Magician Prince (31 page)

Tomlin continued, “Then Skynryd asked my name
and I told him. The next words that came out of his mouth were a
complete shock to me. He said, ‘Thank you, Tomlin. Now close the
door and be on your way. I won’t be leaving this cell any time
soon.’

“My mouth was probably hanging in surprise
when he told me to close the cell door. I stammered out, ‘Why?’ and
he said, ‘Because I think I can do more good for magicians like you
and even for my own clergymen from within this cell than I can
outside of it. If I flee, then I will be branded a criminal and
everything that I have said up to this point about the good side of
magic will be dismissed, but if I stay then I will be tried and
allowed to speak publicly for all to hear.’

“’You will be executed and no one will care
what you have to say then, you daft old fool,’ I told him without
thinking. I still don’t know what possessed me to speak to him like
that, but it sounded to me like he wanted to throw his life away
right then and that made me angry. I pleaded with him to come with
me, but he stubbornly refused.”

Tomlin stared at his beer. It had gone
untouched since he poured it and now his story had stopped as well.
He looked as if his memory had suddenly jolted forward to Skynryd’s
death. When Tomlin had told her of the priest’s death it was like a
member of her family had died. She was selfishly glad that she had
not been there to witness it and saddened that Tomlin had been.

“He did not take your name calling well, did
he?” she prodded, hoping to pull him back to his story. Somehow
this seemed better to remember Skynryd as the man he was rather
than focusing on how he died.

Tomlin stymied a laugh and picked up his mug
as if he had just sprung back to life. “That is putting it mildly.
Skynryd strode across the cell, grabbed the door and swung it
closed with him still inside. The clang of metal on metal rang
loudly and woke the guard from his nap. Then to make things worse
Skynryd called the guard and alerted him to my intrusion.

“Skynryd probably thought that the guard
would run me off since I was just a kid, but he had other plans.
The jailer drew his sword and came at me. There was no word of
warning or threats. The guard just attacked. For an instant I was
dumbfounded by what was happening. Everything was suddenly spinning
out of my control and I was unsure of how to fix it. The guard
swung with an overhead swing that would have cleaved me in two if I
had not stepped aside just then. Nevertheless the blade bit into my
boot as I dodged out of the way and although the leather was not
pierced that did not protect the small bones of my foot from being
crushed under the sword’s weight. I screamed out in pain and
thought that I was done for. Then you showed up out of
nowhere.”

“I had been hiding, watching the whole
thing,” said Alia. “I am only sorry that I had not acted sooner to
spare you that pain. Before he could strike again I reached into
that man’s mind. There was no subtle manipulation there. I held him
by sheer force of will.” Years later, the anger at seeing Tomlin
lying on the floor of that jail still boiled her blood and Alia had
to take a moment to return to a place of calm or else the aura that
she was projecting would go awry.

“It was probably for the best or things could
have turned out much differently,” said Tomlin. Then he picked his
story back up. “You forced the guard to sheathe his sword and then
had him open the cell again. Then you ordered, not asked Skynryd
to, ‘Get your ass out of that cell and heal my boy.’

“Skynryd took my staff from the floor where
it had landed and began to pray over me with it. The pain was
reduced to a severe throb rather than constant agony almost
instantly. I tried to get up, but Skynryd cautioned me against it,
saying, ‘The wound has only just begun to heal. You will need to
stay off of it for a few days.’

“You forced the guard into the cell and
locked the door behind him before helping me up to his chair. The
guard was cursing and calling for help. He needed to be silenced
and that was when you handed me your staff and said, ‘Put him to
sleep now,’ as if it was that simple.”

“It was.” Alia assured him, “and after a few
tries you knocked him out. I was secretly proud of you to do it
with the pain of a broken foot distracting you.”

“I knew you were,” said Tomlin. “After that
things got a little fuzzy for me as I was distracted by my own pain
that came back even stronger once I began to take serious notice of
it, but you took over the discussion with Skynryd and told him of
your dreams for the Collective and how you wanted to form an
organization of magicians that would stand up and protect their
own. You told him how you wanted to create a place of safety for
them where they did not fear persecution. The look in his eyes told
me that you nearly had him convinced. Then you pointed to me as I
nursed my foot and said, ‘It won’t be easy. Invariably things are
going to get bad and people are going to get hurt just like that
little boy and when that happens we are going to need someone to
heal them. If you come with us, then you can help save the lives of
untold magicians or you can die in a cell or get publicly executed
as a heretic. The decision is yours.’

“Of course, Skynryd agreed to join our fight.
How could he say no after something like that?”

Alia placed her hand on Tomlin’s. “He was
good man.”

“He was a good friend.”

The rocking of the ship had almost become
rhythmic as Byrn spent most of his time confined to quarters. Since
telling Janus that he was Xander Necros, Byrn had been segregated
from the other magicians. They deemed him too dangerous to mix with
the other magicians and they were right, though not for the reasons
they expected. King Janus saw “Xander Necros” as a weapon at his
disposal, but feared a scenario in which that weapon might get free
of its restraint and so kept him locked away where he could not be
used until the appointed time. However, the truth was that the
collar Byrn wore around his neck was already deactivated. He could
escape if he truly had a mind to, but chose to stay as he worked
out a way to get his fellow magicians off of the ship without
bloodshed.

In the days that passed Byrn spent his time
quietly testing the limits of Xander’s body. The grandmaster had
used the life forces of others to power many of his magic spells,
but without being willing to feed from people in the same way Byrn
was faced with much steeper limitations and found he had to devote
some of his energy just to ordinary bodily functions. It was
unclear if this was the natural state that Xander had spent the
twilight years of his life living or if it was an effect of the
spell that switched their minds. He guessed it was the latter,
thinking that the original caster of the spell would have little
use for his old body once it was vacated and would not care about
the condition it was left in. There was some small condolence that
his innate ability to see the magic currents, as he thought of
them, and to manipulate magic without the need for a device were
both still intact. It was also still possible to absorb ambient
magic around him, but anything complicated like the fire wings was
proving difficult to maintain for long.

At times he tried to recreate Kellen’s magic.
Looking back, he should not have been surprised that the Kenzai
arts were just another form of magic just as healing energies were.
When he saw Kellen’s power flare up earlier, Byrn recognized its
similarities to his own fire elemental magic as well as to the
absorbing attributes of necromancy spells. Some combination of
those magic disciplines resulted in the creation of the Kenzai arts
and Byrn was determined to figure out how to recreate that magic.
It might be the only thing that would help him defeat Xander and
reclaim his body.

Hours or perhaps days passed in the creaking
hold as Byrn made countless attempts to recreate the Kenzai magic
and failed each time. For his first attempt at the magic he
conjured a simple flame, then tried to infuse that with the
necromancer death magic, resulting in a black hued flame, but
without any special properties. Byrn was inexperienced with the
intricacies of death magic. He learned the summoning arts of the
necromancy discipline from the first Avelice Necros, but he had no
desire to learn the most deadly magics that centered on absorbing
life forces with the ever-present threat of Ashura’s curse weighing
upon his shoulders.

At times it felt like a useless waste of
time, trying to recreate a magic he knew next to nothing about
based on another form of magic that he possessed little more than a
passing knowledge of. If he had help, then Byrn was sure he could
master this new spell form, but locked away as he was there was no
one he could seek aid from. Perhaps there was a necromancer or two
from among the captured Collective magicians onboard the vessel,
but it seemed unlikely. Any with the necessary skill would have
transported to safety, leaving the younger and less experienced
magicians to fend for themselves.

On the sixth attempt Byrn tried to start by
creating one of the black tendrils. He had never done it before,
but had seen it in use by Xander and Avelice Necros although that
was before he had gained the power to see the flow of magic. Once
he had a reasonable approximation of that spell down, he infused it
with fire. Again the result was a black flame, but now it held some
life absorbing properties. It was not what he wanted, but it was a
step in the right direction. There must be some other aspect
missing. What made the flame blue and caused it to absorb only the
magic from the blood instead of the whole life force? It was
infuriating to be so close and still seem to have an unassailable
obstruction blocking his goal.

It should not have been so hard. Men like
Kellen and Donovan could practice the anti-magic discipline and
they did not even think of themselves as magicians. In fact, to
suggest that they were using magic would likely invoke anything
from laughter to violence. There were easily a dozen or two Kenzai
roaming Aurelia for every one magician and it was a skill that
could seemingly be taught to anyone regardless of magical aptitude
meaning that it was a simpler form of magic to practice. However,
knowing that did not make Byrn’s failures any easier to accept. In
fact, it only served to fuel his frustration.

Eventually the attempts started to blend into
one another and Byrn began to give up. Maybe he misinterpreted the
power radiating off of Kellen and only saw what he wanted to
see.

Byrn absently traced his finger over the wood
as he sat cross-legged on the floor. His mind drifted back to Baj,
then as now, he was a prisoner, but in Baj he was just a powerless
boy making tentative forays into magic. Now he was a sorcerer with
few that could rival his skill, even trapped in Xander’s body, and
the only thing preventing him from leaving was his own desire to
stay.

For an instant there was a light blue flash
of light where Byrn’s index finger touched the wood. It was there
and gone so fast that he might have thought that he imagined it if
not for the sudden blackness as his eyes readjusted following that
light. Byrn knew that he had done it somehow, but was unsure
exactly what and how he managed to make that blue light. It was not
the blue flame that Kellen sported. It had been the softer glow of
a Kenzai sword or rune.

He suddenly realized what he had been doing,
running his finger along the wood. Byrn knew that image well. He
had stared at those anti-magic runes in Baj everyday for a year. He
was redrawing one of those runes. Creating the flames wielded by
Kellen was the work of a Kenzai master. Like any new student, Byrn
would have to learn the less powerful techniques of rune carving
and weapon enchantment before being able to wield that power
directly. His fingers traced the rune once more, this time with a
pressing of the magic he could spare. The rune lit with blue energy
as he drew first the outward circle, then, without lifting his
finger, drew straight lines from one edge of the rune to the next
so that when he was finished the lines formed what he always
imagined as gleaming stars in the sky.

The moment it was complete the gentle blue
glow of the rune increased ten fold so that the light filled the
small compartment. Byrn’s stomach began to feel queasy as that old
feeling of having his magic slowly drained from him took hold. He
stood up and kicked at the rune, hoping to mar it, but since it was
drawn with magic alone there was nothing to mar. It took time, but
eventually it absorbed the last of his magical reserves and having
no more fuel to consume, died out.

Almost at once, Byrn started to feel his
magical essence rebuild itself, but he had to lie down. The magic
that he devoted to keeping Xander’s body functioning properly had
been depleted as well, leaving Byrn feeling unnaturally exhausted.
He fought the sudden need for sleep and on some level he feared
that if he were to sleep now, he would never wake up, but soon he
could no longer keep his eyes open.

***

Kellen shook him awake sometime later. When
the knight saw that Byrn was awake he roughly hauled him off of the
cot and held him on his feet until Byrn could think enough to stand
on his own. “King Janus demands your attendance in his private
quarters,” was all the explanation Byrn received before Kellen
ushered him out of the room.

A pair of guardsmen led the way up to the
deck with Kellen following behind them. The treatment seemed
unnecessarily rough on Kellen’s part considering that everyone
believed that he was under the complete control of the collar. The
knight’s anger was probably fueled by his remembered tortures at
the hands of Xander Necros when their roles were reversed and
Kellen found himself the prisoner. Byrn had been there too and
watched some of the torture although he had not participated.
Compared to what Kellen went through, Byrn was getting off
lightly.