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k_a_webb“Lucille, be careful.” Lucille’s grandmother’s voice was full of an unexpected, at least to Lucille, concern. “I have a bad feeling about all this.”
“Why?” Lucille asked, wondering if her grandmother had the same worries she did.
“You mentioned before that a record book was stolen from the Moonjumper’s Bureau in Sheepshank and I can’t help thinking that someone there is after a Walker, although I haven’t worked out why. It would be easy enough to use a natural Walker if the counterfeiters wanted to expand their ring to other worlds, so I doubt that’s what their after…” She sighed. “Just do your best to stay safe for me, please.”
“I am, Grandmother.” Lucille smiled at the crystal, even though her grandmother wouldn’t be able to see it. “From the moment I found out about the record book I’ve known that they want something more and we’ve talked about the possibilities. I’m not dealing with this alone, my companions want to keep me safe, so we’re planning for the very worst that could happen.”
“You trust the Quiarans you’ve met?”
“They’re good people.” Lucille bit her lip and decided she needed to trust her grandmother. “Kaito’s found a home here and I’ve met someone who’s a reincarnated fae.”
“Kaito’s safe?”
“He is.”
“We’ve been so worried about him. The moment we heard about the arrest warrant we started making plans for getting him to somewhere safe, but he disappeared before we could. I wasn’t entirely surprised, because it seemed unlikely we were the only people thinking ahead, and I knew it was unlikely that we’d find him if he had gone into hiding.”
“How many people have you helped?”
“As many as we could, Lucille, without drawing too much suspicion. We’ve been doing this for a long time now and we’ve got safe places on many of the worlds, including Athare, but we still have to be careful, because if anyone suspects me or the man I work for… it’s something I try not to think about. There’s a chance it could mean the end of the Walkers.”
“Kaito wanted me to get a couple of things for him. Do you think that’s possible?”
“It is and if you let me know what they are I can get them sent to Quiar.”
“You’re working with the natural Walkers too, aren’t you?”
“Of course we are. There have always been natural Walkers in Riordan’s family, because of his marriage to Tegan, and keeping them safe has been part of the job the leader of the Walkers had been doing for centuries.”
“Ever since the natural Walkers became demons, thanks to the Council,” an unexpected male voice said. “Good morning, Lucille. I’m Kester.”
Lucille stared at the crystal. Kester, the leader of the Council, was talking to her through a communication crystal. “It’s nice to meet you,” she replied, even though she could hear the wariness in her own voice.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time, but you’ve been so busy since you finished your exams, and getting hold of you hasn’t been easy. Your mentor’s been trying to keep you safe from me until you were ready.”
“Ready how?”
“For every true Walker things are different. Some are claimed by the worlds who want them almost immediately, because they know it’s something they can cope with, while others need time. In time they will come to understand how difficult it really is to follow the first rule and once that happens the worlds know that their job will be much easier. Your mentor thought that you were someone who’d need time, while I believed that you would have been claimed the moment you stepped onto one of your worlds.”
Smiling again, Lucille nodded. “I was. Kniroch was the world that first claimed me and it happened the night I arrived there.”
“A dreaming connection?”
“That’s what Kniroch said it was. I thought I’d still be tired when I woke up, but I felt as though I’d had the best nights sleep I’d ever had.”
“How many worlds are you connected with?”
“Three. Kniroch, Beshaki, and Quiar. Kniroch claimed me first, even though I travelled to Beshaki before Kniroch, and Kniroch told me he had the first claim because of my family connection.” Lucille shook her head. “Kniroch thinks I’ll have the ability to travel to the sibling worlds and they can connect to Walkers in the same way the other worlds can. It’s possible I may connect with one or more of them.”
“It’s happened before. There are five Walkers who trained with the Council who’ve connected with the sibling worlds and even more natural Walkers. All of them have are blood related to someone who currently lives on Kniroch or was born there and moved to another world, whether that was through choice or simply due to one of the doors taking them to another world.”
“To travel to one of the sibling worlds you must have Knirochian blood.”
“We’ve found that the natural Walkers often have a blood connection to the worlds they can travel to, although it may not have started that way. I know Tegan could travel to all thirty-four of the worlds and she was one of the first of her race born on Athare. As with all the magic that the fae gave us it’s evolved and I think it evolved the way it did because of what the fae did.”
“You think making anyone who could walk the worlds into a criminal had an effect on their abilities?”
“I do. Before the fae made their decision not all natural Walkers joined the Council. Tegan only did because of Riordan and wasn’t sure that she’d made the right choice for a long time.” Kester sighed. “I’m not telling this story right.”
“The Council has always been led to one of Riordan’s descendants,” Lucille’s grandmother said. “When the leader of the Council learnt what the fae was planning he knew he had to keep the natural Walkers safe. He knew it would mean walking away from the Council, but as far as he was concerned he had no other choice, because he would have been executed too, as would several members of his family. Now, he got very lucky. Emrys turned up, thanks to Athare, and helped them to get to a safe world, a world no one knew existed until then, and for several years they stayed hidden. It seemed the safest thing to do and they managed to stay in contact with the rest of their family thanks to a small group of messenger dragons.”
“I still use messenger dragons to keep in contact with that side of the family,” Kester continued. “The youngest brother of the leader took over the Council, because he was only one who couldn’t travel the worlds, and he knew that to keep his position he needed to work with the fae. His family agreed, as they didn’t want to let Riordan down by letting control of the Council get taken over by the fae entirely, so it became a time of compromise between the fae, the leader of the Council, and the angry races of the Web.”
Lucille ran a hand through her hair. “I learnt about this during my training, although I didn’t know abut the messenger dragons… or Emrys.”
“You’re lucky,” Kester replied. “The fae wanted that time to be kept off the curriculum, because of the mistakes they made, and the only reason it was kept was thanks to the quick thinking of the new leader. I don’t know exactly how he managed it, as the fae must have been much more difficult to work with then, but in the end they agreed that it was important that their new Walkers understood why they were lucky enough to have the jobs they were given, and how easy it would be for them to lose them again.”
“Although they didn’t know about Emrys either.” Lucille’s grandmother sounded like she was smiling. “They didn’t know that someone had helped the natural Walkers to escape, especially not someone who’d used one of the doors to travel through time because he was connected to Athare. As far as we know Emrys is still alive and travelling through time, but we don’t know when he’ll appear again.”
“Did Riordan die?” Lucille asked.
“I’ve met his reincarnation a couple of times, as have other members of my family, and from what he said he spent a bit of time travelling after he left the Council behind, before finding himself a place to settle down. He ended up finding it four hundred years in the future and on one of the sibling worlds of Kniroch, not long after they were placed.” Kester sighed. “The man he became still lives on Pendragon, because he feels it’s more his home than Athare, and he lives in hope he might find Tegan again.” There was a moment of silence, that Lucille didn’t know how to fill. “Didn’t you say you’d met on the reincarnated fae on Quiar?”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.