The Amber Legacy Read Free Page A

somehow, in the absence of light, she could see clearly and that only made this dream more eerie than the others. She was in a dark place and yet she could see. And she could hear his voice. He was always whispering something, but the words were never clear in the dream, just a tone that compelled her to search for him. Even in the dream, she knew she’d dreamed what was happening before. There was a dark corner ahead and she knew he was somewhere in the darkness just beyond it, waiting for her, calling to her. Yet she never turned the corner.
    A shiver raced along her spine the moment she entered the cave. Smoke drifted in the flickering torchlight, irritating her nose and eyes, from a half-consumed cigarette teetering on the edge of the stone table. Samuel was the only person in the village who smoked. Others had experimented with the strange foreign habit, and rejected it. ‘What’s the sense in sucking smoke into your lungs?’ Dawn asked. ‘You might just as well stand over the fireplace and breathe it all in.’ Meg saw no sense in the habit either. Also on the table, a shiny black bush rat was engrossed in cleaning its whiskers, as if it considered the humans irrelevant. Bush rats are brown , Meg noted. Why is this one black?
    ‘Five people,’ the old man announced, as he stared into a sliver of amber crystal resting on the grey stone. ‘There will come five people. Their lives will be inextricably linked with your own. One will be a thief. One a killer of men. One a young woman of beauty and low virtue. One will be in business. And one will be a king-in-waiting. You must beware the king-in-waiting. He will be your nemesis.’ Samuel raised his brown eyes, and when he licked his cracked lips a gob of spittle lodged in a hairy wrinkle by his mouth.
    Don’t ever let me get old and disgusting , Meg thought, fighting the gorge welling in her throat.
    The old man grinned, revealing his rotting yellow teeth and sunken gums where other teeth had once been. ‘You will grow very old,’ he told her, ‘and with it you will gain great wisdom.’ Ignoring her gasp of surprise, he returned his attention to the amber crystal. ‘Before all of these there will come others,’ he continued. ‘One will be a soldier and he will bring you great happiness and greater sorrow. One will test you. One will take you to a great city in a foreign land. One will tempt you with impossible promises. Two will be your loves. One will be your greatest threat and your greatest hope.’
    ‘Are these the same people?’ Meg interrupted.
    The soothsayer looked up and shook his head. ‘Much is hidden,’ he said in his croaky voice, ‘but be patient, girl. There is something else here, something powerful.’ He looked down again.
    Meg waited for more predictions, but the old man was silent. Irritated by his silence, her attention drifted from the grey stone tabletop to the cave’s dark and cluttered walls. Weird things hung from myriad hooks and wires—dried animal and bird carcasses, rusted weapons and farming implements, assorted string, clothand hessian bags, all bulging with odd contents; sticks, clothes, dried plants. The cave stank of a putrid mixture of offal, rotting vegetable matter and sweat. Towering in the shadows near the entrance was a stuffed fully grown grey kangaroo. Why would anyone want to keep dead, stuffed animals? she wondered. Bored, she refocussed on Samuel, and was astonished to find him still staring at the crystal. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Hey. Old man.’ He did not respond. Sweat beaded on his furrowed brow. ‘Hey!’ she yelled. The rat sat up and stared inquisitively.
    Samuel’s body jerked, as if he’d pulled away from an invisible hold, and he nearly fell off his low wooden stool. He gulped in deep, desperate breaths like someone resurfacing from being underwater for almost too long, but his wild gaze did not diminish. To Meg, he half-whispered, ‘You are pursued by the shadows of death, girl. The weight