“The door, Jar,” Amber said calmly.
The sound of many gears, shifting and ratcheting as they turned, preceded the door finally swinging open. As I followed Sam and Amber, the tiny man jumped onto Amber’s shoulder.
“Brownie?” I guessed, out loud.
“Take it back, knave!” Jar spat and pulled a tiny sword from the scabbard at his side.
“Sorry. I’m not from around here. Gnome then?” I’d only had two guesses and still got it wrong.
“Do I look like a brownie?” The gnome turned away in disgust as he sat on Amber’s shoulder, holding onto a lock of her hair for stability.
“No. You’re right,” I said. “My apologies.”
Jar harrumphed but re-sheathed his sword.
Once through the door, we found ourselves in the courtyard of a great, stone castle. At the front corners stood narrow towers with tall, conical roofs. At the very top, colorful flags were attached to thick masts and flapped lazily in a gentle breeze. Instead of taking the tidy, brick path around to the front, we walked around to the side, where a tall tower adjoined the castle. The tower stood alone and was connected to the castle by an enclosed bridge on what looked to be the second level.
“Tig will meet us in the library,” Sam said as he approached the tower’s entrance, which was protected by an ornate stone archway, but otherwise had no door.
“No need for security?” I asked, shifting Flick in my arms. She wasn’t heavy, but unconscious, she was dead-weight.
“Without permission, there is no way to access other floors,” Sam said he led us through the archway and into an empty space.
“No stairs?” I asked, unable to find any conveyance to other floors. It hadn’t escaped me that we’d crossed over the outline of a fifteen-foot-wide, yellow brick circle centered in the room.
“No need,” he said.
Without warning and just as he’d stopped talking, we simply were no longer on the bottom floor, but rather in the middle of a completely different, large, round room. The room was filled with wonders I wanted to explore, most notably, the giant rows of book shelves which took up half the room. As my eye followed the aisles, I realized the stacks were considerably longer than was possible within the confines of the tower we’d entered.
“You are Felix Slade, then.” The man who approached was of a slight build. His ruddy complexion indicated wood elf, but his bright blue eyes were more rounded than the elves I’d seen so far. Probably the most unusual thing about him was that he wore a t-shirt with a Disney logo on it and blue jeans.
“Ah, right,” Sam said. “Felix Slade, this is King Tigerious Parnassus. Ruler of Gaeland. Tig, this is the unfortunate wizard Felix Slade and his unlikely companion, Flick.”
“Bring her over to the table,” Tig said, rolling his eyes, although at what I wasn’t sure. As I laid Flick onto the table, he placed a small pillow beneath her head.
“My king, you don’t plan to heal a demon, do you?” Jar asked, hopping onto the table, placing his hands on his hips.
“She suffers,” Tig said simply, not looking at Jar. “No one is made greater by another’s suffering. How we treat our enemies when they are weak is the true measure of who we are, Jar.”
I had the sense that Tig was speaking more to the room than he was to Jar.
“Doesn’t hurt that Bert is here,” Sam said, looking at his sister, Amber, who had one hand on the pommel of the sword that hung from her belt.
“Thank you for coming, Amber,” Tig said. This time he pulled his eyes away from Flick as he spoke. “I hope you’ll stay for a few days.”
“I will see this through,” she said.
There was something going on between the two of them. My best read was that Tig had it bad for the girl and had either been rebuked or had never fully committed.
Tig smiled wanly and turned back to Flick. “I haven’t seen a demon of this sort before. What is she?” He ran his hands over her body, keeping them about ten inches above her as he did. His palms glowed green.
“Peutering,” I said, through painful breaths. “Not female. Can change sexes.”
“She is very powerful. What is the wound on her back?”
I raised my eyebrows at his assessment. I might have dismissed his analysis, except for the fact that he somehow knew of the wounds on Flick’s back. “We were attacked by demons. Flick identified them as flesh-eaters.”
“Those, I have met,” Tig said. “How is it the two of you come to be in Gaeland and in possession of a seed from the great tree?”
“My mother,” I said. I was finding it difficult to breathe and tried to keep my answers short. “She threw it to me and we were transported.”
“Sam says you came from Leotown. That is in the Midwestern United States. Not over far from where I grew up. What were you doing in Kaelstan?”
“Trying to help someone,” I said.
“There it is,” he said triumphantly as wood splinters and gray puss pulled up from the wound and hovered in a ball above Flick’s body. Tig made a small gesture with his finger and the wood splinters were separated and fell. He brought his hands together. The ball of hovering goo flashed a brilliant green and disappeared from existence. “She will recover now.”
Flick’s face relaxed and she sighed, although she remained unconscious.
“That was amazing,” I said.
“Peutering.” Sam dropped a dusty tome onto a nearby table. “Hah, Bert, you got it right.” He looked over at Amber, whom I assumed was Bert. “Not technically a demon, but considered a darkling. They can change shape and have enhanced strength when on Faerie and to a lesser degree Earth. They can be summoned if you know their full name. Generally considered the working class of Kaelstan, if you don’t mind me paraphrasing. Greater demons use them as labor.”
“Would you allow me to read you?” Tig asked.
“Get him a shirt first,” Amber said, annoyed.
“Jar?” Tig said. “Do you have anything that will fit?”
“Kat will,” he huffed as he jumped from the table onto the floor. “I’ll tell her. And I’m telling the mayor you have a demon up here.”
“Thank you, Jar,” Tig said, a smile playing across his lips.
I held my hands out and Tig gently grasped my arms and laid his thumbs across my wrists. His hands were warm to the touch. “The stone skin is self-inflicted,” he said after a time. “I cannot remove it.”
I nodded in acceptance. I’d been hopeful, but it was a long shot.
“There is great battle within you,” he said. “You are of two worlds and they are at war for you.”
“Not sure that’s going to matter,” I said. “The Lapide Pugno will end me shortly. Will you help Flick get back to Kaelstan when I’m gone? I’d hate to see her dead because of me.”
“Why did you go to Kaelstan?”
“I have these dreams,” I said. “In my recent dreams a witch was being chased by an evil wizard, who killed her. She had an artifact that allowed her to travel to Kaelstan. Let’s just say that in the process of rescuing her, we ended up in Kaelstan without a way to get home. We were separated and I’m afraid she’s in worse trouble than she was before.”
“The stone skin? Why would you do this to yourself?”
“I was tricked,” I said. “I needed a weapon to help me fight ogres who had killed another wizard.”
“Ogres don’t kill,” Sam said. “They’re peaceful.”
“That could be. These ogres were spelled by the same wizard who I dreamed killed my friend. They wear enchanted necklaces. I can tell you these ogres are extremely hard on people - especially wizards.”
“They are magic nulls,” Sam said. “Most spells have no effect on them. The Lapide Pugno, as you call it, is clever and the necklaces even more so.”
“Clever enough to kill me.”
“I said I couldn’t remove it,” Tig said. “Not that it couldn’t be removed. You have it within yourself to remove this enchantment.”
> “Stop with the Yoda-speak,” Amber said, impatiently. “He’s not getting it.”
I narrowed my eyes at Amber. Just who was this Yoda everyone talked about?
“Let me show you,” Tig said, ignoring the conversation. “You’re feeding the spell when you should starve it - something in how you cast it. Can you see it?”
Tig drew me into his vision. At first, all I saw was a bright green light moving as if through a sparkling, colorful fluid. Suddenly, I realized what I was looking at. It was as if I stood in front of a mirror, looking at myself with wizard’s sight. Tig’s aura was the bright green light illuminating and examining my own. I could see the familiar dark purple and black streaks of my aura, surrounded by bright yellows and medium blues. This time, I saw a thin gray shroud blanketing my arm, the edges of which pulsed as it consumed magical energy and crept forward.
“I can,” I said.
“Take control, Felix,” he said. “It is your energy. Don’t feed the spell.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I tried pulling at the edges of the spell, but found I had no way to get a grip on it.
“It’s an infection. Fight it,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The spell seemed to understand I was trying to stop it. The gray leapt forward and my breath caught as it closed in on my throat. Panic rose at the realization that I would soon suffocate.
“I know it’s difficult, Felix, but you’re not seeing it.”
“No shit!” Amber’s disembodied voice pierced through.
“Panic will not help,” Tig reprimanded. “I suspect you’ve been attacked before. This is no different.”
I turned as Tig formed a dark green ball of sludge with his hands and hurled it at me. It splattered against my good side and pain coursed through my body. I yowled in response.
Two larger, dark green sludge balls flew toward me at a high rate of speed. Before I could react, they too hit. It felt like someone was tearing flesh from my side.
“Stop!” I choked out the word from my constricting throat.
“Make me,” Tig said as five sludge balls, each the size of my fist, hovered near his green aura.
Taking five hits would kill me. “Scutum!” I pulled my shield up and deflected the sludge balls.
“What is that?” Tig asked, excited as he hurled sludge ball after sludge ball. With the shield, I found it easy to deflect them all.
“My shield,” I said.
“Don’t be dense, Slade,” Amber exclaimed. “He’s telling you to use the shield against the spell.”
“I can do that?” I asked. I didn’t wait for a response as I turned my palm toward my own body and the Lapide Pugno spell. At first the shield careened off the top of the hardened gray blanket that surrounded my side. I could actually feel myself striking against the stone and that success spurred me on. I tipped the shield back and willed it into the triangular shape of a medieval heater.
“That’s it, Felix,” Tig said. “Now you see it.”
I dug the shield’s tip beneath the edge of the spell where it ended next to my chin. The spell held tight as I warred with it. My body’s reserves flowed equally into the spell and into my shield as they fought for dominance.
“No good. It’s leaching my energy,” I said, panic rising again.
A pencil-wide stream of bright green energy pierced through my vision and wrapped itself around the heater shield. It was enough to break the stalemate and all at once a sizeable chunk of the spelled grayness broke free and flaked off. I pushed the advantage and drove the shield down.
My aura brightened as I breathed the first full breath I’d had since arriving in Gaeland. With renewed vigor, I made quick work of the spell and peeled the remainder of it from my body. My vision went dark and my head swam. Apparently, I'd expended my reserves and was bottoming out.
“Hold on there, tiger,” Amber said, catching me and helping me fall gently to the floor. I landed atop a pile of stone shavings.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice shaking.
"Katinwal. Just in time," Sam said.
My blurred vision had started to clear and I caught sight of a gnome who'd appeared in the center of the room. The gnome wore dark-red velvet overalls and had a long blonde ponytail halfway down her back. In her arms, she held a folded light brown shirt.
"Good afternoon, King Tigerious, Wizard Samuel, and Bulwark Amber." She handed me the shirt. "And who is this handsome, shirtless man?"
I was still seated on the floor, trying to gain my wits. I accepted the shirt and gave her a quick smile. "Felix Slade. It is nice to meet you, Katinwal."
"Kat to my friends," she said and curtsied. "Jobie has assembled an early dinner in the dining hall. Will you be staying the night?"
Her question gained me the attention of the room. I gave myself a moment by removing the tattered shirt I still wore and pulling the fresh shirt on.
"I need to get back to Kaelstan," I said. I reached up for the edge of the workbench where Flick lay and attempted to stand. Strong hands grabbed me beneath my armpits and helped me to my feet. I nodded to Amber, who still regarded me warily. "A friend of mine was taken by a dragon and I have to find her."
"Tall order, that," Sam said. "We closed the breach between Gaeland and Kaelstan more than eight years ago. There is no way back."
Chapter 18
Demon Blood
Sunlight filtered through the castle’s stained-glass windows and into the room the wizard, Sam Elendahl, had offered me the night before. I’d awoken with a start, having dreamed once again about Missy. This time she was stuck in a dungeon and slowly being tortured. Even awake, I heard the echoes of her screams in my ears.
On a positive note, the evening’s rest had been good for me and I felt recharged. I didn’t know if it was Gaeland as a whole, or just the tower where we slept, but magic was everywhere. When I cast my wizard’s sight, I’d been shocked to discover that magical energy was layered upon every object and creature. It swirled around as if it were part of the very air we breathed. Even Flick’s aura shifted from the dark purple of Kaelstan to something much more complex.
We’d spent a short time talking the night before. Even though my exhaustion made me horrible company, after what Tig had done for both me and Flick, I didn’t feel like I could simply go to bed.
Sam and Amber spent most of the time asking about the magic of Earth. Even though both had spent their childhoods there, they had no idea wizards and witches existed.
For my part, I learned that we were in the Wizard’s Tower as Sam’s guests. The arrangement was significant because as King of Gaeland, Tigerious would cause himself numerous political issues by harboring a demon.
According to Sam, however, as Wizard, he was given more latitude. I felt a shading of truth when he told me the latter, but I had no desire to argue the point.
A warm body pressed against my side and I felt the scrape of Flick’s solid horn on my arm. I’d laid her on a couch in the room when I’d gone to sleep the night before, unwilling for us to be separated. Tig was clearly not interested in bringing her harm, nor was Sam. But Amber was a person of action and I sensed she would do what was necessary. I had no idea what guided her decisions.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Flick had moved to join me in the bed. I had no sense that she meant anything beyond a desire to gain comfort. I stared at the strange little being beside me. If I blanked out the horns on her head, she could have been any other teenager - well, horns and her latex textured skin.
My concept of living beings had been under constant assault this last year. First, I’d discovered werewolves, then trolls, demons and ogres. Now it was elves and gnomes.
I brushed the top of Flick’s head with my hand. I think I mostly just wanted to touch the smaller, horned bumps on her skull. She adjusted her position and started to wake.
Suddenly, she flew back, taking covers with her and falling from the bed onto the floor.
So much for the peace of the morning.
“Master, I apologize,” she said. “I did not mean to presume your bed.”
“Calm, Flick,” I said. “You are safe and have not offended. We’ll talk about limits later.”
“Will they destroy me today?” she asked as she pulled at the covers she’d taken with her and started to fold them.
“No. Why would you ask that?”
“I heard the gnomes speaking in the night,” she said. “The mayor of the castle’s colony of gnomes is demanding it for their protection. It is an agreement made with the king.”
“We are under the care of Wizard Elendahl,” I said. “And I will defend you.”
“You must not, Master,” she said.
“Felix,” I reprimanded.
She looked down. “Felix,” she said, “you must not further endanger yourself for me.”
“I’m hungry,” I said, changing the subject. I hadn’t eaten much the night before due to exhaustion, but this morning I felt I could eat the entire menu at Chatty Katty’s. “I’m taking dibs on first shower, but you’re welcome to take one after I do.”
I jumped from bed and made my way through the castle’s elegant guest suite to the bathroom. I’d learned the night before that the wizard’s tower itself was magic. As long as you were a permitted guest, the tower acted to fulfill your every request.
“Shower, please,” I said, placing my hand on the warm stone of the shower stall. Water rained from the ceiling and I was soon drenched. When I opened my eyes, a dish of shampoo had appeared on a shelf, next to a bar of soap. “Thank you.” I murmured, losing myself in the joy of the shower.
When I exited, I wasn’t surprised to find a thick towel and a pile of fresh clothing. The jeans were lighter in color than I was used to but they fit perfectly. I wondered if the tower had manufactured them or if others had been involved. The clean, dark green linen shirt very much resembled the one Katinwal had provided the night before. I was further delighted by a pair of soft leather, mid-calf boots that had been left by the bench where I dressed.
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