I blinked. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea that my magic was unreliable. But on the other hand, if I kept my sword sheathed, I would have Fae magic to use if the human magic didn’t work.
“I’m just supposed to make spells up on the spot?” I asked.
“But they aren’t reliable. You might think you have the perfect spell, and something will go wrong with it. It’s almost worse than having no magic at all.”
“Except I do have the Fae power, and that’s reliable.”
But the look on Gerrold’s face made me bite my lip.
He tried to manage a smile. “But the positive side is that in very small things, you’ll be able to do anything you like with it, and you can make up a spell on the spot that will work as well as anything I could teach you.”
“Like what, for instance?”
He looked around and picked up a dead twig. “Try lighting that,” he said, handing it to me.
I took it and peered at the end of it through the gathering darkness. Hmm. Darkness. Dark… “Hasten, hark!” I said to the magic. “Light the dark!”
And just like that, with a tiny drain of power, the end of the twig blossomed into flame.
We tried several more little tricks after I made one of those glowing balls of Fae light to give us something to see by. Not only could I create fire, I could also distill pure water out of the air; I could make a plant go from bud to bloom within a few moments; and I could make small objects float and fly just as I could with Fae magic. But I couldn’t get it to work to cheat at dice (and with Fae magic, I could).
Gerrold pulled at his chin a little, then looked as if he had decided something. “Let me repeat what Brianna has probably already told you about human magic. Most people don’t have magic that is strong enough to be useful, and of the ones that do, about half don’t have the will, the patience, or the ability to stick to mastering it to make it useful. It’s like being musical. Everyone can sing. Not everyone is willing to undergo the discipline and training to be a minstrel. Fewer people than that can compose music. Even fewer can compose and perform to a standard that makes them into legendary performers.”
“So… it’s more than just having it, it’s having it strong enough and being willing to work at it?”
“Exactly so,” Gerrold said. “Not everyone magical has the drive. Because they don’t have any control, they can’t even wish a drop of water into existence at first. But if someone is determined enough, it’s possible for almost anyone with sufficient magic to become a competent magician—a witch. Not brilliant but certainly competent enough to make a living. People who have more power and devote time and effort into mastering control become wizards. But unless you are a sorcerer, and they are very rare, it takes a lot of work to master control, as you are learning. Without that work, magic dries up in most people for lack of use.” He chuckled. “Wizards don’t like people to know that.”
“Because then there’d be no jobs for wizards?” I asked, only half seriously.
“No,” he said, sobering. “Because then wizards and witches and other folk like them would spend all their time cleaning up the messes that people who don’t think before they act would create. Remember the fable of the Wishing Fish?”
“The one that gave a man and his wife three wishes?” I asked.
“And you remember what happened. The first thing he wished for, because he didn’t think, was a sausage for dinner. Then his wife got so angry that he’d wasted a wish that she wished the sausage onto the end of his nose. But he wished it off again—and there they were with nothing to show for the great gift but a single sausage.”
I chewed my lower lip. “But I didn’t think at the christening, either. I just jumped in between Aurora and that Dark Fae.”
Gerrold smiled. “That’s a very different sort of ‘not thinking.’ You could be trying to use Fae and human magic for all sorts of things to make your own life easier—and you’re not. What you are doing is learning control and discipline.”
“That’s probably because every time I use magic, it drains me. So the lesson is, don’t use it unless you have to?” I shook my head. “No, that’s not right. I have to have a different sort of discipline than it takes to memorize hundreds of spells. I have to learn how to focus everything fiercely when I need to use human magic. I can’t let myself be distracted no matter what is going on around me. My concentration has to be perfect or nothing will happen.”
Gerrold looked up at me, his eyes solemn in the light from the Fae globe. “I honestly would not care to have that sort of magic.”
“Only because you like to have complete control and predictability.” I don’t know why I said that, but once the words were out of my mouth, we both knew I was right.
He looked chagrined. “I’m inclined to think of magic as my tool. I must admit that I don’t much care for the tool possibly twisting in my hand and failing to accomplish my goal because my concentration slipped an infinitesimal amount for a mere moment.”
“Maybe that’s another reason why I have this sort of magic. I don’t mind that.” Then something occurred to me. “But that means that I didn’t get chosen by it?”
“It’s just an accident. And you could have decided to reject something you couldn’t completely control. I’ll be honest. If that had been the only way I could be a wizard, I might well have decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and be a blacksmith. I hope you’re not too disappointed that I won’t be able to teach you anything.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m relieved.” I stood up.
“Why is that?” Gerrold asked, doing likewise with a little groan for his old knees.
“It means that I’m not getting another set of lessons.” I rubbed my head, wondering if the vague hollow feeling in it was the prelude to a headache. “I’d need a day and a half of time each day to fit everything in.”
He grimaced and dropped a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m very sorry, Miri. We seem to be loading you up with more responsibilities every day, and you didn’t ask for any of them.”
“But I did. I asked to be able to protect Aurora. At least now I can instead of sitting back and wringing my hands.” I was very good about not adding “like Melalee.” And as I parted company with Gerrold at the door to the garden, I said, “I’ll take being able to act over being a spectator, no question about it.”
But I had another reason for being relieved that my human magic was going to require only the ability to make up rhymes on the spot and focus hard. Even though the Companions and I had very little free time at night, there was something I wanted to do, but I was going to need help.
A lot of help.
When I had given the others the silent signal that I wanted to meet up after dinner, we all went to the training yard as usual, which was the one place that was guaranteed to be deserted at this hour.
“Are we going up to Gerrold’s tower again?” Nat asked excitedly as soon as the last of us (me) arrived.
“Well, no, actually.” And before his face could fall, I said, “I’ve been thinking about something I need your help with. And this is the best time of day to do it.”
“All right, what is it then?” Giles asked.
I took a deep breath. “You all know my father was Fae, or half Fae. But none of the Fae seem to know who his mother could have been. That’s what I want to see if I can find out.”
Rob’s brow wrinkled, then his face cleared. “Oh! I see where this is going! We need to go through all the records of the Fae in and around Tirendell and see if we can find a match!”
I gulped a little because what I was about to say was, well, scary. But it was a possibility, and we—I—needed to consider it. “That includes the Dark Fae.”
Anna looked shocked. “Why?”
“Because the Dark Fae are constantly bickering with one another, one of them might have had an enemy, and how better to protect her son than place him with humans?” I was pretty sure that this was the thing Brianna h
ad been dancing around and not saying. “So we also need to look at the Dark Fae to see if there are any females who might be a match and who disappeared shortly after my father was handed to Sir Delacar. Because the best way of explaining why a Dark Fae wouldn’t come back for her son would be if she was dead.”
They all wore varying expressions of consternation, ranging from Giles, who looked mostly as if he was thinking hard about this, to Nat, who looked seriously alarmed.
It was Nat who finally spoke up. “But why pick Sir Delacar? Why not just steal a human child and leave hers as a changeling? Everyone knows the Dark Fae do that.”
“Because he’s kind, and she wouldn’t want her son harmed in any way. And because her enemies would certainly look for a changeling. They might look in all the traditional places where a Fae or half-Fae child is left—like remote cottages. The last place anyone would look for him was here.” I then repeated some of what Brianna had told me. “If she expected to confront an enemy and win, she probably assumed that she’d be back for him within months at most and that all this would become an amusing tale about how she had duped the humans into caring for her child, then left them bereft when he vanished again.”
“That would explain why none of the Light Fae know anything about it—or at least claim not to,” Elle finally said. “But—”
“I know. I’ve thought of everything you can think of. What if he was planted here to do mischief in the Court? Except he didn’t. What if he was evil? Except he wasn’t. What if he was intended to betray the King and the kingdom? Except that didn’t happen—”
“And what if the real difference between the Light and Dark Fae is just as simple as what they do and how they get their power?” asked Giles sensibly. “What if you took a Light Fae child and gave it to a Dark Fae parent to raise and vice versa? What if the Fae aren’t two separate races but two different attitudes?”
And that was exactly what I had been wondering about after I realized that the Companions’ courage and determination had empowered me against the Wraith.
There was silence for a very long time, until Nat finally spoke up slowly. “Well, there are Fae allies who are completely good or evil as far as I can tell. And there are some who are supposed to be neutral. Take Goblins, for instance—”
“I’d rather not,” I said, but it seemed that I had won over my Companions.
“So we’ll be spending our lovely summer evenings cooped up in the Records Hall ruining our eyes.” Anna sighed.
Nat spoke up suddenly. “No one locks up the records. There’s no reason why we can’t get the pertinent record books and read through them somewhere nicer than the musty Records Hall, at least until the sun goes down. Tomorrow night after dinner, I guess.”
And just as easily as that, it was decided.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WE FOUND THE TIME TO GO TO THE RECORDS HALL AND retrieve the books we needed to start our search, and we had about two hours to peruse them before it got too dark to read anymore. Then we had to replace the books since I didn’t want anyone to ask questions about why we had them.
It was actually pleasant doing this even if the reason was potentially disturbing.
We found a corner of the herb garden with great light until sunset, and no one ever went there, since that garden and the kitchen garden were right by the kitchen door. Which turned out to be very nice because Odo would come out with cool wine and leftover pastries for us once he had finished banking the ovens for the night.
Nat was the best of us at deciphering the crabbed handwriting of the clerks who had made the entries. Elle was best at determining if a name was an alternative spelling of one we had already noted down. However, it became clear from the first evening that this could take a long time. Assuming that my father had actually been his apparent age of six or seven when the lady brought him to Sir Delacar, we had started with the books that recorded the Fae of the kingdom about nine years before that event, and I wanted to look through all of them right up to three years after his arrival. That was twelve years of records to check.
It would have been even harder if the Fae frequently changed their appearance. But once they found a look they liked, they tended to stay with it and only varied their costumes. That meant that once a Fae was identified by name, we could be relatively sure that as long as the appearance matched, it was the same Fae every time.
In the process of carefully making lists of the Fae we thought were likely candidates for what would be my grandmother, we discovered something else. The lists also made note of who had identified the Fae in question, where they had done this, and how the person had determined who the Fae was. The “how” was usually “because this Fae matches the description of an existing Fae,” but there were other far more interesting answers. Like “bargained for the information at the Goblin Market” and “was told of the Fae by Grothar, the King Bear.”
On the third night of our list making, I mentioned this aloud, and the others all looked up. “That sounds as if asking Clarion, Lobo, and Viridity about Fae might be a good idea,” said Nat. “And any other talking animal they know. I wonder if that Grothar is still around.”
“Well, when we get done with our list, we could see what Lobo says,” I replied. “We could ask him on our way to Brianna’s.”
“He should know the safe ones to talk to,” agreed Giles, because as we knew from tales, not all the King animals were exactly “safe.” Just because Lobo wouldn’t eat anything he could talk to, it didn’t follow that other King animals were that picky.
By the fourth night, we were finished. We had lists of both Light and Dark Fae females who were probably of an age to have children and the years they were in Tirendell. I planned to ask Lobo for his help.
The next day, Brianna met us at the tree in the garden. “The Council of the Elder Fae is calling a full meeting of all Light Fae,” she said, before I could ask her why she was here. “I’m leaving now, and I will be gone at least a week.” She smiled, and I could tell that it was intended to reassure us. “I’ll send a message when I am back. In the meantime, you’ll have a week to entertain and rest yourselves in the afternoons. Enjoy it, my dears!”
“Wait—”
But she had already stepped back through the door and was gone.
We looked at one another. “Should we tell Sir Delacar?” Rob asked.
“No,” I said firmly. “This is our chance to have a nice long talk with Lobo, and I’ll bet Brianna forgot to tell him that she was leaving. I’ll ask him to bring Clarion tomorrow and any other King animals he can persuade to talk to us. Let’s go.”
As I had hoped, Lobo was waiting for us on the other side of the door. “Brianna was called to a Fae council,” I told him, “I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
His ears flattened. “That’s disappointing, I shall miss you.”
“No, you won’t,” Nat said, before I could say anything. “We’re not telling Sir Delacar. You’ll get all of us on our usual days, and Miri alone on hers. We have a project—”
Nat turned to look at me as if he was afraid he had spoken out of turn.
“Go right ahead, you’re doing fine,” I told him.
“That’s… very interesting,” Lobo said thoughtfully, when Nat had finished. “What do you want of me?”
“Well, if we find female Fae who disappeared in the three years after my father came to the palace, we’re hoping you can tell us about them. And if we don’t find any who disappeared, maybe you can help us narrow down the list in some other way,” I said.
“Or if not you, then any other King animals you know that are willing to speak with us,” Nat added.
Lobo opened his mouth but didn’t get a chance to say anything because Viridity crashed through the bushes at just that moment. The unicorn panted franticly, and his eyes rolled wildly as he skidded to a stop beside us.
“You—you—you—you—have to—help me! My friend Serulan—is in—terrible—trouble!”
“Who
’s Serulan?” Rob asked, before I could.
But it was Lobo who answered.
“Serulan,” he said, “is a dragon.”
Dragons were rare and powerful, and there were three that lived in Tirendell that I knew of, and all three were treasured by the provinces they lived in. Serulan was one of Tirendell’s resident dragons. They were hermits for the most part, and they were renowned for their wisdom, which makes sense seeing as they lived as long as Fae. They spent most of their time adding to or brooding over their hoards—and most of those “hoards” weren’t treasuries of gold and silver. Dragons could collect almost anything, from books to seashells; the one commonality was their obsession over their hoards. They hunted for objects of desire, they traded for them (in either goods or knowledge), and they spent entire days admiring their collections when they weren’t being consulted by those brave enough to approach them for advice.
So all I could think was: How could something that big, that powerful, and that old be in trouble?
And how in the name of the Infinite Light could we possibly help?
But it was Viridity asking, and I owed him more than I could ever possibly pay back. And—I had promised him that I would do whatever he or Lobo or Clarion wanted from me when he saved Aurora.
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