Son of the Keeper: Book 1: Principles of Magic

by R. S. Merritt

  “Good morning your highness. I gave Niko the morning off so you and me could have a talk. I’ve checked with all your teachers and you’re doing phenomenal in all your classes. The one thing people have noticed though is that you’re so focused on your classes that you seem to be isolating yourself from the other students.”

  Chris didn’t know what to say to that. There were only so many hours in a day and he felt like there was so much he needed to learn that he didn’t have time to waste. He enjoyed going to lunch and dinner with his classmates but at times he resented it as it did take a couple of hours out of his study time every day. He’d talked to people about things like the trials and the enemy and he just didn’t see a lot of room for frivolity in his daily work schedule. He knew he wasn’t a normal eleven-year-old. He knew Omasa probably had a good point and that he should be spending more time learning from the other students. Time was just so precious.

  “I’m fine. There’s just so much to learn and so much for me to catch up on. These other kids were all born into this life. They accept things that four months ago I would have thought qualified you for a one-way ticket to the crazy house. Not only do I need to learn how to do this stuff but I have to be able to do it better than everybody else. Otherwise, I’ll end up killed in the trials. If I do survive I get to be the king of a people who have their backs against the wall and an invincible enemy made out of monsters and nightmares encircling them. I eat lunch and dinner with Nicole and some others and I enjoy the conversation. It’s a great break from studying and everyhting but I just don’t have time to be playing Uno until three in the morning in the common area.”

  “Good points sire. I’m glad you’re looking at it like that. Whether you feel like it or not through you are still an eleven-year-old boy so you need to have some fun to stay sane. You also need to be learning to deal with people since you’re going to be king. Just think of all the things you can learn just by spending a little more time interacting with your classmates.” Omasa made to get up off the chair. He considered the conversation to be done. His fears had been allayed by the way Chris had responded. It made every bit of sense to Omasa for Chris to be focused. He figured it was better to have to try and stop a charging horse than to prod one that didn’t want to move. Chris was very much a charging horse.

  “I’m not just trying to hold back the darkness. I want to bring light back into it. I want to kick the enemy out of this world and then chase them through all the others. For that I need power and I need allies. Thank you for coming out and talking to me about it. Now are we going to go jog up the bluff or is that just something you have us young folk do?”

  Omasa laughed along with his king then proceeded to leave him in the dust on the run up the bluff. When Chris finally got to the top Omasa was pretending to take a nap.

  “Us old folk need our naps. Luckily I had plenty of time waiting for you to get up here.”

  “How’d you do that?” Chris asked. “How’d you get up here so quickly?”

  “That’s the next piece of the lessons on the martial side. I think you may have been thinking of the martial side as the people who don’t use magic. The people who wear charmed armor and slug it out with the enemy at close quarters. The brutes of the magic world.” Omasa looked at Chris who nodded slowly. That had been the general direction of his thinking. He’d put the knights at a lower level in his mind than the wizards as far as magic went.

  “Today will be a good lesson for you then. Knights do use magic. We use it to augment our bodies natural fighting and physical abilities. For instance I focused on putting a little bit of a push of force on the ground each step I took on the way up here. After a few steps I was basically just floating up the bluff. It saved me a ton of physical energy and got me up here faster than you could have driven a jeep up here. I can do the same sorts of things in combat. I can focus on my elbow and cause my arm to strike with much more force than I could accomplish just using my muscles. We basically can utilize magic as a trick to amplify the skills we already have and have trained on. That’s why it’s so important to get down the breathing and the exact right form for all the strikes. The form may not make a ton of sense in some situations until you think about the fact you’ll be multiplying the strike a hundred times by using magic. If your arm isn’t positioned the exact right way it would be pretty easy for you to shatter some of your bones.”

  “When do I start learning how to do to that?” Chris asked.

  “You’ve already learned most of the basics so I asked Niko to start working weapons training in with you and also to start teaching you the techniques to drive the physical forms.” Omasa did not say anything but Chris was already at the level most squires didn’t reach until they’d been here for five or six years. It wasn’t unheard of for it to take a year just to master the breathing exercises. It had been awhile since Omasa had been in the company of royalty so he was still adjusting to just how naturally talented Chris was. Omasa remembered fighting alongside Chris’s father and how awe inspiring that warrior had been on the battlefield.

  “This is why I don’t have time for friends. There’s just so much I need to know. I keep finding out new things and they all alter my view of the world. Like the way Wessel explained magic to me. He basically said if you put an Indian tribe on an island for a thousand years then pulled them off and showed them a car or an airplane they’d instantly assume it was magical because it is so far outside their reality.” Chris stopped. He was at a loss to try and explain how much he didn’t know and how bad he wanted to know it all.

  “Enough deep thoughts for this morning. How about we skip ahead and I teach you a trick that may come in handy.” Omasa had a grin on his face as Chris nodded and eagerly waited for the lesson. Omasa stood up tall. “All you need to do is focus on a beam of energy and use your body as a conduit to have it flow out your legs and lift you.”

  Then as Chris watched with his mouth hanging open Omasa jumped twenty feet into the air and slowly drifted back down. They backed away from the edge of the bluff and Omasa told Chris to give it a try. Chris focused. He knew now that was where the rest of the world got the idea that wizards and witches used wands and chanted magic words to cast spells. All of spell casting required focus and some ways people were able to focus their power were to chant or use something like a wand to help them focus their energies. They could also charm a wand to have certain properties that made it easier to focus. Chris focused now on what Omasa had told him.

  “It’s not work –” Chris had been about to tell Omasa it wasn’t working when he noticed he was about fifty feet up in the air and climbing rapidly. He panicked for a second and started falling out of the sky. In order to avoid smashing into the ground he forced himself to focus while plummeting towards the rock strewn surface below face first. It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. He was able to get enough focus going to avoid hitting the ground at full speed so he didn’t break anything. His pride got a huge bruise though. He got up to try it again and Omasa told him that was enough for one day.

  They raced for the cafeteria and this time Chris won.

  Chapter 12: Ignoring the Council

  Chris mastered the martial skills and control of his body like he mastered the other skills taught at the school. In the mornings he continued to learn the martial skills as he worked on balance and strikes and various weapons. He met with Nicole and a small group of friends that had formed around him for lunch. He opened up and listened to their stories and it was like Omasa had said. Their stories helped him to understand this world as much as reading and attending classes did.

  He learned Nicole and her sister lived in a manor in Canada. They’d be going back there for the summer for break. They were wealthy and their family had been in the noble class since before the Xandians had come to this world. The wealth part did not matter so much since basically anyone who was a noble was ridiculously rich. The ability to read minds, control weather, control people, fight like a god, and a th
ousand other advantages made it almost impossible to have ended up poor on this planet. Some of the strongest alchemists could actually turn lead into gold using just their minds to realign the atomic structure of the materials.

  The most powerful tool they had in their arsenal to become rich and powerful though was a combination of compounded interest and their long life spans. They had also been helped along by a culture that inspired a devotion to passing along wealth to their children. When your family has been around for two thousand years and understands the importance of making smart investment decisions you’re probably going to be doing ok when you’re the trust fund recipient. Chris had just figured out recently that he was probably the richest person on the planet. Through various trusts and corporations he owned properties all over the globe. He owned major interests in companies that were household names. There was a hundred-person company that existed just to manage his fortune and his investments.

  On finding out that Nicole was going to be gone for the summer Chris began to wonder if he was going to be able to go somewhere for the summer. He was told it was completely up to him but from a protection standpoint everyone thought it was wise for him to stay on the island. In addition to its being the oldest place on earth the Xandians had founded, it was also the most strongly protected. Generations of wizards and witches had cast protection spells over the island as part of their duties to the kingdom. There were literally thousands of rocks around the island that had been charmed to repel enemies. It was actually part of the charms class curriculum that you had to create one and place it around the island to pass the class.

  On learning this Chris had asked where Glenda had been moved to and he was told she was living in a castle overlooking the ocean on the coast of Ireland. She was with a powerful noble family that had sworn to guard her. She was guarded by the knights and witches of the high protectors that Omasa had sent as well. The castle was charmed against the dark ones and invisible to the casual observer. It was one of twenty places around the earth that were considered strongholds for the Xandians.

  Chris was listening to a lecture on the creatures that made up the dark horde in a classroom with seven other students when the door swung open. Omasa was outside the door. He motioned for Chris to join him in the hallway. Chris excused himself and walked out into the hallway to see what was going on. Penny was also there and she came over and hugged him before backing away and letting Omasa speak.

  “They have Glenda your highness. The enemy took the castle in Ireland this morning. They killed everyone else there and now they are saying they want to speak with you or they’ll butcher your mother as well.” Omasa delivered the news with his typical stoic reserve but Chris saw the vein in the man’s head throbbing. He’d never seen that before. “The council told them no and the council told us not to tell you what was going on. They didn’t want you distracted from your studies when there’s nothing you’re able to do.”

  Chris choked back tears. This was not the time to appear childish. He summoned up his best idea of what a king should sound like.

  “Get the plane ready. I’ll meet with the enemy and they can pass along their message. We’ll do whatever we need to make sure my mom gets out alive. Anyone who is scared of the council can stay behind but we need to leave now. Omasa, I’m sorry for your losses. I know they would have fought until the last to fulfill their oaths and died trying to protect my mother.”

  Omasa nodded. He was being torn apart on the inside. He had lost some of his best people today. He had sent them to guard Glenda not really thinking the enemy would be able to field a force strong enough to break into the stronghold. The enemy had been able to not only break in but also had been strong enough to overwhelm the powerful fighters within it. The reports he had gotten back so far showed this was a large force on the enemy’s part. Probably numbering in the high hundreds with some powerful fighters as well as shaman and necromancers and other dark wizards. There was just no other way they could have won that battle. The fight was being portrayed as an opportunity to deliver a message to the new king. In reality it was probably going to be an ambush or assassination attempt. They needed to lure the king off this island and get him somewhere they had a chance to kill him.

  The council knew this was really an assassination attempt. They knew Glenda didn’t stand a chance. That is why they had ordered Omasa not to tell Chris anything. As high protector Omasa was technically a part of the council and he’d chosen the more honorable course. It may spell their deaths but Omasa didn’t see any way they could just sit here while monsters massacred the mother of the king. He’d known Chris would not stand by and wait. If he had been able to do that he would not have been the kind of boy that Omasa thought would make a great king one day.

  Two more knights joined up with them dressed for battle. Omasa told them to take the king to get a suit of armor from the armory and grab weapons. Then Omasa disappeared after telling them to meet him on the tarmac. The knights of the high protector took Chris to the armory and got the armorer to work up a suit of chain that would fit. It was not the custom suit he’d be getting when he got older but it was the best suit available on the island that would fit him. Chris slid it on and felt the magic charms in the leather exert force on the chain links that made them feel much lighter and allowed for much more ease of movement. The two knights gathered swords, guns, spears, and shields and shoved them all onto a cart. Once they had gathered everything together they all rushed to the tarmac.

  At the tarmac the head mistress Locasta was in a heated argument with Penny and Omasa. Locasta was insisting they stand down and stay on the island and let the council take care of the situation. Locasta saw Chris coming and turned her attention towards him.

  “Your highness. I’m so sorry for what’s happened. The council let us know that travelling there would be suicide. Your mother is very likely already passed based on the ferocity of the battle that took place at the castle. You should stay here your highness.” Locasta looked intimidating. She looked like she was used to people jumping when she said to jump. Chris did not care. He walked right past her and kept moving towards the plane.

  He turned when he got to the mobile stairway. Looking over at a flustered Locasta he gave her orders. “Head mistress, thanks for relaying the council’s suggestions. Please inform the council we are on the way to the castle to rescue my mother. Please have them send us all logistical information and provide whatever support Omasa deems necessary.” Locasta bowed and headed back towards her office. Before leaving she made a gesture of good luck at Chris and everyone else boarding the plane.

  Chris rushed up the stairway and took a seat in the front. Omasa was talking to the pilots as the jet filled up with knights who were accompanying them. Penny and Wessel both boarded the plane dressed for battle. Omasa grabbed the microphone up front and addressed the plane in general.

  “Late last night a large force from the dark horde attacked the castle in Ireland. They let one squire go after taking some bites out of his face and arms. They showed the squire that Glenda was still alive before they released him. They told him to have the king come to them to receive a message or they’d kill Glenda. The squire died from the poison in the bites after telling us this. He indicated there were multiple dark wizards and hundreds of the hordes foot soldiers left alive at the castle. The enemy doesn’t normally expose this many of their people at one time. Especially not high-level shaman. We’ll be there in a few hours. Hopefully we’ll have a plan and some more info by then.”

  Omasa quit talking and came and sat down by Chris. They all moved their chairs around to work on coming up with a strategy.

  Chapter 13: The Message

  They landed at a small airport about ten miles from the castle. There were numerous planes parked at the end of the tarmac. Most of them were similar size Gulfstreams but there were a few larger planes as well. They taxied to the end of the runway and waited while a mobile staircase was moved to the plane. Looking out his wi
ndow Chris saw a huge crowd of people coming towards the plane. There were a few hundred people in a wide assortment of wild ensembles marching out to meet the plane.

  The stairs were rolled into position and attached to the plane. Omasa motioned for two of his knights to go to the bottom and stand honor guard. The two knights clattered down the main aisle of the plane and then down the stairs. They took up positions at the bottom of the stairway. Chris took a deep breath and walked to the top of the stairs. Looking out over the crowd he took in the grizzled visages of senior warriors and wizards as well as the excited looks cast up at him by the younger members of the crowd. As he stood there taking the crowd rippled as they knelt and saluted him. Chris felt the crush of the fealty oath spilled from all those lips and washing over him. He raised his hands for them to rise.

  At the bottom of the stairs the crowd stood respectfully back from seven elderly witches and wizards. Miss Penny whispered in Chris’s ear that they were the remaining members of the council. Chris marched down the stairs to face them. He expected to hear them telling him that he needed to remain safe while they carried out the attack or that more time was needed for planning the attack. The council merely bowed again as Chris approached them. The wizard in the middle stepped forward and asked what the kings command was. Chris and Omasa had discussed the various scenarios they may face at the castle and come up with a plan on the plane flight over.