Kaianan Page 17

  “So, which way to the Conductor?” she asked him, sheathing her blade in her scabbard and tightening her fresh dark green tunic around her waist. When he didn’t reply, she titled her head to assess him again. By her calculations he had been in some sort of tunnel, or somewhere tree bark was present, perhaps wood. Small tiny particles remained on his robe and tunic, and perspiration sat against his neck. The most shocking to her was when she got a good look at his eyes, indescribably bloodshot. It reminded her of that one time she beat him at swordplay, but he’d never mention that day to a soul. Why would he? She kept that to herself knowing one day she could use it against him. That aside, he had definitely been somewhere grave, or done something severe and she was certain he would not discuss any of it with her either.

  “Xandou …” she whispered out of earshot of prying others, “is everything okay?”

  “All is well. It truly is,” he said, almost dreamlike. “We must travel north. She resides in the watchtower,” he eventually answered her question about the Conductor, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Did you eat?”

  “Aye, I did.”

  She watched his body relax a little. Was this his way of showing he cared?

  “And how did you go with your parents?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she replied flatly, throwing her long-braided hair behind her.

  “You do know everything they do for you is out of affection, right?”

  She smirked. “Maybe.”

  “Kaianan, please remember all they want—I mean, all I want—is to protect you and keep you safe.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Your life is extremely important; you should know—”

  “You’re full of useless information?” she cut him off. “Well you are, aren’t you?”

  He rolled his eyes and scoffed. “You’d think I’d be used to your smart mouth by now.”

  “Someone has to keep you on your toes. I think my parents have you all twisted.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Let’s get moving, Princess,” he said sarcastically.

  She didn’t need to be told twice, and she was partly thankful Xandou wanted to drop the conversation. She felt a huge chasm between them. It had been there since her birthday, since she’d shoved him over. Xandou had become a stranger to her. She had no idea how. But this type of conversation didn’t happen between close friends, it happened between people who kept secrets from each other, and she would remain cold and distant as long as he did.

  She followed him as Xandou walked silently north through the grasslands alongside the Valley Woods.

  “Is it far?” she asked, watching him fasten his robe and twist it back into the right place over his shoulders. He shook his head, walking alongside her. “Do many people visit the watchtower? Visit the Conductor?”

  “Of course,” he said, “many people must use the Euclidean Vector to travel.”

  “I don’t understand, how does it all work?” Kaianan’s mind feeling heavier than a freshly caught Ebel. “How does it fit in with the Siliou and the auras?”

  “Ah, you see, the Euclidean Vector is the arrow of travel. The Euclidean Vector is known as a wormhole, Kaianan, and Conductors, who are also conduits, slice through the Siliou and send people to other planets using this conduit version of the aura. Conductors, unlike trained aura users, can’t do anything else with the Siliou but close and open Euclidean Vectors.”

  “And I’ve never heard of it? My brain still feels like there are things missing.”

  Kaianan noticed Xandou go quiet.

  “No, you’d know nothing about it,” his voice was rushed and shaky, “this is a Felrin system, Kaianan, they use the Euclidean Vectors—they organised the infrastructure of Conductors, after all—but they also have Euclidean Vectors opening via generators on their cruisers, so they don’t use gatekeepers often.”

  Kaianan wasn’t certain Xandou was telling her everything, but maybe it was because he was protecting Jahzara. Or maybe he just trusted her as much as she trusted him. “Do people befriend the Conductors?”

  Xandou took a moment and a breath. “Hmm, our Conductor has the most affiliation with the Giliou, although even the Necromancers voyage from time to time. I know Gorgons seldom travel, so she will see a new face in you.”

  “I understand she controls Rivalex travel, Xandou,” she said remembering the antiquity lesson on gatekeepers, “but does she have any friends, any allies?”

  He frowned. “I would hope she does.”

  Kaianan repressed the urge to ask anything further and they pressed on until the watchtower was in sight. In the distance, she saw a thin building of bluestone, just like the Manor, but lined with thick black trimmings and roof. Some sort of thick smoky fog sat around the base of tower and it held a slightly ominous presence, Kaianan immediately felt a minor sick feeling develop within her.

  “The smoke of the Siliou,” Xandou explained. “All the gatekeepers must spread it around their tower. It keeps the worlds in symbiosis.”

  Kaianan glowered, but was highly intrigued. The steel gate of the tower grew nearer. Kaianan watched Xandou push the gate open and walk them down a path, and they entered another wooden door to get inside. They climbed up a wooden spiral staircase leading them to a single black door. Xandou attempted to knock but it had already begun to open.

  “She tends to know you’re coming,” he whispered.

  The door creaked all the way back on its hinges and the smoky room stung her eyes. Kaianan reached for her scabbard. The smoke soon cleared and she heard Xandou take a few steps forward. She released her hold on her hilt and followed him, black walls and empty bookshelves became visible on either side of her.

  The amount of dust was extraordinary. In the middle of the room, a black-stained chair of Miry was angled away from them. They approached the right side. Kaianan coughed away the soot lingering in her nose and got a good look at the woman she had just walked in front of. She wasn’t as old as Kaianan expected, then again, she didn’t have many expectations.

  The woman had long orange hair and brown eyes, and was dressed in a long, lacey mustard dress. Smoke was whisking around her ankles and she grasped the arms of her chair in anticipation.

  “Master Xandou, so good to see you again, and so quickly.” Her face softened toward him.

  Kaianan gaped at her ghostly white complexion.

  “You also, Jahzara,” Xandou said. “This is Princess Kaianan of the Gorgon.”

  The fiery redhead gave her a firm gaze. “Ah, yes, the second princess. Your sister was here a couple of nights ago,” she said, exposing the brilliant white of her teeth.

  “Do you know where she was taken?” Kaianan rushed out.

  “Kaianan, your sister is safe with Metrix,” Xandou cut in. “You must not jeopardise her safety by knowing her location.”

  “I hope you’re right, Xandou.” Jahzara stared at Kaianan. Was she trying to push doubt into Kaianan’s mind? There was no way of knowing. And even if she did, there was nothing, at this moment, she could do about it. Besides, looking around at the dusty room of basic furniture, no books and little personality made her question Jahzara’s credibility.

  “Jahzara, do you live here by yourself?” Kaianan said, removing her sister from her thoughts.

  “Of course I do. In my line of work, it would be very hard to live with someone—never sleeping, always people visiting, leaving, and sometimes dying within my Euclidean Vectors. It is a life of patience, but one that is worth the cause,” she said, tapping her impatient fingers against her chair.

  Kaianan tried to ignore the angst coming from the edgy woman. “You’re not from this world, are you?”

  “No, I’m not a Giliou.” She gazed longingly at Xandou. “I am from Vengard, in the Dowaric System. I was a young girl when I was blessed with the power to conduct. I was summoned here by the Felrin once they realised I had received my power. They seemed to have always known I would become one.”

  “Did you have to
go through much? Learn how to use it?” Kaianan had never been more intrigued, this woman was able to open up time holes and direct space travel—she admired everything about her.

  “Oh, yes,” Jahzara said pretentiously. “I had a very young Conductor train me, but he was able to do things with the Siliou I could never dream of. He was truly gifted. It was a shame when he died.” She spoke like she had gone back to the very moment.

  “Do you die? How? Why?”

  “We are just like any other living person. Just because we can control larger parts of the Siliou doesn’t mean we can outlive life itself—”

  “I read Felrin Liege became immortal using Kan’Ging.”

  Jahzara paused staring at Kaianan after her interruption. “They are the exception to the rule. And Conductors don’t use Kan’Ging. That is a different kind of power in the Siliou.”

  “How different?”

  “We-have-limitations-different.”

  Kaianan nodded.

  “Kaianan,” she said, “don’t ever be confused: Siliou is not a force of life or being; it is a force of magnetism, the gravitational force between all planets and objects, all keeping the harmony in our beautiful hierarchy of planets. More importantly, it allows us to be who we are in that hierarchy. We gain access by acknowledging our source, and our source chooses selective auras to light up the Siliou. We control what we can of it in a positive or negative way, and some are more skilled at it than others. That ability of use can be different for everyone depending on what they excel at.”

  Kaianan nodded. Why wasn’t she aware people had a choice in auras. What was a selective aura? She had a birth aura, a Gorgon aura, yes, but what of another? She felt the violet aura fire up in her when she ‘ported yesterday. What did Xandou say? Free time movement. “Can I change my aura at any time? Just by imagining it?”

  “Of course not,” Jahzara said, “it takes years of training to understand one aura let alone two.”

  “But I have two …Well I don’t use my birth aura, but I have something else, another aura,” Kaianan said, with enthusiasm, “I can feel it.”

  Jahzara cocked her head, twirling her fingers round her orange strands and looked to Xandou. “Do you?”

  Xandou’s face paled. “Gorgon don’t use their birth auras and what you’re feeling could be a one-off … Jahzara knows about a lot of things, Kaianan, but she won’t be able to assist you with this.” He gave the Conductor a look suggesting if she wasn’t to remain silent, he would most likely kill her.

  “No,” Jahzara said, to Xandou’s look of relief, “unfortunately I won’t.”

  “Do you know if all will end well on Rivalex?” Kaianan asked Jahzara, trying not to get angrier than what she already was at Xandou. “If you can read my future, can you see the path for the world ahead?”

  “No, Kaianan. I can only see you. And, yes, a friend you wanted out of me, a friend you have.” She turned to Xandou. “I’m surprised, Xandou. As a future leader, you never felt within your heart to ask for my friendship.”

  “I always believed I was, Jahzara. I never thought I would have to ask,” he said, trying to wipe and hide the perspiration dripping from his blonde strands. Secrets tugged underneath him, Kaianan knew. She was appalled by it.

  “Perhaps communication and direction need to be your focus going forward?” Jahzara raised her eyebrows at Xandou. “Never mind. Your Euclidean Vector is opening. Now remember, Kaianan, keep walking straight, don’t veer toward the edges, and don’t look back. Shooting stars are dying Euclidean Vectors. You don’t want to end up one of them.”

  “No?”

  Jahzara flushed with a menacing poise. “No. They venture to Holom.”

  Kaianan’s eyes widened.

  “Xandou, do you know who you must speak to on Earth?” Jahzara asked the distracted Giliou. Xandou nodded. “Please wish him well for me,” she added.

  Holding the palm of her hand in front of her, Jahzara engineered the Siliou to divide. It was like watching someone take a knife to the air; a huge vertical rip opened in the middle of the room as her hand lowered, and space appeared.

  “Vector safely, the both of you, and Kaianan, my friend, I will be seeing you again,” Jahzara said, smiling sublimely. Kaianan observed her face glaze over to a deeper, darker look of callousness. Kaianan couldn’t help but feel there was something much more to the woman than she dared show.

  “Just breathe,” Xandou whispered as he grabbed her hand. Kaianan stared at the huge rip of time and space in the room. The temperature had decreased. Kaianan felt a shiver down her spine; she was scared. If they stepped through this hole, would they fall into space? What was going to catch them?

  “Xandou, I …”

  “Kaianan, I need you to trust the process, here.”

  She swallowed. Squeezing his hand, she followed him muttering to herself to ‘trust the process.’

  They moved through the human-sized opening of dense black space; she clenched her body praying not to fall. Once her foot went through – thud!

  The whirlwind of stars and black nothingness began weaving around her in fast motion, however looking down, she was standing upright, on … on a smoky path. It was forming around her ankles. The shadowy smoke continued forward, circling and shrouding around her feet, enabling them to walk on it.

  “Move, Kaianan. Walk,” Xandou beckoned. She squeezed his hands tighter and gulped. Intense flashes of light crossed her vision. The universe became remote. It was like walking through a dream of space, seeing but not being able to feel the actual interstellar environment. “Press on, Kaianan.”

  The flashes of space subsided as quickly as they came and the Euclidean Vector began to reopen. Xandou, with his hand out, sliced open another rip in front of them while the smoke kept spinning below them and up and around the incision in space. Through the forming gap was a blinding light.

  “Let’s go.”

  Kaianan moved each foot forward slowly and robotically at Xandou’s words.

  Again, the thought of jumping through a time hole scared her. Xandou went first and as soon as Kaianan stepped through the exit after him, her ears blocked and an icy rush seized her body. Her stomach groaned, she felt like she was dropping downward fast. A super-fast freefall – then – stop.

  The next thing she knew she was planting her boots on hard ground; a dry dirt of a huge open plain. She caught her breath. She touched her body quickly; everything was still there. She relaxed and exhaled. That was a ride she may not want to get used to.

  Xandou appeared beside her. “Are you okay?”

  Kaianan, who’s disentangled braid was blowing about in the breeze, looked up to a bright burning sun in a fluffy-clouded blue sky and, mesmerised and grinning, she nodded.

  “Good,” Xandou said, placing a hand on her back, “welcome to Earth.”

  Chapter Twelve: The Truth Exposed

  Dersji walked quietly behind Sachin as she took him down several familiar corridors of the Felrin Congress Estate. This building was huge. Dersji knew it well. The fifteen-foot ceiling on the ground floor, plastic white walls everywhere. Everything was sterile. Everything was able to be shifted with Kan’Ging, and only eight people in the universe could do that. If he could convince Sachin, it crossed his mind to fire up in Kan’Ging and go gung-ho in an escape, but intrigue had him stepping two feet forward behind her instead.

  They had been able to manage getting by several orchid chestplate and white robe wearing Shiek strolling the corridors too. Just their luck, Dersji thought.

  “Here,” she quickly said.

  Dersji entered a door that slid up when she tapped on the control. It was an elevator. As soon as they entered, Sachin clicked on a button and it jerked upward. Dersji knew there were forty floors on one side of the building and sixteen on the other, as it was a spiral shape with different heights, but the top levels of the spiral, seventeen to forty were generally for admin staff. She then surprised him by pressing on the emergency button in between level fi
fteen and sixteen.

  “You want me to go back to the Spiral Room?” Dersji said disillusioned, the Spiral Room was basically the hub of the spiral Congress Estate building, a section where the roof was glass and enabled the purple sun to shine in, and it was literally just where he had come from. “Are we going to hang out with the Principals?”

  “Shh, Dersji, we need to get in the ventilation system.”

  “Are you kidding me?” He said while Sachin had climbed up above the elevator through a hatch and walked across the machine to get to a hole in the wall.

  Dersji huffed and followed her. “I could be drinking rum, you know.”

  “I do know Dersji, I might not have seen you for twenty years but I was married to you for nearly a hundred.”

  He sniffed and watched her slide into the vent. “That you were. Although I don’t know how you ever got through it.”

  “I waited for Arlise,” she turned around and winked at him.

  Dersji bit his tongue and climbed in after her. They crawled through the vent for a few minutes. Sachin turned her head and placed her finger to her mouth. Dersji didn’t need to be told, he had already heard the muffled voices getting louder.

  On familiarity alone, Dersji recognised Principal Ree’s voice. “As the closest five alliance systems of the Felrin, we have summoned you because of a recent event surrounding the breakdown of a Liege and Menial connection. There is a need for you to support us at the next quarter summit of the Universal Order.”

  Sachin pointed through the vent, and Dersji crawled closer to get a better look.

  “General Aradar,” Ree said from the exact spot he was in when Dersji left the Spiral Room, “now that Liege Brikin has been dealt with, please explain the Felrin Congress proposal for Rivalex and the missing Menial to the guest judges.”

  Standing in the centre of the spiral tiles, General Aradar puffed his orchid chestplate out and smoothed his hand over his bald head.

  Dersji wanted to lift the whole bench up with his Kan’Ging and throw it into the General. It took him all his restraint not to.