by Jean Gill
‘This is what forging kills,’ she told Drianne. ‘All those stupid ladies and brutish knights were once as open as this. If Kermon is responsible, I can never forgive him, whether he was forced or thought it was right. Never.’
He didn’t do it. Drianne clearly believed what she said but then, she would. She had a connection with Kermon.
‘Radium,’ pronounced Mielitta clearly and the rainbow gate appeared, drawing awed gasps from the children who could see it.
‘May the stones be with you,’ Mielitta told her friend. Drianne jumped onto the sill, waiting to catch the children each in turn, see them safely through the gate. One by one, each eager child landed safely. Clutching their lunch-boxes, they were helped through the gate by Drianne and then they vanished. They had strict instructions to wait on the other side and they behaved like Perfect little citizens. Then it was Drianne’s turn and she too leaped through the rainbow, leaving room on the stone for Mielitta to land and follow.
Maybe the Citadel flooring did not extend as far as this water-soaked passage but if the river was purified and the gate warded, Mielitta was taking no chances. When the ground had clamped her, it had done so in seconds, with no escape and she’d not come this far to lose everything. She dared not remove the cut-out soles but they hampered her movement when walking. How much more difficult they would make the jump across to the iron gate.
She steadied herself mentally. She’d made so many jumps far more difficult than this one. ‘Make the ground your friend,’ she murmured and leaped. Her left foot landed safely and she tried to throw her weight forward, gain purchase, but the tip of her right cut-out sole caught on a rock edge, bent and pulled the boot with it. For a moment, she teetered, her body weight see-sawing between the sill and the foot that dangled over the water-race below. Then a force slammed her sideways, onto the sill and through the rainbow gate.
Jannlou.
Chapter Thirty
On the other side, Mielitta arced, ready to buck and free herself but Jannlou had already rolled away and sprung to his feet, leaving her short of breath but very much alive. And surrounded by giggling children, who ran barefoot, splashed each other in the stream. Little sign of their Perfect education was evident as they rolled and played in the meadow or the water, clothing discarded as they went. If the children reacted so spontaneously to Nature, maybe her plan would work.
Where was Drianne? Then Mielitta spotted her friend, barefoot and balanced on a rock, being tugged in all directions by squealing children until she slipped laughing into the water. She choked as she took a faceful of water, swallowed, recovered and laughed. She was no older than the top class of students and smaller than many of them as she acted her age for once.
Mielitta swore loudly and the nearest ring of children giggled.
‘That’s the nice man,’ the brown-eyed girl told her in reproving tones.
‘Not in front of the children,’ Jannlou admonished her but she was in no mood for jests and she prepared to launch herself at him. Self-defence, she told herself. Then she saw his red-rimmed eyes and held back, just as somebody who was Jannlou’s equal in strength if not size came hurtling towards them from the edge of the forest, where she’d asked him to carry Verity and wait.
‘Kermon,’ she yelled. ‘I don’t need to be rescued!’
The Apprentice Mage-Smith stopped dead but all three of them were poised, ready for a fight. There was no time for this!
‘And I didn’t need you to rescue me either.’ She glared at Jannlou.
He interpreted her words for Kermon. ‘That’s her way of saying thank you.’
Mielitta ignored his irritating smile and spoke to the perplexed Apprentice Mage-Smith. ‘I don’t know what Jannlou’s doing here but if we keep him with us, he can’t betray us.’ Another daggers look. ‘A second time.’
Jannlou looked back at her without flinching. ‘Yes, I told Bastien your Maturity Test hadn’t fully taken. He recognised you, kept asking questions, why you were working in the library, why you were still… different. He was pushing for answers and I thought it would get him off your back.’
He shrugged. ‘And he’s my friend. We always shared things. I never thought he’d summon you to do it again.’ His voice shook. ‘You really think I knew what they had planned? Bastien and his father–’ He choked on the words, couldn’t say more.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mielitta told him. ‘About your father.’
Both men gave her a sharp look. ‘How did you know?’ asked Kermon.
Mielitta told the truth. ‘I saw it.’ Jannlou’s eyes blackened with pain and she forestalled any questions. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it. Kermon, where’s Verity? You haven’t lost her?’
‘No, she’s resting in the shade at the tree-line.’
‘Right, let’s round up this lot and take them to the beehive. Then we can talk.’
The children had let off enough steam to accept the idea that there was more fun to be had deeper into the forest. With help from an apologetic Drianne, clothes and lunch-boxes were recovered and the children marshalled into a dishevelled version of their previous order.
They were having so much fun, Drianne justified the chaos that was not part of the plan.
Mielitta didn’t need to shut her eyes to see the bee-map danced into her mind, showing her the way home. She headed up the procession with Kermon, entrusting the nice man to the two little girls who’d taken a shine to him. This time, Drianne knew he was there and would keep watch over him using her magecraft. Whether she was stronger in her powers than Jannlou remained to be seen but for the moment he seemed harmless, entertaining his little fans.
Kermon stooped to pick up Verity from her resting-place at the fringe of the Forest, her face a pale oval dominated by watery brown eyes, full of accusation.
‘Did you drink from the stream?’ Mielitta asked her.
‘I’m not allowed,’ responded Verity.
‘You should have tried it. But here, take this. It’s from the Citadel, purified.’ Mielitta passed over a leatherette bottle.
‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ asked Verity.
‘You will know by the taste, the lack of taste. You’re thirsty. Drink.’
Kermon flashed a look at Mielitta. Perhaps Drianne was not the only one who thought her hard. But Verity took a much-needed drink, then they walked onwards, weaving through the trees.
‘See the shadows of the leaves, the sun burst through the canopy?’ Mielitta asked. Nobody could say she didn’t try.
‘It’s too bright. It’s bad for my eyes,’ was the sullen reply.
‘See how tall that tree is? Each ring in its body is a year’s growth. Imagine how many years old it must be.’
‘Daddy told me about trees. That’s a week’s wood for the Citadel.’
How could people’s perceptions be so different? Mielitta’s bees sang of home and work. Her mouth still fizzed with the taste of the Forest water, drunk upstream from the area turned into a children’s playground. Goodness knows what flavours had been added by the schoolchildren.
She saw flashes of feathers overhead, heard warnings of their approach tweeted and barked by the Forest-dwellers. Despite the threat of war, Mielitta felt the Forest working its peace inside her, its natural forces drawing her home. When she reached the glade and saw the beehive humming with activity, her heart melted, sweet and golden, as soft as Drianne could wish.
‘We camp here,’ she told Kermon. ‘Can you tell Drianne to help settle the children down, calm their spirits, tell them to open their lunch-boxes but wait for the order before eating. We need to keep them all here. Rinduran would never dare to attack the Forest while the children are with us.’
Kermon’s face showed the concentration that Mielitta now recognised as communication with Drianne, who knew the plan already.
Loosed, Mielitta’s bees flew dizzy loops around her as she walked towards their home. Humming gently, ignoring the inner circle of wide-eyed children and the three
adults who’d joined her in the glade, she removed the roof from the hive, revealing the top box full of honeyed frames.
Surrounded by the bees, she hummed her news and her request, waited while the scouts told the workers, while the workers took word to the Young Queen and while the hive danced in debate. Their anger at the prospect of war was a roar. Their attitude to the children was a confused buzz that settled into understanding of what Mielitta needed. And their trust in Mielitta was the respectful dance of those who guard their queen, unconditionally.
Patiently, in mind-pictures, in a dance, she showed the bees what must be done. The first bees repeated her instructions, hesitant, but as she approved their response, confidence grew and soon, the hive was of one mind and intention.
Feed the human grubs, they agreed.
Mielitta punctured the caps on honeycomb and each worker bee collected its load of honey, flew to a child, and regurgitated the honey onto the sustenance in the open lunch-box. This work was repeated until each child had a layer of honey spread on the usual Citadel bread-substitute. Then Drianne released the children’s waiting spell and let their hunger instruct them.
Each bee observed her designated child eating the honeyed sustenance and the forest around the glade hummed with contented bees. Equally contented, the children let bees alight and tickle their open hands while they munched. All the children but one.
Pale and as isolated as she had been in her partitioned room, Verity would not touch the honeyed sustenance Mielitta offered her. The bee who’d been charged with feeding the girl hovered anxiously.
‘I’m not allowed,’ said Verity, swiping at the bee with her arm. ‘Make it go away!’
‘She made the honey and brought it to you,’ Mielitta said. ‘Bee grubs are given honey, pollen and water. She would bring you pollen if I ask her. You could try it.’
‘I’m dying,’ said Verity.
‘What if you’re not?’ asked Mielitta. ‘What if it’s the Citadel life that’s killing you?’
‘You’re wicked!’ Worried by the tension, Verity’s bee buzzed closer to her, settling on her hand, asking what was wrong. Verity smacked one hand on top of the other, forcing the bee’s sting through her skin, fatally.
‘Ow,’ screamed Verity, flicking the dead bee onto a heap of pine needles and staring at the tiny dart still sticking in her hand.
The bee’s death buzzed black in Mielitta’s head, souring the smell of happiness everywhere else in the glade. She reached over and pulled the sting out of Verity’s hand.
‘It’s killed me,’ the girl whimpered, nursing the reddening bump on her hand.
‘Good!’ Mielitta spat back before she could help herself.
Drianne moved between them, inspected the girl’s hand, told Mielitta, It feels sore but not dangerous. You should tell her. It’s not going to kill her.
Mielitta maintained a stubborn silence and it was Kermon who passed on Drianne’s words to Verity. The girl didn’t believe him, just cried harder. ‘Daddy will come for me,’ she sobbed. ‘And then you’ll see.’
To keep some control, Mielitta walked around the glade and soothed herself by watching the other children. Under the effects of Drianne’s magecraft, the children were all calm and as curious as their bees, which flew or settled on their skin, inquisitive, asking questions with their wings and antennae, amused by the answers.
‘Why couldn’t you do that to Verity?’ she asked Drianne bitterly, as her friend joined her.
‘I don’t know. The others are all open to the Forest, to new experiences. They’ve not been forged. You saw them at the stream, just following instinct.’
‘I saw you at the stream.’ Mielitta smiled weakly, still grieving for one dead bee.
‘I think, maybe, Rinduran has changed something in his daughter. His fears are her reality. She clings to the idea of her own death.’
‘And if she doesn’t die it will kill her to admit Daddy could be wrong!’ Mielitta’s laugh hurt. ‘I thought maybe your magecraft wasn’t working in the Forest.’ Then she realised what she’d said, recalled why she’d thought that and looked around for Jannlou.
He was sitting with his fans, making little creatures out of pine cones by squashing them into each other and gouging out pieces to make eyes, legs, beaks or claws.
She went over to him, fuming. ‘You said magecraft didn’t work in the Forest!’
He smiled at her and her stomach butterflied. How could a man do that to you, even when he was in the wrong? Especially when he was in the wrong!
‘I don’t have any,’ he told her. ‘Magecraft.’
This was outrageous. She was prepared to swallow his excuses for betraying her to Bastien but she wasn’t a fool. ‘Of course you don’t. All those years studying magecraft, the times you and Bastien used it against me – of course the Council got it wrong, your teachers got it wrong and you don’t have any magecraft at all! And I’m the Queen of the Citadel!’
‘Bastien covered for me. Right from the start. Everyone expected me to have magecraft because of my– because of my father. He expected me to have magecraft. People see what they want to. And I wanted to please my father. Wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m a girl.’ Mielitta remembered Declan’s reactions to her hopes of becoming a smith.
‘Well, anyway, it started as a game. Bastien was so powerful he could throw his magecraft, make it look as if I was doing it. We practised until we were really good. Everyone thought we were inseparable so it was easy. If I was with my father nobody expected me to show my talents – he did everything. And then it was too late for me to say it was all Bastien. He never let on. But things have changed.’
They were silent, thinking of all that had indeed changed.
Mielitta flushed. What a fool she’d been. ‘B-b-but you’ve been using glamour, with all those girls…’
His grin was a Perfect demonstration of charm. ‘No, I haven’t. No magecraft, no glamour.’
Mortified, she rushed off to find somewhere in this Forest to cool her burning face. She sought refuge in the beehive glade but when she reached it, there was no balm for her soul. Quite the opposite. The war had begun.
Chapter Thirty-One
Darkness panicked the bees and Mielitta urged them all back into the hive. Any dribbled honey from the top box had been cleaned up with lightning efficiency and the colony was at fighting strength. It needs to be, thought Mielitta as a wave of black obliterated the sun, like the sleeve of a mage’s robe sweeping across the sky. In its wake lay only the void. Darkness indeed.
It begins? the bees queried.
‘Yes,’ she told them. ‘I will call you when you can help.’
This was no thunderstorm but a blackness that drained all light, all hope. Mielitta had faced this twice before when he entered her thoughts but Rinduran’s power had grown. Maybe he’d added Magaram’s and Shenagra’s strength to his own, as Drianne had gained Puggy’s. Ravished minds, ravished power – consent was irrelevant to Rinduran.
‘He will play on your fears,’ she yelled to the others, hoping that Jannlou and Kermon were hidden. Then the wave of unnatural darkness descended, enveloped her, cut her off. Drianne had wrapped the children in a sleep-binding that should preserve them in a honeyed dream while the war raged around them.
When the voice came, it grated like a knife on glass, pared her. ‘This is your doing.’ The blackness dissolved, allowed her to see the ashen wasteland in which she was the only life-form. Leafless trees raised their agonised branches to an indifferent grey sky and throughout the bare Forest, Mielitta saw only skeletons, four-legged and two-legged, big enough to be bear or tiger, or small enough to be birds.
Her heart thumped as she looked everywhere for her friends, scanning the barely recognisable places where she’d last seen them. Drianne and Kermon, white bones against a tree. Why torture herself further by looking for Jannlou?
‘Bees?’ she queried.
Shivering, huddling together, they were still there but
their crushing despair brought her to tears. Through their eyes, she saw the hive empty, no queen, no adults, only grubs dead from starvation. The dance directions in their heads whirled, nauseating, and their sickness was terminal. She was sucked into their vortex, black as an eye-patch.
No home they whispered. No food. No flowers. Nothing.
Mielitta was weeping, knew there was no hope. It was almost a relief to let go. There was no place for her or the bees in this sterile Perfect world. The pine needles at her feet were already changing into grassette, an extension of the Citadel’s control, of Nature’s loss. Rinduran had won and Verity would be safe. Sterility had won.
Something about that train of thought was wrong. She reached for her lucky arrowhead in her habitual nervous reflex and the touch of the steel cleared her head for long enough to think straight. Something about sterility, being sterile… her thoughts zigzagged like bees desperately seeking flowers. Sterile… sterile meant no children. But there should be children here. Where were the children? There should be hundreds of them, or their bones, lying around.
Even as she thought of them, pictured Jannlou’s little fans, the brown-eyed girl and her friend, the landscape around her gained a green tint, brown on tree bark, dancing shadows. Human shapes shimmered into view. The children were all there, safe, sleeping, with a taste of honey in every mouth. Not just the children. She could see–
And then she couldn’t. The scene blacked out completely but now she knew the mirage was only that, a misglamour. And she would fight until the end.
