The Key of Amatahns

  Chapter Twelve

  The elf jerked her out of the water with astonishing strength and proceeded to drag her toward a narrow back alleyway. No one came to aid Janir’s screams of distress. Struggling gained her nothing. The elf ignored her rebellious kicking and frantic punching.

  “What are you doing to that girl?” demanded a hefty troll, passing by. He had warts over most of his body and black hairs growing out his ears. Rotting teeth were falling out of his jawline, but at that moment he was the most gorgeous creature Janir could have seen.

  The elf snapped to attention. “Nothing inappropriate, I assure you.” He spoke with a refined, cold voice. If frozen silver cold speak, it would have sounded like him.

  “What then?”

  “He’s—” The elf clamped a hand over her mouth and the troll seemed not to notice.

  “The girl owes me money,” the elf explained.

  The troll grunted in understanding, made some remark about lazy borrowers, and shuffled off about his business.

  Having handled the inquiry, the elf whirled around and strode with confident, masterful steps toward their destination. They reached the alley and after the elf dragged her several paces into the narrow space, he raised her off the ground and slammed her into the earthen wall. Groaning, Janir tried to remain calm. There had to be a misunderstanding, there had to be.

  He held her firmly by her throat with a claw like grip and stared at her with a penetrating gaze. “How interesting,” he mused, “you must be at least fifteen, but you still have not learned how to create a veil in your mind.”

  “There must be some mistake here…” Janir hesitantly began, but he glared at her so hard she decided to hold her comments.

  Suddenly, she felt something inside her head—a hazy idea or image. With horror, she recognized the presence of the elf—he was in her mind! Panicking, she tried to get him out of her thoughts. Imagining a battering ram, Janir flung her consciousness at his presence with all the force she could muster.

  The elf let out a stifled hiss of pain, tightening his grasp on her neck. Janir sensed his mind withdraw from hers with the rapidity of one bitten by a viper in a box. Ramming her head into the wall, he muttered in his native tongue, regularly repeating one word that she did know in Elvish—“Stupid, stupid. Stupid of me.”

  Janir glanced from side to side, trying to find a way out.

  “Where is it?” he demanded.

  “Where is what?”

  “Do not jest with me, mortal!” the elf snapped, “Where is it?” he repeated. “I know you had it. I learned that much from you, in spite of you throwing me out of your head.”

  With a driven air, the elf groped through her pockets and felt her over perfunctorily.

  Janir kicked his shins. “Get your hands off me!” She struggled in vain.

  “Where is it?” the elf repeated after thoroughly frisking her body.

  “Let me go!” Janir shouted, kicking wildly.

  The elf leaned so close that she smelled nighttime. Even though she had never thought of a time of day having a scent before, she couldn’t think of how else to describe it. She would have found it appealing under any other circumstance.

  “Where is the Key?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know!” Janir shrieked, fighting to pry his fingers off her throat.

  “You will tell me,” the elf growled, tightening his grip even more.

  Someone smacked the elf on the back of the head with a shovel. He dropped Janir, drew one sword, and whirled around, holding the back of his head. It was the dwarf he had bumped into earlier, along with a good number of others, all of them carrying shovels, jeering at the elf.

  “Ye think that just because ye’ve got pointy ears and longer legs, ye can shove us around?”

  The elf said something haughty in Elvish, something Janir didn’t catch. It was likely something that enraged the dwarves, because all at once the one who appeared to be their leader angrily cried out.

  “Get him, lads!”

  Dwarves were masters in shovel combat, Janir quickly discovered. With a fierce battle cry, they expertly wrenched his sword away from him and set to taking out his legs. The elf was quickly brought to the ground by several well placed shovel strikes to the back of his knees and then the dwarves set upon him mercilessly, hitting and kicking him with their heavily built fists and stocky legs. Two of them started head butting him like miniature bulls. One grabbed the elf’s flailing hand and crunched his fingers between rows of stout teeth.

  Janir stood frozen for a moment. She needed to run, to get away from here, but which way should she—

  Seemingly from nowhere, a dark, lithe woman, appeared from the crowd and laid a hand on Janir’s arm. “Come with me, Janir,” the woman beckoned in a voice like wind in a tree, thick with a foreign accent that seemed somehow familiar.

  Surprised into obedience, Janir followed her back through the market. Just as a wave of the crowd swept between them and the elf, she spotted him snap to his feet with a shouted incantation as all the dwarves flew away from him. One hand went angrily to a cut on his temple, and the other snatched up his sword. Then he began searching the crowd for her.

  “How do you know me?” Janir wondered, stooping low to avoid a dead hanging animal by a vending stand.

  “What other Argetallam maiden would have been without karkaton and lost in the Vermilion Market?”

  “How did you know—?” Janir almost fled in alarm, expecting some sort of trick, but the memory of the elf drove her after the stranger. The woman didn’t strike her as threatening and at least this way she should be able to escape her pursuer.

  “In good time,” the woman said.

  The woman led Janir to a quieter street, far away from the busy part of the market. This was a residential area with flowers growing from the upper stories of the homes and potted plants in front. The woman guided Janir up the steps of a terracotta abode and ducked inside, rustling the wooden beads and ragged cloth flap that hung in place of a door.

  Inside the cozy cottage, herbs and flowers hung from the ceiling and lay in disorganized piles on the floor. A loom was set up near the small fireplace with fresh flax lying beside it. The furniture was fitting for the surroundings, roughly made and natural in appearance. Another low doorway led to the rest of the house, the kitchen and a bedroom. What caught Janir’s attention was the golden orb set upon a small round table in one corner.

  “You are a seeress.” It was not a question.

  “Who else keeps such an orb?” the woman replied. “My name is Zeerla. I am the one your brother is searching for.”

  “But how could you know that? I didn’t know that…you know about Lucan? You know about…?” Janir gulped. How much had this woman learned and how had she learned?

  “I see much.” Zeerla stepped to her small wooden table and laid her wispy fingers over the orb like a tired mother stroking her baby’s head. “So much.”

  “Then why are you still here?” Janir demanded. “My brother will not be good to you when he finds you.”

  “No,” Zeerla agreed, “he will not.”

  Janir waited several moments for a response. “Well?”

  Zeerla sighed. “Today will be a dark day, but this is the only course that has a chance of keeping what I love. All others are guaranteed to ruin.”

  “What—your powers? Lucan will not hesitate to take them if he has the chance!”

  “I have had visions of my death, Janir. I believe I will have my powers when I die. Not your brother nor any other Argetallam will take them from me now or ever.”

  “He could still kill you without claiming you!” Janir shouted impatiently.

  “No, I do not die by the hand of an Argetallam nor do I die here,” Zeerla sighed, casting a loving gaze about her small home. “These visions are oft a curse,” Zeerla softly murmured. “All of us learn that, including your mother.”

  “My mother?” Janir balked, feeling the acute sense of bitter
loss that still accompanied any reminder of her.

  “She is how I learned your name. Before she even saw your father she had a vision. In that vision she glimpsed a young woman, her unborn daughter, and showed me the girl’s face—your face.” Zeerla silently indicated Janir. “She was overjoyed. After years of waiting, she wanted a child so very badly.”

  Zeerla didn’t say it, but Janir could see in the woman’s face that Aryana had thought she would have her child with Armandius. Tears came to her eyes when she thought about it. Her mother had been in love with a man, had been that man’s wife. Yet Aryana’s only child was the offspring of her abductor. How could her mother have loved the spawn of a murderer?

  And Janir didn’t want to think about what must have happened for her to exist. She couldn’t believe her mother had gone to the Lord Argetallam of her own free will.

  “Why couldn’t I have been born Armandius’ daughter!” Janir cried, breaking a long space of silence.

  “You would not be yourself, if that had been,” Zeerla calmly replied. “You were born as you were meant to be.”

  “But I hate being an Argetallam,” Janir whimpered, shaking her head. “I never wanted this or anything that’s come with it.” She thought about her brother, the hatred that awaited her back in Brevia, the legacy of brutality and cruelty that was the Lord Argetallam’s.

  “You think I enjoy being a seeress?” Zeerla retorted. “Seeing people’s deaths, people I love, knowing all the painful and horrible things that are going to happen to myself and them before death…you think I relish that?”

  For a while Janir couldn’t find words. It made her seem childish and insignificant. “It can’t all be bad,” she hesitantly replied.

  “No, it is not. I do see joyful things, happy visions. Like everything, it is two sided, as is being an Invulnerable.” Zeerla calmly removed her hands from the orb and folded them in her lap. Every word and motion this woman made was calm.

  “I just…” Janir eased herself into the small chair opposite Zeerla across the table. It creaked slightly. “I don’t want to be this. Argetallams are the cruelest and most brutal people to live.” And I’m afraid I’ll become like them. She had killed, what if that was the beginning?

  “Take care when using superlatives to describe someone you do not know well,” Zeerla chided.

  “Don’t know them? I am one of them!”

  “Very well.” Zeerla dismissively gestured in the air. “We will assume being one gives you the knowledge. But it still does not make you an authority on all the other people in the world. And you must know everyone ever in existence to know who truly are the worst and best.”

  Zeerla waited a moment and went on when Janir didn’t reply. “Your power is not a good thing, child, but nor is it evil, it simply is. The sword is not evil, nor the arrow or the bow. They are whatever their wielder bids them be.”

  Janir had never thought of it that way.

  “Your power is whatever you choose for it.”

  Janir knotted her fingers into her filthy skirt, looking down at her knees. It was…a different perspective.

  “Do not flee.” A soothing tone crept into the seeress’ voice for the first time.

  “Flee from what?” Janir looked up from her fingers.

  “Yourself. Do not flee from yourself.” Zeerla laid a thin, long fingered hand on Janir’s arm.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Do not flee from who you are. You will never get away. Take it from someone who knows. It is impossible to escape.”

  Janir felt as if there was a great deal to consider. Armandius had never told her she was evil, but he had never denied what a wretched thing her people were. Velaskas—he was probably best left out of her train of thought and no one else besides Armandius’ steward knew. Everyone at Castle Caersynn that she could think of adored her or were at least kind to her. But none of them knew what she was.

  It was perhaps the first time someone had spoken to her so openly about her power. She would have to think more on it later.

  Clearing her throat, Janir changed the subject as she remembered more immediate problems. “Who was the elf in the market, do you know?”

  “That was Malkalar,” Zeerla said flatly.

  “I take it you know him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Realizing that Zeerla did not enjoy giving information freely, Janir reconstructed her query. “Who is the elf? Why is he chasing me?”

  “He is a very dangerous man. As to who he is, I am not to tell you. Ask your friend, Saoven.”

  A stab went through Janir’s chest at the thought of Saoven. She still held some hope that he would come for her, but it had been so very long now. Perhaps he had learned what she was and washed his hands of her. Perhaps something had happened to him—her chest tightened at that.

  Zeerla laid her hands on the orb again. “Malkalar is chasing you and he searched you for the same reason. You had something that he wants.”

  Janir stared blankly at Zeerla. The seeress had replied to all her questions honestly without giving any explanation whatsoever. “Is it so secret?”

  “Why be secretive, unless it is a secret?”

  She wanted to be angry at the woman’s distinctive lack of straight answers, but after her encouraging speech on Janir’s unusual struggle, it seemed ungrateful. Janir sat back in the wicker chair and stared at the other woman, trying to think of what to say.

  The seeress went back to stroking the orb, absorbed by its presence. Behind Janir, the jangling of wooden beads pierced her thoughts.

  A young mortal girl stooped into the house. She had the look of a foreigner, as did Zeerla—eyes like onyx and copper skin. Earth tone clothes hung raggedly from her slim shoulders and draped down to the ground. At first she wore a joyful smile, until her gaze fell on Janir. With a start, the foreign girl glanced sharply at Zeerla.

  “Argetallam!” she exclaimed in a heavily accented voice, reaching behind her with a swift motion. In less time than Janir could react, the other girl had a short stone dagger in her hand and looked ready to charge like any one of the fiercest warriors on earth.

  Not sure how to react, Janir tried to leap backwards, but forgot that she was still seated. The result was that she flipped the chair and hit her already sore head on the wall.

  “Peace, my child,” Zeerla placated, smoothly and swiftly rising to calm the girl. “Florete, I have warned you about jumping to conclusions from partial thought,” the seeress chided.

  Janir straightened awkwardly and watched the other girl’s very sharp stone blade. She could probably overpower the child if she had to, but she didn’t want to hurt the girl or get cut.

  “But she is an Argetallam,” Florete protested. The girl spoke clearly, carefully, never letting two words slur together. “I saw it…in your mind…”

  Florete was a reader? Janir was definitely afraid of hurting her.

  “And a friend,” Zeerla added.

  “The Argetallam is a friend?” Florete’s eyes narrowed at Janir, but she cautiously lowered the stone knife.

  “Yes, and the daughter of Aryana Caersynn,” Zeerla explained.

  Florete’s face showed she was still apprehensive. All the same, she offered a slight incline of her head, even if she remained quiet.

  Janir tried to look nonthreatening and racked her brains. She had heard that accent before, long, long ago. Both Florete and Zeerla spoke with it and so did someone else from Janir’s distant memory. Catching herself in time to return courtesy, Janir bowed to Florete.

  Florete slipped the stone knife back into its place. It was either meant for cutting herbs or something else benign or this market was one of the most dangerous places in the world. “Do you want me to leave, Mother?”

  Zeerla shook her head with what Janir thought was an edge of sadness, but she didn’t know the woman that well. “No, my dear, stay.”

  Florete entered the house as Zeerla bade, but she never took he
r eyes off their guest.

  “Mother?” Janir glanced between them, taking in the similarities.

  “I was a slave girl in Stlaven when I bore her,” Zeerla explained. “I was allowed to bring her with me once I discovered that she had the Gift.”

  Florete neatly settled herself in another chair near the small table. “I am an enchantress,” she said carefully, watching Janir with distrust.

  That explained the accent. Janir must have heard people in Adasha speak with the same inflection, though it did make Janir wonder why the girl had an Old Brevian name.

  “Enchantress? But then, how could you read a person’s thoughts?” Janir had heard of clairvoyants being able to peer into thought, but enchanters weren’t supposed to be able to do that without touching a person. She shuddered at the memory of Malkalar.

  “It is a hereditary trait occasionally passed onto the children of seers and seeresses,” Zeerla explained.

  “But I don’t have it,” Janir protested.

  “Being an Argetallam cancels out any gifts you might have received from the other parent.” Zeerla sounded tired.

  Florete watched Janir and the Argetallam felt her heart filling with dread. Even if Zeerla was meant to get through this with her powers intact, did that mean Florete would, too?

  “Florete, my child, would you see to the fire, please?” Zeerla asked in a very maternal tone.

  Janir immediately felt a pang in that sore place where her mother had once been. Florete rose with all Zeerla’s grace and stood before the fireplace. With exaggerated motions and clear words, she raised several logs into the air from beside the hearth and arranged them in a perfect pyramid. As Florete practiced her skill with great concentration, the young Argetallam’s mind had already moved to other things.

  “My brother is coming,” Janir whispered to Zeerla. “As is the elf from the market, I’m sure. They will be here any minute. We should go.”

  The seeress took on a very sad expression and stared mournfully toward young Florete. A little winded from the work of using magic, the girl sat cross legged in front of the fire, watching the leaping flames with a heart wrenching ignorance.

  Janir had an odd sense of protectiveness for the young girl and Zeerla. Florete might be suspicious of her, but these days Janir was sometimes suspicious of herself. The two of them were like living reflections of her mother, seen through textured glass. Inexplicably, Janir felt that they were like her mother in some way, crafted of the same material as Aryana. The idea of them meeting their fate at the hands of Lucan was unbearable.

  “Oh, child,” Zeerla sighed, shaking her head despondently. “They are already here.”