The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga)

by Ashley Setzer

  Valory squirmed beside me as they poked her with the porcupuff needle. She became still very quickly afterwards.

  “You,” said a distorted voice next to my ear. It sounded like somebody speaking underwater. “What is your true name?”

  This was always the first question asked in any Truth Test. So much was tied to a name—much more than just an identity.

  “Emma Wren,” I replied.

  A pause. The watery voice spoke again, this time with a shakiness that wasn’t caused by the distortion spell. “How is it that you are not dead?”

  “I refuse to die until the true queen is restored and Ivywild is free of the duke.”

  “What is your true name?” the voice asked Valory.

  She replied in a flat, distant monotone. The spell had a strong grip on her. “I am Valory of Signal Mountain. I—” she halted, struggling with the forces in her own mind. The spell had subdued her boisterous personality, making her the perfect conduit for the other streams of consciousness that lived in her blood.

  “I am the child who shouldn’t be,” she continued. Her voice took on an edge that made my skin prickle. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought Marafae was standing next to me.

  “Explain,” said the distorted voice.

  “Nin ist verkinu ter gunt,” Valory said in a perfectly clipped Slaugh tongue. “Inger teksu geifel zer vanvati.”

  “I see,” said the voice. He turned back to me. “Is it true what you told these men about Commander Frayne Larue? Is he dead?”

  A soul-shaking sigh left my lips. “Yes.”

  Somewhere somebody sobbed.

  “How?”

  “He was subjected to the experiments and tortures of the clergy and the duke’s staff at Helm Bogvogny. Their experiments drained him, but he escaped to search for Lord Finbarr. He died giving up the last of his strength to fight some of the duke’s men.”

  There came more sounds of sniffles and sobs.

  The test giver took a long time to speak again. Even through the voice distortion spell, I could hear the sorrow in him. “Then you have come all this way to tell his story.”

  “Not only that,” I said. “I have come for allies. We must reclaim what the duke stole. We must defend Faylinn against the gathering evil. I’m going to make a stand. I’ve come to seek out those who will stand with me.”

  The room filled with cheers. Hundreds of voices rose up in unison.

  “I must warn you,” said the test giver over the din. “Our forces are meager. We are distant from home, with no army and no allies other than the desperate and oppressed. Are you still willing to fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are among friends,” said the test giver. The effects of the distortion spell faded so that he spoke normally. “May your courage strengthen ours ten times over, and don’t you ever, EVER disappear like that again!”

  The rope fell away from my wrists. I couldn’t rip the blindfold off fast enough as I stepped out of the shallow pool. I was crying and laughing and trembling all at the same time. My heart felt like it might burst.

  Lord Finbarr looked in the same condition. He hugged my shoulders tightly. The winter had been unkind to him. There was no green left in his hair, only snowy white curls. He was thinner than I remembered and there were new worry lines all over his face.

  “You’re alive!” Lord Finbarr sang. “You’re alive! Bless the stars and the moon and the earth and every leaf of every tree! Oh, my child, we had lost all hope!”

  Somebody, or rather, two somebodys clung to my boots.

  “We thought you were gone forever,” said a tearful Harriet.

  “Yeah,” Alice chimed in.

  “It’s a miracle,” said Bazzlejet, who was sniffling unabashedly at my side.

  Garland Finbarr nudged him out of the way and gave me a loud, sincere kiss on the cheek. “Anouk said she told you to do the same for me.”

  I saw Anouk waving from outside the huddle. She no longer wore her robe or her head scarf or any scrap of green. Instead she looked like a normal young woman except that she was all aglow with some strong emotion. Garland took her by the hand and drew her into the throng of people surrounding me.

  They were all there, packed into the great room of some ancient wooden building. Jules Larue beamed at me from a distance. He was holding his wife, who appeared to be near hysterics. She managed to give me a watery smile and a little wave before collapsing on her husband’s shoulder. I couldn’t begin to imagine how they must feel. A beloved member of their family was dead while I had apparently returned from the grave.

  There were others. I spied my butler, Fritz, along with much of the nobility’s personal staff. Some of Commander Larue’s Master Casters and scouts were there. They put on brave faces, but a few of them had to turn away and take out a handkerchief.

  It was all so happy and yet all so sad. The absences were like a gaping hole in an otherwise perfect mosaic. Commander Larue could never come back. There was no Chloe, or Violet or Othella. I craned my neck, halfway expecting to see Chloe shoving through the crowd.

  “Em?”

  I turned. Valory stood alone, wide-eyed like a lost child. The Truth Test had worn off and she sounded like her normal self again. Everyone seemed to be ignoring her or too frightened to come close.

  I worked my way through the crowd and grabbed Valory’s hand.

  “I didn’t know you could speak Slaugh,” I said.

  Valory gave me a confused look. “I can’t.”

  “Everyone,” I said loudly, “this is my friend, Valory. She saved my life and helped me find my way here.”

  “How y’all doin’?” Valory asked.

  The others hung back and stared.

  Harriet was the first one brave enough to creep close to Valory. She tilted back her head and gazed in awe at Valory’s wings and the furs hanging from her belt. “Are you a really real Slaugh?” she asked timidly.

  Valory knelt down on one knee so that she was closer to Harriet’s height. “I sure am. That don’t mean nothing, though. I’m as gentle as a baby squerbil.”

  Harriet giggled. “You’re really tall for a girl.”

  “Maybe you’re just really short,” Valory said in a teasing voice.

  “Huh-uh!”

  “Yeah-huh!”

  That did it. A swarm of children crowded around Valory and bombarded her with questions. Glowing from all the attention, Valory sat down cross-legged in the floor and indulged them.

  I turned my attention back to Lord Finbarr. I could tell that he had as many questions for me as I did for him.

  “You have to tell me how you survived that fall!” Bazzlejet said to me.

  “Do you have any other news of the duke?” Garland asked.

  “You must let me tend to your hair,” Fritz insisted, frowning at my grimy tresses. “Some of our Pixie staff is here. We can get you cleaned up.”

  “All in good time, all in good time,” Lord Finbarr said, waving them off. He straightened his glasses and took me by the elbow. “I know you must be exhausted, but could you grant me a little time for a meeting?”

  I wasn’t tired anymore. I felt as though I could run a marathon. “Sure.”

  He led me to a little room just off the big one. It showed signs of recent repair. New wood had been laid down to patch holes in the floor. A curtain hung as a makeshift door. Lord Finbarr drew the curtain closed against the protests of Bazzlejet and the others.

  I studied the little room. There was hardly any stone used in its construction. Instead it used the giant planks of wood from surrounding trees. From the weathered look of the wood and the patches of moss that grew in places, I gathered that it was very old.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Lord Finbarr sat down on a carved out tree stump and gestured for me to take a rustic chair.

  “It had a name once, but for hundreds of years it has simply been called Woodman’s Hall. It was used as an outpost for hunters who sup
plied our troops in the last of the wars against the Fomorians. It blends in with the timbers of the forest. I’ve kept this place in the back of my mind just in case Garland and I needed to use it in our travels. Looks as though we all needed it more than I could have imagined.” He sighed and pushed back some of the white curls on his forehead.

  I said nothing. I still found it hard to believe that I was actually sitting in a room with Lord Finbarr.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  I shook my head. Marching through the forest I’d felt famished, but now food seemed trivial. “I just can’t…I mean…you’re here! After what happened to Commander Larue…”

  “Tragedy,” Lord Finbarr said. He struggled with the next words. His eyes blazed with anger like I had never seen in him before. “Those cowardly dogs. I always knew enough not to trust the Seelie Court, and I was beginning to have my doubts about the clergy.” He gave me a guilty look. “I did convince you to train as a priestess. I must apologize. My intentions were those of a meddling old man. I didn’t think they’d actually try to harm you. By putting you in their domain I hoped to put them at ease while you cultivated a bit of harmless knowledge.”

  I thought back to the poison fruit. “I wouldn’t call it harmless.”

  Lord Finbarr stared down at his hands. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through. By all accounts you shouldn’t be alive. Rumors say a dozen of the duke’s men saw you go over the waterfall and you never came up at the bottom. Then Jules Larue and his family said you’d crashed into the side of a mountain along with most of their house.”

  “Both true,” I said. “I can’t explain it. Maybe the family curse works differently for me. Maybe it just keeps me alive so that I have to keep watching my friends die.”

  “Oh, that old thing,” Lord Finbarr said as though he were talking about a dirty rug and not an ancient, powerful curse. “You sound like your grandfather. Or perhaps you’ve been listening to that old windbag, Grimmoix?”

  I’d never heard Lord Finbarr refer to another adult in such a way. “I’m just starting to get the feeling that destiny has a lot more control over my life than I do. I don’t like it.”

  “Let me tell you about destiny,” Lord Finbarr said. “It’s rubbish.”

  “But what about people who can see the future?” I asked. “High Priestess Grimmoix can. So could her niece, Linaeve. How can they do that if there isn’t already some framework in place?”

  Lord Finbarr’s eyes twinkled and he gave me a wry smile. “Funny you should mention Linaeve. I remember something she told Florrie once. She said that fate was all about connections. A strong enough connection can allow you to glimpse a person’s heart for what it really is, to live out their dreams and nightmares, and even see them when they’re far away. With most people, though, she could only see a tiny little thread. She said that people tend to weave themselves into their own situations. Those get tangled together, and that’s when you can start to see where the whole mess is going to end up. But it is never out of your hands to untangle yourself. It is never out of your hands to weave a new path.”

  It sounded exactly like something Linaeve would say. I thought sadly of my lost Spirit Mentor. I felt as though my own mother had been taken from me a second time.

  “Commander Larue was not a victim of fate,” Lord Finbarr said. “I know he went out fighting with every drop of his valor. A man like that does not lie down before destiny.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the deadened lump of rock that Commander Larue brought from Helm Bogvogny. “This is what the duke and his followers are turning people into,” I said, handing the stone to Lord Finbarr. “Destiny or not, if we don’t do something soon a lot of people are going to die and the duke is going to have a powerful weapon to show for it—maybe even more powerful than my flute.”

  Lord Finbarr paled. His glasses magnified the look of horror in his eyes. “What is this atrocity you speak of?”

  I told him everything that Commander Larue had said about Helm Bogvogny and the giant alchemical stone. Though it was painful, I described exactly how he looked with his magic drained from him. I ended with his valiant standoff in Feegman’s Boot, carefully recounting how the magic in the tiny stone gave him a phenomenal burst of power in his last minutes of life.

  “Now imagine a rock like that as big as a room,” I said. “Commander Larue shattered it, but they’re bound to have some of the pieces. If they have the ability they will surely make another.”

  Lord Finbarr looked on the verge of a collapse. “It is worse than I ever could have imagined.”

  There was a movement in the curtain covering the door. Valory pushed it aside and poked her head in. “Oh, hey there you are, Em. These folks were just talking about laying out some grub. Are you ready to eat? I’m hungry enough to eat a fluffalo.”

  “Just a minute, Valory,” I said.

  Lord Finbarr shook off his pallor and waved Valory inside. “Join us for a moment, Miss.”

  Valory ignored the shouts and squeals of the children outside and came to stand beside me.

  Lord Finbarr extended a hand to her. “We haven’t officially met. I’m Lord Mulberry Finbarr, servant of the crown of Faylinn.”

  Valory pumped his hand vigorously. “Pleased to finally meet you. I’m Valory, Queen of the Slaugh.”

  Caught off guard by her bluntness, I did a double take and then watched Lord Finbarr to see his reaction. He raised an eyebrow and smiled knowingly. “Yes, you told me as much a moment ago. You were under a trance, so you won’t remember.”

  “Is that what she said when she spoke Slaugh?” I asked.

  “More or less,” Lord Finbarr said, still with a knowing smile. “Family secrets have a way of outing themselves in such situations eh, Emma? But Valory, of course, you know there’s a problem. No doubt Emma has explained it to you.”

  “You mean my scoundrel of a half-brother?” Valory asked. “I reckon I could put him in his place easily enough.”

  I sprang up from my cushion, gaping at Lord Finbarr. “What? You mean you knew about King Hugo?”

  “I always knew,” Lord Finbarr said. “You can’t hide royalty. Florrie and I were close friends of King and Queen Winterwing. I’d had glances of Hugo when he was very young. Florrie was still carrying Garland when Hugo was born, so she and Linaeve wrote each other often on the progress of their little boys. Hugo had an exemplary upbringing. He can read and write in several different languages and he knows all the customs of a royal court. I knew it was him the moment he spoke to me at Moonlight Pass.”

  I recalled a defeated Slaugh boy speaking in his native tongue to Lord Finbarr on that night so long ago.

  I was too astonished to be angry. “Why didn’t you tell King Theobald or the Seelie Court?”

  “Because being dead has its benefits,” Lord Finbarr said. “As long as Marafae and her minions thought that they’d extinguished the last of the royal family, they wouldn’t come after him anymore. The same could be said for you, Emma. Do you think you would have lived fifteen peaceful years in the human realm if the Seelie Court knew that you or any other Wrens were still alive?”

  Valory glanced back and forth between the two of us as she tried to piece things together. “You mean he hid who he was? Well that’s kind of smart, I’ll give him that. What’s wrong, Emma? You look like someone stole your boots while your feet was still in them.”

  I tried to remain calm as I looked Lord Finbarr in the eye. I didn’t feel betrayed, exactly. I understood his reasons. Nevertheless, a sickly feeling burned in my gut as it dawned on me that I might have made a huge fool of myself. “If you knew that, then you must have known that he’d leave someday.”

  “It was part of the deal we made on that night at Moonlight Pass,” Lord Finbarr said. “I promised him a safe haven and the chance to avenge his people someday. The occasion arose in the weeks before King Theobald’s death. Our informants overseas learned of activity near Seraph’s Tear. We suspected
that Robyn and her mechamen were behind it. Of course we can’t go near the place, but Slaugh can. Othella had been harboring other Slaugh refugees. We asked King Hugo to take those people and go to Seraph’s Tear to take out Robyn’s army.”

  I felt like I was going to be sick. The room spun. I thought of all the horrible things I’d said to him when he left. Warring emotions raged inside me. If he’d only told me…if I’d only known…why did he have to hide it from me?

  “I can tell he kept you in the dark until it was too late,” Lord Finbarr said, giving me a sad look.

  Anger won out over shame. “He stole my dagger! He said awful things about the Fay! I thought he was turning against us!”

  “And perhaps he has,” Lord Finbarr said. “He was supposed to stay in contact with Othella, but he never made contact after he left. We have no way of knowing what he found.”

  Valory touched my shoulder. “You okay? You’re kinda green.”

  I shrugged her hand away. “What about Othella and Chloe and Violet? Let me guess, same story? Nobody’s heard a thing, right?”

  “Correct,” Lord Finbarr said. “I can only guess that they are in the human realm. Othella knows enough about the place to keep them safe there.”

  Something grumbled by my ear. Valory wriggled and stared at the floor. “Sorry. That was my stomach.”

  Lord Finbarr rose from his seat. He moved very stiffly like an invisible hand was pressing him down.

  “There is much to consider,” he said wearily as he held open the curtain. “I’ll call up a council in the morning to discuss Helm Bogvogny. Now let us eat and give thanks.”

  “Sounds good to me!” Valory said. She strolled out into the great room.

  Lord Finbarr patted me lightly on the elbow to hold me back. “I know you don’t understand all of his reasons,” he said in a hushed voice. “You must keep faith in him, though.”

  I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. “But he’s gone rogue! He doesn’t care about any of us!”

  “Are you saying that because you really believe it, or are you saying it to make yourself feel better?”