Chapter Thirteen Lettle #2
Afa’s smile lit like a spark, his expression greedy. ‘It will be a long night.’
Ajax raised his snout to the ebbing fraedia. Night was drawing in.
‘It will.’
Afa crossed his legs and looked up at her, waiting. Sometimes Afa seemed ancient, almost otherworldly, and then sometimes, like now, he seemed a boy, young and innocent.
Lettle began. She spoke of the Bleeding Field and the Forever War, how she had been raised looting bodies, and foraging for food.
To her embarrassment, tears wetted her cheeks when she spoke of her father and his death.
She brightened when she came to talk about the Gural diviners, and the community she had found there.
By the time her tale reached Mosima, her throat had grown hoarse. She told him everything she could of the fae realm, hoping to pre-empt any questions. Finally she ended with the impending war at Mosima’s boundary, and her journey here with Alder.
Afa was quiet, his eyes reflecting the dimming fraedia. When he spoke, he barely whispered, ‘You have lived a rich and tragic life, thank you for sharing it with me. It has been a very long time since I have been moved by words alone.’ Some of the madness in his gaze had abated.
‘Will you tell me your story now?’ Lettle’s hands twisted eagerly in her lap.
‘I admit I do not want to. And when you proposed this exchange I had already decided that I would garner all I could from you and offer nothing back.’ He smiled ruefully and his resemblance to Alder was a punch to the stomach.
He is Alder. The reminder disconcerted her.
‘But after your generosity I see no reason not to comply with the terms, no matter how painful it will be nor how it will disturb the peace betwixt us.’ He took a deep breath.
‘I did not always live in Kaa’pah’lie. I was born in a small hamlet in the foothills of the mountain.
My mother,’ he winced, ‘I barely remember her face now–time has robbed me of that too–she named me Afa like I said. I had a younger sister, who was born just a year after me. Her face I do remember. We looked so similar with our grey eyes and fair curly hair that no one could distinguish one from t’other.
But as the years lengthened our bones and sharpened our minds, our paths diverged.
I grew dissatisfied with the village we were raised in, ambition luring me across borders. ’
He crossed and uncrossed his ankles. ‘I spent a year in a Bosome Temple in the Elven Lands, learning everything I could about divination. I spent two seasons in the Fae Lands, studying fraedia crystals and the fae’s magic.
I traversed from continent to continent, read books, studied at universities.
I had a veritable hunger for knowledge, but nothing could sate me.
‘I had decided there was only one thing that would satisfy my curiosity–learning the magic of my ancestors. Human magic in my time was feared, its knowledge hoarded by those with power. But none of that lore lay with my people. Our language is the crucible of our magic, and we had lost so much of it over the years. We knew small things, like verasis.’ He touched the bud of a flower next to him, and the flower bloomed.
‘But our language had disappeared from circulation. Because like all magic, it must be spoken with intention to have an effect. For example, I can say verasis now, without meaning, and naught will transpire.’
It was true, the second bud he touched did not open.
‘That’s all there is to it? Intention?’ Lettle asked.
He shook his head vigorously and for longer than was socially normal. ‘All magic requires sacrifice. Even the gods could not create from nothing; we are the pieces of them. Humans were made from the very seeds of the earth, and so our magic can wield all that the world proffers.’
‘How do you define the terms of the sacrifice?’
Afa looked at her, and she felt his gaze see her very soul. ‘You have uncovered the perils of this magic quickly. I understand now why you are such a successful diviner.’
He stood up and pulled a book out from the wall.
‘Everything in the sanctuary outlines different spells, with their probable sacrifices. I say probable, because magic evolves, it changes over time, just like animals and plants. This spell here will increase your corn yield; the words translate as: Corn grow fast and sturdy. The expected sacrifice for abundant crop is that the adjacent field will become barren overmorrow.’
‘Does it have to be those exact words?’
Afa screwed up his features. ‘Words have more power than you can ever imagine. They hold purpose; every single word in a spell has to be considered.
‘See this flower,’ he pointed to the plant he had made bloom.
‘It wilts, for it was too early for it to bloom. I had asked it to open its petals but I lacked due care with my words and now the flower will perish–that is the sacrifice I have wrought. That is the balance and care you must have in order to wield the greatest power in this world.’
‘A language imbued with magic must be dangerous to use in basic conversation,’ Lettle said.
He winced as though she had pricked a memory.
‘Yes, it hadn’t been in circulation for many millennia before I was born.
Besides, one thing you should know about the humans: we were content with the world our god had blessed us with.
We farmed and traded and largely stayed out of the politics that drew in the elves and fae.
We had no government, only small hamlets who governed themselves. And that was not enough for me.’
The resentment towards his own people made Afa’s mouth twist with bitterness.
‘You see, I had discovered in my time with the elves that they were sacrificing magical beings in order to speak to the Fates. And the fae, the fraedia crystal they used to grow their crops and warm their houses, was not a gift from their god.’
Afa turned to Lettle.
‘How do you think these magical things came to be?’
He waited for her to answer, his eyes alight now with the crux of his tale.
‘Human magic?’
‘Precisely! They had taken what was ours and enhanced their own societies, while the humans were content in their ignorance. So,’ he smiled, his teeth glinting in the orange light.
‘I started to steal it back. It took me many years, and in that time I had gathered a following of other students–not all humans–who saw the righteousness in my task.
‘They called me Emperor, and I united the mountain range under my rule. I reintroduced the human language among my most trusted advisors, for it was a precious thing to mould the world beneath your fingertips with just one word. We called ourselves sorcerers.’
Afa laughed abruptly, making Lettle jump. ‘Trust, I had once thought an incorporeal thing, but I believe now that it is glass, and once it shatters, it is impossible to mend.’
‘…without trust we cannot live for each other.’ His words stirred up Rayan’s voice from her memories. She felt a tug in her heart, and Ajax nuzzled her hand. Afa didn’t seem to notice.
‘Forgive me, I jump ahead. I continued my studies, but this time I did not enter the universities as a willing student. I went as a reaper, to harvest all I could, leaving their shelves barren. I stole back the magic that was mine.’
‘The books,’ Lettle murmured. ‘These are those books.’
She looked at them with newfound appreciation. Some must have been thousands of years old.
‘Yes, everything that was ever written in the human language exists in this cavern.’
‘How have they survived this long?’
‘They are bound in the leather of magical beings. Even in my time there were few left. Wyvern and efrit existed only in books. Though star gliders and haba were still very common. Oh, and obeah, of course.’
Curious, star gliders and haba are both creatures only found in Mosima.
‘Have you read every book in here?’
‘Many, many times.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Though back then I only had a tenth of this collection. I shared my knowledge with my cadre so we were not defenceless. We wielded magic unmatched.’
Lettle shivered. His words echoed with a prophecy once told to her by Shaman Imna: You will wield magic unmatched, speak prophecies unspoken. You will be the leader we seek, and the leader we are due.
Afa thought she shivered with fear, and he nodded at her, leaning in as though to frighten her further.
‘We each had our strengths. Guso could call on the trees to twist and pull at your skin. Cevar could make it rain ice daggers with a few words. Bish could turn metal molten in your hands, so no swords could stop us. Each spell of course required sacrifice, but we were all willing to pay it for the cause–even Guso, whose thigh bone shattered through his skin every time he spelled.’
Lettle swallowed the bile that burned up her throat. Afa seemed unaffected by the tale.
‘What was your strength?’
‘H-Hady,’ he stumbled on her name, ‘and I, we specialised in one thing–bindings.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘We learned how to weave souls together,’ he said proudly.
‘What is the benefit of a binding?’
She had seen Afa the child, now here was Afa the teacher. ‘Bindings enhance the capability of your power. For example, on my own I could call on the fastest camel; bound with others, I could simply create the fastest camel.’
Lettle was horrified. ‘But the sacrifice…’
He nodded. ‘Was great.’ Not would be. He had done it.
‘So you bound to Hady?’
‘Yes, my first mistake.’
First? she thought. She had counted many more already.
‘The magic allowed for us to communicate within our mind, as well as amplify our spells, which I have said already. What I have not said is that Hady was fae.’
Lettle felt a thread of an answer unravel in her mind.
He paused and looked over to the waterfall.
Tears began to swim in his eyes as he continued, ‘And the other thing you should know about Hady is that I loved her with more than my soul, more than my heart. If I was captivated by knowledge, I was equally captivated with Hady. She was everything to me.’