Island Shifters: Book 02 - An Oath of the Mage

by Valerie Zambito

  “I know, darling. This is not your fault. Please go with Maman now.”

  Kenley peered around Beck’s legs at the Cyman called Arlen lying on the ground and began to cry. “I killed him!”

  “No, Ken, you did not kill him. He still lives, and I will heal him in a few moments. I promise. Can you be a big girl and run along with Maman now?”

  She nodded and reluctantly let go of Beck’s legs to take Kiernan’s hand.

  Kiernan looked at Avalon. She was standing rigid and her mouth was wide open as though a ball of cloth had been stuffed into it, but there was nothing there. And, while everything else looked frozen in place, her eyes were spinning wildly.

  “You…you will be along in a moment?” Kiernan questioned him.

  He nodded, but still had not taken his eyes off Avalon.

  As she led Kenley away, she heard him say, “You have committed your last act of violence on this island, Avalon Ravener.”

  In the now clear and calm twilight, Beck stared at the woman who had caused such devastation on the island and to his family and yet he hesitated, his two oaths at war inside him. As a shifter, it was difficult to take a human life—any life—but as a Mage he had vowed to defeat evil utterly and without remorse. Killing an enemy in battle was one thing, but to stand here and kill a woman in cold blood was quite another.

  He knew that Arias Sarphia would not approve, but he lifted his hand and released the ball of air inserted in her mouth, and let the invisible ropes around her body slip away.

  Avalon instantly sucked in a deep breath and rubbed her arms. “A Mage you may be, but a very inexperienced one.”

  He tipped his head in agreement. He knew he still had much to learn.

  “Looking back on this very moment, you will remember that it was your hesitation to kill me that proved fatal. You never should have released me from my bonds.” Avalon disappeared, seemingly into thin air.

  Beck cursed and spun around searching for the sorceress. With a shake of his head, he remembered the little girl he killed during Mage training. His blood oath and compassion for humanity had led him to make the same mistake twice, but he now realized the error in his thinking. Avalon Ravener was not human. What humanity she may have once held had been destroyed long ago when she invited evil into her heart, and she deserved neither his charity nor his mercy. The words of his Mage oath flared in his mind.

  Destroy evil utterly and without remorse.

  His unqualified acceptance of that phrase came to him at the same time that Avalon’s spell slammed into his back. His body flew through the air, but he now had his own spell to use.

  “Pilloni.”

  A pillow of air caught and cradled him inches before he would have slammed into the hard sandstone floor of the valley. He jumped to his feet. Avalon must have cast an invisibility spell because he could not see her. The landscape was so flat that even in the growing darkness, he could see the profiles of Kiernan, Rogan, Reilly and the Cymans walking to their camp, but Avalon was gone.

  “I am here, Mage!”

  Avalon was standing on the ledge of the cave entrance.

  He uttered the hover spell, and his arms windmilled through the air as his body zoomed toward the cave. He would definitely need more practice with this spell.

  Avalon laughed and disappeared inside.

  Beck made the ascent at a high rate of speed and landed hard, skidding across the floor and crashing into Avalon’s mahogany table in the center of the chamber.

  When his body came to a rest, he looked up and caught a glimpse of Avalon’s black robe disappearing into the next chamber. He chased after her.

  Chained to the wall in the main chamber for the duration of his last visit, he had never ventured this far into the cave. Pallets for sleeping lay scattered throughout the room and at the back wall three more passageways. He picked the corridor on the left and sprinted through, casting out with a detection spell for the presence of life. It was empty, so he did not slow until he saw the light of the opening up ahead.

  At the exit, he stepped out of the tunnel and found himself in a cavernous chamber split by an unfathomable, dark chasm. A stone bridge spanned the gap between the ledge he was on and another, much wider ledge on the other side.

  He looked to the right. A woman was lying there, and he ran to her.

  It was Sapphire.

  He ran his fingers over her body in a healing probe and found that the only recent injury was a very hard blow to the head.

  “Sapphire! Wake up.”

  The sorceress began to stir. When her eyes focused on him, she scrambled away as if afraid of him.

  Beck held out his hands to calm her. “It is just me, Sapphire. Relax.”

  “What happened?” she asked, looking around at her surroundings.

  He shrugged. “I just came in here and found you like this. You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head. “Where are the others?”

  “Back at their camp, but why would they leave you in here?” He reached out a hand to help her to her feet.

  “I don’t know. I really cannot remember anything.”

  “Well, you did take quite a wallop. Do you think you can walk?”

  A guttural laugh cut through the cavern. Across the abyss, Avalon appeared from behind a boulder.

  Beck pushed Sapphire back with one arm and moved to stand in front of her. “Stay behind me.”

  Avalon was shaking her head. “And, you call yourself a Mage? Let’s see,” she said holding up her fingers to count. “Your sorcery is rudimentary and pathetic. You let me go when you should have killed me. And, you have committed your second fatal mistake of the evening.”

  “Such as?”

  “You turned your back to a sorceress.”

  A powerful kick to his back sent him sailing over the ledge and out into the air. Stunned over the fact that Sapphire was conspiring with Avalon Ravener, it took him a moment to recover. He fell over twenty meters before casting a spell to stop his descent, and he shot back upward through the air.

  He landed smoothly this time, in the middle of the stone bridge with Avalon on one end and Sapphire on the other. Standing sideways, he held one hand, palm out, to each sorceress and took a deep breath. Time slowed as he drew on the power of his magic to calm his mind and body, and every minute detail of the cavern came into sharp focus. The faded detail etched into the stone balustrade, the tiny cracks that peppered the surface of the bridge, and even a larger fault line that ran deep under the mountain floor.

  He would not hesitate again.

  There was a lesson in every failure, and every lesson would make him a better man, a better Mage.

  Lowering his head, he sought the power of the earth, harnessed its strength and brought it forward, drawing it in. He directed his magic at the fault line deep within the core of the rock and struck at it with every bit of power he held.

  The mountain trembled.

  The cracks in the surface of the bridge fractured and spread with ominous snapping sounds as the fault began to quake and widen.

  Beck looked up and time slammed back into place. Although it felt longer, the span of one heartbeat occurred since he landed on the bridge from his fall.

  With a strenuous scream, he pushed out with his palms and both women sailed back through the air. The bigger threat was Avalon so he turned and sprinted toward her first. Hand out, he pinned her to the ground in a sorcerous grip of steel.

  The reluctance was gone.

  He approached the woman who had killed Gemini Starr, Citrine, Bajan, the dark-haired girl whose young face stared back at him now, and the countless other nameless souls just for the use of their bodies. He could not forget that the woman also tried to kill him, his wife and his daughter.

  Destroy evil utterly and without remorse.

  Leaning down, he took her head into his hands and she screamed in denial. In the end, he did show some mercy. Avalon deserved much worse. She deserved to suffer.

  “Mo
rbendi.”

  Her head rolled to the side, lifeless eyes wide, and her mouth still open in a soundless scream.

  Turning, he sprinted back toward the bridge and it was now swaying dangerously from the threatening grumble of the mountain. He felt one end collapse and had to jump in a running leap to the other ledge as the surface of the bridge disappeared beneath him.

  He landed in a crouch and scanned the cliff.

  Sapphire was gone.

  He ran through the center, narrow passageway and came out into the room with the pallets just as the sorceress erupted out of the corridor on the left.

  She skidded to a stop when she saw him and held up her hands when he walked toward her. “Please, Beck. Do not do this.”

  Destroy evil utterly and without remorse. “Beck, please.”

  He kept walking.

  “I ask for your forgiveness! You are a shifter, Beck Atlan! Remember that! Remember your blood oath to serve and protect!”

  “You forfeited the right to ask for forgiveness when you sided with evil.”

  As she lowered her head and cried, Beck cast the killing curse for the second time.

  CHAPTER 26

  Home

  Diamond was just tying a fresh bandage around Airron Falewir’s head when a massive explosion rocked the world. On instinct, she leaned over the Elf with her body as stone fragments from the mountain blasted into the air like balls of iron shot from a cannon. A gray cloud billowed outward from the mountain in a rippling, seething mass too far away to reach them.

  “Beck!” Kiernan had been lying down on a bedroll with Kenley, but now lurched to her feet.

  Diamond covered her mouth with a fist and choked back a sob. Beck could never have survived such a destructive blast. Dear Highworld, how much more could Kiernan take? How much loss and heartbreak was one woman expected to endure in a lifetime?

  “Uh, I can’t breathe under here.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said and slid off Airron.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I am not sure.” Diamond stood and stared. Where a mountain once stood, was now a smoldering pile of rubble and the vast blue of the Arounda Ocean glittering in the distance.

  A huge boulder rolled free from the ruins. Rotating across the sandstone at considerable speed, the stone grew smaller as it covered the distance and soon arms and legs became visible sticking out of the rock. When the boulder made its last revolution, the stone broke apart and fell away.

  A man stood.

  It was Beck, and he was covered in what Diamond recognized from the Academy as an earthen coat of armor.

  Kiernan began to laugh hysterically, wrenched back from a momentary spiral into darkness.

  Airron, standing now, patted Rogan on the back as they exchanged grateful smiles that their friend was alive. The three children and Cymans whooped joyously.

  Thoughtfully, Diamond watched Beck approach.

  He was Mage.

  She did not think the others could see it yet, but he wore his power and strength now like a second skin. As he should. He was virtually indestructible. With the command of sorcery and shifting, not to mention his political influence as a member of royalty, there was not a person on the island who could stand against him.

  All of that power in the hands of one man would be terrifying to Diamond if not for one detail.

  Formidable beyond measure, he was also pure of heart. There was not an ounce of evil in Beck Atlan.

  He smiled a crooked smile at his wife, and she picked up the sides of her dress and ran to him.

  For all his might, she just hoped it would be enough.

  Squatting down, she retrieved her diamond from her pack and stroked it anxiously. After Kiernan told her that Sapphire had turned against them, she realized it was the Spell Casting sorceress that had clouded her ability. Just before the explosion, she read her stone and discovered a frightening image.

  The scene was hazy and indistinct, which meant that it would not happen for some time yet—many years perhaps. But, it would happen. Of that, she had no doubt.

  A beast was headed for the shores of Massa. An implacable, sinister presence that would stop at nothing to achieve its goals. What those goals were or what shape the beast would come in, she did not know, but it would come.

  She took one more hard look at Beck Atlan—at his strength and kindness and newly acquired wisdom. The sight soothed her fears.

  The Island of Massa was in very capable hands.

  Airron leaned his head down so that his mouth lined up with the Draca Cat’s muzzle. Baya exhaled the Healing Breath directly into his lungs, and he immediately felt the magic working its way through his body, mending his injuries. The pain, the aches, and the exhaustion melted away from his body like the molting of new skin.

  When the last vaporous trail disappeared into his mouth, he stood and bowed to the cat. “Thank you, my friend.”

  Baya tilted her head in acknowledgement.

  Airron removed the bandage around his head and watched his friends revel in spirited conversation. It was over. Avalon Ravener was dead, and they were still alive. He wished he could stay to celebrate with his friends, but he had somewhere to be.

  Grabbing his pack from the ground, he walked over to join them. “Despite a delightful afternoon,” he said, interrupting several conversations, “I must leave you now.”

  Kiernan bristled. “What? Where are you going?”

  “Haventhal.”

  “At least travel with us to Elloree and take the waterways to Sarphia.”

  He shook his head and threw his pack at her. She caught it by the strap. “I can travel faster over land. You will take care of my pack and clothes for me?”

  “Of course.” She gave him a hug. “Be careful.”

  Beck stepped forward, a layer of dirt still covering his hair and clothes. “It will take some time for me to escort the Cymans to Northfort, but we still need to have that conversation. Will you return to Bardot soon?”

  “With two nephews to help raise? Of course. Besides, I think Kane is going to be a master bodyshifter one day, and somebody has to teach the kid.”

  Beck threw his head back in a hearty laugh and after all they had been through, it sounded so innocent and so pure. He grabbed Airron in an embrace. “I hope you find what you seek. Come back to us soon.”

  “I will.”

  Beck released him and Rogan planted his feet in front of him with his arms crossed. “The only thing he is seeking is another girl to kiss. What has it been? Over a week now?”

  “Fourteen days to be exact.”

  “When will I see you again?” Rogan asked.

  “Are you going to cry?”

  “Of course not, you blasted Elf! Just stay safe, all right.”

  Airron promised with a laugh and after a broad farewell to the rest of his companions, he walked behind one of the horses, undressed and shifted into his black Grayan wolf. The horse screamed and rolled his eyes in terror when he saw the large wolf appear at his side.

  Slinking from behind the terrified animal, the wolf poised his muscular body to run, but suddenly stopped and turned, giving one last grin to the humans before loping off east toward Haventhal.

  The wolf ran the entire day and night without stopping. The next morning, he crossed a body of water at the shallows and once on the other side, took time for a brief rest before pushing on.

  He sensed other animals in the area, but they avoided him.

  The wolf preferred the fertile forests of his home over the bleak landscape he now traveled, but did not think about them. Soon, he would enter another forest, this one wetter and more humid.

  He stopped one more time during the night for sleep and at last, footsore and exhausted, the wolf slithered into the city with the bright lights at dusk, careful to avoid notice.

  At the back of a small stable, the air shimmered and Airron Falewir stood and opened the side door to the building and slipped inside.

  It was em
pty, just as he knew it would be. Breathing in the familiar scent of his horses, a warm feeling came over him. He walked into the tack room and retrieved the spare tunic and leggings he kept there for that very purpose.

  Once dressed, he walked outside into the early evening. He only employed two servants at his home, a housekeeper and a groomsman, but they only came during the day and would be gone by now.

  Airron did not go into the house, there was no time. Instead, he strode through the grounds to the gate in front, yanked it open and walked out onto the streets of Sarphia.

  People waved to him in greeting and he acknowledged them all with a smile and tilt of his head. The Elven city was truly one of beauty, and he felt like he was seeing it with new eyes this night. Shining lights in every tree brilliantly complemented the star-filled sky. White domed palaces and slender spires with gold inlay captured the lights in radiant reflections. Manicured pathways, lily ponds, and vibrant flowers decorated every estate in a multitude of colors.

  He wondered how he overlooked it before. How could he not have appreciated what seemed so undeniable now?

  Suddenly feeling anxious, he increased his pace and even began to run, hopping over hedges and low stone walls like a blacktail deer. He was sprinting by the time the house came into sight.

  A guard was standing at the gates, but recognized him and let him in without question.

  Airron hurried up the steps and knocked on the door impatiently. The sound of music drifted to him from the open windows.

  A silver-haired butler in servant’s livery answered the door and when he saw Airron, wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something unpleasant. “Ah, Master Falewir. What can I do for you?”

  “Let me in, Quincy,” Airron said and took a step forward.

  The man was not very big, but he moved in front of Airron and blocked his way. “The Lady is busy with a recital and is not receiving guests at this time. If you will come back…”

  “Move.”

  “Master Falewir, you cannot…”