Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

his skin tingled all over, and his senses felt hyperaware. There was no numbness. He licked his lips and formed his words carefully. “Madam, it appears that it would serve us both if you accompanied me from now on.” It was the only possible response, at least for now.

Renna smiled at him, seeming genuinely pleased. “I do so appreciate dealing with an intelligent man,” she said. “Why don’t you rest for a few more minutes, and then we can discuss our next steps? I’ll fetch you something to drink. You must be thirsty.” She sprang up with vigor, seeming energized and excited. She was out the door a moment later.

Gamarron regarded the plainly dressed girl left behind. She looked like so many of the country folk of the Mainland, dark of skin and hair. She was pretty, but there was a tightness about her eyes that spoke of a heavy weight. “Why,” he croaked, “do you stay with her?”

Nira sat in the wingback chair. “She doesn’t allow any other option,” she admitted. “She’s a powerful woman.”

He gestured to his own chest. “Has she done this to you?”

The girl shook her head, her straight black hair swaying. “No, that was new. She’s threatened me, yes, but it’s more that she – she makes things happen. She gets it all done. After a while, you just let her, no matter how awful she is. It’s easier.”

He could imagine that it was. This girl seemed too simple and straightforward to resist a creature like Renna. He picked himself up off the floor as his stability returned, and he sat on the bed, careful not to disturb Kest. There was a burning deep in his chest as if he’d swallowed a burning coal. “And tell me in truth: have you seen me in a vision?” He fixed her with a steady, searching gaze. It was the one he had used with his steadholders for all these years when any sought to lie or take advantage. The guilty couldn’t stand up to it for long.

Nira looked right back at him, unfazed. “Yes, I did. I don’t know why I see you when I touch her, other than I guess that Renna is mixed up with you somehow. I don’t know why I see what I do for different people; maybe whatever the most important or intense thing that could happen to the person floats to the surface. Renna has made me show her that vision of you a dozen times. It’s always the same. I could have drawn your face before I ever met you.”

Gamarron nodded. He heard no dishonesty. Can this be? “And you think that the Pure Light… what? Sent you? Chose you?” He was not quite ready to believe it, but finding the truth sometimes meant revising one’s assumptions.

“The Light is not person or a thing, but a force.” She rattled the words off as if they were a memorized catechism. Her lips twisted as if the words tasted bad. “It chooses us the way the wilderness chooses one sparrow to survive while another dies. We simply wait for it to bless or burn us.” She shook her head ruefully. “That was one of the Sayings in the group I grew up in. Our religion, I guess you’d call it. I just wanted to get away. Who teaches their children that you’re born just to die, and only random chance will save you? What kind of world is that?” She lifted her hands in a fatalistic shrug. “This one, it turns out.”

“So you’ve come to believe in this religion you left behind?” he asked.

“No,” she said emphatically. “They were fools.” She paused. “But they didn’t get it all wrong, obviously, because here I am, seeing these visions.” A hesitant smile crept across her face. “I’m beginning to think I’ve only scratched the surface. What else is in me? What else can I do? It’s amazing. Any being – or force, or whatever – that can do this must be, I don’t know… good? Worthy of respect? ‘Worship’ is what Da and Madra would say, but I’m no good at that.” A shadow crossed her features. “And when I remember that it kills nearly everything it touches, well… then I start to feel bad about getting excited.”

She seemed embarrassed to have spoken so freely. “I’m sorry she did that to you. I’d have done something if I knew she was going to…” She gestured helplessly at him. “I wish I had seen it coming.”

“Thank you.” He stood uncertainly, wavering on his feet. The pain was fading, leaving a dull ache in its wake that spoke of something deeply wrong inside him. He felt a sudden need to practice the koda. He hadn’t had the chance to perform the meditative exercises since the day he had departed Serpentslip. It had been years since he’d gone this long – since before he’d unified the holdfasts of the Black Isle under his rule. And look how far I have strayed without it. I have maimed a boy I should have cared for and let my body be chained to another’s will. It did not seem coincidental.

“Chosen by the Pure Light,” he mused, keeping one hand on the bed to ensure his balance. “How can an unthinking force choose you?”

She took a breath to respond but floundered, unsure. “Well, it’s not like it… picked me or anything,” she ventured. “I just happened to be the one. Or one of the ones. Maybe there are others!” She brightened at that thought. “But, I mean… even if I just happened to be the right body in the right place… it has to serve a purpose, doesn’t it?” She looked to him for confirmation, seeming hopeful. She wants that to be true, but she’s just making it up as she goes. This is a child without a center to her life. He felt a tug in his guts that reminded him of when he first met Kest.

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling.