Aethersmith (Book 2)

by J. S. Morin

  “No, they’re probably searching the ground outside the clock tower for my gory remains even as we speak.”

  The speaker was still dressed all in black, but now was unhooded. Jaw-length auburn hair framed a face smooth with the signs of youth. Her piercing green eyes met those of her associate directly, with no sign of deference or fear. She was tall, and thin of face and limb. The loose black outfit hid her modest curves and called into question her gender, but only when her face was hidden away as well; she was unmistakably beautiful.

  Her associate reached into the satchel, and took out the circlet from within. He turned it over carefully in his hands. “I sort of expected something a bit fancier,” he mused.

  “Sure, Zell, let me just nick back into the museum and pick you out a nicer one. I figured you wanted a dressed-down magic crown that you could wear with your every-day rags. But I can take you down to Duke Street in the morning, and get you something that would go with a nice fancy crown,” the prowler replied.

  “Does it work?” the man asked, shrugging off her sarcasm out of old habit.

  “Try it,” she replied.

  The man put the crown on. It looked ridiculous on his massive head, a thin ring of gold lost amid a tangle of sweat-glossed black hair.

  “Whoa, is this what you always see?” the man asked as he slowly looked all about the room, especially lingering on the walls and floor. “I can see you quite clearly—and the two daggers you are hiding. I can even see Rakashi and Tanner in the next room, and the innkeeper downstairs.”

  “Glad you like it. Now can we get back on our way to Scar Harbor?”

  “Sure, Soria, first thing in the morning.”

  Chapter 2 - Fighting the Tide

  The sea thrashed, and the wind howled past Kyrus Hinterdale as he stood staring out into the approaching storm. His bare feet sank slightly into the thick-packed, muddy sand left by the receding tide. Kyrus had adopted the natives’ custom of going about with no shirt in the tropical climate of Denku Appa, a remote equatorial isle that, for now at least, was his home.

  Kyrus had seen many a storm, safe on dry land and huddled indoors in his homeland of Acardia. His thick northern blood was not so bothered by the cooler air this southern storm blew; in fact, it seemed a refreshing change from the often sweltering heat of the daylight hours of summertime on the island. If not for the steel-grey sky with its otherworldly look to it, the windblown rain trying to drive itself beneath his skin like a storm of nails, and the threat of the storm surge washing out the low-lying village, the day might almost have been pleasant.

  Toktu, senior elder among the Denku, had told Kyrus that this storm did not look so bad as many the islanders had seen. Nonetheless, most of the Denku had retreated to more sheltered ground, taking refuge in some caves farther inland. Those who had remained behind wished to see a unique sight: their “spirit man” wanted to hold back the storm.

  Kyrus had been using shielding spells as exercise for his Source. He had only learned of magic’s existence a few months ago, and was trying to make up for a youth of lost opportunity. In the realm of Kadrin—which Kyrus saw through the eyes of his counterpart from the other world, his “twin” Brannis, each night instead of dreaming—a sorcerer would be trained from an early age, starting as young as eight or so with formal training. Kyrus had seen all the rudiments as Brannis had struggled through the early ranks of the Kadrin Imperial Academy of Sorcery before they finally gave up on ever making a sorcerer of him, despite his family’s strong magical heritage. It seemed as if, joined by some mystical connection, their Sources were the inverse of one another. Brannis was a stone, almost entirely cut off from the aether; Kyrus found that it leapt to his call and flowed from his Source like a river.

  For weeks, Kyrus had been wading out into the shallow waters near the tide line and practicing holding back the sea. At first, he had just tried stopping the lapping kiss of water that would tickle the toes of walkers along the beach. It amused him at first to see the water stop weirdly at an invisible barrier and crash lightly against it, as if he had fashioned a glass so clear it did not cast any distortion or glare to betray its presence. With practice, he was able to form his shield farther and farther out into the tide. He kept the shield arced so that the vast and cunning Katamic Sea did not simply sneak around the sides, and he stood close to the center of that arc, as it seemed easiest to keep an equal pressure of aether in all directions that way.

  With the coming of the storm, Kyrus found both a test and a purpose. The Denku had taken him in when the notorious pirate Denrik Zayne had stranded him on their island after expressing concern about potential retribution in this world for the attack of Denrik’s own twin on Brannis’s homeland in the other. Kyrus had shared their food, lived in one of their homes, and had begun to learn their language. In return, he had been able to do nothing of use for them, save entertain with his magical tricks. Now, though, with talk of storm surges that might wash away part of the village, Kyrus intended to keep his new home safe from the storm.

  * * * * * * * *

  “He is brave, our spirit man,” Tippu commented, crouched behind a palm tree in an effort to shield herself from the worst of the storm winds.

  Her green-dyed hair was being played havoc by the storm winds. Clad in just a loincloth and a pair of necklaces—the latter doing little to either cover or protect her—she shivered against the cool, wet air that tore past her.

  “Yes, very,” agreed Kahli, her long, scarlet-dyed braids whipping behind her as the wind gusted. She huddled against Tippu’s back both for warmth and the shelter of the wind. “And look, he does not even shake with cold.”

  “He is a northerner. Their winds are always cold. He sweats like a hunter even on mild days,” said Gahalu, Kyrus’s best friend among the Denku.

  While the two girls had claimed Kyrus as their own and had been trying—with limited results—to woo him, Gahalu had been Kyrus’s interpreter and guide on the island. Worldly by Denku standards, Gahalu had sailed aboard foreign ships, learned about distant lands, and picked up a few exotic languages, Kyrus’s among them.

  “This weather probably reminds him of home,” Gahalu said.

  “This is home now for him,” Kahli insisted. “Look how he risks his life to defend it.” She pointed to the bare-chested northerner, standing where the water ought to have been chest deep, with the seawater stopping eerily a few paces from him at well over head height.

  “You said he was not spirit man among his own people, that they chased him off and wished to kill him. That does not sound like home. Home is where he is loved. Home is where he will have strong sons who will grow up to be hunters and elders and spirit men,” Tippu said.

  Despite his scrawny body and skin that refused to darken to the creamy bronze color the Denku felt looked healthiest, Kyrus was an object of desire and envy among the Denku women. Tippu and Kahli had gotten to him first and claimed him, but should he decide to send them away, others would be quick to fill their places.

  Gahalu sighed and watched his friend fighting the Katamic. Kyrus spoke more to Gahalu than anyone else, even though he was picking up the Denku language quite quickly. He knew that Kyrus had other reasons for damming the tide, though he had no cause to think the lad was being less than selfless in this particular instance. It allowed him to strengthen his powers with the spirit world, and Gahalu knew why that was important to Kyrus.

  Kyrus had explained that, with enough power, he could make himself disappear from Denku Appa and appear in his homeland of Acardia. There was a girl there, in Scar Harbor, that he missed very much, and he wished to return to her. He was too polite to shun Tippu and Kahli, and was smart enough to know that if he did, more would come after him, but he did not want them. Surely he had fallen prey to their charms—the two girls were not shy at all about their victories when speaking to the other Denku women—but he always seemed shamed by it after.

  The Scar Harbor girl was like a shark, Gahalu thought: she had su
nk her teeth into Kyrus, and he was not able to swim free of her. Gahalu found himself thinking like the elder that his grey hairs said he was becoming, meddling in the loves of the young. For all their inane chatter, he wished the two girls well in their quest to win Kyrus’s heart. He did not want to see his friend go.

  * * * * * * * *

  I had expected this to be harder, Kyrus thought.

  He was holding back a wall of water ten feet high and hundreds of feet long. He had struggled at first to get the wall shaped properly. It had to be wider than usual, and therefore could not be as far out to sea as he would have liked. He had abandoned his usual tactic of standing at the center of the arced wall, and instead stood close to it. With how long the wall needed to be to protect the village, to center it at the water’s edge would have pushed it so far out that it would have had to be thrice the height and bear a much greater weight of water. As it was, Kyrus was hardly noticing the effort now that he had it stable.

  Aether in, aether out.

  Kyrus was drawing a small, constant flow of aether to keep up the spell. Aether was fortunately a resource in abundance on the island. Many of the native species produced admirable amounts of the stuff, and the sea life inhabited the area in such vast numbers that the supply seemed inexhaustible. With few sorcerers in his own world, the aether seemed to be all his for the taking. In his counterpart’s world, sorcerers were common enough that such vast seas of aether were unheard of.

  Kyrus knew that he ought to have felt like a mighty wizard of the fairy stories, but he knew the trick now. It was still wondrous, but he suspected that any sorcerer from Kadrin, brought into his world, would be able to manage much the same with the ready supply of aether at hand. More than that, though, with the more challenging effort of creating and stabilizing the wall now past, it was growing boring. Storms were not momentary things by and large, and this one had already been raging for hours. His feet were aching, and his back was growing sore from standing so long in one place.

  Kyrus knew that he could sit down in the mud, or even recline, and still hold the wall intact just as well. He also knew that there were a dozen or more Denku who had trusted him enough to come out as close as the tree line to watch. Among them were all his closest friends on the island, as well as Tippu and Kahli. As much as their advances exasperated him, he did not wish to diminish himself in their eyes. A primal, primitive part of his brain insisted that the affection of pretty girls was important—and not to be jeopardized by sore feet or boredom.

  * * * * * * * *

  Kyrus took his midday meal at his post, holding back the storm sea. He had grown accustomed enough to the light work of holding the aether-formed wall in place that he felt safe performing other magics while he held it. He had chosen from among the multitudes of fish arrayed before him like a child’s fishbowl, and plucked the Source from a tasty-looking specimen. Flat and tall, the green-and-yellow striped fish was shaped like the paddles the Denku used for their fishing boats, and as long as Kyrus’s forearm. Gone limp as its life’s essence was cleanly removed, the fish offered no resistance as Kyrus then levitated it over the invisible wall and into his waiting hands, frying it with aether as it floated the short distance through the air.

  Kyrus kept a small knife at his belt—made of steel, it was a valuable gift from his Denku hosts—and used it to fillet the fish. He ate as he worked, never taking his eye long from the real task at hand as he continued to hold back a mind-boggling amount of seawater. When he’d had his fill, he threw what remained of his meal over the wall and back into the Katamic for other predators to finish off.

  When the ache of his feet finally got the better of him, he quietly cast a levitation spell, just using it to lift himself up such that his heels barely brushed the muddy ground.

  I wonder if this means I am beginning to think like a sorcerer, when levitation magic seems like the proper course of action, rather than sitting down and getting my trousers muddy.

  * * * * * * * *

  When the storm finally calmed, and the risk to the village had passed, Kyrus released the shielding spell. He was worn inside and out. It was the longest he had ever used his Source, certainly, and as best he could recall, the longest he had ever stood in one place.

  With the storm clouds obscuring the sun all day, Kyrus could only guess how long he had kept up the wall, but he figured six hours at least. Should anyone ever inquire about it one day, that is what I shall tell them, anyway. The overcast sky allowed occasional breaks that let in the light of late afternoon. Kyrus just had no idea how early it had been when the storm began, having awakened to a deep grey ceiling of the world.

  The freed surf washed around Kyrus’s ankles as he turned back toward the village, and saw his audience rush down to meet him, finally feeling safe with the spirit man’s strange magic no longer in effect. Too many of them talked at once for Kyrus to pick out more than a stray word here or there in the Denku tongue, which he only understood at a modest pace. When Tippu and Kahli saw him fatigued, and came to support him under each arm, he at least tried to focus on what they were saying to him, since he suspected it would have the most immediate bearing on his evening.

  “We will help …”

  “… to …”

  “… house …”

  “I …”

  “… you …”

  There were too many words Kyrus was unfamiliar with, and they were both speaking too fast for him to separate the words and decipher them. He gathered that they were intent on helping him back to the little house he had been given, but beyond that, it was all gibberish to him. When Tippu took her long necklaces and slung them over his head as well as hers, he began to suspect that rest was not on his agenda for the evening.

  “Hungry,“ Kyrus managed in Denku, one of the words he had made sure Gahalu taught him. “Sleepy.”

  Kahli seemed to understand the former at least and rubbed his stomach, nodding eagerly.

  Hopefully with a full belly and a worn-out brain, I can fall asleep right after dinner.

  * * * * * * * *

  Gahalu stayed back from his friend as the crowd—and Kyrus’s two amorous pursuers—escorted Kyrus back to the village. The Denku had much wisdom about the sea, but their people did not make up catchy little sayings the way so many foreigners did to help make them easy to convey. Thus it was a Feru Maru saying that stuck in Gahalu’s mind as he looked at Spirit Man Kyrus: “No man can stop the tides.”

  Kyrus just had—and stopped a storm atop it. The young Acardian was seeking to increase his magical power so he could use it to return to his home. After what he had just witnessed, Gahalu did not expect it would be long before Kyrus would try to use his powers to leave them.

  * * * * * * * *

  Kyrus lay awake on his sleeping mat, unable to still his mind. Kahli curled against him under one arm and Tippu the other, slumbering softly. The bedding in the small stone house that some previous mainlander had built on Denku Appa had been lumpy and uncomfortable, so Kyrus had adopted the Denku custom of sleeping on the ground. His own head rested on a pillow made from a sand-filled sack, which formed a cradle shaped for the size of his head by many nights’ experience; his two companions pillowed their heads on his chest. He felt badly for having used magic on the girls to lull them to sleep, but it was easier than arguing with them and kinder than spurning them. He owed Brannis a debt for having learned a sleeping spell for him to defend himself with. Even with the spell, the two of them still found alertness enough before drifting off that they had latched onto him.

  Kyrus wore ruts in his mind with his mental pacing, wondering what to do with Tippu and Kahli. He could not sum them up on a ledger like some merchant, though he had tried. He did not dislike either of them—far from it. They were sweet and thoughtful, unfailingly attentive, and (he reluctantly admitted) alluring. They were cousins, he had discovered, but were as close as sisters and had always planned to share some hunter together. They never quarreled with one another, at least
with Kyrus around. They just seemed so … young.

  Kyrus was a young man himself, just twenty-two years old, and he would have been surprised if his two suitors were much younger, at least in years. Kyrus drew a distinction between young and youthful. The latter bespoke vigor, energy, and a brightness of spirit; the former indicated naivety, overexuberance, and a stubbornness born of a refusal to accept unpleasant truths. For all the times they were not trying to busy themselves with the bits he kept beneath his trousers, they seemed like young girls, playful and cheerful, irresponsible and oblivious to all that went on outside the focus of their vision. He would have liked to consider himself something of a philosopher for seeing the difference, but he knew he was splitting hairs in trying to indict the girls for traits he found himself drawn to in Abbiley.

  Abbiley Tillman was somewhere back in Scar Harbor, the only girl Kyrus had ever fallen in love with. He loved the joy she took in the simple things in life, like the break of the sea against Acardia’s rocky shores or the sights and smells of the markets when foreign traders came to town. She had little money and only a brother to call family, yet she did not let the cares of the world burden her; she carried on with a smile, and was always considerate of others ahead of herself. That was probably the key difference, as Kyrus saw it. As much as Tippu and Kahli doted on him, it was a greedy sort of love they showered on him. They wanted him for themselves, to be the spirit man’s wives, to be the envy of the other girls from the village, to have their children possibly become spirit men one day themselves.

  Thus he longed for Abbiley, who fell in love with him when he was a simple scrivener whose only claim to wealth was an old shop he had been given by his former employer as a gift (Kyrus had paid a pittance for it, for appearance’s sake, but knew it for the gift that it was). He was resolved to return to Scar Harbor, outlaw or not, and marry her. They might have to live on the run—he hoped she would be willing to go—and there would be other complications to be sure, but they were not insurmountable, not with the magic he was learning.