Thicker Than Blood

Chapter 14

Castles in the Sky


___________________________


"Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent.
It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them."
- Bene Gesserit, Dune



___________________________

12,002 BC

It was easy to look at something as beautiful as the Kingdom of Zeal and not think of the evil lurking behind it. Life was full of things like that, where things of great beauty hid things of great danger. Spraying on too much perfume to conceal the rotting stench beneath. Ivy knew Lavos was somewhere beneath the earth, but in Zeal she felt his presence closer than she ever had in Algetty.

It didn't take long for Ivy to settle in, even though everything was different in Zeal. The food, the people, the clothing. The air itself was different. Cleaner, somehow. It would have been simple to let herself be seduced as all the Enlightened had, so Ivy deliberately looked for the bad things about Zeal Kingdom. Like the stuck up people. Like the oppressive heat that was so intense she would sometimes have trouble breathing.

She longed for snow.

Ivy had her own room, all to herself. It was as big as the entrance cave back in Algetty. Cold marble floors polished to a gleaming shine, huge windows that were surprisingly difficult to open, so the first time she could wrestle them wide enough, she left them like that. It was much, much too hot in Zeal. And somehow having a constant breeze flowing through her room made it seem more...hers.

There was even huge porcelain tub in one corner with pipes that brought in hot water whenever she wanted it. Ivy bathed in it every night., scrubbing until her skin was pink. In Algetty, you'd only get to bathe about once a month, and then it was with rags dipped in melted snow.

The kitchens were wonderfully chaotic, always in a rush to prepare a feast for someone somewhere. No one ever noticed when she was there, or else they didn't mind. They certainly had enough food not to miss the little she took. In Algetty, they'd always been real careful about food. Rationed it, 'cause you never knew if you'd have enough for tomorrow, or next week, or enough to last through a blizzard too fierce for hunting in. And the food itself was incredible. Much better than dried deer jerky.

For the first couple of weeks, life was pretty simple. Ivy woke up every morning around dawn, ate breakfast of whatever she'd snuck into her room the day before, then went off to the library until midmorning.

The library was a huge room, with two floors, though the second one was more of a large wrap-around balcony and Ivy wasn't sure how to get up there. The bottom floor was enough to satiate her curiosity for the present. It was like a maze, the shelves impossibly tall, and after the first few chaotic rows, the light dimmed enough that Ivy longed for a torch, but only dared to bring a small candle in among the endless, dusty mess of books. Its feeble, flickering flame was scarcely enough to hold back the shadows a few feet, seeming only to make the seething darkness deeper, more alive, as if the shadows were angry with her intrusion into their domain.

Ivy knew it was silly, but she believed in the invisible things lurking in the shadows. The childish belief of monsters under the bed. Things that go bump in the night. Her visions had taught her all too well that just because you couldn't see a thing didn't mean it wasn't real. And that didn't apply to stuff like the wind, natural parts of reality everyone could feel. There were some forces in the world only the inside part of you could sense.

But all of you could be afraid.

Nearly all of the books on the shelves were way too complicated for her to understand, but there was a shelf at the very back with its bottom row empty, and whenever Ivy saw something promising, she tucked it away for later. A few books on herbs actually had pictures that were in color. She also found a book on Enlightened history, and a whole bunch on wind magic.

When Melchior came to get her for magic lessons, he would teleport them to some remote part of Zeal where they would go unnoticed, usually close to the edge. It felt so exhilarating to stand there and just look over the end of the kingdom, seeing all the miles solid rock beneath her feet drop off into nothing, with fat white clouds stretching out like snow as far as she could see. The wind was much wilder near the edge as well, much more fierce without any buildings or trees to take the teeth out of its bite.

First Melchior ran her through a bunch of tests, which he wouldn't tell her the purpose of, though most of it seemed to have no purpose. He wouldn't even tell her, when the testing was over, what she'd done.

And then that was it. No more anything to do with magic.

"You're supposed to tell me how to use it! That was the whole purpose of me coming up here!"

"I apologize if you thought I was going to teach you everything right away, " he'd said, not really meaning it. "You are simply too young, Ivy. Children are not taught to use their magic until thirteen."

"That's five years! You expect me to sit around on my ass until then? Melchior, this isn't going to work. What am I supposed to do here?"

"Go to school, like a normal child should. Make friends, play with people your age that won't try to kill you on a daily basis."

That afternoon, at the library, she took the simplest looking book she'd been able to find on wind magic -- Where the Wind Goes. She was willing to risk being caught. In Algetty, fighting was what mattered. In Zeal, it was magic. Just a fancy name and a bunch of stupid rules for what, in the end, was essentially a weapon. And Ivy was not the kind of person to let it go to waste.

But she was a little nervous to start teaching herself to use it, and pretty soon she'd have to go to school with all the other kids and then there wouldn't be time for it in the day. Which was just as well, because if she snuck out at night it was less likely she'd be seen. It would cut into sleeping, but that might turn out to be a good thing for one very simple reason.

The nights were Hell.

The Dreamstone did nothing to stop the nightmares. And they were all the same.

Darkness, so complete it felt alive. Smoke she couldn't see burned her eyes, forced her to blink back stinging tears. Monsters brushing slimly skin against her, the smell of wet blood and rotting flesh, the shrieking, sniggering voices whispering just soft enough that she couldn't make out the words -- and that horrible presence, huge, heavy enough to make the stinking, hot air hard to breathe. Then it would get slowly lighter, but it was a dirty kind of light, dark red, like blood or lava. And it didn't come from overhead, it was in front. Squatted low to the ground.

The things slid to just beyond her vision, into dusty shadows just dark enough to offer only the suggestion of form, but what she saw, what she couldn't avoid seeing, made her stomach roll and try to claw its way up her throat. Then the huge shadow would scream and the eye would open to whirling blue, and -- and sometimes she woke up right then but sometimes she didn't, but all she could ever remember when she did wake up was seeing Enlightened people all around her, staring blank-eyed and slack-jawed at Lavos, even though she knew the dream went on for much, much longer.

There was a sense of urgency about the dreams she didn't understand. It would leave her in the dark, sitting up in bed, gasping for breath, and trying not to look to closely at the darkness and wishing like hell she had enough courage to crawl over the bed to the table by its side and light the candle. Ivy knew then that, wind element or no, the first magic she taught herself would be to make light. She thought the dreams might be because of her magic, there was such a burning in her blood, but at least it took the edge of fear away, between the long, dark hours until the sun rose.

It did not take Ivy long to catch herself up the level of the Enlightened kids her age, and Melchior didn't seem surprised when she told him she was ready to join them. He just looked at her, hard, then sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose like he had a headache, and told her to be ready tomorrow morning.

Gaspar's class was even more disappointing than Melchior's lessons.

They were learning plants, which should have been interesting, but it was really, really basic stuff and Ivy knew most of it already, and even so Gaspar had a way of teaching that made rocks seem more entertaining. Ivy yawned, and looked around the classroom from her seat alone at the table before last. More than half the kids were asleep, and the other half weren't paying attention either. One child in particular...

A spitball hit the back of her neck. It was disgustingly warm.

She closed her eyes, flattened her palm on the table, took a deep breath, and continued taking notes.

Another spitball joined the first.

Ivy hated to admit it, but there were things she missed about Algetty. Good, clean, honest malice was one. None of this amateur stuff. In Algetty, you either were prepared for war, or you kept your mouth shut and stayed the hell away from those who were. In Algetty, you fought with knives and teeth and rocks and anything sharp that hurt.

In Zeal they used saliva coated wads of paper.

Another of which went splat in her hair.

At least she knew what he'd meant with that cryptic remark about being nice. But then, he needed to learn that she wasn't very nice either. And it was about time someone stood up to his prissy spoiled ass.

Ivy tore the sheet of paper in half, waded up the clean half and stuffed it in her cheek. She watched Janus's reflection in the window by Gaspar's blackboard as he reloaded the glass tube. He had his chair tilted back and his feet were propped up on the desk.

Janus took aim and fired. Ivy ducked to the side, spit the wad of paper into her hand and turned, hitting him square between the eyes with it. There was only a brief second to savor the open shock on his face before the force of her throw overbalanced his chair and sent it crashing to the floor.

Gaspar whirled around and met with a crowd innocent faces bent over their notes.

"Janus?"

The prince quickly appeared behind his desk, his face red with fury and embarrassment, his eyes narrowed in hatred at Ivy. Spitwad dripped slowly over his nose.

Gaspar's eyes surveyed the room, taking in the spitballs in Ivy's hair, the torn sheet of paper beside her, the size of the spitwad on Janus's face, and the scarcely controlled amusement in Ivy's eyes as well as the laughter she was fighting to bite back. The other children peered up at him with carefully veiled expectancy.

He returned to the board.

"Ahem. Where were we? Ah, yes..."

Janus felt a shudder of fury run through him toward the Guru, but he'd suspected that reaction. Janus wiped the paper off his face and righted his chair with hands that shook. He spent the rest of class planning things. When Gaspar finally dismissed them he was the first one through the door. He waited in the shadows until Ivy emerged, and was about to confront her when she ducked into the shadows on the other end of the hall, blending in so well that if Janus hadn't watched when she went in he wouldn't have known she was there. What the hell is she doing...?

His question was answered when Gaspar stepped out of the classroom, locked the door behind him, and started off down the hall. The moment his back was to her, Ivy followed him. Not so that he would notice, but close enough that Janus was astonished Gaspar didn't know she was there. Janus followed Ivy following Gaspar until they reached the doors to the palace. Gaspar kept going. Ivy stopped on the steps and watched him until he disappeared in the cave that eventually led to Kajar. Janus watched her a bit longer, and was on the brink of turning to leave when she spoke.

"Janus, why did Gaspar walk all the way down here when he could have just teleported? Is there some rule against it?"

He scowled at her. She still hadn't turned around. "How did you know I followed you?"

Ivy shrugged. "Instinct, I guess. I may have heard you, or saw you and just didn't realize it." She turned toward him, looking bored. "Why did Gaspar go this way?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know?"

Ivy sighed. "That's what I thought you'd say." She looked at him for a moment. "He knew we were following him."

"...And the point is?"

"Haven't you ever thought it strange that the Guru of Time spends his days teaching children instead doing something worthwhile with his time, like Melchior and Bethashar?"

Janus merely arched his eyebrows at her. "Excuse me?"

Ivy sighed, and shook her head at him. "Never mind." She sounded tired. When she began walking back to where her bedroom was, he followed.

Janus was beginning to realize that all hatred aside, she was his best chance at getting what he wanted from Dalton. The man knew someone had been in his room, and knew they would be back. On his own, there was no way in hell Janus would be able to pull it off without being caught.

"Look," he said quickly, before his mind changed itself. "I'm going back to Dalton's room tonight. I know its dangerous, but its the only way to--"

"Okay."

Janus stopped walking and glared at her. Ivy glared right back just as fiercely.

But she was the one to look away first.

"If we're going to be partners in this," Ivy said quietly with her eyes on the floor, "you need to understand some things." Ivy paused. He waited impatiently. She took a deep breath. "I'm not going to be able to explain everything I do." Ivy finally met his eyes. "Sometimes I don't even know why I do things. It's the visions. They make you. They're making me fight Lavos. Last year, they made me go out into the forest with my bow and wait in the top of a tree. A few weeks ago they did the same thing." She watched his eyes widen in recognition. "They aren't something I can control. They're something that controls me."

Janus was sure that somewhere he was still furious with her over the spitwad, but at the moment he was too confused to express it. "All right," he said cautiously. Ivy nodded.

"Okay. So tonight, I'm in charge because I'm the only one with experience in this."

"All right..."

"All right. Be in the library at midnight."

___________________________

Rast: Huh. Down for four weeks and all the reviewers forget you exist. Go figure.

___________________________