The Wealding Word (16 page)

Here Nell piped in, “I’m thirteen! And how come no one has ever told me what a Malady is?” Adults had a lot of bad habits, but none so vile as discussing the lives of young people as though they weren’t present and listening.

The sorceress turned to Nell saying, “You’ve heard of guardian angels, yes? A Malady is like that, but in reverse.”

The hermit quickly took over, “Instead of protecting you and bringing joy, a Malady brings misfortune, feeds off of it, and adds to the suffering of everyone around you. They’re called by many names: sowers of sorrow, hungry ghosts, woemongers, angels of suffering, and dozens of others. Typically they attach themselves only to very unusual or very influential people. Not much more is known about them.”

“Well, we are here to find out everything we can.” Lady Zel said. “I assume you still have
my books
on the subject, Peter?”

The old man scowled. “You’re probably sitting on them.” Lady Zel promptly stood and found that she was not. Peter began pushing piles of books, restacking, and muttering as he tried to locate the appropriate volumes. While he searched, Lady Zel poked about, inspecting the hovel with some disdain.

“Look at this: mildew on the whole stack! Peter!” She was genuinely scandalized. “I trusted these books would at least be
safe with you, and they’re rotting at the seams!” She held up one particularly mottled folio which poured dark sheaves of parchment onto the floor.

“If you wanted them, you should have come and got them. Was I to carry the whole library back to you in a cart?”

“Yes! After all, it’s how you took them from me,” Lady Zel said.

It sounded to Nell a lot like her own parents when they quarreled. Their accusations made her head hurt. What’s worse, they were bickering about books when her life was at stake. Frustration got the better of her. At once she pushed hard at a big pile and it crashed down, moldy papers flying everywhere.

Peter and Lady Zel looked at her in surprise. “Why did it pick me?” Nell cried. “Why am I the one with the Malady? I didn’t do anything to deserve it!”

The sorceress and hermit shared a glance, and Lady Zel said, “Nell, we don’t even know if it is indeed a Malady that has come. Chances are, such a creature would not pick a thirteen year old girl to hex.”

“But you told the king I had a Malady,” Nell said.

Lady Zel shrugged sadly. “True, and I’m afraid it’s still my best guess, at this point. But we need to be sure.”

The old man finally found the book he needed, saying, “Here it is:
Writings of the Most Ancient Order
. Let me see.” He flipped through a number of pages and came to one with a creature sketched at the top. It had the long head of a pig and a fat, misshapen body.

“I’ve seen that before,” Nell said, pointing to the drawing. As she spoke the words, an instinctive fear crept upon her. “In the well, I saw something like that by the light of a candlewisp.”

“You saw this creature?” The hermit asked. He looked to Lady Zel. “Well, that confirms it.”

The sorceress made no response. She peered at Nell, but the girl’s face was downcast, lost beneath russet tangles.

Peter squinted down at the page and began reading,
“…the wordless Woemonger stands above me like a clod of earth-spew. It grows larger with my every misfortune, and by its power the ills of the world bleed me day and night. As always, it comes to feed when danger and misery are greatest. Today my children were…”
The old man paused, “We don’t need to get into that.” Skipping ahead, he read on,
“I have come to discover that ridding myself of the creature is impossible. There are but three ways. They are known as The Forbidden Path, The Void, and The Stair of Stars. For any of them to work, the creature must be near
.

“If spoken by one of great power, the Word Isolet may be sufficient to break its hold, but this magic is forbidden to those in my Order. The second way, the Void, requires a human life as sacrifice. The third way is, I believe, only a rumor. I have traveled many years searching for the Stair of Stars, but I have found very few who know its story, and none who know its secret. If truly it exists, it is too well hidden, and too late for me to find. The Void awaits. It is the only way open to me now.’”
Nell gripped Rawley’s neck as the old man finished the passage.
“’Tomorrow I shall rid myself of this demon and be done, once and for all, with the curse that is my life.’”
Peter closed the book. “That’s where it ends. The writer, Genivi Dulio, does not appear to have made any further entries in the book.”

Lady Zel sighed, “Black magic, death, and a rumor.” The candles in the hovel dripped wax on the floor, guttering in a slight draft. “Well, we know the Malady has to be present for anything to work. That’s something at least. First we have to come up with a sure-fire way to attract it.”

The hermit chuckled darkly. “The creature comes only when its host’s suffering is greatest. What will you do, dangle the girl off of a cliff? Torture her? You can’t seriously consider placing Nell in real danger. And unless you’ve been taking lessons from the Widow, you don’t possess the power to banish. So where does that leave us?”

The sorceress swirled her teacup, considering. “It’s true. I have never studied the art of banishing, for Isolet magic is against my
Order. It is not an option.” Lady Zel looked sadly at the girl across the table.

Nell kept her head lowered to hide her tear-streaked face. There were incalculable forces in the world that meant her harm, and the reality of it was only just setting in. For reasons that she might never understand, a demon had singled her out for a life of misery, sentencing her and everyone around her to suffering without end. The senseless malice of it was more terrifying than the black tunnels she faced beneath the earth. Nell was numb, petrified by the truth laid before her.

The sorceress sighed. “Still, we won’t give up hope. Short of finding this Stair of Stars, other solutions must be possible. We just need time.”

C
HAPTER
17

T
HE
C
ANDLESTONE

Nell stayed with Lady Zel as spring turned to summer. She spent her days wandering among the sheep and goats in the shadow of the tower, gathering bouquets of fragrant Bee Balm and blue Lobelia, handfuls of long-plumbed Cohosh and purple Skullcap. Lady Zel had more flowers than Nell had names for – so many colors crowding around the base of her tower and quivering with the breeze in small, sunlit gardens. Four peacocks presided over the grounds, looking upon Nell with distant curiosity. Though there was no fence of any kind, all of Lady Zel’s animals stayed close. On one occasion Nell asked whether it was the Wealding Word that bound them to the tower.

The sorceress laughed as though she had heard a joke. “Wealding magic only frees things, never binds.”

“But the grumlins in the weald – they stopped when I told them to,” Nell protested.

“I think it is time you gave Miss Elder a hand in the kitchen. Learn to cook. It will help you to follow directions.” Remembering Lady Zel’s second rule concerning idle speculation, Nell stopped asking about magic after that. She continued practicing how to listen, however, following rule three.

The sorceress took tea every afternoon, and she often invited Nell to join her on a wide, marble-columned patio overlooking the
forest. She used the time as an opportunity to “see” Nell, as she called it, and conversation usually turned to teaching the girl items of practical interest. Nell sat beside the ageless woman, learning the shape and sounds of each letter, the names of the seas, or how to keep knots out of her hair. Some days however, Lady Zel simply let Nell tell her stories, listening with interest as she described falling into the well, speaking with the dragon, or enduring the torments of her sister. During these times, Nell asked questions of the sorceress as well – that is, questions that didn’t conflict with rules number one and two. Getting Lady Zel to speak about herself quickly became Nell’s favorite game.

Unlike most adults, Nell found that the sorceress answered every question quite candidly, without softening the truth or weaving some tired moral into her responses. Nell examined her closely. She learned that Lady Zel liked to sing more than anything; she preferred the company of cats over dogs; her favorite flower was wild honeysuckle – which Nell thought far too common a selection; Lady Zel got married when she was seventeen and she had two children, twins, the very same year; she was queen for 56 years, though she only ruled the realm for eleven of them; she had two husbands, but not at the same time; and she will be one hundred and eighteen years old the day before the Feast of St. Camillus.

Nell remembered her own grandmother, a woman completely shriveled by time, who sometimes hobbled by for a visit when Nell was small. She died a few years ago, and was probably half of Lady Zel’s current age. Nevertheless, her frail and stooped Nan came to mind when Nell thought of an old person. In contrast, at one hundred and seventeen, Lady Zel was tall and straight. She had wrinkles of course, and her hair was white as snow, but she did not fit Nell’s definition of ‘old.’ Old people groaned about their aches and forgot words so that you had to finish what they were saying. But even when the sorceress was being vague, there was still something
precise about her. Lady Zel’s exactness of presence made other people, young or old, seem blurry by comparison.

“Were you really a prisoner in this tower? My dad used to tell me stories about a maiden who was locked in the weald and saved by a prince.”

The sorceress gave a sigh. “It amazes me that people still tell that tale. Yes,” she said. “I was taken at birth by the witch who once lived here. She raised me as if I was her own child, and I loved her dearly.”

“You loved someone who kept you locked away? Didn’t you ever want to leave?” Nell took offense at the thought of never being allowed to walk outside.

“Well you’ve been through the tower, Nell. It has more rooms than most castles. Anyway, I had everything I needed right here. And I was incredibly naive to the world. It had to be that way. You see, the witch was using a barbaric practice to stave off her death. The spell siphoned my life, but it worked only if I was completely trusting – willingly under her power. So, she was very kind, and very protective.” Rapunzel recalled her old mentor, her hand drifting up to stroke a long white braid. “And something of an eccentric too. But unlike most who keep thralls, she was not truly wicked. She even taught me a few Words of Power.”

“And that’s how you became a sorceress?”

“Not quite, but it’s how I learned my first Words. Remember the prince from your father’s story? He did indeed find me locked away in a tower – this tower in fact. Night after night he returned to keep me company, and we eventually fell in love. This, of course, led to plotting my escape.”

Nell leaned forward, eyes wide. “But what about the witch? Did she know?”

“Well, I was not one for secrets in those days. I was so innocent; I could keep nothing from her for very long. When she found out, her anger was swift and fierce. She knew that my heart was now with the
prince, and I would not willingly stay in her tower. The necromancy she had invested upon me was wasted. So, in utter frustration she banished me to the wilderness. I was only seventeen years old, all alone, and completely ignorant to the realities of life.”

Nell gulped. “That really happened? What did you do?”

“I wandered the weald. Lucky for me, the sorceress had taught me the Wealding Word, and I found my way to the Aureate Oak. It was he who cared for me until Prince Roland came and took me back to the castle on the hill. Years later he went on to become King Roland, and I, Queen Rapunzel.”

“You don’t keep anybody as… as thralls do you?” Nell had a sinking feeling in her chest.

“Heaven preserve us! No child!”

“But you look…” Nell paused, knowing it was improper to speak of a lady’s age, but unable to restrain herself. “You look…
good
for someone as old as you are!”

The sorceress smoothed her long white hair, smiling at Nell’s inadvertent compliment. “Thank you Nell.” And it was true: at one hundred and seventeen, Lady Zel looked not a day past sixty. “I wish I could say it was natural, but you see, I am mistress of the Word Eternis. It is one of the rarest and most powerful Words, and it keeps me as young as I like. This look seems to suit me well though.”

“The Word Eternis… so you can’t die? I mean, is that why you don’t keep thralls?”

“
Keeping thralls is repugnant
,” Lady Zel said sharply. But after a pause, she began again. “The Word Eternis prolongs life, Nell. It keeps you healthy and even young-looking. But it can only be given to people with an important task to achieve: one that could take lifetimes. The quest and the Word are one. When the quest is over, the power of the Word Eternis fades. There are many who have come to beg or demand I give it to them, but it is not something to be granted lightly. I’ve learned that lesson all too well.” The sorceress
sighed and looked at the sun dipping toward mountains to the west. Nell could almost see the lines of age lengthening over her features like shadows across the forest, and then the moment was gone.