by Cory Huff
The vision started to fade. Liam regained control of his breath. “That…Bloodstone tattoo…is on the inside of the one of the journals that my parents left me…it’s very old. The image is ancient. It’s a piece of paper… from an older journal they said.”
Badb started laughing. Liam smiled nervously and asked “What?”
Badb laughed and laughed. It was unsettling to Liam. Finally, she regained control of herself, wiping tears from her too-round eyes. “I thought you were just another half-Sidhe Liam. I didn’t realize you were connected to the Bloodstone line in some way. Liam, the Bloodstones were the leaders of Atania. Darian the First, King of Atania and husband to Dearbhail, the daughter of Mab, the Summer Queen of the Sidhe. If you are related to them, you could be the heir to the Kingdom of Atania.”
Liam looked at her blankly, not able to comprehend what Badb was saying. However, his hyperventilating had stopped.
“Liam, we thought the hope of reuniting our people ended with the death of Darian. Cyric murdered all of his children, or so we thought. If you are related to them, this is why your Fey heritage shows so strongly. The vision Darian and Dearbhail had was a united Sidhe and human kingdom, fulfilled through their children. Liam, your family journal could be the key to fulfilling that vision, if it indicates a relationship.”
Liam was stunned.
“And I’ve found you in the ruined city of Ghealdar.” She continued, smiling grimly. “This changes everything. I cannot teach you here. You have to leave Ghealdar. You are not safe here. The city and the beings in it are exceedingly dangerous, and you are too important to risk your death here. And, I’m sorry, but you must leave without me. The curse of the druid crone Ithia keeps me from leaving this place.”
“What?” exclaimed Liam. “You tell me I could be related to a long-dead king, and then tell me I have to leave and you can’t help me with what I came here for in the first place? Where am I supposed to go Badb?” She opened her mouth to say something, and Liam, suddenly possessed by rage and frustration at being thwarted so close to his goal, plowed through, “No, don’t talk, I talk right now! I didn’t ask for any of this! I’m not part of your human-Sidhe-unification strategy. I am just a tanner.” He was starting to hyperventilate again. He could feel the Ogham power wanting to rise within him to protect him from this source of frustration, “from Atania, accidentally caught… up in this dream of temporary madness…I’m going to wake up and find out this was some elaborate hoax.”
Badb slapped Liam across the face, hard. Her tiny frame packed a massive wallop and Liam crashed to the ground. He saw a bright light and heard a ringing sound. He looked up at Badb as if to ask why and he was staring into the mid-day sun. Badb stepped between him and the sun, and her face was angry and fearsome to behold. She spoke with the authority of a battle general ordering a low ranking peon, “Liam, you don’t get a choice here. Two centuries ago, our people believed that Darian Bloodstone had betrayed his wife and us. It was rumored that he allowed Cyric to murder his children and his wife to cleanse the bloodlines and that he only killed Cyric to consolidate power after the genocide of our people. You could be the one to prove all of that wrong. You might be the child that proves that Darian was not a monster. I’m sending you back to Atania so that you can find out. You need to find a way to confirm your heritage and to prove that Darian did not conspire with Cyric in the Hartland War. I’m also sending someone with you to make sure you follow through.”
Liam groaned as he flexed his jaw. The fey general could hit hard. A lot harder than her little frame suggested.
7. Meddling
Sophronia walked out of the house about an hour after Liam left. She couldn’t sit there with Aidan sighing and brooding. Between realizing that some of her stories - perhaps all of them - were true, Badb refusing to teach her, and the horrific sounds of battle that raged through the night, her mind was racing. But Aidan was so obviously distressed that she offered to talk. He said he didn’t want to talk, but he kept sighing and hmm-ing. Finally, she rolled her eyes, picked up her pack and walked outside.
Who knew how long they would be here? Sophronia had taught herself what she knew of the Ogham. It had taken years, but that was mostly because understanding the simple task of opening herself up to the magic had been impossible until it had finally happened. With outside guidance from such a powerful Sidhe being, who knows how long it would take? Weeks? Days? A few hours? Was Liam going to walk back through the door tonight a changed being of light and power?
She looked up and down the street and didn’t see anything remarkable. She turned right and started striding with a purpose. Perhaps a vigorous walk would help her shrug off the disturbing night sounds and the frustration that she felt over being shut out. She had traveled all of this way, and she was stuck. It wasn’t fair. She blew out a big sigh of her own as she came to an intersection. Some of the weeds growing out of the cobblestones were as tall as she was. She stepped around a tall, grassy plant she didn’t recognize and stopped when she saw someone standing there.
This person was tall and blonde. Distinguishing male or female was difficult. With a thin build, penetrating eyes, and a severe mien, they looked a little bit like Liam, but with blonde hair cropped short and skin that hadn’t been around tannery chemicals for 20 years. Their skin was, in fact, almost luminescent. They were wearing a large black cloak. The hood was pulled back, hanging off of the neck. It looked like they were clasping hands in front, but it was hard to tell with the folds of the cloak covering the entire body. The effect was to make the face stand out bright, even in daylight. It was disconcerting.
The person smiled a slight half smile. “Hello,” they said. “My name is Jannon. What brings you to Ghealdar?” The voice was even, slightly effeminate but not high. Strong.
Sophronia was cautious. Was this a friend of Badb’s? A rival? Something else unrelated? “Hello, stranger. You startled me there.” She responded.
Jannon watched her quietly.
“Oh,” she smiled and managed to blush, “my apologies. I am here in Ghealdar on business. My name is Sophronia.”
“Business?” Jannon smiled, mocking her. “What business could you possibly have here in a dead city, Sophronia?”
“Forgive me Jannon,” she responded smoothly. “This dead city has rattled my nerves and made me unsettled. What did you say you are doing here yourself?”
“Watching you Sophronia. We’ve been watching you for a long time. Months. Mindee and I both.”
As soon as he spoke Mindee’s name, Sophronia drew her sword and stepped back into a fighting stance. Jannon waved his hand at her sword, utterly unafraid. That voice was amused, “You won’t need that. If I wanted to kill you myself, you would be dead before you ever saw me. I didn’t tell Mindee to kill you. She took that into her own hands, and I’m sorry about that.” Jannon’s eye contact was unnerving. For some reason, she believed that Jannon could easily destroy her, and fear formed like a ball of lead in her stomach. “I’m revealing myself to you because I’m curious. What do you want? Why are you teaching yourself the Ogham? Why are you here?”
Sophronia thought she saw an opportunity here. Perhaps she could escape this encounter alive. She smiled her dazzling performer smile, looked straight at Jannon, and said, “I learned of the Ogham on accident. I realized that it could help me be the best performer. I want to be a bard, like the bards of old. I don’t want to sing folk songs. I want to tell tales to make people sob and weep. I want to experience adventures that shape the world and live to tell the tale. I want to uncover mysteries. I want to know what happened in Atania, what happened in Ghealdar. I want to know how a great empire falls, suddenly, with no warning and no record. I want to know who the Sidhe are. I want to know them personally because they must still be alive. If Badb lives, then others must live too. I want to know why the Ogham used to be a commonplace tool, and now nobody knows what it is, let alone uses it. I want to uncover the secrets of the universe and master them. I want t
o be one of the creatures like Badb.” She paused for dramatic effect, “Like you.” She paused again. He was still silent, listening.
“I want your secrets. Mindee is your friend? For how long? Are you her teacher in the Ogham? If it was long, she must not have tried very hard. My friends defeated her, and they know nothing of the Ogham. If I’ve guessed correctly, she barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. Look at what I learned on my own. What I’m capable of. With someone like you as a mentor,” she paused and gulped realizing how ridiculous what she had just said sounded, “with you as a teacher, I think I could approach what I want. Teach me. Teach me, and you won’t be disappointed. Teach me, and you’ll see how much time you wasted with Mindee.”
Jannon was silent for a long time until finally, that powerful effeminate voice sounded, “I will test you. Please me, and I will teach you. Displease me and die here in Ghealdar.” His words carried weight. Sophronia felt that weight like a physical force pushing against her. She was nearly as tall as him, but at this moment, she felt like she was shrinking while he was growing.
There was a long pause before Sophronia spoke in a voice that was barely trembling at all. “What’s the test?”
“Tell me what happened in Atania. Moreover, tell me why you are here. Do not dissemble. I already know many details. Start at the beginning, when you first learned how to use the Ogham. I want to know how this happened.”
It was mid-day by the time Sophronia explained her history with the Ogham. She told Jannon all about her childhood explorations of the woods. She had played there from the time she was just six years old, bringing her friends there to play. She knew all of the abandoned mansions by heart. She had become curious, walking through these homes in the woods, reading diaries of the long since departed. She felt like she knew many of them. The Bloodstone family. The Blackraven family. The Djinn.
One day she had discovered the overgrown road that led to hidden Atania. She had fallen asleep in the woods at just eight years old. Usually so sure of where she was, she got lost in the dark and happened upon the overgrown road that led to a new place. That was when she had begun exploring hidden Atania. That first night she had only seen the palace. She realized she was in the wrong place, had gotten scared and felt a little ill, and had found her way back home.
But she eventually went back. She explored the grounds around the palace. She studied the hidden buildings. On her third trip back, she had found the library and tried to understand the markings in the books. Over the course of the next ten years, Sophronia had reconstructed the Ogham alphabet by matching the markings in the library books with the descriptions of the machines, farming techniques, and other things the Ogham was used to enhance. She had done it one painstaking letter at a time, with many failures.
After reconstructing the alphabet, she had memorized it and experimented thousands of times until she unlocked the key to accessing the underlying power the Ogham represented. She had lucked upon the solution that the Sidhe had taught humanity centuries ago.
“You are a remarkable woman,” said Jannon, interrupting her as she explained how she used the Ogham to enhance her stories and songs. “Mindee was right. You are fierce, strong, and intelligent.”
Sophronia took in Jannon’s praise and blurted out, “So you’ll teach me?”
Jannon looked at her impassively, his sky-blue eyes boring into hers. “I will test you more.”
Aidan started awake. He was lying on a couch. He had been thinking about the noises he heard in the night, obsessing over them and reliving the nightmare soundscape from last night. What was this place?
Desperate for some measure of comfort Aidan thought about how much peace he had felt in the Temple of the Creator. He had felt so sure of himself and the Creator’s will for him. These last two weeks he had felt none of that. He had closed his heart to the Creator. Maybe the Creator would welcome him back?
He knelt and prayed for the first time in many days. At first, he couldn’t speak, so he silently pled with the Creator to help him know what to do. The terror had seeped so deeply into his bones that he felt he had no other recourse. Emotion poured out of him as he sobbed over the deaths in the night. Then he sobbed over the deaths of the men in that tunnel. Then his heart truly broke over the deaths of his father and his friend Nia and his missing brother. They had been the only people in the world who cared about him.
No. That wasn’t true, he realized. Liam and Sophronia cared. He shouldn’t needle Sophronia so much. His brother cared. What was Auley doing at the moment? As his soul quietly poured out its misery, Aidan felt an emotional release. His throat seemed to unclench, and Aidan pled with the Creator out loud, “Please keep my brother safe. I love him so much, and I think I’ve messed everything up. I left him without his father or me. I’m sorry Creator, I truly am. I just had to get away. I had to get away from the place where dad died. I needed…to put my focus on something. Something that didn’t make me hurt. I hurt so much.” He cried more. He cried until tears wouldn’t come anymore. He felt comforted by saying it all out loud to the Creator. He felt that presence again. Then he fell asleep on his knees, leaning on the couch.
In a dream, Aidan found himself walking down the crowded street near the market he sometimes went to when his family was able to scrounge together enough to purchase sweets. There was a merchant with open bins of candy. You could give him a coin and put huge handfuls of candy into a small canvas bag. He would go home with the bag bulging and his cheeks full of peppermints or licorice.
He was standing in front of one of the bins when he realized it was utterly silent. He looked up and realized the street had cleared. Even the merchant had disappeared. Coming down the lane were two enormous men who walked with swagger as they carried huge longswords. Also, they weren’t men. They were covered in brown fur and had the heads of cows. Aidan gaped at their enormous snouts decorated with golden rings and the massive horns sprouting from their heads just above their bovine ears. The two creatures were bearing down on the one other person on the street who hadn’t disappeared yet. A woman about forty years old with a no-nonsense grey bun had just exited a house along the market, her head down and distracted by some deep inner thought. She looked up just as the cow-men grabbed her. She screamed out but made no sound. She attempted to run away, but the enormous, terrifying creatures caught her in their iron grips.
Suddenly a phalanx of ten Knights of the Creator appeared, thundering down the street on horses toward the struggle. Aidan recognized several of them from training. They bore down on the assailants, who dropped the woman and drew their larger than normal longswords. Everyone opened their mouths and bellowed challenges. Just as they crashed into each other, Aidan woke up.
He gasped as he awoke. His heart was pounding. He realized that he longed to be there with his fellow knights and squires. He should have been on one of those horses, defending that woman. The meaning was clear. Atania was in trouble and needed his help. He had to go back. He had selfishly left his home and his younger brother behind to run away from his problems. He would rectify that problem immediately, even if he had to go back by himself.
Aidan stood up to run out the door, but before he got two steps, he fell back down. His legs were full of pins and needles. He had fallen asleep on his knees and cut off the circulation to his legs. He laughed at himself as he flexed and stretched, waiting for the circulation to return. A heroic burst out of the door would have to wait a few minutes.
8. Trouble at Home
Cichol crept through the ruins of hidden Atania. He avoided the main road that led from the cliff to the palace in the center of the city. He took the side alleys. Cichol, a bone-white Thalamhtuatha who was raised underground, had no problem navigating the dimly lit alleys. He was slender and taught; muscles chiseled into his slender form. He wore his dark hair in short braids. His fellow seafaring Tuatha sometimes put bright beads in their braids, but Cichol placed more value on the ability to blend in. His braids were unadorned.
His clothing, dark pants and a dark, tight-fitting shirt, with black hardened leather boots, were workmanlike. His one nod to ornamentation was a small gold ring in his nose, a mark of his rank. He had a similar ring in his ear. When he was on the boat or on ceremonial occasions, he wore a chain that connected both of them. The chain held several charms, together signifying his rank among the sailors. He was their senior leader, reporting directly to the terrible and intimidating minotaur Emperor Gabalifix.
He rounded a corner slowly, saber out and dagger in his off hand. It didn’t seem possible this entire section of the city was abandoned and free of danger. There were always hidden dangers. He and his team of Thalamtuatha scouts would find them. That was his job. Walking in parallel, four other Thalamtuatha slinked their way through the city’s ruins. Their advance report had indicated there was nobody in this section, but advance reports weren’t always correct, especially when they came second-hand. The Emperor hadn’t revealed the source of this intelligence, but Cichol assumed it was the Unseelie Court. The Winter Queen had plenty of reason to want this place destroyed and the humans subjected to the sword. Their genocidal war against all Sidhe had reduced her people to just a fraction of who they previously were.
That was above his pay grade. Cichol rounded another corner and stopped. There they were — the hidden danger. Four miserable twisted dwarves huddled around a meal. They were hideously deformed, covered in grime. Their clothes were tattered and ruined. They were gnawing on some bones, stripping the last of the flesh from whatever this creature had been. He smiled when he thought that perhaps it was some lost human soul who had the misfortune of meeting these … creatures. Cichol stepped forward, slowly, until he was within lunging distance. He cleared his throat. All four of them turned to look at him. Cichol spoke with a thick accent despite his years on the surface world, “Are there more of you?”