Silverglen: A Young Adult Epic Fantasy Novel Read online

  "Of course. Father is out of town tonight. There is no one else to worry about—"

  "You know that isn't true," Salena cut in. A small line appeared between her brows. "You were careless to have gone in there. What if someone had been waiting inside?"

  Ember made her tone light, almost teasing, unable to resist disturbing her mother. "He was waiting outside."

  Salena gripped the arms of the chair and leaned forward, her face flushing into a scowl.

  "That creature? Did he see you?" Her voice was thick. Wheels churned behind those frozen blue eyes.

  He is untouchable, mother. You cannot kill this one. Unlike Ember's old nurse maids, who witnessed Ember's odd nightly behaviors of disappearing through windows, Fletch would not be easily ended. He was cunning, and close to Arundel. Besides, Salena wouldn't have reason to kill him, not until she was sure he knew what Ember was.

  "No," Ember said with more confidence than she felt.

  "But he suspects," Salena said, relaxing a bit into the chair.

  "Does he have reason to suspect?" Ember turned to prod the fire with an iron poker. Sparks exploded in the hot air and disappeared a moment later.

  "Perhaps he heard something. Perhaps you were careless at the Academy. It wouldn't be unlike you. All it would take would be one small glimpse, or a sound, or an unusual movement on your part. Then the suspicion would take root."

  "Perhaps he knows something I don't."

  Salena’s tone sharpened. "What do you mean?"

  Ember turned her back to the fire, feeling her pulse quicken. "Perhaps he knows who I really am. Who my real parents are."

  Her mother stiffened and looked away.

  "What now?" Salena sounded hollow. "You heard rumors again? I have told you before not to trust them."

  And you eat up rumors like a starving cat with a rotten fish.

  Ember didn't bother pointing out the irony of Salena's words. "A book informed me that shapeshifting is passed down by blood. Unless either you or Father are shifters, you aren't my real parents."

  Salena jerked up from the chair and strode to Ember. "I am your mother!" The fire lit her smooth, perfect face—a face that was not only made beautiful by Glamours, but that was young, and confident, and stern, and knowing. There were other things in that face, things that Ember didn't want to see…love, tenderness, compassion. How could a person lie to someone they loved?

  She put a hand up to caress Ember's face, but Ember pulled back.

  "You lied to me," Ember hissed. She fought the urge to shift and fly away.

  Salena's expression hardened. "I birthed you, and you are mine. That is no lie."

  "And Father?"

  Salena looked into the fire. "What was this book you found?"

  Ember crossed her arms. "It doesn't matter. An old tome from before the rebellion."

  Salena shook her head. "The book is wrong, Ember. People had their silly notions about shifters back then. The truth is, no one knows how the ability arises. Unless you heard or saw something at the Academy...?"

  The researchers at the Academy stayed as far away as possible from shifters. There was no sense in risking funding by angering the Council. So she had seen nothing, and heard nothing. That's just it, though, Ember thought. No one knows the truth about shifters anymore. If they did, they kept silent. Or they lied.

  "Well, then," Salena said. "This argument is over. If you have nothing important to tell me, then I'm away to bed. Welcome home, dear."

  chapter three

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  The unwelcome noise of the smith’s hammers woke her at dawn. Twenty blacksmith's hammers multiplied to hundreds as the sounds traveled from the west side of the keep to the east, ricocheting from wall to wall before spilling out over Mirror Lake and bouncing off the cliffs.

  Part of Arundel's legacy. Fortunately one that she wouldn't inherit, real daughter or not.

  Groaning, Ember clawed out from beneath the sheets and stumbled to the basin of water at her bedside. In the dim light, she made quick work of cleaning up and dressing in her usual comfortable trousers and loose cotton shirt, with a dagger tucked inside one boot. Satisfied, she left her rooms and went to find her row-boat.

  She followed the path from the great hall to the lake and took the thick semi-circle steps down the cliff until she reached the last step that rested in the water. Her small row-boat bobbed among the others tied up there, and she started to untie her rope.

  "BLOODTHIRSTY BUGGERS!" boomed a voice nearby, followed by a string of equally robust curses.

  Ember whipped around to see a large fisherman crouching on the steps several boats down, struggling with a rope line full of jerking fish.

  A squelkin had his hand embraced by rows of sharp teeth, with two dozen tentacles winding around his arm and stretching for his neck.

  Ember yanked the dagger from her boot and leapt over the steps, blood thundering in her ears.

  The fisherman struggled with a tentacle, peeling it away from his throat, yelling profanities at the top of his lungs. He didn't seem to notice her until the dagger sunk into the squelkin's head.

  Tentacles and teeth slackened, and Ember removed her dagger. Black liquid oozed out of the opening.

  "Thank you," the fisherman muttered, tugging the squelkin from his hand. Tattered flesh clung to his bitten hand, and blood seeped from it as he strung the dead squelkin on his rope.

  "I can take you to the healer—" Ember started.

  "I have my own healer," he cut in, then gave her a sharp glance that roused a half-apologetic grunt from him. He tossed the rope over a shoulder, but Ember pretended not to notice as she tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt.

  "Here, at least let me wrap it. Please."

  The fisherman scowled and hardened his lips, but let her wrap his hand snuggly. He avoided her curious gaze.

  "You've been bitten before," Ember said, noticing the scars on both forearms.

  "I'm a fisherman," he said with a touch of scorn, as though the scars didn't need explaining and he had only pointed her in the obvious direction because she was the lord's daughter.

  Did he dislike her because of Arundel, or was it that she dressed like a boy? Cheeks burning, Ember knotted the cloth, wondering what a normal woman, with nothing to hide, would say.

  "I hope it heals quickly—"

  The man nodded once and was off, striding up the steps as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, his rope of fish and squelkin bouncing against his broad, sweat-soaked back. Inky liquid splattered on the steps behind him.

  Ember rinsed her dagger, tucked it back into her boot, and nodded at another fisherman who approached the steps. He raised his hand and gave a grim smile.

  She stepped into her boat and rowed as fast as she could straight east.

  She passed under the immense walking bridge that spanned from the northeast tower to the southeast tower, cutting through one of its three round arches that smelled of fishy moss. Sunlight shimmered off the water and onto the stones as the oars dipped.

  Ember redirected the boat northeast, ignoring Arundel’s Blinding spells that warped the appearance of the lake, and focused instead on her own internal compass that had unfailingly led her to Gregory's over the years.

  She was sweating by the time she neared the small cliffs closest to Gregory's bungalow—or rather, his father's bungalow, which Gregory would inherit along with the horse-breeding business when his father died.

  This spot in the cliffs was the lowest on the lake, not an official entrance like the great staircase to the east. Here, the cliffs had crumbled and receded beneath massive pine and cedar trees, one of which had fallen and rested like a ladder along the rocky edge.

  Ember threw the boat's rope around the tree, knotted it securely, and scrambled up the log until she reached the dense pines at the top.

  She had made a habit of flying to the bungalow when she was younger, when she and Gregory were just friends. And before it mattered
that she showed up without clothes on—a rather annoying trait of shapeshifting that she had tried desperately to change. But no matter how much she tried, her mind could only alter her own flesh and bones, not any other material. Gregory hadn't minded her nudity last summer, but now she wasn't sure, and she couldn't take her chances shifting during the day.

  Ember broke out of the woods and onto green pastures. Acres of grass spread around a squat stone building and rows of stables. The tree-line lay to the north, where the Merewood Forest rose in gentle hills before reaching Arundel's smelter. Beyond the smelter and the forest clearings lay the rounded Orion Mountains, but Ember had no attention for them today.

  Near an opening of a stable paddock, she saw Gregory straddling a leggy mare. His back was rigid, poised, and his mare's ears perked back, waiting...

  His trainer, standing ten paces away, made a signal, and Gregory thrust his heals into the mare's flanks. In a flash they were flying toward the forest, the mare's white tail streaming behind her like a brilliant flag in the morning sun. Ember ran to the paddock, breathing in the smell of horse and dung as she watched Gregory. A thousand things filled her head—memories of playing chase with Gregory as a child, of grooming horses and mucking stables and doling out oats. She could recall the sweet smell of alfalfa, how the evening sun slanted through the stable doors and gilded horse hair and dust, and how they glimmered as they danced in a warm breeze.

  More than anything, she remembered last summer. Butterflies in her stomach, hay sticking to her sweaty skin, his face like sand against her.

  Horse also tried to fill her head. The scent of the lush grass was hard to ignore, and the sudden feeling of freedom as she ran, unbound by fences, with the wind gliding along her nape. She forced it all away, repressing the urge to run on all fours, to toss her head in the air and kick, to let her skin melt and her muscles flex into...

  No, she thought, it's Gregory I want. He was a distant point at the forest edge. He whirled the mare with finesse, and she bent her head toward the ground as she careened back.

  Ember reached the paddock fence and pulled herself up to the top rung. The trainer, Florence, had the copper skin and golden eyes of an Ekesian, with a wiry figure and an ugly patched beard. He had a foul temper, but today he was intent on the race, and his skinny, ringed fingers moved beads rhythmically on his counting-piece.

  Gregory flew. He leaned into the mare, crouching in the stirrups, his elbows pointing down and out for balance. Every jolt of the horse rocked his slim figure, but he moved into the jolt fluidly, as if he was a part of the horse and could not be separated from her.

  I want to be that horse.

  She dug her fingernails into the ridged wood of the fence. Gregory was close now, his brown curls pressed back from his wild eyes. He wore plain clothes, as he always did with the horses: a leather jerkin over a loose white shirt with rolled cuffs, brown trousers and leather riding boots that rose to mid-thigh.

  "Ember!" he called when he saw her. He ran full-tilt toward the fence and yanked the mare to a halt three paces in front of her. He grinned and patted the mare's neck with a muscled, tanned forearm.

  "You're mad," Ember said, grinning back.

  "Me? It's all Pigeon. Did you see us fly?" He whooped into the air and Pigeon rocked her head up and down, wet nostrils flaring. Gregory turned to the trainer. "Well, Flor, what do you think? Am I good enough to enter the contest this year?"

  Florence frowned at the nickname and tugged on a scraggly tuft of chin-hair. "The Red Morning?" He sniffed and looked hard at Gregory and his horse. "Yes. Thirty beads this time," he said with a thick Ekesian accent. "No winning. Not with that." He waved petulantly at the mare. "You need a stronger horse. Ride Brimestone."

  "Brimestone?" Gregory laughed. "He would kill me with his reckless temper. Besides, I would never take a stud to a race. I will take Pigeon. She is the lightest and fastest of them all, not to mention sane."

  "Of course. I forget you are Lachian, not Ekesian. I am finished here," Florence said. "We race again at sunrise." He threw a silky red sash over his shoulder with a bejeweled hand and trudged off toward the stables, clutching his counting-piece.

  "He thinks he's one of the best horse-masters, and yet I've never seen him ride," Gregory said, amused.

  "Perhaps it makes him uncomfortable to ride."

  Gregory grinned. "Perhaps. But I'm beginning to wonder if Ekesians feel anything other than pride."

  Ember snorted and nearly dropped the reins Gregory tossed to her. She stroked Pigeon's sweaty, milk-white neck as Gregory dismounted, and traced the irregular pattern of blue veins that stood out in soft ridges.

  "Will you really be entering the Red Morning this year?"

  The prestigious race lasted a night and a day, covering the long distance from Merewood to Kingsbury. Not all the contestants ended up in Kingsbury. Some would be found half-way or only an hour from the start. Others would simply never be found.

  "You heard Flor. I'll be sending in a dove today to let them know. The race starts tomorrow evening, but there's no such thing as being too late to enter, if you give them enough coin."

  "Tomorrow?" Ember forced a smile and clasped the reins. "You must be really excited. I'm happy for you, Gregory."

  "You will be there, won't you?" He fell into step beside her. Pigeon's head bobbed between them as they walked toward the stables.

  "I wouldn't miss it," said Ember. "I know how long you've been preparing."

  "My whole life," Gregory said, nodding. "I've never felt more ready." His excitement simmered down as he looked at the ground. "How was the Academy, anyways?"

  "Same as usual. Dull, tedious, and I nearly failed my practical." Ember hesitated. She wanted to tell him about the cage in front of Arundel's study, how she suspected that Fletch knew she was a shifter. "I found a book," she said instead. "Arundel isn't my father."

  Gregory stopped short and stared over Pigeon's smooth nose. "The book told you he's not your father?"

  "No. The book told me that shifters get their abilities from their parents. My mother is not a shifter. Neither is Arundel." Ember had spent enough time spying on them to know they were nothing more than wizards.

  "And you think the book is right?"

  "It's the only explanation that makes sense to me."

  "The wife of Arundel, the man who slew hundreds of shifters, sleeping with a shifter. An act that is not only forbidden but that completely revolts most of society. Makes perfect sense."

  Ember swatted him on the shoulder. "If it was that revolting, you wouldn't have done it."

  Gregory gave a half-smile and shook his head, leading Pigeon into the stable corridor and tethering her in a grooming stall.

  "But it makes sense, doesn't it?" Ember went on as Gregory picked up a hoof-pick. "Arundel and I have never had anything in common. You know who I am and what he does to people like me."

  "You aren't completely different from him, Ember. What about your love of weapons?" He leaned on Pigeon's side, and the mare willingly offered him a hoof.

  "I don't love weapons," Ember replied, grabbing a curry comb. "You know the only reason I have anything to do with weapons is for my own protection."

  She could feel his glance as she rubbed Pigeon down.

  He finished cleaning the last of Pigeon's hooves and helped Ember brush Pigeon's shoulders. "Do you have any idea who your real father is?"

  "Not the slightest. There aren't any shifters left in Merewood, remember?"

  "As far as you know."

  A billow of horse hair and dust rose between them.

  "I'm watching and listening for them all the time. Don't you think I would've heard by now if someone was like me?"

  Gregory shrugged. "There's always a chance you missed something. Or that the shifter is in hiding. Maybe he's a cook in Lord Arundel's kitchen, or a groom in his stables. It's just like with the book. You've been reading them practically your whole life, and just now you find one with information about shi
fters. Where did you find the thing, anyways?"

  "Tucked away in a corner at Silverglen. It was an old dusty tome."

  Gregory took the grooming comb from her and tossed it in a bucket. "You're being carefully ambiguous. What are you not telling me?" He raised his eyebrows at her as he untethered Pigeon.

  Ember sighed. "I found it in Arundel's study. It was open on his desk."

  Gregory paled. "You didn't shift there—"

  "I did, and I'm fine."

  "Ember... What if Arundel—"

  "He was gone from Silverglen last night. He's likely not even back yet."

  "And Fletch, was he gone?"

  "He's never gone. I made sure the study was empty first." And that I had an escape route. "I'm not afraid of him, anyways."

  "You should be," said Gregory. He gave Pigeon a tug toward her stall and locked her in. "He's Arundel's pet."

  Ember didn't want to think about Fletch anymore.

  "It seems like forever since I've seen you. You look older, like a seasoned horse-master."

  Gregory shook his head and sighed, giving up on the argument. "That wrinkly, huh? And here I thought I was aging well."

  You are, she wanted to say. Just looking at you makes my chest hurt. She laughed instead. "Have you been practicing with your throwing knives?"

  "Every day," he said, patting the thick belt on his leather jerkin where a small, metallic hilt poked out of a sheath on each hip. The pair had been Ember's gift to him before she left for the Academy last fall. "I'm still best with a quarterstaff, but I haven't had much of a chance to practice this winter, for lack of willing opponents."

  "If that is a challenge, I accept."

  "Excellent."

  He grabbed the two quarterstaffs that leaned against the wall with the brooms and pitchforks and hanging bridles.

  Ember rubbed the dust off of hers and hopped the fence into an empty paddock. Sweat prickled along her back as she strode out to the center of the grass. Gregory followed and stood a few feet from her, grinning and tossing his quarterstaff back and forth. His staff was as long as he was tall, which wasn't very long because he was nearly of a height with Ember. Her own staff went a few inches over her head, and it was hard and heavy in her hands.