The Messenger's Luck

An accident-prone failed witch struggles to change her luck to disastrous effect.

                There were times - and lately they occurred with alarming frequency - when Tava bitterly regretted not running away to become a minstrel. As she craned her neck to take in the foreboding black peaks above her, she decided that this was definitely one of them.  She settled her leather pack a little more firmly on her shoulders with a sigh. She had set out from the last village just before dawn; the Messenger’s Guild had a reputation of haste and efficiency to uphold.

                Yet, though she had only stopped her brisk clip long enough to choke down her traveler’s rations and relieve herself occasionally, the gathering dusk had painted swatches of purple across the sky by the time she reached the base of the mountain. And she still had a long way to go. The sun was a molten lump of copper toasting her back, the slopes at her feet a broadening web of shadow as the light slipped away. She grumbled to herself as she shifted her pack again, wincing a little at the sore spot on her shoulders.

                The scarlet Messenger’s tunic had slipped off her left shoulder again, as it had done at least a hundred times since the damn thing had been issued to her. The unprotected skin had been rubbed raw under the leather straps of her pack. Should she survive getting to the top of the mountain and home again to the Guild quarters, she really was going to punch the uniform seamstress right square in her pug nose.

                She focused her gaze back on the cliffs above her. Kazran’s castle was supposedly up there too, somewhere. Why was it, she wondered, scanning the sharp rocks and split boulders in increasing frustration, that warlocks always insisted on setting up home in the most inaccessible terrains imaginable? It seemed to her to entirely defeat the purpose of having a full command of magic.

                Her grumbling thoughts were arrested at the appearance of a wide, flat ribbon of white unspooling around the mountainside. A wizard’s road. Soaked in magic, wizard’s roads were designed for the utmost comfort for its travelers. Horses would trot upon them with renewed vigor, carriages would not rattle so much as a bolt, and foot travelers would feel their aches and blisters slipping away with every step. Provided that they had proper invitation to wherever the road led to, of course. As the last light of the setting sun slipped away, the path unfurled neatly at her feet.

                Tava gingerly tested the smooth, glowing path with one foot. The road lay as innocent as honest stone beneath her boot. Gradually she eased her other foot on to it and stopped, tensed and waiting. These roads could be deadly to the uninvited. And Kazran had an especially nasty reputation towards even his own vassals.

                Surprisingly, nothing happened. No lightning snaked down to strike her where she stood, no boulders rumbled down to squash her into jelly, nor did the ground did not open up to swallow her whole. Cautiously, breath bated, she took a baby step. Then another and another. She inched her way up the path at a snail’s pace. Five yards. Then ten.

                Her breath escaped in measured beats. Fifteen yards up the path and she finally relaxed. Then her next step sent her feet skidding out from beneath her. Her arms pin-wheeled wildly as she fought to regain her balance on the road as it turned to ice beneath her. She crashed to the ground, her breath escaping with a soft whoompf, and rolled all the way back down to the foot of the mountain, finally fetching up against a thin tree.

                Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as she lay in a breathless heap under the starless sky. Her knees and elbows sang with pain. Her back felt like one giant bruise, and the wind had been thoroughly knocked out of her. Her tunic had rucked up above her stomach, and she was sure her skin had been scraped raw there. Her breath whistled like a reed flute when she finally managed to catch it.

                She rolled over with more of a whimper than a groan. Go and be a messenger, Tava, she mimicked her elder sister savagely as she eased herself back to her feet, using the sad, little tree as leverage. You’ll travel to so many places, Tava!

                “Go…kiss a… wild boar, Sarde,” she wheezed.

                It was not, perhaps, really her eldest sister’s fault that she was a whimpering mass of scrapes and bruises at the foot of a nasty warlock’s mountain. Even though joining the Messenger Guild had been Sarde’s idea to begin with.

                Sarde, the prodigy who had already been apprenticed to a highly regarded witch by the time she was twelve years old. The genius who earned her title after only four years under the elder witch’s tutelage " a task which normally took a bare minimum of ten. Sarde, lean and elegant, had even managed to make the curling ram’s horns of a mature Earth witch look good. She was barely thirty now, and her reputation raced in ripples of frightened rumors for leagues ahead of her.

                It was said of Tava’s sister that she could turn a man’s heart to white stone in his chest with a sharp glance. That she could cast a handful of seeds to the wind and they would take root in her enemies’ houses, unfurling in pendulous folds of orange petals until the very roofs collapsed on their heads. She could see the future of any who entreated her, their lives and loves and fortunes laid out as sharp as the lines of a map before her poison-green eyes. And yet her little sister couldn’t even light a fairy flame.

                Sarde had forgone a full night’s rest for two years and invented new swear words in sixteen different languages trying to pass on some of her knowledge to Tava. And every single one of the younger’s efforts had given birth to a new, surprisingly inflammatory curse from the elder.

                When Tava tried to cast a divining spell with her sister’s rune stones, half the stones exploded. Her efforts to bring a small oak sapling to maturity had ground to a halt when the tree fractured into stained glass. Attempting to summon water up from deep beneath the ground had resulted in an acre of her sister’s land blooming into an admittedly lovely shade of magenta. And then there was the unsavory matter of the simple infatuation charm she had tried out on the village blacksmith that ended in a scandal involving his neighbor’s goats.

                Even though it was undeniable that Tava had the gift for magic, Sarde finally was forced to admit in the second year of tutelage that her little sister had all the aptitude of the average tree stump when it came to actually using it. Faced with this disappointing failure, she hit upon the brilliant idea of sending Tava (over the latter’s loud protests) off to the Messenger Guild with nothing more than a letter of recommendation tucked in her cloak, a small coin pouch, and a fine dagger of blue silver as a parting gift.

                “It will be a fine opportunity for you to see the world,” Sarde had tutted, bundling her reluctant younger sister out her cottage door. “You will meet many powerful people in high places.  You don’t have to be a messenger forever, you know. Just long enough to make connections and get a better grasp on your place in the world.”

                “Well can’t I train to be a minstrel like Ellis?” Tava protested as she unsuccessfully attempted to latch on to the door frame.

                Sarde’s curved lips tightened into a thin line at the mention of their brother. “One musician in the family is more than we ever needed.”

                 Those lucky enough to hear him perform personally said that Tava’s brother was a long limbed, graceful angel with dark, tragic eyes and a devastatingly sweet voice. Everywhere he went (reportedly) he would depart with a bulging coin purse and at least six donated underthings as keepsakes.

Sarde said that Ellis was a willowy, silk-draped fop strumming a lute and flouncing around dirty tavern tables who simpered his way through cheap love songs until the patrons paid him to leave.

                At least Ellis never had to fight his way up the rocky roads of temperamental warlocks; the road probably would have unspooled covered in flowers for him. For that matter, Tava thought bitterly as she scrambled over the first black boulder bordering the path, Sarde would have just created a brand new road. She briefly considered giving it a go herself as she squeezed through a burl of bramble-thorn, but she quickly dismissed the thought; she’d probably just end up setting the mountain on fire, or worse.

                The moon was high in the sky and her boots were nearly shredded to ribbons by the time Tava dragged herself up yet another stony ridge and found the doors to Kazran’s castle no more than twenty paces ahead of her.

                The noise that escaped her was less a sigh of relief than a whimper of exhaustion. Her hair, so neatly braided at the start of her journey, now clung to her face in damp hanks and stuck up in little candlewick twists out of the sad remainder of her plait.  Her fingernails had been torn to the quick on at least three fingers from hauling herself up countless little ridges, her shoulder was bleeding from the stupid pack, and she probably could have wrung a bucket of sweat out of her once-sparkling clean tunic. She probably looked more like a homeless beggar than a member of the most respectable guild in Ethra.

                She briefly considered trying to tidy herself a bit, but shrugged and continued on towards the castle; Kazran was just as likely to deny entry to a clean messenger as an unkempt one. Tava paused, straining her neck upwards to take in the sight. Kazran “The Destroyer’s” castle crowned the mountain top in a fearsome silhouette. The horned turrets and knife-edge spires of the castle jutted black as a brand against the moon.

Tava steadied herself with a deep breath. This was it. She shrugged her pack a little more firmly on her shoulders, struggling to ignore the ache burning between them. A metallic clang rang against the stone at her feet.

                She glanced down, fighting off a groan of frustration. Her little silver knife, the loop on its sheath already worn thin, had finally given way and fallen off her belt. She wiggled her way into a crouch, mindful of the unbalancing weight on her back, and scooped the stray blade up. Her knees popped in protest as she shimmied back into a standing position.

                She examined the hardened leather sheath. As she had feared, the loop that normally held it to her belt had torn in half. Worse still: a deep crack fissured down the surface of the age-shined leather.

                She shook the sheath experimentally; the leather that had once gripped her knife like a lover was now as loose as an ill-fitting boot. The blade rattled against the sides with every shake of her hand. She cursed, then cursed again louder just to see if it would make her feel better.  It didn’t.

Trying to imbue the beautiful little knife with a good luck charm had been her secret, last-ditch effort to try and successfully cast a spell. She had for once, set aside her sister’s careful, step-by-step instruction papers and tried to summon the magic up organically. Essentially the very thing her sister had warned her for two years not to do. Magic without careful planning and re-planning of every single step could have devastating, unforeseen consequences. It was horribly, dangerously, stupidly unpredictable.

Then again, so was all of Tava’s carefully planned magic, so she reasoned that this couldn’t possibly produce something worse. In fact, it seemed to go almost too well. She had thought for a minute about how to go about it, and found herself conjuring up memories of all the times in her life where she had felt like everything had lined up for her. The way the wind had smelled on the day she had fallen out of her parent’s roseberry tree, only to land lightly on her feet. The time she had tripped over Ellis’s first lute without snapping so much as a single thread.

To her amazement, the blade had glowed a soft blue that faded away almost as soon as it began. Her elation had carried her through the next two nights before Sarde had shooed her down the road. And then on the third night, the trouble with the knife began.

Tava had gone through four belts and six knife sheaths in the year she had now been employed at the guild; the knife was always tearing off her belt or the loops getting snagged on improbably strong branches or knobs or somehow loosening just enough to bang for an hour against her thigh before it finally decided to fall off.

Angrily she stuffed the blade and torn sheath under her leather bracelet, hoping that it would be tight enough to hold both the blade in place.

                Cautiously, she allowed her arm to hang down at her side. The pressure held the sheath closed and the blade in place. It was not a perfect solution, but it would do until she could buy a new sheath, she hoped. Holding her arm stiffly at her side, Tava crossed the last few yards between her and the castle.

In spite of the very real danger she knew lay behind them, Tava could not help but scoff to herself at the sight of the imposing doors. They were beautifully crafted of glossy blackwood and overlaid with ornate iron bars; Kazran could not have more clearly signaled ‘dark wizard’ had he slapped it in red paint across them. They also seemed to be lacking a knocker, handle, or any other means of actually getting inside them.

                She wetted her chapped lips nervously. This was beyond stupid: it was suicidal. She cleared her throat of the dust that seemed to have settled into it.

                “Halloo the castle!” her voice rang out clear enough at least.

            The fine hairs on the back of her neck stiffened and her arms rippled with gooseflesh; someone was watching her. She craned her neck back and scanned the parapets for any sign of movement. The cold wind fluttering softly through the castle banners was her only reply.

                She caught her breath and waited for an endless moment. There was nothing. And then:

                “Halloo, traveler! What business have you here?”

                Tava craned her neck further back in an effort to see who was speaking to her. She could still see no movement against the black lines of the castle walls. She bristled a little. Most likely another deliberate design to frighten any visitor. Or invader.

                “My name is Tava Martin of the Messengers Guild, and I come as an emissary of Driebun Village with a message for the Lord Kazran.”

                There seemed to be more activity on the wall now; Tava could faintly hear multiple voices engaged in some hushed debate. Suddenly, to her surprise, a smaller door she had not noticed hidden against the lines of the grander entrance swung open. A withered man in a black velvet doublet gestured for her to enter.

            She obediently stepped through the door, blinking at the sudden brightness after the near perfect black of the mountain. Torches lined the walls at tidy intervals, flickering in dark jewel tones. Tava managed not to roll her eyes; now Kazran was just showing off. The old man in black velvet cleared his throat pointedly and started down the hall.

                Tava swallowed, her nervousness bubbling up like sour wine in the back of her throat, and hurried after him; ridiculous show-off or not, Kazran was still incredibly dangerous and she’d be a fool to forget that. The old door porter moved with surprising swiftness, and she found herself half running to keep up. Dark rooms behind arched doorways blurred past as they moved down the hall. Left, right, left again, Tava was beginning to feel slightly dizzy as he led her deeper into the castle.

                They had been walking for perhaps a quarter of an hour when he stopped so suddenly that she almost crashed into him. They were standing before another overly-large pair of blackwood doors. The old man bowed stiffly; as though waiting for his signal, the doors creaked open.

 Tava took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and crossed the threshold. She found herself standing in a great hall, lined with twisted pillars. A long purple carpet, so soft she sank in almost to her ankles, started at the doorway and led down to a regal dais at the other end of the hall. More of those wizard torches illuminated the hall, blazing here in a uniform, deep blue, their light casting strange, dancing patterns on the walls and floor. It was about as far from Sarde’s simple forest cottage as one could get.

                Heart thudding in her chest, she strode down the carpet towards the man seated on the dais. She stumbled after the third step; something was wrong here. Tava could not shake the impression that she was walking under water. A feeling of unreality washed over her and she stumbled again, almost falling to her knees. The edges of the stone blocks in the walls undulated in the blue torch light, the thick carpet slowed her movements, compounding the aquatic illusion. Any moment now, she would be gasping for breath.

                Tava gritted her teeth and shook her head sharply to clear it. The lines of the walls obediently snapped back to solidity, and the oppressive feeling on her windpipe vanished. Sarde had at least trained her not to fall for under-handed conjurer’s trick like that one. She squared her shoulders marched down the carpet with no further resistance to impede her. Within seconds she stood before the wizard himself. She even dared think she looked confident in doing so.

                Up close, Kazran was not nearly as tall as she had initially supposed him to be, though long limbed, and lanky. His tousled hair was a surprisingly ordinary shade of brown, his leather armor plainly styled, though as glossy and black as the wooden doors of his castle. Even his face was fairly unremarkable; had Tava passed him in a crowd, she likely would not have recollected him ten minutes later. The only ornament to testify to his Lordship status was a simple silver band passed round his brow.

                Yet the very air around him shimmered with magic so strong that it left a faint metallic taste on Tava’s tongue when she opened her mouth to speak.

                “Lord Kazran of the Cabra Mountains,” she said with as much of a bow as her bulky pack would allow, “I am Tava Martin, and I bear a message for you from Driebun Village " ”

                Kazran waved his hand lazily, and she faltered to a stop. He offered her a languid smile as he settled back onto his throne.

                “Say no more, little traveler, I believe I can guess the rest. The villagers wish to take up arms and declare another pointless rebellion?      

                Tava blinked. “Not at all, Milord,” she responded. “I am merely here to " ”

                “Ah!” he clapped his hands like a delighted child, “So just one this time, is it? Some village trollop has swelled up with a surprise brat and her father thinks I owe him her honor price?”

                A headache was beginning to blossom right between Tava’s eyes. “No, Milord, if I might just " “

                He peered at her a little more closely. “Surely you don’t wish to foist your soiled honor on me, do you?”

                Her face flushed brick red at the insult, and for a moment she was too thunderstruck to speak. The lanky wizard seized the opportunity to delve further into the topic.

                “Perhaps not, then. Ah! I think I have it. Doubtlessly your lover was one of those half-witted Neanderthals who thought to challenge my men the last time we passed through the Driebun Valley, and now you’ve come with some ill-thought plan to avenge him?”

                Tava finally abandoned decorum and rubbed at the tension between her eyes. “Milord, I am here on behalf of the honored Tavern-keeper Orin Perion. Earlier this month, your men stayed at his inn and departed before paying their bill. I am here to collect the owed amount of eighteen gold, with an additional twelve silver for damages caused in their…merriment.”

                Kazran actually looked surprised, blinking several times as though uncertain of what he’d just heard. “You’re here to collect a tavern bill?”

                “Yes, Milord. You may either pay the stated amount in full now, or offer up half now, with the rest to be collected within the next fortnight.”

Kazran stared at her as though she had grown another head. Finally he shook his head in disgust and clapped his hands sharply. Immediately, the blue torches dimmed. Shadows pooled beneath the stone walls and rippled out into the hall. Tava shuddered as the warmth of the hall seemed to siphon away from her body.

Kazran glared at her through eyes as cold as stone.

“You dare to barge into my castle, invade my privacy, and disturb my peace over a brain-dead villager’s whining?”

Tava shook her head frantically, too frightened to speak.

The shadows filled the hall with empty blackness, lapping over the edges of the carpet now. She instinctively shrank back.

Kazran didn’t look ordinary now; now he towered like an avenging demon over his throne. He pointed a finger at Tava and the shadows rushed towards her.

“Die.”

                “Wait!” Tava stumbled back from his accusing gesture. The thick carpet slogged against her ankles, and her pack finally overbalanced her.

                She pin-wheeled wildly for balance, to no avail. She heard an odd whizzing noise as she crashed to the floor, followed by a wet thwack.

                “Urrghhhh.”

                Dazed, Tava heaved herself back up on her elbows, flinching at the fresh pain. She clenched her eyes shut and waited for the end. Nothing happened. In fact the hall seemed to actually be getting warmer. She dared to open her eyes. The torches once again flickered against the stone walls, only now they seemed to be honest orange flames.

Confused, she chanced a glance at the dark warlock and her breath caught painfully in her throat.

                Kazran was slumped down in his chair, slack-jawed as though in astonishment. His eyes glared at nothing. A brilliant spot of blue-silver gleamed against his dark breastplate.

                Tava gulped and felt at her arm. The leather sheath was still tightly packed against her arm but it seemed curiously flat now. Her knife was gone. This was bad. Tava hauled herself up to her feet. She stared at the still form of the warlock, silently willing him to move.

                “Lord Kazran?” she inched closer. There was no response.

                She gulped, glanced around the empty hall, and darted up the steps of the dais. A dark stain was steadily soaking through his breastplate. Tava held her breath and prodded at his leg with the tip of her boot. She winced back, half-expecting him to rise up with flashing eyes again. There was nothing.

                She let out her breath in a slow hiss. For better or for worse, Kazran was dead and she was responsible.

                “Well, little sister, what do you propose to do about this mess?”

                Tava yelped and leaped backward, very nearly falling down the steps behind her. The hall was not as empty as she had originally believed it to be; Ellis leaned casually against a pillar to the left of the throne, arms comfortably crossed as if Tava had accidentally broken a flower pot rather than slayed a rich wizard.

                “Ellis!” she squawked, her face turning several interesting shades of red, “What are you doing here? You scared me half to death!”

                He grinned, lifting one shoulder in a half shrug. “I had an invitation. Kazran does " or did, I suppose " enjoy some music every once in a while. But back to my original question,” he continued, the grin fading from his face, “what are you planning to do about this?”

                Tava looked back at the dead form of the dark warlock. She shook her head, and to her horror, felt a lump rising in her throat and a familiar stinging at the corners of her eyes.

                “I don’t,” her voice broke a little and she cleared her throat quickly, “I don’t know.”

                She grabbed the hilt of her little knife and yanked it out. It came free with a sickening wet riiiiip and for a horrible moment she thought she was going to defile Kazran’s body by vomiting on it. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and blinked away the budding tears in her eyes. This was the worst possible time to break down and weep like a child.

                Ellis shook his head somberly. “Well,” he said, “I suppose it wasn’t really your fault, Tava.”

                She nodded glumly. It had been an accident, and in all fairness, Kazran had just attempted to kill her.

                “I mean, how were you supposed to stop him with just a little knife?”

                “Wait,” she stared at him in bewilderment. “Stop who?”

                Ellis rolled his eyes. “The knight of course, silly girl.”

                “The…knight?”

                He sighed and pinched the skin between his eyes. “The knight in the white armor, of course. The one with the golden sword and the flaxen hair?”

                “The…OH!!” Tava’s face flushed in embarrassment. “That knight.”

                “Yes, that knight,” Ellis exclaimed in exasperation, “immortal gods, you are slow sometimes! The one who charged across the hall with his sword held high, proclaimed something heroic (I’ll figure that one out later) and plunged his golden blade into the dark wizard’s heart! Oh,” his tone brightened significantly, “I sense a legendary ballad coming out of this one. You should really bring messages to angry warlocks more often, Tava.”

                She gaped at him.

                “I’m only jesting!” he laughed hastily. “But seriously,” he added, “You should probably go now. The heroic knight errant will probably be easier to sell if I’m the one telling it.”

                Tava nodded. He was right. Of the two of them, Ellis definitely had more credibility. She rolled her shoulders, steeling herself for what she had to do next; a small velvet bag of coins bulged from Kazran’s belt. She untied it from his belt and fished out thirty silver coins.

                “The money he owes the tavern-keeper,” she explained in response to Ellis’ raised eyebrows. “It will probably look less suspicious if I had a reason to be leaving,” she added a tad defensively. Her brother simply sighed and shook his head.

                “Well,” Tava fidgeted awkwardly, “goodbye!” and all but flew down the carpeted walkway and back out the blackwood doors.

                Ellis watched after the fleeing form of his younger sister for a moment. Well, he thought as he picked up his lute, no performance was complete without a properly set stage. He gestured to one window not far from the doors Tava had just disappeared through. The glass obediently shattered inwards as though a hulking form had leapt through it. A similar motion to a window by the throne sent shards of glass flying outward into the dark air of the night.

                He smiled in satisfaction and strummed his lute, already composing his melody to this white knight.

                Tava blew through Driebun village like a westerly storm the next morning, barely stopping long enough to thrust Kazran’s money at the startled tavern-keeper. She barely stopped to sleep or eat on her seven-day journey back to the Guild headquarters. Her master was no less bewildered when she shoved her report under his door and promptly confined herself to her room for nearly three days.

When he opened her report, expecting her normally thorough and detailed log of every expenditure, stop, and complication, he found it simply read: “Lord Kazran of Cabra Mountain " account paid in full.”

               

Author's Note

Anything that would help make the story better is welcome!

Reviews

[Srchaud]

I loved this. Heck I even laughed outloud at the punching of the pugnose.
I would only steer clear of too many ly words-slowly hurridly etc-they tend to tell not show and you have shown so well already.
Also the word was can be cut in a few place.
Other then these minor and fixable compliants hats off to you this is well done.

[Rabbit]

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your feedback.