Chapter 36
There are deep mysteries hidden in the Gray Lands. The locals, Jinn and Peri, say they are children of the Lady of Smoke and Fire. Like smoke, they disappear into the depths of the deep desert inhabited with sun loving monsters like the Lilu and Gallu, things that have more in common with the beings of the Shadow Lands than any other people in the Sunlit lands, like fire they burn any who pry too deeply in the things they choose to keep hidden. Even the failures of our magic and the blockage to no space use seem another aspect of Smoke and Fire.
Does this Lady actually exist as an embodied being? Is she a guardian of something so threatening that two whole races of beings exist to protect it and her? Only the people of the Gray Lands know for sure.
Be sure to keep their prejudices and taboos in mind when doing business with them. Whatever else goes on in the Gray Lands, the mineral treasures there are real. And valuable. Be content to take what you can like proper Dragonkin, and leave the mysteries to those who own them.
Zandis Trading Worker’s Manual, Sunderland Press
Violetta Greenleaf, deep in the sacred heart of the Gray Lands, sat underneath a tree in the only garden she was allowed to be in. Her room, a bathing chamber and this garden had become the entirety of her room since the day she was brought here, burning with fever and almost dead from a Blood Fire spider bite. For a long time this had been enough. She was weak, almost unable to stand up when she came to, and Xhindi, the Jinn man who brought her here, and the Called, the person who was in charge of this site, and a couple of helpers were the only people who dealt with her, and for a time, it was all she needed.
But now, her leg was strong enough to walk without a staff, at least for an hour or so. Her magical ability, scrambled by the illness and the need to keep her asleep while she healed, was beginning to come back to normal levels. She looked at the pearl the Called had given her to practice with, closed her fist over it, and let her innate magic touch it. It felt warm to her mind, warm and full of potential, teasing her magic to come forth and play.
When she opened it, the pearl in her hand glowed with a bright blue-green light, a bit bluer than green.
“Almost there,” she whispered. “Good enough to leave.”
“Ah, there you are, Violetta!” a warm male voice said.
She looked up to see the smiling face of Xhindi. “Not very many places to search. I’m either in my room, in the bath or here.” She couldn’t quite take the frustration of her limited existence out of her voice.
Xhindi sat down next to her, and looked deeply into her eyes. “Soon, Violetta, soon. My sister tells me you are almost ready to ride again. I’ve asked her about saddling up a griffin to see how well you handle it. I think it’s about time to move onto somewhere beyond this place.”
Violetta rested her hand on his, briefly. “I never was good at waiting. These last days...as I’ve gotten better, I’ve just started to feel so closed in.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and suddenly, the words began to pour out of her. “I miss my home. And I need to get that bundle we found back to where it will be safe to try to open it. I know you had asked me not to open it until we reached safety, but that never was going to happen. My friend let me know he had set up a rather nasty trap on it. I have his instructions on how to neutralize it back in Ynys Afel, in Meridae. I need to get to a Dragon Web station so I can let my place of work know that I’ve been delayed. I...I…”
Xhindi’s face fell. “I am so sorry I let this happen to you, Violetta.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, saw the concern and guilt written across his face. “You saved my life. Don’t forget that.”
“After letting you be put in danger.” He ran a hand through his hair and stood up. “I was supposed to get you safely to Xendo’s Freehold then Aufzee’s Freehold, and then safely back to Runi Blahn.”
“It isn’t your fault that someone did in those poor men. It wasn’t your fault that someone was evidently spying on the Freehold. They may have even been looking for my friend’s vault. And it’s certainly not your fault that damned spider bit me.” She frowned at him. “Taking on guilt that doesn’t belong to you is not a useful thing. Or so my old school master always told me.”
“Did you take on others’ guilt sometimes when you were young?” he asked.
“Well, there was a group of us who were, well, we bent the rules a bit. Sometimes more than a bit. One particular person would always blame the rest of us when he got caught. The school master worked hard to break us of the habit of letting him hide behind us. We were all excellent students even when we pulled stunts or snuck off campus when we weren’t supposed to, and I think the headmaster actually approved of our spirit, if not what we did. But the one thing he didn’t approve of is taking on unearned guilt.”
“He sounds like a wise man. Is he still at the school?” Xhindi asked.
“Nobody knows where he is. He was working on something in his lab one night and disappeared. They say it was a no-space accident.” She sighed.
“He wasn’t Dragonkin, right?”
“No, but he was a respected researcher in the theory of no space magic.” She looked at her hands. “No space can be a dangerous area for the non-Dragonkin. It seems over the last several years they’ve lost one or two or three people working in the field. I’m sad he was one of them.”
“Now I am guilty of something. I’ve made you think of sad things.” Xhindi bent down, and plucked a daisy that was growing near the bench. “Here. I offer you this as recompense for my guilt. Forgive me?”
She took the daisy from him and twirled it in her fingers. “I…”
“And what will you give me in recompense for plucking flowers from my garden, brother?”
The two of them turned to see the Called, wrapped in her usual gauzy dress and veil. She was followed by two of her acolytes, the only other people that Violetta had any regular interaction with. For all she knew, the entire site was peopled by just those three women. The acolytes were dressed in gauzy gowns as well, pale gray as opposed to white.
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“Uh,” Xhindi said, shrugging.
“So like you. Be glad I’m here for Violetta and not your sinful soul.” She held out her hand to Violetta. “The Elder Mother has made a decision. She has asked me to bring her to you.”
Violetta slowly stood up and let herself be led away. Xhindi began to follow.
The Called turned around as she heard him moving. “No, Brother. This is a matter of Smoke and Fire. You may wait in her room if you’d like, but you cannot follow us.”
Xhindi took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, but nodded, and watched them walk out of the garden and enter another door that Violetta had not yet been through. Not sure of what to do, he went back to the bench. There, the daisy he had given Violetta sat abandoned.
Picking it up, he tucked it into his pocket and sat down.
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Lady Elaine’s carriage rolled up the driveway to the main entrance of Allynswood Manor, and one of her men came running to open the carriage door.
It was a large building of three floors, faced with white stone. A colonnade of white carved columns surrounded the front of the building with graceful arches between them. It was an impressive place, echoing with long centuries of power and elegance.
“Jessup,” Elaine said, as she stepped out of the carriage, “Let Edelkyn know we have a guest for lunch. And let Arriane know, too, in case she wants to join us.”
Jessup bowed respectfully. “Yes, my Lady,” he said, then turned to walk back into the house. Elaine watched him go, but made no move to go inside.
“It always amazes me how big your house is,” Gan said.
“That’s what happens when you have ancestors with grandiose ideas,” Elaine said, grabbing her friend’s arm. “Far bigger a house than someone with sense would build, but the Allyns who built it wanted to impress the noteworthies at court. Finally, he got bored of court intrigues and one day decided to go join an order of monastics on an island to the far west, turned the estate over to my grandfather, and dropped out of sight. Nobody’s heard from him in at least a century. But it is more than just the rooms we live in – offices and workshops and such.”
She began leading Gan down a path away from the front door. “But what I brought you out to see isn’t in the main house at all.”
“Oh?” Gan said. “What is it?”
“It’s on the other side of the gardens. Come on, I know the main house makes you nervous. I have to admit, even after growing up here, it sometimes makes me nervous, too, especially when I look over the maintenance budget.”
Gan chuckled at that as she let herself be led down a paved path that crossed a mix of flower and herb beds. Spring flowers like pansies edged the pathways, with lupines and snapdragons and petunias and others standing beyond. The path led to a splashing fountain. Three paths radiated from its base.
“I see why you have to have a staff of gardeners here,” Gan said, stopping to look at the fountain. “I remember when I was a girl and visiting here, how this fountain fascinated me. I couldn’t figure out how the water got here.”
“So that’s why you were reading the Magic of Water, back when we were just getting out of elementary levels. I always wondered about that,” Elaine said. “Come on. Where we are going is just beyond the orchards.”
They took the middle of the three pathways, crossing a small hedge that marked the end of the flower gardens. Here were the vegetable beds.
“Now this is the most important part of the gardens.” Elaine said, stretching out her arms as if to encompass the whole of the food gardens. “Here we raise the vegetables both for the big house and all the people who live at Allyswood village. My parents had let it run down with bad management, but since I took over, we raise enough to feed the village, the house and have some left over to sell at Goblin Market. Profits for that get split amongst the gardeners’ families, so they are more than happy to be here. I’m rather proud of it.”
“Sounds like a lovely idea. I see your time studying with the Greenfellows didn’t go to waste,” Gan said nodding as she looked around.
The area was filled with raised beds with young vegetables in them. Some of the beds were covered with fabric, some had structures build into them. Each was separated by a path that allowed for easy access by wheelbarrow. A number of people were out and about working in the beds, including Rob Woodway, who was constructing tripods for one of the beds.
“Getting the bean beds ready?” Elaine asked.
Rob turned around, and seeing who was speaking to him, he bowed slightly and tipped his cap. “Lady Elaine! Mistress Gan! I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come by this morning, Ma’am,” he said to Gan. “But Lady Elaine asked me to work here today…”
“With good reason, Rob,” Elaine said with a gentle smile for the young man. “That’s because I was bringing her here today for lunch. Come to the big house today after work. I have some pleasant news for you.”
Rob twisted his cap in his hands and looked a bit perplexed. “If you say so, Ma’am. If you say so. I’ll be there.”
Gan gave Rob a little encouraging nod, and let Elaine drag her into the orchards. The trees were just entering full bloom, the trees adorned with white to pink blossoms everywhere.
“So where are you taking me?” Gan asked. “The orchard is beautiful, but I’m sure that’s not what you brought me to see, the glories of your gardening efforts.”
“That’s true. I was thinking about how you were going to tutor Tam. I thought it would be better if we had Tam tutored out of the main house,” Elaine said, taking her friend’s arm once again. “He knows every nook and cranny, even better than I did at his age, and there’s so many distractions, with servants and workers, people who want to indulge him. And he’s getting rather good at taking advantage of it.”
“And we can’t have him come to my place.” Gan said, nodding. “The Pixies wouldn’t give him nor me a moment’s rest. Not that they would do it out of malice, but Pixies are what they are. Not a place for distraction-free learning. And he will need that, at least some of the time.”
“I can just imagine what that would look like,” Elaine said, laughing lightly at the image. “I’d have to drench him in Ixip, and I’m sure the Pixies would come to hate him because of that.”
“I’d rather not do that to Moxie,” Gan said, patting her friend’s hand. “Or any of them, for that matter.”
Elaine nodded. “That certainly wouldn’t be fair. And there’s a bit more - Tam’s a good child, but if he’s not really interested, it can be hard to keep his attention on what he ought to be doing,” she admitted. “With the last tutor, I had to have Edelkyn sit in the room during his lessons to make sure he did more than doodle during class time. He might not have feared his tutors, but she is a different story. Suddenly he began actually passing his tests after that.”
“Edelkyn, eh?” Gan chuckled at that. “I seem to remember you feeling rather intimidated by her yourself, when you were younger.”
“Oh, I was.” Elaine nodded. “Maybe I still am, at least a little. Edelkyn is a force in her own right.” They walked out of the orchard, where they reached another hedgerow, this one higher than the last. The pathway was closed by a tall, stout gate. “I used to cringe at the thought of her frown.”
Elaine unlocked the gate, and they stepped through. In front of them there was an open expanse of lawn, and set near the center of it, under the shelter of a stand of trees, was a modest-sized cottage, made of fieldstone and whitened wood panels, with a fine red tile roof.
“I was wondering what the best place to have you two do your lessons when I remembered about this place. This is one of our guest houses,” Elaine said. “It’s got a good sized main room that I always thought might be just perfect for a classroom.”
Gan looked at the grounds thoughtfully. “So close and yet isolated. And with a good bit of ground surrounding it.”
“It’s about halfway between the main house and Allynswood village. My grandfather built it that way because sometimes he let people he really didn’t want to socialize with, like his brother-in-law, stay here when they came to visit.”
“He sounds like he was a clever person, that grandfather of yours,” Gan said. She turned around in a circle. “It’s easy to pretend you’re rather alone here.”
“Exactly. I thought that would help you to keep Tam on track. And it would be a good place to work with Arriane, if she still wants you to train her. And, if you felt so inclined, maybe some of the Allynswood village children.”
Gan nodded. “I’ve been wondering about them.”
“There’s a school at Goblin Market run by the Alder Branches, but it’s a long walk for little legs.”
“I will give it careful thought,” Gan said, as she walked around the room. “Room enough for ten or fifteen little ones. Room for magic practice without disturbing anybody outside. Yes, this is very nice.”
“Good,” Elaine said. “Let’s go have lunch and plan when to start.”