Smart Alec in the Dark Lands

by Donald Wigboldy

  Shaelamee smiled and asked, "Are you saying that my twenty-four years are shorter than yours and thus I am not that much older than you after all? Why are you trying to figure that out, Alec?"

  She was teasing him again and now Alec wished that he had taken the time to work out the math. With the hours in her day being shorter than Atropos and the years much shorter, he was pretty sure that her age would be perhaps a quarter less in Alusian years. Eighteen was still older than fourteen, but four years wasn't unusual in relationships when people were older as opposed to ten years. There were those kinds of couples too, but not usually when it concerned someone in their early teens.

  "It just came up while we were waiting for you to wake up. Maybe that explains why you do impetuous things that I would expect from someone still in their teens."

  Sniffing in displeasure, Shae retorted, "Not everyone grows out of such things. Some people call it being brave."

  He could tell that the girl wasn't really put out with him for pointing her impetuousness out, but it probably did annoy her slightly.

  Shrugging, the boy said, "Anyway, maybe we are much closer in age than Ediyem believed at least."

  "Are you trying to become my boyfriend, Alec?" Shae giggled and he could tell that this was definitely her trying to make him blush again. It might also hold a kernel of truth, but mostly it was another attempt to tease him.

  He looked around at the air fencing. It wasn't to mask any embarrassment this time. "I am busier trying just to stay alive here. This isn't my world and I don't know all the rules or all of the dangers either."

  Pushing the bottom part of her blanket into the center of her crossed legs, Shae exposed more of her legs and side. Alec caught the newly revealed parts of her and quickly tried to make it look like he was still looking away.

  "This isn't my world either," the girl reminded him. "I was assigned here by the high command... or whatever level that actually gets stuck with placing new warlocks and what have you."

  "You are a warlock? Helios said that your magic was different than his... or mine. We call the enemy wizards back home warlocks because they use darker magic. Well, the enemy that came to our world through a different type of gate a couple centuries ago. Is your magic like that?"

  Frowning from confusion at his attempt to clarify the terminology, Shaelamee asked, "What did Helios say was different?"

  "He said that his magic comes from within and is mostly instinctual... I guess would be the most accurate answer. Yours supposedly comes from... someone else in your dreams?"

  Green flame blinked into existence above her open right palm.

  "I wouldn't say that it comes from my dreams, though... I guess my dreams do have something to do with the spells that I learn. To say that it comes from someone else isn't exactly correct either." Shaking her head, the girl replied, "That dragaoin is quiet so often, but when he talks he doesn't seem to shut up especially when he is talking about other peoples' business."

  "He said that his power comes from being a descendant of dragons. It is supposedly in his blood or whatever. Could the ancients that gave birth to your people have put it in your blood similarly?"

  Sighing, Shaelamee warned, "Don't believe everything that Zmaj says, even if he believes it."

  Alec considered her curiously making her sigh again.

  "My people tend to believe that our power comes from pacts with other beings. Sometimes we don't even need to officially join them for the magic to flow through us. Some do enter pacts and many of those you might say have dark magic. Not all creatures who could grant them power are good beings. Certainly many are quite the opposite, though I would say that I would stay away from those genasi anyway.

  "The worst of those caused great wars amongst my people long before the Ciemnosci found our world."

  "So you don't study magic either?" Alec asked wishing that someone here understood how much work went into him becoming a wizard. He supposed just letting his magic overtake him like a wilder could have been easier if more uncertain.

  Her green eyes closed and she was silent until they opened once more.

  "Meditation tends to reward me with the powers I use. It takes time and sometimes I can't find a way to learn anything for a long while. Other times the magic I discover isn't what I planned on at all.

  "It is rather hit or miss.

  "So you study to learn a certain spell, I take it? There are people like that, especially among the dark elves as I think you called them. I prefer that name to Ciemnosci," the girl giggled again. "Ediyem would hate being called an elf."

  "Why? Do they know of the elves too? There are elves in my world, though I think they came through another gate long ago.

  "Alus seems to draw many gates to it and many races have found a home there."

  Shaelamee's face lit up a bit at the thought. "So they are used to new races? What would they do if the genasi made it there? Would they hate or like a girl with blue skin?"

  Feeling a bit of surprise at the way her question was phrased, Alec countered, "Are you thinking of trying to visit Alus?"

  Blinking at him, the girl leaned back slightly as if to gather a moment to think it through. "Well, you wish to go home, don't you? You want Ediyem to try to get permission to send you back to this Alus. Maybe I could visit it to see what it is like where you live?"

  She looked up at the clouds with the red lights rippling through the darker parts of them and added, "Can you see a sun and a sky without these clouds all the time?"

  "We have a yellow sun and three moons. It gets cloudy at times and we have storms where you won't be able to see past them. During the winter, we often have gray skies, but it is just whatever the weather brings us."

  Sighing longingly, Shae said, "I would definitely like to see the sun again."

  "Can't you go home? You can see a sun and other weather there, right? The Ciemnosci didn't do this damage to your world like they did in Atropos."

  "I can't go home until I finish serving out my time in the army. They send me where they want me to go and that has been here on Atropos for years. I haven't been back to Wataris since I was seventeen... in my years," the girl added with a sad smile.

  "So you've been here for seven years?"

  "Well, roughly that in my years. Even though I have been here I keep track of my world's calendar. It helps me remember my parents and siblings birthdays. My grandparents and other relatives also... well some of them. I can never remember them all."

  Chuckling, Alec said, "Well, I guess that we are different that way too. Wizards like me have really good memories. If I was told a birthday, I can usually pull out the date for anyone, not just my family."

  Shae's face scrunched showing disbelief, but she said, "If you just remember all those little details, your brain must get really, really full."

  "My friend is a diplomat wizard... well a novice like me, but she says that she is trying to memorize every person's name that she meets. Being able to call up someone's name makes it easier to build rapport or something. It is just part of her field of magic."

  The girl shook her head and said, "I have problems remembering my breakfast some days. I can't imagine committing so much information to memory. It seems a bit useless to lock so much in there really."

  "It is how we learn spells so that at any given moment we can access the actions and words needed to cast it. Without that kind of memory, we would need to have a book handy or memorize things temporarily and rememorize them all the time as we need them.

  "It is part of being a guild wizard and how we are made. I guess that is part of us being different, if that seems too hard to bother with for you."

  Looking concerned, Shae quickly amended, "I didn't mean that it was a bad thing; just that I don't think I could do it. I know a finite amount of spells. Beyond them, I would have to meditate to find more. Occasionally I will learn another."

  Waving off her concern, Alec replied, "Sorry, I wasn't hurt by the comment. I just realized
that our people must learn magic differently indeed. To an extent, I wish that I could learn my spells like you or like Helios who seems to grow into his magic with time."

  "You could learn more spells than either of us combined your way though," the girl noted before a yawn stopped her. She covered her mouth turning away from Alec in an attempt to avoid making him yawn as always seemed to happen when someone saw another yawn.

  "You're getting tired?" he asked. "Maybe you're ready for some sleep after all?"

  She smiled at him and nodded. "I will try."

  The girl stood moving over to her pack. She untied the blanket as she sat down. Keeping the blanket around her, Shaelamee wagged a finger saying, "No peeping on me while I am sleeping this time."

  "You were naked when I caught you last time and I covered you up after I had to clean the fruit off of you!" he responded aghast at the allegations.

  Shae giggled at finally seeing him flustered and blew him a kiss. "You're so easy to tease," the girl said rolling onto her side covered in the blanket.

  Sighing, Alec stood as he took over the watch. She had gotten him again, he thought with a shake of his head. Glancing at her blue hair peeking out from the top of the blanket, Alec shook his head. He could believe that she was more like seventeen or eighteen the more he dealt with her.

  She had asked why he cared about their age difference and Alec wondered that as well. Surely just trying to figure out why she acted like a teenage girl was enough, but was it? The boy wondered about the question for a large part of his shift.

  Light came to the east, but only because the sun struck the clouds there. Alec could see why Shaelamee or anyone would want to leave this world. The permanent cloud cover meant that each day was a shadow of what it could be.

  The three had breakfast after the others awoke. Then Helios cast his spell that let him see the path of the hollows that they had been following since the lake. They left their large opening between pieces of jungle and soon they were surrounded by the thick brush and trees of a land that was a complete contrast to the valley near the fort.

  Like the clouds overhead, Alec was more than ready to be out of the jungle again, however. It took much of the morning, but eventually the three left the jungle feeling cooler air once more as they looked out on the rest of the Soyanne Valley. It spread out before them as far as the eye could see. To the north and south, Alec thought that he could make out more hills or maybe even mountains. It was hard to tell at this distance.

  Straight ahead all the wizard could see was a rolling plain.

  "There is a river and lake that way," Helios stated pointing ahead of them. "There are more hills beyond them while there are openings in the hills both to the northeast and southwest of the jungle."

  The dragon man was obviously giving this information to Alec, a stranger to his world. Since Shaelamee had been positioned here for so many years, it was likely that she knew all of this equally well.

  "Which way does the hollows' path go?" the blue girl asked as she sat in the saddle in front of Alec. She seemed comfortable in the position after a couple days riding, if Shae was ever not comfortable anyway, the young wizard thought sitting behind her.

  Pointing to the hills to the southwest, Helios replied, "They seem to be headed in that direction. If they hide in the hills, without magic it would become nearly impossible to track them down. There are buildings from one of the old cities at the base of those hills and a few more built into them."

  "Do you think that they use the buildings as a home or base?" Alec questioned curiously.

  "That would imply that they are more intelligent than we have been led to believe. I have never seen a hollow that appeared to be smart enough to reason like that."

  Shae put in, "These seem to be more intelligent than the normal breed. Usually I can pick them off from the fort tower like they are moths moving into a flame. Those don't run away or seem to actually be scouting the walls or anything. They just wander and don't bother to avoid us even though we can blow them up at will.

  "Even so, the ones we keep running into now seem to be using military tactics... or at least some kind of tactics anyway."

  "The hollows vaulted the seven foot air fence by throwing some over it," Alec agreed. "The ones Shae followed might even have intentionally led her into that clearing with the hallucination fruit."

  "You think that they set a trap?" the girl queried dubiously even though she had just said that the hollows had used tactics in the first fight.

  Shrugging at her, the young wizard replied, "It might not have been completely intentional and you could argue that the odds of the fruit striking you might be slim also. If they did reason that you getting drugged by the tree would slow us down to help put distance between them and us, then we should really be wondering whether they are evolving with time.

  "You said that the hollows have never seemed that intelligent. Maybe some of the newer ones are coming back smarter or older ones are taking in more information to continue to improve. I mean, I am new here; but doesn't it worry you the way they have been acting?"

  The genasi girl and the dragaoin exchanged looks but said nothing in answer to Alec's questioning.

  After a moment of thought, Helios stated, "We will have to make sure to keep our eyes open to the possibility of new attacks. It is the same whether they are evolving, or whatever you wish to call it, or not. They remain dangerous as always. We simply need to remember that as we chase them down."

  "And we still don't know what Ediyem sent us to find," Alec added.

  An elbow to his midsection preceded Shae's frown over her shoulder at the boy and her order, "Stop it. We will find what we find when we find it. Stop complaining about it. You don't need to know everything about everything all at once, Alec. Experience is a good teacher as well, so watch and listen to the world around you. You'll learn enough that way if you're patient."

  Chastened by the blue girl, he held his tongue still wondering why the dark elf commander had sent them off on such a vague kind of mission. Like Shaelamee had said though, if he could just exercise some patience and pay attention he just might find out what it was.

  Still wanting to ask them questions, but understanding that his new friends wouldn't have the answers that he would want, Alec kept his thoughts to himself as the two salamanders carried them in the direction of the tall hills. It was nearing mid afternoon by the time they could see a number of stone buildings in the shadow of those hills. According to Helios, this was the way that the oddly acting hollows had gone.

  To Alec, it still looked and felt like a possible trap; but like their silver scaled leader had cautioned, they approached warily.

  "If they are in one of those buildings, we might have a problem," the young wizard said quietly.

  "Shh," the girl hushed him in a whisper of sound. "Just be ready, Alec."

  They continued to approach what looked like a small city. A broken outer wall still marked the outer boundary of their old defenses. A number of stone towers rose higher than the wall and they appeared to be in surprisingly good shape unlike the wall. He looked for smoke just in case there were living inhabitants, but nothing presented itself to him.

  If it was still occupied, the boy worried that it was just with the undead.

  Chapter 13- The Red Ghost

  Tall stone buildings rose up all around the three as they rode deeper into the ancient city. Even from the height of a salamander's back, many stood dozens of feet above their heads making them obstacles to both vision and their path. There were broken buildings that had given into time and the elements, but many just looked old yet solid enough to be lived in even now. Glass windows... or what Alec supposed had been glass... were mostly shattered and gone.

  Dusty streets with cracked pavement had plant life stretching through the gaps looking for a sun still hidden by unnatural clouds.

  It felt like a ghost town that still had ghosts walking around or hiding just beyond the edge of his sight, Ale
c thought with a shiver.

  The girl in front of him turned at the feeling and asked in a hushed voice, "Are you cold?"

  Shaking his head, the boy confessed, "I just had a feeling like we were being watched and not by something alive."

  Her eyes appeared unhappy to hear the revelation. Wrinkles of worry rippled across her forehead a moment before Shaelamee said, "I suppose hollows aren't really alive, but try not to let your mind play any cruel tricks on you before we find a safe place to set up camp."

  The young wizard recalled the hound spell and repeated it not for the first time this day. Keeping it up indefinitely ate into his supply of magic, so he couldn't hope to maintain the spell all the time; but Alec kept it up as much as he could as they wandered through the ghost city.

  A low grumble as Helios pulled his salamander to a halt could be heard easily by the boy with his spell in place. The silver scaled dragaoin looked side to side with a frown before finally turning to the others to say, "They have crisscrossed this area a number of times. Either this is their home or they..." Helios paused before sighing, "Or they are doing a good job of masking their trail."

  Shaelamee shook her head as she protested, "Are you trying to say that they are intentionally trying to keep you from following them? Has Alec's questions addled that lizard brain of yours?"

  An angry look crossed his face at the slight, but Helios managed to control his voice as he said, "We have seen them do odd things especially this trip. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that maybe one of them retained the basics of a hunter who might be able to try something like this."

  Sighing in annoyance, the blue girl complained, "Well, if they are so smart as to fool your tracking spell, what do you propose we do then, Helios?"

  The dragaoin looked up at the cloudy sky and said, "I can try to break down the tracks looking for the very freshest of them for a little while longer; but if I can't figure it out soon, we'll need to find a solid building to set up camp."

  "A building," she questioned? "Why not just pull back outside the walls and set up another wind fence?"