Chapter VII, Reading 5

"His Majesty also gave me the hereditary symbols of the King: the crown; the scepter; and a neck chain made from interlocking links of white and yellow gold.  He told me I was responsible for their safe keeping for I needed to keep them for the future king of our world.  I will give them to you, Flindra, when you leave.  You will have to give them to your King when he claims you.  He will have need of them."

"I will see that he gets them."

"Upon the conclusion of my meeting with the King and Queen, I immediately set out to search for the knowledge which would help our world in some distant time, but would not aid my beloved King and Queen in the present I shared with them.  I was led here, to these caverns, and it has been here that the Spirit has shared much of the knowledge we need to defeat the Kwetwer and the Ansu armies."

"Did you ever see King Meldh or Queen Kwenth again?"

"No."  Kewero shook her head sadly.  "I spent several years in this cave complex, all the time absorbing the knowledge our world needs to survive."

Kewero's face grew deeply troubled and there was unmistakable pain in her eyes.

"When I finally returned to the world I knelt and wept, for all around me was destruction.  The lush green of life had been supplanted by the dismal brown of naked soil and barren rock.  I traveled for days through this wasteland until I came to the place, which had once been the proud estates and castle of King Meldh.

"The devastation was indescribable.  Before me stretched a burned area which was roughly circular in shape and many leagues in diameter.  Whatever it was that had caused the area to ignite had incinerated the soil, leaving only the bare rock beneath.  The rock itself had been baked in the intense heat to the point that metamorphism of the minerals had begun.  As I looked around in shock, I knew that what I looked upon was evidence of the power of one Kwetwer and I knew I still had much to learn before I could direct my future champion to stand fast against all of them.

"I then searched for Princess Melenth.  She was alive with her foster family in an area of forest ignored by the Ansu.  It was an island of life in a world laid waste.

"Since that time I have carried out Queen Kwenth's instructions to protect her line.  For some reason, in any generation only one child has been born.  I was thankful that this was the case, for I could then focus my attention on this lone child.  I have hidden your forebears among simple people, noble families, merchants, and artisans.  This left a tangled skein for the Ansu to unravel.  Sometimes I had to separate parents and child as I did with you.  I did this to minimize the risk from the Ansu when their agents had discovered the family.  More often, I just arranged marriages to different and distant people.

"When I haven't been seeing to the safety of your ancestors, I have been trying to learn as much as possible in hopes of giving you the necessary knowledge to defeat the Ansu.  The purpose of my existence is to be your teacher and mentor.  Does that answer some of your questions as to who I am?"

"It does."

Flindra looked down and stared at the floor of the cavern for a moment.  When she looked up there was unmistakable anger on her features.  "Why couldn't the Spirit have helped King Meldh?" she demanded.  "Why couldn't he have destroyed the Ansu then?  History says he was a great and good king.  Why did he have to die?"