The Sorcerer's Return (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  “Perhaps, but the thing gives me the creeps. How long will you be gone?”

  “It will take a week and a half to reach Brelland. I cannot say how long it will take to align and join the stones. It could take another week, or even two, to get the three gates working.”

  “Why so long? Did you not make one to Southport in a night?”

  “Although the distance is only a little farther, these gates are vastly more complex. The one we made here was designed to accommodate a handful of people. These must unerringly move the population of the entire city. The slightest flaw could result in disaster for hundreds, maybe thousands, of people.”

  Miranda entwined her arm with Azerick’s and leaned against his shoulder. “I will miss you.”

  “I do not see why. I have not been pleasantly social since I returned.”

  “I am the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of North Haven. I understand the difficulties of leadership. This is a challenging time, and you must consider the welfare of a nation, not just your wife. But know this, mister,” Miranda warned as she poked a finger into Azerick’s shoulder, “your pass expires when this is all over.”

  Azerick smiled at his wife. “That certainly sounds ominous.”

  “I have made a list of the things you are going to do to return to my good graces. I must warn you, it is extensive and growing daily, so I do not recommend you dawdle in defeating these false gods.”

  “With encouragement like that, I shall go strike them down before lunch.”

  The Rook watched the sparring matches from the shadows of a distant building. The sorcerer’s abominable son was making short work of a slightly older boy, a boy Daebian would exceed in apparent age in a matter of months. In the several months The Rook had been working in the guise of a lowly blacksmith, the boy had aged nearly two years.

  The task tested the limits of his patience, but the sorcerer was too powerful to risk a direct confrontation. Killing a man is easy and rarely takes a great deal of imagination, but to destroy someone without shedding a drop of blood was a true art form. His contract was to kill the sorcerer, but the Rook figured his employer would not object to a more painful end. Now that Lord Giles had left the school with his other monstrous child, he would kill the boy. It was none too soon. Already people were inquiring about his rapidly deteriorating health as he consumed this shell.

  The Rook considered killing the wife too. Would it cause the sorcerer more pain to lose them both at the same time, or would experiencing the woman’s grief over her son cause a greater amount of pain? To delay her death could cause undue risk to himself. No, let her grief rain down upon the sorcerer and drown him in their shared sorrow. Once the sorcerer experienced the full impact of his loss and failure, the Rook could move against him directly. Even if the sorcerer managed to destroy him, the Rook’s soul would be at peace knowing he had succeeded in destroying his target.

  He watched the sun’s slow decline with the attentiveness and patience any enemy required. The Rook counted his heartbeats, tens of thousands in number, before stealing out of the bunkhouse he shared with a dozen other men. No one sensed his departure, just as no one would detect his return.

  The Rook approached the tower under the cover of darkness, carefully noting the roving guards’ positions. He was not too concerned with them. Even without his abyssal skill in manipulating shadows, his lifetime of being a preeminent assassin ensured he would go undetected. The wards protecting the tower were a greater problem, but only marginally.

  His skill in disabling wards allowed him to breach the foyer of the new tower with a moderate amount of exertion. Subtle magic like illusions and unraveling the spells of other wizards had always been his strongest magical ability. Hurling balls of fire and turning his enemies to ash with powerful strokes of lightning were never his forte.

  He had spent months learning the routines of everyone who went in or out of the tower or patrolled the grounds. His humiliation at being brought down by a pathetic goblin would not be repeated. The creature called Grick had been an unexpected variable, one that his overconfidence had allowed to become a critical factor. He might still decide to kill the creature after this was done. But doing so would acknowledge the goblin as being worthy of his attention. It was a choice made difficult by his overdeveloped pride and ego.

  The Rook reached the landing to the woman’s suite of rooms. It would be a simple matter to creep in and slit her throat, but he decided to leave her for now. Let her tears rain down upon the sorcerer and drown him in her anguish. Only then would the Rook finish dissecting the sorcerer’s world and take away everything he held dear.

  He crept up the stairs to the floor above. Daebian’s rooms were to his left, the abomination’s to the right. He was with his father and would pose no unexpected variables this night. The Rook had watched the creature on the practice field. He knew Raijaun wielded powerful magic and would be an insurmountable foe if not taken completely by surprise.

  Both rooms had supremely well-made wards upon the doors. There was a foreign element to them that made him think the demonic freak had crafted them, or at least modified those placed there by the sorcerer. It was a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. All magic had its roots buried within the same Source, no matter how deviated a path from which it may come. A lock, no matter how masterfully crafted, was still a lock and could be picked given enough patience and skill.

  Unraveling the wards protecting the rooms beyond was an arduous task, but the Rook was emboldened by the Sorcerer and his progeny’s absence. It took far longer to breach the room than he had initially planned, but it was within the allowable timeframe. It was still dark out and at least two hours before anyone would began stirring within the tower.

  The Rook scanned the first room for a full minute before stepping inside. He cast a strong but simple spell to prevent any noise from traveling beyond this or next chamber’s walls instead of silencing himself. The Rook seldom made mistakes, but on the rare occasion he did, like with the Sorcerer’s assassination, he never repeated them. His spell allowed him to hear everything within the room yet would not alert anyone outside no matter how much noise he made.

  The assassin reached the center of the room when he felt a slight shift in the air currents. He spun, blade at the ready as the door clicked shut. A deeper shade of black separated from the shadows against the wall.

  “Did you think I would not recognize you, assassin? I spent a decade tracking you, crossing blades with you and barely surviving. I would know you no matter what face you wore.”

  The Rook smiled and stood up straight from his half-crouched position. “Well well, if it isn’t my old friend Jansen. How long have you known?”

  “I suspected something off about you the day you showed up. I was all but certain of who you were weeks ago and have been waiting for you to make your move ever since. I just needed you to reveal yourself so I could finally kill you once and for all.”

  “You are getting a little long in the tooth, Jansen. I am far more than what I once was, and you are past your prime.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “I guess we will have to see.”

  Deep within Jansen’s heart, he knew the Rook would one day return. When Lord Giles seemingly rose from the dead, he was certain the assassin would eventually follow. The few people who truly knew the former Blackguard said he was obsessed with the Rook, and he admitted they were probably right. But obsession did not always mean a person was wrong. Three times he faced the Rook, and three times he barely escaped with his life. This time would be different. He knew how the assassin fought, and he no longer concerned himself with surviving the encounter. The Rook would die tonight even if it cost him his life to achieve it.

  Jansen moved first, leaping at the assassin with both his blades twirling in a dance of death. The Rook moved like a snake, leaning, ducking, and darting away from the lethal swipes with uncanny speed and agility. The assassin’s weapon of choice was a large
knife, ill-suited for a duel against an opponent wielding heavier blades with a greater reach. This made for an eerily quiet battle. Only the men’s breathing, the slap of a hand blocking the forearm, or the grunt resulting from a punch or kick broke the silence of the room.

  Borrowing from a painful lesson the Rook had taught him, Jansen swept his foot around in a swift arc, the small blade attached to the toe of his boot cutting open the Rook’s shirt and several layers of flesh beneath. The assassin leapt backward, narrowly avoiding a more debilitating strike, and nodded his approval.

  The Rook burst into a flurry of activity, slashing and stabbing at the former Blackguard captain and forcing him to back across the room as he desperately fended off the attacks. Jansen broke his retreat by lunging forward and blocking the next strike with his forearm. He tried to bring his other blade around, but the Rook grabbed his wrist in a vise-like grip.

  Jansen tried to kick at the Rook’s groin with his toe blade, but the Rook used their clasped arms as leverage and flipped over the weapon master’s head. The assassin twisted in midair, breaking the grip on each other’s wrists, and landed a kick to Jansen’s back. Jansen rolled with the strike to absorb as much of the blow as he could and to put some distance between them.

  In the split second it took him to roll to his feet, the Rook was on him, stabbing for his neck then heart as he stood. Jansen once more found himself on the defensive and in a poor position to counterattack. He knew then what he would have to do. Deep down, he had always known how their final battle would end.

  Jansen swept his sword in a powerful, horizontal arc. The Rook nearly folding himself in half as the blade swished past his stomach and buried his knife into Jansen’s chest before the fighter could bring it back in to block. Jansen did not attempt to block the thrust. He dropped his sword the moment the Rook lunged in and grabbed his arm with his now free hand, pulling them together as he thrust his other sword deep into the assassin’s stomach.

  “I got you now, you son of a bitch,” Jansen hissed out with a spattering of blood. “Now I can follow you to the abyss and make sure you stay there!”

  “You stupid fool. There was once a time where your sacrifice may have meant something, but that time is gone. You managed to destroy this shell, but I can simply take another. Perhaps I will take the mother or the boy.”

  “Or perhaps I will take you,” Daebian said as he buried his knife into the Rook’s back.

  The Rook felt his panic surge as he tried to escape the dying mortal body, but he could not as an unseen force seemed to grab hold of his spectral form and began drawing it into some dark oblivion. Klaraxis rejoiced in the assassin’s silent screams as he devoured the creature that had caused so many problems of late.

  The one called Jansen still clings to life. If you hurry, I can consume his soul as well.

  Daebian looked into Jansen’s dying eyes as he sat crumpled against the wall. “No. I liked Jansen. He deserves to rest well.”

  You weaken yourself with your pointless sentimentality! You will never achieve your desires if you limit me to the pathetic life forces of lowly animals!

  “You know nothing of my desires, demon. No one does. I gave you the assassin. Be content with that.”

  You know people like you and I can never be content. To settle for contentedness is to limit yourself and deny your own desires.

  “Perhaps, but I will not allow anything to control me, including my desires.” Daebian left his warning to the demon hanging in the air as he stepped out of his room and shouted down the stairs. “Mother, there are dead people in my room! Mother!”

  Miranda appeared at the top of the stairs in moments, holding her robe closed with one hand and gripping a light sword in the other. “What is it? What happened?”

  “Someone came in my room. Jansen killed him but he got stabbed too,” Daebian explained without emotion.

  “Dear gods, are you all right?” Miranda asked and searched her son for any injuries.

  Daebian stepped away and slapped at her probing hands. “I’m fine, Mother.”

  Miranda grasped his shoulder and ushered him down the stairs. “Come, we need to get Allister and Rusty.”

  “We need to get a maid to clean up my room,” Daebian muttered under his breath.

  It was a somber mood around the breakfast table that morning. No one had returned to sleep after learning of the foiled attack and Jansen’s death.

  “Have we learned anything about this assassin?” Miranda asked.

  “We know he was adept at using magic,” Rusty answered. “He disassembled the wards in the tower and was able to raise a barrier of silence inside Daebian’s room.”

  “The fact he was able to match Jansen in a fight shows he was a master of the blade as well,” Alex added.

  “Thank the gods Jansen was there and able to kill him before he reached Daebian. Why would someone want to kill my son? He is just a boy!”

  Allister spoke up. “He is Azerick’s son. My guess is our enemies wished to cause grief in hopes of distracting him from his preparations. A better question is what was Jansen doing in Daebian’s rooms?”

  “What are you saying? I don’t care what he was doing. He saved my son’s life!”

  “I am saying Jansen either saw the man sneaking into the tower or he suspected the man had ill intent and had been watching him. Either way, I do not understand why he did not raise an alarm.”

  “Unfortunately, that answer died with Jansen,” Alex said. “He is a hero many times over, and we will send him to the gods as such.”

  All heads turned as Brother Thomas entered the dining room and sat at the table. He had taken charge of both the bodies for final rites.

  “Thomas, we were just discussing last night’s events. Do you bring us any news?” Allister asked the cleric.

  “Ken identified the man as Carl Rothschild. Simon hired him on as a general blacksmith about eight months ago. He said the man was competent enough in his duties making nails, horseshoes, and such, but he often watched the sparring matches on his breaks. Ken said he felt uneasy around the man.”

  “An assassin, a mage, and a master swordsman. The man certainly had many talents,” Allister grumbled.

  “They may not have all been naturally acquired.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The man showed signs of significant premature aging. I found some residual dark energy tainting the man’s flesh. I believe he was possessed by some abyssal entity.”

  Miranda slammed the table with her fist. “I live in an armed camp preparing to battle ancient gods, and demon possessed assassins try to kill my son! What else must we endure?”

  Rusty grabbed at Miranda’s anguish-driven question. “That brings us to another issue I strongly believe needs addressing. Our students have been enduring these brutal training exercises for more than a year now. In that time, seven have died and dozens seriously injured. How much longer are we going to continue this? How many more students are going to have to die before we take a stand against this brutality?”

  “I have broached the topic several times, and each time Azerick has been unbending,” Allister said.

  “He has become fanatical; he is obsessed with these Scions that no one else seems to know anything about.”

  “We are all aware of the attacks on Bruneford’s Mill and The Academy. Do you doubt their veracity?”

  “I acknowledge the fact there have been deadly attacks by these monsters, but both time they were defeated by a population totally unprepared for them. We are no longer unprepared. People around the kingdom are training and on guard for more incursions. Last month, several hundred of these things struck Brightridge. The army crushed them before they could breach the walls.”

  “Azerick says what we see slipping through is but a trickle from a sea of invaders that manage to slip through the cracks he works diligently to stem. Do you doubt his word?”

  “I do not doubt his word, but I must question his assessment of the situat
ion. I am not suggesting we lower our guard, only that we readjust our curriculum to a more moderate level to prevent more injuries.”

  “Azerick is adamant about his training and preparations,” Allister argued. “He is not going to budge on this.”

  “Then we have to try harder to convince him.”

  Miranda interrupted their debate. “Has anyone seen Daebian?”

  “I think he said he wanted to go for a ride today,” Alex answered.

  “After what just happened? I told him I did not want him out of my sight!”

  Daebian knew everyone was going to make a huge fuss about what happened in his room last night, so he took his breakfast from the kitchen and ate it on the way to the stables. Mother wanted to watch him like a hen on an egg. He would have none of that. Klaraxis explained who, or what, the assassin was, and it was very unlikely there was another. It was not as though he was defenseless. He knew the man was up to no good for weeks. His entire countenance and behavior spoke of ill intent. He marveled at how oblivious everyone was—except Jansen. He almost felt some regret for not having intervened sooner. Oh well, it was Jansen’s problem, not his.

  It was still early, but the grounds were abuzz with activity thanks to the failed assassination. Twice as many martial students were making roving patrols, each with at least one adept or full mage amongst them. Peck was up feeding the horses, which was not unusual at all. He was often one of the earliest risers. Daebian failed to comprehend his dedication to such a mundane existence.

  “Peck, I need a horse,” Daebian loudly announced as he entered the enormous stable.

  Peck emerged from one of the stalls with a bucket of oats. “Um, okay. Pick one I suppose.”

  “I want that black stallion I see you on all the time.”

  Peck shifted his feet nervously as he stammered, “Um, you should probably take another one. Newmoon is pretty fiery and can be downright mean with people he is not used to.”

  Daebian stepped close to the stableman and rose up on his toes just a bit to so he could look down on Peck. “I want the black stallion. Is that a problem, Peck?”