The Wizard of the North

by Richard Stephens

  Silurian recalled their conversation the night before. “Come on, I know you better than that. It’s the Grimward, isn’t it?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, maybe.”

  He walked over and sat beside her, shoving her over with his hips so he could sit without falling off the edge of the broken log. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “We don’t need to visit this spirit. Let’s just keep going. I’m thinking we have a long way to go yet to get back to Zephyr.”

  “What about your sword?”

  He shrugged. “What about it? It’s just a piece of metal.”

  “But you need it enchanted if you’re to face Helleden again. You can’t confront the sorcerer with the sword the way it is.”

  “Bah,” Silurian said and stood up to pace around the poor excuse of a fire. “I’ll figure something out. I always have, haven’t I?”

  Melody grimaced and dropped her gaze to the sputtering flames. She stared into the dancing fire and chanted a verse of incoherent words.

  Silurian walked back to where she sat, following her gaze into the struggling campfire. At first, he saw nothing, but when her chanting stopped he thought he saw something take form within the flames. He shook his head, and refocused. Sure enough, there it was. It looked to be a seaside abutting a line of snow-capped mountains. The vision panned in closer, zeroing in on the end of a long inlet. Everything around the edge of the water appeared grey and black.

  He frowned. It looked to be the remnants of a burnt-out city lining a large bay. Madrigail? It can’t be. There’s nothing left. The cold creeping up his spine had nothing to do with the weather.

  Melody had told him about Zephyr’s widespread devastation, but he never imagined it was that bad. The only thing recognizable was the twisted Rivergate Bridge, and even it looked on the verge of collapse.

  A fierce pop disturbed the fire and the vision faded, but before it winked out altogether, Silurian’s eyes were drawn to the middle of the harbour. Dozens of oddly shaped boats floated about a much larger, four-masted ship. The closer he looked at a certain object, the closer it magically came into view. Gerrymander’s deck grew in size. The shapes of individual sailors began to make themselves discernible, working alongside what appeared to be odd-looking children. He leaned forward, trying to put a name to one of the faces, and nearly tipped into the fire as the vision faded. He caught himself and blinked a few times.

  He sat down beside his sister, a stunned look on his face.

  She offered him a grim smile and nodded. Her voice sounded as if from a dream. “Now you understand what I told you. Zephyr, as we know it, is gone.”

  The vision left a sickening hole in his stomach. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. As bad as the vision had been, his mind couldn’t shake the sight of the boat in the harbour. He gave Melody a crazed look, the beginnings of a smile upturning his lips. “Was that a current vision?”

  “Ya, why?”

  “Did you see the boat?” His head nodded as if answering his own question.

  “Out in the middle of the bay? There were a bunch of boats.”

  Silurian grabbed her by the shoulders, a maniacal look in his eyes. “The biggest boat. That was Gerrymander. I would bet my life on it.”

  Her furrowed brows told him she didn’t comprehend the significance.

  “Remember? I told you. I sailed to the Under Realm on that boat.”

  Melody’s eyes grew wide. If not for Silurian’s iron grip, she would have toppled backward off the log.

  He nodded vigorously. “They found their way back. The quest survived.” His enthusiasm petered off. Just because the Gerrymander had returned, it didn’t mean everyone from the quest had returned with it. His memory of the landing party was a grim one. The quest had been seriously picked apart by those awful birds Wendglow had aptly referred to as Terrors. Pollard had stood near the river’s edge with Sadyra, fighting a losing battle against an endless demon horde that swarmed across the Dead Plains.

  “Rook?”

  Melody’s incredulous whisper cut through his thoughts. He swallowed, but nodded back, his eyes tearing up. His throat constricted so tight, all he could do was nod, and squeak out, “Maybe.”

  Melody’s shoulders shook. Tears rolled off her cheeks. She gave Silurian the most pitiful, heartbreaking, quivering smile of hope. “Rook.”

  He pulled her into his embrace and held her tight, unwilling to shatter her hope. The chances of anyone from the landing party surviving the battle upon the Dead Plains was practically zero, but he hadn’t the heart to tell her. He held her tightly and stared out across the gently rolling waters of the Lake of the Lost.

  They followed the treed shoreline south, along a high ridge. Before the weak sun had crested overhead, Melody pointed to an island not far off the lake’s eastern shore. “Do you see that island? That is what people mistakenly call Grimward.”

  “You mean the island we’ve been able to see since we hit the lake?” Silurian asked, the mocking tone in his voice informing her that he would have to have been blind to not see the vast island sporting a decent sized hill on the shore facing them.

  Melody shot him a look and slapped his shoulder. “No, silly boy. The one tucked against the shoreline. You can just make it out, between the trees.”

  Silurian squinted. “Of course, I see it. I’ve been watching it for a while now.”

  Melody saw the playful smirk on his face. She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that just swell. Zephyr depends on you to help deliver us from Helleden and you can’t even see an island. Fat lot of good you’re going to be.”

  Silurian laughed.

  The animal trail they followed split off to their right, descending the ridge toward the lake.

  Melody stopped and considered the side trail.

  Silurian waited a few steps ahead. “What’re you thinking?”

  She didn’t respond at first. Finally, she looked him straight in the eye. “Come on. We need to do this.”

  “Do what. Find that ghost who kills people? No thanks.”

  She swallowed. “I’ve been thinking. Ya, ya, I know, but listen to me. If we’re to have any chance of defeating Helleden, you need your sword enchanted. It’s the only way.”

  “No,” Silurian said, his tone unequivocal. “I lost you once to a Wizard of the North. I’ll be damned if I’ll lose you to his ghost. How do you expect me to defend you against something like that?”

  “We don’t know it’s a ghost.”

  “Come on, Mel, it’s close to what? Five hundred years old? What else could it be?” His words lost their luster at the end as he remembered Wendglow’s tale about Saros and Yarstaff. If the Voil elder could be trusted, the three of them were over four hundred and fifty years old themselves.

  Melody chewed her lower lip. She thrust her chin up and said, “Well I’m going. You can come or not.” With that said, she jabbed her staff on the ground, spun around in a flurry of dark blue wizard robes, and strutted off.

  Silurian stared as her cloaked head disappeared from view down the embankment. He threw his arms in the air. There was no feeling quite like the one that filled a person when they planned to pay a surprise visit on a killer spook.

  He didn’t catch up to her until she was well down the bluff. Grimward Island lay a short swim from the shore. With winter upon them, he didn’t relish the thought of the ice-cold water.

  They walked in silence until they were directly across from the closest point on the island.

  “And just how do you expect to get over there?” Silurian said, and pointed at her staff. “I don’t suppose that thing will carry us.”

  Melody rolled her eyes. “No, probably not. How ‘bout I turn you into a frog?”

  “Ha-ha. No. What about transporting us over with a spell? Like you did to bring me here.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. For one thing, I need to be at the receiving end.”

  Silurian grimaced and bent down to touch th
e water with his fingers. “Brr. If the lake gets any colder, we’ll be able to walk across.” He looked at the ripples lapping the shoreline where the lake bottom quickly dropped out of sight. They couldn’t wade across the channel.

  “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?”

  “You’re a genius. We’ll walk across. On ice.”

  Silurian looked at her as if she had gone mad. He glanced skyward and then all around them. “Do you know how long we’ll have to wait until that lake freezes over?”

  “Not if I freeze it first.”

  “You? Freeze the lake?”

  “Not the whole lake, silly. Just a section. Right here at the shore. Big enough to carry us.”

  “Really? You’ve done this before?”

  She avoided eye contact. “Yes…and no. Well, not really. I mean, I haven’t made an iceberg before, but I have made ice. Many times. Phazarus used to like his ale cold. Especially in the summer months. Before he became too old to hold his liquor well.”

  Silurian listened to her rattling on. Some things never changed. He raised skeptical eyebrows and gestured to the shoreline with an outstretched palm. “I’ve got to see this. Have at it.”

  She feigned an indignant glare and stepped to the water’s edge, dipping the top of her staff into the lake.

  Silurian walked up and stood quietly beside her. A slight breeze rustled the fallen leaves behind them, causing him to shiver. A crow’s call reached him from the direction of Grimward Island.

  He stifled a cough, not wanting to disturb her concentration. He wasn’t unfamiliar with magic use. For years he had wielded an enchanted blade. The sword had infused within him the uncanny instincts of a cat, providing him lightning-fast reaction time, but he had never needed to recite words or perform a rite—the sword had simply reacted.

  While in the Under Realm, an inner presence had surfaced from within him, totally unexpected. Even now, he wasn’t sure where the ability had come from. If he had to guess, he would attribute it to a latent energy trapped within the sword strapped across his back, but he harboured a suspicion that the magic might have come from within. He had no way of knowing so he pushed aside the assumption as a fanciful delusion.

  He speculated absently, not for the first time, what had made the magic in his sword re-emerge? He hadn’t been able to sense the latent power since the Battle of Lugubrius and yet, at certain times, it was as if the blade had held onto its magic, hiding deep within its core. There had to be a residual magic lying dormant within the cold steel, but as to what triggered it, he had no idea. He wondered if the presence of magical danger activated it. He shook his head. How could he depend on that?

  An unnerving sensation gave him goosebumps and pulled him out of his thoughts. Almost imperceptibly, Melody’s voice escaped her lips, an eerie litany of foreign phrases all strung together as if she lovingly sang a sad song. The hidden runes of her staff glowed a subtle, light blue.

  The sun had barely moved across the sky, but a lot of time seemed to pass before there were any visible signs of her spell.

  Silurian wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the water around the staff appeared less transparent. A little less fluid. As he stared, enrapt with the procedure, a thin rim of clear ice formed around the tip of her staff where the gentle roll of the water wet the wood. It began to thicken and spread to the water around it—gradually at first, but before long he watched the edges expand; abutting the shore at their feet and extending in a circle outward into the channel.

  He was dumbstruck. He had witnessed Melody blow up a cave, watched her summon magical fire, and was the beneficiary of her use of her staff as she blasted the shadowy serpents in Wizard’s Gibbet. His miraculous sister had even called forth an image in last night’s campfire, but for some reason, watching her transform the lake water into ice left him gaping in awe as the revelation sunk in. His sister was a wizard. A real-life conjurer.

  A dark thought tempered his wonder. As a woman, most people would refer to her as a witch or an enchantress, but regardless of the label she received when she emerged into the real world, she would be shunned by most, if not outright resented. Watching her perform an act most people deemed impossible filled him with wonder and a dire foreboding. Her life was about to irrevocably change. If he was right about his assessment of the superstitious population who worshipped all sorts of deities, her life wouldn’t be changing for the better. Magic users were rare, and because of their scarcity, most people didn’t trust them. He should’ve left her back on Dragon’s Tooth.

  Melody’s voice rose in volume and pitch and then fell off. Half the channel between the shore and the island had iced over. She turned her head to look at him, but her eyes didn’t appear focused. She wavered on her feet. Grasping the embedded staff with both hands she staggered.

  Silurian wrapped his arms around her as she became dead weight. Her head lolled backward and she giggled.

  “Mel?” Silurian worried she was on the verge of fainting, and yet she smiled. “What’s happening? What did you do?”

  Her head rolled away from him and back again. She said with a giddy smile, “Master Mintaka, I give to you a bridge.”

  Silurian looked to the expanse of ice jutting halfway across the channel to Grimward. “Um, I hate to tell you this, but we’re still going to have to swim, unless you mean to evaporate the rest of the lake.”

  Her shifting eyes slowly became still. The dazed look seeped out of her stare, and her body assumed some control of its own. She blinked rapidly a few times, the smile dropping from her face. Still in his arms, she looked at him as if they had just met.

  She stiffened and pushed herself free, able to stand on her own again, albeit, with the assistance of her rigid staff. “Oh, did I pass out?”

  “I’m not sure what just happened, but you never lost consciousness. At least I don’t think you did. You feel okay?”

  She tried to pull the gnarled tip of her staff free, but the ice refused to release its grip. “Yes, I’m fine. A bit woozy, but that’s to be expected. Here, help me get this out.”

  Silurian grasped the length of dark wood and yanked, reefing it one way and then the other.

  Melody gasped as she watched the staff bend. “Don’t break it. Use your knife. Hurry, the ice won’t last long.”

  Silurian pulled Soulbiter free and knelt on the edge of the shore. He reached out and chipped furiously at the ice imprisoning the staff. As he worked away, careful not to mar the staff—the gods only knew what would happen if he cut the bewitched pole—he grunted and looked up at her. “Did you hear me. The ice doesn’t extend all the way to the island.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “What? You think I can freeze the entire lake? You’re lucky I froze that much.”

  The ice suddenly released the staff, its gnarled tip almost striking Silurian in the head as she wrested it free.

  At once she stepped onto the sheet of ice and carefully made her way out toward its edge. “Hurry. I need to invoke the spell again before we lose this section.”

  Silurian secured his dagger and followed. The ice itself wasn’t too slippery, but the farther out they walked, the less stable it appeared. As they neared its far edge the entire shelf seemed to dip into the water. Small waves pushed water onto the floe, making their last few steps treacherous.

  Without pausing to consider her tenuous position, Melody lowered the head of her staff into the layer of water on top of the ice sheet and focused on her task.

  Silurian stopped well back from the edge, worrying about what would happen if she did pass out. Swallowing his better judgment, he slid one foot ahead of the other until he was within arm’s reach—the layer of ice felt like it tilted a considerable bit more beneath his weight. He reached out to grasp a fold of her cloak and the robes beneath, curling the fabric in his fingers. If she fell in, he planned to go with her.

  A blood-curdling screech rent the relative serenity of the desolate region.

  Silur
ian jerked, his feet sliding beneath him. In his struggle to keep from falling, he yanked hard on Melody’s robes.

  “Hey! Are you crazy? What’re you doing?” she cried out, trying to maintain her own balance. Her arms flailed in the air. The staff whirled about and thumped him in the thigh, making him scramble harder for purchase on the ice.

  The screech sounded again.

  Still flailing about, Silurian pointed to their right, to where the lake opened up on the northern tip of the island. “There! Did you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “I don’t know. It was big. There’s something in the water.”

  They both stared at the spot he indicated, but there was nothing to see.

  “It’s probably a turtle or something.”

  Silurian gave her a nervous laugh. “Um, I don’t think turtles scream like that.”

  “Well whatever it was, it’s gone now. I need to finish this spell, or we’re in big trouble.”

  Silurian was about to tell her they were already in trouble—that they needed to go back, but as he looked to the mainland he gulped. The ice floe had separated itself from the land. They were effectively afloat upon a thin sheet of Melody’s magical ice with a screeching lake creature lurking nearby. He wanted to inform her about their newest predicament, but she had set herself into her spell.

  Sliding his feet uncertainly toward her, he kept his eyes on the northern edge of the flow. He spared her a quick glimpse. The runes on her staff pulsed light blue—the water at its tip noticeably congealed and spread outward. He reached out to grab her robes as he contemplated their precarious situation.

  By the time Melody’s peril dawned on him, it was too late. She stood ankle deep in the layer of water upon the ice. Water that she compelled to harden. There was nothing he could do but watch as it froze around her feet.

  Icy fingers of magical freezing crept his way. He lifted his feet clear of the layer of water in rapid succession. Several times he felt resistance as he raised a foot clear of the rapidly forming ice, but soon the ice’s advancing edge spread beyond him and continued outward.