Preface:
This story takes place midivalish, sometime after or during the crusades but well before the height of the renaissance. Trade is becoming more prevalent, along with the new middle class, and Europe is slowly coming out of the dark ages.
The story takes place over a span of around two decades, so each chapter title is prefaced by the main character's age at the time.
Author's note:
This is the first real story I've written. It has actual plot and things. I have notes. It's also the longest I've ever written by a factor of three(and I'm only a third of the way done as of right now... probably less). So if it's boring, if the writing sucks, if it's just plain bad... please don't hurt me. And if you decide to give up before chapter three, give me the benefit of the doubt. It starts slow out of necessity.
Questions or comments, contact me as Another Aurelia on AIM.
Oneiros
Part one - formative years
Chapter three - nineteen - blood magic
Slivers of peel fell into the bucket as Sylvie cut them away. The knife, only a few inches long but razor-sharp, whispered wetly as she peeled the potatoes with smooth, controlled strokes. Finishing, she cut it into small pieces which she dropped into a pot before taking another from the pile and starting over. She hummed as she worked, a simple but curiously disjointed melody.
Outside the window, the sun was beginning to sink below the trees, and already their shadows reached the house's west side. The leaves of the trees were beginning to turn brown, heralds of frost still weeks away. Celina would be back from town soon; Sylvie's hand tightened on the knife for a moment, and she increased her pace. She wanted to be done and upstairs in her room before the woman returned, safe from her prying eyes. She wanted to be away from here entirely, away from people. She could picture them all too clearly, petty, nattering women and loud, crude men. Merely being near them made her feel violated, unclean. She didn't dare think private thoughts when near them; it felt as though she were naked in public.
The knife glistened softly. She imagined stabbing someone, the look on their face as she thrust the knife up under their ribcage to their heart, the feel of warm blood covering her hand as she withdrew the knife to stab again. She smiled faintly. Wistfully.
Hurried footsteps on the path brought her out of her reverie; Celina was home early. Furious, Sylvie lashed out with the knife, scoring the counter top deeply. Then, schooling herself to stillness, she returned to her task, moving mechanically, face carefully blank. With each footstep, her rage grew, rage at Celina's inevitable presence, rage at her own inability to change that future. Her skin tingled with the suppressed urge to destroy something, and she gripped the knife so hard that her hand trembled.
She heard the door open. Celina entered and set something on the kitchen table. Sylvie could feel Celina's eyes on her, watching. She continued to peel the potato, careful not to betray her knowledge of Celina's presence with any variation of pace or rhythm.
"Mrs. Dantanov is in labor," Celina said, "Mistress Wythers is with her, so we have some time, but you'd best leave that."
Nodding, Sylvie finished the potato, dropping the pieces into the pot and putting on the lid as Celina continued.
"There shouldn't be any trouble - Lord knows she's had enough experience with this - so I'll mostly let you handle it. I'll stand by just in case."
Sylvie nodded again. It was the first time Celina had let her do one unassisted, but it shouldn't be a problem; she knew what to do if anyone did.
They set about gathering the birthing supplies, but were interrupted by the sound of someone running up the path. Celina went to the door in order to meet the person. Between the runner's heave breathing - she wrinkled her nose in disgust - and her own preparations, Sylvie made out that someone had been injured at the mill when a shaft splintered; a large piece had been driven through his leg. Sylvie wished she could see it.
Presently, Celina came back to the kitchen, urgency showing in her movements.
"I'll be going to the mill, then." she said, "When I finish there, I'll join you at the Dantanov's house. Unless you've finished and come back here, of course. You'll do well."
"Thanks," said Sylvie. It was the first time she had spoken in hours, and the word felt strange on her lips.
Even before Sylvie had finished preparing, Celina had gathered what she needed and left, running as well as she could. The house felt even more empty than it usually did when Sylvie was alone there, the sudden quiet overpowering after the frenetic quiet of the last few minutes. Lifting the bag with the birthing supplies in it, Sylvie left the house.
The sun had sunk fully below the trees by the time Sylvie had started down the path, and the air was pleasantly cool after the heat of the afternoon. A light breeze sprang up, bringing the smells of both summer and fall.
The Dantanov's house, past midnight.
Even as she wrapped the child in blankets, Sylvie knew it was dying. The birthing had gone wrong; there was nothing she could have done to prevent it, but she felt as though she had failed somehow. But then she examined her feelings, for that was all she felt. She had no sorrow for the child, for she detested babies, nor sympathy for the mother, who she disliked.
She passed the child to Mrs. Dantanov, seeing from the look in the woman's eyes that she also knew it was dying.
"I'm sorry," sail Sylvie, turning away to hide her lie.
"It wasn't your fault," Mrs. Dantanov replied. She sighed softly. "Or anyone's."
Sylvie didn't reply. There was nothing to say. Slowly, she began gathering things back into her bag. Normally immune to fatigue, even late into the night, she was more tired now than she ever remembered being. She stood straight and leaned backward slightly to relieve the stiffness in her back, at the same time glancing at the two on the bed. Mrs. Dantanov was resting, her eyes closes, and the child was nearly gone. She could feel its' life-force diffusing as it died. She turned back to cleaning up.
After her experiment with the bird she had pursued the subject, limiting herself to speculation about what had gone wrong, wondering whether the sickness had been a result of her method or her subject, or perhaps because she had removed the bird's spirit instead of letting it leave the body naturally. She had never truly considered trying a second time, out of fear of discovery and out of fear of the side effects. Here and now, though, she was unhappy, both with herself and with the world, and she might not get another chance like this for years, with a human subject too far gone to cry out and Celina away. She reached a decision.
She extended a flow of life-force. Mrs. Dantanov's eyes were still closed, either resting or asleep. She concentrated to keep the flow from joining the child's life-force, and moved it to touch the diffusing cloud. Immediately, a torrent of mana poured through the flow and into her, more than she could ever hold normally. She cut the flow, leaving it to hang in the air and fade away. The influx of mana stopped, but she held too much.
The mana filled her, saturating her body and seeming to search for a way out. Her skin tingled with it, and sensations seemed to be amplified. She had to focus carefully on not letting the mana escape and discharge, suspecting that to do so could have disastrous consequences.
The excess mana soon began to dissipate, not discharging itself but merely fading away, and within a minute, she held only a small fraction more than normal. As it did so, keeping the remainder safely contained became easier. She realizes that her lungs were burning for air, and took a deep breath.
Sylvie saw Mrs. Dantanov's eyes open and meet her own. Surprised, she stared back. It lasted only a moment before the remaining excess mana, free from her control, discharged into her body. She was aware of a great heat, then blackness.
The healer's house, evening of the same day.
Sylvie lay in bed long after she woke, replaying the memory of the morning over and over in her head. The power she had felt then made her laugh almost giddily. She could draw more, she thought, and probably spare the attention to direct it if only she had something to use it for. At the same time she dreaded that Celina may have discovered what she had done, and listened in cases she was in the house. She heard nothing for a long while, and got up.
She felt somewhat sore, as though she had worked hard the day before, and decided that it was probably just a side effect of the mana discharge. Aside from that she felt well rested, and slightly hard of thinking from sleeping so long. She descended the stairs and crossed the narrow hall to the kitchen, where the setting sun painted the walls a rich shade of red brown. She found on the table a note from Celina saying that she was away taking care of the man who had been injured at the mill, whose condition had worsened, and that she would likely be away until late evening.
Sylvie climbed the stairs and went to her bedroom. She sat on her bed and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes. She tried to think, but it was difficult with the events of the previous night running through her mind.
To gain such power from simple death was incredible. To not have anything to use it for was tragedy. The book she had learned from, "To use mana," made references to other spells, but they were so vague as to be useless, rarely more than hinting at the purpose. Some of them sounded dangerous, others benign or helpful, when one could guess the purpose from the name at all. What little she had discerned did no more than suggest a wide range of uses.
Her thoughts turned to the Oneiros dictionary. It contained some words which she had never encountered in the book about magic. She had asked Celina about them and been told that there had been a third document when Celina and Anton had started translating the book, a short list of words several of which never occurred in the book, and that once they had transcribed the list it had been discarded.
Sylvie frowned, opening her eyes. Celina was never one to discard something unnecessarily. Perhaps it had contained something which she didn't want Sylvie to know about, or perhaps it wasn't a simple list; there were several pages which had been removed from the end of the dictionary. And if Celina hadn't thrown it away....
Sylvie stood and lit the lamp by the door. Carrying it, she went to the entrance of the workroom, directly above the kitchen, the same size, and windowless. She set the lantern on a long table and returned to the door. She remembered vividly the day when she had been introduced to magic. She had heard Celina go upstairs to the workroom. The south side, she recalled, and one floorboard had made a slight cracking sound.
After walking back and forth across the floor several times, she found that the south end of one board made the sound. She returned to the door, then walked in a straight line over the board until the wall, joining the sloping roof at shoulder height, stopped her. She was just under a roof beam. Reaching up and running her hands between the thatch and the top of the beam, she found nothing. Undaunted, she repeated the process with each of the others, with the same result. Finally, she stood on the table and did the same to the ridge beam, where, she found two books. Smiling at her success, she pulled out a chair and sat at the table.
The books' titles were both in Oneiros. The first read simply "Death magic," and inside its' cover were the missing pages of the dictionary. The second was labeled "Basic " and a word which, upon consulting the dictionary pages meant "Moving things between two places without traversing the distance between. (via portals, or summoning)(progressive verb)"
She opened the first, leafing quickly through its' pages. They detailed spells of killing and destruction, ranging from the simple and low-energy to incantations of such destructive power that she knew trying to perform would constitute dramatic, fiery suicide. The last was followed by a full page illustration of the gutted ruin of a building large enough to hold a small city. It looked as though it had exploded from within with impossible force. Immense stone blocks lay scattered to the edge of the scene, which must have been several miles from the center of the destruction. The picture was labeled "Aftermath of the attack by the rogue (magic user), Ayquaid."
Sylvie turned to the second book and looked through it as well, though more hurriedly. It contained illustrations of different types of portals, then of dangerous-looking animals which it said could be bound to the summoner's will.
She returned to the first book and began reading the first spell. It was truly simple, taking a mage and a half to describe in full. She read through it carefully twice, and when she had finished she rested her left elbow on the table, lower arm pointing straight up and hand open. She cast the spell, and fire engulfed her hand. It was a soft, white flame like that of a candle made from the best tallow. The felt the air move around her hand as the flame's draft rose, felt the heat of the flame on her face while her hand remained cool. She turned her hand, examining it from all angles. The flame covered her hand completely, licking across its' surface and between her fingers. She laughed wonderingly, entranced, and put more mana into the spell - it required a steady influx to work - and the flame grew until its' tip was a full foot above her fingers. It outshone the lamp, illuminating the room's darkest corners and throwing shadows into sharp relief. Abruptly, the stopped the spell. The flame winked out, and the room was blanketed in darkness. She sat there, staring into space and thinking as her eyes readjusted to the gloom.
So. Celina had kept these hidden from her, all these years. For good reason, too, Sylvie supposed; there was no good reason for a healer to know any of these things. She smiled wryly. It seemed there were more options available to her now.
She carefully replaced the books as she had found them, and gathered all the straws which had fallen from the thatch during her search. She returned to her own room, blowing out the lamp and replacing it in its' former position by the door. She opened the window and twisted the straws into a bunch which she held cupped in her palms. She cast the spell again, this time into the straws instead of the air around her hands. She could do the same for any object, as long as she was touching it. In an instant, the straws blackened and crumbled, flames briefly shooting up. She stopped the spell and opened her hands, then blew across them lightly. The small pile of ash was blow out the window, disappearing into the twilight.
She stood there looking out the window while dusk's muted colors faded to the true black of night, deciding what she wanted the future to contain. She began to smile.
Once night had fallen, she went downstairs to make a start on the chores she had missed during the day. She was sweeping the sitting room when she heard Celina return and set her things in the kitchen before appearing in the door of the sitting room.
"A word with you?" Celina asked.
"Yes?" Sylvie replied, suddenly remembering her worry that Celina may have discovered what she did.
"You did well with the birthing or Mrs. Dantanov would've said, but your sickness worries me. I'm sure you remember that day when you were twelve?"
"Vividly. This was different, though if these types of thing become a pattern... I supposed I'd best take an apprentice early."
Celina nodded. "What happened?"
Sylvie frowned as though trying to remember. "I don't know. All I remember is feeling heat."
"Some strange sort of fever, maybe. I'll look through the previous healers' books for something similar, though Lord knows most of the things they tried were useless." She left the room, leaving Sylvie to her sweeping.
Sylvie finished her chores unhurriedly, planning how to bring her new goals to fruitation. When she returned to bed, she slept the deep sleep of the content, and dreamed of blood and fire.
