by Devri Walls
Tybolt struggled to his feet as sick nausea wiggled up his throat. How had they managed to find a spell that broke through his natural Hunter defenses? “How…?”
“I’ll explain everything, but I need you to trust me.”
Tybolt glowered at the four wizards. He grabbed his sword and the wizards tensed, their hands rising as one. “I can’t go with you, not without finding Auriella—”
“You’ll be of little help to Auriella if you burst into flames again before you reach the castle.”
“Why fire? What did you do to me?”
“Come with me and I’ll tell you,” Gamel said. His posture was sure and straight, with no sign of budging.
Tybolt had no idea what had just happened, but he felt heat simmering within, and he couldn’t risk the flames again. The logic warred against his emotions.
No battle was ever won on emotions—he’d learned that long ago. He ground his teeth and sheathed his sword. “Fine, I’ll come with you, but I don’t trust you.”
“Fair enough.”
The five of them walked deeper into the thieves’ forest. Tybolt sized up the four wizards. None of them looked familiar, but they all walked with the same air of the upper class wizards he’d encountered before. If he had to guess, these were some of the more powerful wizards. Not that their powers mattered to a Hunter.
Or did they? He’d just been thrown into a tree. His back and tailbone still ached in testament.
Carac stopped at a large pine. He picked up a rock from the base and rapped on the trunk. Three fast knocks, followed by two slow and four fast. A moment later a rope ladder rolled down, appearing from thin air. It slapped against the trunk, and Carac grabbed it and started to climb. The ladder went about two-thirds the way up the tree and then vanished, as if it were hanging in thin air.
“After you.” Gamel motioned.
Tybolt grabbed the first rung and climbed. At the point where the rope disappeared he paused, and then reached up. His arm vanished, and he grabbed the next rung. He pulled up and then stopped again as an entire tree top village appeared. Bridges hung from tree to tree. Homes were built in crooks of branches, some on top of the other.
“Climb!” a voice demanded from below.
Tybolt continued up, pulling himself through a hole beneath a platform. Carac was waiting for him, and the rest of the wizards were soon behind.
“How did you hide this?” Tybolt finally asked, still scanning the rooftop village.
“We learned that although Hunters were immune to direct magic, visual deceptions were quite effective,” Carac said.
“Come,” Gamel said. “I’ll explain everything.”
Terric hauled Auriella down a set of stairs she hadn’t known existed. His grip sent five points of pressure into her arm. Her stomach rolled and bile seeped into her mouth. She hated him more than she’d thought possible.
He jerked her forward and she stumbled. He tightened his grip even further to keep her from toppling down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, she recoiled. “What is this place?” It smelled of dank air and rotting straw, with another odor she couldn’t identify.
“The king’s private dungeon.” He threw her into an open cell. She fell against the wall, her cheek scraping against the roughly hewn stone wall. The door slammed behind her, clanging with an ominous ring that vibrated through her bones.
“All his brides have visited this cell,” Terric said. He leaned against the door, arm over his head. In the dark, his deep-set eyes looked like empty pits. He pointed towards a stool in the corner of her cell, barely illuminated by the torch that burned on the wall next to the stairs. “That bread is all you’ll get until the wedding. I suggest you ration it.”
Auriella looked over at the half loaf that was already starting to mold. “The wedding isn’t for seven days.”
“The king wishes his brides to be very compliant.”
Auriella threw herself at the bars, wrapping her hands around his and forcing herself not to recoil. “Please, Terric. Let me out of here.”
“You should have taken my offer earlier. You can rot.” He turned for the stairs.
“Where’s my father?”
He reached into his cloak and tossed something through the bars of her cell. It hit the floor with a soft thud.
Auriella stared at the shape on the ground with apprehension. She crouched and picked up something cold and firm. Unsure what it was, she held it up to the streams of light coming through the bars.
She screamed and threw the severed finger out of her cell. Terric’s laugh bounced off the walls, covering her gasps as she shoved herself backwards.
“When I said I almost had to take his finger, that wasn’t entirely honest.”
The sound of Terric’s footsteps grew fainter as he climbed the stairs. Auriella cursed the tears dripping down her cheeks, and she swiped them angrily away. She’d actually believed the fantasy Tybolt had painted for her. She was a fool.
Gamel’s treetop home was larger than Tybolt had expected, and the room was littered with chairs. A desk sat in the middle of the room, the bed and washbasin shoved haphazardly to the side. This was clearly used more for meetings than for sleeping. Tybolt picked one of the chairs and dropped into it.
“So this is where the wizards have been hiding.”
“Some of them, yes,” Gamel said.
“And the ones you tipped me off to, were those ones you didn’t like? Or did they say the wrong thing?” He leaned back and draped his arm over the chair next to him. “Do your friends here know you betrayed your own kind?”
Gamel turned to close the door as a wizard came running across the wooden bridge.
“Alistair, Alistair!”
Gamel’s head dropped in defeat. “Not now!” he shouted, slamming the door.
“Alistair?” Tybolt sat straight up. Gamel had a pained look but said nothing. He slowly walked to the chair behind his desk, his shoulders hunched.
Tybolt pointed to the door. “Alistair is here, isn’t he? You said you knew where he was.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“What?” Tybolt sputtered. “No, we can’t talk about this later! Alistair is the key to all of this, he has to stop—”
“I’m Alistair.”
Tybolt scowled. “You can’t be Gamel and Hess and Alistair.”
“I can and I am, but that’s not important right now. The better question is—who are you?”
“I’ve always hated your word games, Gamel.”
“Call me Alistair.”
Tybolt gripped the sides of his head. “Alistair, then. I know who I am.”
“Do you? To know who you are, you must know where you came from. You know your mother, but you do not know your father. Therefore, you don’t know who you are at all.”
Tybolt didn’t like where this was going, not even a little. He’d always wanted answers, but not like this. He swallowed. “And you do?”
“How do you think I came upon you that night all those years ago? Your father sent me.” He leaned forward and crossed his arms on the table. “Tybolt, I’ve thought so many times about how I would tell you this, how I would get you to believe me. I’ve had years to plan, but there was never a good way. Now here we are, and I am still no more prepared than I was.” He took a deep breath. “Tybolt, you are a wizard. Son of Aja and heir to the throne.”
The seconds ticked by, and for the second time in his life, time slowed. He watched Alistair’s face, searching for anything that might betray the words he’d spoken, any ticks or tells. There was nothing but a marked family resemblance—in the eyes especially.
The eyes.
His heart stuttered painfully in his chest, and memories came rushing back. How could he not have seen it before? The only thing he’d not inherited from his mother was his eyes, neither the shape nor the color. But now, looking at Alistair he saw Aja’s eyes—his own eyes, staring at him. “No, it…it can’t be.” He cleared his throat and tried to ma
sk his fear.
“Think back, Tybolt. Had you known, I’m sure you would’ve seen the truth of it written all over Aja’s face. He never was very good at hiding his feelings…and you have his eyes.”
Blue eyes, blue eyed-Hunter, blue eyes.
“You’re insane,” Tybolt said. It sounded childish and petulant, but he wanted this man to be insane, needed him to be.
But there were times, so many times, when Aja would stare at him, only at him. Tilly had noticed, others had noticed. He’d been too angry to notice, or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to. “I am a Hunter,” he insisted.
“You have a short memory.”
Alistair reached out his hand. Tybolt felt magic wrap around his body, pushing him against the chair. He tried to get up but couldn’t. The wooden legs jerked, and then he was sliding across the floor, slamming into other chairs as he went. The pressure against him was so intense he could barely get a breath. The magic finally released, and Tybolt gulped in air.
“You’re no longer immune to wizard magic,” Alistair said. “That either means you have suddenly lost your ability as a Hunter, or you are, in fact, a wizard.
Alistair’s hand came out again. The spell he whispered was so quiet Tybolt barely heard it. His body jerked from the chair, and he landed on the floor like a doll. Then he was pulled by a force he couldn’t see and slammed against the other wall.
“Defend yourself.”
Tybolt grabbed the hilt of his sword.
Alistair rolled his eyes. “Not like that.”
Tybolt was pulled across the room again by an invisible hand. His head smashed into the leg of the table.
“Defend yourself.”
Tybolt reached out for something, anything, but his brute strength was useless now.
“Defend yourself.”
The process repeated itself, and each time he slammed into a wall or piece of furniture, more rage built up within him. “Enough!” he shouted. Tybolt felt a force ripple out from within him, and Alistair was pushed up into the air. He flipped once, his purple cloak splayed out like the wings of some grotesque bird, and landed flat on his back.
“There it is,” Alistair grunted from the ground. “Took a little longer than I thought, but we found it.”
Tybolt was shaking, and he looked down at his hands. “No, I didn’t…I couldn’t. I didn’t use a spell.”
“There has to be words to make your magic work, but if you possess enough power, a simple word will do. You appear to have the abilities I hoped you would. We weren’t sure, considering your Hunter blood.”
“This can’t be happening. I am a Hunter. I’ve always been a Hunter.”
“You are.” Alistair nodded. “You’re also a wizard.”
Tybolt’s denials dried up in his mouth, and he withered inside. “Tell me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” Tybolt stumbled to his chair, dreading what was coming.
“Very well.” Alistair leaned back and smoothed his cloak out, folding his hands in his lap. “The night of the Fracture, Aja insisted on visiting your mother. I told him it was madness. I’d told him that multiple times—it never did stop him. I was terrified he would be caught. Best-case scenario—he would be forced from the throne. At worst they would hang him for treason.
“As it was, Aja’s stance on Hunters had already softened considerably, and the royal council was becoming angry. He’d begun to rule in favor of the Hunters at many trials and was pushing for more Hunter rights in meetings. I warned him repeatedly that he was making enemies, both in the wizarding world and within the city.”
An image flashed in Tybolt’s mind, a memory. He could almost feel the chill of the ocean air on his skin and he was a boy again, standing on the cold sand. “I saw him that night,” Tybolt said. “There was a man in the lighthouse with my mother. She admitted it was my father, but she refused to tell me anything more.”
“You’re a lot like him, Tybolt.”
That statement ripped Tybolt back to reality. “Do not compare me to the man that killed my mother.”
“The only thing my brother was guilty of was not being able to stop the Fracture.” Alistair looked weary, and he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Aja had known something was happening within the wizard ranks for months, but we’d been unable to discover what it was. We had an informant who said he’d been invited to a secret meeting. He suspected the topic would be about removing Aja from the throne. We sent him as a spy but he never returned. Aja feared for his life, but mostly he worried for his family, for his son. While I tried to track down the traitors, he made plans to keep you safe. If anything were to happen to him, I was to come get all three of you and take you to a hidden cabin in the forest.”
“The cabin you took me to.”
Alistair nodded. “The night of the Fracture, the weather began rolling in, wizard weather, but Aja was not controlling it. We were on the balcony of the throne room, watching the purple storm brewing on the horizon, when Rowan came through the doors, throwing down lightning bolts in the distance with incantations I’d never heard before. Aja shoved me out of the room, putting himself between Rowan and me. I heard the magical battle raging behind me as I ran down the hall. I knew what he wanted me to do.
“The horse was slowed by the earthquakes that started even before I was out of the city. I got to you as fast as I could, but I was too late. The lighthouse had already gone down.” Alistair looked away. “I failed my brother in the one thing he’d asked of me. Everything was lost.” He took a deep breath and met Tybolt’s eyes. “Then I saw you.”
Tybolt put a thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes, pressing hard. “If Aja’s my father, then why am I just now presenting magic? Wizards come into power when they’re children.”
“I put a spell on you. Rowan started sending Hunters out to collect wizards immediately after he took power. I couldn’t risk you being found. Nowhere was safe. I took a risk and decided to hide you in the one place Rowan would never look—right beneath his nose.
“I had to make you a Hunter. I couldn’t do anything about your eyes, but I could make your Hunter side dominant and lock down your magic…at least until you turned nineteen.”
“What’s so special about nineteen?”
“At nineteen, a wizard’s power increases exponentially, but I knew your powers would increase even more. The moment you turned nineteen, part of Aja’s power transferred to you, as was your birthright. I knew my spell wouldn’t hold against that much magic, and I asked you to meet me in the forest so I could remove it, but you left before I got the chance. The flames were the result of your powers trying to escape the shell I’d encased them in.”
“You knew that would happen?”
“Well, I knew something would happen. I wasn’t expecting fire.”
“But you removed the spell, so there is no chance of me bursting into flames again?”
“Correct.”
“So you lied to get me here.”
Alistair shrugged. “Desperate times.”
Tybolt took a deep breath in through his nose. “You still haven’t explained how Rowan controlled the weather. Only royal blood has that ability.”
“He’s using the magic of other wizards, harnessing them. It has something to do with the Hold, I’m sure. Beyond that, the truth is…I don’t know how he did it.”
“The Hold?”
“Yes. I suspected it from the beginning. His magic was completely out of control when he attacked Aja, and it resulted in the Fracture. There was too much power, and none of it was the natural ability for weather—thus the incantations he used. But once Aja was placed in the Hold, the storms were sure, focused. The way they should’ve been. After more wizards were added to the Hold, the wall went up to prevent the rest of the natural storms from coming in. With each wizard you bring him, he grows more powerful.”
“But how?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but Rowan proves my the
ory every time he executes a non-wizard.”
“Why?” Tybolt asked. “What possible motive could he have for all of this? He destroys half the land he means to rule, and he keeps the storms from coming in so people starve to death? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, we’re missing something. After the Fracture, we tried to find the wizards who’d been known to associate with him. Oddly enough, they were all locked up in the Hold with Aja. Don’t you find that strange? How do you think an average man manages to take down Aja and then single-handedly imprisons fifteen wizards?” Alistair raised an eyebrow. “He covered his tracks well—none of us know anything about him. He arrived by boat five years before the Fracture, a refugee from Deasroc, and that’s the extent of our knowledge.”
“There are no wizards on Deasroc.”
“I know. Even stranger.”
Tybolt stood and began to pace. He was a wizard, Rowan was a wizard…Auriella was with Rowan. He froze in his tracks. “I have to go. I have to get Auriella.”
Alistair surged to his feet. “No!”
“You heard the bells—the queen is dead. I have to get Auriella out of there. Once she’s safe, then I will deal with this.”
“We can’t risk it. We have no idea how powerful you are. If Rowan discovers what you really are, this is all over.”
“I won’t leave her there.”
Alistair shoved back his chair and came around the table. “What about the people?”
“The people are not my responsibility.”
“Yes, they are. You were born heir to the throne. It is your only responsibility.”
“I don’t care whose son I am—that does not make me worthy of the throne.”
“You’re right! It doesn’t. You made yourself worthy. You’re the only one who takes care of those villagers. You feed them, worry about them, watch over them. Dropping you off with the king to hide you amongst the Hunters was the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do. I was worried we would lose you, that the heir to the throne would become a Hunter in his heart. But you didn’t. You were kind and brave and loyal and every bit the king you would’ve been had you been raised in the castle—probably more. These people are your responsibility, and you accepted it long ago.”
