The Lantern's Curse

by Hannah King

  “Take your time,” I heard Tate saying over his shoulder. He was busy in the corner working on something of his own. The minutes slipped by.

  “Come over here by the fire,” he interrupted finally. I drew my hands away, stood up and came to where he was standing. He held a flask in his hands along with a thin piece of wood.

  “This is wulf ink, made from wulf berries, very hard to come by, even here in Leida.” He unstopped the bottle and dipped a brush inside.

  “Ever heard of it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Can I see your right hand?” he asked in an oddly polite tone. I hesitated, questioning him with my eyes but he only waited. Slowly my hand reached out and he grasped it firmly in his left hand.

  “Such pretty hands,” he admired, although they were covered in rough calluses from my sword hilt. Then he took the brush and began to apply ink to my palm, gripping my hand tighter to steady it. His brush strokes were swift and neat, forming a foreign letter or symbol. He set the brush aside and admired his work.

  Then the pain invaded. Worse than acid, stinging, burning, throbbing. I cried out but he wouldn’t let go of my hand. Instinctively I pushed him aside, twisting out of his hold and kicking him to the floor.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  TALITHA

  “DON’T TOUCH IT! Don’t touch it!” he called out wildly as I moved to nurse my screaming hand. “You’ll only spread the pain!”

  I froze. He was getting up from where I’d shoved him.

  “I suppose I might have told you it stung a bit,” he decided. I glared at him incredulously, still gasping.

  Stung a bit.

  He reached for my hand again and I gave him a frightening glance of warning.

  “I only mean to help the pain,” he insisted, holding out the thin scrap of wood. Reluctantly I stopped recoiling and allowed him to place the wood on my hand. I was instantly grateful I’d allowed it, for the sting began to decrease swiftly upon contact.

  Tate began to chuckle as my breathing slowed down.

  “Remind me not to surprise you again,” he raised a bushy eyebrow. “I’m afraid I underestimated Cronin’s womenfolk.” He removed the wood and rubbed his elbow with a mock groan.

  I looked down at the mark on my palm.

  “Don’t worry about washing it off in the baths,” he said matter of factly, returning the ink and its accessories to a drawer. “Wulf ink bonds with the skin to the grave; that’s why it’s such a pain to apply, not to mention expensive,” he muttered under his breath. “That bottle alone cost us a fortune.” He neglected to realize that I was still shocked and angry.

  “Permanent?” I cried. “What do you mean? What did you write on me?” I demanded. He held up his hands playfully, as if preparing himself for another one of my attacks.

  “There, there, no need to panic. It’s not a mark to be ashamed of. All of my Nurandism-instructed students bear it. It’s a mark to be proud of, my dear. It means you’ve been trusted with information that hardly anyone trusts people with anymore.”

  “But, why don’t you have one?” I would have remembered seeing a mark as large as mine on his palm, even though I’d only known him ten minutes. The man considered my question.

  “I’m a master, not a student, and I learned Nurandism long before the law decided to enforce palm marks for pupils. I aged out, you might say, and I thought it would look rather foolish to celebrate my accomplishments so late in the game, not to mention the sting,” he winked again, but I remained unamused. I felt tricked by the whole procedure.

  “Back to the plant!” he said cheerfully, clapping his hands and startling me. “Let’s get our first lesson over with before the dinner bell rings.”

  I seated myself in front of the plant with a huff, still struggling not to stare at the black symbol that glared at me from the center of my palm.

  “So,” Tate cleared his throat. “We must communicate with this plant so that it will do what we wish. Then it will stop growing out of bounds.”

  I stared, convinced the man was out of his mind.

  “Place your hand on its leaves and repeat after me,” he paused for effect. “Listen.”

  “Listen,” I echoed wearily, sure he was teasing me again.

  “Accept my mastership. Know my strength. I will keep you safe in the soil, if you will do for me one thing.”

  I repeated it cautiously, wondering when he would admit that this was all a joke. He went on and I duplicated the next phrase.

  “Shrink away from your constraints and cease your roots from reaching out. Content yourself with the small life you have and abandon the roots that have wandered too far,” I said, looking at him.

  “Don’t say it to me, say it to the plant,” he chided. I quickly tried to remember the phrase and looked back at the plant, but I did a poor job, jumbling the words. Tate huffed and repeated the phrase again until I was able to say the whole thing to the plant.

  “Well?” I turned around, waiting for him to laugh at me. Instead he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Do you speak chive?”

  I stared at him blankly. “Of course not.”

  “Onion?”

  “What?”

  “Well you’re speaking to it in Cronin. Do you think chives speak Cronin?”

  “Do you want me to learn the phrases in Leiden?” I sighed, thinking maybe he assumed the chives were “Leiden” chives.

  “So, you believe the chives speak Leiden?” he queried.

  “I don't know!” I ended in defeat, knowing he wanted to tell me something and that I would likely be guessing for hours if I tried to answer his impossible questions.

  “She doesn’t know!” Tate exclaimed, as if to someone across the room, or, perhaps Lavalt in the heavens, but it was unclear. I was beginning to understand the eyerolls I’d seen from the Paraphrant members when this man’s name had first been suggested.

  “Here’s something that may take a moment to compre-hend.” Tate’s tone lowered and he pulled a second stool up to the table. He spoke slowly and deliberately, pausing after each word.

  “Chives speak chive. Do you speak chive?” His voice was almost a whisper, his eyes wide, questioning, holding my gaze in a cringeworthy stare.

  “No,” I said weakly. This was clearly another game of his.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t try to speak to the chive at all, considering you can’t speak its language; that is unless you think it’s going to do you the favor of learning yours,” he added drily.

  My eyes traveled to the door longingly. It was likely locked.

  “So?” He cocked his head, still looking to me for an answer. Since I’d already seen his reaction to the phrase I don’t know, I grasped for anything different to say.

  “Well, perhaps, I shouldn’t speak to the plant, if it can’t hear me,” I sighed, my shoulders falling into a slump. A smile spread across his face.

  “True, true. There are precious few words that both you and a creature or plant will understand. So, if we can’t speak to the plant, how do you suppose we might still manage to communicate with it?”

  Silence.

  “Come, I need your full attention for this.” He waved a hand in front of my glazed expression. “How do you think you could effectively communicate with something, or someone, that cannot speak your language?”

  “Charades maybe,” I offered half-heartedly.

  The man erupted into laughter. Genuine laughter, as if what I’d suggested was the most amusing thing he’d ever heard. I hadn’t been serious, of course, but I hadn’t anticipated him so thoroughly appreciating my sarcasm. He laughed and laughed while I impatiently waited for him to regain his composure.

  When he’d finally cleared the tears out of his eyes, I prepared for his infuriating questions to start again, but he was suddenly in a more efficient mood.

  “Well, if we continue at this speed, we’ll both be late for dinner.”

  Dinner, I thought. We were only two hours away from the
evening meal. If I could endure a little longer, I’d be free, and could go eat in the common room with Tratis.

  “Don’t worry, your lesson will be over in a few minutes,” Tate promised affably. “The phrase is still as follows; ‘Listen. Accept my mastership. Know my strength, etc. etc.,’ but…” He paused dramatically. “You will communicate these phrases in feeling. Not ‘with feeling’ mind you, but ‘in feeling.’ Do you remember exactly how your hand felt when it was burned with wulf ink?”

  I nodded.

  “There may be many words that describe the feeling of pain, be they close definitions or merely decorative curse words, but none of them compare to the actual feeling that pain produces. No word can clearly communicate it as well as the feeling can. Living things of the inhuman variety understand very few words, but they understand loud and clear a language that is potent and alive. Nurandism is the act of transferring feelings to a living creature to motivate, encourage, or, in some cases, threaten it, if need be. Have you ever felt a creature's fear, pain or happiness?”

  I nodded.

  “Did it ever occur to you, that, while you were viewing their feelings, your own feelings might be viewed by them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Every time you touch a creature, you open a direct passageway between your minds,” he went on.

  Hunger, thirst, fear. I’d felt them all at one time or another when interacting with different creatures. I’d never imagined they could sense my feelings too.

  “So, we communicate by feelings?” I summarized with uncertainty.

  “Not just any feelings!” he corrected. “If you think you can make anything useful happen by feeding a creature your own random emotions, you’re out of your mind. The gross sum of your tangled up, day to day, human sentiments would completely overwhelm a creature if they could read them. Thank heaven that’s impossible. Most creatures can only interpret distinct and simple feelings. Furthermore, those feelings must be transferred deliberately and clearly, or they will not affect the creature at all. In fact, the creature must do more than observe our feelings. They must, instead, accept our feelings as their own. For this to take place, we must bind them by speaking a combination of words.”

  “But you said we can’t speak to them,” I pointed out.

  “I never said that,” he denied it as if it was the most ridiculous accusation. “I merely said there that are very few words that both you and a creature can understand. Roughly fourteen actually. These words make up the language of Nurandism, a speech that all creatures have understood since the beginning of time. The words were given to Lanterns when the world was created, to guide the world’s life forms into order, to protect them and to protect humankind from them. The words, when combined with direct feelings, form a powerful variation on the phrase you were speaking plainly to the chive earlier.”

  “Fourteen words?” I echoed doubtfully.

  “I know, it seems hardly enough, but coupled with your feelings, you’ll find them to be quite effective.”

  “What are they?” I dared to ask.

  “What are what?

  “The words.”

  “Ah, yes. I will teach you the words, but it is you who must allow them to grow strong and potent in your memory, or they will not help you. They are living words that will be met with opposition. Each one spoken will start a battle of wills between you and the life form. But with a little practice, you will perfect them. Then your dream of communicating with the onion will come true,” he gestured toward the chives.

  “How good is your memory?”

  “It’s all right, I suppose,” I answered.

  “Nevertheless, I won’t make you learn the words without both hearing and seeing how they sound. We will begin by speaking and reading these words, so that you can hear them; after that, you will only think them silently to yourself. They must be transferred to the creature through your thoughts, never aloud.”

  He stopped and walked over to a bookcase.

  “Because of this, even more so, you’ll need to see what you’re saying. But we cannot copy these down in ink like a mathematics fact. It is forbidden. Once written down, these have a tendency to fall into the wrong hands, and we can’t risk that.”

  He took a canister from the shelf in one hand and placed his empty plate in front of me. “This is the safest way to write them.” He poured a stream of sand from the canister’s spout and gave the plate a good shake. Taking a clean quill from a nearby desk, he traced the sounds of the fourteen words in Cronin letters. When he was finished, he spoke each one to me and gave me their meanings.

  Ceptador (Listen.)

  “Once we’ve gotten their attention, we specify who we are speaking too,” he explained. “You can speak to either the plant in this pot or to all chives in this region. I recommend speaking only to this one for now.” He pointed to the writing in the sand. “Eniz is the word to address a single member of the species. Eplam allows you to speak to members of the species nearby, and Elzar is the word used to speak to the entire species. Forget Elzar for now, and be sure you don’t fool around with it either,” he warned, then flustered, “I don’t know why I even wrote it down...however, you’ll need to learn it soon enough.”

  The rest of the words were longer and more difficult. I stumbled over the pronunciations, and he corrected me many times. But there was something exciting about the way each word sounded and I noticed a strange twinge of happiness creeping over me as I learned them.

  Gorath, zitar, alymath (accept my mastership, know my strength.)

  Huelatath, aralt, yor, wol, ueili (A promise of protection if the feeling is accepted.)

  Solador (Accept these feelings as your own.)

  Rauphador (Release from me.)

  “Had a good look at them?” he asked, just as I was beginning to read them through a third time. I was about to shake my head when he in turn shook the sand, causing the letters to vanish.

  “Now that you’ve seen and heard them, you’ll have to keep them in your mind. It won’t do to keep looking down at the sand every time you forget; it will break your focus. I’ll prompt you the phrases the first few times. Let’s begin.”

  I mouthed the words to myself, trying to retain them but feeling desperately empty in the head.

  “Don’t forget!” he raised a hand. “These phrases are useless without the transfer of the feeling. We said before in our pretend phrase that we wanted the herb to shrink away from the sides of the pot, and to be content with the soil we allotted. So, we must convey the feeling of shrinking, followed by contentment. Search your memory for a time when you have had to, in so many words, make yourself smaller. You will use the feeling from that memory. Have you ever tried to fit into a space that was too small for you?”

  I hesitated. “I think so…”

  “If you’re not sure, there is a very small, very dark cabinet that I can lock you into...”

  I visually shuddered and took a step back. A wicked grin spread across his face.

  “Ah. You don’t think so, you know so. You remember exactly how it feels to squeeze into something. To shrink back as far as you possibly can to fit into a space. That’s a feeling that many people find unpleasant.”

  I nodded. I hated being confined. I had years of memories of hiding in caves and fitting into spaces where I could barely breathe. I remembered the horrible, sickening feeling that caused me to draw every limb in as close to my body as possible.

  “Good,” he said, satisfied with my phobia. “That feeling is exactly what you will transfer for the binding. That is, if it can stay in your mind as clear as it was when you shuddered. This should be an easy binding with no conflict. Plants are weak-willed and have few feelings of their own.”

  He set the chives in front of me again. “Remember, clear and in order. Convey shrinking and contentment only.”

  I reached out for it, palms sweaty, eager to get it over with, success or failure, and dreaming of my upcoming dinner.

  C
eptador, I asked it to listen inside my head. Eniz, I specified, my hands resting on the stalks of the plant.

  “Gorath, zitar, alymath,” Tate whispered in my ear. I repeated the phrase silently, fighting my wandering mind. Then I promised it protection, the hardest and longest phrase. At this I felt a peace, a welcome to continue. Just as he’d said, the herb’s empty mind was quick to bend to my will. I took a deep breath, focusing before I proceeded. I pushed aside some hunger pains, blinked away some fears, and stuffed a few hundred questions that I had for Tate away.

  “Only when you’re ready,” Tate whispered, breaking my concentration. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Solador, I began, then brought to my memory one of the dark caves I’d huddled in as a child with my family and hundreds of others. In the cramped space I’d hardly been able to breathe, so I’d sucked in my breath and drawn my small knees to my chest. Then I’d shrunk even more as I heard the sounds of horse hooves, just outside, of Parter soldiers dismounting and searching the woods, killing anyone who had not hidden themselves in time. Suddenly my connection with the plant was growing dim. I gasped and my eyes flew open.

  Tate raised his hands in a questioning gesture.

  “What happened?” I asked, furious with myself for losing focus.

  “Distraction, likely.”

  I frowned. I wasn’t sure how I could have been any more focused on what I’d just been feeling. My stomach was still tight with anxiety from the memories.

  “I was only thinking about my feelings, I swear.”

  Tate looked at me, scratching his beard thoughtfully.

  “One feeling at a time Amlai. Only one.” He couldn’t read my mind, but he seemed to understand what had happened. I’d allowed not just the feeling of shrinking into my mind, but the fear of the Parters. I’d confused it.