Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 Read Online Free Page B

lay the bones of those who had been killed in the fight over possession of The Catalyst, the one prophesied with the power to join the Four Worlds, Khatrene’s baby.
    Prior to that battle, Talis, Khatrene and her dead brother Mihale had fled into exile on Atheyre where they had spent the last eight months, while here on the Earthworld of Ennae more than three years had passed. On the Waterworld of Magoria the baby Glimmer had grown to be sixteen, because each of the Four Worlds moved five times faster than its neighbour in the void. This was how Khatrene, who had been separated from her brother and left on Magoria, had returned to Ennae ten years older than her seventeen-year-old twin.
    Now that seventeen-year-old king faced troubles enough to daunt an experienced ruler. Their enemy The Dark had been vanquished, but his allies, the invading Northmen, were yet to be driven from the Southlands. Added to that, the Maelstrom’s destructive force had been unleashed. It was little wonder their young sovereign coveted the stone. He would need every advantage to safeguard his people.
    ‘The Catalyst is gone,’ Mihale said and Talis was jolted from his thoughts. ‘She is no longer on this world.’
    ‘But … we just got here,’ Khatrene said in a disbelieving whisper. ‘How could she be gone?’
    ‘We are the only royal blood on Ennae,’ he told her, his youthful voice echoing overloud in the solemn chamber of death.
    Talis shook his head. ‘Majesty … why would she leave?’ The Catalyst could only join the Four Worlds from the Earthworld of Ennae. Was she defying her destiny? ‘The Maelstrom comes, she … should be here,’ he said, aware of his beloved’s stillness beside him. Khatrene had waited all of her daughter’s life for this reunion. Talis could not begin to imagine her disappointment.
    Yet it was disbelief that sounded more prominent in her voice. ‘How do you know she’s not here?’ Khatrene asked. ‘Did the voice tell you?’
    Talis was still confused by this talk of a disembodied voice that had spoken first to Khatrene inside her mind and, on leaving her, apparently to her brother. Certainly on Atheyre, while Talis had been using his Guardian powers to assess his king, revived from death but not yet awake, he had heard whispers in the boy’s mind. Khatrene had assured him that the voice she had heard was sage and offered her nothing more than advice, yet Talis felt unsettled. His young king’s behaviour had been uncharacteristic since the moment of his awakening.
    ‘The talisman tells me,’ Mihale said, fingering the dull stone.
    Khatrene frowned at this and even Talis felt uncomfortable. If the stone had not aided Mihale to open the way between the worlds, it was unlikely to be offering him portents now. The more likely truth was that he heard the same voice she had. Yet he denied it.
    ‘Where is Glimmer then?’ Khatrene asked.
    ‘I know not,’ Mihale replied, and Talis felt his discomfort grow.
    The King gazed at his sister in defiance, and she back at him in suspicion. Talis looked upon them both, and despite their different ages they were like two sides of the same coin.
    Their royal ancestry had endowed them both with snow hair and royal-hued eyes which set them apart from every other occupant of Ennae whose colouring of skin, hair and eyes was from the palette of their world — brown. Even the White Twins’ skin was of a different hue, pink Khatrene called it and had told Talis that on Magoria the people were all of that shading, and more — there were green trees, blue sky, purple sunsets.
    Talis had learnt the words but had been unable to imagine them while he lived in a world of brown seas and skies — until Khatrene’s divinity as The Light had been revealed. Now, exactly as it had done when she had been last on their homeworld of Ennae, his beloved’s magical aura burst forth into multihued brilliance as sunlight struck her from the skylight above. Rainbow colours.
    Mihale