Complete Magic Lands Books 1 & 2 Omnibus

by William Robert Stanek

  Tall gulped at the air. “Deanna,” he said, his voice breaking. “The girl I met in Adalayia.”

  Alkin’s rough grip hurt as he pulled Tall back to Rhyliath and thrust him into a seated position. Avea stormed off, a hurt look in her eyes.

  “Tell me everything,” Alkin said. “Start at the beginning. Tell me how the wizard turned you. What he holds over you to force you to betray us.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Tall said. He tried to stand. He was thrust back to his haunches so hard he fell over. He righted himself, turned back around, saw the pommel of Alkin’s sword as it swept inward. He put his arms up to block the blow just as Rhyliath snorted, brought his head around and then caught the sword pommel in one of his great hands.

  “Enough,” Rhyliath said. “The boy has proven himself an ally. What is the meaning of this?”

  “This,” Avea said, returning and holding out the orb for all to see. “Tell us everything. Hold nothing back or so help me…” She let her voice trail off. The implied threat didn’t escape Tall. He swallowed hard, turned to each in turn, looking for something that would tell him he was among friends. “Alkin, it’s me, Tall,” he pleaded. “Avea, please. I’ve done nothing… Rhyliath, I’m no more in league with the wizard than you are. I don’t understand. Help me.”

  Rhyliath’s huge eyes were the least imposing. Tall shifted toward the wivre as much as he was allowed. Doing so was a mistake though. Alkin reached out and snatched him up so roughly pain shot through both shoulders.

  Avea interceded, putting herself between Tall and Alkin. “So many have been turned. So many we thought friends and did not know until the moment of betrayal. I pray not you. Finding you just when we lost our seer was too opportune though. I should’ve suspected.”

  Tall said quietly, “Avea, it’s me, Tall. Why would I do anything to hurt you? You’ve done nothing but help me.”

  Alkin said, “You’d do it because the wizard’s hold once fixed is inescapable. Some of weaker will don’t even know what they do until they’ve done whatever was asked of them, and by then it is too late.”

  “I’ve never seen, never met, the wizard,” Tall said in protest, but that wasn’t exactly true. The wizard walked his dreams when he was in his village and he’d drawn many pictures of the wizard over the years.

  Alkin stepped forward, straightened Tall’s shirt. “I see it in your eyes. You know, don’t you? The wizard. He’s come to you, stood before you, told you what you must do. Hasn’t he?”

  “No, no, no,” Tall shouted. “I’ve only ever seen him in dreams and visions.” Alkin pulled back, only slightly, but it was enough for Tall to realize things were about to get really bad. He dropped to a knee, held onto Alkin’s hand balled into a fist. “Please, no, I beg you,” he said. “Whatever you plan, I… I…”

  “Alkin, what if our suspicions are unfounded?” Avea said. “Will we ever forgive ourselves?”

  Avea took Tall’s hand, helped him sit down. With a gentle voice, she spoke to calm him. He heard little of what she said; the world was spinning. He suddenly had no control over anything. Hot tears were in his eyes. “What must I do?” He pleaded. “How must I prove myself?”

  “Tell us, from the beginning, everything about how the orb came to be in your possession. Leave out no detail.”

  Tall started to tell her about leaving his village, journeying into the wilds, but she cut him off, repeating what she’d just said. He told her of his arrival in Adalayia, of the laity named Deanna.

  Avea interrupted. “That’s the name you were saying when you first saw me. Isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Tall admitted. “I thought you were her.”

  “Go on,” Avea said.

  Tall told her how Deanna called the orb a healing sphere and used it to heal his broken ribs, how she helped him escape the city, and how she must’ve slipped the sphere into his pocket. He stopped, regarded Avea and Alkin to gauge their reaction, before looking to Rhyliath for sympathy.

  Avea said, “There’s more, I know there is.”

  Tall said, “Deanna told me she has a sister. When I saw her outside the city, Lady Hravic and another were with her. She said something about her sister. It seemed they’d taken her sister somewhere.”

  Alkin looked incredulous. “You saw Lady Hravic outside the city?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Tall said. “It was dark. I had settled in for the night when they came. They didn’t know I was there. Not at first at least, but Deanna figured it out somehow. The orb, I think. I think it gave me away to her, but she didn’t betray me. She warned me and told me to flee instead. The other two never saw me, but I’m sure the woman was Lady Hravic. I don’t know who the man was.”

  “They took her sister,” Avea said, half to herself.

  Something gnawing at Tall suddenly became painfully obvious. Avea said she was Kerry’s grandmother and yet it seemed she didn’t know Kerry’s sister, Deanna. How could that be, he wondered, unless Avea wasn’t who she said she was. And if Avea wasn’t who she said she was, neither was Alkin.

  Tall tried to hold in his sudden terror, tried to ensure his thoughts were closed. It was Avea who’d sent his brood with Grandin. She who’d requested he tell them to obey Grandin like they would him. Grandin traveled north while they flew west. How much distance separated him from his brood? Did he dare reach out to them? Could they reach him in time?

  “I’m going to die,” he whispered to himself. He stared at Avea and Alkin, hatred in his eyes. They were talking; he wasn’t listening. His thoughts were spinning. It was as if he was facing the colossus of the loch as it surfaced from the depths again. Only this time he was the yearling trembling and unsure where to go.

  As the spectral behemoth began to open its maw, he lunged forward, springing over Avea and Alkin as if he’d used his staff as leverage to lift into the air. He landed with both feet, rolled and came back up. His hand clutched a rock as he spun around. He saw only the glistening white teeth in the ebony abyss of the great mouth. How Tall wished for his staff, but the rock would have to suffice.

  He walked backward, the stone readied and raised in his hand. He sucked in a breath, thought it must be his last, for the great maw was descending to swallow him. He raised his arms up over his head, fell to his knees. He couldn’t stop himself from shaking.

  A scream died on his lips. No matter how hard he sought to cry out, there was only silence.

  Shaking. Something was shaking him. Was the behemoth swallowing him?

  A voice. Distant, like an echo. “Tall, Tall, Tall,” it said.

  More shaking. The voice again. “What? What? Tell us. Let us help you.”

  Tall opened his eyes, found that it was Alkin who held him and not the bowels of the beast. The latter was certain death, he knew, but the present circumstances seemed no less grave. “Let me go,” he shouted, or at least he tried to shout, for Avea’s hand across his mouth let not a word escape.

  Avea looked him dead in the eye. “I’m going to remove my hand,” she said. “When I do, you’ll not shout.”

  “But…” Tall started to say, but Avea’s hand went back to his lips as he did so.

  “The magic used to conceal this vale does so by playing tricks on the mind. No doubt the same wizardry plays with our doubts and anxieties. Now, when Alkin releases you, promise you’ll not try to flee.”

  Tall nodded, waited for the moment of his freedom, knowing he would flee no matter what. And that’s exactly what he did when Alkin let him go. He ran, sprinting away down the hill. He heard Avea and Alkin running behind him, then a rush of wind as Rhyliath landed abruptly in front of him.

  Rhyliath said, “Avea speaks the truth. I was unaffected by this magic, but I sensed it once I understood there was something amiss.”

  Tall drew in a deep breath, fought to recover from the hasty sprint. “You…” he said, his voice trailing off as he realized his fear and panic were leaving him. “But Avea… How could she not know Deanna? Deanna and Kerry
are sisters. How could she not know her own granddaughter?”

  Avea said, “If Deanna and Kerry are sisters, then it is news to me. You seemed to think Deanna and I looked alike, so maybe it is possible.”

  “That just cannot be,” Tall said. “It makes no sense.”

  Avea started to say something, Alkin interposed. “There’s much you don’t know the half of, Tall, and now is not—”

  “Ever my defender,” Avea said, cutting in. “Tall must hear this and know to calm his fears.” She paused, took a deep draught from her water bag. “As a mother, as a grandmother, I’m a terrible failure.”

  Alkin tried to speak. Avea waved off his words with a sweep of her hand. “A terrible price I’ve paid for the long years of this struggle. There is much I’ve missed, much I don’t know.” Avea must have seen the question in Tall’s eyes. “Go on, ask,” she said.

  “How is it possible to not know your own granddaughter?”

  “Kerry’s mother, Ekatarin, married young. Stirling, Kerry’s father, took Ekatarin away to start a new life, but the strife they left behind in the East caught up with them in the West. I spent many years looking for them. By the time word came that they’d been found at last, it was too late. The wizard had already taken Ekatarin. Stirling believed to the end she was lost to the void. A broken heart is what killed him, I’m sure of it.”

  Tall was silent for a long time. Fear replaced doubt. He feared for Ray’s safe return, for his village, for his mother and father, for Ellie—the girl whose kiss he would never know. If the wizard’s magic was so powerful he could cast a pall over an entire valley, what hope was there? How could anyone as insignificant as he make any difference? He should return to the Inland, spend what time remained as best as he could.

  It was Rhyliath who interrupted Tall’s reflection. “How quickly you learn the closing,” the wivre said. “I see your fear on your face, but I hear nothing of your thoughts.”

  Tall knew the words were meant as flattery, and suddenly he wondered whether his thoughts had been closed at all. He started to reply when an absence lurking at the corners of his mind brought pain and memory. He reached out to the hatchlings, to Lucky, to Lady, to Hazard. Finding emptiness, he reached out farther and farther. His eyes rolled back, his body collapsed to the ground, but he did not know this. He knew only that he must find them, and they must find him.

  Around him there was shouting. He felt this, more than he heard it, for he was no longer in the world of tethers and links. He was in that other world, drawn there by the one. But the lost one was no longer a withered specter, he was a man in his prime, clad in golden robes. On his head, he wore a spectacularly jeweled crown. In his right hand, he held a scepter as finely crafted as his crown. And yet, the sight of him still terrified Tall. There was an undeniable power in the man’s eyes and his demeanor was so much more than regal. It was transcendent, almost divine.

  Tall wanted to run, but as soon as he thought about it the roots of the earth were reaching for him and twining round and round his limbs. Then she was there; a woman clad in robes of white fire. With the wave of her hand, the bindings fell away. With the touch of her hand, Tall was torn from the inverted world and restored to the true world.

  Even as that other world faded, Tall saw the other, his features withering as he gradually became unrecognizable as a man. The otherworlder was reaching out. Reaching, reaching.

  Tall wanted to recoil. A strange purpose in the dying eyes held him transfixed. The other’s icy touch found him.

  Tall feared the worst, thought sure this was the end, but the cold thing pressing against his hand wasn’t the other’s grasp. It was the other’s scepter. Only now it wasn’t a scepter. It was a staff. And not just any stretch of wood, it was the straight length of arbor that Tall crafted in the village with the other 12-winter boys. He realized then that he couldn’t recall the last time he’d held the staff, though he suddenly knew he’d been without it for some time.

  Sight came with his return to the true world. Yet just before he saw Avea, Alkin and Rhyliath standing over him, he saw the tethers that held everything and all. Angry crimson spread like a blanket, interlaced with white fire and ice blue. In this way he saw all. Bright clusters from Inland villages. A web of lights from Adalayia. Faint traces and pockets of brightness. One of these pockets was Lady Hravic, Deanna and the man. Another, his brood. How faint and thin the returning connections were, so much so they seemed more transient than fixed.

  The sun was directly behind Avea when Tall looked up at her, and he knew in an instant that hours had somehow slipped away. “How long?” he asked.

  “That is my question for you,” Avea said. “Time in that place does not flow as it does here.”

  Tall sat up with Alkin’s help. Tall noted Rhyliath was close but preoccupied with something.

  Avea waved Alkin back. “We all have our mirrors there. I must ask,” she said. “Did the other find you? Did he touch you?”

  Tall sensed urgency in her words, a hidden peril as well. He answered carefully. “My staff. Did you?”

  “This,” Avea said, pointing, her expression showing her unease. “Alkin?”

  “Not I,” Alkin said.

  “I thought as much,” Avea said. “Tell me what you experienced.”

  “It felt like it was only moments. He appeared but he was whole. I tried to run, but something held me. There was another, a woman. She freed me… and …and I returned.”

  “There’s more, I know there is,” Avea said.

  “Just before he touched me… Or at least I thought so, but what I felt was the staff pressed into my hand. I’m certain of it. I don’t know how… I can’t recall but I don’t seem to remember having it while I’ve been with you.”

  “Odd, continue.” Avea’s eyes fixed on Alkin’s for a moment; whether impulsively or deliberately, Tall didn’t know.

  “That’s it. The next moment I was… was… Wait, just before, I saw them. The tethers. Red, connecting everything and all. White, shining out like stars in the night sky. Blue, cold and underneath.”

  Avea’s eyes fixed on Alkin’s and did not return to Tall’s. She held still otherwise, said nothing. “It is, isn’t it,” Alkin said.

  “I think so,” Avea said quietly. “You yourself said he has the light of a seer.”

  “Not just the light,” Rhyliath said, his attention suddenly and fully on what was transpiring.

  “Too opportune and doubly so with Lady Hravic outside the city,” Alkin said, half to himself. “Tainted, his gift is. Tainted, I tell you.”

  “Even so,” Avea said. “We know of the ill binding, and can deal with that when the time comes. For now, we must use what advantage we can get.” She turned to Tall. “Do you know where Lady Hravic is? Did you see her in your vision?”

  Tall nodded. “She follows but at a distance. She must be using Deanna to track. The orb, I think. Somehow she can use her orb to find mine.”

  Avea and Alkin spoke at length in hushed tones. Rhyliath interjected at times. Tall listened, but couldn’t quite hear what was said. Perhaps some form of the closing, he thought. Perhaps because they thought they couldn’t fully trust him. Or perhaps because of the taint. He didn’t know, but by early afternoon, they seemed to have a plan. By late afternoon, they were ready to carry it out.

  Rhyliath deposited Tall and Avea on a hillside, Rhyliath with Alkin astride him circled to the south and waited. Grandin and his men came from the north. Tall’s brood waited to the east. Tall reassured Hazard across the link, thankful the tethers were strong and renewed. This was mostly because they were so close, also because of the heavy influence of seed. Avea warned him that so much seed would have him walking in two worlds, but also told him that there was great need. He was to watch the way and be ready.

  “Down, get down. Wait here,” Avea hissed. “Stay out of sight. Whatever you do, don’t draw attention to yourself. Can you do that?”

  “Is it time?” he asked.

 
; “Soon,” she said. “If I don’t return by the time the sun touches the horizon, follow the plan as we’ve discussed.”

  Avea stalked off without another word, leaving Tall alone on the hillside. Being alone didn’t dampen his mood. His thoughts raced. His heart soared. His journey was coming to an end.

  Chapter 17: Wrinkle in the Mix

  An hour passed, perhaps more. Unease settled in. The plan seemed so simple, so perfect: Track the trackers, wait until nightfall, seize them. Go after the soldiers, exchange Lady Hravic for Ray.

  Simple. Perfect. Except something was wrong. Avea should have returned by now.

  Tall gripped his staff and shouldered his light pack. He slipped from concealment. Stooped over, half crawling, he moved to a vantage point on the hill.