by B. T. Narro
“I don’t think it’s right for all of you to be prying into these affairs,” she scolded. “This is Jon’s life.”
“But these affairs do pertain to us,” Reuben argued. “We are going to be the ones fighting against a revolt. The princess’ hand in marriage could tell us which noble family we won’t have to worry about. If Jon’s going to marry her, we should know so we can better prepare for the Chespars to make a play for the crown.”
“I’m not marrying the princess,” I said a little angrily. “Let me be clear about something. I haven’t seen her as more than a friend at any point since coming to the castle. Nothing has ever happened between us. I wouldn’t let it.”
“That’s obviously not what we’re discussing,” Reuben said with a roll of his eyes. “Everyone knows that many betrothals, like one to Callie Lennox right now, don’t have to do with anything but politics. Do you believe Trevor Chespar would marry her for love and companionship? Of course not. But he might marry her anyway, and then your chances of ever being a noble will be gone.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Well that’s good,” Reuben spoke quickly. “It would be better for all of us if you let Trevor marry her, but personally I think you’re wasting an opportunity that you will never see again.”
“Can we drop this?” I asked.
“Yes, enough of this,” Jennava announced. “We came here for the necessities required for enchanting and cursing, and so far we have nothing to show for our efforts.”
As she split us into two groups again, I noticed Hadley eyeing me. She diverted her gaze when I looked over, but I could almost read her thoughts.
Sure enough, she volunteered to join Remi’s group this time. I saw the two of them walking close when we separated, and I was just about certain that Hadley was asking Remi what she saw that made Remi think I would marry the princess.
I still felt the same way about Hadley as when I was first getting to know her. She made my blood run hot, but both Kataleya and Reuben had now advised me to consider marrying into the Lennox family. It seemed like most of my peers had already assumed I would be interested in such a marriage.
Part of me didn’t even want to think about it. More than anything, I just wanted to win the war against Rohaer. But another part of me knew that I should consider it. Marrying into the king’s family was an opportunity I might never have again because Callie would probably be married before the war was over, and there would be no family more powerful than the Lennoxes if we won.
But why did I care about joining a powerful family? Until now, it had never been a desire that even crossed my mind. It wasn’t long ago that I was living in Bhode with hardly anything to my name. I had just wanted to learn sorcery; that was all. Now I found myself thinking about the riches and political sway that came with being a noble. I had never thought myself to be greedy before, but was I wrong?
No, the answer came quickly. I wanted these things because recently I had seen what kind of world I was really living in. If I was never going to be a noble myself, then I would always be answering to one of them, if not the king. If I wanted more for myself, I would have to seriously consider marrying the princess.
As all these thoughts ran through my head, I walked with Michael, Reuben, and Kataleya, all of us quiet. Hadley had passed her bow and quiver to me now that she had joined Aliana’s group.
“There’s something ahead,” Reuben said as he pointed.
“How far?” Michael asked.
“We should be able to see it soon.”
We pushed through some thick shrubbery and spotted a deer grazing. The animal heard us and darted off before I could ready an arrow.
It was the first time I had seen Reuben use his tracking skill. I was glad he had not only matured emotionally but had grown as a sorcerer. I wondered how well he handled the sword now. I had seen brief glimpses of him and Michael fighting against Rohaer’s sorcerers and swordsmen during our last battle, but it was a chaotic scene without time to notice much besides the happy fact they could keep themselves alive.
Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t be long before I had a much better opportunity to see just how well they fared. My pulse increased as I thought about one of my friends being killed before my eyes. It seemed more possible than ever.
I couldn’t let that happen. “Reuben, Michael, how do the both of you feel about some sword practice with me tomorrow? We’ve never really had the chance.”
“Sure thing,” Michael said facetiously, “as long as you’re not going off to fight Gourfist, or if something else comes up.”
“He has a point, Jon,” Reuben said. “You have enough to worry about without adding us to your list. Besides, Leon is actually a decent teacher.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I really wanted to help them improve if I could, but maybe Leon had it covered. Mostly, I just wanted to spend more time with them. It had been too long since we’d done something fun, and there were few things I enjoyed more than sparring.
“There’s something else this way,” Reuben said.
We continued on as if I’d never mentioned training with them.
CHAPTER FIVE
Our group managed to hunt down five creatures during the next few hours. Reuben told us that each one would fetch many ingredients, given how all of their claws and teeth could be used, in addition to other parts. I thought we had done a fine job tracking and shooting them, but when we met with the other group soon later and heard they had hunted down a dozen more than us, I was sure I wasn’t the only one in our group who felt a little bad about it.
Reuben was mostly quiet during the walk back. Before we’d left, he’d said his tracking skill would never be as good as Aliana’s, but Leon had implied that was because she was exceptional. It didn’t look as if this made much of a difference to Reuben, though. I didn’t know what to tell him to make him feel better. He was still very useful. Every sorcerer was.
“You’re getting better every day, aren’t you?” Kataleya asked Reuben in a clear attempt to brighten his mood.
“Slowly.”
“That’s better than nothing,” she said. “You’re already at a level that will help us.”
“I can barely sense anything past thirty yards. How is that going to help us before it’s time to fight?”
“We won’t be fighting anyone for a while,” Kataleya said. “There’s time to improve.”
Speaking of, I was itching to fly again. I couldn’t get the feeling out of my mind. It seemed like a waste to walk back without practicing.
I moved over to walk beside Jennava and explained what I planned to do.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” she replied. “Rather than flying on your own, it’s more likely that you will be carrying someone most of the time. That’s what you should be practicing now, but I don’t want you going so high with anyone on your back anymore. Not until we develop a harness to make sure your passenger stays on.”
Everything she said made sense, but I wasn’t going to be walking all the way back to the castle when I could be flying. “But I want to practice more in the meantime. I—”
“Yes, you can go ahead of us. Keep in mind that you are vulnerable in the air if Valinox is nearby. This is a skill worth practicing even considering the risk, but try not to stray too far from Newhaven at any given time.”
“I’ll stay close to the capital,” I said, then took a running start. I wrapped dvinia around me with my spell of Grab and picked myself up.
With little caution, I heaved myself up higher and higher, dodging tree branches and trunks alike.
“Jon, be care—!”
I couldn’t hear Jennava anymore as I broke through the canopy. I hurled myself outward and breathed in the rushing air. Letting out a sigh of relief, I was already becoming addicted to the feeling. I didn’t ever want to walk anywhere again.
I soared higher into the sky and took in the beautiful sight of Lycast. Beneath me, the forest came
to an end, met by a river and a short bridge. A path broke out and led to the main road into Newhaven. The city looked small from up here, though growing ever bigger as I zoomed toward it. I spotted the castle near the center. I planned to land within the tall walls, but not before I enjoyed this a little while longer.
I could get there in less than a minute. Meanwhile, it was going to take the rest of my group an hour to get back.
Past the capital, to the east, lay the vast ocean. To the south stood the mountains where Leon had taken me and the others when I had first learned the spell of dvinia. Deeper south, toward the higher peaks, was where Souriff and I had faced Valinox and Cason. The other way, to the north, lay the long road between the capital and Tryn, the city where I had first stopped after my trip from Bhode. It was in Tryn where I had sought out a sorcerer to explain the energy I felt buzzing in my mind and eventually met Barrett.
I took myself higher into the sky, looking far north toward my hometown. All I could make out from here was the snowy forest that surrounded Bhode. It was difficult to keep myself suspended compared to tossing myself intermittently, which gave my mind chances to recuperate. For now, however, I held myself high up and looked straight south.
Rohaer would come for us from this direction. I wondered where their army was right now. I could see straight down the road, as it snaked between the mountains and the forest, though it did turn eventually around the tall, rocky slopes that ran south for hundreds of miles. The forest grew deep into Rohaer territory. My gaze could follow it long past where the road turned out of view. It was huge in its entirety.
I couldn’t see any of the towns that lay near the road between the kingdoms, but I knew they were somewhere in the far distance behind the hills and trees. I wondered what might become of them as Rohaer’s army headed past them to get to us. I imagined the king didn’t want to find out. He would want us to stop the army before they entered our kingdom.
Beginning to tire, I wanted to let myself down. But I was just a mile away from the castle. I could make it.
Just as I was about to hurl myself that way, something startled me.
“Follow me,” said someone right behind me.
“Ah!” I yelled.
With my concentration broken, my spell came apart. I fell as I screamed in horror.
However, I was so high up that I had plenty of time to compose myself. Catching myself seemed too difficult. Instead, I wrapped dvinia around my body and used my momentum to guide myself forward instead of down, pulling up hard as I sped through the air.
Eventually I arced enough to gain height once more, my speed starting to slow. Now immensely tired and hovering only about as high as the tall trees of the forest nearby, I looked around for the woman whose voice I had heard.
She breezed over to me through the air. I felt power emanating from her and knew right away that she had to be Failina, the demigod of erto.
Failina looked very different from her sister, Souriff. Her hair was short and layered, rising up above her head and slightly falling to the side. The color was hard to place, somewhere between red and brown. She wasn’t tall like Souriff but short like Hadley. It wasn’t so much her shapely curves that drew my gaze down to her body but the many marks on her arms. I had never seen anything like them. It was like she had been painted, like she was a living work of art.
I let gravity take me to land as she came toward me. She seemed like she was as graceful as she was powerful as she slowed on her way to the ground, wind whooshing around her as if the natural elements of the world beckoned to her call.
She wasn’t the most beautiful woman I had seen, but she might’ve been the most striking. She had smoldering eyes, cyan in color, accentuated by her dark eyebrows. Her jaw sloped down to a slightly pointed chin, giving her face a slender look of delicate beauty, which went along with her full lips, her mouth slightly agape as she looked at me with curiosity.
There wasn’t much fabric covering her body, which I figured had to do with the immense amount of wind required to keep her in the air. Her short white dress fitted over her shoulders with straps and pinched around her waist with a wide belt. She wore close-fitting leggings beneath the dress, an outfit for a warmer day, not this cold winter one. And yet she didn’t look the least bit cold.
“Failina?” I asked.
“Yes, and you are?”
“Jon Oklar.”
“So it is you. Souriff has spoken about you, but she did not mention you could fly.”
“It’s a recent development.”
She looked at me as if she didn’t believe me. “It wasn’t long ago that you required Souriff to take you into the forest on her back, but now you fly like you’ve been doing it for years. Have you kept this skill from Souriff?”
I didn’t understand the point of her question, but it sounded like she was getting at something.
“I’ve probably been able to fly for some time, but I’ve never really tried until today.” I was hesitant to show her the Induct stone, fearful she might take it away from me as I still had no idea what her intentions were.
I did think of something, though, that might ease the tension I was feeling.
“I want to thank you on behalf of everyone for keeping up the snowstorm as long as you did. We would be in much worse trouble if you hadn’t.”
She didn’t crack a smile, only nodded. “I would like to speak to you about something, Jon Oklar. I was looking for someone of your group and happened to see you in the sky.”
“The rest of my group is just a little ways back in the forest,” I said with a glance over my shoulder, feeling a little uneasy about this without them here.
She was shaking her head by the time I glanced back at her. “This must be quick. I don’t want Souriff to see us.”
Had she meant to say Valinox? No, she wasn’t correcting herself.
She continued, “It was wise of you to refuse Souriff’s demands to meet me in the mountains. You would have died there. She has been responsible for the deaths of many humans, even men and women whose goals were aligned with hers at the time. You must remain cautious around her. Warn your king and the other sorcerers, but do not speak about this to Souriff. She is as selfish as Valinox.”
I knew Souriff was intense in her goals, but to hear from the sister who had been helping her that she was as selfish as Valinox came as a shock.
“When you say she’s been responsible for the deaths of many humans, do you mean she’s even murdered some?”
“She will not murder any more.”
“Any more?” I asked with a rising pitch to my voice. “Who did she murder?”
Failina opened her mouth but did not speak. “That’s not relevant right now. She could be returning from Rohaer soon. Tell me of your immediate plans so that we may strategize together while she is away.”
“We could go see the king right now. We could be there in less than a minute.”
She shook her head. “I have been alive a long time, Jon. I have spoken with many kings as well as many of the soldiers and sorcerers they have overseen. The decisions that kings make are always for their kingdoms, their kingdoms,” she repeated. “These decisions are not made for the men, women, and children who live in their kingdoms. They are not made for the water and fire mages who allow their people to thrive, or the healers who bring prosperity through good health. Instead, these decisions usually pertain to their generals and soldiers, their witches and warlocks. There is a time to discuss war with kings. I will speak with Nykal Lennox. I will strategize with him while in my sister’s company, but I came here to speak to you, healer, you and your kin. You must be protected from not only Rohaer but from my own brother and sister.” She reached out and touched the underside of my chin. “Are you beginning to understand?”
I nodded as graciously as I could. “Thank you, goddess.”
“Call me Failina.”
“Before I tell you of my plan, I want to know if Souriff is truly as dangerous as Valinox.�
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“Not to Lycast. She is your strongest soldier, besides myself.”
You’re stronger than Souriff? But there was a more important question. “Does that mean you will kill for us?”
“I will not. Neither will Souriff, and that is the reason I am more valuable. With my power over the elements, I can do a lot more against your enemies than she can. That is not important right now. The only thing you need to know in this moment is that Souriff wants to be involved in human affairs as much as Valinox does. It is the reason they have waged war against each other.”
“I thought it was Valinox who started this and Souriff just wanted to help us fight against him.”
“She would have you believe that, but it’s not the case.”
“Then why are you helping Souriff and not Valinox if they seem to be equally responsible for the destruction they’re causing?”
“Because of dteria, Jon,” she said in a tone as if that should be obvious.
“I figured that, but you were starting to confuse me.”
She let out a frustrated breath. “I’m only making matters worse by trying to explain. You will have to trust me for now. Be as wary of Souriff as you are vigilant of Valinox. That is all. Now tell me of the king’s goals and the steps he is taking to accomplish them.”
“I can, but help me understand something first. Why am I supposed to trust you implicitly?”
She seemed taken aback as her eyebrows lifted in apparent surprise.
“It is what you’re asking, isn’t it?” I confirmed. “To trust you more than I do Souriff?”
“Yes, because I spent months holed up in the mountains, suffering through the cold as I maintained an endless snowstorm. I did it for the benefit of Lycast, our mutual interest in this war.”
“But I don’t know for a fact that was you. I heard about it from Souriff, but I never saw you with my own eyes. I trusted you to be Failina, at first, but now I’m not so sure. You could be deceiving me, turning me against Souriff.”
Her gaze became fiery.
I put up my hands in a gesture of appeasement. “I’m just hoping for a little proof before I choose to start distrusting Souriff, who I thought was one of our greatest allies. I don’t mean to offend, goddess. You are the one teaching me to exercise more caution. I figured I’d start now before divulging our plans.”