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k_a_webb“Yet you won’t let me teach you how to use magic.” Kestrel felt Ash studying her, as though she was more interesting to him now that she had asked for his help, and she did her best not to let that affect her. “I don’t understand you, Kestrel.”
“No one does.” She let her eyes meet his. “I want to learn about the world, because it’s something I chose not to do before, in an attempt to get Falcon to. He is the one who should, if you are right about me being related to him, be teaching me, but he doesn’t. Magic is something he won’t let me learn about and the only things I learn about the world are those that I learn thanks to my skills at listening from places he doesn’t realise he can be heard. Normally he complains about Heliopath’s insistence that the mages outside of the city are preparing for war, as he doesn’t believe it can be true, not when all the mages from the time of the war chose to enter the city.”
“There’s his first mistake.” Ash smiled. “Not all of the mages chose to enter the city, but it was enough that it affected the world for a certain period of time, before the curiosity of the mages trapped within the city got the better of them. Of course they did have to start from the beginning, using a lot of guesswork, but by the time the mages had their first children they’d realised that there was something very special about them, and they’d decided it was something they wanted to learn more about.”
“What about the mages outside the city?”
Ash bit his lip. “Heliopath isn’t going to be pleased with me if you learn more than he wants you to.”
“It’s helping me to forget about my headache… and the insomnia.”
“Not all green level mages sufferer from insomnia, but it does happen to some. It’s likely to get worse if you chose to move onto the next level.” He smiled. “There’s one blue level mage I know who quite often doesn’t sleep because if he uses any magic at all it means he’ll spend hours trying to doze off, so he makes it simple for himself and choses not to sleep until he’s exhausted. Makes him useless for about three days at the end of the cycle and Heliopath keeps getting told that we’d be better off without him, yet Heliopath keeps him at the Gardens because he knows none of the other Houses would take him. Sending him out there would be a mistake, for more than one reason, so we have a blue mage with intense insomnia issues you can talk with if you ever decide to let me teach you how to move onto the next level.”
“Ash…” Kestrel shook her head because she didn’t want to argue with him any more. It was strangely nice having someone to talk to who didn’t treat her like she was still a child. “Even if I don’t I might talk to him.” She smiled at Ash. “Tell me more about yourself. You all know so much about me.”
“We guessed.” There was a long silence, as though he was trying to work out what he could tell her. “My father was once in the Black Hollow, before your Uncle was kicked out by the old leader, but when that happened he chose to come to the Gardens.”
“Uncle wasn’t kicked out.” Kestrel bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t told Ash something she wasn’t actually supposed to know, and Falcon would be furious if he found out that she knew or that she’d said something. “It was some plan between Father…” She sighed, remembering that talking to anyone when she was tired was a bad idea, as she always said more than she wanted. “…and Uncle, that had something to do with his son and what needed to be learnt. The only reason I know about it was because I had this really bad habit of sitting underneath Father’s desk, but he didn’t know about it so he’d often be more open with me there than he should have been. Unfortunately he realised not long after I heard about Uncle and he’d always check under his desk before a meeting after that, to make certain that I wasn’t there, so I had to find another way of learning more about the Hollow and the world outside. Most of the time I was unsuccessful.”
Without saying anything Ash left the room, leaving Kestrel alone with her headache, and she couldn’t stop wondering what she’d said as she laid back down. Maybe he was going to tell Heliopath what she’d just said. She bit her lip. If he did, and Heliopath told Falcon what he knew, she doubted that she would ever be welcome in the Hollow again, even if something did happen to Falcon. A tear trickled down her cheek. She should have known better than to say something so stupid, something that Falcon wouldn’t want Heliopath to know, and yet she’d still done it, the same way she’d let herself be kidnapped in the first place.
“Is what you told me the truth?” Ash asked, startling Kestrel, because she hadn’t heard the bedroom door open, which might have meant she’d actually fallen asleep. “Did your uncle really plan the time he left with your father?”
“Can you pretend you never heard that?”
“No, sorry, it’s something I need to know.” Ash sat on the bed. “It’s not something Heliopath is going to tell Falcon he knows, so you don’t have to worry about your brother being angry with you.”
Kestrel sat up. “He’s going to be angry with me anyway. Our cousin was meant to be home by now and he’s not, and I know Falcon’s waiting for other people to return.”
“Who?”
“I’m not certain. He mentioned Dale a couple of times and Wolf, and I think he said Quartz once, but I thought our brother was called Quartz and he’s dead.”
“Tell me about your uncle first.”
“Father didn’t want him to go. Uncle was his second in command and the only person he really trusted, but in the end, apparently, there was no choice, because something’s coming and my cousin needed to be ready for that.”
“What was your cousin called?”
“No idea. Falcon won’t let me look at our family tree. He tells me that there are things about our family I’m not ready to learn yet, as though he thinks I don’t already know that my grandfather and father were immortal, until they were killed. It’s something to do with the magic they used to create the Hollow in the first place.”
“How did you learn about that?”
“Sitting under Father’s desk was comfortable and I learnt some very interesting things, that I pretended I hadn’t learnt because they didn’t want me to know. Part of me thought that Falcon would change all that, because we were close before he took over, but…” She shook her head. “Becoming the leader of the Hollow changed him more than I thought was possible. Sometimes I hate him. He promised me, when we were six, that he’d teach me how to use magic, because I’m his only sister, but that never happened. I wonder if he ever remembers making it. Of course our brothers were all much older – Quartz, I think, was fifteen at the time, having been born to one of father’s wives before our Mother.”
The look Ash gave Kestrel made her realise how little she knew about the Hollow and her family, but it had never really mattered before. She’d always been certain that Falcon would teach her, eventually, because they were alone. Yet it was beginning to become obvious that he probably wasn’t the person she thought he was when they were younger. Instead he’d become a clone of her father, who never thought she needed to know anything, even though there was a chance, a small one, that she might become the leader of the Hollow. He should have taught her and he should have taught Falcon, but he hadn’t. His focus had been on her dead brothers.
“Did you know that two of your other brothers were called Dale and Wolf?” Kestrel shook her head – she’d only known of Quartz because it had been his duty to look after them occasionally, but he hadn’t really spent any time with them when he was. “They’re eldest of your eight brothers.”
Kestrel ran a hand through her hair. “How does Heliopath know that?”
“Heliopath was taught that by your uncle.” Ash sighed. “Heliopath is the cousin that you think Falcon is waiting for. You would have thought Falcon would have recognised family, but obviously not.”
“Why is Falcon waiting for him?”
“I’m not certain. There are new questions that I don’t have answers to and I’m thinking that Falcon might know more than he’s letting on, and there must be a reason for it. Unfortunately we don’t know what that reason is, so until we do it’s safer if Heliopath doesn’t talk to him – at least until we have some idea of what Falcon know, why he knows it, and what he plans on doing with that information.”
“Okay, Heliopath is a black mage. Falcon could be, if he put his mind to it, but I have a feeling he doesn’t want to.” Kestrel looked at Ash. “He thinks he’s safer where he is and I don’t blame him. Black level powers… black level withdrawal symptoms… I can’t imagine what they must be like, but knowing what I now know about green level I’m beginning to wonder if I really want to learn more.”
“Being at black level isn’t easy, Kestrel, but that doesn’t mean you should give up before you’ve even started.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We’ve been looking into it, and hope to know more in the future, but at the moment we don’t know what skills a black level female mage would have. It appears that people have reached that stage before and someone has destroyed the information that we need for whatever reason.” He sighed. “There’s a chance it might be in the library, so I’ve sent Benedict to look, but there are no guarantees about anything. Until I arrived no one here seemed to know what abilities a black level male mage would have.”
“Falcon did. He knew you had death magic. Father never reached black, but Grandfather did, although he died a long time ago.”
“You were told he died.”
Slowly Kestrel nodded. “I was told that he died. The same way I was told that my brothers died and yet, if we take what Falcon said to be the truth, he’s waiting for them to return to the Hollow.”
“Falcon either knows what’s coming and is pretending he doesn’t or he’s making things up.”
“He was talking to Lars.”
“Which means it’s unlikely that he was making things up, although it’s not impossible.” Ash sighed. “Things were so much simpler before you arrived.”
“Not my fault.”
“I wasn’t blaming you.” He smiled. “It’s just now I don’t know what I should be saying or doing, because it appears that your brother is playing games for some reason…” Stopping, he stared at the wall about Kestrel’s head. “Of course he is. If you’re right and your father planned the disappearance of your uncle and cousin then they know what’s outside. So how do they know what’s outside?”
“They came in from there.” Kestrel shrugged. “I’ve heard stories, although I don’t know if they’re anything more than that, about Grandfather choosing to enter Ildieu in order to create the Black Hollow. Something was happening at the Grey Gardens and he decided he wanted to give the mages here an option about where they could live, so he created a sanctuary for them, which was blood warded using magic from outside the city, because he knew that would mean that only people loyal to someone within the Hollow, usually the leader, could enter. Even now if someone wants to join they had to make a vow to Falcon, otherwise they can’t get in the building.”
“How did you hear those stories?”
“Falcon told me them when we were younger.” She sighed. “Maybe it was before he became a part of whatever it is he’s involved in now, because he changed so much when he became the leader of the Hollow and I wasn’t expecting it. Instead of being my brother he seemed to become my father and I never really got on with him, even though I wanted him to love me. He seemed to look right through me. I never existed to him.”
“Maybe there was a reason for that as well.”
“Maybe.”
“Look, Kestrel, there’s so much we both have to learn now, about the Black Hollow and your family, for Heliopath and for you, and I think it might be time for the two of us to start working together.” Ash bit his lip. “This is going to sound like I’m making things up, because I want to teach you more about your magic, but I get this feeling that we’re meant to work together, although I’m not sure why.”
“If Falcon is waiting for Heliopath…” Kestrel sighed. “He might be waiting to kill him.”
“Possible, but if that is why he would have done it already. Falcon’s never seemed the sort of person to wait for a long time if he knew he could do something. He would have sent someone to kill Heliopath or he would have done it himself – waiting over a year doesn’t make any sense. All it’s done is give Heliopath time to get settled in and gain some allies, allies that Falcon wouldn’t want him to have if he didn’t already know what was coming.” Ash bit his lip. “The problem becomes knowing more than I should about Falcon. It’s easy enough to hide it away, from people who might want to know, for someone like me, but with you… I hate to do this to you, Kestrel, but if you want to go along with Falcon’s, and your father’s, plans then you’re going to have to spend the majority of your time in here or in Heliopath’s study.”
“Would he be there when I did?”
“No, Heliopath is busy doing other things right now, things that I can’t tell you about because you can’t know.”
Kestrel smiled. “You mean sitting on my bed talking to me about protecting someone who’s done nothing but irritate you since the moment you took over the Grey Gardens?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not stupid, Ash, and I may not remember my cousin, but I do remember names. You are my cousin and as you said my cousin is Heliopath… well, it’s not hard to put the two things together and come to the conclusion that you’re also the leader of the Grey Gardens.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
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Date: 2014-04-15 05:47 am (UTC)