by Terah Edun
So even if she wanted to back down now, she knew that she couldn’t.
But Donna Marie didn’t know that and she read hesitation in Mae’s every movement.
Possibly to persuade her, possibly to just get this moving the foreign woman begrudgingly began to explain.
“There’s something about that tattoo about your collarbone. It doesn’t react to coercion of any kind, magical or physical,” Donna Marie admitted.
And how would you know that? Mae wondered to herself as her hackles raised.
Who else had this woman approached to get what she’d needed…and what had she done for the access she obviously so desperately wanted?
“in fact, your ancestors were quite devious about it,” Donna Marie said in an envious tone that Mae didn’t like. “They made the tattoos invisible to the naked eye unless you’re a mage…”
“Well, that explains why the girls in the village never really asked about what was right in front of them,” Mae muttered.
“and resistant to inspection without the express approval of the bearer,” Donna Marie concluded.
Mae raised a curious eyebrow, “So you just have to ask and it can be studied?”
“No,” Donna Marie grumbled. “It’s rather more complex than that.”
Donna Marie frowned as she continued, “How can I explain this to one so ignorant to the complex intricacies of a mage warding?”
“You can try by using small words,” Mae said sarcastically.
Mae heard a small laugh come from Rivan but when she looked his way, his face was once more expressionless.
“I didn’t mean to imply you were an idiot, just unversed in the formalities of magical study, which would give you a platform to understand this,” Donna Marie started to explain in a long-winded tone.
Fortunately Rivan interrupted with a short and sweet, “It’s a binding on your body.”
Mae looked over at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Go on,” she said with curiosity.
The foreign woman also turned to him with slight relief on her face and Mae tried not to get annoyed as his eyes drifted down from her face to her neck to her chest and hovered.
She wanted to ask him if his mother had taught him any manners but she recognized the disconnect of the look on his face. He was imagining the glyphs that spread across her chest like a clan crest.
Or maybe he could see them through my tunic and vest, Mae thought with wonder.
It wouldn’t surprise her that the second of the foreigners had strange gifts of his own.
He was so closed off that it was hard to tell just exactly who he was, much less what he knew, but she didn’t interrupt him. She just let him contemplate his next words carefully.
After a moment of staring at a point just to the left of her, Rivan continued in a methodical voice as if nothing strange had happened.
“That binding makes it so your flesh hides the very well written layers of the spell written within it.”
“Spell, what spell?” Mae asked genuinely shocked.
Rivan sent her scorching look. “The tattoo,” he said in a disbelieving tone.
As if she was the fool for not realizing it in the first place.
And maybe she was but he didn’t have to take that tone with her. She was new to all of this!
Apparently deciding to take pity on her Rivan explained further, “The inked tattoos on your collarbone, and I suspect this is true for all the women in your greater holding…”
He paused there to glance over at Ember’s prone form resting against the tree. Mae resisted the instinctive urge to step in front of her sister’s body and instead let him continue his examination from a distance, a distance of several feet away from both Ember and herself. If he could study the tattoos from that far away and while she was covered, Mae was tempted to just tell Donna Marie to let Rivan do what needed to be done.
Jolting her from her reverie, Rivan continued as he said, “this is the same. It’s more than just a design, representative marking of your family. As Donna Marie stated it binds your powers and precludes you from using them.”
“And how does it do that?” Donna Marie asked in a smooth leading tone.
She clearly already knew she was just trying to lead his explanation back to her original path of inquiry.
“By using a powerful mage’s work to do so,” Rivan said through gritted teeth.
Still the foreign woman nodded in appreciation as she said, “Thank you Rivan.”
“Don’t thank me,” the young man muttered. “Her family may have done a shitty thing but that spell work is absolutely gorgeous. It’s alive in her skin.”
And this time both Donna Marie and Rivan were staring at the hidden ink with what Mae could only characterize as want.
“Well,” Mae said while clearing her throat and trying to break up their stares. “So you want to study how they inked the design?”
“That and more,” Donna Marie said eagerly.
Rivan shrugged. “It’ll take careful analysis of the layering to see just how they laid down the spell framework I’m guessing. Starting with a bare look at your skin and moving into the field of aural divination as we descend into the realm of strictly mage sight.”
Mae stirred but she really didn’t have the background to say if he was lying or how all these ‘aurals’ would affect her. She just had to trust them because from the looks on their faces, they had done just about all the explaining either was prepared to do.
Reluctantly, she said then “Okay, let’s get going then.”
She eyed Rivan warily as she did so while wondering if she had been keeping a tense eye on the wrong person all along.
He knew far too much about this ‘warding’ when even Donna Marie couldn’t definitely state such details.
So how did he know it? Mae openly wondered with a question in her eyes as she looked at him.
Of course, he was now back to being silent with an interesting gleam in his eyes, his hand folded in front of him, and no more.
Donna Marie proceeded to begin.
“Well, as my fine traveling companion has so aptly stated,” Donna Marie said. “Your tattoos are composed of more than meets the eye. I will not only have to visually study it but dive into my magic to unravel the layers that make it a composition.”
“But you’re not going to…permanently remove it or anything?” Mae nervously stated.
“What?” Donna Marie blurted out caustically. “Oh no, I don’t believe that will be necessary.”
Mae let out a slow sigh of relief.
“That’s good,” she hurriedly replied. “I mean, not that I wouldn’t want it removed, but it would make my life easier if you could just…make the tattoo bend to your will for a moment, show me how to proceed with the incantation as a third in the mage triangle and then…we’ll all be on our way.”
“I’m sure we will,” Donna Marie replied with a bit of darkness in her tone.
Mae couldn’t precisely pinpoint on what part of their conversation had tripped her up though so she let it go as just a fanciful part of her imagination as Donna Marie continued to speak.
“Now that I have your verbal permission to assess your tattoos you must do one more thing first before we begin?” Donna Marie said.
“What?” Mae asked immediately with apprehension.
To be fair Donna Marie had yet to ask something of her she couldn’t easily physically give…but there was always something more on the horizon, which Mae didn’t like. But she had to play what she had in her hands to get to the cure if she wanted to win.
“You must believe inside yourself that this is the right decision,” Donna Marie said. “Or it won’t work.”
“What won’t work?” Mae asked mystified.
“I won’t be able to access your ink,” Donna Marie said in a final note.
“You know I’m amazed that that’s all it takes,” Mae said finally.
Donna Marie shrugged. “Sometimes the simplest thi
ngs are the hardest. For instance, if you had a mirror in front of you right this moment, what you see and what I see would be very different,” Donna Marie explained.
Inquisitively Mae asked, “What about what Rivan sees? Do you all see the same thing?”
“No,” Rivan said shortly.
“Yes,” Donna Marie replied just as quickly.
Mae looked back and forth between them.
“Well which is it?” she asked in confusion.
Donna Marie and Rivan exchanged quick looks with silent words between them, then he nodded as if giving Donna Marie to proceed in his steed.
“The magic that shields your tattoo also convolutes it,” Donna Marie said reluctantly. “If it constantly shifting the design and parameter to the naked eye, so you see even if there had been a mage in your village when you were growing up, one that wasn’t on your family’s payroll, they wouldn’t have known what to make of it either.”
“It shifts,” Mae said in speculatively wonder as she traced an apprehensive finger over her neckline.
“Yes,” Donna Marie said dryly. “Like constantly moving sediment along the bottom of the river. So I can see it as one shape in a second and then the lines are moving again.”
“But with the aural thing you’ll be able to look beyond the shifting shapes to the really ink,” Mae quickly said as the dots connected in her head.
She wasn’t sure why the ink across her collarbone was so intricately warded and laid down, but knowing this now, she was more eager than ever to get this done.
Perhaps even see for herself what kind cage her relatives had unwittingly put her in.
And perhaps see if that cage had a lock to be broken.
Though She didn’t tell that to Donna Marie or Rivan .
Not yet.
She just needed to get the cure done and only then, when her true purpose was served would she go beyond that and think of the implications for herself.
3
“You seemed to have at last grasped the implications,” Donna Marie said with an approving smile.
She wasn’t aware of Mae’s thought process on the matter, but at the moment it would be a bridge too soon to bring up the far-flung possibilities.
Instead, Mae said “Well then, I’m convinced. I believe you should see it.”
She looked at them expectantly as if all of a sudden, their vision should have cleared and the ink would have stopped shifting of its own accord.
Rivan shook his head, “It’s more than just your vocal approval, its relaxing the wards you’ve put up around yourself as well.”
Mae threw up her hands in frustration and paced back-and-forth.
“This whole conversation is because my magic has been locked away according to you,” Mae accused. “How can I have wards when my magic isn’t free?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Rivan said. “They’re instinctive.”
Mae narrowed her eyes. “Then you’re going to have a problem because I’ve never played around with wards, magic or otherwise. In fact, I don’t think any in my family has. Even the male relatives in my family don’t have naturally intense gifts, just enough to set bone or encourage crops.”
Donna Marie nodded eagerly, “Now you see my conundrum. Why work so hard to lock something away that is essentially meaningless in nature.”
“I wouldn’t call it meaningless. That’s practically my clan crest you’re looking at. It means something to the young women of our line when we wake to see it laid out in all its glory on our flesh. It means we belong,” Mae cried, a little offended.
“Yes, the designs are pretty and were given a nice backstory,” Donna Marie said wryly. “But it is the work involved in the magical layering that is the masterpiece and the question is how did they do it?”
“What do you mean?” Mae asked, curious despite herself.
“I mean that there are toddlers in my cities which display more magic than the greatest of your elders,” Donna Marie replied with insulting frankness.
Before Mae could object, she continued on, “I am not boasting, it is a fact.”
“And yet the gifts needed to do what these backwards commune-dwellers have done outstrips more than the mage adepts at your fabled school,” Rivan murmured.
What school? Mae wondered as her ears perked up, not wanting to interrupt now that they’d told her something.
“Nevertheless,” Donna Marie said firmly. “They individually are not so gifted which begs the question what are they hiding underneath these runes that would make them beggar their family to afford its casting.”
Mae frowned, “What do you mean by that?”
Rivan spared her pity glance for once.
“You know we’ve been wandering through these woods for days on end before we approached your castle,” he said slowly.
“And?” Mae demanded as her eyes searched between the two. Wondering what horrors they were hiding that both of them seemed so reluctant to speak.
“It wasn’t that we were lost,” he replied softly. “It was what we found.”
Mae placed her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“Spit it out,” Mae said.
“Elderflowers girl,” Donna Marie said bluntly. “Enough to cover an acre in neatly squared sections off to the west.”
Mae blinked. Then blinked again.
There were a lot of implications to process in that statement.
“That’s impossible!” Mae cried, her mouth agape.
Elderflowers were the rarest of the rarest plants which could be sold within kingdom or even across the border. They were practically currency in their own right because they were so valuable for a wide array of properties from cooking to casting with magic.
Both Rivan and Donna Marie looked at her with ‘poor little girl’ looks in their eyes.
She objected strongly to that.
Denying their claim, Mae stated empathetically, “Even a quarter of an acre would be enough of a crop so that no one in my family would have to work for the next two years!”
“Yes,” Donna Marie said simply, not seeming to get how disconcerting this was for Mae at the moment.
Desperate to get her point across, Mae stressed her next few words.
“Do you know what that would have meant?” she asked bitterly. “That kind of gold would have changed our lives.”
She wasn’t thinking of luxuries when she said it. She was referring to being able to cure the children who had died in the previous rounds.
Mae thought it through over and over again. It couldn’t be true. It didn’t make sense.
While her family was the locals liked to term comfortable and the kingdom liked to term destitute, she still had grown up loved and well-fed. Not enough money for furnishings in her room or more than one extra set of attire a year, but happy.
But with the money from harvesting elderflowers which only grew in specific types of soil? Well, even after the best treatments for their ill, the Darnes family would have been living as fancy as the fanciest of city dwellers.
Her stubborn denial must have remained on her face because Rivan sighed and dug into his pockets.
When he withdrew his hand, he held in it a small clothed-wrapped bundle tied with twine.
“Catch,” he said dryly.
Mae watched it sail through the air when he threw it and when she did indeed catch it, it landed with a heavy thump.
Eyebrows raised in curiosity she wasted no time in opening the package.
Her mouth sucked in a sharp breath of air when she saw that there on top a piece of burlap with a weighty rock by its side sat a bunch of hearty elderflowers. Perfectly healthy, fresh blooms with lavender color on the tips and white in the center. Unmistakable for what it was.
Mae’s mouth went dry but she had to ask, “You got all this from some hidden plot in my forest?”
Rivan nodded and said seriously, “That little bunch in your hands right there is enough to buy a supply wagon stocked with goods to get us
back over the border and staying in good inns every night to boot.”
Mae couldn’t deny what she was seeing and held in her own hands.
“There’s more?” Mae whispered.
“Much more,” Donna Marie said firmly.
Mae said in a hollow voice with wide eyes, “You think they sold these elderflowers to what? Stock away gold no one’s ever seen in some hidden room?”
“We think they used this to have the casting done on each of your female line when they were old enough,” Donna Marie speculated. “The magic is so finely detailed from what I could see now, it would have cost an extreme amount to hire a mage of that caliber for every one of you girls.”
The undercurrents of what she was saying didn’t elude Mae.
She looked over at Donna Marie this time and asked in a quiet tone, “You never really came here to observe our trade, did you? You always came to unlock the gifts.”
Donna Marie didn’t deny it.
“And that is why you know I’m telling you the truth,” the foreign woman stated simply. “I wouldn’t lie when I am so very close to getting everything I dreamed of.”
“Those men who came here before, do you remember them?” the foreign woman said suavely as she came over and plucked the elderflowers from Mae’s grasp.
“No,” Mae said hoarsely. “Just what I told you before.”
“Hmm,” Donna Marie replied. “Nevertheless they left something behind. Something else your family is keeping hidden. I’ve been inside your walls, so I know.”
“And what is that?” Mae asked with a heavy swallow.
“Whatever it is that ails your siblings is coming from within your own walls,” Donna Marie said with a smile. “And I think you know that.”
Mae stiffened. She almost snapped in outrage that she knew no such thing.
But there were so many secrets and lies lately.
A family that she couldn’t trust, practicing the dark arts and rolling in unseen wealth.
She wanted to tell Rivan about the former…but she still didn’t trust Donna Marie with the knowledge, despite the fact that she knew less or little about the boy himself, she thought he would help her uncover that secret.