Legend of the Tundra Read online

  Elliot’s mouth opened in a shameless gawk. “And you believe her?”

  I smiled again. “Yes, I am not an easy male to deceive.”

  He nodded once after a few moments of thought. “Fine. Bring her to me.” He stood quickly and walked out of the room.

  I laughed to myself as I moved behind his desk to look at the letters left there.

  ✽✽✽

  ?

  Mara walked quickly for one so short, I had nearly a foot on her and she took off down the halls fast enough that I could not keep track of all the twists and turns.

  We arrived at a door that looked just the same as every other in this hallway and walked through it into what I assumed were to be my chambers. Simple, elegant, pristine.

  Mara snapped her fingers and I heard the sound of a bath filling behind a door slightly ajar on the left wall. I strode around the room as she busied herself with pulling towels out of drawers in the armoire on the right wall. The walls were a simple white, besides the armoire there was a small table and chair set of white metal, a fairly large bed covered in thick blankets and an assortment of pillows, and a small table with a lamp upon it beside the table on the left side. The room was plain and comfortable.

  A large window looked out over some treetops and into the fields and rolling hills beyond. The entire house (compound? This was far too large for a simple house) oozed a sense of serenity.

  I rolled my sore shoulders and walked toward the bathing room. Seeing the bath nearly full I walked over and stepped in leaving the door open for Mara to enter as she pleased. The water felt incredible, warm to cool my aching muscles.

  Now, if only I could figure out where I was, or who I was.

  I willed myself to calm. To slow my pulse that seemed to race every time I let my mind wander to the subject. I must have learned some interesting coping skills in the time before I could remember. I patted myself on the back for taking this so well.

  I was obviously insane, either that, or something had been done to me.

  I sat forward suddenly with the thought, water sloshing out of the tub and onto the floor. Mara let out a noise of startled anger behind me the first real sound I had heard come from her.

  Glancing over my shoulder distractedly at her I looked again to my scarred fingers and arms, to my legs which also had tell-tale signs that damage had occurred to them. Most of the scars were obviously old, clearly having been dealt a long while ago.

  “So, I'm old then.” I whispered to myself. Mara simply said “Hm?” to which I responded by ignoring her completely.

  I could tell that some of these injuries must have been at least a few decades old, most looked older, but it was hard to ascertain. The information didn’t help me much, but it did tell me I was old enough to have fought a few battles at least. Maybe I was a mercenary or a warrior of some kind. My body certainly looked fit enough for the role.

  I was a hardy build. Muscular, with small curves. Curious for the first time and wondering why it had taken me so long, I stood quickly from the water and stepped out of the tub letting Mara make frustrated noses as I sloshed the water again all over the floor. The mirror across the room told me that I had deep silver eyes and chestnut brown hair neither straight nor curly falling to my waist. As I strode closer, the surreal feeling of not knowing who I was became more tangible and I touched my fingers ending in cracked nails to my soft pink lips. I truly did not recognize this face. It mattered not, because the face is simply a casing, but one should be able to recognize themselves at the very least.

  As I stared into this stranger’s eyes and saw her staring back with a look of utter confusion on her face, I saw her as beautiful. Myself. I knew myself - sort of. I knew my soul. I knew I had seen things, those eyes – my eyes - the mind may have forgotten, but the eyes were windows that had not fully closed. Those eyes had seen much.

  “Okay, so maybe more than a few decades.” I said. My heart began again to hammer in my chest.

  My hand was shaking as it rose to rest at the base of my throat. Mara strode up behind me in the reflection with one hand on her hip and the other outstretched with a pile of clothing. Turning, grateful for the distraction, I took them from her. I dressed quickly, admiring the workmanship of the clothing as I did so. The details in the embroidery on my Burgundy and canary yellow tunic, not to be outdone by the clear jewels marching their way up the sides of my legs on otherwise simple black leggings. There was a pair of hiking boots of the softest leather waiting, but I tucked my feet instead into a pair of fur lined sheepskin loafers. I felt like being comfortable at the moment, like every cozy, fur lined article was a step closer to knowing what had happened to me.

  I found myself again at the window, wondering if this was somehow self-inflicted memory loss. Did I see something so traumatic that my mind broke? Did I lose a part of myself intentionally to save the rest? You hear of those things happening to people.

  “Highly unlikely.” A voice behind me drawled. I turned around quickly to find Gaelen leaning against the doorframe.

  “Elliot, your host, would like to meet you now.” He turned into the hall with me quickly catching up, drawing in a breath.

  Before I could speak, he continued:

  “You are obviously Fae, the condition you are thinking of usually only shows itself in the shorter living species; humans, even elfin, some of the other Sidhe, but not the immortal species.”

  “You’re psychic?” I sputtered.

  He smiled without looking over and continued down the hallways. We passed over the central staircase and I realized I should have been paying attention to how to get back to my room.

  “I’ll show you how later, but I’ll expect you to remember after that. As I was saying…”

  He put his hand on a solid oak doorframe and swung himself around so he was walking down the hallway backwards away from me.

  “Immortal species, as-in; meant to live forever, or even those who are long-lived like the Nephilim, their – or your- minds are much tougher. Hard to break. You are meant to last for many ages, can you imagine if there were a bunch of immortal magic users with post traumatic stress walking around? Tundra, what a nightmare. You're already emotional crybabies enough as it is.”

  I just grimaced and stuck my tongue out.

  He turned back around and cut quickly right around a corner.

  What he said made perfect sense, “I think I have the right to be a little emotional, considering I have no idea who I am or what happened to me.”

  “What happened to you, or what was done to you?” he replied evenly.

  I stopped for a moment, shook myself when he didn’t stop and caught up with him quickly.

  “What do you mean…” I was interrupted as he lifted his hand for silence, we were before a large door of darkest chestnut. He pushed his hand on the central part and the whole thing slide sideways into the wall revealing a brightly lit den-like drinking room. On one side sat an impressive piano and a harp, on the other, a fully stocked bar. In the center were all sorts of comfortable looking chairs and small tables placed here and there to set drinks down upon.

  My eyes were drawn to the set of chairs closest to the bar, deep red velvet chairs with brass buttons indenting them. I felt that style ruined the chair. Ruined the comfort. In one of the chairs was a male, a Fae. His swath of wavy hair the colour of golden sunlight seemed to sway slightly in a non-existent breeze flowing silkily past his shoulders. He was wearing an emerald coloured vest over a white shirt rolled up to show his tanned arms to the elbow. He stood as we entered and my next impression was his height. I was shocked. Fae males and females are typically not largely different in height, it depended on your bloodline, not your sex if you were to be tall, even so the tallest Fae were rarely over six measures, even the Nephilim tended to be taller. Elliot, as Gaelen had called him had to be over the tallest by at least a half measure.

  My second impression was that he held the ocean in his eyes, the deep blue sapphire of the depth
s once you pass a certain drop off. One where you can no longer even sense the ocean floor, let alone see or touch it.

  He walked up to me and smiled, I smiled tentatively back after looking at Gaelen, who had walked away to hold up the wall near the fireplace I hadn’t noticed until now.

  “Hello lady, my name is Elliot Caster, welcome to my home. I am pleased to make your acquaintance and am sorry to hear of your plight.”

  “Nice to meet you Elliot,” I responded taking his offered hand and letting him lead me to the seat opposite the one he had just been sitting in. As I spoke I tried to think of why his name was tingling recognition in my head.

  “I am grateful for your hospitality, I wish I were able to more properly introduce myself.”

  I watched him pour a knuckle of amber liquid over ice in a small crystal cup. He leaned forward and handed it to me. I smiled as I took it and breathed in the rich, spicy, scent of what I knew would be a full-bodied whiskey.

  How the hell would I know that and not my own name? My knuckles whitened slightly as my grip tightened on my glass. Gaelen chuckled behind me.

  I wanted to turn and throw the remainder of the decanter at his head. He just chuckled some more.

  Elliot looked between us and sighed. “Get the hell out of her head would you Gaelen?” He turned back to me, “I suppose he has been enough of a pain that I should apologize for his rudeness.”

  I laughed then. “I have already been informed that I am impolite and I don’t even know enough about myself to know if that is in character for me. I think I’m playing by some strange rules right now, so I'm not worried about some…” I furrowed my brow and quickly waved away the thought with a lazy gesture “…whatever he is, poking around inside my empty head.”

  Elliot smiled genuinely then. Leaning back and swirling his own glass.

  “What can you tell me? What do you remember?”

  I told him, in short, about waking up in the circle of sand to the moment I arrived in front of him. Gaelen moved forward at first mention of the circle and asked details of the direction I had been moving, after a few directions he simply disappeared.

  By the time I was done my story he had appeared.

  Elliot hadn't moved at all during the telling and even now a statuesque quality had fallen over him. The sign of the very old Fae, the ones aged at least a few millennia; they stilled so completely when they did not have use for their bodies, seemingly just minds tucked away inside a meat suit.

  He came to, startlingly so. “You said you knew the types of plants in the forest, you know all sorts of information, you knew about the whisky, anything else?”

  Shrugging “Just now I figured you are at least a few millennia old because of your stillness” I leaned forward. “How is it that I know this…useless trivia and yet do not know my own name?”

  Turning to Gaelen “What did you find out there in the woods?”

  Gaelen seemed to take a moment to realize I was speaking to him.

  I looked at him as he answered slowly. “It was definitely a spell, cast somewhere else and you were transferred here. The spell does not have any particular negative intent surrounding it. It does not seem to have been cast to cause harm. It left quite a signature where you landed; however, it is not enough to trace it.” He held up a hand when Elliot opened his mouth and looked sharply at him. “I could glean no information further than that which we already know.”

  Elliot slumped slightly in his chair looking thoughtful.

  “Why here? What else is on this world other than your curiously ornate mansion?” I said to Elliot. “No offense, your home is lovely.”

  He smirked. “There is nothing on this plane, save for my curiously ornate mansion.”

  I sat back in my chair. This guy had an entire plane? For his house? I raised my eyebrows at Gaelen.

  He laughed. “Naked forest girl, meet Elliot Caster, prince of the Sidhe.”

  I cursed crudely before putting my hands over my mouth.

  Elliot laughed. “Basically”

  He stood and stretched out his long body, catching my eyes as he did so.

  I smirked before leaning back in my chair.

  Gaelen watched us with narrowed eyes, “The thing, that I’m not certain either of you is grasping the severity of, is that we now have a female under a spell sitting down and drinking whiskey with the Fae prince, a spell that specifically sent her to this planet.”

  Elliot walked away and merely nodded.

  We sat in silence for a moment before Gaelen took the seat opposite me that the prince had just abandoned. “Listen to me, if there is any small detail you recall, the tiniest one, it could be enough to change things.”

  He was the soberest I had seen him, I stared into those deep eyes and saw the same thing in his that I had in mine. Darkness, he had seen much, done much. I reached my hand towards his without breaking eye contact. He flinched his hand out of the way whilst blinking my probing gaze away gently. The gentle deflection of his eyes warring with the violence of his physical flinch backwards.

  “What are you?” I asked him.

  Elliot said to the air through the open window. “Pointless question to ask him. If you don't know, you probably never will.” I opened my mouth to argue but Gaelen interrupted.

  “Some foreign creation long forgotten, nothing to concern yourself with. Would you like to stay here?”

  I smiled. “Isn’t that the prince’s invitation to grant?” I looked over at Elliot. He simply shrugged, a graceful rise and fall of his shoulders.

  “Yes. I suppose I could stay here.” I said slowly looking back to Gaelen. “I have nowhere else to go, I would not feel so guilty imposing on the wealth of a royal as that of a commoner and if either of you are feeling so kind, the resources available here to either break my spell or learn more about it would be greatly appreciated.”

  Elliot waved his hand idly, still staring out the window. “Of course, we need those answers as well. It's a matter of security. Until then, my home is yours.”

  Gaelen stood. “I’d like to start training right away.”

  We both looked at him. Elliot slowly idled over. “What do you mean training?” his voice deathly low. The first real sign of an ancient Fae prince I had truly seen.

  Shivers rolled up my spine as I looked to Gaelen and I saw only the slight raise of an eyebrow in response. “She has absolutely no idea what magic she has, nor how to control it. I think we are well aware of how dangerous that can be. To have her living with you without that knowledge is like having a bomb sitting here waiting to go off.”

  Elliot rolled his shoulders and turned to stare me down, inspecting me. I grew quickly antsy under the scrutiny.

  “Fine. Now get out, both of you.”

  On the way back to my rooms Gaelen showed me the correct route from the main staircase. I thought I would be able to remember it now. It was not exactly a long or complicated passage, just one during which every turn during looked identical.

  Thanking him at my door he responded that dinner was to be when the sun went down in the main dining hall on the first floor.

  Exhausted, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 2 – Legend of the Tundra

  Dinner that first evening was uncomfortable to say the least. It turned out that I was a picky eater, as though I was trying food for the first time. For all I knew, I was. The food I had eaten earlier when I first arrived had been simple breads, fruits, and cheeses. The spread was now much more varied and elegant.

  Seated at the massive table with Gaelen and Elliot, I pulled all of the different food items toward myself.

  Elliot watched me expressionless and Gaelen with some amusement as I reached to every end of the table to help myself to at least a small portion of each item set in front of us.

  Sitting back and clearing his throat Elliot said “Well, I think we need to find something to call you seeing as we don't know your name.”

  Shrugging I shoved an enti
re mouthful of something that looked like a still squiggling sea creature into my mouth and promptly spat it violently across the table, specks of it flying into my host and guards faces. The vines in their wall planters behind Gaelen uprooted and flung themselves across the room spraying dirt in an arc across the wall behind me.

  Everyone froze for a moment. Gaelen turned in his chair to look at where the planters had been behind him as Elliot snapped his fingers and the food I had spat across the table disappeared. I waited a heartbeat longer and burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  Tears rolling down my cheeks and my stomach muscles constricting I tried to bite out an apology, instead I shook my head, got up from the table and left the room.

  I did not hear Gaelen and Elliot’s cracking laughter after I had left.

  Walking back through the house to the main staircase intending to go back to my room, a large hallway to the right caught my attention.

  The passage was covered in tapestries showing pictures of Fae and other Sidhe, all creation. Stories.

  A tapestry of a war-torn battlefield caught my eye. Howelltie, tall and broad, their silver hair and red eyes looking for all to see like beautiful demons, raining fire and physical blows down upon a large army of Nephilim.

  Howelltie were a creation of a very powerful group of Fae a long time ago who had tried to create a new immortal species. The Howelltie were long lived, but they were also limited in magics to only psychic and fire. They also were susceptible to any weaponry, unlike the Fae who were only susceptible to Ash. They still remained the closest any Fae had come to using their creation magic to create an immortal species. All Howelltie had similar colouring, they had liquid crimson eyes and silky neigh on electric mercurial hair of silver. They were also incredibly tall. The shortest among the Howelltie were equal to the tallest among the Fae.

  The Nephilim were the result of Angels and Fae cross-breeding. Like the Howelltie, the Nephilim were all of a similar colouring; their hair, skin, fingernails and eyes were all different shades of gold. Otherwise they shared the features and physicality of Fae, though their magic was limited to only creation magic, creation magic in the simplest sense. Their creation magic, unlike the Fae, could only create inanimate objects, never a living being or plant.