“Well, I thank you for your contribution to our tournament, falcon. You have been full of surprises this week. We all wish that you could finish the competition in a duel, but we also knew that such a grueling competition would have its share of casualties.
“When wizards duel a worthy opponent, they often over do it and we’ve had our share of men and women needing treatment for exhaustion during this tournament so you are not alone here.”
The wizard stood to shake his hand. “It has been a pleasure watching you at work, Sebastian Trillon. Perhaps the king will do this again and you can return to show us the new magical skills you have learned by then.”
As Sebastian turned to leave, the wizard spoke up once more, “You know your name was on everyone’s lips before you even arrived. A battle mage that can duel wizards. That is a feat in and of itself. A battle mage that can learn spells during a duel and turn them on their creators, now that feat will certainly be on everyone’s mind for years to come, even if you weren’t able to finish the tournament.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sebastian smiled at the man before leaving the office.
On the way back to the inn, Yara clung to his arm as she leaned against his shoulder. “Thank you,” the girl said quietly.
Sebastian knew what she meant, but he could only answer, “There’s no need to thank me for this. If I can’t listen to those around me, people like you who I asked to come along for your expertise as much as wanting you beside me, then what kind of owl would I be? An owl is supposed to be wise and I wouldn’t be showing much wisdom if I pushed through the warnings of you and Darius, who warned me this would happen even before that duel besides.
“Like you said, I really have nothing more to prove. With time to rest, I could beat any of those left and I already let Southwall know that a battle mage is as good as any wizard even at their own game.” He sighed, “It would have been nice to win, but this is for the best.”
Feeling her nod against him, Sebastian felt only a little bit of disappointment in his decision. He couldn’t put Yara through another possible life ending duel, especially when it was just a simple game. Bragging rights were hardly the best reason to risk one’s life.
The fires had been extinguished completely as the army of Southwall waited for the enemy to show themselves once more. To their surprise, a single opponent walked ahead of five of the warlock wraiths. He towered over the creatures and his power dwarfed theirs as well.
“Garosh,” Rilena breathed in fear. The leaders all glanced to the woman that even in the darkness could be noted as turning white with fright.
The giant had no horse but would have easily stared her in the eye were he close. Showing no fear for the army lined up against him, Garosh calmly walked through the burned ground to a place within easy speaking distance. He looked at the leaders and spied those he knew from before causing the women to shrink away, even Druick looked a bit disturbed by the mighty giant.
Smiling grimly, Garosh spoke in a near shout to breach the space between them, but his voice held strength like he was hardly pushing to be heard. “Southwall, I have come to sue for peace.”
His words set Rilena’s jaw dropping. “You tortured us! How could you think to bring words of peace now?”
The giant smiled coldly and looked at the woman on her horse. She shrank before his gaze, but he answered evenly, “If you had found my people sneaking around your castle, would you not have done the same to make sure that your people are safe? Don’t tell me that there is a double standard just because you are human.”
Falconi Ralto glared at the falcon and addressed the giant, “Why do you sue for peace, giant? Now that we have come, now you wish to beg for peace from us? Why shouldn’t we just push forward and destroy you?”
Cold, derisive laughter met the threat before Garosh replied, “You don’t have enough to destroy my forces. Your wizards are too few, your numbers insignificant. I could call down my army and wipe you from the face of my mountain, if I wished.
“You see how easily we can defeat your fire wizards. If you still don’t believe have them attack me with their flames and see what their power is compared to mine.”
Taunted into the act, a wizard couldn’t resist and threw a fireball at the giant. The leaders watched as it was swept aside by a dark shield as if it was nothing to the man. Delfar and the other wizards turned to admonish the fire wizard, but the fireball was followed by three more from other wizards determined that they could break through his defense.
All the flames met the darkness only to be absorbed by the night. Not only had the giant proved his words, the wizards of Southwall had begun to lose hope. What kind of sorcery could simply eat their spells?
“As you can see, my power is stronger than yours, my magic better and this is what I say to you. Peace. I will even go as a prisoner, if it will end this fighting.
“We can continue this battle, but both sides would lose many before we finally crushed you. There is no point to losing so many good soldiers. We have not come to continue the emperor’s wars. He has grown old and weak after more than a millennia and now his hold weakens over those he held for so long. Factions have begun to split off from him looking for lands where they can live in peace. There are men in Staron and other lands to the east that have left the Dark One, now it is time for me and my people to leave him as well.”
“Why here?” Falconi Ralto demanded. “If so many have fled east, then why come into our lands? You knew that we would fight you, if you came here.”
Spreading his hands in a gesture that implied that he hid nothing, Garosh replied, “What safer place to flee from the emperor than behind the wall that has held him back for centuries? You hide here and fight back to keep him in the north. We can help if that is what you want or we would be fine with building our home quietly in the mountains.
“What say you? Do you wish peace or should I call down my army to destroy you?”
Ralto glanced at the other leaders before asking one last question. “And you would be our prisoner? Are you truly their leader?”
As the giant’s power seemed to increase forcing his presence on any who could feel magic, Garosh stated grimly, “Power rules north of the wall and mine is the greatest of those that have come to make a new life here. If you take me, then my people will wait for my return and do nothing to risk my life.”
“We accept your offer. We will have peace and you will come with us to Windmeer to speak with our leaders. Perhaps there can be peace between us, but we will let them decide if they believe your words.”
A rumble of voices questioning the decision raced through the ranks of Southwall, but Rilena knew that she was glad. She could sense the enemy’s army behind him and hemming them in from each side. Even without her extra senses, they were no longer masking their wizards and she could tell that they outnumbered their own. Garosh wasn’t lying. If they had pushed to fight, Rilena doubted that they would have survived the hour.
A horse was brought forward as the giant turned to wave off his bodyguards. Chains to bind his wrists were brought out as well. A wizard without his ability to gesture was much safer and believable as their prisoner, but even so Rilena sensed that the strong iron would not hold him if the giant didn’t wish to go.
When the army of Southwall turned back from the mountain and the enemy slipped away to their fortress, only then did Rilena feel the least bit safer. Garosh was still with them. Her fear of the giant would linger all the way back to Windmeer and beyond. The woman wished that she could return to Falcon’s Keep and put more distance between her and the man that had tortured her so recently. He could bring peace, but she still felt that he was evil.
She only hoped that Ralto and the others hadn’t fallen into some new trap.
The last day of the tournament started off as a let down to those who hoped to see Magnus fighting the mage that had come so far in the wizard’s duels. As disappointed as the crowd was, the fire wizard seemed even more so. He had hop
ed to have a rematch with Sebastian in Winter’s Edge, but it wasn’t to be.
After announcing Magnus’s defaulted win, Annalicia and the earth wizard from Tolmona fought a grueling duel in the Royal Gardens. Sebastian sat beside Darius as the High Wizard watched his granddaughter battle. Once again, he witnessed the dancer quality to the Malaiy wizard’s magic and found it very interesting to see. Her ability was amazing despite the extra energy that the woman must use during a duel just from the full body casting and the Tolmonan wizard soon began to lose ground to her superior skill.
Sebastian was glad for Darius when Annalicia managed to defeat the earth wizard. The Tolmonan had not only put up a good fight but several times the wizard had nearly turned the match to a victory, but still the young woman persevered and won. With the silver haired beauty’s win, the final match was set.
With the final being in the afternoon to give the woman a chance to rest, the remainder of the morning would be made up of grudge matches including one for Magnus to even the playing field. The fire wizard dueled an air wizard from his third round, four way, match who had come in second. It would not affect the outcome for the finals, but after the heated duel was over, the fire wizard would no longer have the advantage of having a pass for his morning match.
Meeting with the wizard, who thought of him as a rival, Magnus was the first to speak and it wasn’t a true greeting as he went straight to the heart of the matter, “I can’t believe that you forfeited our match. After the duel in White Hall, I was really hoping to redeem myself and beat you for once.”
“It wasn’t really my choice,” the mage replied without heat. Loving to compete and win, Sebastian had been looking forward to battling the fire wizard again. “My healer and other experts were pretty adamant about me needing to withdraw. I was used up to the point that I couldn’t have really given you the kind of match you would really want anyway.”
“So in other words, Yara, made you quit,” the smug, sarcastic look on the man’s face implied that letting Yara control him was somehow demeaning. “She tells you what to do and when she’s afraid for you, she made you give up,” he finished with a sad shake of his head.
“Hardly. Hers was not the only opinion that I listened to and truthfully I can still feel the hollowness of having used too much power. If I had let my pride carry me through, we would have had that match and I would have lost. Either I would have passed out or died trying, but then I realized that this is still just a game. For all the bragging rights and the want to win, that isn’t really a very good reason to risk dying over and besides we can always have that rematch sometime.”
Sighing Magnus acquiesced with a nod. “I suppose if I couldn’t have your all, then it would have been as meaningless as taking this forfeit. This is still a matter between you and me. Whether it is a grand, public spectacle or something smaller in a match between us, the winning will be just as sweet.
“I am disappointed that you couldn’t have seen the new things that I have learned over the past several months though, but I guess an injury or overuse of strength is just something that can happen.”
Shrugging, the mage replied with a smile, “I have learned new things as well, but the next time we duel, I am sure that we will have learned even more spells and refined our skills.”
As he took a bite out of a wedge of cheese, Magnus eyes narrowed conspiratorially as he changed subjects and asked, “So what can you tell me of this wind witch that I will be facing in the finals? You’ve seen her fight. Do you think I can win?”
“If you have watched her fight, then you know about as much as I do about her skill. Annalicia uses a full body dance style to cast. If you can slow her down or even immobilize her that would probably give you the best chance. However, even if you can, I have a feeling that much of that is for show, so she could suddenly cast in a more minimal way.” The mage answered his first question and continued on to the second saying, “As to being able to win, anyone can win in a duel. It is just pure determination that will decide who will be champion. If you duel her the way you dueled me at White Hall though, you will probably lose.”
The wizard frowned at the assessment. “And how can I change that? Magic is magic and what I know is all I have.”
Wanting to give a sigh of his own as the mage knew that his answer was not the one Magnus wanted and would probably go unheeded, Sebastian replied, “It’s not what you know, but how you use what you have.”
“Great now you sound like some fortune teller,” Magnus answered throwing his hands in the air in frustration.
He shrugged, “If you only use fire, Annalicia will most likely win. She has defeated a fire user more than once already. You need to think beyond your basic spells and find a way to disrupt her. She will try to use her wind spells to weaken or negate any fire you use. If you use the speed of a battle mage and some of those spells to change it up, it is still possible that you might win.”
Shaking his head in a disappointed way, the wizard added, “You don’t sound very confident in me.”
“It isn’t you, but the way Annalicia fights that worries me for your match, Magnus.”
The two men stood in silence a moment as both sought words for the questions already raised, but Sebastian was left with little advice that he could give. He knew too little of Magnus’s magic spells to give him a true plan. What had been used in their previous duel and the basic magic that had been thrown around during the wizard’s apprentice days only gave him a partial idea. As to Annalicia’s abilities, the mage had even less true knowledge. Seeing a duel or two rarely gave insight into a wizard’s playbook.
“Well, I guess that I will have to do what I have done to get here. Maybe in the middle of the duel I can adapt like you mizard. I’ll do my best to keep the win within Southwall’s borders,” the silver eyed, blond haired wizard decided as he took a last sandwich and turned to leave. “Later, then Bas.”
Chapter 36- Eye of the Hurricane
The crowd cheered as the final two wizards took their places for the final match. With the Heights being chosen as the final venue, the surrounding walls and castle heights became filled with screaming fans. Magnus had a large following as the last defending wizard from Southwall, but Annalicia’s beauty and different casting style had many followers cheering for the woman from Malaiy as well.
The air erupted with powerful wind and fire spells as the two began their duel.
Defenses were tested on both sides quickly. Gusts of wind and spears hammered firewalls and mage shields, while Magnus came back with an impressive array of fire spells. As Sebastian had predicted, however, the wind wizard was able to tame his initial barrage of fireballs and streams easily with her defensive whirling wind defense, but the mage sensed that it was a simple feint by the fire wizard.
Annalicia smiled at the ineffectiveness of the fire attacks, and retaliated with a dragon that was drawn out a bucket of water from behind her using a combination wind and water spell. Appearing much like a creature of water, the wind forming the dragon assaulted Magnus full force, but the man was ready. Mage shields cut the magic near the source. Depleted of the water and magic driving the wind, the dragon disintegrated spraying the fire shields with a mere drizzle.
“Mage cylinder,” the fire wizard commanded an unknown spell. Sebastian watched in surprise as a dozen blue tubes appeared around the circle of the wind wizard.
Annalicia had no idea of what to do or what the purpose of the blue cylinders would be. That curiosity nearly cost the wizard as she could not decide how to deal with the constructs or if she needed to deal with them, though their appearance implied danger. Before the silver haired beauty could decide, the large tubes drove themselves into the defensive wind wall. With the winds swirling around them, the tubes began to spin with the vortex.
Giggling at the sight, Annalicia looked at the maneuver as a colossal blunder on the fire wizard’s part.
“Fire wall,” an immense wall of fire sprung up outside of the wind w
all. Sebastian knew that it was a more impressive show of power than he could ever have hoped to accomplish without help from Bairh’loore. The crowd gasped at the speed and scope of the wizard’s newest spell. No other wizard had ever accomplished so much and only the battle mage had demonstrated any spells close to this, but as they watched the firewall seemed to be growing thinner.
Realizing that the wind wall must have been siphoning away the fire’s strength, Sebastian also realized that this was Magnus’s plan. At first the fire thinned slightly, but the flow gathered momentum and it was at the fire wizard’s desire when the fire seemed to implode inward driving towards the vortex within.
“Firewall,” the fire wizard caused another circle of flames to appear almost exactly where the first had just been. With the rapid flow from the first wall, the second joined the rush and a third wall appeared as the second thinned in the rush.
Over the roar of wind and flame, Sebastian thought that he heard a scream.
Using the command ‘Battle Cry’, the mage cried out, “Stop the match!” Running from the stands, Sebastian wished that he had Bairh’loore to command. He feared for the girl inside the flaming vortex and understood what Magnus had been about with his firewalls and the cylinders before them. With the strength of the wind to pull the mass of fire, the cylinders had channeled the flame inside the defense. If they didn’t stop the duel immediately, he feared that Annalicia would wind up roasted even with the protection of the wizards around her.
Magnus looked over to see the mage running before returning his eyes on the devastating magic that he had wrought. He wasn’t sure that he could stop the process even if he had tried. Reaching for the flame, the fire wizard tried to shut it down, but it had gained a life of its own within the winds of the other wizard.
Shutting down the cylinders was the best that he could hope to do, but the vortex continued to rage and everyone could see that the fires had intensified inside. The vortex wasn’t moving to strike out at Magnus as it had in other matches and remained within the circle. Sebastian thought that he could see a figure on the ground even through the fire.
Battle Mage: Winter's Edge Page 48
