Ronith

Ronith lowered her binoculars and turned from the turret window to where Mol Morin stood, swirling away the image in his scrying bowl.

“I’ve called back the bee, my Lord. We’ll hear what they said shortly.”

“Good, very good, child.” The Alchemist giggled. He’d been doing that a lot lately, and she could not get used to the sound. When she’d first met the Alchemist, he had been so calm and in control. Now his irises seemed to glow the color of sapphires in his mahogany face. And they were wilder.

He was changing, like many things.

Ronith peered down at the terrain below. The goblins were still rounding up Elves that had escaped their first wave of attack. Half were imprisoned in cages and half were fed to the gardens. Her throat constricted when she saw her childhood friend Thelisa swallowed by a hungry cocoon that eventually fell still, throbbing gently. The imprisoned Elves in a nearby cage shook the bars and cried out. Ronith recognized the reddish-brown curls and stricken face of Sochee.

Overtaking the compound had been too easy. The Elves, thinking the Wizards were allies, let them in without question.

The tide of goblins came later.

The Elves fought bravely, but they’d had them on sheer numbers. The Elven Faire’s population had been dwindling, and Yelora had not called every Elf in the realm to the stronghold. Now many were dead, others imprisoned, and what horrors were happening inside those cocoons, Ronith did not know. She did not want to know.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. She did want to know. She should know if she was to be a part of it.

“My Lord, what happens next?”

Mol Morin hobbled over to her. “We shall see what insights your bee gives us before we send a message back to Queen Yelora.”

“I don’t mean that,” Ronith said, careful with her tone. It had gotten her in trouble too many times before with Yelora. “I mean what happens next with all of this?” She motioned to the window, to everything beyond.

He harrumphed as he made his way to a low, crescent-shaped couch in the center of what had clearly been a music room during the Elves’ occupation. Ronith recognized the typical architecture and decor—a rectangular room constructed in a certain ratio, the use of marble and glass for enhanced acoustics.

“Come, let’s have a seat and we’ll talk.” Mol Morin lowered himself stiffly onto the couch. He seemed to be in pain all of the time, though he did not complain of it.

Ronith did not enjoy being this close to the Alchemist of late, but she joined him anyway, sitting at the far end of the single couch.

“Why did you choose to become my Blood Mage?” Mol Morin asked, waving over a Goblin with a tea service perched on its arm.

Ronith watched as the beast poured steaming liquid into a cup and handed it to him. “I had no place with the Elves. You offered me a place here.”

“So you just got lucky.” Mol Morin sent the Goblin in Ronith’s direction. “A more strategic person would have joined the Wizards because they could see we are the strongest of the factions, the most powerful, the most likely to prevail in a war.”

Ronith accepted a warm cup from the goblin’s gnarled claw and sipped it. It tasted like piss and grass. She set it aside and smiled at her mentor. “A more noble person would join a faction because they believe in what they represent.”

“There is no nobility in war!” the Alchemist spat. “Listen to me, Blood Mage, and listen well. I lived through the Rift War. I fought in many battles, but the one I’ll never forget was on the banks of the Cold Sea, not very far from here. The Dwarves pushed us back, and their forces were formidable even without the golems they’ve managed to resurrect or their new magic-dampening technology.

“I was captured, along with many other young Wizards. We were taken to a dungeon deep within the Dwarf mines, so deep I could hear the bowels of Terris churning as I curled up on the cold rock floor of my cell each night. Not that I knew when night was. There was no sunlight. There was no light of any kind. The only kindness they did me was to give me a small gem—a ruby—to pray with.

“I prayed to escape. I prayed for help to come. Eventually I prayed for them to leave me to rot in my cell. But not even that prayer was answered. The Dwarves were engineers and scientists and as such were always looking for subjects upon which to test their various new developments. So that is what we prisoners became—test subjects. Rats to be poked and prodded and hooked up to machines or dosed with so-called medicines. Our wrists were always kept locked behind our backs so that we could not use our magic. And, if they didn’t want to hear us screaming, they shoved a sock filled with dirt into our mouths to silence us. That way, quiet and helpless, we could only lie there and endure what was being done to us.”

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The horror of his words clawed at Ronith. “I—I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. You weren’t born yet. And the Elves came late to the conflict, though they were instrumental in ending it. Since then, reparations have been made, and most of the people who lived through that great, dark time have long since passed out of the memory of those who remain. So who is left to remember, I ask you? Who?”

“I don’t kn—”

“I am.” The Alchemist pressed his lips together and shook his head at his china cup, as if it were all the tea’s fault. “It will happen again,” he muttered. “All of it. But not to me. Never again to me.”

He set his empty cup aside on the couch, but it toppled to the floor as he stood, his violet gaze ruinous. “This time I will not be put in a prison. This time I have chosen the winning team, Blood Mage, and fortunately for you, I have invited you onto it with me! This”—he spread his arms at the room, the window, the Goblins muttering amongst themselves in the corners—“was always going to happen. It was preordained. Fated. The question was never, How can we stop it? But rather How can we make sure we don’t become a victim of it? That is what I have done for you! What I would do for any of the children that I love!”

Love. Ronith stiffened at the word. She’d never understood it.

Her thoughts went back to Yelora and the Summoner hovering in the air, bound together like flowers in a bouquet. The memory of Yelora leaning in to kiss him sent a spike of rage through her gut.

Why did Yelora get everything, even when she didn’t deserve it? Even when she treated people like swill thrown to the pigs? She’d stolen Gorlo, but now where was he? She’d probably let him get eaten by a bear. She was so selfish. Terris was coming apart and where was Yelora? Embarrassing herself (and everyone else who happened to be spying on her) by lusting after the Summoner. Why wasn’t she here with her people? It just proved more and more that Yelora was not fit to be Queen. That Fara had made a terrible mistake.

But Ronith had chosen wisely. She’d bet on the winning horse. The Alchemist was old and wise and powerful. If he believed this was a New World Order, then Ronith had been right to take her place at his side to rule it.

Just then, the bee zipped through the window.

“Ah, it’s back!” The Alchemist giggled again and Ronith stifled a shudder. “Let’s have a listen, shall we?”

“Tell me your secrets,” she said to the bee as it hovered in front of her, and the bee played back Yelora and Kashur’s conversation. Ronith’s stomach pitched like a boat at the mention of Gorlo. “He’s alive!” She jumped up and readied her staff. “I’m going after him.”

The Alchemist shhed her and waved a hand for her to sit back down. “Let’s hear the rest of it first. A hasty plan is a foolish one!”

“I’m not making a plan, I’m just going to get Gorlo.”

She stomped toward the exit, but something stopped her, physically. All her muscles locked into place.

“A moment, Blood Mage,” the Alchemist wheedled. “I insist.”

She stopped fighting the spell, and he let her loose. With gritted teeth and clenched fists, she forced herself to tolerate Kashur’s gushing monologue. But once it came to the kiss, she’d heard enough.

“I’m leaving.”

“Not so fast.” Mol Morin stopped her again, forcibly.

“This is getting tiresome,” she hissed.

“They’re plotting against us, are they?” Mol Morin muttered to himself as he lifted a hand and touched the pads of his fingers together as if playing an instrument. A messenger hawk soared through the window, landing obediently on his arm.

“We knew she was no longer our ally,” Ronith said. “We received the message meant for Sochee. The one warning her not to let us in.”

Mol Morin called a Goblin over and whispered to it. Nodding once, it snatched the bee out of the air and scampered from the room.

Mol Morin ran his hands along the hawk’s back, smoothing its glistening, brown-and-white feathers. It opened and closed its beak in silent protest. Ronith, too, felt like she was being preened under Mol Morin’s long, crooked fingers.

“I don’t think our little Elf Queen knows that we’ve beaten her home to the hive. If she did, I doubt she’d be frolicking in my Summoner’s arms like that.” That manic giggle. “Perhaps it’s time she found out.”

“How will she find out?”

“The bee will tell her.”

“You’re going to record a message for her using the bee?”

“Something like that.” Mol Morin chuckled. “Meanwhile, go and fetch your little monster, if you must. I know you have an unhealthy attachment to it. Here, take some crystals.”

He tossed a bag at her, and Ronith caught it without looking as she hurried from the room. Rounding a corner, she dropped the bag of crystals out an open portico, smiling smugly to herself when a Goblin yelp reached her ears a moment later.

She would never use the crystals. She saw what they did, what they were doing to Mol Morin, what they were doing to Terris. She might help rule this new world, but she wasn’t going to let it devour her.

Outside she stuck to the safe paths on her way to the stables, looking straight ahead so she didn’t have to see the suffering of her people—or what used to be her people. She wished there was a way she could avoid hearing them crying her name in desperation. Grabbing the first horse, she launched herself onto its back and kicked it into a run, scattering Goblins as she did.

They said Gorlo’d been spotted by the river, somewhere between here and where Yelora and Kashur had appeared in the sky.

If he was anywhere near there still, Ronith would find him.