Page 67 of Earthbound

Afa screwed up his features. ‘Words have more power than you can ever imagine. They hold purpose; every single word in a spell has to be considered.

‘See this flower,’ he pointed to the plant he had made bloom. ‘It wilts, for it was too early for it to bloom. I had asked it to open its petals but I lacked due care with my words and now the flower will perish–that is the sacrifice I have wrought. That is the balance and care you must have in order to wield the greatest power in this world.’

‘A language imbued with magic must be dangerous to use in basic conversation,’ Lettle said.

He winced as though she had pricked a memory.

‘Yes, it hadn’t been in circulation for many millennia before I was born. Besides, one thing you should know about the humans: we were content with the world our god had blessed us with. We farmed and traded and largely stayed out of the politics that drew in the elves and fae. We had no government, only small hamlets who governed themselves. And that was not enough for me.’

The resentment towards his own people made Afa’s mouth twist with bitterness.

‘You see, I had discovered in my time with the elves that they were sacrificing magical beings in order to speak to the Fates. And the fae, the fraedia crystal they used to grow their crops and warm their houses, was not a gift from their god.’

Afa turned to Lettle.

‘How do you think these magical things came to be?’

He waited for her to answer, his eyes alight now with the crux of his tale.

‘Human magic?’

‘Precisely! They had taken what was ours and enhanced their own societies, while the humans were content in their ignorance. So,’ he smiled, his teeth glinting in the orange light. ‘I started to steal it back. It took me many years, and in that time I had gathered a following of other students–not all humans–who saw the righteousness in my task.

‘They called me Emperor, and I united the mountain range under my rule. I reintroduced the human language among my most trusted advisors, for it was a precious thing to mould the world beneath your fingertips with just one word. We called ourselves sorcerers.’

Afa laughed abruptly, making Lettle jump. ‘Trust, I had once thought an incorporeal thing, but I believe now that it is glass, and once it shatters, it is impossible to mend.’

‘…without trust we cannot live for each other.’ His words stirred up Rayan’s voice from her memories. She felt a tug in her heart, and Ajax nuzzled her hand. Afa didn’t seem to notice.

‘Forgive me, I jump ahead. I continued my studies, but this time I did not enter the universities as a willing student. I went as a reaper, to harvest all I could, leaving their shelves barren. I stole back the magic that was mine.’

‘The books,’ Lettle murmured. ‘These are those books.’

She looked at them with newfound appreciation. Some must have been thousands of years old.

‘Yes, everything that was ever written in the human language exists in this cavern.’

‘How have they survived this long?’

‘They are bound in the leather of magical beings. Even in my time there were few left. Wyvern and efrit existed only in books. Though star gliders and haba were still very common. Oh, and obeah, of course.’

Curious, star gliders and haba are both creatures only found in Mosima.

‘Have you read every book in here?’

‘Many, many times.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Though back then I only had a tenth of this collection. I shared my knowledge with my cadre so we were not defenceless. We wielded magic unmatched.’

Lettle shivered. His words echoed with a prophecy once told to her by Shaman Imna: You will wield magic unmatched, speak prophecies unspoken. You will be the leader we seek, and the leader we are due.

Afa thought she shivered with fear, and he nodded at her, leaning in as though to frighten her further. ‘We each had our strengths. Guso could call on the trees to twist and pull at your skin. Cevar could make it rain ice daggers with a few words. Bish could turn metal molten in your hands, so no swords could stop us. Each spell of course required sacrifice, but we were all willing to pay it for the cause–even Guso, whose thigh bone shattered through his skin every time he spelled.’

Lettle swallowed the bile that burned up her throat. Afa seemed unaffected by the tale.

‘What was your strength?’

‘H-Hady,’ he stumbled on her name, ‘and I, we specialised in one thing–bindings.’

‘What does that mean?’