After using the scepter to open the portal below Castle Rock, Neera had discovered a person sleeping against a large rock. Assuming it was Corvan she had awoken him from a deep sleep. Both she and a man she now knew as Jorad had been startled by the abrupt introduction. Right away they searched the small cavern for any sign of Corvan, but it was empty. Jorad only stumbled along beside her, seemingly unable to keep his eyes off the scepter’s purple glow.
Jorad claimed that he and Corvan had become separated in the labyrinth after they discovered a dangerous animal was tracking them. Immediately Neera’s mind went to the strange human-like creatures Jake believed had abducted her husband. Had they come back for the Scepter, or possibly for her? The explosion on top of the castle rock must have been an attempt to break out of the Cor, but where was her son?
Jorad tried to ease her mind by telling her that Corvan might have returned to Kadir on his own to check on Kate. Neera was glad to know the girl was still alive, but it did not make any sense that Corvan would leave if he had been so close to home. Most likely, her son had left Jorad sleeping in the final cavern, because he did not want the man to get to the surface. She was faced with the same issue as, with Jorad in tow, she could not check and see if the scepter would allow her back. Her only choice was to head down to the Cor and believe that Corvan would follow with his hammer in due time.
After making their way through two more rooms, Jorad began asking many questions about the scepter and how it got to the surface in the first place, but he did not seem to connect her to its original disappearance from the Cor. In the third room, he asked if he might hold it for a short while and when she declined, the intense anger that crossed his face made her wonder if might try to take it by force. Not that he could. The familiar weight of a what felt a lot like a melee weapon in her hands had awakened all her former military and covert training skills. Her keen observations of the way Jorad walked and postured his body confirmed that he was not trained as a fighter. In time, when he bragged about his integrity as a priest of the people of Kadir the puzzle pieces fell into place. She had never been too fond of the clerics and their manipulative ways.
When they reached the arched door that allowed access to the Cor, the priest let it slip that he was in possession of the only key to that final door. Neera asked him to leave in unlocked, in case Corvan turned out to be following behind them. At present, her immediate goal was to locate her husband and rescue him. Once she and Deyan were united, given their unwavering loyalty to each other, they would be an unstoppable duo.
Earlier, Neera believed that Jorad’s stories about the fate of Kadir might be exaggerated, but when she stepped onto the ledge overlooking the ruined city, it was even worse than she imagined. Even though it was a night phase, Jorad told her Kadir would not get much brighter during the day—most of the lumien seeds had been stolen by the ‘Broken’, people who went crazy from eating lumien seeds. As she studied the divided city below them, Jorad rested on a low wall and filled her in on the overall history behind the great destruction that had been brought on by her grandfather, the downfall of Kadir and the current conflict with Rozan.
As he continued to brag about his role in saving Kadir from a creature called a Watcher, Neera asked a few clarifying questions, posturing them as if she knew nothing about the Cor. He told her about the large statue being dismantled on the far side of the cavern and a woman named Tyreth, but she inquired about Kate the man fell silent. After a long pause, he commented that all he knew was that Kate was not well and was being looked after in one of the settlements. In order for Kate to get well again, Corvan needed to take the scepter to the person who could heal her. He offered to help Neera with that task and, at the same time, rescue Tyreth, someone he appeared to have a great interest in, who was being held for ransom in Rozan.
On the way down the narrow track to the bridge leading to the central street through Kadir, Jorad talked at length about the unrest with Rozan and how it was on the verge of all-out war over the dwindling supply of food. A recent battle had taken the life of his closest ally in the palace guards. His connection to the palace did not go unnoticed by Neera and when they arrived at the central crossroads, and he asked her to go with him to the palace, she declined and said she had other business to attend to first.
Jorad attempted to frighten her with bizarre stories of the broken and how dangerous they were. He said the palace guards could keep her safe, but Neera refused his offer. Once he realized she could not be swayed, Jorad approached a small window, spoke to someone inside, and as soon as the gate lifted to let Jorad into the intact side of Kadir, he ran into the darkness without looking back. Neera immediately headed up the wider street towards the library. Jorad wanted to get his hands on the scepter and with his connections to the palace guards, he would be on her trail shortly. She needed to find a safe place to hide out and her old quarters in the library would be perfect, provided she could still gain entry.
Approaching the entrance to the Kadir library she was startled by the complete destruction of the porticoes in front of the main doors. Somewhere beneath the piles of blocks and broken pillars was the lower workroom and the scroll chute that dropped down from the Bandur library. Most likely that meant there would be no way of retracing her escape from Bandur all those years ago, even if she could still fit through the tube. It had been barely wide enough for her back then and having a child along with the effects of aging under the sun, likely meant it was impossible now. She could try the upper chute that was used for sending scrolls back to Bandur to see if it might have been left open. If she recalled correctly, it was somewhat larger.
Heading to the right she looked for the side door from the alley and found it propped open with a rock. Stepping inside, she held the glowing scepter aloft and made her way towards the rotunda at the center of the building. The smell of rot and mold was overpowering, and she was so distracted checking the shadows for any sign of Jorad’s broken creatures that she almost stumbled into fracture in the floor with water flowing far below. Skirting the ragged edge she crossed the main floor, resisting the urge to look overhead at the paintings on the ceiling as she moved into the foyer to check on the entry to the lower workroom. Amidst the broken pillars there were recent indications of people working to unblock the passage, but the long stairwell was full of water.
Retreating back into the library proper she climbed the wide curving stairs to the upper balcony, relieved to find the door to the library chapel also blocked from closing by a chunk of stone. In her day, the door was never left open.
Raking the block away from the door frame with her foot, she stepped inside and let the door close and lock with its distinct click. She could open it from the inside but if the chapel was to be a secure hideout, she would need to find one of the keys to enter from the library side and not use the stone block to keep it open if she went out.
For no apparent reason, once inside the chapel, the glow from the scepter faded away. Collapsing it down on its shaft, she returned it to the position it had been stored in the black box, tucked the shortened scepter away in her worn carpet bag. Feeling her way along the wall to the left, she located a barely discernable indentation and pressed her palm flat against the wall. Across the circular room a light sprang to life in a rounded alcove. Neera moved quickly up the middle of the twin rows of curved benches facing the recessed space. Normally the alcove would hold the statue of the Wise Woman, but to her dismay, the figure had been broken off at the knees—chunks of its body and arms strewn across the floor.
Setting her bag on the floor, Neera picked up the pieces and arranged them in order on the front bench. The head was missing but just outside the chapel door, she discovered that the head was the rounded stone she had moved out of the way when she entered. She smiled to herself, for it was fitting that, during the overall destruction of the library of Kadir, the head of the Wise Woman had rolled into the doorway, keeping the chapel open for Neera’s return.
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Cradling the gentle face in her hands she brought it inside and laid it reverently on the bench above the other pieces. It was on this very bench that Madam Toreg had taught her to meditate and clear out the anger and bitterness her grandfather had infused into her soul. The women of the ancient maternal society had lovingly brought her back from the hatred and bitterness she harbored toward the people of the Cor.
Turning back to the alcove, she wiped the dust away from a patch of the tiles, pressed her palm against the spot, then returned to the bench by the statues’ head and waited Nothing happened. Whoever had broken the statue had also damaged the mosaic’s functionality. In the past she had loved to sit here and watch the animated stories unfold along the walls of the chapel. She had lived in the back room a long time, learning of the Cor from its matriarchs. Slowly she realized how her grandfather’s narrow self-righteous views of Cor history were a result of his own warped perspective, one of self-pity and aggression.
From Madam Toreg she had learned what it meant to be a woman of the Cor—that the path of compassion and truth was an integral part of her heritage was revolutionary. To discover that the ways of the wise woman were innately woven through her very being was an incredibly intense but liberating experience. It was also a time of great sorrow for she came to understand what it meant to have been separated from her own mother and from all other female companionship at such a young age. After meeting Deyan, she had hoped to have a daughter of her own to pass on her knowledge but despite her best intentions, Corvan was her only child.
With a heavy sign, Neera rose to her feet and examined the feet of the statue sticking up from the round pedestal. Would it still function and allow her access to her former living quarters? Grasping the top of the legs she twisted the base a quarter turn to the left then rotated it three quarters of a turn to the right. Retrieving her carpet bag, she stepped into the back of the alcove, then turned the legs of the statue to face the center.
Without a sound, the alcove spun her silently into the darkness behind the front wall of the chapel. A white light came on overhead, illuminating the workroom had been created in the early days of the Cor as a way to send scrolls and secret messages down to the women of the Bandur library. When Neera had arrived only Madam Toreg and a few of the sisters knew it existed or how to gain access. With the news of the fall of Bandur, they had locked the cover on the chute that allowed scrolls and other materials to be sent to the Bandur library and it had never been used again. After that, they had converted the space into a bedroom for Neera to hide out while undergoing her training.
Neera ran a hand over the bedspread. She had lived here in complete secrecy, the ongoing solitude punctuated only by the visits of Madam Toreg in the chapel and then later, an occasional walk through Kadir, disguised as one of the Sisters, the order created by Madam Toreg.
The light overhead began to fade away, as it always did once she was inside the secret room. Neera sat on the edge of the bed and dusted off the glow globe on its bedside stand. As its familiar yellow light filled the room, she leaned against the wall behind the head of the bed and pulled her bag closer. Now that she was safely hidden away, she was hungry. Digging into the bag, she removed the beef jerky for Corvan and set it aside. Consuming animal protein was a side of life under the sun she could not relate to, she was more than content with what her garden provided. Retrieving the bag of dried fruit she had brought from her pantry, she unwound the piece of twine holding it closed, then she coiled it tightly and set it on the beside table. As she nibbled on dried apple, she pulled out the metal book she had taken from the oak chest in Corvan’s room. She had seen it a number of times when Corvan’s grandfather would write at the kitchen table instead of up in his room.
“The boy will need this someday,” he would say. So far, she had not been able to open the covers to see what was written inside.
Setting the book next to the coil of twine, she gave the glow globe a shake, took it in hand and left the bed to direct her attention to the broken statue. Repeating the sequence of turns, she did not step into the alcove as the other side rotated back into her room. The matching unbroken statue of the Wise Woman came into view and instinctively, Neera bowed her head and gave voice to the ancient words. A sense of well-being flowed over her as she recited the seven guiding principles of the way of wisdom.
After completing the customary meditation and breathing exercises, Neera cleaned the dust from the figure with her sleeve. In truth, the sisterhood did not worship the statues for they only represented those who had gone before and who had lived their lives in the ways of the wise. The sisterhood of the Wise Woman went back to the beginning of the Cor and as she understood the history, the statue represented one of the greatest leaders the Cor had ever known. Madam Toreg said even the title Cor-Van was originally attributed to her leadership. In more recent times, when the council changed and men took over the Cor and the chamber, all the statues of the Wise Woman disappeared, except for those that were safely hidden away in the secret library chapels. Neera thought back to the central plaza at the intersection where she and Jorad had parted ways. The head of the woman in that statue had also been broken off. It appeared that someone was going out of their way to discredit the role of all the women in the Cor.
Once the statue was clean, Neera shook out the bedding and lay back to enjoy one of the carrots she had brought along. Tilting her head against the wall she looked overhead at the cover of the round chute that had been used to send scrolls to Bandur. While she had first lived here, she had considered using it to go back to the Kholm, but Toreg had locked it up.
In the light of the glow globe dust motes drifted past her. The room had been shut up for far too long. Leaving the bed she went to the far wall and slide back the covering on the ventilation holes connecting her room to the main library below. When she lived here, she would leave the vents open so she could hear the voices of the women working and singing as they worked in the library below. Their happy voices help to ease the loneliness of hiding out in her room. She would have loved to join them, but Madam Toreg insisted that it was not safe for her as her grandfather had eyes everywhere and was searching the Cor for her.
Returning to the bed she got under the cover and watched the particles of light in the globe swirl to the bottom and wink out, one at a time. In the past, watching the light fade away had been the only way she could fall asleep each night. The air from the vents was a bit chilly and she raised the hood of her coat over her head, glad now that it had been winter at home, and she had worn her hooded winter coat to go out to the rock. She had forgotten how much colder Kadir was than her grandfather’s home.
At that thought, she recalled that her royal tunic and the sword she had worn when she first left the Kholm might still be wrapped up under her bed. The clothes were worn only by the ruling family of the Kholm and in time, with patient counsel from the Sisters, she finally understood why her grandfather had sent her to Bandur dressed in that manner. With that shocking knowledge she had tried to burn the uniform and discard the sword, but Madam Toreg would not permit it. According to the teachings of the wise, destroying the vestiges of past mistakes only made it easier to make similar errors in the future.
The final bits of light winked out and Neera was drifting off when a familiar song filtered through the ventilation holes. A young girl was singing the lullaby Neera’s mother used to sing before her patents were forced to flee the Kholm. It was the same song she had sung to Corvan, even as he grew older but at his insistence, only when no-one else was around, especially Kate.
Leaving the bed, Neera used the spinning statue to exit the bedroom, then moved quietly through the chapel. Dropping her shoes to keep the chapel door from closing, she tiptoed to the edge of the balcony.
Down below, on the main floor of the library, a small boy and a short girl were walking hand in hand between the study tables. The girl was holding a barely working glow globe and singing in a quavering voice, while the boy was looking nervously around, as if he expected someone to jump out at them any second.
When they reached the large stone table in the center of the room, the boy hopped up on the edge, his feet swinging nervously. The girl put her arm around the boy’s shoulder, touched her head to his and he broke out in a huge grin. She started singing Corvan’s lullaby again, louder this time. The boys’ lips moved but Neera could not hear his voice. As she stepped closer to the balustrade, a small pebble fell to the floor below.
The young girl immediately fell silent, pulled the boy in close and searched the room below. Seeing nothing, she slowly looked up with eyes that were fully dark. She focused on Neera’s face and smiled.
“Hello, Kalian’s mother,” the girl said warmly.
