“Look at them! They’re getting away!” she shouted. She was shouting at no one, as there was no one left alive at the enclave. She had to watch helplessly as her quarry escaped down the hill. There was no one left to send after them, and she was not willing to sully her own hands, at least not yet.
“I’m not ready to let you off the hook yet, you fool.” She pounded the stone railing as she focused on Croom once more. “I’ll bring you back. Yes, that’s what I’ll do! I know I can. With the power I now possess, and the knowledge that is held in the library, I know that I can bring you back to life.”
She turned from the scene on the hillside and rushed back into her new keep. She was giddy with her new powers and her freshlyhatched plan to bring Croom back to life through necromancy. She giggled and complemented herself on her intelligence and insight as she ran down staircase after staircase until she reached the ground floor. With silken dress flowing behind her, she dashed out the door and down the hill to where lay Croom’s crumpled corpse.
She was still laughing gaily when she arrived at the spot on the hill where the short but furious battle had taken place. A scowl replaced her smiling face when she saw closely what had become of her deadly servant.
“You see what has happened to you. And just because you are a fool.” She pointed an accusing finger at Croom’s torn and battered body.
“Well, don’t worry. You failed because you were a fool. I’ll make you so that you cannot be defeated. You will not be able to be killed because, of course, you are already quite dead.”
Once again she began her quiet little selfish laugh. “Come along now and I will see what I can do about fixing you up some. You really are quite a mess.”
With a negligent wave of her hand, Croom’s body began to quiver and stir. Acantha turned from the dead man and began walking back up the hill to her keep. The corpse followed five feet behind, rolling and tumbling through the dust and brush with every step she made.
Acantha was quite unconcerned about whether her spell had worked; nor was she concerned about the gouges or torn flesh the corpse was receiving from its rough treatment. She was confident that the awesome power given to her by the ruby would ensure any spell that she performed and that it would be strong enough to repair Croom’s battered body when she brought it back to life.
“Who’s going to do all my work now that you’re a stupid corpse?” she muttered as she continued to trudge up the hill. The good humor that she was feeling about her new plan was leaving her now that she had to exert some real energy herself.
“I’m going to need some help around here. I’m going to be much too busy regaining the emerald and then asserting my will on an inferior people. I won’t have time to do the boring chores like cooking and cleaning.”
She turned around and pointed another accusing finger at the torn and battered body rolling through the dirt after her. “If you had done what I told you to do, I wouldn’t have to worry about all of these mundane things.”
She continued her walk back to the keep as she continued talking to herself. “Supply boat. That’s it. There is a supply boat due in a few days. The supply boats have all kinds of seamen that I can recruit to be my servants.”
With her mind clear on how she would handle the day-to-day chore of running the large castle, she returned her attention to the plan of bringing Croom back to life.
She left him lying of the floor of the main hall as she retired to the massive library to begin her search for the right spells. “Yes, Croom, I think Michael and Everett will be very surprised to see you again.”
CHAPTER 2 It took Michael and Everett weeks of travel to reach the small village of Monterey. The village was situated across the bay from Cruztown and the Cruz Mountains. It was decided that Everett would travel on to the Cruz Mountains while Michael stayed in Monterey for a short time. Since Michael was the younger and stronger, he would work at whatever manual labor he could find to earn enough credits to buy supplies for the two of them.
“Are you sure we should be out here in this kind of weather, Karl?” Michael was asking the question of the man sitting across from him in the small fishing boat.
Late summer storms were a rarity, but when they struck they could be very fierce. This particular storm caught Michael and the owner of the small boat early in the morning as they were first setting out to fish the bay. The other fishermen were smart enough that they did not even consider setting out in this weather, but Karl’s greed was too strong.
The small boat was rocking wildly in the rough surf less than a half mile from the rocky shore. The two men each had an oar and were laboring to keep the boat prow-first into the waves.
“Look, who’s the boss on this boat?” By now the wind was blowing so hard and the rain coming in sheets that Karl was nearly shouting, even though they were sitting right next to each other.
“Well, you are, but...” “Yeah, and who’s going to pay you the credits for working on this boat?”
“Well, you are, but...”
“And which one of us here is the experienced fisherman of this bay?”
“I guess you are, but...”
“Then shut up and row!”
In fact, Karl had been fishing the bay less than a year. No one knew from where he had drifted into town. If any of the townsfolk had known more about him, they would have known that he had very little experience with the sea or working a boat. What little success he had with his fishing came from listening to the other fishermen and doing what they did, and following them to wherever the fish were to be found.
Which made some sense in normal conditions, but not when it came to dangerous weather. It was Karl’s arrogance that had led him into this situation. No amount of experience would have justified being on the water in a storm such as this.
“I don’t know, Karl,” hollered Michael over the wind and rain. “I think it’s getting worse! I think maybe we should go back!”
Karl was too busy manning his own oar to respond to Michael. He was finally beginning to realize that he was woefully lacking in the skill necessary to handle this situation.
“Okay!” He yelled back at Michael. “If you can’t handle it, we’ll go back!” Inwardly he thanked his lucky stars that he could turn back and blame it on Michael, while showing himself in the favorable light of caring about his worker’s safety.
In an attempt to return to shore, Karl’s lack of experience caused him to turn the boat broadside into a wave. As he turned the boat, one of the wild waves came crashing over the low sides – hitting Michael with enough force to rip him from his bench and toss him overboard, cracking his head on the flying oar. Karl was protected from the main force of the wave because it hit Michael and he was able to hold onto his side of the boat without being thrown overboard.
Karl did not give a second thought to Michael as the young man went flying past him and into the roiling ocean. He was too busy holding on for dear life and blaming Michael for getting him into this mess by making him turn back. The next wave took Karl over the side and down to the bottom of the raging sea, where he paid the ultimate price for his arrogance.
Without knowing how he got there, Michael found himself engulfed in the cold and violent ocean. He felt as though each time he fought his way above the surface of the water to gasp a breath of air, a giant angry hand would swat him back under a wave. With quickly flagging strength, Michael would have to fight his way back up all over again. The blow to the head, and the confusion and disorientation made it impossible to use his magic.
He was barely conscious and nearly overcome with exhaustion when he finally heard the waves crashing on the rocky shore. Using all of his remaining energy, Michael struggled toward the sound of the booming surf.
He barely sensed that his ravaged body was being thrown violently among the rocks on the shore until he felt himself slammed into the hard black stones. He finally passed out from pain and fatigue.
* * * * * That night, with the storm still blow
ing, Sarah finally convinced the last of her patrons that it was time to leave her tavern and go home for the night.
Sarah was the owner and operator of the fishermen’s favorite tavern in Monterey. She was a bit shorter than medium height, a slim girl with shoulder length blonde hair framing a delicate face. Her light blue eyes were almost too large for her pixie appearance.
Since the storm had brought them in early, most of the fishermen had met at Sarah’s to tell tall tales of the sea, and to see who could boast the loudest and tell the most outrageous lie.
Sarah’s was a large old tavern, cluttered with obscure useless relics from a time no one remembered. The barroom was dark from too few windows, and the tables were old and worn with not even the benefit of a cloth to cover them. Even so, it was a spotlessly clean and comfortable place.
Sarah was approaching the door to lock up for the night when Michael half staggered and half fell through the tavern doorway. His stumbling steps sent him reeling into her and the collision took them both to the floor. His long black hair was matted with blood and plastered against his scalp, his face was pallid, his eyes hollow.
She did not realize what had happened until Charlie, her simple-minded helper, separated the injured man and Sarah from the tangled heap.
“Are you all right, Miss Sarah?” Sarah was dazed, sitting on the floor just inside the door, with the wind and rain blowing in on her. Her arms were propped up behind her and her legs were splayed out with her skirt immodestly thrown above her knees.
“What in the world...?” Charlie gently laid the stranger aside and rushed to close the door before Sarah became soaked to the bone.
“This fellow here is a mess! He came crashing through the door and fell right on top of you. You both went down. Splat!”
Sarah looked over at the unmoving pile of soaking wet rags that Charlie said was a man. A stranger in as much of a mess as this fellow seemed to be usually meant trouble, but Sarah was too kind-hearted to throw the injured man back out into the storm. She had Charlie carry him to the back room where she lived, while she bolted the door and window shutters.
When she returned to her room, she found that Charlie had already made the stranger comfortable on the bed and was washing the blood and grime from his face.
She saw that the unconscious young man was quite handsome. He was about her age, late teens or early twenties, with straight black hair, tanned complexion, and a tall, muscular body. Perhaps his nose was too sharply defined and the mouth too generous, but put all together it worked quite well.
“Who is he, Charlie? Have you ever seen him before?”
“No, ma’am. Must be new ‘round here. I know nearly everyone in town, and he ain’t one of ‘em.”
“Yeah,” said Sarah, with a little smile, “and those that you don’t know, I do.”
Sarah looked closely at the man’s head now that Charlie had it clean. He had taken a grievous cut above the left temple.
“You had better get me a clean sheet that I can make some bandages from,” she said to Charlie as she examined Michael’s wound. “Then you can go get Oliver for me.”
Oliver was an old fisherman and Sarah’s self-appointed protector. He had been watching after the young woman ever since her uncle had died.
She thought of her Uncle Gus often. He had always been the center of her world, the only family she had. She remembered a strong, happy man that loved and cared for her. He had played games with her when she was a little girl, and taught her everything that he could to help prepare her for adulthood.
When she was older and helping him with the tavern by making sandwiches and serving the patrons, he was her protector. More than a few migrant seamen found themselves face down in the dusty street outside the bar when they tried to become too friendly with Sarah.
The word was eventually spread not to tamper with old Gus’s niece. Now that Gus was no longer around, Oliver and the other fishermen and dock workers that frequented the tavern cared for and protected Sarah. Occasional migrant seamen still found themselves rolling in the dust in front of the tavern.
Over the next few days, Sarah and her friends were able to nurse Michael back to good health. As his healing continued, Sarah found more reasons than necessary to go to his bedside and see that he was properly cared for.
For Michael’s part, he told Sarah that he and his old friend were traveling north, but did not mention anything about the magician’s enclave or that he was a magician himself. Because of the Magicians’ War, and the cataclysmic results, magicians were feared and avoided.
As Michael recovered from his ordeal, Sarah spent all the time she could being near him. Walking together along the quiet lapping surf one evening, Michael was struck with how gentle the ocean was compared to the morning that he had nearly drowned.
“The ocean was so wild that morning,” he told Sarah, as he stared out at the moon’s reflection on the water.
“It’s smooth tonight,” she answered with a smile.
Michael returned her smile. “I think you have a calming effect on it.”
“Oh, right. I tamed the ocean, is that it?”
“I think you could.” Michael pulled her close to him, gently pressing his lips to hers.
Sarah’s heart was beating so strongly that she was sure Michael could hear it over the surf. When their lips finally parted she needed a few seconds to catch her breath before she could speak.
“Don’t play with me, Michael.”
“I’m not playing,” he answered, as he pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Will you stay here with me instead of going north?”
“I want to. I want to very much.”
“Then stay.”
Michael could not tell her about the reasons that were causing him to travel north. The only answer that he could give her was to hold her closer. He understood his responsibilities in keeping the emerald ring from Acantha, but he had been here a few weeks and had heard nothing from her or seen any signs that she was pursuing him and Everett.
He made his decision. He would stay here with Sarah. If Acantha would leave him alone, he would leave her alone. Everything that he ever wanted was standing right there in his arms.
“So?” asked Sarah.
“What?”
She sighed and pushed him away.
“So will you stay? Will you stay here with me, or are you going to continue traveling?”
Michael smiled down at her.
“If it’s at all possible, I’ll stay. I don’t ever want to leave you now that I have found you.”
She sighed once again, this time in pleasure and melted back into his arms.
“We can have a nice peaceful life here,” she said. CHAPTER 3
Sarah glanced nervously at the table in the corner. It was occupied by a short thick man with a heavy jaw and brow. His mouth was thin and straight with the corners slanting down, as if by nature it had never been meant to smile. He tried to push his dirty thinning hair down with stubby fingers as he watched the few patrons. Sounds of raucous laughter would flow over to the strange man’s table, the table which, Sarah noticed, all the rough seafaring men avoided looking at, without knowing why.
Sarah hoped that Charlie would be here before long to work the evening hours. If he got here soon enough she would not have to go near the stranger again. He was causing no trouble that she could see, she just felt uncomfortable around the dirty man.
She was supposed to meet Michael at the old building on the hill where he spent most of his time. The going was quite rough and she did not want to make the walk without strong light.
Within minutes Charlie ambled in the front door.
“Hi, Sarah,” Charlie called out. He was wearing his normal foolish grin as he approached. “A lotta work for me tonight,” he said, as he reached the bar. “Ships from the south due in tomorrow, and I gotta be ready for a full bar tomorrow night.”
“Oh, Charlie, I forgot about that. Do you want me to stay behind tonight
to help you get ready?”
“No, ma’am! Don’t need no help.”
“I just thought it would make it easier for you if I stayed.”
“No, ma’am! I’ll have this place up to snuff before I leave here tonight, don’t you worry none.”
“I never worry when you’re here, Charlie. All right, I guess I’ll quit for the night.” She glanced again at the strange man at the corner table.
Charlie gave Sarah another grin. “Yes, ma’am, you go ahead now. I’m sure you want to meet up with Michael.”
Charlie didn’t have to convince Sarah that he would be able to manage the tavern without her. She knew that. She gave the stranger one final look as she left for the evening.
Her mood was light and a smile was on her face as she made her walk through the village. Even the shambles of Monterey seemed beautiful to her. No doubt it was a beautiful city in times past, but now showed the haphazard architecture of neglect. Most of the city was composed of shards of ancient fallen buildings, overgrown with a jungle of trees and bushes.
The city had obviously been home to thousands of people once, but now, after the Magicians’ War, only a few hundred people lived in Monterey. They claimed whatever surviving buildings they could as their own. Most of the people lived in the center of the city not far from the ocean. Here they could be together near the docks where the small ruggedly-built wooden ships would arrive with supplies brought from the south. The supplies would be bartered for food that was grown in the lush valley, a day’s journey inland.
Sarah reached the building where Michael spent most of his time. It was located just a short walk from the docks of Monterey. There were other buildings nearby, but not nearly as many as in the center of the village. The hulks that remained stood empty and added an aspect of loneliness to the hillside where they lived. The area was overgrown with trees and shrubbery.
In the failing light, Sarah followed the path through the woods that led to the door of the low building. The entire front wall had at one time contained large panels of glass. Most of the windows were boarded up where the glass was missing. Only three of the windows still retained the ancient glass.
The Enchanted Emerald (The Enchanted Stones Book 1) Page 2