survive. Fraternizing with the unmarked will be our downfall. Marked above all!'
The laser was finishing its work. Burnt on the far wall was an incredibly complex mark, about two feet across, full of intricate arcs and spirals. It sat in the middle of a large circle, wide enough to climb through.
'Get ready, Kai,' she warned under her breath. On the other side of the room, Zhen and Harland assumed fighting poses.
There. The beam disappeared. Kai sent an arc of lightning in Harland and Zhen’s direction as Elra dashed towards the mark on the wall. To her horror, the two of them were ready: they soaked up Kai's assault with Blocking marks on the underside of their arms. Although clearly in pain, they inched forward against his electric barrage.
'Hurry!' Kai moaned.
Elra was at the wall. She ran her hands across the mark, instantly recognizing there was another one identical to it somewhere else in the world. Cold, wind-chill, the dripping of water on stone... where does this lead?
'I can't keep this up!' Kai wailed. In that short time he'd moved closer to her, but so had the other two. His electricity was weakening, and Elra doubted he could maintain such a vicious assault for much longer.
No time for decision-making. Elra threw caution to the wind and ripped the wall. On the other side of the rift there was nothing but darkness. Behind her Kai screamed.
She spun round. He was eking out the last of his energy: maybe it was her eyes, but he actually seemed leaner than he had done a few seconds ago, as if all that expenditure had literally stripped what little fat he had on him.
The other two were just a few meters away. She looked into the darkness beyond the rift, then back at Kai's last-ditch attempt. She sighed.
Grabbing him by the fabric of his jacket, she pulled him in her direction. Zhen and Harland charged.
The last thing Elra saw, before they both fell into the darkness of the rift, was Zhen taking a swipe at the air where Kai had been, her hand crackling with fire.
Thirty-eight
Cold stone. Damp, all-obscuring darkness. To Elra's left, Kai groaned.
'Ow,' he said, to the darkness.
'You're safe now,' the darkness replied. Its voice was deep, yet unmistakably female, and carried a warmth with it that was severely lacking in the air.
Up ahead in the distant dark, a light appeared. It gradually took the form of a woman, presumably the bearer of the voice. What was this place? As she got closer, they began to make out her appearance. She was old and serene, with darkish skin and hawk-like features. Her curly hair was blistering white and her eyes carried immense warmth in their gaze. Her whole being seemed to be radiating light, there was no other way she could be illuminated.
'Elra, Kai. I am Morwen.'
Kai groaned again. As this ethereal vision called Morwen came closer, Elra saw the marks on her hands. Unlike others she'd come across, which had been smallish tattoos on their bearer's palms, these ones enveloped the entire hand, vast swirls of white which ran up and down her fingers and up her forearms. In the center of one palm sat a crescent moon shape, in the other a circular disk that Elra presumed represented the sun.
'Help me with him, Elra.'
Morwen held up her Moon hand and, to Elra's astonishment, it glowed with a delicate yet powerful light, illuminating their surroundings. They were in a large cave; well, more of an art gallery, really. Its walls were covered in hundreds cave paintings and drawings, some little more than abstract shapes daubed in red ochre, others white paintings of animals and humans, some a combination of the two. Elra didn't doubt that many of them were Knowledge marks. Behind them, on what she supposed was the far wall of the cave, was the exact same mark as had been made on the hideout's wall by that beam of light, etched into the very stone itself.
Elra grabbed Kai under both arms and pulled him to his feet with Morwen's help. He was immediately sick. The briefest hint of a smile crossed Morwen's serene features.
'Ah, Body Knowledge. Such power, but at what cost?'
Her accent was hard to place. Somewhere between Britain and Scandinavia, with a hint of American in there too.
'Where are we?' Elra asked.
'Banuvai Cave, Tanzania.'
Tanzania.
'Are you the Wise?' Elra asked, and immediately realized how stupid she must sound.
Morwen flashed her half-smile again. 'I am one of them. Now come on, let's get him out.'
They struggled down to the mouth of the cave, gazed upon on all sides by the silent images of the past. When they finally exited they were met with a hauntingly beautiful scene. They were stood on the side of a hill, with a vast savannah stretching out before them for many miles, studded with monstrously bulbous trees and great swathes of long grass which moved like waves in the silent wind. At the base of the hill sat a small village. Directly in its center was one of those monstrous trees, under-lit by what looked like a large campfire. It was hard to tell at this distance.
The whole scene was surprisingly well-illuminated by the light of a full moon: everything had a bluish, understated glow which made it almost dreamlike. Beyond the moon the stars shone, undimmed by the lunar light.
Thirty-nine
The red glow of the campfire sparkled in Olympia's eyes. Morwen would soon be along with the London duo: she'd seen her colleague’s white beam focused on the Moon, scribing a mark thousands of miles away, which meant Kai and Elra would have hopefully escaped by now.
Morwen. She remained a mystery to Olympia, a state of affairs she wasn't used to. The woman had unique Change Knowledge, the exact process of which the rest of the Wise had yet to fully understand, making her something of a wildcard in their eyes. This wasn’t helped by the fact she preferred her own company, and only checked in with the others once every few years, while the rest of the Wise made a point of visiting the brothers’ village in Tanzania every six months or so. She clearly preferred to spend her time in the far north of Iceland, away from the collective Marked community and its ancestral country of origin (and indeed humanity’s place of origin). In fact, Olympia had only seen her three times before, and the first time she had been a teenager, recently moved from Greece to take up her place alongside the brothers and the rest of that generation of Wise. Tsonge and Singoro's stepmother had been alive back then, as had Blind Eagle, a Wise American patriarch of semi-mythical power.
Idle thoughts drifted through her mind, about the future of the Wise, and of the Marked community in general. If these dark times hadn't befallen them, Rania would have soon taken her place among them, as would Elra, probably. Alas, it was not to be.
Olympia had no doubt it would require all of their combined powers to even begin to comprehend what was happening, let alone stop it. She thought again of the car on the road, unknowingly charging towards an invisible wall.
If only Rania would give them something to go on, anything at all. The girl had talked to their future selves, she could basically time-travel within her own body... but Olympia knew the futures she traveled to might not be ones that would actually come to pass. In fact, the very act of telling someone what would happen in their future might cause it not to happen. Time, cause and effect were funny things, not to mention mostly an illusion. Enough to give anyone a headache, even the likes of Olympia.
The sound of retching gradually emerged out of the nighttime noises of the bush. Kai and Elra stumbled into the circle of light around the fire, followed by Morwen. Olympia gasped as she saw Kai’s skeletal frame: his face was gaunt and his ribs were visible under his t-shirt. Even by the warm firelight the unnatural pallor of his skin was easily discernible.
'Singoro, call Barunde!' she called in the direction of the nearest house. She dashed over to the duo and helped Elra sit Kai down on a pile of blankets near a shed.
'I'm Olympia by the way,' she said as an aside to Elra.
'Pleased to meet you,' the girl replied. 'And thanks for helping out back there.'
'That was all Morwen. I'm sorry about Zhen.'
&
nbsp; 'You knew?'
'Well, I knew what she was like. Didn't know she'd go crazy on you like that. But I said, you've got Morwen and Rania to thank for getting you out.'
Behind them, Morwen smiled. Kai retched, looking dangerously near to being sick again. Morwen, silent and serene, swanned inside to fetch help.
'It's good to finally meet you,' Olympia continued, smiling. 'Together we'll get your friend back and get to the bottom of all this nonsense.'
Singoro dashed out the house followed by a lithe but cheery-looking woman, a capulana tied high around her pregnant waist. He crouched down next to Kai, holding his lolling head in his hands.
'Ah no, Kai my boy, exerting yourself too much. Not good. Burn yourself out,' he said soothingly, chuckling. 'He must have really socked it to them.'
'He did. I’m Elra by the way.'
'Yes you are. I'm Singoro, the white one. My brother Tsonge's the black one. We're like keys on the piano. I'm the sing, he's the song,' he said, chuckling. 'Pleased to have you here.'
They got Kai to his feet and Barunde walked him inside, supporting him as he took the journey to the door one step at a time. In that moment Olympia spied a look on Elra's face that lasted the briefest of milliseconds, but told an entire story in itself. It was tragic, she mused, the way these things come to fruition just as the world's going down the drain.
'He'll be fine,' she reassured.
'Yes he will,' Elra replied, not taking her eyes of