Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  Koren recalled being completely miserable back then, not only at missing out on seeing a real wizard, but miserable at hearing everyone else in Crebbs Ford later talking about how amazing the wizard was. “And it was only that one time, I think,” he added. He was very sure a wizard passing through the tiny poverty-stricken village of Crebbs Ford had only happened once; he would certainly have heard about something exciting like that.

  Frieda was not pleased. “Wizards are supposed to visit every village at least once every three years, in Tarador. Here, our wizards come to every village two years apart, at the most,” she declared with pride. “And we dwarves have fewer wizards.”

  “My village was very tiny, ma’am,” Koren was embarrassed to say.

  “That is no excuse,” she said with disgust. “Your power should have been discovered when you were very young. It is not your fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Koren shook his head. “I’m not a wizard. I can’t be. I have never cast a spell, or, or made a ball of fire with my hands.”

  “Not all wizards can throw fireballs,” Frieda admonished. “Some have power for healing. Or they can work with animals, speak with them, almost. I remember one wizard who-”

  Koren seized Freida’s arm. “Speak with animals?” He asked slowly.

  “Yes, why? Can you do that?”

  “They don’t talk to me,” he whispered.

  “No, animals can’t actually speak,” Frieda explained. “Zara told me wizards are able to make animals understand when they speak, understand their thoughts. And wizards can calm an animal when they are frightened, and use their power to heal a sick animal. Have you ever done anything like that?”

  “No?” Koren said, as he thought back to when he had sat up all night with a sick cow. Or more than all night. People in Crebb’s Ford had remarked on how good Koren was with animals. His touch had calmed many animals. Even Thunderbolt, now that he thought about it. And Thunderbolt had an uncanny ability to understand Koren. “Maybe?”

  Could he be a wizard? It could not be. But-

  “Kedrun,” Bjorn prompted with a nudge of his boot. “Frieda asked you a question.”

  “Oh, sorry, ma’am. What?”

  “I asked, how do you know you can’t make a fireball? Have you tried?”

  “How would I do that?” Koren stared at his palm, without realizing he was actually contemplating the possibility that he might, just might, be a wizard.

  “I don’t know,” Frieda placed her hands upright on the table. “I’m not a wizard.”

  “I’m not a wizard either!”

  “Kedrun,” Bjorn held up a hand to forestall an argument. “I followed you all the way up here, without knowing your purpose. Now I’m asking you to try. Just try it.”

  “When I can’t do it,” Koren demanded, “will you stop telling me I’m a wizard?” He looked to Frieda. “Can you give me a hint?”

  “All I know is, I once heard Zara say she wills the spirits to pull power thru her.”

  “Through her,” Koren mumbled to himself. “That is not much help.” Shomas Feany had once made a fireball appear in his hand, and that wizard said it was difficult for him. What had Shomas done? Koren squinted and stared at his right palm, willing fire to appear there.

  And also not willing a ball of magical fire to appear, for if it did, Koren’s life would turn upside down.

  “Is there something I’m supposed to say, to make the fire appear?” He asked, imagining fire hovering above his palm.

  “Concentrate,” Frieda suggested. “I truly don’t know how it works.”

  Koren willed fire into existence, and-

  Nothing happened.

  “I told you-”

  Koren fell backwards on his chair again, his feet kicking in surprise as an orange spark flickered just above his hand.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Bjorn held onto Koren’s shirt and hauled him back upright, then the three sat in stunned silence. Koren pushed his right hand away from him, holding it away with his left hand around his right wrist, as if he didn’t trust the magical fire not to appear again. A gust of wind came in through the half-closed window shutters, making the lanterns flicker. For a moment the workshop was plunged into darkness before the lanterns flared back to life.

  Koren broke the silence, staring open-mouthed at his right hand. “Did that happen?”

  “It did,” Bjorn said in a hoarse voice. “We all saw it.” Kedrun, or Koren, the lost young man who snuck into a warehouse where Bjorn had been trying to drink himself to sleep, was a wizard. A wizard who did not know he was a wizard!

  Frieda reached across the table and squeezed Koren’s hand. “Now do you believe me?”

  “I’m a wizard. How could that- If a wizard had discovered that I have power,” Koren still did not fully believe it. “When I was young, in my village. What would have happened to me?”

  “You would have been taken as an apprentice by an experienced wizard, to teach you and guide you into understanding your power and how to use it.”

  “Taken me away from my parents?” Koren did not like the sound of that. “But, they needed me to work the farm.”

  Bjorn chuckled at that. “Kor- Kedrun,” he kept up the ruse in front of Frieda. “There is a reward for the parents of wizard. Your parents would not have needed to work a farm ever again, not unless they wanted to act as lord and lady of the manor.”

  “They would have been rich?”

  “Rich?” Bjorn laughed along with Frieda. “Yes! They would-” Bjorn halted his thought. “I’m sorry, Kedrun.”

  “Why?” Frieda looked at Bjorn. Koren’s head was down, a tear rolling down his cheek.

  Bjorn spoke for him. “Kedrun ran away from home. Later, his parents were killed by bandits.”

  “I’m sorry,” Frieda squeezed Koren’s hand. “It must be-”

  Koren squeezed her hand, hard, then snatched his hand away. “Any wizard who knew me, would have known that I am a wizard?”

  “Yes, assuredly,’ Frieda answered, puzzled. “That is what I do not understand. You thought a wizard cast a spell on you, so you must have known a wizard at some-”

  “I did,” Koren stood up abruptly. “I did know a wizard, and he lied to me. They all lied.”

  “Would you like me to send a message to Lady Zara?” Frieda asked quietly.

  “No,” Koren touched a fingertip to a shard of the focus stone again, as if to assure himself that he had not imagined a flicker of fire appearing in his hand. “Bjorn, we need to go.”

  “Go?” Freida frowned in concern. Whether Koren wanted her to or not, Frieda knew she needed to tell Zara about the young wizard who did not know he was a wizard. “Go where? You can’t walk the mountain paths in the dark. You could stay here tonight,” she offered.

  “Frieda, thank you,” Koren made a short bow to the kindly dwarf woman. “I need to speak with Bjorn.”

  Frieda protested several more times, but Koren would not be swayed. Outside, he and Bjorn looked down the street at the lights in windows of the tightly-packed buildings. “Koren,” Bjorn whispered, “I think we do not say anything about this to Barlen, or anyone else. And Frieda is right, we can’t go anywhere tonight,” Bjorn realized he had no idea what Koren’s plans were now. “Where are we going now?”

  “Linden,” Koren said with spite. “In Linden, there is a wizard who needs to answer for his lies.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The next afternoon, after they had again left the narrow ledge behind, they saw plumes of smoke coming from beyond the foothills in front of them. The valley could not be seen over the crest of the foothills, yet it was clear that was where the smoke was coming from. Without any discussion, Koren and Bjorn picked up their pace, hurrying down the steeply sloping trail as quickly as their aching legs could carry them. Neither Koren nor Bjorn had been able to sleep much the previous night, and not only because the beds at the tavern were too short.

  Bjorn’s sleep had been interrupted by waking with
one eye open, to peek across the room in the darkness to where Koren was sitting up in his too-short bed. The young man had been either staring out the window at the night sky, or staring had his palm, willing a fireball to appear. Only once in the night had Bjorn seen a tiny, weak glow of magical fire appear. “Koren,” Bjorn asked to satisfy his own curiosity, “you keep looking at your hand. Are you able to make a fireball?”

  Koren didn’t answer at first. He clenched his fists, not being aware he had been looking at his hands. His attention was focused on the plumes of smoke rising into the sky to the south. If it was possible to run down the rugged mountain path, he would have. The loose rock and steep slopes forced him and Bjorn to walk carefully; a turned ankle or twisted knee in the mountains would be disastrous. Ahead of them were two flimsy, frightening rope bridges over deep chasms. On their way up the mountain, Koren had balked at crossing the first bridge, insisting there had to be another way up the mountain. The two dwarves strode across, showing it was, they said, perfectly safe even as bridge swayed alarmingly in the gusty winds. It had taken Bjorn walking easily across the bridge to shame Koren into trying it. He was not looking forward to crossing the pair of bridges in a downhill direction. “I tried a hundred times to make another fireball; it only worked again twice. And it wasn’t anything I would call a fireball,” Koren said sheepishly. He had tried off and on all night to make another flicker of flame appear above his hand, only managing to create a twinkle of dull red so faint, his sleep-deprived mind thought it might have been a reflection from lamps in the street outside.

  When he had wakened, just as an orange glow in the east announced the sun would soon rise, he had wondered if the previous day was a dream, Surely he could not be a wizard. And then, on his very first try that morning, he made an orange ball of thin fog the size of a walnut appear. No matter how many times he tried after that, he could not do it again. “I don’t know what is different when it works, and when it doesn’t,” Koren gritted his teeth in frustration. “I don’t know how to create a fireball! I’m guessing.”

  “Don’t wear yourself out,” Bjorn was worried about Koren. “Magic is dangerous, and you are right, you don’t have any idea what you are doing. Leave it alone, until you can find a wizard who will train you properly.”

  “They were supposed to have trained me properly already! They were-” Koren’s voice cracked, and he fumed silently.

  “Koren,” Bjorn said after letting the young man by himself for a while. “I’ll go with you to Linden, and I won’t ask questions until we get close to the capital. What I ask is, whatever you intend to do there, think it through first.”

  Koren didn’t reply. He had plenty of time to decide exactly what he was going to do when he returned to Linden. All he knew right then was that he felt used and angry and betrayed. Paedris must have known about Koren’s power. If the court wizard knew, surely the Regent also knew. And likely crown princess Ariana knew also. All of them had lied to him. All of them had denied him a proper reward for saving the princess. And for finding the Cornerstone. The betrayal of Carlana and Ariana Trehayme did not surprise him; they were royalty and they cared nothing for other people. But Paedris? Paedris was a fellow wizard. The Wizard’s Council should have discovered Koren’s power when he was a little boy. His parents should have been living like royalty. Instead, they were dead. They were dead, and Koren had thought his parents abandoned him.

  Koren did not yet know what he was going to do when he got back to Linden, and there was still the problem that the Royal Army had orders to kill him.

  The only thing Koren was sure of was that someone was going to pay for betraying him. Pay for the death of his parents. Pay for making him think he was cursed to be a jinx.

  “Koren!” Bjorn’s call jolted Koren from his enraged reverie. “Look!” The former king’s guard pointed down the trail, to where two dozen dwarves were struggling up the mountain.

  As they grew closer, the dwarves began gesturing, waving as if they wanted Koren and Bjorn to turn around and go back up the mountain. The dwarves were shouting something that could not be understood due to the distance and the wind. One of the dwarves got the others to halt, and he hustled up the trail by himself. When he was close enough, he halted, cupped hands around his mouth, and shouted. “Go back!”

  Koren followed Bjorn’s lead, holding hands up in a peaceful gesture, but continuing down the trail. “I’m Bjorn, this is Kedrun,” Bjorn shouted.

  “I’m Abelard. Turn and go back, we’re all coming up the mountain!” Before Koren could ask why, the dwarf gestured to the pillars of smoke. “Orcs invaded the valley from the east, yesterday. We’re cut off. Some of us went north, others south.”

  “My horse!” Koren exclaimed. “My horse was in a stable there!”

  “Don’t worry about your horse,” Abelard advised. “We had enough warning to clear ourselves and our animals ahead of the orcs; most of them fled south.”

  “We need to get back to Tarador,” Koren said breathlessly.

  Abelard shook his head slowly. “You’ll not get there going down this trail. After the last of us crossed the lower bridge, it was going to be dropped into the gorge.” He looked up at the sun. “That was this morning. Without that bridge, the next closest way across the gorge is twenty miles east. There’s likely orcs crawling all over land to the east; they came at us with a full army, this wasn’t any raid.”

  “How else do we get across the gorge?” Bjorn asked, holding Koren’s shoulder to steady the young man.

  “If you’re headed for Tarador?” Abeldard scratched his beard. “You’ll need to go back up this trail, go toward Westerholm, then south from there. That’s,” he considered, while watching the other dwarves continue up the trail, laden with everything they’d been able to carry from the foothills. “Three, four days?”

  “Another four days?” Koren exploded. “We can’t-”

  “I wouldn’t go, if I were you,” Abelard grimaced. “Those orcs are heading west; they’ll likely be there in force by the time you could get there.”

  “But-” Koren’s protest was cut off by Bjorn steering him away, and speaking quietly in his ear.

  “These dwarves have just lost their homes to orcs; and likely family and friends also. Our concerns mean nothing to them. We will get to Tarador, it will not happen today. Understood, my young wizard friend?”

  “Understood,” Koren hung his head in shame and disbelief.

  “Abelard,” Bjorn adjusted his pack, “how can we help?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Regin Falco ate supper by himself in his study. As he picked at his food, his gaze alternated from the messages on the table, to the royal castle on the hill beyond the window of his Linden estate. There two messages. One spoke of triumph; the destruction of the enemy force in the Kaltzen Pass of the Turmalane mountains. All of Linden, indeed all of Tarador rejoiced wherever that message had reached. Regin’s genuine joy at the victory was tempered by his knowledge, provided by officers of the Royal Army, that the enemy had another entire army still west of the River Fasse, an army perhaps even larger than the force lost in the Kaltzen. While Tarador’s victory was impressive, it was not the final battle in the war, nor likely even the final battle before winter that year. For this reason, Regin had not announced a celebration that evening. There would no doubt be an official royal feast day when the Regent returned to Linden; until then Regin would wait to see what followed the victory at the Kaltzen.

  The other reason Regin wanted to be alone was the second message on the table. The first message was an official communication from the Royal Army to the leaders of Tarador, and had arrived early that afternoon. The second message had arrived hours later, a private message from Captain Jaques to Duke Falco. The message stated that Kyre had bravely risked his life in an ultimately futile attempt to prevent the enemy from forcing their way through the Gates of the Mountain. That Kyre had been injured by an enemy wizard, but had later been healed and was now recov
ering.

  Regin’s heart nearly had stopped when he read that his eldest son had been struck by a wizard. He intended to compose a message back to reprimand Captain Jaques; such a message should have opened with ‘Kyre is well’ before stating that the heir to the duchy of Burwyck had led an charge and been seriously injured.

  Knowing his son would regain his full health had mollified Regin only the span of a moment, for the message went on to state that after the battle, Kyre had confronted the Regent. That meeting, tense at first, had ended with Kyre renewing his pledge of loyalty to Ariana Trehayme! Regin Falco’s heir had sworn an oath to protect the enemy of the Falcos.

  After dinner, a meal he largely pushed away, the duke took a glass of wine and walked the parapet of the estate. His guards knew not to engage him in conversation or make eye contact he their duke wished to be alone with his thoughts. The sun set, stars appeared in the sky, and Regin retired to his bed chamber.

  But he did not sleep. Rather than taking to bed, he sat in a chair by the window, slowly sipping a glass of wine. And attempting to decide what he should do. What he needed to do. His carefully laid plans were close, so close, to bearing fruit; to putting a Falco back on the throne of Tarador. Now his son, the instrument of the impending Falco victory over the Trehaymes, had betrayed him. Openly embraced Regin Falco’s enemy. That Kyre had demonstrated exceptional courage mattered nothing to his father.

  The Falco estate became quiet as its residents took to bed, and still the duke sat silently, staring out the window. The only sound was the occasional footsteps of guards echoing in the walled courtyard below, the only movement visible the flickering of torchlight.

  The duke of Burwyck went rigid, wine glass poised halfway to his lips. The glass fell from his stiff fingers, falling into his lap, then rolling off onto the thick carpet, barely making a sound. Red wine pooled in Regin’s robe, soaking into his pants and the chair beneath. Unable to breathe properly, his mouth tried to open and close, but the only sound was a faint rattling gasp.