The Kindness Curse Read online

  THE KINDNESS CURSE

  Magic to Spare, Book 1

  Michelle L. Levigne

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Kindness Curse (Magic to Spare, #1)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  About the Author

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  Ye Olde Dragon Books

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  Middleburg Hts., OH 44130

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  COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY Michelle L. Levigne

  ISBN 13: 978-1-952345-36-4

  PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED States of America

  Publication Date: June 1, 2021

  Cover Art Copyright by Ye Olde Dragon Books 2021

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information retrieval and storage system without permission of the publisher.

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  Pirating of books is illegal. Criminal Copyright Infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, may be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination, or are used in a fictitious situation. Any resemblances to actual events, locations, organizations, incidents or persons – living or dead – are coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Chapter One

  "I hate magic. I hate majjians," Merrigan said for what felt like the thousandth time since the seer, Clara, had turned her world upside down.

  She tripped over another branch across her path through this unending, dark, tangled forest. Six hours ago, she had been riding in her carriage, following a tidy plan to save her kingdom. All she needed was a little cooperation from a seer who owed the late king of Carlion some loyalty. Her caves were in his kingdom, after all.

  Merrigan stopped short, stunned to see sunlight and a road a few steps away. It wasn't much of a road, packed dirt full of ruts, and a ditch between her and it.

  Five hours ago, her carriage stopped in front of the series of caves where Clara consulted pools of vision.

  More than four hours now, Merrigan had stumbled through a tangled, shadowy forest, with birds shrieking overhead and squirrels and other creatures running through the branches. She was positive the roots reached out on purpose, to trip her.

  Clara had done this to her. Threw her out into the forest, so far she couldn't find her way back to her carriage. Put her in these rusty black, dowdy clothes. Granted, she was a widow, but she was the queen. She had a right, a duty, to dress stylishly. At least Clara had changed her light slippers to heavy black boots. Sometimes, unfortunately, common sense and comfort did trump style.

  Her legs ached and her joints creaked and her arms felt too thin. Even her hair felt wrong. She couldn't adjust the thick, canvas strap slung across her chest, and the heavy carpetbag bumped her hip with every step. Her arms simply wouldn't cooperate. She felt hollow, drained. What had Clara done to her? And why?

  Everything blurred from the point the woman stepped from the shadows and looked at Merrigan with those depthless, pale eyes. Still, the implication was painfully clear.

  "I'm cursed," Merrigan whispered. Getting across the dratted ditch in front of her was far more important than remembering what that arrogant majjian had said to her, just before rainbow streaks of magic twisted around her. A thousand thorns shredded her clothes and skin, then dropped her in a muddy patch of open ground in the center of the forest.

  The sunshine slanted down at an early afternoon angle on the rough road. More like an overgrown path. Perhaps this was a lane to the main highway. She cringed at the mental image of someone from the court in Carlion seeing her here.

  What was that creaking noise, rattling and dragging, coming toward her? Merrigan looked over her shoulder, anticipating some horrific monster made of bits and pieces, animated just long enough to torment her. Yet nothing moved in the shadows. The sound didn't come from the forest. Was it too quiet?

  All except for the sounds of frogs.

  Merrigan shuddered and focused on the road so she wouldn't hear if those frogs dared to speak to her. She had ordered all the frogs in Carlion turned into frog legs for breakfast, to silence them. She had grown sick of frog legs long before the kingdom ran out of frogs. Yet she still sometimes heard frogs creak-croaking her name, in the stillness between waking and sleeping.

  "No, no, no," she whispered, and turned to face forward. She refused to look down into the ditch, if any frogs hid there.

  Movement to her right wrung a tiny shriek from her. Was that a wagon? Yes, it was, and the source of the sound. Not a monster.

  She had been an overly imaginative fool. Leffisand would laugh, if he could see her now. Of course, if her late husband could see her now, she wouldn't be out here in the forest, would she? She wouldn't need to consult a seer to fix the problem of having no heir.

  Fury helped Merrigan take that leap to cross the ditch.

  Her legs betrayed her, just like everything else today. She hit her knees on the edge. An unqueenly shriek escaped her. She dug her fingers into the dirt and debris and stopped her slide backwards. Thuds and voices cut through the panicked heartbeat in her ears. Big, strong hands caught hold of her arms with bruising force and lifted her up with astonishing ease.

  What had happened to her, that she was so thin and frail?

  "Here, now, Granny, be careful." The man smelled of metal and salt and the stables. He chuckled as he slung her half across his shoulders and strode down the road a few steps. She landed with a thud and a squeak on the back end of the wagon. "What are you doing way out here by yourself?"

  "Here?" She looked down the road ahead of her. "Where am I?"

  "You're on the main trade road between Schoebern and Wyndalbern."

  "Where?" She shook her head when the big man frowned at her like she was an idiot. "What kingdom is this?"

  "Bern-Lyceum."

  "That's—that's on the other side of the world!"

  "What do you mean, other side?"

  "Bern-Lyceum is on the western continent. Armorica is the center of the world."

  "If you say so." He spat, barely turning his head. Laughter bubbled up behind her, and she turned enough to see four rough, bearded male faces, all of them tanned and dirty, with dirty hair and sloppy caps. Peasants, of the lowest sort.

  "I know so."

  "Yeah, and if you're so smart, why didn't you know what road you almost fell off of into the ditch?"

  "I need to get to the nearest port. Dratted majjians! How dare they interfere? How dare they send me flying across the world? The inconvenience. The lack of respect!" Merrigan muffled an unqueenly shriek. She wished he stood closer to her, despite the peasant aroma. She wan
ted to kick this sneering, filthy man. All the trees she had struggled past. Especially Clara.

  She would like to kick Leffisand, for going to war with a magic apple tree and getting himself killed, so she had to deal with all these inconveniences and indignities.

  "The nearest port, eh? That's a long walk, Granny. Heading in the wrong direction, too."

  "Oh, what do you know?"

  "More than you." He grinned, revealing several dark teeth.

  "You will take me to the port."

  "I will, eh? And why should I?"

  "Because I am the queen of Carlion, and I must return to my kingdom immediately."

  "Should take you to a healer. Addlepated crone."

  "I am not talking nonsense." She pulled herself upright and gave him her most queenly glare of disapproval. "You will take me to the nearest port. Immediately."

  The idiot laughed, bending down with the effort, and putting his face in her reach. She slapped him. His laughter stopped short and he rubbed his cheek, visually measuring her head to foot.

  "Should slap some sense into you, but one as ancient as you would probably break in half, turn to dust." He took another step back. "Probably some faerie trick. Push us hard until we do something rude, then slap a curse on me and mine." He turned, glaring at the entire forest. "Won't fall for it, that I won't! The word's getting around. You faerie folk are too big for your britches. Day's coming, you get judged like you been judging all of us."

  Merrigan shivered, remembering angry old women, shouting at her mother on the steps of the palace of Avylyn. She remembered the things Nanny Tulip had said in the quiet of dusk, and the things she learned from the dark, old books her nanny put under her pillow, to fill her dreams and teach her while she slept. She agreed entirely. The faerie folk and other magical-gifted folk—the majjians—were unforgivably cruel, judgmental, and arrogant.

  The man caught Merrigan around her waist and set her back down on the rough road with a thump. "I won't be falling for no tricks and judgment from faerie folk. Ain't going to give you the last of my food and water, and ain't going to curse you, even if you do sound half-mad. Just going to leave you where I found you."

  "But I am the queen of Carlion. I order you to help me!"

  "Keep telling that tale." He stomped to the front of his wagon. "You'll get a ride to the madhouse." He climbed up onto the driver's bench and clucked to his massive, muddy horses.

  The old man with him stood up enough for Merrigan to see his hunched back and bald head. He muttered something, and the young men with him guffawed.

  "Great-grand says you aren't even pretty enough for him!" one of them called, as the wagon started forward.

  "How dare you!" Merrigan ran after the wagon a dozen steps, though she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do.

  "Just a wrinkled old crone. Not enough of you for tinder," he called. More guffaws rang out, bouncing off the trees and mud.

  Merrigan stopped, her knees threatening to fold. She trembled so, she feared if she sat down she would never get up again.

  "I'm not," she whispered, as the wagon bumped down the road and faded into the distance. "I'm tall and raven-haired, with gray eyes and roses in my cheeks and I can dance all night and all day until the musicians beg for mercy." She shuddered, fearing those brute peasants had been speaking the truth. The clothes she wore were certainly fit for a crone.

  After thinking until her head hurt, Merrigan turned and made her way up the road in the opposite direction. She certainly didn't need to meet those brutes in the next town and have them laughing at her and pointing fingers. Half an hour later, a family of farmers in a much cleaner wagon, pulled by two smaller horses with flowers woven into their manes, approached from behind her. A man with a cheerful voice called out greeting to her and offered her a ride before she could even think to ask. The farmer and his sturdy wife and three daughters, all of them browned by the sun and almost unbearably cheerful, addressed her as Granny, with some respect. That confirmed, but in a nicer way, what the brutes had said. The girls adjusted the sacks of cotton and fleece filling the wagon, which they were taking to town to sell, to make a soft seat for her. They offered her a cool drink of water from a clay jug and included her in their unbearably cheerful chatter about all the things they wanted to do when they were in town.

  Merrigan was still smarting badly from the mockery of the brutes in the first wagon, so she kept her silence and let them believe she was tired. Their consideration for her comfort was most gratifying. Yet these people were strangers, not her servants. What was wrong with them, to be so kind to a total stranger?

  When they reached the town, the smallness of it stunned her. The way the girls had talked, she expected a major city, with an enormous merchant district. This place boasted only four streets of merchant and artisan shops. She counted only four inns, a barracks and a courthouse. Merrigan didn't doubt the circuit judge only rode out here once every four moons. There was a town square, with a well, a dancing floor, and a dais for musicians. How could the girls have been so pink-cheeked with excitement over ... this?

  She forgot her disdain for this disappointment that called itself a town when she stepped down from the wagon. She looked down into a watering trough between her and the steps up to the raised walkway around the town square. Merrigan stared, horrified, at the sagging jowls and pale skin, the red-rimmed eyes that looked like ashes rather than the dusky crystals praised by simpering courtiers. Leffisand had always teased that he preferred her eyes filled with sparks, ready to flame with righteous indignation. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were nearly nonexistent, her nose was twice as long and had a definite downward hook. She saw a protruding mole on her chin, another on her cheekbone and a third between her eyebrows. Her hair had once been so lustrous thick and dark that court poets described it as midnight velvet stolen from the skies. Now it was thin to the point she feared she had bald spots, and that peculiar shade of white that was no color at all.

  Clara had indeed cursed her. Who would ever believe her when she said she was the queen of Carlion?

  Yet that filthy brute who accused her of working with faeries had given her an idea. People still expected to be rewarded by majjians if they did outstanding things or ridiculously simple kindnesses. Didn't they? If the folks hereabouts thought faeries were interfering, then she could convince the fools that helping her would earn them a reward from the fairies. Or hedge witches. Or minor enchanters. Or faerie godmothers.

  If all else failed, she could follow the stories of magic at work until she found the nearest majjian and request help. As long as that person hadn't heard what Clara of the Pools had done to her. There had to be some rivalry among majjians. If she was lucky, she would find someone with a grudge against Clara, and convince them to help her to spite the seer.

  "Are you all right, Granny?" the farmer's wife asked, gripping Merrigan's elbow as if she thought she was about to fall over.

  "Perfectly fine. Just thinking deep thoughts."

  "Where do you plan to go from here?"

  "I would like to see the world. Now that my husband is gone, and his property has gone to his kinfolk." She caught her breath, knowing that was happening in Carlion right that moment.

  She had never met any of Leffisand's relatives, other than his wretched healer cousin, Rafal, until the funeral. The greedy graspers insisted Leffisand was an evil, scheming brute who had exiled them. They were likely stripping the palace of its riches. That horrid Rafal had likely proclaimed himself king. Did anyone pity her, as the childless widow? No. She had no claim to the throne because she hadn't given Leffisand a child. So she had gone to Clara for help. Why did the woman take offense that she had lied about being pregnant, so she could stay queen? How hard would it have been to give Merrigan a child conceived through magic? Why was it so horrid a thing?

  What right did Clara have to call her selfish and cruel and arrogant, and condemn her to wander the world until she learned kindness? A queen who was kind and generous
was weak, simply asking people to trample over her. Kindness would make her a target for the cruel and arrogant and selfish.

  Just like her mother, Queen Daylily. Hadn't being kind ultimately killed her mother?

  "Yes," she said, catching her breath, fighting not to shudder with her fury over the injustices that had hit her, one after another, until a lesser woman would have crumpled. "I want to see the world. I want to find magic and wonder and see incredible things."

  "Well, you are equipped for travel. Do you have a cloak for when it rains?" The farmer's wife gestured at the heavy bag that had been hanging at Merrigan's hip this entire time.

  Of course, she hadn't looked into it. Who had time, when they were struggling to escape a barbaric forest and find civilization? Merrigan let the farmwife check her possessions, to see if she was supplied. She had a shawl, extra stockings, extra underclothes, a spare shirtwaist and skirt, an eating knife, and a few slim bound volumes. Merrigan couldn't believe Clara could be so kind, and knew her love of books. A moment later, she knew she had been right. The first book was a collection of homilies on thinking virtuous thoughts and acting with generosity and honor.

  The other two volumes were poetry, and tales of the actions of majjian folk. Merrigan wondered if the book had been there before or after she resolved to find someone with magic to pity her and help her. Was Clara taunting her, helping her, or warning her?

  The farm family insisted she should share their dinner at the finest inn in town. Then they asked a merchant friend to help her on her journey, by letting her ride in his wagon to the next town on his route. Merrigan thought that was highly generous of them, and quite unexpected. She was just stunned enough to listen to the prompting from her childhood memories. Her first nanny, Starling, had gently scolded her to always say her thanks. No matter who had been kind to her. No matter how grand or small the gift. She thanked her benefactors with graciousness far above their station, climbed into the back of the merchant's wagon, and fell asleep.