Using all the force of his will, the wizard ripped his gaze from the top of the stairs and turned around. For a moment he hesitated, then charged down the steps. He barreled through the second door and fell into darkness.
***
Aidan gasped and sat up. He was in what looked like a makeshift mine. A draft was blowing from the deepest part of the shaft, carrying away smoke from a small campfire. Aaliyah sat across from him, picking her nails with her knife.
“Glad to see you’re finally up, magic boy,” Aaliyah said, never looking up from her nails.
Aidan leaned himself back against the wall. His head felt like a very angry dragon was trapped inside, attempting to claw its way out.
“How long was I out?”
“Pretty much all day. The roc did you in. We weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”
Aidan closed his eyes. “Try to sound less concerned. Do you have any water?”
The amogh tossed him a skin. It bounced against the rocks with a gentle thump and a splash, but to Aidan it sounded like war drums. He opened the skin and greedily started sucking water.
“The egg is fine. It’s somewhere over there in Timothy’s stuff. We took your wand too. You aren’t supposed to use magic for a few days.” Aaliyah said. “You owe the others a thank you. They saved your life.”
Aidan put the now empty skin down and looked up at his friend.
“About that. Do I owe you a thank you? Because I could’ve sworn I heard your voice when the roc was … doing things to me. And later, I needed someone, and you were there,” the wizard said.
Aaliyah paused her nail picking. It was only for a moment, and in anyone else it would have meant nothing. But Aidan had spent enough time with Aaliyah to know that her subtle actions were the only way to read her.
“It must’ve been a hallucination,” she said quietly. “From the pain.”
Aidan sighed. “Yeah, must’ve been.” He would never, ever understand this girl.
An uncomfortable silence filled the mineshaft until Eleanor came in. She looked tired, but there was a smile on her face.
“This cave is defended! Well, kind of. I cast a spell that will make a really loud noise if a stranger tries to come in. Didn’t have much magic left. Oh, hey Aidan.”
The blonde wizard plopped herself down next to Aaliyah.
“Oh, so that’s how you keep your nails so clean and pretty. Mind if I have a go when you’re done?”
Aaliyah rolled her eyes and handed Eleanor the knife. “I was planning on getting some air anyway. Will I trigger anything if I go out?”
“No, I have it set up to ignore amoghs.”
Aaliyah stood and left the mineshaft. Eleanor immediately started picking at her own nails with the knife.
“Aaliyah told you no magic for a few days, right?” Eleanor asked.
Aidan nodded.
“Good. Right now your soul has no arror. If you use up your magic, it won’t have any reason to stick around.”
Aidan was quiet for a moment as he remembered how much his soul had wanted to not stick around.
“Eleanor, what did you all do to me? How did you keep me off that staircase?”
The girl looked up at Aidan, concerned. “I don’t remember a staircase. Kyra was doing something with her powder. I tried to help, but I’m pretty sure I was just donating magic. Maybe you can ask Tim when he gets back. He took Kyra back to her village to grab some supplies.”
“When will they return?” Aidan asked.
Eleanor frowned. “I don’t know, he really should have been back by now. Maybe he has a lot of supplies.”
She had barely finished speaking when a light started glowing from the mouth of her bag. Inside was one of the communication crystals the team had been given, linked to two others. Timothy had one, Aidan had another. Giving Aaliyah a magically powered device would have been pointless.
Eleanor picked up the crystal and Timothy’s voice rang through the mineshaft. He was breathing hard.
“Grab you stuff and get ready to go. The hellhounds are coming.”
8
Timothy knew something was wrong with the village long before they reached it. Smoke should’ve been rising from some of the chimneys, but there was way, way too much smoke above the treetops. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the village from the roc’s back, and he doubted the bird would tell its passengers if something was wrong. As they got closer, Timothy grew more concerned. Every time the trees parted enough to allow a view of the sky, the pillar of smoke seemed larger.
Kyra seemed to have noticed that something was off too. They began to speed up as they moved, and eventually Timothy found himself running. A moment before they reached the tree line, the wizard caught Kyra’s arm and stopped. He could smell the smoke in the air.
“We should go back and get the others,” he said.
Kyra ripped her arm free and pushed through the last of the bushes. Timothy sighed and followed. For once, he wished he could travel with someone who had a sense of self-preservation.
When he stepped into the light, it took a moment for his mind to process what his eyes were telling him.
“By the dragon’s breath,” he said. It was all his mind could manage.
The village had been completely sacked. The buildings were charred heaps of charcoal, the last bits of flame giving way to embers. Chickens, goats, and a single cow were lying dead all over what had once been the village center. Their throats were slit, and their bodies devoured by some sort of animal.
The worst though, were the people. There weren’t nearly enough to account for the whole village, Timothy could only see six. One adult body, burned beyond recognition, was still clawing at a window on the last remaining wall of a house. An elderly man and woman, stabbed in the back as they fled. But by far the most horrifying were the three in the middle. When Kyra saw them, she ran to them. Timothy couldn’t move. It was Derrin, another elderly man, and a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve. All of them were staring at the sky, black and purple magic bolts protruding from their chests.
For a moment Timothy was staring into that dark carriage again, his mother’s face twisted in pain. The wizard slowly approached the bodies and fell to his knees as Kyra started to wail.
“No, no, no,” he said, curling into a ball. “This can’t be happening.”
It was him. Whoever had killed his mother had killed these people. Had killed this child. As Kyra’s voice drowned out the world around him, Timothy felt something deep in his gut. Something Aidan had described to him on countless occasions. Something he never thought he would experience. The words rage and hate couldn’t begin to describe it. It was so much deeper, so much fuller. It was passion, a passion for one thing and one thing only. The blood of whoever committed this act.
Kyra had been wailing incoherently, but now she looked up at the sky, tears streaming down her face, and screamed a word that Timothy knew all too well.
“Garret!”
The wizard sat up and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“What did you say?”
The witch couldn’t respond through the sobbing.
“Tell me what you said or I swear I’ll… I’ll… I don’t know, but it won’t be pretty.” He gripped her tighter.
Suddenly the sobbing stopped, and Kyra’s eyes rolled back. Her head tilted towards the sky, and Timothy felt that strange power grip him again.
“A promise once made in the coldest of blood,
by a scared little boy whose life hadn’t begun,”
“Stop it,” Timothy said. “We don’t have time right now.”
“now a healer is he, for his soul was too kind,
but vengeance won’t rest till it’s had its time.”
“I said shut up!” Timothy yelled.
Now as his mother died, his lover shall too,
“Shut up witch!”
Kyra’s pupil-less eyes turned and looked directly into Timothy’s.
Watch out bo
y. The dark angel is coming for you.
The spell broke, and Timothy was flung backward onto the ground. Kyra was where she had been, and her eyes returned to normal. She stared at Timothy with horror and fear.
The wizard rolled over and crawled to the witch. He grabbed her by the shoulders again, this time harder.
“You know, don’t you? Derrin was wrong, you remember everything about the prophecies.”
Kyra looked back at him, her face full of pity. For a moment, rage overcame Timothy again, but it subsided along with his grip. They sat in silence for a few moments, surrounded by the dead.
“Okay,” Timothy said, standing. “We need supplies. Food.” The wizard made eating motions with his mouth. Kyra nodded shakily, then pointed to the bodies and made a digging gesture. Tears started to fill her eyes again as she did so.
Timothy shook his head. “We need supplies, whoever did this might come back. What I wouldn’t give for a translation spell.”
He started trying to mime his thoughts when they heard a sound that turned the wizard’s blood to ice. Barking and howling. Hellhounds.
Timothy suddenly realized how stupid he had been. The beasts had followed them south as they travelled towards the roc’s mountain, but had stopped at the river. The roc had carried them over the pack when it brought them to the mine, which would have made regular dogs lose the scent. These, however, were not regular dogs. They hunted by using the magical energies given off by objects and creatures. Aidan was not producing enough power to be tracked anymore, but Timothy and Eleanor were still emitting enough power for the hellhounds to follow. Also, the phoenix egg was like a beacon. Had he taken a moment to think about it, Timothy would have put some sort of dampening spell on the little egg, but it was too late now.
Kyra noticed the howling too. She grabbed Timothy’s arm and ran to what had once been Derrin’s house. The walls were still standing up to about head-height, though the door was completely gone.
“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast,” Timothy said, pulling his wand out of his robes.
Kyra ran to a former bookshelf and pushed aside the ashes. Behind them was a chest, clearly enchanted, that had survived the hottest flames. Kyra said a few words in her version of the sorcerer’s tongue and the chest clicked open.
The hounds had almost breeched the tree line. Timothy felt cold sweat trickle down his neck as he tried to think of a spell that could stop the beasts. Cold spells took a lot of energy, which was something Timothy didn’t have. All of the other elemental spells hadn’t had any effect on the beasts, and Timothy didn’t have enough time to think of a more complicated spell.
He was preparing to make a small, condensed field of cold, more like a snowball, really, when Kyra again grabbed his arm and pulled him out the door. He looked back and saw a dark shadow dart into the village behind them. Before he could see any more, Kyra yanked him into the forest on the north side of the village.
Since Timothy had met Aidan, he had done a lot of running. They had run toward and away from dragons, assassins, wizards, and amoghs. The worst, however, were the hellhounds. There was no way for Timothy to outrun them, no way to duck behind a tree. He couldn’t lose them, and he couldn’t turn around and fight them.
So it was as they ran through the forest, Timothy’s breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. The hellhounds didn’t seem to be getting any closer, though the wizard had no doubt they could. No, they were waiting for their prey to tire. As Timothy felt his strides shorten, a nagging sense of guilt began to battle his vicious fight for survival. The hounds were tracking them by following Timothy, if he let them catch him then maybe Kyra could get away.
He tripped over a log and fell facedown into a pile of leaves. Kyra knelt beside him and pushed her body up against the fallen tree.
“Go, get out of here,” he gasped, gesturing for her to run. It was shamefully evident that she was more in shape than he.
Kyra shook her head and started mixing powders from her bag. It was kind of impressive how adept her hands were as she whispered bits and pieces of spells. Even after seeing her only family murdered and running for her life, her instincts were still strong enough to keep her going.
“What are you—”
Kyra cut Timothy off by shoving some powder in his mouth. He felt some of his precious magic flood to his face and sneezed. The powder came out of his mouth and floated in the air, suspended in magic. It hovered there for moment before forming into two distinct shapes. One was a boy holding a wand, clothed in some tattered ranger’s clothes. The other was a dark-haired girl in a simple homespun dress.
“Oh. That’s amazing.” Timothy said, staring at the perfect likeness of himself. Illusion spells were difficult to master. Had he cast it, most likely one of the ears would have ended up on the forehead. But these were pure images of their creators, down to the color of the eyes. Most importantly, Timothy could feel his magic resonating from them, a beacon for the hounds.
Kyra said a few more words in her witch’s tongue, then pointed east. The apparitions took off at a breakneck pace, leaving the trail of magic behind them. The hounds’ barking slowly receded as they got further away. As soon as they were out of hearing range, Timothy pulled out his communication crystal and started to warn the others about the hellhounds. His magic ran out completely before he could hear a response.
Kyra stood and offered her hand to Timothy. Between the running and the magic she had borrowed from him, the wizard was utterly exhausted. He slowly brought himself to his feet on shaky legs and started stumbling forward, Kyra at his side.
Moving was a struggle, but the wizard kept pushing on. He could still hear the hellhounds in the distance, and if that wasn’t motivation enough, he knew he had to get back to Eleanor. Every time they took a moment to catch their breath, the words of Kyra’s latest prophecy came crashing to the forefront of his mind. As his mother died, his lover shall too. He knew what it meant. He didn’t want to believe it, but Eleanor was in grave danger. Garret had killed Timothy’s mother, and now it was going after the person who mattered most to him. There was hope though. Vengeance won’t rest till it’s had its time. Whoever this angel was, perhaps the prophecy was saying Timothy would have a chance to kill him. To save Eleanor.
When they had been going for about ten minutes, the sound of the hellhounds suddenly stopped. Timothy felt whatever magic Kyra had used on him die. The wizard swore, and tried to move a little faster. Either the beasts had caught the illusions or Kyra’s spell had run out of magic. Whatever the case, it would only be a few seconds before the creatures picked up the true scent again.
Kyra unsheathed her long, jeweled dagger. The metal had been woven into waves ending in a sharp tip. From where he stood, Timothy could feel it was made of Rakka steel. Timothy had never put his wand away, though he doubted it would do much good until he had time to regenerate some magic.
The hellhounds weren’t playing games anymore. In under a minute Timothy could branches breaking behind them as the beasts crashed through the forest. Mustering the last of his strength, Timothy started running again. Kyra still stayed with him. If nothing else, the witch was loyal.
He heard a snarl behind him and whirled around. The first hound was loping after them with long, lazy strides, avoiding trees and branches effortlessly. Timothy, on the other hand, had barely turned back around before he tripped on a root and fell into sunshine. He was at the foot of the hill. The mine was just a little way up, if he could make it that far.
The wizard flipped over onto his back just in time to see the hellhound leaping for him. The creature was absolutely massive, with a gaping maw to match. Its eyes were cold red orbs, its fur messy and matted. One ear was half gone, and a scar covered the beast’s nose. The beast jumped, and Timothy felt two huge paws slam into his chest. His head hit the hard earth. The wizard closed his eyes as teeth flashed downward.
He heard a yelp and felt the weight lift from his chest. The boy looked up to see Aaliyah at the
mouth of the cave, next to a pile of stones.
“Come on,” she yelled. “I can’t keep them off forever.”
The amogh threw one of the stones into the woods and Timothy heard another hound cry in pain. He jumped to his feet and ran to the mouth of the cave. After a moment, Aaliyah joined him. Kyra was already there; she must have kept running when he went down.
“We need to get some weapons,” Timothy panted. “They’re going to try to come in.”
Eleanor smiled. “Let them come. I’m ready.”
Timothy glanced back out of the cave. Six of the creatures were nervously circling the entrance of the mine. After a few seconds, one built up enough courage to place a paw inside the cave.
Timothy felt a magical trap snap, and a high pitched ringing filled the air. He and the others had to cover their ears. The hounds, though had hearing that was far more sensitive than that of any human. They fell to the ground yelping and clawing at their heads. The five who were further away from the cave ran back to the woods. The last had no such luck, as a rock from Aaliyah’s hand took its life before the alarm stopped.
Timothy leaned back against the wall of the shaft. Aidan was still sitting where they had left him, though he was now conscious.
“Eleanor told me I couldn’t help set up traps,” Aidan said, “and Aaliyah made me stay here. Sorry I couldn’t help.”
“It’s all right,” Timothy said, “glad to see you awake.”
The blond wizard felt two arms wrap around him and smiled. Eleanor could always, always make him feel better.
Except when Garret kills her, said a small part of his mind.
Timothy frowned and pushed her away. “We don’t have time right now. How long can we stay here?”
“I don’t know,” Eleanor replied. “The hellhounds seem to get braver at night, and I don’t think they are acting like they would in the wild. I think someone is controlling them. When that person gets here, I don’t think an alarm will stop him.”
Timothy swore and sat down next to Aidan, who handed him a waterskin and a handful of berries.
The Phoenix King: The Thunderheart Chronicles Book 2 Page 9