Bonds

I woke again to afternoon light painted against the far wall. My muscles felt loose, liquid – in truth, beautifully relaxed - but I was still grateful that I could move again. I turned, wincing at the shards of pain that rippled across my back... And when I’d turned, I was met with a sight that sent me into silent shock.

There were three pixie children, not past their growing years, sitting on the bedside table. They were gathered around a circular board, taking turns arranging different seeds across its patterned surface, chattering to one another in a language that seemed both familiar and alien.

The one farthest from me, a girl, was looking squarely at me. She said something, pointing toward me, and the other two looked. The oldest of them stood and walked a dozen paces before taking a leap into the air. My eyes followed as he fluttered halfway across the room to another table, where a solitary candle sat in the middle of an intricate sand painting. He dove past it, dousing the flame.

It had been an eternity since I’d seen lesser fae. Surely more than a hundred years… At the beginning of my captivity they were common enough, captured as I had been captured, bought and sold like objects, killed and spent for the sake of human magic. But they didn’t have the endurance of elves…they seldom survived long under such abuse. I’d arrived long ago at the conclusion that they’d become extinct.

“Gray says your name is Nydiel,” a voice beside me said, making me glance over. The other two had come closer, sitting on the edge of the table with their legs dangling over the edge. Upon closer inspection, they seemed to be identical.

“I’m Ullisa, and my sister’s Ullana. That’s Esender. Are you going to fix the garden?”
the one on the left, apparently Ullisa, asked.

“Gray says you might, when you’re not sick anymore,” Ullana added, tilting her head.

“Garden?” I answered in confusion, hearing a soft noise and looking to its source. The boy had landed on the edge of the table and was walking toward me.

“The garden. It’s enchanted. And it’s doing poorly because Gray can’t tend it the way it needs to be tended, and we can only do so much,” the older one, Esender, answered.

All three of them suddenly looked toward the door, and I followed their gazes just in time to see it opening.

“He’s awake?” Gray said as he entered, carrying a tray.

“Mmm-Hmm,” Esender answered, glancing back at me and then to their abandoned board game.
“Does this mean we can go back to the garden now?”

“If you want. But you’re welcome to finish your game, as well. Oh, and Avwin wanted to know if you’re going to be joining her this evening.”

“I’m going back to the garden,” he answered quickly, taking off and whisking past Gray’s head and out the door. The girls were both giggling, gathering up the seeds into what appeared to be a hollowed-out acorn.

“See you later, Gray!” one of the girls shouted as they both took off, darting and chasing one another I their departure.

“Feeling better? It’s a little late for lunch, but I thought you’d appreciate some food.”
My stomach twisted at the thought, and all of my interest immediately fell to the tray he was carrying.

It was deceptively simple fare, and part of me knew it, but it had been so long. An entire human lifetime since I’d had anything more than plain gruel and vegetable pottage. The food he offered me, herbed bread still warm from the oven, soup with a complex flavor that seemed to bloom on my tongue like a summer flower, sweet black tea that tasted of honey…it was an amazing assault on my senses, a level of indulgence that I hadn’t bothered to even dream of. My gratitude was too absolute for words, and on some profound level it hurt that I should feel so much concerning so little…but no human had ever offered me such decadence. I met his eyes, mouth open to speak but devoid of adequate words. He smiled at me, and he offered a plum. Dewey, fresh, as if it had just been plucked from the tree. In the dead of winter.

“There are many benefits to enchanted gardens,” he said, replying to the question that must have been in my eyes.

“You are…far too kind to me, my lord,” I finally said, unable to meet his eyes any longer. Here was my captor, who stood between me and my freedom…but he had been my deliverance from my previous tormentors, and he had pried free the little piece of death that they’d lodged in me and washed their poison from my wounds, and offered me all of this. Damn me for a fool, I felt indebted to him.

“I told you, I’m not anyone’s lord. I give you no more than I would offer any who came to me in such a state.”

I met his eyes again, and quickly looked away. He pressed the plum into my hand; it was cool…and when I bit into it, it was sweet and tart and powerfully alive and so utterly perfect that I felt my eyes sting. FAR too kind.

“I’ve brought you some clothes… when you feel ready, I’d like to show you the garden. Did the children tell you anything?”

“Only that you seek my aid in repairing it, my…sir,” I replied, laying the bare pit of the plum down on my empty plate and resisting the urge to lick my fingers.

“It's the deepest well of living magic I’ve ever been privileged to see. Gilvrain keep is built on the ruins of the imperial palace of the elven high court.”

There was a silence as he waited for some reaction from me, but I gave none. The irony that I should now serve as a slave in the very place where my people had once ruled was too bitter for me to dwell on at present.

“When I first arrived at Gilvrain Keep, many years ago, whole sections of it were dead and the decay was spreading to others. I’ve worked since to prevent that, but my magic… isn’t fae magic. And the others have such limited resources. They’ve managed to keep the heart of the garden alive.”

“Those children?” I asked, my eyes narrowing slightly. He smiled.

“Esender is just beginning to learn – he won’t have real duties for a few years yet. The twins haven’t even begun apprenticing yet. Their mother, Alwi, is second spinner. Their grandfather, Timuil, is lore master.”

“There are others?” I asked, my eyes widening in wonder.

“There are seventy-eight, in total. But Esalor and Ulwin are expecting their first child soon. It will be the firstborn in the seventh generation.”

“You have seventy-eight pixies here. That’s a village,” I replied, looking down, an odd sensation stirring in the pit of my stomach. Seven generations. He kept his captives in good enough health and comfort that they begat more captives. And those children hadn’t shown anything like the dull, hollow-eyed misery that I’d so often seen in the children of other slaves. Such signs might bode well for my own fate.

“How long…” I began, not entirely sure what I meant to ask.

“I brought the first of them here almost one hundred and twenty years ago,” he answered.

I looked up at him then, my eyes narrowing, assessing his features.

“You’re human,” I said, finally, half statement and half question.

“And I’m a mage. And I’ve been eating the fruit of an enchanted garden since my twenty-seventh year. I haven’t aged since then,” he replied with a wry smile.

“Oh,” I replied, softly, taking a breath. That I might have a master who shared my immortality had never occurred to me. Time wouldn’t part me from this one, as it had from all previous masters. Well, no longer would I be passed from father to son like a parcel of land… but if this man proved intolerable, there would be little hope of respite.
As he smiled and handed me a folded bundle of clothing, the rational part of my mind told me of just how unlikely it was that this man would prove intolerable.

He was speaking as he led me through stone corridors with lofty ceilings, but all I could think of was the fact that I hadn't been clad so well in more than a century. That I'd never gone so long without being caged or chained until my escape. If my understanding was correct he was taking me to the place where he intended to keep me, the place where my work would be done. Freedom was never a lingering thing for me.

We were at the end of a dim hallway now, before a tall wooden door engraved with many sweeping lines of elven text. I didn't have the chance to begin reading it before the door swung open silently. Gray gestured, and I stepped inside, my mind reeling in unadulterated awe. THIS was to be my cell? Sweet Lady, I was blessed. It was beautiful.
A dozen or more immense pillars of warm gray stone, carved to look like the trunks of trees, supported a vaulted ceiling of stone beams and colored glass. Sunlight poured in from overhead, illuminating the whole of this massive chamber in a patchwork of rich colors. There was a path of broad slate tiles, and I unconsciously followed it, looking around in breathless awe. A stream ran alongside the path, breaking over a bed of pebbles, beautifully clear. Sprays of little white flowers grew along its banks. There were hundreds of plants; their arrangement proved that they’d been rigidly organized, once, but had been allowed to wander in recent years. The beds mingled together and found a natural order. But all of this – the water and the light and the life all around me – it bore no comparison to the deep well of magic that I felt. I could feel the lay lines of the earth itself here, the way the magic twisted and flowed around this place like the roots of a tree around a stone. It felt like…home.

“I’m to stay…here?” I whispered, my mouth suddenly dry.

“You would like that?”

“Oh yes, my lord…yes.”

And as I walked along that path, the stones cool beneath my feet, I could feel the sickness. The lay lines that were withered, the ones that were broken. I closed my eyes and reached out with all my other senses, understanding the fabric of magic that was woven in this place. There had been some mending done, broken lines bound off or rewoven, but that changed the pattern, left holes. I sat down, leaning absently against a tree, concentrating on what I’d found. I’d done this kind of work before, but I’d never taken on a challenge of this magnitude. It might take years, even decades to root out all the frayed and broken magic here, to reconnect the patterns of energy correctly, so that the whole of it sustained itself. With each broken thread more energy and power ran away into nothing, like blood flowing from a wound. The garden was bleeding to death, and it would be my work to stop the bleeding.

“Are you alright?” a voice asked, breaking my concentration.

“Yes. I’m sorry, my lord, I was trying to understand… what needs to be done here,” I replied, opening my eyes. He was kneeling beside me, his features painted with genuine concern.

“Gray. Not ‘my lord’. I’d like to show you the village, if that’s alright,” he said, concern melting into relief.

“Of course, sir,” I answered, watching him get up and taking the hand that he offered.
He smiled so much more than any other human I’d ever known. There was a relaxed, easy way about everything he said and did. Already that relaxed air was infecting me, making me let down my guard. I couldn’t imagine him striking me.

He led me down that stone path toward the heart of the garden, which grew more dense and verdant and pulsed with more magic with every step we took. It was a woman’s laughter that I heard first, and the sound of conversation, and faint music.

And then it was before us, and I felt my throat tighten. There was joy here.

I was looking at a village. Pixies going about their business. A group of women grinding acorn flour. A cloud of children playing at a game that seemed to involve keeping a pear from hitting the ground. An old man playing a stringed instrument to an arc of seated onlookers. Under it all was a dynamic pattern of shifting energy; the flour women were weaving threads of magic with every rise and fall of the pestle. The old man poured magic into his song.

"And what of me?" I breathed, afraid to disturb the scene before me.

"Hmm? The mage responded, catching my gaze for a bare moment before I remembered myself and averted my eyes. I would apparently have to be blunt.

"What are your orders of me, sir? What would you have me do here?"

He looked at me quizzically, as if I'd said something very strange.

"I've been telling you all morning… aid the garden."

"In what way would you have me do it?" I replied, suppressing a sigh.

"In whichever way sees most natural to you, I suppose. In my experience, no two people approach magic in the exact same way. I differ from the pixies, and they from one another… I trust that you'll find your method easily enough. If you're looking for advice, look to them. They've devised half a dozen different schools of magic over the last century or so. Oh, and don't mind Venmoth. He'll do anything for attention."

"Did I hear my name?" a voice called brightly, and without warning there was a pixie youth hovering in front of us, and I suddenly felt obliged to avert my eyes. None of the pixies seemed to grasp the concept of clothing, a fact which hadn't seemed disconcerting before this one hung in the air several inches from my face, in a state of very apparent arousal. My wandering gaze found the mage, who was rolling his eyes.

"I rest my case."

I felt a keen loss of appropriate words, and was saved from the need to say anything at all by the sudden arrival of yet another pixie, this one moving at such velocity that I could ascertain absolutely nothing about him or her…save that said pixie clearly had an interest in Venmoth, with whom said hurtling pixie collided with enough force to knock both of them out of my field of vision and bring them to the ground in a patch of pale yellow flowers.

"And who was that…"

"I could name a dozen candidates and still be wrong. Most likely it was whomever Venmoth had been entertaining when we distracted him by mentioning his name. Venmoth is…popular. If you ever want advice on the magical application of channeled lust, he has a lot to offer. And will most likely offer it whether you ask or not."

"I'm still uncertain as to what your orders are of me, but I'll do my best to serve you…" I replied, averting my gaze and looking out over the vastness of the garden. I couldn't see the far wall.

"That settled, I'd like to show you the quarters I've arranged for you – you'll want to become familiar with the hallways. There are a number of abandoned rooms and twice as many that serve for nothing more than storage. This entire wing of the castle and all attachments to the garden have been relegated to me. It's more than I need, but it does grant me…solitude…" he said, his voice growing a bit distant.

I followed him back out of the garden, into the cool dimness of the hallway. The stone walls suddenly pressed much more sharply, the magic at my back beckoning me to turn and walk in the sunlight again, to feel the grass beneath my feet.

He led me through a vast network of hollow, drafty passages, the square and somber work of human architects giving way at times to the startlingly different elven ruins that this castle had been built upon. A jarring clash of style, of purpose. The room I was to be quartered in was lovely; woven silk beneath my feet, a vast bed, a wardrobe full of clothing as fine as what I presently wore. More than any slave could ever hope for. A freeman would appreciate such luxury.

He was leading me somewhere else when the bell rang. I couldn't determine the source of the sound, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. He halted, his eyes growing distant for a moment.

"I'm wanted at court. I must attend this."

"My lord?"

"I've told you, I'm not anyone's lord. I answer to the needs of the court as much as anyone else; often more so. I'll return as soon as I may. Continue acquainting yourself with this wing, but I don't suggest traveling beyond it without me. The staff of the palace at large doesn't know you yet."

And without further explanation he disappeared down a hallway and through a door, leaving me standing in the dim light cast by an arrow loop sat high on the wall. Alone. Unfettered. Uncaged.

I could run, if the mood struck me. I could find my way out of this maze and be gone before he knew to miss me. No knowing how much head start it would gain me, but I'd managed to evade my former captors for three days on a matter of hours, and I'd done so without the benefit of a night's rest and a hot meal.

But even as the thought occurred to me, the core of me rebelled against it. A chord struck deep within me, drawing me back, guiding my feet with little effort through the twisting passageways, through the arched door. Grass beneath my feet. Sunlight on my face.

What good was freedom in the face of this?