Guardians of the Light (Book One of The Nebril Riverland Chronicles)

  Chapter 11

  The sky lit up in a gorgeous lavender hue. The shade was strikingly similar to that of the Lumeai's eyes, as all forty some pairs stared at us, awaiting our reaction. The light of the stars receded and the birds sang in anticipation of the impending sunrise. The green glow of the mountain top became more subtle as the sun crept ever closer to the horizon. Soon it would burst over the edge of the land, rise above the hill tops and spread its warmth across the valley. I could see lights glowing in the windows of the houses in Carper's Village. The people were awake; they were preparing themselves for a wedding.

  A rush of guilt very nearly flooded my body, but was held in check by the fascination that I felt over everything I had heard this morning. How could I be expected to marry Callum now that I had been enlightened to my situation? Regardless, my chest still ached at the thought of my parents rising this morning to find that I had not returned. I could see the pain in my mother's eyes as she put on her best dress, holding out hope that when she got to the church she would find me there. I could see my father trying to be strong, telling her that everything would be alright. I would show up at the last minute because I really was a good girl, though he probably would not believe it himself. I didn't want to hurt them; it tore at my heart. Why was it that in order to spare them pain, I would have to spend a lifetime being tortured by my own? It did not seem fair.

  I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind and instead began to process this new information about Hallen. If she were a bei clu, then suddenly everything Jalya had said about the similarities between me and her mother made complete sense. The boy they talked of, they must have meant Ashel...was his father this....Mejalen? Of course he was; it was so obvious to me now. If Mejalen was Hallen's bei clu va, there was no way that she could have kept herself from him once she found him. I felt such sadness for her and wondered if she had felt the same way about marrying Jalya's father as I felt about marrying Callum. And even though she was married with a young child, she still could not keep herself from her bei clu va. This knowledge strengthened my resolve that I'd made the right decision not to marry Callum today.

  I turned away from the lights of the village as I felt Jalya shift on the moss next to me. When I looked over, I saw that she had her head in her hands. I moved to put my arm around her, but before I could even reach out Lovis was already there, stroking her arms with his pale hands.

  "Oh my dear," he crooned. "It will be alright. She will be fine. This is not a bad thing."

  Jalya shook her head, then lifted it to look into his huge purple eyes. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, which Lovis dabbed with his fingers. The beads of water wobbled on his fingers for only a second before his skin absorbed them like a sponge. "Do you not believe me, love? I assure you that this is the truth. I saw her myself. She was here on this mountain many years ago, sitting right where you are now."

  "I believe you," Jalya sniffed. "I knew there was something different about her; this.....this makes sense. But....I don't think you know this....she died two days ago."

  An audible gasp rippled through the crowd and their large eyes seemed to grow bigger. They looked at each other helplessly. Darlus left Sharl's side and sat next to Jalya. "Oh my goodness, dear, I am so sorry," she said. "What happened?"

  "I don't know. My brother found her just lying on the ground. He had been hunting and when he got back.....well, he didn't know what happened....didn't see anything."

  "Your brother, oh my!" Lovis exclaimed. "Where is he my dear? Can you bring him to us?"

  Jalya began to cry again. "I would, but I don't know where he is."

  "He left the house last night," I explained. "We don't know where he went."

  This information seemed to concern Lovis quite a bit. His serious look was back and his features were drawn together tightly as he quietly stared down in the direction of the village. The whole group was, in fact, deathly quiet as though they had just received the most devastating news. I didn't know if they were reacting to Hallen's death or Ashel's disappearance. I only knew that their silence implied something monumental, something that was very wrong.

  The quiet was disrupted by the scraping sound of rock rubbing against rock, and I looked over Lovis' head to see Sharl squirming uncomfortably. Darlus noticed at the same time and left Jalya to return to his side. "Oh dear, what happened? Are you alright?"

  "I just remembered something," he said, barely above a whisper. He held his head in his hands and rocked back and forth, shaking uncontrollably. "I couldn't remember much before...about what happened to me. I'm still not sure what was a dream and what was real....but, oh my, I believe that I saw the wu bei last night."

  The group broke their silence with renewed murmurings of excitement. They glanced eagerly at each other then back at Sharl, bobbing in place like frisky children.

  "Oh yes, my dear, you must tell us what happened to you." Lovis sat back down in his original spot on the rocks and looked at Sharl with concern. "Whatever held you up for so long?"

  Jalya sat forward, all signs of crying having stopped. "Wait, wait, wait a minute. What's a wu bei? Is he talking about Ashel?"

  "Ashel, why yes, Ashel, that's his name. Oh my, my memory again." Lovis shook his head and chuckled. "Yes dear, your brother is a wu bei; that is the child of two bei clu va."

  "So that means that Mejalen is Ashel's father," I stated. "Does he know?"

  "Why I don't know, my dear. I don't know what he knows."

  "He doesn't," Jalya assured us. "He doesn't know who his father is. When he asked our mother about it, she told him that he was dead, but he didn't believe her."

  "Well, if he was dead, Hallen would have known," said Lovis. "When a bei clu dies, his or her half soul is freed from the body and seeks out the bei clu va. The bei clu va is then finally furnished with a complete soul. If Mejalen still lives, he is aware of her death. His soul is now complete, yet his heart is broken."

  Jalya turned to Sharl. "So, where did you see my brother? Do you know where he went?"

  Sharl looked up at her, his big eyes seeming to tremble in his face. "I don't know where he went, but I saw him in a cart, last night in the forest. He was with a....Nebril." He almost choked on the word. "Oh...oh my, I could see his....darkness." He spit out the last word violently and then clasped his arms around his legs, once more forming his body into a shivering white ball.

  "A Nebril...out this far?" Darlus squeaked. "That's very unusual."

  "Th-the Nebril, he was driving a cart with horses....he was sooo dark. The wu bei was inside. I could see him through the window in the back."

  "David?" I looked at Jalya for confirmation, though I didn't need it. How many other Nebril would be driving a cart through here? I turned to Lovis. "He was in our village selling merchandise. This was his second visit. He seemed to be a very nice man."

  "Nice....nice. They can be nice, but they are dark. There is much darkness inside of them," Sharl continued cryptically, then his eyes widened again. "And there were others with him....Orlogs I believe....one of them stopped me, would not let me pass. I could not get to Hallen and the wu bei. They have only darkness, no color, only dark....twisted broken bodies that don't work, but strong, evil minds. It would not let me pass. It held me still with its mind until I was so weak from lack of sun, I could not climb back up the mountain."

  "What's an Orlog?" I questioned. I was beginning to feel like a toddler, being exposed to the outside world for the first time. Lovis had been right about how well we were sheltered in our village.

  "We don't know really," Lovis answered, "but we have been hearing strange reports of these creatures from travellers who visit us, strange creatures with gnarled, twisted limbs, unable to move much at all. They seem to be in a great deal of pain or anguish, because they are often wailing or crying and causing a general disruption. We don't know where they came from or what their purpose here is. However, our visitors tell us that they can probe minds; they can find you throu
gh your thoughts, and paralyze you with theirs. Thus they don't need physical strength to catch you, and when they do get hold of you, they drain you of your energy. A large enough Orlog can kill a small enough victim, or so we've heard. This practice seems to dull their pain, to give them the energy to move on to their next victim. They are very dangerous, but we've only heard reports of them being found near Nebril City, never this far out. Oh my, this is bad news. Tell me Sharl, did they hurt you?"

  "Oh no, they did not hurt me," Sharl replied, having calmed down somewhat. "At first there was just one and all it did was hold me there; I could not move at all. Oh, it was so dark, as if there was no colour left inside. It touched me with its grotesque limbs, maybe trying to drain me, but it couldn't. Yet it kept me there all day, frozen, just staring at me, unable to hurt me."

  "Oh dear, what could it have wanted with you then?"

  "I don't know. But when the Nebril came with the cart..." He stopped and shuddered momentarily at the sound of the name. "....he told it that it could let me go now. It was time to leave. That everything had been taken care of, whatever that meant. Then the Orlog dragged its hideous, mangled body up onto the side of the cart, and, as they rode away, I saw there was another one...another Orlog on the other side of the cart." His face twisted up into an expression of disgust. "You should have seen the thing. It could barely even move, its joints were so stiff.....it cried out with every step, and there was this sound...a horrible clicking, grinding sound..." He pursed his lips together hard and resumed his violent shaking. Darlus wrapped her arms around his curled up body and rocked with him.

  Lovis thought for a moment. "Did you say that the Orlogs were dark as well?"

  "Yes, yes," Sharl squirmed, narrowing his eyes as though trying to keep out an unpleasant vision. "So very dark, even darker than the Nebril, no colour at all.......Lovis, what kind of demon has no colour?"

  "I don't know. I just don't know."

  "What is this darkness that he keeps babbling about?" Jalya asked, as she wiggled impatiently on the moss.

  "Oh my, yes, well this is quite a story," Lovis's eyes grew wide. I sighed. It looked like we were going to be here for a while longer. "Yes, quite a story indeed! I'm sure you've seen a few Nebril in your lifetimes, my dears. Tell me, have you ever heard it said that they do not die, that they live forever?"

  "Well, we've heard people say it," I answered. "But I always thought it was just stories." I thought about it now. Up until last night we had thought the sun seekers weren't real, as well. I wondered what other strange tales we would be hearing this morning.

  "A story maybe, but a true one at that. Remember how I told you that the Lumeai watch over the bei, that we can see when it's unbalanced or tainted in any way? Well, these disbalances of the bei have been happening more and more over the last several years. Not only that, but we have been seeing strange colourings in it....streaks of blackness mixed in with the colours. When we look at the Nebril we can see it; there is a high amount of blackness in their bei, where there should be none at all. This is not a good thing. Darkness is never good; it is toxic to our souls. Too much blackness in the bei and babies will be born impure, contaminated, unable to connect to each other, unable to connect to their land, evil, unfeeling, uncaring enough to destroy the world that they live in. This blackness....it must be stopped."

  "Can't you stop it? I thought you were responsible for the bei."

  "Ah yes, but we can only see the bei and feel it. We know when something is wrong. But we are helpless to do anything about it ourselves. We can only alert others to the situation. So this is what we did. Months ago, we had some Natki visitors, as we do from time to time; they like to check in with us and see if there are any problems. We told them of our findings and concerns, so we asked them to check around the riverlands and see if anything was amiss. Well, months passed, and then they returned to us, just two days ago in fact. The Natki that you saw were probably among them."

  My chest ached at the remembrance of the man on the hill running toward me, me running toward him. I was almost there, if he'd made it to the top of the hill closest to me, I may have been able to see his face. If only I could have seen what he looked like, then I'd at least know what I was looking for. I folded my arms across my chest in an attempt to dull the gnawing pain.

  "The news that they brought with them was disturbing to say the least," Lovis continued. "Like you, we had thought the stories of the immortal Nebril were just silly rumours, tales that travelling merchants tell to amuse their customers. The people of the woodlands don't generally visit the city and the Nebril mostly keep to themselves. However, the warriors that we sent validated these stories. Some of them were able to sit in on a few of their weekly church meetings. Every week one of the leaders will call a volunteer from the pews to come to the front to receive the gift of everlasting life. Apparently there are always many who are eager to volunteer, but they only pick one each week. First this person drinks an unknown substance from a chalice. Then the Nebril elders place their hands upon a large crystal and instruct the volunteer to do the same. The crystal emits an enormous flash of light and it's over. We do not know how it works, but the Natki say that the eyes of a person change during the ceremony. No matter what color they were before, they change to the deepest of brown, almost black, soon after touching the crystal."

  Lovis looked from me to Jalya and back again as if to be sure we were taking it all in. I nodded to give him some reassurance. "The Natki say that these ceremonies are held every Saturday evening, which would correspond with the strange behaviour of the bei that we have observed early Sunday mornings. That's what we were checking for when you awoke."

  "I noticed something when you were doing that," I said. "There was this weird vibration. I don't know how to describe it, but it felt...uncomfortable. But Jalya didn't feel it, only I did."

  "Yes, that discomfort was the disbalance and the bei trying to reorient itself. You always have access to the bei; it is a part of you after all, but your sense of it is limited. Our ceremony created a portal through which you could sense it. Your bei vibrates along with the rest. Jalya's does not, because she has too much inside of her, so it doesn't move as well. Think of a bottle half filled with water; there is much more room for it to slosh about than if it were completely full."

  Lovis smiled at me as I digested the horrifying thought of sloshing bei. "We'll have to invite you to a ceremony when the bei is in balance. It would be a much more comfortable experience. However, I fear that you do not have much more time to visit with us today."

  "We have to find my brother," Jalya said gravely.

  "Yes, yes, you do, but I fear that he may be quite far from here by now."

  "It doesn't matter; I can't leave him. Who knows where they're taking him or what will happen to him. Emerin and I....we're not going back there anyway." She turned her head in the direction of Carper's Village. There were lights on in most of the houses now and even a few people wandering outside, waiting around for the church bells to start ringing.

  "I'm supposed to be getting married today," I said sadly, to no one in particular.

  Lovis nodded, seeming to understand without me having to say any more. "It is a wise decision to leave. For yourself and for everyone. You are much too important to live all your days in that village."

  "What do you mean much too important?"

  "Oh my dear, the bei clu are very important to all life here. While we Lumeai watch over the bei, the bei clu maintain it. Mend it when there are problems, as there are now. But the bei clu cannot do anything on his or her own; they must find their other, their bei clu va. Two bei clu va or a wu bei alone have the power to fix the bei, pull the darkness from it and make right the spiritual world.”

  “So this kind of thing has happened before?” I asked.

  Lovis nodded slowly. "There has been darkness before, long ago, before you were born, before your grandparents were born. I, however, am extremely old and remember these
events. No one knows how the black gets into the bei, but it has happened before. Unfortunately, this time, there are not many bei clu left to take care of the problem."

  Lovis looked sadly out over the hills. The rest of the sun seekers stared at me with expectant eyes and I got the feeling that I was about to be asked to do a monumental task. I just hoped that it wasn't something more horrifying than marrying Callum.