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 1

Year 232 of the Bynding

The Kingdom of Salles
Around Summer Solstice

 ~ ~ ~

A haint flails for my magic, seeking any weakness that it might latch on to, so it can ride or usurp my body. Air rouses itself at my magic's command, and I snap it at the haint in a sharp lash too quick to alert others that a mage is nearby.

The haint's pain mirrors back at me from the magic leeched into these marshes. I chew meadowsweet root to help the headache, but the pain doesn't distract me much. Painkillers are a rare commodity for me.

I squint against the glare of the midday sun. I don't think that stone wall ahead is another mirage. I rub my stomach with one muddy hand. "Not much further, lé." She cannot hear me, not yet, but Gaylen says my daughter will be a pretty thing, shorter than me, and someday a queen.

Someday a queen, if I can reach the king of Salles before any servants of my daughter's father find us. They shouldn't, not in these marshes that require a fair amount of magic and wits to survive, much less traverse safely. But Darnell commands gryphons.

Gaylen promised he could buy me time enough if I didn't tarry, and I haven't, but I fear I will return home to find my husband's corpse.

At least it won't be our son's. Darnell dare not kill him. Not yet.

I continue onward, carefully driving off each haint I encounter with as little magic as possible. Magic draws haints' attention if you're careless with it. A haint can ride me, but it can't possess me. My unborn daughter is more vulnerable.

I finally reach the stone wall and follow it eastward until I reach the small gate that leads into the palace grounds. It's unattended and unlocked. Humans are superstitious about these marshes—or so I've been told—but that still seems careless. Particularly when a bruised woman that nobody knows can let herself in.

Through my magic's connection with the air, I sense others coming. I avoid them and hurry into the palace, into a storage room, where I glimpse my reflection off a polished pitcher. I'm sunburned where I'm not caked in mud or covered by my ragged dress. My dark hair's lank, greasy.

Gaylen Saw that this king would help me, I remind myself. That means I must leave this room and present myself like the neighboring queen I am.

Nausea makes me clutch my stomach. A queen who's every bit as enslaved and subject to a tyrant's whims as the least of her subjects, to the point that the tyrant can rape his own half-sister and emasculate the woman's husband and she can't do anything about it. Some queen I am.

The door creaks as it opens. "Knock, knock?" a girl asks, peeking in. She stares, her hazel eyes widening.

Yai. "Forgive me," I quickly intercede to distract her before she starts screaming for the guards. "I seem to be lost. Where might I find the king?"

The girl's larger than many adult elves. Her magic buzzes with a lack of focus that only comes with someone in the midst of Bridging, so she's likely about ten. Her ginger-colored hair's an erratic array of braids that reminds me of the giant I met as a girl, before my mother...died.

The girl still stares at me, open-mouthed.

"Silly Silva," another girl's voice cuts in. "What, you find a cat..." This girl weasels her way in around the other one, spots me, and blinks. Her hair—a dark blond or a light brown—is clean but tied back simply, with a cord.

This girl's smaller than her friend, but her magic is solidly Bridged, so she's doubtless older. She's quicker-witted than her friend, too, because her bright brown eyes promptly narrow rather than widen at me. "Green," she says.