Keeper of Shadows (Light-Wielder Chronicles Book 1) Page 3

  “No, they’re striking everywhere, now,” Lyssanne whispered. “And the pressure, it won’t stop growing…like a water-skin that’s being filled to bursting.” Strength leeched out of her like moisture from a wrung-out dishrag. Her voice, too, grew weaker. “What’s happening to me?”

  “I—I am not certain, dear,” Evlia said. “I shall brew you some mourning-tree tea for the pain. Then, we shall see.”

  Gasping, Lyssanne struggled to sit up. “The flyl!” She fell back to her pillow in a wave of dizziness.

  “You took it off the flame ages ago,” Aderyn said. “Just rest and wait for that tea.”

  Lyssanne struggled to comply. As hours slipped by, the fog of agony numbed her mind to all else, including the time of day. Yet, it kept her too alert for unconsciousness or even sleep.

  Six months thence, Lyssanne pushed open the shutters on her north-facing window. Light filtered through the filmy curtains like feathers borne on the soft autumn breeze. Its heat and the coos of the dove perched on the sill warmed her more than the mourning tree tea she sipped. After drinking the bitter brew thrice daily for half a year, she barely tasted it anymore.

  Leaning against the window frame, she stroked the dove’s feathers and gazed out at the lush grass sloping down Rowan Hill, but only remembered darkness filled her view. “I had the dream again, Serena,” she whispered. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  Serena tilted her snowy head into Lyssanne’s hand.

  “You always seem to know.” Lyssanne closed her eyes, but couldn’t banish the image of the nightmare that had haunted her since her illness began. “Had you not awakened me…” She shivered. “What is this shadow that stalks my slumber? From whence stems this certainty that, should it ever reach me, that shadow will destroy me and all I love?”

  Serena ceased her cooing.

  “What answer can I expect from a dove?” Lyssanne’s shoulders tightened. “Still, to speak of such things with anyone else…not even Aderyn or Mr. DeLivre would understand.”

  Shrill voices drew Lyssanne’s gaze across her lawn. A smudge moved just beyond the hedge bordering Broone’s field. The children! To avoid the pain their knocking would inflict upon her skull, she strode to the door and stepped outside to await her former students.

  A swarm of small bodies rushed up Rowan Hill toward her. The children took turns embracing Lyssanne or offering shy greetings.

  “Niklette made us a kite!” little Elaiza Murrough said, tugging at Lyssanne’s skirt. “It’s got six sides. Just like me…six years. Gavan, show her.”

  Elaiza’s cousin held up the kite for Lyssanne’s inspection, then the children rushed off down the lawn.

  Niklette laughed. “I told them they’d only have a few days to fly it before the winds grow too gusty, but they insisted.” She gestured to the cottage. “Would indoors be better for you?”

  “No,” Lyssanne said. “The cottage walls would amplify the children’s voices.” She smiled at the younger girl. “How are you faring with the teaching?”

  “A bit flustered,” said Niklette. “Jarad’s been rather troublesome. Caused Madam Colby some bother at the orphanage, too.” She lowered her voice. “This morning, he threw his bowl of porridge at a smaller boy after a simple jest. Almost came to blows.”

  Lyssanne shaded her eyes and searched the lawn for a glimpse of Jarad. “I’ve never known him to show such violence,” she muttered, “especially toward a younger child. He has always treated little ones with gentle protectiveness.”

  “Think it has anything to do with his accident?” asked Niklette.

  “That was months ago,” Lyssanne said.

  Niklette sighed. “It has changed him. He used to climb anything that could be scaled, but after that fall from the oak in Market Square, he won’t even go near the dais in the meeting hall.”

  Across the lawn, several children squealed in laughter, as the kite caught the wind.

  Lyssanne pressed her fingertips to her temples, smiling through the pain in case a child should glance her way. “Fear can lead to worse things,” she said.

  “I suppose.” Niklette glanced skyward. “Time I’m off to assist Madam Colby…if you’re certain you feel up to this.”

  “A few hours shouldn’t prove too taxing,” Lyssanne said. “I must ease back into life, lest I become a useless lump, of no benefit to anyone.”

  “I’ll return before noon,” Niklette said, then she hurried off toward the village.

  Lyssanne called the older children to meet her and the little ones on the hillside near the rowan grove. Once they’d all gathered, she explained the many ways renowned men of science had used kites in their endeavors to predict weather patterns. As the children’s questions and Lyssanne’s strength waned, she gave her students permission to enjoy the cool, autumn day as they willed. After helping Elaiza untangle her kite’s string for the third time, Lyssanne grew unable to bear the increasing weakness in her limbs.

  She snagged a passing boy. “I must request a favor.”

  The boy stopped and turned. His features blurred, as if a dark haze lay over Lyssanne’s eyes. “Favor?” he asked.

  “Jarad,” Lyssanne whispered, his familiar voice revealing what her eyes had not. “Indeed a favor, or rather a quest,” she said, drawing inspiration from the tales he'd always admired. Perchance she could turn this to good purpose and lighten his melancholy, at least somewhat. “’Tis nothing as grand or dangerous as your beloved Epic of King Aleric, but it will save a lady from distress.”

  “I can do a quest,” he said, his voice brightening. He leaned down, already having exceeded her height at eleven years of age. “Even if it is dangerous.”

  Lyssanne smiled. “I’ve no doubt of it. What I need is a place to sit, where I can watch the little ones.”

  Jarad glanced about. "One of your kitchen chairs!” At her nod, he ran toward her cottage.

  “Can I have a quest too?” Elaiza asked, twirling with her kite string held high.

  “Quests are for boys,” Gavan said.

  Raised voices cut off Lyssanne’s intended response.

  “I said, stand aside,” Jarad shouted. “I’m on a quest for Lady Lyssanne.”

  “You? Ha!” said Elward Murrough, his voice coming from the vicinity of Lyssanne’s porch. “You’ll never even see a knight, let alone go on a quest. None of us will.”

  “You wanna make our teacher stand all morning when she’s ill?” Jarad snapped.

  Lyssanne trudged up the hill toward her cottage, calling, “Boys!”

  “Maybe it is a quest, to him,” Aderyn’s nephew Arron said as he and Elward descended the porch steps and passed Jarad. “Such a dangerous climb, all the way to the top step.”

  Jarad swung around and slammed his fists into both older boys’ backs. With an explosion of flailing limbs and shouts, all three landed in a writhing heap on the ground.

  The mist in Lyssanne’s eyes thickened, forcing her to wipe them. Gooseflesh trickled along her arms and down her back like water from a frosted-over washbasin. “Cease!” she cried, pressing her hands to her temples as she rushed to the boys. “Elward, Arron, stop this at once. Jarad, get up from there. Now!”

  Still blinking against the ever-darkening haze obscuring the boys, Lyssanne glanced about for some way to stop them, and the blur dissipated. A thin, fallen limb stuck out from her neglected flowerbed. She snatched it up and returned to the scuffling boys.

  Dodging boots and elbows—and blinking against the returned blur, she thrust the limb between two of the boys. Arron scooted backward, staring down at the limb, then looked up at her. He pushed to his feet and shuffled past her, still a bit hazy, but the blur remained darkest around Jarad.

  Lyssanne squinted, as the pain in her temples grew. “Elward Murrough, I said cease!”

  Elward glanced up and received a blow to the jaw for his distraction. Shoving Jarad aside, he lurched to his feet. Jarad lunged for his legs, but Lyssanne blocked his way, again brandishing her l
imb.

  “Jarad, enough!” Keeping her gaze fixed on his blurred form, she said, “Elward, Arron, report to your fathers. Tell them I’ve sent you to make better use of your aggressions for the rest of the day.”

  “What about him?” asked Arron. “He has no father to work off steam with.”

  Jarad lurched forward, but his chest met Lyssanne’s outstretched branch.

  “You’d best concern yourself with what yours is going to say,” Lyssanne said, still eyeing Jarad. “And if you fail to do as I ask, I shall hear of it.”

  As Arron followed Elward down the hill toward Broone’s field, Lyssanne sank onto the steps and waved Jarad over. He slumped on the lawn, arms folded, face averted.

  “Were you harmed?” she asked, struggling to assess his condition through the haze surrounding him.

  “Nah.”

  The crunch of footfalls on grass drew Lyssanne’s gaze to a small figure approaching. She raised a hand to forestall the child then turned back to Jarad. “That was unwise.”

  “Arron called me a coward, and—”

  “I heard,” she said. “His words were out of place, but did your actions disprove them?”

  Jarad held his silence, his face turned toward the stone exterior of her cottage.

  She swept a hand over her eyes. “Sometimes the most valiant course is to stand in the face of ridicule and not let it sway your actions.”

  A sudden, shrill cry cut off her next words. Lyssanne pushed to her feet and rushed toward the sound. The child who had sought her attention beckoned her to a rowan tree halfway down the eastern slope of the hill. Children clustered around it, pointing.

  “What’s amiss?” Lyssanne asked. “Is someone injured?”

  “Gavan went up the tree to save our kite!” Elaiza cried. “Now he’s stuck, too.”

  Lyssanne shaded her eyes. “Gavan,” she called, focusing on a lump of brown and white among the branches that must be the small boy. “Just ease back down the way you went up.”

  “C-can’t.” His voice was a mere squeak. “Dizzy. D-don’t wanna let go.”

  “Don’t be silly,” one of the Blythe twins said. “You got up there. You can get down.”

  A whimper was his only reply.

  “Scolding will not help him,” Lyssanne said. To Gavan, she shouted, “Hold fast. We shall get you down.”

  “What’s to be done?” asked the other twin. “You can’t climb up there in skirts.”

  “Jarad!” Lyssanne called. “I shall need your assistance.”

  Gasps and whispers surrounded Jarad as he pushed through the group. Though Lyssanne couldn’t determine his expression from his distance of several paces, his shuffling footsteps shouted his reaction.

  “Shouldn’t someone else do this, mistress?” Jarad whispered.

  “On the contrary. As the oldest boy still here, it falls to you to rescue him.” She fought to ignore the haze darkening around him. “Such delicate work requires utmost skill, and I happen to know you’re the village champion at picking skyberries, without bruising a single fruit.”

  “But that was before.” Looking away, Jarad muttered, “I cannot. What if I…?” He scuffed the toe of a worn boot in the dirt then stared at the shallow hole he’d made. “I’m not brave like the knights in your stories.”

  “True courage cannot exist except in the presence of something worthy of fear,” she said, her soft words filling the hush that had fallen. “Consider a candle. Lighting it would serve no purpose if there were no darkness for it to brighten. The knights of old weren’t unafraid. They ventured forth nonetheless, the quest more important than the fear.” She grasped his shoulder. “You are no different. Gavan needs you. Now, go!”

  Huffing, Jarad jerked away from her hand. He shuffled over to the tree, along the way kicking something that smacked against the base of the trunk.

  Noire glared down at the peasant girl standing beneath his perch. That night in the tower was to have changed everything; yet, here he sat, half a year later, spying for the sorceress. Still.

  Venefica’s enemy shivered, her fair skin paler than ever; her iridescent shimmer dim but not extinguished. How could her Light yet blanket the village, albeit threadbare and riddled with holes, when she was thus weakened and, most days, confined to a darkened cottage?

  Noire squeezed his talons around the branch, piercing its bark. As long as Lyssanne’s Light denied the Shadow Mist free rein, Venefica would lack the power to fulfill their bargain.

  He leaned forward. Perhaps the dark fog was gaining ground. For, a mere five paces from Lyssanne and that infernal Light, one of her precious charges stood swathed in the Mist.

  The boy Jarad leapt at Noire’s tree and caught hold of the lowest branch. He planted his feet against the trunk, gripping the thin limb so tight the wood creaked. The boy reached for the next branch then froze. He lifted the palm of his hand, then the fingers.

  Shards of ice lanced Noire’s spine, the chill that always preceded a burst of Venefica’s power. Words whispered through the roiling Mist, sibilant susurrations of fear and failure, of falling and fatal injury. Shadowy tendrils slithered over Jarad, up the tree, reaching for the smaller boy he’d been commissioned to rescue, and climbing toward Noire.

  With an undignified squawk, Noire sprang into the air, raining leaves over Jarad and causing him to all but lose his hold. Landing in an adjacent tree, Noire glanced at the cottage roof. The Mist was still too close, but he dared not venture nearer Lyssanne’s home, after almost having his eyes pecked out the last time.

  Sure enough, the dove, which had claimed Rowan Hill Cottage as her exclusive territory since the onset of Lyssanne’s curse, peered up at him from the windowsill. Smaller she might be, but fast as a mountain storm and just as fierce. Well, this branch would afford him a better vantage anyway.

  Lyssanne stepped nearer to Jarad’s tree, blinking and swiping at her eyes as if—Could she see the Mist? Impossible. No mere human could perceive its presence, let alone one with such poor sight. Still, what he’d observed earlier seemed to confirm it, and she was a sorceress.

  “Jarad,” Lyssanne said in the hushed tone one might use with small, frightened animals, “focus on the bark in front of you. Look at the colors in the wood, the direction of the grain. Can you describe it to me?”

  “Well,” he said, “there’s a big knot right in the middle of the trunk.”

  “Good.” She hugged her upper arms as if chilled. “Keep your eyes on that knot and pull yourself upward until you can see only the next change in the wood. Forget all else. Nothing matters now but the tree.”

  As Jarad stared at the bark, his lips compressing in a thin line, the whispers in the Mist grew fainter. He hoisted his lanky body upward with agonizing slowness. Lyssanne’s praises rose with each successive branch he gripped.

  Threads of Light streamed from Lyssanne and pierced the Mist, reaching for Jarad as he neared Gavan. The Mist recoiled, then surged into the breach with renewed vigor. Jarad faltered as he reached for the branch on which Gavan sprawled. He closed his eyes for an instant, then grasped the younger boy’s leg.

  “C’mon, Gavan,” Jarad said. “Scoot backward toward me.”

  Gavan shook his head and gripped the limb tighter.

  Jarad tugged at his foot. “I’ll help you.”

  Was that a flicker of light from within Jarad? The flicker sputtered then died.

  “You’re s-scared too,” Gavan said.

  Jarad bit his lip. “Yeah, well, not if we do it together.”

  “Wh-what if we fall?” Gavan asked. “You did. B-broke your arm and—”

  “That’s because I didn’t have me to help,” Jarad said. “I’ll hold you steady. You heard Lady Lyssanne. I’m the best climber in the valley.”

  As Gavan inched toward him, the flicker within Jarad flared again and held. He kept a firm hand on the smaller boy and led him in a painstaking descent, while Lyssanne and the children offered encouragement.

  Waves of Light
, tinged with green and silver, flowed from her to Jarad, and from within Jarad back to her, reflecting and intensifying the brightness. Noire struggled to focus on the Shadow Mist through the glare. The dark fog lurched away from the boys as if in pain, broke apart, and whisked away, despite the absence of the slightest breeze.

  Jarad delivered Gavan to the embraces and cheers of his friends, then backed away and offered Lyssanne a sheepish grin.

  Smiling, she rested a hand on his shoulder, no longer swiping at her eyes. Then, she swayed.

  “Lady Lyssanne?” Jarad said, struggling to steady her.

  She pressed a hand to her brow, her other arm winding around the boy’s middle. “I must sit. I’m…Find Niklette. She needs to…return for you.”

  Jarad helped her to the ground then glanced around at the younger children. “Don’t just stare like that. Somebody get her some water or something. I’m gonna get Niklette.”

  Lyssanne set Aderyn’s basket on the table and lifted the cloth, releasing a savory aroma that set her stomach to rumbling. “Spiced meat pies?” she asked.

  “That, and a treat as well,” Aderyn said, stomping her boots on the mat in front of the cottage door. “I bargained Mr. Whiskin out of his last unicorn horn pastry for you.”

  Lyssanne replaced the cloth and turned to her, smiling. “You do know me well, my friend. I’ve not had one of those since…” Her smile wilted at the recollection of the day her illness had begun.

  “Lyss,” Aderyn’s said, “the air in here is as frigid as outside.” She made a shivery sound as she hung her heavy winter cloak on a peg. “And no wonder. Your fire is almost out.”

  Lyssanne strode over to the fireplace to toss more peat moss onto the coals. “I suppose it dwindled during my unexpected nap. Those overtake me rather too often, of late.”

  “Well…” Aderyn’s voice took on a cheery tone that sounded forced. “This weather is apt to send us all into hibernation.”

  “I suppose.” Lyssanne plucked the quilted sackcloth mitt her mother had made from its peg beneath the mantelpiece, slipped it over one hand, and grasped the lever hidden along the inner wall of the fireplace. Gritting her teeth, she pulled it toward her with all her strength, and the firewood basket swung outward. She lifted a small log from the meager stack in the corner and dropped it into the iron basket. With her protected hand, she pushed the lever toward the back wall then pulled down, opening the basket to drop the log into the trench-like rack over the coals.