Lodestone

by Katherine Forrister

  Melaine’s curiosity propelled her back to her bedroom to throw on some clothes, foregoing the corset for speed’s sake as she donned a sapphire velvet dress. She then hurried through her quarters and down the stairs to the inner courtyard. She found the exit through which Karina had left and sprang into the open grounds of the castle. The frigid air nearly took her breath away, but she pressed onward until she stopped ten or so feet away from Karina, who spoke in a voice as stiff as her posture. The swarthy man stood beside the cart. He was dressed like a Midduner in a cheap but unpatched wool suit and a blue coat. A golden tooth glinted with every grimace under his crinkled eyes.

  The pale woman who had been with him was nowhere in sight. Melaine frowned and looked around the courtyard and beyond the gate, but the woman wasn’t there.

  “I trust all is accounted for, Stebbon?” Karina said to the man.

  “Yes, m’lady, of course,” Stebbon said. “I’d be a loon to try to swindle you, m’lady.”

  Melaine noticed he didn’t mention the Overlord. The delivery man seemed too nervous to speak of where he was. His fear gave Melaine a boost of pride. She wasn’t afraid to be in Highstrong’s walls.

  Karina extended a hand and dropped a coin purse into Stebbon’s palm, which glistened with sweat despite the cold air. He grinned at the weight of the purse, but his satisfaction was brief. His nervous fidgeting overtook him again, and when his eyes left the purse, he looked at Melaine instead.

  Karina spun around. Her eyes held a speck of fright but then switched to cold appraisal. Melaine had no idea what was going through the old bat’s head. Karina didn’t deign to inform her.

  “Don’t mind her,” Karina said to Stebbon. “She’s just a stonegirl. We can’t all have powers like the Overlord.”

  Stebbon responded with a courteous half-smile to Karina’s implication that Melaine’s stones were for Karina’s use rather than the Overlord’s. It was clear Karina didn’t want her master’s condition getting out to the public, and for good reason, Melaine thought.

  Still, there was no need for Karina to have called her a stonegirl to belittle her in front of a stranger. Even saying she was a servant would have given her a higher standing than a lodestone-peddler, and Karina well knew it. She was degrading Melaine on purpose.

  “And the woman who came with you?” Melaine asked Stebbon, hoping Karina would at least spread her disdain around so it wouldn’t be centered on her. “Is she an assistant as well?”

  Stebbon looked at her with a quizzical expression. “Woman? It’s just me and the horses, love.” He gave her an awkward smile.

  “But I saw someone out here,” Melaine said, glancing at Karina. “From the window.”

  Karina frowned, then pursed her lips with impatience. “Stop this nonsense. Unload the cart.”

  “I’m not a servant,” Melaine spat.

  “You will do as I say,” Karina said, unwavering in her strict demeanor. Melaine glared. Stebbon shifted his eyes between Karina and Melaine, but it was clear his curiosity was higher than his nervousness about intruding on their conversation. Melaine wondered how much he would twist his observations into rumors upon returning to Centara. Better give him something good to share over a hearth-brandy in some Midden pub.

  “Fine,” she said, giving Karina a smug smile.

  Melaine slipped her wand from inside her dress sleeve. She’d kept it pressed against her skin at all times since the Overlord had given it to her, trying to get used to the grating tingle of residual magic. To her delight, it seemed to have dissipated completely, as if her own, fresh magic had absorbed and transformed it into something beautiful and powerful. Perhaps the Overlord had done the same when he’d first made it. The only reason the wand had felt tainted again was its placement in a box for years.

  The idea of the Overlord’s magic infusing with hers inside a wand made her feel warm inside, like they were part of a clandestine exchange that no one else could ever understand. It sent flutters through her stomach, and at sudden moments, she would recall the light, tingling brush of his lips, leaving her breathless and uncertain. The intimacy of a union between their magic was alluring, but considering him as a man—not an Overlord, not an idol, but a man like any other—made Melaine’s heart buckle and her knees feel weak. She would shiver, and her palms would grow clammy as she willed herself to remember all the vile men she’d had to fend off in the streets.

  The Overlord had always been in a separate category in her mind, elevated far above the common swill of men she was used to in Stakeside. Though she’d never before allowed her admiration for him to slip into the realm of attraction, his almost-kiss had forced her to tiptoe along the edge. He was different from other men, but perhaps…perhaps that didn’t make him more than a man. Perhaps he was just a different kind of man. Many prostitutes in Stakeside had talked about this, the notion of different sorts of people in this world, people who could make them feel genuine care, or more, rather than just the act of turning a cheap trick. Melaine had never thought she’d be able to experience that feeling in her line of work, not with lodestones.

  Yet, lately, whenever she offered the Overlord a stone, she felt a glimmer of a soothing feeling, like sunlight caressing a gently lapping pool. A sense of care would pull from her heart, a draw to share a part of herself with him and to receive a part of him in return. The line between physical and metaphysical blurred in his presence; she felt at once like they shared an existence, yet were too separate from each other when they sat across the library table, too far away when they stood mere steps apart. She wanted to be closer. Did he feel the same?

  But those were thoughts for another time.

  For now, Melaine raised the wand and concentrated on the levitation spell that she had learned from the deraphant’s horn Insight in the great hall. The knowledge it had bestowed was so much more intricate and thorough than any of the trifling lifting spells she’d learned in Stakeside.

  Karina’s eyes were sharp as flint as she watched Melaine focus on the cluster of wooden crates and canvas bags. None were labeled, but Melaine saw a few scattered grains of wheat and dried legumes on the cart. No doubt the supplies were boring foodstuffs and basic supplies that Karina used to keep the castle’s four occupants fed and to maintain the keep. Melaine flicked her wrist and scooped all the spilled grains and legumes into a little pile and sent them back to their respective bags.

  Stebbon tried to disguise a snigger as a cough, and Karina had a subtle, snide look on her fine-lined face. Melaine fought a flush of shame. She couldn’t stand seeing any food go to waste like that, but her actions served to highlight her lowly background, and she couldn’t stand for that either.

  She lifted her wand higher and pulled a burst of magic from her bones, channeling it into the wand. In one sweep, every crate and bag lifted into the air. She moved her wand to the right, and the entire supply load floated to the ground and settled gently, as if Melaine was tucking in a babe at night.

  “Where would you like them?” Melaine asked. Karina glared, her eyes locked on the wand in Melaine’s hand. But then she raised her chin and turned back to the delivery man.

  “You may go,” Karina said. “I’ll expect you back next month, Stebbon.”

  Stebbon bowed his head. “Yes, m’lady. I’ll be here.” He flicked his eyes to Melaine again, then climbed onto the hard, wooden bench on the cart. He tugged on the reins of his horses and turned the beasts around. Melaine watched as he goaded them through the gate, the empty cart trundling behind them.

  As soon as they were over the threshold, the horses whinnied in fright as the metal gears beneath the gate began to turn. The large iron bars emerged from the ground and descended from the looming lintel along the topmost wall. The man tried to calm his horses as they neighed and bucked, but he was tense already, and they sensed it.

  Melaine could feel the dark magical ward of the gate reform. The thick, invisible barrier was suffocating but not as suffocating as it had felt when she was outs
ide the walls. As Stebbon disappeared from sight, Melaine turned toward Karina. The old woman’s hand was resting on a small lever at the gatehouse as if her simple touch had caused the enormous gate to do her bidding.

  “Is that how it opens?” Melaine asked. Karina slipped her hand away as the gates shut with an echoing clang of metal.

  “It is,” Karina answered. “For those who are worthy to wield that power.”

  Melaine narrowed her eyes but held her tongue. Karina’s gaze had again shifted to the wand in Melaine’s grip, as if insinuating that Melaine was nowhere near worthy of neither the gate nor the wand. Not worthy enough to be in the castle at all, more like it.

  However, it was also clear that Karina was surprised to see Melaine carrying the Overlord’s old wand. She was being forced to reassess Melaine’s standing, and she didn’t seem to like that notion.

  “If you think you’re so clever, why don’t you take all those crates and bags to the larder?” Karina said. “Surely, a talented young girl like yourself can do that without trouble.”

  Melaine didn’t miss the restrained sneer in Karina’s words. She was torn between leaving the Overlord’s servant to do all the work or helping so that she could prove her magical prowess.

  Karina turned around without waiting to hear Melaine’s answer. She headed in her smooth stride toward the side entrance and opened the door. Melaine looked at the largest crates. They would fit but only single file. Melaine pursed her lips and raised her wand again. She had never tried lifting anything in any particular arrangement, but this was a good chance to test her skills.

  As she heard Karina’s clipped footsteps beyond the door, she felt a sinuous curiosity creeping after her. Melaine knew nothing about Karina other than her service to the Overlord and the keep—and the fact that she despised Melaine. Perhaps now was a good time to discover more about the old woman.

  Melaine pushed a flood of magic through her wand and toward the nearest crate. It lifted into the air as she commanded the spell and hovered a foot off the ground. She coaxed it to stay there and then focused on the crate next to it. She imagined a string tying the two crates together and flicked her wand. The second crate lifted into the air and hovered beside the first.

  With a pique of satisfaction, Melaine focused on a canvas bag filled with grain next. She lifted it into the air and attached an invisible thread from its drawstring to the second crate. She kept casting magical strings and lifting bags and crates until she had them all lined up in a floating queue, ready to guide them into the keep.

  Melaine smiled to herself as she walked to the door, using her wand to pull her chain of supplies behind her.

  She followed Karina into the inner courtyard and through a passageway she’d never entered before, one that crossed the small courtyard and the garden and led into the large, rectangular building that she’d guessed housed the kitchen. The hallway was a little wider than others, and fortunately, the supplies made it inside with only a few bumps and scrapes on the stone walls.

  They entered the rectangular building. Doors appeared in the corridor in staggered intervals, and peering inside, Melaine suspected the humble rooms may have been servants’ quarters at the castle’s initial, First Era conception. Like the outer courtyard, however, they held evidence that many people may have lived there at one point in more recent years, some of the occupants being the Overlord’s army, preparing for war. Dozens of empty bedrolls were scattered across the floors along with various wooden bowls and tools of daily living.

  A few paces down from the servants’ quarters, Melaine and Karina passed by a heavy, wooden door with iron reinforcements. A small, barred window was slightly above eye level. It reminded her of the thin, rectangular slit she’d peered through in the prison cart on her way to meet Overseer Scroupe.

  A rusty, iron sign was nailed to the door below the window. In archaic, flowery lettering, it read: Armory.

  Melaine paused. She thought she heard a quiet clanging sound from inside, like two distant swords crossing each other.

  “What’s in there?” she asked. Karina looked over her shoulder but only tsked.

  “Are you in need of a weapon?” she mocked. “Do you have petty schemes against the Overlord or myself that I should know about?”

  “I was only curious,” Melaine said. Karina expelled an annoyed sigh through her nostrils and turned around to continue her pace. She turned a corner, but Melaine hesitated in following. The clanging of swords was growing louder, and horses’ hooves thundered with the rattle of armor and shouts of men.

  The sounds were distant, but Melaine had no doubts they were coming from within the armory. Ancient magic seeped through the door like a fog.

  She stepped up to the iron bars and peered through the window.

  A wide-eyed woman stared back at her from inches away.

  Melaine jerked back. The pale woman’s eyes were clouded white and sat in sunken sockets. Her veins ran black through the parchment-thin skin stretched tight over her skull. White, straggly hair hung around the woman’s forehead like ancient cobwebs.

  The woman backed up in slow, jerky steps. Her face was as gaunt and ghostly as her eyes. Her cheeks and lips were riddled with black rot in fractals, and she opened her mouth to reveal a black tongue and rotted teeth.

  A clawing scrabble erupted from her throat. The sound grew louder and faster, like a frenzied creature was trying to escape. Black, oozing blood gurgled out of her mouth along with a single, whispered word that echoed in Melaine’s head.

  “Walls.”

  Melaine wanted to scream and call for Karina, but she couldn’t unclench her jaw, and her feet felt glued to the floor.

  Then the horrific woman dropped to the ground. A dark shadow scuttled across the floor to a dim corner of the small armory room.

  “Please,” a small voice whimpered.

  Melaine backed up and pressed her spine against the corridor wall. Every crate and sack lifted by her spell dropped with a heavy bang.

  “What are you doing?” Karina asked, storming back around the corner.

  “There’s a—” Melaine raised a shaking hand to point to the armory door. “There’s a woman in there. Something’s wrong with her.”

  “What?” Karina snapped. “Don’t be ridiculous. That door hasn’t been opened for years.”

  She strode to the door and looked through the barred window. Melaine waited with bated breath, still pressing her back hard against the wall.

  Karina drew back from the door. “There’s nothing there,” she said. “Nothing but rusted weapons and cobwebs. Now gather yourself and take those supplies to the larder.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  Karina turned away from the armory and walked at a swifter pace around the corner of the passage.

  Melaine let out a short breath.

  “It was there,” she whispered, trying to get control of her beating heart and trembling body. “She was there.”

  She struggled to push away from the wall and eyed the armory window with deep, gut-twisting fear. She gathered a breath of courage and approached the door. Karina must have seen something. Melaine couldn’t have imagined the imprisoned woman.

  But she had imagined a pale woman standing on the balcony of the library tower the night she’d discovered Talem’s body. She’d imagined a woman standing near the gate mere moments ago when Stebbon first arrived.

  This castle provokes nightmares. The Overlord hadn’t disagreed with her statement. Nightmares happened when a person was asleep, but this was different. Was she going mad?

  Melaine swallowed and stepped up to the door’s window.

  The woman wasn’t there. She looked around, peering hard at the shadows. Karina was right. There was nothing in the room but old weapons and shields of the First Era’s regal fashion.

  Melaine stepped back again and listened for the clang of metal armor and swords, for the screams of battle, yet she heard nothing. But then, a soft whisper brushed h
er ear. With it came a familiar comfort—the same warm feeling she got when she laid her hand upon the library door.

  “Walls,” the whisper said again. The woman’s voice was gentle, though no less pressing.

  “What do you mean, ‘walls’?” Melaine asked, but she got no answer. The warm, soothing magic disappeared, leaving Melaine alone in the dark passageway.

  She shuddered and looked down at the crates and bags on the floor, still in a line down the corridor. She pulled on her magic and lifted the string of supplies. She avoided looking at the armory again as she followed the direction Karina had gone. She turned the corner and saw a single open door at the end of the passage. Heat permeated from it, and the thick smell of fire and baking bread filled her nose.

  She tugged on the tethered supplies and walked to the door. The room inside was large, with a long table in the center and a wall-sized stone hearth on one side. A large cauldron hung inside the hearth, flickering over a warm fire. Various cooking implements hung in neat rows on the wall, and canisters of dried foods were organized on shelves. The delicious smell of baking bread drifted from a large, cast-iron oven in one corner.

  “Where do you want these?” Melaine asked.

  “In the larder,” Karina replied, nodding to the back corner of the room opposite the oven. Melaine walked around the long table and saw a doorway leading to a large, cool larder.

  She raised her wand and directed the crate in the lead to the larder. The crate obediently floated inside, tugging its fellow crates and bags behind it. When all of the supplies fit snugly in the larder, Melaine lowered her wand and released its magical tie to the supplies.

  “All right, I did your chore,” she said. Karina walked about the kitchen in clipped strides, taking tools from the wall and removing containers from the shelves.

  “Fetch some of that garlic,” Karina ordered as she deposited her items on the table. “Make yourself useful.”