The Lost Enclave Page 11

  She nodded.

  He left her there and exited the bedroom. His eyes did not need any help to see in the limits of moonlight. In the corner, he saw something move. Nathaniel was across the room in a flash. He grabbed at the invader, but felt powerful hands grasp him from all sides.

  He saw Great Ones, not his parents or their friends, but Great Ones nonetheless. One held him off the ground with massive arms that squeezed the air from his chest, while two others stood by, appraising him mockingly.

  “Nathaniel Mansfield,” one of them said, unrolling a scroll. “You have been charged with acting against the interests of the world.”

  “What have I done? Unhand me!” Nathaniel struggled, but it was no use. The man holding him was a fully developed Great One, and a large one, at that.

  “You stole the betrothed of a member of the Authority,” the third man said. “You have brought shame on your family and the Authority looks upon us with suspicion.”

  “You fear the Authority? That is your problem, not mine.”

  “The Authority is the Prophet’s representative in the world!” the man with the scroll said. “Perhaps we do not need to fear the wrath of the men in the Authority, but the Prophet’s power is beyond ours, and you threaten to bring all of that down on us!”

  Nathaniel began to respond, but he heard Amara scream.

  “Nate! Please help me!”

  “Amara!” Nathaniel roared. He kicked at the leg of the man holding him, and the man cried out in pain and dropped him. Nathaniel burst toward the bedroom. He had just enough time to see Amara struggling against Eli in front of an open window.

  Then the invading Great Ones were on Nathaniel, pelting him with blows to the back and the head, and driving him to the ground. He felt their boots on him, pressing him down with such terrible force that they would have gone through the floor had there been a cellar beneath the hut. He felt one of his ribs crack under the pressure, but all he cared about was Amara, as Eli picked her up and carried her to the bedroom door.

  Nathaniel tried to move, but he was pinned down by the Great Ones. He cursed and clawed, but got nowhere. “Amara!” he cried, and it was a pitiful, helpless sound.

  “Nate!” She reached for him but Eli pulled her away.

  “On your feet, Mansfield,” one of the Great Ones demanded. The horrible pressure ended, and the hands scooped him from the floor like he was an infant.

  “Where is he taking her?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Back to her proper home.”

  Nathaniel swung his foot back again. This time he connected with his captor’s groin. Nathaniel broke free again and gave chase.

  Eli had Amara over his shoulder and was stumbling away from the hut. Lights were being kindled around the village, but nobody had yet left any of the other cabins.

  “Eli!” Nathaniel roared. “Put her down!”

  Eli wheeled around, still holding Amara on his shoulder. He fired an energy weapon. The shock went through Nathaniel’s body and he fell to his knees. Another shot connected, and he was on his back, convulsing.

  Amara screamed. Eli walked toward Nathaniel. “It is over, man. Just go home. Let my betrothed and me do the same.”

  A shadow fell over them, and Eli looked up, eyes wide.

  “Nathaniel of the house of Mansfield,” one of the Great Ones said, “you have attempted to evade capture and punishment for your crimes against the Great Ones and the world. The penalty is death.”

  The man swung a metal poker lifted from the small cabin. It came down fast toward Nathaniel’s head, but he was helpless to move.

  Then he saw a flash of Amara’s nightgown, and heard her cry out in pain. He felt sharp agony, as the sharp metal rod missed its target and became buried in his shoulder. Nathaniel did not want to look, but he could feel Amara’s blood pouring all over him. He felt the remainder of the spasms subside, and pulled the rod free of his shoulder, with Amara impaled above it. He laid her gently down on her side, with the poker jutting out on the other like a misplaced rib.

  The man who had attacked them moved closer, but Eli stepped in front of him. “Please,” he said, and his voice was filled with tears. “Please, no more. I will have the Authority relinquish its claims against the Great Ones. You have done too much.”

  The Great Ones turned and wandered off into the woods.

  Nathaniel looked pleadingly up at Eli. “Help her, please. Help her.”

  “I will do the best I can,” he said. He brought out the energy weapon. “Rest now, Nathaniel.”

  Nathaniel heard the crackle of energy, and saw the bolt headed toward his face. That was all.

  Nathaniel awoke in his bed in the palace. He ripped off the blankets and stood.

  “You’re awake,” Patrick said. “Are you okay?”

  “Where is she?” Nathaniel screamed. “Amara! Where is Amara?”

  “Who?” Maxwell asked, sitting up in bed and scratching his head. “Is that the girl you were crying about in your sleep?”

  “You know her. You’ve met her,” Nathaniel said. “Where is she?”

  “Listen, Nate,” Patrick said, “You’ve been sick as hell since the closing ceremonies. Been in your bed for most of the winter. There’s never been anything like it in the annals of the Great Ones.”

  “You expect me to believe that I dreamt her? My life? My unborn child?”

  He saw Patrick and Maxwell exchange glances. Patrick sighed, “Ah fuck, Nate. They wanted us to play coy with you, but I see how you are suffering. Listen, you are no longer charged with anything. That normal you had the issues with took care of that. You are back where you belong. You healed up and you are a Great One again in proper standing. And right now your family really wants to see you.”

  “Where. Is. Amara?” Nathaniel yelled.

  “Nate,” Max said, “she died. The injuries were too severe.”

  “And the baby?” Nathaniel asked.

  His friends shook their heads.

  “They were buried together in their family’s plot,” Patrick said. “I’m so sorry, Nate.”

  Nathaniel wanted to say more, but he felt grief spill from him, bubbling to the surface in a never-ending eruption of anguish.

  His friends waited a few seconds, uncertain, then embraced him, and held him for a long time as he cried.

  14

  Nathaniel fell into a deep despair that his friends could not bring him out of. He saw his parents, and accepted their embrace quietly, without the anger or resentment that many had worried he would exhibit after everything that had occurred.

  A darkness settled in to his heart. In secret conversations, Patrick and Maxwell wondered if their friend would ever return to the young man he had once been. Nathaniel was ignorant of all the concerned faces and hushed voices around him. He barely ate, rarely slept, and spent most of his time sitting in his room or pacing around the halls of the palace.

  One day, his father came to see him as Nathaniel sat on the edge of his bed studying the far wall.

  “May I enter?” Drystan asked.

  “Aye,” Nathaniel said. His voice was dry and flat. Drystan approached and sat next to his son on the bed.

  “We see very little of you these days, Nathaniel.”

  “I do not wish to be seen.”

  “I understand. Yet it would be good for you and for the community to see you back to yourself.”

  “You want me to pretend to be well?”

  Drystan shook his head. “I want you to be well. I know I cannot force it or command it, but you are my son and to see you like this is a terrible thing for your mother and me.”

  “This should never have happened,” Nathaniel said.

  Drystan sighed. “Perhaps not. But the rules and the order of our world were set in place long before your time and long before mine. The Great Ones carry unpredictability in our line. That has only become more true with the decline. The laws keep us moving forward.”

  “There is no forward,” Nathaniel said. “Our
line is doomed. But I found love, and I had created new life.”

  Drystan looked pained. “You think because your powers were deactivated you were able to conceive a child? That has never happened before.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I…perhaps I do not know for certain. Nathaniel, I am at a bit of a loss here. I wish to give you advice, but you have trodden such a unique and dangerous path that I simply do not have the experience to provide proper counsel. So all I will say is this: your family misses you.”

  With that, Drystan left the room. Nathaniel stayed in place for a while longer, then got up and walked to the door. He went down the hall, and continued walking, ignoring any stares or attempts to talk to him.

  He walked out of the palace. He kept walking, and soon he had left the Central Enclave behind him. He walked until he reached the lake where he had made a home and a life with Amara. And there he sat silently, letting tears roll down his cheeks.

  Hours passed. When the tears were gone, Nathaniel picked himself up and returned to the palace and the life he had known before love had shown him another way.

  Nathaniel concluded his story and sat very still. Goldman and Lilli looked at each other, unsure what to do. Lilli’s cheeks were wet with tears.

  “Nate,” Goldman started. “Man. I don’t even know what to say.”

  Lilli moved next to Nathaniel and put her arm around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Nate. That story…how did you move on from that?”

  “I had no choice,” Nathaniel said. “I had duties to my people and to the world…what I thought of as the world at that time. I knew not how long my life might be but I suspected it would be quite long, and I knew that I could not mope around the palace forever. I made a choice as I sat at the lake. I decided to not think of Amara and the pain of that loss. I could not always stay true to that choice, but over time it became easier and easier. The passage of thousands of years has a way of suppressing the memories of youth. And yet…I suppose they were still there all that time.”

  Silence once more descended. Nathaniel thought about the part he was not telling—of the Great Ones who had ambushed him and how they had later met what the palace thought were mysterious and untimely ends.

  “Did you ever see them again?” Lilli asked. “Amara’s family, I mean. Or any of the people from your village.”

  Nathaniel sighed. “No. I avoided them all. What was there I could say to them or they to me that would not cause more pain and suffering? I knew her parents blamed me for everything that happened to her.” He paused. “I did not know much about normal parents. Probably not as much as either of you do.”

  “Well,” Goldman said, “I don’t say this much, but I’m adopted. I didn’t always have the greatest relationship with my folks. Probably couldn’t have left home the way I did if that weren’t the case.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “But you see the point. I wanted to leave them be.” He paused. “I did see Eli one more time, years later.”

  “How? Why?” Goldman leaned forward, intrigued. “How much later are we talking?”

  “Many, by mortal standards. I know not a precise number, but Eli was elderly. Maybe fifty, sixty years.”

  “Crazy,” Lilli said. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “There is not much to tell. All those years had passed, and I was simply a member of a struggling and declining population of Great Ones. Most of the surviving older members of my kind had retired to a quiet existence. Maxwell had met his end only a few years earlier. One of the youngest declines to ever happen. Patrick and I had the somber responsibility of leading the community, which mostly meant figurehead appearances here and there and monthly meetings with the Authority’s leadership.”

  “Was Eli the head of the Authority then?” Lilli asked.

  Nathaniel shook his head. “He was always connected, but he was not in line to lead the world. He held a post as leader of his enclave. Amara’s home enclave.”

  “So you were keeping tabs on him,” Goldman said.

  “Tabs?”

  “You were aware of what he was doing,” Lilli clarified.

  “Aye. Not with any great interest, but his name appeared in records once he assumed command. Typically, the Great Ones would hold an annual audience with the enclave heads and the leader of the whole Authority. Eli never appeared at any of those, sending his lieutenant in his stead. The absences were not lost on me.”

  “So how did the meeting happen?” Goldman asked.

  “It was not a meeting in any official capacity,” Nathaniel said. “As I said, Eli was elderly, and had long since left his post. I received word that he wanted to meet with me. Nobody around me knew anything about our shared history, except Patrick. He asked me why I would take such a meeting, and I told him I had very little reason not to.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the type who would accept that answer,” Goldman said.

  “By that point, Patrick had learned that questioning me would never lead to a satisfactory answer. He just told me to be careful. I heard him clearly. Though I was at my full power and Eli was old, I had not forgotten his assault. He was in a medical facility in the Central Enclave, reserved for important normals. I knew at first sight that he was near death. The smell of it filled the room.”

  Nathaniel paused again, picturing the scene as it had been.

  The man in the bed was weak and worn. At first, he took no notice of Nathaniel. Then his eyes fixed on the large warrior by the door to his hospital room.

  “You came,” Eli said. His voice was barely more than a rough whisper.

  “Aye,” Nathaniel said, remaining near the door.

  “You have changed,” Eli said. “Though I reckon not as much as me.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “Aye. Why did you send for me?”

  Eli turned to face his visitor and groaned in discomfort. “Urgh. Hurts to move these days. Not that I have many days left. That’s why I asked for you.”

  “I am no doctor. And no miracle worker, either.”

  “I have doctors,” Eli said. “And I do not seek a miracle, nor do I expect one exists. I have simply come to the end of my path.”

  “So what is it then? What do you want from me?”

  To Nathaniel’s shock, the man began to cry. “I want absolution!” Eli exclaimed. “Only you know the truth of all that transpired. My family is gone. Amara…her family is gone as well. There is nobody left who knows but you!”

  “Aye. I remember well what happened.”

  “Then tell me you forgive me! For my youthful pride and anger. I took vengeance on you and it cost me everything that mattered.”

  “It cost both of us everything!” Nathaniel said.

  The man nodded slowly. “I understand. I valued Amara, I hope you know that. But I was unlearned in the ways of the world and I did not treat her correctly. I knew she was precious, yet I did not appreciate her. But I want you to know that I never meant for any of that to happen. The incident at the lake. I just wanted you to return to your palace.”

  “I understand that,” Nathaniel said. “Do you understand the depths of what you stole from me?”

  “The baby,” Eli said.

  “Aye. My child.”

  “Nathaniel,” the old man started, “there is something you need to know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The Authority took Amara. They tried to save her, but she was too far gone. But they wanted to keep the baby.”

  Nathaniel tried to speak but could not.

  “I know that is shocking to you. I wish I could tell you something more positive, but when they returned Amara’s body to me for burial, they told me the baby had not survived. It was a boy.”

  “I did not need to know that,” Nathaniel said after a short pause.

  “Perhaps not. But now you know all I know. And how sorry I am for all of it. Now, will you offer me absolution?”

  “It is not for me to do. Only the Prophet can offer absoluti
on. And if he is watching with Klaus and the Christ child, do you think they will look kindly on what you have done? Do you think your tears and apologies will save you from hellfire?”

  “Please, Nathaniel!”

  “I accept your apology. But it is not for me to protect you from the judgment that lies ahead for you.”

  With that, Nathaniel turned and left the room.

  “Jesus,” Goldman said. “The fucking Authority strikes again.”

  “You never pursued it after that?” Lilli asked. “Knowing that they had messed with your son?”

  “It would have done no good. Those people were already dead. With Eli’s death, that time in my life passed into history, and there is where I wished it to stay.”

  “We need to break that whole operation,” Goldman said. “Fucking assholes in every generation.”

  “We may yet get that chance,” Nathaniel said. “We will see what there is to learn in this other territory.”

  With that, Nathaniel rolled onto the ground and closed his eyes. Goldman got up and walked toward him, but Lilli stopped him. “Let him rest.”

  “Yeah,” Goldman said. “You’re right. Christ. What a story.”

  They walked into the darkness, leaving Nathaniel to his sleep.

  “This place is insane,” Lilli said. “That story just makes it all so much worse.”

  “Definitely. The Authority rules that territory. And the Great Ones were not a whole lot better in their way. Only Nate wanted something more. He and Amara.”

  “It makes him seem so human,” Lilli said. “It’s hard to picture him young and so foolishly in love.”

  “Was it that foolish?” Goldman asked. “Think of the world they lived in and what their expectations for a good life were. They didn’t need much more than they could get in their little ‘lost enclave.’”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true. It’s fucking awful.”

  “All the more reason for us to help make this all okay.”

  “Do you really think that this land will help us figure out how to stop what’s happening back home?”