A STORM WAS raging overhead. He lay on the hill above Elaimat. Below him white light broke the wide plaza in two. As he watched, children and their guardians fell screaming into the crevasse that suddenly opened there. Lashing rains swept across the orchard behind him and petals blew wildly across the funneled ground.
He felt hands pulling at him.
“Nathaniel, please. Get up. Come with us. Hurry!”
Naliv and others stood beside him. Her dark hair streamed out in the wind. Her eyes were filled with a desolation he’d never seen in them before.
“We must get you away from here.”
She was shouting above the roar of the storm.
“What’s happened?” Nathan asked, rising to his feet.
Naliv only beckoned him to follow her as she ran along the crest of the hill. He saw the horizon then, a wide band of red clouds rising higher each moment. He could feel the fear and distraction of the men and women who were with her.
He ran alongside them, feeling the needle points of cold rain against his face. Below, the walls of Elaimat were shattered in places, and he could see the courtyard, the red flowers scattered on the stone tiles.
Naliv led them across the labyrinth and along a path between two walls of rock. The sky was a sea of dark, turbulent clouds and the wind was so strong he could barely step into it. She made a sudden turn to the right and he followed.
They faced a large round hill covered with grass.
“Here. Please, hurry!” Naliv ran to one side and beckoned to him again. He saw the opening at the base of the hill. The next moment they had all entered it and raced down a long passageway. The sounds of the storm grew muffled in the distance.
They were in the cave, the room with the pillars and their ancient spiral engravings. The light from the sconces was bright. Nathan stared at Naliv. She hadn’t aged since the last time he had entered his dreams. Yet she had changed.
A man handed him and Naliv each a cup from a shelf next to the entrance.
“It is hot. Drink it, please,” Naliv said to him.
The liquid went through him in an instant, warming his body.
“Will you tell me what has happened here?” Nathan said. Looking around, he realized some people weren’t there with them. “Where is Marn and Soran?”
“You have just seen my son die. He was in the plaza.” Naliv looked away. “It is inconceivable, and yet it has come to this.” She looked back at him and her grief felt like a physical pain of his own.
“It’s Calum, then?”
“Not only him. I have realized, now, that I should have removed the conduit from you as soon as we had the Harec returned. I did not want to take the risk of causing you harm. In this way, I opened the path for other vibrations to enter into my city from your world. Calum was clumsy and careless, yes, and he thinks he has caused this. In one way, of course, he has. Now he cannot stop himself. He knows fear now. You see, we have never known the cost of such a thing as the emotion of fear, and the suffering it requires. All we see, this rage of his, has been transmuted into the storm. It is an extension of him. In this he is acting as we always have in Elaimat, extending our thoughts outward, creating our reality. Until now, this has meant light, and joy.
“By bringing you back, I widened the power of the conduit. I thought through you we could find out what our past, our mutual past, would reveal, so that I could help Calum and protect Elaimat. In my choice to keep you with us, instead I created a path for chaos.”
YOU ARE READING
The Magic Hour
Mystery / Thriller"It was not exactly dark, but a kind of twilight or gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof." -Childe Rowland "T...
