Chapter 19

My return to the city of Gower was made with little fanfare. The people at the gate stared at the big stallion more than they did the young twenty-one year old man on his back.

That all changed when I reached the palace, and announced who I was. I was ushered into the same reception hall as the one where I had met King Kenneth on my last visit. Before long the King himself burst into the room. I had a shock in store when I recognised who came running into the room with him ... it was Mom.

"Sean!" they both cried.

The King was certainly acting very differently to the arrogant man that I had encountered on my last visit. He seemed genuinely delighted to see me. I wondered if Mom had anything to do with that?

"We were told that you were dead!" said my father.

"And who might have told you that?" I asked.

"Hassan."

"Well, that figures!"

I proceeded to tell both of my parents what had happened to me over the past three years. My recounting summarised and glossed over some of what Hassan had said to taunt me, but I made sure to cover the high points.

I was watching the reactions my description brought, trying to use them to tell me how much of what Hassan had said was true and how much had been her cruel invention.

Neither parent gave much away however, and they encouraged me to continue my story through to the end.

Once I had finished, I couldn't contain myself any longer and I demanded to know where Brenda was and what had happened to her. Now I did get a reaction from them and it wasn't a good one. Both of them looked away from me. It took a few moments before Mom answered.

"Much of what Hassan told you is nonsense, Sean. As you can see both your father and I are in perfect health. As far as I know, Linda Thomas is also cancer free."

I could sense a 'but' coming.

"What about Brenda?" I asked again.

"Well ... I'm afraid that she didn't lie about that, Sean. Brenda has married Aiden and there is a son. John, I believe they have called him."

The hope that I had rejoiced at, the hope that I had nurtured so carefully and that had spurred me on to make my escape from the dungeon, was suddenly and cruelly extinguished.

It is hard to describe the pain I felt at that moment. Somehow I had convinced myself that Hassan had been lying about this. My hope had been rekindled, but now I knew that I had lost my love after all, just as the poisonous wizard had claimed.

Mom tried her best to comfort me but I was beyond that. She spent hours in my quarters with me, trying to get me to talk and to find a reason for carrying on. She encouraged me to commit to remaining in Gael and to be named as King Kenneth's heir.

"Mom, why have you suddenly changed your tune so dramatically? Why are you so hell bent now on me helping the King? I get the impression that you have never loved this man ... if I had to guess, I'd say yours was an arranged marriage."

A sad look appeared on Mom's face, and a tear leaked from one eye. It rolled slowly down her cheek and then dripped onto her blouse, leaving a dark stain in the fabric.

When she spoke it wasn't what I was expecting. Instead of explaining anything about her marriage or why she was urging me to defend Axon, she asked me a question.

"When did you discover you were a cross-over, Sean?"

That was the last thing I was expecting from her. At home in the Midwest, I'd asked her to tell me what I was and she had claimed she had no idea. How was it that she could talk about me being a cross-over now?

"I thought you said you didn't know what I was?" I asked.

"I don't. Oh, I know little bits and pieces but the one thing I can't forget is what being a cross-over means. My mother was a cross-over, and it changed my whole life.

"It's very unusual I believe and for some reason it's considered dangerous. My mother managed to keep it hidden until after I was born, but then it was discovered and we were banished from Gael.

"My own father banished us to the 'other-world'. I was only two-years-old then. What little I know of lore was learned through the stories my mother told me as I grew up. That's how I know about dreamtime and things like the succession of kingdoms. She even taught me some spells.

"It seems that my father married again quite quickly after we were banished. He had a son who grew up to be healthy and strong. The son was told about his father's first wife and the fact that she had been a cross-over."

Her story was spellbinding and I was hanging on every word.

"The son decided that one way of turning the odds against his father's enemies was to have a son of his own who was a cross-over. He left Gael and tracked down his father's first wife and his half-sister.

"Now do you see, Sean? The reason it appears as if I have no love for your father is that we should never have been married in the first place. It was sinful in the eyes of The Mother, as we are brother and sister!"

This was mind blowing. I had asked Mom to explain why she wanted me to commit to Gael, but I hadn't been expecting something as dramatic as this.

"You mean that King Kenneth actually planned to have a son who was a cross-over? He went to all that trouble to track you down, he knowingly married his half-sister so that he could father a cross-over?"

"Yes. I've never really understood it, but it was very important to him. When you said that you had taken Brenda into dreamtime I knew that he had succeeded. What it means ... I'm still not sure."

I shared what Charles had told me with Mom, explaining about the perfect balance between 'royals' and wizards and how that would be upset if one person was born with both sets of abilities.

"A cross-over removes the checks and balances of the system, that's why they are considered so dangerous. Charles said that there had only ever been two ... your mother must have been one of them.

"What it means is that I have the strength, speed and endurance of a royal, but I'm also able to use strong magic. If you're right, that's what the King was looking for to give him an advantage over Scania. So far he hasn't had the satisfaction of knowing that his plan has worked. I kept my magical ability a secret when I visited here before with Brenda."

To my knowledge I was the only male cross-over and it seemed I had been blessed with exceptional strength and magical abilities. King Kenneth was about to get what he had planned for twenty-one years before...

"You know, you think you hate your father, Sean. The thing is, you don't really know anything about him. If it wasn't for Kenneth, Scania would have ground Axon beneath its heel long ago.

"King Malcolm and all of his brood are evil to the core. If you think Hassan was bad ... you've yet to meet her brothers and sisters! Are you going to stand by and watch this fair land be raped by Scania?"

Always I had had that affinity with the soil and nature. I shivered now as I remembered the desert that was Scania and the dead feel of the soil there. I imagined the lush countryside of Axon being turned to dust and it made me shudder.

"If you give up now, Sean, then Hassan will have won the day. Kenneth has no heir and when he dies the kingdom will pass to Hassan's father, Malcolm of Scania.

"I don't think you should let that happen. Perhaps it's time for you to take your rightful place after all?"

It seemed surreal that she was suggesting I should play the Prince now. Her words conjured up the memory of Hassan's taunts however, and I could feel the bitterness inside me at what she had tried to do to me. But, try as I might to function normally, the pain of losing Brenda was still crushing.

King Kenneth also tried to shake me out of my depression. He had a more selfish reason perhaps than Mom did. He started after questioning me further about how I had made my final escape from Hassan.

"Sean, tell me again about how you killed and disposed of Hassan? There is danger here. If King Malcolm of Scania suspects you have killed his daughter then we could have a repeat of what happened three hundred years ago!"

"You don't need to worry, father. I flew from her dungeon and took her with me. They have a saying in the 'other-world' - Hassan 'sleeps with the fishes'. I flew over the sea and dropped her really far out. Her body won't be found."

"What exactly do you mean when you say you 'flew', Sean?"

"I'm sorry. I was being literal. I flew. There's no other way of describing it really."

"But that's impossible!" cried the King.

"Lots of things that at first seem impossible become possible when you are dealing with a cross-over," I told him.

His head snapped up and his eyes were almost bugging out of their sockets.

"You mean..."