Silverglen: A Young Adult Epic Fantasy Novel

by E. A. Burnett

  Inside the camp lay more spells. Glamours on the ground, hanging from tree boughs, and even stretched across the entrance to a cave that was tucked beneath a crag. Were they traps, like so many of the Glamours at Silverglen, but meant for patrols rather than shifters?

  The river they had followed to the camp widened and grew more shallow, forming a stream that wandered under the trees and past the cave, its banks smoothed by flat stones and moss. Children played in the water along with shifters in otter and fox forms, and their shrieks of laughter bounced off the crags.

  Others, wearing the scarce covering of deer hides similar to the Zarian fashion, could be seen carrying firewood, hanging washed blankets, skinning rabbits, and planting seeds along mounds that looked oddly familiar. They used hovels, Ember realized, just as the Orion clans did. Only the entrances to these hovels, and some of the roofs mounded with dirt for planting, were sewn with a Glamour.

  Hidden. Everything is hidden.

  It was a wonder the shifters could find anything.

  Ember flinched when she felt a cold, wet nose against her hand. A wolf-like dog pushed its muzzle against her. Ember sunk her fingers into his coat and laughed when the dog wriggled against her.

  "He’s not a shifter," Ember stated. She knew it somehow from his simple gaze, and from the way he snorted and wagged with pure joy. A dog’s greeting, not a human greeting.

  "That's Jasper,” Riggs explained. “My father found him as a pup abandoned in a den and took him in."

  "He's cute." Dogs were a rarity at Silverglen. Arundel kept only five for hunting, which he left in Fletch's care when they weren't being used.

  Riggs reached down into a low-growing clump of sapphire-weed and lifted the wide piece of wood on which they grew. "Welcome to camp," he said, giving her a wink and a twitch of the ears before heading down the steps into the hovel. The wizards followed with Kitt's litter.

  Satisfied with Ember's scratches, Jasper bounded away to play with the children in the water, and a fresh wave of laughter and screams erupted as he shook water from his coat.

  "The camp is small," said Seabird, coming to stand beside her. "About a hundred people. Most are shifters. Survivors of the rebellion."

  "I never could have imagined so many shifters in one place," Ember said. They had begun to notice her presence in the camp. Some stared blatantly, while others looked over their shoulders, and still others pretended not to be curious at all, going about their chores and slipping like ghosts in and out of visibility as they walked through the hanging Glamour spells. "How many wizards are here?"

  "Five." A frown creased Seabird's forehead. "It's a challenge to keep the spells in good condition. Especially after a heavy rain."

  Ember nodded. "Where shall I stay?"

  "Wherever you like. There are no empty homes left, so you will have to share. I will introduce you to the kitchen staff."

  Ember swallowed a sudden wave of panic.

  The kitchen, it turned out, was in the cave. They crossed the stream where a thick slab of wood ran from one smooth bank to the other and walked into its rounded mouth.

  Smoke from a great fire streamed up into a hole of the cavernous ceiling. The echoes of a handful of voices came from the few who stood at wooden trestle tables, standing in the light of the cave opening. They chopped and stirred and tossed diligently, and the scents of onion, garlic, and meat washed over her. They barely glanced up when she came in, except for an especially tall woman who wore a full-length leather dress trimmed in feathers and fur. She looked to be Ekesian, or perhaps Zarian and Ekesian, with her wide, dark eyes and skin the shade of a silk-nut.

  "Sea," she breathed, and she glided up to Seabird, brushing her cheek against his in greeting.

  Seabird gave a white-toothed grin.

  "Ember, this is Asenath. She's a great wizard, and a good cook, too."

  "Good?" The woman waived a hand dismissively. "I care only about the aesthetics. I have no skill when it comes to taste. That's mostly Etty's work."

  "Ember expressed interest in working in the kitchens,” Seabird told her. “She has some nice dishes in mind.

  Asenath's face lit up. "Well, that's perfect! Etty could use some help now."

  Etty, looking sweaty and stern, stood at a table near the fire in the back of the small cave. She looked Ember up and down while she cleaned out a turkey.

  "Ember, you said?" she asked in a husky voice. "Stuffed a turkey before?"

  Ember shook her head, trying not to look too closely at the red parts Etty dragged out from the turkey's body cavity.

  "Lord's cook, is what Seabird made me think you were. By the looks of you, I'd say scullion. Come here now, don't be scared. It's dead."

  Precisely. Perhaps she should've told Seabird she could sew, or chop wood, or—

  "You know how to tear? With your hands? Don't look so puzzled. There," Etty said, motioning to a bowl and a loaf of hard bread. "Tear that into bits. You a shifter?"

  "Yes," Ember said, taking up the dense, nutty-smelling bread.

  Etty, a bit heavy-set, finished cleaning the inside of the turkey and started chopping onions. The sharp spray of them stung Ember's eyes.

  "You're new, so I'll give you some advice," said Etty while she chopped. "This camp isn't anything you've seen before. You're young, so you wouldn't remember the old days. Back in Lach." Etty sniffed, though Ember was certain it was only from the onions. "Don't be surprised if you see shifters eating in animal form. Most like it better that way. And mating. It's hard to keep up with all the breeding. As far as the bare skin, you'll get more than enough of it. You look us in the eyes or don't look at us at all. It's what's proper."

  She tossed the onions in with the bread.

  "Stuff as much breading and onion in as you can. We don't have butter, but the bird juice does just fine. And it's rude to look on if a couple is mating," she continued seamlessly. "You'll get used to it soon enough, and then you won't hardly notice."

  Ember doubted that very much.

  "Wizard rules don't apply much here. Even Seabird doesn't have a stick up his arse like other wizards. Now we tie up the flaps of skin using these sharpened twigs and sinew. Make room for the spit-stick to go through."

  "How did you all come to be settled in a clan village?"

  "It was Seabird's doing. Used to be that we made our own camp. That was before a patrol found us out. A shifter gave us away."

  "A shifter?"

  "He was offered a reward, a place back in Lach. Very tempting for many of us. Twelve people were killed for it. That's when our healer disappeared—killed him too, no doubt." Etty speared the turkey with the spit-stick, pushing through the flesh and bone like butter. "We moved camp. Seabird bought this one from a clan who wanted to move north of here. Clans close to the border are restless nowadays."

  Ember helped Etty set the spit over the fire. The turkey gleamed in the orange light, the skin sweating until pink juice rolled down its side and fell, sizzling, into the hands of the fire.

  "Now, we turn it like this while it cooks," Etty said, gripping the handle of the spit and rotating it steadily. She eyed Ember. "You planning on wearing that rag for good?"

  Ember looked down at the over-sized garment and shrugged. "I hadn't thought about it."

  "You look out of place. I know someone who can make you something better."

  Hopefully not like yours, Ember thought. Etty's outfit was unfortunately tight-looking, accentuating the bulges along her sides and causing them to spill out like dough between the top and bottom pieces of hide.

  Ember opened her mouth to politely decline.

  "Why are you here, anyways?" Etty asked before she could speak. Ember hid her surprise with a frown and began cleaning off the table with a soapy rag.

  "I'm looking for my father. He disappeared before I was born. I don't know anything about him, but he might look like me..."

  Ember glanced hopefully at Etty, who studied her face while she turned the spit.

 
; "Dark hair like a raven," Etty muttered. She looked away. "I knew someone with that hair once. Gone now. Come here and give this a turn. Don't burn it now, keep it moving."

  Etty grabbed the bucket of turkey parts and left the cave, calling Jasper with a shout as she did so.

  The heat of the fire burned Ember's skin, and soon she was panting and sweating in an effort to keep the turkey turning. I mustn't burn it, she thought desperately, thinking of the shifters who had looked at her when she arrived, and the ones who hadn't.

  She tried not to think of the man with hair like a raven.

  chapter Twenty

  Riggs looked up when Ember came down the steps to his hovel. A fire crackled in the center of the space, shedding yellow light on the ground where Riggs had spread out his healing implements. In the darkest spot of the hovel, Kitt slept on a low cot beneath the watchful gaze of Norman, who perched above him.

  "I have just given him a tincture," Riggs said, waving for her to enter.

  Ember closed the door to the hovel and stepped into the warm breath that exuded from the fire. She set down the bucket she carried, full of water. The rain from her sodden dress pooled on the packed dirt floor and steamed in the heat.

  "A bit late for a swim, isn't it?" Riggs asked, amused.

  "It's pouring out. Do you mind if I stay here tonight?"

  Riggs grinned. "Stay as long as you wish, but be forewarned. People will talk."

  "But you're a healer," Ember said, smiling. "Surely women sleep here when they're ill."

  "Are you ill?"

  Ember grinned and lifted a foot. Two days without shoes left her feet muddy, scraped, and bloody. She wished they would callus so she could walk like a wolf or a cougar through the mountains.

  Riggs made a tisking noise with his tongue. "Too ill to walk, I suppose?"

  "Most definitely."

  Ember settled next to Riggs, relishing the fire’s heat as it dried her soaked dress. Riggs' hovel, it had turned out, was farther from the kitchens than she had thought, and she hadn't been able to avoid the sudden rainstorm. After that muddy sprint and a long day in the kitchens—where she had discovered the kitchen staff here to be just as chatty as the kitchen staff at Silverglen—the quiet, embracing warmth of Riggs' hovel was a welcome solace.

  "Does he still have a fever?" Ember asked as she began washing her tender feet in the bucket of water.

  "Not anymore. He needs to sleep though. He'll have to rest longer than he'll like."

  "Perhaps you can slip some ellium tincture into his soup," Ember suggested.

  Riggs laughed, though Ember could sense the slight tension in his voice and the way he leaned over his tools, not quite looking near her.

  "I'm sorry about your knife," she said abruptly.

  Riggs' smile died, and the crackling of the fire filled the momentary void of silence.

  "It belonged to my father."

  Your dead father. Ember hunched over the bucket.

  "I would've taken it back if I could, only the Freeze would've been broken."

  "You've no need to apologize. You did what you had to do."

  "But you need it, don't you?" Ember motioned to the couple of knives that remained in his collection.

  He fingered one, which was long and toothed. "We could always use more knives. We have no access to metal here, and no smithies."

  Ember, who had been born to the ringing of smithies in Silverglen, stared at Riggs. "No smithies? But how do you...?"

  "We use what we have. What we brought when we fled Lach."

  Ember winced as she washed the last of the mud from her wounded feet. She could go back to Silverglen, steal a bundle of knives, return here—

  No, that would be far too risky. If Fletch had told Arundel what he knew—that Ember was a shifter and had fled—Arundel might well have a trap waiting for her at Silverglen. And no one ever escaped Arundel's traps.

  Ember pulled her feet close to the fire. "What about the clans?"

  "The mountain clans? They mostly keep to themselves and aren't exactly friendly."

  "But you've traded with them before, haven't you?"

  "Me? No. Seabird, yes." Riggs shrugged. "But it's Seabird." As if that explained everything.

  Ember sighed. "Why were you and Kitt at that burned village then, if not to trade?"

  Riggs adjusted a glass vile. "We were looking for survivors. We saw the smoke from camp."

  A risky move. Kitt must have guessed that it was either a clan burning out a clan, or a patrol burning out a clan. Either way, exposing themselves for the benefit of a couple clan members seemed like too big of a risk to take, especially for someone like Kitt.

  Ember took a leap. "Were you spying?"

  Riggs' brows raised. "I am not a spy. I'm a healer," he said, waving a hand over his box and tools.

  "Kitt, then," Ember pressed. It fit, somehow. "He's a spy for the faction."

  Riggs gave a half-smile of amusement, but said nothing further.

  There was more, Ember knew. She watched as Riggs placed his tools back into his box, muttering each name as he set it in its proper place.

  A thought struck her.

  "You were looking for survivors," she stated. "From the raid." Had his father been one of the ones taken?

  Riggs' hand paused over a pair of scissors. Then he gave a reluctant nod. "Six of our people went missing during the raid. We assumed the patrol captured them, maybe even killed them. Kitt and the others have been looking, but..."

  Ember's throat cinched. She hated thinking how they had likely died by Arundel's hand. "When did it happen?"

  Riggs studied a blade of the scissors. "Near the end of winter." He tucked the scissors into the box. "Sixty-five days ago."

  Ember could tell that it upset Riggs to speak of it, but she swallowed her words of comfort. She would be surprised if anyone lasted more than a few days in captivity of one of Arundel’s patrols. She wouldn't give him false hope.

  Riggs packed the rest of his box with tender hands. She wished she had something of her own father, her real one, to touch and hold and cherish.

  But that was assuming he was dead.

  "Do you know anyone older with hair the color of a raven?"

  Startled, Riggs looked up at her and frowned. "Sure, there are several people. There's Nolene, Verena, and Peter—"

  "Peter?"

  Riggs gave a sheepish grin. "If you mean people with dark hair who might be your father, well, Peter is only ten..."

  "That's it then? Three people?"

  Riggs frowned. "There’s Deon, but he’s about our age. There have been others, in the past. Even my father had dark hair."

  Ember smiled. "Was he a very good shifter?"

  "As good a shifter as he was a healer. By the time he took Kitt in, my father had given up on teaching me about shifting."

  "He raised Kitt?"

  "As his own, once we found him. Or rather, once Kitt found us." Riggs pulled out a small wide-mouthed jar with a green substance and handed it to her. "An ointment for your feet," he explained.

  The cream cooled and soothed her raw skin, and she dabbed it on liberally as Riggs continued his story.

  "It was Norman's doing, really. Kitt was fifteen at the time, and though he was older than me by a couple years, he had the silly notion that he could shift into a firebird."

  "Was it that silly of a notion?" Ember asked, feeling her face burn. She remembered all the times she had tried herself, only to be drastically disappointed.

  Riggs smiled. "It is if you've grown up watching other shifters try again and again only to fail. Firebirds aren't normal animals. They have a bit of Ineoc in their blood."

  "Is that what your father taught you?" Her parents made a point of never mentioning any other god beyond Yathe. Arundel, because he laughed at the idea of Ineoc as a god. Salena, because she preferred not to believe there were any gods at all, or at least that they never held sway over her life.

  Riggs nodded. "Him and others. So
my father found Kitt, trying desperately to become this magical animal, so worn and frustrated with the shifting that he appeared to be a parrot with gray, tattered wings and a croak like a toad. Not even a hint of fire in him. And Norman, all the while, sat perched in a tree up above, looking down at him as if he was the strangest, most hopeless creature he had ever had to deal with."

  Ember burst out laughing, and the fire popped and sizzled along with her. On his perch, Norman fluffed his wings and bobbed his head in agreement, his crest fanning open in a brilliant ray of scarlet.

  "He shifted back to human form when he noticed my father watching him," Riggs continued. "'You cannot take the form of a firebird,' my father told him. 'They have something that you do not.' Rather than asking my father what that was, Kitt refused to listen and spent the next week trying even harder to turn into a firebird. Once he gave up, he came to my father to ask what exactly it was that the firebird had that he did not.

  "My father always had more patience than I. He knew Kitt would come around, and he knew Kitt would learn to listen better, over time."

  Ember couldn’t imagine anyone more patient than Riggs. "What was his name?"

  "Neal. Neal Pitkin."

  A soft, kind name. Ember smiled and lay back, wishing she had fresh linens to wrap her feet in. Linens, it seemed, were another rare commodity in the camp. She would have to do without.

  The door to the hovel creaked open, and Ember sat up at the unsteady patter of feet on the steps. A young boy with springy brown hair tugged at the hand of a woman not much older than herself, who wore an elegant full-length dress of softened deer-hide and rabbit-lined boots.

  Her wide eyes stared unsmiling at Ember as she came to the base of the stairs, and when the boy released her, her hands flew to rest on the bulge of her belly.

  "Lexy," Riggs greeted the woman. "You look dry. It must've stopped raining outside."