Eight
Step. Balance. Step. Balance. Step. Balance.
It was all Alex could do to keep moving across the lake at a snail’s pace as the hours crawled by. Having skipped lunch to visit her parents and Draekora, Alex was both starving and exhausted. Not to mention, with continued use and a distinct lack of medication, her wounded leg was absolutely killing her.
Added to everything else, Alex was still damp and miserably cold from her earlier submersion, but she pressed on, balancing from rock to rock to rock as she made her way across the unending lake.
The bad news was that despite how much time passed and how far she estimated she’d travelled, there was still no land in sight.
The good news was that she’d had a lot of time to consider what the cloaked figure had said, and once again he’d tried to trip her up with his words. For the third task, he’d never said she couldn’t spill the water—just that she couldn’t drink it, and that the glass had to be full when she reached the end. Upon realising that, Alex had promptly tipped the liquid out and secured the glass inside her jacket, intending to scoop up some lake water when she arrived at her destination. The move had freed both her arms and enabled her to balance easier—and therefore, move at a faster pace.
When she hit what she presumed to be the five-hour mark, Alex knew something wasn’t right. Given the temperature of the water, it must still be winter wherever she was, so the sun should have long since started setting. And yet, it remained high in the sky as if it were still noon.
If she hadn’t already tested her theory, Alex would have been convinced that she was inside the Library, because nothing about her situation made sense. Who was the man who kept appearing and disappearing at will? How was he able to refill the glass as if by magic? Where did the lake come from, and where did it end? How were the floating stones circling into new positions? Why did it appear as if time wasn’t moving?
All of those questions could easily—if unorthodoxly—be answered if Alex was indeed still somewhere inside the Library. But if that were true, then why wasn’t she able to call forth a door to spirit herself to freedom?
Step. Balance. Step. Balance. Step. Balance.
On and on and on Alex walked, pausing to rest more frequently as the hours continued to pass. When it reached the stage where she was certain it should have been well into nighttime, she became convinced that she must be inside the Library. She certainly hoped that was the case and time was frozen in the outside world, since she had told her friends she would be back for dinner, and the last thing she needed was for them to carry out their promise to begin searching for her.
Step. Balance. Step. Balance. Step. Balance.
Step… Wobble.
Wobble.
Woooobbblllleee.
When Alex lost her footing and nearly plunged back into the icy water, she knew she couldn’t continue any further. Her stomach was cramping from hunger. Her throat was parched with thirst. The muscles in her good leg were burning from the strain of balancing her weight. The stabbing pains in her injured leg, which was again bleeding freely from constant use, were becoming more than she could bear. She was shivering from the cold, but also feverish from the effort of her journey.
She had, without a doubt, reached the end of what she could manage.
Alex’s mind and body stilled as she repeated her last conscious thought and then replayed the cloaked man’s instructions.
‘When you reach the end, the glass must be as full as when you started.’
All along, Alex had presumed the floating rocks were leading her somewhere tangible—like land. But what if the instructions weren’t about reaching the end of the lake, but rather, reaching the end of herself?
Barely able to keep her feet under her any longer, Alex withdrew the glass and, body screaming in protest, kneeled down on the shaking platform to fill it with water.
She didn’t have to rise again before the scenery around her abruptly transformed, with her now empty-handed and crouching on a plush rug in front of a burning fireplace.
Whimpering with relief, Alex stretched out her aching limbs until she was collapsed flat along the rug, soaking up the heat and allowing her muscles to relax for the first time in what felt like decades.
“I am reluctantly impressed.”
Alex didn’t move from her position, but she did flick her eyes up to the cloaked figure now standing above her.
Watching him, she couldn’t hold back a moan when he created another glass of water out of thin air and passed it down to her.
“No more tasks,” he said, and while his tone remained bland, there was a hint of reassurance in it. “This one’s to quench your thirst.”
At that, Alex forced her body up into a seated position and reached for the offered drink.
“Ten hours, fifty-four minutes and thirty-two seconds,” the man said as she guzzled down the water. “You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that.” He made a pensive sound and added, “I’m curious how different your result would have been without your Meyarin blood strengthening your balance and endurance.”
Alex was past the point of surprise when it came to what secrets this mysterious man knew about her.
“I’m not sure it works like that,” she croaked out between swallows. The glass somehow offered an unlimited supply of water, and only when her thirst had been sated did she set it aside and watch it promptly disappear from sight. “I can tap into the heightened senses, speed and reflexes of the immortal race, but I’m still limited by certain aspects of my human nature. Balance being one of those.”
He made another sound, perhaps agreement this time.
“Yet with training, any skill can be developed,” he said.
“Not the least of which is balance.”
“Are we speaking figuratively or literally?” she asked, too tired to keep up if he was still playing word games.
“Both, of course.”
Alex sighed. “Of course.”
Noticing her wound dribbling blood onto the rug, Alex unwound the soggy bandage to inspect the damage. It wasn’t as bad as when she’d first been impaled, but the healing effects of the laendra were nowhere near as good as they had been before she’d travelled for nearly eleven hours on it.
Re-bandaging her leg and wincing at the renewed compression, Alex asked, “Any chance you’ll explain what all that was about?”
Given the lack of answers she was generally offered by most people in her life, Alex was downright shocked when a plush armchair appeared in front of her and the man sat down, heeding her request.
“Three tasks I gave you to judge your worthiness,” he said. “The first was to assess your complex reasoning skills by testing the speed by which you solved a problem while under pressure.” He paused. “You passed with acceptable swiftness.”
Alex snorted, since she’d practically inhaled the water in her first test. There was no way she could have acted any quicker than that, and he damn well knew it. Acceptable swiftness, my ass, she thought.
“The second task was to test how willing you were to put aside your natural inclinations towards trusting those around you and instead follow your instincts in high-risk situations.” He repositioned his hood as if to keep the light of the flames from revealing his face. “Again, you passed, but only just. There may come a time, Alexandra Jennings, when no matter how close you are with your loved ones, the only person you will be able to trust is yourself.”
Alex didn’t like what he was implying. “If I can’t trust the people I care about, then we might as well give up now.” She remembered Kyia’s words from earlier that day—relatively speaking—and added, “There’s no way I’ll be able to face what’s ahead without them by my side.”
“You of all people know that no one is safe from Aven’s reach—no one except for you and, perhaps, those once bound to you,” the man said. “What assurances do you have that your closest friends aren’t already Claimed by him, just like what happened with Jordan Sparker? Tell me this, Alexandra: without first Claiming them yourself, how would you know?”
Alex turned cold all over again as his point clutched painfully at her heart. The truth was, she hadn’t realised Jordan was Claimed, because Aven had ordered him to act as normal as possible. Sure, she had felt as if something was off about him, but she’d attributed it to other factors, like his miserable family.
“For the challenges you’ll face, you will need your friends by your side,” the man said, his monotone softening as if to comfort her—albeit slightly. “But you need to be aware of the possibilities and willing to put aside your faith in them if your instincts are telling you something different. Had you not decided to test the water in the glass and therefore distrust my word about its acidity, you would have soon fallen and, consequently, failed.”
Alex nodded, unable to form words of agreement yet also understanding what he was telling her. “And the final task?”
“That was to see how far you were willing to go to reach your goals. How stubborn your will, as it were,” he answered. “It was aimed to test the strength of your character in the face of what appeared to be an impossible, unending quest.”
“And I passed?”
“You didn’t give up, not until you reached your very end—and far beyond it, I dare say,” he responded.
Since that wasn’t quite an answer, Alex repeated, “So… I passed?”
The flames flickered across his cloak and the silence stretched on until he finally confirmed, “You passed.”
This was a good thing, Alex tried to remind herself. But in her current physical condition, she found it difficult to call forth any excitement.
“So that means you’ll take me on as a student?” she clarified. “That you’ll teach me how to strengthen my gift so I can expand the range and share it with others?” She paused, realising that she’d never actually confirmed his ability to do so. “You can do that, right? Teach something like that, I mean.”
“With the right level of dedication, almost anything can be taught.”
Again, that wasn’t exactly an answer. And he was now just repeating himself from earlier.
“Is that a yes?”
The man’s cloaked shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “It is not a no.”
Alex frowned at him. “Could you be less vague? The fate of the world kind of rests on your answer.”
“Tenacious you might be, but I see you also tend towards the dramatic.”
Closing her eyes and counting to ten, Alex waited until her urge to throw a burning log at his head passed before she spoke. When she did, her voice was hushed, serious. “You seem to know more about me than most, so don’t act like you’re ignorant of what’s happening out there and the role I have to play in it. Tell me right now—are you just wasting my time, or can you teach me what I need to know?”
A shuffle of material as he shifted in the seat. A long moment of weighted quiet. And then, “I can teach you what you need to know. However,”—he pointed a gloved finger at her—“whether you will learn is something only you can decide.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Alex whispered her promise.
“I know you will, Alexandra Jennings. You showed me that in ten hours, fifty-four minutes and thirty-two seconds. That dedication is the only reason I’m agreeing to help you. Because without it, you would fail before we even began. And I don’t need to tell you what that would mean for this world.”
Alex drew her legs up and, ignoring the throbbing pain, wrapped her arms around her knees, staring into the fire while slowly nodding.
“What happens now?” she asked, her voice hesitant.
This time, he didn’t make her wait. “As you have likely guessed, we are currently confined within the walls of the Library. But before you interrupt with the questions I can see in your eyes, no, I am not Chosen, nor have I ever been a headmaster of Akarnae. I am also not Meyarin, thus I am not in any way related to Eanraka. The reason I can wander these halls and utilise the secrets within is not knowledge you have yet earned, so do not ask.”
Alex hadn’t seen the man’s face, let alone learned his name, so while he clearly knew her secrets, she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t plan on sharing his own.
“All you need to know is, while in here, my authority supersedes yours.”
“Is that why I couldn’t open a door to leave the lake?” Alex asked.
A dip of his cloaked head was all the confirmation she received. “The Library, as you know, is sentient. As such, it understands that there will be times when you will have to struggle through obstacles to learn the things you need to learn.”
He leaned towards her, his posture demanding her full attention as he continued, “Make no mistake, Alexandra. There will be nothing easy about the tasks I set you.” He waved a gloved hand in her direction. “Consider your gift as a muscle. You cannot strengthen it without hard work, discipline and patience. It must be pushed to its limits—just as you will be.”
Alex drew even tighter into herself, uneasy about what she might have to endure under his tutelage.
“Now,” he said, sitting back again, “presuming you still wish to continue, I have one requirement and one rule. The requirement is that you tell no one about me. You may share that you are attempting to strengthen your gift, but you will give no other details about how that is being done or who is teaching you.” He hesitated before allowing, “The only exception is the Meyarin to whom you are mentally bound, though you must swear him to silence.”
Alex didn’t like the idea of keeping such an important secret from her friends, but if that was the price she had to pay, then so be it.
“As for the rule, there is just the one,” the man continued. “Break it once, and you’ll experience my displeasure. Break it twice, and you will no longer be my student.”
From her huddled position on the ground, Alex raised her eyebrows. “And that rule is?”
“Never question my training methods,” he told her. “Everything I do is for a reason, whether you comprehend that reason or not. I will suffer no demands for explanations. You either follow my instructions without comment, or we’re finished.”
Well. That was about as black and white as he could make it. No room for ambiguity there.
“So,” Alex said, “what you’re saying is, it’s your way or the highway?”
Predictably, he didn’t respond. Until he did.
“That, Alexandra, sounds very much like you questioning me.”
Crap.
“I—”
“But since we have not officially begun your training, I’ll allow you a grace period—for today only.”
Alex swallowed. “Uh. Thanks. And, um, sorry. Habit, and all that.”
“A habit that you’ll want to break swiftly if you plan on spending any time with me.”
Nodding, she muttered, “Duly noted.”
The man stood. “You’ve had enough for now.”
With his words, the armchair disappeared, as did the fireplace and the rug, along with the nothingness of the rest of the space around them. Instead, Alex found herself still curled in a ball but now sitting on the rocky ground in a familiar underground cavern divided by a narrow river—the place where she’d first discovered she could step back through to Freya.
“Your curfew is ten pm,” the man said. “You will therefore meet me here every evening promptly at nine. How long we train each night will depend on how quickly you complete the tasks I set you, but the Library will ensure that, while you are with me, time will not pass for the rest of the world.”
Alex opened her mouth to point out a problem, but he beat her to it.
“On Tuesdays and Thursdays when you have your Stealth and Subterfuge class until nine-thirty, you will come here directly from there. Tardiness on any other day will be considered unacceptable.”
This guy was something else.
“Do we have an agreement?”
Like I have much of a choice, Alex thought. Either she put up with a grumpy, monotonous taskmaster, or she didn’t. But since the latter would doom the entire world, her answer required little consideration.
“Yes, we have an agreement,” Alex said, uncurling from her ball and rising to her feet. “Do you have a name? Or should I just keep calling you Mr. Mystery Man?”
“If you do turn up for your first lesson tomorrow night, I shall give you a name. In the meantime, I suggest you get some rest—and some medical attention. You must be prepared to work tomorrow, and work hard.”
With those sombre words of warning, he disappeared, leaving Alex alone in the cavern with a thousand questions and the knowledge that, thanks to his rules, she couldn’t ask any of them.