by Andi Van
“Em, do you mind carrying that little one until we get to the castle?”
Emlynn rolled her eyes, and Zaree laughed. “Right. Stupid question, never mind.”
“I….” Jorget paused and cleared his throat. “I could carry the other one for you. If you wanted.”
“What do you think?” Zaree asked Mistral, who looked at Jorget, snorted, then looked back at her in a way that screamed, ‘I don’t know, do you think he can manage it?’ Was the gryphon seriously helping her tease Jorget? She wanted to grin widely, but it would have given her away. She wondered if this is was how Tasis felt when he and Rin were in sync.
The thought made a sudden chill run down her body, and she tensed. Mistral must have noticed it, because she let out a soft chirp and nudged Zaree.
“Oh come on,” Jorget said. “You know I’m capable of it. It’ll be fine.”
The words brought Zaree back to reality, and she smiled, albeit a little unsteadily, at him. “Yeah, it’s fine, I’m just giving you a hard time.” She patted Mistral and tried to smile more convincingly. “Okay with you?”
Zaree, you’re not fooling any of us, Daro said with a sigh. What is it? Something just upset you.
Zaree had always appreciated how quiet Daro was, even after the revelation that he was a familiar. Both he and Bahz were far quieter than Rin ever was. The cat never shut up. But she wished Daro had maintained his usual quiet and kept the question to himself. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about this. “I’m going to ask you a question,” she told Daro. “And if you can’t tell me, I want you to be honest and tell me as much. If you can, I want an honest answer.”
I don’t lie, Zaree. You know that.
Right. She did know that. But she was suddenly a complete mess, so she was going to forgive herself for that one. “Am I a magic user?”
Daro tilted his head, obviously perplexed. What?
Zaree pointed to Mistral. “Is she going to randomly start talking to me at some point?”
Mistral made a noise of confusion at her question, but Daro laughed. No. No, you are not a magic user and she is not a familiar. She’s just a gryphon. Well, as “just” as any member of such a magnificent species can be, at any rate.
Mistral preened at the compliment, and Zaree couldn’t stop the giggle that bubbled up. Then she laughed harder, until she had her hands pressed to her ribs in hopes of stopping the ache.
“Is she all right?” Falcon, no longer naked but looking a little silly in Emlynn’s larger clothes, murmured to Yldost.
“I believe it’s a case of stress from multiple sources getting to her,” Yldost answered. “Her body is trying to force some of the stress out. She will be fine once she calms herself.”
“I’m thinking she’s relieved it’s not one more source of stress on top of the ones she’s already dealing with,” Kelwin said. He pulled Zaree into a hug to help steady her, but she kept laughing.
“I have no idea what’s so funny,” Zaree wheezed between chortles. “Ow. My ribs.”
“Deep breaths, Zar. Force yourself to calm down.”
His advice made things worse, as it turned out. She took a few deep breaths and had managed to stop in the process, but the moment she stopped forcing so much air into her lungs she started laughing again. This time, it set Kelwin off too.
“They look very nice together,” Falcon observed. “Are they a couple?”
That brought the laughter to a screeching halt, and they both looked at her with something akin to horror. “Goddess Maker, no,” Zaree said. “He’s engaged to my brother.”
“Ahh,” Falcon said in understanding. “Close family, then.” She paused, looking Zaree over. “You’re better now? We should go.”
“We’re ready,” Kelwin assured her, letting go of Zaree and giving her a pat on the back. “Lead the way.”
The distance was just as Zaree had judged, a short romp through a small wood that she guessed would have been half an hour at most. And then they found themselves in front of a castle that had once been impressive but was now crumbling. It was certainly in better shape than the guild on the isle had been when she first laid eyes on it, but time had done its damage to a building not preserved by magic.
“I’m glad it still stands,” Falcon said when they stopped to take a good look. “I was not certain if it would. I may not have wanted to rule here, but it was still a part of my childhood.” She moved toward an archway where doors had likely once been and waved them to follow. “Come. The tunnel’s entrance is in the dungeon on this end as well.”
“Once we get there, I need to call Denekk,” Jorget told them. “He needs to know we’re coming, and we’ll want him to see if he can figure out where we’ll emerge. I mean, we know it’s the furnace room, but if a furnace has been built over it, we’ll have a problem.”
“Indeed,” Emlynn agreed. “We need to go about this with caution.”
They began to move again, and Zaree found herself walking right behind Falcon. “Falcon, may I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.”
“It’s been bothering me. You still eat, yes? I’ve seen the merfolk eat. But you were trapped in that set of caverns that makes up the empty guild. What did you do for food?”
“Ah,” Falcon responded, sounding amused. Zaree couldn’t really blame her, considering it was an odd question, but it was one of those ridiculous little things that had been picking at her sense of curiosity. “You recall that there isn’t much space near the entrance for gardens or livestock, yes?”
“Well, yes. That’s why I was curious.”
“Whoever built that guild was very clever. In the very bottom, down a different hallway than the one you took that led to the room with the gate, they built a garden.”
“In the bottom of a set of caverns?” Kelwin asked, sounding fascinated. That didn’t surprise Zaree in the least, given where his interests lay. “How did they manage that, and what sort of plants are down there?”
“I will show you sometime,” Falcon promised. “The walls are… the same, but different. They give off a different light than the others, and the light is unaffected by a person entering and exiting. They mirror the sun’s schedule. There is a system of some sort that collects water from the outside and lets it drip at specific intervals, keeping the plants watered. It is rather overgrown now, but there are still edible plants. There is a small cavern branching off it that was used as an apiary at one time. There are still bees, but not as many, and they do not move beyond the garden. I do not know if it’s because there’s nothing else of interest to them in the guild, or if there’s magic keeping them in there. So to answer your question, I was not lacking in vegetables, fruits, tubers, herbs, or honey.” She grinned at Zaree, and the smile was rather toothy. “So you see, I would have tried to kill you when I attacked, but I would not have eaten your corpse. I am a vegetarian.”
This made Zaree start to laugh again, but that apparently had been Falcon’s goal, because she didn’t ask again if Zaree was okay.
As they continued to make their way through the empty castle, Zaree looked around. It was certainly a far cry from the guild in the mountain. That place had been spotless. The castle, on the other hand, was so full of cobwebs that Zaree was starting to feel arachnophobic despite having never been bothered by spiders before. The grime on the floor was so thick that they left footprints. Plants sprouted up between cracks in the masonry.
“This place needs some serious cleaning,” she noted out loud. She’d meant the thought for herself, but she saw Jorget nodding out of the corner of her eye.
“I bet it used to be beautiful,” he said. “It’s sad it’s in such bad shape now. Maybe we can come back and help clean it up at some point.”
“To what end?” Emlynn asked. “If a new king is placed on Archai’s throne, it will be up to him what happens here.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” Jorget said.
That can’t be good, Bahz interjected. Don’t injur
e yourself.
“Cute,” Jorget said, giving the bird a withering look.
“He only does it because he knows it winds you up,” Emlynn pointed out.
“As I was saying,” Jorget continued, “even if Archai gets a new king, or we somehow cure the current king of his madness, no one’s going to automatically love magic users. We covered that already. But what if there were projects like this? What if small groups came to use their magic to help people, so they’d see firsthand that it wasn’t bad?”
“It is an interesting proposal,” Yldost said. “But I advise you to give it a great deal of thought. People’s minds are not changed easily, unless they are far different from what I remember.”
“No, that’s pretty much unchanged,” Kelwin told them. “But I think Jorget’s got the right idea. If nothing else, it’s something hopeful to contemplate. And we could all use some hope right about now.”
“Since I’m not a mage, do I get to supervise?” Zaree asked. “I think I’d be good at it. I can stand around and tell people what to do.”
“Yeah, you’ve got plenty of experience at that,” Kelwin agreed, dodging the blow she aimed at him.
Now, now, children, Bahz said. No fighting.
“He started it,” Zaree muttered under her breath before speaking at a normal volume. “Falcon, how far down is the dungeon?”
“We’re nearly there. The castle seems larger than it actually is. It was a popular method of building at the time.”
“Because no one wanted to attack a large castle and lose an entire army,” Jorget said.
“Precisely,” Falcon agreed, looking pleased that Jorget had known that bit of trivia. “Attacks against large castles were not done spur-of-the-moment. It was a method of defense.” She paused at the next entryway, peeking in before nodding. “This is the entrance to the dungeon. Watch your step, I do not know how the stone has fared here.”
Indeed, the stone steps spiraling down appeared to have seen better days, and Zaree was inundated with mental images of having one of those steps crumble under her feet and causing her to tumble to her death. She was being ridiculous and she knew it, but it still didn’t seem safe.
“You’ll be fine,” Kelwin said softly from next to her.
“I might, but what about…?” She turned and looked at Mistral. “Do you think the steps will support you?” she asked. “It’s too narrow here for you to glide down.”
The gryphon pushed past them and gingerly set one foot on a step, slowly leaning her weight on it. When nothing happened, she began to make her way down at a painfully slow pace.
“Apparently she’ll be fine,” Jorget said. “Come on, Em. Let’s help the babies follow their mama.”
Zaree realized that the pair could probably have set the hatchlings down once they’d reached the castle, but perhaps they had the right of it. They didn’t know if it was safe or not, and the baby gryphons weren’t as prepared to defend themselves as the rest of them.
It was the fact that she was considering the gryphons’ safety that made it a little ironic that the step she had just placed her foot on chose that moment to crumble. She barely had time to anticipate the pain when strong arms grabbed her. She expected it was Kelwin and turned to thank him, only to discover it was Falcon who’d kept her dignity—and possibly several of her bones—intact.
“Thank you,” she said with a sigh. “I should have been paying better attention.”
“Perhaps,” Falcon agreed with a nod. “No one would wish to see you injured.”
“Including myself,” Zaree agreed, turning her focus to the steps in front of her.
They reached the bottom with no other mishaps, and she had a feeling she wasn’t the only one to sigh in relief. But Falcon gave them no time to rest. She merely led them down a hall, past several cells that had likely once had bars of some sort on them, and into another room. She stopped short at the large hole in the floor in front of her.
“Here,” she said. “Let me go first, so that I may see if it’s safe.”
No one argued. She crouched down and dropped cautiously through the opening. A light started to glow, and Falcon laughed. “It is safe.”
“The hole looks big enough,” Tasis said. “Mistral should fit.”
The gryphon clacked in agreement and leaped through the opening. “Well, she’s braver than I,” Zaree said. “I’ll go through next. You can pass the hatchlings down to me.”
She sat on the edge of the hole, hoping it didn’t crumble when she did, and slid down. When she straightened and glanced around, her eyes widened. “This is the tunnel?”
“Yes,” Falcon said, amused. “I had a feeling you all had visions of dirt passages. You forget that this was built for royalty.”
The tunnel looked like it could have been one of the long hallways on the isle. The floors were a stone so pale they gleamed, there was not a trace of dust or a cobweb to be seen, and the walls glowed.
“Zaree?” Emlynn called down. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Zaree answered. “It just appears that magic really is everywhere.”
Chapter 12
“YOU’RE SURE about this?” Triv asked, giving Trekelm a sideways glance from the comfortable library chair she was curled up in. “I mean, I saw what it did to Falcon.”
The guild’s leader let out a snort. “Falcon. That girl was far too early in her training to attempt that, and she did it without permission or guidance because she wanted to impress you.”
“It took her a month to wake up,” Trivintaie said firmly. “No matter her reasons, I don’t want that to happen to me.”
“Please.” Corrin snorted from his seat across the room. “You have a damn dragon for a master. You could probably flick your fingers to do this, then go engage in a round of swordplay with Gyr. Uh, Master Gyr,” he amended quickly as Trekelm glared at him. “Oh come on, Master. Gyr’s the one who told us he didn’t want us using some stuffy title to address him.”
“You’re not a master yet, so you’ll address him with the respect he deserves,” Trekelm told the young man firmly before pointing at Triv. “And you need to remember that I may not be your master, but I do lead the guild. Do you really think I’d tell you you’re ready if I wasn’t 100 percent certain?”
“Well, no,” Triv allowed grudgingly. “But please remember that I was the one who found Falcon after she cast the spell.”
“She succeeded,” Corrin reminded her.
Triv shot him a glare. “She did, but it nearly killed her.”
“You’ll be fine,” Trekelm said in what Triv assumed was supposed to be a reassuring voice. It wasn’t. Not really.
“If I die I’m having Corrin resurrect me so I can smack you,” she muttered as she opened the leather book she’d placed on her lap earlier. It had no title, but the pages held spells in a language no one truly understood that she’d learned over the past few years. She flipped open pages carelessly, pausing when she finally reached the entry she was looking for. She stared at it for a long moment before looking over at Corrin. He nodded and gave her a wink. She rolled her eyes, an expression that was completely ruined by the fact that her face heated, and spoke the words on the page.
“Tova songei temi dova.”
There was a deep tone, more vibration than sound, that shuddered through the library. Trivintaie barely noticed the startled look Corrin shot Trekelm, instead concentrating on chanting the words. She wasn’t sure it was even working, until suddenly a shock of magic ran through her body, making her scream the words.
And then, just as suddenly as it started, everything went still and silent.
There was a hole hanging in midair in front of Trivintaie.
“You did it!” Corrin shouted with a laugh. He made to join her, but Trekelm grabbed him and held him back.
“Wait,” the guild leader hissed. “Her familiar hasn’t appeared yet.”
“Yes, he has,” Triv said with a chuckle.
As
one, Corrin and Trekelm stared at the strange opening. There was something… twitching?
“Whiskers,” Corrin said. “Whatever it is, it has whiskers.”
“It’s safe,” Triv said to the owner of the whiskers that were peeking into the room. It was odd, seeing only the strands and nothing else. “I didn’t call out for you to make you a slave.”
Truth.
The voice echoed in Triv’s head, and she held back a laugh of relief.
“Truth,” she agreed. “No one here will hurt you. I seek only guidance and kinship.”
The whiskers moved, pressing into the room, where they were quickly followed by a nose, then an entire muzzle, then the head of a cat. A purple cat. It blinked as it took in its surroundings, then turned its intelligent gaze to Trivintaie. The feline eyes widened in what Triv would have thought was surprise if it had been a human.
You’re—
“I’m Trivintaie,” Triv said. “I’m hoping we can be friends.”
The rest of the cat slid into view as it leaped gracefully to the floor from wherever it had been called, the hole in the air closing behind it.
We will be very good friends, the cat assured her. It stopped to groom its tail, and Triv was made aware in the most awkward manner possible that she might want to ask if she should refer to it as ‘he’ instead of ‘it’ from that point on.
My name is K’yerin. I look forward to seeing what you can do.
“ZAREE? ZAREE. It is time to wake.”
Zaree blinked rapidly, her dream clashing with reality and leaving her confused as to who she was and what was going on. Her chest clenched with a pain that would have been unimaginable if someone else had described it, and a tear slid down her face.
Yldost’s face was almost touching hers, and they jolted back in shock. “I did not mean to upset you,” they stammered. “But you would not wake.”
“It’s nothing you did,” Zaree said, her voice thick as she waved away their concern. “I was dreaming again. I wish Triv had come back before we left so we could have figured out why I’ve been dreaming about her.”