Page 26 of Dark Shaman: Eternal Hope (The Children Of The Gods #100)

ELUHEED

T he morning sun beat down on Eluheed's back as he knelt in his herb garden, but he didn't mind.

There was something so soothing about being surrounded by rows of fragrant herbs, the scent of fertile earth, the buzz of insects, the distant sound of waves, and about dipping his hands in the rich soil.

Tony worked beside him, less enthusiastic about the dirt under his fingernails but surprisingly still eager to learn about growing things in general and medicinal plants in particular.

"Is this the one you gave me for my headaches?" Tony held up a sprig of feverfew.

"It was one of the herbs." Eluheed patted soil around a newly transplanted sage plant. "It's good for other things as well, but the preparation matters as much as the plant itself. Too strong and you'll cause more problems than you solve."

They'd been working for a couple of hours already, taking advantage of the cooler morning hours, but they would need to call it a day soon, wash up, and join their ladies.

It wasn't a bad life, and if Eluheed didn't have a vow to fulfill and Tamira didn't have a son she wanted to find, there would have been no urgency to find a way to escape this island.

It would take many years before people started noticing that he didn't age.

His charges could wait as well, and yet Eluheed felt in his bones that time was running out and that he needed to hurry up with the escape plans.

The sound of approaching footsteps made him look up, and he saw a guard striding toward them with purpose.

"The lord requires your presence, shaman," the guard said.

Eluheed set down his trowel. "Right now?"

"Immediately."

"I need to change first." Eluheed gestured at his soil-stained clothes and lifted his hand to show the guard the dirt caked under his fingernails. "Give me five minutes to clean up."

"There's no time. The lord is waiting, and if you know what's good for you, you won't make him wait a second longer than necessary."

"Right." Eluheed rose to his feet, brushing the worst of the dirt from his pants. His hands were hopeless, though, with soil ground into every crease and embedded under each nail.

Tony shot him a sympathetic look. "I'll finish here."

Eluheed nodded, then followed the guard toward the double fence while trying to clean his hands on his already-dirty pants. That only made things worse.

The guard noticed and seemed amused. "The lord couldn't care less about what you look like, shaman."

"I care," Eluheed murmured under his breath.

The guy shrugged and motioned for him to keep going toward the waiting vehicle beyond the second fence.

The driver of the jeep was an immortal, but he wasn't enhanced.

Music from the radio filled the awkward silence, the island's station broadcasting popular tunes that were occasionally interspersed by praises to the magnificent Lord Navuh.

The ruler of this island certainly lived large and had one hell of a god complex.

Eluheed was just grateful that he and the rest of the harem seemed to be exempt from the constant indoctrination bits.

Absentmindedly, he watched the scenery passing by, the beautiful greenery that covered every unclaimed portion of the island, and the construction crews that were still working on the damaged buildings, but his mind was on what Navuh expected him to do.

One option was that the lord wanted a personal session and a vision concerning his future, and the other was that he wanted Eluheed to touch one of the enhanced ones again.

As the jeep entered the underground military complex, the temperature dropped the further down they descended. The fluorescent lights made the dirt on Eluheed's clothes look even darker, more pronounced, but he forced himself not to think about it.

It was what it was.

Navuh waited inside the detention facility, immaculate as always in his black attire. His eyes took in Eluheed's appearance with one sweep, and his mouth twisted in distaste.

"Forgive my appearance, my lord. The guard said that you wanted to see me urgently."

Navuh waved away the apology. "Your appearance is of no consequence. My time is."

"Of course, my lord." Eluheed bowed his head. "Your time is priceless."

"It is." Navuh turned to look at the long row of detention cells. "I need you to take another look at their shared collective. They are still not talking, but they are twitching less and eating more. I wonder if the withdrawal symptoms have eased."

Wouldn't it have been easier to just ask them?

But Eluheed didn't say that. Instead, he dipped his head again. "As you wish, my lord."

Their small procession passed the communal cell where the regular soldiers were kept. These men played cards and talked quietly, seemingly resigned to their imprisonment. But in the isolation wing, the silence was absolute. It was as if there was no one in those cells.

"I want to monitor what's happening with them," Navuh said, stopping at an interrogation room.

"And since they are not communicating with their guards or each other, you are the only one who can tell me whether they're planning something or if they're simply escaping somewhere in their heads that we can't access. "

Through the reinforced window, Eluheed could see guards preparing the space—bringing in the reinforced chair, checking restraints. His hands clenched involuntarily, driving dirt deeper under his nails.

"The same precautions as before?" he asked.

"Yes. But this time, it's a different soldier. His name is Malak." Navuh gestured to the guards, who left to retrieve the prisoner. "I've learned that he was one of their strategists. Perhaps his mind will be more organized than Nahil's."

When they brought Malak in, the soldier didn't resist the chains, didn't even seem aware of them. His eyes were open but unfocused or perhaps focused on something only he could see.

"He's either in their shared space or his brain is fried," Eluheed observed.

He approached the guy slowly, noting how Malak didn't track his movement. The soldier's breathing was deep and regular, almost hypnotic in its rhythm.

"Malak," Eluheed said.

There was no response.

"I'm going to touch your arm now."

Still nothing. Malak might have been carved from stone.

Eluheed placed his hand on the soldier's forearm, prepared for the violent pull of consciousness he'd experienced before.

Instead, he found himself slipping into something that felt almost peaceful.

The transition was smoother this time, like slipping into water instead of being pulled under.

The chaos he'd encountered before had evolved into something more organized —still turbulent, but with patterns, currents, and an underlying rhythm.

Another visitor, one of the voices in the void, said .

The bounded one, another said .

He brings the earth with him .

That last thought made Eluheed freeze. In this space, everything about him was more exposed—not just his thoughts but the essence of what clung to him.

Soil. Growing things. Life and death and life again.

He tends the gardens.

More than that. The earth knows him .

The attention of multiple consciousness turned toward him, drawn by something in the soil under his nails, the plant oils on his skin. In the physical world, these were just dirty hands. Here, they carried stories, and these men were hungry for something to occupy their shared mind.

Eluheed reinforced his mental shields, trying to pull back, but the curious presence from before was there again, stronger now.

An old dirt. Much older.

From another place. Not Earth.

Eluheed severed the connection, jerking his hand away from Malak's arm.

The interrogation room slammed back into focus, harsh lights reflecting off concrete, the astringent smell of industrial cleaning products tickling his nostrils.

"What happened?" Navuh demanded. "You pulled away violently."

Eluheed's heart was racing. "It's much less chaotic in there, and they are perceptive." He looked at his hands. "Malak shared with them that he smelled earth on me, and they wanted to find out more. They are bored and hungry for stories."

Navuh's eyes sharpened. "What kind of stories?"

"Anything. They were fascinated by the idea that I work with plants. That I tend gardens." It was true enough, though incomplete. "One consciousness in particular is very curious about external stimuli. It latched on to these details and tried to construct a picture of who I was."

"Could they have learned anything they were not supposed to know?"

Eluheed shook his head. "I disconnected before they could go deeper. But they're definitely evolving. The isolation is allowing them to explore their connection without distraction."

Navuh began his characteristic pacing—three steps one way, three back. "So, they're using the imprisonment to grow their abilities."

"In a way. Without external stimuli, they're turning inward. Or rather, toward each other. If you don't want them to keep doing that, perhaps playing music or showing them movies could be a distraction."

Navuh regarded him with thinly veiled amusement. "I know that you don't believe that. They can tune out exterior stimuli."

Eluheed let out a breath. "Forgive me, my lord. I wasn't thinking clearly. You are absolutely correct. They've found each other in a space where physical conditions are largely irrelevant."

"Then what do you recommend?"

That was a loaded question, and he didn't want to give Navuh an answer that would result in the execution of these men.

The truth was that they were dangerous, and the prudent thing to do would have been just that, but it wasn't Eluheed's responsibility to determine their fate.

"There isn't much to do except to frequently monitor them. They're in a process of becoming, and I assume you would like to understand what they're becoming before the process is complete."

He might have just bought these poor souls a few more days to live.

"Could you do this daily?" Navuh asked.

The thought made Eluheed's gut twist. Each contact risked exposure, especially now that they were becoming more perceptive and more intrusive in their pursuit of entertainment.

"Every other day would be safer, my lord. Repeated exposure might allow them to map me, for lack of a better term. To understand my mental architecture well enough to predict and possibly manipulate it."

Navuh considered this. "You're concerned they could influence you?"

"It's possible. They're learning to work as one mind. Against that unity, an individual consciousness, especially a human one, might be vulnerable."

The lie was wrapped in truth. He was vulnerable, just not in the way Navuh assumed.

"Every other day then," Navuh agreed.

"Thank you, my lord." Eluheed bowed again.

As they walked back through the facility, Navuh seemed contemplative. "What did you mean when you said they wanted stories of the earth you carried?"

Eluheed chose his words carefully. "It was like they were trying to read a book written in a language they only partially understood. They could sense there was meaning there but couldn't quite grasp it."

"Meaning in dirt?"

"Everything carries information, my lord. The soil contains minerals from specific locations, pollen from certain plants, and microscopic life unique to particular environments. To a consciousness that has expanded beyond normal limitations, these details might be significant."

On the drive back to the harem, Eluheed stared at his soil-caked hands and thought about the answer he'd given Navuh.

The enhanced soldiers had sensed something about him that was more than skin deep.

Somehow, the dirt on his hands created a bridge to his past, which was why he'd ejected so quickly, severing the connection.

He couldn't allow them to find out that he was not human.