Shift

Chapter 19

19

Irene and the rest of the princesses were gathered in the meeting chamber.

The Elders were gathered in groups around the room. Three minutes ago there had been an explosion at the western outer ward.

“Why am I in here instead of out there?” Irene grumbled, not for the first time.

“You will all stay in this room until we hear from the head guard,” An old man snapped, fed up with the Princesses and their troubles.

“Last time I checked, we were the ones who managed to save everyone from being slaughtered!” Irene snapped.

“Look, we’re going to get on everyone’s nerves here, I think it would be better if the five of us just had some time to cool down, somewhere else as safe as here,” Erika’s calm voice surprised everyone and the Elders nodded.

“I think it’s best if you just take some time to cool down, maybe you should go to the library,” One of the Elders agreed. Erika nodded humbly and followed a guard out of the room, as if she hadn’t just gotten an elder to obey her.

The other four Princesses were quick to follow and soon they were at the door to the library where, even more surprising, Erika convinced the guard to stand outside while they were in the library.

After she’d shut the door and dragged the other to the far corner of the room Irene stared at Erika.

“What the hell just happened?” She said dumbly.

“You’re not the only one good at giving orders,” Erika shrugged.

“Wait, did you just use hypnosis on them?” Lana grabbed Erika’s shoulder.

“Yeah, maybe just a bit,” Erika admitted reluctantly.

“What, did this just happen today or-”

Erika cut her off; “It’s a trait of my family. You can heal,” She nodded at Vera, “You can sense people’s emotions,” She turned to Lana, “You are an excellent warrior,” She pointed at Irene, “And you can dig the truth out of the deepest grave if you wanted to,” She stopped at Maya, “My House has the ability to influence people, we are the House of Ram, others are our sheep,” She explained. The Erika standing in the middle of the room wasn’t the meek, quiet Erika that everyone had grown up with. This Erika was tall, confident, and powerful, and she knew it.

“Does your family know about this?” Lana asked.

“Yes, but they don’t know how strong my ability is.” Erika answered.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Maya said, hurt.

“I would have, but it isn’t like healing, others think we do it all the time, people don’t trust you when they know you can change their minds.” Erika pleaded.

“How strong is your ability?” Vera asked.

“Stronger than anyone in my family, but I can’t control your mind or anything, I haven’t-”

Vera cut her off, “Could you persuade Valdor?”

“What do you mean?” Erika asked nervously.

“Could you ‘suggest’ that he should kill himself?” Vera clarified. Erika gulped.

“I don’t know, Valdor is powerful, he would probably sense any persuasion I tried to use, and I’m not sure if my ability is strong enough to convince people to do anything. Whatever I wanted to get the Elders to do, I’d have to be ten times as powerful to try the same thing on Valdor, at a guess. He is rotting with black magic as far as the old scribes are concerned.”

Vera nodded. Erika was probably right, but still, it could be a useful trait.

“The book I found about the pendants is still here, you should all have a look,” Maya commented. The princesses nodded in agreement and followed Maya to a dusty shelf.

An explosion rocked the room. The shelves shuddered and a few volumes fell to the floor. Vera bent down to pick them up. They were old, it was amazing the covers hadn’t ripped off when they fell, then again, just about all of the books in the library were old.

One of the books had a cracked spine and as Vera tried to close it a smaller, animal skin book fell out from between the pages. Vera looked at it in puzzlement. It wasn’t so much a book as a heap of velum pages stitched together. The others had been reading the passage about the pendants Maya had found and didn’t notice Vera. She flipped through the pages and had a strange feeling of daja vu, remembering the book in Sol’s library about Valdor’s exile. This was much older though, as long ago as Valdor’s reign within the wards had been, this was at least twice that age.

“Vera?” Maya asked questioningly, seeing her standing in a pile of old books.

“Do you know what language this is?” Vera asked her, holding out the little book. As smart and diplomatic as Lana was, Maya was the best at linguistics. From dead shorthand used by long gone scribes to the body language of a complete stranger, Maya could read anything or anyone like a book. She took the book from Vera and turned the pages.

“Where on earth did you find this?” Maya asked.

“It fell off the shelf just then,” Vera said.

“No way,” Maya snorted. “I combed every book in this room. This was not on that shelf!”

“It was inside another book, but that’s not important. What does it say?” Vera tried to steer the conversation back to the book, but Maya wasn’t having it. As well as she could read linguistics, she prided herself on finding anything. She’d been giving a mission, and she’d missed something. That annoyed her.

“What book was it in?” Maya demanded.

“Umm, that one,” Vera pointed to the book with the cracked spine and Maya studied its cover.

“I read that one, no way was there another book inside it. I would have noticed.” Maya protested.

“What does the book say, Maya?” Lana asked gently.

“It’s really old. It’s printed on velum and the ink is barely visible it’s so faded. Plus, I think it’s a particularly old kind of writing. It’s in plain English, but the style of spelling and everything dates it back to… well, back to the founding families.” Maya answered.

There was a collective gasp. Only one piece of writing remained from the time of the founding families, and the Elders kept it safe and secure. Information about Valdor and the exile of the sixth House was retracted, and so, forgotten. But this, this was older than time. Writing just hadn’t lasted and gradually the few preserved pieces had become unreadable. The book Maya held could show them what the world had been like when the wards had first been built, when the Houses didn’t exist and there were simply six families.

“You can read it?” Erika asked tentatively.

“Yeah, and I know what it’s about, too” Maya nodded, in awe as much as the rest of them. The princesses looked expectantly at Maya.

She took a breath before she spoke, “It’s about how they used the magic. How the wards were built, and how they saved the magic of the six bloodlines in six golden pendants…”

No-one needed to say anything, and no-one was capable of speech. This turned the game upside down.