Truths revealed, a journey sealed
A stab of darkness never healed.
Sergeant Flint did not look very happy.
He did not look happy at all.
He looked, in fact, the most angry that Ben and Lady Araynia had ever seen him, and everyone was silently thankful that he was no longer in possession of his giant crossbow.
“Someone wanna tell me,” he growled, hands on his hips, “WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS GOIN' ON?!”
They were cringing at a table in Watchroads’ Guard House, which was significantly more gloomy and dingy than the Freeroamer’s white-painted headquarters in Forthwhite. The walls were of cold, grey granite, so damp that moss was growing in places, even in summer, and the windows were small and unfriendly. The room they were currently in had no windows at all; nothing but a wooden table and benches. Two lanterns burned on opposite walls, with another hanging by a chain from the dark-beamed ceiling.
“Araynia found the thief,” Ben said simply.
Flint’s expression changed to one of astonishment. He turned to the officer in charge, a grey-bearded Sergeant named Wolfrun.
“On it,” the man said, and was gone from the room in an instant.
Taking his hat off, Flint rubbed at his face and went and leaned on the table. “Tell me what happened.”
Ben explained everything, from his point of view. Lady Araynia sat silently while he told it.
Flint’s mood did not improve when the Bladeshifters were mentioned. He waited until the boy had finished speaking, then slammed his fist onto the table, grabbed his hat and shoved it onto his head, and turned away, fuming.
“An' you saw no sign of the Eliminator, or Hawk?” he muttered after a moment.
“No,” Ben replied unhappily, and sighed in frustration. “I almost caught him! I would have, if those damned Bladeshifters hadn’t gotten in the way!” He shook his head. “But their leader, Jewels, wasn’t one of the dead, even though she was holding Araynia’s pendant. Maybe it burned her and she threw it away. I found it lying in the dirt.”
“Well, three of ‘em didn’t get so lucky,” Flint growled, and gestured in the direction of the street. “An' now we’ve got half the town clamourin’ at the door of the Guard House, wantin’ t’know what happened!” He turned an intense hazel stare onto the noblewoman.
Araynia flushed, and couldn’t meet his gaze. She stared down at her hands in her lap, instead. She still felt sick, and a little shivery, and extremely tired.
“I… I do not know,” she stammered. “I only wanted to get them away from Ben. I do not know what I was doing.” She swallowed. “I was desperate for help. I tried to call Lor—” she caught herself abruptly. No one else knew about her connection with Requar.
She flushed even deeper. “I… I called upon the magic in my pendant,” she mumbled. “I did not… intend to hurt anyone…” Tears welled in her eyes again, and she shook her head.
“She was being chased, Flint,” Ben said defensively. “They were going to kill her. She hasn’t been trained, like Ferrian has; she probably acted on instinct. Ferrian told me how he couldn’t control his magic at first, either; it just burst out of him at unexpected moments.”
“Aye,” Flint said. “Heard all about it from Grisket.” He shook his head, scowl remaining in place. “Hell of an instinct, though…”
“I do not understand!” Araynia burst out, wiping at the tears leaking down her cheeks. “I was supposed to have inherited healing magic! How… how could I have… killed people?!”
A deep, uncomfortable silence fell.
“Requar was a powerful sorcerer,” Flint said finally. “I guess you got, er… the whole package, not just the healin’ part…”
Araynia looked up at him in confusion. “What does that mean?”
Flint and Ben exchanged a look, and Araynia did not like the expression on their faces. Something dark began to grow in her chest.
“Umm… how much do you know about Lord Requar?” Ben asked cautiously.
Araynia stared down at the table. “Almost nothing,” she admitted.
“Best keep it that way,” Flint growled darkly. “He could heal anyone, and usually would without askin', but…” he shook his head. “He also did some things you don’t wanna know about…”
The noblewoman was on her feet at once. She rounded the table and confronted Flint. “I absolutely do!”
“Lady…” Ben said in warning. “You… you really don’t…”
Araynia looked from the Freeroamer to the boy and back again. Her chest felt tight, but there was a flicker of anger in the darkness, now. “And how is it that everyone else knows important things about Lord Requar, and I do not? I am the one who is supposed to be carrying on his legacy: I think I ought to know!”
There was another silence. Flint and Ben looked unhappy. The Freeroamer regarded her for a long moment, as though weighing her resilience with her need for truth. Then he nodded, slowly, and told her plainly: “He destroyed the School of Magical Studies.”
Araynia stared back at him, aghast. “W… what?!” She shook her head in denial. “No! No, that can’t be true! That was a terrible accident, a spell that went wrong…”
Ben shook his head.
“That ain’t even the worst of it,” Flint went on, gloomily, and frowned. “Are you sure y’want to…?”
“Tell me,” Araynia said tightly.
Flint moved over to a bench and sat down slowly, clasping his hands on the table before him. “When Requar was a kid,” he went on quietly, “he got hold of a trigonic dagger." He hesitated, glancing up at the noblewoman. "He killed his mother with it, accidentally.” He paused at Araynia's gasp of shock. “For years, he studied at the School, tryin' to find a cure for her. That’s how he ended up with a Sword of Healin’.” He shook his head sadly. “But he couldn’t save her. He kept the dagger, though; he thought he could stop anyone else from usin' it.” Flint was silent for a moment.
“Four years ago, he and his brother had a fight. Arzath found out the truth about their mother. He took that damned dagger and threatened his brother with it, hated him so much he thought he wanted to kill him, but that dagger was too evil, even for Arzath. But..." He closed his eyes, bowing his head. “Requar picked up the dagger and… stabbed himself with it. I was there, and it weren’t pretty.”
Araynia stared at him in horrified silence.
“That wasn’t how he died, though,” Ben added quietly. “He would have turned into a wraith, but Arzath brought him back, somehow. But Requar sacrificed his life to save Ferrian.”
Araynia’s heart pounded in her chest. She found herself walking backwards until she came up against the stone wall. Her world seemed to have narrowed into a dark tunnel. She put her hands to her face.
She never could have believed that Lord Requar’s history was so horrific, and she hadn’t even thought to ask anyone about it, or find out who he was as a person. Childishly, she had been in awe of him, so dazzled by his attractiveness and charm, and a vain hope that he was somehow her saviour…
I have inherited magic from A MURDERER!
She turned and leaned her burning forehead against the cold stone, choking with sobs. The magic no longer felt like a wondrous gift, but a taint, as though she might as well be infected with trigon. The pendant was a black hole upon her chest; she wondered why she had ever been so desperate to get it back. Now, all she wanted to do was rip it off and toss it down the nearest well.
She could no longer communicate with Lord Requar. Why? What had changed? Was it deliberate? Had he saved her from the wraiths for his own selfish purposes, just to throw her away when he got what he wanted?
She couldn’t reconcile this awful knowledge with the person she had met in the Sword. He had treated her with kindness, even though she had sensed something frightening about him from the start. But he had completely failed to mention the destructive potential of her – of his – magic. He had only ever talked about her ability to heal…
All of a sudden, just like that – Araynia fully understood what the Sword of Healing was for.
Requar had told her that she didn’t need it to use healing magic, but that was not entirely true. Perhaps, a very skilled sorcerer could do such a thing, but the point of the Sword was to isolate the restorative part of the magic, separate it out from the rest, so that it could be used safely. Otherwise, there was an equal chance that she could destroy someone that she was trying to save.
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As long as she kept hold of her Sword, she could direct her magic harmlessly into it, instead of creating all kinds of disastrous effects…
She straightened from the wall. Ben was trying to comfort her, though she couldn’t hear his words through her own raging thoughts. “I need the Sword of Healing back,” she said shakily. “Now.”
Ben looked at her in concern. “Raemint will—”
“No!” She spun. “I am going back for it!”
Sergeant Flint was standing between her and the door. He crossed his arms. “That ain’t happenin’, Lady,” he stated frankly.
Araynia glared at him, through a tear-streaked face. “Are you going to stop me?”
Flint shrugged. “Yeah. If I ‘ave to.”
“Araynia,” Ben pleaded. “Please don’t run away again.”
She looked at him, at his young, wounded face, full of disappointment and worry, and all the anger drained out of her. She stepped over to the bench and sagged down onto it, too exhausted to stand up for herself any longer.
“It will be alright, Araynia,” Ben consoled her. “We’ll get your Sword back!” He sat down next to her. “You’re not Lord Requar,” he added quietly. “You’re your own person.”
Araynia said nothing, just stared at the tears dripping into her lap.
The door opened at that moment, and Sergeant Wolfrun returned. “Crowd’s gettin’ a mite unruly out there,” he said. “You folks better leave.”
Ben looked up in surprise. “We’re leaving already?!”
Wolfrun shrugged. “Up to you, but the Lady here’s in danger if you stay. Your thief’s been spotted headin’ east; like Flint reckoned, he’s prob’ly headin’ for Bridgetown.”
“Oh no,” Ben said in sudden dismay. “The Bladeshifters are probably after him too, now, knowing he’s got the Eliminator…"
Flint looked furious. “If that Jewels woman gets ‘er grubby mitts on me crossbow…!” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
No one wanted to imagine that scenario.
“Aye, well,” Wolfrun said, “there’s horses saddled and ready waitin’ out the back. If you head out the southern side o’ the town, you should miss the rabble. You can circle back across the plains to The Line.”
Flint shook hands with the Sergeant. “Cheers, Wolf!”
Wolfrun unpinned a shiny round badge from his blue sleeve, and flipped it to Flint. “Saw you was missin’ yours. I’ll rustle up another.”
Flint thanked him again, then moved to the door. “Alright, kids,” he said. “Let’s move it.”
“Wa—wait a minute!” Ben said. “What about my sister?”
“In a safe house,” Wolfrun replied. “We’re lookin’ after her.”
Ben looked uncertain. “But you know she’s…”
Wolfrun nodded. “We know. We ain’t lettin’ anyone near her. We’ll take good care of her, give you me word.”
“Cartin’ Everine around the countryside ain’t doin’ anyone no good,” Flint pointed out. “She’s as safe here as anywhere.”
The boy nodded reluctantly. Then he thanked Sergeant Wolfrun, helped Araynia to her feet, and they followed Flint out the door in uneasy silence.
“I think we should cut her eyeballs out and roast them,” Shadowrunner commented, lying on her back in the dry grass.
“Leave one of them intact,” Silverstrike suggested, tossing his blond fringe out of his face. “So that she can see what’s happening.” He gave a nasty grin.
“We should’ve stayed behind to finish her off,” the grizzled man, X, complained. “The hell with torture…”
“Enough!” Jewels silenced them all with a glare. “I want the Eliminator! Once I prise it off of that fool Gastan, I’ll shoot his pretty head off with it. Then we go back and put a bolt in the girl. Then Flint.” She paused. “Make it two bolts for that bastard. Then that brat of a boy…”
Silverstrike raised an eyebrow. “In that order?”
Jewels grinned at him, her golden teeth glinting in the last rays of the sun as it set. “Depends who gets in my way first!”
“That girl was no sorcerer,” Shadow fumed. “She could’ve stood there and blasted us all to bacon, but she ran off like a stupid child…”
Strike snorted an incredulous laugh. “You’re one to talk! You fled like a squealing piglet!”
Shadow pushed herself up, angrily. “I saved my own hide! I ain’t messin’ with magic! Look what happened to those goons we left behind: burned to a crisp!”
“Brawn almost had her,” X growled. “I would’ve put an arrow in her back, but he was in the way.”
They fell into seething silence, marked by the crackling of their fire. They were camped out on the plains, sheltered from sight by a massive, golden-grassed hillbeast, which rumbled occasionally in its sleep, making the ground tremble. Behind them, to the west, the sun lowered over the distant, shimmering cluster of buildings that was Watchroads. A long thread of caravans, carts and refugees stretched their weary way along The Line, most heading east.
“That snake Gastan,” Strike sneered. “Knew we should’ve put a knife in him! He was supposed to deliver us a horse, not a hell-damned sorcerer!” He glanced at Jewels. “You think he knew that pendant was magical?”
The Bladeshifter leader regarded her right hand, hastily bandaged with a strip torn from her own scarlet jacket. Her dark eyes burned within their black stripes, almost as fiercely as the pain seared into her palm from the cursed blue stone. “I don’t know.” Her gaze narrowed. “But he’s a dead man.”
The girl named Magnolia sat in the grass on the mountain bluff, humming to herself and watching the bees, and playing with wildflowers. To her right, the white castle rose majestically, with its grand towers and stained-glass windows, and shining gilded spires, like spears raised to the rippling blue sky. To her left, a breathtaking valley dropped away, cradled in the hands of lofty, venerable mountains like a forgotten paradise. A high waterfall danced sparkling off the cliffs at one end; a clear river wound below, with deer nibbling peacefully on the lush green grass along its banks.
The girl thought that this had turned into the most wonderful dream that she had ever had. The castle was huge and mysterious and full of nooks and crannies, and she wanted to explore every piece of it. She wanted to stay here forever. The dreadful, nightmarish apparitions that had tried to frighten her had almost been forgotten, now, dimmed to faded, unpleasant memories. Here, she felt safe, and warm, and comfortable, and had already come to think of this place as her home. Perhaps, once, she had had another home; but she could no longer remember it, and it didn't seem to matter any longer.
She was happy.
The tall, handsome man named Requar puzzled her, though. She did not know where he had come from or why he had rescued her and brought her to this place, but she was pleased that he had. He was very kind, and softly spoken. But whenever he was not looking at her, he seemed to forget that she was there, and became lost in thought and melancholy.
This made Magnolia a little sad, too. How could anyone be unhappy, living in a place like this?
Getting to her feet, she ran up to him, where he stood at the edge of the bluff. He was wrapped in his fine blue cloak, with the hood pulled over his head, as though he were cold, though the air was quite pleasant. She held up a daisy chain necklace that she had made. This is for you!
His expression brightened at the sight of it. This is for me? My goodness, what a beautiful thing. I am honoured. He bowed graciously, removed his hood, and placed the daisy chain reverently around his neck.
The girl beamed.
It was at that moment, without warning, that the sky flashed a brilliant, searing blue, startling them both and flooding the entire valley in a deep, cerulean glow.
Magnolia clutched at Requar's sleeve. What is that?!
Requar held up a hand. Shhh!
A voice could be heard, far distant, echoing off the rock like someone lost in a mountain pass. It was a woman's voice; desperate, pleading, but they could not make out the words. The voice bounded off the cliffs, over and over until it sounded as though a hundred women were crying for help, then a hundred more, turning into a garbled, incomprehensible cacophony...
And then, just as suddenly as they appeared, the eerie blue glow and the horrendous voices vanished. The valley returned to quiet, sunlit serenity, as it always had been, as though nothing had ever been amiss.
Both the white-haired man and the young girl stood wordless in its wake.
Magnolia hardly dared to speak. Was it the demon lady? she finally whispered.
Requar stared up at the snow-dusted mountain peaks, and looked worried. No, he replied, shaking his head. That was Lady Araynia.
The girl frowned. Who is Lady Araynia?
The man sighed, closing his eyes. Someone who is beyond our reach.
What's wrong with her? Is she lost?
She is in danger. But there is nothing we can do to help her.
What? Why?? Magnolia felt angry. Why can't she come here, with us? You helped me!
Requar was silent for a moment. If there were any possible way that I could lend her my aid, I would not hesitate. He shook his head sadly. But she must find her own way here. She exists outside of our dream.
Magnolia looked down at the river below, uncomprehending.
Turning, Requar put a hand on her shoulder. Come, he said. Why don't we go back insi-- ungh--
He dropped abruptly to one knee, a hand clutched to his chest.
The girl gasped, and stepped back in alarm. What... what's wrong??
Requar did not reply. He was doubled over, seemingly in great pain.
Magnolia spun, looking around frantically, but saw no sign of darkness anywhere; no storm clouds creeping up behind the mountain peaks, no sinister figures in black armour.
Nothing looked different.
But something wasn't right.
Turning back, she dropped into the grass beside the man, feeling helpless and distressed.
Gradually, he recovered, straightening a little, gasping for breath. His body and clothing had become slightly transparent, his hair misty, as though he was on the verge of fading away.
Magnolia grabbed his arm again, fearful that he was about to disappear.
It is... merely an... old scar, he told her, hand still pressed against his chest. Do not t-- trouble yourself...
But Magnolia WAS troubled. She was very troubled, indeed.
Mister Requar, she said tentatively. Are you alright?
To her surprise, he laughed. I am sorry to tell you that... I have never been... anything so fanciful as... 'all right'.
The girl looked at him in dismay. Is that why you're sad?
He looked up at her, his blue eyes flickering with something deep and unfathomably tragic. Sitting back, he gazed up at his beautiful castle. It is as you told me, he said quietly, white hair stirring ethereally about his face. I am not supposed to be here. I should not exist.
But... you ARE here! You're talking to me!
Yes. And I feel pain. He closed his eyes. Sometimes, I think that is all that I can feel. Pain.
He was silent for a moment, then sighed. Death sometimes takes on... unexpected forms...
Magnolia was quiet. She stared down at the grass. Am I dead, too?
No! He took hold of her shoulders. Magnolia, no! You are very much alive, and I am here to ensure that you remain so, do you understand?
She shook her head.
He regarded her anxiously. No, he sighed again. No, I don't suppose you do... He fell into another long silence.
The demon lady still hunts for us, he murmured, after awhile. She will hurt us both, if she finds us. But no matter what she may try to do to me, you must not believe anything she tells you. And you must never, ever allow her to touch you.
Magnolia hugged herself. I don't want her to touch me, she said determinedly. She is disgusting!
Requar's smile returned. Good, he said, and sagged with relief. That is good.
They were silent again, as a soft breeze rippled through the grass and flowers around them. Requar's form became solid once more, colour and substance returning to him, sunlight sparkling off the delicate embroidery on his robes. Whatever had afflicted him had passed, it seemed.
He climbed to his feet, and offered her his hand. Do you like books? he asked.
The girl jumped up at once. With stories in them??
He smiled. All books contain stories, he replied, and hesitated. Well. Many of mine are a little... he winced slightly. Dark. But I am sure we can find something for you...
Magnolia tugged him eagerly towards the castle, her excitement returned. She could not wait to see his books. Perhaps there was a whole library!
They entered the cool interior of the foyer, where Requar urged her to go ahead up the stairs. The girl raced off, delighted.
At the entrance to the castle, the dead sorcerer stood staring out at the idyllic valley one final time. Then he backed inside, closed the double doors and barred them firmly behind him.