The Royal Wizard (31 page)

There is something about him,
Saeran replied.
Something not right, but I cannot remember what.

Jasper, the northerner from Aegiros who had accompanied Queen Mari here, had not departed with the others. Not even after the queen had met her end. This land might be his home, but the castle wasn’t.

Nia came to stand by Saeran as Jasper approached.

He bowed deeply to them both, that same smile still plastered on his face. He spoke, but Nia didn’t hear his words. She stared at his face, which seemed out of place to her. She looked at him again with a dragon’s gaze and saw an illusion. It was powerful, carefully constructed, and very detailed, but an illusion nonetheless. What worried her was that she couldn’t see through it to what lay beneath.

Nia blinked, trying to adjust her focus, and her gaze snared on something lying hidden in the man’s pocket. Her senses returned to it each time she thought to look away. It was at once smooth and sticky, like a perfect little trap. Nia could feel the cold seeping out of it and shivered, but she couldn’t look away. Behind her, the creek screamed. Beneath her, the earth shuddered. Her vision clouded over, and in the dark mist she remembered the nightmare from which she’d awakened bleeding, a scream caught in her throat.

The ground shuddered again, hard enough to throw them all off balance. Saeran caught Nia against him, breaking her concentration, and she shifted her sight back to normal so she could once again see Jasper’s false face. Dark laughter, sharp as a blade, sliced through the autumn air.

“Nia?” Saeran’s said, but she didn’t answer him.

She searched with her senses for the threat she could feel saturating the air, careful to avoid the trap, but found no one; no one was around them, except for the man hiding in illusion. The dragon was restless, wherever he was, trying time and again to reach her, to speak to her, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Are you well, my lady?” Jasper asked, his voice polite, but beneath it she could hear the edge of glee.

Nia found her feet again and faced him. “I do not know who you are, but I know what you are doing. You have outstayed your welcome. Leave, or I will make you.”

The king frowned. She could already feel questions burning inside him. He would ask them later, but for now he didn’t say a word.

Jasper’s eyes turned assessing. His smile returned, this time with a calculating edge to it, as he looked Nia over. “My apologies,” he said, backing up a single step. “I had not realized my presence offended. If the lady wishes me out of her sight, I can oblige. But surely, your Majesty, banishment is too harsh an order in this case.” There was a lilting note to the end of his statement, as if he was asking, not saying it outright, and Nia caught the faintest slither of compulsion. It infuriated her that he would dare. But before she could do anything about it, Saeran spoke.

“You waste your charms on us,” Saeran said with difficulty, as if he had to fight to speak the words, but speak them he did. “I agree with the wizard in this. Your queen is gone, and you have no more reason to stay. You have until the day after Samhain to depart.”

Nia winced. Samhain was in two day’s time. A reasonable stretch, by anyone’s standards, yet Nia couldn’t shake the feeling that it was precisely what Jasper had wanted. Not to prevent himself being banished, only to postpone it a little while.

Jasper bowed. “As my liege commands.” Before he left, he spoke his last. “I regret that I have caused you any kind of discomfort. Please, allow me to make amends. I am a fair hand with magic tricks. Perhaps I could provide entertainment for the Samhain feast.” His gaze encompassed them both, and Nia felt another push of compulsion.

The wolf skin at her back moved, hackles rising until it made her own tickle. She suppressed an uncomfortable shudder. “No,” she said at the same time as Saeran decreed, “I will permit it.”

Jasper’s glee followed him like invisible smoke back to the castle and out of sight.

Saeran rubbed his chest over the dragon pendant. “It’s burning,” he said. “I suppose that means I have made the wrong choice.”

Nialei of the Streams.

Nia flinched at hearing the words whispered on the wind. She turned toward the source, back to the creek.
Niaaa…

Drawn to the dancing waves that shimmered in the sunlight, Nia went back to the bank and knelt there, taking off her cloak. The wolf skin remained, refusing to be discarded like a garment. It hugged her shoulders instead. 

“What is it?” Saeran asked, coming to kneel by her side.

On the other side of the stream, shapes shimmered into being. Glowing mist swirled around a gathering of Others of all shapes and sizes. Nia recognized the Sidhe and the dire wolves among them, but there were so many others, too. Creatures she’d never seen before, beautiful and terrifying, childlike and ancient, creatures of air, water and fire, earth and pure magic, all gathered there together, watching.

“Gods,” Saeran breathed, “look at them all.”

“You can see them?”

He nodded. “Why are they here?”

Have you learned?
the female dire wolf asked.

What will you do?
the Sidhe inquired.

“I think they are here for me.”

“What? Why?”

Nia closed her eyes and felt the dragon nudge her mind. “I think it is time to find out who I am,” she said, opening her mind again to the dragon. She let him in, but didn’t let him speak. The creek looked fuller, eager somehow. Nia placed her hands flat over the stream, just close enough to feel its cold, but out of reach of the water itself. Closing her eyes, she concentrated for a moment and then cupped her hands. They cut into the stream without touching it, and a perfect ball of water separated from the rest, hovering a hair’s breadth above her skin, nestled in her hands.

It was still moving, swirling ‘round and ‘round, still a creek, even caught in her hands. Nia had read about water creatures. They didn’t understand words, didn’t use them. They communicated with their minds and bodies. These creatures had powerful voices and didn’t use them unless there was no other way. Their songs could kill as easily as bring a thing back to life.

Nia searched her memories as far back as she could go, looking for a spell. There had to be one and it had to have been there since she’d been a child. What she found was a dream, and in it a melody.

Nia hummed to the ball of water in her hands. The song echoed, a double voice so strange it couldn’t be human, yet it was hers. How could it not be?

Do not tell me you still harbor a human’s fears,
the dragon had said to her.

The ball of water quivered to be struck by her voice, but it was not a defensive movement. It was dancing to her tune, responding in motion when it could not in voice. It swirled faster and faster, until it resembled a ball of yarn. A single ribbon detached and stretched up from the ball, creating a small vortex.

It grew and splashed outward, straining against her hold. Nia released it to float just above the surface of the stream and sat back to watch it, still singing, letting her instincts guide her when the memory faded away.

At last, Nia ran out of notes to voice and the vortex as big as her now collapsed, leaving in its place a creature so strange, and so beautiful, that Nia could only stare. The female was shaped almost like a human, but her fingers were webbed and her ears were tiny. She had gills on the sides of her neck and brilliant scales scattered down from her neck all over her body. Her hair was not hair at all, but some sort of water plants. Her eyes were enormous in her face, the color of stars and emeralds, and her eyelids closed sideways, not up and down. She had only two small slits where a nose ought to be, and her lips were full and feminine. When she opened her mouth to draw breath, Nia could see a row of tiny, sharp teeth.

Nia pushed to her feet and bowed to the creature, recognizing royalty when she saw it. She nudged Saeran to do the same.

The female blinked a couple of times, and then Nia’s mind filled with images, sent to her on a sigh. She saw a beautiful castle made of shells and pearls, crystals and flowers, deep beneath the water. Creatures like this one swam all around, playing and laughing, singing together to help fish and plants grow. They were the guardians of the world’s waters. She was showing Nia where she’d come from, a way of introduction.

When Nia acknowledged this, the images changed to show another female, this one with eyes more white than green. She was floating serene by the edge of a lake but a dark cloud of blood was spreading around her body. She was dying. With her last breath, she sent a shrill call into the air, a summons.

An impossibly tall man came running out of the forest. He had antlers growing from his head, and hair like spun gold. He wore only a pair of tattered pants and his skin was darkened from the sun. Drawings and symbols covered his chest and arms, patterns that changed as he approached the female in the water. His sapphire eyes were filled with pain at the sight of her. He dropped to his knees at the edge of the lake and caught the water sprite’s face in his hands, searching her eyes.

The female brought forth a bundle of water plants and handed it to him with shaking hands. He nodded to her silent pleas, tears of blood running down his beautiful face as the sprite closed her eyes, sinking beneath the surface of the lake where she dissolved into the element which had birthed her.

The male unwrapped the bundle to expose a naked babe, a little girl with eyes almost as bright as his own. His daughter. Nia. But she was too small, too fragile to stay with him. His people were a powerful lot who reveled in contest and battle. Though it broke his heart, he took the child to an old woman who lived at the edge of his forest. Nia’s eyes welled with tears as Eirwen took the child into her care, but she made her father swear on the love he held for his water sprite that he would never approach the girl.

Understanding passed between them. Halflings were extremely unstable. Born with human bodies, for that was a shape easily adoptable by all Others, they could change as they grew to favor either of their parents, or both. It all depended on who raised them. Had Nia stayed with the water sprites, she might well have become one herself. But more likely, she would have drowned in their world before developing the ability to breathe under water.

She could not have survived with her father, either. In his demesne she would have been less than half the size of other children, weak and disadvantaged, easy fodder for everyone to prove their dominance by fighting her into submission.

No, her only hope for survival was to stay human, but she could only do that if she never knew Others existed.

The male gave his word and swore to look after her from a distance to keep her safe. The old woman nodded, and by the time she raised her gaze again, he was gone.

Nia was shaking by the time her vision cleared, and she could see the water sprite again. The female’s eyes were sad. She’d waited a long time to be summoned to show Nia these things. A long time to carry so many memories not her own. She reached out a webbed hand, caressing Nia’s hair without touching it.

Water creatures and land creatures rarely mated. Nia’s mother had died giving birth to her because she’d been forced to do it near the surface to make sure Nia survived. And to keep her away from her father’s people, Eirwen had taken Nia far away, to a no man’s land between Wilderheim and its western neighbor Ravetia, where she would never hear anyone speak of magic or Otherlands.

Nia remembered little of her time there. Only that they’d traveled from village to village for years until Eirwen had been too old to go any farther. By the time Nia’s magic flared in her sleep and took Eirwen’s life, Nia had been on the border of King Manfred’s realm, and she’d made it all the way to Frastmir on her own, only to be found by Nico.

Saeran caught her hand in his and held on, his presence warming her cold insides.

You were brought here for a reason,
the dragon said.
Do not fear it, there is no need.

The water sprite tilted her head to hear another’s voice. She blinked and sent her greetings through Nia. The dragon responded with assurances that she was relieved of her burden. He would look after the pair from now on. The sprite nodded and looked at Nia again. What might have been a smile transformed her face for a moment, before she twirled around and changed into water, splashing back into the creek.

Had it not been for Saeran’s arms coming around her, Nia would have fallen to the ground. 

CHAPTER 34

Nia spent the next day in her chambers. Not of her own will. She had yet to sleep a wizard’s sleep since the healing she’d channeled for Saeran and Mari, and the summons of the water sprite had undone what progress she’d made.

She thought about her father. If he’d ever been around, even at a distance, would she have sensed him? Nia couldn’t remember if she ever had. She couldn’t even be sure of what he was. His antlers told her little. He could be a wood sprite, an animal spirit, or anything in between or beyond. Far too many creatures dwelled in this world to know them all, especially when most never revealed themselves to humans.

The only thing she was now certain of was that she was not human. That was what Nico had seen in her the day he’d caught her stealing bread from the castle kitchens. That was why the Others let her see them—she was one of them. An Other at the right hand of a human king.

Or as human as a dragon’s descendant could be.

Nia chuckled. What a pair they made, Halflings governing a human realm, and no one the wiser. But Wilderheim had always been a kingdom of Others as much as humans, and if Nico could have done it, she could do no less than prove worthy of his faith in her ability to do the same.

Nico.
She sighed. There was another mystery. Her mentor had served three generations of kings, prolonging his life as much as his human body would allow. Toward the end, Nia had felt the toll it had taken on him. Through practice and sheer force of will, Nico’s essence had grown to make up for his withering body. For her sake he’d waited longer than was wise, but now, at least, Nia knew what had happened to him.