“I shall send Ithalia for her,” agreed Lady Fallawen. “Be ready to depart at the morrow’s twilight.”
She turned to go, with a final winsome glance over her shoulder at them before she departed. Dara could almost feel the field of glamour magic around the woman recede from the Great Hall. But the effects of the spell were not entirely gone from her companions.
“What a magnificent woman!” Sir Ryff said, shaking his head as he sat and watched her go. “A figure like a greyhound, speech as sweet as a birdsong, eyes like . . . like . . .”
That was just too much for Dara to bear. Did they not realize when they were just glamoured? She was only a second-year apprentice, and she could see it as plainly as the biscuits in front of her!
“Like a frozen pond in the depth of winter, blessed amongst gods and men yes we all know she’s beautiful,” Dara complained, “but have you ever stopped and considered what evil may lurk beneath that gown?” she asked sarcastically. Ordinarily, she’d not cast aspersions on any of the Alka Alon Emissaries, but she was that irritated with Sir Ryff.
“I have,” Master Minalan said, solemnly. “Which is why you’re going with me, Dara. You’ve worked more closely with the Alka Alon than anyone, so I want you there. To keep your eyes peeled and your mind open.”
That took Dara by surprise. While it was true that she and Lady Ithalia had consulted repeatedly, in their research into transgenic enchantments, she didn’t quite think she was an authority in any way. But she realized that her master may have ulterior motives about including her. Especially if Lady Pentandra was involved. If he was mentioning the Alka Alon Council moving against him, then she knew the matter was more serious than he let on. But that was not what concerned Dara. She’d just been given an invitation so rare and precious that a hundred wizards would have fought to replace her . . . and she knew it.
“Go to a council with the Tree Folk?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“Not if your next sound is a squeal,” Master Minalan warned. “Control yourself. You will be representing me and Sevendor and all of humanity. But go ahead and pack for the journey. Lightly,” he emphasized. “We won’t be gone long, and I’ll have other things for you to carry. But at least one formal gown. You do have a formal gown, don’t you? That fits?”
“I think I have something,” Dara agreed, her mind spinning again. They were going to a secret council with the Alka Alon, and he wanted to discuss her wardrobe? Most of the time the Alka Alon, in their true forms, were as naked as babies! “I was given a few dresses at Barrowbell. They didn’t fit well at the time, but I’ve . . . grown.”
“Make sure you pack one, but don’t worry too much about what it looks like. The Alka Alon will all be naked, anyway,” he dismissed, with a grin. “We just want to be respectful. Now I’ve got to figure out how to break the news of this sudden trip to my wife,” he muttered, as he turned to go upstairs.
Well, that settled one matter, Dara realized. If she was off to some secret Alka Alon council meeting with her master, there was no way she could attend the Chepstan Spring Fair with either Sir Festaran or Gareth. She found herself oddly pleased with that, even as she fretted about going . . . to the Kulines? That was hundreds of miles away from Sevendor!
Sir Ryff looked at her curiously, the wonder in his eyes perhaps fading the tiniest bit . . . finally.
“Is it always like this, around here, my lady?” he asked, uneasily. “Fairy maidens at breakfast? Wizard’s lights at night? Furry servants underfoot?”
“This?” Dara snorted, despite herself, as she sat down to finish her breakfast and think about what had just happened. “This is actually a pretty boring day, in Sevendor. Tyndal and Rondal aren’t even around. The Flame help you if you happen to be here on an interesting day.”
***
“When it comes to our little trip to the Kulines, I’d like you to keep it discreet,” he added. “It’s a high honor for any human to be invited to the Alka Alon’s hidden cities.”
“I promise I’ll behave, Master!” she blurted out, fearful that Minalan was reconsidering including her.
“Oh, I have every confidence in your behavior, Dara,” he chuckled. “But I’d like you to keep this trip . . . discreet. There are those who would be troubled to see the Spellmonger and the Alka Alon work too closely together. And I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” he admitted. “Sometimes the Alka Alon can take centuries to decide anything.
“More importantly, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, while we’re there,” he continued, more purposefully. “We need to use this rare opportunity to learn as much as we can about our allies. Every little detail, every impression, every word they speak, I want you to take note of it all. There is no telling what obscure piece of information might prove vital, some day. Lady Pentandra and I will be doing likewise, of course, but no one will suspect a lowly apprentice is listening. Which we all know they do,” he add, wryly.
“I shall learn everything I can, Master,” Dara pledged.
“Good. Now, you’re released from service this afternoon to prepare for the trip. But pack lightly, as we will be bearing gifts for the Alka Alon council. And take this,” he said, sliding the little box that contained her small witchstone over to her. “I don’t think you’ll need it, but it will allow us to communicate mind-to-mind, which could be helpful, and I think you’re responsible enough to bear it without being tempted to blow up a mountain, or something.”
“I will do my best to avoid that, Master,” she assured. “Shall I bring Frightful?”
“As amusing as that would be, I doubt she will be useful,” he chuckled. “Besides, the Alka Alon have different ideas about domesticating animals than humans do. They think it odd. Bringing a bird might be a distraction we don’t need.”
“Understood, Master,” Dara nodded.
“I don’t expect a lot from this trip,” Minalan admitted. “But we have to take whatever door the Alka Alon open for us, if we want to secure their help to win this war. This could be nothing . . . or it could be very important.”
“You don’t really think that they would . . . execute you, do you, Master?” she asked, recalling Minalan’s conversation that morning.
“Oh, I seriously doubt it,” he chuckled. “I was making a point to Fallawen. But there are many on their council who object to any humans having any irionite, much less a big whopping ball of the stuff.”
“Ithalia says they don’t really trust their own kids until they’re at least two hundred years old,” Dara observed.
“At thirty, I’m little more than an infant to immortals,” the wizard agreed. “I will make my case before their council, and perhaps convince them. But I will not give up the best means of our defense just because they ask me to. Not unless it’s the difference between a permanent alliance or not.
“Now, run off and get ready . . . I’ve got to talk to Sire Cei about some bandits, or something, before I leave. I’d hate to get stranded in the Kulines and not have him know what to do about bandits,” he said, sarcastically. “But he’s insisting.”
Chapter Four
The Unusual Lesson
“You? You’re going to a secret council?” her sister Leska asked, shocked, as Dara rooted through the chest where she’d packed the many court dresses she’d acquired in Barrowbell. Some were gifts from friends, some had been made for her . . . last year. She was uncomfortably aware of how much she’d grown since then. “Why by the Flame would they want you there?” her older sister demanded, accusingly. “Unless . . . Smoke and cinders, Dara, what have you done?”
“Me?” Dara asked, as she sorted through the dresses – more dresses than she’d ever thought she’d own in her life. “I didn’t do anything. The Alka Alon don’t particularly want me there at all. Indeed, I’m only going to wait on Master Minalan and Lady Pentandra and make them look good,” she explained. “I just happen to be Master Minalan’s apprentice,” she reminded her sister, who, despite plenty of evidence t
o the contrary, still didn’t think Dara was capable of much.
“It all just seems suspicious,” Leska said, her hands on her hips. “Suddenly you can’t go to the Chepstan Spring Fair, which is bad enough. But then the Magelord decides he needs to take you to . . . where, again?”
“It’s apparently some Alka Alon town, deep in the Kulines,” Dara replied, absently, as she discarded her best dress from the pile. It was beautiful, but far too showy for a mere apprentice, she knew. Not that the Tree Folk noticed such things.
“The Kulines? The Kuline mountains?” her sister gasped. In truth, Leska had barely heard of the great peaks of the Kuline Range. Like most of the folk of Sevendor, she knew only that they were big, they were in the north, and they were impossibly far away. “Dara, how long will you be gone?” she asked, with unexpected worry.
“Only a few days. The Alka Alon will transport us,” Dara explained, patiently. “By magic. They have their Ways . . . it’s a bit complicated to explain, but it’s the same way they were able to get the entire army out to Gilmora, last year.”
Her sister shuddered at the memory. Dara had been in that army, as had her father, brothers, and most of their male relatives. Dara felt a twinge of guilt at bringing that up. Going to war had been bad enough for Dara and the others. She’d never considered what it must have been like for Leska and the other folk of Westwood Hall to have witnessed an entire army, including people you loved, just . . . disappear. Perhaps forever.
For some of those young men, Dara recalled, it had been forever.
“It will be fine,” Dara insisted, trying to banish her own doubts, as well as her sister’s. “The Alka Alon use the Ways all the time. One minute we’ll be here, in Sevendor, and the next we’ll be in the Kulines.”
“For a secret council that no one knows anything about!” her sister continued, resistant to being soothed.
“Well, it is a secret council,” Dara pointed out. “That’s how they work. So don’t tell anyone where I’m going. It’s just some business Master Minalan has with the Alka Alon. Wizard business, as usual. Nothing to worry about,” she assured. “I’m really only going along to serve as a packhorse,” she added. “How about this one?” she asked, holding up a dark green gown of fine wool she’d been given in Barrowbell. Dara and Leska had little in common, these days, but Dara had to admit that her sister had a good eye for clothes.
Leska looked at the gown skeptically. “I don’t know . . . what will the Alka Alon be wearing?”
“Mostly, they’ll be completely naked,” admitted Dara, with a laugh. “They don’t wear many clothes in their natural form. They dress their human-sized forms out respect for our customs, thankfully.”
Dara couldn’t imagine what would exactly happen if, say, Lady Fallawen had decided to visit Sevendor Castle naked, in her exquisitely-beautiful human form. But she doubted there would be much work done, that day.
“Naked?” Leska snorted, scandalized.
“When they’re tiny!” Dara emphasized. “They don’t need clothes in their natural form. Which most of them will be in, I’d wager. Now tell me,” she said, holding the dress under her chin, “does this say ‘helpful apprentice of a powerful magelord’?”
“To people who don’t wear clothes?” her sister asked. “I think all it would say is ‘I’m dressed.’ You could probably do as well with a shapeless smock and a kitchen apron,” she decided.
As crudely as she’d put it, her sister was correct, Dara knew. The Alka Alon wouldn’t care what she wore. Master Min merely wanted her to be presentable, whatever that was. The only person who might even notice what she was wearing was Lady Pentandra. She decided on the green gown mostly because it was comfortable and warm, and she imagined the Kulines, if they were truly larger than the Uwarris, would be chilly even at this time of year.
“I’m more concerned about all this sneaking around, than your wardrobe, Little Bird” Leska explained, using the nickname Dara had carried in the Westwood since birth. “It’s just not natural for a lord to go popping off, unannounced, without a proper retinue.”
“With magelords, there is a lot that isn’t natural. That’s kind of the point of magic,” she observed, as she chose a few pairs of hose and underwear to add to her pack. “Wizards’ work is just like that. With Master Min, it’s doubly so. He’s the one the Alka Alon trust, not King Rard. So, when they want to include humans in their secret councils, he’s the one they call.”
“There’s just something suspicious about a folk who are so fair. And immortal,” Leska added, resentfully. “You’d think with all that magic, why would they need to call upon mere human wizards for councils? Especially half-trained, barely-civilized teenagers.”
“I am far from half-trained!” Dara insisted with a snort. Leska never missed an opportunity for a dig at her little sister. “As I said, I’m mostly going to make Master Min look important, wait on him, and carry his gifts. And keep my eyes open,” she added.
“For what?” Leska asked, skeptically.
“For whatever needs to be seen,” Dara answered, realizing that any further explanation would not only be beyond her sister’s understanding, but could lead to rumors about their trip that Master Minalan probably didn’t want to be spread. She was slowly learning why wizards were so obscure and inscrutable to other people. Usually it just took too long to explain everything.
“I still think it sounds suspicious,” Leska said, sullenly. “Be careful!”
“I’m always careful!” Dara insisted, automatically.
That earned her a look of skeptical denial from her Leska so severe that Dara herself had to laugh at it. “All right, I’m not always careful,” she conceded. “But I’ll try not to do anything that gets me turned into a tree or something. Besides, Lady Pentandra will be there to keep me out of trouble.”
“Another wizard!” Leska condemned.
“Like me, yes,” Dara responded, pointedly. “Leska, we are ruled by a wizard. Your sister is a wizard. We have wizards of all types crawling through Sevendor like ants . . . so you’d better get used to them. In fact, now that I’m packed, I’ve got to scurry to my lesson, this afternoon. With Master Olmeg. Who is also wizard,” she stressed.
“Yes, but he’s not so bad,” her sister admitted. The big Green Mage was a favorite at Westwood Hall, which he visited frequently as he helped oversee the new Enchanted Forest that Master Minalan was growing in the snow-white dirt of the Westwood and was a frequent and merry visitor. “I guess, as wizards go, not all of them are.”
***
Dara enjoyed her lessons with Master Olmeg so much that she was cautious not to mention the fact to her master. Nothing causes a master to rethink his approach to education more than a happy apprentice, Rondal and Tyndal had assured her, before they’d left for further training.
What Dara liked best about her lessons with Sevendor’s Green Mage was that they took place in his manor hall in Hollyburrow. Outside of the Westwood and Sevendor Castle, it was quickly becoming her favorite place in the domain.
Once the most disreputable yeomanry in Sevendor, known as Farant’s Hold, Hollyburrow was now a green and prosperous country. It had an intriguing history.
When Master Minalan took over as Magelord he’d turned the rascal Farant and his sons out, and installed Master Olmeg, the Greenwarden, in his place. Then Master Olmeg had recruited two small tribes of Tal Alon to come live in his small estate, with the Spellmonger’s permission, and he used his own considerable powers in concert with the furry little gardeners. After a full year’s toil the result was a delightful little village centered on Olmeg’s manor house and the large Tal Alon compound known as Hollyburrow.
Hollyburrow was cleverly constructed of woven sticks and mud, which meant that it was technically buried. But the squat, wide artificial hill was more than just a shelter and administrative center for the sprawling combined tribe of little brown furred people; it was also an elaborate garden complex. The sewage and rainwater were cunningl
y collected and used to fertilize and water thousands of plants in little planters and cavities scattered all over the burrow.
That was in addition to the vast vegetable gardens the Tal had planted (with Olmeg’s advise and oversight) on the northern fields of the estate. Once a place where maize and beans grew but poorly, under Olmeg’s patient care and with the industry of hundreds of nimble little Tal Alon paws, the fields of Hollyburrow were producing an ever-increasing bounty of fresh vegetables and roots. Dara had arrived at the little manor hall only after walking by the largest, most lush garden of field peas she’d ever seen.
In fact, Sevendor had prospered so much from the Tal Alon that Master Min had given the estate to Olmeg, outright. And the Tal had prospered so much from the green wizard’s guidance and intervention that they were now having babies. A lot of babies.
Hollyburrow was bulging with Tal, Dara knew, and extensions to the huge burrow to accommodate the growth in population were already under construction. Some of the Tal had taken to building little cottages or holes dug into the slope of Matten’s Helm, to escape the conditions in the compound, thus expanding their presence across the estate.
That was the part of Hollyburrow Dara really enjoyed. While the great burrow was impressive, even majestic, in a smelly sort of way, she loved seeing the small furry brown housewives sweeping the stoops of their tiny cottages, and the little light-brown furred kids playing in the fields. It was a scene of domestic life that seemed very familiar, but at the same time engagingly exotic.
Master Olmeg’s home was the old manor house left by Farant, but the wizard had dramatically changed the place once he’d moved in. The willows surrounding the hall had been trimmed back, and a beautiful little hedge surrounded the compound. Gardens within the hedge were laid out in an intricate pattern. Mushrooms and fungus were grown in beds of leaves or manure held in boxes. There was even a little moss garden out by the spring house where the Greenwarden grew samples of mosses valued for their medicinal and construction properties. Dara had never considered moss to be of any particular value, but Olmeg had an entire team of Tal Alon fussing with the garden.
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