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

by Fran Jacobs

"Why?" Silver looked surprised. "Gods, no one wants to bother with any more study than they have to."

  "I do," I said. "I'm interested."

  "Why?" Silver asked again. Then he gave me an odd look. "Why exactly are you here? Not to mage-train, you told Hazel that much earlier."

  I blinked in surprise and glanced at Hazel, only to find her looking up at me with curiosity in her eyes. "No," I said. "No, not for magic, I-I-" I glanced desperately at Teveriel and Trellany, but the bard gave an uncomfortable shrug and wouldn't meet my pleading gaze, and Trellany just stood still and impassive, as always.

  "I wanted to ask that as well," Hazel said, "but thought it might be too difficult for you to talk about it." She gave me a soft smile. "If it is too hard, then don't worry about it. You don't have to tell us."

  "But we are curious," Silver said.

  His grey eyes were firm, like hard flint. Hazel might be happy enough to not push the issue, but Silver wouldn't be. He wanted to know and I knew that if I wanted to fit in here, be trusted, be accepted, even a little, I was going to have to say something. My mind started to race, scrambling desperately for a lie, for a story, any story!

  "My father sent me," I said finally, and I racked my brain for a name I could give them, one that they may have heard of but would not know much about. "Lord Varnal of Devisha. He-" Gods, how could I say this? How could I tell them that my father thought I was an unruly brat and that was why he had sent me across the kingdom with a bard and a female bodyguard? And, if I was such a brat as to be sent away from home, then why would I want to consult the library?

  Trellany came to my rescue. "He," she began slowly, and then gave me an apologetic look as she lowered her voice into a whisper, "has a bad addiction to a certain drug." I stiffened at that, staring at her with my eyes wide, but she carried on as if I wasn't there. "He really worried his father. He would barely eat or leave his room, was rude, restless, had bad mood swings and would do nothing except smoke." She poked me in the ribs sending a sharp sudden flare of pain and surprise shooting across my chest. "You can see how thin he is, how pale and wasted."

  "Yes," Hazel said quietly, looking at me strangely.

  "Well," Trellany continued, "reading and drawing were the only two things that Candale seemed to enjoy doing, other than smoking. His father decided to send him here because there's a large library and no temptation. I was sent along to keep an eye on him and to make sure that he got there and didn't try to sneak away on the road. And Teveriel," she frowned, "is Candale's closest friend. Lord Varnal was sure that Candale would be able to break free of his addiction more easily if he was away from temptation, but knew that he would still need some support, so, here we all are."

  Hazel took my hand, suddenly, and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. Her fingers were warm and very slender and small in mine.

  "Withdrawal will be hard," Trellany added. "The healer told us, before we left, that Candale might have seizures, suffer from bad dreams and perhaps even hallucinate from time to time and hear voices, but it would all pass eventually." Her eyes met mine and through the apology I saw there, I also saw why she had said this. It explained my fits and, if I did have a vision, or hear voices, or anything like that, then there would be an explanation for that as well. I gave her a nervous smile and a flash of relief crossed her eyes, as she continued. "By the spring, he should be back to normal and we'll leave to return home. But, while we are here, keeping an eye on Candale, we've been roped into teaching. Weapons for me, music for our bard."

  "Tival will rope anyone into teaching," Hazel said, with an uncomfortable smile at me, that I think she wanted to appear sympathetic. "He seems to think that everyone has something that another can benefit from learning."

  "We don't mind helping out," Trellany said. "We'll have most of the day to ourselves, while Candale is in his classes, so a couple of hours of teaching, or trying to teach, will give us something to do." She looked at Teveriel firmly, as if to tell him that he could handle it, whether or not he thought that he could, or indeed, even wanted to try. Then she shrugged. "So that's that. Perhaps we can continue with our tour now?"

  "Yes," Silver said, still looking at me. "Of course."

  They took us to see the music room next. It was another dark room, but this time it had instruments in it, dusty instruments, although that didn't seem to bother Teveriel. He headed straight for them, making squeals of delight as he examined each one, while I stood outside the room with the others. Musical instruments just didn't interest me as much as the library did and my feet were itching to get to it. I struggled to be patient, knowing how important this was to Teveriel, especially if he was going to have to be a teacher for the winter, but it was hard.

  "A harp!" he exclaimed. "And lutes, flutes, lyres and violins!" His voice sounded delighted, like an excited child opening his presents on his birthday. "And music books, with songs and scores written down! Gods, I never even heard of some of these songs, they're so old! This won't be so unbearable after all. Even if everyone is inept, at least I will learn something."

  "Good," I called to him through the open door. "That's good." I shifted my weight from foot to foot. My impatience was growing as the minutes crawled by. We were so close to the Rose Prophecies and, even though I knew that I wouldn't have the chance to find the book or read it with Hazel and Silver around, I was still desperate to see the library, the place that marked the beginning of the end of weeks of my obsession and fear. "Will you be long?"

  "No," he called back. "I just want to make sure that I know where everything is before I have to teach a single class, and then we can go."

  "All right," I said, struggling not to snap at him.

  "What is this?" Trellany asked suddenly. She placed her finger against a stone brick above the arched doorway and traced around the symbol carved into it with her finger.

  Silver squinted. "Sign for protection," he said finally. "There's one outside every door. This place used to be a monastery. Some of the ceremonies carried out here involved magic, although it wasn't called that in those days, but that's basically what it was. They carved these symbols outside every door to make sure that nothing evil could get into a room, or, if it did, that it couldn't leave."

  "What sort of evil?" I asked.

  Hazel shrugged. "Demons," she said. "I suppose."

  "Demons?" I moved away from her, closer to the symbol and lifted my finger to trace it around. There was dust in the worn marks, but as my finger traced around it I recognised the graceful swirls and knew it was the one from my dream, the one that strange child had sketched in the air. But why had that child drawn a symbol for protection? What did it want to be protected from? Was it a demon it feared? Despite myself, I shivered.

  "Demons?" Teveriel said, reappearing at the doorway. He moved beside me to stare up at the symbol and then his eyes met mine as he whispered softly, "This is what I saw before. I thought I recognised it. I must have seen it in an old book of songs, or something. Is this what you saw, too?"

  "Yes," I whispered back. Though I could feel the eyes of the others on my back as they heard our soft voices, they hopefully couldn't hear our words. Trellany knew that we would explain this to her later. I just didn't want Hazel and Silver to know about any of this.

  Teveriel nodded thoughtfully. "And you've never seen this symbol before? Not even unknowingly?"

  "If it was unknowingly," I told him sharply, still in a whisper, "then I wouldn't know that I had, would I?"

  "No," he said. "I suppose not."

  "So," I said, a little louder, wiping the dust from my finger onto my tunic. "Demons?"

  "Demons," Silver said. "You know, misshapen evil creatures. You must have heard stories about them."

  "Yes," I said, "of course, but they were just stories. I didn't think anyone took that sort of thing seriously."

  "Every story has its basis in reality," Hazel said. "There is no such thing as a completely original idea. Everything gets inspiration from somewhere else." She gla
nced at the carved symbol. Now that both Trellany and I had traced it with our fingers, most of the dust had left it so it stood out so clearly in the grey stone wall.

  "I'm not sure I believe in demons," Teveriel said quietly. "But I do believe in evil, although I doubt this symbol could do much to keep anything truly malicious at bay."

  "Evil is an excuse," Trellany said coldly, with a surprising amount of venom in her voice. "There is no such thing as evil. People do evil things because people are selfish bastards with no compassion for anyone else. No demon possesses them, no evil witch, no dark spirit. People do what they want and then look around for something else to blame."

  "And for the most part," Silver said, "the people who get blamed are those with magic, those who are different, outsiders."

  Hazel groaned and rolled her eyes. "You could bring any discussion, even one about cakes, back onto this topic of yours, Silver. You're completely obsessed and it's getting so boring!" She took my arm again. "The library," she said. "And then the practise yard."

  As she took us off towards the library, Trellany and Silver fell in step together. It was obvious what they were discussing, the evils that people do. Why Trellany felt so strongly about this was a mystery to me. Perhaps she'd had some experience with it. If so, it wasn't something that she had felt the need to share with me, but then, she hadn't felt the need to share much of her past with me at all.

  Hazel took us up a wide flight of crumbling, grey stone steps and along another identical corridor until she stopped outside a door bearing another small bronze plate. "The library," she announced, even though the bronze plate had already indicated as much. She pushed open the door, letting me slip inside and then followed behind me. "It's usually a lot busier than this, in the evenings that is, but everyone is at weapons class right now, or in their own rooms resting. That's also why our librarian, and history teacher, Calran, isn't around. No one is expected to be in here to need his help, but he can be found in here the rest of the time, when he's not in class, of course."

  I just nodded, not really listening to her, as I was completely distracted by what I was seeing before me.

  The library was huge, three, maybe even four times larger than the one in Carnia Castle, with three rooms hidden behind that one thick door. The other two rooms were smaller, however, as though they had, at one time, served another purpose and had been joined to the main library when their separating walls had been knocked down. The main library room had the usual arched doors and windows, but also a very high ceiling, which had once been painted. I could still see the faded images peeling away happily on the domed roof. I couldn't make out what those images were meant to be, though, and they didn't really interest me as much as the sight of all the books and scrolls, tucked away on the shelves. There were shelves everywhere, forming long corridors that reached up to the ceiling and stretched back, off into the darkness. Rickety looking ladders leaned against them, a way to reach the books that were up too high, although I wasn't sure how safe they would be to climb.

  "It's huge," I said in dismay. "How will I ever find anything?"

  Hazel laughed. "Easily," she said. She reached for my arm again - I was beginning to wonder why she wanted to touch me so much - and led me towards a large, wooden board mounted on a stand by the door. "Map," she said, tapping it with her fingers, "of where all the books are." She was right. It was a map, of sorts. A list of all the different subject areas that the library had books on, which room they were in and then, which shelf. "It was a big task to organise this place, took years apparently, but it was worth it. Everything can be found easily, so long as you know what you're looking for, and you can always ask Calran if you can't find something."

  "I've never seen so many books in one place before," I said.

  "King Alarn, when he created the library, had copies made of every book in Carnia, even of those in private collections, and those copies are all housed here. It's something that has continued since that day. Any new book has a copy here somewhere. But a lot of the really old books, and the books of dangerous magicks, are out of bounds to us, locked away in a secret store room somewhere, where none of us are allowed to go."

  "It's one of those myths," Silver said, "that builds up after a time. There probably aren't any books of dangerous magicks, they were probably all destroyed, but children whisper about them anyway. They say that there are books that can raise the dead, or release demons, or destroy a man's soul, that sort of thing, but then they also talk about having seen ghosts in the gardens, or up in the bell tower."

  "Ghosts?" I whispered.

  "This is an old building," Hazel said. "People have died here, but then people have died everywhere. Some of the children have claimed to have seen things, ghosts, or to have heard voices, but it's more likely to be an echo, or a trick of a tired mind, than anything more sinister."

  "I'm fairly convinced that a ghost would have something better to do than to bother the living," Trellany said. "Now that we've seen the library, can we go to the practise yard? I'd like to have a little look around."

  "Of course," Hazel said. "Just follow me."

  It was dark when we got outside and hard to see where we were going, but the practise yard, which was just behind the building that housed the library and classrooms, was lit with a dozen or so lanterns that helped to show us the way. There were perhaps twenty students out there, sitting on the stone ground, watching two pairs of students sparring with each other. A tall, middle-aged, heavily-set, muscled man was standing over them with his hands on hips, yelling out the odd instruction. While Trellany went over to talk to him, I drifted away from the others to have a look around, aware of eyes, watching my every movement and the whispered voices and giggles, as I did so.

  "Stop staring at him," someone yelled sharply, causing me to whirl around quickly with surprise. "And keep your eyes on what your classmates are doing!"

  I bowed my head, embarrassed at having interrupted this class and causing the weapons master yell out like that, and continued to slink my way towards the stone stairs, which led down, through the wall at the back of the yard.

  "Don't worry about them," Hazel said, in a low voice. "Everyone is so bored that even a bird flying overhead is enough to distract them." She glanced back at the four students who were sparring with each other, panting as their feet moved swiftly on the cobblestone, and the seated students, who were still whispering and giggling to each other, not really watching what was going on at all. It was so different from Trellany's classes where everyone always paid attention to everything she said and did.

  I smiled, and climbed down two of the top steps so that I could sit. The cold of the stone seeped through my breeches and coat, but my feet ached from the lengthy tour so I tried my best to ignore it. "Where do these stairs go?"

  "Down to the gardens," Hazel said, sitting down beside me. "They're my favourite place in the whole school."

  "Is it still within school grounds?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes. That's just a wall. You'll easily be able to tell the difference between a garden wall and the school boundary wall. Why?"

  "I'm not allowed to leave school grounds," I said. "An eye has to be kept on me, so I can't go sneaking off."

  "Bit hard to keep an eye on you in this place," Hazel said, "with the garden and all those empty classrooms to hide in, but there's no chance for you to find anything that you shouldn't either."

  Drugs, she meant. I wondered why she hadn't asked me what drugs I was meant to have been addicted to, but I was glad that she hadn't. What did I really know about such things? I'd heard rumours, of course. Several of the lords and ladies at Court had become a little carried away with opium. And I knew that there were other sorts of flower based drugs that could induce hallucinations, or a feeling of euphoria, but the names, and exactly how it all worked, escaped me. It wasn't something that had ever really interested me and I was still a little surprised that it had been what Trellany had offered as an explanation. Did I still l
ook that pale and wasted that someone who didn't know me could believe that it was due to an addiction?

  "But the garden can wait for another day," Hazel continued. "Tomorrow, perhaps? Or better, yet, our day off. That will give us more time to see them properly, and we can't see much in the dark like this anyway. Besides, I expect you're very tired."

  "Very," I agreed. "It has been a long few days, sleeping rough." I shivered, as a sharp wind blew up the stairs, and drew my coat further around me. "I don't think I'm even that hungry. I would just like to sleep." I glanced at Trellany, who was still talking to the weapons master. "Is it long before supper?"

  "An hour," Hazel replied softly. "Perhaps." Her eyes were worried as they studied me.

  I gave her a smile, trying to reassure her that there was nothing wrong, but I wasn't completely sure of that myself. I was suddenly very tired. I could feel the weariness in my shoulders, in the small of my back, and I prayed that it was just saddle-soreness and exhaustion, and nothing more.

  "Oh," I said, trying to hide my disappointment. I had hoped that it would be sooner.

  "Let's go back inside," Hazel suggested. "And you can rest until supper. I'm sure you will feel better then."

  "Yes," I said, nodding. "All right."

  Back in our rooms, once Hazel and Silver had left us, I sank down onto the couch, head in my hands. "So tired," I said softly.

  "That always hits you suddenly," Teveriel noted, sitting on a chair across from me. "Your exhaustion, I mean."

  "Just like my fits," I mumbled. Then I lifted my head quickly when I heard his sharp intake of breath. "No, no, Tev," I struggled to reassure him. "I don't think I'm going to have a fit. I'm just tired."

  "Can you tell at all when one is coming?" he asked cautiously.

  "I get pain," I said, "in my head, and shoulders and the small of my back. Tension, like a headache, or as if I have been sitting at my desk for too long, only it doesn't go. It just builds up until I can't stand it and then bam!" I clapped my two hands together and Teveriel flinched at the sound. "Fit hits, I fall down, that's it. Fit passes, eventually I come back to my senses and the pain is gone, mostly, although I often feel a little sore and dazed. To be honest, the fit is a damn relief after the pain I feel before it, as it releases all the pressure that seems to build up. Sometimes I think that that's all my fits really are - my body's way of releasing pressure from lack of sleep, or stress or something." Teveriel's face had turned ashen and he just stared at me, eyes wide and unblinking. "Tev, it's fine, really. Look, if I ever feel a fit coming on, I will take myself away from you, all right? I don't mind. I would prefer it if you weren't around me if it is going to unsettle you this much." I bowed my head. "I'd rather that no more people see me like that than have to."