by P. D. Kalnay
“Where did you learn to make these?” Ivy asked when she’d tried the last dish.
“One has a bunch of cookbooks in his library,” I said.
Ivy looked strangely relieved.
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“Me either, until today.”
“Thank you for making dinner.”
“No problem. Sorry I haven’t helped out more.”
“You were busy.”
“You’ve been busy too. I’ll do more around here from now on.”
Ivy was silent for a while. Then she took a second and larger helping of one of the fruit-filled loaves.
“This is delicious,” she said. “I haven’t had hexan bread since I was a young girl.”
“One should get most of the credit. I just followed his instructions.”
“I shall thank him later.”
“You gathered more things from the warehouses than I realised.”
“I knew they’d be picked clean when others arrived. Most of what remained has already been scavenged by the people from the ship.”
“The ones I’ve seen don’t look to have brought much with them,” I said.
Aleen and Alak might not have had more than the clothes on their backs… if they’d worn clothes.
“The folk who accompanied the knights are poor. That is why they came and swore themselves into servitude. I have spoken to some out in the fields.”
“Aleen, a satyr lady I met, said she’d sworn herself to serve Sir Balar. How does that work?”
It was nice having a normal conversation with Ivy.
“Those I met have sworn a lifetime of service to one or another of the knights. They must serve until their master dies.”
“How is that different from slavery?”
“Each entered the contract willingly. They have done so in exchange for a boon or payment. For all of that, they are now little more than slaves.”
Aleen had given up her freedom, just to buy a future on Knight’s Haven for her son. It seemed like a crappy deal, and I told Ivy about them.
“It may have been the best option available to her,” Ivy said. “Proudspire is a port city and a small nation unto itself. It has an unsavoury reputation. A mother, alone with her child, would no doubt find life there… difficult.”
“It still seems like Sir Balar is taking advantage of their situation.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t help these guys anymore,” I said. “You’re still restoring the fields aren’t you?”
“I am, but I’m not doing it for the Order. The people here will need food, and we cannot leave the island, meaning that we will need the goodwill of our neighbours, unless we lock ourselves in here for the rest of our lives.”
“You’ve been doing more than I realised. You’ve kept us fed, and you’re feeding those other people…”
“I have been happy doing those things.”
She sounded sincere, but Ivy had been generally angry at me for a while. I figured she was just trying to put a good face on things; I hadn’t been carrying my weight.
“I’ll do more to help out around here,” I said again.
Ivy stared up at me. She looked thoughtful. Then she smiled.
“You are an idiot,” she said softly.
I couldn’t argue, having recently come to the same conclusion. We ate the rest of the food on the tray in silence.
“How are your lessons progressing?” Ivy asked when the last of it was gone.
That sounded like a loaded question.
“All right, I guess. I have nothing to compare them to. Gran only tried to teach me the one time, and that went poorly.”
“How so?”
I told Ivy about the second coffee table I’d murdered.
“That shouldn’t have been possible,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what Gran and Mr. Ryan said too.”
“What have you learned from that woman?”
“Not much. I’m still trying to feel the air around me, but I’m hoping to be able to speak over distances soon. I’ve grown more sensitive to air currents than I was before.” I shrugged. “To be honest, I’ve learned more from One.”
“What has he taught you?”
“I learned the basic word set for enchantments last night, from the Titans’ Language, and–”
I cut off at the look Ivy gave me.
“You learned all of them in an evening?” she asked. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Not all of them, just the basic ones, and I practiced writing a few others I already knew.”
Ivy stood up abruptly and left the balcony. She returned with a stick of charcoal and thrust it at me.
“Write them,” she said.
It was bossy, but I was happy not having her mad at me. I took a half hour to write the symbols from the basic set. Many are complex and stroke order is critical. Ivy watched in silence, and I explained what each symbol meant as I finished it.
“There,” I said. “See, I told you I learned them. I’m a little slow writing them still.”
Ivy stared down at the balcony. I’d used most of it as an impromptu memo pad. After a few minutes of silence I got tired of waiting.
“Did I get some wrong?” I asked.
“These are perfect. Better than I could do, and I’m unusually skilled for my age. Perhaps, I should not be surprised.”
“Surprised by what?”
“Learning these words took me six years of study. Many require decades to comprehend a subset of them, and most have great difficulty with at least a few, depending on aptitude. There are enchanters who study for centuries, managing only a handful of the primary set. I myself know just eight additional words. That knowledge was hard-won.”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised. I told you I could see how the doors and the protection around the little warehouse worked.”
“They used these words in the enchantments?”
“Yeah, the warehouse only used a few, and the doors have a couple of additional ones. What did you think I was talking about?”
“I assumed those enchantments were formed from our language. I can’t see wards in stone or the air.”
“You can enchant things using the Fae language?” I’d never thought of that.
“Of course you can! Most enchantments use ordinary writing or none at all. Only greater enchantments use these.” She reached up and grasped her necklace. “Do all the things you crafted contain the Primal Tongue? I assumed that what I couldn’t see was similar to the petals and inscribed with the language of the Fae.”
I hadn’t thought about it.
“Nah, I think all the other parts are covered in this.” I pointed at the balcony. “What’s the big deal? You said we just know things because we’re fae didn’t you?”
After talking to Lyrian, I was certain that wasn’t quite true.
“We know our language from birth, as most peoples of the First World do. It’s a part of us. Perhaps dragons know these words in the same way, but no one else does. You haven’t told Lyrian any of this, have you?”
“I told her I made your necklace. That’s no secret though. And, I told her that I enchanted it by accident, but she didn’t believe me.”
“Who would?”
“She thinks I learned these words from Gran, I think. I didn’t tell her otherwise.”
“Don’t. You shouldn’t tell anyone until we discover what this means.”
“OK, I hadn’t planned to tell her much of anything. She’s kind of jerk.”
Ivy raised an eyebrow.
“I’m glad you’re different from the regular fae,” I said.
“I feel the same way about you.”
She seemed sad when she said it.
Chapter 16 – A Pound of Flesh
Weeks passed, and Ivy and I fell into a regular routine again. She spent her days out on the slopes of Knight’s Haven, creating a lush paradise, and I spent mine trying to learn how to contro
l my winathen magic. I really did try, but the going was slow. My mornings were spent with Lyrian, who despite what she’d said, proved to be an impatient teacher. I spent the afternoons attempting to overcome my mornings’ failures and my evenings learning more of the Titans’ language from the books that One contained. Marielain Blackhammer had known a lot of words. Somehow, I’d retained a part of that knowledge, but I needed more. I also tried my best to remember to help out around the apartment, but the truth was, I forgot about my promise on more days than I remembered. Ivy and I passed each other like ships in the night, and she looked as tired as I felt.
***
After too many attempts to count, I managed to send my voice down the road to Lyrian. I formed the tube of air which would channel my voice to her. Then I spoke, suspending the vibrating air from my throat in front of me, before sending it along the invisible tube.
“Can you hear me now?”
“Yes.” Lyrian’s voice sounded next to my ear. “Now, try to listen. Reverse the flow and move the ends of the tunnel from my ear to my mouth and do the reverse at your end.”
I shifted the ends of the air tube. That was easy now that I had the hang of it. The tube drew the sound of Lyrian’s voice to my ear.
“Can you hear me?”
I waved to let her know that I could.
“Excellent, now you must learn to control two tunnels, allowing speech with someone without our abilities.”
Two at once? My excitement disappeared—so much for celebration. Most lessons went that way. After a few more hours, I barely managed the second tube of air.
My studies with One had gone better, and I now knew over a hundred words from the language of creation. That might not sound like much, but Ivy said it was more than she’d ever heard of any enchanter learning. I clung to that during my lessons with Lyrian. In regular school things had come easy for me; being the slow kid was a new and miserable experience.
***
The following morning I saw something as I descended the cliff-side staircase. A ship was docked at the central pier. The Northfire had long since moved on, and seeing a new ship was shocking. As usual, I was last to arrive on ‘The Green’, which was what Lyrian called our patch of grass.
“Did you see the new ship?” I asked.
“Hard to miss it, Jakalain. More knights and settlers arrived late last evening. Already, they have spread out in the city.”
“It’ll take a lot more ships to fill up this place,” I said. Havensport looked as though it could hold twenty or thirty thousand residents by my estimation. Only a few hundred had come on the first ship.
“Many more,” Lyrian agreed. “Some neighbourhoods begin to look almost homey.”
I’d walked around, and a few houses and shops were cleaned up, but nothing actually looked good. I frowned.
“Homey may be an exaggeration,” Lyrian conceded.
“Less charred,” I suggested.
“Less charred. Are you prepared to move on to a new topic?”
I’d spent forever learning to talk over a distance and was ready to do anything else. I nodded.
“Our lessons are entirely unorthodox. Is there something in particular you wish to learn?”
“Flying,” I said without hesitation, “or gliding at least.”
Lyrian chuckled.
“Ah, there is a winathen boy inside of you, after all. We can begin with the basics, and attempt jumping, if you give me your word you won’t jump from any cliffs until I say you are ready?”
“OK, what do we do first?”
“You have gained small mastery in the thickening of air. That skill is needed to jump, fall under control, and finally to glide. Our wings are too small to hold us aloft without enchantments.”
I was no aerospace engineer, but that was super-obvious. Wings big enough for a guy my size would have been huge. Lyrian stood.
“I will demonstrate a jump first. This is how all children learn and is safest since you start on the ground.”
Lyrian moved back, and I studied the air around her. She spread her wings and simultaneously thickened two wide columns of air on either side of her. Then she flapped hard and leapt straight up. It was awesome. Lyrian shot twenty feet up, hovered for a second, and then landed softly on the grass. Talking across distances was handy, but this was super cool!
“Did you observe what I did?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Begin with a small jump.”
I spread my wings and tried to replicate the columns of air she’d created. One side ended up being denser than the other, so when I flapped my wings and jumped, the difference caused me to barrel roll—throwing me off the air columns. I’d gotten ten feet of height, and the hard landing on my side was painful.
“I’ve seen worse first attempts,” Lyrian said, “but not many. Try for a smaller, more controlled jump and work your way up.”
My new bruises agreed with her, and I did small jumps for the rest of the day. By the end, I was getting five feet of air under my feet and landing on them most of the time. Jumping was simpler than gliding because the bottom of the air column pushed off of the ground, acting as a spring on the way up, and becoming a shock absorber on the way down. Tall as I was, I’d never dunked a ball in gym class. After the lesson ended, it was hard not jumping around everywhere. When the euphoria wore off, I felt exhausted, and I fell asleep before dinner.
I did little besides jumping for the next week. Lyrian said it was a valuable training method for learning intuitive control. To be honest, I just thought it was fun. I met up with Ivy after a round of training. Lyrian was gone, but I was still out on the boulevard like a regular bouncing fool. Ivy’s laughter brought an end to my jumping, and I turned to face her.
“It’s valuable practice,” I said.
“It looked valuable.” She snickered again.
Ivy had an armful of basket, covered in a wide green leaf.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s your dinner. I traded for it at the market.”
“We have a market?”
That was news to me.
“Yes, one of the smaller markets has reopened. It is mostly bartering for now.”
“What did you get?”
Ivy pulled back the leaf to reveal three silvery blue fish the length of my forearm. They didn’t look like any species I knew, but they were definitely fish. A moment later I caught some of their fishy aroma.
“Meat! We’re having meat!”
“If you want to?”
Fish had always been low on my meat totem pole, but after the last meatless months, I couldn’t have been more excited.
“Let’s go,” I said.
It was early for dinner, but who cared. I took the basket and began climbing the stairs. Ivy was quiet for the first steps. I could tell she had something to say.
“You gonna spit it out?” I asked.
“I don’t trust Lyrian. You spend too much time together.”
“I don’t trust Lyrian either, but Gran said she’d send people who were in her debt to help me. From what you’ve told me, anyone would do whatever they could to not owe Gran.”
“That is true,” Ivy grudgingly admitted.
“I only trust one person in this whole world… you. Although, I think we can probably trust One, Two, and Three.”
“Yes. They have no aura for me to sense, but I believe they are trustworthy.”
“Kinda hard to imagine them plotting against us.”
It was like imagining teddy bears plotting against you. Ivy must of have felt the same because she cracked a smile.
“There’s nobody else to teach me winathen magic, and no other tutors have shown up. I’m learning a little petrathen magic with One’s help, but without Lyrian, I can’t figure out the rest.”
“I won’t deny the logic of what you say,” Ivy said. “I still don’t like it.”
“We’re stuck here for the rest of our lives, and our neighbours are mo
stly jerks. I think we have to learn all we can and make sure we’re prepared for–”
Screams rose from the city below cutting me off. Ivy and I tried to discern the cause of the commotion, but nothing was visible through the broken rooftops. Then something dark and sinuous raced along the boulevard. It was long, sleek, and dappled in shadows that clung to it, near the middle of the afternoon, when there should have been none. The creature changed direction with impossible speed. From a distance it looked more like a dark, sinister streamer on the end of an invisible stick than a living thing. That was before it found a victim.
A goblin stepped out of a partially repaired shop across the boulevard, probably looking to see what all the noise was about. When he saw the thing down the road, he took a step back towards the doorway. That was as far as he got.
“What is that?” I asked.
The monster had already finished devouring the guy. Like a snake, there wasn’t much chewing involved.
“Wyvern,” Ivy said.
I’d read about those in Gran’s library.
“From the Black Wastes? The natural enemy of the unicorn?”
Ivy turned to me with a surprised look.
“How do you know that?”
“I read about them. How would one get here?”
“Hurry, Jack!”
Ivy grabbed my wrist and tugged me into motion, up the last steps, and onto the landing. Once we were through the doors, she wished them shut. Ivy looked terrified.
“Someone brought a nest here,” she said. “Only a crazy person would, but someone has!”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“It’s similar to the men who set off bombs, in your movies. In the wild, wyvern hatch and kill their nest mates until only the strongest survives. The Black Wastes can’t support many creatures, and the wyvern can only breed in the Wastes. Outside of their natural habitat, they’ll kill all the easier prey first.”
“You mean–”
“Yes, the people below will be killed, one by one. When the last is dead, the wyvern will turn on each other until a single survivor remains. Perhaps the Knights of the Order will be safe behind their walls, but I doubt it. Wyvern can climb shear surfaces. The Ileholt, an ancient fortress that had never fallen was decimated when a saboteur smuggled in a nest.”