"Just past that copse of trees, there. It's well hidden. As you know, the magi typically don't welcome visitors."
"Fantastic," Klaus drawled.
"Shad,” Kaia stifled a yawn as they slogged through the swamp, "What is this magus like anyway?"
The cat's muffled voice emanated from his dry pouch. "He is both a hermit and scholar."
"Aren’t all the magi hermits?"
"If you ever meet them, you can let me know."
"But, this one has Kallar's blade."
"That is what Everard believes."
"He doesn't know?"
"Do not fear. Dorinar will know where the sword is, even if he doesn't have it. But I doubt he would let such a precious artifact fall into clumsy human hands."
When they finally reached the small grove, Kaia could just barely discern a ramshackle dwelling cunningly hidden among the trees. Moss coated the roof and vines hung over the grimy windows. Creeping ivy obscured the walls, camouflaging it perfectly among the trunks that crowded around it. Kaia could barely make out the outline of a door hidden behind a low-lying branch.
Kaia shifted in the saddle. "Are you sure he still lives here?"
Before Shad could respond, Klaus hammered a fist on the green-streaked everoak door. They paused and listened for movement in the house, but only heard the patter of raindrops on leaves.
Klaus rolled his neck to the side with a crack. "My name is Klaus Thane, the Shadow Heir of Okarria, and I have come to ask for the council of the magus, Dorinar."
Once again, they paused, but the quiet sound of rain filled the silence again.
"Open up, Dorn," Shad called. "You know why we’re here."
"Go away," a reedy voice grumbled from behind the door.
"Guardian Thane has come to claim what is rightfully his."
"Rightfully his?!" the indignant voice squeaked. The door cracked open, and a curly haired young man peered out from the gloom within. "Obviously, his ancestors couldn't be trusted with it, since it is no longer in the Heir's possession."
Kaia was taken aback by how young the magus looked. Surely, he was just as old as Everard, and yet he looked perhaps only a decade older than she. His stained clothing was as shabby as the cottage and hung from his thin frame. A mop of curly brown hair fell untidily into his suspicious black eyes, and his skin looked like it had never seen the sun.
Shadmundar sighed audibly. "You know it was stolen, Dorn."
"Humans always have excuses!" the man snapped.
"It's wet out here and we're coming in, whether you like it or not," Klaus growled, pushing past the magus through the cracked doorway.
The magus stalked after the Heir. "I most certainly do not like it!"
Shad leapt from his perch, shook his fur in the doorway and padded silently after them.
Kaia looked around for a barn to house the Dalteek and the smelly, mud-coated ragehound, but could see nothing amidst the thick greenery. "I won't be long, Gussy.” She stepped out of her muck-caked boots and closed the door behind her.
Her eyes widened as she took in the dimly lit room. Stacks of books, papers, and scrolls littered every available surface–table, floor, chairs. Various mugs and plates lay scattered among the documents. The room had absorbed the chill of the rain that fell outside, while the fireplace lay ashy and unused. Cobwebs hung from the corners of the ceilings and a layer of dust coated assorted piles of paper and cloth. A gray tabby hissed at Shad as he delicately picked his way through the piles. Kaia tiptoed after the black cat towards the raised voices emanating from down the corridor.
She followed Shad into a narrow, candle-lit hall. Kaia's curiosity grew as they passed room after room in the deceptively large house. At the end of the corridor, they finally came into a cramped study lined with overflowing bookcases and a small fire burning in the hearth.
Klaus scowled and stalked across the floor, eyes raking over the heaps of odds and ends as water dripped from his cloak to the stone floor. "Where is it?"
The magus crossed his arms. "As if I would keep it here.”
Kaia's eyes flicked from Klaus back to the magus. "But you know where it is?"
"I am a historian. I know where most things are," Dorinar retorted.
"Tell us where it is!" Klaus slammed a fist against the wall. "Have you looked at the sun lately? We don't have time for this! We need it to stop Nifras!"
"Just the two of you?" Dorinar seized the fire poker and stabbed at the flames. "You'll need a lot more than that."
Kaia rubbed her forehead with a clammy palm, trying to ward off her exasperation. "Then help us, Dorinar.”
"Not my affair," the magus sniffed as he put the poker down and shuffled the papers on the desk by the clouded window.
"Dorinar," Shadmundar said sternly. "The sword belongs to Guardian Thane."
Dorinar paused in his puttering’s. "As if such things can be trusted to humans."
"Dorn…" Shad had a note of warning in his voice.
The strange man threw up his hands, scattering the papers he had been straightening. "Well, what if I don't remember? How about THAT, Shadmundar?"
Shad’s tail flicking from side to side. "You must be joking."
"I'm an old man, cat. I can't be expected to remember every minute detail of human existence." The bookish magus, who looked nothing like an old man, glanced at them suspiciously from the sides of his eyes before seizing a book and opening it to a random page. "So sorry to inconvenience you. Best of luck with the battle. Goodbye."
"We're not leaving until you tell us where the blade is," Klaus rumbled darkly.
"And what are you going to do? Threaten me?" Dorinar scoffed, his voice cracking. "How original! Humans are all the same!"
"We'll simply stay here until your memory is jogged." Klaus brushed a stack of papers off one of the frayed chairs and unceremoniously collapsed into it. A small cloud of dust puffed into the air as he sank into the cushions.
"No!" Dorinar shrieked. "You must leave this instant! I do not entertain visitors. I'm a very busy man! I don't have time for this nonsense."
"The sooner you tell us where the blade is, the sooner you can get back to your solitary, pathetic existence," Klaus said, his hazel eyes meeting Dorinar’s ink-black ones.
Color flooded Dorinar's cheeks as he snapped the book shut. "Senseless, stubborn humans!" He pointed an accusing finger at the Shadow Heir. "Wait as long as you want, you hopeless fool. I am not the one running out of time!" With that, the magus stormed out of the room, the slam of a door punctuating his exit.
For a long moment, the trio listened to the rain tapping its cold fingers against the glass window as the flames slowly died. With a sigh, Klaus grabbed the poker to prod the failing fire. Kaia let out a breath she didn't know she was holding and let her tense body sag against the wall. Shad leapt onto the great chair facing Klaus.
"Well?" Klaus ground his fists into his eyes.
Shad pawed at the papers on the cushion. "This was not unexpected.”
Kaia shrugged. "But what do we do now?"
Shad's eyes combed the books that surrounded them. "Well, Dorn is a fastidious historian. The location of the sword is bound to be documented in one of these tomes. Perhaps we can find it."
Kaia looked at the hundreds of books that surrounded them, puffing out her cheeks as she exhaled. "...Right…."
Klaus picked up one of the books he had thrown to the floor, wiped the grime from the cover, and opened it to the first page. "Might as well get started."
Kaia took another look at the rows of books and excused herself to care for Gus and the horses. After stumbling around the house’s walls in the wet, she managed to find a derelict barn that held a milking cow, a chicken coop, a rabbit hutch, and a bored, fat gelding. There wasn't much room for the Naerami does, but it was the best she could do for them. After watering and feeding the Dalteek, she dried off Gus as best she could with a horse blanket and returned to find Klaus and Shad exactly where she had left them, surr
ounded by stacks of volumes piled high around their chairs.
“The dog smells," Shad muttered, his eyes glued to yellowed pages as he flipped busily through the texts. Gus settled into a damp lump by the fire.
Kaia didn't bother to respond as she bent down to dislodge a book from its hiding place behind the nearest bookcase. She perched on a nearby chair and opened the book to the first page: An Account of the Royal Court in the Reign of King Wayrcham, the Noble, written by Teraeza Jamette, followed by lists of names, dates, and accounts of different councils, debates, and edicts that made Kaia's eyes glaze over with boredom.
Her eyes blurred as she painstakingly deciphered the spidery text that referenced events and people she’d never hear of. She looked up as Klaus thumped a thick book closed and began to flip through another one, his eyes darting back and forth across the pages. Even Shadmundar moved faster than she, methodically clawing through page after page. It would take her an age to get through even one page, much less understand what any of it meant.
Perhaps if they hadn’t banished her from the schoolhouse, the teachers could have helped with her word troubles. Kaia's cheeks heated with the sting of her exile once again. She tossed the book back onto the floor in frustration. Klaus' hazel eyes and Shad's blue ones briefly flicked up to her and then to each other. A blush crawled down Kaia’s neck. To see them quietly acknowledge her ignorance humiliated her more than if they had teased her.
She stood and strode from the room, only to find the next room over—the kitchen—as disorderly as the rest of the house, with dishes strewn about the counters, stained documents littering the table, and half a loaf of bread sitting forlornly next to the water basin. Fidgeting restlessly, Kaia picked her way over to the pantry. The door opened on creaking hinges, and several small creatures scuttled for cover as she revealed their refuge. But, in addition to the provisions and herbs she expected to see, Kaia found yet more books stashed haphazardly on the shelves. There was a small stack shoved beside the flour sack, a few more pushed behind a bottle of wine, and another underneath a round of cheese.
Kaia collected the volumes on the table and glanced at one of the titles, A List of Odriel’s Blessings in the Age of King Roggitt, written by Teraeza Jamette. Kaia scratched her head as she glanced around the room again. There was a book on one of the chairs, one on the mantle, and even one under a table leg. She sighed in exasperation. The record Klaus and Shad were looking for, if it even existed, could be anywhere. With a roll of her eyes, she gathered up the texts and all the other crumpled papers she could find in a haphazard, food-encrusted stack and made her way back to the study. She said nothing as she dropped the tower of pages next to Klaus’ armchair, and went back out to look for more.
In the next room, a bedchamber by the looks of it, she found books squirreled away under the mattress, stacks of papers in the dresser drawers, and even a scroll hidden in the pillowcase. This was not simple absentmindedness, Kaia thought, as she felt the other pillowcases for hidden works. Teraeza Jamette had authored every text she found. The magus had hidden her works deliberately. But why? She looked at another title, The Account of the Dragon Heir, Shava, in the Second Age, by Teraeza Jamette.
Kaia stilled. Shava. Mackie had told her about Shava. She flipped through the looping words, and a loose sheet escaped from the pages. She picked up the wrinkled parchment and found a detailed ink sketch: a barefoot young woman, hair cropped short, eyes closed, sitting on top of a mountain, with a brown hawk circling above—Odriel’s preferred form.
As Kaia ran her fingers over the grave face of her ancestor, she remembered Mackie’s words, “They say she climbed barefoot to the top of the pass and waited all night on the highest peak without moving—no food, no sleep, no water—until Odriel finally appeared to answer her plea.”
A rustling in the hall interrupted Kaia’s reverie, and she hastily folded the sketch before stuffing it into her breeches pocket.
She spent the next hour going over every inch of the room to ensure she hadn’t missed anything. She barely noticed when the magus whisked into the dusty bedchamber, stared for a moment, and then left the way he came.
When she turned her search to the spacious sitting room they had come in through, she found the magus tucked sullenly into an armchair in the corner. He snuck peeks at her as she checked under the rug and rifled through his desk. Though Kaia could feel his dark eyes lingering on her, she refused to return his gaze. When she found a bundle of pages beneath a loose flagstone, she glared at the magus accusingly, but his face studiously pressed into yet another book.
This is useless, she thought furiously. Dorinar is completely mad.
The Heirs spent the night in the cottage, and the next day started much the same. The rain continued to fall while Gus stretched by the fire and Kaia combed the premises for hidden manuscripts. While Shad and Klaus sorted through Dorinar's never-ending collection of texts, the magus bustled about, glaring whenever they saw him. More than once, Kaia overhead Klaus confronting Dorinar—their voices rising to shouts and then sudden silence as one of them stormed away.
In the midmorning, Kaia had turned to rummaging through yet another repurposed bedchamber when under the bed, her fingers encountered a long, smooth surface among the usual clutter. Curious, she reached another arm under to grasp the edges and extract the object from its hiding place. It was a portrait, its colors swirling under the shining glass of an ornate frame. Kaia got to her feet. Upright, the painting almost reached her chest. She leaned it against the bed and backed up to the wall to regard the whole picture.
Kaia brought a hand to her mouth. Mountain girl as she was, she had not laid eyes on many pieces of artwork, but anyone could tell the painting was beautiful. Thousands of minute brushstrokes came together to form a woman with long red hair and a half smile as she peered over a bare shoulder at the artist. Projecting an aura of confidence, her stunning green eyes crinkled mischievously from under a cocked eyebrow.
The portrait spilled life, bringing light into a room that had been dour a moment before. Who was she? And why was this magnificent piece under the bed? The girl had a spark, that much was obvious, and whoever had painted the portrait had clearly worshiped her. Could it have been Dorinar? That didn't seem possible.
After another moment spent considering this, Kaia seized the portrait and shuffled into the common room for better lighting. She shooed the house tabby from the mantle and placed the girl's image above the fireplace. When she took a step back to get a better look, she trod right onto Dorinar's slippered foot.
"Oh, sorry..." Kaia started, stepping away from the magus. He seemed to hardly notice her as his dark eyes stared at the painting, transfixed.
"Where did you find that?" he whispered.
Something in his gaze made Kaia uneasy. She had been rummaging through his cottage after all. "It was under the bed."
"I'd prefer if you didn't display that painting," he said stiffly.
"Why?"
"I don't have to explain myself to you." The magus turned back to his armchair.
"How can you not love this painting?" Kaia protested, gazing at the portrait. "She looks like she knows all your secrets. She has such spirit."
"She did." Dorinar’s voice was gruff.
Kaia glanced at him. His wistful eyes shimmered beneath his curls, and suddenly she could see the weight of his years churning there despite his youthful features.
When he spoke, he articulated his words slowly, as if each one recalled a memory. "She was doting and joyful, but fierce. And stubborn. So very, very stubborn…."
Kaia smiled at his description. "She sounds like a kindred spirit."
"Ha!" Dorinar barked. "There was no one like her. She was astoundingly intelligent—even now, her writing haunts me."
Kaia raised her eyebrows. Could this be Teraeza Jamette? Is that why he hid her works?
"How can you say humans are all the same if she was unique?"
"Even the strictest of rules have their
exceptions," the magus grumbled.
"What happened to her?"
"What happened to her is what happens to all mortals. She died," Dorinar said curtly, opening a book in front of his face to end the conversation.
Kaia grimaced as she looked back at the painting. All people died one day, but that was all the more reason to treasure their memory—not hide it away. The stilted silence was broken only by the listless rain drumming on the thatched roof and the fire sizzling below the mantle.
She looked at the hundreds of books that surrounded them both and imagined a time when this girl sat at a desk, maybe in this very room, her head bent, pen scratching away at parchment. She was sure the cottage had been much different then, and Dorinar, too. Kaia's thoughts twisted and turned. That Dorinar would have helped them. Maybe he was still in there somewhere.
Kaia crossed her arms and looked hard at the magus, curled up in the corner of the room as far away from her as possible. "Why do you study history anyway?"
The magus sighed in annoyance. "By establishing patterns in humanity's history, you can effectively predict the future."
"But why do you bother studying humanity if you refuse to live among them?"
"I’ve witnessed generations of human lives—the same short, meaningless lives over and over. I can hardly bear your presence anymore."
"Maybe we wouldn’t be so predictable if you deigned to share your knowledge," Kaia snapped.
"So that humanity can use it to sow death and destruction?" The magus lowered his book to peer over it at her. "I think not."
Kaia clenched her fists. "Knowledge can deliver us from the darkness.”
"Or send you deeper?"
She growled in frustration. Klaus should be playing these word games with the magus, not her. Her voice rose in timber. "If you let Nifras destroy us, there will be no more history for you to study."
"How vain…." Dorinar smirked, placing the book gingerly in his lap. "There was history before humans, and there will be history after. In fact, I look forward to studying something new."
Odriel's Heirs Page 17