He reached into the air and began to collect more energy, then took another step, further to the south.
The sky was cloudier still. If his next step or two continued the progression, he would feel rain drops falling very soon.
He did step into rain on the next step, but only a light drizzle. He wasn’t going to travel much further that day, he decided. As part of his planned journey to the south, a slow, healing journey, he wanted to stop at a small, unnamed fishing village on a river. He was confident of the general region the village was in – he’d stopped there before, on his very first experience of traveling through white magic. He’d treated the medical problem of a girl, then left before seeing if she’d recovered.
And now he wanted to see the girl and her health. He’d be able to visit the girl, confirm his remedy had worked; he could rest his leg, and keep his head cleared of disruptions and distractions. He could focus on the mission ahead, the coming battle he would wage in Southsand. He wouldn’t have to think about Stoke, or Coriae, or Greenfalls.
He knew that he would think about them. He would think about Coriae in particular.
But in the meantime, he needed to learn the location of the village he wanted to find. He wished he could talk to the birds, to ask them what they saw from their paths that glided high in the sky.
“Oh,” he gasped, as the thought occurred to him. He could fly too, in a way. Perhaps.
He could control air to make wind blow. He might be able to control wind in a way that would make it blow him up into the air. He might. Or he might not. It might blow him up, and then let him come crashing down. He unknowingly winced at the thought of suffering a hard impact with the ground.
But he had used the spell to control the air and wind before, not just to blow wind, but even to help shape the energy he had fought Donal with in Great Forks. He could maintain control over the wind, perhaps control it finely enough to accomplish what he wanted.
He wanted to fly.
He bit his lip as he stood in the light rain and considered the wording of the spell he would cast, and the control he would exercise. It seemed possible. He had not been bound by any rule or law to only use the spells in his brain exactly as they had been implanted in him. His experimentation, sometimes purposeful and sometimes accidental, had already given him greater control of his white magic power than he had started with. He’d learned to combine spells, and he’d even learned to reach out and gather the abundant natural energy that fell freely within the sunlight, though he’d been given no instruction in how to do so.
And on one occasion, his soul had penetrated the barrier that limited his access to most of the white magic spells, letting him access the spell to summon and control water during his confrontation with Donal in Greenfalls. When he’d opened Coriae’s ring, the extraordinary memory stone hidden within it had passed to him a massive collection of white magic spells, but then bounded the vast majority of them off within Theus’s memory, leaving them unknowable and unavailable for his use. There had been a vague promise that he might have access to them in the future, but no explanation of when or how or why.
Yet he had somehow found the knowledge about summoning water and been able to apply it when he had been in dire need of it.
There might be a flying spell waiting within him, but he didn’t have any sense that it was available.
He stood in the rain and simultaneously began to collect energy from the filtered light that fell through the clouds, while also exercising the spell to control the winds of air. It was an intensive spell, one that consumed great amounts of energy. He was fortunate to be able to try the spell during the daytime, when his available energy was virtually unlimited.
And if it worked, he would be able to fly, and he might spot the isolated village, and he could check in on the health of a teenage girl named Halcyon.
Chapter 22
Two hours later, Theus was walking in the rain, moving towards the small village in the wilderness. He was limping more than walking, a result of a sprained ankle he’d gained in the process of learning how to fly, or really, in learning how to land after he had begun to fly.
He’d needed five efforts to learn how to lift himself with controlled and contained blowing winds. His first effort had simply flipped him over and knocked him to the ground. His second had flipped him up before he fell to the ground.
On his third effort he adjusted the angle at which the moving air current struck him, and he rose twenty feet in the air immediately – then fell to the ground. That was the time he sprained his ankle.
By the time of his fourth effort, he’d concluded he needed to have uplifting air striking him from multiple directions. He concluded that as he sat on the wet ground after his third effort, rubbing and massaging his injured ankle for several minutes.
The fourth attempt worked. He’d managed to raise himself in the air and survey the territory around him for several long moments. He managed to land with some dignity, and then on the fifth try he’d lifted himself and maneuvered. He was able to attain significant altitude with confidence in his abilities, then moved laterally through the murky, rainy sky while he searched the ground below to the horizon, until he had finally found the river valley he sought. It was in that direction that he traveled on foot.
When he reached the river, he turned to the west and proceeded to follow a path along the driest, firmest parts of the river valley. Dryness was relative, he found, as swales became streams, and streams became rivulets while carrying the flow of rainfall washing off the surface of the empty landscape.
Theus trudged on, while the rainfall diminished. In the late afternoon, as sunlight broke through the first rifts in the clouds, Theus spotted the columns of smoke that rose from the village chimneys while the sun was setting in the western sky. He hurried his limping pace, injured left leg and sprained right ankle painfully protesting until he reached the edge of the village.
The settlement appeared unchanged from his previous visit. There was no street or particular organization to the structures in the homely cluster of buildings. Theus walked slowly to the building he had visited before, the public room that served as the center of the village, where the citizens met and exchanged news, vows, jokes, goods, and threats according to their moods and needs.
The room was half full with men and women drinking ale as they conversed, but all talk immediately ceased as the locals realized a stranger was among them.
“Where'd you come from?” Asked the first voice that spoke.
Theus hobbled to an empty seat and sat down, relieved to remove the stress from his legs.
“I came across land, from Great Forks,” he replied. He knew what he was going to hear next.
“Nobody comes overland,” a different voice informed him.
“This one may have. He said he did before,” a voice spoke from the kitchen door.
It was the proprietor of the tavern-cum-inn, Theus recognized. He was the father of Halcyon, the girl Theus wanted to check up on.
“I’m glad you remember,” Theus told the man, not ready to stand and stress his legs at the moment. “How’s your daughter?”
“I’d tell her to come in and show you herself, but she’s down at the docks getting some fresh fish for the stew tonight. You’ll see her in a few minutes,” the man kept a straight face.
“It’s a miracle!” one of the patrons shouted loudly.
“It seemed like a miracle, the way this visitor treated Hallie’s sickness and made her better,” the tavern keeper agreed.
“No, I meant it’s a miracle that you’re using fresh fish for your stew for a change. Did you run out of the three-day old fish?” the wit in the audience asked, to a round of laughter and even an appreciative smile from the tavernkeeper.
The man provided Theus with a mug of ale.
“What brings a traveler through this place again?” the tavernkeeper asked when he served the mug to his guest. “We’re not on the way from anywhere to anywhere. We�
�re where people come when they want to stay away from other people.”
“The first time I was here was because I didn’t know the way to where I was going, and I just wandered in,” Theus told a version of his story that was close to true. “This time I came so I could see how Halcyon was doing, and to rest my leg for a day or two; I’ve had some trouble with it.”
“You’ll see Hallie soon, and she’ll be so pleased. She’s never seen a stranger before, let alone the man who saved her life,” the father told Theus. “And your dinner tonight’s on the house. And your room too, if you want to spend the night.”
Ten minutes later, Halcyon opened the door from the kitchen to the public room, and walked shyly over to Theus’s table, where she stood silently for several seconds, until he looked up and recognized her.
“You look so much healthier than the last time I saw you!” Theus gamely stood to greet the girl.
“You’re the one who saved me?” she asked. “My dad says so.”
“The only time I ever saw you before, you were lying in a bed upstairs,” Theus told her.
“How did you know what I needed?” the girl looked at the seat by the table as she questioned him.
“Would you like to have a seat?” Theus asked in a kindly manner, and the pair sat down, the girl now eager to listen to Theus speak about her illness.
“I saw a spot on your leg that looked like a bite,” Theus explained when they sat down.
“I remember swatting at something on my leg while I was on the river bank!” she exclaimed. “I was holding my basket in my right hand, and I had to switch it to my left so that my right hand could slap my calf.
“Who would have thought that could be so dangerous?” she asked reflectively.
“You know, everyone in the village wanted to help,” Theus told her. “When I told them what we needed to make the medicine for you, everyone went looking for the supplies. The whole village really helped save your life, not just me.”
She smiled broadly at the thought of the outpouring of friendly support from her neighbors, and she and Theus began to speak about the people of the village. Theus sat back and smiled as he listened to the girl take him on a verbal tour of the community and its residents. When her father came by to provide a loaf of bread for Theus to eat, they both shared pieces of the plain brown baked good while the girl continued to chat. Not until Theus’s bowl of fish stew arrived did Halcyon stand up.
“Thank you,” she said with shining eyes. “Thank you for saving me, and thank you for coming back!”
The tavern roomed filled up as more of the residents of the village came in at the end of the day.
When the tavernkeeper came to take Theus’s bowl, the visitor stood up. “I’d like to get a good night’s rest,” he told his host. “Will you rent a room to me?”
“No, but I’ll give you one,” the man repeated his earlier offer. “Go upstairs and take the first door on the left.”
Theus spent two days in the village, resting and healing. He found that while he had gone to the village to let himself heal, he was asked to heal several other residents of the small settlement. Between the common remedy ingredients he carried and the ingredients the village members managed to scrape together from their scattered homes, he concocted a dozen remedies that he administered to most of his patients.
For the other patients, he wrote down the list of ingredients that were needed, and directions on how to combine them. He hoped that someone from the village would be soon bound down the river to trade goods in a larger city, where the correct supplies would be available.
Halcyon spend the first day of his visit to the village staying with him, expressing her interest in learning how to heal people.
“Maybe I could become the doctor for our village,” she mused when they ate lunch. “We’ve never had one that I know of.”
The following day, she was back at work in the tavern and down on the docks, chatting with the fishermen.
“She doesn’t stick to any one thing too long,” her father consoled Theus as the two watched her walk towards the docks after she helped clean the post-breakfast kitchen. “Besides watching the boys, that is,” the man clarified. “She’s been going down to the docks to watch the young fishermen for two years now. That’s why she was down there and got that spider bite you had to save her from.”
Theus thought about the girl, isolated in the small village. It was not much different from the isolation he had known while growing up on the farm in the Jewel Hills. He’d have wanted to look for something more exciting too, if his family had been able to spare him from the chores needed to keep the farm producing enough food to feed the family. And eventually, even that hadn’t worked, he reflected.
He spent the day offering medical help to a few visitors, but mostly just contemplating the future. He had ideas about what he could do in Southsand, vague ideas that he contemplated and tried to analyze and flesh out, to determine if they were practical or not.
The following morning, Theus bid farewell after breakfast.
“Will we see you again sometime soon?” the tavern host asked.
“I don’t know,” Theus shook his head with a half-smile. “If I happen to be in the area, I’ll try to stop by,” he promised. Once he was outside the tavern he oriented himself in the sunny morning, and took his first magic step of the day.
He was on his way to Exlive. After that he’d pass through Steep Rise. And after that he’d arrive in Southsand. It was the same journey he had made months earlier, when he’d been on his way to rescue Amelia, the first time he’d ventured forth using the powers of white magic.
On that journey he’d been fearful, afraid of Donal, afraid of defeat and death.
Now, he found that he was strangely less fearful. He didn’t fear Donal, or even death. He only feared failure. He didn’t want to let Donal and Ind’Petro and their demon allies win the battle, and be set free on a defenseless world. Theus wanted to win, at any cost.
When he was out in the countryside, he stopped taking the magical steps that covered ground quickly, and he resumed practicing flight, pressing and directing flows of air that propelled him upward and forward. He even practiced moving backwards in the sky, once he was airborne. By the time he was done with his practice, and as the sun began to set, he reached Exlive, and he took a room for the night in an inn near the waterfront.
The city was tenser than before, and less friendly than before. He listened to the conversations in the dining room of his inn, where he heard that the reduction in shipping to Steep Rise and Southsand had hurt the Exlive economy, putting sailors and traders out of work.
He left that city in the morning, and moved further south. Theus arrived in the vicinity of Steep Rise in the afternoon. He cautiously kept to himself in the city, and spent the night in an inn there. In the morning, he felt confident that his leg was whole and healed. He was in the best shape he was going to be in. It was time to move on to Southsand.
Chapter 23
Theus ate breakfast in Steep Rise. He left his inn by the harbor, and looked up at the hill on the southeastern side of the city. High up on the hill, still prominent, stood the white palace that had once been the home to Amelia and Amory and their family. If he succeeded in Southsand, Theus told himself, Amory and Redford and other supporters would be likely to win back that palace, and re-establish the rule of the native dynastic family.
He doubted that Amelia was likely to return for more than visits though. It seemed clear that her path in life had diverged, and moved to Great Forks and Stoke. If he hadn’t rescued her, and taken her to Duchess Holstem’s estate, she wouldn’t have met Forgon, and fallen in love with him, Theus thought.
If he hadn’t happened to be on a ship that had been taken by Southsand pirates, he wouldn’t have ever been diverted to Southsand himself, Theus realized. Was he destined to fight Donal eventually, he wondered? Would Limber have expected Theus to fulfill all the duties he had assumed, if the boy hadn’t h
ad any notion of the terrible evil that had risen in the south?
It seemed so. Theus had the blood of old Limber in his veins, and so seemed to have been destined to have to fight the battles he faced. In that sense, seeing Donal while only a lowly slave in the Southsand palace had been an advantage, strangely enough.
There was no point in procrastinating any further, he knew. He faced south, and he embraced the sunlight and his magical powers, and he took a step into the rugged mountain countryside. Then he took another, and a third, which put him on the shore line. With a smile, he engaged his magical control of the winds, and began to fly upward, scouting the coast to determine how far he had to go to reach Southsand.
A fishing village was just a mile south along the coast, and three trading ships were visible in the sea lanes off the coast. The shipping traffic showed that the Southsand port had to be nearby, so Theus flew over the fishing village, and around a promontory that jutted out into the ocean. When he cleared the point of land, he spotted Southsand city and its suburbs.
He gave a sigh, and landed on the firm sand of the strip of beach that lay between the ocean waters and the rocky cliffs behind. With that, he proceeded to walk, and by noon he reached the gates of the city. He had arrived at Southsand.
The sight of the gate to the city meant that his life as he had known it was approaching a turning point. Theus was convinced that he faced a battle to the death with Donal, as well as in his effort to destroy the god Ind’Petro. The double challenge would leave him dead, or alive but wounded – there was no way he could foresee not being pushed beyond the boundaries of all that he knew or had experienced in such a trial.
Tangled Engagements (The Memory Stones Series Book 4) Page 24