by T. K. Kiser
So screamed the crying daffodil
Who’d seen before how torches kill...
On stage, Ansa cried. She snapped herself from her roots and chased after the moth on the wind, singing,
“You don’t know, Butterfly?
Can’t you see that you’re going to die?
I’ve been watching you from the ground
And you haven’t seen me cry...”
“Does Ansa have any other scenes after this?” Carine whispered to Giles.
He leaned over. “No, the daffodil dies at this part of the show.”
David, eyes fixed on the stage, stifled a yawn. It was surprising how much that made him look like Marcel.
“Where will Ansa go then? We need to talk to her.”
“I don’t know, but if we wait, we will miss her. Performers never meet the audience in Verdiford. It is said to break the fourth wall.”
“For the sake of your pretty wings
And the sweet melodies you sing
And for the daisies that you might land on
Please come down and carry on.”
“We have to catch Ansa right when she goes off stage.”
David raised both brows. “Are you crazy, Carine? Here, storytelling is sacred. We can’t go backstage. We’re guests.”
“This may be our only chance to find out about Firebrand, to find out if the sorcerer following us has any weaknesses at all.”
To the annoyance of the fauns behind them, they stood. Carine snaked her way around the audience to the side curtains. The orchestral music pounded in their ears as they approached.
“I’ve been uprooted so I might fly here
And now I know I don’t have long,
So I’m begging you, dear butterfly,
Come down and carry on.”
“Hurry,” Giles said, “that’s the death scene.”
Carine wound around the orchestra and tucked through the flower curtain as her heart beat.
“Hey! What are you doing back here?” growled the man who’d played the crow. He was loitering by the side curtains eating what looked like a sandwich. On stage, Ansa crumpled.
“Excuse us,” said Giles, pushing past the crow. “We are royalty.”
Carine stumbled behind the willow branch that Ansa had passed.
Inside, the tree was a dressing room. Elegant costumes hung from hangers on branches close to the trunk. At the base of the trunk was a desk with a stool for sitting. White and blue paint pooled in small containers next to a lantern that flickered at the base of a mirror.
“Ansa!” Carine called out.
The faun turned, surprised for the hint of a second. She looked Carine over. “The princes of Navafort,” Ansa said matter-of-factly, assessing them. Her voice was peaceful. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Carine bowed, not quite knowing why.
Ansa bowed back to Carine, just as the crow bumbled in behind them.
“Are these people bothering you?”
She shook her head serenely. Bells seemed to jingle. “They are my guests.”
The crow grunted and ducked away.
“You must be Prince David, the middle child. And you, Prince Giles, the youngest.” They nodded, in turn, but Giles didn’t look too happy being reminded of his birth order, grumbling something about only six minutes. “But you, I don’t know.”
“Carine Shoemaker of North Esten,” she said, and then spit out her question. “What do you know about Firebrand?”
“Quite a lot.”
“Good, because his imitator – not a centaur, but a man – is following us. He’s already killed our friend, and we need to know how to fight him.”
“I see.” She clasped her ring-covered, long-fingered hands. “The legends of Wyre must not be well known in Navafort, nor here either.”
“But do you know—?”
Ansa waved the question away. “Yes, yes. I know the tale.” She sat and crossed one of her hairy legs over the other. “Firebrand was a doctoral student in Wyre before the fall. He had great ambition—too great, perhaps. For reasons unknown—though I suspect he was frustrated by his failed experiments—he presented his university false information and invented sources in his final thesis. The university dismissed him, but he was determined to make a name for himself.
“Firebrand traveled north, recruiting a young human apprentice on his way. His goal was to study dragons, so he went to the one spot in this realm where a dragon can reliably be found.”
“Luzhiv’s cave,” David said, his eyes wide.
Ansa nodded. “For more than a year, Firebrand took detailed notes and made meticulous drawings in a journal. When folk offered their hearts to Luzhiv, Firebrand watched from a precarious distance and recorded everything. When others ran to the cave to set their purses or swords around Luzhiv in hopes of enchantment, Firebrand watched, noting all.”
“Dragon’s bane,” David whispered. “Did he make all of these notes in pen and ink?”
Ansa nodded.
“I have some of his drawings in my room. They must be his, but I never knew,” David said, nearly breathless.
“Could very well be,” Ansa said. “One of Navafort’s kings collected part of the Firebrand collection in a political trade many years ago.”
“A centaur in Midway told us Firebrand had magic.”
“Magic…” She smiled to herself. “Do all of you call the mysterious powers by that name?”
“We know the correct terms—pronunciation and mispronunciation,” Giles said.
“Yes, Manakor is too deep a language to be explained by throat, tongue, lips, and mouth. A word in Manakor encompasses all that has been and all that is called to be. Only dragons have the ability to speak this language.”
“The Gift of Calling,” Carine said.
Ansa nodded yet again. “The Heartless Ones, on the other hand, trade for their power, and they can only speak Manakor Luzhivam, which means, in the name of Luzhiv.”
“Firebrand doesn’t speak Manakor Luzhivam, does he?” David asked.
“No, he learned a new way to gain the power, and quite by accident. While Firebrand studied Luzhiv, the dragon flew off and fought the rose dragon.”
“That was Luzhiv’s most recent attack before Kavariel.”
“That’s right, Prince David. Luzhiv was bleeding when he returned, and some of his blood sprinkled the snow. Firebrand, for the sake of knowledge, tasted the blood. He recorded his observations. That is the last entry he ever made.”
“Riolo said Firebrand destroyed his home city,” Carine said.
“He did. But we know about it because his apprentice, Jon, wrote down what happened afterward: that the dragon’s blood gave the Firebrand the Gift of Calling.”
“He could pronounce,” Giles said.
“No”—Ansa raised her finger—“only almost. Nine of the ten dragons, including your Kavariel, pronounce. They open their mouths and the Etherrealm speaks. Unlike them, Firebrand could only mispronounce, but his Manakor was so close to the true word that it confused nature. In his studies, Firebrand had learned sufficient Manakor vocabulary to make use of his power. According to Jon, the power poisoned him.
“I believe the task of dragons, given them by the higher realm, is to remind creation of its name, to call everything to order and beauty, affording this realm a glimpse of the Etherrealm’s glory.”
Carine’s heart pounded. A month ago, this all would have been terrifying. It still was in a way, but now it also sounded true—even beautiful.
“When a dragon calls a name, he amplifies the call from the Etherrealm. In a sense, dragons remind nature what it’s for.”
“Except for Luzhiv,” added Giles.
Ansa nodded, pleasing the young prince. “Luzhiv is the disobedient dragon. He chooses to avoid the Etherrealm, and he spreads his disobedience and power through the Heartless Ones. Luzhiv has the power to pronounce and to purely remind nature, but he doesn’t do so. Instead, he perverts his words wi
th his own will and plans. The mispronunciation is subtle.
“Nature mistakes his call for the true call and responds obediently. Firebrand followed his lead. Instead of submitting his will to the Etherrealm, Firebrand imposed his own ideas on the world. The power proved addicting.
“Firebrand returned to his home city, but the university refused his new work, claiming his name had been corrupted by previous cheating. Firebrand destroyed the city. His apprentice, mortified, tried to convince Firebrand to stop mispronouncing. It annoyed the scholar, who insisted that everything was done in the name of science, and that he knew what he was doing.
“One day, Firebrand grew so tired of Jon’s incessant nagging that he poisoned Jon’s drink with his own blood, which was filled with the power of dragon blood. As soon as Jon drank it, he unintentionally received the Gift of Calling too. Firebrand gloated, but Jon swore never to mispronounce the way that Firebrand did. This upset Firebrand, who had thought he would win Jon over.
“Firebrand attacked him. He started with stones and vines. He shouted for Jon to defend himself. He did not. At least, not by speaking Manakor; instead, the apprentice tore out of the vines that wrapped around his neck. He sheltered himself behind rocks as shields. He dug into his bag and pulled out a pen.”
Carine’s heart pounded, but David asked the question. “What did he do with the pen?”
Ansa smiled. “Words have power. Jon had been studying his master’s work, so he could read and write the language of the Etherrealm. He wrote the word order on a nearby leaf, but his activity only made Firebrand angrier.
“Firebrand uprooted and raised a tree to launch at the apprentice. Then, Jon did a brilliant thing. He pronounced. I’ll tell you, he did not mispronounce. He did not impose a single drop of his will on that word. He submitted his will to that of the Etherrealm, and instead of verbally calling nature to order, which would risk mispronunciation, he relied completely on the Manakor written on the leaf.
“He touched the word. Jon called nature back to the splendor that was intended for it, just as nine of the dragons do. They say that Firebrand could not compete. Even though he yelled and yelled his butchered Manakor to launch the uprooted tree, nature heard the true call to order over Firebrand’s noise. The tree did as trees should do. Instead of flying across the sky, it simply returned to earth. It fell, crushing Firebrand beneath it.
“Jon wrote of the tragedy. He did call it a tragedy, for even though he hated the poison of the power, he writes that he loved Firebrand like a father. That is where your kingdom’s wishstone trinkets originate, actually. They come from centaur country, from this old legend, but by now, Navafort has adopted the tradition as its own and reduced it to mere superstition.”
“What happened to Jon?” asked Carine.
“He disappeared. No one ever met him. We know him only through his records. The journal itself was found in southern Padliot decades ago. I always thought we would hear from him eventually, that he would turn out rotten like Firebrand had. But he never did.”
Carine’s face felt cold. A slew of details swirled around her head, feeling as related and conflicting as opposite poles on a magnet. Her granddad had the same name as Firebrand’s apprentice and his book was found in the same region where her granddad lived. It couldn’t be that Firebrand and her granddad had anything to do with each other. Could it?
Ansa looked at Carine. “Are you ill?
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Come on,” David said, watching her with concern. He placed his hand on the small of her back. “Let’s go back to our rooms.”
Carine held out her hand. “Wait. Firebrand is a centaur, and he’s dead, so he can’t be the one that attacked us. But there’s still the question of his apprentice. How old is he? How long ago was this?”
Ansa thought. “Jon would be in his seventies now, if he’s alive.”
“Then the sorcerer can’t be Jon either,” David said. “He moves too fast to be that old. He looks and sounds younger.”
It was difficult to imagine Carine’s developing theory as reality. It would have been possible for Granddad to be Firebrand’s apprentice. Her granddad had died from a heart attack when she was younger, but if he hadn’t, he would be in his seventies now, like Ansa said. He also had an abhorrence of magic that matched the apprentice’s philosophy, which he had passed down to his son Didda. Carine thought back to the sorcerer; he smelled like home and wore leather gloves like Didda.
“Jon could have fed his blood to someone else,” Giles said, “or what if he has an heir?”
Ansa thought. “I suppose it’s possible.”
Whereas Granddad would have been too old to be the sorcerer, Didda was the right age. Carine braced herself against the tree trunk, determined to disprove her crazy suspicion. There had to have been an occasion when she saw Didda and the sorcerer at the same time. There had to be some proof that Didda was not the sorcerer. But during each action of the sorcerer’s, Didda was nowhere to be found. When Selius died, Didda was out of the house. When the sorcerer attacked the Bastion, Mom hadn’t seen Didda for an hour.
But even though his whereabouts weren’t accounted for, it didn’t necessarily mean that Didda was the one. After all, Didda would never kill anyone. He would never terrorize a city or threaten his daughter. Dragon’s bane, he would never even go near a Manakor word. That wasn’t at all the gentle father she knew.
It couldn’t be him, it couldn’t.
The crowd whistled and clapped as the performers—minus Ansa—took their final bows.
“You have a question?” said Ansa, studying Carine’s face.
Carine pushed herself off the bark. “You said the power poisons. Can it change a person’s heart? Can it make a good person kill?”
She wished with all her heart the answer would be no, never.
Ansa met her gaze. “Mispronunciation turns order to chaos. Using that power makes a person as sick—or worse—than the darkest Heartless One.”
40 Gift or Trade
Carine was glad to put some distance between her and Verdiford the next day. Her muscles felt weak as she swayed front and back on the horse. When they stopped for lunch, she rested against a sycamore tree, the crown of her head against the bark. Staring at the sky, she slowly exhaled, but the slow-moving clouds couldn’t sort out the jumbled questions plaguing her.
“What’s wrong with you?” David dropped a green apple from Lord Tauno on her lap and sat down.
“Nothing.” Carine smoothed her skirt along her legs, placing the apple on the ground. Her stomach was already in knots; adding food to the equation wouldn’t help.
“Well, if you need to talk about anything, I recommend Giles—very sympathetic.”
Carine snorted.
“Of course, there’s always his handsome older brother.”
“Who, Marcel?”
David grinned. His eyes, when they met hers, were bright as stars. He peacefully closed them and leaned back over the grass, adjusting his arm where the sycamore root threatened to discomfort him.
“Actually”—Carine took a breath—“I have a favor to ask.”
“Ask away.” He pushed himself up onto his arms.
“Do you mind if I borrow the wishstones?”
David pretended to clean out his big ear. “Am I hearing this? Didn’t you cut off your hair because you heard that some people thought hair and magic were connected?”
“I didn’t know what I was talking about. Please, David.” She held out her hand.
He looked at her open palm but didn’t budge. “You hate enchanted things.”
She shrugged. “A wishstone itself has no inherent magic. I know that now. The only thing special about a wishstone is the Manakor word. I want to look at the words.”
David pulled his drawstring bag from his pocket as slowly as possible and dramatically plopped it into her open palm.
“Thank you,” Carine said, pocketing the bag in her surcoat.
“I thought you wanted to see the words.”
“I will, later.”
David laughed. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re going to dump them in a river or something.” He reached across to her pocket, but she pulled away. His forearm rested on her leg.
“I won’t, I promise. Maybe I would have before, but now I understand better—really.”
“Interesting ploy: you pretend to have this huge change of heart, and little by little, you get rid of every enchanted item we have with us. I see what’s going on.” He grinned and reached across her.
She pushed his arm away, so he couldn’t take the wishstones back. But David was quick. He reached over, and laughing, yanked the drawstrings from her pocket. The bag whipped out.
“Ha!” he said, and then his face fell.
The green vial of gullon blood had fallen on the ground when he pulled out the wishstones. Carine’s heart sank as David’s eyebrows contracted. Carine quickly put her hand over the vial that lay in the dirt.
“Dragon’s bane,” said David, his voice low.
“I can explain.” Her throat felt thick.
David let the bag of wishstones go and snatched up the vial. “You lied to me.”
“David—”
“You stole this from me. I trusted you!” His knuckles whitened over the vial.
“Please, David, I was trying to protect you.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” David stood, his jaw tense.
Carine felt too weak—too unworthy—to stand, so she pleaded from the ground. “You can’t feed it to the dragon. You’ll die.”
“You think you’re so much better? This was my mission, Carine. You can’t steal it from me!” David’s voice broke.
“I wasn’t trying to—” she stopped. David had the blood now. He was going to die saving the dragon. Even if he hated her, she still had to stop him. “I took the blood because even though you can’t save Kavariel, I can,” she lied. “My cloak is fireproof. I thought that while you and Giles get the flame, I can safely deliver the blood.”
