“That’s our cue,” Lucinda said.
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” Adelia confessed. “Why can’t we convince one of the other prisoners to do this?”
The sorceress offered a weary grin. “As I’ve told you before, polymorphing a lycanthrope is a nearly impossible task. Their…‘ingredients’ are substantially different than yours and mine.”
“At least we know they can change back,” Adelia said. “You’re sure this won’t be permanent? That’s what you thought about Merlin, you know.”
“I am certain, my dear. And while you perform your task, I’ll convince our new friend to help us with the one we came to Sungarden for in the first place.”
Adelia blew out a deep breath but finally nodded. “Do it.”
While the rest of the prisoners watched with curiosity, Lucinda set to work, lifting her hands and pointing her digits at the girl. The telltale light of her magic encompassed Adelia, and several audible gasps filled the cells.
“I know it sounds unbelievable, but it may be true,” they heard Reya raise her voice from down the hall.
When the light subsided, Adelia the girl was gone. A small white mouse was left in her place. Of all those people who were imprisoned there, perhaps none were so perplexed by her transformation as Merlin. He was fixated on her, and had Lucinda not pushed him aside, he would have continued to inch closer and closer to his friend.
“Can you understand me, Miss Kreegan?” the sorceress asked.
The mouse gave no indication that she did, but her whiskers twitched, and she looked about at her suddenly large surroundings.
“It will be just as we talked about. Bring us the keys, and we’ll handle the rest.” Lucinda kneeled and gave the mouse a subtle nudge, pointing her in the direction of the guard’s chamber.
“What is going on here?” Orson asked as Adelia began the trek across the stone hall. “Are you not prisoners then?”
“In a few moments, I hope none of us shall be,” Lucinda insisted. “We’ve come to get you out—all of you. Sungarden was your home, but you must see that as a distant memory. You can forge a new life elsewhere, and we want to help.”
“Who are you?” the apothecary asked.
The sorceress offered a beaming smile. “I’m hoping we can be mutually beneficial acquaintances. You see, we came to Sungarden specifically for you. We had heard you had been working on ways to negate magic and other arcane influences. What I saw of you at the ball proves that suspicion, I think.
“But now that you’ve found yourself in this predicament, perhaps we can offer you—and the rest of the shapeshifters here—freedom and prosperity. While Sungarden has forsaken you, Forsynthia will surely welcome you. All you need to do is trust in me. It’s no large task when a noose is your only other option. I don’t think any could argue that.”
Orson swallowed away his tension. “What must we do?”
The sorceress offered up her brightest smile once more. “First, we wait for her.” She pointed to the guard’s chamber, and both watched the little white mouse scurry onto the chair and then up to the table. Once she was there, Adelia pushed the keys off that perch and onto the ground.
“You planned to be here,” Orson surmised.
“Reya believes you to be a good person. Likewise, I’ll not see innocent people condemned because of a little magic.”
The man arched his eyebrow but said nothing in reply.
Lucinda noticed that hesitation as well but shook her head. “You know now why we’re here. It would be a measure of good faith if you were to help us with our dilemma.” She swept Merlin close to that set of dividing bars and turned him to Orson. “This dapper young fellow is actually no more than a cat in people’s clothing. Usually, my magic expires after a few hours, but it’s been days, and he’s shown no signs of reverting to his true form. I was hoping you could use your newfound power to change him back.”
“I’d be happy to try,” he said.
As he placed his hand upon Merlin, the sorceress turned toward the gate of the cell. Adelia pressed the keys across the uneven stone floor. A moment later, they arrived in Lucinda’s waiting hand.
When the sorceress rose once more, she was faced with a perturbed gaze from the shapeshifting apothecary. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
Orson crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s like nothing I’ve encountered before. I’m trying to dismiss the magic, but it’s just too strong.”
Lucinda narrowed her eyes as she considered that possibility. Her eyes flashed wide then as she passed a glance to the small mouse at her feet. “What about her? Can you change her back?”
“If your magic has grown more powerful than my…ability can handle, I don’t believe we’d have any better luck.”
“Humor me,” the sorceress bade with a saccharine smile angling her lips.
The apothecary nodded and bent low, reaching through the bars to touch the mouse. As soon as his fingers landed upon her fuzzy, strange form, a ball of darkness enveloped the area. When it subsided, the mouse was gone, and in its place, the aspiring sage’s apprentice stood.
A meager sigh of relief pressed through Lucinda’s lips, and she draped her hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“I’m ready,” Adelia said. “Do it.”
Lucinda’s brow furrowed. “Do what, my dear?”
“Change me. I’ll go and get the keys, like we planned.”
The older sorceress lifted the keys and dangled them before the girl. “You really don’t remember getting them?”
“Did I?” Adelia asked.
“Interesting,” Lucinda pondered. She waved the notion away, though. “It’s something we can consider later. For now, we have to move on to step three of our plan.”
“Getting out and rushing the guards,” one of the other prisoners said.
Lucinda scoffed at him. “I would hope I could convince you to use a little more finesse. It’s a long way between here and the bridge out of Sungarden. We’ll need more than just a mad rush to find our way to safety.”
“What did you have in mind?” Orson asked.
“In our current predicament, our best option would be stealth. We must not let the guards know we’ve left the prison.” At that, Lucinda twirled the keys around her fingers. A quick approach to the cell and the sorceress was working on their way to freedom. Once their cell was unlocked, she worked on the others as well. She warned with a quiet, stern voice that no one was to venture out of the cells until they were all ready to depart. Finally, she returned the keys to the guard’s desk, situating them as best she could surmise their position from before.
“Best of luck to you on your shift,” she heard Reya bid.
Lucinda scurried back to her cage before the guard rounded the corner. The cell door was shut once more, but the lock was not in place. As Dale drew closer, those who dwelled in the prison shared tenuous glances with one another.
The guard sighed, unsure of how he should have felt about the goings-on in his formerly quiet, peaceful city. He made his way around the desk and pulled the chair out. His vision settled on his keys, in a place upon the desk he didn’t normally place them.
Dale furrowed his brow and walked back into the corridor. All eyes landed on him, and he could feel the hairs on his arm standing on end. He averted his gaze from them, bowing toward the floor. The young fellow traced the intricacies of the stone floor and moved along toward the bars. When he reached the middle of the cell door, he noticed something odd. A flash of understanding widened his eyes, and his hand dropped to the pommel of his sword.
“Change of plans!” Lucinda insisted. With a wave of her hands, a bright white sphere blinded everyone in attendance. When it subsided, the door to the cell had been transformed—though only slightly so. Everything past the crossbars at the top and bottom had been removed, and the entire thing was narrowed, shrunken sideways. “Help me,” she cried.
Merlin, Adelia, and one of the other prisoners moved to a
ssist, pressing forward on that malformed gate. Dale couldn’t pull his weapon out of its scabbard before he was pushed back into the guard’s quarters. Another wave of Lucinda’s hand summoned a second flash of light. When it subsided, Dale arched an eyebrow and stared ahead.
The bars had reverted to their original size, but they extended into the brickwork of the doorway. The guard was trapped behind them, and there was no budging them, even when he pushed with all his might.
“Have no fear,” Lucinda said. “After all, you have the keys.”
Another flash of realization reached Dale, and he turned around to his desk once more. As he lunged for the tools of his salvation, though, the telltale white light returned. He skittered to a stop and stared at the keys, which had been transformed into strange wooden shapes instead of the toothed iron he needed to escape.
“They won’t be like that forever,” the sorceress said. “Just long enough for us to board—” She blanched as she spoke that word. “Just long enough for us to board up the corridor, that is. You’ll be out before you grow hungry, I assure you.” A subtle crack was apparent in her voice, and she looked away, almost in shame.
“It’s time,” she bade. A glance to the other prisoners had them exiting their own cells, until a crowd filled the corridor. “Let us leave this forsaken place and never return.”
Dale watched, trapped behind those bars that should have kept the werebears in check, as every single prisoner took their leave. “This definitely won’t help me come time for a promotion,” he said and let his head rest against those bars.
Chapter Ten: Setting Sungarden
Somehow, their new hideout was even more stifling than the prison. It was roomier, with air that wasn’t stale and dry, and even had some cushy places to sit, but it lacked light or the opportunity to talk or pace. Inside the shop, a score of people had to remain silent. Faced with the threat of discovery, no one sat near any windows to watch the beautiful sunset the city was known for.
Orson sat upon the counter, his legs dangling over the side. He looked about, observing all the folks he had shared the cells with. Some of them he had known carried the same strain of lycanthropy as he. Others he had discovered just as they were being led to the palace stage. One thing united them all: fear. With uncertainty before them, any moment could be their last.
Despite being in his home once again, Orson felt anything but safe. He kept sentry upon that counter, utilizing it like a lookout tower.
Still, he was surprised when his rescuer sidled up beside him. “I detect a hint of guilt from you,” Lucinda whispered. “You’re looking at those here as though you’ve done them some disservice.”
A shrug shook Orson’s weary shoulders. “I haven’t particularly accomplished what I set out to for them.”
“You were trying to cure them,” she reasoned.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“In my experience, I’ve found you cannot change who you are underneath. You can change your demeanor, your manner of speaking, your clothes—even tie a big ribbon to yourself. It doesn’t change what you truly are.”
“How true that is,” the apothecary agreed. When the woman passed a curious glance his way, he offered a half-hearted grin. “By now you know the truth about what you had heard: you believed I had been working on a way to stop magic or to at least negate its effects. Now you also know why. Even though this is who I am, what exists to tell me it must be so? We should all be free to choose our own path, no matter the hardship.
“I thought I had discovered the answers I sought. Years of trials—perhaps even decades now—I had worked on concoctions and phials, with arcane substances that would brand me a warlock. If my neighbors had discovered what I did here, they would have condemned me even without knowing of the beast that lurks beneath.
“Trial after trial, one broken hope after another, and I was no closer to a cure. I had taken insane risks and endured those failures without falter. On several occasions, I poisoned myself looking for an antidote.
“One day a few weeks ago, I felt something different,” he went on. “I suppose you could say I was embraced by a new hope. It was as if I was inspired by faraway stars, or perhaps the remnants of a deep dream. In any case, I knew what had to be done. When I woke, I knew just the potion to mix. It’s funny. Now that all this time has passed, I can’t even remember what was in the thing. But make the potion I did, for I was inspired by whatever divine force had visited me.
“Once more, I played victim to my own experiments. I couldn’t risk anyone else finding out what I was doing, so I ingested the latest potion on my own. At first, it seemed as pitiful a failure as ever. A bit of an acrid taste was all I had, like the gods were mocking me. I cursed them, and within the hour, I believed they had cursed me back. A great fire brewed in my belly, a worse pain than I’d ever endured. Every time I shift into the form of a beast, I feel the agony of my body ripping and twisting in new directions. The inferno that consumed me from within was worse than that by far. By that night, I was longing for death. But it never came.
“Somehow, amidst all the suffering, I succumbed to fatigue. I collapsed right there on the floor, and when I woke, the only thing I had earned was regret—or so I believed.
“I was still unable to halt the transformation. Try as I might, there was nothing I could do. But as the days went by, I could feel something lingering. There was something that had changed in that short while I couldn’t identify. I felt I was that much closer to the truth.
“About a week later, a new supply came in for my shop. Rather than pay for a delivery charge, I met the workers at the dock. If I could save a few coins to invest toward finding a cure, it was a worthy sacrifice.
“You know how Sungarden feels about magic, but they do make some exceptions. Nearly every ship of any renown on the southern sea employs a wizard in various tasks: speeding travel with a mighty wind or combatting the terrible creatures that rise to the surface from the deepest depths. That morning, one of the ships had their wizard, Olimer, performing a duty a touch more mundane. It sped up their process to have him enchant the various crates to float. The merchants could guide them untethered from the ship to their carts. It was something I was familiar with and something that shouldn’t have been any different from my normal routine.
“But as you can probably guess, not everything went as I expected it to. After Olimer raised the crate from the hold, he gave it a nudge in my direction. As soon as I touched it, though, it fell from the air like a stone. Lucky for us, the crate was merely filled with herbs and roots from Lustra. If they were heavy armaments instead, I suspect it might have ripped through the deck and landed back in the hold. Olimer just shrugged as though he’d seen it all before. You might know better than I, my lady, but it seems as though magic is not at all as predictable as we common folk believe it to be.”
Before he could be interrupted, Orson went on. “The wizard just set back to business right away and enchanted the crate once more. Again, I tried to shift it toward my cart, and again, it dropped to the deck. By then, I surely had Olimer’s attention. After telling the ship’s crew to unload the vessel in a more traditional manner and warning me not to touch the crate anymore, he took some special interest in my odd dilemma.
“As we moved the crate into my cart, he inquired about any special concoctions or experiments I had been working with. Like that, he had figured out my secret—well, one of them anyway. He had seen something like it before, even though I wasn’t sure what it was. Oh, I had found a way to negate magic. Dweomers and cantrips and minor enchantments fall to my touch in an instant, whether I will it or not.
“Stronger magics resist me, it seems. For some time, I believed that to be my plight regarding our lycanthropy. But I didn’t get the same…pull, like I received when trying to help your friend over there.”
Lucinda arched her eyebrow at that revelation and passed a glance toward Merlin.
“That was when I discovered the truth,” Orson said
. “I couldn’t negate the magic that would turn us into bears because it isn’t magic. It’s biology. It’s nature.”
The sorceress placed her hand atop his, and the apothecary bore a smile at the sympathetic gesture.
Adelia sprung up from her seat, just before the doorknob twisted. The muscles of every inhabitant of that place tensed as the door swung open. Sighs of relief rang out when they saw the face of a friend.
“We have a few more moments before we have to move,” Reya explained
“What’s happening out there?” Adelia asked.
The guard offered a weary grin. “Our plan is taking shape. The others are already headed for the harbor. It seems the hint Lucinda dropped for Dale in the prison helped to sell the lie better than I expected. With the sun dipping behind the western mountains, there’s no better time than now to flee. The roads will be empty, and folks will be too busy with their supper to notice our exodus.”
Hopping from the counter, Orson made his way to Reya’s side. “Thank you for doing this,” he said. “You’ve been an incredible friend.”
A pained expression was visible on the guard’s face, even in the darkness of the shop. “I only wish you had felt you could confide in me.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t risk implicating you. If they had found out you aided a shifter like me…”
“In a few hours, they’ll be sure of that,” she insisted. “Lucinda?”
The sorceress clad in purple rose and gave a gentle clap of her hands. “Who is ready to see their new home?”
*****
Lights flickered behind the windows of the buildings on that main street. They weren’t enough to illuminate the presence of the score of folks who were leaving Sungarden behind. The moon was full that night, though, and Reya watched it with a scornful gaze.
Transformed (Ancestral Magic Book 2) Page 9