A Shadow's Tale (3 page)

‘Yes, sir.'

That evening, I was burrowing under the blankets of my bed just as Armen opened the door. He chuckled, shaking his head. It was common knowledge to him that I only went to bed when I sensed him coming down the corridor to make sure I was not staying up too late into the night. Peeking my head out from under the covers to look at him, I smiled playfully. He ruffled my hair gently, perching on the bed, gently chiding me in the way that had become a customary part of the routine.

‘How is Merlas a half-blood?' I asked, clutching a lock of coarse hair taken from the doe's mane tightly in my hands.

Armen sat on the end of the bed. ‘I should have known you were listening. Merlas was, as I said, an experiment. A crossing between the two main breeds of pegusi. Can you tell me what they are?'

‘The carnivore and the herbivore.'

‘Yes. Merlas was born of a herbivore doe and a carnivore stag. In a sense, the experiment was a success. She eats both meat and herbage as well as developing a mixture of their physical traits. But she was strong. Stronger and bigger than the other pegusi. Her mother wanted nothing more to do with her filly, so the carers raised her. She quickly became uncontrollable, obviously a battle pegusi. It took three carers to do anything with her. The rest of the flock rejected her because she was a half blood.'

‘Like me.'

‘Like you.'

Armen left, leaving me alone in the dark. I waited a few seconds to make sure that he was out of earshot before scrambling out of bed. I didn't have very long, not if I wanted to escape. If I had enough time, I could get away. I could sense another presence, even though there was no one else living in this part of the Senate Towers. A malevolent presence that was all too familiar to me. My fingers fumbled with the catch on the window. I heard the door slide open. I whipped around. Meran. Just because he wasn't one of my teachers any more wasn't reason enough for him to leave me alone. It had never been reason enough for him not to haunt my mind and dreams, enough for him to stay away in the dead of night when he would project visions of blood and violence into my mind. It was too late to hide now. His eyes gleamed red in the light of the tiny orb of magic Armen had cast for me as a night light. The thought of my father scared me, but not as much as Meran did now. Meran was here and now. And he was dangerous. I backed up against the window, trying to plan a strategy in my mind. I heard him utter a spell, locking the door. There was no way out now.

He walked towards me lazily, as if savouring the terror that was starting to take a hold of my soul. I had to calm down. I couldn't afford to have an outburst now. I had to stay in control. I waited a few more seconds, waiting until he was nearly within an arm's reach of me. I ducked. I scrambled away from him, darting to the other side of the room. He growled in anger.

‘You can't escape me, demon,' he snarled. ‘I have waited too long for this.'

I waited for him to approach me again. If I managed to keep this up long enough, he would run out of time and be forced to leave. Unfortunately, he wasn't going to wait that long. A net of dark blue magic ensnared my ankle, anchoring me to the floor. I pulled against his hold. My magic started to spark in the air, uncontrollable. I didn't have the experience to harness its potential. He grabbed my arm, snapping a cuff of grey metal
onto my wrist. I yelped in pain, wrenching my arm from his grasp. It burned as if I had stuck my arm into the very heart of a fire. The magic I couldn't control vanished. I had nothing to fight with. No way to defend myself.

Meran sneered to himself as the full weight of the situation became clear to me. I doubled my efforts to break free from his magic, but I felt so much weaker with the strange metal. Tears were starting to gather in my eyes. He grabbed a fistful of my hair before pulling a slender vial from his belt. He pulled out the stopper with his teeth. I tried to twist out of his grasp as the smell hit me. It was acidic, sickly sweet. It promised pain. Every fibre of my being screamed at me to get away from it. Meran sniffed the clear liquid with an air of appreciation.

‘Holy water, straight from the temple of the goddess. Perfectly harmless to most races, but deadly to creatures of the underworld. I am finished playing with you, spawn of evil. Arellan would have been bonded to me if it hadn't been for your untimely arrival, but I shall now do her a favour. It is time this world was cleansed from this darkness.' He pulled sharply on my hair. I gasped in pain. He emptied the vial into my open mouth before clamping it shut and pinching my nose closed. Desperation rose in my soul as I struggled to pull my head from his grasp. Swallow or breathe? I had to breathe. The poison burned like its acidic smell. It pooled in the pit of my stomach before spreading out through my muscles. My legs gave out beneath me. I curled up into the tightest ball I could manage. I wanted to scream, to alert someone that there was something wrong, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of hearing the culmination of the pain I felt. The burning shot up my spine, igniting a flame in the base of my skull. I couldn't hold it back any more. I opened my mouth and screamed, only to find my voice muffled by a bundle of cloth. Tears streamed down my face. I glanced at the door, praying for someone to come through it to save me. Meran's cruel laugh echoed through my mind.

‘No one is coming for you, half blood. No one cares. No one ever cared for a demon.'

Through the darkness of despair, pain and anguish, a wave of calm descended. A motherly warmth. My eyelids drooped, half closed. I exhaled a long sigh, my mind floating above my body. New sensations overruled the agony. The heat of the sun on my back. The rush of wind on my face. The sound of rain on the roof as I lay snug and warm indoors. Feather light caresses. I sighed softly, letting myself fall into the touch. It curled itself around me like a fuzzy blanket, reassuring and comforting. I surrendered myself to it.

Something started hammering on the door, breaking me out of my mental escape. Pain slammed back into my body with the force of a flock of enraged pegusi. Meran smirked, murmuring into my ear that no one could get past his spell. My stomach was twisting itself into knots. My chest burned with every breath I struggled to take. A bitter, metallic taste had gathered in my mouth, my vision tinted red as blood trickled in the place of tears.

Silver light flooded the room, almost blinding me in its intensity. Meran scrambled away. Someone shouted my name. I screamed for help but the cloth muffled the sound once more. I began to cough. More blood dripped from the corner of my mouth as the cloth was taken away. Panicked voices erupted around me. I screamed in agony as another wave of pain slammed into me. Something pinned my shoulders to the ground. Cool glass touched my lips. I tried to spit out this new liquid but to no avail. It froze its passage down my throat to pool in my stomach. Darkness descended like a thick blanket.

My gasp of pain echoed strangely as I awoke. My muscles pulsed, aching and burning with magic desperate to escape. The more I struggled to restrain it, the more it fought to escape. I had to let it go. I relinquished all semblance of control. It tore away
from me, great talons ripping through me, white-hot claws raking through my skin. I don't know how long it lasted. The black energy poured from my body like a river bursts through the dam. Eventually it slowed to a trickle. Then it stopped. My throat was raw from screaming, my mind was burning and my body a song of aches. Someone laid a cloak over me, blanketing me in its warmth. My tired eyes closed and I soon dropped into a sleep so encompassing as to be the eternal sleep.

I awoke again slowly, trying to piece together what had happened. It remained elusive. Every muscle and joint throbbed. My head felt as if someone was using it as an anvil. Even my hair seemed to hurt. I tried to remember what had happened, why I wasn't in my room any more. Why I was lying on the earthen floor of a great cavern whose walls were blackened and burned. A solid looking door marked the only way out. I remembered reading about something like this, a cavern deep under the Senate Towers where they brought people who couldn't control their magic. I got to my feet, clutching the cloak around my shoulders.

‘Hello?' I called out. ‘Is there anyone there?'

The door opened to reveal Armen. He gathered me up in his arms, hugging me close, pressing his face into my hair as if he couldn't bring himself to believe that it was still me, that I had survived. I bit back tears again as I clung to him, unwilling to let go. I didn't want to leave the shelter and comfort if his arms where I knew I was safe. His voice was choked with unreleased desperation as he spoke.

‘We thought we were going to lose you, between Meran's attack and the power surge…Thank the goddess that a carer came to find me. He said that Merlas was acting up again, that she seemed afraid of something. I came to see that you were all right.' Merlas had been the one to let them know that there was something wrong? It took me a moment to remember that the doe
would always be aware, even subconsciously, of my emotions, of whether or not I was in danger. For the first time, but certainly not the last, I was glad of that connection. I looked up at Armen.

‘Can I go see her?'

The first thing Merlas did was pin me down with one wing. Running a scrutinising eye over me, she started licking the layer of blood, sweat and grime from my face and arms. Armen leant against the wall of the stable, smiling at the sight. I giggled, squirming under the feel of her tongue that was both soft and rough at the same time. Only once Merlas deemed me to be clean enough did she let me up. I stayed lying down for a moment, enjoying the comfort of the feathers Merlas had moulted and that served as bedding. She lowered her head, letting me hang on around her neck as she helped me to my feet. I kept my arms around her, my face buried in her mane, breathing in her distinctive smell of grass and hunting, of dust and sunlight. She had saved me with her thoughts. She had taken me away from that situation and comforted me.

‘You scared the feathers off me,' she snorted in a very grumpy manner once I had let her go. I stared at her. Behind me, Armen chuckled.

‘I forgot to tell you that the stories are true. War pegusi do talk.' I turned back to Merlas, stroking her nose.

‘Thank you for helping me,' I murmured to her. Merlas nickered gently in reply.

A young carer stopped outside the stable, a terrified look on his face and his arms full of the cushion-like saddle the war pegusi used. He trembled as he bowed to Armen, unable to free his hands to perform a formal salute. Armen thanked him, taking the saddle from him. The carer couldn't have left quicker as he tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away.

‘Today, I will introduce you to flying. This will become a reward for you, for good behaviour or work. This afternoon we
will begin working with magic. You need to be able to harness it in order to defend yourself.' He lifted the saddle up onto Merlas's back, showing me where all the different straps went: two around her belly, one across her chest and one around her hindquarters. A last, loose loop of leather around the base of her neck served as guidance. He led the pegasus out into the field adjoining the stable where a carer stood with a pretty, dainty looking brown doe. Armen lifted me up onto Merlas, tying the final straps around my calves and thighs, explaining that they would help me to stay on her back while flying. I fidgeted, unused to the position my legs were tied into, astride the doe, with my calves tucked under my thighs in a kneeling position so as not to get in the way of Merlas's wings. Swinging himself up onto his own mount, he imparted one last bit of advice as he tied himself onto the saddle.

‘Let her take off. Do not worry about it. She knows what she is doing.'

He walked the pegasus to a long, fairly narrow strip of silvery grass. Merlas followed, prancing a little and tossing her head. She jumped forwards, barging Armen's doe out of the way, leaping into a gallop. I dropped the loop, terrified, grabbing onto the mane with both hands, the doe's gait pitching me back and forth. Then nothing. Her great wings stretched out on either side of me, beating gently as the ground dropped away beneath us. I sneaked a peek down past her feathers. Everything seemed to be so small. I took hold of the loop again, but simply held it. I let her steer. She flew out towards the city, the warmth of daylight on our backs. Armen caught up with me, smiling. His mouth moved, saying something, but I couldn't hear what he said. The wind was whistling over my face, stealing all other sound from my ears.

The flight ended much too soon in my opinion. Landing was even more uncomfortable than taking off, the sudden transition from smooth flight to rugged gallop. If it were not for the straps holding me to the saddle, I would surely have fallen off. I loosened the knots, but was then stuck. I couldn't get down. The
ground was a long way off. I desperately looked around for something I could use as an intermediate step. The doe solved the dilemma herself. She suddenly pitched forwards, her front legs folding beneath her. I slid down her neck to land in a tangled heap on the grass. Merlas snickered behind me. A hand pulled me to my feet, supporting me until my legs realised that they were supposed to hold my weight again.

‘Did you enjoy your flight?' Armen asked.

I couldn't find the words to express how amazing the flight had been, how good it had felt with the sun on my back and the wind in my hair. Looking at Merlas, I simply nodded in response to Armen's question.

Armen decided to hold my first ever magic lesson outside in the court yard of the Senate Towers. Having very rarely been outside the Towers, I took a moment to gaze upwards at them. They were huge, taller than any of the other tower homes in the city, eight of them arranged in a circle, linked on several levels by covered walkways. The marble seemed to glow in its brilliant whiteness, the roof tiles a deep grey. Many of the white-robed Senators passed by, more often than not glaring at us. Armen simply ignored them, and I soon began to follow his example and did the same.