Unseen (Black Jewels Trilogy)
An old story that I wrote when I first read the Black Jewels Trilogy. One of the few one-shots that I've started and actually finished, while still keeping it as a one-shot. Enjoy.
The Unseen
She twirled amongst the colours, arms flung out in joy, voiced raised in celebration. Today was a very important day, the second most important day of her life. Today was Jaenelle’s Birthright Ceremony. Today she would receive her Jewels, and make her grandmother proud.
The Priestess standing before the small Altar in the room below Beldon Mor’s town hall frowned, confused, as to why the little girl was dancing and singing, when she was supposed to be quietly meditating. Not that she hadn’t had other children misbehave during their Ceremony. Few were the five year olds who had an attention span of more than a minute. Still… she couldn’t speak to the child to tell her to attend, as the Ceremony had already started, and speaking once it had started was forbidden. Until the black candles burnt down to the stub, or until the Jewels appeared on the altar, she had to remain a silent witness. But she heartily disapproved of this girl. Jaenelle Benedict should have been sitting quietly, trying to find that inner colour, reflecting on those qualities and strengths that would lead her to her Birthright Jewel.
Not that anyone thought Jaenelle would be able to achieve a Jewel of her own. In the months leading up to the ceremony, the child’s psychic scent would generally become more focused, and the week before the ceremony, an experienced witch or warlord would be able to discover the child’s caste. Jaenelle’s scent was muted, almost as badly as a half-blood’s would be. Everyone knew she was not a Queen, not even a Priestess or Black Widow. Perhaps she might be able to train to be a Healer, or an apprentice Black Widow, but she would never be naturally gifted. Her scent wasn’t even strong enough to be a Jewelled witch.
At most, the child might, just might, gain a White or Yellow Jewel. But the Priestess…and many others…doubted it would happen.
Especially not if the child continued to sing and dance, when she should have been focused.
Jaenelle was starting to reach the peak of her performance now. Her feat pounded the ground in time with the heartbeat of the earth, and her nose was tickled by what seemed to be the perfume of thousands of flowers. She could actually hear the colours now, though she would have been hard pressed to describe how. It was much the same as when she heard the wishes of her friends on the wind. Like Kaetien’s wish to meet a nice human who wouldn’t try and kill his foals for their horns. Or Gabrielle’s wish that she have at least one female friend that wasn’t also, annoyingly enough, one of her relatives. They were whispers on the wind that she had answered, and now there were other whispers, coming from the colours themselves.
White and yellow dominated her senses, and from them she heard sounds of commonplace things. I hope the bread rises properly. I wonder if that new maid would like some of these flowers. I think we should take the horses to the new farrier for shoes, tomorrow. And below that, like a shadow of what was just above it, more colours, but less concentrated. Tiger’s eye, rose, summer sky. Oh, not another boring pile of paperwork! That new minstrel at the Corva House was wonderful! Hmm, red silk or blue satin…the satin, I think. The Queen of Dova village has an appointment at 2, the Priestess from the Erille altar at three thirty, which leaves a small amount of time for me to have lunch.
Jaenelle stopped singing for a moment. That last voice had been familiar…and yes, she knew it. Her grandmother’s voice, coming from the rose colour. A smile on her face, she started to sing again, and the colours sang back. Darker, now, Purple Dusk and Opal of both shades, light and dark, sang to her about crafting things, about gardens and herbs and healing. There were overtones of familiar voices, too. Her sister, Wilhelmina was wishing she could get out of her Craft lesson with Graff and go see how Jaenelle was doing with her Ceremony. Alexandra, her grandmother, was still checking her schedule, making sure that all the appointments for the day were set, the light opal colour pulsing with an undertone of darkness that Jaenelle didn’t really like. In the Purple Dusk, Jaenelle could hear Leland reminiscing about the time she’d put Phillip under a dream web… and Phillip himself was outside, waiting for his daughter, though he didn’t know that was who she was. Strange, that he should be there, as it was tradition for fathers to wait for their daughter’s ceremonies to finish. Robert was technically the one who was supposed to be waiting… ah, well.
Under the thread of colours, a strong voice came through very suddenly, from the shadowy green.
Blast and burn it! Hell’s fires, what a stupid thing to do. I should have known he would have had a mercenary team waiting to protect him! Some assassin I make. Titian would wring my neck if she saw me make such mistakes.
Jaenelle grinned and listened a moment longer. This woman knew Titian, another friend of Jaenelle’s, but the sadness in this Surreal’s voice made her pull away, and listen deeper. There was very little sound now, occupying the sapphire blue colour. Only Phillip Alexander’s annoyance that Robert wasn’t there for his own daughter’s ceremony…and… Jaenelle flinched back. A very cruel voice, very strong, and very… bad. Jaenelle dove a little deeper through the colours, hoping to find refuge from the bad noise. But there wasn’t. In the Red colour, the bad voice just got stronger. The song it wove was of anger and hate. Jaenelle almost whimpered, but then, something miraculous!
* So what shall we argue about today, brother? * an amused, lazy drawl came from a voice that was filled with longing for mountains and the freedom of the air.
* This wine isn’t so wonderful, Prick. I rather do believe it tastes like cat piss, * replied a voice that was almost bored, but had an undertone of humour to it.
Jaenelle couldn’t hold back a giggle as ‘Prick’ replied that it was not cat piss, it tasted like horse piss. Whoever they were, whatever they were, they were deep in the colour Red, and they overpowered the bad voice greatly. Jaenelle smiled in relief as she went to the next colour. Oh… Surreal again!
In the Gray, where the shadows started to become even darker, only Surreal’s voice could be heard. She was still complaining to herself about messing up the assassination, but she was starting to evaluate how to fix the mess. Her conversation with herself was becoming a little too gruesome as she considered details, so Jaenelle went a little deeper. The dark grey, what Jaenelle thought of as Ebon-Gray, had only one voice in it.
The lazy drawl was back, and there was a tinge of humour and fear mixed into it. Jaenelle listened for a few minutes, as this man, who thought of himself as Prick, and thought of his ‘brother’ as Bastard. They were mock arguing, but it sounded very real. And then they started to destroy things…and people.
Jaenelle shied away from the very real destruction, only to find it again as she came to the last of the colours. The blackness was to the point of emitting no light at all. It felt comforting. Very much so. But… yes, the brother, Bastard, was using it, angrily tossing the blackness at people, making them hurt. But he was hurting too. Jaenelle didn’t know what to think. She wanted to watch and find out why they were fighting. She wanted to turn around and go back up to where the voices were happier, back at the Purple dusk and Opal colours. A voice she hadn’t heard previously, one that had so far been overridden, caught her attention.
Fifty thousand years. I’ve waited so long. When will she come? It would be almost bearable, if only Saetan…no, he can’t know I’m still here. When will she come? I want this over with. I want to fade back into the Darkness and drift. I want my peace and quiet, not just solitude…when will she come?
Jaenelle blinked a few times, and then gasped. The colours had faded rapidly. The noise of song and speech fading with them. She could no longer smell the scents of flowers, or hear the heartbeat of the earth… it was just…gone.
“Well,” the voice was full of contempt. “That is what you get for not paying attention,” and a little anger. Jaenelle looked up at the Priestess in confusion. What? What had happened? She’d done as the Priestess had told her to. She’d found her focus, and followed the colours until she came to the last of them that she could reach. What had she done wrong? “Well, out little fool. Clearly there is no Jewel weak enough for you.” The Priestess gestured to the empty stone bench that was the Altar. Jaenelle bit her lip and suppressed a sob. She’d been so sure she’d done it right. She’d found the focus and gone as deep as she could. She tried to explain that to the Priestess, who did not bother to listen. Instead with shoving hands, and annoyed, cutting remarks, Jaenelle was pushed out into the sunlight of the town hall’s garden.
“Jaenelle?” Phillip Alexander’s voice asked, as he picked her up and settled her on his hip. “Jaenelle, what happened?”
As the Priestess answered the Prince’s questions in a scathing tone, Jaenelle opened her eyes, and blinked. There, on the ground, was a little white crystal. A White Jewel. She struggled to get the man to put her down, and when she did, snatched up the Jewel.
“Look,” she cried to the Priestess, “see! I didn’t fail. Here’s my Jewel!”
The two adults looked down at her open hand. The Priestess sneered. Phillip looked concerned.
“Mentally unstable, this one. Perhaps you should see about getting her to a Mind Healer. Or there’s that new retreat for mentally unstable children…Briar…something or other. If she’s going to go around, claiming that road pebbles are Jewels, she clearly needs help.” She continued to sneer, but Jaenelle wasn’t listening. Instead she gasped and then scrambled to pick up something else off the ground.
“Yes…” Phillip spoke uncertainly, as the little girl presented another stone, this one faintly yellowish. Disappointed with the adult’s reaction to her Jewel’s, Jaenelle looked around desperately trying to find a more impressive Jewel. Even as Phillip led her out of the hall’s garden, and down the road, she would occasionally stop and pick up another pebble or rock and present it proudly. Phillip was close to weeping as he and the child finally arrived back at Alexandra Angelline’s estate house.
Jaenelle curled around herself in her bed that night. She didn’t understand it. She had a Jewel of every single colour! Thirteen of the Black ones, even. All of them pulsed with power. So why did the adults look at her despairingly, say that she was ill, demand that she throw her Jewels, what they called pebbles, away?
Perhaps…perhaps they weren’t her Jewels. What if they were someone else’s, and accidentally been dropped where they were? Would she…would she have to give them back? Had she really failed the test…
You did not fail. A voice, rumbling with age and wisdom spoke directly into her mind. I sssent thesse Jewelss to you, witchling. The power around you flung them about, sso they did not land properly on the Altar. I am proud that you have them, and ssso many of them. Usse them well.
“Who are you?” Jaenelle asked, her mind stretching back along the voice’s path, trying to find him.
I am Lorn. Was the very simple reply.
Jaenelle clutched the two little velvet bags she’d hidden her Jewels in, and considered this as she started to fall asleep. Lorn must be a friend, then. She would go visit him tomorrow morning, and thank him properly for the Jewels.
Happy that someone was proud for her success today, Jaenelle slept, dreams of coloured clouds with familiar voices waiting for her. As she slept, she focused on the voices that had been underneath the others, as though coming from the mythical ‘other Realms’ that she’d heard so much about. She was sure she could hear Gabrielle’s voice in the Opal, and Kaetien’s, too. And even deeper than them, on a cloud of green that seemed…broken, was Titian. Content, she let the dreams take her to her friends.
In her hands, the two little velvet bags glowed for a moment with a power that would have startled even the prissy Priestess of Beldon Mor’s Altar…if she’d been there to see it. And then the bags disappeared…unseen.
When Phillip went to check on her sleep a few hours later, he was happy to find that there were no hints of those silly little pebbles anywhere around the little girl. Hopefully she would accept that she was a non-Jewelled Blood, and get on with her life…
Honestly, the silly child. Trying to pass coloured pebbles off as Jewels. As if he wouldn’t know a Jewel when he saw it.
A/N This is just my thinking on how Jaenelle ‘failed’ the Birthright Ceremony. If the Jewels didn’t make it to the Altar in time, or if her uncontrolled power somehow kept them from reaching her, then they would have fallen in the street. And just like with her ‘muted’ psychic scent, unless the ‘adults’ knew what they were looking at; all they would have seen were coloured rocks.