Chapter 10

Reign of Tiryam Edgarro

The City of Fairrod, Astoria Grove

Orion Manor

Year 736, Winter

Frey supposed this meant something to him, but it didn't hold an inkling for her. "What does it mean?" she asked at last. Frey took the book from him, squinting at the tiny text. "Why did my dream follow the plot of a book I've never read before?"

Orithin moved his shoulders in a shrug. "Perhaps because I have? My question is—why you? If we assume this dream was my dream—modeled after a story I read and colored by my magic—it would make complete sense. Yet you were the one who dreamt it. I don't understand how you fit into all this."

She was deep in thought. "Maybe," she started, and then stopped, smiling because of how silly it sounded in her head.

"Go on," he prodded.

She pursed her lips, unsure if she should tell him. "Don't laugh, okay?"

"Frey—"

"Promise me you won't."

The barest flicker of a grin. "I promise."

Frey spoke quickly. "Maybe it was your dream. Maybe you were dreaming it when you were in that ragging tower." Another idea came to her. "Hyacin told Harrod—back when I was at her house—that I might be able to find you because we're bound by a magical contract. You're my teacher and I'm your student. There's a connection there—a magicked one. That's why I could find you with the looking spell."

Orithin inspected his fingernails unhappily, and Frey remembered that Harrod had objected to her helping because he thought Orithin would, and rushed on.

"You did say it would make sense if it was your dream to start with. Maybe it was—and maybe I came into it because we're connected. Maybe you don't remember it all because you weren't yourself at the time. The tower made you forget—or something."

His mouth was open. And then he broke into a wide grin.

Frey scrunched her nose. "You said you wouldn't laugh," she reminded him crossly.

"I'm not laughing," he assured her, ruffling her hair. "I just wanted to know when you had gotten so clever."

"I was always clever," she replied, frowning. "I am clever."

He guffawed at that and Martha came rushing in, hair wind-swept from being outside.

"Frey!" she cried, realizing she was finally awake. "I was down at the markets—just got in when I heard—oh, I'm so glad you're alright." The older woman hurried over and hugged Frey tight. "He hasn't left your bedside," she informed her. "Worried out of his mind, he was."

Frey hid a smile. "Really?" Inside, she was secretly pleased he had been so concerned.

"I wanted to see you wake up," he responded defensively. "I'm leaving now. I feel attacked."

Frey got out of bed, wanting a bite to eat. She stopped on her way to the door, horrified by the brief glimpse into her mirror. Her hair was greasy and tangled, her usual bouncy curls hanging limply. Her face was grubby and streaked with dirt. The thought that Orithin had kissed her head made her face go red. Instead of the kitchens she ran to the bath, trying to be discreet.

Though she resolved to be quick, the hot water loosened her aching muscles and unknotted the tenseness in her shoulders. Her hair flowed out in waves under the water's surface and she mused herself a mermaid to pass the time. After about an hour's time of splashing happily in the warm water, Frey scrubbed herself vigorously until she was pink. She climbed out and dressed herself, smiling at her—now clean—reflection. Her smile faded as her gaze fell across her still-wet, shining brown locks. Her insides twisted, remembering how dream-Roric had grabbed her hair.

Spying a large pair of shears atop a cabinet, she grabbed them and started took hold of clumps of wet hair. With tears falling down her cheeks, Frey hacked at her damp tresses, brought on by a fit of anger. When she was done, she slumped onto the floor of the bath, tired and drained. The shears fell with a clink to the floor, surrounded by wet bunches of her hair.

"What's happened to your head?" a familiar voice called as she closed the door to the bath behind her. Arithy, holding a pile of sheets, was coming up the stairs.

"Nothing," she snapped, not in any mood to deal with the maid's strange animosity towards her.

Arithy sighed and put the sheets down at her feet. "Let me help you fix that."

Frey watched, mouth slightly open, as the older girl came near her and touched her choppy locks with gentle hands.

"You've done a right good job," she told her, a grin lighting her freckled face.

"I did?"

Arithy nodded seriously, the merest flicker of a smile in her eyes betraying her glee. "A right good job—in making your hair stick out like a sheep not clipp'd in months. I saw one—back home. He ran away and we didn't find him for a long time. When we did see him his wool was so long his head was buried in it."

Frey had a hard time imagining such a thing. "Was he okay?"

"Fine—more than fine when Pa finished with 'im." She pointed at the door to the bath. "Let me get something to fix this. Wait in there."

Frey stared at Arithy's retreating back in astonishment. For months she had treated her like she was diseased. What had changed? She slipped back into the bath and glancing at the mirror. She winced. Arithy had been right.

When the maid returned, thinner shears in hand, she motioned for her to sit on a stool. "It'll only take a moment. Stay still."

"Thank you," she murmured as she plopped down.

"Is there a reason you took a whacking at your hair?" Arithy queried as she worked. "Just for something to amuse yourself? Or did all that time in bed drive you mad?"

"No," she said softly. "I had a dream."

"A dream that told you to cut your hair?"

Frey knew she was being cryptic but didn't really want to get into the details. "It was my old slave seller. He—he grabbed my hair and—" She bit down on her lower lip so hard she tasted coppery blood. "I dreamt that."

"Ah." Arithy had paused in cutting. She started again a moment later. Her tone was gentler when she next spoke. "It's nothing good to remember, Frey." Something in her voice told Frey she was speaking not out of hollow sympathy but experience. "If you can, forget. Pretend it was just a bad dream. You're more than what you were then. And you can probably make birds chase after him or something now."

She laughed shakily. "I always thought you hated me," Frey admitted, rubbing a spot on her nose with a sleeve.

"I think I did, a little." Arithy returned to her brisk cutting. "Master Orithin doesn't let people into his house willy-nilly and you were just a slave girl—or so I thought."

"How did you meet him?" Frey realized she hadn't asked before and felt ashamed to admit she hadn't cared.

"I ran away from home," was the emotionless reply. It was a well-rehearsed one. "A man—well, no need for details, really. My parents had died the year before and I was sent to live with my uncle. He lives in Brittal—that's a tiny village outside Fairrod—and I was to stay with him. That was the plan but he had just remarried. The woman he married didn't like me. Too country-bred and she thought herself something like cityfolk. Her daughters always sniped at me and her son pinched me and hit me whenever he could. I ran away to Fairrod, hoping to get a job as a maid." There was a bitterness that had crept into her voice though she could tell Arithy had spent a long time masking it. "There's a bad sort in Fairrod—especially the men." She spat on the ground, muttering something in an alien tongue. "After it—happened—I drank corrindere. A little bit of it is used for cooking. More of it for healing. Too much and it causes hallucinations. I wandered out to the Harring Sea. Master Orithin saved me when I jumped the brid—when I fell into the water. He was passing by and he saved me. He's the first decent person I met and he, by luck—or perhaps by kindness—was in need of a maid."

"He took you in," Frey finished for her, seeing Arithy differently. "Like he did for me."

The older girl's tone was light. "Like he did for you—except he made me a maid and you his student."

Frey toyed with her fingers, finally having seen it from her point of view. "I'm sorry—"

"Don't be," Arithy said firmly, and Frey could tell she meant it. "I realized it after this whole thing—I don't want to be his student. Not if it means going to places like the R-Red Tower." She shuddered. "I don't imagine anyone other than you could have saved him. The way that healer woman—Hyacin—spoke of it, what you did was nothing short of a miracle."

"It isn't—"

"You saved him. That's good enough for me." Arithy stepped back and admired her handiwork. "Take a look."

Frey, holding her breath, looked into the mirror. Her brown hair was even all the way around now. The sudden weightlessness made Frey grin. She should have cut her hair before! She shook her head, enjoying how her curls bounced but didn't weigh her down.

"Thank you," she murmured, stroking her hair with her hand. Now Roric—real or otherwise—would have a hard time grabbing her hair.

Having finished everything she needed to do, Frey ascended the stairs to Orithin's room, an apple in hand.

"Yes, I'll make sure she's ready by then," came an impatient voice. Orithin was standing in front of the fireplace, which was violet in color, a hand on his chin and elbow balanced on the back of his other hand. "What need do you have of her surname?" he snapped. "Just put Frey the Great or something." He caught sight of her hovering by the doorway and held up a finger. She nodded in understanding and stepped inside, closing the door gently behind her. "Good day to you as well."

The fire died down to glowing embers before going out completely. Orithin fanned himself with a large hand. "Why do they have to use the fireplaces?" he complained to her, motioning Frey inside. "It's so ragging hot. In the winter it's fine but come summer..." He shuddered.

Frey hid her disappointment that he hadn't commented on her hair with a quick smile and tossed him the apple. "This is for you. Can I ask what that was?"

He caught the apple in one hand and thanked her. "Sor Cinclair Adala," he answered her question. Orithin spun the stem on the apple, looking deep in thought.

"Sorsin—what?"

He smiled, looking up. "It's a name. Well—'Sor' is a title. Much like 'Sir' or 'Madam,' used by members of the Merlin Order. That was the seventh seat—Sor Cinclair Adala. Not a big fan, sorry to say. Doesn't smile enough."

"Why was he calling?" she asked, remembering the low tone of the voice.

Orithin stared at her for a second and then burst out laughing. "She was calling about your signet ring. You've missed the official ceremony. That awful banquet I told you about? It happened six weeks ago. We didn't take much notice because—well—things happened. But they're going to give you yours in a smaller, not as lavish ceremony. It'll be us and Sor Adala, and three witnesses. We have to find the witnesses ourselves. Bothersome, really, but I suppose we should be happy they're not going to make us wait an entire year."

"Witnesses?" Frey rolled the unfamiliar word around, liking how the 's' sounded at the end. "What are they?"

"People who are there to say it happened—in other words, bystanders."

"Can we choose anyone?" Frey was thinking of Martha, Harrod, and Hyacin.

"No—not anyone I employ, I'm afraid," Orithin replied, a knowing twinkle in his eyes. "They have to be mages—graduates of Amorfixia would be preferable. And their disciplines must be different."

"Disci—?" She inwardly sighed. Though her reading skill was heaps above where she had started, Orithin often used words she didn't know and she felt stupid when asking what they meant.

"Areas of study. Specialization. For example—Hyacin's is healing."

"What's yours?"

He flashed his teeth at her. "I'm a wizard. I'm trained in everything."

She gave him a look. "I suppose that includes bigheadedness. What kind of dec—disciplines are there?"

"More than you can count. Combat mages are those that are trained in—you guessed it—combat. Enchanters imbue ordinary objects with magic to turn them into augmenters—stones, gems, metals, the like." He used the hem of his shirt to polish the apple. "I'll give you a book on this when I get a chance to. It should prove more eloquent than I am."

"Is slave-hunting a type?" Frey asked resentfully, thinking of the mages that had been hired to find slaves with magic and turn them in.

"No," Orithin said shortly, bristling. "There are mages called seers—they can see magic in places and in people. Less-capable seers take on those jobs—slave-hunting, as you put it—to make a little extra coin. It's a dishonorable profession. To magical folk, it's seen as something like betrayal. It is betrayal, in truth." He pressed his lips into a thin line, eyes smoldering. "Seeing is similar to what you did with Hyacin at her house." The corner of his mouth twitched. "I still haven't forgiven her for using you like that."

Frey knitted her brows together, defensive of her friend. "She saved you," she felt compelled to point out. "You can't be mad at her for that."

"Seeing magic is incredibly hard to master," he said without looking at her. "Hyacin did say she had guided the spell on you but you could have been pulled in all the same."

"What's so dangerous about seeing?" Frey didn't think just looking around at aura in people could be as fraught with peril as Orithin seemed to think.

"It drives some mad," Orithin said, taking a bite of an apple. His black eyes didn't leave hers. "What you did only breaches the surface of what seeing magic is all about."

"Who are the other witnesses going to be?"

"'Other' witnesses?" he repeated, the corner of his lips pulling up in a smile. "Do you already have someone in mind?"

"Hyacin," Frey said matter-of-factly.

"Well," the wizard said, eyes twinkling, "she'll be pleased. She was hoping you'd ask her." He chucked the apple core towards the fireplace and it landed in the burned logs. There was a flash and what was left of the apple was eaten up by golden embers. "As for the others... I have a couple in mind. By tradition, you're to ask them."

"Me?"

He nodded, spinning the ring on his thumb absentmindedly. The serendibyth stone gleamed in response. "I'll go with you but you'll do the asking."

"And we can't—just have a chat with them using that?" She pointed to the fireplace, suddenly nervous.

"They have to sign an agreement about being witnesses," Orithin answered, tousling her hair. "Don't worry too much, wizling. We'll do that tomorrow. Let me do some thinking about who I'll choose."

"Is it a hard decision?" By the way he'd said "bystanders" she would have thought he wouldn't care about who the witnesses were.

"I haven't been a proper teacher to you. Let me do this part right."

Frey flushed pink and started to leave.

"Oh—and Frey?"

She turned around slowly, hoping her face wasn't too red. "Yes?"

He grinned crookedly. "I noticed you cut your hair—it looks good."

If she

had been blushing before, Frey was sure her face was crimson.

- - - - 

Don't forget to vote! :D