I shut my eyes and tried to concentrate on the lit candles that had been positioned on a raised platform in front of me. The burning flames reminded me of Luan's words and that angry look that had been on her face. It made me think of Emily's distant attitude to me earlier today. I felt some gush within me, like the blood in my body was being replaced with red heat.
"Tisq! Tisq!" Herald's slightly high voice ordered. I dropped my hand and glanced at the bunch of candles placed together and lit. "You're supposed to ignite the candles, not make them burn much more than it was."
"Sorry," I whispered. "I'll try again." I rubbed my hands together, breathed in and tried to concentrate on quenching the fire with my mind.
"You're thinking about something. Care to share?"
Herald was dressed in a pair of black trousers and a black shirt that hugged his body. A black leather jacket was over the top. He had told me he'd worn fire-resistant clothes, just in case.
"I..." I felt an ugly urge to tell him everything that had been going on to this point. An urge that I spurned as soon as it came. I sighed and ambled to the Nesylone Waters. Our shoes were off and placed somewhere close to the bank. I put my feet in the water and let its conciliatory effect fill my veins. I shut my eyes, going further as the water covered even more parts of my leg. I stopped walking when the water was at my knee.
"Does it take your strength, the training sessions?"
"It hurts me. More precisely, it reminds me of things." I peered at the crystal clear water and the waterfall up ahead. It still seemed far away, even now that I was closer to it than Tevessa and I used to be when we were swimming. "It's like larvae's flowing in my veins instead of blood."
"It'll get better each time you come here."
"To Asterion?"
"To Neba, in general."
"Why's that? Because I get used to it more?"
"Sa." I turned my head to look at Herald. He pulled up the hem of his trousers so that they were up to his knees then he came to stand beside me. He was standing on a higher rock, making him look taller than he was. His pointed nose looked like it wanted to run off and swim.
"What d'you mean by that?"
"Segika-hi-Merwinian works more than being just a major ingredient for making a pristil. If it were, then it wouldn't have mattered if it was rare or not. Ez, Segika-hi-Merwinian is a very powerful segika. Zhun, a power stone indeed."
I nodded. "You hate me, don't you? Because I refuse to tell you what I know about the Asterions, am I wrong?"
"The word 'hate' is one I never adopt. Nebans don't hate," Herald replied. "We are good people."
"Then why does Crypta hate the Asterions so much?" I asked.
"Emery, visor ami. Look at me." I turned to look at him. "Do I look like Crypta?" I sighed and shook my head. "Let questions be thrown to only those who can answer it, then."
He got out of the water and began to put on his sandals. "I wanted to show you something." I got out and began to wear my trainers just as Herald went to grab his bag. "Give me your Mehjazgeu."
Obediently, I reached for the can in my jeans and gave it to him. When he accepted it, he said, "Don't do this often, or better still, not to people you don't trust. Mehjazgeu acts like an access slip." He sprayed the potion in the air and the green-ash hole appeared. "Ez, when Crypta gave it to you, he was granting you permission to go in and out of Neba as you please, and to any place in Neba you so desire too. If you lend it to someone, you're equally granting the person such right."
"What if someone steals it?"
"You can't access what doesn't belong to you. You won't be able to go to places that you've been restricted to except the person has lent it to you willingly. It's the same if you've been threatened to hand it over. As long as you don't want to give it out, it's useless to whoever has it. That's what makes Segika-hi-Merwinian precious."
Herald and I walked through the portal when I asked him, "What have you thought of?"
"I'm taking you to my emoh in Elakki. Emoh is Cirile for village. Elakki is home to all investors and traders. It's the heart that determines Neban's financial position as a kingdom of Cirile."
When we got out, I felt a completely different atmosphere. Many people were everywhere, women in loose gowns, men in long tops that covered their legs. They looked like Egyptians, with their head ties and facial features.
The scent that filled my nose was sharp and indescribable- a sweaty, dusty, gamy smell. "This is trekma-ki-Asbhi, one of the many, many markets in Elakki."
I was going to reply when a man with a barrow full of shiny objects rushed past me. His right shoulder hit me and I staggered back as I shrieked in annoyance. He didn't care to turn and apologize; he was too busy either running from or to something while screaming something in Cirile. When I turned to Herald, he was laughing at me.
"If you don't work on your stance," he said while adjusting the bag on his shoulder. "You're going to fall. It's a market, what do you expect?" He was talking more loudly now but his voice was drowned by all the screaming. "Do you know what he said?"
I shook my head.
"Kaw'reh, kyelma, ami'n pecta turh isoun." He laughed even more. "Come, woman. I'll accept your discounted price." Herald laughed his contagious chuckle, the kind that could be teasing or funny, depending on your current mood.
I laughed. "Really?"
"In Elakki, nothing is free. Food, water, shelter, knowledge. We're here to purchase knowledge for you."
"For me? About?"
"Anything. Anything you'd like to know. You're a curious person, I've observed. You ask way too many questions, more to the people who don't have the answers. When I insisted you tell me about the Asterions and you denied, I felt the only fair way to seek something from you was to let you have knowledge of something in return. Anything. Anything you want." He grabbed my hand. "Come."
He led me through the hustle of people selling the goods. Knives cut against fishes as they cut them into tiny parts. A man in a stained apron gathered the pieces of fish and put them in a black polythene bag. He handed it to a woman who gave him a stack of shiny green circular coins.
"Where do the fish come from? I haven't seen any in the Nesylone river."
"The Nesylone Waters is one, zhun, but it's not the same in each Neban division. The Asterion's never dries during the cold season, but Elakki's does. If you visit the Nesylone Waters through the Elakki pathway, it's more like a flowing lake, filled with aquatic animals. You can't swim in the Nesylone Waters of Elakki, you can drive a nokare though."
"What's a... nokare?"
"It's a small light vessel made of log. It's pointed at both ends and we move it with a jepada, a paddle."
"So... a pirogue?"
He grunted. I laughed in return. Herald hated it when he figured there was an Earthian word for anything he considered special to Cirile.
The smell of faint vanilla hit me. It was lignin, according to what Mr Nicholas had taught us, which is present in books - mostly old books. Besides that, I could smell almonds and a weird combination of chemicals giving it an inky smell.
"Most arthuhens are forbidden from entering Elakki. Except for some Chinese though. They've been with the Nebans for a long time, you may not even tell the difference."
Herald and I were standing in the middle of wood tables filled with scrolls, books, papers and feather-like pens. "Your appearance may or may not give you away, but your language surely would. You're going to talk through body gestures. In Elakki, you can only purchase a page of knowledge per day. Except you're a student and can be identified by your dorawk which enables you to purchase a maximum of ten pages of knowledge."
"What happens if they find out I'm human? Don't the Royals know who I am already?"
Herald turned to me cautiously, slightly angered. I stretched my lips. "Sorry," I muttered, remembering his warning that I should direct my questions to those they were meant for.
"A page of knowledge costs between ten to fifty qrusvyr." He put his hand and gave me a green silver coin. On it was a carving of the Neban dragon and the word 'dri'. "That's ten qrusvyr. Dri means ten. You'll purchase a page with it and I'll try to explain as much as I can. Do you get it?"
I nodded.
"Once you read, we leave. I'll explain the rest to you."
Herald led me to a man with a bald head but a brown pack of strands sticking out in the middle. He wore a long welcoming smile. His leaf-green eyes were burning with excitement. "Yarijta yera!"
"Yarijta." Herald greeted and said some more things I couldn't make out. I glanced around, observing the numerous big books packed on dusty shelves. After Herald's discussion with the old man, the old man brought three books and showed them to me. One of them had the inscription "Nes-hi", it was brown and shiny. I knew nes-hi meant crystal, the book had to be something about the meaning of our crystals.
The next was a black book with a Chinese inscription. The Neban dragon was drawn to be all around the book, even intertwining with the inscription that if you weren't looking carefully, you would think there was nothing written on it.
The last one was a grey book with a round bottom flask holding a mixture of two oils. The lower was yellow and thicker and the upper one, smaller in volume, was a light pink mixture. At the top of the book, the statement, "Sredrun Tart-Eamin Ethab" was written.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted to know more things about the Nebans. I needed something that I could offer to Tevessa so that he would see how important it was to forget the feud and help the Royals defeat the Zadios.
Opening the second book, all the pages are blank. Herald shut the book immediately and passed me a stern look. I sighed, realizing my mistake and whispered the first number that came to my mind to Herald, "Page 56."
He relayed my message in Cirile language to the man and I handed the man the dri-qrusvyr coin. He took a feather, dipped it in a bowl of clear oil, opened a page of the book and began to rub it all over. Words began to appear, written in a language that I could understand:
and the death rate was expanding quicker than he would have believed conceivable. Jia Mùchén strived to aid his people until they complained: they couldn't tolerate Hong Xiuquan's hard ruling longer. In 1869, when they heard that Wu Yazhong had fled to Vietnam but had got killed in Bắc Ninh, Jia Mùchén admitted it time to run. They hid in grottoes, drank their blood to suppress their thirst, ate berries from the floor, and always were on the lookout for any mortal being who one of them was not.
Jia's population grew impatient, thinning, and having a desire to eat food. Jia Mùchén met him two years later, when his people had begun to die and hate one another. His deep red eyes expressed a surging determination to achieve something, but when they showed him their swords, he smiled.
Zadio, this man they surprisingly met on a deserted, abandoned trail, had led them through a greenish-ash portal without saying a word. Smiling only was he, one that silently said, 'I'm here to help you.' Then, they now were in a land covered with thick trees and a large river he called the Nesylone Waters. The look on the followers' faces as they ran to the river and drank water, for the first time in two years, could not be forgotten.
Zadio offered Jia a cup of oil instead. When he drank it and relished the bitter taste, he had assumed he had been poisoned. 'Zhè jiǔzāo...'
'Tòule?' He replied, 'Wǒ zhīdào.' A traitor was he, Jia quickly confirmed. If not, how else could he understand the indigenous language of China, and speak it so fluently? He didn't falter. He added, 'Zhè shì wǒmen nénggòu jiāoliú de wéiyī fāngshì.'
As Jia tried to reason his words, his followers watching intently they were, drew their swords out safety-consciously. By their stance, though, they didn't seem ready for an attack if one had ensued. Scared they all were; paranoia from times they had been deprived of food, water, and shelter.
Zadio had noticed that: their weakness. 'Nǐ lèile ma?' He smiled a daring smile like he was not scared of being attacked by a multitude. Frayed they were and Zadio knew that. He had the upper hand. But he didn't hurt any of them. He told them that there possesed something they could offer him in exchange for his hospitality. Zadio and Jia spoke different languages. He told Jia that Cirile was his and if he hadn't drank what he called elynian oil, he wouldn't have been able to understand him. Jia'd begun to learn it too.
Their saviour was he: Zadio Valimenati, and when Jia
|Page 56|
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A/N
Who are the Zadios?
Lol, like we haven't figured it out already ;)
If you still can't put the pieces together, then I guess you've got to wait for the next update.
In the note, you may have noticed some "he" were written in italics. I've done that so you know who's Zadio and who's Jia. Plus, they see Zadio as someone quirky, and hence, the italics.
The language written in italics is the traditional version of Chinese language. Now, I've done all my translations straight from Google Translate. If there's an error in sentence structure, please help point in out (I'm not a Chinese).
As always, don't forget to vote :)
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