Chapter 37 Caspia
Thirty-Seven
Caspia
The world returned with a fuzzy focus as I awoke to shouting. Rainbows from the crystal chandeliers sparkled on the ceiling. The light reflected off the swirls painted on the ceiling in gold. So much gold.
Andreas’s angry voice carried across the library. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
“Andreas.” Faxon was calm but firm. “Your anger is not helping the situation.”
“Answer me, Brother Nold,” Andreas barked.
“I did nothing.” The priest’s tone was soft and enthralling. As smooth as a silken sheet. It was like a lullaby threatening to lure me back to sleep.
Except with that voice came the prickle on my skin and a dull ache through my head. It wasn’t as overpowering as it had been earlier, but it was strong enough to rouse me fully awake.
I pushed up off the stiff divan where I was lying, taking in the quiet alcove.
It was a reading nook with shelves built into the walls.
Across the space was a window overlooking a row of trimmed hedges in the castle’s gardens.
And in the center of the room was a small desk with a high-backed velvet chair in the same coral shade as the divan.
Kos sat on the opposite end of the sofa. At my movement, he straightened and cupped his hands over his mouth. “She’s awake.”
I winced as he yelled, the noise only making my headache worse.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied as Andreas rushed into the alcove, his expression panicked and worried.
He dropped to his knees beside the divan, taking my face in his hands. “You’re all right?”
I nodded, gritting my teeth against the constant sting. I was too cold and too hot. Lightheaded and queasy. “The Velvi’os-telfer. Where is he?”
Andreas didn’t need to answer. As the awful sensation spiked, I knew Brother Nold was coming this way.
“Stop.” I squeezed my eyes closed. “Please. Don’t let him come any closer.”
“I will not let him hurt you,” Andreas said. “You’re safe.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s…”
The magic. It had to be the magic making me sick. It felt like poison sliding over my flesh, flowing through my veins.
I forced my eyes open, but the world was spinning too fast. Then I lowered my voice, not wanting Kos to overhear. “It hurts to be close to the priest.”
Andreas’s forehead furrowed, but he didn’t argue. He twisted over his shoulder as Faxon approached with the priest not far behind. “Go back to the desk. Both of you.”
Brother Nold backed away immediately.
Faxon hesitated, then nodded, motioning for Kos to follow him out of the nook.
I waited until we were alone, until Andreas shifted to sit on the divan at my side, then breathed. The pain was still there but bearable now that the priest was gone.
“All this time, I’ve wondered if anyone from Kenn has come to Calandra. I thought it would be a Starling or explorer. I didn’t expect it to be the Velvi’os-telfer. Or I guess here you’d call them…”
“Voster,” Andreas finished for me. “You know them?”
“I’ve never met one myself. They are nomads, and most live in hiding. They were driven from their homeland ages ago after they lost a war with the country Beesa.”
Was that how the Beesan dialect, Andreas’s old language, had come to Calandra? From the Voster?
“According to our history books, the war started because of their religion. Their beliefs did not align with that of the Beesan king, and for that, he decided they were an abomination. Mostly, I think he was a power-hungry tyrant who saw an opportunity to expand his country. His descendants are ruthless.”
Religious persecution was simply the guise for slaughter and invasion. I didn’t know much about the Voster faith and who they worshiped. As Nestlings, our focus in education was about our own traditions, our own beliefs, not forgotten cultures.
“Who do they worship in Calandra?” I asked Andreas, though I suspected the answer.
“Ama and Oda.” He signed the Eight. “And the Six.”
How long had the Voster been here? Had they adopted the Calandran religion or brought their own to this continent? How had they escaped Beesa?
How did they have magic?
“I must talk to Brother Nold.” The notion of being in the same room as him made my insides twist, but there was no other way.
“No, not if it hurts you.”
“It’s better with some distance. I can’t feel it now that he’s gone.”
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know. In Kenn, the Voster don’t have powers. At least, not that I know about.” I couldn’t imagine they would have lost the war otherwise. “I’ve never heard of any being that could make a book float in the air.”
“The priests have fluid magic. They can manipulate water and wind and blood.”
Magic. I was really starting to hate that word. “That must be what I can feel. It’s like insects crawling on my skin. Like being poked by a thousand needles.”
If I could feel it but the Calandrans couldn’t, then it was either because I was a Starling or because I came from Nelfinex. Maybe what gave them their starbursts protected them from the Voster magic.
Andreas put his arm around my shoulders, hauling me into his side. He kissed my hair, then stood, helping me to my feet, steadying me as I swayed. “We’re leaving. I don’t want you around him.”
“Not yet. I must speak with him.”
“Caspia—”
“I have to understand.” I clutched Andreas’s arm. “I could spend my life in this library and never find answers. Brother Nold might be the only way.”
Andreas dragged a hand over his face. “All right. Let me talk to Faxon.”
I sank to the edge of the divan, hands clasped in my lap as he left the alcove.
Did the Voster in Calandra know their people across the Marixmore were all but extinct? Did my aunt know they lived here, too? That they had magic?
It didn’t take long for Andreas to return. He walked to me, holding out a hand. “Faxon has an idea. Come on.”
He led me through the library toward an iron spiral staircase in a dim corner. We climbed to the second-level mezzanine, passing column after column of bookshelves as we circled the atrium, only stopping once we hit a wall.
Below us were the gilded double doors, both closed. We stood at the railing, staring out over the library below, until Faxon emerged across the atrium with Brother Nold.
They took up a position mirroring ours. The prickling sensation returned, but with the open air between us, it was tolerable.
“The acoustics are strange in this part of the library,” Faxon said. “It’s nice that when I need a text from over there, I don’t have to yell.”
He was far enough away that he should have had to shout. But at his normal volume, I could hear him as if he were standing at my side.
“I’ll leave you to talk.” Faxon nodded to the priest, then disappeared into the stacks.
“I am sorry for any pain and discomfort I have caused.” Brother Nold pressed his hands together as he bowed.
“Would you mind if I asked you some questions, Brother Nold?”
“Ask, child.”
I took a deep breath and looked up at Andreas. “I need to speak to Brother Nold—”
“Alone.” He finished my sentence and kissed my temple. “If you need me, I’ll be downstairs.”
My heart started to race as I stared at Brother Nold. “You know I am from the continent Kenn.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It has been a long, long time since I heard anyone call me Velvi’os-telfer.”
“How long?”
“Since the war. So many summers I have lost count.”
The wars had started over four hundred summers ago and had lasted generations. “How is that possible?”
Brother Nold looked to his side, to a table with two wooden chairs. He lifted his hand, and one of the chairs rose from the floor. He floated it close and set it down. Then he took a seat, his burgundy robes pooling to cover his feet. “How did you come to Calandra?”
“On a ship.”
“You were called here, weren’t you? The ritus. You are Starling. It has been a long, long time since I’ve seen someone with a Starling’s gold eyes.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “But my ritus failed. I didn’t shift.”
“You will.” It sounded like an omen of death.
What I’d wanted for so long, to become Starling, now seemed like my doom.
“The journey from Kenn to Calandra is impossible for most. This land is small compared to Kenn. Any error in navigation means a sailor could pass by without even knowing it’s here. Without your ritus call, I suspect you would not have found it, either.”
“Is that how you came here?”
“I am Voster. We have no ritus. But we escaped the wars thanks to the help of three of your Starling ancestors.”
“They came here. And left?”
“Only one. The other two… Their Starling lives were claimed by this land.”
My mind raced at how they might have died. No, not died. Their Starling lives were claimed. “They shifted. And could not shift back.”
Brother Nold cocked his head to the side. “You did not come here alone.”
“No,” I whispered. “My cousin, Xandra, came with me. She changed into a bariwolf. Then tried to kill me.”
“Ah.”
“What happened to them? The Starling who led you here?”
“There was no choice. It was our death or theirs.”
I swallowed hard. “And the third?”
“She flew away and left us to our peace.”
“As a swift?”
Brother Nold nodded.
“So there is hope.” I pressed a hand to my heart as it swelled, the hope in my chest bringing me nearly to tears.
“Do not hope,” he warned. “She was an old and powerful Starling, yet even she could not shift back to her human form. She killed for months. Every human she encountered was sent to the shades. We do not know that she returned to Nelfinex. We only gave thanks when she was gone.”
She must have returned to Nelfinex. She must have found a way home.
And she was likely the reason it was forbidden for Starling to come to Calandra. Because hundreds of summers ago, a Starling came to this continent and became a monster. A crux.
She was the catalyst for our law.
What else had she started?
“Did the crux migrate to Calandra before you arrived?” I asked.
“No.”
By the grace of the Divine.
The swift had a keen sense of smell. They were territorial birds with a deep connection to the Starling, more so than any other creature on Nelfinex.
Something about that journey to bring the Voster here must have changed their migration patterns. My ancestors had led them to a new breeding ground.
Here, the crux were terrors. Here, the Voster had powers. Here, the Starling were monsters.
Why? What was different about Calandra?
Magic.
“You made those books float,” I said. “How?”
“How is it the Starling blood allows you to transform? I do not know why we were gifted this magic when we reached this land.”
“Have you ever returned to Beesa?” I asked.
“No.” He dropped his chin. “We cannot return. It is sworn.”
“To who? The Calandrans?”
Brother Nold ran a finger the width of his pale lips and didn’t answer.
“Andreas said that you are an emissary to the king.”
“Yes, child. The brotherhood strives to ensure that what has happened in Kenn does not repeat itself in Calandra.”
“You mean the war and the persecution of your people.”
He nodded.
I wanted to ask more about his magic. About his role in Quentis and what exactly it meant to be a part of the brotherhood. But the sting of his magic was beginning to sink deeper beneath my skin. The ache in my head was returning with a vengeance. “Why does your magic hurt?”
“Because you are Starling. You are not meant to be here.”
“But I’m not Starling. Not yet.”
“Yet you feel it.”
I nodded and pressed a hand over my heart and the thrum within.
“Go, child. Leave Calandra. Before it’s too late.” Brother Nold stood and bowed, then was gone. When the prickle of his magic faded and I could breathe fully, when my head stopped spinning, I knew he’d left the library.
And I knew, without question, I would not see him again.