Hunted Sorcery (Jon Oklar Book 2)

by B. T. Narro

  With so many stitches, however, they weren’t really worth wearing. I’d thrown them in the chest where I stored my swords, where they would remain a constant reminder of the fight I’d almost lost.

  The princess seemed to be waiting for me when I finished my bath. She sat on a bench in the hall, a sad look as she glanced over at me. There was a single guard standing nearby.

  I sat down beside her. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Can we speak in private? I know it’s late, but—”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you.” She stood from the bench. I followed her through the hall and out into the courtyard. The wind was cold, but she was bundled up in her heavy cloak, and I was warm from my recent bath. The guard waited behind in the apartments.

  “I wish there was somewhere inside we could talk quietly,” she said with a bit of a shiver. “But I know how it would look if I entered your room.”

  She didn’t seem like her usual self. “What happened when Pearson entered the keep?”

  “That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. I was with my father and mother in the most secure room in the castle. There were two thick boards of wood barring the door, a mess of guards outside.” She paused. “It didn’t matter. He broke the doors, shattered them with the strength of a battering ram. Then he came in and picked me up with one arm as if I weighed nothing and held a knife to my neck. He threatened to kill me unless my father told him where our treasury was kept and provided the key.” She shivered more and had a fearful expression as if she felt like she was in immediate danger again.

  I wanted to put my arm around her as a friend, but I was too concerned about the implication.

  She went on. “He shouldn’t have been as strong as he was. It doesn’t make any sense.” She leaned somewhat against me. “You’re very strong also, but could you hold me up with one arm?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Pearson did so easily. And did you see his sorcery? I’ve never heard of spells that powerful. He threw our guards away from him with ease. I heard two falling from the third floor. I wanted to see, but my mother made sure I didn’t. Now I’m glad. Do you know if either of them lived?”

  “One did. What has your father told you about all of this?”

  “Nothing. He never tells me anything except that everything will be fine. I don’t care anymore. I don’t need him to tell me anything. I need him to listen.” I was surprised when she buried her face in my chest and started to cry. “I don’t know why he’s not listening.”

  I couldn’t help it. I put my arms around her and held her close.

  “Listen to what?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure if her answer was to my question or one I hadn’t asked. “That was most of my family’s coin and jewels. I don’t care if they can never buy anything for me again. I just don’t want to see my father hanged.” She wept hard onto my chest.

  “Hey,” I told her softly. “I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  She composed herself a bit and stepped away from me, a serious look on her young face. “He can’t pay the troops he needs to fight against Rohaer. I’ve heard him speak about our enemies many times. There are so many more of them than us. They have a real army, Jon. The only army my father had were the citizens who joined the rebellion and the mercenaries he paid to fight against the late king. He spent so much coin to ensure Oquin Calloum and his followers were dead. I was so proud of my father. He didn’t even want to do all of that, but he knew the spread of dteria had to stop. Oquin was responsible for much of it.”

  “I know.” I had heard much of this from Calvin.

  I still couldn’t believe he was dead. I had just been talking to him the other day.

  “I don’t think you know all of it, though,” Callie continued. “My father had saved some coin to fight Cason, the other dark mages, and eventually Rohaer, just in case the people of Rohaer didn’t rebel against their king. Now the worst has happened. Rohaer’s people haven’t rebelled, and the coin my father saved has been stolen.”

  I had to ask something. “Didn’t Oquin have coin and jewels that went to your father upon his coronation?”

  “Not much. Oquin spent everything he had building up an army because he knew a rebellion was coming. My father didn’t want to make the same mistake by spending everything on his army, but now he’s made the biggest error of all. I know this is not the right thing to say, but perhaps as his daughter I am the only one who can say it. He’s put too much trust in you and the other sorcerers. He thought the eight of you and a few measly hired swords would be enough to deal with all the corruption in Lycast.”

  It was one thing to hear Calvin speak about this but another to hear the king’s own daughter speak against his choices. It seemed that Nykal Lennox had had a shaky grasp on Lycast from the beginning, and now it was slipping away.

  “But he still won’t listen,” Callie said. “He needs to now more than ever. I don’t know what he’s supposed to do about all of this, but accepting the truth is the first thing, don’t you think?”

  “Accepting the truth about what? What won’t he listen to?”

  She inhaled slowly, then glanced at me as if I wouldn’t believe her. “I don’t think Pearson is human.”

  “Are you saying he’s a demigod?”

  “I am,” she told me confidently.

  “But Pearson has lived in Newhaven for a while, hasn’t he? He’s interacted with many people?”

  “Yes, my father is investigating his recent past, looking for any evidence of his abnormal strength. People will be questioned. It may be proven later, but I already know the truth. He is not human, Jon. I could feel it when he picked me up.” She paused, her voice breaking. “I don’t know why he didn’t just kill all of us. Maybe the rumors are true. He’s scared of Gourfist finding him if he uses too much power. We do know Gourfist is real. Don’t you know, Jon?”

  “Leon has said that, and I’m inclined to believe him.”

  “I’m almost certain the rest of the demigods are real too.”

  A silence passed. I felt inclined to believe Callie as well. The simplest answers were true most of the time. It was the easiest explanation for Pearson’s strength, but it did bring up many more questions that I was too tired to think about now.

  “Not just that,” Callie added. “They are involved.”

  “How do you think the other demigods are involved in this?”

  “Think about the blizzard that began before winter and has continued this whole time.”

  “Callie!” called Nykal from the doorway of the keep. He gestured for her, anger on his face.

  She gave a sigh. “It is past my bedtime. I’m sorry if I wasted your time. I just needed to talk to someone, and I have no friends in the castle besides you.”

  “You could never waste my time, princess. I do hope you feel a little better after speaking with me.”

  “I do.”

  “Besides, I think you might be right about all of this,” I told her.

  She didn’t smile about that as she wiped her eyes, then gave a quick curtsy. I bowed.

  She ran off to her father, who looked at me as if I had done wrong. I bowed to him, but he was already entering the keep before I straightened my back. I didn’t let his disapproval of talking with Callie past her bedtime get to me. There were more important things to consider.

  Callie had seemed confident that Pearson was a demigod. Which demigod could he be if it was true? He was known as a fire mage before today, but clearly he was powerful with dteria. It was the demigod Airinold who gave up his strength to bring dteria to the world, and it was only Airinold who had power over it. However, some stories said that Airinold had since lost control of both dteria and his mind years after he became Gourfist, a massive flying creature that slept for decades at a time in the center of Curdith Forest.

  When asked about other demigods, Callie had referenced the blizzard that prevented travel between Roh
aer and Lycast. I didn’t know the odds of the constant snow occurring naturally, but I trusted that Callie did. She could be right, and it was Failina—the demigod of erto—aiding us by delaying the march of Rohaer’s army. It was a nice thought, especially considering that another demigod was clearly working against us.

  If Pearson wasn’t Airinold, then who was he? Clearly not Failina. Was it even possible that Pearson was one of the female demigods? I hadn’t thought to use my Identify spell on him to see if he might be cloaked with an illusion. But again, he had lived in Newhaven for many years. He had spoken with countless people. If the rules of sorcery applied to the demigods the same way that they did to us, then he shouldn’t be able to modify his voice.

  That meant he was male, and so there was only one demigod he could be.

  It wasn’t Nijja, the goddess of the fae world and the creator of ordia. It wasn’t Souriff, either, the creator of dvinia and the goddess who supposedly made contact with the krepps. Like Failina, we owed a lot to her. She had already proven to be on our side, stopping the krepps from engaging in war with Lycast because of the actions of the previous king, who had ordered the killings of a group of krepps who’d come here to trade.

  Pearson had to be Valinox, the firstborn demigod and the creator of mtalia. According to legend, Valinox had been jealous of his siblings who created more powerful sorcery and received more praise from their father, Basael.

  There was so much to think about that I started to wonder what the point was of wasting my energy. What could I do about any of this right now even if it was true? I had to trust that the king knew best, but I was starting to doubt all of us had a fighting chance serving a leader who was so financially crippled. Was it really possible to fight a war against the dark mages without enough coin to pay for an army?

  I was beginning to agree with Callie. Her father had put too much trust in us.

  But there was a more important point to consider. What else could he have done that would’ve been better? Like the rest of us, he was making the most out of the dire situation.

  I was glad he had put so much trust in us. It was a risk that I was going to make sure paid off.

  If not, then all of us were going to die.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The morning of the next day started off normally, with breakfast in my room before my bath in the boys’ bathing quarters, where I greeted my friends. That’s where the normality ended, however. While the four of us bathed somewhat privately, a curtain around our tubs, Michael was usually quite chatty, with the rest of us keeping up the conversation during moments of pause. However, the bathing quarters was completely quiet this morning, save the sounds of water sloshing.

  Out on the courtyard, Kataleya was already at work, a large wall of water hovering in front of her as she made a face of concentration.

  “Jon!” she called as I left the apartments. “Would you come here?”

  Kataleya always practiced near the well, letting her water fall in when she was done using it. She already had a sheen of sweat on her face, her chest swelling with each heavy breath. I tended to be distracted by concerns these days, except when I looked at Kataleya. Then everything seemed to become clearer.

  Her cunning eyes, a sharp gray-green hue, made me curious as to what was going on in her mind. She always had wisdom to spare, and I didn’t believe it had much to do with her being two years older than me. It seemed to be more related to the kind of person she was.

  It almost felt as if I had a second mind when I started to look at a woman in a romantic way, as was clearly happening with Kataleya. There were thoughts that came, always unbidden, that would get me in a fair bit of trouble if I was to ever speak them aloud. For example, this second mind brought my attention to the ample size of her bosom beneath her shirt.

  I found myself slowly losing the desire to stop these thoughts the more they made my chest burn. Instead, I wanted to act on them, to find some way of showing Kataleya how beautiful I thought she was.

  “Good morning, Kat,” I said with my best smile. “You look nice.”

  “Do what you did to Cason’s dteria, but to my water.”

  My heart sank at her lack of a reply to my compliment. “What?”

  “He grabbed my energy.” She didn’t seem to find what she was looking for as she glanced at my confused expression. “We spoke about this. Remember?”

  I was still lost. “We did?”

  “Yes, while you were healing.”

  “Oh, I was in such a daze then. I don’t remember.” But I did remember grabbing Cason’s energy. I wasn’t going to forget something that felt like it had put a temporary tear in my brain.

  Kataleya made her wall of water again. It looked identical to the one she’d created in front of herself in hopes of blocking Pearson’s energy.

  Now I knew what she was doing. Pearson had grabbed her water and moved it with ease.

  “Grab it, Jon. As hard as you can.”

  “There’s no way I’m doing it that hard. The last time I did—”

  “All right, just tell me when you have a good hold.”

  Her arms shook.

  I focused, telling my mana to take hold of her water as I casted the spell of lG, G, and uG. I could feel it understand my wishes, surrounding Kataleya’s wide block of dense water. I closed my hands into fists as I tensed my mind.

  “I have a firm hold.”

  She tried to move the water with jerks of her arm. I felt it with my mind. The whole wall of clear blue jittered. It was like an arm wrestling match, Kataleya pushing up harder while I pulled down with equal strength.

  “Harder,” she said.

  I gritted my teeth as I collapsed my energy around her water.

  The wall started to bend at the edges, curving inward.

  “Oh god, you’re strong,” she said, as if startled. Then she groaned and spread her arms away from each other. I felt a great push against my mana as her water evened out into a flat wall again.

  It was tiring, to say the least. I couldn’t hold it much longer.

  “Try to take it away from me,” Kataleya said.

  I clawed my hand slowly through the air, forcing my mana to move in tandem.

  Kataleya jumped and leaned back, as if a rope were between us and she was trying to pull me the other way. “Rgh,” she groaned. “Are you pulling as hard as you can?” she asked through her strain.

  “I will now.”

  I jerked her water the opposite way, but she must’ve let go at the same time as I did it. The wall of water became a jet as it speared toward the apartments…where Michael was coming out.

  It happened too fast for him to do much besides get his arms up and let out an expletive. Water hit him so hard that it picked him up from the ground and threw him back inside the apartments.

  I ran after him, worried he might be injured. But he was getting up when I arrived and seemed more angry than hurt.

  “I just took a bath, Kataleya! What the hell?”

  “I’m sorry.” She had her hands over her mouth, but her squinted eyes made it clear she was smiling.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Michael.

  He swore again as he lifted up his shirt to reveal shallow cuts all down his chest. “Stings like the nails of a woman scorned. Did I scorn you, Kataleya, hmm? Did I?”

  She laughed a little. “I didn’t mean for you to be hit. I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “You don’t sound very sorry. Was that on purpose?”

  “No, of course not! And can’t I be sorry and find it humorous at the same time?”

  “No! That completely goes against the apology. Go ahead and heal me, Jon.”

  “Jon and I were…I suppose ‘wrestling’ would be the best way to describe it?”

  “Take your wrestling to the bedroom next time and leave me out of it.”

  She smacked his bare stomach with the back of her hand.

  “Ow!”

  “Oh god, I didn’t mean to hit you t
hat hard!”

  “Yeah right!”

  Her cheeks were red as she held in a laugh. “We were wrestling with our mana,” she specified. “And I wanted to see what would happen if I suddenly let go.” She showed me a serious look. “You know, we might be able to use this concept for something. It’s like slingshotting a spell.”

  “It does sound like something we should test.” I then focused on healing Michael’s shallow cuts.

  He let his wet shirt down. “Better go change, again. Thanks, Kataleya.” Then he started up the stairs with a squish on each step, leaving wet footprints behind him.

  “I’m sorry!” she called after him, then immediately turned to me. “We should spend a lot more time practicing together,” she said. “I want to be able to hold my water in place in case we encounter Pearson again, and I believe we should experiment as well. I’ve never heard of sorcerers casting together, but it could be useful.”

  Spending most of the day with Kataleya, our mana intertwined, sounded enjoyable, but I couldn’t agree to it, unfortunately. “I wish I could, but I’m still planning on speaking with Cason as soon as the king allows.”

  “Oh, right. After, then?” she asked hopefully.

  “After, I have to learn to catch myself, in case we face Pearson again.” It was hard to get the words out, but she needed to know why this was so important. “He threw me so high last time that I could’ve died had I landed differently. I need to make sure that doesn’t happen…ever.”

  “Oh.” She began to nod. “I understand. That’s how I feel about my inability to block his spell. I don’t want that to happen again ever, either, but there’s no one else who can grab spells. It’s a skill you should work on, you know? As soon as you have time.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that this might’ve been the spell that Eslenda had used the first time I had seen her, when Aliana and Eden and I had ventured into Curdith Forest and come across her bathing. I had to test it to make sure.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I think this calls for one experiment right now.”