There were only a few tents here: his and Reshra’s, the General’s, and those of a few other boys from noble families. A thick stand of goshen bushes and clumps of palmpress grass separated them from the other tents and the main feasting areas. It was still quiet, and no-one had stirred from bed since he’d sat to eat. But soon people would be coaxed awake by hunger and the need to stretch and piss away the wine they’d drunk at the feast the previous night.
Soon the girls would begin to trickle out of the tents to pad home to the women’s village, dresses wrinkled and hair mussed, but chins held high with the pride of a successful hunt.
He motioned to the tent, but she shook her head slightly.
“Alone,” she whispered, and darted away in the direction of the beach used for the hunt ceremonies. It wasn’t as hidden as the plains or the cove, but at least it would be empty this early in the morning.
Sy took a few extra minutes to clean up his breakfast, watching to be sure no-one who may have seen her stepped outside their tents. A last peek into his shared tent, though, showed Resh was no longer in bed, and the blankets were cold. Sy hurried to find Corentine.
She was a speck on the far end of the beach already, nearly where the sand wrapped around to face the Sulit lands.
“I know why you have magic,” she said as he approached, still keeping her voice low.
He blinked at her and his steps paused, mouth open to ask but uncertain if he truly wanted to know.
“Your mother. And her mother. And hers. My mother, and her mother, and hers. We are both born of it. The magic never left, Sy.”
“Who is my mother?” The question slipped out without his permission. He snapped his mouth shut and shook his head, his hand held up as though to stop the words. “No. It’s still better if I don’t know.”
“My friend claims the signs of change are here, and that the Matron knows. She claims the Sulit witches will know.”
Sy glanced across the water, where the Sulit lands were too far to be visible on the horizon, misty and unknown. None of the Weshen had gone west to Sulit since the Separation. And to his knowledge, none had ever gone south to Umbren.
“Sy,” Corentine whispered. “Your father knows, too. He knew your mother’s magic when he found her. He knew when they had a child that this boy - you - was likely to inherit that magic. Sy, have you been honest with me? Has the General never once said anything to you about your magic?”
Sy’s face had been growing more flushed with anger at each of her words, and all he wanted to do was let out a roar of anger. How dare she accuse him of lying, when all he’d done was be honest with her? If all she said were true, his father had been very deceitful indeed. He didn’t know whether to thank Corentine or curse her.
Instead he broke away into a run, jogging at first, then sprinting along the water’s edge, in the direction of the men’s camp.
“Sy! Stop!” Corentine yelled to him, but the rush of wind in his ears and fury in his heart made her seem like an echo, far away and unimportant. He sensed her footsteps pounding behind him, but he was farther along and faster in his rage. She would not catch him until he had found his father.
But as she tackled him from behind, he couldn’t help but grin through his haze of anger. This girl was truly his match in every way, as if they had been made to either complement or destroy each other.
He preferred the first, and so he didn’t struggle.
“You will not do this!” Corentine said fiercely, scratching at his back as she worked to pin him to the ground, arms behind his back and face in the sand. “You swore to keep my secrets, and by spilling these, all will come known!”
He relented completely, letting his limbs go limp. “I’m sorry,” he managed, spitting sand from his mouth. “Please get up and I swear not to be so rash again.”
She slid off his back into the sand next to him, and he flopped over. “I should not have told these stories to you,” she said, almost to herself.
“No!” he countered, brushing his hand against hers. She moved her hand from his reach. “Corentine, thank you for telling me. I won’t break your trust again. I swear I won’t hurt you.”
“And you will break that promise,” she whispered, watching the ocean waves and repeating what she had said before, when their bargain had first been made. “Men have always hurt women. The Restless King hunted Weshen women, enslaving them for their magic. Killing them when they tried to save themselves.”
Sy remained silent, although he had heard stories that both supported and contradicted her words. Many of the Weshen women had wanted the attention of the king. Sought it, much the same way some of the girls sought his brother on the beach. For honor, and for pride.
“And the Separation took half of the women’s utility. We were once strong hunters, just like you and your men.”
“I know,” Sy answered. “But it was done for protection. The magic was in your blood - in the women’s blood. The men couldn’t have that blood spilled recklessly by MagiCreatures.”
“It was still a strength, and it was taken. We’re still captive here on Weshen Isle, and it’s all because of the magic and the men. The Sacrifice took everything.” She pushed up and began to walk the line where the water lapped onto the sand, quickly sucking away her footprints. Sy scanned the beach carefully, but there was no movement at the men’s camp in the distance.
“What does it feel like?” she asked quietly, staring at the water frothing around her bare feet. “When you choose to do magic?”
Sy rose and stood beside her. “It feels like power, rushing from the core of your being and filling every arm, leg, finger, toe.”
“Mine doesn’t feel like that. When I tore apart that Vespa, or when I shifted younger, I was nauseous. Unbalanced. As though I were doing something foreign to my body.”
“That’s because your power is untrained. Uncontrolled. Imagine the storms that come to the island. Some are gentle rain, coaxing life from plants and feeding the water back to the ocean. Shifting one source to another. But some are tempests, powerful and destructive. The shift becomes violent, like a break.”
Corentine looked up at him, understanding in her wide amber eyes. “I must become like the rain, then.” She closed her eyes and held her hands over the water, cupping them the way Sy had done in the cave. “Teach me,” she whispered, and his chest tightened at her vulnerability, standing on the empty beach with closed eyes and outstretched palms.
“Think of your center, where your strength comes from. It’s not the same for everyone, my teacher says. Open the channel of your endurance, the way you do when faced with a difficult task. The very strength you use to survive is the strength you use to shift,” Sy said, watching her hands fill with water even as he spoke.
He grinned in complete amazement at how fast she learned. It had taken him months to learn to find such strength.
“My strength comes from my family, and what I must do to protect them,” Corentine said. Her eyes still closed, she moved her hands around the water, letting it form a sphere that she was no longer touching. The sphere rose between them and spun, the salt gathering in clumps at its edges like tiny continents on a miniature world.
“I can feel them. The sources,” she whispered.
Then the salt separated from the water a bit at a time, the grains floating away on the breeze. Sy bent his lips to taste the water, and it was fresh.
“Congratulations. You’ve mastered something which took me many months.”
“Because I’m a woman, and we have always been the keepers of magic,” she teased, rewarding him with a smile that stirred his center. In that moment, he felt powerful enough to shift mountains.
She pulled his hand from his side and turned it palm up, resting the sphere of water there. Then she pulled more water into her hands, moving them in circles to coax the water into a ring, its width as much as her arm. She spun and rotated it between them, playing like a child with a hoop. Laughing, Sy waited until the angle was
right, and he tossed the sphere through the middle of the hoop.
But Corentine controlled both, merging them into a flat disc of water that she then hurled across the sea. It skipped across the water’s surface, and Sy marveled as the disc refused to merge with its source. For several seconds they both watched it, mesmerized by the crystalline light reflecting from her creation.
“What is the meaning of this?” a rough voice yelled, breaking into their bubble of wonder. The disc crashed into the sea, and Corentine bolted without even a glance at Sy.
He pushed down the sick that crept up his throat as he turned, searching for the right words that would defend instead of condemn.
Tag was there, his face dark with confusion and accusation and betrayal. He would never understand. Sy hoped he might be able to convince the burly man to stay quiet for now, but explanation would be required, and his father would soon know that magic had again come to the island.
And from Corentine’s family. Again. But if the General knew already…
“Tag, please,” he started, but they were both interrupted by a scream. Sy felt the blood drain from his face, and he swayed on his feet as he turned to see what had happened.
Farther down the beach, Corentine lay crumpled in the sand, her face bloodied as she tried to scoot away from Resh.
“Sorceress!” Resh screamed, his long fingers pointing like bony daggers hurtling toward Coren’s chest. She felt herself flinch as if the word itself had pierced her, as if it alone could take her very life.
“Sulit witch! Traitor!” The shouts seemed capable of echoing to every corner of the island. She tried to get up, to run, to vanish into her younger self, but her body and its magic were both frozen in the face of this fierce boy. He yanked her to her feet, wrenching her arms behind her and cinching her wrists together with his leather belt.
“Tagsha, get the General!” he yelled. Coren moaned, stumbling against his pressure to pull her up the beach. “Quiet, girl. My brother is too trusting, but I know your family’s true story. You will not ruin him.” He bent closer to her ear, his breath hot against her already flushed skin. “Your witch grandmother Lorental single-handedly forced the necessity of the Sacrifice. Your family is responsible for the downfall of our people, but you will never hold that power on these shores!”
Coren’s head spun with his accusations and the repercussions of what had just taken place. Surely he must be false. One family alone couldn’t have caused so much. Maren had said…but Maren might have been wrong, if she only knew part of the story.
But none of it mattered now, because the only thing left for her future was banishment.
Chapter 13
“Tag. Please wait,” Sy pleaded, turning to the man who had always been more than his father’s guard. Tag looked between the two brothers, torn between duty and love, responsibility and trust. “Tag. It’s not what Resh thinks.”
“Was she not using magic?” Tag asked, his voice cracking. “I saw…I don’t really know what I saw.”
Sy opened his mouth to deny it, then hung his head. There was no use. Tag had seen something, and Resh knew something of what it had been. The General would need no other convincing.
“Tagsha!” Resh yelled, half-dragging Coren as they neared. “I command you to find the General!”
Tag glared at Resh. “You should not have tricked me into this!” he called.
“You are under oath, Tagsha. Now that you know, you cannot keep it.” The look on Resh’s face was triumphant, even from so far away. In that moment, Sy learned what it was to truly hate a brother.
In Weshen, under General Ashemon, the law was the law. Sy’s brain raced to find another way, a loophole, even as he ran to catch his brother.
“Resh, please wait. There’s an explanation.”
“Of course there is, brother. This girl is the newest in a coven of Weshen witches, bent only and forever on their own aggrandizement, no matter how it might hurt our people. She may seem down on luck now, but her dreams are that of victory. Are they not?” he sneered at Coren, who glared and spat blood onto the ground before them.
“How dare you hit a woman!” Sy yelled, raising a fist as if to pay the blow back to his brother.
But Coren said, “Stop. That part was an accident. There is nothing more you can do. I have disobeyed my mother, and this is my penance.” Her voice was bitter and resigned, as though she were actually beginning to believe Resh.
“But is any of this true? Your family?” Sy whispered, hating that he needed to ask the question to settle his doubts.
She looked to the sky, avoiding his eyes. “It may be. It may not be. I know little of my family. Certainly we have been cursed by many kinds of magic for too long.”
Sy felt his heart cracking for the sorrow she had known, and the hardships she would surely find today.
They were nearing the center of the beach, where several men had run from their tents, and even a few of the girls. Resh’s shouted words must have drawn them from their breakfasts and lingering kisses.
The small crowd of women and men stuttered and murmured, uncertain of how to react to such a display. More people continued to hurry from the tents onto the beach. Resh screeched the damning words again and again, stopping only when the General tore through the door of his tent, striding onto the beach.
Ashemon stalked toward his youngest son and the girl he had caught on the wrong beach, murder on his face.
For a second, Coren thought the look was directed toward Reshra.
If only Maren were right about the General’s bargain.
If only that bargain included her.
The people had begun to clump together, closing in on them, then backing away, like the tide sucking at the sand. She saw many familiar faces, now made grotesque by fear and the lust for spectacle.
The General came to a stop several yards from Coren, looking between both of his sons and his guard.
“Reshra. Hush your cries,” he barked. Resh glared but clamped his mouth shut. Coren pushed her back straighter, twisting her wrists in their bindings, although she couldn’t quite rid her shoulder of Reshra’s grip. Ashemon turned to her then, pinning her in his hard gaze.
“Tell me, girl. Do you deny my Second Son’s accusation?” He was not yelling, but the crowd and the morning were so quiet that his voice echoed off the cliffs.
Coren did not answer, nor did she flinch at his words. There was no going back to before, even if she were the only one who had realized it yet.
Perhaps there had never been another option. Not for her family. Between the Restless King and the Mirror Magi’s elders, her family members had all been dead the second they had been born. The unfair truth of it swept her suddenly, and the currents of anger pulled her under.
There was an odd look in Ashemon’s eye though, as if despite the fury rolling from every movement, he was reluctant to broach this subject. Thanks to Maren, she knew some of the General’s old secrets, but she also knew people change. Since Sy seemed to mistrust him now, she would do the same.
“Do you wish a trial?” he asked then, and the whispers began. Trials were reserved for violent acts, never magical ones. Whatever game he was playing, she would have no part in it.
“You pretend to offer me a trial?” Coren sneered, finally finding the strength to wrench her arm from Reshra’s grasp. She stood as tall as her slim form could stretch. “My brother had no such trial. Your father sent an eight-year-old boy to die alone on the MagiSea! And now you will surely threaten me with the same, although I am the only caretaker to two young children. What worthy Generals!”
Reshra yanked hard on her bound arms, causing her to stumble to her knees. Several of the watching women gasped, though Coren thought she heard one laugh.
“I deny nothing,” she called, her voice reaching toward the crowd like a slap of its own. “Your Second Son may be a lusty shame to our people, but he is not false.”
This time she managed to twist completely away from Reshra,
springing up several feet away from him. She glanced back at him with a look of challenge as Sy stepped slightly between them.
“I know nothing of Sulit magic, only the power the Mirror Magi have cursed my family with!” she continued, twisting to watch every judgmental face before her. “Perhaps before you banish me, you should send someone to the temple in Weshen City to ask the sages why one family has been so chosen for the magic’s return!” Coren’s voice rose and rose, spiraling through the gaping crowd. “Ask them why, if shifter magic is supposedly gone, and the women are trapped on this island, why have the banishments remained necessary!”
She finally managed to twist her hands free from their leather binding and swept them around her. The crowd shuffled away and pushed each other back, as though ducking her very movements. “You have all played a part in driving my mother insane, my father to desert, and my brother to die! Give me a boat and my siblings, and we will leave you forever. I will have no part of your future!”
Coren realized she was nearly wild with grief, near to doing something she could never be forgiven for. What would these actions mean for Penna and Kosh? But she seemed powerless to stop the rage from pouring forth, and Ashemon was staring at her with something like curiosity, almost inviting her to continue.
“Our ancestors made a cruel bargain to protect all Weshen people, denying our nature to protect our existence, but you have not protected my family! You have not!” She ended on a wail, the anger dissipating as the heaviness of what would surely happen next weighed on her soul. She began to slump to the ground.
Suddenly, Coren felt a gentle pair of arms wrap around her, the familiar smell of Sy envelop her, overwhelm her, and she allowed herself to sag back into his chest.
There were several beats of silence as the General stared between Coren and his two sons. Neither Reshra nor Syashin moved a muscle, both staring defiantly at their father. The crowd too was silent, waiting for their General, and the cry of a dawngull was the only noise on the beach.
Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1) Page 12
