A misplaced child, p.34
A Misplaced Child, page 34
“It’s only a part of who I am when I’m here.”
“Yes, and this is your home.”
“Is it really? I spend more time in the illusion. How can I call Aluna my home when the spell has me?” Gedas didn’t immediately answer and Elodie pressed on. “Please, Gedas. Just tell me what you know of the spell. If you don’t want to help me break it, then that’s fine, you don’t have to. I’ll try to find someone who will, but please, just tell me where to start.”
Gedas did not respond, and the silence stretched between them as he examined his tea. The expression was one she’d seen before on his face, but she couldn’t name it. Close to sadness or guilt, but not quite either.
That twinge returned in Elodie’s stomach and she pushed it away, set down her cup and left his rooms.
Thankfully Silas wasn’t in the hallway. Instead of heading to the main staircase, Elodie headed toward the servant staircase and left through the kitchens, no squires in sight.
Now she knew the location, the trip to the bordello house Callie worked in was much shorter, perched on the end of the town near the forest where they’d found the dragon’s breath. Elodie tried to enjoy the fresh air and morning bustle of the town waking up, but her stomach felt tight.
She entered the quiet and deserted house, and a brown-haired boy rose from a table near the bar.
“I’ve got this one.” The woman they’d met before waved the boy away and approached Elodie. “What do you want?”
“I would like to see Calendula.”
“She doesn’t wanna see you.” The woman crossed her arms.
“I can pay.” Elodie reached into her belt purse hanging under her cloak. She felt for a few smaller coins, hands shaking, and when she withdrew them saw she’d pulled a small silver and a small gold coin. The woman’s eyes grew and she shoved Elodie’s hand down.
“Put that away,” she hissed. She sighed and shook her head. “Come with me.”
She looked around with fear, and led Elodie out a back door to the alley behind the house. This small alley was cramped and isolated from the noise and movement of the city.
“Are you daft showing coin like that in a place like this?” She wiped a hand over her face. “This city may seem all safe on the outside, but show gold like that an’ yer neck will be cut before you know it.”
Elodie was shocked. She’d begun to think this city was the safest in Aluna.
The woman sighed and lowered her voice. “Look, I understand you knew Calendula in her last life, but you need to understand a few things.” The woman paused and paced a few feet away before returning to Elodie, a heavy look in her eyes. “I was sold to a house when I was sixteen. My man had gambling debts, and used me to break even. My life, that life, it’s over. It’s as if it never existed. Even if I somehow managed to pay off my bond, what place would I have in the world when all I have to my name is this? All anyone knows me for is what I do here. Do you understand?”
Elodie didn’t, and said nothing.
The older woman sighed. “Your friend is gone. The life she had and any possible future is gone. Her bond is all that remains. It’s a hard thing to deal with for someone so young and so fresh sold as her. When you come here, askin’ for your friend, and waving around gold, all it does is remind her how far she’s come from her old life, and how she can never go back. You are torturin’ her with your visits, and believe me when I say her life is hard enough.”
Elodie dropped her head, shame made her cheeks heat. The woman turned to leave, but Elodie stopped her.
“Will you give her a message for me?” A small movement from an upper window caught her attention, a silver glint and red hair moving behind the frame of an open window.
“What’s the message?” The woman tapped her foot impatient to go.
“Tell her that calendula is another name for a marigold,” Elodie said. The woman frowned, but Elodie took a deep breath and kept going. “In some cultures it’s a sign of the sun: bright, vibrant, and energetic. Providing life to those it’s light touches. In other cultures it’s used to adorn homes, welcoming its inhabitants and guests. Medically it has a million uses. Magically it grants protection. But just by itself, growing wherever it’s planted, in mud, sand, clay or shit, calendula brings peace, life, and beauty.” She paused and her eyes flicked again to the empty window. “Will you tell her that no matter who she is, what she does, or what is done to her, she always has been and will be that beautiful and bright calendula?”
The woman gave Elodie a long look before she nodded and headed back inside.
Elodie stood there, asking herself if the woman was right and if there was anything she could do to make it better for Callie. She didn’t want to make anything harder on her friend. She looked to the window again, but there was no movement.
Elodie pulled her hood up over her face and turned down the alley, walking and thinking. She walked back to the castle the long way, following the perimeter of the town, hoping for just a little longer in the open air, near the trees and far away from everyone who would look on her with expectations or unspoken secrets.
After a short distance she became aware of someone following her and sighed. She couldn’t hide from Silas in a snowstorm. She pulled down her hood and turned to look at him. Instead of his large green eyes she was met with the hard face of a man, greasy brown hair and piercing blue eyes.
She inhaled to let out a scream when the man hit her hard on the head and she fell to the ground. The world spun as she reached out to steady herself.
She tried to stand up, but the man was on her, grabbing her arms while something was draped over her head. She tried to scream but her voice caught in her throat and she coughed.
“Ha! It works!” a second man said, tapping something at her neck.
“Told ye it was a proper mage. I’ve bought silencing spells from him before.” The first man pulled Elodie’s arms together. “Grab her feet.”
Elodie’s heart jumped and she fought. She pulled away as hard as she could and tried to break the man’s grip. He held on tight and her wrists ached. She didn’t care. The pain was nothing compared to the fear.
The other man grabbed her ankle and she kicked and twisted, desperate to break free. The man held her foot hard in his armpit and tried to grab the second foot. Elodie felt something pop in her ankle and a sharp pain stabbed up her leg.
She tried to cry out but no sound came from her mouth, the silence was a pressure building in her chest as if she couldn’t breathe. She twisted and tried to bite and kick, but the pressure built and built. She couldn’t pull in a breath. She gasped for air, but it didn’t come. She saw lights in front of her eyes and her arms and legs got heavy, and then everything went dark.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
She was cold.
The chill radiated from her back and butt. She tried to move and grab for blankets, but something sharp cut into her wrists.
She opened her eyes. It was dark, the only light coming from the flickering glow of a torch just out of view. The cold hardness at her back was stone. Everything around her was cold, hard stone. There was a large wooden something to her right, blocking the glow of the torch. She tried to move her hands, but the pain was back at her wrists. Metal clinked above her from the manacles wrapping her wrists. She pulled against the metal, it rattled but held firm.
Panic rose in her chest. She was trapped. She opened her mouth to scream but stopped herself. That wasn’t how Gedas taught her to act in a crisis.
She took a slow shaky breath to clear her head. Gedas taught her to use what was around to accomplish her task. She wasn’t helpless, she needed to think.
She shook her head, still trying to clear it. She didn’t make complex spells to accomplish a specific goal like the academics looking for their magical ranking. She shaped magic along the natural path of her tools like a hedgewitch. She needed tools. There was nothing here for her magic to use.
The last few months, or was it a year now? Gedas tried to teach her magic, but she’d refused. If only she hadn’t refused, maybe now it wouldn’t be too late.
She pushed away that thought. She wasn’t going to dwell on regrets. She closed her eyes again and took another deep breath and examined her surroundings. There was barely any life nearby, at least not any big enough to be of any use. The moss and mushrooms couldn’t help.
She felt further. There was plenty of potential life around. The ground below her was mostly hard stone, but there was dirt, decomposing leaves and other bits of nature’s trash creating a thin layer along the bottom of the cave floor. Hidden in this small bit of soil were seeds. Seeds carried in by the wind or by the droppings of an animal sheltering from the winter. The seeds were small points of potential life in the back of her mind.
The soil was thin, but maybe it would be enough. She closed her eyes and tried to focus. The fear and anxiety made it hard. She had to push away the thoughts and fears several times. How long until her kidnappers came back?
She focused on a few of the small seeds and reached out with the ruakh within her. Small roots of deep blue light stretched out in her mind’s eye and into the soil around her. The thin root of her magic reached the seeds and she nudged the ruakh around them, pushed to awaken the dormant life inside.
She felt the sprouts expand suddenly and rapidly and burst from the thin layer of soil around her. She kept going. She kept pushing. The sprouts were an inch then two then three. Each expanded, searching for a sun that wasn’t there and the first points of light winked out.
Elodie sucked in a deep breath at the sudden loss of life. Her gasp was silent as the spell on her chest cut off the sound. She’d never been so connected to a plant when it died. The tiny ferns and ivy needed water and sun.
Plants could grow from magic alone, she’d compensated before for the lack of sunlight or water or nutrients in the soil, but never all three. If she tried to keep growing the dozen or so sprouts they would all die. She took a deep breath and picked one. Wild strawberry. It was a natural climbing plant, she could direct it up the wall and onto the shackles around her hands.
She’d never done anything like this, but she had to try. She pushed her desperation into the plant and prompted it to grow and grow. Slowly, so unbearably slowly, it snaked carefully up the side of the stone. When the strawberry tried to put out a leaf or a bud, she stopped it, asking it to focus instead on reaching farther. She kept her eyes closed but she could feel its progress. It snaked around her arm and up her wrist. At last the edge of the climber reached the shackle. Now what?
She didn’t know any plant spells to unlock something, the thought was absolutely absurd. Plants protected. They didn’t unlock.
But they did sometimes destroy.
A plant could break and erode over time. Ivy cracked mortar between stones, roots tore up cement. The shackles were made of iron. Even if she had the resources to grow the strawberry stronger and farther, she doubted she could grow it fast enough to save her.
She had to try.
She grew the strawberry over the shackle and threaded it through the keyhole, then wrapped it around the lock, and back through the keyhole. Around and around she grew it till the keyhole was filled with the vine. She asked the vine to strengthen itself, to grow thicker and push against the metal. It hurt. The metal cut into the soft plant, but it pushed back. She didn’t know how long she sat there, fighting in the war between the metal and the strawberry. She shook, and sweat dripped from her forehead.
There was a scraping sound in front of her and her concentration broke. She opened her eyes as a blond man came into view.
“Awake at last?” he asked, a sick smile on his face. “Don’t worry, the chains are fastened well. You ain’t going anywhere, flower.”
He moved closer to Elodie and crouched before her. She tried to scoot back against the rock, but her ankle throbbed.
“How about we have a little fun before the boss comes back?” he asked.
She flinched away and tried to scream again, but the pressure on her chest was back. She couldn’t breathe. She stopped screaming, gasping for breath, but kept kicking as much as she could, ignoring the stabbing pain in her ankle.
“Easy girl, easy, easy.”
“Oi! I said hands off, Calub,” another voice said. The blue-eyed man grabbed the blond man. “Don’t hurt the merchandise.” He shoved Calub away.
Elodie remembered then, why those eyes had been so familiar. She’d seen that man in the bordello house when she’d first gone to find Callie.
“Orders were to kill her. What does it matter if we have a little fun first?” Calub straightened moving away from Elodie.
“I don’t care what the orders were. Do you see who that is? That’s the princess. We can ransom her for double what they’re paying us to kill her. You go tell Leu I want her keeping a lookout and you are to play scout. I’m going to town to set up the ransom.”
“Shouldn’t one of us stay in here?” Calub asked, his eyes landing on Elodie again.
“Na, she’s chained to the wall, she’s not going anywhere.”
The two men walked out of her line of sight. She waited till she couldn’t hear them any longer before she pulled against the chains around her wrist, the strawberry clinging to her arm, forgotten in her panic.
She could escape, she could slip her wrist out. It wouldn’t be too hard, her hands were small. She was just a little girl. She pulled and pulled, and the metal cut into her hand more and more, it cut into her vine, severing it.
She could do this, she could do this, she could do this.
She fought against the chains trying to make her hands smaller and smaller.
She could do this, she could do this, she could do this.
The tears fell down her face soaking into her shirt and the sobs tried to come out, but the pressure was at her chest again, she could barely breathe.
Slowly the light died within the plant without magic to sustain it.
Her breaths came in harder and faster.
She couldn’t do this.
Her hands hurt. Her thumbs felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. Her hands felt numb and warm liquid trickled down her arm as she fought against the metal.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been struggling, how long she’d been fighting against the chains.
She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do this.
She cried silently. She was tired and exhausted. Every muscle hurt and still she cried.
Movement.
A person came into view, a woman. Her light brown hair pulled back to show an angular face and uncaring eyes. She looked down on Elodie, her face blank as she lifted the bow in her hand and brought it down hard on Elodie’s head.
Chapter Forty
There was a loud bang, and a muffled cry that brought Elodie to consciousness. When she opened her eyes it was lighter. The stone of the cave was lit with a pale glow of daylight.
“Go see what that was,” came the voice of the blue-eyed man.
The second man, Calub, walked past her view toward the daylight.
A dull light flashed and something large came flying back into the tunnel past the corner where she lay.
It was Calub. His legs lay bent oddly. The other man cursed and came into view, ax in hand. He rushed toward the entrance of the cave, releasing a war cry as he went.
She heard a clash of metal, and another, followed by a scuffling. The man with the ax fell just in front of her, a pained expression on his face. He choked and blood came out of his mouth, and then he stopped moving. Elodie inhaled, a scream in her throat that caught and couldn’t escape.
The pressure built in her chest again, and she forced herself to breathe slowly.
Another face came around the crates, and the breath turned into a silent sob as she looked up into the fierce, angry eyes of Gedas. Blue sparks flared in his cold gray eyes as he crouched before her and placed a gentle hand on the cut on her head.
Sir Jesper appeared next, blood splattered on his face. He looked Elodie over then called over his shoulder. “Check their pockets for keys.”
“No need,” Gedas’s voice was hard and icy.
He pulled the pendant over her head and dropped it to the ground. Free of the silencing charm, Elodie let out half a sob. The pressure on her chest was gone.
Gedas reached above her head to her wrists. She felt his warm hands cover the metal. His eyes glowed before there was a crunch and bits of dust fell over her head. He lowered her hands and picked the flaking metal and rust off her skin before meeting her eyes.
“I caught one trying to escape,” Silas called from the entrance.
“Oh goodie,” Gedas replied, a scary smile on his face. Another spark jumped in his eye before he stood and turned from Elodie. “Drop him there.”
“Silas, get her out of here,” Sir Jesper called.
Silas appeared, an intense look on his face.
“Can you stand?” he asked.
She nodded and he helped her to her feet. Pain shot up her leg, but she gritted her teeth.
Elodie looked at the dead man on the ground and froze. Silas nudged her chin making her look him in the eyes. She’d stopped moving. “Hey, don’t look there, focus on me, alright?”
She nodded and he led her around the body.
“Please, let me go, I don’t know anything I promise,” came the voice of the man who’d wanted to play. Elodie looked over her shoulder in time to see the wall of the cave reach out and wrap around his arms, pulling him into the stone.
The man started to scream.
Silas pulled her faster toward the cave entrance.
“What do you think, Jesper? Think he truly knows nothing?” Gedas asked, his voice had his usual tone of quizzical inquiry to it, but she felt that icy hardness just under the surface.
“Not likely. How far can you make the wall eat him?” the knight asked calmly.
