by Sarah Dalton
He gritted his teeth and continued on up the steps. It did no good to think of the Menti. They were unnatural abominations and he hated them with every ion of his being. It was because of the Menti that he had to make this journey up the steps to the top of the tower. It was because of them that he kept the woman in this room even though he hated to do it. Every month he visited her. And every month his hopes were dashed once again. The things she had to say never changed, no matter how much he longed for it.
He stopped to rest, placing a hand on the cold stone for support. He was forty-one, and had been king since he was twenty years old. He had inherited the throne from his father, King Mithrin II, a dour man with little interest in ruling. Mithrin had taught Davead little, instead letting his advisors make the day-to-day decisions while he brooded and complained in the background. Davead remembered the day his father died. He had looked at Davead from his deathbed and said, “Now it is yours, son, and I am finally free of it all.” Mithrin threw the crown to the floor of his bedchamber. Davead had watched in horror with his throat closing tighter and tighter.
And now it was twenty-one years later and he had not choked on the crown. And he had reached the top of the tower, despite his grumbles and aches. The guard did not need instructions. He opened the door for his king and stepped aside as Davead walked into the room. Davead did not wear his crown at all times. He wore it during important festivities and while listening to his subjects. He believed that a king who must always wear his crown to command respect was likely not a well-respected king. He may not have the love of all the people in Estala, but he was respected by the court of Nesra’s Keep.
At least, so he hoped.
The room was as dark and bleak as he remembered. There was a narrow glint of light breaking through the hinge of the shutters on the window, but that was all. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, they fell onto the strange objects around the small room: scattered chicken bones, large clumps of hair piled high on every surface, bowls smeared with blood, feathers littered across the floor. And, finally, his eyes came to her. She was barely visible in the dark. It was only her shock of grey hair that stood out; the rest blended into the shadows. She stood stooped and fragile, in a ragged black tunic that touched the floor. Her face was dirty.
He had never mistreated her. She was allowed baths, clean clothes, and a maid to clean her chambers, but the woman had turned them away. She had done so for over ten years, and now the place stank of stale sweat, blood, and urine.
She was in the centre of the room, facing the door, as though she had been waiting for him to arrive. “You have come with a question.” She smiled, and her rotten yellow teeth peeked between red lips.
“Yes.”
She repulsed him. She seemed to him to be rotting from the inside out. Her skin was loose along her bones, her hair hung limp and brittle to her waist, and her fingernails were coated in filth. She had come to him ten years ago, and even then she had shuffled along on her bare feet with her back stooped low. He remembered how she had approached the throne and his guards had turned their heads away because of the stench. But he had let her speak, and her words had chilled his bones. He had imprisoned her immediately, because he could not bear for others to hear her words. The guards had been sworn to silence. The rest of the court had not heard her whisper.
“It is the same question,” she said. “The same question after all these years.”
“Yes.”
He called her the Hag. She had told him that she had no name. The Hag suited her.
She fetched a bowl from a table and shuffled over to a desk covered in feathers and hair. She brushed some of them away to clear a space and placed the bowl on the table top. Her bony fingers reached up to her mouth. The king cringed as those dirty fingers rummaged inside her wet mouth. She yanked, and a rotten tooth came out. The king turned away as she dropped the tooth into the bowl. His stomach lurched. He had been in battle. He had seen blood and guts spread over fields, but there was something unnatural about the Hag and the way she worked.
A glob of bloody spit followed the tooth, before she ripped hair from her own head and threw that in too. Then she took a grimy spoon from the table and stirred her strange concoction together. When the room became filled with her high-pitched song, King Davead felt a creeping chill lift the hairs on the back of his neck. He longed to be gone from that room, but he needed the answer like he needed air for his lungs. It was a deep, desperate longing. He had to know.
When the song was finished, the Hag cleared her throat and spoke in her usual rough whisper. “The question has been asked.”
“And?” He took an eager step forward.
“You will be killed by a Menti. Your crown will be taken by a Menti. Your life will be destroyed by a Menti.”
The king let out a long sigh and his head lolled forward. It was the same answer every time. It was the same thing she had said to him when she shuffled into the throne room.
“Who? I need to know who this Menti is!” He balled his hand into a fist. His face flushed with angry heat.
The Hag laughed. “That I never see.”
“Then what use are you?” he demanded.
“If I am no use, throw me from the tower and have done with it.” When the king refused to answer, the old Hag laughed. “Thought not. I will see you in a month, Your Majesty.” She turned away from him.
Davead’s spine straightened. He was the king and yet this foul old woman dismissed him. But as soon as his temper rose, it fell once more. What could he do? She was as frail as a baby bird. She was as ancient as anything he had ever known. How old she was he did not know. It could be centuries for all he knew; she was a Menti, after all. He turned to leave the room, thinking about how much he hated the Menti. That hatred had flourished over the years, nurtured like a mother feeds her child. Oh, he had tested the Hag. He had asked her many more questions, many that had come to pass. She had predicted the death of his wife Sofia, and the illness of his second son, Luca. She had predicted that Matias would grow stronger than his brothers combined and that Stefan would forever be his least favourite. Alberto would be fair, Carolina would prefer swords over dolls, and Serena would be the most beautiful lady at court. She had predicted it all. Which meant only one thing: The prophecy was true.
The guard slammed the door shut and the sound of the scraping key haunted Davead as he made his way down the steps. He hated the Hag. He hated that he had locked her away in the tower, he hated her prophecy, and he hated the Menti most of all. He would not rest until they were all gone and his family was safe.
The way down was easier than the way up. His heart lifted as he descended. The prophecy would not come true, because he had a plan.
But his thoughts of those plans were interrupted as he reached the last step. His guard had been waiting for him there as commanded, but he had been joined by another, and this man was red-faced and pacing. King Davead recognised him as the healer appointed to his son, Luca. He wore a white tunic over roughspun trousers, but his tunic was stained with black.
“Your Majesty, I have grave news,” the healer said. “Your son has died.”
“Luca? That is a shame.” It was upsetting news, but not surprising. The boy had been on his deathbed for days, running a fever so fierce that the healers could do little for him.
“No, Your Majesty. Not Luca. There was a fire. It seems that Luca somehow managed to get away but we do not know where he—”
“Who is dead?” King Davead demanded.
“Your son, Matias, is dead. We found his sword among the remains.”
King Davead reached for the wall to steady himself. His oldest son? How was this possible? Matias was a strong boy. He was a good leader and a good man. “How did this happen?”
“A… fire, Your Majesty.”
“Show me.”
The men walked quickly through Nesra’s Keep to Luca’s chambers. Davead barely noticed how out of breath he was when they reached the scorched room. The p
lace stank of burned cloth and flesh. A scorched tapestry dropped to the ground as they entered the room. Servants were still putting out the remainders of the fire, but at the sight of the king, they bowed and scuttled out of the room.
But it was the pile of fabric and blackened flesh that Davead could not stop staring at. He reached forward and pulled the sword from the remains. It was Matias’s sword, he was sure of it. He knew the suns engraved on the hilt, because he had put them there himself. The sword had been made for Matias when he came of age and began commanding the bulk of Davead’s army. “Suns for my son,” he had said.
And now his son was gone. He dropped the sword.
“Find Luca,” Davead commanded. “No one touches my son until I speak to Luca. Lock this door behind us and tell no one what you saw.”
The three men left the burned room. The healer stopped to lock the door, but Davead kept walking. He walked down the corridor, passing servants and advisors and guards. He spoke to no one. Finally, he came to his chambers and commanded his guard to wait outside.
In his rooms, he could smell the sea air. The shutters were open on this warm, bright day. It was always warm and bright in Reyalon, and on a day like today that brightness mocked him. But at least he was alone in his chambers, the one place he could be alone. He walked over to the window that looked out towards the Sea of Kings. That azure stretch of sea was waiting for him. His fingers reached up to his neck and unclasped the iron medallion that rested beneath his doublet. The iron clattered as it fell to the stone floor.
It took little effort. It was as simple as clearing his mind. The act erased his grief, his pain, and his anger. As he performed this one act that brought him peace, his clothes dropped to the floor in a puddle. Out of them rose a great, regal hawk of chestnut feathers. He squawked as he stretched his wings almost as wide as the window and soared into the wind.
Luca
Matias was dead. Luca could not believe that his older brother was dead while he was here, at the Port of Kings, standing amongst fishermen and sea captains, huddled against Brother Axil in an attempt to not just evade the prying eyes of the public, but escape altogether. He wanted to be somewhere else. He wanted to be someone else. He wanted to go back to that moment where he had lain on his deathbed and figure out what had happened. One moment he was too weak to hold a cup of water, the next a great fire had consumed his brother and he was strong again.
God gave me my strength back, but at what cost? Did I pray for this? Did I ask for this?
As they had fled Nesra’s Keep, Brother Axil had covered him with a blue robe like his own, and pulled the hood over Luca’s head to cover his face. It was all a blur to Luca, but he remembered a foul-smelling tunnel, rats running over his feet, and Brother Axil straining to lift a portcullis leading out of the keep. They had hurried to the gates out of Reyalon where the guards let Brother Axil through without so much as peep. No doubt the guards had assumed that Luca was some protégé of Axil’s, another member of the Enlightened. Then it was simply a matter of riding down to the port and hiring a cabin on a ship.
At least, that was what Axil was saying on the journey. Luca struggled to keep up with what was happening. He could hear Brother Axil’s words, but he could barely process them. His mind was still in his chambers with Matias by his side. Every now and then he felt the flames licking his skin. Heat spread over him before dying quickly down.
Matias was dead.
Where had the fire come from? He’d had no braziers lit in his chambers. There had been a fire roaring in the fireplace on the other side of the room. Had it been a backdraft? No, surely not. There was no way a fire could consume a person like that from a backdraft.
“Five silver sofias and yer can have the cabin,” the captain said. “We’re loading up for Xantos now. I should warn yer, Brother, the cabins are nothin’ luxurious. They won’t be what yer used to by the looks of yer.”
Luca paid more attention now. The captain was short and squat with a smattering of grey stubble along his chin. When he grinned, he was missing a tooth. His clothes were dirty but not ragged. When he held out his palm for the coins, his hand was as large as a supper plate.
“What are we doing here?” Luca asked as the captain walked away. He turned the iron bracelet around his wrist. “What happened to Matias?”
Brother Axil led Luca further down the docks towards the ship they were about to embark upon for their voyage across the Sea of Kings. It was a bulky cargo ship with a mermaid carved into the prow. The mermaid wore seashells around her neck and a crown of seaweed atop her head. The smell of fish from the nearby markets turned Luca’s stomach.
“Luca, you were dying. It was not your fault. I should have seen it sooner and helped you before it was too late.”
Luca stared at his mentor. Brother Axil had been hired as his Governor when Luca was a babe. The old Gov was from Xantos and had appeared strange to Luca at first. His ice-blue eyes seemed out of place next to his dark skin. The colour of his robes matched those bright blue eyes. Axil was a Brother of the Enlightened, which Luca came to realise meant that he knew everything, and he knew best. It meant that he liked to lecture Luca about the world and tell him stories that he was almost sure were made up. Like the ghosts of the dragon kings or the skinshifters who could become random objects like a mug of ale. He told Luca about the Ash Mountains and the Castle of the Sun that resided in Xantos.
Luca had not always listened to Brother Axil. He had defied him many a time. Brother Axil once told him that the ale his father drank would make Luca sick. But Luca was a stubborn young boy, and he snuck a jug of ale to his chambers to drink. The next day, the servants had to take his rug away for a thorough clean, and Luca felt like he had been sword fighting with Stefan. Stefan always went for a head blow, after all. But now, Luca needed his trusted mentor, the man who had been his Governor all these years, to tell him what had happened. He needed to know, but he did not want to know. His stomach twisted painfully at the thought that he had somehow caused the fire himself. There was a part of him that believed it had come from deep within him, like in his dreams of the flames, the ones that made him feel powerful. It was all connected. He knew it, but he did not know how.
“Why was I dying?” Luca asked.
Brother Axil lowered his voice and fixed Luca with his icy stare. “Do you remember the stories I told you about the Menti?”
The mention of the Menti made Luca’s skin prickle, as though ants ran across his arms. He scratched at his skin and frowned. Father always banned his children from talking about the Menti, except to scorn them. Father hated them and he hated their magic most of all.
Brother Axil waited until Luca nodded.
“Menti have all kinds of powers. Some can shift into another being, others can see the future, and some can bend nature to their will. They can make a great gale blow, or they can control water within their hands. Others can create a ball of flame.”
The ants continued to dance across Luca’s skin. He did not like the mention of fire. “Why are you telling me this?” His voice was a whisper because he was almost completely sure why Brother Axil was telling him this story. He did not want to believe it. His throat was suddenly dry and his tongue felt too large for his mouth. He swallowed nervously.
Brother Axil laid a hand on Luca’s shoulder. “Breathe slowly, my prince. You must remain calm. When Menti come into their powers, it can be a difficult transition. It is not always known how or when it will happen. I know I am not supposed to speak of these things as a Brother of the Enlightened—our path is with logic and reason, not magic. But I must talk of these things, because, my dear Luca, you are a Menti. You came into your powers as you were confined to your bed with the fever. You had no control over your powers in any way. I am so sorry.”
Luca felt his knees weaken. Brother Axil was by his side in a shot, propping him up. It was as though Luca was back in that bed, weak and powerless from head to toe.
“I killed Matias.”
“It was an accident, Luca. You could not have known that your powers would begin at that time. You had no idea what lay ahead. I held my suspicions close. I was not sure and it was too dangerous to speculate aloud. I have never heard of fire coming to a boy in such a way. We all thought you were meant for death. I had already begun to grieve you. I will not lie, I am happy you are here. I will grieve poor Matias for as long as I live, but I am glad that I never had to say goodbye to you.”
Luca stumbled as they walked towards the ship. Seawalker, it was called. Luca held back tears as he remembered the way strength had flooded through his limbs as the fire had left his body. Matias. Matias. His big brother. The man he always wanted to be. The man who taught him how to hold a sword. He had killed Matias.
He could not live with that.
“What if I hurt other people,” Luca said. “What if it happens again? I… I mean, you said it yourself. I cannot control it… myself. I had no way of knowing—”
“That is what the iron band is for,” Brother Axil explained. “The iron blocks the power, you see.”
Luca stared down at the bracelet around his wrist. This was all that stood between him and scorching the flesh from some innocent? His insides squirmed and wriggled. His chest was tight and ached. In his mind he heard Matias’s laugh when they were children, until it turned into Reva’s laugh as they ran through the corridors at Nesra’s Keep. Both were lost to him now.
“Come,” Brother Axil said, “we should board the ship. We need to leave with haste. The king will have found Matias by now. He will be searching for us.”
“Father will kill me,” Luca said. “It’s what he does to people like me. He kills them, or puts them in iron shackles. He controls them or he executes them.”
“He fears them,” Axil admitted. “I have never known why he fears them so much. It is a habit of kings, I think. They always fear those with powers greater than their own. An army of Menti is a frightening thing. Even a small army can overcome a great number of men. If they have the right powers, of course.”