The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (33 page)

Images were just beginning to coalesce when she was suddenly aware through her sentinel that there was movement in her room, the room containing her physical body.  Snatching her mind from the depths, Yeva grabbed her knife from the floor, threw it quickly up into a general guard position, and executed a rolling leap to her feet that would take her several yards back and to her left.  A sword slammed off of her blade in mid roll, modifying her momentum and causing her to stumble slightly upon rising.  Her uncharacteristically awkward movements nearly cost her her life, as her attacker thrust for her chest and managed to scrape along the ribs of her left side.  Ignoring the pain as her training had taught her, Yeva finished her leap away and grounded herself solidly, both physically and mentally.

Yeva quickly assessed the situation as her attacker continued to press her.  She instantly recognized the man as Guild member Salanda.  She still did not know whom Salanda represented, but whomever it was they clearly saw some advantage in having her eliminated.  Yeva had known that when she explored the tunnels, opening the avenues in the Realm of Possibilities, she was creating a spike of her own presence in the Realm that was likely to catch someone’s interest, and interest when working among the upper levels of the Baraduhne not infrequently lead to violence.  She had on several occasions crossed paths with Salanda during these exercises, and on each occasion had managed to avoid his notice in real time, but she had known that if Salanda had any skill in the Realm at all, he would know of her movements.

There were many questions in the back of Yeva’s mind regarding Salanda’s purpose and Salanda’s allegiances, but all of them had to be suppressed in the heat of battle.  Salanda’s arms were longer than Yeva’s, and his sword was longer than her knife, but this reach advantage was balanced to some extent by Yeva’s greater speed and agility.  Still, Salanda was impressively skilled, the space in which they fought was small, and his unrelenting attack kept Yeva on the defensive.

Salanda repeatedly tried to force Yeva back into a corner of the room, where his size and reach advantage could pin her in place, while Yeva used a dodging, darting defense that kept her blade flickering past Salanda’s defense and her body constantly moving around the center of the room.  With razor sharp steel wielded with the skill of masters in their trade, wounds were inevitable and given and received by both combatants.  Salanda seemed to be irritated, however by the unexpected skill of his opponent, a mere girl, and made the fatal mistake of overextending in a thrust to Yeva’s heart.  Yeva managed to slip the blade, scoring her left arm in the process, while wrapping her blade around the wrist of Salanda’s sword arm, severing the tendons and opening both the radial and ulner arteries.

As Salanda’s sword fell from his useless hand, he threw himself at Yeva, trying to strike her in the throat with his left forearm.  He had to twist his body to do so, and was just too slow.  Before he had completed his motion, Yeva had thrust her blade into his gut and spun away.  Salanda lost his balance and crashed to the floor.

“You’re going to die in a few moments,” Yeva said, keeping her distance from her still dangerous opponent.  “Why are you here?  Whom do you represent?  Who sent you?”  Frustrated, Yeva watched Salanda return her questions with a smile as his eyes slowly glazed over in death.

“Whoa!!” Owen exclaimed, throwing himself backward off the log on which he’d been sitting, and tossing the bronze hawk over his shoulder.

“What was that?!” Marian shouted, half rising from where she was crouching, “are you alright?”

Owen had been experimenting with what he laughingly called his “wizarding state”, relaxing into the awareness that allowed him to see the lines of energy, or whatever they were that seemed to make up and vitalize everything around him.  He and Marian were in their base camp, deep in the woods north of Carraghlaoch, and Marian was warming up a pot of water over a small fire. They were tired and dirty from another day spent searching the woods in the neighborhood of the castle for the entrance to the bolt hole that Owen had seen in his vision. They had been unsuccessful, again.

Owen was more and more easily able to assume the ability to observe and interact with the energy, and he had been just passively watching the world around him, permeated with the red-orange lines of power. He became intrigued with the small fire that Marian had built, watching how the lines crowded and vibrated around each other in an excited dance. It occurred to him that a person should be able to induce the lines of flux to imitate that motion, and if they did, would fire appear? Unconsciously, he began to move the lines of force that emanated through the hawk-shaped staff cap within and in rhythm with the fire, causing it to grow. As he realized what he was doing, his eyes began to cross, and the locus of lines he was agitating flared up and began to converge quickly towards his source of control—the brass falcon’s head he held in his lap.

Owen was startled to see a ball of fire flashing toward him, and reflexively threw himself out of the way, falling backward off of the log where he’d been sitting.  The fire disappeared as soon as he lost his concentration, and boy, had he ever lost concentration!  “Well,” he sheepishly said to Marian, who had jumped back when the fire flared, “that was certainly exciting.”

“What the devil did you do? For a moment, I thought that sorcerer you are always going on about was attacking.”

“I think I just invented fire,” Owen responded with a sheepish grin.

“Great Cats, Owen, you just scared the crap out of me. Do you have to play with that thing when I’m around? Soaking me with rainwater was bad enough, but I think you just singed my eyebrows. You could have cremated both of us.”

“Oh come on, Marian, where is your sense of humor. That rain trick was funny.”

“Maybe for you.”

The two had been caught in a small fall shower three days before, as they were walking back toward their camp after one more unsuccessful hunt for the buried tunnel entrance, and Owen had been practicing his observation state to distract himself from the cold drops that seemed to be aimed at his head and the back of his neck.  He noticed how the descending drops of water seemed to be tracking down faint lines of energy that moved with the winds through the air.  As he walked, it occurred to him that he would be a whole lot more comfortable if he could just divert those lines so that they no longer converged on
him
. With a little concentration, he discovered that he could do just that, and soon he was keeping himself dry while the rain continued to fall all around him.  It took a little effort to maintain his focus, but not really all that much.

Naturally, that success at diverting the rain led to additional questions, such as whether he could cause the rain to locally concentrate instead.  Gradually, so that it wouldn’t be too obvious, he began to increase the density of lines of energy, and along with them drops of water, in the vicinity of his younger sister.  Before long, Marian was struggling in a virtual downpour, holding the collar of her cloak tight around her neck with her left hand while she tried to use her right arm over her head to shield herself from the torrent.  As she was about to comment to Owen about this unseasonably heavy rain, she looked over to her brother and noticed that not only did he seem to be walking along completely dry, but that he was also wearing a huge grin.

“Why you dirty…” Marian began, jumping at Owen and wrestling him to the ground. Soon they were rolling around, Owen laughing uncontrollably, as the cold gentle rain landed evenly upon them both. Owen finally had to surrender, weakened by his mirth, as his sister sat on his stomach punching and tickling him, and they walked the rest of the way back to camp in relative comfort as the rain fell all around but no longer on either of them.

It had been more than two weeks since the McMichaels had tracked the soldiers from Baraduhne and the captive citizens from South Corner back to the ancient castle of Carraghlaoch.  A week ago, a large party of soldiers and their captives left the castle, crossed the bridge over the river and turned south away from the arch across the Wizard’s Moat.  When the wind was blowing from the right direction, they could hear the faint sound of trees being felled in the distance.

They had begun looking for the hidden entrance to Owen’s tunnel two days after Marian returned from tracking the departure of the gorn.  And although Owen was still sure that the tunnel actually existed, his confidence that they would ever be able to find it after the centuries it had lain hidden, was waning.  It had to have been subtly hidden to begin with, and a couple centuries of falling leaves, changing plant life, and the occasional violent storm certainly had not served to make the entrance more visible.

They worried too about Jack.  They had expected his return with reinforcements at least a week ago.  Had the gorn spotted him before he reached the village?  Had he ended up butchered and eaten like the poor young woman that they’d discovered at the watch tower?  If so, what were their father and the other farmers around South Corner thinking and doing?  It was entirely possible, that they had mounted a rescue mission that had walked right into a trap at the tower where the boys first fought the gorn. They couldn’t help but feel desperately alone and abandoned to their own resources with winter approaching.

In truth, Marian and Owen had done fairly well; Matthew McMichaels had been conscientious about training his children in the basics of self reliance and survival in the wild. Their lean-to in the trees was warm and dry despite the increasingly cold nights typical of fall and the proximity to the mountains, and they had been able to add substantially to their food stores.

Marian had awoken early one morning and peered out on their little clearing before leaving the shelter. There was a light ground fog on the clearing floor, and not a breath of wind. As she watched, a young buck walked slowly out from under the trees on the other side of the clearing, heading cautiously toward the small pool created by the little spring. A crust of ice had formed near the edges of the water, and Marian could see the steam from each exhalation of breath from the deer seeming to add to the thin layer of fog already in the meadow. The animal was clearly not entirely certain of the safety of his surroundings, but had not spotted anything unnatural in the structure that they had built of cedar boughs back in the trees.

Moving as slowly and quietly as she could, Marian reached for Owen’s bow and went through the difficult motions to bend it in the confined space and secure the strong, waxed cord that comprised its string.  The buck continued to approach the spring in an arcing path, putting Marian’s concealed location off of his left shoulder.  Silently pulling a broad head arrow from the quiver, Marian inched forward and slowly pushed one of the cedar boughs that constituted their doorway over just far enough to allow her to slip out of the shelter.  As the buck lowered its head to drink, Marian silently exited the shelter, barefoot and in her small clothes and rose ever so slowly to a standing position.  As she nocked and pulled the arrow smoothly back to her right cheek, the deer suddenly sensed her presence, looked in her direction then turned to bolt towards the woods. Marian anticipated his move, and let fly scoring a sound hit just behind the animal’s right shoulder. She could not have placed her shot much better, even if the target had remained stationary. There was no doubt that she had pierced the deer’s lung if not its heart. The buck bounded into the woods, but there was a definite hesitation in its movements.

Marian, adrenaline pumping, hurried back into the lean-to to rouse her brother, get dressed and finish the hunt. Allowing a little time for the buck to settle so that it would bleed out and reduce the distance that they would have to carry back the carcass, the two walked quietly across the clearing where they found a splattering of blood trailing off into the woods. In no more than forty yards, Marian spotted her kill lying on the ground. The arrow had clearly been a heart shot, for the deer was already still. After dressing it out, Marian and Owen carried their prize back to their camp and suspended it from a nearby tree. They had eaten well that night, and had enough venison to keep them in meat for many days to come.

Marian suspected that Owen was not aware of it, but she certainly was. Owen’s manner toward her had been slowly changing. He no longer treated her, no longer even thought of her as his ‘little’ sister that he must care for and protect. She was now a full partner in their mission to somehow rescue the villagers of South Corner.

Unfortunately, contrary to their success in the woods, all of their efforts to find a way into the castle, or to otherwise rescue the captives, had resulted in only frustration.  There was no doubt that the castle was still manned, they still saw soldiers patrolling the walls, and they were also sure that at least a few of the prisoners were still kept there.  Young women still drew water from the river on a daily basis, and they had not spotted Aaron Murray among those prisoners that had been herded across the bridge, although his father was in that group.  The main gates still hung open, sagging on their hinges, but with soldiers on the walls, there was no way that they could even approach them. Nor could they approach the old drawbridge that crossed the river without being seen.