Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  Raddick was silent, his pride hurt by Bjorn’s defiance, and worried he would look weak in front of his men. Then, Raddick realized he had taken time to think, exactly what Bjorn wanted for Koren. The former King’s Guard was right, it cost Raddick nothing to leave the boy alone for a while. The army captain nodded assent. “Very well. No one has ever told me I had to save the whole world, I suppose young Master Bladewell has a lot to consider.”

  “It would be helpful to call him simply ‘Koren’. He can be Master, even Lord Bladewell when he’s ready. Right now, he wants to be accepted by you and your men, not treated as an oddity.”

  “Sound advice,” Raddick looked toward his men, who acknowledged their captain’s unspoken order. “Now, Bjorn, what is this about his parents being killed by a bandit?”

  Half an hour later, Raddick held a hand over his face, shaking his head in stunned amazement. “In the short span of time you have known him, Koren learned,” he took the hand away from his eyes to avoid tripping on a rock, and counted on his fingers. “That his parents did not abandon him. That they were instead killed by bandits. That, rather than him being a dangerous jinx, he is a wizard?”

  Bjorn tried to grin at the absurd situation but found his could not find any amusement in the boy’s pain. “Aye. Then you tell him the Royal Army is ordered to protect him rather than kill him. And that Lord Salva lied to Koren to save the boy’s life. Oh, and, of course there is the little detail that he is our only hope to defeat a demon army and save the world. That is six rather jarring revelations in a short time.”

  “I can see why you asked me to give him time alone to think,” Raddick looked ahead to where Koren was trudging with determination up the mountainside, a hundred or so yards ahead. The boy had slowed to match the army troop’s pace and they gave him privacy. Whenever Koren walked sideways as the trail took a switchback to climb a particularly steep section of the mountain, Raddick could see the young wizard’s lips move and his hands gesturing as he talked to himself.

  “Everything that boy thought he knew, he was wrong about. If you told him the sun would now rise in the west beginning tomorrow morning, he might think nothing of it.”

  Raddick walked beside Bjorn silently for a while, each man lost in his own thoughts. Finally, when they reached the top of a rise and realized it was only a false summit which had hidden the real ridgetop from view, Raddick halted to drink from his water flask.

  “A copper coin for your thoughts,” Bjorn offered.

  Raddick watched Koren continue up the hill in front of them, the boy silhouetted against the low afternoon sun. “I was thinking many of us ask our children to grow up too quickly. Koren had responsibilities on his parents’ farm, yet he could still enjoy a normal childhood. Suddenly, he had to become a man on his own, to survive. Now he must save us all, if Lord Salva is to be believed. Our princess rules the land at her tender age, and she never really had time for to be girl. It is so for many royal children, they are used as pawns in their parents’ game of power, and those who stand to inherit must watch their backs lest their younger siblings change the order of succession. Children born in less fortunate circumstances are often sent away to train in apprenticeships as soon as they can work.”

  “You have children?” Bjorn asked quietly.

  “A son and a daughter. My son already wants to join the army, though at ten he can barely lift a sword.” Thinking of his children made Raddick sad, then he pushed aside thoughts of anything but his immediate mission. “Night will be coming soon, and that looks like rain,” he gestured to clouds building in the north. “We cannot risk a fire, and being exposed on this mountain is no way to spend a night, if we are to resume a brisk pace in the morning. Thomas! Take Lem and scout ahead for shelter, let the wizard join you if he wishes. Oh, and remember to call him Koren.”

  The two soldiers called Lem and Thomas, unburdened by their packs that were now carried by the others, quickly caught up to Koren, who had not been paying attention to anything behind him. “Ho, there, Koren!” Thomas called out.

  “Oh. Hello,” Koren said warily. He struggled to recall the man’s name. “Thomas?”

  Thomas paused beside the young wizard. “We’re scouting for shelter to spend the night, Captain thinks rain is coming. I don’t suppose you know any place ‘round here with soft beds and good beer?”

  The remark made Koren smile. That and not being formally called ‘Master Bladewell’. “Would you settle for a bed of dried grass and moss, and cold water from a mountain stream?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Better than many nights I’ve spent in the army. Will you help us? Three pairs of eyes are better than two.”

  Koren thought the man had made a joke about his unnaturally keen wizard sense of sight, and stiffened. “Even a wizard can’t see what isn’t there,” he looked around at the exposed landscape of rock, low-growing shrubs and clusters of stunted, wind-swept trees.

  “Ah,” Thomas waved a hand and lowered his voice. “I don’t know if this wizard talk is real, or a bunch of nonsense,” he looked Koren up and down skeptically. “You’re a master with a bow, that’s for certain, but as to the rest of it?” He held his palms upward. “You find us someplace on this mountain to keep us dry tonight, and I’ll say you’re a true wizard.”

  Koren grinned. “I’ll take that challenge.”

  Thomas and Koren strode on ahead, while Lem scouted to the right of them. “So, what’s it like, being a wizard and all?” Thomas finally asked the question that had been burning inside him. He had been told their mission was to rescue Koren Bladewell the wizard’s servant, but until Raddick spoke after the death of Lord Feany, none of the soldiers had known that Koren himself was a wizard.

  “I don’t know. Really,” he added as Thomas looked at him skeptically, thinking the boy didn’t want to talk about it. “Really! I didn’t even know I am a wizard until I got up in these mountains. I haven’t been trained at all, I don’t know how to do anything, not yet.”

  “Captain said something about us needing you to save all of Tarador?” Thomas asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Koren said truthfully. He hoped that was a great exaggeration by Paedris, intended to spur Raddick’s search for the young, untrained wizard. Koren could hardly believe he was a wizard, certainly he could not be the most powerful wizard in the world. It couldn’t be true, could it?

  Koren wasn’t the one who found the overhanging rock ledges to shelter under, that was Lem, and Koren felt better that their shelter for the night was not provided by his dubious wizard skill. Lem, an expert woodsman whose father was organized hunts for royalty, knew to look for a particular type of shrub which took root in the thin soil that was washed down by rain to gather in crevices and under ledges. He called out to Thomas and Koren, and soon the remainder of the troop was stashing their packs and thin bedrolls under overhanging rock. The cavern under one ledge extended deep and tall enough to almost be considered a cave, and because it faced north up the mountainside, Raddick risked allowing a fire to heat water for tea once darkness fell and a steady drizzle began to fall. Food was still tough travel bread, hard cheese and dried meat and fruit, but holding a battered cup of hot tea made Koren feel less like the night on the mountain was less a desperate race for survival, and more like a hunting trip in the woods with good companions.

  “Trade you,” Thomas offered, plopping himself down on a flat rock next Koren near the back of the cavern. The wind sometimes caused smoke from the fire to swirl around the cavern, stinging Koren’s eyes, but the fire of dried brush and lichen was so small he didn’t mind.

  “What you got?” Koren peered at the man’s pack eagerly. The travel bread they had bought from dwarves was filling and easier to chew than the supplies carried by the Royal Army men, but it had an unfamiliar taste and Koren was anxious for a taste of home even if made his jaw sore. “I have plenty of this dwarven bread.”

  Thomas stuck out his tongue in disgust. “Sorry. The
re’s nothing wrong with it, but the dwarves mix in mushrooms for flavor, and it tastes odd to me. Problem is, I spent almost a year up in the dwarf lands with a Royal Army patrol back when King Adric wanted us to push back the orcs together, and I ate too much of their travel bread that year. I see you have an apple, would you trade it for dried fruit?” He held up a cube of stuck-together mixed fruit.

  “It’s only a small apple, and it’s got a bruise here,” Koren said honestly.

  Thomas handed him two cubes of dried fruit, and bit into the apple happily. “Ah, that’s good. Not like apples from my home, can’t expect that up here, I guess.”

  Koren bit into a cube of dried fruit, biting it in half with effort. He should have used a knife but didn’t trust to use a sharp blade in the darkness of the cavern. The fruit, he guessed it was peaches and pears with something else mixed in, was leathery but sweet, and the cube had been dipped in honey before being wrapped in wax paper. He would eat the other half the next morning, then lick the rest of the honey off the waxed paper as he had been taught by soldiers who wasted nothing in the wilderness. “This is good,” he mumbled over a mouthful. “Thomas,” he asked quietly. “You’ve been in these mountains before? Do we have a chance to get out of here, back to Tarador?” Every time they tried to turn south to head for the border, they had found orcs already there. It seemed like their task was impossible, they needed to cross the lowlands to the south, but the army troop was forced to tramp slowly up and down mountains on foot, while the orc host had faster going in the lowlands. Koren, Raddick and his men were being forced in the wrong direction. If they were delayed too long, they would be trapped in the mountain strongholds of the dwarves by heavy winter snows.

  “In these mountains? No, not here, I was stationed east and south of here, on the border of the orc dominion. What was the border, before, well, the orcs weren’t so bold back then. Don’t you worry none, lad,” Thomas clapped him on the back. “The Captain knows what he’s doing. I’ve served with him off and on for nigh on eight years now, he’s gotten me out of scrapes worse than this.”

  Koren held his tongue and did not say that implied Captain Raddick had gotten Thomas into worse scrapes in the past. “Worse?”

  “Well,” Thomas took another bite of the apple, slurping so the juice didn’t get wasted running down his chin, “not much worse.” In the dim reddish firelight, he grinned. “Koren,” his expression turned serious, “I’m sorry you were falsely accused as a deserter, when you were doing our job while the army dithered uselessly near Longshire.”

  “It’s not your fault, Thomas,” Koren’s eyes grew moist at hearing the soldier’s kind words.

  The man tapped the castle and sword crest of the Royal Army on his tunic. “I’m part of the Royal Army. That means I share in the glory when we are victorious, and I share the responsibility when the army treats a courageous man shabbily. You can’t have one without the other.”

  Koren’s eyes did well with tears, he wiped away the tears with the back of a hand, and shook Thomas’s offered hand. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, lad. You acted to save the life of the court wizard, when my, our, army sat on their asses and protected themselves,” Thomas looked at his boots in shame. “If you ever give up this wizarding foolishness, you might consider giving the Royal Army a try. We could use a man of fortitude and initiative like you. You did all that before you learned you are maybe a wizard, aye, that took some courage, there’s no doubting that.”

  “Thank you, Thomas,” Koren took a sip of tea. “I don’t know that this wizarding thing will let me alone, whether I want it or not. It, it may be my fate, as Captain Raddick says.”

  “Don’t you listen to this saving the world nonsense. I don’t know what Lord Salva is thinking, nor the Regent herself, laying that weight on your shoulders,” he shook his head sadly. “This war has been going on for a very long time, and, if it has come down to us needing one untrained wizard to pull us out of the fire, well, that’s the failure of our society. We shouldn’t have let it come to this at all. We’ve had generations, nay, hundreds of years when we could have dealt with the demon, and we always put it off for another year, another decade. We allowed this problem to fester unchecked. It is not the responsibility of your generation make up for the failures of the past, eh?”

  “Someone has to,” Koren muttered quietly to himself. He chewed the rough bread with no appetite, eating only because he knew he had to. Shomas Feany had died to bring Koren back to Tarador, and the kindly wizard’s death might have been for nothing. Koren forced himself not to think of what orcs might have done to Shomas, though Raddick had assured Koren that orcs were very superstitious and would likely have burned the body, after casting hex signs and chanting whatever incantations they found comforting. Orcs would not have abused the body of the wizard, Raddick had explained, for they feared the ghost of Shomas haunting them afterward.

  That was cold comfort as Koren sat by himself, mechanically eating bread while tears streamed down his cheeks.

  After checking on the sentries he had posted, Raddick ducked under the overhang and took off his wet cloak, shaking it away from people, then stuffing the hood into a crack in the rock so it could drip dry. He sat down next to Bjorn and gratefully accepted a tin of thin tea.

  “Fire’s not causing us any problem?” Bjorn asked quietly.

  “No,” Raddick took too great a sip and nearly burned his tongue. If the tea was not strong it was at least hot, a virtue in the cool dampness of a mountain evening. “Any light would only be visible from straight up the mountain, I doubt orcs have climbed faster than we have. They don’t have any reason to, there are plenty of spoils to steal or burn in the valley. No one can see far in this drizzle anyway. There’s little wind and I’m glad of that, for the sentries.”

  “I can stand a watch,” Bjorn offered.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Yes, it is. You have few men left and we are all tired. I have stood many a night watch in my time, Captain. I may not have wizard vision,” he looked across the fire to Koren, “or even merely young eyes, but I can see well enough.”

  “I accept your offer. You can take the next watch, when Lem comes in.” Raddick would rather have the unfamiliar man on watch in the evening, rather than in the wee morning hours when there was greatest risk of a sentry losing alertness or even falling asleep. Gesturing with his tin cup of tea toward Koren, he leaned toward Bjorn and lowered his voice. “It was not wise of me to tell our young wizard he must save the world, that is too much a burden for anyone.”

  Bjorn nodded. “Yes, but is it the truth? Is he our only hope?”

  “Lord Feany thought so, or Lord Salva thought so and told our wizard. Ah, this is,” Raddick squeezed a fist in anguish. “This is a terrible situation. I would rather have lost all my men, and myself, than Lord Feany. Shomas,” he used the wizard’s given name now the man was no longer with them to hear, “intended to explain the truth to Koren, speaking wizard to wizard. He was also going to begin the lad’s training, help him understand and use his power. None of us are capable of doing that!”

  “Lord Feany should have written instructions, perhaps, as insurance against his death.”

  “He told me that would not have worked, when I asked him for such,” Raddick shook his head. “Apparently wizard training is not like instructions for constructing a wagon, it must be taught by a master wizard directly to an apprentice. Shomas said it is far too dangerous otherwise, Koren could kill himself, or us and himself, by toying with power he doesn’t understand.”

  “Hmmm. He has been attempting to conjure fireballs, should I tell him not to do that?”

  “That would be best, yes,” Raddick said hastily, aghast at the idea the untrained boy had been playing with powerful magic. “He should wait until he has a wizard to instruct him properly.”

  “Do we have that much time?” Bjorn asked with weary frown.

  “I don’t see we have a choice. The boy can�
�t use his power anyway, can he?”

  “No, other than archery, and his skill with a sword,” Bjorn declared. “One tiny fireball he created, that is all I have seen. Did Lord Salva truly say Koren must save the world? In those words?”

  “No,” Raddick admitted. “Not those particular words. And I do not think he meant for Koren to act alone.”

  Bjorn finished the last of his cooling tea, and reached for the pot to get another cup. “You should tell him that, then,” he advised. “Right now, the lad is thinking he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. It would be good for him to know he doesn’t have to lift that burden all by himself.”

  Captain Reed could see a commotion near the port side of the bow, Alfonze was gesturing emphatically, engaged in an animated, whispered conversation with two other sailors. They seemed to be arguing about something, then the three of them stopped talking and stood still, listening intently. The spell was broken a moment later when all three turned toward the starboard side of the bow; even through the shrouding mist Reed could see their eyes were wide open. Alfonze pointed with a finger, ordering one man to hurry to report to the captain.

  Walking quickly on feet padded by canvas slippers lest his feet make any sound on the deck, the sailor approached the Lady Hildegard’s master. “Captain,” the sailor said only when he was close enough to be heard in a whisper. “There’s something out there. A ship, maybe,” he added, feeling stupid as the words left his mouth. Of course it was a ship, what else could it be? Mermaids?

  The sailors standing next to Reed overheard, and a murmur arose on the foredeck.

  “Shhh!” Reed whispered harshly, making a slashing motion across his throat with one hand. He listened intently. The enveloping fog muffled all sounds. Barely, he could hear low, rolling breakers crashing against the unseen cliffs to port. A faint hiss to starboard announced languid swells lazily slapping against the starboard side, and he could hear the ship’s timbers creaking gently without enthusiasm, as if the chilly unnatural fog were putting the ship’s very bones to sleep. The ship’s crew had done everything they could to make the ship’s passage through the water absolutely silent. Extra sailcloth that was now not needed had been cut into strips and used to secure and pad anything that might bang against something else. Hammocks, rope, even spare clothing had all been tied around or stuffed between equipment that might make noise. Because, one way or another, this was the last voyage of the Lady Hildegard, Reed had instructed the sailmaker and his assistants to create padded slippers for the crew, even the captain was wearing canvas slippers rather than boots. The deck was liberally sprinkled with sand to prevent anyone from skidding, and everyone had been ordered to remain silent, unless requested to speak by a senior crewman.