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SEVENTEENGabriel

Gabriel wanders.

There is no sun and no moon to follow the passage of time and his idea of day and night has vanished anyway after years spent in a windowless dungeon.

Still, it feels like night. The Emerald Palace has grown quiet, many of the windows turning dark as lanterns are snuffed out and lights flicked off.

He follows a garden path around some manicured hedges, then walks the perimeter of the reflection pool. A slight breeze ripples the water.

He crosses through a flower garden, then enters into the orangery and follows a cobblestone path into a tropical indoor garden.

The Wizard has been busy. Everywhere Gabriel looks there is something fresh and new to discover. He is on sensory overload.

How is he ever to focus on finding a god when he can barely spend two seconds on a rose bush before he’s darting across the path to a lemon tree, then a patch of strawberries?

He plucks the berries right from the stem and pops them into his mouth like candy. The sweetness floods his mouth, almost unnatural.

He is eager to return to a normal life, but how can anything be normal again when he only feels comfortable in darkness, when every taste is a marvel, when he feels more at home imprisoned than free?

The path curves around a small fishpond, then enters back into the Emerald Palace into an art gallery. He loiters here, taking in the paintings. Several must predate the war because they show the royal family. There’s a parade with the queen on a float, her king beside her, the princess beneath them sitting on quilted pillows, and just behind them, the Wizard as a teenager. There’s another of a picnic on the shores of Lake Quad and another of a winter holiday at the castle in Eisvale.

The Wizard is in all of them.

Gabriel was young when his brother went away to the palace and Silas was always busy, always away saving anyone who needed saving.

For a long time, it was just Gabriel and Glinda. His mother spoiled him. It was no great secret. When his brothers came home, they would tease him about it incessantly. But what Gabriel truly wanted was to be with his brothers.

He would have done anything for their attention.

He keeps walking and spots a painting depicting the battle between the Wizard and the Witch of the West.

Whoever the artist was, they have captured the clashing of power in a dizzying array of color and light. The Wizard’s power is dark and electric, the West’s power glittering gold. Behind them, storm clouds build to staggering heights.

Just before Gabriel leaves, a set of four small paintings catches his gaze. They’re all framed in gold and hung from wire. He knows immediately who they are.

The Cardinal Gods.

There’s Valon, the God of the North, of Thunder and Sky. Next to him is Metnua, God of the East, of Harvest and Hearth. Then Crice, the God of the South, and of the Wild. And lastly, Rotho, God of the West, of Metal and Minerals.

All four paintings have clearly been rendered by the same artist. All four of the gods are depicted bleeding for the land and their people.

Rotho bleeding gold. Crice bleeding leaves. Metnua bleeding wheat. Valon bleeding rain.

A group of teens stumbles in from the garden, a green bottle of Emerald Spice passed between them. They’re laughing, cajoling one another. And then they spot him.

“Oh,” a tall one says. “Gabriel—”

A freckled young woman elbows the tall man.

“Sorry.” He looks sheepish. “Lord Gabriel. I meant no offense.”

The title was gifted to him by the Wizard. He did not earn it.

“No offense taken,” he answers.

Gabriel’s skin crawls for darkness and solitude. He does not like eyes on him. So many pairs of eyes. Are they judging him? Is he still smudged with the dirt and stain of being a prisoner? He bathed and scrubbed and scrubbed some more but the residue of years of captivity has clung to him like a film.

He clasps his hands behind his back and steps aside, away from the next doorway where they are clearly headed. “It’s all right,” he says. “Please, carry on.”