Teine's mind turned and turned on itself as he sat on the bed in the blue room and carefully packed his belongings into the satchel. Frustrated and more than a little frightened by the strange conversation he'd just come from, Teine took comfort in doing exactly what he'd been raised to do- follow orders. He'd been ordered to go to Marne, and that was what he was going to do. He found himself wondering if, perhaps, he'd be able to get some answers from the boy. Unable to stop himself, Teine sighed out loud. The boy was frail, sickly, and strange even for an Aoife. How someone as small as a six year old human child could suddenly become the undisputed Master of Teine's fate seemed like some cruel joke.
Teine stared blankly at the portrait on the wall. Brothers playing on the beach, a moment of sunshine, sand, and smiles forever frozen in time. It made him very cognizant of how badly he was missing Leis. He was absolutely certain she'd be able to make sense of all this strange behavior from the Aoife. In fact, Leis might already know why people at Solmurry tended to tiptoe around the topic of Marne. It was as though Teine had landed in the middle of some strange cult or something.
"If she knew, she'd tell me," Teine tried to assure himself. But somehow, after everything he'd seen that day, he wasn't too sure.
It didn't take him long to pack his meager belongings and vacate the blue room. It was probably for good, he suspected. Humans normally didn't get full guest privileges in any of the Aoife homes, no matter who they belonged to. However, Teine took fleeting comfort in knowing he'd probably always be furnished in somewhat lavish quarters as long as he was traveling with Marne. All the same, he glanced over his shoulder to appreciate the beauty of the furnishings, the softness of the bed, and the portrait of the "brothers blue" and the slice of their happy childhood he'd witnessed. He couldn't help himself. That painting had managed to lodge itself firmly in his mind as one of his favorite pieces of art of all time. "It was too good to last, anyway," he thought. Trying not to feel sorry for himself, as though he were being evicted from paradise- trying, in fact, not to feel anything at all- Teine threw his bag over his shoulder and headed back down to the kitchen.
While he had been upstairs packing his bag, the matronly old Bess had made up a tray for him to take to the basement. "There's a good boy," she chirped, handing it to him. The dishes clanked and rattled together as he clumsily seized it, then rattled again as she patted his cheek with one wrinkled, age spotted hand. "Careful there." She lit a candlestick with a taper from the stove, then placed it on the tray so he'd have something to see by. "Mind the stairs, now. They take a sharp turn at the bottom, and then you're there."
The pleasant, sweet scent of beeswax mingled with the meaty aroma from covered bowls on the tray, and Teine found himself inhaling for the sheer pleasure of it. "I'll be careful," he assured his colleague, giving her a pleasant nod as she held the basement door open for him. He tried hard not to jostle the tray or bump her with his satchel as he began his descent down the narrow, bricked stairway.
The candle lit a very limited radius, and Teine could barely see two steps down from his position. Within a few steps, the dank, mildewy smell overpowered even the fragrant candle and hearty meal, and he found himself thinking more of a dungeon than a basement. Just as he glanced upward, hoping for some reassurance from the kitchen Bess, she closed the door on him, leaving Teine to navigate the steep, claustrophobic descent by candlelight alone.
"Great," he muttered, suppressing a nervous laugh as he listened for a moment to the howling of the wind outside. "They'll probably discover my bones in a thousand years when someone excavates the tower ruins."
About halfway down, Teine's feet nearly slid out from under him as he lost his footing on the mossy flagstones. He narrowly escaped upsetting the tray and tumbling the rest of the way down but fortunately kept his feet and took to peering cautiously at each step before placing his weight on them. Although there wasn't standing water pooled on any of the steps, he could hear a steady dripping from further down in the basement, as the sound of the storm raging outside was muted substantially by the inches of cold stone between Teine and the elements. Teine wrinkled his nose at the strengthening smell of mildew, wondering how the extreme humidity in this basement could possibly be a healthy place for anyone to recover from an illness, much less a frail child who took cold easily.
After the sharp turn that had been described to him, Teine reached the bottom of the stairs. The low ceiling of the stairwell opened up into a room that looked to be used mostly to store casks and preserves. The walls were lined with jars of pickled goods, as well as many waxed rounds of cheese and other sundries protected from the dank atmosphere by their packaging- but there was no sign of Teine's young Master. Glancing around and holding the tray high to maximize the effect of the candle, Teine whispered, "Marne?"
Three drips of water plunked into a bucket catching a leak before Teine heard a faint answer. "I'm in here."
Treading cautiously toward the sound of Marne's voice, Teine inched his way across the floor, afraid of stepping on anything or upsetting any of the shelves he was passing so near. After a score of steps, he could make out the faint outline of a door with a table sitting next to it. He could see the light switch by the door, and sighed; this whole uncomfortable trek into the underworld of Madric's Tower would have been a lot less stressful, if lighted with good, electric lights. Imagining the room lit brightly, it suddenly seemed much less menacing, and Teine found himself smiling at how silly he'd been to be afraid at all. "I've got your dinner," he told the boy. "Hang on, I'll be right there."
Setting the tray on the table, Teine reached for the latch on the door and gave it a turn. The latch cooperated, but the door didn't budge. With a frown, Teine tugged harder, feeling the tell-tale stubbornness of cellar-damp wood. He bit down his momentary panic at the thought of Marne trapped. "Uh... don't worry," he called to the boy. "The door's stuck. It sure is humid down here." With a twist, helped along by a shove from his shoulder the solid oak door burst open. Teine grabbed the candle off the tray and thrust it ahead of him to scout for Marne.
In the shadows beyond the light of his candle, a dark form rustled, rising up from the indistinct features of the poorly lit room. Two bright, electric blue orbs reflected back the light of Teine's candle, tracking him with eerie luminescence.
Eyes.
Teine was only able to squeak "wraith!" in alarm, before dropping the candle on the ground and knocking himself nearly brainless on the door behind him. The candle guttered for a second, laying broken in a pool of its own hot wax like a dying soldier, before the flame went out completely.
"Don't be a fool. Stand still." Marne's sharp command sliced through both the womb-like darkness and Teine's fog of terror like a scalpel of ice. His confident words halted Teine in his tracks, an effective barrier to the blind, panicked flight he was about to take.
Teine tensed at the patter of small feet across the flagstones coming toward him. "It's only me." the creature whispered. Teine could smell him, the scent he'd come to associate with Marne. In the close space, the unearthly mix of cinnamon and cloves struck him; Marne was not an Aoife.
A moment later reality rushed back in, and he realized with some relief that the small form next to him was warm and alive- certainly not a wraith.
The next thing Teine knew was Marne's fingers brushing against his, pushing something into his hands. "Here, take this." he said. Out of the habit of obedience, Teine opened his hands to receive it without even wondering first what it was. Before he could gather his wits about him to ask, the candle burst to life, whole and brilliant in his hands.
Puzzled, alarmed, and strangely thrilled by the trick, Teine couldn't help knitting this last occurrence together with all of the other mysteries that he'd witnessed over the last couple of days. Theory after theory piled themselves on top of each other, vying for space in his suddenly overstuffed brain. Eager for more information, he couldn't help but turn his gaze to search for his young Master's face. But Marne had turned away, retreating out of easy candle range. Teine hesitated, struck dumb by what he'd seen earlier. Uncertain how to proceed, he stayed in his spot by the door, listening to the muted and eerie wail of the storm outside while he waited for his Human eyes to adjust to the candlelight. As though reading every half-baked theory tumbling around in Teine's head, Marne threw him a resigned, furtive glance. Once again, Marne's eyes caught the candlelight and reflected it back.
Instead of terror, Teine was surprised at his blooming sense of wonderment. Holding the candle in front of him to get a better look, he advanced a few steps closer and was able to make out a raised, child-sized bed with heavy but shabby looking drapes, a bedside table, and a stand with one of the amazing picture boxes he'd seen in the playroom at the Demense. A wooden rocking horse guarded the foot of the bed like a faithful pet. This room, unlike the others beyond the door, was completely windowless. Cocooned in a blanket, a corner of it wrapped over his head, Marne lay, very studiously averting his gaze. "Please bring me my supper." Marne whispered. "Then, begone with you."
Gone was the tone of command, the certainty and confidence that had rooted Teine safely in his place earlier. Instead, the voice was that of a young child, alone and frightened of the dark, and swaddled like a nurseling. "Yes, Master," Teine replied, out of habit. He could have sworn he was getting a headache from all the questions stampeding around in his head, that propriety demanded go unasked. He closed the distance to Marne's bedside and set the candle on the little bedside table, frowning at the two other empty candle-holders. Marne had been in the dark for some time.
"Please?" Marne answered, sounding even more tentative. Teine hesitated, the oddness of the plea catching him and holding him there. Marne was heir to Solmurry, son of the Lord and Master, and held life or death sway over literally hundreds of human lives- he owed no one a please except his own kin. Even though Teine had been trying to catch a glimpse of the boy's face to better discern what the child wanted, Marne's next words caught Teine completely off guard. "Please, don't call me that."
Teine blinked, uncertain what was being asked of him. "Sir?"
"Don't call me Master." As if gathering courage, Marne took a deep breath, then turned his head to face Teine directly. Up close, the child's eyes were even more spectacular. They reflected the candlelight like orbs of blue fire. "I believe it demeans us, both."
Teine barely heard Marne's words, he was so caught up in what he was seeing. The Marne he was looking at didn't even look like the Marne he'd been introduced to. The face he showed the world must be some sort of illusion- perhaps some of that experimental magic that Madric had showed him. Aoife, even their children, generally had sharper features than Humans, with long, oblique set almond shaped eyes, high cheekbones, narrow noses, and prominent chin and jaw lines. Marne's face, at least the one Teine was viewing right that moment, had many similar qualities, yet managed to be as unlike the face of an Aoife child as horses were to deer. This was no deformed Aoife he was looking at- Teine increasingly more convinced that Marne was an entirely different creature. The pupils of Marne's eyes were distinctly diamond shaped, unlike the round pupils of both Aoife and humans, and even the irises of his eyes were an odd shade resting somewhere between blue and grey. Instead of the rich golden locks of his father and uncle, Marne's hair was variegated into multiple shades covering the entire spectrum of blonde, from sunny bright all the way to generous helpings of platinum. His hands, pale against the heavy woolen blanket, were even more slender and appeared to be jointed somewhat differently from the Aoife.
The child simply looked otherworldly.
And Teine could do nothing but stare dumbly at his young Master, with the oddest feeling coursing through him. It wasn't timidity, or fear, but a strange sense of purpose. As though somehow his life- his real life- had only just now begun.
Marne sighed, struggling to sit up in the bed. His thin lips twisted into a sardonic and slightly self-deprecating smile. Teine had seen that same expression on Marne before, but on his other face. "Of course you realize, it's rude to stare," Marne admonished him, his voice surprisingly timid. "But since I've certainly given you just cause, we can overlook it. Just this once."
Teine blinked, realizing that he hadn't for several seconds. He opened his mouth to speak, but could get nothing out but a couple syllables of unintelligible grunting- an utter failure for one usually so articulate.
"Go ahead," Marne encouraged. "I know you feel you must ask. You have my permission."
As artless as a toddler, Teine opened his mouth again, willing himself to form words. Finally, he blurted, "What are you?"
To read the next chapter, Chapter 13, "Chosen"... click HERE!
The Gilded Shackle is the first book in The Evermancer Saga, a series of online serial novels. Go go right to the most recent chapter, go to www.evermancer.com.
To read the whole story, starting at the beginning, click HERE!
0 comments:
Post a Comment