by B. T. Narro
A man’s voice came out of Greda’s mouth. “This man is familiar to me.” The illusionist pointed at me.
The guards let go of Shaw and Jacob and took out their swords.
“It’s him, sir,” the dark mage said. “The bladedancer.”
Sir? Was this Cason Clay, right here before us?
The image of Greda’s face and hair morphed into that of a man. The light blonde hair shrank until it covered only the top of his head, the hue darkening. Greda’s cute, round face elongated. A light beard sprouted around the mouth, covering a pointed chin. The dark eyes didn’t change, making me realize that they were Cason’s from the beginning. He had a menacing look that was casual as well, as if the scene before him would require a great physical intervention and yet he wasn’t so much in the mood.
“Burda, get out of here now!” I demanded.
She finally took off running.
“You will free these men now,” Cason said.
“Who are you?” the lead guard asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Cason.” The brave guard dashed at the most wanted criminal with his sword, but Cason lifted his hand, and the guard rose into the air.
I had never seen such a spell. Cason must’ve encircled the man with dteria and forced the clear energy up, hoisting the man up with it. The amount of power it took was far beyond anything I could do with my mana.
The other guard and I charged. Cason made a shooing motion toward me. A thick sheet of clear energy shot out from his hand and picked me up. I had been thrown by dteria plenty of times before, but this was different. I kept rising higher, the energy still intact, as it carried me into the sky. Finally it dispersed, but my momentum carried me on until I slowly came to a peak and started to fall.
Terror consumed me when I looked down and saw just how high I was. Up past the two-story houses around me, I was going to break something for sure.
The ground came at me fast. I did the only thing I could think to do. I casted Expel right beneath me and held it as strongly as I could. The energy was soft, like a mattress. It would be a lot better to land on than the hard dirt of the street.
I didn’t know what happened exactly, but suddenly I was on the ground with aching pain across my entire front side, including my face. I felt weak, hurt, like I didn’t have the strength to stand up. A flash of memory came back to me. I had broken through my barrier of mana, the dvinia shattering from the force of my body pushing through it. However, it must have slowed me because I didn’t think anything was broken, though I was in too much pain everywhere to tell for sure.
I looked up to see Cason holding both guards suspended in the air. He walked up to the closest one and grabbed the man’s shin. He held out his other hand, and Shaw walked over to allow Cason to place it on his shoulder.
The guard screamed as if in great pain, but soon it was over. Shaw stepped aside and let Jacob take his place. The guard screamed again, and that’s when I realized what I was witnessing. Cason wasn’t just a dark mage. He was a warlock, draining the life from the guard to heal the injuries of his men.
Soon it was the dark mage’s turn. By then, the guard had passed out, and I feared he would die from this one.
“No!” I yelled as I forced myself up, only to put too much weight on my right foot and collapse. Something was severely wrong with my ankle.
Cason finished healing the dark mage and let the guard drop lifelessly to the ground. The other guard continued to squirm in the air as I heard a woman shriek from behind me. I looked back to see Burda. She had not gotten far.
“Run!” I yelled again.
She did run, but it was toward me.
“Don’t!” I yelled. “Get out of here!”
She tried to lift me up, but I was too heavy for her.
“Go, dammit!” I screamed. “Go!”
Cason walked toward us. He let the guard drop as he passed by. “Keep him from running,” he told his healed men, and they held swords up to him.
I needed time to heal myself, but Cason would be upon me in a moment.
I pushed Burda back. “Run!” I yelled for the last time.
She let go of my arms and bolted away.
Cason bent down. I was about to throw him back with dvinia and heal myself as quickly as I could. There was one problem with that plan, though. It wouldn’t buy me enough time.
“Anything broken, Jon?” he asked.
I didn’t answer as I stared up at him.
He ground his foot on my injured ankle, ripping a scream out of my throat as my bones splintered inside my skin.
It felt like ages passed before he finally took his foot off.
“You’re lucky,” Cason told me. “A fall from that height could’ve killed you.”
“He probably used dvinia to slow his fall,” said the dark mage. “He’s stronger with it than you thought.”
“How strong?” Cason asked the overweight man. “Stronger than you?”
“No,” he said. “But close.”
“Then he is still weak, and with an ankle broken this badly he will be useless for a while. Leon cannot mend broken bones.” Cason looked into my eyes. “You’re lucky I have a use for you, Jon. You will give a message to the king. Tell him there’s only one way to keep the people of this city safe. He is to forfeit the castle to me by tomorrow evening. He will do so by putting down the drawbridge and exiting with all of his soldiers and sorcerers. The castle workers are to remain. They will serve me now, as will your king. You will tell him this, and I promise, I promise that fewer people will die by the time this is over.”
I nodded.
“Byron Lawson is to return to Tryn where he belongs,” Cason added. “He will be hearing from someone shortly with instructions. Failure to comply will result in the death of everyone the king cares about, including many citizens of Newhaven who want nothing to do with this war. I am merely trying to save their lives.”
Cason turned around and walked back to the captured guard, who was shaking with fear.
“I expect you to quit your service unless you wish to end up like him.” Cason pointed at the guard lying in the middle of the street. “And you will tell the other guards what happened here, or I will come for you and any family you may have.”
The man nodded.
Cason and his three loyal men took their leave. I wasn’t sure I would be able to heal my broken ankle, but the prone guard—if he was still alive—needed my help first. I got up and hopped over to him as quickly as I could while the other guard checked his pulse.
I crouched down over the man and put my hands on his chest and back. Cason may know my name, but he didn’t seem to realize that not only had I learned the heal spell with uF, and F, but recently I had taught myself to add the lower octave of lF to the spell, increasing its power exponentially.
It drained my mana and stamina like nothing else, however.
I casted the three notes together into this man’s body. I didn’t know where he needed healing, but the heart seemed like the best place to start. If casting Expel was like throwing a heavy rock, then casting Heal was like trying to heave a boulder that I could barely get off the ground. But Heal was even worse, because I had to maintain the spell for it to do any good, like holding the boulder up with steady hands, yet all the pressure was on my mind.
In the case where there was no injury for my mana to find, however, the strain was somewhere in between the two.
“What are you doing?” asked the guard.
“Nothing,” I said as I stopped.
“He’s gone.”
I nodded. “Did you know him?”
“No.”
Someone did, perhaps a wife, a child. I stopped myself as I looked down the street at Cason and the others walking away casually. I figured the overweight dark mage would return to his house for some belongings and then we wouldn’t find him there again. He would go into hiding—wherever Cason was staying in the capital. Shaw and Jacob would be with them.
I had thought Cason was still in Koluk, plotting, but that seemed to be over now. I would’ve liked to think that his whole plan was sending someone to convince the king to give up his castle, but I was not so naive. When that failed, which it would, he would take action.
The guard offered his hand to help me up. “I can make sure you get back to the castle, but then I’m quitting. I have a family to worry about. You’re young. You might want to think about doing the same.”
“I can make it back on my own,” I told the man scornfully.
He looked insulted as he took back his hand. “Don’t be prideful. You saw what he can do. The king has no one who can stand up to that kind of sorcery.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Rohaer will come for Lycast, eventually,” the man added. “It’s better if Nykal gives up. Many lives will be saved.”
“If that’s what you think, then why did you join as a guard? You pledged to protect the kingdom, and now you quit.”
“I will protect my family and myself first, and the kingdom second. I won’t be the only one who quits after tonight.”
I got up on my one foot, tired of him talking down at me. “You will take the body of this man to Byron Lawson and tell him what happened. Let him decide what you are to say about this event. Then you can quit.”
“Who are you to give me an order?”
“Didn’t you hear them? I’m Jon Oklar, the king’s sorcerer.”
“A lot of good you did against Cason, sorcerer.” He gestured at my ankle. “And a lot of good you’ll do now, as the rest of those who fight will die for their stubborn king.”
“Take the body back. Drag it if you are too weak to carry it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He hoisted the dead guard up over his shoulder and started walking off.
I waited for him to turn away from me before I sat back down.
Byron Lawson was a man I still hadn’t met personally, but he had employed my father for many years in the city of Tryn, where Byron was the lord and my father worked as his head guard. Now Byron was the head guard here in the capital, assigned to the important role because the king trusted him. I looked forward to speaking with him about my late father, though I was certain when we finally did meet, there would be more important matters to discuss.
I had never healed anything besides scrapes and one very deep cut my fellow sorcerer Reuben had suffered to his leg. It would’ve taken his life had I not intervened. He’d been a lot nicer to me since then, though still arrogant and haughty at times.
My ankle was definitely broken, but I was too frightened from this encounter with Cason for the pain to really get to me right now. I didn’t want to admit to myself that the guard was right about many things.
I tried not to think about it as I casted Heal on myself. The agony of the spell mending my bone tore another scream out of my throat, forcing me to stop.
Damn, this is going be horrible.
I took a few deep breaths and started the spell again.
CHAPTER THREE
Home. It was a word that had meant one thing to me a month ago and something else now.
Home used to be with my father, in Bhode, a town most people here in Newhaven had not heard of. I could almost see his bearded face as I groggily made the walk back to the castle.
“Jon” was all he’d say when I’d done wrong. Just my name. “Jon.” He’d let his eyes remind me of what I knew.
“I’m sorry,” I wanted to tell him. “But I don’t regret it. I don’t regret coming here.”
I expected him to disapprove of me putting myself in danger. I expected him to shake his head at me and say my name again.
He did not.
He watched me instead. No, he looked after me.
I knew it was my sleep-deprived mind blessing me with a waking dream, but I felt tears in my eyes.
“You should’ve brought me back here years ago,” I told my father. “A healer could’ve saved your life if we were here when you became sick.”
But how many healers had I met who could cure such a sickness? I wasn’t sure I could do it, even after I had learned the most powerful variation of the spell Heal.
“Do you blame me for a lack of prescience?” my father asked me, his question leading somewhere.
“No.”
“Weren’t we happy in Bhode?”
Bored, I wanted to say, but in truth that was rare. Our sword fights kept us busy when we weren’t gathering, hunting, and cooking. We also helped our neighbors in return for some much-needed coin every now and again. My father had earned a lot from his time as head guard in Tryn, but much of that had gone toward purchasing the house and the belongings within.
I didn’t want to think about how I now owned that house in Bhode. I had contemplated selling it before leaving, but I wanted someplace to return to, in case things became dire during my trip south. Besides, I wouldn’t have felt safe traveling with all that coin, and that was assuming someone would buy the house. The people in my hometown weren’t known for buying or selling property.
“You blame someone,” my father said. “If not me, then who?”
Myself.
I knew he would console me if I said it aloud. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be miserable, at least for this moment. It felt like I deserved it.
“Jon,” he said, and let his eyes do the lecturing.
I looked at him for a long while, knowing this might be the last time I saw him.
He was right. I shouldn’t blame myself.
“I miss you, Father.”
I blinked, and he was gone.
I’d made it to the castle. The drawbridge was down, two guards standing before it, one with a horn latched to his belt. He would sound the instrument at first sign of an attack, and the drawbridge would close. That was only if I didn’t come home first. It would stay closed for the night after I passed through.
Home. This was my home now.
But it wasn’t really. It was where I ate and trained. It was where I had my own large quarters. It was where the king lived, with his daughter and wife, and where my peers slept and trained. It was the most important place to me in the world right now, but it wasn’t my home.
“You’re late,” complained one of the guards.
I didn’t want to give them the reason for my tardiness. I couldn’t speak the words more than once, and I would have to deliver the news to the king’s councilman.
I trudged past them as one gave the signal to close the drawbridge. The deafening sound drowned out my gloomy thoughts for a short time as I crossed through the portcullis and into the grand courtyard.
Last night, I’d asked the king why he would station two guards and leave the drawbridge open for me to return. Why not close it after I left the castle?
His reply had made me realize that my lack of sleep was starting to affect my ability to think.
“In case you encounter more trouble than you can handle and need to flee back to the castle.”
He clearly hadn’t forgotten about the threats that lurked in the city, but he didn’t know just how close some of these threats had become.
I also had a sense that the king wanted to lure out our hidden enemies. An open drawbridge with a couple of guards could be seen as bait, but Cason seemed to know that. Rather than take the bait, he’d demanded we leave willingly.
As much as I wanted to enter the apartments, where my peers were sound asleep with no idea what had happened tonight, I needed to tell Barrett Edgar about Cason. I headed toward the keep next to the apartments. The guard there unlocked the door for me.
With all three hearths lit at night, the ground floor of the keep always felt like an oven. I walked up the stairs to the second floor and followed the light down one hall. The king was probably asleep, but the councilman was always up late.
I eventually made it to his room to find him writing at his desk. He stopped and looked at me.
“What happe
ned, Jon?” Barrett was a middle-aged man with a gray beard, but his moustache was still black.
“I encountered Cason.”
Barrett bolted out of his chair. “Where?”
“He’s gone back into hiding, I’m sure. It took me too long to get here when he was done.”
“Done with what? What happened?”
I was too tired for this, but it had to be said. I told him everything, starting with entering the tavern in hopes of entrapping Shaw. I went on to briefly describe the battle against three of them: Shaw, the man who called himself Jacob, and the overweight dark mage. Then I told Barrett about the arresting guards and the following confrontation with Cason, all the gruesome details included. It was difficult to get the words out by then, but I found the strength to inform the councilman of the ultimatum that Cason had delivered to me.
“He says we must forfeit the castle to him by tomorrow evening by letting down the drawbridge and exiting with all our soldiers and sorcerers. Also, Byron Lawson is to return to Tryn, where he will be hearing from someone with instructions.”
I wasn’t sure I should add the last line. It didn’t seem necessary for anyone to hear, even the king, because I knew we would not comply. But Barrett seemed to sense I was holding something in.
“What else, Jon?”
I sighed. “He said that failure to comply will result in the death of everyone the king cares about, including many citizens of Newhaven who want nothing to do with this war.”
“Everyone the king cares about, as in his family?”
“He didn’t specify, sir. That was all he said. After he left, I tried to save the guard whose life he’d drained, but it was too late. I told the other guard to take his body to Byron and follow whatever order Byron had for him.”
“That was good on your part.”
“But I fear he might’ve disobeyed. He’d openly told me he was discontinuing service after what he’d seen.” I paused. “I never got his name.”
“We will look into it. Don’t worry yourself anymore with this. I will speak to the king in the morning. You should rest.”
I expected him to tell me this punishment was over now. I gave him a longing look.