CHAPTER 18 #2
“The options are endless,” she beams, clearly pleased by that fact as she bounces excitedly, listing every choice in alphabetical order.
It takes an hour to agree that the cake will be made in the shape of a woodland mushroom, frosted in a thick layer of blue with maroon spots on the cap. Apparently this particular fungi is an old favorite of the fea, eaten with lively enthusiasm and only mildly intoxicating.
Awri and I go back and forth debating flavors and when I give up on offering my opinion the female begins arguing with herself.
Even the general starts to look sorry for me when he finally offers, “Chocolate.” It’s all he says, but it’s enough to silence Awri into short-lived contemplation before she narrows her eyes at him.
“Don’t you have something better to do?” she says playfully.
“There are many things I should be doing,” he admits, “but I’m beginning to doubt your ability to complete the task the king set out for you.”
She levels him with a glare, and I’m proud of her when his feet shift beneath him and he begins to walk toward the door.
“Make it chocolate. It’s his favorite,” he says over his shoulder.
“I’m his favorite,” Awri retorts.
“I’m quite sure that’s no longer true,” he replies.
Awri chuckles as he turns the corner, and she doesn’t waste a second before writing ‘chocolate’ in her elegant scroll work at the top of the sheet.
When Awri makes it through the rest of the stack by early afternoon, I can’t help but marvel at the general’s tactics pertaining to his friend’s planning.
Like Awri, the male is obviously a master of the craft of social maneuvering. A fact I tuck away.
Her earlier worry over Kishek never fully leaves her eyes and without a task to occupy her mind it becomes more evident that he is at the forefront of her thoughts. Rubbing her palm against her sternum, she excuses herself to check on him, giving me free reign of the palace.
Intent on taking the reprieve to bundle a few more satchels of Kishek’s tea, my feet take me to the kitchens.
A young human, about my age, with golden curls and dark eyes opens the door.
A waft of fragrant herbs and cooked meats churns my stomach and it growls. She chuckles sweetly and invites me in.
Media is exactly as I expect, rhythmic creak following every push of her heel as her chair rocks away from the fire and back again. She doesn’t turn to greet me, but casts her eyes in my direction, nonetheless.
“Glad to see you’ve returned so soon.” She smiles and knocks the leg of the empty chair beside her with her cane. “Come and join me.”
I glide into the seat, tucking my legs beneath the thin fabric of my dress. She makes no effort to hide her thorough inspection of me, her eyes dragging over my body when my stomach growls again.
“Sera, a bowl of stew for our guest, please.”
The young girl is quick to bring a steaming bowl with a fat slice of heavily buttered bread. She dips her head when I thank her, then makes herself busy rolling out a thick sheet of dough on the blocky table sitting in the center of the kitchen.
“Sera is my granddaughter,” Media explains.
“She has your eyes,” I say, blowing on the hot stew.
The woman smiles fondly at the girl and nods in agreement.
“The general tells me you knew Awri and Riesh as children,” I say.
“I did. Not as well behaved as my own children. They’d hardly begun to walk when their mother disappeared beyond the southern border of La’tari. Their father left them in the hands of the king and relinquished his title as general to go in search of her.”
Her eyes fall to the wrinkled hands in her lap, and she turns them over beneath her gaze.
“He never did find her,” she says sadly. “Funny, what events borne by the fates lay outside of our control. The male left to find his mate, the female he’d lived alongside for centuries, and returned instead with a ship full of frail humans, missing a piece of his soul.”
I take a bite of my stew, the robust flavor lost to the bitter tale spilling from the woman’s lips.
“He went back for years, so many times, always in search of her. Always returning with a ship full of mortals, desperate to flee the very shores they were born upon.”
She stares off into the fire for a moment, watching the flames lick the sappy logs as they pop in the hearth.
“It took something from him, returning without her all those times. Years of hopeful searching turned bitter, and when it became clear she would never return, all we could do was hope that, for her sake, he was wrong when he assured us that she still lived.”
“Why would you hope that?” I ask.
“It is better than the alternative,” she says.
“What alternative?”
“What the La’tari have always done to the feyn.” Her brow draws down, and she looks at me as if I just asked the most ridiculous question she’s ever heard. “Hold her, break her, and force her to use her gift to aid them.”
I set my bowl of stew aside, my appetite suddenly absent my body. A small ember of rage flickers to light deep inside me. They’d spent a lifetime spewing hateful tales into this woman’s ears and now she believes every lie she’s been fed.
“The La’tari never kept feyn prisoners,” I assure her, “Not even during the war.”
“According to whom? What exactly do you think started the war, child?”
I bristle at being called a child. I might be much younger in years, but it is quickly becoming clear I have more experience on the southern shores and a far greater understanding of how the mortal kings ruled La’tari in the past.
“The war started when the feyn invaded our shores, killing every soul in their path, man, woman, and child.” It takes every bit of my restraint to keep the rising heat from my voice. “All so they could strip the resources from our land and bring them here, to their people.”
“What resources would those be?” she asks.
“The gifted stripped the land of its fertility,” I explain, “and now La’tari is little more than a barren wasteland. Crops won’t grow; water is scarce. Entire families starve, unable to grow food to feed themselves.”
A part of me feels bad for her. She left her homeland before the feyn came to ravage it and never saw for herself the devastation they left in their wake.
I stiffen in my seat when she cackles hoarsely.
“Is that what they teach now? That land was barren long before my great grandfather was born into this world.” She shakes her head at me.
“Mortal lives are short, and our memories even shorter. It is a great boon to those who wish to enslave our minds and rewrite our histories.”
“What reason would humans have to rewrite their own history?” I argue, hoping she can see reason.
“Not humans. The Vatruke.” My heart nearly stills as the word falls from her lips.
“What are the Vatruke?” I ask, not caring if she decides I am completely ignorant.
Her eyebrows shoot up and she replies, “I never expected the Vatruke to fall from the memories of the La’tari. It is they that bleed our soil of the essence of Terr.” She taps the leg of my chair with her cane, and asks, “What do you know of the sundering?”
“As much as any La’tari child.”
She puffs out a dissatisfied harrumph. “If what you’ve shared with me so far is any indication of the rest of your education, I’ll recommend that Xeyvian supply you with a history tutor, and a good one at that.”
I try not to glare at the woman as she begins her tale, “The lifeforce of Terr has always been precious to the feyn. Shivay, they call it. The world soul. The light of all life. It is the essence they draw upon to access their gifts.
When mortals first found the feyn, they feared what they did not understand. Some things don’t change much over time. No matter how many years pass, man never ceases to fear the unknown,” she adds, absentmindedly.
“We have always been too quick to pass judgment, and irrational in our fear of what is new. Back then, the feyn were powerful beyond what you or I can likely comprehend. They had access to the whole soul of Terr, not the shredded bit of what’s been left in this veil.
The feyn fought for years to establish peace with us, to build a world where fea and mortals could dwell happily alongside one another. But the prejudice of our kind saw them as little more than creatures and treated them as such. It wasn’t long before humans began to hunt the fea.”
“Humans have never been strong enough to hunt fea,” I argue.
“You think not? The Drakai hunt them, even to this day.”
My stomach twists at the mention of my people. She isn’t wrong, but most Drakai are raised from birth to survive an encounter with the feyn and precious few make it back from such a mission.
“The fea may be more powerful than us,” she continues, “but they also have a reverence for life that mortals could never obtain in a life so fleeting.
When it became clear there would never be peace between them, the most powerful among the fea gathered to discuss what could be done.
The first utterance of the sundering was born that night—an agreement to separate Terr into five veils where fea could live alongside mortals, each unknown to the other.
But the soul of Terr had to be divided among the five veils of our world, and it weakened the fea.
Most fea followed the path to a new world, eager to leave the humans and their wars behind, but some remained, the Vatruke among them.”
“You still haven’t told me what they are.”
“Patience, child. I’m getting to that,” she says with a tsk. “The Vatruke rebelled at the loss of their power and have done all they can to reclaim it ever since.”
“The Vatruke are fea?”
“They are a small group of feyn, powerful long ago. I suppose they may still be just that, but it’s hard to say what one becomes after many lifetimes of hatred and a lust for power and vengeance.”
“If the Vatruke are what you claim, wouldn’t they hate the humans? Why would they be working with the La’tari?” I ask.