The Raven's Curse

by Rain Oxford

  “We’re going to use my mirror to---” Livia started.

  Ayden rolled his eyes. “Don’t bother; Merlin already explained.” The sorceress frowned and Ayden’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. This isn’t working.” He indicated the crystal. A tiny smudge of gray was forming in the center.

  “It is working. You apologized for being rude. That is not something you would do if the curse was in control.”

  “If being rude is the only thing I have to worry about, why do I have to fight it? I can use the dark magic to defeat my mother and then we can get the curse broken afterwards.”

  “Deep down, you know you wouldn’t stop at Mother,” Thaddeus said.

  I could feel the self-doubt that was going through Ayden’s mind as he considered people who had wronged him for whatever reason. Then he nodded. “You’re right. I kind of want to kill you right now, so I should try to fight it.”

  Thaddeus took a step to the right, casually trying to hide behind Livia. “Maybe you should keep those thoughts to yourself.”

  Ayden stood and held out his hand. His staff instantly flew to him.

  “Ayden!”

  “Right. I forgot,” he said, reaching for his robe and putting it on. He didn’t look the least bit sincere.

  I will have to watch his mind closely for tricks. We headed down the hallway towards Livia’s study. Before we could reach it, however, there came the sound of an explosion from outside. One of Livia’s costumed guards appeared.

  He was slender and dressed from head to toe in a black uniform, which completely covered his face and hair. The only thing not black aside from his eyes was a white patch on his chest with a club on it.

  “What’s going on?”

  “A necromancer and shapeshifter appeared and demanded you surrender Ayden to them or they’ll blow up the castle.”

  “Gideon, stay and help Livia,” Ayden said. “Is there any way we can send out a decoy me?”

  “Yes. Evelyn, a magician, is already working on that,” Livia said.

  Then there was another explosion. “We’ll have to talk about this later,” Ayden said. “Livia, make sure your defenses are strong. Gideon, protect her.”

  “Why can’t her guards do that?”

  “They didn’t stand a chance against the last sorceress that attacked. Where is Sonya?”

  “She’s visiting her father.”

  Ayden nodded. “Good. Thad, you stay here as well.”

  “No way. Mason can defend you with magic, but I doubt he can fight.”

  “Neither can you. You’ve always just followed Zeus and Bev around to be their footstool. Besides, you’re not making it easy for me to fight this curse. I keep expecting you to try to hold me down and call for Mother.”

  Thaddeus looked highly offended, but I wasn’t particularly sympathetic. I believed people could change and I believed that Thaddeus hadn’t instigated any of the attacks on his brother, but he still let it happen when he could have tried to help. Then again, I suspected Thaddeus was subject to a degree of abuse before Ayden was born.

  “Fine. I’ll stay,” Thaddeus said.

  Livia, Gideon, and Thaddeus followed the guard down the hall in the opposite direction while Ayden and I followed Mason to the study. Once there, I saw the round mirror built into the table. Fog swirled around the surface.

  “Since the mirror is pointed this way, we’re going to have to jump down,” Mason said.

  “At least someone gave me a healing potion,” Ayden said. “Merlin, are you okay with it?”

  I nodded. “I will go first to make sure it is safe.” Without giving him a chance to argue, since it looked like he was about to, I jumped, not as if I was jumping onto a table but as if I was going to jump over something. This paid off as I fell through the mirror like it was a hole. The drop was only about six feet, which I was able to make easily.

  I was in a mountain valley. Although there was snow on the mountaintops, there were still fall leaves on the trees. Before I could tell him it was safe, he jumped through, landed on his feet, and rolled.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said dismissively, checking to make sure his staff was unscathed.

  “Maybe you should have left that behind.”

  “I’m never going to leave it behind.” He held it up and red magic shot from the crystal into the portal, which instantly closed up.

  “What did you do that for? Mason could have helped us.”

  Ayden shrugged. “I don’t trust him. He would have turned on us just like Sven did.”

  Although his hair was still blond and his eyes were still blue, the crystal over his heart was getting very cloudy. “We need to find the dragons.”

  Ayden nodded and followed me. “I wonder if one of the dragons would help me.”

  “That is why we are here.”

  “No, I mean help me to defeat my mother.”

  I sighed, but didn’t say anything. When it came down to it, Ayden was going to have to fight it on his own. Everyone had to find out what kind of person they were eventually.

  We found the lake pretty easily, which was good because it was moments from sunrise. As Kille had said, there was a small isle in the middle with a stone pillar. We followed the shore until we saw twin mountains and then took a few more steps until the pillar was right between us and the mountains. Behind us, there was just a cliff wall, no caves to be seen.

  “This is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe he just told you there was a cave here to get rid of you.”

  “Then we have only a few minutes before we find that out.”

  “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

  “We have to get the curse removed.”

  “I don’t know that I want to.”

  “A curse cannot be removed against the person’s will,” I lied. “Speak to the dragons, explain the curse, and ask them to break it. If they cannot, it is because you do not really want it broken. If they can, they will most likely be willing to help you defeat your mother.” I felt wrong saying such a thing to the young sorcerer, but I had to get him in the cave somehow. “Besides, I thought you wanted to meet more dragons.”

  He smiled. “You’re right. It’s worth it to talk to dragons. I wonder what color they are.”

  At that moment, the sunlight poured through the gap and hit the stone on top of the pillar. The stone, which I couldn’t see clearly, was a prism, which shot a narrow, rainbow beam into one particular spot on the cliff wall behind us.

  “That can’t be right. There’s no cave there,” Ayden said.

  We walked to that spot, and as we did, the entrance was revealed. Rock had formed over the entrance and hid it, but there was plenty of room for a small dragon to slip under it. “Remember the etiquette I taught you. Dragons know when you are lying. Do what I taught you with your staff, and then state your purpose here.”

  With a sigh, Ayden changed his staff into a sword, stabbed it into the ground, and hesitated. Then he took two steps back, and knelt. I could see on his face he wanted to do exactly as I had taught him, but it wasn’t easy for him.

  In addition to having an attention deficit disorder, he was a visual learner. His auditory processing skills were lacking, so much so that he sounded much less intelligent than he was. The problem wasn’t that he was dumb, it was just that he learned through observation and reading. Anything I told him was liable to be forgotten or even unheard, but if I made him write it down, he would remember it.

  “Hello, dragons!” he yelled loudly. I groaned. “My name is Ayden Dracre, son of Ilvera Dracre and Kille Rynorm! I’m here because I have some kind of curse over me and my father told me only you can break it!” He stopped to catch his breath.

  “It is called the raven’s curse.”

  “Right. They call it the raven’s curse for some reason! Anyway, can you break it? I’d really like to go and defeat my mother today! Also, you can help, if you want! She
’s killed enough dragons!”

  “That is enough, young sorcerer. Now bow and hope they respond to such a brash request for assistance.”

  He shrugged and did as I said. I didn’t have a sword, of course, but I bowed as well. After five minutes, Ayden started squirming. After ten minutes, he started whining. It took fifteen minutes before the space filled with smoke.

  “We know of the raven’s curse and are sympathetic to your plight,” a voice called out. Like most dragons, each word was laced with power. Every dragon was all-powerful and knew it well. What they decreed was the final judgment. “What do you offer for our help?”

  Ayden froze, confusion all over his face. “Um…” he patted his pockets and pulled out… dragon hide gloves.

  “Put those away!” I told him.

  He frowned. “They’re not real. They used to make armor out of the hide of dragons, but once dragons were commonly considered extinct, they came up with fake dragon hide. They figured out that, by rubbing certain oils and potions on regular leather, it could make the leather as tough and magic-repellant as real dragon hide.”

  “And how are those valuable to us?” the dragon asked.

  “I don’t know. My father gave them to me.” His feelings were written all over his face. “Actually, I don’t think I can give you them. It’s the only thing I have to… remind me of him.”

  The smoke cleared in front of us, revealing two waist-high boulders. Embedded in the boulder on the left was a sword. On top of the right boulder was a chalice. “You have proven yourself worthy of our help. Choose your path. The sword will make you invincible, so that you can defeat your mother. The chalice contains a potion that will break any curse.”

  Ayden looked from one to the other, obviously conflicted. “Would I be more dangerous with the sword than my mother will be if I don’t stop her?”

  “Only you can answer that,” I said.

  He nodded and stood. “I choose the chalice.”

  “Then take it and cure your curse,” the dragon said.

  Ayden slowly approached the chalice, picked it up, and backed up until he was next to me again. “Thank you.” He then knelt and set it gently on the ground in front of me. “Take it, Merlin.”

  “No, Ayden. It is for you.”

  “You are a better wizard. Once your power and immortality returns, you can make that potion Asiago made. You can take my power away so that the raven’s curse won’t make me hurt anyone.”

  “If you take it, you will be able to help the Sjau.”

  “I promised to break your curse and this may be my only chance to do it. You can help the Sjau more than I can.”

  “You are talking about getting rid of your magic.”

  “I don’t want to lose control to the curse again. I trust that you won’t let that happen. Please take it.”

  “I will not.”

  “Why not?”

  “There is no potion that can break all curses. The dragon was only testing you.”

  He looked back at the cave with a betrayed expression on his face. “Is that true? You were only testing me?”

  “Yes, we were, and you have proven that the curse can be broken. However, we cannot break it, because you have already allowed the curse to corrupt you.”

  “You just said it can be broken!”

  “You have allowed it to corrupt you, but not to the point where it is irreversible. Because of that, only you can break it.”

  Ayden dropped his head. “Then what’s the point? If you won’t help me, why should I bother fighting the curse?”

  “We did not say that we would not help you. Walk north exactly two thousand steps. There, you will find a stone pillar as tall as the trees. Circle this pillar three times. Then you will have to face what you fear.”

  “I’m not afraid of anything, though.” There was no answer. “Dragon?” Still no answer. “Was that a dismissal?”

  “I suspect so.”

  We did as the dragon instructed. Ayden kept counting and losing count, but I wasn’t worried. If the dragon had said, “Head north for about a mile,” it wouldn’t have sounded as wise. Besides, it wasn’t like we were going to miss a stone pillar. The reason I didn’t interrupt his counting was because it was keeping his mind clear and the curse subdued.

  When we reached the pillar, Ayden looked surprised. “Did I mess up?”

  “Undoubtedly.” Etched into the flat side of the pillar was a language I would know anywhere— the dragons’ language. However, it seemed like an older dialect than I was used to.

  If you want to change your future, step through and face it.

  Be warned, if you cannot change, you will not leave.

  That sounds friendly.

  Before I could tell him what the inscription said, Sven appeared, aiming his wand at Ayden. It wasn’t the same wand that Ayden had given him, though, so I knew he could hurt the young sorcerer. “Don’t take another step,” he warned.

  Ayden didn’t. Instead, his staff changed into a sword. “You really don’t want to anger me right now.”

  “You’re not nearly as scary as your mother.”

  The crystal was getting darker. “I’m going to be soon if you don’t leave.”

  Sven really was the last person Ayden needed to see at that moment; he was the one who betrayed Ayden’s kindness. Magic shot from Sven’s wand like a beam of red light, but Ayden dodged it.

  “He cannot kill you,” I told him. “Ilvera’s plan is to draw magic out of all fourteen of the Sjau at once, using you.”

  He ignored me, which didn’t sit well with me since he was the only one who could hear me at all. Ayden didn’t turn to magic, though. He dodged each curse Sven flung or used his blade to reflect it. Somehow, his instincts were improved by the curse, which was fortunate, except the crystal was still getting darker.

  Ayden truly believed he could help people with dark magic, and I may have been responsible for that. Gmork had given into darkness because he lost his mother whereas Nimue did it to save me. Ayden had been taught his entire life that magic was completely black and white, at least for him. Magicians and seers could choose how to use their magic, but as a sorcerer, Ayden had to use only dark magic.

  The fact was, “dark magic” could be gray. The Rynorm family lived in this gray area, as did most sorcerers on Caldaca, because although they were sorcerers, they had a place in society. The Dracre family, on the other hand, tried to be as destructive to society as they could be.

  Ayden naturally tried to use dark magic to do good things, which was entirely possible, for “light magic” could be just as gray. He needed both sorcery and wizardry to reach his full potential. The problem was that the raven’s curse was black as ink and all-consuming. This was the kind of darkness that would eat him from the inside out— the same kind that Gmork was lost to. Ayden was not innocent or delicate; he had faced this same darkness every day of his life and was scarred by it, but he had always resisted it before.

  I told him to accept the sorcery inside him and because of that, he didn’t understand why nothing good could come out of this.

  Ayden kept advancing on Sven until his sword was more efficient than Sven’s magic. Sven pulled a short sword off of his belt, which he must have gotten after betraying Ayden, and tossed his wand aside. Normally, I would worry about the young sorcerer’s chances against a kitten let alone an experienced sorcerer, but this was not the Ayden I knew.

  It was at that point that his sword began glowing blue as magic pulsed through the blade. Ayden’s expression was cold, the crystal was dark gray, and he was about to kill Sven. He wasn’t going to back down, and he would never forgive himself if he killed someone, even his enemy. He managed to trip Sven and aimed his sword at Sven’s heart.

  “Sven is only obeying Ilvera because she has his wife captive!”

  I was not fast enough to stop Ayden from plunging the sword into Sven, but I was fast enough that his aim shifted. Instead of running the blade through Sven’s heart, i
t went through his arm. It was nothing a healing potion couldn’t cure.

  “Are you serious?” Ayden asked, more with anger than regret.

  “I heard Ilvera say it herself. If he does not obey her every word, she will kill his wife.”

  Sven, knowing that he was outmatched, took the opportunity to escape. When he vanished, Ayden growled with anger. He had been pushed back over the edge. His hair started to turn black, the crystal was now black as ink, and the sword caught with blue fire. I didn’t understand that part, but I knew Ayden was losing his battle with the curse, and when he was defeated, I would never be able to get him back again. He would face his mother and be killed, exactly as she had planned.

  The crystal cracked.

  Part 3

  Ayden

  Chapter 21

  I felt the curse break free and fill me once more with waves of anger, greed, and pride. If I gave into the curse, I would be fearless and powerful. I wouldn’t ever have to worry about people not accepting me. I would be free to do what I wanted, when I wanted to, and nobody could stop me.

  The reason this curse was so hard to fight was because I was a sorcerer. I was not selfless like a wizard or mage was. I didn’t want to hurt people, but that didn’t mean I wanted to help everyone. I wasn’t a hero. I was born a sorcerer and no matter how much I used my magic for good, or how many curses I broke, I would still be a sorcerer, just like my aunt was.

  The crystal started cracking, as if the curse was literally digging claws into it. It was easily crushing the power of all that light magic inside the pendant. Dark magic was so much more powerful. I saw worry in Merlin’s face and my first thought was that he was afraid of me, which just fueled the anger.

  I could feel the curse, like a ball of heat, sinking further into my chest. It felt good and bad at the same time. Up until I chose to fight with Magnus, this was what I had always wanted. It was power and self-confidence. I would finally be able to defeat my mother and anyone else who threatened me.

  But in doing so, I would lose my friends. I would be accepted as a sorcerer only after giving up who I was. Of course I would be accepted if I conformed. I wasn’t just a sorcerer, though. I didn’t want to save everyone, but I liked making friends and I liked helping them. Sorcerers made alliances, not friends. I enjoyed breaking curses, reading, and learning both wizardry and sorcery. Merlin wasn’t afraid of me, he was afraid for me.