Chapter 58
I was starving and downtown was bustling with a farmer’s market. Fresh produce, fruits, beer and wine were available for sampling and purchase. I helped myself to a score of apples, pearfruit and berries. The butcher was selling some kind of spicy meat on a stick roasted over the coals and the flavor was the finest my taste buds had happily worked on since that long-ago meal back at Mrs. Murphy’s boardinghouse.
Before I knew it, I had fruit juice, meat gravy and seasonings running down my chin and hands. I wiped off my mouth with my sleeve not caring who saw my lack of manners and me. Besides, who could see me do anything, I was invisible. I snickered and picked my nose so I was astonished when I heard a voice remarked, “That’s a disgusting habit, Reuven and one I’ve never seen you do before.”
I dropped my last bite to whirl around and gape at the tall Elassai noble that I thought I had no fear of ever encountering again. Connacher and he could see me.
“M-m-m-master,” I whispered and turned to flee. He snatched at my hair and gripped it tightly bringing tears to my eyes. I daren’t use magic against him.
“You are here because you follow the wizard’s compulsion,” he stated. “You are here for your great-grandfather.”
“Yes, master,” I returned and felt relief rush through me making my muscles lax and leaving that sour burning in my stomach.
“You are here because we plotted it so. I will help you enter the palace and reach the Lyr. You would never make it on your own, even with your masking spell,” he smiled. He raised his voice. “Guards! I have the prionsa! He has escaped! Faet warriors, Klese guards!”
Within seconds, we were surrounded by the Royal soldiers but Connacher did not release my head of hair from his grasp. He dragged my protesting, stumbling body towards the palace escorted by nearly a squad of armed and pissed off Royal soldiers. I was scared but not terrified and when I tried to fight back with magic and fists, Connacher spelled me immobile so I couldn’t move or walk. He dragged me by my hair and the tears from that blinded me. I couldn’t see anything until he let me go. I fell to the floor at the foot of Lyr Averon’s throne – a curiously delicate thing of willow branches, ivy leaves and flowers with jewels no less lovely than the petals of those flowers. He wore his favorite white, a material called samsite that shimmered with colors as an opal would. Rare and costly, only a king could afford it, as it was woven from silkworms that matured only once every 100 years. It was the stuff of legends.
“Connacher, you have a curious gift of finding my lost great-grandson,” the king said as he stood over me. Like all the Elassai, he was nearly seven foot tall, willowy and with those deep violet eyes. “You escaped the madry vehlen,” he announced. “As our legend foretold. He is truly the one sent to destroy all Elassai and bring down the Border Wall.” Then, to my astonishment, he knelt at my feet and raised me up, smiling at me. “I have waited nearly a thousand years to hand over this curse, Tobias Tiobhan. I grow weary of life and want surcease. Only you can give me this.”
He put into my hands a simple dagger carved from a single crystal of amethyst jade and curled my hands around it.
In my head I heard Blackfin say, ‘strike’ and plunged the blade into my great-grandfather’s chest. He opened his mouth, leaned into me and bit me with his own bloodstained fangs.
“Now it is your curse,” he gasped and I watched the light fade from his violet eyes.
Not a gasp, whisper or sound came from the Court as I laid him down to stare at my bloodied hands. I felt changes go through my body; first I was cold and then dying of the heat. I was suddenly a hundredweight heavy and floating like the dust motes in the air. Hungry and thirsty, then so full I thought I might vomit. I couldn’t breathe yet my lungs were full. A swell of indrawn breaths grew behind me. Became words. Lyr. Tiobhan. Lyr Tiobhan. Tobias.
I turned to look at Connacher and he was smiling a self-satisfied smirk that made me cringe. “Get up,” he said. “Make me your Councilor.”
I obeyed him and before my wondering eyes, the entire Court – all the glittering robed Nobles, all the impressively armed guards and muscled warriors went to their knees acknowledging me as the Lyr. “Tell them to open the Border Wall and cross into the Newlands. Engage the Wizard’s forces. You, Reuven, my Lyr will accompany me to my Tower.”
“Yes, m –.”
“Do do not call me that. Only Connacher now. It would not be – politic.”
“Yes, Connacher.” I dropped the bloodied knife and followed him out of the throne room. He led me down the processional into the palace and to the Lyr’s chambers. Servants and courtiers, noble men and women bowed low as I passed them. I remained behind Connacher like a beaten dog.
He knew his way to the King’s Apartments and they were as beautiful as anything I’d seen in the Emperor’s Palace. Here, instead of marble and golden inlays, everything was made of wood, vines and plants. There were flowers in place of jewels and golden beams of sunlight that wrapped the interior in a coat of richness beyond the brassy harshness of the precious metal.
His bed was an intricately woven bower of silver beech and willow, its leaves forming a canopy overhead and a mattress was stuffed with the softest moss. Covered in silk sheets so fine and tightly woven, I suspected water would bead off its leaf green surface.
The room was enormous, a bedchamber with its own suite, a living area with overstuffed couches, chairs and tables – all created from wood and natural fibers. The carpet was grass so tightly leafed that it sprang back and I could not separate the individual leaves with my fingers.
Connacher told me to find a spot to occupy until he could contact the Wizard. I found a space near the door and sank to my knees with my back against the wall. I remained there trembling with anxiety that his attention would focus on me.