by C. G. Garcia
He needed to begin healing the magical shock she was suffering as soon as possible, but he knew that he would be too drained to tend to her if he performed the portal spell. He could always ask the king’s personal healer to tend to her, but the thought of letting another touch her made him feel surprisingly uneasy.
No, it’s better for me to heal her since I already know her mind so well, he reasoned. Besides, the fewer people that know of her, the better.
He glanced down at the sleeping girl in his arms and said to her, “You’re safe now, milady, and when you wake, I’ll discover if the old Golden Mage prophecy has any truth to it.”
With those final words, he set out into the forest again, retracing his steps back to the Lake of Tears path, resigning himself to an agonizingly long ride back to the palace.
CHAPTER FOUR
The palace grounds swarmed with the usual assortment of servants, mages of every class, apprentices, bards, petitioners, and noblemen hurrying to and from the huge, iron gates of the palace wall to whatever tasks demanded their attention for the day. Aidric watched them from afar, tightly shielded from emotion, hidden from view by a convenient clump of trees. He knew that if he attempted to ride through the palace gates with the young woman in his arms, too many curious eyes would see. Many questions would be asked, questions that he had no answers for at the moment.
Aidric muttered heartfelt curses under his breath. There was no choice. He would have to use magic if he hoped to slip into his rooms unnoticed, something he would have rather avoided while the girl was still so raw and damaged. The shields he had placed around her mind should keep her from sensing any magical energy, but with the way the untamed power within her was currently battering against those shields, he feared even the smallest hint of magical energy would get through and trigger another burst of power and shatter them just as she had easily shattered his own shields earlier.
Still, he really couldn’t risk anyone learning of his discovery just yet, either. Those in power might see her as a threat to the safety of the kingdom and order her to solitary confinement until they decided what to do with her. He shuddered, knowing all-too-well how miserable the palace dungeons could be. Most of the weaker prisoners never emerged alive again.
I’ll not allow that to happen to her!
Shadow would have to stay behind. Although the steed was as silent and well-mannered as a horse could be, Aidric could not take the risk of Shadow whickering at an inconvenient moment.
Aidric carefully dismounted and set the girl as gently as he could onto the soft grass. Quickly, he tied Shadow’s reigns to one of the trees, giving the horse enough slack to graze as he pleased. He would send one of the stable boys for Shadow later.
He then closed his eyes and carefully began the spell that would ensure all eyes that tried to look at them would see nothing but what they expected to see, making them for all intents and purposes, invisible. The wave of magic flowed from his hands and settled over the girl’s body like a thin film of mist. He did the same to himself and afterwards, gathered her into his arms again.
Luckily, the line of people entering and leaving the palace grounds had thinned somewhat, so the danger of bumping into someone and ruining the effects of the spell was not as great. He kept to the edges, and after a few close calls with children suddenly darting in front of him, Aidric was safely through the gates.
Not one of the two dozen guards on either side of the gate glanced in their direction even once. In fact, they eyed the travelers with a bored indifference. Frowning, he wondered if that indifference was feigned or genuine. The matter definitely deserved further scrutiny, but for the moment, the light weight in his arms reminded him that he had more pressing matters to attend to first.
It seemed to take an eternity for Aidric to cross the seemingly endless lawns surrounding the palace before he safely reached the side entrance of the palace that led to the Mage Hall where his private suite lay. The area was currently empty.
Heaving a huge sigh of relief, he prayed to Seni that the main hallway would also be empty as he awkwardly reached for the door handle, trying not to jostle the girl too much, and cracked open one of the two tall, golden-bordered marble doors. He saw none of his fellow mages as he peered down into the gloom of the main corridor. Just to be extra sure, he sent out a Probe of Inquiry, but it found no one still within the Hall.
Satisfied that they were alone, Aidric stepped into the hallway and dismissed the invisibility spell. He hurried down the corridor to his quarters at the end of the corridor that lay thankfully unlocked. He seldom spell-locked his door since none of the mages ever worried about thieves entering their domain. Most of the common folk believed that a dire spell would strike dead any potential thief if he or she even attempted to enter the Mage Hall without permission. Completely untrue, but the mages allowed the uninformed to continue believing it. If the rumor kept their quarters safe from thievery, then the mages saw no reason to set the record straight, and for once, Aidric totally agreed with them.
He quickly passed through the sitting room, ignoring the enormous spread that a servant had left him on the dining table against the far wall for lunch, even though his stomach began to growl in protest at the delicious aroma. He carried the girl into his bedroom and gently laid her onto his enormous feather bed.
She moaned softly as she sank into the coverlet and her head hit his down pillow but otherwise, showed no signs of reviving. A mercy, really, since she would be spared the misery of consciously feeling the shock-headache.
Aidric pulled his robe from her and replaced it with one of the thick blankets that lay folded at the foot of the bed. There was a cold bite to the air, and he had enough to worry about with her extreme case of magical-shock, let alone the problems a chill could add to the mix. His bedroom, despite being windowless, annoyingly could sometimes be quite glacial, the result of bad architecture.
Satisfied that she was warm enough, Aidric bent over her and lightly laid both hands onto her forehead to begin the healing. He closed his eyes and wove slivers of his own life force through her mind, finding and healing the places most traumatized by what she had done to herself in her apparent ignorance of her mage powers.
He winced at the state of the natural magical “channels,” a type of energy ley-line that wound throughout her entire body. It was worse than he had thought. Her channels pulsed in some places with a type of inflammation. In others, the flow of energy was disrupted, redirected, to the point of seeping out beyond the normal flow as though through cracks in a barrier, causing significant damage to the surrounding tissues that were never meant to be touched by the energy of a Mage-field.
Aidric found it hard to believe that anyone would do this to themselves intentionally, even a potential spy testing out her abilities against Lamia’s Mage-general. Another sand-mark without treatment, and the damage caused to her brain would have been irreversible, possibly even fatal.
A few moments later, he drew his hands and mental connection away with a shiver of pleasure, her healing complete. The feelings that healing aroused in the healer were very similar to those aroused by lovemaking. Aidric always felt embarrassed after healing a patient because most were well aware of the feelings of pleasure he was experiencing. Some even teased him about it, but with his current patient unconscious, this time he was thankfully spared the awkwardness. He listened closely to her rhythmic breathing without the usual discomfort and determined that her sleep was now natural and not shock-induced.
For a long moment, Aidric stared down at her sleeping face and debated whether or not to wake her or allow her to awaken naturally when she had slept off the exhaustion. No one was expecting him anywhere for a few sand-marks, so sitting by her bedside and keeping watch wouldn’t be a problem. However, he wasn’t so sure any of them could afford to let the mystery of this powerful maiden go unsolved any longer, even if she did need the rest.
Taking a deep breath, he mentally touched her mind and sent a mind-thought
that commanded her to awaken, hoping in the same instant that he was not making a serious mistake.
***
She was dreaming of colorful lights of no distinct shape that danced in a large circle around her, shimmering beings at least twice her height, gleefully laughing at her because of her obvious fear of them. She turned from left to right in a futile attempt to escape them, but they were everywhere, slowly closing in on her as if they meant to devour her.
She seemed to be standing in a vacuum of darkness with the only source of light being those dancing lights and the light radiating from herself. She could hear their mocking laughter surrounding her as if it were wisps of fog ready to squeeze the warmth from her body.
It didn’t take long for their persistent ridicule to finally anger her enough to banish most of her fear and to rush at the nearest dancing light, the energy emitted by her body glowing more fiercely, her mind focused on one thing—to destroy it. God, she had never felt so alive!
However, before she could reach the offending light, the dream suddenly faded, and Allison awakened to the unfamiliar sensation of something incredibly soft enveloping her entire body. Disoriented, she tried to remember where she was. She only knew that the bed she was sleeping in was not her own. It was simply too comfortable.
Then, as sleep gradually left her foggy mind and remnants of her strange dream returned to her, she suddenly recalled the brilliant rip of light that had sucked her into its realm of madness and the strange forest that she had found herself in after her terrifying experience moving through that colorful realm of light. Had that been real?
Her eyes instantly flew open, and what she saw made her heart freeze.
A strange man loomed over her, staring down at her with a mixture of curiosity and wariness evident on his face, but that was not what made her heart begin to race in sudden fear.
He didn’t look altogether human.
He had a mop of hair as white as newly fallen snow that fell in soft waves to the top of his shoulders, hair that should have belonged to an old man, but this man’s face was smooth, young. He was no older than mid-to-late twenties, surely. His eyes were a strange, but beautiful, pale-violet that she had never seen on another human being—not even with colored contacts. His skin was only a shade or two darker than his hair, as pale as any albino’s skin. He was not incredibly tall, about six feet, but he still appeared to tower over her like a giant out of myth.
His clothes looked as if he had just stepped out of the pages of a history book describing the fashions of the past. He wore a long, full-sleeved shirt the same color as his hair of a material that resembled silk but cast off a brighter luster. It was laced together in the center with laces that seemed to have been coated in real gold. Small jewels that appeared to be diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds adorned the cuffs of the shirt, as well as the shoulders and collar.
A cape of silky sapphire edged in gold fell down his back to come to rest a couple of inches above the floor. It fastened around his neck by a gold and sapphire brooch in the shape of a teardrop more beautiful than any piece of jewelry Allison had ever seen.
The breeches he wore were of the same sapphire blue of his cape, tucked into a pair of brown, leather boots that rose to just below his knees.
All of this, Allison took in with a single sweep of her rapidly widening eyes.
She was suddenly very afraid.
After a moment of tense silence, near tears, she worked up enough courage to ask, “What are you? Where am I?” She nearly choked on the words as she all but whispered, “Am I—dead?”
The man frowned and shook his head. His whole demeanor seemed to become suddenly agitated at her words. She instinctively shrunk back.
Oh God—maybe I insulted him when I asked him what he was, she thought in alarm as the stranger continued to frown, his pale-violet eyes staring intently down at her own as though trying to see down to her very soul.
“Mei agio nea legera ois ventia. Aut ois legera meis?” he said with a shrug, looking expectedly down at her.
Allison’s heart clenched painfully as a maelstrom of fear and confusion thundered through her entire being, and she recoiled as far away from him as the bed permitted, finally losing the battle to keep the tears at bay. She had never heard the language that he was speaking. She only knew the few phrases and words in French and Spanish she could remember from school, but neither of those languages sounded even remotely like the words he had spoken. His language seemed to consist of mostly vowels with a few harsh consonant sounds.
Where the hell was she?
The man took a hesitant step towards the bed and stopped when Allison whimpered in fear.
I’ve got to get out of here! she thought frantically, her eyes darting wildly around the room until they settled on the wide-open door across the room. But—can I make it through before he can stop me?
***
Aidric looked down at the girl’s tears in dismay.
I’m frightening her. Although, I can’t say that I really blame her. Waking up in a strange room with a strange man looking down at me—I imagine I would be quite alarmed. He clenched his fists at his side in frustration. How in the six hells can I make her understand that I mean her no harm when we can’t even communicate?
The language she had spoken was totally foreign to him. It was a tongue that resembled nothing he had ever heard uttered, even in the strangest of dialects, much less was it amongst the dozens of languages that the Master Linguist, Zenas, had magicked into his memory.
Even so, Aidric had hoped that she would at least understand Lamian. Instead, she had looked at him as though his words had been the snarls of a beast. He couldn’t even resort to reading her thoughts since touching a mind so recently traumatized in such an invasive way could cause irreparable damage to her psyche.
I can’t stall any longer, he thought gravely. I don’t like it, but I need Zenas’s help.
Unfortunately, the only way the linguist would ever agree to magick the Lamian language into her mind was by receiving King Diryan’s approval. The king would undoubtable demand to see her first. Aidric had never spoken about the Golden Mage legend with the king, or anyone for that matter. He had no idea how the king would react to seeing the girl and realizing her probable identity. He had wanted to bring Diryan as much information about her as possible to lessen the chances of her being imprisoned, but without being able to understand each other...
A sudden movement in the corner of his eye interrupted his thoughts, and Aidric turned his attention back to the girl in enough time to see her bolt out of his bed, obviously heading for the open door. In a panic, Aidric raised his arms and threw a paralysis spell at her. With a sinking feeling, he watched her collapse onto her face without so much as a gasp onto the marble floor as the spell overtook her.
Now she will never trust me… he despaired. What have I done?
***
A blast of what felt like hot air abruptly hit her from behind, and Allison suddenly found that her limbs no longer obeyed her in mid-stride. The momentum instantly had her diving forward until she fell flat on her face, her forehead hitting the marble floor hard enough to make her see black for a few seconds. She tried to cry out, but her voice didn’t seem to be working, either. All she could manage was a strangled gurgle, along with short, shallow breaths. She struggled to rise again, but her body simply would not obey her.
Dear God, I’m paralyzed! she realized with horror. Somehow—somehow that white-haired man did it to me!
Allison heard footsteps approach her from behind, and the man’s strangely cut, brown leather boots came into her field of view. She tried desperately to shrink away from them, to curl into a protective fetal position, terrified that one of those boots would suddenly bury itself into her stomach as punishment for trying to run away, but she couldn’t even so much as blink an eyelid. She tried to speak again, ready to lose all dignity and beg for mercy as she stared helplessly at the tip of his boot, but it was as if an i
nvisible hand was squeezing her throat to prevent the words from emerging.
She mentally braced herself for the expected blow, half-suppressed memories trying to push to the forefront of past times she had found herself in this same position as a child, the same terror of the threat of violence. Instead, he squatted down, and a couple of tense seconds later, Allison felt him gather her into his arms, bridal-style. He then carried her back to the bed. It was then that she got a good look at the bed and noticed that the tips of a few large, white feathers peeked out along the edges from beneath the coverlet and the thick top sheet. Was that the mattress? A bunch of huge feathers piled high on what appeared to be a regular bed frame? Except this bedframe was as ornate as a king’s might be.
The frame was of a dark, almost black wood, constructed from what she suspected was the wood of those strange, monstrous trees she had seen. The headboard rose approximately five feet from the bed. Many different murals of various nature scenes were skillfully carved along it as well as the sides of the frame, some of the animals alien to her. What appeared to be solid gold was also plated along the edges of both the frame and headboard.
Allison was shocked when the strange man carefully laid her down onto the coverlet and draped the thick blanket she had thrown off earlier over her body up to her neck. She lay there enveloped in the warmth of soft feathers and blankets, unable to even blink, helplessly gazing up at his strange, but exotically beautiful, face as he looked down at her with an unreadable expression. She was scared, waiting for blows with the surety of past experiences and confused that they hadn’t come. She could feel the tears leaking out of her eyes, but like everything but her breathing, she had no control over them.
Standing over her, looking tall, regal, dangerous, and unearthly beautiful, he was the most intimidating creature she had ever seen.