Split the Party

by Drew Hayes

  “Sometimes, we can create pools in the stream, if we stick with the analogy.” Dejy reached back to the glowing rectangle and began to draw with his finger, creating bright blue shapes seemingly out of nowhere. He made a stick-figure person, then a sloppily drawn sword. Around them, he drew little arrows that went into and out of his creations, easily discernible as the stream he was talking about.

  “Everyone has a little magic built up inside them. However, mages—be they wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, shamans, or any other obscure classification of spell caster—have the ability to create pools of this energy—called mana when it’s out of the stream—in themselves. As magic flows through us, we skim a little off the top and keep it for ourselves, not unlike an unscrupulous tax collector. However, we are merely borrowing the mana, as we give it back in the casting of spells. The more training you have, the more mana you can hold in your pool and the more magic you can wield before waiting for the stream to refill you. With me so far?”

  Though writing furiously on one of his pieces of parchment, Grumph managed a quick bob of the head so that Dejy knew he was keeping up. Nothing was terribly hard to grasp in Dejy’s analogy, yet still Grumph took careful notes. He’d done enough work at building and brewing to know that the fundamentals of every craft were the things that came up again and again.

  “Good. Now, enchanted items are ones where a mage has constructed an artificial way to restrain or direct the magic as it flows through a tool, not unlike a dam. A simple enchantment might be the ability to have a sword be sharper when swung. In that case, the mage merely creates a spell that is being fueled by the magic already weaving through the sword. If one were to make something more powerful, they could create a pool in the sword, filling it with their own magic, so that the sword could be lit on fire. Anyone could use the blade, though a mage would be needed to refill it after the power was used. The most powerful kind of enchantment would be not only to give the sword a pool of its own and the ability to light on fire, but also to connect it to the stream in a way that allowed for it to refill automatically, just as a mage would. It takes a very gifted mage to create those sorts of items.”

  “Am I to enchant something?” Grumph was enjoying the lesson, though he’d slowed his writing as he began to wonder how learning to make magical items was relevant to a wizard of his level.

  “Not for a long while,” Dejy assured him. “But I wanted you to have a firm understanding of how magic and your own ability to store mana work. As it stands, your two biggest weaknesses are the limited number of spells you can cast and how little mana you’re able to store. While I plan to train you on the former in classes and practice, deepening one’s mana pool is more difficult. It’s akin to trying to build up strength: a matter done best with time and effort.”

  “So I work around it,” Grumph said. He’d expected this much; despite all the effort he’d put in on their weeks of travel, his spell-casting power was growing slowly. Dejy’s analogy was spot on. It was like gaining muscle; slow, deliberate work was the only way to succeed.

  “Well, I guess you could do that,” Dejy agreed. “Or we could try and forcefully deepen your pool, which was what I had in mind.”

  Grumph said nothing. He merely waited patiently for the man in dark robes to explain. Dejy dug about in his pockets until he produced a white stone with runes etched across it. Power seemed to radiate off the object, and Grumph had to fight to keep from staring into its alabaster depths.

  “This little beauty is called a Mana Stone. Rare as all get-out, but being a big-wig in the guild has its perks. They’re fashioned for use in war time, meant as a tool to consolidate power. Mages can funnel mana into the stone, like they’re refilling an enchanted item. Then, any mage who knows the command can draw the power into themselves. A dozen weak spell casters can trade their power to an archmage, who will wield its combined might to tremendous effect. Luckily, as no one has made war with the guild in a few centuries, we now mostly use them for big enchanting projects. Or, in today’s case, training.”

  “You want to drain my magic.” Grumph eyed the stone suspiciously, beginning to notice slight curves and imperfections on its surface. The longer he looked, the more it appeared less like a rock and more like something far more insidious. Bone was white too, after all.

  “Quite the opposite,” Dejy replied. “The best way to deepen a mana pool is by draining and refilling it over and over. You’re going to burn through your mana learning the spells, and I’m going to fill you up using the stone. In that way, we tackle both of your biggest weaknesses in the same go.”

  “Seems . . . too easy,” Grumph admitted.

  “Trust me, it isn’t.” Dejy slipped the stone back into his pocket, and, as he did, a weight seemed to rise off his shoulders. “The reason we don’t use Mana Stones more frequently is because employing them hurts. A lot. Some to the one who gives the mana, but more by far to the one who receives it. They’re made that way. Power should never be freely taken from others. If mana is being forcibly moved around, then a toll has to be paid.”

  “Good.” Grumph felt his esteem for the guild, or at least whoever crafted the stones, rise. The ability to take and wield another’s power, magical or otherwise, was not thing that should be done lightly. It was reassuring to know he was joining with people who understood that. “I can handle pain.”

  “I rather thought you might be able to,” Dejy said. “But that comes later. First, we’ve got to get you emptied, and to do that, we’re going to start working on spells. Keep your quill at the ready, there won’t be time for going backward.”

  Grumph did just that, a flower of excitement blooming in his chest. For the first time since he’d picked up that dead wizard’s book, he was moving past the mere guise of being a mage. He was learning, growing, and surpassing the wizards he’d been pretending to be. While he was still worried for Thistle and the others, there was a simple truth in him that could neither be contained nor denied.

  Grumph couldn’t wait to see where this new path took him.

  * * *

  Eric and Timuscor watched the sunset as they tore into a plate of vegetables and leftover dire turkey. The meat was finally beginning to run out, and come tomorrow, Eric would have to dedicate at least a bit of his time to searching out new foodstuffs. That didn’t particularly bother him, as he was running out of places to search for books, anyway. What did nag at the back of his mind was that Thistle still refused to leave that office of his, even for meals. The plates Eric would bring up were occasionally picked at, sometimes even half-eaten, but there was no way Thistle was putting enough down to sustain himself. Not even gnomes ate that little.

  Plucking a piece of breast from the nearly picked-clean carcass on the plate before them, Eric took a moment to enjoy the sight of dusk glowing across Briarwillow’s empty streets. Amidst the worry and uncertainty and fear, he’d managed not to notice how hauntingly beautiful a place it was, now that all of its citizens had been removed. Sitting in the street, mouth full of turkey and back to the hall, it finally hit Eric that there was a silent majesty to Briarwillow in its abandoned state. He wished Thistle were with them to share in the sight. Actually, he just wished Thistle were with them at all. Without the gnome’s guidance, Eric was realizing for the first time how much they depended on their paladin, and he was feeling more lost with each passing hour.

  “If everything went well, they should be heading back around now,” Timuscor said, breaking the spell of silence cast under the waning sun’s light.

  “I’d hope they wait until morning,” Eric replied. “Though, I suppose, if they’ve got a squad of mages, perhaps night travel isn’t as difficult.”

  “Part of me was hoping to see them popping out of some magic portal today, assuring us they’d gotten help.”

  “Nice as it would have been, if they just make it back safely, that will be enough for me.” Eric spat out a small piece of bone, which bounced off the stones in the road before coming to rest se
veral feet away. “They’ll get us help. Maybe not what we were hoping for, but they’ll find some—”

  A thunderous slam, followed immediately by crashing steps, halted the words on Eric’s tongue and dried up his thoughts. It was coming from the building behind him, the one where Thistle had been holed up for two days straight. There was no mistaking the noise for anything but what it was: quick, furious steps by gnomish legs navigating a human-sized house.

  Moments later, the front door burst open and Thistle came all but exploding out of it. He looked around, eyes wild and a small book clutched tightly in his hands, before he finally noticed his friends resting their backs against the house’s front wall.

  “Timuscor!” Thistle waved the book he was holding, thumb firmly gripping his spot in the pages, and rushed over to the knight who still had an apple halfway to his mouth. “Timuscor, where did you find this book?”

  “In . . . in a basement. Of a house. Near the edge of town.” Timuscor, a man whom Eric had seen put himself in the most dangerous positions of every expedition without a second thought, was clearly rattled by this small bundle of half-mad energy.

  Thistle took in the information like it was a blow to the head, then scurried into the street, gesturing down the twists and turns.

  “Which way? North? East? We need to go back there!”

  “Thistle.” Eric stood from his restful position, dusting off his pants as he rose, and stared his friend in the eye. “Enough. We’ve held our tongues while you twisted yourself into madness upstairs, but the sun is already setting. There’s no time for an expedition out to the edge of town, not if we want to make it back safely.”

  “But I need to see what else is in there,” Thistle protested.

  “Why? What makes that place so much more special than any of the others? You need to tell us what you found in that book if you expect us to keep helping you with this. Was it a way to open the doors?”

  “The doors? Ah, right . . . the doors.” Thistle shook his head, clearing away some of the cobwebs and calming himself down. When he looked at Eric again, there was still a lunatic sheen in his eyes, but some semblance of awareness had also returned. After the past pair of days watching Thistle grow worse, Eric took it as a marked improvement.

  “No, I’ve found nothing about the doors, or the caverns, or the mountain’s purpose,” Thistle admitted. “But I may have gotten a lead on something, at long last.”

  “If it’s not one of those three, what’s there left to learn about?” Timuscor asked.

  “The starting point for all of this madness, the first piece of the puzzle we ever encountered.” Thistle raised the book until it was level with his head, and then tapped its corner to his face, just above the ear.

  “I may have found a lead on the skull. Or, to be more precise, the skull’s original owner.”

  Chapter 21

  Gabrielle was grappling with something she hadn’t had to face for a very long time. Not since Maplebark had she faced this adversary, before the adventurers died in Grumph’s tavern and thrust her into a perilous new world. This was not an enemy she could easily battle; it would not be merely beaten into submission, not even if she still had her axe.

  For the first time in months, Gabrielle was fighting boredom. With Grumph in training, Fritz handling business, and her status as a non-mage confining her to Fritz’s quarters, there was little for her to do. Worse, there was almost nothing for her to be afraid of. Fear and caution had defined her life since they left Maplebark: watching the roads for signs of monsters, sleeping uneasily lest they be ambushed before they could wake, living in constant readiness for action. It all took a toll on her, consuming a vast amount of mental energy. Now that she was safe, that energy came bounding back, and the only place she had to direct it toward was, unfortunately, aimless worry.

  She worried about Grumph passing his trials. She worried about Thistle, Eric, and Timuscor stuck in the strange, cursed town of Briarwillow. She worried about her family, her mother and father in Maplebark as much as her tribe in the forest. They’d worked so hard to be sure the king of Solium had no reason to raze their precious town, but with no way to check in, her imagination filled Gabrielle’s mind with images of slaughter. Yet, it wasn’t even for the family she couldn’t see that Gabrielle worried the most. That honor was reserved for herself.

  Gabrielle worried—feared really—that she was nearing the edge of how well she could continue to fulfill her role. The others were getting stronger: Eric more confident in his stealth, Thistle gaining new paladin powers, Grumph getting an education under proper mages, and Timuscor was already a handy fighter. All it felt like she had were anger issues and a broken axe. She hadn’t even been able to best a lowly bandit in matched battle. Since the day Grumph took the spell book and she the axe, Gabrielle had feared that she wasn’t strong enough to fill the role of barbarian. At the rate her party was growing, it seemed that fear would be realized sooner rather than later.

  These were the sorts of thoughts muddling around in her head when the door opened and Fritz came bustling through, arms piled high with scrolls and parchment.

  “Afternoon!” Fritz said, dumping the lot of her load unceremoniously on the floor.

  “Afternoon,” Gabrielle replied, staring uncertainly at the clutter of paper now littering the floor. “Do you need a hand with that?”

  “This? Gods no; if I never see another order slip or receipt it will be too soon. There are a lot of things I love about being a kingdom-trotting trader, but the paperwork is far from one of them. I pay a few of the lower-ranked mages to swing through here and keep things organized.” Fritz walked over the papers, stepping on more than a few, and sank into one of her many living-room chairs. “So, how was your first day by your lonesome?”

  “To be honest? Strange. I really didn’t know what to do with myself, having no one to fight and no danger to watch for. I mostly explored your estate,” Gabrielle admitted. She hadn’t even taken the time to don her armor that morning, instead wearing simple traveling clothes built for comfort. It was nice to move so freely again, but at the same time, she felt . . . wrong. Too light, too vulnerable. She missed the weight of her armor and the power it carried.

  “You mean my quarters,” Fritz corrected.

  “Ten bedrooms, two kitchens, three living rooms like this, and a massive outdoor garden. I may not know magic or trading, but I know an estate when I see one. Makes me wonder how one trader could possibly be worth this much to a guild of magic users.”

  “I always say it’s the three Cs: Consistency, Customer Service, and Cunning. That last bit comes in handy for making people see the need for enchanted items, even if they have more mundane solutions. Speaking of, didn’t you and I have a shopping trip on the books?”

  Gabrielle could see it was a deflection—she’d spent enough time around Thistle to know conversational misdirection when she saw it—but she decided not to push the issue. After all, Fritz had helped them every step of the way; without the elf, they likely never would have made it to Cadence Hollow, let alone gotten into the guild to ask for aid. If Fritz wanted to have some harmless secrets, it was no place of Gabrielle’s to try and pull them out of her. So long as they remained harmless, of course.

  “That we did. Do you know of any good smiths in town? I’d like to get an axe that’s a bit sturdier this time around.”

  “Good smiths? Gabrielle, this is Cadence Hollow, a town built on merchants and money. Short of a kingdom capital, here is where you can find the most amazing, well-crafted weaponry in the land, coupled with whatever enchantment you might happen to desire.”

  “Well, that sounds wonderful,” Gabrielle said.

  “It is. Unfortunately, given how you reacted when I told you the price of some of my wares, I doubt you’ll be able to pick up those sorts of items,” Fritz clarified. “But we can still find you something nice. Plus, if I do say so myself, I am one demon of a haggler when the occasion demands. Mark my words, you shall have
an axe by this day’s end.”

  “If that’s the plan, then we should probably get going.” Gabrielle rose from her own chair, mildly surprised at the ease of the action until she remembered her demon-scale garb was tucked away in one of Fritz’s bedrooms. “Let me go put on my armor.”

  “Heavens no, that’s the last thing I want you to do.” Fritz hopped up out of the chair and grabbed Gabrielle lightly by the shoulder. “Once they know you can actually use the weapon, they’ve got the power in a sale. We’re shopping for this like it’s nothing more than a trinket, a bauble to set over the fireplace. First rule of negotiation: never give away any more information than you have to.”

  “I’m fairly certain that’s also one of the main rules in battle,” Gabrielle said.

  “That’s only fitting. After all, negotiation is a battle of its own. Only we fight with money instead of weapons. Come, my little barbarian; come and see my battlefield.”

  * * *

  Thistle laid the map out across the desk, sending the sides spilling over the edge until they hung down like flat, wagging tongues. He paid these no mind, as his eyes were on the center continent—one with which everyone in the room was intimately familiar. His small hand traced a line across it, beginning at the Endless Ocean and going north until a finger rested directly on the kingdom’s name, surrounded by hand-drawn etchings of mountains.

  “Baltmur,” Thistle said, tapping it gently. “A small kingdom surrounded by mountains and cliffs, built into rock. Between it and the nearest kingdom, Alcatham, is the massive Hooran desert. And the city on the edge of that border is us, right here in Briarwillow.”

  “Everyone knows about the Hooran desert,” Eric said. “It’s said to be one of the deadliest places in all the seven kingdoms.”