The Multitude, стр. 14
Gabriella had heard numerous tales of valor about these warriors. They’d been stationed in scattered outposts along the edge of a thick forest separating Sanctimonia from Virtus. Many a barbarian raider had stolen through these woods in the past, usually during the dead of night. The guardians watched for them.
A woman such as Carmella held a revered position in the Mystic tribe, one inherited, perhaps from a husband who’d been killed. The job would pass to Maynya one day.
Carmella looked toward the window at Maynya and shook her head. She began creeping sideways, shooting glances at the woods while closing the distance to the cabin. When she reached the window, she glared with such ferocity a timid girl would have scampered away in terror.
Instead, Maynya raised an insistent voice through the open window. “Ego sum siccus.” I am thirsty.
Her mother’s expression darkened further. “Servo vestri own postulo!”
No help would be coming from that quarter any time soon.
Maynya headed to the table on her own. She hauled herself onto one of the chairs, stood upright, managed to keep her balance, and scooped water out of a basin with a tin cup. After she drank her fill, she scrambled back down and returned to her cot.
The girl closed her eyes again.
Gabriella fought off a new onslaught of claustrophobia. If she wanted to travel beyond her cabin grounds, blindness would be the price she’d have to pay whenever Maynya slept. She calmed herself with the rhythm of the girl’s heartbeat, the chirp of crickets out the window, the whisper of wind against the cabin walls. To pass the time, she put her mind to work on the puzzle of God’s recent signs, but pieces still seemed to be missing. Best to be patient and let Him play His hand.
Eventually, Carla awakened, cracking her eyes open.
Gabriella gasped at what could only be described as Dali’s version of the Syracuse bedroom. A half-opened dresser drawer melted to the floor. Cassy the deer floated toward the ceiling. The room brightened. The ceiling turned from off-white to lavender.
An eye-blink later, everything reverted to normal.
She probed Carla’s mind for the reason and beheld something so rare and beautiful she could scarcely believe her eyes. The fleeting illusions had been caused by an extra brain lobe—the type found among only a few blessed mortals, such as Henry Stoddard. Though microscopic in size, these lobes gave their hosts the ability to project massive illusions…a gift or curse, depending on the local reaction. Although some societies revered those gifted by God with extrasensory abilities, history held many examples of illusion casters persecuted as witches…or sorcerers. Henry spent most of his time as a hermit for a reason.
Spiritualist or demon? Carla wouldn’t likely be regarded as either. She had the lobe but lacked the sharpened cognizance required for casting illusions. Not that she was a dull girl. She simply didn’t know she possessed her gift. And telling her would do no good. She had to feel the power within.
Gabriella blamed herself. Two thousand years earlier, she’d split every soul in existence. Suppose she’d weakened those with special powers to the point they didn’t know they had any? In that case, those descendants still divided would cast only the dimmest of psychic glows, like too many lamps plugged into the same socket. Only if merged together might Maynya serve as the switch and Carla the light.
Then she considered the opposite possibility. What if Carla were the switch and Maynya the light? Gabriella collapsed onto the edge of the bed.
Oh, what a light show Maynya might be! The ramifications exploded like multicolored fireworks in Gabriella’s head. They tasted like chocolate, smelled like perfume, and warmed like crackling logs in a fire.
Within the woods of the Mystics, or better yet, the much darker desert home of the Virtus barbarians, an illusion caster might be regarded as a miracle worker. Maynya could mesmerize a following, inspiring them to look upon her as a true messiah, if she harnessed her power. Thrust into a leadership role by this circumstance, she could preach a message of love and altruism guaranteed to etch itself into her followers’ minds.
God had lifted His elusive whispers to a roar when He sent the girl to Gabriella, providing—at last!—a solution to a forty-year-old riddle. Why had the Sanctimonia cabin been placed where it was?
For Maynya to find.
Gabriella needed to bring the two half souls back together, igniting their lamp to warm the cold universe across the portal. She glanced over her shoulder at the smoke. Suppose she snatched Carla out of bed and carried her to her twin, where the two girls might merge into a single messiah?
No. She could never steal a woman’s child.
Could she?
Well, maybe, but the portal had never admitted a mortal before. The Mystics had always flinched away from its heat.
Besides, she needed to bring the girls’ souls together, not their bodies.
A hint of an idea tickled the back of her mind but darted like a dust mote each time she tried to grab hold of it.
A scream rose from the other bedroom.
Gabriella hurried across the hall.
CHAPTER 6
A moment later, in the bedroom across from young Carla
The girl’s mother, Bethany, leaned against the headboard of her bed, still fast asleep but with eyes wide open. She stared sightlessly through the tangle of dark hair hanging down her face. “Make them stop!” she rasped.
Gabriella touched the woman’s wrist. “Shh. You’re just having a bad dream.”
Bethany slumped down to her pillow. Her breathing slowed. “Visions,” she muttered.
Visions? Gabriella’s heart beat faster. Visions could be messages from God!
She dove into Bethany’s subconscious.
Gabriella squinted at the glare of a bright, sunny day. She and Bethany stood on an unusually empty Manhattan sidewalk. In the near distance, flashing emergency lights