by Terah Edun
Mae stared down with fascinated horror and wondered what in the world was going on. Was she about to watch something she wouldn’t be able to scrub from her mind for decades? For a second, she wanted to drag her sisters from the room, but if she did, she’d have to explain what she was doing there. And if she hadn’t wanted to do that before, she really didn’t want to do it now that everyone was nearly naked.
The woman moved around the room with efficiency, drawing groups of two circles on the floor, one within the other, all around the room. Mae saw them using a white powder to make the rings.
Mae saw the men turn around, and to her absolute fascination, they bore marks across their back. Scribbles in black ink, all four of them.
No, not scribbles, Mae thought as she squinted.
Luckily, one of them men had a broader back than most, making the ink stand out on the larger canvas.
When Mae figured out what she was looking at, her breath caught in her throat and she almost choked.
“They’re tattoos!” Mae said, reaching out and grasping Ember’s shoulder by instinct.
She’d never seen something so profane.
The ink of the clan on men.
Her voice filled with revulsion, Ember said, “Those aren’t our tattoos. They’re mockeries of everything that we stand for.”
25
Mae kept trying to process what she was seeing, but it was hard to do. Everything was tainted by a foreign purpose now, and she didn’t just mean their clothing choices.
Tattoos on men.
Magic rituals including both genders.
It was all too much and went against everything she’d grown up knowing.
As if she realized Mae was in shock, Ember reached up and patted the hand that gripped her shoulder fiercely.
“It’s okay,” Ember whispered. “It’ll be all right.”
But Mae was thinking it would never be all right again. From this moment on, no matter what else happened, her life was changed. The people she had long viewed as regular individuals, family, were now strangers. There was no one she could trust.
She looked at Ember in startlement as her sister squeezed her fingers in reassurance.
Except Ember, Mae thought with gratitude.
No matter what, Ember would always be the nosey know-it-all that Mae could rely on.
“And maybe Richard,” she muttered.
“They’re starting something,” Ember whispered, and Mae turned her focus back to the group. Then the tone of the gathering below changed. Everyone became serious as they fell back in points along the circles at evenly spaced intervals. The women each between two men.
All of them raised their hands to shoulder level and stretched them out so that a cupped hand overlapped another cupped hand, which overlapped another cupped hand, and so on, until they were linked in a circle.
Then the men closed their eyes, and the illogical tattoos on their backs began to glow.
The women between them began to chant, and their tattoos began to glow as well. Every body below was shining with a light like a mini-sun as Mae and Ember watched from above. The glow grew so bright that they overlapped, and the power that was flowing from every individual rose and, in an arc, dipped down to splash into the bodies of her sisters lying immobile in the circle.
Mae didn’t know what was happening, but apparently Ember did.
“This can’t be happening,” Ember said in astonishment as they watched the power arc amid loud chants from below.
The chanting grew louder and louder, giving them time to talk without being discovered.
“What?” Mae asked, afraid to take her eyes off the girls. She didn’t know what these insane relatives of hers were up to, but she was genuinely afraid that if she looked away, one of them would slip a knife across a vulnerable throat.
“Wait for it,” Ember murmured. “I want to be sure.”
“Wait for what?”
“Just wait,” Ember said in a voice that was barely audible.
Before Mae could protest once more, something interesting happened. The power arc reversed, and out of girls’ bodies rose a thick, inky substance. It traveled up the glowing arc of light and down into the bodies of the six staring around the ring, now growing louder and louder in their chants. As their voices rose, so did more of the black tar. It was so disgusting that Mae couldn’t look at it anymore.
“That,” Ember said solemnly. “They’re draining the girls of their life energy.”
“How do you know?” Mae asked.
“I just…I just do,” Ember said. “We need to get out of here now.”
“We can’t leave Samuel and Rachel,” Mae protested.
“They won’t hurt them yet,” Ember said bleakly.
“How do you know?” Mae asked. “Because that looks pretty hurtful to me!”
“It’s painless to them,” Ember said. “Until it’s finished, and that won’t be today.” Before Mae could interrupt again, Ember said, “And yes, I’m sure.”
“Okay, fine. So, we stop them,” Mae said as she planted her hands underneath her and started to rise.
“No!” Ember snapped. “They are mage adepts. We’d have no chance against them. We need to get out of here and warn the council.”
“Warn the council?” Mae hissed out—frustrated. “They are the Council.”
She was specifically talking about her Great Aunt Camilla, sister of the head of the Council of Elders but Mae wouldn’t be surprised if one of the men as well had intimate ties to the governing body of the greater holding.
“Still,” Ember insisted firmly. “We have to try. If there’s anyone at that table who is still a true elder, then they’ll stop this.”
Mae wasn’t sure how she felt about the sound of that. But she had to admit there weren’t many other options available to them. So it came down to trust.
Taking Mae’s silence as assent, Ember whispered, “We need to find another exit.”
Her skin crawling, Mae nodded in agreement. She looked around and saw a side window leading outside—to the roof, hopefully. She’d gone through worse trying to get out of a barn secretly.
“Over there,” Mae whispered as she pointed at the window.
“Okay,” Ember said. “On my count. One…”
“Two,” Mae whispered.
Anticipating the need to run, Mae started to rise slowly on her hands and knees in time with the countdown. She tried to not make any sounds, but she kept her eyes glued to the tableau below just to be sure no one was already sneaking up the stairs after them. Her muscles felt tense and her heart was racing, and that was before everything got a whole lot worse.
The door down there creaked open, and they never made it to three. Instead, she and Ember flattened themselves to the floor again to keep themselves from being detected as the secret group’s concentration was broken momentarily below. She was wondering if they would have a chance to slip away again when she almost stopped breathing. The person who walked in whistling was none other than Richard. That sound choked off the moment he caught sight of all the people in the room, mysterious cloaks at their feet, who had turned as one to look at him.
To his credit, Richard didn’t panic. “I think I found the wrong room, eh?”
“Grab him,” Mae’s great-aunt snapped as she and the rest put their robes on in a hurry.
Richard tried to back out, but he was surrounded by the robed figures. One of the men conked him over the head with a heavy staff. He collapsed to the floor with a groan.
“Oh no,” Mae said as quietly as she could. For once in her life, she had hoped Richard had stolen the book and run off somewhere. But no, he had it here with him, and the robed figures had spotted it as quickly as she had. It was unmistakable, and even from here she could see the grimoire opened to the Recuperation Cure-all for all those aggrieved by the Wasting sickness. Fortunately the open pages didn’t catch the first person’s eyes as nimble fingers picked it up from Richard’s side and began leafing thro
ugh the text. The book began to glow for this newcomer just as it had for Richard only hours before. Mae’s fingers itched to snatch it from the strange relative’s hands, but she was far up in the rafters and he was down below. He was hidden again by the heavy cowl, as the bird mask lay unused on the floor, but Mae knew it didn’t matter, because she’d never forget their faces.
Heart beating heavily, Mae desperately wished that the group decided the grimoire was unimportant. If they could throw it off to the side and she could retrieve it like she had before, even better. But to her despair, the person who was holding found the grimoire extraordinarily interesting. Their eyes were narrowed as they paged through the book and turned to their compatriots to show them. Mae and Ember were just lucky that this person didn’t have a focus on a particular casting, and couldn’t find the one they had been looking at. Just before they seemed about to close the grimoire, the man glanced at the girls behind him.
No, no, no! Mae chanted in her head, desperate to stop him from making the connection and unable to do a thing from where she was.
He seemed to be focus entirely on the girls and the grimoire that Richard had been bringing into the room. Her grimoire.
Someone below murmured something to him, but he waved them off. Then he put his hand flat on a blank page in the book and concentrated. And just like before with Richard, the pages started fluttering of their own volition as he raised his hand, and he looked down at what the grimoire had revealed.
That was supposed to be our secret, Mae thought bitterly.
Well, at least until she could take all the evidence to Grandmother. How was she supposed to convince the foremost elder in the holding of what she had learned if she didn’t even have the object that had started it all off? And Mae wasn’t stupid enough to go down those stairs and ask the robed figures to give it back.
As she watched in misery, Camilla approached the person who held the grimoire. She held out a flat hand, demanding he hand it over, and he did with clear excitement as he showed her what he had found and gestured animatedly. Glumly, Mae knew she was never getting that grimoire back without explaining to the Council of Elders why she’d had it in the first place. It also occurred to her that they might hide it away, but why would they do that if the incantation was there and the girls needed their help?
Mae had a bit of hope that these robed figures would do the right thing, regardless of her getting credit.
As she was thinking through how she could keep track of the new owners of the grimoire and how to get Richard back before he told everyone of her involvement, she watched her great-aunt suddenly rip a page out of the book. The one that it had revealed first to Richard and now to this male.
As she took the page, she handed the grimoire back to the male relative and said words loud enough that Mae had no issues deciphering her command from where she was.
“Burn it!”
And without so much as blinking, the man snapped his fingers, and the grimoire was completely in flame.
“No,” Mae said. “What are they doing?”
“They have no intentions of letting that casting ever see the light of day,” Ember said solemnly.
“What? What do you mean?” Mae said. It never occurred to her that they wouldn’t turn the incantation over to the proper authorities. “You said they weren’t hurting them!”
“I said yet.”
“What makes you think they won’t heal them?”
“Because what they just did with that circle,” Ember said, “that is the reason why the girls have been sick for so long in the first place.”
“What?” shouted Mae, forgetting for a moment where she was.
Listening to Ember put some pieces together for her, Mae fell like her entire life was unraveling. Everything she believed, everything she knew, everyone she trusted was a lie.
It almost didn’t register with her that she’d blown their cover until all the hooded figures looked up and someone shouted, “Who’s up there?”
Mae saw the eyes of her great-aunt as her hood fell back, and they were the coldest she’d ever seen. This was the woman who had fed her porridge when she was sick, who had helped patch a knee when she’d fallen off her pony, and she was the woman who had taken Mae on her first trip to the spring fair. But Mae knew down to her bones that they couldn’t catch her and Ember.
Not stopping to think, only acting on instinct, she grabbed Ember and yanked her up on her feet.
They ran.
26
“Go, go” Ember shouted at Mae as she ran right behind her.
They both heard feet storming up the winding staircase to the second floor but luckily enough it was only wide enough for one person at a time to come after them.
Still considering there were five bodies that could be heading straight for them, minus their extremely old Great Aunt, Mae wasn’t liking those odds.
Mae dove for the window which wasn’t open. Realizing she couldn’t push it out because the glass on this floor was sealed, she frantically looked around for an implement to smash it.
“Move,” cried Ember from behind her.
Mae quickly stepped to the side and then turned to look to see what her sister was up to. She was glad she hadn’t waited because Ember had a heavy prybar in hand, the gods alone knew where she’d gotten it, and she was swinging straight at the window.
With a wild smash the glass flew outward and Ember wasted no time breaking out the rest of the shards so they could fit through the small round hole. Not waiting a moment more Ember kept hold of her improvised weapon and went through the window feet first.
Mae followed behind with a yelped, “Wait for me.”
She made it all the way through the window and was about to start clambering along the ledge when she felt a sharp yank that almost took her off her feet and off the ledge to her death a dozen or more feet below.
Mae screamed.
She couldn’t see the person who had grabbed her but they were yanking on her hair hard.
Unable to turn around and face them Mae felt herself being dragged back through the window head first.
The person who was doing so even had the audacity to yell “Who are you?” as if she was going to answer.
She just kept screaming and clawing at his hand as she tried to break free. Ember, in the meantime, had come running back to her but she couldn’t get past Mae at the man holding her because the ledge was only wide enough for one person in front of the other. It was a ledge built into the exterior of the tower itself and was not what Mae would have chosen for an escape path had they not been forced to make due.
“He’s got me!” Mae shouted desperate at her sister.
Ember responded with a snarl and a manic look in her eyes. Mae was a little afraid herself when she saw Ember raise that prybar high but she saw it coming down straight towards something above her head and she knew Ember was going to save her.
The crowbar hit skin and bones with a loud crunch.
Something snapped and someone started screaming and it wasn’t her.
That person with the hand bisected by Ember’s prybar let go of her hair and focused on getting their impaled hand back through the small window. Scrambling to safety Mae got her legs up from over the side of the building and she was once more on fairly safe ground. Ember reached a hand down to Mae with a satisfied grin and helped her stand up on the ledge.
“Thank you,” Mae said while breathing heavily.
“Let’s go,” Ember shouted.
And off they went—again.
Making their way across the blocked path with haste, Mae tried to keep a steady hand on the wall of the building while not looking to her left. There was no wall protecting that side and nothing but open air waiting for her if she looked.
As the wind picked up and hit her, Mae halted as she watched Ember jump over a small empty space in the path they’d been running along. It looked like some of the blocks had been broken off with a hole right in the middle.
&nb
sp; “Come on”, Ember said urgently as she waved her onwards.
Mae shivered and looked back over her shoulder—wondering if there was a pursuit coming.
No one was there.
Just a head sticking out of the window and glaring down at her.
Maybe they can’t fit, Mae thought with some relief.
She turned back to Ember and said, “They’re not coming!”
“So what?” retorted Ember. “You want to stay out here on a ledge or go back up to where they’re sure to catch us? Jump!”
Mae flushed. Ember was right but darned it…she was a little afraid of heights and having never told anyone that, she didn’t expect her older sister to understand. Just as she waffling where she was and Ember began shouting at her again, a gust of wind ripped by so strong that Mae was flattened against the wall for fear of falling off the ledge.
She had to turn her head so quickly so that she didn’t smash her nose off that she ended up looking back the way they came. Which is how Mae saw a male mage half-hanging out the window and a swirling bright glowing magic rippling around his hand. Before her eyes he threw the ball of light in the air and as it came towards her that light dissipated into a second vortex of wind.
Mae quickly discovered she was more afraid of being blown off a tower ledge by a windstorm than her fear of heights and she jumped forward screaming all the while “They’re trying to kill us!”
She nearly landed on top of Ember but her sister didn’t complain. She steadied her landing and started running again. Just as they came to the end of the ledge, Mae saw a wide balcony in front of them.
“Over there!” Ember said and this time Mae didn’t hesitate.
She dove for the safety of that balcony which was a little more than a foot below where they were currently standing and so did Ember. Landing flat on her stomach with a harsh hit, Mae was just grateful to be below the rim of the ledge because at that moment the summoned windstorm that had nearly blasted them off the ledge roared by.
