by Ember Lane
I sneaked a glance at Cronis, but he was just staring through the telescope. Looking back, I took a breath as I saw the star was twice the size it had been, still pulsing—looking like it was about to burst, and it had turned blood red. And then it exploded, spears of white light erupting from it. My whole lens was filled with the brilliant, dazzling blast, yet my eyes didn’t melt, didn’t even fog over. As fast as brightness had filled my vision, so black swept over it, and the star was no more.
Cronis fell backward, sitting on his backside. I could see tears filled his eyes.
“Gone,” he muttered. “Pique has gone.”
I asked him what Pique was, but he just turned and looked right through me, clearly bereft of any hope, any joy.
“It is where they came from,” he eventually spilled.
7
Petroo
I’d wandered back to Greman’s after I’d helped Cronis back down. The wizard had appeared a little broken, even though he’d told me it was what he’d expected would happen. He wouldn’t enlighten me any further as to the meaning behind his final words, and so the next morning I asked Greman about them over a cup of honeyed tea.
“He has a theory,” Greman said. “And theories are just jumped-up ideas that scholarly types think are solutions to problems.”
“What’s his theory?”
“He thinks that the reason ShadowDancer became ShadowDancer from the boy once called Zender, is that a god named Belved fell to the land and corrupted him. Load of garbage, if you ask me, complete drivel.” Greman leaned in. “And you should forget all about it. Your job is to level up, to make yourself better—safer.” He furrowed his brow. “Don’t get trapped in the web of a lunatic, for once his silken tendrils cling to you, they’re impossible to get off. There’s a war to be won in this land, and that should be enough pin legend to any whose name deserves it.”
He was right, of course. I was still small and weak, and merely hobnobbing with greater folk than I, but I decided to keep an open mind about it all, after all, I’d seen the star die, and along with it, the planet Pique.
I was a level two nobody, and so I took up the hourglass and went out into the vale. There was only one way that I knew to get stronger, to get fitter.
It was an overcast day, as if the gloom of Pique’s destruction had crossed space and blanketed this land. For some reason, my heart was heavy, but as I set the hourglass down and began to run—run like the wind—my mood lifted. Up and down I ran, like I had the day before, each burst chiseling away at what I needed to gain points and reach my next levels—stamina and running, my focus. With each rest break, I sought out differing creatures, snails, ants, a honeybee, an eagle, and each gave up its name and level freely. It was just like Cronis had said, if you expected it, as a matter of course, it just happened. My perception leveled up twice, and once it got to three, I could even identify varying plants, whether they were edible or not, what benefit their leaves, roots or flowers would give you. But with every circuit, my eyes were drawn to the tower, and I wondered if there was anything I could do to cheer Cronis up.
Before I could make my mind up, Shylan leaned out of the tower’s window and called to me.
“That’s enough of that, it’s time to improve your mind—you won’t get anywhere if you’re as thick as a troll.”
My heart surged with joy. Did that mean that Shylan was going to teach me? I bolted to his tower and up its steps, and into the chaos room. Cronis was nowhere to be seen, the owl was perched on the ale barrel still scowling at me, and Shylan was sitting in his usual spot at the table, looking down at the large book. He glanced up.
“I swear,” he said, “making head or tail of this garbled garbage is going to be the end of me, but it must be of some import.” His green eyes stared out through his long, draping hair. “A storm is brewing, and its thunder is in my guts, and my guts tell me that this book is vital.”
“What is it?” I took a seat next to him.
“It is a book titled The Auguries of the House of Mandrake, and it is written by a madman—namely Cronis, and even though I was there at the time, it makes absolutely no sense to me.” He closed the book, and looked me up and down. “So, what have we here?” And I sensed he was looking at my stats.
“Hmm,” he said. “You have six attribute points unallocated, that could be very useful. Why haven’t you allocated them?”
I shrugged. If I was honest, I didn’t have a clue where to allocate them, plus, it appeared fairly easy to get to more points at first—obviously it was getting harder now, what with my stamina being so high. Hmm, that sounded like a better answer.
“Because it gets harder to get more points the higher you get, so if I wait until I’m on twenty or something, and then add them, I’ll get more bang for my buck.”
His emerald eyes narrowed. “Bang for my buck?” he repeated.
“Value.”
“Hmmph, well why didn’t you say that.” He reached out and touched my shoulder. “It is a great idea, and well-thought-out, but it has one flaw. If you don’t use them within a full cycle of the moon, you’ll lose them. It’s just the way things are.”
“How long’s that?”
He shrugged. “About twenty odd days—Cronis knows—he’s the astronomer.”
“So what should I do with them?”
He sat back in his chair and looked me up and down. “That depends, what do you want to do? Do you want to be a warrior?”
“Nope,” I said.
“A thief stealing hearts and purses in the markets of Tharameer?”
I shook my head.
“Do you want to spend your life as an artisan, making those glowstone spheres you’re so taken with?”
“Wrong again.” I was smiling now, he’d be so happy when I told him.
“Perhaps a trader, traveling the Spice Route from Zang Zhou all the way to Cendyll? How about that?”
“Nope, not a trader.”
“Well what? A miner, seeking banes under the Castle Zybond? A quester unlocking its dungeons? What?”
“None of those,” I replied, tight lipped.
“Well you don’t have to choose for another few levels, it helps to allot points where you might need them later.”
I couldn’t believe he’d given up so easily, but then, he could have put all the choices in the world in front of me, and I’d have taken none, because I’d made my mind up. I wanted to be a wizard, and that’s what I told him.
“A wizard?” he said, his voice incredulous. “You can’t choose to be a wizard, the land has to choose you.” He furrowed his brow. “Of course, that’s not strictly true. A necromancer, a warlock, summoners, and even mages aren’t blessed by the land—they bend it for their own gains—more often than not for evil. No, no, you can’t choose to be a wizard.” He shook his long hair back as if to clear his mind. “How about a pirate? The most famous pirate of all is Prince Chukwuemeka Conchobhar Cyneweard of The Five Isles,” and Shylan nudged me and winked. “I know him personally. I could get you aboard his ship.”
“But I want to be a wizard,” I said, defiantly.
Shylan threw his arms up in exasperation, then visibly sagged. “Why does everybody want to be a wizard? What’s so wrong with being a great warrior, a fearsome leader?”
“Why can’t I be more than one thing?”
A puzzled expression crossed him. “Why would you want to be average in everything? You can only excel at one thing.”
“Why did you become a wizard?”
Shylan jumped up and headed straight for the ale barrel. “I was chosen by my master, Scholl, at a very early age,” he said smugly, as he poured himself a mug of ale.
“No you weren’t,” came a growl from the doorway, and I turned and saw Cronis there, still with a blistered face, still with clumps of hair missing, and still with his charred clothes on. “You were brought, sold, and then somehow lost.”
Cronis walked into the room and sat across the table from me. “He has no
idea how he became a wizard, he just woke up in Scholl’s hut one day, Scholl taught him, and the rest is history.”
“Who’s Scholl?” I asked.
Cronis grunted. Shylan guffawed. “Who’s Scholl?” Cronis said, his voice now incredulous. “Who’s Scholl? You really don’t know anything. Tell her, Shylan, tell her who Scholl is.”
“Ale?” Shylan replied.
“What?” Cronis shot him a look.
“Would you like a morning ale?”
“Is it morning?” Cronis asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why the stupid questions? Pour and spill, in that order.” Cronis pulled out his pipe, put his grubby bare feet on the table and grunted.
Shylan smirked and poured another two ales, bringing them over to the table and pushing one in front of Cronis and another before me. He sat.
“Alexa,” Shylan began, looking down at me as though I was a stupid child. “Scholl is the father of our magic. It is he who mastered The Colors, and us—Cronis and I—who are merely the students.”
“Then I’ll go to him and learn, if you won’t teach me.”
“Won’t teach her what?” Cronis asked.
Shylan held his head in his hands as if his very existence pained him. “I merely told her that she can’t be a wizard, the land has to choose her.”
“Oh,” Cronis said, and he turned to me. “You could be a warlock.”
A strangled noise, like the cry you smother when you stub your little toe but don’t want to make a sound, burst from Shylan’s lips, before he finally raged. “She can’t be a wizard, and it’ll be over my dead body that a warlock, a necromancer, a banegrade, a weather-twister, or a mage is trained in this tower.”
“Well that’s settled then,” Cronis said, quite firmly.
“Thank Poleyna for that,” Shylan let spill, as though all his energy had just seeped out onto the tabletop.
And then I saw a glint in Cronis’s eye.
“I’ll teach her to be a summoner.”
Shylan screamed, and I remembered I was in the middle of a game of wits that had probably been going on for centuries, ages, or however long these two had known each other. Cronis darted me a look and then dissolved into laughter, and, even though I felt downcast, I chuckled a bit too. Shylan raged, banged the table, took a long guzzle of his ale and then took out his pipe, primed it, lit it, and puffed away on it, lapsing into a deep contemplation.
“How did we even get on this perilous course?” Shylan eventually mused, his voice much softer now, almost melancholy.
“The unallocated attribute points,” I replied.
“Three to wisdom, three to intelligence,” he said, more as a cast-off comment as if the whole allocation thing didn’t interest him anymore.
“What about vitality?” I asked, worried I might inadvertently get myself killed—after all, just running into a wall nearly did me in.
“Ha,” Shylan said. “You’re in a vale, surrounded by a forest, a spell of protection, with two of the most powerful wizards in the known world, and a beggle who enjoys pretending to be average. What possible harm could you come to?”
It seemed perfectly sound reasoning, and so I pulled down my stat board and allocated the points. The minute my board updated, I felt a ball of heat in my stomach. I stood, staggering backwards over my chair, falling, crashing to the floor, only for my body to levitate, spin around and hang in the air. Warmth coursed through me, an all-encompassing glow of happiness. A slice of light erupted from my mind, fanning out like a fast clock hand, making a disc of brilliant white all around me which spread up and down until I was enveloped in a sphere of light, so precious, so fulfilling, and just like last time. I had leveled up again. The feeling was truly addictive.
Congratulations! You have 20 allocated Attribute points. You are awarded 400 XP.
You have reached 500 XP. You have leveled up. You are now Level 3. You have 6 Attribute points to allocate.
“Show off,” said Cronis, but he had a big grin on his face.
“Two Wisdom, two Intelligence, and two for Vitality…just in case,” Shylan said, and winked.
But his words fell on deaf ears. “You knew?” I said. “You knew I just had to allocate the points to level up?”
He nodded. “I knew the usual rules of this land are somehow being altered for you—I knew that. Level three is usually…ten skills?”
“Think so,” Cronis said. “But then, she started with hardly any points so fair’s fair.”
That was the second time I’d heard I was doing the game all wrong, but hadn’t the man on the Spear Of Light said as much? There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it, so I just ignored it.
Shylan puffed his chest out. “And as we’d got no further deciding your profession, I think it best just to distribute them to matters of the mind for now.”
Though I was still smarting from not being allowed to become a wizard, I decided that Shylan wasn’t all bad and beamed back at him.
“Alchemy,” Cronis said, all of a sudden. “You could be an alchemist. You don’t need magic to make bang-powders, to harden steel, or to search for the impossible.”
I weighed up the choice. “Is it a skill?”
“Can be,” he replied. “A skill or a profession. Though you have to have level 10 alchemy before you can choose it as a profession.”
“And,” I ventured. “If Scholl were to let me become a wizard, would it be useful?”
“Undoubtedly,” Cronis affirmed.
“Here we go again with the wizard stuff,” Shylan lamented.
“Then how do I open up the skill?”
“Open up a skill? You can’t just do that—you have to do something—accidently turn mud into bronze, that sort of thing.”
“Look,” Shylan interrupted, “there'll be no alchemy, no nothing until she decides on a profession she can actually pursue—” But he stopped in mid sentence and just stared at me. “How in Scholl’s name did that happen?”
Cronis was studying me too. “Poleyna only knows,” he muttered.
Congratulations! You have opened a new skill, Magic. You will now be able to learn magic.
“Ha,” I said. “So I can become a wizard.”
“Shylan…look closer,” Cronis urged.
Shylan stared at me. “No, no, it doesn’t mean that you can learn, doesn’t mean that at all. Anyone can potentially learn a bit of magic, but most don’t bother. Magic is normally capped at Levels three, four, even up to ten, but there appears to be…” He bent closer as though studying my stats harder would help him understand. “There appears to be…” He sat bolt upright and the color drained from his face. “There appears to be no upper limit to the levels of magic you can learn.”
“So, I can become a wizard.” And I beamed.
“That’s just it. Even high wizards have limits. I have one, so does Cronis. They rarely get met, such is the path to leveling up once you get up into the nineties, but there’s always a limit.” He shot a look at Cronis. “We mustn’t teach her magic. On no account.”
“On no account,” Cronis said.
“Why!” I screamed.
Shylan’s eyes narrowed. His expression became one of the utmost seriousness. His voice, when it spilled, was filled with wisdom. “Don’t you see? Your power is without restraint. You could, you could...”
“You could destroy the world,” Cronis affirmed, and silence fell.
I’d gone from elation, to frustration, to fear. This world had given me something I had set my heart on, only to take it away even though it was still there—like an annoying itch. There had to be a way…
It started as a low hum, and then got progressively louder. I noticed Shylan cock his head. Saw Cronis holding his ale, but then stay as still as a statue, his mouth drooping open. The hum became louder, like a wasp was in the room.
“Petroo,” Shylan whispered.
“Must be,” Cronis replied.
“Isn’t he?” I asked.
; “Prince of the Apachalant,” Shylan let slip.
I got up and ran to the lowest window. Now the sound was like a G-string had been plucked and was resonating. I saw the vale, the forest surrounding it, the mountains beyond, and then I saw a ripple, no more than that, arrowing directly toward us, under us, and I turned and looked at the room’s doorway. A man was standing there. He was tall and wiry, and somehow I knew it was him.
“Petroo,” Shylan gasped.
I reckoned him seven feet tall, but thought possibly less given that he appeared to be getting a little shorter as I watched. He had straight, brown hair that stuck to his forehead, cheeks, and his neck. His face was sharp, like a ferret, yet handsome, and he wore a garb similar to what I’d imagine an Elven soldier would wear—though I’d never seen one—except it was black, rather than green. A bow was slung over one shoulder, and I guessed a pair of quivers crisscrossed his back somehow. I couldn’t tell how, and I could only see their arrow’s black and gold fletchings.
“What’s happened?” Cronis asked.
“What’s happened?” Petroo said, his voice easy on the ear. “You have forgotten your manners, old man, that is what’s happened.” He looked directly at me. I shrunk under his gripping stare.
“Alexa Drey, Petroo, Petroo, Alexa Drey,” Shylan said, dismissively. “Now, what’s happened? What brings you here at full pelt? What is so urgent?”
But Petroo ignored him, and walked the distance between us. He knelt before me and held out his hand. I placed my own in his and looked down at him.
“It is an honor, Alexa Drey. I am Petroo, High Prince of The Apachalant. Any friend of these two, is a friend of mine.” He smiled an enchanting smile. “It balances it all out a bit.” He winked.
Then he turned my hand over and studied the stain on my palm. Looking back up, he appeared confused, and then he bowed low, held, and stood, turning toward the wizards.
“What news?” Cronis barked.
“But you must already know,” Petroo nigh whispered.