Airel - Aaron Patterson [85]
He appeared appreciative that I had changed my tack. “Airel, you are here to begin your training.”
“Training. Like,” I couldn’t help giggling a little bit, “superhero training?”
“If you don’t learn control, you’ll be a danger to everyone around you, including yourself.” He had a hint of a smile on his pale face. I turned to look at Michael, still, in spite of myself, feeling like I needed to be pinched.
Michael leaned into me. “We should stick together. I think whatever he knows, we need to know. This is uncharted territory, if you know what I mean.” Michael took my hand in his. I could feel his pulse, and I couldn’t help but grin. His heart was beating just as fast as mine was.
I turned back to Kale. “Alright. What do we do first?”
“‘We?’ ‘We’ won’t be doing anything. Understand, children, Airel needs to be here—as for you, Michael, you’re here for other reasons altogether.”
I was seriously chafed now. “‘Children?’ How dare you.” I mounted my high horse and looked condescendingly at him from it. “Don’t ever call me a child again!” I was so angry at him that I could barely formulate the thoughts in my head, which, I was aware, he would probably be probing.
He sighed in response. “Airel, your training is to be solo. Michael cannot undergo any of it. Most of it he will not even be allowed to watch. You must learn these things in the quiet of solitude; you must become accustomed to your instruction one-on-one.” He stood and walked to a small, rough table that I had not noticed before, standing by the windows. On it were several books, one of which was the Bible we had been using earlier, and all of which were very old. “Your first course of study will be history.”
He selected one of the books. It was an imposing looking volume, and me being somewhat of a book junky, although not a history fan, I almost salivated looking at its hidebound cover. He walked it back to the table, and as he did, my mind flooded with what can only be described as destiny. There is no other way to express it.
“Your history, Airel.” His voice was filled with pleasure and pain, and as he said the words he looked at me the way my dad did sometimes, right before he would tell me that he loved me. He placed the book on the table before me.
I looked at it, and I have to admit, even before I ever touched it, the moment felt heavy. I reached out my right hand to the book, to open its hidebound cover. As my hand neared it, it began to feel magnetic to me, as if I could not draw back even if my life depended on it. The tip of my finger rested at last on its front cover, releasing a torrent of sound in my head, a shout of triumph: KREIOS.
Chapter XVIII
1250 B.C. The City of Ke’elei
Cold seeped into the room where Kreios lay awake, fidgeting. Sleep eluded his grasp tonight, and he resolved himself to that particular fate as he lay staring at the sky, watching the North Star’s constancy. He did not like the situation. He was wrestling with whether or not the council was willing to lie to him—or, at any rate, to obscure their motives. It scared him. He wondered, though he attempted to reject the thought from his mind, if there was a secret alliance with the Seer. It was unthinkable. It nagged him, and he fidgeted again as he wrestled with it in his mind.
“You sleep less than I do; I did not think that was possible.” Yamanu struck a flint and piece of stubble on the stone wall, lighting his pipe in one fluid motion. He drew in and let out a puff of smoke. “Your thoughts betray your heart. If you die how is that going to help your daughter—are you better off dead?” Yamanu pulled his cloak tighter to his neck and looked out past Kreios at the moon.
Kreios kept his gaze on the steady North Star, unmoving in the heavens, and the stars reflected in his eyes like infinitesimal diamonds in a sea of black. “She is all I have. Victory will be victory. Even if small victory is as small