Chapter: Dramatic Revelations: 16 of ?
Author: Sam
Series: A Deeper Magic
Last Chapter: DG and Wyatt get help and send a message to Jeb. Wyatt recalls getting out of the frozen lake. Arista introduced.
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"I am not seriously hurt, my love," Lavender smiled, touching Ahamo's cheek with gentle fingers. "The horse never landed on me."
He smiled, though worry showed in his brown eyes, and the royal consort turned his face to kiss the queen's palm. Every chance he got, he would make love to his wife . . . fifteen annuals separation had been sheer torture. "I still worry, Lavender. The bank you and the horse fell down was no gentle slope."
She nodded gingerly, apparently still sore after several hours. She moved her hand to cover his on the plank table they sat at. Spring green trees spread their leafy shade over the royal couple as they spoke. "After such a long rest, my aches are less."
Ahamo sighed and looked over to the apron-clad couple working not far away. Husband and wife worked side by side in their joint-owned smithy. Close by, but not dangerously so, stood a reasonable sized stable which the pair also operated with their extended family among the small group of homes at the edge of the Vinkus River; their teenaged son had disappeared into a large field to corral fresh horses for the travelers. The queen's mare had been injured shortly before sunrise after throwing a shoe, and the accident had resulted in both horse and rider losing control and sliding down a steep embankment practically into the large Vinkus River.
Clearing her throat, another woman from the tiny community walked over, carrying a tray with filled bowls and cups. She began placing the food in front of the couple seated at the community table, a slight tremble in her aged, work-worn hands.
The royal consort smiled up at the woman. "Thank you. This smells wonderful."
She nodded and answered, "I'm sorry it's this late, but your majesties woke so late . . . those river pods do help the sleep along with the pain." She seemed unaware that she could be considered impolitely babbling.
Lavender smiled and soothed, "this is perfect. Thank you for allowing us to rest in your home, Junia."
Junia looked at the queen and offered a tired smile. "Well, it's not every day we get royal visitors to Vinkus. It's like a breath of fresh air . . . used to watch as the carriages passed to Finnaqua way back when."
"We hope to begin the practice again soon, Junia," Ahamo smiled widely at the older woman. "And we'll be certain to stop here for a change of horses . . ."
"Hmm . . ." the woman made a noise low in her throat but smiled as she placed a plate of fresh bread before the couple. "Good for you that you recalled our little farrier here. Else you'd be walking your journey."
Rich laughter escaped from Ahamo and he nodded, amused and delighted by this honest woman. He touched her sleeve gently and said, "Junia, you are the breath of fresh air."
She laughed in return, throwing her head back, just as merry sounding as the royal consort. "Behave, Your Majesty. Your wife watches us," she flirted lightly.
The younger man grinned over at his wife who smiled in apparent enjoyment of the interaction. It had been so long since they had been among the people without barriers. The time during the witch's coup had been restrictive for many reasons, not least of which was that Ahamo had been banished from the O.Z. as part of Lavender's plan to aid the witch's eventual downfall. As convoluted as the plan had been, it had worked; the second miracle was the people's ready acceptance of his innocence.
Jingling metal work on bridles alerted the trio and they turned to watch a man bring two horses towards the stables. Junia clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Excuse me, Your Majesties. I need to help Dolphus or he'll get the saddles all jumbled. Good with animals, that one. Not so good with leatherwork." The woman didn't wait for their reply, striding off to catch up to her grandson.
Ahamo turned his smile on Lavender, picking up his spoon and taking a few bites of the muglug they'd been served. "I did hear some interesting news while you were being tended by the veterinarian."
Lavender chuckled, withdrawing her hand to retrieve her own spoon and begin her late luncheon. "And what might that be, my love?"
He broke some bread and handed it over to her then broke a hunk for himself to dunk in the rich, thick soup. "There's been a drastic increase in Long Coat activity this past week. A dozen men, a Long Coat among them, approached the Nature Clan checkpoint, but no one's sure if they got in or were turned away." He ate carefully, watching his wife's reaction, though he kept the smile on his face for the benefit of anyone passing by.
"Ah," she softly murmured, also putting on a public smile and continuing her meal, though she moved carefully due to the bruises and cuts she'd received from her accident. "And what news of Leona? Have they spoken of her to you?"
With a slight nod, Ahamo replied, "actually yes. They think she might be joining or encouraging the Long Coats in a bid for the throne. But there is no definite proof. A couple down the road said they thought the Long Coats might only be using her name as clout and that the princess might not even be aware of what's been going on."
His wife sighed, light purple eyes studying her soup as she slowly spooned up some more. Very softly, she asked, "Has anyone said who they support?"
Ahamo placed his hand over Lavender's, drawing her attention to his gently smiling face. "They don't wish to betray you or our daughters, Lavender, but they think she might be good for the kingdom with her strong magic." He gave his wife's hand a gentle squeeze, bringing a soft smile to her face, then scooped up more food. Absently, he added "I don't think they knew who I was until after you came out of the veterinarian's home."
She chuckled again at Ahamo's slight deception.
The sound of excited chatter, followed by several children running past, drew the royal pair's attention to the northern road. Ahamo stood quickly, shock coursing through him at the sight of the couple trudging down the old brick route. A man in simple grey worker's garb and a woman in grey and red traditional dress with a bright yellow sling and hair ribbon came closer. At the sound of Lavender's gasp, Ahamo started running for the pair, worried and frightened by what he saw. "Azkadellia!"
His eldest daughter raised her head and smiled softly at him. Pain seemed to radiate from her eyes and she carried her splinted arm gingerly even in her sling . . . was that silk? As he reached the woman, Ahamo slipped an arm around her as support. "What happened, Az?"
"Azkadellia?" Lavender sounded as worried as Ahamo felt. She rose unsteadily to her feet, but remained where she stood, eyes watching intently.
"The tower fell under attack," Az started explaining once she got close enough to be heard by her mother. "Dylan got me out through the sewer, but I broke my arm." She sighed, glancing over at the resistance fighter. "We thought to seek horses here on our way south."
Ahamo eased Azkadellia onto the plain wooden bench and sank next to her. "Sit, Dylan." He gestured to a seat then at the man he'd only met the evening before. "Someone attacked the tower?"
Dylan nodded, exhaustion mirrored in his eyes. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"Long Coats." The new voice came from the edge of the woods where young Jeb Cain stepped from the tree line. A red-haired woman followed bearing an oddly constructed sling-pack. The woman wore a thick metal collar and, surprisingly, men's clothes.
"Jeb?" Ahamo turned his attention to the son of his younger daughter's Tin Man. He noticed the man's royal uniform had become drenched and covered in mud. His fingertips seemed red and raw, and he wore a bedraggled pair of leather work gloves. "What the hell happened?" the royal consort asked, voice dropping to a worried low baritone.
The redhead placed Jeb's sword on the table and helped Jeb to sit on the bench next to Lavender. She then carefully laid her odd burden on the unused part of the long table. The pack moved, but she placed a hand on it and the movement eased.
Jeb sighed, holding his hands carefully away from touching anything. "Long Coats attacked this morning. I believe most of the staff got out. A small group of us made plans to go for help." Jeb looked up, his blue-grey eyes more dazed than pained, though a hint of his suffering laced his every word and movement.
Dylan took up the narrative. "The princess and I are going to talk to the Papay, the Spiritus, and the Sapientiam Clans." He met Ahamo's eyes steadily.
Surprised, Ahamo realized this young man knew of the treaty and most probably the passcodes. The royal consort nodded, his smile lost, as he listened, storing the information for later.
"Father was to get Princess Dorothy out and take her to the Guild Fighters in the east," Jeb added, to the royal couple's relief. "The viewers headed north, and Father mentioned that the nurture units who cared for the princess would go to Milltown." Jeb shifted and the redhead, still standing, frowned down at him, but the young man seemed to ignore her in his effort to give the news. "I was to get to you and let you know what happened so you could carry on to the Nature and Phlogiston Clans. I'm to go to the abandoned Shiz Academy and collect the resistance and await your orders." Finally, his steel-blue eyes closed and his body went slightly limp in a pain and drug induced slump. The redhead caught and supported the resistance leader.
Reaching out, Ahamo jumped when Jeb straightened and shook himself.
"The princess' dog found me when I was leaving the tower, but he fell into a patch of Fireweed." He gestured with his chin towards the odd bundle.
"Fireweed . . ." Horror filled Ahamo at the name; he'd had his own experience with the caustic plant shortly after he'd arrived in the O.Z.; his hands still bore the scars. "Princess' dog?" Carefully, Ahamo peeled back part of the makeshift pack, brown eyes widening in shock at what he found. "Toto!" He looked at Lavender. "It's Toto."
Jeb chuckled, an odd sound in his condition. "Toto? I've been calling him Baxter. Oh," he seemed absent-minded, "this is Mariah. She's been helping us."
The woman nodded at them and touched the metal collar she wore, identical to the one Ahamo saw on Toto.
There was something familiar about the woman, but he couldn't place her face . . . then again, the last time he'd probably seen her she would have been a child . . . if they really had met. He offered her a smile. "Thank you, Mariah."
She nodded then touched the collar again.
Ahamo sighed. "I'm sorry. I don't know much about the medicine collars. Our advisor, Ambrose, developed them to help block magic so the patient could be operated on. There's a type for animals, too, to deliver life-saving medicine during their illness." He shook his head and stood to inspect her collar then frowned further. "But the collar I saw only had two buttons: one to lock or unlock it and the other to deliver medicine. This one has a third button I don't know."
Azkadellia shuddered and looked up. Her voice sounded light but tired. "I'm sorry. The witch took anything she could from Ambrose. If the collar was one of the things stolen, her medicos would have changed it into a torture device. The third button might even administer a deadly dose."
"We will need Ambrose to look it over." Lavender carefully checked over Toto's collar. "Until then, I would suggest that neither of you use magic. The magic-blocking properties might have been corrupted and register as a need for medication regularly rather than upon command." She sat back, a frown on her gentle face.
Jeb shook his head. "I don't know what magic they'd be blocking in a dog . . ."
"Actually, a shape-shifter," Ahamo filled him in. "Toto can change into a man-shape, the princess's magic tutor."
Turning to look over the small dog, Jeb shook his head again. "But he convulsed while on my back. I don't think he'd have been using his magic then."
Dylan suggested "malfunction perhaps? Or a change made during the conversion?"
Lavender sighed and looked around at their bedraggled party. "I can not say this is a good beginning, but I will not change the plans made so far. Ahamo and I will parlay with the Nature Clan and continue on to the Phlogiston Clan." She looked over Jeb then the bundled Toto. "Mariah, could you see that Officer Cain and Toto get to the Academy safely? Once there they can rest and get medical attention."
Mariah nodded again, her expression serious, her whiskey-colored eyes worried.
"If you are feeling able, Azkadellia, you should continue south. Beware of the Papay, their fields lie still in terrible condition and many may see you as a threat." Lavender winced at her own aches.
The young Dolphus came from the stables then and directly to their table. A boy about the same age as Jeb's eighteen annuals, he had less enthusiasm and fire in his eyes. "Got two horses, Majesty," he said. "Looks like you need more." He reached a hand out to lay on Azkadellia's shoulder, smiling in a friendly way.
"Don't touch me!" Az shot to her feet, her voice dropping an octave and sounding very much like the witch-controlled woman of a month before. She stumbled away from the shocked teenager, her eyes wild. "No one touches me!"
Ahamo stepped into her path and she looked up at him. He was stunned by the blind panic in her brown eyes. "Az?" The father pulled his daughter against him, sliding one hand to the back of her head and pushing her face into his shoulder. "Shhh . . . Daddy has you, baby," he purred low, trying to soothe her fear. His eyes met those of a noticeably worried Dylan, but Ahamo merely shook his head, confused and worried as well.
Rising carefully, Lavender placed a hand on Dolphus' arm. "I apologize, Dolphus," she said carefully. "The witch abused her horribly."
Apparently accepting the odd explanation, the youth nodded and backed up, holding his hands up in clear view for all. "I'm that sorry, Princess . . right glad she was killed off for hurting you." He glanced over his shoulder, as if looking for safety, and added, "I'll get four more horses now." The teenager turned and ran for the open field.
Lavender turned towards her daughter, unable to help, her frustration evident in her light purple eyes. Softly, her voice hard, she asked, "this goes beyond the witch, my Azkadellia, does it not?"
Az, wrapped in the protective embrace of her father, nodded and lifted her face, tears streaming down her pale skin. "It was Tutor."
A muffled bark came from the bundle on the table, and all eyes turned to the injured shape-shifter. He tried to wriggle his very painful way from the encompassing leather, but Mariah stopped him, her hands gentle on the patient. Toto protested again, whimpering.
"No, not DG's Tutor," Az clarified then her voice dropped, sounding fearful. "My magic tutor . . ."
"Tell me," Ahamo commanded, real anger blazing through him and shining from his eyes. The royal consort very rarely got angry, but he could not tolerate someone hurting his loved ones. He guided Az to sit with him on the bench next to Dylan, directly across from Jeb watching through a medicine induced daze. Meeting eyes so like his own, Ahamo looked directly at the younger woman. "Tell me, Az."
Her voice remained soft, filled with remembered terror. "She would call me stupid and slow. If I asked for help, she would become angry." Az shuddered. "And she often raised her hand to me."
"She dared strike you!" Lavender appeared incensed, hands clutching at the wooden table edge so tightly the skin grew taut and pale.
Az shook her head, turning her attention to her mother. "No, Mother. She never got the chance. Zero would interfere. Sometimes he would call out to her, and other times he would hurt his hand. When she saw the injury she'd get even angrier and attack him."
"Attack her son?" Lavender sounded as horrified as Ahamo felt.
"Yes," Az confirmed. "She start beating him and calling him useless and weak . . . a real zero. She would tell him over and over again that if he didn't have hands, he was a failure and a useless waste. She'd say that no one could do magic without hands." Az sobbed, turning back to her father and leaning into the tall blond man. "Her anger was so frightening, but if I tried to stop her, Zero wouldn't let me." Finally, she fell to quietly sobbing into her father's shoulder.
He wrapped a sturdy arm around her, eyes almost black in his anger. "I swear I will see that woman dead, if it's the last thing I do in this world!"
The others seemed uncomfortable with Az's revelations, especially the royal couple. They had let that woman have annuals of access to their older daughter and had never once suspected she might be terrorizing their child . . . or abusing her own son. Lavender and Ahamo looked straight at one another, but neither spoke as they let Az cry and the two resistance fighters review their own assessments of the princess and her long hated bodyguard.
Slowly, as any of the hamlet's inhabitants avoided the group, Az brought herself under control once more. She wiped her face, though the ravages of her emotional outburst showed in red, puffy eyes and slightly runny nose. Finally, the princess looked up at the group. "I'm sorry I lost control," she said, wiping her nose on a handkerchief her father provided.
Ahamo pulled her back against him and kissed the top of her head gently. "You are safe now, my love." For his daughter's sake, he buried his anger at the long ago magical tutor. Later he would ensure the woman was hunted down and brought to justice for her perverse crimes.
Quietly changing the subject, Lavender spoke up. "Jeb Cain . . . Dylan . . ." she paused. Dylan had never told anyone his full name and the lack showed in the queen's hesitation.
Flushing, the man spoke quietly, "Terrae . . ." He didn't turn to look at Azkadellia, who seemed not to be paying attention as she leaned into her father's embrace.
Gentle surprise lit the queen's eyes, but she merely nodded slowly, painfully. "In gratitude for your duty to our clan and especially to our family, I thank you. You are truly worthy of the title Tin Man. Please, I have nothing to give you to display the honor as yet, but know that you will ever be among our most trusted friends and allies."
Jeb's head snapped up, despite his lethargy. Dylan looked equally surprised at the granting of such a coveted, rare position as Royal Tin Man. Neither man seemed able to answer, but both were apparently aware of their great honor and new responsibility. The serious looks on their faces bespoke the gravity of their acceptance.
Straightening, still keeping his arm around his oldest child, Ahamo added his voice to his royal wife's. "Thank you both for your sacrifices. When we are back together at the Academy, we will make sure you are presented your dues." He smiled at them, though his brown eyes remained serious in light of what he'd learned. "But first, we must ask further duty of you."
Lavender smiled for the small group of conspirators. "Dylan, you will be Princess Azkadellia's personal Tin Man until a time as she is able to choose one for herself. Then you will join Jeb as part of the group of Tin Men assigned to all of the royal family." She rose slowly. "We will celebrate later. Now, we must hurry. The day grows late and we have long to go."
Without giving the men a further chance to respond, the party broke up and began heading their own ways. To spare Az and Dolphus both a second meeting, the two horses already brought over were handed over to the south-bound pair. Ahamo assisted his daughter to mount the horse intended for the queen. Dylan mounted the other horse, and both were shortly on their way.
Jeb, Mariah, and Toto were fortunately provided a cart, which the red-haired woman seemed quite capable of driving, and that trio headed north towards Central City and the abandoned Shiz Academy beyond.
Lastly, the royal couple accepted a pair of fine horses. They silently mounted, Ahamo aiding his injured wife. Still upset over Az's revelations, bothered by the recent attack on the Western Tower, and worried about the implications of Leona's possible bid for the throne, Ahamo and Lavender rode west along the Vinkus River and towards the first checkpoint.
No one saw the shadowy figure who had changed course and begun to follow the queen and her consort towards the Thousand Years Grasslands.
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Continued in Chapter Seventeen: Voluntary Prisoners
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The Twelve Clans of the Outer Zone with the Ruling House of Each Clan:
Aquam Clan/ House of Rimi . . . (Ice- Mount Runcible)
Cogitatio Clan/ House of Idae . . . (Milltown)
Corde Clan/ House of Animum . . . (Viewers)
Fortitudo Clan/ House of Greyhatt . . . (Guilds- Munchkins)
Lux Clan/ House of Gale . . . (formerly House of Ozma- Gillikin)
Mortem Clan/ House of Shiz . . . (Alma Mata- Gillikin)
Nature Clan/ House of Terrae . . . (Vinkus- Thousand Year Grasslands)
Papay Clan/ House of Somniabunt
Phlogiston Clan/ House of Pyre . . . (Fire- Desert surrounding O.Z.)
Sapientiam Clan/ House of Quinolui . . . (Quadling- Realm of the Unwanted)
Spiritus Clan/ House of Aeris . . . (Air- Lake Country)
Tenebris Clan/ House of Fugae . . . (Witch's Dark Tower- Gillikin)
