Chapter 4:
The Silver Key
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“We should keep going,” Master Ivor said as they crossed back to the Hall of Doors. Ewen ignored him and sat on the floor, not something he often did, but this mission had been a particular disaster that had gained him a bad burn in his hand and done nothing to get them close to even the idea of finding the Weaver.
So no, to keep going was not something on the table without some rest, even if he’d come to hate this place and its ever-moving doors in the two weeks they had been coming and going.
“Ewen—”
“Just a moment, sir,” Ewen said, wincing as he took out the bandages covering his burned hand.
The sorcerer sighed and then nodded to his relief, what would have been if the man from the Moorlands had been his companion? Probably to get up and keep going, brutal as their training was. Master Ivor wasn’t so bad, for someone of the Brotherhood at least, even if Princess Briallen hadn’t trusted him enough to leave the man with him.
“Do you think they might have found her?” He asks as he takes the oil that the old man gives him, his eyes trying to fix on anything but the moving doors.
“Maybe, Princess Briallen knows how to track well enough, and Ector… he will make sure she comes with them.”
“But you’re the one who knows how she looks; you know how her power looks like.”
Master Ivor laughed softly. “Believe me, my boy, that kind of power would be noticeable for anyone who has seen magic at all. Besides, I only saw the lady a couple of times.”
“I wonder why she left,” Ewen commented as he bandaged his hand. He knew little of the Brotherhood, but a woman entering was strange stuff. Most women preferred to join the covens in Imnalia or just form their own spaces. The Brotherhood had a mighty reputation, but also one that disdained the magic from his country and his queen. Even the way they reached to magic was different, dangerous, corrupting, or so he had heard.
Of course, he supposed that a Weaver was a different thing, a Weaver couldn’t fit on a coven more than a sorcerer would.
The last world they had been looking for was a strange one. They arrived in a place settled on a volcano or at least close to it. The people dressed strangely, women and men with tight clothes and short hair. Their tokens had worked well then, so the locals hadn’t seemed to notice how different Ewen and Master Ivor looked, but they were still weary. They kept asking if they worked for ‘the State’ and what had brought them there. The first days, he and Master Ivor had been kept in a cell, constantly questioned despite not knowing anything and only having their search for the Weaver as reference for anything before their visit. The people in this word didn’t know what a Weaver was, and they laughed when Master Ivor mentioned magic, so he didn’t do that a second time. At the end, Ewen was pretty sure that they let them get out of the cell because they thought they were either mad or lacking wits.
But then noises started and the base – as they called it – was attacked by those flying ships made of steel. Ewen had tried to help but once the explosion took on the building he woke up to find the place whole again with Master Ivor telling him that this world was self-contained and everything would repeat in the span of a day, but there was no signs of the Weaver. So he only got a sore body and a badly burned hand for his troubles.
“We should wait for them this time,” he offered tentatively as he stood up and fixed his bag, Master Ivor arched a brow. “Well, it would be a waste to go to another world if they have found her, sir.”
The sorcerer sighed and looked around at the moving doors then down to the slightly burned edges of his cloak. “Alright, we’ll wait for them this time, but we’ll leave immediately if they don’t have her, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Ewen said, more obedient than he felt. “Can I ask a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know why she left our world?”
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“Well then, start from the beginning.” Amelia gestured to a chair for the strangers to sit down, the rational part of her mind screaming that these two would probably murder her, and she was being an idiot and a nutcase for believing them, but she kept it down. Nothing of this had any logic; she might as well try the illogical path first.
Only the young woman sat down, fidgeting with a gold ring in her right hand, the man kept standing with his arms closed, just like Amelia did.
“We are not from this world, as you might have noticed from our appearances,” the girl started. “My name is Briallen, I am the daughter of Phrynia, Queen of Imnalia and this is Ector, he is from the Kingdom of the Moorlands. The person who sent us thought it was better to send just four people, representing the three kingdoms in our continent and the city-state of the Brotherhood of Grunore. Our companions are out in other worlds, searching, too.”
Amelia stared at her, what even was this, two escapees from a close asylum? How could she believe this?
“Searching?”
“Our world is dying,” the girl said, “we don’t know when it started, but it’s like the centre of it has shifted. Magic is a great part of our lives, and now some people can’t access it no matter what practices they use. Dragons have awakened again after centuries, and they go around burning cities and villages to the ground, and we can’t kill them because that just kills the land even more. A plague has weakened all our armies in the last years, a sickness that we can’t cure and just—”
“Get to the point, what are you searching for?” Amelia said between gritted teeth. Were they taking her for a fool?
“We were searching for a Weaver with enough power to change these events,” Briallen said, taking a deep breath and staring at her intently. “We were told that it was you.”
Yes, they were taking her for a fool. “Me?” she snorted. “I am your saviour? This is not funny.”
“We came here with a description, my lady, and you’re the only one that has fitted it.” Briallen sighed as if she were saying totally normal, and Amelia shook her head. “We were told to find a woman of your looks, and in these lands you would be the only one that to see pass our spells. Why do you think your friend only remarked about our clothes? She saw us as just people from this realm—”
“How could you lot know what I look like?” Her eyes went to the man for a moment, and an uncomfortable pinch of fear settled in the pit of her stomach. It was easy to forget he was there when the girl was the one that did all the talking, but she couldn’t exactly deny the elephant in the room – or at least the elephant inside her own mind. “Did you tell them?”
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The man arched an eyebrow. “Ivor claimed he met the Weaver in the Citadel, I have never seen you before.”
Somehow that sent her a pinch of hurt, which was another ridiculous thing so Amelia stepped back. “Let’s say I believe you two—”
“Do you have any other options?” He said, ignoring the look that Briallen gave him. “You’re trapped inside this world now that you are aware of its nature, once the two days pass this will start all over again. These people don’t have your magic. They will never notice it no matter how much you point it out.”
“What… What do you mean?” she whispered, taking a step back. “This… This can’t be just three days to repeat. I remember last week, I remember what happened a month ago, I—” Amelia covered her face with her eyes, shaking her head.
This couldn’t be happening; she had her life here, her family, it was just impossible that it was just three days. Her mother, her father, they… they…
“What?” The words barely came out, stuck in her throat. “Why can’t I—?”
“My lady.” Briallen got up from the chair, her face painted with concern.
Amelia ignored her, leaving the kitchen and striding to her bedroom, opening the drawers of her night table. She couldn’t remember her parents’ faces or their names. Her mind just went Mum and Dad, as if she were a child too small to see them as anything else.
She searched inside the drawers, pulling underwear, handkerchiefs and little things that didn’t matter, but not a single picture of her parents, or even her aunt… Whose name she didn’t remember either. Once the drawer was empty, she took out the two silver rings her mother had given her but also found other two, a gold one with a red stone with a red stone. Staring at it, Amelia tried to invoke any memory of her parents or aunt giving it to her, nothing came.
Her chest started to hurt when she got up to plunder the wardrobe, the only thing close to anything unfamiliar was a sheet of paper – or was it some sort of fabric? – with a sentence written over and over:
Never dreams, only memories.
It was her handwriting, frantic, in lowercase letter, but still hers. She barely heard the others behind her, holding the piece of… parchment like it was some dangerous snake that would bite her at any moment.
“What happens to the rest of the people here?” she choked out. “Is the entire world just stuck in three days? My parents, I—”
“There is nothing else but this city,” Briallen said softly, Amelia felt her hand over her shoulder and pulled away. “Anyone who leaves just comes back here, they don’t notice. They don’t have magic, you do.”
“Who would do something like this?”
“Weavers can change everything: time, space, destiny,” Ector explained evenly.
“Are you saying I did it?” Amelia snapped. “Why would I do something like this? Why would I lock myself in and these people in a place like this?”
“I’m not saying you did.”
“So?”
“Maybe someone put you here,” Briallen offered and knelt by her side, taking the sheet of paper from her hands. “This parchment here, this is from home. Do you dream of a world different from this, my lady?”
Amelia clenched her jaw, stopping herself from turning around and looking at the only person that appeared in those dreams. Yes, they looked too different to be home, and they were too precise to be just dreams.
I can’t believe this makes sense. I can’t believe I am actually falling for this.
But what other explanation could it be?
“The leader of the Brotherhood, Lord Merlian,” Ector started, “he can change this by just moving his wand over in the air. No spells needed, but even then he has to rely on into an external source. Maybe this was an attempt for a spell. Maybe you were trying to go back.”
“Go back?”
“Go back home,” Briallen said. “You can’t remember your parents and there are no pictures, so this isn’t your world.”
That’s too simple. Amelia swallowed the biting comment and took the parchment from her hand. The sentence was written again and again, frantically. A spell, huh? She remembered the words she had typed last night, a small paragraph that had little meaning to anyone, but hours later these two were knocking at her door. Had she brought them to herself? Was she trapped in these three days like everybody else until she saw them on the street the night she bought the typewriter? Had she done that before seeing them, or was she just trapped in the circle of an unconscious desire?
Getting up with the girl’s help, she squished the piece of parchment in her hands. She didn’t feel like this powerful being Briallen had described, she felt like she was probably out of her wits. But the options were listening to them and going or staying there and risk the days repeating and repeating until she’d truly go mad.
“Show me then,” she said, turning to Ector, maybe wrongfully, as he had said he didn’t know her. But somehow, she knew him; maybe that was enough for now.
“You should pack something to go first,” Briallen said, accessing her up and down. “Your clothes are too light for this kind of journey, do you have breeches?”
Amelia blinked at her, for a moment not knowing if she actually had them. God, did she even use the same three dresses every time? But she had breeches; she used them for when she went on bike rides with Fiona in the weekends.
Fiona. What would even happen to her? Would she be worried that she just disappeared?
“My friend, will she even notice I’m gone?” she asked softly as she went down and picked the clothes.
“Probably not, since you are not from this world,” Ector replied, and she felt cold all over.
“Right,” Amelia murmured and searched for the clothes, picking underwear, two shirts and her two pair of breeches. She couldn’t take exactly much in her travel bag. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”
Briallen and Ector looked at each other for a moment, the former arching her eyebrows in an exasperated gesture. Then both of them left the room and Amelia took the clothes, the parchment and the ring with the red stone, shoving them inside the buttoned pockets of her coat, took out a change of dress, undergarments and another jumper and put them in her smallest travel bag. Then walked right to her small bathroom and staring at her own pale face in the mirror, she tried for a moment to remember her own birthday and couldn’t. She knew she was twenty-eight, but there wasn’t a memory in her mind that wrapped her in the tighter clothes of the previous decade. Did she even look like this before coming to this place? She could remember her hair being longer, but not the moment where she cut it.
Sighing, she washed her face and took off the little makeup she had put on for work. After changing her dress for the sport breeches, a shirt, a jumper and an overcoat, she took a deep breath before opening the door with her bag already settled over her shoulder.
This was madness, complete, utter madness.
But the alternative seemed worse; the alternative was staying here, screaming to a city full of people that couldn’t see what she could.
“All right,” she said as she closed the door from her bedroom behind her. “Let’s go then.”
Her hand gripped the sleeve cuffs of her coat as the two strangers looked at each other. Ector nodded at Briallen and stepped in front of Amelia, making her move to the side. He took something from his clothes, a silver key that looked as archaic as them; it fitted perfectly on her bedroom door.
Please let them be wrong, her own desperate voice pleaded in her head. Please let them be just two crazy people, even if that includes me.
Please let them be right, so I can go home. Another part of her admitted, deeper, more desperate when the door and bathed them with a searing white light.