1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of Air: Book #5, Chronicles of Marsdenfel

Year 232 of the Bynding - The Realm of Salles, around Summer Solstice - post 2

I force myself to take a slow deep breath, to eat another sandwich. I needn’t eat much, but there is my daughter. She’s more human than I am.

Mataine watches my fight for composure with a narrow-eyed gaze. Aldrik politely pretends not to see my discomfort. He stands and goes to the window, studying the view as if we aren’t having a conversation.

I take a deep breath. “I managed to play ignorant for a time. My father was willing to believe that my mother had neglected to educate me in human things, to spite him.” I swallow.

“It sounds as though your father had his own share of paranoia,” Aldrik comments lightly, still staring out that window. “It’s a shame he was so determined to think ill of your mother. I have heard she was a remarkable woman. My father is an air mage, did you know?”

Aldrik’s nonchalant tone tells me his evidently off-topic comment has a reason behind it. “I did not.” I have an air affinity, as well, from somewhere in my father’s lineage.

“How much do you know of the human Crystal?”

My mouth sours. “We don’t know where it is. My mother didn’t. I don’t. Gaylen doesn’t, either, although he is a prophet.”

Aldrik glances back at me, focusing more on his wife. “In one of the Crystal Wars, a band of soldiers was sent, presumably to capture the human Crystal and bind it like the elfin one had been bound. Your mother’s ancestor Liathen was in that party. As was your father’s ancestor Tobel, who always resented that he never quite made it to air elemental.”

“How do you know this?” I keep an eye on Mataine, who looks as startled by her husband’s revelation as I am. She won’t appreciate him confessing such a secret to me.

Aldrik turns, looking out the window once more. “By the time they captured the Crystal, only the elf Liathen and the human mages Tobel and Conláed survived—along with one scoutswoman lucky enough to make it that far. Tobel took the Crystal for himself over the other men’s protests.”

That would explain why my father’s family obsesses over the human Crystal, though not how they lost it or why they think King Liathen took it. “And the woman?”

“She and Conláed mixed poorly. Conláed finally decided he’d had enough and left. A few days later, the woman disappeared, as well, and Liathen wouldn’t have put it past her to have harassed Conláed one last time, to the point of fatality.”

I wait for him to explain the connection.

“The Crystal also vanished in that time. Tobel accused Liathen of taking it, or at least of knowing where it was, for Tobel had left it somewhere only he could reach. He could pull the item up with his air magic, but none of the others could. Presumably.”

Aldrik knows the very thing my father killed my mother to learn.

My breath becomes visible on the air; Mataine goes pale.

“What was the woman?” I remember how Aldrik had mentioned how lucky the woman was to have survived. “An elemental would have been enough advanced to hide her magic from two mages.” And even if she lacked an affinity for air, any elemental can advance, become a “Shifter. She was a shifter?”

“Shifters are barren,” Aldrik says, tone still mild. “It would have been… difficult for her and Conláed to have been my father’s ancestors if she were a shifter.”

Mataine speaks first. “But she and Conláed mixed poorly.”

“In those days, anyone powerful enough to count as a mage was an east end of a westbound skunk. She knew that well, for she’d been one. She therefore ribbed Conláed for his reluctance and refusal to perform certain tasks, missing entirely that the poor man was a cripple with a bad leg.”