Treasurekeeper

by Ripley Harper

  The corners of the Green Lord’s mouth pull down, as if the words in his mouth are leaving a bad taste. “But the laws of nature and magic are not so easily broken, and their plan went horribly wrong. For not only did both Faustus and Medousa die in the process, their bodies worn out by the staggering amounts of magic they’d used, but the result turned out not to be what anyone had expected. Yes, each of the Pendragons’ daughters was born with a magical twin who could carry her power for her, but these turned out to be not dragons but monsters: dumb, twisted creatures both pitiful and hideous. More terrible than that, however, was the fact that each set of twins shared but one soul, so that the little girls experienced the monsters’ pain, hunger and beastly instincts as their own.”

  There’s no way I can hide my emotions anymore, knowing what I know, so I look down, pretend to study my nails.

  “As they grew older, the girls’ humanity began to slip away, and by the time they reached adolescence, there was usually very little of their human selves left. But even as their minds dulled and their spirits withered, their magic remained, and once the Pendragons learned that they could control their daughters’ magic by controlling their mindless bodies, the fate of their descendants was sealed.

  “And what a terrible fate it was. For those mindless young women were forced to bear their own children in time—–children born from deadened bodies that knew not what it gave life to. Some say that Magnus Pendragon fathered children on his own daughters. Others say it was Morgaine’s brother who fathered those children. All we know for certain is that the couplings were highly incestuous and that, as a result, the bloodmagic within that family became corrupt even as it grew stronger with each generation of brother laying with sister, and cousin with cousin, in an endless incestuous cycle that strove only to keep the magic pure no matter the cost.”

  “What? No! You can’t do that!” I’m so shocked that I forget all about hiding my feelings. “It’s immoral and illegal and just wrong! And what about birth defects and genetic mutations and diseases... You can’t do that!”

  He nods grimly. “As far as we could determine, the humans born from those incestuous couplings remained outwardly perfect and generally healthy, but the monstrous twins became sicker and more deformed with every generation that passed.”

  His words call up a visceral memory of rheumy eyes, rotten scales, and bloated limbs. “Are you telling me that Jonathan’s mom and dad were brother and sister?”

  “Not exactly.” He looks up at the ceiling, thinking. “If I remember correctly, Jack Pendragon married his cousin Robyn, the daughter of Anne, his mother’s sister. Their grandparents, however, were brother and sister, so the union was deeply incestuous by any measure.”

  I put both hands over my mouth, horrified.

  “Yes. The Pendragons’ history is shocking. And the details are so unpleasant that I can almost understand why your keepers have avoided this topic. And still, you do not know the worst of it. For Faustus’s dark deed affected more than just the Pendragon family; after that terrible act of dark magic, the power of every Earthkeeper whose ancestry share in the bloodline of the Seventh, no matter how far removed, was tainted.”

  “I don’t understand how that’s possible,” I say, trying to get my head around this latest twist. “Scientifically, I mean. If he died without leaving any children…”

  “Yes,” he scoffs. “I’ve heard that your keeper fancies himself a ‘scientist’.” He spits the word out as if it’s a synonym for ‘pedophile’. “Personally I have always maintained that Gunnar Waymond is dangerous, and not least because he’s trying to fill your head with the preposterous idea that magic is just another natural phenomenon to be dissected and probed at by clever people in white coats.”

  He glances at the door, quickly, as if he suspects that somebody might be listening on the other side. “Listen,” he continues softly, his voice urgent. “Gunnar Waymond is not what he seems, and he’s most definitely not a bloody scientist. The Waymonds, or Waemundings, to be more precise, have never been scholars, nor have they ever shown any interest in research or learning. Those people are warriors—–brutal killers really—–and he’s a dangerous, ruthless man who is using the famed sexual allure of his bloodline to—–”

  “Oh, just stop. Please. I honestly don’t have the strength for keeper politics right now.”

  “Ah, but you see, I think you do.” The Green Lord gives me a level look. “I think you have the strength for more than any of us can imagine.”

  “Phew, what a relief. Because if you think so it must be true.”

  This time he doesn’t play dumb. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you. And you should also know that nobody believes that clueless teenager act of yours anymore.”

  I snort. “The sad thing is that most times it’s not even an act.”

  “If that’s the case, I pity you. Because you’re either as thick as a brick, or else you’re so deeply in denial that your entire life must be a lie.”

  Chapter 26

  Denial is the refusal to accept reality. A person in denial will act as if a painful event, thought or feeling does not exist. Repression is the act of restraining something: the goal of this form of defense is to keep unacceptable desires, feelings or thoughts out of the conscious mind.

  Extract from Well Mind and Body and Spirit blog

  I skip dinner and later, when Gunn knocks on my door, I tell him to go away. I don’t want to talk to anybody anymore, or listen to them, or even look at them. All I want is to lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. The same pressed iron ceiling with its twisting dragon pattern that I spent years and years looking at and never really saw.

  So deeply in denial that your entire life must be a lie.

  The Green Lord’s words keep echoing through my mind, the way insults tend to do when you recognize a kernel of truth in them. Denial. What exactly does that mean anyway? Isn’t it just AA speak for those situations when addicts don’t want to admit they have a problem and hide behind all kinds of fancy terms and excuses?

  I reach out a hand to google the word: the action, in this room, so automatic it takes me a few seconds to realize my phone isn’t lying on my bedside table.

  Of course. I haven’t had a phone in months.

  I knew that, obviously.

  I stare at the circling dragons on the ceiling, amazed by how strange life can be. The girl who lived in this room wouldn’t have thought it possible to go for months without her phone. My entire life used to be on that phone and now…

  The half-formed thought makes me feel curiously lost and floating, so to distract myself I get my laptop from where it’s standing on my desk, closed and lifeless. When it fires up, I have to swallow a sudden, sharp ache at the back of my throat. My wallpaper is an old photo of my friends at school, lying on a small patch of grass and sticking out their tongues at the camera. I search Daniel, Henry, Maggie and Eve’s laughing faces for a while, not sure what I’m hoping to find. Then I press a key to make the photo go away.

  By the time my web browser opens, I’m not even sure what I’m trying to do anymore, so I just type in a quick “what does it mean to be in denial” and scan through the summaries under the top hits on Google.

  … a refusal or unwillingness to accept a painful truth … despite overwhelming and irrefutable evidence… a defense mechanism to protect the psyche during difficult times… may interfere with your ability to face challenges… can keep you from moving forward…

  It’s enough. I slam the screen closed.

  Tapping my thumb against the lid, I think of the extraordinary childhood I had in all those isolated desert places, of the creepy semi-feudal town we moved to, of my mother’s mysterious illness, of Ingrid’s bizarre house, of Gunn’s ‘self-defense’ classes.

  Why did I never question any of it, or even think it strange in any way?

  And afterward, when everything changed and I learned the truth about myself, why didn’t I start questioning things then? I mean, I liv
ed in that horrible Pendragon compound for months and never once asked why the Pendragons were cast out from the Order of Keepers, or what the Order’s really for, or what any of them really wanted from me.

  Could all that have been due to some Enthrallment spell? Sure, it would be really nice to shift the blame, but what if I simply didn’t want to know?

  Gunn told me the entire town has been freed from the Pendragons’ Enthrallment spells, which means that if they really had been clouding my mind, I should see things more clearly now. So why do I still feel so lost and confused? Why do I still feel as if I don’t know anything? Why have I never, not once, tried to find out the real truth about myself—–

  No.

  That’s not right.

  Every single hair on my body stands up as I remember something.

  Something I’ve made myself forget.

  I have wanted to know the truth about myself, right from the very first moment I knew there was something strange about me, I have always wanted to know one thing—–the only thing I’ve ever really cared about.

  In the Green Lady’s cave, I finally got the chance to find out if the power inside me is evil, and in the process I was dragged so deeply into someone else’s memories that I almost didn’t find my way back to my own life again. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get an answer to my question.

  Because I did. A terrible, unthinkable answer!

  I remember hands, small and delicate, embroidering the sign of the holy cross. I remember a warm marriage bed in a drafty castle of stone. A man who talked to a monstrous creature on a moonlit night. A husband who changed when he inherited his mother’s power. An army marching: the flash of weapons, of armor glinting in the dark.

  I remember a mother who became a dragon to help her people, only to die on a slayer’s sword. I remember two little orphaned girls, barefoot and wild, trapped in a castle of dead wood and stone. A confusion spell crafted to escape. A baby’s tragic death and a mother’s bloody revenge.

  And then—–oh God! —–I remember what happened next.

  *

  It was not Coblaith who slit the throat of little Leaf while she lay sleeping in her forest home. But it was Coblaith who had given the order, and it was Coblaith who looked her husband right in the eye when he confronted her about it.

  Fergal could see that his wife was hiding behind a hollow religious piety to justify the cold-blooded murder of an innocent child, and he went to bed with a heavy heart.

  But on the morning he felt different.

  Something had changed: he was stronger in his magic than he’d ever been before, stronger than he’d thought it possible to be! No distant realm was closed to him now, no part of the universe inaccessible, no point in time beyond his reach.

  With his mind newly sharpened, it did not take him long to realize what had happened. On his niece’s death, he must’ve received a share of her power, for the power could not be destroyed but must find its way to the closest family members when the host’s body died. Which meant that, should his other niece lose her life too, all the power would be his.

  That morning, the hunt for little Moss began.

  Nobody expected Lord Fergal to have any trouble hunting down an eight-year-old girl hiding in his realm. For not only did he have legendary powers which allowed him to see what others could not, he also had the services of his loyal subjects to command: soldiers hardened in battle, spies who had ears everywhere, and huntsmen who knew the woods as well as any deer. And yet, as the days began to shorten and the seasons slowly changed, no one found as much as a broken twig in the woods, or a single hair left behind, or whispers telling of a cold and hungry child needing food or shelter.

  In time, Fergal began to lose interest in the hunt, for his immense power more and more often took him to distant realms which he was loath to leave, and when he was not lost in waking dreams, his body lay in bed, as still and lifeless as that of a corpse.

  Coblaith, on the other hand, directed all her loneliness and grief into the vengeful pursuit of that unnatural little demon who had murdered her babe, and as the days passed by without any sign of Moss, her dark purpose only grew sharper.

  It was during the depths of midwinter, at exactly the time when a lesser woman would have given up the hunt, when Coblaith finally devised a plan that would change her destiny forever. After another painful and humiliating conversation with her husband, who now dwelled in realms so far removed from this one that he hardly felt her touch or heard her voice, she consoled herself with the thought that the power belonging to Fergal’s family was nothing to be intimidated by. After all, was it not true that his sister—–that monstrous being who had once been mother to Leaf and Moss—–had been slaughtered like an animal?

  The memory brought her the first real hope she had in months, for she recalled that at the time, Fergal’s spies had told of a stranger of a kind never seen before in these lands: a man with skin as dark as night who had called himself a slayer. Such a man, she reasoned, could surely not be too hard to find—–especially when offered, as a reward for his services, the evil offspring of the very monster he had killed.

  Coblaith hastily sent her most trusted scouts on a mission to find this man, and she did not have to wait long before a cloaked and hooded stranger arrived at the castle, accompanied by no less than a dozen men-at-arms. She summoned the visitor to the main hall in order to welcome him with her lord by her side. Fergal had recently awoken from one of his sleeping spells, and she thought it best to uphold appearances in front of strangers.

  Due to the delicate subject matter of this meeting, Coblaith was eager to have it in private, and as soon as the stranger entered the hall she ordered it cleared of all servants. But when the visitor removed his hooded black cloak, she was appalled to find that his skin was even paler than her own and that his hair was as yellow as the braided locks of the barbarians from the north.

  “You are not the one I seek!”

  “Indeed not, my lady.” The stranger walked up to the long table where she sat with her husband, his stride unhurried, and seated himself right beside her. “That one would not have assisted you in your quest to hunt down and murder a helpless little girl.”

  “The girl is not helpless.” Coblaith pointedly did not dispute the rest of his statement.

  The stranger smiled at her words, and for the first time since her wedding night, Coblaith noticed that a man, who was not her husband, had perfect white teeth and full, kissable lips.

  “A baby snake remains a snake,” the man agreed, his voice amused. “And even a young scorpion can poison a man full grown.”

  “So you will help me kill this child?” she asked, emboldened by his words.

  “Quite the opposite, my lady, I am here to beg you to stay your hand against the juvenile.”

  “Then you are of no use to me.” She rose from the table.

  “Not so fast.”

  The startling heat of the hand he placed on hers made her sit back down immediately. She sent a bewildered glance toward Fergal, but her husband had that faraway look in his eyes again which meant there would be no reaching him now.

  “I will not show mercy towards that monster!”

  The stranger gave a low, chilling laugh. “I am not on a mission to plead for mercy, my lady. I am here to ensure that the power of your son, and his children in turn, will not be imperiled by a hasty act, the consequences of which you do not yet fully understand.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What do you know of my son’s power?”

  “I know that on the day of Lord Fergal’s death, your son will inherit his father’s magic as well his lands—–but only for a time. For the magic is a power borrowed from a dragon, and on the day that his cousin, the fugitive child whom you call Moss, finally changes from a girl into a dragon, this power will flow back to her again, to be passed on to her children in turn.”

  “All the more reason for me to kill her now, before such an evil and unnatural transformation can ta
ke place.”

  “Ah, but such an act will have unfortunate consequences. For once your husband’s niece is dead, the power in your family’s blood can never be renewed. Yes, your son will inherit his father’s magic one day, but after that the power will dwindle with each generation until there is hardly anything left.”

  Coblaith looked pointedly at her lord, who sat beside them as lost to this world as a common drunk. “I shall view such a consequence as a blessing rather than a curse.”

  The man did not pretend to misunderstand. “It is true that Lord Fergal has drunk too deeply of the well of power inside him. But there is a simple cure for his affliction, and many ways to ensure that your own children will not fall into the same trap.”

  “I have but one child, my lord,” Coblaith said bitterly.

  “For now. But once Lord Fergal is returned to himself, you may be blessed with many more, each of which will share in just enough of their father’s power to make them magnificent, loved and feared throughout the kingdom.”

  Coblaith gave him a cool, measuring look. “Continue.”

  And thus the stranger told her about ten ancient bloodlines of power and how this mysterious power was passed on from one generation to the next. Male and female offspring inherited the power from their parents in equal measures, he explained, but only female children born from a mother directly descended from the Ten—–body to body, blood to blood—–could transform into dragons once they reached maturity.

  Such a change, unfortunately, lead to a calamitous loss of power among their immediate family members, for magic belonged to dragons, and as soon as the transformation from girl to dragon took place, all the power passed on through the male lineage naturally flowed back to the body of the dragon.