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Or a curse.
Or a prayer.
Zai couldn’t tell. But his hackles raised even more. Every fiber of his being vibrated with tension.
A strange smile curled the corners of the woman’s lips, making her suddenly look much younger than she was.
“You know it so well,” she praised. “It sounds so much more poetic when you recite it. Must be that deep, manly voice you have, coming from that young, vibrant body.”
They all blinked nonplussed at the old woman’s comment. It wasn’t lascivious in any way, more a statement of fact. But it still sounded strange coming from her mouth.
“Why did you engrave those words into Sorin—I mean Sol’s skin?” Ben persisted.
Her thin gray brows rose up her unlined forehead.
“I have not engraved anything on anyone…yet. And if I do, it is only to remind the bearer of what is important. That though there are wins and losses, success and failures, one must never relinquish hope. If you stop fighting, then the battle is already lost.”
“But…” Ben frowned with concentration, his quick mind clearly turning and churning.
“Aren’t those words a spell to protect him? Look, we don’t have time for riddles. I just want to make sure Sol survives this and all the other tribulations that come his way. Even far, far into the future.”
“That is not up to you, child,” the woman said, not unkindly.
“We, each one of us, have choices to make. There is nothing you can do to alter the course of someone else’s Destiny.”
At this, Ben lost it, his frustration clear as he spat out passionately, “Then why am I here? Why have I come all this way, across time and space, to behere? I have to save Sorin. Sol. People I love depend on it.”
Zai suddenly noticed that Sol had been quiet for quite a while. In fact, when he looked at the Eagle King, the warrior seemed to have frozen like a statue.
Zai looked around him and focused on the sounds and smells.Everythingseemed to have paralyzed. The very air was still, heavy with portent.
It was as if they’d stepped into a bubble in time, in a parallel plane to reality.
She regarded Ben closely, her unreadable eyes glowing with an inner fire.
Finally, she said, “You cannot change the past as it happens, Benjamin Larkin D’Angelo. For the past leads into a future that is already laid. If the Eagle King does not enter this Tournament and fight the Elemental, if he is not reborn from the ashes of the Fire Mountain, he will not become whom he is meant to be. He will not save and heal your loved one when he is needed. They will not be together now, though they suffer difficult times.”
Ben gasped and held his breath. Zai could tell that the old woman’s words shook him to the core.
“Their path is their own, child,” she continued softly, almost motherly.
“Just as yours is your own.”
She speared Zai suddenly with that swirling gaze.
“And the Dark Hunter’s is his own.”
“We all have a role to play and a path to follow. We all have the free will to walk that path or choose another. There are infinite possibilities for the future that weaves from a finite past.”
Ben visibly deflated at that, as if all the air had been pushed out of his lungs.
To which the old woman said, “You are not here for Sol, my child. You are here for yourself. Perhaps you have learned something in the process. Perhaps you have yet more to learn before your journey’s end. And perhaps you have taught something new to those around you. Perhaps that is all you can do.”
She turned suddenly to look at Zai again, holding him captive with those unknowable eyes.
“And you, Dark One. Perhaps you have learned something as well…before it is too late.”
The beast inside of Zai stretched its limbs and claws at that. It wanted to break free of Zai’s iron control.
