Eolyn (14 page)

C
hapter Seventeen

The Town of Selkynsen
stretched along the west bank of the Furma River, which separated Moisehén from the neighboring kingdom of Roenfyn. Thick walls of yellow stone enclosed the city center. Shops and vending stalls crowded the narrow streets and winding alleys. Along the riverfront, there was a constant rush of activity as ships and ferries unloaded goods in exchange for the diverse products of the kingdom.

Eolyn’s ears rang with rhythmic shouts of vendors and the avid chatter of hagglers. The smell of rotting fish, stale urine, and spilt ale buffeted her senses and made her eyes water. Buildings crowded over them, cutting off the expanse of the clear summer sky. She clung to her companions, Rishona and Adiana, and wondered whether Achim’s ‘stone forest’ would be as chaotic and rancid as all this.

“I’ve never seen so many people in one place,” Eolyn said.

“All the better for the Circle.” Rishona offered a warm smile to a group of men. They paused in their conversation to watch the raven-haired beauty pass. “The more active the markets, the more generous our audience.”

“What was it like growing up here?” Eolyn asked Adiana. “I can’t imagine living in such a place.”

Adiana lifted her chin. “Selkynsen is the center of the kingdom. Where else would anyone want to live? The life, the commerce, the culture. The King’s City may be impressive, with its grand buildings and noble history, but all the real activity is here.”

Eolyn shook her head. How could one live in a place without trees? The earth’s magic ran in such insipid streams under the province of Selkynsen. She already felt the drain on her power.

“In truth,” continued Adiana, “I only spent part of my childhood here. My parents were merchants and patrons of the arts. They recognized I had a gift for music when I was very young. They wanted to place me with an instructor, but with the purges gaining momentum, no one would accept a girl for fear of accusations of subversive magic. So my parents sent me downriver to New Linfeln. I lived there with my mother’s cousin and studied music for nearly eight years.”

“What brought you home?”

“Mother and father stopped writing, and then stopped sending money. I thought...” She shrugged and glanced away, tucked a loose strand of golden hair behind her ear. “I thought they’d forgotten about me. I spent everything I had left to come home. I was only fifteen at the time, and very angry at my parents for their neglect. I was going to give them quite a scolding, you know. But then I found out Mother and Father hadn’t forgotten at all. They had died.”

Eolyn’s heart twisted at the memory of her own loss. “How?”

“Mother was burned for witchcraft.” Adiana’s voice took on a bitter edge. “And father was executed on charges of harboring a witch.”

“Your mother was a maga?”

Adiana shook her head. “It’s not very likely. Selkynsen never had much of a tradition of magic. Our strength is in commerce, music, and art.”

“Art is magic,” Eolyn said. “So is music. It’s all Primitive Magic. The Old Orders considered Primitive Magic the most sacred of all.” 

Adiana laughed. “You’ve been spending too much time with Mage Corey. You should watch yourself, you know. It’s not wise for a woman to speak as if she knows of these things.”

Eolyn bit her lip. She hadn’t considered the ease with which she spoke about magic. How many times had she made similar comments in front of Renate or Tahmir or even Mage Corey?

“Anyway, I’m not talking about Primitive Magic,” Adiana continued. “I’m talking about mages and magas and the like. Very few of them ever came from Selkynsen. Yet during the purges more witches were burned here than anywhere else in the kingdom. How do you explain that?” Her eyes rested sharp on Eolyn, though the challenge seemed intended for someone else.

“I don’t know,” Eolyn confessed.

“Mother and Father died because others wanted what they had. Many families were brought down during the purges, and new empires built on their graves. Father’s conviction allowed his entire estate to be confiscated by the magistrate.”

“But their property should have gone to you!”

“A girl?” She let go a harsh laugh. “An orphan? No, I had no rights to anything, and no money left to get me back to New Linfeln. In a public show of mercy, the magistrate offered me a place as a servant in his household, but I could see that held no future for me. He was a perverse old man. Rather than submit to him, I ran away, thinking to find employment on the piers. By then, women weren’t hired for much of anything. For a while I tried singing in the taverns, but the men…”

Adiana paused. She studied the cobblestones at her feet and wrapped her arms around herself. When she returned her gaze to Eolyn, her expression was forced somehow; light-hearted, but with tension upon her brow. “They always wanted more than a song, you know. They paid better if I obliged them, and became cruel if I did not. Still, I was lucky. Father’s steward came after me before I wandered too far down that path. He took me in as one of his family.”

“How was it that you came to join the Circle?”

“That happened much later. I kept my instruments hidden a long time, out of shame I suppose, or fear. Then one day, Corey’s Circle appeared, with women creating music alongside men. I simply knew I had to be a part of it.” Adiana took Eolyn’s arm in hers. “Mage Corey has admitted you to a sacred place, Sarah. A world where you can be a little more yourself. This is what he gives to everyone who joins the Circle. You’ll find we are fiercely loyal to him because of it.” 

Rishona interrupted their conversation with a gasp of delight. She rushed over to a vendor whose rickety table was filled with dried herbs and flasks of colored powders.

“Your people call these ‘spices’,” Rishona said as Eolyn and Adiana caught up with her. “They are from my homeland. We use them in much the same way you use herbs. They give excellent flavor to our food.”

At the vendor’s invitation, Eolyn reached for a flask containing powder the shade of oak leaves in late autumn. Just as she was about to open it, Rishona stayed her hand.

“Not this one, Sarah. Allow me to show you.” The Syrnte woman removed the cream colored scarf she wore wrapped it around Eolyn’s eyes, leaving her with the sensation of floating inside a bright cloud.

“This is the sea,” Rishona said.

Eolyn sensed the flask under her nose and felt the warm rush of a salty breeze.

“These are the high plains of my homeland.”

The maga’s senses filled with the golden caress of sun-warmed grass.

“The night.”

Eolyn detected an aroma at once ephemeral and intense, so sweet it left her heart aching.

“The fire that warms our hearths.”

Beckoning Eolyn to part her lips, Rishona touched her tongue with a substance that flamed through her sinuses and burned down her throat.

“You put this in your
food
?” Eolyn gasped.

Rishona set her breath upon Eolyn’s lips, generating a soothing frost that spread over the path of the fire spice. “That was to open your senses. What I am about to show you is far more subtle.”

The Syrnte woman said no more, allowing Eolyn’s imagination to play over the aromas and tastes that followed: of reeds growing on the edge of a placid lake, of damp leaf litter and fruit-laden trees, of the sun setting over a bright sea.

After many such journeys, a new aroma came to Eolyn that slowed her breath and quickened her heart. She inhaled her own perfume, a heavy, intimate spice that emanated from the heat of her hands and the soft contours of her breasts. She tasted the honey that spread across the inner curve of her thighs whenever she entered into ecstasy under a full moon.

Startled, Eolyn pulled back, but the scent of a man’s desire halted her retreat and wove through her own fragrance. She had encountered this heady aroma once before, fleetingly, the day she said goodbye to Achim. It was not Achim, however, who anchored himself to her as their passion took flight.

Abruptly Eolyn tore off the scarf.

A heated flush overtook her cheeks. Rishona’s gaze was cool and impassive. The maga felt certain the Syrnte woman had seen the vision. What she could not tell was whether Rishona had also crafted it.

“That is enough.” Eolyn’s voice was rigid. A tremor invaded her tone. “Perhaps you can show me more another day.”

Rishona accepted the scarf, a faint smile playing upon her ruby lips. She turned to the stall keeper to place her order.

Adiana drew close and wrapped her arm around Eolyn’s waist. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s cast a spell on you.”

“I think she did.”

Adiana clucked her tongue. “Not possible. They wouldn’t have let her into Moisehén if she were a witch. Rishona always plays the spice game when there’s a new member. I think it amuses her to see our mundane senses confused by the aromas of her homeland.”

But Eolyn was not about to dismiss the incident so lightly. Rishona had entered Moisehén at Mage Corey’s behest. The suspicion that he might have hired a Syrnte witch with the full knowledge and support of Tzeremond’s Order troubled her.

The vendor charged a premium price for his goods, and though Rishona managed to bargain him down, she left a large sum in exchange for tiny amounts of the precious imports. With a look of satisfaction, the Syrnte woman tucked the spices into her purse.

“My brother will be upset that his monthly allowance for wine has been spent.” She lifted her dark eyes to Eolyn. “Though it will please him to know his meals will soon have more flavor.”

“Enough dawdling!” Adiana declared. “Let’s have a look at some fabrics.”

She took Eolyn’s hand and led the way to the textile shop, a cramped space with bolts of cloth stacked to the ceilings. The shopkeeper was a thin old man with a balding head and complacent smile. After laying out multiple silks and brocades, he left them to attend other customers. Rishona bade Eolyn to make her choice, but the variety overwhelmed the young maga.

“You must help me, both of you. You know better what would work for the show, and what would fit within the allowance Mage Corey gave us.”

“We should choose a color that offsets the lovely tone of your hair,” Adiana said. “Perhaps one of the greens.”

“Green is the traditional color of High Mages,” Eolyn objected.  “It’s too risky.”

“Perhaps blue, then,” Rishona suggested. “Not the ice-and-silver blue of Khelia’s gown. Yours is a richer blue, the warm blue of a river on a summer day.”

Rishona separated a sapphire damask with gold threads woven in loose diamonds. Eolyn ran her fingers over the extraordinary weave. She could not imagine herself in such fabric. It was so foreign to anything she had ever known.

“Well?” Rishona prompted.

“I don’t know. It’s too soft, I think.”

Adiana giggled. Rishona called the shop owner and instructed him to cut the fabric. She then had him set out several bolts of simpler cloths before turning back to Eolyn.

“You are to choose something else,” the Syrnte woman said.

“Another dress?” Eolyn asked. “Why?”

“It is a gift from Mage Corey, something to wear when you are not performing.”

“A gift?”

“I overheard him just yesterday.” Adiana said with a conspiratorial grin. “He thinks you look charming in those homespun russets, but he wants to see you in something more suited to your place in the Circle.”

“My
place
?”

They laughed.

“It seems you have inspired some generosity among the men of the Circle.” Rishona’s words sent a burning flush through Eolyn’s cheeks. She turned abruptly away and set her focus on the textiles.

Adiana drew close. “You should be pleased, you know. It’s unusual for Mage Corey to take a special interest in one of the women under his employ.”

“Special interest indeed.” Eolyn did not bother to hide her annoyance. “Though it is not of a romantic nature.”

“What other kind of special interest is there?” Adiana teased.

Eolyn drew a breath and searched for an appropriate response. She could not deny Mage Corey’s vigilance of her, his ample attentions, his calculated kindness. But Corey did not seek her heart. He sought proof of her magic.

“There is a resonance in your spirit that reminds Corey of someone he lost, someone very dear to him,” Rishona said.

“Rishona, I will not show Mage Corey disrespect by denying this gift, but nor will I suffer any more talk of his romantic intentions.”

“Then perhaps we can talk about the song Nathan dedicated to you last night!” Adiana suggested. “I’ll wager his caress is as sweet and sincere as his voice.”

“We could also discuss the coin my brother offered you in Moehn.”

“That doesn’t really count,” Adiana objected. “Tahmir’s always handing out coins to women in those processions.”

“He’s done that before?” Eolyn asked.

Adiana shrugged. “It’s brought more than one willing partner to his bed after a show.”

Eolyn’s heart sank. She had spoken little to Tahmir outside of her riding lessons, but she could not deny the attraction she felt for him. His dark gaze unsettled her, and he moved with a raw sensuality reminiscent of Lynx. Already there had been moments, a brush of his hand over hers, a meeting of eyes across the evening fire, in which she found herself thinking that perhaps he felt the same. To learn she was one of many disappointed her somehow.