My nerves increased with every passing second.
I was in the lion’s den. In the very place where my existence was frowned upon, occupied by people who wanted nothing more than to hurt my kind and ban us from using our magic forever. People who despised magic so much they were willing to kill for it.
Cullyn led me to an area outside, away from the main courtyard, through an archway built into the building on the east side. The sun was rising from behind the building, casting its golden rays over us . It enveloped me with a glow that helped warm the chill that had settled in my bones from spending the night in a room that could barely be considered more than a cell.
At the end of the graveled path sprouting from the stone archway, stood an enormous greenhouse. It stretched at least twenty meters in length, and was easily six meters high, a spectacle of glass with a dome on top reminding me of a lighthouse.
Cullyn and I walked inside through tall glass doors that squeaked when Cullyn pushed them open.
“Marletta,” Cullyn said as he addressed the woman standing in the back of the greenhouse. “This is the new acolyte, Saleyna.” He said my name in the same tone someone would talk about disgusting food.
The woman turned toward us, the sunlight hitting her freckled face. She wore the same red robes as the other Priests, but hers were covered in dirt stains. A twig was nestled in her ginger, curly hair and as she walked toward us; I could spot filth under her nails too.
“Nice to meet you, Saleyna.” Marletta bowed her head slightly, smiling at me. She didn’t seem deterred by the mark on my head, and she looked friendly enough. Her friendly manner was a stark contrast from the way Altheia and Cullyn had treated me. “I’m the Head Herbalist. I teach acolytes all there is to know about herbs. We have a whole garden here designed to help people combat illnesses, heal diseases.”
All the things people asked mages’ help for, before magic was banned. We too relied on herbs for healing, only tapping into our magic when there was no other option to heal someone’s wounds or cure someone’s illness.
“The other acolytes will join us soon,” Marletta said while she rubbed her hands clean on her apron. The apron had once been white, but it now looked like a mix of grey and brown. “You don’t have to worry if you’re not that familiar with herbalism. My motto is: what you don’t know, you can learn.”
I liked Marletta’s straightforward approach. So far, she was the only one in the Red Keep who didn’t treat me like a leper because of the brand on my forehead.
“If she’s anything like her kind, that won’t be an issue,” Cullyn muttered below his breath, but loud enough for me to hear. Coming from anyone else, it might’ve sounded like a compliment, but from Cullyn’s mouth, it was obviously an insult.
I balled my hands into fists. Of course, the moment my mood improved, Cullyn had to ruin it, as if he had made it his personal mission to thwart me every chance he got.
“Cullyn, the acolyte is in good hands,” Marletta said while she put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure you have other duties to attend to now.”
It sounded like a command more than a remark, and it made me smile.
Cullyn sulked, but he turned on his heel and stalked out of the greenhouse, leaving Marletta and I alone.
I swirled around, taking in my surroundings. The greenhouse was gigantic. A spiral staircase led to the upstairs floor, where a steel balcony circled the entire roof, offering a three-hundred sixty degrees view of the outside. The downstairs area was divided in four areas by a hexagon-shaped terrace in the middle of the greenhouse. One wooden table stood behind Marletta, like a teacher’s desk, whereas behind me, eight similar tables were lined up—for the acolytes, a title which now included me.
In each of the areas grew a variety of plants, from trees to herbs and practically everything in between.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Marletta asked, chuckling at my awestruck expression. “It took years to get it into this shape. When I first came here, it was barely more than a ruin, and all the plants had died. Rebuilding it took forever.”
“Why was it in such a horrible condition?” I asked, dumbfounded by how the Red Priests could let something this beautiful go to waste.
“Most of the Red Keep was,” Marletta explained. “Twenty-or-so years ago, when I joined the order of the Red Priests, it was nowhere near as popular as it is now. We lacked the funding to maintain the upkeep of the stronghold. I made it my personal mission to restore the greenhouse.”
“Well, you should be proud of the result. It’s magnificent.”
Marletta blushed. “Thank you. Now if you don’t mind, could you help me carry those pots over there?” She gestured at eight stone pots standing to the side of the hexagon terrace. “Please put one on every table.”
“Sure.” I walked after her and grabbed one of the pots. It was a lot heavier than I had expected so I groaned while I carried it toward a table.
“What are these plants?” I asked while I dropped down the pot with a dull thud. The plant had greenish-yellow flowers, dark green leaves, and a slightly darker-colored circle in the middle of the flowers. It looked vaguely familiar, and I was pretty sure I had seen it before as a climbing plant in hedgerows and woodlands.
“You might recognize them,” Marletta answered. “It’s a good season for white bryony.”
She shot me a curious look and I was wondering if she was trying to figure out if I recognized the name of the plant or not. Bryonia Alba, as it was also called, was an inexpensive surrogate for Mandrake and had a lot of medicinal properties ascribed to it, but that was about where my knowledge ended. Mother had stopped teaching me about herbs and their healing qualities when I got branded and my magic disappeared. In fact, when I thought about it, she stopped teaching Sebastian and me pretty much everything since then.
The first few years after the Red Priests marked me, I blamed my mother for not stopping them. She was the one who had held back my arms while they put that branding iron on my forehead.
But then, as the years went on and I saw the toll it was taking on her, with her own magic trying to kill her from the inside out, I knew that all along she had just been trying to protect me. If I believed Sebastian’s stories, the powerful Wizards from the days of old sometimes got destroyed by their own wayward magic as well, when it became so powerful that their veins turned black and their eyes spit fire. No matter from what side you looked at it, it seemed like magic was more of a curse than a blessing.
The double glass doors of the greenhouse opened, and a small army walked in, all of them clad in similar grey robes as mine. The other acolytes were talking to each other when they strolled in, but the noise stopped abruptly when they noticed me.
“Ah! Welcome,” Marletta said, clapping her hands. “Can each of you please find a spot behind one of the tables? Oh, and this is our newest member Sarleyna,” she briefly introduced me. “I will not bother reciting all your names to her since I'm sure you can all introduce yourselves after class.”
Despite her friendliness, Marletta had a no-nonsense attitude. She jumped right into the topic she wanted to teach us about, without going on for too long about my status as a newcomer. I kind of liked that, though—being the center of attention had never been something I particularly enjoyed.
I waited until the other students had each occupied a table and then went to the remaining one, moving behind it.
“Today I will teach you about white bryony,” Marletta said. “White bryony is said to have enormous healing qualities. It can heal everything from malaria to indigestion, even pains in the chest and headaches. According to one of the oldest legends surrounding white bryony, if you dig up the plant it will shriek horrendously, which supposedly causes people to die from the obnoxious sound.”
One of the students in the back of the room, a girl with curly red hair tied back in a ponytail, gasped. “Is that true?” she asked the teacher.
Marletta chuckled. “It’s true that people think tha
t, yes. But I can assure you it’s just a legend. While the sound a white bryony makes when you dig it up isn’t particularly pleasant, it doesn’t sound like a shriek, and it certainly won’t kill you.”
“Mistress Marletta,” a young girl with blonde, straight hair asked from two rows in front of me. “Is it true that this also heals gout?”
“Yes,” Marletta answered with a smile. “Now, while the plant certainly has healing qualities and digging it up won’t kill you, keep in mind that the root is poisonous. It’s often used as a substitute for another, rarer and more expensive type of plant. Can anyone tell me which one?”
She looked around the room expectantly. I followed her gaze, staring at the other students. Some avoided looking at her, keeping their heads down, while others shook their head, indicating they had no idea.
I knew. But I would rather walk through the fourth circle of hell than raise my hand to answer.
“Let’s give our newest member a chance,” Marletta said, resting her gaze at me.
I cringed, wanting to crawl underneath the table and disappear. Had I somehow messed with a satyr and ruined all my luck? Had I stepped into an elven circle by accident, and was now facing all my worst nightmares coming true?
“Well, Sarleyna?” The herbalist asked, tilting her head to the left and looking at me curiously.
I contemplated pretending not to know, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to be untruthful. If I was to face the Blood God at some point, then I wanted to do it with as clear a conscious as possible.
“Mandrake,” I said. “It’s often used as a substitute for mandrake.”
“Correct.” Marletta gave me an encouraging smile. She continued to list the variety of uses for mandrake, including its common use as an anesthetic, or to threat some of the illnesses of the mind: melancholy, madness, mania.
A pupil in the front of the class, of whom I could only spot her brown hair tied into a braid, raised her hand.
“Yes?” Marletta asked, gesturing at her.
“Isn’t it true that mandrake is often used as a protection from magic?”
I didn’t miss the subtle nod of the girl’s head toward me.
A protection from magic. A protection from me.
Reyna, the leader of the Brotherhood of Whispers, the group of renegade mages desperate to stop the hunt and slaughter of our kind, the woman who had tricked me into coming here by convincing my brother to take my place if I refused, had been dead wrong.
She had said that once I got accepted into the ranks of the Red Priests, it was the safest place for a person like me—someone who, despite that cursed rune disfiguring my forehead, still had access to her powers. But she had been wrong on so many levels.
This was a death trap for my kind, one I couldn’t escape from.
When the student on my left muttered below his breath, “Maybe we should stock up on some mandrake then,” while staring at me in a way awfully similar to how Cullyn had regarded me when he first saw me, I knew I was a dead woman walking.
If the Red God didn’t kill me during the initiation ritual, then sooner or later, one of his disciples would.
Chapter Two
After herbalism ended in a catastrophe, with Marletta shooting angry glares at any student who so much as dared to mention magic, I stood away from the others while they prepared to go to their next class which was, surprisingly, woodcarving.
Although, when thinking about it—not that I had anything else to do while all the other students purposely ignored me—it made perfect sense. A place like this always needed new chairs, tables, closets, you name it.
As the group of grey robes started moving, I joined in at the back, trailing behind them. I had never felt this lonely before. At home, I always had Sebastian to keep me company. Even if he wasn’t around, our house was a constant reminder of his presence, his smell clinging to the furniture, his coat hanging next to the front door, his shoes blocking my path whenever I tried to clean up the kitchen.
I wondered if he felt the same, now he was forced to fend for himself.
For the thousandth time since I left, I wished I had said goodbye to him.
I followed the grey robes out of the greenhouse, onto the courtyard. They then turned to the right, to another building identical to the ones I had been in before: sturdy stone structures with little soul or personality. We entered a large workshop with various machines and carts, cogs and gears, stacked on each side of the room. The ceiling was at least four meters tall, but despite the enormous height, it was quite dark in the room, courtesy of the small slits of windows allowing only minimal sunlight.
“Hey,” a voice said from next to me, interrupting my thoughts.
I stared at the girl with the curly red hair, who had asked in the herbalism class if the shrieks of a white bryony could really kill someone.
“I’m Tamrin,” she introduced herself, extending a hand toward me.
I smiled at her, glad to see a friendly face for a change. I shook her hand, and a chill travelled upon my spine. For a second, her face seemed to morph into something else.
Tamrin’s eyes turned wide, her shock mimicking my own.
I hadn’t imagined it.
Her normal face had large, green eyes, a straight nose, thin lips, and freckles. The person she had morphed into for a millisecond had far bushier eyebrows, a thicker nose, dark eyes.
Tamrin pulled her hand out of mine as fast as if I’d given her a jolt of electricity.
I really must’ve been jinxed, because the one person who was trying to be friendly towards me, turned out to be keeping a secret as well. I was willing to bet my life on it that Tamrin wasn’t entirely human either.
Which would have been fine, ten years ago. Before the Great Famine. Before magic was forbidden and everything remotely connected to it, became as shunned as the wizards practicing it.
“I’m Saleyna,” I said, trying not to sound too spooked. “Nice to meet you.”
Tamrin still stared at her hand as if it had caught on fire. Then, she looked up at me, and a dark shadow passing over her features.
Without another word, she abruptly turned on her heel and stalked away from me, toward the others.
Great. I scared away the one person who was trying to be nice toward me.
“Please take your positions,” the woodcarving teacher, who had introduced himself as Gentar and towered over the rest of us with a height so impressive I wondered if he descended from giants. His shoulders were so broad I wouldn’t be surprised if he was strong enough to lift a horse. Any warlord would’ve paid a good coin to have a man with such a strong build join his army. Perhaps, he had been a warrior before he joined the ranks of the Red Priests.
I wondered the same thing about the others as I took up an empty space in the back of the workshop, thanking the Gods that at least woodcarving had nothing remotely to do with magic.
Who were all these people, and what had convinced them to become a Red Priest?
Had they been ‘called’ by the Red God? If so, how? Dreams? Visions? Just a gut feeling?
I would have to pry them for answers, even if they despised me, or use my magic to extract the answers from their minds, because the only way to survive the initiation rite was if I could somehow trick the Red God into believing I was here for a reason other than the actual one: that I was a spy infiltrating his very own stronghold.
My gaze rested on Tamrin, while I desperately tried to turn a stump of wood into a small stool. I had felt the magic coursing through her veins when we touched, so different from mine, yet so alike. I had seen her shift, even if for just a second. Although her kind wasn’t hunted down the same way mine was, non-magic users still shunned them.
What in the Gods’ names brought a shapeshifter to the temple of the Blood God?
The girl with the straight blonde hair caught my interest next. Her long, pointy ears betrayed her Elven heritage, although her hair—too light blonde to be native to these parts—had already given
a hint about that. She was at least half Elven.
Elves had always been held in high regard, even by the High King, although they too used magic, or had done so once. Practically their entire Kingdom was built on magic. But then the usurper had kicked the Elven Queen from her throne, and the Elven Kingdom had fallen into a dark pit of despair it still hadn’t recovered from.
Everyone here had a story. If I got to know their stories, if I figured out what brought them here, then maybe I could spin a story of my own, one so good even the Blood God had to believe it.
I struggled through the rest of class, delivering a horribly mismatched stool at the end, with one leg longer than the other ones. Gentar raised an eyebrow when he beheld my monstrosity, but he still said, “At least you tried. It takes practice.”
For someone who had never tried woodworking before, my attempt was not too bad, at least according to my amateur eyes. I shrugged, accepting my defeat. It was obvious I had zero affinity for woodcarving.
As the class finished, Gentar pat his belly and said, “Lunch time.” He escorted us outside, and then back to the main building, through the meandering corridors, and through double doors leading to an enormous dining hall.
The main hall, where four ten-meter-long tables were stationed, with eight equally long benches on each side of the table, was the most impressive space I had seen so far in the Red Keep.
The windows were decorated with stained glass, showing scenes depicting the Red God in various stages of his life. Once upon a time, before the Gods went back to the Upperworld, they dwelled on our own world, governing over their subjects as the Kings did now.
Judging by the bloody depictions staring down at us from the glass windows, it hadn’t exactly been a good time in the world’s history. Gods weren’t always peaceful or helpful. The Red God in particular, had spread bloodshed wherever he went, bringing honor to his name.
But the Era of Gods had been over a millennium ago, and no one was alive now to remember it—not even High Elves lived a thousand years.
Wayward Magic Page 16
