Oromis was waiting. While Eragon went off to meditate the wizened elf beckoned to her. Mellary followed him into the cottage, taking a seat around the table as he did. Oromis studied her as Mellary looked everywhere else. The silence built until she thought that she would crack.
"It was an illusion," she said, breaking the silence. She was in no mood to play patience games. "A false image. It is sorcery, a talent I inherited from my father. No, I can't do them for long periods of time. No, they're not substantial, so I can't physically hurt anyone. Yes, I have always been able to do them, though I had to teach myself from books in the library. No, I am not proficient with them. It's been a long time since I last used an illusion. Yes, they are discomforting, though I never experienced the pain I did yesterday. Any other questions?"
She fell silent, waiting. The old elf looking unfazed by her outburst.
"Why?" he asked finally, the single gentle word slicing through her. Mellary flinched.
"I… don't… I don't want anyone to know," she muttered. "My heritage has led to problems in the past. I didn't want that to happen again."
"Enough to hurt yourself in that way."
"I didn't know it was going to hurt that badly." It had taken hours for the effects to wear off.
"If you had known?" A very pointed question. They were speaking in the ancient language, and she wasn't going to get away with anything less than a somewhat honest answer.
She sighed. "I would have anyway."
"The dwarf now knows. What would you do?"
She hadn't made him swear not to tell. Mellary winced. She knew she had been forgetting something.
"I can't allow him to tell anyone," Mellary murmured, thinking aloud.
"Why?"
"It is second nature now," she said with a shrug. It was true enough. If word had spread in the human world, she would have been hunted to the ground.
Her secret was beginning to slip through her fingers. In less than a day, she had already revealed too much to two people: Orik and Aerwyn.
Why not let it go? A small part of her whispered. Why hide? Mellary shoved it away. Of course she had to hide. The scar across her throat began to itch beneath her tunic. She rubbed it restlessly.
"You will leave the dwarf alone," Oromis said, authority in his voice. Mellary bristled.
"Why?"
"As a Rider, you will not succeed in keeping this quiet. Those you lead need to have faith in you."
Mellary laughed sourly. "I'm not a leader."
Oromis considered that. "The Varden will look to you to be one."
She shook her head. "They have one in Eragon. I'm too powerful, too strange. I'm not…." she paused, trying to find the right words. "Human enough," she settled on. "Not the way I think, not the way I fight. Soldiers wouldn't follow me."
"You sound certain."
"I haven't been in that position before, but it's not hard to guess." She shook her head. "Let him lead the armies."
"Then what will you do?"
Mellary shrugged. "What needs done."
That ended the conversation for a while. Mellary read from an old scroll Oromis had provided her. The parchment was gold from age and crackled like a dying fire beneath her fingers.
"Would you show me one of these illusions?" Oromis asked suddenly.
Mellary hesitated, the ghost of yesterday's pain making her shudder. Her first experiments had hurt as well, the pain gradually fading away with practice. Just a small, plain illusion wouldn't bring it back.
She cupped her hand palm down on the table and said the incantation, power moving through her mind. She could feel it concentrating under her hand, even as pain spiked through her head.
Mellary raised her hand, revealing a small crimson flower growing out of the table. The bloom had five blood-red petals arced around a golden center. The petals looked like they had an inviting velvet texture.
The elf reached forward, his fingers passing through the petal. Mellary hissed as agony burned at her. The illusion vanished, winking out of existence.
She rested her elbows on the table and closed her eyes, massaging her temples where the pain seemed to be centered. It wasn't as terrible as yesterday, but only by a sliver. At least her eyesight wasn't blurring.
"I'm not sure how much larger I could create them," Mellary said. The elf stood and began to move around, but she didn't open her eyes. "Even before I fell out of practice, I couldn't make big ones."
A few quiet minutes later, Oromis set something in front of her. A sweet, fragrant scent filled the air. Mellary cracked an eye to find a cup of dark amber tea in front of her. She sipped gratefully, spicy herbs making her tongue tingle. Her headache began to subside.
"Do you possess any other unusual talents?" Oromis asked.
Mellary shook her head. "My mother's blood held sway magically," she said.
"As a Rider, in this coming war, any gift may help," the elf began.
"Not if I incapacitate myself," Mellary interrupted.
"You believe that the effects will fade with practice?"
"They did before…. But I wasn't a Rider then."
Oromis nodded decisively. "You will practice this magic, to determine the usefulness of this talent."
Mellary bit her lip to keep from arguing.
She finished the tea, which took the razor edge off the pain, turning it into a low, dark throb at the base of her skull.
Oromis rose from the table, crossing the room to collect something from the shelf. She expected him to return with scrolls, but instead he placed a green slab in front of her. Mellary glanced down at it.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, the ceramic cup slipping from her fingers. She caught it before it hit the table, the tea splashing over the lip and onto her fingers. She set it down, quickly shaking the scalding liquid off her fingers.
She cleared her throat. "I didn't get a chance to look at it yesterday," she said softly, picking up the fairth.
The edges were hazy, but the center was sharp and clear like cut crystal.
"It's a memory," she said softly. "An old memory." Some small part of her that wasn't currently drowning noted that the details were perfect.
She picked it up, her fingers tracing one sweeping line, lingering of the flash of fire-bright red in the center.
"The assignment was to capture an image from the surroundings," the elf said.
"You told me to find something worth preserving," Mellary said softly. "I did."
The pain of the illusion had worn away by the time Embrald swooped down to land on the open cliff side, but her nerves still jangled in her body. A strange compulsion had taken over her mind from the moment she had seen the green slate, so strong that it defied her attempts to ignore it.
Embrald's wings shuffled restlessly as he landed, her anxiety seeping across their bond, despite her best attempts to contain it. She climbed onto his back before speaking.
I want to go somewhere. The fairth was heavy in her pocket, spurring her on.
Where?
West of the city central, she directed.
Destination? Embrald asked. She didn't respond, so he asked again. And again.
You'll see, she finally replied.
Mellary.
Please. The plea was succinct…. And desperate. Embrald was silent after that, the only sound the leather ripple of his wings slicing through the air currents.
They flew for a long time, as the sun dipped down towards the horizon.
Down near the tree levels, Mellary instructed. Embrald did as she asked, falling softly until they were mere feet above the branches. Embrald twisted sideways to avoid an upright bough, Mellary instinctually shifting with him.
She scanned the horizon waiting for the slight bulge that should appear in the tree line. When it finally loomed up, she spoke. Stop here.
Embrald flared out his wings, jerking them to an abrupt halt before falling through a hole in the canopy. Mellary pressed close to his back, grasping branches skating across her exposed back. She felt Embrald's mental wince as one tore at his membranous wings.
They jerked to a halt, draped over a bough thicker than her waist. The forest had closed around them, dense here where there was plenty of sunlight.
Mellary straightened as her dragon began to worm down the branch towards the trunk, digging his long claws into the rough bark.
Can you get down to the ground? Mellary asked with concern. Embrald snorted contemptuously. Finding an open gap he leapt, folding his body into a long green arrow to fit through the small space. Trunks rose around them like majestic columns as the light dimmed slightly. Embrald snapped out his wings and they drifted down to the ground, settling gently on the forest floor.
Mellary immediately hopped off and laid her hand on the wing that he was trying to fold against his side.
Let me see, she admonished. Embrald spread the wing.
The canopy here was widespread and perforated with holes that let light stream through in wide beams, making it almost as bright down below as it was above. The patch of sunlight they were standing in made his scales shimmer, the green skin of his wing translucent. It betrayed the vicious red slash just below the sturdy bone. A single ruby drop trailed down from the wound.
Mellary proclaimed the cut superficial and healed it easily. Satisfied that the wing wasn't going to rip, she turned back to the forest.
She began to walk, passing in and out of the sunbeams.
What are you looking for? asked Embrald curiously as he trailed behind her.
Markers, Mellary said. Trail markers. Should be symbols on the bark… She trailed off, running her hands over the bark, feeling it scrape against her skin. The chords of her memory were all but vibrating with recognition. Here.
An ornate arrow had been raised out of the bark, pointing off to her left. Her heart thumped in her chest, so hard she was expecting her ribs to crack.
She turned around to find Embrald eyeing her. This forest extends for hundreds upon hundreds of miles in every direction. How did you know to find it here, on this particular tree?
There are several scattered around the forest here, Mellary said absently. I use to climb trees and the terrain in the distance rises up, enough to create a bulge in the tree line.
Embrald tilted his head back, stretching his neck out to stare up at the canopy. You. Climbed. These trees.
Mellary showed him the deep rugged channels in the bark. They snaked back and forth, providing an abundance of hand and footholds. Before he could say anything, she had scurried up ten feet of trunk.
A thick tail wrapped around her waist, lifting her away from the bark and setting her back down on the ground. Mellary laughed, easing some of the tension that had kept her wound.
You never fell?
Not far, she said easily.
Mellary turned in the direction of the arrow and began walking. Embrald moved at her side, his head sweeping back and forth.
Who put those arrows there? he asked after a mile or so.
My mother, Mellary responded, matching his soft tone.
They kept walking. The ground was a mottled patchwork of shadows and sunlight, alternately bright and dim. Suddenly light streamed down in a large patch, where a tree seemed to be missing entirely. Where the side trunk would have been stood a cabin.
Mellary halted on the edge of the shadows, breath abandoning her. She stared at the cabin, rooted in place.
I didn't expect it to actually be here, she said, her voice quite with absolute shock. Embrald stood at her back, a warm and reassuring presence as she pulled the fairth out of her pocket and held it up.
Despite the decades, the recreation of her home was perfect. The gardens were wilder now, the herbs and flowers replaced with crawling vines and long opportunistic grasses taking advantage of the sunlight. But the graceful, organic arcs and edges of the house were the same. All that was missing was the flash of her mother's hair. The memory was one of her happiest, when she and Emary had come home from a trip into the forest. Mellary had collapsed onto grass, tired from walking. Her mother had laughed and gone into the house to get them both a snack and water. Her hair, a much deeper, truer red than Mellary's gold-tinged curls, blazed in the sunlight.
She tried to take a step forward and found her body rooted in place. Gritting her teeth, shaking her head to clear it of paralyzing memories, she wrenched one foot up. As soon as her sole left the ground her whole body released, and she stepped into the sunlight.
As she did, she remembered what she and her mother had been practicing that day. Emary had a special talent with shields.
Wait- she began as Embrald moved forward.
Her dragon smashed up against the ward, his whole body crumpling from the momentum of his movement. Mellary took one look at the equally affronted and confused look in his eyes and collapsed laughing. She lay back on the grass, gasping for air.
Whenever you're done, Embrald snapped. Mellary looked up and grinned at his expression.
It's impossible to look dignified when you just ran nose first into a ward, she informed him.
Embrald gave her a cool look, but amusement burned in his eyes.
He paused to look at the ward. It was visible now, sheer and barely there, rippling like silk in a gentle breeze. Only the part he had collided with was there, but Mellary knew that it extended all the way around the clearing.
My mother had a special talent with shields, she told Embrald. Ellesméra is the closest settlement, and you saw how long it took us to get here by flying, much less on the ground. There are things that live out here, vicious things warped by centuries of exposure to the magic of the forest. We needed a protection. The ward is designed to keep out anything that was not an Elf.
Your mother has been dead for decades, Embrald pointed out. As gently as he said it, his words caused a long-buried twinge to echo through her. How are her wards still functioning?
Mellary rested her hands on the ward, feeling the magic tickle her palms. I'm not sure, she said honestly. I never had a chance… my mother never taught me all her secrets. But somehow, I believe she created it to feed off the magic of Du Weldenvarden itself. I don't know how, and I wish I did. She closed her eyes, feeling the delicate intricacies of the layers of the ward. Warm air rushed over her hands as Embrald lowered his nose to the barrier. A flash of emerald lit the inside of her eyelids, and she knew he was feeling out the spell.
This is… strange. And beautiful, the dragon said softly. Mellary smiled. It would be disrespectful to destroy it. Embrald withdrew.
You assume you could, Mellary said slyly. She lowered her hands slowly, savoring the familiar feel of her mother's magic. It had been so long. I cannot alter it. You'll have to stay over there.
The dragon curled up around the tree. The trunk was too long for even Embrald's sinuous body to encircle. His head lay next to the boundary. Go.
Mellary turned to face the cottage, her heart racing like a storm wind across an open plain.