The Medievals 2 Page 9

Wendolyn cannot imagine ever being strong enough or powerful enough to defeat Waldron, not after watching Waldron kill Thorne back in Cumbria, nor after enduring his bone-piercing torture for so many hours and days and weeks. But the thought of having such a power to destroy Waldron and avenge the death of Thorne is seductive.

  All eyes are on Wendolyn as her mind sorts through the choices before her.

  Leading to this moment, Wendolyn has never had to make a decision that could have such grave consequences, that could affect a multitude of others beside herself.

  “But how do I find it?” Wendolyn wonders aloud.

  “Call to it with your mind,” the Lady of the Lake instructs from the river. “The Sorcerer’s Staff is bound to your blood. It is yours to command.”

  The watery woman’s words find Wendolyn’s veins and warm her blood: It is yours to command. The words travel through her body, ultimately reaching the tips of her fingers, where she feels them tingle with energy.

  On instinct, Wendolyn walks slowly toward the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots.

  As she approaches, several of the Truscans move aside to clear her path. Wendolyn moves across the root bridge, and as she gets ever closer, she can feel a force persuading her forward, like a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  Wendolyn crosses the remaining distance to the base of the tree, where she stands by herself, dwarfed by the soundless giant. Up close, the tree’s faded red bark has deep grooves, and there are wounds stained with sap that cast its age into high relief.

  She angles her head up to follow the profound channels in the bark skyward, and her eyes must strain to see the distant crown, where sunlight streams in. Not knowing what else to do, Wendolyn presses her left hand to the rough bark, joining her body to the body of the tree, anticipation filling her chest.

  Then she closes her eyes.

  She leans in.

  And she whispers to the ancient being: “Show me the Sorcerer’s Staff.”

  But the only response is a long, mocking silence.

  Wendolyn waits for a moment and then opens her eyes, sighing. She turns to look back to the others standing across the root bridge, where they wait for something to happen.

  “I’ve had yawns more interesting than this,” Loxley quips.

  “Loxley,” Richard chides, coming to Wendolyn’s defense.

  Wendolyn’s heart sinks as her anticipation quickly loses air, and a sense of doubt moves in to fill that abandoned space in her chest. This promised power is no power at all. And Wendolyn feels foolish, having believed those who told her she had such a power, having wanted to believe them.

  “Your mind has been weakened by Waldron’s touch,” Mulan explains. “The voice of Merlin is within you, even though it may not be ready at the surface. Do not give up.”

  The Blind Shen is right. Wendolyn’s mind is still lifting out of the fog of despair that consumed her while she was a captive of Waldron. There are thoughts and memories that are still out of her reach, and her head still aches.

  Wendolyn turns back to the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots, and once again, she presses her hand to the bark. Then, she squeezes her eyes closed tightly, attempting to force any obstructions from her mind.

  With her mind unclouded, Wendolyn leans into the tree and whispers, “I call upon you to reveal the Sorcerer’s Staff to me.”

  She has never said these words before, but somewhere deep within the subchamber of her memory she can hear the faint voice of Bwalen, her father, saying them to her. And she thinks that this must be a key to unlocking the location of the staff.

  And yet, the silence taunts her again.

  But Wendolyn does not open her eyes yet. Instead, she repeats her request over and over again: I call upon you to reveal the Sorcerer’s Staff to me... I call upon you to reveal the Sorcerer’s Staff to me... I call upon you to reveal the Sorcerer’s Staff to me... I call upon you to reveal the Sorcerer’s Staff to me...

  As she continues the entreaty in her mind, Wendolyn hears the sound of leaves shivering. She opens her eyes to see the long, hanging branches stiffening, as if they are bracing against her appeal.

  As if they are withholding something from her.

  Then, the soil around her feet begins to float upward, like the earth is setting it free into the air. The dirt swirls slowly past her eyes, as if dancing, and then continues to rise above her. She looks down to her feet, where the earth does not stop in its release of the soil. And as more soil rises, Wendolyn realizes that she is sinking into the hole that the absenting soil creates beneath her.

  “Wendolyn, no!” Richard cries out.

  Wendolyn turns to see Richard trying to approach her, but Mulan prevents him from going further with an outstretched arm.

  “She is fine,” Mulan assures him. “Let your silence encourage her focus.”

  Richard matches eyes with Wendolyn, his look asking her if she is alright. And as Wendolyn nods to him, he steps back, heeding Mulan’s words.

  The intimate whirlwind of dust continues in a column growing up around Wendolyn, and her body continues to descend. When the hole is as deep as Wendolyn is tall, the scent of earth greets her nose, and she can see a host of worms and bugs that wriggle and scurry away as their underground refuge is exposed to the sunlight.

  If the hole reaches much deeper into the ground, Wendolyn imagines that she will fall through the earthen ceiling of the Truscans’ world that exists beneath the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots. But just as this thought strikes her, Wendolyn’s body stops its descent, and the last tail of dirt flies up into the sky as the whirlwind ceases.

  As Wendolyn faces the newly exposed trunk in front of her, a knowing plank of sunlight guides her eyes to a divergent root, its coloring different from the rest of the tree. It is a pale branch caught in one of the wide grooves of the red bark.

  And as Wendolyn looks more closely, she can discern etched markings that show through a layer of dirt, like ancient engravings.

  It is the Sorcerer’s Staff.

  “It is here! The staff is here!” Wendolyn shouts, the only words she can manage.

  “So it is,” Wendolyn hears King Lemlee say with astonishment.

  She looks back over her shoulder to find all of the others already assembled at the edge of the hole, looking down at the staff.

  King Lemlee shakes his head in wonder: “To think that Merlin’s staff has been with us all along in this tree. It has lived among the Truscans for centuries, yet we never knew.”

  Wendolyn reaches out for the staff, but then stops herself and looks up at Mulan.

  “May I?” Wendolyn asks the Blind Shen.

  “Wendolyn,” Mulan says. “It is your inheritance from your ancestors. You need not ask permission.”

  Wendolyn turns back to the denuded tree trunk, and she again reaches for the staff. Instead of grabbing it all at once, she runs her fingers across its engravings, stubborn dirt surrendering to her touch and falling from the staff. While the meaning of the ancient markings escapes her, she is heartened by the notion that they hold a message intended for her eyes.

  With much of the sediment cleared away, a nearly complete outline of the staff is revealed within the furrow of the custodial bark. Wendolyn uses a finger to pry the staff loose from its home. And, to her surprise, it willingly releases itself into Wendolyn’s hand.

  Her fingers are immediately compelled to wrap themselves around the grip of the ancient staff, and the palm of her hand warms to the touch of the wood. The warmth then courses throughout her body, but not in a comforting way. The heat stings her skin and her bones before it gathers at the front of her mind, her head aching at once.

  Wendolyn is suddenly overwhelmed by a hot wave of nausea, and sweat runs cold against the nape of her neck. She is reminded of the sudden fever that overtook her when she was gathering water by the lake.

  “Wendolyn, are you okay?” Richard asks, his voice echoing at the edges of her ears even though he is now just at arm’s length in front of her, having jumped
down into the hole.

  “I--” Wendolyn starts, but a sudden dizziness steals any further words from her.

  Richard holds her steady, his hands on her shoulders. And while his lips are moving, Wendolyn can no longer hear what he is saying.

  Then a vision flashes before her eyes. One that she has already seen.

  An enchanting spray of fire emanating from her fingertips and then racing across the Nine Territories. The Four Winds blowing over entire villages. Rain drowning the lands.

  They are the same images that haunted her when Waldron tempted the night of her soul with an invitation to join his cause.

  And as the nightmarish vision stabs at her mind once again, Wendolyn releases the staff from her hand, and she feels her feet give out beneath her.

  ◆◆◆

  “I do not wish to touch the staff again,” Wendolyn insists to the Blind Shen.

  Wendolyn and Mulan are alone in the forest, a short distance from the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots, standing in a spill of evening light within a chamber of giant red trees. Between the two of them, the Sorcerer’s Staff rests on a small, moss-covered boulder.

  Mulan has brought Wendolyn to this solitude beyond the leafy curtain of the Truscan village in order to instruct her on the power of the staff. Mulan believes that Wendolyn needs to be separated from the distractions of the others so that she can focus. But Wendolyn desires to have nothing more to do with the staff after her first encounter with it, when it took her senses and her footing.

  “What did you see when you touched the staff?” Mulan gently prompts.

  The visions flash briefly on the insides of her eyelids.

  “I saw death and destruction everywhere. Houses were burning. People were drowning. And I was the one who caused it all,” Wendolyn confesses.

  Mulan tries to assuage Wendolyn’s dark fear: “Those visions are not real.”

  “They felt real. They felt like the future.”

  “Have you seen them before?”

  Wendolyn nods as she remembers Waldron’s stone-choked words that introduced these images into her mind: “Imagine it, Wendolyn. You and I -- together we can be the Last Fate of the Realm.”

  “Yes,” Wendolyn says to Mulan. “It was in the Memory Chamber with Waldron. That is where I first saw them.”

  Mulan nods with understanding, and then explains, “Waldron seeded those images within your mind for this very reason. So that they would hold sway over you. He wants you to believe that you are capable of such horrors, but you are not.”

  Just then, an enormous hoverfly buzzes over them as it flies from one tree to another, interrupting their conversation for only a moment.

  “How can you be sure of this?” Wendolyn continues.

  “Because you are Merlin’s descendant,” Mulan submits. “You have a light within you that beats back the dark.”

  But Wendolyn is quick to challenge Mulan: “If the stories of the Endless War are true, then it was Merlin’s own magic that nearly killed off the humans.”

  The Blind Shen stands there, searching for a response.

  “I do not want this power. I did not ask for it,” Wendolyn asserts, gesturing toward the staff that lies on the rock between them.

  “The staff does not give you power, Wendolyn. It can only magnify the voice within you. By learning how to use the Sorcerer’s Staff, the fear will go away. And so will the pain and the fevers that visit your head.”

  “How do you know of that?” Wendolyn wonders aloud.

  “Everything is louder, yes?” Mulan asks.

  Wendolyn nods.

  “And things are brighter, forcing you to squint in the daylight?”

  Again, Wendolyn nods as she thinks back to the headache that befell her after she blacked out in the Cumbrian forest with Leeta and the other children; or after the fever by the lake; or after the crippling pain in her mind after Waldron searched her memory.

  “It feels like someone is yelling at you, but you do not understand what they are saying,” Mulan says. “Like their tongue has been formed in a different language. It is as if there is someone inside of you that is trying desperately to get out.”

  Wendolyn’s eyebrows knit together as she looks at Mulan, who has just described Wendolyn’s existential pain in the very real way that she feels it.

  “Yes,” Wendolyn agrees with surprise. Then, even though she is scared to hear the answer, she asks: “How do you know this? What is it? What is trying to get out?”

  This question has haunted her for some time, ever since the headaches began. She yearns to understand this feeling that returns again and again, as if a monster has been awoken within her.

  “It is you, Wendolyn,” Mulan answers. “It is your true voice that wants to reveal itself to the world.”

  True voice.

  She remembers Thorne using those words with her back in the cottage. “You must learn to control it,” he had said. I will teach you to find your true voice, which hides deep within you.”

  For so long, Wendolyn has heard a voice in her head that she believed was not her own. She has looked at her arms and fingers and wondered to whom they belonged. Her reflection in the glassy surface of the lake, it was not hers. Her thoughts, not hers. Her mind, not hers.

  And yet, it has been her all along, always her, trapped inside the walls of her own mind, wanting to get out.

  “You carry a power within you,” Mulan says. “You know this by now. But you do not know how to wield it. The pain you experience in your head -- it comes not from the power itself, but from your inability to control it. This staff will help you channel that power.”

  Wendolyn’s mind travels back to the cottage on the night that Waldron found her, the night that Thorne first told her of her power. A tide of questions consumed Wendolyn. But Thorne’s vague answers could not rescue her from her swirling mind. All he told her was that he would tell her more when the sun came up. But it never did. Not for Thorne.

  “Why did Thorne wait to tell me until it was too late?” Wendolyn asks Mulan. “Why did he not tell me who I really am?”

  Mulan considers Wendolyn’s question for a long moment as the leaves flit with an evening breeze.

  “Perhaps he did not think you were ready to hear it,” Mulan speculates. “Perhaps he was not ready. Perhaps… he wanted to protect you from the truth as long as he could.”

  “He should have told me,” Wendolyn protests, and she can feel a sleeping anger toward Thorne awaking once again within her.

  “You are right,” the blindfolded woman agrees. “And if Thorne were here with us, I believe he, too, would agree. But you must understand, the members of the Order -- while we are superior warriors trained to guard the Descendants, our training only allows for so much when it comes to raising a child.”

  Against her will, tears form in Wendolyn’s eyes.

  “I thought he was my father,” Wendolyn admits dolefully, gulping her emotions. And then, she quietly adds, “I thought he loved me.”

  As she says these words, Wendolyn realizes that it is not anger she feels, but a deep, incurable sadness that grows from the thought of Thorne never having loved her, the thought that he was a father-pretender for all those years.

  Taking Wendolyn by surprise, the Blind Shen steps toward Wendolyn and wraps her arms around her, hugging her close to her chest. The warm touch of another person, the sound of Mulan’s heart beating against her pressed ear -- it is too much for Wendolyn.

  And she sobs.

  Tears stream down her cheeks and leak down the back of her throat.

  As Wendolyn’s tears wet the black fabric of Mulan’s cloak, Mulan hugs her even closer. After several minutes of sobbing into the chest of Mulan, Wendolyn tries to rein in her tears.

  “Breathe in,” the Blind Shen instructs, and Wendolyn obeys. “Now hold it, and imagine that it is all of your sadness captured in one breath of air.”

  Wendolyn holds her breath, her tears subsiding.

  “Now,” Mulan c
ontinues in a calming voice. “When I let go of you, I want you to release all of that sadness out into the air, freeing it from your body.”

  Wendolyn can feel Mulan’s hold loosen around her. And as Mulan releases her body completely, Wendolyn exhales, pushing her kept breath out into the air above her in the Eternal Forest. She releases her full breath, saving none of it.

  “How do you feel?” Mulan solicits.

  “Better,” Wendolyn replies.

  And it is true: she feels as if much of her sadness has been lifted from her. Wendolyn wipes the last trails of tears from her cheeks, and then looks to the blindfolded woman.

  “Thank you,” Wendolyn says to Mulan.

  But while Mulan responds with a smile, the smile quickly fades into a thin line of concern across her lips. And Wendolyn’s senses, dimmed by her emotions, return all at once as she suddenly notices a rattling sound.

  She looks to the boulder next to her, where she sees the Sorcerer’s Staff trembling, the wood clattering against the mossy stone.

  “No!” Mulan utters, a grim awareness striking through her voice.

  Her hand reaches for the staff, but the Blind Shen is not quick enough, and the crooked stick flies from the stone.

  Wendolyn’s eyes follow the staff as it shoots through the air, across the hall of giant trees, and then disappears into the shadows of the forest. It is a swath of deep, black shadows that are marred by a single red dot.

  A chill hits Wendolyn’s spine as Waldron steps slowly from the shadows.

  As the Rune moves further into the fading light of the evening, Wendolyn sees that he is cloaked in darklings, with all but his silver mask covered in the black feathers.

  And he is holding the Sorcerer’s Staff.

  “Nooooo!” Mulan shouts just as she leaps into the air.

  The Blind Shen’s feet spring from the earth as if she can fly, and Wendolyn is reminded of Thorne leaping from the Edge of the World. With her fists ready to attack, Mulan soars across the forest as she arcs toward the waiting Waldron.

  But just before Mulan reaches Waldron, the darklings fly from their perches on the Rune and unite in front of their master, forming a massive black wall that floats there in the middle of the forest.