Anthology - The Search For Magic

The conflicted dragon balanced between her hatred of elves and her love of the tribute Medan squeezed out of them.

Jai’s hand shook, and his breath caught ragged in his throat. Very carefully, he slipped one thin sheet of parchment from atop the other, like brushing a shadow from a shadow.

Behind him, Annalisse said, “Don’t work too late, Jai.”

“I won’t,” he said, but they both knew he’d been long at his work and would be longer still.

She laughed. “Well, at least take time for your supper, will you?”

He said he would try, and the librarian said nothing more to discourage him from returning to his work. Those sheets needed separating before more damage occurred, and Jai Windwild had the patience for the work.

In the purpling twilight, Jai lurched down the garden path and home to his supper. He owned no crutch or cane. He owned only a slanting gait. It was his, and if he did not run on sun-dappled forest paths anymore, he’d taught himself not to regret that too much. He went each day to better places, into the lands of legend and the proud realms of elven history. There, he would have been happy to spend all his days.

The first golden fireflies danced ahead of him into the darker shadows beneath the arbor at the front of his parents’ little house. The heady scent of wisteria filled the twilight. Thick bunches of the amethyst flowers brushed Jai’s shoulders as he passed. He caught the door latch, balancing a little against the jamb, and the door opened under his hand.

Face white as the lone pale moon, his father gestured him inside.

“Father, what-?”

Emeth Windwild shook his head and closed the door behind his son. “Come in,” he said. “We must talk.”

Jai saw his mother beyond his father’s shoulder. She sat still as stone in a cushioned nook near the window that overlooked the little stream beside the house. Marise Windwild loved no place in her home better than this. She did not look out though. Her eyes darted from her husband to Jai, then to Emeth again.

Someone has died, Jai thought. The house had that kind of stillness, the breath-held quiet when sorry news has come. He thought of his father’s uncle who lived down in Mianost, a man so old it had been a wonder for the last ten years that he’d wakened each morning. When he turned to his father again, words of sympathy on his lips, he saw Emeth’s hand trembling. That trembling quieted every word Jai would have spoken. He had never seen fear in his father. Not during the terrible Chaos War, when all the world seemed to run mad, nor afterward when the dragon came. Not even when his son had shattered his knee, nor when he watched Jai struggle to walk again as healers warned he would not win that battle.

“What’s happened?” he asked. Marise Windwild drew a breath, as though her son’s question freed her. She shuddered, and her eyes welled. “Your father… he has been…”

She choked, tears spilled down her cheeks as Emeth finished her sentence. “We have to go, Jai. We have to leave the city. A message to one of the agents of the resistance went astray.”

Jai’s heart slammed hard against his ribs. “Father…” he said, whispering as though agents of Marshal Medan crouched in the shadows. “Father, something that implicates you?”

Emeth shook his head. “I don’t know. A spy was found in Medan’s household, and right after, someone disappeared-someone along the chain I work with.” Cold understanding chilled Jai’s blood. His father was like a number of others who aided the resistance: only a small link in a chain. He would, now and then, hand a note to a tailor, information disguised as an order for clothing. He’d speak a word to one of the bakers in the household of a woman known for her shy and retiring ways, something that only seemed to be about bread or the price of wheat. Intercepted, these seemingly innocent messages and others like them would appear to be nothing more than the daily business of an ordinary man. But in the right ears, they were more. No man or woman passing a word understood the whole of the message, but all the words together became news when they reached their destination. Somewhere, perhaps in a dark and deep forest glen, the leader of the resistance, that fierce warrior known as the Lioness, would see to it that a plan of the Marshal’s would turn suddenly sour. Black-breasted Knights would die with elven arrows in their necks, and the elven warriors would vanish.

Simple men and women made this work, risking their lives and the lives of their families every day in the cause. Now a link in the secret chain had been broken and the delicate trust betrayed to the enemy.

“The damage has been done, Jai,” his mother said. “One by one, those who had to do with this matter will leave the city. You, your father, and I will go at dawn, for we have a plausible excuse for leaving and will arouse no suspicion.”

They would go to Mianost, the three of them. They would leave before first light, making sure that messages were left behind to say that Emeth’s uncle was failing fast, that the family wanted to gather one last time to be with their venerable relative. Passes would be secured to take them safely out of the city and past the checkpoints manned by the Dark Knights. In an occupied city, not every elf was trustworthy, not everyone a partisan. The whole of the plan to escape was not revealed to everyone who had part in it. Each knew only what he must.

“This much your mother and I know,” Emeth said, “for the rest, we will do what we’re told when we arrive in Mianost. We are confident that once we reach Mianost there will be a way to true safety.”

Stunned, Jai spoke without thinking. “Leave…” He shook his head. “I just got to the last page of the histories of the kings-”

“Damn the kings!” Emeth cried. “Jai, listen to me. We have no choice. If we don’t leave tomorrow, we must take our chances here. I forbid that.” His hard expression softened. He was not unaware of his son’s love for his work. Indeed, he had fostered it. “I’m sorry, son. Events give us no choice. We must leave. I know very little, but if I were ever made to tell even that, others would be found out.”

Jai heard that as though hearing his father’s death sentence, for there was a place in Qualinost not so old as the lovely houses and homes of the elves. It dated only to the time of the dragon’s conquest-a crouching, ugly building of sandstone, hard planes, and biting comers. Narrow windows, like suspicious eyes, glared round the square structure. Ironbound doors opened only at the order of one of Marshal Medan’s soldiers. There the Knights were barracked, and below that place was an unlit hole of a room. In that chamber, no man or woman had ever survived the torturer’s attentions with all secrets intact. The telling was the fee paid for death at last.

Quietly, steadily, Jai said, “You don’t have to stay, father, but I don’t have to leave.”

Marise rose, turning her back on the window. “You do, Jai.”

“But I don’t know anything! I don’t know who you talk to, when or where or what you say. You’ve always made sure of that, so there’s no need for me to flee. I couldn’t tell anyone anything if I wanted to. Go to Mianost and leave me behind-”

“No,” said Emeth, and now his face wasn’t so pale. His hands didn’t tremble. “No, Jai. If Medan ever came to suspect us, he would take you to torture.”

The Knights would break him bone by bone in that terrible place beneath the barracks. Jai’s blood went cold. “But I would never- Father, you know I would never-”

Emeth held up a hand, a gesture Jai knew well. “No more, Jai. You would never tell, but you would be killed for your silence. That won’t happen. You will come with us. No more will be said.”