Hunted Sorcery (Jon Oklar Book 2)

by B. T. Narro

  The man carried a large chest on his shoulder as if it were a small container without the many pounds of gold and jewels I had to assume were in there. An archer shot down at Pearson from above the drawbridge, but the arrow stopped at the invisible wall of dteria surrounding the sorcerer.

  What could take Pearson down? It seemed that only fire could burn through his defenses, but both Leon and Remi were out arresting Luther.

  The king had entrusted me to defend his castle, and I damn well would. I just had to figure out how.

  There was one dark mage in my way to the open drawbridge, but he seemed more interested in fleeing than dealing with any of us running after Pearson. He threw back two of the king’s armored guards, then soared up and over the castle walls. He landed in front of Pearson soon after, joining Cason and one other near the open drawbridge.

  They threw men back with ease. I did catch sight of Josef, the fire mage, but he was thrown back as well before he could do anything.

  Horrified, I noticed a carriage with two horses ready and waiting a short distance from the chaos. I would never condone the injuring of any horse, but I didn’t see how else to stop Pearson from escaping. I would cut one leg of each animal and heal it later.

  I wasn’t going to make it, however. Pearson wasn’t walking very quickly, perhaps finally fatigued from carrying the large container on his shoulder.

  A large number of dark mages seemed to come from nowhere. They swarmed the guards just outside the castle.

  By the time I arrived, a battle had broken out, too many spells and swinging swords for me to keep track of it all. I tried to get through everyone, but these sorcerers were attempting to stop all guards from getting to Pearson, and they were doing a damn good job of it. I was thrown several times, getting up and rushing forward after each one. Pearson was just about to get in his carriage on my third attempt.

  This time I made it deep enough through the chaos to notice Cason among the many enemies. After hurling three guards away from the battle with one spell, he collapsed to one knee in clear exhaustion. He was not as important as Pearson, though, as I resisted and tensed every muscle while charging around the outskirts. I was hit with at least one spell of dteria, but it only made me stumble before I picked up speed again.

  It was too little too late. Almost all of my allies seemed to have given up; or perhaps they were just injured as they lay on the ground far from the battle. None were dead, but they didn’t look as if they would be getting up anytime soon.

  I was afforded a clear view of the carriage, Pearson waiting inside with the door open. A driver sat on a high bench, with the two horses’ reins in hand and a look of urgency on his face. The driver had his gaze on Cason, not me, as Cason puttered toward the carriage with clear intentions of escaping.

  I was right behind him, quickly gaining ground.

  Then I screamed as an arrow took me down.

  It was stuck in my leg, tearing through my muscles the more I tried to get up. I noticed the archer nearby, a woman fleeing with many of the dark mages.

  I yanked it out and healed myself, the world blurring in my heated exhaustion. By the time my vision was clear again, Cason was just about to board the carriage.

  Michael sprinted out from behind me and suddenly slammed into Cason, both men tumbling over each other away from the carriage. Reuben was right there behind Michael, jumping on Cason and helping Michael pin him down. Cason held a dagger with one hand, using his other to hurl both of my friends off him with a blast of dteria. But they didn’t go far.

  Reuben was first to jump back on Cason, with Michael right behind him. My focus went to Pearson, who had emerged from the carriage without the king’s gold on his shoulder. He trudged toward the three wrestling men. Remi was next to arrive, with Kataleya not far behind, though Aliana was quite a distance away still, no doubt slowed by having to carry her bow and quiver.

  It must’ve been a confusing scene to them, with many guards on the ground with severe injuries, a dozen dark mages escaping. There was only one man who wasn’t either on the ground or running away from the scene. Pearson had left the carriage behind. I thought I might get to the horses, but I was blasted by Pearson’s dteria before I was close enough to cut one of the animal’s legs.

  Remi had to duck suddenly to avoid my spiraling body flung over her head. I tried to get my feet out in front of me as I soared, but I didn’t have enough time, my horizontal speed far greater than my vertical.

  I skidded along the ground violently and finally rolled to a stop. My body stung at every spot my skin was exposed. I felt someone’s hands on me.

  “Are you all right?” Kataleya asked as she helped me up.

  “Pearson is stronger than Cason!” I announced loudly enough for Remi and Aliana to hear as well. “He has the king’s gold in his carriage!”

  Where was Leon? There was no time to ask. My injuries were not bad enough to keep me from running or fighting, as I darted toward the carriage once again. Pearson was busy throwing Michael and Reuben away from Cason.

  A dagger was embedded in the front of Cason’s shoulder. Pearson helped him up, then spun to find me about to enter his carriage as I kept my eyes on him. I tried to dive inside, but everything whirled around as I was struck with dteria again.

  I had no idea where I was when I landed, for I had rolled quite a few times. I got up to find myself quite a distance away as I watched Remi try to burn Pearson, only for her fire spell to hit an invisible wall and spread along the thick dteria in front of him. Pearson flicked his wrist at her, and she somersaulted backward away from him like a bothersome insect.

  Kataleya created her own wall, this one of dense water. Pearson made a grabbing motion, then flung his hand up, and her wall of water flew off. With Kataleya visibly shocked, she was frozen in place a moment before she was blasted with dteria. She spiraled past me.

  Aliana seemed to be next in Pearson’s sights, but she already had an arrow ready.

  “Not Pearson, the horses!” I tried to tell her, but it was too late.

  She fired, only for the arrow to stop short of Pearson’s chest before it fell to the ground. She muttered a curse in fear as he swept his hand in her direction.

  She flew away to land somewhere among the injured guards and the rest of my peers. The carriage had left already, the king’s gold in the cariole. One sole driver guided the animals, but there was no hope of me catching up to them.

  But Aliana had dropped her bow to the ground before Pearson had thrown her away.

  There were a couple of arrows scattered near it as well. She’d probably made this happen on purpose. Bless her.

  I picked up her weapon and loaded an arrow.

  The horses were headed north down the street. I aimed well ahead of the fast animals. I just had to hit one of them.

  I shot.

  The arrow stopped after just a few yards, intercepted by a block of Pearson’s dteria that he’d moved into the trajectory of the arrow.

  Now I was the one cursing as he looked at me with his hands out. Bracing for impact, I was surprised when it was Aliana’s bow in my hands that was crushed and broken, and not me. He left me alone, bending his knees and jumping as he flew off into the sky faster than any bird could go.

  He soared high and far, coming down in front of the carriage at least fifty yards away. The horses halted, giving him time to get in. I saw a few more of our guards on the street near him who would soon reach his carriage, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to do much. My focus went to Cason, as he had just finished pulling the dagger out of his shoulder and had begun to heal his wounds.

  My peers and I rushed him as quickly as we could, but he was too far away for us to stop him. The dteria that he used to wrap around his waist was so dense and strong that I could feel it even from five yards away.

  I knew I might be able to take him off his feet at this short distance with a powerful spell of dvinia, but he was about to take himself off his feet anyway. My effort wouldn�
��t do anything.

  I had to try something else. It was watching Pearson grab Kataleya’s wall of water away from her that gave me the idea.

  Rather than try to grab with my dvinia, I used only the three octaves of G with as much strength as I could muster. It was the spell I’d used to grab Leon’s boot. There was no strength to the energy, not enough to hold a physical object, but I could only hope that my mana worked differently with spells than with objects.

  I grabbed Cason’s dteria and pulled down with the entire weight of my mind just as he was taking off.

  Unbearable pain tore through my skull. It felt like I’d just put my whole body into lifting something that wasn’t supposed to move, but all the pressure had been on my mind.

  A splitting headache like none I’d experienced before sent stars flashing in my vision as I collapsed.

  Blearily, I made out Cason rising into the air for just a few yards before coming back down as he flailed in shock.

  Michael was first on Cason’s back, driving a sword deep into the enemy sorcerer. Reuben was right there after, piercing the back of Cason’s leg with another sword. My friends must’ve picked up the weapons from many of the fallen around us.

  I wanted to help them, but I couldn’t take my hands off my head. I had to heal myself, the pain too much, but I couldn’t focus.

  It took what felt to be a long while before I finally managed to get a grip on the three octaves of F and began to heal. The pain had taken a lot out of me, though, or perhaps it was just the act of grabbing Cason’s powerful energy with all my strength.

  Kataleya crouched near me, her hand on my back. “Jon, can I help you somehow?”

  I shook my head, my breaths too heavy for me to think, let alone answer her.

  “Don’t kill him!” yelled the king as he darted toward us. “He is to remain alive!”

  There were three swords in Cason now, with Michael and Reuben sitting on top of him and Remi standing nearby, ready to burn Cason should he move.

  “Jon, we need him healed enough so he doesn’t die,” the king ordered.

  I nodded and lifted my hand for Kataleya to help me up. Aliana came to assist, both of them pulling me to my feet.

  I trudged over to Cason and nearly collapsed in exhaustion near his head.

  He practically growled at me with his ugly mug. Remi crouched down near us and held a dagger against his throat.

  “If you try anything, I will kill you,” she threatened.

  But his eyes were already starting to roll back in his head, the muscles in his neck relaxing.

  “Get off him,” the king ordered.

  Michael and Reuben moved aside, leaving a bloody Cason lying motionless in the road.

  “Hurry Jon,” the king said, then told the others, “Take out those swords, now!”

  I didn’t want to heal this man. Cason was a danger so long as he drew breath. I thought about pretending I couldn’t, that it was too late already, but that was my anger speaking. The king was right. We needed him alive so we could find Pearson. I didn’t want to think what might happen to this kingdom if we didn’t recover that gold.

  I put everything I had into closing and healing up his sword wounds, knowing that I didn’t have enough stamina to fully heal him anyway.

  I went until I felt like I couldn’t get enough air. I knew the feeling well by now. I would pass out any second.

  “Stop, Jon,” Michael said as he grabbed my shoulder. “We need you to heal Leon.”

  I let the spell come to an end. I was too exhausted to feel anything, though I knew I should be afraid for Leon, especially considering that I didn’t think I could heal anyone else without a long rest.

  “He’s bleeding out as we speak,” Michael told the king as I fell to the dirt and let my eyes close.

  “Is Cason going to live, Jon?”

  I couldn’t speak, my consciousness fading.

  “We need Jon for Leon,” Michael said.

  “Cason needs to live no matter what,” the king retorted.

  “He’ll live,” I wheezed out. I wasn’t even sure it was true. I had healed Cason greatly, but his body was still very damaged.

  “Then get Jon to Leon,” the king said.

  Michael and Reuben hoisted me up.

  “We’ll get him there if we have to carry him the whole way,” Reuben said.

  They picked me up, one on either side of me, and soon I was being whisked away.

  “Good god you’re heavy,” Michael groaned. “You’d better be able to run soon.”

  What the hell just happened? was all I could think as I struggled for breath.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was past suppertime when I was finally done healing everyone. I could barely stand by then.

  Leon had been stabbed in the leg during the arrest of Luther. Leon and many of Byron’s guards were unable to rush to the castle when the king sent a distress signal through the callring. Apparently, the sellswords employed by Luther had made the arrest quite difficult, and Leon had grown impatient, sparking an armed conflict outside Luther’s mansion.

  I had spent the last few hours in the courtyard, healing. I had listened to my friends speak about what had happened with Luther, as Eden and Jennava described what had occurred here. I hadn’t seen Jennava during the chaos, but there were a lot of people I hadn’t seen.

  While I was healing those who needed it most, the uninjured organized those who needed healing immediately and instructed me who to heal next. It made my work easier.

  Leon assisted by healing those with superficial cuts, but he had lost a lot of blood. He couldn’t do too much before he retired to his quarters.

  The king kept everyone around until all the injured were healed, except for a large team of archers he’d sent after Pearson because only archers had any hope of shooting him dead. I had not spoken with his majesty. I almost didn’t want to. He was grief stricken, with long looks at the ground as if he’d lost a child. I had heard, however, that his family was safe. It was his loss of coin that he mourned.

  Luther had been brought through the courtyard in chains. He had denied any involvement with Cason when he was arrested, and he was still spouting the same message as he was escorted into the keep.

  There was one person who wouldn’t stop staring at him, though I couldn’t read her expression. Aliana never took her eyes off her father until he was far enough into the keep where we couldn’t hear his complaints any longer. The door was still broken off its hinges.

  I was in a daze. I knew I needed food, but I felt that eating wasn’t going to help me process everything that had happened. The worst of all was the news Eden had given me hours ago, soon after I had begun healing.

  With tears in her eyes, she’d told me that Cason had killed Calvin. Cason had thrown Calvin against the wall of the keep. There was a blood stain about five yards up were Calvin’s head had struck stone.

  I knew I would grieve later, but all I could think about, now that I was finally done healing and sitting down in front of my supper, was Pearson Robinson. It wasn’t his sorcery that scared me the most. It wasn’t even that he’d somehow carried an enormous chest as heavy as a grown man down three flights of stairs. It was that he had broken the door to the keep off its hinges, an impossible act that many of the king’s guards had witnessed. He hadn’t done it with dteria but with a simple kick of his boot.

  What was even more strange was how a woman was later seen watching us take care of the injured from her perch on the roof of the keep, a woman no one recognized, including the king and his staff. It was soon after he’d sent men up to detain her for questioning that she’d jumped off the back end of the keep and wasn’t seen again.

  I ate quickly while listening to my peers, who seemed to be in a slightly better mood than I was. It was probably because they hadn’t lost a friend. Right now, it felt as if a cloud would be blocking out the sun for the rest of my life, never a bright day again.

  I knew this would pass. Th
is feeling would diminish, as had the pain of losing my father. But this time it was pity that I felt the strongest. Calvin had been robbed of his life. He was one of the good men. In no way did he deserve this, and in no way was it his fault.

  At least I perked up a little when I heard Michael compliment Charlie.

  “If you hadn’t melted those swords when you did, a lot more people than Leon would have been stabbed, maybe even killed. You did well, Charlie.”

  “Aye,” Reuben agreed.

  “Thank you.”

  “Jon, are you going to be all right?” Michael asked. “At least we got Cason,” he said, most likely to cheer me up.

  It was true. Cason was now in a cell in the dungeon, and no amount of magic could break him out of a stone and metal cage.

  “I’ll be fine tomorrow.” I hoped so, anyway. “After some rest.”

  I could feel Kataleya’s gaze on me from across the dining hall. I didn’t want to worry my peers, but I just couldn’t bring myself to lift my head up.

  There were still so many unanswered questions. Why was Luther lying about his involvement? Could he be so stupid as to think that we would actually believe he was innocent after everything that had happened? Perhaps he just needed some time to realize this, and then he would help us figure out where Pearson had taken the king’s coin. But time was not a luxury we had. Right now, Pearson could be passing out the coin to his loyal sorcerers, who would soon be on their way to Rohaer.

  The alternative to this scenario was that Luther really was innocent, which meant that Aliana and her mother were working with Cason and had framed Luther. I didn’t care to even entertain this idea. Aliana was innocent in my eyes. In fact, all of my peers might be innocent.

  After seeing what Pearson was capable of, it was clear that he could’ve been the one who put the callring in Kataleya’s room at some point. It could’ve been an attempt to make the king suspect the wrong family, to keep Luther from being arrested.

  I still didn’t know what Luther had to gain from this. He was already wealthy and powerful. I doubted that Pearson could entice Luther with something that he didn’t already have. Perhaps it had been a threat that had turned Luther against the king, forcing him to plot a theft of the king’s tax collections.