She concentrated on their location but only picked up a kind of hazy silence where the five Ancients stood. Either they’d mastered a way of shielding their emotions from being read, or they had none. She looked at them for the first time in her life, though it was hard for her to stare into the light that they gave off.
Now she could see what Nell meant when she referred to the Ancients as strange things. They didn’t even look like people. At the time, she’d thought it was a mere slip of the tongue, but now she understood. The nearest Ancient seemed female, though she didn’t know why she thought that. There wasn’t a thing feminine about the creature, and it outsized any person she’d ever seen by two or three. The arena was probably the only room that they fit into comfortably.
Their heads were misshapen and held a few strands of long white hair. They were neither slender nor plump, but there was something incredibly solid about them. Both their bodies and faces bore sharp haunting angles with no roundness to them at all. Their skin was the color of old parchment and had strange faded patterns scrawled into it. They looked so out of place here, like they didn’t belong in her world. It was almost as if two- dimensional characters tore themselves out of a frightening portrait and began walking around.
As they drew nearer, their light burned more brightly. She kept her eyes locked on them, despite the pain, as long as she could before having to look away.
The largest of the Ancients spoke in a deep unearthly voice. “Brothers and Sisters, do you see? She cannot even bear the sight of purity. Does it hurt, Demon, to gaze upon me?”
It took her a moment to realize he was referring to her. She felt the curses rising to her throat but reeled them back and spoke the way Healers were supposed to speak, reverently.
“I’m no Demon, I’m a Healer. Born to serve, I’ve been entrusted with the sacred duty of freeing trapped spirits. It’s what I’ve always been and what I am now,” she said, her voice steady, though she had to fight to keep it that way.
He paused a moment before speaking. “What you have always been? You never wanted to be a Healer, never felt thankful for this ‘sacred duty’.”
She went to speak, but he silenced her with a raise of his sharp hand. Even their hands were different from hers. Amanda took in his claw-like appendage with strange tattoo-like markings a few shades darker than his yellowed skin.
“Amanda, you may lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me. You never wanted to be a Healer. Three years after the Dredging, you ran from us. You selfishly ran from your responsibility here. Then you came crawling back two years later. Why? Because you didn’t have the strength to stand on your own. You needed our strength, our energy, and our light because you had none,” he sneered at her.
She was burning with anger and couldn’t stop herself from shouting at him. “You don’t know me. I came back to this place because I wanted to learn how to help them. I wanted to be a better Healer. I just couldn’t handle failing them anymore. No, I didn’t come crawling back for your support, because it is not your strength and light that I call on. Unless you think yourselves Gods now?” she finished.
“Yes,” he answered. “Do you see my light and my power? Look around you. Look at my flock. If I’m not a God, what am I?”
It took her a moment to realize she was hearing his voice, not through her ears, but inside of her mind.
“You’re a monster!” she answered loudly. There were gasps all around the arena. The Healers seemed unable to believe what she’d just shouted at their beloved leaders. Some even began crying.
He smirked one last time at her before putting on a pained face and addressing the crowd. “I fear that she is beyond us, my friends,” he said, choking on faked emotion.
He turned and walked to the lone female Ancient and lightly touched her shoulder. She stepped forward as he fell back into her position. As she spoke, Amanda was surprised that it was still the first Ancient’s deep voice filling the air.
“What was the other thing you said, dear? Oh, yes, a Healer is what you are now. No, what you are now is ruined. I can smell the evil in your veins and don’t tell me you can’t feel it tearing the goodness from you. We all sense your pain.”
Amanda spoke steadily, remembering Nell’s advice, although she hadn’t done a very good job at following it. “I do feel the darkness in me, but I’m alive and so is my spirit. I am strong. My spirit will prevail. I’m not ruined. I’m fighting!”
“Spirit will prevail.” The Ancient turned to look at her.
“Do you really believe that, Amanda? Your spirit can barely manage the strength to heal a single Scar. You believe yourself strong enough to purge out this evil? Well, we do not.”
She turned and touched the smallest of the group who faced the audience and spoke to them in the same commanding voice. “We have reviewed the plight of this girl.” She waved his dagger-fingers toward her. “And we have found that death is in her best interest and the only way.”
Amanda’s heart jumped into her throat. Could they be serious? The hundreds of spectators began to make sounds of protest, apparently unconvinced.
The Ancients were unmoved by their discord.
The smallest Ancient began to speak again. “Brothers and Sisters, this is the best choice for her. If you dispute the truth of the statement, just look at her.” He turned to face her. “She’s in a beautiful dress of purity. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see what’s really before you, but it’s only an illusion. Look well, and you can see the poison underneath.”
The crowd was silenced by this as they studied her and saw the darkness of the living bruise swirling beneath the transparent fabric of her dress.
She realized why they’d put her in the gown and spoke up quickly. “The very same thing could be said about you. Your light is brighter than the sun, but so is an atomic bomb. All of you could be nothing more than a clever illusion, but I have faith you aren’t, and I have faith I’ll make it through this. My spirit is alive, and that’s no illusion,” Amanda said.
He glided quickly back to the group like a dog summoned back to its master. As he brushed the tallest softly on the cheek, his voice rang out in anger. He advanced toward her immobile frame. “How dare you compare our light to your darkness? Ours comes from above. We are conduits, and we harbor your powers. Without our strength, Healers wouldn’t be.” He turned back to the crowd and spoke with certainty. “If she loses the fight within, she won’t merely die. She’ll be no more. She’ll have joined the ranks of so many other lost souls, and we cannot let that happen. Will you stand idly by as her spirit fades, when there is a way to save her?”
“Save me? You’re going to murder me,” Amanda whispered but knew that the crowd of Healers had turned as mumbles of ‘save her’ reached her ears. She knew she was beyond the point of reasoning. She would die.
Kaedin didn’t have to fade. These were the strongest among them, and they could save her.
“I don’t need to be saved, but there is someone who does need saving. The Scar I came out of, will you find it? Please. The demon that did this to me is so strong, and there is this little spirit who needs to be—”
“We don’t seek Scars. They open to us when the spirits inside them are ready. It’s the way it’s always been, and it is the only way,” the Ancient said.
“There never is just one way, and she was ready. That’s why her Scar opened to me. You could find it. Please, just help her. I don’t care what you do to me. Just save her.” She was screaming at him again and tried to level off her voice.
He leaned down to her. His light was so bright it nearly burned her, and he whispered, “There is only one way, and it’s our way.” He straightened back up and addressed the group of Healers behind him. “Take her away; we have more to discuss.”
Two large men came and plucked her off the platform. One of them was her friend Cole. She’d always considered him her best friend, although he might not have known it. Amanda tried to avoid getting too close to anyone.
As the stranger and Cole carried her off, she looked up and saw tears staining Cole’s handsome face. His chiseled jaw was clenched tightly, and he looked as if he were holding back sobs. Amanda wished she could wipe away his tears. She hated seeing them on the cheeks that usually bore happy dimples.
She looked back at the Ancients and wanted to put up some sort of fight.
