I had questions for Zephyr, who told me he could shield us all. I wasn’t sure what happened when the spirits were occupying his body, drawing from it, leaving him weak to the point of death. His spirit, joined with theirs now, was gaining strength at an alarming rate.
He smothered their voices as they tensed in the presence of so much power, but he shielded them from it too. Where and how he got such power, and what it meant for me, I didn’t know, but intended to ask him.
There was no time to now.
My nerves had been firing faster the closer we came to the palace, and I all but cast a spell when under the watchman, but somehow Tyrel and Zephyr had combined to keep him from detecting my magic.
It would be all but impossible now that we were to face the Canceler Elders directly. As they entered the room I felt their eyes rake over me, assessing with an unnerving calmness, as if they could instantly flick me away like a bug.
The took their seats in such a cold and stony silence that I half expected frost to coat the architecture. There was no one else in the Hall at first, and no preamble to the fact they intended to get to the matter at hand.
The man in the center seat, fully garbed in a dark red outfit that looked suited a jester more than a judge, addressed Tyrel: “Canceler Tyrel, who is your prisoner, and why have you brought her to us?”
“Her name is–“
“More importantly, ” a voice spoke from the right side of where I was standing, “why is she not bound and gagged properly?” A woman, clothed in diaphanous black pieces of cloth that somehow covered her, slinked from around one of the colonnades. She was slender, tall, and bald, and had large, sapphire blue eyes that gripped me in an icy thrall as she looked at me, but spoke to the Council.
“This child is awash in dark spirits. But there is one, known to me, who holds them at bay and calms her emerging power. And she is alone in the world.”
That last part, spoken with no inflection of any kind, made the reality that much more stark. I was alone in the world, as far as my flesh was concerned. So much so that I was attracted to the nearest male to me, still at best an unknown, at worst an enemy.
I checked off a list of sorts: An enemy leading me to danger, the spirit of a dead bird, and me, a keeper of dark, unfamiliar spirits testing my ability to keep them from wreaking havoc on the living was all that stood between worlds bent on destroying each other. It was a frayed, thin strap to hang the fate of the world on so weak a warrior. Having shouldered the burden, though, I now had to carry it.
Plans be damned. They can’t afford to kill me now. I stepped forward to speak to them and plead to be heard, but they panicked, and I stepped into pulsating, writhing bands of power that brought me to my knees as they bound me tight.
I felt pain all over as Zephyr cried out inside my head, which I now held in my hands.
If I’d ever been a threat, I wasn’t now, and if I wondered about the Cancelers’ abilities to contain my magic, I didn’t now. I hurt everywhere. But then it began to subside, almost as abruptly as it had beset me.
The looks on their faces told me something unexpected happened. Three of them stood up, looking at me with something between fear and contempt, and the woman who was on my right side recoiled, not quite sure if she was up to taking me on or not. One who is known to me… she knew of Zephyr, then. Another piece added to the puzzle of magic around me.
Tyrel stood open mouthed at first, then hung his head in resignation; he was in deep trouble now. Zephyr’s cry hadn’t been one of pain, but power, strong enough to counter their own, on their turf, and in their home.
Zephyr was known to the Cancelers.
Had I just been betrayed?
Nightshade Stories 