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

blazed. "You have the map of the known territories, and the Royal City on you at all times! Show it to me," she demanded.

He reached into the inner slit of his vest to deliver a small rectangle that was the size of her palm. She pulled at its corners to spread it into a full sized sheet bigger than her whole body. "That is not what I'm looking for," she yawned, "Where are the older maps? Especially the ones from before the slave times? Or even older ones?" she asked him, swishing the last of the Juice in her glass. Her breathing became slower and deeper as the juice began to work its poison through her body.

"If they exist, they should be in the King's possession. Some might have survived in the hands of the Mothers of the Lines." He watched her closely, never relaxing his tense posture. "Probably Mother had them too at some point."

Everything became clear to him the moment he noticed the way her shoulders tensed when she heard his answer.

"You want the maps. You don’t care about any of your things the Mother might have taken from you." He closed off his expression, and his face became his mask. That was the invisible line she had crossed, he realized, she had lied to him.

"We can't go ask around any of them, and I certainly don't want to visit the King again so soon… I'm so tired." Bertan ignored his accusation and yawned again.

She could not hide her fatigue anymore. Her eyes drooped, and the carpet seemed softer than her bed that was suddenly too far away to even try and walk there. Lying down by the side of the Unnamed seemed the best idea to follow. The safety he emanated was the balm for all the fears and troubles that have targeted her at all times lately.

"I need to join the boy," she uttered semiconsciously. It was her Madness speaking. Unable to keep her eyes open anymore, she dived straight into the Maddened dreams.

"I know Bertan, the Mother of your first Sword child,” he whispered softly carrying her into her sleeping-room. “Have a safe journey."

He watched her sleeping longer than he would ever want to admit. The softness of her face took an almost childlike form. He was sure, she didn’t know about this part of making a child, of the Madness the Mother and the Child would have to share just as every Sword that had been made before.

The Unnamed knew that Bertan was still very young and spent so much time out of their lands, so till now, small but important details would go unnoticed in front of her eyes. She would have to learn the hard way of the Madness sharing with that boy, he smirked, as if he thought she deserved that kind of punishment. It would be her first real lesson what being a Sword really meant. And he was there to guard those two kids who had no idea what Fates they had spun into existence. This was going to be a long waiting time, he finally relaxed, for no eyes were focused on him.

 

 

7

The Trek of the last days finally came to an end, it wasn’t pretty. Red eyes were everywhere around. Wild, blood red eyes watched Cressy and the rest of the Seekinglander tribe for a long time, almost at ready to strike. None of the blood-maddened Axe Warriors said a word. Their hostility was brewing, the air was thick with it while her tribe took their time to cross the Wall into the heart of the Axeland.

Cressy noticed that there was something enthralling in the way the maddened soldiers dug the trenches around the Wall. No sound other than the one of the sand scraping and shoveling was present. No orders, no grunts, no whistling, nothing and yet they still worked like a well-oiled machine. Everyone knew their place, function, and a task at hand, accepting it without any question.

She watched the unreal scene that was happening in front of her eyes, utterly dazed and fascinated. There was no fear in her, quite the opposite. She even dared to walk closer to the group of men digging a narrow trench at the base of the Wall. Cressy could see how deeply rooted into the ground the Wall was. There were old legends in the Old Lore that it had no end below the ground, she recalled, and it certainly looked like it was true.

She just stood there, unaware of the time passing by, missing the fact that every one of her tribe managed to cross the Wall. She was completely alone, surrounded by the enemy that started to take notice of her vulnerability. It wasn’t till she looked right into the blood red eyes of the Warrior who already tightly held her arms that she realized those eyes could be the last thing she would see in her lifetime.

Tension left her body at once. Clarity raced through her mind.

"I just want to help you," Cressy feebly protested with her last conscious breath.

 

A flash of light grazed her skin. Some kind of a neutral, unfamiliar buzz scraped her ears. Marked with the red-eyed haze, she was born into a very different world. A new world that was embedded in the founding structures of the one her mind had just left behind.

There was so much light around! Brightness seemed to hurt her eyes, once she fully recovered and looked around. So many people looked at her though they never stopped working and digging the same trench around the same Wall she knew from the other world. It was clear that everyone noticed her at once when she fully regained her mind.

"It looks the same, yet it's so different," Cressy thought, "I have to remind myself where I am." At this moment she realized her thoughts were out there for everyone to hear for it was audible, despite her muteness. "How is this even possible?"

"It's not possible in the slightest," a finely tuned voice answered. Cressy couldn’t see who it belonged to because everyone around looked at her with great interest.

"Then how can it be?" she asked.

"It's not and yet it is," the same voice seemed to decide to have a conversation with her.

"Explain please," she pleaded, still very disoriented in the reality of weirdness around her.

"It cannot be explained. You can only experience it for yourself," the voice scraped her mind

"Does it ever end? Is this a dream?" Cressy asked.

"Doesn’t everything have an end?" A quiet chuckle turned into a loud cackle.

"Is my world over?" She questioned more herself, than the voice.

"This is your world. It just looks differently from here, but it's still our world."

"Why am I seeing and experiencing it then?" She frowned looking around with more attention to the details of what was happening.

"Isn't it obvious? You said the magic words that had the power to bring you in here."

"What did I say?" Cressy asked utterly confused.

"You said you wanted to help us," the voice seemed to be more distant.

"Really? I don’t recall that part,” she said bewildered.

"It's only natural that you don’t remember. We keep on forgetting where we come from." Silence echoed for few moments. "A pure wish to be of service, not tainted with expectations, is something to cherish and treasure."

"Why?" Cressy asked.

"It just is. Why question it?" The voice seemed to get tired, weakened in her head.

"What could be so special about my offer to help?" she wondered, thinking again more to herself.

"It was made, for starters," the answer took her by surprise as she wasn’t expecting it.

"People don’t do that?" She couldn’t hide her surprise.

"Not many and not one of your kind." Words stretched into the infinity.

"Not one Seekinglander ever linked with you?" Cressy felt a tad disappointed. She held some hope of meeting here someone she knew.

"No," the voice chuckled, "I should have said more clearly. You are the only female here so far. You had accepted the test before it was even presented to you. So here it comes. Help us."

"How do I help you?" she asked after a while, wondering why some of her thoughts were audible, and some had to be 'thought louder' in order to be heard.

"Look around, find what gets your attention." Silent yawn accompanied the weakening voice.

"Isn't here a taskmaster of sorts?" Cressy looked around restlessly.

"No," cold be heard form a great distance.

"Some kind of leader?"

"We are here on our own," barely audible whisper answered.

"Then how do you know what to do?" she asked totally perplexed.

"We are only doing what got our attention. We don't have any plan going on."

A pause that followed stretched for so long it became clear to her that the conversation might be over.

Cressy looked around, full of curiosity and wonder. Everything looked the way she remembered it to be, but was different at the same time. Was it the unnatural existence of so much light here that caused everything seem so vibrant and alive? She had no answer for that.

The sky was yellowy-gold in hue, like it wanted to be more of a white gold instead, but couldn’t decide. It was as if the sky itself was the sole source of light. Cressy was amazed that the brightness didn’t hurt her eyes anymore for sometimes even the firelight was too strong for her comfort. The sky was void of stars, so it was hard for her to know her exact position. The Wall remained the only navigation mark she could follow. Only then she realized how pretty it was. It didn’t seem mirror-like anymore. What was a highly polished surface before, now seemed rough, turned into a sand-still form.

Cressy became mesmerized with the way tiny grains reflected the skylight. She couldn’t stop herself. She needed to get closer to that Wall, to touch it and reassure herself that it’s not just her eyes playing tricks on her. The only thing that came to her mind was to jump into the trench others were still digging. It was much deeper than she had expected, so she stumbled and fell on her butt. It hurt. Good. Pain meant she was still alive. Crazy but alive, there was still no comfort in that knowledge.

"Boredom kills," the voice continued their conversation out of the blue.

"What?" she asked completely confused.

"Here, wherever it is that we are, boredom kills," the whisper droned on.

"What do you mean?" Cressy got up groaning and assessing her damages. There were none.

"If you won't find a thing to work at, you will cease to exist."

"How?" She asked, but felt at the same time that she didn’t want to continue this conversation anymore.

"How what?"

"How will I cease to exist?" She prompted.

"Ah, that," the voice chuckled again, "Normally, by the death of your body."

"And how that does usually happen around here?" she asked quite annoyed with the half-truths she was getting all the time.

"It's not a fun thing to watch and even less so to talk about," the voice snapped, "Just find yourself something to do."

"I don’t want to dig," Cressy whined.

"Who tells you to dig?"

"You told me to work. It doesn’t look like there is anything else to do here." She touched the Wall with pleasure. That couldn’t be any kind of work, obviously.

"If you don’t