“It says the only way to stop a spell is to cut off the source of power. We can’t just take the wand. We have to break it,” he said.
“But I can’t even get close!”
The swirl was getting larger now, almost as large as the stump, and there was a foul-smelling wind rushing out of it. Just at the edge of hearing was a mixture of chilling noises, like voices chanting in an unknowable language. Layla panicked, grabbing stones and hurling them at the wand. The fear coursing through her took any precision from her throws, and any stones that came close were zapped away by the wand.
“Go get me more rocks!” she cried out.
William scrambled to obey, spotting a decent one a short distance away, but before he could reach it, the little dragoyle sprang into action, clamping down on the rock with its mouth and dropping it at Layla’s feet.
“Why did it do that?” she asked, her mind in no condition for any more puzzles.
“It...it is a puppet. You control it.”
“You’re right!” She turned to the monster. “Dragoyle, destroy the wand!”
It snapped to the task, bounding toward the wand and shrugging off a blast. It clamped down on the artifact, heaving a breath of blackness while it shook and chomped. There was a hissing whine, almost like the wand was screaming in pain, and finally it fractured in a burst of light and fell to the stump. The instant it broke, the dragoyle fell lifeless, and the swirl began to slow. Layla wiped beading sweat from her forehead.
“Okay, the wand is gone. What happens now?” she asked.
He flipped to the end of the book, and his eyes traced over the page, the words now illuminated by the first rays of the rising sun.
“I can’t understand the words anymore,” he said.
“I guess that makes sense. All of the spells are going away. Did it just get colder?” she asked, pulling her nightshirt a little tighter.
“Just windier, I think,” he said. He looked across the brightening field. The tufts of grass and remaining stalks from the harvest were beginning to bow under the force of the wind, but they weren’t moving in the sweeping wave that he was used to. They were bowing in a curve...and all directly toward the shrinking swirl. “Grab onto something! The wind is blowing toward that thing!”
They sprinted toward the fence, but its widely spaced slats were already rattling dangerously in the wind. If the gale grew strong enough, it wouldn’t anchor them for very long. Crawling through it and fighting a rush of wind that threatened to drag them backward, they made their way to the spire and wrapped their arms around it. The wind intensified. Soil and earth were spiraling into the black swirl. It sucked up the book, shredding it to pieces as it did, and made short work of the dragoyle’s remains as well. The stump was shaking and straining at its weakened roots. Above it, the swirl was barely the size of the fist, but the air rushing into it howled deafeningly.
With a crack like a whip, the stump pulled free, colliding with the ball of darkness and splintering into a galaxy of tiny fragments that disappeared inside. Now the mass of black was the size of a marble. And now it was the size of a pea. Now a pinpoint. The air shook with a resounding roll of thunder and burst of energy as the swirl finally vanished completely, taking the maelstrom with it just as swiftly as it had come.
The children let a few long moments pass before they were willing to release their grip on the spire. When they did, they took some time to observe the scene of chaos revealed by the rising sun. The stump was gone, and a good deal of the earth beneath it had gone with it. A few slats had been ripped from the fence and hurled far into the field. Each of the siblings was plastered with dust and dirt, their hair and eyes wild. Their jangled nerves had not yet permitted anything as complex as speech or rational thought to fall into place by the time they heard their names echoing across the field. They looked toward the farmhouse and saw their father rushing in their direction, still in his nightclothes. Layla and William both hurried to him, hugging him tightly.
“What is going on here? Your mother and I woke to a terrible sound and found your room empty.”
“We—” William began.
“We woke up early to...to finish the stump,” Layla said. She was always quick with a lie when the situation called for it. When the truth involved dark sorcery and nearly summoning an ancient evil, the situation certainly called for a lie.
“You what?” their father asked. He looked around, spotting the scooped out pit of earth and the scraggly remnants of roots sticking out from its edges. “Good heavens. You certainly did a thorough job of it.” He looked around. “Where did you put it? And where did you put the soil?”
“A man came by. He had an empty wagon. We convinced him to haul it away,” William offered, slowly picking up on his sister’s ideas.
“If you were digging, where are the shovels?” their father asked, now legitimately confused.
“We put them away,” Layla said.
“Then why are you out here?”
“We were trying to figure out how to fix the fence. It broke when we were loading the soil.”
The confused farmer looked around at the shattered and scattered slats. “And the noise? What was that?”
“There was a windstorm. It passed quickly, but it made a mess,” Layla said.
He looked into the frazzled and anxious faces of each of his children. Their story didn’t make any sense, and he seemed reluctant to believe it, but in the absence of a better explanation it was enough.
“We’ll discuss it later. Next time you plan something like this, tell your mother and I so we won’t be worried.”
“I don’t think we’ll be doing something like this again, Dad,” Layla said.
The trio set off back to the farmhouse. William glanced over his shoulder at the spire.
“Father?” he said.
“Yes, William?”
“Since the stump is gone, can we go to New Kenvard like you said...after a nap.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you think anyone there will be able to tell us about the history of the city?”
“I imagine so.”
“I’d like to hear about it.”
“Yeah,” said Layla. “I think I would too.”
###
From The Author
Thank you for reading! If you liked this story, or perhaps if you found it lacking, I’d love to hear from you. Below are links to some of the places you can find me online, and if you’d like to be kept in the loop with important new developments and releases, consider joining my newsletter.
Official Website, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, Tumblr, Wattpad, and good old email.
Discover other titles by Joseph R. Lallo:
The Book of Deacon Series:
Book 1: The Book of Deacon
Book 2: The Great Convergence
Book 3: The Battle of Verril
Book 4: The D’Karon Apprentice
Other stories in the same setting:
Jade
The Rise of the Red Shadow
The Redemption of Desmeres
The Big Sigma Series:
Book 1: Bypass Gemini
Book 2: Unstable Prototypes
Book 3: Artificial Evolution
Book 4: Temporal Contingency
The Free-Wrench Series:
Book 1: Free-Wrench
Book 2: Skykeep
Book 3: Ichor Well
NaNoWriMo Projects:
The Other Eight
Other Stories:
Between
e-buttons">share
The Book of Deacon Anthology Page 206
