by Guy Antibes
“Between all of us, the stone in this room shouldn’t stop us from escaping,” Trak said.
Honor’s eyebrows shot up and her hands went out. “Not here, not now, Trak. We have to be patient.”
The cobwebs were finally clearing up. Trak rubbed his hair and his eyes. “I’m sorry. I still feel like I’m dreaming. Is there something to drink?”
“I hope you like water,” Neel said, giving his son half a grin.
Trak laughed. “That’s a sobering thought,” he said, still very happy to see the people he loved, except he still missed Valanna.
“Indeed,” Able said as he poured Trak a cup of water from a pitcher on the table surrounded by a number of gaily-painted wooden cups. He could hear his own happiness echoed in his adopted father’s voice.
Ben took his chair and put it down by the long table, large enough for them all to be seated at once. It reminded Trak of the long tables in Able’s inn, The Blunted Sword. “We came here to convince the Toryans to keep the peace in the mountain boundaries between Kandanna and Santasia or join the loyalist faction of Santasia led by Garono Dalistro in fighting against Riotro.”
Trak drained the water cup. “I’m fine with that. Nullia, a magician named Tomio, and I were captured by the Toryans and then captured again by a Kandannan army unit before I came here. Tomio was killed by the Kandannans.” Trak thought about the main events of his escape. “Nullia left us, heading towards Gorinza.” He suddenly had a thought. “Garono made it safely to Nikia? What about Valanna?”
Ben smiled. “A delightful girl, perhaps a bit overwhelmed by the events. I saw her some in Mozira. She is quite pretty, so I can see how she charmed you. She asked about you, and I told her your story. I hope you don’t mind.”
Trak shook his head. “Mission probably told her all about me when she was with him.”
“Ben said she would help fight with the Loyalists,” Neel said.
“Good for her. So I save her, just to put her into a war.” Trak didn’t really know what to think about the situation with Valanna. He felt resentment to think that fate hadn’t wanted them together. “I’ll not be fighting for either side,” Trak said. “I feel like I’m cursed to be banished from everywhere I go.”
“I can’t disagree,” Honor said. “Unfortunately, I’ve been right there with you.”
Trak looked into Honor’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been a very good nephew, have I?”
“Since you are my only nephew, I have nothing to compare. You will have to exercise some patience, here in Kizru, I’m afraid.”
“I was cast out of Kizru when ten years old, Trak,” Neel said. “My mother died, and I guess they didn’t want a half-breed walking the streets, so they sent me back to my father in Colcan.”
“You didn’t live together as a family?”
Neel shook his head. “Just for my first two years, I was told, and I don’t really remember any of it. My father was sent to Kizru on a diplomatic mission and met my mother. He had to return to Bitrium to his other family.” Neel looked at Honor. “I joined them later.”
“But Ben said you spent time with the Toryans.”
“I did, but I lived in modest circumstances until my mother died. She worked at a weaver’s shop using her magic to move the loom. I was a half-breed in Colcan, as well, and not treated much better. I had prodigious magical talent, but not quite to your level—“
“But close enough to be an Innovator,” Ben said.
Neel nodded. “I felt stifled in Bitrium and left before I was twenty. I thought I could convince the Toryans to take me back in.” He looked down at the floor for a while. “I lived in the woods for six months, but I never returned to Kizru. They had had enough of me, and then they knocked me out and shipped me all the way to Nikia, where someone put me on a ship to Pestledown.”
“And then you met Galinda Youngblood,” Able said, finishing the story.
“Now we are back in Kizru. I am just glad that they didn’t kill me out of hand—”
“But if the Toryans don’t like half-breeds,” Trak said, “then, what am I?”
“None of us know that,” Ben said. “They’ve had enough opportunities to kill you, too.”
“I know. This place might be just as bad as Bitrium, if I have to watch my back all the time,” Trak said. He felt as if his life was balanced on the edge of a sword. His future might be decided by whatever the side of the bed the king of the Toryans got up on in the morning. He put his hands to his head and gripped his hair. “I’m sorry I put all of you into this mess.”
“You didn’t,” Able said. “We would be here even if you were still in Espozia.”
He lifted up his head. “That’s right. I’m less sorry then.” He managed a smile and poured another cup of water.
The door to their barracks opened. A fancily-dressed Toryan walked in, accompanied by four guards. His gaze landed on Trak.
“I’ll be taking the boy now that he is awake,” the man said in heavily-accented Pestlan.
~
Valanna looked at the woman who claimed to have known Trak in the Espozian Magician Guild. “So you think that Trak is going to survive?” she said, while she poured tea into four cups. The woman, Nullia, had finally accepted a room in the mansion at Misson’s insistence.
Nullia shrugged and took her cup and sipped. “I can’t tell you that. The Toryans are a fickle bunch. They sent me out of their lands as quickly as they could get rid of me. That’s how they protect themselves. No visitors at any time. I didn’t sense any hostility towards Trak, however.”
The woman’s story seemed right. Bonigo, the leader of the Moziran guild vouched for the woman’s identity. Everyone seemed happy to have another Purple join the ranks. Nullia’s insistence on a guarantee not to be absorbed again gave her credibility in Valanna’s eyes.
Asem cleared his throat. “Can you teach Valanna some battle skills?” He looked over towards his wife. “You never did learn any, did you, Kulara?”
Kulara shook her head to the negative, but Valanna didn’t believe it. She thought Kulara was the one who wanted to learn new battle poses. Asem never ceased to amaze her. He was sneaky and furtive when he wanted to be and as honest as the day is long on other matters. Right now, Valanna would rather have Kulara learn all of the battle skills, so she could stay behind in Mozira and learn to bake bread or clean or something other than kill other people.
“It’s not a matter of battle skills, Prince Asem. It is a matter of applying what you know with deadly force,” Nullia said.
Valanna thought of her wind spell and the threats she had made with it. Nullia was absolutely correct. She compared magic to fire. It could be used to help or to hinder. Kulara knew more than enough to hurt people. Her mind went back to the magician fight in Sunbeam’s restaurant in Gorinza. Fireballs flew back and forth. She rubbed her arm where her burns had healed. Part of her forearm might even be slightly mottled from the fight for the rest of her life.
The Purple magician rubbed her upper arms, showing some anxiety. “I will give her instruction into the theory of application of magic as a deadly force. If she needs to know another pose or two, I will provide such instruction. I could do so when we start out tomorrow, but Senior Dalistro wants me to be able to fight wherever Riotro shows up.”
“You know Trak’s flying spell?” Kulara said.
Nullia laughed. “It’s not a flying spell. I’d never be able to think of such an application of magic on my own, but it’s a combination of the lift spell that you used in Bitrium with a wind spell to provide the motive force. If you can master both poses, I suppose you can fly wherever you wish. I would guess that both of you can do that.” Nullia looked at Kulara and Valanna. “You just need a platform to stand on so you can maintain your poses.” She shook her head. “Trak, what an interesting boy.”
Valanna looked at Asem and decided that he might not have the ability to generate enough wind to move a platform, but Kulara certainly did. She felt proud that T
rak could have thought of something so simple on his own, but maybe Ben was the one behind the spell.
“Then perhaps I can learn to operate a flying platform before we go north,” Valanna said. She liked the idea of actually contributing something to the fight to regain the Dalistro’s house. She owed Misson that much, and Valanna dreaded eventually returning to Balbaam and facing King Marom.
“Maybe all three of us could use the innovation,” Nullia said. “We can get started tomorrow morning.”
“You can count me out,” Asem said. “I can barely whip up a breeze.”
“I don’t mind a traveling companion.” Kulara smiled seductively and put her hand on Asem’s bicep. “It’s always useful to keep a man around.”
~
By midday, the three magicians were able to lift wooden doors up into the air, and then they were able to shift their spells and use wind to blow themselves forward.
Asem looked down at the ground from the platform that Kulara had raised. This time he had taken a rock with him. “Watch,” he said.
Kulara broke her wind pose and leaned over as Asem dropped the rock. It fell straight down and bounced on the dirt below. Asem could see the indentation in the ground where it fell.
He laughed. “I’m an Innovator, too. If we take a basket of rocks, we can drop them on the army. The platform can sail above a city’s walls with ease, and a flotilla of flyers can rain down destruction on the inhabitants.”
“Not too many rocks. It’s not easy moving the both of us up in the air. I can get in the air without trouble, but I get worn out using the wind pose. I think I’ll be good for about an hour or so of continuous flying,” Kulara said.
“Limits. Always limits.” Asem grinned and pulled his feet from the leather straps nailed to the doors to keep him from falling off. He eased his way over to his wife and kissed her on the lips. “They make life more interesting.”
“You and your interesting. I wonder if there is a spell that can take us out of the sky. We’ll have to ask Nullia.”
They went back into the villa and sat in the main room. Asem played at dusting off his pants until Nullia entered.
“So?” Nullia said.
“What can knock us down? The descension spell… can it be triggered remotely from the ground? Can magicians send rocks seventy paces high? Arrows we don’t have to worry about quite as much as they will hit the underside of our platforms, but fireballs would represent a danger,” Asem said. “Before we risk our lives, I’d like to know the answers, and you are the most familiar with the magical capabilities of your fellow Masters.” He looked at Kulara, who seemed to agree. That would be a relief, in this instance. It would save his body and his ears from a closed-door harangue.
Nullia put her head back for a moment and closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she finally said, “but we can experiment. The spell is applied to the platform, so I could initiate the spell while off the platform. Whatever we find won’t be applicable to Riotro’s capabilities, but to everyone else’s except for Trak.”
Asem nodded. “Riotro can’t be everywhere and if Valanna moves with a smaller army up the eastern side of Santasia, I doubt if he would bother her when the main army goes right up the middle of the country.”
“I am willing to do that,” Valanna said. “But I still think we need to know the risks, for all of our sakes.”
The next day, Nullia sent a platform up twenty stories. Misson brought the best archers in Mozira to the villa. Only a few arrows made it up to the platform, and only one had the power to stick to the bottom of the wooden platform.
“So we won’t have to worry about conventional forces,” Asem said.
Nullia, Kulara, and Valanna threw fireballs up into the air, but none sent them high enough to hit the platform.
“What other threats could we encounter?” Asem looked at the three women.
“Weather,” Nullia said.
“Bird droppings,” Kulara said with a smirk.
Valanna was silent for a moment. “Didn’t the Toryans bring down your platform?” She turned to Nullia.
“They did, but there are no Toryans with Riotro’s forces,” Asem said. “I’ve been through the battle order, and no one mentioned Toryans at all, except to hope they took out as many Kandannans as possible.”
“I’m still willing to risk it,” Valanna said. “The platform would be more comfortable than riding in a carriage.”
Asem smiled. “Especially if we install something to support your wind pose.”
“Trak installed a pole on his to lean against. If we will be traveling with more people, perhaps we can build a railing around the outside edge. I’d feel more comfortable that way,” Valanna said.
Kulara put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Very nice. I get one, too?
“Of course, my love. That’s settled. Nullia can fly with Valanna to support the eastern column and Kulara and I will fly with the main force. Misson wanted me to go along with Valanna, but that was before Nullia arrived. If any of you get too tired, we just put the platform on a cart, and you can ride to Espozia along with the rest of the army.”
~~~
Chapter Eight
~
Trak still held onto the impression that the capital city of the Toryans should be a village of huts, but now walked on dressed stone pavement with stone houses sporting glass windows. It reminded him more of Estia than Bitrium, but he felt the same kind of tension in the air that he noticed in the Colcan city.
Evidently, he hadn’t been taken to the white palace at first, since it loomed up ahead. The two guards in front of him stepped out of the way for a horse and cart. He didn’t see many animal-driven conveyances, since most of the carts in the city were the same kind of floating platforms using the same spell as the makeshift ones scouts had used.
They walked through a gate made out of gilded rods into a large courtyard. The multi-colored clothes that he noticed the Toryans wearing had given way to more uniforms. Trak looked up at the palace with its intriguing architecture. He stopped to gaze at the windows and the edges of the walls before his main escort gently pushed him in the back.
“You will be prepared to meet the king of the Toryans,” he said as they turned away from the main entrance, hugging the right-hand side of the palace.
They finally came to a small door, flanked by uniformed guards. Trak noticed the grim expressions on their faces. They were more suited to guard one of the Bitrium towers than this gaudy palace.
“Follow me,” his escort said again. He led Trak upstairs and downstairs, along balconies and galleries filled with tapestries of all sorts. The walls and ceilings matched the weirdness of the exterior. It looked to Trak like a wax building that had been set out in the sun. He thought the only straight lines in the palace were the level floors.
“In here.” The escort walked in front of Trak into a small set of rooms. “You will clean yourself and dress in the clothes on that bed. Don’t think about sleeping. The king will see you in one-half of an hour.”
Trak could only nod as the man abruptly left the room with Trak still standing in the middle of it wondering what to do next. He sighed and peeked through one of the doors, finding a warm bath, already drawn. He found the bath refreshing and wondered what he had smelled like after seeing the clear water cloud up with soap and dirt. He stood up and used a bucket of water to rinse his body and found a white towel of unique design to use.
Wrapping the towel around his body, Trak walked to a window and looked out across Kizru. His changing chambers were probably three or four stories high. His view didn’t include the courtyard, but looked out over a stable and a large practice yard. Soldiers practiced with weapons on one side, with magicians practicing in smaller walled areas like the mazes he had seen in Espozia and Bitrium.
He gazed across the city and didn’t see any flying platforms above the city. Trak wondered why cultures were so moribund. Everything stayed the same for long periods of time. Perhaps Innovators in B
itrium were identified so they could be exiled, like in Neel’s case, or executed. Time had never even seemed to change anything at The Blunted Sword in Greenbrook, but maybe it should. It seemed that Santasia had progressed more than Colcan or Pestle.
Trak shook his head and turned to the clothes arrayed on the bed. He ran his fingers along the finely-woven underclothes, surprised at the luxury. The clothes left behind in the bathroom were serviceable, but not like these.
He had no idea how much time had elapsed, so he quickly changed and sat on the bed, waiting for a meeting he hadn’t asked for, nor expected. Why would the king of a country, or in this case, of a people, want to talk to him? Trak still wasn’t that far removed from being an illiterate stableboy in a remote part of Pestle.
Trak started at a single knock on the door, which then opened. His escort had returned. He looked Trak over and grunted after straightening his collar. He spoke a singe Pestlan word, “Come.”
The corridors became wider as they walked and the people they passed, better dressed. Here, he thought that the Toryans would all be like Tembul, another impression shattered. No one walked with Tembul’s confidence, but all of them seemed furtive, somehow and more tense than the common people he had passed on the streets. Trak looked at what he wore and found his outfit to be simpler than what he observed around him, but his traveling clothes definitely didn’t belong.
They came to a set of large double doors, flanked by guards in some kind of odd ceremonial dress. Perhaps these were ceremonial guards dressed in an ancient Toryan style. His escort mumbled something to a guard, who opened the door for them.
“Go inside,” the man said. He stayed at the door’s entrance as Trak entered a library of some sort. A white-haired man sat a large desk about fifteen paces in front of him. Trak walked towards the desk.
The man busied himself examining papers for a moment and then looked up. “No poses in my presence, if you please,” he said in roughly-accented Pestlan.