Page 142 of A Baron of Bonds
“Did you come to find me just to see if I had some wine to share?” He crossed his arms, no doubt remembering what it was like to be twenty.
Rell gasped in mock surprise. “Why, we would never. How could you even ask us that?”
“So, do you?” Renn asked again, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Philius laughed and began to walk with them. “Let’s go see, shall we?”
“Not too much, Philius!” I called after them, wondering if I should intervene.
I decided not to. I wasn’t Baron of Felgren after all. They were allowed to have some fun.
I skimmed over the rest of the lumen magic chapter. The author admitted there wasn’t much research on how they got to be the size they became or how they had become so intelligent.
But the Great Stream was something to try. If it imbued magic into the lumens as pups, perhaps it could break a magical connection to the Blightress. It was worth looking into.
I stood and stretched myself, patting both books to return to their places on the shelves and finding my feet taking me to the Origins of Felgren section, fifth level to the west.
I pulled on the book I wanted,Legends of the Blightress: A Collection of Tales Passed Down Through Centuriesby Layngden Roper, and found the page I needed to read again.
“If not ye wish to be dead out of the gates of Hyrythiah, wander not to the north of the cytydel where She blackens all life and styls all brything from thy chest. Her wryath consumes all after the fall of Felgryn from her arms and thy Bayron sayved us from Her eyvil.”
I remembered reading this passage years ago in my channeler studies. I couldn’t seem to move past the idea that a Baron, the first Baron in fact, “saved us from her evil”.
Having met her myself, I could believe it, but something still tugged on me not to. I flipped the pages, again finding more of what I wanted.
“Without anger, She laughed in mirth.
Without love, She left them bleeding.
Without hope, She walks the earth.
Without fear, Her heart is fleeting.”
I could pour myself into every line of that piece of lore, spoken down through the centuries in the Attatok Mountains, and still I would feel I could never really solve it. Was it so simple that to rid the land of her heart that fuels the Blight, we must give her nothing to fear? What exactlydidshe fear?
I rubbed my face, pinching the bridge of my nose, frustrated that everything was so complicated. Everything had an answer that I had to dig for. Nothing was open, and honest, and obvious, and real.
That wasn’t entirely true.
Revich was all of those things and would continue to hold me like the sky he was and had promised to be all those years ago.
I closed the book and replaced it on the shelf.
I’d ask her tonight. When she called out to me, I’d listen as I said, but I was still too curious by far not to wonder at her origins as the Blightress. I just hoped I had the patience to shut my mouth and listen.
“Dammit.”Blood swelled on the pad of my finger and I put it to my lips.
“Careful now,” Rev eyed me over his book with amusement.
“I just haven’t done this in a while,” I murmured, checking on my wound from the small needle I had threaded.
The fire crackled and popped, warming our room as we sat in our chairs—mine the pillowy blue, his, the stiff black. My barefeet were tucked under his open legs, right where they belonged, and I wiggled my toes to get his attention again.
He glanced up over his book,To Train a Conduit: A History of the Conduit Trialsby Thalia Lighton, and quirked a brow.
“How many times have you read that?” I tilted my head, avoiding my current task.
“Four.”
