Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  Frieda sat on a chair, but did not relax at all. Strangers showing up unexpected on her doorstop were usually trouble. Especially when the strangers were not dwarves. With dwarves, if she did not know them, she usually knew their families, or their clan. With ‘Kedrun’ she knew nothing. “What do you need from Lady Zara?”

  “A spell was cast on me. I want it, fixed. Removed. Taken away, however wizards do that.”

  “If you think someone cast a love spell on you,” Frieda remarked with disgust, “then you have come a long way up here for nothing. There is no such thing as a love potion. Zara gets asked for that once a week, at least.”

  “No, it’s, it is not a love potion,” Koren replied, embarrassed.

  “Anyway, why don’t you ask the wizard you paid for this spell? Whoever cast the spell on you would be the best person to undo it.”

  “I can’t ask Lor-, I can’t ask that wizard. I didn’t pay for the spell, I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t even know a spell had been cast on me, until I was told about it.”

  That got Frieda’s attention. “A wizard cast a spell on you, without your permission? Kedrun, this is a serious matter. This must be reported. The Wizards’ Council forbids the use of magic on anyone who-”

  “No, please don’t report anything. It’s my fault. Partly my fault. I just want the spell undone. Or I want to understand it, if it is dangerous to me.”

  “Hmm,” Frieda sat back in her chair. Koren had her intrigued. “What is the nature of the spell?”

  “I have,” he glanced toward the door. “I have been given magical fighting skill.”

  “Ha!” Frieda laughed.

  “It’s true! I have,” Koren protested with sudden anger.

  “No, you haven’t, you young fool,” Frieda said gently, seeing on Koren’s face that he truly believed what he said. “You’re either a complete fool, or someone has played a trick on you. There is no spell to make anyone fight with the speed and skill of a wizard.”

  “I can! Ask Bjorn! Or Barlen. Bjorn called me a berserker, and I was not showing him all of my speed or skill. I may not have the fighting skill of a wizard,” he did not know what level of skill that could be, “but I have bested a weapons master when I had no training.”

  “Kedrun, there is no such magic,” Frieda scoffed. “If that is your business with the Lady Zara, you have wasted your journey. And my time.”

  “There must be,” Koren insisted. Had his long journey all been for nothing?

  Frieda shook her head slowly. “There is not. There is not a month that goes by without someone asking Zara to make him or her faster, for greater skill with an axe or a sword or a bow. Zara turns them all away, because there is no such magic.”

  “Is that because Zara works with metal? Should I ask another wizard?” Koren asked innocently.

  “You question my Lady’s power?” Frieda’s eyes flashed anger in the candle light.

  “No, I, I do not mean any offense. I know little of wizards. Please, you have to believe me. I had never touched a sword before, and I was able to fight like a champion my very first time. Ask Bjorn. Or Barlen or Dekma, they’ve seen me fight.” Then he corrected himself. “They’ve seen my skill with a bow. I never miss. Never.”

  “Never?” Frieda asked with an arched eyebrow.

  “Never.”

  For the first time, Frieda paused to consider the young man. Whatever the truth, Kedrun very much believed a wizard had cast a spell on him. A spell Frieda knew did not exist. Then she had a startling thought. “Your skill with a bow, when did this start?”

  “I’ve always been good with a bow, ever since I was a little boy. I’ve never missed, not since I was very little.”

  “Never?” Frieda repeated, skeptical.

  “Not that I can ever remember,” Koren answered truthfully.

  Frieda knew it could not be true, but she also saw that Koren fervently believed in what he was saying. Whatever the truth was, the young man was frightened, and he needed help, and Frieda could not turn him callously away. She could not help him, but she could humor him, and perhaps provide some comfort. And a dose of reality. Or, possibly, a shocking truth? “Stay here, I need to get something.” She went into a back room and returned with a copper-plated box. Before opening it, she lit a lantern and set it on the table. “Here,” she opened the box and began taking out various items. “Set these on the table behind you.”

  The first item Koren was given was a heavy ceramic bowl, stained dark with years of use. He set it carefully on the table, and reached for the next item; a simple stone with a rounded top and a flat base. It was not large, and to his surprise, she tossed it through the air to him. As soon as it fell into his cupped hands, the stone flared into dazzling light. Koren yelped in surprise and he dropped the stone onto the wood floor. It bounced and rolled under his chair. “What was that?”

  Frieda seemed to be just as surprised as Koren. “It won’t hurt you. Pick it up and put it on the table.” Seeing he was reluctant to touch it again, she reached under his chair and picked it up. Frieda moved to put the stone on the table, but flicked her wrist and dropped it in Koren’s lap.

  The stone flared light again, not as bright this time, but Koren could feel the heat of it tingling the skin on top of his thighs. In a panic, he scooped it up with both hands to toss it across the workshop. As before, as soon as his bare hands touched the smooth stone the stone flared with light, but this time the light grew blinding, searing Koren’s eyes though his eyelids were tightly shut. He had not time to heave the stone upward before the light grew unbearably intense, and the stone shattered into three pieces.

  Koren’s fell over backwards, his chair toppling to the floor, sending him awkwardly flailing his arms until he crashed heavily onto the rough wood planks of the floor. “What was that?!” He shouted in fear, feeling around blindly to set the chair upright. His vision was coming quickly back to normal.

  “What did you do?” Frieda asked from the floor where she had also fallen, dazed.

  “I’m sorry,” Koren almost sobbed. “It’s my fault. I didn’t mean to break it. I’m a jinx. I have always been a jinx.”

  “You broke it?” Frieda screeched, shaking her head to clear the spots swimming in her eyes.

  Koren’s vision had returned quickly. Not wishing to touch the stone again, he used a metal rod to push the pieces across the floor to Frieda. “It shattered. I didn’t mean to do it, I swear. I’m a jinx. I will pay for the damage,” he offered.

  “Pay for-” Frieda asked in horror as she pushed the three pieces of the stone together on the floor by feel, her vision still dazzled by spots. “Do you have any idea how much a focus stone is worth? It’s priceless!”

  The door burst open and Bjorn rushed in. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “No we’re not all right!” Frieda wailed. “Your idiot wizard friend here broke Lady Zara’s focus stone.”

  “Wizard?” Bjorn’s mouth was agape in astonishment. “Kedrun is no wizard.”

  “I’m not a wizard.” Koren was just as surprised.

  “You have lied to me from the moment you darkened my door,” Frieda scolded, waving a finger at Koren.

  “I am not a wizard,” Koren insisted. He turned to Bjorn. “She played a trick on me, and the stone broke. I’m no wizard.”

  “No?” Frieda scooped up the pieces of the focus stone and offered them to Bjorn. “You take it. You’ll see.”

  Bjorn gingerly let her put the three pieces of stone into his cupped hands. Nothing happened. “See what?”

  “Exactly!” Frieda pointed to Koren. “Now make him touch a fingertip to one piece.”

  Koren recoiled, holding his hands behind his back. “I’m not touching it again,” he pleaded with Bjorn. “I already broke it.”

  “Kedrun,” Bjorn looked askance at his young companion. “I think you need to do as she says.” When Koren hesitated, Bjorn added softly “It is already broken, what could be the harm?”

  Ba
rely holding one eye open, Koren reached out a shaking finger and brushed it against one of the shards of the focus stone. It flared to light in Bjorn’s hand, but faintly, no longer having the power to blind anyone. “Do that again,” Bjorn requested, intrigued.

  Koren tapped a fingertip to the shard, then held his finger lightly on it. The shard glowed with a warm light, flickering. “Why does it do that?”

  “It’s a focus stone. It was a focus stone,” Frieda snapped. “You know damned well what it is, master wizard.”

  “I don’t,” Bjorn declared. “Tell me.”

  “Wizards use focus stones to concentrate their power. The stone pulls power from the spirit world, through the wizard who touches the stone. I don’t know how it works, I’m not a wizard. Lady Zara uses this one to infuse magic into metal, somehow. She did use it,” she glared at Koren. “It’s broken now!”

  “I said I was sorry,” Koren was now angry at her. “You shouldn’t have given it to me, if you knew it was going to break!”

  “How did it break?” Bjorn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Frieda admitted. She looked at the shattered pieces inn Bjorn’s hand, and took them back from him. “It shouldn’t have happened. All I have ever seen it do is glow. When Zara used it, the stone only ever had a dull red glow to it. It’s never been blindingly bright like that. What did you do to it?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Koren repeated his protest. “How could I do anything? I’m not a wizard?”

  “Then why does the stone shine when you touch it?” Bjorn asked. On impulse, he picked up a piece and squeezed it tightly. Nothing happened. But when he lightly pressed it to Koren’s forearm, light pulsed from the shard of stone. “Kedrun is not a wizard,” Bjorn told Frieda confidently. “What could this mean?”

  Before Frieda could repeat that Koren certainly must be a wizard, Koren made a guess. “Could the stone be pulling power from the spell within me?”

  Frieda stomped a foot on the floor. “There is no-”

  Bjorn interrupted. “What spell?”

  Koren shuffled his feet and stared at the floor. “You called me a berserker? My speed and skill come from a spell a wizard cast on me. That’s why I need to see a wizard, to have the spell removed, before it burns me from the inside.”

  “There is no such spell!” Frieda shouted, raising her hands in frustration.

  Bjorn took a half step backward, away from Koren. “She is right, there is no such spell.”

  “But-”

  “Kedrun, I was a king’s guard. If there were a magical way to give a soldier the fighting ability I have seen in you, we would have had had it,” Bjorn declared with certainty. “What does this mean?” He addressed the last to Frieda.

  She held up her hands. “He is a wizard, I told you. Kedrun, you said a wizard gave you magical fighting power with the sword, but you also told me that you never miss with a bow? That you have never missed, as far back as you can remember? That started before you say a wizard cast a spell on you?”

  Koren did not like the answer he had to give. “Yes.”

  Bjorn was not convinced. “I’ve known archers who say they never miss. Kedrun, you have remarkable skill with a bow, but-”

  Frieda had enough. “I’ll prove it to you. Come outside.”

  Outside the blacksmith shop, it was now fully dark; the last tinges of sunset had faded from the western horizon. Overhead, stars twinkled brightly in the inky black sky; the stars rippling as a strong breeze blew down the mountain. In the streets, lights shone through windows, and lanterns on posts beside the street swung back and forth. “Do you see that yellow sign there,” Frieda pointed away from the town, toward the pit mine that was now dark and empty of workers. “It is round, and hangs just below the lantern?”

  “That one?” Bjorn looked toward a post closer to the shop.

  “No, the one at the edge of the mine pit. The sign is there as a warning to avoid the edge,” Frieda explained.

  Bjorn squinted. The sign was too far away for him to see anything other than a faintly yellow dot that swung wildly in the breeze. “I see it. What about it?”

  “Kedrun,” Frieda instructed, “put an arrow in that sign.”

  “Impossible,” Bjorn snorted.

  “Can you do it?” Frieda demanded. “If you can, I will send a message to Zara.”

  Koren unlimbered his bow and peered at the sign. When the breeze blew strongly, the sign was edge on. Only when the breezed slackened momentarily was he able to see it as a full circle. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I can hit it.”

  “No,” Bjorn scoffed. “It would be a miracle. In this wind? How could you time such a shot?”

  Koren nocked an arrow and drew the bowstring back. “I don’t time it. I just,” how could he explain what he did not understand? “I wait until it feels right, then I-” His fingers released the bowstring without him commanding them to do anything. In the darkness, there was a distant “thunk” sound, and the little yellow disc of a sign now had an arrow embedded in it.

  Bjorn’s words echoed the words Koren had heard aboard the Lady Hildegard. “That was not an amazing shot. That was an impossible shot, Kedrun.”

  “It’s not impossible! I did it,” Koren thought that fairly obvious. “I can do it again, if you like. It’s not so difficult.”

  “How could you possibly know to aim, at so distant a target?” Bjorn unconsciously took a step back from Koren. “A moving target?”

  Frieda touched Bjorn’s arm. “He doesn’t know, not consciously. Zara explained it to me one day. A wizard who hold a bow draws on the power of the spirit world, and bends them to her will. Or his, in Kedrun’s case. The spirits know which target he wishes to hit, and they guide him. When the spirits sense the time is right, the bowstring is released, even if the wizard does not know it.”

  “But the wind!” Bjorn shook his head. “This wind would send any arrow off course.”

  “The vagaries of wind are no mystery to the spirits. They know when to release the bowstring, because they know the exact moment when the winds will blow an arrow to its target. And powerful wizards can bend the world to their will, so that even the winds do their bidding. You,” she looked at Koren with a mixture of awe and fear, “are a powerful wizard. Why have you come here, to my Lady Zara’s home?”

  “I can’t be a wizard. I would know!” Koren protested again, but less surely. “Wouldn’t I know?” How could a wizard not know of his own power?

  “Come back inside,” Frieda invited them, pulling her shawl around her. “Nights can be chilly here in the mountains, even before the summer has passed.”

  Inside, the two men sat silently at a table while Frieda went to get a teapot and cups. Koren busied himself with tapping one or another piece of the focus stone, watching the shards glow briefly. “Bjorn, I’m scared. This can’t be.”

  Bjorn touched the focus stone, and nothing happened. “You think a wizard put a spell on you? I think you need to tell me who you really are.”

  For the first time, Koren regretted accepting Bjorn’s offer to come with him. “Koren. My name is Koren Bladewell.”

  That seemed to satisfy Bjorn, for the man nodded and held out a hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you, Koren Bladewell. I’m still Bjorn Jihnsson.”

  “Sorry,” Koren said sheepishly. “My name, um, doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  Bjorn thought for a moment, and shook his head. “No. Should it?”

  Koren had to remind himself that, while he had briefly been famous within the small circle of the castle in Linden, few people in the wider world of Tarador knew or cared who the court wizard had as a servant. “Do you know of Lord Salva?”

  “Yes, of course.” Bjorn sat up straight and squared his shoulders. “I was a king’s guard. I lived in the castle barracks for many a year. Lord Salva knew me by name, we shared meals together in the field many times. Why do you ask about the court wizard?”

  It surprised Koren how big the world was, and at the s
ame time, how small. “I was Lord Salva’s servant. Until-”

  Frieda came back into the room, carrying a tray laden with a tea setting. Koren rose to take the heavy tray from her. “Lord Salva?” Freida asked. “What about him?”

  Bjorn shared a look with Koren. “Kedrun asked if, since I was a king’s guard in Linden, I had ever met the court wizard. Frieda, you are certain that Kedrun must be a wizard?”

  Koren dropped the shard of focus stone he had been playing with. “I can’t be a wizard. Wizards, don’t they know what they are?”

  Frieda poured tea into three cups, and removed the cover from a bowl of sweet biscuits. “Kedrun, has anything strange ever happened around you? Something you couldn’t explain?”

  “Not real-”

  “After the focus stone shattered, you said you were a jinx, that you’ve always been a jinx. What did you mean by that?”

  It took more prompting, but Koren told them of how he knew he was a jinx. He did not mention the crown princess, or the incident with the pirates. He told them of the bad things that had happened to a boy in a small village; bad things that could not be explained as anything other than a supernatural jinx. Himself.

  Frieda turned away, wiping at her eyes. “Kedrun,” she said quietly as she sipped tea, “you are not a jinx. There is no such thing as a jinx. You are a wizard. All those incidents you mentioned are your magical power manifesting itself, without you being able to control it. Or even knowing of it. That is why wizards are supposed to be discovered when they are very young; so an adult wizard can guide their power, and protect them from being hurt by their own power. No wizard ever came to your village?”

  “Oh,” Koren stared at his teacup with guilt. “We lived in a very small village, our farm was a long way from the village center. We didn’t get into the village much,” he explained. “I remember hearing a wizard was coming to our village one time, and I was excited about it. But the wizard was to come through our village during harvest time, and we were busy, and one of our cows was sick. So I stayed at home.” And his father had declared that having a wizard look at Koren, to find out whether the boy was a wizard, was a foolish waste of time. Bodric knew his boy was not a wizard; anyone could see that. The law stated every child in Tarador was supposed to be tested for magical power. The law said a lot of things, Bodric had said scornfully, and not one of the laws helped a poor honest farmer to make a living.