Forest Magic

Samara sat on an ornate stool besides the bed where the prince of all forests lay, studying his features as if to imprint them permanently to her mind. She could scarcely believe he was here, that she was free again. Her heart filled with joy and an unbearable love as she traced the wide intelligent brow with its fine dark eyebrows. He had the longest eyelashes she had ever seen, a fine aquiline nose, strong jaw and sculptured full lips.

As her gaze caressed their softness, she wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. Silken pleasure, she imagined, his strength coming through but not overpowering her. He was masculine in a way she had never seen in a male, beautiful perfection that should have been effeminate but wasn't. She wanted to caress every inch of his face, to feel the softness of his skin, its deep-bronzed heat seeping into her body as she held him close to her. She needed to experience the bliss of his touch in ways no other had touched her.

She blushed slightly at that, averting her eyes from the temptation of his form but could not resist gazing back upon him. Her eyes settled on his super fine, baby soft raven hair wishing she had the courage to run her hands through it. It was an impulse she found hard to resist, an impulse that took all the discipline of her upbringing to resist.

In all her life she had never seen a Mushtran, nor had anyone in living memory done so and now here he was her intended. She should be scared by the prospect as Mushtrans were rumored to be savages. Though truthfully there was nothing remotely savage about him. He was elegant with perfect features that denoted culture, features that could only be a result of centuries of good breeding. If the rest of his race was anything like him it would explain why her race had driven theirs away. She could not imagine the men of her race tolerating such competition for their women.

An enchanting smile touched her lips as she wondered at her fate. Her face had always been considered enchanting but she had been cursed with a short stocky body that had always been in the males of their bloodline. The women were always short and dainty and she had been the one exception. The instant she had been transformed into her tree though she had found herself tall and slender, like all the legends depicted a princess.

To say she had been shocked would be an understatement, the long limbs had felt ungainly, the unexpected height had made her dizzy that she had actually fallen. Her two companions and their suitors who had been imprisoned with her had also been shocked wondering at a curse that could turn her into a graceful being. Once she had become used to her height a new worry had gripped her, whether she would still look as she did or be as stocky as she had been before. When she had looked into his eyes that fear had melted away.

She could still remember the shock on her parents' faces when they had first seen her. Her mother had cried something the queen of Quagari seldomly did and never in public, her father had seemed even more fierce, pride shinning in his eyes. As long as she lived Samara would always remember that moment.

"Darling you should be resting." Her mother said as she walked into the room.

As always the queen of Quagari looked the epitome of style, her posture perfect, back straight, arms held elegantly by her side without the awkwardness some had when they stood still. Not a hair was out of place her beauty captivating as it shone more from her serene eyes. Samara had always wished she had that poise, that beauty that went beyond mere looks but she had merely been Samara.

"I am not at all tired" she replied with a smile.

The queen frowned at the besotted look on her daughter's face. She recalled how uncomfortable the young man had been at the idea of marrying her daughter. Whilst she was grateful to the young man for freeing them she could not help be resentful he did not want her daughter. Samara was her only child, her pride, that anyone could dismiss her without much thought was galling. Logically she could understood it was not her daughter the young prince objected to just the situation but as a mother any slight to her child was not something she could fathom or tolerate.

Her daughter was exquisite having matured in the two years of her imprisonment gaining more height than any in her family ever had. Gone were the freckles that had graced the bridge of her nose and the chubbiness she had retained from her childhood. Now a princess sat before her, tall, composed with all the self-possession one would expect of her. Her skin was flawless, her comportment impeccable and her features striking. What man would refuse her hand? Especially when a crown came with it.

"Samara, we have not seen you for two years, we would all like to spend some time with you."

"Forgive me mother, I had not considered that." She stood and made her way to the door where her mother stopping for an instant to gaze back at the sleeping form lying so still. She did not want to leave but her mother was right, they had been separated for long and they all needed to reconnect. Enfolding her mother in her arms she closed her eyes to savour holding her mother again. Until that moment she had not realized how much she had missed such a small thing. "I missed you mother."

"I missed you too love. Come let us go scrounge up a meal."

*

Her father looked just as he had the last time she had seen him, his dark hair unmarred by any silver, his face still unlined. The gravity in his eyes was more pronounced the only sign of the toil the last two years had taken on him. His grave face lightened and a smile split his face when he saw her. He held his arms out to her and as she had done as a child she raced into them. Tears flowed down her cheeks as her father's strong arms wrapped around her.

"My Angel." Her father whispered into her hair his voice full of emotion. "I missed you."

"I missed you too father." She whispered back.

He stepped back to look at her, his eyes sheened with tears that would never fall nor be remembered a smile full of pride gracing his face. King Hiram was a man of small physical structure but he had always loomed taller in Samara's eyes even as he surely did in the eyes of most of his subjects. At the moment even though she now stood taller than him he still seemed larger than life.

Samara felt overwhelmed, emotions she could not name flooding her that all she could do was smile and cry and laugh. The others looked on with happy smiles, content for the moment that all was well. The troubles of the days would reassert themselves another time, this moment was precious. This moment was unequaled joy.

* * * * *

Waking up at first Ferik could not figure out where he was. The room he found himself in was spacious and luxuriously proportioned. Richly decorated with cream and gold velvets and silks which contrasted beautifully with the white and gold walls and grey tinted windows gave the impression of having the forest near enough to touch. Of the four walls, two were made entirely of glass; the third held a large sliding door leading to a large balcony and the fourth connected to the rest of the house. Covering the breadth of the palace it had a high ceiling painted with a forest canopy chock full of exotic birds.

Ferik still had no idea where he was, he had not been introduced to any of the people he had met though he recalled the Daelen master naming the royal house he was now a guest of. As he had then talked about him marrying their princess Ferik had forgotten most of what he had heard beyond that.

The princess! He did not want to think about her, let alone marriage. By Mushtran standards he was too young to even contemplate such a thing, although his mother had told his by the standards of the land people he was now a man. To marry a non-Mushtran besides who had obligations outside of Mushtra was unthinkable, obligations he was expected to fully shoulder. Living outside of Mushtra would be a protracted torture the thought of which made his blood run colder and his skin clammy.

Yet he could not ignore the surreal magic that had entranced him when he had first held the violet eyes of the ashen princess nor the explosion of power when their hands had touched. He remembered thinking himself in love, but what did he know about love? With the exception of his father's experience love developed gradually between people destined to be for Mustrans. It was rare that people not meant to be had fallen in love and the few that had defied tradition to be together had shamed themselves by ending up separated and marrying the ones meant for them in the first place. Much as it pained him he would have to ignore whatever it was that he felt for the princess and discourage any feelings on her part, it would not do to hurt her and loving him would end in pain for her.

As the foresthym his life would be extended far beyond that of an ordinary Mushtran and the princess would be aged in five decades, it was impossible. The question now remained, how would he tell his hosts he could not marry their daughter? The proud king would be insulted, they were offering him a throne, the fact that it was already his by reasons far beyond birth notwithstanding, they knew nothing about that. As soon as he was well enough he would leave, even if it meant going back to the desert.

Satisfied he settled himself more comfortably against the pillows and closed his eyes. Immediately the darkness that had haunted him since his collapsed drew him back into it. He had struggled long and hard to escape it but on waking up the memory of it had been lost, how that could be he did not understand.

His birth mother beckoned to him, begging him to rescue her. She had died giving birth to him, something that had never happened in Mushtra. Had it not been for the love of Adyka Fellnermate Ferik would have been destroyed by that fact. His father's second wife had taken him under wings and done everything to mitigate the stigma of his birth. Still even now the pain and misery of it battered at him. He ran towards her with guilt knowing at him as he tried in vain to reach her. He could not tell what assaulted her but her voice reached out to him, growing fainter until it was just an impression upon the dark wind that buffeted him.

On legs like lead, unable to breathe in the dark nauseating he struggled to find her only to hear a tantalizingly near voice that would disappear on the wind. Once he even saw her face, fragile and exquisite as her effigy had portrayed as he had seen it at the center of the shrine her grieving parents had built for her. He tried to run to her but his legs grew heavy, mired in quicksand in which he was sinking.

"I love you son," echoed about him "... hold you... once."

Tears filled his eyes as he struggled in vain, clutching at the stinking rot within the sand he yearned to be held by her, something she had never done as she had died a breath after he had left her body. He struggled even more as her voice reached inside his head full of so much love the words unintelligible, he bent his mind to hearing her and felt hers brush against his. As that love transfused his being he stopped struggling and accepting it, never had he felt such mother love, something so perfect and pure. The stinking rot banished, instead of the scratchy embrace of sand, love cocooned him.

A hand touched his forehead, cool and loving but in a different way, he frowned wondering who it could belong to, there was something familiar in the touch but he could not recall it. Curious he focused more on that touch even as he tenuously gripped his mother's mind.

"He is so hot master Galmishrak." A soft beautiful voice reached him and he wondered at the worry in it.

"He took in some of the spell's darkness in freeing us," a male voice replied on a sigh. "I do not know how else he could have done it but now he is in a dark thrall and I cannot help him, this is beyond my arts, he is going to have to free himself."

Dark thrall? Were they talking about him? He was not benighted; his mother had already rescued him as he was going to save her. Her voice echoed his thoughts driving away the other two; the hand was no longer on his brow, so that love became eclipsed by his mother's and he embraced her. She entwined her mind with his, claiming the son she had loved enough to die for, infusing him with love so that they would be together forever. Nothing mattered except her and her adoring, beguiling voice that bloated out all he had ever thought and cared. He adored her; the mother fate had taken away from him. She was the center of his being, the lodestone he would now and forever gravitate about.

A flash lightning fast dazzled his eyes, sluggishly he became aware that he was floating in nothing, grey light dreary like a misty morning surrounded him. A sword, he concluded as another flash shone to his right. A dark heaving tentacle about an inch thick writhed on a severed end and he stupidly wondered at it too numb to be horrified at its ghastly nature. He became a bit more lucid and saw that more tentacles reached out from the misty distance and into his head. The voice still beguiled him so he was incapable of more than simple thought. He thought the sword pretty as it repeatedly flashed about him and his eyes stupidly sought it trying to guess where it would next appear. Even as the tentacles no longer held him, he was still somewhat mindless. He noted absently, almost listlessly that the voice of his mother, which had been beautiful, now had an iron under tone that was rather unpleasant.

"Ferik!" the new voice was command personified; he knew that voice though it had never held such absolute authority. It was the voice he had always listened to, a voice that had guided him all his life, the first he had ever been conscious of hearing and he had betrayed it. With a wrenching of his mind, strengthened by the new voice, he thrust aside the ache his mother's voice had become.

Had it really been Valkira calling to him or something else? Had he really thought of her as his mother? He knew from what others said and Elgion's memories that she had been so selfish and self-centered unable to love another and begrudging her older son his father's love. She had hated being with child a second time and sought knowledge on how to undo it, an art the Mushtrans abhorred and had never aspired to know. How could he have believed she loved him? How could he betray the gentle, and yes, pure love from the mother who had raised him?

He raised stricken eyes to her face, as always had been the case when he was hurting it held all the understanding in the world. Her hand cupped his face and his head cleared even more as a pall of darkness poured out of him to hover above before she banished it. How many times had she banished his fears and nightmares? She drew him into her arms and he wept, as he had not done since he was six and the other children told him he had not been given an amita because he was a mother killer and any children he had would be the same.

Everyone had known Valkira had a shorter lifespan, destined to die after no more than a human lifespan and her parents had protected her from anything and everything until she was unbearably conceited. Her engagement to the crown prince Fellner of Zanoa had been drawn out which had suited him since he could not abide his intended, few could. They had been married in their early eighties, three decades after most of their age group and she proceeded to make his life and those of all in the palace miserable. Her fury when in four short years she had been with child when most went for decades had been astronomical. Safely delivered of the heir to Zanoa she had been in her element as all paid homage to her and her infant son for continuing the line of old. Aside from her generation, the house of Zanoa always had a single heir so she was content that she would not die in childbirth. Mushtran children of the same age were usually born within three years of each other so in little more than a year she was again with child. The palace of Zanoa had been unlivable for her vituperations; she poured venom against all but especially her husband. She pled vengeance against generations to come of house Zanoa little caring that she cursed her own descendants.

Barely three months after her death Fellner had met Adyka, a Daelen mistress running away from the death the Zidjma promised her. Her parents and year old brother dead she ran to the only place no one could go, the Mushtran forest. How she herself had entered it, she had no idea but something had drawn her much as something had drawn Fellner to the place where she lay exhausted and bleeding from a gash on her forehead. No one had protested their love except Valrika's parents who could not agree that fate had ill-used the prince of Zanoa until then.

Adyka was Fellner's equal, his true soul mate and amita, the quidvultdeus even revealed it. Even the fact that she would likely never have a child with the man she loved or that he was four times her age had daunted her. She had taken to his children and Elgion, two years old and much withdrawn from his mother's abuse had become more open though Valrika's parents never let him forget she was not his mother. Ferik growing up knowing only her had stubbornly insisted on calling her just that.

"I am so sorry mother." He now chocked out miserably

"It is not your fault, whatever that was preyed on your darkest memories and emotions. It also injected some other needs into you." She let go of him and looked into his eyes. "You should have called the earthpower to you instead of immersing yourself into that spell. It leeched into you and that is why you were so exhausted and all this happened."

"You know about the trees and the dark spell upon them?" he asked stunned.

"Ferik," she admonished gently. "This is your dreamscape and your memories are part of it" she sighed. "Whatever dark master assailed you most likely now knows what you are capable of."

"I will be defeated were we to meet again?" he asked apprehensively

"He will be able to guard against you and exploit your weakest areas. Your power grows with age and more study so before facing any more of the Zidjma or their curses practice more of your abilities. I have taught you much but it seems you need to apply the knowledge more. Do not forget the Terran first; it will serve you better as the quirin is non-existent in the land."

He nodded his head in acknowledgement relieved to be on familiar ground, figuratively at least, all about them was a grassy veldt of gently rolling hills that stretched into misty unknown. Unlike before, the mist was pure white and shone with translucent light that made all ethereal.

"I missed you." He said with a soft smile.

Her features softened as she looked at the son she could not love more had she given birth to him, pain and sadness filling her eyes. "Your father and I miss you so much too. A year is such a long time..." her voice trailed off betraying more than words could.

Ferik doubted his father missed him, more likely he was glad the son whose presence made him uncomfortable was gone. His father had never been at ease with him, Fellner made sure they were never alone, subtly, but Ferik was still aware of it and it hurt. Ferik would not admit it even to himself but it still hurt. He was also aware that many considered his birth mother's death a curse upon him despite the fact they were relieved by it. No doubt, his father was one of them. His mother went out of her way to reassure him of his father's regard but he found it hard to believe, nothing had happened to disabuse him of his notions. He did not doubt Fellner's love, his father had proved that many times, but he still was not comfortable with him.