‘Nadira Armonia, yes. She was your great-grandmother.’
‘I… Oh.’
‘She had a theory regarding the perfection of a spell which–’
‘I’m an Armonia?!’ Krystal burst out. ‘You’re an Armonia? You are Cadenza Armonia. How–’
‘And you are, correctly, Krystal Armonia. And we are, as far as I’m aware, the last of our family anywhere in Draconia.’
‘But–’
‘Perhaps we should sit down, calmly, and talk about… all of this, rather than continuously interrupting each other.’
‘That would be good,’ Felicia said. ‘I’m going to get whiplash looking between the two of you at this rate.’
Krystal glowered at Felicia. ‘Okay. Okay, we’ll sit down and talk. I want it all. The whole story. I want to know how I ended up in an orphanage.’
Cadenza nodded. ‘The whole story. I hadn’t really wanted to explain all of it, but…’ Her gaze swept around the room, pausing briefly over each of the misfits. ‘But I think you need to hear all of it. Perhaps Nadira did have something after all…’
~~~
‘Once upon a time…’
‘Seriously?’ Krystal asked, interrupting Cadenza’s flow before she had really started.
Cadenza glowered at her daughter, though there was no heat in it. They had decided that waiting for after the evening meal was a good idea: the story was, according to Cadenza, going to be a long one and the girls had spent several hours wandering through the ruins. Krystal and Trudy had helped with the cooking, and that had been such a normal thing to do with someone that Krystal was having a hard time maintaining her edge of anger. Or maybe it was just that she was not the kind of girl to stay angry for long. Whatever, they had eaten and were now sitting around Cadenza’s ‘lounge’ with a goblet of wine each. And it was story time.
‘“Once upon a time” is a narrative convention used to indicate that what follows happened so long ago that, even assuming it’s true at all, no one remembers it enough to be sure,’ Cadenza stated.
‘Recorded history goes back a long way,’ Krystal said.
‘Yes, recorded history does, but then you have the matter of who did the recording.’
‘Whoever survived to do it,’ Ramona said. ‘One of the prizes of winning is that you get to paint yourself as the good guy.’
‘Precisely, Ramona Rose. Though, even recorded history is not entirely unkind to the Armonia family. However, for the more pedantic listener, some two thousand years before our current age, Draconia was plunged into an era of terrible warfare.’
‘The Age of War,’ Krystal said.
‘That’s what we call it now, but it’s not an especially accurate term. Dragons under the banners of the royal families, and others, had been fighting for generations. The Skylords and Silvertrees were less involved, hidden away in their mountains and wastelands. The Nightskys concerned themselves, for the most part, with seeking out new magic to throw at the Armonias. The Scarlins were determined to unite the southern continent under their banner, but they relied too much upon the Verdantas for food, and the Goldstems were strategically difficult to reach in their jungles. The Age of War began, slowly, when population pressures led to shortages of food, difficulties with water supply, and other resource issues.’
Krystal nodded. ‘And thus began about three hundred years of war.’
‘Well, yes, but you have to remember that warfare was very seasonal back then. Frequently, the “wars” came down to raiding parties grabbing resources. Cattle raids, ambushes on caravans, and sometimes there would be open sieges and pitched battles, but those were the exceptions. Everywhere except for what is now Concordance. I won’t say that the Armonias ran some form of utopian community here, but they could supply food and water to their population, and that population was happy for the most part. Both the Nightskys and the Scarlins mounted attacks on the island, but they were pushed back, often before they could even land.’
Cadenza paused, sipping her wine. She frowned. ‘Now, this prosperity was down to magic. The Armonia family had figured out a way to utilise the magical talent of all their citizens in the creation of spells which could have huge effects, but it had its limitations. Long, complex rituals were needed. It was said that they used a corpus of magic which no other magi understood. It was said that the family had learned this magic from demons. Whatever the truth of the matter, their magic had problems which they sought to solve through the creation of a magical object of great power.’
‘The Crown of Harmony,’ Krystal said.
‘Which brought about the end of the Age of War,’ Felicia added, ‘and began eighteen hundred years of peace.’
Cadenza smiled. ‘The Crown of Harmony. It embodied the magic they had used for generations, creating a bridge between all the members of the Armonia family. With it upon the head of the family’s matriarch, she was granted enormous magical power, both vast strength and incomparable knowledge. Through the power of the crown and the Armonias’ innate diplomatic skills, the need for war was diminished and peace was negotiated wherever dragons controlled the land. Many of the innovations in magic which made our current lives possible happened in that time, the Age of Harmony. The Guild of Magic Users and the Weather Bureau were founded in that time. But everything comes to an end.’
‘History says that the Armonias began using the crown to gain power over all the other families,’ Krystal said. ‘Over every dragon, in fact.’
‘History neglects to mention why that happened.’ Cadenza paused again, frowning once more. ‘Uh, I should point out I’m not that old and I’m telling a story told to me by someone who did not witness these events either. My story could be just as wrong as, I believe, the common version of history is. It’s just that my version tends to have details in it which are lacking in the official version.’
‘Okay.’
‘Good. For some eighteen centuries, the Armonias wielded the crown fairly, bringing harmony and prosperity to Draconia and asking nothing more for that than to be left alone, just as they had been before the wars began. The Nightskys pestered for knowledge of the crown’s power, but it was a secret the Armonias would not give up. They feared what would happen if the crown’s power fell into the wrong hands. After a while, the pestering stopped and one young dragon, the daughter of the then matriarch, fell in love with a Nightsky. The joining of the two families in this way was seen as a good thing. Everyone was happy. Two years later, the new matriarch was crowned while still mourning the death of her mother under… slightly strange circumstances.’
‘Cadenza Armonia,’ Felicia broke in, ‘are you implying that the Nightsky family assassinated the matriarch of the Armonias to gain access to the Crown of Harmony?’
‘Actually, no one knows for sure. Considering what happened afterward, it’s quite possible, even likely, that Ganar Nightsky was in it for himself. He could not control the crown himself, but he had managed to gain near-total power over his wife, Marriam Armonia, the new matriarch. She controlled the crown and, due to the nature of the thing, her will influenced that of all of the family. The Armonias did try to take control of the whole of Draconia, but they did it under the influence of Ganar Nightsky, and he wanted it all. When the Armonias threatened to withdraw their support from the other families, the Nightskys were not excluded.’
Krystal was frowning now. ‘But that doesn’t preclude the possibility that the Nightskys were behind Ganar. If, secretly, the Nightskys wanted the crown but knew that they could not take it without the other families turning on them, just as they did on the Armonias, they would need to keep up the pretence of being victims. As it was, everyone turned on the Armonias and there was no chance of the Nightskys being worse off than anyone else. And, if I remember right, the Armonia forces only attacked the Scarlin cities.’
‘Yes, but they would,’ Ramona said. ‘It’s considered a textbook strategic choice. The Scarlins were loudest in declaiming the Armonias and they had the biggest force
of troops and ships. The Armonias defended themselves against the magic of the Nightskys as they always had done and used their magic to make the Skylords effectively useless, but to defeat the Scarlins they needed to attack. You never fight on multiple fronts if you can possibly avoid it.’
‘Yes, agreed, I guess,’ Krystal said. ‘But the Nightskys represented a worse real threat. No one had ever managed to get to Concordance unless the Armonias wanted them to because of their magic. Attacking the Scarlins and leaving the Nightskys to plot and plan was just stupid. It wasted dragons fighting to invade a well-defended coast and gave the Nightskys the time to work out how to get past the Armonia wards.’
‘Yes, and no,’ Cadenza said. ‘You are right that the Armonia assault on the Scarlin cities was a waste of life, but the Nightskys did not find a way past the Armonia wards.’
‘What? But that’s what–’
‘What the Nightskys said they did? Yes, I know. But the power of the spells protecting this land came from its populace and its ruling family. A substantial portion of that populace was sent to war with the Scarlins, led by several prominent members of the family. That was the great strategic mistake and, from what I was told, Ganar did not realise it was a mistake until it was too late. He knew how to manipulate Marriam Armonia, but he did not really understand the nature of the crown or how it was used. The move to armed conflict doomed the Armonias because it sapped their powerbase, not because it gave the Nightskys time to plan. The spells weakened, the Nightskys saw it, and they tried to invade the island on their own.’
‘They came in to support the Scarlin counterattack,’ Ramona said, though she sounded as though she was not really sure about that.
‘Not before a failed attempt two years before the Scarlins sailed north. The Nightskys claimed that their magic kept the ships safe, but by that time the war was effectively over. Oh, there was more fighting, but the Armonias were a broken family. Those sent out to fight the Scarlins had passed beyond the influence of the crown, and the matriarch, and Ganar Nightsky. They returned knowing that, somehow, the crown had been corrupted. One of their number was Nadira Armonia, the author of that book you found, and she knew more about the magic of the crown than anyone else. She had long believed that the enchantment was imperfect, that any enchantment would be imperfect, and that the magic needed a “perfect balance of dragons” to achieve its true effect.’
‘What would a “perfect balance of dragons” be?’ Krystal asked.
‘That’s not really important to the story at this point. I believe the precise theory is in the book. Nadira was able to shield a group of her kin from the effects of the crown and, when they returned to this land, they set about dismantling the power of their own family.’
‘Why didn’t they just try to take the crown back?’
‘Because Nadira persuaded them that the crown had been a mistake or, at best, a solution to an immediate problem which should have been cast aside long ago. Perhaps it was needed to create the Age of Harmony, but the longer it existed, the more likely it was that its power would be turned to chaos. It was, she thought, inevitable. It took them time, and this city was under siege by the time they finally got to Ganar and Marriam, and the crown. History says that the crown was lost, carried away from the city in the last days of the war, and hidden. It was destroyed. That was what took the top floors off the tower.’
‘History also says that the Armonias were slaughtered to the last child,’ Charlotte said, ‘but here you are.’
‘Anyone who tells you that they’ve destroyed an entire family is lying, Charlotte Cloudborn.’
‘Charley,’ Charlotte said. ‘I hate being called Charlotte.’
‘Very well,’ Cadenza replied, smiling. ‘Nadira freed her immediate family from the crown and smuggled them out of the city months before the siege. She was quite a brilliant woman, by all accounts. In all, perhaps only two dozen escaped, many hiding among our most loyal retainers, who stuck by us through the decades following the war.’ Cadenza turned and looked toward Trudy. ‘The Black family.’
Trudy blinked. ‘No one ever told me we used to be royal retainers!’
‘Hardly surprising, darling,’ Felicia said. ‘Loyalty is one thing, and refugees can be hidden in secret, but let it be known that you were the family favourites of the Armonias and there would be consequences.’
‘It, uh, does explain why one of my ancestors picked one of your ancestors to pass on the message,’ Krystal said. ‘So, the Crown of Harmony is gone, the Armonias are dead, or scattered. No one can have the big prize, the magic of the crown, so they decide that they can get by without it and we get Concordance and Concord City.’
‘Yes,’ Cadenza agreed. ‘Nadira believed that the crown had been unnecessary for centuries. The family had shown everyone that it was better to live in peace, given the world time to advance so that it could cope with its population, but the power behind that was no longer needed.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She was in the tower when the crown was destroyed. It’s likely that she destroyed the crown and died doing it. So, the Armonias were killed because of a marriage with a Nightsky and, almost a millennium later, perhaps the last of them was foolish enough to fall in love with another one.’
‘My father was a Nightsky?’
‘He was.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Trudy said. ‘Cadenza Armonia, can you sense magic? Like a feeling of it around you?’
Cadenza nodded. ‘One of the family traits of the Armonias.’
‘So, Krys, you got a bit from both families. You’ve the Nightsky vision and the Armonia magic sense. And the Nightskys usually have indigo-like colouration in their normal shape, so that explains your hair and eyes. And a child from the two most powerful magical families on Draconia would probably have pretty good magical talent…’
‘You came out with strong magic?’ Cadenza asked. ‘I tried to keep track of you, but it wasn’t easy. I knew you were far from mundane and quite skilled, but never quite how good. I knew you’d left Appleyard, but I wasn’t sure where to…’
‘The Celestina School of Magic, in Concord City,’ Krystal replied. ‘I’m… fairly good at magic.’
‘Pfft!’ Felicia exclaimed. ‘You’re practically a genius, darling. There probably isn’t a student in the school who can match you in general theory. Some may surpass you in practical spell shaping, but your general skill is quite amazing.’
‘I–’
‘Don’t be modest,’ Trudy said. ‘You know she’s right.’
‘But–’
‘Just live with it, Krys,’ Xanthe said, and everyone else just looked at their embarrassed friend until she gave up.
‘Okay, I’m very good at theory. Not quite so good at the practical, except with light and meta-magic spells. And I’m better in scales.’
‘I’m a little better in scales,’ Cadenza said.
‘Oh, I’m a lot better in scales. This isn’t explaining how I ended up learning magic in an orphanage.’
‘I’d say that’s fairly obvious, darling,’ Felicia said.
‘I still want to hear it.’
Cadenza nodded. ‘But I need more wine for this.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll get another bottle.’
Krystal bent down and picked up the book which was sitting beside her chair. Somehow it had seemed right that she and Cadenza would take the chairs, and somehow Krystal had not wanted to let A Treatise on True Harmony get too far away from her. She undid the clasp and opened it to the first page, which was basically a foreword explaining why the book had been written. Well, it was fairly obvious why, really, and Krystal turned the page. Her eyes caught the end of the foreword: I do not believe that I have captured in this work the ultimate expression of True Harmony. I leave it to one of my descendants to fully understand it and complete my work.
‘She doesn’t believe she’s really got to the bottom of this,’ Krystal said. ‘Nadira Armonia, I mean. She says she doesn’t think
she’s got it right.’
‘No,’ Cadenza agreed, ‘but she has a pattern which she thought would work with the right dragons.’
‘This “perfect balance?”’
‘Yes, though it’s not that complex at its most basic level. There are some details which can make the configuration more effective, but it requires one dragon of each colour willing to take part.’ Walking back to the chairs, Cadenza pulled a cork from a bottle and began filling glasses. ‘She called the resulting effect the “Harmony Configuration.” Seven dragons, joined together to create something capable of great feats of magic, working as a coherent, harmonised whole.’
‘You mean us,’ Trudy said. ‘We’re seven friends, one of each colour. We could do it.’
Cadenza smiled and took her seat. ‘Perhaps. Now… I met your father, Krystal, at the Midwinter festivities in Concord City. We sat and talked through Midwinter Night. He was handsome, charming, intelligent… and he had no idea who or what I was, of course. When it became apparent to me that I loved him and he loved me, I told him who I really was, fully expecting him to run for the hills. Instead, we both ran to the forest. We came here, hiding from the world, and things were fine for a while.’ She blushed a little as she went on. ‘As you can imagine, contraception is something of an issue when one is living in a forest. You were a rather inevitable consequence, Krystal, and not an unwelcome one until we discovered, during the pregnancy, that your father’s disappearance had been noticed. The Nightskys were hunting for him and, somehow, they had discovered who he had left Concord City with. We had to run, but I was heavily pregnant and, once you were born, things were not going to be much better.’
‘So, you hung on until I was born and then took me to the orphanage,’ Krystal said.
‘Yes. Don’t think it was an easy decision. You were here for three days while we both recovered from the birth.’ Cadenza grinned. ‘You were a good baby. Quiet, calm. You only ever cried when you were hungry and you did not keep us awake too much. Letting your father take you away tore my heart out and then… Then he did not come back. Nothing I tried could find him. I waited as long as I could and then I left. To Spinyard first and then south to Scarlin Westervale and the villages of the savannah. After five years, I could not cope with not knowing what had happened to you and I returned to Appleyard. The townspeople know me as a herbalist who passes through now and then, a green dragon named Clarise Arbour.’
Misfit Witchcraft (Misfits Book 2) Page 18
