Winds That Will Be — Aedan's Journal
"Flesh and Blood, or Cobwebs and Glitter, or Whatever the Fey Were Made Of"
Aedan's Journal. Session 2-3-01.
© 2001 Todd Worrell
Raj's arms were wrapped around Benedict, trying to contain him. He had trumped Magni for help "with Benedict" and Gabriel, Gregory and I had tagged along. Wasn't Giselle supposed to have cured Benedict already? Apparently she was as reliable as the rest of the fey. We had ended up in a small cave in some mountainous shadow. Across from me, near a small campfire, Gregory and Gabriel were working their magic to cleanse Benedict of his infection. I knelt near the wrestling match, trying to assist Raj if I could. Magni stood a few feet away, watching me suspiciously.
There was something dark on Raj's pant leg, but I couldn't see what it was in the relative darkness. I reached forward quickly just as Benedict mumbled something and flung Raj's body away from him—well, most of his body. Raj kept his grip on Benedict's wrists, but he looked like a kite caught in a windstorm as he jerked up into the air.
I touched Benedict's forehead, none too gently. "Sleep," I told him, and he did.
Benedict crumpled. Raj fell on top of him and grunted. His face was contorted in pain.
"What happened?" Raj said groggily as he rolled over. His eyes flickered a bit. Uh oh.
I shifted to look at Raj's thigh. It was covered in blood. The wound was only four inches long, but it was on the inside. His artery was cut. Magni stepped in and touched Raj's chest with one finger. A spark leaped from the tip of Magni's finger into Raj's chest and immediately the big guy began breathing easier.
I tore Raj's sleeve off his tunic and wrapped it around his upper thigh. The cloth barely reached around his massive quadriceps, but it helped. I healed the cut with a spell, but it didn't cure him completely. At least it made him conscious.
I helped Gerard's son to a sitting position and explained that he had lost a lot of blood but he was going to recover. He whispered his thanks. I was vaguely aware of my cousins' noises of success and Magni's binding of Benedict behind us as I tended to Raj. His pulse was strong and his pupils weren't dilated, so I pronounced him fit to travel. What he needed was rest, preferably in his own bed. Besides, now that we weren't struggling with Benedict, I noticed that I could see my breath. It was really cold here.
Gabriel trumped us all to the Great Hall of Amber. I wondered briefly how he had done it but my attention was immediately seized by a very heavy, very sleepy Raj leaning on my shoulder.
I held him up as best I could until a pair of burly guardsmen relieved me of that duty. They each supported one shoulder as the big guy slouched off toward his rooms.
"How did that cut get there?" Magni walked up to me as we both watched Gregory and Gabriel leave.
"I would say Benedict had a blade." I was prepared for Magni's insinuations. I don't know why he thought that I had stabbed Raj and I was prepared to question his evidence.
"What size?" Magni looked askance at me. He knew something.
"Small," I said. "Probably curved, to judge from the tear in the skin."
"Like this?" Magni held up a section of metal, four inches long, with a hooked claw of a blade with a simple leather-wrapped handle .
I didn't say anything, but I turned to stare at my cousin. He was smiling and obviously pleased with himself. I wasn't going to ask. I wasn't. I wasn't.
"Where did you find that?" I asked.
"Oh," Magni looked at his fingernails nonchalantly. "Benedict had it."
I looked at him. He laughed and walked off whistling, turning the small blade over and over in his hand.
It was late. I went to bed.
* * *
I awakened at some point in the night. It was dark, and quiet enough that I could tell the morning staff hadn't begun their chores yet. The wind blew in through my half-open window.
Variga used to say You can judge a man by the company he keeps, but women you shouldn't judge at all. She had a twinkle in her eye when she said it, but she meant what she said. I had her explain what she meant to me. A man's friends and acquaintances reflect his interests in the world. Those reasons can also be applied to a woman's circle of friends, but women are much more subtle; they use societal interaction for many more reasons than men do.
If I applied that thought to my recent acquaintances, it seemed to ring true. Caine had no real friends, and his associates were people like Jaliya. Caine admired her, I knew, but primarily because she knew when to be clever and when to be silent. Jaliya, on the other hand, worked for Caine. She must have enjoyed the job somewhat, or she would have left him. But I never for a moment thought that she viewed Caine as a friend or an acquaintance.
Martin had his family around him. His acquaintances weren't by choice either, so I didn't think I could judge his character very well. I wondered if it would be worth a visit to Texorami to find out more about our acting Regent. It certainly looked like he was going to be King of Amber. Well, if the opportunity presented itself I would visit, but I didn't anticipate having much free time in the next few weeks.
Among my other cousins, most of us were lumped together much of the time. Gabriel, however, spent considerable time with his father. That actually seemed relevant, as some of Brand's scheming ways seemed to have been inherited by his son.
Me? I seemed to spend most of my time with Magni. He was mysterious and clever, but a fun guy. I enjoyed his reckless attitude when he wasn't threatening me. Gregory was dark and brooding, but he got things done. Raj was trying so very hard to do the right thing. Giselle was a woman, so I tried not to judge her. I failed. In my mind, I had classified her as Fey early on. She was erratic, emotional, and seemed to care more about her horse than she did about the fate of the cosmos. But she was also intelligent, hard-working, and knew many odd little secrets about the workings of the universe. It would have been unfair to dismiss her as simply an elven bimbo. None of these people, however, were my friends. Friends, Caine had said, get you killed.
What does all this mean? I don't know. The next time I see Variga, I'll ask her.
* * *
In the morning, Magni had breakfast served in the Library. When I arrived, Gabriel and Gregory were already there, all of them eating some strange egg dish that was Magni's version of a bad joke. I didn't get it.
But I did eat the eggs. With enough pepper, they almost tasted good. I devoured a cantaloupe, some kiwis, and a pitcher of orange juice to get the taste of the eggs out of my mouth.
At the head of the table, Magni slowly spooned bite after bite into his big mouth. He had black circles under his eyes and his hair looked less spiky, somehow. In fact, he was in the exact same clothes he been wearing the night before, only they were much more rumpled now. Gabriel must have been rubbing off on him.
Of course, in his weakened state, we interrogated him. He claimed to have walked a different Pattern than any we knew of. His mother's name was Teresa, his father's was Alunim. He grew up in the Realm of Five Kingdoms, which he claimed was destroyed by Chaosians during the Patternfall War. His grandfather was a mysterious figure known only as the Wanderer. Magni's description of this guy's legendary abilities made it rather clear that he was an Amberite of some kind.
Giselle blew in, late and gorgeous as usual. She had one bite of eggs, declared them "too young," and herded Gabriel into a corner to argue with him. We heard them discussing her Fey friend Ailill at some depth. Apparently she wanted Gabriel to make a trump of the Unseelie Lord. Gregory looked at me when she said this, then admitted that he already had a trump card of Ailill. He took it out and showed us.
The guy was tall, pale, with dark hair and a pointy face. Dressed in macabre red and black, leaning up against a column upon which tiny writhing forms were carved, his eyes twinkled and reflected like rubies. You could almost smell the brimstone, but that was probably just the eggs. I handed the card to Giselle. She squealed in delight and pestered Gregory until he gave in and agreed to loan her the card.
With a jaunty wave and a flip of her long blonde hair, Giselle flitted off to assist her mother with the Fey court statuary.
We finished off breakfast and pushed our chairs back from the table. Talk turned to the lawn gnomes in Flora's care. Now that we had, collectively, managed to cure Benedict, the feeling was that together we could accomplish anything. Why we decided to help Flora instead of putting Osric out of our misery was a mystery to me. But I was willing to go along for the ride.
I shuffled through my Trump deck, took out Flora's card, and pondered. That didn't work, so I concentrated.
"Why, Aedan…hello" Flora was in the forest clearing where the statues were. Her hair was pulled back, but much of it had escaped. It gave her an uncharacteristic look of disarray.
"Aunt Florimel," I smiled my most charming smile. "You look fantastic." She smirked at me.
"I knew you were going to say that," she said. Her right eye winked at me. I didn't glance at her dead left eye with the scar running through it.
"I'm calling to offer you my assistance and the assistance of my cousins."
"Well," Flora ran a hand through her hair. "I was going to ask Brand for help, but since you're offering…."
"We're ready now if you would like." I glanced around the breakfast table. Gregory and Gabriel were nodding their agreement. Magni was nodding off.
"Not just yet," Flora pursed her lips. "I'll call you back in a few minutes. Be prepared."
"Aunt, I am never prepared, but," I turned my head in a way I knew to be quite fetching, " I am always ready."
She laughed politely and broke off the call. I nudged Magni with my elbow. He came awake with a snort. I related my conversation to my cousins. They listened to me and made what small preparations time allowed: Gregory checked to make sure his sword slid easily out of his scabbard; Gabriel massaged his temples; Magni plopped his head down on the table and resumed snoring.
We sent a servant to hunt Raj down to see if he wished to accompany us. He arrived, looking much better than he had the night before. I asked about his injury. Raj said it itched a bit, but that it had sealed over pretty well and he wasn't sure if he was going to have a scar. His shoulders slumped as he said this. Raj admitted that it would be quite an accomplishment to have a scar from a wound caused by Benedict and still be alive to show it off.
Only a couple minutes later I accepted a trump call from Flora. Gregory shook Magni awake and handed him a thermos of coffee. Magni upended it and gulped the whole gallon down. He smacked his lips and rubbed his hands together.
The five of us went through to my aunt. Giselle was with her. They had been busy, it appeared. Most of Finnvarra's court had been restored to flesh and blood, or cobwebs and glitter, or whatever the Fey were made of.
There were five statues remaining: a large man with an arrow in his abdomen; a young man with bad hair; a woman missing an arm; and the two joined statues of Finnvarra and the woman that looked nearly identical to my mother.
I stood before these joined figures and stared. It was hard to tell if it was really Deirdre. My own memories of her were from my childhood. I didn't know if I could tell her apart from an imitation. The fact that this woman was made of stone didn't help, either. The moon symbol on the shoulder of her dress was slightly different than my mother's, but I didn't know what that meant. The man next to her looked familiar also. I thought that he was standing near my mother when I saw her in Tir na-Nog'th, only a few weeks ago. The man I had seen was wearing a mask, and I couldn't recognize him with any certainty by his clothing.
Time continued its course without me. Flora and my cousins had restored the one-armed woman. I heard her say her name was Alluravel. I turned and glanced at her. She had white hair, both arms, and golden eyes into which Gabriel had already hopelessly fallen. They walked a few paces away and sat down together. They talked. Or, rather, she talked and Gabriel agreed with everything she said. I thought that it was ironic that Brand's son should have such a weak mind to succumb so easily to the Fey glamour.
Everyone ignored them and continued working on the next statue. Soon enough, the young man was restored as well. Giselle told us his name was Cian, and that he was a younger son of Finnvarra. He rubbed a hand through his elfin blond hair and shook his head. He didn't respond right away when Giselle said his name.
So she said it again, and again.
"What happened?" He asked. His voice was high for a man.
"You've been a rock," Gregory said. Giselle glared at him and he pouted.
"We don't know," Giselle explained, "But you were turned to stone at some point and have been for several weeks."
Cian looked around at the clearing. When he saw Alluravel, just for a moment, he looked disgusted. Then his eyes settled on the pair next to me. His eyes opened wider in astonishment.
"Can you fix Finnvarra as well?" he asked.
"We intend to try," Giselle answered. She made introductions all around. Cian shook everyone's hand perfunctorily, but he stopped when he met me.
"You look familiar," he said.
"I could say the same," I replied. I thought I might have seen him somewhere.
"What is the last thing you remember?" Gregory interrupted Cian's struggle to remember my face. I didn't think I had ever met a son of the King of Faerie. I would have remembered that.
"We were attending a meeting," Cian said, walking over and studying his father's statue. "at Finnvarra's request. I was dancing. There was a…disturbance." Cian walked around the statues. "Then I was here."
I approached the gold-eyed Fey woman. She was smiling and batting her eyelashes at Gabriel. The boy seemed utterly entranced. When I knelt beside them, Alluravel looked up at me. She gasped.
"What is it?"
She shook her head.
"I don't know. For a minute I thought you were someone else."
I studied her a moment. She was thin in the extreme, even for the Fey, and seemed to be wearing rouge on her cheeks.
"What do you remember?" I asked her. Behind me, it had grown silent. Everyone was watching and listening.
"I remember the King told us about this woman." Alluravel pointed at the statue of Finnvarra's consort.
"Yes?" I prompted. My heartbeat started accelerating.
"She had some connection to the Pattern," Alluravel looked around. She straightened her shoulders and began speaking more confidently. "But not of Amber. She was connected to Tir."
"Please, go on."
"She looks very like the Princess, doesn't she?"
"The Princess?" I asked, my mouth dry.
"Princess Deirdre."
"Yes," I swallowed. "She does."
"I think Finnvarra was trying to negotiate something with her. They weren't really dancing. They were standing near the thrones, on the elevated part of the floor."
I knew the scene she was describing. I motioned for her to continue speaking.
"As Cian said, there was a disturbance. She noticed it first, and said something. I didn't understand it at the time."
"What did she say?" I already knew the answer.
"To Finnvarra, she said 'I brought you here to introduce my son.' I can't remember his name. Then she said 'I have something for you.' She lowered her mask and—are you okay?"
I stumbled and sat down, all the blood draining from my face.
"I was there," I said, the words falling heavily from my mouth. "I was there."
* * *
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