The Hero's Peril (The Sorcerer's Saga Book 5)

by Rain Oxford

  “They use glass for cabinets and boxes,” I added. I studied the bread the proprietor had given us, which was not a loaf like I was used to. It was hard, so I figured it was pretty stale, but I wouldn’t complain.

  “It smelled so fresh,” Yuri complained, disheartened.

  “Well, you asked for it, and it was a gift, so deal with it.” I took a bite and nearly choked as I realized it was fresher than anything I had ever tasted in my life. And it was fantastic. Yuri tried to take his half from me, but I jerked it away. “No, I was wrong. You’re a prince; you shouldn’t have to suffer such meager gifts. I’ll eat it for you.”

  “But I’m hungry enough to eat a tree.” He froze, because he had almost walked right into a tree. “Why is there a tree inside?!”

  “Is that really any weirder than the black-and-white world or the---”

  “Yes!” he interrupted. “That’s so much weirder!”

  To shut him up, I shoved a piece of the bread into his gaping mouth and walked around the tree. I didn’t get very far before he had caught up to me and was trying to steal the rest of my treasure.

  I froze when I saw something even stranger than the tree in the middle of the hallway; there was a tiny hut with glass objects on display. These objects represented all kinds of things, from animals to people with wings, but what had caught my eye was a rose. It was only as long as my hand, with delicate red petals, flawless green leaves, and sharp thorns. I could see through it, but the glass was colored as naturally as a gem.

  “Is that for sale?” I asked the man behind the glass display shelf.

  “It sure is.”

  “It’s pretty, but we have more important matters,” Yuri said.

  I was already pulling out my coin purse and decided to ignore him. Realizing this, the man grabbed the rose and a small, black box from out of sight. He carefully set the rose in the box. “Who’s the lucky lady?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Who are you buying it for? You have that look in your eye I see every once in a while. You aren’t really seeing the rose when you look at it, you’re seeing someone who isn’t here, so that tells me it’s not for yourself.”

  “Kalyn.”

  “Good name.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Twenty-nine, ninety-nine.”

  “Um… I don’t know what that means.” I pulled out a gold coin. “Will this work?”

  He leaned on the glass shelf and pursed his lips. “Oh, you’re one of them… why didn’t you say so? Yeah, a gold coin will cover it and something else if it catches your fancy.” I handed him the coin and he bit it.

  I reminded myself not to be surprised. On Caldaca, if a wizard gave a proprietor gold, the proprietor trusted them because wizards never lied. Here, they didn’t have such rules, so it made sense that he had to check it.

  I had just never had a stranger doubt my coin before.

  Without a word, he slipped the coin into his pocket. “Did you want anything else?”

  I looked around and was about to say I didn’t, when I saw a little glass bear. It was not a scary bear; it didn’t have claws or teeth. In fact, it was smiling. “That one,” I said.

  He put the bear in another box and put both boxes in a clear bag. When he handed it to me, I expected to feel fabric, but that wasn’t what it was. It was smooth, indescribable. “Whoa.”

  The man laughed. “Don’t have plastic where you’re from, do you?”

  “Is it some kind of leather from an invisible creature?” I asked.

  “No, it’s a synthetic, man-made material. Have a good day now, and welcome to White Hills.”

  “Um… thank you.” It was a little creepy how accepting he was. “Where’s the egg?” I asked, attaching the sack to my belt.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you while you were busy buying trinkets. I’m having a hard time figuring it out. This place is full of magic.”

  “But Merlin said… wait… where is Merlin?” In my excitement, I hadn’t even realized his presence had disappeared from my side. We looked in every direction, but he was nowhere to be seen. Considering he was the only wolf we knew, it shouldn’t have been difficult to spot him in a crowd.

  I was about to call to him mentally when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Yuri and I both turned… and we both jumped. “You have blue hair!” Yuri squeaked.

  The man just grinned, not offended at all. His hair was short, spiky, and bright blue. “It came out great, right? I saw you two leaving the women’s store with the wolf. You might want to go get him before security does.”

  “We can’t find him.”

  “He’s in the comic book store.”

  “What’s a comic book store?”

  He pointed to a shop next to the one we had arrived in. “Thank you!” I shouted, grabbing Yuri’s arm and dragging him with me. The comic book store was a book shop, which I was excited about, except that the books were not like those I had read. The shop was full of shelves, and every shelf was stuffed with colorful books. Most of them had artistic drawings of battles on them. I ignored my desire to study them and instead looked for Merlin.

  I found Zuras first. He was in the back of the shop, reading one of the books. It made sense why we had arrived where we did; there was no mirror in here, except for a small one in the corner of the ceiling… which I thought was a very inconvenient place to put it.

  Bookshelves in the middle of the room made it quite difficult to maneuver. There were only three other people, but the room was hardly large enough for one person to walk around comfortably. I motioned to Yuri, who went around the other side of one of the shelves, effectively pinning Zuras into the corner. He hadn’t spotted us yet, obviously completely enthralled in his book. That, I could understand.

  There was also a white counter along the north wall, which was covered in comic books and tiny, unrealistic statues of people in weird clothes. Zuras could run behind it to bypass us, yet I was confident I could curse him before he did. As if they sensed there was a battle coming, the two other patrons put down their books and hurried out, leaving only the proprietor behind the counter, Zuras, Yuri, and me.

  I met the proprietor’s eyes and he nodded to me, as if he knew Zuras was an evil sorcerer and we were there to defeat him. There was definitely something strange about this town.

  He pointed to the mirror and I looked up. It took a moment for me to spot what he was trying to tell me; Merlin was crouched behind the counter, watching Zuras. “I’m here,” I said in his mind. “What do you want me to do?”

  “For the moment, do nothing. If he looks up from the book, distract him and draw his attention as far away from me as possible.”

  Just then, a loud woman’s voice filled the shop. “Between two and five, there will be a buy one, get one free event at the---” the rest of the sentence was cut off by an annoying scratchy sound. Yuri and I had both jumped. It was not the same voice from the black-and-white world.

  Zuras turned to us and his eyes widened with shock. Merlin lunged at him, hitting him full-force in the chest and slamming him into the wall. Merlin latched onto Zuras’s arm and pulled him away, throwing Zuras to the ground with a jerk.

  “Hey, man, no blood in my shop,” the proprietor said. “Take it outside if you’re going to fight.”

  Obligingly, Merlin let Zuras go. “He was after something on Caldaca, the monochromatic world, and the last world. Ask him what he came here for,” Merlin said.

  I glanced at Yuri, who was clutching his head in pain. “What did you come here to take?” I asked Zuras.

  “Nothing!”

  Merlin growled at him.

  Zuras sounded afraid, not angry. “Why this world? What is your plan?” I asked.

  “To read… I’ve been trying to find this book for months.” He pointed at the book on the floor, which he had dropped. “I’m not playing around right now! I just wanted a few minutes to myself!”

  “You stole from my parents!” Yuri yelled,
bracing himself on the shelf.

  “I didn’t target your parents, I just needed the egg!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I---” Zuras gasped with shock and clutched his head.

  “Not you, too!” I said. “Don’t tell us you hear voices.”

  Yuri dropped to his knees. “They won’t stop!”

  Zuras let go of his head and reached into his pocket while Merlin was distracted by Yuri. What he pulled from his pocket was similar to the sphere of light that magicians made… except it was black. Instead of being blindingly bright, it was blindingly dark, and consumed all light in the shop.

  It was pure black in an instant. I heard Merlin growling and snapping, and a couple of shelves were knocked over.

  When light returned, Yuri, Merlin, the proprietor, and I were alone. The proprietor was hiding behind the counter, Yuri was pushing a shelf off of him, and Merlin was half buried under books.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have done something.”

  “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, young sorcerer. We were all distracted by the possibility of answers. Neither of us was reminding you to use magic.”

  “It was a waste to come here; Zuras has probably already found another mirror.”

  “He ran pretty fast,” Yuri agreed. “He’s either found another mirror or he’s far enough away that we won’t catch up to him before he does. I can’t hear the voices.”

  “I doubt Alice will help us again.”

  “That’s okay. Zuras will come to us.”

  “Do you think he’s that arrogant?”

  “Regardless, he’ll be back… once he realizes he’s lost something.” He pulled a small sack out of his pocket. It was one of the sacks that Zuras had carried on his belt. “I was trying to get the egg, but it was kind of dark.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re right; he’ll return. Even if it’s not vital to his plans, whatever they may be, he’s too arrogant to let us get away with stealing it.”

  “We need to get out of here now,” Merlin said.

  “Where do we go?”

  “I will explain on the way.” He led us out of the shop and back into the hallway. We turned the corner and met another, equally large hallway… and I froze. Merlin stopped with a sigh.

  “Is that a car?” I asked, pointing to the bright red machine in the middle of the room. I ran towards it, trying hard not to bounce up and down. It didn’t resemble the car from the previous world in any way, yet I couldn’t imagine it being anything else. It looked like it was one massive piece of curved metal. Some features were black and there was glass on the front. There were windows into it, but they were too dark to see through, so I assumed the car was bigger on the inside than the outside, since that was a common effect on house windows when the houses contained that type of spell.

  “Yes, young sorcerer, it is a car, and no, you cannot drive it.”

  “Where’s the owner? I want to buy it.”

  “I doubt you can afford it,” Merlin said.

  A woman who had been walking past me overheard me. “You can’t buy the car; it’s not for sale. You have to win it.”

  “Oh! A tournament! That makes sense! What kind of tournament?”

  “Ayden!” Merlin warned.

  I realized what I was saying and blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pester you.”

  She laughed. “No worries. Welcome to White Hills. We have all kinds here.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Talk to the sheriff. He’ll explain.” With that, she walked away, leaving me more confused than ever.

  “Is there a problem here?” a man asked, stopping in front of us. “The dog can’t be in here.”

  He was a tall, muscular man with a tan shirt, dark green trousers, a silver star on his shirt, and a belt overcrowded with black gadgets. I wondered if any of them were like Zuras’s pistol-rays.

  “What’s a dog?” I asked.

  His eyebrows lifted. “Oh. You’re one of them. I thought I sensed it, but we have to be careful with strangers. Welcome to White Hills.” He looked at Merlin. “You need to be more discreet.”

  Merlin nodded. Instead of panicking, the strange man walked away.

  “I understood none of that.”

  “This is getting weirder by the minute,” Merlin agreed. “We need to figure out what is going on here.”

  “Maybe they know all about magic.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  * * *

  We walked outside into a field… except it was not a grassy field. The ground was black and solid, more like rock than dirt, and there were lines and shapes painted all over it in yellow or white. Yuri and I hesitated to step on it, but it was solid.

  There were also cars everywhere, of unimaginable colors, shapes, and sizes. Some were no bigger than the car I’d driven on the other world, while some were larger than the gobrin that had chased us in the car.

  Merlin didn’t let us soak in the sights; he led us off of the clean black ground and onto a faded gray ground, which had some holes in it. This was a road, but it was much wider than those I was used to. I realized that was because it was for cars instead of people, horses, and the occasional cart.

  “Zuras is here for a reason, and it is not to read a comic,” Merlin said. “He stole something from each of the worlds, so I think it is safe to assume he is here to steal again. Furthermore, he would not be here for any random magical item.”

  “So, we need to find something very powerful.”

  “Correct. Strangely enough, this town seems to be swimming in magic energy, but there is one spot that stands out. Moreover, I recognize the energy I sense from it.”

  “It’s a person you know?”

  “An old friend.”

  “That’s… convenient.”

  “Not likely. This particular friend is prone to hopping over the fire and into the pan.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  He stopped in front of a little shop. The entire front was glass, although I couldn’t see into it. There were two signs on the door.

  Sorry,

  We’re Open

  Hours of Operation:

  Mon – Sun

  Whenever I feel like it.

  “Is your friend… weird?”

  “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  Before I could try to open the door, a loud explosion erupted behind us.

  Chapter 12

  The loud explosion included sound and light, but when we turned to see what had happened, there was no damage, only Zuras standing there. “How did you know I was coming here?” he asked.

  “You’re not as clever as you think.”

  He raised his hand towards the sky and clenched his fist. I pointed my staff at him. “Make him into a bat.”

  Magic shot from my staff… and hit an invisible ward around him.

  He laughed dramatically. “Your puny powers stand no chance against Master Whirlwind’s superior mind!”

  “Can you transform me into something big enough to hurt him?” Yuri asked. He was sweating, but he wasn’t rolling on the ground in pain. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

  “The greater the difference in shape and size, the harder it is, and it would take too much time.”

  Zuras pulled another weather machine out of his pocket. Once again, black lightning shot into the sky and storm clouds formed, but it was rain, not black goo, that fell.

  “Is that really what you’re going with?” I asked.

  Zuras grinned. “Wait for it.”

  Whatever “it” was, I definitely didn’t want to wait for it. I wanted to stop him before “it” came to pass. I pointed my staff at him and focused my willpower rather than my mind. In addition to summoning Veðrgramr to save me, I could also call any nearby dragon for help. It didn’t drain my energy like using my own dragon did.

  Instead of dragons flying in to save the day, three cars, all with matching designs, stop
ped in front of the shop. Five men got out, and they stood with authority I only knew sorcerers and kings to have.

  One of them held up a tiny black box to his mouth. “I am Taylor McCoy, the sheriff of White Hills. If you don’t know what a sheriff is, it means you do as we say or we shoot you.”

  “Are you challenging me?!” Zuras asked.

  “I’m warning you.”

  Lightning shot out of the sky towards him and… curved out of the way. The man didn’t have a ward around him or anything; it was more like the lightning was afraid to hit him. One of the other men drew a black device from his belt that somewhat resembled Mr. Charcoal’s pistol.

  Zuras pulled a black ball out of his pocket and threw it at the sheriff. Although his range was great, his aim was not; it struck the man directly to the sheriff’s right. The black substance splattered on contact and clung to him.

  “What is this gunk?!” the man asked, shocked. He tried to move his arms, but it was sticky and kept growing to engulf him. Two of the other men tried to help him.

  “Surrender yourself and I won’t shoot you. Continue resisting and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of a bullet.”

  “What’s a bullet?” I asked Merlin.

  “I will explain later.”

  Zuras pulled out another ball.

  “Zuras!” Yuri shouted to distract him.

  Zuras glared at him. I told you my name is Master Whirlwind!”

  “If you would stop changing it, maybe we would remember it.”

  Zuras’s eyes darted between us and them, and then he tossed the black ball aside. “I think this party is getting too crowded. Until next time.” With that, he pulled a broom out of his pocket.

  A full-sized broom.

  Out of his pocket.

  Then he threw one leg over the broom and flew up into the sky, soon out of sight.

  “Did he just fly away on a broom?” asked the guy to the left of the sheriff. The man who had been struck by Zuras’s goo ball was mostly freed with the help of his friends.

  “He just flew away on a broom.”

  “That’s a new one on me.”