But what if there were another answer? Her father said that her mother had died shortly after she was born. Had he lied to her? If he had, why? And why would her mother have left?
She buried her face in the linen pillowcover and closed her eyes. She definitely had some questions for Keeva in the morning.
Chapter Fourteen
7th Waxing Sap Moon, Year 4368
Amethyst awoke to the smell of garlic and onions, and the sound of someone in the room with her. She pushed herself up, her shoulder protesting with a jolt of pain. She winced, drawing a sharp breath, and looked towards the hearth to see Keeva crouching in front of it, stirring a small iron cauldron.
“I wondered if you were going to sleep all day,” said the white-haired elf, glancing at Amethyst as she stirred. “I wouldn't have been surprised, but you do need to eat.”
“It smells delicious,” said Amethyst, sitting up. She was starving; the last time she had eaten had been in the afternoon of the day before. Keeva brought her an earthenware bowl with a carved wooden spoon, handing it to her before ladling out her own bowl and sitting in a chair at the table.
“So,” said Keeva, stirring her stew as she waited for it to cool. “What brought you out into the snow? You're old enough to know you can't handle that kind of cold by now, and you were not prepared to travel in that weather.”
“I was running from something,” Amethyst replied. “I tripped as I was going down the ridge, and the snow collapsed around me.”
“What were you running from?”
Amethyst shook her head. “I don't know if I should say.”
Crossing one leg over the other, Keeva leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knee. “Do you fear reprisals from me?”
“Not from you, no. From the one I was running from. I fear that I have greatly angered him.”
“Ah, one of the Masters, then,” said Keeva, nodding slightly as she turned back to her bowl and lifted a spoonful of stew to her lips.
“You know the Masters?” asked Amethyst, curious.
Keeva scoffed slightly. “I know of them. I think the only ones that are purposefully ignorant of their existence are the Northmen.”
“I was an apprentice there,” Amethyst said. “I fear that I am no longer.”
“Now, why is that?” Keeva asked. She brought a loaf of bread over and sliced the end off, dipping it into her stew.
“No elf has ever been able to do magic before, and when it came time for me to dedicate myself to the craft, I panicked and fled.” Despite her reticence at sharing the details of how she left the Citadel, Amethyst found Keeva very easy to talk to.
“Whoever told you that elves can't do magic was a fool.”
Amethyst furrowed her brow. “Everyone I have ever met has told me that. Even the priests, they work exclusively through the gods... they aren't working magic, they're delivering blessings and prayers.”
Lifting the knife again, Keeva sliced another thick piece from the loaf in front of her and held it out to her, though she was across the room. Amethyst started to get out of bed to take it from her hand, but before she could set her bowl aside, the slice of bread floated out of Keeva's hand, slowly crossing the room to settle next to her on the bed.
Amethyst's eyes opened wide. “How did you do that?”
“Magic, obviously.”
“I know, but, you're an elf!”
“And so are you,” Keeva countered.
“I know but...” Amethyst struggled for words, but Keeva's point stood. If Amethyst could do magic, why couldn't another elf? “My master told me it was likely because of where I was born that I could work magic.”
“It sounds like your master had an agenda.”
Amethyst chuckled mirthlessly. “It would seem that he did.”
The older elf leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs again. “The Masters cannot find you here. We are invisible to them, in their great stone building. You can tell me anything you wish to tell me, or you can keep to yourself whatever you wish to keep to yourself.” Keeva looked up at Amethyst and took a bite of her bread. “I may be able to offer perspective or even a solution, but only if you choose to talk and to listen. You don't have to do anything alone unless you choose to.” She shrugged. “You're here for a while anyhow, until you're well enough to travel.”
“I suppose you're right,” said Amethyst, looking away.
The two women sat in silence for a moment, then Keeva dipped her bread into her stew again.
“So, which element does your master command?”
“Earth,” said Amethyst. “He normally lives on the top of Mount Stromgard, in the Northlands. The element is powerful there. He said that Castle Lonwick was built upon a nexus as well, which could explain my affinity for that particular element.”
“If that's the case, why aren't there more elves in Castle Lonwick with that ability? I mean, there have been many born there over the centuries... I remember the city to be very large.”
Amethyst pursed her lips. “That's true. I didn't think of that.”
“I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just questioning. It's a good habit to have.”
“Perhaps. I wasn't encouraged to ask too many questions.”
“I'm going to assume you weren't encouraged to run away from the Citadel and ride an avalanche into the valley while half-naked, but here you are.”
Despite herself, Amethyst laughed. “Again, you have a point.”
Leveling her eyes at Amethyst, Keeva sat her spoon down. “So, why did you flee your master?”
Amethyst leaned back, laying down again, balancing the bowl on her lap. “I will answer your question if you answer mine.”
“Very well.”
She turned her head to look at Keeva. “Are you my mother?”
Keeva took a deep breath, then asked quietly, “What makes you think that?”
Amethyst looked back at the ceiling, holding up her hands and ticking off each point she made on her fingers. “My father never actually said that my mother died. He said that she left us, or that she was taken from us, shortly after I was born. I have only ever heard of one snow elf that visited Castle Lonwick, in all of our histories, and very little is said about her. You say you knew my father, and you know how large Castle Lonwick is. You asked why I had the skin and hair of the snow elves as if you knew the difference between the elves of Lonwick and yourself.” She turned to look at Keeva again. “It seems fairly obvious to me.”
Drumming her fingers on the table, Keeva maintained eye contact with Amethyst, then sighed and looked away. “I had hoped to raise you here, in the Far North, where I could instill upon you the virtues of our kind. Unfortunately, you were unable to handle the cold like the rest of us. It was not my first choice, nor the most ideal, but it was the realistic choice for you to be raised by your father.”
Amethyst nodded, a lump rising unexpectedly in her throat. “Why did you leave us?”
“For the same reason I left Lonwick the first time. It was not my home. I was needed here. Unfortunately, your father could not leave Lonwick to be with me, and you could not live with me either.” She spread her hands. “If you had stayed with me, you would have frozen to death. If I had stayed in Lonwick, I would have lost a large part of myself. I prefer to avoid both of those possibilities.”
“Well. Is this the part where we hug and have a tearful reunion?” Amethyst asked, staring at her food.
“I honestly don't know.” Keeva smiled, looking down. “I can say that I missed you, but I never really knew what it was like to be a mother, so I can't say that I know what I missed.”
“Maybe you would have if you had stayed in Lonwick.”
“Maybe I would have. Can you change the past?”
“No,” said Amethyst, shaking her head.
“Well, neither can I. Your father and I... we were good together for a time, but we are two very, very different people.”
They were quiet again for a while. Keeva gestured to Am
ethyst and picked up her spoon again. “If you do not eat, you will not heal.”
Amethyst picked up her bowl and finished her meal. The food made her feel better, though her heart and mind were in turmoil. Part of her wanted to berate Keeva for abandoning her and her father, while another part was overjoyed at finally meeting her, despite the dire circumstances. She set her bowl aside, on a small table next to the bed.
“When I decided to join with Giriraj as his apprentice,” she said, “I agreed to fulfill any order he might give me, as well as take care of any needs he might have, personal or otherwise. I have avoided a certain part of those duties for three months now, and he has been patient with me.”
Sitting back in her chair, Keeva said nothing, listening as Amethyst related the events of the last few days. She told Keeva about her outburst in the dining chamber, about Giriraj's ultimatum, and his subsequent compromise. Amethyst told her of the ritual, the drink that he had given her, the build up to her panic, and her hallucinations.
“When I looked up and saw him between... between my legs, shifting into the dragon, I fled,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “I ran from him while he called to me. He tried to bar the entrance of his chambers, but I was able to break through and leave the Citadel. I stumbled in the snowbanks outside, and the snow collapsed underneath me, dragging me down the ridge. When I landed in the valley, I ran through the forest until I reached the other side, and couldn't climb anymore. I tried to make myself a shelter, but the element of Earth is weak here, and I couldn't do much for heat... just getting out of the wind and snow was about all I could manage.”
Keeva nodded, frowning. “I do know that some herbs can be mixed into a drink that induces visions and can facilitate connections to certain energies, but that one seemed to be meant to dull your senses.”
“He knew I was nervous about it. Maybe he was trying to ease me into it? I don't know.”
“You don't ease someone into something they don't want to do, especially not that,” said Keeva, her frown deepening. “That is something you don't do until you're ready to do it.”
“But if I refuse,” Amethyst protested, “then my apprenticeship ends, and I have to leave it all.”
“There may be a way to make sure his... needs are fulfilled,” Keeva said, a look of distaste crossing her face, “while not submitting to that sort of exploitation.”
Amethyst raised an eyebrow. “To sleep with him without sleeping with him? That doesn't make a lot of sense.”
“Well, it would if you weren't you.”
Amethyst scowled. “That wasn't any better.”
“Can you walk?” asked Keeva, standing.
Carefully, Amethyst pulled back the covers and set her feet on the ground. They were sore, feeling as though she had scalded them in too hot of a bath, but she could walk if she were careful. The cloth wrappings on her feet helped cushion them. “I think so, if it's not too far, and not in the snow.”
Keeva held out her hands, gripping Amethyst by the elbows to pull her to her feet. “No, just to the front room. I'll go out into the snow, and just for a moment.” She led Amethyst to the door, helping to support her as they made their way into the adjoining room. It was much larger than the one that they had left, though still smaller than many of the chambers in Castle Lonwick. There was a long table in the middle of the room with six chairs pushed in around it, and one wall was dominated by a large brick oven. On either side were wide, flat stone counters held up by sawn beams, sacks of flour stored underneath. One of the counters has been liberally dusted with flour and held several lumps of dough, while the other bore baskets that were filled with golden brown loaves.
She helped Amethyst to a chair where she could sit in the warmth of the oven, the smell of freshly baked bread filling the room, while Keeva went to a door set into the thick log wall across the room. A cold blast of air pushed into the bakery as she opened the door, stepping out into the inky blackness beyond. Despite the heat from the oven, Amethyst shivered.
The older woman was only gone for a moment before she came back with a large block of packed snow, closing the door tightly behind her. “Wait here,” she said, and stepped back into the room they had come from, returning almost immediately with a small leather bag. She emptied the contents onto the table in front of Amethyst.
Two marquis cut sapphires, about the size of Amethyst's thumbs, and a faceted diamond sphere fell onto the table. She reached out and picked up one of the sapphires, marveling at its clarity. She absolutely loved gemstones, and sapphires were one of her favorites. The diamond was particularly brilliant, the facets refracting the light in a stunning display. She picked it up, looking through it as it cast tiny rainbows against her hand, acting like a prism in the firelight.
“Now, can you sense magic in any of those stones?” Keeva asked.
Amethyst set the diamond down, focusing on the stones in front of her. Beyond their most basic energy, which all stones had – and gemstones had in abundance – she didn't feel anything especially magical about them. They were ordinary, if beautiful.
“No,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
Keeva picked up the stones and set them on top of the block of snow, which was starting to melt. Before Amethyst's eyes, the block shuddered, shrinking in on itself before surging upwards and outwards, growing to be as tall as Keeva and sprouting three appendages from the top. The bottom of the block of snow split apart, forming into columns as long as Keeva's legs. The figure quickly grew to look like a person, though made of snow instead of flesh, and with no fine features, only possessing the most basic of shapes.
Fetching a brush from the smaller room, Keeva pulled a single white hair out of the bristles. As she pressed it into the head of the snow woman, the surface of the figure shimmered, long white locks growing out of its scalp. Its skin smoothed until it was the same texture as Keeva's, with glassy finger and toenails appearing on its hands and feet. It stood there, looking like a perfect copy of Keeva, except that it neither moved nor breathed.
The older woman stepped up to the front of the figure, and pressed her lips to her doppelganger's, breathing into it. The figure's eyes opened, and it started breathing normally. The first difference between the two was that Keeva was clothed, and her copy was not. The second was that the figure that had grown out of the snow had eyes the color of the sapphires, as opposed to Keeva's purple eyes.
Amethyst was suitably impressed. She pushed herself up, stepping gingerly across the floor to stand near the figure. Reaching out, she rested her wrapped finger against its shoulder and pressed lightly. Its flesh sank in and sprang back, just as her own would have, but it was as cold as snow.
A slight frown was on Keeva's lips as she looked her doppelganger up and down. “I could have sworn I had maintained my figure better than that...” She shook her head. “Nevermind. Look, you can see that though she's formed of ice, she moves and feels like flesh, except that she is cold.”
“Also, she's still melting,” Amethyst said, pointing at the floor.
Sure enough, the puddle of water that had started to form under the melting snow block was still growing, despite the changes it had undergone.
Keeva snapped in front of the figure's face. “Are you awake?”
The golem turned and looked at her. “Yes,” she said, her voice a perfect mimicry of Keeva's.
“Go wait outside, so that you do not get my floor wet.”
It turned on its heel and walked to the door, stepping through and closing it behind itself.
Amethyst carefully crossed her arms over her chest. “So, I can see how one might mistake that for a real person... until you touch it.”She looked over at Keeva, furrowing her brow. “I mean, he would have to touch it.”
Keeva nodded. “He would. So that's why you would use clay instead.”
~~~
8th Waxing Sap Moon, Year 4368
The two elven women sat at the table, mixing different pigments into a lump of white clay. Amethy
st's hands were nowhere near healed enough for the task; though they were mending nicely, her fingers still sported angry scarlet marks near the tips, but the honey and bandages were working well to soothe the irritation. Keeva had told her it was a miracle that she hadn't lost the tips of her fingers or toes, but Amethyst figured it was more likely due to the fact that she was half snow elf. She might not be immune to the frost like Keeva was, but she seemed to have retained some bit of resistance to it.
Keeva had collapsed her golem and brought the gems back inside. They were sitting in a small bowl nearby so that they wouldn't get lost, and Amethyst kept glancing over at them, a nagging worry in the back of her mind.
“You're concerned with something,” Keeva said.
“The sapphires. They make the golem's eyes blue. I'm sure he would notice that.”
Keeva nodded. “Absolutely. I chose sapphires because I wanted it to be plain that it wasn't me if I ever had to use her around the village. But for you, we can use different stones.” Keeva glanced sidelong at her. “Which ones do you think we should use?”
Amethyst mock scowled. “Haha, very funny.”
Keeva shook her head, kneading the clay to smooth out the pigment. “I am serious. I was able to make a deal with one of our traders who had two matched amethysts. He wanted a load of bread to be able to take to the next village, a day's travel away. He said we could have the amethysts as well as your pick of a tiger's eye, a citrine, or a bloodstone.”
Amethyst nodded, raising her eyebrows. “That is helpful. How many loaves does he need?”
Keeva pointed to the baskets on the counter. “Ten of those.”
Doing a quick count, Amethyst blanched. “That's at least a hundred and fifty loaves!”
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