by C S Vass
The feeling was immediately liberating the second Fiona stepped outside. She had wrapped a thick black cloak over her tunic and though the day was frigid that didn’t stop the sun from shining in a sky as clear as glass without a single cloud to obscure it.
Fiona had been to the pond several times as a child and moving to the path was more like the pull of some subconscious magnetic force than an exercise of her will. There was a reason she had left Haygarden after all, and being back in the city reminded her all the more strongly of it.
Immediately upon exiting the Southern Gate she passed through houses that clung to the city walls like barnacles on the bottom of a ship. Two dogs were tussling with each other over what Fiona would have guessed to be the the bone of a horse. Their yapping growls echoed through the otherwise serene silence of a winter day. She continued onwards past the shamble of houses and beyond the hodgepodge of tents and encampments the commoners dwelt in until she was barely within sight of the city.
When she arrived Fiona found a comfortable log on the edge of the woods. During busier times of the year miscreants, murderers, and merchants (her father used to say it was impossible to tell which was the worse of them) would prowl the area to prey on those without the means to protect themselves. Today though there was no sign of such nonsense. All Fiona had for company was the refreshing frosty air and her thoughts.
The water was clear and frozen, a giant mirror that gazed unblinkingly into the expansive sky. When she was adequately satisfied that she would not be interrupted Fiona reached deep within herself and started prodding at the manjeko.
The magic orb immediately reacted to her. She could feel it purposefully and with intent now. It was no longer an accident for her to stumble into, but more like a second heart, throbbing and sucking a network of magical energy through her being. Fiona allowed herself to be thrust into the manjeko. She flew wildly, chaotically inside of herself and then her consciousness ballooned outwards. She was inside the true sight once more, and this time she felt highly in control of it.
Tearing through the air like a hawk she zoomed back into Haygarden. A floating ghost, she stalked the streets, searching past rows of houses packed together like books on a shelf.
His essence was there. She could feel it, almost like a smell, almost like a coloring of the otherwise grey world around her, but not quite either. It was impossible to tell if she was getting nearer or farther, but the sense of him was clear enough. Fiona felt as if she were some vicious territorial animal sniffing out an enemy. She had to find him. Revenge was what started the journey, and rage was what fueled it.
“I see you’ve gotten more comfortable with the manjeko, Fiona.”
The words, spoken softly, shattered her concentration. She turned and saw the Beast standing there with his doglike snout and pulsing red eyes.
“It still isn’t enough,” she said.
The Beast grinned. “You have much more to learn.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t think that just because you can handle the basics of the true sight that you have even started to touch the depths of its power. There is little difference between you now and a common scryer. But the true sight is meant for so much more. The ancients summoned it for purposes of a much higher caliber. Those masters of days long gone used the true sight in their courts of old to see into the hearts of men. To identify treason. They used it in battle to anticipate the attacks of their enemies before even they knew them. The most practiced and powerful could even see through the veil of time, bending their perception to see the acorn, tree, and firewood all at once.
“Do you understand, Fiona? You have been successful perhaps in wielding the manjeko as a child is successful in playing with a wooden sword. It is a necessary step, but by no means does it mean you are ready to handle the fight ahead.”
The Beast spoke calmly and deliberately. It sounded to Fiona like the words of a fanatic, but his eyes were not wild or drunk on ideas of power. On the contrary he seemed more like a schoolteacher patiently explaining a simple concept to a student.
“If the manjeko can truly do all that, then how do I obtain those powers?” Fiona asked.
“You face your fears.”
The Beast launched himself at her, his sword gripped in two strong hands and thrust forward with deadly intent. Her own demon-pommel blade was spinning from its sheath, and she deflected the blow with a sideways slash.
“Always so eager to fight me,” Fiona said.
“It’s the only way. The depths of the manjeko’s power is too much for you to calmly approach. Only when the strain of a life or death situation is put on your body and mind will you be forced to tap into your deepest potential and unleash the manjeko’s true strength.”
“So long as I live,” Fiona said. The Beast nodded.
They fought for what felt like hours. The Beast was an annoyingly deceptive opponent. Much of the savagery of their previous interactions had been replaced with a strategic cunning that left Fiona fumbling after him like a clumsy thief stumbling through darkness.
“Watch me!” The Beast shouted as he leapt behind her and swept Fiona’s legs out from under her. She dropped to her hands and cartwheeled her feet to buy herself time to stand.
“I’m not a rookie,” she said. “I know how to anticipate moves.”
“You anticipate my moves by watching me with your eyes. The problem is, my body can lie. When I said watch me, I meant you must watch me with the manjeko.”
“What are you now, my teacher?”
The look he gave her made Fiona shudder.
“We are bound together, Fiona. For better or for worse. You made the decision to draw the manjeko into your body.”
She huffed. “I was under the impression that that would be the end of the ceremony, not the start of whatever this is.”
The Beast stepped towards her, red eyes glowing like hot coals smoldering in his face. “Your impressions are of no interest to me. Your ability to use this magic is.”
“Then what do you want me to do? Why are you here? What the hell even are you?” The questions rolled out of her one after the other. She had wanted to maintain a distance from whatever the Beast was, but once she asked the first question the rest came pouring out like water bursting from a leaky dam.
“I don’t waste my breath on lost causes,” the Beast said. “Prove you won’t die on me and maybe I’ll tell you.”
In an instant Fiona felt a stinging pain, and she had no idea what had happened. As she somersaulted backwards, she realized that he had sucker punched her right in the face. “You bark a lot, but you don’t listen.” The Beast was shaking his head with his arms folded. “I’m not surprised. What should I expect when you haven’t even faced your fears yet?”
“Stop saying that,” Fiona bellowed. “What does that even mean, face my fears? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t exactly walk away from fights! I’m tired of hearing you spout your nonsense.”
The Beast did not look amused. The world around them seemed even more forlorn than it usually did. “You’ll never get to Morrordraed,” he muttered.
“Morrordraed? Why the hell would I want to go to some godforsaken swamp?”
“I see that you’ve grown belligerent, Fiona. Let me offer you what help I can, most likely for the last time.”
The world dissolved. Fiona thought this was just her going back to her body, but after a while she found herself sitting in blackness, surrounded by a void. Her heart began to beat faster.
An uneasy feeling spread through her chest as if she just drunk something syrupy hot and the tentacle warmth was expanding over her body. Slowly the world around her came back into focus. She didn’t recognize where she was, but the sky above her was still a velvet red.
More of her surroundings entered into Fiona’s field of vision the longer she stood there. Trees scattered the horizon though they were largely decimated as if some wild beast had tried to trample them. She realized she was standing on
a battlefield, with broken bodies all around her. It had been a massacre. Dead soldiers had fallen everywhere with arrows in their bleeding corpses.
Her eyes widened when she saw Rodrick.
He was underneath her, dead as well. His lips were bent into a single curious line as if he were mildly amused by something, or perhaps perplexed. Part of the crown of his head was missing. Fiona reached for her sword, as if the corpse might spring back to life, and found that she was naked.
Was this the future? If it was, it meant that Rodrick’s death would come with a very high price. She stood there, uncertainly. Was the Beast trying to make some point? What was he to gain by showing her this? Was this vision for his benefit, or for hers?
Yet nothing emerged from the dead chaos around her to give Fiona any insight into the nature of what she was supposed to glean from this bizarre experience.
She stumbled into the thought with the same feeling as if she had been walking at a quick pace without paying mind to her surroundings and stumbled off a cliff by accident. What was she to do now? Whether this was a prophecy, a truth, or just some insight into her own desires, if Rodrick lay dead before her and revenge was satisfied then what was she to do?
Even though she knew she was only in a world of mirage and shadow the question now seemed more profound with Rodrick splayed before her. The obvious thing would be to work out her deal with Smiley, obtain her passport, and leave wretched Tellos forever. But was that truly what she wanted? It was easy to imagine that as the goal, but when really confronted with it could she leave?
Then again why would she stay? Donyo and Martin were basically lost, and the court was in ruins. She supposed that it would largely depend on if Sandra Redfire actually held onto power long enough for her to eliminate her brother. If so, maybe she could help. But then again, maybe Smiley would make sure she wouldn’t. It’s not as if he would come offering her a passport out of the kindness of his own heart.
Fiona’s nostrils flared at the thought of being manipulated by that golden-toothed snake. It made perfect sense that he was simply trying to be rid of her. But of course she couldn’t ever really trust him. She couldn’t really trust anyone, and she was raving mad if she hadn’t learned that lesson by now.
“Do you begin to see?” the Beast asked.
Fiona turned, and he was striding towards her confidently, arms behind his back.
“You think you’re some profound guru to raise the question of what happens after his death?” Fiona asked. Her voice was sharp. “This wasn’t even subtle. I thought visions were supposed to work in metaphor.”
“What would be the point of that?” the Beast asked. “I have better things to do with my time than watch you piece together your life Fiona. But the fact remains, you don’t have an answer. Not truly.”
“What’s that to you?” she asked.
The Beast sighed and spit on the ground. “You really lack any sense of appreciation for your situation. After all this time, to think you’d be the one to make it this far. Fiona we are dealing with things bigger than your personal happiness. To make the strides that you’ve made with the manjeko…nobody has done it in fifty years. To wield this magic, you have a responsibility to—”
“I have a responsibility to my own mission,” Fiona snapped. They were all the same. Every damn one of them. She was so tired of being manipulated. “After I complete it, I might entertain requests. Or I might not. It’s not really up to you, now is it?”
“Arrogance is not a pretty color on you, Fiona. Nevertheless, I am impressed with how far you have come. It won’t be long now before the manjeko fully opens to you, and you will either thrive or burn in the bloom of its power. We will see each other soon.”
* * *
The pond was much drearier to Fiona when she returned to herself. Whatever charming memories of youth had been there had dissipated into the frost. Somehow a deal of time had passed. It was almost nightfall and her stomach was throbbing with the pangs of hunger. A low-burning sun sank gracefully into the horizon beyond the bare branches of scattered treetops scratching at the sky.
The next few days came and went without Fiona truly noticing. They were in the cold heart of winter, and when she wasn’t focused on keeping herself from freezing or filling her belly, she went to see Donyo and Martin. They played cards and told bawdy jokes and drank too much, but it was surprisingly nice to be able to focus on something other than her quest to find her brother. At night they would cook together. Simple fare: hard black bread and stew with dumplings made from flour. Sometimes there was beef or fish.
Of course Fiona didn’t allow herself to believe that she was putting anything off. Instead she simply accepted that she was tired. Her encounters with the Beast were beyond draining and tapping into the manjeko would deplete her energies before they were sufficiently restored—energies she would need at the maximum capacity if she were to break through whatever illusionary magic Rodrick was using to hide his presence in the city.
But there was no denying that it was nice to spend time with people other than Brandon or Smiley. Even nicer was the fact that Donyo and Martin had no interest in the platitudes that they had relentlessly chased her with two years ago before she left. There was no talk that everything would be fine, because it had to be, of course, or that justice might be delayed but ultimately could never be denied.
In short two years had turned the both of them into cynical drunks and Fiona found that entirely refreshing.
The one person who did not show up over that period was Sasha. Fiona was unsure whether she would have welcomed her appearance or not, but the truth of it was that Donyo and Martin had improved her spirits enough that she would try to make the best of it should her old friend come around.
After a week had come and gone, she realized that she couldn’t keep putting off what she knew was her mission. She waited for an afternoon when Donyo and Martin had buried themselves in some pub or tavern and sat cross-legged on the floor across from a brightly burning fire. She took a deep breath and leapt into the manjeko.
The surge of power was explosive. It was as if before she had been using the manjeko blind, and with a wrist tied to an ankle on top of it. There was something inside of her, opening like a flower exposed to sunlight after months of clouds.
The world was still grey, but now the shades of grey were so diverse it was as if she could see more colors than she could before. The red sky above her no longer intimidated her, but instead became a new well of power that she could draw from.
Feeling euphoric, she drew vast amounts of energy into herself. As she did so, it became obvious she was using the true sight incorrectly from the start. Why should she float around like a lone ghost? That was hardly better than simply being a human walking through the streets. She split herself and then did it again and again. Seven or eight Fiona’s took form and covered the different sections of the city. There was nothing jarring or strange about it. Humans already had two different eyes, didn’t they? Humans already could hear and smell at the same time. This was just an extension of the already complex sensory organs of her human form. There was nothing to it.
She continued on, aggressively trying to sniff out her brother. The scent was there, and it was stronger than before. She could even see it, floating in the streets like a purple mist. But the mist was everywhere, and there was no obvious direction she should take to find out where it would lead to.
Several of her forms moved outside of Haygarden. The sensation of Rodrick’s closeness wasn’t quite so strong, but all the same he could be deploying some type of advanced trick to deceive her.
She continued to scan through the houses and shelters that dotted the outskirts of Haygarden and then came upon the woods. She knew the chances of her stumbling across Rodrick in the forest were slim, even if he was out there, but still there was no harm in exploring just how far her newfound powers could take her.
She moved past ancient trees, tall and proud and bursting with the secr
ets of a million hidden lives that scurried within them. She floated over streams and past babbling brooks, through the matrix of life contained by the woods.
Eventually she came across a cabin not too far from the city walls, but deep enough in the forest to be sufficiently suspicious. Intrigued and unconcerned about the privacy of whoever happened to live there, she moved towards it.
Fiona tried to enter it, but unlike other buildings in Haygarden that she could simply force her body to move intangibly through this cabin was somehow protected from her. Some magic was defending it against her advance. That much was obvious. All of the windows were covered with thick drapes and she couldn’t see so much as a shadow within.
Burning with curiosity, Fiona tried to enter from every possibly angle, but found that whatever defensive spell was barring her from going inside worked seamlessly. After spending a good ten minutes trying to figure out if there was a weakness she was ready to give up when the door abruptly burst open.
Eagerly she came around to look when she saw Reggie Downcastle staring in the doorway smoking a pipe, and Sasha Rains sitting behind him.
Chapter Fifteen
Hot rage flooded Fiona as she soared back into her body and grabbed her weapons. So that was the way of it? Reggie had kidnapped Sasha and taken her somewhere where he thought she would be out of reach. Well, Reggie wasn’t counting on her having the manjeko, and he certainly wouldn’t be counting on her rushing over there to free his prisoner.
She was just about ready to leave when the door burst open.
“No, not now, I don’t have time for you,” Fiona moaned.
Smiley grinned, his golden teeth glittering. “We have some business to take care of, Fiona,” he said matter-of-factly.
“It has to wait,” she said.
He eyed her angrily. “It won’t take long. My friends tell me that you’ve not made any progress on finding your brother, nor have you looked into certain other matters of state that were entrusted to you.”