Ellenessia's Curse Book 1: The Shadow's Seer

by Fran Jacobs

  I flinched. "What did he say in the letter?" I asked.

  "You can read it for yourself. There's a note addressed to you at the end." A letter, written in my grandfather's elegant black script, was pushed towards me. I lifted it towards my eyes, squinting to try and see it in the dim light, but it was no good, I couldn't make out the letters; it was going to have to wait. "Basically," the old man said, "it says that I should expect you, that you're to take lessons here with the other students, and that you should have free access to any of our books that you wish to consult in our library."

  "Lessons?" I said in dismay.

  "King Sorron doesn't want you to waste your time here. He doesn't believe that consulting our books will take every hour of every day for the whole of the winter, so he wants us to keep you busy. You will join our students for lessons before lunch and again just before supper for weapons training. While they're at their mage classes, in the afternoons, you will be free to consult the library, where Calran will be on hand to help you. King Sorron has also made it clear that you're not to leave the school grounds, so the countryside around White Oaks is out of bounds, I'm afraid. Your friends can come and go as they please, but you, Prince Candale, cannot."

  "But-"

  "There is nowhere that you would want to go in this weather anyway," Tival continued, "but should you be caught somewhere that you're not supposed to be, then I have permission to punish you as I see fit." He shrugged. "It's all in the letter, Prince Candale. King Sorron is coming here as soon as soon as the weather allows, to collect you personally, and I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure that you're here to greet him where he arrives."

  I was taken aback by his words and the firm note of determination in his voice. It was clear that Tival didn't think I should have disobeyed my grandfather under any circumstances, but I did wonder if he knew what the circumstances were and whether it would change his opinion if he were to find out.

  "No one is to teach Prince Candale weapons work except me," Trellany said.

  "People will question why Prince Candale gets special treatment," Tival said. "King Sorron doesn't want anyone to know who he is, or why he's here."

  "No one is to teach Prince Candale weapons work except me," Trellany repeated firmly.

  "Fine," Tival sighed, with almost a roll to his eyes, although he was too polite to actually do it. "We will enlist you as an extra sword master down in the yard. You can teach Prince Candale and half a dozen or so of our better students. Will that suit?"

  "Yes," Trellany replied. "That's fine."

  Tival turned toward Teveriel. "Hmm," he said, scratching his chin. "I imagine we had better find something for you to do, too, for appearances sake, of course."

  Teveriel glanced at me, with an alarm in his eyes, and then, back at Tival. He opened his mouth to protest, no doubt, that he didn't need anything to do, but was cut off smartly by Tival's decision.

  "You can be our new music teacher. We haven't had one here for a good few years, but despite that, and the students' obvious inexperience, I doubt that it will take up that much of your time, nothing more than an hour or so every few days."

  Teveriel frowned, but the look in Tival's dark eyes allowed no objection, so he sighed heavily and nodded. "All right," he said, and I could see that he was trying not to grimace at the idea of having to teach a group of students who maybe little better, and even, much worse, than I had proved to be.

  "Good," Tival said, satisfied. "Then everything's settled."

  "Except for me," I said. Tival looked at me questioningly. "If no one is to know who I am, then how will you explain me, my arrival here, why I don't have mage gifts?"

  "As a noble's son," Tival said thoughtfully. Then he nodded to himself. "Yes, yes, a noble's son. From time to time we do get some of the more troublesome young nobles sent to us, and no one will think anything of another one arriving. This isn't a hard place, Prince Candale, but it is isolated. No taverns, no towns or cities within easy access of here, and lessons make up six out of every seven days. Lords and ladies often send their children here for a taste of discipline. Cut off from places where they can drink themselves into a stupor, or gamble away whatever money they possess, many of those young nobles straighten themselves out and, if they don't, they at least learn more than they would have done avoiding class at home. You will just be one such noble. I'll leave it to you to reveal as much, or as little, of this make-believe situation as you want to your classmates, but that's what you should tell them, should anyone ask. It's what I shall be telling the other teachers here, except for Calran, of course. He already knows who you are, although unlike me, I suspect he knows why you're here as well."

  I opened my mouth to say something, not to explain why I was here, but to say something, anything, whatever came out, in fact, but Tival shook his head.

  "I don't want to know," he said. "As I told you, I don't want to get involved in this. It's between King Sorron and you."

  "What about my name?" I asked desperately, hoping, somehow, to force Tival into creating a different sort of story to explain why that I was here, one that didn't involve portraying me as a troublesome, unruly brat. Being a noble was one thing, but being sent here to be disciplined, that was another. How would the other students see me? How would they expect me to behave? Or would they just avoid me in general? No, I wasn't too comfortable with the idea at all.

  I was to be disappointed.

  "What about it?" Tival asked. "You're not the only Candale in the kingdom. In fact, after your birth, it became a popular name amongst all classes of society, women naming their babies after the new prince, and so on. I don't see how it will be a problem. No one will expect the king's heir and grandson to be at this school, or enrolled in lessons. Even with your violet eyes, keeping your own name, and openly being your true age, people will just assume your mother named you Candale because you shared so much with the prince. I doubt anyone here has ever seen a picture of you, so you don't need to worry. Just keep yourself out of trouble for the winter and then your grandfather will be here to collect you. Do you think that you can do that?"

  "I can try," I replied. Tival snorted and I lowered my head, pretending to study the parchment I held in my fingers. "Can I keep this letter?" I asked. "Read it over later?"

  "Of course," Tival replied. He got to his feet. "We take meals down in the hall and you'll be expected to join us there for supper tonight. The twins will show you where it is and anything else that you need to know. They will also be in most of your classes."

  "The twins?" I said, giving Teveriel a quick significant look. He pretended not to have seen it, but I knew that he had to be thinking the same way that I was. Talira had said that a twin would be part of my group, a 'companion' to the Shadow Seer, and now we were about to meet a pair. This couldn't be coincidence and not even Teveriel could think that it was, surely? After all, Talira could not have known that we would meet a set of twins here at White Oaks. Could she?

  "Willow you have met," Tival said, "and she has a twin sister, Hazel. Their mother is a healer, very fond of nature, hence the girls having natural names." He smiled fondly as he thought of them. "And they have an older brother, Silver. All three are students here, just as their mother was before them."

  I nodded.

  "I will speak to you again in a few days, see how you're settling in." He gestured toward the door. "Now, if you don't mind leaving, I have a letter to write, to inform King Sorron that you have arrived safely."

  Back in the antechamber we found two girls waiting for us and there was no mistaking that the second girl was Willow's twin, Hazel. Although she was dressed completely different from her sister, in breeches and a tunic, with her long hair tied back in two braids, one on either side of her face, she was identical to Willow. It was strange to stare at these two girls, like mirror images of each other, only dressed differently. And, although they were identical, there was something prettier about Hazel, warmer somehow. She smiled as soon as we exi
ted Tival's room, a bright smile that lit up her whole face and made her brown eyes seem warm and full of light.

  "Hello, I'm Hazel," she said brightly.

  "Hello," I said, returning her smile. "I'm Candale, this is Teveriel and Trellany." Hazel nodded a greeting towards them and came forward and helped to relieve me of one of my bags, shouldering it easily, and then she took another bag from Teveriel, and made a move towards helping Trellany, too, but my bodyguard shook her head.

  "I can manage."

  "If you're sure," Hazel said doubtfully.

  "Come on," Willow snapped, stopping Trellany from reassuring Hazel that she was fine, and without looking back at any of us, she stalked out of the room. There was no doubting her haste.

  "My sister doesn't appreciate being ordered to be your guide," Hazel explained to me, as we followed along behind her. "She doesn't appreciate anything that intrudes on her studying. She takes it all very seriously."

  "Oh," I said softly, not sure what else I could really say to that.

  We walked on, with my gaze fixed on the ground, rather than at the girl walking alongside me. "You're mages," I said quietly.

  "We will be," Hazel said. "Eventually. It takes a lot of work to learn to master our gifts properly. You're not here for that?"

  "No." A quick glance in her direction saw a brief look of question cross her eyes as she wondered why I was here if it wasn't for magic, so I changed the subject. "You like it here?"

  "Oh, yes." Hazel laughed. "You look surprised!"

  "This place is ... rundown," I said. "How could anyone really like it here?"

  "The building is not important," Hazel said. "It's the people, the lessons, the knowledge, that's what matters to me. My mother is a healer, now, and my father is a blacksmith. If I hadn't had any gifts, or this school hadn't existed, then I would have probably become a healer, like my mother. I would have only had a basic education, just been able to read and write, and it's likely that I'd have never left the village where I was born. But I do have gifts and my education here is in-depth and varied and, when I finish here, I'll be free to come and go wherever I want and do whatever I want with my life. So, yes, even though White Oaks is dilapidated and parts of it are dangerous, I'm glad to be here. This is a special place, Candale."

  "Oh," I said. I hadn't thought of it that way, but, even though I could understand why she liked White Oaks as a place to offer her a future and freedom, it didn't change the fact that the place was rundown and dirty and I certainly couldn't see what was so special about it.

  "You'll see, Candale," Hazel said, perhaps seeing my thoughts on my face. "Give it time and you'll see."

  "All right," I said, albeit doubtfully.

  We were taken to a door on the third floor, which Willow pushed open for us. It creaked on its hinges. "There you go," Willow said, and turned and walked away, disappearing off into the darkness of the corridor.

  Hazel sighed. "She can be such a cow," she said. "We're twins, yet we have very little in common." She smiled at me. "I imagine you want some time to unpack and have a wash, before I show you around?"

  "Yes," I said, "thank you. Can you give us an hour or so?"

  "Of course," Hazel said. "And if you dig out your dirty clothes we can take them to the laundry before we start."

  "All right," I said.

  "See you in an hour then."

  When she had gone, Trellany led the way into the dimly lit suite. There was a large sitting room, with five doors leading off from it, three on one side and two on the other. The sitting room itself was arranged in the typical Carnian fashion, with furniture, mismatched and over-stuffed, around the hearth, where a fire crackled. At the back of the room, there was a large, wooden table, in front of the window, with its closed, heavy drapes. Faded tapestries hung on the walls, moth-eaten, with some of the threads coming loose, and lantern light cast the room with a somewhat sickly orange glow.

  "I told you," I said, triumphantly, as soon as the door to the hall was closed. "Talira said I would meet a twin and we did."

  "We met a set of twins," Teveriel replied.

  "Yes, but only one of those is going to be important."

  Teveriel snorted. "Meeting the twins didn't prove anything, Candale. I'm sure that most people, at some point in their lives, will meet at least one. And Talira didn't say when you would meet them or if they would be male or female. This is just a coincidence."

  I ground my teeth. "There's no need to be so damn dismissive," I snapped, "just because you don't believe what Talira had to say. Sometimes you sound like my father." As soon as I had said the words, I regretted them, not just because of the hurt look in Teveriel's eyes, but also because they were completely untrue. It had just annoyed me that Teveriel was, again, rejecting what Talira had had to say. Was he going to continue to do that even when we found evidence that proved I was the Shadow Seer? I gritted my teeth, feeling anger rise up inside me again, and took myself to sit on the couch, glaring at the floor before I could give in to my temper and say something else that I might regret.

  "I wonder why the curtains are closed," was all Teveriel said, an attempt to change the subject.

  "The curtains are closed because it's getting dark outside," Trellany offered sarcastically. "There's no point in having the curtains open when the sun is setting, or didn't you notice the sun starting to do that earlier?"

  "There's still moonlight, starlight," Teveriel told her. "Anything has to be better than having these gloomy drapes pulled like this, blocking out everything." He pulled back the curtains but it made no difference. The glass of the arched windows was dirty and no light could get through. Trellany just shook her head, as though she had expected as much, but she didn't say anything, for which I was grateful. The last thing I needed was another petty exchange of nasty comments between them. While on the road I'd been caught up in more than enough to last me a lifetime.

  Once Trellany had decided which room was the safest for me to sleep in, I moved towards the table at the back of the room where a jug of wash water, bowls, clean towels and soap had been left waiting for us. The water was cold by now, but I felt so dirty I really didn't care, and with my hands full, I headed into my new bedroom.

  I set the bowl and soap down on top of the dresser and looked around me. It was a nice enough room, well furnished and fairly large. The bed was easily a double and was covered in a faded patchwork quilt, with several plush looking pillows. It reminded me of a child's crib, as it had a high wooden frame, and looked very safe and comfortable. There was also a chair, with deep cushions embroidered with faded red and gold flowers, standing against a wall; a tall, heavy looking dresser, with four drawers and brass flower handles; and a nightstand and closet that matched the dresser. A wooden picture rail ran around the length of the room and it, the floor, the dresser and the bedside table, were covered in grey dust. The lantern on the nightstand was lit, but the glass was dirty and cracked, and it cast the room in the same orange glow as all the other lanterns in this place seemed to.

  The door opened behind me and Teveriel slid in carrying my bags. "So you have something to change into," he said, dropping them beside the bed.

  "Thank you," I replied.

  "This is a strange room," he said, glancing around.

  I turned to look at him. "It's dark," I said. "No windows. Gloomy, dusty, dirty. Gods, I hope there are no spiders."

  Teveriel pulled a face. "Me, too. Doubtful, in the winter, but you can never tell in a place like this." He sat down on the bed and jumped up and down a little, making the mattress squeal. "At least the bed is clean," he said, "even if nothing else is. And I meant strange because of all the little carvings." He pointed and I looked up. Around the high, wooden frame of the bed, and on the wooden dresser and closet, were strange looking wooden faces with blank carved eyes and sharp noses.

  "More gargoyles?"

  "I don't think so." He frowned as he stared up at one of them and reached out to touch one with his fingers. "Hope
they don't give you nightmares, dreams of them coming alive, or stealing your soul or something."

  "They wouldn't have," I said dryly, "until you put that thought into my head."

  Teveriel grinned teasingly at me. "Sorry," he said, with no hint of genuine apology in his words. He got up. "I'll leave you to wash up." He wrinkled his nose. "And I'll do the same. Gods, we all must stink. Frightening how easy it is to get so used to our own smell so that we hardly notice it anymore."

  "I noticed it," I said. "And I'm sure Hazel did as well. The three of us smell like horses and mud."

  "Yes," Teveriel agreed. He headed toward the door and I watched him, staring at his back, and then I sighed.

  "I'm sorry."

  "For what?" Teveriel asked, turning around to look at me.

  "Snapping at you, comparing you to my father, it was unfair. I'm not even sure why I did it, or why I was suddenly so annoyed. I'm sorry."

  Teveriel tilted his head as he regarded me. "You don't know why you were annoyed?" I shook my head. "Odd." And then he left me.

  I bolted the door behind him, with no more thought directed at his leaving statement, and started to get undressed. The clothes I was wearing certainly needed cleaning. The outer layers were soaked with mud and grass-stained, the ones beneath were covered in dried sweat and some had grease stains from my time in the Golden Ox's kitchen. Some of the clothes in my saddlebags were also dirty, so I made a pile of them all on the floor, and hung up the fairly clean remainder in the wardrobe. I left a pair of black breeches and a dark violet tunic, to change into, on the patchwork quilt across the bed. I was glad that I'd packed so many clothes. Carrying the bags around had been a pain, they'd been so heavy, but at least at nights they'd been full enough to make a pillow for my head, and now I had plenty to wear while my other clothes were being cleaned and dried.

  I stood naked in front of my mirror to clean myself properly, reaching for the misshapen lump of soap and the washcloth. I was so dirty! There was mud on my calves, where they had soaked through the two pairs of breeches I had worn, and even a splatter of it on the side of my face. How it gotten there and why no one had told me about it, I had no idea. And there was also the usual scattering of bruises on my arms, shoulders and legs.