CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER
13
Julia stared after them in horror, her eyes wide as saucers. She gave a choking, gasping sob and took a step forward, but then stopped herself. She could do nothing for Peter now — not just one girl against two guards. She cast her eyes frantically around for Louisa, and, seeing her close to the edge of the pit the men were digging, dropped her bucket and dipper to the ground with a splash and sprinted over to her.
Tears stung her eyes as she ran, and by the time she reached Louisa her face was a red and slimy mess of tears. She grabbed her arm and clung to her. “Peter!” she gasped. “They’ve taken Peter!”
“What? How?” Even with the heat of the place Louisa’s face had gone absolutely white.
“The guards—they found him. They knew he was the one who had taken the map and they marched him away somewhere. I don’t know what’s happening to him—we have to find a way to rescue him!”
“How could we rescue him? It’s just us now—and we don’t have any swords or anyone on our side. We don’t even know where they’ve taken him.”
“But the people—the people we’ve been talking to—surely they’ll help us! We’ll find Alyce and she’ll know what to do …”
Louisa’s ashen face looked, all of a sudden, very tired indeed. She shook her head. “They’re under the threat of death as it is. We have to find a way to overthrow all the guards, not just the ones who took Peter. We can’t help him until then.”
Julia wanted very much to slap her. “What do we do now, then? Keep giving out water while Peter’s taken captive?”
“Yes,” said Louisa. “That’s what the Lord of Hosts brought you here to do, isn’t it?”
Louisa closed her eyes and seemed to sway back and forth. Julia began to wonder if her stepsister was ill. She watched her for a moment, mulling over what she’d said.
“Yes,” Julia replied at last. “I suppose that is why we’re here.”
“Good,” said Louisa. She opened her eyes and regarded her stepsister. “Go get your bucket and let’s get to work.”
It was a long and difficult morning, punctuated by a few small tremors in the earth. None of them were large enough to do much more than slosh around the water in Julia and Louisa’s buckets, but Julia was wary, remembering what Peter had said about running out of time. And so she spoke ever more urgently to the people, reminding them of all the Lord of Hosts had done for them and urging them to return to him. No one responded with much more than a nod or a grunt, or sometimes a raised eyebrow. No one seemed to recognize the Deliverer of Aedyn.
As Julia moved through the crowd of prisoners she kept a close eye on her stepsister. The color hadn’t returned to Louisa’s face, and her eyes seemed larger and more distant with each passing hour. As she moved between the miners Julia could hear Louisa humming snippets of the song. She swayed back and forth as she sang, not quite steady on her feet. As the sun rose in the sky she seemed to wilt, her shoulders sagging in on themselves, her hand shaking each time she lifted the dipper of water to the lips of a slave. And as she faded, the singing grew louder.
Julia was desperate to keep her quiet — desperate to keep the guards from hearing the words she sang. I must get closer to her, she thought. Close enough to silence her. She wove her way nearer to her stepsister, pausing to lift the dipper of water to the lips of slaves she passed, keeping her eyes always on Louisa and praying that no one else would hear the song.
But in this she was not so fortunate.
The sun was just reaching its highest point in the sky when a guard passing nearby happened to hear Louisa’s song, and stopped to listen. Julia didn’t notice him until he called out.
“You there!” he cried. “That song. What’s that you’re singing?”
What color there had been in Louisa’s face abruptly left it, and Julia thought she might be about to faint again. Julia put down the bucket of water and started toward her.
“It’s … it’s just an old lullaby my mother used to sing to me,” Louisa was stammering. The guard gave a mirthless laugh.
“This mother of yours—she a prophetess, was she?” Louisa shook her head blankly. The guard nodded at the bucket she had in her hand. “Leave that be,” he said. “We’re going to pay a visit to Captain Ceres.”
At this Julia rushed forward and flung an arm around Louisa’s shoulders. “Let me come too,” she pleaded. “She’s my sister, and she’s not been well … let me come too.”
The guard gave a harsh nod. “Follow me.”
So back up the path they went, up to the Captain’s tent. Louisa walked slowly, humming all the while. Julia kept a hand on her back, urging her forward and wondering how to tell her to be quiet. They went up the ridge and were ushered into the tent.
Julia blinked rapidly, her eyes adjusting to the dim light inside. Gradually the Captain came into focus. He was sitting behind the same desk, his arms folded across his belly, listening to a guard speaking in hushed tones. Julia could only catch the odd word here and there, but it was enough for her to realize that they were talking about Louisa. “Girl … prophecy … singing …” As Julia listened, hoping for some clue as to what the guards intended to do with them, her eyes were drawn once again to the Captain’s talisman — why was it so familiar? Where had she seen it before?
The guard who had brought them up from the mine interrupted the other, whispering a few words in the Captain’s ear. Ceres’ eyebrows went up as he listened, and, as the guard finished, he leaned forward in his chair, seeming to regard Louisa as a wolf regards a lamb.
“My man tells me you’ve been singing a song,” he said. “A song of great interest to me. Won’t you sing it again for us?”
Louisa shook her head, her lips pressed tight together. Beads of sweat were starting to form on her forehead, even in the cool shade of the tent.
“Please, sir,” Julia began. “My sister is sick. Out in the hot sun all day … I fear she’s become delirious. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Quiet,” ordered the Captain tersely. “Let the girl speak for herself.”
Julia fell quiet, silently praying as she wrung her hands. There was a moment’s pause, and then Louisa opened her mouth and sang in a high, clear voice:
The two come together, the two become one,
With union comes power; control over all.
She stopped, her voice quavering on the high note, and Julia breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. But the guard who had brought them to the tent was shaking his head.
“There was more to it,” he said with a scowl. “Something about light and a host returning.” The Captain’s eyes opened even wider.
“More to the prophecy? It cannot be. It cannot be!” He pushed back the chair from his desk and fairly leapt across the room, stopping when his nose was just an inch from Louisa’s. “Tell me what you know, girl! Tell me quick or your life will be forfeit!” Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth to land on her face. And then, abruptly and without warning, Louisa fainted.
The Captain said a very bad word indeed and turned to Julia.
“What was it she was singing? If it was a childhood lullaby you must know it too.”
“I never heard her sing it until a few days ago,” Julia said truthfully. “And it was never anything but those two lines—perhaps your guard is mistaken.” She paused, looking at Louisa’s limp body lying at her feet. “Please, sir, let me take my sister back to our tent. She’s ill—she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
The Captain, perhaps understanding that Louisa was useless, gave a curt nod of dismissal. “Leave me,” he said. “Console your sister. My guards will bring you back to me once your sister is well.”
Julia knelt and touched Louisa’s face, giving it a few gentle slaps to rouse her. It was only a moment before Louisa’s eyes opened, and Julia smiled for perhaps the first time that day.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re going back to our tent.” She reached out a hand to help her stand up, then looped an arm around her back to support her. She cast one last glance at the Captain and his strange talisman, and then, just as they walked out the door, followed by one of the Captain’s guards, she remembered.
The star pendant her grandmother had given her for Christmas. It was the same—it would fit right into the space in the Captain’s talisman. That was the piece they were looking for. She thought about the prophecy—when the two halves were put together they would have power. They would have control. But light would come, and the Host would return …
Julia mulled it over in her mind as they walked back to the prisoners’ tents, accompanied by the guard. The Khemians would never find the pendant, lying where it was on top of the dresser in her own bedroom back in England. But they would never stop looking—not so long as they thought it would bring them “control over all.” And as they searched the hour grew nearer that the volcano would erupt, and some force—some dark power—would be released into the world.
And if she could unite the talisman and the pendant, maybe she would be able to stop it. “The darkness shall fall,” she whispered to herself.
They reached the prisoners’ tents, and Julia found an empty shelter in which Louisa could rest. The guard, silent as ever, stationed himself just outside. Julia laid Louisa down on a cot and put a hand on her forehead. “Sleep,” she told her. “Sleep, and then we’ll figure out what to do.”
Louisa nodded and closed her eyes, and Julia, suddenly overwhelmed, wrapped her arms around her knees, put down her head, and wept. It had all gone wrong—Peter imprisoned, Louisa delirious, and a volcano about to erupt. She was just one girl, and she could never save them all. She could never bring them back to the Lord of Hosts. Their prayer this morning hadn’t worked, and they were all doomed.
Julia could never say how long she wept, but after a time her tears slowed and she sat back against the cot. It was time to make a plan, because crying didn’t solve any problems. That was what her grandmother had always said, after all.
Grandmother. Her Christmas present. The pendant, lying back home on top of the dresser.
Her thoughts whirled faster than she could keep up with them. The pendant was back home, but if only it were here, and if she could only get the pendant that the Captain wore around his neck, the pendant into which her star would fit like a puzzle piece, she might—she might—be able to control whatever was about to come out of the earth. Or else she could use it as a bargaining piece for Peter’s freedom—and maybe his life. The six-pointed star was the only thing she had that the Khemians wanted, and more than anything, Julia wanted her brother back.
She was confused, she was tired, and she was utterly overwhelmed. It was time to get help, she decided. It was time to find Alyce.