Teaching the King (Witchling Academy Book 1) Page 21

  From behind a pile of shattered rocks, a groan sounded. We turned, all of us tensing, as a bulky figure emerged. Lord Raspir, the keeper of this castle.

  He waved off the cries of surprise and relief from his people and turned to us. “It’s been too long, my king. We didn’t think you would come, what with the magic these bastards had in play. It was like nothing we’ve seen before.”

  I scowled. “We had no idea you were under attack until the very end. How long have you been defending the keep?”

  “The storm came up a day or so ago. Not as long as that, but it’s been a hard go.”

  I looked more closely at the man. A day or so, he said, which was even longer than I expected. We’d seen Jewel Point barely twelve hours ago still unharmed. Yet Lord Raspir was as proud as any Fae Lord, and his beard was long and unkempt, old wounds layered over with new. Something didn’t make sense. “What day do you think it is?”

  He looked at me oddly, then shrugged. When he cited a day some two weeks prior, it was my company of warriors who gasped.

  “Your people?” I asked sharply. “Have they rations? Have they eaten?”

  He scowled. “Of course. We’ve enough for a solid month in the keep, less, perhaps, with the battle…” For the first time, he looked around at his own people, as if seeing them more clearly. Their ragged clothes, thin faces, and wild eyes. A Fae female broke free from the crowd and moved forward, her gown stained and torn off all along the hem. I immediately knew who she must be, but Lord Raspir staggered back a step.

  “Marguerite,” he gasped, his words tinged with horror. She said nothing more but toppled into his arms, weeping tears I suspected she’d kept bottled up throughout the long siege.

  “Two weeks,” I said. “Two weeks you’ve fought off the Fomorians who leveled against you an attack so dire that you couldn’t tell day from night. Two weeks when this attack was hidden even from those who were looking for it. That is dangerous magic indeed.”

  “But you took them down,” Lord Raspir said, giving his wife a gentle hug as she straightened and stepped away from him, the tears she had shed serving only to make her more beautiful. She turned to us.

  “We knew the instant you arrived. The air came alive both within the castle and over the sea. The song of the ancient guardians heard once again, even if they chose not to aid us directly.”

  I scowled. The Fae of the ocean clans, among all the high Fae, cleaved most closely to the ancient ways. The guardians they spoke of were little more than myth. Then again, so were the Fomorians.

  “You summoned them?” I asked, and before they could bristle at my tone, continued. “You should have. To protect your people. There’s no aid you should turn away, as long as the price for it is not too high.”

  Lord Raspir nodded. “We knew you would come, but these wraiths, they stank of old magic and old war. My wife knew the ancient spells and wasn’t afraid to try them.”

  “Those spells came with the castle,” she said, her voice weary but determined. “And so we sang the ancient songs and performed the rituals. Unfortunately, there was no response across the sea, no raging dragons or birds of fire to come to our aid. This battle was ours alone to fight. The ancient ones wouldn’t assist us.”

  I scowled. What would Belle say about that? What history might be buried somewhere in that academy about the ancient ones, whoever they were? I didn’t even know the role they played in the original battle fought between the Fae, the witches, and the Fomorians, if any. There was too much I didn’t know.

  “Magic has returned to the castle of the High King,” Lord Raspir said. “The enemy at our gates will be defeated.”

  “What do you know about the Fomorians?” I asked, and Lord Raspir turned to me as his wife muttered something dark.

  He grimaced. “Only what we have in the archives. Which my beloved wife was quick to find when we realized the wraiths were coming up from the sea. Not too many creatures challenge the ocean Fae in their own domain, but Fomorians would, if they’d finally found their way free of their prison. To reach our waters, they would have had to travel through the muck and mire of their underworld home. It’s a fearsome journey, and a deadly one. Better to stay on their own plane than to pillage ours.”

  “So what would bring them here?”

  “Power,” Lady Raspir said. “A disruption in one of the realms awakening their lust and greed. We’ve had our share of those disruptions of late, particularly the human realm. It’s possible they saw their opportunity to strike—and took it.”

  Even as she said these words, there was a disturbance out over the ocean. A high, keening cry of battle and fury.

  “Merrigan Cove.” Lady Raspir turned to the east. “Look! They’ve lit the warning fires.”

  We turned as one to see the faint flickering flame bloodred on the far horizon.

  “That’s their westernmost keep, far from their actual castle,” Raspir said.

  “How long have the fires been burning?” I asked him, but he shook his head.

  “We’ve not had the skies clear enough to see beyond our own faces for most of the battle. I have no idea how long they’ve been in distress.”

  Niall grunted. “We have to go.”

  I nodded, turning to the side and calling up the portals. A flash of memory shot across my mind, and I froze. Belle. How could I not have remembered earlier?

  I turned to Niall. “Did you see Belle when we came through? The blast that knocked her back?”

  “I didn’t see anything like that, though I don’t know what’s real or illusion anymore.” Niall shrugged. “But don’t you think if she were in trouble, you would know? Your bond would tell you?”

  I grimaced. I didn’t know any such thing. I wanted to believe it was so, but I couldn’t sense Belle at all. Where was she?

  “We go through,” I decided as I opened a portal onto Merrigan Cove, where the whole keep was engulfed in flames. Unlike Jewel Point, it looked as if grave damage had been done.

  “Go!” I ordered.

  We leapt through.

  37

  Belle

  Unable to help myself, I took a step forward, my hand lifting toward the symbols that had been etched into my unconscious since I was barely able to understand words. As a little girl, I’d believed wholeheartedly the stories my ma and grandmother had told me, this combination of beautiful jewels and terrifying slavery.

  As I got older, especially after my grandmother died, I began to have my suspicions. My ma had drawn the same conclusions far earlier than I had, and she’d assured me more than a few times with a grim sort of certainty that my grandmother, and, of course, her mother before her, had been deeply damaged by the work of the Fae. None of us had any doubt that we’d suffered at the hands of our oppressors, but a crown of emeralds? Elegant steel cuffs that somehow announced our enslavement to all? Metaphors, we’d decided in the end, potent but not real.

  So what were these? Illusions that fed on my own memories, much like the Fae bane? Or something more?

  “They are beautiful, aren’t they?” The rough, heavy voice of a man jerked me around, sounding something like King Aiden but infinitely thicker and rusty with disuse. I blinked to see an old warrior with white-blond hair, heavy features that still managed to look beautiful, a scar running down one side of his face. I’d met a race with white-blond hair before, but this was no Akari. This was a Fae. But…who?

  “Is all this illusion?” I demanded. “Because you couldn’t survive these wards of my great-grandmother’s in the human realm.”

  He slanted a glance at the big pots of flowers and rolled his eyes. “The strongest race in all the realms, undone by a flower. You have to admit there’s a certain sense of humor in that.”

  He took a step toward me. I lifted my hands, my right one still holding my knife, surprised to feel a whisper of a breeze shift around me, fluttering across the fabric of my tunic, lifting my hair. The Fae stopped and sighed.

  “I’ve been dead for a
hundred years, you idiot. You really think I can hurt you?”

  Yes, he can. The realization was quick, harsh, and absolute.

  “Do you want to hurt me?” I asked. “Because if you did, then yes, I believe you could. Whatever entertains a Fae in the moment is generally not good for a human.”

  He stared at me, then shook his head with a grim smile. “I was commanded to this duty by Mistress Reagan Hogan. You’re not her daughter, I don’t think. You’re too mouthy, and not nearly scared enough.”

  “Well, thanks for that, I guess. But I’ve been called back to teach the High King all the same.”

  He shrugged, not seeming dismayed or even disappointed at the information. He leaned against the wall with the kind of casualness that indicated he knew this castle, these rooms. He gestured to the case.

  “So now you have a choice. You can leave now, or wear those symbols of power and stay in this realm, wielding all the might of a Hogan witch and to spare.”

  I frowned at the shackles. “Symbols of whose power?” I asked with a curl of my lips. “Those are the tools of the Fae meant to keep a Hogan witch in her place.”

  “Is that what she told you?” the old Fae asked, sounding genuinely intrigued. He tilted his head, scanning up the wall. “I can see that. It certainly would dissuade you from venturing out, and like anything wrought by the Fae, it is a slippery business to give up magic once you’ve tasted the power that it offers. But she did, she did. The king she was saddled to would have driven anyone to madness, but that’s the pride of the ocean Fae.”

  “While you are mountain Fae. Did you live here? Die here?”

  “Live, die.” He waved an unconcerned hand. “Those are human terms. This castle hasn’t had a keeper in perhaps two hundred years. When the ocean Fae left, they cursed it to its cornerstones.”

  He rolled his eyes at my obvious surprise. “Oh please. It is a favorite pastime of the Fae to present themselves as nobler than any other creature ever born, especially the family of the High King. I know, because we did the same thing for hundreds of years ourselves.” He frowned, glancing away again as if lost in contemplation.

  “Are you of the line of the High King of the mountain Fae?” I prompted.

  He laughed. “I’m little more than a house serf now. But once upon a time, yes, my family wielded great magic. We destroyed the Fomorians, and kept the realm of the high Fae safe. That duty now lies with the ocean king, and he will find his way. The Fomorians are our ancient enemies, but they can be defeated. We did it once before, after all.”

  “How?” I demanded “And why doesn’t the High King know this?”

  “Because he didn’t ask,” he said grimly. “They are all so proud. Your great-grandmother told me that even as she condemned me here. The High King would sacrifice his own people to keep her tied to him, just as we would have, given the chance.”

  “Okay…” Finally, we were getting somewhere. “Were you alive when the ocean Fae defeated your people?” I asked carefully.

  “Oh, yes,” he sighed, but then his next words twisted around on themselves. “I died defending this hunk of stone because it was our home. It was beautiful then, the sky clear and the surrounding valleys filled with life. Out of spite or stupidity, the High King of the ocean Fae cursed me into these stones. I’ve kept the place clean since then, until your great-grandmother showed up looking for answers.”

  I didn’t need him to explain what those answers were. “She found them.”

  “She found them and took off her crown and bracelets, promised me freedom in return for guarding her secrets, and left.”

  I stared at him in horror. “She promised you freedom, yet you’re still tied here? She lied to you?”

  “Not exactly.” He smiled. There was no guile in his eyes, only rueful admiration. I didn’t trust it, I didn’t trust him, and when he stepped toward me, I shrank back. Another breeze stirred the air, this one strong enough to send the blooms from the large bouquets flowing out into the center of the room.

  “Enough! Enough.” The Fae wheezed and coughed, sounding genuinely distressed as he lifted his hands and stepped back from the harmless flowers. Maybe not so harmless, I had to acknowledge.

  “Like I said, you have a choice,” he wheezed. “Wear the mantle of the Hogan witch’s power and feel what that means to you. For the High King to have somehow pulled together enough strength to have lured you back out of the human realm indicates there is particular magic afoot. Either the kingdom is at great risk or you are.”

  I frowned. “Yeah, no. There’s no danger I faced that would pull me here.”

  He regarded me skeptically. “Are you sure about that? Let me tell you what I know about your great-grandmother. She wasn’t a perfect woman, but she was fierce. And she knew what she wanted and went after it, to the detriment of anyone else who dared to stand in her way. She had an overriding reason to do the things she wanted to do. Do you know what that reason was?”

  “She wanted to be free,” I said.

  “She wanted to be free.” He nodded. “That’s a pretty powerful motivator. So is saving your people. So is love. So is hate. What’s yours? Why are you here, Belle Hogan?”

  As I struggled with the answer, the Fae lifted his hand, and as he stared off in another direction again, his mind apparently wandering, a portal appeared in the center of the library. It was a battle scene, some castle I’d never seen before. Aiden stood in the center of a roiling mass of slimy-skinned creatures that looked long and thin, more arms and legs than body. My fists tightened.

  “The Fomorians?” I asked, which drew the Fae’s attention.

  “Star and light,” he muttered. “No wonder the need is great.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I have one job here,” he said, still distracted by the vision he had afforded me. “I keep the castle. I see nothing. I hear nothing until somebody comes in and awakens me. That somebody was you. But if that is going on right now you’ve got another choice. You can help the king. You can blast the Fomorians back, this wave of them, anyway, with the snap of your fingers.”

  “I’m not my great-grandmother,” I protested. “I haven’t been trained the way she was.”

  “You don’t have to be your great-grandmother. You just have to be you…and wear those.” He nodded to the artifacts in the case. My gaze went to them, then dropped a level lower to the rolled-up parchment.

  “The contract,” I said.

  “Will be here, waiting for you, assuming you survive,” he said, “and assuming there’s anything left of the Fae realm to teach. I don’t have permission to let you take the contract, but you can’t tarry long trying to get it. I’m telling you right now, I don’t need to have the sight to know that Aiden and his warriors are losing their battle.”

  I turned with horror to the portal, and could quickly see he was right. Aiden and the others were fighting desperately, and my heart skipped a beat as the High King of the Fae threw himself into every attack. His arms and legs strained, the lines of his muscles standing out in sharp relief beneath his tunic and pants, and his face was locked in a ferocious snarl. Somewhere along the line, his hair had ripped loose from its binding and now flew around him in the raging wind. He slashed and blocked, surging forward then diverting to the side to protect one of his warriors, and I could hear the heat and terror of the battlefield well up, a harrowing song of death. Why weren’t they wielding magic?

  And why wasn’t I there, helping them? I was the Fae king’s witch, and I needed to keep him safe. To keep all of them safe. Hogans were healers, and here I was sitting in this ice cave while the High King of the Fae—Aiden—was getting his guts poked out? What the hell was I doing?

  “Why aren’t they using their magic?” I practically moaned, clutching my useless knife as if I could skewer the Fomorians myself. “They’ve begun the training. They know the spells. They should be winning, not losing.”

  Despite my best efforts, Lena’s hateful words came back to
me. To save the Fae, you must leave him, or die. Now that war is upon us, there’s no other choice for you.

  “‘I’m not my great-grandmother,’” the Fae parroted back to me, gesturing again to the case as I glared back at him. “Well, your great-grandmother also didn’t become a mighty force until she augmented her abilities. Why do you think she feared these objects so much?”

  I opened my mouth to retort, then I heard Aiden’s cry. I turned to see that he’d been struck in his shoulder by a long, wicked spear, dripping some oily black substance I couldn’t identify. Both his hands were on the spear as he staggered back; he’d lost his weapon. There was a frenzy of activity.

  Panic shot through me, quick and hot. I had no choice—I legit had absolutely no choice. I snapped my knife shut and stuffed it back into my pocket, my heart pounding hard enough to make my ribs quake. “I will burn you to a crisp if you’re lying to me, Fae,” I warned.

  He smirked. “Lying is what we Fae do best. But we also like to tell inconvenient truths.”

  I strode up to the case, but there was no visible door, and I was too pissed to care about that. Yanking my sleeve over my fist and balling it into my palm, I punched forward, shattering the glass.

  “Crown first,” the Fae directed, but I grabbed for the contract anyway, only to have my hand forced away once, twice. A third time.

  “Crown first,” the Fae repeated. “Unless you want the king to die while you fight ancient magic. Your choice.”

  Snarling with annoyance, I grabbed the crown, slapping it unceremoniously on my head before I reached for the shackles. Even in my extremity, I wasn’t going to call them bracelets. I pulled one on, then staggered back, my eyes going blurry with vertigo.