Chapter 13

It would be foolish of me to pretend that I agreed with Everiya, Great Queen of the Seed. Given her power (which I began to sense was considerable if aroused, and I had no intention of doing that)her decision that Meryl should take the cuffed and gagged Natalie to justice at the hands and magic of the Mage Isaac on Sevir rather disappointed me.

No, that is an understatement. I was utterly devastated.

I pleaded for Cerys’ life, saying that Ruben would kill her slowly and horribly if I didn’t present Natalie to him. I even got on my knees to do it (and how amazing it was to feel once again the luxurious carpet of Natalie’s apartment beneath my knees as I had so often in the past when I licked out the woman who was now our prisoner) but my tearful begging was to no avail. Everiya, Eve as many called her over the centuries, had made up her mind. Mage Isaac, the woman in black decreed, would be permitted to get his revenge and thus Meryl, beaming with gratitude, fastened the prisoner Natalie to her with cuffs. She waved me goodbye and via her dull gold collar the woman transported the struggling Natalie Dawn from the here and now in London and off to some unimaginable fate on the planet Sevir.

I wept when Everiya made her pronouncement. I had failed Cerys and I hated myself. Perhaps I could have fooled Meryl, maybe even put her even if only temporarily out of the way, when I first encountered her on coming back to Earth, and learned she wanted the same as I did. Fool her or delay her so I could take Natalie back with me to Sevir and thus save Cerys. Now the Welsh girl would die and I was the reason. I should have been smarter and more prepared for anything. I had been naive to say the least. Now I wanted to die myself: there was nothing for me on this planet or that distant one.

“Get up,” said Everiya as she regarded me, half crouched and half slumped on the soft, rich carpet. “Your task is not done.”

“It is,” I sobbed. “You don’t know how cruel that bastard Ruben is! I have failed my friend Cerys.”

“I know better than you, Isabella. Cerys is not lost, but I must deal with Ruben before anything else. I have to, before I turn my attention to Isaac. I will eliminate both of them, but I have decided I must attack the dark powers of Ruben first: he poses the greater threat to the Seed.”

I stared up at the woman. Her eyes were not shifting colour as much as they did as she looked down at me, and were mostly green. A bright, electric green. I confess in other circumstances it would have been awesome to behold, or terrifying. But they shone with a purpose. I could tell that. I got up, sheepishly. This was a strong woman and I felt now I had to be strong, though I had no idea how to be.

“Sit down and listen, Isabella. You made a good case. So too did Meryl. But I had to choose the best path for the Seed. This is the best path, fraught as it is with danger.”

I sat but the woman in black didn’t. She stood with arms folded, legs slightly apart. She was bracing herself. I knew that very little would shift her if she so determined. “There are things you need to know,” said Everiya, carefully. “Things that not many of your kind are permitted to know. But whether you know it or not you entered not just another physical world in Sevir but a metaphysical one in the realm of magic. We of the Seed are a part of that. It is as vast as any other, full of contradictions and enmity and deceit. It is a mirror of your flawed human lives in wanting to lead and serve at the same time, torn between choices.”

“Choices? I never had those on Sevir. So am I to be a horse again?” I demanded, though I had no idea why I said that. “A humanhorse of a different kind?”

Eve smiled. “Yes. For what I can see that is you destiny, though you may scramble against it. That is your inner knowledge I believe. You may rail against it and weep, but the reality is we all become what we must be. You are strong and courageous, and you seek justice. The way I will show you can bring that.”

“Can, but not will bring it.”

“No, Isabella, there are too many factors, too many powers in play. They swirl and eddy, like an inrushing tide around rocks. But let me tell you why all this is happening. Or some of it, at least. First, a sort of history lesson. Be patient and listen, for you may learn something of what we are, why things are as they are.

“The Seed is an old discipline in a greater world you humans call magic. Yes, I am outwardly human, in many ways, but not all. My kind came from the planet Sevir originally—”

“You are not small, as they are!” I protested.

Eve held her hand up for me to be quiet. “No, and not all on Sevir are as the Tankic and the Egri, though you may regard them as the dominant lifeforms there. We can be called the Inoci. We left that planet under duress but never lost touch with it. We had to seek out a planet that could house us, where we could exercise our powers. One where the conditions for our well-being and skills could flourish. There are many planets, untold numbers around countless stars, but many are either barren or riven with fire or swamped in gas or are even little more than water. Each has its own life forms, even if unrecognisable by your standards. But we Inoci had to seek a planet where our magic, though that is your word for what we do and not ours, can exist. Earth was ideal. It is similar in look and size to the place we left, but more important for us it had many of the same qualities for us as did Sevir. Magic works here where it would not elsewhere. The Seed could grow here where it could not even begin to survive on many other planets we found.”

“But with the likes of Ruben, it didn’t,” I said.

“Very erudite of you to understand that, Isabella. I was right to let Meryl go with Natalie and thus instruct you here. Yes, the Seed would have grown on Earth had it not been thwarted by personal ambitions. It is something that is prevalent on this planet; you humans see this all the time in your so-called leaders who strive for power and glory at the expense of others. That negative aura, if I can put it that way, infected Mages like Ruben and Isaac. They formed what they called Root and Branch. At first it was believed it was a whole part of us all, much like an extension of what the Seed was. A flourishing, we believed. But it emerged both aspects wanted to be the Seed. There was a war—still is in many ways—and the Seed was threatened. But the enemy of my cause was flawed; it could not itself stay joined. The Root and Branch fell out, for their ambitions clashed. So Earth-like in so many ways! It became a three-way war, and when the Seed made inroads into their powers, many of their survivors fled back to Sevir.”

“So Ruben and Isaac are fighting there because they fought here, but couldn’t win.”

“Yes. But I and my fellow Seed people must prevent them from joining forces again. The fight is not over.”

I laughed. “No way! They hate each other.”

“All enemies can and do find a way to work together, when it suits them. I could point to much of human history as proof. Enemies will join to win a battle and then in the hour of victory slip away to resume their own fight with each other. If I cared I could be fascinated by this level of friendly deception, or perhaps a shared desire for postponed hatred. My concern though is not with Earth: the human race must resolve its own issues.”