The Missing Mage

by Robyn Wideman

  Gathering knowledge as we go forth

  The path is forked, twisted and full of fear

  When darkest hour falls

  Follow the stars, for there illumination will light the way

  If only you let your eye adjust to the light

  When your sand begins to fall into the abyss and your time on the path has almost ended

  Fret not, look back on the path, cherish your choices, then look to the sky

  Become the star that guides the next

  To walk on the sands of time

  “Okay, sands of time is the hourglass right? What would the next one be?” asked Sharon.

  “Well I would guess book but, since there are only three tiles in front of the first one that we can reach, let’s step onto the first tile and find out what the next three glyphs are,” said Cyrnic.

  Quinton stepped out onto the first tile. Nothing happened, he smiled before looking down to read the next three tiles. “The moon, a sunrise, and a book,” said Quinton. “It is the book, right?”

  Cyrnic nodded. “That seems logical, and the next should be a forked path or something twisted.”

  Quinton stepped onto the book tile, and repeated the process. “Forked path, fire, moon. That is an easy one,” said Quinton as he stepped on the next tile.

  “The next line ‘darkest hour falls’ will likely be a blank tile, representing that it is too dark to see,” explained Cyrnic.

  Quinton examined the next three tiles. “Okay that works, but we have a problem.”

  Cyrnic frowned. “What is it?”

  “Two of the next three tiles are blank,” said Quinton. “They’re either supposed to be blank or are worn and so dusty that I can’t read them. I can make out the glyph from the next row of tiles, and I can see the tile with stars. But it is between the two blank ones. Either tile could be the correct one.”

  “Well that is problematic,” replied Cyrnic. “Pick the one that looks like it is supposed to be blank and then quickly move to the star tile. Maybe we will get lucky.”

  Quinton nodded, he couldn’t think of a better idea, so he swiftly stepped onto the left tile and then the star tile. Right away, the others followed.

  Nothing happened.

  Cyrnic smiled, “I believe we may have been lucky.”

  “I think you spoke too soon. Look at the walls,” she said, pointing.

  Coming out of the recessed spots between columns were skeletons. Some of the skeletons were armed with swords and others with axes.

  “This is an interesting turn of events. I had not expected reanimated corpses, I thought perhaps we would be roasted in fire or dropped into a spiked pit,” said Cyrnic.

  “It that supposed to be comforting?” asked Sharon.

  “Oh no, merely an observation. Now might I offer a suggestion?” replied Cyrnic.

  “Please do,” replied Quinton.

  “Don’t die,” said Cyrnic as a skeleton rushed to towards him. Cyrnic, having been healed by Ava, was now fully capable of using his magic. As the skeleton came within striking distance, Cyrnic thrust his hand out towards it. A giant flaming hand appeared and grabbed the skeleton. The hand squeezed the skeleton until it burst into flames and the ashes fluttered to the ground.

  Sharon was almost decapitated as she watched Cyrnic’s magical display. An ax-wielding skeleton had come up behind her and took a swing.

  Quinton, while fighting off a skeleton noticed the sneak attack and called out to her. “Sharon, duck!”

  Sharon dropped at Quinton’s warning. The ax missed her head by mere fractions of an inch. Sharon struck out with her new sword, hitting the skeleton in the leg. To her surprise the skeleton froze. The sword was magical, and had instantly covered the skeleton in a sheath of frost and ice. Sharon took another swing at the skeleton this time striking it in the torso. The ice and the skeleton inside shattered into thousands of pieces.

  Between Cyrnic’s flaming hand and Sharon’s new magical sword, they made short work of the skeletons. Ash and ice soon covered the floor.

  Quinton looked around the room. No more skeletons appeared. “Okay let’s get going before more skeletons show up.”

  …

  As they continued down the corridor, a movement caught their attention. There, half way up the wall, were Nathan and Ava. They were coming out of a hole in the wall. Seeing the others, Ava jumped down to the floor and joined them.

  As Nathan exited the hole, he paused and looked back. He could see the shadow of a spider following them. Nathan was just about to draw his bow when inspiration hit him. Putting his hand against the inside of the tunnel, Nathan closed his eyes and concentrated on the rock and dirt. He imagined the tunnel collapsing before the spider. With a small rumbling sound, dirt and then rocks started to fall from the roof of the small tunnel. Moments later, the tunnel was completely blocked. Nathan smiled to himself. Not bad, he thought, not bad at all.

  Jumping down from the small ledge, Nathan joined the others.

  “Where were you?” asked Quinton.

  Ava shook her head. “You don’t even want to know. Have you found anything yet?” she asked.

  “Cyrnic thinks it’s behind those bronze doors. Come on let’s find out,” replied Quinton.

  “What is with all the ash and ice on the floor?” asked Nathan.

  “Oh, just reanimated, sword-carrying skeletons that tried to kill us, nothing serious,” replied Sharon.

  “You think that is bad? I had a spider the size of a small horse try eat me,” said Ava.

  Sharon shuddered. “Oh gods, I’ll take skeletons any day. Check out this sword I found, it is awesome. It turned the skeletons to ice!”

  Cyrnic inspected the sword as the group moved closer to the large bronze doors. “An excellent find, already it has proven very useful,” said Cyrnic.

  The bronze doors were large, very large. Nathan grabbed one of the doors handle while Quinton grabbed the other. Nathan looked over at Quinton. “Ready?”

  Quinton nodded, “Ready.”

  The boys pulled hard on the handles. The massive bronze doors slowly opened.

  Chapter twenty eight

  BEHIND THE DOORS WAS the largest room they had found so far. It was in stark contrast to the rest of the underground building. A high ceiling soared 40 feet above them with small openings in the stonework that let natural sunlight shine into the room. Instead of a stone floor, this room had black and white marble. Four matching white marble columns with gold flowers running up the sides were in the middle of the room. Between the four columns was a dais. On the dais sat three large leather-bound books. They had found the tomes.

  On either side of the room were two large stone statues. The statues stood ten feet tall and looked like rough-hewn men. It was if someone had started carving out a man but never got to the fine details. The statues and the dais in the center of the room were the only things of note in the elegantly-built room.

  “There they are!” exclaimed Cyrnic in excitement. “The lost tomes of the Red Order.”

  “Come on, let’s get them and get out of here before any more weird things attack us,” said Sharon.

  Carefully the group approached the dais. As they got halfway across the room the two statues suddenly sprung off the walls and started running towards them.

  “Damn the seven hells! Me and my big mouth,” said Sharon as the stone statues came closer.

  “Stone golems!” yelled Crynic.

  Nathan could feel the magical energy emanating from the two large golems. These magical creations would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to defeat. “Cyrnic, grab the tomes while we distract the stone golems. Hurry, we won’t be able to hold them off long,” yelled Nathan as he quickly moved to his left. “Quinton, Sharon make the one the right go close to the wall.”

  Quinton could see Nathan’s plan, he gulped and hoped it would work long enough for Cyrnic to grab the tomes. Grabbing Sharon’s arm he sprinted to his right. As hoped, the stone golem came clo
ser to the wall, leaving a gap up the middle of the room for Cyrnic.

  While the four youths battled the golems, Cyrnic ran up to the dais. The tomes, at long last, he thought to himself. Cyrnic grabbed the tomes and put them in his satchel. Turning towards the others he lifted the satchel in triumph. “I have them,” he yelled.

  A searing pain struck Cyrnic in the back and then the front of his chest. Looking down, Cyrnic could see the wicked tip of a sword protruding from his chest. Someone had snuck up and stabbed him in the back. With a turn of his head, Cyrnic could see the maniacal grin of a Darcarion mage.

  Before the Darcarion could strike again, Cyrnic yelled to Sharon, the closest of the four youths. “Sharon!” As Sharon turned, Cyrnic threw the satchel towards her. The Darcarion mage tried to lunge at Cyrnic’s arm to prevent him from throwing the satchel but he was too late. With the remains of his energy, Cyrnic stood up tall, looked the frustrated Darcarion in the eyes, and said, “Not today.” Cyrnic’s magical flaming hand appeared and grabbed both Cyrnic and the Darcarion squeezing them together. With his last breath Cyrnic whispered to the dying Darcarion. “This is for messing up my house.” The flaming hand enveloped them both.

  Sharon, hearing her name, turned in time to see Cyrnic throw the satchel towards her. Grabbing it out of the air, she looked to Cyrnic, watching in horror as he used the flaming hand to finish off himself and the Darcarion mage. She screamed out at the sight, “No!”

  Ducking a swing of the powerful yet ponderous golem, Quinton looked up at the sound of Sharon’s scream. He watched as Cyrnic and the Darcarion were engulfed in flames. Through a small corridor on the opposite side of the room, he could see a horde of Darcarion mages, and Morthon soldiers accompanied by devil rats pour into the room. “Nathan, Ava we have to go. Now.” Quinton slipped past the golem and grabbed Sharon’s arm and pulled her back towards the bronze doors.

  Nathan and Ava were ducking and weaving, keeping the stone golem at bay while they waited for Cyrnic to retrieve the tomes. When Cyrnic yelled to Sharon, they both saw what happened. They quickly followed Quinton and Sharon to the doors. The two large golems were close behind, with the Darcarions and Morthon soldiers also closing in.

  As Quinton reached the doors, he pulled one shut. He then grabbed the other door, pulling it until it was almost closed, leaving just enough room for Nathan and Ava to slide through. As they ran through the door he pulled it shut.

  As soon as he was through the doors, Nathan turned, putting his sword between the two handles, temporarily locking them.

  A large crash shook the doors as one of the stone golems crashed into them, but the doors held. Then a scream rang out. The golems had finally notice the Darcarions.

  “Hurry, lets get out of here before they can get past the golems,” said Nathan as he started running.”

  “What about your sword?” asked Sharon as they ran.

  “Are you kidding me? I can always forge a new sword. No way am I pulling that sword out of those doors,” said Nathan.

  While the trek into the Red Order’s lair had been slow and methodical, their retreat out was anything but. As fast as they could, they sprinted back out of the building. Mere minutes later they burst back outside into the jungle.

  “Keep moving,” insisted Quinton. “There are Morthon soldiers with the Darcarions now, and they have devil rats.”

  “Devil rats?” asked Sharon.

  “Rats the size of dogs. They are like bloodhounds, only nastier and dirtier. Vicious and hard to train, but can track down a scent as good as any hound. They will be following us very soon.”

  “Giant spiders, skeletons, and now oversized rats, I am really starting to hate the jungle,” said Sharon before she started to cry. “Poor Cyrnic! Damn those Darcarion bastards.”

  Quinton stopped for a second to give her a hug. “Come on, love, we need to go. We can deal with those damn Darcarions later, first we need to get these tomes safely back to Balta.”

  Sharon nodded, and took a deep breath. She was ready to go. Her small emotional outburst had released some of her angst, and now she was once again calm, cool, and collect, ready for what was to come.

  Quinton turned to Nathan. “Any ideas?”

  “I think I have a plan,” Nathan replied. “First we run as far as we can, as fast as we can. Get as far away from here as possible before the Darcarion can back track from where ever they enter the order’s lair.”

  With that, the group ran back through the jungle, using the pathway they had made on their way to the Red Order’s lair. When they finally could run no more, they stopped for a quick break.

  “How far did we get?” asked Ava as she gasped for breath, exhausted by the hard run through the hot, muggy jungle.

  “A couple miles, we are about a mile south of Cyrnic’s cabin now,” replied Nathan.

  “Are we heading there?” asked Quinton.

  Nathan shook his head. “No, the Darcarions would easily track us there. I just wanted us as close to the forest as possible. Now we are going to head east instead of north.”

  “But that takes us farther away from Balta,” protested Sharon.

  “Only a little ways,” said Quinton. “It makes sense to try and lose the Darcarions. If we stay on the path, they don’t even have to try hard to track us. At least going through more jungle will slow them down more than us. They will need to use the devil rats if we go slow enough to make our back-trail difficult to read.”

  “We’re not going slow either, we will go slower now, conserve our energy, but maintain a quick pace. They won’t be able to move any faster than us, and so as long as we keep moving, we can stay ahead. It is going to be a race from here to Balta. As long as the Darcarions and Morthon soldiers don’t have more warriors between us and Balta we can make it.”

  “What are the odds of that?” asked Sharon.

  “Oh, probably one in a million, give or take a Darcarion or two,” replied Nathan. He didn’t want to give the others false hope. They were in trouble, and getting back to Balta was going to be a very difficult task.

  “Sweet turnip turds, those are not the kind of odds I want to hear. How about you come up with a sneaky little plan to get us out of here, and quick!” begged Sharon. The trauma was wearing her patience razor thin.

  “Just keep moving, for now…” replied Nathan, before starting to jog into the jungle once more.

  …

  It was almost midnight when they stopped again. They had made it out of the jungle and into the forest without incident, but they could hear the screeching calls of the devil rats. The enemy was still following them, no more than a mile or two behind them.

  As they sat and rested for a while, Quinton asked Nathan what the rest of the plan was.

  Nathan took a small stick and made a crude map. “Here is Balta, we are here, over to the west is Cyrnic’s cabin. Those damn devil rats are probably about here right now.” Nathan made a small x only a little ways behind the marker for their location. “We are almost exhausted. We can’t run all the way to Balta without getting some rest. So we need a place to hide.”

  “I agree, but where?” asked Quinton.

  “Right here,” said Nathan, drawing a small x a short ways off to the northeast. “When Verin first started showing us around the forest, he took us to a small waterfall. The waterfall had a cave behind it. We will hide out for a couple hours in the cave. Get some rest and then make a break for Balta.”

  Quinton could see what Nathan was thinking. “Use the water to throw off the devil rats.”

  Nathan nodded. “We will go down stream from the waterfall, cross over and then make tracks like we back-tracked. Then we will walk up the stream to the falls. A good tracker will be able to see where we walked in the water, but they will need daylight for that. It should buy us a couple hours sleep.”

  Nathan stood up. “Let’s get going. The sooner we get to the waterfall, the sooner we can have a real rest.”

  When they finally made it to the wate
rfalls, they were beat. After crossing the ravine several times, slashing through the stream to confuse their tracks, the group trekked through the water to the small pond at the bottom of the waterfall. They swam through water and dove under the falls, coming out in the small cave.

  “I could sleep forever,” groaned Sharon as she collapsed on the hard rocks.

  “Sorry my love, you only get a couple hours,” said Quinton as he cuddled up with her.

  “Well, fine. But, when I get back to Balta… I am taking a hot bath, and falling asleep forever. Well, at least a day.”

  Nathan and Ava huddled together on the opposite side of the cave, Ava rested her head against Nathan’s chest.

  “Are we going to make it?” Ava asked Nathan.

  “Absolutely,” replied Nathan.

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Ava. “Those devil rats looked hideous and there were so many Darcarion mages and Morthon soldiers. Who knows how many more they have looking for us right now.”

  “Because I have the most wonderful ingenious plan ever,” replied Nathan as he held Ava tight.

  “Oh really? Care to share that plan?” she replied.

  “Sleep first, when you wake, I will tell you…”

  Chapter twenty nine

  “That is the stupidest plan ever!” said Ava.

  Nathan shook his head. “Maybe, but it is the plan and you promised to follow it.”

  “You tricked me,” Ava said hotly. “You made me promise to agree with it, knowing I would hate it.”

  The loud argument between Nathan and Ava woke Quinton and Sharon.

  “What’s going on guys?” asked Quinton.

  “What is going on, is my stupid boyfriend-” Ava paused to punch Nathan in the arm. “He is making you and me go to Balta while he and Sharon stay behind!”

  “What?” exclaimed Sharon. “Why?” Sharon sleepily rubbed her eyes, trying to make sense of Nathan’s logic.

  Quinton groaned, thinking he should have guessed Nathan would split their group to protect the tomes. He instantly knew what Nathan was planning. “Because of Thorn. Nathan called Thorn. Thorn can only carry two people. I know the woods better than any of you and Nathan can communicate with Ava through magic if something goes wrong. Is Thorn almost here?” asked Quinton.