Diary of a Conjurer (26 page)

“Who?”

She hesitated again, as though it was
difficult to answer. “My father.” A tear formed in the corner of
her eye.

By this time the Xylonites had appeared from
their hiding and tiptoed quietly to Silvio’s side, their mouths
opened in awe at the sorceress standing in the grass. Silvio
signaled for Xylepher to bring Ivar’s water skin and when he did,
the old man touched Promise’s lips with the spout. She drank
greedily.

“Whoever you are,” she said, wiping her mouth
with the back of her hand. “Whoever you are, you’re not safe.
Hacatine is watching me. She’ll make captive of anyone who helps
me.”

“Bah,” Silvio said, a wad of spit in his
mouth. “She’s been watching me for a hundred years.” Letting the
force of his disdain carry it, he shot the spittle as far as it
would fly.

“Are you Silvio?”

The conjurer scowled, and exchanged glances
with the little people, but he didn’t answer.

“Ivar told me your name. You gave him your
magic, didn’t you?”

Silvio wasn’t one to blush, not often, but he
felt heat rise to his head.

“That was an unintelligent thing to do.” She
brushed her hair out of her face. “And now the young fool has a bit
of my magic as well. The mix of sorcery and wizardry is an ill mix
if those powers aren’t affectionately given. Being a wizard you
should know that.”

“Little choice I had.” Silvio grunted,
offended by her reprimand. “It was a choice between giving my
wizardry to the youth or to Hacatine.”

She shook her head and snickered. “Just a
choice of time. Ivar won’t be able to defend himself against her.
He’s naïve, much too arrogant, and extremely foolish. I’m afraid
we’re all just waiting for our ruin. She’ll find him, get what she
wants, and destroy us. She’ll destroy all the civilizations around
us too, eventually, unless they bow to her heavy hand.”

Silvio straightened, as much as he could,
for his bones ached anew. He agreed with her, but the Xylonites
were standing there next to him, their faces long with pouts. They
had offered him hope whenever he had been despondent. He owed it to
them to return the favor. “Maybe not,” he said and winked at
Xylepher. “Maybe we can get through this, and things will turn out
for the better.”

Those were hard words for Silvio to utter,
because in his gut he didn’t see how anything could go right. Here
they were, a powerless old wizard, a blind girl who had lost her
magic, and a colony of little people depending on him for safety.
Still, without hope they would die without a fight. There had to be
something to believe in.

“Find him.” Promise’s voice softened. “Find
the Kaempern and try to reason with him. Maybe that’s your hope,
though I doubt you’ll be successful. He hadn’t listen to reason
when I offered it. Even if he did return your powers to you,
fighting Hacatine is beyond your strength, even with magic. She’s
not going to retreat this time. Her throne sits on shaky ground
back home. Taikans are waiting for results that she has not yet
delivered.”

“Is that right?” Silvio asked, combing his
beard, intrigued by the news of his homeland. Silvio felt a tapping
at his knee and looked down.

Xylepher whispered his name. “We should bring
Promise with us, sir.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. The Xylonites could
tend to her. She’s no way of taking care of herself alone in the
wilderness.

He nodded thinking,
I’m moved by her tenacity.
“Come with us.” The gentleness in Silvio’s tone surprised
even him. It’d been a long time since he spoke softly, and even
longer since he’d spoken to a sorceress, other than his hissing and
spitting at Hacatine or Promise when she was a statue on the
beach.

She didn’t answer for a long while. Only the
ocean surf beating on the beach below filled the air with
sound.

“I refuse sympathy. Your kindness would be
your death,” she finally whispered. “I would be of no help to you
but would only cause you pain.”

Silvio grumbled to himself,
though he expected that answer.
How does
one counter that kind of response?
“Bah,”
he retorted. He would have shown her his bulging eye if she could
see, but she couldn’t. “Hacatine can’t cause me any pain that I
don’t already have. There’s the woods west of here that leads to
Alcove Forest. That’s where the boy is going, my wager. If Hacatine
wants a war, I don’t see how any of us can avoid getting involved.
We might as well stay together.”

Eyesight

The campfire smoldered with stale smoke as
the sun sent beads of color across the surf. Ivar awoke at sunrise,
remembering something significant had happened the night before,
but not until a transparent outline of a dagger distorted his
vision did he recollected the events.

“How are you doing, Promise?” he asked as he
watched the clouds roll across the sky. “You know; I keep wondering
about that dagger I saw in your eyes last night. Did you see it
too? I wonder if that has something to do with who I was when I was
young. A golden dagger? Pretty remarkable.”

Promise didn’t answer. The blankets he had
conjured up for her the night before were still intact as though
she never touched them.

“Promise?” Ivar stood, and wiped the sand
from his hands and looked out across the beach at a figure in the
distance. She probably just went for a morning walk.

Hungry, it was time for Ivar to get to work.
The food on the table was gone, the last bites having been
plundered by a band of seagulls still hovering over camp. That was
fine, as Ivar had an appetite for fresh fruit and perhaps a bowl of
meal. He closed his eyes and imagined a sweet juicy apple.

But instead of an apple appearing in his
mind’s eye, he saw an apple tree. It stood in an orchard at the
edge of Kaempern. Tage was standing next to him and they were
stalking a buck that munched on unripe fruit fallen from the
tree.

No, no. Just one apple is
all I want
.
Not a
deer, or an apple tree.

He squinted and tightened
his fist, visualizing a dark red apple. Nothing happened. Ivar
opened his eyes. Where his hand shimmered with green magic, swirls
of yellow also spun beneath the flesh of his fingers.
Okay. The power is there. Maybe I’m
distracted.

He thought about an apple again, this time
with his eyes open. His hand glowered yellow and an apple appeared.
But when he tried to take a bite of it, he closed his teeth on air.
The apple disappeared, if indeed it had even existed at all. Oddly,
the taste of apple lingered on his tongue.

Something’s gone wrong.

He thought about an apple again and this time
found himself sitting under an apple tree in the same village he
saw the day he almost drowned.

The tree was huge, full of
large red fruit ready for picking. Children played in the street,
and he saw a woman waving at him, calling to him. “Daryl, come home
now, it’s time to eat
.”

Fear groped him. Daryl? Ivar opened his eyes.
His wizardry power wasn’t working the way it had been the day
before. He couldn’t control the magic.

It’s like shooting a bow
with my other hand,
he laughed to
himself.

The moment he made that comparison, his mind
drifted again.

He was at the Kaempern camp bracing a red
oak bow in between his knees as he tilled the wood, bending and
shaving, creating just the right tension at each arc. Satisfied
with the graceful curve of the last strung notch, he leaned the bow
against the bench next to him and admired it.

And there it was!

The weapon was so vivid that Ivar reached out
to touch it, but instead of grabbing hold, his hand passed through.
The bow was there, in his memory, but not in reality.

Does this have something to do with
Promise’s magic? Did I do something I shouldn’t have when I looked
into Promise’s eyes. I saw what she saw in me, but maybe I tapped
into her power!

“So that makes two of us with insight now!
This should be fun. I’ll be able to see her past, and she mine.” He
looked at his hands, now glowing with both green and yellow light.
“I like Silvio’s magic better. I can make things really happen with
his magic. Wonder if there’s a way to separate the two. Maybe
Promise will know.”

Ivar let his eyes rest on the never-ending
motion of the sea pounding on the beach. The surf rumbled, and
spray misted the air, transforming into fog. Promise, a silhouette
against the morning sky, stood in the path of the waves as they
broke, the foamy rolls of water splashing around her feet. Ivar
watched her for a few moments letting his mind wander, not certain
how to handle his dilemma.

Maybe she’s angry. I hope not. I could have
been more considerate of her warnings but she sounded so much like
Aren. So controlling!

She could be right about
using Silvio’s magic for things like food. I know how to forage,
and hunt. I’ll make a spear and go fishing later today.
That should make her happy.
Clams for breakfast!

Geysers sprouted whenever
the water receded, and seagulls were digging for them. Ivar jumped
up, pleased with his new resolution, and breathed in the salty air
that floated on the breeze.
Ah . . . the
wind! Confirmation!
Ivar knelt on the damp
stretch of beach, dug, and felt the cool ridged surface of a razor
clam in his hand. He was doing the right thing now, using his
skills instead of magic to feed himself, and it felt good. Another
spout of water popped up from a hole nearby and he moved to it,
harvesting another. He worked the beach until he had an armful of
clams tucked into the hem of his tunic.

“Look, Promise, breakfast!” he called out,
but she was gone. He wasn’t sure why, but suddenly he felt empty,
and it wasn’t just that he was hungry. He was alone.

The fog had thickened. Still it wasn’t too
foggy to see the coast in both directions. The gulls flying over
the beach were visible, as were the rocky cliffs to the west that
jutted out into the sea. No Promise. Surely she wouldn’t have been
swept away by the waves. She was too intelligent, too magical, for
that.

He turned to the east. He would have noticed
if she crossed his path. To the west there were no footprints in
the sand. None. When he looked out to the sea he saw the fleet of
ships off shore, and a tiny dot of a skiff bouncing on the
waves.

He dropped his clams and ran up the hill to
the campfire, grabbed the black case the strangers had left behind,
and headed west, toward the cliffs. If he had been certain he could
control his newly acquired magic, he would have stayed and
confronted the sorceress, but there was much to sort out before he
would be ready to tackle her.

Ivar was quick on his feet. His short body
and wiry legs gave him the ability to dart through the woods, skip
over ravines and creek beds with ease. Once he left the sand and
reached the grasslands, he covered ground as swiftly as a hart on a
chase. The mountainous countryside that he approached was topped
with large majestic cedar trees, a perfect refuge for someone with
his skills.

Clutching the case firmly, and without
looking back, he bounded over the boulders of the bluff, maneuvered
his body through the steep embankments, and slithered through
crevices until he reached the crest of the cliff, scrambling into
the forest.

Spies

“Nothing but a bundle of sandy blankets and a
few hot embers left, sir. I’d say he left less than a few hours
ago. That is, if he escaped.”

After jumping behind the log where the other
Xylonites hid, Xylepher bent over and held his knees, wheezing a
bit as he caught his breath.

“The ships aren’t moving, and the skiff is on
the beach.” Silvio combed his beard, twisting the hairs at the end
of it. It wasn’t like him to be nervous.

“If she reaches him before we do . . .”
Promise began.

“Holderbash!” Silvio interrupted her in the
loudest whisper he had. She mustn’t raise the level of fear already
brewing among the Xylonites. Professing calamity would just make
matters worse. He’d seen the little people when they were afraid.
They’d scatter. They’d run all over the place impossible to manage.
If not that than they’d hide underground for a very long time and
worry him to death. That’s why the Xylonites needed Silvio, to keep
them levelheaded, and to hang onto hope. “She won’t find him
first!” he insisted.

“As long as I’m slowing you down, she
will.”

It was true, as much as Silvio hated to
admit. They had only come a short way, but leading a blind person,
no matter how smooth the traveling, had its encumbrances. Even on
the beach the Xylonites had to keep her path clear from rocks she
might trip over, shells she might cut her feet on, or too feisty a
wave that might trip her at the knees and wash her away. And as
timid as the little people were of the water, it was a job they
preferred not to have. But when they traveled through the grass
above the beach, the ground was lumpy and rutted and limbs
protruded from fallen trees in the most unlikely places. Had they
been quicker, they might have caught up with Ivar before Hacatine
came ashore. They were too late for that now.

“Just leave me here,” Promise insisted.

“No, no, we can’t do that,” the Xylonites ran
to her side, but she was already sitting on the ground, holding her
head in her hands. “I can’t go any farther, anyway. My head feels
like the eye of a hurricane, empty yet surrounded by darkness. The
mission is more important than I am. I’m of no value to you. You
need to find Ivar and you need to find him before Hacatine captures
him. Silvio, please. Ivar has no idea how to defend himself from
her. At least you could turn him into stone or something. Or
convince him to return your magic to you.”