by CM Raymond
Ezekiel leaned on his staff. “Yes, it does go both ways. But remember, you are the magician, not him. Now, about that staff.” Ezekiel’s eyes cut to the trees, and Hannah could tell he was looking for the perfect limb.
“Hey, Zeke, any chance I can have a wand instead?”
“A wand?”
“Yeah, you know, nothing screams ‘old man’ more than leaning on a staff. A wand is, well, kind of sexy. And if it is about focusing…”
Looking at his own staff, Ezekiel said, “I’ve had this since I was not much older than you.”
“Let’s not get all self-conscious about this, Z. No offense, really. I mean, I never expected you to have been very fashionable, but…”
Ezekiel held up his hand to stop Hannah before she had a chance to say anything else more offensive. “We can discuss that at another time. In fact, the druids will have better luck than you and me at creating a tool for you to connect to the natural world. Let’s wait until we speak with them.”
“I guess that’s on the to-do list, right after blow shit up.” She gave Ezekiel a winning grin. “Now, where the hell have you been?”
The old man’s face darkened a little bit. Hannah could tell that something was bothering him. “Well do you want the truth, or do you want the TRUTH.”
She laughed at him. “What the hell kind of wizard nonsense is that?”
“Trust me, young girl. You’ll be speaking my brand of nonsense soon enough. But to answer your question, I’ve been traveling throughout Irth… and I’ve been sitting alone at the top of the tower. I’ve been everywhere without budging an inch.”
Hannah paused for a second and squinted her eyes. It was a riddle and she was determined to solve it. Finally, the answer clicked and she yelled with glee. “You’ve been astro-whatevering. Traveling with your mind!”
Ezekiel nodded, proud once again of his young protégé. “Top notch.”
“But where did you go?” she asked. His face turned cold again.
“Might want to sit for this one.”
The two sat in the grass, taking in the sunshine, as Ezekiel told his story.
“While you’ve been training these last weeks, I have been quite active, mentally. At first, I spent my energy walking the streets of Arcadia, but this time from the safety of the tower. I’ve been gone from my city for nearly half a century after all. And when I went there physically, well you stumbled across my path within the first hour, flashing rude gestures at large angry men.”
Hannah nodded. She remembered it well.
“Naturally,” Ezekiel continued, “I needed to get you away from the city. But once I had, I decided to return. That is the battleground after all, and I mean to be prepared. So, I observed and assessed and planned. But preparing for battle means more than just knowing the arena. You need to know your enemy as well.”
“Adrien,” Hannah said between gritted teeth.
The man’s name rang in her ears. While many in Arcadia elevated him to nearly god status, the third person with the Matriarch and Patriarch, many, including Hannah, despised the man.
The people of Queen’s Boulevard were pretty easily split. Half were enamored by the rhetoric of the Academy and the Capitol, dreaming of one day working hard enough to make it out of the Boulevard and up onto the hill. The other half realized that those in charge were working for their own ends, not for the common good.
Hannah and William were lucky. Wisdom was the foremost of her mother’s abilities, and she passed it along to her children from their earliest days. Highlights of the story, as told by her, remained etched in Hannah’s mind, and no matter how much her drunk father went on about the virtues of the authorities, he couldn’t sway what she had already learned.
“Tell me about Adrien. I want to know what happened. How he became like he is.”
The old man nodded. “Interesting question. I also want to know the answer to your query. I cannot say exactly what went on with my student since I left Arcadia, though I have gotten some information. But I will tell you what I know. As the Age of Madness was coming to a close, a small band of us had been working together to not only survive but also to pursue the cure.
“The days were exciting and we were filled with hope. Hard not to have hope in the darkest of days. It was almost all we had. There was a group of about five of us who started to think seriously about the founding of a new city. Of Arcadia.
“One night, I remember it was winter as we were huddled by a stove in a makeshift shelter. A boy about your brother’s age came stumbling through the door. His hands and face were riddled with frostbite, and he looked like he hadn’t eaten for a month. We did the best we could to nurse him back to health.
“The boy told us about the loss of his parents to some of the mad ones, the zombies as you call them. He’d been making it on his own for a long time and had no plan to do otherwise. Trust was not one of his vices, and we couldn’t blame him. He had seen the worst come out in people, and it was only by the necessity of winter that the boy named Adrien agreed to join us.
“Over the course of a few weeks, not only did he come to trust us, but I started to see that the boy had abilities beyond what even he knew. It wasn’t unlike what I saw in you. So, I offered to train him if he would agree to stay and help to build our dream. We were quite a pair. He was naturally gifted; I was naturally stubborn. Many I have taught believe I was born special. I wasn’t. I just work without ceasing and have always doggedly pursued that which I put my mind to. Magic was no different.”
“As people started to gather to our burgeoning town, Adrien’s gifts advanced quickly. He took lead on magical construction, helping others understand how the gift of physical magic could be used for the sake of actually constructing the city itself. It was an amazing sight to see.
“While he led that way, I worked with the refugees pouring in, helping many of them to hone the power that was within them and focus it on different aspects of the place we were building. There was nothing like magitech in those days, but I expect that even then Adrien may have been imagining what he could do if he could apply magic to inanimate objects. It’s clever, really. Nothing I would have ever thought of.”
“Yeah,” Hannah interjected. “Magitech is a hell of a thing, really. They’re applying it to all sorts of stuff. Problem is, no one on my side of town can afford it.”
The old man nodded. “That is indeed bad. But I fear that something worse is coming. Adrien has plans for the magitech, something bigger and more dangerous than anything we can imagine.”
“How do you know?”
Ezekiel smiled out of the corner of his lips. “Like I said, know thy enemy. I confronted my old protégé.”
As Ezekiel explained his confrontation with Adrien, how he tricked him into revealing part of his plan and then attacking nothing but Ezekiel’s shadow, Hannah went from surprised to downright impressed.
The old man was full of tricks.
“I don’t know what,” the old man continued, “and I don’t know when. But Arcadia is going to need us. Irth is going to need us. So, I spent the last couple of days locked in my room, searching for answers outside of the city. In the deepest corners of Irth.”
“Well? Did you find any?”
Ezekiel sighed. “Yes, but not the ones I wanted. I have been searching for an old friend, someone who can help us, help you. But I can’t find them.”
The two sat for a while by the Wren, each in their own thoughts. Hannah marveled at the man’s stories, realizing that if she stuck with him, her life would never be the same.
The opportunity she had been given by the magician was literally beyond her wildest dreams, but also her wildest nightmares.
She wondered if it was worth it, worth giving up her old life—not that there was much to discard. But she missed her brother and Parker like crazy and decided she would find a way to see them sometime soon. Maybe Zeke would teach her that astral projection trick.
“How did you end up doing it,
Hannah?”
“Doing what?” she asked. She was hardly listening and was afraid she’d missed something he said.
“Sal’s wings. Have you thought more about it? I’ve never seen anything like it before. If we’re going to have a fighting chance against Adrien and his forces, we’re going to need every unfair advantage we can muster. Right now, you’re all we’ve got.”
Hannah laughed. “Better call in some reinforcements, cause I’ve got no freaking clue what I did to Sal—in the marketplace or out here. It just happened. I tried the physical magic approach, which didn’t work. Then I did the navel gazing thing. Nothing.”
“What was it, then?”
“It was you. You kept bitching and badgering me. I was frustrated, even angry. Felt like I was going to explode, and then, I just kind of did. It just happened.”
Ezekiel stroked his beard and sighed. “Well, we know it has something to do with emotion, which is no surprise; all magic is connected to our emotional states. But the catalyst we still don’t understand.”
Hannah picked up a rock and looked at it, turning it over in her hands, “If it is what we need to take down those bastards ruling over Arcadia, I’ll figure it out. I promise.”
She tossed the rock out into the river Wren.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You’ve been sitting there for an hour and haven’t said a damned thing. Can you really not hear me when you’re out starwalking or whatever?” Hannah paced the floor and Sal followed her every step. But the magician kept his eyes trained on an imaginary dot on the wall. “Well, that’s good. I was afraid that maybe you had lost your marbles or just gone plain bloody nuts.”
Ezekiel didn’t budge.
“Oh,” Hannah continued, “that’s nice. Me? Yeah, I’m doing fine, except I am in lock down in a three-bloody room building with nothing but a freak of a lizard and a magician who likes to go monk three times a day to keep me company. Otherwise, things are just peachy.”
The wizard remained silent.
Hannah had been training in the tower for what felt like an eternity, and she was going crazy from being cooped up in one place. Other than the fact that there was absolutely nothing to do, the wizard was a peculiar sort of company.
Ever since she turned Sal into a dragon, Ezekiel had been spending more and more time sending his mind roaming Irth. What he was looking for, he wouldn’t say—beyond the oh so ominous, answers.
Meanwhile, Hannah was finding a strange stirring in her gut. She could only guess that it was the thing that other people called homesickness.
She called it missing.
Although the girl would never call herself sick for the squalor and the abuse of the Boulevard, there was plenty from home that she longed for.
William. Parker. Her bed. And even the QBB itself. Everything that was familiar had been stripped from her. It was the first time she was away from the one place that had made up her entire existence.
Hannah leaned down and picked up Sal. He folded in his wings so she could hold him more easily. “At least I have you, little guy.” The lizard’s tongue flicked out and then back in, moistening her cheek.
“The lizard isn’t your only friend,” the magician’s voice boomed from across the room.
She turned. “Thank, the Patriarch. I thought you’d died with your eyes open.”
Ezekiel got up from the floor and landed on a couch near Hannah. “Someday, child, you’ll find that magic is one part learning, one part practice, and fifty parts mindset. During my time abroad, the greatest of the things I learned was how to focus all my life toward the work of magic and restoration. You will do well to learn this sooner rather than later.”
“My meditations are coming along,” Hannah said, a little sulkily.
The man laughed. “I’m not too old to remember what it is like to be your age. I was only a few years older when we set off to build Arcadia. That year, I knew everything. And then, two years later, I knew it was all wrong. Life is a road of changing one’s perspective. Some call this waffling, but it is growing in wisdom. And among all the arts, nothing is greater.”
“Ah… OK. Got it. Change your mind. Get wise. I’ll write that in my little book.”
Ezekiel’s face grew soft. A smile spread across his lips. “You’re a hopeless smartass, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” Hannah said with a smile to match. “Gonna take more than magic to change that.”
The man stood, and the smile faded from his face. His lips grew tight and Hannah knew that something very serious was coming. She had learned that the magician loved life and enjoyed a joke or three, but when it came to the life of the world, the old man was all business.
“I don’t understand you,” he said.
“Most don’t.”
“No, I mean your skills. Though they are rough, magic is trying to escape you. That’s how we got this little guy here.” He nodded toward Sal. “But you’re able to express magical arts that are foreign to the guilds of the corners of Irth. I’ve spent hours in study, and it seems you might have some unnatural combination of all of the arts.”
“Hell, as far as I know all magic is unnatural,” she shrugged.
The magician laughed which brought her some comfort. “On the contrary, there is nothing more natural than magic. It’s in each and every one of us. The question is whether someone is strong enough to bring it out. People like me, those mentored in the arts, are taught to bring it out in a way that doesn’t blow their bodies into little bits all over the city streets.
“Imagine how annoyed people would be if they went out in their best clothes, only to have them splattered with blood by someone losing themselves to the magic? Others will never manifest the magic whatsoever. But you are different. Hannah, you’ve done nothing to bring your magic to the fore, but it refuses to be bottled up. Just being in the world, the magic created Sal and there is no explanation for that.”
Her mouth hung open as she thought of a wiseass comment to quell the seriousness of the room.
But she found nothing.
Finally, she said, “So, what do I do?”
“That my dear is the question for the ages. If I had the answer, I would give it. But I know some people that might know.”
“More friends of yours from the old days?”
Ezekiel nodded. “Something like that. I’ve been holding off on this for a while, but I’m afraid there is no other choice. I need to go visit them.”
Hannah squinted her eyes, suspicious of what was coming next. “OK, when do we leave?”
Ezekiel’s face answered the question before his words. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m afraid you can’t come with me.”
“Why the hell not? I’ve been practicing every day like you said. I’ve been getting better. And if these people can help me, then I should go with you.”
“It’s not that simple. I have been reaching out with my mind, trying to connect with them, but there has been no answer. Which means one of two things. Either they have turned their back on me, which means that they have become as great a threat as Adrien. Maybe worse.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I know you aren’t, but I am. Because the other reason I may not have been able to contact my friend is that they’re dead. Which means that there could be some danger there I can’t foresee. And you are too valuable to me for us to run in blind.”
Hannah dropped her eyes downward. Despite all that she had been through, it seemed Ezekiel still saw her as a child to be protected. When would he learn that she was able to contribute? To use magic as he did, to protect others.
