The Spirit Mage (The Blackwood Saga Book 2)

by Layton Green

  “We have to think of something,” Will said.

  Caleb turned on his side to face him. “Eh?”

  “A way to escape.”

  “I don’t want to die here, little bro, but this place makes Alcatraz look like a Lego jail.”

  “I refuse to pry rocks out of a wall until I die,” Will said. “I’d rather take my chances with the Darklands.”

  “Lucka, you wouldn’t last a day,” Dalen said. “There’re things in the Darklands—”

  Will waved a hand in irritation. “Yeah, yeah, you’ve told us over and over how terrifying it is, and I’m sure you’re right. You know what I find more terrifying? Dying a slow death as a slave for the delvers.”

  “What do we do?” Caleb asked quietly. “Even if we manage to leave this cell, how do we find Yasmina and get past the guards? Out of the city?”

  Will stood and began to pace. “I don’t know. Dalen, do you have any other tricks up your sleeve?”

  The colored balls disappeared, and Dalen rose to a sitting position. “There are too many guards. I can fool one or two, but not a whole city. Aike. If only I was stronger, knew more spells.”

  Will stopped beside Marek. “What about you? Any ideas?”

  Marek’s head tilted on a slow axis to face Will. He smirked and returned facing the courtyard.

  “Just checking,” Will muttered.

  He kept pacing and trying to analyze the possible angles of escape. Despite his efforts, he failed to produce a single idea. Security was too tight, the situation too hopeless. If Tamás—the leader of the revolution—hadn’t been able to escape after a year, what chance did they have?

  Still, he knew that loss of hope equated to death. They had to keep watching, keep striving, keep believing.

  He reached the end of the cell. When he turned, he saw Marek crouched in front of him, hands up and fingers twitching, as if ready to attack. “You vant to do something?” he said, stalking towards Will. His accent sounded Slavic. “Then stay prepared for vhen your time comes.”

  He rushed Will, this time on guard against a cheap shot, catching Will around the waist and tackling him. Caleb rose to help his brother, but Marek pushed him down as if he were a twig figure.

  Marek ended up straddling Will’s chest. Will executed a maneuver Mala had taught him, trapping Marek’s left leg and arm and tossing him sideways. Each of them scrambled for position, ending up with their arms locked together in front of them, holding each other at bay.

  The big man grinned. “That’s good.”

  Dalen and Caleb started towards them. “It’s okay, guys,” Will said, trying and failing to trip Marek, instead landing with an oomph on his back as Marek threw him to the ground. The man was strong.

  Marek offered to help Will to his feet, and he accepted.

  “Again?” Marek asked, breathing hard as he crouched into position.

  Will crouched as well, adapting his old wrestling stance to the tighter street-fighting position Mala had taught him, in order to protect his vitals. “Oh yeah.”

  Yasmina felt hands on her body. Calloused palms roamed her thighs, strong fingers pressed into her stomach and then higher. She moaned and tried to thrash, but couldn’t find the strength.

  Was she dreaming?

  As she drifted in and out of consciousness, the sounds of the dying rose around her, a concerto of foghorns moaning into the night.

  A heavy form flopped on top of her, a squat pale body she knew belonged to one of the delvers.

  “No,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “Just relax, lovey,” the delver whispered back, holding both of her arms down with one hand, while the other reached for her shirt.

  Then she felt the weirdest thing—she must indeed be dreaming—a sensation of tiny feet swarming up her legs. The padded soles were cold and dry, strange but not unpleasant.

  The delver pulled on her shirt, and then he started shouting.

  Beating his hands over his body, he flung himself off Yasmina and started spinning in a circle and stomping his feet.

  That was when she noticed the moles.

  They were everywhere: running up the delver’s limbs, biting his face, tangled in his hair. Blood poured from a thousand bite wounds, and the delver ran screaming out of the infirmary calling for help, which made her chuckle even in the dream. Ironic, that.

  Yasmina sensed eyes on her. She shifted her head to the left, a torpid movement that sapped the rest of her strength.

  On the next cot over, she saw an old man with long stringy hair and eyes the color of a winter sky. He was watching her. Two moles chased each other up and down one of his arms, as if playing a game.

  Surely she was dreaming.

  “Did he hurt you?” the old man asked.

  Yasmina smiled at the dream figure.

  “I’m Elegon.”

  “You know who I am,” she replied. “You’re in my dream.”

  The old man looked at her sadly. “Rest, young one. I know this fever. If you can last but a few more days, it will break. You mustn’t give in.”

  Dream apparition or not, Yasmina took his advice. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift, all the way back to Brazil, to her youth in Manaus.

  Heart of the Amazon, they called it. City of the Forest. Paris of the Tropics.

  Most people in the United States thought Yasmina—the brown girl with the funny accent—was from Rio de Janeiro or the concrete forests of Sao Paulo, because that was all they knew. They also thought she loved soccer and samba and maybe Formula 1 racing and plastic surgery.

  Yasmina didn’t love any of those things. What she loved was the beauty of her hometown, a city of two million accessible only by boat or plane, surrounded by the jungle, at ease with the natural world. She loved its tropical rhythm and rich smells, its lush gardens and surprising sophistication. Home to an opera house and art museums, it was once flush with the wealth of rubber barons.

  Yet most of all, she loved its fauna. For as long as she could remember, Yasmina had identified with animals better than humans. Animals did not judge, or practice willful cruelty, or spew racial epithets.

  A shy string bean of a girl mocked by her peers and even her mother for having no figure, Yasmina had few friends growing up. From a young age, she had sought refuge in the jungle, yet another quirk that her society-obsessed mother did not understand.

  Not until she came to the United States for college did Yasmina start to find her way. America had its own demons, but at least she could be herself. She was free to study her animals at Tulane and avoid the microscope of Brazilian society and love the man who didn’t love her back.

  Oh, Caleb.

  Beautiful, kind, gentle Caleb. There her mind lingered. He reminded her of her father, including the drinking and the gambling and the womanizing.

  Still, she preferred those weaknesses to a violent man.

  Her mind drifted again, to the recent past, and a sob escaped her. Her animals in her apartment back home, they needed her! What had happened to them when she had been forced into this world?

  Or had the dream begun then, with her capture by that terrifying man who could call upon the dead? Was this a dream within a dream? Was she at home in New Orleans, her dogs and cats and ferret by her side, trying desperately to get her attention?

  She didn’t know.

  She just knew she wanted to wake up.

  Will and Marek began a nightly sparring routine. Caleb couldn’t believe it. He asked Will how he managed to lift a finger after working in the mines all day, wondering if their parents had swapped him at birth for a Viking warrior.

  “Thanks for the compliment,” Will had said.

  “A short, geeky Viking,” Caleb clarified.

  The hand-to-hand combat practice was good for Will, both for his mental health and his budding warrior skills. Marek was the polar opposite of Mala: unskilled, one-dimensional, physically powerful. While Will would have employed a different strategy in a more open setting or with
weapons, he was forced to confront Marek on his own turf, and it was making Will a better fighter. He had to practice his strikes and holds and escapes on a much larger opponent, in a tight space, adapting his techniques to fit the situation. And Marek learned from him as well, grunting with respect every time Will slipped out of a bear hug or forced him to submit with a limb lock.

  It was a surreal experience, their quiet and determined sparring in the silence of the ruined courtyard, lit by the eerie glow of the mineral lamps. To Will it felt proactive, a way to improve his situation and rebel against their captivity.

  A few weeks later, after another twelve-hour shift in the mines, the delvers took them home on a new funicular, which was not uncommon. They ran captives into the mines twenty-four hours of the day, and scheduled funicular journeys like air traffic controllers.

  The new route carried them to an area of Olde Fellengard they hadn’t seen before, a section of dried up canals and stone dwellings missing their roofs. Behind them loomed a huge, intact ziggurat. The masonry was exquisite, and the top of the structure, a flat pillared roof, was sprinkled with statues and gemstone sculptures.

  “Delver temple,” Dalen said.

  “What was the name of their god?” Will asked.

  “They had many. I don’t recognize this one, perhaps Mith-Kavi? My Da told me stories about the delvers of old, but that was a long time ago.”

  “So the delvers banned religion, too?” Caleb asked.

  “The clans inside the Protectorate gave it up to avoid war with the Congregation. Lucka, I’m no delver expert, but from what my Da said, their two religions are crafting stone and collecting wealth.”

  Though albino and crueler, Will thought, the delvers of Urfe were similar in many ways to the dwarves of fantasy legend. Had delvers inspired the myths on Earth?

  Of course they had.

  They rounded a corner and saw a sight that caused the line of prisoners to pause, earning a crack of the whip. A few streets behind the principal barracks, recognizable by its octagonal roof, was a basin of water the size of a home swimming pool. A narrow canal flowed into the basin on the far end. Another led from the basin to the rear of the barracks.

  Chained to a rock in the center of the pool, shivering with cold and hugging her knees to her chest to conceal her nakedness, was a young female with long black hair and bright crimson skin.

  And horns.

  And a barbed tail.

  One of the delvers snapped another whip. “Keep yer arses moving! Nothing to see here.”

  Will saw a few of the guards making lewd gestures in the direction of the girl. She hugged her knees tighter and began babbling in a strange language.

  A language which Will, thanks to his magical armband, could understand.

  Free me, she said. Free me and I can free you.

  “Um, is that a devil girl?” Caleb whispered.

  Free me, please please please. Free me. Free me.

  “What’s she saying?” Caleb continued.

  Will shushed him. “Later.”

  The girl’s babbling turned louder, more insistent. I’m so cold. Free me. Please. Please please please please please

  Caleb was craning his neck to look at her. “Succubi or not, she’s smoking hot.”

  Just before the group marched out of sight of the basin, Will and Caleb turned and saw the crimson-skinned girl dipping into the water, which reached to her waist. Before she dove under, Will caught a glimpse of lithe limbs and a voluptuous figure. He also caught a glimpse of a red glow spreading outward from her hands.

  “Wow,” Caleb said.

  Will rolled his eyes. “She looks sixteen.”

  “Not from where I’m standing.”

  Will didn’t reply. He was too busy empathizing with her plight, pondering what had caused her hands to glow, and thinking about the first words she had spoken.

  Free me, she had said, in a throaty, mellifluous language unlike anything he had ever heard.

  Free me and I can free you.

  -28-

  Mala eased open the thatch door to the largest of the three huts. After sweeping her gaze around the interior to ensure she was alone, she slipped inside and closed the door, which had a crude wooden hinge and no lock.

  The smell was horrific, a fetid odor of unwashed bodies. The only furniture was a reed mat in the center of the hut, lying directly on the clay-like ground, and she realized the bedding was the main source of the smell. Years of hag rot soaked into the fibers.

  Mala had expected human skins hanging on the walls, animal skulls, body parts soaking in black cauldrons. But there was nothing. No toilets, no foodstuffs, no personal items. The lack of belongings was disturbing, as if the hags were . . . animals. Creatures of instinct imbued with the power of speech and rudimentary survival skills.

  The other two huts looked the same. Disappointed, Mala had only one remaining option: follow the hags into the forest. She doubted that would get her anywhere, but she had found nothing in the valley to aid her escape.

  If forced, Mala would gather her belongings, flee into the forest, and search for civilization. That was the last option, since she had no idea what awaited her inside those trees, whether she could reach the nearest town, or if towns even existed on this world. And once she left the valley, she risked losing the amulet—and her way home—forever.

  Whispering words of courage to herself, she stopped to grab her sash and short sword from the storage house, then scouted the perimeter of the clearing. Close to where she and the majitsu had first popped into the world, she found a well-trodden path leading into the woods.

  Leaning down to eye the indentations made by three sets of six-toed hag feet, she realized the tracks were fresh, just a few hours old, and surrounded by layers of older tracks.

  Crouching, her senses on high alert, Mala crept into the mist-enshrouded forest. Though brown bark comprised the trunks of the enormous old-growth trees, the ashen color of the leaves and foliage, combined with the omnipresent haze, made her feel as if she were walking through a hoary dream world, a worn-out land of fog and secrets.

  As soon as she entered the woods, she felt the foreboding sense of a presence even more strongly. Like someone or something was watching her. She realized it was not coming from any one place, but all around, as if the forest were a sentient being. She shuddered and pressed forward.

  The path branched a few times, but the widest trail was the one she was following. It also had the most footprints. She became one with the forest, moving at a cautious pace and attuning herself to the woodland sounds, lest the hags catch her unawares.

  Mala had learned to fight and steal and survive in the dangerous underworlds of Londyn and New Victoria, becoming the youngest person ever—male or female—to gain the rank of guild master in the New Victoria Rogue’s Guild. Restless and proud, longing for more adventure, she had traveled east to join the ranks of the Alazashin, a legendary group of thieves and assassins whose rite of initiation had almost killed her. Realizing a life of indiscriminate crime was not for her, she blackmailed the Grandfather of Alazashin Mountain to gain her freedom, then roamed the world as a professional adventuress, searching for objects of magical power to sell to those with means.

  She had faced some of the deadliest creatures on Urfe, had penetrated the keeps of wizards who could kill with a flick of their wrist, but as she crept through the woods in this alien world, facing beings who had stuffed her and a majitsu into a cage without breaking a sweat, she felt the cold fingers of fear crawling up her spine.

  No, it was more than that, she realized. Fear she could overcome. It was the helplessness that terrified her. The same feeling she felt in the presence of a powerful wizard or even a majitsu, and which she hated with all of her being: the knowledge that she could not defeat these hags, not without help.

  An hour into the forest, she found them. The grotesque hags were digging around the roots of an ancient tree, rooting through the soil with their bare hands, like anima
ls. The sense of a presence felt stronger here. Making sure to stay upwind, Mala flattened behind another tree and watched.

  The hags’ tree was easily the largest in the forest, larger than any tree she had ever seen. Its canopy of branches, thick and gnarled like an oak but even longer and more clustered, hid the sky from view. The aboveground roots were a nest of petrified anacondas stretching twenty yards in every direction.

  As Mala watched, the largest of the hags extracted a wriggling gray worm from the soil and plopped it into her mouth.

  A food source, then. But why this tree in particular? Why not something closer to the valley? Did the gray worms only thrive in this one environment? Or were they just tastier here?

  Over the next few hours, Mala watched the foul creatures dig up a few dozen worms. Each hag ingested one of the slimy larva every hour or so, and the lead hag impaled the remaining worms on her necklace. As the sky darkened and the hags stood to leave, Mala slipped back on the path and rushed back to the valley, hoping she hadn’t waited too long. After flinging her sword and sash into the farmhouse, she raced into the kennel and took the potion.

  “What did you see?” Hazir called out, just before she shrank and climbed into the cage.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Quiet now, they’re coming soon.”

  Terrified the hags would return before she grew to normal size, Mala paced back and forth on the straw, pressing her tiny body against the back of the pen when she heard footsteps approaching the kennel.

  Grow, Mala willed herself as the two sister hags stepped through the entrance.

  Grow.

  The hags slopped food into the kennels, starting with the unicorn. Sensing Mala’s predicament, Hazir tried to engage them in conversation, but they didn’t respond. Mala heard them move forward again. A few more steps, and they would be able to see inside Mala’s cage and discover her secret.

  The backs of the two hags came into view as they paused to feed the nymph cage. The woodland creature pleaded for release as Mala finally began to grow, lying flat on her back to conceal the magic, scrunched against the rear of the pen.