Blood and Memory (41 page)

It was hours before Wyl returned, subdued but composed. Elysius knew he had not gone far, barely steps from the small dwelling he had built himself many years ago. He understood Wyl’s need to be alone, to come to terms with the confusion and the terror.

Fynch had long ago been carried to bed, sleeping in the same cot Wyl had used earlier. It was still not dawn.

“I imagine you have questions for me,” Elysius said gently. “Put on the pot, we’ll have another jar of tea each, I think.” And as Wyl silently moved to oblige, Elysius added, “I’ll tease up the fire again.”

Knave padded up quietly to steal a warm spot. Water was set to heat while the embers were prodded and encouraged to flame again. New kindling erupted into larger flames and a fresh log was thrown on. Satisfied, the Manwitch made himself comfortable in the creaking rocking chair he had also crafted.

“Ask me,” Elysius said. He could feel the barrage of queries stored up in Wyl’s mind.

“How do you see?”

“I use others. Knave is my favorite, but I can use birds or other beasts. I am deaf, too, Wyl. Others are my ears.”

“People?”

“Only if I’m prepared to open my magic to them.”

“Which you aren’t, I gather.”

“Rarely. It’s too dangerous. Animals take nothing from me.”

“But you used Myrren for this purpose,” Wyl accused.

“Only during her incarceration, so on two occasions, and yes, I had to relinquish some of my powers to her. She took just enough to dull the pain of her torture.”

Wyl nodded, seemingly satisfied with that line of questioning. “Your brother. I gather from what you’ve said that he has made you look this way,” he said, trying hard not to give offense with his words.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe he hated me.”

“Why?”

“I would not share the secret of communicating with beasts or birds. It was evident to me from a very young age that Rashlyn was unstable.” Elysius scratched his large chin. “More than that, in truth. I knew Rashlyn was mad. And he was cruel beyond imagining as a child. As he matured, he became worse.”

His curiosity piqued, Wyl could not help but ask more about the strange, dark little man in the mountains. “Why didn’t he possess the secret you did?”

“We have different skills. Mine are based in nature and living things. He has…well, other talents. His magic is what I would call black. It is frightening, and with his twisted mind wielding it, it would be the darkest of weapons.”

“But he could learn your magic?”

“Oh yes,” the Manwitch answered. “As I could his. He offered me all of it—every answer to every question—if I’d give him the secret of the beasts.”

“Why did he want this so badly?”

“To command them, I suspect.”

“To do what?”

Elysius smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “He would rule the land if he could.”

Wyl looked at him incredulously. “You mean as a sovereign…a usurper.”

“Beyond. Why not Emperor? Why not Lord High King of the three realms, just for a start. He would look to Parrgamyn and further. With all that power at his disposal, he could control all of us.”

“Why hasn’t he tried to do something like this already. Surely if he can call up storms, he can wreak all sorts of havoc.”

Elysius nodded thoughtfully. “I think my brother is losing his wits. I noticed it all those years ago when we were still together. There would be periods when he was not lucid.”

“He’s mad—is that what you mean?”

“Insane. I sense his madness is getting worse. And he will know this, of course, so I suspect he will seek to influence instead and this is perhaps why we now find him in the Razors working with Cailech. You said you sensed that he had an unhealthy control over the Mountain King. This is likely Rashlyn beginning to exercise his dark influence over a powerful man. If he can control Cailech, he can wreak havoc.”

“Was he like this as a younger man?”

“He could not control me—my mind was closed to him. Rashlyn always did crave power but never had it. Youngest son, you see. And as much as my father was uncomfortable with our powers, he loved me and I him. His relationship with Rashlyn was strained from early childhood. My father sensed the darkness in his youngest son, often talked to me about it and whether I could somehow work my powers on my brother to stem his powers.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Elysius cringed somewhat. “It seemed cruel at the time. He had so little going for him and I seemed to have it all. But as we got older I realized my mistake and by then it was too late. He was far too suspicious of me. I’m surprised he took as long as he did to exercise his power over me, to tell the truth. We had little love for each other.”

“Could you not”—Wyl searched for the right words—“prevent him from using his magics on you?”

“Shield myself from his powers, you mean?”

“I don’t know what would be the right expression,” Wyl admitted.

“It has taken me years to learn his ‘scent.’ That’s how I describe magic, being able to sense the wielder’s characteristics.”

“And so you can—what, feel him using his powers?”

“You could describe it that way, yes,” Elysius replied. “He is up to dark things, Wyl, and it bodes badly for all of us…all of Morgravia and Briavel, even for the Mountain Kingdom he ostensibly serves.”

“Can he sense you?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. He thinks I’m dead, remember, and I use my magic fleetingly these days. I also suspect that the use in my magic out in the Wild is somehow masked. The Thicket filters sentient activity. I can sense him, in other words, but he can’t sense me.”

“Why wouldn’t he have recognized me in Koreldy’s form?”

“Because of the Thicket… it has subtle powers, most of which even I am not privy to. It is my belief that it has protected you.”

Wyl had the feeling that Elysius was not being entirely forthright but decided it was more urgent to focus on the central details of Elysius’s story. Rashlyn was not important to Wyl—or so it seemed to him—and he pressed on to get the full tale of Elysius’s finding himself in the Wild. “So tell me what happened after your father asked you to stem your brother’s magic.”

“I lied and said that I couldn’t. I was too young and stupid to realize how that would come back and bite me. My father’s relationship with Rashlyn was nonexistent by the end.”

“The end?”

“Yes, sorry, we’ve been jumping about, haven’t we? After my father discovered my relationship with Emil, he banished me to Parrgamyn, to live without my family. Leaving Morgravia, our home, was punishment enough, but to be without my family—he knew how much it would hurt. My parents did not know that Emil was pregnant, of course, but Rashlyn suspected as much. He also guessed that I wouldn’t return to our place of birth permanently. I rather liked Morgravia and I especially enjoyed the south, where it’s green and filled with meadows and woodland. Parrgamyn is more arid, you see.” Wyl nodded. “Anyway, in my anger I carelessly boasted to Rashlyn that I would jump ship and escape back into Morgravia. I recklessly thought he might help. Quite the opposite, he began to blackmail me. He threatened to tell our father of my intention unless I gave him the secret of the beasts.” Elysius laughed, but there was little amusement in it. “I refused to relinquish the secret, despite his threat.”

“So what happened?” Wyl prompted.

“I had given my parents the promise that I would return to Parrgamyn, but I had every intention of returning to Morgravia after a suitable period. I think my father knew this but chose not to acknowledge it. And so I dutifully took the ship home from Brightstone, but we’d barely gotten out of the port into the deeper waters to sail around the Razors toward Grenadyn when Rashlyn wove a brilliantly dark and evil concoction of spells to capsize the ship I was on. I imagine he hoped I would drown with the rest of the unfortunates on that sailing—ninety souls were lost that day—but I miraculously remained afloat, although the freezing waters of the north would have surely killed me. With my last remaining strength, I summoned a wind and cast my luck with it. I remember very little of that wild night, but when I regained consciousness, I had washed up on a tiny beach in the far north.

“But this is how cunning Rashlyn is, Wyl. He took the precaution that should I survive, I would never be able to live in a normal society again. He cast his second devastating spell.” Elysius sighed. “Death would have been easier and my brother knew this; he understood my love for poetry and literature, knew I would suffer without the social contact I thrived on.”

“And this is the result of his work…this guise you wear?”

Elysius nodded. “A sea eagle showed me through her eyes how I now appeared. And I had lost my sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell.” Elysius fixed his nonseeing gaze on a faraway spot and recalled that difficult time. “With the sea eagle’s help, I navigated my way into the foothills of the Razors, and then using a variety of animals for my lost senses, I skirted the mountains for several weeks. I was in shock—I had nowhere to go and was so terrified of being seen that I had to avoid all humanity. My friends, the animals, whispered to me of a place—an enchanted place—called the Wild, where no person dared go. I begged them to take me there…and so they did. I’ve lived here since.”

“The spell cannot be lifted?”

“Not with any magic I own,” he answered ruefully, “though I have tried, Wyl, I have tried.”

“We are both cursed, then.”

“You speak true,” Elysius admitted. “You are only the third person I have met since I came here.”

“And Fynch is the second, so that means…ah, yes, of course, Emil. I remember now, the Boatkeeper gave me her name, but I didn’t make the connection…so Myrren’s mother came to you?”

“Yes. She braved the Thicket and the Darkstream to find me.”

“How did she know where to find you if everyone thought you were lost?”

“I shouldn’t have but I used a seer I knew to seek her out.”

“Widow Ilyk!” Wyl cried, hushing himself for fear of waking Fynch.

The Manwitch nodded. “I knew she was safe to use because her powers were weak. Whatever enhancement I added by opening myself up to her would not make her dangerous—I believed she would take only what she needed to make herself more skilled in her craft.”

Wyl wrapped Ylena’s thin arms about her elbows and shivered. “Tell me about the widow.”

“Well, she and I had met on several occasions during a couple of her visits through the southern region and once in Pearlis. I had always liked her and so I took the chance. I cast myself wide and was able to reach out and find her. Naturally, she was amazed to hear my voice in her head, but she was a believer of magic, so I suppose she overcame her fright rapidly. She agreed to find Emil and give her a message. And in return she took some of my power—not very much, she was not greedy—which allowed her to become very gifted with her sight.”

Wyl sipped the strongly brewed tea. “Extraordinary.”

“Emil came. She was shocked, terrified, of course, by the state I was in. I learned of my daughter and she learned that the child she bore me might be cursed with the same magics. She could neither bear to look upon me nor stay longer than the hour she already had. All my hopes of finding some love or companionship again evaporated the moment I saw the revulsion in her face. With some help from me she was able to navigate her way back through the Thicket safely without the Boatkeeper noting her return, and I have had no further contact with her. I’m presuming she never told anyone that I was still alive.”

Wyl shook his head. “I imagine not. How did Myrren react to learning the man she called father was not her real one.”

Elysius grimaced. “It was as if she’d suspected as much all her life and yet how could she have? Nevertheless, she took the news calmly when I finally found the courage to speak with her in the dungeon—it felt almost like relief, in fact, to tell her the truth. The next time we spoke, it was very brief, and occurred after her torture, so she was near enough dead anyway. She told me she wanted vengeance on the Prince through you. I think she believed you might relish it. I could not refuse her.”

“Her gift seems to be more suited to her uncle’s magic, if you don’t mind my saying so, although I’m presuming you both share some powers.”

“You’re right on both counts. There are certain skills we can both wield. And it might be that Myrren did inherit some of our combined magic and that when she took my power, she corrupted it with the sort of dark twist Rashlyn would use. She made the conditions of the gift, not 1.1 simply channeled her the power to achieve her desire.”

“And so I have no choice in this. My destiny is mapped out,” Wyl said into the gloom of the dying embers.

“You also have no choice in making it happen, Wyl. Remember this, you cannot force death. It does not work that way. Myrren’s Gift has its own momentum, its own force, you could say. You do not control it; it controls you.”

Wyl shook his head. “So if I asked Celimus to stick his blade in my belly, the gift won’t work.”

Elysius shook his head slowly. “What’s more, it will make you pay a penalty. Those were my conditions—I couldn’t have you running around begging influential people to kill you. Now that I know you, I realize you would never do such a thing. Power is not what you crave. You cannot welcome death through someone else and thus maneuver it to your own ends. The gift is subject to the whims and fancies of the world around it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I do not use my power for dark purposes, and this vengeance—which I was obliged to provide—had a blackness to it that went against the spirit of my magic. So I made sure that although you could not control the gift yourself, it was subject to choice.”

“Other people’s choices, you mean?”

“Exactly. Death must visit you because the perpetrator decides it, not because you or the gift does. People will influence how the magic applies itself, in other words.”

“And that made it all right in your mind?” Wyl asked, aghast, his tone leaden with disgust.

Elysius felt his anger and frustration. “It made it easier, Wyl, that’s all. I thought that if others had some choice in the matter, you might be spared.”