Mordred-Night Wolves

by Lisa Daniels

  “He... is?” Kiara gaped at him, before recovering slightly. “Ah, yes, of course. He'll want to get to know his new daughter at some point.”

  Inside, though, her insides clenched, angry at the sudden marriage. Of knowing that whether she liked it or not, she now needed to roll along with it.

  At least Mordred didn't try it on with her. He had approached her to confirm to the public—which meant the other servants scuttling around—that they had indeed consummated their “marriage.” Winifred smiled as Mordred sauntered away. She hadn't seen him without his mask before, and she now spun on Kiara in excitement. “That's one good-looking god you've taken, there. You're a lucky one, mistress. Most have to be content with those missing half a foot or with black teeth.”

  “I'm sure,” Kiara replied wryly. She decided to change the subject before her inside emotions ended up displaying far too obviously on the outside. “So where would you recommend me to go?”

  “Oh. Let's see... well. You'll probably want the scenic route—the one where they take all the tourists. We don't get a whole lot of tourists, but enough so that there's a few people making a living from showing them the sights.” She walked Kiara over to a waiting carriage beyond the gates where the sentries stood, and they clambered up into it. “The central bridge, please,” she called up to the driver, and he coaxed his two horses into a trot. They trundled over the main bridge, giving Kiara plenty of time to look down into the lake below, where she saw live fish covered in magic—level four talent.

  Level one, manifesting the light. Level two, manipulating it. I'm probably just about level two. Level three, attaching it to a still object. Four, living.

  What was five again? Something about attaching it to an object from a distance or something, and getting it to move of its own accord. Just like the ripple effects in Mordred's room, giving the whole place the eerie texture of something underwater.

  Winifred here was a level six—manipulating the light so that it imitated living and still forms. Level seven was having the imitation without needing a source to attach to. Heat transference could happen from level three onwards, a kind of additional skill that was supposed to be learned at some point, though it became easier the higher up the skill chart someone was. Very few level threes could heat transfer, whilst many level fives could.

  Drat. I'm wrong about what she might be. She's a level seven at least. That fish just went swimming off. It wasn't attached to a stone or the wall or anything.

  Was Winifred even aware of how powerful she was? It irritated Kiara to think that someone so valuable was little more than a servant. Servant work should be confined to those who didn't have lightweaving. It should be given to those people so that they still had something valuable to do. Not to waste a lightweaver on something so mundane. Wasteful and pointless. Just like the lightweaving used in this city.

  She couldn't help but stare at Winifred, just wondering how they let someone of her talents be stuck here.

  Winifred already hinted at not being challenged on it, though. So she left it alone. Maybe she could ask Winifred to lightweave a few things as the kind of whimsical demands of a mistress. Test the girl's ability for herself.

  Girl? I'm not much older than she is. She must be eighteen, nineteen at least. And I'm barely past twenty-one.

  Winifred dutifully showed Kiara around the city, though it required a lot of lake visits, some bobbing on the water in flimsy little boats, and a trip to some of the better shops in the area. People stared at Kiara's dark hair in a distrustful manner, however. They really didn't seem to like a foreigner walking in their shops, even if said foreigner was married to one of their gods.

  Or perhaps that was the issue. Someone that they considered lower than others happened to be hitched to someone they worshipped above everything else. Creating a conflict in their minds.

  “It's like I said,” Winifred whispered, as she gently steered Kiara out of another hostile shop, “they don't like that you've robbed the chance for one of their own to marry a god. Every little girl dreams of making it big in Kanthus. Marrying a Highborn or marrying a god. Take this.” She picked up a book from a small market stall, propped up against a glowing bakery. “‘Love and Lust: The Prince of Wolves’. A book that many people love here. About a commoner from the streets who ends up accidentally marrying a god, but they fall in love with each other along the way and she ends up having lots of healthy gods as children. A classic.”

  Kiara snorted, before stopping herself. Thankfully, Winifred shared the mood, for she grinned as well. “It's a terrible book, honestly, but this is the kind of fiction you'll see our single, lonely girls reading. You want to get it, mistress?”

  Well, seeing as it sounded disconcertingly true to what happened to her, except it was an entirely different kind of accident, Kiara agreed. She probably wouldn't be able to manage past a few pages, anyway. They bought the book for about two silver coins, and Winifred tucked it away in a little knapsack that she wore specifically to help her mistress with whatever she intended to buy. Some women preferred entire carriages full of goods, according to Winifred, since they couldn't help but snap up anything that drew the slightest bit of interest, such as cleverly made ornaments with intricate lightweavings.

  Most lightweavers of around third rank ended up being merchants, selling glow-necklaces and other useful objects. When a group of men down one main road openly stopped to glare, Winifred now became uncomfortable.

  “Mistress... I think perhaps I misjudged the mood of my fellow Kanthians. I think it best if we don't leave the palace unless we have a full armed escort. I had hoped that as two women, a Highborn and her servant, we would more or less be dismissed. But it seems everyone knows who you are. News travels very fast.”

  “What's the issue?” Kiara didn't exactly expect the people to love her. Nights, she didn't have much love from her own people in Fjorn. People just saw her as the brat.

  But that hostility... that couldn't be just because she'd married a god, could it?

  “We don't have any protection. I'm a fool, mistress. Let's hail a carriage.” Winifred instantly dragged Kiara over, though there were no carriages currently in sight.

  “This can't be because I married Mordred, can it?”

  “That's one small thing of many, mistress.” Winifred scowled, before pulling Kiara into a book merchant's shop. “Many people believe that a formal alliance with another kingdom will invite their weaknesses into us. They fear losing jobs, having too many foreigners in the city, and they fear the sacred bloodlines being weakened by lowly blood such as yours, compromising their ability to fight the night hordes. All of it nonsense, but things that people do believe.”

  “Then why didn't you ask for protection when we went out earlier? Why didn't you caution me against this?” Slight worry entered Kiara. People tended to leave things out for the purpose of deceiving others.

  “I didn't expect us to wander off this far, mistress. Following the main routes, we will have little chance of being accosted. But wandering over to these stalls, which you dearly wanted to look at...”

  Kiara flushed slightly. True. She'd spotted the stalls, went darting off to them, and consequently found herself getting more and more distracted by all the different things. Such as that strange little sign outside that tavern, with lightwoven bees flitting around it. Or the small fountain which depicted water coming out of a wolf's mouth. Or that stall with the deliciously thin potato chips.

  Everything should be okay. People wouldn't dare assault her for whatever reason. Why bother risking the wrath of the god she married? Pretty stupid thing to do, right?

  Loud music blared out all of a sudden. Two men playing on trumpets, another one drumming. So loud that they drowned out the sound of any voices nearby.

  Including the sound of a scream.

  Three men closed in on her from the left, swerving out of a thin alley. Another two walked in fast from behind, and a carriage drew up. One drawn by four horses, big and bl
ack and completely sealed, so that anyone inside it couldn't look out.

  A hand clamped over Kiara's mouth. Before she had time to struggle, the owner of those hands had bundled her into the carriage, along with a terrified Winifred. The doors locked and clicked. Sealed inside a pitch dark room, lit only by Winifred and Kiara's glow-necklaces. Instantly, Kiara yelled and started banging against the wood, along with Winifred.

  No one responded.

  No one came.

  The carriage jerked off, the music deafening, with them screaming until their throats ran ragged.

  Realizing that they were trapped.

  Chapter Five

  Kiara didn't know how many hours they'd been in that carriage. Only that they kept rattling forward until the city sounds had long drowned out, and the wheels ran instead across what sounded like soft, spongy ground.

  Taking them somewhere outside Kanthus city. To one of the swamp-laden areas beyond.

  “Are they planning to ransom me?” Kiara didn't know, but she reached for Winifred's hand. In the time they'd been stuck in the carriage, Winifred had made herself several animated light animals. Little wolves that scampered across the air. Dragons, creatures that belonged to the night hordes, also fluttered around, belching tiny blue flames.

  “It would be a bad idea to do such a thing, mistress,” Winifred said, slumped forward, her short red hair dangling in front of her face. “No. I suspect they plan to dispose of us in a more discreet manner. It's not the first time I've heard of such a case happening. Take us out far, beyond the safety of the kingdom, into the Endless Dark. And let the night hordes deal with us.”

  Kiara's teeth chattered at the thought. She tried remembering the extra levels of lightweaving, the rarer ones that few people reached, as a bid to distract herself from this new reality. Level eight. Being able to illuminate multiple living objects at the same time, rather than one at a time. Whole fields, for example. Whole schools of fish. An entire lake, also heated. Winifred didn't seem like a level eight, at least. Level sevens could also do what a level eight did. It just took them longer, since they needed to infuse each thing individually. Level nine. What's level nine...? She sighed. She'd completely forgotten what nine was. Let alone ten. And was there higher than ten? What little she heard from her tutors suggested that there might be many levels they hadn't yet heard of. They described light as being a weapon against the darkness, after all.

  With the sun being the ultimate light, and the moon its faithful shadow.

  “I just don't see the point in this.” Kiara continued to inhale her light and let it bubble out of her. Then, for good measure, she produced more of it, though since she didn't know how to leave it within an object, it soon fizzled out. “Like, why bother to jeopardize a potential alliance? We should all be working together to fend off the night hordes. That just makes sense.”

  “To you, perhaps, mistress. Not to others. They are too proud. Since we've successfully held off the hordes for so long, for them, why bother changing how we work now? Why sell ourselves to a weaker nation at all? I'm sure many wonder what the royals are thinking, trying to organize such a thing.”

  Kiara slumped against the uncomfortable wood. The way they just honed in on Winifred and her, had the music, the carriage ready... it seemed surprisingly efficient. An opportunity presented by her wanderlust nature, from flitting stall to stall. She thought about Mordred, with a small pang of sadness. Though she didn't take what had happened seriously between them, he did. He'd put himself out there, risked ire, just to make sure she didn't ruin things.

  He cared about this potential alliance. He wanted her to go and meet his mother and father this dusknight, to place a formal knot on things. Or had dusk passed already?

  Shame, though. Kiara barely had any time to get to know her new accidental husband. Or read the book Winifred got for her. Or, well, do anything, really.

  Three nights.

  That's how long it took for me to mess things up. Three entire nights. Unbelievable. If Bethany had been here...

  Bethany wouldn't let herself get distracted. Bethany would do her duty with her new husband. Violet wouldn't mess up either, but she didn't need to. Already married, and busy in the process of making children. Unless she somehow lost the ability to make children, there would be no messing up involved.

  She stank as much as the bogs that surrounded Kanthus. All her life, foraging among the bushes, playing hide and seek with frustrated guards and huntsmen, skipping lessons and walking out on bewildered tutors who seemed to think they were actually interesting, riding her horse, Lost Star, around the paddock, playing with the farmers’ kids in the fields and the urchins in the streets...

  What use had any of it been?

  The feeling of her own incompetence ate her up inside. Her knee danced, and light popped away from her, fading from yellow to an acid green.

  “So,” Winifred said, “about that weaving lesson I was supposed to give you... now’s as good a time as any.” She attempted a small grin. “You need to learn how to adhere light to a stationary, non-living object.”

  Kiara shrugged. Probably best to try and distract herself. Winifred began talking her through the motions, explaining that magic wasn't as simple as some people made it out to be. “You always need good focus to do any of the things you need—even with just manifesting it.”

  Kiara choked back a laugh at this. She didn't really have good focus. She barely had any focus at all when it came to things. Always needing to move somewhere, to do something, to follow the next interesting thing to present itself.

  “However,” Winifred said, “each, uh, level of magic requires something different from you. A different kind of focus, a special area of concentration that can't be shaken, no matter what happens. Like a... second brain in your mind, tucked away.”

  Again, Winifred started going into the territory that fast made Kiara bored—though she did somewhat explain it better, in a more engaging way than all the tutors before. All this nonsense about concentration. Kiara knew she didn't have it, knew she couldn't dark well focus on anything long enough. The anger trickled inside her. All she did was suck the magic and fail miserably at what it had to offer. People could spend years trying to rise up the levels. They could be taught how to use their weavings—once they reached said level of weaving. But anything before that—she needed to learn by herself.

  But how did you make a brain always distracted by things focus?

  That's not entirely true, is it? Kiara did focus on things. If an idea seized her attention, she could carry it through faster than anyone else, in an immediate manner. She became obsessed with completing, with blocking out everything else until that one thing was done. Like her treehouse.

  And she really, really wanted to get out of this carriage.

  The carriage drew to a halt, just as Kiara considered this idea, only half-listening to Winifred's explanation. Yes, she needed to feel the magic, to find it, to impress her will upon it.

  The sounds of people getting off the carriage, of horses being unlatched and hastily retreating, drew the attention of both women. They waited until the sounds died off. Until nothing remained but the faint murmur of wind, and their breaths within the confined space—and a cold draught coming from somewhere.

  “Guess they don't want to stick around,” Kiara said. She shivered in her black dress, wrapping the thin coat around her better and buttoning it up. The gloves helped, too. Winifred sighed, before they heard a strange, whispering kind of snarl echo from outside. Instantly, both women froze. They stared at each other, frightened—and soon the noises congregated nearby. Then something scratched at the carriage, perhaps trying to claw a way in.

  Kiara forgot how to breathe for a moment, not daring to draw too much attention. Winifred went pale, letting all her weavings die out, until only the glows of their necklaces remained. The scratching and snarling continued, and the women huddled together, united in their terror.

  Of course. In the Endless
Dark, the monsters lived. The ones without light. Nameless creatures and horrors that threatened to extinguish the last standing lights of humanity. Interesting, Kiara thought, that people never gave an exact description for these creatures. They always left it so vague, and the vagueness added to the terror. Because if you didn't understand what you fought against, what you needed to defend against, then how did you look such a thing in the eye and not quail with fear?

  The carriage began rocking from side to side, before it lurched, and stayed at an awkward angle.

  We're sinking, Kiara realized. They must have taken us out to the muskeg. Well, wasn't that just fantastic.

  Whatever thing that tried to get at them from the outside soon stopped. They needed to escape now. Regardless of whether the thing waited for them or not. The carriage made a rather ominous creak, moving again.

  “Dark take this place,” Winifred cursed, now erupting in light again. She weaved intricate orbs that soon illuminated every nook and cranny, before both women resorted to trying to bash in the main door. Dead if they stayed, possibly dead if they escaped. Not much of an option, either way.

  And this stupid door didn't want to budge.

  Kiara let out a frustrated scream. I must get out of here! We must! She balled up her hand, shaking with fear and anger, cheeks flushed, again inhaling the light. The desire to get out consumed everything else in her mind, and she felt a strange pressure building up in her skull, as if the light she had inhaled now formed a kind of dam there.

  The light leaked out through her hand, as it had done a thousand times before. With some difficulty, she linked that strange blockage in her mind with the light dissipating outside her skin. With Winifred's floating orbs, which seemed to draw themselves to Kiara, as if attracted.

  Something burned in Kiara's arm, along her fist, and, with another shriek, she slammed her fist into the door, over and over, just needing to somehow make a dent in the wood, just to somehow find a way through, no matter how much it hurt her knuckles in the process.