A Fistful of Fire: Chronicles of Marsdenfel #1

Year 245 of the Bynding

Year 245 of the Bynding

The Kingdom of Salles

Late Autumn, after Harvest

Some say the Shadow is an illness, no different than others that might attack a populace. Some say it is a curse directly from the Creator Himself.

In truth it is no plague; it is no curse. A group of faeries created this gruesome parasitic cousin to linashor and omurk. They created it to kill by destroying a victim’s magic.

And kill it did: them.

—Endellion

· · · • • • · · ·

The other servants think I’m part faery! I must be faery, they say, why else would I be granted linashor when its guardians refuse others’ requests for it?

I bite my tongue. In these two years, the Shadow has decimated entire villages in Salles, striking the once-wealthy kingdom hard as trade has dropped, except for the dwarf allies. No dwarf has caught the Shadow.

The too-little babe Princess Claiborne was among the first to go. She and Mister Woad both refused to drink tea of any kind. But when King Aldrik likewise fell prey to the Shadow, he accepted the linashor tea I offered him. He survived his illness. And thus the rumors started.

It has been two years since the Shadow began—a fitting amount of time, considering it can take a year for the magical parasite to progress in a bearer. The magical illness presumably does the bidding of whoever controls it, but a powerful hand must constantly guide it for that to work. If legend can be trusted, it killed its own creators.

Father’s use of the Shadow has always been pointed, limited to a carefully-selected few to keep the duration, the progression, the passing of it all under his direct control. The Shadow as it’s hit Salles…

I wonder how Carling lost control. She’s usually better about recognizing and heeding her limits.

With my charge and my tutor gone, I often find myself wandering the sick wards with my meager offerings of what little linashor I’ve been able to harvest at equinox and solstice.

Ygrain tried to quarantine me like she did Silva—faeries are particularly susceptible to the Shadow; because they created it, Mother had guessed—but I think King Aldrik overrode the healer, because she’s stopped trying. The parasite isn’t hard to cure if you have the means to fight it.

Many mornings, as the sun rises, I face the northwest and curse the man who found the Shadow and dragged it from its long-forgotten crypt. I curse him and his get. By that, I curse myself.

And I’m the target, I know. I’m the one the magical parasite seeks. I can feel it, sometimes, drawing at my strength if I’m away from plants. It’s Silva’s lessons that have made me notice; I can feel magic now, feel the elf in me that pulls on plants. It seems to strengthen as I age, but I suspect that’s an illusion from my growing awareness of it.

May the Power bind Carling! If she wanted to kill me with the Shadow, couldn’t she have at least done it properly? Father or Drake have surely noticed this.

She commanded the parasite to seek me before she released it; she neglected to give it boundaries. It snatches everyone it can as it seeks to kill me, and I…I can fight it.

Should I?

Perhaps it would be better not to, I think as I sit on a windowsill for some fresh air. If I let it catch me, its goal, it should stop killing anyone else. Perhaps, for Queen Yuoleen’s kingdom to be freed, I, the last in a line born of her guilt, must die.