Reawakening

by CM Raymond

  Parker cursed them in his mind, but kept his mouth shut. Parker was trying to keep a low profile. People in the quarter knew that he and Hannah were close, and he was only waiting for the day when someone dropped his name to the Guards for a few coins and a pint of elixir. They would do almost anything to catch Hannah and Ezekiel, the number one public enemies.

  Hannah had begged Parker to stay at the tower in the woods that night, to join she and the Founder, to join the fight. But things weren’t that easy. Hannah’s family was dead; Parker still had responsibilities to his. Without him, his mother would fall into squalor and likely sell all she had for the sake of survival. In Queen’s Boulevard, a son doesn’t let his mother sell those kinds of goods—not if he can help it.

  Parker slowed as he turned the corner around Hannah’s house. Jedidiah, the Prophet, was already on the scene. Since Hannah’s display of blazing energy, the old man had moved his pulpit from the Capitol lawn to the ruins of her home.

  Old Jed’s voice rang out over a crowd.

  “Take a good look, brethren. This is the result of magic used unlawfully. Nothing good can come from casting outside of the law. As the Matriarch said, ‘My boundaries lie in delightful places.’ Do you not know what that means? It means that only ill can come from the unrestrained—and unlicensed—use of magic. Go on, go on, cast the spells born in your dark, back rooms of deceit, and it will be a pox on your house. On all of your houses.”

  The crowd murmured. Parker waited for the hecklers to shout the man down, but nothing came. While most of Arcadia used to laugh at the Prophet, the old man had taken on new importance in recent weeks. Since Hannah’s attack, the Prophet had only grown in popularity. There was nothing like a crisis to bring solidarity for the charlatans and the deceivers.

  Old Jed continued. “For years, dear followers, I have tried to teach you. The message I brought was one of passivity. I prayed, and I preached, and I asked that you, all of you, would use magic only according to the boundary laid out by the great Father and Mother—that those who were not accepted by the academy would suppress their evil urges. But now, I know that this is not enough. Passivity will, in the end, be our ruin. It is time for us, for all of us, to rise up against the Unlawfuls, to quell the use of the magical arts in their perverse forms, to stop the use of magic in ways that go against the norms of the universe.”

  The crowd cheered, and Old Jed beamed. His time had come, and he knew it.

  He lowered his voice. “Brothers and sisters, the fight that is before us is not an easy one, nor is it safe. I take pause even in considering asking of it from you today. But it is one that is necessary. Now is the time for us to aid in the resistance against the unauthorized use of magic. Too long have we left the job of justice to the Governor’s men alone. We need to take up the mantel as citizens—no, as lovers of our sweet, sweet Arcadia. Now is the time for us to be true sons of the Matriarch and Patriarch. They have ordained the Chancellor as their head in Irth, and he shall not be cast asunder. As the Chancellor decrees, so does the Matriarch!”

  A shout went up from the crowd; Parker’s blood boiled with a vengeance for truth. They all responded so easily to the old man’s lies.

  “An assault against the Chancellor and his men is an assault against the Matriarch and Patriarch who have put him in place.” Old Jed’s arms lifted in the air, and the applause seemed to carry him into the heavens. Something was different, and Parker knew it. Only weeks ago, the man was a farce with a few whacked-out followers, but his infamy turned to fame overnight. It was as if a switch had flipped.

  Parker crept away from the masses that had gathered to hear the false prophet. Parker knew the truth, even if no one else believed. But Hannah would set them all straight.

  Weaving through the crowd, Parker busted through into Ivan’s Square, the only public park designed in Queen’s Boulevard. Usually, it was filled with drunks sleeping off a bender, or mothers trying to find a spot of grass for their kids to play. But this morning, the park was empty, save Eponine, a girl well-known to the quarter, and the four older Arcadians that surrounded her. They all wore robes of white, and they circled Eponine like wild animals ready to pounce on their prey. The little girl, not older than ten, looked scared to death—her face was a sheet of white.

  “We know what you are,” a woman named Jez yelled at the girl. “We know you’re an Unlawful, just like that witch, Hannah, is.” Jez was only a few years older than Parker, and they had grown up together in the quarter. He never expected that she would be caught up in the Prophet’s madness, but these days, anything could happen. “Now we just need to know if we should report you, or take care of you ourselves. Hunters have enough on their hands these days.”

  The girl stood in the center of the circle, speechless. Logic, for only a moment, told Parker to keep walking. Minding his own business would keep him out of trouble, and this would ultimately serve the greater good. But conscience trumped instinct, and he cut toward the disciples and the young girl.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he shouted into the fray.

  Jez looked up at Parker, her eyes as wild as a drunk on a Saturday night. “Mind your own business, you little twat. We’re just doing the work of a true Arcadian. Unlawfuls like this need to be taken care of.”

  Parker glanced over at Eponine and gave her a nod. He wanted her to know it was all going to be OK, even if he hardly believed it himself. “Get your damned head out of your ass, Jez. She’s a kid. You want to hunt Unlawfuls, that’s your business, but this girl isn’t one of them. She’s just trying to survive in QBB, just like we did when we were her age. You’re only making things worse.”

  The disciples looked at each other, then at Parker, and back at Jezebel. The woman knew that she ran the show, and she searched for words. “Of course, you would try to divert our good works, Parker. You and that witch bitch are thicker than thieves. We should bring you in.”

  His eyes sparkled in the face of the threat. “Try it. I dare you.”

  Since his victory in the fighting Pit, word had spread about Parker’s toughness. He took down Wildman Hank, the most violent fighter Arcadia had seen for some time. Jez didn’t want to tempt fate, and he knew it. The disciples backed away, and eventually turned to leave.

  “Bastards,” Parker muttered as they left the park.

  Eponine looked up at him; her big doe eyes were on the verge of dropping tears. “Thank you,” she eked out.

  “You don’t need to thank me, kid. It’s the least we can do for each other. Shame what those idiots have come to. Since I can remember, people of the quarter had each other’s backs. But this is a new day.” He grabbed her arm and gave it a squeeze, a mild attempt at comforting the girl. “Where’s Randy, anyway?”

  The girl looked down. She and her brother, who was half a decade older, were inseparable. If you lived in the quarter, you never saw one of them without the other.

  “Working, I guess,” she said. “Got a new job in the factories. Trying to go honest, and they were hiring, so he cast his lot and got picked. I haven’t seen him for weeks. But coins keep coming to our house by messengers, so I guess he’s doing all right.”

  Parker had heard rumors like this. Apparently, the industrial district was working on something big, and they were willing to pay for work, even hiring people from the Boulevard. The whole thing seemed too good to be true, but Parker had no reason to tell this girl that. Instead, he mussed up her hair in big-brotherly fashion.

  “OK, kid. Keep your eyes open. If you need anything while your brother’s gone, come find me right away.”

  The little girl blinked her big doe eyes and ran off into the bustle of Queen’s Boulevard. Parker couldn’t help but wonder about her brother’s new employment. The factories never hired from the Boulevard, even to do the most menial of work. Something was happening. Something big, and he was going to find out what it was.

  ****

  Karl climbed the final steps up to Craigston—a small mining
town nestled in the Heights. He had cursed the mystics all the way up, as he always did. They built the winding, mountain staircase decades earlier, and they weren’t considering their altitude-challenged brethren when they spaced the steps. Maybe their magic helped them, but Karl had no such help.

  At just shy of five feet tall, the rearick expended extra energy climbing into the clouds. The trip to Arcadia and back that he was now wrapping up was uneventful, as were most of them. The rearicks transporting crystals and precious metals to Arcadia hired him to protect them and their cargo from robbers and other ill-willed creatures on the road, but most of his trips were just a walk in the park. The pay was good, and, with the shape of the mines recently, it was probably safer playing guard than it was chiseling out the glimmering bits of earth for others to sell.

  Karl’s first stop after arriving at Craigston was the mining office to collect his wages. Walt, a one-eyed man slid a pile of coins across the table. He was taller than most rearick, but shorter than most of the lowlanders he’d seen on his journeys around Irth. Karl was sure Walt was some sort of bastard son born of rearick and lowlander, but he couldn’t be certain.

  Karl pushed the coins around on the sticky counter and nodded. His pay was a few coins shy of what they had agreed to pay him, but he shoved them into his purse regardless. Everyone knew the mining company shortchanged people wherever they could, and the rearick had all but gotten used to it.

  He was one of the most sought after guards, and it wasn’t just for what he could do with his hammer. Karl was smart and easy to do business with. The money was good, and the work was generally easy, but he had been away from the Heights far too much for his liking. He was looking forward to some time of settling down, putting his feet up, and maybe even getting underground for a few days.

  “Danke, Walt,” he said. “How long until the next run?”

  The man behind the counter pushed a finger under his eye patch and scratched the empty hole. Walt hissed a little when he talked. “As a matter of fact, the time is now, rearick. If you’re ready, you’ll leave in the morning.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yessss, Arcadia is pushing us hard for metals and amphoralds—the gem to fuel their damned magitech. They are paying more than ever, so they had to get us to increase our production. The sun is shining, my little friend. It’s time to make hay.”

  “Ain’t no rest for the righteous, eh? That’s how the gods will it. The Queen Bitch will have me working the road for the rest of me days, I guess.”

  “Listen,” the words slithered out of Walt’s mouth, “there are plenty of other young rearick who’d be happy to step out of the mines permanently—get an easy job like you, swinging your war hammer. Just say the word, and I will hand your load off to the next generation. I could probably pay them half as much to do what you do.”

  “Bull,” Karl responded quickly. “Ain’t nobody can do what I do with this.” He patted the weapon leaning against his shoulder. The cold steel of his war hammer had spilled its fair share of blood. “But I’ll take the job. It’s either work or drink myself into an early grave.”

  Walt grinned. “Early grave, my ass. By my counting, you’re already long overdue. We come from the dirt, and the dirt will take us all eventually. No one’s strong enough to shake it, not even someone like you, Karl.”

  Karl smiled. “When the dirt is ready to take me, I’ll welcome her with open arms. But it’s not my time yet. I do, however, need the night to rest. Just the thought of climbing down those stairs has given me quite a thirst.”

  Walt nodded. “That’s my little man.”

  “So, the boss is opening another mine?”

  Walt cocked his head to the side. “No. Why?”

  Karl laughed. “I’ve been in that latest hole too much to keep me in the dark, Walt. That line is pretty much spent. Go much wider or deeper, and things might get a bit dicey down there.”

  Walt shook his head. “Can’t start a fresh one, not with these orders coming in. Finding and tapping a new hole takes too much time. The big wigs in Arcadia are offering premiums if we can get the resources to them fast. The mine, she’ll hold. We’ve done deeper and broader before.”

  “Sure,” the rearick said, narrowing his eyes, “but we’ve also lost good rearick in collapses that were shallower and narrower. The boss don’t know what he’s screwing with, Walt. Drop a mine and no premium from the lowlanders will make up for that time, or the loss of labor—let alone fathers and sons.”

  “Anything else, Karl?” Walt’s good eye told him the conversation was over.

  “Nah, that's all.” He turned to leave, then looked back over his broad shoulder. “Walt, if something happens, it’s on you and yer boss. Make sure you can live with that.”

  “You just keep ‘em safe on the road, Karl. Leave the digging to me.”

  Easy to dig when ya keep yer ass aboveground, Karl thought, but he left without another word spoken.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Get the hell out of there, Sal,” Hannah barked at her dragon. Sal had rolled up in a ball and tried to fit himself into her leather bag.

  The problem was, the damned lizard wouldn’t stop growing.

  He had started the size of a tiny common lizard. Now, he was nearly the weight of one of the goats the farmers brought in from outside the city walls. And his wings were getting too big for comfort. When spread out wide, they spanned nearly ten feet.

  It was a good thing that Sal had learned to neatly fold them in over his back. Poor guy was still shocked by the changes, but Hannah tried to assure him it was natural—which both of them clearly knew was a lie.

  Sal hopped off the bed, and Hannah continued to stuff the few belongings she had brought to the tower into the bag. Those belongings were all she had since they had fled the city and crawled back into their little broken down tower—what used to be called a skyscraper. Apparently, Ezekiel had cast some kind of mental magic over their home—a ward that kept it invisible from the eye of a passing traveler.

  Or worse, a Hunter.

  It had been over two months since she had been taken on by Ezekiel, the master magician, and the one the Arcadians called the Founder. That day was dreadful and fated. It was the afternoon that she was nearly killed in the streets of Arcadia by the Hunters, with a little sexual molestation to increase the torture before her flame was extinguished.

  The Hunters were “civil servants,” commissioned by the Governor and Chancellor to find and capture or kill anyone using magic without authorization within the city walls. Magic could only be used by those licensed through Chancellor Adrien’s Academy, and he kept a very close eye on just how many students were allowed through the doors.

  At the time, she thought their accusation that she had used magic was preposterous. Hannah, being a girl who grew up in poverty in Queen’s Boulevard—the slum of Arcadia—knew nothing of the magical arts and their use.

  Although she hadn’t known it, she had used magic—or at least it had escaped her—and that magic resulted in the temporary healing of her brother’s seizures. As a side bonus, it also transformed Sal, setting him on his path to dragonhood.

  The Hunters saw it happen. They tagged her, and just as they were about to have their way with the girl, Ezekiel showed up out of nowhere to kick ass and didn’t give a shit about their names.

  Except one that became Stump.

  Ezekiel would have saved the girl, regardless of her innate power. He had returned to Arcadia to find that it had fallen into despair due to his old student’s leadership. Ezekiel had trained Adrien himself, thought of him as a son. But in Ezekiel’s forty-year absence, Adrien distorted Ezekiel’s legacy and used the gift of magic for his own devices.

  This was an error that Ezekiel vowed to set right.

  But to do that, he needed to help Hannah realize her potential. At least, that’s what he kept saying every day as they trained. Hannah knew that he was right, although she didn’t quite know how far his teaching could take h
er.