The Heartwood Chronicles

To Amber’s surprise, Kael’s directions did, in fact, take her back to the corridor the Headmaster’s study was on.

Without any detours into damp underground caverns or battles with shadow monsters.

She didn’t make it as far as the Headmaster. Ainsley, eyebrows drawn together in concern, lurked in the corridor. She brightened when Amber appeared. “You made it!”

Amber noted with mixed feelings that the paper mage also looked relieved. “I suppose I did. The way out wasn’t as straightforward as it could’ve been.” She looked down at her mud-spattered, torn skirt.

“But the Headmaster approved you!” Ainsley beamed as if that was all that mattered. “Look!” She lifted Amber’s right hand. A complicated yellow rune glowed on the back of it.

“When did that happen?” Amber wondered, but Ainsley was running on like a bubbling brook.

“I’m so glad. I do like you.” Ainsley clasped Amber’s hand and did a little skip. “Though I shouldn’t be so surprised. Usually the applicants who end up not coming out of the Headmaster’s study are girls who fall instantly in love with Troi or people Kael dislikes on sight.”

“I didn’t come out of the study,” Amber pointed out. “Or at least not to here. Does everyone have to undergo some weird trial?”

“You’re right. You didn’t. That’s strange.” Ainsley cocked her head. “There is a test, of course, but it’s different for everyone. We don’t all have the same magic.”

“I see.” Are failed applicants still wandering around the underground caverns, or worse? Were their bones crunching under my feet down there? She shuddered.

Ainsley giggled. “It’s not what you’re thinking, silly. The failed interviewees wind up back at the train station or the docks, along with all their luggage. We don’t make them do the long trek back.”

Amber was not reassured. “And how would you know they end up at those places? It’s not like you can see them.”

Ainsley hesitated. “I haven’t personally seen it. But the students do test the system, you know. Last year, Troi sweet-talked this rich tourist girl into interviewing. She ended up back in her hotel room. Kael saw her after. Though”—Ainsley tapped her chin—“both Troi and Kael got into trouble for wasting the Headmaster’s time. Stable duty,” she added darkly.

“Oh.” Amber rubbed her fingers across the rune, magic tingling against her skin. I’m still not sure about this. What was that strange test back there?

It was not one of mine. The Headmaster’s voice was so close, it was as if he spoke in her ear.

Amber jumped, startled. Mindspeech?

What do you mean? Tentatively, she placed her palm atop the colored rune.

Your magic pointed you towards a creature in need; it was your character that responded to it, answered the Headmaster simply.

Even so… Amber hesitated.

Unusual magic leads to unusual situations. Magic is not a safe path; but this world isn’t safe either. Heartwood will prepare you, at least.

In the corridor, Ainsley chattered on, oblivious that her companion was no longer listening.

The Headmaster said:

Ask yourself: Do you wish to walk this path?

 Amber was silent, thinking.

Then, she thought, Yes, I do, and removed one hand from the other.

She turned her attention to a complicated story about Kael and a herd of pigs that was just drawing to an end.        

“Anyway.” Ainsley snapped her fingers, and a stack of cream-colored papers appeared in her hand. “Here’s your contract. Come into this room to sign it. Then we can celebrate tonight! The kitchen staff always outdo themselves when we get a new student.”

The room in question was small and quiet, smelling of wood and dust. Most of it was occupied by a large table ringed with chairs. Amber sat down on one and spread the contract out before her. It was huge, and dense with writing. The paper crackled with strong spells.

“Here’s the pen. Make changes with it, if you need to—Headmaster will respond right off, mostly–and then do a palm-sign right at the back.”

“This may take a while,” Amber warned. “This contract is huge!”

“I’ve never seen it take longer than half an hour to scan through,” Ainsley said. “Of course, most people just flip right to the end and sign.”

“Ainsley,” said Amber ominously, “please don’t tell me that you’re one of those people.”

“Well.” Ainsley smiled mischievously. “I did spend a lot of time in here with the contract, but I was mostly trying to figure out how the spells in the paper worked.”

Amber tugged her braid. “Argh! People! Really! You HAVE to read your contracts, especially ones with this many magical spells on it. Do you really want to end up promising your first-born child to the school without meaning to?”

“Oh, the Masters would never do anything like that.”

“Your faith in humanity is touching, yet very misguided. How do you think lawyers make their living?”

“I’ll be back for you in an hour.” Ainsley waved at Amber. “You’ll be done by then, I’m sure.”

Amber looked at the stack of paper in front of her. Don’t bet on it.

Read Episode 10.

Author’s Note: Sometimes, it’s not so easy deciding where to break up the episodes. This week’s could easily have been about twice as long, but I opted for two smaller episodes over one long installment. Just from my experience, people reading online (either on the website or email) prefer shorter material with lots of white space. I could be wrong, though. Let me know which you like more: Two 800ish-word episodes or one 1600ish-word episode?

Amber barely had time to brace herself for impact, much less throw together a shielding spell. Darkness lunged towards her face, sharp-edged and fanged.

Silver light, harsh and sudden, bloomed in the room. Amber squeezed her tearing eyes shut. A high-pitched screech reverberated in her skull. She clapped her hands to her aching ears.

It took Amber several moments to clear the light spots from her vision. The room darkened once more. Behind her, the creature in the cocoon, its energy spent in that one burst, hung quiet and exhausted. In front of her, its shadowy predator writhed on the floor and skittered under a tub.

Drat. It wasn’t dead.

Whatever it was.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the winged creature that had saved her. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Her attacker under the tub was a dark blot in the pattern. She had hardly pinpointed it when it arrowed at her again, aiming for her feet.

Amber shook the pattern, sent it tumbling over into a corner.

Had she really heard it snap its teeth together as it missed her ankle by an inch?

She shuddered.

No time to think. It was back.

Amber retreated, almost into the closet. Its teeth snagged the hem of her skirt. She kicked it away, the motion emphasized with a magical push. Material tore as the shadow scudded back, then caught itself, a puddle of darkness upon the floor.

Amber breathed hard. The shadow was a fraction of her size—it shouldn’t be so pernicious and hard to get rid of!

I need help. Her mind flipped through faces—not Lisette nor Troi, couldn’t bring Ainsley into this, definitely not Master Zoya, Jex had already been kind enough…

And what if this was a test? Shouldn’t she succeed or fail on her own merits?

No. There was more at stake than a passing grade. There was a helpless creature behind her. The shadow’s teeth would tear it to shred.

Her brain settled on Kael’s face, complete with grin. She didn’t like owing him, but still…

Swiftly, she imposed her memory of Kael on a stray wisp in the pattern. Find! she commanded and pushed it through the threads.

Memory was fast, quicksilver. The spell disappeared and Amber eyed the shadow, lying too quiescent on the floor.

Under tubs and in the corners, movement fluttered, darkness flowed.

This has to be a joke! Amber’s eyes widened.

The thing was trying to grow.

Not while I’m here! Amber poured power into parts of the pattern, holding them rigid. The threads became rods, crystallized into geometric shapes, keeping the shadow thing apart. Its dark myriad parts strained against the strangely heavy air. Amber nudged a rod here, shifted a surface there, trying to cage them one by one.

Her brain throbbed, her head threatened to split. Her mental grip on the pattern was slick with strain and panic; she was barely holding on as it was. Something snapped and several shadows slithered over to join the central part. It spiraled up into a column of darkness, gaining more edges. The sense of sharpness emanating from it increased, as if the contents of a hundred knife blocks had been consolidated into one burgeoning monster.

Amber gave up the losing battle, pulling all her senses back towards her. She gathered threads, leeched grey, around her in a kind of armor. Armor made of cobwebs, but at least it was something.

She raised her chin and said to the growing thing, “Bring it on.”

Shadows coalesced into a monstrous form. Wings bladed out from its back. Eyes gleamed red.

It roared.

The roar echoed. Behind the monster, the air turned red and yellow and orange. A blast of heat nearly shriveled Amber’s eyeballs.

Fire engulfed the shadow creature. For a moment it was a black twist of agony, then it shivered into a million specks of ash.

Amber gaped.

The flames died down, but the light remained, incongruously yellow and cheerful.

“Hey.” Kael strolled across the laundry. “Got yourself into a spot of trouble, huh?”

Amber shut her mouth and eyed the blackened walls, singed sheets, and one half-melted tub.

“So have you,” she commented.

He looked around and groaned.

“And what’s worse…” Amber spun around and hurried to the closet. “You’ve near fried this poor thing!” Not only was the silver creature exhausted, it was now also dehydrated. She looked in dismay at its crumpled greyish wings and collapsed body.

Kael peered over her shoulder and let out a low whistle. “Wow. It’s a memory moth. The caterpillar must have made its way here last autumn.”

“We need water for it, quick.” Luckily this was the laundry. Amber hurried over to a faucet in the wall, scooping a bucket along the way. She had to twist hard, but plenty of water clanged into the bucket.

She placed the bucket on the closet floor.

“I don’t think immersing it is a good idea,” commented Kael.

She gave him her best do-you-think-I’m-an-idiot look? “If we can get the moisture in the air, it’ll help. Can you heat this so it turns into mist? Gently?”

He made a face at her, but squatted down willingly enough. After a bit, water bubbled and vapor rose into the air. Amber channeled the heat of it out of the closet, through the pattern, and into a far wall. Stone could handle it.

After some time, Kael rose and examined the moth. “It does look better.”

The creature waved its legs and flicked its wings. Amber thought it was grateful, maybe too much so. After all, Kael had nearly fried it.

He frowned. “It’s all tangled up, though. Reminds me of that Hopeswell bakery.”

Amber sighed. “I know. I’ll take care of it. Keep the light on.”

Working slowly, delicately, Amber unknotted, unraveled, and snipped away the last of Stunning Spells’ horribly clinging magic. Kael looked on interestedly over her shoulder.

“Your magic is amazing,” he said. “I knew you’d fit right in here. Did you sign the contract yet?”

“Contract?” Amber echoed. She struggled to put the bits and pieces of her interview with the Headmaster together. She had the nagging feeling that something important had faded from her memory.

Memory. Memory moth. She looked at the half-emerged creature, fully the length of her forearm, its wings lacy and shot with iridescent blue. A tenuous idea was beginning to form in her mind…

“Yes, contract!” Kael took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and gave her a gentle push towards the doorway. “I’ll keep an eye on the moth; you get yourself properly registered. Turn left, upstairs, then the second right. Go on.”

“But…” Amber began, then stopped when she caught his unwontedly stern expression. “All right, all right.” Propelled by Kael’s urgency, she hurried out of the laundry, her mind spinning with questions.

 Have I even been offered a position here? Is it time-limited? What’s up with the underground levels of this place?

One thing is for sure: I’m going to need some answers!

Read Episode 9.

Author’s Note: Happy New Year! Sorry this is a little late–I wrote most of this on Wednesday, but it was missing just a little something and it wasn’t until today that I figured out what. Memory moth, huh? I don’t know much about it yet, but it’s definitely Magical and Important. Actually the whole theme of remembering is becoming rather important in this story. I wonder how it’s going to play it over time! 

She hadn’t reckoned with walls.

The pattern, of course, had little issue bending through solid matter, but Amber was not so fortunate. What should’ve been a straight path to the source of the deformity had instead become an extended sojourn inside a dark and dismal labyrinth.

Amber was heartily sick of it. It didn’t help that she’d developed a headache trying to keep both the pattern and the real world in the front of her mind. Nor that the deformed pattern, with its tautness and occasionally shuddering, played havoc with her mage sight.

Why is this blasted school on top of a stone maze anyway?

Amber tripped over something the dark, something that rattled underfoot. Her hand shot out and steadied her against something damp that gave away slightly under her palm. Ugh.

Amber shone her meager light towards the wall. It was curved and bumpy here, and the color of stale cheese and white mold. It ended in a rounded ledge above her head. Above it was an expanse of darkness. The labyrinth had spilled her into a cavernous space. Amber couldn’t begin to guess how high the ceiling rose above her head.

She nudged the light to her other side. A multitude of curved columns, natural rather than man-made, stretched down the path, yellow as wolf’s fangs, disappearing into darkness. The feeling of being in a maw blanketed Amber; she couldn’t shake off the sensation that she’d been swallowed up. Something tugged at the very edge of her hearing, something almost too low for her to hear. Amber stood still and held her breath, waiting…

A furious fluttering in the pattern made her jump. Whatever was caught in it was sapping its strength in a desperate struggle for freedom.

“Hold on!” Amber called. “I’m coming.” Thrusting the mysterious formations around her out of her mind, she sloshed through puddles and darted around splintered fragments. A curved wall loomed ahead of her; luckily, it had a circular hole at waist height. Amber clambered through it and half-fell, half-slithered down the other side. A wet smear covered the back of her skirt and things crunched under her feet. Her small light shook wildly, sending shadows sliding all around her.

Amber ran, half-blind, through the space, then turned sharply to her left. She felt, rather than saw, rock narrowing around her. The texture of the air changed, becoming more heavy and gritty, as if the stone was breathing on her. Eyes on the footing ahead of her, she saw the step a moment before she tripped over it. Her palms struck stone, sending twinges of pain up her forearms.

She winced, then pushed herself to her feet. The stairs stretched steeply up, each step just a bit too tall for comfort.

Obviously, nothing of this place had been designed with Amber’s preferences in mind. Her hem, she was sure, was soaked in muck.

Panting, Amber reached the top of the stairway. The pattern pulled her to the right into another large room. Now she could see with her mage sight the creature that needed help, a silvery body all tangled up in the strands.

Amber warily crept into the chamber. It was shadowed rather than pitch-black, with large dark objects set all over the floor. Her foot hit one with a hollow clang. A scent of soap and lavender wafted to her nose.

This is… the laundry?

As Amber blinked, the air took on a brownish quality. Tilting her head up, Amber could make out lines of light outlining the upper walls; she realized they were shutters.

She had certainly not expected anything this homey.

Amber crept between the laundry tubs towards the silver body still twitching in the pattern. A huge contraption, comprised of cranks and wheels and rollers, loomed ahead. It looked like a torture device, but, after examining it for a moment, Amber decided it was an industrial-sized mangle.

She ducked around it and felt along the wall. Her questing hand found a wooden door, grasped a metal door knob. She twisted it and the door swung outwards, revealing a closet full of the smell of moth repellent, anti-mildew spells, and linens in disarray.

The silvery body was now revealed to be more of a large cocoon, split down the side, tangled in domestic spells whose provenance she recognized.

Stunning Spells again, she thought, disgusted. Once again creating havoc.

“You poor thing,” she crooned to the hapless creature. In the dim, she made out crumpled silver-dusted wings and delicate legs. Whatever it was, she was sure the creature was harmless. She couldn’t explain how she knew, just that the feeling was bone-deep.

Please help. The whisper caressed her cheek.

“Of course.” Amber set to work at the offending spells. “I’ll have you out in a—”

A movement on her periphery. Amber spun around to face it.

A wave of darkness lunged across the floor and leapt at her.

Read Episode 8.

Author’s Note: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! This peppermint mocha-fueled episode was written in Peet’s Coffee & Tea, where I sought refuge from the cold and dark while my daughter was at her barn. It was definitely a more cheery setting than the one Amber found herself in!

Thank you so much for reading this serial! I hope you’re enjoying it. Please feel free to tell others about it, if you think they’ll enjoy it. You can share this FB post, if you’re on that platform. 🙂

 

“So, Amberlin, you are a truth seer.” The voice echoed in her head.

The door clicked shut and Amber came to herself in the greyly dim corridor, her hand still on the handle. It was cold under her palm.

Wait, what just happened–?

Amber shook her head. Why’d my memory stutter like that just now? She remembered with perfect clarity talking to the Headmaster, down to the warmth of the teacup in her hands, the taste of the aniseed biscuits, the questions he’d asked about books, law, the theater, music. She remembered thinking how gentlemanly and knowledgeable he’d been, sitting there across from her, a pipe between his large, square hands.

His hands.

He held out a book to me and I took it. But—what did I do with it? I don’t remember putting it down. Next thing I knew, I had the teacup in my hands. The tea was spiced, with honey in it. The cup was porcelain with a leafy green design and a gold rim. The biscuits were oval, arranged on a plate with scalloped edges…

Memories crowded into Amber’s head, almost overwhelming her with details—the myriad scents, the flashes of light, the splashes of color, every line and every curve. What she really wanted to remember—that book!—had drowned in the depths of impressions.

Her head hurt.

With a sigh, Amber let her hand drop, her fingers brushing the metal of the door handle. She turned, and blinked.

An unfamiliar corridor stretched ahead of her, low-ceilinged and smelling of damp and mildew. Tiny rune lights flickered in the walls. As Amber stared, they winked once, then vanished.

Darkness descended on her like a heavy hand.

Stiffening, Amber took a step back, reaching for the door handle to the Headmaster’s study—and safety.

Her hand found only rough stone.

Oh no. Heart hammering, Amber swiped frantically in the dark.

Still no door.

“Help,” she squeaked. The sound was pathetically small, coming from a constricted throat.

No answer.

“This isn’t funny. I mean it.” Amber meant to sound firm, but her voice wobbled.

No one jumped out with a sheepish grin, abject apologies, or welcome lights.

Lights.

An illuminating rune was the first thing a novice rune mage learned. A basic spell, it was practiced over and over, until scored deep into muscle and memory.

Amber’s facility with runes was shaky at best, but she had something better.

Taking a deep breath, she switched on her mage sight.

Slowly, the pattern emerged around her in dark, glitter-dusted strands. Tiny knobs stood out here and there, glistening with residual energy. With a half-sight, half-sob, Amber twisted them.

One by one, the lights came back on.

Right.

She was back where she’d started, but not for long. The lights would stay on only for a bit. The pattern was buried deep here, almost beyond Amber’s reach, and she had little magical energy of her own to draw on. Getting out of this miserable corridor was her first priority.

Amber hurried down it, senses alert. The corridor forked ahead of her, plunging into darkness on her right, ascending to a gold-tinted dusk on her left.

The way out. Thank the Maker! Breathing out a small sigh, Amber turned left.

Something tugged at her, pulling her towards the other path. Amber squinted into the heavy blackness. There was something wrong. The pattern right here was weirdly lopsided, stretching too thin in that direction. She felt a strange bunching in the distance, like tightened stitches puckering fabric.

It reminded her too much of her earliest sewing projects.

Help me.

Amber couldn’t tell whether she heard the exhausted whisper with her ears or in her mind. But she couldn’t mistake that tired hopelessness.

Whatever it was, it needed help.

She bit her lip, still poised to hurry into the meager light.

Please. The word brushed against her with a dry rustle, like the fragile wing of a dead moth.

Amber made up her mind. Swiftly, she reached as far as she could into the pattern as it spread into the left passage. It had soaked in some of the light, at least. She tapped the tiny nodes within it, releasing a thin stream of brightness. It flowed towards her, and she directed it towards the right. A soft glow illuminated a few feet of corridor.

It’d be enough.

Bracing her shoulders, mage sight glued to the deformed pattern, Amber took the right fork.

Read Episode Seven.

Author’s Note: Amber to the rescue! What’s she going to find at the end of this path? I hope I figure it out soon! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Fyi, episodes are likely to be sporadic until the New Year.