Tethered Spirits

by T. A. Hernandez

  A slow smile stretched across Kesari’s lips as she took in the view. Some of her dread about returning melted away as a newfound sense of warmth wrapped her like an embrace. Despite everything, this was still her home, and the familiar sights were a comfort she hadn’t expected.

  They followed the sloping road down into the trees below, eventually emerging into the farmland they’d seen from the hilltop. The others let Kesari take the lead, and it didn’t take her long to find the familiar trails she’d walked with Mum, Dad, Rajiv, and Navya as a child. She took a meandering path, steering them far away from her own childhood home and other familiar places—the Hempstock’s farm where Mum traded vegetables for milk, old man Barker’s where Dad often had his tools repaired, the onion fields Rajiv had tended to the summer before he joined the Atrean Navy.

  A group of girls who looked to be about Navya’s age headed their way, and her heart started to pound. She made a quick turn onto a different path. The last thing she needed now was to run into her family, or anyone else she knew, for that matter. What would she say to them? Just imagining it made her hands feel clammy.

  “Where are we going?” Amar grumbled behind her. “I swear you’re leading us in circles.”

  “It’s a shortcut,” she replied.

  He snorted. “That’s a lie if I ever heard one.”

  “Shh,” Lucian hissed from the lantern.

  After a few more quick detours, they left the farmlands and reached the city itself. Buildings packed tightly together rose up before them in neat rows. Little square houses with steeply pitched roofs and tall chimneystacks lined the busy cobblestone streets, and shops displayed a variety of colorful products in polished glass windows. Carriages rolled by in droves as pedestrians hurried about their business. Some were dressed in modest attire similar to what they’d seen in Malfram, but many wore elaborate suits and gowns, accented with decorative hats, jewelry, spectacles, purses, and even a few colorful pet dragons.

  There were several Kavorans among them, along with a few Visans, Sularans, and other foreigners, distinguishable only by their unfamiliar clothing and speech that was as varied as their appearances. Many travelled here to trade from across the sea, and Kesari couldn’t even name all the places they were from.

  She smiled again. Skies above, she’d missed this—the rush, the noise, the organized chaos of it all. Everyone was always going somewhere important, and the very air was alive with more sounds and smells than a person could ever hope to remember in a single moment. Her family lived on a quiet plot of farmland, and she’d always begged Rajiv to take her into town on the days they finished their chores early. Many of her best memories had been made right here.

  Her worst memories, too.

  A bitter pang twisted in her gut, but she forced the smile to stay in place as she turned back to look at her companions. “Welcome to Deveaural.”

  Mitul’s eyes were wide and bright as he turned his head this way and that, seemingly trying to take in everything at once. Amar looked around more casually, an air of indifference in his loose posture. Saya, however, seemed agitated. She held her body as tense as ever, but her eyes darted at every new sound, making her look something like a wild, wary animal.

  “Is it always this noisy?” she asked Kesari.

  “It quiets down a bit in the evening,” she replied. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  Unsure of where to go now that they were in the city, Kesari caught the eye of an approaching girl and stepped toward her. “Excuse me, but we’re looking for a Tarja named Jameson Weatherford. Have you heard of him?”

  “Sure,” said the girl. “Who hasn’t?”

  “Do you happen to know where he lives?”

  “He’s in the tower.” She turned back and pointed west, toward the coast and the royal palace. For a moment, Kesari feared the girl was talking about one of the towers in the palace itself, but then she noticed a darker, conical spire rising over the roofs of the surrounding buildings.

  “Thanks,” she said, gesturing for the others to follow her.

  “Be careful,” the girl called after them. “The Wizard Jameson doesn’t take too kindly to strangers turning up at random. He threatened to turn my friend Sarah into a toad once.”

  It wasn’t possible to use magic to turn one thing into another, but Kesari didn’t bother telling her that. Instead, she simply ignored the girl’s warning and set off down the street.

  Mitul fell into stride beside her. “What did she say?”

  “Just that this Jameson might not be the friendly type.” She hadn’t let such a minor inconvenience stop her from pestering Tamaya or any other Tarja she’d gone to for information, and she wasn’t about to let it stop her now.

  “I don’t care how unfriendly he is,” Amar said, “as long as he can give me some answers.”

  The wet, salty smell of the ocean grew stronger as they continued into the city and got closer to the coast. Passing under the shade of a particularly large building, Saya stopped and craned her neck to look up.

  “Is this the tower we’re looking for?”

  Kesari hadn’t taken her eyes off the dark spire the girl had pointed out, and it still lay at least a few blocks ahead. She stopped to examine what had caught Saya’s attention.

  It took her a few seconds to recognize what it was—where it was. The city square. She’d meant to avoid it, but she’d been so focused on trying to reach the tower that she hadn’t been paying attention to their surroundings. Her stomach leaped into her throat.

  In the very center of Deveaural, a magnificent bell tower rose a few stories higher than the surrounding shops and houses. Three enormous bronze bells hung inside the open belfry, gleaming so brightly that Kesari had to shield her eyes against their glare.

  “They rebuilt it,” she said quietly, half to herself and half to Lucian inside the lantern at her waist.

  “Rebuilt what?” Mitul asked. “The bell tower?”

  “Why did it need to be rebuilt?” Saya asked.

  Kesari’s mouth went dry, and the skin on her arms prickled. She glanced nervously down at Lucian, and he floated up out of the lantern to hover in front of the others. A few people around them stared at his sudden appearance, but Kesari didn’t care anymore. Her feet were rooted to the ground, the weight of Rajiv’s coat pressing down on her as a dozen explanations rose to her mouth and stuck in her throat.

  Lucian floated to an alley a few paces away. “Here,” he called to the others. “We can get to Jameson’s tower this way.”

  Mitul and Amar trailed after him without hesitation. Kesari forced herself to move, her lungs still tight and breathless. Saya continued to stare up at the bell tower.

  “Are you coming?” Kesari called. Her voice came out with a shaking, reedy pitch.

  “Coming,” the older girl replied.

  A few minutes later, they found themselves in front of what could only be Jameson Weatherford’s residence. The tower stood alone in an empty courtyard, away from any other shops or houses at the farthest edge of a dead-end road. Thick rosebushes with blooms the color of dawn grew all around its base except for a gap where the door was. Flowering vines crept up the curving stone walls to the dark, steeply slanted roof, where puffs of pale gray smoke billowed from a narrow chimney.

  Lucian and Kesari were the first to approach the door, where they found a handwritten message pinned to the wood. Kesari hadn’t ever learned to read very well and could only understand a few of the shorter words, but Lucian read and translated it aloud for everyone.

  “‘Estate of the Great and Honorable Wizard Jameson Weatherford. No admittance after noon except by prior appointment. All violators subject to expulsion by magical force.’” He turned to them with a sly grin. “Well, that’s not very friendly, is it?”

  “What’s a wizard, anyway?” Mitul asked, speaking the foreign word slowly and deliberately.

  “Atreans have all sorts of strange names for Tarja,�
� Lucian replied. “Sorcerer, wizard, witch, enchanter. Some will say each of those means a different thing, but that’s rubbish. Most people here don’t actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to magic.”

  “Fancy title,” Saya said with a snort.

  Amar strode forward. “He can call himself whatever he likes, as long as he lives up to his reputation.” He raised a fist and rapped his knuckles against the door.

  The ink scrawled across the paper began to glow, and a disembodied voice read the last two lines aloud in Atrean. “No admittance after noon except by prior appointment. All violators subject to expulsion by magical force.”

  “What was that?” Saya asked.

  “A warning,” Lucian replied.

  Kesari shifted back and forth on her heels. “Maybe we should come back tomorrow.”

  Amar shook his head, brows drawn together in a look of grim resolution. “We came all this way. I’m not waiting any longer.”

  He rapped on the door again but hadn’t even finished when some invisible force knocked him off his feet and sent him flying backwards through the air with his arms and legs splayed out in front of him. He landed with a groan on the cobblestones, eyes wide and jaw slack.

  Lucian let out a low, cackling laugh as he floated over to Amar. “That was incredible. You should see your face!”

  Amar glowered at Lucian, stood up, and brushed the dirt off his backside. He walked to the edge of the road and picked up a rock half the size of his palm. Kesari backed away from the tower as he took aim.

  The rock hit dead-center, then went ricocheting straight back at Amar. He barely had time to duck to avoid being struck in the chest.

  Lucian laughed again. Amar scowled, the anger in his eyes burning more fiercely than ever.

  Kesari looked up. There was a face poking out of a window overhead, peering down at them from several stories above. “Look!” she called to the others, but by the time they did, the face was gone. “He was up there. I saw him.”

  Lucian floated up the side of the tower to the window. “Hello?” he called out. “Hello, your Great and Honorable Wizard-ness? Do you mind coming out for a chat?” He tried to float forward through the window, but some invisible barrier seemed to be blocking him. “I don’t see anyone,” he called down to the others.

  “This is ridiculous,” Amar said. He picked up another rock and sent it sailing into the air. It missed the window and clattered harmlessly off the stone walls of the tower.

  He picked up another and was about to try again when a man’s voice called out from behind the door. “Stop that at once!”

  Amar lowered his arm and approached the door again. “We need to talk to you. Let us in.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Please.”

  “Didn’t you hear the message?” the man snapped back. He spoke Kavoran with perfect fluency, though his Atrean accent was thick. “It’s well after noon. Come back tomorrow, or preferably not at all if you’re going to keep acting like a bunch of barbarians.”

  Amar’s face contorted with intensified frustration, and Kesari hurried to chime in before he could say something that would aggravate the wizard further. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to disturb you, but it’s very important that we speak to you. Please, we won’t take much of your time.”

  For a few moments, their only answer was silence. Then the door opened with a creak to reveal a tall, thin man in disheveled blue robes. His skin was pale even for an Atrean, as if he didn’t see the sun as frequently as he should have. Thick, black hair framed a handsome face that was younger than Kesari had expected it to be. His green eyes were piercing beneath dark brows as he surveyed the strangers before him.

  “Well, you’re persistent, I’ll give you that,” he said at last. His gaze settled on Kesari and Lucian. “And you have a Spirit Tarja in the form of fire. I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before. Curious. But I really am very busy today. You’ll have to come back another time.”

  “We have something else, too,” Mitul said quickly.

  Jameson shook his head. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s of no interest to me. Not right now. Good day.”

  He turned to leave. Desperate to stop him, Kesari called out, “Tamaya Takhar sent us.”

  Jameson stopped and glanced back over his shoulder at them.

  “It’s about him,” Kesari went on, pointing to Amar. She could bring up her own concerns later. Right now, they needed to get the wizard’s attention.

  “What about him?” Jameson asked, raising a single eyebrow.

  Amar stepped forward, facing the man with his shoulders squared. “Apparently,” he said, “I’ve been cursed.”

  25

  Amar

  Amar watched Jameson’s face shift from annoyance to doubt to curiosity until finally, he pushed the door open and stepped out into the sunlight. His emerald-green eyes bored into Amar, searching for answers, or maybe searching for a lie. Amar stared back, unwavering.

  “I suppose you’d all better come inside,” Jameson said at last. He pushed the door open and held it for them as they filed in one by one.

  The tower was much larger than it had appeared from the outside, but it seemed Jameson wasn’t much of a housekeeper. A large, square table stood in the center of the room, almost entirely hidden beneath scattered rolls of parchment and haphazardly stacked books. Wooden crates of bottles and pouches too numerous to count sat underneath the table. A battered suit of ancient armor stood lopsided against the wall, its arms and shoulders draped with discarded robes and scarves.

  Wooden stairs ran along the curved walls of the tower in a spiral, circling up to the levels above. Cobwebs clung to the corners, and particles of dust shimmered in the light. The entire place had a wet, earthy smell, like rain falling on dry ground. Mismatched chairs were scattered around the hearth without any kind of order or arrangement, and it was toward these that Jameson directed them after locking the front door.

  He gestured for them to sit. He took the largest chair for himself, a plush, velvety thing that was starting to wear at the corners. Amar chose a simple wooden stool and pulled it a little closer to the fire as the others circled around in their own chosen seats. Lucian hovered faithfully over Kesari’s shoulder, adding his orange glow to the flickering light of the flames in Jameson’s hearth.

  “Now then,” the Tarja said, nodding to Amar as he settled back into his chair. “You mentioned a curse? Please explain.”

  Amar exchanged a glance with Mitul, who launched into the story of their first meeting. Jameson listened intently, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth as he leaned forward. Only once in a while did he interrupt to ask a question. Amar and Mitul answered each one as best as they could, and occasionally Saya, Lucian, or Kesari would chime in with their own thoughts and observations. It was all a little overwhelming, and Amar began to feel like a specimen being poked and prodded for some kind of scientific experiment.

  “And Tamaya suggested that I could help you, did she?” Jameson asked when they’d reached that part of the story. “Do you know why?”

  “She seemed to think you might know about curses,” Mitul said. “More specifically, how they work, and how to break one.”

  A smirk curled Jameson’s lips. “So she’s finally realized all my studying is useful after all.”

  Amar frowned. What was it Tamaya had said about her former pupil? That he was always more concerned with magical theory than its practical applications. It now occurred to him that, even if Jameson could provide them some answers, he might not actually be able to do anything about the curse.

  He shook away the first seedlings of frustration before they could take root. He could deal with that problem if and when it arose.

  “Do you think you can help?” Mitul asked.

  “That depends,” Jameson replied, fixing his intense gaze on Amar once more. “What exactly is it you want help with?”

  “I want to know what’s going on,” Amar said. “I don’t even kn
ow who I am, or what caused this. I want my memories back. I want answers, and if there’s some way to break this curse, I want that, too.”

  “Well, that sounds simple enough,” Jameson said. It was impossible to tell whether he was being serious or sarcastic. He turned to Kesari and Lucian. “And what about you two?”

  The girl blinked, her gaze shifting away from the fire she’d been absently staring into. “What about us?”

  “I didn’t hear you mentioned in your friends’ story until right at the end, so you haven’t known them as long as they’ve all known each other. Judging by your accent, you’re Atrean, not Kavoran, and yet somehow you ended up there and led a group of strangers back here. I’m curious as to why.”

  Fidgeting with the hems of her coat sleeves, Kesari glanced at Lucian. “We wanted to—that is, I wanted to come and see you. Tamaya said you might know of a way to…” She took a breath, as if working up the courage to speak her request. “To break our Bond.”

  Jameson’s brows furrowed, and Mitul exchanged a surprised look with Saya. After his conversations with Lucian, Amar had suspected this was coming, but he could still hardly imagine Kesari and Lucian being separated. What would that mean for the Spirit Tarja?

  “I know it sounds ridiculous,” Kesari said, “and you probably think I’m a fool, but—”

  Jameson held up a hand. “I’m not here to judge. I’m curious, I admit, but your reasons are your own. You should know that breaking a Bond is no simple matter. There are tremendous risks involved—life-threatening risks.”

  “I know,” Kesari said.

  “You gave up half your life to make this Bond. Even if you do manage to break it and survive the ordeal, you likely won’t get those years back.”

  “I thought as much.”

  “Lucian could fade away. Forever.”

  Amar looked at Lucian, but his expression was unreadable. The stakes were so high for him, and yet, he’d been entirely supportive of Kesari all the way here. Amar didn’t understand it. What was it about their Bond that was so awful Kesari couldn’t bear it any longer?