by Nichelle Rae
The excited boy started running back towards the road where we left the others. He stopped suddenly and his bright face turned back to me. “Are you still going to make me a quiver, Ortheldo?”
I smiled. “Yes I will. With Rabryn’s help it will be done in no time.” Cairikson took a deep, excited breath that made his chest puff out a little before he spun away and continued running.
I looked at Rabryn as we both started walking back towards the road. “Okay, I could hardly believe my eyes watching you do that.” Rabryn chuckled. “I didn’t even know Salynns could talk to nature! How is it that you’ve learned how to do such a complex thing in such a short amount of time? I mean, Addredoc has only been teaching you for a couple weeks hasn’t he? How can you be so…so…” I laughed. “So far beyond good I can hardly believe it’s possible.”
Rabryn laughed with me. “Well see, that’s the thing. Addredoc, truthfully, hasn’t been teaching me much.”
“Then how can you be so advanced?”
He shrugged. “Addredoc asked the same thing. When I didn’t have answer for him he asked me about incidences in the past when I used my magic. I told him everything and he came to the conclusion that my magic works completely on need, instinct and emotion…not knowledge. He says it’s unlike that of any Salynn ever born.”
My brows went up. “Impressive, but how does he know?”
He shrugged again. “He’s Addredoc.” We both laughed. “Seriously though, think about all the times I’ve used my magic—healing Azrel in Oaksher, for example. I didn’t know anything about my magic then. All I knew was how I would feel if she died and I couldn’t let that happen, I wouldn’t let that happen. The next thing I knew I was yanking the knife from her back and putting my hand on her and she was healed. Killing that Shadow assassin during the Black Storm is another example. I was fearful for Azrel’s sake.”
“Not to mention pretty pissed off, I’m sure.”
Rabryn blew out a breath. I saw him shudder as he tried to shake off the memory. “Yeah, that too.”
“Well what about just now in making Cairikson’s bow? There was no emotion there. There really was no instinct.” I paused for a moment, then looked at him and saw him already smiling slyly at me. I grinned. “But there was a need.”
Rabryn nodded. “Cairikson needed a weapon so he will be able to help in the next battle and we hopefully won’t have to lose anyone else.”
I nodded in agreement. It was quiet as I thought about the other few times Rabryn had used his magic and, sure enough, in each incident there’d been high emotion or great need, or he’d used it on instinct. Suddenly I thought about how he used his magic to show me what Azrel’s life had been like in The Pitt.
I grabbed his arm, stopping him in midstride. “What happened to Cluna?” A shadow passed over his bright blue eyes. He pressed his lips together and looked away from me. I wasn’t sure he was going to answer me, but I had to know. “Did you kill her, Rabryn?”
He sighed. “It was an accident.”
“What happened?”
He bowed his head and I followed him to a nearby boulder. Both of us sat down on it. It was quiet before he took a breath to speak. “As I told you, my mother died the day after—he paused and blew out a breath—“the day after Azrel was almost burned alive. With the death of my mother so close to the attempted murder of my sister, I went a little crazy temporarily.” He bowed his head. “Azrel was laid up for a while with her feet bandaged, and both my parents were dead, so there really wasn’t anyone to stop what I did.” He clasped his hands in front of his mouth and looked into the woods, staring out at nothing.
“All I could think about was how much pain Cluna had caused Azrel over the years of torment and torture.” He looked at me pleadingly, “and Azrel defended them! She even joked with me about it sometimes, explaining it away as a normal reaction when people don’t understand something. She smiled in the face of her torture just so I wouldn’t hate them as much as I had a right to.” He chewed his bottom lip. “She did it to protect me from becoming hateful and spiteful and angry.” He shook his head and looked out over the woods again. “In spite of, or maybe because of Azrel’s grace in it all, I truly hated those girls. I wanted revenge for my sister. I wanted revenge for myself. I wanted her to hurt just like she hurt Azrel.”
He stopped there for a moment and I feared he wouldn’t continue. “What did you do?”
He sighed. “I did some investigating first and found out that Cluna had a really big crush on me.” He shook his head. “As soon as I heard that, I set my plan in motion.” He swallowed heavily. “I started flirting with her and showing her interest. As we talked over a couple days our conversations inevitably came around to my sister.” He swallowed heavily again, as if his throat was threatening to close on him. “I agreed with every horrible, hateful thing she said about Azrel. I even embellished a little on my own just so I could gain her trust.” He was quiet a moment. Then he gave a mirthless chuckle. “She had the audacity to say to me, ‘Wow! With you on our side, we can kill her easily now! Will you help us?’”
Rabryn bared his teeth for a moment, but quickly pulled his lips closed to hide them. “So she and I devised a plan”—his mouth stayed tight like he didn’t want to admit this—“to kill my sister.” He went quiet again then shook his head. “All the while being so close to her made me want to vomit or rip her hair out. She was a clever wench, I had to give her that. The plan she came up with…” He shook his head again in disbelief, then blew out a breath and hunched over, resting his elbow in his knees. “After we’d been courting a while, I invited her for a hike and a picnic up the Northeast Cliffs where the waterfall flowed.”
He went quiet again for a few drawn out moments. “She was just standing there on the edge of the cliffs. Everything was perfect. One push was all it would take. Not even a shove. She was so close to the edge I could have tapped her shoulder to get her attention for something and she would have fallen.”
He shook his head. “I hated her. I knew I hated her! Azrel’s pain, her cuts, her bruises, her humiliation all came back to me.” He paused and sighed. “But so did Azrel’s acts of grace. All the times she joked about her torment. All the times she shrugged it off. What was it all for if I turned into a hateful vengeful person anyway? What was the use of her smiling in the face of that torture if I became the person she was trying to protect me from becoming?”
He shook his head for a long few moments. “I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it! I would not let Azrel’s grace be for nothing.”
I softly blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and my shoulders slumped. Whether I deflated from disappointment that Cluna hadn’t been killed or relief that Rabryn hadn’t killed her, I couldn’t even begin to guess.
Rabryn shook his head softly. “Suddenly, close to the ground I saw a flash of gold light—which I didn’t know at the time was my magic. It turned the rock she was standing on into a bolder of ice in the middle of summer.” I flinched, but not for the reason Rabryn might have thought. “She slipped. I heard her bump and scream the entire way down the two-hundred foot cliffs until she hit the water.” He paused. “They found her on the bank two days later, drowned, and as broken as a porcelain doll.”
“No one pressed charges?”
Rabryn shrugged still keeping his eyes on the forest. “Cluna’s friends were still terrified of Azrel, so they didn’t say anything. They didn’t even say anything about Cluna and me courting. Thank Goodness because that way Azrel never suspected anything. She just knew that Cluna fell off the cliffs and was dead.”
I sighed.
“Looks like I got the story straight now.” Her voice came from behind us.
My eyes went wide and it felt like my spine turned to ice. I could practically see Rabryn’s heart stop with mine. His eyes went wide and his entire body went stiff as both of us slowly turned to look over our shoulders. There she stood, in plain daylight, with her arms crossed over her chest
. Both of us trembled, me more for Rabryn’s sake than in fear of Azrel’s wrath.
Rabryn was panting in fear as he slowly stood up to face her. “Azrel,” he said, choking on her name. Then he couldn’t even speak.
Azrel’s jaw was working furiously and I could see her shaking with rage. Why hadn’t she started screaming yet? What was she waiting for? She bowed her head and stepped forward stiffly before looking up at Rabryn again. “I’m pretty sure my little brother doesn’t murder people.” Her voice cracked with the effort of reining herself in. “So you’d better explain everything that happened with Cluna quickly before I make assumptions and go berserk.”
What? An explanation? She was actually holding her temper and willing to wait for an explanation? She was actually pausing before making assumptions? I couldn’t believe it! It wasn’t like her to hold her temper at all, for anything! Rabryn, not wanting to waste a split second, immediately began explaining to her how his magic worked, using the examples he’d given me. Azrel remained calm and neutral, nodding here and there, and staying silent. The spectacle of Azrel doing this had me mesmerized.
“Deep down, yes I did want to kill her for what she did to you. But even though I consciously decided not to, my magic did anyway because of the emotion, because of the hatred I had for her.”
“Which made the rock turn into ice?” Azrel asked. Rabryn nodded. Azrel then looked at me pointedly, picking up on the oddity in that as I had. Azrel blew out a breath and bowed her head. “Okay, I understand. All that really matters is that you decided not to murder her when it came down to it. I’m proud of you.” I thought Rabryn was going to collapse in relief. Azrel smiled and held out her arms. “Come here. I missed you.”
Rabryn eagerly stepped into her embrace. “I missed you too.”
They held each other for a long few moments. “I love you, little brother.”
“I love you too.” After a moment, Rabryn pulled away and looked at his sister with concern, no doubt over her haggard and unhealthy appearance.
Before he could say anything, though, Azrel looked at me. “And you.” She stepped towards me and smiled. “Thank you for being so honest with me in Rocksheloc. You opened my eyes more than you know, and I really appreciate it.”
I swallowed hard, unable to use my voice. I wanted so badly to hold her, but I didn’t dare yet.
She looked down and pushed the toe of her boot into the ground a couple times before she looked back up at me. “So I guess you know who Cluna was, then?”
Again I had to swallow hard before trying to speak as the visions Rabryn showed me flashed in my mind again. Those horrible visions became more real because I could see her and know, as I looked at her, that she had actually endured such senseless abuse. My beautiful brave Azrel.
“Hey,” she said softly, stepping forward and resting her hands on my cheeks, “I survived it, so don’t torture yourself with thoughts of it okay? It’s done and I have to start dealing with the scars as best I can. I have a long road ahead of me in trying to rise above it, but with everyone’s help, I just might be able to do it.”
My voice finally worked, but it was choked with burning emotion. “You’ll do it. I know you will because you, my darling, don’t know how to fail.”
She smiled gratefully but then bowed her head and lowered her hands. “I feel like I’ve already failed so many times on this journey.”
“Yet here you are.”
She looked up at me with a small smile. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“What you consider failures were just a part of the process of digging up the warrior I know you are, nothing more and nothing less. You will do it.”
Deep appreciation washed over her face. She held her arms open. I walked into her embrace, her arms limp around me and weak. I held her gently. For the first time since I met her sixteen years ago, she appeared breakable to me, vulnerable.
“Thank you for believing in me,” she whispered. We held each other for a few good long moments before she pulled away, still smiling up at me.
“Okay Azrel,” Rabryn said. “Where in the blazes have you been? You look terrible!”
All of us chuckled. “This, dear brother,” she said holding her hands out to her sides, “is the result of no sleep for five days, plus magic effects that demand twenty-four hours of sleep that Reese and I fought through to stay awake. No food, certainly no bathing, a nice big battle with Gibirs one night, and another battle with Gorkors two mornings after that.”
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “That’s…”
“Bad?” Azrel asked.
“Really bad.”
“And now Welptacks…”
“Really, really bad.”
“What?” Rabryn asked.
We both looked at him. “Shadow Creatures haven’t been seen in such numbers walking freely across Casdanarus in about 2,500 years,” I said.
Azrel continued. “After the Nameless One was defeated, ending the First Shadow of Darkness, bands of these creatures hung around and caused some trouble here and there for about two hundred years. With their master gone, though, they had no leg to stand on, and eventually went into hiding.”
“And haven’t been seen until now,” I finished.
Rabryn looked at us stunned. “That’s really bad.” Both of us nodded. He grimaced. “So a Second Shadow is looming?”
Azrel shook her head. “Not looming.” She and I glanced at each other and came to the same understanding without saying a word. She looked back at her brother. “It’s already here.”
Rabryn squeezed his eyes shut and looked like he was going to be ill. “How? Why?” He looked back at us. “Why is it happening now?”
Azrel shrugged. “My only guess is because the Anarran Gem is away from its owner. All this started as soon as it was handed to Ortheldo. It’s a powerful artifact of pure Goodness that these Shadow Creatures are homing in on.”
“So we’re dragging them out of hiding?” Rabryn was terrified of the very idea, I could tell, though he was trying to be brave and keep his composure.
Azrel shrugged again. “It was bound to happen anyway. Remember Rabryn, I have a mission to destroy the last living Evil in the world.” She sighed, “As unprepared for it as I might be, it’s the only reason I was born.”
Rabryn seemed to visibly calm down, perhaps realizing that this was Azrel’s burden and she was handling it fearlessly. I asked my question, finally. “Who’s the newcomer in the black mask?”
“His name is Lisswilla. He’s another member of my team of protectors.”
“So someone told you who the Deralilya is?”
She nodded. “Reese explained it to me. Apparently there are more of these protectors of mine scattered about and we should run into them along the course of this journey.” I nodded. “Lisswilla was actually what saved me and Reese and the Gleo’gwyns from the Gorkors.” Azrel smiled mirthlessly. “After the Gleo’gwyns saved me and Reese from the Gibirs.”
I blew out a breath. “Sounds like you had a busy week.”
“It was also Lisswilla who gave Reese and me some special drink he made which keeps you awake and alert for two days straight.” Azrel rubbed her red eyes with her thumb and index finger “But the potion’s side effect is that you sleep so soundly for twelve hours that not even a major battle will wake you up.” She looked at me with her eyes half closed. “When I hadn’t caught up with you all after two days, I was so terrified that something happened to you that I fought off the mandatory sleep. Because I was fighting it off, Reese decided to fight it off too.” Azrel gave a small chuckle. “Lisswilla was flabbergasted beyond words that we managed it.”
Just then, Azrel’s legs gave way and she collapsed. Both Rabryn and I jumped to catch her, but I was closest and caught her before she hit the ground. “I’m…okay. I need…” She steadied herself, though she barely managed to hold her weight.
“You need to sleep,” I said, helping her stay steady.
“I need a bath first.”
“And she needs to eat,” Rabryn piped in.
“Rabryn, would you go see if Forfirith has returned?” I asked. “If he has, will you bring Azrel’s bathing liquids to the stream a half a mile north of here?”
Rabryn nodded. “Sure.” He leaned in and kissed Azrel’s cheek. “I’m glad to see you.”
Azrel smiled. “I’m glad to see you too.”
When Rabryn turned and left, I scooped Azrel up into my arms. She gasped in surprise, then smiled at me as I started carrying her towards the stream to the north. “Should I even try to argue?”
I smiled at her. “You can try.”
She chuckled and then rested her head against my shoulder. “So, what do you make of that?”
“Make of what?”
“Rabryn turning stone into ice.”
I blew out a breath. “I’m really not sure, but it seems Rabryn is extremely powerful. More powerful than we thought.”
“What makes you say that?”
I thought about how to say this, but there was no easy way. “He can talk to nature too.”
“What?” Azrel lifted her head from my shoulder to look at me.
I met her eyes and nodded. “I’m not sure if you saw Cairikson with his new bow?”
“I did. That’s when I came looking for you and Rabryn.”
I explained what I saw Rabryn do to get that bow made. Azrel listened, her eyes widening in disbelief, her brows dropping in confusion. “Yeah,” I said, nodding in response to her facial expressions. “You should see him do it.”
She rested her head on my shoulder again. “I didn’t know Salynns could do that.”
“I don’t think they usually can, just Rabryn.”
“And he’s the only Salynn I’ve ever heard of that can manipulate elements like turning stone into ice. Only wizards can do that, and only after years and years of schooling and practice.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think there’s something special about your brother.”