A brine-heavy summer breeze swept the rooms of the vine-keeper’s grand house. The panes of the open windows trembled with its passing. The breeze paused to tousle the hair of a young man who slept over an open book. Neither the sound of the summer insects below his window nor the breeze’s affectionate touch stirred him. Wayward brown hair lifted from his smooth brow. A bit of pink showed in his copper complexion. Sleep softened the hard angles of his jaw, cheekbones, and ridged nose. As he slept, the afternoon crept past the hottest part of the day, leaving a damp mist along his brow. Then he woke, blinking at the corners of the room.
It was a comfortable room, with furnishings suited to study — a desk, shelves, a gently-inclined table for standing to write, and everywhere numerous thick, leather-bound volumes whose spines decried them as being the dry, informative sort. Nowhere was to be found the pleasant, palm-sized novels of leisure. This was a room put together for a singular purpose, the bettering of a young man’s mind.
The young man in question sat up, now fully roused from his impromptu nap, and attempted to resume the book he’d been sleeping on. First Century Human-Elf Relations was as foreign to the interests of a sixteen-year-old Human as it could be. Not for the first time, the words swam on the page as his mind tripped over long sentences describing the cross-racial politics danced by human clan chiefs three hundred years ago. The book dropped from his grip and closed.
He threw his head back and sunk his fingers into unruly hair. “Why do I have to study this anyway?”
Sitting before him on the desk were three more volumes, assigned reading marked by lengths of bright ribbon tucked between the pages. With a groan, he tossed the history book atop the others, causing the stack to wobble precariously. He stood and stretched lanky arms above his head, leaned side to side, making the muscles in his shoulders crackle. With a light-footed bounce, he skipped across the room to the only window facing the south side of the house and hiked a leg over the wide sill.
His clambering descent, begun by holding the window ledge with his fingertips as he swung his leg to the top of another window frame, would’ve had his mother’s heart pounding. But he’d taken this route to escape his studies quite often of late; in past years he’d escaped down tree limbs and porch balustrades to avoid both chores and switches. His arms and legs might’ve been shorter then, but he’d always been limber. Textured stucco scraped his forearm as he finally dropped into the grass. He scarcely noticed.
Even as his toes curled in the deliciously cool grass, guilt pricked him. It was the last day he had, and half of the things his Amma had urged him to read remained untouched. But the words of his father on the previous night returned like bile to banish his regrets.
“Your Amma thinks she can salvage this situation. Put a last-minute shine on your education. Make you look like a lordling. But make no mistake, at the Mage College you’ll be judged by your compliance and dedication, not your connections.”
It wasn’t the words that made his blood boil, but his father’s derisive tone. The young man set his teeth and continued on.
None of the gardeners or family servants were in the south garden when he slipped through it, his head bobbing left and right to watch for them. This wasn’t a vegetable garden; the household’s vegetables were grown beyond the stables, out of sight of the house. No, the purpose of the cultivated flowers and shrubbery on the acres that surrounded the house proper were what set Vinnegottera apart from other vine-keeper’s properties. Creeping phlox, curbing beds of mountain aster, and evergreen shrubs proclaimed to all who passed by on the mountain road, “Vinnegottera is no mere farm; it is the Vinier family estate.”
If Vinnegottera were an estate, it was the heir who stole unnoticed from its grounds and struck out along the dusty mountain road. Danen Vinier, he was called. Though, he would not long be known by that name. It was not the name that was important, really, but the role he was going to play in the re-awakening of all the old things that had been too-long forgotten. Sometimes roles go along with a new name.
Danen Vinier sprinted along, ducking under low, reaching branches of an olive grove. The trees, heavy with green fruit, crested the mountain ridge like an emerald wave climbing skyward. Puffy white clouds scudded the horizon. Late summer sunshine beat down while he toiled over soft, loamy earth.
He didn’t pause. Didn’t linger to see the wheeling mountain hawk chased overhead by a trio of gulls greedy for the fish speared in its talons. Whenever he paused to catch his breath, he gazed downward. His eyes searched the sandy road and the house he’d left behind. Waves of heat baked the mountainside. Heat shimmered up from the estate’s red-tiled roof and wavered against the rough, yellow stucco. Vinnegottera nestled like a yellow flower among the fertile browns and greens of her vineyards. It was the sort of home his mother was adept at tending with her diplomacy and wit. One of Lady Maudline’s many gifts was the ability to sense precisely what her folk wanted and how to cultivate a healthy exchange of their labor for her loyalty.
What will Amma do if she discovers I’m gone? He didn’t know, but it didn’t much worry him. He was half-way there; too late to think about consequences. He fixed his eyes on his goal, a giant oak towering over the olive grove like a shepherd standing waist-high in the midst of his flock. My oak. He brought his shirt front up across his brow. The harsh call of cicadas sliced through the heavy air.
Danen ran.
The insects nagged.
The earth under his feet smelled warm and welcoming, especially when he stumbled and caught himself, his ink-stained fingers sinking deep. He brushed the dirt off his tunic. His good clothes still lay across a bedroom chair where he’d left them. There’d be plenty of time before dinner to remove all trace of this illicit escapade — he hoped.
Reaching the top of the ridge, he paused to gaze over his shoulder again. The road was still empty. Beyond the estate lay the city of his birth, Scransunn. Neighborhoods descended the slopes in terraces, the homes surrounded by fertile fields and orchards. From the ridge top much of the mountain road was hidden from view. He felt a moment of ill ease. Danen imagined his father walking along it; entering the house only to find him gone; the black fury that always followed such disrespect.
Will he be home early, because of the guests? He wondered, hurrying on.
New rivulets of sweat streaked through the dirt on his brow and jawline. He batted drops of it from his chin with the back of one hand. It was a relief to stumble out from the stifling olive grove and rest beneath the oak’s wide-reaching canopy. Its branches swayed, whispering to him a welcome, as a sea-blessed breeze lifted the boy’s hair from his brow. Its cool touch refreshed him, filling his lungs with the salt-tang perfume of Lady Sea.
With a clearer mind, he recalled how his father had slipped out during his sister’s wedding feast to look over a late shipment of goods. He felt the tension in his shoulders and jaw release. Kalaran Vinier varied his schedule for no one.
“Even if he does come home early, Amma won’t tell him I left. She’d rather scold me herself and Da never know.”
He wasn’t talking to the tree, exactly. He was, in the way of most Humans, talking over his worries out loud. But he liked to sit under the oak and pretend the great, old tree was wise and listening. Closing his eyes, Danen leaned against the rough bark and put away the worries that nipped at his heels.
When he opened them, the sheer dazzlement of the sun-sparked bay near took his breath away.
Before last night, he’d longed to make sailing his career. He was old enough now to apprentice on one of the Vinier ships. With a hitching of his breath, he was swept up in memories of sleeping on a rocking deck under inky, jeweled skies while the ocean sung him her susurrus lullaby.
It was not to be.
His father’s words of the previous night jarred caustically against that pleasant memory and his boyish hopes. “You’ve got to be taken in hand, before your magic runs rampant.”
“It makes sense,” Danen told the tree. “From Da’s perspective, it would’ve been a waste to send me to sea if I was always going to end up being a mage.”
Resolutely, he turned his back on the vista to begin his climb. While his limbs found the familiar grip-holds, his thoughts turned up earth, looking for seed. If my magic is dangerous, why can’t I remember what happened? Is six years old too young to remember?
The climb into the oak’s lowest fork required more effort than climbing the ridge had. He leapt to catch hold of the massive limb, then crunched upwards into a ball slowly lifting his torso over the branch, his biceps trembling with the effort. Once he’d swung a leg over and transferred his weight, it was a different sort of challenge to rise. He balanced carefully and reached out to grasp the next handhold.
In a few minutes, he reached his usual perch, nestled between the smoother, newer branches in the crown of the giant tree. A break in the leaves allowed him to see into the distance northward while the foliage overhead shaded him from the burning afternoon sun. The breeze would soon dry his sweat-damp tunic and hair.
Below his dangling feet, the ridge fell away, steeper on the northern side than the one he’d just climbed. Another ridge of the mountain rose in the distance to meet a rocky shoulder of the Travinia Mountains, stone and forest butting up against a clear, blue horizon. A sandy road snaked left and right, creeping higher and higher, until it broke through the rocks in the distance. There stood a narrow, granite-walled pass. Danen studied the pass, as though concentration might make the fuzzy details of that miles-distant vista more plain.
Out of habit, his fingers tugged at a simple chord he wore around his neck, pulling it out from under his shirt. He glanced down at the stone suspended from the chord. It was rather plain-looking. Nothing but a polished bit of green basalt with scratches and nicks worn into the once-smooth surface. As he rubbed the pendant between his thumb and forefinger he sucked his bottom lip, thinking about another thing his father had mentioned the evening before.
“The danger of your magic . . . it’s why you wear the amulet.”
He glanced down at the amulet he’d worn for as long as he could remember, wondering if it still worked. Hesitantly, Danen gripped the stone necklace in his hand, pulling the thong taut against the back of his neck. Maybe neither of his parents had wanted to dredge up the past, that’s why he was kept in ignorance. Perhaps they’d put their trust in this trinket to keep danger at bay. They should’ve known a day would come when Danen would ask questions. Amma would’ve known.
His father assumed such questions were moot.
At that moment, Kalaran Vinier was not thinking of his son. He did not wonder whether Danen would obey the command to never remove the amulet. Kalaran was with the warehouse master, examining the latest shipment of trade goods as it was carried inside by shirtless, sweating porters. He was keeping a mental tally of each type of good while Simpen talked about the current market prices in Scransunn for each.
He’d never had to wonder whether Danen would comply before. The boy had always sought to please him, was cautious to a fault, circumspect about anything that might anger Kalaran. The fear of a switching had ensured his obedience years ago. Kalaran would’ve boasted as much, had he been thinking of Danen at that moment. But, in a most unusual turn of events, this time it was Danen who intended on doing just as he pleased without considering anyone else’s feelings.
“Unnatural . . . inhuman.”
Those two words had stuck out to Danen, sprinkled through the lengthy lecture his father had given him on why he’d needed to be kept under a close watch all his childhood. Danen whispered the questions he hadn’t dared voice the night before.
“If the spell I did was dangerous, why keep it a secret? What if I’d been stupid and taken the amulet off? What if I’d lost it?”
But Danen knew he wouldn’t have. More often than not he found ways to get around his father’s rules. But there wasn’t a way to get around wearing this particular piece of jewelry. It was either there, or it wasn’t. He wondered if the rules would change, now that he was leaving home.
“Your uncle will take you in hand. If you prove yourself a studious acolyte, he may very well promote you to a position of distinction. Keep in mind how your actions will reflect on the Vinier name.”
“What if I want to stay here?” Danen grunted, crossing his arms over his chest.
The night before Kalaran had heard his “Yes, Da” instead of the roiling questions that crowded his mind as he’d gone to bed. Now, it was too late to go back and ask them. Two words, and his life was wrested off course into a terrifying unknown. That was how he imagined it, at the time; though he could not have begun to imagine just how far off the usual course of things he was about to be carried.
With a jerk of his arm, Danen snapped the leather thong. He stared down at the palm-sized amulet in his hand. It was one thing to disobey a direct order and remove it. Quite another thing to attempt the impossible. Everyone said a Human couldn’t cast spells, not unless they had a little Elven blood in them.
When Danen spoke again his voice didn’t waver, and it wasn’t quiet. He clenched his fist tight over the stone till fingernails bit into skin.
“I’ll see for myself what I’m capable of!”
Great novel launch, Lindsey! I much look forward to following this story.