Myths and Magic: An Epic Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

“Well, boys,” another one called out, “Look what we found: a scrap of lost trash. How did you escape your tour group wagon?” they asked, not caring what he said anymore. All the questions jumbled into invisible punches. Each harsh, snide remark was more insult than interrogation.

  Trash.

  That was the word they used.

  “A bit of trash blown free from the rubbish sack. Right, boys?” The first soldier asked, pleased with his discovery. “Well, let’s do what we can to get you back to your parents. They must miss you so.” He cackled, a witless fool.

  Mathilde stood there, invisible.

  Magic flushed the air out of her lungs. Her stunned reaction caused Mathilde to draw deeply on the vidartan spells, in ways she could not explain. Like she had swallowed a ball of lightning. That’s what it felt like. She held that energy in her chest, holding back every desire she had to set them all on fire.

  She burned. They did not see the danger. They did not have eyes to understand the blazing star in their midst.

  More than anything, Mathilde wanted to protect her little brother.

  But instead, she stood by while the soldiers insulted him. She did nothing when they marched her ten-year-old brother off to the waiting train car.

  She did not attack. She did not whisper anything except two words: “Follow. Kubonera.” Magic obeyed, tracking Fritz’s heartbeat and his own limited vidartan abilities. He glowed with that marker of her will as the men marched him down the length of the train.

  As soon as the soldiers had wandered off to ‘throw away the trash.’ Mathilde hurried over to the train rails.

  Gently she reached down, touching Captain’s broken body.

  He opened one eye and blinked at her. It was bad. Even with the care of an animal doctor, the wound wasn’t treatable. It was a back injury from the impossible way his feet splayed across the metal tracks.

  His breath came in shallow bursts. Captain didn’t even yowl when he saw her face so near to his own. There was no hatred left. Only pain and fear at the hand of death that clenched around his battered form.

  “Vahagn,” Mathilde whispered, calling down fire to end his suffering. Vahagn to set him free. Vahagn to kill her enemy, broken on the ground, by the carelessness of his own men. “Vahagn. Rodak,” she said, with her hands on his fur, holding him by the neck as certain as a mother cat moving a kitten. Light the world.

  Mathilde knew that the powers she held were unpredictable.

  She called fire. But magic made its own path, flowing through her hands in a wave of power, like the tide lapping ever further up on the sandy beach.

  A flood of vidartan magic covered the cat, closed the injury, and drowned the hatred. The cold heart of lightning burned those faults to cinders. Vahagn cleansed the broken spine, reshaped the black fur of the cat, freed the veil of suspicion and disdain that had held Captain to his mission.

  His yellow eyes cleared.

  The ancient spell of fire did not wait for her orders. It simple purged the darkness it found, everywhere weakness was detected.

  Mathilde wrapped the battered cat in her shawls, near her heart, holding him tight. She didn’t watch the magic. Like she believed in every word her father ever spoke, she trusted the power to act in truth and in defense. She did not question what it did or why.

  Her eyes were on one thing, the yellow star that shone in the distance, linking her to Fritz’s heartfire. “I will not lose you, levav. I will not.”

  In the distance, beyond her human sight, the dogs opened a locked train car. A little boy was pushed inside, one of a crowd of sixty-one souls. Fritz became a prisoner of the Hollyoaken dogs, a traveler on the death trains.

  Destination unknown.

  No vidaya had ever returned. Boarding the train to nowhere, thousands had simply vanished, forgotten, lost.

  Until today.

  Captain was unusually quiet for his growly, normal cat self. Given the horrible injury he had just received, his silence wasn’t that confusing. Mathilde took advantage of the magic that still encased the poor cat.

  She did not have to check all the train cars.

  She ran to the one wagon of disposable people, following Fritz’s heart fire. Dogs stood guard outside, but mostly for show. They weren’t worried about people breaking into the train car… and they weren’t much worried about the vidaya escaping.

  Their prisoners cowered inside, sheep to the slaughterhouse.

  Even from outside the rough, wooden walls, Mathilde could hear whispers of fear and worry. “Where will they take us? Maybe it’s not that bad?”

  “Why are they doing this?”

  “Please, let me out! You’ve got the wrong person. I am not vidaya! Please listen. I know the minister of your government. I swear, I am important. This has all been a huge mistake.”

  The pleas kept coming. But no one outside heard them. No one in all of Hollyoaks cared.

  “Shut up in there, you hear me? Quit yer yammerin’!” one of the guard dogs barked. “I swear, if another one of you complains or begs, just one more word from any of you, I will set this train car on fire. You hear me? Save us all the trouble of transporting you up to the fine tourist destination of Gelschiesen.”

  Abruptly, the car fell silent.

  Mathilde could feel Fritz’s panic through the magic’s connection. Even without her little brother being shoved into the crowded wagon, the whole car and the five train compartments ahead of it seeped fear, desperation, and a sorrow so big it would have flooded the moon.

  The train stank of hopelessness. Charged emotions overwhelmed her.

  Standing there, Mathilde was invisible. Free. Horrified. Marked by her own hair, the magic’s protection was the only reason she was not thrown into the mess of despair with the rest of her friends and family. Only borrowed vidartan magic saved her from that fate.

  Mathilde walked on the fine edge of a sharpened blade.

  Worse still, the limit of her magic had never been tested. She knew a few words, had read a few stories. But Mathilde did not fool herself into believing she controlled the force that the vidartans had long ago discovered.

  Besides, it’s not my magic, she sternly reminded herself. This is my father’s magic. My brother’s magic. My unborn son’s magic, but never mine. I cannot hold the power of the vidartan. Every vidaya knew that: the power of the ancient sorcerers does not listen to the prayers of women. But even while she thought those words, repeated after years of lessons and tradition, Mathilde didn’t believe them, not completely.

  She knew more now. Mathilde existed outside the rules, because she dared to try, because her family needed her to save them.

  “Vahagn,” she spoke the first word, the word of creation, and a dying cat was healed. She spoke another word and the same power destroyed an ammunition dump. And other word and she walked invisible amongst her enemies.

  If I do not hold this power of the vidartan priests, how much of it can I borrow? What is the limit of magic for a girl without authority to become a vidartan priest?

  Uniformed soldiers spat on the ground near where she stood. They did not see her, or hear her, or care. They stood guard. Everything was locked up tight. None of their trash collection duty was going to spill out. There was no escaping the train, not once it started moving. Until then, they kept watch, bored.

  Tidy, dutiful—that was their mission. ‘Keep the trains running on time.’ That was the motto written in bright yellow letters above the station. Right next to the Hollyoaken creed: Unity is All.

  “Trains up and running,” one dog said just as the two coupled engines in the front blasted their horns. Great gusts of coal-blackened smoke belched from their furnaces. The wheels began to turn. There was no time for planning. The wheels waited for no one.

  Mathilde had no time for tricks.

  Running to the back of the car, she jumped the tracks and grabbed on to the gate of the loading dock with both hands. Her feet spun as she tried desperately to grab a foothold on one of the co
upled links. The train lurched.

  Stoking ever hotter, the engines pulled out of the station, picking up speed with each passing second.

  Mathilde hung there, pulling her body, and the cat in her shawl slowly up onto the shaking wagon’s balcony.

  “Vav,” the only word that came to her mind. Feather. Light as down. Like a cocoon of silk, the vidartan power rippled through the threads of her shirt.

  In an instant, the feeling of gravity ceased. In fact, it was good that she had a tight grip on the balcony rail, clinging to it with both hands. That was what saved Mathilde from blowing away, caught up in the winds of turbulence that rushed past the speeding train. Her grip on the railing saved her, and the fabric of her shawl, knotted over her shoulder—that was all that saved Captain.

  Even so, her shawl caught the winds that whistled past her shoulder, and the fabric ballooned up. That was the moment Captain woke from the healing sleep of recovery. She felt bad that he was treated so roughly. But not that bad considering all the terrible things he must have done to the vidaya he captured, not just her family.

  Zealots like Captain Richaron had no mercy in their brittle, glass hearts.

  Claws dug in, he scratched his way up her shawl and onto her shoulders. Not thinking for a moment of retracting their piercing points, since his life hung in the balance. Nothing else registered. Certainly not the trail of blood along her skin.

  Mathilde could not scream.

  She whispered, “Look Away,” through clenched teeth, hoping that magic could travel as fast as a speeding train. Each step of the cat’s path was painful. Captain wanted to live.

  Well, so do I, Mathilde thought, furious at herself and at the Captain for his impatience. Light as a feather was a great spell, but not when speeds exceeded the fastest horses. More kite than human, Mathilde finally pulled her body over the railing with a frightened black cat clinging to her shoulder.

  Finally, she stood at the sealed door to the passenger car.

  “Listen up,” she spoke sternly to the black cat with his ears laid back.

  “I am going to save my family, Captain. That’s what we are doing here. You help me get them out, the spell will release you. I promise. Can you understand? Is there any room in your shriveled pea of a heart for mercy?”

  The cat glared at Mathilde while the winds of speeding transportation howled around their heads and shoulders.

  Captain came to a decision rather quickly. It might have been the rush of land passing under the acceleration of the railroad. Falling off the balcony would be instant death. Especially for a traitorous cat.

  Or even me… Mathilde admitted. “You have to make a choice. We both do.” She felt a rush of magic, deep in the bones of her shoulder and collarbone. Staring straight into his eyes, Mathilde asked the only real question of the stubborn cat, “Will you trust me?”

  Slowly, he leaned close to her. Nose to nose, he didn’t glare. The cat closed his eyes and nodded once. “Alright then,” Mathilde masked her surprise.

  “Once more, into the fire…we jump!”

  Mathilde listened, reaching with the senses the magic gave her while keeping a firm grip on the door handle. There. She felt her little brother. The sorrow that filled his heart fire made her want to burst into the prisoner wagon and free him that very second.

  She pushed her hands against the button that opened the sliding door. A massive lock clicked.

  With a whoosh, the door retracted.

  In the darkness of the interior, startled faces looked out, caught in the bit of light still left in the dusk-filled sky. Ten eager, tear-streaked faces, searched the open door for a rescue that was never coming.

  There was no path forward to where Fritz was held. Even though she wanted to, there wasn’t even room for Mathilde to walk inside the car. There wasn’t a walkway. The wagon was overfull, packed with desperate, frightened people, labeled vidaya. Some of them weren’t, though. From the open door, Mathilde could see that. A group of beaten and bloodied soldiers filled out the middle of the car.

  Not a drop of courage in the lot.

  In fact, the only space left in the whole of the compartment was the air above their heads.

  Mathilde thought resolutely, I can use that.

  13

  Detecting The Shadow of Things

  Floating in the cramped air above the heads of the prisoners, the black cat rode on Mathilde’s shoulder like she was a hot air balloon. Captain made no noise. And he could have. He could’ve alerted everyone in the compartment to their presence. That was his job, in fact, it was his duty.

  But he didn’t.

  Together, they wove back and forth over the heads of the sweaty, tear-filled faces. This close, the stink of human bodies pressed close together in panic was almost overwhelming.

  Mathilde held on to the overhead racks. That was easier because there was so little luggage. Vidayan prisoners were not travelers who meant to stay a while on vacation. Or who ever had any chance of returning. Anything the captives owned of real value was probably on those cars in the far back of the train, confiscated by the dogs. Whole fortunes could go missing during war.

  Who would ever know? Especially when all the owners were gone, vanished in the ‘fog of battle.’

  On wings of gossamer, the magic floated Mathilde through the wreckage of human hearts until she reached her brother. Looking down at his little head, her courage almost broke. He looks so lost, so tiny…

  Abandoned. Alone.

  The truth is: he is braver than all of us. She knew. Smashed against the shuttered window, Fritz waited for a miracle.

  Mathilde positioned her body above him, on the top of the luggage racks. Gently, slowly, she reached out her hand.

  Magic flowed between them.

  Instantly, Fritz knew she was there. She didn’t have to speak. He sat up, looked around, eyes full of hope, of wonder at the the possibility that she could save him.

  That we could save our family, they thought together, at one in the flow of magic.

  As far as the other desperate passengers were concerned, he began talking to himself. “I cannot find them, achut. I can’t find them. They are not in this car for sure. They’re not here. What will we do?”

  Mathilde didn’t speak to him not, through sound. She used the magic and when she did, the two vidartans spoke along the lines of power that connected their hearts.

  Levav, I am here. I understand.

  They aren’t in this car. I hate it here. Can we go home now? He asked with the impatience of every ten year old. Let’s find them and get out of this place. It’s horrible.

  Across the packed car, children wailed, clutching their ragged and bruised mother. Everywhere ,people whispered, trying to recover any part of their shredded human dignity.

  Mathilde could hear some of them speak lies just to calm their own minds.

  “We’ll be fine,” one woman muttered, straightening her wrinkled collar and dress. “They won’t hurt us. My husband’s too important. We are just going to a camp, like summers when I was a child. And if we are good, if we obey every command, we cannot be harmed. We cannot be hurt. They only punish those who cause trouble. Only those who resist.”

  A whole lot of other nonsense spouted from her trembling lips, all just as ridiculous. People who have no power have no choice about what is done with them. The dogs of Hollyoaks took away the voice of their prisoners as well as their dignity.

  When you’re the cargo, you don’t decide your fate. Mathilde had already lived that life.

  Fritz called her anger back. Mathilde? Can’t you use the magic to find Johan? Afterall, he is just like me. The magic—can’t it connect Johan to us?

  Like a bridge over a deep canyon, through a storm of despair, magic cut a path forward with the precision of fire and sunlight.

  From her heartfire to his and on again, magic traveled.

  It sped through the humans clustered in tight huddles, moaning and crying, through the steel-locked doors an
d onto the next car, loaded with more broken people, silent in their misery. Like a bit of sunlight reflecting along a carefully set pattern of mirrors, the magic bounced from one heartfire to another, dim as they were.

  Mathilde felt each connection.

  And without knowing what happened, every heart she touched in her search shared a bit of that vidartan magic as well. Throughout the train, people suddenly stopped crying. They looked around in wonder as the magic brought an element of joy into the darkest of places.

  Nothing in the next car. The magic stretched to the heartfires of the vidaya in the third car, right in the middle. Magic searched for a match to her little brother’s pure white heartfire.

  Almost immediately, the power flared, bright as a streaking comet, white hot. Johan.

  “Johan. Is that you?” She whispered into the river of connection. “It’s me. Mattie.”

  Across the lips of seventy-two people, her words repeated. A whisper that became a roar. Sixty people in the second car said the same exact thing.

  Immediately, they clamped their hands over their mouths, staring at each other in amazement and fear.

  Mathilde didn’t know that. With her physical eyes, she could not see through the steel walls. But she felt something change.

  The vidaya stirred, like they awoke from a sleep so deep they had been buried alive.

  Mattie? A little voice whispered, spinning along the thread of the vidartan spell. Is that you, achut? He asked. Even his response felt so far away. Mattie, I’ve been so alone. I-Where are you? I can’t see you?

  Joahn’s communication became more frantic as the little boy seized on the voices all around him, trying to make sense of twelve strangers all asking him the same question.

  Don’t leave me here, he cried.

  “Johan?” Mathilde tried again, encouraged by even the wandering response. “Johan? Is Mama with you?”

  Through the magic force, Mathilde could see his shining heart fire through an entire train compartment full of strangers.

  Is Mama there?

  She’s here. She’s sick, came the answer, floating along the powerful magic like an echo of a dream.