His Cure For Magic (Book 2)

I. Heart

CHAPTER ONE

Wilem

"Bring him out now. I don't need to tell you what will happen to your daughter if you don't."

Wilem swallowed a thick lump of air, and observed the exchange between Clau and the farmer. Sitting astride his Portnis stallion, he wondered for the millionth time how he had wound up in the General's personal entourage, and once more decided it had to do more with his aptitude than his attitude. The whole interaction was making him sick to his stomach.

"Easy, boy." His direct superior, Mediator Talia Oh, put a gentle hand on the side of his leg.
 

Wilem glanced over at her. He appreciated the kindness of her gesture, but wasn't so enamored of her choice of words. She couldn't have been more than two or three years his elder.
 

"I told you... I... I don't know where he went. I swear." The farmer was an older man, with a light scatter of white and grey hair, a thin mustache, and yellow teeth. He wore the plain stained burlap shirt and breeches of his rank, and his smell of sweat and fertilizer permeated the air around them.

Clau clenched his jaw and turned to his first officer, Captain Lawson, who was holding the farmer's eldest daughter in a tight grip, a slender knife to her throat. The girl had tears in her eyes, but she stood still and silent.

"I'm not feeling patient today, sir. Your son is a threat to this Empire, and he must be brought under control."
 

"My son is a farmer," the man said. "Nothing more. Whoever told you he was Cursed was lying." He stared at his child, the fear foremost in his eyes. "It was Hamlin, I bet. He hates me, because my girls are prettier than his. He knows they'll fetch the eyes of the Renson brothers before his ugly hags ever will. Don't you see, this is how he plans to ruin me."

Wilem heard the General's sigh, and he closed his eyes. This was the third village they had visited in the two weeks since they'd left Edgewater. This was the third village where the Cursed had run, and the General had been forced to act.
 

The rustle of Lawson's cloak was followed by the thud of the body falling to the grass, and the despondent wail of the father, who he knew would rush to her side. It was the third time Wilem had heard it, but he still needed to fight against the thick bile that threatened to rise up and choke him.

"I'm sorry, sir. I will ask you again, and if you don't tell me the truth, I'll begin by burning your farm. When that is done, I will burn your village, and when that is done, I will burn you... alive."

He had left Edgewater with Talia and a small retinue of soldiers. Three days later they had merged with General Clau and his men, a dozen of the Empire's best soldiers, and a single Mediator who Wilem still feared to look in the eye. In the days that had followed, he had seen the General as a kind man, a patient man, and a fair man.
 

Until there was a Cursed involved.

Until the Cursed ran.

The General was fanatical in his desire to track them down, to reach them and control them. There was no punishment too severe, no amount of death and destruction enough to dissuade him. It was a transformation that made Wilem's skin crawl, especially since not long ago he had been nothing more than the son of a carpenter, who had one day discovered that he had the Curse.

"Please, my Lord. Please."
 

The farmer was on the ground bawling, his daughter propped in his arms while her blood spilled freely over his shirt. Wilem opened his eyes, but he didn't look for the man, or his daughter. He kept them straight ahead, out over the fields of wheat that would be burning soon enough, should the farmer still refuse to tell.

General Clau pointed to two soldiers, mounted atop their powerful coursers. "Torches."
 

"Pleeeeaaassseee." His cry echoed in the small valley, a cry of pain that only the coldest heart could ignore. Wilem glanced at Talia again, and saw that even she was getting rattled.
 

"I told you already, sir, I am not feeling patient today. Whether you tell me where he is and what direction he went or not, we will find him. The only question is how much of this land I have to burn before I am satisfied. Believe me, sir, it can be quite a lot."

The farmer quieted, and looked up at Clau. "West," he said, without a hint of emotion. "He went west, into the Darling Glen."

Clau looked at Wilem then. "Wilem, Talia. Take Avoy and Trent."
 

"Yes, sir," he said, in unison with his mentor. The two soldiers rode towards them, already pulling bows from shoulders.

"I expect my Mediators to have located your son within an hour. If they aren't back by then, I'll assume you're lying to me."
 

"He went west," the farmer said again, his forehead crinkled in a mix of anger and agony.

They didn't wait for further instructions. Talia snapped the reins on her stallion, spinning it westward and sending it streaming forward with all the speed the famed breed could manage. Wilem felt his heart pounding as he instructed his own mount to follow, and within moments he was racing along behind her, his eyes first on her billowing black cloak, and then on the small forest ahead of them.

Wilem had never been in the Darling Glen. He had hardly ever been anywhere. He had grown up in Edgewater City, where the Overlord's palace sat. He had been nothing but a commoner, before his soldiers had come for him. Before his father had turned him over.

He hadn't run. He had never considered running. He had been taught that
his
laws were in place to protect them, and to keep them all safe from dangers that in
his
wisdom
he
didn't feel they should have to concern themselves with. The day he had discovered his Curse, he had told his father first thing, and Talia had come for him the following afternoon.

He didn't understand why they ran. He didn't know why there was so much fear. When Talia had come, she had been kind and generous, and held him in high esteem. She had showed him her own Curse, so he would know that she was like him, and that this was how
he
cared for them. She and his brothers and sisters had taken him in, accepted him as their own, and brought him into a family much larger than the one he had needed to leave behind.
 

It was the Liar he knew, him and his Cursed Whore, who together had murdered the Overlord of Elling in cold blood and claimed the city as their own base of debauchery. With his serpent's tongue, he had convinced much of the citizenry there to turn away from his laws and to openly revolt. He had started a civil war, and then when the might of the Empire arrived to crush it, he had slithered away in the dead of night, leaving those he had deceived to be slaughtered under their false beliefs.
 

Yet he had survived, and he continued to instill fear in the outlying villages, convincing them that they were being lied to and used, that
he
was deceiving them in order to keep them in line. That the Curse was no curse at all, but a disease for which
he
hoarded the cure.
 

That was why this farm boy had run, and why his father had tried to protect him. The words of the Liar had reached his ears, and he had fallen for them as surely as all of the others. Wilem didn't blame him, because he knew that the man didn't know any better. He felt sadness though, and pity. Once the boy had run, his true heart had been revealed. His loyalty and strength was called into question, and he could never be part of the family. Never.

They reached the Darling Glen, the stallions charging into the brush without hesitation, hooves pounding the soft grass beneath them. Strider was stronger and younger than the stallion Talia rode, and so Wilem found himself closing in, while Avoy and Trent had been left far behind.

Talia slowed her horse to a trot a few moments later, examining the brush around them as Wilem pulled Strider up alongside. He could hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, and the rustling of leaves on the wind.
 

"You shouldn't have run," Talia said, not to him, but to the air. He could feel the energy of her Curse around her, taking the words and carrying them to the mind of the boy, wherever he was hiding. She would do this to try to draw him out into the open, to break his spirit and his will to resist.

Talia turned to him, pointed to the northwest, and then spun herself to the south. They would split up to search for the boy, but they had to be careful. While General Clau knew what they were and what they could do, it was against the law to use the Curse in witness of the uninformed.

"
You shouldn't have run.
"

Even as Wilem moved further away from his superior, he could still hear her voice in his mind, carried by her power to anyone else who shared the Curse. He scanned the brush, looking for any signs of recently crushed leaves or broken branches, or any other sign of a young boy crossing on foot.

"
You shouldn't have run. We would have taken care of you.
"

Wilem moved Strider ahead at a slow walk, through the wood and brush until he reached a small clearing. It was here that he found the boy, standing in the center of the grass with his hands clenched in fists and his eyes wet with tears.
 

"I saw you," the boy said. He was small for his age, with a mop of long, tawny hair that fell to the top of his bare chest. "I saw you kill my sis."

Wilem slid off the stallion, careful to keep his eyes on the boy. Too many of them had been lost in the months since the Liar had appeared. He had convinced them to fight instead of submitting, and some had been successful in taking the Mediator sent to manage them by surprise. That the boy had been standing in the open, waiting, made him uneasy.

"You shouldn't have run," Wilem said. He reached up and drew his ircidium wand from the saddle. It was a simple thing, a three foot cylinder of the special alloy, with a green stone attached to the end. The metal would allow him to conduct his energy through to the stone and amplify the power that he provided it without risk of harming himself.

"What gives you the right?" the boy asked. "Why do you get to decide who lives and dies?"

"I don't get to decide.
He
does." Wilem started walking slowly towards the boy, gathering his energy around him in preparation for its use.

"Who does? Do you know who
he
is? Does anybody? Silas says we deserve to be free. That
he
has no right to decide our fate. That
he
is cruel to the ones
he
can't control. I won't be controlled."

Wilem didn't know who
he
was. He had heard that the General did, but he wouldn't speak of it. Still, there was no reason to question. He saw the proof every day in the eyes of the General, and the soldiers, and in Talia. They all believed, just as his father had believed.

"Silas is the Liar," Wilem said. "He fills you with falsehoods to make you serve his needs."

The boy surprised him by laughing. "You're the ones went and killed my sis. You're the ones burning villages and farms. Why do you need to do that, if you're so sure you're right? Why does
he
need to rule by fear?"

Wilem thought to speak, but he stopped himself. He had never seen the General's actions as ruling with fear. They had simply been doing what they must to ensure the Cursed were contained. It wasn't safe for them out there alone, he knew. If they couldn't be part of the family, they were better off dead.

"That's why you shouldn't have run. Your mind is poisoned. I'm sorry." He raised the wand and relaxed, feeling the energy pooling in him. He pushed it up the alloy towards the stone. "Chakoth."

 
The stone began to glow, and the ground around the boy began to shake. His eyes widened in fear, and he turned to run again. Before he could take his first step, a thick green vine shot out of the ground from below his feet, twisting and wrapping around his ankle. A second followed it, and then a third. Within moments, only his head was visible.

Wilem felt his heart pounding. He had never actually killed someone before. It wasn't that he was afraid to do it, or had any moral question about it. He knew the boy's fate would be worse than what he was about to do, if he was allowed to roam the empire with his Curse unchecked. He just... didn't
want
to kill him. Just as he hadn't wanted Captain Lawson to kill the farmer's daughter.