Roar, page 19
Aunt Matilde was if anything in an even worse mood than the Oracle. But for her it was all about pride. She seemed to almost accept the Oracle's truth – sometimes – that Thorm hadn't injured her sister. But she could never admit it as she had still been bested by him. Worse than that, he’d had the chance to kill her and yet he hadn’t. It was humiliating to be spared by a beast, even if the beast had once been a person. She could never forgive him for that. It was why the Oracle had forbidden her from even leaving her side.
And that left Camille, fuming for a thousand different reasons. Mostly it was because her mother was still incarcerated in the Palace of the Sun and being forced to do the foul King's bidding while she was helpless to prevent it. All she wanted to do was to go back and rescue her. Which was the one thing everyone seemed to agree on that she couldn’t do. The consensus was that as soon as she set foot back on the Volden Plains she would be caught and once again be used as a hostage against her mother. It wasn’t fair.
“Why so gloomy? The Night Maiden hasn't come for you yet.”
Camille turned to see her aunt standing there, looking just as unhappy as her. “The Night Maiden comes for us all. And these days Nyx comes when we're wide awake.”
“It's not the dreams you should fear, Child. Even the worst of the Night Maiden's imaginings go away when you waken. It's the claws of the King stretching out for you that you should beware of.”
“The King knows nothing of me.”
“Sadly that's not true Child.” Matilde sighed heavily, then sat down beside Camille on the bench seat facing a small brook. “Your mother is the most powerful fell witch in either the Volden Plains or Erisen. His control of her is one of his most useful assets. Now that you have escaped Esmee refuses to perform his bidding. He will do anything he can to regain that control. He has already sent three parties of troll hunters and a small force of mammoth riders to recapture you.”
“They were sent –.”
“After you.” Matilde interrupted her. “Just as the avaryads were sent to find and protect you. And then when it became clear how desperately he wanted you, Potaine and myself. You are a very important person in his plans.”
“You don't know that,” Camille objected. Mostly she objected because she did not want it to be true.
“I'm sorry child but we do. The scent the trolls hunted was yours. The avaryads gathered some of the things from the fallen soldiers and found your clothes among them. You are lucky to be free.”
Could that be true? Camille didn't know. But she guessed her aunt had not come to tell her that. By the way her face was drawn she had something more on her mind. And whatever it was she wouldn’t like.
“And the rest please Aunt Matilde.”
“You are not safe here. Potaine and I have therefore decided that we will escort you from this town to a safer location in the morning. The others will not be coming. They will not even know where you have gone. Or that you are leaving.”
“Elspeth and Mara?”
Matilde's answer was only to shake her head sadly. And Camille knew why. The avaryads had told Camille when they had first met that they suspected there might be a spy among the escaped prisoners. They would not take chances.
“They're good people.” Camille had to defend them. They were her friends. Even if Elspeth was constantly crying about her lost love, Gabe, and Mara was more prickly than a cactus.
“I never said they weren't.”
But she had thought it, Camille knew. Especially about Mara. The woman was like a bear with a sore tooth. She could turn and snap at any moment. And yet she was always there for Elspeth and she couldn't decide whether she loved or hated the lion wizard. Camille truly didn't understand the woman.
Camille let out a heavy breath. “And may I know where I'm going?”
“When we get there. But you will be safe there.”
A shadow fell across them both and Camille looked up to see a bird soaring gracefully through the sky above them. A thunderbird maybe? No, it was more likely an eagle, she decided. It was too high up for her to be sure. Either way it couldn't truly distract her from the conversation.
“And I suppose this is all part of Potaine’s Council of War's plans?” She knew it would be. Even if she had no idea who was on this Council of War, that her aunt and the Oracle kept dropping hints about.
“Of course. But you don't need to concern yourself about them.”
Camille let out a small groan and buried her head in her hand, feeling the beginning of a headache coming on. She should have expected the answer she supposed. These people were not taking chances. Not even with her. But the not knowing was still driving her crazy. Surely they could tell her something!
“Will I at least be able to speak with my mother?” If she couldn’t see her mother then at least being able to communicate with her would be something. More than that really. After three long years it would feel like a miracle. All she needed were the services of a dream weaver to help her enter the great dream.
“We will try. But your mother is speaking less these days. And the dream weavers can't always find her.”
Camille looked away, having to suppress a sudden moment of anxiety. The drugs she knew had distorted her mother's flesh and damaged her mind. But at least in her dreams she had hoped, her mother would be strong. How else could they have been communicating with her? If she was now struggling to communicate in the Great Dream, it said a lot about how terrible her condition must be.
“Why do you serve the Oracle?” Camille changed the subject, not wanting to think any more about what was happening to her mother.
“The Oracle – Potaine – saved my life.”
“I see.” Camille had assumed it had to be something like that. A life debt.
“No. You don't.” Matilde turned to Camille, took her hand and clasped it firmly in her own. “But you probably should. It was back in Greenbough, when we were hiding there. Before everything became part of the Night Maiden's realm.”
Camille remembered Greenbough. She and her mother had lived there for about a year. It had been a sleepy little town where as a child she'd run around in the fields with the sheep and goats and played with the other kids in the streets. It was the last place she could remember being happy. Before the King's men had come for them. She'd been maybe ten at the time. One day she kept thinking, when this was all over, she'd like to return there. To see if it was still the same as it had been when she was a child. But fifteen years was a long time. She doubted anyone there would remember her. Especially when they'd only been there a year. At the time their world had been one of constant upheaval as they'd moved from one town to another, always staying one step ahead of the King's hunters. But they'd stayed longer in Greenbough than she could recall them staying anywhere else.
And then the soldiers had come. They'd grabbed her off the street where she'd been playing, and thrown her in the back of a wagon. And that was the last she'd seen of the town. Or of her mother for several months. It had been the last place she had been happy.
“I was away, looking for our next home. When I returned it was to find both of you gone and the town in flames. I learned that your mother had fought not to be taken and a battle had raged between her and three other wizards. But in the end she lost. She killed all three wizards, but after the battle, you were still in the King's hands and she couldn't find you. All he had to do was threaten to put a knife to your throat and she would do whatever he wanted. Including drinking his potions.”
Camille knew that part. She had heard the story of how the King had got his hag many times before. The soldiers who had guarded her had spoken of it many times. They talked about it because “the hag” was his most powerful magical weapon and that seemed to matter to them. As did the tale of her mother's capture – a battle that had cost them many lives. It had been some months after her capture that she had finally seen her mother again, and by then she’d already started falling under the effect of the King’s potions. It was already too late and there had been nothing a ten year old girl locked up in a strange city full of soldiers could do. In fact it wasn’t until a green eyed lion had released her from her cell, that she had ever stood a chance of doing anything.
“I went after you both. I caught up with your mother's wagon perhaps a dozen leagues from the town, and I killed the one remaining wizard keeping watch over her. But I was too late. Your mother had drunk the potion and was already falling under its spell. Even if she hadn’t been I wonder if she would have tried to escape given that the King had put you on another wagon train and you were already on your way to the Eternal City.”
“All the contemptible little worm in charge of the group had to do was remind your mother that they had you, and your mother had no choice but to stand against me. Esmee could not allow you to be harmed. And her thoughts were already clouded by the potions.”
“I tried to tell her that we could stand together as sisters, and get you back. That together we were too powerful even for the King to face. But she wouldn't listen to me. All she knew was that you were in danger and that I was the one bringing that danger. She struck at me, and I fought back.”
Despite her intention to keep quiet and listen, Camille found herself gasping. She hadn't heard about this before. Her mother never told her about this. Even so, she understood why her mother had acted the way she did. The various potions and philtres the soldiers kept pouring down her mother's throat wreaked havoc with her thoughts. They made it very hard for her to concentrate or think rationally. Hard even for her to hear what her daughter said. And yet more susceptible to believing anything her keepers told her.
Camille remembered the horror she had felt living in the Eternal City – the part of it that had been turned into a compound for the King’s wizards. And the most terrifying thing had been that each morning when the sun came up, her mother would be out on the street in front of their hovel, staring at the distant palace and the main balcony where the King would appear. The palace was quite a distance from the compound and the small hovel they had been given to live in. It was so far away that it was hard to even make out the figure of the King on his balcony. Regardless, her mother had become fixated on the steel clad figure who had held both of their lives in his hands.
By the Sisters how she had hated that creature! And feared him. And the entire palace of burnished copper and marble archways in which he lived. It was beautiful, but she wanted to destroy it. She had wanted to kill him. But of course even if she had been fully grown and had had either magic or skill as a swords-woman she could never have got anywhere near the palace. There had to be thousands of soldiers between the compound where the magical were kept and the palace. And the only ones who ever entered the palace were those nobles the King had summoned or his concubines.
Things had only grown worse as time had passed. Some days her mother had scarcely even recognised Camille. She could remember her mother telling her how desperate she was to save her daughter, unaware that Camille was standing right in front of her. Other days she had seemed like a woman drowning in madness, desperately clinging to any sanity she could find.
“We fought and it was a battle I did not wish to fight. But there was no choice – for either of us. I could not lose my sister and she could not lose her daughter. Fortunately Potaine stepped in just as the battle was heading to its inevitable conclusion, and everything came to an end. Your mother and the soldiers collapsed, and she took me away to treat my wounds.”
“Most importantly she showed me that this was a battle I could never win. Your mother would not stop fighting. Either your mother would kill me, or I would kill her and that would kill me. There was no way out for either of us as long as the Eternal King had you stashed away somewhere.”
“Later she told me about the true war being fought and that we would never be free until the King was dead. That was the day I chose to stand by her side.”
“True war?”
“Another time.” Matilde managed a thin smile. “Just know that the Eternal King is not what he seems and his purposes are not what he says. That this battle has raged for a thousand years but most have never understood what was happening.”
Camille understood though. She understood that after Greenbough had come the time when Camille's happiness had died. When she had gone from being a happy girl playing with her friends to a prisoner in a strange city, with a mother who was slowly but surely slipping further and further into madness. And the day she supposed that the King had gained his most powerful weapon. Because that's what her mother was. She wasn't just capable of defeating any wizard. She was “the hag”. The terrible fell witch that people feared. She was a source of terror that kept the people obedient. Just like his soldiers, his spies and his trolls.
Camille and her aunt both remained silent after the story was told. Each lost in their thoughts. In their sorrows. But for Camille one thing stood out for her beyond all else. That she was nothing but a weakness. She hated that. The understanding that she was the one thing that had trapped her mother from the very start. It was a truly bitter thing to realise. And yet she understood that there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She had no magic. Nothing at all. She couldn't even pick up a sword.
In the morning she would go with her aunt. Not because she wanted to or because she thought it would help. She wasn’t even going because she had been instructed to. Partly she would go with them because they might be able to provide the services of a dream weaver to let her speak with her mother. But mostly she would go because it was the only action she could take that would not make things worse.
She hated it of course. In fact the only thing she hated more was the damned wizard lion who had hurt her mother. But she would do it.
Chapter Nineteen
Four days in a buggy with her aunt and the Oracle – Potaine as she asked to be called – was not Camille's idea of a pleasant trip. Especially when her aunt and the Oracle were still constantly bickering over the green eyed lion. No matter how many times Potaine repeated herself, her aunt would not simply accept that Thorm had not deliberately hurt her sister. Sometimes she almost seemed to believe it. Other days Aunt Matilde was certain the Oracle was wrong. And she wanted justice for what he had done. Justice meant revenge as far as Camille could see.
For her part Camille couldn't be sure. She hadn't been there and her mother had never told her about the fight with the gunsmith. And soon after it had happened she had been thrown in the dungeon. Now, three years later, she wasn't even sure that her mother would know what the truth was. All Camille had to go on was what the wizard had claimed and the Oracle had accepted as true. And though the Oracle was firm in her belief of his innocence, what she claimed had happened was impossible to believe. Her mother was not so stupid as to cast flame near gunpowder and she would not kill herself. It seemed to her that liars lied and oracles could be wrong.
Part of why her aunt ‘believed’ Thorm had deliberately harmed her sister Camille thought was tied up in the fact that Thorm had bested her in a contest of magic. Aunt Matilde had been going on for days about what a poor a wizard he was. How slow and uncertain in his magic. And of course how lucky he'd been. Her aunt's pride had been badly wounded.
Camille didn't have that problem. She had no magic. And she had little pride. All she wanted to do was get to the end of their journey, hopefully meet a dream weaver so she could make contact with her mother in the Great Dream. If that happened she would then decide whether she needed to kill the wizard lion or not. After she had told her mother that she was safe and that she needed to leave the Eternal City.
At least this time the travel was much easier. Far quicker too. There was no more walking. The buggy and horses were Potaine's, provided for her needs by her Temple. But the carriage they were riding in was not one Camille was familiar with. Instead of typical cart wheels, the buggy sported thin spoked wheels with ball bearing races that spun far more freely than anything she'd ever seen. And the horses were what the Oracle called lightmares. They looked like snow white horses except they almost seemed to glow with light, and were able to trot all day without tiring. She wondered if perhaps they had some unicorn blood.
Perhaps they did. Because if nothing else she had finally seen some of the magical creatures that this land was famed for. Mainly she had seen golden hinds grazing. Though truly she hadn't realised what they were until she had watched one abruptly vanish in front of her eyes just as the buggy had drawn closer. Up until then she had simply assumed they were deer. But deer didn't simply appear and disappear.
Whether the lightmares had unicorn blood or not though, they were quick. The trip from the Eternal City to Yissell Arn had taken them twenty days even with all the help they'd been given. That had been a distance of some hundred and twenty leagues. By contrast they had travelled a similar distance in a mere four days using the buggy. Where they had travelled to she still didn’t know save that it was somewhere else in Erisen. She guessed however, when she spotted the pennants flying above the distant trees, that they had finally arrived.
