Magician Prince

by Curtis Cornett

  “Tomlin!” called Xander and ran out into the hall after him.

  “Byrn, is that you?” asked Tomlin returning to meet up with Xander at the third floor.

  “It is,” lied Xander, “and Riona is with me.”

  “What happened to Xander?”

  “He died fighting the Kenzai,” Riona told him. She looked to Xander and he gave a short nod of approval.

  “So you came back to get Byrn? So did I,” said Tomlin, “Great minds and all that.”

  “Yes, well, it is time we left,” Riona told them.

  “Riona, do you feel well enough to transport and take Tomlin with you?” Xander asked. “I have something else to do on my own first.”

  “Alia and Avelice have already left,” Tomlin assured him. “Ryonus did as well, taking Kaleb.” Xander almost asked who Kaleb was and why he should care, but then he remembered the little “lesser” boy that Byrn took around with him like a stray dog.

  “That is reassuring, but not what I had in mind.”

  “I can transport us,” said Riona, answering Xander’s question, “I just need a few minutes more.”

  They waited for Riona to recover and Xander marveled at the sheer energy that Byrn had held. None of Xander’s previous bodies had this kind of untapped power except for his original one. It was instantly maddening to have this kind of sheer strength and not be able to use it to its full potential. If there really was a curse, then there was only one being that could tell him how to break it: his patron, Kassani, the goddess of death, and there was only one place near Aurelia where a mortal could beseech her to speak with him directly. She only had one temple and it resided beyond Dragon’s Peak, the last sanctuary of the dragon race.

  Once Riona and Tomlin had safely vanished into the void. It was Xander’s turn. He chose the rune that would get him closest to the fabled dragon home, held it tightly, and disappeared.

  Chapter 21

  The exhausted desire to sleep was almost overwhelming, but the pain in his broken ribs kept his mind from knowing any sort of rest. It was a small kindness, because Byrn thought that if he were overtaken by weariness he would never rise again. He felt so tired in this body. It was a wonder that Xander was able to function at all, let alone wield the most deadly magic that anyone had seen in centuries. How much of the grandmaster’s energy had been devoted to keeping his body functioning since his escape from Baj?

  A sharp sting pierced his side when he tried to stand, causing Byrn to double back over. He had to get up and move. The cannon fire he heard earlier had stopped. That could only mean that kingdom soldiers were in the castle. If they found Byrn now, they could easily run him through just as Xander had hoped when he left Byrn here to die.

  Byrn dragged himself to the stairs leading down and out of the tower. His vision swam from the exertion and he thought he might faint, but magic was slowly starting to flow through this old man’s blood once more. He held his hands to his ribs and pressed gently. Even that light touch was enough to garner him a fresh wave of agony, but he concentrated on the source of that pain and channeled what little energy he had into a healing salve that found the injury and set and mended the bones. Then he focused the power to heal the worst of the bruising and internal injury. Up until then Byrn’s breathing had been shallow, but he took a deep breath and found that he could do so without wincing. Progress.

  His legs were wobblier that those of a newborn horse, but the sorcerer found that he could stand with only limited assistance from the chilly wall that his left shoulder rested on after a few minutes. He slowly worked his way down the stairs as he became more accustomed to Xander’s body and its limitations. Magic was returning to him and he found that by channeling a good portion of that energy into strengthening the muscles and bones, an action that would have given the young Byrn increased strength and speed, he could walk without assistance and move with some semblance of being in a hurry.

  The third floor from the bottom was empty, as Byrn had guessed it would be. By now Xander and Riona could be on the other side of the kingdom and they had taken all of the runes with them. There had to be more transportation runes within the castle. Perhaps in the private quarters in the east wing, but that would require going through much of the castle undetected. He could make it, but it was a long shot and he truly did not know if Ashura and Kassani’s curse was tied to his old body or to his soul. Before it would not have mattered. He could easily have subdued a whole battalion of men without killing them, but now the actual power residing within him was much weaker and a good portion of that energy went to keeping his feet moving.

  Alia’s old workshop! It was much closer and he could be there within a matter of minutes. Byrn moved as fast as his legs would allow, which was about the speed of a brisk walk. He made it through several adjoining hallways before he heard the sounds of dozens of men marching through the castles. They would be looking for survivors, but if their intention was to take prisoners or not was the lingering question and whatever the answer Byrn did not wish to find out.

  He pulled magic from the world around him. The method that he used was only slightly different from the one that Xander used. Unlike Xander who absorbed great flows of magic from the life-forces of individuals, often killing them, Byrn took a little bit of the ambient energy that flowed from the world and its inhabitants, so that instead of robbing one person of their very existence he took a small bit from thousands of sources in amounts that were so small that the effect was barely noticeable. This energy was transformed into an aura of invisibility. It would not last for very long, but Byrn hoped it would be long enough to get him past these men.

  His feet moved as quickly and quietly as they could, but it was still an infuriatingly slow pace and Byrn had to give his full attention to the invisibility spell to keep it from dropping too soon. He held it close to him, but it was losing form and Byrn had to constantly work to keep the framework of the spell from falling apart.

  Four soldiers rushed past him to one side and he pressed up against a wall so that they would not run into him. Three got by without incident, but the fourth’s foot collided with Byrn’s own causing him to stumble forward. Byrn barely stopped from crying out in surprise, but he thought he was discovered when the soldier turned around and looked right at him for a moment before he realized that the man was trying to figure out what caused him to trip. One of the other guards commanded, “Hurry up already! What is the matter? Walking on your own two feet too hard for you?”

  “No, sir,” replied the one who had tripped with a barely contained flare of anger in his tone, but he fell back in line.

  Byrn let go of his held breath and hurried his way to the workshop. The door was open, but no one was inside. Making sure that no one was looking from the hallway, Byrn shut the door and released the invisibility aura.

  He scavenged the room and looked for any runes that Alia might have left lying around. She always had magical devices and trinkets scattered about, but there were none of the little wooden runes to be found. Now what was he to do? He was too tired to use the invisibility spell all the way to the private quarters and there was no guarantee that there would be any runes there either. Sneaking out of the castle and past the army outside was even more ludicrous. He paced the room back and forth, trying to figure out what to do when he caught the gleam of something gold out of the corner of his eye. It was the control collar that Alia said she had deactivated. Byrn looked at it with his special vision for traces of magic and found none before snapping it closed around his neck.

  The door flew open and a quartet of soldiers entered the room. Upon seeing Byrn the first two raised their swords to strike him down, but another commanded them to stop. “Look at the collar,” he said, pointing at Byrn’s neck. “He’s one of ours. What are you doing in here?”

  Byrn stammered as he tried to come up with something plausible. “I- I was ordered-“

  “All right. All right. We know you were ‘ordered.’ Just get back to your unit
. The rest of the wizards are outside.”

  The soldiers parted for Byrn and he walked past them without a word and purposefully kept his face turned down to avoid eye contact, guessing that this was the way the other collared magicians might act after all of the mistreatments they must have endured.

  The main doors of the castle had been broken down with a battering ram. Most of the heavy wood lay on the ground, but clumps of it were still attached to the massive hinges that the door swung on. Outside there were staging groups of soldiers, Kenzai, and magicians. Byrn headed over to the magicians and was almost stopped a few times, but was allowed to pass without being questioned once the soldiers took notice of his collar.

  It was only the other magicians who ranged from children to the elderly that paid him any mind and recognized him as an outsider, but no one said anything. Whether that was because they were ordered not to speak or because they did not wish for any of the normal humans to take notice was unclear.

  There were about forty magicians among his unit who stood at attention in case they were ordered to go in. Byrn was the only one without a staff and hoped that no one else would make that distinction of him. He looked around to try and get an idea of the kingdom army’s size and makeup. Certainly, he couldn’t see the whole of the army from his vantage point. There were others inside, in town, and probably on the outskirts, but it was a bit concerning to discover that his unit was the only group of magicians within view. Surely there had to be more of them left. He wished he could ask some of the men around him, but did not wish to draw attention to himself. If this was all that was left of the hundreds of magicians that lived in the domains, then Byrn could not allow them to remain as prisoners. For now finding Xander and reclaiming his body would have to wait.

  Hours passed and Byrn began to feel more comfortable as the magicians were ordered by one of the Kenzai who commanded them to return to their camp. The magicians moved at a slow pace that suited Byrn just fine and it was another hour before they came to a stop at the designated camp where they could rest for the night. A handful of Collective magicians were added to the unit with active collars around their necks and if they had looks of despair on their faces when they first arrived that look grew ten times worse when they saw Byrn and believed that Xander Necros, their leader, had been taken prisoner too. They joined Byrn one at a time believing that if something was to happen their best bet of escape would be at their leader’s side. He wondered if he should tell them the truth, but could not risk talking while the camp was in utter silence.

  At some point the army would have to disperse and as Byrn thought about it, he guessed that these other Collective magicians would be questioned. It was a guarded secret that magicians could travel great distances at ease, but Janus knew that and he would surely have shared that bit of information with his generals. They would probably figure out that the resistance was so light, because most of the magicians fled the battle. They would want to know where those Collective members went to and what they had planned for their next move. The captured magicians would be compelled by their collars to answer any questions truthfully as best they could and they would tell the inquisitors that the Collective planned to strike the capital and the army would move out. They had no hope of getting to Mollifas ahead of the magicians, but they would try anyway and when that happened Byrn would take the surviving magicians into the wilderness where they could hide.

  Chapter 22

  “He can’t be dead!” Alia denied the news brought to her by Tomlin and Riona with the same certainty that she would have had of seeing the sunrise on the morrow, if they had told her that it would not come.

  “It is true,” Riona consoled, “I saw it myself.”

  “What exactly did you see?” asked Alia, petulantly. Her cold stare must have unnerved Riona, because she could only open and close her mouth wordlessly so that she looked like a fish desperately gasping after it was yanked out of the water.

  “It all happened so fast…” Riona tried to explain, but could add nothing else.

  “Byrn was there too,” added Tomlin hoping to change the subject to something a little more pleasant in the face of his friend and master’s tragedy. “He was with us at the end, but left separately.”

  Alia did not ask where Byrn went. She had had enough and was not entirely sure that she cared about him at that moment. She was driven from her home, forced to live once more with the day-to-day worry that came with not having a place to call one’s own. Her father was dead, as were many of her friends in a futile effort to protect that home, which was quickly abandoned in favor of enacting her father’s plan to seize control of the capital- a plan he could no longer see fulfilled. It all suddenly seemed so pointless to continue this struggle.

  “Where did he go?” It was Kaleb.

  Tomlin looked to Riona and she answered with a raised eyebrow. “I do not know, but it must have been important,” he finally said when the necromancer did not answer.

  Kaleb looked as if someone had just kicked his puppy, but suffered in silence.

  Ryonus interjected, speaking only to Alia, “This must be hard for you to accept, but why would Tomlin and Riona lie to you?” He gestured to the pair that sat at the table opposite them. Upon returning to Lion’s Landing via the transportation rune, the magicians met up at the Hasty Rider Inn located near the northern wall of the port city. Alia and Ryonus were the first ones to arrive and rented a large enough room should any other magicians show up.

  None did, except for Tomlin and Riona who had just arrived. Still there was some hope that others would join them. No more than a few hours had passed since Wolfsbane was evacuated, but Alia feared that they were all that was left of the Collective. Other magicians were supposed to be scattered about the kingdom, converging on the capital to enact Xander’s plan to seize the throne. She had assumed that his ultimate plan was to take hostages of the royals and other noble families, forcing them to submit to Collective rule, but he was never specific about how he intended to achieve that. Now she may never know and whatever they were to do would now fall on her shoulders to see it through. That was assuming that anyone else showed up when they arrived in Mollifas.

  “I just… I know they would not lie to me, but…” Alia clenched her fists in anger. A sudden desire to hit something or scream came over her and she had to resist the urge to do either. Not only because, performing either act would make her look like a crazy woman, but Avelice was also sleeping peacefully, cradled in her arms. “It does not seem real,” she tried to explain calmly.

  She got up from the table and looked out the window at the stables below. The stable master was tending to some horses with his child apprentice who looked to be doing most of the hard work under his master’s instruction. Farther out was a series of shops and stalls a few blocks away. At this time of day the streets were fairly packed with people.

  “I need some time alone,” she said without looking away from the view.

  “Of course,” said Ryonus as she had expected. None of them would try to stop her. She had a reputation, rightly or wrongly, of being considered ruthless and in her current state they might be afraid of what she would do. Alia could not blame anyone for thinking that way about her. It was an image that she spent some time crafting to maintain her control over the Collective before eventually giving up the command with the birth of her daughter.

  Alia wandered out onto the street amidst the throngs of people, but instead of getting lost within the crowd she turned towards the northern gate with Avelice in tow. As she got closer the crowd started to thin out until she was the only person on foot leaving the city.

  A guardsman called to her as she was leaving. “It is not safe to be traveling the road alone! There are bandits about!”

  “There are always bandits!” she told him, but did not turn and only quickened her pace. “If they are lucky, they will stay far away from me,” she added when the guard was out of earshot.

  ***

  The
cabin was falling apart. She thought that it might have been torn down or burned following the massacre that stole her mother’s life as well as the lives of her students. That was the night that she first met Byrn. She had arrived late to the fight and he was the only one she could save. Alia never came back to this place after that… until now.

  Her boots crunched against the broken pieces of wood that still littered the path leading up to where the entrance had been- now just a gaping hole in the front of the cabin.

  She lived here as a child along with her mother. They shared the cabin with Mother Truthsayer and her two daughters: Minnie and Melani. They were all dead now and only Avelice was left- left to grieve over them and carry on without them.

  “How can I keep going?”

  Avelice cooed as if to remind her that she was not truly alone.

  “I still have you, don’t I, sweetheart?”

  The baby smiled at her and Alia returned her grin even as tears began to blur her vision.

  The crack of a tree branch outside snapped Alia out of her thoughts, reminding her that she was not the only predator that roamed these woods. She unhitched the staff at her back and adjusted Avelice so that she could hold her child securely with one arm and cast magic with the staff. A fire spell came to mind and she whispered a mantra of focus as she readied her mind for casting. A shadow passed over the doorway. It was long and thin. Human. Perhaps it was one of the bandits that the guard mentioned or a Kenzai scout patrolling the area. Alia unconsciously turned her body so that Avelice was held opposite the passageway. Her staff was ready to strike at the first glimpse of the shadow’s master.