Wit''ch Gate (v5)

  The swirling cloud of shadows coalesced on itself, a form taking shape. Even with the glare, Tol’chuk’s eyes grew wide at the sight. Soon the image of an og’re, sculpted of shadows, grew before him. Hunched, bent-backed, it knuckled on an arm the size of a tree trunk, a bristle of spiny fur trailing down its bare back. Large eyes, swirls of dark clouds, stared back at Tol’chuk. It could have been a dark mirror image of himself—and in some ways it was.

  He stepped forward, tears blurring the miracle. “Father?”

  The shadowy figure still did not move, but a crinkle of amusement seemed to mark its face. Eyes traveled over Tol’chuk’s upright form. “He-who-walks-like-a-man.”

  Tol’chuk glanced down at his posture, then bent to knuckle on his clawed fist.

  “No,” the figure said, its voice sounding both like a whisper in his ear and a call from far away. It spoke in the native og’re tongue. “Don’t. The Triad named you truly.”

  “But, Father—?”

  A shake of shadowy head. “I don’t have much time. I must speak quickly.”

  “But the Heart? It glows again!”

  “Only for the moment.” The dark og’re raised his eyes toward his son. “I am the last of the spirits in the stone. It is our blood ties that have kept me from the Bane for this long. But as the sun sets, I will be gone.”

  “No!”

  An angry grumble flowed. “Stones fall from heights, and water runs downhill. Even an og’re cannot fight these things. And you are an og’re, Son. Accept my fate as I do.”

  “But—?”

  “I come at my end with a single guidance for you. As the Bane nears, I sense the path you must take next. But from here you must walk without the spirits. You must walk alone.”

  “But why? If the Bane empties the stone, why continue?”

  “All is not lost, my son. There is still a way to destroy the Bane, to revive the Heart of our people.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The details of the figure began to fade, as did the radiant crimson glow. Even the voice began to fray. “Take the stone . . . to where it was first quarried.”

  “Where?”

  The answer was a brush of wind in his ear. Tol’chuk staggered back. He gasped. “No.” But he knew he had not heard falsely.

  The image faded back to shadows. “Do as you are bid . . . for your father’s memory.”

  Tol’chuk clenched both fists. What he asked was impossible, but still Tol’chuk nodded. “I will try, Father.”

  The shadows receded into the brilliance. A last whisper reached him. “I see your mother in you.” The glow faded back into the stone. “I go happily, knowing we both live on in you, my son.”

  Then only the dull stone remained on the cold granite.

  Tol’chuk could not move. There was not even a glimmer left in the crystal. Finally, he crossed over and gathered it in his clawed hands and sank to his knees, cradling the Heart of his people in his lap.

  Tol’chuk sat until the sun lowered beyond the western horizon, unmoving, except for the roll of an occasional tear down a cheek. Finally, as his tower was swallowed by darkness, Tol’chuk lifted the stone to his lips and kissed the faceted surface. “Good-bye, Father.”

  JOACH HURRIED DOWN the abandoned hallways, praying to escape. His breath was ragged, and his fine clothes dusty from racing through these unused corridors. He paused and listened for a moment. He heard no sounds of pursuit. Satisfied, he slowed his pace and removed a handkerchief to wipe his brow. That had been too close!

  He came upon a small winding stair on his left and took it. The walls brushed his shoulders on either side. Clearly here was an old servants’ stair, too narrow for regular traffic. He took the steps two at a time. If he could reach the main floor of the Great Edifice, he knew the way by heart to the kitchens. His belly growled its complaint at the thought of a loaf of bread and a bowl of barley stew. His narrow escape had cost him his dinner—but it was a small price to pay.

  Joach clambered down the last of the stairs and pushed through the narrow doorway. He was instantly assaulted with the clamor of the kitchens: pots banging, fat sizzling, and the roar of the head cook over the organized chaos. The double-wide kitchen doors opened to his immediate left. Firelight from the row of hearths flickered like sunset on the walls. From this haven, the aromas of roasting rabbits struck his nostrils. Bread, fresh from the ovens, flavored the air with the resins of rye and onions. Joach was drawn toward the smell, enthralled as if still under the darkmage’s spell. Forgetting his frantic flight a moment ago, his limbs moved of their own accord toward the noise and scents.

  He entered the kitchens, bumping into a young scullion girl with her hair pulled back in a single tawny braid under a stained handkerchief. She kicked at him, clearly thinking him one of the other kitchen workers trying to grab more than a loaf of bread. “Och! Get off me, you oaf! I’m no tavern wench.”

  Joach took an elbow blow to the midriff before he could grab her arm and gain her attention. “Hold on!”

  She turned, finally seeing him. Her skin was dark, a deep bronze that matched her rich golden hair. Her eyes traveled up from his black boots, over his fine gray breeches, to his emerald silk shirt with a gray formal cloak over his right shoulder. Her gaze settled on his face.

  Panicked, she dropped to her knees. “Lord Joach!” Her cry drew many other eyes. The clamor of the kitchens died around him.

  Joach’s face reddened to match his fiery hair. He reached and pulled the young girl to her feet, but the muscles of her legs seemed to have vanished. She was like a limp doll. He had to hold her steady. “I am no lord,” he said. “I’ve worked in these same kitchens.”

  “Aye, he did!” a rough voice called out. A large man pushed through the gawking kitchen help. He wore a stained apron over his swollen belly. His cheeks were still ruddy from the flames. It was the head cook. Joach recognized the man from the time when Joach had been enthralled to Greshym. The large man swung his wooden ladle toward the head of a thin potscrubber. “And if you all don’t get back to your chores, I’ll tan your arses but good.”

  The crowd dispersed around them both, except for the girl. She took a step back but no farther. Her eyes were huge.

  The cook tapped his large spoon into his other meaty paw. “I don’t figure you’re down here to fetch someone’s supper.”

  Joach turned his attention to the rotund man. “I can’t believe you’re still here. How did you survive the darkmage’s siege of the island?”

  “Aye, even monsters and darkmages need to eat,” He fingered a leather patch over his left eye. This feature was new. Joach saw a small purplish scar trailing from the man’s forehead to disappear under the patch. “Of course, you’d better make sure you don’t overcook their meat, if you get what I mean.” A glimmer of old horror flashed in the man’s one good eye, but then vanished to be replaced with good humor. “Now what can I do for my little lord?”

  “I am no lord,” Joach repeated with a tired frown.

  “That’s not what I hear tell. I heard you’re a royal prince of those flying boat people.”

  Joach sighed. “So they claim,” he muttered. The elv’in seemed to think he and his sister Elena were the last descendants of their ancient king. “All I know was that I was born an orchard farmer, and I claim no more.”

  “A tree picker!” The cook brayed like an amused mule and clapped him on the shoulder, almost throwing Joach to his knees. “Now that I’d believe. You’re a lanky one, all right!” The cook guided him, none too gently, toward an oaken work table. He kicked a chair forward. “So I’m guessing from the way you came in here with your nose sniffing in the air that you’re looking for a bit of nibblings.”

  “In truth, I . . . I haven’t eaten.”

  The cook placed him in a seat. “How come? I’ve filled that cursed banquet hall to the rafters. They kin’t have eaten their bellies through all my fare so soon.”

  Joach shifted in his seat. “I chose not t
o eat up there this night.”

  “Och, I don’t blame you. All that prattling and yammering.” The cook waved to his kitchen help, directing them with no more than a point of his ladle and a firm frown. Soon the table was filling with loaves of bread, thick slabs of cheese, platters of berries. A small lad carried a bowl as big as his head and slid it in front of Joach. It contained a stew of rabbit with potatoes and carrots.

  The cook tossed him a spoon. “Eat up, Lord Joach. It may be plain, but you’ll find no better fare even in that banquet hall.” Then he was gone to attend his hearths.

  The scullion maid Joach had bumped earlier swept up to the table with a flagon of ale. She filled his mug, splashing more out than in with her nervousness. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she intoned like a litany.

  Joach reached and steadied her hand. The cup was promptly filled. “Thank you,” he said. He found himself staring at her.

  Her eyes, which he had thought from a distance to be a deep brown, maybe even black, were actually the color of a twilight sky, an indigo blue. Joach found himself caught in their pools for a breath. His hand still held hers, though his mug was already full. “Th-thank you,” he repeated.

  She stared back at him, unblinking, then slowly withdrew her fingers from his. Her eyes lingered a moment on his gloved hand. He wore a custom-tailored lambskin glove to hide the healing scar of his right hand. Two fingers and half his palm were missing, eaten away by an ill’guard demon during the taking of the castle. Her eyes returned to his, unfazed by his disfigurement. She gave the smallest curtsy and backed away.

  Joach’s arm was still held out toward her. “What’s your name?” he asked in a hurry, before she could flee.

  She curtsied again, a bit deeper this time. She did not meet his gaze, which Joach regretted. “Marta, my lord.”

  “But—” Before he could finish denying his heritage or say another word, she was already gone in a swirl of rough-spun dress, flying away on swift feet.

  Sighing, Joach returned to his meal. He found his gnawing appetite had somehow vanished. But he picked up his spoon and sampled the stew. The cook had not lied. The broth was rich in spices, and the rabbit meat so tender it melted on his tongue. He had not tasted such a stew since back on his family’s farm. It reminded him of home, of his mother’s care at preparing a winter’s meal. Joach found his hunger again. But as wonderful as the meal tasted, Joach could not shake from his mind the image of the scullion’s twilight eyes.

  Lost in reverie and the spread of food, Joach was not aware of the newcomer to the kitchen until he heard a voice behind him.

  “There you are!”

  Joach did not need to turn to know who stood at the door. It was Master Richald, the elv’in brother to Meric. He groaned inwardly. His escape had not been far enough.

  “It is not fitting that a prince of the Blood break bread with commoners,” the elv’in lord said with clear distaste, striding to the table.

  Joach turned, cheeks reddening from both embarrassment at the man’s rudeness and simple anger. Richald stood stiffly beside the table, eyes above all the clamor, refusing even to see the hard work being done here. He had the bearing of all the elv’in: aloof, cold, dismissive of all those around them. His pale features were similar to his brother Meric, but much sharper, as if cut from a finer knife. His hair was the same bright silver, except for a streak of copper over the left ear.

  Pushing off the stool, Joach faced the elv’in, though the man stood a hand taller than Joach. “I will not have you disparage these folks’ hard work with your rudeness, Master Richald.”

  The man’s frosted blue eyes lowered slowly to meet his gaze. There was only ice and disinterest in those eyes. “My rudeness? My sister had gone through great efforts to bring her six cousins to the banquet to meet you. You could show them the courtesy of more than just a terse greeting and vanishing.”

  “And I did not ask to be assaulted at dinner by a flock of elv’in virgins.”

  Richald’s brows rose slightly, a supremely shocked response for an elv’in. “Watch your tongue. Prince or not, I will not have my family dishonored by a half-Blood.”

  Joach suppressed a satisfied grin. So he had finally managed to crack that stoic shell—to reveal this man’s true disdain for him, of all the elv’in’s disdain: half-Blood. Half elv’in and half human.

  For the past moon, Joach had been flattered by all the attention of the elv’in. Every silver-haired man or woman with a daughter or niece had vied for his eye. He had been introduced to countless women, some younger than their first bleed, some older than his own mother. But after a time, he had begun to sense something behind all this attention—an underlying distaste that would only show through cracks, in whispered words and hard glances. Though he shared the blood of an elv’in king, to their eyes, he was still tainted. For all their attention and the countless daughters and nieces presented to him, the elv’in as a whole found Joach distasteful. He was a mere vessel of the ancient king’s blood, a stallion to impregnate one of their pure stock and return the bloodline to their people. Once done, Joach imagined he would be tossed aside, a spent coin of no value.

  It was this cold ritual that he had sought to escape this night. He was tired of this artificial dance. It would end now.

  Joach stared up at Richald. “How I must gall one of your stature, the son of the queen,” he whispered up at the taller man. “How it must make your blood race with fire to see the best of the elv’in breeding stock fawning over a half-Blood like myself, while you’re ignored.”

  By now, Richald’s limbs were trembling with rage. He couldn’t speak; his thin lips had disappeared to taut lines.

  Joach brushed past him, heading toward the door. “Tell your aunts, tell all your people, that this half-Blood is no longer on parade.”

  Richald made no move to stop him as he headed toward the kitchen exit. Out of the corner of his eye, Joach spotted a pair of scullion girls huddled by the door to one of the cupboards. A pair of eyes followed his path across the room. Marta. She had removed the handkerchief from her head and loosened the tail of her tawny hair, a drape all of bronzes and golds.

  Joach tripped over the kitchen door’s threshold.

  His misstep raised the ghost of a smile on the girl’s lips. Joach straightened his cloak over his shoulder and returned her grin. She bowed her head shyly and withdrew into the shadows of the cupboard.

  Joach watched her disappear, then crossed out of the kitchen’s warmth. He was finished with the ice of the elv’in. It had finally taken the kitchen hearths to melt their hold. Joach glanced back at the open doors. In truth, it had not been just the heat—it had also been a shy girl named Marta.

  After a moon of fawning, the simple truth in her eyes had shamed him. Love should not be bartered and contracted. It should start with a glance that reached the heart, then grow from there.

  Joach turned his back on the kitchens, but he promised to return.

  Both for the wonderful food and to see what else would grow in the glow of the kitchen’s hearths.

  WITH THE SUN just set, Meric sat near the prow of the Pale Stallion, leaning his back against the rail, legs extended. He fingered the lute in his lap and plucked a few stray notes. The sound carried over the open waters around where the Stallion lay anchored. Meric’s gaze followed the notes across the seas and skies.

  The moon had yet to rise; the stars were a jeweled blanket overhead. In the distance, around the isle of A’loa Glen, the spread of stars ended, blotted out by the sleek windships hanging over the castle like gilded clouds. The Thunderclouds, the warships of his elv’in people. Even from here, their magickal iron keels glowed softly in the night, an inner elemental fire holding the ships aloft.

  Meric frowned at the sight. He knew his mother, Queen Tratal, was up there somewhere, probably wondering why her son spent more time aboard the Stallion than on her own flagship, the Sunchaser. Even after a moon among these people, she still did not understand his attraction to and
affection for those who were not of his Blood. She had listened patiently to the stories of his adventures on these shores, but her face had never warmed. The elv’in, creatures of the wind and clouds, had little interest in what went on below the keels of their boats. Even with the tales, his mother could not understand her son’s feelings for these land-bound peoples.

  Meric drew a hand across his scalp. What was once burnt stubble after his tortures below Shadowbrook was now a rich field of new silver growth. The length of his hair tickled his ears and the back of his neck. But this growth could not hide all his scars. A long trail of pinched, pale skin marred the smoothness of his left cheek.

  “Play something,” a voice said near a barrel tied to the starboard rail. The boy Tok sat bundled in a thick woolen blanket, lost within its folds. Only his ruffled, sandy-haired head protruded from his cocoon. The nights now grew cold much faster as autumn gripped the Archipelago. But the chill was refreshing to Meric. It helped clear his mind.

  “What would you have me play, Tok?” The boy always joined Meric when he played Nee’lahn’s lute. It was a private time the two shared together, and Meric had come to enjoy both the boy’s company and their mutual appreciation of music. Some nights even Tok would strum nail on string and practice a song. But it had been almost a fortnight since Meric had last played.

  “Don’t much matter,” Tok said. “Just play.”

  Meric knew what the boy meant. It didn’t matter what song was strummed. It was the sound of the lute itself that was most appreciated by both. The wooden lute had been carved from the dying heart of a koa’kona tree, a tree whose spirit had been bonded to the nymph Nee’lahn. Elemental magick still sang in the rich vibrations of the whorled-grained wood. It sang of lost homes and hope.

  Bending over the instrument like a lover, Meric fingered the neck and stroked the strings. A cascade of chords sang from the lute like a long sigh, as if the lute had held its breath and could now finally sing again. Meric smiled and sighed, too. He had put off playing for too long. He had forgotten how just the voice of the lute calmed his heart.