*back*

Kell became aware that there were a number of shining auras near her. She would almost say they tasted like tea and chestnuts. Though she wasn't looking in that direction, the auras were behind her, she thought they looked rather yellowy, a friendly color.

Moments later, she thought for the first time, about how strange she felt after drinking that concoction of Weyland's. How good it would be to be relieved of the curses and how she wanted to ask him so many questions.

"It's so strange, she's always looked so sad. I don't even know why someone would make something like it," said a young female voice.

Another added, "I think she's waiting for something."

Kell listened, and slowly realized that they were talking about her. As though she were some sort of ... statue? Her eyes blinked, and she swallowed for the first time in ages.

She heard two gasps, behind her - the girls walking Weyland's hall. Ever so slowly, Kell's body reverted from stone into flesh. The two girls, both around thirteen or so, stood spellbound. Their eyes were huge with wonder or fear, and one of them reached out to touch Kell's shoulder to see if she were real.

"Where is Weyland?" Kell said, her voice cracked but still her own. It was only moments before she realized that the ground outside the window was bathed in warm summer light and heat. She turned back to the window, placing her hand on the warmed glass. "It's summer..." She said, a whisper.

"I didn't know you were a real person," said one of the girls.

"I wasn't a statue when I was born," Kell said. Somehow, her faint sense of humor had returned to her. But something was very wrong - well, not wrong exactly, but just not quite in place. How could it be summer? It was almost dark winter when ...

"Where is he?" She asked again, and the first girl glanced down the hall.

"I think he's teaching. Should ... we go get him?"

"Teaching? Here?" Kell said, mystefied. Now things were strange. She got her feet to move, and gazed around her. The hall had changed a bit. It was better lit, clean, and had sounds of some few people nearby in the chambers that led away from the hall.

"Of course teaching, that's why we're here," said the second girl, offering Kell her hand to steady her as she fumbled a bit on the slick stone.

"We're learning to control our magics," the other added.

"Of course," Kell said, still barely over a whisper. She looked again around her, and sought out the rich darkness and sweet aftertaste of Weyland's aura. She saw it, packed behind half a dozen pinpoints of glimmering gold, yellow and green. Other students, she guessed. "He's in there," she said and headed toward the big braced wooden door.

The door creaked open, and several of the nearby students looked up as though they really didn't want to be interrupted. Weyland turned from his big book on a desk, and then strangely the color left his face.

He'd somehow grown a nicely tended mustache and gotee, in however long Kell had been frozen in place. He looked somewhat different. Lines on his face were a bit more drawn, but that was largely because he'd been concentrating. When he gathered his wits, he stepped around the big table and ignored the protests of the students.

"Kell," he said quietly, half smiling and half looking terrified. She snugged herself under his ever-present cloak, and hugged on to him tightly. He returned that embrace warmly and didn't seem to want to let go.

"Teaching? I thought this -" She said, but Weyland placed his finger on her lips.

"It's... been a bit longer than I expected." He admitted.

Kell didn't say anything, but he knew that look on her eyes was going to lead to another horrible heartbreak and the last thing he wanted to do was make her cry. The last thing he wanted to do was tell her that he hadn't succeeded.

"Four years," he said, when she wasn't able to ask. Kell gasped, and sobbed, but didn't break down. Instead she let herself cry and tried to compose her thoughts in the mean time. He'd clearly been able to remove *some* of the curses, because she hadn't been able to think this easily in such a long time. She felt better - really. Kell wiped the tears from her eyes. They came right back, but it was one small triumph for her.

"But then you've got other people to help you," Kell said, glancing through runny vision around her at the students. They peered at her from their seats, and from the hall as well. "What happened?"

Weyland led Kell out of the room and into the hall, instructing the students to continue their discussion about herbal pastes by themselves. Kell knew that wasn't going to be on their minds: they were all quite interested in what he'd been doing getting all snuggly with a girl their age.

"Lord Empal had a strange change of heart," Weyland said with worry. "Right after your ... preservation. I think it's more than just a fluke, that, I think he'd planned it."

"But teaching is something you wanted to do anyway," Kell guessed. "And it looks like you do it well."

"They all are very gifted, like yourself," he said.

"I'm hardly gifted, and I've never been taught," Kell sighed. The youngest of these students knew more than she did about the very things she could do. But Weyland was still holding something back, and Kell knew it. "What about me, Weyland, what's happened? I can feel it, you've released some of the curses."

"But not all," Weyland admitted quietly and not meeting her steady teary-eyed gaze.

"Not all." She repeated. "So.... what is to be done?"

"Now that you're awake, moving quickly is the only thing I can do. I... don't know if I can stop the last curses from coming out."

"But it's way past my birthday," she pointed out.

"True," Weyland said, "but they have all been on hold, all waiting." He didn't much move, and Kell suddenly understood the problem.

"I've got two weeks," she whispered, a question which he nodded at.

"I do not wish to endanger the other students, but you are why I have enlisted them anyway..." Weyland said, and tugged at her arm toward his study. "But I think something else is gone strange too." He gave a purposeful sniff at the air.

He was not an aura sensor, Kell knew that - he had to squint to see auras. But she could feel them with all her senses at once. She twisted her head around, gazing with wider eyes around the castle. She could see far more clearly and for a greater distance than before - because those curses the men in the keep had laid down on her were swept away.

"It's... what an odd smell." Kell said.

"Describe it," Weyland encouraged.

"It's... well, there are all the sparkly banana bits and sprinkles of nice," she started, and Weyland couldn't help himself laughing. "It's what you asked!" Kell laughed as well, it sounded as though she was describing an ice cream treat. "But then all around, surrounding the whole thing, is like a big dark sheet. A cap - it tastes like rubber, the tire kind - we're enclosed in it. It's everywhere."

Weyland nodded, "I thought as much. But ... there is little more we can do about that. I think that is the Lord's influence. Whether it's there because he wants to protect himself, or us, I don't know."

"It's a protection spell? It feels more like one person's aura, all... bloated out beyond them." Kell said absently.

"One... one person's?" Weyland asked, suddenly worried.

"Yes. Who would have such an aura?" Kell asked. "I've never met one like it, I dont' think. I would remember that taste."

Weyland stood, eyes worried. "Kell, when you came, it was just after his Lordship changed dramatically. He changed right back or near enough, just after ..."

He grabbed Kell's hand, and heedless of the looks they were getting racing through the halls, they ran toward the lowest dungeons of the place - where Kell insisted that they would find the center of this odd aura.

***

"But if he's here, like this, there must be a reason," Kell said, but Weyland was furious, and frantic to do something.

Something about the young man who lay in a drugged torpor on a straw bed, in the middle of the dungeon lowest away from the castle. It was the Lord's son, Mifrak. Who had been missing for years before now - and returned to him shortly after Kell had been sent away.

"I know you're right," Weyland said, "but... Perhaps he's the key to this."

"Weyland, he's cursed all over him, just as I was," Kell said, touching the young man's arm. She pulled her hand away, as though hurt. "It reeks of Carnos' work." She glanced around at the aura only she could see. "But ... this is nasty. It's like he's scattered his awareness, his aura is so thinly spread, and it's nowhere near his body at all. But it does belong to him."

Kell looked back at Weyland, who was pacing around the dusty room.

"He was sent back here," Kell said, "you said right after I'd been given away."

Weyland nodded, deeply. He gulped back an angry word or two, "yes, it's how it seems."

"So Weyland, we can't just stop him from .... working, like this," she indicated the inert man's form, "if it stops, Carnos will know immediately. Even from his distance away at his Keep."

There was a long, awful pause.

"Kell, I suppose you're right. I should be concentrating on something far more important." He looked at her, and forced a grin over his lips, "getting those curses off you."

*next*