by Layton Green
Will ran to Lance and dragged him to safety. He had a nasty thigh wound, down to the white of the bone, and his eyes had rolled back in his head.
The ogre-mage was the last attacker standing. He roared in Alexander’s direction, thrusting him backward by some unseen force. The geomancer crashed into a tree and struggled to his feet. Will had another moment of panic at the thought of Alexander rendered unconscious, leaving them helpless against the ogre-mage.
Fochik came sprinting out of the darkness to the left, firing his bow at the same time Allira unleashed a boomerang. The ogre-mage put a hand up, and both Fochik’s arrow and Allira’s boomerang exploded in midair. He waved a hand and Fochik’s bowstring snapped in half with a twang.
Looking around, the ogre-mage realized he was alone. He roared again and thrust his hands toward the ground. A massive collection of roots burst from the forest floor, carrying him upward at dizzying speed while trees toppled in the background. Will watched in fascination as he stopped thirty feet above the ground, atop the platform of interlocked roots.
Alexander shot into the night sky as well, thrust upwards on a geyser-like mound of soil, rising to the same height as the ogre-mage. The ogre-mage brought his hands together in front of him, holding his palms two feet apart. An ugly grey mass formed between his hands, as if a thundercloud had coalesced into a rough-edged basketball. Will experienced a sudden chill, like all the warmth had been sucked out of the air. The ball of magic quivered and shot towards Alexander.
Alexander tossed two of his stones into the air, then thrust them towards the ogre-mage’s weird grey ball. The projectiles met halfway between the wizards and pushed against each other.
The ogre-mage bellowed, and Alexander’s stones moved backwards. Allira threw three boomerangs in rapid succession, but the ogre-mage flicked a wrist and root tentacles shot out from his tower, snatching the boomerangs in midair. It cost the ogre-mage his momentum, but he regrouped and pushed harder. The grey ball of magic gained ground, and Will could tell it was a matter of seconds before Alexander was overwhelmed.
The grey mass was two feet from Alexander’s face. Hashi hacked in vain at the root tower. Will thought of going for Akocha’s bow, but there was no way he could hit the ogre-mage at that distance, even if he avoided the tentacles. Then he had a thought: what if his sword could sweep through the ogre-mage’s roots, like it did with the manticore? He dashed forward while Val screamed at him to stop.
Will looked up as he ran. Alexander’s toes were backed against the edge of the soil platform, his stones hovering inches from his face, about to be consumed by the ogre-mage’s magic. Will sprinted forward and took a giant swing at the base of the root tower.
He barely dented the thing.
Will looked up. Alexander’s stones had dissolved, and the ogre-mage’s ball was an inch from the geomancer’s face. Alexander wobbled on the edge of the platform.
Just before the weird gray mass struck the geomancer, it disappeared. The ogre-mage roared again, this time in pain. Will whipped his head upwards. He saw the bandit leader yank a dagger out of his foot as Mala pulled herself the final few feet onto the platform and tossed something in his face. The ogre-mage screamed and swung his mace at Mala, his other hand rubbing at his eyes. Mala ducked and rolled behind him, drawing her curved dagger as she rolled. She sliced through his Achilles tendon and he screamed and crashed to the platform.
Back arched in pain, the ogre mage pushed through his wounds and grabbed Mala. She looked like a toy action figure in the grip of a child. Will watched her thrust both hands into one of her pouches, then look away as she clapped her hands against the sides of the enormous goblin head. Will heard the sharp crack he had heard during the fight in the alley, and the ogre-mage’s head burst into flame. In one smooth motion, Mala plunged both her dagger and her short sword into the monster’s chest.
He grabbed her, bellowed, and stumbled backwards, pitching off the forty-foot platform with Mala clutched to his chest, the two of them locked in a blazing embrace as they plummeted towards the ground.
-29-
Will’s stomach lurched when he saw Mala falling off the root tower. He ran forward, knowing there was nothing he could do. Just before the two combatants hit the ground, Alexander swooped in and plucked Mala out of the sky, moments before the ogre-mage hit the ground like a blazing boulder dropped from a crane.
Alexander set Mala down and passed a hand over her, quelling the flames licking at her clothing. She stood on her own, and Will sank with relief. He wondered why the ogre-mage hadn’t put out the fire himself or simply flown away, but then he saw both of Mala’s blades buried hilt-deep in the left half of the bandit leader’s chest.
He had died before he hit the ground.
Will ran back to Lance. Allira had already stripped off his breeches, and Will took his hand. “Hang in there, man.”
Lance gasped. “I’m not dying. Go help the others.”
Allira gave him a look that said leave me be, and Will stepped away, sick with worry for his friend. He found Alexander and grabbed his arm. “Can you do something for Lance? He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Alexander grimaced. “Cuerpomancy is an extremely difficult art. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” He returned Will’s grip. “Allira is the best naturopath I’ve ever known.”
Will looked around the clearing to take his mind off Lance. The giant platforms were still standing, which surprised him. He had assumed the magic would collapse.
He saw Fochik and Hashi kneeling over Akocha’s body, and a wave of shame overcame him. He took a step towards the fallen Chickasaw warrior, then decided to let them grieve in private.
The blue light had dissipated, leaving the clearing a moonlight-streaked abattoir. Bits and pieces of the dead were strewn about the field like droppings from some giant cannibal’s feast, a theater of pain and death Will could not have imagined in his darkest nightmares.
He wondered if this was what Lance had seen in Iraq, perhaps on a daily basis. What would that do to someone, he thought? What had it done to Lance?
What will it do to me?
His panic and nausea subsided. Maybe his system was overloaded, but an eerie calm possessed him, a disassociation from the horrific clearing. The feeling both relieved and disturbed him.
Alexander was inspecting the bodies for survivors, Marguerite was tending to Mala, and Caleb was squatting with his arms hugging his chest, staring at the smoking corpse of the ogre-mage.
Val stood very still on the edge of the clearing, his face frighteningly intense. Will felt an urge to do something useful, anything that would take his mind off the battle. Anything that would help him forget that his yell had led to Akocha’s death.
Still indecisive, he saw Val march towards Alexander, probably to see if the geomancer needed help checking the bodies. Will decided to do the same. Val’s back was to Will, and Will knew he hadn’t heard him approach.
“Teach me,” Val said grimly.
Alexander looked up from a corpse to see Val standing above him. “Sorry?”
“What you said earlier. Your offer. I want you to teach me about magic.”
Will slunk away. Left with nothing to do, he began searching the battleground and found an oversize iron bracelet near the body of the ogre-mage, engraved with a grotesque carving of a tongue. He pocketed it as a memento.
Hashi barely seemed to notice his knife wound. He and Fochik disappeared into the forest with Akocha’s body. Allira declared Lance able to ride, but out of fighting commission for a few days. Will had never felt so relieved, though he was shocked at the prognosis, given the severity of the wound. He wondered if Allira had some type of magical talent. At the very least, she knew things about the earth and its healing properties that doctors back home did not.
As they broke camp and traveled another hour down the darkened Byway to create distance from any predators the corpses might attract, Will cocooned himself in silence, replaying Akocha’s death in his head over and over as he
simmered in grief and shame.
Mala let them sleep in and skip the morning training session. The night before, she said, had been training enough.
Hashi and Fochik returned to the party without a word. Hashi gave Mala a brief nod, then rode ahead as usual. Will wanted to apologize to the Chickasaw, but he didn’t have words enough to fill that void. He would find a way, he vowed. He knew Lance might not be alive if he hadn’t yelled, but he also knew that if he had been able to stand beside Lance in the first place, Akocha might not have died.
After lunch, Val spurred his horse between Mala and Alexander. “Could that have been who the search party was after?”
“Those were bandits,” Mala said, “not rebels.”
“Do we have to worry about that every night?”
“It’s troubling,” Mala agreed. “A force that size so close to the Byway, and with an ogre-mage leading them . . . I’m shocked they haven’t run afoul of a patrol.”
Alexander took a sip of water from a canteen. “Unrest is growing.”
“What was that grayish sphere he formed?” Val asked.
“Very crude magic,” Mala said.
Alexander nodded. “He sucked everything from the air around him, moisture, gas, warmth, whatever his will could grasp onto, and formed it into a ball of raw force.”
“And if it would have reached you?” Val asked.
“Suffice to say it would have left the rest of you at his mercy.” He turned his head towards Mala. “Or perhaps not,” he said quietly.
“A trained wizard wouldn’t have lost concentration as easily as the ogre mage,” Mala said. “And he never saw me coming.”
“Perhaps not, but that was impressive, Mala. Even for you. An ogre-mage is a formidable enemy.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “You knew I’d catch you if you fell, didn’t you?”
“Not when I started climbing.”
The scenery started to change in the afternoon, morphing from low woodland to a denser, more jungle-like setting pockmarked by sloughs and swampy channels. Sweeping forests of cypress and live oak surrounded them, draped with curtains of Spanish moss, and a panther with a sandpaper coat eyed them from a treetop perch. Will guessed they were deep into the Florida Panhandle.
As the last strip of light faded, the chirp and buzz of insects grew more insistent, the calls from the birds more tropical, the entire landscape more rich and primeval than before. Just before dark, Mala pointed at a wooden signpost stuck into the ground and marked with a red X.
Will realized a footpath led into the undergrowth behind the sign, just wide enough for the horses. The Byway took a twenty-degree turn to the left, while the footpath continued eastward.
Mala held a hand up, drawing everyone to a stop. “We’ll camp here tonight, just out of sight of the Byway.” She pointed at the sign by the footpath, confirming Will’s suspicion. “That’s the boundary of the Southern Protectorate.”
-30-
Will had a fitful night’s sleep. He dreamt of his parents, Charlie and Zedock, panic attacks that wouldn’t go away, and the unnamed things lurking on the next part of the journey.
At first light the next morning, they started single file down the path, delving into the jungle of the Southern Protectorate. Though Hashi and Fochik never faltered, the trail was barely visible at times, winding through dense vegetation that at times had to be cleared.
If the first few hours were any indication, it was going to be a miserable three days. The bugs alone were torture. Swarms of gnats and mosquitos and horse flies harassed the party, leaving Will slapping and scratching the entire morning. Not a single bug approached Alexander, and Will thought it would be worth a lifetime of study just to learn that one spell.
During lunch, Allira disappeared into the jungle and returned with a handful of roots she mixed with something in one of her pouches. She distributed the paste to the group, alleviating some of the torment.
They took a break from the afternoon heat when the path wound beside a freshwater lagoon. After helping with the horses, Will approached the watering hole, ringed by palms and fronds and looking like something out of a Tarzan movie. He sank his face into the cool water with a shiver of pleasure—until someone yanked him backward.
Will gasped and spluttered. He turned to find Hashi holding the back of his shirt, grinning and pointing into the water. An alligator the length of a small bus drifted near the shore, a foot from where Will had just dunked his head into the blue-black water.
“Good God,” Lance said, limping over. “That’s twice the size of a normal gator.”
Mala walked up. “The swamps and lowlands of the Southern Protectorate are legendary for the size of their wildlife. These springs are part of a vast underground aquifer, where things worse than a crocosaur can surface.”
A crocosaur? Will thought. And things worse than a crocosaur? The pleasing little oasis, like most everything else in the new world, had taken on a sinister cast. He backed away from the spring. “I think I’ll stay with the group.”
“It’s fine to wash,” Mala said with an evil grin. “Just don’t become dinner. When you’re finished, join me by the horses.”
“I’m finished,” he muttered.
He drank half a canteen of water and then headed towards Mala, his step heavy. Why bother training if he could never perform in battle?
He walked past Caleb, who was kneeling with Marguerite next to a set of lock-picking tools. Lance was sparring with Hashi and Fochik while Val huddled with Alexander near the spring. Allira had disappeared into the jungle.
An enormous snake slithered from a vine into the water, at the same time another crocosaur lifted its jaws out of the water to snap at a passing bird.
Will shuddered. Uncivilized Florida was intense.
He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword as he approached Mala, eyes roving his surroundings as she had taught. When she unsheathed her sword and started to instruct, Will interrupted her.
“Listen,” he said. “There’s something you need to know before we begin.”
Her eyebrows arched in annoyance.
“During the fight with the bandits,” he said, “some of them came at us in the woods, because I yelled to help Lance. When I saw Akocha get killed, I . . . froze. If Val hadn’t acted, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
“Marguerite informed me of the skirmish.”
“She did?” Will looked at her, incredulous. “Then why’re you still bothering to train me?”
Mala’s expression didn’t change. “Emotions are a curse during a fight. Some adapt to the chaos of battle faster than others. The only emotion that can’t be overcome, however, is cowardice. You either possess bravery or you do not. Marguerite told me you stood your ground even at the end, when your opponent was ready to run you through. That, Will the Builder, is something that can’t be taught.”
“It’s not that simple,” Will mumbled. “I have panic attacks. I’ve had them for a long time. Sometimes I can’t make my body do what my mind wants.”
“The key to overcoming panic is practice and experience. You’ve seen men killed in battle now,” she said dispassionately, as if discussing the completion of a college course. “You’ve faced a cave fiend, a necromancer, bandits in the night.” She pointed her sword at him. “It’s kill or be killed, and the only way to increase the odds of survival is to train and gain experience.”
Will wanted to explain that it wasn’t that easy, that it hadn’t been that easy since Dad had died, that he suffered from a medical condition and desperately wanted to be normal. But he knew that people who had never been brought to their knees by a panic attack, unable to find the air to breathe, could never understand.
Mala touched the tip of her sword to his chest. “Channel it. Channel it before it kills you. The rage, the fear of failure, the sadness at the world. Channel it.”
Val felt sick to his stomach whenever he watched Will spar with Mala. He worried so much about his brothers he was pret
ty sure he had developed a stomach ulcer.
At least Caleb had the good sense to stay out of the way. Will had almost died twice in three days.
Val took a deep breath and turned back to Alexander. If magic was the only chance he had to protect his brothers in this world, then he would choke on his disbelief and do his best to learn.
“What is magic?” Val asked. “What makes it work?”
Alexander tapped the side of his head. “Magic is here,” he spread his arms, “and out there. It starts in the mind and affects the world.” He shrugged. “It simply is.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, it starts in the mind?”
Alexander pulled a leaf off a sweetgum tree. He let the leaf fall from his hand, then focused on it. The leaf stopped in midair and began to rotate, spinning back and forth until it became a mini-tornado. The blade flew off in shreds, and Alexander let the naked stem fall to the ground.
“The most basic of spells—manipulating a weightless leaf or feather with your mind. Some magicians exhibit different affinities altogether, but the manipulation of small objects is usually the first step.”
“That sounds like psychic powers,” Val said, remembering the times his mind had performed a similar feat.
Alexander’s chin lifted. “Interesting use of the word. Psychics, or augurs, are not usually wizards. A spirit mage could perhaps explain the technicalities, but wizards are unable to see into the future. Neither can augurs, in the true sense of the word, but they sometimes have . . . impressions.”
“What about spellbooks, ingredients, hand-waving?” Val said. “It can’t be as simple as mental focus.”
“There is nothing simple about magic. Though, I admit, years of training can make it appear simple. Or in the case of the ogre-mage, raw ability with years of application.” Alexander started to pace, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. “The only ingredients are those elemental forces which are necessary. Fire needs a spark, water needs hydrogen and oxygen. Yet it can take a cuerpomancer an entire lifetime to learn how the human body works; their laboratories are a place to behold. It’s the same, in varying degrees, with all specialties. A geomancer must know how the earth and its constituents work. He will break apart stones, study soils and geographies, explore the ley lines. A pyromancer studies fire and the elementals, an aquamancer the oceans and rivers and marine life, and so forth.”
