by Greg Curtis
“I thought they locked you away simply to steal your magic.” That after all was what he'd been told.
“Yes. That's what we think. That they found a way to steal our magic and use it to enchant their weapons. But we wondered why they didn't lock up the Smythes.”
Manx had also wondered that. He knew that they'd assumed it was because Smythes looked normal. The magic that they called to them didn't transform their flesh. But he also knew that that seemed wrong. Because even if they didn't look any different to normals, they still had their family name. And Smythes, even from what he knew about their history, were well known for their magic, at least up until four hundred or so years ago they had been. So why hadn't they also been locked away? There was of course only one answer that came to mind.
“You think my family was somehow involved in the crime?” It wasn't even a question.
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Of course you do. Everyone wants to blame my family for every crime going. We seem to be scoundrels by birth, whether we commit a crime or not. But I can't tell you what they might or might not have done. I don't know anything about it.” He wasn't going to deny the possibility though. He owed his family nothing. Not after what they'd done to him. “You can ask them when your people are free.”
“And you can rub my belly now!” Whitey murmured as she rolled on to her back and displayed her belly for him to begin work on. Obviously she was listening to the conversation. But it didn't particularly interest her as much as her comfort. Which was normal.
“We can and we will,” the shaman told him. “But that could be a long way away. And before that, there was something that struck us as strange. Your family threatened us with a gun.”
“Alright?” He already knew that. Adern had told him. And the fact that they'd used a gun didn't seem particularly strange to Manx. What else should they have used? Swords?
“But they're Smythes,” she replied. “Doesn't that seem odd?”
For an answer Manx could only shrug. He didn't know. But it seemed perfectly reasonable to him. What else would they use – sticks and stones?!
“A Smythe can cloak himself in shadow even in the middle of the day. Dance unseen among his enemies. Plunge a knife into a dozen backs before anyone even knows he's there. And yet they chose to simply use a gun?”
Manx didn't know what to say about that. Some of it was in the journals he'd been reading. But not that Smythes were so dangerous. Then again he had only three journals to work with. Maybe some of the others had been more deadly. But still cloaking themselves in shadow was definitely one of the things Smythe's were renown for. That and climbing walls and breaking locks. Really, when he thought about it, his ancestry wasn't something to be proud of despite the pretensions to nobility.
“Again, you're asking the wrong man,” he eventually told her. “I don't know anything about them. And I don't want to.”
“Good! Think like a cat!” Whitey murmured, half asleep. “Not a monkey man! Now my head. I have an itch.”
“But what if the reason they weren't locked away is that they don't have any magic left?” Larissa suggested.
“But I have magic, however limited.”
“And maybe you're the first of your family to reclaim it. You've said it yourself. Your magic is limited. Rather like the magic of those who've recently been freed from the dimensional prison.”
What was she suggesting? Manx couldn't quite figure it out. Some of that must have shown on his face.
“The spell that's holding us prisoner, is four hundred years old. But even though we've only recently escaped from it, it's been failing for years. Decades. And maybe it had failed enough twenty some years ago, that a young boy, terrified for his life and dying, was able to break loose of it. Maybe you're the first of your family, to have reclaimed your ancestral blood. Granted that boon by terror and the nearness of death. Desperation.”
“What do you remember of that day?”
“Teeth, claws, pain and blood,” Manx answered her, annoyed that he had to. He tried not to think about that day, but lately it seemed to be all anyone wanted to talk about. “Lots and lots of blood. So much that everything I saw was red. That I could smell it and nothing else. Taste it.” He shook his head to help clear the memories from it. He didn't like remembering that.
“Blood magic,” the shaman announced. “One of the oldest, most powerful and least controllable forms of magic. Connecting the conscious mind with the ancestral gifts. Some shamans still use it for various rituals.” She suddenly stared straight at him. “Your magic came to you straight after that? Not before?”
“I think so,” he agreed. “Maybe. I could talk to cats after that. There was one in the infirmary when I woke up. Nasty little black and white beast. He liked to sleep on the patients who wouldn't wake up. They were warm.” But Manx hadn't wanted to talk to him or any other cats. Not just because cats were selfish, aggravating creatures, but because lions were cats themselves. Big ones but still cats. The similarity was just too great.
“Can we not speak about this, please.” He asked, because he simply didn't want to remember that day. Nor the months and years of pain that had followed. This was a puzzle for her. It was torment for him.
“I understand –.”
“No.” He corrected her. “You don't understand a thing. You simply can't. No one can. But I have spent my entire life trying to put that nightmare behind me. To just live a quiet life. And I would like to do that again.” He stared out at the fields passing by, and the elephants in the distance, envying them their simple lives. They didn't have to constantly be questioned about the pain of their past.
He had had a simple life. He had had his books. A place to be alone in peace. Work to keep him busy. And he'd never had to think about his past. Where had it all gone to?
“I'm sorry.” The shaman eventually answered him.
“And ugly,” Whitey purred.
“But I thought you would want to know. You follow Freda do you not? The Goddess of knowledge?”
“Knowledge?! Huh!” Whitey interrupted. “What good is that? All those pointless books! You need to know where to find food, where to sleep safely, where to be comfortable. That's all you need to know! And you won't find any of that in a book!”
“But I don't want to know it.” Manx ignored the cat. “I've spent my entire life trying to forget what happened. There's nothing good in remembering the past. Only nightmares.”
“Hold!” Larissa raised her voice so she could make herself heard over the chugging of the steam engine, and it seemed to work as the great machine slowly came to a halt. And when it did, she got up.
“I'll leave you to your peace.” With that she dismounted and wandered to the front of the wagon, leaving Manx alone in the back.
Or almost alone, as he still had his cat with him.
“Praise Ao, for that!” Whitey exclaimed once she was gone. “I thought that muck spouting, dog faced cow would never leave! You know her ears are crooked?! A bad sign!”
“Does that matter?” Manx asked foolishly.
“Not when you have me to look after you!” Whitey purred happily at him as the steam wagon took off again. “Now lets talk about that cream!”
Chapter Twenty
Things were quiet in the Nightshade Inn for once. That was an unusual thing. But Sorsha wasn't going to complain. Instead she was going to stay out of it for the afternoon, sit on the bench in the little garden, and enjoy the sunshine. And she wasn't going to waste her time worrying about what was happening elsewhere in the realm. Hopefully. Instead she was going to study the pair of blue parrots, Macaws she thought, which had taken up residence in the mailbox.
They were pretty birds, though she suspected the mail man didn't think so as he had to try and deliver mail to their new nest and kept getting pecked. And they probably shredded the mail too, adding its remains to their nest. But that wasn't her problem. Her problem was that her chest still hurt.
It had b
een just shy of two weeks. She could get up and walk around without fear of her wound opening up. The healers had said they were pleased with her recovery. Soon she would even be able to go for short walks around the city. But the damned wound still ached. It hurt when she moved. It throbbed when she lay still. And stretching out her arms was a mistake she wouldn't make twice.
“Room for another?”
Sorsha looked up to see Peth standing there, a pleasant smile on his face. He was a good man. And, she thought, a perfect example of someone who shouldn't have been imprisoned. He didn't even know what crime was, let alone commit it.
“Of course.” She gestured at the other side of the bench.
“Thank you.” He took the seat beside her and then let out a small breath as he took the weight off his feet. “Bless the Lady I'm getting older,” he commented. “The muscles aren't what they used to be.”
“Nonsense. You're still recovering from the prison. We all are.” But how true was that, she wondered? Certainly she still wasn't at her full strength yet and her magic was not as sharp as it should be. But mostly she felt fine – except for being stabbed of course. And how old was Peth? She didn't know. He was a druid, and they didn't age as other spell-casters did.
“Any word on your family?” Sorsha changed the subject.
“Not yet.” He shook his head. “I've been right through the barracks and the town hall and nothing. Again. They're not there and no one remembers seeing them.”
“I'm sorry.” She wasn't surprised though. Thus far they'd managed to free nearly two thousand people in Winstone, and thousands more were being freed elsewhere, but that was a drop in the bucket compared to however many were actually still locked up. And for some reason, she didn't know why, everyone had been mixed up when they'd been locked away. Winstone where she'd escaped from was nowhere near Fort Bane where she'd been locked up. Her own family could be anywhere.
So now they had two thousand people in Winstone, constantly wandering around among the others, looking for their families, all while recovering from the effects of their incarceration and trying to make themselves comfortable in their new home. Opening up the centre of the city had been a good idea – or perhaps a desperate one – and now the town hall and the city barracks were filled with their people all trying to find places to stay. But it was still a disorganised shambles.
No one knew where anyone was. A lot of people had left the city altogether to go home and start looking for their loved ones – if after four hundred years they still had homes to go to. But most, as far as they could be sure, were still imprisoned and waiting to be freed.
Of course life was tough for everyone. The mundane as well as the spell-casters. Winstone had been badly damaged. Wild animals still roamed the streets. Half of the city was still closed including many of the factories and warehouses. And the numbers of people begging in the streets or offering entertainment had risen markedly. It was going to be a while before things were as they should be.
And somehow in the midst of all that the Nightshade Inn had become the headquarters for their people, which meant she never got to leave it as their endless plans were drawn up. It seemed that her place was in the inn, making plans with everyone else, even though she couldn't remember helping with any of the planning at all. Other people with far better minds than hers, were arranging things like beds and food and shelter. All she did was get stabbed and lie in a cot day after day like a cripple.
“Scum! Dogs! Unhand me!”
A woman's yells, distracted them both from their worries and made them look up. But they couldn't see anything as whoever was yelling was out of sight, somewhere in the street behind the corner of the building. Even so there was something about the woman's voice that was familiar to Sorsha. Something she didn't like.
The two of them sat there, staring, waiting for whoever it was to come into view. They were curious, and maybe just a little concerned. But when the woman did finally appear, wrapped up in binds of blue energy, Sorsha wasn't curious at all. She was angry.
“Bitch!” She yelled at the woman, forgetting any thought of restraint or decorum. But then it wasn't every day you saw the woman who'd stabbed you and just about killed you.
“Fiend!” the woman yelled back.
“You know her?” Peth asked with an eyebrow raised in question.
“So do you! That's Lady Marshendale!” Except she was no lady and she wasn't wearing her silver armour. Instead she was wearing some sort of peasant garb and a hood to conceal her new scars. Obviously she had been trying to hide.
“Doesn't look very much like a silver knight,” he commented dryly. “Laundry maid's day off perhaps!”
“You never know,” Sorsha replied. “Maybe this is what she normally wears when she isn't out hunting down innocent people.”
Their comments came to an end about then when the two sorcerers holding her in their magic binds, stopped her walking along the street and made her turn and walk up the main path to the inn instead. And no sooner had she disappeared from sight behind the corner of the building, then the two of them decided they wanted to find out what was happening. So they stood up and headed around the corner of the inn just in time to watch the trio disappear into the inn itself. Naturally they followed.
Inside, things were chaotic. More chaotic than normal. There were people everywhere, as normal. But all of them now had their attention fixed firmly on the woman in the glowing blue binds, while they listened to the sorcerers explaining how they'd caught her. It wasn't a story of heroism and valour. Instead the woman who called herself a Lady and a member of a chivalrous order, had found an abandoned, and partly ruined house in the warehouse district and stolen some clothes. She hadn't put up a fight when they'd captured either. Just yelled a lot.
It was strange how much rage she could feel for the woman, Sorsha thought as she stood there watching her abusing the crowd and being abused by them in turn. And how sharp the memory of that knife sliding into her chest was. But she held her silence and let the others yell. They had as much reason to hate her as she did. She was part of the order that had imprisoned them and now, they feared, lost them their loved ones. Maybe they would get them back. Maybe she would have her own family returned to her in time. But none of them knew that for certain. The only thing they did know was who to blame. Though obviously it wasn't actually her. It was her predecessors.
The yelling and screaming continued for a long time. A good twenty minutes or half an hour at least. It didn't stop until everyone in that room – and there had to be a hundred or more people squeezed into it – was exhausted. And it was then that she decided to start asking questions. Ones that began with the most obvious.
“Why did you do this to us?” She asked when things were quiet enough for her to be heard.
“You were freeing the prisoners!” Lady Marshendale glared angrily at her.
“Not that. Why did your order imprison tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the first place? Why did you ruin our lives? Was it just for the magic you could steal?!” It was the only thing they could think of, but she kept thinking there was more to it than that. There had to be.
“People!” The woman screamed at her with anger. “You call yourselves people?! You with that horrific extra eye in your head. And the animals with their antlers and funny ears. Or the glowing eyes. You're not people! You're things! Abominations!” Her face was twisted up with disgust and hatred. “We should have killed you all!”
“But you didn't.” Sorsha prodded her when the woman had quietened down a little. The room too.
“It was a mistake!” Lady Marshendale shouted at her, instantly furious again. “But the fools said we needed the devices.”
“Devices?”
“The enchanted swords and armour and such.”
“Oh shite!” Sorsha swore as she understood what the woman was telling her. Or rather what she was confirming. Because they'd already known it, more or less. Now the woman had just admitted it.
Probably more than she knew. She'd confirmed why everyone was taking so long to recover from their time in the prison. And why the members of the Silver Order seemed to be so powerful. And it didn't seem to bother her.
“You threw us in a dimension without time or space. A place where our magic was trapped with us, bursting to be released. And then you devised a way to syphon it off across the dimensions. A glyph no doubt, placed on the ground where your normal pitifully weak enchantments could be transformed. Charged into powerful spells that would smite with the fury of the gods!” Sorsha took a deep breath.
“And you never gave a thought to the consequences.”
