by Natalie Grey
We made our way up to one of the rocky bluffs, and I had the jarring sense of seeing both worlds at once: beaches filled with tourists, yachts gliding serenely across sunlit waters … and a beach deserted save for the waves and the wind, schools of fish swirling untroubled in the sea beyond.
Daiman sank down, eyes closed. I would have asked him what he was doing, but I had found that it was easier not to talk to him at all than to try to stay cold and dismissive. When he talked, especially about magic, his whole face softened and I found myself being drawn into his world.
Or pretending. I wasn’t a part of his world, I remembered. Not at all.
His hand rose, pointing southwest, almost exactly along the line of the setting sun.
“What is it?” I knelt down next to him to look where he was pointing, then helped him up before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be doing things like that.
“That’s where the island is.” He looked at me curiously, as if wondering why I’d deigned to talk to him now. “Sorcery distorts the world in a different way than—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Never mind. We can start walking now, if you’re ready.”
I’d been leaning in, interested to hear how he’d found Eshe’s island, but his cold tone reminded me not to get involved. “Right.” I gestured along the bluff and nodded. “I’m ready to go.”
He looked at me for a moment, and then shook his head slightly and took the steep path down to the beach. We walked across sand undisturbed by human footprints, my boots sliding and the heat rising up through the soles, and Daiman led me directly out onto the water.
I blinked, wondering if this was some kind of test. Was he going to transform into a manatee and have me ride him?
No. He was actually walking on the water. I watched as the waves swirled and broke around his feet, mesmerized.
He stopped and looked back at me. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah.” I hurried out to join him.
It was a disconcerting experience. The water gave a little under my feet, and the splash against my boots was both wet and not in some bizarre way. As we got farther out, past the breakers, the spell wasn’t able to keep us walking flat any longer, and the sensation became somewhat akin to climbing sand dunes—but, sand dunes that moved under your feet, lifting you and sending you skidding down the other side with your arms wind milling for balance.
Daiman, annoyingly, seemed to have no trouble with it at all.
Eshe had supposedly hidden her island in this world, but we were nearly on top of it before I saw it. It appeared first as a sudden coldness in the air, and then the coldness was revealed as a shadow that seemed to come from nowhere. When the island appeared out of thin air in front of me, I found I’d been half-expecting it. Not five feet from the shore, I stared up at the rocky spit of land wearily.
“Let’s get this over with.” I waded past Daiman, thoroughly soaking my boots in the waves on the tiny beach, and made for what appeared to be a staircase cut into the rock.
“Wait.” He reached out to grab my arm. “Before you start up….” The look on my face must have been forbidding, because he faltered. He recovered admirably, however. “Before you start up, you should know about Eshe. She’s … old fashioned.”
“So be polite?” I shrugged. “I can do that.”
“You know how to be polite like a Ptolemy?” He was clearly done with my not-caring attitude. “Because when I said old-fashioned, I meant Egyptian.”
“The Ptolemies were Greek,” I informed him. I sighed. “But, no. I don’t know any of that. Care to enlighten me? It’s the only way you’ll get me off your hands.”
“I don’t want you—” He sighed, opened his mouth and closed it, and shook his head. “Just give her respect,” he said quietly. “She’s your elder, it’s paramount that you not talk back to her.”
“After five thousand years, I should think I’ve learned not to get too upset by back-talk,” a new voice interrupted us.
I got the distinct pleasure of seeing Daiman jump and go pale. Then I looked around … and I was pretty sure my jaw dropped. I knew I had seen this woman before. I would have known it even if Daiman hadn’t told me that she once trained me. But there was no memory or picture alive that could have captured that face.
Eshe was old. Ancient. It showed in every movement, every glance, every word, and yet her hair was still black and glossy, her copper skin smooth, and her carriage unbowed. She looked like a force of nature, something as eternal as a mountain but given human form. To look at her, one might have thought she was a goddess. I wondered wryly what the difference was.
“Daiman Bradach.” Eshe swept down the staircase. Her robes were white, a pleated linen that called to mind all of the old hieroglyphs from Egypt. “Child of Eire. And what does old Taliesen think of his student serving the Acadamh, hmm?”
Daiman stood frozen as she came to stare up at him. She barely came halfway up his chest, but her gaze made his shoulders hunch.
“You know me?” he managed.
Eshe snorted. “Of course I know you, boy. I know everything important that goes on. I know more about what’s inside that head of yours than you do.” She punctuated her words by stabbing at his chest, eyes narrowing, but gave an elegant shrug a moment later. “Although you did surprise me a few days ago, rebelling against Terric like that. What turns a hunting dog into someone else’s guard, I wonder? Then again….” She looked over at me and her gaze seemed to pierce me all the way through. “Nicola always did have a way with people.”
She made her way over to me slowly, staring me down, and I said the only thing I could think of:
“I don’t remember learning from you, but Daiman says I did.”
She looked at me, just looked, and I remembered Daiman saying that gestures and spells were only an aid. Eshe, accomplished at sorcery as she was, was peering into my head without so much as laying a finger on me.
“Yes,” she said finally. “So I see. And you can forget your request, the answer is no.”
“What request?” Daiman asked, at the same time as I said, “But—”
“But nothing,” Eshe said flatly. “No. I won’t do it.”
“She needs her power unblocked!” Daiman said angrily. He stepped back when Eshe turned at look at him. “It’s true,” he insisted. His voice was fierce. “The block is failing, and so are the spells over her memory. They need to be taken away.”
“I wasn’t arguing with that, druid.” Eshe somehow managed to look wearily amused without moving so much as a muscle in her face. “I was talking about her request.”
“It would be best,” I said quietly. “You know it would be safest.”
“It would be neither.” She lifted an eyebrow. “If you took the time to think for once, you’d know that. You were always impulsive. I should never have trained you before.” Her eyes raked over me. “Now … there’s a chance.” She turned to climb up the stairs, muttering to herself. “Four thousand years old and taken in by talent, what a fool I was. Does she fool me twice? I wonder.”
“Wait.” I cast a desperate look at Daiman and went to scramble up the stairs behind Eshe, barely missing the trailing skirts of her robes. “Someone named Philip is looking for me. He wants my power again.”
“So don’t give it to him,” Eshe said simply. “Gods alive, young people. Always making such a fuss out of everything.”
“Hey.” I grabbed her arm. “Listen to me!”
The look she gave me would have melted stone. I pulled my hand away, suddenly glad I still had it.
She stared at me for a long time, and I was aware of the gulls and the waves and Daiman staring up at us.
“You have a great deal to make up,” she said finally. “Ask yourself how you will do so without your magic, hmm?”
I looked down at the ground.
“And tell that poor boy to come upstairs and get some dinner,” she added. “And stop being so rude to him.”
“Eshe—”
&
nbsp; But she was already gone. I looked down the stairs at Daiman, who was pretending he hadn’t heard any of that.
“Apparently there’s dinner.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “You’re supposed to come up and have some.”
He nodded silently and started up the stairs, and we fell into step with one another. We were almost to the top when he said quietly, “So that’s Eshe. That wasn’t quite what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know, flashes of light, dramatic voices?” He shrugged his shoulders. “But she’s like my grandma.”
“Well, on the plus side, that’s less scary.”
“You clearly didn’t know my grandma.” He shook his head and opened the heavy door into what looked like a Viking longhouse. “After you.”
I nodded, and then remembered Eshe’s admonition. “Thank you.”
He only nodded, but I caught him smiling as we slipped into the darkness of Eshe’s house.
19
Dinner was a strange affair. It was served in what I gathered was the Egyptian style from Eshe’s childhood, with a single bowl in the center of the table, from which all of us ate with our fingers. Between courses, we washed our hands in bowls of water by our places, scented with flowers I was fairly sure didn’t exist in the world I knew.
We ate fish caught fresh from the sea, roots and seaweed, and a stew of lentils that was made with what seemed like dozens of spices, and which tasted absolutely divine. I saw no servants. The bowls appeared and disappeared on their own, and I wondered if Eshe lived here entirely alone.
Our hostess refused to speak of my magic over dinner—or after it. She kept Daiman back after the meal, but I was sent away. I protested, only to receive a glare that seemed liable to melt my bones if I were on the receiving end of it for too long. I left hastily, and was guided by helpful breezes to a room with a little mat on the floor. Robes to sleep in were folded neatly on top, and a copper tub filled with hot water appeared suddenly in the corner, only to disappear promptly once I was done bathing.
I lay awake for what felt like hours, waiting for Daiman’s footsteps so that I might ask him what Eshe had wanted. I heard nothing, however, and despite my best efforts, I fell into one of the most vivid memories I had seen yet: Terric, unleashing the spell that had nearly ended my life. It was amazing how much younger he looked, how heavily the years could weigh against a person even when they did not age.
I tried to study his face, but instead I relived the moment, over and over. In horror, I realized that up until the moment the spell left his fingertips, I had not believed he could hurt me. When I saw at last that he could, that he was powerful enough, it was too late—and I had only a split-second of horror, with the sure knowledge that I was going to die.
It was amazing, how long a split second could last.
I lay trapped in that moment, until a hand on my shoulder shook me awake in the darkness. I sat up with a gulp of sea air, and found Eshe staring down at me with something like pity.
“Come along,” she said briskly.
“Why?”
“To learn magic, girl, what else?” She disappeared out the door and I hurried to catch up, robes hiked up in my hands.
The winds from the ocean were so strong that it took both of us to push our way out of the double doors, and the wind promptly took the door and flung it against the side of the building with a bang. It was viciously cold, salt-spray whipping at my hair and plastering the robes to my skin.
And then Eshe turned to look at me, and there was a moment of calm in the storm.
It is one thing to have an affinity for death, to touch a single life and guide it into the dark. It is another thing to change something as vast as the wind or the ocean without even a gesture. Even knowing how powerful and ancient Eshe was, it made me shiver.
“So what is it you want first, hmm?” She was watching me closely, as if to catch a lie. “Your magic or your memories?”
I was shivering violently. “Neither. I want—”
“No more of that.”
My temper broke. “Why not?” I demanded.
“For many reasons, some of which I have already told you.” Her brows raised, and she sighed. “Not least of all that it’s impossible.”
“It isn’t impossible,” I said fiercely. “Nothing in magic is impossible. If no one will help me do this, I will do it myself.” I wasn’t best pleased to see her smile. “What?”
“In some ways, you are hardly recognizable.” Eshe folded her arms inside her sleeves, still smiling. “And in some ways, you haven’t changed in the slightest. You were never one to let anything stand between you and a goal.”
It was impossible to miss the warning in her voice, and I felt it wash over me like a chill.
Where others might have left such a sideways reminder stand on its own, however, Eshe was not one to shrink from hard truths. “So you had best make very sure, Nicola, that the goals you pursue are worth pursuing—because you are likely to achieve them. Remember what happened the last time you did such a thing.”
I looked away from her, out at the sea. “I know what happened,” I said quietly. “But I don’t remember it.”
“You will.” There was definitely pity in her gaze now. “I will unchain your memories first, for they are creeping into your mind now, aren’t they?”
I nodded. It took a moment to find words. “They come when I sleep.”
“Sleep.” Her smile was knowing. “A strange place, the sleeping mind. But do not fear. The memories are over and done with. The power they have is only what you give them.” She laughed at my sour expression. “I forgot you were never one for platitudes. For all that you became, young one, I’ve missed you.”
“Why?” My voice was high, lost. This was the first good thing I’d had to grasp at from my past. Someone missed me, someone who wasn’t Philip. The thought of him still made me feel uncomfortable.
Eshe took her time in answering.
“You did magic as naturally as you breathed,” she said finally. Her eyes were focused on some point beyond me, something long ago. “You had a talent like none I’d seen, and no fear in it. I’ve never had time for fear in those I trained.” She shook her head. “And you hated injustice. There was nothing you could bear less than for an innocent to be hurt.”
The words were like a blow. “That turned out well.”
“It turned out how it often turns out.” Eshe gave a rueful smile, full of five thousand years of experience. “Let passion overrule justice, and everything will fester. Yes, you don’t like platitudes, but that one is true. How many freedom fighters turn into the very thing they hate? How many, spurred by injustice, set unimaginable cruelty loose in the world? More than you would think.
“Your problem, Nicola, was always that passion—you could not bear inaction or indecision, even in yourself. You leapt to conclusions, and from conclusions to action, too quickly. You had a silver tongue, you always did, and that only made it worse. You became accustomed to convincing anyone of anything, and when you failed at the Assembly … you did not take it well.”
“Why did I do it?” The words spilled out of me. “Just tell me. I don’t want to remember it, just tell me why.”
“I don’t know,” Eshe admitted. “I truly don’t. I know the words you spoke at the Assembly, when you said we would be hunted, that we would be culled like animals. But I don’t know if you believed those words. It was a long road that set you on the path to what you did, and you had already been walking it for many years. If you came here for easy answers, or easy assurances … I can give you none.”
I bowed my head.
“Nor can I shield you from what you are and what you were,” she reminded me. “But nor should I. You think only of what you stand to lose when you have your memories back, but why is that? Why do you not think of what you stand to gain? If you destroy your magic, think of what else you must give up: your immortality.” Her voice turned amused. “And yon d
ruid.”
My cheeks flamed as I looked around at her, and she gave a delighted laugh.
“That isn’t—it’s not—you aren’t understanding—” I broke off and tried to gather my composure. “Though it would pain me to give up such a friendship, I must think of the greater good.”
“Oh, aye.” She mimicked a Scots brogue with frightening accuracy before returning to her normal speech. “Well, then. Shall we begin?”
“Just the memories first?” I asked quietly. “And you’ll leave the block on my magic in place?”
“Yes.” Though reluctant, she nodded. “There will be turmoil, when the memories are released. Perhaps it is best that you do not have your powers at that moment. Now come here, and let me see what they did to you.”
I stood obediently while her mind looked through my own. Unlike Daiman’s spell, which came with the rustling of leaves and the smell of greenery, Eshe’s was pure sorcery, and it gave me a bit of a headache. She did not put her hands on me, but I could feel her in my head all the same.
At length, she shook her head.
“Now, there’s a puzzle.”
“What is?”
“No one has known where you were all these years.” She gave a sigh. “Of course, most people believed Terric had killed you, so they weren’t looking.”
“Most people—you didn’t?”
“No,” she said shortly. She did not seem inclined to explain. She gestured to my head. “I thought that when I saw the spell, I would know who had done this to you. But there are only more questions. Most of those spells were made by different people.”
“What?”
“The blocks. I thought there would be one, I thought you had been wiped and set loose again, wandering until you remembered who you were. Not so. You were passed from place to place, your mind and your magic blocked every time you began to remember yourself—I’m guessing, anyway. It happened many times.”