The Last Orellen - Chapter 45: Winter

“Are you sure?” Kalen asked, giving Yarda’s face a searching look.

It had been a good morning. She had felt well enough for them to have a meal at a table in the inn’s common parlor, and now she sat in a large chair by the window, looking out at the Circonians passing by.

“I don’t have to go—”

“You’ve missed a full day’s work already. And the city is peaceful after all, isn’t it?”

It was true. Everyone had felt that something terrible would happen after the incident between the Acresses and the citizenry in the streets, but so far, nothing worse had come.

Yarda smiled out the window. The white light made the silver strands in her hair shine. “I’m glad winter has finally come on proper.”

The snowfall was an inconvenience, but Kalen knew what she meant. Winter was supposed to look more like this—not dry and brown as it had been up until now.

“All right,” he finally agreed. “I’ll go work at the church until evening. Then I’ll come straight back. I’ll bring you more of that fancy cake the priests are hiding.”

“That’s good of you, small man.”

I’m too old to be called that, Kalen thought. But he didn’t say it.

“Stealing desserts makes me good?”

She chuckled. “Aye. Among other things.”

Kalen ducked into their room to grab his satchel. He stuffed it with a couple of his old books, in case he found time for reading in some quiet spot within the church. His book of mage spells always stayed behind now. It was too noteworthy to be caught reading such an expensive book intended for practitioners beyond his level.

Am I really going back to Clywing now that I know who Tomas is? Is it safe? What if he realizes that I know, and that’s a bad thing? He’s a secret as much as I am, isn’t he?

He wasn’t a risen corpse, like Kalen. But he was the real, naturally born son of Iven Orellen.

Does that make him someone enemies would want to find even more?

Kalen wished, not for the first time, that he had even the faintest understanding of what people meant when they talked about “practitioner politics.” Politics was a scarcely-heard word back home, and almost always it had been used in reference to the goings on in faraway places.

Well, I’m in the faraway place now. I suppose I’d better figure out this word, too.

He added it to the growing mental list of new things he’d encountered.

Going back to the church with Tomas there should be fine. It has been for the past week. He hasn’t said anything to me about who he is or who I am, so as long as I do the same, it will stay the same. He’ll wander around staring at things, pretending to be a priest aspirant named Matthew. And I’ll scrub floors or polish brass, pretending to be the devout Nerth from Tiriswaith.

He gripped the strap of his satchel tightly.

Before he headed out the door, Kalen stopped to check on his cousin one last time. He found her sitting where she had been. She was slumped over in the chair with her head against the window frame.

Just like that, quietly and with her face turned toward the sight of a more familiar-looking winter, Yarda Strongback had died.

#

Shelba had charged Kalen with looking after Yarda.

For the rest of that day and into the next, he held onto that charge with everything he had. A death came with so many choices. Details. Rushing and pressing from those who were trying to help Kalen, or more often, hurry his problem out of their own lives.

Kalen ignored the sudden influx of opinions from people who had no right to them, and the offers of help from those who had not been at all interested in helping up until now. On dark nights full of fears he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, he had already decided how Yarda would be laid to rest.

He cried while he saw it through, but he saw it through.

He cut off her braid and coiled it, tying it neatly with a ribbon. He would carry this with him, along with the letter he would write to her son and the last jar they had recorded for him, until winter ended and ships headed toward home again. It felt safer than leaving it to be stored at the Office of the Post.

Afterward, he walked to the harbor.

“I want her to be buried at sea,” he said to the gruff old harbormaster, who he found standing out in front of his office, squaring off with an angry captain. “It’s tradition on our island. Please.”

This was a partial truth. Sea burials were a tradition for sailors who died without kin. Others were buried in graves. But Yarda had not liked this land anymore than Kalen did, and the ocean was ever so slightly closer to home.

“I have money to pay men to help,” said Kalen, while the harbormaster chewed on the end of a twig and considered the matter. “If you know of any. I’ll give it to you, and you can pay them in turn.”

“Sounds fine to me, boy,” the man said finally. “I would not mind a burial in the wet myself.”

By mid-afternoon, the harbormaster had gathered enough people to help. And the job was done with as much care and respect as Kalen had hoped for.

As evening fell, he watched the crown of the sun disappear below the horizon. The icy wind ruffled his hair.

I will never forgive Zevnie if she got the letter and hid it from Sorcerer Arlade, he thought while he trudged back to the inn under the darkening sky. I will never, ever forgive her if she did that.

He barely slept. Hours before dawn, he rose and went through Yarda’s possessions. He took her money—an amount roughly half as much as his own—and a wooden charm shaped like a whale she had carried in her pocket. He packed them into a fat clay jar he’d been saving to record messages, and he took it all the way to the city’s graveyard.

He planned to bury it there behind one of the redstone tombs, but after the snow was brushed away, he found the ground frozen. He dug his nails into the cold grass, staring at the earth by the light of his sun crystal.

I could thaw it.

A heating circle would be difficult here. The one he knew was fairly large. He’d have to lay it out in found stones or try to carve it into the earth with his small knife. He didn’t like his chances of making clean lines with either method.

I could thaw it with a cantrip.

Kalen knew a lot of cantrips. He had mastered every one in Cantripy of the Sorcerer Brou. Brou had tried to create a spell for every major category of magic, so of course there was one for fire.

For the inflaming of cinders…

You took something that had already been burned before, sang the cantrip over it, and the flames came to life again.

Even ashes from a fireplace would work. I could spread them here and perform the cantrip. I could pour my magic into it over and over, as many times as it takes. I could…

Kalen stopped himself.

He was being childish. Cantrips were unrefined spells that took vast quantities of magic to produce the tiniest of effects. He was just angry and sad, and it would feel good to use his power in that familiar way—to fill and empty himself as many times as it took. He could draw in the magic of the continent a dozen times, twenty, forty…and throw it at something.

But he still hadn’t figured out why or how Zevnie had been able to feel him casting his germination cantrip that day. He’d been in the city for ages now. There were plenty of practitioners here. He’d visited the Enclave. He’d been near someone performing large spells at some point, surely?

He was beginning to think Zevnie just had some special talent. But since he wasn’t sure, he shouldn’t risk it.

He went back to the inn and used his magepaint and brushes to encircle the jar with two different patterns. The first was an old one he’d almost forgotten how to do, since he’d only used it a handful of times before. He had to pull out Basic Magical Practices of the Leflayn Family and reference it.

I wonder if I should feel strange about studying their book?

He decided that he didn’t. It was his oldest book. Nanu had learned from it as a girl, and she had given it to Kalen. It felt like it belonged to him, not them.

It was a relatively simple spell. The painted pattern was just a different version of the heating circle; it warmed water inside a container when the caster poured magic into it. Kalen thought of it as the bath day spell, because he’d painted it on the washtubs his family used.

The second design was more complex because it functioned as an actual enchantment rather than a spell circle. It was the one he’d learned from Gare’s parents on Elder Twin island—the one that made mugs and cups keep their contents from losing temperature.

Probably there were easier ways to do this. For all Kalen knew, you couldn’t use this spell on top of this enchantment in this fashion. But he needed something to keep him busy badly.

So busy I can’t think too much.

And at least this would stop him from casting in the graveyard until he passed out and froze as solid as the dirt.

When he was done painting, he filled his jar with water, tested it, and carried the now-warm crock with him to the graveyard. The sun had risen when he hid behind the chosen tomb again and set the jar on top of the ground. He pressed his finger to the activation rune for the heating spell and cast it.

I wonder how hot I can get it? And how hot it will stay?

He’d brought his paint this time. If he burned through the spell circle or the enchantment, he could just remake them.

So he tried it.

It turned out that using the two in conjunction meant Kalen could get the water jar very hot. After a few casts, he actually couldn’t touch the rune he needed to use to imbue the spell circle anymore, even when he froze his finger in the snow first. He sat with his back to the tomb, nursing a blister as he watched thick white clouds form over the water’s surface.

Snow melted away from it slowly.

Well that’s done, he thought. It’ll heat the ground enough to dig eventually.

He swallowed hard at the thought. Burying Yarda’s money was the last thing he knew he ought to do. It would protect it from thieves. Kalen could try to send it back to her family in the spring, or if he had to, he could dig it up and use it for himself. He would write a letter confessing to his parents if that ever came to pass, and they would pay Yarda’s son back.

This is a good idea, I think. But I don’t have any ideas after this one.

He needed a next step.

Am I just supposed go on living here? Hiding under the church’s wings and hoping that’s enough? Just waiting until it’s easier to travel?

In some ways that sounded like the simplest thing to do. But he tried to consider other possibilities.

Could he travel now? In winter and on his own?

He could give up on Arlade altogether. He could ask the harbormaster to put him on any ship heading to a country that wasn’t hunting for him. He wouldn’t phrase it that way, of course. He would find out by listening in on people through Ears of the East. Or he’d start up a conversation with someone and mention the Orellens and wait for them to say the names of places.

Revale, the kingdom to the north. He’d heard that mentioned. He’d seen it on his map. Maybe he could walk there, stopping at farms along the way?

Through the snow?

Kalen might not freeze to death, if he brought the right supplies along for keeping up heating spells. And he wouldn’t thirst to death even if the snow melted away, since he had Summon Blob. But even if he could carry enough to eat with him, what would people think of a boy who, apparently, looked years younger even than he was, traveling alone?

Would they help me? Would they just assume any child my age running away had done something wrong? Or worse…would they guess what I am?

Another problem to consider—Circon was supposed to be a safe place.

There were Orellens living here and working more or less openly. Everyone knew about the four staying at the church. They’d been here for years. Kalen had heard there used to be even more of them.

Something had changed. Because of the Acresses.

What if it’s like this in even the other safe places?

If nothing else, he should leave the inn. They knew too much about him there. And it was too expensive for just him. He could stay at a cheaper place.

The harbormaster offered to look after me, but he knows too much about me, too.

With his cousin gone, Kalen from Hemarland could finally disappear. And he thought that he should. It was a problem that the two men he regularly saw at the Office of the Post knew him by a different name from the priests; it was pure luck that the post workers weren’t regular visitors at one of the very churches they served.

I might lie my way out of it by saying Kalen was Nerth’s friend or cousin, and he was only collecting his mail. They’ve got no care for how unlikely it would be for two people living on such distant islands to be related. They seem to think we all belong together just because we don’t belong on their continent.

“Yarda, what am I supposed to do?”

She didn’t answer. She wouldn’t answer again.

Nobody was in the graveyard to hear him anyway, so after a moment of futile trying, Kalen didn’t bother to hold back his sobs.

A couple of days later, a boy sat on a pew at the back of the chapel in the Church of Clywing. He was wearing new clothes—a knee-length overshirt of soft burgundy wool, fitted brown trousers of exactly the right length, and a short gray cloak. Beside him, Clywing’s junior priestess was dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.

“Of course I could stay at an inn,” said Kalen, “but the church has become like a home to me—”

“Oh, Nerth! A child your age can’t stay all alone.” She hiccuped. Some of her mousey hair was stuck to her cheek with tears. “You must come into the warm heart of Clywing. She is the god who loves children best, after all.”

“I am twelve,” Kalen said.

He wondered if she kept forgetting that, or if she thought he was lying.

He’d told her his last remaining relation had just died. He wondered how grievous a sin that was, considering he had more relations than any other person he’d ever met if you counted all the Orellens and his hundreds of misbegotten sisters and brothers along with his real family.

“I can sleep on a mat somewhere out of the way,” he said. “And I’ll work all day. The priests won’t mind having me around at all.”

He was surprised this conversation was going so well. He’d started with the assumption that they might let him pay to stay here—less than the inn charged—but it was beginning to seem like he would be allowed to live here for nothing but his labor.

Yarda would be happy.

She’d wanted him to stay out of sight and out of mind, here in a place where nobody sided with the Acresses. It might be that he could do that to an even greater extent than he’d thought.

And as for Tomas…

Kalen would pretend not to know him. And as long as the other boy kept pretending the same, nobody should associate the two of them with each other, should they?

The junior priestess took him to meet with the high priest, who was nervously pacing his office, clearly troubled by some problem.

“What? What?” he said, clearly confused by the request and the priestess’s tearful recounting of Kalen’s excellent singing voice, strong work ethic, and dreadful situation.

“Yes I’m sure it’s fine,” he said hastily, waving them out of his office. “Just…don’t steal the bottom halves of the candles, young man. And make yourself useful. And say your prayers twice daily.”

“I can do all of that,” Kalen said seriously.

They even gave him a room, of sorts. It was actually an isolation cubbyhole, one of three down in the cellar, from some lost time when priests concealed themselves away to think holy thoughts. It was cold and pitch black without a candle or his sun crystal.

The priestess kept telling him it was only a place to keep his things should he need it; he ought to sleep up in the light and warmth of the kitchen. But Kalen liked the isolation. The church cellar was infrequently used. There was nothing down there but a few casks and some large carved decorations that were brought out on holy days.

And it’s quiet, he thought nearly a week later, as he sat on his mat with the heavy wooden door closed.

He was sure he could scream at the top of his lungs, and nobody in the church above would hear. He never heard anything from upstairs. Not even footfalls.

He pulled together his breath thrawning and held it.

When he did this, in the coolness and the darkness, he could almost pretend he was underwater.

No movement of the water to ponder, though, he thought as he traced his pathways. No wind either.

It was a shame Ears of the East didn’t work without natural wind. This would be a perfect spot to listen in on peoples’ conversations from, and there were a lot of conversations going on around town lately that Kalen wanted to hear.

Compassion days had ended at the Enclave.

The one Yarda might have gone to, if she had lived another day, had seen sick and injured people arriving only to be turned away.

“For the safety of our healers,” was the reason, according to the rumors. “The church has been sending ruffians to attack us, you see. All for the sake of the gold their Orellen magicians bring in.”

And during the service last eighth day, the high priest had spoken of Acresses burning people in the streets without cause, using powers they’d learned from the Leflayns to the south.

This was politics it seemed. Just lying back and forth to each other in little ways, so that you were always pretending your side had done nothing wrong and the other side was pretending the same.

I hate it.

On Kalen’s first three days living in the church, Tomas had spoken to him a few times. Simple words of sympathy or polite questions about his day. Never any hints about the fact that he’d recognized him.

And then, all of a sudden, he’d stopped walking laps around the church.

Kalen hadn’t seen him since.

Did he leave? he wondered, following his magic through loops and twists. Are the Orellens gone now because it got too dangerous?

Is it just me left in Granslip Port?

He had been told not to use the door that led to the attic stairs. He hadn’t been tempted to disobey at all, before. When he was still seeing Tomas occasionally.

He couldn’t risk this easy, free, and safe resting place he’d found for himself. Yarda and his mother and everyone who cared about him would be so disappointed in him if he did.

But, thought Kalen. What if they are gone?

If real practitioners, with real training and the protection of the church behind them had to run away, does that mean I should now, too?

He opened his eyes.

He opened Swift Wind Magery.

He practiced Casting Pearls. Eight different pathways. Forty points of intersection. Enough complexity to last Kalen a lifetime, he’d thought a time or two, but he was getting close now. He’d been practicing every night since Yarda died. And he was getting close.

One spell after another.

One day, I’ll have enough of them to not be afraid anymore.

A month later, Kalen went for a walk to see the ocean. He’d never in his life been so long without sight of it, and he’d begun to feel like he wasn’t himself.

He kept his cloak hood pulled up over his face, and he kept his sleeves tugged low over his wrists. Every third child he saw now was wearing the Acress bracelet. Almost nobody was wearing the one for Clywing.

He thought people might question him about his business if he stood still in one place, so he walked along the water’s edge, through the harbor, along the dirty strip of a beach that ran past part of the fishing village the city had swallowed. He formed his spell patterns inside himself while he went.

Startled Bird took less than four minutes now. He’d been practicing it more than the others.

He didn’t cast it because it was too noticeable.

But he did indulge in his newest acquisition. It was so painstaking. He almost tripped and fell flat on his face while he worked to piece it together. But Casting Pearls was a channeled spell, like Ears of the East, so once he had it he could at least maintain it. And it didn’t require all that much power.

When he’d finished building it, he felt it settling. It seemed to be becoming easier, though it hadn’t found a place for itself within his mana structure yet.

The casting part of it was easy, too.

After checking his surroundings, Kalen turned toward the water and flung out his hand, as though he were holding an imaginary pebble. And just about in the place where such a pebble would fall, little skittering swirls appeared on the waters surface. As if small invisible things were rolling rapidly across it.

So it does work on water too.

He’d wondered, but he hadn’t expected success.

The spell’s effect was hard to see on the floor of the cellar, unless he scattered a lot of dirt or sand. Eight invisible balls of wind, about the size of grapes. He fed magic into the internal pattern and watched them. They were confined to the water’s surface, in an imaginary circle about seven feet wide.

They would bruise you badly if you put a hand in their path. Kalen hadn’t been brave enough to stand in the middle of them after that, but he thought for sure they would trip you if you were unwary.

Not the most useful of his spells, but it was still an accomplishment.

This means I can cast every spell in the book eventually. He’d already gained a couple more along the way.

After a minute more, he stopped channeling and headed back to the church.

He decided he wouldn’t leave again unless he had to.

That afternoon, scraping wax from a spill on the floor, he kept staring at the door that led to the attic.

Tomas hadn’t ever reappeared. The Office of the Post didn’t send letters by portal anymore. The priest had continued to speak out against the Acresses, but he no longer mentioned the Leflayns or their pursuit of the Orellens.

By now they must be gone for sure.

I must really be alone.

He thought about it while he worked. He wanted to know. He had to know.

He had been patient for more than a month.

Surely that was long enough for a single question not to be suspicious.

“Priestess Riat,” he said, when she walked through the chapel with a heavy blanket clutched under one arm. “What’s through that door?”

“It’s just the attic, Nerth,” she said. “You’ve been on your knees for ages. Don’t you want to take a break for a while?”

“I’m all right,” he said. “Can I go up there and see the attic sometime? I’ve seen every other part of the church. I’m sure it’s interesting up there, too.”

She blinked. “I think that would be all right,” she said after a moment. “Go have a look this evening. Take a lantern. And don’t get turned around in the passages. I don’t know what they were thinking when they built it.”

“Oh,” Kalen said.

“Don’t be worried! If you do get lost, I’ll come find you.”

It’s not that…

“Thank you.”

They truly are gone.

Tomas left. Just like that.

He didn’t know why it made him feel so desperately alone. He’d barely even spoken to Tomas. He wasn’t really Kalen’s older brother. They didn’t know anything about each other’s lives.

That evening, he took a lantern as the priestess had suggested, and he climbed up the steep dark staircase. The boards creaked beneath his feet.

There were signs people had been living here recently. Narrow halls and cramped rooms that should have been covered in dust if they were long-abandoned were instead clean.

The least they could do is let me stay here now, instead of down in the cellar, he thought bitterly, as he stood in a corner under a low rafter and stared at his empty surroundings. It’s every bit as isolated, isn’t it?

He pitied himself for a long while, wallowing in it in a way he’d been trying hard to avoid. Then, he pulled himself together and left.

He was several steps down the cramped hall when he heard the noise.

It was almost too quiet for him to detect; it was almost too simple and subtle for him to care about even though he had.

A whispery rasp of a sound, as if something lightweight had just slid across wood.

Kalen looked around curiously. He retraced his steps, peering into the room he’d just passed by, and then entering the one he’d left behind.

He held up the lantern.

Nothing.

No. Not nothing. There’s something on the floor.

“You weren’t here a moment ago,” Kalen said, staring down at a rectangular bundle of folded paper, sealed with string and pale blue wax. “I know you weren’t.”

He picked it up.

On the outside, written in clean and elegant script, was a list of ten names.

Lizen, Wether, Sara…

He read to the end.

Matthew.