The Spirit Mage (The Blackwood Saga Book 2)

by Layton Green

  Four five, six

  Or wait, should he think of the last time they had been in this world? Did it matter?

  Seven, eight, nine

  Was Alrick really going inside his head? Was any of this real, or just a complicated trick to relieve Val of his gold—

  He heard a scraping sound, smelled sulfur, and then light flared into the room, the kind of instant glow a wizard would create. Alrick whipped himself out of the oculave, shook out his match, and slammed his palms on the table.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a wizard? You’re not with the Congregation—who are you? And those memories—those mechanical things, those cities—where are you from?”

  Val unfastened the apparatus and backed away from the table. “If you really saw inside my head, then you know I’m from someplace far away. Another world. I know it’s strange—this is all strange—but it shouldn’t affect this transaction.”

  The gazer kept staring at him, and Val compressed his lips. If Alrick was the real deal, then he couldn’t lose this chance to find his brothers. “To answer your other questions,” Val continued, “I’m certainly not with the Congregation, and you didn’t ask me if I was a wizard. Why would it matter? I’m begging you, don’t turn me away.”

  Alrick’s laughter was brief and off-kilter. “Turn you away? No, my friend, that is not something I will be doing. Of course I know there are other worlds, though I’ve never gazed upon a place such as that. And as to your being a wizard, it matters a very great deal. It matters because I can take you with me.”

  -12-

  Will expected the hill trolls to brandish their clubs and come charging down the bluff, but instead they stayed on higher ground, shadowing the tusker caravan through the canyon. He stared in fascination at the oversize heads and cartoonish muscles of the hideous humanoids, their misshapen faces, topknots of bright orange hair, and almost simian lope. The sight of them caused him to break out in a cold sweat.

  Were they going to slaughter them at the other end of the canyon? Kill the tuskers and eat the humans?

  The canyon wound through the dry hill country for miles before leveling out. Still the trolls loped along beside them. Will could smell them, a foul body odor even worse than the stench of the tuskers.

  “These creatures . . . .” Yasmina murmured from behind him, in an awed voice. “They’re remarkable. Did they descend from Neanderthals? A new species entirely?”

  “I don’t know, Yaz,” Caleb muttered. “Does it matter when they eat us?”

  The trail spilled into a settlement of fifteen-foot lean-tos made of tree branches, animal hide tarps, and stones securing the base. Dozens of male and female trolls milled about the homestead, the women cooking over bonfires or stirring enormous pots, the men curing animal skins and sharpening clubs. There were even troll children running about, their carrot tops framing lumpy bulldog faces as they kicked a ball around the rocky, uneven ground.

  Will swiveled to address Caleb and Yasmina. “I’ve been trying to figure out where we are, based on the geography and rate of travel. My best guess is Arkansas.”

  “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of visiting that great state,” Caleb said, “but if you’re right, I gotta say the scenery looks about how I imagined it.”

  Near the center of the village, a gargantuan troll stepped out of a cowhide yurt. Wearing a headdress of bone, accompanied by a cadre of warriors, the chief waited with crossed arms as Grilgor approached. The hill troll was easily twice the size of the tusker leader. Will was too far away to hear the discussion, but Grilgor tossed a small bag of coins to one of the bodyguards, and the troll chief waved them through.

  On the other side of the village, Will got a closer look at the children, and realized he had been mistaken about the ball.

  It was a human head they were kicking.

  The trolls escorted them half a day past the canyon. The hills resumed and the tusker caravan spent the next two days in troll country, passing through five more villages, paying off the chief of each clan. Despite the civilities, the tuskers looked nervous during that stage of the journey, posting extra sentries at night.

  After troll country, the caravan headed west, across a horizon of flat golden plains. They made good time, the tusker steeds pounding out a steady rhythm under the weakening sun of early winter. Will overheard the tuskers discussing a desire to reach the mines before the snows came.

  Yasmina, model-thin even before the tolls of the journey, shivered so hard during the night that Will thought she was having seizures. Caleb didn’t fare much better, and the ordeal had also taken a toll on Will’s hardy constitution. He kept expecting their captors to toss out blankets at night, but they never did.

  The first night on the plains, Will fell asleep huddled between Dalen and Caleb, trying to protect his exposed limbs from a bitter night wind. At times, the screams of slain animals interrupted Will’s sleep, and every time he woke, he couldn’t stop thinking about the trolls behind them, the mines in front of them, and Dalen’s tales of monsters roaming the Ninth Protectorate in between.

  “Yaz,” Caleb whispered, turning over to spoon her willowy form. He pressed as close as the chains would allow, burying the side of his face in her long brown hair, doing his best to rub her arms and keep her warm. “Yaz.”

  Will’s chest rose and fell with the rhythm of sleep, but Caleb was too cold to drop off. He had just heard Yasmina murmuring to herself, and wasn’t sure if she was awake or having a nightmare.

  “Mmm,” she murmured, as if unconcerned whether the conversation continued or not.

  “You still with me? Hang in there, okay? We’re going to figure something out.”

  False emotion wasn’t Caleb’s strong suit, but apart from his family, there was no one he cared for like Yasmina. He felt the need to do something, anything, to lift her spirits.

  So he decided to tell the truth about something.

  “There’s something I’ve never told you,” he said.

  She didn’t respond, but he could feel her hips shift, the corner of an eyelash twitch.

  “When you broke up with me because I wouldn’t change my habits . . . well, it’s true I didn’t want to change. But it’s not true I wouldn’t have changed for you.”

  Her hands were crossed against her chest, and Caleb could feel her heart beating faster. “The thing is,” he said, “it’s not the drinking and the women I’m worried about. It’s me. Who I am. Yaz, you’re such a better person than me, that I . . . I know I’ll never deserve you.”

  She turned and reached up to stroke his cheek. “That’s not true,” she whispered, and he realized she wasn’t as frail as she looked. Just conserving her energy. “None of us are any better than anyone else. We’re all so very flawed, no?” She drew him close, then cupped his face in her hands and gently kissed his eyelids. “It’s okay, meu amor. I knew who you were from the beginning, and I still loved you.”

  She hesitated, as if she were going to add something else, a statement in the present tense. He moved to kiss her, and she moved aside at the last moment, pressing her cheek against his instead. “I’m terrified,” she said. “And freezing.”

  “Me, too.”

  Caleb rubbed her chest and arms, her hands and legs, willing the heat from his body to flow into hers. He had asked a guard for a blanket, and received a backhand to the face. “We’ll make it through this,” he said. “I promise.”

  “You never promise anything,” she said, just before she closed her eyes and fell silent in his arms. “It’s one of your better qualities.”

  Still the plains stretched before them. There were moments of excitement: twin tornados that spun on the horizon like maddened tops, perhaps controlled by a rogue aeromancer; a creature Dalen called a night shamble that resembled a pile of corn husks with claws and a face, and which climbed out of a barrow one night and ate one of the tusker scouts; a caravan of Romani wagons that crossed an intersection in the distance one morning, each side eying the o
ther with raised weapons. One of the captives shouted to the caravan for help, and a tusker whipped her into silence. Even if the gypsies had wanted to free them, there were only three wagons, and unless they had a wizard or some serious warriors—both of which Will doubted—then they would only have been slaughtered by the tuskers.

  The tuskers picked up a few more humans on the plains, though Will had seen no evidence of settlements, and assumed they were stray travelers. “Doesn’t anyone live in the Ninth?” he asked Dalen.

  “Plenty,” he said, “Settlers, traders, hunters, prospectors, tribes of natives—though you’ll never see any of those unless they wish to be seen. Lots of non-citizens, too. Gypsies, religious clans, people who don’t want to be told what to do.”

  “So it’s take the oaths or risk the Fens,” Will said, with a shake of his head. “And maybe get slaughtered in your village.”

  “Under Lord Alistair it is,” Dalen said darkly. “It wasn’t always that way.”

  Will decided to ask a blunt question. “Are you a citizen?”

  “Why do you ask?” Dalen replied, after a long moment. “Are you?”

  “No.”

  Dalen turned to face him, looking relieved. “Me neither. I was on my way to New Victoria to take the oaths when,” he waved a hand, “this happened.”

  Earlier, Dalen had told Will he was from Hellas, a city in Macedonia, and offered no further details. Will hadn’t pressed, not wanting Dalen to realize the extent of his ignorance.

  The midday sun hovered overhead, though it failed to banish the chill. Will saw a herd of buffalo grazing in the distance, and vultures wheeled beneath an archipelago of clouds to the north. He lowered his voice. “We’re running out of time.”

  Two nights before, the tusker with the keys had gotten drunk and fallen asleep. Will had urged Dalen to try to escape, but the young illusionist said he was still tweaking his plan. Will was beginning to doubt his nerve.

  “We’ve a ways to go before Fellengard,” Dalen said. “Once we reach the mountains, according to the maps I’ve seen, we still have to travel many days north and west.”

  “We’re getting further and further away from New Victoria,” Will said, annoyed. “And what’s your plan, go back through troll country?”

  “Head south and find a Byway. There has to be one eventually.”

  “I thought you were afraid of the tribes to the South?”

  “Aike. I’m more afraid of trolls and winter.”

  Will didn’t respond, because there was nothing to say. Even if they managed to escape, their choices were depressing.

  “We’ll have an easier time hiding out in the mountains,” Dalen said. “The tuskers can see us for miles on the plains.”

  “Yeah, but other things can hide in the mountains, too.” Will glanced at his brother’s lowered head. “Listen, Dalen. If you want my help, it has to be the next chance we get. No matter what.”

  Dalen didn’t respond at first, then gave a slow nod. “All right,” he said softly.

  The next day the plains disappeared and they entered a land of dry scrub and surreal rock formations, backed by a glowering line of peaks.

  “New Mexico?” Caleb asked. “Colorado?”

  “Dunno,” Will said. “Never been to either one. But it’s beautiful.”

  The trail wound through jagged towers of sandstone, the rock strata staggering him with their variety of colors. When they crested a plateau and saw the afternoon sun lowering into a mauve and crimson valley, an egg yolk sinking into a field of heather, the sight took his breath away.

  They camped at the base of the first high peak, surrounded by the mythic landscape. The higher elevation brought even colder air, and when Yasmina’s numbed fingers spilled her bowl of gruel, earning her a lash, he knew they had to act.

  The tuskers seemed to be in a good mood, and partied louder and longer than usual with their leather flasks of grog. Throughout the evening, deep into the night, Will’s eyes never left the guardian of the keys. He was one of the last tuskers to go to sleep, and when he finally stumbled onto his bedroll, thick fingers clutching a flask, the set of iron keys dangled enticingly from his belt.

  The last two tuskers dropped off. After Will was sure no other guards were awake, he exchanged a grim nod with Caleb and Yasmina, then turned towards his new friend. Dalen was wide-awake and staring at the sleeping tusker.

  “It’s now or never,” Will said. “You ready?”

  Dalen swallowed and rubbed a thumb against the back of his fist. “Aike. I’m ready.”

  -13-

  “Gathered wizards of the Conclave,” Vice Thaumaturge Rainsword proclaimed, “I give you Lord Alistair, Chief Thaumaturge of the Congregation and First Wizard of the Realm at large.”

  Jalen Rainsword, a powerful electromancer and lead representative of the Sixth Protectorate, ceded the floor to Lord Alistair, who stepped onto the silver-blue dais of hardened spirit to face the semicircle of thirty-one wizards who formed the Conclave, the governing body of the Congregation.

  Three wizards for each of the nine Protectorates, three representatives from Albion, and the Chief Thaumaturge.

  “Fellow citizens and mages,” Lord Alistair said, azantite scepter in hand, “I thank you for your attendance. Please accept my apologies for this irregular meeting, but there are urgent matters that need addressing.”

  He had their attention. Besides being an elder spirit mage and Chief Thaumaturge, Lord Alistair was a tall and imposing man, his silver widow’s peak the punctuation mark on a regal face and square-shouldered frame that, while nearing two hundred years old, seemed to defy the ravages of time. Only eyes of different hues, one pale blue and one almost black, marred the symmetry of his features.

  Lord Alistair held an upturned palm in the air. Though impeccably dressed in trousers of fine wool and a dress shirt with Bavarian cuffs, he was not one to adopt the latest fashions. “My leadership style has never been evasive,” he said, “so let me be direct. The Revolution is spreading.”

  Though no one spoke, the rustle of clothing and almost imperceptible shifting of position was a clarion call to Lord Alistair. These were highly-trained Congregation wizards, most of them elder mages, and the slightest reaction meant they had heard him loud and clear.

  As he knew they would.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said a sylvamancer from the Fifth, his worn cloak and emerald-studded walking stick indicative of his preference for the outdoors. “I thought the situation was under control. Have the rebels become a threat?”

  “It is not that the rebels themselves pose a problem,” Lord Alistair said, his scornful smile relaxing the crowd. “It is the ideas they represent which are of concern. We long ago eradicated the scourge of religion, and who here wishes a return to that epoch of ignorance? None, I should hope. Let us never forget the tragic history of our kind. The millennia of persecution of the wizard born. The Culling and inquisitions. The pyres.”

  One of the trio of women representing the First, a blond aeromancer with the delicate features of a sparrow, asked, “How could events on the Barrier Coast possibly affect the Protectorate at large?”

  Lord Alistair watched as heads turned to regard the three wizards from the Ninth Protectorate—the lands west of the Great Victoria River—grouped on the far left of the Conclave. No one blamed the representatives for the rebel activity. The Ninth was a vast territory, largely unexplored and still under de facto control of the various tribes, clans, and creatures who called it home.

  And the Barrier Coast, unreachable except by great expense and journey, had long been home to gypsies and other undesirables who risked life and limb to get there.

  “Because revolution is a plague,” Lord Alistair said, “spreading like spirit fire across the land.” He raised a palm, rings glittering above his embroidered cuff. “The blame falls on us, the governors of New Albion. We have been lax in our persecution of those who foment rebellion.”

  “But what do you
propose?” said the aeromancer. Her name was Kalyn Tern, and she wore a dress of blue silk that spiraled down to her ankles. “Our prisons are full, the Fens overflow.”

  “Then we make room.”

  “Executions?” Kalyn responded, with a nod. “I’ve been in favor for some time. Only the worst elements, of course. Blights on society of whom we can make an example.”

  “Can we not build more Fens instead?” asked Garbind Elldorn, the sylvamancer from the Fifth. “We’ve plenty of space.”

  “That would set a bad precedent,” Alistair countered. “The public would rather see cleaner cities and fewer undesirables than more prisons and fens. I would also propose strengthening restrictions on Byway travel, bolstering the Oath Guard, increasing city checkpoints, and sending more patrols to the villages.”

  “Aye aye,” said a handsome, dark-haired cuerpomancer from the Third named Braden Shankstone. At forty-four Birth Years, he was the youngest member of the Conclave but already a close advisor to Lord Alistair. Most viewed him as a likely successor.

  They took the proposals to a vote. Thirty of the wizards gave their assent in a matter of moments. After a long hesitation, Garbind slowly raised his hand.

  Lord Alistair paced back and forth on the six-foot wide dais, his expression grave. “There remains one other thing to discuss. I am of the firm belief that a message needs to be delivered to the leaders of this rebellion. Strike a blow that will remind them with whom they are dealing—a blow that will ricochet to our northern and southern borders as well, preparing the way for future incursions.”

  “Be more specific,” Kalyn said. She hailed from one of the oldest wizard families in the Realm and was unafraid to speak her mind. “What sort of blow? What are the logistics involved? If reports are to be believed, the rebels count a number of rogue wizards among their ranks. Nothing of concern, of course, except that we would have to send a few of our own to address the situation.”