The Last Wizard

by Jane M. R.

  Joseara looks down at Brine.

  “The Faewraith are going to appear but they won’t be solid. They might even fly at you but if you shoot, the arrow will only go right through them. Wait until Zadicayn says to shoot because at that time they will be solid so can be shot at.”

  I start, offended. “That tis what I sayeth!”

  “I know. I’m just used to how you talk. Joseara is not.”

  I’m remembering our first conversations when I left the vault. I concede that Brine is right.

  “I got it, wizard.”

  I look down at Brine. “Ye ready?”

  She nods, though I see how she might believe she could die tonight.

  I’ll damned if I let that happen.

  I draw my knife and leap toward the stairs, Brine following. The chiming of glass trails us until we are halfway up, along with a cre-crok animalistic sound. Puffs of mist pop in an explosion of condensation, forming faint circles suspended in the air. And through those circles, the Faewraith burst through.

  They swoop toward us. Brine hauls her chain into the face of the one nearest me, but the chain passes clean through. I hear Joseara from the top of the stairs release a tight breath, and I’m positive she had almost been about to shoot anyway. I don’t blame her. For the same reason I still swung my knife and Brine her chain.

  There are three of them. All about the size of a very large dog with four legs and hooves instead of paws. A thick neck like a horse but with abnormally massive jaws with canine teeth. Absent of fur or scales make them look naked in their orange skin. Two wings stretch from their shoulders. Trailing from the arm of both wings are hundreds of thin tendril-like strips of skin. Each tendril is affixed with these small, clear, circular shaped disks all up and down it. These fill with light once they have consumed someone’s pineal gland. I’ve seen it happen.

  The Faewraith can see us as clearly as we can see them. The three hover above us like vultures. Waiting

  “I’ll shoot the one closest to me,” Joseara shouts to us.

  Which leaves me looking into the starving eyes of the Faewraith closest to me. Brine swings the chain at hers and it backs away.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  “Go.”

  I spring up the stairs faster with my long legs than Brine does. I’d love to pick her up and carry her but I have to get amulet before any of us die. Brine follows, swinging her chain as the Faewraith dives in her again. This time, the silver links slap into its face and it turns away to reset and try again.

  One is trailing me and I’m running backward, jabbing at it with my knife. A thwarp! above my head indicates Joseara having released her first arrow. It dives into the neck of the one I’m trying to knife.

  Brine is only stalling hers. She has reached Joseara and is swinging her rod and chain at the two Faewratih like a person taken with woodness while the thief reloads.

  I lunge forward and jab my knife into the Faewraith’s throat, blood shooting across my wrist and Brine’s chest. I yank out the knife as the monster drops and service the other one. A Faewraith pops into view down the walkway and speeds toward us.

  Joseara fires at it with the crossbow. It bucks back with a gurgle and the body drops.

  “Get going!” Brine screams at me, panic giving power to her command.

  I bolt along the walkway, leaping over the body of the Faewraith, Brine following close behind. Two more emerge out of the air. Both dive at us. Brine shrieks even as I grab her and pull her to the floor with me. We toss around in a tangle of blue coat and yellow dress and then I yank her to her feet. She looks dazed. I hope I didn’t smash her too badly. I rolled over her twice.

  One Faewraith spins about in the air to chase us, the second flying at Joseara who is still pulling the bowstring back.

  I jump through the open door into the office, Brine following and griping the chain as if it’s her life she physically has to hold onto.

  I have to turn my back on her. Fear zings through me upon Brine’s effort to contain a scream. The Faewraith gallops into the office, it’s hooves cracking on the stone floor.

  The metal box with the door is open. I see a red mass. I thrust my arm inside just as I hear the tinkle of chain and Brine shriek.

  My fingers latch onto my amulet. I spring backwards and wrap my other arm around Brine’s waist, hurling her sideways onto the floor. I reach toward the Faewraith whose open jaws are diving at me. At the conclusion of my single word, heat bucks down my arm and blasts the monster in the face with a cone of fire.

  Magic spins inside my body in a flare of energy and light, as if the sun were puffing fresh breath into my lungs. The feeling is achingly familiar but yet so distant a memory. It leaves me dizzy.

  The Faewraith snaps its wings down with a scream, close enough that it’s hooves buck forward and graze my chest. The Faewraith flees the room – on fire. I close my fingers and the cone of fire stops. I chase it.

  I run to the railing, watching the torch I made of the Faewraith thrash apart the air and dive back into the Fae Realm, followed by one more Faewraith that had been bothering the thief.

  Naked energy is shaking me, making me jittery as if a little drunk. Maybe that was too much magic too soon after such a long sober. Now that the spell is over, my blood is left riddling on the confusion of such a shock to my body.

  “Zadicayn!”

  I turn around.

  “You are a wizard!”

  I open my mouth to say something. But a numbness seizes my body and I black out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  BRINELLA

  His head falls back and he collapses to the floor.

  “Zadicayn!” I run to him. Dropping to the knees of my soiled dress, I shake him with no response. He’s still breathing.

  The flames are chewing on Aklen’s office. Joseara is running at me.

  “People are coming down the road!” she hisses, then she runs by me and into Aklen’s office. I don’t know what she is doing. She comes back and kneels at the wizard’s feet.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I don – I don’t know.” Panic is drying up my voice and I forget how to make my legs work.

  “We’ll have to carry him,” Joseara says. I shake myself out of my stupor enough to nod.

  Together, we heft Zadicayn awkwardly in our arms. I’m holding onto his shoulders. His head slumps back into the crook of my elbow. Joseara hooks his boots under her arms and together we stumble as fast as we can to the stairs and then down.

  But we can’t go out the same doors because the people on the road will see us. Joseara indicates with her head for me to follow her and she changes directions. I do, because I don’t have the presence of mind to come up with anything intelligent on my own. What’s wrong with Zadicayn?

  We weave around piles of shaved and unshaved logs, around and behind more machines until I see a door on the very back wall of the building.

  “I explored the building after I unlocked the door,” she says with more calm than I could have managed right now. “You always need to make sure you have a secondary escape route.”

  She turns the handle on the door and pops it open with a swing of her hip just as I hear voices erupt in the building from the main entrance. I practically push her through, closing the door in what I hope was quietly.

  Four tiny buildings stand about the place on the shore of the river where must house the toilets and sheds. With the wizard slumped in our clutches, we dash passed them to the river and I cut a sharp right.

  “No!” Joseara halts. “They will see us if we keep running. Get in the river.”

  “I can’t swim!”

  “We can’t be caught, either!” She has the lead, and unless I want to drop Zadicayn I have to follow.

  She walks into the river, hoisting Zadicayn’s boots to her shoulders. Only the fear of what might come through that back door makes me step into the river. Cold shock zaps up my legs but I keep going, gasping every time my boots slip on th
e sludge. I try to tell myself this is not the same river I fell into the last time I visited Bristol.

  My lantern of a dress floats up to my waist. I hold Zadicayn’s head on my shoulder as I step deeper in, up to my chest. I fix my focus on Joseara, reassured I’m not going to drown only because she isn’t drowning herself. It takes a minute for my body to numb partially to the cold. Already I feel my joints stiffen.

  “Zadicayn!”

  No response.

  “Is he still breathing?”

  “I think so.”

  She leads the way, letting the river guide us downstream. I don’t dare look behind me. The bank of the river soon rises high enough that it hides our bobbing heads. I keep my eyes locked on Joseara to dash the panic rising in my chest at the moment I might not feel the river beneath me.

  The stone building falls into my background and the anxious cries of men go with it. My heart thunders with fear of discovery, amplified by the gentle glow on the horizon to herald the morning in. Had I really been out all night?

  Weariness slams into me. Panic and fear had kept me solidly awake, but those all die when it is clear no one is pursuing us. But my father will be along soon to unlock my door. And then Varseena.

  “Jos…” I utter the name with as little volume as possible, hoping she heard. She looks over her shoulder. “I have to make it back to my house before they notice I’m gone. My father will be unlocking my door soon.”

  “We won’t make it back with Zadicayn like this!”

  “Jos, I have to get back. If I stumble in later with a wet dress smelling of smoke and splashed with blood –”

  “Okay, okay.” Joseara steers the wizard’s boots toward the bank.

  We splash out of the river, laying Zadicayn on the wet mud. Water runs in streams off his hair and clothing.

  “What do you think is wrong with him?” I ask, shaking him again, worry making it hard to breath. I’m shivering. “Zadicayn!”

  “I don’t know. You better run home. I’ll stay with him.”

  “You pulled my blankets back inside my room.”

  “Good thing I did because someone would have noticed about now.”

  “I can’t get back in my room!”

  “You’ll have to get creative because if you don’t leave now, you won’t even have that.”

  I’m not creative. All of my ideas come from the stories Durain told me and I can’t recall a story where the princess had to climb back into her tower without a rope. And I need to stay with Zadicayn to make sure he isn’t dead. But the urgency which powered Joseara out of the water in the first place points back at me. I stand up and dash through the meadow.

  It wasn’t supposed to go like this. We were supposed to get Zadicayn’s amulet, lock everything back up, and leave. And Joseara was supposed to climb into my room and lower my rope for me. This is all wrong. I’m going to get caught.

  Dew drenched weeds slap my legs. My dress is splashed with Faewraith blood, dirt from when Zadicayn laid on me in the graveyard, and a tear from I don’t even know where.

  I can’t afford to think about what will happen if I’m seen like this. I concentrate on running. Breath. In. Out. In. How far is the lumber house from my own? Panic at my discovery keeps me moving.

  The deep blue glow on the horizon is paling. What is wrong with Zadicayn? What will Aklen think when he sees dead Faewraith in the lumber house? Breath. In. Out. In. He will know what they are. He chased one through the forest with two others while I hid in a tree.

  I exit the meadow and enter the dell of trees, gasping for air.

  How am I going to get back in my room? Bloody hell I’m going to be in trouble.

  It’s taking me too long to run. I see my house through the trees, the roof touched with the first of the rising light.

  I stumble into the yard, looking up at my window but I can’t climb into it like Joseara. Telling by the sun, my father has not unlocked my door yet. Yet.

  The front door is locked. I scramble off the porch to the window of my father’s study. Locked.

  I run around the house, near tears of anxiety. I try every window within reach. All locked. Except the small window above the kitchen sink. It is actually ajar. Something must be slow roasting in the brick oven for dinner. I pray the cook is not about to keep the embers awake.

  I scuff up my arms on the sill as I hoist my body up, scraping my shin as I push my body through, knocking over a miniature wooden cross perched there. Inside the house and on my feet, I put the window back where I found it and reset the cross. I hear a creak of wood above my head and freeze, my brain firing for all the excuses I need to make.

  The creaking carries all the way to the other end of the house. To my room. Then the creaking comes back.

  My door is unlocked. I have exactly twenty seconds to run up the stairs and position myself in my room before Varseena arrives. I look down at my ruined dress. I smell like smoke and the dirt and the blood…

  I wrench open the door to the bathroom tucked in next to the kitchen and turn on the water. I strip off my dress and boots and shove it all in a corner between the tub and the wall. I jump in the tub, dousing myself with cold water which sends my shivers into a near seizure.

  I nearly dump the whole bottle of honeysuckle on my head, lathering it all over my hair and body, the perfume so strong it burns my eyes. Footsteps on the stairs. I scrub harder.

  Varseena opens to door. “Brinella?”

  “Varseena,” I mumble in my best tone of anguish, cold water still splashing on my body as I lounge directly under the running water. I hope she doesn’t notice how dirty the water is getting. “I feel so h-hot.” Of course that is the perfect time to shiver. “I feeeeeeel soooooo sick.”

  Varseena gasps and flees the bathroom, presumably to get my mother. I start rinsing the honeysuckle oil out of my hair, pulling the plug on the tub before the dirty eddies become obvious.

  My mother arrives with my macramist and races to the side of the tub, pressing her hand to my forehead.

  “Brinella, your skin is so cold.”

  “Uhhuuhh.” I hug myself.

  My mother stands up. “Cholera. London’s illness has made it to Valemorren. Varseena, stay with her and I will tell Fabrin.”

  I’m shivering without restraint now, certain my skin is turning blue which is not helping my case to convince anyone that I don’t have Cholera. At least no one yet has suspected I started the Whaerin lumber house on fire.

  “Come out of the tube, dear.” Varseena snaps open a towel and wraps it around me. I step out of the tub and hope the honeysuckle in my hair is enough to mask the smoke.

  She holds me close as if my “illness” prohibits me from walking on my own. We walk up the stairs and into my room. I have no idea where my sheet-rope went. Did Joseara stuff it under the bed?

  “Brinella, where did all of your sheets go?”

  I moan and loll my head against her.

  “No matter. I will get new ones. Sit on the bed and I will be right back.” She leaves in a bustle and I look under my bed. My sheet rope is tossed haphazardly just barely out of sight. I yank it out and start fighting with the knots but it’s taking too long so I push the rope further back under my bed and lay down with an arm over my forehead.

  She drops the sheets on my bed and picks up my nightgown discarded there. “Put this on.”

  I do so. Finally getting warm. I lay down and Varseena throws the sheets over me while I continue to moan and hug myself. My mother enters. Her face is pale.

  “Fabrin is riding into town for the doctor. Hold on, sweetie.” She drags my vanity stool over beside my bed, stroking her hand over my forehead. Genuine worry pulls at the wrinkles around her eyes. I want to tell her to have the doctor sent to Zadicayn instead to make sure he is okay.

  I close my eyes and breath sporadically. I have no idea how to act sick. I’ve so far won the predicament of entering my house without anyone knowing I left, though now my exhausted mind goes to Zadicayn I l
eft unconscious on the bank of the river with Joseara. What if the men decide to search downriver? What if Joseara decides she wants revenge on the wizard instead since it was because of him her family burned in the first place? What if –

  I’ll for sure go crazy with my imaginations powering my worries. I force myself away from them all, telling myself be it lie or truth that they are okay… that Zadicayn is okay. I guess he didn’t die because Faewraith are not slaying mankind, but that level of reassurance for comfort is very, very, small.

  I’m so tired. Aside from being awake for a full day, the events of the night wrangle the last desperate threads of energy out of me and I fall asleep.

  I can’t say how long I was out before I’m nudged awake again by my mother and thoughts of Zadicayn assaulted me afresh. Someone is leaning over me. I’m still dragging myself out of sleep. He smells faintly of that same stuff that knocked me out when I was kidnapped and I panic. It’s not until he places his hand on my head that I realize it’s the doctor.

  “Has she thrown up or had diarrhea yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then that is a good sign. You said her skin was cold?”

  “Very cold.”

  “Well, it is warm now. I think it is safe to say it is not cholera.”

  An obvious breath of relief escapes both my mother and father. I know he should be at work by now. Now I start to feel bad that he’s late because of a sickness I don’t have.

  “What are you feeling right now?” he asks.

  I grumble. “My stomach feels really tight and I am really thirsty. Dry throat, too.”

  The doctor walks to my vanity where he had set a black bag. He pops the clasp open and pulls some bottles and spoons out of it. Setting them aside, he begins mixing things together. He turns with a milky white liquid in a glass and sits back beside me.

  “Drink this. It will help with your stomach. Drink plenty of water. Congratulations on your betrothal, Miss Whaerin.”

  I take the glass and sit up on my elbow. I wince at the metallic taste in the water as I drink the whole thing. I return the glass to his hand and he stands.