Page 71 of Soulbound
"You wouldn't believe me if you tried," she said.
And Madrigal did try to get the truth from her, giving up in pure frustration an hour later, when all Cleo could tell her was that Quentin Farshaw had put it in her hands personally.
"Enough," Sebastian finally said, a dark look upon his brow. "Cleo needs her rest, and I cannot see how this is serving any purpose. You were brought here to help my wife, and you have done so. Her Third Eye is closed. What she needs now is rest."
"I will be back," Madrigal said, peering down her nose at Cleo.
"To train Mrs. Montcalm," Ianthe said coolly, linking her arm through the assassin's.
"Yes," Madrigal murmured. "To train her in the art of future-walking."
* * *
Sentenced to a day of bed rest, Cleo succumbed with frustrated grace. If she couldn't get out of bed, then at least she could put the time to good use.
Dragging out Sidestep Through Time, and thanking every god she still had a copy, considering the avaricious gleam in Madrigal's eyes, she set to reading it. She'd managed to snatch a glimpse at a few chapters the other day, but this was the first chance she'd gotten to truly delve inside it.
Instantly she knew she held a book unlike any other. Most sorcerers could rise to the seventh level of the Order of the Dawn Star if they spent many, many years practicing their art, and various Primes and Triad Councilors—the three wise sorcerers who ruled in conjunction with the Prime—had reached perhaps the eighth or ninth level. But Quentin Farshaw had been the only sorcerer to ever reach the tenth level.
The tests for the tenth level required one to manipulate time, or to communicate directly with the divine. To prove his task had succeeded, Farshaw had been required to take an object he was only made aware of during the testing period, and return it to some point in the past, with a letter instructing the sorcerer who found it to appear at the precise time and location of the final test with it.
Nobody had expected him to succeed.
Even to this day, some said he hadn't. But she'd seen him vanish into thin air with her own eyes. Farshaw either owned the same skill as Verity—in itself a rare gift—and was hosting some elaborate scheme, or he was telling the truth.
"More soup?" Sebastian asked at some stage of the afternoon, and Cleo forced herself to smile and waved him away.
He knew she was hiding something from him, and she hadn't dared allow her shields to drop between them.
She'd glimpsed something earlier about demons and time. And with the recent revelation about her father, she needed to know more about it.
She reached a chapter on demons, or the Shadow Horde, or whatever one liked to call them. Premonition became a soft whisper. This was why Farshaw had given her the book. She was certain of it.
Divination is a particular gift, and a truth universally recognized within the Order is that one cannot be taught anything more of the divination arts than vague scrying, which is rarely successful. Think reading tea leaves, tarot cards, and gazing into crystal balls. Objects of focus that allow the sorcerer to perhaps catch a glimpse of future events, if they are well-trained.
But the true divination arts are not these vague predicting agents. Foresight is a powerful gift—or curse—depending upon how one looks at it. Backsight can see right through the annals of history. Psychometry, dream-walking, and future-walking all set the sorcerer of the divination arts aside, and it is a rare sorcerer who can sidestep into a different plane or dimension, or project astrally.
I have spent years cataloguing those with the true gifts. They have nothing in common that I can see. Male, female, child, crone, British, Indian, European, African.... What brings rise to this gift?
Two years ago, I began to study a sudden rash of “miracle children” in Cornwall. Scattered between the ages of thirteen to seventeen, over a dozen children in several villages began to predict things. We have seen such groupings occur in many places and times, however, this was the first time I've heard of them before they were turned to the flames and named witches. I managed to interview the children, and none of them knew where their gifts came from. At first I turned my attention to a nearby leyline, and a ring of standing stones close by. Was pure power leaching up through the earth and affecting such vulnerable minds? I had no conclusive evidence, and it remains but a theory. There is, however, only one common element I can link to these “miracle children,” something far more sinister that turns my stomach, but sets my prediction senses reeling.
Eighteen years before, a group of untrained so-called witches raised a creature in the midst of the standing stones. Barely anyone would speak of the occurrence, but there were hints of the truth, told in vague suppositions. It was a devil, they whispered, and it lured many nearby into sin. It fueled itself on blood, and ruined many an innocent woman before it was finally hunted down and destroyed, though I wonder, if it was demonic, whether it did not merely flee instead.
And the question I must ask myself, is if any of these unions with this "devil" bore fruit.
Is the answer in the blood? Is there something unnatural about those who own the divination gifts? It is said that demons first taught us the gifts of sorcery, many, many years in the past, opening our minds to the possibilities of the world. What if they gave a certain group among us other gifts?
I have spent many nights pondering this question, even tracing news of any disturbances within my own village. There was nothing in the gossip in my home town, but I note that seven seers arose at the same time I did. We range in age, but at most five years separates us.
Why does time seem to part around me, when others cannot even see the individual threads? I think the demon is in me.
Cleo swiftly looked up, to see if Sebastian was watching her. Her heart threatened to stop in her chest, she swore it did, and a breathless, slightly horrified feeling ran through her.
For if she was reading this correctly, then she bore some part of the Shadow Dimension within her own veins, and that alone had given her the great gifts she could work with.
Chapter 16
'I don't even know why I keep writing in this bloody thing. But if they won't listen to the words that spill from my lips, then perhaps they will read these. I hope you read this, Agatha. I hope you understand you have ruined everything. I hope Drake reads this, and knows he has committed an innocent woman to die. For I have been guilty of many things, but this one time I am innocent of the charges against me. I did not kill Drake's nephew. I had no need to, for I am with my own child, finally. And my baby would have been heir. I knew how Drake doted on little Richard. It would have been foolish indeed to strike against him, but nobody will believe me... Nobody. You would think I would have learned this lesson, would you not? I trusted Drake. I trusted him, and when I needed him, he was not there. No, he too, points a guilty finger toward me. The only thing I have left is this child—this precious child within me—who has stayed my execution until I deliver him. But I swear to every god out there; Drake will never know this child. I will kill it before I birth it into its father's world.'
