©2007 bonne friesen

context: Our heroes, Adero and Ylisra, are girls from races which are interdependent but despise one another. Some time ago they discovered a cache of Ancient documents and relics and forged a secret friendship there while learning about the other-worldly Ancients. Now their technologically primitive land is being invaded and the normally unfriednly leaders have come together to try and find a way to save themselves. Thinking they will be heroes, the girls bring information about an Ancient defense system that can save them…

from: Gift of the Ancients

Adero slowed, resting just outside of the council shelter to catch her breath. She listened at the door as she waited for Ylisra to cross the beach, smiling as she heard the debating voices of the council.
“We have no strong weapons to fight them with. We have never needed any, but now I fear we must go to the Caves of Refuge…”
It was her father’s even voice. Adero heard him pause and imagined him rubbing the coarse stubble of his closely-clipped head.
“The land has always protected us,” insisted one of the Elders. “We have never needed weapons. Won’t the Sentinels act on our behalf?”
Ylisra joined Adero as Saldor spoke again.
“The Sentinels that encircle our territory have not acted, and some tribesmen have already died. We have only imagined that they would be a defence to us. No one has seen them act in many lifetimes. If they ever were a help, they are no longer…”
“The timing is perfect!” Adero said, pulling Ylisra behind her. “Let’s go!”
Adero pushed through the curtains which replaced the sea-facing wall of the shelter and stepped boldly into the midst of the proceedings, aware that Ylisra was cringing behind her. Sunlight streamed through cracks in the ceiling, gently illuminating the gathered leaders. The Water King’s sumptuously dressed retinue faced the black- robed Tribe Elders, while the scribes in their scarlet sashes lined the wall opposite Adero.
She executed a hasty bow, imagining their forth coming cheers.
“Your Majesty, honoured Elders,” her eyes sought her father’s as she added “My Lord Scribe. The Sentinels will indeed protect the land, but they must be ‘activated’ first.” She turned her head to catch the gaze of other leaders, willing them to catch her enthusiasm. “We found a great storehouse of information from the past…”
An angry murmur began in the assembly and gained volume. Adero raised her voice to be heard above it. They were supposed to be listening in rapt attention, what was going wrong?
“We found information that tells how to work a great weapon. We can make the Sentinels…”
“WE?”
The single syllable was roared with such ferocity that Adero froze, staring at the one who’d uttered it. The Water King, regally silent throughout the proceedings, now rose to his feet, blocking out the sunlight where he towered over her.
Raging, his face a terrifying mask, Adero realised that his punishing glare was aimed not at her, but behind her at Ylisra.
“My daughter has been… finding things with a filthy dirt walker?” His skin turned purple against the silvery whiteness of his hair and beard, and he seemed to loom even larger. Fear seized Adero like it never had with any adult.
The only movement in the shelter was a craven nod of aquiescence from Ylisra.
“My own child, a traitor to her line, demeaning herself with such company?” He spat. “The dirt walkers are weak. Let them take what they can and hide in their holes.”
He strode the length of the shelter in one great step, knocking Adero aside as he passed and sweeping Ylisra into his wake. His enormous presence turned on those assembled once more before exiting.
“We are strong. We have sunk the ships sent upon us and we will sink whatever else comes. We have no need of the Sentinels, or of this council.” Spitting his contempt once more at their feet, he withdrew in a swirl of shining robes, his courtiers leaping to follow him.
The Elders and scribes began protesting, some enraged, some begging his reconsideration, but the sum of their expression was a pale, weak thing next to the overwhelming torrent of the Water King’s anger.
As Adero watched them disappear, Saldor came up behind her, a boney had firmly gripping her shoulder.
“And I shall deal with my daughter,” he said, whisking her out through the back curtain.

Saldor’s grip on her shoulder never loosened as he navigated her towards the Settlement. His pace remained quick as they trod the wide path through the jungle, even when his breathing became ragged with the effects of his weak-breath disease. Adero wanted to tell him to slow down, to not get excited, but she didn’t dare say anything.
In silence he guided her to the back of the main storehouse. Saldor flung open the narrow red door and escorted her inside to their windowless living quarters. The bare clay walls became a warm rosy colour when Saldor absentmindedly lit an oil lamp.
Adero stood uncertainly on the woven mat next to a rough book shelf and waited until Saldor’s breathing evened, with great effort on his part, and he rounded on her.
“What did you find?”
His black eyes were piercing. She was used to his distracted looks at her, passing nods or vague reprimands, his mind entirely occupied with his very important work. Never before had she been the target of his pin-point focus or sensed the power of the mind behind it. She swallowed nervously, not sure where to begin.
“Adero! What did you find, with that young water woman? Where did you find it? This is important!”
He believed her, she suddenly realised. He believed what she had said and he wanted to know more! And she couldn’t understand why, but this was clearly more important to her father than she could have imagined.
“Ah…a room. Part of a room, part of it is caved in.” He nodded expectantly. “ I fell in through the top, when I was climbing on some rocks in the jungle. I thought it was solid, but there were old leaves and sticks covering over a hole. I fell in,” she repeated. She wanted to tell him what he wished to know, but she couldn’t tell exactly what that was. She looked at him imploringly.
“What was inside?” His attention had not flagged, but he settled into a low wooden stool, as if preparing to talk through the night.
Adero sank to sit cross-legged on the mat before him, illuminated by the lamp. She described the flowering stone columns, the smooth tables, and the screens that told them secrets. “And there were drawers full of Indexes that had all the information organised, but it was in capsules, not books. It used the old numbers and grouped things together just like the accounting system you use, Father. I knew how to use it to find things because it was just like how you showed me to find the right book among your records. I don’t understand how that can be,”
“The Keepers,” he whispered, closing his eyes. Adero was shocked to see a tear stream down his stern lined face.
“How do you know about them?” she asked. “We found a separate index written by the Keepers, and other things they had written. Much of the Ancient knowledge makes no sense to us, but the Keepers wrote documents that explain some of it. Like things in the Citadel,” she warmed to her topic. “Like the platform where we can make the Sentinels work…”
Saldor wasn’t following her lead.
“You must take me there,” he said, rising from the wooden stool. “Now.”
“But Father, you must be careful, and it’s nearly night already.”
Saldor’s mouth was a grim line, and he gave a sharp grunt. Adero rose from the floor.
“There is a better entrance to it,” she said, shaking her dark hair. “At least you won’t have to fall through the ceiling to get in.”
He gave another grunt, but this one had some humour attached to it.
Adero smiled in relief and opened the red door her mother had painted.
She led her Father by the least difficult of her many routes to the library.
“It seems you don’t come here often,” Saldor puffed when a large fern whacked him as Adero passed it.
“I come nearly every day, but I’ve developed over twenty different ways to get there, so I don’t make a real path.”
“You…show foresight,” he managed, with a trace of approval.
They reached the stream and followed it to the boulders in their shrouds of moss. Beneath the jungle canopy, the light was already dim.
Saldor cursed “I should have brought the lamp.”
“You won’t need it at all,” Adero repressed a smile. “Just wait.”
She went ahead into the dark passage , leaving her father just inside its mouth. Quickly she bent to enter the library and pressed her palm to a light tube. She lit several and then pushed the door wide.
“Can you see your way?” she asked.
Saldor hurried toward the light and stopped short when he stepped inside.
“Adero, what have you found?” Awe transformed his severe countenance and he covered the grey stubble of his head with ink-stained hands. “What have you found?”