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STOLEN BY THE PAST Prologue: Very carefully sitting up, he squinted his eyes across the hilltop, his hands still raised to protect his face. But there was no light left, no burning wind - not even the Elder himself. His brethren stood where Leonarra had fallen. A heaped lump lay at their feet, scorched red and black. With a jolt, Abhner realised that it was Crispin. Burnt to an unrecognisable form, Crispin lay dead. Smoke still rose from his singed body and the scent of it carried on their air towards Abhner. Undignified and past caring, he leaned over and vomited. Wiping his mouth, he got unsteadily back to his feet. His eyes betrayed him and sought out his friend's heaped carcass again. Tajar was close to it now, his hands reaching but never quite falling on the figure. Abhner's eyes moved left, seeking out his brother. Behan lay face down on the ground. A body lay on top of him. It was that of Silas. The youngest immortal Abhner had known - the truest of all his kind. Silas's body was unmoving but his mouth was open in one long endless scream of agony. And Abhner was not surprised that he screamed. When the wind and light had raced across the hilltop Silas had fallen down on top of Behan, protecting his mortal body but sacrificing his own. Silas's back was a bed of bleeding blisters. Abhner's hand went to his mouth, sure he would vomit again. He took deep, calming breaths, swallowing away the urge. He caught movement. Had'Rian crawling towards the bellowing Silas. Abhner watched the old immortal curl his arms carefully under Silas's armpits and haul him gently away. Silas writhed and screamed like a bucking stallion but Had'Rian did not let him go until he was safely away from Behan. Abhner waited to see Behan move, saw him lift himself carefully and fold himself into Had'Rian's embrace. Abhner turned away, sickened all over again. |
They were not his friends, not really, not ever. They had been Behan's strange choice, not Abhner's. Although they had helped him these last twelve months, and although they had formed a friendship of some kind, Abhner saw now, only at the end, that they would never be his and he would never be theirs. The person he belonged to, the only one in the world - He turned. Layana. His wife. Screaming at the sky with a voice that Abhner had never heard from her throat before. Her black hair billowing back in the madness she created, her eyes now pure black. He had helped her carry those powers, not ever knowing what they really were. Now he could see their destructive power. Too late he had seen. Now the apocalypse was upon them. Layana was to end to the mortal race. But not for herself. The man she worked for, the man who had given her these powers in the first place. Lucretious. Immortal and evil. An unkempt, brown beard coated his chin and cheeks, the eyes above it were devoid of all emotion. A haggard old green cloak flapped about his skinny frame. He did not look very impressive but Abhner knew far better than most that looks could be deceiving. Layana did not look like her father, of course, because he was not hers by conception. He had mutilated her genes with his own. Once, in the beginning, back at birth where all are equal and innocent, she had been a normal, mortal baby. More normal than Abhner had ever been with his mixed-blood. And how much more abnormal he had believed himself to be in adulthood.
After the Elders had kidnapped him at sixteen. Drugged him, performed spells on his mind. Layana had been there, too. As unconscious as he, suffering from a disease the Elders had claimed. That disease had just been her father's powers: too strong for her mortal mind and body to handle. Abhner had not known her name then, nor anything about her extraordinary life. But he had loved her. And he had spent the next two years of his life searching for her.
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