Hidden: Tales of Ryca, Book 1

by Shereen Vedam

  Anna’s glance was filled with curiosity. “How could he do that?”

  “When High Magic works, specks of light dance around. Anyway, Mam said Papa would knock the specks around and make me drop what I was trying to move. She said it would make me mad and happy all at the same time. That I would stubbornly move a spoon or pot no matter how hard he made it. I vaguely remember laughing so hard the Lights flew about the room shaking everything.”

  “I wish I could have known him,” Anna said in a wistful tone. “Do you think Papa was training you to become a strong sorceress? Pushing your limits?”

  The idea surprised Gilly. “I don’t know. After Mam first told me that story, I spent hours at Lookout Point trying to shift branches and stones. It never worked.”

  “You’re good at casting spells now,” Anna said.

  Gilly nodded. “Mostly hearth magic. I can influence the weather. Set wards. Coerce animals to behave in a certain way. Even do a seeking. Not move inanimate objects though. Except once, when Skye was in danger.”

  They continued washing in silence, then Anna asked, “What was she like?”

  “Mam?” At her sister’s nod, Gilly shook her head. “I don’t truly know. She loved us, I’m sure of that. She tried to make a normal life for us, though we were always on the watch for horsemen. I think she missed papa. Sometimes, late at night, I’d cry out and she’d come to cuddle me and tell me I shouldn’t be scared. That Papa was with us all and he’d never let anything bad happen to us.”

  “I wish he were here now,” Anna said. “I’m scared all the time, for Skye and Bevan and Marton. To think I wanted to go to Tibor to offer my services to King Ywen. That would have meant my death and that of my children. Instead of turning back, we’re still headed toward him.”

  “You don’t have to come.” Was this what was worrying her sister? “I said so in Perm. Better if you, Marton and the kids find someplace safe to hide.”

  “While you go to the castle to rescue our family?”

  “I intend to be careful,” Gilly said.

  “You always think this is your fight.” Anna’s face was flushed now and her eyes wide and sparkling with temper. “It’s our fight! Yours and mine. I may have been a baby when we lost our mother but I’m now grown up. She’s as much a part of who I am as you. Do you think I care any less for her because she never cuddled me at night?” A catch in her sister’s voice spoke of Anna’s hurt at missing that treasured experience. “How could I desert her after she risked her life to save mine?”

  “She wouldn’t want you to put your life or your family’s in danger.”

  Anna flicked that concern away with a wave of her hand. “But she’d want you to risk yours? Would she be proud of me if I let you do this alone?”

  “Better if only one of us jeopardizes her life.”

  “Then you’ve done more than your share. You stay behind and I’ll find her on my own.”

  “Anna,” Gilly began gently.

  “Don’t Anna me,” her sister snapped. “I’ve had as much as I can handle from you and everyone else taking care of me. Whether you like it or not, Gilly, I’m sorry I treated you badly in the past. I intend to make up for it now.”

  When Gilly would have spoken, Anna held up an imperious hand. “There’s nothing you can say to change my mind. We’re sisters and we’re in this together. Resign yourself to that. Now, I’ve been thinking about Tamarisk. He’s likely draining our mother’s powers to use against us, as he is these sorcerers. That means two people who meld their powers, can become stronger. I felt that when I touched your hand during your searching spell. Didn’t you?”

  Gilly nodded reluctantly. In fact, after touching Anna her powers had soared. That might have been what triggered Tamarisk to come looking for them.

  “Well, if we both have the ability to use magic,” Anna continued, “why shouldn’t we try to join them?”

  “Because Tamarisk has been doing this for twenty years. He has imprisoned magical guild members to draw from. Also, he is better at it than us.”

  “We’re younger.”

  “Inexperienced.”

  “We have surprise on our side.” Anna shook Marton’s soggy shirt with such force, he was in danger of losing his one spare shirt. Dark clouds gathered overhead.

  A smile tugged at Gilly’s lips at her sister’s show of temper. She liked the person Anna had become. “Your children need you, Anna. Mam would say the children are more important than our wish to save her.”

  “And she’d be wrong,” Anna replied with grim purpose. “The time for running is over.”

  Odd, but the exact thought had crossed Gilly’s mind in Perm.

  “If Tamarisk had you in that dungeon, what would our mother do?” Anna asked, driving home her point. “Wouldn’t she do everything she could to come for you? Or me?”

  Gilly didn’t know how to answer. She knew Mam through the eyes of a child. Her mother told ten-year-old Saira that hiding was the answer to their problems. Gilly didn’t know the reasoning behind that conclusion. As an adult, she couldn’t guess what drove Mam to abandon her former life instead of fighting Tamarisk.

  Hagan had said that Tamarisk was too powerful for her mother. She’d run to her husband when she felt in danger. When Keegan died, she no longer had anyone to turn to for help. If he’d taken one of her children captive, would she have risked her life to face him, knowing he could overwhelm her? What manner of woman was Mam? The child in Gilly believed she was wonderful. The adult knew her not at all. Perhaps it was time to build a cornerstone of belief all her own.

  She pushed her wet laundry away and turned to face to her sister. Anna was right. Time she opened herself to change. No longer was she Gimpy Gilly, the lonely goat-herder of Nadym. Nor Saira, a wounded child, staring out Lookout Point day after endless day. She was now part of a family who rode together, loved each other and fought side by side.

  A long forgotten mischievous streak rose in Gilly. She held out her wet soapy hands. “All right, let’s give it a try.”

  “Try what?” her sister asked, hesitant, suspicious.

  “To join our powers.

  Chapter 15

  Anna splashed closer and reached for Gilly’s hands.

  “Nothing too elaborate,” Gilly warned glancing around. The wind seemed to have died and not a bird chirped. The sound of trickling water from upstream faded away. The silence felt expectant.

  Heat emanated from Anna’s fingertips. It built up, came in contact with Gilly’s power and flecks of light rose to dance around their clasped hands. Gilly chuckled in delight. All of a sudden, a powerful wave of energy swooped into her body and surged up to tingle her scalp, and then swept down to curl her toes. Laughter lit up Anna’s eyes. The sweep of power must have touched her too.

  “Something small, you said.” Anna turned toward Marton’s wet shirt on the rock beside her. It slithered across the stone’s surface.

  Gilly smiled as she added her focus to her sister’s and the shirt flew high into the air. Her grin widened with glee. She hadn’t expected such a swift response. She often wondered if her mother had made up that story of her father testing his daughter’s ability to move things. Apparently she hadn’t.

  Her gaze met Anna’s and with mutual silent agreement, they drove the shirt into the water and pulled it out dripping, and repeated, as they would have if they were actually washing it. Gilly laughed out loud as they twisted the shirt mid-air until all the water was wrung out. When it untwisted, the wrinkled shirt no longer dripped.

  Anna pulled away but Gilly tightened her grip on her sister’s fingers. Anna raised an eyebrow in question.

  Gilly glanced up toward the cloudy sky. Dark clouds were still there from Anna’s earlier temper tantrum. She dispersed those clouds and the sun shone bright and hot over both of them and the shirt. In moments, the material was steaming dry. Anna’s focus shifted to the shirt and she began to fold the material neatly before lowering it over by the riverbank. They simult
aneously released their grip.

  “Well, look at that,” Gilly said with satisfaction, placing her hands on her hips. “If we can’t overthrow Tamarisk, we can at least do his laundry.”

  A movement caught her attention. The guards assigned to watch her had observed this magical practice, more interested in that than in their comrades’ swordplay. Word would soon spread that both sisters could work magic. More proof they were Keegan’s kin.

  “Enough for now,” she said, then her gaze narrowed on the changes around them. She pointed to the shoreline where it was no longer dry and grassy, but filled with green saplings “Look at what we’ve done.”

  Anna swung around. “But we weren’t trying to do anything with plants.” She went over and swiped across the new growth. The branches sprang back. They were so tall even Marton’s shirt was hard to find buried among them. “What does this mean?”

  “It means combining our powers must have been High Magic.” Worry swamped over Gilly’s good humor. How could she have been so foolish as to work High Magic so unnecessarily? Doing laundry no less. “The horsemen are likely to follow that spark straight to us.”

  “Oh no!” Anna said and then shook her head. “Maybe they won’t come here. We decided they can’t pinpoint locations so easily, right? They could have been transported far away. We might have time to leave, except we can’t go until Tom and the others return. Gilly, we did this. I have to say I’m impressed.”

  Gilly looked at the changed shoreline through her sister’s perspective. “The land looks healthier,” she said softly. “How can magic be evil when it recreates nature so wonderfully?”

  Anna’s gaze caught and held hers with grim determination. “This suggests we can stop Uncle Ywen and Tamarisk.”

  Gilly shook her head. “Moving a shirt and stopping those two monstrous men are two entirely different things. I will write in Jarrod’s book to tell him about our combining our powers and the effect it seems to have had on the land. Maybe he can suggest a way this discovery can help us with our rescue mission.”

  “In Erov, he called you the Defender of the Light.” Anna said as she collected her things. “Did he mean magic?”

  “Yes, but I can’t imagine why he thinks I can be that. I don’t know how to defend Light, and from what?”

  “Not what, whom. Tamarisk. If he’s abusing those sorcerers in his dungeon, he’s also misusing their powers.”

  Arms full, they started back to camp, both of them deep in thought.

  “Even with our magic combined, we’re not up to defeating Tamarisk,” Gilly said, inserting a note of caution into their thinking. “Most of what I know of magic I learned by trial and error. Mam spoke little of how Light works. She did say it was like a trade, each individual good at one kind or another. For instance, your special ability is to heal.”

  “I’ve seen you do many different types of magic.” Anna stopped and dropped her bundle of clothes. She held her hands over them. Gilly sensed she checked if she could do more than just heal. Her sister’s effort vibrated in the air. The clothes stayed put.

  Anna lowered her hands in disappointment. “You try.”

  Gilly dropped her bundle and held out her arms, calling the clothes back. Her laundry jumped into the air and landed in her arms. The crossbow she’d forgotten by the riverbed then flew over to rest on top. Had she called to that? “How odd.”

  “You said you could do this as a child. Maybe you needed my help to remember how. Also, if Jarrod is correct, and you are the Defender of the Light, this explains why your talent is not so specialized and limited like mine.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Let’s go back. I need to warn Marton the horsemen will be coming.”

  “Yes, sentries will need to be posted further away.” Before her sister could retrieve her fallen laundry, with a twitch of her finger, Gilly raised Anna’s clothes to rest gently across her arms.

  “Thanks,” Anna said with a grateful smile. Then, she asked, “Do you feel different?”

  “How so?”

  “Despite us traveling for days with little rest, I feel thoroughly energized. As young and vibrant as those plants.”

  Gilly nodded, smiling. “Me too.”

  They hurried back. While Anna went to speak with Marton, Gilly doused their fire to prevent anyone locating them that way, then picked up her quill and opened her book. She wrote Jarrod’s name prominently at the top of the page. She spent an hour detailing all her questions. Satisfied she’d asked the right ones she shut the book and went to help Anna. If they must leave once Tom returned, they had better start packing everything they’d unpacked.

  By late-afternoon, when no horsemen thundered into camp, Gilly breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this once, their magic hadn’t been noticed. Or what she and Anna did together was a different type of hearth magic the horsemen couldn’t track. Like when Anna healed Tom. No horsemen had come then.

  Her sister was playing a sticks game with the children. A few warriors were polishing their weapons nearby while others patrolled the perimeter. Diligently carrying the crossbow Tom had given her, Gilly wandered in the direction Tom had gone this morning. Why wasn’t he back?

  Just as she was ready to give up, a call sounded in the distance. The men were returning. She was racing toward Tom without thought to how her impulsive dash might look to those around her, or to Tom himself.

  Talus was the first to reach her. He jumped off his horse and bowed over her hand. “Well met, Missus Gilly. We’ve much news to share. Our trip was both frustrating and fruitful.”

  “I’d expected it to be as much.” Gilly had to smile at his formal address. “Where’s Tom?”

  “Coming,” Talus said. “He stopped to ask one of the sentries how all of you fared while we were away. Would you like a ride to camp?”

  Gilly absently shook her head, her thoughts circling around seeing Tom ride toward her. Perhaps she could steal another kiss. She walked across the clearing toward the woods, stretching her neck to spot Tom. “I’m happy to walk, thank you.”

  Talus mounted behind her in a clatter of chainmaille. Suddenly he wrapped an arm around her waist and swung her up high. She let out an involuntary squeal and then regretted it when Tom came galloping out of the woods.

  Talus settled her in front, with his arm firmly holding her in place. “Ladies do not normally refuse when I offer a ride on Padion.”

  Perhaps the ladies he accosted didn’t mind their hips being twisted to sit on top of a saddle. Gilly found the experience not worth the time saved. Her temper flared. As if picking up on her mood, the horse shied and bucked.

  Talus tightened his grip on her waist.

  Tom had slowed to a stop, an angry frown overriding his concerned expression. Then, to her shock, once he had made sure she was safe, he rode past without uttering a word.

  “Have a care, missus,” Talus warned as he focused on controlling his horse.

  Watching Tom’s stiff back as he left her behind, Gilly released her tight hold on the horse’s mane and settled against Talus in disappointment. She shouldn’t take her bad temper out on his horse.

  Tom’s rigid posture, his silence, and the speed with which he headed off all spoke of anger. No, not anger. His expression was similar to Marton’s when Anna flirted with other men. Could Tom be jealous? That was too silly, but if true, amazing!

  She had always envied Anna when Marton appeared jealous. This suggested Tom cared enough to be upset by Talus showering his attention on her.

  Deliciously warm happiness infused Gilly and on impulse, she gave Talus a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”

  “What for?” Talus asked, with a surprised chuckle.

  “For showing me that Tom cares for me.”

  He glanced from her to Tom who had now dismounted and was glaring at them as he brushed down his horse.

  Talus’s grin grew wider. “Ah. Since you care how he feels, then it is he who is the lucky one,” he said gallantly.

  Wit
h a happy smile, Gilly slid off Padion and was about to go toward Tom when she noticed her left hip wasn’t in pain. After being swung up on a horse, twisted around and on dismounting landed hard, she should be in agony. Why wasn’t she?

  Then she remembered the magical play she and Anna had engaged in this morning. When they joined their powers, could her sister’s healing touch have fixed Gilly’s twisted hip? The idea was astounding. Why hadn’t she noticed this change?

  She took a few steps, conscious of her odd walk, and realized her left hip rose higher than the right more from habit than necessity. As Talus trotted away to join Tom, she purposely took a few steps in the sensual natural way Anna walked. It felt awkward but possible. Instead of going to Tom, Gilly turned her steps to her sister’s side.

  When she was beside Anna, Gilly sat cross-legged. She no longer needed to stretch out her left leg. The words to tell Anna of this miracle clogged in her throat. She wanted to savor this joyful discovery.

  She glanced around at all those who were gathering to hear the men’s news from Tibor. No one paid her any attention. As if they hadn’t noticed her walking normally to this spot or sitting down just like them, with both legs crossed.

  Tears of happiness gathered. Her friends and family had not noticed she no longer limped. Because they didn’t see her as Gimpy Gilly? Her heart swelled with pleasure at the thought.

  They just see me.

  Marton called out to Tom and Talus. “Hurry up!” Once they approached, he said to Ned, “We’re all here. Tell us what you discovered and don’t leave out a detail. Did you find the secret entryway?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir,” Ned replied, “exactly where Hagan said it would be, hidden behind overgrowth. It blends into the shadows so well, if I hadn’t explicit instructions, I would never have seen it. The gate was rusted but my key worked.”

  Talus strolled toward Gilly but Tom rushed ahead and shoved him aside before planting himself beside her. Gilly’s heart warmed at his possessing hold on her hand. She raised their clasped fingers and kissed his knuckles. His eyes lighted up until Marton cleared his throat and speared Talus with a pointed glance waving him to sit.