by Kova, Elise
“Come on, up with you.” Jax held out his hands. “Can you stand?”
“I think so.” Vi took his hands, trying to pull herself to her feet. She let out a yelp of pain in the process and her left knee folded. Her uncle quickly caught her, using his strength to support her so Vi didn’t have to put her weight on what now seemed likely to be broken. “Or, not.”
“First, cleric. Then we speak with Sehra.”
Vi gripped him tightly, looking back to Sehra at the mention of the woman. The scolding would be well deserved, but Vi wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Are Ellene and Jayme truly all right?” she whispered.
“Shaken up a bit, but Ellene’s magic protected her, barely. If you hadn’t stopped the fire when you did, this might have been a very different day.”
“A day I don’t want to think about.”
“But you did have control at the end, didn’t you?” Jax murmured. “The fire stopped before we reached it.”
“I don’t know how,” she confessed. “My magic seemed… strange.”
“I’m not surprised. Given that display, Vi… You’re Awoken.” It seemed much more than that to her. “We’ll discuss it when we’re back. Let me help you up.” Jax laced his fingers and held them down, granting her some relief and not pressing further about her obvious hesitation. “I know you’re more confident riding these things than I am. But that’s usually without a bad leg.”
Vi hesitated, staring at the animal, balancing as best she could on her good leg. Gormon turned his furry head toward her, and Vi saw the dead eyes of the noru layered atop his bright, clear ones. She flinched.
“He’s the same Gormon you’ve always ridden,” Jax said encouragingly, soothingly, as if reading her mind.
“I know.” Vi tried to roll her eyes as she placed a hand on the beast’s dense fur. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I’m merely debating if I can endure your help mounting. But I suppose I shall this one time.” Vi made an attempt at the dramatic for a laugh and her uncle indulged her. Together, it distracted her from the pain as she got astride the animal. Her leg screamed in protest, but could still be moved—marginally—so perhaps it wasn’t entirely broken.
“You settled?” Jax asked with a grunt, mounting behind her.
“Yes, and more than ready to get this mended.”
The cat sprang to life and they bounded back in the direction of the capital of the North. Uncle Jax muttered to himself the whole time.
“It’s a miracle you’re all right. Thank the Mother. I couldn’t have imagined what might have happened if something befell you or Ellene. We should’ve never let you go. I should’ve never let you go. The Senate advised against these hunts of yours as you got older and there was less supervision. I should’ve listened. Mother knows what that boy is going to write in his reports of his.
“But… to think, your magic is Awoken and you’re already learning to control fires of that power and size. We may be able to work with this before you return south…”
The words blurred like the trees passing to either side. Vi stared at nothing, letting her eyes glaze over. She could see her father, kneeling before a foreign queen in strange clothing. He had to be on the Crescent Continent in her vision… so how far in the future was that? Tomorrow? A month? A year? She wasn’t sure how long ago his farewell letter had been written.
Then there was her other vision… and that man. The voice, he’d called himself. He’d done something to her and then left with nothing more than a command to find him again.
Vi didn’t know where to start—the fact that he would command her… or the fact that even if she wanted to summon him, she had no idea how.
Soricium emerged before them. The buildings with bases of stone and second stories of wood blurred past them as the noru bounded down the main streets of the city, heading to the large castle-like fortress at its center. The street forced the noru closer together, close enough that Vi could speak with Jayme and Ellene.
“I’m sorry,” Vi called over. They both turned, startled. “I didn’t mean—”
“What’re you sorry for?” Ellene shook her head. “We’re glad you’re all right!”
“Likewise.” Vi breathed a sigh of relief, knowing there were no hard feelings between them.
The noru came to a stop and Jax immediately swung his legs over, reaching up to help her off. Vi allowed herself the assistance once more. She was far too tired and in too much pain to object. His hands fell on her waist and he eased her down. Vi put all of her weight on her right foot, allowing him to shift an arm around her back to help support her.
“Call for Ginger,” he shouted, loud enough that Vi was certain half the castle heard. “The Crown Princess is injured.”
“You don’t need to make such a fuss. I can manage,” Vi muttered, hobbling alongside him. She hadn’t even crossed halfway to the castle when said cleric ran out.
“Princess, what has happened?” The blue-eyed woman fussed, eyes immediately drawn across the constellation of bruises and scrapes across her body, then to her leg. “Goodness, just what have you gotten yourself into this time? The older you get, the worse shape you’re in when you return from these hunts of yours.” She dropped to her knees, setting her basket down, and began rummaging through it. She continued muttering as she worked. “Hunts, why do we even still call them that? We all know they’re just excuses for you to have a few days out exploring.”
Could she be blamed for it? Everyone had their limits in captivity. But Vi held her tongue. She’d caused more than enough trouble for one day.
Ginger, a Waterrunner, had been sent from the South with Vi from the very beginning. Waterruners made some of the best clerics due to their abilities to manipulate the water in the body as well as change the properties of salve. She’d been the best cleric Vi could ask for—overall focusing mostly on mending her after she fell, or reviving her when she was ill, rather than the recklessness that usually brought those things about.
“When we saw the flame, I prepared. I just knew you’d come back worse for wear.” Ginger paused, hands sticky with salve. “It was you, the fire, wasn’t it?”
Vi quickly tried to weigh the scales of answers in her head. As trusted as Ginger was, she was also a Southerner with deep ties to the capital. However, any word she could send back wouldn’t make it before Vi was headed back as well, which meant she and Romulin could thwart any nefarious uses for information.
Then again, who else could’ve started and stopped a fire like that?
“It was me behind the fire. There was a threat to my person and the Chieftain’s daughter,” Vi answered ambiguously. If there was one thing Romulin had stressed, it was that she owed no one more explanation than she wanted to give.
“A threat? Goodness, of what kind?” Ginger paused. “But that also means you’ve finally Awoken, princess. How exciting!”
“Thank you, Ginger,” Sehra interrupted, as if somehow sensing it had crossed into sensitive territory. Vi hadn’t even noticed her walking over. “When you are finished seeing to the Crown Princess, would you mind tending to my daughter and Jayme?”
“Not at all.” Ginger gave a smile and a small nod. Of all of Vi’s staff and tutors, Ginger had integrated the easiest. Perhaps it was her clerical demeanor—that she saw all people as patients, nothing more or less. Or perhaps Ginger was a better soul. Either way, Vi trusted her more for it. “Just one more second and I’ll have finished sorting the worst of it.”
Vi closed her eyes, feeling the thick salve Ginger had coated her swollen leg with chill to a temperature that was almost ice-like. As it warmed back up in the heat of the air, the pain was significantly reduced, swelling gone. Vi placed her weight on the leg delicately. There was stiffness, some stinging, but, as Ginger put, the worst of it seemed sorted. Luckily the injury hadn’t been too severe.
“It may feel better, princess, but it is still mending so do take
care. No running, jumping, riding, fighting, or whatever it is that you find yourself inclined to, cleric’s orders.”
“Yes.” Vi gave a nod to the mostly white-haired woman. She was one of the few who had never seen an issue ordering Vi around, despite their difference in status.
Ginger gave a nod, stood, and departed, leaving Vi with Jax and Sehra.
“I apologize for not checking on you more promptly, princess,” Sehra began and Vi couldn’t tell if she meant it, or was merely saying what would be expected in such a situation.
“It’s I who should apologize to you.” Vi turned to face the woman. “Know I would not have endangered Ellene with my fledgling magic if were it not for the noru afflicted with the White Death. Our lives were at stake.”
“An infected noru? The plague has spread to animals?” Sehra turned from Vi to Jax.
“I was already planning to send word of it to Lady Elecia in the West. She may be able to help get a message to the capital.” Jax never failed to jump at an excuse to reach out to Elecia. The two of them were in a hopeless orbit around each other. But Vi couldn’t read too much into this particular suggestion, given the circumstances.
“I think her mother, Ambassador Amrosah, is still in the southwest region of Shaldan. I can send couriers there.”
“Certainly. I’ll draft a letter.”
A thought crossed Vi’s mind, briefly, that perhaps her uncle would leave her when they arrived south. She would no longer need a guardian and Jax would be far happier with Elecia, Vi would bet. It settled an ache in her that she was ready to ignore the moment Sehra spoke again.
“Thank you for handling it.” Her uncle gave a small bow of his head. Sehra turned to face her, and her alone. “More pressing, for now… Go clean yourself up, and meet me in my throne room.”
Vi kept her face passive, keeping her worry at whatever punishment would be levied against her locked within. “Understood, Chieftain.”
* * *
The stronghold of Soricium could be maze-like for the uninitiated. She’d heard of the castles in the south being rather twisting as well… but it was hard to think they could twist a person more backwards than branches that became bridges that connected to wide platforms before disappearing into the trees themselves in a series of hollowed out tunnels.
It could easily set a person on the wrong course. That is, if they weren’t like Vi, and hadn’t grown up among them. So she had no excuse for any delays other than purely dragging her feet.
Now, Vi stood before an intricately carved door at the end of a long stone bridge, set against the trunk of the center-most tree in the fortress. This was the oldest tree in the world—so the wrinkled men who sat around fires said—and they called it the Mother Tree. It was this tree that was said to have caught a falling star—a shard of the Mother’s light—in its branches. By the time the star finally reached the ground, it had absorbed life from the tree and became a woman. The same woman cut civilization from the boughs of the Mother Tree, forming all of Shaldan.
Briefly, the ruins she’d landed in appeared in her mind. But Vi pushed them from her thoughts. She had more important things to focus on now.
Lifting a fist, Vi gave a few raps of her knuckles against the wood. The doors peeled apart, opening inward by a magic force. Inside, the hollowed center of the tree arched above in a dome. Flowers and vines hung from the ceiling, giving off a cloyingly sweet smell that hung in the room despite half of it being open completely to a wide balcony.
“Come in, Vi.” Sehra was standing several paces in front of her throne, right at the edge of where the tree-trunk vanished and the balcony extended, uncovered, underneath the open sky.
Vi swallowed, accepted her fate, and stepped inside. The doors closed behind her, leaving Vi little option but to cross over to the Chieftain of the North—the woman whose protection Vi had been destined to rely on before she was even born.
“Are you wondering why I summoned you?”
“I honestly find it quite clear.” Vi stepped beside the woman, looking out into the expansive archways and paths of the fortress before them. “You showed me kindness, allowing me to leave. And when you did, I abused it, going farther than I should have. In the process, I endangered your daughter.”
“You went farther than you were supposed to?” Sehra interrupted her list of transgressions with a look of genuine surprise.
“I figured Ellene would’ve told you.” Vi cursed her luck. The girl used to tell her mother everything. But it seemed, with age, she was learning how to keep a secret.
“I expected it, as did Jax.”
“Yes, well…” Vi tried to find her previous thought. “Even still, I endangered Ellene and Jayme with my outburst. I should have stayed here, and trained more after being so recently Awoken.”
Sehra looked straight ahead, out over the treetops of the fortress. She was rigid, regal, everything Vi hoped she could be someday; she had a long way to go.
“I am not going to punish you.”
“I may be the Crown Princess, but I should not be above punishment.” She didn’t particularly enjoy reprimands. But getting off, free and clear, felt wrong.
“There’s no time now for punishments,” Sehra said ominously. “We have too much work to do, you and I.”
“Work?” Vi repeated, glancing from the corners of her eyes at the woman. She had yet to move. She was hardly even breathing.
“Yes, I was waiting for today to begin. I was waiting to be certain, beyond all doubt, for the knowledge I will impart to you has never been heard by ears outside my lineage.” Vi had no idea what Sehra was talking about. “Why do you think it is that you have struggled so much with your flames?”
“I… I don’t know. Everyone always said I was a late bloomer, like my mother. But I have Awoken. And managed to find control in the jungle. My magic…”
The man in the cavern flashed through her mind, his glowing emerald eyes, the singular word he’d uttered. Something had changed with that man, that word. What had he done to her? What was that word that had echoed in her the next time her magic was unleashed?
“And?” Sehra pressed, reminding Vi she had stopped talking.
“And I think I have a better understanding of my magic. I think Uncle Jax will be able to teach me now and—”
“Jax can teach you nothing.”
“What?” Vi turned to face the Chieftain, anger bringing her spark to the surface faster than talking about it had.
“He will teach you as a Firebearer.”
“That’s—”
“That is not what you are. You are not a Firebearer, Vi. Not at your core. Certainly, you are able to create and manipulate flames, but this is a manifestation of your expectations for your own magic and the expectations of those around you.
“Like nature versus nurture. You have been nurtured by Firebearers, so you and everyone else believes that is what you are. But that is not your nature. That is not your magic.”
“I’m certainly not a sorcerer of any of the other affinities.” Something about this conversation felt like being backed against a cliff ledge, knowing she was about to be pushed over. Everything was about to change.
“No, you’re not. You are like me, like Ellene. You can control an element, but it is merely a fraction of your true power.”
“What?” Vi whispered. She knew what Sehra was alluding to before she said it, but it didn’t make sense. It was so jarring that her brain only interpreted the logical conclusion as confusion. Even when Sehra said the words, they sounded like a lie.
“You, Vi Solaris, are a Child of Yargen.”
Chapter Eleven
A Child of Yargen, like Ellene and Sehra. One who could harness a strange and mysterious power. A power very few possessed—a gift rarer even than Windwalkers like Vi’s mother. But there was just one problem with Sehra’s claim…
“All of the Children of Yargen are in your lineage.” Vi shook her head. “Ellene is like a sister to me, but I don’t
think that’s close enough to count.”
“Perhaps it is.” Sehra shrugged, an action that seemed far too light-hearted for the seriousness of her words. “We know that while certain lineages have similar magic, magic is not in the blood. Two commons can give birth to a sorcerer. Why not two who have no relationship to Yargen giving birth to a Child of Yargen?”
“Because it’s never happened,” Vi challenged. It was bold. Sehra certainly knew the history of her land and people far better than Vi did. But Vi knew this much. She’d talked with Ellene about it to the point of circles countless times before. All swirling around questions like, why didn’t the Tower of Sorcerers in the South recognize the magic of Yargen? Or, what really was the magic of Yargen?
“You are a special case,” Sehra agreed, as though such a simple explanation could put her concerns to rest. “But we always knew you would be. We planned for this.”
“We?” Vi repeated. “Who’s ‘we’?”
Sehra began to walk over to the far side of the room. “Your mother, father, and me.”
Everything went from not making sense to being downright impossible. “Let’s say I believe you, that I’m a Child of Yargen—which is an incredible amount to believe at face value, just as an aside. How would my mother know? Or my father? Or you? Why keep this information from me all this time?”
Sehra paused, looking back. Conflict was written over her face at what her next words should be. She placed a palm on the wall before her, and the wood folded like an accordion, revealing a small sunlit study Vi had never seen before and certainly had never known was there.
“Perhaps it would be best if I started at the beginning… Come.”
Vi didn’t want to. She wanted to stand and demand answers, order them as the Crown Princess if that’s what it took. Yet she couldn’t seem to find words. Her arms hung limply at her sides and her spark seemed dull and quiet, even without her forcing it to calm.
