by Aldrea Alien
“There is always more to be learnt of the body, your highness. Some of our texts speak of reviving the dead, but none so far have ever been able to successfully duplicate the act.”
Darshan frowned as he followed the men into the cloister. What did the feats from spellsters of old have to do with a Tirglasian princess? Was she ill? Deathly so? Or was there some ailment that wound through the countryside that he hadn’t heard of? It wouldn’t be the first time a plague had come to Tirglas. He’d been quite shocked to find one had ravaged the land only a generation ago.
Inside, they strolled by the men and women also walking the corridors with little fuss. A few were in the same drab robes that the man who led them wore. The vast majority of the people were clothed in modest attire that appeared no different to any he had seen on those walking the streets. Whilst a casual glance revealed that a number of clothes appeared threadbare—mostly on a few of the younger subjects—there was nothing else to suggest their position.
He eyed the necks of several, finding them bare. Odd. After hearing they’d bound the first cloistered spellsters, he had expected to find the current ones also leashed by infitialis. Perhaps they weren’t spellsters, but the cloister’s caretakers.
On the other hand, there seemed a great deal them, ranging from young children to white-haired elders who would surely be retired from their duties rather than bustling through corridors. “I would love to know the number of years it takes to indoctrinate them all into staying.”
“A lot of spellsters turn themselves in to the local chapel,” the old man replied, his chin lifting indignantly.
“So this obedience is something taught as a child, then?” It stood to reason. “Are there any active hunts for them?” Beyond Obuzan’s merciless pursuits of spellsters by their priests, he knew only of one other land that seemed so intent on ridding their populace of magic. Demarn. His nanny had told him wicked tales of the King’s Hounds stalking through that kingdom, corralling their spellsters like wayward cattle.
But where people like Demarn’s hounds sounded as though they were specifically chosen and trained to deal with their rogue spellsters, the Obuzan priests were mere men. Spending a lifetime believing magic was sinful or made a person dangerous beyond measure would certainly aid in their compliance. Nobody wanted to think of themselves as the very monster they’d been taught to fear.
“You mean witch hunts?” Gordon asked. “Nae that I’m aware of. We’re nae like our neighbouring lands.”
“The Goddess had a plan in sending her power to mortals,” the old man added. “Even if our minds are nae capable of discerning what that plan is. The chieftains of old might’ve abused their power, but we’ve grown humble with the centuries and the whims of magic no longer rule our clans. If we keep our faith in the Goddess absolute as scripture decrees, her divine plan will be made known to those who are in need of guidance.”
Darshan chewed on the inside of his cheek in an effort to keep his true thoughts from showing on his face. He wasn’t an overly religious man and none of the deities throughout the Udynea Empire required unfailing devotion. Coin, perhaps. Maintaining temples and feeding the various priesthoods wasn’t free.
The man waved them through a doorway that appeared to house only an array of tables and chairs.
Darshan eyed the bare stone walls. Only the presence of the two brothers kept him from heeding the itching urge to form a shield around himself. Even so, if this was a study, then where were the books? The scrolls? Even a few diagrams would’ve put his mind at ease.
A lone woman occupied the space. She sat at one of the tables, her shoulder to them and bent over a large book spread before her. Her head rested on one hand, the fingers disappearing beneath the mass of gravity-defying blonde curls that crowned her head.
She glanced up as they neared, then lifted her head, beaming. “ ‘Mish? Gor?” She stood, one delicate finger pinning her place in the book. “I didnae think I’d be seeing you two until the summer. Is Mum being that much of a pain that you’ve had to escape already?” Her features didn’t bear the same stark resemblance to the two princes as their other sister—clearly favouring her mother’s bloodline in the sharpness of her chin and the narrow, downward tilt of her nose—but Darshan didn’t doubt this woman shared blood with the men.
A far more pressing matter busily scrambled to find sense in what he saw. The woman didn’t wear the light brown robes of priesthood, but rather a common gown and sleeveless vest. As much evidence as there was for her to be Hamish’s sister, he could scarcely believe it. Yes, both princes had divulged that a sibling lived with the cloister, but in all the conversation they’d engaged with, never had either man mentioned their sister was…
A spellster.
That meant there was magic within the bloodline. Clear and strong enough to be made known. Gordon bumping through his shield wasn’t a fluke. The man had to be a Nulled One and Hamish—
Well, Darshan had used direct magic on his lover before. Hamish clearly wasn’t immune to it like his brother, which left only one option.
The woman swung to face Darshan, seeming to finally realise he was there. One sweep of his attire was all she gave before a veil of suspicion fell over her face. “Can I help you?”
Hamish cleared his throat. “I’d like you to meet his Imperial Highness, Darshan vris Mhanek, me—” He stalled, clearly flustered. “Me… uh…”
“Your yours?” the woman said, a soft smile crinkling her blue eyes. Not as aesthetically crystalline as her brother’s, but dark like the oceans he had travelled to get here. “I see.” Her gaze darted to Gordon, then Hamish, before she extended her hand to Darshan. “Nice to meet someone who is me brother’s.”
Darshan swiftly re-evaluated the woman’s clothing. She indeed wore a shirt beneath the vest but the sleeves were tight along her arms and the same tawny shade as her skin. He clasped her hand and offered a small bow. “Your highness.”
She giggled. “I’ve nae been called that since I was a wee lass. You dinnae get to keep your titles when you’re cloistered.” She gave his hand a hearty shake. “Caitlyn is fine. I wouldnae have thought they’d allow a vris of the Mhanek to leave the Udynea Empire.”
“He’s me friend,” Hamish blurted, his cheeks having gone an adorable shade of plum red.
“What would you ken of Udynean politics?” Gordon asked of his sister whilst simultaneously giving his brother a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, the man’s jovial tone taking the edge off his words. “I dinnae recall Mum teaching us anything about them when we were bairns.”
“There’s more than a few mentions of Udynea in the older texts. Any decent study of the body requires slogging through the dregs of old rivalries and rumours of far off wars. Of course, there are the translations, but only a right idiot believes those. Nae that they cannae be called technically correct, but…” She rolled her eyes, rocking her head from side to side.
“I hope we were nae interrupting any serious studies,” Gordon said.
Caitlyn shook her head. “Just giving meself a wee refresher of basic human bone structure. We’d a lad with a snapped thighbone and an absolutely shattered hand just a few weeks back. It was touch and go at finding someone with the power and proper understanding of how fingers work to mend him.”
“It must’ve taken some doing for the lad to break it.”
“Aye. But they mended his leg easily enough. Just a clean break. It was his hand that gave the most trouble.”
Darshan nodded his agreement. They were some of the trickiest bones in the human body to mend correctly.
“He’ll be walking with a limp now, but at least he still has full use of his hand. Certainly learnt his lesson on horse thieving.” She jerked her thumb back at the book. “Anyway, I should be taking this one back. The information is good, but the diagrams are piss-poor compared to the ones in the archive.”
“You’ve diagrams of human anatomy in your archives?” Darshan blurted before his manners could take
command of his tongue. He smiled woodenly at the trio, secure in the knowledge that none of them could’ve possibly understood him. To the uninitiated mind, Udynean was often a garble of noise.
But whilst both the men stared at him with the almost identically confused expressions Darshan had expected, the twinkle in Caitlyn’s eye suggested she had understood his every word.
“Would you like to see them?” she asked.
“Very much,” he managed in Tirglasian. He hadn’t been in a space dedicated to sketches of human, or elven, anatomy since his years training as a healer. Seeing the difference between what he remembered from the academy and here would be quite the education. “If you do not mind.”
~~~
Hamish watched as his lover trotted off at his sister’s side. “I guess I’ll stay here, then,” he mumbled. It wasn’t as though he would understand half of what they spoke about. When it came to medicine and ailments of the human body, his knowledge didn’t go much beyond splinting broken limbs and applying pressure to wounds.
Gordon chuckled, drawing Hamish’s eye from the empty doorway. “What did you expect?” He leant back on a table, his arms casually bracing himself. “He’s new and exciting; a spellster from another land. We’re just her brothers. She sees us at least once a year.”
It used to be every week. Back when there’d been a cloister within a few hours’ march of Mullhind, before their mother had forced the priesthood to abandon it. They were fortunate Caitlyn had been sent this close as it was, for many of the spellsters had been spread out over the southern cloisters.
“In the meantime.” His brother reluctantly pushed off the table and jerked his thumb at the door. “I should probably make sure the priests ken to bunk us all near each other tonight. I dinnae want to try explaining once we get back home why our return trip lacks a certain ambassador.”
“Do you really think they’ll try to keep him here? Or could contain him?” Darshan was right in that none of the spellsters, once cloistered, seemed at all eager to leave. He’d noticed similar during his brief stay at the old one near Mullhind. Back then, it had been explained to him that it just wasn’t done. Spellsters didn’t leave the cloisters without the consent of both priesthood and crown.
Gordon shrugged. “I couldnae rightly say either way there. And I’d prefer to nae find out.” He halted in the doorway, peering back over his shoulder. “Speaking of ambassadors, have you made up your mind what you’re going to do once Darshan’s on his way?”
It might’ve been ten days since he’d confided in Gordon of how he felt about the Udynean, with the last week being consumed by their travels, but he was only surer of his answer. “I want to go with him.”
“I thought that might be the case, but have you—”
“I ken it hasnae been long,” he said before his brother could trot out the usual warnings. “How much can I possibly ken about him in that short amount of time?” He peered at his brother. “You’re staying unusually silent. Are you nae going to give me one of your stern warnings of how I should be listening to the right head?”
Gordon pulled a face and shook his head. “You pretty much covered most of it in your ranting. But I suppose you’ve probably enjoyed getting it on the regular.”
Even though he knew his brother only jested, a part of him still bristled. “I’ll have you ken that we’ve done nae more than innocent slumber during the whole journey. Or have your ears heard fairy-fancies since we’ve been travelling?”
Gordon held up his hands. “Nae a thing and for that, I am grateful, because the last thing I want to hear is me brother getting some.”
Thoughts of Gordon actively cringing as his brother passed the tent Hamish shared with Darshan fluttered through his mind. He pressed his lips together, staving off a snicker. “Does that mean he’s passed your test?”
Gordon grinned. “I’ve nae been testing him.”
Huffing through his nose, he glanced at the table beside him for something to toss at his brother. “Dinnae give me that rot.” He settled for a dollop of cooled candle wax some clumsy soul had left on the table, peeling it off and deftly lobbing it across the room. The wax shattered on his brother’s upraised arm. “I ken you far too well.”
Gordon peered over his wrist, his grin in no way diminished. “What I was going to ask before you interrupted me was whether you’ve spoken to him about it recently. Does he still want you to come back with him?”
Hamish rolled his eyes. “Of course he does.” Even if their stint as lovers didn’t last in the Crystal Court, he would still have his duties as an ambassador. And he’d be in a land that granted him far more freedom of self.
“He might’ve had his full of our little family’s song and dance. After all, getting Mum to agree to you leaving will take some doing, especially if it’s in his company.”
Hamish flopped into the chair his sister had abandoned. He glanced at the book she’d been so intent on, but couldn’t make out a single word. “I’ll have a better chance of cracking a mountain with me skull than I do with convincing Mum. She nae listens to me anymore.” Just one word, one piece of acknowledgement that she understood him. That was all he had ever wanted.
“We might need to call on Nora for help there.”
“Nora’ll throw us in the deep end and leave us floundering.”
“I dinnae ken about that. Nae if we explain the situation to her. Ambassador, he said, right?” Gordon slapped his thigh when Hamish answered with a nod. “Nora will love that. She’s been bemoaning the lack of the position since this correspondence began. Maybe if we can get her to convince Mum how badly we need someone in Minamist, she’ll cave. I’d suggest getting Darshan involved there, but I dinnae see that happening amicably.”
“Let me think about it on the way back. Coming at Mum from all sides without cause willnae endear us to her.”
“Just dinnae take too long, you ken how stroppy Nora gets when she’s left in the dark.”
“Aye,” he mumbled. There’d been the time Hamish had dared to be intimate with the dwarven ambassador where Nora had sworn a few words would’ve been enough to placate everything. He couldn’t see how. Their mother had been pretty angry at him. Maybe Nora had meant a more lenient sentence than being imprisoned within his own room. But that talk never happened. He had left it too late for his sister to attempt anything.
I cannae make that mistake again. Who knew what his mother’s response would be if she realised he had involved himself with the man beyond a kiss? There were worse punishments than being confined to his bedchamber.
Darshan turned on his heel, taking in the room under the cool light of a magical globe. So many anatomical diagrams and murals adorned the walls, some in detail he hadn’t seen since his childhood healer training. And it wasn’t in mere dusty patches, everything within the room seemed to be polished and mirrored from one side to the other, be it the rows of books filling shelves carved from the stone walls, the heavy-set tables bearing gigantic tomes or a cabinet containing—
Was that an actual elven skeleton?
He stepped closer to the object in question, lifting his hand to coax the ball of light nearer still. It was indeed no mural or illusion. The longer he stared at it, the more the hairs on his arms lifted. Of all things, he never considered the image of a skeleton unnerving, but this…
This wasn’t any ordinary framework of bones. The elves of now, the ones he had grown up alongside, were over a thousand years separated from that image. “Is this real?”
“Aye. One of the original elven arrivals, or so I’ve been told. We’d a human one just as old, but we were able to trace that back to their kin and give them a proper burial.”
“Just look at it.”
“I try to avoid that. It gives me the creeps.”
“Such a petite size…” He laid a hand on the glass at chest height for the skeleton. The ribcage wasn’t too dissimilar in shape to that of a human, although bearing the customary thirteen ribs. Much like some other
creatures, all but the final pair of ribs were attached to the sternum via cartilage. “The broadness of that sternum, the elongated finger bones.”
“It’s the teeth that get me.”
Darshan lifted his gaze from examining the foot bones to the skull. Although common rhetoric stated that the sharper the canines the purer the elf, he’d never encountered one with teeth any more than marginally different. The canines of this skull were a good inch from the base of the jaw. “You hear nobles back home boasting of how pure their elven slaves are, but this is what the first settlers were like.” Whoever this specimen had been, those teeth could rival a tiger’s.
He stepped back to take the skeleton’s frame in its entirety. If the theologians could have this for but a day. Even an hour would suffice for a new wave of theories to spread throughout the academic circles. “This place has much in common with the average Knitting Factory.”
“Excuse me?”
Darshan frowned. What part of what he’d said had confused her? “Of course, my apologies. It is a somewhat colloquial term for our healing academies.” With apprentice healers being slightly cheaper than even their non-magical counterparts, common folk often sought aid. It didn’t seem to matter that it ran the risk of getting an inadequately trained healer and dying. “How did this collection come to be?” She had mentioned translations earlier, but not the language.
“This used to be a Domian outpost, back when Tirglas couldnae even be classed as a kingdom.”
He strode to the opposite side of the room. There was a space in the shelving, big enough for a cabinet of similar size to the one the elven skeleton sat in. That had to be where the human remains had resided. But there was also a similar structure on a third wall, the shelving there was also bare. Had there been more than two skeletons? Another elven specimen, perhaps? What had become of the third one?
“When the clans finally joined as a kingdom and ousted the Domians, a lot of their studies remained.”
“I am surprised they left the building standing, much less the work within. Do you, perchance, know what sort of studies they were doing here?” As much as some within the Crystal Court liked to idolise the ancient empire, Domian had a rather distasteful underbelly. Not that his own land was clean of atrocities, some of them had likely come from Domian during the invasion several centuries back. But the rumours of what the Domian people could do, what they had known… quite a number of their feats defied the natural order.