The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4

by Brock Deskins

  Bran looked at the weapon and bag sitting across from him. “Thanks, I’m glad you could at least spare that.”

  Azerick felt the familiar stab of pain Bran’s snipe brought. “Look, Bran, I’m sorry I cannot go with you. It is just that—something tells me that going with you to rescue Andrea is not what I am supposed to be doing. I wish I could explain it but I can’t. I feel like something is pulling me in another direction. Andrill said he felt that fate or something had its hooks in me. I don’t know. I just know I am not supposed to go with you, and if I deny the fates or whatever it is then my going may just make things worse.”

  Bran looked up, his face flushed with either anger or shame. “I know. Anyone who has spent time around you can feel it. It’s weird. It’s just that you’re the one who always has a plan. No matter how crazy something is or how bad the odds are, you are the one who figures a way out of it, or something completely random happens that lets you figure out an answer. I’m afraid, Azerick. I’m afraid because I am not as smart or as lucky as you. You know all these things, and whenever you are around things just seem to happen, and no matter how screwed up it is, you always find a way out. I love her, Az, and I am afraid I don’t have what it takes to save her. I don’t have the fates or the gods or whatever looking out for me like you do. I’m just a street rat; a useless street rat.”

  “You are not useless, and maybe the fates are watching you, guiding you to do this. How many people would even attempt to do what you are doing? Anyone who would risk their life and worse is special, special enough for the gods to take notice.”

  “Thanks, Az, I hope you are right—for her sake.”

  Peg came back in less than half an hour. “I got your boat, boy, but you better be prepared to work for it. Captain Zeb don’t put up with no slackers or boys who can’t follow orders.”

  Bran jumped to his feet. “I’ll work hard and do what I’m told, Peg, I swear.”

  “I know, and that’s what I told him. Zeb’s an honest man. He’ll do right by you and get you where you need to go. It ain’t a straight run mind you. This ain’t no passenger boat. The ship’s gotta hit North Haven before sailing down to Langdon’s Crossing, and only then is she sailing for Bakhtaran, but it will still be a far sight quicker than any land-bound caravan.”

  “Thank you, Peg. When do I leave?”

  “Zeb says he’ll take you on right now. He can use some strong hands to finish loading up the stuff they’re runnin’ to North Haven.”

  Bran turned to Azerick. “I guess I better be leaving then. I’m going to find her, Az.”

  “I know you will. I can feel it. I will see you both when you get back.”

  Bran picked up his things, turned, and walked out the door headed for his own destiny. Azerick was already walking after him but stopped with his hand on the door handle. His heart urged him to keep walking, to go with his friend to rescue Andrea, but something else, something profound and hidden deep within the shadows of his soul stopped him.

  “Go to hell!” Azerick growled.

  Peg raised a bushy salt and pepper eyebrow as his vehemence.

  “Not you, Peg,” Azerick said.

  “Oh, I know who ya meant, and I’ll warn ya to watch your tongue lest they decide to meet ya down there one day.”

  “Thank you for everything, Peg. I will pay you back one day for everything you have done for me.”

  The old sailor scowled at the dejected young man. “They say a good deed is its own reward, and anyone who expects to be paid back for a good deed ain’t done any good. Maybe you’ll be in a position to help ole Peg out someday, and if ya are then you’ll do him a good turn for the sake of doin’ it, not for some sense of obligation.”

  Azerick nodded at Peg’s sage advice and walked morosely out of the store and toward his home. He did not have a copper to his name and nothing to eat but a handful of beans, but he was not in the mood to go foraging today. Instead, he took a direct route back to his lair and spent the next few hours wondering if he had done the right thing.

  Was it really the pull of destiny stopping him from going, or was he simply a coward? Azerick was confident he was no coward, but if the gods had taken an interest in him, why was his life filled with so much misery and pain? What kind of destiny required him lose everyone he got close to?

  Azerick finally dropped off into restless slumber and dreamed a dreamless sleep. He woke the next morning to a rumbling stomach and dry mouth with nothing to satisfy either one. The beans were dry and would take hours to cook, and the water jug had a crack that left only a long, narrow trail of wet stones leading to a larger crack in the floor where it the runnel had made its final escape.

  Azerick pulled out the loose stone in the wall where he secreted whatever coins he managed to earn or steal, but upon gazing at the empty niche, he remembered that he had given the last of them to Bran. His stomach ordered him to get moving with a growl that would brook no disobedience. He left through the warehouse entrance and headed for one of his more favorite market squares.

  The square was at a large intersection where many of the city’s workers, both private and governmental, crossed through on their ways to work. Bakers and other food venders crowded into the square, often coming to blows for the best corner to put up their stalls, alternately shouting out the quality and low prices of their victuals and condemning the cost and inferiority of the morsels sold by their competitors.

  Azerick tried to blend in with the crowd and position himself next to one of the more crowded displays, but every time he insinuated himself into a cluster of people they immediately gravitated away from him. He felt like a beekeeper moving toward a hive with a smoke pot constantly driving the bees away from him so he could collect the valuable honey. That was all well and good for a beekeeper, but Azerick needed the crowd to stick together for him to filch a bit of food to eat.

  When his stomach rumbled powerfully once again, he decided he was going to just have to do a snatch and run, hoping the proprietor would not see him or care enough to raise too much of a fuss. His luck was off today, he could feel it. The way things were going, the crowd would resume their normal pressing mass the moment he struck, which would allow a watchman or the baker to grab him and beat him.

  Azerick’s stomach ordered him to stop whining and get down to business. He moved casually toward the stand where numerous fresh baked loaves of bread were stacked on the table and sticking up out of baskets, filling the air of the market with their mouth-watering aromas. His stomach ordered him to move with haste.

  Azerick sidled up to the table, ready to grab a large round loaf of black bread when the baker looked right at him. “What are you doing here? Why did you have to pick my booth? Go on, take the bread and be gone with you. Nobody’s going to want to come to my stand now, defiler.”

  The street rat looked at the baker in confusion then glanced over his shoulder as the crowd moved away muttering.

  “Beware death’s shadow.”

  “Do not let his shadow be cast upon you or you will die”.

  “All die who get near him. We may all die now.”

  “What are you people talking about?” Azerick shouted.

  “Cursed! He is cursed to lose everyone he befriends.”

  “I am not cursed! What are you talking about?”

  “His family is all dead, friends all dead. He is cursed, cursed by the hand of Sharrellan.”

  “He is the hand of Sharrellan, delivering her touch of death to all who get near.”

  “I am not cursed! I am not the hand of death!” he shouted, but the crowd drew away from him and continued their droning.

  Azerick grabbed the loaf of bread from the table, casting a glare at the baker and everyone around him. He half expected the baker to change his mind and demand that Azerick pay for the bread, but his face had gone purple, black splotches stood out against the plum-colored flesh, and his tongue protruded, swollen and blackened like a plague victim.

  The street rat th
rew down the loaf and ran. The street-clogging populace parted like the water at the bow of a swift moving vessel to let him pass.

  “Beware death’s shadow, beware the hand of Sharrellan,” the people’s mantra continued, following him, chasing him away like a swarm of relentless bees trying to drive him away from their hive. Their chanting a mimicry of the bees’ angry buzzing.

  Azerick found himself near the docks and burst into Peg’s shop, not knowing where else to go. “Peg, what is going on around here?”

  “Now why did ya have to come back here, lad?” Peg asked as his face purpled and black splotches began spreading across his visage. “Hasn’t old Peg treated ya right since he met ya? Ain’t he done nothin’ but help ya?”

  “Of course, Peg, I know you have. What’s wrong?”

  “Then why’d ya come back and kill me? Look at me, boy. Already your foul curse is on me. Ya killed me, boy. Ya killed me sure as sure. Go on now and let me die in peace.”

  “No, Peg,” Azerick wailed, “I did not want you to die! I did not mean to!”

  “Meaning don’t mean nothin’ when you’re dead. Go on now, I can’t hardly talk no more,” Peg slurred around his swollen, blackened tongue.

  Azerick ran from the store, sprinted down the harbor front past the long piers and moored ships until he saw a ship with someone he recognized shuffling about on the deck.

  “Bran!” Azerick called out as he ran the length of the long dock. “Bran, you haven’t left yet. I don’t know what is going on. Everyone is acting strange and dying. I think the plague has come to Southport. We need to get out of here.”

  His friend turned toward him, his face already showing the signs of death. “It’s no plague, Az. It’s you, you are the plague. I was too slow. Everyone on the ship is dead already. I suppose it doesn’t matter now anyway. Andrea is long dead, killed by your curse when she met you, just like the rest of us.”

  “No! I did not kill her! It’s not my fault!”

  “Yes it is. Do you know why she was out the night the slavers took her?” Azerick shook his head. “Her father put his hands on her again. He did that sometimes when he was really drunk. Just his hands. They fought, and she ran off even though she knew it was dangerous.”

  “No, no, no,” Azerick moaned, not wanting to hear it.

  “You could have kept her safe, Az. You knew what it was like for her, but you kept your nice, safe little haven all to yourself. You were safe from the depredations of the city above. You let her die. Your selfishness let her die.”

  “It is not my fault!” Azerick vehemently denied. “I could not keep her safe! I could never keep those around me safe! They all died: mother, father, Jon and the others, they all died.”

  “Now you begin to see. Everyone around you dies. Your family died because you are cursed, and Andrea died because you were a coward, because you were too much of a coward to try to keep her safe. Better to let others take her. That way you would not feel the weight of responsibility. Your conscience could be clear. She would be dead, but you could deny culpability. But you know the truth. You know it was your fault.”

  Azerick barely heard Bran’s last words. His own thoughts were echoing inside his head too loud for him to focus upon his friend. I could not keep her safe! I could never keep those around me safe! They all died: mother, father, Jon and the others, they all died.

  “They all died because I did not keep them safe. I may not have been able to save Father, but I should have been there for Mother, Jon and the others, and Andrea,” he said, talking to himself as he left Bran behind.

  Azerick awoke in a cold sweat, somehow knowing it was not the nightmare that woke him. Someone was coming. He heard the trapdoor hidden beneath the burned out timbers of the tanner’s shop open then a sudden cry and thump of a body hitting the stone. He sprang out of bed, grabbed his knife, and prepared to defend his home. If the gods cursed him, then his enemies would suffer under the spell of his shadow as well. He would make certain of it.

  ***

  Half a dozen men surrounded the trapdoor in the burned out remains of what appeared to have once been a tannery. All six men were slavers and normally would have been hunting the streets for valuable targets on this moonless night. Instead, they had followed Kaleesh, one of their own who claimed he knew where one of the men, or boys as it turned out, lived. The man in charge of the slave ring had put out a very sizable reward for the capture of whoever it was that had cost them a fortune by freeing their last shipment of slaves and making them all look foolish.

  Kaleesh had been with the group that had chased the boy into the squatters’ district before losing him thanks to the help of what many thought was the thieves’ guild. Kaleesh had not gone back to the warehouse, now rendered useless by the infiltrators’ knowledge of its existence. Instead, he stuck around the dilapidated ward hoping to find where the boy had gone to ground.

  Kaleesh was an experienced thief out of Bakhtaran and knew they had chased the young intruder to his warren like hounds running a fox back to its den. It was as much luck as skill that led him close enough to the hidden entrance to let him spy the street rat sneaking away the next day. The boy was cautious and far from inept, the fact he was still alive testified to some measure of skill, but he was not a real thief like Kaleesh was.

  The swarthy-skinned, hook-nosed Sumaran knew there was no need to follow the boy throughout the city, although he easily could have without detection. It was simpler to wait for the boy to return, who used far less caution than he should have, and pinpointed the location of the trapdoor for Kaleesh.

  Kaleesh considered ambushing the lad inside his own home, but he could not be certain if there were others living inside. He was confident the boy was not a member of the local guild despite their apparent interference. Still, entering another’s lair by oneself was unwise, so he decided to let a few of his closest cohorts in on the plan. He would take half the reward and split the remainder between the others. It was still very profitable, much more so than if he had foolishly told the entire company. Telling the boss directly was even more foolish. The thieving bastard would have simply ordered everyone down the hole and not paid out at all.

  “The way in is under here,” Kaleesh told his group. “Raheem, you go first and we’ll follow you down.

  Raheem lowered himself into the dark hole, climbing down the metal rungs of the ladder bolted to the stone wall of the shaft. He had only descended a few steps when the ladder rung suddenly pulled out in his hand. Raheem’s stomach lurched with the terrifying sense of falling. He reached out desperately to grab onto another rung as he plummeted into the darkness, but his weight pulled the slick rung out of his hand.

  The slaver never knew what struck him when he hit the floor below. His entire body convulsed and contorted as waves of agonizing electricity created by the magical ward Azerick had managed to reproduce coursed through his body,.

  Kaleesh heard Raheem’s body strike the ground and was glad he had decided to let the fellow Sumaran be the first to descend. He never did like Raheem and figured that if the boy trapped his lair, as he himself certainly would have, then let Raheem find the first one.

  “Be careful and watch for more traps,” Kaleesh told the others.

  Jonah went next, followed by Kaleesh and the others. Jonah climbed carefully down the ladder, reaching with his leg when he came to the missing rung. The next step was slick and coated in grease or animal fat.

  Jonah supported most of his weight with his arms until he was able to get his feet firmly on the next step and avoided touching the slick rung with his hands. He saw where the missing rung slipped into a slot in the sides of the ladder. It let a person step on it without incident, but the moment they leaned back it slid right out of the slot. The bar itself dangled from a stout cord against the wall just a few inches in front of his face.

  He was only two rungs from reaching the bottom, just three feet above where Raheem lay, when the step moved. The rung only shifted a fraction of an
inch, but that was enough to pull the cord that disappeared into a crack in the wall, which pulled the trigger of the crossbow hidden behind it. The slap of the cord striking the spring steel bow heralded the death of Jonah. The former slaver dropped the last few feet, landing atop Raheem with a quarrel protruding from his side just below the armpit.

  Bah, two men dead and they had not even reached the den’s floor! The god’s only know how large the place is. It could cover half the damn city for all he knew. The first flickering doubts began to fill Kaleesh’s mind. Maybe he had better go back and tell the others? No! It was just one street rat, he was certain! The rest of them would just have to be more careful.

  “Now the rest of you watch what you’re doing!” the Sumaran hissed up the shaft.

  Kaleesh grabbed the sides of the ladder with his hands and the inside of his feet, slid the rest of the way to the floor, and then motioned the others to follow him the same way. One after another, the three men slid to the bottom and joined the Sumaran in the gloomy passage, looking warily for signs of any more traps.

  Kaleesh could hear the men’s fear in their breathing as they all stared up the dimly lit passage. A luminous fungus grew on the walls, adding a small amount of bluish light to the dim, yellow light of a low-turned oil lamp placed at what appeared to be a four-way intersection perhaps thirty yards ahead.

  “Death awaits all who enter here,” an eerie voice whispered down the passage. “Flee! Run while you can, body thieves, you vile purveyors of flesh, run!”

  Kaleesh’s men looked ready to do just that until he froze them with a glare promising a knife in the back of the first man to flee.

  “It is just a boy playing tricks with you,” he growled at his men. “I know who you are, boy! I know your face! It is you who had better run if you can!”