Chapter Thirty-Six #2
Adam jerked his head toward the silver torrent of the waterfall. “This way!”
They sprinted past the moon-like curves of massive ribs, and the bamboo gave way to tall ferns and woody shrubs. Ellie shoved through them with her shoulder as the air cooled with damp spray.
Adam scanned the cliff that rose in front of them, then hurried toward a spot near the edge of the cascade where the ruddy stone was thickly covered with vines and flowering creepers.
He plunged into the foliage—and then through it, to where Ellie now saw a dark opening cut into the face of the rock.
She stumbled after him, feeling a chill splash of water as she ducked through the edge of the falls.
She pressed herself against the damp wall inside as Neil and Constance followed.
“Quiet,” Adam warned lowly.
Soldiers moved closer, their voices just audible over the rush of the water. The sounds drew near… and then crashed off in another direction.
Ellie slumped with relief.
“Wanna get the rest of these off?” Adam turned to offer his wrists to Neil.
While Neil took out his sword and cut Adam loose, Ellie studied where they had landed.
It was one of the rock-cut chambers of the ashram.
The space was sized like a deep, narrow alcove, rich with shadow thanks to the vines that nearly obscured the entrance.
In the low light, she could just make out a beautiful relief carving on one of the longer walls, where Vishnu reclined on top of a many-headed serpent as he waited for the moment when he would wake to usher in a new age.
He wore an expression of restful peace on his face under his heavy crown.
“Peanut?” Neil offered, Dyrnwyn flickering in his hands.
“Oh!” Ellie turned her back to him. Her shoulders flooded with relief as the bindings around her wrists fell away and blood pulsed back into her fingers.
Now that her arms were free, she threw them around her brother. “I’m so terribly glad you’re safe!”
Neil frantically thrust Dyrnwyn out of the way of her embrace. “Careful of the sword!”
Ellie eyed the weapon skeptically. “Why? Will it set me on fire?”
“Possibly?” Neil hedged. “But I’m more worried about it slicing one of your arms off.”
She froze with a quick jolt of alarm. “What on earth would it do that for?”
“Apparently, Stuffy’s sword is exceptionally good at cutting through things,” Constance answered cheerfully, shaking the moisture of the waterfall out of her hair. “That’s how we got out of the stepwell. Neil carved through the rubble.”
“How about we talk about this after you put the damned thing away so it doesn’t serve as a nice handy beacon telling the bad guys where we are?” Adam suggested.
With a flash of mortification, Neil pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it around the hilt. The sword snuffed out.
Constance tapped her chin thoughtfully. “You should get a glove.”
“A glove?” Neil echoed. “As in—just one?”
“Then you could put the sword out without needing to dig through your pockets,” Constance elaborated reasonably.
“I’m supposed to run about wearing just one glove?” Neil protested.
“I think it would make you look terribly intriguing,” Constance returned authoritatively.
“He ought to have some sort of training with that thing as well.” Ellie grimaced warily at the weapon as Neil shoved it back into the scabbard. “Especially if it’s capable of lopping people’s arms off if you use it the wrong way.”
“Most fencing clubs limit themselves to foils.” Constance frowned thoughtfully. “Except the one where Julian practiced, of course.”
Neil looked aghast. “You want me to learn sword fighting from Julian Forster-Mowbray?”
“Goodness, no. He wasn’t even very good at it. I’m sure Mr. Mahjoud could teach you—if he’d stop pretending that he isn’t a fearsome warrior.”
Adam cocked a skeptical eyebrow at Constance’s statement.
Ellie couldn’t blame him. She was still far from convinced of Constance’s theory that Mr. Mahjoud possessed martial capabilities.
Neil was tired and disheveled. None of what he’d just experienced aligned with his scholarly disposition. Ellie set a comforting hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I could see things in the past,” he spilled out.
“I have the entire history of Tulan trapped in my mind,” Ellie confessed at the same time.
They stopped, staring at each other.
“Tulan?” Neil echoed first.
Adam stepped up behind Ellie and put a steady arm around her waist.
She drew in a breath and said the rest. “I have the knowledge of an entire civilization that died two hundred and fifty years before we were born stuffed into my brain.”
Neil blinked at her, wordless with surprise.
“It happened back in British Honduras with the Smoking Mirror. Not that I can get at any of it very easily,” Ellie complained.
“It only pops up when I’m not really trying.
How am I supposed to preserve, record, and study the knowledge of a place that I can only remember when I’m not really trying?
But if I don’t, so much will be lost. I know there are fragments of Tulan that survived in the practices and origin stories of some of the neighboring cultures—but they’re fragments.
For all of the rest of it, there’s just me. ”
Shame burned. “I should have told you ages ago, only… Well, I don’t even know why I didn’t. I suppose it’s because it all felt so terribly strange and not at all the sort of thing a proper academic ought to entertain as an idea, never mind run around having inside one’s brain—”
“I understand,” Neil cut in with an aching note in his voice. “I know exactly what you mean.”
And he did, Ellie realized.
She was momentarily overwhelmed by how lucky she was to have him in her life. How rare was it that the boy who became her brother just happened to be someone who understood and shared her intellectual passions?
There were things he’d overlooked from within the shell of his own privilege, but he’d learned to recognize that, and he’d done better. Now the two of them shared the burden of these strange gifts, and they had the opportunity to support each other as they learned what it all meant.
“So what’s next?” Adam pressed.
“We get the astra,” Constance declared stoutly.
“But we don’t know where it is,” Ellie pointed out.
Neil shifted uneasily. “That’s not entirely true.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “You must know it is absolutely killing me not to be able to ask you a million questions about this mysterious power of yours.”
His expression softened. “It doesn’t make you think any differently about me?”
“Beyond being extraordinarily jealous?”
Neil looked flabbergasted. “Jealous?”
“You can see the past, Neil! Just imagine what you could do with that—what you might discover!”
“But nobody would believe me!” he protested.
Ellie waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t have to go about advertising it to them. You could find the physical evidence to support what you saw—because you’d know exactly where to look for it!”
Neil seemed thrown. “I… I never thought of it that way.”
With a sudden impulse, he pulled Ellie into a hug. “Thank you, Peanut.”
Ellie soaked up the warmth of the embrace, her brother’s chin tucked against the top of her hair.
Adam frowned down at the front of his soaked, torn shirt. “I’ve got Jacobs’ blood all over me.”
“That doesn’t seem very hygienic,” Constance commented with a wicked glint in her eye.
“Doesn’t, does it?” Adam shot Ellie an unrepentant smirk.
“Oh, go on!” Ellie huffed indulgently.
He yanked off the shirt and tossed it to the ground, exposing the firm lines of his tanned chest. Ellie’s mind momentarily blanked as she soaked up the view.
Constance shot a devilish look at Neil. “Your shirt’s a bit worse for wear as well, Stuffy.”
“Absolutely not,” Neil returned flatly. “Now, are we going?”