k_a_webb | The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 10, 12th continuation) (Reply)

“Thank you.” Lucille couldn’t help smiling. “I’ve always wanted to learn more, Jarek, and that’s part of the reason I became a Moonjumper. By travelling the worlds I knew I’d begin to understand the Web in a way I wouldn’t have been able to purely by studying it.” She nibbled her lip. “The only problem is everything you learn leads to something more and I find myself wondering if I can ever learn everything I want to. When I spend time talking to Quiar she’ll mention the other Webs, and the other Quiars, which really doesn’t help, as every time it reminds me that I know very little about them. Yet the more time I spend travelling the worlds the more obvious it becomes that I don’t know enough about the history of this Web. All I want is to know everything.”

Jarek laughed. “Which is probably impossible.”

“Probably, and that isn’t going to stop me from trying.” She looked at the still raging battle. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

“I have no idea, but it does seem to be going better for the guards than it did before, so that’s a good thing. Although I want it to be over I’m glad that it’s not.” He sighed. “I know the longer it goes on the better it is for us, as it means they’re going to get tired. We were tired before we started fighting. Due to how well the counterfeiters hid we’ve been searching for them for what feels like years to us. Every week was more difficult than the one before, which meant the days started dragging, and all we wanted was for it to be over. Now it looks like we’re finally getting somewhere, but… are we? Yes, we’re here, we’re fighting them, and we seem to be in a much better place than we were. I just don’t think we can say one way or the other until the person who runs the counterfeit ring is gone. Then we might stand a chance of fixing all of the damage that’s been caused.”

“Sometimes I wonder if everything would be easier if we just went to Theas and dealt with the problem there, instead of going all the way to Fasach first. The likelihood of us dying there is scarily high and if that happens…” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s why the counterfeiters are sending us there. If we die then you’re going to have to find someone else willing to do this, which will give them more time to dig in, and just make everything much harder than it would be if we survive Fasach.”

“You’re going to be okay – because you’re amazingly good with people.”

“Being good with people is part of being a Moonjumper.”

“No, it’s really not. I’ve come across a lot of Moonjumpers who aren’t good with people, which is probably why they find the first rule so easy to follow, because watching things happen means they don’t actually have to talk to anyone. One Moonjumper I met hated everyone he came across. If it wasn’t for the fact he was the only person who could travel to Beshaki at that time he wouldn’t have had a job and that is part of the reason the war got so bad. Fortunately the naturals were watching it, so they could put an end to it before too many people died.”

“Was that the shadow council’s doing?”

“At that point the shadow council was a mess. The man who was supposed to become the leader had gone missing and his younger sister couldn’t be trusted, so for a while we didn’t think it was going to survive. Eventually, though, someone did step in – he was one of the lost leader’s cousins and knew enough about the shadow council to be able to pull it back together. I have no idea how he managed it. Being able to trust someone who suddenly steps in like that isn’t easy and when he did there was a long conversation between a group of us about whether he was the right person to lead the shadow council. Later on we found out that he’d been the one to sort out the Beshaki mess. If it hadn’t been for him then the war, I think, would still be raging now.”

“He sorted it?”

“From what was said he was someone who was very good at getting the right person into the right place at the right time. Even before he became the leader of the shadow council he’d been working with a number of natural, who chose to join when he took over, and it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. If the man who was supposed to be the leader had taken over things would have been very different.”

“Just that story is enough to remind me that I don’t know anywhere near as much as I need to about the history of the Web. I had no idea that the shadow council had gone through those difficulties, although I have to admit I don’t know much about them at all. My grandmother is someone I need to talk to about that, so I can learn more, but I won’t have time to do that until this is over.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Jacinth. Do you know her?”

There was a long silence. “You could say that. I worked with her for a long time and there was a time when I called her a friend, but we haven’t spoken for a while.” He sighed. “Of course that’s another story. It was during my last lifetime, when I died much younger than I expect to thanks to an accident, so she wouldn’t know me in this form. Sometimes I wish she did, because I cared a lot about her then.”

“How old are you in this lifetime?”

“Last month was my 26th birthday. In the life before I turned thirty on the day I died.”

“So there wasn’t a lot of time between your two lives?”

“No, there wasn’t, but that’s the way things work out sometimes. I knew where I was needed, so I came here, although it did take me a little time to decide what body I want to be born into, and in the end I decided this was the one that would be best. Sometimes I still feel like I’m in a body like yours, though, so I make little actions that I shouldn’t be. I’m sure you’ve seen them.”

Lucille nodded. “You keep going to brush a hand through your hair, even though you don’t have any.”

“That’s an annoying habit I picked up… it must have been well over a millennia ago now… do you know how strange it is to think that? My soul has been going from body to body for a very long time, especially if you add in that point where Merry and I went back in time. Mostly I try not to think about it, because it’s hard to accept that I really have existed for that long, but I know of souls who were there when the fae were created.”

Unable to believe what Jarek had said Lucille stared at him. “The fae are a created race.”

“It’s something we weren’t meant to know, but there were a couple of souls that woke up at the wrong time, which is something that happens, and there was one girl…” He sighed. “There’s a very long story behind what happened. I’m not certain we have time for it now, so how about we meet up for coffee tomorrow and I can tell you everything I know about that time. Sadly most of those who did know more have chosen to start again. A couple who haven’t are living lives in place neither of us can get to, unless the worlds choose to let us, and I don’t think they will.”

“Which worlds?”

“One is on Kankirin and has been for the last six lifetimes. She comes back to talk to me after every lifetime, because she believes I’m going to meet the person who’ll tell her stories.” He grinned at Lucille. “I think she might have been right about that.”

“Maybe.” Lucille smiled back. “Where’s the other one?”

“Aerith. He’s working with the Time Council and I’m certain you’ll have questions about that too, but that’s another thing we should leave until morning. We’ll have much more freedom to talk then.”

“The last thing I expected was to have time to talk now.” One of the counterfeiters fell. “It looks like we’re beginning to come to the end. How many more people’s memories are in this thing?”

“You probably don’t want the answer to that question, especially as I think next time it’s going to take longer, if we do make those changes.”

“I don’t think we can decide that for certain until we see how much good we’ve done here.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.