As the dragon turned to leave, Rosalea watched her wrists and ankles. This time, she caught it clearly, silver manacles became visible for just a moment. She wondered again how to make the spell work, and how far away he might have to be to use it. Once she could not see him any more and could not feel a slight presence and pressure in her mind, she breathed out slowly and relaxed.
She felt a little confused. He will really teach me magic? It had almost felt good to share with him what she knew, and to see that he was a little pleased with her abilities, even in areas where she fell a little short. And I can really just wander around? She sipped the last of her tea.
It felt a little like being back home, and for a moment, she wondered if she missed Ulric. She shook her head no to her own internal question. No, I will never miss him. Just thinking of him made her head and body ache. She set her teacup and plate on top of the dragon’s giant earthenware cup and plate.
It was a little like home. The same woman who had brought the refreshments came and got the dirty dishware; which would have happened for her back home. There was a lot more greenery here, and she could see no animals. There were no castle walls to keep anyone out. The size of the estate might be too big and who would dare bother a dragon? The castle was gray-white, and in some spots in the right light, she could see quartz glinting in the sunlight. The more she looked around herself, the more she realized that it was nothing like the boxed-in castle of home… except that the structure felt similar in some ways.
She made her way from the open space by the duck pond and toward more of the garden. The manacles glittered into view when she began to move into the orchard. She tested them, but they held as firm as if a real chain had gone taut and to stop her from advancing. What would be in the orchard that I cannot see? She turned toward a hedge wall and passed through a wrought-iron arch.
Even though the weather was cold and things were frosting, there were still plenty of flowers in bloom. The area felt a bit warmer, but she could feel a lot of magic in the area. It was a little maze-like within the hedge walls; there were thick bushes and clusters of flowers around. She wandered toward a pink rose bush. I have not seen a rose bush since I left the Ieshans. She reached out, gently running her fingers against the edges of the petals, feeling the softness against her fingertips.
She bent forward and took a deep breath of the heady smell from so many flowers in one spot, and found herself looking eye to eye with someone that seemed to be in the bush.
She squeaked and jumped back. He laughed and hopped out of the bush, the branches and leaves bending to let him out, and then resuming their original position. “Scared ya!”
He was just a little younger than she was and looked a bit like she did. Awkward in his fine clothes. He was thin, stood taller than she, had ruffled-looking brown hair, dark skin, and an array of scars on his hands and face. She noted three black Xs on the back of his right hand. He saw her looking. “That’s right, I’sa convicted fella, three times for pilferin’.” He watched her suspiciously, waiting to see what she would do.
She knew how people reacted to her. They grabbed at their sides to check for the money pouches and valuables. She kept her hands by her sides and looked him in the eyes. He seemed to be a little surprised. “I’ve been follering you for about fifteen minutes,” he said with raised brows and a bit of challenge in his tone.
She shrugged. “If you are trying to get me worried you could have stolen something from me, then keep trying. I have nothing on me that is actually mine.”
He stared at her a moment and then burst into laughter. He extended his hand to her. “Name’s Briar. Used to be a different one, then I came here.”
Rosalea glanced at his hand as he held it out to her. The brand on his right palm was somewhat similar to her own. It was circular, contained a pair of mountains with sun between them and writing on the top and bottom. There was only a leaf on one mountain though. Plant mage? She took his hand. “I am Rosalea.”
“Rose-a-lee,” he repeated. “So, he names you too?”
“The dragon? No. I name myself,” she said. “Er… my family, I mean.” That is not actually true: my mother called me Nadia.
He laughed at her again. She smiled despite herself. “Well, roses and briars do go together, you know,” he said with his best overly charming smile.
Rosalea shook her head and laughed. She felt a little heat and color coming to her cheeks as she was charmed despite the cheesiness of it all. You are really easy to like, she thought.
“So, you talks like him,” Briar said. “Where did you come from before? I come from Myraduil, but he got me on me way to the mines, passin’ through a place called River’s End.” Rosalea wondered how many cities Kaylar had some control over. Suddenly he leaned closer to her, so that their noses were almost touching. Rosalea blinked as he broke into a broad grin. “Say! You’s a changer!” Rosalea backed up, to preserve her space and to see what he would do. He laughed. “Now yer watchin’ me, like I was watchin’ you when I told you I was a thief.” He tilted his head, grinned, “Hah! You don’t look like a man-eating demon!”
Rosalea laughed. He was so mock serious as he said it, she couldn’t resist teasing him back a little. “I hear boys like you taste bad,” she teased.
He gave her a startled look and then laughed. “That is good for me then.” Rosalea smiled. It felt good to see him openly acknowledge her and not be impressed by it. She hoped that he felt the same warmth that she had not worried he was a thief. “So, you likes the roses?”
Rosalea nodded. “I like roses very much.”
“Darn, you make me feel like I talk horrible,” he said with a teasing grin. “But Master Kaylar is learning me better.”
Rosalea wondered if he just made a pastime to find things humans didn’t know and to teach it to them. She shrugged. “I understand you. That’s what matters, right?”
“So, there’s two types changer, which kind are you?”
Rosalea thought about lying or finding a way to not answer, but Kaylar already knew, and she felt it would be a matter of time before everyone else caught on. “I am a little of both.”
“That’s weird. Aren’t they supposed to be warring?”
“They are… I am just sort of unusual that way.”
“Hmm. Then, I guess I’m lucky to meet you!”
Rosalea grinned. “I am glad that you are here also.” She began walking, and he followed along. He seemed intent to get distracted by the plants. After a few more moments, he got called away by an older man who seemed irate to see him with Rosalea. Briar gave him a toothy grin and shrugged as the man berated him for shirking on trimming the apple trees. Well, apple trees takes him out of my range of walking, Rosalea thought as he wandered away. She hoped she would see the boy again.
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She returned to the gazebo after wandering around everything thoroughly. She did not want to go inside, but she was not sure what else to do with herself while she was outside. With my magic open to me, I wonder if I can see the spell. She went into her meditative state to reach her inner pool. She saw no sign of the dragon anywhere, so she finally felt safe and calm enough to take a serious look.
Meditating always brought her to her “center,” which felt like the area near her heart and lungs. It made some sense, her beating heart told her that she was alive and sometimes what she felt. Since Kaylar had asked her about it earlier, when someone used mind control, the Ieshan Death Knife, to kill someone else, it was by mentally severing their connection to their internal magic pool. All living creatures had a little magic, not all of them had enough to use magic.
So, focusing on her limbs was hard. But I managed to do it with Rhainnon when I healed her. She was used to focusing on her physical body and extremities to leave the deep meditative state that connected her to her internal magic flow. She fell out of her meditative state several times as she tried to trace the spell that she had been seeing on her wrists and legs.
After many tries, she finally could see the manacles, bright red, over her body. Mind control, she recognized, getting all cold. She lost all her focus so badly that she nearly lost track of her inner world again. She kept staring. Is this the same spell that he put on me in Mire? Or is it a new one? In Mire, he had put the spell on her without her being able to do anything about it.
A little frustration pressed around her heart as she wondered how far Mire was away. He could obviously maintain multiples of the spell over a wide variety of people. Worse, he can manipulate it without me really feeling it. If I was not able to see it, I do not think I would even know it was happening until I hit the boundaries.
For Rosalea, unless she could actively see, hear, or magically feel the presence she was trying to manipulate with any of her magics, she would lose her grip at some point. Even if she did not get too far away to maintain a spell, it would certainly fade when she was asleep. Not for the dragon though. She pressed experimentally with her mind magic on the red manacle, but it did not budge. She was afraid of doing too much since she did not want to summon the dragon to her.
She left her inner world. When Ulric modified my memories, that stayed with me. I might still be missing things, but I would never know. It is why I had to get away from them. She reclined back against the bench of the gazebo, a sinking feeling in her stomach. So, the mind magic works in three ways that I know of from Ulric. It lets you hear thoughts or animal speech. It can modify memories or erase them, and really strong mages can make fake ones, but they can wear off. Then, you can compel someone to take an action, which takes the most energy of all, and Ulric said it required constant pressure and will from the caster on the subject. She breathed out, her good mood entirely dissipating.
This means the dragon is more than a master user at it, I think. He cannot possibly be constantly maintaining all these spells, and only memory spells do not require constant focus and will. But, changing where I can go does not feel like a function of memory, but a function of force. She sat still, taking the whole idea in.
So a dragon has enough magic to rewrite … anything he wants. He can make me not go where he does not want me to go and my own mind and body will stop me. He does not have to maintain it, so it is permanent like a memory spell. She closed her eyes. He could compel me to do anything, walk off a cliff, and I either would not even fight the manacles because he could make me think it was my idea, or he could just have the manacles make my body do it. She put her head in her hands. What had she gotten herself into? The dragon could rewrite her whole past if he wanted. He could make her do anything, be anything, and she would never know that the real her was erased or rearranged.
The whole idea of what she had gotten herself into made her begin to cry, there by herself, in the gazebo. No wonder Rhainnon does not miss her parents.
She could not make herself go inside. It got darker and colder. Someone brought her a cloak, but no one made her go in.
***
“She has not come in again?” Kaylar asked Oralee with some surprise. He had not given her that extensive of an area to wander in.
“She has not had dinner either. I did not like to try and force her since it seems we are trying to give her some space.”
“Thank you. I will go check on her.”
She was not hiding; she was sitting by the gazebo. A duck was sitting in her lap, and she was covering her clothes in grass stains. That seemed right for a shapeshifter.
He watched her get visibly stiffer as soon as she saw him, so he approached calmly and slowly. She inclined her head to him as he got close, but she was stiff.
“It is too cold to spend the night out here, and I want you to come in and eat dinner. You’re still recovering and something like this is likely to set you back.”
She looked down, but she was frozen, locked up again, hostile toward him.
“What is the matter with you?” He waited, to see if she would be upfront with him even a little. However, she remained frozen, unwilling to answer or move or hardly even breathe. Her tension got to the animals sitting near her, and they began to move restlessly. She did not do anything to comfort them because he was there. Now what? He thought, repressing a sigh. Things were going so well. “So,” he said mildly, as gently as he could, “whatever it is, you feel that you cannot tell me.”
She closed her eyes. He reads me like a book— she broke the thought off with half a curse.
He smiled. “With that I know I was correct.” She shrunk away a little. He was surprised by the intensity of her emotions in response to him acknowledging something that actually told him very little. “Just this morning, I just got you to relax a little. What is different about now?”
I hate that you read my mind, she thought slowly. She trembled. She tried to make herself speak, but eventually just ended up shaking her head no at him.
Kaylar took a deep breath in and then breathed slowly out. Rhainnon said that she liked to be independent, but I am surprised about how much that means she also wants the ability to keep thoughts to herself. Really, I think this can mean only one thing, that she has some secret that she is quite desperate to keep safe. I cannot imagine what that could be. She seems so adamant all the time, is it something so serious she would be willing to antagonize someone she thinks is a threat over it? So, let us bring it out into the open. “Eventually, whatever secrets you are trying to keep will become known to me,” he said mildly.
What secrets? was her unwilling and startled thought. She looked up at him and flushed. He was surprised. He would have thought that whatever it was she was hiding was just on the edge of her consciousness, something she would have been relieved to pass over. Yet, she seemed here not to know quite what he meant. She looked down, and he felt guilt surging through her. So, she did have secrets, but that was not the reason why she did not want him reading her mind.
Kaylar mused, watching the frozen uncooperative multi-racial odd little changer for a moment. He decided to take another guess at the situation. “I can hear your thoughts, but I am not going to punish you for them. Believe it or not, people are negative about me from time to time in their heads, and I understand that there is a difference between what you think and what you would say or what you would do.” He watched her starting to tremble, but he could also tell that it was not really the root of the issue. “I know that I control where you go and can disrupt your magic access, but I am not going to… compel you or take things from you with my magic.”
Her eyes were huge as she slowly looked up at him. Got you, he thought, stopping himself from smiling as he stumbled onto this bump. “It would have been convenient for me to… adjust you, but while I am good at the things I have done so far, my skills do not extend to the things you are afraid of. I can view your memories, but I cannot alter them like an Ieshan. If I could compel people to be different, Mire would have been a different experience for you in several ways. I am not an Ieshan; I am a dragon with a little life magic and a lot of essa magic to make it stick.”
She looked uncertain, and Kaylar decided to count that as a win. “Come along inside. As your studies advance, I will show you how I do what I do, and then perhaps it will not quite be so frightening to you.” He leaned in, shooing away the duck and the several other small creatures that had cuddled up to her sides.
“How… would I know if any of this is true?” she asked, her voice small from how tense she was having him in his proximity.
He scooped her up with his magic, which elicited a little squeak. He perched her atop his shoulders, which got a similar reaction as it had the first time, but this time, she did not resist as much wrapping her arms around his neck to hold herself steady. “That is the tough thing. You cannot know until you learn. I think you could perhaps be a little logical. We both know you are capable of being quite stubborn, if I could change that about you, do you think I would hesitate?”
She huffed, and he could hear she was not persuaded.
He smiled as he made his way inside. “In any case, my evening is free. I think we will have some dinner with friends, and I’ll have Oralee and Rhainnon teach you some games, and maybe for a second you can forget about being a paranoid, wild thing.”
She huffed again. I am not wild. I know all kinds of games and manners.
Kaylar smiled, glancing back at her over his shoulder to acknowledge her thought protest, and he even felt a little warm when she turned and hid her face from his sight against his neck.