This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE KINGMAKER PROPHECY
First edition. January 14, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Gemma Perfect.
Written by Gemma Perfect.
Table of Contents
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1
The room is dark, smoky and warm. A young girl sits alone. Her body shakes and shudders. Her eyes are closed and she’s muttering to herself.
A dwarf wets a cloth, rings it out and holds it to her forehead. This is his charge – one of his charges – and he feels responsible for her.
He found her, three weeks hence, but in worse shape than any of the others he mentors, trains, guides. She has more power than he has seen, but many more demons too.
Her name is Halfreda, and with her parents’ blessing – relief really – he is assisting her.
The Realm is open to magic and admires all who possess magical prowess, even though they hardly understand it themselves, but the youngsters who have the magic find themselves in an untenable and unenviable position.
A man of his old age – even though he’s a dwarf which leads people to fear and revere him in equal measure – can handle the suspicion that inevitably comes with magical powers, but a young girl who just wants to fit in? It’s more than difficult; it’s unbearable and Halfreda – like many others – has tried to cast aside her powers, ignore her abilities and dull the magic within her.
Halfreda is trying to banish her true self through a mix of stubbornness and alcohol. The dwarf, known to his charges as the teacher, is trying to undo the damage she is doing to herself and coax her to see the greatness she has inside her – to understand the heights she could reach if she accepted and managed her gifts.
So far Halfreda has resisted, another testimony to the power she possesses, but he is hoping to make progress.
And now? She’s lost to a vision, an episode, some sort of strange occurrence. Again, if she would embrace her true self, she would find that the visions and knowledge she has would slowly drip into her consciousness, become part of her understanding of life without this kind of force. Because she pushes aside her gifts, they struggle to be heard, until they possess her completely.
This is the seventh time in the three weeks he has known her, that she has been taken over by some presence other than herself.
He has placed her on the floor, so if she wants to thrash around she cannot fall or hurt herself. He is keeping her cool because her skin is on fire, and he is listening closely to all that she mutters in case there is anything of interest or significance being said.
She is an interesting specimen to observe. She is young and wise, clever but closed off. He is enjoying working with her, but he wishes she would see the sense in what he’s saying: she cannot keep ignoring her true self and quashing her powers. She feels like her life is too hard with the powers she has and that she would be better off, normal without them. But without the resistance, her life would be infinitely better.
She is the true barrier to her own happiness.
She will get there. He can feel it and it’s why he is happy to persevere.
She is good company, witty and bright, but she needs more work than his other charges.
The teacher is a strange and secretive man, but a good man. He roams the Realm, finding and helping those with magical abilities who struggle with the burden of their true selves. He aids the wise woman of the castle, who is charged with managing all the magical activity within the Realm and ensuring that no ill will is being felt for, or dealt against, the King or any of his family.
He has a mass of knowledge himself, gifts more than he could use in a lifetime, and his life will be a long one; he is happy to share, help, guide. It’s what he does.
Halfreda is quietening down. Her murmurs are tailing off. He mops her brow again, whispering soothing, nonsensical words, really just reassuring her that she’s not alone.
She opens her eyes, rubbing her face and frowning. “Another one?”
Her tone is dry and the teacher laughs. “There will always be another one until you accept your fate Halfreda. Stop pushing your gifts away; accept them, embrace them. They are who you are.”
“I hate them.” Her voice is fierce this time, but the teacher laughs again. “Self-hatred is a cruel thing and a waste of time and energy. You are magical and powerful – more than I have ever seen. But until you accept it, my assistance is limited to merely wiping the sweat off your forehead when you have another vision. If you give in and accept your true nature, I could help you become limitless, powerful. You need to think about it. My time is being wasted otherwise, Halfreda, and though I have a lot of it, I don’t like being ignored. Go, go and walk off your vision, feel the earth beneath your feet, the sun on your face. Ground yourself in reality and then think: Is this how you see your life playing out? Battle after battle, alcohol numbing your senses but not your abilities. It’s such a waste of time. Go now and come to see me at dusk. We’ll talk further.”
The teacher walks away from her – the most difficult but exciting of his charges – and heads over to the others. Their magic is limited and easy to get a handle on. There are three other females, as well as Halfreda, under his tutelage, but Halfreda is the one his mind keeps returning to.
Once he has helped his students understand, cultivate and manage their gifts, they will return to their homes, wherever in the Realm they come from. Two of them are almost ready; they will serve the Realm by working in their little villages as white witches. They will dole out potions and sage advice to the people of the Realm that need it – simple cures for headaches or more intricate spells to ward off evil, or bring a good harvest, or whatever it might be.
Their magic is useful, necessary, but limited.
Halfreda is different.
If she cannot heed his advice, though, he will not continue to work with her. He will send her back to her home and she can continue her self destruction without him.
Halfreda watches the teacher walk away from her and groans. She cannot bear him being cross with her. She has only known him briefly, but already he is important to her. He is filled with magic and knowledge and a peace she would love to be able to emulate.
He is wise and so old and if she could only stop this hatred she has of her gifts, she knows he would aid her. Still, she cannot help but fear who she really is.
She leaves the round house where they all live, with men and women who are friends of the teacher – all filled with magic – and she heads to the river.
The river is her favourite place to be. She loves the sound of the water around her. It drowns out the thoughts in her own head, but she tunes into her subconscious mind and mulls over what the teacher has said to her.
Is she wasting his time and her own? Should she succumb to the gifts she has always had, try to rein them in, gain control over them, rather than the other way around?
Once she opens the floodgates of her mind she is overcome by thoughts, ideas, questions, information until her head hurts. This is why she switches off and deadens her senses with ale.
She lays down on the bank, staring at the blue sky, the birds flying overhead and breathes slowly. She lets memories and feelings in: the sham
e of being different; the embarrassment of her ‘normal’ schoolmates catching her during a vision; the hurt of hearing people’s unkind thoughts about her.
Tears slip from her eyes and wet the grass.
At dusk, Halfreda looks for the teacher and finds him by the fireside.
“What difference will it make?” She sits next to him. “If I accept who I am and if I give my gifts free reign, what difference will it make?”
“Halfreda. All the difference in the world. I promise you. Aside from your interactions with other people, your life is lived by yourself. You will have family, friends, maybe a husband, children even, but they will come and go from your company. You will not. You must be comfortable in your own skin. You must accept who you are, embrace it, and become comfortable with it. You are you. If you are unhappy with yourself, what will you do?”
“I just hate the way I am, the things you call gifts, I call curses.”
“No Halfreda. Curses are a condemnation. You have gifts and they are an opportunity. Your life would be easy if you used them properly. Imagine a life where luck is on your side, where everything goes your way. Days when you are happy in your own skin. This battle you are waging against yourself is exhausting you. There is no joy in your life... your soul. You will shrivel and die if you carry on. You are only young.”
“And yet I feel like an old woman.”
“Well, you are not one. And yet you have wisdom within you, good sense and magic. Why do you keep turning your back on the magic inside yourself?”
“I have never understood it or liked it and I never wanted it. I want to be normal.”
“And I want to be tall. Please Halfreda. We are going around in circles here and it’s beyond pointless. Will you let me help you and guide you? Or do you want to go home?”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“Well then you have only the one choice.”
She nods, and the teacher closes his eyes, joy filling him. She will be the most interesting of all his students ever.
“Let’s begin. We have time before food is brought to us.”
Halfreda nods, excitement and fear mingling together to form anxious jitters inside her.
“I know you don’t feel like you are gifted but tell me in simple terms what your magical abilities are – as you understand them.”
“I know things. Some things, certain things but not everything. Like when I am standing facing someone I do not necessarily hear their thoughts – though I do occasionally – but I know if they are good and kind, or if they have bad thoughts in their mind. But then, people’s thoughts change. People confuse me, and I get overwhelmed by the rush of ideas and feelings that I receive from them.”
“So, something we can learn is closing off your mind and filtering out what is useful to you. No one can stand to know all there is to know about everyone and everything all the time. And a man may have hundreds of emotions, intentions and thoughts over the course of an hour, never mind a day. No wonder you are exhausted! You are getting constantly bombarded with actual information and stimuli from the world around you, information that you receive consciously, subconsciously and through the visions you receive.”
“It’s exhausting.”
“When you have a vision – how does it come?”
“I see it in my head like a picture, like real life but with my eyes closed. I can see things, hear things, smell things. But I am not there. I am in the scene but not part of it. No one communicates with me. I just observe. When the spirits come, that is different. We converse. They tell me things – a hundred things I don’t understand about people I do not know, and I get overwhelmed and panic.”
“I am sure.” The teacher takes her hand. “Halfreda, you have taken the first step here with me tonight. Talking about yourself like this – facing yourself – is the first step to understanding yourself. Then you can focus on managing yourself and eventually enjoying and manipulating your gifts for your own good or for the good of those you serve.”
“Serve? I serve nobody.”
“Not yet, but I have had an inkling of your future.”
“Really?” One of Halfreda’s biggest worries has been her future. How will she live and look after herself, as strange as she is?
“Being magical is a blessing. Please, start seeing it that way. Magic is a difficult thing to understand because the way each person has it and uses it is different. We must learn about you. It should be exciting. And here – here’s food.”
Halfreda is quiet while they all eat. She feels happier than she has since she met the teacher, but wary and concerned as well. She watches the other youngsters around the fire, the ones who are enjoying their gifts, learning to control them, eager to set off into the Realm and assist people with what they have learned and what they know – and she envies them.
She feels different from them. Her magic scares her and tires her out. But now that she is ready to accept who she is, and is ready to work with the teacher – with her gifts, instead of against them – things will change.
She smiles as the teacher raises his cup of ale to her before taking a sip, and she toasts him silently with a lift of her own cup.
2
Halfreda wakes from the first dreamless, restful sleep she has had since she was about five years old and laughs to herself, the realisation a tonic to her heart. She must have made the right decision to have slept so well. No dreams, no nightmares, no strange or cryptic imagery flooding her mind.
Dressing quickly – eager to see the teacher – she is humming as she winds her way through the other people, who share the house, to find him.
He is eating breakfast, the other girls sitting with him. Kinsey – the youngest of the four, only thirteen years old and crippled by visions filled with the darkest of all spirits; the demons and evils of death. Zanna, a cold and humourless thing. Halfreda has no clue how old she is but she is reserved to the point of rudeness, and only ever smiles for the teacher. She is closed lipped about her gifts as well – and Halfreda won’t pry. And lastly Nerida, the same age as Halfreda – their birthdays within days of each other. They feel a kinship.
Halfreda takes her place and cannot help smiling while she waits for the teacher to finish talking to Zanna.
“Halfreda – you look like you could burst.” His tone is droll, as it often is.
“Sorry, but I’m so happy. I slept all night long – no dreams, no nightmares, no-”
“Dreams are a useful tool to assess our frame of mind and bring us answers that we cannot happen upon during our waking hours.” Zanna’s voice is toneless but still manages to be condescending.
“True, Zanna, but if you had been plagued by terrible dreams and the anxiety-filled sleeplessness that it induces then you’d be glad of a dreamless sleep. Our dreams tell us many things, Zanna, but sometimes they are a cruelty, something we cannot escape from. I’m pleased for you Halfreda. Does your frame of mind have anything to do with our talk yesterday?”
“It does. I am ready to accept my gifts and embrace them.” Even as she says it a shiver runs through her and Nerida nudges her with her elbow as she feels it too. “What was that?”
The teacher laughs, holding out his hand as though feeling for rain or testing the direction of the breeze. “Why, I believe that was the Realm quaking in its boots.”
The four of them – the teacher, Halfreda, Nerida and Kinsey laugh; Zanna remains closed lipped, her expression inscrutable, her eyes cold.
Halfreda breaks her fast with meat, bread, and ale, a feeling of excited contentment rushing through her. Who knows what she is capable of with the teacher helping her?
The teacher sets the three of his students, with less ability than Halfreda, tasks to take them through the morning; two simple potions, a trek through the woods to gather ingredients and a quick incantation to practice.
He sits with Halfreda in front of a fire that never goes out and takes her hand. “I am so proud of you. I don’t mind telling you now, th
at I have had a vision of you in my head since I came to your home: I know your future.”
“Really?” The idea scares her as much as it gives her a momentary beat of calm. Having her future mapped out – is that a burden removed or a frightening inevitability she cannot escape from?
“You will not want to escape it – it’s a perfect fit for you and what I believe you are capable of.”
“Tell me.”
“Let me tell you something first. I have seen it, I have seen your future, but it can be changed. If you want to or need to, then your actions, your decisions will alter what I have seen. For example, if there was a freak accident right now and a boulder from above flattened and killed you, the future would change.”
Halfreda laughs and shakes her head. “A boulder from above? I hope that won’t happen!”
“It probably won’t, but I am trying to give you reassurance.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The future as I have seen it is mapped out and I think it will suit you; I think you will be good at it, happy. But you are not obliged. This is not a prophecy I see, or a curse. I think I see it because it happens, but I don’t want to frighten you.”
“It doesn’t frighten me. I like the thought of having a future where I’m happy. And useful?”
“So useful. Who is the most important person in this Realm?”
“Aside from myself?” Her lips twitch as she asks the question. “The King, of course, not me, the King.”
“So, if you were to do the most important job in the Realm, take on an important role, what might that be?”
“Working for the King? Doing what?”
“Using your gifts to help and assist him, protect him and the Realm and his family and...”
Halfreda shakes her head. “No. I know what you’re going to say next. No.”
“Halfreda let me finish.”
“No. You’re going to tell me that I have to kill the Kingmakers and I definitely don’t want to do that.”
“Someone has to.”
“Someone else.”
The Kingmaker Prophecy Page 1