Hey Y'all! ChaCha here! This is the long awaited sequel to Resurgence of the Dark. I wish I could say that you wouldn't have to read the other story for the other one to make sense, but you really should. I pretty much don't own anything, not Eragon or Alagaesia, cause as I'm sure you've guessed I'm not Christopher Paolini, but I love playing around in the universe that he created so here it is. But please enjoy!
Oslyn sat quietly in the chair before the desk covered in paper and listened to her mother quietly argue with the man in expensive looking robes. Oslyn noted that the robes were slightly off kilter and rumpled, but nothing too far out of the ordinary, the only thing giving him away was the smell of hay and the single piece that clung to his long hair, just behind his ear, and the lingering smell of a woman's perfume on his skin. She bit the inside of her cheek, wishing that she could just turn off her brain for a while, not notice the things that she did, not draw the obvious conclusions that she always did.
She heard faint footfalls and was the only one not surprised when the office door flew open, and Murtagh strode in. Her dark eyes appraised him, gleaning quite a bit despite his standoffish demeanor. She watched as the man shot a look at the long haired man next to her mother.
"What's going on here, Cale?" Murtagh asked Oslyn noting the irritation in his voice.
"This woman, Shana" the long haired man gestured to her mother, "Simply refuses to leave without seeing you." Cale paused glaring at her mother, and then sighing, continuing. "We've tested her daughter three times, and this woman simply refuses to believe that her daughter has no magic."
"That is not the case," Shana snapped. She took a deep breath calming herself before turning imploring to Murtagah. "I understand that my daughter does not process a gift for magic, but she is gifted."
"Madam," Murtagh said kindly sitting behind his desk, "I run an academy for magic users, not a school house. I can not take on a student with no ability for magic."
"Give her five minutes," her mother begged. "Believe me she will change your mind." Murtagah sighed and nodded. Oslyn looked down at the floor, she didn't want to go through this again, not when it would just make other people scared of her, accuses her of being afflicted by evil spirits. Her mother placed a gentle hand on her arm, and she looked up from the floor into her mother's dark tired eyes.
Oslyn took a deep breath and looked at Murtagah, "You've had a fire in here recently," she gestured with her eyes to a corner of the room. "Is been repaired by magic, but inexpertly. You can still see the singe marks where the wall meets the floor." She paused her gaze drifting to Cale, "He," she said pointing, "Has been having an affair with," she sniffed the air closing her eyes thinking, "a student. A student from a well off family, by the smell of the perfume. They've been meeting in the stables, I'm sure that someone has seen them, as one of the stable boys seemed particularly embarrassed when he saw Cale leading us here. And you Agetlam," she turned her gaze to Murtagah appraisingly. "You are actually left handed, though you do a well enough job with your right. The man who taught you musty have been from the school of thought that one who writes with their left hand is bound to misfortune, so he taught you to use your right. And considering the effort that you put into those lessons I can assume that you were very close to him."
"Sorcery," Cale snapped. Murtagh shot him a glare and the man silenced.
"How did you do that little one?" Murtagah asked kindly.
"I notice things," Oslyn said firmly. "Things that most people don't see, or choose to ignore." Murtagh reached out and touched her mind and she recoiled, throwing up a barrier that she knew was nearly impenetrable, Shock crossed Murtagh's face, before he smirked seemingly impressed.
"You can shield your mind?" he asked. Oslyn nodded.
"Her first tutor, Kairen, taught her how," her mother chimed in. "Before she was…" Oslyn looked back down at the floor. Her first tutor had been an old woman, who had a little gifts with magic, enough to be the town healer where Oslyn had fist lived in Surda.
"What happened to her?" Murtagah asked firmly.
"She was killed," her mother said firmly. "The townsfolk where we lived believed that Oslyn was being possessed by evil spirits and that Kairen was shielding her, teaching her to be an evil magician. In their fervor they lynched her, and then came for Oslyn and myself. We fled, but the same thing has happened everywhere we've tried to settle."
"Someone finds out about her gift," Murtagh nodded, "And assume that dark magic is at work. Though that is clearly not the case." Behind her, Oslyn's mother breathed a sigh of relief. Oslyn knew her mother never believed her possessed by spirits, but most ordinary people who learn of her gift merely assumed that was the case. That's why they had come to Bullridge, to the Academy, If anyone was going to know that Oslyn was not using magic it would be the people here.
"But what is she?" Cale asked.
"Observant," Murtagh smirked settling back in his chair. "She seems to have a gift for noticing things that others would find beneath themselves."
"It goes further than that," her mother chimed in. "She remembers perfectly everything she reads or sees. If you were to ask her to she could recall the placement of the vase in the entry way to the dining hall, even though we were only there for a moment, Not only that but she's extraordinarily intelligent. She's taught herself to speak the tongue of the wandering tribes and even a little of the Urgals language as we passed both of those parties on our way here. She picked it up as effortlessly as she breathes. She can do math that boggles most, and reads in this language and dwarfish. I suspect that she may even be able to speak it, though I have never had the opportunity to test that theory. She knows if a person is lying simply based on the way they carry themselves."
"Just a mother's pride," Cale spat.
"Tell her three things," Shana snapped. "One lie and two truths, I guarantee that she will know the difference."
"Fine," Cale sneered. Oslyn raised her eyes to the man she was quickly becoming annoyed with. "I am an only child. My father was a kind man. And I think that this is a waste of time."
"You told two lies," Oslyn smiled, though she knew it never reached her eyes. Her smiles were mostly reflex. People found her less terrifying if she acted like a normal little kid. "You are not an only child, you know that you have at least one sibling, you voice shook slightly when you said this one, making it the most obvious of your lies. But by the clenching of your fist and the flare of your nostrils I assume that your sibling was not by your mother, but born out of wedlock. Your father was not a kind man. You flinched as you said that, meaning that he probably beat you a lot as a child, the twitch on your cheek when I mention him gives me the impression that he gave you that scar you bear there. But I can see from your eyes that you do wish he had been a kind man, so you try to remember him as such." Cale's face went ashen, just as everyone's did when Oslyn laid their secrets out to bare, and she couldn't help but throw in a final parting blow, "And by now, you aren't thinking this was a waste of time, so I suppose then it was three lies."
Murtagah burst out laughing, and Cale stomped his foot petulantly, and stormed out of the room slamming the door as hard as he could behind him. "What can I do for you then Shana?" Murtagah smiled kindly. Her mother took a deep shakey breath, but it was Oslyn's voice that rang out in the office,
"My mother doesn't think I know, but she's very ill. She has until winter, and she doesn't think that a girl of eleven will last long on her own. Well at least not one like me." Her mother crumpled into a chair and began sobbing. Oslyn knew that her mother had tried to keep the truth of the situation from her, but she also knew that her mother knew she could hide nothing from her daughter.
"But why here?" Murtagh asked perplexed. "If her gifts are what you say they are, then any number of traditional schools would love to have her as a student, even on scholarship."
"We met an herbalist near Furnost," Shana said her voice still shaking from with held sobs. "She said if we could just meet you that you would take her in, that you would understand."
"An herbalist," Murtagh's face drew down in something that Oslyn thought resemble a scowl, but his eyes told her he was deep in thought. He leaned slightly over the desk his eyes piercing, "Do you recall her name?"
"I think it was Angela," Shana said quietly, and Oslyn knew that her mother was worried that the herbalist's advice was false. Murtagh seemed to drawn deeper into his thoughts as he sat back in his chair and stared off into the distance. Oslyn had seen the look of recognition that had crossed his face when her mother had mentioned the traveling herbalist. She was grateful however, that her mother never mentioned that Angela had offered to read her future.
Oslyn's curiosity was overwhelming and had agreed, but when the herbalist cast a set of dragon bones for her, the woman went pale, and her eyes widened with something that looked, to Oslyn, like fear. She had looked Oslyn in the eyes, and she had noticed that despite the woman's youthful appearance, her eyes seemed ancient. Anglea had said nothing after that, except that Oslyn was an exceptional child and to seek out Murtagh at the Academy, that he would understand. And that if Oslyn ever need the herbalists help, that their paths would cross again in Osilon.
Oslyn watched Murtagh, and she suddenly felt like her fate was in his hands. He looked over at her and a smile pulled at his face. He sighed heavily, "Well, if she sent you then I simply can not refuse. That woman is meddlesome, but she does knows things seemingly beyond the reach of ordinary mortals."
Murtagh set them up in a room in a tower of the academy, Oslyn read, and wrote, and studied. Her mother was visited by students trying to find a cure for what she had, but none were successful. Murtagh even visited every day, asking after Shana's health, and quizzing Oslyn on what she was doing, often coaching her in her languages, often saying that she should attend the classes or lectures, "You're more brilliant than any student we've ever had, it'd be a shame if you didn't keep the other students on their toes."
Though Oslyn knew her mother's days were numbered, she found herself quite happy. She loved the lively debates that the students would draw her into, the fact that they treated her like an equal, the fact that they weren't scared of her. Murtagh too had been so kind to her. She had never actually known her father, he had died of a fever when her mother was still pregnant, but she liked to think that he would have been a lot like Murtagh. Her mother too seemed very happy in her final days. She seemed delighted that Oslyn was being so easily accepted by the students, and was truly delighted at the doting care that she received herself from all of the healers. But everyday that passed, Oslyn couldn't help but notice that her mother got a little weaker, that her skin grew paler, that the dark circles under her eyes got darker.
True to what she said, Oslyn's mother had passed away on the longest night of the year, two day's before Oslyn's twelfth birthday. Nearly the entire academy had turned up to her mother's burial, which touched Oslyn to no end.
Oslyn looked around, at the small graveyard covered in fresh snow. She leaned down and brushed a light dusting of snow off the stone that marked her mother's grave, and sat down. It was almost eerily quiet, but Oslyn actually found that a comfort, it seemed to calm her mind a little. "It's my birthday mommy," she said surprised at how weak her own voice sounded. "I love you." She pulled her knees up and tucked them under her chin, resting her forehead on them, wishing that she could cry. She'd read somewhere that crying could be cathartic, but she had never been good at expressing her emotions. There had never really been enough room in her head for them, not with everything else that was whizzing around at top speed. Emotions weren't concrete, they didn't act by rules like math, or language or magic. She had them, she understood them, but conveying them to other people had always been difficult for her.
She heard the crunch of feet in the snow and turned unsurprised to see Murtagh standing not far behind her. He walked closer and dropped a heavy cloak around her shoulders. "For someone so smart," Murtagh clucked his tongue at her, "You appear to be lacking common sense."
"Not lacking," Oslyn sighed pulling the cloak around her relishing the warmth. "Choosing not to care." Murtagh was silent for a long time simply sitting with her so that she wasn't alone.
"What are you going to do now?" he asked after a while. Oslyn shrugged, she really hadn't given it any thought. The academy was the first place that felt like home since fleeing their little village in Surda.
"I guess I could find work somewhere," Oslyn frowned.
"That wasn't what I meant," Murtagh shook his head making a dismissive gesture. "I meant here, what are you going to do? You many not have a gift for magic but I think you should stay here, learn everything that you can. Attend the lectures, make the instructors nervous." Oslyn smiled, knowing to what he was referring, one of the teachers had been lecturing about the proper formation for a particular spell when Oslyn had been passing by and overheard it. She'd popped her head into the class room and very publicly had told him he was wrong, that he was improperly phrasing the spell, using the wrong noun in the ancient language. He ignored her, and of course the spell went awry, and after that students were clamoring for her to check their work.
"You've been so kind to me already," Oslyn tried to protest. Murtagh made that dismissive gesture again,
"Stay," Murtagah smiled. "Study, when you've read all the books we have, I'll send to Vroengard for more. When you've finished that, we'll figure something out." He rose from the snow, and offered his hand to her, she looked up at the tall man before her and smiled genuinely, for the first time in a very long time, and took his hand, letting him lead her back to the academy.
Author's Note: This is just a little prologue to introduce a pivotal new character in the story. Hope you all liked it! Please Review.
~ChaCha