Flecks of Gold

by Buck, Alicia

  Something deep inside me snapped. A knowledge that had been hidden came into focus for the first time. The certainty of my love for Breeohan hit me in a surge of wonder. My doubt fled, and the fear that had held me constantly at a distance from realizing my feelings disappeared. A will more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before gripped me. In my mind I tore out the nexus of Kelteon’s psychic lash with a fierce and desperate frenzy. There was a blinding flash of blue light. Then my mind slammed into my body as it too flew backwards, crashing into canvas. The knife jerked out of my nerveless hand at the moment of whiplash and arched in a deadly parallel to my body before puncturing the tent fabric an inch from my face.

  My head felt like it was splitting open with the worst headache of my entire life. I reached a hand up to rub my forehead and then I stopped. I waved my arm around and stretched out my legs. I would have shouted with joy, but a groan was the closest I could manage with my head pounding like it’d been on the receiving end of a club swing. The blue light that had illuminated the tent was gone, leaving the tent shadowed but for cracks of light showing through seams and the flap.

  I was still trying to convince myself to sit up, when a hand reached past me, grabbed the knife, and held it to my throat. I looked up to find Breeohan hovering menacingly over me.

  “Kelteon. Give her back,” he snarled.

  “Wait, it’s me. I got myself back.” I winced. Talking hurt.

  “How can I believe that it’s really Mary speaking and not Kelteon?” Breeohan asked suspiciously.

  “Kelteon controlled my body, but he could never hear my thoughts. He never knew you told me you loved me. But I guess you can’t believe that either, not ever having been stupid enough to let someone enchant you. There is seriously something wrong with a world where someone can take over your body, but there’s no cars, no electricity, and no chocolate!” I thought of the weeks of dirt and pain I’d endured with no chance to fix everything, and now to have Breeohan looking at me full of distrust was the last straw.

  Tears leaked from the corner of my eyes and my head pounded with the rhythm of my heartbeat. “The story he told you about being tortured but resisting wasn’t true. I’m such a wimp. I should’ve just burned to death. I almost killed you. It was so close. I’m so sorry, Breeohan. You were right. I’m like a walking curse, bringing pain wherever I go.” I tried to keep from sobbing so that my head wouldn’t explode.

  “I didn’t say that. I said you always seemed to get yourself into trouble,” he replied softly, the knife still at my throat.

  “Well, you were wrong. What you said was too mild. When I tore that blue ball of fire apart and broke the connection with Kelteon, I got slammed back into my own head with the force of lightning. You can tie me up or whatever you do to magicians—I don’t care anymore. But would you just heal my head, please? I understand if you never trust me again. I wish I could prove that I’m me, but my head hurts too much. Stupid third world . . . world.” My tears ran down my cheeks and dripped onto the hand that held the knife at my throat.

  “You pulled apart a blue ball of fire?” he inquired.

  “Yes. When I was trying to get my body back, Kelteon hit me with something, so I followed it and ripped it up, which seems to have worked, but I think death would be preferable to talking right now.” I tried to concentrate on something other than the pulsating in my brain and the fact that Breeohan still had a knife against my neck.

  “Where is Kelteon now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. He left the tent so he could have some fun with you through me, but—” I jerked in surprise, and the knife nicked my throat. “Breeohan, you’ve got to get the king and training general and my mother out of here. The whole camp has been taken over by Kelteon’s men. I don’t know where Kelteon is right now.” I hope he has a whopper headache too, I thought fiercely.

  A purple lacing flashed through my mind, and then relief from the hammering pain washed through me like cool water. Another lacing and the cut at my throat vanished. Breeohan slowly withdrew the knife. “I choose to hope that you are telling the truth. If what you say about Kelteon’s mercenaries is true, I’ll need your help.”

  We scrambled over to the king, Sogran, and Mom and untied them. They were still unconscious, and I didn’t know what drug was used so I couldn’t figure out a way to heal them.

  “What can we do? We can’t drag them through camp.” Breeohan paced through the tent’s murky shadows.

  I looked around and was struck with an idea. Reaching up I pulled down several swaths of the silk hangings that hid the tent’s plainness, and performed the chameleon lacing on them, then I draped the cloth over the three sleeping forms on the ground. They vanished completely in the tent’s dim light.

  The tent flap folded back, illuminating the dark and catching Breeohan and me in its wide beam. Kelteon staggered in, clutching his head with one hand and pointing feebly at me with the other. Several armed men followed until the tent was crowded. Breeohan and I stood in front of the king, training general, and Mom so they wouldn’t be stepped on accidentally.

  “You wretched girl. What did you do to me? What did you do?” Kelteon snarled, his face a satisfying picture of miserable fury.

  “My permission has been revoked. I guess I just needed a strong enough motivator to overcome your control.”

  “You’ll pay for crossing me,” Kelteon growled. He flicked his finger. An arrow loosed, heading straight for Breeohan’s head. Time seemed to slow as I created a wind to knock the arrow off course.

  “No. It’s your turn to pay, Kelteon!” I yelled.

  Another arrow was loosed and thrown off course. The soldiers, realizing that arrows would be useless, drew their swords and ran forward to mow Breeohan and me down. In one swift movement, Breeohan unsheathed his sword, blocked the leading man’s sword and turned him into the other soldiers. The man behind the first accidentally skewered his companion, and three others were forced to swerve out of the way.

  I used the distraction to grab the training general’s sword that lay near the camouflaged cloth. I brought the heavy weapon up just in time to connect with the metal descending toward my face. The training sets that Sogran had made me repeat over and over moved my muscles without my brain’s conscious thought, but I still barely held out against the much more seasoned soldiers that we faced.

  The clash of sword on sword was loud in the tent. I blocked one man, only to find myself almost run through by another. Breeohan and I stood facing apart with the king, training general, and Mom between us. As more soldiers streamed into the tent, I started to worry about stepping on Mom and saw with tired desperation that we were losing. Already I had healed several severe cuts on my arms and legs. Then Breeohan cried out, and I turned to see him crumple to the floor, a man standing over him about to bring his sword down through Breeohan’s middle.

  The man I’d been fighting used my distraction to slice my arm, but I hardly felt it. A growl burst from my throat, and I loosed a wind lacing with savage glee.

  The tent’s stakes ripped from the ground, and canvas flew straight up so that we all stood in the open. Sand whipped around the soldiers who had forced their way inside as well as those who’d waited without. It thrashed around Kelteon and his men like a live thing but stopped short of the bubble of calm I kept around those I loved.

  I focused, lacings flicking and activating through my head in a whirl as I freed each soldier’s head from the sand, then condensed the remaining sand into dense sandstone encasing each of them. Several cried in horror, and some tried to escape, but none had time to do more than take a step before all but their heads were trapped in stone.

  The wind died to reveal about twenty blocks of vaguely people-shaped stone with bare heads screaming and shaking atop stone shoulders. Kelteon’s stone was planted in the middle of his men, trapped permanently in his position where the corner of the tent had been. He snarled, and I saw the flicker of a lacing begin to form, but before I could even warn h
im to stop, it winked out. Kelteon scowled and tried again, only to fail once more.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, Kelteon,” Breeohan panted painfully, “but from what Mary described to me, it sounds as if she tore the very center of your magic to pieces in order to escape you. It might take years for you to recover, if you do at all.” He looked savagely pleased. I was elated to hear him speak at all and stepped to his side but was stopped by more of Kelteon’s mercenaries running into the area, drawn by the sound of the screaming. When they saw the living statues, they halted fearfully.

  “Don’t try anything stupid,” I said to them just in case. “I can encase you as easily as I did them.” I pointed to their frozen comrades. “Drop your weapons and surrender.”

  “Attack them,” Kelteon screamed. “I order you to kill them.”

  The free soldiers looked at each other uncertainly before dropping their bows and swords. I found rope and tied the remaining mercenaries securely while Kelteon yelled futile threats. I hurried toward Breeohan, but he waved me away.

  “I’m fine. It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t heal it myself,” he said reassuringly.

  “You stupid girl. This stone won’t hold me for long. I’ll make you regret what you’ve done to me,” Kelteon snarled.

  “It’s not so fun being the helpless one, is it?” I quipped with immense satisfaction as Breeohan and I dragged Verone, Mom, and Sogran away from the encased soldiers.

  It took us most of the morning to round up and subdue all the mercenaries who hadn’t already fled. We also healed as many of the king’s conscious soldiers as we could. Untying the drugged soldiers, we lay them out more comfortably.

  I freed all but Kelteon from the stone. We took away their weapons and tied them up instead, and I found myself receiving bizarre sobs of gratitude as the stone encasings fell away. The soldiers stopped me from helping with the few burials that were necessary, and I was guiltily relieved that I could avoid looking at the dead.

  When the few of us who were awake could do no more, we settled by the sleeping and waited for them to wake. Breeohan and I sat next to Mom, King Verone—my father—and Sogran. I still wasn’t sure what to make of being daughter to the king.

  “You must not have eaten even a whole bite of the food this morning—you awoke so quickly,” I inserted into the silence.

  Breeohan’s milk chocolate cheeks reddened. “I wasn’t very hungry. The thought of you being tortured turned my stomach.”

  It was my turn to redden. “I was weak. My legs were burning. All I could think about was the pain and making it stop. I put you all in danger because of my flimsy willpower,” I whispered.

  “Don’t blame yourself. I defy anyone to have done better,” Breeohan replied earnestly.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so instead, I looked down at my lap. “I wouldn’t have had the strength to break the enchantment lacing if not for you. When Kelteon first hinted that he would make me kill you, I realized how glad I was that you had escaped, even if that meant leaving me behind. I knew that you were safe, and I was content, but I also knew that I would see you again as a possessed mannequin, and I wouldn’t be able to stop my own hand from hurting you. I wanted to die.”

  “But you didn’t kill me. You broke his hold on you.”

  “Yes.” I hesitantly raised my eyes to Breeohan’s. They reflected an intensity of emotion I’d never before seen on his face. My stomach knotted with a tension both unnerving and exhilarating.

  I leaned forward, greatly daring, and touched my lips softly to his. His hands came up to cup my face and deepen the kiss. Then someone coughed. Breeohan and I parted, and I felt breathless and lightheaded.

  “It’s a good thing you’re surrounded by chaperones. I’d hate to think what you two would do without anyone around.” The king—my father—tried to speak reprovingly, but the effect was somewhat lessened by the drunken slur of his words. My face went beet red as I turned to see Mom, Sogran, and the king staring at Breeohan and me sternly, if somewhat sleepily. Breeohan looked just as red.

  “Now you be quiet,” Mom ordered the king of an entire country. “As far as I know, this is Mary’s first kiss, and you’re ruining it.”

  Thanks a lot, Mom, I thought unthankfully. The three adults were starting to look more alert.

  “Your Majesty, please forgive me,” Breeohan said. He quickly changed the subject, telling them of Kelteon’s control over me and how Kelteon’s men had taken the camp by drugging everyone, how I’d broken the enchantment lacing and broken Kelteon’s magic accidentally at the same time.

  “How did Kelteon get Mary to drug the food? She was watched at all times,” the training general asked.

  “Oh,” I slapped my forehead. “I forgot to look for him in the aftermath. That servant of yours was Kelteon’s spy,” I said to the king. “He came into my tent and told Kelteon through me that you were really my father and had declared it before a council and everything. Kelteon ordered him to drug the food this morning. We’ve got to find him.”

  “Kreth, Zac, Johan come with me. We need to arrest Sirus for treason,” the training general ordered.

  Sogran left, leaving Breeohan and me facing Mom and the king in uncomfortable silence.

  “So the secret is out,” the king said hesitantly.

  “I guess, unless you and the training general are going to switch the privilege again,” I replied.

  “No, Verone really is your father, Mary.” Mom smiled shyly up at the king, and he smiled back goofily.

  It made me instantly angry. “Don’t smile at him, Mom. He abandoned us. He left you without even telling you why,” I snapped. The smiles vanished, and I felt a stab of guilt but suppressed it.

  “He had no choice. He was forced to leave,” Mom said in a small voice.

  “I was not supposed to be king. My sister ruled Iberloah before me quite well, but when she died in an suspicious accident, the people were worried. Revolts began to erupt, and nobles vied for the crown all within days of her death. I was on Earth when it happened with no plan of ever returning to Esa. But Dolna Zeva, the magician school’s headmaster, knew where I was, and he knew where the lacing to get there was located. For the sake of the people, Dolna Zeva came to Earth and dragged me back with Sogran before I could even protest.

  “Once I was in Ismar, the people calmed. The nobles scheming for the crown faded quickly into the stonework. But when I had things under control, I looked for the lacing, only to hear from Dolna Zeva that it had been stolen—I assume by Kelteon. I couldn’t go back to get Fiona, though I searched for years for another copy of the travel lacing that would take me there,” he finished sadly.

  I was unsure how to feel. I’d grown up idolizing and hating my biological father in vacillating stages. Idolizing him because of the way Mom said he treated her when he was still around, hating him for running off and being the first man in a long line of many who had let me and Mom down. But if what he said was true, he really hadn’t left because he wanted to. He’d practically been abducted.

  “Kelteon said someone destroyed the travel lacing,” I said, feeling awkward, at a loss as to what people should say in such situations.

  “I’m sorry that you and your mother won’t get to see Earth again, but I was hoping that you would decide to stay here with me,” my father said. He looked quickly toward Mom, and she smiled blissfully back at him. There was no question about whether or not she wanted to stick around. It was nice to see that Mom’s hopeless self-accusation had been replaced by a tentative happiness as she looked upon her long-lost husband. I’d seen for myself that King Verone was a good person, and really, where else would we go?

  I glanced over at Breeohan sitting next to me and felt a thrill as he smiled.

  “I think I’d like that. Mom?” I asked just in case.

  “Yes. I’d like that very much,” she said, still gazing at the king.

  “I’m glad.” I assumed the king meant to direct his comment to both of u
s, but his eyes were locked on Mom. Their faces drifted closer together, and I cleared my throat, feeling a strange mixture of happy uncertainty.

  “Speaking of chaperones . . .” I said pointedly. Next to me Breeohan surreptitiously held up his hand to hide his smirk, but I caught it anyway and mock-glared at him. Mom turned to me with a mischievous glint in her eye, but before she could torment me further, Sogran returned, looking grim, and the sparkle died.

  “Sirus isn’t to be found anywhere in the camp.” We all drew in sharp breaths. “There’s more.” The training general paused unhappily. “Kelteon’s casing was smashed open. He’s gone as well, probably with Sirus. I’ve sent men out to track them down. We’ll apprehend them soon.” Sogran said the words confidently, but they left a shadow on my previous ease. Why hadn’t we heard Sirus breaking the stone?

  “Continue the search, Sogran. We will break up camp and travel back to the capitol,” ordered the king. Sogran saluted by grasping his left upper arm briefly, then strode off, bellowing orders as he moved.

  While some soldiers broke up camp, the king sent a group into the city to make sure that all of Kelteon’s mercenaries were routed out. I was trying to tie my tent canvas into a neat bundle but managing only a sloppy one when I saw the king’s soldiers return. A prisoner marched miserably ahead of archers with nocked crossbows, his hands tied behind his back. I dropped the bundle and headed to intercept the king. By the time I reached them, Rafan was kneeling in front of the king, gazing down with a look of sorrowful disgust.

  “There is nothing I can do,” the king said in response to what Rafan must have said. “You are guilty of treason against the royal family. You must pay for your crimes.”

  “Wait,” I said before my father could proclaim a sentence. “Rafan was under an enchantment lacing ever since he met me, probably before that. When I was under Kelteon’s control, he showed me. I think when I broke Kelteon’s hold, it released Rafan as well.” Rafan nodded. I continued, “I really don’t know what kind of person Rafan is since it was Kelteon the whole time. But I do know that the only thing Kelteon didn’t control when I was under the enchantment lacing was my thoughts, so I think you should consider that when you pass judgment on him.” I felt strange defending someone I had hated. But I hadn’t ever hated the real Rafan. I’d never even known him, and being imprisoned in my own body had certainly been excruciating torment for me.