Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [60]
He removed his backpack, which he had hoped to remove in a roomy suite in the wizard's nonexistent house. It carried his two treasures. He pulled out Chever's notes, traced the lines of the handwriting with his fingers, then crumpled them and sent them flying. A breeze lifted them, and a couple of pages caught on tree branches. A thin rain had begun to fall, it would mold that parchment to the trees soon enough.
It felt good to be rid of the magic, he hated it now. Magic meant lies and betrayal. Magic meant loving, then finding that you love a stranger, then discovering that you cannot stop loving even when nothing of the illusion remains.
He touched the rose, whose petals had begun to collect raindrops. It was crying-no. It was only a flower that had collected a little rain. With a tortured cry, he hurled it, too, as far as he could throw it, then broke into wracking sobs.
* * * * *
In her den, the druid-wizard looked up, sensing something amiss. The notes…? She closed her eyes and focused upon them. She saw the swamp… the man, weeping and trudging back toward the sewer… the notes sagging in a drizzle in a clearing he had left behind! She immediately teleported to the clearing and gathered the notes under her robe. As easy as that, they were hers.
8
"We make it little by little, until it's too big and overwhelms… us… then goes away aging."
–Chever's last notes
As the druid-wizard dabbed the notes dry while waiting for the man's return, she could not help but consider his misery. In spite of herself, she wanted to alleviate it. How to accomplish that? Well, what had he loved before she had come along? His rose. Chever's notes. Those were all. The rose was gone, broken in the swamp, its crime its failure to convince the man that it was more than what it seemed. The notes, though…
Perhaps if the man had the time to study them more, he would find the answers he sought, the answers he had felt were just beyond his reach back when he first showed her the notes at his cabin.
Maybe she didn't need the notes for her own purposes just yet. Maybe she would have him study them a while longer. In fact, if he reached a breakthrough, that knowledge might prove invaluable to the Shadovar, put the citizens of Shade Enclave in the druid-wizard's debt. Yes…
She couldn't wait long, though. During the last few days, she had begun to hear the Shadovar's call, and it grew louder with each day.
When the man returned, he first paused at the cage of the creature they had brought back from the Deserts-mouth Mountains. He held his hand up to the bars, and the creature mirrored the gesture. Their gazes locked for a moment, then the man tore his away and made his way to the woman's chambers.
She looked up when he entered, and he nodded as though nothing had happened indeed, as though he had been entering just this way for many years, coming home after a hard day's work. She seemed a little damp, as if she had been out in a mist or sweating over a difficult spell.
She reached out her hand, and in it were Chever's notes. "You shouldn't leave such valuable things lying around," she said.
A few days ago, he might have railed at her, accused her of spying. Instead he just stared dully, waiting for her direction.
"You should keep studying these," she continued. "They may help you find completion."
Back in the world of magic and lies, he could not refuse. He took the notes to the nearest table and began to read over the familiar words for the first time in what seemed like months. The woman left him to his thoughts.
* * * * *
When the druid-wizard peeked in later, she thought