The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (22 page)

His meager meal complete, Owen once again focused his eyes on the middle distance and sought the calm. As before, but more quickly this time, he achieved the utterly calm state of the disinterested observer, and with a relaxed look into the glowing eyes of the staff head, the light slowly returned.

Once again, he could see the glowing threads of power that surrounded him, flowing through solid objects and arcing off through the spaces between. It seemed that the threads originated in the earth itself, and flowed from there up through the trees, the bushes, and even the sparse blades of grass that covered the valley. No space was completely devoid of light, but living things contained it most vibrantly. The veins of light were thickest but darkest in the earth itself, splitting and dividing repeatedly as they climbed through trunks and branches, until the finest of filaments left the trees to fill the air.

Owen gazed at the old fortress and noticed that the stone walls held relatively few cords of light, but those were thick and very well ordered. A weave of dull light formed the walls and battlements, and unlike the cords and threads that flowed through the forest trees, they appeared very solid and stable. From this distance, they did not seem to move or flow in any way.

Owen looked up to where he had seen the hawk in its pattern in the sky. There he saw a cluster of light that moved and flowed lazily through the fine filaments around it. Wonder pulsed at the edges of his calm, but this time he did not allow it to distract him.

Threads seemed to flow into the soaring bird, combining into thicker and more densely packed strings that defined its shape, and splitting and reradiating as fine filaments again as they left it.  It seemed to him that it might be possible to trace a thread all the way from his own fingertip up through the air to where it joined with the hawk.  Most things seemed to be connected, if one could trace the myriad of fine strings along the correct path.  All paths appeared to ultimately connect through the earth itself, the seeming origin of the flow of light.  Of the thousands of thick strings coursing through the brass headpiece, Owen thought that several must converge into the bird in the air.

As Owen pondered this connection, his gaze again wandered to the old castle. There was activity there now. A small party—seven people, Owen decided—was exiting the main gate and heading across the wooden bridge over the river. The way they were formed up, it appeared to be one person leading two prisoners, with two additional guards on either side.

Owen strained to make out detail without disrupting his calm center. He could feel it tremble under the effort, and eased back trying to maintain a more disinterested interest. It was difficult to tell from that distance, but from their attire, Owen thought that the prisoners must be young women.

The party crossed the bridge and followed a path that would take them through the field in the general direction of the base of the stone arch over the Wizard’s Moat.

Intent crept into the calm that surrounded Owen. He knew all of the young women of the village, of course, and after his days of pursuit, he felt a personal obligation for their ultimate safety. He did not want to lose track of any of the captives now that he had tracked them to their imprisonment in Carraghlaoch.

As he watched, intent and need building within the calm, Owen noticed that the prisoners and their guards were passing on a line that would take them not far from the red-tail still soaring overhead. With this observation came again the thought that the hawk must surely be connected in some way with the brass headpiece that he held in his hands.

Gazing down at the raptor’s fierce ruby eyes, he let his need select a bundle of cords that pulsed through the artifact. He released his tight grip on his own center and cast his consciousness into the flow. The light seemed to flare around him, and he felt himself rushing forward as though he were suddenly caught up in a mountain stream during spring flood. It was all he could do to hold to his tenuous grip on the calm, and not to panic and fight the forces that swept him onward.

Suddenly his perspective changed. Owen still sat in his hiding place in the bushes gazing at the flashing eyes of the brass raptor, but overlaid with that vision was a view of a field of brown grasses slowly passing below him.  The duality was disorienting an a little nauseating initially, but with the calm, his mind seemed to gradually adapt.

Employing his intent, Owen found that he could subordinate his view of the glowing artifact to his view of the field across the river. The duality did not go away entirely, but the sharp gaze of the red-tail in its hunt became strongly dominant. With his need, Owen shifted that gaze to take in the view of the procession below. He could see them clearly now, and he had been right.

Below him marched five guards and two female prisoners. The lead guard was holding the end of a rope that was attached to the necks of the two young women each in turn. The woman first in line had her head downcast, her blond hair fallen across the left side of her face, but from Owen’s perspective he could make out the profile of Emily Pearson. She had been crying, the tears forming tracks through smudges on her pretty cheeks.

Sympathy caused the calm to waiver around Owen, and the vision faltered momentarily until he was able to regain his detached objectivity.  When he was confident in his self-control, he transferred the hawk’s gaze to the next prisoner in line.  At first, there was no recognition.  The prisoner was young and fair with long auburn hair.  She was wearing a thin shift that had become stained and tattered from her ordeal, but her shoulders were back, her gaze straight ahead, and there was an unmistakable look of anger and defiance on her face despite her circumstance.  With a jolt of recognition that exploded through his consciousness Owen realized that he was looking at Sarah Murray.

The calm suddenly shattered with a flare of light that threw Owen on his back, crashing down through the naked brush. He lay stunned for a while, his stomach roiling, a growing pain behind his eyes and the back of his head and neck seeping blood from deep scratches that the broken branches had inflicted during his violent movement.  His vision of the field across the river and of the light all around was gone.  All he could see through his staring eyes were the leafless branches above him.  They were spinning slowly, duplicated and out of focus.

Across the river, a soldier looked up, his attention attracted by the violent motion of a large hawk. The bird flapped erratically for a moment, then regained control and glided to the top of a nearby pine where it landed awkwardly. With a fleeting wonder at the hawk’s unnatural actions he soon dismissed the thought and returned his attention to the prisoners and their path ahead.

Gradually, Owen regained his senses.  His pulse and respiration slowed, and his vision cleared.  In the background he became aware of the pain of the scratches on his head, and the deep ache behind his eyes, but all he could do was repeat over and over to himself: “Dear Spirits, not Sarah. Don’t let them take Sarah. Please, not Sarah.”

After what may have been minutes or hours, Owen was finally able to raise himself from his sprawl in the bushes, back to the seated position he had held before. He squinted and stared across the river and the broad meadow on the other side, but all trace of the guards and their prisoners was lost among the trees.

Chapter 8

Opening The Avenues

Sarah Murray glared at the officer with the disfiguring scar and the eye patch as she was led out of the stable where the prisoners from South Corner were being held in Carraghlaoch. He had examined each of her fellow villagers, one by one, as if he were evaluating cuts of meat in the butcher’s cold room. His dark right eye seemed to see more than it should, and the sneer forced by the scar down the left side of his face gave the impression that he was not impressed by what he was seeing.

Emily Pearson struggled and cried as she was also selected and led out next to Sarah. “Be quiet,” Sarah hissed at her. “You’ll make things worse.”

The sight of blond haired, blue eyed Emily’s distress in the hands of the rough soldiers of Baraduhne was too much for several of the men of the village, and as Sarah feared they rose from the dirt floor of the stable to come to Emily’s aid. Though courageous, it was futile. With their hands still bound behind them, they were easily managed by the hardened soldiers, and soon every man who had risen, and several who had not, lay on the ground senseless and bleeding while the soldiers stood grinning at the rest with clubs ready.

Only sixteen years old, Emily was a year younger than Sarah, and several inches shorter.  Like Sarah, she wore the nightclothes that she had on when South Corner had been raided.  The light material was now stained and tattered from their travels and their harsh treatment along the way, and her face was smudged where she had used her dirty fingers to wipe at her tears. Neither her dingy shift nor her soiled face, however, hid the fact that she was a very pretty young woman, with fair skin and an alluring figure.

Sarah and Emily were not close friends in the village.  Sarah had always considered Emily to be a little too soft and girly, and it had always irritated her the way all the boys her age would stare at Emily’s high breasts or her swaying walk whenever they thought no one was watching. She had clouted Owen McMichaels’ ear once when his gaze had lingered too long in that direction while she was trying to talk to him.

Now, with Emily obviously frantic and terrified, Sarah, despite her own apprehension, was torn between the desire to mother her and calm her fears, or to give her a good smack to the backside to stiffen her spine.  Given the firm grip that a big, leather-clad, smelly soldier had on her right arm, of course, she was in no position to do either.  Instead, she gave a brave and reassuring look to her father, and a glare to the hateful, sneering officer.  She also committed the visage of Commander Furstiv al Bardon to her memorized list of faces awaiting final justice.

In the courtyard, she and Emily were led over to a lanky weasel-faced soldier, who leered evilly at them. Sarah wanted to pull a heavy cloak around her to hide her torn shift and what was under it from his vile stare, but lacking that settled for her most expressive look of censure and distaste. She did her best, with that look, to make it clear to him that his stares were neither appreciated nor appropriate, and that any actions on his part toward them would be met with a strong response. The soldier merely grinned wider in return.

The girls’ hands were tied behind them, and a thick strong cord was tied in a slipknot around their necks with Sarah at one end, then Emily, and finally the other end was placed in the grimy hand of the grinning, weasel-faced soldier. Soon, they were led out of the fortress, with an additional pair of guards armed with spears and swords on either side.

The small party headed across the drawbridge over the narrow spot in the river gorge. The water boiled loudly under them as it raced to get through the neck of sheer-sided rock. The white water under the bridge raced away, becoming more organized in its flow and a deep blue in color as the high walls separated further apart down stream. In the distance, Sarah could see a stone tower on a slight rise near the edge of the chasm. Beyond that, the river gorge wound down the valley until lost from sight behind the hills.

The soldiers and their two captives continued their journey across a field of brown grasses under the watching eyes of a large red-tailed hawk that was soaring slowly high in the pale blue morning sky. On another day, Sarah might have gazed in admiration at the beauty of the soaring raptor in this majestic setting against the snow capped mountain peaks, but her attention was focused uneasily ahead.

Before leaving the fortress, Sarah had heard the commander growl something about a package and a message to be delivered to a “Lord Sorcerer Kadeen.” She feared that she and Emily were the “package”—the soldier who held the end of their leash was wearing a pack on his back, but he was not carrying any bags or boxes—and she greatly feared the very idea of meeting an actual sorcerer. In the old stories, sorcerers were invariably men of great power and great evil who fought the heroes on the side of good with every vile deception and dark magic that could be imagined.  As an adult woman, Sarah thought that she had outgrown all of those old stories.  She had thought that until the very night that she had been dragged roughly from her bed out to the village green under the watchful eyes of several dozen actual live gorn.  Since then, it seemed that she had been thrown into one of the old stories.  What was missing was a larger-than-life hero to come to her rescue.  ‘
Pfah!’
she thought, straightening her posture.  ‘
Daddy didn’t raise me to be a damsel in distress. Give me half a chance against that weasel at the other end of this rope, and I’ll be my own bloody hero.’

Beyond the field, they followed a winding path through a rocky forest of pine and cedar, with occasional patches of aspen, some still clinging to their dark red leaves. Along with the usual forest smells, the air was heavy with a musty odor that grew as they progressed.