by Ron Collins
“Shariaen?” Darien said.
Garrick had no time to respond.
The creatures made a large push, and the barrier bent. If he didn’t do something soon, these things would work their way through it. He felt the power of Braxidane’s magic rising inside him. Could he control it this time, could he handle mixing his two magics better than he had in the alleyway?
The Shariaen pushed against his barrier again, and he felt it give.
He had no choice.
He pulled life force and funneled it through his link. For a moment he thought he would smother under the two streams, but he wrapped his mind around them both and pressed harder, combining them in even proportion. The Shariaen screamed, and the barrier gave a bit. He mixed more magestuff and more life force, then more, and again more, winning ground each time until, with a final push the pressure released and Garrick fell face-first to the muddy ground, panting heavily.
Sweat poured from his brow. Blood pounded through his body.
But the Shariaen were gone.
He rolled over and gazed up at Darien.
His partner’s stare was direct.
“If you have anything you feel the need to tell me,” Darien said. “I’m listening.”
Chapter 9
Darien winced as he flexed his arm.
“I told you to stay back,” Garrick said.
He crawled to his bedroll. The sorcery had cost him dearly, but he was relieved to find enough of Sjesko’s energy remained to keep him from falling into the all-consuming hunger he was already too familiar with.
“Perhaps next time you could tell me what’s happening?” Darien replied.
“There will never be enough time to explain,” Garrick said. “It will be better if you just do what I tell you to do.”
“Yes, all-powerful Garrick. I hear and I shall obey.”
Darien’s ability to retain a sense of humor, even at a time like this, made him that much easier to dislike.
Garrick gathered himself and sat up. “Stop whining, and let me look at that shoulder.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Humor me.”
Garrick had to hold back his life force as he examined the wound. It was a shallow cut, but one that could fester.
“I can heal that,” he said.
Darien pulled back. “I’ll handle it myself, thank you kindly.”
“Have it your way.”
Darien pulled an extra shirt from his pack, and ripped a strip to act as a bandage.
“So, are you going to explain what just happened?”
“I have nothing to say.”
Darien hung his head with exasperation.
“Garrick, you can throw long faces and ignore me all day long, but you cannot pretend that something didn’t just happen. That something just about got me killed.”
The fact that Darien was right annoyed Garrick to no end.
He didn’t want to talk about any of this right now.
This magic was embarrassing in some deep way. It controlled him. Directed him. It caused him to feel things he wouldn’t normally feel—things he shouldn’t normally feel—and when he drew down, when the power was gone … he knew what this magic was capable of doing.
This whole thing meant he was broken.
The idea of talking about it felt worse than confessing to a crime. It felt like exposing his innermost weakness.
Talking about it would be … hard.
No. Talking about it would be impossible.
But how could he justify not telling his traveling partner at least enough to protect himself?
“I don’t owe you anything,” he finally said.
Darien glared. “This is going to be a very long trip.”
When Garrick didn’t reply, Darien turned back to tending his wound.
Garrick stared into the nighttime.
In a few days they would enter a pass that would lead them to Arderveer, a city that made Garrick anxious. He did not want to face it alone.
“All right,” Garrick finally said. “We need to trust each other enough to make it through this thing. I’ll explain as far as I can, but you have to realize I probably don’t have as many answers as you do questions.”
“I’m listening.”
“You are aware of how magic works?”
“I know the concept. Magical energy resides in another plane that wizards reach by creating pathways in your mind. The magic comes to you, and you manipulate it to your advantage. I’m sure it’s more convoluted than that, or everyone and his brother would be casting magic around like it was gossip, but I think that’s the framework.”
“Yes. It is more complicated than that, but you’ve described the basics. Mages of the orders often call the plane of magic, the source of the magestuff we use to create our spell work, by the name Talin. Mages learn the craft from other mages, and more powerful mages can trigger paths in those who are less powerful—hence the path of an apprentice to the full mage.”
“All right,” Darien said. “So, why the lesson?”
Garrick hesitated, then charged ahead.
“I’ve recently acquired a second magic, one completely different, one that uses energy from within—something I’m calling ‘life force,’ though I have no other person to discuss it with or to argue my naming of it. I think these creatures were drawn by that energy.”
“The Shariaen?”
“That’s what they called themselves.”
“Interesting,” Darien said. “If that’s true, then they are ancients from before Starshower.”
Garrick grimaced.
Starshower legend told of gods who called a great shower of stars down upon the plane because its ancient races were guilty of greed and sloth, among many other sins. It said the world they lived in now had sprung from the wreckage. Alistair had not believed the legend so put no priority on it, which was fine by Garrick. He didn’t like the idea of fickle gods, anyway. But, after meeting Braxidane and the Shariaen, he was having second thoughts.
“Yes. Definitely interesting. Every time I turn around this thing gets worse,” Garrick replied. “How is it you know this?”
“I cleaned shop for a university historian in Whitestone as a boy,” Darien said. “He took to me, and taught me endlessly about that time period—fire and pestilence and all that muck-muck. Shariaen, Tawntorian, Gartonian—I would know those names anywhere.”
“And you think those creatures were remnants?”
“Could be.” Darien ran his fingers down his mustache. “If so, they—they would be very old magic. Very ancient. Very powerful.”
“Since when does a simple shop boy get to learn such things at the foot of a master historian?”
Darien gave a boyish grin. “You don’t own the market on resourcefulness, my friend.”
Garrick glanced at Darien’s bandage, and furrowed his brow. It was well done, precisely cut, and placed well to staunch the flow of blood.
“Hmmm,” Garrick said. “I find myself traveling now with a historian who can bind a wound like a war veteran, and who wields a blade that damaged these ancient and powerful things of the past. Is there anything you need to tell me?”
Darien’s face turned a shade of crimson.
“I’ve got nothing as grand as your story, Garrick. The blade is a gift from my father. It carries a small ward.”
Garrick put two and two together. It was so obvious. He would have seen it earlier if they had met in Dorfort rather than in Caledena.
“Your surname is J’ravi,” he said. “Your father is Afarat J’ravi, the man who has commanded the Dorfort guard the past twenty cycles.”
It was not a question.
Darien nodded with resignation.
“I didn’t know I was traveling with a celebrity.”
“I guess we both have our secrets.”
“I guess,” Garrick agreed, and he stared up into the rocky ceiling of their shelter.
“This second magic you’re tossing aroun
d,” Darien said. “It’s no little fancy who-hah.”
“No, it’s not.”
“How did you rate it?”
“Well,” Garrick said, his face turning crimson. “There was a girl—”
“Isn’t there always,” Darien said wistfully.
“She got into some trouble.”
“Tsk-tsk, Garrick.”
“Not that kind of trouble.”
Darien smiled as if he was going along.
“I tried to help her. Another mage got involved and, to make a long story short, I wound up with this new magic.” He sighed. “To be honest, I’m still working to understand it myself.”
Darien ran his fingers over the scraggly growth of a beard that had begun to appear around his cheeks.
“Doesn’t sound like such a bad deal.”
Garrick shrugged. How could he explain what it was like to watch yourself rip a hundred souls from a tiny village in one horrific blink of an eye?
“Things don’t always look the way they really are.”
“Well,” Darien said, rotating his shoulder gently. “We have a long day before us. Should we sit guard?”
Garrick would probably be awake all night, but he didn’t want Darien to know that.
“My energy is low enough now that I don’t think the Shariaen will return,” he said. “And the weather is bad enough that I doubt we’ll see other marauders. We can both probably sleep this evening.”
Darien nodded. “You’re probably right.”
Garrick closed his eyes, pretending to sleep until Darien’s snores were steady. Then he sat up and looked out into the rain, thinking about Darien’s injury, about how and why the ancient Shariaen might have been drawn to his magic, and—oddly—wondering what Starshower might have been like.
It was a lot to think about.
After years of leading such a mundane existence, his life was becoming one surprise after another, and the world was suddenly getting bigger than he had ever understood it could be. What was he doing here? Why had the Shariaen come to him? What did it all mean?
And what, he wondered, could possibly go wrong next?
Chapter 10
Four more days of spirit-grinding travel brought Garrick and Darien to the foothills of the Blue Mist Mountains. It was a place of coarse grasses that grew in scythes of yellow and brown, and a place whose hard stone ground made Garrick long for the rich soil of the lowlands. The evening sun cut a bloody swath through mountain peaks that rose like cold spikes. A hawk soared silently above.
“There’s a pass just a touch to the north, now,” Darien said as they made camp. “We should be able to get to Arderveer quickly from there.”
As had become their practice, Darien prepared a cooking fire while Garrick tended the horses. Garrick liked this chore because it reminded him of his days in the stables and because it gave him time alone with an animal he thought he understood. The stable boy in Caledena had been right about Kalomar. He was a reliable mount.
But Garrick was tired of travel.
His legs burned, and his hands ached from the reins. That’s what he got for being out of practice. He promised himself he would never go this long without serious riding again. And, yet, amid his promise he also wondered what it meant that the life force inside him had not removed this pain, and that it was now so much easier to control that life force than it had been earlier.
It did not bode well.
They ate dried meat, warmed over the fire.
Darien exercised his wounded arm. It was healing, and he spent considerable time each day manipulating it so he wouldn’t lose flexibility.
Garrick lay on his bedroll and fidgeted. Sjesko’s life force gave a lethargic movement inside him.
“You don’t sleep well, do you?” Darien said.
“Not lately,” Garrick replied.
“Travel usually gives the mind to sleep.”
“I’ll march to my own beat, thank you very much.”
That drew a hearty laugh.
“What?” Garrick said.
“You’re a pain to travel with, you know?” Darien replied. “You don’t talk, and you get annoyed when I sing to myself. You hold midnight communion with ancients. You squirm on that horse like you've got ants in your breeches—it’s no wonder you got saddle sores, by the way—and then you’ve got the nerve to pretend there isn’t anything wrong about any of that at all.”
He shook his head in disgust.
“I don’t suppose you’ll care, but when we’re done with this job I’ll be heading my own way.”
“That’s fine,” Garrick grumbled, oddly bothered. He expected their partnership would be short-lived, but he hadn’t expected Darien to be the one to break it. “I didn’t ask to have you along,” he added. “And I never promised to be the ideal travel partner.”
They sat in silence for a long time, Darien’s frustration clear on his face.
Garrick smiled despite himself. There were times when he couldn’t help but like Darien. His partner had an inner essence that could be infectious, and he wasn’t as annoying as Garrick had first thought. It was true that Darien was not a good singer, but he took great joy in the activity, and that was hard to ignore.
“I wouldn’t mind a song right now,” Garrick finally said.
Darien chuckled. “I’m sure you don’t mean that, but this time I think I’ll just take you at your word.”
Garrick leaned back against his bedroll and closed his eyes as Darien sang, and for the first time in over a week, he actually fell asleep.
Chapter 11
“Garrick!”
He bolted upright to the sound of thundering hooves ringing in the darkness. The crack of a breaking branch rang out from the line of shadow-draped trees farther down the mountain. Four riders, chasing one, he thought.
Darien peered into the moonless night.
A green flash lit the forest, and a man screamed. Unnatural odors wafted on the breeze. Lectodinian sorcery, mixed once again with the unambiguously bloody taint of Koradictine. Garrick’s ire rose with a taste for vengeance. If the orders were involved, he would be involved, too. And this time the advantage of surprise would be on his side.
Red-orange sparks flared further down in the forest.
Darien gripped his sword. “I’m going to go see what’s happening,” he said as he stepped down the hill.
Garrick grabbed his own weapon and slipped toward the action.
As he drew near, the sickening crack of snapping bones came from deep inside the woods and the lead horse cried in the darkness, falling with a horrible crashing sound that Garrick knew too well.
A winded voice came through the woods.
“So, my poor Sunathri, your chase is at its end.”
A flash of blinding light came from nearby to reveal three men on horses covering their eyes with the crooks of their robed elbows. A damaged horse struggled pitifully on the undergrowth. The wizard they had been chasing dashed into the wood, this time on foot, and was gone before Garrick could set sight on him.
With their prey now dismounted, the lead rider waved his cohorts to loop around. The horses slipped into the darkness, blowing with lathered complaints that told Garrick they had been hard used.
He followed the leader—a Lectodinian by the smell of his sorcery.
As he drew closer, the rider cast a thin magelight onto his hand to expose his prey. Garrick used his sword to pull back a branch that gave him a better view.
The mage's prey was a woman.
Her glare was defiant. Her eyes reflected the magelight with unabridged hatred as she struggled to free herself from a mass of whitish paste that held her foot affixed to the ground. Her long hair was black in the darkness, disheveled from her ride and hanging past her shoulders in waves. She held one arm gingerly against her ribcage, her teeth were gritted in obvious pain.
“Aha!” the Lectodinian rider exclaimed as he saw her. “This time, escape will not be so easy.”
“You ca
n’t kill us all, Elman,” she said. “And I’ll not go down without a fight.”
“Anything less would be … unsporting,” the Lectodinian said with a tone of voice that made Garrick’s skin crawl.
The woman and the Lectodinian cast spells at the same time. Their magic clashed with multicolored sparks in the middle of the clearing.
She was Torean.
Of course she was.
Who else would a mage of the orders be chasing around in the midnight hours? It made him mad. He felt his energy stir, and he set gates as he reached to the plane of magic.
The Lectodinian appeared stronger than the woman, but he held his energy in reserve, toying with the Torean like she was a crippled mouse and he was a tomcat. A Koradictine mage, and another Lectodinian edged closer, crimson fire already playing on the fingertips of the Koradictine.
They hadn’t seen him, Garrick thought.
He used his anger to focus his work. He pulled magic through his link, matching the Koradictine’s timing as the mage cast a bolt of raw energy toward the woman. It was a powerful sorcery, and well-cast, but rather than fight him, Garrick let the spell’s momentum carry it forward and only served to divert it gently along a new course that hit the second Lectodinian squarely in the chest.
The mage fell to the ground like a sack of flour.
“What?” the Koradictine cried with surprise.
Garrick felt the dead Lectodinian’s energy rise from its body. Without a thought, he drank it in. It felt good, he realized with morbid satisfaction. Gloriously good.
“What did you do that for?” the lead mage snapped at the Koradictine.
“I didn’t.”
The Koradictine stared wildly into the woods and threw a hastily prepared ball of mage fire toward Garrick’s position. Garrick stepped away so the fireball merely sputtered in the undergrowth. These were powerful mages playing a deadly game.
This was no time to hesitate.
Garrick gripped his sword in one hand, and his wild energy boiling up as he rushed forward.
Another bolt flashed in the woods.
Garrick drew near the Koradictine, and the mage’s horse skittered. The mage waved a hand, and it was suddenly as if Garrick were walking through bog water. He cut the mire with a blast of life force, and plowed on. Then the Koradictine was close enough that Garrick could smell the horse’s lather and see the pupils of the mage’s eyes.
