by Matt Russell
"Hello, old man," a feminine voice with a strange and wonderful cadence whispered in his ear.
Somar turned in shock to see the beautiful face of Thalice, Cassian's elven consort, staring at him under the hood of her familiar silvery green cloak. He let out an involuntary gasp as he saw her, but a feeling of relaxation washed over as the elf’s turquoise eyes sparkled up at him as she said: "I see you are going for a stroll. May I walk with you?"
He felt his mouth curve into grin. Truly, it warmed his heart to see this magnificent creature. Her radiant smile was such a gift after the death and bleakness of recent events. "I think I should love nothing more in the world at this moment, my dear," he said. He offered her his arm, but she shrank back.
"We must not touch," Thalice whispered. She peeled back the fold of her cloak to reveal a glowing blue crystal the size of an apple hanging from a thin chain around her neck. "The enchantment that keeps me hidden from him takes enormous power, and yet it is incredibly fragile. If it were to fail, fifteen thousand soldiers would suddenly become aware that a female elf is in their presence." She gave a soft, silvery laugh.
"I see," he said. He considered Thalice's words as they fell into step with one another through the soldier's camp, noting she had said ‘hidden from him.’
"I needed to come," she whispered as if to explain the impossibility of her presence. "The Norn told me that my dear one would take a life for the first time. I had to be near him."
"Must you hide? It would do the boy enormous good to see you now."
"No, I do not think it would. I know my Cassian very well. He would not wish me to see him just now. It would distract him and add to the shame he already feels for killing his brother."
"Then why did you come?"
"Because I love him."
Somar gazed around. Soldiers were walking around both of them, talking to one another. He had no understanding of elven mysticism, but he had the impression that whatever spell kept her concealed also somehow kept the men around them from noticing that he was speaking to her.
"Well, in any case, it warms my heart to see you, my dear. I am honored that one such as you should know one so lowly as myself."
"You are quite free and shameless with your self-deprecation, but we both know there is nothing truly humble about you, Somar Dojinko."
He laughed. Thalice reminded him very much of Cassian at that moment. She seemed strong and direct like he was, and yet there was also a gentle grace that was unlike anything Cassian possessed. Somar cleared his throat and said: "Do we humans seem silly to you, with all our little facades?"
The elf gave a small shake of her head. "I might have thought so once, if not for Cassian. After what he and I shared though, I feel I understand mortals more profoundly than any of my kind ever has. Your facades, your humor, and so many other things are beautiful to me." She gazed down at her feet. "So filled with emotion you all are from the moment you are born until your deaths." Somar noted the slightest shift in her voice as she spoke the final word.
"It terrifies you that Cassian will die," he said.
Her impossibly perfect face showed traces of pain. "That is one of the reasons why elves do not mingle with humans. It is alien to us to form a bond with another that will not continue through the centuries as we will."
Somar blinked. "Death itself is alien to you." He gazed at her, in all her youthful beauty that he knew would not wither in a thousand years. "Tell me, if you would, what happens to elves when they become ancient? Surely the world would be overrun with your kind if none of you ever cease to exist." There was a silent mental thrill at asking about one of the great mysteries of the immortal people, and it was good to focus on something other than Cassian at the moment.
"Many different things may happen," Thalice said in a quiet voice from under the folds of her hood. "The simplest answer is that we change. For myself, I chose rebirth in my last life."
"Your last life?" Somar raised an eyebrow.
"Does that seem strange?" the elf laughed. "My previous incarnation lived to be over eighteen hundred years old. That was enough for her. Even an elf's mind has limits on how long it can savor life before all taste is finally lost. She needed to be born again, and so she cast off her physical form and relinquished her energy into the world, knowing it would be transmuted into new elven life."
"What of her memories?"
"They are deep within me. I could call them all up if I truly wished, but then that would overwhelm this young mind I now have, and the Thalice you and Cassian know would become only a tiny fragment of this consciousness. My former incarnation would not want that, and neither do I of course. Someday, she and I will become one, but not yet."
"What a wonder it must be to live as an elf," said Somar.
"What a wonder it must be to be him," she said, and she gestured back toward Cassian. Somar gazed behind and saw his former pupil standing on top of a table giving a speech to perhaps thirty men. "He is building his army," Thalice whispered. "I know everything he plans to do."
Somar turned to her and saw two crystalline tears drip down her smooth face. They shone brilliantly in the morning glare, catching and refracting the light into tiny rainbows. "I do not know much of my former life, but I know that in over eighteen centuries, I never loved anything so much as I love Cassian." She bit her bottom lip for an instant. "He has infected me with human emotion, and I cannot discuss these feelings with my people because they would not begin to understand." Thalice caught one of her tears on her finger and gazed at it. "Cassian will destroy and remake the world, as he has destroyed and remade me. That is what he is." She gazed into Somar's eyes and murmured: "We must let him go now, you and I."
He took a slow breath, returning to the pain of saying goodbye to the boy. "I am glad you are here with me to see him off."
"As I am glad to have you, dear old man."
They both gazed again at Cassian, watching him make his emphatic gestures to the growing crowd and seeing their excited reactions. The girl was right of course. It was time to let Cassian go now. Their paths would cross again before Somar's body withered away, he was sure of that.
"Tell me, my dear, would you ride out into the forest with an old human and have tea before you return to your people?"
Thalice gave him a delighted grin, displaying a row of gleaming teeth. "I should like nothing more in all the world at this moment." They began walking together toward the eastern exit of the camp where the horses were kept, away from all the men, and away from Cassian.
Chapter 16:
Resolve
Hervin kept crying. Livia watched as he read her account of Iona's abduction for the fourth or fifth time. It stung to see him in pain, but even as Livia stared at him, her mind wandered to the things she had not written down. Without thinking, she ran her fingers over the place on her neck where the horrible young sorcerer’s magic had touched her. She was certain it had been magic, for it had felt just like when the Nemesai sorcerer had attacked her, only this time... something seemed to have been awakened inside her.
"There wasn't any blood on the ground when you woke up?" Hervin whispered, his face pale.
She shook her head.
"Why would this man think our Iona is a weapon?"
Livia grimaced. The loss of Iona hurt so much... she had perhaps not fully understood how much the silly girl meant to her until now—her best friend in the world.
"She must still be alive," Hervin whispered. "Don't you think?" He stared at her, his face desperate.
Livia still had her charcoal pencil in her hand from writing the account. She reached forward to a clean sheet of papyrus on the table, her hand shaking a little as she wrote:
I think so.
She paused for a moment, then added:
I remember the one who took her. I will draw his face. Then you have to go to the city guard and tell them you witnessed everything.
"What?" he grunted, staring at t
he words. "Why?"
Livia frowned at Hervin, and after a moment realization dawned on the man. He nodded. Of course, Livia could not be the sole witness. No one would take the word of a former slave seriously. It sickened her to admit to herself that likely no one would care much that a house slave—freed or not—had been abducted. If Iona had been the daughter of a lord, the whole countryside would be out hunting for her, but they would be lucky if the guards even bothered to question anyone. Livia forced back tears and willed herself to focus. She had to try, after all.
"Y-yes, please draw the picture," Hervin whispered. He fidgeted in his seat for a moment, then stood abruptly and said: "I—I think I should take the horses and search the local roads. I'll try east first, then—"
Livia put a hand on his arm and shook her head. The leader had been a sorcerer, and from what Livia could recall from their encounter before she had been knocked unconscious, he was a very powerful one. There were the other two men as well—enormous brutes with apotheosis tattoos like Nemesai. They would be three or four times stronger than normal men, and much faster, and their eyes had been so utterly merciless... No, Hervin was no match for such a group, and she did not need to explain this to him. The look she gave him melted his resolve almost immediately, and he sank back into his chair and whispered: "What should I do then?"
Livia swallowed dryly, and then took charge. She moved her charcoal pencil to her paper once more and wrote:
You must reread the account over and over until every detail is burned into your mind. I was there, but you are the witness. I will draw the face, and then we will go.
"Y-yes," Hervin said, and he picked up the note she had given him. His hands trembled as he began to read and whisper the words.
Livia went to the room she shared with Iona and retrieved a large sheet of papyrus from the tray under her bed. She brought it to the table in the dining area and laid it perfectly flat, smoothing the edges. For a dozen heartbeats, Livia stared at the page and reached back to those horrible few moments before the world had gone black. It terrified her to picture the young man who had attacked her, but she forced herself not to recoil from his image. His pale face took shape in her mind, and his dark hair. There had been something around his neck—a silver chain—Livia’s stomach twisted as she thought it might be the necklace of a Nemesai High Inquisitor, but then she shook her head. He was far too young to possess such a rank. The details were enough though, and so Livia pressed the charcoal tip of her pencil to the center of the page very gently and began to sketch.
The face took shape slowly, starting with the nose. Livia could feel tears leaking out of her eyes as her hand worked, but she dabbed them away with her sleeve. Her sketch, she knew almost immediately, was going to be perfect. She used shading to create the depth and what some of the books she had read on geometry called "the third dimension." At times as her fingers moved, the process became almost automatic, and her mind wandered again to when the magic had touched her.
What in the world had happened? It had started as a rumble in her chest when the young man had hurled his spell at her. Livia remembered shutting her eyes, and then there was a... reaction. The thrum inside her grew, and the conjuration had shattered in the air. That had been nothing though compared to the instant a piece of the young man's invisible magic had touched her skin. Then she had felt it. His power had been flowing all around, attacking and killing, but when it met her flesh it recoiled back so hard and fast that the bones in his hand had snapped. Livia had willed his own magic to attack him, or that had been how it seemed. There was little sense to any of it, except that connecting to the power had felt so very... natural... and even… familiar.
Livia's hand continued to sketch as her mind sifted through the ever-growing chaos of her thoughts. For the second time in a handful of weeks, she gave serious contemplation to who she was—who she had been before a slave mark had been placed on her cheek. As soon as that thought came, it was drowned out by one far more urgent: that horrid young man could be torturing Iona at that very moment, or worse... Livia could think of no way to decipher either of these conundrums. Her innocent little sister could be half a day's ride in any direction now.
Her stomach was twisting as she finished the final details of Iona's abductor onto the page and then pulled her hand away and gazed at her work. It was good—all the details someone would need to identify the young man were there.
Livia quickly drew out her writing paper and wrote:
Hervin, you must take this to all the city exits right now and ask if anyone has seen this person in the last few hours.
As soon as she finished the last word, Livia picked up both pieces of paper and ran them to Hervin, nearly shoving them into his hands. He looked up at her, confused, and then he gaped at the image she had drawn, his eyes eventually shifting to her note. After a few seconds, the small man looked up at her and said: "Y-yes, right now." He clutched the papers to his chest and dashed for the front door and fumbled with the latch. He was breathing quickly as he darted out the doorway.
Livia glanced down at her written account of the incident, which Hervin had dropped onto the floor in his haste. Her mind flashed back through the words she had scribbled, and she wondered: Who would take them seriously? Who would care? The Vestilite sisters loved Iona, but Livia knew that they could do virtually nothing to help. Even if Hervin managed to figure out the direction Iona's captors had taken her, no army would be sent—certainly not a force strong enough to counter a powerful sorcerer and cutthroat soldiers with apotheosis tattoos.
Still, she had somehow managed to counter that powerful sorcerer. Livia’s thoughts returned once again to the strange battle she had waged with him. She continued to feel a shadow of… something within herself. What was it? If she could overcome the young man’s magic again, perhaps a pair of tattooed soldiers was not insurmountable Livia stared again down at the discarded page, her stomach swirling with nerves as a thought entered her mind. She had magic! She was sure she did, but not the way others had it. Still, it was a part of her somehow. That was why she had seen the vision of Cassian Asango years ago with every other sorcerer in the world.
Feeling a flutter of nerves, Livia raised her hand in the direction of the page. She had no training in magic of course, but she concentrated on the tingling sensation—the aspect of herself that had awoken when the young man had attacked her—and tried to will it out toward the paper.
The power seemed to respond, for she felt the tingle suddenly shift from every part of her body to her palm and fingers, yet as it did, an unbelievable pain erupted in the front of her skull. It broke Livia’s concentration, and she stumbled to her knees, feeling sickeningly dizzy. The room suddenly seemed to be spinning. Her heart had taken to pounding in her chest, and sweat was dripping off her forehead. She swallowed, leaning forward on her hands. The pain was horrible, and yet... she had felt it many, many times before. It was like the sting she felt when trying to form words with her mouth. Livia had attempted for years to overcome it when she was a child, but every time her lips and tongue worked to produce a single syllable, searing agony had ripped through her. It had happened over and over until she had given up, but she would not give up now!
Livia rose to her feet. Tears of anger dripped down her face as she raised her hand again. To hell with the curse! Iona's life mattered more, and if she could save her sweet little sister from that monstrous young man, then she did not care if it killed her. As before, Livia focused her will, this time readying herself for impending agony. It came once more—a sensation like rusted nails being pounded into her forehead—but she kept pushing, focusing through it on the paper.
Livia felt something like an invisible rope leap out from her palm into the air. The pain grew worse. Her vision started to blacken as tears beaded involuntarily from her eyes, but she blinked them away and forced herself to keep going. Her power seemed to extend through the air and moved to the paper and then coalesced around the
page, and then—Gods but she had never felt agony like this! It was like trying to grip something with a hand that had no skin. Finally, it became too much, and Livia fell to her knees once again and began to shake on the floor, but then something so shocking happened that she jumped: the muscles in her throat engaged in a way they never had before, and she heard herself rasp out a scream.
Livia sat up panting, the pain slowly receding from her head. Never in her life had she heard her own voice... she did not even know she had a voice. Her throat ached a little from the exertion, but that did not matter. She could speak!
Slowly, nervously, Livia drew in a breath of air and tried to cry out again—to make any sound—but nothing came out, and to her sickening disappointment, a fraction of the tormenting sensation returned to her skull. It seemed almost to be warning her to stop what she was doing.
Livia wiped some of the sweat from her face and was shocked to see blood come away on her hand. She dabbed the bottom of her nose with her finger and quickly determined it to be the source.
Livia shook her head, new tears welling up in her eyes. What the hell did any of this mean? She turned in frustration and looked at the page on the ground, only... where was it? There was no sign of the paper anywhere. She stood and swept the room with her eyes until they fell on a crumpled mass in the far left corner. Livia dashed over to it and knelt down. The papyrus had been bent folded and crushed into itself so tightly that when she picked it up it felt solid. Nervously, with hands still wet with blood, she unfolded the mass and saw an incredibly mangled version of the note she had written.