The Sword and The Mountain (Kathardra book 1)

The sun was streaming through a window onto Lessa’s face when she finally woke. She was in a bed, the sheets were soft linen, it had been so long since she slept in a bed that she felt like she was on a cloud.

A thought hit Lessa with a pang, she had not put herself to bed the previous day. Had Zar carried her to bed? Her cheeks burned at the thought, but why oh why did she have to be so far gone that she couldn’t remember it?

“You’re finally awake.” Storm herself sounded drowsy. She also hadn’t slept for the entirety of Lessa’s absence.

“Good morning,” Lessa said to her, sitting up to find her boots beside the bed. She bit her lip, did she even want to know how this happened?

“I don’t know if it’s embarrassing, or touching that someone, likely Zar, tucked me in last night.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Storm's tone carried lighthearted teasing.

Even Lessa’s sword belt had been unbuckled, it rested on the foot of the bed.

Now that Lessa was well rested, her curiosity was able to take command. There was a wardrobe standing in Lessa’s room. It was empty. A door was off to one side, Lessa pulled it slowly open, peeking around the edge. But then she gasped and threw the door wide open.

A massive brass tub stood to the side on clawed feet, taking up most of the small room. “Oh thank the stars, the heavens, the gods, and whatever creature saw to put this in my room,” she said as she fell upon the tub.

It had no nobs, no faucet.

“How do I fill you?”

At once, water started flowing into the bottom of the tub. “Well, that works.”

“It must be enchanted,” Storm commented on Lessa’s findings. Lessa at once stripped off her clothes and slid into the tub, the water was just right: scalding hot.

Upon a shelf to the side of the tub, there was an assortment of bottles. With no idea how to read them, Lessa decided what to use based on smell alone, and hoped they didn’t have some strange enchantment to them. With any luck, she wouldn’t get out of this tub with differently colored hair.

For the very first time in months, Lessa felt entirely refreshed, when she stepped from the bronze tub she wrapped herself in a fluffy towel, found on a shelf right next to the tub. She went back to her room, where someone had thoughtfully dropped her saddlebags on a chair. She dressed and wandered out of her room.

The smell of bacon led Lessa back through the entrance hall and into the dining room she had seen the day before. The room was huge, with black and white marble tiles entwined on the floor to create repeating vine and checkered patterns. A long table, decorated with candelabras graced the center of the room, it was splayed with a full breakfast, pastries, bacon, sausages, fruit, and eggs.

Zar, Worran, and Cinder were all seated at the table, just about finished with their meal.

“Ah, good, you’re finally awake. Let’s begin.” Cinder said the moment Lessa entered the hall.

“But… Breakfast,” she mumbled about to take a seat next to Zar.

“You should have been awake on time.” Cinder stood and swept from the hall.

Sorry. Zar mouthed.

A groan escaped Lessa’s lips and her shoulders sagged, but despite Cinder, she grabbed two pastries from the table and rushed to follow the old man from the hall.

He swept through the manor fast enough that Lessa had to jog to catch up. Instead of to the right at the top of the stairs, he went left, through a series of hallways he finally stopped at a double door. He threw it open and they entered a massive library.

Awestruck Lessa as she walked in and craned her head back to look at the ceiling. A glass dome was open to the sky, allowing the sun to stream into the room, its rays falling on shelf after shelf of books stacked in the room. Spanning a story up higher, and lower than they currently stood.

“Pick your jaw up off the floor and have a seat,” Cinder grumbled at her. He had sat at a small table that was tucked against the railing of the balcony on which they stood.

With an audible snap Lessa clamped her jaw shut and sat down at the table across from Cinder.

“If you wish to use magic you must find it. It will very nearly feel like a muscle you have never used before. In your mind. I have selected a few volumes that may help you in this endeavor. As useless as it might be.” He scooted a large leatherbound blue book across the table toward Lessa. “The Musings of Ruthor Foundings on the subject are the first you should study. After that, you can move on to Shasha, and Helarin the Mute.” He added two more books to a pile before her.

Jaw working, Lessa stared at the books. “I can’t read these,” she whispered.

“What? Speak up, girl!”

“I can’t read these!” she snapped at him, bitter.

“By the dragon’s beard, why not?”

“I can’t read Kathardrean.”

He sat back and stared at her. “You are useless. You can’t read?”

I can read. Just not Kathardrean.” She slid the books back toward Cinder. Her nose might have pointed skyward slightly, but it was only in defense of her pride.

“What do you mean you can read but not Kathardrean? If not Kathardrean then what? Valden? Hraigen? One of the far countries?”

“None of them,” she answered, looking away. Embarrassment colored her cheeks despite her best efforts.

“Then what?” he demanded.

“English!” she snapped. “That’s what we speak and read and write in the world I am from!”

He froze. For a moment Lessa had a twisted pleasure at stunning the mage.

“Did you come to Kathardra through a bore in the fabric of space? Perhaps one located in the fair- the southern woods?”

“How did you know that?”

He sat back in his chair and stroked his beard pensively, staring but unseeing.

“How did you know that?” she demanded, harsher.

“Because I was there when it was created!” he snapped back. “It was fashioned to grant a translation spell for the indigenous language.”

It was Lessa’s turn to be stunned. Had she had a spell upon her this entire time? She had not once thought to wonder why she spoke the same language as-.

“Agh!” Lessa cried out clutching her head, a splitting pain struck her like a sword had been driven directly through her skull.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded leaning onto her palms.

Cinder responded, but Lessa was in too much pain to understand him. “What?”

No, it wasn’t the pain. That was fading now, but she still didn’t understand him.

“What?” she was nearly shouting now.

He said something else, but he was speaking a different language. She could pick out different syllables, consonants and vowel sounds, but she didn’t understand anything he said.

“Why are you doing that?” she growled at him.

Once again Cinder started speaking in the unfamiliar language.

Lessa threw her hands in the air. “Look, I get it, you don’t want me here but that doesn’t mean you need to speak a different language on purpose.”

He shook his head.

“What!” she was yelling in earnest now. “Stop doing that!”

Zar’s voice came from the door behind her, followed shortly by Worran’s voice. They were also speaking an unfamiliar language.

“Ugh not you too!” she groaned. “What did you do to me!” she rounded back on Cinder. “Why can’t I understand anything you’re saying?”

Zar looked at her and said something. Fisted hands, Lessa leaned her face into her knuckles in frustration and pointed at Cinder, "He did something to me! I don’t understand you!”

“Lessa you aren’t speaking Kathardrean,” Zar said, he had an accent but she understood him.

“Oh thank the stars! What is happening? One moment I understood, then I had a headache and I didn’t. He did something.” She turned her eyes on Cinder and glared hatefully.

“One moment,” Zar said with that odd accent. His focus moved to Cinder and he started using the other language again. Kathardrean, Lessa supposed.

Cinder responded. Then Worran interrupted, and Cinder said something else.

Worran grabbed Lessa’s shoulders and shook her slightly. His face was lit up, happy as could be. Words spewed forward from his mouth and Lessa understood exactly one word. What he said started with ‘Zar’.

She raised a brow and looked at Zar, inquisitive, as she leaned back away from Worran’s excitement.

Zar said something dangerously low to Worran.

Worran responded to Zar, still clearly excited.

One word growled from Zar’s lips.

Worran gestured to Lessa, a stupid grin on his face.

“Stop it!” she yelled at him, “I know you’re talking about me!” She shoved Worran away. He laughed and said something else but Lessa ignored him.

“Can you please fix this?” Lessa demanded of Zar. “Wait, how can you understand me?”

“It has something to do with the door between the worlds. It gave us a translation spell.”

He turned back to Cinder and said something in Kathardrean. Cinder answered.

Frustration was boiling through Lessa, she couldn’t stand not knowing what was being said around her. About her.

Zar’s eyes turned back to Lessa and he said something.

“What?”

“We can fix it,” there was that strange accent again.

Seemingly, Zar asked Cinder a question. Cinder gave him a long response and they went back and forth.

A book floated toward Cinder from the depths of the library, he held his hands out and the book gently landed in his palms, baring its pages.

Zar pulled a chair from the table and his eyes locked on Lessa and his hand pointed toward the chair. He said something in Kathardrean.

She slid into the chair and Zar sat across from her. Cinder laid the book in front of Zar and said something as he pointed to it. Zar nodded and his deep blue eyes fell on Lessa.

“I’m going to read the spell, and then I will say a word in your language, and then in Kathardrean, you will repeat them. We will continue until the spell starts to work.”

“How do we know if the spell is working?”

Zar translated her question to Cinder and then repeated Cinder’s response for Lessa.

“He says you will start to understand the Kathardrean words before I translate them.”

Lessa nodded once. “Let’s do it.”

Cinder spoke to Zar, Zar looked from Cinder to Lessa, back to Cinder, and asked a question. With a firm tone, Cinder responded.

Hesitantly, Zar held his hand above the table, palm out. “Let me have your hand.”

A jolt ran through Lessa’s stomach, but she didn’t question. She raised her hand to meet Zar’s and his fingers immediately laced her own and held her hand tightly.

With an air of determination, Zar’s eyes fell on the book before him and he started to read.

Worran spoke but Zar ignored him, continuing to read.

Dark brow furrowed, Zar was lost in concentration. Lessa watched him with a fluttering heart. She tried so hard to not let herself look at him, to not let herself get lost gazing at him, but sometimes she just couldn’t help it. He was so perfect, from his dark messy hair to his jaw that showed the young promise of chiseling when he came into full adulthood. Just holding his hand made her heart beat so hard she thought he might be able to hear it.

Dark blue eyes flashed up to her, and she jolted to attention, hoping he hadn’t caught her longing.

“Lofnir, book,” he said the words clear and slow.

Lessa repeated the words, careful to slightly roll the ‘r’ in lofnir just as Zar had.

“Tarle, table.”

They continued, Lessa noticed many words sounded similar, it was almost as if the languages once had common roots. But in Kathardrean many of the ‘l’ sounds had a slight ‘y’ like accent.

Clearly, Zar was choosing words from things he could see in the library, candle, shelf, stairs, window, hunter, she had lost count after she repeated at least thirty of his words, on and on she continued to carefully pronounce the Kathardrean words.

Until Zar said “Bruft,”

“Boot!” she exclaimed, excited that she understood what he said.

He grinned and squeezed her hand.

“Bren.”

“Good!”

“Lif notir?”

“It’s working!”

And quite suddenly Lessa felt her brain rearrange itself. Almost like space was made and a box was placed in the middle of her brain, and words started spilling out.

Dizziness overtook her, and the room spun, “oh I might throw up,” she said, resting her head on the table.

“Not in the library!” Cinder barked.

Eyes widening, Lessa looked at him, “I understood you!”

“Well that was a missed opportunity,” said Worran.

“I can speak Kathardrean now,” Lessa said to herself more than those around her. It was strange to have the words come unbidden to her lips, weird to be able to understand even the words that were not taught to her.

“How did that even happen?” she demanded of Cinder.

“The passage between the worlds was one of the most sophisticated pieces of magic I have ever seen worked. It places a translation spell upon any who cross. But it seems it was not fail-proof. It seems that once you realized the spell was in place, it broke.”

“This one won’t break?”

“You already know it’s there, so likely not.”

“Is that why you had an accent?” Worran asked. “It’s not so prominent now.”

“I guess so. I hadn’t even realized I was speaking a different language this entire time….”

“I knew,” Storm cut in, smug.

“You did not.”

Now that Lessa knew what she was looking for, she could sort through the words in her mind, just as if she had learned the language the hard way.

Once again, Lessa had to suppress her anger when Cinder started speaking, “You have been speaking another language for how long, and didn’t know? Truly, your intellect is something beyond comprehension.”