A Clash of Magics

by Guy Antibes

  Chapter Seventeen

  ~

  T revor stifled a scream and held tightly onto his sword as he plummeted toward the water. He hoped he had jumped out far enough to avoid the rocks below. Jumping had been incredibly risky, but as bolts of lightning began to rain down around him, he admitted he’d be out of it much quicker.

  When Trevor hit the water, he gasped. Everything was suddenly cold, and Trevor breathed in water. The diving suit didn’t stop his sinking as he had hoped, probably because he still wore the cuirass underneath the diver’s outfit. He almost dropped his sword but managed to jam most of it into its scabbard as he began swimming sideways and then upward. The water in his lungs hurt with every move until he broke the surface of the water. Trevor fought for breath and coughed. Saltwater came up through his nose and began to sting his eyes. Panic took hold of him, and Trevor ceased to be aware of his actions.

  Hands grabbed him, tossing him on a wooden floor that heaved on the swells of the bay. Trevor knew he was being rolled over onto his stomach. Someone took off his clothes and began pressing on his back. He tried to resist the attack but found he lost his ability to fight. Water exploded from his lungs, and then his stomach began to complain again. He was making a mess of wherever he was.

  After an eternity of gasping and vomiting, Trevor finally sighed and let welcome darkness overcome him.

  He looked up at the clouds and at tall masts trying to touch a darkening sky.

  “We thought you wouldn’t be makin’ it,” a sailor said.

  “The enclave!” Trevor croaked, his throat sore from saltwater coming in and everything else coming out.

  “You won’t be going back there any time soon,” the sailor said. “You are on a ship to Sirland. The captain wouldn’t put the ship back to port. You were lucky one of our sailors spotted you. At least the Old Man let us fetch you from the water. Your fishing suit saved your life. None of us thought you’d be on top of the water by the time we rescued you.”

  Trevor got up on his elbows and looked around. The sea surrounded them. Khartoo was out of sight, and so were Lissa and Potur. Trevor tried to teleport, but he didn’t have the magic. Lissa’s attempt to charge his armor and sword was inadequate for the task. He checked on his body. Other than feeling awful, he didn’t detect any other injuries, but something was missing.

  “My sword and armor!”

  “We have it. The Old Man says it looks Jarkanese.”

  “It is,” Trevor said. “Do you have magicians on board?” There was hope he’d make a quick trip of it.

  “Most of us can do a few things, but the healer is the strongest of us. Are you a magician? You called out something about the magician’s enclave, and we found you foundering not far from the place.”

  Trevor lost all his strength. “I’m the opposite of a magician,” he said. “No magic at all.”

  “Are you a soldier then?”

  Trevor nodded. “Of a sort. You might call me a spy. I tried to get information on the enclave from the inside, but I failed, obviously.”

  “That is a pretty big fail. If we weren’t tacking in the bay, you’d be dead.”

  Trevor didn’t know what tacking was, but he was glad he was alive. That was something positive.

  “Are you going to stop at a port soon?” Trevor asked.

  The sailor laughed, but then his laughter stopped, and he stepped away when a woman wearing a uniform with many unbuttoned brass buttons stepped up.

  “What are you going to give me for saving your sorry life?” the captain asked. She had to be the captain.

  “I am sure I was saved with a purse in my pocket. The contents are yours, I suppose,” They had saved Trevor’s life rather than loot him and dump his body into the sea, so Trevor didn’t feel he was about to be killed for his possessions.

  “Can you get up?” the captain said. She leaned over and helped Trevor to his feet.

  Trevor’s legs buckled, but he clamped his lips together and stood straight.

  “Tall. Too tall to work the lines,” the captain said. “Can you cook?”

  “Well enough to stay alive and not kill other people,” Trevor said.

  “You can be a cook’s assistant while we are on the sea. Do you live in Khartoo?”

  Trevor sighed as he noticed how quickly the ship was slicing through the water. “I was visiting.”

  “We are going to my quarters,” the captain said. “I’m sure you have an interesting story.”

  “I have many, unfortunately,” Trevor said.

  They reached the captain’s quarters, where the captain had already laid out dry clothes. “Change while we talk.”

  Trevor guessed he would be stripping in front of the woman. If she was the captain of the ship, he assumed she had seen everything there was to see.

  “Why do they call you the Old Man?” Trevor asked as he took off his diving outfit.

  The woman laughed for the first time.

  “It is an expression of affection and a bit of joke between my crew and me. Sometimes being a hard-bitten captain gets on the crew’s nerves.”

  “What cargo do you carry?”

  “Whatever I can scrounge from port to port. I’m already late getting a shipload of Maskumite cloth to Berry Port in Sirland for overland transport to the Kyrian capital. We normally put in at a few ports along the way, but we won’t on this voyage. That is why I didn’t turn back and deliver you back to Khartoo. I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.”

  Trevor managed a smile as he finished buttoning a shirt. “You have put a delay into my plans, but a delay is better than an abrupt stop.”

  The captain nodded her head. “That was my thinking. You can probably find a Khartoo-bound ship in a week at Berry Port.”

  “I’ll find other means of transportation,” Trevor said. He hoped to find a magician with some power. At least he could get word to the head seer of his dilemma. That would help spread the word, but most of all, Trevor worried about Lissa stuck in Khartoo with Potur. Hopefully, she would head back to the border and wait.

  Trevor was given a tiny cabin reserved for the odd paying passenger after providing an entire evening of stories to an astonished Captain Muranna Bookend. He looked at the cuirass, sword, and ring, laying on the bed.

  Hopefully, his magical items had enough magic stored in them to get off a message to the head seer from the boat. It wouldn’t have to be long, but he hoped there was a proper seer in Khartoo to tell others that Trevor was alive.

  He donned the cuirass and held the sword tightly. The ring was already on his finger when he prayed to Dryden to have enough power to get a message off. He closed his eyes and imagined the ring filling up with magical power. Trevor could almost feel the ring seek out its companion.

  Reena answered.

  “I don’t have much magic to make this work, so just listen. Lissa is at the Drowned Swallow in Khartoo. I had a misfortune and ended up on a ship to Berry Port in Sirland. If there is a seer in Khartoo, have him tell her I’m okay, but without a magician, so I’m stuck on this vessel. I’m using up all the magic in …” The communication failed. He tried again, but it was plain the communication had drained his weapons. He could only hope enough information had gotten through.

  Trevor thought back on the message. Misfortune was right. So much for being Dryden’s Messenger. He didn’t even have the time to transfer what he learned at the Enclave, and Trevor might never find out if he had killed Gareeze Plissaki before he had to flee. Still, he was alive and breathing air rather than water. Trevor thought he could have done much worse, but he worried about Lissa and Snowflake in that exact order.

  ~

  Life aboard the ship wasn’t too bad. Once the ship’s healer had failed to provide enough power so Trevor could teleport, Trevor spent the days at menial tasks in the kitchen and evenings entertaining Captain Bookend with his stories. The captain and her two mates returned the favor and entertained Trevor. The time went quickly, but Trevor’s fascination with the s
ea had waned by the time they put into Berry Port on the morning of their sixth day at sea.

  Sirland used to be part of the ancient Presidonian empire that extended south through West Moreton, so the culture wasn’t much different from what he was used to. After giving his thanks and his farewells to the captain and crew, he decided it would be best to find a seer so everyone could be notified. He hefted the purse that Captain Bookend had given him, thinking about where to go next. Berry Port wasn’t the capital of Sirland. Wistfall, the Sirland capital, was only three days away, so before midmorning, Trevor was mounted, making his way through an unfamiliar country, hoping there was a seer at the end of his three-day journey.

  The passage was a blur. All Trevor could think about was getting back to Lissa, but that would take a powerful magician. He hoped the Sirlandian seer knew such a person. Trevor drove his horse mercilessly, while the urge to return to Khartoo increased with every mile. Finally, Trevor trotted through the open gate of Wistfall. The city seemed to be under a cloud of darkness even though it was midday.

  When Trevor secured a room in an inn close to Wistfall Castle, the country’s ancient seat, the innkeeper lamented about the downward spiral of Sirland.

  “What makes the country spiral down? What is down, even,” Trevor said.

  “Taxes, restrictions on magic, the ordering of fertile fields to lay fallow. It’s as if Queen Marta has no respect for her people,” the innkeeper said.

  “And when did this start?” Trevor asked.

  “About a year and a half ago. But we thought the measures were temporary.” The innkeeper shook his head.

  “Does the queen consult with her seer?”

  “Seer?” the innkeeper said. “He died just before all this started. The queen has rejected having the seer replaced.”

  Maskumite meddling was as plain as it could be, Trevor thought. Without a seer and with restrictions on magic, it looked like Trevor would be heading west to the Maskumite border on a horse, but first, Dryden’s messenger had to eliminate the Maskumite magician who likely ran Sirland.

  Trevor put on his black diving outfit. He wouldn’t fit in with the styles of Wistfall, but he wanted to stand out at this point. The only identification Trevor had was the token from Khartoo for Des Boxster. It looked like he would have to revert to the Boxster name for now.

  After his midday meal, Trevor strolled the streets of the capital. He wasn’t far from Wistfall Castle, and in front of the home of Sirland’s queen was a broad area full of stalls. Trevor bought bags for his horse and a set of clothes that, he hoped, could be worn in court. He returned to his room and changed into his new clothes, and then he walked purposefully toward Wistfall Castle. However, Trevor stopped at the entrance to the Wistfall Cathedral to Dryden.

  Would this be where the seer did his ministry? He walked in and asked to see the bishop. After being shunted from cleric to cleric, Trevor finally was shuffled off to a middle-aged man, but it was made clear the man he met wasn’t the bishop.

  “You are making things difficult by your insistence to see the bishop, young man.”

  “I am from Collet,” Trevor said. “I didn’t want to tell anyone but the bishop because I am not officially in Sirland.”

  The man laughed. “You expect me to believe that is true?” The man was too confident to be an ordinary cleric.

  “I do. Did Lister Vale send a seer to Sirland pretending to be a cleric?” Trevor asked. It seemed a logical move on the part of the head seer.

  The cleric’s eyebrows rose. “And what position does Lister Vale hold?”

  “He is the head seer. You would also know Yvan Grindeworm, who was my tutor in Presidon.”

  “And I am just what you said should be in Wistfall. I have met Yvan a few times, and that makes you Trevor Arcwin, not Des Boxster.”

  “You can locate me if you are a seer. I don’t show up clearly, I’ve been told.”

  “You can be found?”

  Trevor nodded.

  The cleric closed his eyes and then opened them wide.

  “I am playing the part of Dryden’s messenger,” Trevor said. “I was in Khartoo, but I fell into the sea, and a ship bound for Berry Port picked me up. I have to get back to the Jarkanese-Maskumite border.”

  “Then why are you in Wistfall?”

  “The reason I am here is to find a magician powerful enough to allow me to do a special spell. I don’t know many, but it could simplify things if I could. I don’t have enough power on my own,” Trevor said.

  The cleric frowned. “The Sirlandian bishop discourages magic. If you’ve truly been to Collet, you know what I mean.”

  “I do. I met the archbishop of Collet. They let you stay here?” Trevor asked.

  “The Wistfall bishop is worried about Sirland, and that is more important than a clerical squabble.”

  “Can the bishop get me an audience with the queen?” Trevor asked. He told the seer about his ability to detect invisible magicians.

  “I’ve only been in Wistfall for six months,” the seer said, “but I could see that happening if what you say is true.”

  Trevor sighed. “You still don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t disbelieve you, but it is hard to accept a young man, regardless of your size, being Dryden’s Messenger. Aren’t you supposed to lead armies and perform heroic deeds?” the seer said.

  “Ridding you of a Maskumite magician who is currently wrecking Sirland isn’t a heroic deed?”

  The seer shook his head. “You think you can do such a thing?”

  “I can try. I’m not infallible. I failed in Khartoo, but that kind of failure won’t stop me after I’ve succeeded in Jarkan, Okora, Ginster, and Brachia,” Trevor said.

  “If you can get me accepted as the seer, I will find you your magician, even if I have to travel to Viksar to get one as powerful as you need.”

  “Maybe you might be enough. Put your hand on my wrist.” Trevor held out his hand and thought of the other communication ring in Collet.

  Lister Vale responded.

  “This is Trevor. I fell into the sea and ended up in Sirland,” he said through the ring. “I am without a powerful magician, but the seer you have positioned in Wistfall has enough power for my old magic ring.”

  “You do get around,” Lister Vale said. “Did you learn anything at Khartoo?”

  “I learned a few things, but not enough to justify risking death by drowning. Gareeze Plissaki is at the Maskumite magician enclave. I wounded him with my sword, but I had to retreat immediately after. I don’t think he is the leader of his cabal.”

  “Cabal? What are they?”

  “I’ll tell you another time. How powerful is your seer in Wistfall? Can he help me teleport?”

  “You won’t know unless you try. Using the ring is a lesser talent.”

  Trevor thought for a moment. “Could you send some kind of pulse or something to the seer in Wistfall so he knows we are in communication?”

  “I can do that,” the head seer said. “He is on his own in Sirland, so if he chooses to follow you, he can. If he chooses to stay in Wistfall, that is his decision.”

  “Tell everyone I’m fine. I don’t know if you can get a message to Lissa through the seer in Khartoo, but I’d appreciate it that someone tells her too.”

  “I will see what I can do. Our Maskumite seer is a little unpredictable.”

  The connection was broken. A moment later, the seer’s eyebrows rose.

  “I don’t doubt you now. I am Brother Coosin Escarik. My name comes from northern Fuleria. I’d like you to tell me more.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent trading questions and answers. When Trevor brought the wasted time up, Coosin laughed. “The queen only allows visitors in the mornings.”

  “Then first thing tomorrow?”

  “An hour after sunrise,” Brother Coosin said. “I’ll meet you at your inn. We can talk on the way to the castle. I can get us in, but you may have to get us out.”

  Ch
apter Eighteen

  ~

  B rother Coosin took Trevor to a tradesmen’s entrance on the opposite side of the castle from the main gate. “We will use the indirect route,” the seer said. As did Trevor, the seer wore court clothes, but the cleric instructed Trevor to leave his sword behind. Trevor buckled his long knife to his lower leg anyway.

  A guard approached.

  “My good man, we lost our way and ended up here. This gentleman is from Presidon and wishes to see the queen,” Coosin said. “I’m afraid we are going to be late if you don’t let us in.”

  The guard frowned and looked sideways at Coosin. That was a big sign of distrust, Trevor thought. “Visitors are supposed to enter at the main gate.”

  “Ah, but a vigilant guard like you won’t let in the riffraff. As you can see, we aren’t riffraff.”

  “This is the entrance for tradesmen,” the guard said. Trevor could see they hadn’t drawn the most intelligent example of humankind as the gatekeeper.

  “We can be tradesmen,” Brother Coosin said. “What would be a good trade for me?”

  “Conniver,” the guard said.

  Coosin pushed out his lower lip in a pout. “I’ve never been accused of conniving before. I am, however, a personal advisor. Would you like some personal advice?” the seer asked.

  The guard shrugged.

  “Be a good servant to Dryden. That is the first priority for every pious man, and I’m sure you are a pious man,” Coosin said.

  The guard cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter. He looked back inside the gate to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard. “It isn’t an easy thing to do in the castle. The queen has gone off Dryden, but most of us are still believers.”

  “I believe,” Coosin said, “and my friend here believes. You must be a good man. Let us in, and your secret is safe. In fact, it is safer than if you left that information with the bishop.”

  “You sound more like a churchman than an advisor,” the guard said.

  “We are after the same things, and I’m sure you are too. We won’t be long,” Escarik said.