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The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 26th continuation)
“Why do you think the Weavers would have destroyed the fae created doors?” Sini asked, wanting to learn more about Lucille’s opinion of the Weavers. They were a race the chimera hadn’t even known existed until they’d started talking about the worlds and it had become important to Sini to learn as much about the Web as she could. “I can’t imagine that doing anyone any good.”
“The whole reason the fae created the doors was so they could travel to the other worlds and they did it in the most logical way for them. It wasn’t in their plan to ever use them again, or to let anyone else use them, as they’d been created for one reason – to permit the fae to travel to each of the worlds one time to make certain that nothing had gone wrong.” Lucille shook her head. “Nothing did, for a while, but then the worlds decided they didn’t want the fae to be able to control them and destroyed the doors. It can make travelling to some of the worlds a little more difficult, because you have to go around the lost worlds.” She bit her lip. “Destroying them would be a sensible thing to do, allowing the Web to create the right doors rather than having doors forced upon them, and yet I think it might have an adverse affect on the Web, but I’m not certain why I think that.”
Meriwether smiled. “You think that way because of the connection you have to the worlds. It makes you more sensitive to certain things and you’re right. Destroying the fae created doors now would be a mistake, but if they had been destroyed in the early years of the Web it would probably have been for the best.” He rubbed his antler. “I’m sure the Weavers would have destroyed the doors if they had a chance, because the fae wouldn’t be able to control the Web in the same way, and I know that early on they had a couple of plans for how they were going to make it happen. One of Tegan’s closest friends was a Weaver, I was close to Tegan, so I got to learn more about the race than any of the other fae. To be honest I think they were scared of the Weavers, because they knew more about the Web than we did, even though we created them, and I know that they wanted them to be kept as far away from the main continent as possible.” He sighed. “Fortunately they’d disappeared into their settlements by the time the Weavers chose to follow the other Atharian races, so they didn’t know until about five years later and by then there was nothing they could really do about it. The Weavers, by then, had spent a lot of their time travelling the Web, and had a much better understand of everything than anyone else, which made them a very useful resource to Riordan and the Council.”
“What was the Council like under Riordan?” Lucille asked, leaning back in her chair and looking at Meriwether.
“Different. The fae accepted him because he was fae and I think they expected him to pass the position onto another of the fae, but instead his son took over. When that happened things changed, so it became more of a battle between the two sides, because the fae were not at all happy with what had happened. Being half created race made the son a liability at best and a danger at worst.” Meriwether sighed again, this time sounding sadder. “Maybe, if Riordan had chosen to make one of the fae his successor, things would have been different, but he did the right thing by taking as much control out of the fae’s hands as possible. It was just that the fae didn’t see things the same way, so they’ve done all they could to stop the Council from having any control either.”
“The first rule is a good way of stopping us from being able to do anything,” Lucille commented, bitterness filling her voice. “Moonjumpers are, usually, useless in these kinds of situations, because of the first rule, but thankfully they chose to see sense when I told them exactly how bad things might be if someone managed to get the counterfeits from Quiar to one of the other worlds.”
“I remember the day that rule was created. Riordan walked into the old Council, when we weren’t long off disbanding, and told us he’d met someone who could use the doors to travel to the other worlds. Bronwen and Eithne looked as though they’d been expecting the news, Piaras grinned, and the rest of us… we all realised very quickly that the magic had evolved in a way we’d never thought possible at a speed that we couldn’t quite believe. After a quick meeting we called together the full Council, because we had no other choice, and got ready to do battle with the fae.” Meriwether smiled, staring into the distance as though he was seeing it all happening again. “The fae wanted to destroy the traveller, unable to believe that there would be more than one, until we pointed out to them how little we knew about the magic we were using. What happened to the doors proved that, so we used that as evidence, and told them we could use the travellers. It would be the safest way of keeping an eye on what was happening on the other worlds, but the fae would only permit that if they were nothing more than observers. Unfortunately there was no way of making certain that happened when there were so many Moonjumpers who didn’t bother to register with the Council, because they didn’t trust the fae, which meant they didn’t trust us, and in the end it led to the execution of hundreds of people who were suspected of being Moonjumpers. A lot of them probably weren’t and the ones that were often ended up disappearing.”
“Even though I wasn’t supposed to I found myself going through the records of natural Moonjumpers who escaped the Council and it was fascinated. There was one who was helped by a Council Moonjumper, who’d managed to enchant a broomstick to fly, because he was an old friend. For a long time the Council searched for both of them, but they disappeared.” Lucille smiled. “Then there was a group of about twelve or thirteen naturals that used the evolution of magic to create a door out of clothes and simply walked out. I only know what happened to one of them because he happened to find Leolin, but none of them ever got recaptured so I hope things worked out the way they hoped it would.”
Meriwether nodded. “I meet three of them during my journeys around the Web and they didn’t end up where they planned to, but they were safe and that was all that mattered. From what they said they were trying to use the door to get to Leolin and it ended up tossing them all out in different places. They didn’t know if anyone managed to get to Leolin, so I’m glad to find out that someone did.”
“Doors can be created out of clothes?” Bertram looked between Meriwether and Lucille. “How does that work?”
“Magic evolves,” Meriwether and Lucille said at the same time, before laughing, and then Lucille gestured for Meriwether to continue the explanation. “There are only a few natural Moonjumpers who can create doors, but if they have the ability they can use pretty much anything. All they had in the cells were the clothes they were wearing, so that’s what they used, and it worked.”
“I’ve heard of people using trees as doors, if they looked right, and one of Leolin’s stories in his journals was about a little boy who managed to create a door out of market stalls because he got lost. The magic is useful, but rare.” Lucille shrugged. “The fae hate that anyone can create doors, as they believe it means fae magic must have been passed onto the created races, and that was something they never wanted.”
“When Riordan decided to handfast Tegan he didn’t bother to tell the fae what his plans were. He invited people he trusted, because he knew the fae wouldn’t be happy with his choice, and no-one in the settlements found out until it was too late, including his very angry family elder. It was his older sister and she was planning on marrying him off in order to cement an alliance, even though she knew he’d never enter the settlements. He had too much work to do outside.” Meriwther shrugged. “She trusted him to do the right thing, which was exactly what he did, but he did the right thing for him rather than the right thing for the family.”
“Other members of the fae had travelled to other worlds and married,” Lucille said. “I know that, because I’ve met people who have fae magic as well as the magic of their race.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
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That should say "fascinating" above.
I like the discussion of Moonjumpers here.