Salvia: The Exile Chapter 10

Chapter 10 Salvia didn’t know what to do for the best. She’d found some earth and, maybe, if she grew something and kept the last of the Five Laws, she would erase the marks from her skin and be able to go home. But she had no seeds. She could leave the compound for a little while apparently – but the children had warned her against this. If she went outside she’d be marked for ever with a mask like the ones they wore. And, according to the children, the masks stopped you thinking clearly out there. So she could well forget why she was there and what she needed.
It was now three weeks since Salvia had found her bit of earth, and she was still no nearer knowing what to do. And Rowan was growing fast – beginning to walk, even – and what kind of a life would he have here? “Salvia, will you play with me please?” Robin asked. “Ash is painting, and the other three are outside, but I want to play Roku. Will you be the Roku, please?” “All right, I will,” Salvia said, laughing. “What do you want me to do first?”
“First, you be the Roku lying down, and I have to come and pull you up to your feet. Then you lean your head and hands on the wall and slowly you straighten up.” Salvia obligingly climbed into her sleeping bag, and looked up at Robin.
“Oh, my old bones, child. You’ll have to help me upright. I was so much younger once.”
And Robin’s warm little hands helped pull her to her feet. “Then you lean your head on the wall, and put your hands on it too, and slowly get taller – you have to be really bent and creaky first.”
Salvia moved to do as Robin said, enjoying acting the part. She was an old woman, willing strength back into her body. She rested her head and hands on the wall – and it felt as though a bolt of lightning had gone through her! Her knees buckled, and she fell to the floor.
“Salvia!” Robin cried, alarmed. Ash dropped his paintbrush and came rushing over.
“I’m all right,” Salvia said, getting shakily to her feet.
“Salvia, what happened?” What had happened indeed? Salvia was casting her mind back, desperately trying to remember what Rubia Peregrina had said about the theta-chamber in her house. Rubia hadn’t been talking to her – only to Sambucus – and Salvia had felt so drained by her time in there that she hadn’t been paying much attention. What had it been? Rubia had taken all her magic from her. And then she’d put her back into the theta-chamber for the night. What had she said?
“It won’t harm her now.” Well, that had been – and still was – true.
“And there’s no magic left in its walls for her to draw on.”
The theta-chamber had pulled her power out of her – and Rubia had taken it and used it to make herself young again. But what she had said surely implied that Salvia could have drawn on any power stored in the walls – even with her own magic gone. Very carefully, Salvia walked over to the wall again. Robin and Ash looked at each other nervously. This time Salvia was a lot more cautious. She touched the wall lightly with one hand, and reached out just a little with her mind. She could feel the theta-stone respond to her touch. The walls were almost humming with magic – not hers, of course, but someone’s. The first Roku? She stood for a long time, while the children shuffled anxiously from foot to foot behind her, then turned to face them. “It’s all right, and I’m all right. Don’t be frightened. Ash, when the first Roku leaned against the wall each day, did she look the same afterwards?”
Ash was so observant, had such a good eye for colour, that he was the only one of them who might have noticed.
Ash thought hard. “She went smoother,” he said. “And she was softer to kiss afterwards.”
So that was what the first Roku had been doing. Day after day, she’d been pulling her own strength back out of the walls – and day after day, growing just a little weaker. Salvia suspected that there must have been a tipping point – a time when the Roku didn’t have enough strength any more, and the theta-stone was taking more than she could reclaim. Because the Roku had left more than her strength in the walls. She’d left a message as well, pushing it into the stone with all of the power that remained in her. A desperate plea and an explanation of how to get out of the compound. And a warning, too.
The message that Salvia had read made her realise what she had to do. She held her little son close to her that night.
“I have to do this, Rowan. Take a good look at my face – try and remember it like this.” “I have to go out,” Salvia told them at the breakfast table. “But I think I’ve found a way to stop the mask affecting me for at least a little while. Long enough, I hope, for me to remember what I’m doing. We need some seeds though. I have to grow something to complete the Laws I broke. But how come they’ll let me out? How do they know I won’t just escape?”
“We’re on an island,” Willow said. “There’s nowhere for you to go. And with the mask on, everyone will know who you are.”
An island! Of course – that explained the faint smell of sea she’d sometimes thought she’d noticed. And it did explain why she could leave the compound – once she’d been marked out as belonging there.
“Don’t forget to change your clothes,” Ash said, soberly. Salvia changed back into her itchy grey clothes, and drew her hair back into the most unflattering style she could manage. Then she walked over to the wall, took a deep breath, placed her hands on it, and drew all the power that she could into herself. She was hoping that this would be enough to counter the effects of this mysterious mask, that she would be able to remember what it was she sought.
Having the mask put on her face was awful. The children said they’d been made to go to sleep when it was done to them, but the people who’d done it to her had left her awake. She walked out shaking, and with her head already beginning to cloud.
“Seeds. I need seeds.” Salvia tried to make this thought rock-hard in her head.
She looked back along the road to the compound – that was an island off an island! And huge boulders had been piled round it as a defence. Against the sea? Salvia thought not – they didn’t look like breakers. She trudged on, hoping to reach some greenery. Why? Why did she want to see greenery? Seeds! That was it. Nothing would grow here. She must find some seeds. She looked out across the bay, and wondered why the view looked familiar. She’d never been here before. And then, in the shade of two tall trees, Salvia saw a splash of colour. Tall spikes of flowers with what were plainly seedheads ripening at the base of the spikes. Carefully, she gathered a handful of seed, and went wearily back, her precious treasure in her hand. The next chance she had, she went into the maze again and planted her seeds and watered them well. Now all she could do was wait and see if they germinated. And if they didn’t – she’d have to go out again.
The children had been right: the effects of the mask had switched off immediately she entered the theta-stone compound. She’d carefully fed the rest of the power she’d drawn from the walls back into them, but the memories that the first Roku had put into the theta-stone, Salvia kept. She needed to consider them carefully. And then, finally, after several weeks of waiting, Salvia went back into the maze again. She left Rowan to toddle among the pathways by himself and headed to the very centre. And there, in the pot at the heart of the maze, green leaves had unfurled! Salvia was about to bend and touch the leaves, scarcely able to believe her eyes, when suddenly the marks on her body - and the bracelet on her wrist – blazed golden and a wave of heat swept over her. Then the heat died away, and Salvia was there in the heart of the maze, her skin smooth and unmarked. The children couldn’t believe it when they came home from school that day and saw Salvia again. And they seemed unhappy about it, which puzzled Salvia until Willow spoke up. “Does this mean you’ll be leaving us?”
“It means I can get all of us out of here,” Salvia said. But we only have one chance at it. Listen, all of you – this is what we’re going to have to do…” They only had one chance. As the gates opened in the morning, to let the children out to school, Salvia and Rowan went through with them, as they had done so many times before. The, hastily, they all slipped into the maze and raced to the centre of it. Salvia had drawn all the power she could from the stones of the building, and now she used it in the way the first Roku had shown her through her memories.
For a heart-stopping moment or two nothing happened. Then the theta-stone walls of the maze vanished and green hedges took their place. The theta-stone underfoot became living grass, and flowers and ivy covered the outer walls. Like tongues of blue flame, flowers sprang up all over the maze. But in the pot where Salvia had planted the seeds from the blue flowers, a plant with glowing golden fruit now grew. And beyond it, a gate, shining gold. Their way home. The gate led them out – almost immediately this time – to the little dell, the worn stone steps and the two trees that marked the Porta Mutantis. Almost instantly, the effects of the masks they were all wearing began to be felt. The children slowed and stood still and Salvia felt the clarity of her mind slipping away. She held fast to the tattered remnants of the first Roku’s power, still within her. She had to get herself and the children to Rubia’s house. Rubia and Sambucus were both surprised by the arrival of a masked young woman, carrying a small child and followed by five others, who could only stammer,
“The theta-chamber. Get me to it. And bring the children in to the house.”
She was plainly at the end of her tether. Was this Salvia? And was that his son, now in Rubia’s arms upstairs? Sambucus followed her down to the theta chamber, entering somewhat warily. He couldn’t stay there long. But once inside, the mask’s effects were cancelled out, again, almost instantly.
“Salvia? Is it you?” But he’d seen the bracelet on her wrist, recognised it despite its dark colour. “Yes.” As briefly as she could – for she knew the theta-stone would affect him – Salvia told him her story.
“Rowan is unhurt – in fact unaffected, and I don’t know why. But the children – and me – these masks affect us so. The theta-stone cancels it out, but we can’t all live down here – it’s too small. I don’t know what to do.”
“Then let’s hope Rubia does.” Sambucus’ face was grim and set with worry. Once again, Salvia was standing in a circle on the floor of Rubia’s workroom. But this time the flames around her feet were running in clear blues and greens.
“I know what this mask is, and I can break its power over you,” Rubia had said. “But I can’t remove it. If I give you your magic back, I can make the mask dormant – if I don’t, then I can make it dead, so that no-one can ever use it against you again. Which do you want?” For Salvia, the choice had been easy. She had managed without her magic in that compound, she could go on managing. And she wanted to be free of the power this mask had over her. As Rubia’s spell died away. Salvia felt her thinking return to normal, her mind run clear again. Once the flames had died away completely, Rubia came over to talk to Salvia some more. “I will do the same for the children as well, but it will take a few days. This isn’t an easy enchantment to lift. And then, Salvia, we have to find somewhere to hide you all. From what the first Roku told you, from what has happened to Sambucus’ family, it is obvious that there is something very wrong in our kingdom – and I do not know who we can trust. I do know somewhere though, where you will be safer than here – but it’s not going to be very comfortable, I’m afraid.” The journey to Rubia’s place of safety had been long, and mostly secret. Rubia had been very sure about it though.
“Once I saved these islanders from a great danger. They said that they would protect me or mine with all that was within them. Nothing and no-one will get near you here.”
The children had been a bit subdued by it all, and a bit fearful too. But now that they had arrived, Salvia’s worries for them had faded away. The place was a bit rough-and-ready, but Salvia thought it was wonderful – though they were going to have to build on to it if they were to eat inside in the winter! What had been the main room was now a very full bedroom! At the moment, they could eat outside, but when winter came, this far north, it was going to get a lot colder. Best of all, you could see the sea. After that long time shut up in the compound, Salvia felt she would never tire of the wide views before her. The children were free to run around, stretch their legs, fill their lungs with the fresh air, and they were adjusting fast to this new lifestyle. Sambucus had come with them, and was getting to know his son. They needed him: someone had to be able to go and buy supplies from the village across the water from time to time, but in any case, Salvia would never have denied him access to his son. Rowan had a father as well as a mother, and he needed to know then both. The children had new clothes again – soft deer-hide ones that Sambucus had traded for at various places along the way. The girls loved the freedom that not wearing long skirts gave them. Their current craze was skipping stones on the pond. Salvia and Sambucus spent a lot of time – when the children were out of earshot – going over what they both knew. “Tell me again, from the beginning, what you picked up from the first Roku,” Sambucus said one day. “Let’s see if we’ve missed anything.”
Salvia collected her thoughts and began from the beginning once again.
“The first thing I picked up was the urgent need to get the children out of there before they got too old. Something bad was going to happen to them when they got older, something the people of that world would do with them or to them. And although the place was like a prison, in part it was to keep the children safe until they got older – there were people in that world who wanted to do things to the children while they were still young, but the rules said you couldn’t while they were children.”
“Go on.”
“Then there was something about our world: someone here wants to collect more power for themselves than any one person should hold. And somehow the Roku had stumbled onto the plot accidentally – and to escape, she’d leapt through an open portal and ended up there with the children – when they were only babies.” Sambucus listened and fitted together what Salvia knew with what he and Rubia knew. Someone had, he thought, tried to make sure that there would be no heir for the Shield of Alfwyn. He was more than ever convinced that the spate of deaths that had plagued his family was no coincidence.
Salvia still wore the Shield of Alfwyn – it wouldn’t unclasp from her wrist. And this meant that she was still in danger too – or at least, still threatened. Which reminded him of something.
“You know why the theta-stone didn’t affect Rowan, didn’t draw his magic out of him? It was because you were wearing the Shield of Alfwyn all through your pregnancy. It protected him too – and I don’t suppose he was ever far from you after he was born either.” “So what do we do next? We have Rowan safe here – and we have to look after those children. They have no-one else except us. And I promised them I wouldn’t leave them.” “And I won’t leave them either. Together, Salvia – will you do this with me? Will you let me help? I know you are so capable, but this might be easier with two.” Salvia thought about it. Yes, this man was her husband, and the father of her child, but they hadn’t married for love. So why had they married? And the answer came back to her very clearly. They had married to try and avert a great danger that was threatening their land. Someone, somewhere, was trying to upset the balance of powers, trying to damage and wreck things. That was worth fighting against – and in a fight you needed all the allies you could get. “Yes,” Salvia said. “Together we’ll make more of a difference that we would apart. For the sake of these children, for the sake of our son, and for the sake of our land, let’s see what we can do together.”