The Tymorean Trust
Book One
Power Rising
Copyright 2014 by Margaret Gregory
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places,
events or locales are purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
*****
PLEASE NOTE
I use Australian spelling throughout. You will see ou’s (colour) and
‘ise’ not ‘ize’ (realise) as well as a few other differences to American spelling.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Power Erupts
Chapter 2 - The Children of Prophecy
Chapter 3 - Retrieval
Chapter 4 - Confirmation
Chapter 5 - Integration
Chapter 6 - Acceptance
Chapter 7 - First Lessons
Chapter 8 - Small Lyceum
Chapter 9 - Unfriendliness
Chapter 10 - Friendship
Chapter 11 - Progress
Chapter 12 - Newcomers
Chapter 13 - Second Stage
Chapter 14 - Large Lyceum
Chapter 15 - Visitor from Earth
Chapter 16 - First Confrontation
Chapter 17 - Enforced Lesson
Chapter 18 - Expectations
Chapter 19 - Defence Plans
Chapter 20 - The Governors’ Ball
Chapter 21 - Infiltrators
Chapter 22 - Attack
Chapter 23 - Retaliation
Chapter 24 - Resistance
Chapter 25 - Keleb’s Gift
Chapter 26 - Prophecies of the Elders
Chapter 27 - Jonko’s Gift
Chapter 28 - Breaking Curfew
Chapter 29 - Kryslie’s Gift
Chapter 30 - Growing Pains
Chapter 31 - Testing
Chapter 32 - Mind Meld
Chapter 33 - Saying Goodbye
Chapter 34 - Journey to Dira
Chapter 35 - The Returnee
Chapter 36 - Revelation
Chapter 37 - Royal Tour
Chapter 38 - Power Revealed
Chapter 39 - Kidnapped
Chapter 40 - Enemy Territory
Chapter 41 - Escape
Chapter 42 - Mutants
Chapter 43 - Recapture
Chapter 44 - Rescue
Chapter 45 - Aftermath
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Prologue
Death Prophecy of the Tymorean Elder Dakven
As told to Professor Governor Xyron
Year 985 of the Seventh Great Age – Tymorean calendar
Chaos is increasing –
the Age of the Great Ones Lorno, Joshe and Tormel is coming to an end.
Dire times are coming to worlds in all parts of the universe.
Treachery is rife – even on our world.
Those who are to come…are but seeds of peace on a distant world.
We must find them…before they become our enemy…before hope is lost.
Chapter 1 - Power Erupts
Tim Ward strode down the crowded corridor from near the staff offices to his locker with a scowl on his face. He ignored the occasional ‘hello’ from friends, and shoved against anyone that got in his way. That earned him a few curses from ones who stumbled into other people.
At his locker, one of many that lined both sides of passage, he fetched his pencil case and science books, then slammed the locker door shut. His classmates stayed tactfully quiet. The few that knew that Ted Rogers had cited him for a breach of rules, understood his anger.
Swirling around in Tim’s mind was the injustice of the affair. “So I took Marco’s ball off him! So what? He has been needling me for weeks, ever since he was put off the basketball team. That wasn’t my fault,” he was thinking. “I just threw it away from him, for heavens sake, so he’d leave me alone.
I could have punched him, but I didn’t.”
The memory of the confrontation was still vivid, the memory of the anger still simmering. “Marco didn’t have to go and tell lies about me. I wasn’t trying to get him into trouble. I never thought I could throw a ball that far, didn’t think it could possibly break a window and get it stuck on the roof. It was an accident. So why did Rogers come down on me like I did it on purpose?”
The crowds in the corridor thinned out as students went to their mid-session classes. Tim, realised he was still staring at his locker, and jerked around. Rogers had him for science and if he were late, the bastard would have another go at him. Then he probably wouldn’t have just one lunchtime detention, but a week of it. With a renewal of his scowl, Tim headed for the science lab – dreading the next hour and a half of being under Rogers’ eye.
Tim trailed in with the last of the class, keeping his classmates between him and his teacher, and moving past the trolley of glassware to get to the back row of benches. He made an effort to calm himself. Rogers was too much of a martinet to take the slightest misbehaviour in his class. You didn’t want to get on his bad side, and since he already was, Tim didn’t want to make it worse. He put his books on the bench and pulled out the stool.
“Ward, I want you up the front,” Rogers announced, without looking his way. “Is your sister here?”
Tim glanced around, surprised by the question. “No. Why?”
“I want you both where I can see you,” Rogers said, coming to stand near where Tim had intended to sit, and looking like staying there until he moved.
Tim tried to outstare him, but Rogers stayed where he was. The tableau was broken when the hanging screen for the projector suddenly retracted with explosive force. Rogers glanced away, and Tim picked up his things, and released some anger by kicking the stool out of his way. He hadn’t meant to kick it hard, but it fell over. Rogers glared at him until he picked it up.
Meeting the teacher’s implacable gaze triggered a wild uncontrollable fury in Tim’s mind. He spun around, free arm flying out. The sound of breaking glass and the abrupt silence of all other noise snapped him back to awareness. He stared at the tray of glassware now on the green tile floor at his feet, and his books dropped from his grasp. All the energy drained from him as if he had been drenched with icy water.
“Mr Ward, put your books on the front table, and clean up that mess. We will discuss this at the end of class.” Rogers waited to see if Tim obeyed his instruction.
The teacher’s voice had been tightly controlled, had sounded almost matter of fact, but Tim looked at his teacher, and saw the tight lips and flushed face. He bent down and collected his books and pencil case, rose and walked rigidly to the front where he put his stuff with deliberate neatness on the front bench. When he turned to walk to get the broom, Rogers began the lesson, and all but one or two of the students stopped watching him and settled uncomfortably to listen.
Cindy Ward slammed her locker door shut, rattling the entire row of similar, gunmetal gray painted metal doors. The sound echoed down the deserted corridor. She did not consider that it might disturb the lessons that had started ten minutes ago.
In fact, the familiar row of alternating book and coat lockers now seemed like something alien and strange. She rested her head against the metal and felt it cool against her skin, for a moment tried to recall what she had been doing, and where she was.
Behind and above the lockers were windows and through them, Cindy could see sunshine and a blue sky and the trees in the yard next to the school bending in a strong breeze.
“I don’t belong
here,” Cindy muttered to herself, feeling trapped, but not knowing why. She began to back away from the lockers towards the glass doors leading outside. Her eyes were on the trees, her mind wanted to feel the breeze cooling her flushed face. Her ears only heard a buzzing noise.
In an unconscious gesture, she ran her fingers through her long brown hair. The result was no improvement to the original unbrushed light brown tangle and a strand fell back over her face. She turned and headed for the door, saw movement in the corner of her eye and hurried her pace. The door didn’t seem to want to open; she rattled it and tried again. Then she kicked it angrily.
“Cindy! Why aren’t you in class?”
The voice of the school’s Deputy Principal, Dan Ward, made her turn around. Some of the alien feeling went away and she remembered where she was.
“Don’t stress, Dad! I just need to go outside.”
“You were told to come to the office,” Dan Ward told her harshly, walking closer. He was a tall man, in his early forties with tidy brown hair, and dressed on the formal side of casual.
Cindy moved her focus to a stain on the roof a short distance beyond her father. She knew it would irritate him.
“Who said so?” she asked rudely, as she realised she could even see the fine texture of the roof tiles.
“Ted Rogers told you to get down from the roof of ‘C’ block,” Dan Ward told her sternly. Cindy interrupted him with a quick glance back to his face.
“I was just getting the basketball down. Someone had to do it.”
Cindy looked down and hid her smirk. She was still simmering with anger at Roger’s very public dressing down. Instead of listening to it, she had walked off, and made sure he couldn’t find her for the rest of recess.
Ward’s face tightened. “Students are not allowed to climb onto the roof. And you disobeyed a direct instruction given to you by a teacher – and you were extremely rude to him.”
“I was doing it – getting down,” Cindy told her father.
“Just because I teach here,” Ward began warningly. “It does not mean that you and Tim have a right to disregard the behaviour standards expected of all students.”
Cindy jerked her head up and glared at her father. “He had no right to yell at me in front of everyone.”
Dan Ward’s expression became cold. “Get to your class!” he told her coldly. “Consider this an official warning!”
With a dismissive stare, Cindy jammed her fists into the pockets of her school jacket and turned her back on her father. She walked at a deliberately unhurried pace down the deserted corridor and into the passage leading to Science Lab One.
She slipped through the partly opened doorway and slid into her normal seat at the nearest bench. As she shrugged out of her jacket, she noticed her brother was sweeping up a pile of broken glassware. For an instant, their eyes met. Cindy glanced at Rogers and back. Tim scowled and copied her gesture.
Mr. Rogers, the Science teacher, was writing on the whiteboard. An overhead projector reflected carefully drawn molecular structures onto the wall.
“It is nice of you to join us, Miss Ward!” Rogers said loudly as he turned from the whiteboard to face his class. “Come up to the front table please. Your brother will be joining you when he has finished cleaning up his act of vandalism!”
As she stood, grabbing her jacket, she said audibly, “I won’t have missed much.”
Roger’s expression tightened as Cindy strolled to the indicated place. The front seats were usually left vacant because no one liked being right underneath his eye. She settled herself on the seat next to where her brother’s books were placed on the bench. She was aware that he had finished sweeping and was about to join her.
“Step out of line one more time today, Mr Ward, Miss Ward, and you will both be back here for an hour after school.” Rogers warned them. “And it appears that you will need to share your book and working materials, Mr Ward, as your sister doesn’t consider it necessary to provide her own.”
Tim eyed the teacher warily. The intense irritation that had caused him to send the tray of glassware crashing to the floor had waned. He made an effort to concentrate on the lesson even though his mind now felt sluggish. He knew he could not afford detention today – he had a scout meeting after school.
“Mr. Avery, would you tell Miss Ward the question I put to the class before she deigned to join us?”
Paul Avery, sitting at the table next to Tim’s, looked up in panic. “I…er…”
“Mr. Jacobs?” Rogers turned his attention to the next student along.
“What sort of compound is formed by an acid-base reaction?” Ed Jacobs rattled off in a not too subtle imitation of Roger’s pedantic tone.
“Well, you do listen occasionally, Mister Jacobs. Please open your books at Chapter Seven.”
Tim opened his book without checking the place and pushed it nearer his twin, and passed two sheets of paper to her. When Rogers began to dictate notes, Tim opened his notebook and wrote in his usual neat script but he could not have said what he was writing.
Cindy stared at Mr. Rogers as he moved about the room. Her hand fiddled with the borrowed pen but she was not writing. Her eyes seemed to be making the teacher’s face change from long and narrow to round like a ball. The voice of Mr Rogers was merely a buzzing in her head and the information she was hearing was going into memory without her mind processing it.
Tim Ward was only vaguely aware that Rogers had already given two students detention for messy work. He was relieved that Rogers found nothing wrong with his own.
“Miss Ward!”
Both of the twins looked up and Rogers saw a blank expression on each face. The resemblance between them was strong.
“What have I been saying?”
“When an acid is neutralized by a base, you get water and a salt. Thus when sodium hydroxide is mixed …” Cindy repeated verbatim the half page of notes that Rogers had dictated.
Several students snickered, but they stopped abruptly when Rogers glared in their direction.
“I will have your company back here after last lesson, Miss Ward. It will be interesting to see if you can still remember everything then.”
Cindy gave no reaction, except to stare at Rogers until he turned to resume dictating.
“Is your sister’s lack of attention contagious Mr. Ward?” Rogers asked, noticing that Tim had stopped writing.
Tim looked at his hand as if it belonged to a stranger, and said nothing. He forgot the question as his mind tried to understand why his hands looked mauve. He didn’t seem to hear the instruction about joining his sister for detention.
“Someone should go and punch him in the face,” Paul Avery muttered darkly, glaring at Rogers after he had moved away. He too had detention after school.
After a moment, Tim stood up and followed the teacher to the front of the room. Rogers turned, hearing footsteps and only had time to say “What…” before a hard punch landed in his face and knocked him backwards.
Rogers regained his balance quickly. In a fluid movement, he grabbed Tim with one hand, pulled him to the door that he opened it with his other hand. He pushed Tim out into the corridor with enough force to send him stumbling into the far wall. He followed his student out.
“You will go – to Mr. Howard’s office – and wait for me!” he said with emphasis, pulling a neatly pressed handkerchief from his jacket pocket to wipe blood from his nose. As he turned to return to the classroom, he noticed the lights were flickering as Cindy erupted from the room.
“Leave my brother alone,” she screamed coming at him.
Rogers had no chance to react before Cindy began hitting him. He was, for a moment, so angry he was unable to speak. Without a further word, he grasped Cindy’s arm and propelled her across the corridor to join her brother.
“Both of you – up to the Office – now!” Rogers finally articulated. In his state of suppressed rage, he noticed that both Tim and Cindy looked frightened. He told himself that
they ought to be scared. They were in serious trouble. Their father might be the deputy principal, but that would not protect them from being suspended or expelled. He watched as they backed away from him towards the door leading outside.
His class greeted his return with whispers and stunned, frightened looks.
“I will return shortly,” Rogers told his class in a tightly controlled voice. “In my absence you will proceed to answer the questions at the end of Chapter Seven. When I come back, if I hear talking, whispering or any noise at all – the whole class will have detention every night until the end of term!”
Mouths snapped shut, heads bent over work as Rogers stalked from the room. The scratching of pens and the ticking of the clock seemed very loud.
Tim only walked as far as the concrete steps outside the door. The reality of his actions finally hit him and he grabbed the handrail and slumped onto the top step. Cindy, with the instinctive empathy she shared with her twin, sat down beside him.
“Why did I do it, Sis? How could I have done it?” Tim asked aloud, but his mind was blank. He was oblivious to the strong breeze blowing in his face and the scudding clouds that were racing overhead. He had even forgotten he should be going to the Principal’s Office as he absently rubbed the elbow that had hit the corridor wall.
“You shouldn’t have started yelling at him, Cindy.”
“I couldn’t help it, Tim,” Cindy said in a smaller voice than usual. “I felt as if he was touching me! I was so angry…”
Cindy swallowed convulsively, trying not to be sick. The incredible fury that had erupted within her as Rogers pushed Tim from the room had cooled, but the memory made her nauseous.
She and Tim had gone past merely rude. What was happening to them, to make them do such a thing as attacking a teacher? Why was every little commonplace thing making them irritated? Why were they reacting so violently? The buzzing in her head made it difficult to think.