SINDRED
Ezebel assigns me a teacher, a man named Aurelius. I follow him deep underground, in a wing of the palace I've never been to. We go through a maze of halls, and I carefully memorized the route, knowing Ezebel would check my memory of it later. There are no torches on the walls on this level, so we make the entire journey by light of a single candle Aurelius holds before him as he leads the way. The room is through a small door in an unassuming alcove. It is locked with a complex mechanism I've never seen the like of before, about the size of one of Aurelius' long-fingered hands. It is made of a mysterious dark-grayish metal that shimmers blue in the candlelight, and has many tiny gears and levers, as well as countless little nubs that may or may not be buttons.
Aurelius does not let me watch as he presses and turns pieces of the lock in a seemingly random pattern. When he's done, there is an audible thunk and the door swings inward, far heavier than I would have assumed it to be. It is lined with sheets of that same strange metal on the inside. There is a matching lock on the other side of the door, as well as a place for a bar to be placed across, barricading the occupants of the room within.
There is no furniture, but there is light. It comes from odd glass orbs that hang from the ceiling above, a soft yellow glow. Near the far side of the room, a spring burbles along the ground, coming from an opening low in the wall and exiting in a similar way at the other side. It has eroded a winding pathway in the dark marble floor, and is lined with smooth pebbles that glint in the light. Even more confusing than this is the garden on the other side of the spring. Plants I've never seen before grow tall along the back wall, types of ferns and various patches of herbs and fungus, along with a couple bigger bushes that are dotted with berries or tiny flower buds. There is every shade of green imaginable, and splashes of other more unusual colors that instantly draw the eye. There are more of the dangling orbs of light in that section of the room than anywhere else, but in addition to that there are dozens of twinkling lights within the plants themselves, like fireflies in a twilit glen.
Aurelius ignores the garden and takes a seat on a cushion in the center of the room. There are a number of them scattered about, big squares with soft dark gray covers and stuffed with down. They are more comfortable than the mattress I sleep on every night. The only other thing in the large room is a pitcher of water, and a stack of small wooden cups.
Tearing my eyes away from the beautiful garden, I sit across from Aurelius, clasping my hands nervously together in my lap.
"Glamour is their weakness," Aurelius begins.
Glamour. The word sounds strange coming from his mouth. It is something I've heard the staff whisper of in their faerie stories, but Aurelius is always so serious and proper. Before, I would have never imagined him speaking such a distasteful and fanciful word. Now, in the safety of Ezebel's training room, it's like he's a character stepping out of one of the legends, bringing a whole new world to life with one simple sentence.
He continues, "For the Ironborn, magic is mainly spells. It has rules, ways of being detected and studied and controlled. They have their own types of illusions, ways of tricking the mind, of warping what is perceived. But glamour is something alien to them. It is like… another sense the fae have. Your body can see, feel, taste, hear, smell. Right?"
It's the first time he's looked at me, checked to make sure I am following. I nod.
"For one of the fae, glamour is like that. And the Ironborn are, for the most part, powerless against it. This is why they fear us so much. It is not faeries shapeshifting, or calling down storms, or growing beanstalks the size of castles that scares the Ironborn. It is glamour."
I've always known I'm different, that I have to hide what I am with hair dye and never meet a stranger's eyes. I know what they call those like me: demons and monsters. But it's hard for me to comprehend someone actually fearing me. I feel powerless and small. Oh-so small.
