Frey Page 5

  Chapter Five

  Trials

  I stood in the center of a council chamber I had never before seen. Vast libraries lined the walls, interspersed with decorated frames and ornate mirrors. A great vaulted ceiling rose overhead, embellished with intricate carvings, painted in every detail. Across the empty space before me was an elaborate table that seated six leaders of High Council.

  The guards who had brought me here were standing behind me, within arm’s reach on either side. Left of them were council members and, as I glanced right, Chevelle walked in to stand at attention, facing the council table. I could hear others enter behind us, presumably witnesses, and I wondered if Junnie was among them.

  “Elfreda Georgiana Suzetta Glaforia stands before High Council…” The formal tone of the speaker severed my rambling thoughts, dragging me back to a frightening reality. What would they do to me? How bad could the punishment be for sneaking into a library? And stealing a book. Maybe it wasn’t even about that, maybe Fannie had told them I broke into the vault. But they were my family’s things too, it couldn’t be that bad.

  She could lie.

  I swallowed hard. Maybe it was about something else. Maybe something else entirely. Maybe a dead bird.

  A guard approached me. I had been drifting again, lost in thought. What had they said? The council leaders were focused on the pendant at my chest, where it lay exposed against my skin in the V of the low cut gown. They had ordered the guard to remove it. I didn’t understand why they would want my mother’s pendant, but I knew not to ask. I knew what happened when you spoke before being instructed.

  The guard stood, facing me, both hands poised to take the leather chain over my head as I stared on insensibly. His touch lingered and I glanced down, surprised to see he had a firm grip on the necklace but wasn’t lifting it, couldn’t lift it. I looked to the council leaders as the guard turned toward the table and decisively stepped away from me.

  “The crystal will not be removed,” he said. Though he spoke only to the elders, it set into motion behind us a wave of murmurs that filled the room, reverberating up the high ceiling.

  A council elder silenced the witnesses and then trained on me. “Who instructed you in fusion?”

  I didn’t have an answer. I’d never heard of fusion. I wasn’t sure what to do, and I looked toward Chevelle out of desperation. He was watching me, surprise clear on his face. Whatever I’d been accused of, he hadn’t expected it.

  The council elders mistook the exchange as an answer. “Chevelle Vattier, you have led this fusion?”

  His head whipped back toward the council table and he shot out a forceful, “No.”

  They focused once more on me. “I ask again, Elfreda, who taught you the magic to seal yourself to the crystal?”

  I was at a loss. I stood, helpless, as Chevelle spoke up. “Elfreda.” He’d used my given name, I hoped simply because we were in a formal setting and not because of whatever horrible thing I had been accused of. He was pleading now. “Where did you learn how to fuse the pendant with your blood?”

  Fuse the pendant with my blood? What was he talking about? I heard someone behind me. “… how did she know to keep it from being removed?” And someone else. “… who even left it with her?”

  It came together then, the feeling I’d had when I woke and placed it around my neck, the part of the dream I’d shaken off as I stood before the basin washing up, cleaning the blood from my hands, from the pendant. I wanted to explain, tell of what I’d seen in the dream, but it was foggy and I was too slow to pull it into thought.

  I was too late; they had already passed judgment on me. Harsh judgment. The deep voice boomed with finality. “… convicted of practicing dark magic…”

  The elder’s staff slammed against its wood base, echoing into the tumult of discord rising behind me. I reached out my hand to plead for mercy, to beg to be given a chance to explain, and he began to list my lineage for the records. I was flooded with fury at the injustice as I heard my mother’s name and my outstretched hand became a fist.

  The speaker’s voice cut off. He grabbed his throat as the other council leaders rushed to him. His choking face stared directly at me, unquestionably an accusation, and I realized with a start that he was right. I was cutting off his windpipe, as if it were there in my outstretched fist. I released my grip.

  He was surrounded now, and the room was filled with a roar of commotion and terror. My ears rang sharply. I had to look away from it all. When I turned, I caught my reflection in one of the larger mirrors, but it wasn’t me. No, it must be me, but unrecognizable.

  Not unrecognizable, a voice inside me whispered. My hair was dark and windblown. The bell sleeve of the long white gown hung from my still outstretched arm. It was the dream, alive and here. The pendant against my chest seemed to glow at my revelation.

  I ran.

  As I raced from the chamber, I couldn’t tell if anyone had even noticed. They all appeared to be staring at the speaker but, regardless, I concentrated furiously on not being followed. Do not catch me, do not find me, let me go, I was almost chanting in my thoughts. Out the building, out of the village, running as fast as I could, I kept thinking it over and over and over. I didn’t know where I would go, I just wanted away.

  I found myself heading in the same direction I had the day before. But hiding in a briar patch wouldn’t work this time. They would come for me. As I frantically tried to decide where to go, my previous conclusion snaked through my mind. They would find me if they wanted to. There was no stopping them. I had no magic, no tracking skills, no clue.

  I stopped running. My heart pounded, the wind cutting against the damp sweat on my skin. I wanted to understand what had just happened, but I couldn’t process it. It was just too painful. I was confused, drained to the point of exhaustion. I had no way out. When they found me, I would have to surrender. I could see no other option.

  No one came.

  I wasn’t fool enough to go back voluntarily, but for some reason, they hadn’t followed. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had nothing outside of home, outside of the village. I didn’t even know where to go, didn’t know where I was. It was just another clearing outside of the only town I’d ever known, the only town I remembered knowing.

  I wandered toward the briar patch, finding it easily. It hadn’t been far, despite my exhaustion. I crawled through the narrow path I’d made the previous time. It hadn’t seemed such a tight fit in only pants. I settled in, jerking a length of skirt free from the thorns with a spray of colorless beads.

  Brushing the loose dirt off the papers I had buried, I laid the soiled documents across my lap and untied the laces binding them together. I stared at the words on the ancient parchment, unable to believe what I was reading was true. It had to be; it was signed with the official seal, staring back at me from the smudged white fabric of my skirt, the letters on the page as real and words as patent as they could be. The documents held the details of a trial, and not only a trial, a punishment. The punishment of Francine Katteryn Glaforia, found guilty of practicing dark magic.

  Her sentence included some sort of service to council and a spell binding her from using magic of any kind except practical. I was dumbfounded. It had never crossed my mind before, but as I considered it, searching for proof the documents were wrong, I realized Aunt Fannie had never used magic for anything but service. It hadn’t seemed unusual to me, it was just the way it had always been. And besides, I could barely do anything aside from lighting candles.

  Was this why council was so quick to accuse me of practicing dark magic? It was rarely even discussed and never tolerated. What had Fannie done?

  I flipped through more of the pages, realizing something was out of place. It didn’t make sense official documents about Fannie would be among those relating to the apparent extinction of the northern clans. And why had all the documents I’d found about the tragedy been separated, mixed up, and missing pages? I tried to sort it ou
t, but found there were other council documents there too.

  I kept reading, quickly scanning for something of interest. My eyes caught on his name a second before my mind recognized it… Chevelle Vattier. As I backed up to read, my shock and disbelief turned to fury before I could even finish the page.

  Chevelle Vattier had been a volunteer watcher. A Council spy. He had volunteered to watch me.

  Swift, white-hot anger flooded through me and the pages I held burst into flames. The brush around me caught next, burning away as I stood to push free of the blazing patch of briars. They had set a watcher on me. Why? Because Fannie had practiced dark magic? Were they afraid she’d teach me? I’d show them dark magic. I’d learn and go back… But how? How could I learn without a teacher?

  Chevelle.

  The fire died as I thought of the concern he’d shown me in the clearing, the tender moment we’d shared. With one word, the flames caught again, burning with a vengeance through the field. Watcher. None of it had been real.

  He was a watcher, he’d volunteered to watch me, to keep me in line.

  So I’d teach myself, take the risk and learn the magic without guidance. What did I have to lose? The plan was formed: I’d practice until I was strong enough to return to the village. There was nothing holding me back. Nothing to do but this one thing.

  I spotted a small toad as it leapt across the clearing in a desperate attempt to escape the inferno. I concentrated on it, willing it to change. Its wide body started to swell, sides bubbling out, puffing it into a tiny green balloon. It did not transform into that monarch butterfly I had imagined. It burst, spewing entrails across the hem of my dress.

  My head fell into my hands as I groaned.

  It took a while, but the anger eventually faded to a point where I realized I’d need a new plan. I couldn’t help but regret the flames had consumed the documents that had caused all this to begin with. I should have fully read them first.

  My heart tripped at the sound of cracking tinder beneath boot across the clearing. The fire had burned out, but the ashes were plenty evidence I’d been here. I ducked under the cover of a large spruce and watched. Chevelle walked through the tree line and my jaw clenched tight against a silent curse.

  He was alone. He kept walking as he looked my direction, surveying the damage from the fire. I was convinced he would know it had been me, but he didn’t stop or even slow. It made no sense. Why hadn’t he investigated further? Was he not here looking for me?

  He was my watcher and I was missing. So where else would he be going?

  Before I had, regrettably, torched the documents, I had seen Junnie noted as his contact. My pulse sped at the idea that he might be going to her, to get her help in finding me. If he was my watcher, I’d be his responsibility, and she was the only one who knew me at all aside from Fannie. He was a good fifty yards farther as I considered.

  My feet were moving before I’d actually decided to follow him. My determination faltered. How far should I go? What if he wasn’t going to find Junnie? And then I thought, What else do you have to do, sit here and blow up frogs? It was all the convincing I needed. Slinking out from the branches of the spruce, I crept low along the trees and brush as I followed my watcher north.