The next days were mercifully quiet. Alarick went out twice to check on surviving magical villages and urge the residents to come to the Keep for their own protection. Unsurprisingly, no one accepted his offer. They always believed they would be the ones to survive, that somehow the Ministry of the One Truth wouldn't find them. No matter how much bloody evidence he presented to the contrary, people clung to those beliefs like drowning sailors clinging to flotsam. All he could do was offer sanctuary and then be there to pick up the pieces when the inevitable happened.
One rare sunny afternoon, Alarick was on the cliff behind the Keep instructing a young wizard in the art of defensive spells. He did not teach often, but this particular boy was a problem. The Ministry had killed his parents, so he had no one else to help him reign in his talents. Alarick would not have bothered, except for the fact that the boy's uncontrolled magic had nearly burned down the castle on at least three occasions. He needed to be taught quickly and well.
As Alarick and his pupil dueled, he spied Miss Stone sitting on the lawn, surrounded by most of the shape shifters. She had an open book on her lap and appeared to be reading them a story. They had eyes only for her, so enraptured by the tale were they that Alarick and his pupil could have killed one another and no one would have noticed.
Alarick finished the lesson and sent the young man back to the castle. He almost headed back himself, but thought better of it and strolled over to the group. He stood behind Elissa so as not to interrupt her. A couple of people glanced his way, but they were far more interested in her. He recognized the story instantly as Homer's Odyssey. One of the books Master Hale had collected, no doubt. He'd always had a partiality toward the Greeks.
Alarick hadn't heard Elissa speak much before now, but he found himself drawn to her voice. It was strong and clear, yet warm and inviting. It sounded like the sunshine in which she sat.
After a few more pages, Elissa stopped reading and said, "We'll finish tomorrow."
There were groans from her audience at this and protests for her to continue.
"No. We all have work to do. Fun time is over for today."
The group slowly dispersed, some of them casting glances Alarick's way. It happened enough times that Elissa glanced over her own shoulder and saw him standing there.
"Oh, Master Brandon," she said, as she stood up. "I didn't know you were there."
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Reading. I let it be known that if anyone wished to hear stories, I would be happy to oblige every afternoon between two and three. Most people are idle at that time, so I'm not interrupting work," she assured him.
"I didn't realize the residents were so starved for entertainment," Alarick said.
"Well, you've got that glorious library. It seems a shame not to share it. Many of them cannot read, but they can listen. Those who can read sometimes take turns. It's something to do," she ended with a shrug. "Do you disapprove?"
"No. I don't disapprove. Just make certain that everyone gets their work done. This place doesn't run itself."
"I understand," she said, tucking the book under her arm and moving off.
Alarick moved to walk with her, taking the heavy book from her and carrying it himself.
"How are things in the library? Do you have what you need?"
"Oh, yes. Master Lucas has been wonderful. You have a very talented group of craftsmen here. They've been able to make anything I've needed that you did not already have. As for the work, it's progressing. I've organized everything and now I'm working on protecting the volumes. It's tiresome work, but good work. There are a few volumes in such poor shape that I'm copying them onto fresh paper and rebinding them."
"I'm not surprised. Master Hale could never resist a book, no matter whether he found it in a bookshop or buried in a moldy dungeon." A wry smile tugged at his mouth.
"You must have greatly admired Master Hale," she said.
"Why would you say that?"
"When you speak of him, you soften a bit."
"I… soften?" he asked, incredulous that his words belied any feeling whatsoever.
Elissa turned and smiled up at him. "I don't know if you realize how intimidating you can be. You're curt and direct. You rarely smile. Your mannerisms are stiff and off-putting. Most of the people here live in, if not outright fear, at least cautious respect, of you."
"Do you fear me, Miss Stone?" he asked, looking down at her.
"Not as much as I think you want me to," she said.
Alarick jerked back at her words. He never intentionally attempted to make anyone fear him. People simply mistook his distance for anger, and he did nothing to disabuse them of that notion. Neither did he encourage it. Or so he thought. The idea that he would want her to fear him was faintly horrifying. Alarick couldn't decide, though, if it was more frightening for her to fear him, or for her to think he was approachable.
"Thank you for the character analysis, however unwarranted," he said dryly. "I cannot expect people to work hard and contribute to this place if they do not respect me."
"Respect and fear are not the same thing," she said.
"No. But they are close enough cousins to be used interchangeably."
"If you say so," she said. "But to get back to my point, when you speak of Master Hale, some of that goes away. I gather he raised you, after your parents—"
"Stop," Alarick said, holding up one finger. "You agreed never to speak of what you heard that day."
"Never to others, sir. But I thought you might wish to share it with someone who cannot and would not judge. Perhaps unburdening yourself to someone who has no vested interest in any of it may help?"
"I do not wish to share it with anyone. Especially not with someone who is unknown to me, as you are, Miss Stone."
"Very well," she said, all traces of her smile gone. He kicked himself for diminishing her light. He'd almost enjoyed basking in it for a few moments. They reached the castle doors.
"Then I suggest you follow me," Elissa said.
She tugged Odyssey out of his hands and marched inside and up the stairs. Flabbergasted by her brazenness and wondering why he should follow, he did just that. She turned and entered the library, and he quickened his stride to catch up.
"Shut the doors," she said over her shoulder as she crossed to one of the desks, piled high with books and papers.
Alarick noted that what she called organization and progress, he would refer to as absolute chaos. Library materials were scattered everywhere. He snuck a peek into the scriptorium where it appeared a colorful explosion had occurred.
Fanciful drawings of dragons, demons, magical beasts, and some images he couldn't even begin to decipher rested on easels scattered around the room. Some were nothing more than sketches; others were completed paintings. Some papers were clearly the testing ground for new shades of paint, slashes of color spaced at even intervals, their shades barely discernible from one another. He'd never seen such a riot of imagination and creativity in one place before. The art he had studied in school was controlled, complete. The process of its creation was utterly foreign to him.
He turned back to Elissa. She was collecting a small pile of materials off to one side of the desk. For the first time he noticed the colors staining her fingers. Her hands were flying rainbows as she flipped through pages, sorted and piled. He suddenly wanted to watch her work, to see how the images transferred from her mind to the page, but he did not ask. He'd given her free reign. If she needed or wanted to show him something, he believed she would.
She gathered up the pile of selected materials and held them out to him. When he didn't take them right away, she walked toward him and shoved them into his hands. He looked confusedly down at the pile.
"What—" he began to ask, but she cut him off.
"You don't want to share any of yourself with anyone. I can respect that, but you'll want those," she jabbed a finger at the materials.
He shifted the load so he could take the first small book off the pile and thumb through it. It was a diary, kept by Master Hale. This particular volume covered the year Alarick turned fifteen. He looked at the other books. There was one for every year that Alarick was at the castle until the final one, when Alarick had been seventeen and Master Hale had died.
"I kept the ones that cover the years before you arrived here," Elissa said. "But you'll probably want to destroy these. I can enchant them, but they'll still be here. God forbid someone might read them."
"Did you read them?" he asked sharply. She didn't cower, however. She merely tilted her head and gazed at him with a mixture of concern and pity.
"Only about half of the one from the year you turned twelve," she said. "Once I realized what they were, I set them aside to give to you. I respected your privacy as much as I could. You'll find other things in that pile from your childhood, as well. There are some drawings; you show some talent, incidentally. Reports from your tutors. Those sorts of things. Master Hale seems to have regarded you as a son. From what little I've learned of the man by reading some of his other writings, I'd say that's about as high a compliment as you could ever hope to receive."
Alarick swallowed. She was correct. He'd known that Master Hale held him in high esteem and he'd valued that esteem more than any other resource in his life. When Hale had died and taken his esteem with him, Alarick had suffered its lack. He still suffered its lack, if he were honest. Seventeen years had done little to diminish the affection he held for the man who was like a father to him.
"I had no idea that these were even here," Alarick said, a touch of wonder in his voice as he looked at the collection in his hands.
"I'll let you know if I find anything else," she said.
He was dismissed and he knew it. He opened his mouth to—what? Apologize? Thank her? Neither seemed right so he shut his mouth and walked toward the doors.
"You're welcome," she called to his back, responding to the thought he could not voice. In spite of himself, that small smile tugged up the corner of his mouth once again.
Alarick spent the rest of the day and evening reading through Master Hale's diaries. He had his dinner brought up to his room so he wouldn't have to face the residents in his confused and unfamiliarly emotional state.
Not everything in the diaries pertained to Alarick, of course. Master Hale had much else attend to, after all, but he wrote of Alarick often. More importantly, he wrote down his wisdom and advice. Alarick let the man's thoughts and ideas wash over him as he read. For a few hours it was as though Master Hale had returned to offer some steadying words and comfort, things Alarick desperately needed as he watched more and more of his kind succumb to the Ministry.
He took a journey through long-forgotten memories, some good, some bad. Some simply ridiculous, like the time when he was eleven and Master Hale had caught him in his gardens, which were strictly off-limits. Hale hadn't actually discovered him in the gardens, though. Oh, no. He'd caught Alarick after he had fallen in the garden and sliced his knee open on one of the slate path stones. Instead of seeking medical help, which would have meant confessing his trespass, Alarick had opted to gut it out, blood pooling in his boot throughout the afternoon until he finally passed out and his tutor carried him to the infirmary.
As the healer worked on Alarick's knee, Master Hale appeared in the doorway of the infirmary. He didn't appear angry, merely disappointed. Alarick was still woozy from blood loss and thought he was hallucinating when Master Hale said, "I think that's punishment enough, don't you? You'll want to stay out of my gardens in future, boy."
The healer laughed and Alarick asked, "How did he know? Did someone tell him?"
"He knows everything," the healer said. "Remember that the next time you're tempted to do something stupid."
It was solid advice and Alarick had heeded it ever since. The jagged scar on his knee still reminded him of that lesson if he was ever tempted to forget it.
The incident, along with many more, was recorded in faithful detail. Alarick found himself feeling an emotion he hadn't felt since the day the great master had died. Grief.
Grief for the man, yes, but grief also for the stupid, relatively carefree child he'd been. His childhood had ended the day he buried Master Hale and assumed responsibility for the Keep and its residents. Only seventeen, the responsibility had been crushing but he'd faced it and done his job. The cost had been high, however. Whatever remnants of innocence and carelessness he might have carried into adulthood were stripped away, lost forever. Alarick had never looked back. Until now.
He knew that looking back served no useful purpose. Nothing could be done to change the past. Even the greatest wizards couldn't manipulate time. But now, just for these few moments, Alarick allowed himself to look back at the boy he'd been.
Yes, he'd been damaged by his parent's betrayal, but Master Hale had shown him extraordinary kindness. Time and other misfortunes hadn't yet hardened Alarick against the world entirely. That had happened later. Gradually. So gradually that he often didn't realize it wasn't necessarily his preference. Yet here he was, a man of thirty-four, so completely cut off from other people that a woman like Miss Stone believed he actively sought to scare people away.
As Alarick read Master Hale's stories, he remembered how involved the man had been with the residents of the Keep. He'd taken their troubles on as his own. He knew their names and villages of origin. Master Hale had walked among the residents as friends. He hadn't shut himself up in his office as Alarick did.
Alarick felt another emotion. Shame. Master Hale would be horrified at his treatment of the residents. Oh, to be sure, he didn't beat anyone or throw anyone in a dungeon for failing him in some way. Neither did he know them or show any interest in their concerns. They were simply people for whom he provided shelter. He was their landlord. Nothing more.
It was likely too late to do anything about it now. The odds were good that all of them would be dead or scattered to the winds within the year. But, perhaps, he could show a bit more compassion. Perhaps he could endeavor to be more like Master Hale, or at least less like Alarick Brandon.
Putting the ghosts of his past aside, he closed the last diary and blew out the light, only to discover that the sun was already rising outside.
After breakfast the next morning, Alarick ventured back down to the library, the diaries clutched in his hands.
Not wishing to barge in on Elissa's work, he knocked on the doors. When she opened them and saw who it was, she said, "Good morning, Master Brandon. Come in."
He looked down at her as he passed. Had he not noticed that her eyes were hazel with a rim of gold around the iris? And that the colors made an interesting contrast with her burgundy hair? Of course not.
"Please, call me Alarick," he said.
She shut the doors and beckoned him deeper into the library.
"If that is your wish," she said.
He followed her to one of the paper-laden desks.
"What can I help you with?" she asked. Her formality irked him, but he knew he deserved it after his rudeness the day before.
He laid the diaries on the desk. "I'd like you to keep these with the collection," he said.
She raised her eyebrows at that, but only said, "Are you certain?"
He nodded. "Yes. They are part of the history of this castle. They deserve to be here, even if they do not paint the most flattering portrait of me."
"You were young," she said, as if that could explain everything. "We all do stupid things when we're young."
"And some of us continue to do stupid things well beyond the age when we shouldn't," Alarick said.
"True enough. I'll protect them and integrate them into the collection. If it's any comfort to you, I will promise not to read any more of them than strictly necessary to do my job," she said.
"Thank you, but I think… I think you may read them. If you wish," he said. "You might find that the exploits of a teenage Alarick Brandon render me considerably less terrifying."
She laughed, a deep, musical laugh that rebounded around the room like the chimes in a bell tower, all joy and no reserve.
"Probably, Master Brandon. Probably," she said through her laughter.
He looked around at the chaos, which had not improved from the night before.
"Were you working when I came in?" he asked.
"Yes, in the scriptorium. I was illustrating a particularly challenging manuscript. I'm having trouble deciding which curse should be unleashed on an unsuspecting reader."
"May I watch you work?" he asked. "Only for a few moments, if it will not distract you too much. I understand so little of what you do. I would like to learn more."
She shrugged. "It's not glamorous," she said. "But if you would like, you're more than welcome. I'll teach you a bit about my work."
She led him into the scriptorium.
"Hmm. There's no place for you to sit in here," she said, noting the one stool at the desk.
"I can stand," he said, settling himself against the wall just behind the stool so he could see over her shoulder.
"For much of the day I work on enchantments," she said, settling down at the desk. "They're the simplest and most necessary of the protections. They keep unauthorized people out of a book and protect it from destruction."
She picked a book up off the desk and handed it to him. "Open it."
He did as instructed, noting it was just a normal book. She took it from him and laid it, still open, on the desk and picked up her wand. A rainbow of color stained her wand, the result of years of use by paint-covered fingers. At first Alarick thought it was sacrilegious to treat a wand in such a careless manner, but then he realized the effect was quite beautiful. And completely her.
She also picked up a vial of something that looked like a dark red spice and shook a tiny amount into the book's binding. She pointed her wand at the book and said, "Cosignios," then closed the book and handed it back to Alarick.
"Open it," she instructed again.
Alarick tried but could not open it. Elissa smiled at his efforts. She took the book from him and opened it with no trouble.
"It's enchanted to respond only to me."
Alarick looked at the vial, understanding that the substance contained within somehow made the difference.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to it.
"My hair, ground up into tiny pieces. Once it's bound with the spell, the book recognizes only me."
She picked up another vial off the desk, this one filled with what looked like black pepper. She sprinkled this into the book's pages and repeated the spell.
"Open it," she said, handing the closed book to Alarick.
This time it opened for him just as any book would.
"Where did you get—" he started to ask.
"Your hair? Master Lucas is a wonder. I believe he broke into your apartment and cleaned out your comb."
Alarick shook his head. "You could have asked me," he said. "I was the one who told you to make the books accessible to both of us. I would have given you what you needed."
"I could have, but in my defense, I didn't think you wanted anything to do with me. I determined to bother you as little as possible. But since you're here, may I take a bit more? I'm not sure Master Lucas can keep raiding your comb day after day. I think he's beginning to feel a bit odd about the whole thing."
Alarick didn't blame him. He was feeling a bit odd, himself. He reached over her shoulder and picked up the scissors from the desk. As he moved them into position to cut off a lock of hair, she reached up and stilled his hand.
"Wait. Let me. You'll just butcher yourself. I can do it so no one will notice."
Alarick surrendered the scissors to her. She stood and turned him to face the window. She combed her fingers through his hair, lifting it from the nape of his neck.
"If I take from the underside, just here," she said, laying a finger on his neck, "No one will see."
Her fingers caressed his neck as she selected the proper lock and he closed his eyes at the unfamiliar gentleness. Snick. The moment ended, and she spun him around again to face her.
"That should hold me for a while," she said, tucking the lock of hair into a separate vial. "I'll grind it later. Thank you."
He nodded, not trusting his voice just yet. She didn't seem to notice his discomfort. She'd turned back to her desk and was rifling through pages.
"So that's just a basic sealing spell," she said. "Only you or I, or someone who shares our blood, can open that book now. For more valuable, rare, or dangerous works, I add an extra layer of protection. The illumination. Of course, not everything I draw is for protection. Some of it is simply for fun. Here," she pressed a piece of paper into his hands.
He looked down at a very impressive painting of a toad. This was no ordinary toad, however. It was purple and gold striped and sported green spots along its back.
"Why?" was all he asked.
Elissa laughed and tapped the page with her wand and said, "Vimitae." The toad hopped off the page and onto Alarick's coat sleeve.
"Is it real?" he asked, picking up the toad and looking at it from all angles.
"For now. And he's harmless. My creatures only have a few hours of life in them before they return to the page. That's enough for them to do what they need to do, however," she said.
"Which is what?" Alarick asked.
"Well, since this is a page out of a child's fairy tale, the toad is simply for entertainment. But this," she said, hefting a larger volume off the desk, "Is something else entirely."
She opened the book to a drawing of death and tapped it with her wand.
"Wait," Alarick said, unsure what she was about to unleash.
"Don't worry," she said as death, cloaked in black with scythe in hand, emerged from the pages.
The black hooded figure quickly grew to tower over even Alarick and walked toward him, trailing black fog over the floor. There was no face beneath the hood, not even a skull. Alarick drew his wand, ready to protect himself. Death leaned down close to Alarick's face and inhaled deeply. Indifferent, Death turned away and began to wander the scriptorium, never straying far from the book.
"What in the hell?" Alarick asked, composure shaken by the encounter. "You're okay with Death in your workroom?"
"This," Elissa began, holding up the book for Alarick to see "is a grimoire containing some of Master Hale's most powerful and dangerous spells. It deserves extra protection. This way, even if you or I are somehow forced to open it or tricked into opening it for someone who should not read this book, Master Death over there will take care of the problem. Since the spell allows you to read the book, Death is indifferent to you. Had I allowed only myself access to the book, you would be dead by now."
Alarick walked over to Death who was idly inspecting some of Elissa's drawings. He reached out a hand and found Death to be as corporeal as the toad, but Death paid no heed to his touch.
"What happens to him now?" Alarick asked.
"He'll stay here until either his time runs out or I send him back into the book. Only if someone were to come in here and touch the book while he's out would he do anything other than idle about."
Alarick shuddered. He didn't like the idea of calling to Death, even if this Death had not and would not come for him. There were just some forces you didn't tempt.
"Can you make him go away?"
"Absolutely."
Elissa moved forward and tapped Death with her wand. The figure disappeared into the pages of the book in a swirl of fog.
"Can I show you more?" she asked Alarick. "I do an excellent fire breathing dragon. And plague," she added.
"No. I've seen enough for one day. Thank you for the lesson. It was most… Illuminating."
She smiled and chuckled at his pun.
"It is a lot to take in," she said. "You should have seen me the first time one of my drawings came alive. I was eight and a butterfly flew out of my schoolwork. I nearly had an accident in the classroom. Fortunately, my teacher was nonplussed. She simply scolded me for doodling on my schoolwork and that was that. But from then on, I was only allowed to draw in very controlled circumstances."
"Just remind me not to anger you," he said as he walked out of the library, leaving her laughing over her drawings.