With Good Intent

There was a little dirt on her dress and her face, and her panties were wet. She needed to clean up before her father and Varrin returned. Céde quickly chose some clean clothes and went to the wash room. Her skin was still tingling from the release of power, and the rough texture of the warm linen washcloth passing over her erect nipples caused her to gasp. She closed her eyes and imagined big, callused hands in place of the cloth. She rubbed and squeezed, pinched and pulled, until her rapid breathing caught on a moan. Céde needed more, and slid the cloth (his hand) down her belly and over her hip then down the inside of her thigh. With her fingers (his fingers), she opened her outer folds and moaned again when she touched her engorged clitoris. She brought the cloth (his strong and rugged hand) against the tender and wanting place. In her mind, Jorak's long, thick fingers pressed and stirred until her knees shook. She lay down on the floor of the washroom and worked her clitoris with the cloth, and it was not long before the pressure released.

An involuntary cry left her throat as she climaxed. Lying on the cool floor and panting, Céde listened for several minutes to the sounds in the house, praying that no one had been home to hear her. As far as her ears could tell, there was no one there but her. She breathed deeply as she came down from her orgasm, then she stood up to finish putting herself together. Sometimes, in the dark of night, she would lay awake and think of Jorak. Such thoughts would often lead her to touch herself, however it had never felt as good to her as it did just then, and she wondered if the power had anything to do with it. Céde had no idea what that was all about, but in the aftermath, the residual energy seemed to dissipate. She felt calmer, able to think more clearly about what happened and what she could do about it.

Never had she possessed the ability to cause the kind of damage she had done that day. What scared her the most was that, on some strange level, she liked it. It was terrible and beautiful, all at once. Part of her hoped it would happen again, while the sensible part of her prayed that it was some weird fluke she would never see again. As she got dressed, Céde wondered how she was ever going to explain any of it to her father. This was not a change she thought her Papa could handle, and she decided for the moment not to tell him. She thought that perhaps it would be best to handle it on her own. For one thing, if she told him, he would not let her out of the house again. For another, she just knew it would make the worry in his eyes even worse.

That night, Céde and Gavriel sat together at dinner, while Varrin had excused himself on some vague errand. Typically, they would talk to each other, engaging in lively conversation about the day they had had. On that night though, a silence hung heavy over them both. For a long time, the two of them just pushed food around on their plates, occasionally sneaking glances at each other, but neither speaking.

Finally, Gavriel cleared his throat and asked, "So, Céde, tell me about your day." He kept his voice carefully controlled, but his eyes were deeply troubled.

Céde did not look at him. Instead, she said to her plate, "Fine."

"'Fine'. Is that all you have to say?" When Céde only shrugged in reply, his eyes narrowed and his voice took an edge. "So you found your tree then, did you? Well, let's see it." His voice lowered to a dangerous tone. "Show me the tree you drew today, Mercédeon."

There was that use of her full name instead of Céde. He was clearly angry with her, which meant that he somehow knew something, but she wondered how much. She thought it best to play dumb until she could find out. He wanted to see her tree, but she had dropped her sketchbook when the kobolds attacked her. She flicked a glance at him, but it was too hard to meet his eyes as she devised her falsehood. "Um, I left my sketchbook in my room. It, it's not finished anyway. I, um..."

Gavriel took Céde's sketchbook off his lap, where it had been hidden by the table, and set it down with a snap. She looked first at the book, only a few water spots on the cover, but otherwise undamaged. Then she looked at her father's face. His head was cocked to one side, his eyes narrowed to slits, his mouth a hard straight line. She knew he was not only angry, but now hurt by her attempted lie. She searched his face, looking for some way that she could still salvage the conversation. Céde decided it would be best to just stop talking.

The anger and pain in her Papa's voice made her heart ache. "How long did you think you would lie to me? You deliberately disobeyed me this morning. You broke your promise to me. Now you sit here and attempt to lie. You have no idea how much you've hurt me today." Céde lowered her face and would have said something by way of apology, but Gavriel snatched the sketchbook from the table. With a booming voice and contrived smile, he bellowed, "Shall we look at your damnable tree then?"

"What? What are you...?"

He slammed the book open, roughly rifling through the pages until he came to the last entries. "Is this it then?" He made a face of disgust, "This...thing is supposed to be a tree?"

She could not believe what he was doing. He had always been proud of her talents and had never insulted her work before. Céde's shock began to dissolve into anger. For the second time that day, her heart started to pound, and her skin grew hot. She was tingling all over, and her hands involuntarily clenched into white-knuckled fists. Without realizing it, she rose to her feet, and Gavriel rose with her.

He was watching her carefully, but still he continued his berating. "All your trouble, for this? This is shit, Céde. Why did you even bother? A dog could draw a better tree!"

Wisps of Céde's hair lashed at her livid face, in a hot wind that spun in a widening vortex around her. She started panting as power rushed outwards from the center of her being. The power screamed a rage in her head. It pounded on the inside of her skull, demanding release, but she did not want to hurt her Papa. She clenched tight her trembling fists, trying to control a thing she could not comprehend. "Stop it!" she cried, but her voice was strange to her, as if the power tried to speak through her.

Then all Hells broke loose, as plates, cups and flatware flew from the table to spin through the air and crash against the walls. Food and wine were flung out and spun around and around in the maelstrom. The fire leapt high in the hearth, while even the chairs skittered and clattered across the floor. Again, Céde screamed, "Stop it!" She was not screaming at her Papa. She screamed, instead, at the power raging forth from inside her.

Gavriel ducked a flying plate as he got closer to Céde in the relatively safe epicenter of the dining-room storm. She felt her father's arms close around her. The voice that spoke in her ear was no longer mocking, but tender and full of love. "It's all right, now. Céde, let go of it. Just let it fall away."

Something made the power slowly fade; either the warmth and calm in his voice, or maybe just her own exhaustion. In its absence, Céde could only shake and cry. She collapsed in her father's arms, and she let him help her back into a chair. Kneeling in front of her, Gavriel took both of her shaking hands in his. "I had to see the truth of this myself. Gods, Céde. I could have lost you today." He kissed her fingers and smiled softly. "I forgive you for lying. Now, do you forgive me?"

In a weak, trembling voice she said, "No, you were an ass!" But she had already forgiven him, for he made it stop. She was still a pathetic, weepy mess, trying to wipe away tears that just kept coming. "Do you really hate my tree?"

Gavriel laughed, then kissed his daughter's head. "It's beautiful, sweet Céde. Just beautiful."

Inside the shadow of the small kitchen doorway, Varrin silently slid the long, blackened dagger back into its sheath. The complete lack of thought that it had taken to pull the blade made him wince. He tried, without success, to unclench his gut. Gavriel was not only his employer, but was also his life-long friend. He would do whatever he had to do for Gavriel's protection, even lose his only friend for taking a blade to his daughter. The power she displayed was not normal mage-craft. It was sorcery, and it was out of control. Céde could have killed Gavriel. Still, Varrin loved her as if she were flesh of his flesh, and he was sickened by his own soul.

Varrin waited patiently in the shadows, as father and daughter gathered up their mess. As they began carrying it all back into the kitchen, he made a show of having just returned from wherever he was supposed to have gone. He said nothing of the mess as he stood at the basin, helping Céde wash the salvageable dishes. Though Varrin spoke very little, Céde was never one to tolerate silence.

"Uncle, you'll never guess what's happened..." He half-listened as she told her story from the beginning. As their stack of clean dishes grew, her words slowed, faded, and stopped all together. He looked at her and found her staring intently at him, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowed. He met her gaze calmly, as she pieced it together. "Uncle, you're not listening. And you're not listening because you know. You already know, because you followed me. You were spying on me!"

Her eyes narrowed further and her voice had risen to a volume surpassing shrill. When she paused, he shrugged and rasped in his infuriatingly calm tone, "You left town after you were told not to. Now you've seen why you were told. By the way, you're welcome." Varrin's version of a grin might frighten others, but it often won Céde's heart to behold the rare sight. Though she was not quite yet having it.

"'Welcome', for what? I rescued myself!"

"I rescued your book." He winked at her, another disturbing gesture in such a dark and twisted face, but he was family. He turned from her then and tossing one towel at her, Varrin grabbed another and began to dry the dishes. Céde wanted to stay mad at him. She wanted to reach out with her power and throw the dishes at him, but he was just being Uncle. It was like having two Papa's, one or both of them always looking over her shoulder. She thought of the kobolds, and knew there were more than the ones she saw. Besides, he had saved her book. She dried and stacked in silence, but she had decided to forgive Uncle.

While his daughter and his friend washed the remaining dishes, Gavriel sat in his chair by the cook stove and smoked his pipe. He watched the embers in the stove and tried to think of what to do. His daughter, he feared, was in danger from so much more than some tiny kobold raiding party, for Mercédeon's power was not a normal Aptitude for magic.

The magically inclined show an Aptitude in early childhood. These are not sorcerers, but mages: those who have an ability to understand the workings of runes and spells. During market season, the Scepters would come from the Spire, to test the children with puzzles of increasing difficulty. Children who could solve a majority of the puzzles were tested further. They were given minor spells to cast: light a candle, make a pebble glow, levitate a stick, or some other small thing. If the children could cast these spells with any success at all, they were said to have true Aptitude. Then the Scepters took them back to the Spire, a towering castle in the White Range Mountains northeast of Ardyth'tol, where the children who displayed an Aptitude for mage-craft were trained to use it.

Mercédeon was an adult among the myn'nim and still a child among ylf'nim, but she was well beyond her early childhood years. Her power came not from runes and the magical combinations of components, but was channeled through her from the very planet, the Goddess Velith herself. This power was wild, unfettered and unchecked by the civilized restraints of runes, words, and spells. Dangerous and destructive, without proper instruction and discipline, the power would completely overwhelm Céde's sense of self. Gavriel knew he would not be able to handle this alone. She needed someone who could teach her, but there had been no sorcerers on Velith for thousands of years. He was not even sure that the Scepters would know what to do with Mercédeon.

His thoughts ran in terrible circles, and he could think of no one else to help them, but the Scepters. Travel to the Spire meant travel through the forests of Ardyth'tol, roads that were closed to Gavriel twenty years ago. He considered what would happen if Céde's unchecked power went off every time her emotions got the better of her, and at her age, that was pretty much all the time. Could he wait another two months for market season when the Scepters would come to Silver Crossing? Gavriel shuddered at the visions of mass destruction playing behind his eyes.

As Céde retired for the night, Varrin sat across from his friend and gave voice to what was in Gavriel's head. "Going to be a right mess around here soon."

"We've got a right mess already." He flicked a brief glance toward the dining room. "She'll have Lelliahn's journal. It should help. I hope."

Céde's mother, Lelliahn had been a Spire-trained mage. Gavriel thought there might be something in her journal that could help Céde. He knew that passing on his wife's journal was only grasping at straws, but at least he would be doing something. It was time to open old wounds, and to open Lelliahn's old trunk that he kept stored in the attic.

"Gavriel, the girl's going to need a place to work these things out. A backwater, myn'nim mining town is not that place. She needs to go to the Spire. The Scepters there'll teach her what to do with herself."

"All of Ardyth'tol lies between Silver Crossing and the Spire of White Range. I cannot take her there. I am in exile."

"Technically, I'm not."

"But Céde loves her work at the jeweler's shop. She has friends here..."

"You really think her friends are going to relate to what she's going through? And what if she upsets the shop? What happens to her job then? You know full well she should go to the Spire. She'll get new work, new friends."

"Like myself, Mercédeon has a claim to the ylf'nim throne. If those people find out who she is, she could be in serious danger. Not to mention the beasts on the White Range pass through to the Spire."

"All the more reason for me to take her there. Scepters won't get here for another two months. If you want to wait for them to take her, how much damage could be done in that time; damage to this town, to her?"

Gavriel stared back at the embers of the dying cook fire. After a time, he said, "For now, help me bring Lelliahn's trunk down from the attic. We'll talk of this again tomorrow."

Varrin very quietly asked, "Have you considered what this means for Velith? There's been no sorcery for thousands of years. Not since the Lord of Hordes tried to take this planet. Not since the Sorcerers' Sundering killed all of them off and nearly killed Velith itself in banishing the demon lord. I've spent years hunting down demon minions and their descendants left over from the Horde Wars. I don't want to meet their leader. This may herald the return of the Lord of Hordes, Gavriel."

When her Papa and Uncle Varrin grew quiet, Mercédeon stopped eavesdropping and went up the stairs, skipping the third stair that always croaked like a frog. She was looking forward to seeing Lelliahn's things and getting to know the mother she never met. She hardly knew anything about demons or demon hordes, nor did she want to. The ancient histories regarding the Sundering and Lord of Hordes was vague at best. Céde was not even sure she believed in much of it. It could not possibly have anything to do with her, and she was simply not going to think about. This business about a journey to the Spire disturbed her.

Her life was in Silver Crossing. The jewelry smith, Master Forsmythe was elderly and cranky, he needed Céde. She was quite sure he would never be able to manage the shop without her. Then there was her best friend, Adelle, who was recently engaged to the mining foreman, Master Geoffrey. Céde wrinkled her nose at a match she found distasteful. Adelle was three years younger than Céde, but of marriageable age to humans. In Céde's opinion, Adelle was much too young and, at twenty-seven, the foreman was much too old for her. However, if marrying the mining foreman made Adelle happy, then Céde should be there for her friend.

Of everyone she knew in town, she thought she would miss Jorak the most. She liked how his thick black curls grew half way down his back like a mane. She liked the red glint in his dark eyes when he smiled at her. She even liked the tusks that grew from his strong lower jaw and stood out over his upper lip. Sometimes, he took off his shirt and used it to wipe his brow, and she liked to watch his muscles move beneath his deeply tanned skin. She even liked the way he smelled of heat and sweat, and something else that she could not quite place. She especially liked the way her insides felt all churned up when she looked at him, or even when she thought of him. Her father did not like the way Jorak smelled or the way he looked, but he did business with the half-orc as civilly as he did everyone else in Silver Crossing. Céde did not like the way Uncle Varrin's eyes narrowed when he saw her talking with him, as if he did not trust her, or maybe he did not trust Jorak.

Jorak's shoulders and back were crisscrossed with lines, scars he received from wherever the blacksmith took him from. He was only an adolescent boy when Agnar brought him to Silver Crossing. No one wanted to cross the blacksmith, so no one dared tell him he could not raise the half-orc boy or teach him a trade. Céde could only imagine that those scars came from cruel beatings, and that was something she certainly did not like. She was sure she would have the courage to ask him about it one day.

If she was going to have to go to the Spire, she would not be able to be there for Master Forsmythe, for Adelle's wedding, or to ask Jorak about his scars. It made her sad, but maybe if she could keep her power contained, her Papa might wait until the Scepters come, or maybe he would not send her at all. She did not think she could go to sleep. There was too much to think about, but as soon as Céde laid her head on the pillow, her eyes closed and did not open again until morning.

* * * * *

The tunnels rang with the sounds of hammers and picks clanging against stubborn stone, the scrape of shovels through rocky dirt, the grunts and occasional jibes from men at their work. Then a cry - "Oi! Looks like we got Hellstone!" - and the noise became an abrupt silence.

The small group of men that were working the same section of tunnels gathered around Mick, who stood directly under the lantern light holding up a piece of dark rock. It was not the shining silver or galena that they were looking for, but the black stone with dark green striations meant a heavy return of coin, provided they had found a good vein of the rare ore. The men murmured amongst themselves about the possibilities, already debating on whether they would see a raise in their wages. One of them called down the hole for the Nipper. When the boy appeared, they sent him up after Foreman Geoffrey.

From the spot where Mick had been working, Anders called out, "Well, what the Hells is this, now?"

Mick put the rock in his pocket, then he and the others joined their colleague. Anders brought a lantern close to the wall and illuminated the space that Mick had opened up. Behind what appeared to be natural rock, with promising traces of Hellstone ore, there was a peek of smooth faced dark stone. The stone was carved with runes similar to those the mages marked on their buildings to protect the town from the wilds. Though the wards were not familiar to the men, they knew mage-craft when they saw it. Mick's eyes widened with a superstitious fear, and he backed away from the space. "We should leave that alone. It don't feel right." He even went so far as to take the rock from his pocket and drop it on the ground.