Brinlin Isle

by Robin Stephen

  Chapter 1

  Braven lounged on a moss-covered boulder, strumming his lute and singing quietly to himself. All around, the forest was a massive, silent presence. The trunks of the great trees stood like stately pillars, their crowns lost in the dimming fog. The leaves were down this time of year, the branches bare and gray, but the ever-present ferns still brought a splash of green to the forest floor.

  The moss was damp, of course. Everything in the forest was damp. This didn’t matter to Braven. All of his clothing was resistant to the wet, kept fresh by a delicate drying spell woven into the fabric, and the fog was always warm. So he played in relative comfort, his fingers dancing over humming strings.

  As it wouldn’t do for cheerful lute music to be heard anywhere in the enchanted forest, Braven maintained a spell as he played his song. There wasn’t a name for the spell. It was something he’d come up with on his own. He held it around himself so it distorted the notes of his light-hearted tune into the vague murmurings of spectral voices and the snarling growls of dires – the sorts of things the people of Lan Dinas would expect to hear if anyone gathered the courage to venture into the woods.

  Keeping the forest creepy was Braven’s job. He was good at it. He wasn’t good at playing the lute, which was why he mostly did it out here where no one could hear.

  He was nearing the end of the song when he felt the little buzz in his sternum that meant someone had crossed one of his perimeter lines. He stopped singing, cocking his head to listen while maintaining a quiet strum with his fingers. But he couldn’t hear a thing.

  Rising, Braven tucked his lute with his pack into the hollow at the base of the ancient tree behind him. Then he adjusted his cloak and strode off to see who’d tripped his alarm.

  He didn’t move with any particular urgency. In all his years working the woods, Braven could count on one hand the number of times he’d come across anyone other than a wary woodsman. He wasn’t expecting anything untoward, so when the voices drifted back to him on the dim air, he froze with surprise.

  The woodcutters who came into the forest were—as a rule—quiet, observant men who respected the trees and woods as a whole and had learned the trick of the massive misdirection spell that made the forest so easy to get lost in. They came in to gather deadfalls and dropped limbs, working quietly and efficiently, leaving as soon as their task was complete. Braven and his fellows did not harm these men, or even scare them too badly. They did die occasionally, but that was because the woods were dangerous even without Braven’s help.

  Woodcutters worked alone. The forest had a way of separating those who desired to remain together. So Braven was surprised when he heard not just the voice of one man, but several.

  He drifted up behind a tree and pulled his cloak in tight about his body. He closed his eyes and focused, letting his sense of hearing swell and open until he could listen to the conversation of the men several yards away as clearly as if they stood right next to him.

  “… knows we’re in here,” one of them was saying in a low, hesitant tone full of unhappiness.

  The voice that answered was the opposite. It rang with confidence and bluster, the unmistakable bravado of some show-off trying to prove something.

  “I tell you, it’s all fairy stories. When was the last time someone actually died in this woods?”

  “Tem Cutter nearly died.” These words were spoken by a third voice, short and surly.

  There was a thump, as if someone had set a heavy burden down with impatience. “Tem Cutter. Tem Cutter! Why is it he’s all anyone ever talks about? Yes, so a snake bit him. He stayed all night beneath the trees. He beat off a pack of dires with his bare hands. If that proves anything, it’s that we’re all behaving like imbeciles when it comes to this place.”

  Braven felt his normally sunny mood darken a few notches. He sidled around the tree, straining into the fog, but he could see nothing.

  There was no response from the boastful man’s companions. Braven considered his options. He had any number of old standby spells he used to spook the woodcutters if they grew too bold. This situation was different, though. These men were here to challenge the forest’s mystique. That couldn’t be tolerated. He might need to come up with something a little more creative.

  “Anyway,” the man began again, his voice ringing with hubris. “I’ve had enough of scraping and scrounging and breaking my back for a pittance. I’ve had enough of sitting on my hands while there’s a fortune in fine timber sitting here for the taking. You two stand back.”

  Braven felt a prickle at the back of his neck – a warning pulse that something was about to happen. He felt a brief longing for Gia’s presence. She was back at the lake. He rarely brought her on his patrol. It was too cool in the forest for her, and she grew uncomfortable out of the water. The bond between them was muted now, made thin by the distance.

  A strange sense of urgency making him less cautious than usual, Braven hurried forward, moving on soft feet over the loamy forest floor. He stepped around a final tree just as he heard a loud, sharp, smack and saw a burly, middle-aged man standing with feet planted, shoulders braced, the head of his axe buried up to the shaft in the trunk of one of the sacred trees.

  Braven was so shocked, so sickened by the sight, for a moment he could only stare. The man began to work his shoulders, prying the axe head loose. Then he heaved it back again, preparing for another swing.

  Rage erupted in Braven in a sudden violent burst. The world seemed to waver as his vision went red at the edges. He felt heat rise to his face. His brain filled with an unfamiliar desire.

  He wanted to harm these men.

  The man with the axe grunted, reset, and swung again. Again, that horrible sound, the crack of metal biting ancient bark. The man laughed. “See.” His voice had a gloating tone. “It’s just a blighted tree.”

  Braven could see the other two men now. They stood a little distance off, shifting uneasily and casting glances into the fog. Though they were only a few trunks past the place where the forest gave way to grass, one of them held a string that stretched back to the wood’s edge. They must have tied it off on their way in, so they could find their way back out.

  The first man was still talking. “We’re going to make our fortune, lads.” He pulled the axe free and reset for another strike. It seemed to Braven he was not very handy with the tool. He’d seen other woodcutters chopping their way through deadfalls. They swung with clean, efficient strokes. This man was clumsy.

  The thought gave Braven an idea. His rage was a living thing inside him now. He gathered his power, holding it in his mind and bringing it to a focus. Then, he waited.

  Everyone always said Braven was talented when it came to casting. He supposed it was because most of what he did was intuitive. He had a feel for the power Gia lent him, and an innate understanding of what could be done with it. While nothing he did felt particularly remarkable to him, many of his peers had to learn their casting spell by painstaking spell.

  Braven didn’t think. He simply did. The axe rose for a third strike, and Braven sent out thread of magic on a moving pulse. He watched with grim satisfaction as the muscles beneath the man’s shirt flexed. The axe began to fall, its head glinting in the dull light.

  The scene seemed to blur. There was a thud, but this time the sound was not as crisp. It was the smack of metal striking flesh rather than bark.

  There was a single beat of silence before the man began to scream.

  ✣

  Marim still wasn’t easy about the fog. As she reached the end of the garden walk and crossed the gravel yard to the back entrance of Embriem’s large house, it annoyed her she couldn’t see into the distance. Six months here, and she’d learned the different types of fog, when it was likely to be thick, thin, or restless. She’d made it through the violent storms that came with the changing seasons. The systems swept across the island and lingered, battering Embriem’s house for two or three days sometimes.

  After th
e storms moved on, she’d watched the angle of the light change. As the nights grew slightly cooler and shorter, some trees lost their leaves. Others did not. The hedges and grasses were still green, and there was never any frost or snow. Marim found this strange. It would be the dead of winter in Masidon now, the land frozen and dormant, waiting for spring.

  The false winter lent a sort of dreamlike quality to Marim’s sense of the passage of time. She felt she had been in this place for ages, and also that she had only just arrived.

  And always, there was the fog. It muffled the world every time she set foot outside, making her feel as if she’d lost some sixth sense she’d never previously appreciated.

  As she walked, Marim was aware of Kix wheeling above in the damp air. He came to her as she stepped onto the stone stoop and over the threshold, burrowing his small body between her hood and the skin of her throat. She gave a small, gasping laugh. “Kix, you’re cold.” But she said it fondly, reaching up to run a quick, affectionate finger down his sinuous back.

  Her tessila found a comfortable position against her collarbone, and fell still. Marim closed the heavy double doors behind her. They had a tendency to boom if swung quickly, so she guided them shut before turning to make her way up the long hallway that led to the front of the house.

  She was about to turn into the entryway and head for the stairs when she heard a door slam. Startled, she turned in time to see Embriem come striding out of his office, holding a letter in his hand. His red tinged hair was sticking out in every direction, his expression dark.

  “Baret!” He thundered his butler’s name, then noticed Marim standing at the mouth of the hall. Some of the annoyance smoothed out of his face. He modulated his tone, inclining his head in greeting. “Marim. Good day. I didn’t see you there. Where’s Tassin?”

  It was strange, Marim thought, you could live in the same house with a man and see so little of him. Until this moment, she hadn’t so much as clapped eyes on Embriem in days. Now, she couldn’t help but note certain details about his appearance. He was pale, for one thing, even more so than was normal for the people here. He was still too thin. Unlike his son, Tassin, who had wasted no time packing back on the weight he’d lost during his ordeal, Embriem was not exhibiting much of an appetite. More alarming than all that, though, was the strange, restless glitter in his eyes.

  Marim turned to face her employer, resisting the urge to reach up and confirm her collar was high and snug about her throat. “He’s with Secha, having his lunch. Mishi will have him changed in time for his piano lesson.”

  The glitter in Embriem’s eyes sparked. Some of the anger came back into his face. He held up the letter and spoke in a disgusted tone. “It would seem Master Flagron no longer cares to be in my employ.”

  Marim felt a dip of anxiety in her stomach as she stared at the innocuous piece of parchment. She groped for some mollifying statement, some way to put a spin on this latest snub, but her mind was a blank.

  Embriem waited, standing next to an oil painting of a ship on the sea in a gilded, ornate frame. His finely made but somewhat rumpled clothing hung loose around the sharp angles of his body. She almost didn’t believe her memory of the first time she’d seen him. He’d been so hearty and solid, striding out of the fog with the confidence of a man who is secure in his own place.

  When Marim didn’t speak, Embriem’s shoulders sagged. His eyes drifted to the misty view out the window. “Just as well.” His voice was low now, and tired. “His rates are astronomical.”

  Marim’s eyes flickered around the ornate hall. It was dim, even at this peak hour of the day. When she’d first arrived in this house, lamps had been lit in the main living areas all of the time.

  Not anymore.

  It wasn’t any of Marim’s business, of course, but it was difficult not to hear the rumors. Though Marim did not go to town often (and when she did, the locals looked at her askance) she overheard gossip nonetheless. Now that Marim was a long-term occupant, Embriem had expanded the household staff by bringing on a live-in housemaid, a nurse to attend Tassin when he wasn’t with Marim, and a footman. More than once, Marim had overheard quiet conversations in the back halls. The talk on the island was Embriem’s business was struggling.

  Marim was grateful to Embriem, but she also knew her own security and stability depended on his. When she’d had nowhere to go, no way to earn her keep, he’d given her a job. Marim was now Tassin’s governess. In exchange for teaching his son reading, writing, arithmetic, and basic magics, Embriem provided her food and board, plus a weekly stipend.

  It wasn’t an outcome Marim had ever expected when she’d first set foot on the deck of the ship that had brought her here. But then, she’d never expected to be dumped off on this strange island either. For the most part, she was grateful to have a roof over her head. Tassin was a sweet child, if a bit disinclined to focus on the non-magical aspects of his education. If Embriem was nothing more in her life than a polite, distant presence, she could hardly complain.

  Still, she was concerned for him. She’d learned a lot about the brinlins and their needs since taking over Tassin’s care. She couldn’t help but prod. “Embriem, when was the last time you went down to the warmlake?”

  Embriem stirred, his eyes flicking to her only to slide off again. “Nel’s there now.” Before she could point out he hadn’t answered her question, he seemed to rouse himself. “I’m sorry, Marim. Please excuse me.” He strode off towards the back door, once again calling for his butler.

  Marim stood looking after him. That would explain the strange glitter in his eyes. She lifted her hand to her neck and ran a finger along Kix’s back again. The warmlake was at least two miles away. She and Kix had never been separated by such a distance in all the years since he’d chosen her as his partner. “He’s running himself ragged.” Marim murmured these words to her tessila as she continued her interrupted journey, up the staircase, down the broad hall, and into her own room. Inside, she closed the door and hung her damp cloak on one of the hooks on the wall.

  As was her habit, Marim went first to her desk and removed a slim wooden case from the top drawer. She undid the clasp, feeling the spark of magic in her fingertips as the spell within confirmed her identity. She opened the lid and tipped out the three leather tablets within. They were all identical in size and shape. Two of them had seals stamped into the corner. The first bore the crest of Tessili Academy. The second, Professor Liam’s personal chop. The third had no identifying mark.

  Marim settled herself into her chair and spread the tablets out in front of her. Two of them, the two with the seals, bore writing. The third did not. As Kix darted off towards the fireplace, Marim read. She took in the words line by line, first from one tablet, then the other. She had picked up her scribis to begin a reply when she noticed something unusual.

  The third tablet, the one that bore no seal, suddenly began to change. Words appeared, letter by letter, as someone far away wrote on the tablet linked to this one.

  Marim turned from her writing, heart beginning to beat a little faster at the sight of the familiar, slanted hand. She read the words as they formed. “Does Kix socialize with the brinlin?”

  This was typical of the tablet’s owner. No small talk, no pleasantries, just opaque questions.

  Nevertheless, Marim couldn’t help herself. She pushed the two other tablets aside and began her answer.

  Free Gift

  Thank you for reading Brinlin Isle, the first installment in Annals of the Brinlocks. If you enjoyed the book, you might like to join Robin Stephen’s mailing list. You’ll get some exclusive Bydaira content for free, just for signing up.

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  Books by Robin Stephen

  Chronicles of the Tessilari

  Tessili Academy

  Tessili Rogue

  Tessili Revenge

  Annals of the Brinlocks

  Brinlin Isle

  Brinlin Forest

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sp; Brinlin Cove