“You're new here. Give it time.”
I grunted. I didn't want to give it time, I wanted to fill the painful void in my gut which was my empty stomach. But more than that, I wanted to sit next to Mordon and have a cup of brew. My adventure devoid of it had me craving the salty and irony flavor. The smell of roasting beef and caramelized onions announced the end of the morning journey. Mouth watering, I picked up the pace. Mother laughed.
“You have a nose on you like your father! It's that drake side, isn't it?”
“I suppose,” I said and slacked my speed so she wouldn't lag behind.
“Turn right up here,” Mother said. The hip-tall pink roses broke for a set of three stone stairs which led down to a roasting pit with flagstones and moss as a floor. Stadium-style seating surrounded the central cooking area, and smaller pits held various cauldrons and skillets which people used on a whim. Against one side of the seating were counters and a free-flowing tap sheltered beneath a roof made of ivy.
A whole host of young women ringed Mordon, asking a question then putting forward possible answers before he could even begin to talk, and they'd all giggle at once. The chicken leg in his hand had hardly been touched. He winked when he saw me.
Immediately all the ladies hushed and looked to see who he had winked at. Pretending to not even have noticed him, I continued with Mother to the biggest pit where coals radiated a surprising amount of heat. A wizened old man tended to the roast with a carving knife.
“Good daylight to you, Maggie, how much would you like today?”
“Not a great deal, Rejan, but my daughter is famished.”
The old man peered from beneath bushy white brows which had curled black tips from close encounters with the fire. “Daughter, you say? Not Feraline?”
“The one and only. It's her first morning here from the woods.”
“Say no more. Here, young one, take this and go see Rossalinda for the fixings before you waste away.”
I took the plate, heaped with a massive chunk of beef which I wouldn't have dreamed of eating in one sitting before arriving here, and went in the direction indicated. Rossalinda seemed to be Rejan's mute mate, a shaking and timid woman who used a serving spoon at the pace of an uncertain snail. Soon enough, I sat on my own and ate.
“Good daylight to you, beautiful. Are you going to eat all of that?” Mordon swung down next to me, draping an arm over my shoulder and kissing my cheek. The fey girls who had been mooning over him either drifted away or remained not too far off with scowls.
He took a piece of meat, one with the seasoned crust. I slapped his hand and swallowed hard, protecting my plate with one widespread hand.
“Yes.” I re-examined the overflowing plate, and amended, “Or I'm going to try.”
Mordon nuzzled my neck below my ear and said, “But surely you can spare a little for your mate to be?”
“Have a carrot.” I held it out for him.
He took it with a playful nip on my fingers.
Mother sat down on the bench just below us, turning around so she could talk, her plate in her lap. It was like a perpetual picnic here, and the birds were singing and the sun shining through shade trees on a summery day.
“Mother, this is my fiance, Mordon Meadows, future drake lord of the Kragdomen Colony. Mordon, this is my mother, Maggie of the Swift Clan of the Verdant Wildwoods.”
“An honor to meet you,” Mother said and extended her hand palm-down.
Mordon took her by her fingers and kissed the back of her wrist. “An honor to meet you as well.”
Mother giggled, high and shrill just like me, and drew her hand back. She leaned to whisper conspiratorially to me, “He's handsome.”
Mordon gave me a dazzling grin and while I suffered a blush, he hurried to snatch another piece of meat off my plate.
“Hey! Where's that chicken leg I saw you with?”
“In my other hand,” he said, then took a bite of it. “Both are delicious Rossalinda and Rejan!'
Each in their turn held up a serving implement to acknowledge the praise. Evidently this was not the first time he had praised their food, and they did not seem to be tired of hearing the appreciation.
“What was with taking off so early?” I scolded lightly.
Mordon glanced at my mother, who laughed. “I was the one who fetched Feraline this morning from your nest, Mordon. I know where she was last night.”
Mordon smiled. “Ah, in that case. The truth. You were sleeping so peacefully that I didn't want to wake you just because I was hungry.”
I rolled my eyes, but didn't complain. I had been tired.
“So, once I'm done eating your food, what's on the itinerary today?” Mordon asked.
“I think a visit to Aunt Linnia, if the Fey Council is unprepared to see me.”
Mother nodded.
“Aunt Linnia would be your mother's sister, one who you were named after?” Mordon asked.
“Yes.” Mother looked tickled pink with Mordon's perceptiveness. “Have you heard of Luminous Cavern Spiders?”
Mordon found a subject which would make him forget my food. I ate with haste while he talked with her.
“Heard of? They're worth gold. What does your sister have to do with them?”
“She raises them and harvests their silk.”
“She does both? She must be a primary supplier to the market, then. There are just a few caves the spiders will procreate within.”
“Yes, indeed. Would you like to go with us to see them and tour the facilities?”
“I'd love to.”
So it was settled, and so it was agreed, all without my input. I was too busy putting food into my mouth, but the arrangements suited me fine.
After I finished my meal, we washed the tin plates and put them up in their place in the cupboard, thanked Rossalinda and Rejan for the meal, and walked back up the steps. Mordon took my hand, and a thrill went through me. The ladies of the fey, young and too young and not so young, had taken a decided dislike to me on account of Mordon preferring me above them. When I mentioned the illusion that I'd need to be doing, the other women became almost scornful. I nudged us away as fast as I could.
The walk to Linnia's went by much faster than the walk to the food. Either the Wildwoods put us straight in her direction, or I simply enjoyed the walk all the more being hand-in-hand with my beau. In any case, we arrived almost too soon at a shack made of woven willow walls and a thatched roof, smoke coming out of a hole in the center. Linnia emerged at once to hug me.
Aunt was shorter than I was, and that was saying a lot. She had blonde hair cut close to her cheeks, and she was plump as a plum and with lips the same color.
“Feraline, it's been ages! You're quite the woman now.” She had laugh lines as she wiped a tear away. “Last I saw you, you were this high.”
A tour of the spider caves was not immediately eminent. What was, however, was an invitation to coffee and cake on her patio which was crowded with many, many potted tropical plants, all in glorious allergy-inducing bloom. It made for a pretty picture with her white tin dining set, though. Soon the three of us were joined by Aunt Linnia's mate, a bald monk-looking man by the name of Terrie who did not say much of anything but loved to listen.
“You take after Linnia's illusions,” Terrie said when we'd both gone to the cottage to fetch hot water. “That's what they all say. How are you finding it?”
“A challenge,” I admitted. “The textbooks I've found haven't been of great help.”
Terrie poured water into the cafetiere, then set it to start boiling. “I would not think so. Fey magic is a unique subset, and it is passed down the family lines by oral tutors, not written in books. Even if it was, the information for one clan may well be of no help to someone from another.”
“So I'm learning. It's clearer and clearer the longer I'm fey.”
The smell of fresh coffee accompanied the gurgling and spitting of the cafetiere as it finished brewing.
“Linnia
knows how to do the best illusions you've ever set eyes on. Even how to make them tactile. But she's no teacher.”
I watched as he poured rich coffee into the cups. Then he laid them out one by one on a tray.
“But I can teach you. I know how she does it. She can demonstrate, but you'll have to tolerate the both of us educating you.”
Training in magical topics came about rather slowly. The virtues of patience and conditioning were ever extolled in strenuously long paragraphs or lectures on magic. Aunt Linnia and Terrie thought I'd had enough of that. Illusions, in their opinion, were best learned by falling into the deepest part of the lake. Nothing Mother could say would dissuade them, nor did Mordon even waste his breath trying.
The two of them together were a wordless, efficient team. They worked in tandem, hardly had one finished speaking before the other explained better or demonstrated. Soon, I began to wonder if they could telepathically communicate. Mordon met my gaze and stroked his chin. He'd lost track of what we were talking about long ago, but the performance still entranced him.
Terrie proved to be partially deaf, to my surprise, as a result of an accident during a structured spell gone wrong. He heard Aunt Linnia's voice only, but he read lips perfectly well enough to hold up his end of conversation with other people. A few times I had to rephrase what I said, but this was an eccentricity which I grew accustomed to soon enough.
Most of the lesson was focused on my identifying what was illusion and what was real. Aunt Linnia proved to be an excellent illusionist, employing a technique which supplies tedious details by tricking the observer's mind into doing the work instead. Her primary focus was to give illusions a sound or smell, something small and natural, which would make the watchers fill in the rest.
“Here, look at the spell itself.”
I obliged, at first not understanding what it was that she was saying. Then I noticed that she'd woven the words of the spell into the actual illusion, and the words could be read.
The spell was astonishingly simple.
“It should be far bigger than this,” was all I could say.
Mother said, “The best things are simple. It means less effort devoted to it, less time, and more flexibility.”
“But what it means is that it engages the observer better,” said Terrie. “That makes the illusion real.”
See a master make something look easy, and try to imitate them. Go on, see what happens. Disaster. Or maybe that's too dramatic. Child's play, a cheap imitation, that's what happens. Time and again my illusions were picked out with definite ease. I was ready to throw away Aunt Linnia's lessons and go back to my old ways, but I was too stubborn to admit defeat.
Hours passed like seconds before I made my first successful illusion, of all things a cell phone which I used to own before it met its demise during one of my adventures. Mother and Mordon both fell for it, and Aunt Linnia stared at it confused while Terrie understood what it was down to the year it came out. Magic folk and technology.
Setting down the coffee pot, Aunt Linnia invited us for a tour of the caves. Our chairs all scraped back and I noticed as we left the patio that it hosted different plants than it had when we'd first come. Illusion or not? I'd have to ask Mordon's opinion later tonight. The massive wooden doors groaned beneath Terrie's fingers and Aunt Linnia lit several small faerie lights in her palm. They floated out of her hand and into the caves, multiplying and forming a soft illumination for us to see the twists and turns of the cave.
“They like visitors,” she said.
I checked with Mordon, who nodded in quiet agreement. Spiders liking visitors was creepy. Going into a cave infested with spiders was bad enough, but now I knew they had a sense of routine and awareness, I didn't like the idea of a visit very much. We made our way into the cool, moist darkness.
At the end of a narrow, crooked way there was one great big cavern which the faerie lights could not reach into the recesses of. Glossy backs and eyes of hundreds of spiders lined the walls, gazing at us with unblinking curiosity.
“I don't like them.” My own words surprised me, doubly so to know that they were true. “They stink like bad fish.”
“It's their defensive scent. Most people are afraid of them,” Terrie said, “but a few people behave aggressively.”
“I just feel…paranoid.”
Mordon reached out to a spider. It studied his hand then pressed its hairy back into him. “They're amazing,” Mordon said.
I wandered through the cavern. Spiders hung away at first, then advanced towards me. Mordon's wonder did not rub off on me. Particularly not when a spider descended on a gleaming strand and was level with my face when I turned around. I may have yelped and run away from arm-length black legs. These things were friendly enough and never posed any harm, but it was too much for me.
“I think I'll enjoy their silk,” I said, then realized that no one else would be going up to the surface yet. Occupying my time, I rendered first one then several illusions matching the cave spiders, from there adding alterations to them which confused the spiders to no end, and made Aunt Linnia shriek when she saw it.
Laughter burst through the chambers, and I thought even the spiders themselves laughed. Aunt Linnia did not find it so amusing.
“Linnia, Terrie, Maggie,” boomed Father's voice through the door. “We need to borrow Fera. One of the Council Elders is waiting for her in her residence.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Extinguishing the lights, we returned back the way we came, all of us going straight for my willow room. Only when we all stood outside did they decide that I needed to enter the hut by myself, and I could catch up with them later.
“Feraline Swift, enter into my presence please, and if you would be so hospitable, I would like a mug of frog's eye tea,” said a soft voice which could have been male or female.
The Council Elder turned out to be a tall, paper thin woman with bags of skin beneath her arms. She had eye makeup which strongly resembled a Monarch butterfly's wings. Large loop earrings touched her shoulders amidst black hair. I had the distinct impression she already did not like me.
As one of the pillars of the Fey Council, her opinion would matter a great deal to the others on the council. My fate was in their hands. I hurried.
“Frog's eye tea?” I repeated as I adjusted to the dim lighting again. “Do you mean literal frog's eyes, or are you talking about an herb? I don't know what I even have available in this place, but I'll look for you.”
The cupboard in the corner provided me the answer with a cylindrical tin with the label Frog's Eye Tisane. Inside, it was tea. Green tea with roasted rice and bits of pineapple, along with other spices which I couldn't recognize.
“So Father said you were one of the Council Elders—”
“Did he?” The scorn dripped from her tone.
“Err—I think he may have been voicing his high esteem for you, no commenting on your age,” I hurried to say. “You know how he is, I think. He likes to say one thing and mean another through association.”
The woman had venom in her glare which made me wish I could go back into the cavern with the spiders, perhaps for a sleepover if it meant I wouldn't have to see her disapproval again. She could melt iron with that scowl. I avoided her by tending to her requested tea. I doubted she wanted it anymore. But all too soon it was ready.
I set it down steaming in her hands with painted red nails. Then I grabbed a chair and brought it up before her. She kept staring at me, not even sniffing at the cup clasped in both her hands.
Still the woman just gazed. Her eyes were penetrating and they bore into mine with a singular purpose which made my stomach turn over. I wanted to break the contact and stop the discomfort but I couldn't. It would be losing, somehow. I stared back at her with matching determination.
“There you are,” the woman said. “Hard to find, you have mental defenses in place. Good ones. But now I see you.”
“And?”
I didn't know w
hat else to say. To demand her name could have bad repercussions if I voided some unspoken rule. But precisely what it was she meant I couldn't be sure.
“You aren't as fey as we could hope, but more so than we had feared you might not be.”
“I don't understand.”
“What don't you understand?”
“All of this. What you're doing, what it is that you mean.”
The woman sipped her cup at long last. I felt relieved to have her sights taken off me. She asked, “What do you think I'm doing, and what do you think I mean?”
I considered the question a while before deciding that I should go with my first response. “I think that you're a character reference of sorts. You can…what, read into people and tell what they're made of?”
Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) Page 14