The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  "This is our home," Jenniline told the two new members of the household, as they stood at the base of the tower.

  "All of this?" Listrid asked between gasps.

  "Really just the top two floors," Grange answered.

  "But no one else lives here," Jenniline address.

  They entered and climbed the stairs.

  "If no one else lives in the tower, why don't you take chambers closer to the ground?" Listrid asked when they reached the top of the steps.

  "Our Champion wants to be close to the roof," Jenniline said in a neutral tone.

  "What's so important about the roof?" Geric asked.

  "It's hard to explain, but you'll see," Grange replied. “I like to see the open sky.”

  "Listrid, this will be your room," Jenniline motioned when they entered the suite and began to walk about.

  And where do you and the master sleep?" the new servant asked pleasantly.

  "Separately," Jenniline answered crisply. "I sleep over there," she pointed to her door, "and the Champion sleeps upstairs."

  Grange studiously avoided making eye contact with anyone.

  "Let’s go up and take a look up above," Jenniline moved them along.

  "We'll have to get some more furniture sent up for everyone," she observed as they entered an empty room on the top floor.

  It was difficult to imagine that the princess had been overlooked and ignored in her father’s court, Grange thought as he listened to her lead the brief tour, and thought about all that he had seen her accomplish. She was competent and able; she had an out-sized personality; she fought well; and she was attractive. King Magnus had made a mistake by setting her aside in organizing his court, Grange thought.

  She would make a good, strong queen, he thought, then realized with a shock where his mind was wandering.

  "No," he told himself, not realizing that he spoke aloud.

  All eyes turned to him.

  "No, what, my Champion?" Jenniline asked politely.

  "Nothing," he muttered, feeling himself blush for the first time in a long time. He looked at Jenniline for a pair of moments, then quickly broke eye contact.

  "Let’s go see the roof," he suggested.

  "It's a wonderful view," Listrid said enthusiastically when they stood atop the tower and looked out over the palace grounds.

  "It'd be a pleasure to serve the two of you just for helping two good, young people in a lovely home," she commented, "let alone because of the great magical healing you gave us."

  "Amen to that," Geric agreed fervently.

  "What services do you want provided?" he asked. "I've been a blacksmith since I was a young lad, so I don't know a lot about serving a gentleman of the court, but I'll learn as best I can."

  "I don't know that I have a great need for service," Grange admitted. "If you want to work at the blacksmith shop some hours in the day, I'd have no objection," he offered.

  "I just want to make sure that the. Princess and I have others who spend the evenings here with us," he explained.

  "That's wise, my lord," Listrid immediately grasped the need for chaperones to be known to be present. "But we'll be in your service too, and you'll find the household runs better for it," she proudly asserted.

  "We have no doubt of that," Jenniline graciously agreed.

  "Now, let's go get some furniture sent here so that you two will have beds to sleep in tonight," she suggested.

  They started back down the stairs from the roof, though Grange stayed behind, as he started working on his wand, trying to fill it with energy. He sat alone for a long time, watching the glow of the power as it flowed into his slender instrument.

  He was startled when he heard a noise behind him and saw Geric coming up the steps.

  "Did you succeed in finding furniture?" Grange asked.

  "Finding it, yes. Getting the buggers from the shop to deliver at the end of the day, no," Geric said in exasperation. "I suppose I can't blame them though," he said ruefully.

  Grange looked at his wand, only partially filled with power, then sighed. Working on the wand could wait, while having beds for his new retinue of servants was necessary.

  "Can the two of us carry the furniture here?" he asked as he stood up.

  "My lord, it's not work for the likes of you," Geric seemed scandalized by the thought of Grange carrying goods.

  "No one here has high expectations for me," Grange laughed. "They all like to remember that I was pickpocket on the streets before I came here. Let's go see this furniture we need."

  Geric obediently took Grange across the palace campus to a furniture warehouse, where Jenniline and Listrid waited.

  "Are you going to rouse out some of the lazy scoundrels who aren't helping us?" Listrid asked.

  "I was going to help carry the beds myself," Grange replied thoughtfully, "but I just had another idea."

  He looked at the stack of furniture set aside for his household. He could perhaps move it easily, and exercise his wand as well.

  "We can try this," he said softly. "Wand, let your energy lift this furniture, and follow me to our tower." He pointed the wand at the pile, and watched as a stream of energy emerged. The individual pieces rose off the stack and floated idly in the air, awaiting his movement.

  "I suppose if you can heal injuries like mine, you can do other impossible things," Geric said as he gaped upward at the cluster of items in the air.

  Jenniline led the way, and the furniture obediently floated behind Grange, drawing stares from everyone they encountered along the way. When they reached the tower, Grange lowered the furniture to the ground.

  "Now do we carry it up the stairs?" Geric asked.

  "I think I can raise it to the top," Grange judged, sensing that the incomplete energy in his wand was depleting quickly from the furniture transport. He had stored the energy, expecting to call upon it to discharge as another evening light display, hoping to impress the city once again. Altering its use to carry the furniture had drained it faster than expected. But energy remained, enough to lift everything, he was sure.

  He walked up to the top of the tower with Geric. "Let’s see how this works," he said, aware that an audience was watching. He pointed his wand down over the edge of the tower, and commanded the wand to lift the first bed.

  It floated calmly upward, and then was deposited softly atop the tower. The second bed followed it up, as Jenniline and Listrid stood below and looked up. A table came next, leaving only a chest of drawers on the ground. Grange used the wand to lift the chest as well, but when it was three quarters of the way towards the top, Grange felt his wand give a peculiar hiccup, as the last of the energy within it drained away.

  The chest hovered momentarily, before gravity exerted its hold, and the heavy piece began to plummet. Listrid screamed as the chest seemed to head towards her.

  Grange dropped his wand and extended his right hand down. "Energy, lift that chest to me!" he shouted. The wooden box of drawers halted abruptly, just twenty feet above Listrid's head, as Jenniline dove at the woman to push her from the dangerous path.

  The chest rose rapidly, then landed on the roof along with the other furniture, as Jenniline's voice rose from below. "That wasn't funny, you mangy son of a mule!"

  "What are we to do now?" Geric asked.

  "We probably ought to stay out of the princess’s sight," Grange answered, “and let's carry these down the stairs," he added, eyeing Geric's brawny build.

  They carried the two beds down into place before Jenniline arrived. "Listrid is down stairs waiting for us to go to dinner," she said as she eyed Grange frostily. "So come along if you want to eat."

  They all silently went downstairs, and started to stroll towards the dining hall, when Listrid and Geric abruptly turned.

  "The dining hall is this way," Grange commented.

  "For nobles and great wizards, but not for servants," Listrid explained. "Our food is served over this way in our quarter of the palace."

  Grange l
ooked at Jenniline, who nodded her head in acknowledgment.

  "Could we go eat in their hall with them?" he asked her.

  "It's not to be done!" Listrid said in a scandalized voice.

  "Is the food good?" Grange asked.

  "I've been told we get better food there," Geric said softly.

  Jenniline's eyebrows rose.

  "Begging your pardon," Geric added.

  "Let’s go find out," Grange suggested. "We ought to eat together on our first night together."

  "As you command, my Champion," Jenniline replied with a roll of her eyes.

  When the group entered the humble space of the servant’s dining hall, a few of the servants left, and many others scrutinized the appearance of Jenniline – who everyone knew was a princess – and Grange – who was still unknown to many of them.

  But when they quietly picked up trays of food then sat unobtrusively in a corner of the room and kept to themselves, the atmosphere in the hall relaxed, and they were soon forgotten, while they enjoyed their delicious meals. Afterwards, they left the hall in the deepening gloom that was falling outside, and agreed on their walk to the tower that the food was at least as good as what the nobility ate.

  “Of course, the King’s table still gets the best of everything,” Listrid said. “But the servants don’t get short shrift.”

  They climbed the stairs and rediscovered the two pieces of furniture that had not been moved from the roof, but Grange used the energy to waft them into their respective places, before saying good night to everyone.

  “You don’t need any help with anything?” Geric asked as Grange stayed on the roof.

  “No, I’ll just sit up here and work with my wand,” he told them. The results of using the light power to levitate objects – the change from the intended use had substantially reduced the effectiveness of the power he had stored in the wand – made him want to experiment with the energy and the wand and a number of different iterations of combining intent and action, to see if he could overcome the loss of endurance. He would ask Brieed about it as well.

  He thought the last thought, about asking Brieed, and he decided to send the question to Brieed at that moment. Though the master wizard might not receive Grange’s request, if he did, he could send the answer the next morning. If he did not, Grange would simply ask it again in the morning, and wait another day for the answer to come.

  “Master Brieed,” he began, energizing his message so that the words flew towards the rising moon on the eastern horizon, leaving softly glowing trails through the sky as they traveled. He explained what had happened and what he would like to correct. When he was finished he was satisfied, so he sat down and began to focus on filling his wand. The sky had grown completely dark, as the waxing moon hung low in the east, while Grange sat and watched the glowing process of energy that only he could see, power that congregated from the seeming nothingness of the air, and fell and slid together at the tiny vortex where it all entered the wand.

  The activity was mesmerizing, Grange found, when he discovered that his legs were stiff from having sat still so long. He had tried to alter the purpose of the energy that he stored in the wand – some of it was for levitating, some was light, some was heat, some was loud sounds – but he hadn’t needed to physically move to make the purpose of the energy change.

  He stood up, aware that the moon had risen and the stars had moved and the night was passing rapidly. He needed to get some sleep in order to be sure to wake up in time to “converse” with Brieed, he realized.

  Grange decided to empty the wand of its energy with a spectacular discharge of its stored energy, one that many people would not see because they had already gone to bed. He looked across the islands of light spread out through the city, and spotted the total darkness that loomed outside the gates.

  It would be harmless to create a storm that spewed its wrath on the harbor outside the city, he told himself with a grin.

  He spoke to the wand, “Energy, find the harbor, and raise its waters as rain that falls back down on the harbor, within sight of the city, but safely outside the city,” he began the commands. He pointed the wand up in the sky, and watched as a beam of energy emerged and arched instantly through the sky.

  “Energy, create light of all colors, to flicker and flash above the open waters of the harbor,” he added, and shook the wand dramatically, sending bolts of energy searing away.

  “Energy, create the sounds of thunder that rattle windows, and make them clash above the harbor waters,” he directed again.

  He felt the multiple streams of power leaving the wand, bright streaks that flared through the night sky, heading north towards the harbor.

  Lights began to flicker on the horizon, and their illumination revealed sheets of water moving through the air, some rising and some falling. The flashes of lights began to grow more constant, turning from intermittent light amidst the darkness to intermittent moments of darkness among the nearly constant colored lights, while booming and howling noises dimly filtered all the way back to where Grange stood, observing the spectacle.

  The rays of energy emitted from his wand trickled to a halt, as the wand was emptied once again.

  Grange stood and watched, waiting for the end of the flow of his energies to reach the dramatic storm, so that the tempest would also diminish. But the minutes passed, and the storm continued to churn. If anything, it appeared to Grange to be growing more powerful, feeding upon itself, as if he had created a monstrous disaster that had become self-sustaining.

  “Energy, dampen the storm!” he called out. He tucked the now-useless wand in his belt, and held his arms wide, his fingers pointed at the harbor. The power began to condensate from the atmosphere, becoming visible as it gathered along the length of his arms, in a scene that was extraordinary to watch. It gathered with increasing speed, and slid along his arms at an increasing pace, while it conglomerated upon his hands, forming a quivering, glowing ball of energy, that suddenly launched itself outward from his fingertips with a speed greater than arrows released from bows.

  The glowing energy flew through the air, receded from sight as it gained distance, and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then, as Grange waited anxiously, his heart pounding, his arms still held suspended in the air because he didn’t think to lower them, the storm abruptly ceased.

  The noises quit and the air fell silent, as one or two last flickers of light marked the end of the unnatural storm.

  “Do you even know what you’re doing?” a woman’s voice spoke in a shrill tone behind him, and a forceful blow buffeted his back, sending him staggering forward unexpectedly.

  He whirled around to face his unknown assailant, ready to draw his sword, then stopped in a split second, as he immediately recognized who had joined him on the roof.

  It was Shaine, the goddess of punishment, physically present and standing before him, her eyes glowing red.

  “My goddess,” he said in shock, and he dropped to one knee. She had to be there because of the storm he had just formed, he was sure.

  “Do you know what a disaster you almost unleashed on this city?” her next words confirmed his suspicion. “If you hadn’t dampened that monstrosity within the next minute, it would have grown and moved and killed dozens of people; it would have destroyed every ship in the harbor.

  “Did you even know what you were doing?” she was screeching at him. He had never thought that he would see a deity appear so angry, especially with wraith aimed at him. He felt a tremor of fear run through his body.

  She strode forth and approached him, then stretched her arm forth, her hand hovering in front of his face. “I can’t do anything to you at the moment,” she hissed, “because of the role you must play. But I owe you severe punishment, and I want you to know it and remember it.” Her hand slid forward, one finger extended, and it pressed him on the forehead, right where his hairline began, as he squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of pain.

  “Here is my mark,” she
told him.

  The pain struck him like a blast of fiery heat from an open oven, only a hundred times worse, as it began at the single point of contact at her fingertip, and radiated outward. It made him shriek in terror, a long wail of pain and despair.

  And then the pain receded. It drew back from afflicting all parts of his body to only the single spot on his scalp, and then that too disappeared.

  He opened his eyes cautiously, worried about what the goddess would do next.

  She was gone. There were two people standing by the staircase, Jenniline and Geric, staring at him. He could see them clearly, by the light of a reddish glow, a glow that was emenating from him, he realized in shock. He looked down at himself and saw that his flesh and his clothing both were growing dimmer, but still retained a vestigial glow as a result of the touch of the goddess.

  “Grange? Are you alright? What happened?” Jenniline asked in a shaky tone. “I thought I saw someone standing with you for a split second, and then you were alone, looking like that, with your glow and your hair the way it is.”

  Grange felt a release, and partially collapsed, leaning forward to rest on his hands as well as his knees. As he did, he saw the last of the glow from the goddess’s touch fade away. He gagged and retched, then looked up, a haggard expression on his face.

  “I’ve had another encounter with Shaine,” he gasped. “That was her you saw visiting.”

  He stood up and staggered over to them. “I need some water,” he said.

  “I’ll fetch it immediately,” Geric answered, then ran downstairs.

  “Have a seat,” Jenniline motioned towards his bed, where he did sit down.

  “I was testing my powers with a storm over the harbor,” Grange explained, “and Shaine said it was too dangerous. She punished me, and promised more, later.

  “It was terrible,” he added.

  “Are you feeling better now?” Jenniline asked.

  “My body is better,” he told her, as Geric arrived with the water. Grange paused to use the pitcher. “It hurts just to remember what it felt like.