and then added, “and as for the capital, it’s too far, not much of a chance to get their alive. I was out in the square today…”
“Any news? What are they saying?” Yoos asked again.
“You know people! Thanks to the Worlds, they can invent stories, each better than the previous one,” Truvle chuckled, “and that’s all full of buzz. Some are saying it was a fire sorcerer who got lost in his experiments getting his own powers to kill him, others argue they know better – it was two fire guys engaged in a fight eventually killing each other. Some even say they witnessed it, yet never mention how come they survived. Yet others scream arguing it was a scourge from above, and all that stuff, you know. But I bet it’ll finally be the second option. I guess Karun will love it best.”
I froze with my left foot in the air as I was going downstairs, listening to the conversation, my breath held. These two were talking as if they had known each other for a hundred years. But I had never seen them before even being mutually friendly. They would only talk to each other when necessary – just nods, Hi’s and quick handshakes. Occasionally, when Truvle was in Karun, they met in our house. Now it turned out that they knew each other. Had known for a long time, yet had always just acted. But why?
Surprised by the discovery, I stepped back a little and in the darkness got something with my foot, sending a flask down the steps. As if that was not enough, it got followed by a pot – a traitor that fell down with a crash, thus announcing there was a shy listener in the dark staircase corridor.
Silence fell on the room.
“Ricka or Elcha?” Truvle’s voice broke the silence.
“It’s Ricka,” I squealed and went down.
Truvle was sitting by the fireplace looking at the fire, his face all reflective. Yoos was standing a little aside, silent, too, with his hands resting on the back of the chair. I was desperate. Of course they could guess immediately I was eavesdropping, and that made the whole situation extremely uncomfortable.
“How long you been there?” Truvle spoke first, stretching his lips into a smile and turning to me.
“Well, since around ‘it is too dangerous to stay here’, I tried to be honest.
The men exchanged glances. Truvle gave a short hum as Yoos drew in air through his nose a couple of moments letting it out just as slowly, obviously to subdue some strong language as long as I was there.
“You mean the entire place knows?” I was full of emotion.
“Yes, my girl, they all know about it but don’t know who that was, actually, which is good. The valley is sealed. Goortans are dead. Now all you and Elcha got to do is just never even bat an eyelid. Just live the way you used to.”
The glance Yoos gave to Truvle who was trying to reassure me was too skeptical and yet he said no word.
“We got to discuss it with your Mammy, she knows better. And, Ricka …” Trawl hesitated, as if pondering over something, and went on, “we have to tell you something else. I do not want you to learn it from people on the street…”
“What?” I sat on the bench at the wall getting prepared.
“You just…” he paused, “…just don’t take it too close to your heart.”
“I don’t get you,” I turned my eyes to Yoos who was still silent with a stony face expressing completely nothing.
“There is more…” Truvle hesitated and ran his hand through his hair as if collecting his thoughts. But Yoos stepped in there, “The explosion rolled all over the northern part of the valley and reached… It got to Mount Eagle…”
I felt a chill of some bad premonition crawling inside my chest, but I remained silent, waiting for more.
“The fortress is intact,” he said hastily, “but those who were on the gate and the walls at that moment…” he stopped short and fell silent again.
“What… what happened to them?!” I squeezed out the words still not knowing what they were getting at.
The men exchanged glances.
“They’re dead,” Trawl turned away.
I froze, staring at them my eyes open wide.
“How many?” I said with a voice that was not mine. Tears caught my throat.
“Eleven… And five more are with the healers now. Burnt badly.”
I could not hold my tears.
I killed eleven people! Eleven innocent people! How could this ever be possible? What was it going on with me? This is not right, no… it can’t be like that. Like I … I am a monster!”
Apparently, I involuntarily pronounced the last part loud since Yoos was right there next to me. “Listen! You are not a monster! Look at me, Ricka. You aren’t to blame for this. You had nothing to do with all that.”
I raised my eyes, full of tears and obedience, and looked into his weather-beaten face. As our eyes met, I realized he was lying to me. Both to me and to himself. It was my magic power that killed them, and nothing else. Our lives, Elcha’s and mine, had cost them theirs. And Yoos had known many of those people. I could read lots of pain in his gray eyes. And Captain of the Karun guard could not hide it, no matter how hard he was trying. I could also see he blamed himself. Not only he, by the way. Truvle was biting his lips every time he thought that no one was looking at him.
“Ricka, it’s all my fault!” Nargara entered the room, “and please…”
“No!” I jumped up, driven by anger and despair. “Don’t you ever lie to me! It’s all me! I killed them! I’m a monster! A killer!”
All of a sudden I could see my closest people’s faces get filled with fear. Truvle stepped forward stretching out a hand in a warning gesture.
But Nargara’s cold voice stopped him, “Truvle, don’t even try!”
I looked down at my hands and saw fire tongues crawling along, getting bigger and bigger. I tried to shake the flames off yet they went on spreading stubbornly over the skin, as if sticking to its master.
Suddenly, the room got freezing, and a white frost pattern crept across the floor and the walls. It was approaching me, stretching forward its curls as if begging for help.
“Ricka, calm down!” Mammy’s tough voice ordered. “Ricka, can you hear me, my girl? Please, don’t…”
I took my gaze off the fire and looked at her. Nargara’s eyes glowed somewhere deep
inside. His hair swayed as if supported by an invisible air stream. And only then I noticed that the same was going on with my hair, only my curls were sparkling with golden flames. A flow of heat was running from me to her outstretched hand, and turned into ice as it approached her.
Nargara is using her magic against me, I realized. And as I got it, I felt my anger and indignation taking another surge and kindling the flame anew. It enveloped me all over again, the euphoria was growing and spreading through my entire body.
It felt like it was not me but someone else. All my senses got dull, there was no more fear, and only my power was increasing. I felt fear coming off the people standing in front of me, and I saw confusion on their faces. However, for some reason I didn’t care a spit about it… My new self could no longer put up with anyone daring to suppress me with magic, and it stirred another wave of indignation inside me.
“Don’t? You really mean it?” my voice sounded mocking already as a wry smile touched my lips. “Don’t what?”
“We don’t want anyone else to die,” her quiet reply came.
The witch’s words seemed to freeze me and turn into an ice cube, even without magic. The fire went out instantly, and I slid down the wall, burying my face in my hands.
All the three rushed to me. I felt strong arms take me up and seat in a chair.
“Water,” Nargara ordered, and Yoos arrow-dashed to the kitchen coming back a couple of seconds later with a glass of water in his trembling hands.
“Okay, it’s over, my girl. You calm down, everything will be fine,” Mammy said while giving me a hug and stroking my hair.
“Block it… block the flow, like you did before… Please, do. I don’t want it again!” I began to scream through sobs.
“Can’t do it anymore,” she said softly, hugging me again and pressing my head against her chest, “your source is too strong. You have to learn how to control it. It’s all… All that happened in the Fortress was just an accident. Don’t blame yourself,” her quiet voice came.
I clutched at her arms, as hard as I could, and gave way to my loudest sobs, as if it would bring any salvation from all the horror I had gone through.
The Secrets Long Past
As I calmed down a little and began to come back to my senses, Mammy gave me a drink of elixir. I could not tell which exactly since a veil of tears had filled my eyes. However, it sent some nice warm feeling spreading all over my body further bringing a slight relaxation bordering on indifference.
“Baby’s sleep,” I realized. If taken in a small dosage, it worked as a sedative, while a full dose turned it into a sleeping drug.
They pushed my chair closer to the fire, which seemed angry as it was cracking and roaring at the wood that would not submit to its tongues. The everlasting fire in our home included thirteen logs – seven in the master fireplace in the hall, four in the kitchen, another two resting in the stove on the second floor. That was good enough to heat the house even through the worst winter colds. In summer though we never put it down either, only removed a few logs, which left us with an inevitable bit of special comfort. I was looking at the fire, feeling much surprised that after all that had happened I could still enjoy its warm and peaceful crackle. Apparently, it was because the fire in the fireplace was different from the magic fire on my hands.
Meanwhile, the conversation in the living room went on – the men were arguing again about what to do next, leave or stay.
Elcha was sitting next to me, looking into the fireplace, too, and biting her lower lip silently.
She already knew about everything.
Awakened with the fuss downstairs, she jumped out exactly the moment I had just been put in the chair. For a while, my sister sat beside me squeezing silently my fingers until the elixir took its effect. Her hand was bandaged up to the shoulder and rested in a sling on her chest. Her face was pale, eyes sunken and shining of some tough determination. She was no longer that very noisy and fussy girl that would chatter incessantly a day before. Now she had her lips tightly pressed, and her gaze totally focused. She seemed to have grown a couple of years over a night. Then, as if making a decision, she got up and addressed everyone sitting in the living room.
“Well, why don’t you start telling us something at least? I still believe you do know much more than we do,” she curved her eyebrows and pierced everyone with one of her most inquisitive looks.
“What is it you wanna know?” Nargara asked and moved her tired glance onto me.
“First,” Elcha started, “who were the beasts? Second, why is it us they wanted to get? Third, how did they find us?” she was walking as if measuring the room as she darted the questions. “And fourth, if it was so dangerous, then what the he… Mammy, why did you ban us from using magic?!” she turned sharply to face Nargara while her eyes were beaming with so
much ferocity that even Yoos, so gloomy a minute ago, started smiling as he looked at the witch expecting her to respond. But she remained silent.
“And another, just one more thing to ask,” she stopped for an instant thinking over something and then went on with the interrogation, “Who of you were there, on the northern slope, the night before last. I could hear and see two of you, and now, after all that happened, I guess it was us you were talking about.”
Mammy’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Elcha, and her confusion was so manifest she couldn’t have hidden it even if had tried. The moment was so ripe that I jumped right in concluding my sister’s shower of questions, “Enough of your secrets. Looks like they may cost us too much.”
The men looked at each other, puzzled, both moving their eyes at Nargara thus giving her a free hand making the decision.
She exhaled trying to pluck up her courage.
“If we answered your questions now, that would bring around even more of them, and we cannot explain everything…”
“Why?” Elcha immediately asked in the most assertive manner.
“Because we are all bound by the oath of Erion,” Mammy replied quietly.
Now it was our turn to exchange glances.
“Any level to it?” I tried to clarify once I managed my shock.
“First,” Nargara answered in even a lower voice, and fixed her gaze on the fireplace.
We were perfectly aware what it meant; read about it in the Book of Elements.
Erion was a sacred oath with three levels and a great conquering power. It was somewhat different for each of the Elements, yet the point was always the same.
The third level oath was an oath given in words, and if broken it would inflict physical cripple on the guilty party. For life.
The second level oath – magic; if broken, would cut off all the sources taking away the magic powers.
The first level – and the most dangerous – oath on blood. It would kill if violated.
Elcha’s emotions ceased immediately and she sat on the bench at the wall, with some absent-minded expression on her face.
“Any time constraints?” unless expressed that question would have blown my mind.
“Seventeen years… Over in a year’s time” Truvle answered, at the same time answering my next question even before I could ask it.
Silence fell on the room, except the fire cracking monotonously. Nargara broke it first.
“The oath was taken in a small circle of folks, and you weren’t there with us then.”
“So we can’t tell anyone else, that’s the worst part,” Yoos added.
“You mean there are some secrets that concern us, yet we are the ones who won’t learn them, right?”
Yoos nodded.
“That’s the paradox,” Elcha frowned.
“Yes, that’s the side effect we couldn’t have predicted. And there was no need to do so, actually,” Truvle said while stroking the scrub on his chin.
“But there is at least something you can tell, right?” even though the things took quite an unexpected turn Elcha was still not going to give up meekly and unconditionally.
“I can tell you everything in a year, no earlier. But I think I’ll try to explain something…” Mammy said after some thinking, still featuring her typical confidence in the voice. And then slowly, as if tasting every word first, she began it.
“Those creatures… They are called Goortans. They are very dangerous. They’re bloodhounds, and they feel magic with their manes, much like dogs smell with the nose. But they do not act on their own, there serve forces much stronger, and they…” her voice fell silent for a moment.
“I can’t,” she stammered, and a painful expression covered her face.
Truvle came up to her chair, sat down on the floor and took her hand silently thus offering her support.
“Goortans don’t hunt you both, just Ricka. They need the older one.”
