Faelost

by Courtney Privett

  “Cypress Quay,” Mom said. “Elsin, I need you to help us get to Cypress Quay.”

  “That's an orc village, Rin,” Elsin said. Cypress Quay sat on the shore of the Celadon Sea, a two hour ride west of Jadeshire.

  “Mom and Daelis are both orc-friends.” I reached for Yana's hand and squeezed. Everything had fallen apart in an instant and I already knew this was the last I would see of my little sister for a while. “I think that's a good idea. The orcs have named them kindred so they'll keep them safe. You know a little of orc custom, Uncle Elsin. They'll consider what happened here a breach of honor. They'll protect our family.”

  “We'll go to Cypress Quay.” Daelis stood and embraced me. I bent so he could kiss my cheek. “I love you like you are my own son, my own blood. Be careful because it would devastate both your mother and me if you don't make it home alive. Now, quickly, get Shan and gather your provisions. Ready the horses and your dragons, and fly. Ride north and remain vigilant. You heard what he said, Tessen. I think they will do anything to reach both Shan and the dragons.”

  “Stay safe, Daelis. Keep Mom and my sisters safe,” I said as I returned his embrace. Daelon's death meant that my stepfather was now Duke Goldtree, Lord of the Jade Realm. I hoped he would survive long enough to establish himself as the benevolent leader I knew he could be.

  “Protect my Shan,” Daelis whispered. “And yourself. Those dragons are important and could be used to upend the whole of Bacra, but the two of you are far more valuable than any beast could be. Go, Tessen. Hurry.”

  Chapter 5

  Everything was a mess, and all I wanted to do was pull the blankets over my head, sleep for a couple days, and wake up to find everything back to normal. I couldn't. I couldn't do anything but ride and ride some more. My blanket was jammed into a saddlebag and my bed was several hard hours to the south. I hoped my family was still alive, but I couldn't know for sure. Mom had promised to send a messenger falcon to The Broken Star in North Juniper once she made it to Cypress Quay. If they could make it to the orcs, chances were good that they would survive the long-term. If Shan and I made it to North Juniper . . . well, I didn't know what happened next. I didn't know who our enemies were, and we had no friends in the north of the Jade Realm. We were on our own, and we would be hunted once it became known that the ducal guards' assassination and dragon retrieval plan had not been completed.

  Shan hadn't said much to me since I woke him with the news that Daelon was dead and he was an intended target. He hastily shoved extra clothing and supplies into his bags while I did the same. He refused to enter view of the carnage in the kitchen, where Daelis and Elsin whispered to several agitated Wall Sentinels. We didn't know if we could trust the sentinels even though they were friends with Mom, but someone had to know what happened so we wouldn't be blamed for Daelon's death when we ran. One of the sentinels then escorted Shan and me to the nearby northeastern gate while the others either guarded the house or went to the Citadel to give a report. They were not told where any of us were going, just that we needed to hide while we figured out who did this and why.

  My back hurt. Shan and I had ridden for six straight hours with swords on our backs and crated dragons strapped to our saddles, and we still had another six to go. The horses needed a break as much as we did, so we stopped to rest by a creek.

  Pink flecks of sunrise made their way through the redwood boughs and the forest creatures began to stir. We'd seen no one else on the road so far, but that would change as the realm woke and the tiny villages along the route burst into life. It was the only road we could take. I was afraid we'd get lost if we tried the less-established paths through the hills embracing the forested valley.

  Shan stared at me from the shade of a nearby madrone. He was dressed like a desert dweller, with light fabric covering his hair and most of his face, and a pair of dark goggles sitting on the top of his head. He'd pull them down to cover his distinctive turquoise eyes once the sun fully rose. I was nobody, but he was Lord Shannon Daeriel Sylleth Goldtree, now first in line to inherit the Jade Duchy. If he was recognized by the wrong people, he would be hunted and killed. I didn't know to what extent I could protect him, but I'd try.

  “I can't seem to wake up,” Shan said. His gaze dropped to the dragon on his lap. “I keep thinking myself into loops and every single one comes back to this being my fault.”

  “This isn't your fault.” My response was a reflexive lie. Not everything was his fault, but some of it certainly was. My horse snorted and my attention snapped toward the trees. Just a deer herd in the distance, grazing within the coastal mist. Just a squirrel dragging nesting materials into its burrow. I exhaled and allowed my eyes to settle back on Shan.

  “But it is. I took the eggs. They wanted the dragons. Now my grandfather is dead, our family is in danger, and you're in just as much danger as the rest of us because I was an idiot and forced you to let a dragon bind to you. Our family is crumbling and it's my fault.”

  “I have a feeling this is deeper than the dragons. I suspect it's about the Goldtree family itself, and the dragons are nothing but an unexpected benefit.”

  Shan stroked Lumin's back with a single finger. “I don't want to die again.”

  “Again? What do you mean again?”

  He stared at a thick patch of moss to his left. He sighed and shook his head. “I . . . I guess I can tell you. Haven't told anyone else, but I need to learn how to trust again.” He fell into silence as a tremble spread across his shoulders.

  “Shan. When did you die?” I asked, leaning toward him.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat and slowly raised his head until his eyes connected with mine. The circles under his eyes were so dark they could be mistaken for bruises. “When the Jarrah had me. Ranalae spent the first day torturing me. She raked my face with potion-dipped dragon claws first, marking me as her chosen victim. I don't know what was in that potion aside from Uldru blood and ground jade, but she said it would have killed me instantly and grotesquely if I wasn't truly a Spellkeeper. Then she sliced and burned symbols into my skin, tattooed me with a mixture of dragon bone char, soot from ritually burned spellbook bindings, and the blood of Varaku mystics. By the time she was done for the day, my entire back, left thigh, and upper chest were covered. Not long after she left, my heart stopped. I don't know for how long. Sister Umbrage found me dead when she came to apply medication to my wounds, maybe two hours after Ranalae left. She called Ranalae back, and they revived me. They kept asking what I remembered from when I was dead, but I couldn't tell them anything because I remembered nothing. My last memory before waking was intense pain accompanying the frantic flutter in my chest and black spots in my vision. The physician Jarrah, Sister Midnight, told Ranalae that I would die again if she attempted another round of mutilating my body at the same magnitude as the first day. She only did a little at a time after that, and never left me unsupervised again. She said I wasn't allowed to die, especially not before I'd produced a couple magical little heirs for her to corrupt.”

  “Because she wanted the Nightshadows to usurp the Lightborn dynasty and rule the High Kingdom, right? Because the High King is your great-grandfather and Ranalae believed that she was his rightful heir and you were hers?” I asked. No one had personally told me about this, but I'd read the end section of Mom's journal when I was trying to find out why she left me behind when she went to retrieve Shan from the Jarrah. I'd read the account of the fight, where Daelis's mother, Ranalae, had revealed herself as both the leader of the Jarrah and the illegitimate daughter and eldest child of Nylian Lightborn, High King of Bacra.

  Shan held up his hands and narrowed his eyes. “Do not speak of that. Ever. It is not safe and we never know who could be listening.”

  “No one is listening right now.”

  Shan gently returned Lumin to the crate and stood. “One thing the Jarrah taught me is that anything can be a tool for a gifted spy. The rocks, the trees, our own hearts. Do not trust the world, Tessen. Do not
trust me.”

  “But I do trust you. You're my brother.”

  “I don't know what I am anymore,” Shan said. He fastened his dragon crate to the back of his saddle and turned around to face me. His expression softened and a tear dripped from his eye. “I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've reopened several of the scars on my soul and they're speaking for me. I don't mean everything I say. I can't trust my own tongue, but I do trust you. Right now, you're the only one I can trust.”

  I thought I knew what was going on. The torture he'd gone through must have altered his perception of reality to the point that he had become paranoid, and possibly delusional. I rose and went to my own horse. Serida was sound asleep in her little produce crate when we stopped, so I hadn't bothered to get her out. “We can talk about this more later, when we're somewhere safer. We need to get back on the road and keep riding.”

  Chapter 6

  North Juniper sat upon a forested hill overlooking the Celadon Sea. It was midday when we arrived, and the population was busy attending to lunchtime tasks. No one seemed to care about our presence, but I hadn't expected much attention in a crossroads village. I knew that could change later, once a courier or messenger falcon arrived from Jadeshire to reveal the news of Daelon's death, but for the moment we could hide in the open unnoticed.

  It took us nearly an hour to find The Broken Star. We were expecting an inn, or maybe a tavern, but instead we found ourselves hitching our horses to a post in the middle of a cherry orchard. Before us sat a stone cottage with mossy shutters and a clay shingle roof. A sign near the rose-bordered walkway stated:

  Welcome!

  The Broken Star

  Tea House and Book Shop

  “Cherries, tea, and books? Well, this place is very Mom. I wonder if she's been here,” I mused as I unlatched Serida's crate and unhooked the more important of my saddlebags.

  “Perhaps.” Shan adjusted the Satlan linen scarf that covered the distinctive scars on the lower half of his face. Travelers from the Satla and Auran deserts were common throughout the Jade Realm, so it was unlikely his garb would attract attention. He hoisted Lumin's crate onto his hip and said, “The east road goes to Melodar and the north goes to Ivytown and Greeble. She's been to all three in the past two years, so she could have stopped here on her way elsewhere.”

  “Do you think she's okay? That all of them are okay?” I asked. I crouched so I could see beyond the cherry trees. Horses and sheep grazed in fenced pastures, and stone houses dotted a nearby slope.

  “We'll know shortly, once the falcon arrives. Come on. Stop dawdling.” Shan opened the door and ushered me into the tea house.

  The Broken Star was a quaint place with doilies gracing the tops of mismatched armchairs and bowed built-in shelves overflowing with dusty books. We chose a round table covered by an excessively long purple tablecloth and tucked the dragon crates beneath the fabric.

  Two elderly dwarves and a confused-looking, silver-haired young halfling occupied one of the other tables, but the place was otherwise quiet. The dwarves looked up at us as we adjusted our chairs multiple times to mask the irritated squawks of our dragons, but then they shrugged and returned to their tea and card game.

  I startled as a heavily-pregnant Faeline woman emerged from behind the pastry counter. She was tawny in coloring and towering of build, with bright green-gold eyes and a long, plush tail that swished behind her as she walked. Fae of all varieties were rare in the Jade Realm. The laws and customs of their varied races were so different from our own that conflict was difficult to avoid. The few Fae who chose to live in the Realm did so knowing they would never rise above the lowest class and they must conform to our culture, surrendering some of the more barbaric traditions of the Faelands. There were small populations of Fae in the Shade Hollow and West Bottoms districts of Jadeshire, but it was unexpected to find one working in tiny North Juniper.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Welcome to The Broken Star,” the Faeline woman said. Her voice was a pleasant alto, with a distinctive North Jade lilt and a slight purr caught on the ends of her R's. She handed us a pair of worn and stained menus. “Our specials this week are cherry-vanilla white tea and strawberry-ginger scones, and our sandwich special is smoked catfish salad on sourdough.”

  “I'll have one of each,” I said. My stomach growled and churned. I'd brought a few rations with me, but hadn't eaten anything since the previous night's disaster of a dinner. Was that only last night? It felt like days ago, weeks even. I nodded toward the pastry counter. “Can I get one of those croissants, too?”

  “Certainly, sir. Your sandwich comes with a side, so would you like zucchini soup or an herb sallat?”

  “Soup, thank you.”

  “We'd like to speak with the owner,” Shan blurted.

  The Faeline woman jolted and forced a tight-lipped smile. “Certainly, though you'll have to wait another ten or twenty minutes. He needed to pop out for a few to check the fish traps and pick more zucchini from the garden. Would you like to order in the meantime?”

  “Um, yes, I suppose, I guess.” Shan lowered his head so he could study the menu without removing his goggles. “Black tea, no sugar, lemon on the side. Uh . . . I guess a bowl of that zucchini soup and a cherry tart with lemon cream.”

  “Excellent choices, sir. I'll have your meal out to you shortly.” The Faeline woman hummed to herself as she eased behind the counter and disappeared into the kitchen.

  I waited until the halfling and dwarves were deeply invested in their game before saying, “This is odd, isn't it? Why would Daelon send us here?”

  “My guess is that it's a clever, unconventional front.” Shan studied the titles on a nearby shelf. “Bucolic histories and cottage witchery. The server herself is a cottage witch. I can see it in her aura.”

  “I didn't know you could do that.” I pulled a book at random from the shelf behind me. Practical Garden Spells, Vol. 3. I opened to the title page to find the author's name. Randa Greengrass. Nothing too interesting, and I was magically inept so it was useless to me. I flipped through the pages before replacing the book on the shelf between My Life as a Newt and Auran Sandcraft. I twisted so I could scan the rest of the row. Maybe if I searched long enough I could find a text about dragons. No luck so far. Seed Incantations, In Search of Blackfire, The Heritability of Magic Skill, Greencraft Lamentations. This section contained nothing but basic witchcraft so I'd need to look elsewhere.

  “New skill I learned in my Passive Observations class. It takes some effort and isn't always accurate, but I'm tapping into it now for threat assessment. Cottage witches glow green around their edges, but not as brightly as green witches. Totally harmless. Warlocks, me included, drag around a purple-black haze. That's one I need to watch out for since the Jarrah are almost all warlocks and no warlock is harmless, even a hedge.”

  “What does mine look like?” I asked, turning back toward him.

  “Your what?”

  “My aura.”

  Shan lifted his goggles, tilted his head, and stared at me, an eyebrow raised. “You're not magic-skilled so you don't have one. Neither do Mom or Daelis, but Yana has the vibrant blue aura of a mage. Magic from energy, and arcane energy is blue. Warlocks are magic from shadow and witches are magic from nature. The colors and intensities of auras reveal specific skill aptitudes. I see other auras from time to time, but I haven't learned what they are yet because they're rarer than the common warlock, blue mage, and green witch grouping. Frald, Mom's orc shaman friend, has an opalescent white aura, and I saw a bright red aura a couple weeks ago that I assume was a fire witch. Zinnia has something vague and rippling that I haven't figured out yet, so I can tell she'll be magic-skilled, but I don't know in what regard. I am seeing a couple little gold flecks above your hands that I haven't noticed before. My guess is that it's either from having a dragon imprint on you or you've recently touched a magic-infused object. I doubt the latter is the case since lightbinder witches are incredibly rare and I don't think they'd leave
their toys just lying around a tea house.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound disappointed. Don't be. Life is always more difficult for the magic-skilled, and sometimes I envy people like you, people who are–”

  “Normal old simpletons?”

  Shan buzzed his lips and dropped his goggles back over his eyes. “You're hardly a simpleton. You're a lot like Mom—strong, smart, resourceful. Embrace it, because it's a good thing to be. Much better than what I am.”

  “But warlocks are–”

  “Warlocks are messes. We're trapped in a continuous battle to balance the light and shadows within our own soul. It's exhausting. If we tip too much toward the shadows, we end up like the Jarrah, and if we fall fully into the light, the shadows we cast are even darker. We can kill ourselves and everyone around us with a single spell—a suicide spell called a shadow bomb—and even the most inept and uneducated warlock is capable of creating one under the right circumstances. We're troubled and dangerous and I'm beginning to suspect we deserve to be feared far more than we already are.”

  The Faeline woman returned with two small teapots and the assortment of food we'd ordered. She arranged everything on the table, then stood upright and said, “I hope you enjoy your meal, gentlemen. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thanks,” Shan said. He shifted his chair closer to me so he could unwind his scarf without revealing his face to the other patrons. “Why'd you order so much food?”

  “I'm hungry,” I replied. My stomach growled in agreement.

  “I can see that.”

  The door swung open and a Faeline man entered the tea house. A large basket of zucchini obscured most of his face. Was this Daelon's contact? I was so hungry that my head pulsed and spun, so meeting him would have to wait.

  The Fae dropped his zucchini basked behind the counter and spun around to look at us. No, not Fae. Half-Fae. Half Faeline and half human, specifically. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with bright blue eyes, a tawny and freckled face, and collar-length caramel-colored hair that matched his long-furred tail. I knew this man, and knew him well.