Read by DK Ugonna
The capital of the Mainland was changing. Something was amiss.
The wooden sign carved with 'Rika’s Salts' loomed over Saphyre’s head with an unnerving stillness. Where was the wind? She dabbed at the sweat trickling down her neck and tugged the hood of her cloak down, one of the ends snagging painfully on her left horn.
The months of summer would start to fade in the coming weeks, but the heat would cling to the streets in puffs for another fortnight. She eyed the frilled dress of a sorceress scuttling through the streets, the material light enough to sway with every whisper of a phantom breeze. It was a luxury she could not afford; no, she was safer with her frayed cloak and ash-coated fingernails.
The more she looked, the more she noticed the discrepancies in the routes she’d spent days watching. On a normal day, the roads would have been swollen with sorcerers and the crowd would shuffle slowly, sometimes coming to a complete standstill. Today, she noticed gaps. Gaps in the crowd, gaps in the stalls, brisk walks and eyes cast furtively forward.
And then there was the Magic.
‘Settle down,’ one of the merchants grumbled, pushing back a vial filled with bright green liquid as it teetered dangerously close to the edge of the shelf. As far as she’d observed, bottled Magic usually lay quietly in its glass cages once they’d been put on display. Today, it sloshed frantically against the glass; even the blood-red and bruise-purple Magic that usually slept in powdered form.
For a brief moment, she allowed herself to sink into the memory of market day on the Isles. It was nothing like this. No, the Sickle Isles’ market had been small, homely, and filled with the same people who would rage and laugh loudly with one another while they waited for fresh food, sometimes haggling amicably and sometimes not. The smell of roasting meat on spits and the sizzle of dough as it hit the oil would send stomachs rumbling.
‘You’re early,’ a voice said.
Saphyre turned to the tall sorceress rounding the corner, ‘Didn’t want to risk getting caught in the crowds.’
Rika flicked her thick red hair over her shoulder and bent to unlock the small wooden door creviced into the wall. Saphyre considered asking the sorceress if she’d noticed the changes in the capital, but she doubted Rika would respond. The shop-owner preferred they kept their interactions to nods and grunts of acknowledgement. Saphyre didn’t resent her for it; she knew the consequences Rika would face if they were ever discovered.
Rika pushed open the door with a squeak and Saphyre ducked into the small room. She moved across the front herb shop and unlocked a small cellar door behind the wooden counter. ‘How many today?’ Saphyre asked.
‘Ten. Salve.’ Rika pointed towards a small green pot on the countertop.
Saphyre nodded and tucked the pot into her pocket. It wouldn’t be enough, but she was grateful Rika had even thought of it at all.
She grabbed some ingredients from the shelves: thyme, sage and daisies, before she climbed down the steps into the small basement. There were no lights but Saphyre had tumbled down the stairs enough to know from memory where she needed to place her feet if she wanted to return with her ankles intact.
She went straight for the small wooden table top and lit the few candles she’d been allowed to keep around the room. The heat from the flames and the muskiness of the mould sprawling across the wood would eventually make their way to her lungs and she would have to wait until Rika closed the shop before she could run up the stairs to gulp down fresh air.
A knock sounded and Saphyre sighed. She busied herself with placing sheets on the bed in the back and waited for her first sorcerer to clamber down the stairs.
‘Lie down,’ she said as she surveyed the woman. Gaunt cheeks sucked in, and tired eyes watched her with distrust. Saphyre observed the way the sorceress was shivering; her eyes were bloodshot and a trail of a silvery pearlescent liquid was smudged under her nose. This one was severe.
The sorceress pushed past Saphyre and collapsed onto the bed.
‘How long?’ Saphyre asked.
The sorceress swatted Saphyre’s hands away as she tried to tilt the woman’s head.
Saphyre took a calming breath of rancid air. ‘Look,’ she said again. ‘We don’t have to do this.’
The sorceress kept her eyes fixed on the wooden-planked ceiling. ‘A week.’
A week? A few days more and the Magic would have eaten her alive.
‘What’s happening to me?’
Saphyre felt a flicker of pity at the twinge of fear in the sorceress’s voice as she set about disinfecting her dagger, unscrewing the caps from a few jars and readying bandages.
‘If your body isn’t strong enough to contain the Magic it can fight back from the inside.’
The sorceress nodded. ‘Don’t get much rations.’
Saphyre had suspected as much. The woman’s clothes were muddied and scratched, probably one of the workers from the nearby towns trying to survive in the capital. She would have suggested that the sorceress purchased one of the Magic-dulling tonics from the apothecaries, but doubted she could have afforded it.
They only came to Saphyre if they were desperate.
‘It is hard,’ Saphyre said.
‘Be quick about it, Bloodwitch,’ the sorceress snarled, yellowing teeth flashing and spittle flying. Saphyre felt the urge to smack the Magic out of the sorceress but ignored the slur and loomed over the woman’s thigh, knife in hand. With a quick flick across the leg, she waited for the first droplets of blood to peek through the skin. A pearlescent sheen had replaced the red pigmentation, signalling that the Magic had started to eat away at the sorceress’s insides.
She could feel a glare burning through her forehead. ‘Is there a problem?’ she said as she tucked her hair firmly behind her ears, making sure the sorceress could get a good view of her horns.
The sorceress rolled her eyes and Saphyre returned her attention to the cut, waiting for a trickle of red that the Magic had not yet devoured.
‘Do I have the honour of being paid with money or do I settle for your charming manners?’
The sorceress scoffed. Propping herself onto her elbows, she reached a bony arm into her pocket and drew out a small brown sack.
Saphyre caught it a millisecond before it hit her face.
‘A little light for what you’re asking me to do, don’t you think?
‘If I were you, I’d take what I was given, Bloodwitch.’
‘Weaver.’ Saphyre’s hands tightened around her dagger.
‘Just do your job, Bloodwitch, and take your coins before I call the guards and have all your camps razed to the ground.’
Muttering a curse under her breath, Saphyre pocketed the coins reluctantly. She knew she was worth more than what she was settling for, but she could not afford to turn down any money. The weight of the silver coins against her body reassured her somewhat: it would not be enough for winter coats, but she could buy the thread and wool to make them by hand. Convincing Malykin to help her sew them would be another issue entirely.
She unwrapped a wooden box from the fraying material of her sack and gently lifted the flower from its cage. Pale pink petals lolling like tongues, and a centre dotted with crystals of amethyst. It was an odd flower but Saphyre had always revelled in the story of the ancient purple dragon who had cried tears of amethyst into the field of flowers long before the sorcerers had ever found the land.
‘This might hurt,’ Saphyre warned. The sorceress was on the brink; her eyes were flickering, hands twitching and head snapping from one side to the other.
‘Just do it.’ The sorceress gritted her teeth.
Saphyre placed her hands around the cut. Lifting her fingers, the ruby blood started to rise from the wound, anchored to the Magic in her veins. She tethered the red vines into the air and started to weave. She had to work quickly before the blood started to darken and clot.
Keeping a tight hold with one hand, she crushed the petals of the flower in her other and coaxed the blood closer. Her fingers moved deftly and quickly, skimming the air around the tendrils, bending one fragment over the other and around the petals in a tight lattice.
Once she was satisfied, she slowly lowered her palms and the scarlet lattice tightened before slinking back into the woman’s thigh.
A sharp pain made Saphyre flinch as she looked down at her hands: dark bruises had started to bloom …
‘Those weren’t there a few minutes ago.’ The sorceress said.
‘Using our Magic away from the Isles has its side effects.’
‘Well then,’ the sorceress said as she wiped a hand over her sweaty forehead, ‘the sooner you and your filth get out of our lands the better.’
‘I agree,’ Saphyre replied and slammed the lid of the box shut.
*
By the time the tapestry of night sky and stars had started to cloak the capital, her arms were covered in bruises and the small vial of salve lay empty.
One sorcerer had been particularly hard to heal – he’d ingested diluted Magic from a false seller. She’d almost lost the feeling in her left arm after working on him for three hours.
Saphyre left half of the money she’d made on the worktop for Rika. She placed the empty salve vial next to it, hoping that Rika would take the hint and bring her a newly filled one the following day.
The night air was sharp as she slipped back into the market streets. Despite the palpable change in the atmosphere, ships guided by Wind sorcerers sailed over her head to the docks, bringing fresh batches of food and crowds hoping to find shelter in the city before the bustle of the following day.
Her thoughts gravitated to the first sorceress she’d healed that day. As she tugged her hood lower, one end snagging onto her horn again, the memory of Malykin taking care of one of her own injuries surfaced.
*
She’d been eleven, freshly disembarked from the rescue ships transporting the survivors of the Isles to the mainland. She’d ventured too far from the camps that had been set up for her people and run into an unfortunate situation with a group of young sorcerers. They’d been determined to prove that her horns were hollow once cut open.
‘Why do they hate us so much?’ she’d whispered to Malykin, legs swinging against the table.
‘We’re different,’ he’d said, rough hands tilting her head up gently so he could slather the foul-smelling ointment onto the base of her horn. She remembered wrinkling her nose in disgust and Malykin had laughed, trying to swipe at her nose with some of the remains on his finger.
‘Different how?’ she’d insisted, holding his looming hand in her smaller ones, eyeing the ointment on his finger murderously.
‘We have horns and they don’t.’
‘Is that all?’
Malykin had paused and ruffled her hair. ‘Our Magic is ours; it comes from the Isles. It is a part of us. The sorcerers … they did not originally have Magic so they found a way to capture it. But the Magic fights back and if they’re not strong enough, it takes them. Remember Saphyre, Magic always wants to be free.’
‘How did they capture it?’
Malykin had leaned down, red hawk eyes glinting, ‘They stole the secret.’
(c) Kariny Vee, 2022
Kariny Vee is a Mauritian/British aspiring dark fantasy author. A bit obsessed with writing villains & morally ambiguous characters while sipping on lattes in London coffee shops.
DK Ugonna’s credits include Theatre: Uncle Vanya (Tales Retold) at the Hope Theatre, Take On Me (Dante or Die), Sword of Alex (Beyond The Pale) at the White Bear, Othello (Lights of London) at the Moor's Bar Theatre. Short film: I Am Joseph (Four 8), Between The Lines (Pukka Films) and Lonely Planet (NFTS).
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