Chapter 50 Caspia
Fifty
Caspia
S onnet’s Ninety lay open on the desk in my carrel.
I’d finished reading the tale of the ancient battle between the Six and the pythoness for what had to be the hundredth time.
A tale of good against evil. Light battling the dark.
In those moments, you’ll learn who you truly are.
Hain’s words kept coming back to me as often as I came back to this story.
Was there more to that statement than wisdom? Was he talking about me?
Who, exactly, was the pythoness?
A loud bang sounded from beyond the closed door, and I abandoned my reading, hurrying outside and into the hallway.
Faxon and a female tutor about my age were hurrying to close a large window that had blown open. The wind had been raging for hours, its gusts slamming against the castle. A cloud of dust burst through the open panes, and the taste of dirt spread across my tongue as the grit snuck into my eyes.
“Hurry,” Faxon ordered, pushing his side of the window closed as the tutor did the same on hers. The moment it was latched, both sagged against the panes.
Beyond the glass, leaves streaked through the air and the trees whipped from side to side, their branches in a frenzy.
“It’s all right,” the tutor told her students, who were all staring wide-eyed outside. “Back to your work. It’s only the wind.”
Faxon double-checked the window’s latch, then came over, still panting from the exertion. “I don’t like the wind. There’s a reason I am not a gardener or soldier or fisherman. I’ll stay inside and out of the elements, thank you very much.”
I laughed. “Well, if that window opens again, leave it to me. I don’t mind the wind.”
The Starling believed that winds were a good omen. My aunt loved to find a strong current and let it carry her to the stars.
“You leave the window to me,” Faxon said. “It’s bad enough you’re in that tiny carrel. I will not have you worrying about the windows.”
“I happen to like my tiny carrel.”
He sighed, still peeved that he couldn’t talk me into somewhere more appropriate for a lady, but we both knew I wasn’t going to budge.
With a wink, I left him to return to his duties while I went back to my reading, propping the carrel’s door open to listen to the wind outside.
The words on the page of the book blurred together as I let my eyes lose focus and my mind wander.
If the evil magicians from the gray book were in fact the Six, then who was the pythoness? In Sonnet’s recount, she’d amassed a terrible army to conquer Calandra.
What if she wasn’t the villain in this tale? If the Six were demons of the Infernal, maybe the pythoness was fighting against their magic. Maybe Sonnet had reversed their roles in his story because he’d been a believer in the Eight.
But I was not a believer.
I was a seeker of truths.
A figure appeared in the doorway, crashing into its frame so hard I gasped.
“Hain?” I shot out of my seat, about to rush to his side, but he held up a hand, bony fingers splayed wide.
“I’m all right.” The Voster closed the door and shuffled to the empty chair. He collapsed in the seat, and with his eyes closed, he breathed for a few long moments.
His skin was not its normal pale white. There was color in his cheeks, and sweat dampened his hairless head.
“Are you sick?”
He shook his head. “No. But I don’t have long.”
“Okay.” I clasped my hands on the edge of my desk, waiting.
There wasn’t a hint of magic in the room, not even a trace of that pressure or its presence.
He was suppressing it again to save me the pain.
“I can endure it,” I said, knowing he’d understand what I was talking about.
But Hain shook his head as he swallowed hard, keeping his eyes closed as he spoke. “When we met last, we spoke of magicians.”
“Yes. They took their power from the Infernal’s demons and became the Six. They cursed this land.”
“Was evil victorious?”
“I don’t know. I suppose.” I glanced between him and the gray book, a constant companion on my desk. “Unless I misunderstood your story.”
“It is not my story. It is yours.” Every word was pained, his voice hoarse.
My story. How was this my story? I swallowed hard, sliding Sonnet’s Ninety closer. “There is a tale in this book about the Six. They battled a pythoness and her army. After they defeated her, they went to the shades.”
The corner of Hain’s mouth turned up. I suspected it was as close to a smile as I’d ever get. “I was right to choose you.”
“Choose me? What do you—”
“Who was the pythoness? Who would have opposed the magicians?” he asked.
“You never call them the Six.”
“I do not believe in the Six. Answer my question.”
I blew out a long breath, sagging in my seat. “I don’t know. This is the only story I’ve come across that mentions a pythoness. Anything else in the library that has tales about soothsayers is fiction.”
“Caspia.” It was the first time he said my name, and it sent a chill down my spine. “You came to Calandra for a reason, did you not?”
Yes. To avenge Emery and go through the ritus. But I hadn’t told Hain about my sister. “H-how did you know that?”
He didn’t answer. He stayed slumped in that chair, his head resting against the back. His breaths became deeper, and with his eyes closed, I worried he’d fallen asleep.
But the silence gave me time to replay everything he’d said. To take each word and hold it up to a mirror. To flip it around in my mind, examine it at all angles.
My story. Mine. A Starling who had followed her ritus to this land. And who’d seen a vision of her sister’s death. A vision in which Emery had been a monster.
My story.
Not me. My bloodline.
“Was the pythoness a Starling?” I spoke so quietly I was certain he hadn’t heard.
Hain’s eyes popped open.
“The Starling fought the magicians. Were they victorious?”
“Yes.” He nodded, pushing himself up straight. The effort seemed to zap all of his strength, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “There are things I cannot say. I have drained my magic as best I could, but even the frayed remains will keep me bound to the oaths of long ago.”
“The wind. That was you?” I looked to the wall like I could see through it to the windows. It had been howling for hours, since long before I awoke this morning.
Just how much power did he have?
“But you still have blood. Isn’t that what binds the oaths?”
“Not when an oath is sworn between the brotherhood. We are bound by magic.” He closed his eyes again. “You must ask me the right questions. That will be the only way I can answer. I can’t speak the words myself.”
The right questions.
My heart started to race. I opened the gray book, furiously flipping through the pages. “If the magicians lost their battle against the Starling, something would have happened to them. They would have been imprisoned or…executed?”
Hain sighed. “The Voster send our people to the sea when they die.”
“So the magicians were sent to the sea?”
He frowned.
Wrong question.
“What do you do with your dead?” he asked.
“We burn them on funeral pyres, and the ashes are sealed in glass orbits. We keep them in temples.” Oh. “The magicians were burned and their remains sealed.”
Hain’s shoulders relaxed.
The right question.
I stared at the wood grains on my desk, letting my mind wander. “But if the magicians were defeated, why would the Starling leave Calandra? How did this continent become cursed?”
He stayed quiet.
So I could answer my own question.
“The magic remained. The magicians themselves were destroyed, but the magic wasn’t. It lingered and became a part of Calandra. It is the reason for its wrongness.”
And that magic had to be the reason my own body had changed. The reason my blood was now green.
Magic was poison to the Starling. And to the swift.
“From what I have read, it did not happen immediately. For a time, there was peace.” Each word was spoken through gritted teeth, like he was testing the limits of his bond.
“There are books about this?”
“Not anymore,” he murmured.
Was it the Voster who had destroyed those books? Or people who worshiped the Infernal?
“Okay.” I rubbed my temples. “So the magic must have seeped from their orbits. And as it spread, like a tree taking root, it cursed the land and chased the Starling away.”
To Nelfinex.
“When? This must have been countless summers ago. Long before the migrations or the Voster coming here. This would have been…”
The beginning. The origin.
The story of how the Starling came to Nelfinex. The start of my family’s dynasty in Kenn.
An age ago.
Divine. It was a good thing I was sitting.
“If the Six were defeated, how are they now revered as gods?” Why would Sonnet reverse the roles of good and evil?
“Just because they were dead does not mean the Six were forgotten. Without light to balance dark, we become children of the night.”
The nuance of this story must have taken a new shape over time. Truths had been forgotten. Manipulated. If my ancestors had become monsters, trapped in the form of beasts, it made sense that people would have turned on them.
“So to save themselves and the people of Calandra, they sailed away. They fled these shores.”
And magicians were martyred until they were known as gods.
In a way, this meant the myths were true.
The Six had created monsters.
Bariwolves. Fenek. Kaverine. Alligasks. Grizzurs. Tarkin.
But not the swift.
Those, my ancestors had found in Nelfinex. And hundreds of summers ago, after delivering Hain and his brothers to this land, one had returned home, only to leave a trail for the others to follow for migration.
“Why didn’t the Starling destroy the orbits, if they feared the magic was still alive?”
“That, I do not know,” Hain said.
Maybe it was as simple as not knowing how. “If the orbits are destroyed, will the magic cease?”
Was this how I saved Xandra?
Hain didn’t answer—couldn’t answer. He simply stared at me.
It was confirmation enough.
All this time, I’d been reading books, searching for clues, questioning Calandra’s history. And all this time, it had been linked to my own.
My heart raced. Hope surged. By the grace of the Divine.
Could we purge the magic? If the migration came but the curse was gone, then everyone in this continent would see the swift as they were.
I sat taller. “Where are the orbits kept?”
He shook his head.
My mind began to whirl, spinning so fast I couldn’t keep my train of thought. If we couldn’t find them, then there would be no saving Xandra. No curing Calandra. “If the Starling chose the locations, could a Starling find them?”
“It is possible.”
“And that is why you are here, isn’t it?
Because I am the only Starling in Calandra.
You’ve searched for them. You’ve tried to find them.
And you can’t.” Other than Xandra, but she wasn’t going to be much help.
“Let’s say that I did find the orbits. That I found a way to destroy them, too.
That would fundamentally alter Calandra, wouldn’t it?
The Voster would no longer have magic. Why would you want that? ”
Hain looked to his hands and empty palms. “I cannot remember my daughters’ faces. I have forgotten what it feels like to love. To grieve. To live. Light and dark. Good and evil. My people across the Marixmore are suffering, yes?”
“Yes.”
“We have ignored it long enough. We let tyranny win by fleeing Kenn.” His eyes turned glassy. “You have much to consider, Starling. There will be those who oppose you.”
“Your brothers?”
“Among others. Many kings have come to rely upon our blood oaths and treaties. And yes, my brothers will not give up their power willingly.”
“Even if it means an end to the slaughter of the migrations?”
“They do not even care about the lives of their people. Why would they give up magic for humans?”
This was the reason for his secrecy. For insisting that I never attempt to contact him again. To hide my truths. The Voster would sooner see me dead than risk the chance of me destroying the source of their power.
“Brother Nold.” A bolt of terror raced through my veins. “He knows that I am Starling. He—”
“Is not a threat. But trust no other.”
An irritation raced up my forearms. It was more of a burn than the normal sting and prickle of his magic, but I rubbed at it all the same.
“My magic returns.” He sounded disappointed. “I must go.”
“Will I see you again?”
He was barely able to stand from the chair, and once on his feet, he swayed, nearly toppling over as he shuffled to open the door.
“Let me help you.” I stood and rounded the desk, but when I reached for him, he waved me off.
“There is no helping me now, child. This quest is yours.”
“Will you be all right? Will your magic return?”
“By the grace of the Divine, I will fulfill my destiny.” He clutched at his stomach, wincing at an invisible pain. It passed after a moment, and he stood tall. “Farewell, Starling.”
“I—” A lump formed in my throat. I pressed two fingertips to my forehead, silently vowing to make his sacrifice worthwhile. “Farewell, Hain.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his gaze difficult to follow, but it seemed to fix on my hair. Then he hurried away with uncoordinated steps, nearly tripping over his robes, until he disappeared around a corner and was lost.
Silence filled the carrel.
When I walked into the hallway and glanced out the windows, the wind was gone.