“So, if what you say is true, how does that help us?” he asked Ellas.
She pulled up her legs, rested her chin on her knees and looked up at him speculatively.
“It helps because magic is malleable. You cannot change a dragon, for example, because it is what it is. The magic is set and permanent. But you can change something that magic is acting upon.”
Aiden frowned at that statement and Ellas sighed and stood up.
“Allow me to explain it so that even you can understand,” she said condescendingly.
“Ellas, be nice,” Chao muttered.
The sprite looked at him in surprise.
“I am being nice,” she told him. “Do you think that I explain myself to others very often? Chao, you must know me better than that by now.”
“Yes, that is true, I suppose.”
“Of course it is.”
Ellas stretched and her wings reappeared in all of their colorful glory.
“Now, warrior, pay attention. If a magic-user enchants an object, a jewel, say, or some other item, that object is enchanted forever. But,” she held up her forefinger, “if that same caster then decides to disenchant that object, it is no longer magical. Understand?”
“Certainly.”
“Wonderful. We are making progress.”
“But we killed the werewolf who passed along his curse to us. So to follow your logic, doesn't that mean that the spell, if that's what it is, is permanent?”
Ellas shook her head.
“Quite the reverse, actually. Normally when a magic-user dies, their spells die with them. Depending on the spell, of course. If your blacksmith died, then the enchanted weapons that he has created would continue to be magical because he forged them and imbued them with his power during the process. But once their creator was no more, someone else could then alter the magic upon those weapons or negate it entirely. They are no longer connected to their maker. Now do you understand?”
Aiden felt a sudden surge of excitement.
“Are you saying that, when the werewolf who made us this way died, his curse became changeable?”
“Exactly! Ah, you've grasped it. Very good, young man. You have surprised me. Perhaps you are more intelligent than I gave you credit for.”
Ellas glanced at Chao, who was shaking his head, and she shrugged.
“What? I'm being nice, aren't I?”
“For you? Yes, I suppose you are.”
“Then how do we break the spell?” Aiden asked eagerly.
“Ah. Well, that is the problem with my comparison. You and your friend are not unfeeling objects to be disenchanted at will. You are alive. If somehow someone was able to remove your curse as it is, you would probably die instantly. It is a part of your very cells and tearing it away would be fatal.”
“Oh damn,” Aiden said softly. “Then all of this talk was for nothing?”
“Now now,” Ellas said, shaking a finger at him. “Not so fast, warrior.”
She leaped into the air and hovered between Aiden and Chao, her wings flapping frantically.
“I said that the magic couldn't be removed. I never said that it could not be altered.”
“Altered? How?”
“A powerful enough magic-user could change the spell's nature. It would not harm you because the magic would still be there, but it would change how the spell actually worked.”
She flitted forward and stopped about a foot away from Aiden's face. Seen up close, she was even more beautiful than the man realized.
Ellas smiled at him and he wondered if the sprite could read his mind.
“Your fate could finally be in your own hands, young man,” she told him. “You and your partner could be the ones to decide if and when you became werewolves. Your natures would still have to be let loose occasionally; that is the essence of the spell. But you could release that savage spirit in battle instead of under the light of a full moon. And you could control that monstrous side of yourselves, not the other way around.”
“Why would we have to release the beast inside of us?” Aiden asked. “Couldn't we just bury it deep and let it sleep forever?”
“No, that would be futile,” Ellas told him firmly. “You are werewolves, and you always will be. That side of you must be allowed its freedom or, magic or not, it will eventually force its way to the surface. And that could have tragic consequences. But if you released it occasionally, you would be the ones to control it. Isn't that enough for you? How much more do you want, hmm?”
Her voice took on a hard edge and Aiden held up a hand to stave off her anger.
“Of course it is enough, Ellas. And I appreciate your clear and concise explanation of the nature of our curse. You have been incredibly helpful.”
“Have I? Well now, thank you for acknowledging that,” the sprite said, clearly delighted by the compliment.
Her irritation dissipated as quickly as it had come and Aiden was reminded of the mercurial nature of the little creature.
“Now the question is, who is capable of altering the spell?” he wondered.
Ellas smiled and spun around in mid-air. She pointed at Chao and giggled.
“He is,” she chortled. “My friend here is the only magic-user in the world who can change your curse, as you call it. His ability to summon creatures can be used to pull forth your inner beast and alter it to allow you to become your own master.”
Chao stared back at her silently, with no expression on his face.
Ellas put her hands on her hips and glared at him, clearly miffed by his lack of reaction.
“If he chooses to do so, that is,” she added with a slight edge in her voice.
“That will do,” the summoner stated evenly. “You may leave now, Ellas. I am sure that your sisters miss you terribly.”
There was an awkward moment of silence before the sprite said anything.
“Fine then. And you are welcome, by the way. I didn't have to come here and answer the werewolf's questions, you know. I...”
Chao made a sharp gesture and the sprite vanished, leaving behind a sprinkle of glittering dust that wafted to the ground.
“Um, what was all that about?” Aiden asked carefully. “Are you two not getting along?”
The summoner sighed and gave him an apologetic smile.
“Ellas likes to feel that she is in charge, as you may have noticed. And sometimes she oversteps herself. I asked her to come here to explain things to you, not to try to give us orders. If I do not catch that sort of thing quickly, she can become insufferable very quickly.”
“Will she be okay? She won't hold a grudge or anything, will she?”
Chao chuckled as he raised his cup to his lips.
“Not at all,” he replied after taking a sip of his tea. “Sprites are emotional, but they are naturally light-hearted and happy. She will forget her irritation with me very quickly, I assure you.”
He put down his cup again and adjusted his robe.
“You know, they are an amazing race, the sprites. Quite different from the other members of the fay: the pixies and dryads, all of the other races. Did you know that there are no male sprites?”
“Really?” Aiden replied, fascinated. “Then how do they reproduce?”
“Ellas won't say. I did ask once and she became quite offended by the question. Apparently it is considered bad manners to discuss it. But they are the only fay like that. The other races have both sexes.”
He frowned and tapped his lips with a forefinger.
“Actually, I'm told that brownies have three. Isn't that amazing? I wonder how that works.”
“So pixies, dryads, brownies, all of those creatures really exist?”
“And many more. I am still learning about all of them,” Chao told him enthusiastically. “I could spend several lifetimes researching all of the magical races and I would still have more to discover.”
Aiden smiled at him. Chao was such a private and demure person that it was surprising to see him showing suc
h pleasure openly.
“Then I guess you were fortunate that your talent lets you summon exotic creatures like them,” he said.
“I agree. Whichever god is responsible for my gift, I owe them a huge debt. Since I lost Lei,” he glanced over at the painting, “my many friends from the magical worlds have filled some of the emptiness he left behind. No one can ever replace him, of course, but I could not imagine what my life would be like without them.”
“I'm relieved to know that you are not alone while you go forward without him,” Aiden told him. “Grief can be such a debilitating thing to deal with. I'm sure that all of us who survived the Night of Burning lost someone who was dear to us in the carnage. Friends, family members, lovers; the horror of the dragons was compounded by the death of so many we cared about.”
“And you?” Chao asked gently. “Did you lose people you cared about?”
“Yes. So did Malcolm. Our hometown, Renfrew, was destroyed by a horde of drakes the day after the dragons returned. It was too small for them to attack personally, I suppose, so they sent their servants to kill us all.”
He stared darkly past Chao into space.
“Our families were slaughtered like cattle. The irony is that we were spared because the townspeople were afraid of the Changes we were going through and isolated us. We were hidden away underground and actually had no idea that people were dying horribly right above our heads.”
Aiden looked at the other man, his expression one of bitter regret.
“Can you see the tragic irony of it? The only two men in town who might have fought off the drakes were locked away by the very people that they might have saved. Somewhere the lords of Darkness were laughing that day.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, grief is not reserved for any one person, is it?” Chao said sadly. “But surely you must realize by now, all these years later, that you and Malcolm could not have fought barehanded against a pack of drakes, don't you? Maybe you could have killed one of them, if you had both fought it at once and not been torn apart immediately. But more than one? Aiden, you would have been slaughtered too.”
“Yes, but we would have died with our people,” Aiden seethed. “We wouldn't have had to face the devastation of the world alone.”
“Alone? But you and Malcolm had each other, did you not?” Chao asked. “At least you had that comfort. Like my brother and I, or Tamara and Sebastian. And a few others. Do you not think that, in some small way, we were blessed more than many other survivors? Think of Simon O'Toole and how alone he must have felt after his city fell.”
Aiden reluctantly acknowledged Chao's point.
“Yes, that's true enough, I suppose. But I will never forget the day that Malcolm and I left our basement retreat, mostly because we hadn't seen anyone for a few days and were running out of food, to find the town littered with the dead. It was like a waking nightmare. What made it even worse was the fact that we didn't even know what had killed them all. There were paw prints all over the place, massive prints that weren't like anything we'd ever seen before.”
He smiled slightly.
“Malcolm actually had a theory that maybe a pack of lions or tigers had escaped from a traveling circus and had ravaged the town. Ridiculous in hindsight, of course, but the mind reaches for some sort of explanation when faced with something so unbelievable.”
He finished his tea and stared at Chao.
“I'm not here to sift through painful memories,” Aiden told him firmly. “No offense. So let's get back to this problem of ours, shall we? Ellas thinks that you can alter the magic that has cursed us. Can you?”
Chao pondered the pile of books on the table between the two men.
“Yes, it may be possible. I would have to do some research to see what spells I would need to employ, which would take time. But if Ellas claims that I am capable of adjusting the spell, then I have no doubt that she is correct. Sprites understand magic in a way that few other races do.”
Aiden sighed in relief.
“Amazing. So you'll do it? Try to figure out a solution to our curse?”
Chao looked over at him and shook his head slowly.
“No,” he said evenly. “I will not.”
When Malcolm got back to his quarters after he had finished checking on the guards, he found Aiden pacing around the living room like a caged tiger. He stopped abruptly in the doorway, a sudden feeling of déjà vu making him shudder.
Aiden used to pace just like that when they were locked away in isolation in Renfrew, so many years before. They hadn't been prisoners, really, but they had agreed to stay away from the townspeople until someone clever could figure out why their bodies were changing so dramatically. Aiden had hated it and had stalked around the place every day for hours. It had driven Malcolm nuts.
And that's what he was seeing again. Aiden's expression was as dark and angry as it had been then too. It was a look that was quite foreign to him. Perhaps it was his Korean heritage or his gentle nature, but Aiden was not as quick to anger as Malcolm was. He was normally the calm voice of reason when things started going wrong. Well, he looked anything but calm now.
“Hey there,” Malcolm said with a forced smile. “What's going on?”
Aiden stopped abruptly and silently glared at him from across the room.
Malcolm walked in and closed the door behind him. He stood there and tried to gauge Aiden's mood and the reason for it. But it was impossible to figure out what had set him off, because hardly anything ever did.
“Don't just stare at me, Aiden,” the big man said patiently. “Why are you so angry? Was it something I did? If it is, I'm sorry, all right?”
Aiden scowl faded slowly, to be replaced by a reluctant grin.
“Never apologize for doing something wrong until you know what it is,” he told the big man. “I hate it when you do that. And no, I'm not mad at you.”
Malcolm relaxed a bit and walked over to a sofa near the window and collapsed into it.
“Well, that's a relief,” he said. “So what's with all the pacing? What's happened?”
Aiden abruptly turned around and leaned back against a bookshelf. He slipped his hands into his pockets and released a long, slow breath.
“It's Chao. I went to see him. You know, about our little problem?”
Malcolm reached up unconsciously and touched his pendant.
“Yeah, I know. And what? Bad news?”
“Not at first, no. Ellas actually showed up and explained why she thought that our curse was actually more of a magical spell than a disease.”
“That sounds promising,” Malcolm exclaimed with a hopeful smile.
“It did. But then she told me that Chao was the only one who might be able to alter the spell and change it so that we could control our inner beasts.”
“Really? That's amazing!”
Aiden shook his head and the smile slipped from Malcolm's face.
“What's wrong? Are you saying that Chao can't do it?”
“I'm saying that he won't do it,” Aiden said harshly. “He dismissed the sprite as if he was mad about that she had said, which you know is totally not like him, and then told me that he wouldn't try to help us.”
Aiden shook his head and looked down at the floor, his mane of hair falling to hide his face.
“Just like that. One minute I was filled with optimism and the next minute that hope was dashed and gone, just like that.”
“But...but he can't do that!” Malcolm said angrily. “He's supposed to be our friend. Doesn't he understand what this means to us? What it means to live under a curse twenty-four seven?”
“Maybe he doesn't care,” Aiden replied dispiritedly. “He wouldn't say. After he said no, Chao just asked me to leave and didn't say another word.”
“And you just left?” Malcolm asked incredulously.
Aiden pushed back his hair and gave his partner a dark look.
“What did you want me to do? Beat his agreement out of him?”
“Well no,
but...”
“It's his choice, Mal, not ours,” Aiden said.
He walked over to the window and squinted out through the sunlight. He folded his arms and stared blankly into the distance.
“If it's no, then it's no,” he continued, now just sounding tired. “What else is there to say?”
Malcolm crossed the room to join him at window. He put a hand on Aiden's shoulder and squeezed gently.
“Are you sure? I could go and speak with him, maybe convince him to change his mind.”
“Don't. Chao is a little...fragile. More so since Lei's death. If we tried to force him to help us, it would just make things worse.”
He gave Malcolm a quick smile.
“Hey, we've lived with this condition for a decade now, right? If we have to deal with it going forward, then we will. So, how did your circuit of the guard posts go?”
Malcolm could tell that Aiden wanted to change the subject and accepted it. He walked over to the heavy couch facing the window and sat down with a thud. The couch squealed in protest.
“They're all fine. I apologized to the two at the gate and smoothed that whole thing over. The others are still a bit skittish since Liliana died fighting the primal, but they'll be okay.”
“Well, that's one bit of good news, I suppose. How's our favorite ginger dealing with everything?”
“Donny?” Malcolm grinned. “He's fine. Steady as always. The others look up to him a lot and he's clever enough to know that. So he keeps himself on an even keel and that trickles down to the rest of the guards. That man's a blessing.”
Aiden nodded thoughtfully, still looking out of the window.
“Yes he is. We need more like him. Our troops are getting younger and more inexperienced all the time, you know. Every time we lose a veteran, whether through violence or because they step down to pursue some other career, we have to bring in a raw recruit and start all over again. It makes members like Donny even more valuable.”
The Werewolves of Nottinghill Page 6
