Magic Awakens (Irele Book 1)

by Lucia Ashta

  The fortress appeared to be almost straight up from where we were. The horses kicked at loose rocks as they climbed, and the rocks went tumbling downhill behind them.

  Marcelo hung at an incline, tied to the cart. I hoped he would make it up the mountain. After all our combined effort, it would be terrible to lose him now. He looked worse than I’d seen him these last few days. It was hard to tell from where I sat, but it seemed as if his breathing had grown shallow, the fever a beast out of control.

  I turned forward again, determination rising within me as rapidly as the fever was consuming the magician. I felt ready to get out of the cart to push it, to do something to help us move faster. I’d grown tired of feeling helpless.

  Because I lived in a man’s world, I’d always felt limited. I was born in the shadow of a boy, my deceased brother. Then, external circumstances and everyone I encountered made me painfully aware of all that a young woman wasn’t supposed to do.

  No one was around to stop me now. From where I sat, directing the cart right behind the two horses, I did not spot a human or animal anywhere. The limits I felt constrained by now were all my own, the residue of years of observing others restrict me.

  I might not be able to contribute physically to our slow-yet-steady progress up the mountain, but perhaps there was something else I could do.

  I studied the steep incline. It might take us hours to climb the mountain to reach the fortress that punctuated its summit. The horses’ breath was already labored, their muscles taut as they toiled and worked. Sweat dampened their coats, and froth was beginning to build at the corner of my horse’s mouth.

  This would not do. The horses had worked hard enough to help us. They had become our partners in this journey. My heart sank at their suffering.

  I should do something to help them and to help Marcelo.

  Suddenly, I knew what to do. The idea came seemingly from nowhere. Yet there it was, strong and undeniable.

  I wouldn’t dismiss it.

  I could not. To do so would be to deny the person I was becoming.

  Our predicament was bringing clarity and alacrity where there had been none before. Suddenly, the worry fell away. The sounds of the struggling horses blended into the background, behind my rapidly pulsing thoughts. Marcelo drifted away in the distance, much farther behind me than his bindings would allow.

  The sun stood still, its descent toward the horizon frozen along with time. I was no longer in any hurry.

  I turned toward Albacus and Mordecai’s fortress. Details of the brothers’ estate came into focus. I could make out the entrance to the fortress now. My eyes bore down on the gate as if I could transport myself to that very spot by will alone.

  I understood what I needed to do, and I had decided to do it. With the first flash of knowing, I’d chosen to do what I’d never done before: to step beyond any boundaries, even those that were self-imposed.

  My gaze bore down on the entrance to the fortress as if the intensity of it could get us there. Perhaps it could someday; I didn’t know. But not today. Today, I took my thoughts someplace else.

  My eyes began to blur, and I recognized the familiarity of the process, even though I had only done this a few times. I’d introduced myself to the element of air before—or perhaps it was the air that had introduced itself to me—and I could already feel that air and I were no longer strangers.

  At first it was just a whistle of the wind, skipping across the road behind me, as if it were the most innocent of things. But this time, I had chosen to use magic on a grander scale than an experiment from The Magyke of the Elementes. Now, I was stepping into my power, or at least what little I understood of it.

  The whistle behind me grew louder as it amassed more substance. The air’s desire to fully expose its power grew in bursts, and I realized in an instant that I did not control the element of air. It could not be controlled, not by me or anyone else—not truly at least. Air could pretend; it could give off the appearance that a magician dominated it. But that would never be so.

  Then, I comprehended one of the most important lessons I would ever come to learn of magic. The elements—air, earth, water, and fire—were bigger than any one human mind.

  Life would cease to exist without them.

  There was no controlling or manipulating them as The Magyke of Elementes suggested. The elements allowed me to interact with them, to suggest what I might like them to do. They indulged me because they wanted to, because they enjoyed the process.

  And as I approached the air with respect and reverence for its innate power, the air was content. It wanted to play with me, to see what would happen next, just as I did.

  What had been a whistle expanded. The slight breeze transformed into a sharp gust, strong enough to contribute energy to the horses’ efforts. The horses continued uphill, noticing with their next steps that their tiresome trudging was less burdensome.

  The current increased, concentrating more of the air’s almost unlimited energy within it. The horses’ steps grew lighter. Thus, the horses’ spirits did too.

  My eyes saw nothing anymore, not even the colored shape of the brothers’ estate. I’d already shared my intention with the air. There was no need to think of it any longer. I let my eyelids drop the rest of the way down.

  I was tapping into a small bit of my mind’s potential. But it was more than I’d done before, and the part of me that I’d restrained reveled in its newly found freedom.

  Within myself, I delved into the air that swirled through me as much as it did around me. I joined it.

  Just as quickly as I let all thoughts of control go, the air picked up Marcelo and me, ten horses, and a cart as easily as if we were the seeds of cotton floating on a pleasant zephyr. The horses continued lifting their legs at first, until they surrendered to the uncomfortable feeling that they did not touch dirt. Every horse looked down to either side, unnerved by the lack of visible support beneath.

  Like the most magical of carriages in the fairy tales Gertrude, my other sisters, and I had read around hearths, we floated and flew. The air current wound us up the steep roadway, the precipices that broke off to the sides nothing more than a pretty view.

  When I opened my eyes again, my heart leapt with joy. I was experiencing true magic now. This was better than Cinderella’s pumpkin-turned-carriage, and it was better than Saint Nicholas’ flying sled. I was intimately connected to this. I was living the magic. I was the princess of the fairy tale, and the wind swept me off my feet in wonderful accommodating fashion. I was the princess, on her way to save the prince, flying to Merlin’s castle.

  The air rose and climbed, as we did along with it. Trees that perched and clung wildly to rocky mountainsides and overhangs were a blur as we passed. A frigid waterfall plummeted through a crevice, its overpowering rushing sound providing the ideal thematic music as we circled it.

  By the time the air escorted us to the very top, to the very pinnacle of that rocky, nearly perpendicular mountain, I felt like a true princess, and I believed that everything had to go right in my fairy tale now. It had all been too magical for any other result.

  So when we came to a stop at the gate to the fortress—once the air had flown away to take part in another adventure, stillness replacing it—I was completely unprepared for the two grumpy-looking men that worked to open the monumental wooden gate.

  The brothers didn’t look like any fairy tale ending I could imagine.

  An Uncertain Future

  “I told you it was someone young and inexperienced,” said the brother with the longest beard I’d ever seen. His beard was braided, and even so, it reached past his waist.

  “Yes, but you can’t deny there is power in her. So my conclusion was perfectly justifiable,” the other brother said. His long hair was braided into perhaps hundreds of thin braids, like I’d seen women wear in engravings from Father’s books of exotic islands. The beads at the end of each braid clinked together, rustling when he moved.

  The b
rothers finished heaving a gate open that was several times taller than them, and now they walked toward me.

  “It’s curious that she should come today. The runes said all life would change on this day. And now here she is, a surprise visitor,” Long Beard said. I couldn’t know which of the brothers was Albacus and which was Mordecai. Marcelo had told me almost nothing about them.

  “Yes, it’s curious indeed. But that doesn’t mean that she’s the catalyst of change. Her arrival could be coincidence and nothing more,” Beaded Hair said, and Long Beard barked out laughter so loud that it startled me.

  The brothers continued their approach as if I weren’t a real person, right there, listening to every word they said.

  “As if you believed in coincidence! You’re the one who always tells me there’s no such thing, that the entire universe moves to create points of actions that cross and come together,” Long Beard said, his braided beard still shaking from laughter.

  “Yes, well, I suppose you’re right on this one point.” Braided Hair made eye contact with me for the first time. “We shall have to see how this plays out,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes. But neither he nor his brother stopped their progress to speak with me. They were interested in my cargo and stopped only once they reached the cart.

  “I thought it might be him, though I’d dearly hoped it wouldn’t be,” Braided Hair said.

  “He’s in grave danger,” Long Beard said without even reaching out to touch Marcelo. His conclusion was apparent to anyone with an acute mind and good eyesight, and the brothers seemed to possess both despite their age. They walked without the typical curved spines of the elderly, but their hair was gray as dust.

  I spun in my seat at the front of the cart to watch as the brothers pulled themselves into the wagon. They sat, dangling their legs over the edge. They swung their legs and feet contentedly, and it struck me as a disorienting sight for old men to act as children when it was clear that there was an emergency. Marcelo stretched across the line between life and death within arm’s reach of them, and I had thought that both men cared about him.

  Long Beard reached his arm back without turning around and snapped his fingers in the direction of the horses. He did it with such a casual lack of concern that I was shocked when the horses responded immediately. The horses walked through the gate.

  I continued to watch as Long Beard motioned one hand toward the open gate as easily as if he were brushing a fly away. The gate pulled shut behind us.

  I blinked and opened my eyes wider. I had never seen magic done like this before, and I wondered why the brothers hadn’t opened the gate this way to begin with.

  The horses came to a halt in front of the entrance to the castle, exactly where Long Beard wanted them. My head was still turned to watch the brothers. I didn’t want to miss a second of what seemed like a performance. They hopped off the cart with a youthful vitality that befuddled me. I had never seen anything like it before.

  The brothers began to walk toward the castle when Braided Hair twisted the fingers of one hand in the air. I watched, still amazed, as the ropes I’d tied with such precision and care unwound themselves on their own. Then Braided Hair flattened the same hand as if he were carrying a tray, and Marcelo’s body lifted into the air and followed the brothers, hovering.

  Braided Hair guided the man I understood to be their pupil into the darkness of the castle. The front door opened for them, and the brothers disappeared within with Marcelo’s limp body.

  I remained seated where I was. I didn’t know what to do. I had done nothing more than swivel my head to follow the brothers since they first exited the gate.

  They had not acknowledged me other than to speak of me. They certainly hadn’t invited me to follow them in. I sat there, perplexed, until a man finally came out from a building adjacent to the castle to care for the horses.

  “Go,” he said. “They’ll be expecting you inside.”

  So I stepped down from the cart and walked on unsteady limbs toward an uncertain future.

  One of a Kind

  It was lucky for me that I’d been too concerned with Marcelo and how to get to Irele to formulate any expectations, because if I had, the interior of the castle would have immediately dashed them away.

  Unlike Norland Manor, the castle was dark even during daylight. Candles adorned most flat surfaces to illuminate what an overhead chandelier didn’t. The candlelight cast eerie shadows across the walls and crawled across strange artifacts I couldn’t readily identify.

  I looked around. There was no sign of the brothers or of anyone else. Reluctantly, I returned to the front door and closed it. Spring was not quite here yet, and the chill of the approaching night, combined with the higher altitude, would create the kind of cold that penetrates to the bone. As soon as the door latched closed, I yearned for the fading daylight the open door had allowed in.

  Perhaps it was more the stage in my life before magic had entered it that I yearned for, when things had seemed easier and safe though stifling and stagnant. When I closed that door, I understood that I was closing the door on my past forever. By stepping inside the castle and leaving behind the world outside, I was choosing to accept a part of me that involved both danger and potential in equal measure.

  I turned and walked fully into the foyer, rubbing each hand along its opposite arm to warm myself. The undergarments, dress, and coat I wore were insufficient to ward off the cold of high mountains. These stone fortresses retained the cold all winter long. I knew this well from Norland Manor, where I dreaded the coming of winter every year, mourning the passing of fall like the death of a dear friend. But whereas in Norland Manor fires burned throughout the winter in every hearth, I could not spot a single fire from where I stood. The only flames were those of candles.

  Even the sound of the closing door had not brought anyone to me. I heard no echoing steps across the stone floors. I saw no movement, even among the shadows, which crowded across the foyer as if they possessed life.

  I stepped into the entry hall. It was wide and hinted at the grandness of the castle, of what it could perhaps be if it were lit and allowed vitality.

  “Hello!” I said to the empty room and heard my voice bounce off every surface that surrounded me. My voice echoed out of the entry hall until I couldn’t hear it any longer, but I thought it might continue throughout the castle like a crashing ocean wave that filled every crevice until, simply, it dispersed into nothingness.

  No one came. No voice responded to my call. No rushing footsteps pattered across cold stone floors to reach me.

  I walked toward a tapestry that hung across a wall. Even the candlelight around it did nothing to force its image out from hiding. Already I felt as if this were a castle that contained and hid a great many secrets.

  I stepped right next to the tapestry and looked up. It towered and stretched above me. I could barely make out the intertwined legs of humans and animals.

  I reached for a candle, and as I moved it toward the tapestry, I noticed something peculiar. The candlestick had no wax drips along its sides. I studied the flame. No liquid wax pooled around it. I ran a finger across the flame. There was no heat.

  I held my hand above the flame, steadily. The flame in the candle was as cool as the breezes that howled throughout the castle. I began to understand how the brothers could have so many candles burning at once. Ordinary candles burned quickly and were a valuable commodity.

  I picked up a second candle and held both right up to the tapestry, now without fear that the flame would singe it.

  I gasped and faltered, taking a step back. What looked like a demonic satyr, with the telltale legs of a goat, held, against her will, a young woman with flowing blonde hair that only partially covered her nude body. The satyr grinned with sadistic pleasure at those who had the distinct displeasure of viewing this tapestry.

  “It’s an unpleasant image, that one.”

  I dropped the candles with a crash and spun to find Long Beard
behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach, and I was accustomed to the sounds of steps across stone floors. How had he crept up on me?

  I scrambled to pick up the candles from the floor, embarrassed to discover that both candlesticks had shattered. I began to scoop up the ceramic pieces as best as I could.

  “I… I’m sorry. You startled me.”

  “Leave it be, child. We have more important things to tend to.”

  But I continued to pick up the pieces, more quickly now so as to appear to comply with Long Beard’s request. I felt uncomfortable leaving ceramic shards on the floor for someone else to step on.

  Long Beard sighed loudly. Then the shards and splinters of porcelain drew together. I snapped my head up to see how he was doing it. He held both hands in front of him as if they held a large imaginary bowl, and he moved them in toward each other. When I looked back down, the fragments had pieced themselves back together.

  “Now, will you get up, child?”

  I nodded quickly and stood, one candlestick in each hand. I found Long Beard studying me.

  “You have questions.” It was a statement, and I imagined an obvious one. Of course I had questions. I had so many!

  “We don’t have much time now, but you may ask what’s most pressing.”

  I hated to squander a question on this, but curiosity nagged at me. “If you consider the tapestry an unpleasant image, why do you hang it here in the entry hall where you’ll often see it?”

  My question surprised him. “I’ve never thought to move it from where it is. My great-great-grandfather hung it here, and it hasn’t been moved since.”

  Long Beard looked at the tapestry again. “He was a dark magician. He amassed a valuable collection of dark art.”

  Involuntarily, I shivered at the thought of more art like this displayed throughout the castle. I was for once grateful that the castle was not better illuminated. I didn’t want to see the brothers’ ancestral collection of valuable dark art.

  “Is that all you need to ask me now?”

  I recognized humor in Long Beard’s voice, and I thought a barely visible smirk bent his mouth.