forty-three
Sleep was one of the few things that absolved Mira’s anxiety, but she could no longer be surprised when a certain visitor pulled her down from her dreams and enveloped her in a sorceric embrace that cracked open her consciousness and made her face the fears that she kept quashed down in her queasy
stomach all day.
“Let me make things simple for you,” Rahara said before Mira acknowledged her. “I know what the Relics of that planet are. It’s been revealed in countless realities.”
Mira oriented herself by remaining kneeling on the empty ground of her own inner mind, fingers splaying across dirt, tile, cotton, and rock all at once. The less she thought about the sensory world around her, the easier it became to ignore how little sense her own mind made.
“You sure know a lot. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this point. You’re more powerful than my father, aren’t you?”
Rahara turned toward Mira, her glowing blue eyes simultaneously bearing down upon her and looking past her aura.
“I always have been, yes. But you don’t make the correct observation. What is ‘power’ between sorcerers and priests is merely an allocation of talent. It’s how we speak and commune with the Void with a brush of our hand or a flutter of our eyes.
Your ‘father’ is concerned with material matters in pursuit of spiritual salvation for all. That is not a worldview in my time period. My people and I are also much more attuned to the creator’s intentions and how to harness the full extent of our abilities. Humans are new.
Until She breathed life into them, we were alone in the universe. Perhaps, one day, your scholars will debate if the First Epoch truly ended with the founding of the First Sixteen, or with the birth of humans.”
“You saw humans created?”
“Yes. I’ve seen Her power to birth life where there had been none before.”
That information alone had the power to make Mira the foremost academic on… well, so many things that had been lost to julah history over the past one million years. “So, where are these Relics? We must find them before my father does.”
“Your father is already aware of them. He always finds them with terrifying accuracy. But perhaps… this will be a reality where he is stopped before he commits murder for the first time.”
“You talk as if you have seen the timelines of whole other realities.”
Rahara’s silence was now a sign of her attempting to convey things in ways Mira would understand.
I used to think she wasn’t listening to me.
Or that she hadn’t heard what Mira said.
Which was silly—if Rahara could walk into another person’s mind, what was stopping her from reading said mind?
“Perhaps I have. I see what She has granted me vision to see.”
“Do you still talk to her in your time? My mother. If she even is my mother in your time.”
“You ask an interesting question. Is the one who is one day your mother in my time the same woman as your mother? This High Priestess? We did not understand her by that title. We merely had the prophetic vision of the High Priestess’s coming. In my time,
we merely know Her as the holy incarnation of the unknown creator’s avatar—and as the tragically barren foundress of House Lerenan. To think of Her as anyone’s biological mother is a strange thing. Yet here you are. You were borne of Her body and dedicated from Her flesh. But, at any rate, yes…
She and I communicate by letter since we have founded our Houses on either side of the Great Mountains. She also comes to call on me when all others have gone to sleep. A sacrilege, as it were, since we Sixteen agreed to travel nowhere except for Garlahza once a year. It was Her own rule. Sometimes,
I think she imposed it to keep me from my beloved. The one She stole from me.”
“You mean my father.”
“The man I speak of will one day be your father. In another life.”
“Julah do not reincarnate.”
“They do if She wills it. I’ve lived before. I will live again. He and I return from Her holy embrace in the Void when She requires our accompaniment in the mortal world. We protect Her, and She rewards us with Her undying love.”
Mira’s memories were occasionally jumbled in this dream world, but one thing from the other reality stood out as if she had always been meant to pinpoint it.
“It’s always been just your mother before. This unnerving urge to protect her with the full force of my strength. Like we’ve been bound together since before we were born.”
Mira welcomed the realization that had long played with her imagination. She accepted it as the natural order of all things, since the Void knew that it was best to simply accept than to question when so much more was on the line.
“She is omniscient in your time,” Mira said. “So, she can see the future and what all is to come to Her creation. Including me.”
“She can peer into any reality, yes. In my time, She asked me to guide you in the far-off future. I am around to protect you, but only I, Rahara, have the knowledge necessary to tell you what must be done. So, here I am. Even Crossing realities so I may guide you.”
“Did She tell you where to find me after I fused with this Mira?”
“Of course. Your mother knew where to send you for the best chance at your survival.”
“I miss her,” Mira confessed to the specter before her. “Even though the Mira I inhabit now doesn’t remember her. Tell me, will I ever see her again? As my mother?”
Rahara’s fingers threaded invisible strands between their pads. She conjured nothing but more dead “air” in a realm that had no air to speak of. There is nothing for me to breathe here. Nothing but my own visions and dreams.
“We tell ourselves that She is everyone’s mother. She creates, She nurtures, and She sees you to the other side. But, I suppose, there is at least one who is Her child above all others. Even if that child came from Her very essence and is, in a sense, Her.”
“You mean me.”
“Everything I know of ‘you’ is what She has shown me, and what you have shown me since we first met. You have many similarities. You are also very much your own person, it seems. You may be cleaved from Her, but you host your own soul sent from the Void. It is interesting to see unfold.
No matter what reality I am shown.”
“So, the Relics…”
Rahara slightly cocked her head. “You don’t want to hear the tales of ‘you’ from other realities? You are not the first of yourself to become chief of this barbarian tribe. Rarely, however, do you adopt the position as a julah.”
“Then, maybe being a julah is what changes things this time.”
Rahara reached for her, those iridescent fingers brushing against Mira’s shoulder without quite touching her.
Yet it was the gesture of an older woman who doted on her like a distant aunt who may not have always been present in Mira’s life, but supplied, loved, and prayed from afar.
The very thing she had come to expect from the denizens of House Marlow.
“Your strong optimism and love for those close to you comes from your mother. I see Her in more than your face. It’s written in your very aura. The Red Line is as strong in you as it is in Her. Spread that love as far as you can. It is the very rare mortal who courts the Red Line in their veins.
You are directly connected to the Void, to the End of All Things. Perhaps I will see you there soon.”
“I need your help,” Mira said. “Lend me your blue magic, power of the mortal world.”
The hand retracted, yet the bright blue eyes retained their glowing luster.
“The Blue Line is the most fragile, but yes, it is what I possess. I cannot lend you my strength from here, though. You must trust someone else to maintain the balance in the end. All I can do is share my knowledge and guide you toward what you seek.”
“The Relics.”
Rahara weaved a shape before her, presenting Mira with a tome that flipped open to an auspicious page. “There is a book in the largest city. It is the public Relic upon which thousands have entrusted their hopes, fears, and dreams. Secure it before your father does.”
Mira had a vague idea what that was. She knew of the custom for newly-inducted mercenaries to write their names into the tribe’s book—a bloody history in the making.
“The other one…” The image of the book was replaced with a flickering dagger.
“You must hurry. Currently, the personal Relic belongs to a powerful man in a small village. This dagger represents his grief. But it’s about to change. I sense that this Relic will adopt a new form soon. There is someone else on this planet who possesses something they hold close.”
Mira understood. As soon as she awakened, she would put the knowledge to good use, and told Rahara as much.
“Then go. Awaken, and let me rest as well.”
In that fleeting moment before sleep and the waking world, Mira wondered what it was like for a Dreamwalker to expend so much of her talent on these seemingly simple visits.
Did Rahara sleep for days afterward? Did she require so much caloric nourishment that those around her feared for her safety?
Did she talk to no one until she was “herself” again?
Or was she always searching for Mira, never truly connected to her own reality?
Mira’s release from her mental imprisonment had her waking up with a start.
She was disoriented for a few seconds, sweat teeming from her brow until she realized that the air conditioner had automatically turned off sometime in the middle of the night.
She cast off the blanket from her bed and sat there, naked, closing her eyes and willing the air conditioner to turn back on and blast her with air cool enough to bathe her face in.
She curled her legs beneath herself as the wall-mounted machine did for her what it took too much sorcery for her to do on her own.
As it clanked, clanged, and groaned with a warning to be looked at later, Mira summoned her pad and pen from the meeting table in the other room.
They floated through the dividing curtain and plopped on the end of her bed while she forced herself to wake up.