AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Missing, missing…" Violet muttered. "Oh!" She quickly drew a straight line right where Six had indicated with her finger. "The horizon. We need to fix the time of day with the horizon. You told me that before. I guess it slipped my mind." She glared over at Six. "It's a lot to remember, you know. All this stuff is hard to keep straight."
Six held the cold smile frozen in place. "Yes, my queen, of course it is. I apologize for forgetting how hard it was for me to learn all these things way back when I was your age."
The drawing that Violet was working on was complex beyond anything else in the cave, but Six was always there to remind Violet of the right thing to draw at the right time.
Violet shook the chalk at Six. "You would be well advised to keep that in mind."
Six carefully knitted her fingers together. "Yes, my queen, of course." She pursed her lips and finally drew her glare away from Violet as she turned back to the wall. "Now, at this point we need the star chart for this domain. I can give you the lesson in the specific reasons later, if you want, but for now why don't I just show you what's necessary?"
Violet glanced to where Six was pointing and shrugged. "Sure." She went back to sucking on the bread stick as she waited.
Six opened a small book. Violet leaned in, squinting in the flickering light. Six tapped the page with a long nail as Violet finally bit through the crunchy bread stick.
"See the azimuth? Remember the lesson about the referent angle to the horizon for this star, here?"
"Yes…" Violet drawled, looking like she actually did know what Six was talking about. "That would involve this angular reference, here, then. Right?"
"Yes, that's right. It's an aspect of the binding agent that ties it all together."
Violet nodded. "In turn tying it to him…" she said, thoughtfully.
"That's right. The link is one element of what is necessary to lock it in place at the time of the concluding connection. That, in turn, makes the horizon you just drew necessary to fix this angle. Otherwise it would be a floating correlation."
Violet was nodding again. "I think I see, now, why they have to connect. If the interrelationship is not fixed"—she straightened and gestured to an arc of symbols—"then these could happen any time. Today, tomorrow, or, or, I don't know, a dozen years from now."
Six smiled in a sly manner. "Correct."
Violet smiled in triumph at her accomplishment. "But where do we get all these symbols, and how do we know where to use them in the drawing? For that matter, how do we know that they are needed at the precise points that you had me draw them?"
Six took a patient breath. "Well, I could teach it all to you first, but that will take about twenty years of study. Are you willing to wait that long for vengeance?"
Violet's frown darkened. "No."
Six shrugged. "Then I suggest that the shortcut of me helping direct the design is the shortest route to the result."
Violet screwed up her mouth. "I suppose."
"You have the basics, my queen. You are doing quite well for this stage of developing your talent. I assure you, even though I am helping you with some of the complexities, none of this would function without your considerable talent added in. I couldn't make this work without your ability."
Violet smiled like a prize pupil. Taking another careful look in the volume Six was holding open, Violet finally went back to the wall, carefully drawing the elements she needed from the book.
Rachel was amazed at how well Violet actually could draw. All the walls of the cave, from the entrance all the way back into the deep place where they were working, were covered with drawings. They were stuck in every available space. In places it looked like they had been squeezed into small spots left between older drawings. Some of the drawings were very good, with details like shading. Most, though, were simple drawings of bones, crops, snakes, or other animals. There were pictures of people drinking from mugs with skulls and crossed bones on them. In one place a woman, looking like she was made of sticks, was running out of a house that was on fire; the woman, too, was covered in the flames. In another spot a man was in the water beside a sinking boat. In another scene a snake was biting a man's ankle. The walls were also covered with pictures of caskets and graves of all sorts. All the pictures had one thing in common, though: they were of terrible things.
But there was not one single drawing in the entire cave that began to approach the complexity of the thing Violet was drawing.
Other drawings were only infrequently life-size pictures of people and even those only had a few things added, like rocks falling on them, or them being trampled beneath a horse. Most of the drawings showed the same sorts of things but were only a few hands' widths across. Violet's drawing, though, went on and on for dozens of feet, from the ground to as high as she could reach, working its way deeper into the cave. Violet had drawn the entire thing all by herself, with Six guiding her along the way, of course.
What alarmed Rachel the most, though, was that after Violet had been working on the drawing for quite some time, after she had drawn in stars and formulas and diagrams and strange, complex symbols, she had in the center of it all finally drawn a figure of a person.
The figure was Richard.
Violet's drawing was unlike anything else in the cave. It made them all look simple and crude by comparison. The other drawings all had easy, obvious things in them, like maybe a thundercloud with angled lines for rain, or a wolf baring its teeth, or a man simply clutching his chest as he fell back. There was little else on the walls but a few simple things around the figures.
Violet's drawing was covered with things that were completely different. There were numbers and designs, words in strange languages, some written along the lines of diagrams, numbers carefully placed where angles came together, and there were strange geometric symbols cast everywhere throughout the illustration. Whenever Violet drew any of those symbols Six would stand close, concentrating, whispering guidance for every single line, sometimes correcting where Violet was about to place the chalk, preventing her from even touching it to the wall for the next line lest it be out of sequence or out of place. Once Six even became alarmed and snatched Violet's wrist before she could touch the chalk to the wall. Sighing in relief, Six then moved Violet's hand and helped her begin in the correct place.
Unlike every other drawing in the cave, Violet's was done in different colors. The other drawings all along the way deep into the cave, to where Violet had started hers, were simple chalk drawings. Violet's drawing had green trees in one spot, blue water in another, a
yellow sun, and red clouds. Some of the designs were done entirely in white, while others were multicolored yet in an orderly manner of colors.
And, unlike every other drawing, when they left the cave and Rachel looked back she could see elements of the drawing glowing in the dark. It was not the chalk that made it glow, because the same chalk in other places in the drawing did not glow in the dark.
There was also a part of one symbol that glowed when left to the darkness. It was a strange face glowing out from an otherwise dark drawing made entirely of complex designs. Whenever the torch was near, the face wasn't visible and it only looked like a network of lines. Rachel could never see what aspects of the design could possibly make up the face. But in the dark it stared out at her, the eyes following her, watching her leave.
The thing that really gave Rachel goose bumps, though, was the picture of Richard. It was a drawing done so well that Rachel could actually recognize him by his face alone.
It amazed Rachel to see how well Violet could draw. There were other things to tell who Richard was, though, even if the drawing hadn't been so good. His black outfit was depicted accurately, just the way Rachel remembered it. It even had some of the mysterious symbols drawn around the edge of his tunic. Six had been very careful in her guidance of precisely how Violet was to draw those designs. In Violet's picture, Richard also wore the flowing cape that looked to be made of spun gold.
The way Violet had drawn it made it look almost like he was in water.
All around him, too, were wavy colored areas that Six called "auras." Each color had complex formulas and designs lying between them and Richard. Six had said that at the end, as the final step, those interposing elements between him and his essence would be connected to form an intervening barrier. Whatever that meant, Rachel didn't know, but it was obvious that it was important to Violet.
Six seemed especially proud of that part, of the intervening barrier elements. She would sometimes stand for long periods of time and just stare at them.
