“Need I remind you of your place?”
“I have no place!” laughed the crone. “What am I, just a simple old woman? Who has something you want, of course, and if you harm me then you’ll never get it! Do you think anyone else would agree to tutor your daughter if they knew what happened to me? Of course not, and if you frightened them into it, they’d have her first rune burn her to ash, and have the gall to call it an accident. Besides, even if they all did agree, none of them has the skill. How many has she been to already, two?”
“Three.” Her mother’s voice was flat, and Lucille cringed at the table, the names of the other tutors jumping through her mind. Each paid a hefty sum to accelerate her schooling, and a heftier one for their silence afterwards. And each with a different method that fell just as flat.
Marta, with her encouragement and prodding, trying to coax talent out of Lucille like an eager puppy to be trained. But it had been elusive, darting away and slipping through her fingers, no amount of positive reinforcement bringing it out.
Alagash, relying upon knowledge alone, his mantra that rote memorization and studies would prepare her for when her talent finally did show itself. Had it emerged, perhaps he would have been right.
And Yuri, most recently, who still sent shivers down Lucille at the thought of him, at the nights spent alone in the darkness and the cold. Or of the white hot knives he had thrown at her, barely missing her skin as she shrieked and twisted from where he had shackled her to a cork wall. Fear, Yuri believed, would push the power out of her like a persistent case of the hiccups. But now, whenever Yuri approached, Lucille’s thoughts seemed to shut down, her muscles bracing and body closing. The exact opposite of what he had hoped.
So now, they stood before Madrea—her mother’s final gamble. The woman had left runework behind over fifteen years before and now spent the majority of her days on the city wall, in a small guard shack she had renovated for personal use, overlooking the lip to see the sea in the distance from her rocking chair on her porch. To anyone else, purchasing the shack would have been a ludicrous request to ask the city guard. But to the commanding officers, Madrea’s accompaniment was like an extra battalion of soldiers on the eastern flank, except the only cost to this one was a single private sent to retrieve her fresh tea and biscuits each morning from the town below.
Of course, Madrea still had her old accommodations within the Tower itself: a room gifted to her near the top, despite the stone circlet around her neck. But for thirty years, dust had gathered in that room, and the door had remained unopened. Since her retirement, she had not even set foot into the base. But her memory still lived on, and no Keeper was willing to clear out her furniture.
Madrea, who had taught two of the seven Locks currently on the council. Whose students had travelled to the far reaches of heaven and brought back treasures above wonder. And who Ministal, king of the elves of Heaven Two, had bowed to so low that his hair had touched the ground after she had single handedly saved him from a flame spirit rampaging from the depths of Heaven Four. The greatest mage in the city to never take upon herself a higher rank.
“What is it then, that you want?” Lucille’s mother asked, reaching into her purse and retrieving a coin to drop on the tabletop. “Of course, payment is readily available.”
“Money?” croaked the crone, swiping the coin away so that it clattered to the floor, rolling into a corner. “You offer me dirty money? Skimmer money? Vultures, the lot of you. I don’t want your money.”
“Surely, then, there is something you would want?” Her mother’s voice turned seemingly calm, but Lucille flinched back. When it became quiet like that, laced underneath by a hidden layer of ice, that was when she was ready to strike.
“Not money. What could I, an old woman of little want and even littler worth, ask for? I have not long left in this world.”
“You said that thirty years ago, and often before that.”
“Time is short. They say a thousand years can pass in the blink of an eye, when it has a mind for it.” She sat back in her chair, chewing on her lip, considering. “But yes, Skimmer, there is something you can give to me.”
Her eyes darted left, toward where the Tower was. Though they could not see it through the windowless room, its presence was like a magnet to a compass. Everyone in the city used the Tower for directions, as a natural landmark, and its location became as ingrained into their minds as up or down.
“When I die, she must bury me.”
Lucille slid backward in her chair, the thought of the dead crone resting in a coffin chilling her bones, already feeling the shovel in her hands biting into the dirt. She opened her mouth to protest, but her mother was already speaking, her curt voice cutting the words off in her throat.
“Deal.”
Chapter 20: Lucille
Lucille climbed the uneven steps in twos, taking care to observe even the ones with the longest gaps. Her mind drifted as she steadily moved upward, her feet on autopilot as they wedged onto the cobblestones, sticking to the solid squares and avoiding any of the voids between the rocks. Her mother’s voice came back to her as she glanced down at the basket that swung in her right hand—one that they had prepared with the offering early that morning before the sun had entered the sky.
“I don’t want to bury her… that’s, that’s disgusting,” Lucille had said, staring from the Tower window to the pinprick of light on the far wall. Already, the crone was awake, the lantern bobbing as she made her morning rounds around the perimeter of her house.
“At her current rate she’ll probably outlive you,” her mother said, checking over the contents of the offering. Tea, cheese, flowers, and a corked bottle of brandy filled the interior, but the basket itself could have been the sole gift as a centerpiece. It was stretched over with embroidered fabric depicting fairies alighting on honeysuckle and dipping in teacups to retrieve nectar, and the handle was stitched seven colors in a rainbow band. “And when she does finally fall over, just toss a handful of dirt on the grave and the knotted will handle the rest. That should satisfy the absurd wish.”
“I still don’t like it,” balked Lucille, and her mother placed her hands on her shoulders, lowering her voice and speaking into her ear.
“And I don’t like that the sole continuation of my line cannot summon even the barest glimmer of a rune. Do you know what would happen if word got out, that the mighty Falstors’ magic has run dry? That their youngest will never move past knot? The shame you would bring upon us, the whispers whenever I stand before the assembly?”
She squeezed Lucille’s shoulders, the nails biting through her dress, four on one side and three on the other, the unevenness making her shift.
“You do this for us, Lucille. If anyone can fix you, it is Madrea. Now, take her the offering. Make the best first impression that you can. I can’t afford for this tutor to turn you away—already, the rumors have begun. A Falstor is strong. You must be strong. You must uphold the name.”
Lucille blinked as she reached the top of the staircase leading up the side of the wall, falling in line behind two guards that patrolled the perimeter. Runes glowed softly on the path ahead, brightening on their approach and racing up the crenellations, like a bubble of sunshine drifting along with them. Runes that Lucille knew from her studies, yet could not replicate.
The shapes threw her into her memories again, just as the sun crested the horizon. The dim illumination reminiscent of Alagash’s candlelight as he propped the book before her. At eleven, the text was an insult—the large, blocky letters were meant for children several years younger than her. But then, those children had already drawn their first independent rune.
“Aloud, again. Let it sink in, you must feel the words as a sensation within you. And you must force them out, just as you would speak with your voice.”
“But how?” asked an exasperated Lucille, dropping her forehead to the table. The words had long burned themselves into her mind, and she no longer needed to read them
to recite them.
“How does one explain how an index finger moves? You cannot. I can show you, but I cannot teach you that. It should be natural. It should flow from your knowledge. Now recite, and then you shall draw.”
Lucille drew an exasperated breath, then spoke with her head still on the table, as she had hundreds of times before.
“The severer’s rune. To split, to divide, to partition. At lowest level, an inclination to separate—a slight push, the force of two felt-covered marbles bouncing against each other. By the power of heaven, vested into an element, a vertical and two curls. For the learned beginner, use a kernel to split a droplet of water.”
“And the drawing? Lucille, I cannot help you, if you will not help yourself.”
“But it never works,” Lucille whispered, and she raised her head. Before her were trays of several common aurels. Pure water, interspersed with glitter to see the faintest movements. Soil, fluffed by fingers as if it has just been plowed. An upside down glass of air, smoked, the particulate swirling around the inside. A row of lit candles for fire. Plus several others, including metal shavings, a single cut ruby, chicken bones, and wood.
But for Lucille, these may as well have been for show, a preparation for a finale never to come. For she would only be able to affect one of these, assuming she possessed a common aurel within her, and until she drew her first rune, that type was as much a mystery to her as her tutor. The coloring, when her aurel energy exited her body, would be the tell, but so far the aurel energy had stubbornly refused, like a mute unable to speak.
Lucille picked up one of the kernels off the table, holding it between her finger and thumb. She began to draw in the air, dragging the glimmering kernel around as if it were a pen, starting with the downward curved line that was severance. But for Lucille, this pen was out of ink.
Sparks trickled behind the kernel and she clutched it, squeezing it as if she could force her aurel energy out through pressure. She closed her eyes as a thin light trail dissolved behind it—the trace of heaven, and nothing more, imbuing no element that would hold it in place, none that would corporealize it. She felt within herself, seeking out the center, where the aurel energy would flow, described by others as the area just behind the heart, a single upper vertebrae of the back between her shoulder blades, that would sometimes tingle with excitement when happy, or bear the weight of the day when depressed. That should be where her aurel energy activated, where it focused before spreading to her other limbs. From there, she should pull it forth like siphoning from a glass. Yet from there it refused, as the candles flickered, and Alagash sighed, packing away his insulting children’s books.
Back on the city wall, Lucille wondered if she should turn around as Madrea’s home came into view. If she should throw the offering to the grounds below, then flee, informing her mother that Madrea had rejected her. Or more believable, that Lucille had already failed whatever test lay in store for her.
She clutched the handle of the basket, holding it over the edge, stopping as the two guards pulled away ahead of her. But Madrea’s words held her fingers in place, as they rang in her mind, taunting her. Needling away at her gut as she paused, the words that assumed she had already failed.
There are other paths in life than being a Keeper.
Lucille grit her teeth, turning back to the home, forcing her feet to move forward one more time. One more time, she would try. One more time, she would fail, and her mother could not be angry with her then. And then she would bury the old hag in the future, laughing on her grave, as she remembered her failing to tutor her just as much as Lucille had failed as a student. A single mar on Madrea’s otherwise perfect record.
As she approached, the guard shack came into view up close for the first time in Lucille’s life. It looked like none of the other shacks she had seen. Rather it was as if someone had lifted a cottage out of the forest or prairie and set it down upon the wall, taking with it a small yard, two saplings, and enough flowers that Lucille could smell them long before she could make them out in the light. A bench swing dangled lazily from the porch, and unlike the other shacks, this building was constructed from logs, and the roof shingled, as if someone had carried the supplies all this way up the stairs just for the crone. Stranger still, hummingbirds hovered around a feeder off to the side, and a squirrel chittered from one of the saplings—but surely, neither would have spent the effort in climbing the wall simply for so little a benefit. Then Lucille’s stomach growled as the smell of biscuits overrode that of flowers, and she reached the edge of the grass, where a pebble pathway led to the door.
Strange, it occurred to her, to plant grass above rock only to cover it with rock once more. Her shoes crunched along the path, the basket clutched determinedly, and she held her fist to the wood of the door. Wind chimes sounded next to her, and Lucille could just barely catch the scent of salt from the sea in the distance. As she drew the knocker back—a simple ring, not even made from metal—the door opened before it could clack. Madrea stood in the entranceway, her eyes running over Lucille, then straying to the open basket in her hands. She huffed, then spoke, her voice bearing none of the bleariness of the morning.
“So you’ve made your way up here to learn, eh? We’ll see then what old Madrea can do. A promise is a promise, girl, so there are signatures to complete first. You understand the terms?”
“You were quite clear,” Lucille said, then at an inner prodding, continued, “ma’am.”
“I was, wasn’t I? Well, good. Is that brandy in your basket? The doctors tell me I cannot have brandy anymore, so it is no longer carried up to me.”
She turned, walking inside to a table she had set for breakfast for two, and retrieved an empty cup from the cupboard.
“All the better that you have brought it. I never was good at listening.”
Wind blew across the top of the wall as it reached mid day, pulling Lucille’s hair away from her as she stood next to Madrea’s chair swing, the chains creaking while the crone drifted backward and forward. Not natural wind, of course, but generated wind—the sets of runes lining the edges of the wall glowing too dimly to set them apart from the afternoon sunlight, circulating the air clockwise around the perimeter of the wall. Lucille studied the lines, subconsciously tracing them with her finger. All morning, she had been expecting Madrea to walk her through some opening meditative warm ups, or to quiz her of her knowledge. Instead, the old woman had polished off a breakfast two times too large for her, coupled with half of the bottle of brandy, the other half tucked affectionately behind the couch pillow. After that, she’d helped clear the table, Madrea moving at such a slow pace that Lucille could have cleaned it just as fast without her help, putting herself more in the way than actually being productive and stopping every few minutes for a sip of her steaming tea. Then Lucille had returned to the table, ready to begin, astonished as the woman shuffled past her outside to take up residence on the swing. After a few moments, Lucille had followed, standing awkwardly off to the side, waiting for instructions.
“A waste if you ask me,” said Madrea after some time, leaning back until the boards creaked. “A pleasant one, but a waste no less. As if it would ever be useful.”
Lucille started, her attention shifting back to Madrea, shielding her eyes from the sun. She would start sweating soon if she didn’t move from her position leaning against the door frame, and her clothes would stick to her back, making her nose wrinkle in disgust.
“What is a waste?”
“Why, the wind. You think they keep it for our comfort? Not at all, they’re just making sure the runes still work, a form of maintenance. Though they’ll raise or lower the breeze for me—too fast, and it takes the heads right off my tulips.”
“Who can adjust it? I thought it was just to keep the guards cool?”
“With the bawdy uniforms they wear, they couldn’t give a dead kernel how those soldiers feel. Two layers, in the dead heat of summer? Pah! They don’t care at all.”
; “Then what’s the point of it?” Lucille asked, her curiosity piqued as she returned her attention to the runes. She recognized them, bind and release. But they were more complex than that—higher than her beginner level, indecipherable to her. Like hearing a foreign language, and recognizing the variety, but not understanding the words.
“No, the wind is for the city defenses. Races in laps around the walls, driven onward in the breeze we feel. But when activated, at its potential, it becomes a high powered stream. You can drop a loaf of bread here and it will carry it around the circumference and strike you in the back of the head before you can recite the runes. All that, and you know what for? To protect against arrows. Arrows. Blows them away like toothpicks. As if arrows were actually any threat. They might as well actually be toothpicks.”
Madrea spat, and Lucille recoiled from the dark splat on the porch.
“Sounds like it was pretty effective then, right? If it blows them all away?”
“Pah! Against arrows, sure. But do you think this city has any concern about arrows? The council is too distracted, gets it into their minds that arrows are a threat, builds this whole elaborate system to defend them. Why? Because the last two nomadic raids on the city managed to lob a few pointy sticks over the wall before the guard dispersed them. One of them hit a citizen in the arm. Sticks in the council’s mind, now they have to address it. But the raids were never the danger.
“They think like that. Whatever happens most recently is of utmost concern, eclipsing the past. The warnings of history turn to tales, then myths, to be told to children at night and laughed about over tavern songs. So now we’re building defenses for blasted arrows. Put a competent mage out there, and full activation of wind to them is no more than the breeze we feel. It’s a hedge to keep out giants.”
Heaven Fall Page 13
