Nature's Master (The Nature Mage Series Book 4)

by Duncan Pile

  Sestin spun out a compulsion with a flick of his finger. The man froze, unable to move or speak. His eyes were brimming with fear, and a muscle began to twitch in his cheek. Sestin reached out and took hold of his wrist, preparing to transport back to Ruined Elmera. “I think you’ll find that you can.”

  …

  Chloe put her ledger aside and slumped into the chair with a weary sigh, staring disconsolately out of the window. She’d been trying to deny it for months, but it was time to face the truth. She was unhappy. She missed the simplicity of her life in Caleb’s Brook. No, it was more than that. She missed the simplicity of her life before Kai had returned. She’d been content, looking after the pigs and chickens, and keeping herself to herself. She missed Belom too, with his strong arms and quiet, reassuring presence. They had been on the cusp of becoming lovers when Kai returned to disrupt everything, and months later Belom had died in his sleep, the victim of a massive heart attack. Thinking of Belom and all that might have been made her heart ache.

  “I miss you, my friend,” she whispered.

  The village had seemed a lonely place after Belom’s death, and she’d finally agreed to move to Helioport – something Kai had pressured her to do from the moment he’d arrived in Caleb’s Brook. By the time she left, she’d even begun to see it as a fresh start, a chance to put the past behind her, but it hadn’t worked out that way. She had joined a number of societies in Helioport, trying to forge new friendships, but never managed to get past the surface with anyone. Or maybe, she conceded, she’d never let them get past the surface with her. Either way, she had grown lonelier by the week. She missed the countryside, the wind whispering through the treetops, the dawn chorus waking her from sleep each morning. Here in the city, she dressed in fine silks and dangled from Kai’s arm, but all she wanted was to get her hands back in the soil.

  Frustratingly, Kai was oblivious to her misery. He was delighted to be back among magicians, and bustled about his business with energy and obvious satisfaction. He’d already landed a prestigious teaching post at the college, and if rumours were to be believed, he was tipped for chancellor after the incumbent stepped down. His days passed in a heady rush and he never stopped to probe the thin façade of contentment she’d developed to mask her unhappiness.

  Reluctantly, Chloe had reached the conclusion that he was selfish. It was difficult to remember the man she’d fallen in love with, all those years ago. Perhaps he’d changed, or perhaps young love had blinded her to his faults, but either way she found herself loving him less and less as time went on. If things carried on like this, she had little doubt that the day would dawn when love for him no longer resided in her breast, and she didn’t feel like waiting for that to happen. The ugly truth was, as long as she lived in Helioport, she wasn’t going to be happy. She was living someone else’s life.

  Strangely, facing the truth head on wasn’t as frightening as she’d thought it would be. A weight had lifted from her shoulders, and the pressure at her temples – a constant discomfort during the past few months – had been relieved.

  Chloe stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the impossible constructions of the College of Collective Magicks, and knew that it was not her home.

  She sighed again, this time at the prospect of telling Kai how she felt. He wasn’t going to take it very well.

  …

  Sestin was brim-full of excitement as he entered the apartment. Overtaken by a sudden mischievous urge, he closed the door as quietly as possible and snuck through the house on silent feet. Gods, he hadn’t felt this good in ages! Tantalising whispers had reached his ears, naming him as heir-apparent to the current chancellor. His unparalleled academic record, coupled with a history of extraordinary magical advances – most of which he had discovered on his travels – had established him as a serious contender for leadership of Antropel’s most celebrated magical institution. Personal achievements aside, he’d made progress in his quest to free himself from the Dark God’s influence. There was a long way to go, but he had reason to hope he would one day erect a permanent barrier between himself and the source of all his terrors. Hope had strengthened his resolve, and for the first time in years he could imagine living a normal life. In the meantime he was happy here with Chloe; her presence at his side was bulwark enough against evil. As long as she was with him, he was free of the Dark God’s influence, which gave him the time he needed to banish Ak-Thakis for good.

  He crept through the apartment until he found Chloe in the kitchen. She sat at the table, clutching something in her hands. The smile slipped from Sestin’s face when he realised she was crying.

  He stepped up behind her and squeezed her shoulders. She jumped like a scalded cat.

  “Kai!” she cried, wrapping her hands tightly around the object she held.

  “Sorry Chlo, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, but another glance told him she looked more guilty than startled. “What’s that you’re holding?”

  “Oh this? It’s nothing,” she said, burying her hands in her lap.

  “Show me.”

  “Honestly, it’s nothing.”

  Sestin felt a thrill of alarm. “Chloe, open your hands!”

  Looking at him through puffy eyes, she unfurled reluctant fingers and revealed a small, wooden object – a squirrel, lovingly carved by a skilled craftsman. Lovingly carved by Belom.

  Sestin froze, cut to the quick. He’d found her caressing the same object many months ago, and after discovering the identity of the giver, had insisted she got rid of it. “I thought you threw that out.”

  Chloe’s hands were trembling. “I held onto it. Belom was a dear, dear friend.”

  Sestin spoke softly. “People don’t cry over gifts from friends. This was a lover’s token.”

  “It was not! Belom never touched me!”

  Sestin peered at her through narrowed eyes. “Then why cling to this? Why the tears?”

  Chloe’s shoulders dropped. She lifted her head and met his gaze. “I am not crying for Belom, though God knows I miss him. I am crying for the life I have lost.”

  Sestin went cold. Suddenly, all he had believed to be certain was like a leaf in a breeze. “What are you saying? That you prefer mud to silk? You were living like a peasant.”

  Chloe sighed. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, though I don’t expect you to understand.”

  Sestin started to pace. “Are you deliberately trying to upset me? Is this vengeance? You are cruel Chloe, most cruel.”

  “I’m not trying to be cruel. I just can’t carry on like this.”

  “But I’ve seen you with your friends, laughing and joking. You’ve been happy here.”

  “I’ve been miserable,” she cried. “You see what you want to see, Kai. I never wanted to come here and I’ve never been happy since the move. Perhaps for a few months I held to hope, believing I would adjust and find my feet, but I have never been comfortable – not with life in the city…and not with you.”

  “No,” Sestin said, stopping dead.

  “Kai…”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Whether I say it or not makes no difference. It is true.”

  “Chloe, I’m begging you.”

  “I don’t love you anymore.”

  Icy fingers crept over Sestin’s soul. “It cannot be so.”

  “I’m so sorry, but it is.”

  Sestin shook his head firmly. “No Chloe. We’ve been together since we were young. Even in the long years of separation, our love did not fade.”

  “That is what saddens me the most. It was real once – more real than life itself – but we have both changed. We can’t relive the past.”

  Panic seized him. He couldn’t let Chloe leave him, not when her presence kept Ak-Thakis at bay. He fell to his knees, clinging to her skirt. “We can work on it Chlo. I’ll do whatever it takes, whatever you want. I promise you, we will find love again.”

  Chloe slid off the chair and knelt before him, taking his h
ands. He met her gaze and saw everything he dreaded confirmed in her eyes. “I am leaving you Shirukai,” she said, a fatal curse, carried on a lover’s whisper. That same silken voice had uttered intimacies to him a thousand times, and now it cut him like a blade.

  Sestin stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped everything. Deep within, something broke and the course of his life shifted. In the absence of hope, the momentum that had carried him for months was lost. He could already feel himself sliding.

  Chloe was speaking again. “I know it’s hard to accept, but you’ll come to terms with it in time. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “I won’t,” he whispered.

  “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I won’t change my mind, however much it hurts to see you like this.”

  “I know you won’t,” Sestin said. He looked into her face, taking in her soft skin and light blue eyes, and understood that she was no longer his. Something visceral stirred within, a taint of bitterness and fury spat from his very bones. His hands clenched tight as he recognised the presence of the Dark God. Long-suppressed memories flooded his mind; of men, women and children butchered by his own hands. His arms, slick with viscera, his mind inflamed by an unslakeable thirst for blood. He had been lost then, captive to the Dark God’s will, and he was losing himself again. His willpower was fast eroding, crumbling beneath the devilish onslaught.

  He met Chloe’s gaze. “Run,” he urged, through gritted teeth.

  “Kai? What’s the matter?” she said, and blanched, clearly unnerved by what she saw in his eyes.

  “The Dark God…He is within me,” he said, clinging to control by his fingertips. “RUN!” he bellowed. Chloe shot to her feet and made a dash for the hallway, but she was far too late.

  …

  Sestin squatted on the hard kitchen floor, rocking back and forth and staring in horror at the blood dripping from his hands; Chloe’s blood. Against his will, he relived her last moments in his mind. Her beautiful eyes had been disbelieving at first, then pleading, then horrified and then blasted, as the life was ripped from her body. The murderous rage had left him now, but its taint befouled him still. A sick thirst had consumed him – no, it had possessed him – craving blood and pain and death, but it could never be slaked. It was the violent heart of insufferable madness, beyond satisfaction or remedy. It was the Dark God, loose in him once more after all these years.

  Chloe’s torn body lay at his feet, an accusation he couldn’t deny. A ragged wail escaped his lips. He was lost, his last hope of redemption gone forever.

  The Dark God had taken him in a moment of weakness. Happiness and hope had been snatched from him, and Ak-Thakis had ridden in on the tide of his fear, smashing through the barriers that had long held Him back. The Dark God had been forced to retreat once more, held at bay by grief and sorrow, but Sestin could feel Him looming, beating relentlessly against his feeble resistance. He couldn’t be balked for much longer.

  His heart was hammering in his chest, his breath snatched in short, panicky gulps as the last of his strength ebbed. Madness lurked in the shadows, gibbering insanity that would shatter his mind and torment him for eternity. He scrambled over to Chloe’s rent form and hid behind her, draping her bloodied hair over his face.

  “Stay back!” he cried, but he knew it was folly. His enemy was within, not without. The talisman of Chloe’s love could no longer protect him. He was on his own, facing a foe he couldn’t defy.

  The Dark God’s presence swelled in his mind – vast as a mountain, infinite as the stars. A voice spoke, cracked and hollow, shaking the very foundations of Sestin’s being. “Yield to me and your torment will end.”

  Sestin trembled uncontrollably, caught in the grip of unbridled fear.

  The voice spoke again. “Give yourself to me freely and all the world will be yours. Resist me and your anguish shall be unending. It is time to choose, Shirukai Sestin. You will not be given another chance.”

  The Dark God’s words ripped at him like a freezing wind. He was bruised inside and out, shaken in every way a man could be shaken. The sense of danger loomed, a colossal, engulfing shadow, and suddenly he knew – another moment’s hesitation and the decision would be made for him. He had no choice.

  “I yield.”

  There was a pause, and for a moment Sestin thought he’d left it too late. “Very well,” the voice said at last, crackling with hideous satisfaction. “Receive your reward.” The Dark God’s presence flooded him, sweeping away the last of his resistance. It rose within him like a tide, filling him, transforming him. He was wracked by convulsions as parts of him died, snuffed out in an instant. All that was good and kind in him ceased to be, and other things took their place – cunning, ambition, ruthlessness. The halls of his mind rang with disdainful laughter; his own laughter, mocking the feeble creature he had once been. Weakness had been scoured from him. There was no place for affection, no room for mercy.

  Love too had fled him – an unworthy addiction he no longer needed. He hungered to serve the Dark God, to free him from a prison he had not known existed until that moment. The Dark God’s reign was to be his driving obsession, his one and only goal.

  Already Ak-Thakis was whispering to him, instructing him. He must return to Skelka and take possession of the Bloodstone that had once been used against him. He must master its use, harnessing magical power and using it to erode the walls of the Dark God’s prison.

  Sestin rose to his feet, eager to do his Master’s bidding. He looked down at Chloe’s broken body, huddled and empty on the floor, and felt nothing. How could he have been so piteously bound to love? So complete was his transformation that he couldn’t even remember what it felt like. Sestin smiled to himself. The Dark God’s fire had scorched him, consuming his weakness, and now he was free.

  Twenty-six

  Rimulth’s body lay far below, safe on his bed in the Warren, but his mind soared free with the air spirit in the skies above. The elemental’s vision was extraordinary, allowing him to see everything in crystalline detail. As the city fell away below, he looked down on the arena and saw magicians paired up with guardsmen, practicing the art of Sword and Sorcery. Gaspi and Taurnil walked among them, shouting encouragement as the recruits trained for battle. Rimulth silently wished them well. Gaspi and Taurnil were doing their part in preparing for the invasion, as was everyone else in the city. It was a hive of activity, noisy as a festival but grave as a wake. The faint musical clang of hammers on anvils reached his ears. The blacksmiths were doing their part too, forging weapon after weapon and passing them on to the college for enchantment.

  The air spirit circled one last time, soaring high on the hot air rising from the city, and flew out over Helioport’s defensive wall. The eastern road was clogged with wagonloads of produce, trundling towards the city – local farmers, bringing provisions for the siege. They carried home-made weapons, crudely forged from farm equipment.

  Horsemen travelled the road too, along with a steady trickle of footsore villagers, responding to Hephistole’s call for volunteer troops. Some were old men, ready to pick up the sword once more, and others were younger than Rimulth by several years, hoping perhaps for their first chance of glory.

  The river Helia meandered below, encircling the city in a great, lazy loop. The docks were shut, and all vessels were being redirected to the nearest port. Even now, Rimulth could see a scow bobbing disconsolately in the distance, barred from entering the city’s waterways.

  The spirit winged its way north-west, heading for the farthest reaches of Helioport’s lands, where they would scour the landscape for signs of the approaching army – something he’d been doing for days while reaching out to the communities who were yet to abandon their homes.

  They flew out across the plain, passing over fields that were empty of livestock; in anticipation of the coming siege, Helioport’s grazing stock had been moved to distant pastures, safe from the sharp swords and cleaving axes of the enemy army. They soared over
the first hillocks to the north, speeding over abandoned villages that had been teeming with life only weeks previously, and then swung west, followed the only approach Ferast’s army could use – a broad valley, cutting through forested hills and rocky gullies that opened onto the floodplain.

  Rimulth had flown this route every day for the past week, and was pleased to see the villages and hamlets he’s visited were all clear. That was, until he reached Boswell. Boswell was a thriving rural community, which acted as a trade hub for nearby villages and crofters. The residents were fiercely proud of their little town, and for reasons of their own, were reluctant to believe Rimulth when he’d spoken of the approaching army. Boswell’s mayor – a corpulent, self-important man called Royston – formed the backbone of the resistance, and Rimulth was determined to change his mind.

  After scouring the far horizon and seeing no sign of the enemy army, Rimulth directed the air spirit to land. It spiralled down towards Boswell’s large, formal green, but Rimulth cast his awareness from its body before it landed and opened his eyes, back in his room in the Warren. He reached into his clothing and withdrew the enchanted amulet – twin to the one tied around the air spirit’s neck – and spoke the word of command. Sight and sound disappeared, obliterated by the magic of transportation, and moments later he appeared in the middle of Boswell’s village green.

  The mayor, who must have been keeping a look out for him, came bustling out of the inn and strode across the green. Rimulth had spoken with him twice before, and couldn’t shake the impression that Royston took these visits as evidence of his own importance. He shook Rimulth’s hand with exaggerated pomp and made an attempt at a shrewd expression. “Come to talk us into leaving again have you?”

  “I have,” Rimulth said, doing his best to hide his irritation. The mayor gestured towards the village inn. A table had been prepared for them inside, in pride of place near the hearth. Rimulth grimaced, understanding the mayor’s intent all too well. He wanted to be seen by all and sundry, talking with the visiting magician.