Erin felt her jaw drop. “He’s what?”
“The Emperor of Silmar,” Kirchel repeated, smiling at her reaction. “The head of the imperial government.”
“You mean he’s in charge of a whole empire?”
"Well, yes and no. 'Empire' is the closest word we have for it in English, but it functions a little differently than most empires in the human world. The Silmarith Empire is made up of eleven countries, and each of them functions, to some extent, independently of the others. They all have their own laws and systems of government. The purpose of the imperial government is to tie all the countries together as a cooperative group and to maintain peace between them. There are some basic laws that it enforces for all the countries within the Empire, but the imperial government's main job is taking care of relations between Silmarith countries and those between Silmar and foreign countries. So the emperor is half leader and half diplomat. It’s kind of a complicated system, but it seems to work quite well. The Empire has had centuries of overall peace and prosperity.”
“Not counting Mataith attacks in Lomáril and Aner....”
Erin and Kirchel both turned their heads at the sound of Arturyn's voice. He had woken up and was gingerly pushing himself into a sitting position. His torn and bloodstained clothing was gone, and he was wearing a loose robe that Erin guessed had come out of his magic bag. Half of his face, including his left eye, was covered in white bandages. He certainly didn't look much like an emperor at the moment, but Erin was willing to take Kirchel's word for it.
“How do you feel?” Kirchel asked him, looking concerned.
“Much better than last night, though still a little stiff and sore,” Arturyn replied, moving his arms and legs experimentally.
“You’ll do something about the Mataiths, won’t you?” Erin asked, while Kirchel moved over to Arturyn’s side and started removing some of the bandages on his arms to inspect his cuts. “I mean, won’t they keep attacking people?”
What she could see of Arturyn’s face looked grim. “Yes, they will. You saw for yourself how much they enjoy the sight of human blood….” He sighed. “I’ve been trying for years to find a way to keep them permanently out of Silmar. It's just...complicated. Politics is always complicated.... But believe me, I'm definitely planning to bring the issue up again the next time the Imperial Council meets. And that’s….” He hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t even know what day it is. For all I know, I might have missed it already.”
“You haven’t,” Kirchel said reassuringly, now starting to pull the bandages off his face. “Though you will if we don’t get you home in good time. It’s the twenty-eighth day of Gloviel.”
“You mean I only have one day?” Arturyn looked at her in dismay. “I don’t suppose you have any brilliant ideas on how I can possibly get there in that time? We must be miles away from the nearest city or portal, and neither Erin nor I are going to be able to walk very far. And on top of that, there's a good chance that there's still a group of Mataiths out there.”
“Yes, I have an idea,” Kirchel told him calmly. “But right now, I’m more worried about your eye. I’m going to take the bandage off, and I want you to tell me how much you can see with it.”
She pulled off the little pad of white cloth that, like the rest of the bandages, was somehow staying on without any visible adhesive. Arturyn’s eye was closed underneath it, but he opened it cautiously and looked around the room. After a moment, he closed his right eye, presumably to concentrate on what he was seeing with the left one. The eye seemed to be in one piece, but it looked clouded and out of focus.
“I can see some color and movement,” Arturyn said, squinting at the fire. “But it’s all blurry—I can't make out any details. And my eye still hurts when I move it.”
Kirchel nodded. “That’s about what I expected. Let me put some more enolin on it and cover it up again for a while. That will keep it from hurting and might help your vision clear up a little.”
She put several drops of clear liquid into his eye and replaced the bandage. Then she started inspecting Erin’s wounds while Arturyn dug through his bag to find them some breakfast. Erin saw that her cuts and bruises were completely healed now, although the skin where they had been was now tinted green, just like the place where Arturyn’s powder had healed her shoulder.
“It won’t stay that color forever, will it?” she asked Kirchel anxiously.
Kirchel smiled. “No, it will fade away in a few days. The green is where the tylith is holding your skin together. But it’s gradually absorbed into the skin, where it quickens the growth of new cells. So by the time it’s gone, your skin will have grown back to fill in the gap.”
Erin raised her eyebrows. “That’s good stuff.”
“Yes, it is. It also prevents scar tissue from forming, so your skin will be completely normal-looking…once it stops being green, that is.”
“Too bad we didn’t have some of that after the mirror...” Erin said with a sigh, looking at her scarred hands. “Don’t you have anything that will get rid of scars?”
Kirchel started packing her things away in her bag. "It's possible to remove scars, but it's quite a difficult process that needs to be done by a proper healer. I was planning to talk to you about the possibility of magically healing your leg and the scars on your arms eventually. But I knew that telling you about magic and about this world would come as quite a shock. So I was trying to take it slowly and get to know you a little better first." She made a face. "Though I guess that didn't work out at all how I'd planned...."
Arturyn had taken out three small loaves of bread. He handed one each to Erin and Kirchel, along with cups of steaming brown liquid. The bread looked similar to the loaves they'd eaten the day before, but it turned out to have a sweet, fruity taste to it, sort of like an orange roll.
Erin took a tentative sip of the brown liquid and raised her eyebrows in surprise at the familiar taste. "They have hot chocolate here?"
Arturyn laughed. “Those of us who are lucky enough to have been exposed to human cuisine do.”
When they had finished eating, Kirchel stood up and crossed over to the mouth of the cave. “I’ll take a look around outside. If there are still Mataiths around, we ought to know how many and where they are before we set out.”
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
“What if they see you?” Erin asked nervously.
“I’ll be careful,” Kirchel said, giving her a reassuring smile.
She waded out through the partially flooded cave entrance and disappeared around the rock wall. Erin and Arturyn watched her go and then started gathering up the blankets and mats.
“So, Kirchel must be the cousin you told me about—the one you’re staying with,” Arturyn said, rolling one of the mats up into a tight bundle.
Erin nodded. “She’s my mother’s first cousin,” she explained.
“And was it your mother’s family she lived with after her father died?”
“That’s right.”
Arturyn looked up from the blanket he was folding to regard her thoughtfully for a moment. “So, this world has another Anaurian to look forward to, then. That's a surprise, since the last emergence from that clan was only two generations ago.”
“Huh?" Erin blinked. "What’s an Anaurian?”
“You,” Arturyn said with a small smile. “If you’re Kirchel’s cousin, that means you belong to the Anaurian clan. A very interesting clan, that one. It's quite famous here in Silmar. But it’s an intermittent line. In the past, it’s only had an emergence—meaning that it’s produced someone with blood magic—every seven or eight generations. The last one was Kirchel’s father.”
Erin frowned, trying to digest all this new information. “But what about Kirchel? She can use magic, right?”
“Yes, but it’s not quite the same situation. Kirchel inherited her magic from her parents. Her father, on the other hand, wasn’t a descendant of mages but was still born with magical abilities. That's what we call an ‘emerged mage.' They’re not common, and it’s especially rare for a family line to keep producing them intermittently like yours does. Only a few intermittent human clans have ever existed. And no one's really sure why it happens.”
Arturyn finished stuffing the last blanket back into his bag. Then he looked down at his robe. Erin was about to ask if he wanted her to look away while he changed into different clothes, but before she could, he made a sweeping motion with his hand, and the robe seemed to melt. It reformed a second later as a shirt and pants.
Erin stared at Arturyn’s newly formed shirt. “I’ve got to learn how to do that....”
Arturyn chuckled. “All in good time. Magic isn’t as easy as it looks. It takes a lot of study and practice. It certainly is useful, though.”
Just then there was a splashing noise from the cave entrance, and they turned to see Kirchel coming back. She looked cheerful.
“No need to worry about Mataiths,” she said as she stepped out of the water. “Not many of them survived the fight with the sethien, and those that did headed west, back toward their homeland.”
“How do you know that?” Erin asked, puzzled.
“A little bird told me,” Kirchel said with a wink. “Well...actually, it wasn't that little. Large birds can usually fly higher and scout better than the small ones can.” She turned to Arturyn. “Do you think you feel well enough to travel?”
“Well, it looks like I can walk,” he said with a slight frown. “But I don’t know how far or how fast. Do you know how far we are from the portal?”
“More than twenty miles, I’d guess. The Mataiths travel quickly."
Erin and Arturyn both grimaced.
Kirchel chuckled. "You two don't need to make faces like that. Who said we had to walk the whole way?" She gave them a mischievous smile. “Come on. Let’s get going.”
She extinguished the fire with a flick of her hand and then led the way out of the cave. Erin and Arturyn exchanged puzzled looks before they stepped into the chilly lake water and followed her.
They retraced their route from the night before, wading through the shallow water on the edge of the lake. The water was still cold, but at least now the sun was shining, so Erin could see where she was walking without needing anyone to hold onto her. She was also in much less pain and shock after Kirchel’s doctoring and a good night’s sleep. She suspected that something in the black liquid Kirchel had given her had kept her from having any nightmares about the Mataiths, though Wraith was probably going to have to share his space in her dreams with them and the sethien from now on....
The trip along the lake edge was much quicker in the daylight, and in a few minutes they were stepping out of the water onto the sandy shore. Arturyn dried them all off this time. Then he turned to Kirchel.
“All right, what now? What little trick do you have hidden up your sleeve?”
“I’ll show you,” Kirchel said simply.
She took a few steps away from them and stood with her back to the lake. She was still for a moment, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in concentration. Then she stretched out her hands, and a mass of purple fire shot out from her fingers and settled onto the ground in front of her.
She started moving her hands, and the fire reacted, growing and changing shape as though she were sculpting it like clay. A moment later, it was the size and shape of a horse. Kirchel put her hands flat together, fingers pointing at the fire horse. Then she abruptly pulled them apart, and it split into two identical horses. They stood perfectly still until she lowered her hands. Then they seemed to come to life, tossing their heads and pawing at the ground. Their hooves left no marks on the sand beneath them.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Arturyn asked, reaching out to touch the nose of the nearest fire creature. “Making soris is advanced stuff.”
“Legan taught me,” Kirchel said with a smile. She looked drained but pleased with her work. “I saw him make one for a class once, and I begged him to show me how to do it. It took me months of practice before I could make a stable one.” She walked over to stand next to one of the soris and beckoned for Erin to follow her. “Come on. They’ll only last a few hours. We’d better get moving.”
Erin realized that her mouth was hanging open and closed it quickly. But she couldn’t stop staring at the soris. One of them stared back at her with translucent white eyes. Unnerved by its unfaltering gaze, Erin blinked and looked away. Then she remembered that Kirchel was waiting for her and quickly went over to stand beside her.
“You and I will take one sori,” Kirchel said. “And Arturyn can take the other.”
She gestured at the sori, and it knelt on the ground so that they could climb on. Despite being made of fire, it was only slightly warm to the touch.
“Too bad Elizabeth isn’t here,” Erin said when they were both astride the sori, Kirchel in front and Erin holding on behind her. “Riding a purple fire pony would be her dream come true.”
Kirchel laughed. “Well, maybe we can arrange it sometime. These are really paskjys, though. They're very similar to horses, but how they run is a little smoother and faster.”
She nudged their sori, and it rose gracefully to its feet. Arturyn was already settled on his. He pulled out his map and looked at it for a moment, then squinted up at the sun with his one good eye.
“It looks like the river that runs into this lake is the same one that went past Celadrier,” he said, checking the map again. “We can probably just follow it for a few miles. But it curves off to the east further on, so we may save time by going straight north at that point. Then we should meet up with the river again later and can follow it most of the rest of the way.”
Kirchel nodded. “I think that’s more or less the route the Mataiths took bringing you here, though I was concentrating more on following their trail than I was on geography. Well, keep an eye on the map, will you? Let me know when you think we need to part company with the river.”
She turned their sori around and prodded it into motion. Erin held tightly onto Kirchel’s shoulders, not wanting to be thrown off. But the sori transitioned smoothly from a walk into a gentle canter. The breeze it generated tugged at Erin’s hair and made her eyes water a bit, but otherwise the ride was surprisingly comfortable.