The Wilder (The Trouble with Magic Book 1) (30 page)

From the comparative safety of the distant plateau, the two magicians and one Mirikani stared in horror and disbelief at the scene far below. The entire village had vanished, dropped into a massive crater to be then obliterated by tons of debris tumbling from the shattered mountain. Like a mocking smile, a bright golden sun filtered through dense clouds of choking dust. Swirling and billowing high, tainting the once clean mountain air, plumes and wispy tendrils of dirty brownish-grey smoke snaked up from dark crevices, odours of charred timber mingling with the ominous and nauseating odour of blood and seared flesh, not necessarily animal. The pitiful bleating of a goat, lying somewhere injured and unseen amongst the chaos, pierced the oppressive silence which now hung over the devastation. A tortured jumble of shattered rock, broken trees and mangled debris was all that remained of the small but thriving community. A narrow road which had once led further up into the mountain range, had broken away. An inaccessible two hundred foot escarpment now loomed like a huge sentinel at the far end of the chasm.

Karryl shielded his eyes against the mocking sunlight, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper, fraught with pain and shock. “There are people up there, and animals! They’re trapped!”

Placing a steadying hand on the young magician’s dusty sleeve, Symon followed his gaze. He thought for a long moment then shook his head. “It’s not likely they are trapped. There are a number of paths through these mountains. They’ll be safe enough.”

Turning his back on the scene of devastation, Karryl fought to control his trembling body as he took Symon to one side. “This was no natural occurrence. Did you feel it?”

Symon nodded, his round face pale with dust and dismay. “I felt something. At the time I thought it was part of what was happening.”

Karryl’s face was thunderous. “Part of it! It was the cause of it!” He looked over his shoulder to the niche in the rock-face, where the Mirikani cowered trembling as he stared with tear-filled eyes at the scene on the far side of the gorge below them. “D’you think he had something to do with it?”

Symon shook his head. “If he did, judging by his reactions things didn’t go according to plan.”

Karryl grimaced. “I’m going to have it out with him.”

As Karryl approached, the little man looked up, his lips and chin quivering. His hands wrung and twisted as he shrank back against the rock.

Almost choking on his words, he sank to his knees, a pathetic frightened, dust strewn specimen. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. It wasn’t meant to be like this.”

Grabbing him with both hands, Karryl lifted him into the air, tightening his grip as he held him at eye level. “What d’you mean, it wasn’t meant…”

The Mirikani hung limp in Karryl’s hands, only his eyes moving as tears streamed down his face. “My brother…down there. Please, must find Morchelas. Please.”

Disgusted and infuriated by the duplicity of the Mirikani, Karryl began to shake him unmercifully. “I just knew there were two of you.” He thrust his face up close. “If Morchelas is your brother, who in the name of D’ta are you?”

Through choking sobs he stuttered “C…C…Conjiber. We twins.”

Resisting the urge to throw the little man bodily over the edge of the gorge, Karryl glared as Symon came to stand beside him. “Put him down, Karryl. It’s not helping.”

Reluctantly and none too gently, Karryl lowered Conjiber to the ground before turning to Symon. “You heard what he said. That
was
magic we felt, and powerful magic at that.” He glowered down at the terrified figure of Conjiber. “After all this, do you really expect us to help you, brother or no. That was meant to kill us, wasn’t it?”

Shoulders drooping, the Mirikani wrenched his gaze away from Karryl’s furious glare. Shuffling to the edge, his hands clenched and unclenched as he surveyed the scene far below.

Croaking and quivering, the sound of his voice barely reached Karryl’s ears. “Only you two. Not all village. Not children, not sweet, helpless animals. Such disaster!”

He sat down with a bump on the stony ground, clamping his hands over his face as his narrow shoulders shook. For almost a full second Karryl felt sorry for him. Grabbing him by the collar of his cloak, the young magician roughly hauled him to his feet. “We’ll go down and try to find your brother. If he’s dead, too bad. If he’s alive we’ll want a full explanation.

Symon’s voice, stern and tight with concern, came from behind them. “We’ll want that anyway, sooner rather than later. What we
will
do is begin by searching for anyone who might have survived. If we find your brother while we’re at it, all well and good.”

Feeling a brief tingle across his skin accompanied by a tiny surge of power, Karryl raised a questioning eyebrow.

Symon gave him a tight smile. “He won’t go anywhere we don’t want him to.”

Dropping to his knees, Conjiber peered down over the rim of the ledge. Once again resisting the compulsion to send the little man hurtling downwards, Karryl knelt beside him.

He made no attempt to disguise the loathing and disgust, along with a welter of other emotions that he felt churning inside him. “What do you see?”

Morchelas sat back on his tiny black boot-heels. “See much. Nothing good. Nothing move.”

As if sensing Karryl’s ambivalence, he turned reddened eyes up towards Symon. “Can go down, please? Look for brother. Find Morchelas.”

In a perverse kind of way, Karryl began to feel some sympathy for the tiny man who only a short while ago had been so full of high spirits, even if for all the wrong reasons. One eyebrow raised he looked over at Symon for a decision.

The little magician nodded, but as Conjiber leapt to his feet, Symon raised a forestalling hand. “You will wait here. That way we shall know where you are. Whether or not we find your brother, we have some very serious questions for you.”

Self-pity, petulance and resignation fought for dominance of Conjiber’s face. He gave a little shrug as he scrambled to his feet. “Can’t go anywhere. Famous magician prevents. Must stay here.”

Magician and apprentice exchanged glances. Symon looked hard at Conjiber. “It would be best if you did remain here. Can’t have you falling into a hole, can we?”

The Mirikani looked as if he was about to stamp his foot. “No more likely than you. Just smaller hole.”

Karryl patted him firmly on the top of his head. “Exactly. That’s one of the reasons why you stay here.”

Without waiting for any further argument, he picked up his shoulder pack, stepped over beside Symon and the pair linked arms. As the blue and silver motes sparkled and swirled, Conjiber did stamp his foot, spat into the air and cursed, loud and long. None of this was part of the plan. He watched, disgusted, as his captors emerged from behind the huge toppled and tilted monolith which had once been part of a mountain. Their raised voices as they called out for survivors, drifted up to him. He nurtured a combined hope that they would find his brother, and that he wouldn’t say too much, too soon. Finally he sat down near the rim of the ledge and spent a while cursing Symon for the spell which kept him confined. Then he turned his attention to other matters.

* * *

It was Symon who suggested they split up. Not keen on the idea, Karryl nevertheless agreed to try it for a while. His grim expression, coupled with his tone did little to disguise his reservations, “I still think we’d be better combining our ears, eyes and powers.”

Balancing precariously on a large tilted slab of rock, Symon patted his palms together. “Indeed! But the idea of splitting up is to get an overall view more quickly. When we begin a more intensive search, or have a specific target, then we will combine.”

He waved his arms to encompass the vast acreage of devastation. “What you have to remember is the amount of ground we have to cover. You’re now just as capable as I am of working independently. The time has come to put the powers which the spirit of the book gave you to good use.” A wry smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “Anyway, your limbs and mind are far younger and more agile than mine.”

Not fully convinced, Karryl felt a twinge of misgiving as he looked around at the huge swathes of jumbled rock and rubble. “Are we going to attempt this alone? Isn’t there some way we can contact somebody, get some extra help?”

Symon raised his hands slightly as if the matter was of no consequence. “We have all the help we shall need.”

Without waiting for a response he turned away, then looked back over his shoulder. To Karryl’s surprise, he gave a broad wink. “Use your powers as you think fit.”

There were no sparkling motes, simply a slight displacement of air, and Symon was gone. Standing perfectly still, Karryl looked slowly around, his sharp eyes and retentive mind noting and recording each minute detail. That done, he then repeated the process. The position of a large square-edged stone, possibly once the corner of a building, had shifted slightly. He moved towards it, his ears attuned for any sound other than the gritty scrape of his own careful footsteps. A frisson of strong magic disturbed the ends of his hair and prickled along his forearms.

He threw a ward of shielding around himself, searching for the source of the magic as he continued to pick his way awkwardly towards the tumbled building. Unable to detect anything which might give cause for concern, he let the shield fall away. As the last vestiges dispersed, he spun round, his feet slithering in the rubble. The sound of a weak tremulous voice had reached his ears. There were no words, just an unintelligible mumbling interspersed with dry, coughing whimpers. The sounds were coming from somewhere behind the cornerstone.

Karryl called out in Ingali. “I can hear you. Are you injured?”

The immediate response was a long, low keen of relief. A strong voice spoke over the keening sound. “I am not badly injured, and my wife has more fright than hurt. You will get us out?”

Karryl looked about for Symon, but there was no sign of him. He had to make an on the spot decision. Crouched down amongst the rubble, he put his mouth close to a narrow vertical crevice, a slice of darkness alongside the stone. “Are there just the two of you?”

There was long pause, punctuated by furious whispering. The man called again. “Somewhere is our son. Please, find him.”

Karryl leaned forward to place his palms on the tilted cornerstone. “First, I will get you out, then you can help me search. Please, keep quite still, and don’t be frightened by anything you might see or hear. I’m going to try and move some of the rocks.”

He moved back a little way, and placed his pack on the ground. He then selected a spot which would give him the widest angle of approach, reducing the necessity of moving from place to place. Reluctant to expend valuable power on transporting the rocks any distance, at the back of his mind was the niggling thought that, wherever he put the rocks he intended to shift, he could be condemning other survivors of the Mirikani twins’ callous act. Refusing to dwell on it, he drew in power, carefully lifted a large rock from the top of the cornerstone and transported it away from the precarious heap on which it sat. The grinding, rattling sound of slithering stones and settling rocks was nerve-wrackingly loud in the eerie silence. Eased by the removal of the larger rock, part of the heap slipped sideways and stopped. A rock the size of Karryl’s head tumbled down, coming to rest close by the side of his foot. Glancing down at his bare and dusty sandalled toes, he gave an involuntary wince at the thought of the damage it could have done.

Keeping a careful eye on the doubtless unstable jumbled heaps, Karryl began to devise a spell. Basing it loosely on a spell of holding, he rapidly cut and spliced parts of other spells, bonding them neatly to the base spell in a construct he knew he would not have time to test. Adding a fervent prayer to D’ta he began. Using individual strands of power, he wove them through and around as many boulders and chunks of rock as he could reach without stretching the fabric of the spell too thin. Not even certain it would work, but refusing to allow doubts to dampen his concentration, he gradually closed the net. Certain all the strands were secure, he wove a strong levitation spell into the fabrication. Chunks of loose granite, masonry, small boulders and even dust were now confined in the close but invisible mesh of the net.

Beads of perspiration began to trickle down Karryl’s face. If one strand should weaken and break…Banishing the thought as quickly as it had formed, he held power and spell firmly together. Gathering as much additional power as he could muster, he leaned in to the task. In one massive breath-taking move, he shifted a good half of the heap to the base of a similar one, roughly fifty yards away. Temporarily stunned by his success, Karryl blew out his cheeks as he wiped perspiration and strands of hair away from his eyes. His relief was short-lived. A wispy cloud of dust and smoke preceded the clatter and rattle of shifting pebbles, as a frantic scraping and shuffling came from below the tilted cornerstone. Karryl scrambled forward to grasped the outstretched hand which had appeared beside it.

Despite his ordeal, the scratched, bruised and begrimed Ingali who emerged from the cavity beneath grinned widely as he grabbed hold of Karryl’s upper arms. “You have saved us! I…I…”

He was unable to continue with the effusive thanks it seemed he intended. Releasing Karryl’s arms, he gave in to despair and crumpled down onto the pile of debris which had once been his home.