The Last Wizard
Page 1
The Last Wizard
Jane Merkley
Distributed by Smashwords
Copyright 2016 Jane Merkley
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of
the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial
purposes. If you enjoy this book, please encourage your friends to download their own
copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Old English Dictionary
Historical References
Chapter 1: Zadicayn
Chapter 2: Brinella
Chapter 3: Brinella
Chapter 4: Brinella
Chapter 5 Brinella
Chapter 6: Brinella
Chapter 7: Brinella
Chapter 8: Brinella
Chapter 9: Brinella
Chapter 10: Brinella
Chapter 11: Brinella
Chapter 12: Brinella
Chapter 13: Brinella
Chapter 14: Brinella
Chapter 15: Brinella
Chapter 16: Brinella
Chapter 17: Zadicayn
Chapter 18: Brinella
Chapter 19: Zadicayn
Chapter 20: Brinella
Chapter 21 Zadicayn
Chapter 22: Brinella
Chapter 23: Zadicayn
Chapter 24: Brinella
Chapter 25: Zadicayn
Chapter 26: Brinella
Chapter 27: Zadicayn
Chapter 28: Brinella
Chapter 29: Zadicayn
Chapter 30: Brinella
Chapter 31: Zadicayn
Chapter 32: Brinella
Chapter 33: Zadicayn
Chapter 34: Brinella
Chapter 35: Zadicayn
Chapter 36: Brinella
Chapter 37: Zadicayn
Chapter 38: Brinella
Chapter 39: Zadicayn
Chapter 40: Jaicom
Chapter 41: Brinella
Chapter 42: Zadicayn
Chapter 43: Brinella
Chapter 44: Zadicayn
Chapter 45: Brinella
Chapter 46: Zadicayn
Chapter 47: Brinella
Chapter 48: Zadicayn
Chapter 49: Jaicom
Chapter 50: Zadicayn
Chapter 51: Brinella
Chapter 52: Zadicayn
Chapter 53: Brinella
Chapter 54: Zadicayn
Chapter 55: Brinella
Chapter 56: Zadicayn
Chapter 57 Jaicom
Chapter 58: Brinella
Chapter 59: Brinella
Chapter 60: Brinella
Chapter 61: Zadicayn
Chapter 62: Brinella
Chapter 63: Zadicayn
Old English Words Used Within the Story
ART: Are.
BESEECH: Request, ask.
BESOUGHT: Asked, made request.
BETWIXT: Between.
BREEDBATE: A person or something that creates strife.
BUGLE-BEARD: A shaggy beard like buffalo hair.
CANST: Can.
CODPIECE: A covering flap or pouch that attaches to the front of the crotch of men’s trousers.
COSH: A small cottage, hut.
DOST: Do, does.
DRETCH: Torment.
DURST: Dare.
EYNDILL: Jealous.
FONKIN: a little fool.
FOPDOODLE: A simpleton.
FULLSOME: Rich, plentiful.
GARDEROBE: Medieval toilet.
HUZZAH: Originally a sailor’s cheer or salute. To shout aloud.
JUVAMENT: Aid!; Help!
MAW-WALLOP: A badly cooked mess of food.
MERRY-GALL: A sore produced by chafing.
MILDFUL: Merciful.
NARY: None; absolutely nothing; not even close to anything.
NAUGHT: Nothing.
OVERMANY: A lot.
PUDH: Horrible.
SHALL or SHALT: Will.
THEE, THOU: you.
THINE, THY: your.
THITHER: there.
TROW: To think or suppose.
VASQUINE: A petticoat .
WAGHALTER: A rogue likely to swing in a gallows.
WHIFLING: An insignificant creature.
WHISTERSNEFET: A blow to the ear.
WIDDERSHINS: Unlucky, prone to misfortune.
WIST: Knew.
WIT: To know, know.
WOODNESS: Madness, insanity.
YE: You
YORE: years ago.
YOUNGHEDE: A youth.
Historical References Used in the Book
Wars of the Roses:
A series of dynastic wars for the throne of England. They were fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet, the Houses of Lancaster and York. They were fought in several sporadic episodes between 1455 and 1487, although there was related fighting before and after this period. The final victory went to a claimant of the Lancastrian party, Henry Tudor, who defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
95 Theses:
The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences were written by Martin Luther and are widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The disputation protests against clerical abuses, especially nepotism, simony, usury, pluralism, and the sale of indulgences. It is generally believed that, according to university custom, on 31 October 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
THESE NUMBER 94: Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death, and hell.
Victorian Era:
The Victorian Era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria’s reign from 20 June 1837 until her death, on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence for Britain. Within the fields of social history and literature, Victorianism refers to the study of late-Victorian attitudes and culture with a focus on the highly moralistic, straitlaced language and behavior of Victorian morality. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period. AUTHOR NOTE: With the exception to girls being tied into their dresses, locked in their rooms at night, and using certain perfumes dependent on their courting status, all other standards were based on the actual decrees put out by Queen Victoria.
Middle Ages:
In European history, the Middle Ages, or Medieval period, lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: Antiquity, Medieval period, and Modern period. The Medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, the High, and the Late Middle Ages.
CHAPTER ONE
ZADICAYN
30 October 1518, England
I used to question why only the sons of the family could hold magic, but upon hearing my sister scream, “Zadicayn!” as they dragged her and my mother away to be held in a place where they could be used as leverage against me, I understood.
The hard part is trying to convince these men that I am on their side despite it being devastatingly disadvantageous to me so I could pretend to go along with them, wait for them to become complacent and lower their guard, and the moment they do… run. Run like hell.
But they aren’t lowering their guard. Because they know it is devastatingly disadvantageous to me and, in fact, are only gaining my obedience because of their threats
toward the lives of my mother and sister. So I cave. I cause the copper pieces to be forged, acquire the three blood sucking diamonds, and alter the vault beneath the castle chapel so it will keep someone in instead of someone out.
But time for waiting and delaying is up. I run like hell.
They catch me on the bridge.
They stuff a cloth in my mouth so they can’t hear me shout, put a bag over my head so they can pretend it’s not a human they are throwing in the vault.
Dragging me into the castle’s chapel, they force my chest against the wall and make sure I hear the familiar snick of crossbow strings being pulled back and locked into place. A cold chain loops my neck. My amulet. My face is crammed into the wall and I can’t see any of them through the bag.
“Ye modor and ye sester shalt live so long as ye dost,” Gandorlain reminds me from behind, “so I hopeth ye hath thought upon the words for ye spell to give ye long life. Long life.”
My sister is eleven. Six years younger than me. Expecting she’d live until she’s seventy, I’ll give her an even hundred just to make sure. Longer, I’ll give her longer, because I still want to live, want to give someone time enough to gather the key to my release I created for these men who want to harvest the magic from my amulet. Impossible, I told them, but they won’t believe me.
The man holding my head to the wall rattles me, reminding that they are waiting on my response.
If I could only see where the men are positioned about the room, I could use a spell against them. Hands sliding across crossbow wood remind me that spell would be short lived.
My sister said she would free me, I reassure myself, because I can’t afford to rest upon the more likely truth that she won’t be able to. Believing that truth will devastate me and I’ll fail in the spell and my mother and sister’s lives will end by these same men. My sister will free me…
My eyes squeeze shut and I begin the spell.
Cease hunger, cease thirst, cease physical pain… I whisper under my breath in the language of the Fae, forcing my body into a hibernation so I might live a week, a month, a year… forever in stalemate without food and water and the necessities of life until my sister can free me from the vault.
Forever. Fear slides thick and cold down the back of my skull.
I finish my incomprehensible whisperings and just fall silent.
“Ye don, wizard?” Dendaryl drawled.
They shake me. I don’t respond.
“Now the codpiece tis just playing games.”
“He don.”
They removed my amulet. Stripping my shirt off me, they crush my naked chest harder against the cold stone of the wall. Despite my fighting, the three blood sucking diamonds slam into my back, sinking under my skin, beckoning a shriek out of my compressed lungs the men holding me won’t hear clearly through the cloth stuffed in my mouth.
Pretending I’m not human.
They haul me backward, the muscles in my back throbbing. The scrape of stone on stone shoot bolts of warning and fear through me.
There is still a chance.
I thrash with every part of my body that can move but too many hands hold me fast. Someone grabs my legs and lifts me into the hollowed out altar where beneath is the hidden vault my father made. It had a secret escape passage, except these men had blocked it closed with brick and mortar.
“Grab the ladder or be dropped!” someone barks.
I continued to fight. They drop me.
I feel the spell activate as soon as I fall out of the light, landing at the bottom hard enough to summon a moan and a litany of curses. I roll to my knees and tear the bag off my head, looking up from my prison as the metal grid slides shut above me, closing off my access to the only opening in the vault. Two men replace the stone lid of the altar.
And darkness becomes my eternity.
PART I
324 years later
CHAPTER TWO
BRINELLA
24 April 1842, England
The sun mocks my tears. The way it glances off the golden wings of the dragonfly perched on my window and the way it magnifies the laughter of birdsong teases me with a knowing that life will still move on despite my grief.
“Brinella…” A hand on my shoulder. When did my mother enter? Despite the overpowering smell of her patchouli, I didn’t even notice that until just now.
A vain wish teases that if I do not move from my seat by the window nothing will change, that it will not become reality until I tear my glance from the window.
My mother prompts me to stand and, as if spelled, I do. But if I look back on my chair I know I will see roots shooting through the wood like anchors holding my sanity in a spot where I can find it again.
She’s talking but all I hear are sounds because I can’t hear anything else. Not through the numbness shooting through my ears to my stiff knees as if unwilling to bend, unwilling to carry me to a reality I can’t handle right now – still – despite I’m already three days into it.
My mother’s brown hair matching my own falls across my sleeve of black bombazine as she clutches me close and moves down the hallway, clutching, as if afraid I’ll fly back to my room to avoid my best friend’s funeral and cease to exist.
Right now, I really want to.
The sun glares on me as we step outside, drowning me in heat and the essence of that which gives life… and watches on as life is taken away.
My father is waiting by the coach pulled by two horses. He assists my mother inside first and then me. The coach lurches forward at the sound of snapping reins. I lift my veil to look out the window at the passing trees along the cobble road, clutching my wrinkled handkerchief.
“Can we go up Canyon Road first?” I ask. “It will just take a moment.”
My mother makes a little sound I choose to ignore. With pressed lips, my father nods. He opens the slid in the coach wall behind his head and passes instructs to the driver.
The coach rolls left onto a dirt road ten minutes later, the ride scattered with bumps and kicking dust into the windows so my father closes them. I still crack open the shutter to watch.
“Stop here.”
My father opens the small window again that opens up beneath the driver’s box and dust billows in. “Stop here.”
“Whoooaa,” chides the driver and the coach slows.
“This is highly improper, Fabrin,” my mother hisses to my father as I gather the black folds of my dress to exit. “You are encouraging her bad behavior!”
My father doesn’t reply, reaching for the door handle to assist me out but stops when I pin him with a seething glare.
“I can help myself,” I snap. Opening the door, I step out, shutting it the same moment I hear my father go to my defense as my mother has a miniature explosion of complaints.
A small foot path snakes through the trees. I am careful to step lightly and pick up my skirt to keep it out of the dirt. I come to a stream about twenty feet off the road. It is small enough that I jump it like I have a hundred times, though I have never done it in a dress and so was not anticipating the back of it falling in the water when I land on the other side. Hopefully it will dry before I make it back.
I reach the open space in the trees which is bare save for a large stone on the edge and a log Durain and I pulled into the area for seating around the small camp fire. Stones border the black spot of ash where Durain’s rucksack slumps beside it.
I sit on the log next to the bag, numb and breathless. The leaves overhead shift and hiss, allowing the sun to still throw glances down on me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t hide from it.
What good did it do to come here anyway? Durain was pronounced dead three days ago. But I have not seen him dead yet, some unreasonable part of me argues, so certainly he can’t be, because fifteen years of friendship can’t just end like this.
“Brine?” my father’s voice rolls through the trees. He would have let me take as long as I needed. But not my mother.
“Coming!�
�� I choke back tears. I look at Durain’s bag one more time, questioning if I should take it with me.
But maybe he’ll come back for it, that unreasonable voice says again.
I leave it.
I manage to jump the stream without any mishap this time, dreading every step back to the coach which will take me to finally witness the end of Durain.
Mother won’t look at me when I climb inside. I’m fine with that.
On the cobble road again, my father opens the shutters to flush out the gentle haze of dust that had still made it inside, and my mother sighs in annoyance.
“Brinella,” she begins with marked disproval, only smothered down from pure hostility because my father has his hand on her wrist. “You are sixteen now. Frolicking about in the dirt is not suited for a woman who is of the age to marry.” Her eyes narrow at the betraying patch of dirt clinging to the wet hem of my dress. I had been too distresses to remember – or care too? – pick up my skirts on the walk back.
“Stop babying me, mother,” I snap, grief over the death of my friend giving me boulders to stand upon. She doesn’t respond. But then my father is doing his best to distract her with excessive fingering on her arm.
Now looking like I was responsible for the brief animosity and feeling bad about my outburst – but not to the point of apologizing – my gaze goes out the window again and no one speaks all the way to my Aunt Magara’s house.
The houses of stone morph into wood as the coach enters my aunt’s neighborhood where the community’s farmers mostly live.
The coach pulls into the yard. I’m unable to avoid looking at the hearse fluttering with black ostrich feathers and professional mourners waiting around it.
My father exits and assists my mother, and then me. The driver snaps the reins and the coach rolls into an area off in the grass where other carriages are parked.
Aunt Magara’s parlour maid receives us in the foyer. The smell of what must have been a hundred different scented candles tinge the foyer in a smoky haze. Their combined smells do not mingle well. My father hands the parlour maid his white calling card, the bottom right corner bent. The parlour maid accepts the card and disappears, leaving us standing in the foyer which looks as if a disobedient flower girl had thrown shreds of black twill on everything: the looking glass, windows, and every picture clinging to the flocked velvet wallpaper. The clock on the wall is stopped at 9:42 – the time of Durain’s death.