Chapter 27| Storytelling.

"What have you done?"

The question rang in her head.

The crowd around her jostled her, moving around her like a tide around a withered, beaten stone. Brice had begun work quickly, her Wield a sharp burst of heat in her desperation. Two men ran to get something to carry Sloane on. They had tried hauling her into their arms, but one man had retched at rotted smell; her lower legs were like slabs of meat that had been left out in the summer sun for weeks, her skin sliding off like the top flimsy layer in a cup of heated milk.

Aether soldiers shouted for the onlookers to leave. Their accusing stares slid over her, but she ignored them.

"I didn't mean to do that," She said, her voice small.

No one paid her any attention.

The crowd was pulled back and Brice lay a hand over Sloane's heart, murmuring something softly under her breath. The pain etched into Sloane's face eased, but the tension in her jaw had not slackened. The Pretender brushed past her, kneeling beside Sloane. She brushed a hand over Sloane's forehead, her face a mask of concern.

Perhaps she was concerned, but the sight of her was enough to pierce through Aire's guilt. A hand brushed down the back of her arm and Aire jolted, turning swiftly to face Ferdia. The storyteller raised his hands, his expression gentle. "Perhaps it is better that you do not linger here."

She eyed him. "Where do I go? To your cells?"

Ferdia shook his head, his gaze flickering to the Pretender. "No order has come yet. Until then, let's get you sorted."

At her continuing look of suspicion, Ferdia gave a gentle sigh. "I know that neither of us know each other very well. You have no reason to trust me and I give you full permission to spill my guts onto the floor if I have nefarious, deadly intentions."

Her lips quirked. Strange man.

But he was right in one way. It was not wise to linger here. Soon, the peoples' attention would return to her, their hands rising to point an accusing finger.

She sighed, following him. The storyteller ambled as he walked, his attention drifting to every new thing – the curve of a window, a wilted flower. Another person passing him. He walked, he looked as if every detail was his to observe and that he saw something new as he passed along this street even if he had walked it a hundred times before.

As they turned a left corner and a row of houses loomed beyond, triangular rooves with little black-glass balconies overhanging the streets, Aire paused. "My room isn't this way."

It was nowhere near her rooms. The black glass street here was studded with flecks of gleaming gold glass. It was beautiful, yet ostentatious. If this had existed in Irial, criminals would have broken up the street in the dead of night and sold of the chunks by dawn.

"Hmmph," Ferdia paused, amused. "You've a good sense of direction, Aire. The path confuses people."

"I feel like it's important to remember where you are in a place like this," Aire evaded. The houses seemed to semi-circle around a gleam of light in the ground. Momentarily entranced, Aire wandered closer. The light was not light at all, but glass. Glimmering silver glass. It cast light like it was night-time, leaving great gleaming silver streaks along the walls.

"This city was built to hide." Ferdia's gaze drifted, rising to the thin plume of smoke eking out from the stone, high above. "They built chimneys here in the stone. Imagine that!"

"Chimneys?" She didn't understand his amazement.

He pursed his lips. "Well, I have seen chimneys before but not like this! It helps ease the smoke from our houses so we can light fires during the cold nights."

"To halt smoke-sickness." She glanced back up at the smoke appreciatively. The great long houses back in Cearna where they had roasted meat and danced into the night had tiny holes in the straw rooms. She had remembered the tinge of smoke in the air and needing to step outside to clear her head.

"Exactly," Ferdia grinned at her. He stopped in front of a house that sat at the side of the semi-circle curve of houses. The wall was made of dark stone, decorated by colourful tiles. The house, like all the others in Valherin, was built into the wall of the mountain.

Aire paused, examining the tiles. Green tiles, gold tiles, rising amongst the smatterings of blue. Mixed amongst it, where tiles painted with different images. Some, she couldn't understand, but others she could. Two figures standing amongst foxglove and heather, hands intertwined and bound by a sash.

The burning of a great Cearnain temple. Burning books. A sword of Lunar-steel.

Other faces, people that Aire had never met. Some, with the dark hair of Laochra. Others with the same burning red of Fiachra. Family?

Ferdia stood at her shoulder. "One day, I will be dead and all the stories that I have spent a lifetime gathering, will die with me. This wall tells pieces of Laochra and I's life. To let people, know whose home they are entering. But I have tried writing and drawing the stories I have heard. Our people were great for telling them, but not so great at writing them down. We thrived on passing our history through song and word and it worked for a long time. We have lost so much because of that."

"That responsibility must be great," She had always loved when the storytellers visited when she was a girl. The ones who travelled from far away would bring daring, strange stories of lands Aire had only heard of in lessons. She would moan and complain in those lessons when asked to read, but she would sit on the cold stone floor all evening and listen to the soft, melodic voice of a storyteller.

Considering that, she had never thought about the importance of their work. They had been a passing amusement, important in her parent's court. Now, they were a fraying thread holding onto the old memory of Cearna.

"Not as great as your responsibility, Aire Thielan."

She arched a brow, a brief beat of panic in her throat. Her responsibility?

He matched her expression, a red brow rising. "Being one of the only remaining Wielders."

"Ah."

He unlatched his door, his voice soft. "Did you assume I was talking about something else?"

Aire shook her head, "No. I am just tired."

The inside of his home was dark, the air heady and warm. Aire swayed in the doorway, comforted by the scent of lavender and something else – something softer underneath. Something soft and sweet. Ferdia lit the torches and opened the window, so the silver gleaming glass underneath ebbed in like moonlight. It was a soft light, muted by the angle of the where the window was.

The entrance was a circular room. A firepit sat in the middle, built up by round stones. A spit was placed over it, but the metal was clean. Relatively untouched. Two rooms split off from this entrance room. Around the fire pit were a series of mismatched chairs.

Ferdia touched one, his expression fond. This one was like a rocking chair, the wood carved with images and symbols. They were sloppy images, unlike the ones on the walls outside. It was laid thick with oddly made cushions. "Laochra tried his hand at woodcarving and sewing when I complained about my old reading chair. I adore the gift, but he is truly better at wielding a blade."

Aire's heart warmed, imaging the grizzled warrior making such a chair. Making the misshapen cushions for his life's love. Then, at the scholar who adored the gift so much that he endured the lumpy cushions.

"I will make you some tea," Ferdia motioned to a chair and began to light the fire. "Sit."

She sat, perched on the edge of a chair with a view of the door. There were shelves built into the walls, haphazard and clumsy looking. They were lined by books with cracked spines, reams of parchment stuffed with slips of cloth to mark the last page rage. Along the walls were elegant paintings along the stone. The golden sunrise, the colour now distorted by the silver light spilling in through the open window.

The rough roll of the sea, the great rise of temple doors. Places in Cearna, painted onto the walls with brilliant realism. Ferdia must have painted these too – pieces of Cearna from his memories. One image, a smaller one, of a place crafted from pale basalt. Pillars of marble, shimmering veins of moonstone. Great towers where seagulls cried from their high perches. The dark roll of the sea. A great castle sat upon the coast; a city born from the fishing village where the first gifted Aryshalin lived.

As the stories went anyway.

"You've been here?" Tension wormed down her spine. She resisted the urge to check her shawl, to check to see if any curl of hair had crept out.

"I've been many places," He set the pot to boil, his tone absent. "I wonder if these leaves are as strong as they used to, or am I just drinking so much tea that they're losing their effect?"

Aire glanced over her shoulder, confused. "Sorry?"

Ferdia blinked at her. "These tea leaves? We grow them in the open lands, using Danla's ... method but I find that they're weakening as of late."

"There is a famine in Kaelara. The land is rotting the crops. Perhaps it is spreading." Aire remembered the spirit of the girl, alone in the dying field. Had her family joined her now?

"I heard about the famine from Laochra," Ferdia was perturbed. He continued to stir the tea. "Kaelara doesn't believe in the power of the land like we do, though even before they invaded and took over us all, we tried to tell them. Unlike our neighbours and different lands across the Great Sea that I've only read about in books long ago, we do not believe our gods of the sky to be the most powerful. Some of them worshipped gods of thunder, or wind and air and believed that they were the insurmountable ones. The ones who ruled all the other gods. Cearnia had many gods, many who we worshipped together as the Danann."

"I've heard about the Danann."

He smiled briefly. "As a child of Cearnia, I would expect so. The Danann bestowed power through gifts, through bloodlines. They say the first of the great Aryshalins was given a drop of moonlight, and others say that it was a brief and burning love affair that bore the first child of magic. The stories are so old now that we can only tell both and wonder which one is true."

"We do worship the skies." Aire hedged. "Deeply. Especially the moon."

"Yes," He said, "Yes, we did."

Not any longer – not when the moon had been stained bloody. A strange, permanent scar when Kaelara struck Cearnia. Ferdia checked the tea, then turned to one of the haphazard cupboards to withdraw two crudely carved cups. One of his own had his name carved into it.

"But Cearnains believed that the gods and goddesses of the land were the most powerful. The worthiest of worship and fear. It was those gods and goddesses who urged the land to rest each winter, who revitalised it during the spring. They helped lambs to term, granted babies on mothers who had empty arms and so much love to give. Then after the Danann had fallen silent, there were those in the bloodline of people granted gifts and magic by those gods and goddesses that could urge the weather to change, who could urge crops to grow and who tended farms where the lambs, the calves and the hatchlings never died. They quelled famines, eased harsh winters, and tended to great gardens. Simple, essential magic whose quiet strength settled underneath the grand displays of Wielders who could command great plumes of fire, who could step into open air and hang there like a bird on the breeze."

As he spoke, his words felt like music. A tangible thing that formed in the air between them, as if crafting a moving image. She could see it before her, feel the subtle warmth of spring air. The distant bleating of lambs.

She shook her head and the feeling vanished.

"I am aware..." Aire eyed him, suspicious now.

Ferdia blinked, focusing on her. The air was warmth inside the room. Aire eyed the fire and the smoke ebbing up to a hole in the ceiling above. Aire wondered how the smoke would vanish, where it would go? How had anyone not died from its poison yet? Was there a series of chimneys built into the mountain? Who had crafted this place?

"I apologize," his cheeks were red. "I tend to speak before thinking."

She said nothing and he pressed a mug of tea into her hands. It was made of something she couldn't taste, and the slight twinge of bitter nettles. He settled himself in his armchair with mishappen cushions, holding his own mug close to his chest. He watched her for a long moment, with a gentle and calm expression. Aire didn't know what to think of him and as she sat there, she realized that it wasn't wise of her to come here alone.

Ferdia fixed the glasses perched on the edge of his nose. "What happened, Aire?"

She tensed. "I injured Sloane."

"Just for fun? Just because you could?"

"No!" Aire shook her head. "No, I didn't mean to do that."

"It would be understandable, if Sloane was the reason your throat looked like that." Ferdia said softly. "Sloane is like a daughter to Laochra and I, but I could not condone her injuring a guest when there is no good reason presented before us."

Aire touched her throat. For a moment, she hesitated. It would give her a perfect escape, to blame Sloane for the bruises on her throat. No one could pin it on Gaela and people may accept Aire's response if they thought Sloane meant to kill her. But ... Sloane's words still lingered, and it bothered Aire to know that her words affected her. Honourless.

It would only confirm Sloane's beliefs if Aire condemned her unjustly.

"Sloane did not do this."

Ferdia's head tilted. "Your throat did not look like that earlier today. Did someone attack you?"

"... I do not want to talk about this."

The storyteller and the secret-stealer stared at each other for a long moment. His smile was still gentle, but there was a keen sharpness in his eyes. As sharp as Aire's blades. Common sense warned her, 'Be careful.'

As if sensing she would not be easily broken on this, Ferdia moved on. "Your Wield is unrestrained. Untrained. If you do not want a repeat of what happened to Sloane, you will have to learn to control it. "

He looked at her, voice soft as the smoke that ebbed up and out of this mountain home. A voice that lulled her tired mind. "Tell me the story, Aire Thielan."

And so, Aire told him the story of her interaction with Sloane on the black-glass street. The bile in her throat, the harsh accusations that Sloane spat at her. Ferdia's brows rose as he listened to how Sloane had questioned Aire's honour. To a Cearnain, Aire's anger was justified. The reaction however...

The words flowed from her, too quick for her to stop. Ferdia just listened with rapt attention, cradling his own tea. He sipped occasionally, but his attention never shifted.

"No matter what she thinks, Sloane knew better than to question another Cearnains honour with consequences. However, the manner in which you defended it was not ... well, it was mismatched."

"As I did, I did not mean to do it."

"And you can say that all you wish, Aire. But you still did it and that is all that people will focus on." Ferdia pressed softly. "Why did you leave the celebrations? You and Sloane were far from the bonfire."

A knot hardened in her throat. She wanted to keep Geala a secret. Someone had bound her mouth; someone had harmed her so badly that her spirit could not pass. She was a clue – a blow against the Pretender and Aire had no clue who was in on her suffering. "I felt ill and didn't want to disturb the party."

Ferdia's head tilted. "What did you do all that time?"

"I didn't notice the time passing," She sipped her tea, meeting his gaze coolly. "I was lost in the nauseousness."

His lips tightened. "That is not the truth."

She bit down her instinctual retort. "Well, it is the truth that I know."

"People say that stories have many sides. I know there to be only one. The truth. And you are not using it."

They stared at each other. The fire crackled in the deep hearth. Steam ebbed from her cup, curling up in fading tendrils. The room was too hot. Too small. She managed to shrug a shoulder. "Well, I cannot help it if you do not believe me."

The corner of his mouth quirked. "I am choosing to do nothing, Aire. I am a storyteller."

"Yes, I know that." Aire retorted, prickled. "You are a storyteller. A noble profession for any man or woman, but that doesn't make your word law."

Ferdia sighed. "I had hoped you would tell me the truth. But, from what I know of how you came to find yourself in the Bloodbounds control should have alerted me to your... suspicious nature."

"Wielders have to be suspicious."

"That we do."

She caught his words instantly.

We.

Welcome back to Aire's world! 

More secrets, more trouble brewing. 

Tell me your thoughts, theories and conspiracies! 

1. What punishment awaits Aire? 

2. Would you have gone with Ferdia? 

Until next time - Saoimarie.