Five Kingdoms: Books 01, 02 & 03

by Toby Neighbors

  “Couldn’t you use your magic to do that?” Brianna said as he cut the wood with his knife.

  “Yes, but sometimes I like to do things with my hands. It reminds me of growing up.”

  “Did you do a lot of work around your house?”

  “I did almost all the cooking and cleaning,” Zollin admitted. “Quinn could do it, but I always felt like I needed to make up for my mother’s absence.”

  “Why?” she asked innocently.

  “I don’t know, I guess I always blamed myself for her death.”

  “I can’t imagine Quinn feeling that way,” Brianna said.

  “Well, I don’t know why, but I always thought that he did. It’s stupid, I guess, but our relationship was always rocky. I wasn’t good at carpentry and I didn’t like it. We didn’t really understand each other.”

  “I’m so sorry, Zollin. I never knew.”

  “No one did, really, I never talked with anyone about it except for Todrek. We were the outsiders growing up, but then he started to develop and grow, while I was always skinny and awkward.”

  “You aren’t now,” Brianna said, smiling at him over the birds she was preparing.

  “Still skinny and still awkward,” Zollin said, waving his hands at himself as if to say, see.

  “I don’t think you’re awkward at all. You have a confidence and quiet strength that is very attractive.”

  She glanced down as she spoke, but Zollin was still staring at her. He couldn’t imagine anyone thinking he was attractive, even though he knew Brianna was attracted to him. He pushed the thoughts away and changed the subject.

  “What about you? Did you do much growing up?”

  “I did everything,” Brianna said with a sigh. “My mother was so relieved to have daughters she could boss around. She would sit and pretend to knit while she ordered me and my sisters around. I hated it.”

  “You don’t seem to mind working hard,” Zollin said. “You’re making short work of those birds.”

  “I don’t mind the work,” she admitted. “I just resented my mother for not helping when she could have. We just never got along. She seemed jealous whenever my father gave me his attention and then it seemed she had more and more for me to do.”

  “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about that now.”

  “No, not with you. You treat me too good I could get spoiled with you around.”

  Zollin smiled and felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment. He focused on getting the spit ready. He found a stick that seemed long enough and straight enough, but he needed to peel the bark off and trim the knots and limbs so that it could be passed through the bird carcasses.

  Brianna moved away from the camp to clean the birds, cutting out the entrails with deft strokes of the delicate-looking knife she kept in her saddlebag. She dug a small hole and covered the entrails over with dirt to keep the smell from attracting other animals. Then she washed the birds in the stream.

  Zollin had salt and a few herbs in a small container he kept in his saddlebag. He sprinkled the seasoning over the pheasants and then mounted them on the spit. The fire had burned down and was producing an even heat. Zollin put the birds on to cook and then turned back to Brianna, who had just finished scrubbing her hands in the stream.

  “Ready to practice again?” he asked her.

  “Sure. What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, I can levitate some targets and at the same time press a sense of panic and fear on you.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. We’ll start small, then work our way up so that you get used to it.”

  “Okay,” Brianna said, although she wasn’t sure she was.

  Zollin took some of the wood and transmuted it into wooden disks. He used his magic to send them up into the air and then, with a single thought, set them ablaze. The floating targets shimmered in the heat of the flames, but they were easy to see in the fading twilight. Then, Zollin sent out a feeling of mild anxiety. It was easy to imagine feeling worried and then push that feeling out with his mind. At first it had been strange using his mind to touch or push his will out onto others, but it was almost second nature now. At times he had been tempted to use it in Orrock when haggling with a merchant to get a better price, but he felt that using his power that way was wrong. Quinn had always told him that knowing right from wrong was easy, it was doing the right thing that was difficult sometimes.

  He glanced over and saw that Brianna seemed completely unaffected. Then he remembered the ring, the little silver ring with the white stone which Kelvich had called a White Alzerstone. The small gem was like a tiny hole that sucked in any magic around it. He had given Brianna the ring on a whim when they were still in Tranaugh Shire. He hadn’t had time to really explore the ring’s power, but he knew it protected the wearer from magic.

  “You’ll have to take off the ring,” he told her.

  “Oh, I completely forgot,” she said.

  She pulled off the ring and sat it on a rock near the fire. As soon as the ring left her hand, she seemed startled. A feeling of strong uneasiness had come over her all of a sudden. She was worried, even though she had no idea why. Zollin noticed the pinched look on Brianna’s face. He hated to see her features shadowed by fear, but he wanted to help her be ready for whatever they encountered with the dragon. He had no idea if she could actually help and a part of him didn’t want her anywhere near the beast, but neither did he want to be separated from her again. For now, helping her was the best thing he could do.

  “Fire when ready,” he said.

  “The targets aren’t moving,” she said, her voice tight.

  “I’ll move them once you get used to things.”

  “Are you sure this is safe?” she asked.

  “Sure it is. Fight through what you’re feeling and hit the targets.”

  She placed an arrow on the bowstring and drew the weapon back. She took careful aim, then shot. The arrow flew up and hit the flaming wood, which tumbled through the air until Zollin caught it with his magic again. He hadn’t been prepared for the force of the arrow’s impact.

  “Wow, that bow really packs a punch,” he said.

  “It’s amazing,” Brianna said, trying to sound cheerful, but not quite pulling it off.

  “Okay, I’ll start moving the targets now. See what you can do.”

  He began moving the flaming disks in a slow circle. Brianna took aim and shot again, hitting the disk she was aiming at. Zollin increased the speed, but Brianna again had no trouble hitting her target. Then Zollin sent the disks flying in different directions. He heard Brianna’s gasp and glanced over to see her struggling to get her next arrow nocked. Zollin tried to move the disks in unpredictable patterns. At first Brianna struggled to hit the targets, but after several misses, she began to hit her marks. She was shooting more and more on instinct and even though she still felt worried, she could see that the repetitive action of daily practice with her bow had given her the fundamental skills she needed to hit the moving targets.

  When she had shot all of her arrows, Zollin stopped sending out the feelings of anxiety and extinguished all of the disks but one, which he used to illuminate the ground where they searched for her arrows.

  “You’re very good,” he said.

  “Thanks, but I still don’t think I’m ready to face a dragon,” she said, but there was more confidence in her voice than before. “How do you make people feel things?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain. I just think it and then I sort of push the feelings out with my mind.”

  “Have you ever done it to me before?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, a little surprised. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “No reason really, it’s just...” She paused as she thought of how to frame her thoughts so that he could understand them. “I know you can do all these amazing things—in fact, I’m not even really shocked by them anymore. But they were all things you could do, things I could see. When I took the ring off I
felt scared. I mean, not scared but worried and I couldn’t explain it. You hadn’t done anything and yet, my emotions couldn’t tell the difference. It was unsettling.”

  “I’ve never used my magic on you. In fact, with the ring on, I can’t,” Zollin said.

  “I don’t think controlling what people think and feel is right,” Brianna said.

  “Nor do I, that’s why I don’t do it. I’ve only used it with animals up until now.”

  “I don’t want you to do that to me again,” she said, and there was a note of anger in her voice.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You don’t have to be sorry, just don’t do that to me, okay?”

  “Sure, I promise.”

  They picked up the arrows and returned to the fire. Zollin had turned the spit occasionally as she had practiced shooting. The skin on the pheasants was brown from the heat of the fire and the fat was dripping from the birds to hiss among the embers.

  Brianna immediately picked up her ring and slid it onto her finger. It was one of the few possessions that she still had from her old life, which is how she thought of her childhood in Tranaugh Shire. The ring seemed so simple, but it had saved her life more than once. It shielded her from the power that she admired and feared in Zollin. She looked at him in the firelight where he was checking on the pheasants. He was taller than she was, his shoulders broad and the muscles tight and wiry like his father’s. Compared to Mansel he seemed small, but alone by the fire he seemed bigger somehow.

  Brianna knew she wasn’t treating Zollin fairly. She knew he had only been trying to help her prepare for the possibility of fighting the dragon, but she couldn’t help how she felt. When she had taken off the White Alzerstone ring, she had been manipulated in a way that she couldn’t resist or overcome. It frightened her and repulsed her. Since the day they had left Tranaugh Shire she had not stopped thinking that her life was somehow entwined with Zollin’s, but now she had doubts. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was somehow controlling her affections. The ring was her protection from his power, or was it? Was it possible that he had only pretended that the ring had power? She didn’t know, and the uncertainty gave her pause.

  They had cheese and bread, along with a few vegetables, but Zollin didn’t feel like cooking. In fact, the void that had suddenly opened between Brianna and himself had swallowed up his appetite. He didn’t know what had happened or what he had done, but the bond he felt with Brianna was suddenly severed and he felt lost. They did the work of settling in for the night in silence. Bedrolls were unpacked, the horses were double checked to make sure they were securely hobbled for the night, but still able to graze.

  Once the birds were done cooking, Zollin pulled them off of the spit and onto some tin plates he carried in his provisions. Brianna had cut the bread and cheese and they sat down to eat. Neither of them was talking and the gap between them seemed to be widening.

  “Hello at the camp!” a voice called from the darkness.

  Zollin was both startled and relieved to hear the voice. He had felt like the silence was going to swallow him whole, and the sound of another voice was welcome.

  “Who’s there?” Zollin said. “Show yourself.”

  “Just a traveler,” said the voice. It was louder now as the stranger drew closer. “I smelled your supper and hoped we might be allowed to join you.”

  Zollin sent out a wave of magic even as his own power was pulsing and roiling inside him, stoked by his fear and the possibility of danger. He identified two adult men, a woman, and a small group of children. They seemed even more tentative than Zollin felt.

  After a moment they approached out of the darkness, still shadowy, but obviously harmless. They were refugees in haggard clothing. The men carried packs on their backs, the children were filthy, with tattered clothes, a few still clutching sad little toys to their chests.

  “We’re from Prath,” said one of the men. “We’re going to Orrock.”

  “Do you have food?” Brianna asked.

  “A little,” said the man. He had a drooping mustache and there were permanent sweat stains on his clothes.

  “Come,” Zollin said, waving his arm at their camp site. “Sit down around the fire. We’ve got plenty.”

  “We don’t want to be a burden,” said the man. “We thought we saw some strange lights in the sky and were trying to see what they were. Normally we’d have made camp by now.”

  “You’re not a burden,” Zollin said. “We’ve got pheasant and I can make a stew.”

  “There’s bread and cheese, too,” Brianna added. “I’ve even got some strawberries in my bag for the children. Please, join us.”

  Zollin thought that Brianna seemed as happy to have someone else at their camp as he was. He stuffed down his feelings about what had happened with Brianna. Perhaps later she would talk to him about it. For now, he had plenty to do to keep his mind busy.

  The refugees settled around the fire. They were obviously exhausted. Zollin went to the stream to fetch water. While he was there he sent his magic into the water and found several large trout. He brought the water back to the campsite and then returned to the stream. It only took the work of a few minutes to levitate the fish from the water, clean them, and then magically set them to cook.

  When he returned to the camp with three large trout, steaming and ready to eat, Brianna had given the newcomers their bread and the pheasants. The woman was busy dividing the birds among the children.

  “Here’s some trout as well,” Zollin said.

  He laid the fish on a small towel that Brianna spread out carefully by the fire. She had already gotten a small pot and filled it with water. It now hung on the spit over the fire, which she had added more wood to, so the flames were dancing around the pot as they heated the water. Zollin got the dried meat from his saddlebags, as well as an onion and three carrots he’d been saving. Brianna had some potatoes which she was cutting and dropping into the pot when he returned. He handed her the food and she smiled up at him. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give Zollin hope that things would be okay.

  “You’re all from Prath?” Zollin asked.

  “Yes, this is Tasha,” the man said, pointing to the woman, “and her husband, Dovas. I’m Ulrick. The children are from our village. Tasha was the teacher at the essentials school in Prath. When the Priestess came and warned us of the dragon’s attack, many of the families sent their children with us. We watched from a distance to see what would happen. We had heard the rumors, but no one really believed that a dragon was real. The men of our village stood guard and the women were ready with buckets of water in case fires were started in the village. Just after dark the dragon came. The village was totally destroyed.”

  “What about the villagers? Did any escape?” Zollin asked.

  “A few did manage to survive, but the dragon attacked so quickly, and in the dark, it was hard to see what was happening. It made several passes around the village and most were trapped inside the flames. The beast gorged itself before torching what remained.”

  “What about your guard? Didn’t they fight back?”

  “They tried, I suppose. We were too far away to make out much detail in the darkness. The children were terrified and to be honest, we were, too.”

  “Did you return to the village?”

  “No, we didn’t think the children could handle that and we were afraid to split up, even in the daylight. Our instructions had been clear: get the children to Orrock if anything were to happen. So that’s what we’re doing.”

  Zollin looked at Brianna. There were tears in her eyes. Zollin was angry. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but his resolve to fight the dragon became even more solid.

  “We’re going to find the dragon,” Zollin said. “We’ll kill it or drive it back to where it came from.”

  “How are you planning to do that?” said Dovas. From the sound of his voice he didn’t find it possible that anyone could stand up against the dragon.
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  “Zollin is a wizard,” Brianna said. “The lights you saw were burning targets that he was levitating for me to shoot at.”

  “A wizard?” Ulrick said, surprised.

  “It’ll take more than parlor tricks to stop the dragon,” Dovas said.

  “Zollin is very powerful,” Brianna said.

  “Sure he is,” Dovas said cynically. “He’s little more than a boy, miss. The dragon won’t even notice him.”

  “Dovas!” Ulrick scolded. “Where are your manners?”