A Trace of Majik

The violet waters of the sandstone aqueducts shimmered in the sunset light, throwing an odd alignment of shadows over the walls of Ent Arden, largest of the violet villages. Estella could hear the quays on the neighboring canal, Emak begin to open. The sound was far from comforting; indeed, when the quays swung open, the deep, waiting streams of the canal burst forth and brought the merchants to the port villages.

Estella didn’t have much time.

She knew the Mad King was after her; he’d come for all the witches. It was a blessing she’d escaped his wrath this long.

There are few free witches left, the letter from her friend Farn echoed through her head as she scurried through the lightening city. Her grimoire thumped against her thigh as she came to sudden stops at each intersection, the looming sandstone walls, once so friendly, now seemed to be hiding any number of villains, all looking for her. Come back to the Citadel, Farn’s letter had finished, we’ll find new ways to be free.

Estella listened hard to the waking sounds of a crush of humans as Farn’s voice faded from her mind. She would go west, perhaps even back to the Citadel, but she had to finish her mission here first. These people needed her, and after all, wasn’t that the point of being a witch? The Citadel had turned the young witches out to better humanity, give them a balance to the majik of the Fae, who harbored such force innately. The humans had to be taught, and after many long years, Estella had graduated. She’d made her way home, back to the violet villages, bent on offering healing aid to those who lived there and the merchants who frequented the ports.

Not long after she’d returned, she’d heard the whisperings, the frightening rumors that the king in Durevin had called for all witches in Icaria to join Durevin in his mission for peace.

Creeping around the agora, Estella shuddered. Peace isn’t the problem, she thought miserably, this is about control. But many witches went, including Estella’s best friend. She hadn’t seen him in months.

A piece of gravel shifted in front of her, and Estella stopped, heart racing, gut flickering. One last stop, she pleaded with time, I need to give them the book. As soon as she’d heard the summons, Estella had begun teaching a small group in the city the beginnings of majikal healing. This, of course, was strictly forbidden, but she’d known her time was going to run short. And Estella couldn’t bear to leave her beloved Ent Arden without the potential for miracles.

A shadow flickered on the tanned wall, and Estella stopped, frozen in place. A woman whisked across her path, her hair askew, dried blood on her hands.

“Estella-sana.” She whispered, using the honorific that many witches carried. “Please, my sister needs you.”

Estella hesitated. Any further moments in the city only lessened her chances of escape. Isn’t this the point of being a witch? Estella chastised herself, isn’t this why I am trying to remain free?

Estella nodded quickly, feeling the weight of her grimoire press against her thigh. She had one last stop, just one. She needed to drop her book of incantations with her pupils. At least then, they would have the small language of majik she had managed to record.

For a witch to separate from her grimoire almost always meant she had died. At the very least, it signified that a severe trauma had befallen her, which, Estella had reasoned, was a fair assessment.

Estella followed the woman into a dark home, where she could hear the screams of childbirth. Estella was by no means a midwife; she had trained in the delivery of babes, but there were many perfectly sound human midwives without the witchery she possessed who expanded the population just fine on their own.

They only called for Estella if something had gone terribly wrong. And Estella could tell by the smell of copper and the dark stains along the bedsheets, that this was such a moment.

Thrusting her bag into the trembling hands of the woman who had found her, Estella knelt by the dying mother. She took her hand, ice cold, and began.

Using majik was not, as Estella had learned, something one did without thought. Majik was the force of the world, the power that maintained time. To employ majik, a witch focused on something in the material world, plucked it out of its time, manipulated it, and replaced it in time. It was a heavy business, and it required all the focus one could muster. Often in the Citadel, though rarely once a witch had graduated, it killed initiates, or at least seriously maimed them, for lost focus meant thoughts run amok, and thoughts run amok can do serious damage to that which was supposed to be the object of focus.

Estella mumbled the words, using her mind to cast out into the muscles and sinew of the mother. There was a tear, she could tell, which would require knitting back together. She could not tell where the babe was, except that it was out. This was good, Estella noted, this would be one fewer consciousness she’d have to navigate.

Slowly, Estella drew upon her words to create a spell that would bind the specific muscles back together. Slowly, she asked the woman’s blood to replenish more quickly. Estella began to feel her own strength failing and tried to finish the job quickly. The more damage to a body, the more strength healing took from a witch.

Finally, Estella nearly fell backwards, her eyes flickering open. The woman on the bed gasped.

“Keep her warm.” Estella rasped to the sister. “Keep her dry.”

The woman, whose grateful face streaked with tears and sweat, nodded. As she opened her mouth to thank the witch, a knock sounded at the door.

Both women turned to the little doorway, the wooden entrance narrowing at the top. Dread pooled in Estella’s stomach. No one came to the door of someone giving birth. It was not the custom in Ent Arden, nor any of the violet villages. The women of the neighborhood knew better. They waited, as did their families, for news.

No, Estella knew. Her time had run out.

“Take this.” Estella pressed the woman’s hands closed around the bag the witch had thrust to her. “Take it to Tompsonn.” Estella shook the woman slightly, whose eye were wide with fright and wary at the urgency in Estella’s tone. “Promise me.”

The woman nodded.

“Where can I escape?”

“A window, upstairs, where we hang the washing.” The woman murmured.

Estella turned and sprinted up the darkened staircase, praying to the twins that the woman was not too tired or shellshocked to remember Tompsonn’s name. Tompsonn wasn’t anonymous in the city; he’d been a healer before Estella had returned from the Citadel to perform miracles. While she had stopped aging the moment she’d been accepted into the witch’s institute, and would age no more, Tompsonn was quite old and had proven himself quite accepting to his inevitable death. Estella required this; too much attention hung on majik’s potential to lengthen life. That was not its purpose.

All this spiraled through Estella’s mind as she clambered through a small window upstairs, onto a windy roof. The top of Ent Arden stretched before her, as the many sanded roofs provided her one last chance to escape the city. Laundry flapped along many of them, and Estella sprinted and jumped, wishing once more, she’d had the wherewithal to where anything beyond light dresses.

She felt the little knife at her belt, usually employed in cutting herbs for her salves and potions, and knew it would be no good should she fall into direct combat. She could only hope that Jone would be along at some point. He was supposed to meet her at the edge of the city; he’d probably be wondering where she was.

Jone, Estella’s nun, foresworn to protect her no matter the cost, was her best friend and most trusted companion. And she had not told him she’d been teaching villagers majik. He would not have approved, and, should they ever be captured, Estella did not want this information in his head.

She balanced over crossbeams and ducked around laundry, desperately aiming for the large arch at the far west of the city. Halfway across a lower roof, Estella stilled. She was no longer alone.

“This is not how I wanted to do this, Estella.” A familiar voice trilled from behind her.

Estella turned, a young man, unarmed, with sandy hair stood across from her on the far side of the flat roof.

“Cary.” Estella’s voice wavered. “They sent you, did they?”

“I volunteered.” Cary’s visage darkened momentarily. “I negotiated your terms. You have one last chance to come to Durevin, meet with the King, explain why you didn’t heed the summons. The rest just wanted to kill you.”

“Too right we did.” A cold voice joined Cary’s as another woman stepped onto what Estella was quickly discovering to be a battlefield. Grey marred her dark hair, and Estella wondered at what age she had joined the Citadel. Witches stopped aging once they arrived, but they remained at the physical age they were when they attempted the trials to enter. Rarely did one encounter a witch older than early thirties, rarer still, was it to see a witch who appeared to be in her late fifties. This was not a creature to trifle with.

“This is Milaina.” Cary muttered, introducing the witch. Estella could tell he was frightened of her.

“How could you, Cary?” Estella didn’t want to lengthen this encounter any more than she had to, but she had to know. “You cared about these people.”

Cary had been her friend, her partner in Ent Arden. He’d gone north at the summons, but he’d said he would resist. He’d said he would—

“No point in resisting, Estella.” Cary’s voice hardened. “The King is trying to bring peace into the land. He can’t do that when there are majik users running amok everywhere, showing people how to do majik on their own.”

Estella’s heart dropped. They knew. Despite what Cary had promised, this was not an escort team, these were executioners. Estella had heard rumors of what happened to witches who refused the King’s service. In the small hours of the night, when she was most ashamed, most human, Estella would think ever so briefly of joining the King to avoid this fate.

Then sun would rise, and she’d remember her purpose as a witch.

“Where’s Jacob?” Estella asked Cary.

He flinched.

“He’s no longer with us.” Milaina spoke again, her voice like ice that spooled down Estella’s spine.

“They made me kill him.” Cary said sofrly, as if he couldn’t help himself. “They made me kill my nun.”

At that moment, any doubt at all that Estella had harbored vanished. She prayed that Jone would stay away until she could do what she knew she had to.

“I will never go with you.” Estella informed her would-be captors sadly. “You wish for the land to be in chains. I cannot live without freedom.”

“You and so many others.” Milaina sniffed, uninterested. “You don’t understand what you say. There is freedom in security. There is freedom for opportunity, prosperity, when everyone feels safe. We will finally eliminate the Fae. Their majik will no longer threaten humans. We will assign the witches, ensure that all humans have their proper place and can all benefit from majik. We will make the land peaceful, just, and whole once again.” Milaina’s face shined from the belief in her eyes. “You are simply too young to understand.”

Estella merely shook her head. “That is not freedom.” She repeated. “That is tyranny.”

“I don’t have time for this, Cary. We’re supposed to be in the south by tomorrow evening.”

“She’ll come around!” Cary turned to the elder witch, ready to defend his former friend.

As he did so, Estella gasped; a sword thrust through the young witch’s sternum.

Jone had arrived. Dark beard covering a wicked scowl, Jone stepped between Milaina and his witch. Anger radiated off the nun in waves, his instincts taking over any rational mind.

The nuns too were educated at the Citadel, though their training was much different than that of the witches. Estella had never asked what made him so loyal, but they had bonded quickly on that lonely mountain in the sea.

Milaina nudged Cary’s quivering body with her toe and sighed. “This is why we never should have even started with the nuns.” She seemed to mutter to herself.

Jone charged forward, and for the briefest of moments, Estella harbored a hope that they would escape Ent Arden.

Milaina’s eyes seemed to change, the pupils dilating so widely that her entire iris seemed black. Jone froze, sword arm outstretched. His eyes flickered wildly.

Milaina moved slowly, walking forward to take Jone’s blade from him.

“Jone!” Estella cried, rushing forward.

Irritated, Milaina snatched the sword, and Estella watched in abject horror as Jone’s neck snapped backwards. His eyes, so recently alight with anger, dulled as his limbs collapsed into a bent pile at her feet.

How had she done that? Estella had never been taught to hurt anyone with majik; such efforts were strictly forbidden at the Citadel.

Milaina shook her head, almost ruefully. “Did you ever see this?” She asked, her voice calm now. She sounded almost strained. Carefully, Milaina tugged open her tunic, displaying a tiny tattoo below her collar bone. Estella blinked. Though she couldn’t see the ink exactly, her blood stilled. It resembled the tattoo that sat along Jone’s ribcage. It was the mark of a nun.

“I am older than you can imagine, little one.” Milaina’s voice had softened. “I believe in this king.”

“I cannot.” Estella replied weakly. “You can’t condemn these people to slavery.”

“It’s not slavery!” Milaina screamed, her quiet demeanor shifting with alacrity to pure madness. “It’s faith! It’s freedom! Why can’t you martyrs understand?”

In that moment, Estella knew she would not survive this encounter. She felt strangely calm at her impending undoing.

She’d taken an oath, when she’d first exited the Citadel. She’d come across a lone Fae, missing several limbs, whose last purpose in its life seemed to be inviting witches to take this oath. She’d promised not to use majik to kill. She would abide by this oath; she had no choice. Estella thought of the nymph as she knelt. She began to weave a spell.

“That won’t work.” Milaina crowed. Full of bloodlust, the witch strode over to Estella and ripped her up from kneeling by her hair. With more force than Estella thought possible, Milaina threw her to the ground. Still, she focused on her incantation.

With every word, Estella sought to protect Ent Arden, to give her life force to shield its inhabitants from the evil that radiated from Durevin. She could hear Milaina cackling in her glee. Estella had no idea if her spell would work, nor if she had enough energy to complete it. Still, she spoke in the first language, the language of majik.

Finally, Milaina seemd to have had enough. She stood over Estella, beginning her own spell. Words fell from her mouth, strangely twisted, as though the first language did not wish to be employed in this way.

Estella felt her strength begin to ebb more quickly and strove to speak more quickly. “With my life, I give protection,” Estella intoned, in one last force of will. She stopped speaking, wondering why her body felt so light. There was no more pain.

A violent buzzing grew, confusing her senses. Estella tried to raise her hands to cover her ears, only to find she no longer owned any limbs.

She floated, surrounded in darkness, her body evaporated. Estella could feel her own mind beginning to unravel, her sense self devolving into darkness.

“I really don’t like doing this.” Milaina seemed to have calmed. She stood in front of what was once Estella, her expression disappointed. “So much waste.”

The pieces of Estella, her mind, her faith, her soul, all seemed to wander inside this body of darkness. Unable to speak, or, indeed, perceive Milaina with eyes, the wraith that was Estella floated for a moment.

“You are between time now.” Milaina sighed. “What a waste. We could have used you. You’re clearly very strong.”

The wraith did not understand. She should be dead. Now she simply wasn’t anymore, but she could see the song of majik that called to her around Milaina. It sang a terrible lullaby.

“No, you don’t.” Milaian held up her hand. “Now you fly, and you exist, and you don’t get in our way."

Milaina made to turn, shaking her head.

The wraith, with enough Estella left in it, lunged forward, swallowing Milaina whole in its darkness. Milaina screamed, and the wraith felt the lullaby soften into nothing.

The wraith considered the body on the sandstone roof. It considered all three bodies, unsure now, why it was there.

Floating quietly, the wraith noticed the light from the sun, the blue of the sky.

In the distance, a light line of lullaby called. Majik. The wraith could feel it, the tune seemed to vibrate its existence, drawing the martyr to its sound.

A trace of majik.

The wraith shivered slightly, unsure what its purpose was any longer, and raced north, towards the lingering song.

~.~