Tryal's Curse 7.1

Chapter Seven~
Of Tea-rs

Meanwhile, at the Meare, Malkolm was weighing the pros and cons of not being a splattered mass of blood and bones on the ground. He supposed it could be worse. His back stung, but he was alive. He had read the letter, but Kelm did not look all too pleased about the matter. In fact, he looked absolutely terrifying, even with his rumpled cloak and wild, knotted beard—which, Malkolm thought, added to the intimidation even more than usual.

‘My letter,’ Kelm said, extending a hand. His nostrils flared. ‘It was an incredibly low thing of you to do, Malkolm. Incredibly low. Why, Donovan said—’

‘I know,’ Malkolm hissed, ‘what he said.’ A beat. ‘I read the letter.’ His neck was beginning to ache from craning it; Kelm’s expression was indistinguishable, something between shock and fury, but he gripped Malkolm by the elbow and pulled him to his feet.

‘I suppose I oughtn’t to be surprised,’ Kelm muttered, casting a disapproving look at Malkolm, ‘but it is my letter and I would very much like to have it back.’

Malkolm nodded. The letter was still crushed between his fingers and he held it out to Kelm, but pulled his hand back almost at once. ‘Wait—I can’t give it to you.’

Kelm raised an eyebrow. ‘And why not?’

‘Because—’ Malkolm hesitated. ‘Because you’re not going to Durthnõt. I am.’

Silence hung thick in the air as Kelm regarded Malkolm. It was a silence so thick that Malkolm felt Kelm’s piercing gaze alone could cut through it, cut it into thin slices and bind him from the ankles up with it. Silence, Malkolm realised, was not a nice thing to experience. He was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was—that they were—standing on a square of magical energy some 7000 metres above the ground. The slab the red house stood on was some way ahead of them, and Malkolm knew that Kelm could cause the magic to vaporisefrom beneath him if he wanted to.

You can do magic, too, Malkolm, he told himself, irritated. It was silly that he was having to remind himself of this.

When Kelm still did not speak, Malkolm slid a layer of his own magic beneath his feet. He said, ‘Have you had any luck with the girl?’

‘No,’ Kelm said shortly. ‘My magic can’t trace anything beyond the village anymore.’

‘Why do you need to find her so badly?’ Malkolm asked. He stuffed the letter in his pocket and cast a quick guarding spell around it, in case Kelm should decide to summon it using the wind. Kelm looked at Malkolm, the rage in his eyes even more evident than before. His arms hung stiffly around his tall frame, and he looked down at Malkolm with utmost contempt.

‘She is my Meka’s niece. More than that—she is my friend’s niece, and I have known her ever since she was born. That such a bright, young thing should be swallowed up by the mountains—it’s an unthinkable, traitorous, terrible thought.’

Malkolm huffed.

‘But it’s just—it’s silly. The whole village is so caught up in it. Besides,’ Malkolm leaned back in order to look Kelm in the eye better, ‘there’s a possibility that she’s run off on her own accord—that she doesn’t want to be found. It’s a stupid thing to waste your time over.’

It also struck Malkolm as odd that they were having this conversation in mid-air, but he chose not to comment on the fact. Instead, he continued, ‘Your house hates me.’

‘It’s not a silly thing, Malkolm, and,’—Kelm grinned wickedly—‘I know. My house generally dislikes people it doesn’t know. Especially people who steal my property.’ He twirled a hand, green sparks dancing along the length of his finger, and frowned when nothing happened. ‘A guarding spell? Malkolm, I demand tha—’

‘I have a—I want to make a deal with you.’ Malkolm could feel the tips of his hair turning pink again, and he wished he could somehow stop it. When an Ixister-in-training, a Sreya, ascended to the Ixister class, he gained the ability to have his emotions transfer into a physical trait. Malkolm’s had been, unfortunately, that his hair would turn pink whenever he was nervous, or stressed. And right now he was a mixture of both.

He ran a hand through said hair, tangling his fingers with it. Kelm stared at him, his face impassive, then jerked his head his way in a gesture for him to continue.

‘I can find Elborn Radagel’s niece for you,’ he said. ‘I have the power to do so, now—I could see where you were before you were out the front door and heading up the Mountain, so…’ He inhaled deeply. ‘I could show you where she’s been, where she’s been the last couple of days, and I could ask the wind to follow her.’

‘I know what you can do, Malkolm.’ Kelm brushed the dust off his sleeves. ‘And what do you wish for me to do in return?’ He looked at Malkolm questioningly, and he could almost feel the heat radiating from his head as the pink traveled up his scalp.

‘Let me take your place at King Trent’s court,’ Malkolm said simply. ‘I’m certain I can heal the king.’

Kelm did not speak. With a wave of his hand, he simply conjured a staircase. It fizzled as he walked on it—up and up, through the window. Malkolm hesitated slightly, then followed him.

When the pot plants saw Kelm, they relaxed, and the ivy snaked its way around them like an archway. Malkolm watched, disgruntled, as the plants crooned and waved happily at Kelm. He grimaced at them, and promptly tripped over a root, his chin hitting the carpet with a loud thump.

By the time he had gotten to his feet and brushed the dust off his cloak, Kelm had rearranged the Writing Room to its original state. The carpet was still and quiet, the furniture no longer rattled, and the papers were stacked neatly beneath a tray of silver teacups.

Kelm was pouring tea into a large glass bowl. He looked at Malkolm severely. ‘Sit.’

A chair knocked into him from behind, nearly toppling him off his feet again. Malkolm sat. He watched as Kelm stirred the tea, muttering short spells as he did. Drops of hot liquid jumped up and made strange shapes: sometimes elephants, at other times trees or indistinguishable blurry outlines of what appeared to be (Malkolm straightened in his chair to peer at it) … jumping tea. Malkolm straightened his cuffs again and leaned back in his chair. He brought the letter out of his pocket; it was crushed and twisted in the strangest manner, and it took all of Malkolm’s self-control not to cast a smoothing-out spell on it. It was impossible to charm an object with two spells at once, and if Malkolm took the guarding spell off of it, Kelm would magic it back at once and the deal, Malkolm knew, would be null.

Although Kelm hadn’t really agreed to the deal anyway.

‘So we are in agreement, then?’ he said, finally, watching Kelm whirl a tea-cloud around his finger.

‘We shall see,’ Kelm said, still concentrating on making shapes with tea. ‘But first, it is your duty as … Ixister of the Meare’—Kelm looked pained at putting the words ‘Ixister’ and ‘Meare’ together—‘to help your Meka during times of—well times like this, anyway.’ The tea-clouds fell into the bowl with a splash and Malkolm winced as droplets of sticky tea fell on his hands. Kelm leaned over the table and spoke to the bowl, loudly: ‘Show me Arlene Randerfort.’

The tea rose into the air as like a square of glass, gleaming red-brown and shimmering distinctly. Malkolm watched, knowing that Kelm was attempting to Pry Arlene’s location. Prying was first of the many arts he had learnt as a Sreya and one that Malkolm considered himself to excel in, particularly, although he was good at everything else, too.

Kelm’s method was immaculate, Malkolm observed, slightly put-off because even he hadn’t acquired that fluidity or neatness with which the tea-screen threw light—at every forty-five degree—and darkened to a rich mahogany. Any time now, he knew, an image would form on the tea-screen, an image of the present as opposed to the past. When an Ixister searched for a moment from the past and projected it onto the screen, it was called Scrying. But this—the graceful twisting of fingers in an effort to create a map in thin air, the delicate prodding at a medium suspended in thin air—this was what made Prying an art: difficult, and dangerous.

Kelm leaned down, his eyebrows flaring, his eyes dark and penetrating. The lighting in the room seemed to have dimmed suddenly, even with the sunlight streaming in through the open window. By the large sun-shaped clock that was painted on the ceiling, Malkolm could tell that it was only 8’o’clock, but it felt like noon. He leaned forward in his chair, too, subconsciously calculating the moment when the image would appear on the tea-screen. His hands crunched into fists; his eyes narrowed. It was always intense, waiting for an image to appear. The fine point of an Ixister—a showcase of their power.

Prying was not a joke.

Kelm blew hard on the tea-screen. His beard parted and fluttered in a nonexistent breeze. Malkolm could feel his ears turning red, his hair turning pink….

The glass bowl blew up.

Quickly, Malkolm raised his hands in front of his face, a shield springing up from his palms. Shards of glass landed in his hair and tea seeped into the front of his cloak. The wall in front of him had a large hole in it. White dust floated in the air and settled onto his hands, his face, his feet and his hair. He coughed and blinked flecks of it off of his eyelashes. His shield flickered and disappeared.

‘Kelm?’ Malkolm walked around the desk—it hadn’t suffered any damage—and towards the hole in the wall. The energy that the tea-screen threw back at Kelm had thrust him back into the wall, and him alone because he had been the one it had come from in the first place. It was one of the mechanics of Prying, and Malkolm was torn between wanting to laugh at Kelm and feeling sorry for him. A sliver of concern sneaked its way into his heart, however, and he bent down to help the older man up from where he lay, his head brushing the banister of the staircase-that-went-on-for-forever.

Kelm got to his feet shakily. His beard was grey, not just because of the vast amounts of dust that had settled onto his shoulders, but an actual, dull, iron grey. His eyebrows were thin and wispy on his forehead and he looked quite … resigned.

Other than that, Kelm appeared unhurt. The reason for this was obvious; his back was covered in a softly shimmering blue material—a shield.

‘You have fast reflexes,’ Malkolm said.

Kelm coughed. ‘Unfortunately, however, I cannot Pry across the Meare anymore.’ It looked like he was having to spit the words out, as if admitting them would fire up some strange universal mechanism and cause him to actually give up his role over the Meare. Malkolm didn’t hesitate to point out that this was true anyway. He said,

‘Look—I can help you. But you must allow me to go to court. It’s what I said before: I have something you don’t have, and despite your obligations … well, you don’t really want to leave your Meka in a fix like this, do you?’

Kelm’s arm hung around his tall frame loosely, his broad soldiers heaving, his brow furrowed. His mouth twisted into a frown. Then, he sighed.

‘Do it. I accept your … offer.’

Malkolm threw Kelm a satisfied smile. ‘Very well,’ he said smugly. He turned around with a flourish and walked back into the Writing Room. With a flick of his wrist, the window was fixed. Malkolm grimaced at his reflection in the mirror, at his wild pink hair and tea-stained clothes—but only for a second. The window glimmered with an unidentifiable sheen. The room darkened.

‘Show me,’ he said, ‘Arlene Randerfort!’