I wondered what had frightened the man. I was sure there was little to see apart from an old castle overgrown with vines and moss. But what did I know about anything; I saw my own things, now. Always a veil of gray crisscrossing over the pretty things, a tint of darkness shadowing the brightest spots.
The young man halted his stallion, and the horse stepped elegantly and demurely to the side of the road. As soon as it had done that, the cause of the sounds of those three more sets of hooves came into sight: three fine stallions, each carrying men in brightly coloured velvets.
All the men’s’ saddlecloths bore the emblem of the king of Sarastland, the acorn symbol. Who were these people? I was guessing, the current prince and company? Had to be, unless they were bandits who’d robbed the king’s horses…But these men with their fresh faces, relaxed smiles, and feather hats did not pass for bandits.
Whichever year it was, I had no clue, but the man was about twenty years of age, was riding a stallion boasting the colors of Sarastland, and wasn’t wearing a crown. A king, out in public, would have worn one. So yes, this had to be the prince, and for some reason, he stepped down from his horse and waved to his friends to do the same. Then he swept his blond, cropped mop of hair from his face and seemed to take in the castle. Which he could not be able to see…
With a laugh, he turned back to his friends, who were following suit and dismounting in flamboyant leaps, in ways only young men could master.
“Fellows, you’ll think I’ve lost my mind, but I’ll tell you anyway! I’ve been having weird dreams, or more like half dreams and half nightmares, and in them, I’ve been seeing this castle. Perfectly like this. Down to those masses of roses that cover the walls, and these broken-down ruins of an old fountain, everything. And you know what? Just last night, I went inside, in my dream of course, and when I opened the doors…the whole place was full of gold. Masses of gold everywhere. Golden chandeliers, golden furniture, chests full of gold coins…Everywhere I went, there was more and more. Every door I opened, more gold, the craziest things. A golden book. A golden toothpick. And there was a certain ambiance about the place, sort of heavy and meaningful…It was crazy. When I woke up, I actually laughed out loud at myself. I mean, what kind of a dream is that? I don’t need gold, I’m fine, thanks…But I mean…This is the exact same castle! What are the chances? Maybe it was an omen, a good sign? I don’t know about these things, but it’s got to mean something?”
One of the friends slid off his feather hat enough to scratch an itching scalp and set the hat back. “Certainly, Sire…Well, what could it mean, though?”
“I don’t know!” The prince gave another exasperated, unbelieving laugh. “Maybe we’ll all be rich? Maybe you’ll be rich? I really don’t know, but I want to see what’s in there! We’d be crazy not to go and look. Anybody want a gold toothpick?”
“Why, my Sire…?”
“If there’s as much gold in there as in my dream, you’d be making your toothpicks of gold, too…”
The friends shared glances among each other, but none of them at least overtly showed criticism. Me, I shivered in my clogs and felt butterflies in my stomach. I expected no mortal could get through the wards. Nobody had set foot in the castle since it had been sealed. It pained me to think that I’d have to watch them try. They weren’t witches or wizards. They weren’t demons or fae. The royal family of Sarastland was mere human, or so they’d been, when I’d last taken part in the ordinary world…
How I’d wished the first to arrive would have been my Elsa, Lily, and the rest of them. My dear sisters, with that feather message, my magical message in a bottle. Perhaps it was still out there, flying, but I didn’t have my sisters here.
I snapped out of it and told myself to pull myself together. I had a chance here to talk to someone. So, I yelled out to them — at least I hoped I did.
“Hello!” I pinched myself, just to make sure I wasn’t going into some absent, spellbound state again. I was yelling, wasn’t I?
From their faces, it was painfully clear they couldn’t hear me. Maybe I could make them hear me with magic? But I’d used so much of my energies sending the feather off that I was terribly low on reserves. Dangerously low, to be honest. I’d thought, what else could have been more important? Then this happens…
But the demon had robbed be almost empty and what had happened? I’d fallen ill, but I’d survived. And this was too important to be a coward…
I summoned up my magic, leaving only a splash untouched — I literally felt my heart cooling — but I was sure I got out a good amount.
“Hello!”
Then I dug my feet to the floor and just sent out the magic energies by themselves, spending the magic in a steady stream.
No. Perhaps more? Or whatever I had. Or all of it. All I had. I yelled, too. “In here!”
I had to at least tell them what this whole thing was about. I’d seen through the demon’s foul play, but there was still no witness. And it didn’t matter who was the witness, did it? As long as the truth got out. By heavens, if I could get these people to hear me, maybe the whole pact would be invalid and the enchantment be broken? Besides, the Princess was still here, with a life to live, and perhaps I had lived quite enough for one life…
The walls had clearly been thinning nowadays, too. I’d seen it. After all, the demon was using my very own magic to feed them, and my powers were obviously weakening. But how badly was the enchantment suffering? Exactly how much of it had already worn off?
If I couldn’t get through the walls, how could mortals? Well, I wasn’t immortal, either, precisely, I was merely long-lived, but still, you’d expect me to do a few things regular humans couldn’t…
I’d spent a lot of magic on my yelling, but the people didn’t seem to even spot the magic. These guys were only smiling, laughing, taking relaxed steps this way and that. Wouldn’t they have been ogling at the layers of power, talking about it? Also, why could I hear them, but they couldn’t hear me?
The demon was too good, too clever, too skilled. He’d made sure we’d signed a solid contract. But apparently, he hadn’t taken into account that my powers would wane, as this was a jail, after all…and captive hearts could only go dry. Oh, greedy minds, how they refused to understand. But perfect, in the end, as the castle walls should be weakening.
The golden-haired young man, the prince, the one with the large, bright green eyes, was suddenly frowning, taking slow, pensive steps towards me. So, he’d spotted me through the magic wall? He looked like he could see me. His face turned white, then he stepped back with a hand going to the hilt of his sword.
He called out to his friends, and they all talked in rushed, low voices, so I couldn’t make out what they said. Then they pulled back, partly walking backwards, staring at me or the castle, getting their horses…and then they mounted and…
I couldn’t go after them. They’d reacted like I was some evil darkling guarding a trap or a haunted house.
What now? Were they coming back with an army?
Chapter 25
But only a moment passed before I heard noise again. I thought they’d turned around. It felt like a fleeting minute, though I couldn’t really tell how long it had been, any better than I knew a day from a week.
But then, as I was so wrapped up in worrisome thoughts, I didn’t feel a need to move from my window; didn’t feel the need to move at all. I was entertaining thoughts of a lightless place, again, a place that might come after this, a garden of dry flowers and scorched grass, shades of maroon, and umbra wrapped in grey: a place for demonkind. A haven where I no longer needed to do one thing except be and think and live and breathe darkness.
But I knew the people walking into the yard. It was the king and his wretched witch, and…Oh, how my heart fell, when I saw who came to sight from behind the cut sycamores: my sisters Elsa, Lily, and Loreleine. They walked in a line behind the king, a rope going from one to another. Their hands had been bound and a rope had been tied to their bi
nds to keep them together, and I imagined, from running. Perhaps even making using magic more difficult? It wasn’t absolutely necessary to have one’s hands free to cast spells, but it did help.
I wondered what the king and Rachel could have possibly done to be able to fight them and capture them, in the first place, until I remembered the Fae Queen had robbed them of their powers. Of course…And now this was the result?
The king walked my sisters to the fountain and gestured for them to sit down. They seemed hesitant. I imagined they were thinking to attack the king, even though he was the one with the sword and a head taller. The king shoved Loreleine’s back impatiently. They scrambled to sit down in the grass.
Rachel walked among them, head high, like some pretentiously prancing, monstrous fowl. “Look at you all, gaping like wide-eyed, scared children! Yes, my powers have grown!” Then I couldn’t make out the words from her growling, low voice, as she crouched over my sisters, until she finally sprung to stand up straight again, with a twisted, frenzied expression. “You small-time peddlers, you little outlaw-maggots…You’ll never be a sorceress like me. You think you’re all fire and brimstone? You think you’re true-born fae?”
Well, yes they were, and so was I. Or, technically speaking, halfling, of course, but fae nevertheless.
They’d had powers beyond any self-taught, human hedge witch, until the Fae Queen made that unreasonable decision. Ignorant immortal using her powers in ways that only destroyed more…
“Well, here’s a lesson for you!” Rachel went on as if this was some huge celebration of her glory. “Watch and see how it’s done! Watch, weep, and wonder!”
Rachel raised her hands and twisted her fingers in crude street-magic styles. The smell of hedge spells filled the air, and the electric currents of the forcibly-forged energies made the sky crackle. I was distracted when something small and blue flashed past among the gathering gray veils and smoky energies, shooting across the yard. It was the bluebird. She came straight at me, at the door, but just as I was already stepping back, she halted in the air and fluttered in place.
Then I saw what she held in her beak.
A ring.
My mother’s golden fae ring…
That couldn’t be.
Mother had somehow lost the right to wear it, and I’d never learned why. I’d been too small to understand. She’d once said, she’d tell me later…
I recognized it, though, after always staring at it, pestering Mother with questions about it. We’d talked about it a million times — only not about what its purpose was.
Then she’d lost it, or had to give it away, and I never understood why, but I could tell she’d been devastated.
Here it was. The bird had it. And…offered it to me?
I stopped completely still when I saw the writing on the inside. It really had to be my mother’s ring or one exactly like it, but by the time my mother had passed…I hadn’t known how to read.
I could read now.
And the writing spelled out one thing that I should have always known. It was an aiala ring.
Halflings who were essentially full-born fae earned the right to carry one, to show they had the right to use their magic like the fae and had the rights of one. Sometimes aiala had trouble accessing their full powers, but they were entitled to magic, and these rings helped them access it all. There was no harm in giving out these rings to deserving halflings and leaving them where all the world could get to them, because they only worked on real aiala…
Only on those, who’d been born halfling, but were essentially fae.
That explained the incredible things she’d done with her magic, though I only remembered a few occasions, and even those only as impressionistic visions, wondering which parts were true and which parts dream.
Then that also meant my mother could have lived on Fae Island if she’d wanted to…Why didn’t she? She would have been so much safer, and the king would never have gotten to her…
Because of us, her daughters? Had she stayed because we wouldn’t have been allowed there with her? Maybe so…
I reached out a hand with my palm open. The bird dropped the ring in my hand. So, I slipped it on. And at that, I had no words.
A power surged into me that I’d never known. Beautiful, strong, clean power, fae energies. This was what I was always meant to be. This was what I truly was deep down. I could instantly connect with the powers and knew exactly what to do with them.
But quick, before I lost my chance…
I raised my hands. With one glance out into the yard, where everyone was still playing out their cruel drama, I shook my hands, squeezed them into fists and released them, somehow simply knowing exactly what to do. That shot out a thunderbolt and then another and another—they flowed out as blue fire, filling the yard in my entire field of vision, nothing but bright indigo blue heat rising in cascades of flames.
The flames scurried along the contours of the earth and reached Rachel…then King John…and fire enveloped them both all the way to the tops of their heads, making them fierce live torches, wrapped in energy. Rachel frowned at me — not painful, I saw, thank goodness — but I was controlling her every move now. She had to feel the grip of it. I pressed my fingers together, and Rachel faltered on her feet.
True fae power. Watch, weep, and wonder.
I took Rachel to her knees and, focusing some energies, bent her fingers one by one back to harmless fists, so she’d drop those hedge witch tricks. I didn’t even need to hurt her. It was enough to stop her evil show. The source of powers I had now was so great I could command things with a soft whisper and a smile. I sat her down and put her hands in her lap.
Then I stepped forward and into the blue veil and simply slipped right through it and found myself rolling in the grass out in the yard. I pushed myself up, then ran to my sisters and waved my hands at the ropes, freeing everyone. The knots fell off. My baffled sisters stood up with expressions on their faces that said it all…See, this was what we’d always been about, holding our own, together. There was something baffling about the mood, though…
Something moved in my periphery. I turned to see King John charging with a sword. Focusing on Rachel, I hadn’t thought him that much of a threat. I picked up the torn bits of ropes from the grass with nothing but my new energies and flung them out at the king’s outstretched hands. They coiled around his wrists, halting him, making him yell out with surprise. I threw one knot at Rachel, too, and it turned into a rose vine before it curled around her wrist and secured itself as if it had grown there, the way vines do.
Then I still heard something startling behind me and, tired, turned to face that way, but what I saw made me still and then lower my glowing, fiery hands.
It was the young men again, the four youths on their horses, faces filled with horror and concern. They’d turned back and returned, for whatever reason. I was only happy to see them of course — sensible, good people, weren’t they? If they were from the court of Sarastland…But they looked like they were about to walk into enemy fire in some battle they expected to fail at and were only forced to go to for their honor.
The prince of Sarastland jumped off his horse and walked up to me. I almost forgot about my horns and the fire on my hands, as I prepared to say hello, though I saw the evaluative gleam in his eyes. What he saw in me was a monster.
“What castle is this? What creature are you?”
I noted the fiery glow of his sword. So, he had an enchanted sword. That explained his bravery. Perhaps they’d gone back for it, or had slipped away to perform the magic? How did hedge magic tricks work, again, I wasn’t sure. The sword’s power was clearly mere hedge magic, but it looked strong. To me, it would have lit up a room like a candle. I wasn’t sure Julian could see the glow himself. He might think I’d miss the fact if he didn’t know I had eyes for it. But he was brave.
“What place is this, before I have to hurt you, darkling?”
“This castle is an enchantment, made of
magic, crafted by a demon in place of a tomb. And it was a trap, but we are free now…”
I couldn’t have told anyone why I put it that way; it was one of those things. Sometimes in times of chaos, you don’t know what you’re saying, you blurt out things that surprise even yourself. I didn’t mean to talk about tombs and demons, I was tired and shocked, only trying to make the best of a bad situation—and another, and another—reacting to one thing at a time. But the prince had clearly lost his interest in talking to me because he twirled on his heels.
He gestured for his companions to follow and stalked to the door, which — I only now noticed — had lost its blue sheen, as if a fabric covering the entrance had been ripped down. The magic wall was breached at that spot. I must have torn an irreparable hole in it when I pushed through, and the enchantment hadn’t been able to fix it.
I watched at loss, as the prince bowed and stepped over the high threshold, going in sword at hand. His friends looked undecided, glancing around as if scared of ghosts. Two of them seemed to contemplate staying behind, because they stopped to stand at the entrance, to stand guard, I imagined. Ahhah…As if they could stand guard against the company out here? There was the king, an experienced swordsman, even though he never used his skills in any honourable ways, as far as I knew; then there was Rachel, a hedge witch; and then there was me…my hands still glowing fiery blue. Tingling, now that I thought of it, somewhat burnt. But they were already healing after the strain and damage, and with speed I’d never known. If only I’d had this way to heal, back then, years ago. Oh, I would have paid anything for it.
The last two men dove in, as well, sneaking away with hunched shoulders and bent heads, not staying to guard after all, and I became aware of the tense silence behind me, even without looking.
Hesitant, I brushed aside a branch of rose vine, which was hanging from my horns and tickling my cheek, and turned to take in the situation. Rachel was still on the ground where I’d left her and threw me a glowering stare. The king beside her sat just as I’d left him, as well, but his look was contemptuous. Never mind their attitudes, however, what did it matter? They were rendered harmless, then…I hurried to my sisters, who still stood at the edge of the yard in the burnt forget-me-nots, huddling together, worried looks on their faces.
Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance Page 55