The Secrets of Solace

by Jaleigh Johnson

  “But how?” Ozben said, flabbergasted. How could one book contain a different story depending on who was looking at it?

  Lina shrugged. “Maybe it alters the story to fit the person reading it. The archivists think it makes a weak telepathic connection to the reader. They were consulting with a sarnun who lives in Tevshal about it—I think her name was Raenoll—but then the war started, and they lost contact with her.”

  “That’s too bad. I’d love to know how the book works.” Ozben’s head was still spinning as Lina moved down the stairs, gesturing for him to follow.

  “This one you have to lean in and smell, like the stained-glass murals,” she instructed him at the next alcove. “It doesn’t have a name, but I call it a memory jar.”

  Ozben moved up beside her, eager to see this latest wonder. He gazed into a square glass vase about six inches tall. In the bottom of the vase swirled a thin pink mist. He bent forward and sniffed. The scent tickled his nose with hints of cinnamon mixed with something else he couldn’t identify. It was a nice smell, though, and it reminded him of something. What was it?

  A memory popped into his head then, so vivid and sharp that it made him jump. Ozben felt Lina’s hand on his arm, steadying him, but in his mind, he was suddenly back in Ardra at the royal palace.

  He was five years old and playing at sword fighting with his sister, just as he’d described to Lina. Elinore’s straight black hair flew around her face as she moved, dodging his clumsy sword swipes and leaping backward over their mother’s petunia beds. She was almost fourteen and so much taller and more graceful than him, but it didn’t matter. He was laughing, having a good time, and so was she.

  They danced and dueled through the palace gardens while bees buzzed around the flowering ivy growing thick on the walls. Once, Elinore tripped and fell backward, sprawling on the lawn. Ozben ran over and dived on top of her, squealing with laughter. Elinore let out a big “oof” noise and flopped on the ground, pretending he’d crushed her.

  “Enough, both of you!”

  The angry shout came from somewhere near the garden gate. Elinore scrambled to her feet, helping Ozben up with her. The speaker was their grandfather. Ozben’s joy shriveled into fear—he’d always been a little in awe of his grandfather—but his sister had stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder, and that made him feel better and worse at the same time. He’d wanted to be the one to step in front of her and protect her from the king’s anger.

  When King Easmon strode across the garden, the sunlight reflected off his silver hair and the epaulets at his shoulders. Ozben stared, thinking how equally noble and frightening the king appeared. At that age, Ozben’s head barely came up to the man’s waist. He knew the cuts and facets of the emeralds in the sword swinging from the king’s belt better than he knew the cracks and wrinkles in his grandfather’s face.

  “Go inside, Elinore,” the king instructed sternly. “Your mother wants a word with you.”

  “As you wish, Grandfather.” Elinore bowed to the king, shot Ozben a wink and an encouraging smile, and left the garden. Ozben started to follow—his grandfather rarely paid attention to him, so he didn’t expect any different treatment now.

  But this time, the king reached down and seized him painfully by the arm.

  “You’re the least of all of us, you know,” his grandfather said softly, staring into Ozben’s eyes. “The most unimportant.”

  Ozben’s stomach clenched. He was suddenly cold all over, except where the king held on to his arm. A grip like iron, and his hand was hot, so hot Ozben imagined it might burn him if he held on long enough.

  But it was his grandfather’s tone of voice that was more painful than anything. He didn’t sound angry or even disappointed, as Ozben’s father and mother did when he got into trouble. No, it was because the king sounded resigned, as if there was no hope for him.

  “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” he said haltingly. Whatever he did, he would not let the king see the tears that stung his eyes. He stared into his grandfather’s grim face, not daring to blink in case they fell.

  “It does neither me nor your family any good to hear you say you’re sorry, boy,” the king replied. “You won’t be a child forever. Soon you’ll have to decide what you can contribute to this kingdom. Earn the privileges you’ve been given, or I’ll see them taken away.”

  “Ozben?”

  His sister was calling to him. Of course I’m not all right, Ozben thought miserably. He wished more than anything that Elinore would dash back into the garden and rescue him from his grandfather.

  “Ozben, say something!”

  Wait, that wasn’t his sister calling to him. It was Lina’s voice. His grandfather’s face swam in Ozben’s vision, melting and reshaping into a jar of mist resting in an alcove.

  Ozben came back to himself with a jolt. The memory had seemed so real. In fact, he could have sworn he still felt his grandfather’s hand squeezing his arm. Ozben rubbed the feeling away and suppressed a shudder.

  “What was that?” he asked, his voice trembling.

  “What did you see?” Lina asked. She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, just as his sister had done.

  “It was…the clearest dream I’ve ever had,” Ozben said, fighting for the words to describe how he felt. “Except it wasn’t a dream. It happened.” He remembered that day in the garden, sword fighting with Elinore, but the rest of it, the conversation with his grandfather—he’d forgotten all about that part, blocked it from his memory.

  Until now.

  “It’s the mist,” Lina explained. “Its scent conjures a memory you’ve lost. Only the one, though. I’ve tried it about a dozen times to see if I can remember something different, but it doesn’t work that way.”

  “If you knew how it worked, then you might have warned me,” Ozben said, his temper flaring. He’d been unprepared for the memory jar’s effect on him, and his grandfather’s hurtful words still rang in his mind. The least of all of us. That was what he’d said. His grandfather had always been strict, yet Ozben never remembered his being cruel.

  But beyond the hurt and confusion in Ozben lurked also a hint of fear. Why and how had the mist conjured that memory out of all the others in his past? This was more than just a candle flame that wouldn’t go out, or a book that told telepathic stories. This artifact seemed much more powerful to him. It had reached deep into his mind to conjure that lost memory. Ozben looked from the curling mist to Lina’s face, his brow furrowed in consternation. “Is the mist…it can’t be…some kind of magic?”

  Lina frowned. “The archivists never use that term,” she said. “Saying something is ‘magic’ just means we don’t have a scientific explanation for how and why it works. But there’s nothing here to be scared of. All these artifacts have been tested and retested a thousand different ways to make sure they’re harmless.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said curtly, unwilling to let his anger go. The memory of his grandfather had been anything but harmless. But Ozben didn’t want to tell Lina what he’d seen. “How can you really know if they’re safe if you don’t understand how this stuff works?” he asked, gesturing to the alcoves.

  “Well…” Lina stared at the mist, and her eyes took on a faraway glaze. She leaned forward and closed her eyes as she breathed it in. After a moment, she opened her eyes and looked at him. “You’re right,” she admitted. “We can’t know for sure that these things won’t hurt us. Kind of like with people,” she added quietly, as if she were speaking to herself. “No matter how much you think you know someone, you don’t always understand why they do the things they do.”

  She looked so sad all of a sudden that Ozben’s anger drained away. He wondered what memory the mist had conjured up for her. If it was anything like the vision he’d just seen, he could understand why she’d tried dozens of times for a different one. Maybe it was just the nature of the thing to bring up bad memories, though he couldn’t imagine why that would be useful. “Will you show me more?” he
asked, hoping to distract them both. As much as he feared some of these artifacts, he was equally fascinated by their mysteries. He was beginning to understand why the archivists were so dedicated to their work.

  And Lina did show him more. By the time they’d reached the bottom of the stairs, Ozben had seen a plant that chimed the faintest notes of a song when he touched its leaves, a clock with seventeen numbers on its face, and a sculpture of a ballerina that looked so real, he’d expected it to dance right off its platform at any minute. He wanted the alcoves and their mysterious wonders to keep going on forever.

  “Elinore would love this place,” Ozben remarked as they continued through the museum, walking down a hallway flanked by lifelike statues. “So would my parents. I wonder why they never came here before.”

  A pang of homesickness hit Ozben, and he had to pause in front of a statue of a man on a charging horse. He’d gotten so caught up in seeing the museum that he’d forgotten to ask Lina if she knew a secret way out of the stronghold. Time was running out if he wanted to be away before dawn.

  So what if you do escape? whispered a voice in the back of Ozben’s mind. What then? Hope that he had enough coin with him to buy passage on a train or caravan, if one existed that could navigate the snow-covered roads out of the mountains and take him all the way to Ardra. What if he ended up having to walk for miles with no food and water? Was he truly brave and resourceful enough to make it all the way back home, or was he just fooling himself? Maybe his grandfather was right.

  A few steps ahead of him, Lina stopped and turned around. “Something wrong?” she asked.

  Ozben shook his head. “Nothing. I’m all right.”

  “Good,” Lina said, and her eyes lit up. “I saved the best for last.”

  There was more? “Um, all right.” Maybe it would distract him from the dark direction his thoughts had taken. Besides, Lina looked so excited, Ozben found himself wondering what she had up her sleeve that could possibly top all the things he’d seen so far. “Is it in this wing of the museum?” he asked.

  “It’s not in the museum at all,” she said. “I’m taking you to my workshop.” She hesitated and seemed suddenly nervous, clasping and unclasping her hands. “I’ve never shown it to anyone before,” she said. “It’s a secret. No one can know about it. Do you understand?”

  Ozben smiled wryly. “I have some experience with secrets,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  She nodded, but Ozben sensed she wasn’t quite convinced. Now he was really curious about what she might be hiding in this workshop.

  “It’s a bargain, then?” she said. She walked over to him and held out her hand. “I’ll keep your secret, and you’ll keep mine?”

  She looked so serious that Ozben’s grin faded. He took her hand and shook it firmly. “I swear on my honor as a prince of the Merrow Kingdom, I’ll keep your secret.”

  “All right, I believe you,” Lina said, and her serious expression melted into a smile. “Come on. I know you’re going to love this.”

  Lina stood next to Ozben, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he stared at the Merlin. She was tempted to point out that his mouth was quite literally hanging open, but she decided not to, especially since it was likely she’d worn the same dumbfounded expression when she first clapped eyes on the airship. And Ozben was seeing not only the airship for the first time but its strange wings as well. He had to be overwhelmed.

  “This is”—Ozben turned to her as he spoke, his eyes enormous—“the most amazing thing ever!”

  Lina grinned hugely. “See, I knew you’d be impressed.”

  “Impressed?” Ozben made a slow circle around the ship as he spoke, looking at it from every angle. “It’s an airship buried inside a mountain! How did it get here?”

  “Same way the other artifacts do,” Lina said. “Someone found it in the scrap fields, brought it here, and the archivists rebuilt it. I think a cave-in must have buried the chamber a long time ago, so the archivists thought it was gone.”

  “Do you think it flies?” Ozben asked, pausing beneath one of the wings to examine the ship’s rigid frame.

  Lina walked over to join him. “It’s possible,” she said. “I tested one of the engines, and it worked fine, but without getting inside the ship to look at the controls, there’s no way to know for sure. Though even if we did get it to fly, it wouldn’t go very far in this chamber.”

  “So there’s no other way out of this cave?” Ozben asked, gazing around the room. He appeared to be lost in thought.

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Lina said, but then again, she’d been concentrating all her efforts on digging out the ship and getting inside it. “You see those stones wedged in front of the ship’s door there?” She waited for him to look, but Ozben was still staring intently at the cavern walls. Impatient, Lina grabbed his arm and, ignoring his yelp of surprise, towed him over to the door. “Those four large, incredibly annoying boulders are keeping me from opening the ship,” she explained. “I need your help to move them.”

  “Oh?” Ozben went over to the closest stone and nudged it with his foot. It didn’t budge. He crouched down and shoved his weight against it, trying, Lina assumed, to scoot it across the ground. His face turned red, and he broke off with a gasp. He glanced up at her with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s not possible.”

  “Of course it is,” Lina said, smiling brightly. “You’re exactly what I need.”

  Ozben’s skeptical expression didn’t change. He stood up and gestured to himself. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, and believe me, I’d rather not mention it at all, but I’m not exactly the biggest or the strongest prince that ever lived. Although what I lack in strength, I make up for in strategy,” he added quickly.

  “Even better,” Lina said. “I’ve been thinking it over, and it’s all a matter of tools, not strength. I’ve tried using a pry bar and fulcrum by myself, but it isn’t enough. I need another pair of hands running another tool.” She surveyed the cavern. “Right…there,” she said, pointing to a large stalagmite jutting up near the rear of the ship. “And there.” Next she pointed to Lumpy, the most rectangular-shaped of the four boulders. “If we hook up a hand winch at those two points, and you run the thing while I lever the boulder with the pry bar, it should be enough to dislodge it and knock loose the other three rocks. Simple as that.”

  Ozben rubbed his chin while his gaze darted between the stalagmite and Lumpy. Slowly, he nodded. “All right, I can see how that might work,” he conceded. “Let’s give it a try. Where’s the hand winch?”

  Lina grinned sheepishly. “Well, that’s where your strategizing is going to come in really handy,” she said.

  “Uh-oh,” Ozben said, his eyebrow shooting up again. “You don’t have a hand winch, do you?”

  “Not even close. But I know exactly where to get one.”

  She grabbed his arm and led him over to her worktable. She selected one of her large maps of the stronghold and unrolled it. Ozben looked at the map and then studied Lina’s face. He pursed his lips. “Go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m starting to get the impression that this ‘late-night tour of Ortana’ was actually an elaborate plan to get me down here so you could embroil me in a different but equally elaborate plan to help you break into your airship. Am I close?”

  Lina blushed. “Yep, you’re pretty much on the nose,” she said. She looked at him hopefully. “Did it work?”

  “Did I mention you’re diabolical?” Ozben asked, but he smiled as he said it, and Lina felt a surge of hope. She’d come this far—it was time to sell him on the rest of the plan.

  She turned back to her map, which showed a general layout of the entire stronghold. “See, the Heart of the Mountain is here, in the center of everything,” she said, tracing her finger around the large circular chamber in the middle of the map. “If you go out the south passage from there, you end up in the museum. What we want are these six areas to the east and west. Those
corridors lead to the archivists’ workshops.” She tapped her finger on each of the six rooms as she named them. “There’s the Flora and Fauna divisions, but we call them the Garden and the Menagerie. Then there’s the medical wing, the library, and the Gears and Steam room, which is where we need to go to get our hand winch.”

  “And since you’re showing me all this in the same way my grandfather shows his commanders a battlefield map,” Ozben said, “I’m guessing we’re not going to be able to just stroll up to the Gears and Steam room and ask for the hand winch.”

  Lina patted him on the shoulder. “You’re quick,” she said. “Technically, the archivists’ tools can be used by anyone, but if I ask for the hand winch, it’ll attract attention and questions I don’t want to have to answer. We need to do this in secret,” she said.

  “Makes sense.” Ozben traced a finger across the map, studying the pathways she’d drawn. He glanced up at her curiously. “But what I don’t understand is, why me? Not that I don’t enjoy the idea of a challenge,” he added hastily, “it’s just, why haven’t you asked one of your friends to help you before now?”

  The question caught Lina off guard, and she felt her face get hot. She tried to hide her embarrassment by turning away to rearrange her tools. “You said it yourself. You know what it’s like to have a secret—something you can’t trust to anyone else. And I don’t have any friends…I mean, I don’t have anyone else who understands that.”

  “I see,” Ozben said quietly. “Well then.” He clapped his hands together. “We’d better get started. We have a lot of planning to do.”

  Lina sneaked a glance at him to make sure he wasn’t teasing her. He was staring intently at the map, biting his lower lip as he studied the tunnels. A thread of excitement worked its way through her. They were really going to do this. She’d been right: Ozben was the perfect partner.