by Helen Church
“Don’t try to be your physical self,” Onur sounded really weary.
Ilsa tried to do as she was instructed. Worried that Onur was wounded because of her was distracting though, and where was her father and Barey?
She forced these thoughts away and focused on the immediate problem. She could help nobody all the time she was without form. As soon as she stopped trying to think of her form as a physical thing she realized the truth in it. She had no arms, legs or torso to claim, so trying to move these things was useless. Yes she could turn towards the voice, she realized she did have control, she just needed a point to focus on, and the direction of Onur’s voice was it.
“That’s right,” he sounded relieved now. Ilsa concentrated on creating movement that would bring her closer to the voice, and this was much harder to do. Willing herself to move closer seemed to inch her slightly forward, but then she stopped again, and she didn’t realize why.
“Concentrate!”
She felt shame again. Why did he expect her to know how to do these things! Did he expect that she flung herself from her body for fun all the time? She tried again, and didn’t just concentrate on moving forward, she tried to will some force behind it too so that she could move further, and that seemed to be the key.
Speed and propulsion. Ilsa focused on these things, hoping to sense her own body, but she still felt nothing. She wondered if it was possible to see while she was in this form, and as she idly wondered, her wish was granted. Whiteness was partially correct from her feeling, she was in the clouds, and falling rapidly.
Panic and adrenaline hit her like a flood as she plummeted downwards. She briefly wondered if she would die of fright before she hit the ground.
She wanted to scream, but had no lips or voice to do so, and that fact calmed her suddenly. She wouldn’t die, her body was not here. She was just her consciousness, and the ground couldn’t hurt her, could it?
She told herself that she would be fine, and that the fear she felt was just a reflexive reaction. As the ground loomed closer, she saw that she didn’t recognize this landscape at all. Green farmland as far as the eye could see, and in the distance a body of water seemed invitingly blue. Had there been a coastline near Carbom? She didn’t think so.
As she continued to fall, she realized that she still didn’t know where her body was. She could see little specs moving around below her, their formation led her to believe that they were cattle. Hopefully her body was not beneath their hooves.
“Ilsa,” Onur’s voice was almost a whisper now, she hoped that he was not seriously wounded. On that note, she hoped that she wasn’t seriously wounded either. She did not look forward to awakening her physical pain’s once more.
The direction of the voice was slightly to what she believed to be east, and so she altered her direction in a way that seemed almost easy now. As she moved she slowed her descent, but kept up her speed, searching intently for a sign of either her body or Onur, but also hoping to see sign of her father or Barey. She had a terrible feeling that she had done something awful to them all.
With the cattle far behind her now, she saw a great disturbance in what looked to be a vast field of corn stalks. A path of destruction looked to be carved into the ground, and a great trench stretched off into the distance.
She knew she had been responsible, and wondered again at what she was capable of.
She saw Onur before she saw anything else. He was laying on his side at the deepest point of the impact site, and he was bleeding from his side.
Before she could help him, she needed to find her own body. She stopped her movement and turned to look in each direction, and when she saw slight movement in the corn, she hurried towards it. What she found was the shrouded servant crouched over her body, which looked bruised and bloodied. Her leg was laying at an impossible angle, which could only mean it was broken, or maybe dislocated. And how was she supposed to get back to herself?
She tried to position herself over her body, and simply fall into herself, but that did nothing other than drop her through her body into the earth, which briefly made her panic again.
She spent a moment trying to think logically how she could inhabit her body again, and tried to reach out with herself to find that center she had tapped into before, once to cast the fire and another to cast out…whatever she had cast out when the crows had attacked.
Ilsa found it easily, and felt a strange sensation of being pulled together, her body and her senses merging once more, and the resulting enormity of pain and exhaustion that hit her at once was enough to draw a hoarse cry from her.
The shrouded servant was startled back from her cry, and fell back to the ground in a silence that reminded her that he…it, was not living. But wasn’t that concern she saw on the slack features?
The shock of her pains was overwhelming, and the white hot wave of adrenaline was not going to keep her conscious for long. “Onur?” she called with all her might, but found her voice came out whiny and weak.
The sound of a horse approaching confused her. Was Onur not injured as she had seen? The sound of hoofbeats got closer and the earth shook beneath her body. She struggled to sit up, but the pain in her hip jolted through her form and pinned her to the ground with another scream, but this time the servant didn’t shrink away, it actually drew closer. It slowly extended a hand towards her face, but pulled back almost immediately when a horse halted beside her, spraying dirt over the both of them.
A man dismounted and crouched beside her, “what are you?” the stranger asked.
The rational part of her mind wondered the very same thing. “Please,” was all she could say. What she was trying to say she didn’t know.
The man frowned down at her, but seemed to pull his thoughts to practicality. His eyes scanned down over her from head to her leg, where they lingered for a moment. He then looked over at the servant, his frown deepened.
“Ilsa!”
That was Onur’s voice, and it sounded strained. “Help him,” she managed to say to the man. He seemed confused, but got to his feet and hurried away. Ilsa could feel her adrenaline fading, and complete exhaustion was threatening. She looked at the servant and saw that he was studying her intently. “Can you understand me?”
He inclined his head slightly, his white milky eyes stared at her, unblinking.
“Do you remember your name?”
The droopy eyelids wrinkled in confusion, but he reached out to her again, this time not stopping until her touched her face. She fought against her revulsion as the cold and damp fingers touched her cheek briefly. Both hands then began hovering their way over her entire body. She puzzled over this, but as his hands reached a point directly above her hip, he jerked them downward and she felt a tugging sensation that filled her body with white hot pain once more, and she couldn’t help the scream she loosed.
The effort that the servant exerted was clear, but he repeated the process again, almost immediately so that she had no time to recover from the pain before it happened again. The difference this time was that her bones very decisively clicked back into alignment as he yanked his hands downwards once more, and as the heat of the pain and adrenaline spiked through her once more, he collapsed over her, unconscious.
Before the exhaustion returned she tried once more to move, and found this time that she could, but not without pain. Her entire body felt battered and tender, but it responded to her commands, and so she pulled herself into a sitting position, and pushed the servant off her legs.
In the distance she could hear cries of pain that could only be coming from Onur, and she wondered how badly he was hurt.
Ilsa turned herself onto her stomach, then pushed herself onto her hands and knees. Her right hip screamed in protest, but it supported her weight as she staggered to her feet. She nearly fell, so favored the leg as best as she could as she stumbled toward the sound of Onur.
The stranger saw her coming and seemed to be alarmed that the leg that had seemed so badly damag
ed was now bearing her towards him. In his hand he held a pistol, and it was aimed towards Onur’s head.
“No! Don’t shoot him!” She cried out, and tried to hurry her pace, but just ended up falling into the dirt, where she cried out.
The man holstered his gun and came over to Ilsa, “it’s a kindness miss, his leg is broken.”
“You don’t understand, he isn’t a horse,” she knew how crazy she sounded, but hadn’t he heard Onur speaking?
The man looked down at her leg, the one that had been twisted behind her just minutes before. “And what is he if not a horse?”
She hesitated, “a man.”
Onur cried out again, only this time his cry was purely equine. Ilsa pushed herself up again, and the man helped her by holding her arm and supporting her to Onur. “Onur, how badly are you hurt?”
He turned his large soulful eyes to her, “let him shoot me,” he said quietly, his voice strained in pain.
“No!” She could not allow that to happen. He was her only link to this strange power that she had, and if she lost him, she would be lost in this strange land with no way back to Barey and her father. “There has to be a way to heal you. We can get you to the water, you can heal yourself like Barey did.”
“The elements would not heal me, I am an affront to the natural order,” he wheezed.
Ilsa put her hand to his flank and desperately tried to think of what to do. Could the servant heal Onur as it had done so for her? She looked back at the prone figure who hadn’t moved since she’d pushed him off her legs. Shame washed over her. He’d healed her broken form and she’d abandoned him to the dirt.
Turning back to the man, she pointed at the servant. “Bring him here.”
He frowned at her demand, but before he could protest she said, “we don’t have time to argue, do it or be damned.”
He must have been convinced, because he hurried over to the limp form, and with ease scooped him into his strong arms and came back to her side.
Ilsa pushed back the hood and revealed the hideous visage beneath. The man gasped at the sight of the milky eyes and deathly pallor, but thankfully did not drop him in disgust, as Ilsa was sure he wanted to. She pushed back her own revulsion and reached out a hand to touch the horror. His cheek was as clammy and cold as his hands were, but his eyes fixed on her as she made contact, and he seemed to strengthen at her touch.
What to do or say? She had no idea. “You healed me,” she stated plainly. “Can you heal him too?” She placed her other hand on Onur’s flank, where he still bled. “Please?”
The servant touched her hand where it rested against his own cheek.
“I don’t know what to do!” she cried out, and could feel tears threatening to fall at her frustration. Why couldn’t she just know how to use this power she had?
Right then she wished that they had never gone to Carbom, and that she hadn’t discovered that part of herself that had been buried so deep within her. Why couldn’t she have just been a normal son born of a normal marriage like the rest of her line?
The servant blinked at her tears, and with his other hand he pointed at her.
“What? What am I meant to do?”
“Ilsa, shut your mouth and use your mind,” Onur wheezed. He sounded so weak, but also angry at her stupidity.
Feeling more upset, she was about to argue, but she felt a tugging again. She looked down at the servant and saw that he was pulling her hand down to the scorched earth.
She didn’t know what to do, but then she hadn’t known to bury Seer Barey in the earth either. She had just acted. Ilsa knew then what the servant was trying to tell her.
Just as Onur had said, she shut her mouth and used her mind. She closed her eyes and buried her hand into the earth while pressing the other against Onur.
Now what?
Afraid to reach for the place within her that caused fire and bodily harm, but unable to see an alternative, she turned her mind inward, and tried to feel what she could do.
Pushing the panic away when she felt nothing, she frowned and tried to stretch out her senses.
The cold clammy hand covered hers in the dirt, and she immediately felt a connection, not of flesh but of willpower. She channeled this energy through herself and out of her other hand, to Onur, who grunted. Whether in pain or relief, she couldn’t tell, but now that she felt this flow of force, she directed it from the earth and from the servant, to Onur’s bones. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel where the break was beneath the hand that was seemingly touching his whole self.
Ilsa couldn’t remember moving her hand, but she must have done so as she was now feeling the broken bone. The break was a clean snap, and one sure move would fuse the fragments together again. Was it possible to do that? Drawing more strength from the earth she forced the bones back into shape, and Onur let out a blood curdling scream, kicking her away and breaking the contact she held.
Immediate exhaustion flooded her and she looked up at the sky, which was darkening.
The stranger’s face appeared above her own. “What are you?” he repeated with what she thought was fear.
“Tired,” she said honestly, and then she knew no more.
13
“Ilsa!” Ellard called again and again. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d called for his daughter, and Onur, but it didn’t satisfy his need to see some proof that she still lived.
When he’d regained consciousness he was within the embrace of Seer Barey, who had a bloody wound on her forehead, but no other sign of harm. She was still sitting on the ground now, unmoving and calm in spite of the carnage around them.
Tree’s were felled, brush was burning, and the corpses of crows seemed to be everywhere. The earth was gouged as if a great force had parted it, and Seer Barey sat in its center, eyes closed.
She hadn’t spoken a word, and if not for her breathing Ellard would have though her dead. He wondered if she were doing something Magickal, and that is what made him reluctant to disturb her. So he called again for Ilsa.
“She isn’t anywhere you can hear her, Ellard,” Barey spoke at last. She got to her feet delicately, and had a grim expression.
His fear was realized then. During the crow attack, Ilsa had burned again. “Where is she?”
Barey shook her head, “I don’t know. I cannot sense her within my range, or Onur. I can only hope that they are alive. I am sorry,” she sounded tired, but Ellard didn’t hear defeat in her tone.
“What happened? Do you know?”
Barey looked around them, and gestured toward the distant shape of Carbom, “we were attacked. Ilsa must have pushed the crows away, and in doing so…”
Ellard closed his eyes and tried to imagine a logical course of action to take now.
As if hearing his thoughts, Barey said, “we should return to Jocham, and report all that has happened.”
His eyes snapped open once more, “we need to find Ilsa.”
“Jocham doesn’t know that the magick's are loose, we have to warn the Kingdom. Once we are there we can amass a search for Ilsa.”
His fury began to rise, “by which time she may be dead. I have to search for her now! You may return to Bardon if you wish.”
“We have to return to Bardon together Ellard,” Barey insisted. “If you do not inform the King in person of what has transpired here, and vouch for me, I’ll be put to death immediately.”
Ellard saw the truth in this, and as much as he disliked it, he owed Barey more than to leave her to her death. He met her blue eyes, and gave the reluctant nod to indicate he agreed. “We have no horse, and I have no idea how we’ll get to Bardon. But I agree, we need to speak to Jocham.”
Barey smiled, “Glutar isn’t far.” She took a deep breath then, and seemed to take delight in it. She spread her arms as she exhaled and swayed her arms in the breeze. “The Magick's are free Ellard,” she fixed her blue eyes upon him. “It’s a good thing.”
Ellard had no Magickal awareness, and so
couldn’t rejoice as she seemed to want to, but he smiled at her too. He couldn’t help it. The happiness radiating from the Seer was a genuine and beautiful thing to behold, and he wondered not for the first time how old she was.
If someone were to witness the Seer now she would seem to be a young woman without a care in the world, but Ellard knew that she was at least old enough to have seen the Magick's imprisoned in the first place, so she was at least two generations older than she seemed.
Without dropping her smile, she pointed to the woodland to the east. “Glutar is this way.”
They began to walk, and Ellard glanced back once more at the distant shape of Carbom. It seemed small now.
“That place has no power now,” Barey said, and she seemed to have no interest in looking at her former prison.
Ellard turned his eyes away and focused on the forest ahead of them. “You couldn’t sense any trace of Ilsa?”
“No Ellard, I couldn’t.” Barey seemed saddened by this. “She must have travelled far this time. She is very strong.”
“What is she?” He asked with almost a desperate tone. Their trip to Carbom had not yielded the answers they had sought, and in his mind had actually raised even more questions. There could be no doubt now that Ilsa had Magickal talent, or that she was his daughter. The stubbornness on her features as she had pushed herself could only truly come from his bloodline, though he still puzzled over her creation.
Barey shook her head, “I only have theories at this point Ellard, and speculation may not be our friend.”
Ellard laughed, “true, but we have many miles to cover, so we may as well indulge in a little speculation.”
Barey smiled, “true. You are a good man Ellard.”
He blushed, “what does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” she took a deep breath, and seemed reluctant to say more.
“Barey please, I’d rather think about speculative theories than confusing half thoughts that don’t connect.”
“Okay. I feel that Ilsa may be my granddaughter, and that though you are her father in all ways that matter, you are not the one who created her.”