She heaves for breath as my sword tightens across her throat. ‘Don’t kill me! I can still be useful tonight.’
‘Your use is done here. Don’t push your luck.’
‘Look, I was confused at the time Marduke first approached me. He showed me things, like how my father beat my mother to death. He told me that since half my genes were inherited from my father, I was born to be a part of the Order of Chaos, it was my destiny. At first, I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to. I tried not to. But I was vulnerable, and power is food for the weak.’
I recall how tragic and disturbed Rochelle’s childhood was, living with a violent father. But still, if I let her go, how do I know she won’t simply turn around and try to kill me with a weapon concealed on her body?
‘I can’t prove that I won’t harm you. You wouldn’t believe me anyway. But if you can find it in yourself to trust me, somehow … somehow I’ll prove your faith was worthwhile.’
I think hard, my arms growing heavy holding the sword so long at this height. The blade presses into the skin at Rochelle’s throat, causing a trickle of blood. She’s asking me to release her, but how can I do that? For starters, if she’s telling me the truth, Marduke will realise she’s turned on him and will probably kill her immediately. But then it occurs to me how I can give her a way out. A way out that will leave her free to choose. It will be up to her then to decide what to do with her life. Everyone deserves a second chance. Don’t they?
Suddenly, I recall how Rochelle tried to poison me that time in the past with King Richard II. She knew my identity then and still she—
‘It was my job. If I didn’t, I would have been reported. I wasn’t alone on that mission. But there wasn’t enough poison in that goblet to kill you, Isabel. Only to make you ill for a short time.’
Taking the risk that she’s telling the truth, I slide the tip of my sword beneath her skin-tight mask, raising an edge near her left ear. It lifts, and with a flick of the sword, peels away, coloured lenses and all, revealing Rochelle’s brilliant green eyes, looking slightly reddened and irritated from the mask.
With nothing to protect her identity now, Rochelle has Marduke’s blessing to turn and run. She takes one step backwards and gives a barely perceptible nod before disappearing into the woods.
I don’t get a second to analyse whether I’ve done the right or wrong thing. Arkarian’s voice sings out, ‘Hurry, you’re needed here!’
I run back into the clearing. What I see there leaves me gasping and breathless. Many warriors are now lying dead or maimed on the clearing floor. Marduke himself stands beside Matt with a flaming torch in his hand, poised ready to light the timber at Matt’s feet. The guards on either side of Matt are now fighting Arkarian, Mr Carter and Shaun. Then I see why Arkarian called. It’s Jimmy – lying very still, half slumped against a log, blood pumping out from a deep wound to his thigh.
I run over and lift his fingers from the wound, running a hand over his sweat soaked face. A warrior approaches with his sword drawn. Shaun diverts his attention quickly, doing battle with two warriors at once. Immediately, I get to work on healing Jimmy. He’s lost a lot of blood, and it takes me a few minutes to get started. Just as I think the task impossible, the cells will not repair, they begin to move at my will. I seal the exits first, saving what blood Jimmy has left, then repair his damaged tissues, muscles, tendons and blood vessels.
‘Good work,’ he says, regaining his strength with surprising speed. Leaning on me at first, he gets to his feet, tentatively trying out his newly repaired leg. It takes his full weight and he grins, nodding with relief. ‘I owe you one, my girl!’
He takes his sword and gets straight back into the fighting. We are, of course, still severely outnumbered, two and sometimes three to one.
Shaun suddenly eliminates the pair he duels with and spins on Marduke, who still holds the torch threateningly near Matt’s feet. ‘Touch flame to that wood and I will slice your head completely off, as I should have done twelve years ago.’
Marduke only laughs, but tosses the flame to one of his warriors. I think he still resembles Lord Whitby. ‘Hold this,’ Marduke says. ‘I’ll be back to light it soon.’ And to Shaun he says, ‘It’s about time we finally settled this score, friend.’
They begin to duel. This fight is unfair right from the start. Marduke is fresh, having fought no one yet, whereas Shaun has fought many already. This also is in Marduke’s plan.
Matt suddenly groans and moves his head, as if slowly waking. What else can go wrong? I spin around in a mad circle, wondering how Ethan could possibly be taking so long. My attention is riveted to Shaun duelling with Marduke. This is the fight Shaun left the Guard to avoid. The others too have paused to watch, forming a rough circle so that they can keep an eye on each other as well.
Marduke has the upper hand right from the start. Shaun gives back as good as he gets, but it’s obvious he’s tiring. The battle just seems to go on and on, then Shaun’s sword strikes Marduke’s right shoulder, drawing blood.
Marduke shakes his head with a violent grunt, and comes back with a vengeance that leaves everyone stunned. Swords clash fiercely. Shaun is forced ever backwards. It’s obvious now that Shaun is losing, but when the lethal strike comes, it happens so quickly it takes us all by surprise. Shaun falls to one knee. Terribly disadvantaged, he tries hard to regain his footing, but Marduke lunges his sword straight at Shaun’s chest. It goes in swift and deep, piercing right through Shaun’s protective armour.
Shaun gasps, his sword dropping with a clang to the ground. I run to him and, with Jimmy’s help, withdraw Marduke’s sword. Quickly, we remove the battered armour. I put my hands to Shaun’s chest in an attempt to stem the massive blood flow while starting to work my healing skills. But I’m still weakened from healing Jimmy, and Shaun is fading fast.
Marduke stares down with a satisfied half-grin. ‘At last,’ he hisses.
Trying to ignore the hatred and bitterness emanating from the heartless man towering over me, I press down hard on Shaun’s chest and start visualising the enormous amount of healing that must take place to seal the wound first, then repair the heart and all the surrounding damaged areas.
But Marduke tries to distract me. He takes back the torch, calling my name, taunting me to watch him light the wood beneath my brother’s feet.
A sudden commotion seizes my attention. Warriors move around the clearing. There’s a new figure among them. Ethan! Finally, he makes an appearance. Where has he been? He doesn’t even seem to be hurrying. Steadily, he approaches Marduke, ignoring everyone else, though as he passes near me he gives a lingering look at his father lying on his back beneath my hands, blood still oozing from his open heart-wound. In a flash, his eyes reveal the pain and torture of a child gripped by the certain knowledge that he could at any moment lose that which is most precious to him – his own parent.
‘You’re too late, it’s almost over,’ Marduke taunts, holding the torch mere centimetres from the wood.
‘Ah, but not too late to show you this.’ Keeping his eyes focused solely on Marduke, Ethan raises one hand and, in a dramatic show, moves it in a wide arch. Before our eyes a brilliant dome of light appears, the shape of a beautiful girl generating within. She looks up and around the dome, confusion on her delicate face.
‘What game is this?’ Marduke demands.
‘Don’t you think she looks a little familiar?’ Ethan asks in a teasing voice.
Marduke takes the challenge by peering intently at the girl. Suddenly, his head jerks backwards. ‘It can’t be!’ he whispers.
‘She is your daughter,’ Ethan announces flamboyantly, bowing at the same time. ‘Neriah.’
Heal! I order myself to concentrate on repairing the damaged cells in Shaun’s chest, visualising the sealing of vessels, blood returning to wounded tissue. As the healing takes shape, I wonder whether my efforts are too late, as Shaun’s loss of blood is horrendous. I try hard to keep focused, but the torch at Matt’s feet
, the darkening of his bruised skin, and this unexpected shy-looking apparition have me mesmerised. I force myself to work on two levels: healing Shaun, which I do with an inner source of energy I’m normally unaware of; and observing the goings-on around me.
Marduke stares at Ethan, clearly unsettled. ‘This is nothing but an illusion.’
Ethan wills a dagger from his boot to his hand, and in one fluid movement reaches within the dome and drags the girl into his arms. Forcing her back to his chest, he points the dagger to her throat.
Outside the dome the girl looks very real indeed. She squirms, her eyes widening with confusion and panic. Ethan tightens his grip. Drips of blood form across the girl’s throat where the dagger has come too close. She screams.
‘No!’ Marduke commands with a surprising catch to his throat. ‘Release her!’
‘Only when you throw down the torch,’ Ethan says, maintaining a steady front. I’ve never seen Ethan so controlled. What’s happened to him? Where’s the boy who generally acts before he thinks? He is wearing an air of calm-composure. ‘If you don’t do as I say, you will never know your own flesh again.’
Marduke lowers the torch just slightly. ‘Where did you find her? I looked everywhere since that day, twelve years ago, when her mother snatched her from my arms.’
‘She’s been well cared for. You only had to wait. Obviously, she was going to be drawn to Veridian; it was simply a matter of time.’
‘She is Named?’ Marduke asks in a voice of disbelief and disgust. ‘By the Guard?’
‘She’ll enter the Guard one day soon,’ Arkarian announces.
Marduke suddenly laughs, his tone heavy with contempt. ‘Do you think I will allow that?’
Arkarian shrugs. ‘You won’t have a choice.’
‘These past twelve years I have seen another world and I have learned many things, old friend. I’ll not confuse my loyalties again. My fealty is to the Goddess alone. She has made me very content.’
Ethan’s arms stiffen as if unable to believe the heartlessness of the man before him. ‘What are you saying?’
Marduke’s eyes shift to Ethan’s. ‘What I’m saying, boy, is that I would not hesitate to kill my own daughter if that’s what it takes to keep her from your hands.’
Ethan inhales sharply. ‘I never did think of you as a man. All those years I was right.’
‘So what am I?’
‘In my dreams you were a monster. The reality is, you’re far worse.’
Marduke looks at me while I work hard to save Shaun’s life. ‘You waste your strength on him, girl. One day perhaps you’ll have the skill, but today you’re far too inexperienced. He will die, as he should have done before he did this thing to me.’ He raises a thick hand to the shattered side of his face where scars run in zigzag fashion from his hairline to the deep chasm of his chin.
And with those angry words Marduke throws the torch directly into the centre of the pile of wood beneath Matt’s feet, simultaneously lunging for the girl still held in Ethan’s arms.
Surprised by this sudden distracting move, Ethan lets his grip loosen, Marduke grabs the girl and holds her tightly. ‘Neriah!’ he whispers close to her ear.
The fire ignites, causing chaos in the clearing, and my heart to racing. ‘Noooo!’ I scream, losing my concentration altogether now, and make to run to Matt.
Arkarian pulls me back down, covering my hands with his own over the centre of Shaun’s chest. ‘Heal! For you’re almost done, and a healer is what you are, Isabel.’
‘But Matt?’
‘Ethan and Jimmy will save him.’
I look up and see Ethan and Jimmy running to the fire. I glance down briefly at Shaun, his injured heart beneath my hands, wondering how close I really am to healing his wound. ‘Marduke says I’m not strong enough to save Shaun.’
‘Don’t listen to the poison that flows from Marduke’s mouth. Keep going, Isabel. Marduke forgot to mention what else he learned from the Order – to lie and cheat and deceive. If you believe in yourself, you can still heal this man. Without you he will surely die.’
But all thoughts of healing soon fly from my head when Ethan suddenly spins away from the burning flames without even trying to get Matt down. Shivers go through me as I watch him take his dagger, hold it tightly in his fist, then spin on Marduke as if possessed of a power and strength even Marduke would find intimidating. He rams into the big man with no apparent care for his own safety, the blow forcing Marduke to release the girl called Neriah. In the same instant Ethan grabs the girl, shoving her into the lighted dome. She falls into a heap on the floor and disappears.
Marduke looks at the spot where his daughter was and roars, his hands clawing the air angrily as if this action will somehow return her. Stunned, I can only stare as this huge man drops to all fours, digging away at the dirt where the last rays of Ethan’s lighted dome are now disappearing.
Slowly, Marduke realises his daughter is gone. He staggers to his feet, his arms held wide, his misshapen face contorted. His eye searches for Ethan, and when he finds him, Marduke gives an earth-shattering roar, stretching his hands wide in front of him. To everyone’s amazement Marduke’s fingers start to glow with streaks of vivid blue light, as if his blood vessels have become luminous. And just like lightning, electric streaks flash from his fingertips with hissing, screeching sounds.
Arkarian calls out a sharp warning. But Ethan is one step ahead. Dagger drawn, Ethan charges Marduke, stabbing him deeply in the throat. Marduke screams, grabbing Ethan in a tight hold. But Ethan hangs on with all he has, stabbing Marduke again and again.
And while Marduke’s life drains from his body, Jimmy and Mr Carter try their hardest to dismantle the burning timber to get to Matt. I try to keep my mind focused on the healing beneath my hands, sensing on some higher level that I’m close now, while still trying to see beyond the leaping and crackling flames. But they’re just too strong. The wood must have been doused with something to make it ignite so viciously. The flames take a firm hold, stopping everyone from getting any closer to Matt.
‘Help him!’ I scream while still trying to continue working on Shaun.
Hands suddenly clasp over mine. I look down. They’re Shaun’s. Gently he pushes my hands away. ‘You are truly gifted,’ he says softly, apparently completely healed. ‘Consider me always in your debt.’
Arkarian helps him to his feet, and I’m free now to run to the fire. But when I get there, everyone is just standing around looking at the place where Matt’s scorched and murdered body should be hanging. They’re staring, and now I understand why. Matt is not there. The tree is bare except for the flames leaping and dancing around its massive trunk.
Arkarian comes up behind me. ‘Who did this?’
Ethan staggers over, as puzzled as the rest of us. ‘I don’t know, but Marduke is dead.’
‘Are you sure?’ Arkarian asks.
This question has everyone turn and look at the lifeless body lying in a widening pool of his own blood. As we stare, Marduke’s body starts to disappear. ‘He died out of his own time. What does this mean? He can’t come back, can he?’ I ask.
Ethan and Arkarian exchange a really weird look but don’t say anything. Marduke’s remaining warriors come over for a closer examination, but only bloodstained grass remains where their master’s body lay but a few seconds earlier. They realise their master is dead and gone. Quickly, they back away, gather their dead and wounded, and disappear into the surrounding woods.
Shaun stands in the exact spot where Marduke’s body disappeared and answers me. ‘What this means, quite simply, is that our problems with this man are over. No one can come back from the dead, Isabel.’
Ethan finally drags his glance away from Arkarian and takes my hand, pointing it into the flames before us. ‘You have to learn to trust more, Isabel.’
I think his words right now are insane. ‘What are you talking about? Where’s Matt? Where at least is his body?’
‘Here … Here I am.
But who the hell are you?’ I spin around as Matt’s laboured voice comes from somewhere behind me. He looks weary and beaten and bruised and greenish, but at least he’s breathing. Jimmy and Mr Carter help him walk, taking most of his weight.
‘How did you escape?’ I ask, but quickly remind myself that as we’re still in the past, Matt is seeing us as the strangers the Citadel created to keep our identities secret.
‘Rochelle released me. She’s gone now, said something about having to disappear for a while. I don’t understand what’s going on. Can someone please explain?’
I can’t stop myself from screaming and jumping up and down in sheer relief. My brother is alive and safe, even though he resembles a corpse recently dragged from its grave. I run the short distance between us, throwing myself at him, giving him a fierce hug. Jimmy and Mr Carter have to hold him more firmly so my hug doesn’t knock him backwards.
Matt labours to get a clear breath then pushes me slightly away. ‘Do I know you?’
I stare straight into his eyes, brown like mine. He stares back. ‘Isabel?’
I nod and grin at him as speaking is too difficult.
He touches my long curls. ‘What’s with the red hair?’ He peers at my face closely. ‘And what are these? Freckles?’
‘It’s a long story and I’m not so sure you’re supposed to hear it,’ Ethan says, then glances at Arkarian.
‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ Arkarian says cryptically. ‘But getting Matt’s health back is our first priority.’
Matt stares hard at Arkarian and frowns. ‘I know you. You’re the one called Arkarian.’
‘Yes,’ Arkarian replies. ‘But how do you know?’
‘Your eyes are exactly as my sister described them in her sleep.’
Arkarian’s eyes slide to mine, but my face is going hot so fast I think the freckles are all joining up. Quickly, I drop my gaze.
‘Really?’ Arkarian says in a curious tone. ‘And what exactly did she say?’
‘Ah,’ I interrupt. ‘This is hardly necessary. Matt’s in pain. Shouldn’t you do something?’