by Kim Wedlock
She pursed her lips, bobbing her head thoughtfully, then looked up at the stars as a light wind moved the leaves above them, creating a brief window to the night sky. "Yes and no." She turned her dark, mysterious eyes back onto him with a simple smile. "No one's really tried."
"Oh, people have tried," he assured her.
"Perhaps, but not with any pressing need to succeed, which you certainly now have. And, as a side note, given the present situation, I don't think we can rely too much on 'everything we know about magic'. Now, tell me: what have you come up with so far?"
"On the magic or this pointless spell?"
"Both."
He took a moment to collect his thoughts and shortly realised with another painful wave of failure just how little he truly had. "Well," he began anyway, "the magic is raw, like that within mages, but with no container to direct or contain it, and it's gathering at magnetic sites - that much I worked out for myself."
"No, I told you about the magnetism," she corrected him with a weary sigh, "but at least you've confirmed it for yourself. Anything else?"
He looked at her flatly. "And that there is no construction to the magic at all. It's not part of any spell, and there are no traces of any spells in the areas that could have possibly caused it by some insane circumstance either. As far as I can see, it's just appeared out of nowhere." She continued watching him expectantly, and he rolled his eyes. "And I have no idea where to start with the spell whatsoever. I have no clue how to fix it and I'm quite positive that I can't."
"Then why did you accept the task?"
He blinked. "Well...because..."
An irritatingly knowing smile spread across her face as she looked away and up towards the shaft of moonlight, and Rathen's brow lowered again in defeat. 'Because I care.'
She leaned back on her hands and crossed her slender legs. "If it's 'raw', then it should behave as normal magic," she mused, "and if an elven relic can remove or block the magic of a mage, it could do the same with this. That's assuming of course that the spell in the relic affects the target's magic, not the target's body. If it just affects the heart and stops magic from either forming there or joining the bloodstream, then it would be quite useless in this case."
"Right," Rathen nodded slowly, his mind now suddenly quite open to the possibility of the artefact, and he waited impatiently for the 'but' that would follow.
"But if the spell affects the magic itself, then with enough information on the relic and understanding of how it would have worked, you could, in theory, find a way to make something similar."
He shook his head, disappointed by her vague response and lack of any helpful suggestion. "Just like everyone else, you're forgetting about the amount of power it would have taken for the elves to make such a thing. No one has the magical capacity to do that, and certainly not me - even if I did manage to tap into this rumoured power of mine. It isn't possible."
"Hush, Rathen, I'm just thinking out loud, running through the bottom line." She turned contemplative eyes onto him. "What you need to do is take it step by step. Forget the magnitude of the task, that will just distract you and make you feel hopeless."
"I already do."
"What you need to do before anything else is just understand the magic; familiarise yourself with how it feels, how it moves and flows, what form it's sitting in - cloud, puddle, brick, whatever. Once you've got that, you can try to affect it as a whole - push it, compact it, expand it - and if you can do that then you can go further and try to interact with it which would eventually broaden into removing it. That's it. No grand shows of what a magnificent mage you are, no trying to solve the problem in as few steps as possible. Don't try to run before you can even sit up by yourself. And if you can't get that far, you're not going to be able to do anything about it at all, in which case you can put it out of your mind with the satisfaction of having tried."
His jaw tightened as he shook his head. "It isn't going to be as easy as that."
She took him suddenly by the chin and turned his head towards her, and as her dark, beautiful eyes gripped him, eyes the colour of the maturest summer leaves, he saw within them a flame of confidence. But it was not the confidence which she unfailingly carried for herself - it was in him. "You haven't tried it yet."
His frown softened and his heart similarly melted, and he found himself surprised by how much her faith meant to him. "Where did you get this wisdom of yours?"
"I was born with it," she grinned, and leaned in to kiss him. "So, remind me: what should you do first?"
"Understand the magic."
"And how are you going to do that?"
"By going to another ruin and feeling it again, I suppose."
"Exactly. And how are you going to feel it?"
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You're going to close your mind, stop asking 'where has it come from' and getting bogged down in specifics, and just feel it. And," she added as she rose to her knees, "I suggest you try somewhere influenced by more than just beauty. Try somewhere more chaotic. It might feel different."
He nodded in understanding, but his eyes suddenly flashed as an urgent thought swept across him, and he reached out to grasp her wrist. "Wait - you've been to these places."
She frowned. "I have..."
"And did any of them feel...peaceful to you?"
She took a moment and pursed her lips in thought, her frown barely marring her perfectly smooth face. "Not really, no. Why?"
The lines in his own brow deepened. "No reason."
She cocked her head curiously but didn't pose her question, and rose the rest of the way to her feet. "Anyway, I must be off."
"You're leaving already?" He asked as he followed her up, though only a touch of disappointment found its way into his voice.
"I found you by chance," she told him softly, "a happy coincidence, but I was out here taking care of other business, and I really must get on." She stepped forwards and pressed her lips against his, softly, warmly, her kiss radiating a greater affection than any other that night. They remained there for an endless moment, and when she pulled away, he almost moved with her. She smiled apologetically as she began to take slow steps away, leaving him to catch his balance. "I promise I'll give you more time when we next meet. For now, try not to upset anyone else. This won't be the last time the harpies set upon you, so you'd better keep your eyes open and your hands free, as much as you might hate it. And," she added, smiling widely, "try to enjoy yourself. An opportunity like this won't come along for you very often."
"I would rather it hadn't come along at all."
"Trust me, Rathen: you're in good hands. Just try to keep calm. And be nice."
"And don't pull the horses' tails?" He raised an eyebrow and cast her a childish grin, which she returned with one much the same.
"Exactly." And with a final step, she vanished into the darkness. Rathen's heart sank as he found himself suddenly standing alone amongst the trees, and again a little further as he heard her disembodied voice call 'I love you' through the night. He looked down at the blanket that still lay beneath his feet, but even that shortly disappeared, and then no trace remained of her ever having been there.
A breeze picked up around him. He folded his arms tightly against the invading chill that dragged him sharply back to the world, and sighed sadly as he looked up towards the shaft of icy moonlight. Then he turned around and trudged back to camp, alone. He fought hard with every step to push aside the sense of loneliness that assaulted him every time she left, and the longing for the simple, normal life he'd left behind, both of which seemed easily able to overshadow his heavy and far more immediate concerns.
But that existence had gone, and nothing good ever came from indulging its memory.
Chapter 12
The warm glow of the campfire slipped off into the darkness to drape itself softly around Rathen's shoulders. It ushered along his heavy footsteps, welcoming him back to the camp with an encouraging nudge while its hea
t set to work warding off the persistent chill. But he made no show of noticing. He didn't spare a moment even to wonder if its hospitality had been his imagination. His mood remained bleak and inverted as he stopped silently beside Aria, who continued to whittle while Anthis watched openly beside her, and he dropped heavily to sit in the dirt in front of the fire in the hope that its hypnosis would chase away his gloom if he stared deeply enough into its writhing depths.
Aria looked up sadly at his distant eyes, and the pause of her blade stroke encouraged Anthis's gaze to follow. But Rathen felt neither of their stares upon him. His mind was lost in burning thought.
As if it would really be so easy to push such despair aside. He was assaulted by memories - memories he desperately wished never to relive, and yet clung to so dearly; memories he'd never forgotten, had never even faded, but now seemed to weigh upon him as heavily as they did when they were fresh. Being back in the world had given them a new, stinging vitality, and he found himself asking the same questions he had when his world had first turned upside down: why him? Why did his life have to turn out this way? Why did he have to lose everything? And why by his own hands? That was the true torment: everything that had befallen him had been by his own doing, and even now, after the passage of so much time, he still had no idea why, how nor when the curse had befallen him.
But though those questions had eroded him ever since, he had long ago stopped trying to answer them. They had no meaning; even if he could get his answers, it wouldn't reverse a thing. So instead he had turned to bitterness, and he'd nursed it alongside a hate for himself and a greater loathing for the Crown. He'd turned into a dour, resentful man, and how Kienza or Aria could love him like they did, he still couldn't fathom. And what would Elle have said if she could see him now? If she were to peer out from the black and ghostly forest around them, what would she see? Would she see the man she'd loved? Or would she see only his shell?
The thought pummelled him. His heart swelled and dropped, turning to lead as familiar grief surged over him like a tidal wave, and his jaw was clenched so tightly that he became aware of it and had to force it to loosen. But his eyes didn't move. The campfire that Kienza had created, the fire he swore he could hear her voice in, smell her scent within, held his gaze as if it stared right back, and he found himself struck just as violently by guilt for pining over his past after everything she'd done for him.
'That is not my life anymore,' the voice in his head chided him for the thousandth time, and he knew, painfully, that no amount of sulking would change that. He straightened and forced himself to breathe, inhaling so deeply it almost hurt, and exhaled his thoughts away with the long-practised technique. Others quickly spilled into their place, and though they were far more weighted, he found himself more inclined to deal with them than he had been five minutes ago.
He inhaled slowly once more, suddenly grateful for the distraction, and focused his mind purposefully so that he might, at least for the moment, keep these thoughts from being clouded by severity.
Understand the magic. Kienza was probably right; he hadn't once tried to look at the matter in smaller pieces, he'd just kept obsessing over the enormity and impossibility of it, became frightened and pushed it aside. 'And sulked,' Kienza would have added. But, alongside telling him more than he'd wanted to hear, she'd also handed him a solution, as he knew she would, and quizzed him to make him think for himself in the process. He hated it when she did that, but it always helped him get his thoughts in order.
For what felt like an age, he turned his mind back, doing his best to recall all he could of the magic that permeated the ruins in the hope that he could make some use of the meagre experiences so far. But no matter how hard nor how long he tried, nothing returned to him beyond the beauty and apparently non-existent peace. He hadn't been paying attention to distribution or accumulation at the time because he hadn't thought to. No, he'd been thinking of that bottom line: that he was expected to form an impossible spell to remove it, and just how much of it there was to remove.
That damned bottom line.
He finally gave up, another rough sigh puffing through his lips, and he drew his knees into his chest while a voice he wasn't fond of and yet was very much like his own chastised him for being so easily overwhelmed. But what could he do when he had so little to work with?
'There will be other sites...' If Garon expected him to achieve his task, there would have to be, and then he could find something of use. But for now, he was decidedly useless in the matter.
He watched the flames flicker back and forth, his thoughts shifting with them as his tired mind grew sluggish, his eyelids heavy, and he became slowly aware of just how deeply his back and thighs ached from being in a saddle for so long. The soreness only worsened the longer he let himself notice it, and soon his whole body felt rigid and sleep seemed mockingly distant. His mind looped around, returning to depths he didn't wish it to, and again he had to force it into silence.
But before he could get a rein on his thoughts himself, he was torn quite suddenly out of them. His heart stopped, shocking his mind into a blank slate, then leapt to race faster than the winds and thud louder than the hooves of a thousand horses, each of which seemed to have kicked him as they'd passed.
He looked up, wide-eyed, as Aria fell quiet, her gentle humming silenced, and he found her staring back at him with an equally wide gaze. But hers was one riddled deeply with guilt, though she seemed unsure as to why. "Why do you look so sad?"
"I don't," he replied quickly, though he noticed even as he spoke the strong downturn of the corners of his lips, and it took much more effort than he expected to smile. But he knew even as he managed that it hadn't been worth it. The way her young brow knitted together made it clear that it wasn't convincing.
Her fringe shadowed her face as she looked down at the half-shaped wood in her hands. "You do. More than usual." She turned her big blue-grey eyes back up at him. "Is it the song?"
He blinked as his heart settled back into its normal rhythm, and though he opened his mouth to lie, he knew there was little point. She was too perceptive; he rarely got away with it. He sighed in defeat instead. "How did you know?"
"Because that's all that changed. You didn't look like that two minutes ago, and two minutes ago you were still sat there with the same clothes, the same fire. And Anthis was sat just here then, but I didn't think it would be that because you've never looked like that when Anthis wasn't sat near you before." She shrugged in disappointment as Rathen noticed that the young man had indeed left her side. "What's wrong with the song?"
He sighed again, suddenly feeling guilty himself, and managed another weak smile in an attempt to reassure her. "There's nothing wrong with the song. A woman I know--...knew, used to sing it."
"A woman? Was she important? Of course she was, you wouldn't remember if she wasn't important." Her curious frown softened as a thought occurred to her, and her eyes widened a fraction in wonder. "Was it your mum?"
He breathed a brief laugh, but the half-smile that came with it was just as fleeting. "No," he replied. "I don't recall much about her."
"Was it...my mum?"
His sad frown returned. "No."
The flames of the campfire flickered at the edge of his vision. He felt their draw once more, luring his mind back into desolate thoughts. He steeled himself. He wasn't going to let himself succumb to Elle's memory again that night.
Oh, but if only it was that simple. He already had. It wasn't so easy to push her from his mind once she'd made an appearance. He knew this well - he'd spent the last eleven years trying to move past her in order to build a new life, and he'd managed with no small effort.
But that tune...that lilting melody he tied so specifically to her... It seemed it still had the power to knock him sideways. He'd never heard anyone else sing it, and even as Aria had hummed it a moment go, it was recited in his mind in Elle's voice in perfect time. A canticle sung by a shade of the past.
He dragged his
gaze from the fire and back onto Aria. She was watching him patiently, her guilt for being the cause of his sorrow still clear upon her young face. "Where did you learn it?"
"I heard one of the Arkhamas humming it. I thought it sounded pretty."
Ditchlings...he wondered where they'd gotten it from. "It is pretty," he smiled.
"Do you want me to stop?"
"...No. Yes."
She smiled sadly then rose nimbly to her feet, placing her knife and wood carefully in the grass amongst the strips and shavings she'd worked away from it, and stepped over to wrap her arms around him. "I'm sorry for making you sad, Daddy."
He chuckled and held her tightly. "I'm fine," he assured her. "I promise."
"I'll sing you something else."
"You don't need to do that."
"It's okay, it's one you like."
A hesitant smile forced itself upon him. "Ah. Must you?"
She nodded vigorously, already stepping back in preparation, and following a deep breath and no opportunity to object, she dove into a much-rehearsed rendition of 'Oat, The Lovely, Miserable Goat', complete with a silly and quite irrelevant dance. She put her usual effort in to try to cheer him up, and though it worked, both for the entertainment and the shameful reminder that he had other things he could pour his heart into, she was already tired and her performance finally wore her down.
She didn't object when he put her to bed, and he didn't have to remain at her side for too long before she drifted off. Five minutes after he'd pulled the blanket over her, she was sleeping peacefully, and he returned to his spot by the fire with a much easier heart.
Anthis shortly joined him after tucking his books away in his saddle bag, and as Rathen tossed Aria's mess of wooden shavings into the fire, the young historian smiled fondly towards her. "She's dedicated to you, you know," he said softly.