Lucid Waking

Archive for July 17th, 2006

The Swan’s Secret

More coming, of course…

            Papers were strewn all over the floor in a carpet and were flying across the floor above the wind that billowed through the window opening. Bottles of ink were shattered and smeared across several dozen empty parchment sheets. Chairs lay on their sides from the impact of a fall and table legs were dented from the impact of something heavy smashing against it. The bed sheets were splattered with ink from the wet papers flying across it and quills were ripped and stabbed into the floor. A large white swan lay on the bed covers, its beak soiled with ink, its head resting gracefully on the pillow. Lady Catherine looked at the creature’s barely moving ribcage as it laid facing away from her, completely docile.
            “Get Ann,” she barked to her soldiers behind her, “tell her she needs to bring a bucket of water and a brush.”
            Silently, two of her men at the back turned down the stairs and disappeared around the stone pillar rising in the center of the spiral staircase. Catherine sighed stepped around the papers as best she could. She pushed a piece of auburn hair behind her ear and approached the bed. The air smelled of potent magic and she could hear the faint buzz of a new spell between the crinkles of the paper in the wind. A large gust blew her into the bed post as a mysterious vile slid off the table and shattered on the floor in a sickening crash. The swan raised its head to glance at the vile as a small pink fire started in the papers, but it didn’t move anything else and lay its head down again on the pillow. Catherine sat down and felt the bed give under her weight. She rubbed the bedpost thoughtfully remembering the day she was sworn in as Captain of the Guard. She had been sitting on the bed at age eighteen and was being congratulated by the old captain of the guard and Lady Selena for saving an entire army section from a spell. It was just luck, she had thought at the time, but she knew better. In fact, if she hadn’t been scouting around enemy lines or got caught, the outcome of the war would have been quite different.
            “Oh, my,” Catherine heard Ann cry quietly as she put down the bucket with a faint thud and started on her hands and knees collecting papers. Catherine pulled her hand down from the bedpost quickly and looked at the swan.
            “Can you feel it?” Catherine asked her, reaching out a gauntleted hand towards the bird.
            Ann nodded and her curly hair bounced. “Clear as day. Seems like a wisp wizard, but I’m not sure.”
            “Or a shifter.” Catherine put her hand on the bird and lifted up the wing with her other hand. “There, there,” she comforted wiping away the silvery residue of the spell from the bird. It stuck to her hand like spider webs, but she rubbed her hands together until they stuck to the palm of her hand in a single thick string.  She picked it up just as easily and cradled it in her arms, watching Ann’s expression carefully.
            “Don’t give me that look,” Ann said wrinkling her nose, but keeping her head down. She was the only servant who would dare talk to the Commander General of the Army that way and she was probably the only servant who could get away with it. Ann had met Catherine when she was sworn in and assumed position as captain. But when Ann told her she was Lady Serena’s advisor, who stayed as a servant for safety reasons, Catherine was more than critical. However, it was advantageous to have help from a highly qualified mage to manage an orc problem that was terrorizing the town. Catherine rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.
            “So you haven’t a clue.”
            Ann shook her head and gathered up the ink in new glass pots with a quick wave of her hand and a small burst of purple light. She splashed a bit of water on the pink fire, which went out in a curl of smoke and placed the new inkwells in a circle. She stood up and waved her hand to gather all of the papers in a pile on the table. Another wave sent the bottles of ink into another group next to the papers. She brushed off her apron in two neat little pats and walked over to the table.
            “Obviously that swan is Lady Serena.”
            Catherine looked down her armor at the bird in her arms. “Given a sedative.”
            “Don’t be so mundane,” Ann bent down and lifted the bird by balancing it on her forearms. She carefully placed the bird on the floor and pulled out a piece of chalk from her apron.
            “What do you know of the Wisp wizards and the shifters?”
            Catherine snorted indignantly. “Not much. Wisp wizards were shifters that talked to the dead and can travel back and forth between death and life. They have legends of this shifter who learned necromancy and spoke with the dead. He made a deal with some death god and was granted permission to travel back and forth between life and death.”
            “Uh, yes. They are the messengers of the dead. Much as we have a mail service, they are the mail service to the underworld. They also have pilgrimages to discuss treaties with dead kings and living ones. Sometimes the dead can’t stay dead and manage to hire one to finish their dirty work while they are living. What about shifters?”
            “Shifters? Isn’t it obvious? They change their form of the form of others.”
            “Not just that,” Ann sat down on the chair and pulled her blond hair out of her face. “That’s the only magic they can do. None of this wind stuff,” she waved her hand in a nonchalant way about the room. “But, shifters are the only ones that can change the shape of something,” she said pointing at the swan on the floor.
            The swan was now sitting in a cage of blue light, flapping its wings wildly, a sort of fear and fury in its eyes.
            “I suggest you call off the troops,” Ann said smiling.
            Catherine got up and went towards the door. “No further orders; continue training. Lieutenant, take three of your troops to guard the foot of the stairs. Dismiss.” Clanking metal armor confirmed her orders and she closed the door when she got back in the room. Ann had rested her head on her thumbs and was lightly touching her index fingers on her head.
            “So about that sedative,” she said. She smiled maliciously, but didn’t face Catherine. “It wasn’t a sedative, it was a demon structure. They use them to make sure no one dismisses the spell. If another spell is used, the demon is released and the body our Lady is contained in goes berserk. They keep the second body quite, sleepy, to make sure nothing happens to it.”
            Catherine turned, horrified to the swan pushing its neck through the cage bars and slamming its body in full force to its cage. The blue bars of the cage cut into the skin between the feathers and when the bird pulled back for that moment, Catherine could see blood dripping down the snow white feathers.
            “They usually stop when a deal is met or her time is served,” Ann said, continuing to watch, without moving.
            Catherine nodded. “Ann, tell me what you found out.”
            Ann turned to look at her, frowning.
            “Now,” Catherine said forcefully.
            Ann instinctively sat up straight in the chair as a slight fear gripped her. And this is what she’s like as commander, she realized standing up and gathering her composure. She walked over to the bed and pulled out a coin from underneath the pillow. “I can’t be in the room when you read it,” Ann said sadly bending down to enlarge the chalk ring in the room and lightly breaking the smaller one. The cage popped open to accommodate the larger side but the bird still thrashed against it. “I already know of the agreement and swore not to tell. If anything happens, I didn’t tell you about this. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to stay here.”
            “Wait, Ann. How does this work?”
            “Wait for the moon.”
            Another gust of wind blew into the room and whistled through the bars of the cage, but didn’t knock anything over. Catherine nodded and flew out of the room and down the stairs.
            “Go back to training,” she said as she passed the guards at the bottom of the stairs. They walked off in clanks of metal as she ran the opposite way to the camps. The air was still outside and had a faint fresh smell of garlic from the kitchen. Birds chirped in the trees and the sun shone down on the field. She stepped cautiously into her tent and sat down on her cot. Sighing, she placed the coin in her trunk and locked it in. With the click of the lock she heard the leaves of the trees rustle and a scrabbling at her tent. Ever alert, she pulled out her dagger and waited. The shadow of someone about her height walked around her tent, bent down to either track, scope, or see if she was inside. Adrenaline rushed through her veins and she waited carefully, embracing the energy inside her. Soon, whomever it was rushed off as suddenly as they had come and the sun dimmed for a brief second. She waited inside her tent for a little while longer, until she knew there was no one there and trotted off towards the barracks.