Halfax

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “This is where you grew up?” Myn said.

  “Not entirely,” Jade said. “I had some years with my family, and a time with a terrible clan who adopted me. But this is certainly where I became who I am.”

  “Wait here,” Halfax said, crouching down.

  “Right,” Jade said, taking Myn’s hand and helping her to the ground. “In a place like this, one can’t be too careful.”

  “What sort of a place is this?” Myn said with wonder.

  “A meeting of ley lines.” Jade said. “Magic runs thick here. That’s why whatever wizard first built this tower chose this place. The forest itself can fuel potent spells like the enchantment that keeps this place lush and bountiful regardless of the weather.”

  Halfax crept with slow care into the idyllic glade. It was a bit comical, to see the enormous, powerful creature moving into a near-paradise as though he were wading into an ambush.

  “What is he worried about? This place looks like it is completely deserted. The animals haven’t even grazed on the grass or eaten the plants,” Myn said.

  “Animals can sometimes sense magic. It keeps them away. But they aren’t the only ones who can detect it. For some it has an irresistible allure.”

  “Wizards and witches and people like them?” Myn said.

  “Yes. And other things too. Mystic creatures. Otherworldly influences. Some people in the old days, who no doubt thought they were terribly clever, called this place ‘The Ravenous Woods.’ It was said that a whole squad of soldiers vanished without a trace. Creatures called husks—wandering entities in search of a spirit to consume—have gotten the blame over the years. So have the spirits themselves. And dragons. Undying creatures called liches…”

  Myn shivered. “You’ve always taught me that, regardless of what so many people believe, magic isn’t bad.”

  “Magic isn’t always bad. But, like anything else, it can always be a threat.”

  Halfax inspected the entirety of the glade and as much as he could of the structure. For the tower, that meant little more than craning his neck to gaze into and sniff at the windows. When he was satisfied, he returned to them.

  “No one lives here. Not since our time here. But it does not feel right,” Halfax warned. “There is something wrong. Something has changed about this place. I do not want you to enter the tower.”

  “The life of my husband and the future of our kingdom depends upon it. As much as I trust your intuition, I am not leaving without what I came for.”

  “Jade—”

  “Your duty is to Myn, not to me. Keep her here and keep her safe. I am going inside.”

  “My duty requires that I keep Myn safe. Nothing in my duty requires I allow you to risk your life,” Halfax rumbled.

  “If your duty is to me then I order you to allow my mother to do as she must,” Myn said.

  Halfax slowly turned his gaze to the girl. He seemed unswayed, and unamused.

  “That isn’t how it works, Myn,” Jade said softly. “Halfax, can you tell me what you think will happen if I go inside?”

  “I don’t know. But there is a will hanging over this place. I can smell it. I can almost see it.”

  “Is it a dark will?”

  “I don’t know. But it yearns for someone to enter.” His jaw tightened. “It isn’t to be trusted.”

  “Then I shall keep my eyes and ears open,” Jade said.

  She took a step forward. He swept his tail in front of her.

  “No…” he fumed.

  Her expression became more stern. “Halfax, did you raise a fool?”

  “No.”

  “And do you think I’ve forgotten all you taught me?”

  “No.”

  “And do you suppose that when I left this place I stopped learning all the world could teach?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have everything I need to face whatever is inside. And if not. I have a wonderful and brave dragon outside and a clever and loving daughter to work out what to do.”

  She stepped over his tail and waded through the grass toward the front door. Halfax watched her. The tension was more than apparent in his posture. The way his jaw clenched, the beast could probably grind stone to sand. But he held his ground and he held his tongue.

  Myn looked up to him once her mother had slipped inside.

  “You’re worried about her,” Myn said.

  “Always,” he said.

  “She rules a kingdom now. She commands an army. She can take care of herself now.”

  “It was always my goal to help her find the strength to move past me. But the fact she doesn’t need me anymore does not wipe away everything that came before. Perhaps it is a thing of dragons more than it is a thing of humans. But when a bond is formed, it is not easily broken.”

  He was silent for a moment. When the moment passed, he looked down to her.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For not insisting to go with her.”

  Myn lowered her gaze. “Don’t thank me for that. I want to. But I know what sort of a person I am. I know my luck.”

  He turned his body, to look upon her more directly.

  “Does your mother tell you to stay back? To stay safe rather than follow the paths the world leads you to?”

  “Of course?”

  He leaned closer. Myn felt a flash of anxiety at the huge creature taking so focused an interest in her, but it passed quickly. There was nothing in those eyes that spoke of hostility or threat.

  “Does she?” he repeated.

  “Not in those words,” Myn said.

  “In her action? In her demeanor?”

  “I… No… I guess not. She tells me to be careful.”

  He nodded. “As she should. Your luck is a challenge. It is something to be mindful of, not something to allow to control you. You need to understand it, and learn to overcome it when it stands between you and what you wish to do.”

  “I can’t help that I’m afraid.”

  “I didn’t say not to be afraid. I said don’t let it control you.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t need to be afraid of anything.”

  Halfax hissed a breath. “Do you remember, three years ago, during the summer. You were with your mother and father. There was a festival in the lowlands, close to Five Point.”

  “I think so.”

  “There was strong snow. Strong wind. And behind it…”

  “Oh. The thundersnow. I remember.”

  “Did that frighten you?”

  “No. It is so rare. I was amazed. I remember watching from the window, watching for the flash and waiting for the rumble.”

  Halfax shut his eyes. A subtle shudder shook him. “The rumble…”

  “That frightens you?”

  “I told you how my eye was injured. I know what that flash is. I know what that rumble is. The sound cuts through me.”

  “But during that storm was when the bakery caught fire. The wind whipped it up so much that even with the snow the flames were out of control. We were lucky the manor’s back doors were clear of snow or we might not have…”

  She trailed off as she realized.

  “We weren’t lucky at all, were we? You cleared the doors.”

  He nodded.

  “But how?” she asked.

  “In that storm there was never any risk that human eyes could have seen me.”

  “And even during the thunder, you charged out and did your duty. You weren’t afraid.”

  “You aren’t listening. I was terrified. But there was something that frightened me more. Failing. Losing you… Losing Jade… And knowing I could have stopped it. A dragon lives a long time. The weight of regret is a terrible burden to carry though all those years.”

  He looked to the tower.

  “If I could, I would have kept Jade in this tower where I could shield her from everything the wor
ld might have in store for her. But that is not the way of things. I had the duty to keep her safe. But I did not have the right to keep her life from her. And so, I watch. I feel pride in knowing my part in what she has become. But always, always I worry.”

  #

  Jade crept carefully up the steps of the tower. It had been half a lifetime since she’d been here last, but every brick and every board dripped with memories. The central stone of this step had to be replaced when she turned ten years old. She’d badly smashed her thumb with the hammer trying to shape it and Halfax had to hold her tight until she stopped crying. The shutter for this window used to flap at night and wake her up, so Halfax tore it free.

  Finally, she reached the room that she called her own. She smiled at the thought of it. The highest room in the tower. Guarded by a dragon. It was just as she left it. Shelves of books ringed the room. A bed, still made from the last morning she’d slept in it. The place didn’t even have a musty smell. She might as well have left it that morning.

  The queen allowed herself a moment to reminisce. She’d had some wonderful times here. She took a seat on the bed and shut her eyes. It was partially to attempt to envision where she’d left the book that would contain the cure. But she also just wanted to bask in the little sensations of this place. The unique way her every motion echoed off the circular walls and the cone of a roof. The smell of permanent spring outside the window. And that subtle scent of age that came with a large collection of ancient tomes.

  “Nice to be home, isn’t it?”

  Jade’s eyes shot open and she sprung to her feet. The voice was not her own, nor was it Halfax or Myn. It almost wasn’t a voice at all. It was more as though the creaks of floorboards and groans of a settling home had combined with the echoes of the past and crafted themselves into a whisper.

  Something had changed in the seconds that she’d shut her eyes. The light of afternoon had shifted to the golden glow of sunset. The place was warm now. She could hear the crackle of a fire below her in the tower’s fireplace.

  “What is going on? Who is there?” Jade said, reaching for the knife at her belt.

  “I am here. Here is what I am. Here is who I am.”

  “Show yourself,” Jade demanded.

  “If that is what you wish, I shall attempt it.”

  A soft wind puffed up from between the floorboards. Dust blossomed and caught in the sun shining through the window. The particles shifted and stirred in the light. The slow, wafting motion gradually gathered a sparse scattering of the dust into something resembling a human form. It was barely there, but it was enough that Jade had somewhere to look.

  “This is the best I can do. For now. My mind is clearing, but slowly.”

  “What have you done?” Jade said, stalking slowly past the sparse form to look out the window.

  The tower’s surroundings were not as she remembered them. Or, rather, they were precisely as she remembered them, but not the way they’d been a minute before. The garden was blooming. The grass was sheared short. A clothesline had tunics and trousers hanging from it. Their size was suitable for a child.

  Jade and Halfax were nowhere to be seen.

  “What have you done with my daughter!” Jade fumed, eyes sharp with fury. “And where is Halfax?”

  “They are where you left them. I would give them to you if I could, but that is beyond my ability.”

  “You are the one who took them away!”

  “I did not. They are still there. But you are here. You are where you once were. Where you belong.”

  “Then take me back.”

  “You came here for a reason. Let me help you.”

  “I don’t need your help. Take me back.”

  “But you’ve just come home. Stay a while.”

  Jade turned to the hatch on the floor that led to the stairs. She didn’t remember shutting it, but that was the least of her concerns. She pulled it open and rushed down the stairs. They were rougher, more worn than they were on the way up. Repairs she’d done in her later years of living here had been undone. She walked near the edges of the steps, spiraling down. As she walked, the landing at the foot of the stairs seemed never to get any closer. She looped her way around. In her head, she counted off these steps. She’d lived here for years. She’d navigated these stairs in pitch black. The tally ticked upward. Double the number of steps she knew there to be. Triple the number. Her legs and lungs burned as she tried to reach a bottom that remained just out of her reach.

  When she stopped to catch her breath, a glance over her shoulder revealed the hatch, barely a handful of steps above her. And in the doorway, the mysterious form.

  “You look tired,” it whispered softly. “Why don’t you sit? Remember the seat where you would study. With the trusty lamp?”

  She trudged back up the steps. Opposite the bed, her old table and chair were set just as they would have been if she had selected a book to read through the night. The lamp flickered with a warm light. It was now the only source of light in the room, as the evening sun of just a few minutes ago had been replaced by a cloudy, moonless night.

  Jade crept slowly to the chair and took a seat.

  “What did you come here for? Tell me. I can help you.”

  “I need a cure. It was in one of the books here. I remember it. I need to know how to cure cutleaf poisoning.”

  “Yes. I think I know the one. Please, relax. I shall fetch it for you.”

  The dusty form wafted away and reformed at one of the shelves.

  “What are you?” Jade said, eyes looked.

  “I am… Forgive me… the words are coming slowly… I am this place. The sum total of the experiences, the occupants, the history. I am the most unique parts of my guests amplified.”

  “You weren’t here when I was here last.”

  “I was. Or at least, that which would be me was here at that time. I was… becoming. And now I am. Here. This is the book. Forgive me, I do not know the page.”

  Jade stood and approached. The figure dispersed as she drew nearer, and directly in front of where it had been, a very thick tome. Instantly, Jade recognized it. It was indeed the book that held the cure. She pulled it free and thumped it to the table. A rush of dust from the table top curled up and reformed the half-seen figure. A few cobwebs rattled free from the rafters and seemed to drape over the shape, giving it a subtle robed appearance.

  She opened the book. It would be laborious to find the page that held the cure. One by one she turned pages and scanned down them.

  “It feels good to have you here. It focuses me,” the whisper said.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “I do not. Perhaps you would select one? You are a part of my history. It would be fitting.”

  “I am not in the habit of helping mystic beings who hold me prisoner.”

  “You are not a prisoner. You are a guest. A resident.”

  “Guests and residents can leave.”

  “Perhaps I can find the words… Yes… Perhaps… Genius Loci. That is the name for me. Or the name that would seem to fit best. Yes. It was Wolloff who said it.”

  “Wolloff… why do I know that name…” Jade said.

  “A former resident. Long, long ago.”

  The room began to shift. The table and chair she used remained, but around her, the contents of the shelves shuffled and reconfigured. Improvements she’d made in her youth were unmade. The room rearranged itself, ticking backward through years of usage. Faster and faster it changed, until it was a blur. When it finally slowed to the point of visibility, there was another figure in the room.

  Somehow, Jade knew this wasn’t the being who had trapped her here. This was some echo of the past, a remembered occupant. He was dressed in a white robe, and had the bearded and dour countenance shared by so many of the educated men in the north.

  His mouth moved as though he were speaking, but the words took some time to reach her ears. At first it so
unded like they were echoing down a long hallway, but by the end of his third sentence, they were clear as if he were truly beside her. A baffled-looking young man stood opposite him. He clutched a crystal in one hand and skimmed a spell book in the other.

  “The name for such a presence is Genius Loci. The spirit of a place,” said the gruff old man, presumably Wolloff. “Rare. But it can happen.”

  “But what is it?” asked the unknown younger man.

  “It’s when a place gets a mind of its own. If magic is strong, and history has seasoned it again and again, a place can sometimes learn to think for itself. I wish I could say the same of my students.”

  “Why do I need to know about it?”

  “Because you are to be a white wizard, or had you forgotten why you came here? And thus you should know the things that could cause harm without explanation.”

  “Harm?”

  “It is a mind. Name one thing in this world that has a mind and can be trusted to be virtuous at all times. Like all things, it will try to grow. And if a thing can have a mind it can go mad. If a place goes mad, it can…”

  The voice echoed away again, and the room blurred itself back to a configuration familiar to Jade. There was little question in her mind as to the motivation this being had in ending the recollection where it did.

  “Yes. Genius Loci. I suppose I might be called Loci, then. To take the name Genius would seem boastful.”

  “Is this really so momentous a place? That it could weave itself into a consciousness?” Jade asked, turning back to the book.

  “A place is as important as the people who call it home. Taken as a whole, I have hosted many of the most important people in our history. Myranda Celeste. One of the original chosen. And Myn, another of them. Caya, who would become Queen. At my very edge, Lain, another of the chosen, and who history remembers as the Red Shadow. Yourself. Halfax. King Terrilius. And now Myn. Countless wizards and apprentices. This place is a crossroads of history,” Loci said.

  He, and the voice was now certainly male, was more visible now than he had been, though in a different way. He lurked at the corner of her vision. She felt certain she could see a blank-faced, robed man, but when her eyes shifted to focus upon it, it was always a trick of the light. A collection of books half-shrouded in shadow that at a glance might have been confused for a figure.