Thinblade

by David A. Wells

  She smiled up at him like the sunrise. “You’re my hero,” she whispered. “Now turn around,” she added with a smile.

  Once she was dressed, they mounted their horses and rode to the clearing where the wagon was still parked. Isabel dismounted in a hurry, went to the little wagon and started searching through its contents. A moment later she came up with a covered cage.

  “They took Slyder before they kidnapped me so I couldn’t use him to lead you to me.” She popped open the cage, took her forest hawk out and gently tossed him into the air. He took to wing with enthusiasm. Isabel laughed with delight at seeing Slyder fly up into the trees.

  Alexander and Isabel were sitting on the wagon applying healing salve to each other’s injuries when Alexander’s escort charged into the clearing. When Isabel saw her brothers, she rushed to them, hugging each in turn. Anatoly and Abigail came to Alexander and listened to him recount the events of the fight and Truss’s escape.

  “Sound’s like Lucky’s magic decided the day,” Anatoly offered with a slightly reproving look.

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that count. His potions saved my life and killed Truss’s master-at-arms, no doubt about it. But, I did learn a bit about fighting with a blade. Once the magic of the skillbook actually sank in, I fought pretty well, just not as well as that battle wizard.” Alexander shook his head. “That guy could move so fast it was scary. One moment he was fighting like a skilled warrior and the next he was driving his spear at me with blinding speed. I hope I never have to face another one of those.”

  Two days later they were back at the palace and having dinner in the private residence with the Alaric family.

  Isabel told the entire story of her ordeal. Truss was indeed in league with Phane. His master-at-arms was a member of the Reishi Protectorate and he’d promised Truss quite a lot to lure Alexander out into the open. Truss’s plan was sound given the prowess of his master-at-arms, but, thankfully, it played out quite differently than they anticipated. Hanlon and Emily were overwhelmed with relief at the safe return of their daughter.

  As the evening wound down, Alexander maneuvered Hanlon out onto the balcony for a moment of private conversation. “Hanlon, I have a request of a personal nature.”

  “Name it.” Hanlon didn’t hesitate. He’d expressed his gratitude to Alexander when they returned and several more times during the evening but Alexander’s request was quite a lot to ask.

  Alexander took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. “I would like your permission and blessing to court Isabel.” He held his breath.

  Hanlon looked stunned for just a moment before grinning broadly and taking Alexander up in a giant bear hug. He set him back down and looked him square in the eye. “You have it. You’ve already risked the world for her and I’ve seen the way she looks at you. You have my permission and my heartfelt blessing, Alexander.”

  When he lay down to sleep that night he was exhausted but simply couldn’t quiet his mind. There were too many possibilities swirling around inside his head. The threat was still out there but it seemed farther away and the reasons for fighting that threat seemed closer and more real. Alexander finally drifted off to sleep, feeling a sense of hope and optimism that he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  Chapter 33

  Jataan P’Tal stepped off the gangplank onto the solid, unmoving boards of the Southport dock and breathed a sigh of relief. He hated the ocean. He believed that men should have firm ground underfoot. The solidity of it was reliable and predictable. When the very ground beneath your feet shifted and moved, you couldn’t find firm footing and firm footing was the first part of being effective in battle.

  Jataan P’Tal was a battle mage.

  He was quite possibly the most deadly man alive in all the Seven Isles in any contest of blade or steel. He wasn’t invincible, a fact he was all too aware of. He was just that good in a fight, another fact he was well aware of.

  Battle wizards were rare. They had a unique connection to the firmament. Their power didn’t flow from active visualization and concentrated will like most other wizards but instead was guided at a more basic, instinctual, and intrinsic level. A battle wizard’s magic manifested in the moment of the fight. In that moment he moved with otherworldly speed and struck with inhuman force. In the moment of the fight a battle wizard saw time differently. His surroundings appeared to slow down. His perception and senses accelerated.

  He had a different relationship with weapons as well. A battle wizard could hold a weapon and discern its strengths and weaknesses. He could know with a touch if an arrow would fly straight or if the haft of a spear was imperceptibly cracked or if a blade was made true. A powerful battle wizard could use his magic to repair a weapon or even make a flawed weapon straight. And in the moment of the fight, a battle wizard’s magic flowed into his weapon and lent it a strength and sharpness uncommon to other blades.

  In the last thousand years, Jataan P’Tal was the only battle wizard to rise to the level of mage. Jataan P’Tal was a very dangerous man. He had a calling and he was devoted to it with all his heart and soul. He was the General Commander of the Reishi Protectorate. His duty in life was to preserve the Reishi line. He had been raised from childhood to fulfill his duty to the Reishi. Now that he actually had a charge to protect, he felt a sense of exhilaration at his purpose taking on substance, mixed with a bit of apprehension at exactly the form his purpose had chosen to take.

  He’d been taught every day of his life that the Reishi were responsible for creating the Old Law. They had brought the Seven Isles together and presided over a period of nearly two thousand years of peace, prosperity, and security. They had ushered in the greatest civilization ever known in the recorded history of the Seven Isles. And then they had been betrayed. Their secret had been stolen and released on an unsuspecting world. A world that had been ravaged by war and netherworld horrors until all was lost except for the sole surviving member of the Reishi Line: Prince Phane.

  Jataan P’Tal had imagined living through this time since he was a child. He had stood guard over Phane’s obelisk for hours hoping for a sign, hoping for the opportunity to help the Reishi rise again to tame a now broken and corrupt world. He wanted to be a part of that. He wanted to serve the noble cause of bringing the Old Law and the rightful and benevolent rule of the Reishi back to the world.

  What he hadn’t imagined was Phane. The man was not quite right. He had unseemly appetites. He called on creatures from the netherworld to do his bidding. Jataan P’Tal told himself that he was a soldier and Phane was a prince and the rightful heir to the Sovereign’s throne, but still, he was troubled.

  He took a deep breath of the ocean air that mingled with the smell of fish and livestock. The docks were busy. Jataan P’Tal stepped up on a crate to see over the crowd. He was a little man, standing only five and a half feet tall but stocky with just a slight paunch. His skin was swarthy, his close-cropped hair was jet black, and the irises of his eyes were black as night. He wore black pants and a black shirt of coarse cloth. His belt was cinched tight under his belly and he wore a black, fur-lined cloak over his shoulders. He didn’t appear to be armed and he carried only a sack over his shoulder.

  After just a moment on the crate, he saw his Second and marked his position in the crowd. Boaberous Grudge was a hard man to miss. As much as Jataan looked deceptively nonthreatening, Grudge looked dangerous and menacing. Men of courage gave him a wide berth and averted their eyes to avoid any hint of a challenge.

  Boaberous Grudge stood over seven feet tall, weighed almost four hundred pounds, and was completely bald. By all accounts he was a giant. Jataan often wondered about the man’s lineage. Despite his size, he was quick on his feet and agile as well. He was as strong as any three men together and had absolutely no fear of any man alive with the sole exception of Jataan P’Tal. He wore a large pack on his back, a huge breastplate, bracers and greaves. On his back, beside his pack, was an oversized quiver filled with a dozen javelins. Resti
ng on his shoulder was a huge war hammer with a haft that was easily six feet long.

  Boaberous was scanning around the crowd until he saw Jataan coming his way. They joined up without a word and set out into the streets of Southport. The blacksmith was Reishi Protectorate. That would be their first stop. They needed information, horses, and perhaps a few men to assist in their task.

  The Rebel Mage had sent an assassin through the millennia to bring the Reishi line to an end for all time. Jataan P’Tal had a sacred duty to prevent Mage Cedric’s assassin from succeeding. He’d always understood that the best defense was a good offense. He had come to kill Alexander Valentine before he had the chance to deliver Mage Cedric’s final blow to civilization.

  ***

  Phane sauntered casually into the council chamber of the Reishi Army Regency on Karth. His voyage had taken a day longer than he’d wanted but that didn’t matter. He was here now. He looked each man in the eye as he moved closer to the table with each languid step.

  The men at the table regarded him with a mixture of suspicion, fear, and anger. He shouldn’t have been able to walk into their council chamber unchallenged and unannounced. Yet here he was and his demeanor was anything but expected.

  They were all wearing armor adorned with an ornately stylized letter R emblazoned in gold on their polished steel breastplates. All nine of them were slightly overweight but each had clearly served his time in the field. Some bore scars. Others simply wore the grizzled look of a man who’d seen his share of death.

  Phane flashed his best boyish smile at them, knowing that it would only chafe them further. He wore no armor, carried no weapon, and showed no respect. He regarded them casually for a brief moment before he reached across the table and took the wine goblet from the man in the center chair and hopped up on the table, sitting sideways so he could look over his shoulder at the man sitting in the seat of power, the center seat of the council table.

  These men were the General Council of the Reishi Army Regency. They ruled half the island of Karth, with the House of Karth ruling the other half. They had been at war with each other, off and on, for the better part of the last two thousand years.

  At the end of the Reishi War, a significant force of the Reishi Army had been trapped on Karth when the Reishi fell. Since the House of Karth had sided with the rebel forces against the Reishi, they were natural enemies. The war never really ended for the people of Karth. The island was governed by tyranny on both sides and the people bore the brunt of the burden.

  Phane took a long drink from the goblet, draining it completely, then casually tossed it on the floor. When he flashed another of his boyish smiles at the man in the center seat, one of the other Generals stood and drew his sword.

  “How dare you? Guards!” he bellowed. When none came rushing in he frowned slightly and lunged at Phane, who simply slipped off the table and danced out of the way of the blade. He stopped just out of sword range and stood pointing at the man and laughing in mockery.

  The man’s face turned red and his mouth opened and closed in rage. Phane took another step backward and motioned with both hands to come for him, while wearing a big dopey grin and snickering at the grizzled old soldier.

  The other men all wore masks of stone-cold anger but each held his seat at the table, staring at the intruder with a mixture of caution and disbelief. The man with the sword vaulted over the table but before he could hit the ground, while he was at the apex of his vault, Phane’s smile contorted into a look of murderous glee. He thrust his hand out toward the man.

  With one hand on the table and still in midair, the man simply burst apart as if a force of tremendous energy had struck him square in the chest hard enough to turn his body to pulp and splatter his parts around the room. The bulk of his mass smashed into the wall behind the table with such force that it liquefied on impact, squirting gore in every direction. One arm thudded onto the table as it came free of his torso at the shoulder. One of his legs spun end over end through the air and hit the edge of the table, leaving a lurid red splotch before flipping off onto the ground and settling in a pile of gore framed by a slowly expanding puddle of blood. His head skittered into the corner of the room and spun slowly to a stop, leaving a red circle painted on the floor around it.

  The remaining eight men sat in stunned fear, splattered with the pulverized flesh, bone, blood, and guts of a man who only moments before had sat at their table. Phane giggled for a moment before his face took on the look of another murder waiting to happen. He drew himself up and deliberately cleared his throat.

  “Gentlemen, I am Prince Phane Reishi.” Their faces went white behind masks of splattered blood. “I am here to assume command of the Reishi Army Regency and deliver you victory over the traitorous House of Karth.”

  The blood-soaked men all looked back and forth at each other, little bits of viscera and bone falling from their hair when they moved their heads. The man in the center chair stood slowly and bowed stiffly, dripping blood on the table.

  “Prince Phane, we are at your service.” There was a slight tremor to his voice.

  Phane flashed his most boyish smile. “Of course you are, General. You and your men can get cleaned up now, and do something with this mess.” He gestured around at the table with a look of exaggerated disgust. “Then I would like to inspect my army.” He turned and sauntered off, talking over his shoulder as he left the scene of carnage, “In the meantime, I’ll make myself at home.”

  Chapter 34

  Alexander screamed. He put his hands on either side of his head like he was trying to keep it from coming apart and screamed again. The pain was unbearable. He didn’t know that anything could hurt so much. He slumped to his knees. The searing agony began to expand from the breathtaking torment in his head to the rest of his body. It felt like molten lead flowed slowly through his veins from his head into his torso and out to his extremities. He wanted to scream again but couldn’t draw enough breath. He was on his knees slumped over with his forehead on the cold stone floor when a convulsion of tingling, burning misery tore through him. He fell over on his side and gasped for breath. His lungs simply wouldn’t work. He felt them burn with need for air but couldn’t make them draw breath. He shook in a paroxysm and imagined that this must be what it felt like to drown in liquid fire. His vision started to close down and he felt himself losing consciousness. He nearly panicked. He knew he would lose everything if he let himself succumb now. He had to endure the trial of pain, or perish.

  Alexander had spent the week prior studying with Mason, learning about the mana fast and what he could expect. He worked hard and long to learn the mental concentration exercises and visualization techniques he would need to survive the ordeal and to control his access to the firmament once he succeeded.

  Mason told him he wasn’t ready. Most apprentice wizards spent years of daily study learning the strict mental discipline required of a wizard. Alexander had some training from Lucky disguised as simple thought exercises but without the rigor. He hadn’t practiced the meditation and the careful, methodical creation of vivid and exacting images in his mind that was so necessary to a wizard.

  Alexander had insisted. He needed the power that the mana fast represented if he was going to have any chance of stopping Phane. And he knew he needed to do this now, before he left for Blackstone Keep, or he might never get the chance again.

  Isabel had asked him to wait. She begged him to put this off. It broke his heart to see the fear in her beautiful green eyes. She railed at him when begging didn’t work. He took it without flinching. When that didn’t work she fell into his arms and cried. He held her and promised her it would be all right. She stood at the door and watched with tears streaming down her face when he locked himself into the tower room to begin the ordeal.

  Abigail had been angrier than Isabel but she knew her brother better and knew he wouldn’t be swayed once he’d set his course. She told him she loved him and made him promise he would survive. She was standin
g next to Isabel when he secluded himself away for the fast.

  Anatoly and Lucky hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. Anatoly simply asked if he was sure he had to do this. When he saw the look of resolve on Alexander’s face, he just nodded. Lucky gave him a few suggestions, pointers, and reminders of lessons past to help him with the trials that lay ahead. Alexander thanked them both for their support and promised he would survive and emerge stronger.

  Mason had prepared the top room of his tower for Alexander. It was a round room just over thirty feet across, with a centered, twenty foot magic circle inlaid in gold. Mason set up a cot, a small table, a meditation cushion, and a barrel of drinking water inside the circle for Alexander and cast the invocation that would protect the world outside the circle from the forces that Alexander might call forth. Until he completed the fast, he wouldn’t be able to leave the circle. He had committed to his course. If he succeeded, he would live.

  As the torment threatened to overwhelm his sanity he focused his mind on the pain itself. He embraced it and welcomed it into every part of his being. He felt like he was on fire but still he held onto the pain. Mason had told him that he had to face each trial directly in order to succeed. He had to become larger than the trial within his own mind. He had to master the challenge and learn to focus, concentrate, and control his mind and feelings in spite of the trial.

  He lay on the floor all that night struggling for each breath, shuddering in unmitigated torment, occasionally convulsing when a wave of agony ripped through him. When dawn came he focused on the light from the tiny window and clung to the pain. He focused his will and looked for a place of clarity where he could find refuge from the gales of unrelenting agony that racked him down to the marrow of his being. He cast about within the confines of his consciousness for a place of safe harbor.