Page 45 of Dark Shaman: The Lost Treasure
Something about what Tony had said bothered Eluheed. If becoming immortal was a choice and not a birthright, how did the dormant children transition into immortality?
"You said that the girls are not allowed to become immortal. That implies it's a choice, something that can be granted or withheld."
Tony studied him for a long moment. "You really don't know, do you?"
"I'm beginning to realize there's a great deal I don't know," Eluheed admitted, which was true enough.
Tony bent back over his notebook, sketching with renewed focus. "The immortal males have fangs and venom. When they bite someone who carries the dormant godly genes, it activates them. The person goes through a transition and becomes immortal, but only the boys are induced."
Eluheed's mind reeled. Fangs and venom? His own path to immortality had been completely different. These immortals were an entirely different species.
"The sons born to immortal or dormant females and human males can be activated when they reach puberty," Tony said."They get induced by older immortals and become warriors in Lord Navuh’s army of immortal soldiers."
"Why not induce the daughters as well?" Eluheed asked.
"Navuh wants them to remain dormant because their fertility is as high as human females when they're dormant. Once they transition to immortality, their fertility drops dramatically. He wants breeders, not more immortal females. That's why the boys are removed from the Dormants' enclosure as soon as they reach puberty and moved to the training camp. The Dormants are kept away from immortal males so they don't get activated by mistake or purposely."
"That's monstrous," Eluheed spat, forgetting to maintain his pretense of casual interest.
"Welcome to Navuh's world," Tony said dryly. "Where women are breeding stock and men are cannon fodder."
Eluheed felt sick. He'd known Navuh was evil, but the industrialized approach to breeding an army was on another level.
"The girls born in the Dormant enclosure are doomed to the same fate as their mothers," Tony added quietly. "Generation after generation, trapped in a cycle of breeding more soldiers for Navuh's insane quest for world domination."
Eluheed's mind raced as he tried to process everything Tony had told him. Immortals with fangs and venom. Dormant genes that could be activated. Breeding programs designed to create armies.
What kind of crazy world had he stumbled into?
15
TAMIRA
The inner garden was Tamira's favorite place in the harem, and as she sat at her favorite bench by the fountain with a book in her hands, she positioned herself so she had a clear view of the balconies.
Elias had been moved to the second level earlier that day, and the news had spread through the harem's invisible network with typical efficiency, whispered between servants and confirmed by Areana's announcement at breakfast.
Tamira couldn't contain her curiosity about the man who was supposedly a shaman, but she couldn't simply knock on his door. That wasn't how a lady operated, although she could see Tula doing just that.
Well, she wasn't Tula, and she valued the art of subtlety, of letting things unfold naturally or at least to appear to. So, she waited, turning the pages of her book and occasionally lifting her eyes to check the balconies.
The book in her lap wasn't a prop, though. She'd gotten it in the latest delivery a few days ago and had been reading it ever since.The Power of Intention: Manifesting Your Heart's Desireswas an interesting read.
The fountain's steady cascade provided a modicum of privacy, its white noise potentially masking conversation from listening devices. She knew better than to trust it completely, of course.
In the harem, privacy was an illusion.
Even with the fountain obscuring sounds, cameras could capture lip movements, and anyone who'd lived long enough could read lips, provided they knew the language being spoken. She didn't know where the cameras were hidden, but she assumed the tropical foliage camouflaged them. Her room and the rooms of the other ladies were free of such devices, allowing them some privacy, but the public areas were a different story. Tula claimed that Tony's room was also bugged, so Tamira assumed that Elias's room was bugged as well, but that wasn't something she was worried about at this point.
She wondered what languages Elias spoke. Over the endless years of her captivity, she'd collected languages like other women collected pearls. Each new tongue mastered was another small victory against the monotony, another way to fill the centuries. Her accents might not be accurate because she'd learned most of them from books and hadn't heard them spoken, but her vocabulary in many of them was extensive.
These days, learning was easier than ever with books on tablets that could translate words with the press of a finger. When she'd been a girl in Sumer, only the gods had possessed such miraculous devices. Now, everyone used them, but the harem's tablets were regrettably connected only to an internal server. Lord Navuh didn't allow the harem to be connected to the internet, which she'd read about and seen in movies.
Their window to the outside world was narrow and carefully monitored—a vast library of approved books and films—but it was what it was, and she did her best with what was available to her.
The book grew warm in her lap as the afternoon progressed. Tamira had not chosen this title because she wanted to impress the newcomer with her reading material, but she hoped that a shaman would have opinions on manifestation and spiritual desire.
She closed her eyes and tried to practice what the book preached.Come out, she willed, picturing Elias appearing on his balcony.Be curious. Come down to the garden.The author claimed that focused intention could reshape reality, that believing strongly enough in an outcome could make it manifest. It sounded like New Age nonsense, the kind of philosophy that flourishes among humans who have decades to fill with meaning, not millennia. But what harm could it do to try?
