The Forgotten Tale

by J. M. Frey

  “Caerdac,” the rogue lad says, cautious. He does not, however, give his family name, which I think is smart of him. “And this is Bradri, and you can’t just—”

  “We’re on a quest we can—”

  “Writer’s callouses! Kin, stop arguing with the boy and get on your damned horse, we can’t—”

  “—do what we like, especially since we’ve got to ride all the way to the Mooncall sea.” Kintyre continues, shouting louder to drown out his trothed's admonishments. “And then find some sort of boat to—”

  “This is my home!” the dragonet spits. “And I’ll not have you steal from me twice —”

  “Peace, dearest! They took nothing that —”

  “—cross the damned—”

  The sound of rock shattering upon rock halts every tongue. We all look to Wyndam, who threw the stone against the cave wall to gain our attention. The horses side-step and nicker nervously.

  Wyndam drops the second rock he had been holding in case his first didn’t work. Then he makes a wild gesture that takes me a moment to interpret, gesturing to himself, then mimicking the toss of a boat upon the waves with his hand, as a child might do in a bathtub. Bevel understands what it is Wyndam is suggesting much more swiftly than I. Though I am only a few beats behind him.

  “Listen, Caerdac,” Bevel says, moving forward and putting his hands on the rogue’s shoulders, like a concerned teacher or mentor might. Silhouetted against the sky, the dragonet mantles and hisses in warning. “Far be it for me to have any right to ask this of you, especially as we are trespassing, but we are going into a situation where we cannot know what lies ahead. I know there is no love between us, but I would be grateful if you would do us a favor.”

  “What favor?” Kintyre asks, still lost.

  “How grateful?” the rogue says at the same time, eyes narrowing, calculated and cunning.

  “You cannot want for money,” Bevel says, gesturing to the pile of gold shards the dragonet has wept.

  Kintyre and Bevel exchange a glance and a frown, communicating in that couples-only language that I was once so jealous of and now have for myself with my wife. Did have. Still have.

  “Uh,” Bevel says when the eyebrow waggling and lip licking is complete. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t . . . um,” the Rogue begins.

  The longer this game plays out, the more impatient I get. “Forget it, then. I have no time for you to make up your mind. Brother, let’s go.”

  “Patience, Forssy, maybe we should—”

  “No!” I shout. I am already heading over to Capplederry. The great cat remains still as I climb up the harness behind Wyndam. “Enough dawdling. You two, mount your horses. I will not leave Pip and Alis to the mercy of this creature and the Viceroy a moment longer.”

  “A rescue mission?” Bradri chirrups.

  “We were tracking the . . . the weather witch,” Kintyre says, with only the slightest hitch. Clearly he has decided not to reveal all. For once. It seems my brother the hero has indeed grown wiser.

  “She stole my sword,” the rogue says sadly.

  “And she has stolen my wife and child,” I cut in. “So if we could cease this dawdling . . .”

  “A hatchling?” the dragonet hisses, eyes popping wide and eye ridges furrowing in dismay, its mantle flaring in alarm. It raises its head, sniffing the air, as if it could find the trail.

  “Dearest,” the rogue says in alarm.

  “No!” the dragonet says back. “Not that nice lady who told us to talk instead of fight. Not a hatchling.”

  “We aren’t going to—”

  “We are,” the dragonet insists.

  “Just wait!” Bevel says. “We know where she’s going; we don’t need you to follow. We only need you to fly ahead and secure transportation.”

  “Would you?” I ask, feeling a pull of desperate hope hook itself in between the bones of my ribs, tugging me toward them. “They went east, we think, to the Ashmarrow Isle, to the Iv—”

  “We haven’t said yes, yet!” the Rogue lad says, overwhelmed by my vehemence.

  “Dearest,” the dragonet pouts. “Just think. We promised to find ways to better the world. What is better than this?”

  The rogue sighs and pats the dragonet’s neck. “Oh, very well, you soft-hearted lout. But if we get killed for this, it’s your fault. I’ll haunt you.” The rogue and the dragonet shoulder their way past Wyndam and Capplederry and step into the open.

  “How fast can she fly?” Bevel asks, trailing them with the horses’ reins in his fists. I don’t ask Bevel how he knows the dragonet is female, and I’ll make no assumptions until the creature tells me one way or another.

  “Fast enough,” the dragonet says irritably.

  “Fast enough to catch up to a weather witch?” Kintyre asks.

  “Yes!” the dragonet snarls. “And if we do, we shall—” The dragon stops, cut off as the rogue climbs upon its back. There is no harness, not like Capplederry, but the lad hooks his ankles behind some of the small horns sprouting above the dragonet’s shoulders, sitting comfortably in a convenient gap between the ridge of spine-fins.

  “Do nothing!” I interrupt.

  “But the hatchling,” the dragonet protests.

  “Please,” I say. “Don’t let her know you’re coming. For the sake of my . . . my hatchling. I fear she will harm her if the witch feels cornered. Once you have secured transport, you can follow at a distance and tell us where they go. But I would prefer that you return straight to us”

  The rogue lad looks torn, but ultimately agrees. “And once we’ve got the ship?”

  “We’ll be going by way of the Forest Path through the Stoat,” Bevel says.

  “We’ll look for you there,” the rogue answers in return.

  Impatience tugging at me, I say: “And if we miss you, we’ll meet you in . . .” I look to Bevel.

  “Long Pond Harbor,” he supplies. “You know the Shift Berth Dock?” The rogue nods. “Get them to tie up there.”

  “Right,” Caerdac says. “We’ll sort payment later,” he adds, pointing deliberately at Kintyre.

  “Agreed,” my brother says.

  With one last, lingering look at Wyndam—a calculating, narrow-eyed look that surprises me—the lad and dragon are in the air and speeding toward the easterly horizon. I shout “Thank you!” after them, and can only hope they heard me.

  “Fortuitous,” Kintyre says, mounting Dauntless and clucking the horse forward. He raises his hand to his eyebrows, watching the silhouette of boy and dragon fade into the endless blue sky for as long as they are visible.

  “You are the main character,” I remind him. “There is no such thing as fortune for Kintyre Turn.” However fortunate finding the exact sort of magical creature we require to chop several hours off scouting the harbor for a ride to Ashmarrow Isle might seem.

  Kintyre huffs a laugh, still clearly unnerved by the reality that he is the main character of our world, and then our party is off. Capplederry lurches to its feet, and we begin picking our way down the mountain.

  Even with Wyndam right up to the cat’s neck, half-buried in its ruff, and me seated behind, clinging to the harness, Capplederry does not seem terribly affected by our weight. Everything smells of wet animal, and I imagine that we cannot be light.

  But before I know it, we are bounding along the foothills, and rush into the verdant clasp of the Stoat Forest, leaping brush and fallen trees, chasing the scent of the sea.

  Deals

  There is an infestation of academics in Varnet’s Tower. Solinde bypasses them for now, and deposits her burden on the circular, flat expanse of the tower roof. It is surrounded on all sides by a shoulder-height wall of leviathan vertebrae, and the ivory beneath their feet is a single, smooth bone, made most probably from a massive kraken skull. There is a door chipped into the bone against one side, and a telescope and astrolabe on a wooden table that has long been neglected. Whatever books and notes the various gleaming paperwei
ghts were holding down have long since been carried away by the weather or scavengers.

  It saddens Solinde’s heart to see her son’s research so neglected, his works so wasted. She had heard, through what gossip she could obtain in her cottage-prison, that during his glory-filled days as First Vizier to the King, he had developed many wonderful spells and discovered new Words. And now, it is all lost to time, and neglect, and the caprice of the proud, arrogant, cruel Kintyre Turn.

  The Reader stands statuary-still in the middle of the roof, where Solinde left her, the child squalling and screaming and wriggling in her unforgiving grip. Solinde watches, amused, as the child levers herself down, onto her feet, and pulls on the Reader’s hand, screaming, “Ma mama ma! No, no! Dada!” The child can almost walk on her own, and Solinde pushes down memories of holding Varnet’s hand as he wobbled through the barn, determined to get to a nest of that season’s hayloft kittens.

  From below, she can already hear the clash and clatter of uncouth mortals, tromping their way upward to investigate the storm that has curled the tower in its spinning arms. She has very little time to get what she wants before they are overrun. And she is tired from maintaining the storm, the ivy-spell, and transporting two mortals across the sky. She needs rest before she can dispose of the scholars.

  She has no time to rest, however.

  Instead, she scoops up the infant, who grabs hold of her mother’s leg, hard, and screams, clearly fed up with being manhandled.

  “No, no, no!” the child wails. “Bad! No! Ouch, ouch, ouch! No!”

  Solinde’s patience is running poverty-thin, the grains of sand in her internal hourglass trickling away. She can hear the scholars getting closer.

  “The name!” Solinde orders the Reader. “Tell me the name!”

  “The name?” the Reader echoes. Her voice is dull and flat, her eyes glowing green, but her teeth are clenched, and her hands curl and uncurl into fists. She is fighting. And hard.

  “The name of the Deal-Maker who wove Varnet’s geis. Tell me.”

  “I don’t . . .” the Reader says, and chokes on her words. She splutters and coughs, all while standing completely immobile, held fast by the glowing green scars that cover her back. “No.”

  “Do as I command!”

  The Reader gasps like she’s been punched in the stomach and blinks hard. She shakes her head, and some of the tension is her posture evaporates. She sways on the spot, arms rising, fingers spread, then drops them again. “You don’t . . . have to . . .”

  Solinde sneers. “Of course I have to know! He is my son. Is there nothing you would not do for your own child?”

  “You could be . . . the main character . . . in your own story,” the Reader protests. “Why be . . . content . . . with being a . . . a side-bit in . . . his?”

  “Because I am his mother,” Solinde snarls. “What else is there for a mother to do?”

  “So much,” the Reader sobs, and she is crying. Tears stream out of her eyes, faintly green in the glow against her cheeks. “We are so much . . . more.”

  “The name!” Solinde snarls, and wraps a hand around the fussing infant’s neck, the threat implicit. “Now!”

  The Reader whimpers. “Neris!” she yells, but the thunder drowns it out. “Neris!” she screams again. “Her name was Neris!”

  Relief washes over Solinde like a tidal wave. Her fury evaporates, and with it, the storm. The wind stops so abruptly that the Reader stumbles, no longer braced against it.

  Solinde feels herself go pale, and then flush. She slumps, as if someone has cut her strings. Her hand flops against her thigh, and her knees give way. She sinks downward, slowly, trembling. Her face crumples, inch by inch, papery, and suddenly, she feels so very weary, so very old. Her eyelids slide closed, moisture pressing out the bottom, tears rolling in two thin, trembling lines down her cheeks, dropping off the quiver of her chin.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Finally, yes.”

  The child, held loosely in her embrace, reaches up and pats her cheek, concerned. The babe is large-hearted, clearly, and cannot stand to see someone else cry, even as she is stiff and wide-eyed with terror.

  “Neris,” Solinde croaks.

  “You have your name,” the Reader says, and every part of her is trembling, reaching, tense and fatigued, pale and grime-smeared. Her expression is begging, grasping, pleading, and desperate, desperate, desperate. “Please. Please. Give me . . . my child. Let us go.”

  But Solinde pulls the infant closer to her, staring down into her face. Solinde feels her expression softening. The Reader waits, hands still wide, and waits, clearly fearful that any move she makes might be the one that prompts Solinde to harm the child.

  “He was like this, once,” Solinde says softly. “Such a happy child. So easy. But then the power came. And his father feared him. Feared that I would teach him to harness the magic my blood had granted him.” Solinde takes the babe over to the table, makes an enthusiastic cooing sound when the child reaches out to the astrolabe, curious. “He lied, you know. Told the great Wizard of the Bedim Isle that Varnet had a natural talent and affiliation for Words. That he had taught himself great magic, that he was a wizard, too. He did not tell the fool that Varnet was special. He had not learned magic; he was born of it. And as such, he deserved more. He deserved better.” Solinde turns to the Reader, and her voice is growing hard again. “My son deserved everything. He nearly had everything, until you . . . until your—”

  “Hey now,” the Reader says, clearly aiming for a tone that is soothing, but that only annoys Solinde further. “It wasn’t . . . me who stirred up . . . the Necromancer . . . caused all that trouble with . . . Ghost Legion of Urland.”

  Solinde offers the Reader a glowering look, unimpressed with her attempt to push the responsibility for that failure off of Kintyre Turn and onto her son. “But had he not thwarted him, Varnet would have gained the throne of Hain!” the Deal-Maker snarls. “Carvel was a fool, even then, and heir-less! As First Vizier to the King, Varnet was in line to take the throne!”

  The child stops patting the astrolabe and starts to look concerned again. “No, no noooo,” she says softly. Solinde looks down at her again.

  “And now, here is another child born of magic, and what do you do, Reader? You deny her. You lie and say she is powerless. Ha! And you say it is I who does my child a disservice? Pah!”

  “No . . . magic,” the Reader insists.

  “My son,” Solinde whispers, petting the babe’s head to soothe her. “My poor, poor son.”

  “Please,” the Reader sobs.

  Solinde grins at her. “No,” she says. Then she lifts her free hand and her face to the sky, and calls out, silkily: “Sister! I know who you are now. Neris! I bid you with your name to come. Neris! I compel you with what you owe me to come. Neris! I summon you with your name! Neris!”

  Neris is not as dramatic as her sister. In one heartbeat, she is not here; in the next, she is. She stands beside the table, hands folded, mockingly demure. But her smile is a knife-slice.

  “Hello, sister,” Neris sneers. “If I can even call you that now.”

  Solinde feels shame and anger boil in her guts. She clenches her fists, and in her arms, the child whimpers and wiggles. Solinde sets her down, for there is nowhere she can go. The child wobbles over to her mother, clinging to the Reader’s leg and moaning, “Ma mama, up, up!” But Solinde has not released the Reader from her compulsion, and the child is not obliged.

  Below them, the mortals have reached the upper level of the Ivory Tower and are attempting to break the enchantment on the lock keeping them from opening the hatch onto the roof. Solinde fears they will burst in, but when they don’t, she reaches out with her power to touch the lock and . . . ah, yes. Varnet’s scent, and touch, and sound, it is in this magic, too. The lock is more than just a hinge and metal workings. The spell is complex. It will take them hours.

  Now that Solinde has her son’s captor, she has time.

  “So, yo
u are one of the ones who would shame me for my own rape?” Solinde spits at Neris, arms spread in false welcome. “Blood of my blood, Sister of my Spirit, you would blame the victim of a Deal gone awry?”

  Neris laughs and shrugs. “Rules are rules, sister. You laid with a man. You could not come back.”

  Though the sky is clear, the sea below the tower cliffs begins to boil and foam. Small waves crash against the tumbled boulders along the steep shore, but they grow larger with every surge. “There are no rules that state you must keep all that I desire from me!”

  The babe is screaming now, red-faced, clinging to the Reader and howling. Below their feet, the mortals pound on the door, shouting reassurances to the child, and demands to let them through.

  Nobody on the roof moves to assist them.

  “No, there is no rule, and yet . . .” Neris spreads her hands, grinning. “Why should I give up that for which I Dealt simply because you ask? Out of sisterly love? No, you are no sister to me any longer.”

  The Deal-Maker Spirit screams, and the child echoes it, petrified.

  “And what is this?” Neris says, peering down at the babe. “More of your horrific half-blood abominations?”

  “Don’t . . . touch her!” the Reader commands, and Neris turns to toss a curling, wolfish grin at her.

  “Oh, is she yours, Mistress Lucy? Yours and . . . ah, Master Forsyth Turn, was it? Lovely to see you again. Need your kitchens cleaned? Fancy a pot of tea fetched?”

  “You are not amusing, Neris,” Solinde growls.

  “Oh,” Neris says, pouting theatrically. “Will you dock my pay?”

  “Enough!” the Deal-Maker snarls. “You have Varnet?”

  “Yes,” the other Spirit says, drawing upright. “But I don’t feel like Dealing for him. I don’t want to give him up. He’s too entertaining. Did you know, he has the sweetest high-pitched scream?”

  “You will Deal him to me,” Solinde snarls.

  “I shall not,” Neris counters. “He killed one of our sisters and compelled me to call down that Reader with her blood. He deserves his torment.”

  “He killed none of us! That was my blood he possessed!” Solinde says. “In an amulet, yes? It was my blood, and I gifted it to him, voluntarily, on the day his father sent him away!”