Sentient Night

A/N: I am having trouble with the symbol I usually used to indicate a POV change, sorry. Also, the paragraph indentations and the dialog spacing didn't come out right, I'm really sorry if that makes it too hard to read. This is a work in progress so any suggestions you might have or parts that you find confusing, please tell me! There is nothing that can’t be improved by a little more editing. Enjoy! Please review!

Ch. 1: Shallow Shadows

Bastien was other, that was her first thought upon seeing him. There was something in his gait as he entered the conclave that was smooth, but not light, not delicate, not fey as she knew them. Dull ashy hair slithered over his shoulders and down the almost sickly slenderness of his body. His slate grey eyes were small but intense and seemed never to fully focus.
He bowed slowly but shallowly to the gathered council and waited.
Antha smiled slightly, she knew it would not be her mother that stood to address the alien Dream-Weaver. Alivia curled, softly posed at the center of her councilors, only her utter stillness betraying her discomfort. While the fey were generally such a contrast to each other, sitting on the richly veined marble their deep muted colors and faintly glowing skin made them like one illuminated painting with a chip missing in the middle.
The chip spoke. “I was under the impression that the whole of our kind are welcome guests in your city.” His voice was low and his words slurred together as if there were something sticky in his mouth. The whole scene was incredibly amusing.
Emair rose from beside Alivia, making just two small steps aggressive, heavy white blond hair hitting her hip as if just catching up with her. Emair’s pale blue skirts flowed around her like a sculpted puddle, dragging on the floor. Bits of hair dripped down to cover the dress like living embroidery.
“We indeed open our arms to our treasured allies; some of your company, however, do not fit that description.” Her voice was like music, smooth and clear and calming.
“I assure you, Lady, that my comrade’s aid is necessary to complete my work.” He was struggling not to grin. Antha had the urge to reach out and touch his mind, to see if it was sticky in there too, but her tutor would know.
“And what business is it that brings you to Esca, Master Bastien?”
“I am searching for a book, for a friend.” He had bent slightly at the waist in courtesy and submission. What was he getting at?
“The fey are not great lovers of books, Bastien.”
“Not great lovers, no.” He had strengthened and there was a slight smile in his voice. It was clear they would get no more out of him. No one could claim Esca completely devoid of books. That was the end of it, clever puppy. Antha smiled wider, she loved secrets.
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Antha sat noiselessly, her hands folded on the table, her skirts rustled softly in the twitching breeze. Diamonds of light danced across the cool stone. Master Caidryn Sienda of the Third Order and Magistrate Andrias Sessil of the City of the Sky stood apart in the vast room. Andrias was a statue carved of cold light and solidified by pride. His chin was sharp and his posture rigid, centered exactly in the massive window. The sun’s rays, fractured and broken the rounded glass, tangled in his white gold hair as it cascaded over the folds of his cloak. Caidryn stood in the great shadow of one of the few solid strips of wall before the barren desk.
He began to pace as he spoke. “There are three varieties of magic, Elemental, Artificial and Ritual” he said, pausing.
Doesn’t it pain you to say Artificial, Librarian?
“You need not concern yourself with the latter two. Simply know that you may encounter them.”
Andrias’s gaze loomed over them as if in constant warning. His presence filled the room like smoke.
She wondered again how they had ever come to be together. Caidryn was as radical an oddity as Esca ever saw. He was a Wind Rider, but his grandfather was a wingless creature who no one cared to think of and his education was in the Third Order of Sorcery, which no one cared to consort with. It was because of Caidryn that the art of sorcery was known to her at all. Sorcerers worked in shunned Artificial magic. They went two far, took too much, and generally reveled in their vile self-serving art. The fey loved the elements, they loved their blood and they loved their ignorance.
“Elemental is the purest form of magic, wielded only by those creatures most attuned with and connected to the earth.”
And human float in outer space she smirked.
“Elemental magic is what you are, it is what runs through your veins, it is what tingles in your flesh, it is what fills your lungs and your mind and your soul. The fey are made of magic in its most fundamental form.
But she was different, it had died inside her, and she would do anything to get away.
“None but the fey can use Elemental magic.” Caidryn droned on.
Andrias looked over and snickered. Strands of sun-kissed honey fell to frame the far side of his face. His eyes, pools of jagged blue glass, fixed soundly on the errant pair in the shadows. He was really more their supervisor. As he taught her the harsher points of politics within the conclave she saw in his moods the futile attempt to ingrain himself into a court in which he did not belong. She was not like him so he thought her relatively useless, but he sensed buried flame that he could not coincide with weakness and sometimes she showed her bits and pieces of his twisted logic.
“What are the two major powers of the wielder of each element?”
To know that I may encounter them She thought. Then again, unlike her kin, her association had not been evident from birth, in fact, she much expected not to know her element until the trial. The bloodlines were so pure that even when a mixed child was born it was easy to predict their power. Rare crosses yielded the great crafters of ice flame, the fabled dominions of blizzards and fire storms and an array of other less impressive outcasts. Mostly, mixes were considerably weaker than their parents but their powers could be unpredictable. They could simply have lesser power over two elements, but the danger was really of the elemental forces mixing inside them and producing something utterly unheard of.
“The two major powers, princess.”
And the one minor power that anyone with power can invoke? No, that’s Artificial, bad girl. Antha gave a small, secretive smile. It had taken her two weeks of invasive questioning to produce that tidbit of information. Andrias frowned at the word major, of course, he had not been present at the final unveiling. Caidryn was no fool, and he knew her well enough to guess that had he not specified she would have unleashed her secret on the room. Poor Caidryn, outmaneuvered yet again by a 12 year old, perhaps Andrias would teach him some politics.
“Hmm, for water, calling rain or ground water and turning it into ice.” Caidryn nodded.
“For fire, calling it from nothing and heating with touch. For earth, enrichment and growth. For Air, changing the direction of the wind and its intensity. For light, prolonging the day and focusing light.” There were degrees of success for each however. For instance, the entire light faerie population would probably have to pool their powers to turn day into night. Andrias was a light faerie and in her opinion theirs were the least attractive of the fey powers. No one expected her to be a light faerie.
Caidryn went on to droan in turn about each shining city and the role of the Queen of the Fey, which was basically to exist, be generally loved by all, and to deal with foreigners who not only were generally ignorant to Esca’s existence but would never be allowed in anyway, and the role of the city magistrates, which was basically to visit Esca and “represent” their cities and to deal with foreigners of which, again, there were never any. Antha’s thoughts began to wander back to her sticky Dream Weaver.
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An immaculate city, Bastien thought, laughing. Esca was all air and light and white polished marble, blooming gardens and sweet smelling sandalwood. How ironic that this was where he had been sent to find a being of pure darkness. Indeed, it seemed that in the dead of night the city was brighter than it had been in the day, the only element missing was darkness. Many had retired with the sun but there were certainly fey about. Music drifted deftly through the streets.
He had expected to find her in some cave hallowed at the base of a proud stone building or perhaps under a dark wood owning, veiling thick and stagnant air, but walking through the plaza he saw no such inconsistencies. From his own limited experiences with the fey he knew they slept in commons, but that was all. He stopped in the street and closed his eyes, letting the aura of the city pass over him. He rubbed slowly between his fingers a piece of her hair, reaching out with his mind to impress the subtle feel of her aura in his memory. When he opened his eyes again they were filled with the power of the finding spell. It was almost dizzying, to look at the buildings with this new sight, as if they were swimming with blotches of color, some radically different and some almost indistinguishable. Hers was not one of the latter. He blinked and the spell was broken.
He walked steadily towards a lone door I the corner of the plaza. The only child he had seen since his arrival twirled passed him, her shoes making sharp cloping noises against the pale stones. He looked up at the tip of the moon drenched fountain in the center of the courtyard and saw a small group of birds, their beady eyes watching him. The glow of the city that had once made him confident now planted the first seeds of doubt in the pit of his stomach. He ignored them, his task was clear and he was sure that he had not been followed. It was not the way of faerie, the King had said. Bastien believed and obeyed.
Her aura was everywhere but he did not sense her in the house. It was clear she lived alone. The door made no sound as he entered. His Majesty had said she was one of the weakest of them, young and untrained. But he was sure she would have the book, somewhere. She would have to be foolish indeed to have kept the book in the city. The remainder of the Treacherous Ones were few and scattered, scared and weak. There were three rooms connected by archways. Other than preferring darker wood, there were no difference he could see in the house except that in stood alone. Nothing particularly sinister adorned the walls or popped out of the drawers. He meticulously searched every corner of every room but it was his finding spell that lead him to the book. The color was highly concentrated in one spot in the middle of the west wall. She had probably practiced her craft right in front her hiding place, assuming she would stuff the book right back in the wall if she heard someone.
Bastien walked over to the wall and ran his hands along the knotted wood. The press of magic was intense. He gritted his teeth slid his fingers behind the hidden panel. Sliding the book from its nook in the wall Bastien stood, studying the enameled ruin on the cover. As he turned he felt a rush of air and then pain exploded behind his eyes as something hit him from behind.
Bastien stumbled, book clutched to his chest with one arm and turned to face his attacker. He got a glimpse of her form mid lunge and then she was on him again. She knew what she was doing. He threw her of and she melted back into the shadows, but he could still feel her presence. He power filled the room and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. The shadows were rapping themselves around him, crushing him. But he had caught her mind in the moments she had been visible and sent Emair’s voice into her head, along with the sound of running feet on stone. She abruptly released him and disappeared.
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Antha watched through the masses of thin fluttering curtains as the sun began to touch the western hills. At each exhale the fragile fabric rose high, scattering shallow shadows across the floor and then returning to caress the cooling marble. She walked barefoot down the hall; all around her whispers of emotion brushed her mind. Twilight was one of her quietest times, the trials of the day were subsiding and it was yet too early to venture out into the sentient night. She new that people like her went mad. There were times when the press of humanity was too much to bare, to shield against, but survival was about discipline and control. Those times made her even stronger. And sometimes in the midst of such chaos she would invite the madness in, and revel in it. She hated the listless, stagnant minds of the fey.
Of course she had to teach herself that control, because she was not old enough to receive more than the most basic magical training. Instead she learned history, the history of the fey and the history of her lineage. She learned as many languages as her teacher could name (though the fey, as Emair put it, were ‘not great lovers of books’ and were even less enamored of outsiders). Antha loved books, because they taught her things no person would, and some things no person could.
She stood before Kit’s door and paused a moment. She closed her eyes and felt the sun disappear entirely behind the highest peak.
“Poetic phrase” Antha called. She could feel the prick of irritation from behind the door and laughed.
Antha burst through the door and knocked Kit to the bed in a running hug. They rolled once so that Antha could stare triumphantly down into angry green-gold eyes.
“You’ve been a naughty kitten, haven’t you? Missing lessons?” Kit said nothing. “Well you’re in luck because I know just what you can do to earn forgiveness!”
“I don’t think you mother cares,” she snorted.
“But I care, and I missed you.”
Antha rolled over to pout and Kit sat up on her elbows. “Why do I think whatever you want me to do is something your mother will care about?”
“That’s OK Kit, I’ll just go by myself. Wouldn’t want mum to notice you.”
“And if she notices you?”
“I’ll run like hell. Don’t want any of her rubbing off on me.” Antha’s voice took on a harsh tone.
Kit grimaced and looked down at her half sister.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked.
Antha’s eyes glittered with mischief.
“Do you like secrets, Kit?” Nothing good could come of that question.
“Sure” she replied cautiously.
“Having secrets or knowing secrets?”
“Knowing secrets, I guess.”
“I love them both, but tonight we can go with your pick,” she said, as if she had ever expected Kit to answer differently. “You’re a very lucky kitten, because someone new has a very big secret and he’s begged me to find it out.”
“Strangers never come to Esca.”
“That’s why we have to know everything about him,” Antha rolled on her back and looked up in mock innocence.
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Of course, walking out the front door was not an option, not because anyone would have stopped them, it was the principal of the thing. Antha crouched on the edge of the damp, living, roof. Few could remember a time when the palace was a series of sprawling archways Moss and vines and gnarled wooden arms had long since grown in thick and heavy, gathering at the pinnacle of the city and sheltering the fragrant halls and clustered chambers of the queen’s refuge and the council forums, and then more sparsely stretching out to brush the sleek marble of the city. As if the bare inch she could sink in the moss made her perch less precarious. Her pale ashy wings twitched and shimmered, flowing out behind her, veined in black, thin enough to be virtually translucent. They balanced her, for now, but she harbored no illusions as to what the slightest breeze would do. There was little strength in the still soft adolescent membranes.
Antha watched as Kit skidded on her back, clawing frantically for a hold in the stronger under layers of the green-brown mess.
Kit gritted her teeth as she finally came to a stop and saw the glimmer of feline eyes disappear over the edge with a flourish. With one fluid stride Antha’s shoulders slunk down and she melted back into the roof. The shadows wrapped around her like fur and she looked like some avian wraith on the horizon.
She did not look at Kit again, but waited. Hearing a “yip” from above her Antha smiled and dropped down to the final stretch. Her sleek form slid over the roots like water and landed finally back on the solid, cooling earth. How many times had they left in this fashion? She thought as Kit stumbled the last few steps towards her. The younger girl was mussed around the edges, her stiff gate and glaring eyes made the most adorable picture. Antha did not turn until they were close enough to touch. She pulled a string of lichen through Kit’s hair. “Pretty Kitten” she beamed and spun.
Kit slowly followed her sister’s prancing steps. Some times at night she wondered whether her feet actually touched the ground. It felt strange to know that this time they would not be separated and that she would be stuck in Esca for who knows how long. Kit didn’t want to think about the future. She didn’t think that they would make her leave, that Antha would let her be sent away. Besides, she thought with a muted but bitter pain, she had been paid for. Not that she particularly wanted to stay in Esca, but where else would she go? Antha was all she had, all she knew, and all that she could be sure would remain constant in her life. They were only half sisters, but she thought that Antha loved her. She was content to be her plaything, because in the dark Antha would hold her, and whatever she needed Antha was there.
After three months the streets of Esca still felt eerie and foreign. Clean and crisp and quiet, Esca was the gathering place of elements. It was a fusion of all living things and yet managed to feel empty and cold. In the day it was pale and bland and drowning in fuzzy white light, but with the night came the feeling of abandonment, as if it should have been more. It was the way the shadows felt. There were shadows, but they were clearly empty. There was no sense of depth, no sense of secrets in them.
No one was ever around at night. Looking at her sister, Kit thought, she doesn’t even notice. The silence is her nature, as far as she is ever concerned, it’s always just her and the world.
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She could feel him already. So, close, he worked with his dark magics, secrets turning in his eyes, laughing in his sticky voice. Bastien truly existed in another world; he was a phantom in a land of careful vitality. She thought his presence suited these vapid streets, they beckoned him. She looked up at the harshly lit window, mage light, perhaps. Nature always made shadows.
The shuffling of Kit’s feet ceased. Her small face lost all annoyance and lit with curiosity. Antha ran back and swung the smaller girl by the waist into her arms. Kit looked up at her through thick black locks, their texture like blades of grass as they mixed with Antha’s curls. When her squirming ceased, Antha bent to whisper in her ear. “Time to go, Kitten” and swung Kit up onto smooth wood sill.
The “guest chambers” were actually a building on the outskirts of the city, and modeled like no other. It was dark, cut, wood lined with cold iron arch windows. She had slept on its floors often enough and wood was infinitely easier to climb than marble. She slid her fingers into the burned slats she had made long ago and waited for Kit to clamor over the high balcony wall and onto the slender awning. The balcony glass was stained with a dark blue pattern. As she sung her leg over she was Kit trace the sprawling owls and dragons and great, postured spiders. Antha peered through a clear pane in-between a dragon’s toes and was rudely surprised. Staring back at her was not Bastien’s glassy, cleaver, grey storm skies, but the washed out muddy hazel of human eyes.
Her eyes, normally her greatest weapon, held raw and total shock and she simply gaped as he stood from the desk and opened the window. His face was a mess of angles and gnarled, brown flecked skin. His eyes were harsh and sharp and unnervingly clear. She looked down. He had been writing.
“What are you doing here?” He demanded. It was obvious what they were.
Staring at the pattern of the ash wood on his desk her composure began to return. “We are here to see Bastien”. The tone might have seemed almost normal to someone who did not know her. She was stalling. Thoughts raced through her mind and she bitterly thought, probably across her eyes too. She was frantic, she knew there was supposed to be a human, she had never been caught before. She would be-spell him, obviously he was a magic worker, but she was better.
She looked up with resolve and his face had contorted. He let out a wheezy laugh at her response. It had not been her best work and he obviously wasn’t buying it. She had a moment to think; at least he’s not stupid and met his solid eyes again, this time with confidence. His eyes widened and she was in his mind. She wrapped her power around his consciousness and twisted. As her sensed returned she saw him fall to his knees, eyes rolled up in his head, and sink in a heap of dark fabric and rough cropped hair. He would be out for a while.
Stepping over him Antha strode across the unfinished wood. She had been careless not to have checked the house before. She stood in the center of the room and this time she listened. Bastien would have sensed her had she sent her power through the house so she merely opened her mind; she had other ways of finding him. At first she could only feel the weak stirrings of the unconscious human. She stood utterly still until she heard the faint whispers of his nervous mind below her. He must have been asleep, she could barely feel him. She noiselessly opened the room’s only door and stepped out into the hall. Looking back she raised her eyebrow at Kit who had barely left the balcony and she reluctantly followed.
If I were I secret where would I hide? Antha thought. She slid along the hall wall, one and trailing the smooth lines of the wood, her whole body pressed up against the now dead and dry formation. Magic was thick in the air. How many spells must it have taken to create the heavy press of power? I made her fell dizzy and elated at the same time.
Antha stood in front of the next door, hand poised over the knob. The human had shaken her. Kit came up behind her, almost touching, to peer at the plain door that had attracted her sisters attention. Antha twisted the gold knob and quickly squeezed her head inside. It was a study, an empty study. Antha snorted and swung the door wide for Kit.
“Why are we here again?” Kit whispered.
“He said it was a book, didn’t he?” Antha retorted, skimming the shelves.
“What was a book?”
“The reason he came to Esca. Can you imagine what it could hold?”
She couldn’t.
Antha continued sifting through the bookcases, nipping at them with impatient fingers and then dragging those fingers over the spines with short angry movements. Nothing, nothing of interest. Well, everything was of interest but she had read it all before. Nothing here. Antha twisted the rusted gold handle of the eastern-most door. “Wait!” Kit yelped. But the door opened and the scent of blood washed over her. Her eyes followed the angry red trail until it disappeared under Bastien’s splayed black coat. She looked up and met the gaze of someone wholly unexpected. They stared at each other across the Dream-Weaver’s limp form.
She had found her book. Across from her stood a small woman with pinched features and a look of surprise in her lilac eyes. Her skin was lavender black, smooth and toned like some syrupy liquor. She was a Dark Faerie. And she had a book under her arm. Antha hadn’t sensed her at all. The surrounding shadows began to creep up, solidifying hesitantly around her.
Kit was terrified. She was always terrified when Antha so tested fate, but she wondered if this time her brazen sister had finally gotten them into something from which they could not escape.
She felt the magic building and it made her head spin. Chips of light began to coil around Antha’s fingers and flared into true witch fire. All she could think of was how angry Andrias would be if he knew Antha could use witch fire.
The shadows rose like some great tidal wave and smothered the thin blue flames. The darkness became thick and blinding and she felt faint as the impenetrable weight of shadow crushed her lungs. And she was released. Kit fell to the floor on hands and knees fighting to breathe, stars danced behind her eyes. As her vision cleared she rocked back on her heals and was again faced with the gnarled sorcerer, brass candlestick hanging limply at his side. The crumpled body of their assailant lay motionless at his feat. She gaped for a moment at the great magical battle ended with a candle stick. Antha would never have thought of it, or used it, it was a matter of dignity. She wondered vaguely if the sorcerer would appear in the conclave to tell the Queen of their indiscretion and the uproar a human in the palace would cause. The fantasy did not last long because as the sorcerer bent to reach for the book he collapsed again in the grip of Antha’s enchanted sleep. Antha stepped delicately over Bastien and eased the book from the previous thief’s arms. Clutching the book to her chest, with her other hand Antha grabbed Kit’s wrist and they ran back through the hall way, over the balcony and past the flurry of city houses. Just as Kit pulled herself through a decorative bottom window into the upper chambers she noticed the eerie silence in her sister. Antha stared aimlessly east through the thin glass, the trickle of wind from the open window toyed with a strand of her rumpled hair.
“What are you thinking?” Kit tentatively whispered.
“Just that, I’ve never seen the city in fall”
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She couldn’t stop trembling. Her tiny hands couldn’t seem to grasp the slippery cushion fabric, couldn’t anchor her to the physical world. The coach hopped and sputtered up the rocky incline. She knew they were close. Satha had dressed carefully in fresh linen at the last inn.
She didn’t really know what to do with the girl though, so she stayed away and hoped for some sort of naming calm to settle with time and quiet and a thousand new things to adapt to. She felt sorry for the creature, truly. She pulled back the curtain of her small window to watch the castle grow as they approached it. When finally they stopped she was met squarely by the gaze of Lord Steward Garrison. She was courteously handed down from the carriage as the poor girl was untangled by several servants who awkwardly supported an elbow and a hand and perhaps a shoulder. The method was ridiculous. Satha called a lady maid to carry the girl upstairs, forgoing another blathering attempt at walking. They walked brusquely up the stairs and the new lady of the house’s eyes began to glaze over. She gave brief instructions to the maids and left to inform the Master of their arrival.
Kit was stripped and washed and passed around by a hundred hands. As she lay shivering on the cold tile waiting for her second bath to fill she found that she could think again. The enormity of what was happening finally penetrated the hysteria of her mind. In an instant her thoughts began to overwhelm her. She was in a house, her father’s house. She tried to think of things she should be feeling, wondering. What did he look like? What would he think of her? She couldn’t bring herself to care. All she could really feel was the heat leaching tile and the stinging brightness of the world unveiled by curtains. She really hadn’t been in that coach so long. It really hadn’t been so long. And all this was really better than the pain. For now the emptiness was better than the pain. She was picked up again like a heavy, gangly sack plunged back into the water. It was warm all around, like being smothered by skin and blankets and rumbling furry bodies. Her knees slid on the porcelain and her head lolled back. She closed her eyes and the hands on her were gentler, as if they had realized her change in mood and had to treat her as a living being. She raised her heavy lidded eyes to face the washer woman. She had a pretty face. She was soft and round and flushed, not like Satha. The maid considered her face a moment and looked down.
“Stand up now” she said. “You’ll need to dress.”
Kit stood and held her arms out and was rapped tightly in a rough white towel. The woman helped her from the bath and water streamed from her calves onto the polished floor. The haste of the moment was lost and Kit was permitted to walk slowly back into the bedroom. Now in her own power Kit took her body to a mirror and peered at her pallid face. It was clean and smooth and more prominent with the hair slicked back. It bore no tear stains or road filth, the only sign of what had passed was in her haunted eyes and her empty expression. The maid dressed her in heavy linen. It was a long white skirt, the top half covered by a dark blue robe with three quarter sleeves that clenched at her waist. Though it was simple Kit was sure that she had never seen anything like it. Just then she heard heavy footsteps from the hallway. Satha swept into the quite chamber and took note of the maid standing by the bed post and the little girl now seated on the satin covers.
“Ah, your clean” she said.
To Kit’s surprise she knelt down to look her in the eye.
“Your father waits for you in the foyer. Are you ready to see him?”
She nodded. Satha curtly rose and took Kit’s hand. As she stepped from the room Kit noticed that her feet were still bare, her hair was damp, the walls were stone, despite the wooden floors. They passed through an archway and he was sitting in a wooden chair turned out from a chess table.
He was brilliant. She had never before seen anyone with his coloring in the tribe or in the city. His eyes were like pale speckled embers and his log hair, pulled back and resting at the nape of his neck, was the same untainted red. His eyes were small and faded and virtually expressionless. The eyes that truly caught her were those of the girl on his lap. She reminded her of a freshly painted china doll. Her skin was a vivid song of pure black and crimson and deepest blue, like the endless ocean at sunset. But there was some monster that had risen to wrap its tendrils about her expression and in her burned some fierce intelligence.
“Kitrine?” he said. “Kitrine” He held his had out to her and she took it, looking into those eerie blue eyes.
“Kit is going to live here” he said gently to the girl who must be her sister. Her pale hand reached out touched Kit’s face. She slid off her father’s lap and hugged the smaller girl. Her flaxen curls engulfed both their bodies.
“My Kitten” she said.


A/N: Back for chapter two! I’m sorry about the POV breaks, for some reason they didn’t show up when I loaded the document. Collin will be important later but I can’t decide whether to establish him better now or wait. Any thoughts? Please review.

Chapter 2: Into the Dark

Bastien stood rigid and glaring behind the throne of His Majesty. The best thing he could do for himself was not draw attention. He had failed, their only chance at one of the dark books and he had failed his king. He knew all to well the mounting threat of coup from those who wanted to exploit or participate in the wars of sorcery. Bastien couldn’t help but scowl at one such traitorous individual who dared speak so outrageously before the king.
“Is all business independent from the crown now treasonous? What crime are these men truly guilty of save attending to their own matters while not on duty? Have they served unfaithfully?” Loren smirked at Bastien, the little weasel was implying that this could be about mercenary control. He was wining more and more supporters and he knew it.
“Indeed they have been unfaithful” King Mathus Daidren said comely from his throne. “My most trusted liaisons are serving another master; there can be no doubt as to the threat of” he thought for a moment “conflict of interest.”
There could be no end but execution, Bastien knew, the only question was that of how much damage Loren would do before then. He also knew that his liege would do anything in his power to prevent the Dream Weavers from becoming filthy mercenaries for a lower race, but Mathus had let it continue to long. It had gotten to the point where he had little hope for restoration of the old ways. Mathus was not a weak king, but he had been lax, and lacking in loyal spies. It was a wonder that they had caught these three at all. After hearing the rumors of a different sort of magic from a survivor he had worked personally to convict them. Their capture was just what the king needed to make a show of strength.
“But what crimes have they against the kingdom?” Loren grew to bold. One day he would go one step to far and on that day that he would die.
“Every crime, Loren, because I am the Kingdom” Mathus’s voice rose and crashed over the assembly like thunder underground. “They have given by oath their lives to me and I will say when they breathe and when they sleep and when they serve and if I should choose to take that breath that is my right.”
Bastien tried to gauge the reaction of his young prince. As Mathus’s only son Collin would have that right one day as well. I winsome smile played on his face a this father’s victory, but the child’s expressions were so strange Bastien delved no further.
“And in an hour’s time they will be executed for treason.” And the death spell would be felt throughout the city. Everyone would soon know their king’s willingness to preserve natural order and all the dissenters would feel his wrath like a prophecy on their own lives.
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Antha looked wistfully of towards the horizon. She loved to ride, she was thrilled to be rid of the city, but days in the saddle and under the eyes of Andrias had worn her ragged. Summer and winter had confused each other once again, the road she usually took to escape her mother in spring was covered in dying fall leaves. How ironic that Alivia so determinedly won her all year long only to send her away as usual. Caidryn rarely accompanied them to Tessair because as Esca’s only acceptable foreigner he was needed to mediate virtually all outside diplomatic relations. While Andrias had moth the skill and the burning desire to be so diplomatically important he was sadly brushed aside again and assigned to babysitter, a position many believed was too high for him. Andrias was a Light faerie of no great power or charm and he was male.
Today, he radiated distaste; a relatively idle winter with barbarians was not his ideal vacation. Antha amused herself imagining what she would do first the moment she was free of his “company”. As the peaks around them rose higher and more jagged and the forests thickened, crowding around them, Antha’s spirits rose.
“Where are we, exactly?” Kit asked in an increasingly rare moment of travel conversation.
“I don’t know, somewhere between Esca and Tessair. I don’t care for maps” she replied.
Andrias loved maps. Antha hoped her comment would not bring her an extra lesson to prompt her memory, but if it did, she would smile and levitate bits of his hair and make very sure not to absorb a word of it.
By the time full dark descended Kit was exhausted and Andrias was blind so they made camp. Antha watched the plump ball of rice flower rise under an enchanted flame. She pulled the leather band from her hair and shock so that it fell all around her, running her hands through the sweatless locks. The cool night brushed the backs of her hands and somewhere fragile crickets made a backdrop of white noise.
She looked at her sister across the fire but her eyes were focused down on the flickering dirt. She knew that Kit was perfectly at ease in the wild, but about her hung an aura of quiet apprehension and a little fear. Andrias stirred the soup; he was a wall of ice and arrogance. Reading them was familiar and boring and a little sad. The smell of seasoned vegetables in soup filled her with a little warmth as she straightened her posture but her thoughts longingly returned to her book, buried and hidden in her back left pack.
When Kit woke Antha was no longer lying beside her. Sitting up she noticed Andrias still in his bedroll across the cold fire pit. He looked annoyed even in his sleep. The crisp cold of early morning was everywhere. Antha’s horse was gone and Kit thought nothing of it. The strain of travel for Antha was more the forced proximity to anyone in general and her tutor specifically. She forced herself from under the blankets and into the cold. Shivering once, she pulled on her shoes and went down to the riverside to wash. They had been roughly following the river of whispering spirits for a day and a half and would only deviate slightly form its course at the end of their journey. Andrias eventually told her that it was called “whispering spirits” because a small human village didn’t understand the nature of nyads. The “whispers” were actually the slight rustling made by the feet of nyads fleeing from human intrusion.
As she splashed her face and neck droplets bit down her back under her nightgown. It made her feel as though she, like the woods, was covered in morning dew. Perhaps, when she was no longer welcome in Esca she could simply melt into the woods and never take human form again. It was a stupid thought. She almost laughed; she was 10 and already thinking of abandoning her two legged life.
Antha sat utterly still, cross legged on a smooth boulder surrounded by fickle green. Wisps of near by fog clung to the trees like lichen, reluctant to touch her. The wind crawled meekly to tease her hair, she sighed and cast an apprehensive glance at her saddle bags. Rising in one smooth motion she let the thick blue folds of her cloak trail behind her like a current. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until she touched the animal. Her breath rose in pale streams, breaking weakly on the encroaching fog. Her skin was numb and glassy. Reaching deep into a bundle of close she removed her stolen treasure. The cover was rough leather with a single symbol etched in the center, “ritual”. The inside cover read “Book of Summoning”.