by Martha Carr
WarMage: Unrestrained
The Never Ending War™ Book Two
Martha Carr
Michael Anderle
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2020 Martha Carr & Michael Anderle
Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US edition, March 2020
ebook ISBN: 978-1-64202-817-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-818-8
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Free Books
Goth Drow
Author Notes - Martha Carr
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Books by Michael Anderle
The WarMage: Unrestrained Team
Thanks to our Beta Team:
James Caplan, John Ashmore, Larry Omans
Thanks to our JIT Readers
Diane L. Smith
Dave Hicks
Dorothy Lloyd
Debi Sateren
Peter Manis
Veronica Stephan-Miller
Jeff Goode
Deb Mader
Paul Westman
Editor
SkyHunter Editing Team
Chapter One
Connor Alby finished writing the last letter and folded the parchment paper with a heavy sigh. He poured melted wax onto the flap from the green candle at his desk before he stamped it with the Alby family seal—a large, intricately scrolling A. Finally, he picked up the letter he’d received, read it once more, and tossed it into the fire.
The letter that started this whole damn mess. You can never be too careful.
Quickly, he stood from his desk and hurried through the small house toward his bedroom, where he retrieved a small traveling satchel and jerked it open. Into it, he thrust a few changes of clothes, a half-full coin purse, and a few premade potions. Everything else was flung aside as he whirled through his belongings in search of what he needed. Satisfied, he hoisted the strap of the satchel over his shoulder and ran a hand over what was left of his graying hair.
My granddaughter finding her own path and my magic returned. I had a feeling things might come to this. I merely hoped I’d have more time.
The floorboards creaked beneath him as he stormed through the house toward Raven’s room. The sight of her beneath the blankets, completely oblivious and innocent in sleep, made him clutch his chest in sudden indecision. She can handle it, old man. She’ll have to.
Connor lunged across the room and grasped his granddaughter’s shoulders to shake her awake. “Raven. Wake up.”
The girl groaned and tried to roll over, and her red hair spilled across the pillow. “I’m not…more sleep…”
“Right now, girl.” He shook her a little harder. “Raven Alby, for your mother’s sake, get up.”
When she uttered another groan and a loud snore, he jerked the covers off her body and dropped them on the floor. Her eyes snapped open. “What—”
“Listen to me, granddaughter.”
“What’s wrong? Did I oversleep?” She moved her hands sluggishly to her mussed hair, and she blinked before her gaze settled into a vague stare around her bedroom. The space was lit softly by the fire crackling in the main room. “I never oversleep.”
“No, it’s a few hours before that time. But I can’t leave without saying goodbye to you.”
“Goodbye?” Raven pushed quickly to a seated position in the bed and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I have. But I won’t know until I’ve finished what I need to do.” Connor cupped her cheek and his eyes glinted with a few tears beneath a pained brow. “I love you, Raven. You’re strong and capable and fierce, exactly like—”
“My mother. I know.” She frowned. “I love you too, but you’re not acting like Connor Alby right now. Am I still dreaming?”
“If only it were that simple.” He stooped to press a kiss to his granddaughter’s forehead, blinked the tears away, and nodded. “Whatever you set your mind to, Raven, you can do it. Don’t forget that.”
Before she could respond, he whirled and strode out of her bedroom, his traveling boots thudding on the floor.
Raven froze for a moment. Oh, hell no. She launched herself from her bed and her bare feet slid across the wooden floor as she raced after her grandfather. “You forgot the part where you tell me what’s happening and where you’re going.” She glanced out the window at the pitch-black night. “And why you’re leaving hours before we’re supposed to be up.”
“If I could tell you, granddaughter, I would.” He snatched his cloak off the peg at the door and draped it over his back, satchel and all. “But it’s too dangerous. I wish I could say I’ll send word when I get there, but I don’t know if that’s even possible.”
Her mouth worked open and closed a few times. “Oh, I get it. This is a joke, right? Some kind of test? I know I’m going to Fowler Academy as a mage in—to be a mage—and I know bonding with a dragon as my familiar is a big step beyond that too. But I won’t drop my chores. You don’t have to leave to see if I can run the ranch on my own. I have that down.”
“It’s not about the ranch, Raven.” Connor strode across the living room again and retrieved the thick stack of letters from the desk beside the crackling fire. “And it’s not a joke or a test. Creative thinking, but no.”
“But you don’t ever leave the ranch!” She stared at him with wide eyes while her brain attempted to push through the last foggy traces of sleep. This has to be a dream. “You took a big first step when you came to watch Leander and me win the competition before the trials, but this is—you can’t simply pick up and leave.”
“I can, I need to, and I have to. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more than that.” He stepped toward her and handed her one of the letters clutched in his hands. “Take this to Headmaster Flynn when you get
to Fowler today.”
“Headmaster Flynn knows where you’re going?”
“No. But he’ll know what to do once I’m gone.” The front door stuck a little before he jerked it open and stepped into the cold, brisk air. I have to go. If leaving Raven doesn’t kill me first.
“Grandpa, wait!” Raven lurched after him and ignored the whip of cold air through her pajamas and the freezing, dew-studded grass and hard dirt beneath her bare feet. “When will you come back?”
Connor paused and spun to face her again. He tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it.
There’s that far-off look again.
“I don’t know, Raven. I don’t know enough to be certain of much at all other than that I have to go.”
She rushed across the short distance between them and almost knocked him over when she threw her arms around him. “Whatever it is, be careful.”
He chuckled and ran his hand over her wavy red hair. “I’m a careful man—frugal goat-rancher and grandfather to one incredible mage in training.”
“Yeah, well, you used to be a dragon rider too, so I wouldn’t say your track record of being careful is completely clean.” Raven laughed, but her grandfather’s sad smile made her stop.
“Exactly like you.”
“Except I don’t run off in the middle of the night and hand out mysterious letters.”
“But you’ll do what has to be done too, won’t you?” Connor glanced at the night sky studded with stars before the glow of dawn and nodded. “I have to go. I love you and I trust you to do the right thing when it’s most important, Raven. Whatever and whenever that is.”
“I love you more, Grandpa.”
He pulled her in for another tight hug, kissed her cheek, and stepped away. “If you really, really need me, you can always find me with a calling potion.”
“Ha. Right.” As long as I don’t call him from the sky.
“Be good, girl.” With another nod, Connor Alby turned abruptly and strode away from their home and across the Alby Ranch. The hem of his cloak fluttered around his ankles.
Raven watched him until the darkness swallowed him. She shivered and rubbed her arms as she glanced at her bare feet.
He won’t be gone that long. That satchel was small and only half-full. Test or not, I can keep things running around here, no problem.
She scurried into the house, closed the door behind her, and stepped toward the fire with a sigh. For a few seconds, she stood with her hands outstretched for the flames to warm them before she lowered them again.
“Yeah, it’s too quiet in here. No way will I go to sleep again.”
Once she’d accepted the inevitability of wakefulness, she hurried to her room and changed into her clothes for the day, snatched up her jacket with her mother’s silver and red pin, and slipped into her work boots. Unperturbed by the darkness, she headed across the Alby Ranch toward the empty land away from the goat pen and the ranch hands’ cabins.
A fire inside is nice but manipulating it out in the open is even better.
Raven started the large fire where Connor had first taught her the spell, stepped back, and nodded. “Sequantur flamma.” She pulled a streak of fire from the blaze and directed it with ease toward the closest unlit torch. It burst to life and cast a flickering ring of light onto the dew-covered grass. It’s a heck of a way to clear the mind, too. And while Leander’s still at Moss Ranch, playing with fire is the closest I can get to him from here.
She lit the next few torches as easily and stared into the flames as one arc after another moved with no hesitation at her command. With a deep breath, she released the stunned urgency of Connor’s flight from the ranch to filter into the darkness.
Yeah. Leander would like this part too.
Chapter Two
When Raven finished lighting the torches, the stars were a little dimmer in the sky although the sun hadn’t come up yet. She wandered toward the goat pen and the barn, now fully awake although her fingers were a little cold from the chill.
I can’t believe I’ve been awake this long already.
The dwarf goats bleated and jumped toward her when she brought the sack of feed and fresh hay closer. “Okay, you greedy little gremlins. Okay, it’s coming.”
One of them uttered a loud, cut-off cry, which made the others leap away. “Cody! Get off Jezabele’s back, will you?” She swatted at the young goat who’d almost grown out of being a kid altogether. “She’s not a crate or a bale of hay.”
Cody’s less than graceful leap thrust him into a larger animal beside him. They both bleated at the collision before they focused on their breakfast.
She shook her head and dragged the empty sack into the barn. “Those animals. They give the best milk and cheese in Brighton and they still don’t know what’s good for ʼem.”
As she always did, she double-checked the latched gate on the pens and made sure the animals had everything they needed for the day. Satisfied, she returned to the house to change out of her boots, grab her satchel, and head to school.
Exactly like I do every day. Only Grandpa’s gone off somewhere and left me with a letter for someone else.
Raven picked the letter up and stared at it for a few moments, then shook her head and stuffed it into her backpack. I’m curious, all right, but not curious enough to break his trust.
Despite the early start, she’d dawdled somewhat and now had to run across the Alby Ranch, past the goat pen and the fence posts, the barn, and the other small cottages where the ranch hands lived and worked on Connor Alby’s land. When she reached the front gate and the huge sign with the ornately curling A branded into it, Henry Derks was there waiting for her. She yawned, covered her mouth, and shook her head.
“What happened to you, Alby? Did you just wake up?”
“And have my ass handed to me by a whole pen of dwarf goats gone hangry? I don’t think so.”
He slapped the top of the gatepost and turned to walk with her down the long dirt road into town. “Then why do you look like you didn’t sleep at all? It’s been a week since you and Leander killed at that competition out in Nadine. I know you had to be good to win, but don’t tell me the adrenaline’s still keeping you up.”
“You know what, Derks? I slept like a baby that night. Nothing’s keeping me up, only waking me up way earlier than anyone should be awake, even a rancher.”
“Did one of the goats get out and cry to get in again?”
“No. They slept later than I did.” Raven lifted her hair off her back and drew it over her shoulder to braid it with quick, experienced fingers. “My grandpa woke me a few hours early.”
Henry snorted. “Did he have extra special chores for you today?”
“Yeah. The kind where he picks up and leaves in the middle of the night without telling me a damn thing about it.”
“What? Connor Alby doesn’t leave the ranch. Okay, maybe once last week, but that was a big deal. He crawled out of his shell to watch you and your dragon fly into first place—woah!” He lurched forward to catch his toad familiar—who had leapt from his shoulder bag—before he could land in a nice muddy puddle. The young mage splashed across it instead and carefully deposited Maxwell where he belonged. “Which was awesome, by the way. Now you guys are exempt from the trials, right?”
“Yep. Leander is officially a trained dragon and a mage’s familiar.”
“Familiar in training, though, right?”
Raven gave her friend a playful punch and rolled her eyes. “That’s pushin’ it, Derks.”
Grinning, he darted away from her and splashed through a few more puddles in the road.
“You know, I see more and more every day why you chose a toad as your familiar.”
“Thanks.” He shook a few extra beads of muddy water off his boot and patted his bag where it rested against his hip. “Now if I can only figure out how to snatch food the way Maxwell does, I might die happy.” He jerked his head forward and stuck his tongue out, and his eyes bulged.
She laughed. “Careful what you wish for, Derks. I know a few people who’d punch your lights out before they let you lick their food, especially when you make that face. I might be one of them.”
“Naw, you wouldn’t hit me, Alby. I’m your best friend.”
“No, maybe I’d sic Leander on you. Those rolls from Mrs. Whittaker can be hot but burning your mouth on dragon fire is a whole different level.”
He stopped short on the road, his eyes still wide and his mouth open but in a very different reaction.
“Henry, I’m kidding.” She laughed and shoved him again before she adjusted the strap of her satchel. “Of course I’m kidding. Come on. I would never do that.”
Her friend uttered a small, wary chuckle and caught up to her again as they moved quickly down the road. “Leander might, though.”
“Not if I didn’t want him to.” She gave him a sidelong glance, and he pointed at her and shook his head.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I need to get myself a new best friend.”
Raven rolled her eyes and grinned at the tree branches hanging over the road that had begun to sprout new, leafy buds. “You mean like Jenny?”