Magician Prince (30 page)

Ryonus was teaching the basics of swordplay
to Kaleb out by the stables when the enchanters returned to the
cozy inn with a pig on its sign. Since Alia’s proclamation that
Kaleb would be Avelice’s protector the boy had thrown himself into
his new training as a fighter and seemed to relish every moment of
it. Ryonus was an able sword master for a new pupil of the blade
and Tomlin saw fit to teach Kaleb his own brand of fighting that
involved the ability to size up his opponents as much as any
traditional combat techniques. It was a welcome distraction for the
men to take their minds off of all they had been through of late as
well as what was to come. Alia envied them for that small measure
of peace they shared.

A thrust from Kaleb’s practice sword sailed
past Ryonus as the man sidestepped the boy’s sloppy attack, forcing
Kaleb to overextend himself and nearly fall forward as he rushed
past Ryonus. The magician smacked Kaleb with the flat of his sword
on his rear and ensured that he fell, sprawled on his belly.

“Do not rush,” Ryonus chastised him even as
he helped the boy to his feet. “Your attacks need to be measured,
calculating. It is not enough to swing your sword wildly and hope
to hit your opponent.” Ryonus went on with the lesson and Alia and
Tomlin moved on to find Riona watching over Avelice in their rented
room.

“Was she any trouble?” asked Alia as she
stood over her daughter. Her hand grazed the top of the girl’s head
delicately. Alia smiled warmly as she felt her baby’s soft skin and
Avelice smiled back at her. Avelice was sitting up on the floor and
could follow her mother around the room with her eyes.

“She was a darling,” said Riona who did not
get up from her seat by the window. Ryonus and Kaleb could be
clearly seen from where she sat.

“He is a handsome man,” Alia smiled with a
nod out the window. She was gratified with Riona’s sudden blush
that told her she had guessed correctly. “You should talk to
him.”

“We talk all the time,” answered Riona,
sounding more defensive that she had intended.

“But not about your feelings for him,” said
Alia.

“It is obvious to anyone who has eyes,”
Tomlin chimed in, reminding the women that he was still in the
room.

“Ignore him,” said Alia, “Ryonus has no idea.
He does not have a romantic bone in his body.”

“Oh, I bet he has at least
one
romantic bone,” suggested Tomlin and his answer was complete
silence from the women. Riona’s faced blushed an even darker shade
of red while she stared daggers at him. Tomlin put his hands up in
surrender. “I was only joking. This isn’t Antella where women are
supposed to behave more… ladylike.” When the women’s brows only
grew more furrowed, if that was possible, Tomlin realized his
error. “Not that Aurelian women are unladylike. What I mean is that
Antellans are more frumpish. By the way, have I mentioned how
lovely you both look today? Because you do.” Tomlin flashed that
wily smile and Alia was forced to return it despite her
irritation.

“Maybe you should go for a walk,” she told
him, trying to sound stern and angry rather than amused and she
must have been somewhat successful, because Tomlin hastily
agreed.

Once he left, Alia turned to Riona who said,
“Sometimes I wonder what gets into that apprentice of yours.”

“He is still young- barely seventeen and acts
as most young men his age do. It is easy to forget that when you
think of all he has done and seen as if that should somehow make
him more grown up. He has experienced things that no grown man
should be forced to go through and yet he continues on, but at his
heart he still has that impulsiveness, that brashness of a young
man itching to prove himself to the world.”

“Old Father used to temper his bravado,”
observed Riona. “They used to fight like dogs at times. Has he said
anything to you about Skynryd?”

“Besides confirming that he was dead?
No.”

It was true that the priest and the bard used
to tease and mock each other on a nearly constant basis, but that
was just the nature of their relationship. Underneath, there was a
great respect between the two men who outwardly could not have
appeared more opposite.

“Maybe I should offer to do a summoning for
him so that he can say goodbye,” said Riona. It was a kind
suggestion, but it made Alia suddenly wary of the necromancer. Why
would she offer to summon Skynryd for Tomlin when she had not
extended the same thing to Alia with her father? Was it because she
knew such an attempt would be futile in Alia’s case, because Xander
Necros was still alive?

However, Alia kept those thoughts safely
hidden and simply said, “That would be kind of you, but I would
like to make the attempt first. As his master, I owe him that.”

“Of course,” Riona answered. “I can keep an
eye on Avelice for a while longer.”

“That is very much appreciated,” said Alia,
but she suddenly started to feel uneasy about leaving Avelice alone
with her, “but I cannot ask you to give up so much of your own time
for me. Why don’t you spend some time with Ryonus and send Kaleb
back here to watch Avelice?”

Riona said that she would and when Kaleb
arrived a few minutes later Alia sat down with him and told him not
to let Avelice out of his sight until she returned. Kaleb
agreed.

It did not take long for Alia to find Tomlin.
He was in the common room of the inn making himself the center of
attention with his melodious voice and deft lute playing that made
everyone turn to watch him. He called it “hiding in plain sight”
and though it seemed a risky thing to do, Alia admitted that it was
effective. No one would suspect the young man demanding everyone’s
attention of being a magician. No, they would be more likely to
suspect the loner sitting in the corner as Ryonus was apt to do or
the fellow who never comes out of his room except to order food and
drink.

Alia sat at a table near the hearth where
Tomlin was seated, making sure that he could plainly see her and
took a moment to listen to his song. It was
The Fall of
Everec
recounting the events of the orc attack against the
mountain city just before two winters ago. As the ballad goes, the
orcs attacked Everec with an overwhelming force and drove most of
the citizens out, but through the quick thinking of their leader, a
noblewoman by the name of Marian Lightfoot, who also happened to be
Byrn’s adoptive mother, the city’s army was able to hold off the
invading orcs until Warlord Nightwind’s army in Slivering could
arrive and drive them out. It was a great tale of heroism and
tragedy as the Lady Marian was felled in the defense of her city at
the last battle.

However the truth of those events was much
different. Everec was attacked and the city was besieged. That much
was true, but Lady Marian had ordered the city evacuated to save
lives before escaping herself. From then on Alia pieced the true
events together from the story Byrn told her upon returning to
Wolfsbane along with the disgraced orc, Korok’s account. Byrn and
Kellen transported into Everec following the Kenzai’s escape from
the Collective. Kellen had threatened to kill Alia if Byrn did not
do as he asked and so Byrn helped him escape to spare Alia’s life.
Upon their arrival in Everec, Byrn and Kellen were taken prisoner
by the orcs. There they were reunited with Sane, who was also a
prisoner and Byrn was going to be put to the torch. However, he
managed to escape and drove off the orcs by nearly burning down the
city around them.

It was a week or two later when Byrn and Lady
Marian were reunited in Silvering, but it was a short lived reunion
as Kellen, who was a supposed friend to Sane betrayed them all and
brought the Kenzai down on them. It was during that conflict that
Lady Marian was killed, Sane was made a slave, and Byrn was forced
to flee to the elven kingdom of Raiden half a world away, but it
did not serve the royal agenda to make it known that the orcs were
defeated by a magician and that the lady noble who was looked at
with admiration for her courage and sacrifice was actually killed
by Kenzai hunting her son and so adjustments had to be made to
history. For a brief moment she wondered how many other events
throughout history had been colored or outright changed to serve
the needs of those in power.

Tomlin sat down at the table across from her
as she mused this. He was greeted by a few pats on the back by
other patrons and a pleasant smile from a serving woman by the bar.
She brought a pitcher of beer along with two mugs. “On the house
for your fine performance,” she told Tomlin and leaned in, exposing
her cleavage as she poured his mug. “I hope you and your
older
sister
will enjoy it.”

Alia smiled politely. “That is very generous
of you,” she said without correcting her. Instead, she made a
mental note of the woman; her name was Silvia and was the daughter
of the innkeeper, in case she needed to find Tomlin tonight. His
evening would be full.

“I wish you would not sing that song,” Alia
told him once Silvia had left.

“It was not my first choice,” he admitted,
“but someone requested it and it would have drawn the wrong kind of
attention for a bard to turn down coin for a song.” To this she
could not argue. Then he added, “I look forward to the day when I
can sing of what truly happened. Perhaps I will even be the one to
write it.”

“That would be a great thing,” said Alia. She
took a swallow of her beer and wondered how to ask him of Skynryd.
It was the kind of thing that one should be sensitive to and so she
did not want to just blurt out her offer. Finally after a few false
starts, she decided that there was no better way to ask and just
said, “If you want to talk to Skynryd, I can help.”

The offer put Tomlin off balance for a moment
and a look of deep sadness shone in his eyes, but it only lasted
for a moment before he buried it. “I would like that,” he said in a
tone that was very measured. Here too, he was trying to hide his
pain and Alia wondered that she had not seen it before. She had
been so focused on her own misery that she neglected his and that
thought shamed her. Tomlin was her apprentice and that meant that
she was his confidante as well as his master. Instead he was too
busy being a sympathetic ear to her to be able to worry about
himself.

“Do you remember the first time we met
Skynryd?” he asked. His eyes looked far away as he relived the
memory. Alia told him that she did and delicately projected an aura
of calmness about them so that no one would pay any mind to what
they discussed.

“Yes, we had hoped to make him the fourth
member of the Collective.”

Tomlin nodded. “We had heard of a priest
speaking out in favor of magicians, telling people of all the good
they could do if given the chance. He was thrown into a local jail
cell and shunned by his fellow priests as payment for his
words.

“I was only thirteen at the time and still
very much the learner as your apprentice. Skynryd was to be the
first real test of my abilities. My mission was to sneak into the
jail, free him, and get us both out safely without anyone being the
wiser.” Tomlin had already finished his first beer and had poured a
second, but did not drink from it. Instead he stared at it as he
spoke, “Getting into the jail was a trivial matter. It was not at
all how I imagined it. In my childish fantasy I thought the jail
would be more like the insurmountable prison of Baj, but it was
just a simple set of cells and a guard station more suited to
containing drunken brawlers than rogue magicians. I walked in as if
I had every right to be there as you taught me and looked the place
over as if I was simply a curious little boy, but I need not have
bothered. There was only one guard stationed there and although I
had expected to have to use the sleep spell to knock him out before
freeing Skynryd, that too was easier than anticipated. The guard
was already sound asleep.

“The ring of keys to the cells hung on his
belt and I slipped them off with ease. Magic was not needed as my
own experience as a child-thief gave me all the skill I needed. I
took his keys without so much as a jingle and thought that I was in
the clear. Skynryd was the only prisoner and so I did not fear
anyone alerting the guard to my presence. If there had been, I know
I was instructed to use magic to make them sleep too, but I had
already decided that offering to set them free would be a simpler
course of action and less risky.”

Alia nodded. As a child, she would have
rebuked him, because the point of the escape attempt had been for
him to get some real world magical experience as much as it was to
get the priest to safety, but now he was on the cusp of manhood and
it no longer mattered.

“It was the dead of night and Skynryd was
fast asleep when I unlocked his cell door. Even though I had the
keys I still did not want to step into the cell and so I called to
him keeping an eye on the guard so that I did not wake him by
accident. Skynryd woke up and looked at me in confusion. ‘Boy, what
are you doing?’ he asked as I stood outside his open cell.

“’I am here to rescue you,’ I told him
proudly. Then added, ‘I am a magician.’”

Tomlin had been speaking in a low voice, but
Alia still hazarded a glance around the tables sitting nearest
them. Even with the sense of safety she was projecting out to the
patrons making a declaration like “I am a magician” tended to
attract eyeballs to the person saying it. No one seemed to notice
and when she looked to Tomlin she saw a look of concern being
replaced by a nod. Alia’s aura had made him a little too relaxed as
well.

“I’m sorry.”

“No harm done,” Alia told him, “Please
continue.” She strengthened the aura so that no one even noticed
that they were still sitting there. It was midday and the common
room was sparsely populated anyway.