In her eagerness to finish, she grew lightheaded after several rounds of stooping and standing. She stumbled with a faint moan and teetered.
A pair of strong hands steadied her.
“Father,” she said, sighing, “I wasn’t overexerting myself, I swear.” Standing on her own feet again, she turned to thank Father Liam. Dorhen stood there instead. Too woozy to scream, she gasped and tried to leap away. When she stumbled, he threw his arms around her waist.
“Don’t be afraid, relax,” he said.
“How did you get in here? We have a wall around this place for a reason.”
He retrieved the little stool and placed it inside the walls of hanging sheets before guiding her onto it. “Sit down,” he said, keeping his voice low, though it retained a sense of authority. He remained visible for now, and sat on his knees before her, his eyes large and concerned. “You must think I’m a scab by now.”
“I’ve been planning to tell them about you.”
“Please don’t.” He raised his hands, palms out. “I don’t mean to scare you so much. What can I do to make you unafraid of me?”
“You can start by giving me a straight answer. Why do you keep coming back?”
He seemed reluctant to answer. “Because of you, Kalea.”
“What is it about me?”
“Your hair. It’s…brown. And the sound of your voice makes me want to come closer to you. There’s something about you…” Kalea put a hand to her chest as she listened. “I’ll be no trouble, I promise.”
“Didn’t you say Arius Medallus makes you walk?”
Dorhen closed his eyes. His throat apple bounced as he nodded. “I’m finished walking.”
“Has he returned?”
“No.”
“What would happen if he returns and beckons you and you don’t obey?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to disobey him before. Not to say I haven’t. I have, and when I get him mad enough…he has ways of…putting images in my head, I can’t even…” He closed his eyes and swallowed again.
“If you want to stay around so bad, you could consider training for the priesthood.” The ridiculous idea made her smile, and she covered her mouth. “But you’ll have to cut all that hair off and have a tonsure instead.”
“Yes. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to be near you.” He bowed his head to the ground as if she were a queen sitting on a throne.
Kalea scowled. “I was joking. You can’t join the priesthood solely to be near me. That would be wrong.” Nonetheless, she laughed as the image materialized in her mind: Dorhen in a robe with his ears sticking way out to the sides, uncovered by any hair, and a big shaven bald spot on his pate.
She carried on laughing for a bit, and he peered up through his eyelashes. Tears streaked his face. His eyes were cloudy with moisture, hopeless. He offered no more words. Kalea’s laughter died, and her smile followed.
“You really mean it.” He did nothing more in response. She couldn’t laugh anymore, even if she wanted to. “What can I do? You’re an elf—and a male, and I’m a novice vestal.”
He remained staring at her—pleading with her, his tears still running and his hands planted on the ground. Apparently, he could produce no good solutions to his strange dilemma.
“Well,” she said, “you do make me feel safe when I know you’re near.”
He raised his head a bit more. “I do?”
“Yes, I must admit. Sometimes.” Doubting thoughts crept in after her statement. It didn’t make sense. Though the statement was true, his grabbing her yesterday, paired with the notion that he had cast spells on her, battled the paradoxical feeling.
He blinked as he drew in a long breath. His tears had stopped.
“Dorhen, I have a quandary.”
“What’s a quandary?”
“It’s a problem.” She crossed her arms under her breasts. “Did you cast a spell on me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know any spells.”
“So how do you turn invisible?”
He tugged his blue hood from inside the brown one. “It’s a spelled hood. Arius Medallus made it. Otherwise, I can’t do any magic.”
“I see. You seem fond of me though.”
“I am.” He bowed his head again.
“Stop doing that. It feels wrong. You should bow to the One Creator and no one else.” He raised his head again but remained planted on his hands, faithful as a dog. “What kind of person is Arius Medallus if he can make a magic hood?”
“He’s a fairy at the level of fairy-major.”
Dorhen and the waving sheets around them blurred in her vision. Her voice trembled out. “What did you say?” Her dizziness returned.
“Kalea,” Dorhen said, “I didn’t only come here to grovel at your feet. I have to tell you an important thing before you banish me from yourself forever.”
“What have you to say?” Saving Dorhen had been the wrong choice. He’d bring fairies and demons into her safe little world. He could endanger the whole convent! Her breath caught, ready to let out a scream. They’d call the guard and have Dorhen hauled away, and then Kalea could get on with her life once and for all. No more love spells to plague her with him gone.
“You’re not mentally ill.”
She canceled her impending scream. His eyes brightened again, and his cheeks were drying, but his eyelids were still red. “What?”
“I thought you should know. You’re not mentally ill. I see those faces in the water too. It’s Arius Medallus.”
“You’re trying to fool me.”
He lurched to grab her hand but canceled the action, instead grabbing air and clenching his fist. “No, I’m not. Arius Medallus shows up full-body for me, but sometimes he appears as a face in the water. He’s a water spirit. He’s not harmful. This means you’re not mentally ill. You’re normal.”
“I wouldn’t call seeing spirits normal.”
“Call it what you want. You have the gift of being able to see him. I understand most humans can’t see beings like him. Not so easily, at least.”
“So…” Kalea pointed to her chest. “We have Arius Medallus in common.”
Dorhen bobbed his head rapidly like a child would. His smile returned after such a long absence.
Kalea frowned deeper. “This isn’t good.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Because we can’t trust stray spirits like fairies who fly around causing mischief.”
“You’re right. But Arius Medallus is special.”
“How?”
“He rescued me from danger.”
“Is that why you wander around with him? Where are your parents?”
His smile wilted. “My mother’s dead. My father murdered her. He set our house on fire and she burned up in it.” Kalea covered her mouth with both hands. “If Arius Medallus hadn’t been there to spirit me away to a safe place, my father probably would’ve killed me too.”
Dorhen’s eyes dulled as he recounted his past, as if he’d already cried plenty about it and couldn’t cry anymore. The turquoise fire in his eyes had been doused into black holes by an old emotion harbored deep inside. He waved a hand at whatever horrified expression she was making. “It’s all right. It happened a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“I was about six.”
“Oh, dear Creator.”
“I’m twenty-two now and have come a long way. Arius Medallus taught me how to survive in the forest: how to catch fish, and which plants and insects are safe to eat. He also made this magic hood. He knows I can’t settle anywhere outside of Norr because I’m an elf. He keeps me walking in circles around the Lightlands, altering my path every season.”
Kalea wiped her eyes, restraining any more tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I can survive. Arius Medallus chose me. And you being able to see him in water means he chose you too.”
“For what?”
“Who can say?”
The sun was waning, and voices at the door murmured to each other before calling, “Kalea, are you all right?”
“Yes!” she called back. “I’m finishing up. I’ll be in soon.”
“Supper’s about ready, girl.”
“Thank you, Sister!”
She turned back to Dorhen and grabbed his hand from where it rested on his knee. He paused in awe to watch their two hands in contact.
“Dorhen,” Kalea said, “tomorrow I’m going to wash my loads at the creek. Do you know where the dam is?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Meet me there.”
Chapter 8
A Companion for a Mercyman
After managing to avoid looking at the stars for the last few days, Daghahen toiled with the holding sphere containing Wik, which he’d brought back from the Darklands after painstakingly searching for it over a five-year period. After some well-made bets in various pubs, he’d restored his coin purse enough to buy a room for a few nights at an inn for some imperative privacy.
At first, the sphere appeared to be nothing but a beautiful black ornament in his hands, but the more he handled it and became familiar with it, the more familiar it became with him.
“Can you talk?” Daghahen whispered, testing the thing, certain that it possessed an awareness of some kind.
He was answered by strands of slight vibrations running through his nerves from where the orb touched his hand. It was a start, and the more he touched and tapped it, the more it responded. He tried new ways to agitate it—to provoke it into speaking or communicating by some means. He put it in water, in direct sunlight, and when he held it over a flame, a horrid, sand-like hiss rushed through his head, nearly making him drop it.
You fool!
After placing it on the inn room’s stained straw pillow where he always rested it, Daghahen paused and looked around. “Hello?”
No one had entered the room. Turning back to the holding sphere, he squinted and reached out to touch it again.
Damn you!
He jerked backward and fell on his rear. It did talk! Climbing to his knees, he placed his hand on the orb and asked, “Are you the pixie called Wik?”
A gentler sound like sand sliding down a slope ran through his head. The pixie must be using his own nerves and energy source to communicate telepathically. It wasn’t hard to imagine, knowing that pixies came with the ability to enter people’s minds in general. Wik wouldn’t be able to possess anyone now, since he was trapped in the glass.
He tried again. “I took you out of that witch’s trunk. Can’t you speak to me at least? Are you Wik?”
What else would I be, little elf?
Daghahen knew as much, but confirming the information never hurt. This was one of Ilbith’s coveted five, Wik himself. Daghahen had already talked Thaxyl’s energy away, and now talking might glean something from this one. There was always a chance a new pixie would yield new answers. Wik held more value than Thaxyl; he was still at the level of pixie. He carried on an economical system for circulating his energy, apparently more economical than breeding a hybrid race of heart-eaters to gather energy for him. No, Wik liked to possess mortal people. Pixies were the only fairy type powerful enough to perform pixtah, the feat of possession. Some favored the practice more than others, but Wik existed by it.
This foreboding creature spent its time floating around in the shadows, looking for its next host. When it found one, it lived in the human or elf’s body, using it like a suit. It leeched the person’s life force away until no more remained, or until the host body was destroyed by other people. Until then, the new being which stepped forth from the combination of the two, always called Wikshen, enjoyed a lavish life of violence and debauchery.
Alternately, Wik could be caught in a sphere, and this had happened more than once. Darklandic lore mentioned that whoever the sphere was broken closest to would automatically be possessed. If Daghahen wanted to share Wik’s power and use it to kill Lambelhen, all he’d have to do would be to break the sphere. But nothing in his calculations made clear that it would be a good idea. Daghahen wasn’t the one. Besides, there were other uses for this item, the most valuable item in Kaihals.
“Good. I knew it. Now, there are things we must talk about.”
I owe you nothing, little elf.
“Not even for a bargain?”
So let me out and we’ll bargain.
Daghahen smiled and shook his head. “We’ll have to do our bargaining before that happens.”
The sand sound grazed his eardrums. It sounded so real, as if there should be sand spilling into the room whenever it happened.
What do you want?
“I want to kill my brother.”
Pathetic. I’ll not join with a shriveled toad like you. Find me a better host.
“That’s not what I mean.”
The sand rushed again, and Wik’s voice became faint. You haven’t enough talent…
“No, not me!” he yelled. “I have a sword, Hathrohjilh. Do you remember that name?”
The sword is useless. Throw it away. I am all you need. The sword only brings you trou…
“What?” He shook the orb and put his ear to it. The effort didn’t help. “Wik!”
The sand ran in long drifts through his head, sometimes separating into indiscernible syllables.
“What do you mean?” He shook it again to no avail.
Keep walking.
Afterward, all the sounds and vibrations stopped.
Those two sly sorcerers had been following him the whole week. Actually, one was the sorcerer and the woman was his thrall: a talented lass who could be a sorceress if she’d entered the faction by some different way. Instead, the man had somehow captured a woman he found beautiful, tamed, trained, disciplined, and used her, and now he had brought her here to help with trying to capture Daghahen and the burden he carried on his back. He had seen this process before when he, too, practiced sorcery ages ago. It was one thing for a woman to be born into the servant class of Ilbith, or even to be captured, chained, and put to servant-like purposes. It was a more disturbing concept for a person to be trained as a personal thrall against their will and set to walk free of chains, assisting and carrying out complex missions for their sorcerer-masters, as if participating of their own will.
Today she wore a wig, blonde to cover the thick, black hair which usually cascaded down her shapely form. Daghahen recognized her from yesterday, when she’d pretended to sell stolen twisted bread off a stick in Tintilly’s market.
Now she shimmered in her blonde wig and dancer’s skirt, wearing the same dark-colored corset she always wore, this time glittering with all manner of glass baubles dangling around her neck and falling into her cleavage. Swaying her hips, she moseyed right over and perched herself next to Daghahen as he sipped his tea at a table in the biggest inn in Tintilly.
A medley of pleasant scents rushed up his nose, particularly clove and vanilla. She leaned right into his space, hovering her chin over his shoulder. “Care to show me a little mercy, mercyman?”
He glanced at her before shooting his eyes across the room for her master.
“Sorry,” he said. “I got all my money stolen in the last brothel I visited.”
“I’m sure you have some left, my sweet sir.”
He smiled toward his half-empty cup. “Nonetheless, you don’t want to dally with me, darlin’. You might catch my melancholy.”
She let out a pleasant, musical laugh and batted his shoulder. “Pardon my manners. I forgot the protocol. I believe I am supposed to perform a charitable act for you before you can show mercy to me.”
Her hand found his leg under the table, but he snatched it, brought it up, and kissed her knuckles. She flashed a bright smile. Her eyes were painted with black and lavender.
“Your manners are faster than my desires.”
He flashed a smile back at her. “You should go find someone else.” He studied her eyes for a long, serious moment. She read
them. “To tell the truth, I don’t like talking to women in this setting.”
The musical pleasantry chimed in her voice. “Why not?”
“There’s so much sadness in my past. I used to talk to girls like you a lot. Got them good and hot for me before sending them upstairs to meet me in my private room.”
One of her eyebrows popped up. “What happened next?”
He cocked his head back to his cup and sniffed. “Upstairs, they found a different me. I hate to talk about it.”
“Aw. You poor, weary soul.” She smoothed a hand along his cheekbone.
“You really don’t get it, lass.”
She straightened her back and pushed her bosom forward. “I think you misinterpreted me a moment ago. When I said I’d do a charitable act for you, I meant I should buy you some food. You look hungry.” She waved her hand in the air to the barmaid. “A bowl of stew!”
Daghahen ground his teeth. Where was her master hiding? No doubt she’d find some quick moment to poison his food when it arrived. He couldn’t take the chance of letting her near it. Not for an instant.
“You’re so kind, lass.” He kissed her hand again. She smiled, and he smiled back. No telling if she knew his special talent. He summoned his quickest reflexes for what came next. Holding her hand, he touched her palm with his finger, whipped it to her collarbone, and then to her forehead, touching her between the eyes. “A pretty thing, too,” he said simultaneously.
When he relaxed again and dropped her hand, she sat staring, as if struggling to register what happened. Her pupils swelled as she stared into his eyes. Success.
“Isn’t that better?”
“Oh, yes, my love.” The barmaid placed the stew bowl on the table as the thrall hugged his arm. She buried her face into his hair and kissed his neck.
“Ah-ah, not yet. Hold on.” He uncoiled her spindly grasp from his arm and brought her attention to the food. “It’s on me. Go ahead.”
“Thank you, my love.”
“You’re welcome.” He braced his elbow on the table, smiling at her, and then surveyed the room while she ate. He kept the smile pasted on his face. “My dear sweet maiden, who’s the man you were traveling with?”
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