Chapter Fourteen Legend of the Guardian
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LEGEND OF THE GUARDIAN
Why does the king want to kill me?” six-year-old Reyanwyn Connery asked, head tilting as her mother brushed the tangles from her hair.
Gwendolyn Connery had a warm, kind face. Her blue eyes were bright, and her flaxen curls hung wildly around her face and down her back. Wood snapped in the hearth before them. “I suppose he is afraid of how strong you are.”
“Why? I’m small and he’s big.”
“Have you ever seen the king?” Gwendolyn asked.
“No.”
“Then how do you know that he is big?”
Reyanwyn snorted. “He’s a king.”
“Even kings can be small.”
“Have you seen him?”
Gwendolyn flicked Reyanwyn’s freckled nose. “No, but I know that the only size that matters is the size of your heart. And for this reason, I can say most surely that the king is very small. You, little pine, have a heart twice his size. And you will grow even bigger.”
“Big enough to kill the king back?”
Gwendolyn paused. “Do you want to kill him back?”
Reyanwyn shrugged, and they were quiet for a while. Then Gwendolyn said, “Humans have a tendency to fear what they cannot understand. Often, our reaction is to destroy what scares us.”
“Are you scared?”
“Sometimes.”
Reyanwyn winced. “Of me?”
Gwendolyn tilted Reya’s head back to meet her eyes. “Never.” She kissed her brow. “One day you will have the power to destroy those who would hurt you. You will be stronger than the king. Stronger, I imagine, than one thousand of his soldiers.”
“One thousand?”
Gwendolyn smiled. “Maybe even two thousand.”
“Two thousand.” Reyanwyn repeated it like a mantra.
“When you are, remember that none of us are all one thing. We’re good and bad and all kinds in between. Do you understand, little pine?”
She nodded, savoring the feel of her mother’s hands, the bristles on her scalp.
“I don’t want to kill him back,” Reyanwyn said finally.
Gwendolyn’s eyes twinkled in the firelight. “That is why you are strong.”
“Get up, Reyanwyn,” said a voice that was both commanding and concerned. She was lying on her back. How the hell had she gotten down here?
“Everything hurts,” Reya rasped a little more dramatically than she intended. “Why does everything hurt?”
“Why does your sword arm ache after sparring? Give it time,” Caelan said, pulling her to her feet.
“What did I do?”
“Most Sages learn to exercise control over their magic at a young age, before their magic grows to full strength. You do not have that advantage.” Caelan’s voice was grave. “You mustn’t ever let that floodgate down completely.”
“Why?”
“When a Sage gives themselves completely over to their magic, it can trigger what we call a Rage. In it, we are reduced to an almost feral state, without conscious thought, governed entirely by our most basic needs and emotions.”
Reya winced.
“We are at our most powerful in a Rage, but also our most vulnerable. Many have attempted to use the Rage as a weapon, and it’s usually the people closest to them who are forced to put them down.
If I sense you’re on the verge of one at any point during our training, I will bring you out of consciousness again.
Consider this your one and only warning. ”
“You knocked me out?”
“It’s a healer’s skill,” he said. “Useful for performing invasive procedures.”
Part of her was furious, while another part of her was grateful he had knocked her out before she’d done any real damage to their surroundings.
“Have you ever done it?” she asked. “Gone into a Rage?”
“Yes, and I nearly killed several others and myself.” His tone was final. She tried to imagine Caelan out of control, and it was a terrifying thought. This was not a male who lost control. “Now tell me what happened. You had it for a moment there. Then you panicked.”
She threw up her hands. “The same thing that always happens. I can’t control it, Caelan.”
“Bullshit. Look down. You’re still wearing clothes. The light never touches the fabric, so you have some control. What changed?” Her jaw flexed, and he tried again. “I can’t help you if you don’t explain it to me.”
“It’s like standing in a riptide,” Reya gritted out. “I can’t keep my footing.”
Caelan looked thoughtful. “So find an anchor.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I take the form of a raven, I channel a memory or something I know to be true, to remind me of who and what I am. Otherwise, I could lose myself to the animal.” He tapped his temple.
“If that isn’t working for you, try something physical to tether your focus.
Do whatever you need to do to ground yourself in what’s happening here, not in your head. ”
There was merit to that idea. She used similar exercises when she had to enter small spaces. The problem was there was nothing she could touch without the risk of obliterating it.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Her hand drifted to the hilt at her side. Etellinian steel was immune to time and rust and even magic. But unlike Kellstone, it didn’t affect magic-born.
Caelan nodded. “Try again. This time, direct the magic to your palm.”
There were about a thousand forms of torture she would rather endure than try again. But when did she ever get what she wanted? She took a steadying breath, journeying to that crystal wall inside her.
Gripping the sword like her life depended on it, Reya lowered the floodgate, and light poured over the barrier, threatening to drown her.
Her magic mocked her in its refusal to obey, weaving between the strands of her hair and tracing the length of her arms and legs. Almost joyful in its newfound freedom, even as it turned the earth beneath her to glittering black. The sight of it brought tears to her eyes.
What have you done?
Her body flared like the white ring around an eclipse.
The Cleary disappeared, and a flurry of mountain snow turned her nose pink. Smoke rose from a crooked chimney in the distance. Reya closed her eyes as tight as she could.
Never come back.
“Stay with me,” Caelan said, voice calm and steady. “You’re in control.”
She had to survive to keep her brothers safe, and to do that she had to master this.
Anchor yourself.
The steel in her palm warmed, as if to remind her it was there.
She focused on the imprint of her father’s hand in the leather.
Remembered the sound of his laughter. Let it pull her back from the winter of her memory and met the eyes of the Alethian warrior whose own were already shining with victory.
She would do this the way she did everything else: with stubbornness and steel. The cavern was just a place in her head, and she controlled what happened inside it. And if she could command her power in there, she could command it out here.
Reya drew the sword and plunged it into the blackened earth.
The light set the words on the fuller glowing, but didn’t harm the blade.
She imagined sealing the crystal gate inch by glittering inch and felt the pressure swelling in every part of her body as the light retracted.
When the cavern sealed shut, the aura around her vanished, leaving her panting and in desperate need of another bath.
Caelan cleared his throat. “At least you’re not on the ground,” he said wryly.
Eyes narrowed, Reya sheathed the sword. The first rays of day broke over the trees, and the ends of her hair danced within them, the red shifting from deepest copper to brightest gold in the shafts of sunlight peeking through the canopy.
A muscle in her neck spasmed, and she winced, grabbing at her skin.
“This will feel like nothing compared to what’s next,” he warned.
“What’s next?”
Caelan’s answering smirk was a threat if she ever saw one.
Beneath Ash’s hooves, the trail was changing, the soft and supple earth replaced by weathered rock atop a carpet of moss.
“What is this place?” Reya asked. Wildflowers and ivy twined through crumbling stone walls around them as if to keep them upright, the frameworks alike in size and shape. They looked like houses. Or rather what was left of them.
“Ombriar,” Caelan said. “It was once a town, home to humans and magic-born alike. Another casualty of Rhiterran conquest.” There were dark circles beneath his eyes that had not been there before.
Their training was taking a toll on Caelan, too.
He was shielding constantly while she practiced. “This is where I wanted to take you.”
Reya had never even heard of this place. “Why?”
He clicked his tongue, urging Ciz forward. “You’ll see.”
Tree roots tangled over the uneven path.
They rode past broken arches and pillars, the makings of what might have once been a square.
Where light and life had once spilled from windows, greenery hung ornamented with the first blooms of summer.
Only a few glass panes remained, rusted and fogged with age.
A startled cross fox darted out of their path and into a nearby building.
The world forgot, the Cleary seemed to whisper, but I remember.
Reya wondered what it was like for Caelan to watch the world decay around him. To remember a time and place lost even to history.
They dismounted before the largest and most intact building in the town. Rounded in shape, what would have been a domed roof had been completely burned away, and the stone walls were nearly hidden behind a curtain of green. Reya stepped through the archway.
A willow tree had sprouted up in the center of the structure, lichen draped from every wildly sprawling branch like crystals on a chandelier.
When Reya tore aside a gaggle of vines to reveal a beautiful face, breath abandoned her.
“It’s an All-Gods Temple,” she said reverently.
The carving of Pirax, with his flaming sword, was unmistakable. Under more leaves and branches, there stood his brother, Ryksis, with his one missing finger, his beard adorned in silver down to his waist in the way of Old Etellina.