by M. Gregg Roe
The two girls now standing at the base of the bridge looked rather different from one another. Ilona wore a loose yellow blouse and knee-length brown skirt. Her dark hair was short, but with long bangs that fully covered her forehead. Iris had donned an elegant black dress, accenting it with a fine silver necklace and matching bracelets. Her longer and wavier hair bore silver hair clips. But the two girls had the same oval face with unblemished tan skin, high cheekbones, bushy eyebrows, and inquisitive brown eyes.
Iris nodded formally before speaking. “We spotted you standing here. We know we’re early.”
Ilona pointed at her sister. “She thinks we’re going somewhere fancy afterward, like Lucien’s.” She pointed at herself. “I think we’re going to The Watch. I know it’s your favorite.”
It was Audrey’s favorite restaurant, but lunch wasn’t part of the plan. “We will be visiting relatives,” she told them, “but first we need to talk about some things.”
“You’re our only living relative,” Ilona retorted, now pointing at Audrey.
Iris shook her head. “We have distant relatives in Merryton and Fisherton.”
Audrey spoke up before Ilona could object. “We do, but that’s not who I mean. Follow me.”
The two girls continued to whisper to each other as they followed Audrey to her cottage. She rolled her eyes at some of their more bizarre speculations. The two had active imaginations, but there was no way they would ever guess the truth.
Now that it was finally time to tell the two girls some of her secrets, Audrey felt anxious. She drew on her martial arts training to calm herself, slowing her breathing and relaxing her muscles as she stood facing the two chairs where her cousins sat. To their left, by the wall, Benson was curled up on his dark green bed, deep in slumber.
The reason that Ilona and Iris lived at the mansion was a bad one. A virulent disease had struck Farmerton, spreading rapidly throughout the village and soon resulting in deaths. Too weak to move, Audrey’s aunt had ordered her daughters to join several others who were fleeing north, hoping to reach Fisherton. Not all of those had survived, and those that did ended up being taken to an obscure forest village. Traveling there to retrieve her cousins remained one of Audrey’s happiest memories to this day. After so much loss, it had been a wonderful reunion.
Audrey reached into her belt pouch, pulled out an item, and held it up facing her cousins. “Who can tell me what this is?” she asked brightly.
“It’s an ugly brooch,” Ilona said, looking bored.
Iris gave her sister a disapproving look. “It’s a brooch with Andoran’s symbol on it,” she said imperiously.
“Yes,” Audrey agreed. “But Ilona is also right. It is pretty ugly.” The rounded rectangle was large and heavy, the type of brooch you would use to fasten a cloak, not wear on a blouse or dress. The symbol incised into it comprised seven straight lines that all met at right angles.
Ilona stuck out her tongue at her sister. “The seven lines are for the seven kinds of magic,” she said proudly. “Want me to list them?”
“No,” Audrey said, more annoyed than amused. “And that’s just a theory.”
“Where did it come from?” Iris asked, still staring at the brooch. “Is it magic?”
Audrey handed it to Iris, who frowned briefly before handing it to her sister. As novice spell-casters they would discern only a weak residue of white magic, not the item’s true purpose.
Ilona handed the brooch back, but Audrey didn’t put it away. Instead, she smiled and said, “This was given to our great-grandmother Helena by the man who actually fathered her daughter: Andoran.”
“This better not be one of your jokes,” Ilona warned with narrowed eyes.
“It’s not,” Iris countered, wide-eyed. “I can tell.”
Audrey nodded solemnly. “I wouldn’t joke about something like this. We all know that Andoran wasn’t a god. He was just a long-lived man with extraordinary magical abilities.”
“One who did some pretty bad things,” Ilona added. “Apparently including fathering illicit offspring.”
“Illegitimate,” Iris shot back, frowning. “It’s not illegal, just immoral.”
“To continue,” Audrey interrupted before the two started arguing semantics, “there are many other brooches like this one, each given to a woman that bore one of Andoran’s daughters.”
“Only daughters?” Ilona was incredulous.
“Good grief,” Iris said as her gaze went distant. “Helena only had one daughter—that was Karin—and she had two daughters.”
“Berna and Marilee,” Ilona said, turning pale. She looked up at Audrey. “Our mothers. Does this mean we can only have daughters?”
It was impressive that they had spotted the pattern so quickly. “Not necessarily,” Audrey assured them. “You’re three generations removed.”
“That’s a relief,” Ilona said, and Iris nodded.
“There’s more,” Audrey intoned, bracing herself for the hardest part. “The brooches aren’t just mementos. They have a purpose. Specifically, they are capable of trapping the spirits of Andoran’s descendants upon their death.”
“What are you saying?” Iris asked, her eyes wide.
After taking a deep breath, Audrey continued. “Helena passed the brooch to Karin, but she failed to pass it to her oldest daughter before she died. And no one else knew about it. That’s why it wasn’t found until… after.” She still didn’t like being reminded of what had happened to their home village. “When Karin died, this brooch trapped her spirit. And when my mother died, the brooch also trapped her spirit.”
“What about our mother?” Iris asked, and her sister nodded fervently.
“A brooch can only hold a maximum of two spirits, and Marilee died first.” The blunt statement quieted the girls briefly as it dashed their hopes. “I would have told you earlier if your mother had been the one.” Audrey had been close to her aunt, learning from her sewing skills that she still prized. Berna had struggled after the death of her husband, but she had been an excellent mother to her twin daughters.
“Are they still in there?” Ilona asked, staring at the brooch in trepidation.
Audrey shook her head as she stowed the brooch away. “Not anymore. They have new bodies now, but not normal ones.”
“And we’re going to visit them?” Ilona asked. “Where?”
Actually, all Audrey knew was that it was somewhere underground. She only had to know what a place looked like to teleport there, not the physical location. “You’ll see when we get there. And by the way, this is all secret.”
Her cousins nodded in unison.
“And how are we getting there?” Ilona asked. “Is it far?”
“I’m teleporting us there,” Audrey answered matter-of-factly.
Ilona scowled as she pointed at Audrey. “You’re not even a spell-caster.” She hesitated. “Do you have some kind of enchanted item? Is it the brooch?”
Audrey smirked. “No, and no. But an enchanted item gave me a few powers.” She struck a pose with her left hand on her hip and right arm pointing upward. “Behold! I am the great and powerful Guardian of Andoran’s Realm.” Then, before they could say anything, she teleported herself to her bedroom and listened from beside the open door.
“She wasn’t kidding!” Iris exclaimed. “Where’d she go?”
“I didn’t sense anything,” Ilona complained. “Teleportation is strong black magic.” Then she chuckled. “I’ll bet she’s close enough to hear us. Isn’t that right, cousin?”
Audrey beamed at her cousins as she stepped into view in the doorway. “You know me well. Now let’s go visit my dead mother and the grandmother who died before you two were born.”
One of these days, Audrey would do something about the room’s ugly green carpeting. (It didn’t smell great, either.) But for now, she simply let go of her cousin’s hands and watched as the two of them looked all around with wide eyes.
The spacious sitting room was seven-sided, w
ith a high ceiling that glowed softly, providing the room’s only illumination. Panels of dark wood covered the lower half of each wall. Doors of the same wood were barely visible in two of the walls. Tall bookcases fronted four walls, while the last showed a polished brass mirror the size of a door. In the center of the room, two dark green sofas faced a low wooden table with what looked like a large glass sculpture of a spider on top of it.
“My, how you two have grown!” rang Marilee’s voice in Audrey’s head, and she knew the girls were also hearing it. “It’s so good to see you.”
The girls continued to hold hands as they sought for the source of the voice. “Where did that come from?” Iris asked as her head swiveled back and forth. “It sounds kind of like Aunt Marilee.”
Speechless, Ilona pointed to the table where the “sculpture” was now waving two of its thin legs. Audrey waved at her mother as her cousins gaped. “I told you her body was different now,” she chided them.
“Not that different,” Ilona scoffed, finally letting go of her sister’s hand. “She’s a construct.”
“I am not a construct,” Marilee said in a stern voice. “I’m a human spirit that’s animating an artificial body.” Her full rotation atop the table was elegant and precise. “What do you think?”
The girls had been stunned beyond words, so Audrey spoke up. “You still look like a big glass spider with a leg missing, Mother.”
In fact, Marilee’s body comprised numerous pieces of lavender-tinted crystal. A head-sized sphere sat atop a flat disk from which sprouted seven evenly spaced, articulated legs. The sphere, which served as both head and body, was filled with tiny crystals in a variety of shapes and sizes. Marilee was now a crystalloid, one of Andoran’s many creations.
“Seven legs,” Ilona said, walking up to the table with her sister following. “And this room has seven sides.”
“Yes,” Audrey said. “Andoran had a thing for sevens. I’ll leave you three to get reacquainted. I’ll go tell Karin that you’re here.”
There were two gasps as Audrey walked through the brass mirror into a narrow passage carved from stone that led away. (The mirror’s enchantment made it permeable.) Following the passage, she soon came to a nexus where six other passages branched off and took the second one on the left. The crystalloids’ domain was rather like a maze, but Audrey knew it well now. In the next nexus she encountered a crystalloid with a deep blue tint, color being the only way to tell the creatures apart by sight.
“Guardian,” sounded the voice of an old woman in Audrey’s head. The crystalloid tilted her head forward and then back—her version of a respectful bow.
Audrey nodded back. “Do you know where I can find Karin?”
“I think she’s in observation room three,” the crystalloid replied.
“Thank you.”
Audrey took the first passage on the right. Observation rooms were still what impressed her most. The room was round, with most of the floor recessed. Off to the left was a crystalloid with a pale orange tint. “There you are, Audrey,” she said, raising up one leg. “Did you bring the twins?”
“Yes, and they’re eager to meet you.” Audrey had only a few dim memories of Karin. The woman had died young.
“I need to show you something,” Karin said, jabbing a raised leg at the center of the room. “What does that look like to you?”
The recessed floor could show a live view from above of any part of Andoran’s Realm. What it showed now was rather dull—cracked dirt with occasional patches of sad-looking vegetation. But there were also a large number of what looked like stone blocks with angled ends, seemingly identical and reddish-brown in color. They were grouped closely together, but in no apparent arrangement.
“What shape are those?” Audrey asked, unable to remember the name.
“A trapezoid, not that I would have known that when I was alive.” Karin chuckled and waved a leg. “I had to die to finally get a proper education.”
Audrey stared at the blocks. They could combine to form a straight section or to make an angled corner. That was kind of clever. “It looks like someone is building a keep, or maybe a tower,” she remarked.
“But who?” Karin asked. “There’s no sign of footprints near the blocks, and there’s nothing nearby.”
“Where is this?” It definitely wasn’t familiar.
Instead of answering, the viewpoint began to pull back, showing a wider area. When the process stopped, Audrey could see that they were looking at an island of sorts, an ellipsoid of land bounded by a wide river on one side and the Gray Forest on the other. From maps, Audrey recognized the location in the easternmost section of the Realm. And Karin was right; there was no sign of habitation or even ruins.
Karin came over to where Audrey was standing, rotating as she moved rather than walking like an insect. “We first noticed this about half a month ago. There were fewer blocks then. Every morning, there are at least ten more. We’ve watched the area overnight, and they appear one at a time, just popping into existence.”
A sense of exhilaration filled Audrey. There was potent magic at work and a mystery to be solved. The blocks didn’t look like a threat to the Realm, but you never knew. It was an opportunity to prove her worth as Guardian.
“I’ll investigate the blocks and let you know what I find,” she told Karin. “Let’s head to the sitting room so you can meet your other two granddaughters.”
Once back there, Audrey introduced Karin to the twins and then went off to the side with her mother. “You still don’t have any wrinkles or gray hairs,” Audrey told her with a silly smile.
“I’m more worried about cracks,” Marilee joked. “How are you, Audrey?”
Audrey shrugged. “Same as always. I keep pretty busy.”
“I do too. We’ve been keeping an eye on that elf like you asked us to. He takes a lot of walks.”
“So do I. He lives in a nice area.” For now, anyway.
Marilee sighed. “It does look nice. I miss the outdoors. I miss cooking and eating. I miss sex.”
“Mother!”
“Well, I do.” Marilee raised a leg and shook it. “I miss your father, too, even if he was too greedy for his own good. We fought sometimes, but he never raised a hand to me.”
That was what Audrey had always believed, but the confirmation was still a comfort. Her reaction to her father’s greed had been to become the opposite, frugal to a fault and generous to those in need.
“I miss him too,” Audrey confessed. “And Aunt Berna.”
“Well, she’d be happy to see how Ilona and Iris turned out. Who’d’ve ever thought we’d have spell-casters in our family?”
That had been a surprise, and it still made Audrey envious. She had magical powers, but they were simply grafted on. They didn’t feel natural. Or deserved.
Audrey continued to chat with her mother until she noticed Karin departing through the brass mirror. Ilona and Iris walked over to her with a look she knew well.
“We want to see what’s through there,” Ilona said, pointing once again. “Please,” Iris begged, clasping her hands together and dimpling her cheeks.
“Another time,” Audrey told them in her no-arguments voice. They had already been through enough strangeness for one day. “I know a lovely spot where there’s a waterfall and lots of bushes with edible berries. And I promise to answer more of your questions. How does that sound?”
Iris laughed. “Like I’m overdressed. Let’s go!”
[ 5 ]
New Home
It was anticlimactic. One moment Ferikellan was in the sitting room of the house that had been his home for nearly three years, and the next he was somewhere else. The change was startling, but he felt nothing otherwise. Or sensed even a trace of magic. He still didn’t understand how that was possible. Was Audrey somehow suppressing his ability to sense magic? That seemed more likely.
“I’m going to explore,” Vurk announced, already on the way to the oddly shaped room’s only door.
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Audrey waved at the mass of crates and bundles she had transported earlier. “Is that everything?”
Ferikellan bowed formally to her. “Yes, it is. Thank you, Guardian.”
“I’ll be back in a day or two.” She flashed a winsome smile. “Enjoy the indoor toilets.” And then she was gone.
He still wasn’t sure what to make of the young woman, but her power was undeniable. Audrey not only teleported but did it casually, as if it were something perfectly normal. From what he had read, teleportation magic required careful concentration. And even then there were risks.
Only when she came for them had Audrey mentioned the name of their new home: the Triangular Keep. Stone towers were generally built with either a round, square, or rectangular cross-section, not an equilateral triangle. That meant that all the rooms would be oddly shaped. It was going to take some getting used to.
The surrounding village was known as Tritown, a name almost certainly derived from that of the keep at its center. That was also unexpected, but he had refrained from asking her about it. The answers would come in time. Well, assuming that an ogre didn’t step on him.
Built-in oak bookcases and cabinets lined most of the room’s walls. The furniture comprised two large rectangular tables, two desks, a small sofa with dark blue upholstery, and two simple chairs. It was so perfect for a laboratory that he suspected that the keep’s original owners had used the room for just that. There were even some odd stains visible on the wood plank floor, something that all researchers who dabbled in alchemy ended up with. But otherwise everything was clean and dust-free.
Ferikellan walked over to the nearest of the two windows and pushed open the wooden shutters. Beyond the village’s scattered houses and stands of trees, he could indeed see the Gray Forest. He estimated it to be no more than two miles distant. That was excellent.
