Fever Mist by L. K. Rigel

« Chapter 1 »
Sorrow’s Prisoner
    Eleventh Century Dumnos. Elyse at Glimmer Cottage
    I WAS ON THE ROOF the morning the fever mist rolled in.
    Like rolling thunder made visible, I thought.The mist was black and gray and white… unnatural. What kind of magic is in this?
    Of course I dearly wanted to go to the cliffs for a real look, to be near Igdrasil, but there would be people on the road.
    Even then, a woman scurried through her fields, dodging the sheep as she made her way toward Tintagos Bay to see the strange phenomenon. I recognized her and picked up the glimmer glass for a better view.
    Yes, it was the salt-tosser, Mrs. Thresher. She once accused me of being a fairy and tried to frighten me out of my own house. I didn’t like the farmer’s wife, but I knew her name, and that’s all that mattered. I put down the glimmer glass. Where had I put the satin pouch of dust?
    I have to know a person’s name to use glamour dust on them. I sit in a quiet place—usually the roof of Glimmer Cottage—and say the name three times while tossing a handful of the stuff in the air. As the dust settles, the person’s living image appears, complete with surrounding sounds and smells, the clarity and scope depending on the quality of the glamour dust.
    Of course it’s easier to sit in the chaise with a glass on my lap, but the three-dimensional view from the dust goes to a different level. I can tell if the people in the dust view have been enchanted and whether the source is wyrd or fae.
    I wanted to know if that mist did something to the salt-tosser.
    And that’s when I discovered I’d run out. I went down to the kitchen to look for what I had in store, but there was nothing in the cupboards, no spare hidden pouch in the worktable drawers. A glimmer glass lay under a tea towel in its usual basket on the counter, but there was no dust.
    Warm, fresh spring air wafted in from the open window. The day promised to be lovely, this sweetest season of the Dumnos year. Outside, the flower garden was a riot of color. Lilacs, roses, wisteria, lilies, peonies, iris, tulips—any bloom you can think of was on display.
    Being a wyrding woman had to have some advantages. The Dumnos mist penetrated my cottage boundary only when I allowed it.
    I’d started the garden ten years earlier when I returned from the faewood, right after I threw those dreadful, salt-tossing squatters out of my house. Not to worry. No one ever notices the floral phantasmagoria. To confound Idris, and others, I keep an obscuration boundary going continually, all around the cottage perimeter.
    It isn’t the fae alone I fear. I can’t risk human visitors either—can’t risk anyone making contact with the two souls captured in my ring. But having to forego the world doesn’t mean I like it. The loneliness is soul-crushing. It may kill me before I find the means to atone for what I’ve done.
    To fight despair, I use glimmer glasses and glamour dust to keep up with the comings and goings of the people of Tintagos Castle and its surrounds. There are no kings in Dumnos anymore, but a baron is ensconced at the castle. He’s descended from Saxons who invaded Dumnos hundreds of years ago, his father made baron by the invading Normans while I was gone.
    Lord Tintagos has no Oracle, but he’s friendly to the wyrd. I often hear him defend our kind against the rantings of priests secure in the patronage of House Normandum. Our local monks and nuns are as sweet and as benign as ever they were, but the bishops out of Sarumos have grown strong in the world, and their influence increases daily. They don’t bother to hide their contempt for the wyrd or their wish to see us disappear.
    No wyrders live in the open now. In the glimmer glass, I’ve heard people mention a local wyrding woman, Kaelyn. I’ve never seen her, but I’m sure she does exist. One time I watched a banquet where Lord Tintagos waxed poetic about her healing powers—though he may have exaggerated his tale