by Layton Green
“How long ago was the competition?” Will asked.
“I dunno, half a dozen years or so?”
“Six years!” Will forced calm into his voice. “You’ve been together that long?”
“Together? We enjoy each other’s company now and again. I don’t think Mala is the type for a homestead and a brood o’ little ones, if you know what I mean.” He winked at Will as Mala returned to the courtyard.
Freshly washed, her dark hair poured in waves over a sleeved corset that matched her scarlet boots. As usual, she wore black leather pants and an astounding array of jewelry: bracelets, rings, a silver nose stud, earrings, and a choker of intertwined bronze in place of her old medallion. She had left her sword and pouches behind, but her dangerous blue sash was tied around her waist, and Will noticed a dagger tucked into her left boot.
She put her hands on Gunnar’s shoulders but looked right at Will, her eyes twinkling with roguish charm. “Your travels have treated you well, Will the Builder. Your hair has grown past farmboy length, and that fair skin of yours has a touch of sun. The women of Freetown were quite taken by you, you know.”
Will took a long drink.
“Should we go upstairs, darling? It might be some time before we are presented with a soft bed again.”
Mala was still looking right at Will, as if addressing the question to him. He stared right back at her, challenging her to look away.
Gunnar drained half a mug in one swallow and pounded it on the table. “What right-minded man would say no to that?”
As the big warrior rose to leave, Mala walked over behind Will, leaned down, and said, “Stay the course, Will the Builder.”
“What?” The proximity of her freshly washed scent, cinnamon and rose, made him feel light-headed.
She backed away, lips curling. “With your training.”
“Oh. That.”
“It takes hard work and confidence to achieve your goals,” she said, her smirk more devious than ever.
Gunnar, with the myopic confidence natural to physically imposing men, didn’t seem to notice the exchange. Will watched them leave with a sinking feeling, so jealous it made his stomach ache.
“What, pray tell, was that about?” Mateo said.
“What do you mean?” he said dully.
“She was telling you something.”
“She likes to torture me.”
Mateo rubbed at his thick stubble. About the same age as Will, he had long brown hair and khaki-colored eyes. Unlike Gunnar, who favored tight breeches and leather jerkins, Mateo wore loose patchwork clothing and calfskin walking boots. “Mala’s infamous along the Barrier Coast, you know. As respected for her exploits as she is disdained for not joining the Revolution.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Will said. “I know she’s out of my league.”
“Do you know what other member of our party is famous? It isn’t I or Selina or Gunnar.” He lifted his mug. “It’s the warrior with the strange accent who helped lead Tamás out of captivity, and who carries Zariduke into battle. You’ve given our people hope, Will.”
“I don’t think Mala’s very impressed.”
He yawned and stood. “Cousin, there are three things I know in life: the art of the Urumi blade, the trails of the Blackwood Forest, and the wiles of Roma women. And unless I am gravely mistaken, there is something brewing between you and Mala of Clan Kalev. Whether anything will come of it, well, prophecy is not a talent I possess.”
Will didn’t know what he thought, either, about Mala’s cryptic words and dancing eyes.
Not much, that’s what.
After his cousin retired upstairs, Will tried to join Yasmina for a spell, but she yawned and went to bed. He was disappointed she hadn’t wanted to stay and chat about home. Without his brothers, Urfe sometimes felt like a waking dream, the realization of both his wildest fantasies and darkest nightmares.
He sat under the luminous silver moon for another hour, enwrapped in the tropical fragrance of the courtyard and the memories of the past. He thought about his poor mother, stranded in her mental institution like a ship lost at sea, and his old friend Lance, who Will prayed had survived the fight with Zedock. Eventually his thoughts turned to his father, whose early death Will had never quite recovered from. The thought that his father had once walked upon the soil of Urfe gave Will a small amount of comfort. Anchored him to this world.
After the hardships and terrors of the journey to Leonidus’s castle, Will no longer suffered from the debilitating panic attacks that had begun after his father’s death. For that he was grateful beyond words. But his recovery was a double-edged sword, since he had nothing to fall back on now. No excuses.
By all accounts, the dangers of the expedition to the pyramid would surpass any he had faced so far. Weighty things were at stake. His brothers needed him. And he, Will Blackwood of New Orleans, logic whiz and fantasy geek, struggling blue-collar worker and driver of a Honda Civic, was expected not just to survive but to perform as a full-fledged member of the party, tasked with leading the charge to bring hope to the persecuted clans of his people.
It was a hero’s job—whether he was ready for it or not.
At dawn the next morning, bleary-eyed but buzzing with anticipation, Will joined the others for coffee, bread, and cheese in the courtyard. Everyone looked intense but optimistic, eager for the journey. Soon after Will arrived, Coba burst into the courtyard.
“Grab things!” the guide said. “Come now!”
“What is it?” Mala said.
“Port authority. Checking door to door for border tokens. Someone say foreign magic used in old town temple yesterday.”
Mala leapt to her feet, face grim. Will grabbed his pack and felt ill. This was his fault.
Coba put a hand on Mala’s shoulder, and Will saw fear in the eyes of the good-natured Mayan. “We must hurry,” Coba said. “Get to jungle.”
“The patrol is close?” Mala asked.
“Two streets over. And Mala—they have a Battle Mage.”
The adventuress paled as she flew into action. Everyone dropped their breakfasts, grabbed their packs, and followed her in a rush out of the guesthouse.
The street was empty except for a few peasants on foot, scurrying to early jobs. Birds twittered from the trees, weak sunlight bathed the town in gold, and there was no sign of the patrol.
“Hurry,” Coba urged.
Will had the brief thought that maybe their guide was leading them into a trap, but Mala seemed to trust him, and that was good enough for Will. Mala would have trouble trusting her own mother.
Coba led them halfway down the block and into a dirt alleyway. The passage spilled into a grassy cul-de-sac surrounded by a wooden fence topped with stakes. A dead end. Will’s heart sank until he saw Coba making a beeline for a banyan tree near the fence. The guide shot up the aerial roots like a monkey, ran across the tree, and jumped over the barrier. Mala did the same, matching his agility. Everyone else followed suit, with much less grace.
On the other side of the fence, they dashed down a series of streets in a more disheveled section of town, a blur of ramshackle buildings with thatched roofs and clothes drying from tree limbs. At the next intersection, Will could just make out the edge of the jungle. He felt a glimmer of hope as Coba scanned the empty streets and dashed towards the smudge of green.
No one accosted them. They drew closer and closer, until one more block and a field of calf-high spiky agave stood between them and the safety of the trees.
Just before the last street ended, they passed an old woman on a balcony, wringing out a shirt. As Will glanced up at her, she pointed down at them and began to scream in Mayan.
“Go!” Coba yelled, breaking into a sprint.
They cleared the town and entered the field of agave, much bigger than it had looked from a distance. The jungle was at least a quarter mile away. Coba led the mad dash through the field as another voice joined the cry of the old woman, and then another.
>
Halfway across the exposed ground, a shrill male voice rang out behind them, in heavily accented English. “Halt!”
Will spotted a tiny fissure in the trees, a path into the jungle he guessed Coba was aiming for.
“Cease running at once!” the voice said again. “Cease or face your death!”
Mala turned her head as she ran. Will couldn’t help risking a glance. What he saw caused his mouth to go dry and his heart to slap against his chest with fear. A twenty-foot long green snake, thick as a barrel, was slithering towards them with its torso raised high into the air. Standing atop a wooden dais strapped to the snake’s neck was a man with the imperious bearing of a wizard, wearing a feathered headdress and covered in leopard body paint. He carried a hooked iron staff in one hand. A Battle Mage, Will knew.
A group of Mayan warriors followed behind their leader on foot. Shirtless and wearing embroidered kilts over their loincloths, the soldiers carried shields dyed in vibrant colors and a variety of spears, axes, and daggers.
The giant snake closed in on Will and his companions, advancing in a sinuous undulation much faster than they could run.
They would never reach the jungle in time.
-10-
“Could it be true that Zariduke has returned to Urfe?”
Garbind Elldorn, a sylvamancer from the Fifth Protectorate who favored worn traveling cloaks over tailored finery, had posed the question.
“Blood and Queen, Garbind,” said Jalen Rainsword, a powerful electromancer and the lead representative of the Sixth Protectorate. “Have we sunk to the level of spreading a gypsy rumor?”
Murmurs emanated from the thirty-one archmages gathered for a meeting of the Conclave, the ruling body of the Congregation. Three wizards for each of the nine Protectorates, three representatives from Londyn, and the Chief Thaumaturge, Lord Alistair of Inverlock Keep.
Under the new constitution, Lord Alistair and Queen Victoria were equal in power. Diplomatic relations were solid between the two capitals, Londyn and New Victoria, though a number of distinguished Albion families were bitter about the shift in power.
“Perhaps it’s a rumor that should be taken seriously,” Braden Shankstone said, taking his cue from a private meeting that morning with Kalyn Tern and Lord Alistair. Braden was a handsome, dark-haired cuerpomancer from the Third. The youngest member of the Conclave, he owed his political success to Lord Alistair’s patronage as much as to his own considerable magecraft.
“If the sword was at Freetown,” Jalen said, “then why did no one notice during the attack?”
All heads turned towards Kalyn Tern and Professor Anastasia Azara, the two members of the Conclave present at the battle—Lord Alistair termed it a lesson—of Freetown.
“It happened as we were pulling away,” Kalyn said coolly. “At that point, there was no more resistance.” A sapphire dress of Himalayan silk swept the ground at her feet, and a waterfall of white-blond hair reached to her waist. She was an aeromancer from a powerful family in the First, and had helped Lord Alistair cement his power. Many thought her his political equal.
“If the rumor is true, the sword could be anywhere on the Barrier Coast by now,” Braden said. “It could be on its way here. Imagine if it fell into the hands of the Black Sash.”
There was a general rustling. With the help of the Haruspex, a Congregation necromancer who specialized in acquiring forensic knowledge from the recently deceased, Lord Alistair had learned that the Alazashin werebat who preyed on the Abbey students was hired by the Black Sash gypsies.
Wisely, the Alazashin had focused on inexperienced pupils. But an assassin wielding Zariduke could challenge a full wizard.
“Enough speculation,” Lord Alistair said, from atop the silver-blue dais of hardened spirit facing the semicircle of wizards. “The return of Zariduke is of grave import. It is imperative we discover the truth.”
Like everyone else, Lord Alistair wanted Zariduke safely in Congregation hands. Yet the Chief Thaumaturge had two additional reasons for believing the legendary sword had returned to Urfe.
The first was Zedock’s secret mission to retrieve the sword from the world on which Dane Blackwood had found it, called Earth. Someone had killed Zedock and taken the sword. One of Zedock’s majitsu had disappeared, as well—had he switched sides and joined the Revolution? Did he perhaps have gypsy blood?
The second reason was the Spirit Liege that Lord Alistair had sent to the Barrier Coast. The one that never reported back.
It had to be the sword.
The knowledge thrilled, terrified, and enraged him, and the words of the phrenomancer rang in Lord Alistair’s ears like a thousand tower bells: When the sword born of spirit returns to Urfe, war is imminent, and one born of gypsy blood will destroy you.
Contrary to the impassioned speeches of his detractors, Lord Alistair did not hate the gypsies or the other Exilers, those who had settled in the Ninth to avoid taking the Oaths. He despised them, yes. Their ignorant beliefs had no place in an enlightened society.
But what he hated was the danger to the Congregation that religion posed. The unification of the common born.
For years, he had taken a hard line and hunted down those who fomented unrest or openly practiced their religion. Yet it was that damnable prophecy that spurred him to such extreme action. Lord Alistair had no time for superstition and false prophets, but phrenomancers had proven time and again they could foretell future events. The threat to his rule—in his eyes, to the survival of the Congregation—was real.
Yet no prophecy was assured. Phrenomancers dealt in possibilities, not fact. Man possessed free will.
Which was why Lord Alistair would create his own destiny. He would kill every single gypsy on Urfe, if that was what it took. Even better would be to find the sword and possess it for himself. Imagine the sword in the hands of an elder spirit mage, he thought, untouchable by a rival’s magic.
Untouchable by anyone.
The very idea gave him a shiver of anticipation.
“And how do you propose we learn the truth?” Jalen asked.
“We consult a phrenomancer,” Alistair said. “A good one.”
“How can we be certain he will speak the truth?”
“Because I will gaze with him.”
That silenced Jalen. Any further dissent would be a lack of trust not just in the phrenomancer, but in Lord Alistair himself.
“We should impose more restrictions until we find it,” Braden said. “Increase the patrols, the checkpoints, the Oath guards. And, as needed, the executions.”
Garbind snarled. “Restrictions? At this point, it’s an ethnic cleansing.”
“The law is the law,” Alistair said sharply. “The gypsies are welcome to join the Protectorate.”
“Yet our Oath Judges are free to reject an application on any grounds, and frequently do so,” Garbind said, as he looked around the room. Not even his compatriots from the Fifth would meet his gaze. Only two wizards appeared sympathetic: Lord Jalen, and the sad auburn eyes of Dean Groft, Dean of Spiritmancy at the Abbey and the highest-ranking spiritmancer after Lord Alistair. Some would argue that Dean Groft was even more powerful than the Chief Thaumaturge, but the Dean abhorred politics and almost never intervened.
“Perhaps we should rethink the restrictions,” Garbind said. “Are they really necessary in this day and age?”
Alistair pounded his dais. “I’ll not harbor a discussion of returning to the old ways! The scourge of belief in false idols must never again darken the Realm.”
“Freedom of choice is different from freedom of religion,” Garbind argued. The Conclave was a representative democracy among wizards, not a dictatorship, and Garbind was not one to be cowed by bluster.
“Need anyone remind you,” Kalyn said scathingly, “that the Age of Sorrow almost resulted in the eradication of the mage born?”
Murmurs of assent spread through the room.
Garbind laughed. “Yes, nearly two thousand years ago. The gyps
ies and other Exilers are hardly a threat to the might of the Congregation.”
No one disputed that fact, which made Lord Alistair uneasy. He raised his palms in a conciliatory gesture. “Enough talk. Shall we bring this to a vote?”
As with the last meeting, Garbind and Jalen and Dean Groft were the lone dissenters. Alistair made a mental note to double the patrols and death squads.
A deep, tri-tone bell chimed from inside the Wizard Chute, signifying that someone sought entrance to the Gathering Room.
Lord Alistair pulled a lever beneath his dais, resulting in an answering bell below. He wasn’t worried about intruders. An invisible multi-discipline ward surrounded the Sanctum, passable only by those bearing the imprimatur of the Congregation.
What about a team of assassins wielding Zariduke, he thought at the last moment? Able to slice through the wards? The thought caused his hand to clench, but instead of a sword-wielding Black Sash gypsy, a pyromancer named Rasha Tremayne rose through the chute in the corner. Rasha was assistant secretary to the Conclave and one of the stewards of the Sanctum.
Alistair chided himself. Zariduke was a powerful weapon, but hardly a threat to a roomful of elder mages. Legend had it the sword was made long ago for the captain of the Paladins: a group of warriors loyal only to the High Priest of Devla, who bestowed holy powers upon his honor guard. Sheer nonsense, of course, since Devla was a myth and his priests had disappeared ages ago. The current Prophet was heir to a long line of charlatans who stoked the flames of religious fervor for their own profit. A fervor which, if allowed to blossom, would erode the public’s faith in the Congregation.
Rasha bowed as she faced Lord Alistair. He didn’t like the uneasy frown creasing her face. “Milord, the Secretariat General just received word that your daughter is in Porlock.”
The floor seemed to shift underneath Lord Alistair’s feet.
Rasha looked as if she would rather be stretched on a torture rack than delivering her message. “Since the Conclave is in session, the Secretariat was contacted. Apparently Adaira has . . . traveled through the Pool of Souls to join Val Kenefick on his mission.”
