by Beam, Brian
Til’ appeared bright eyed and bushy tailed—maybe that’s a description I should’ve saved for Max—and in no way sore. I tried not to glower out of jealousy.
“Thanksh,” I said around a mouthful of eggs.
Til’ gave me a large grin and hopped up on the bed beside me. He wore a dark green shirt and brown pants with a gray cloak thrown around his shoulders. A leather satchel hung at his side. “Briscott’s asking around to get us a lead on getting into the Wizard Academy. He’s really a good guy. I like him.”
Til’ and Briscott had really hit it off during the trip to Auslin. During the times that I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, Briscott seemed completely fine with listening to Til’ ramble endlessly while I hung back and dwelled on darker thoughts. They knew when to give me a little space, and I was thankful for that. Given the amount of laughter that drifted back to me, they enjoyed themselves despite my occasional brooding periods.
Til’ continued as I attacked my food. “I made him a carving of Loranis’s sigil last night. Do you think he’ll like it? I’m sure he will.” Til’ stopped suddenly and looked into my eyes. I’m not sure how I looked, but he apparently thought that I looked troubled. “Are you okay?”
Til’ actually stopped talking, giving me a chance to answer, his large silver eyes filled with concern. He usually only did that when he was dead serious about something. I swallowed a bite of bacon and sighed. “I was just thinking about my father again. This whole thing with him . . . it’s been hard to come to grips with. But you’ve been right this whole time; I won’t truly know what’s going on until I can at least speak to Max, so there’s no point on dwelling on it now.” I gave Til’ a smile. “We need to focus on getting Max out of the Wizard Academy so he can tell me how stupid I’ve been about it all.”
Breaking into a smile of his own, Til’ hopped back onto the bare-wood floor, the planks creaking underneath his boots. “You’re not stupid,” Til’ said with a mischievous grin. “Just a tad mopey, like a child who broke his toy.”
I hung my head, shaking it back and forth. “Great, I have another Max on my hands,” I muttered.
Til’ beamed back at me, happy to have brought me out of my gloomy thoughts. “Don’t worry, Korin. Max will tell you that your father’s not really a bad guy, and we’ll all go show Raijom a thing or two.” Til’ shadowboxed the empty air before him, his face scrunched up in mock anger.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I laughed. I swallowed my last bite, regretting not leaving some water to wash it down with. “Let’s go see what Briscott’s got for us.” With that, I stood up and gathered my new brown cloak, sword, and recently purchased backpack filled with supplies.
As we left the room, I felt surprisingly good, muscular aches aside. After a visit to the local bathhouse the night before, I was properly bathed and shaven. A little cleanliness goes a long way in promoting a positive mental state, especially when stuck somewhere like the Magi’s Charm. I’d considered getting my hair trimmed, given its current shagginess, but something about leaving it as an uneven, shaggy mess kept me connected to Sal’ in a way.
Shoving the flaked-paint door back into its frame—no easy task on my part—we set off down the hall towards the stairs of the two-story inn. I had all of my valuables on me, so I didn’t bother locking the door behind me. Besides, if someone tried to pry the door open, there’d be a good chance I’d be able to hear it from across the city.
Making it down the L-shaped stairway was a miracle in itself; walking down the unstable steps was a balancing act akin to walking across a ship’s deck in the middle of a storm. Sadly, the Magi’s Charm was the best of the worst, or in other words, the best that the Black Magic District had to offer.
With the closest inn outside of the Black Magic District being two miles away, we’d felt like we’d waste too much time traveling back and forth each day that we scoured the seedy section of Auslin for a similarly seedy wizard to assist us. After a night in the Magi’s Charm, I was starting to think that giving up a little sleep for an earlier start—losing an hour or two to travel—would be worth it for a nicer and safer inn. I’d be able to have a room that didn’t make me feel like I’d slept on a pile of rocks or set my scalp to itching. Given some of the faces I saw staring back at us from tables in the common room, I figured I’d probably also be less likely to take a knife or random spell to the back.
Shiny charms and trinkets, the types of which were sold on every street corner in Auslin, hung from the common room’s rafters as if from a gallows. Considering that such items were nothing more than fakes with no real magic power, I had a feeling that the proprietor of the Magi’s Charm was making a point of their uselessness by having them carelessly hanging overhead.
There were nearly a dozen ill-repaired, rectangular, wooden tables haphazardly placed around the room, long benches serving as seats. A bar stretched down the far wall. Behind it stood a stout, brown-robed man with a shock of brown hair hanging down one side of his face. He was working on both wiping out mugs with a soiled rag and setting some sort of record for having the sourest expression ever. His face was half forehead with very little room for his suspicious eyes and pug nose. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in about ten years, his dark brown beard hanging below the level of the bar.
I decided to forgo ordering a drink, though after the salty bacon I would’ve loved some more water or a nice ale. Let’s just say it was because the man behind the bar was cleaning the mugs with a dirty rag, not the fact that he was possibly a wizard, one with an expression making him seem to be looking for a reason to hurt someone.
Almost all of the tables were occupied by rough-looking men and women. No more than four were seated to a table, with plenty of space between them on the benches. It seemed there was very little trust to go around in the room. Most of the patrons wore simple wizard-style robes of varying colors and cleanliness. Whether they were actually wizards or just wanted to appear to be, I didn’t know. I just knew that I was really glad that Briscott had taken it upon himself to do some questioning for us. With some of the glares cast our way, I figured any exchange with the clientele of the Magi’s Charm wouldn’t have been pleasant. I was used to drawing attention with Til’ around—a Kolarin outside of Isaeron is fairly rare—but the stares seemed to take us both in with equal suspicion.
Briscott was sitting alone at a table by the windowless front door, sipping from a clay mug. He wore a similar outfit to what I’d met him in—dark browns and greens. His black cloak was draped over the bench beside him. When he saw us reach the bottom of the stairs, he stood and gave a warm smile that seemed out of place among the distrustful glares cast at us from the other tables. His black hair was tucked neatly behind his ears, his beard just recently trimmed short. He also looked well-rested and chipper, his eyes gleaming along with his smile. I guess I was the only one who’d had rocks instead of down in their mattress.
I weaved through the sporadically spaced tables, making my way to the front of the room while avoiding bumping into any wizards who may have felt like practicing magic on the first person to rub them the wrong way. If you couldn’t tell, I wasn’t exactly feeling secure in the Magi’s Charm. Once I reached Briscott, I shook his proffered hand as he clapped my shoulder with the other.
“A Loranis-blessed morning to you, Korin. Rest well?” he asked in his usual friendly tone, his pond-water eyes gleaming with perceived innocence.
“As well as I could in this place,” I responded in a whisper, making a cursory glance around the room where too many eyes were still on our table. “I always wondered what it would feel like to fall asleep while rolling down a mountainside.”
Briscott gave a hearty laugh and took his seat again, burying his face in his drink, his kind eyes sparkling with mirth. I sat across the table from him, and Til’ jumped up beside me. I had a good view of the front door and the wooden sign that had been nailed to it. It read: “Leave Without Paying, Leave Without Your Head.” I looked ba
ck at the barman. If the other employees of the Magi’s Charm were as charming as Mug Polisher, then I wouldn’t want to put the sign to the test.
“This place gives me the willies,” Til’ announced, much louder than necessary, oblivious to the eyes focused on our table. “I can’t wait until we go out into the city and find someone to help us. What do you think Max is going to say when we rescue him?”
“Til’,” I began, cutting off his questioning. He looked up at me expectantly. “Shut up.”
Til’ crossed his arms and gave me his best affronted expression. I smiled, partially to help take the edge off of my words and partially because his childish expressions never ceased to entertain me.
I made a covert gesture to the room around us. “We have an audience,” I whispered conspiratorially. Til’ made a not-so-subtle observation of the tables around us, and his eyes widened in realization. He turned back to me and gave a sharp nod of understanding.
“You’d think that with all the attention we’re getting, Loranis had created us with three arms or with horns growing out of our blighted foreheads,” Briscott chuckled softly as he lowered his now empty mug.
Til’ and I joined him in uneasy laughter before being cut off by a tall, gangly serving woman approaching our table. To call her homely would be a courtesy. Her stringy hair would’ve been better suited on a rat, and I was actually a little jealous of her ability to grow facial hair. At first I thought she was giving me the “stink eye,” but then I realized her right eye simply didn’t open past a squint. She wore a simple gray dress overlaid by a begrimed waist apron. Her sleeves were rolled up to her knobby elbows, displaying more arm hair than Briscott and I had combined..
“Whaddya have boysth?” she asked almost unintelligibly with a prominent lisp due to her lack of front teeth.
Fighting the urge to shudder, I thought back to Mug Polisher and his dirty rag. “Nothing for us, thank you,” I answered. Til’ nodded his agreement.
“Wasthe of my time,” she muttered angrily, skulking away to another table.
“Briscott, please tell me you’ve found a lead and that we can get out of here right now,” I whispered pleadingly.
Briscott gave me another big grin. “I got more than just a blighted lead. I got us a name and location. Harlon Restip at the Traitorous Trader.”
“Of course he’d be running a business by that name,” I sighed. “Well, at least we know he can help us.
If only it could‘ve been so easy.
Chapter 21
Law and Orders
Maybe I should clarify.
Finding Harlon Restip was easy. Too easy. I guess I shouldn’t have truly believed that finding a means of sneaking into the home of some of the most powerful wizards of Amirand would be as simple as asking a few questions and getting a single name. However, I also didn’t realize how difficult it really would be.
We found that the entire Black Magic District had the same lack of trust and abundance of suspicion that we’d seen in the common room of the Magi’s Charm. Harlon Restip at the Traitorous Trader—a “technically legal provider of slightly used magic goods,” as Harlon described it—was just one of several degrees of separation between who Briscott had spoken to and who could actually help us get into the Wizard Academy.
The major suppliers of magic goods, potions, charms, and information in the area seemed to distance themselves from others of their shady echelon as a means of protecting their own interests as well as those of their underhanded cohorts. From the trouble it was causing us, it seemed to also be their way of annoying the hell out of honest men looking to do something highly illegal.
Harlon Restip referred us to Yemsh Henk. Yemsh Henk gave us the name of one Alam Blackstone. Alam Blackstone . . . you know what, it would take me half of this journal to map out the entirety of every unscrupulous, venal wizard and back-alley shack we were directed to over the next few hours. I could also go into great detail about how many times we were sent in complete circles—Harlon Restip and a few others saw us more than once that day—and how much money we had to spend in bribes in each of those cases to keep from being sent on the same circuitous path.
Each wizard we met with told us pretty much the same thing: “I wouldn’t dare do anything that would bring the entire Council down on my head, but I know someone who might. However, could I interest you in . . .” followed by one of a hundred pointless items, potions, or spells that had absolutely nothing to do with getting into the Wizard Academy. If they were being truthful about the items and spells they offered, we could’ve met the loves of our lives, been immune to all poisons, had the ability to speak to animals, been more attractive to the opposite sex—or same sex if that was our inclination—and increase the size of our . . .
Let me stop before I get too far into the more inappropriate promises of what they had to offer. Long story short, we spent hours upon hours getting absolutely nowhere until the sky darkened and the air became thick with the promise of rain. We found ourselves meeting a sorceress named Ulys Illiafel in a dark, empty alley, our stomachs aching and our legs weak with hunger as the first drops of rain began to fall.
“Ah, I wouldn’t dare do anything that would bring the entire Council down on my poor head,” Ulys began in a voice about as sweet as a snake’s.
“But you know someone who might,” I finished with more than a little annoyance.
Ulys’s thin lips pulled into a tight smile, her ash-gray eyes sparkling eerily. She was actually somewhat attractive with her smooth, heart-shaped face and blond hair spilling like waves over her shoulders. Her scarlet robe was actually clean and reminded me of Sal’s, being form fitting and showing off her . . . features. Hey, I was allowed to look, okay? Anyway, even her alluring curves couldn’t make up for her general creepiness. Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t seem to blink . . . or that it felt like when she looked into my eyes, she was looking into my soul with the intent of ripping it out of my body and eating it.
Ulys pulled up her hood as the rain began to pick up. “Could I interest you in a charm that—”
“No,” I interrupted with more force and volume than I meant to. In my own defense, it had been a very long day and the little food I had in my backpack hadn’t gone very far between the three of us.
“What my friend here is trying to say is that we’re only interested in finding someone who can help us get into the Wizard Academy,” Briscott cut in, seeming completely at ease and unaffected by our long hours spent combing the streets. I didn’t understand how he could be so calm and friendly all the time. I was typically a friendly, easygoing guy, but even my patience had limits.
“And what is it worth to you?” Ulys asked.
I exhaled heavily and gestured to Til’. My coin pouch had long since been empty. Til’ gave me a regretful look and dumped the last of his coins—a silver piece and two coppers—into Ulys’s outstretched hand.
Ulys’s unsettling grin, barely visible in the shade of her hood, faded. She arched a thin eyebrow. “Really?” she asked skeptically.
“Til’, give her the last of the woodwork,” I sighed, wanting nothing more than to call it a night. We now had no money and were giving up the last of Til’s woodwork—a flat, hand-sized piece of wood carved with seemingly impossible swirls and loops around a lifelike panorama of Auslin’s skyline. We no longer had the means to even acquire rooms for the night.
Til’ pulled the piece from his satchel and held it up to Ulys. The sky lit with a sudden bolt of forked lightning, briefly illuminating Ulys’s wicked smile before letting darkness mask her face again. The following thunder rumbled with ground-shaking intensity, reminding me briefly of Bhaliel’s battle with the metal-monster eldrhim.
“For this, I can help you,” she said in her sickly sweet voice, tucking the woodwork into a hidden pocket in one of her sleeves. She pointed to Til’. “Come with me.”
As she started down the alley, we all began to follow. As if she had eyes in the back of her head, Uly
s whipped around and held up her hand. “Only the Kolarin. You two will meet him outside of Charms for Harm in one hour.”
I recognized the ridiculous shop name. We’d met with its proprietor, Tiedmont Gillecky, earlier in the day. It was nowhere close and was in the opposite direction Ulys led Til’.
“But that’s all the way across town,” I protested, knowing it would take a good portion of that hour to get there.
“That is how I know you will not be following me,” Ulys answered. Her face was shadowed, but her voice did a good enough job of conveying the threat she intended. “Your friend will be there in one hour.”
Til’ seemed unconcerned. “Guess I’ll see you in an hour,” he said with a slight shrug and not a hint of worry as he started after Ulys.
Til’ had been a good judge of character in the time I’d known him, yet I wasn’t so quick to trust Ulys. “Wait just a minute, Ms. Creepy Pants. Why should I trust your word? How do I know he’ll be safe with you?” Again, my mouth and brain seemed to have no connection.
“Because,” Ulys began, her eyes seeming to glow under her hood, “you have no choice.”
There was a sudden flash of sharp, white lightning. I shut my eyes against the brightness, and when I opened them, Til’ and Ulys were simply gone. Briscott was at my side, agape. The rain was pouring by this point, plastering our hair to our heads.
“Good enough reason as any, I suppose,” Briscott said after the shock wore off. He raised the hood of his cloak.
I ran a hand through my hair to wring out the rain and lifted my own hood. “Briscott, Til’ just gave up the last of his money and woodwork. He has nothing to offer in exchange for a way into the Wizard Academy. Besides, I’m not sure we can trust that wizard. I don’t know if I’d trust anyone in this place. We have to go after him.”
Briscott slapped a hand onto my rain-soaked shoulder. “Go where? We have no blighted idea where she would’ve taken him. We should head to Charms for Harm. Loranis will watch after Til’,” he said. Only the promise I’d made to myself to not attack Briscott’s religious views kept me from making a sharp-tongued retort.
