Magician Prince (24 page)

“Why would you do that?” he asked. His voice
was shrill and caked in fear. He did not step back out from behind
the wall.

“I didn’t know it was you,” she told him
again and had to suppress an urge to be short for having to repeat
herself.

“Why would you do that to
anyone
?”

“I have to protect myself… and Avelice,” Alia
defended her actions, but her words were empty. She was in no mood
to argue with a child. “Just come out.”

Cautiously, Kaleb stepped out. He viewed her
warily not unlike a kicked dog wary of abuse. Alia dropped her
staff and went to him. Pulling him close, she hugged him tightly
with one hand. Kaleb was tense at first, but soon relaxed and
returned Alia’s hug, encompassing Avelice. Hot tears ran down the
enchantress’ face. She tried to hold them back, but once they
started there was no stopping them. Kaleb squeezed her tighter and
only then did she notice how strong the boy was.

“Why are you crying?” he finally asked with
concern once their hug had ended. His eyes appeared impossibly
large and innocent as Alia met his gaze.

She laughed a little, thinking that she must
look quite the sight. Everyone thought that she was so strong and
fearless. For a time she believed it too, though deep down she knew
the truth. Alia cursed her own weakness. She would never let any of
the others see her like this. The shame would be too much. It had
not been her intention, but maybe that was why she ended up here of
all places where she could be alone to grieve in private.

“My father is dead,” she finally said and had
to fight back a fresh rounds of tears at hearing those words escape
her lips. “I spent so much time trying to get him out of prison and
building the Collective only to have them both ripped away from me
in the course of two days.”

Kaleb nodded. He understood all too well what
it was like to lose everything in a moment. Her father had killed
Kaleb’s family and nearly everyone he knew. “I don’t mean to mourn
him in front of you,” she added.

“Because he was the one who killed my
family,” Kaleb suddenly blurted out.

She was taken aback by the boy’s directness,
but maybe that was the province of children to be so candid. “Byrn
told you?”

“I figured it out when he fought Byrn. He
told me to run and I did, but not far. I was worried about him and
Sane, so I went back and saw the black snakes that killed my family
come out of your father.”

The black snakes, as Kaleb called them, was a
high level magic skill possessed by necromancers. Any one of those
masters could use them, but there was no point in explaining that,
because Kaleb was right about her father.

“If you knew, then why did you come to me
when you needed aid?” she asked, thoughtfully. “Why trust me?”

Kaleb shrugged and she thought that would be
his reply, but then he answered her question with one of his own,
“Who else would have helped me?”

Alia was torn between feeling insulted that
the reason Kaleb had come to her was because he could find no one
else to trust and honored that she alone was someone that he felt
he could turn to. Faced with both options, she chose to take his
words as a compliment, because he never did anything to warrant her
assuming the worst of him. The boy shook a little, though the air
was not cold and he averted his gaze from hers just then. How she
longed to know what his thoughts were at that moment. She wanted to
tell him that it would be all right and that his feelings, whatever
they were, were natural. A moment of clarity dawned on her that she
realized that as she mourned her father, this little boy whom she
had come to care for in a short time was torn between sadness at
her loss and relief that the man who killed his family was dead. It
was disconcerting to suddenly realize that someone she looked up to
was a true monster in the eyes of others. She knew that there were
some who viewed all magicians in that way and in its own manner
that did not bother her. There were those who were bigoted against
her kind, but she considered that to be a flaw within them. Kaleb
may have been raised with some of that belief as most children
were, but he loved Byrn, who was a magician, and he thought that he
might love her too. For him to view her father as a thing best left
to a child’s nightmares or campfire stories broke her heart with
the truth of it.

“Now that you are back among lesser-
non-magic users
you have no more need of my protection,” she
steeled herself to say the words, because she feared what Kaleb
might say. “Perhaps it would be best if you stayed in Lion’s
Landing. There is an orphanage here and in time they could find you
a loving home. It was very irresponsible of Byrn to haul you
halfway across the kingdom as he did, anyway.”

At her words, Kaleb turned his face away and
would not look at her. Alia stepped around him so that she could
see his face, but he turned away again. He did not want her to see
his tears. Instead of pressing the matter, Alia put an arm around
him and herded the boy over to the weather worn staircase. She sat
on these steps many times as a child and wondered that they
suddenly seemed so small compared to her memories. They sat
together for a time and they watched the sun setting behind the
trees. Alia placed one arm around him and Kaleb laid his head
against her shoulder while she cradled Avelice who was thankfully
still sleeping soundly.

It would be too dark to travel back to Lion’s
Landing with a boy and a baby to care for, she decided, and gently
pried herself away from Kaleb asking that he wait for her at the
bottom of the steps while she explored the upstairs. Darkness had
already crept in, giving the partially destroyed cabin an ominous
feel, but Kaleb agreed to wait without complaint.

Darkened splotches of wood where blood had
soaked in from the massacre here almost two years ago could still
be seen in the dark. Alia walked past some of the rooms to the one
that had been her bedchamber as a young girl. It was a grim sight.
Even now the room was stained in dried blood and there were several
overturned beds where children that must have been living here were
hidden. For a horrifying instant she could see the children that
must have been in this room cowering under those beds as fighting
was going on just outside their door and then the men who had come
to kill them busted in…

She banished the images from her overactive
imagination and left the room. She turned and entered the room that
would have been her mother’s and found it for the most part intact
although it had suffered what must have been a cursory ransacking.
The bed sheets were long gone and dresser drawers had all been
pulled out so that the contents lay dumped on the floor, though
most of those possessions were long gone either to the Kenzai who
cleaned up the site during the aftermath or to roaming forest
dwellers, but there was no blood spots anywhere or other signs of
violence.

Alia returned to the top of the staircase and
called Kaleb up. She asked him to fetch her staff that she had left
lying on the floor earlier and he brought it with him. “We should
rest,” she told him and gestured to her mother’s room.

Once inside she faced the door and placed the
butt of her staff against it so that the blade scratched a small,
rudimentary symbol not unlike a scarecrow into the wood. She then
infused the tiny rune with some of her magic that would place a
ward upon the doorway. If the door were opened as they slept, it
would sound a mental alarm that only Alia would be able to hear and
wake her from her slumber. In that way they could rest with some
measure of peace.

The night was not cold with the coming of
summer, but Alia unfolded her traveling cloak and wrapped it around
Kaleb and herself with Avelice lying between them. She suddenly
felt very tired and realized that she was emotionally exhausted. It
only took moments for sleep to claim her.

***

The next morning Alia woke to find the two
children still nuzzled against her. Morning’s light brought a new
hope and freshness to the day and she lay there for a while, not
wanting to disturb either of the children wrapped up in her
cloak.

Avelice was the first to stir and Alia
carefully unfastened the cloak so that she could get up without
disturbing Kaleb. She should have brought some food with her when
she left the Hasty Rider yesterday, but thankfully Avelice was
still nursing and could eat. The growing baby was voracious, but it
was not an unpleasant experience as Avelice sucked the milk from
her. She was at the age where she could begin to eat soft foods,
but Alia was still producing plenty of milk and it felt good to
have that pressure released from her body.

A sudden buzzing in her head caused Alia to
jerk and she turned suddenly to see Kaleb exiting the room. He had
left to give her some privacy while Avelice ate. It may have been
awkward for him to see the baby feeding and so he left silently,
but Alia could not help thinking that his silence indicated that he
was still upset over their talk the night before. She wanted to
call for him, but decided to let him be. Perhaps if he spent some
time outside, the fresh air and gentle sun would improve his
spirit.

Her words had hurt him more deeply than she
had thought that they would. Good sense told her that leaving him
in the care of the orphanage would be best for him. Alia and the
others would be marching into danger just as surely as they had
just escaped it. It was unfair to put him through that when it did
not have to be that way. That was her rational mind talking, but
the rest of her knew it would be difficult to let him go and it did
not help that Kaleb clearly did not want to be left behind.

“I’m not his mother,” Alia quietly reminded
herself. Avelice stopped sucking for a second to look up at her
before resuming her meal. The unwanted thought that Kaleb had no
mother intruded on her thoughts, but she pushed it away.

Once Avelice had finished eating Alia went
downstairs and found a bowl full of berries and some apples. Kaleb
sat at the table waiting for her. He was still sulky, but tried to
present the sparse pickings with a thin layer of cheerfulness. It
was almost as if he was saying, “See what I can do. I can be
helpful to you.”

“This is very nice, Kaleb. Thank you,” she
said, putting on her own happy mask. She hated herself for
suggesting that he stay behind, and suddenly knew that she could
not bear to make him stay someplace if he did not wish it.

“I could hold Avelice for you,” he offered
and gratefully took the contented little bundle that was seeing the
bright greens of the trees in the new day’s light outside with a
furtive interest.

Alia sat next to Kaleb and they began to eat.
He looked at her with renewed hope, but did not say anything. She
realized then that he always seemed eager to hold Avelice. Little
girls tended to want to hold babies often, but boys were less
likely to want to hold them preferring to play at rougher games.
Did Kaleb have a baby sister before her father destroyed Colum?
That could explain his protectiveness over Avelice.

“Kaleb,” Alia began cautiously, “we are going
into a very dangerous situation. I wouldn’t lie to you about
something like that, but I need you to understand that there are no
guarantees that any of us will survive the next few weeks. That
includes you and Avelice if you decide to come with us.”

Kaleb pulled the baby to him and held her
just a little tighter. “Then I will protect her,” he said with a
confidence that astounded the enchantress and caused her to
smile.

“Then from this moment forth you will be
known as Kaleb…” Alia paused as she considered a sir name to give
him. He had no sir name from his family and it seemed wrong to give
him the name of Necros, considering what her father had done to his
family. Finally she settled on, “Shieldbearer,” and Kaleb nodded in
agreement eagerly. “And your duty will be to watch out for Avelice
and keep her safe from harm. Can you do that?” Alia made the
suggestion, thinking that if Kaleb felt like he had a role in her
group, then he would not feel like he might get left behind.

“I can,” he agreed. Any sign of the morose
boy from the night before was suddenly gone. “Will I get to learn
how to use a sword?”

“In time,” said Alia. His smiled was
contagious. “You could have no better instructors than Tomlin and
Ryonus. You know Tomlin was not much older than you are now when I
took him on as my apprentice.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

They talked then for a while and the
tenseness of the past few days melted away from each of them. It
was a new day and even in the face of tragedy there was reason to
find hope.

Flowers of all colors and species, some of
which Sane had never seen before were underfoot. He had been lying
amongst them for so long that he could not recall how much time had
passed. The sky was an azure blue and there was not a cloud to be
seen for miles around. The flowers stretched out before him until
they eventually met and merged with the sky in a light purple hue
at the limits of his vision. The sorcerer did not know where he
was, but this was a place of peace.

Am I dead?
He was surprised that the
thought did not alarm him more. He had expected the underworld as
the name implied to be a place of darkness like an underground
cavern, but this place was so beautiful that he could not imagine a
more wonderful place to spend all of eternity.

A hand offered to help him up and he took it.
It was an old man’s hand not that much different from his own. He
had expected it to be clammy and cold, but it was warm to the
touch. The hand belonged to an equally old looking man with a white
beard and hair. He dressed in a scholar’s robe that shimmered in
pastel colors as he moved. “Sane of Aurelia, at last we meet,” the
old man spoke affectionately, but there was an underlying sense of
authority to his voice that made Sane want to bow, but he resisted
the urge. “Where you come from I am known as Learion, but among my
brothers and sisters I am simply called Wise.”