Did she pass?
She felt guilty, as if she let him down by being bedridden for so long. Had he waited for her to begin feeling better before taking her here?
Merrick grunted, averting his eyes from hers. Lenna watched him fiddle with the golden ring on his finger, but he provided no moreinformation. Lenna fell silent as they walked the last few miles towards Spinella.
As she crossed through the town’s gates, she felt the transition from dirt path to slick cobblestone under her boots, the city alive and thrumming in front of her. She had a quick moment to drink in the bustle, the bursts of new sights, music and color, before Merrick stepped into her field of vision.
“Keep your hood up and your head down,” Merrick advised quietly, gently tugging her hood over her hair. “We don’t need to draw any attention to ourselves here.”
Lenna swallowed. “I thought you said Spinella was safe?”
Merrick bent down, adjusting her cloak so her curls stayed put behind the heavy fabric. “We are going to meet my friend.Heis safe, and there are protection wards around our meeting place, which is very secure. I just want to make sure there is no trouble getting there.”
Lenna took one more longing-filled look at the city alive around her. Colorful flags dipped and danced from two-story stone and wood buildings, merchants shouted above the din of musicians and shoppers, naming their wares and prices. The overlapping chatter sunk into Lenna, and she shrunk closer to Merrick as they hurriedly wove through the shopping district. Merrick’s large body half covered hers as they made their way past carts of oddly smelling meats and cheeses, weird fruits that Lenna peeked at from under her hood, and garments ranging from silk robes to shirts with holes in the backs for wings. A merchant shouted near her, and Lenna quickly averted her eyes, panic rising, as she suddenly felt very small.
Her mind wanted to ask why they were avoiding the townsfolk, why Merrick was so guarded and on edge, but she wasn’tsure she was yet ready to face those answers. Merrick had said he would tell her. A small piece of her trusted that.
They passed through the shopping district quickly, and she breathed a sigh of relief as they entered a less occupied part of Spinella. Lenna raised her head a fraction as the voices and noise dimmed behind them. They were on a side street with sleepy looking shops lining the cobblestone path.
A bell tinkered, and before Lenna could look away, her breath hitched.
“Fae,” Merrick said under his breath catching Lenna’s reaction to the svelte body, the almost feline eyes, the delicately pointed ears of the strange woman that exited the bookshop in front of them. “These lands, on the continent of Irridessen, are home to humans, gargoyles, and the fae.”
“I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful,” Lenna whispered as Merrick half-dragged her past the store.
Merrick dipped his head. “Female–not woman. With the motley of beings who live here, we go by female, male or just species name if one does not identify to one or the other. And the fae have excellent hearing,” he muttered as the female giggled in their direction. “And are always annoyingly beautiful.”
“Oh.” Lenna paused, blush creeping up her neck as she realized the fae female heard her compliment. Merrick steered her away as the fae smiled again before disappearing in a flash of blue light. Lenna stopped dead in her tracks, gaping at the place where the fae had stood a split second before.
“They also have magic. Some fae can disappear from one spot and reappear a half second later someplace else, like that fae just did–it’s called waning,” Merrick continued, pulling Lenna with him. When Lenna didn’tso much as turn her head to acknowledge she heard him, Merrick stopped and put his hands on either side of her shoulders. She jumped out of her trance and stared up at him with wide eyes.
Merrick seemed to stare at her for a long moment. Then, he took a deep breath and rubbed his beard with his hand. “I’m sorry, this is all so new to you, and I truly keep forgetting how much of these lands are not spoken about in the Slate Kingdom.”
Lenna stayed quiet, chewing her lip until Merrick began walking again, slightly slower than before as they wound their way through alleyways and buildings. As they left the rest of the shops behind, Merrick quietly explained the basics to Lenna, in a voice barely above a whisper.
Merrick spoke of gargoyles first, not to Lenna’s surprise. He described how the horns of a gargoyle were typically passed down through heritage, how gargoyles were blessed by Alke, the God of War, who gave them gifts of agility and strength. He explained how he could use his wings in this form as well as his sentry form.
Then he went into fae. Glossing over the ridiculous beauty and the pointed ears, their superb hearing, and their physical strengths–lessthan that of a gargoyle, he noted as a smug smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Lenna tried to follow the flurry of information, grateful that Merrick had begun to open up as he explained the complex history of the fae–noting that even he didn’t fully understand how gods chose to bless different lineages with differing powers. Some gods and goddesses could grant fae the ability to bend elements to their will, conjure up a storm of rain to water their fields, start a small fire to light kindling for cooking. Some fae could wane from one side of the continent to the other, others could only manage a few miles.
Other gods could gift unique, more deadly magics, though those were few and far between. The God of Water, Beyos, could bless you with atrickle of control over water, or the ability to influence the tides. The Goddess of Destruction, Aella, could give you the power to start a forest fire or to shape lightning to your will.
He noted that all fae had some type of magic, though there was only a small percentage that held anything extraordinary. And some gods did not bless anyone, preferring to keep their magic to themselves, never to be shared with those who walked the land. He grumbled under his breath that there were darker gods, like Phades, the Goddess of Death, who preferred to keep their powers under wraps, not trusting any beings with their unknown gifts. He made a small gesture of reverence, that Lenna mirrored, as he spoke of the Goddess of Death who ruled the afterlife from the god realm, Minmere.
Lenna was relieved learning they all worshipped the same gods and goddesses–at least that didn’t feel foreign. As Merrick trailed off in his explanation, her thoughts turned to her own knowledge of the gods. She had prayed to Alke in the temple in Doortan to give her the strength to be a good wife. Now, she realized Alke had been too busy gifting all these gargoyles incredible prowess. She had begged Beyos to water her crop fields during the dry spells that seemed to plague the soil once every few years. Lenna had even prayed to Phades, asking her to keep watch over the souls of those she loved that had passed, and Faune, the Goddess of Life, giving thanks when a new babe came into the world, wriggly and screeching.
But knowing that the beings in these lands had received gifted magic from the gods left a sour taste in her mouth.
“Why don’t the gods grant magic to the people in the Slate Kingdom?” Lenna asked before truly thinking the question through, hoping, as the words were spoken, that the gargoyle did not take offense.
Thankfully, Merrick seemed lost in thoughts of his own, again fiddling with the ring on his finger. “There was a great war a long time ago, when the Slate Kingdom was under the rule of Ingotheria. Long story short, the Kingdoms of Ingotheria were defeated by the Larimar Islands and the Kingdoms of Irridessen–the Obsidian and Opal Kingdoms. The treaty that was drawn up took the Slate Kingdom from the clutches of Ingotheria and gifted the land of the Slate Kingdom to the humans who fought and for the families of the humans that died in the ruthless and bloody war.” Around them, the cityscape changed, and they now walked down what looked to be the housing district. Short rows of colorfully painted homes connected with each other, weaving on both sides of the path like snakes through the cobblestone.
Merrick continued, “It was one of the major points written into the treaty after the war that Irridessen forced Ingotheria to sign. After the ink dried, one hundred fae constructed a magical dome around the lands of the Slate Kingdom, keeping out magic, keeping out fae. It gave the humans their own land to prosper without the threat of magic. It’s what affected your lifespans, since there was no magic left in the land to extend them. There was another loophole, where gargoyles could still access the Slate Kingdom in Sentry form, but that wasn’t discovered until years later. The gods and goddesses still bless the beings in the Slate Kingdom, but fae magic itself is not compatible with full-blooded humans. The only magic humans can be blessed with comes from Moirai, the God of Sight, who creates seers and the Oracle. But seers can be fae or human. The Oracle can only ever be human.”
“Why?” The question was out before Lenna could stop herself.
“I don’t know–ask the gods,” Merrick muttered, his wings tightening to his back as they passed another group of fae chatting and walking together in the opposite direction. Lenna ducked her head, shrinking into Merrick’s shadow.
As the sun began to set, they passed a noisy neighborhood bar that stood on the corner, beginning another row of the curiously linked houses. Merrick drew Lenna onto the opposite side of the street, tuckingher into his side. “Even in these lands, humans cannot have magic. If humans breed with gargoyles or fae, their offspring have the chance to gain magic, but the only full-blooded human that will ever receive magic is the Oracle.”
