THE SUN HAD FINISHED its long journey for the day.
An array of deep orange, purple, and gold waned from the sky, being replaced by a dusky charcoal which in turn would soon be exchanged for a blanket of soft starlight.
Ty took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He tried focusing on the zigzag of the cobble in front of him, studying each stone as he passed. His mind kept replaying the moment Saleena had been struck by his father’s
arrow, the look on her face as she saw it protruding from her chest. She had locked eyes with Ty for a brief moment just before slipping back over the
side of the pier and into the icy waters of the East River. Would he ever forget that look?
“Who was she?”
“What?” His father had been silent the entire walk back from the docks to the East Inn.
“Who was the woman you . . .” Ty didn’t finish the statement.
His father stopped, taking a moment to study the nearly vacant streets. It was an uncommon sight, especially at closing time. Ty assumed it had something to do with the armed-banned of Black Watch running through
the center of the pavilion earlier, or possibly the alley fire. Either way, it
was clear his father was being overly cautious as to who could be listening in before answering Ty’s question.
“She was someone I had rescued from the Black Watch a few weeks back on one of my poaching runs. I hid her while I led the guards off in another direction. When I went back for her, she was gone.”
“Why were they hunting her? What could she do?”
“The sad thing was she couldn’t do anything. She wasn’t even a wielder.”
“What? Then why were they after her?”
“Because someone claimed she was. They saw her use some new kind of treatment to heal a child. It was a technique the other physickers had never
used before. And nowadays all it takes is for someone to be suspected of being one of the ven’ae to make it so.” His father snorted in disgust. “The White Tower has everyone so scared of the idea of magic that one can hardly sneeze around here without worrying they’re going to be turned in for associating with hobgoblins or some such nonsense. It’s like we’ve lost the ability to reason or trust. The White Tower has managed to turn us all against each other.”
They continued down the left side of River Street. A few of the shop owners were closing their doors as the last of their customers made their
way home. Ty had left his horse tied in front of Reloria’s Sweet Shop. They were only a couple storefronts down when his father stopped and headed
across the street.
“Where are you going?”
“Leave Waddle. We’ll come back for him later.”
Waiting for a covered carriage to pass, Ty followed his father across Easthaven’s main thoroughfare. This late in the day, there were very few carriages and carts. The only traffic was a single wagon making its way in the direction of the East Bridge. The next street over, they headed south
before slipping down a side street that ran adjacent to the tannery. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to meet the council.”
Ty’s breath caught in his throat. His pulse raced with excitement. He was going to meet the council. Ever since first hearing about their existence, he had wanted nothing more. He wondered if maybe they would have some
answers as to what was happening to him, but then he changed his mind. He still hadn’t found the right time to tell his family yet, and he wanted them to be the first to know.
He was also curious as to why his father was even on the wielder council. As far as Ty knew, his father didn’t have any magical abilities. He could only conclude that it was because his father was the overlord’s forester and his knowledge of the land was used to help relocate the ven’ae from one place to another.
“I believe you deserve some answers,” his father said as he spared a passing glance over his shoulder. Ty couldn’t have agreed more. “Everything might not be as it appears.”
Ty was left wondering what his father had meant by that last statement as he picked up the pace to keep up with Kellen’s long strides. They
traversed half a dozen back lanes and side streets before finally making their way down a small alley behind an artillator shop.
Ty found the air in this section of the city to be somewhat rancid, as the smell of human waste lined the small trenches on either side of the streets where the resident’s chamber pots were emptied. Holding his nose with one hand, he pushed forward.
They passed down another dark alley. A few lanterns hung in front of the entryways, revealing a row of doors lining the back of some obscure shops and personal residences. His father stopped in front of the second to last on the right and knocked three times, waited a moment, and then knocked once more.
“Who ith it?” called a rough voice from the other side. “Kellen.”
Ty could hear scraping noises coming from the other side of the door just before it opened. Not wanting to linger in the dingy alley any longer than he had to, he followed his father inside.
“Ith good to thee you, Mather Kellen,” the older man said before sticking his head out the door to see if anyone was about.
“It’s good to be seen. Especially after the evening we’ve had.” “Aye, I geth it ith.”
Ty found himself enamored with speculating the cause of the man’s slurred speech. After dropping the wooden beam back into the metal bracers, the elderly man turned and smiled. His toothless grin said it all.
“Eliab, I’d like to introduce you to Ty, my youngest.” He felt his father’s hand grip his shoulder. “Ty, this is Eliab, he’s the gatekeeper for the council. In his younger years, he was the overcaptain of the Sidaran forces.”
That must have been a long, long time ago, Ty thought as he watched the old man smack his toothless gums. It reminded him of a weasel he had once seen as it was preparing to relieve some poor creature of its eggs. “It’s nice to meet you, Master Eliab.” Ty started to hold out his hand but there was a momentary sense of hesitation as he took in the large double-bolt crossbow tucked under the man’s arm.
Eliab took his hand and shook. “Ith good to meet you, Mather Ty.
Mighty fine young man you have here, Mather Kellen.” “He is, indeed.”
“After hearing about thith eveningth predicament, I can thee why you brought him by.” Eliab laid the crossbow back on the table and headed into
the next room. “The counthil ith already here and waiting.”
“Good.” His father motioned Ty forward with a nod. “This is one of the Harbor Houses we have in Easthaven. It’s also the primary location we use for our meetings.” They followed Eliab into a back room and down a flight of stone steps into the cellar below.
“We use this location to hide wielders who have been discovered and need a safe place to stay until they can be relocated.” Navigating their way around the maze of boxes and barrels, they came to a stop outside a closed door.
Eliab knocked.
“Come in,” came a low voice from the other side. Eliab opened the door and stepped back to let Ty and his father pass.
“That will be all, Eliab, thank you,” said a short but stocky man standing at the far end of a long table.
The old toothless gatekeeper laid an encouraging hand on Ty’s shoulder as he passed. He shut the door on his way out. Ty stepped out from behind his father to get a better look at who all was in the room.
“Mother? Why are you . . .” Then he saw Breen and Adarra. His whole family was there. He started to scan the room as he hopped from one face to the next. Why was everyone staring at him? He recognized a few of the
people as local shop owners. His eyes widened at the sight of Miss Reloria.
Her head was topped with the same bold yellow and lavender lace bonnet she had been wearing earlier when he had visited her shop. He definitely hadn’t expected the sweet shop lady to be a council member.
There were others he didn’t recognize, including a strange woman with short white hair and yellowish eyes glaring in his direction. He pulled away from the harsh stare and continued counting the faces until his eyes caught the end of the table. His mouth dropped. He took a step back. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It wasn’t possible. Sitting in a chair on the far side of the room, talking softly with Fraya, was Saleena, and she was very much alive!
“What? How?” was all Ty could get out as he gawked at the formerly dead woman looking in his direction.
“Master Kellen, I thought that was you.” Saleena tried standing but her legs collapsed and she landed back in her seat. “I don’t know if I should hit you or hug you.” She actually had a smile on her face as his father, who
strangely enough didn’t seem all that surprised, walked over and knelt down beside her.
“I am glad to see you alive, Saleena,” he said with a warm smile, gently patting her hand, “but the next time I tell you to stay put . . . do it.” Saleena bit her lower lip. She looked embarrassed. She nodded and then glanced down at the table to avoid further eye contact.
Ty, still mesmerized by her miraculous rise from the dead, took a step forward. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a long story,” his father said, “but one I’m sure you’re going to enjoy.” He stood and gestured to some chairs on the left side of the table. “Take a seat. We have a lot to discuss.”
Around the room, the others exchanged eager glances as they moved to find their seats. For some reason, Ty felt this had more to do with him than Saleena. He was bubbling over with excitement. This was going to be the night; he just knew it. He would never find a better time to reveal his secret than right now. He had just been granted entrance into the inner sanctum of the Easthaven Wielder Council and, apart from that, his whole family was here.
After everyone had found a place around the large rectangular table, Ty’s father leaned forward in his chair and turned to him. “First of all, Ty, you need to know that nothing which happened tonight was your fault.
Everyone here had a hand in tonight’s events.” His father’s eyes lowered as he thumbed his chin in thought. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t we have
everyone take a moment to briefly mention the role they played in pulling off this rather complex ruse.” He turned back to Ty. “I think you’ll find it rather interesting.”
His father didn’t say it but Ty could see the pride of what the council had managed to do reflected in his eyes. “I guess the best place to start would be at the beginning,” he said with a quick gesture across the table at the tall, gray-headed man with the baggy robes and carved staff.
The older man nodded politely and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “My name is Orlyn and I own the apothecary on River Street,” he said, clearly more for Ty’s sake than anyone else. “And your father gave me the task of rendering our jailors cataleptic.”
Ty’s face contorted. Cata . . . what?
“Huh?” The man sitting next to Orlyn, with the disheveled hair and side whiskers, grunted. “What in the name of Aldor is cata . . . lep . . . whatever?
Speak plainly, man, or the boy ain’t gonna have any idea what you’re talking about.”
Orlyn raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “Well, for the lesser educated in the room,” he said as he cleared his throat, casting a sidelong look at the man sitting next to him. “It means unconscious, inert, lifeless.”
The man next to the tall apothecary folded his arms and mumbled something under his breath. Ty wanted to chuckle but resisted the urge.
“As I was saying, my job was to find a way to render Saleena’s captors useless. And being the skilled apothecary that I am, I can think of no better way to accomplishing this task than with some well-placed yularis in their evening ale. And since I happen to be on good speaking terms with the barracks’ cook, after I managed to help him with a particularly nasty
abscess in a rather precarious location, I was able to slip my cocktail in their drinks.” Orlyn finished with a slight bow from his seat, signaling the end of his part in the tale.
“Which leads us to the next stage of our story,” his father said, pointing in Miss Reloria’s direction.
With a loving smile, the sweet shop owner introduced herself and expounded further. “The only unfortunate downside to Master Orlyn’s concoction was that a mere whiff of it would have sent you into convulsions by its unbearably foul taste. And so I was tasked with taking a pitcher of rancid ale and reconstituting it into something fit to drink. I also topped it off by adding a light touch of cloves and honey. It was undoubtedly the finest drink they will ever have the pleasure of forgetting.”
Ty had no doubt that if Miss Reloria had anything to do with it, the drink would have been worthy of the High King himself. People traveled from all over the kingdom to sample her sweets.
The excitement around the table seemed to build as each member continued to reveal their individual part in the overall plot. All that was, except the white-haired woman who proceeded to sit in her chair with all the animation of a corpse suffering from three-day rot. His father kindly offered her objective. “As the cook walked into the cells with the Black Watch’s evening meal, Sheeva followed him in.”
“And how did she do that?” Breen asked, leaning forward in his seat on the other side of Ty. Ty leaned forward to get a look at his older brother.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had been kept in the dark concerning tonight’s events.
“Ah, I’m glad you asked.” His father gestured to Sheeva. “If you would, please.” Ty wondered why everyone was looking at his family, and then he noticed that the air around the woman’s seat had started to warp, and in the blink of an eye, she vanished. Ty was speechless. His mouth swung from its jaws once again.
“What the—” Breen’s chair slid back from the table as his hand defensively went for his bow.
Ty’s mother gasped and so did his sister as they stared at the empty chair in disbelief. “It’s one thing to hear about it,” his mother said, “but it’s quite another to actually see it.” Ty couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his mother so unnerved.
Moments later, the place around Sheeva’s seat distorted and she reappeared.
“That was amazing, Miss Sheeva,” his sister said as she pulled out one of her journals and began scribbling something inside. “Could you tell me how it works? What does it feel like? Have you always been able to—”
“That’s enough, Adarra,” Ty’s father interrupted. “You can question the poor woman later. As I was saying, once inside the barracks’ cells, she waited until the guards had thoroughly drunk the entire container and were lying face down in their own dribble on the floor. After they were safely subdued, she unbound Saleena’s ropes, helped her into one of their white robes, and had her run for the docks.”
“And that is where I take over!” the boisterous man beside Orlyn chimed
in.
“Not quite,” said the barrel-chested man at the front of the table. He
wiped his hand over the bald area on the top of his head before fiddling with a small piece of metal hanging around his neck.
“Veldon is correct,” Ty’s father cut in. “As fast and determined as our beloved Captain Hatch was, he and his men managed to gain considerable ground in their chase—”
“And would have intercepted our fugitive,” Veldon said as he waved his hand over the flame of a nearby candle, causing it to stretch to nearly three times its normal height, “if not for a timely explosion that forced them to back-track their route.
Ty remembered the alley fire that had blocked their way. He had no idea there were people who could manipulate fire. It was all so incredible.
Beside him, he could hear Adarra scratching away in her journal.
“This of course added just enough time for Saleena to make her way down to my docks.”
“True,” his father said, glancing at the man on Master Orlyn’s left, “which in turn leads us to Feoldor.”
Feoldor, with a grin that spread clean across his face and quite possibly around the back of his head, clapped his hands together. “Right! Now for the good part.” Some of the others rolled their eyes. “My job was not only to keep the Black Watch away from Saleena, but to do it in a way that
would leave them believing she was going to destroy them all if they didn’t act. And let me tell you, son,” he said, looking directly at Ty, “that was no mean feat. I had to keep them from getting close enough to notice that she was not the real threat. And I did it with this.” He raised his hand and a sharp gust of wind whipped around the room.
“Feoldor!” Feoldor quickly lowered his hand when he saw the look on Reloria’s face as she tried holding her hat in place.
“Sorry about that.”
“I guess I’m next,” his father said as he rested his elbows comfortably on the table. “It was my job to kill Saleena.” Ty was stunned by his father’s matter-of-fact confession. “Or, at least, appear that I had.” His father’s
smile quickly vanished when he looked at Ty. “What I did not expect was to see my son come bursting out of the storm set to save the fair damsel like Felix the Great.”
Breen clapped Ty on the back and winked. “Ty the hero,” his sister added.
Ty, feeling rather flushed, merely smiled and shrugged as if it had been nothing. He was glad no one except his father had actually witnessed the incident. If they had, they would have seen how completely terrified he had been.
“Which I must admit,” his father said, “that even though it did wonders in selling my part as the wayward hunter who was being commanded to murder a wielder under protest, it brought my heart to a stop when Hatch grabbed him, pulled out a knife, and then demanded I shoot Saleena or watch him open my boy’s neck in front of me.”
There were more than a few gasps to be heard around the table, followed by proud stares. His mother reached across Adarra to squeeze Ty’s hand.
His father continued, “So I pulled back my bow, took aim, and released
—”
“And that,” Feoldor butted in, “is when I cut off the wind and waves in order for it to appear as though it had indeed been conjured by our young Saleena here.”
“It was most convincing,” Ty’s father acknowledged with a firm nod.
Ty watched as Saleena’s hand rubbed across the mark on her chest where the arrow had been. “I guess it’s my turn,” she said, “since I was the one standing there with a piece of wood sticking out of me. Although I must admit, I don’t remember much of anything after that.” Her eyes seemed to
glaze over as she relived what had happened. Tears streaked her cheeks. “I remember pain,” she said, “and falling. It seemed like I was falling forever, and then, darkness.”
Fraya reached out to grasp Saleena’s hand as the woman wiped her eyes and lifted her head from where she had been staring at the table in front of her.
Reloria pulled out a swatch of material from her handbag, unfolded it, and removed a small piece of what looked like green taffy. Saleena graciously accepted the sweet and stuffed it in her mouth, smiling at its soothing power.
Ty could only see one flaw in their story. “If you shot her, then why isn’t she dead? You never miss.”
“Ah, you’re right, I don’t miss. My shot had to be precise. I had to make sure that I not only kept from piercing something vital but that I gave her
time to finish the last two steps of our journey.”
“Last two steps?” Ty was confused. “But we all saw her sink into the river and disappear downstream. Even if the arrow didn’t kill her, she would have drowned.”
“That is where I pass the story off to our little friend over there.” His father pointed toward the small man seated on the other side of Orlyn at the head corner of the table. “Gilly, if you would.” Ty had almost forgotten about the little dwarf.
“When the beautiful lady fell into the waters, I caught her,” Gilly said with a smile so warm Ty couldn’t help but be drawn in. “I made a bubble for her to breathe on the soft bottom. And I carried her away from all those mean men.”
“And he walked her right out of the river like a water faerie,” Fraya added with a bright smile down the table for Gilly, who playfully waved in her direction. “And brought her to where I was waiting in a small wooded
area outside of town. After I pulled the arrow from her chest, I went about healing her wound.”
Healing her wound? Ty looked at his father and then back at Fraya. “Are you saying you’re a . . . a . . .”
“A wielder?” Fraya smiled. “Yes.”
Ty couldn’t believe it. Was everybody a secret wielder? Why was he the only one who didn’t seem to know about any of this?
“Thankfully, Master Kellen is an excellent shot or my job would have been impossible,” Fraya admitted. “There are some wounds so severe they can potentially kill the healer as well as the victim.”
Ty was taken aback at hearing how dangerous what she had done was.
He wondered if Breen had known about her involvement. Ty turned to look at his older brother, but Breen was too busy smiling like a love-sick oaf at Fraya to notice.
“And from there, we know the rest,” his father said, joining the others in a relaxed pose. No one spoke for quite some time, content to sit in their
solitude and revel in a job well done.
Ty, on the other hand was bursting with questions. He had his own secrets, and he was desperate to share them. This was his chance. He tried running over in his mind what he would say, like he had so many times before. He just couldn’t figure out where to start. He clenched his fists around the legs of his trousers for support and took a deep breath. Here
goes nothing. He opened his mouth, but before the first word ever came out, his father spoke.
“Ty, there is another reason why I brought you here tonight.” His father cleared his throat and rubbed his hand across his thinly trimmed beard. He appeared to be having a difficult time trying to think of what to say, which was unusual for his father. Ty’s father always seemed to know exactly what to say. “There’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you for some time
now, but . . .” His father shared a look with Ty’s mother and she nodded for him to continue. Ty didn’t think he could take it any longer. “Ty,” his father said, “you’re—”
“A wielder!”
