Bertan`s quest by Michelle Tarynne (ereader android .txt) 📕

Lar looked around, unable to see anything of help. Finally, she just looked down and saw the pattern that had attracted her attention earlier.

She woke up with a start to find herself still sitting on her mother's bed. Unable to process her dream she followed her inner voice to roll up the carpet that covered the floor. There it was. The secret that begged to be uncovered. It was the same pattern graced the Throne Room's floor, but now she knew it wasn't just a pattern. It was a map of what lay beneath the Axeland.

She went motionless for a moment, froze in her pose, frown deeply etched on her young face. There was no thrill in that secret, no happiness about it. She quickly analyzed what she could recall from her dream. Those ‘Pods’ worried her, it had to be something bad. The voice uttered this word with revenance and fear. The vibration that one word brought to her core made her want to forget everything. Her dream-spell brought back the kind of past that was better off forgotten.

Lar run from her mother’ chamber as fast as she could, but it didn’t take away the feeling that word had brought to her core. Pods. She ran in the hopes that it would make the spirit voices die instead of following her, not knowing that ancestry to the core she carried deep within her body was just getting awake.

Trying to forget what she had just uncovered, Lar suddenly realized that she still had some questions, and the only person that could answer them was her father, just as Kyre mentioned earlier. She found her Da hunched over the plans in his new 'meeting room', as she called it. It was a small room that overlooked the lands outside the Inner Block. The Red Axe King moved his royal business there, all of his meetings took place there

"Da?" she called once she entered the room.

"Yes?" the Red Axe King didn't raise his head from the plans he was reviewing.

"How close is the war?" Lar asked, though it wasn’t the thing of a great interest to her anymore.

"I don’t know it yet. I hope it doesn’t get here at all," her father answered absently.

"But it will," she sighed.

"Yes, someday it will arrive at our doorstep," he agreed.

"At the Wall," she corrected him.

"Yes," the King laughed unexpectedly. He wasn’t used to being corrected in any way, "At the Wall. For now, it's our only protection," he added somberly.

"What if it fails?" she disliked the hopelessness in his voice. There was no way to win this war, she realized, but they would fight anyway.

"I'm working on a plan to protect us when that happens," the King motioned to the plans that were laid out on the big table next to him.

"Can I see it?" Lar walked up to him and climbed on his lap to see everything better.

"You can, but you won't understand it, you are too young " he laughed again. There was no point to argue with Lar once there was a thing she wanted.

"Try me, Da," she giggled in anticipation.

"Let's see…" the King frowned at his plan and pointed to its center, "Many, many miles below the surface there is a place called The Melting Place."

"What does it do?"

"We are not sure anymore. We haven't been using that part of the Mine since our independence," he explained.

"Our what?" she frowned.

"Freedom, from the ones who wanted to be our masters," her Da patiently explained.

"Were they really bad?" she asked.

"Yes, of course, they were bad. Good people don’t need slaves. Anyway, we have been trying to go back into the certain parts of the Great Mine to rediscover our past."

"What is there?" she touched the place on the plan that he pointed earlier.

"Mostly nothing that we understand, but the Melting Place used to have a great source of fire that now resides much closer to the surface, it’s still but we think we should be able to make use of it."

"What would we do with that fire? It’s still deeply below us, you said," she scanned the plans with her keen eyes. It was the only chance for her to learn what her father knew about the places beneath the Inner Block.

"Yes it is, but our great inventors found a way to spread it around on the surface."

"You want to protect us with fire?" Lar squeaked with excitement looking at the plans in front of her with a newfound respect.

"In a way, yes," the King sighed.

"Will it work?"

"I work to make it work," her father answered with a deep sigh.

"What if it doesn't work then?"

"It will work Lar, you will see this great wall of fire, even from your room."

"Won't they find a way to get through?"

"They don’t know about it, so they will have no chance to prepare."

"Surprise?" she giggled, "Surprise for the Swords? Is that possible?"

"Yes Lar, it will be a surprise for them," the King chuckled too.

For a moment he let himself be drawn into his private fantasy world and the Axes were free to keep on living in the lands they stole so long ago. Though, he knew all too well, that Swords would never let that happen. Maybe this time the Fates would be on the Axes side yet again. They needed to win so badly this coming battle, to survive long enough to prepare for what’s coming next.

The two of them, a father and his only daughter sat in silence while he was hoping for a better future, hoping to keep this moment just a little while longer, hoping this peace could stretch into infinity.

"Ah." She quieted for a bit, trying to gather her courage for the burning question that she wanted to ask in the first place. "Da?"

"Yes?" he asked absently, for he was deeply immersed in his plans again.

"What is the meat we eat made of?" she asked tentatively.

"You know it Lar. It's from flesh." He closed his eyes with a deep sigh.

"But where do we get that flesh from?" Lar wouldn’t let go once she noticed his sigh. A sigh like that could only mean an uneasy truth or a secret.

"From the ones that need it no more," the King evaded.

"From the dead?" she asked breathlessly.

"It's not possible to eat something that is still alive, Lar."

"I mean, do we eat our dead?" she asked, "I mean, our people?"

There was no answer for that question for a long time. The Red Axe King frowned and nervously cleared his throat with a faked cough.

"Yes," he said after a long silence.

"Why?" she sniffed and tears welled in her eyes.

"It would be a waste to just let it rot." The King embraced his daughter tightly, letting her express her shock in the only way she knew, through tears.

"But it's so awful," Lar sobbed.

"Why? Why is it more awful than eating a dead animal?" he reasoned patiently.

"It just is," she quieted.

"But you like it. You like the meats you eat. You like the way it tastes."

"You never told me what is made of."

"Would it make any difference?" he sighed.

"I don’t know," she admitted.

"Lar, we don’t kill our food, we don’t hunt anymore. We take only what the nature gives us. The dead body is a nature's gift that we learned to make use of to survive."

"We don’t hunt anymore?" she picked up on the other question she really wanted to know answer to.

"We don’t," he said absently, already looking through his plans.

"When did we hunt and what?" Her tears were already gone.

"It was a long, long time ago Lar, even before we were forced to be slaves."

"I want to know about it," she said stubbornly and in all-business tone. She knew right then, she just wanted to hear it out loud from him.

"You are too young."

"Is it that bad? Am I that bad?" She asked feeling a little bit lost, even though she knew already what he was to say, it made her feel uneasy, knowing it ran in her veins, the bloody past of her ancestry.

"Of course, you are not, Lar. It was a long time ago, I'm not even sure anymore if that’s a true story," he tried to derail her interest one last time.

"Tell it to me then, Da," she pleaded, "Please. Pretty please," ‘I have to know,’ was the thing she didn’t have to add. They both knew it was there.

"Ah, Lar, don’t look at me like that." Suddenly he was afraid to close his eyes while she targeted him.

"Then tell me."

"All right. Do you remember that story of the times where there was this brightness in the sky gave us light and warmth?"

"About the days? I love that story!"

"Yes, that one. We don’t know what it was, but once it just disappeared. We still don’t know why. But it did. In one moment, the light was gone, and the food was gone with it. There is a legend that our ancestors started to hunt others to survive," he said evenly, though he didn’t dare to meet her eyes.

"To eat them?" she gasped wide eyed and disgusted.

"Yes. Though this seems very unlikely, Lar. Maybe it was just when we started to eat dead flesh. So many people were dying out of hunger then. Who knows? The legend also says about the red blood eyes curse. Have you seen anyone with red blood eyes?"

"No, of course not, but it's a horrible story anyway."

"Yes it is. Hopefully, it's only a story, nothing more," the King frowned, like he just realized something important.

"But we do eat our dead now, that is not a story," she moaned unhappy.

"We eat them and we don’t waste it," he said sharply, cutting her arguments short.

"I don’t think I will be able to do it again, Da," Lar looked straight into his eyes, defiant in her tone.

"What?"

"Eat flesh. I don’t want it," Lar said decisively.

"You don’t have to, but you will become weak at some point," he chuckled.

"I don’t mind it, Da," she said as she left the room, "Even if I have to eat dirt, I won't ever eat flesh again."

The Red Axe King was left agape. He knew, she couldn’t know that eating dirt was a long forgotten tradition of the Seekinglanders. Lar's origins were starting to reveal themselves, he realized somberly. She was turning into a Seekinglander, into her mother's kind. He hoped there was still time to fix it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Bertan! I'm so happy to see that the rumors of your arrival, and return, were the embodiment of the truth, this time," a soft and deceiving voice of the High Mother Of The Third Line tried to put a comfort spell into Bertan's mind and make her let her guards down. Bertan, on the other hand, knew her Mother too well though, being her last true daughter. She had learned the hard way not to make the same mistake twice and would never trust that creature again.

"May the blessings guard you, Mother." Bertan kept herself as stiff and composed as a taut tension line of her kite. Her formal robes were the key reminder of the right posture to keep, and the right words to say. The usual garment of a Sword was an armored robe, easily and readily worn into fights and informal meetings, always filled with the favorite and necessary weaponry. While she chose to wear for this meeting soft and alien cascades of a formal silk coat that was draped in waves around her body hiding everything but the lies.

"I never thought that I would live to see it happen, so forgive me please but I just have to ask. What brings you back, to where you obviously don't belong? Dearest of daughters." A tall and statuesque Mother of too many generations appeared tense herself, hiding it well beneath her act. The training that Bertan went through with the southern tribe, made her easily see through that act. She could notice the things she would most certainly ignore before. That fact brought