Chapter 8
Another week flies by in a flourish of mundane happenings. I still cannot stop thinking about the sovereign’s impassioned speech. About the new world—no traditional monarchy, and equal treatment for all.
Apparently equal treatment means treating everyone like riffraff. The streets that once felt like home now threaten potential danger thanks to Peacekeepers dressed suspiciously like Forayers.
Over the years, I’ve heard the servants speaking of the injustice in the Grounds.
Where people are hanged for the use of magic or being suspected of having a Mage bloodline.
Here in Mainland, those suspected of having a magical bloodline or owning magic contraband are banished to the Wastelands.
Perhaps that sounds like a fate worse than death, but I’d like to think it provides an opportunity for escape.
Then there are Undesirables—people with lifelong ailments or complexities that make them different.
Grounders who are Undesirable are banished to the Wastelands if they come forward rather than being exposed.
In Mainland, mercy killings by family members and friends are commonplace, but many Mainland Undesirables also take their own lives.
It is a great shame upon the family to be an Undesirable, so they’re most likely to be victims of unwarranted violence.
It always leaves me riddled with anxiety to have Neris out of my sight for that reason.
Three summers ago, we were fortunate that Neris collapsed right in front of Radika’s workshop.
We hadn’t known Radika at the time, but she’d been a kind stranger willing to help.
With the tonics from the potion maker, Neris doesn’t have as many fits as she used to, but stress always makes her condition worse.
Life under the rule of Queen Morwenna, the Good, was bad enough. But I’m certain life with Sovereign Rheon Odhran will be far worse for Undesirables.
As we walk through town, Neris is a source of nonstop chatter.
Most of what she says goes into one ear and out through the other.
I’d awoken this morning to the memory of my father’s smiling face, his hands raised in preparation for me to strike them.
Strike like you mean it, he used to tell me.
And I would fire my fist into his hands with gusto.
My heart aches. Realms, I miss him. I hate that we never get to see him.
And that Mother has never shown us any of his letters.
I suppose they’re personal to her, but he’s our father.
As I spiral deeper into my thoughts of Father, of this slowly depreciating kingdom that feels less and less like home, a sharp jab in my side startles me. I wince, rubbing my side as I register that Neris has stopped walking. Her face is as white as a sheet.
“What?” I demand.
Voices carry from somewhere nearby as she points her rounded chin toward a group of people.
All garbed in white robes, they’re gathered up ahead of us on the right.
My pulse scampers and I’m suddenly rooted to the spot, prickling cold spreading through my body.
Phantom pains send tremors through me, and Neris wraps an arm around my shoulders.
She gives them a squeeze. “Keep your eyes down and keep walking,” she says.
I nod, though the chills don’t abate.
I hear my own screams in my head, see myself writhing on a cold cavern floor.
My legs are still moving, but I don’t register my surroundings.
Not until we’re passing the group of Purists at a proximity too close for comfort.
We take as wide a berth as we can from the throng while they shout to the masses about the evils of raw magic and Mages.
While they hand out propaganda on parchment in hopes of recruiting more souls for their twisted mission.
“Shut it, you daft dingbat!” a man shouts from across the cobblestone street. “There is no magic. Come off it!”
One of the women cloaked in white shifting her message from the dangers of magic to one about the return of the gods. “The gods shall walk amongst us again!” Her impassioned voice rises as I look away, focusing on a wider-than-usual gap on the cobblestone footpath.
“Are you ready for their return? You there!”
I freeze, as I’m sure Nimue is talking to me.
“Keep. Walking,” Neris whispers, her fingers digging into my biceps. But there’s a strange power that radiates from that woman. Even to someone like me who can’t sense other people’s magical powers.
I keep walking, my legs like lead. Then another woman steps in front of me, silvery hair slipping out from her hood with silvery eyes to match. Her weathered skin has seen better days, though I know she appears older than she really is. Damn, Credia. I’d hoped to never see her again. Or Nimue.
“Nice to see you thriving, Gwyn,” Credia says with unwarranted familiarity.
Not here. Not now. Not ever again.
I sling one arm across my chest and set off running in these ridiculous shoes that are hardly meant for walking, the heels clacking loudly against the cobblestones.
Buildings whiz past me in a blur until one of my heels snags on a crack between the stones.
My ankle wrenches, the grinding pain temporarily stealing my eyesight as I stagger forward on the broken heel.
I kick off my shoes and continue running despite the hot, throbbing ache.
I’m not repeating my mistake of fraternizing with or even talking to those fanatics. I’ve already shattered my soul once with their help. All because I was desperate to be rid of my terraforging.
It’s not until I veer off the footpath and into a small open field with a ruined shrine that I stop running.
The more years that passed after my powers manifested, the stronger I became.
I had to travel to the middle of the forest to let out the pent-up energy from my unused magic with increasing frequency.
On the weeks with no use of my powers, I felt it crawling beneath my skin like a parasite, threatening to hollow me from the inside out. Threatening to consume me.
Yet the older I grew, the fewer opportunities there were for me to release that energy, and the more desperate I became to be rid of my magic.
A year ago, Neris and I were walking through the forest when we came upon two women with platinum hair visible beneath their white hooded capes.
The first looked at me with knowing eyes.
“Fear not,” she said, her voice both commanding and soothing.
“I sense great turmoil within you. I can help you.”
Neris tugged me away from the woman. “Get away from us!” she shouted.
Yet the woman didn’t balk in the slightest. “My name is Nimue,” she said, lowering her hood. The other woman did the same, her face identical to Nimue’s. “And this is my sister, Aine.”
With a smile and a troublesome glint in her eyes, Aine nodded with practiced politeness.
“It’s not every day we encounter a Terraforger,” Nimue said, and my heart just about tumbled out of my chest. “You carry a dangerous secret, Gwyneth.”
“How do you know my name and—?”
Neris squeezes my arm hard to shut me up.
“The gods told me. I know you long to be rid of that festering curse that threatens to destroy your life. Many other Terraforgers, especially, have before. We can help restore you to the person you were meant to be. Ordinary. With so much potential to do whatever you want. No hiding. No fear. No shame.”
Neris’s arm tightened on mine.
“How?” I asked, my voice a mere whisper.
“There’s a Cleanse—with water from the sacred River Daehan of Siad Nahar. It will cleave the powers from your soul.”
“How can we be sure you’re not lying?” Neris asked.
“Come with us,” Aine said. “There are many of us living in perfect peace just outside the city.”
“I can’t just leave.”
“Speak to your mother about it,” said Nimue. “A mother only ever wants what’s best for her daughter. If you decide to take our offer to cure you, head southeast to the temple of Rhianu. There, you will find us. You can come as well, Reneris.”
Neris’s lips were an unmovable thin line.
“There will come a day when Erleya will truly be purified of magic. Don’t you want to be free of it before it is destroyed, and your soul along with it? Think on it, Gwyneth.”
Neris and I didn’t say a thing to each other about the odd encounter for days.
With harp and dance lessons, constant preening of my appearance by the servants and my mother, and history lessons, the time continued to press on without any opportunity for me to use my powers.
And sure enough, when Arionna provoked me, my emotions were so fragile that my anger nearly brought down the whole house.
It was then, with tears streaming down my face, that I told Mother about Nimue and Aine.
Naturally, she agreed, sending a note to Father who came right home to sit down and discuss things.
We came up with a plan—to tell everyone that I was going off to study history with a master historian.
And then we left, Neris and I, to find the temple of Rhianu.
As dilapidated as the circle of stones that surrounded the statue of the Mother goddess was, the building in the field behind it was even more run-down.
The place where I now stand appears eerily similar.
My lungs are ready to burst as I collapse onto my knees near the sacred circle of broken stones half my height.
A cool breeze rustles the overgrown grass and my sweat-soaked dress, sending a shiver through me.
I breathe in the loamy scent as I press my hand against the soil.
The damp earth turns malleable beneath my powers, my fingers sinking into it like it’s water.
I try to forget the lies about my magic—that I’m tainted for possessing such powers and would be better off cleaving it from my being.
I was so foolish. So damned foolish.
“Winnie?” Neris’s voice reaches my ears, and I can’t be more relieved to hear a familiar, comforting voice.
My hand comes out clean when I pull it from the soil. I sit fully in the grass and look up at my best friend, tears staining my face.
“That was Credia, wasn’t it?” Neris whispers.
Wiping the sleeve of my dress across my cheeks, I nod.
Neris heaves a sigh. “Alright, let’s get you home,” she says. “I think we’ve had enough adventuring for the day.”