A Dark Inheritance

by Todd Herzman

  She tried again, pushing slightly harder at the well of strength within.

  Flames blazed into being. The light blinded Ella, but only for a moment. She took three slow breaths and watched the fire. She still didn’t know which tunnel to take, but at least she had light again.

  She watched the smoke rise and hit the rocky ceiling. A small, almost imperceptible gust of air sent the smoke down the left tunnel. Ella blinked at the smoke. The air current flowed from one entrance to another. There would be an exit down there. She walked down the left tunnel, hoping it was the exit she needed.

  Her eyes travelled back to the ground, hoping to see some trace of her and Aralia having been through this way before, but the clay stretched farther and farther. On her way to the beach with Aralia, Ella hadn’t noticed the difference. The entire cave had seemed the same.

  She didn’t know how many steps she’d taken before the clay turned to dirt. She stared down at it and let out a breath when she saw the trail she and Aralia had made earlier. She’d gone the right way.

  Ella hurried her steps. There was light up ahead. She extinguished her flames and ran through the narrow tunnel, arms and shoulders scratching against the cave walls in her haste. She turned sideways and crept out the exit.

  Smoke rose from the village. Ella’s heart skipped. Her breath ragged. She bolted, running as fast as her legs allowed. How could they be here already? she thought. Memories of her own village on fire flooded into her mind. As she got closer, she noticed people staring at her. None of them looked alarmed. She ran past them, to the source of the fire, and found it was coming from one house.

  Ella bent over, resting her hands on her knees and puffing. She stood in front of the village smokehouse. Nothing was on fire—nothing that shouldn’t have been, at least. She’d gotten to the town before the raiders—of course she had. They would still have to land at the beach and make their way through the narrow pass before getting to the large clearing housing the town.

  She felt foolish but shrugged it off. She still needed to warn people. She needed to find Aralia and Reena. She looked around, only seeing local townsfolk. The group of teenagers she’d passed last time were looking at her and whispering—probably because she’d just sprinted through the village like a madman. She walked to them.

  ‘Do you know where I can find Aralia?’ Ella could have warned these three—probably should have—but she worried she’d cause a panic.

  The tall, dark-skinned boy smirked at her before nodding in the direction of the round hut. Ella dropped her head in silent thanks before bolting away. The fire in the hut burned softly. Aralia and Reena were in there, sitting on opposite sides. Ella caught her breath.

  Aralia stood. ‘Why aren’t you on the beach?’

  Reena stood too. ‘Ella, what is it?’

  Ella drew in a breath. ‘I saw a ship. Red sails. I saw it from the beach on other side of the island.’

  Aralia cursed and exchanged a glance with Reena.

  ‘We knew this day would come,’ Reena said.

  ‘That didn’t stop me from hoping it wouldn’t.’ Aralia looked at Ella. ‘Only one ship? You’re sure?’

  Ella nodded.

  Reena strode out of the hut.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Aralia shouted after her.

  ‘The Serpentine is vulnerable out there on the water. Knowing my damn crew, they’d fight rather than flee, and I’ve of a mind to do the same. I will burn this blood mage’s ship to the ground.’

  ‘No!’ Ella shouted, running to catch up to the captain. ‘We need the enemy ship intact.’

  The captain’s forehead crinkled. ‘What?’

  ‘We need a way to infiltrate Albion. If we have that ship—’

  ‘We’ll stand a better chance,’ Aralia cut in, coming to stand beside them.

  Reena glanced between them then shut her eyes. ‘Fine.’ She gritted her teeth and turned to the narrow pass. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  Ella looked up at Aralia as Reena stormed off at a run. ‘Shouldn’t we go with her?’

  Aralia shook her head. ‘We need to prepare the village.’ Aralia, now outside the round hut, reached her arms up high. She closed her eyes, and the sky darkened. Lightning flashed, striking around the town in a circle. Ella counted six strikes before it stopped.

  Townsfolk gathered around the hut, coming forth from all edges of the village.

  ‘Effective.’ Ella relaxed a little at seeing the display. Aralia was a powerful witch; she and Reena had fought blood mages before. Whether Ella would be of any help might not matter as much as she’d thought. This would be nothing like the attack on her village.

  This was a battle they could win.

  Chapter 36

  Marius

  According to Peiter, they were less than a week from the Tahali mountains. They had made it out of the last forest without anyone seeming to have followed.

  They were a few hours walk from a village, and Lilah had left them to replenish their supplies. Peiter sat with his back against a tree. He was still injured from when Marius had thrown him with his powers, but he seemed stronger each day.

  Marius sat cross-legged, hands on knees, on the dirt. He felt stronger too. The chill in his bones was almost gone. Peiter said he still had mana to replenish, as the Starblade had taken so much from him, so he was practicing his mana-draw.

  As he sat, breathing slow and deep, eyes closed and heart open—as Peiter would say—he could feel more than he ever had before. It wasn’t just the power inside that he felt, it was everything else, too. There was mana everywhere. He couldn’t explain how he was feeling it, how he knew that in that moment a small bird flew overhead. He didn’t feel its shadow or hear its wings beating—he felt inside of it, at least, to the mana it held like every other thing, living or not.

  The trees swayed, and he felt their age. He didn’t need to count their rings to know they’d been tall when his grandfather was still learning to walk. He felt the grass beneath him, the insects moving below, and something stronger, farther down—a pulsing, ebbing flow. The heat of the world.

  Marius pulled on the mana around him, a little from everywhere. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know dozens of glowing balls hovered toward him. Whenever one entered him he felt the well inside fill up, the chill subside.

  ‘That is enough for today,’ Peiter said from his tree.

  Marius opened his eyes and blinked at seeing the world through his vision instead of the other, more ethereal sense he had trouble defining. ‘I felt good.’

  The monk nodded. ‘You are progressing fast, but you must be wary not to take too much too quickly.’ Marius was about to respond, but Peiter raised a finger. ‘You have not done anything wrong, Marius. It is simply a fault we are all susceptible to falling into. We must always take less than we think we need.’

  Marius wanted to argue with the monk. He felt great, and he wanted to continue that feeling—especially after all that had happened—but he knew better.

  ‘What will it be like at the monastery?’ Marius asked, trying to distract himself.

  ‘You will find out, soon enough.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything you can tell me about it?’

  The monk sat, silent against the tree. It looked as if he wasn’t going to say anything at all, then he nodded, almost imperceptibly, and spoke. ‘There will be people your age there. Kids who have been training since they were younger than you. Acolytes and apprentices—but there are also older people who come to the monastery. Some do not start with the order until they look old enough to lead it.’

  ‘When did you start as a monk?’ It was hard to tell Peiter’s age, but Marius knew he was old. His eyebrows, the only hair he didn’t shave off his head, were a pale grey.

  ‘When I was twenty.’

  Marius tilted his head. ‘I thought you would have been younger.’

  ‘Oh, I was plenty young. It might not seem it to you, but for
some people, not much happens until after their twentieth year. Life does not even seem to have begun.’

  Marius scrunched his eyebrows together. Twenty years old, he thought. Being that age was so far away. Ruben wasn’t even that old yet. ‘What did you do before?’

  ‘I was a scribe, in the library at Guhrat.’

  ‘Guhrat?’

  ‘You have never heard of Guhrat?’ A smile touched Peiter’s lips. ‘Guhrat is west’—he waved to his left—‘and across the sea. The library… well, it is said to be the heart of knowledge in the world. There is magic in Guhrat, you see, as there is in most places. There is a school for it, too. The young and old train there just as they do at the monastery. But I never did. Back then, I had no magic, thought I never would, but I craved knowledge.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Had a knack for absorbing it. But the school… they took only students who could afford to be there, ones who had enough gold to fill the coffers. So, I did the next best thing and became a scribe in the library.’ He sighed. ‘That was a very different time in my life.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  The monk frowned. ‘I scraped by, for a long time, and saved enough gold to pay for a year of tuition. But the things being taught at that school… the more I watched the other students, the more I became familiar with the culture.’ He shook his head. ‘It was not about learning for the sake of learning; it was not about knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It was about the accumulation of power.’ He waved a hand, gesturing around at the trees. ‘We have something beautiful here in Kharleon. I do not agree with the methods used to achieve it. But in Guhrat? The space around the city… it was a wasteland. The masters took their students to what was left of the forest and trained them to drain a tree until its leaves browned and blackened—until the tree became so brittle its branches could not hold a hummingbird. As a scribe, I learnt of other paths. I read about the monks, about their gentler way of life, and instead used that money I had saved for tuition to journey across the sea to the Tahali mountains monastery.’ He picked a blade of grass and spun it between two fingers. ‘I always thought I would go back and teach them what I had learnt.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  The monk looked away from Marius. ‘I go where the monastery sends me. Perhaps one day they will deem me ready to return, but as yet, that day has not come.’

  Marius thought about what Peiter had said. The way the monk acted, lighting fires without magic and only taking what he needed from the land, it all made sense now. ‘That’s why you want me to be careful. I won’t turn this place into a wasteland, Peiter. I promise.’

  Peiter chuckled. ‘I know, Marius. I know. I never believed you would. But practicing care is important, it is something you should learn sooner rather than later. It is something some people never learn.’

  ‘Is that why there are seekers?’

  The monk’s expression darkened. ‘People fear what they do not understand. True, there are very real reasons to fear magic…’ He shook his head. ‘But that does not mean it should be destroyed.’

  Marius looked through the trees, in the direction Lilah had gone. ‘Her sword is magic though, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. Starblades are something else entirely.’ Peiter gazed at the clear sky above. ‘Have you ever seen a rock break through a starfall?’

  Marius shook his head. ‘My brother did, before I was born.’

  ‘When the star—the meteorite—hits the ground, do you know what it does?’

  Marius knew well. He’d stumbled upon the place that rock had hit in the forest before Peiter had come to Billings. Even the dirt looked wrong, dark and… lifeless. The clearing made a perfect circle, radiating from a small dip in the ground. ‘It creates a deadland.’

  The monk inclined his head. ‘The metal that comes from within that which falls can be used to create such a blade.’

  Marius’s eyes widened. ‘The mana. It’s in everything—the grass, the trees, the ground. I felt it. But these deadlands, they don’t have any, do they?’

  ‘The deadlands, the wastelands around Guhrat, they feel the same. The mana in those places has been depleted. The Starblade leeches it—how, why, I do not know. I do not think anybody knows. But when Ronin realised blades could be crafted from these meteorites, he took it as a message from the heavens. A message to cleanse that which should not be.’

  ‘Cleanse? You mean—’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘The blood mages of the world, the death wizards and dark sorcerers… they make me understand this impulse. Magic is a great and terrible thing.’ He stared at Marius. ‘Be thoughtful in your use of it. Always. Do not give a reason to prove these people right.’

  Leaves didn’t crunch, and no twig broke underfoot, but something told Marius Lilah was nearby. He looked over his shoulder at the edge of the clearing. Sure enough, a moment later she walked out. When he looked back at the monk, Peiter wore a curious expression.

  ‘Did you hear her?’

  Marius shook his head. ‘No, I just… knew she was there.’

  The expression on Peiter’s face made Marius wonder about how he’d known. It hadn’t been mana he’d sensed, like in the trees or the bird that had flown overhead. It had been something else…

  ‘Interesting,’ Peiter whispered. He then turned his attention to the seeker. ‘Any luck with supplies?’

  Lilah grabbed one of the shoulder straps of her bag and dropped the bulging pack onto the ground. ‘There’s lunch in there.’ She didn’t look at them, her eyes distant, staring off through the trees. ‘Eat fast, we’ve stayed in one place too long.’

  ‘We have not come across anyone in days,’ the monk said.

  ‘I’d like to keep it that way.’

  ~

  They were back on the road twenty minutes later. Lilah took point as usual, and Marius couldn’t help staring at the second sword attached at her hip. The blade’s metal had come from the sky. Some blacksmith somewhere had broken into a meteorite and made a sword from what they’d found. He wondered if Ruben knew about Starblades.

  A message to cleanse that which should not be. Marius shivered at the thought. How could a rock falling from the sky be a message? It was just a rock.

  He remembered what the blade had made him feel the night he’d killed that man and hurt Peiter. It had felt like his very life was leaving him. He thought back to the deadland in the forest, the way nothing grew there. The barren, broken land. He would have ended up like that, barren and broken, had she not sheathed the sword.

  Marius steeled himself. He looked up at Peiter beside him, no longer needing to hold his back as he walked. Marius sped past the monk, catching up with Lilah.

  ‘I see I’ve gained an extra shadow,’ she said without turning around. Had his steps been that loud? ‘Is there a question you want to ask me, little monk?’

  I’m not a monk, he thought but didn’t say. He cleared his throat, opened his mouth, but found his lips too dry and his tongue too heavy to talk.

  ‘Well?’

  Marius bit his lip. He took a sip from the canteen that hung around his neck then walked up beside her, being sure not to look back to see what kind of look Peiter might be giving him right now. It took a moment before he built enough courage to talk.

  ‘Do you hate me?’

  ‘What?’ Lilah sputtered. ‘No. I don’t hate you, Marius. What would make you think that?’

  He glanced at the Starblade in its sheath then back into her eyes. ‘You’re a seeker… I have magic.’

  She looked ahead, avoiding his eyes. ‘It’s not that simple. What has the monk been telling you?’

  ‘He said the metal that makes your Starblade comes from the sky. He said you see it as a message to—’

  ‘To cleanse what shouldn’t be?’ Lilah scoffed. ‘Old ideas for old men. If I thought such a thing, would either of you still be alive?’ She didn’t give him a chance to answer. ‘I seek to destroy evil, not magic. Th
ere is evil on all sides.’ She patted her scabbard. ‘This blade could be used for evil.’ She glanced at him. ‘Just as your magic could be.’

  Marius winced at the thought of what he’d done. He knew what he’d done was wrong, but he hadn’t felt evil.

  ‘Don’t worry, little monk. I only drew the Starblade on you because you lost control. I’m not here to hurt you. Now go, walk with Peiter. I’d like to be alone with my thoughts.’

  Marius slowed his walk until he was beside Peiter. He watched the seeker tread ahead and wondered how different his life would be if someone like her had been in the village that night.

  Would she have been able to stop the blood mage?

  Chapter 37

  Ruben

  Ruben stood in the castle gardens. The statue of the God King behind him, in front a clear expanse of grass and stone walls. Black charred the walls from where he’d practiced throwing his fire. Alyssa had left him here, as she so often did, alone to his own devices.

  He hadn’t fed from her again, not since the first time. She hadn’t brought it up, and he was trying not to, but every time he saw her he felt a hunger and desire as intense as the fire that brewed within him.

  Ruben focused on a point on the wall and forced his arms to stay by his side. His jaw set, eyes narrowed, and forehead wrinkled, he imagined the stone bursting into flames.

  Alyssa didn’t have to wave her hands to create illusions—something she hadn’t let on until recently. The wave of her hand helped her focus her power, but it wasn’t where it came from.

  The same must be true for his fire. He wondered what would happen if he were in chains again, unable to raise his arms. The thought terrified him. No matter how powerful he became, how could he fight while restrained?

  He gritted his teeth. His whole head vibrated and shook in concentration. In frustration.

  He let go, relaxing the muscles in his arms—in his whole body—that he hadn’t realised were tense, releasing the breath he’d been holding. Alyssa had told him time and time again that his powers didn’t come from rage, even though that’s how he’d accessed them before.