Tarah Woodblade

by Trevor H. Cooley

  Surely you’re mistaken.

  “There’s no mistaking what I saw. Blast it, I should have noticed right away. The way the thing was turning its head to look around instead of just moving its eyes. They have a bird-like way of moving if you know what you’re looking for.”

  The screams had faded into the background and Arcon was able to slow down, breathing a little easier. Its eyes were all wrong.

  “Yes. They are good at hiding but have difficulty copying the human body. Their true form is too different. They can never get the faces quite right,” Mellinda said. She chuckled darkly. “People used to send them after me quite often during the height of my power. Luckily I was hard to kill.”

  Arcon suppressed a shiver. In a very real way, the witch that shared his mind was far more frightening than any creature he could come across. At least for the moment she had no choice but to be on his side.

  At the next major cross section, he turned the corner and headed towards the scholar’s estate at a leisurely walk. Perhaps it was after those other men. The ones that ran.

  “I doubt that. We were simply lucky that they ran. The low levels of magic in the place may have confused it momentarily, but you didn’t fool it with your sly ‘look away’ maneuver. It was going to follow you the moment you tried to leave.” She sighed. “In fact, I would say it’s already figured out its mistake. It is likely that it’s on our trail right now.”

  Should I run again? he asked. He was only a half mile or so from the entrance to the Gnome Homeland. The scholar’s estate was just inside and no dark wizards dared operate inside the homeland.

  “It wouldn’t do any good. The dark wizards might not enter, but a basilisk wouldn’t be afraid. It would just sneak up and kill us while we waited to see the scholar, then take the rings and be gone.”

  Arcon clutched the secret pocket that had been sown to the inside of his shirt, feeling the lump that was the Rings of Stardeon. I’ll hide my trail then. What spell do I need to use?

  “It’s not as simple as hiding your tracks or disguising your body,” she said. “Not now that it’s seen you. Once a basilisk has identified you, it’s over. This thing has more than your scent. It has your magical essence in its mind and probably that of the rings as well.”

  “But-.” Arcon said aloud, his mind in a panic. So what are you saying? We’re dead? I should just give up now?

  “No, you fool, but there’s no use hiding. We need to find a place to fight,” Mellinda said, her voice determined. “And we don’t have much time. We need to find it quick.”

  Arcon glanced around, looking for a vacant alleyway. Alleys were less frequent in this part of the city. The tall buildings were stacked right next to each other, several in a row sharing walls. Fight a basilisk? And in the city? How do I do it? Any magic I use powerful enough to fight with will alert the guards.

  “Very true and it will take a lot of magic to kill this thing. They are more resistant to elemental magic than dwarves. If you kill it, every magic user in miles will know it.”

  I don’t have that much magic. Admittedly, he was well above average in fire and his air and water talents were decent, but he wasn’t on par with the greats.

  Arcon turned down a long alleyway that looked perfect for his needs. There were no vagrants and only a few windows faced inwards. It would have to work.

  “You must put on the rings,” she said.

  Arcon froze. No. We’ll have to fight it without them.

  “You know it’s the only way. When you kill the basilisk the surge of power will alert the watchers in the city, but once you take the rings back off, they will have no way of tracing that level of magic to you.”

  Her logic was true, but Arcon hated the rings. He’d been forced to wear them twice before, each time to fight off whatever force the dark wizards sent against him. The surge of power was tremendous, but in his mind the power was far overweighed by the hungry essence of the things, sucking at him, draining his vitality and leaving his body and his fingers . . .

  “Ewzad Vriil found the way around that,” Mellinda reminded him.

  Arcon was well aware. The wizard had overcome that problem by turning the power of the rings inward and becoming one with them. But that situation was permanent. The only way to remove the rings after that had been death.

  “Never that,” he said aloud.

  “Then you’ll have to put up with their hunger,” she replied in exasperation.

  Arcon stopped half way down the alley and pressed himself against the wall at the joining of two buildings. He reached out with air magic and pulled the shadows around him, absorbing the light, then reached under his shirt and opened the secret pocket, letting the rings spill into his hand. He shivered at the weight of them.

  There were two sets of five rings, one for each finger, and every one of them fixed with a different precious gem. Each set was linked together by gold chains. When they were worn, their wielder’s magic was boosted exponentially and in addition would give him the power to manipulate the body of any creature, man or beast.

  “Put them on!” she urged.

  They’re tangled. The chains had wrapped around each other. He began untangling them, but the magic he was using made it hard for him to see the rings in his own hands.

  Mellinda gasped. Someone stood in the mouth of the alleyway. This person was shorter and thicker than the man in the tavern and he wore a different coat, but the way he scanned the alley, moving and cocking his head, was the same. “That’s it! Put on the rings!”

  Arcon had the first set untangled and began shoving them on each finger. The rings moved, becoming larger or smaller in order to conform to the size of his fingers. As the rings went on, each finger began to twist and writhe bonelessly as if each digit was an individual serpent with a mind of its own. A rush of power accompanied the change, but Arcon could feel the rings feeding on him as the flesh of his body withered, tightening on his bones as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.

  The basilisk started moving down the alleyway towards him, its steps slow and methodical as if it didn’t see him in the shadows.

  “Put them on faster or both of us are dead!” she commanded.

  You’re already dead, he pointed out. Putting on the last set of rings was the hardest part. The writhing fingers on his other hand didn’t want to obey and it took a large amount of concentration to get them to hold still while he put the last rings on. The creature was only a few steps away when he finally got the last ring on.

  The enormous surge of energy that accompanied that last ring made Arcon forget his fear. His puny masking spells melted away and he extended one squirming hand towards the creature. His fingers undulated in unison as a pillar of fire erupted from the ground under the basilisk’s feet.

  The fire roared upwards in a column thirty feet high. The sudden heat caused the windows facing the alley to crack. A squeal ripped from the creature’s engulfed form, but it continued towards him.

  Arcon formed a wall of solidified air between him and the basilisk, keeping it at bay while he increased the intensity of the fire. The city’s watchers wouldn’t be able to ignore a surge of magic of this magnitude. Arcon knew he had to end this quickly.

  The basilisk only slowed. One singed hand began to push into the wall of air, its digits thinning and sharpening into talons. There was a sharp crack as the rocks making up the walls of the buildings around them exploded, peppering the alley with heated shards of rock.

  “That won’t stop it,” Mellinda warned. “You’re killing it too slowly!”

  “What do you suggest!” he snapped. The basilisk continued to push its arm through the wall of air. Its claws were only a foot away from his face.

  “Reach into its body with the magic of the rings!”

  “I don’t know how,” he shouted back.

  “I do. Let me take over!” she suggested.

  Arcon laughed. “Never. I’d rather die right now.”

  “I don’t have my powers and
this is your body,” she urged. “You could always wrest back control.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. He took a step back and increased the thickness of the wall of air. The basilisk pushed its head out of the blaze and into the wall. The burnt remains of its face reformed into a bird-like beak. Arcon winced. Even so, it wasn’t as frightening as the prospect of Mellinda taking over his mind. Just tell me what to do.

  “That could take too long. We could die while I try to explain!”

  Then talk quickly, because I wasn’t joking when I said I’d rather be dead.

  Mellinda snarled in anger and said, “It’s similar to healing magic. Reach into its body as if you wanted to probe an injury, just try to send your magic through the rings themselves as if they were a tool.”

  Arcon blinked as he processed her instructions, then did as she said, picturing the magic flowing through the rings and out of the undulating fingers at the end of his hands. His energy pierced the basilisk’s flesh. What he found was confusing. The thing had no organs, just unformed tissue, except for the muscle and bone in its spine and limbs. The intense heat of the fire spell ate away at its form, but at a slow rate.

  “Don’t try to make sense of its body make-up. Just paralyze the thing!”

  That was a spell Arcon understood. He expertly wove an intricate latticework of air and water and sent it through every fiber in the creature’s strange body, holding it in place. It stopped pushing through the wall of air, but the basilisk immediately fought at the spell, its very flesh rejecting the magic.

  “Blast! I’d forgotten. Stardeon had the same problem with the creature. Find its brain. It won’t look like a human brain but it’s a cluster of nerves inside the thing. It’s the only part of a basilisk that never changes, no matter the form.”

  It took Arcon a moment to find it. The creature’s head was filled with unformed flesh, as was its chest. He finally located the knot of nerves that Mellinda had described deep in the creature’s hip, one of the places least likely for an attacker to target.

  “Destroy it!”

  Arcon’s paralyzation spell had deteriorated to the point that the basilisk was pushing through the wall again. Only its rear leg was still engulfed by his pillar of flame. Quickly, he tried to burn the area, but its flesh was too resistant. Finally he simply latched onto the nerve cluster and pulled as hard as he could.

  The basilisk’s brain shot out of its body and ricocheted down the alleyway, a pulsing lump of pink flesh. Its body trembled, then froze. Its tissues began to harden, stiffening until they were solid as rock.

  What the?

  “You did it,” Mellinda said with a laugh of triumph. Arcon found a smile of his own creeping along his pale face. “That’s what happens when a basilisk dies. They turn to stone, statues of their own moment of death.”

  The creature’s final form was quite hideous, part man, part beast. Its twisted head was frozen in a soundless screech, a forked stone tongue escaping its open beak. It’s clawed arms were extended, the joints on one of its legs bent in the wrong direction.

  Mellinda chuckled grimly. “I used to keep them around as decorations in my main palace.”

  Arcon’s smile faded.

  “You! Stop!” came a gruff voice from the far alley exit.

  Arcon turned just in time to throw up a spell deflecting several ropes of air that had been cast around him. Several guards and a man wearing wizard’s robes stood blocking his way. They wore the livery of the Mallad guard.

  “Just kill them,” Mellinda commanded. “Best do it now before more arrive. They won’t be able to trace it back to you once the rings are off.”

  Arcon wasn’t so sure. He gestured and another column of fire rose, blocking off the rest of the alley and obscuring them from the armed men at the entrance. Another wall of air went up, holding back the heat of the blaze. Several arrows thumped into it, hanging in mid air while their fletchings burned.

  “That was foolish,” she growled. “Now you’ve trapped us here. There are probably even more guards.”

  Arcon turned and faced the wall of the alley, then gestured with a slicing motion, sending a razor thin blade of air through the stone. He made two vertical cuts, then one horizontal one into the wall, then pushed it inward.

  No one was inside the building as the rectangular block of wall crashed down. The people inside must have evacuated. It was a workshop and the fire outside had heated the room, causing several tables and some shelving to start on fire. Arcon built a shield of cooled air around himself and stepped into the room, leaving the alleyway blazing.

  “Very well. So you’re not always as foolish as you seem,” Mellinda said.

  Arcon walked deeper into the building and cut a similar rectangle through the far wall. Shouts rang out as the stone crashed down. It was another shared wall and this building was full of people. It looked to be an eating establishment. Arcon caught a glimpse of several tall gnomes and stewards wearing green sashes before he sent multiple weaves of air into the room, absorbing the light and turning the room pitch black.

  While people yelled and stumbled around in surprise, Arcon made his way to the front exit and stood just to the side of the door as he began removing the rings from his fingers. As he did so, the vitality returned to his body, filling out his flesh and returning the health to his face. The power also faded. The roaring pillars of fire in the alleyway vanished. So did the walls of air. The last thing to go was the blackness that enveloped the building Arcon stood in. Light returned to the room as he removed the last ring from the thumb on his left hand.

  While people looked about in shock, some of them picking themselves up off the floor, Arcon placed the rings back into the hidden pocket inside his shirt. He wasn’t worried that he’d be recognized. The man that stood next to the door looked very different from the emaciated mage that had burst into the room. His clothes were a different color and his hair was a deep auburn.

  Nevertheless, he quickly exited through the door and walked into the street beyond. The road was filled with guards and Arcon did his best to look dazed as several of them pushed past him into the building. He joined the crowd of onlookers watching as Mallad’s official mages put out the fires.

  Chapter Six

  Arcon watched with his mage sight as the mages, their robes emblazoned with the Mallad crest, worked efficiently. They had the fires on the exterior of the buildings extinguished within seconds, one of them sending gouts of water into the burning sections while another pulled the very oxygen out of the air around the blaze. They were well-trained, but the way they cast the spells was different than Arcon was used to. This likely meant they were from Alberri’s mage school.

  “What are you doing? Just get out of here,” Mellinda urged. Arcon obliged her, turning away from the scene and continuing on his way towards the section of the city known as the Gnome Homeland and the scholar’s estate.

  He kept his jaw clenched nervously for the first few minutes, but to his relief, no guards shouted at him. I was gauging how strong they were. I need to know what I’m up against if they’re going to be after me as well.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. They don’t know who they’re after,” Mellinda assured him. “Besides, the basilisk statue in the alleyway will just confuse them further. All they’ll know is that the dark wizards are somehow involved.”

  Right, he replied. She had a point. Alberri’s constant problem with dark wizards was the reason they kept such a close watch on magic in the first place.

  Still, he waited until he was sure that he was too far for the wizards to sense it before he sent a muted spell through his clothing, deflecting all dirt and ash as he walked. By the time he approached the gate to the Gnome Homeland, he looked as clean and immaculate as if he had come fresh from a bath.

  “You cast that spell differently from the way I learned it,” Mellinda remarked.

  The spell they teach at the Mage School takes much longer. Arcon replied. I learned this version from watching Ewz
ad Vriil. The man never truly bathed.

  The capital of Alberri was in actuality one enormous city split into two very different sections. Mallad was the eastern half of the city. It was elevated above the other, covering the top of a raised plateau in the desert highlands. The western half consisted of the Gnome Homeland and it covered the plateau’s slope and the lowlands below.

  Mallad was the newer, but more run down section of the capital. This was where the tradesmen, the nobility, and the palaces of Alberri’s human king were located. The King of Alberri was little more than a figurehead, though. Everyone knew that the true authority of Alberri came from the gnome scholars in the homeland.

  Arcon was relieved to see that the line at the gate was only ten people long. On past days, the line had stretched a block. If only he had a steward’s sash or scholar’s badge he wouldn’t have had to wait at all. But there was nothing to be done about that so he stood and waited his turn at the guard station. He put on a calm face, ignoring the sounds of commotion down the street. The wizards had put the fires out, but smoke still filled the air as the onlookers were questioned.

  Finally it was Arcon’s turn at the gate. The homeland guards were very thorough, forcing him to remove his cloak and making a close inspection of the dagger he wore at his waist. Still, it went relatively quickly compared to the first time he’d been through. Arcon had learned quite quickly what was and wasn’t allowed in the Gnome Homeland. The guards gave him a temporary pass and let him through the gates. He slid the paper into his pocket and hurried on his way, knowing it only gave him leave to stay in the homeland until dark.

  “They are a lot more particular now, than when I was last here,” Mellinda remarked.

  “Yeah I know. You say it every time we come through,” he mumbled. “It’s been a thousand years, what do you expect?”

  “It doesn’t look much different, though,” she said and he could tell that the reminder of her age stung her. “The gnomes haven’t changed much.”