Chapter 9 #2
It took blood to inscribe...which always stole a bit too much of Kinlear’s strength. More than he liked to admit, but it was the best he could offer his kingdom. The true act of fighting in war would never be meant for him.
But as he lifted his blade, Magus placed a hand upon his arm. “No blade. Today, we discuss a different sort of weapon: your dreams.”
Kinlear sighed.
He’d told Magus about them weeks ago, in a moment of frustration. He’d utterly given up on how best to save himself from his nightly death. It had all started when he’d fallen asleep in class, and Magus had refused to teach him another damned thing until Kinlear told him the truth.
And that was the other thing about the old man.
He always seemed to know when people were lying.
“I sleep, I die,” Kinlear said now. “The same as it’s always been.”
“And your monster?” Magus asked, cocking his head. Somehow the flock of finches still perched there managed to stay on.
“Hooded. Clawed. Smells like a corpse left to rot in the sun,” Kinlear said. “Always the same, Magus. Can we move onto runes now?”
“The monster,” Magus pressed. “Tell me, again, what it is chasing you towards.”
“Death,” Kinlear said. “Every time. Why does this matter today?”
His tutor laughed, lifting a hand to catch a butterfly. As if he’d heard even the tiniest flutter of its wings. “You are clever, Little Prince. But you are also, like your Scribe’s blade...incredibly dull. Have you ever heard of the term Veilborne?”
The way Magus said it – like a whispered prayer – sent a shiver running up and down Kinlear’s spine, though he hadn’t the faintest clue why. Even the finches chirruped and soared away.
“No,” he said, watching their little wings carry them north.
“Ah.” Magus grunted. “I suppose here, in Lordach, you call them Seers. Though of course, they’re often a farse.”
Kinlear couldn’t remember a single true Seer in his lifetime.
He knew only the stories of the ones that had died out, long ago, when the Sacred were born and magic was settled to the Pillars and the allowances of the Five.
His father had removed nearly every book that spoke of the Seers of old, if only because those with unpillared magic.
..forbidden magic...had all gone to join the Acolyte.
They’d defected and given up their eternal souls by choosing to fight on his side of the war.
Now, if someone claimed to be a Seer, they were tossed right into Rendegard, the prison that perched just on the edge of the Sundered Sea.
Nobody got visions anymore.
Not even the Sacred, for magic came only to those whom the gods gifted it to.
“To be a Veilborne was once a strange and beautiful thing,” Magus said, and cleared his throat. “Haunting, of course, for the dreams can be so visceral. So... true.”
“Nightmares,” Kinlear said. “And gods, I hope they aren’t true.”
He’d never be anywhere near a darksoul in real life. And if his dream-forest was to be his fate someday, his true end?
He hoped his illness would take him first.
“Have I ever told you,” Magus said, “that I was born a twin?”
That was certainly a new bit of information. Kinlear raised his brows in true interest.
“I had a sister, Marin. She was born second, like you. She nearly died at birth. Also like you, yes?”
Kinlear nodded.
“The order of our births mattered little at the time, of course, for my sister and I had no battle over crowns or thrones. But in sleep...Marin was troubled. She often found herself drifting, all alone, in an endless sea.”
It sounded like a different version of his dreams.
Kinlear shivered, even though the greenhouse was far too warm.
“For years, Marin could not swim her way out of it. She often woke up screaming until her voice ran thin...speaking nonsense about a strange, dark being who met her there, who pulled her under the surface until she drowned. Peculiar, that she shared the same sleeping fate. And even more peculiar, that just like you...she was plagued by an illness in her waking days.”
Kinlear’s heart stuttered. He’d never met someone else like him...
A twin with an illness and terrifying dreams.
He wondered why Magus hadn’t told him the parallels, until now.
“What kind of illness?” he dared ask.
“Ah, not quite like yours,” Magus said. “Her condition was that of the heart. The dreams, though.” He blinked into the distance. “Eerily the same.”
He blew out a shaky breath. “What happened to her?”
“As Marin grew, her dreams shifted. Eventually she found her way out of the sea, and onto a black rock isle, where she began to see things before they happened in real life,” Magus said softly.
“Things that always came true, like the death of our mother. The destruction of our village. The sinking of a ship...and the premonition that someday, I would lose my sight in my chase for answers about her untimely death.”
Kinlear’s stomach twisted.
All tales he’d never heard from Magus before...and he wasn’t sure he wanted to, anymore. His palms were sweating. He reached for his vial, a nervous little tick as of late.
“And... was she right?” he whispered. “About the things she saw in her dreams.”
“Quite right,” Magus said, and nodded. “Every time. Some things happened quickly, but others, particularly the worst of them, took far longer to come true.” He sighed. “My sister died early. Terribly. I was there when she took her last breath. Just as I was there when she took her first.”
Kinlear could picture it.
One twin, losing another.
He saw Arawn in his mind...a king who would someday rule without his twin brother by his side. Suddenly, the sun was too bright, the warmth of the greenhouse too stifling. The birdsong and the butterflies, too merry.
Magus stared ahead, while he twisted and twisted his cane, boring a hole into the ground. The grass was now entirely gone beneath it.
“I spent many years after her death, quite furious at the gods. I’d always been confused by them, but after Marin.
..” he sighed. “I traveled far and wide, searching for answers about her dreams. Her illness. Her final fate. I blamed them for the terrors she faced, the things she had to witness before their time. And while there are few answers to be found here in Lordach...” He swallowed. “I found them elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Kinlear asked.
“South,” Magus said. “Across the Sundered Sea. Where ancient knowledge hides.”
Kinlear wanted to press for answers, but the old man kept going, as if he hadn’t the time.
“It was there that my sister’s vision about my own sight came true. A sacrifice. A choice.” He clenched his scarred hands – there were strange marks on his palms, not entirely unlike Kinlear’s penance brands – but he gave no explanation as to their origin.
“I learned that Marin did, indeed, have magic. It was given from the realm of the gods, as all magic is...but...perhaps it was not from the Five entirely. Perhaps...there are other powers at play.”
Kinlear’s heart dropped.
He reached for the stone in his pocket...wishing he could speak to Arawn. Wishing he were here to listen...
But his hand fell away as something inside of him whispered, no.
Arawn would not take the risk of entertaining this conversation. He would tell Kinlear to call for the guards. He would tell him to throw Magus in prison for even daring to speak ill of the Five.
But this?
This was the kind of lesson Kinlear had always longed to learn.
The dangerous kind.
The kind that felt like a terrible secret.
“But all of this is impossible,” Kinlear whispered.
“Is it?” Magus smiled as another finch landed on his shoulder, tweeting a merry little song.
It felt out of place, a jarring shift that had Kinlear’s breathing set on edge.
He coughed, tasting blood. A sip of his vial settled him, but he sensed that soon, another fit would come.
“You’re speaking of something that could get you killed,” Kinlear hissed, as he recorked his vial. “Something a defector would say.”
Magus waved a scarred hand. “I’ve no intention to defect, boy, especially if that’s what they expect of me.
I’ve never cared to walk the path others assume is mine to follow.
” He smiled as another finch landed on his shoulder.
They were drawn to him, as if he were a magnet.
“Now, tell me. Have you ever seen anything else in your dreams? Anything, beyond the dying woods and the monster?”
“No,” Kinlear said. “Nothing but—”
His words trailed off as in his mind, he heard the distant echo of two dark wings cutting through the sky. He remembered the figure in the darkness. The savior spun from shadow.
He remembered a spear that struck him, just before the magic of the Five pulled him away.
“Did your sister mention seeing anything?” Kinlear asked. “A memory from before she was born?”
Magus blinked. “I’m afraid not.”
But Kinlear did.
He remembered every moment of the dark place. Before the monster, before the dying forest.
But he didn’t tell Magus that.
He kept it tucked tight to his chest, a secret only for him. He’d never even told Arawn about it.
The old tutor pursed his lips, as if he sensed him holding back, but he didn’t push.
“I believe that all those years my sister suffered, all the times she struggled both in waking and sleeping...it was because she was paying the price of using her magic,” Magus said.
“Powerful magic. The kind that could have turned the tide of this very war, if she’d learned how to wield it.
Imagine, what a Veilborne could do, if they were to see things. ..before the enemy made a move.”
Kinlear wanted to laugh in disbelief.
To scream.
Because what Magus spoke of was impossible. There hadn’t been a true Seer in Lordach for ages, and for it to be his own tutor who knew of one?
Not only that, but his tutor’s twin – a sick one, just like him?
Marin’s story was too close.
It couldn’t be coincidence. It could only be the gods...as if, after all these years Kinlear had begged them to answer...
They finally had.