Mystic

by Jason Denzel

  “Who were those people?”

  Ox looked at the cave’s entrance as if trying to see beyond. “I do not know, but even now, I cannot see them. They blind and bind me with their iron.”

  “Why did they do this?”

  “There have always been those who oppose the Mystics and their ways. Kelt Apar has been contested many times.”

  Pomella wracked her mind for a solution. Anger rose like boiling water bubbling over the edge of a pot. Easing Sim from her lap onto the ground, she stood and yanked against the chains binding her ankles to the spikes, but they held tight. She pulled harder, biting her lip against the pain until she cried out.

  There had to be a way out. There had to be a way to save Sim.

  Her eyes widened as she remembered The Book of Songs. She looked around in the dark for her canvas pack and found it a short distance away. She leaped for it, but her chains prevented her from reaching it. “Shite and blather!” she screamed. She dropped and rolled to her back, reaching with her legs. The toe of her shoes just barely touched the bag’s edge.

  “Come on!” she snarled, and stretched farther. She hooked the tip of the bag onto her foot and pulled it toward herself with a triumphant yelp. Her hands yanked the bag open. Dried rations spilled out along with her bottle of chi-uy and the glass vial containing Mantepis’ venom.

  Pomella froze. Her hand trembled as she lifted up the vial of vemon. If all else failed, perhaps she could ease Sim’s passing. It pained her to hear his shallow breathing.

  She clenched her fist around the vial. No.

  Setting the venom carefully aside onto the ground, she put it out of mind and drew The Book of Songs from her pack.

  “What are you doing?” Ox asked.

  “There has to be something in here to help us,” said Pomella. “Do you know anything about the Myst that can help us?”

  Ox shook his stone head. “I am not a Mystic. But I believe that if a Mystic were here, he or she would say there is always a way with the Myst.”

  “Well, I am a Mystic!” Pomella snapped, ignoring the fact that it was presumptuous and unlikely to ever be true.

  She flipped through the familiar pages, trying to remember if there was anything in the book that could help her escape. The pages flew by, but nothing appeared to be right. She gritted her teeth, frustrated that she understood so little. The only entry that seemed relevant was the page that described the song of opening, the same one she’d tried in the other cave with Sim. It hadn’t worked then, and she doubted it would now.

  “This is the last time I’m getting trapped in a cave with you, Simkon AnClure,” she muttered.

  She paused on a page decorated with familiar lotus flowers. Other drawings beside them showed wounded animals: a dog, a horse, and a strange furry-faced creature she didn’t recognize, with a long winding tail. The illustrations seemed to provide instructions for how to apply simple bandages and poultices. She couldn’t understand the neatly written runes on the page, but she thought perhaps she could try to replicate the results if she managed to find the illustrated herbs. She only recognized a few of them.

  Her heart sank. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t leave the cave to find herbs. All she could do was sit and watch Sim die.

  Pomella slammed the book shut. How in Saint Brigid’s holy name was she supposed to help when she was locked up!

  She took a calming breath. She couldn’t fall apart. Not now. Her all-too-familiar anxiety lurked within her, like night spirits waiting for evening shadows to arrive before coming out.

  Her hand traced Sim’s face, running from his hairline to his strong chin. Bruises covered his otherwise peaceful face. If she ignored them, along with the scrapes and dirt, he looked like he was asleep. She brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed him between the eyes.

  “I was a blathering fool not to listen to you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me.”

  The memory of her grandmhathir flashed in her mind. Lorraina had looked peaceful and sleepy, too, at the end.

  Pomella’s stomach clenched. She’d been as powerless to stop Grandmhathir’s passing as she was now to stop Sim’s. There was only one thing she could do. The only thing she really knew how to do.

  She could sing.

  It had been what she did for Grandmhathir during her last hours. Pomella still didn’t understand the connection between her singing and the Myst, but she knew it existed. She’d seen what it could do, even if she couldn’t explain it.

  She brought to mind the last song she’d sung to Grandmhathir. It was the same one she sang at Mhathir’s grave on cool summer evenings. Looking at Sim, Pomella tried not to think of how he’d soon be another person she sang to on those nights.

  She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. All she could do right now was try to comfort him. Beginning with a soft hum, she eased into the song.

  “Now as the sun sets down

  Arise comes the soft moon

  Here between our distant lands

  You will see me soon

  “Long like the night of winter stars

  Far as the Mystic sea

  I will hold your gentle hand

  Until you part from me

  “Then as a swift bird I’ll follow

  Searching throughout the sky

  Yearning for your warm touch

  Only to fade and cry”

  The last echo of her song resonated throughout the cave. Pomella waited, stroking Sim’s hair, hoping for something to happen, a sudden miracle from the Myst. But nothing changed. She hid her face in her arms and knees.

  The last rays of the setting sun disappeared from the cave entrance. The cold iron chains made Pomella shiver.

  Minutes passed, then hours. Pomella thought about her entire journey, tracing it back to when Ox interrupted her village’s Springrise festival. She should never have left home. She should have listened to her fathir. This whole venture had proven to be nothing but a selfish attempt to become something she wasn’t. She wasn’t special, just like the High Mystic said. She wasn’t good enough to succeed. All she’d managed to do was kill Sim and probably the High Mystic as well. Poor Lal would lose his life. Ox was trapped, maybe forever, and she’d waste away in a cave atop MagDoon.

  She had to do something for these people. It wasn’t fair that they would all bleed and die while she sat here.

  A buzzing sound filled the cave as Hector and Ena flew to her, trailing silvery smoke. They hovered in front of her, and she held out her palms for them to alight on. “Can you help me?” she said. “I need something.”

  The hummingbirds cocked their heads, seeming not to understand. She sighed. Of course they didn’t. They were just birds.

  “Those little ones have taken quite a liking to you!” the Green Man said, his voice booming despite its subdued tone. “Did you summon them with a song? Your singing is quite beautiful.”

  “Thank you, Ox,” she said. “I’m not sure how they came to me. But it neither matters nor helps.”

  “Over the centuries,” Oxillian said, “I have always had a fondness for the apprentices and Mystics who sang. The number of Mystics I have met is beyond my recollection, but the ones my feeble memory keeps are those who Unveil the Myst with their songs.”

  “Do you ever sing?” she asked.

  “Sing? No. It never occurred to me.”

  “Maybe you should try sometime. Perhaps it is your Unveiling, too?”

  Oxillian smiled, a strange contrast to his bloodied, stony form. “I was grown from the Myst,” he said, “but cannot use it.”

  “We’re alike then,” Pomella said. “Because I can’t control it, either. Any success I’ve had was pure luck. I feel so powerless.”

  “I was grown by a ritual of song,” Ox told her, staring toward the horizon.

  “How—how old are you, Ox?”

  “Grandmaster Faywong once estimated I was sung into existence nine hundred years ago. It is hard to know. Time is a difficult conc
ept for me to understand.”

  “Do you remember being … grown?”

  “I remember the song that called me forth. The first human High Mystic of Moth pulled me from the soil and stone of Kelt Apar. I am one with this land, this forest, this mountain.”

  Pomella bit her lip, thinking. “Ox, how did that Mystic summon you earlier? Why did he cut me?”

  “I am the guardian of this forest. When the blood of one I protect is shed by violence, I feel it in soil and stone. I came to protect.”

  “They lured and trapped you,” Pomella said.

  The Green Man’s expression darkened as he touched his collar. “With accursed iron, which stands above stone in the Mystical Hierarchy. I have broken it before, but here, atop MagDoon, which has always been shrouded in mystery, my strength is somehow lessened.”

  The Mystical Hierarchy. Pomella’s eyes widened. A sudden understanding flashed within her. She touched the cut in her ribs Ohzem had given her.

  “Ox,” she said. “That’s it.”

  She rushed to The Book of Songs and tore through the pages. Her hands shook with excitement.

  “The first Trial. Iron was poisoning animals,” she mused. “That’s why Mistress Yarina needed blood.”

  In the center of the book Pomella found the elaborate diagram depicting the Mystical Hierarchy that she’d looked at the night she and Bethy had spoken. The runes around it labeled each of the Mystic Essences: water, flesh, stone, iron, blood, and fire. There were more above that, but her attention was drawn to three in particular.

  Stone, iron, blood. Iron above stone. Blood above iron.

  Pomella looked at the wound on her ribs. A milky scab had already begun to grow over the shallow wound. Dry blood stained her skin and torn dress.

  Her heart raced. She flipped through the pages again, searching for something else. In a perfect moment of clarity, she realized what she had to do.

  Blood above iron.

  Squeezing her jaw against the pain, Pomella carefully rubbed the iron manacles against the bloody cut on her side. The thin scab opened, oozing fresh blood to the metal.

  Hoping it was enough, Pomella found the page she’d been looking for and cleared her throat. Beginning in a gentle hum, she sang the bars of the song of opening. It was the same song she’d tried in the other cave with Sim. Her grandmhathir’s musical notes filled the page.

  As Pomella sang, swirling tendrils of fog appeared in the cave. She wasn’t sure if she could have explained what happened. All she knew was that this time, when she sang the notes, she put power into it. Power from her desperation to save Sim. Power from the raw pain she felt. And power from her blood.

  The wordless song filled the cave, reverberating off the walls. The cut in her side burned as if on fire. It took all her effort not to cry out in pain. She sang louder, somewhere between a chant and a hymn. She drove the pain away with her song. She grasped her chains and pulled. She willed them to break.

  The silvery fog circled around her, moving faster and faster. As she belted out the highest note she could, nearly a cry, but with perfect pitch, the iron in her palms burned like fire but did not hurt her. The burning blood in her side surged with the rising tide inside her. She pulled with all her strength.

  With a blinding surge, the silvery fog spiral rushed into her hands. The cave exploded with light. The iron bonds shattered, and she pulled her hands free.

  Ox stared at her, his stone eyes wide with surprise.

  Surging to her feet, Pomella gasped and laughed. By the Saints!

  Ox rose to his full height. “Save the High Mystic. Hurry.”

  “I can free you, too! My blood—”

  “No!” he said immediately. “You freed yourself with your blood. I have none to give. It will not work. You shouldn’t risk using more. What you did is very dangerous.”

  “I can’t worry about that right now,” she said. But sure enough, she couldn’t deny the feeling of light-headedness washing over her. The surge of emotions, her overall fatigue, and even her wound, all nearly overwhelmed her.

  “Go,” Ox urged.

  “What about Sim?”

  “There is nothing you can do. I will help however I can.”

  Pomella nodded, then remembered her hummingbirds. She flipped The Book of Songs open to the page she’d seen with the herbs and wounded animals. “Ena,” she said, “I need your speed. And Hector, I need your strength. Find these herbs. Please. Bring them back here to the Green Man.”

  A part of her felt it was silly to be making such requests. But the better part of her now realized it was her old assumptions that were the real blather. Setting them aside, she poured confidence into her requests. “Go, my friends. Now. Bring as much as your wings will allow. Help Sim.”

  She wasn’t surprised when the hummingbirds blazed out of the cave and down the mountain.

  She bent over and gently kissed Sim’s lips before leaving the circle of spikes, wobbling only slightly. Much of her side and belly was exposed now, bloody cuts standing out against her light-brown skin. Her clothing still hung together, if only barely. So much for her Springrise dress.

  “Keep him alive,” she told Ox. “I’ll return with help as soon as I can.”

  The Green Man held out his hand. In his palm was a smooth pebble. “Take this. You remember how it works?”

  Pomella nodded, and took the stone. “Yes. Thank you.”

  She picked her cloak up off the floor where Quentin had slipped it off hours before, and slung it over her shoulders. Then she ran for the cave entrance.

  “Pomella!” Ox said, calling after her.

  She stopped and turned.

  “You were wrong,” he said. “You are not powerless. What you Unveiled just now not only exceeds anything I’ve ever seen a would-be apprentice do, but is beyond what many full Mystics have achieved. No matter what happens today, I know you could be a great Mystic. You are worthy of it.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Thank you, Ox,” she said, and ran out of the cave.

  Full night enveloped her, but it seemed like a new day. The moon only shone half-bright, but it gave her hope. How in the name of the Saints would she make it back to Kelt Apar in time to make a difference? The others were hours ahead of her. She knew they wouldn’t rest and would strike at Yarina as soon as they arrived.

  “Well,” she said to herself, “you fall faster down the hill than up.” It would be hard to see in the dark, so she picked up a tall oak branch she spotted nearby. It seemed to her like a solid enough walking staff that might prevent her from breaking her neck.

  She threw Oxillian’s stone onto the path before her and intoned, “Lead me to Kelt Apar!” The stone burst into green light and flew down the mountain path. Taking a determined breath, she ran after it, staff in hand, her cloak and dark hair billowing behind her.

  * * *

  The flight down MagDoon went slower than Pomella hoped, but the guiding stone led her true. She stayed on the old trail, using her walking staff to help prevent any accidental spills.

  Somewhere in her mind, a familiar voice called her a fool for running in the dark in a torn-up dress, bleeding, hungry, and exhausted. Nothing but a dunder, girl, muttered her father’s voice. She shut the voice out and descended the final leg of the trail.

  Dawn arrived as she came to the base of the mountain, its light rising reluctantly on the shadowy side of MagDoon. She pushed exhaustion and pain away. When the first hint of pinkish blue touched the sky, dimming the stars, she wolfed down the last of her rations like a bear freshly woken from her winter slumber. She needed her strength for whatever was yet to come.

  She reached the trailhead and paused for a moment to stretch her back. Raw blisters ached across both feet. The thought of having to walk a full day’s worth through the forest made her heart sink. Perhaps she shouldn’t have eaten the last of her food.

  Sighing, she retraced the steps she and Quentin had taken, following the trail west toward Kelt Apar. Befor
e she’d taken even a few steps, a figure erupted from the side of the road, armor and scales gleaming in the early sunlight. Vlenar stood before her, hand on sword.

  Pomella stumbled backward, her heart racing. Sweet Brigid, had he betrayed her, too?

  “W-what do you want?” she said.

  “I am looking for a misssing ranger,” Vlenar said, dropping his clawed hand from his sword. “Whatttt happened ttto you?”

  Pomella pulled her cloak tighter to hide her torn dress. “Mistress Yarina is in danger. A Mystic and a band of mercenaries trapped the Green Man at the summit of MagDoon. With him locked up, they plan to kill the High Mystic!”

  Vlenar’s hand flexed on the hilt of his sword. He looked over his shoulder toward Kelt Apar, then up the slope of the mountain.

  Pomella rushed on. “My friend, Sim, is dying up there. Quickly, please, can you help him?”

  “We need tttto ffffind Rochhhhhella,” Vlenar said. “Ssshhhe isss clossse.”

  “But that will take too much time!” Pomella protested. “I’m going back to Kelt Apar right now.”

  Vlenar grabbed her shoulder. “Myy fffriend needsss help, ttoo,” he said. “Ssshe can help greattttly. Come.”

  He cut into the forest, moving with alarming speed and agility. Pomella stared after him. Shite and blather, this better be worth the time! Gritting her teeth, Pomella followed. She was taking an awful risk, and likely further endangering both Yarina and Sim. But she needed help, and right now Vlenar and this other ranger were her only chance.

  She trudged through dense forest, walking across soggy underbrush left over from last autumn and winter, or even earlier. Her guiding stone trailed behind her, waiting for her to return her attention to it. After a few minutes, Vlenar slowed to a tiptoe, hand ready on his sword.

  Pomella crouched and followed in the same way. “Do you think there’s a way we can free Ox?” she whispered.