Third Power

by Robert Childs

  “God,” Steve laughed morosely, “I hope not.” Then, more seriously, he added, “What do you say we turn our brains toward something more constructive—like maybe figuring out a way to get home?”

  “I’ve actually already given that some thought,” Sonya said brightening. “What if you were to go ahead and use magic to get Haldorum’s attention? But beforehand we secure a ready means of transportation to get out of the area. Then we could watch from a distance to see who showed up, say from a hillside or something like that. If the wrong person comes to town…well, we leave.”

  Steve tilted his head as he thought it over. Though the idea certainly had merit, it was not without danger. “Hmm, possible, but risky.”

  “Doesn’t have to be our plan A,” she admitted, “but better than nothing if nothing else comes to mind.”

  Steve walked back to where Sonya stood and watched the lights of the town. “Well, it’s something to consider, especially since I don’t think I can get us back on my own. Haldorum is supposedly the only one who can transpose worlds as easily as he does—and I don’t even know how to do it the hard way.”

  “I’m not expecting you to get it right the first time, Steve.” Sonya leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’m going to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.” She walked into the shadows of the loft and curled up in one of the piles of straw near the hatch to the lower floor. Though he could not see it, he could hear the smile in her words. “Good night, Steve,” she said.

  “Good night,” he returned.

  She closed her eyes and Steve turned again to face the night. He sat down in the doorway and let his legs hang over the side as he contemplated their options. If he was truly Sonya’s only hope to get home there was a very important question he had to answer before he could start experimenting with his talents: how to use his magic without broadcasting to the whole world. But how does one practice such a thing without actually using magic in the first place? He laid back with an exasperated sigh…

  “Keep her still!” a voice whispered harshly.

  “If I move my hand she’ll scream!” another countered. “I only have two hands. One of you grab her legs.”

  Steve opened his eyes sleepily from a haystack in the far corner of the barn, not sure yet if a dream had roused him into wakefulness. Several shapes slowly came into focus in the predawn gloom. After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the ill light and his heart quickened at the sight of Sonya struggling in the arms of a man who held her pinned with her back against his chest; one of his hands clamped over her mouth and his free arm around her waist, pinning her arms at her sides. Another individual worked to keep her legs from kicking wildly about while two others stood to either side supervising the clumsy operation. Their clothing looked little better than the townsfolk, though more uniform in appearance with black leather belts and black knit caps. Something about them suggested local law enforcement, or possibly militia. Each carried a staff of some six feet in length, save for the two men who had set them aside to deal with the struggling teenager in their arms. The two looking on stood motionless and held their weapons butts to the floor in their left hand.

  “I said keep her still!” The man to her right stepped forward and punctuated his last word with a swift backhand that knocked the young woman senseless. She sagged in her captor’s arms.

  “Was that so difficult?” he hissed.

  Steve’s jaw tightened but he did not move. He closed his eyes to narrow slits, feigning sleep as he watched from his bed of straw.

  “Now go get the other,” the same man said pointing in Steve’s general direction. “Or do you need me to show you how to do that as well?”

  The man he spoke to was shorter, but stout with thick forearms. Straightening his cap as he went, this shorter man crossed the room until he stood over the ‘sleeping’ young man to nudge him awake with the end of his staff.

  But he came too close.

  Steve slid his left foot behind the man’s heel and drew his right knee to his chest. The movement seemed natural enough, appearing as little more than the unconscious motion of someone rolling to their side in deep slumber. Then Steve’s eyes snapped open and he kicked the man across the knee. The leg folded back on itself with a loud crack, and the man went down howling in pain. In the next moment, Steve curled into a ball and rolled backwards onto his shoulder blades, his hands touching the floor on either side of his head. He then thrust his lower body into the air and snapped upright to land nimbly on his feet, only to drop to one knee as someone struck him from behind.

  “Quit playing, you fool!” another shouted. “Knock him out!”

  “I am trying!” the other returned, swinging his staff a second time, then a third. “He will not go down!”

  The man holding Sonya pointed at him. “There! Around his neck!”

  Steve threw himself into a dive roll with the crystal singing shrill in his ears. His hands landed across the fallen man’s staff and he picked it up as he rolled to his feet facing his attacker.

  Strangely, he paused then; surprised and amazed at the overwhelming sense of the world around him. Had someone asked, he could have closed his eyes and described the location of everyone and everything in the loft—no, more than that, he could feel everyone and everything around him.

  Steve reached out an open hand and focused his will upon the floorboards at his enemy’s feet. In answer, the magic rushed out of him in a torrent and then spread out in all directions along the floor until the entire structure of the barn began to quake and tremble. The floor collapsed around them both without warning and together they fell, startling the chickens below into a squawking frenzy and sending the cows charging out of the open front doors of the barn.

  Steve hit the ground and then rolled sideways amid a blinding cloud of dust and debris, bleeding off the momentum of his fall, before continuing the roll to his feet. Ten feet away his opponent staggered to his feet, the staff in his hands broken cleanly in half. He threw the pieces away in disgust and then snatched a short shovel off the wall in its stead. Steve squared off clutching his own staff in two hands like a spear leveled at his opponent’s sternum. His opponent advanced two steps and the young wizard thrust with magic-imbued strength. Bone cracked and flesh tore as the hard wood connected with his jaw, sending the man reeling 180 degrees to the floor unconscious.

  “Enough!”

  Steve looked up in the direction of the voice above him. Three men stood at the edge of the tremendous hole the young wizard’s magic had rent, one holding a short knife to Sonya’s delicate throat. “You are the real prize here. Any more trouble,” he said, “and the girl dies.”

  Steve froze in place, his mind racing.

  The blade pressed closer still.

  “All right!” he said at last. He threw the staff away and then placed his hands up behind his head. “Just don’t hurt her.”

  Chapter VIII

  A single torch burned in the bracket of the stone wall as Steve fidgeted with the shackles around his wrists. His neck still burned from his captors’ earlier attempts to remove the crystal from around his neck but, despite their best efforts to break, snap, and cut the chain, its tiny links proved impervious to the strongest steel and muscle.

  “I may not be able to remove the crystal while you live,” Azinon had said, “but it is an entirely different matter when you die.”

  Looks like he was right, Steve thought, wincing as he gingerly stretched his neck and the raw skin there for the hundredth time. He then went back to rotating his wrists back and forth inside the shackles, trying to squeeze his hands out of the cuffs. Blood trickled down his arm as the metal bit into his flesh.

  “You might as well save your efforts,” came a voice from the darkest corner of the cell. Steve looked up with a start. “The chains are rusty but still more than adequate to hold us.”

  Steve moved away from the light of the torch as he peered into the shadows. His pupils dilated and he could make out a vague human sha
pe crouching in the corner. And still, something did not seem quite right. “Who are you?” he asked.

  The figure rose to his feet and then stepped forward. “My name is Eegrin.” A fair looking young man, scarcely older than Steve himself, reached out and clasped his forearm in a strange gesture of greeting. Wearing a sleeveless, formfitting uniform of blue cloth with a black star over his left breast, the chain between his wrist bindings clinked lightly against Steve’s own. The oddest thing about this young man was not the uniform, however, but the pair of large, powerful wings folded neatly across his back.

  Noticing his cellmate’s disbelief he said, “I am of Jisetra. A ‘bird man’ as your people like to call us.”

  Steve reached out tentatively and then paused, asking permission with his eyes. Eegrin gave an amused smile and nodded. Steve then touched the feathery surface of one wing, following it across the feather-covered ridge of bone until it met with the flesh of Eegrin’s exposed back.

  His eyes reflected amazement. “They’re real.”

  Eegrin released Steve’s arm and said, “Of course they are. You behave as though you have never heard of my kind before.”

  “I haven’t – except in fairy tales perhaps.” Steve studied the long slender feathers, deep gray with blue along the tips.

  Eegrin unfurled his wings until each tip touched the opposite wall of their ten by ten cell, and could have gone further still.

  “Now that is something I wish I could do,” Steve said.

  Strong tendons responded to the pull of muscles and Eegrin’s wings folded once more across his back. “It is a wonderful freedom, but quite useless in here.”

  Steve sighed heavily. “That’s true. So how does someone like you end up in here, anyway?”

  Eegrin smiled wryly. “Wrong place, wrong time, and a strong net.” Then, more soberly, he added, “From here I’ll probably be given to Borathis, and then sold into slavery in some distant corner of the land. And you?”

  “My friend and I were arrested by the locals. I’m still not exactly sure why, but I think it has to do with being the newest wizard in town.”

  “Are you telling me you are the Third?” Eegrin asked with wide eyes.

  “Third what?”

  “There are only two in the realm who possess magic enough to be considered a Power of Mithal. The prophecy speaks of the coming of a third great power who will set the wheels of destiny into motion.” Eegrin’s wings fluttered to match the excitement in his voice. “My people believe it a foretelling: the destruction of Azinon and the return of the bloodline!”

  “Woah, ease up, buddy,” Steve said raising his hands and shaking his head. “No returning bloodlines here. I’m not even from your world, and I’m just trying to find my way back.”

  “Precisely!” Eegrin insisted. “It is written the Third Power of Mithal shall come from another world.”

  “Look,” Steve said patiently, “I’m telling you, you’ve got the wrong guy. Yeah, I’m not from around here and, sure, I can swing a staff at your head like a beast, but I can’t even control what very little I know how to do. If you guys are looking for a savior, you might want to look for someone who isn’t just flailing around in the magical kiddie pool.”

  “You mean to say you have no great powers?” Eegrin’s enthusiasm appeared to deflate with this news. “It is written the Third—whoever he may be—will have all the power of a wizard, but be capable of so much more.” Eegrin paused then as he considered, and his jaw set in a determined line. “Even so, there has to be a connection. You claim to be from another world and that much is very clearly stated in the prophecy.”

  “Well, I have never been very big on prophecies,” Steve replied.

  Eegrin dismissed that with a wave. “None of that matters right now; a discussion for another time. What does matter is you have magic. Use it to free us from this place and I’ll carry you to safety.”

  “I can’t.”

  The smile dropped from the winged youth’s face like a falling brick. “Why not?”

  “Because the last time I nearly tore the whole building down around me, and very easily could have hurt the person I was trying to save in the first place. Look around us,” he said with a gesture indicating the whole of their prison. “This place is nothing but stone and heavy wooden beams.”

  Eegrin glanced about their cell and looked visibly nervous at the stone and timber above their heads. He nodded. “I think I understand. All you need is a needle, and all you have is a sword.”

  Steve tilted his head, acknowledging the metaphor. “Close enough.”

  The winged young man paced the length of their cell for a time. After a minute, he stopped suddenly. “There is another way. At some point they will bring us before the townspeople for judgment. It is summary and only for show, but the point is they will bind my wings and take us out of this cell. If you can free me I will fly us to safety.”

  “Not us. You. I can’t leave without Sonya.” Eegrin looked at him askance. “The friend I came here with,” Steve explained.

  Eegrin nodded with a grin. “Even such, if you can free me, there is still something I can do for us all.”

  With at least a loose plan in mind, the two of them seated themselves against the back wall of their cell to wait out the night. As he did, Steve could not help but wonder where Sonya had been taken and if she was all right. The muscles in his jaw tightened as he recalled the man who struck her. If given even half a chance, he resolved the coward would pay for that.

  Eegrin laid down on his side and then enveloped himself with his wings in their damp cell. Shortly after, he nodded off to sleep. Steve remained awake in the gloomy silence, listening to the far off sound of water dripping, and wondering if he would ever really find a way home. He stared down at the floor, to the three rectangles of moonlight shining in from a barred window above his head. He shifted his hands to his lap and the chain of his shackles fell between his legs, drawing his attention. He held his wrists up and pulled the chain taut between them as he eyed it closely. The links were very old, crudely fashioned, and brownish-red with corrosion.

  How strong could they be?

  The crystal flickered against his chest as he slowly pulled his wrists apart. Rust flaked off the chain and fell between his legs as the links expanded under the strain. Then the blood oozed, trailing the length of his arms in two small rivulets. He relaxed defeated and his head fell. It’s no use, he thought. I’d cut both my hands off before—wait!

  His head popped up as a new idea came to mind.

  Only a few hours after sunrise, a tall and heavy man ambled down the corridor with the rocking, side-to-side gate of one whose thighs had grown too large. It was not a long walk from the main room to the cells but he was already sweating, swinging a ring of keys idly on a finger shaped like a thick sausage.

  Eegrin and Steve both looked up as the large jailer placed the key into the lock and swung the door open. He ran his fingers through a mat of gray and black hair on his head and stared at them through bloodshot eyes. His belly sagged over the rope he used as a belt but, despite his shambling appearance, Steve could tell there was also strength under that girth. His body mass was simply enormous and the young man wondered idly if there was a man alive who could throw a punch into that gut the jailer would even feel. Fortunately, though, harming him was not the plan.

  “You,” the jailer said pointing.

  “Me?” Steve asked and pointed a finger at himself.

  “Yes, time to face the townspeople.”

  Both young men looked to one another and Steve said, “Isn’t that nice, Eegrin? Everybody came to see me. Maybe they’re going to apologize.”

  The man snorted. “I don’t think so.”

  Steve feigned appalled. “You don’t think so? Well, if you don’t think so then I’m not going.” He stood and then crossed his arms as far as the chain between his wrists would allow.

  The large man’s upper lip curled into a vicious snarl. “You don�
�t want me to come get you, boy.”

  “Then you’d be wrong,” Steve replied quite truthfully. “What are you going to do? Break my arm?” Steve held out his right arm, taunting. “I’ll bet someone as old and fat as you would drop of a heart attack first.”

  The jailer covered the ground between himself and Steve surprisingly quickly, reaching for the proffered arm to snap it like a twig. The crystal around Steve’s neck blazed to life and stopped the big man’s charge as it drew his gaze. Doubt played across his face just then, but Steve did not wait. He lunged from his place in the cell and the jailer’s eyes widened with visible terror.

  “Nooo!” he cried. With surprising agility, he sidestepped and Steve passed just outside of his enormous mass.

  Eegrin half jumped, half flew, to the man’s back but the jailer reached over his head and pulled hard, throwing the winged youth across the cell. He turned to flee but Steve seized his wrist and the young wizard’s magic raced across the physical connection like a bursting dam.

  Eegrin sat up, rubbing his head but unharmed, and watched the spectacle before him. The towering fat man staggered back a step as Steve increased his concentration, pushing his will through every nerve and fiber.

  “Are you all right?” Steve asked without looking away.

  Eegrin climbed to his feet and flexed his wings experimentally. He nodded, “I’m okay. What about him?”

  Though thoroughly immobilized, the jailer’s eyes darted about in abject terror, draining the blood from his face and giving his sun-beaten skin a pale ruddy complexion.

  Steve shook his head once; a slight motion. “He’s just scared, is all.”

  “Please,” the big man muttered, almost praying. “Please don’t shrink my head.”

  Steve almost smiled but asked of Eegrin instead, “Tell me I didn’t hear that right.”

  The big man began to teeter on his heels and the Jisetra rushed behind him, easing him to the floor and nearly being crushed in the process by the man’s sheer mass. Their jailer continued his babbling until Steve slapped him silent with his free hand. “Listen to me,” he said. “What is your name?”