The Flame in the Mist (29 page)

“Indeed she was,” said Lumo, “and as cruel as any of them, until, just before she turned thirteen, she had a change of heart. She escaped from the castle and came to Oakstead to seek the help of the Solvays living here at that time. They took her under their wing, gave her a home, and trained her in the Light Arts. Later, she and their son Valior fell in love, and wed.”

“That must have angered the Agromonds no end! Is that why they hate us so much?”

“Our emnity goes back hundreds of years before that, but Majem’s escape—her betrayal of them, no less—made their hatred more bitter. There was a time, though, long before, when Agromonds and Solvays ruled this land together in harmony and prosperity: the Agromonds in the south, and we, the north.” Lumo took a sip of water, and smiled. “Yes! I see your look of astonishment, Jemma, but it is so, and all told in Majem’s book. Read it, when you are ready.”

Jemma shivered, and turned the book in her hands. “So Majem was one of them! To have been so evil, and become so good.…”

“Nobody is evil through and through, Jemma,” said Lumo, “or good, for that matter. Each of us has the capacity for both, and for most of us, one wicked act, or even several, does not make us a wicked person. That depends upon how we choose to commit our lives. Yet even good people have the capacity for cruelty, just as evil ones have the capacity for kindness.”

Jemma nodded, remembering her harsh words to Nox about his lost twin, and how kind he could be to her. “What caused such a change of heart in her?”

“That too is in the book,” said her mother. “Some of it is … painful to read. Wait, at least until your ordeal has faded from your mind. Then we shall talk of it, and of the future, and tell you more about your brother, as well.”

“My brother … What was his name?”

Lumo and Sapphire both drew in a breath, then spoke together. “Jamem.”

“Jamem,” Jemma repeated. Another anagram … The eerie sense of connection she’d felt to Majem threaded through her again. And now there was a third person hooked
into the story. Jamem. She wanted to ask more about him, and about his disappearance, but the sorrowful looks on her parents’ faces made her think better of it. She’d only found out about his existence a few days ago, after all, while they had endured twelve years of heartache. Her questions could wait.

Running down the crag—her silken dress ripping on branches … Screams from the castle—her father, calling her name in a strange, muddled way: “Ma-jemmajemjamem!” Would she ever be free of it all? The dungeons, the small boy’s whimpers, her father’s fury …

Wait—this can’t be
my
dream! I don’t
know
any small boy, and my father is Lumo, Lumo Solvay! He’s never even
been
to the castle!
And yet, it
must
be her—the rats were in a pouch around her shoulders, and she could see the Stone’s aqua glow. The bell began tolling, once, twice.…

“Enough! I’m free now, free!” Jemma woke on the last strike of three, the dream details vivid in her head. The silk dress, the small boy—they weren’t her memories! They belonged to someone else. Someone long ago. Someone who, like her, had broken free.

“Majem,” she whispered. “It was her I was dreaming about.”

Outside, it was still dark, but a candle stub burned by Jemma’s bedside, next to the book and crystals. Noodle and Pie were fast asleep on her pillow, their tiny snores purring like mothwings. She took stock of the patched cotton gown she was wearing, and remembered her mother bathing her
just before bedtime, then bringing her here and tucking her in.

She closed her eyes. But the evening’s events kept churning through her head: more stories she’d exchanged with her parents, then going down to the kitchen with them for a nightcap of camomile tea with Marsh and Digby. Her parents had given Digby a pony to thank him for bringing her home. Then, since he had to leave early in the morning and return to Hazebury to help his father with deliveries, Jemma had said goodbye to him.

That had been harder than she’d expected, and she felt sad now, thinking about him. She would miss him. Her friend. Her rescuer. Her rescuee. For more than four years, they’d seen each other every Tuesday at dawn, and the past two days’ adventures had driven him deeper into her heart. He’d stood by his word to Marsh, and brought her here despite the dangers. And after all her dreaming, here she was at last, miles from Agromond Castle—but there he would be, still living in its shadow, making the weekly trudge up the crag with Gordo and Pepper to deliver the Agromonds’ supplies. Even though he’d promised to visit as soon as he could—being careful to avoid Blackwater—there was a hollow in her, a piece missing. A piece labeled “Digby.”

Candlelight danced around the room. Jemma’s churning thoughts were turning into a thick butter, threatening to keep her awake all night. Sleep was a hopeless cause.

“No point just lying here like a log,” she mumbled, pulling herself to sit. Settling cross-legged on the bed, she picked up Majem’s book and opened it. Title. Name. Then she noticed something beneath it, hand-written in faded lettering,
which she hadn’t seen before. As she looked, the shadow of ink began to sparkle, faint light shining through the words, just as it had shone through the cover when she’d first read it. She tingled with anticipation as the light became brighter, until the words’ graceful flourish was clear across the page.

“The Fire One! So Majem knew about the Prophecy … and wrote this dedication, all that time ago, to
me
?” The idea felt strange and fascinating. Even though she knew she couldn’t be the Fire One without having been Initiated, she felt compelled to read on.

“
MS
. Majem Solvay,” Jemma whispered, slightly perturbed by the word
quest
with its capital
Q
. “But what on earth does she mean by the Forgotten Song?” Spurred by curiosity, she turned the page.

Nine in the morn! And the date: it was three hundred years to the day before Jemma’s birthday. The cord of connection between her and Majem tightened.

Jemma’s gaze sped over the pages, despite the old-fashioned language. She read about Majem’s father, Kralyd, marrying a beauty who, though not of sorcerer’s blood, brought more wealth into the already-bulging Agromond coffers. She read how Majem, the youngest of two sets of twins—each a boy and girl, as those of healers and sorcerers always were—was the most powerful of their four children. Majem’s gruesome Offerings had delighted Kralyd, making her siblings green with envy. She had no remorse. No feeling for others. Jemma skimmed over several pages of details, her stomach now churning as much as her head.

Then she came to a passage that made her throat clench:
The Children imprisonned in the Dungeons
—twins and triplets who were kidnapped and brought to the castle to be dealt with
—in accordance with Twin Lore
, which Majem went on to explain.

There exists between Twins an invisible Bond
, she wrote,
the brayking of which by the Deathe of one by whatsoever means, doth release a grayt Force
.

“A bond between twins,” Jemma murmured. “When one dies, no matter how, the bond breaks, releasing a great force. Digby mentioned something about that, on our way to Oakstead.”

She read on, her patience stretching to grasp the rest of the Lore. But she was determined.

When the twins were from the families of healers and sorcerers and therefore had special Powers, the great force released at one twin’s death automatically went to the surviving twin, increasing its strength—and its Powers.

However, when twins from normal families died, since they had no special Powers, the great force simply
flyeth into the Ether
, as Majem put it—unless, at the moment of death, it was harnessed by someone powerful enough to direct it to a place of their choosing.

Which is exactly what the Agromonds did.

Twice a year—though always
at Tymes unpredictable, to avoid Detection
, they took twins and triplets from far and wide, then sacrificed the strongest one, and, using
the proper Rimes and Rituals
, directed the force of its twin bond
into the dark Entity
, which in return gave them Power.

Jemma needed no reminding what that Entity was. “Scagavay,” she whispered, her blood running cold. But it got worse. Under the Agromonds’ command, not only did the great force go to Scagavay—the slain twin’s soul went too. Its body was then locked in the dungeons with the surviving twin, who was simply left there to die.

She choked back tears, utterly nauseated. “Those poor children! Just like that girl ghost in the forest said: swallowed by the monster.…” Then a terrifying thought hit her: that was exactly what would have happened to her too. All her dreams, with the dark voice saying
You are mine, all mine!
had been telling her so. And Majem had done such awful things … had reveled in them! How could somebody so evil possibly have changed? Despite the horrors of everything she’d just read, Jemma had to find out. She turned the page.

Banished to the Forest … Seeking his lost twin … Jemma’s mind spun back to the forest phantoms, pleading for the souls of their trapped brothers and sisters. Perhaps she had even seen this boy among them.… It was all so heartbreaking. But the book held her eyes like magnets.

“No!” Noodle and Pie woke with a start. “Sprites! I can hardly believe what I’m reading—two rats, just like you …” The rats crawled onto her lap.

Instantly, Majem’s mother had seen the change in her. Majem must flee, she said, for her father would surely kill her if her Powers no longer served his ends. Majem protested: she was not yet Initiated—could not possibly survive the forest! Her mother assured her she had a plan to protect her—a plan that would also ensure her own freedom, for she too could no longer abide the evildoings at the castle.

Terrified, Majem ran from the castle and down the crag, her Stone around her neck, her two new rat friends in a pouch around her shoulder. Just as Jemma had dreamed. The
Aukron spied her, and attacked. She would die—she knew it! But no … A sudden rush of force filled her. The beast lay wounded. In what seemed like no time, Majem was at the bridge, crossing the river into Hazebury—with no Mist around her.

“No Mist,” Jemma said. “And two rats. The same color as you.” Noodle and Pie blinked at her, and an absurd thought leapt into her head. “You’re not
related
to them, are you?” Another blink. “No … it’s too weird. This whole
thing
is weird.… So, what was that force Majem felt? Ah, here we are:
And soon did I surmise what must have come to pass
—Oh, no!”

Majem’s mother had murdered Majem’s twin. Murdered him, to increase Majem’s Powers and give her the strength to defeat the Aukron. Though Majem never went back to the castle, soon the terrible tale rippling through Anglavia confirmed her suspicions: her brother Faustus had indeed been slain by their mother. Kralyd put his wife to death for her treachery.

Rattled by the story, Jemma raced through the rest of the chapter: Majem’s journey to Oakstead … Healing a sick boy on the way … Her thirteenth birthday, alone on the moors … Then at last, four dawns after fleeing the castle, she arrived ragged and exhausted at the Solvays’ door. Their son Gudred answered it, invited her in. She was taken under their beneficent wing, and trained in the Light Arts. Gudred, though just a year older than Majem, was the family academic, and taught her to read and write. At nineteen, she married his older brother, Valior. Her father’s fury was taken out on the whole country: poverty, misery, and Mist spread like disease. On the Solvays, Kralyd placed a particular curse,
which Majem and Valior discovered when their son, Ruddeg, was born: he was an only child. This was a shock, for Solvays, like Agromonds, had only ever borne twins. But from now on, the curse decreed, Solvays would only bear single children, so if one died, there was no twin to inherit its Powers, which were therefore lost.