Eolyn (6 page)

C
hapter Seven

“I want to be a warrior maga like my mother.” Eolyn’s voice cut sharp through cool morning air.

Ghemena gathered a handful of bean pods, set them in her basket, and observed her charge for several minutes. Vexation marked Eolyn’s every move as she wrestled carrots out of the soft earth.

“But there is no war to fight,” Ghemena replied. “Why learn the arts of war if no war exists in which to apply them?”

“It would serve to defend myself against those who would punish me for my magic and…” Eolyn forced another carrot out of the ground and threw it in her basket. “It would serve to avenge the destruction of my village and the murder of my
family.”

“There are many strategies for self-defense that do not require wartime magic. As for vengeance, who speaks to you of such things? The impulse for revenge has no place in this household, much less in your lessons.”

Ghemena received the girl’s cross silence with concern. An agitated glow tinged Eolyn’s aura, accompanied by a surprising spark Ghemena had not noticed until this moment.

“You have a friend you haven’t told me about,” she realized in astonishment. “Who would have thought? A child in this corner of the woods. And a secret you’ve chosen to keep from me.”

Still Eolyn did not speak. She wrapped her fist around another bunch of carrot greens and pulled hard. Tension creased the girl’s brow and the sweat of her efforts dampened the fine roots of her hair.

“Why did you not tell me?” Ghemena insisted.

The earth released the carrot unexpectedly, throwing Eolyn back on her heels. She stared at the vegetable for a long moment and then tossed it in a basket. “He asked me not to.”

“Oh for the love of the Gods!” Ghemena lifted her hands to the heavens. “What is it with men that they can smell a virgin across such distances? Who is he, Eolyn? The son of a forester? He cannot be a thief, or I would have lost you to some terrible fate long ago.”

“He’s not a thief or a forester. He’s just a boy who comes to visit the forest, a student of magic like me.”

The words hit Ghemena in the stomach. The ground lurched and her vision blurred. She caught herself on unsteady hands and tried to recuperate her breath. A harsh rattle invaded her lungs.

Eolyn rushed to place her hands upon the old woman’s back, but the girl’s healing powers had not matured enough to penetrate Ghemena’s brittle ribs.

“A mage!” Ghemena gasped. “But how? Where did he come from?”

“I’m not sure.” Eolyn sounded distraught. “He just appears. He told me he lives in a forest like this one, only everything is made of stone. Ghemena, what is wrong? Where has your breath gone?”

The old maga closed her eyes. Her head sank into shaking hands. Only one place could be described as a stone forest, the great city of Moisehén, the King’s City. A student of Tzeremond had somehow crossed the kingdom, penetrated the South Woods, and found Eolyn.

I do not have the strength at this stage of life to confront a disaster of such magnitude.

Ghemena lifted her face and found it wet with tears. “You cannot see him again. And we, we must leave this place at once to seek a new refuge.”

Even as she spoke Ghemena recognized the impossibility of this task. Varyl would not return before spring, and Ghemena was too old to move without his help. At least two moons would pass before winter rendered the South Woods impenetrable. If the mages wished to track them down, they could do it before Samhaen.

She drew a deep breath. “Perhaps we can find a new place for you, Eolyn. Somewhere to hide in the coming months. You could stock it with supplies from the cottage and wait for spring to show you another path. I am too old to ask for a longer life. If they find me, little will be lost. But you, you cannot die now. You must run and hide.”

“No, Ghemena,” Eolyn protested. “I will not leave you.”

“You have no choice! A student of Tzeremond has found you. He will betray you, if he has not already.”

“That’s not true! He’s promised never to betray me. He wants only to protect me. He’s even offered to teach me how to protect myself!”

Ghemena pinned Eolyn with a sharp gaze.

“What do you mean?” she asked, each word crisp and ominous.

Eolyn averted her eyes. A flush invaded her cheeks. “He wants to teach me how to fight, a little. How to throw a knife. How to hold a sword.”

“So you wish to die like the magas of the Old Orders,” Ghemena concluded in bitter tones. “On the battle field watching the blood drain from your severed limbs.”

“No, Ghemena! It’s just…I’m frightened. What’s going to happen if I ever leave this forest? How will I know whom to trust? Who will I look to for protection if I can’t protect myself? And Achim has already taught me so much, not just about fighting, but about Tzeremond and the King and the world outside of these woods.”

“It does not matter. Even if he can remain loyal to your friendship—which he cannot—there are others in his Order who, at the slightest hint of your existence, will do whatever it takes to destroy you. You must put an end to this ‘friendship’ at once.”

“I can’t,” the girl pleaded. “Don’t ask me to do this, Ghemena, please! He has been such a wonderful companion. He’s the only friend I have besides you. We have known each other many moons now. All summer we have been together. Don’t you think he would have betrayed me already if that had been his intention? Please, Ghemena, I can’t bear the thought of losing another friend. Not now. Please.”

Ghemena folded her fingers tight over her forehead. Her inner voice was faint against her own anxiety and the clamor of the girl’s pleas.

“You yourself said,” Eolyn continued, “that in the Great War there were mages who supported the magas, who fought with them against the King and Tzeremond. What if my friend is like those mages? What if he is destined to help me when the time comes?”

“Your friend is not a mage of the Old Orders!” Ghemena snapped. “The Old Orders are dead. Tzeremond saw to that.”

Eolyn retreated into confused silence.

The garden plants shifted under the autumn sun. Insects buzzed amidst leaves and branches, indifferent to the crisis at hand.

Ghemena took Eolyn’s hands into her gnarled grasp. Such long fingers the girl had, already rendered strong by work and magic.

“For the greater part of my life, Eolyn, I believed the truism of the Old Orders that there is no evil in this world except that which we create by our own choices. Tzeremond changed all that. His wizardry had no place in the traditions of Moisehén, and yet he came from us, trained by our own masters.

“He has only ever turned his magic to destructive ends, yet the Gods leave him unpunished. He violated the greatest prohibition of our people and taught the ways of magic to a man of royal lineage. When that prince assumed the crown and the magas rose up in protest, Tzeremond did not simply defeat them. He destroyed all his rivals, mages and magas alike. He tore down the old ways and created his own order. Now the only magic left to our people is controlled by him. Tzeremond does not have students, Eolyn. Tzeremond has only puppets, and your friend is one of them.”

“Achim is not a puppet! He’s not, Ghemena. He’s my friend.”

Ghemena sighed at the stubborn set of Eolyn’s jaw. She knew that look of determination. She had honed it. “You’ve always been such an obedient child. Why do you choose to be difficult in this of all things?”

Eolyn’s expression softened. She shrugged and lowered her gaze.

“I will consult the cards tonight, Eolyn. Tomorrow we will decide what to do. Until then you must not go to the forest. You are to remain here with me.”

Alone in her tiny room that evening, Ghemena removed her worn deck from its resting place and spread it in an arc illuminated by a solitary white candle.

Decades ago, a traveling Syrnte witch had left these illustrated plates with the Doyenne as a gift. In time she had learned how to interpret them, and ever since her flight from Moisehén, they had been her constant companions.

After meditating, Ghemena chose three items to accompany the reading: a polished black stone, a songbird’s feather, and a broken knife. Closing her eyes, she passed her aged fingers over the cards in search of an ephemeral vibration.

She drew first for Eolyn.

Companionship. Two witches play in an open meadow. The sun sets in the west and the moon rises in the east.

Ghemena’s eyes grew damp. This was not the answer she sought. The risk seemed far too great. Still, the cards rarely misled her. Should she doubt them now?

Returning her fingers to the arc, she drew a second card for herself.

Transformation. A solitary witch crosses a river as if on air, her face upturned. Stars illuminate her path.

Ghemena’s heart slowed. She rested her hands on the rough surface of the table.

So many years she had lived, so much experience she had gathered. Yet in this moment under the flickering candlelight, age and wisdom seemed insufficient to confront the true meaning of this image.

The Gods will soon call me home.

For herself, the news felt almost comforting, but what would become of young Eolyn once she was gone? And how could she teach the girl everything she needed to know before crossing over the Plains of the Dead?

“How much time do we have?” Ghemena whispered.

The deck responded with two cards.

For Eolyn, three rivers.

For Ghemena, seven trees.

C
hapter Eight

In the weeks before Samhaen
, the magistrate of Selkynsen brought a girl accused of witchcraft to the city.

At the King’s request, Prince Akmael oversaw her trial. She was young like Eolyn, no longer a girl but not quite a woman, with flaxen hair and frightened blue eyes. Her parents, merchants of some renown, wept and raged before the court while pleading her innocence, but in the end the girl confessed under torture.

When they dragged her back before court to receive her sentence, Akmael could only see Eolyn, her face swollen and discolored, her hair matted with blood, her limbs broken and twisted until they no longer served her.

The night before the girl burned, Akmael could not sleep for the thought of his Eolyn thrown to the guards like some scrap of meat, to be ravaged by them so she would not die a virgin.

The Prince had not seen such violence perpetrated against a witch since the trial of the woman who murdered his mother. That red haired assassin had committed an unpardonable crime. In Akmael’s mind, she deserved every moment of suffering imposed upon her.

But this girl from Selkynsen, what offense had she committed that would undermine the peace of the kingdom? What threat did she truly pose?

The zealous fury of the mages that destroyed her sobered Akmael and made him reconsider his plan to bring Eolyn to the city. As a prince he had no real power of intervention in matters of magical law, and if he could not secure his father’s sympathy, what would become of his friend?

So winter passed, followed by spring and then summer again, and still Eolyn remained his secret in the South Woods. How long he could sustain this situation, Akmael did not know. Years could pass, decades even, before the Gods saw fit to call his father home and give the Crown to him. Every day Eolyn spent in the South Woods was another day lost to the corrupting influence of that crone. Yet if Eolyn left the forest, Tzeremond’s mages could find her. When that happened, she might be lost to Akmael forever.

“It doesn’t feel right.” Frustrated, Eolyn drove the blade into the earth and paced around it. Sweat glistened on her sun-warmed skin and dampened the roots of her auburn hair. “I can’t do this, Achim. I can’t fight with a sword.”

“You’ve only just started. It takes a lot of time and practice to handle a blade with skill.”

“It’s not about practicing. It’s what happens when I feel the metal in my hands. Something inside me rejects everything I try to do with it.”

Akmael could not deny the truth of her observation. The moment she had wrapped her hands around the hilt, Eolyn’s natural speed and balance deserted her. All afternoon her movements had been awkward and forced. She appeared to be fighting against, rather than with, the weapon.

Eolyn pulled the sword back up, sheathed it, and offered it to him.

“No.” Akmael shook his head. “This weapon is yours.”

It was the first sword he had ever used, a small instrument meant more for practice than for battle. Akmael had long since discarded it in favor of longer blades, but it was well crafted. He had chosen the weapon for Eolyn, knowing its light weight would sit perfectly in her strong hands, and that it would never be missed from the castle armory.

“I can’t accept your sword, Achim. How will you fight without it?”

He laughed. “I have many other swords. One day I will inherit my father’s sword and then that will be the only one I use. You need to practice, Eolyn. Keep the sword.”

“Can’t we just visualize another one for me?”

“A sword cannot be visualized. Magic cannot be used to create weapons of war.”

“Why not?”

Akmael shrugged. “Sir Drostan says it is because magic and warfare had separate origins, magic being given to Caradoc and warfare to the ancestors of Vortingen. But maybe they simply haven’t discovered how to do it yet.”

“Even if I do keep this sword, where would I put it? Ghemena will destroy it if she finds it at the cottage.”

“You can hide it here in the forest.”

“Then some thief or forester might come across it and take it.”

“I know a simple spell that allows you to drive a sword into stone so that only you can remove it again. We can use one of the boulders at the foot of Lynx’s ridge.”

Eolyn unsheathed the blade and let it rest in her hand. The length of metal reflected the autumn leaves against a blue sky. She studied the instrument, listening carefully to its silver hum.

“It’s such a strange sound, the language of swords,” she said.

“You understand the knife well enough.”

Eolyn had learned the dialect of knives with ease. She could send her small blade singing into almost any target.

“The knife has a simple song,” she replied. “It’s not at all like the voice of this sword, not nearly as complex.”

“It is the same language.” Odd she could not hear that for herself. Distinguishing the voice of a sword from the voice of a knife was as simple as discerning between the accents of Selkynsen and Selen. “They are both metals.”

She looked up at him. For a moment, Akmael lost himself in the oval line of her face, the curve of her rose colored lips, the lovely smile that spread through her dark eyes.

“This is a generous gift, Achim. Thank you. I will keep your sword. Perhaps with time she and I will learn to understand each other.”

Eolyn sheathed the weapon and together they set out for the high ridge. Autumn leaves crunched underfoot. Trees crowned in gold and crimson shaded their path. Empty sounds of fall had invaded the South Woods, chasing away songbirds and driving bears toward their caves. Soon the white blanket of winter’s death would spread over barren trees.

This would be the second time Akmael left Eolyn behind in the South Woods for the winter. Once again, he wondered whether he was making a mistake. The forest could snatch her away in its grip of ice, leaving nothing but her memory to greet the spring. If she survived, that crone would continue to confuse Eolyn with her web of subversive magic.

Akmael wanted to take Eolyn back to the King’s City, wrap her in a fine fur cloak, and watch her fall asleep in front of a roaring fire. He wanted to deliver her to the comforts of Moisehén, but the specter of the battered girl from Selkynsen loomed in his mind. The smell of her burning flesh returned to his memory.

“How do you survive here the winter through?” he asked. “What do you do for food and warmth?”

“We always greet the season with plenty of supplies. What we can’t grow in the garden or harvest from the woods is brought to us by a forester named Varyl. He comes only twice a year, but he brings everything we need. The South Woods has always been kind to Ghemena and me. I do not fear winter. I love its crystal breath and the starkness of its colors.” Eolyn paused in her gait to expose the blade of the sword. She held it to her ear. “I bet this sword will have a different song in winter. I bet she will ring like the ice.”

Akmael smiled and took the weapon from her hands. He coaxed a hum from its blade with a few idle slices through the air.

“She will sing only for you if you keep flattering her like that,” he said. “Why is your tutor so opposed to you learning the sword? All the magas of her time understood the arts of war.”

“That’s not true! Only a small number of magas have ever been warriors, even during the last great conflict in which they all perished.”

Akmael let out a breath of disapproval.
So many lies the hag was telling her!

“Ghemena was not part of the warrior class,” Eolyn continued. “She never condoned war, not even when the magas rose up against Kedehen. She supported the magas because they were her sisters, but she has no tolerance for war. She believes anyone who learns to speak with the sword will die by it.”

“Better to die on a blade than on the pyre.” The King’s men weighed the honor of one death against another without a second thought, but Akmael could tell by the look on Eolyn’s face that she did not find his comment amusing.

“I don’t understand how magic can be applied to warfare,” she said. “Magic should be used to create not to destroy. And in war one always has to destroy. How is it possible for a mage to become warrior?”

“It is easy enough.” Akmael balanced the sword in his grip. “You learn the arts of war and then you learn the arts of magic. Then a mage warrior like Sir Drostan teaches you how to integrate the two. For example…”

Advancing toward a nearby tree, Akmael evoked a soft hissing ring from the blade. He ran up the trunk vertically while deflecting the advances of an imaginary enemy and returned to the ground in a short flight.

“Tricks like that give you a great advantage over your opponent. You can also alter the path of flying objects.”

He threw the sword toward the trunk of young pine, willing it to swerve before driving solidly into the target.

“A skilled warrior mage detects the fears of his enemy and turns them to his advantage.” Akmael strode over to the pine to retrieve the weapon. “A warrior mage trained in High Magic can use his staff to invoke a death charge.”

His words stopped short when he turned back to Eolyn.

She stood deathly still amidst the falling leaves, her feet pressed tight upon the earth, her eyes wide and frightened. All the color had drained from her face.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you going to be one of them?” she whispered.

“One of whom?”

“Are you going to be a Rider for the King?”

“No. No, Eolyn. The Riders are not mages. They’re just knights.”

“They destroyed my family, you know. And my village. I only escaped because I happened to be in the woods that day. That’s how I came to be here with Ghemena.”

A chill took hold of Akmael. The trees creaked in a passing breeze and then stood silent.

“There must have been traitors there,” Akmael said. “The King only sends his Riders to villages that harbor traitors.”

“There were no traitors where we lived, only farmers.”

Frost spread over the forest floor, painting fallen leaves misty white.

“Children can’t be traitors,” Eolyn said, “and as for their parents, what treachery is there in tending chickens and harvesting grain?”

“I do not know, Eolyn. All I am saying is he must have had a reason. Sending the Riders upon a village is not a decision the King makes lightly. There must have been some justification.”

“What
possible
justification could there have been?” Her voice broke like a clap of thunder.

When Akmael offered nothing in response, Eolyn sank to the ground and began to weep.

Akmael had known Eolyn in many moods, but he had never witnessed this core of pain and anger. Then again, he had never asked why she lived so deep inside the forest with only an old witch for company, or what had happened to her real family.

Now with the truth laid out on the carpet of her tears, he felt torn between the loyalty he sustained toward his father and the brutal consequences of the King’s justice.

Sheathing the sword, Akmael approached Eolyn and knelt down beside her. “Eolyn.”

“Don’t you dare tell me it’s my fault!”

“Your
fault?”

“That’s what you think!” Eolyn’s sobs coursed through her body in harsh shudders. “It’s what you said!”

“What
I
said?”

“You said women’s magic invokes tears and bloodshed. You said magas bring death upon their families, even upon their own sisters. But it wasn’t my fault! I only knew Simple Magic back then. And even if I had known what I know now, what’s wrong with that? With who I am? How can something so beautiful be
wrong
?”

Her words lost their way in a renewed round of tears.

Akmael sat back, uncertain how to respond.

Yes, he had said that, though he could not quite remember when. But he had not meant to hurt Eolyn, only to warn her about the dangers of women’s magic.

He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Eolyn, the attack on your village was not your fault. I don’t know why the Riders came, but it could not have been because of you.”

That much was certainly true. No hamlet had ever been punished just because one girl knew a few medicinal plants.

Eolyn’s weeping wavered, fell, and rose again.

Akmael was reminded of the lamentations of his own mother, which haunted the shadows of his early childhood.

“I lost my mother, you know.” His voice sounded small. He’d never spoken about this to anyone, not even his father. “She died defending me and I saw her fall. I had not yet seen eleven summers, but I blamed myself for her murder. I thought I should have been able to protect her, but I couldn’t. It still gives me bad dreams, sometimes.”

The tremor in Eolyn’s shoulders faded.

Encouraged by her response, Akmael continued, “I’m not saying it’s comparable to your loss. I mean, how can one grief be weighed against another? But I think I understand something of what you experienced.”

For a moment Eolyn’s sobs intensified. Akmael drew her close and inhaled the honey-and-wood scent of her hair. Embracing her like this gave him a sense of warmth and completion.