The Sorcerer's Legacy (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  After a short ride, they arrived at the same place Azerick had tied Horse up the other night when he had visited the ruins. He slid out of the saddle, helped Ellyssa down, and tied Horse up to the same branch with the same instructions to stay put. Horse did not need to be ordered to stay, the grass was long and green here and so long as it was here this was where he would stay.

  The moon had waxed to just over half full, when it was visible at all through the dark, scattered clouds. Azerick held Ellyssa’s hand as they walked up the hill towards the keep. She squeezed Azerick’s hand tighter as a chill sent goose bumps crawling all over her skin. She wanted to turn and run away but she had promised Azerick that she would be brave and that was what she was going to do.

  Azerick stopped and turned to look at her. “I am going to cast a few spells to help protect you even though I hope you don’t need them, all right?”

  She nodded and Azerick cast his spells. She could not see anything different but her skin prickled for a moment with each spell he cast.

  “The other spell I am going to cast will keep all sound from reaching your ears but I am not casting it on you, I am going to cast it on the staff so we can walk in or out of its area of influence. If something goes wrong, you grab the staff and run away as fast as you can. Do you understand? Grab the staff and run away.”

  Ellyssa swallowed hard. “I understand, grab the staff and run away. I got it. This is the haunted place, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is, but I hope to make it not haunted.”

  “Are we going to see a ghost?”

  “Most likely,” Azerick nodded his head.

  “Have you seen the ghost before?” she asked.

  “Yes, a couple nights ago,” Azerick answered.

  “Were you scared?”

  “I guess you could say that. I ran, but mostly because I did not want to kill the ghost.”

  “How can you kill a ghost, it’s already dead,” she stated with her childlike logic.

  Azerick chuckled at her. “Just be brave and do what I say and everything will be just fine.”

  They walked through the large opening where the main gate once stood and Azerick stopped and planted his staff. He cast a globe of silence upon it and all sound instantly ceased. Not even the wind that blew his cloak about made as much as a whisper. Azerick took Ellyssa by her small hand again and walked forward until they could hear once more.

  “I want you to take a step back so you are within the area of silence and I want you to stay there. I expect the ghost will come out any moment now and I want you to be brave and just stand still unless something happens to me. Then you know what to do right?”

  “Grab the staff and run,” she answered with more courage than she felt.

  Azerick took several steps forward as soon as Ellyssa stepped back. “Lady, I wish to speak with you.”

  For a moment, only the howling of the wind blowing through the open windows and crenellations along the top of the central tower and walls could be heard. A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He watched as the spirit rose out of the ground just before the tower. Azerick recalled that that was where she had appeared the last time as well. He wondered if that was the exact spot that she and her children had met their deaths.

  “Where are my children?” the spirit cried.

  “Here, spirit, one is here, although she is not yours. Your children are gone, Lady, but I will bring the voice and laughter of a child back to these halls if you will depart and allow us to live here.”

  The banshee looked past Azerick and directly at Ellyssa. Azerick motioned for her to be brave and stay where she was.

  “The children, where are my children?” the Lady wailed.

  “My Lady, please understand that your children are gone. They have been gone for over three hundred years. I cannot bring them back, but I will bring this child to live here, if you will permit it,” Azerick pressed.

  The spirit glided across the dark flagstone without disturbing the long blades of grass and weeds that sprouted between the stones and stopped just in front of Ellyssa. Azerick stepped closer to the frightened girl to reassure her. She shook from fear, but she did not run and met the ghost’s stare. The Lady reached out a tentative hand and Azerick almost snatched Ellyssa away, but he hesitated. The ghostly hand touched a wisp of Ellyssa’s golden hair as it fluttered in the evening breeze.

  The lock of hair turned pure white at the banshee’s touch as an ethereal tear crept down her luminous face. The Lady smiled first at Ellyssa, who also had tears sliding down her face, and then at Azerick before gliding back and sinking into the ground. Almost immediately, the bumps on their flesh and the prevailing aura of fear disappeared.

  Azerick turned towards Ellyssa and dispelled the globe of silence. “Are you all right?”

  “She was so sad,” Ellyssa said with a sniffle and wiped away her tears with her sleeve. “She said she would like it if we lived here.”

  Azerick looked puzzled at the statement. “You could hear her? I did not hear her say anything except to ask where her children were.”

  “I heard her in my head and my heart, not with my ears.”

  “Well, welcome to your new home,” Azerick said with a wave of his arm.

  “You’re going to live in this dump?” a voice suddenly asked from behind him.

  Azerick and Ellyssa both spun towards the direction the voice had come from. Sitting on top of the wall was Wolf and sitting at its base just below him was his huge wolf, Ghost.

  “Wolf, what are you doing here?” Azerick asked, startled from being snuck up on.

  “I wanted to see if you were going to run from the ghost again. That was hilarious. I’ve never seen a human run so fast!” he laughed heartily.

  “I thought that was you back where those bandits attacked.”

  “Yep, so did you marry the princess or what? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you rescue one?”

  “She is a duchess not a princess and no, we are not getting married,” Azerick replied sternly.

  “She wouldn’t take ya, huh? She was too pretty for you anyway,” Wolf grinned. “So, you’re really going to live in this dump?” he asked again.

  “Eventually; it is a fixer upper,” Azerick defended.

  “Pfft, looks more like a faller downer to me,” Wolf shot back impishly.

  Ellyssa was unable to contain herself at the exchange and the courtyard rang with her pleasant laughter.

  “What do you know, you sleep under a tree!” Azerick shot back.

  “I sleep under the nicest tree around, not some rotten piece of deadfall,” Wolf countered.

  “All sorts of animals choose the nicest tree around—for a toilet.”

  “So that’s what that smell was? And I was always blaming it on Ghost!” Wolf laughed so hard he almost tumbled off the wall. Ghost looked up at him, and Azerick would swear, rolled his big golden eyes at the half-elf.

  “So, am I going to be graced with your sharp witticisms from now on?” Azerick asked the half-wild boy.

  “If you’re lucky. I like to stay where the food is and you still owe me,” he shrugged.

  “I owe you for what?” Azerick demanded.

  “For saving your life, remember?” Wolf replied as if he were talking to an imbecile.

  “I saved your life first!”

  Now Wolf looked indignant. “Giving a boy a biscuit and shooting a man in the neck with an arrow who is about to kill you does not balance out!”

  “It was stew and a blanket, which you stole, and a chunk of meat for Ghost,” Azerick pointed out.

  “It was two men, and I live under a tree not a fancy castle so I deserve the blanket, and I guess Ghost could have just eaten your mangy old horse. It probably would have been a mercy killing anyway after having to haul you and all your stuff around.”

  “I thought it was a pile of junk not a fancy castle?”

  “You said you were going to fix it up. Who’s th
e girl?” Wolf asked as if noticing Ellyssa for the first time.

  Azerick had almost forgotten that Ellyssa was standing there. “This is my apprentice, Ellyssa.”

  “Good, you need help. Watch his back, he gets himself into trouble a lot and needs sharp-eyed kids to bail him out,” Wolf informed her.

  “I do not get myself into trouble all the time and I definitely do not need a child to help me out,” Azerick insisted.

  “So what is she doing here in such a dangerous place in the middle of the night?”

  Azerick refused to answer and glared at the boy perched upon the wall but Ellyssa answered for him. “He needed my help.”

  “I thought so,” Wolf nodded. “I knew him for two days before he got in a fight with about twenty bandits.”

  “That was not my fault, they attacked me!”

  “You were on a horse, they weren’t. You could have just run away,” Wolf pointed out.

  “I do not run away,” Azerick growled.

  Wolf smiled—wolfishly—as the sorcerer fell into his verbal trap. “Oh, so you were actually charging the ghost the other night. I guess you were just going the long way around.”

  Ellyssa was laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face. Azerick looked fit to explode as the grubby boy with the wolf pet repeatedly scored in their verbal jousting match.

  “Did you want something or are you just here to annoy me?” Azerick asked.

  “I’m hungry, got any food?” Wolf asked unashamed.

  “What? You come here and give me a hard time and then you expect me to feed you out of simple kindness?” Azerick asked, amazed at the temerity of the wild child.

  “Of course,” Wolf answered without even blinking. “You wouldn’t let a poor, innocent, defenseless child who is barely able to survive on his own starve to death, would you?”

  Azerick was not going to fall for Wolf’s helpless child ploy. “Why is it that half the things that come out of your mouth are lies and exaggerations?”

  “Because I’m only half human otherwise everything would be lies!” Wolf shouted, pounding the top of the wall with his hand and laughing.

  Azerick buried his face in his hand and shook his head realizing that Wolf had set him up once again.

  “If you want something to eat you will have to come into town with me,” Azerick told him.

  Wolf made a face as if he had just eaten something rotten. “Go into the city? No thanks, Ghost and I will just find something out here. I snared a couple rabbits earlier. I wouldn’t mind some cheese or something next time you come out though.”

  “I will put something together tomorrow,” Azerick promised.

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Do my ears deceive me or did words of appreciation actually come out of your mouth?” Azerick asked dramatically.

  Wolf jumped from the fifteen-foot high wall, tumbled to break his fall, and rolled nimbly to his feet. He and Ghost loped over to where the sorcerer and his apprentice stood.

  “Can I pet him?” Ellyssa asked as they came near.

  “I wouldn’t, he probably bites,” Azerick cautioned, “but Ghost probably won’t mind.”

  “Hey that was almost funny. You keep trying and you might find a sense of humor yet,” Wolf quipped. “You can pet him; he won’t bite as long he knows we’re friends.”

  As Wolf and Ghost drew near, Ellyssa could see that the boy was covered in dirt and bits of leaves and detritus was tangled in his long hair. “Why are you so filthy?”

  “Why are you so ugly?” Wolf retorted defensively.

  “I’m not ugly!”

  “Yes you are!”

  Ellyssa looked up at Azerick. “Is that a boy or did the wolf throw up some half-digested animal?”

  Wolf held his arms across his stomach as he laughed. “She’s clever and funny, not like you,” he said to Azerick. “I like her.”

  Azerick could only shake his head and smile at the completely unpredictable half-elf.

  “What are we going to do now?” Ellyssa asked, looking up at Azerick while she stroked Ghost’s furry head.

  “I will have to go see the Minister of Labor, post some notices, and maybe tell a few of the innkeepers to put the word out that I am looking for carpenters, stone masons, and just about every type of laborer I can find. Like it or not, this is going to be our new home,” Azerick proclaimed.

  CHAPTER 2

  The goblin prowled through the moonless dark with a stealth born of necessity and a lifetime of practice. Being caught by one of the humans whose farm he spied upon was a sure way to get himself killed, bringing about an even faster death than the gnawing in his belly constantly threatened to do. Grick watched the farmhouse intently, using his superior night vision to spy any movement within.

  All was silent, the last lamp or candle was doused more than two hours ago. The humans were not the real problem however. It was their flea-ridden dogs. Gods how he hated those dogs. Grick was a decent hunter but hunting had not been good recently. There was a darkness, a taint, to the land these days. He would not normally risk a raid like this but he was hungry, a type of hungry only someone who was truly destitute could know. And that hunger forced him to take risks.

  Grick was a rare goblin in more ways than one. For one thing, he was raiding on his own, something normal goblins rarely did. Goblins were by nature cowardly, only attacking and raiding when they possessed superior numbers by a wide margin. That was one reason he hated his own kind nearly as much as humans did.

  He was also a fair measure smarter than the average of his ilk. Grick had come to despise the raiding, thieving, and sometimes killing his kind perpetrated in order to survive. He also disliked hiding in a filthy hole in the ground packed with dozens, sometimes hundreds of his kin, not that the other races gave his kind many other options.

  Grick had hoped that his individuality would become apparent to those who lived above ground if given the chance, but no one had ever been interested in taking more than a single look at him before cursing him and chasing him off. During the cold winters, he would often sneak over the wall of one of the larger human cities, hide in some abandoned building or sewer, and forage only at night. It was a dangerous proposition but the only alternative was freezing and starving to death.

  But living in the city amongst the humans was dangerous. The city watch would kill him out of hand if they caught him, and they had come close more than once. His small size and nimble fingers sometimes got him employed by the thieves’ guild, but they usually reneged on whatever deal they made with him and were almost as likely to kill him as the watch, so he avoided all humans as much as possible.

  Grick disliked stealing from the humans, but they would not miss a few of the eggs, or maybe just one of the chickens that roosted only a couple hundred feet away in their cozy chicken coop. He licked a long, bony finger and tested the wind once more, and then began crawling towards the henhouse. Within minutes, he came to the outside of the tall wire fence made to keep out predators. Fortunately, he was cleverer, or at least more able, than a fox in getting past the less than formidable fortification.

  Grick pulled out his two, rust-mottled daggers that were specially modified for just this type of work. Each dagger had a small hole bored through the center about an inch back from the tip of the blade. He aligned the holes and slipped a pin through them, converting the two daggers into a pair of wire snips. The makeshift snips were not terribly efficient but they worked. The goblin methodically clipped the wires until he could push up a section of the fence just large enough for him to crawl under.

  With a last look over his shoulder to the farmhouse and the two large dogs that slept on the porch, Grick crawled towards the narrow ramp that the chickens used to walk up and into the raised henhouse. Quiet as a shadow, Grick shinnied up the ramp and barely squeezed through the small square opening that would have been far too small for any human or animal much larger than a fox. The goblin fought to control his breathing, knowing that c
hickens were notoriously skittish and made a horrendous amount of noise if they felt threatened.

  Several chickens made low clucking noises as the goblin cautiously approached. “It okay, just human farmer coming for some eggs,” Grick quietly reassured the fowl in the human tongue.

  The diminutive egg poacher gently slipped a hand under one of the wary hens, withdrew three of the warm eggs, and slipped them into a leather pouch at his waist. He stuck his long fingers under a second hen and felt several more of the warm treats hidden under the white feathered fowl. Just as his hand wrapped around the precious but fragile treasure, the wind outside shifted, bringing the goblin’s distinctive scent to the sensitive noses of the dogs.

  The two hounds woke immediately and thrust their wet, black noses into the air. The mild evening breeze wafted the tiny scent particles of the goblin right into those super-sensitive smell receptors, which immediately set the dogs off. Grick involuntarily flinched as the dogs’ barking broke the evening silence. The chicken he had his hand under began squawking and flapping its nearly useless wings in terror and warning.

  Grick cursed loudly in his own crude language, shoved the eggs he gripped in his hand into the pouch with the others, and fought his way through the flapping, panicked hens. With stealth no longer an issue, Grick snatched one of the chickens around the neck and fled the chicken coop. Face down and crawling on his belly, he saw the light of a lit lamp through the closed shutters of the farmhouse. The two dogs continued to bark their threats and warnings while tugging against the ties that held them on the porch.

  Grick ran to the hole he had cut in the wire and dove through it. He cursed again as his tattered shirt caught on the flap of fence. He had intended to pull the section back down to conceal his entry, but the dogs’ barking rendered that pointless. He reached back behind him with his one free hand and tried to free his trapped shirt. He cursed again as the door of not only the farmhouse to which the chicken coop belonged slammed open, but the other three houses that were nearby as well.