Eolyn

by Karin Rita Gastreich

  “Yet already you have outwitted him.”

  “The King set me free.” A mystery that disturbed her deeply. “He could have kept me prisoner, had it been his desire, but he set me free and entrusted me to Mage Corey.”

  Ernan leaned forward and took both her hands in his. His palms were hot. The smell of ale permeated his breath. “Don’t you see, Eolyn? It’s as if our destiny were written from the moment our village was destroyed. I was given to the care of a Knight of Vortingen, and you to a Maga of Old. We have each learned the skills necessary to avenge our parents’ murder, the destruction of our village, and the oppression of our people. We are meant to do this together, you as maga and I as warrior.”

  “Our mother’s battles were her own.” Ghemena’s words sounded shaky on Eolyn’s lips. “Who are we to resurrect them?”

  Ernan’s brow furrowed. He sat down, heavy, in front of her. “How can you say that, Eolyn? After everything Kedehen took from us, everything he destroyed. Does it mean nothing to you, that Mother and Father were murdered, that the innocents of our village died, that you’ve lived your whole life in hiding just to be who you are?”

  “I…” Eolyn shifted in her seat, uncertain. “I’m sorry, Ernan. It’s not that I don’t believe in your cause. It’s just that my magic is not meant for war. Ghemena would never forgive me for putting my gifts to such use. And Kedehen is dead. The man who took everything away from us is gone. We have hardly given his son an opportunity to be King. What if he is different?”

  “Did your encounter with him give you reason to believe he is different?”

  “No,” she admitted. “It did not.”

  “Eolyn, do you know how our mother died?”

  His tone ignited a current of dread inside of her. “Why do you ask?”

  “She died at his hands. Kaie left us to go to the King’s City, hoping to set the Queen free. But when she tried to escape with Briana, Prince Akmael intercepted them. He killed them both.”

  Eolyn stood and stumbled away from her brother, knocking the table and sending more ale to the ground. “But he was only a child at the time! Surely he did not have the power to defeat a maga warrior and a witch of East Selen!”

  A memory broke through her words, an image of a day long past, when the boy Achim took shelter with a girl named Eolyn in the musty hollow of a large beech. Heavy summer rain poured down, hiding the world and leaving them trapped near the heart of the old tree.

  That was the day Achim told Eolyn the story of his mother’s death, of the stranger who called her ‘friend’ and then tried to kill him. Had that, too, been a lie? In her heart, Eolyn believed it was not. The tears Achim had entrusted to her, his surrender to her consoling embrace, the exposure of his vulnerability. All of this testified to his sincerity.

  “That’s not how it happened.” Eolyn returned to her seat, truth spreading through her like the bitter essence of crushed rue. “Kaie tried to eliminate the prince. Briana died defending him. It was Kedehen who struck down our mother when he came upon them, though he did not kill her. He turned her over to the mages, to find out where she came from and what else she was hiding before her execution.”

  Eolyn’s throat was tight with sorrow. For the first time, she comprehended the absolute remorse her mother must have suffered in her last days. The brutality of the mages, the flames that choked out her existence, the pending fate of her family, all of this would have paled next to the devastating burden of having killed one of her own sisters.

  “How do you know this?” Ernan’s tone was sharp, his eyes narrow.

  Eolyn detected the zealous flare in his heart. Instinct told her he would not respond well to the statement the King and I were close friends as children, and he told me all about it.

  “My tutor, Ghemena, used her divinatory tools to determine the fate of our mother,” she said.

  “I see.” He studied her with care. “But it changes little. If our mother sought to destroy the boy, she must have known and feared what he would become. The magic of East Selen cannot remain in the line of Vortingen. The Mage King must be stopped before he consolidates his power.”

  Ernan rose and went to his collection of arms. Eolyn noted the height of his body, the breadth of his shoulders, the weight of his step. She wondered how many men he had killed, and how many more he would bring down before confronting the one upon whom he hoped to exact his final vengeance.

  “I have something to show you, Sister.” He returned with a weapon wrapped in well-oiled leather. A hissing ring cut through the air as he withdrew the sword from its resting place.

  Eolyn’s heart went still. She had seen this blade. She recognized its silver white glow and mysterious voice from a dream granted to her as a child, a nightmare of blood and fire. She had watched Akmael die beneath this sword.

  “This was my prize from the battle of Darya,” Ernan said. “This, and the scar you see on my face.”

  Ernan proffered it to her.

  Eolyn set her fingers upon the cool silver blade. The hilt was ivory in color and without adornment. Though the weapon appeared newly forged, it whispered with the blood of the many it had slain, peasants and knights, princes and kings.

  “This is Kel’Barú,” Ernan said, “the sword of the Galian wizard Sapoc.”

  Ghemena had mentioned the fire wizards of Galia, but Eolyn knew little of their sorcery.

  “How did you come by it?” she asked.

  “I killed its master. It was my final victory before returning to Moisehén. When I captured Kel’Barú, I knew the time had come to confront the Mage King, for this is a blade worthy of a wizard’s blood.”

  Eolyn hardly heard her brother’s words. She sank to her knees and set her ear against the flat surface of the blade. A tremor invaded her fingers.

  “You understand it,” Ernan realized. “You can hear its voice!”

  Eolyn closed her eyes against the sting of tears. Already Kel’Barú had learned her name.

  Eolyn, it sang. Eolyn, Eolyn, Eolyn.

  “I have heard the mages of Moisehén can speak to metals,” Ernan continued with excitement, “but Corey insisted this sword was unintelligible.”

  “I have not understood the voice of any sword until this day,” Eolyn confessed. Why, she wondered with a breaking heart, would this, of all swords, speak to me?

  “Sweet sister.” Ernan took the blade from her and sheathed it. Setting his strong hands on Eolyn’s shoulders, he brought her to her feet and enclosed her in his solid embrace. “Do not weep! Can you not see the herald of our destiny? You can speak to this sword. I can wield it. Together, we will use Kel’Barú to destroy the Mage King! Together, we will bring the days of our exile to an end.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kel’Barú

  Within a few days of Eolyn’s arrival, Khelia and several of her companions returned from a hunting expedition, laden with venison, rabbits, and wildfowl. Cheeks flushed and eyes shining, Khelia greeted Eolyn with happy laughter and a full embrace.

  Khelia, it turned out, had known Ernan for many years and even fought multiple battles with him. The Mountain Warrior witnessed the confrontation between Ernan and the Galian wizard Sapoc in the Battle of Darya, and she relished telling the tale over and over, each version somehow more bloody and violent than the last. She stood on equal footing with Ernan in the planning of the rebellion. Indeed, their army included a large number of warriors, men and women, who had followed Khelia from the Paramen Mountains.

  Eolyn was truly happy to see her. In short order, the women developed a custom of seeking each other out in the afternoons. Distancing themselves from the encampment, they would engage in a game of throwing knives, or simply converse while enjoying the forest. Though Ernan’s army was located well inside the heart of the ancient woodland, there was a patch of young trees nearby, full of birch and alder that stretched in thin columns toward the azure sky. Their soft trunks made for excellent targets.

  “We could not have asked for
a clearer sign from the Gods,” declared Khelia during one of these outings. “That they should deliver you, a High Maga, into our company at precisely this moment.”

  “You speak like my brother.” Eolyn sent her blade singing into a pale trunk. “I’ve told him already. I can’t help you with this campaign. Ghemena taught me nothing about war.”

  Khelia flung her blade to meet Eolyn’s. “You have been underestimating your abilities from the day we first met! You stopped a red death flame in its path without as much as a staff in your hand. I think that would be a very useful ability to have on the battlefield.”

  “I know a handful of flames for ceremonial purposes, a couple for self-defense. I have some talent with the knife, and I fight well enough to scare away ill-intentioned village boys. That is all.”

  “We have no one else with your skills in magic.”

  “What about Mage Corey?”

  “Corey has exceptional gifts for his rank, but he does not command your breadth of knowledge.” Khelia’s voice lost all undertones of amusement. “We need you to win this war, Eolyn.”

  “An entire Order of Magas, with an army of maga warriors, opposed the House of Vortingen once,” Eolyn countered. “We know where that left them: scattered and destroyed. My life as a refugee is testimony to their extermination. If you choose to lead your people to a similar fate, you cannot expect me to take part in it.”

  Khelia extended her arm toward her knife, sitting snug inside the trunk of the young birch.

  Ehekaht, she murmured. Naeom denae.

  The handle shivered, and the blade worked its way stiffly out of the wood before flying back to Khelia’s grip.

  Eolyn stared at her, astonished. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “My father was a Mountain Warrior who descended from our lands with his comrades to assist the magas against Kedehen. That is how he met my mother, who was an initiate when the war began. Afterwards, they fled to the mountains to escape the purges. I was born among the Mountain People. My mother taught me the traditions of Moisehén, and my father, how to use the sword. I figured out for myself how to integrate the two.”

  Eolyn studied her friend, a glimmer of hope in her heart. Khelia knew something of the craft. She had not been educated under the strict traditions of the Old Orders, but she was a maga nonetheless, and a warrior at that.

  Extending her arm, Eolyn called her own blade. As it flew into her grip she cast Khelia a sideways glance. “Who taught you how to sing?”

  Khelia laughed. “The whole village! That is the tradition of our people.”

  “And your mother anointed you High Maga?”

  “No. She never completed her own training. I learned much from her though, and I also sought instruction from our Wissens, but Mountain Magic is very different from the sorcery of Moisehén. So I have an odd combination of gifts, being adept at some things and useless in others. Master Tzeremond and the Mage King won’t know what to expect from me. That is one of the reasons why I believe we have a chance.”

  “Yet by the same argument, my participation would be a liability, for I was trained in the old ways. They will know exactly what to expect from me and how to counter it.”

  “Perhaps,” Khelia conceded, throwing her knife to a new mark. “Although, when you were brought before the Mage King, he encountered something unexpected, something so surprising it made him lose his bearings and set you free.”

  The observation subdued Eolyn, turning her thoughts toward the true dilemma of her heart. She could not tolerate the idea of confronting Akmael on the battlefield. She could not envision using her magic to kill him, no matter what he had become.

  “As for Tzeremond,” continued Khelia, “our greatest strength now is his fear of you.”

  “Fear of me?” Now it was Eolyn’s turn to laugh. “He hates me, but he does not fear me. Far from it.”

  “Corey said the stench of his fear filled the throne room.”

  “The air in that place was rank, but not with Tzeremond’s dread.”

  “Your apprehension must have inhibited your ability to detect it.”

  With a slight shrug, Eolyn whispered to her knife before sending it toward the new target. It sank into the bark with a satisfying thunk, right next to Khelia’s blade.

  Khelia clapped her hands in delight. “Excellent throw! You do have some talent. Do you know how to handle the sword?”

  “I learned a little once.” From a boy I trusted, with a blade Dragon destroyed. “I was never very good at it. I don’t like swords.”

  “You like Kel’Barú.”

  Eolyn could not argue with this. Something about that weapon had captured her heart. The way it hummed in Ernan’s grip, the way its long silver face reflected all the colors of the forest.

  Years ago, Akmael had told her magic could not be used to forge weapons, but the Galian wizards had apparently found a way.

  “You should give Kel’Barú a try,” Khelia said. “It’s meant to be wielded by a sorcerer, not by common soldiers like us.”

  “Ernan handles it well enough.”

  “It only performs in his grip when you’re around. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that sword is in love with you.”

  A shiver passed through Eolyn. She did not want to wield that sword, lest it slay Akmael while in her hands. “My skills are not worthy of such a weapon.”

  Khelia flung her blade anew, giving its flight an elegant arc and landing it at nearly twenty paces. Visibly pleased, she set her hands on her hips and cocked her brow at Eolyn. “Well then, we’ll just have to practice, won’t we?”

  Despite Khelia’s insistence, Eolyn did not for a moment entertain the thought of expanding her meager knowledge of weaponry. Ghemena’s abhorrence of warfare had long since turned her away from this path. If she was to restore women’s magic to Moisehén, she wished to do it on her own terms and with her own gifts.

  Still, Kel’Barú called to her.

  With Ernan’s permission, she began to take the sword on long walks. She wandered deep into the ancient forest with the blade strapped to her back, drinking up the rich magic of those verdant corridors, until she found a clear and peaceful brook by which to rest. There, she would unsheathe the blade and set it next to her against the solid trunk of a beech, oak, or willow.

  Sun filtered through the canopy. Trees whispered on the wind. Kel’Barú sang songs of another world.

  On the western shores of Galia, fire springs from the earth and flows in burning rivers to the sea. It is from this union of earth, fire, and water that the Galian wizards draw their power.

  Ghemena had told Eolyn these stories, years ago in front of the hearth in their cottage.

  There was a time when Galian wizards visited Moisehén. They were comrades of our mages, and they loved our magas, taking many with them as consorts. But the rise of Kedehen put an end that friendship. The Galians were not pleased by the war and the persecutions that followed.

  Kel’Barú’s smooth hum reflected the liquid melody of the brook. It told her of its birth many generations before, of battles it had fought and warriors it had killed. The more time Eolyn spent with Kel’Barú, the more she felt drawn to its compelling voice.

  “I would have liked to have met your former master,” she murmured one day. “He must have been a noble wizard, for you are a noble weapon.”

  Kel’Barú beamed at this compliment, catching the sun’s reflection in its silver blade.

  “Do you not resent my brother, at least a little, for having slain him?”

  At this Kel’Barú’s glow dimmed. The sword sank into a deep silence, the heavy quiet of the center of the earth, a sad stillness only metals could achieve. When at last it spoke, its voice was subdued. Sapoc was not my master.

  Surprised by this response, Eolyn reached out and set her tapered fingers upon the blade, cold to the touch despite the afternoon sun.

  “I’m sorry, Kel’Barú,” she whispered. “I think I understand something of your gr
ief. I, too, have lost many who were dear to me, a warrior and wizard among them.”

  “And I, it seems, have lost the woman I love to a piece of forged metal.”

  Startled by the man’s voice, Eolyn snapped out of her trance.

  Tahmir stood over her, his dark eyes filled with amusement, his silky black hair flowing free about his broad shoulders. She had not even heard his approach.

  “By the Gods, it’s good to see you!” Jumping to her feet, Eolyn flung herself into his embrace. The rich spice of his aroma inundated her senses. “What of Rishona and Adiana? What of the rest of the Circle?”

  “We abandoned camp the night you left. Rishona and Adiana arrived with me today. The others travel by their assigned routes and should join us soon.”

  “Have you any word of the King?”

  “Your appearance at Bel-Aethne caused a great stir. The people of Moisehén say it is an omen. Tzeremond’s mages are mad with rage. The purges have been renewed.”

  “Purges?” Eolyn withdrew in alarm. “But there is no one left to purge!”

  “They take whomever they can, girls with an unusual look, spirited women, widows who prospered after their husbands’ deaths. It does not matter anymore whether the magic is real.”

  “And the King does nothing?”

  “What would you expect him to do?”

  Tahmir’s discerning gaze unsettled Eolyn. Ghemena had told her the Syrnte could hear thoughts, and that time bent around their magic in strange ways. She now realized the full implications of this. How many of her thoughts had he heard during these past months? How much did he know of her past, and what had he seen of her future?

  “A great unrest is spreading through Moisehén,” he said. “Your people are tired of the Mage King. The appearance of a maga has renewed their courage. The moment is ripe for your brother’s rebellion. With you at his side, there is little now that can stop him.”

  “When I was a child, I was told to run and hide from men-at-arms,” Eolyn replied. “Now I am told I must run to meet them.”