The Mage (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  “I was quite lucky,” said Elerian quickly, for he did not want Glycia to pursue that particular thought. “I was able to get ahead of them and take them by surprise; otherwise things might have come to a different conclusion.”

  Glycia said no more, and Elerian hoped that ended the matter, for he did not want to attract undue attention to himself. Just then, a dog began to bark farther up the hill, and Elerian saw mage lights through the trees. Soon, Carbo bounded into sight, closely followed by Balbus, Paetus, and a dozen of their neighbors, all armed and carrying mage lights. When he saw Glycia holding Elerian’s hand, Paetus threw down his weapons and ran forward to hug her. Holding his daughter with one arm, as if afraid to release her, he kept thanking Elerian to the point of embarrassing him. Standing in a pool of yellow mage light with the rescue party around him, Elerian told a brief story of the rescue, trying to make it seem as unremarkable as possible. He and Balbus left for home soon after, with the excuse that they were tired and in need of sleep.

  When Elerian and Balbus returned home, Elerian found that a cheerful fire was burning in the hearth, and that Balbus had left a pot of stew warming on the stove. A crusty loaf of bread, baked that morning, was sitting on the table. As they sat down to a late supper, Elerian recounted to Balbus what had happened in more detail than what he had told Paetus and the other farmers. “I fear the Ancharians have gone back to their old ways and fallen in with the Goblins again,” he said at the end of the story. “What can they want with our people?”

  “Horrible as it may sound, it is recorded many times in the old tales that Goblins crave man flesh above all others,” said Balbus. “I believe they are taking prisoners for food and perhaps for slaves. At least we know for certain now that the Ancharians are definitely involved. Tomorrow, we will inform the guard at Sidonia and spread the word that these traders from the east are not to be trusted. Any that are found wandering about will be arrested.”

  Balbus was true to his word. The following morning, the word went out to the guard and all of their neighbors that the Ancharians were in league with the Goblins. The traders, however, all disappeared before any of them could be captured, for the two Ancharians that Elerian had spared quickly informed their countrymen that their part in the kidnappings was revealed. The pair then returned to Esdras and made a report there to the commander of the Goblins who now ruled that city. He was the same Goblin who had turned Tamas into a badger and whose plans Elerian had already thwarted once. A mage and a skilled warrior, Lurco was charged by the Dark King with the task of bringing Ancharia under the control of the Goblins. He was also ordered by Torquatus to find and capture, if he still lived, the Hesperian Torquatus had seen in the portal.

  Lurco found the report of the Ancharian raiders extremely interesting, for they were quite certain that the Hesperian, who had attacked them, was gifted with night sight and possessed speed and strength far beyond what one would expect in an ordinary man. Lurco decided to attend to the matter of the Hesperian personally. It took him time to set his affairs in order, but by the end of April, several weeks after Elerian’s rescue of Glycia, he had assembled together a force to accompany him into Hesperia. They were all tall Urucs, dressed in black leather armor and carrying swords and knives with black blades. Each of them was a skilled warrior, hardened in many battles. With the two Ancharians accompanying him as guides and supplies for many days of travel, Lurco crossed over the Ancharus and disappeared into the forest, traveling west.

  CLODIUS

  After his rescue of Paetus’s daughter, Elerian tried to stay out of sight as much as possible. Once the first wave of admiration for his brave act had somewhat subsided, questions began to be asked for which Elerian had no good answers. Like Glycia, people began to wonder how he had defeated a Goblin and two Ancharians by himself in the dark. Elerian remained close mouthed about the affair, and Glycia was unable to add much to the story, for she had seen little in the darkness. As a result, some people began to cast a suspicious eye on the whole incident. A few of the wilder rumors that began to circulate actually had Elerian in league with the Ancharians and their Goblin ally.

  “Do not pay any attention to the talk you hear,” said Balbus calmly to Elerian. “Tongues will run on and facts matter little when rumors fly. If you do not show your face for a time, the gossip will die down as something else comes along to gain the attention of the wags.”

  “I suppose you are right,” said Elerian, but he was not pleased, for some of the people spreading the rumors had known him his whole life. “You would think they would trust me after all this time,” he thought to himself angrily. “What would they say, I wonder, if they knew I was not even a Hesperian?”

  The answer to that thought was not pleasant to imagine, and Elerian decided to keep close to the farm, as Balbus had suggested. Several weeks passed. There were no more raids, and as Balbus had predicted, the rumors about Elerian began to fade away. He had begun to put the whole affair out of his mind when, in early May, an urgent knock suddenly sounded on Balbus’ door, well after sunset. Carbo rose stiffly to his feet and stalked toward the door, growling deep in his chest. Elerian and Balbus, who were still sitting by the fire, looked at each other in alarm, thoughts of Goblins immediately springing into both of their minds.

  “Who can that be at this hour?” wondered Balbus aloud, as he apprehensively rose to his feet and walked toward the door. Elerian stood up, too, and took Balbus’s old sword from its pegs above the mantel in case their visitor was of the unfriendly sort.

  “Who knocks on my door?” asked Balbus loudly when he stood before the door.

  “Let me in please!” said a despairing voice they recognized as belonging to a farmer named Clodius. They rarely saw him, for he lived near Sidonia, a good half day’s walk from Balbus’s farm. Only something extraordinary could have brought him such a distance with night coming on. Balbus unlocked the door and opened it, the light from the fireplace falling on the tear streaked, worn face of the farmer.

  “My daughter, Alfidia, is gone,” he said at once. “We think she was taken some time this morning while my wife and I worked in the fields. She left us to bring our midday meal but never came back. When we returned to the house searching for her, the front door was open, but Alfidia was nowhere to be found. Not knowing what else to do, I walked to Sidonia to seek help from the garrison. The two soldiers who came back with me found tracks leading down to the forest, but said there was nothing further they could do until morning since they had little woodcraft and the light was already failing. I thought then of Elerian and how he rescued Paetus’s child. I have walked all the way from Sidonia to see if he will help me.”

  Elerian exchanged pitying glances with Balbus as both of them had the same unspoken thought. Clodius’s farm was far away, and even if Elerian offered to help, the raiders would be many miles away by the time he returned with Clodius to his farm and took up the trail.

  “Is it worth it to help him,” wondered Elerian to himself. “I will only add to the rumors swirling around about me with almost no chance of recovering the girl. All this attention may bring the Goblins down on my head and Balbus’s too.” Elerian looked at Clodius’s distraught face and found that he did not have the heart to tell the miserable farmer that the situation was almost hopeless. “I will at least try to help him,” thought Elerian to himself. “It will give him some hope, at least for a little while.”

  “I will do what I can,” he said to Clodius. Balbus was already gathering food for him to take in his pack. Evidently, he had never entertained any doubts that Elerian would wish to help rescue Clodius’s child.

  When Elerian finally stood before the front door with all his gear, he noticed for the first time that Balbus had a sad look in his eye that gave him pause. Out of the hearing of Clodius, he asked quietly, “What troubles you grandfather? You know as well as I do that the raiders are already too far away for me to catch them. I will make the effort because Clodius has asked me to, but I am sure I wi
ll be back empty handed sometime tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps you will Elerian,” said Balbus quietly, “but even if you do, I think the time we were appointed to spend together is drawing to an end. You have reached a man’s estate, and Tullius and I have long since taught you all we are able.”

  Next to Balbus, Carbo whined nervously as if he shared Balbus’s premonition. For the first time in a long time, Elerian looked at him closely and saw that his sleek black coat was heavily frosted with white, for even though he came of a long-lived breed, Carbo was very old now. Balbus, too, suddenly looked old to Elerian’s eyes, and he was filled with a sudden unease.

  “Do you wish me to stay home then grandfather?” asked Elerian. It would be a difficult thing to sent Clodius away without help, but he was prepared to do it if Balbus asked him.

  “No Elerian,” he said with a sudden smile. “We must each take our appointed road. Regardless of what passes in the future, I am content, for I have had my heart’s desire fulfilled. Few in this life can say as much.”

  They clasped forearms warmly and Elerian said once more, more for his own benefit that for Balbus’s sake, “I will return soon,” although he, too, suddenly had an uneasy feeling that change was in the air. After he followed Clodius out to the road, Elerian turned once more and waved to Balbus and Carbo, who were standing in the front yard of the farmhouse to see him off.

  “I will return soon and everything will be as it was,” Elerian thought reassuringly to himself as he turned away. Following Clodius down the road, Elerian felt his apprehension gradually subside. Soon, he forgot it entirely. He was young, within a few years of coming into his full powers, and filled with the assurance of youth. He still did not expect to catch the raiders, but if he did, then he would deal with them as he had dealt with the band that had taken Glycia.

  “Even when I was a child, the Goblins were no match for me,” he thought confidently to himself.

  It was well past the middle of the night before they arrived at Clodius’s farm, for Elerian had slowed his pace to allow the exhausted, footsore farmer to keep up. He felt no anxiety over the delay, for he still considered his task almost hopeless. It would be next to impossible to overcome the raiders’ lead before they reached a place of safety.

  When they reached his farm, Clodius pointed to a darkened field behind his farmhouse. It was planted with wheat, and even from where he stood, Elerian could see where the raiders had passed through the field, leaving a clear trail through the green, ankle high shoots.

  “They went that way into the woods on the other side of my field,” said Clodius in an exhausted voice. “The soldiers and I lost their tracks under the trees.”

  “Wait in your home,” said Elerian. “You are not in any condition to travel any farther tonight. If I succeed in rescuing your daughter, I will return her to you, but I may not come back for several days, for they must have traveled far by now.”

  His gentle reminder of the hopelessness of the rescue fell on deaf ears, for Clodius clung stubbornly to the idea that Elerian would bring his daughter back. As Elerian set off across the wheat field, Clodius returned to his house where his weeping wife waited by the fire.

  When Elerian reached the boundary hedge on the far side of the wheat field, he found a gate leading through the hedge already standing open. After passing through it, he closed it behind him and melted like a shadow into the forest in front of him. Once under the trees, Elerian followed the faint scuffmarks Alfidia’s abductors had left behind in the leaf litter that covered the forest floor. The raiders’ trail led in a fairly straight line, northeast. In the soft ground by a streambed, Elerian found the print of a small sandal clad foot, but it gave him no hope, for the track was already old and dried out.

  As Elerian slowly followed the few traces the raiders had left behind to mark their passage through the forest, he had the sense that they were drawing farther away at every moment. Only the remembered look of desperate hope in Clodius’s eyes kept him at his impossible task. By the time the sun began to push its golden light above the eastern rim of the world, Elerian had reached the dark forests of the lowlands and was already well to the northeast of Tullius’s house.

  The trail did not seem any fresher to Elerian, but as he stole quietly under the trees, his sharp ears suddenly detected the sound of weeping from somewhere ahead of him. Puzzled, for the raiders should have been many hours ahead of him by now, he slipped silently through the trees toward the sound. The weeping grew louder, and before long, Elerian saw a young girl through the trees, sitting on a large oak root. Her linen dress was torn and dirty, and her long brown hair obscured her face, for her head was bent down to her chest. She was crying softly while holding her right ankle with both hands. Although he could not see her face, Elerian was sure it was Alfidia, Clodius’s daughter.

  “Either she escaped from her captors, or else they abandoned her after she hurt her ankle,” thought Elerian to himself. Still suspicious, he probed the forest around him with his eyes and ears, but there was no sign of anyone else nearby. At last, he warily approached the girl. While he remained distrustful of the situation, he was also confident in his ability to overcome any danger that might present itself.

  When he stood a few feet from the girl, Elerian asked quietly, “Are you hurt?”

  At the sound of his voice, she started and jerked her head up in alarm, for she had not heard his soft footsteps. Her tear streaked brown eyes were wild with fear.

  “Do not be afraid,” said Elerian reassuringly. A sudden widening of her eyes caused him to spin around. A tall, dark haired Ancharian in leather clothing had appeared behind him, seemingly out of thin air, and was in the act of swinging a heavy black club at the left side of his head.

  CAPTURED

  Swiftly raising his left arm, Elerian caught the Ancharian’s club in his left hand, the hard wood stinging his palm without doing any damage. Before the surprised raider could recover, Elerian struck him on the jaw with his closed right hand. “One down,” thought Elerian to himself, as the Ancharian slumped toward the ground. At that moment, a tremendous force struck the back of his head. The world went black, and Elerian’s body fell forward onto the ground, next to the fallen Ancharian.

  The sound of hard voices was Elerian’s first hint that he was regaining consciousness. Keeping his eyes closed, he took stock of his situation. He was lying on his back, and his head ached abominably. A warm trickle that could only be blood was running down his neck. An unexpected, hard kick to his left side sent the world spinning, and Elerian felt sick to his stomach.

  “Easy Gallus, he is no good to us dead,” Elerian heard someone say in a cautionary voice.

  “Casco is dead from the blow he got from this scum,” replied a second angry voice. “Besides, he’s safer dead if we’re to pinch that shirt he was wearing.”

  Elerian heard a sudden, sharp smack that could only have come from a blow. Opening his eyes to slits, he saw two tall Ancharians, one standing and the other sitting on the ground rubbing his chin with his left hand, an angry expression on his face.

  “You’re a fool Gallus,” said the Ancharian who was standing, speaking in a low, deadly voice that was not meant to carry far. “Do you want to kill both of us with your careless words? The lupin may turn up at any time. It might even be watching us right now. They sneak about like shadows, and they report everything they see and hear to the Goblins. If it finds out what we’re planning, we could end up like Mallius. I heard the Goblins tortured him for a week before finally died.”

  “Let us kill the lupin when it returns then,” said Gallus sullenly.

  Lowering his voice and darting nervous glances all around him, Ruso asked contemptuously, “What if the lupin has already told his masters that we took this farm boy. I’m not going to risk being questioned at the end of a heated knife blade by failing to turn him in when we show up in Esdras.”

  “We don’t have to return to Esdras,” said Gallus stubbornly as he rose to his feet
.

  “If we cut and run, we will be found, eventually,” replied Ruso. “The Goblins have spies everywhere. The thing to do is act normal, turn the Hesperian in with no fuss, and just walk away with the shirt and ring.”

  “How do we make sure he doesn’t talk?” objected Gallus, also whispering now. “If he opens his mouth, we’re both dead.”

  “You leave that to me,” said Ruso confidently. “Fortune is smiling on us right now. First, that leopard took the Mordi that was with us, leaving us on our own. Then the lupin popped up out of nowhere and warned us we were being followed, giving us a chance to capture this young fool and his pretty shirt.”

  “Fancy a Wood Goblin forgetting to keep an eye out overhead for leopards,” said Gallus, forgetting his anger as he remembered with satisfaction how the Goblin had screamed when the leopard had dropped down out of a tree and crushed his skull in its powerful jaws. The Mordi had not treated his Ancharian allies well, and they had both been glad to be rid of him.

  “As I said, luck is with us,” repeated Ruso. “Look at how this trusting fool walked up to the girl, like a lamb to the slaughter,” he said, laughing softly at Elerian’s lack of caution. Listening to him, Elerian felt a proper fool for letting such a simple trick deceive him.

  Abruptly, Ruso’s good humor vanished, for he stopped laughing, and his voice turned hard again. “Wake him up,” he ordered Gallus. “I’m going to have a quick look around, but I want to have a talk with him when I return.”

  Moments later, rough hands dragged Elerian to his feet, and a sharp slap across his face set off a shower of red sparks behind his closed eyelids. He kept his eyes closed, waiting for his head to stop spinning, but a violent shove on his back forced him to take a step forward. Elerian heard the rattle of iron links and realized, for the first time, that there were iron manacles connected with a length of chain on both his wrists and ankles. When he opened his eyes, he found that his weapons had been taken from him. The anguis skin shirt that he had worn under his tunic was gone, too, along with his silver ring. The raiders had left him nothing except his clothes, but Elerian was not excessively worried. Once his strength returned, and he had a moment to himself, he was sure he could break his chains. There would be time to recover his things once he was free.