Hidden Magic of Aldarae: Legacies, Chapter 4

Erryn blinked and stared at her in silence for a moment. Then he turned his head to look around again. He’d thought there was something strange about the air of the place, but now he realized it was that everything felt…muted. Even the renewed pounding of the rain seemed very far away. Nothing had the vibrancy of the waking world.

Then his eyes went to the ground and he jumped, swearing violently. At his feet was—him.

His body anyway, back to the wind and curled in slightly, frowning in his sleep. His eyes darted up, and he saw the still unconscious form of Ciara laid out beside Jem. And a very much awake Ciara sitting up next to her body, her form flickering slightly around the edges. Why hadn’t he noticed that before?

His lips twisted in a snarl. “Witch,” he hissed.

Hurt flashed in her eyes, but she hid it quickly. “Yes,” she said quietly, meeting his gaze steadily.

He growled. “You lied to me.” He took a step forward. Maybe his dream-self didn’t have weapons, but if she tried anything he would fight her hand-to-hand. Or, well…specter-to-specter.

She spread her hands helplessly. “What would you have done in my place?” she asked pleadingly, eyes wide. They were once again doe brown, possessing none of the raw power of that burning gold. “If I had told the truth…you would have killed me, Erryn.”

His glare intensified. “What makes you think I won’t just kill you now?” he demanded.

Her smile was so small and lost it twisted his heart before he hardened it against her. “Because you didn’t. You could have cut my throat and been done with it. Or smashed my head in with a rock and made it look like an accident. But you didn’t.” She stared up at him, hands still open in a gesture of pleading innocence.

He folded his arms. “How do you know that? You were unconscious.”

She shook her head. “I was like this.” She gestured to her flickering form, then the body—her body—lying next to her. “It’s called an astral projection. Sometimes mages use it to travel long distances in their sleep; but I was forced into this state, so I’m trapped close to my physical form.” She shrugged. “I can see everything happening around me, but I can’t wake up.” Her mouth twitched at one corner. “Thank you for burying Gale, by the way. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

He realized that must’ve been the name of the old gelding. His treacherous heart clenched. How could someone evil care so much about an old horse? But he shook the feeling away and asked, “So why enchant me then? Make me into this…astro-whats-it.”

She chuckled slightly. “Astral projection. And I didn’t really enchant you, just…knocked on the door of your mind while you slept. You’re the one who answered.” There was almost something playful in her eyes, just for a moment. “You’ve got a strong will. Not many people without magic can hear an astral projection, even in their sleep.” Her face became grave again. “I needed to talk to you,” she said softly. “I need your help, Erryn.”

He scoffed. “Why should I help you?” he asked, low and dangerous.

Her face was like stone. “Because I’m the only chance you all have got of making it through the rest of this journey alive,” she said. Then she offered the tiniest, most wan smile he’d ever seen and added softly, “And because…whatever you believe, I am your friend.”

His stomach felt hollow at that, at the expression on her pale face, but he pushed the feeling away. “What do you mean?” he demanded gruffly. “About being our only chance.”

She let out a sharp breath, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. “We’ve been under attack since we left the capitol,” she told him. He blinked. What in the hells was she talking about? “The wolves were just the start of it; someone—another mage—had spelled them to attack us. I removed the spell and explained what was happening, and they left.”

He gritted his teeth at the mention of magic but held his tongue and let her continue.

“After that…whoever enchanted the wolves kept coming after us.” Her mouth quirked up on one side wryly. “Honestly, you probably would have noticed something if you hadn’t been so distracted by the idea of me being a witch,” she said dryly. He glowered. Her smile faded. “They’re strong, whoever they are,” she said quietly. “Kept sending needles of power at us, trying to pin down our location. I tried to hold them off, but there was only so much I could do…” She sighed again, letting her head drop forward. “He broke through my barrier today. Then when I fought back, stopped the rockslide, he somehow…I guess you could say he found a chink in my armor.” She looked up at him, brown eyes wide and honest, showing not a hint of subterfuge.

But that doesn’t mean anything, he thought furiously--though he was finding himself less and less convincing. “So he put you in this…waking sleep?” he demanded, raising an eyebrow.

Ciara nodded. “When I attacked his spell directly, I left the tiniest opening through the clashing of magic. I didn’t think much of it—there’s almost no way one sorcerer can attack another just through their magic touching, not without at least being able to see each other. But this mage…” She shook her head and looked up at him. Her eyes were scared. “I’ve never felt anything like it, Erryn. They’re so powerful…it’s inhuman.”

He continued glaring at her, desperately ignoring the way her expression and voice tugged at his heartstrings. “All magic is inhuman,” he spat.

Ciara shook her head emphatically, flickering hair scattering all around her face. “No, Erryn, it’s not. Three hundred years ago, after Queen Ciara left, Rolond feared that his sister’s supporters would oust him. She was the voice of magic in our world, Ryn, my people flourished under her reign. And Rolond feared us. So, he spread the idea that magic is evil, that any creature of magic—fey or fell—was to be killed on sight. He banned the practice, the speaking of Old Tongue, communication with animals. But none of that is evil. It never has been.” She stood and reached out to him.

He took a step back, and hurt shone in her eyes. “Please, you have to believe me,” she begged softly. “Magic isn’t good or evil, people are. Magic is just…it just is. It’s something we’re born with, we can’t help it. It doesn’t make me evil any more than the color of my hair.” She stared at him with a tearful gaze. “Please, please, believe me.”

He shook his head, his whole world tilting on its axis. “Heresy,” he murmured, wishing desperately that his dream-self had some sort of weapon, for comfort’s sake if nothing else. “Lies.”

Ciara shook her head desperately, and he could see she was fighting to hold back the tears that shone in her eyes. “No, no it’s not lies. I’m telling the truth, Erryn, listen to my voice. You’re a soldier, a Varcian Guardsman, you can tell if someone’s lying. Tell me if I’m lying.”

She wasn’t. There was nothing about her that indicated a hint of deception… But he had thought that when he confronted her the night before, and look where that had gotten him. “You could be bewitching me,” he said, taking another step back.

She faltered, the expression that flashed across her face a mixture of pain and disbelief. He realized that the thought had never even occurred to her. “But I’m not,” she whispered eventually. “Erryn, I don’t know how to prove it to you, but I am not lying. Tell me what to do, how can I prove it to you?”

A thought that had been whispering in the back of his mind since his suspicions were first aroused that day with the wolves suddenly leapt to his tongue. “Were you involved with my father’s death?”

Ciara took a step back, looking as though he’d just slapped her across the face. “No,” she breathed. “No, of course not. I’ve never hurt anyone. How could you even think—"

“Do you know the sorcerer who killed him?” he barreled on, hardening his heart against that voice, those eyes.

Silence for a moment. Then Ciara drew in a sharp breath and met his hard gaze. “No,” she said evenly. “Not directly. But I know of him. Every mage in Aldarae knows who he is. Fears him.”

He felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. “And none of you came forward with a name?” he hissed. The mage who had killed Darian Cooper had been determined to be but one of many--a network, a web of magic within Varcia itself. Even if the killer himself had fled the city, and so kept his true identity hidden, there should have been more who knew who he was. And yet the guard had never found one.

Suddenly Ciara’s calm dropped away, replaced with a fierce anger he’d never seen in her before. If either of them had held a physical form, he might have been worried for its safety.

“What were we—what was I supposed to do, Erryn? If I came forward, I would have been hung, or burned, or drowned, or—or… They wouldn’t even have given me time to give a name.” She laughed abruptly, a sound that sent a shiver up his spine, and he took another step back unconsciously. “Besides, what could any of you have done against him? He’s too powerful for you, there’s only one man who could be a match for him.” Her eyes flashed with burning gold. “And you and your kind drove him away, blamed him for Darian’s death.” She laughed again, bitterly. “All this time we’ve been trying to protect you people, and—You know what, I give up. I thought maybe you could be more than a good little soldier, just following orders. That you could think for yourself. I should have known better; magic is evil and sin until the moment it can help you, and then once it’s stopped being useful, you talk with a blade.” She glared at him, eyes flickering between gold and brown. “If lives weren’t at stake, I’d send you back to sleep and tell you to forget this ever happened.”

His own anger suddenly burst to the surface. How dare she talk like this, like she knew anything about…about anything? “Fine,” he spat, not caring how much he sounded like a petulant child. “Do it. But I’ll still know what you are. Don’t think you won’t wake with a cut throat.”

The anger faded from Ciara’s expression, replaced with a flash of fear, and a small part of him felt sadistically pleased with himself. And then instantly, horribly guilty.

She straightened her shoulders and tossed her spectral hair. “Very well,” she said coolly. Then added, her tone taking on a little more bite, “I thought you might at least be half the man your father was. Guess I was wrong.” She raised her hands.

He knew it was bait, but he took it anyway. “What do you mean?” he demanded, fists clenching.

She met his eyes, and there was something in that gaze that told him—he knew deep to his core—that whatever she would say would be truth. “I said I met your father when I was out after curfew. Not a lie, but not the whole truth either. He caught me coming home after performing a spell. I was trying to… It doesn’t matter, it was stupid. But he knew I had magic. I thought he was going to kill me.” She spoke as though it had happened to someone else, detached, though her mouth drawn and her eyes were tight. “But he didn’t. He let me go. When I told him I wasn’t a creature of evil, he believed me.”

Erryn felt the old grudge rising up in his chest, and finally the words spilled out of his mouth. “I am not my father,” he ground out.

“I know,” Ciara replied easily, raising her hands again. “I thought you could be so much more…”

He woke with a start, jerking up and grabbing the wrist of the hand that shook his shoulder, yanking it to the side. There was a soft grunt as he flipped a heavy body over him and sprang up. It was only when he was crouched over his “attacker” that he realized who it was.

“Gare?” He blinked, feeling disoriented. Was he really awake?

“Gods and demons, Ryn,” Gareth wheezed, glaring balefully up at him. “I was just waking you for your watch.”

Erryn shook his head, trying to clear it. Slowly, he stood, letting his brother breathe. “Sorry…weird dream,” he murmured, eyes drawn to the back of their small shelter.

Everyone was asleep. Including Ciara. He gritted his teeth as he remembered her cold, biting words. He hadn’t thought the girl had it in her to be so manipulative. Of course, he hadn’t thought she was a witch, either…

“Ryn?” Gareth put a hand on his arm, and he started slightly, turning his head to look at him. “You alright?” He asked softly, brow furrowed with concern. His voice was low, trying not to wake the others. It was only now that Erryn saw Aiden standing a bit behind his brother, looking at them curiously.

He straightened his shoulders. “Fine,” he said gruffly, and clapped a hand to the younger man’s shoulder. “Get some sleep, I’ve got this.”

Gareth nodded, and Erryn suddenly noticed the dark circles under his little brother’s eyes. He was exhausted; they all were. Gareth simply laid down where he was standing, pausing only long enough to strip his sword from his hip before dropping to sleep.

Aiden chuckled softly, finding a place to spread out a blanket by the dying remnants of the fire. “Out like a rock the moment his head is down,” he commented, nodding toward Gareth with a smile.

Erryn grunted a vague agreement, mind and one eye still on Ciara. She looked like…she was sleeping. Chest rising and falling evenly, eyes closed softly, not clenched or flickering with nightmares. One of the girls, Lisanna probably, had placed a small, soft toy under one the young woman’s hands. Some sort of winged creature it looked like, maybe a dragon—odd toy for a young girl—but it just made her look so innocent. Not at all like a black-hearted witch, or the quietly powerful woman from his dream.

Someone shifted in their sleep and Erryn jerked back to the situation at hand. He made sure his blade was fasted properly to his belt, then picked his way toward the front of the outcropping. As he passed Aiden, he paused for a moment.

“Don’t hurt him,” he said quietly, not looking directly at the young Lord.

He saw Aiden freeze out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t need to ask who Erryn was referring to.

After a moment, he answered softly, “Hurting him was the furthest thing from my intention. I swear it.”

Erryn nodded, then took his post. He sank down onto the pebbly ground with his eyes trained on the darkness before him. He couldn’t keep the dream-vision from his mind, turning it over and over, watching it from every angle, thinking, questioning. How was he supposed to believe anything she had told him, regardless of his “gut feelings” about the matter? She had spent her whole life lying to everyone around her.

“I thought maybe you could be more than a good little soldier…could think for yourself…”

He gritted his teeth and swallowed an angry growl. What did she know, with her magic and her lies—how could she know anything about him, about his life? He could think for himself, he could do more than follow orders; it wasn’t his fault he was born to be a guard, a soldier, like his father before him.

“I am not my father.”

“No. I thought you could be so much more.”

“Shut up,” he muttered to the memory of her voice, only realizing after that he’d spoken aloud. Luckily, no one seemed to have heard.

So what if his father had let her live despite knowing of her powers? His father could make mistakes.

But…he’ never known the man to do so before. Not with something like this, not when lives were at stake. Maybe…maybe he’d trusted Ciara for a reason.

And look where that got him, he thought bitterly. Slaughtered by a sorcerer.

But not the sorcerer everyone thought, if Ciara was to be believed. Wait, what was he thinking? Of course she wasn’t to be believed!

Quite without his permission, different memories of the girl began trickling through his mind: Ciara smiling at him that first day on their journey, showing her dimples. Ciara riding with him and Gareth, teasing and laughing as though they’d known each other for years. Ciara’s face when he first confronted her about magic, scared and lonely. Ciara’s laugh when she was mobbed by Lisanna and Mina for a bedtime story.

Ciara talking to the wolves, sending them away, protecting everyone. Ciara’s golden eyes flashing as she floated above the rockslide, chanting in Old Tongue to drown out that horrible spell.

Ciara saving all their lives.

“Gods damnit!” he hissed, and surged to his feet. Careful not to wake anyone, he quietly stormed back to the girl’s resting place and planted his feet, folding his arms across his chest.

“I’m not saying I tst you,” he whispered angrily, feeling ridiculous. But Ciara had said she was aware of all that went on around her unconscious body, so…

“I…I believe you about us being targeted by another sorcerer. And as far as I can see, you’re the lesser of two evils. So, I’ll do it, I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do so you can wake up. But mark me, I will watch you like a hawk. First whisper of a sign that you’ll turn on us, and I will not hesitate to cut you down.ru” He glowered down at her sleeping form, waiting.

How’s that for thinking for myself?

Nothing happened.

He gritted his teeth in frustration. “Ciara?” he tried, still angry, but now slightly unsure. What if she couldn’t hear him after all?

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a voice sounded in his skull, clear as a melt water stream and warm as honey. Thank you, Erryn.

He jumped and swore quietly. “Demons above and below,” he muttered, rubbing his temples. “This is so weird.” A diusturbing thought struck him. “Wait—are you reading my mind?”

Laughter in his head, not his own: high and chirping like a nightingale’s song. No, just projecting my voice into it. Reading your thoughts is certainly beyond my power. When the voice spoke again, it was friendly but distant, cool. Obviously she was still angered by their last encounter as well. Listen, I need you to make a potion to wake me—

“I will not—!” he started furiously.

Shh! her voice hissed through his mind. Not so loud, you’ll wake the others! A sound like the wind sighing, then, I’m not asking you to do magic, Erryn. Think of it as cooking, if that makes you feel better. I just need you to collect a few ingredients and heat them over the fire, then make sure my body swallows it.

“…Fine,” he ground out, feeling distinctly uncomfortable and guilty and—and a whole mess of other emotions he couldn’t quite put a name to. A part of him still couldn’t believe that he was doing this, helping a confessed witch.

Another part of him dredged up a memory long faded by time: his father’s face, viewed from the eyes of a child, and hearing his voice say gently, “Remember, Ryn, good and evil isn’t so clear cut as most people like to think. We all have a little bit of each inside of us. It’s our choices that make us who we are

This is the right choice. Maybe not necessarily the good choice, in the long run; he still wasn’t sure. But it was the right one. He looked down at Ciara’s sleeping face. “What do you need?”

Finding the ingredients took longer than he would have liked. He made excuses to the Warranhall household and his brother when they all woke as the sun started to peep her head over the horizon, saying he had remembered a field tonic his father had taught him how to prepare and thought perhaps it would help Ciara and Jem. And off he’d gone, with only a slightly suspicious look from Gareth, searching through the scrubby coastal plants and stubborn trees clinging desperately to the cliff face.

Wakeflower, sea berries, bark of a yew tree, yarrow, he repeated to himself in his mind, on his knees and up to his elbows in a scraggly little bush that sported a few pathetic handfuls of white berries.

Wakeflower, bark of yew, yarrow.

Wakeflower, bark of yew.

Bark of yew.

Bark of yew.

Yew bark.

Yew.

“Where in the hells am I supposed to find a yew tree?!” he demanded of the sky, eyebrows drawn into a furious glower. The sun was steadily climbing higher; he’d been searching for almost four hours.

About forty yards east, on an outcropping overlooking the bay.

Erryn’s eyes widened and he whipped around, searching for the owner of the voice in his head that was not his own. Like when Ciara had projected her thoughts into his mind, the voice seemed more primal than human, winds of a hurricane and rattling stones—but also somehow distinctly masculine. His forehead broke out into a cold sweat. Was this the sorcerer that had attacked them? “Who are you?” he demanded, scanning the near barren shore and bay. “Show yourself!”

Who I am is unimportant, the voice whispered. Just know I offer help.

Erryn gritted his teeth and said, for what felt like the thousandths time I the last few days, “Why should I believe you? You could be planning to kill us all.”

I could be, the voice agreed, and Erryn thought it sounded almost amused. I suppose you will just have to have a little faith, Erryn Cooper.

He felt the cold sweat drip down the back of his neck and his heart rate picked up. How did this sorcerer know his name?

When a long moment passed and nothing happened, the voice spoke again, softly. I do it for her. Save Ciara, and I will forever be in your debt.

Erryn blinked surprised. This—this man, or whatever he was, knew Ciara? “Why don’t you just save her yourself?” he asked, eyes still desperately searching for any hint of another human life.

Another pause. Then: I...do not have the ability. The voice sounded…pained. Regretful. I wish I could, but I cannot. The whispering began to fade.

“Wait, where are you?!” Erryn demanded, spinning in a searching circle once again.

The voice, any trace of it, was gone.

Erryn gritted his teeth. Perfect. More treason and mystery. Just what his day needed.

Well. Now he had a choice: go where the voice had told him and get the last ingredient, or keep searching on his own.

He weighed his options. He’d been searching for hours with no luck, the chances of him finding another tree stubborn enough to grow here were slim to none…but on the other hand, it could be a trap.

His hand went to the hilt of his sword, and he set his jaw. I’ll just have to be alert. Ready for whatever comes, he decided, and began walking east.