Assassins of Heretrua

Chapter Six

      "Have you got a book of the laws or something around here somewhere?" Evelyn called from the library floor, where she was sitting to sift through endless shelves of books.

"Um..." Ren leaned around a shelf from the top of a ladder. "Probably. But I wouldn't know where to find it. Maybe try over there?" He pointed to an area with more stacked papers and scrolls than books. Evelyn walked over to it. "Here?"

"Yeah." He jumped from one of the lower rungs of the ladder and hit the floor with a thud. "I'll try to find it. Here." He handed her a book he'd pulled off the previous shelf he'd been looking through. "If you want an overview of the greatest, most important events of our history, they're all wrapped up in this."

"Really?" Evelyn turned the book over in her hands.

"Yeah. It was my favorite as a kid. I read it a thousand times."

Evelyn looked up at him. "That good, huh?"

"Indeed."

Evelyn smiled and opened the book in the middle. "There's pictures!"

"I know." Ren peeked over her should. "That was my very favorite story in the book. Turn back a few pages to get to the beginning."

Evelyn did so. Her fingers traced the title. "Nikolai. That was... is... my brother's name."

"He must be pretty amazing to share a name with this guy," Ren joked.

"He is." Evelyn was already intent on reading. "He was a king, then?"

"One of the greatest that ever lived. And he started young, like me. I would love to be like him."

"If he shared my brother's name and is a role model for my husband, I think there's reason enough for him to automatically be my favorite, too." Evelyn turned the page to a full-sized pictured and gasped.

"What?"

Evelyn shook her head. "That's crazy," she murmured. "He even looks like Nik."

"Are you serious?" Ren leaned closer and Evelyn did, too.

"Yeah, in fact..." she peered at it a long time. "That's almost a creepy resemblance. They could have been twins."

"Or..."

Evelyn looked up at Ren, a question in her eyes.

"They could be the same person," he finished.

They stared at each other in silence a long time.

"I've come to believe a lot of things while I've been here, but this takes the cake. It can't be him," Evelyn insisted.

"You got pulled here, why couldn't he?"

"But in the past? I would think he'd come in the present."

"Well, the past was the present at some point. So when he was pulled here..."

"If he was pulled here."

"Right. He'd just be pulled to a different present than the one we're currently in."

"So we believe in time travel now?"

Ren just shrugged.

Evelyn's chair screeched back as she stood up. "What other books do you have on this guy?"

"Plenty. I've read all of them."

"Then start talking and I'll start reading."

"Okay. Um..." Ren led her to a shelf and started pulling out books and handing them to her as he talked. "One reason I think it's not such a far fetched idea is that Nikolai could be your brother is because his past is muddled. There's not any information on his childhood or where he came from. In fact, there's a lot of disputed facts about his life, and plenty of missing information, too."

"Well answer me this, how did he become king? And if he came from another world, wouldn't someone have caught on to that and put it in one of these books?"

"How did you become queen?" Ren shot back. "This is a world where anything can happen. Reality takes precedence over fiction in terms of which events seem more unlikely. The funny thing about life is that the things that happen in reality are often the most unrealistic."

"That doesn't answer my question about why no one knew he was from another world. Or why no one cared enough about that fact to put it in a book."

"Here." Ren pulled one of the books out of her stack and opened it. "This is supposedly the most complete story of Nikolai's life and reign. However, the language it's written in has been dead for centuries. No one can make a complete translation."

"Oh." Evelyn traced her fingers over the words. "Then why can I read it?"

"What?"

"I can read it." Evelyn blinked and noticed that the lettering shifted and changed into words she could understand as her eyes swept over the page.

Ren looked over her shoulder. "I can't."

"That's odd," Evelyn muttered.

"It's good. What's it say?"

Evelyn had scanned over the first few pages. "It's like you said. A complete account of his life." Evelyn turned back to the beginning and started reading.