“You’ve won the battle of Greenfalls, and you’ve won the first battle of Great Forks, Theus,” the captain from Greenfalls told him encouragingly. “I believe you can win the big battle here as well!
“Go with the gods’ blessings,” the man offered.
Theus waved his thanks. He patted Trey on the shoulder as he turned to go.
“We’ll get the old gang together after you win this next one, and it’ll be just like old times,” the weaver said with false cheerfulness.
Theus flashed a grin, and then he limped away, headed in the direction of the next battle. He heard the officers barking orders as he left them behind, but he paid no attention.
He looked ahead, to the south. Over and between the buildings in his path he saw smoke rising, and he heard the terrible sounds of distant battle. He found a city street that seemed designed to take him directly towards the battle, and he hobbled along it as quickly as he could, sometime walking, sometimes trotting. And he thought about the last comment the officer from Greenfalls had offered.
He was going with the blessings of the gods, he realized. Truly and really. Both Limber and Currense had encouraged him and supported him. They not only approved of his goal, but had placed him on the path towards it. That had to count for something in his favor.
The sounds of battle grew louder. The street he walked was deserted. The sun shone overhead at high noon. Mature trees spread their long limbs across the street, making it a shady tunnel of green.
And then Theus saw Glory’s home. He thought of Glory, and her mother Glenda, who had so kindly allowed him to stay in their home while he experimented for the first time with the stone that had granted him the knowledge to exercise white magic. The house looked empty, and Theus hoped the two women had safely fled the city and stayed away from the battle.
He saw movement between a few houses, as soldiers tried to creep around the fringes of the battle. It was time to grow invisible, he decided, and so he reached up above the trees and into the air that was full of sunlight, and he collected the energy he needed to hide himself while he walked towards his particular fate in the battle of Great Forks.
Chapter 29
Theus found that the battle was raging across a large swath of the city, as columns of soldiers from Southsand advanced along every street and alley and water ditch they could, while the collection of defenders fought heroically, but were often outnumbered, or found their flanks turned, and were caught in deadly attacks from multiple fronts.
There were loud booming sounds that came from some spot in the very near distance, and Theus suspected he was reaching the place where Donal was inflicted his unfair and evil abilities upon defenders of Great Forks.
And then he came upon a small open plaza, one that must have usually hosted a neighborhood market. It had become the center of the war between the armies of the two nations at the moment when Theus stealthily entered it.
He slipped through the open spaces between and behind combatants, not interfering in any particular struggle as he limped in a hurry to find Donal and to begin to wage his own personal war against the black magician.
Theus saw a fiery gout of flame suddenly fly across the battlefield, followed by screams of pain and terror. It had to be Donal, he was sure. Theus reached out to find more sunlight and to grasp a greater portion of the energy that was being released upon the world, just as he saw Donal for the first time.
The black magician stood upon some type of small platform that raised him above the line of soldiers in front of him, and from his vantage point he saw and attacked the forces that he judged were the greatest impediments to Southsand’s advancement.
A group of Great Forks fighters were maintaining their spot on the far side of the plaza battlefield, even though their fellows nearby had retreated; the brave, embattled salient was providing an unbreakable barrier that the black-clad soldiers of Southsand could not defeat or pass further by. The defenders were fighting with heroic abandon, swords and staves brutally defeating the waves of invaders who crashed against them.
“No!” Theus heard himself shout. He saw Donal studying the point of contact. And he saw that Coriae stood among the warriors in the confrontation, her staff flickering and pivoting with uncanny speed and accuracy to strike any opponent who came within her reach. There were no other obvious women fighting in the battle, but Coriae had discarded convention – as Theus knew she was bound to do – and had made a place for herself in the defense of her homeland, wearing inelegant and nondescript leathers as she blended in among the warriors around her.
Donal raised his hand to attack the valiant group of fighters. Theus was still too far away to strike Donal. But he could still make an effort to help.
He took a small step with white magic, a carefully-controlled fraction of a step forward, one that successfully placed him where he wanted to be, between the magician and Coriae. Even as he landed, Theus pivoted physically so that he faced Donal, while he also invoked a different spell and seized hold of great quantities of air in the sky overhead.
Theus pulled the air down in a massive blast of power, then deflected it off the pavement of the plaza. Stones cracked and buckled as they suffered the cyclonic force of the air hitting them, then bouncing away.
Theus released his stream of tornadic wind towards Donal. As a powerful flare of flame and heat left the magician’s hand, it flew into the barrier of air that Theus had created, and instantly changed direction, spiraling straight upwards in the twirling, swirling defense that Theus had erected.
The whole battlefield grew momentarily silent, stunned by the incredible sight of the bright flames twisting upward and dissipating into the atmosphere overhead, and further stunned by the fact that an attack delivered by the unstoppable magician had somehow been defeated.
“No! No!” Donal roared with an angry voice that was magnified by his grasp on energy.
“You will not foil me! I feel your presence, and I see your puny surprise!” the magician screamed with such emotion that it strained his voice.
“Theus! I know you’re here! I will destroy you,” Donal said. “You have grown too impudent with your childish strikes. I will punish you!”
Theus had the man’s attention. He could begin to lead the magician away from the battle; Theus could distract Donal just as he intended and needed to.
Theus released his invisibility spell, and he heard a scattering of gasps from members of the two armies, who remained momentarily frozen by the spectacle of the dramatic departure from the script of the battle.
“Theus!” he heard his own name shouted by Coriae, who stood in the army that was behind him, where he could not see, though he could be seen.
“Donal! Leave this city now! Run and sail and hide away, and take this army with you!” Theus shouted. He grasped his energy and took a small step to the side, traveling twenty feet in a split second, and making a few more voices murmur. He created a swarm of balls of bright light, and flung them at the magician as well for a visual effect, though he knew they could inflict no harm.
The voices behind him cheered at the sight, until Donal flicked his wrist and a wall of darkness absorbed the lights and disappeared.
“What childish games you play, little one,” Donal sneered. The black magician flicked his wrist again, and a stream of flame leapt toward Theus.
Theus wasn’t ready. He couldn’t invoke the spell to move another torrent of air quickly enough; all he could do was move to safety.
Theus took a microstep to the side again. He felt the heat of Donal’s attack strike the spot he departed from, and he saw the flames splatter away from the ground a moment later as Theus stood in a new spot.
“Anyone who stands in support of Donal’s evil will perish with him!” Theus threw his voice and spread the curse among the ears of the men closest to the magician, then he turned invisible and walked towards the Southsand front as quickly as he could limp. He swung his staff across the faces of three men, who fell instan
tly to the ground, and then Theus took another white magic step backwards into the plaza again.
The two fronts of armies were incrementally edging away from one another, Theus noted, and the men who had stood in front of Donal were now beside him or behind him, and moving away.
Theus let himself become visible again as he stood isolated and alone in the no man’s land between the armies. He grabbed his knife and he threw it at Donal. The magician lifted his hand and pushed it forward.
As soon as Donal acted, the knife reversed course unexpectedly, while taking on an evil red glow. Theus saw it flying back at him, aimed at his own chest. He leapt to the side, but not quickly enough, and he felt the knife strike his right shoulder, and embed itself there.
“Now what does the little boy playing with magic have to say?” Donal asked in a deadly voice.
There was a shouting from somewhere in the middle distance, the shouting of a new conflict breaking out. Perhaps the Greenfalls soldiers and their rescued allies were having an impact on the battle.
“I don’t know what you did or how, and I’ll give you credit for trying. But you should have come to me and asked to be my acolyte,” Donal told Theus. The magician raised his right hand and pointed it at Theus. “If you had, you’d have more than a few seconds of life left in you.”
More flame was coming, Theus knew with certainty. He felt the pain in his leg, and the pain in his shoulder from the two wounds he had suffered, but he knew he had to focus on Donal. He had to reach out and find energy, then use it effectively.
He directed his abilities up into the sky and gathered the sunlight, as much as he could in a split second; it would be the most that he had ever held. He began to mentally recite the spell to control the breeze again, but then his mind told him to use the spell to control light, and without realizing, he mentally recited both simultaneously.
He looked at Donal, and time seemed to slow down. Theus was on his knees, and Donal towered as he stood in front of the army that had fearfully crept behind him. The first gouts of flame began to fly away from Donal’s fingertips.
Theus took his muddled spell and infused it with the energy he had collected, as he held his good hand up. Limber’s golden cuff around his wrist grew suddenly warm, then glowed.
Gouts of flame emerged from his palm, and flew in the direction of Donal. The light he had called and the air he had called mixed and merged and reacted and became the same weapon that Donal used. It was a beam of burning, bright heat. It was a cold blue color, while Donal’s was tinted with a hot reddish hue.
The two beams struck in the air, the front of one striking the front of the other.
Theus saw and heard and felt the concussive explosion the contact of the two created, but he held his beam steady, and so did Donal.
Theus closed his eyes and bowed his head, then reached out even further afield to gather more energy from sunlight, and he pulled the energy in, feeling agony from the strain his soul felt in the ongoing effort to overachieve in the harvesting of the energy. He felt his own energy reserves begin to dwindle, as he realized he was contributing them to the battle with Donal as well. He was all in, leaving nothing behind. There would be no next round of the battle for him.
And then he heard screams and shouts and cheers from the soldiers in the plaza.
His eyes were closed, and he didn’t dare open them. He needed no distractions as he tried to feed his spell with more energy and power, so that he could counter Donal’s unbeatable assault.
The confrontation went on for five more seconds, then ten more, then twenty more. Theus could withstand the attack no longer. He was serving as the conduit for more energy than he had ever handled before, and it was wringing him bereft of ability to go on.
He tried to prepare himself to lean to the side as his power faltered, in the vain hope that Donal’s beam of deadly force would miss him when there were no more defenses.
And then there was a powerful scream. It was Donal’s scream. Theus’s eyes flew open.
He saw his own blue flames striking Donal’s hand. There was an explosion, one that shocked Theus as much as the sight of his overpowering Donal shocked him, and then made him falter. His blue ray of energy disappeared, but Donal’s own reddish ray disappeared too.
Instead, Donal held his right hand up, his left hand clenched around the wrist. The hand was on fire, burning brightly – in a light blue flame.
As Theus watched in stunned amazement, the flame on Donal’s hand sputtered out, revealing a blacked piece of flesh at the end of his arm, and then Donal passed out, crumpling to the ground. The soldiers around him cried out in horror at the loss of the magician who had made their victories possible.
And then Theus passed out, and toppled over onto the pavement.
Chapter 30
Theus woke up in a soft bed. The ceiling was dimly lit. He painfully turned his head on the soft pillow, and saw a small candle burning in a lantern on his bedside table.
Coriae sat in a chair beside the bed, her eyes closed, her chin resting on her chest.
She looked very tired, but very beautiful. Theus closed his eyes and opened them again, then stared at her, looking for anything that had changed. A few hairs appeared out of place, and she carried dark circles under her eyes, but she was still the mesmerizing beauty he remembered.
She seemed to sense his study, for her eyes fluttered, then opened.
“Theus, you’re awake!” she said softly. “What do you need? What can I get you?”
“I know!” she answered her own question with more energy, as she shook out her sleepy cobwebs. “I can make a healing ointment for your wounds. Tell me how to make it; we’ll have it for you immediately, unless it needs things more exotic than our kitchen holds.”
She made him aware of his wounds. He had seen her face, and thought of nothing else. But now he felt the pain of the wounds in his shoulder and his thigh. And he felt weariness in his soul, a great exhaustion.
“Let’s see,” he found that his memory was reacting on its own accord, beginning to examine what was needed to treat the pain and potential infection of the wounds while promoting healing. “I need,” he began, then stopped. His soul overrode his memory, and demanded to state its own concerns.
“What happened? Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re right in your own room, here at home, in my father’s mansion,” Coriae told him tenderly. She leaned forward, closing the narrow gap between them, and speaking in a voice that was soft, and intimate.
“And as for what happened, well, I can tell you some things, but not everything. The city is still in chaos, and no one is completely sure what all is happening. The governor fled as soon as the invasion began, and my daddy is taking control of the city for now, trying to give orders and reorganize the chaos,” she told him.
“But you are our hero! You won the war! You stopped the invasion! You beat their magician in your battle of great magic!” she gushed the compliments with genuine admiration evident in her voice.
“If I had known you could do such things, I would have treated you differently a time of two, let me admit,” there was a sparkle in her eye, and perhaps a humorous note of caution.
“Oh Theus,” she softly began in an intimate voice, then checked herself, and bit her lip.
“What happened to Donal, the magician?” Theus asked. He wanted to hear her intimate thoughts, but he also needed to know if Donal was alive or dead, a threat or only a memory.
“He fell when you did, you probably know that,” Coriae told him. “His soldiers grabbed his body, and pulled it into their ranks.
“That was right when the new forces were starting to attack their flank, and they were in a panic, trying to fight and readjust their lines and not having him able to help them. They pulled back to a defensive position, and are crouched down there in a bit of a stalemate. They raised a flag to parley,” she informed him.
“They asked to speak to you,” she told him.
I
f he had any color, he imagined he turned pale as he heard her words. If he was already pale, as he suspected he was, he undoubtedly grew paler. He had no desire to go face Donal in a parley. It would be an ambush, he was sure, and he would lose.
He could not grasp the energy needed to fight with white magic, he was sure. That was the pain he felt in his soul – pain or emptiness or vast overuse, and now inability. He could not grasp his energy, and he didn’t even want to try to. If he faced Donal, he would be defenseless.
“I’m not ready to parley,” he replied. “Not just yet,” he tried to hide his vulnerability from her. “Maybe later.”
“Of course, Theus!” she said with greater energy, and abundant sympathy. “We’re not going to drag you out of bed and throw you to them.”
“I do need to heal,” he told her. “Let me give you that remedy, and then we can talk. Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes, whatever you want Theus,” she spoke with a subservience that he knew was unnatural to her.
“Whatever I want?” he grinned as he gently mocked her by repeating her own words.
“Oh you!” she took the jibe. She lightly slapped his good shoulder. “You’re incredible; able to fight better than any man in the city, a mighty magician, I’m not sure what else, based on all the wild rumors, and still here able to tease me.”
“I need,” he closed his eyes, and recited the list of ingredients. She asked him to wait so that she could write it down, and minutes later she did, then gave the list to a servant, and finally returned to telling him what she knew had happened since he fell unconscious.
“We haven’t seen any sign of their magician, if he’s even still alive, and he certainly took worse from you than you took from him. Oh my goddess, the sight of him standing there with your fire burning his hand!” she exclaimed.
“Well, they are hunkered down, and they want to parley with you. I heard the officers reporting to my father; they said to tell you that Alamice and Montuse of Southsand wish to negotiate a withdrawal with you, and they trust you,” Coriae reported.
Unpredictable Fortunes (The Memory Stone Series Book 3) Page 28
