The Iron Sword

by J. M. Briggs

  “If there is nothing else, this meeting is over. Thank you, everyone.”

  Luegáed rose first, giving a slight bow to Arto once again before he moved over to the doorway. He stopped and lingered nervously, suddenly remembering that he’d come with Merlin and thus had no torch. Arto heard Merlin chuckle and rise from his seat. His mentor nodded in farewell to the others before moving to join Luegáed. Arto watched as Merlin created a new orb of light and Luegáed drew back the pelt, watching the sparking magic with fascination. Then Medraut stepped forward and extended his hand to him. The two of them gripped each other’s forearms for a moment before Medraut stepped over to the doorway and retrieved his torch. Using the hearth fire, Medraut relit the torch and left the roundhouse.

  “So,” Arto asked, looking over at his sister eagerly. “What did you think of Luegáed?”

  Morgana paused at the question, her eyes focusing on the now empty doorway with a pondering expression. Her lips were tight and Airril glanced towards Arto with a hint of worry.

  “I’m not certain yet,” Morgana finally replied. “He seems like a good and capable young man, but I caution you brother, do not trust too easily.”

  “Morgana, you don’t even trust Medraut and he’s family,” Arto countered with a chuckle.

  “He is your father’s nephew,” Morgana reminded Arto, her green eyes flashing in the light of the fire. “He is no relation of mine. I tolerate him for the sake of you and mother.”

  “Proving that we are truly loved by the ancestors to have her trust and love us,” Airril added with a small forced laugh, gently placing a hand on his wife’s arm. “We’re not going to determine the value of Luegáed tonight Morgana; the only thing we can do is move forward and see what happens.”

  A soft sigh escaped Morgana, but she nodded in resignation. Leaning over, she kissed Arto quickly on the cheek, having to lean up a little due to his recent growth. Privately he hoped to grow a little more but knew that he was probably doomed to be shorter and smaller than his imposing father had been. Airril nodded to him and then he and his wife stepped out of the roundhouse, Morgana summoning forth a small orb of light to guide their way.

  Letting the flap drop, Arto breathed deeply before he turned to Gwenyvar and asked, “And what did you think of Luegáed?”

  “I liked him,” his wife answered simply, giving him a sweet smile. “I think that he will be very pleasant to have around.”

  Grinning, Arto stepped forward and kissed his wife gently, pulling her into a warm embrace. As her arms came around him, Arto felt a little of the tension drain away. He exhaled gratefully, pushing away all thoughts of the Sídhe, gates, and alliances.

  7

  Training in the Hills

  Alex inhaled deeply as she followed Aiden up onto a flatter piece of trail, catching her breath quickly and resisting the urge to turn around and check on Bran, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate it. Her feet were beginning to ache a bit and she was rethinking this day hike idea of theirs.

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t spend more time with your parents,” Aiden offered as he came to a stop in front of her and pulled out his water bottle.

  All around them the trees swayed in a light breeze, their leaves sounding like the ocean over their heads as beams of sunlight found their way through. A few feet ahead, the leafed trees of the lower part of the hills started to become scarcer as pine trees took over the landscape. The smell of pine was filling Alex’s nose and lungs.

  “It’s fine,” Alex replied as she paused by a mossy rock and reached to her small backpack for her own water bottle. “But it was nice to have breakfast with them before they had to leave. Daddy had a meeting Monday morning that he had to prepare for, otherwise, they probably would have stayed longer.”

  “But it was nice to see them?” Aiden asked, sounding a touch nervous.

  Laughing, Alex nodded and reached out to smack Aiden’s shoulder playfully as she assured him, “Yes it was nice, a bit weird to have all of our parents together at once, but it was nice.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden agreed, his smile a little sad and distant.

  Alex didn’t have to ask why, it was the same reason that she felt bittersweet about her parents visiting. It had been nice to see them again, the homesickness of leaving home after a whole summer of her mother’s cooking, Dad’s barbecues, family jokes and even just spending time with her brothers Matt and Ed, had been nagging at her for the last week. But it was wrong to have them in Ravenslake somehow. It was a part of her life, the magic and the danger posed by the Sídhe and whatever else was coming, that her family didn’t belong in.

  Maybe she was protecting them and keeping her parents from having to worry about her. Maybe she was just being selfish so that a part of her life remained calm and normal so that she had a place to go and not have to worry about being a mage. She wasn’t sure and as Aiden started up the trail again, Alex shoved the question out of her mind, not really wanting to know the answer. It was a pretty day and she could pretend that they were just a group of friends out on a nice day hike.

  The trail became steeper up ahead, twisting around the curve of the rocky hill and Alex had to wonder just how the Sídhe steeds were able to get down from here and into the city. Those large horses certainly seemed light on their feet and even in hiking boots, she was having some trouble keeping her footing.

  “Almost there,” Aiden called back to them.

  “Why did I let you talk us into this?” Bran despaired from behind Alex.

  Glancing behind her, Alex gave Bran a small supportive smile. Her friend was leaning heavily on a tall walking stick that Aiden had presented him when they’d arrived at the trailhead.

  “Did you come up here last time?” Alex asked, turning her attention back to the trail.

  “No, Nicki and I stayed down on the lower slope of the hill,” Bran answered in a slightly winded voice. “Only Aiden went up to the tunnel with Morgana and Merlin.”

  “Which was good given how many of them got past us,” Aiden added from the front.

  “That was a rough night,” Nicki groaned, her voice carrying a slight hint of a whine. “Stumbling around in the hills in the dark was not fun.”

  “That is the nice thing about daytime,” Bran agreed. “You can see where you are going and the Sídhe can’t stand the strong direct light of a sunny day.”

  “And here we are,” Aiden called from ahead of them. “A lovely empty and flat place to practice our magic without any risk of hurting our dorm rooms or being seen.”

  Following Aiden up, Alex stepped over the crest of the slope. The side of the hill had been flattened by the Sídhe as they created their last tunnel. Already the old opening in the hillside had caved in, but Alex knew that a gleaming magical gate made of iron was hidden just below the surface and was keeping the Sídhe out. The flat area that had once been barren of plant life due to the alien magic seeping through from the opening was starting to show signs of renewal. Around them in the trees, Alex could hear birds and had seen insects flittering around.

  “It’s different than it was in June,” Alex observed with approval.

  “I swear that the hike wasn’t that bad last time,” Bran groaned as he came up behind them, leaning on the walking stick as a hand reached down to rub his leg carefully.

  “Well last time we were all pretty tense and high strung,” Nicki offered with a smile as she joined them. “After all we were marching up here to block off a Sídhe tunnel.”

  “And we did a great job,” Aiden said, stepping further into the flat open area.

  It wasn’t exactly a glade, the sharp change from sloping woods to level surface far too sudden to be mistaken for natural. The vegetation was still rather spotty, but Alex suspected that by this time next year the little area would be discovered by hikers and become a favorite picnic or camping spot. Although she wasn’t certain that camping was allowed up here, hopefully not or Aiden might get some really bad ideas into his head.

  Aiden opened
his backpack, a grin on his face that made Alex a little uneasy. A moment later a stack of large slim volumes was pulled out. The covers were brightly colored with images of dragons, wizards with a raised staff and sparks of magic filling up the space. Raising an eyebrow at the cover, Alex lifted her eyes up to Aiden.

  “Really? This is your idea of training,” she asked giving him a teasing smile. “I assumed you didn’t just haul them here for the weight training.”

  “Come on Alex,” Aiden huffed, raising an eyebrow in return. “We need to start doing more with our powers. Fireballs are great and all, but I’m a little limited in what I can do. Morgana and Merlin said that we can do a lot more with our magic if we focus and visualize. These can give us ideas. I know it seems a bit weird but these books are literally just lists of different ideas for spells and magical combat.”

  Alex looked down at the book that Aiden was offering her. She didn’t recognize the name, but the subtitle proclaimed it a Grimoire full of spells. Sighing dramatically, Alex accepted the book and walked over to one of the larger leafed trees around them and settled down in its shade. If Aiden smirked victoriously behind her, Alex was content to ignore it. And if sitting under the tree in the cool shade, enjoying the soft breeze and the smell of the forest was much nicer than spending the day in her dorm room would have been then Alex wasn’t going to mention that either.

  Opening up the book, Alex skipped the book’s introduction which covered the apparent game system it was a part of and instead moved directly into the spell section. The volume that Aiden had given her only had spells, but the first section had a lot of information and numbers that meant nothing to her. Then she found a section of fire spells and stopped to read the various descriptions. Some of them were very vague and conjured nothing in her imagination, but a few of them made her smile as new ideas began to spark in her mind. There were spells for water, earth, and air, but also spells to affect animals and even a few to affect machines. However, Alex had to note a distinct lack of spells that were just about energy in a raw form. There was the expected lightning bolt, but everything seemed to be split into a particular form.

  She wasn’t a student of physics like Bran by any extent of the imagination, but she had passed her physics class and lab with an A minus. That was totally due to Aiden helping her in the lab and Bran’s help in understanding the class notes. Still, she knew that energy was all about affecting objects and conversion. It couldn’t be created or destroyed, just changed.

  She’d already managed to take over the magic of others: one of Aiden’s fireballs and the light form of magic that the Sídhe used. Morgana had told Alex that her magic was raw energy that didn’t take a particular form like Aiden’s fire, Nicki’s water or even Bran’s visions and telekinesis. Of course, Alex realized with a smile, that didn’t mean that it couldn’t.

  Groaning softly, Alex stretched out her legs and set the book down on her lap. She closed her eyes for a moment and reached for the small flickering spark in her gut that had become a familiar part of her being and tugged. A surge of warmth churned in her stomach for a moment before energy jolted up her arms. Seeing the magic as a small quivering strand of dark silver, Alex directed to her right hand and slowed its flow. Magical exhaustion was not something she wanted to risk, not with a hike down the mountain in the future.

  Looking down at her fingers, Alex watched the small bolts of dark silver energy arc between her fingers like a surge of electricity. Her skin tingled with warmth, but she wasn’t having difficulty breathing or keeping the energy contained in her hand. A small smile tugged at her lips and she stared at the sparks and forced herself to inhale slowly. The energy rippled slightly, reacting to her. Licking her lips, Alex thought about the light orbs that Morgana used and imagined the tiny sparks of lightning forming into a simple orb.

  The tiny bolts arced again, but this time sparked up into the space just above her palm. Swirling together the random jolts slowed and formed a small orb of dark silver energy that hovered just above her skin. Then the dark silver color of the orb began to fade away, the color of the orb shifting as the energy began to thrum. She could still feel the magic radiating out from the orb, but it felt softer somehow, airier in a way that she couldn’t explain. After a few moments, the dark silver color of Alex’s normal magic had faded complexly, leaving a small glowing ball of pure light that she could barely stand to even glance at. The only similarity that Alex could discern was the shape and the sensation of magic still radiating into her skin.

  Eyes dropped down to the book, Alex’s eyes traced over one of the descriptions. It was apparently a simple spell just to shape an element like earth, but Alex couldn’t help but think back to the demonstrations that Merlin and Morgana had done of magic when they first met. They created a beautiful tree in the center of the room made out of light but projected in place like a hologram. It had been that sight that had truly convinced Alex that magic was real and somehow she was a part of it.

  Focusing on the small ball of light in her hand, Alex studied it for a moment before she thought about the light dimming. Instead of the bright ball in her hand, she wanted the normal form of her energy, the dark silver that barely glowed at all. For this to work, she needed to be able to see what she was doing. It seemed much faster this time, the light dimmed and transformed into the dark metallic shade of Alex’s magic. She studied it for a moment; it wasn’t kinetic energy: it had nothing to do with the movement of objects. It wasn’t radiation either, and it wasn’t exactly light. It wasn’t really electrical either, even when it sort of looked that way, as it didn’t behave like electricity.

  Shrugging off her chain of thought, Alex chuckled at her attempt to explain the science of her own magic. After all, magic was something special generated by the earth to combat invaders. What was in her hand could be a completely unknown form of energy, something new and completely magical.

  The magic expanded slowly, stretching out in front of Alex and twisting slowly into a new shape. Slowly the main pillar of energy lengthened enough to form the trunk that Alex was imagining in her mind. A small sound of delight escaped her and called the other’s attention to her.

  “Oh wow,” Nicki whispered, but Alex didn’t look away from the expanding magic.

  Branches slowly began to grow out of the magic and sweat gathered at the edges of Alex’s hair and on the nape of her neck. Her fingers were moving slowly, tracing the branches without conscious thought as her eyes remained fixed on the gradual growing form in front of her. A wave of fatigue washed over Alex and she quickly dropped her hands into her lap with a loud gasp for air. Her eyes closed in a moment of disorientation and she heard Aiden call her name, but a moment later she shook her head and opened her eyes.

  Hovering just above the ground a few feet in front of Alex was a four-foot tall tree made out of softly glowing dark silver magic. Branches twisted out of the main trunk, growing up and around each other in the glade. Alex hummed in satisfaction and glanced towards Nicki and Aiden as they approached the tree.

  “Wow Alex, it looks like what Merlin and Morgana did,” Nicki observed as she reached the tree and moved around it slowly.

  Aiden held out his hand and slowly touched the tree, his fingers shimmering as they slid through one of the small branches.

  “Looks like it,” he agreed, pulling his hand back quickly. “But it’s not just light or like a hologram, I could feel… static when I touched it.” Aiden looked over at her and grinned, “Your power is really neat Alex.”

  “Thanks,” she replied with a small smile. “Now if I could just figure out how to control it properly. I think that I can transform it into different forms.”

  “That could be really important,” Nicki said with excitement, clapping her hands together. “You’ve already been able to take over magic thrown at you and transform it a little, but think about it. You could turn a raging fire into something else completely with enough practice.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden agreed with an e
ager expression, his expression becoming awed. “Or store up the magic and release it all at once. If you could do that, you could probably do anything.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Alex insisted as a blush took over her cheeks and a wave of fatigue weighed down on her. Looking towards the tree, Alex noted that parts of it were beginning to disperse without her concentrating on it. “One step at a time okay. Let me get the basic conversion and shaping figured out before you want me taking over all the energy I come across.”

  “Fair point,” Nicki conceded as she turned to watch the rest of the tree fade away, tiny sparks of magic floating away.

  Leaning back against the tree, Alex held out her hand and tried calling some of the magic back to her, curious to see if she could. But the small sparks of magic just swirled around her hand until she sighed loudly and flicked them into the air. Nicki gave her a small smile and tilted her head, silently checking that she was okay. Nodding, Alex gave her roommate a small smile and after a moment, Nicki headed back to her own backpack and book.