The Spirit Mage (The Blackwood Saga Book 2)

by Layton Green

  Caleb stared at her.

  She giggled and moved her hands in a circle, as if twirling through a meadow. “Can you smell the lavender? I love days like this.”

  Will swallowed, his mouth dry with worry.

  Farzal called out for them to march.

  “Sure thing,” Caleb said, helping Yasmina to her feet. “Let’s go to the park.”

  She started walking, her smile as warm and bright as the sun they might never see again.

  Sick with worry over Yasmina’s health, Will was nevertheless awed by his surroundings. The journey took a turn for the fantastic, leading them through territory filled with molten geysers, multi-hued underground streams and lakes, rock formations that boggled the mind, fields of mushrooms and lichen and strange plants clinging to the cracks and fissures, insects and aquatic life unlike anything Will had ever seen. If the Darklands was an undiscovered country, this section was its national park.

  The bottomless chasms, navigable rivers, and gaping holes in the stone floor sparked Will’s imagination, making him feel as if they had barely glimpsed the wonders of the Darklands. When they skirted a chasm with a set of rough-hewn stairs leading into the blackness, it made him think of the old things Dalen had mentioned, and fear laced his curiosity. He also sensed danger lurking in the shadows at every turn, unwilling to face the might of the delver expedition.

  Dalen was right. Even if they escaped, they wouldn’t have lasted five minutes on their own.

  Two days later, during the evening march, Yasmina collapsed. She was unresponsive to Caleb’s pleading, and Farzal stomped over to her. “If she can’t continue,” he said to Caleb, “she stays behind.”

  Caleb’s face was ashen. “You can’t do that.”

  Farzal smirked and waved for the delver with the keys. He ran over, and Caleb stepped in front of Yasmina. “No!”

  The delver shoved him aside and unlocked Yasmina’s chain. Caleb stepped towards him. “Unlock me, too. I’m staying with her.”

  Farzal rasped a laugh. “And lose an able body for the mines? I think not, laddie.”

  “Give her to me,” Will said in desperation. “I’ll carry her.”

  The delver with the keys shrugged and tossed Yasmina’s limp form at Will, then returned with Farzal to the front of the march.

  Yasmina’s emaciated figure felt as light as a child. Will put her on his back and draped her arms over his shoulders.

  “Thanks, little brother,” Caleb whispered. “I’ll take her when you get tired.”

  Though unresponsive, Yasmina was semi-conscious, able to relieve a bit of the burden by clinging to Will. Despite her reduced weight, Will was ready to collapse an hour into the journey. He gritted his teeth and kept going. Caleb wasn’t a reasonable option; Will knew he wouldn’t last five minutes.

  Half an hour later, Will stumbled, falling to a knee. He struggled to his feet and lurched forward, unable to accept defeat, knowing Farzal would leave her to die without a shred of remorse.

  Will stumbled again, his hamstrings cramping, and Yasmina slid off his back. Dalen and Caleb moved to help him, each of them struggling to pick her up.

  “Leave her,” a voice rang out.

  Will looked behind him, to the prisoner who had spoken.

  “I’ll carry her.”

  The speaker was Marek, the muscle-bound cretin who he had clashed with the first night of their captivity. Will hesitated, though something in the man’s eyes told Will he could trust him with Yasmina.

  And there was no choice. Will guessed they had at least another hour on the day’s march, and he couldn’t carry her any further. Caleb gave a reluctant nod, and Will squeezed Yasmina’s hand and left her on the ground.

  As Marek passed her in line, he scooped her up as if she were an inflatable doll, then slung her over his shoulder.

  After they set camp, shoveled cold stew into their mouths, and lay down to sleep, Will overheard Caleb whispering to Yasmina. Her eyes were open but she was catatonic and feverish. The delvers hadn’t even bothered to chain her.

  “Wake up, Yaz. Please wake up. Will and Marek can’t carry you all day. Farzal will leave you if you don’t come around.” He buried his head in her chest, his voice cracking. “Please, Yaz.”

  Will turned the other way and tried not to listen.

  The next day Marek and Will swapped out carrying Yasmina during the morning march. When they tired, arms cramping from the strain, Caleb and Dalen took ten-minute turns, managing to survive until the short lunch break.

  After lunch, Will bent to pick her up, knowing he wouldn’t last much longer. Even with Marek’s help, they wouldn’t make it through the day.

  Someone whistled, and Will turned to see a muscular woman on the other side of Dalen, one of the newer arrivals, waving a hand. With a grave nod of thanks, Will passed her on.

  During the rest of the day’s march, every able-bodied prisoner took a turn carrying Yasmina, passing her along the line until each man or woman tired. She became a child in the care of the village, kept alive by a spark of human goodness in that darkest of hours.

  Will had put a pebble in his pocket each morning to track their journey. On the afternoon of the thirteenth day, after a long slog through a mind-numbingly uniform series of tunnels, the party stopped inside a cavern with a high ceiling and five exit tunnels, similar to any number of caverns they had passed.

  Farzal stepped to the center of a wall and placed his hands on the surface. The wall glowed with blue light, illuminating a set of spidery runes swarming the wall. The delver moved his hands over the runes in a rapid pattern. A concealed door swung inward, revealing a staircase ascending a vertical chasm.

  Will was surprised to find two sentries waiting inside the door. They waved Farzal through, and he led the party up the stone staircase.

  Hugging the edge of the rock wall, the stairway seemed to last forever. Every hundred yards or so they passed a wide platform lit by mineral lamps and manned by a pair of sentries fronting a tunnel.

  Will was carrying Yasmina when they reached the top of the staircase. His arms felt like wheelbarrows full of wet cement. Two sentries stepped aside as Farzal opened another of the rune doors, and the party stepped through the portal, this time onto a large platform manned by another set of guards.

  Wide marble stairs descended on both sides of the platform, and a five-carriage funicular on bronze rails was anchored to the ledge. Will inched forward and caught his breath. Far beneath them, in a cavern so enormous it boggled his mind, a vast underground city had been scooped out of the earth, built entirely of silver-hued stone glowing in the emerald light of a million hanging mineral lanterns.

  Farzal turned to address the line of captives, showcasing the view with an upturned palm. “Welcome to Fellengard,” he growled.

  -22-

  Night fell soon after the hags stuffed Mala and the majitsu inside the cages. Eerie sounds emanated from the forest: hoarse growls and ragged barks, a series of prolonged shrieks, and the alien chirping of whatever species of insects populated that world.

  Once reasonably sure the hags wouldn’t return for the night, Mala whispered, “Majitsu!” as loud as she dared, not caring if the creatures inside the kennel heard her. Surely they despised their captivity as much as she.

  A pause, and then, “My name is Hazir.”

  At the front of the kennel, when the hags had led her in, Mala had noticed an open storage bin filled with discarded belongings. She hadn’t seen her edged weapons, but her sash and pouches had been dumped on top of the pile.

  It got her thinking.

  “I assume you’ve tested our bonds?” she asked.

  “Of course. The gray coils are impervious to magic. Or at least to mine.”

  “See if your magic works outside the cage. Try to move something, a piece of straw.”

  A longer period of silence, and then, “It does appear to work outside the cage, but you must know I’m not strong enough to hurt—”

  “That
isn’t my objective. At least not yet. If you can reach my pouches, float the red one over to me.”

  Hazir gave a harsh laugh. “And aid your escape?”

  Mala swallowed her retort. To have any chance of escaping this nightmare world, she had to cooperate with the arrogant majitsu and deal with the consequences later. “I’ve a potion that can render me small enough to escape this cage. I propose a truce while I search for a way to overcome the hags.”

  “Do you think I’m daft? Why would you return for me?”

  “Because the amulet is our only way home, and the larger hag wears it around her neck. I’ll need your help retrieving it. And I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, unless you have another plan.”

  The majitsu didn’t answer, and Mala added, “If you’re thinking of using the potion for yourself, know that I’ve many potions, at least half of which are poison. Choose wrongly, and you doom us both.”

  Mala held her breath as she waited on the majitsu’s decision. When her red pouch containing the Potion of Diminution floated into view, she prepared to reach for it, but it stopped moving just outside her cage.

  “Your word that you won’t leave me behind,” the majitsu said.

  “On the honor of my clan, I swear that if it is within my ability to leave this world, I shan’t do so without you. We will use the amulet together.”

  The pouch drifted within reach. Mala squeezed a hand through the latticework opening, searched through the pouch, and extracted a green vial. Since nothing else would be of use and there was no place to hide the pouch, she had Hazir return it.

  Before she quaffed the potion, she said, “I’ll need your word as well, Hazir. That if we return to Urfe, we go our separate ways, the past forgotten.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Swear it,” she said. “On your oath as a majitsu.”

  She could sense him gritting his teeth. “Should we reach our home world, then on the oath I swore to join the Order of Majitsu, I promise to honor our pact and grant your freedom.”

  Not believing a word he said, but wanting him to think she did, Mala stripped, put two drops of the potion on her tongue, pushed the vial and all of her clothes except her shoes–which wouldn’t fit—through the cage, and began to shrink.

  Two drops shrank her to the size of a grasshopper. She was just able to jump up and over the bottom latticework of gray tendrils. The other creatures watched with listless eyes as Mala huddled naked on the wooden planks, her new world a towering and frightening place, hugging her knees to her chest as she waited for the potion to wear off.

  Half an hour later, after returning to normal size, she dressed and pocketed the vial. When she passed Hazir, they exchanged a grim nod.

  An expert tracker, Mala slipped soundlessly into the night to learn the lay of the land. The clay-like ground felt moist and sticky beneath her bare feet.

  There wasn’t much to the compound. Besides the kennel and cluster of low farmhouses, she saw only the three conical huts she assumed the hags stayed in.

  She searched the two farmhouse buildings first, both of which were piled haphazardly with cobweb-covered furniture, piles of clothes, and random junk. She found her weapons tossed just inside a door, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Next she explored the valley, roaming right to the edge of the forest, wary of stepping inside the woods. She felt a presence flitting through the darkened trees, something dangerous and unfamiliar, and decided not to venture into the forest unless forced.

  Frustrated, shivery from cold and unwilling to risk waking the hags, she was forced to return her weapons and race back to the kennel as the muted dawn light broached the horizon. After relieving herself outside—there was not even a pot inside the filthy pens—Mala took two more drops and returned to her cage.

  The smaller hags returned just after dawn, tossing each prisoner a pile of mush that looked like tripe. Mala forced down enough of the vile meal to keep from starving. The creatures stopped by again at dusk, slopping another round of food into the cages.

  Following the next dawn visit, Mala waited long enough for the hags to wander away, then took another dosage. After checking to ensure the hags were nowhere in sight, guessing they had gone into the forest, she ran to the edge of the trees behind the three huts and hid in the foliage as she observed the windowless dwellings for the better part of an hour.

  The huts were made of dried mud with thatched roofs. Like everything else in the settlement except for the farmhouses, everything seemed to be of organic origin.

  Mala saw no movement inside the huts. It was time to take a risk.

  Creeping down the hill on bare feet, nerves endings bursting with adrenaline, she took a deep breath and reached for the door of the first hut.

  -23-

  When Val arrived at the Abbey on the first day of wizard school, there were signs guiding the students to different coteries. According to his registration scroll, he was part of Coterie III.

  He left the carriage and followed the signs behind the main hall on foot, down a brick walkway that led through a citrus grove, to a handsome granite bungalow in a clearing shielded by curtains of bougainvillea. A large koi pond covered the left half of the clearing, and climbing roses brightened the granite. Standing beside the pond, taking in Val’s approach with folded arms, were two majitsu.

  Val tensed as he approached. Is this typical for students? he thought. Majitsu guards?

  He entered the house promptly at nine a.m. and found four people sitting in a tidy lounge decorated with tapestries and oil paintings. He took a seat on a velvet sofa, between a bookshelf and a glass cabinet stocked with bottles of amber spirits.

  The other students were trying to observe each other without being noticed. Typical behavior in a new group, exacerbated when that group was a collection of prospective wizards at the most exclusive school in the Realm.

  To his left, an attractive, pale young woman with turquoise eyes and a waist-length braid of blond hair shared a couch with a tall, thin black man about Val’s age with a bald head and a high forehead. The man was dressed in a one-piece outfit of stitched silk, a strange hybrid between a robe and a business suit.

  In another chair sat a swarthy young man closer in age to the woman—mid-twenties—with curly dark hair, hairy forearms, and a strong build. With his chocolate pants of fine wool and white shirt buttoned to the neck, left thumb tapping his crossed legs with nervous energy, Val knew his type right away: the type A, over-eager associate. The brash negotiator.

  “I’m Adaira,” the pale young woman said, rising to grasp Val by the shoulders and kiss him lightly on the forehead. A linen pantsuit, flared at the shoulders and wrists, complemented her turquoise eyes. Silver riding boots hugged her calves, and a matching belt accentuated her narrow waist. She wore no jewelry other than a choker of black pearl. The fashionista, Val assumed.

  “Val,” he replied.

  Before she sat, her eyes made a confident sweep of his face, as if cataloguing his features. “Charmed,” she murmured.

  “Chakandida,” the bald man said, tripping over a foot-stool as he rose. He righted himself with a self-aware chuckle, then grasped Val’s arm at the elbow. “Call me Dida.”

  “Sounds easier,” Val said.

  “Yes, yes,” Dida laughed. His accent was heavy and his diction precise. Val liked him at once.

  “Gowan,” the curly-haired man said, with a curt nod. Val responded in kind.

  The door opened, and two more people entered. Despite his vigor and swarthy good looks, the tall man holding the door with aplomb appeared at least a few years older than Val, his age betrayed by the lines around his eyes and streaks of silver in his V-shaped goatee.

  The woman behind him was a fish woman.

  Val could describe her in no other way. She entered the room with a strange rolling gait, like a sailor just off the boat. Her face was green and gilled at the cheeks, with a wide and pleasant mouth, nostrils so flat they were almost imperceptible,
and lidless eyes the color of aged tobacco leaf. Sinuous blue-green scales covered her body.

  Val had seen the representation of a similar humanoid before, on the zelomancy board in Leonidus’s castle. Kethropi, Mala had called them. A race of fish-people.

  The woman raised the back of her hand in a limp-wristed movement, curled the corners of her mouth, and announced herself as Riganthalaag Kothvi of Nelandia. “Perhaps you should call me Riga,” she said, after everyone regarded her with a blank stare.

  “Xavier at your service,” the man behind Riga said, bowing after he closed the door, “and you may call me whatever you fancy. Hopeful sylvamancer, father of two, Southern Protectorate freeholder. My gads are Catalonian, neither wizard born, and I’ll be shocked if I pass the discipline exam. But I’ll be damned if I don’t give it a whirl.” He spread his palms and grinned. “Just so you know.”

  Soon after the two new arrivals took their seats, a large-framed man with a comb-over—taller even than Xavier, but with the mushy build of an academic—entered the room from a swinging door beside the bookcase. He sported a gold robe with one of the blue-and-white striped stoles.

  He clapped once, then strode to the cabinet. “I see we’ve all arrived. I trust the first few decades of everyone’s life have been relaxed and pleasant? Because—” he poured himself a highball of the amber liquid –“the next three years, if you last that long, will not be.”

  His voice was arrogant and highly intelligent, reminding Val of his law school professors. “I’m Professor Gormloch,” the man said. “You may call me Professor Gormloch.”

  Adaira and Xavier chuckled.

  The professor plopped down on the sole remaining chair, crossed his legs, and swirled his highball. “Basics of Wizardry,” he said. “The essential tools applicable to all disciplines of magic. As well as mastering core skills, we shall delve into the shallow end of the major disciplines, both to familiarize ourselves with the traditional spectrum and to elucidate your own career path. Change of discipline is natural, and may be effected at the beginning of any semester—all that matters in the end, of course, is whether you pass the exam for your chosen discipline.”