Guardians Book One - Magic Rising

Chapter Twenty Nine

Kath opened her eyes. What she saw was hazy and unfinished, flickering around the edges. I'm not awake. This is a dream...no. A memory. But...where is this place? It was like nowhere she had ever imagined, a world both lush and deserted, somewhere ancient and unspoiled. She stepped forward; sand crunched under her feet, achingly loud in the silence. There were buildings here and there that could only be temples, surely, rough-hewn sandstone carved with love and care into pictograms Kath couldn't read. She moved forward to look at a frieze.

No, Kathleen. You are here to know something else. Her legs, entirely out of her control, turned her around and marched her down the wide sandy path. It was lined with trees, each branch dripping and heavy with fruit and wide, stiff leaves. A breeze ruffled her short hair, filled with some scent she couldn't place, sweet and fresh. The heat made her skin tingle; shading her eyes, she glanced up. The sun was enormous and bright in the clear blue sky above her. The path before her stretched out into some cliffy beyond for miles, unmarred by anything a human had made.

"Where...am I?" she asked aloud.

Not where. When. A wave of humour that wasn't her own washed through her mind. A long time ago.

And then she saw the men.

They were tall, with enormous brown eyes, and their skin was a rich coppery red-brown, their hair long, black and braided. They were young, clearly, and clad in bronze, with long, notched swords at their sides – full swords, not like Lady's short blade. And they were identical to the last feature. Moving as stealthily as she could, she pressed up to the trees lining the path and moved forward, one step at a time.

You need to understand, said the Lord of Light, and Kath realised she was looking at his original body, and that of his brother. And yes, now she was growing closer, she could see they weren't as identical as all that. The man on the left was glowing, subtly, as if there were fireflies under his skin. And the face of the man on the right was suffused with fear and rage.

"How could you leave me from this?" he said, reaching out a hand. "To seek with out me. To find, without me. I am the other half of you. We shared a womb. You leave me, without word, and now, you would share your treasure with the world, as if they matter as much as I, to you?" His hand was shaking, and his voice was rapidly losing its calm resonance. "How can you spite me thus? I would never have left you. Never, not for the power of the world." He tossed his head. "You stand before me, now, you dare, you ask me to return with you – when I came only to bring you back to safety – and you ask me to follow in your wake as you give away what could have brought us closer?" He stepped towards his brother, towards the man who would become the Lord of Light. "You are all I have. Together we could have built a sacred world – shared between the two of us, as it should be. We have neither kith nor kin. We have each other. You choose strangers and foreigners over I?"

The Lord of Light held out his mortal hands. "Brother. Twin. No. This is no slight on you. Without a tribe – without a community – we have nought. We are all children of this earth, that is what I have learned from what I have found..."

His brother sliced his hand through the air, silencing him. "No! They are not us. We need no-one. It was outsiders who killed our family. Why would you trust them again? I shall not lose you. I shall not!" His hand drew back, hovered over his sword hilt. The Lord of Light shifted his weight slightly, warily, back into what Kath now recognised as a precursor to a fighting stance, ready to move forward if necessary.

"There is no loss. But all men are brothers. Do not allow fear to cause you to hate, my twin, other half of my soul..."

"You leave me no choice!" his twin roared. "Give up this needless power if you will not share it with me. I see it infecting your body, little by little, taking you away – it is wrong! You call it 'natural'. Nothing of this is natural. Only our bond is, and only our bond matters, and I shall take these monstrous lies from you and take you home and we will begin anew..." He drew his sword, eyes half-mad as he swung it at his brother. The strike was weak and impulsive, and the Lord of Light was easily able to duck aside from it as he drew his own sword to block his brother's rage.