For a long moment, Anton couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. Where was Professor Carteri? Who was this curly-haired, brown-eyed girl looking at him with a strange expression?
He blinked, swallowed with a throat that felt like sandpaper, and finally found his voice. “What happened?” he croaked, in a credible imitation of a bullfrog. “Where am I? Where’s the Professor?”
There was something wrong with his tongue… and his ears. It felt like heavy snow was falling inside his head, piling up, muffling everything, trying to bury him once more in darkness. Had he been drugged? But it didn’t feel the same as the one time he had been drugged, when he’d broken his arm as a child, before his family fell apart, and had been sedated while the doctor set it. This felt…
He didn’t know how it felt. He’d never felt anything like it before, like someone from outside himself pushing a smothering pillow down on his consciousness.
The girl appeared horrified that he had spoken. She turned in a hurry and headed toward a narrow door ajar in the dark-paneled wall, next to a gilded stove, the glow of burning coal showing through the metal grill in its round belly.
“Don’t go…” he said, as urgently as he could through the strange lethargy gripping him. “Tell me…”
She paused, her back to him, then turned and stepped back toward him again. She pointed at herself. “Brenna,” she said.
He managed to pull one arm-it felt like lead-free of the covers and laid his hand palm-down on his bare chest. “Anton. Do you… can you understand me?” He spoke very slowly and clearly, as though talking to a deaf old woman.
The girl put her head to one side, studying his face. “Oondehrrrshtant you? Awlmoost… yoor wahrrrds ur shtrrranjuh.”
“My… words are strange?” But not incomprehensible! he thought with a surge of excitement. They don’t speak another language; it’s just a dialect-an accent.
The Professor was right. There are people inside the Anomaly… not monsters or ghosts as the superstitious would have it. People, people like us… but people from the past…
The Professor! Anton felt ashamed for not thinking of his friend and mentor sooner. “Where is the Professor?” he said. “The man I was with,” he added, when the girl gave him a puzzled look.
She frowned, as though trying to work out his words. “The man.. .” Already he was becoming accustomed to her accent. “I am sorry. He is dead. He died when your… flying thing… crashed into the trees. Was he… your father?”
“He’s… dead?” Anton couldn’t believe it, couldn’t accept it. The Professor… dead? He can’t be. He can’t be! He was all I had. .. Without him, I’d be all alone, back on the streets of Hexton Down
…
But sympathy filled the girl’s face, and he couldn’t doubt her. She had been there moments after the crash. She must have seen the Professor’s body herself… and arranged for his rescue.
A friend, then?
Too soon to tell. He didn’t know if he had any friends here. A stranger from outside the Anomaly? If they had truly been isolated in here for centuries, the appearance of someone like him would hit them like a grapeshot grenade thrown into a crowded room. And if their politics were anything like those of the Union Republic, everyone who learned of his existence would try to use him for their own purposes, or at least prevent their enemies from using him for theirs.
And without the Professor… he would have to deal with that, all of it, on his own.
The darkness pushed down harder. His eyelids drooped. He saw the girl reach out a hand toward him, but this time he didn’t fight the lethargy. Instead, he was glad to let it take him, burying him in blank forgetfulness.
Brenna gazed at the sleeping youth, pitying him-she had seen from the look on his face how much the man he had called “The Professor” had meant to him. But she was also astonished that he had awakened at all. Healer Eddigar knew his business, and he had said the spell would keep the stranger unconscious until at least morning. Here, practically on top of the Magefire of Falk Manor, there was no chance his spell had been too weak.
So how had this strange youth from beyond the Barrier managed to overcome it, even for a little while?
Brenna knew she was pushing her luck, staying so long in the boy’s
… Anton’s… room. She went to the servants’ door, but even as she reached for it to swing it wider, the main door opened. She jerked her head around to see Lord Falk looking at her.
She froze.
Falk’s eyebrows rose. “I see you found a way through my security arrangements,” he said dryly. “Perhaps we should have a talk about that.”
He stepped to one side and motioned for her to come out. Mute, heart pounding, she crossed the room and stepped out into the hallway. The guards turned as she emerged. Kuff’s face paled. “Lord Falk, I swear, we didn’t let her pass! I turned her away myself not twenty minutes ago-”
“At ease,” Falk said. “She came through the servants’ corridors. Which I had not bothered to guard because I was more concerned about the boy escaping than anyone trying to sneak in to see him, and he would have been unlikely to find them. So the fault is mine, as much as yours.” He gave Brenna a stern look. “But not,” he added, “as much as yours.”
“Lord Falk-”
“I said we would talk about it, and we will. But not here. Come with me.”
He led her down the corridor in the direction of her room, but rather than taking her around the corner, stopped at another of the guest rooms. He opened the door and motioned her through.
The room looked much like the one in which Anton lay, except that the furniture was shrouded and the air icy, the stove in the corner unlit. Falk gazed into empty space for a moment, eyes narrowed, and an untethered magelight appeared, a glowing ball of bright blue light floating in the air over his head. Falk returned his attention to her. “I should have remembered the servants’ corridors, of course,” he said. He reached out and pulled the covers from two chairs and a table near the door, the floating magelight following him wherever he went. He motioned for Brenna to sit down, and she did so, though without relaxing, keeping her back straight and her hands folded primly in her lap. “I wandered them often enough as a boy,” Falk went on, sitting down across the table from her, “so I can hardly be surprised that you know them well. But I really did not expect anyone from within the household to defy my wishes and try to see the boy… especially you.”
“You didn’t tell me I couldn’t see him, Lord Falk,” Brenna pointed out, while wondering a little at her own temerity. “And it is my home, too.”
Falk cocked an eyebrow at her again, but said nothing. He studied her in silence for a long time. She became increasingly uncomfortable under that gaze, but held still, waiting to hear her punishment.
Lord Falk surprised her. “Perhaps it is as well,” he said. “The youth, after all, is wounded and alone. He will need a friend and companion when he awakes. He will find me cold, and possibly even sinister… and he will thus be less likely to tell me what I need to know, whereas to you, he may speak freely.”
Brenna felt shock, then anger. “You want me to be your spy?”
Lord Falk made an impatient gesture with his right hand, as though flicking water from his fingertips. “I mean him no harm, Brenna. But we cannot be certain he does not mean harm to us… or, if not him personally, those who sent him.” He leaned forward. “He comes from beyond the Barrier. If two men can cross the Barrier, then an army can. And if those who have found their way to the Barrier from the outside world share the traits of their ancestors…”
Brenna’s tutor had taught her well. She knew exactly what Falk was referring to. “But the Mage Wars were eight centuries ago,” she said. “Ancient history, inside or outside. The MageLords are probably little more than legends out there… if they remember them at all. Why would they attack?”
“ We remember the Mage Wars,” Falk said. “Why shouldn’t they? And even if they do not, think of what they will find here: a lush, civilized kingdom, carved out of the northern wilderness, rich in natural resources, developed cropland, fresh water… if whatever powers are out there are like every other power in history, they will see us as fruit ripe for the picking, especially if they know nothing of magic and believe themselves to have the edge in military might.”
Peska had told Brenna of the atrocities committed against the MageLords and their followers during the Mage Wars. The rebel Commoners had slaughtered men, women, and children. They would have eradicated the Mageborn entirely if the Twelve hadn’t found the Evrenfels magic lode and used all the magic and energy of the Old Kingdom to transport themselves and their followers halfway around the world. Rebounding from their near-eradication, they had carved civilization out of wilderness here-and Brenna, Commoner though she was, did not want to see all that destroyed any more than Falk did.
She took a deep breath. “I’ll learn what I can,” she said. “But I would have anyway. I’m not your spy.”
Lord Falk nodded solemnly. “I understand. And of course I will question the boy myself. But if you learn anything you think I should know… please tell me.” He held out his palm, and the magelight descended to rest in his open hand. He blew gently on it; it drifted away from the puff of air. “One secret above all I hope he will share with either you or me: how that flying conveyance works.”
Brenna blinked. “Magic, surely. It carried a mageflame. I heard it roaring-”
Lord Falk shook his head. “There is no magic about it at all. I tested it myself. It is a plain, unenchanted object, like a broom or a table. It works by artifice, not magic.” He flicked a finger, and the magelight dropped like a rock to the floor. He raised his hand, the light rose slowly again. “So what held it up?”
Dinner that night was a quiet affair. Lord Falk and Brenna ate alone in one of the more intimate dining rooms off of the Great Hall. Falk had never been one to encourage idle chatter, and he considered any queries about his official business impertinent. Nevertheless, emboldened by their earlier conversation, Brenna ventured to break the silence as they waited for dessert. “Why did you come home at this time, Lord Falk?” she asked cautiously, then decided to venture a small joke. “Is it true what the villagers say, that you know everything that happens here before it happens?”
To Brenna’s surprise, a corner of Falk’s mouth actually quirked upward. “Well, I certainly wish that were true, but… no. No, I came because of an alarming incident at the Palace. You’ve met the Heir…”
“Prince Karl,” Brenna said. “Has something happened to him?”
“Almost. Someone tried to kill him yesterday morning… inside the Lesser Barrier.”
Brenna blinked. She had been taught the Lesser Barrier protected the King and his Heir as effectively as the Great Barrier protected the entire Kingdom.
As securely as that? she thought uneasily, remembering Anton, guarded and asleep upstairs. Are both Barriers failing?
The thought felt like heresy.
“But I don’t understand,” she said. “Why should that bring you here?”
“There is someone here I think might be able to help me figure out who was behind the attack,” Falk said.
Brenna frowned, thinking. “Mother Northwind?”
Falk raised both eyebrows this time. “Well done. Yes, she is the one I came to see. May I ask why you named her?”
Perversely pleased to have surprised her notoriously unflappable guardian, Brenna shrugged. “Who else could it be? Aside from me, I doubt anyone else here besides Mother Northwind has ever been more than twenty miles from Overbridge.”
“Well-reasoned,” Lord Falk said. “Yes, it is she I came to talk to.”
“But what information could she have?” Brenna asked, curious.
Falk shook his head with a small smile. “That, I’m afraid, I cannot tell you.”
Dessert arrived, a trifle of whipped cream and fresh blueberries that had been magically preserved through the winter. While she ate, Brenna thought about Mother Northwind.
The old woman-Brenna had no idea how old-had lived in her cottage, nestled against the valley wall not far from the manor, for as long as Brenna could remember, but certainly she had not always lived there. No one knew, or at least no one had ever told Brenna, precisely where she came from, or everything she had done in her long life.
One thing Brenna knew; though she lived among the Commoners, she was Mageborn. More than that, a Healer, who assisted Eddigar, focusing her efforts mainly on the women of Lord Falk’s demesne, easing the pains of childbirth and occasionally exerting extra effort to attempt to save the life of a mother or child-attempts which were, more often than not, successful.
Falk had been eating in silence. Now he put down his spoon and picked up his wineglass. As he drank from it, he gazed at her with cool thoughtfulness. “You are now eighteen years old,” he said as he put down the glass. “A grown woman. And that, too, has brought me here.”
Brenna froze, spoon halfway to her mouth, wondering what was about to come. If he tells me he’s arranged a marriage…
“When I return to the Palace, I want you to come with me… to stay.”
Brenna’s heart skipped a beat. “To stay? Not just for a visit?”
“To stay,” Falk confirmed. “It’s time.” He smiled. “Spring is scant weeks away. Wouldn’t you enjoy celebrating Springfest in New Cabora?”
Brenna felt her face spreading into an enormous smile. “There is nothing I would love better, Lord Falk!” she said fervently.
“Excellent.” Falk took another swallow of his wine. “Then it is settled.” He pushed away from the table. “And now, if you will excuse me…”
In her bed that night, Brenna found it hard to sleep, her brain whirling, wondering what it would be like to move to the city permanently. New people, new friends… she smiled in the darkness
… a lover, a husband…?
But then, for some reason, her thoughts leaped back to the youth, Anton, not just her brief exchange with him in the bedroom, but what had come just before that, when she had lifted the covers…
She blushed in the darkness, and set herself to determinedly counting nice, fat, woolly (definitely not shorn and naked) sheep.
She was up to two hundred and forty-seven before she finally drifted off to sleep.