Bertan`s quest - Michelle Tarynne (best beach reads of all time txt) 📗

a startling revelation that it was way too easy for her to see through the Mother. The conversation was becoming dangerous before it even started.

"I need to speak with you in private. Where no ears can hear and no eyes may see, Mother." Bertan's voice didn’t even feel as her own.

That request alone sparked a rare look of interest in her Mother, a calculating gleam filled her bright eyes.

"Ah, I see. We should visit the Winter's Peak then." The Mother led the way in silence with such poise and superiority that all of her guards and company knew they were being dismissed right there, without any need for a verbal command. The Highest Mother of the Third Line was followed only by Bertan, who nodded at Genes to stay too. He could not object, frozen as a stone, he waited.

When nothingness spread around, it was only darkness that met Bertan's feet. Crescent moonlight soothed her eyes, unused to the amount of light that graced the Royal City. The Winters Peak was a small terrace, forged into the peak of the mountain. The view would be breathtaking, was it not the only a place of solitude granted to the few with secrets and the ones eager to keep them in darkness. It was the only place in the entire Royal City of Naam accessible only by stairs. One thousand two hundred and fifteen of them, and as many ways to avoid being followed and heard.

"Why did you come back now Bertan? You know what that means. You can't leave without having a death squad after your head soon. You will pay not only for your own past sins here," a sincere worry marred Mother's voice. Not the thing Bertan would ever expect to hear. "Much has changed while you were gone."

"I know Mother. I will try to deal with that later." Bertan decided, to go with the most pressing issue she faced first. "Now I need to ask you one question… Who am I Mother, I know, I'm not the one you told me I was."

"How can you be sure?" Her Mother asked clearly not surprised. She kept her eyes closed to avoid any eye-linking with her daughter.

"I know Mother. This knowledge has been growing inside me. Who am I? Who is my real father?" Bertan tried very hard not to sound too hungry for knowledge. She was sick at the thought of being fed with lies again.

"I do not know, dearest daughter." Impossible sorrow seemed to enter the Mother's voice for a tiniest of moments. Just a fleeting impression that Bertan was almost sure she had to imagine it in the first place.

"How can you not know that?" Bertan asked more hostile than she wished to. That exactly had to be just another lie that her mother kept on repeating throughout her life. The Echo suddenly carried a bit too much sound for her liking. And she looked around nervously.

Her Mother's figure seemed to crumple at that exact moment.

"Mother!" Bertan lunged forward with an embrace, to keep the matron from falling down from the terrace's stone ledge. She crouched to assess the damages, finding some kind of darts that bit her Mother who was barely breathing at that point.

"I'm not your Mother, Bertan, I never was," the Mother struggled to say. "We don't breed anymore, even with the foreigners." Last breath wheezed out of her. The Mother left Bertan lost and alone once again.

Of all the moments, Bertan had wished for death to come upon her Mother that was the only one time, in her entire life, she prayed for one more breath, one more second of life, for the person she hated. All was futile now. More questions without answers arose. The Fates were not kind for her first approach to uncover the truth of her origins, rendering everything else to be pointless. She had only a few moments more to buy some more time before she would be able to leave the city again.

 

Genes couldn’t believe his eyes. It seemed as if a stranger hijacked Bertan's body that walked down the stairs. It was the first time when he truly noted and appreciated her beauty, strength, and grace. Stormy, and empty dark eyes that belonged to Bertan assessed everyone who gathered by the staircase. In her left hand she held the head of The Mother of The third line.

Her unwavering voice announced a clear, but detached message, "I, Bertan of The Third Line To The Throne, by the law of blood, am taking over the Third Line Throne Head position. Anyone, who wishes to fight my claim, speak now, or stay silent forever!" She raised her right hand to point into the sky.

Not a softest of sounds to broke the shocked silence that followed, not a bit wind, not a rasp of a shoe on the marble floor. Even breaths seemed to be held for a long while, as she had claimed her new position.

As no competition arose, she dropped the head to the floor. "Prepare the funeral immediately." her voice was still strong and unrelenting.

Bertan quickly left. People by the scene were left disoriented and awed. They had a chance to be a part of a live-and-tell experience that they would relish for the rest of their lives. Her Mother had been one of the ultimate masters of the Sword Kingdom for more Great Cycles than most of their own lives. No sane person would take lightly the one who had apparently just chopped her head off to claim her position, so they feared Bertan greatly then. The Swords respected only those they feared.

 

Genes had no choice, but to follow the stranger that had now taken control of his friend. That thought brought him up short. Aye, Bertan, the Sword, the killer, the ultimate enemy, was becoming his friend deep within his heart.

 

Bertan ran through the last corridor that separated her from the Red Rooms. She was barely aware of the troubles Genes had to follow her stride. She ran straight for the trash bin to throw up, heaving an almost empty stomach out, drowning in panic that was hovering over her ever since she had to chop off that damn head off. It had not been a killing, for blood was already unmoving, yet the disgust it unveiled had fed her Madness. No matter how much she tried to shut down that voice in her head, it did not relent.

She had known, she was no Sword by nature. The difference now was that she was sure, she was no Sword by blood either. Volatile Madness devoured her mind, and boiled her blood, as she cursed the fictitious heritage she was made to believe in her whole life. At some point her awareness gave up, letting her slip out of her body. It was a bit of reprieve from the hatred in a tortured mind.

 

Bertan became a'De in Genes eyes, almost Death within a living, and breathing body that had a soul at the ready to leave. Everything was an act since then. She uttered no word nor took any interest in his presence.

He didn’t bother to count the cycles that passed, and he could feel death creeping into him too, for she was the only person that kept him alive in the Royal City of Naam, in the middle of Sword territories. He still had problems to wrap his mind around the fact that he was in the middle of the enemy lands. So he kept his head low, and started to observe things, and people.

The only thing he did know for sure was that this was his prison, and he would never be able to reach his tribe that had probably already started the Great Trek into the unknown. The Oracle would be followed closely, with or without him present. He had never felt so alone, raw and hopeless as in the time that Bertan was swept into a'De. All the cycles blended into one until his fear turned into the only food for his body and soul.

Uninterrupted time of silence and stillness stretched into Cycles, until six guards stormed into Bertan's main room. She didn’t even bother to raise her eyes then. Her sole focus was aimed at the glass of the Tharo Juice. Nothing could break the connection she had with the glass in her hand and the liquid in her mouth.

The guards froze in a rigid formation, three by each side. They waited for something to happen. When nothing had for a long time, they did not relax their wariness. As one, they fell to their knees to sit on their heels. Their leader was still to reveal himself, from behind the thick doors the guards left opened. The aura of his hidden presence was heavy with the weight of his position and the strength of his scent. Once that odd kind of perfume reached Bertan, it caused her to raise her head and look at the doors, drilling it through to the place that someone apparently waited.

"In!" A sudden awareness and fury in Bertan's voice startled Genes in an instant. He fell into a dizziness, when he thought that nothing would make her alive again but in that great wake up call, his only one thought was to hide. Nothing, and not one that was able to bring her from the a'De, and yell this way, could by no means, herald anything good to happen. So, Genes dived straight down and behind her sofa to watch a bizarre scene that took place by the rules of the world, he knew wasn't his.

A tallest man, he had ever seen, entered the room to stop right in the middle of his guards. The figure was robed in a strict attire, complete with a hood and a face-covering that revealed only his wary eyes.

"What brings you here, Ash of the Second Line, with double the guards you usually bring, to my lowly rooms?" the ice in her voice would freeze all the piss in Genes groin, was it directed to him.

"Hardly lowly anymore, you are, Bertan,” a raspy voice, hidden behind the customary mask, answered ruefully, “You should be proud some of us started to take you… a bit more seriously after…"

"After I took my Mother's head to take her position at my house?" she asked coldly, not giving away that she was still deeply sickened with that fact.

"Well, yes, of course. You are finally showing signs of becoming a true Sword to be on guard around, with more guards of course," his voice was so deep and rumbling that it almost reached the edge of being inaudible at times, "But that is not the reason of my visit."

"What is it then?" she asked, and narrowed her eyes to look more closely at her visitor, in the search for any signs to be wary of, and yet, she could not find any.

"Always quick to the root of things,” he laughed quietly, “You haven't changed that much."

"I have not changed, at all," she voiced the bitter truth that tugged at her core even more relentless since she came back into her senses again.

"Don't expect me to fall for your sweet appearance ever again. As well as for the continuous mutiny to the custom of face covering, walking barefaced like only the slaves do. A visible face lies just as good as the covered one, even better in fact, because no one expects the deception then. That's why your Mother had fallen, isn't it?" His words stated both admiration and a warning. "Mind now, all of us have learned that lesson pretty quick."

"Noted. Why are you here? Is it a secret?" Bertan straightened her posture even more, standing up in an almost unnoticeable movement.

"Hardly Bertan, the new Mistress of the Third Line." He seemed to be amused when it became apparent that she noticed her physical disadvantages. As tall as she was for a female, she barely reached the middle of his torso. Yet, he still