Magic Under Stone

blushing. She told me later how she loved me the minute she saw me, and I always told her she had awful taste, considering I was entirely ready to go to war with her people at the time.”

I thought of Violet’s infatuation with the dangerous jinn, and how Erris said she was so much like Mel. Indeed.

Ordorio was looking more anguished. “This is where the memories grow painful. Some months into the war, the sorcerers of the council made a bargain with a powerful fairy family-the Graweldins. If they helped us wipe out the Tanharrows and win the war, they would be the new royal family of the fairy kingdom. A secret treaty was signed acknowledging that the humans would control the Great Serpent River, while the Graweldins received generous gifts and concessions.

“However, there is a reason why fairies don’t have as much revolution and assassination and all the things you may have read about in our histories.”

I nodded. My country had a revolution for independence in my grandfather’s time. The king had been assassinated. I had grown up hearing exciting stories about it, but it no longer seemed especially exciting anymore.

“The fairy throne is guarded by ancient trees. Supposedly, they only lend the wisdom of the ages to the true ruler, and if an impostor dares to take the throne, the trees will die. The Graweldins knew the fairy people wouldn’t accept them as rulers if the trees died. So they needed a way to get around the ancient magic… such as putting the true king in a death sleep. That was, the trees wouldn’t know if the true king was only sleeping. Death sleep isn’t permanent… unless, perhaps, the soul is detached from the body. Or trapped in a false one. The magic I had developed proved to be the answer. It was daring, but…”

“Are you saying Erris really is in a death sleep somewhere. He is alive?”

“I think he must be.”

My hands were shaking. I had suspected for so long that Erris was really alive. To have it confirmed by the man partially responsible for trapping him in the first place… “Where is he, then?”

“I wasn’t privy to that information. In the fairy palace, I assume. If his soul has gone back to his body, he might wake up… one of these days.”

“How did you end up with the fairy princess, with Melia, if you were involved in this conspiracy against the Tanharrows?” Annalie asked.

“Well.” Ordorio was staring at the ground again. “The Council needed to kidnap a fairy royal, and they wanted the most useless, ineffective heir. Melia seemed the natural choice. She was widely known as a foolish girl, obsessed with boys and clothes and therefore easy to trick. But as I sat there among the men discussing how they would capture this young girl and how they would do this to her, I had my first doubt. I didn’t know fairies, except as formal and somewhat hostile diplomats, but I had seen Melia in the garden, and she was just as ordinary as any girl from home. My concerns grew and grew, and I learned that a few of the other sorcerers were troubled by the idea of kidnapping a woman. But if Melia wasn’t trapped, she’d most certainly be killed. I arranged to have her smuggled to the far northern tip of Lorinar… almost two hundred miles north of Cernan. I had a good friend there, a fur trapper who came to Cernan occasionally to visit family. The poor girl spent a few years living in near-total isolation with him while humans waged war on the fairies, and the rest of her family was slaughtered. Many times, later, I wondered if I hadn’t made a mistake, saving her.

“Meanwhile, the sorcerer’s attention fell to Erris, and he walked into our hands sooner than expected. He actually snuck out of the palace and into the woods to meet a girl or something, a human spy spotted him, and apparently he didn’t put up any fight when they tried to capture him. It was obvious he’d lived a pampered life and didn’t suspect anything bad could ever befall him. He answered our questions at the mere mention of torture. He kept telling us he was the ninth son, why would we want him? And he barely slept. He cried at night. The other sorcerers disdained him for being so soft, but I wondered if I was any different. I’d never known anything but privilege either.”

I was visibly trembling, thinking about my jovial Erris in such a brutal situation.

“Of course, he never suffered physical pain. He was already sleeping when we placed him in a death sleep and his soul into an automaton. The disturbing thing was, the automaton looked different with his soul in it. It looked more like him. The men wound it once, and it played some horrible thing-not a song at all, just desperate pounding on the keys, as if he was trying to break free-”

“Stop!” I cried. “Please. I can’t-I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” Erris had never mentioned this to me. I had never realized quite so deeply what it must have been like for him to wake to that, and then go to sleep again for thirty years, without understanding what had happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I had… done something. Stopped it somehow. But I’d be branded a traitor. So I ran away. Disappeared to the mountains.”

“And you left Melia living with some old fur trapper?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t want to see her, considering I’d played a part in doing something so awful to her brother. I didn’t seek her out until she was the last Tanharrow alive. There were plenty of rumors that she’d died, but I was still worried they might look for her. I went with the intention of protecting her, and… she was different, but she still lit up at the sight of me, and I felt so unworthy. I wanted to devote my life to bringing her joy. I never told her what I’d done.”

“Oh, Ordorio,” Annalie said. “You were never honest?”

He put his head in his hands.

“That must weigh heavily on you,” she said.

“It does. But I wouldn’t change things. We had many happy years in the woods. I really didn’t think anyone was looking for Mel anymore. I guess I got a little complacent… sending a few letters, talking to people in town. Violet’s first summer… fairy men came for us, and I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t been keeping up with magic all those years. When they found out about Violet, they killed Mel, and when I tried to stop them…” He swallowed.

“I am dead,” he said simply.

“I know,” Annalie said. “I sensed it.”

I was not quite so calm as Annalie. “What does that… mean?”

“I died, but I couldn’t pass on. I could see my fallen body and those men leaving with Violet. It’s an awful feeling to die in the midst of a will to live. I feared I would be trapped a lost soul. After I calmed down a little, I called upon the Lady to help me. She said she would grant me life again and protect Violet if I would serve her. She needed a skilled necromancer who could travel the world and deal with abuses of spirit magic. I gave my power over to her, and for nine months of the year, I serve her. I have the summer with Violet. It certainly isn’t the life I envisioned for her, but at least she isn’t an orphan. I brought Melia here to bury, but… well, you saw the clockwork body upstairs. I was trying to find a way to grant her life again, because I knew she would want to raise Violet.”

“You are a necromancer,” Annalie said. “You couldn’t bring her back with her real form?”

“The fairies… mangled the bodies,” he said curtly.

I was feeling ill, preferring not to imagine all of this. “What are you, then?”

“I am a ghost. Just corporeal enough so you don’t notice.”

Truly, I was glad Annalie was there. If Ordorio had come and I had been alone, hearing these stories spoken to me alone, in the isolated darkness of this house, I might have screamed, but Annalie, accustomed to strange matters of the spirit world, seemed to take it in stride.

“Now, you want to go after your daughter,” Annalie said. “And I suppose you can’t, because your magic belongs to the Queen of the Longest Night and you are only supposed to be here during the summer.”

“You’re quite right,” Ordorio said.

“I want to go after them more than anything,” I said. “I would leave right this moment if I didn’t think I’d be hopeless as soon as I reached the gate. But how could I even get in, much less find them in Telmirra?”

“You’ll have help.”

“Who?”

“You asked me if I’d gotten Karstor’s letters. Well, I hadn’t, but I heard from other sorcerers I encountered in my travels that he was searching for me to head home. The Lady granted me permission, and so I rushed back. When I got off the train, I stopped for the mail.” Ordorio took a bundle of letters from his coat and slid the top one my way. “This letter is how I knew Violet was gone. From Ifra Samra to ‘Friends or Family of Violet Valdana and Erris Tanharrow.’ I think you’ll find it very interesting.”