Grasping The Future

by Michael Anderle

  The last thing Ben remembered was seeing the terrible look on Gwyna’s face. She had already thrown the magic at Jamie, but when she realized who it would strike instead, she wasn’t sorry.

  He could see she was surprised but she had no qualms about resolving the situation immediately and permanently. She wouldn’t wallow in feelings of betrayal and would instead take action.

  And then the pain—oh, God, the pain. The bolt of energy had hurt more than anything he could remember. He was sure she had punched a hole through his chest cavity and there was no time to even regret his choice before he lost consciousness, swallowed by pain and darkness.

  In that final moment, he had not expected to wake up again and when he did, it was with a flail and a yell.

  He had not realized that he was being hauled over bumpy stone, but when he shouted, the dragging stopped and Gwyna dropped him without any attempt at gentleness.

  “So,” she said and her voice was cold. “You’re awake.”

  When the stars cleared from his vision, he looked at her upside-down face and tried to think of something to say.

  “Before you try to be clever,” she said, “remember that I know they knew your name and you knew theirs. You can’t pass this off as foolish heroism—which would also be unforgivably stupid. No, you saved them because you knew them and cared for them, even after they tried to kill me and took what should have been mine.”

  Ben closed his mouth. She had it tied up in a very neat bow and she had headed off all the potential lies he could think of.

  “Who are you really?” Gwyna asked. “Don’t consider lying to me. I won’t take it well.”

  She was probably telling the truth about that.

  “I was advised to seek magical training,” he said. “The person who told me said I was like a walking bomb. The twins…I met them in the village—at the inn. They came in with the boy injured and villagers there clearly wanted to pick their pockets. Once I’d stood up for them, I felt protective.”

  The woman’s expression said she was impatient and unimpressed by any of this.

  “The day after I met them,” he continued, “a magical beast attacked the inn. The three of us killed it together, after which it turned into a…human. That was when my friend found me and told me my magic was a danger to myself and everyone around.”

  “And who gave you my name?” she demanded.

  With an internal sigh, he decided that Yulia’s name was probably too important to give up. It seemed he was about to find out whether Gwyna could tell when he was lying.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It wasn’t my friend. I found a scrap of paper saying I could find you in caves near the lake.”

  The pain was immediate and crippling. It seared through his bones and he curled in a ball and whimpered. So much for manly stoicism.

  “Liar,” the sorceress said, annoyed. “You’re a liar and I told you I would not take well to that.”

  “You did,” Ben agreed.

  “So, who gave you my name?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated.

  The pain surged again and this time, it lasted longer. He writhed on the floor, felt the stones digging into him, and caught a glimpse of Gwyna, her head turned negligently away. She was bored, her posture said. She didn’t feel anything in particular about torturing him and she certainly didn’t care enough to look at him while she did it.

  When the pain released him, he lay with his forehead against the stone and panted. One rock in particular dug into his ribs. It wasn’t pointy but flat. He pushed to his hands and knees and caught the glint from inside his shirt.

  The iron ring. Gwyna had taken it but it was there now, held inside the shirt by a few loops of thread.

  She had bound his magic, and that gave him a strange certainty that everything would be okay. He merely had to get it away from him and he would have his magic back.

  Not now, he cautioned himself, and not while he wasn’t sure of the lay of the land. Gwyna hadn’t killed him immediately, which meant she needed something from him—but what? Ben looked at her. She leaned against the wall and watched him with an expression that seemed halfway between bored and angry.

  “What was so important about what they had?” he asked her.

  She sighed. “You didn’t even know. What they had was stones from the magical wellspring at the center of the forest.”

  “Like the—” Fae wellsprings. Ben didn’t finish the sentence. If Gwyna knew about another set of wellsprings, she would doubtless try to steal their power immediately, and the fae had been through enough lately. He had to find something else to say. “Like the…magic is made to look like stones?”

  “No.” He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “The stones are infused with the pattern of the magic.”

  “The pattern of the…I don’t get it.”

  “I know that,” she said with cruel precision. She crouched to stare at him. “You don’t understand any of this. You’re an idiot.”

  “Hey,” Prima said and sounded offended.

  Ben looked up in surprise.

  “This is my idiot,” Prima said. “I’m the one who insults him, lady. Not you!”

  He sighed and looked at the sorceress. “Okay, so you need the stones. I’m smart enough to get that part, right? So go get a stone.”

  “The well wouldn’t give them to me,” Gwyna said. She sounded annoyed. “And the power of an entire forest is—”

  “More powerful than you?” he asked, seizing the chance to take a jab at her.

  “An entire forest will naturally be stronger than a single sorceress,” she snapped, nettled by his comment. Still, he could see that his words had struck home. She didn’t like being refused anything and she didn’t like to pit her strength against someone else’s or be thwarted.

  “But with it, you would have been more powerful than any other sorceress,” he guessed. He sat with a wince and curled his knees to his chest. Hidden by his legs, his hand crept up the inside of his shirt. He had to get to the ring.

  “I—” Gwyna shook her head. “Close enough. I would have freed that forest. It was foolish of it to stand against me.” She sneered at him. “Like you.”

  “You would have set me free?” Ben laughed at her. It wasn’t as strong a laugh as he wanted it to be. He was still in pain and he was tired. “You would have killed me the second I was powerful enough to be a rival.”

  “I don’t fear you as a rival,” she said. “I clash only with those who want the same things I do. You want other things. I would have set you free to claim them, but you were weak. You clung to the lies you were taught as a child—working for the good of the whole and working to help others instead of yourself. You raise them up and don’t see that you have sacrificed your strength to do so, and so left yourself behind.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” he said before he could stop himself.

  Gwyna grasped his throat and slammed his head back against the rock. Ben would have been upset about this—and he probably would be in the coming days—except for the fact that it gave him a chance to rip the ring out of his shirt. He was fairly sure he got it.

  Not too sure, however, because the pain was the only thing he was conscious of a moment later. He yelled directly in her face, less as a way to annoy her than as an involuntary reaction.

  “You’ll be one of them next,” she told him. “That monster you fought? Yes, it was once human but I set it free. I found those who needed revenge, who had been held back from justice by the same stupid rules you follow. I gave them a gift—I gave them strength and weapons and I took away the inhibitions that held them back.”

  Ben stared at her, horrified. He’d known that Gwyna was the one who made the monsters. It was chilling, though, to hear her describe what she’d done as a gift.

  “When I turn you,” she asked, “who do you think you’ll destroy?”

  Horror rushed over him. He could see it now—a monster with claws and teeth with all his grudges and no
ne of the things that held him back. How many would he kill?

  “It’s time to find out,” the woman told him. She hauled him up with more strength than she should have had in her small frame and he left the ring on the ground, terrified to let a single clink of metal on stone let her know he was free now.

  He stumbled along with her while she pulled him through the tunnels. Pulses of pain stopped him from being a threat, but he told himself he was also doing this for a reason. If she was taking him to get a gold ring, he could find Josyla, couldn’t he?

  When Gwyna kicked open the door into a dungeon of sorts, Ben heard a scream. He looked up briefly—before his captor kicked him down the stairs—to where a small human—or perhaps an elf—cowered in the back of the room.

  “No,” she begged. “No, please, I can’t do this to anyone else. Please, I can’t do it again.”

  The sorceress heaved a sigh as she strolled down the steps. Now that Ben was on the ground, he could smell the soot and feel the heat of the forge. He looked up muzzily as Gwyna stalked toward the half-elf. He was sure this was Josyla

  “You will do this,” she said. “You will not hold your talents back. I have given you a gift. I have taught you how to take revenge on the ones who sold you. Why do you not accept the gift? Why do you persist in refusing it?”

  “I thought gifts were something people wanted,” Prima said.

  “They’re supposed to be,” Ben said under his breath.

  “So she’s merely very bad at giving them?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. Next question. Did you plan to do anything useful at any point?”

  He grinned slightly, looked at the ceiling, and winked.

  “That doesn’t come off as suave as you think when you’re covered in blood and soot,” Prima informed him.

  “For the love of… Trust me, okay?”

  “It’s your funeral,” she responded.

  Ben sighed. Gwyna reached Josyla and caught her arm. The sorceress tried to pull her unwilling apprentice to the forge, but even as small and beaten-down as Josyla was, she put up a good fight.

  It meant that the woman’s complete attention was focused on the elf. He readied his energy, pictured the lightning she had used on him, and thrust his hands forward to release the power.

  Nothing happened, and he scowled at his hands.

  “Yep. Oh yes, your funeral.”

  He looked at her, shoved his hands forward again, and this time, pictured the emperor from Star Wars.

  His effort drew the same dismal response of nothing.

  Finally, with time running out, he used a spell he did know. The water bucket Josyla would use to cool her various instruments lifted off the floor, dropped water and pieces of metal as it did so, and streaked across the room at high speed to pound into Gwyna’s head. She went down in a heap.

  “Oh, damn,” Prima said. “Okay. I was wrong. I can admit it.”

  The elf stared at Gwyna’s unconscious form.

  “Josyla,” Ben said urgently.

  Her head jerked up.

  “Orien sent me.”

  Her face transformed. “Orien?” For a moment, he could see the elegance of Yn’solde before it disappeared and was replaced by determination. “Come on, let’s go before she wakes up.”

  “One second.” He took a piece of iron off the floor and hid it inside the sorceress’ pocket. Quickly, he followed her out of the room to make their escape toward the safety of Yulia’s house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jamie fought the urge to sprint down the road. Yulia seemed to make them move faster than they should be able to, somehow, but it didn’t seem like enough. It wasn’t right, surely, to be walking when Ben was in the hands of the enemy and might be killed?

  The old woman was not dawdling, at least. When the twins tumbled through her door, gasping about Ben and Gwyna, she had snatched a pack and a walking stick and set off with them at once. She had taken the two rocks and now held one in her palm as she walked. Her gaze was distant.

  Taigan squeezed Jamie’s hand. “It’ll be okay.” She lowered her voice before she added, “You know Prima won’t let anything happen to him. The team will pull him out if they need to.”

  Something unknotted in his chest and he nodded. To his surprise, however, his sense of duty did not flag in the least.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Maybe it isn’t ‘real,’” he said and made finger quotes, “but I believe he wasn’t thinking about that when he threw himself in front of me. The pain was real, the danger was real—he truly did try to sacrifice himself for us. We owe it to him to do everything in our power to save him.”

  “And we are,” she said. “Even with the ground being…folded…or whatever it is she’s doing, sprinting won’t do anything except tire us out by the time we get there.”

  “Indeed,” Yulia agreed.

  Both twins jumped, and Jamie wondered how much she’d heard.

  The old woman did not address that. “What we should do,” she said briskly, “is make a plan of some kind. You’ve proven that the two of you are resourceful and you can catch Gwyna off-guard, but that’s no excuse for going into this unprepared.”

  They nodded.

  “Now, the one thing I can tell you is that if Gwyna wanted Ben dead, she’d have killed him at once.” Yulia heaved a sigh. “Of course, whether she wants him alive as an apprentice or simply as leverage against us, I couldn’t say, but the boy’s alive. I can tell you that much.”

  Taigan swallowed. “And if he’s alive, he can come back from whatever it is. As long as he’s alive.” Jamie heard her add under her breath, “Prima, please tell us we’re doing the right thing.”

  “You’re doing the right thing.” For once, there was no mocking tone to the AI’s voice.

  “Can you let him know we’re coming for him?” Jamie asked quietly.

  “No. That violates the rules of the world. You both must do what you are doing regardless of what’s going on in another area.”

  “You told us we were doing the right thing!” he snapped quietly.

  “You’re going into danger for your friend’s sake. That’s the right thing to do.”

  His heart sank. What if it was already too late? What if Ben thought they’d left him? Then, he straightened. Prima had said they were doing the right thing and she was right. They were doing the best thing they could with what they knew. What else could they do?

  Slowly, he let the question form in his mind before he asked Yulia, “Is Gwyna more concerned with her grudges or getting what she wanted to start with?”

  “That is a good question.” The old woman nodded approvingly. “As with everyone, she is a great deal more changeable than she thinks. She wants power and she will not suffer anyone to stand in her way. She has decided that no one has any more right to anything than anyone else—that the right is earned by the one who seizes it with the most force.”

  Jamie saw Taigan frown. “What?” he asked her.

  “It must be a very scary way to live,” she said with a shrug. “You never know if you get to keep something. What if someone else wants it more or is more powerful? You’d always be looking over your shoulder.”

  “Just so,” Yulia said. “And yet, it is perhaps easier to mistrust everyone than it is to place her trust in even one other person. That takes bravery.”

  “It does?” The girl looked at Jamie. “Isn’t that…easier?”

  “Not for everyone.” The old woman smiled and raised her head to scan the way ahead. “Ah. I think we may have arrived at the right time.”

  He looked ahead and saw two figures. One was almost certainly their friend and the other was shorter. Ben with Gwyna in pursuit? No, the two figures were running together. Might this be the elf’s friend? Jamie and Taigan looked at each other for a moment, then raced forward.

  They reached the other two not far from where the path curved down toward the lake. The man was in rough shape, bruised and batt
ered, and the young woman beside him was thin and pale and looked uncomfortable in the noonday sun. She had glanced at her companion to gauge his response to the twins, but she still held back and cast frequent looks over her shoulder.

  Ben and Jamie clapped each other on the shoulder.

  “You’re alive,” the boy said with relief. “Thank God.”

  “She wanted to turn me into another one of those monsters,” Ben said without preamble. “And she’ll probably be after us soon. Taigan, hello. Yulia—thank you for coming. All of you, this is Josyla. She was held in a dungeon by Gwyna.”

  The woman remained where she was. She looked over her shoulder again, then nodded at them.

  “You saw Orien?” she asked.

  “We did,” Jamie pointed to himself and Taigan.

  “And I could hear his memories of you from leagues away,” Yulia said with a smile. She looked hard at her and seemed to read the young half-elf’s thoughts. “She told you no one was coming for you.”

  Josyla trembled.

  “And she warped your mind as well,” the old woman said softly. “Do you see that now? Is the fog lifting?”

  Josyla’s head jerked up. “She tried,” she said fiercely. “But she wasn’t able to turn me into one of her monsters, no matter how much she tried. She whispered in my head, all day and all night, how I had been betrayed and I should get revenge.” She pressed her lips together. “It’s quiet now but it feels so strange.” She swallowed and sighed. “But with her saying it over and over again, telling me to nurture all of the hatred I had, I could always cling to the fact that she tried to send me in the wrong direction. Every time she said it, I got more determined not to—”

  The explosion tore through the road and all five of them were flung aside. A series of “oof”s and “ow”s issued from the group and one particularly evocative oath from Yulia before a glittering blue dome settled above them.

  Jamie leapt to his feet, his sword at the ready. “Yulia! Tell me how to break through the barrier!”

  “The barrier is mine, young man.” The old woman stood and dusted her skirt off.

  “Oh.”