Malivia owned her. Held her by the same leash she held her house wizard by, and Vimika had handed it to her with a greedy smile on her face. If knowledge was power, then that fragile old woman was a god to two different wizards now and hadn't needed a drop of magic to achieve it with.
Vimika should have run, just like always. Before it had been to spare her heart. At least this time, it would have been to spare her soul.
A breeze suddenly blew in from the shadows, bringing a voice along with it.
I told you, it said.
"Shut up!" Vimika shouted so loud it hurt.
Even living underground, she had never felt so trapped. A monster ahead, a monster behind, and she didn't even have her magic to help. She was just a pointy-eared, slit-eyed human, cut off from her means of figuring out just how large a threat either presented. The illusions had fooled even her magic senses though, so maybe it didn't matter after all.
As quickly as it had come, the breeze died away, allowing her to hear footsteps approaching from behind.
"I'm sorry," said Aurelai.
Vimika grit her teeth to the point of pain, fighting the urge to turn around. "It's too late for that."
"Then I'm sorry for that, too." The footfalls stopped. "Please don't make me beg. I can't bear the idea of being left alone again. I didn't know what bringing you here would do to you, or our people. I... only know what Father told me. That we couldn't leave because the world hated mages. When I saw the treatment of the house mages, I had no reason to suspect he was lying. Until I saw you. You were free, you had a home of your own, friends who cared about you. You got drunk in public without worrying about anything happening to you. I thought you were different. That you were stronger than them... that you would understand."
Vimika chose to ignore the last part. "The world did hate us, for a long time."
"He didn't tell me it was because of him. He said the world was jealous of our power."
"Did those house wizards you spied on seem powerful?"
"No. But you did. It's why I thought to try you first. You were already free," Aurelai said.
Vimika's head fell back in a mirthless laugh. "Then maybe I owe you an apology."
"You had everything I wanted, and I thought you could help me get it. Is that not power?"
At that, Vimika turned and saw for the first time just where she'd found herself. The house was a bit rustic perhaps, but well looked after, surrounded by flowers that bloomed in the dead of winter, an idyllic island floating in a sea of luscious green. Isolated from anything resembling civilization and miles from the nearest soul, it was everything Vimika had wanted. And she'd been so close. She'd been right to want to get away, and now she had, ironically. But she didn't feel powerful. Just the opposite.
"Do you know why people turned on us? What your father did?" Whatever the objective truth, Vimika was willing to play along with Aurelai's for this much.
"Mechamagery," Aurelai said, her voice tiny, her eyes unable to hold Vimika's. For a fraction of a heartbeat, Vimika lamented it.
"Mechamagery. Ripping the lifeforce out of a living thing and shoving it into a metal body so it could live forever."
Aurelai winced, but nodded at Vimika's assessment.
"It was seen as… unnatural. As much as people said they didn't like mechamagical animals, they bought them at astronomical prices. Mages started taking shortcuts making new ones, not waiting for the donors to be on the brink of natural death. Then came all the failures, the monstrosities that killed their makers and then themselves… the common folk wouldn't stand for it, rebellions fomented, so the king put a stop to them before they could start." Vimika paused to take a breath and regretted the split second it gave her to see the impact her story had on Aurelai's features, but it was her duty to continue. "Mages had gone too far, too close to the domain reserved for gods, and they... we, were punished. Our people were decimated, leaving barely enough to continue. Even then under strict conditions. Like having to wear the hat and robe at all times, or be arrested. We can't practice magic without a formal education from an accredited wizard school, we have to account for every single public use of it and pay taxes on each. No human woman will risk bearing the child of a wizard and subjecting them to the harassment, the taunts, the rules. I've been called a 'slit-eyed witch' more times than I can count. Do you know what 'witch' means? It's a corruption of 'wizard' and 'bitch'. My ears pulled, my hat stolen, I have to ensorcel my locks to keep people from breaking into my home in spite of the fact I own nothing worth stealing. That's your legacy. The world your father birthed and fled."
The longer Vimika spoke, however, the more time it gave her blood to cool. Getting it all out was cathartic, but it was Aurelai's lack of denial, her complete and total supplication to what she was being bombarded with that made Vimika stop.
In the house, Vimika had been defenseless against magic. Out here, Aurelai was against the truth, and now she stood diminished, curling in on herself, her arms wrapped around her waist. But more sure than Vimika had been of anything lately, she knew the look on Aurelai's face was genuine as it turned inward, her ears drooping into limp crescents.
Aurelai hadn't known. As a full-blooded wizard living in the Atvalian Empire, there was no way for her to have not known the truth about the Purges. They all did, since no one was about to let them forget. The only explanation for how that could be was that Aurelai had been telling the truth.
In broad daylight, there was nothing at all about malicious about her. Nothing illusory or deceptive. Outside of the lab, with none of the trappings of her heritage beyond the eyes and ears, and without being able to See it, there was no sign of the power that lurked within them all. She was a woman like any other.
But if Aurelai was telling the truth, then there was another, much larger truth hanging over her, and she didn't even know it. Vimika hadn't enjoyed any of the truths the day had revealed so far, but if her hunch was right, then it was one that also had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light.
In a moment, Vimika's righteous anger collapsed. Her shoulders sagged, and she no longer knew what to do with her hands without sleeves to hide them in.
"Aurelai… I think you've been here a lot longer than you think you have."
As surely as if Vimika had taken a hammer to them, Aurelai fell to her knees so hard they kicked up clods of dirt, and she sat on her heels in slack-faced dejection.
She looked up with wide, beseeching eyes. "Why?" she whispered.
"Greed. Power. Hubris. There are a lot of reasons."
"Against their will? But he said..." Aurelai choked back a sob, her hand flying to cover her mouth.
"I'm sure he said a lot of things," Vimika said tightly. "I didn't know him personally of course, but history does. And what it has to say is... well, I can imagine what he told you."
Aurelai looked up, twin wells absorbing every bit of sunlight that fell into them. "When? When did all this happen?"
"Over 200 years ago."
"How? How could I have lost track of so much time?"
"How is this all still here, including you? Everything should be dust by now, or at least taken back by the forest," Vimika said.
Aurelai tossed a hand at the very idea. "The slab has suspension spells weaved into it. Every cabinet and drawer is laced with null time; the house is draped in preservation spells. Father was prepared to wait for things to... improve. The methods aren't the problem."
"You just waved away two things that are still incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible anymore. That you don't see them as problems is a problem."
Dark eyes scanned the tree line, as though it looked somehow different than it had before. "I've always been apart from the world, but to know that I've been apart from time as well?"
What could Vimika possibly say to that? The idea was ludicrous, but every fiber in her being, every drop of intuition she'd ever had, magic or no, told her that Aurelai believed what she was saying. That her reality w
as even stranger than she had let on, and it was only now occurring to her.
Aurelai's features shifted, and she hooked a sable curtain behind an ear that had regained more of its normal shape. Still on her knees, she held out her hands. "I beg of you, Vimika. Whatever evils my father committed, please don't judge me for them. What he did to me was the last. Help me untangle this... place. Please. Whatever happens when we escape, I will take full responsibility for. I won't ask you to be a minder or- or a chaperone for the modern world, just... please don't leave me trapped here all alone for another two centuries."
It was impossible to look down on a woman on her knees and not be moved, but equally impossible to truly comprehend the scale of what Aurelai was asking. Or set aside the fact that every choice that had been made leading to Vimika standing over her was a sword stroke that had torn Vimika's life to ribbons.
As they floated all about her, she had no idea how to go about stitching them back together, or what shape they would be when she was done.
Or how to even begin.
Where could she go?
Without her magic, she couldn't even open her front door, let alone fly the other one. Could she make it out of the forest? In all the humiliations she'd suffered, she'd never felt so exposed and vulnerable. To be stripped of her self-respect along with her clothes and laughed at was mortifying, but being stripped of a sense, a core part of her very identity was something else entirely. The Vimika who had been taunted that night, had her heart ripped out twice, was still Vimika. Without her magic, who was she now? What was she?
Aurelai may have been the one on her knees, but it was Vimika who was at her mercy.
But those black eyes didn't know that, and if they did, they didn't agree. They were open and pleading, and the least Vimika could do was grant Aurelai the dignity of not having to vocalize it any more than she already had.
Vimika looked to the house, to the flowers Aurelai had clearly been so carefully tending, finally to the clear blue sky. "If I choose to leave, you won't stop me?" she asked.
"I will not. You won't be made another prisoner to him."
"And if my magic doesn't return..." Vimika snatched one of the ribbons. All that was written on it was doubt, in the colors of fear. "You won't kick me out?"
Aurelai blinked. Already slower than Vimika's, this one shadowed already dark eyes long enough to give Vimika's spirits time to realize just how much further they had to fall.
Then they opened again. "Why would I do that?"
Vimika was standing on ground too unsettled to trust her weight to an implication. "Would you kick me out if my magic doesn't return?"
"I- no. No, of course not."
The fact that Aurelai almost sounded offended by the idea made Vimika return her earnest need for eye contact. But there was more bewilderment on Aurelai's face than offense, and Vimika let go the breath she'd been holding.
"All right."
Aurelai shot to her feet. "Truly?"
"Yes. I will probably regret it, but I need time to think, anyway. There's nothing out there for me right now but trouble. Here, at least, I have a mystery or five to solve."
"Thank you!" Aurelai exclaimed, clapping her hands together hard enough the sound reverberated around the clearing several times, making it sound like there was an audience for her good news. To that ghostly applause, she all but snapped herself in half as she swept into a bow deep enough for her hair to pool on top of her feet.
"I am forever in your debt, Vimikathritas Malakandronon. I receive your acquiescence with praise most highest, of-"
"Ah... what are you doing?"
"Thanking you properly, owner of my most egregious debt," Aurelai said without raising her head.
After everything that had happened, on the edge of both exhaustion and an identity crisis, Vimika barely caught an unfortunate noise not unlike laughter that tried to burst from her nose. She managed to slap a hand over her mouth, but a sound made it out that was something like a sneeze being half-smashed back in with a hammer.
"Have I done something wrong?" Aurelai asked the ground.
"No! No... just... I've only seen that kind of formality in plays. It's a bit... surreal," Vimika said, waggling her foot to signal that Aurelai's bow had gone on long enough.
She snapped right back up again so fast Vimika's back twinged in sympathy. "Do people not read Manners and Protocol for Polite Magical Society anymore?"
"I think there might be a copy moldering in the basement of the Academy library somewhere. Ahem. No. No, they don't," Vimika managed with the sliver of composure she'd regained. "Something to eat and maybe a wash would more than suffice for now."
"For now?"
"Well, if I'm going to be here awhile, it might take more than one," Vimika said.
Wizards were, by and large, a people who believed in things like good hygiene, thus keeping magic uncontaminated so it didn't do things like animate mold into seeking revenge for the invention of penecillin. Long hot baths were preceded by a good scrubbing so as to not stew in their own filth, and for that reason alone they were happy to bathe separately from humans for the rest of time.
"Whatever you'd like," Aurelai said. "My home is now yours, for as long as you want it to be."
"Thank you."
Aurelai's sense of time was obviously broken, as she stood staring for a length that careened into uncomfortable with a smile that was admittedly on the endearing side of idiotic.
Vimika cleared her throat. "So, ah... could you... show me around?"
Aurelai snapped back from wherever her thoughts had wandered off to. "Oh, of course! Where are my manners?"
"In a book. Which you may want to forget about if you're to blend in when you rejoin the world," Vimika said as she gestured for Aurelai to lead on.
CHAPTER SIX
"SO THIS, ER, is my house," Aurelai said from inside its shadow, at the foot of the stairs.
"Looks pretty good for being a couple centuries old."
Vimika thumbed the railing that hemmed in the front porch. The white paint was peeling, and she could spot the occasional spot of rust that had once been a nail, but it seemed structurally sound, at least by the noise it made when she knocked on a post.
"The entire clearing is saturated in magic. Spells criss-crossing and interweaving in patterns I could never hope to untangle. Father's illusions are bound to the trees and feed off their mana, while the climate protection I made feeds off the mana of the things growing in here. The grass and my garden, for the most part. The more I grow, the stronger it is, which gives me some incentive to keep my thumb green," Aurelai said.
"That explains the temperature. It seems like winter never ends in Durn, but this far south? Well, there's a reason no one lives out here."
"A reason Father chose this place, you mean."
Vimika shook her head. "Actually I didn't, but you're probably right. It does make me wonder, though. Not to make your situation feel worse, but there is nothing around here. I could have walked for days in this forest without the illusions and never found my way out again. Why show me the clearing at all? Why not just stay hidden completely?"
"A good question. To see if you'd still come?" Aurelai asked as she led Vimika along a line of white jamalok blossoms, the most mature festooned with vibrant indigo stamens. "It took me a long time be able to Borrow as far as Durn."
Vimika stopped to smell the jamalok. They were known for their uniquely divergent smell, which to humans smelled like death, but heavenly to wizards. Including the green stems, their coloration was a combination of all three magic types, making them a particular favorite going well back into antiquity. Being able to touch and smell the confirmation of such continuity would have been reassuring if she hadn't known who they originally belonged to.
"You certainly chose the right bait. I couldn't have lost Oliver if I tried, no matter where he led me."
"Is 'bait' really a fair word?" Aurelai asked.
"I mean… lure? Is that better
?"
"He was just 'hope' to me. Nothing more. You must believe me."
Vimika cradled one of the flowers between two fingers, the petals soft as silk but slightly waxy. "I'm sorry. It's still hard to believe all of this is actually happening. Certainly not what I was expecting when I set out this morning."
"Then I will do my best to be convincing." Aurelai led them out of the shadow of the house and back into the sun.
Even though Vimika could see trees sheathed in snow all around, the breeze that was waiting for them was warm. Being able to feel it on top of her head was strange at first, since she had been twelve the last time she was outside without a hat on. She had to fight against the urge to throw her hands over her head just to have something covering it, but not a single watchman burst from the trees to arrest her. Without the hat, the world was much brighter (and breezier), even as the sun was beginning the descent into late afternoon. The crisp, brilliant light of a cloudless winter's(?) day was more than a match for the clinging residue of their argument, burning it off of them like cobwebs before an open flame as they walked together.
Aurelai did so with her head higher and her back straighter than Vimika had yet seen, seeming to have settled comfortably into their detente already. She was poised and articulate as she explained the grooming of jamalok flowers, but Vimika, simple creature that she so often found herself sharing a body with, was more interested in the one doing the talking than the subject.
In daylight, Aurelai's hair was liquid ink, her skin preternaturally pale, almost glowing. The darkness of her eyes was leavened somewhat, the vertical slits common to all wizards more visible against irises that were now more like thick smoke than solid stone, alive as they hadn't been until now. The deep wine red of her dress was less like blood, the brocade more silver than ice. It was old-fashioned but not unbecoming, even if it was strange to see a wizard in anything but proper robes and hat.
Midnight Magic Page 8
