“We should save him,” Taigan said.
“Yeah, probably,” Ben agreed.
Neither of them moved.
“Why…aren’t you?” Orien asked them curiously.
“We’re afraid she’ll make us drink the tea if we go in there,” the girl explained.
“There’s nothing for it but to be brave, I suppose,” the elf said finally. He sounded surprisingly cheerful. “Into battle, my friends. Our comrade is alone in the hands of the enemy.” He set off, whistling.
“I like him,” Taigan said, after a moment.
“So do I,” he told her. Still, he couldn’t help but remember Orien’s eyes when he saw the ring—and the fact that he had come to deliver whatever the message was himself.
He had a feeling that things had become far more complicated.
Chapter Seven
It was a while before Jamie managed to extricate himself from the ministrations of the innkeeper’s wife, who constantly insisted that the wound would need to be recleaned. He had thought it would be easy enough to show her that he was healed, but she seemed to think he’d managed a trick of some kind and jabbed at his shoulder until he was fairly sure she would re-puncture it.
She muttered something he guessed was a ward against witchcraft and began to examine her various pots of salve, at which point he snuck out to join the others.
“I think she thinks I’m a witch,” he said when he located them.
“And the tea?” Taigan asked.
“I didn’t have any of that this time—no thanks to you lot, who didn’t try to rescue me even once.”
All three of them were suddenly focused on their beer and food.
“Traitors,” the boy said darkly. “So—Orien, is it?”
“Yes.” Orien nodded at him. “Taigan, yes?”
“Jamie, actually.” He tried not to be prickly about that.
“Ah.” The elf looked confused. “Human naming conventions are very strange. Regardless, I am pleased to meet you both. What brings you to this town?”
The twins looked at each other. Jamie shrugged at his sister.
“Bad luck,” she answered.
“A fine enough answer.” Orien mopped some of the stew with his bread. “If bad luck troubles you, I wouldn’t head north. Heffog is full of it these days. Or, rather, long-needed vengeance, which tends to catch people in the crossfire.”
The boy considered this as the innkeeper brought him a bowl of stew. It hadn’t been long since their breakfast, but it seemed that anytime they sat there, they were given food—and, as a perpetually hungry seventeen-year-old, he didn’t complain.
“Perhaps we should go speak alone,” Ben suggested to Orien.
“Nuh-uh,” Taigan answered before the elf could. “You said you’re looking for a goldsmith, there are weird gold rings on things that are attacking us, and we want to know what’s going on.”
Orien blinked at her and looked at Ben. “I see you told them who you were looking for.”
“No specifics,” he said. “Although I suppose the only specific I know about this woman is her name. I don’t even know if she’s human, elvish—”
“Half-elvish,” the elf said. “Like me. You wouldn’t know it—she looks full-human—but she has the magical talent of a full-blown elf.”
“I didn’t know humans and elves had different levels of talent,” he said.
“Mmm.” Orien took another mouthful and thought for a moment. “It’s more the way they do magic. Elves can usually get the hang of it sooner or later and very few humans do, but if humans do, they tend to be quite powerful—like your friend Kural. And you, I’d guess.”
“Me?” He looked flabbergasted.
The elf looked at the twins, both of whom shrugged in response, and focused on Ben. “I thought you knew. You practically spark with magic. Didn’t you know?” A wary look settled on his face and he rummaged in one of his pockets before he withdrew an iron ring. “Give me your hand. Yes. Wear this for now.”
“Why?” Ben asked blankly. He looked at the twins, who both shrugged.
“Because you’re a walking bomb,” Orien told him sweetly. “And I’d rather not be anywhere close when your power first comes out.”
“Uh…” He stared at his hand. “Huh.”
“Anyway,” the elf said with another sideways look at the iron ring, “Josyla had exceptional talent. If you want my opinion—and you really should—it’s why she was so good at metalworking. Some of the best wizards in the world don’t do magic for its own sake. They simply use it for their passion. Hers was gold.”
“And that talent got her sold,” Ben said softly.
“Yes. It’s surprising, given how much Kerill could have made off her talent if he kept her. That’s what made me think. I checked the records and…well, let’s say her selling price was extraordinarily high and the money wasn’t even half of it. He was playing the long game and had many of the other elves in thrall to him, magically speaking.” He smiled grimly. “I’m glad the bastard’s dead, and even more glad that I could do it.”
Jamie didn’t need to look at Taigan to know she was spooked. The twins looked at their food in utter silence.
“You’re scaring them,” Ben said.
“Good,” Orien replied promptly. “Then maybe they won’t go to Heffog.”
He groaned and sounded genuinely exasperated, which Jamie liked. After their discussion, he was more ready to trust the other man—but he still felt he should keep his guard up.
“So…” The boy cleared his throat when everyone looked at him. He decided to be as neutral as he could about this. “It sounds like you found her trail.”
“Yes.” Orien gave him a tight smile and looked out into the town square. “She was bought by a sorceress, a woman who dabbled in very dark magic. Well. I say ‘dabbled.’ It was more than that. Kerill’s records weren’t very specific.”
Ben frowned. “How did you find out, then?”
“I located one of his mistresses—who I happened to know was a great deal more intelligent than he gave her credit for—and explained what I needed to know. Between the two of us, we worked it out.”
“How did you get the mistress to tell you?” Jamie asked, now suspicious. Taigan’s look said she wondered the same thing.
“I asked,” Orien said. He looked at the boy’s expression. “I asked nicely so don’t give me that look. She knew exactly who I was and what I had done, and she didn’t have any particular love for him. Also, she knew why I was asking for the information.” He shrugged. “It seems Kerill never told anyone much of anything except when he got angry. Then, he would threaten anyone in the vicinity with what he’d done to other people. Like, say, selling them to a sorceress who could control minds.” He took a sip of his ale.
“And…” The girl paused, then soldiered on. “Are you worried that she might be controlled?”
The elf went silent for a long moment before he nodded.
Taigan looked at him. Almost gently, she asked, “How can we help?”
Orien gaped at her. He was about to respond when Ben interrupted.
“You two will stay out of this.”
“The hell we will,” she retorted.
“Yeah,” Jamie added lamely.
“You will,” he said flatly. “It’s dangerous out here. That sorceress controlled the minds of however many people in Heffog, she’s turning the poor into her personal army, and if you think for a moment that she’d let her prized goldsmith go without a fight, you’re deluding yourselves. Orien and I will find a way to resolve this.”
The silence that followed almost crackled with tension. Orien closed his mouth and sat, looking unnerved.
“No,” Taigan said finally.
“No, what?” Ben glared at her.
“No, we won’t simply let the two of you go off alone to rescue this woman,” she said. “You’re right, this sorceress won’t let her go easily, which is why you need help.”
“You’re tee
nagers,” he responded sharply. “Someone has to look out for you two, not lead you into danger.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been told that danger is the only thing that will make me better,” she snapped. “That’s why Prima led me into the fight with the bear-cat-thing, it’s why… I…it’s what I need.” She seemed to have remembered that Orien didn’t understand this.
Ben sighed. “I understand that,” he said, “but I have seen some things in this world that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I don’t want to send you home traumatized.”
“I’m confused,” Orien said. “Are you ill?”
“In a way,” Taigan said. She looked at him. “And I’m supposed to face danger here. It would make me stronger and it might cure me.”
“There are many dangers,” the elf said finally. “Perhaps you need dangers that are not quite so…well, dangerous.”
“No.” She didn’t back down.
Jamie leaned back in his chair to watch. He couldn’t keep from smirking. Neither Orien nor Ben had seen his sister’s stubbornness, but they were in for a real surprise if they thought they would convince her to turn back.
“We will not discuss this around Orien,” Ben said dangerously, “who has lost his fiancée and doesn’t need her rescue to get turned into—”
“Ben.” The elf put his hand on the other man’s arm. “Think for a moment.”
He sighed. “What?”
“You saw Heffog. You saw people beaten down, rudderless, and cowardly.” Orien nodded his head in the direction of Jamie and Taigan. “These two want to help. They’re brave. Shouldn’t we encourage that?”
Frustrated, he muttered something and the elf leaned closer to say something in a low voice. When Ben started laughing, Jamie bristled, but he only nodded and looked at the twins.
“He’s right,” he said. “You two would go off and find a worse disaster if we didn’t take you along.”
“Now, wait a second—” the boy protested.
“Yes,” Taigan said flatly, “we would.”
“Taigan!”
“We’re winning! Come on!”
Her brother put his head in his hands. “I hope to God that Mom and Dad don’t hear about this or they’ll kill me.”
Chapter Eight
Unfortunately, even Orien did not know much. Over several mugs of ale, while Taigan and Jamie sparred out in the back, he shared the very few pieces of knowledge he had about the sorceress and his suspicions about Josyla.
It took an extraordinary amount of ale for him to admit them.
“The girl’s question was good,” he said finally. He held the mug as if for balance and stared blearily at the back wall. “That’s why I came. Myself, I mean.”
“Hmm?” Ben, who had been rather more restrained in his drinking, raised an eyebrow and tried not to laugh at the sight of the ever-elegant Orien swaying tipsily.
“The girl.” He tried to jerk his head at the yard and swayed drunkenly but managed to steady himself with visible effort. “This ale…strong.”
“You’ve also had about twelve mugs of it,” he pointed out.
“Have I?” the elf tipped his mug and looked intently at the bottom of it as if that might hold the answer. “Huh. It’s good. Anyway. The girl was right—about what you’ll find when you find Josyla.”
“You think she’s mind-controlled?” Ben, who could have dumped his beer on Taigan’s head when she brought it up, wasn’t surprised but he hadn’t wanted to be right about this.
“Yes and no.” Orien’s fingers had tightened around the mug. “It’s…I think she might be working for her willingly.”
“What?” That, he had not expected.
“Yeah.” His companion looked at him with a frown. “And she wasn’t my fiancée, you know. Only a friend.” The mournful way he said it showed that he, at least, had wanted it to be more.
Ben made a noncommittal noise while he took a sip of his beer.
“She…” Orien sighed.
“You loved her,” he said and cut to the chase. “She had good qualities.”
“Yes. She wasn’t a monster or anything.” The elf looked miserable. “Only…resentful. Resentful of us being servants for being bastard-born while our half-siblings were lords and ladies. Resentful that so many in the city didn’t have food. All of it. It wasn’t that she was mean. She merely saw so much cruelty and felt powerless because she would never be rich enough to help. After a while, she even looked down on herself for being a goldsmith.”
“Why?”
“Because it only helped our lord,” Orien said. “She loved her work but she said she didn’t want to enrich him.”
“Shouldn’t she feel the same way about the sorceress, then?”
“Maybe.” He looked doubtful. “The thing is…look, I couldn’t tell you why I’m so sure of this, but when I heard who had bought her—that it was a sorceress who used black magic—all I could think was that Josyla had decided to learn from her. She was clever and she’d learn all kinds of things you never expected her to from the details she needed to put into a certain piece of jewelry or an offhand comment. I’d bet she learned magic, whether the sorceress meant to teach her or not.”
Ben sighed.
“I’m only saying,” Orien said, “that you need to be careful. And…think about whether you want to do this.”
He looked at him. “If I don’t, though, you’ll always wonder.”
The elf looked away.
“And maybe you’ll try to find her yourself,” he continued quietly.
Orien said nothing.
“And you might have to make a choice you don’t want to make,” he continued, “about how to deal with her.”
Although he said nothing, his elvish features were twisted with pain.
“I’ll go,” Ben said, “and if she was tricked or coerced or anything like that, I’ll bring her home. If there’s any way, I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” Orien said quietly. He stood drunkenly. “I should get back. They need me. This was the worst time to go but I couldn’t tell a messenger what I told you. You should start with a woman named Yulia. She and the sorceress worked together.”
He held his tongue and simply nodded as he saw Orien to the door and watched him set out. From the speed with which the elf faded into the distance, he suspected that he had a travel spell of some kind on him.
Being that drunk, he’d better be careful or he’d wind up miles off course. He smiled at the thought and returned to his drink.
Once he’d drained his tankard, he left word with the innkeeper that he was going to see Yulia. The man seemed bemused that he would visit an old woman, but there was no hint of scandal in the way he nodded. Whatever she had done with the sorceress, she didn’t seem to be known as one.
Ben snuck out, hoped the twins would take time with their sparring—after all, the energy of a teenager could go almost indefinitely—and headed down the country road, whistling quietly. Despite his misgivings, or perhaps because of them, he concentrated on how beautiful the day was. The night’s rain had turned the grass and trees a brilliant green, while the blue sky and warm sun set everything off perfectly.
Yulia lived a mile or so away from the cluster of buildings that comprised the heart of the town. It was farther than he would have thought an old woman would live but then again, it sounded like she was not merely a helpless old woman.
She was working in the garden when he arrived. Herbs and vegetables were planted in neat rows without a weed in sight. A stone wall covered in lichen and moss surrounded the yard, with a flowering apple tree on one side of the gate and a pretty, thatched cottage in the center of it with smoke rising from its chimney.
The old woman stood as he came close and hobbled forward to open the gate.
“Did you know I was coming?” he asked her, confused.
“Of course. Your thoughts were loud enough for a half-addled cow to hear them.” She gave him a piercing look from under bushy brows and waved him in
. “Come on, then. The tea should be steeped.”
“Er…thank you.” He followed her along the path and into the house.
It was tiny. A little bed was covered with a patchwork quilt, a rocker at the hearth held a basket with yarn and knitting needles, and the other side of the room was taken up with a long wooden workbench covered with stacks of cloth, spools of thread, and a few jars of spices. A teapot sat on a ceramic tile with two mugs next to it.
Yulia waved him to the bed to sit while she poured them tea. She hobbled back, sat in the rocking chair, and then said baldly,
“So, it’s the goldsmith Gwyna bought, eh?”
“Do we need to have a conversation?” Ben asked. “Or have you read all my thoughts already?”
“Don’t be smart with me, young man.” She moved fretfully and her gnarled fingers closed and shifted around the warmth of the mug. “Your thoughts came through muddled—oh, clear enough for me to guess who you wanted to find, but little else. Gold, I saw, and a terrible beast. An elvish woman. But, you…who are you?”
“No one important.”
“That’s not true in the slightest,” she said at once. “You killed an emissary of the new elvish king, boy. I’d not say you’re unimportant.”
He leaned back in his chair. “How did you know that?”
“You dreamed of it last night.”
“I…” He had, and the thought that someone could hear his dreams was deeply unpleasant.
“It takes an unusual talent to hear thoughts,” she told him. “And they’ve been less clear since this was put on you.” She extended her hand to tap the iron ring. “Which brings me to your problem. You need to find Gwyna and you need to do it without her realizing who you are and why you’re there.”
Ben waited.
Yulia sighed. “She was a quiet one, Gwyna. Always quiet. She kept her thoughts hidden and worked hard. I never saw the darkness in her. There are some you know will go bad, but she wasn’t one. She was mild-mannered and nothing special to look at, with no great talent for fire or ice or any of the things that level towns. In most cases, their parents would come to me begging for help. She arrived on her own.”
Grasping The Future Page 5
