The Wizard's Secret (15 page)
I should have known it wouldn’t last.
It was a normal day when I returned home with four
pails of water. Nimue was supposed to be preparing dinner, but I sensed
something was wrong the closer I got to the cabin. When I saw the door open and
a letter stuck to it, my heart sunk into my stomach. It sunk even lower as I
recognized the familiar handwriting.
Merlin,
I changed my mind
and will be marrying Nimue. She agreed to this and came with me willingly.
I crumpled the letter in my fist. I knew how to find
Gmork’s home because Nimue had told me. The problem was that if she really did
agree, who was I to argue? Gmork had always been a good friend.
But Nimue would have written me a letter herself if
she left of her own volition.
I reached under my bed for the wizard’s staff I
rarely used. While the staff was created as a means of concentrating my power,
it could also be used as a weapon. It was about three feet tall, a little more
than an inch in diameter, and made of dark wood. Every inch of it was covered
in carefully carved magic symbols and sigils, starting at a skull with vampire
fangs. The top of the staff was a silver oval that unscrewed in the middle, and
the staff ended with a silver spike.
* * *
It took me half a day to reach the castle. The castle
was white, towering, and symmetrical. In bright sunlight, it would look
pearlescent and pristine. In the moonlight, however, it looked ghostly.
When I arrived at the gate, I saw a small man with a
dark aura. He had shoulder length, oily, dark brown hair, pale skin,
wheat-colored eyes, and scars all over his face and arms. His clothes were
unkempt with patches and stitches.
“I am here to speak to Nimue.”
“Well, you can’t, so go away!” the man said.
“I will speak to her. If you do not bring her out
peacefully, I will go in forcefully.” At that point, I saw Gmork coming towards
us. The five years had not been easy on the man, but I figured that had more to
do with necromancy than stress. I couldn’t help but to remember how happy he
was as a child. “Why have you taken Nimue?” I asked.
“As I said in my letter, I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“I realized that the only way to be happy is to take
what I want by force. Nimue is mine now.”
“Does she make you happy?”
“She will.”
“Have you considered what she wants?”
“She came with me willingly. She will learn to be
happy.”
“What did you do to make her go with you?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“Until I hear her tell me herself that she wants to
be with you, I will do whatever I have to do to save her.”
“So be it,” he turned and walked back to his castle.
“You’re not getting in,” the small man sneered. “Even
if you get past the wall, you’ll never make it past the dragon alive.”
I left without giving him a response and circled the
castle, looking for a way in. The dragon was nowhere to be seen, but I highly
doubted they were lying about it. I wasn’t terribly nervous, for I was
immortal. Of course, I was still slightly worried, because I knew a dragon’s
magic could break the immortality curse that Baltezore used on me.
I didn’t sense any powerful magic in place to keep me
out. Then again, a dragon could do that job just fine.
* * *
I scouted the castle for three days before making my
move. In those three days, I saw the dragon several times flying in the sky and
knew it was preventing Nimue from leaving. Gmork wasn’t dumb; he knew I would
have left if Nimue told me herself that she wanted to stay. Nimue was being
kept against her will.
At sunset, I broke open the gate and marched right up
to the castle. Servants of the castle tried to attack me. I struck a few with
my staff as if it was a sword. I had been taught patience and wisdom from the
greatest warriors of their day, but I had also been taught to fight. Even though
fighting was a last resort, that didn’t mean I would never end up in a
situation where it was necessary.
This was one of those situations. I would fight so
Nimue didn’t have to.
About ten servants tried to rush me. “Hrista.”I
slammed the base of the staff into the ground and focused my magic. The ground
trembled violently and energy blasted outward, throwing everyone but myself and
one other man off their feet. “Fall down,” I told him.
With a terrified squeak, the man dropped to the
ground.
I walked past them all and the rest of the servants
that attacked were nothing. Then, right before I got to the door, I heard a
loud screech and ducked instinctively. “Hlíf.” I focused my magic through my
staff once again. Just before the dragon’s fire reached me, an invisible shield
of magic blocked it.
I turned around and backed myself against the wall of
the castle as the dragon landed in front of me. If I tried to go into the
castle without dealing with the dragon first, I would be showing disrespect and
lose any chance I had of getting on the dragon’s good side. Instead, I knelt
and bowed to the dark brown dragon.
Although he was smaller than Cennuth, he had long
spikes down his back and tail, making him look a great deal more sinister. The
shape of his head was also more like a serpent and his legs were longer and
thinner.
“Why are you bowing, wizard?” the dragon asked. The
ferocity and confidence in his voice filled the space and reminded me of
Cennuth.
“I was raised to respect dragons.”
“Then leave now and I will spare your life.”
I risked looking up and meeting his eyes. “I will
not. The woman I love is being held against her will by Gmork and I will save
her.”
“You speak of Nimue?” he asked. I nodded. “Then why
did you let Gmork take her?”
“I thought he was a friend. I know better now; dark
magic only leads to hate and destruction.”
“Who taught you about dragons?”
“Cennuth, a dragon.”
“I have heard of Cennuth. If I let you go and you
fail to save Nimue, she will be killed.”
“I will save her.”
“I will trust you because of Cennuth. Save Nimue and
make sure the dark wizard cannot go after you, because if he does, I will make
sure you die with her.” With that, he flew away.
I entered the castle and slammed the first guard that
attacked me against the wall. “Where is Nimue?”
The guard struggled against me, so I pressed the
sharp base of my staff to his chest. “She’s up the stairs to the left!” I let
him go and he slid to the floor.
I fought my way to Nimue’s room without seeing Gmork
or the small man. Although it was suspicious, I didn’t have time to hesitate. I
ended up losing my staff along the way, but it hardly mattered. I reached the
last door in the hallway, threw it open, and saw Nimue sitting on a bed.
Part 3
Ayden
The first sign that we weren’t on Caldaca anymore was
that the houses around us were made of some kind of white rock. The air was
thick and cold, so I wrapped my robe as tightly around me as I could. The sky
was white with a blanket of clouds.
It doesn’t look too different from
Caldaca, just really cold
.
More shrieking distracted me from my observation.
“Why couldn’t we have appeared in the forest?” It was
all around us. I grabbed Asiago by his thin shoulders and pulled him up. “We
need to get out of here, fast.”
“What are they saying?”
“I don’t know. Oh!” I pulled the pendant Vactarus
gave me out of my pocket and fastened it around my neck.
One of the villagers stopped right in front of us,
pointed dramatically, and screamed, “Witches!” at the top of his lungs, as if
we were attacking him. Then he ran away.
I sighed. “Now, that’s just rude. I’m not a woman.” I
tapped the light blue jewel. “Maybe this isn’t working properly.”
“What isn’t? I couldn’t understand him,” Asiago said.
“They’re afraid because they think we’re wizards.”
He scowled. “I get you with your blond hair, but how
can anyone confuse
me
with a wizard?”
“Merlin said you can’t tell what someone is by their
appearance here. There aren’t separate wizards, sorcerers, necromancers, and
such. There are only wizards who can be good or bad and they can do all kinds
of magic.”
“How dreadful!”
“We need to go,” I said. Several of the villagers
were now advancing towards us with pitchforks and torches. We turned to run in
the opposite direction, only to see a second mob closing in on us from that
side as well.
“Do magic!” Asiago yelled.
I held up my staff. “Make us invisible.” The staff
vanished. I could still feel it in my hand, but it was invisible. We, on the
other hand, were quite visible. “You worthless staff!”
“Do something!” Asiago demanded.
“I can’t! If I attack them, that would be sorcery.”
“I don’t want to die because you are afraid of your
own strength!”
“You do something! Call a zombie to help you!”
“Do you know how slow they move?!”
One of the villagers wheeled out a cage from behind
one of the strange houses. The cage was large enough for at least five grown
men to stand in. A villager pointed his pitchfork at me and ended up knocking
the torch out of another villager’s hand, setting a third villager’s dress on
fire.
“The witches cursed us!” the man who caused the
problem screeched.
I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“Get in the cage, witch, or we’ll burn you right
now!”
“Alright, fine,” I said, calmly, surprising them. I
grabbed Asiago’s arm and led him to the cage.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“We’re doing as they asked.” He stepped up into it
and I followed. A woman shut the cage and locked it with a key. They
immediately started arguing over what to do with us. Some of them wanted to burn
us, some of them wanted to hang us, and two of them thought we should be
drowned.
“Tell me you have a plan to get out of this.”
“I may have a couple.”
“Then do it!”
I shook my head. “Have patience. Finding Merlin is
our first priority. I assume he appeared here, so he might not be far.”
“That was over a month ago, though. He could be
anywhere by now.”
One of the villagers rattled the bars of the cage
door. “Hey! Are you good witches or bad witches?”
“They’re not going to tell the truth!” another villager
yelled at him.
“They set me on fire!” another villager said. She was
the one whose dress had been set aflame, and they had gotten the fire out.
“We had nothing to do with that. You shouldn’t be
messing with fire if you don’t know how it works. Have any of you heard of
Merlin?” I asked.
The villagers stopped arguing. “The old court
magician? He disappeared a long time ago.”
“Stop that!” Asiago snapped. Someone had used the
distraction to poke him with a stick. Angered by his reaction, another villager
held up a torch to the bars threateningly. Since my staff was still invisible,
Asiago tripped over it as he tried to scramble away from the villager. Red
magic shot from the unseen crystal and struck Asiago, who immediately changed
into a large, black, skinny wolf.
This caused more panicking, of course. “Turn him
back!” I demanded. Fortunately, before anyone could shoot flaming arrows or
worse, Asiago changed back on his own.
“What did you do that for?”
“I didn’t do it; the staff did.”
“Your sorcerer’s staff transformed me on its own?” he
asked with disbelief.
“Of course it did. I told you it likes to misbehave.”
Suddenly, Asiago vanished, and when I looked down at myself, I couldn’t see my
body either. The staff had finally stopped playing around and made us
invisible.
“Where did they go?!” one of the villagers asked.
About half of them were too shocked to speak, while the rest were not short on
accusations. I ignored them and pulled out my wand. Normally, I would have
tried to pick the lock, but we didn’t have time to waste. I needed to find
Merlin.
I waved my wand at the lock.
Blast it
, I
thought to the wand. That’s exactly what happened; the lock exploded, the door
burst open, the villagers screamed, and the invisible crystal of my staff
pulsed with a deep red light. I had just used sorcery.
Without hesitating, I reached out until I felt
Asiago’s arm and then I pulled him behind me. I pocketed my wand and picked up
my bag, which vanished. We quickly made our way to the forest while the
villagers were busy panicking.
* * *
The invisibility over us fell as soon as we were out
of sight, so we continued running. We ran until I was completely out of breath.
I managed to slow myself and braced myself against a tree. Asiago, on the other
hand, tripped over a root, crashed into the ground hard, and rolled away.
Since he had rolled into a puddle of half-frozen mud,
it was difficult for him to recover. By the time he finally stood, he was
covered in mud and clearly a little fed up. “I’m not dressed for this!” he
said, using his muddy robe to wipe some of the mud from his face.
“Maybe Merlin is somewhere close.”
“How are we supposed to find him?” Asiago asked.
“I don’t know.” I held my staff up in the air. “Find
Merlin.”
I half expected a beam of light, half expected
nothing at all to happen. Thus, I was startled when there was a small explosion
of light and the syrus appeared on the ground right in front of me. The
whispering returned, even louder than before.
I glared at my staff, but that didn’t bother it at
all. “I knew you were up to something at the castle.” Before I could say
anything else, however, I felt my magic being drawn into the staff and then a
soft glow lit the crystal. A moment later, the glow brightened and narrowed
into a beam of light the disappeared into the forest in front of me.
“What does this mean?” Asiago asked.
“I guess we follow the light. There’s probably still
something from Merlin inside the chest, which the staff can use to find him.”
“Did you need the box to find him?”
I thought about it. “I think I might have.” I did it
instinctively when I told my staff to find the wand, but the wand was a part of
me. When Livia made the staff show me to Magnus, she put her own magic into it.
She may not be connected to Magnus physically, but she did love him at one
point, at least enough to have a child with him.
I picked up the syrus and put it in my bag.
* * *
We followed the beam of light until we reached a dirt
road shortly before sunset. “Maybe we should stop for lunch,” Asiago said.
I grimaced. “I don’t know. I make a lot of mistakes
in my life, so I try not to repeat the same ones.”
“The zombies couldn’t follow me here, so what’s the
problem?”
“I guess you’re right.” I was hungry and tired. “You
can stop searching for Merlin for the moment,” I said to the staff. Obediently,
the beam of light went out.
Following the road, it didn’t take us long to find
the village. It wasn’t too different from the previous village. The homes were
much sturdier looking than those found in Akadema. I started to get worried
when I noticed people were watching us closely.
“Why are they staring at us?”
“I’m sure it’s just because we’re strangers,” I said,
not really believing it.
I approached one young man on the road. “Excuse me.
Is there an inn around here?”
“There’s a tavern down the road, that way.”
“Thank you.” We didn’t have to walk far to reach the
tavern, and when we did reach it, we both froze. On the door were four
drawings. One of the drawings was of me and the other was Asiago.
After a moment of surprise, Asiago pointed at my
picture. “That’s you!”
“Yes, and that’s you,” I said, pointing to his as if
he was an idiot.
He frowned deeply. “It is?”
“You don’t know what you look like? You’ve never
looked in a mirror?”
“Not since I was a child.”
“That explains it. I have no idea how they drew us
and distributed the drawings before we could even get here. Come on. We can’t
be seen.”
“But I’m hungry!”
“I know. I have a plan.” We ducked around the side of
the tavern so that we were alone. I leaned my staff against the wall and pulled
out my wand. “This is the last thing Merlin taught me and… I didn’t exactly
master it.”
“What?!”
“Merlin taught me to do disguises. I haven’t been
able to do it well, though.”
“I thought only Magicians could do disguises.”
“They can, but it’s different. Sorcerers can use
aging spells or change skin, hair, or eye color. Sorcerers can actually
transform the body, whereas Magicians can only make people see things
differently. You need to be quiet or everyone will come over here. Now, if you
want to eat, we need to go in under disguise.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, while you decide, I’m going to disguise myself
and go get some food. You can figure out your own way in.”
“No, please! I’ve decided! Disguise me. I’m
starving.”
“If you’re that hungry, we can find some berries or
something to eat.” When he just clutched his stomach and moaned pathetically, I
sighed. “Fine. Hold still.”
I waved my wand at him, studying his face closely. A
sparkly orange mist flowed from the wand to surround his face, but the crystal
in my staff pulsed with a deep red light. “No! It’s sorcery! I didn’t mean it.
Magnus is never going to get rid of my sorcery now.” The orange mist faded, and
a moment later, so did the red glow.
“Are you joking?!” he whispered fiercely. “Just do
the magic! How can disguising us hurt anyone?”
“I don’t know, but according to the staff, this is
sorcery.”
“Your uncle will understand if you do one little
disguise spell.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe if I just do
something small. We’re not going to hurt anyone. If you do any magic, though,
it will dissolve the disguise.” I waved my wand at him, the sparkly orange mist
surrounded his face, and the crystal glowed deep red. It made my stomach churn,
so I didn’t waste time.
I imagined his hair changing from black to gray and
wrinkles marring his young face. That was the only thing I did, since he was
easily thin enough to look like an old man. I felt my magic seeping into his
skin.
“That should be enough.” I lowered my wand and the
mist faded into Asiago’s skin. The crystal stopped pulsing.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“You don’t really want me to answer that.”
He scowled. “Have you made me completely hideous?”
“Of course not. Now, I’m going to do mine, so be
quiet and let me concentrate.” I really wanted to do something fancy, but I
couldn’t explain that to Magnus.
I took off my sorcerer robe, wadded it up, and stuck
it in my bag. I waved the wand over myself and imagined my own face. In my
mind, I changed my hair to black and my eyes to dark reddish-brown. I made my
facial features sharper so that I looked like my father. When I opened my eyes,
Asiago was frowning at me. “What?” I asked.
“Now you look like a proper sorcerer.”
“Am I recognizable?”
“Not really. Can we eat now?”
“Yes. Just promise me you won’t do any dark magic. I
want to get rid of this sorcery.”
“You are impossible. I can’t understand why a
sorcerer would want to banish his sorcery.”
“I’ve told you already! I don’t want to hurt anyone
on accident.”
He sighed. “Can we please just get some food?”
“Make yourself invisible,” I said to the staff. I
felt my magic flow into it and it vanished. It was still there if I needed it,
but it was clearly a tool of magic and people obviously didn’t like magic on
this world.
We stepped out of the alleyway and opened the door to
the tavern cautiously. Several people glanced at us, but only momentarily.
There were a dozen wooden tables taking up the majority of the tavern. The bar
was across the room, so we made our way to it. A middle-aged, bald man with a
scruffy orange beard greeted us. Well, it was more of a grunt of
acknowledgment.
“Hello. We’d like some food and something to drink,”
I said, setting my bag down on one seat. I sat on the seat next to it and
discreetly leaned my invisible staff against the bag.