Anais of Brightshire

by Jamie Wilson

  Chapter 7

  “My father asked me to start attending his council sessions,” Cedric said as we pulled our sleds to the top of the snow-covered hill. “What are they like?”

  “Tiresome. I sit in a corner taking notes, I don’t say anything.” I shrugged.

  At Thellium’s request, I had been attending the council sessions to record notes for the last few weeks. He had traveled north to Barriershire, and he thought it best to have an impartial observer update the archives.

  “I don’t really want to go. What is my father like in the meetings?”

  “He yells a lot. I don’t know why he asks for opinions if he intends to disagree with everything.”

  “That’s my father.” Cedric rolled his eyes.

  “Thomas doesn’t speak much. I keep expecting him to stand up and take charge. Doesn’t he become Lord Seve as soon as he turns eighteen? That must be fairly soon.”

  “One year, until Thomas is of age. Thomas has always been internal. It doesn’t surprise me that he keeps quiet in council sessions.” Cedric paused. “Anais, do you know why Thellium is visiting Barriershire?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me,” I answered.

  “Hmm, that’s curious. He’s been traveling a lot.”

  We both took one more run in our sleds down the snowy hill. I tumbled to the ground at the bottom, and the flakes of snow that covered my hair and clothes melted as we walked back to the Great House.

  Cedric, Thomas and I spent the three hours of the next council session in silence, me with a quill in hand, while the other men at the table discussed next season’s crops, crop rotation strategies, crop fertilizers, the slaughtering and smoking of pigs, sheep and cows, and taxes. I struggled to keep my eyes open.

  Sister Sebella stood and said, “I would like to reopen the discussion of the construction of an abbey for the people of Brightshire.” Sister Sebella was visiting Brightshire, and had insisted to be granted an audience at the council session.

  “No,” Lord Seve roared. “No abbey will be constructed in Brightshire. The sisters are nothing but trouble. I tolerate you, as I tolerate Thellium, but I will not relinquish taxes to support an abbey.”

  Sister Sebella sat, her jaw clenched.

  A squire from the Blumstead farming district stood. “Have there been any more unexplained deaths?” he asked.

  Moricutt, Brightshire’s sheriff, stood. “Three this month.”

  Lord Seve frowned. “At least the count is down.”

  The squire stayed on his feet and asked, “Is there still no response from the west? Did you report that you suspect that furies are rising in the Southlands?”

  Lord Seve sighed. “I send word each month to my ambassador, and each month he sends word back that the western lords discount our suspicions. The soldiers who hale from our district are returning, but the majority of the army will remain in the west.”

  “Lord Seve, it may be best if you visit court yourself to voice our concerns,” the squire suggested.

  “Perhaps, but I do not wish to leave Brightshire in these dark times.”

  “Lord Seve, I believe it would be useful to at least request that the remaining mages return to determine if these deaths are truly the result of furies,” the squire continued. “And if the worst case is true, and the furies are not just wandering but mobilized, we need the army and support from the mage community. We cannot stand alone.”

  “I do not support the return of power of the mages.” Lord Seve’s hand crashed down on the table. “Mage craft is evil. The solution can only be with the Seven Shires Army, and if Courtshire will not send the army, they certainly won’t send what few mages can be unearthed from the sewers.”

  The squire frowned and sat.

  “If there’s nothing else, I will adjourn this session,” Lord Seve said.

  Lord Seve looked at me. “Anais, please summarize your notes and come by my office this evening so that we can discuss your record.”

  “Yes, sir,” I murmured.

  As I walked out of the council room in the wake of the squires, I heard their restrained discontented discussions.

  “It’s a travesty that Lord Seve continues to vote against reinstating the mages. He never listens to me,” the squire who had spoken in the meeting whispered.

  The other nodded. “It’s no wonder he can’t get support from the west, when he holds on to such antiquated beliefs. He’s the last hold out. I’m taking my family away from Brightshire. We have no hope here.”

  I caught up with Cedric and walked beside him. “What did you think?” I asked him.

  “Everyone seems tense and angry,” he replied, frowning.

  “I know.” I bit my lower lip.

  “I didn’t realize that my father’s missives to Courtshire had been ignored.”

  “It makes sense, who wants to believe that furies might infest the Seven Shires again,” I said.

  “The last time the furies rose and attacked the mages and the army pushed them back. It will be different now, with no centralized magic community. We might not be able to do it again. I wish we could figure out definitively if furies were behind the murders. If the west would send us one mage to sense out the root the murders we could know for certain,” Cedric said.

  “So you’ve changed your mind about mages?”

  “Maybe.”

  We turned down a secluded hallway. “Cedric, there’s something I have to tell you.” I breathed in.

  “What is it?”

  “Last autumn I bought a book.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “A book on magic, a book that describes how to perform spells.”

  “No … no way. Why didn’t you tell me?” Cedric whispered.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I was scared. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  Cedric breathed in sharply, and stopped in the middle of the hallway, his back to the wall. I sank against the wall next to him.

  “Can you cast spells?”

  “I could cast a small levitation spell, and I cast a spell to find Kirsten.” I bit my lower lip. “The night that we met…”

  “I can't believe it. This is amazing.”

  “But, it doesn’t work anymore. Every spell I tried after that night failed.”

  “Can I see the book?”

  “I buried it.”

  “You what?”

  “I buried it in the garden.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I was scared that someone would find it and I would get in trouble.”

  “What if it gets damaged or someone else digs it up? We should go get it.”

  “We can’t get it now. Someone would see us.”

  “What about after dark tonight?”

  “I can’t. I have to summarize the meeting for your father.”

  “Tomorrow, we will dig it up tomorrow. I won’t wait any longer than that.”

  I sighed. I knew that telling Cedric about the book was inevitable, but losing sole control over the book worried me.

  “Okay, we’ll get it tomorrow night,” I promised.

  Late the next evening, I dressed in a fur-lined coat, a gift that Mediera had sent me through the post from Barriershire. It was expensive to send letters, and I couldn’t imagine how much it had cost her to send the coat. I also wore a white wool hat pulled tight over my hair that I had pulled back into a messy knot. My leather satchel that held the salt, stones and scarf, rested against my shoulder. As I waited for Cedric, I saw the moon looming large and bright from my bedroom window, and I felt grateful that it would be in the sky to light our way tonight.

  I did not notice Cedric slip into my room. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I jumped startled by his voice. “Yes.” I nodded.

  I followed him out into the garden and showed him the spot where I had buried the book. The ground was now stiff and frozen. Cedric and I tried to dig into the earth with our hands, but blood from our
ice bitten fingers seeped into the earth.

  “This isn’t going to work.” I panted.

  “You’re right. I’ll get a shovel.”

  I stood in the shadows waiting for Cedric and feeling nervous. He returned with a broad iron shovel, and I watched him dig a shallow hole into earth. When he uncovered the book, we removed the frozen dirt from its cover by hand.

  “It looks okay,” Cedric said as he flipped through the moist pages. “Does it have a spell to figure out how the people are dying?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “It’s hard to read. The language is archaic,” Cedric commented.

  “It took me forever to be able to decipher parts of it.”

  “Well, maybe you should look,” he suggested.

  I took the book from Cedric, and sat next to him on the ground. My breath showed dense and heavy in the air, and I fell into a fit of shivering.

  “C’mon Anais, we need to know what’s happening.”

  “Okay, okay.” I paged through the book, and stopped at a passage near the end. “This one might work. It is supposed to cause the spell caster to dream the last night of someone’s life.”

  “Perfect. Can we cast it now?”

  “No. We need something they were wearing the night they died.”

  “Hm, that might be difficult.”

  “You think?” My question was laced with sarcasm.

  “But not impossible.”

  Thinking of Kirsten, I shuddered.

  “The bodies of the dead are kept in wooden coffins in the graveyard. We could steal something off of one of the bodies, some piece of clothing.”

  I paused. Even though I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to try casting this spell, I was taken in by Cedric’s excitement. “I suppose we can try it. But, we shouldn’t go to the graveyard tonight, it would be too dangerous.”

  “We’ll go early tomorrow morning. We need to get there before the gravedigger arrives.”

  “Fine,” I groaned.

  The next morning, Cedric and I walked to the cemetery and climbed over the low stone walls that fenced the grounds. Cedric and I stole a shoe off an old man whose body rested in a cheap coffin waiting to be buried. The old man had the same long gashes through his face that had mutilated Kirsten, and one of his legs appeared to have been gnawed to shreds. I turned away from the dead man’s empty stare, burying my face in Cedric’s shoulder. Cedric seemed surprised at this intimacy, but not upset.

  The next evening we met again in the hidden alcove in the garden. A dense fog surrounded us and blurred the scene. “We should both get in the circle,” Cedric said. “Our chances might be better if we both cast the spell.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted, drawing a large messy circle of salt. I stared at the ground. “I don’t have enough salt.”

  “It doesn’t matter, we’ll make it thinner.” Cedric knelt down and thinned out the line.

  “I don’t know, Cedric. I’ve never done this with two people.” I frowned.

  “It’ll be okay. We have to find out what’s been happening to those people.”

  We sat and I cut the inside of my wrist, and let my blood trickle onto the earth. Cedric cut himself too and we watched our blood pool together on the hard icy ground. Cedric and I spoke the words of the chant written in the book in unison, although the words were meaningless. I didn’t know what to expect. We waited, and waited, motionless and silent.

  A figure cloaked in darkness emerged from the fog. As he approached, I grasped Cedric’s hand, breathing shallow nervous breaths.

  “Thellium?” I asked, when I could distinguish the form of my master.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Thellium growled.

  “So you’re back then,” Cedric said lightly. I glanced at him. How could he be flippant about this?

  Thellium glared. “Get up, and give me that book.”

  I stood and handed the book to Thellium, staring at the ground. Cedric pulled himself up languidly and eyed Thellium with an impish grin.

  “Cedric Seve, you’ve committed a grievous crime.”

  “Perhaps. But, what harm has it done? Why does everyone talk about magic as if it will destroy the world? We are trying to figure out if furies are here in Brightshire. No one else is going to aid us; no one is coming to protect our lands; no one is doing anything. We have to take responsibility.”

  Thellium sighed. “Performing powerful magic this close to the Southlands will rip apart the boundary.” Thellium paused.

  “What boundary?” I asked softly.

  “An age ago, after the last rising of the furies, the mages of the Seven Shires erected a boundary that lies on the border between the Southlands and Brightshire to prevent the furies from crossing into our lands.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said softly.

  “Very few people know. The secret was meant to prevent panic, but it may have been wiser to share it with the public, especially now with the current cries for the return of the mages. How long have you been practicing magic?”

  Cedric and I looked at each other. “This was the first spell we tried together,” Cedric admitted.

  “But not the first spell? Anais? The truth please.”

  “I bought the book over a year ago. I performed a few levitation spells, and a locater spell. But, I haven’t been able to get any of the spells to work for a long time. I stopped trying. This was the first one I’ve attempted since the summer,” I answered, shivering.

  “It’s freezing out here, let’s go inside and talk,” Thellium said. We followed him through the dark frozen grounds to the stone walkway that led into a side entrance to the Great House. He then led us through a dark hallway and up the spiraling staircases to his room. Cedric and I sat in the leather chairs near the fire, while Thellium paced. As I played with my fingers, Cedric sprawled his legs out in front of him and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Magic has to be fueled,” Thellium began. “A mage, or in your case a foolish amateur, fuels magic either from reserves in their own body or from blood magic, which draws power from the earth. Drawing magic from your own body is the simplest method, and I hope, the only thing you would have been able to accomplish at this point. If you try to use magic from your body, and you don’t have enough magic within yourself, you will suffer from bad headaches, nosebleeds, and cramping. The more complicated the magic, the worse off you are in terms of pain and the harder it is to replenish what you used. Did you feel any of these effects?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I had a bad nosebleed and headache after the locater spell, and after that everything I tried failed.”

  Thellium looked at me and nodded. “Good. You burned out. I hope that’s all that happened.”

  “Did I make things worse? Do you think I caused the furies to rise? Am I responsible for the people who died?” I asked with quivering lips.

  “No.” Thellium sighed. “The kind of magic you performed isn’t powerful enough to draw the furies. It is the second method that wrecks havoc. As you experienced, your own body only holds a fixed amount of potential magic. Once you use it up, there is nothing left, and the byproducts stay harmlessly inside you. However, when mages draw fuel from the earth and use their blood as a catalyst, the reaction that occurs between the blood and the earth is unclean. The reaction produces a residue in the air that the furies smell. If the reaction is very strong you can see a solid ashy byproduct, it is that ash - that residue - that draws the furies. Even though you spilled your blood, it’s very unlikely you could really have used blood magic; it’s much more likely that you used up your internal supply. Blood magic is extremely difficult, very few mages ever succeed in using it.” I remembered the ash I had seen after levitating the scarf, but I kept silent.

  Thellium continued, “And even if by some chance you used a little blood magic, the erosion of the boundary has been occurring for longer than you’ve been alive.
This has been a slow process. There are blood mages active in Candel, and even though the Seven Shires outlawed magery, there are still practicers of the art in our realm in hiding. The residues from their activities have been diffusing to the boundary and destroying it for years. However hard I’ve tried, it’s proved impossible to stamp magic out of our world.”

  “Why,” Cedric started, “Why would a mage ever use blood magic if they knew about the furies?”

  “Because they can extract much more power from the earth with blood, and at little sacrifice to themselves. That initial surge of power is a rush, and what they can accomplish with it, is almost limitless. Before the war, blood mages operated whole cities - every convenience was supplied by their power. Droughts and famines were a memory, everything that was needed or even desired was provided by a few, seemingly innocent trickles of blood. The world was a different place then.”

  “And those who still practice?”

  “It is a difficult temptation to resist. Risk versus reward.”

  “How do you know all of this? How did you find us?” I asked Thellium, suddenly suspicious.

  “Because he is or was a mage,” Cedric answered. “There is no other explanation.” Cedric turned to face Thellium.

  “Yes, Cedric, I was a mage,” Thellium acknowledged. “A long time ago, before I understood the terrible repercussions our actions would have on the world, I was a mage. I’ve given it up.”

  “But, that must have been ages ago?” Cedric asked. “Magic has been illegal for a century at least.”

  “We live longer than most, even those of us who turned away from the art,” Thellium answered.

  “You already knew this was happening? You know, for sure, that furies are killing people?” Cedric asked.

  “Yes, Cedric, I know. I haven’t been traveling to Barriershire; I’ve been traveling to the boundary to assess the damage done. As of now, only a few can cross, but we have very little time before the boundary is completely eroded. And then, then all bets are off. Your father knows too. There is no question.”

  “Then, where is the army?” Cedric asked.

  “The western lords refuse to send it.”

  “That’s unfair!”

  “Yes, perhaps it is. There isn’t much we can do to force their hands. It is late, and I have told you too much already. You should both get to sleep. We’ll sort through this mess in the morning.” Thellium turned away from us, my book tucked gently beneath his arm. “Go, get out of here,” he said.

  Cedric and I returned to our rooms in silence. I couldn’t believe our situation. It seemed so hopeless. If the monsters that had ripped apart those people were left un-hunted, free, what hope was there? And almost as bad, had I just lost Thellium? Had I just lost my position as his apprentice? He must hate me. I was so confused. How was I supposed to sleep after all of this? I tried to stay awake, but I felt so heavy, like I was merging into my bed.

  I was screaming. My leg, something had my leg. I looked up at the slick dark creature that held me pegged to the ground. Another one crawled towards me, and slashed at my face with long sharp talons. Cold seeped into my bones, and I was gone.