by Dawn Peers
Stooping and bowing, scraping herself away down the corridor, Grainne turned on her heel and sprinted after the dog. Ross looked up at the door, and the emblem hanging outside it; Sevenspells. No, he wouldn't want one of his girls to lose a pet from that court, either. Gathering the cloth together, Ross hid the volume in its folds. He strolled now, more at ease, looking far more normal to the casual eye with a bundle of material in his hand than he would an old volume of work that, when opened, would undoubtedly reveal itself to be from Sha'sek.
Ross may have looked calm, but inside, his palpitations did not stop until he reached the safety of his room. Closing the door behind him, he placed his precious bundle on the table and scrutinised every dark corner of his sparse space with a candle. He even checked under his cot, though what kind of threat could have lived there remained to be seen. Satisfied that he had neither been followed nor tricked, Ross went back to his table. Hand shaking, he filled a wooden cup with water and took some unsteady sips. His hand shook, with droplets of water splashing to the dusty floor. Still shaking, Ross placed the cup down on his desk. Water wasn't going to calm his nerves, and if he spilt it on any of the ink, even if they could replace the book without Sammah identifying it was gone, the baron would eventually find out that someone had taken his invaluable and mysteriously private text.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, Ross peeled back the dusty linen to reveal the cover of the book. It was decorated with thick gilding. It was written in the dialect of Sha'sek, rather than the common tongue both lands more recently shared. That was an indicator of either the text's age, or its contents. No one in Everfell, that had always lived in Everfell, had ever taken the time to learn the exaggerated and complicated script of the Sha'sek. Even some natives to the land never learned to write it, only to speak its lilting and hauntingly beautiful tones. As a mercenary, Ross had learned the hard way the importance of knowing the deals you were signing. Corruption was a trait common to all men, and more than one baron had tried to deceive him with clauses in fighting contracts that they had expected him, as a common-born fighter, to be unable to read. Ross traced his fingers along the shapes of the words. It had been a long time since he'd read anything in Sha'sek. It was like receiving a visit from a long-buried and unwanted ancestor. The Growth of the Gifted was the simple title. It seemed innocuous enough, but its connotations set Ross's hairs on end. No text of this size was so simple.
He opened the first page, and began reading out loud to himself, his finger tracing along the text to keep track of the words, which he would only let on his lips in a whisper.
Started by the hand of Baron Sammen, First Son of the Second of the State of Innerstide, this text is a study on the evolution of the gifted, from the year of the Salted Sands, 467.
We have spent a long time, and a lot of power, collecting together as many gifted children as we can find. They are here by the grace of the spirits, having been parted from their parents in many unfortunate circumstances. We bring them together in one colony, so that they can live together in harmony, grow, and with each other, learn and grow stronger.
Baron Sammen? Ross's mind worked back through the family trees that he knew of. Innerstide was the city state that Sammah came from, though the name did not match his brother, Baron Genner. A father would usually pass his name on to his first born, so that family lines were easy to trace. With Sammen and Sammah being so similar, there must have been some deaths and power struggles in the two hundred years since this text was started for Sammah to be relegated to being a lowest born, and effectively exiled in to the service of Everfell. Ross’s lips continued; he was already beginning to see the similarities between Sammen's work, and that of Sammah.
We have twenty children so far. They are all fascinating, and I love them all like they are my own. Long may this continue to be the case. I will spare time on each of the following pages for each of their skills; they have a lot to teach me, and we have a lot to learn about what our gifted can do for us.
Ross began to flip each page carefully. When one seemed so delicate that he became worried of tearing it, he went to his storage chest and started rifling around until he found what he wanted; a thin dining knife. He wrapped it in a small fold of linen, and placed that between each page, scooping it over with the knife. Sammen did indeed have a range of children available to him. He had labelled each talent, too, and Ross recognised many of them. The Muted; the Incandescent; the Winter Child; the Night Eye; the Healer. Ross stopped at that page, looking over its detail.
We have two healers. A boy and a girl. They are marvellous, and without them, we would surely have lost at least one of our family to blight. An older healer has been teaching them, and between what we know, and watching these two grow, we can see how to make the most of their amazing abilities.
They do not heal the body in the traditional ways, though their minds show an amazing aptitude towards herbs and to memorising the needs of the body. No; they see inside the bodies. When presented with a man of seemingly perfect health, but with a constant coughing, our boy identified a blackness on the man's lungs; a sort of consumption. We have been able to draw it out with herbs and steams; the man is, by all accounts, now recovered.
What is more compelling is the influence they have on the powers of the other children. With how they can see illnesses grow, they can also, if directed to look, see the powers of their peers grow in kind. The girl appears to be able to gauge differences in strength, also. With this, I suspect she is the more powerful of the two. When they are older, we shall mate them, and see if they also produce a healer, and if the child is of a greater power than their own.
Ross turned the page at this. Selective breeding had not been commonplace then in Sha'sek; it had been more recently, and poorer gifted sold themselves on the marketplace so that parents may be able to have gifted offspring. It was not a practice of which Ross approved. He turned a few more pages. The Sleeper; the Walker; the Empath. Ross shut his eyes. After the brief rambles he had read about the Healer, he did not want to see what future could lie in store for Quinn.
Looking down, though, he saw very little. The Healer and the Winter Child had several pages dedicated to the evolution of their power. The Empath, as Ross turned over the next page, had just two. The rest of the pages were blank, as if expecting to be filled, with the child never growing to fill them. Ross shut the book. That could only mean one thing. Sammen went into detail, and so did the men that continued his work after him. All of the abilities had more than two pages. So either they did not have much to say about someone with empathic abilities—which, after knowing Quinn for so long, he doubted—or the empath had died. Ross sat down hard. He didn't want to know why.
Then, he reasoned, it might not be that the empath had died. He or she may have just ran away, or taken their power out of the reach of Sammen, in the same way that Quinn had grown mature enough to know that she did not want to be under the control of Sammah. Ross opened the book again, trying to find his page. He scanned over the ink quickly. He realised on the second page, that the last line was new ink.
The empath does not have to wait until their naming day, for their true abilities to be triggered. It can be forced with the help of a healer, if they are skilled enough.
This had to be the day that Maertn had worked on Quinn, after she had passed out in the courtyard. But what had the young healer done? What had Sammah directed him to do? Ross knew that he shouldn't be reading this alone. The words within though seemed laden with ill-intent and dread. There wasn't a happy conclusion here for Quinn. There couldn't be. One person though, it seemed, was key to this. The Healer.
Ross wrapped the book back in cloths and almost sprinted out of his room. He had to find Maertn, and quickly.
42
Quinn let herself go. She sank down into the water, letting its warmth completely blanket her, gliding over her skin and washing away the worries and doubts that had been hanging over her head for what now seemed like forever. Hold
ing her breath, she stayed there for a time. The water had no tide to it; no rhythm or pulse other than what she caused with her own movements. Her mouth shut tight, all she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat between her ears. It was strong, the blood pounding in her head. She relished the feeling. It was a reminder that she was still very much alive, and that her body still wanted to carry on this fight, even if she herself doubted her capabilities to carry it on.
The water moved, small eddies pushing ever so slightly against her. She reached out, feeling a concentrated ball of concern that she knew belonged to Eden. She raised her head out of the water, taking a deep breath in through her nose, and looking for the lord who had just entered the pool. He swam towards her through the warm mist, like he had done that first time they were in the pool together. Her foray underwater had raised her heart rate anyway; it pushed on further now. She was glad that she was already red and sweating from the heat of the pool, because she knew that she had started blushing immediately.
Eden stopped again a respectful distance away from her, treading water before looking over his shoulder and pushing himself the short way to the edge of the pool. One hand snaked out of the water and grabbed the ledge. Not wanting to be left alone in the middle of the pool, Quinn followed suit, keeping the distance between them.
"How are you feeling today?"
Quinn seriously pondered the question before answering sarcastically. "Still a high level of oppression, mixed with a large potential for death. I'm doing well under the circumstances, captain. How goes your hunt for the Satori?"
Eden grinned at her. "Good and bad. I don't think I've found the deadly murderer yet. I've definitely met some interesting women in my work, though."
"Some interesting women? More than one? You must tell me about them all."
"Oh, you wouldn't be interested I'm sure." Eden started mixing at the water with his free hand. "Just court ladies, you know the sort. Fluttering eyes and rouged lips. Eager to please."
"And is that the kind of ladies that my Lord Eden would usually favour?"
Eden made a face. "Not on your life."
Quinn chuckled. "I didn't think so. Otherwise you'd be in here when they are. Plenty of opportunities for court progression are presented in the caverns, so I hear."
"Oh do you? And have you ever been in here when the ladies of the court are bathing?"
"Once." Quinn admitted.
"And how did you find it?"
"It was like listening to a flock of hens being drowned."
Eden laughed, both pleased and amused by her answer. "That sounds like quite the spectacle. Maybe I will have to come and see it some time." He swam closer to her, his voice dropping. This time his free hand cupped her cheek, his palm hot and his eyes serious. "How are you really, Quinn?"
She felt her muscles drop to the floor as she tried to work out a response. He had never touched her so closely, spoken to her so quietly, not when they were alone. She was also very conscious of the fact that they were naked. Quinn was suddenly glad of the darkness of the water.
"The same as I've been for weeks, Eden. I'm scared. I'm just doing the best I can to survive. I don't know how to keep up this dance for Sammah; avoiding and pleasing him at the same time is exhausting."
"You don't have to keep it up for long." Eden said, simply. Quinn knew though that it wasn't that easy. Her head pounded. She blamed the roaring of blood and her heightened heartbeat, and closed her eyes against it.
"Sometimes I just wish Maertn hadn't stopped me from leaving that night."
"If Maertn hadn't, Elias would have brought you back. Which one of those options is the more preferable?"
"Maertn, of course. There again, if it had have been Elias, or if I had somehow made it out of Everfell," she opened her eyes "I wouldn't have met you."
Eden dropped his hand, grinning like a lovesick child. "You mean that?"
"Of course I mean it, you fool."
"You know that no one besides my brothers and my father have ever dared to call me a fool?"
"Then that makes them bigger fools. You have a title. That doesn't make you any more or less of a man."
Still grinning, Eden leaned forward and kissed her. Quinn hadn't been expecting it, and the action shocked her. It was nothing more than a peck on her lips, but it was the first kiss she had ever received from a man, and the feeling he left tingled, imprinted on her now, forever.
A silence stretched before them as Quinn tried to figure out what she was meant to do next. She would never be anything more to Eden than a consort; he could never marry her. Did she want that, though? Did she even want to consider that, at her age? Or, after a lifetime of being either derided or ignored, did she finally want to take for herself an enjoyable slice of this life. After all, in a matter of days, she might be dead, either by Sammah's hand or his orders. Eden himself looked petrified. He was worried that he had overstepped the mark; that he should have asked her, or warned her. He reached down in to the water and grabbed her hand, placing it on his heart. Quinn knew what that gesture meant.
She found Eden's nerves. They danced along, as unsure as she was, excited as she was, and as inexperienced as she was. She found his heart, which was nervous, and true, only for her. And she found his passion, which could have set the water on fire were it not simply in their minds. When Quinn didn't pull away, Eden wrapped his hand around her upper arm and pulled her to him in the water. This time, when he kissed her, she responded in kind, though she withdrew her power from him; Quinn was worried that what she felt there would make her faint dead away in to the waters of the cavern.
43
"I'll have to read it to you, Maertn. Unless you've been learning the Sha'sek dialect, and haven't told anyone."
"The baron taught us some of the most common words, but that's all. I can't read it. I'm pretty sure Quinn's forgotten the words she learned, too."
Ross smiled. "I wouldn't expect her to be able to remember those at the moment, not with everything else that is going on in her life. Sit down. Would you like some ale first? You might need it?"
Maertn shook his head in refusal. "I can't abide the stuff."
"Huh. You're probably one of the only men in Everfell that does. More for me. And I'm pretty sure I'll need it. Excuse me."
Ross poured a full brass tankard full of ale from a pitcher, and quaffed the entire lot down in a few large gulps. Maertn stared, open-mouthed. Ross wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and smiled in amusement at the healer's reaction.
"Come on lad, I was a soldier, once. You think just because I'm a chamberlain, I've forgotten how to drink? That's one of the most important skills in my job!" Ross winked at him, and Maertn smiled. "Now, on to more dour matters."
Ross took out his cloth-wrapped knife again, and found the page for the empath. He explained what he had found in the book so far.
"There are pages dedicated to finding out about the abilities of gifted Sha'sek children, and how they change as you age. It was started by one of Sammah's ancestors, and he's carried on that work, with you and Quinn at least. I think Sammah needed this the time Quinn collapsed, because she exhibited symptoms that have been written down before in this book. I haven't checked any of the details yet. I didn't want to do it on my own, but I also want to make sure there's nothing in this that will scare Quinn, before we tell her."
"I don't feel right about that. Shouldn't we tell Quinn we have the book at least? We've been waiting to get our hands on this for so long."
"No. She's already got enough burden on her shoulders. I don't want to frighten her any more. I don't know what this book is going to say and, between you and me, there isn't a lot they know about the empath compared to the other gifted."
"Okay. You...you know better I suppose."
"Maertn, you're her best friend, and I respect your opinion about her. I beat down on Eden for hiding the deaths from her, but sometimes, some secrets are meant to be kept. We won't hide this from her forever. We'll
just make sure there's nothing in there that's going to make her want to run away again. Agreed?"
Maertn nodded, though it was clear he was unhappy at their little deception. Ross gave him a reassuring nod, and started reading from the text.
"Just so you know, lad, I haven't read this either. Best we just read it all the way through the once, then examine it after, okay?" Maertn nodded again. "Good. Right. Here we go."
Ross was glad for the knife. His palms started sweating straight away. "We have one child in our midst. He appears to be empathic. We already know this ability is rare, and there are no others, and very few documents, for me to draw on how to watch this child. We therefore need to examine him more closely than the others, and make sure he speaks to us constantly about what he is feeling, to ensure we see as early as possible any changes in his nature.
We have to be careful with him at all times. He is fearful of crowds. In his eighth year currently, he cannot cope with the various emotions that appear to assault him from all angles. In its early stages, we know, the empath cannot filter what they see or feel. Every emotion is known to them.
The isolation seems to do him well. He is a happy child. He interacts with one or two that we send to him. He seems to have a natural affinity with healers of both genders. This is perhaps cause for greater and lengthier study, though as it is not clear how this is linked to the gifts, it is not a cause for concern in this volume.
We have asked him to begin writing down how he feels regarding certain emotions. These are too lengthy to be included in this volume. They have been noted and are in the separate volume “Empathic Instincts.” Have you ever seen Sammah looking at this other volume?"
"I wouldn't even know what the volume looks like. Sorry, Ross."