“Now, please break the curse,” Eva requested.
“I will do what I can, but only one at a time.”
Eva and the fox stepped back, indicating that I break
the curse over the bear first. They probably assumed there was no danger in
breaking a curse. There hadn’t been any in breaking my own curse, but there
were different kinds. Some were more devastating to break than they were to
suffer through.
Using my wand to guide and enhance my magic, I let my
magic flow into the bear. The first thing I sensed was the curse, which I
ignored for a moment to see if the person was strong enough to handle it being
broken. Although he was healthy, he was just a child.
Then I focused on the curse. It was stronger than I
was used to dealing with, definitely stronger than my brothers’ curses, but not
the strongest I had ever seen. The sorceress had created it out of spite and
did so with great detail. This was not an afterthought. I wouldn’t be able to
hack at it the same way I could with my brothers’ curses.
But all curses had a weakness because all sorcerers
had a weakness. This curse was simple; make the kid into a bear. There was
nothing in it to alter the boy’s behavior to make him act like a bear or even
to give him bear instincts. When a curse was rooted in someone’s magic, it was
often fatal to remove. Fortunately, this boy had no magic, so the magic was
just wrapped around him. I tested it for soft spots, literally. Even the most
vile sorcerers could feel regret over something, and that usually laced their
curses. Of course, that could also be the strength behind their magic.
There were no soft spots; the sorceress was very
certain in her desire to curse the boy. I looked for anything that she might
have missed. Sometimes, people will have a natural resistance to magic,
especially curses, if they were cursed as a very small child. Some curses could
even be worn down through constant resistance over years.
By acting like a person instead of a bear, the child
would have been wearing it down if it had any stipulation on his behavior, but
the sorceress was more clever than that. Since I couldn’t find the weakness in
it, I would have to do it the harder way; I would have to attack the spell.
I pulled my magic away from the bear. “It’s too
dangerous to break like this. I need to return home and get supplies.”
“Supplies?” Eva asked.
“I need to draw the magic out of him, and I’m not
strong enough to do that with my wand alone.”
“Can’t you just break it?”
“It could kill him.”
“What about killing the sorceress?”
“Well, that would work, but---”
“Then do that,” Eva interrupted.
“This sorceress is powerful. I’m not going to fight
her if I can help it.”
“Which is less dangerous for my son?”
“Obviously, if I went and fought the sorceress it
would be less dangerous for him, but much more for me. I’m not going to do it.”
She scowled. “Then we will find another wizard who is
braver!”
“So be it, but you need to look for a wizard who is a
fool, not brave. I will return home. If you change your mind and you wish for
me to break the curse my way, you can find me at Magnus’s castle, just south of
the creek Hayla found me at.”
She growled. “You will regret refusing to help us.”
“I never refused to help you; I refused to clean up
the mess you made by fighting the sorceress you stole from.”
She lunged at me, and if I wasn’t already riled up, I
would have been terrified. Instead, I raised my wand and a sinister red fire
lit up the tip of it in a threatening manner. Eva’s eyes widened with shock as
she jumped back. “You aren’t a wizard! You’re a sorcerer!”
I considered correcting her and saying that I was
both, but that was not a concept she would understand. I still didn’t
understand it. Without another word, I turned and walked away. My wand still
glowed until I was sure I wasn’t being followed. Since I had no idea which way
the castle was, I knew it was going to be a long day.
* * *
My brothers were devastatingly cruel and slang curses
without considering the consequences, but I knew what they didn’t. We were all
my mother’s pawns, which was why she never wanted us to learn to read. My
father taught me in secret. Although my two oldest brothers were very powerful,
none of us could challenge my mother, and it wasn’t just because of our magic.
There were different kinds of curses. What she taught
my brothers and me was meant to temporarily incapacitate our enemies, but she
certainly wasn’t teaching any of us to take over the family in the future. The
kind of curses she and other powerful sorcerers could do made my skin crawl.
The most powerful curses I read about were created for other magic people and
creatures; they bonded to the person’s magic itself.
For example, my mother once cursed a man to build her
a castle. The man was even supposed to make the blocks. My mother was aware of
how much the man was loved by his family and the other people of his village,
so she was unconcerned when they sent for a powerful wizard. Two came to help,
only to refuse when they saw him. They knew what kind of curse had been placed
on the poor man, yet they would only say that it was too dangerous to break it.
My mother made us watch this all and my brothers
thought it was the greatest thing they’d ever seen. I wished I had enough magic
to break the curse. Unfortunately, the third wizard to visit the cursed man
wasn’t as wise as the previous two. He had the power to break the curse and he
did so, but the curse was rooted in the man’s magic. My mother knew something
the man himself didn’t even know; he had latent wizard powers. Although it
never manifested, magic did make up the essence of his life, and in breaking
the curse, the wizard shredded the man’s hidden magic.
The curse was broken and the man turned to stone. To
my horror and my mother’s delight, so did every member of his family. His
children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews, and everyone else who
shared his blood all turned to stone. My brothers cheered for my mother’s
brilliance. They never realized how much my mother kept from us. She made us
loyal to her out of fear, not love, and we all knew we were expendable to her.
* * *
By the time I reached the castle, right as the sun
was setting, I was cold, hungry, and tired. At least the warm sun had dried my
clothes, but my boots were still at the creek and my feet were in bad shape. I
had another pair in my room, though, so I didn’t worry. I went to the front
gate, which opened by itself. The gate knew me, which was great because I
couldn’t sneak back into the castle grounds without setting off Magnus’s wards.
I proceeded cautiously, opened the front door
quietly, and saw no one standing around the entranceway, so I decided to sneak
to my room. If Magnus wanted me, he would know where to find me.
I reached the top of the steps and turned to walk
down the hall… only to be blocked by Magnus. The wizard scowled and crossed his
arms.
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Where
were you? How did you get out of the castle?”
“I didn’t know I was a prisoner.”
“Your mother might be after you. I thought you were
in danger.”
“Oh.” He had a good point, which made me feel guilty.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have left without telling you. I didn’t mean to be
gone so long.” I explained what happened with the fox. When I was done, he
looked concerned.
“I see. I suggest we do a little more training with
your wizardry and for you to stop sneaking out of the castle.”
I nodded. “I’m really tired.”
“Go to bed, then, and we can discuss it in the
morning.”
I didn’t argue and he stepped out of my way. Once I
was alone in my room, I took a deep breath and sat on my bed. I hurt a child. I
cursed the fox without meaning to. My aunt told me that I had “neutral” magic,
so I could do both light and dark magic. It made sense to me that the reason I
was so bad at sorcery was because I didn’t want to cause chaos to innocent
people. That meant if I did want to, I could hurt someone.
I could kill someone.
The problem was that I hadn’t been trying to hurt the
fox. I nearly killed her on accident. Merlin came from a world where wizards
and sorcerers were the same thing, but the idea that someone could be both a
wizard and sorcerer was unheard of here. I was born a sorcerer, and what
happened with the fox proved to me that there was no way I could be both. It
just wasn’t the way here, so I would have to choose. I had a choice, and that
was more than anyone else got.
Before I ran away from home and met Merlin, I would
have chosen to be a sorcerer because I thought that was the only way to be
accepted. It wasn’t, though. People would accept me as a sorcerer if I behave
like a sorcerer, and they would accept me as a wizard if I behave like a
wizard. It was just my family who wouldn’t accept me.
Guilt churned in my stomach as I reflected on my
entire life. Just before I finally fell asleep, I made a decision.
Thus, I could understand why Magnus looked surprised
to see me. I sat down in my usual seat and pulled the bowl of flowers towards
me. I put a few of the flowers on my plate and waved my wand, transforming them
into bread and potatoes. I couldn’t help but to smile every time I did this,
because before Merlin and Magnus started teaching me, I could only manage to
transform stuff into apples and broccoli.
Magnus had explained that it was because I was trying
so hard to make it
not
apples and broccoli. I couldn’t conjure meat with
wizard magic, so once I stopped fighting my wizard magic, conjuring any food I
wanted that didn’t come from living animals was easy.
“I want you to take away the dark magic inside me,” I
said.
Magnus sat back and frowned. “I was hoping you would
never ask this of me. It would be a terrible mistake.”
Not long after I joined Magnus’s side, I found a
drawing which indicated that Magnus and Livia knew each other and even had a
daughter together. Although I told Merlin about it, I never brought it up to
Magnus. “I know you and my aunt had a daughter.”
“She told you about Sonya?” he asked.
When my aunt’s first daughter, Veronica, tried to
kill her, she locked away her darkness. That resulted in her second daughter,
Sonya, being pure good. Unfortunately, Veronica killed Sonya.
“She told me about Veronica, Sonya, and locking her
power away because Veronica was a sorceress. She didn’t tell me that you were
Sonya’s father.” He didn’t say anything. I really wanted to tell Magnus about
the ghost girl I met because I was pretty certain she was Sonya, but I had to
be gentle about it. I didn’t know if finding out that his daughter was a ghost
would upset him or help him.
“I will not seal your dark magic,” Magnus said before
I could come up with a way to tell him.
“Why not?”
“Because Livia has always regretted it. Why can’t you
accept who you are?”
“I’m trying to! I don’t want to hurt people!”
“It’s not in you to hurt someone,” he said.
“Obviously, it is.”
“I see why it worries you, but you should understand
that removing your dark magic is not to be taken lightly.”
“Is it irreversible?”
“In a way. To take away your dark magic is to take
away a part of what makes you complete. I admit I didn’t think you actually had
any darkness in you, though. If I locked it away, you would never be the same.”
“Well, it’s obviously not fatal, because my aunt is
fine. Besides, she locked me, Merlin, and Bralyn up so we couldn’t go after
you, so I know she’s not completely good.”
Magnus sighed. “I thought you figured it out a long
time ago. Think about this; your aunt is a very powerful person. How did you
get out of the room she locked you in?”
I didn’t see where he was going with this. “I picked
the lock.”
“Did you honestly think you could have escaped if she
didn’t want you to? Did you really think she forgot to take away your things?”
I shrugged. “I thought she was underestimating me
because I was so bad at being a sorcerer.”
“Ayden, she
wanted
you to come to me. That was
why she made sure your staff would lead you to me.”
“Then why did she lock me up?!”
“Your seer friend, Dessa, went to Livia and told her
what would happen. Livia knew she had to interfere in order for you to learn to
accept your light magic.”
That was not what I expected him to say at all, and
it made me question how much of my life Dessa manipulated.
Was it just Livia
?
Did Dessa somehow cause me to leave my home
? How was I supposed to know?
Maybe Merlin had a reason for distrusting seers. She was my friend, but I
didn’t like being manipulated, especially since I trusted her to tell me what I
needed to know.
Then again, she told Merlin I would die on the day
his curse was broken.
Was she lying
?
Was she misleading him
?
Why
didn’t she explain
?
“Ayden?” Magnus asked when I didn’t say anything for
a while.
“I did accept my light magic. Now I’m trying to be a
wizard so I won’t accidentally hurt anyone.”
“I will not do it.”
“Fine.” I shoved my plate away and stood. “Then I
will be in my room until you change your mind!” I stomped out of the room,
knowing full well he would be too shocked to follow me. Outbursts of emotion
were a sign of weakness for sorcerers, and my brothers would have preyed on me
for it. Magnus, on the other hand, would give me privacy to cool down.
I went to my room and packed as little as I could get
away with, which included one change of clothes, some food, a knife, some rope,
my flame-proof dragon-hide gloves, a pair of snapping rocks, my wand, my staff,
and my Dracre robe. I snuck down the stairs and towards one of the back doors,
but sinister whispers stopped me in my tracks.
There was absolutely no reason for me to make the
detour to the magic room, yet I found myself doing it anyway. Inside, the syrus
was almost vibrating with the force of the magic inside it. The crystal on my
staff glowed, almost as if threatening the box to behave. When the whispers
suddenly became much louder, I let go of my staff to cover my ears. “Shut up!
I’m not letting you out!”
My staff did not fall. Instead, I felt magic being
pulled from me into my staff right before a red burst of magic shot from the
crystal into the chest. The syrus vanished. I glared at my staff. “What did you
do to it?”
As if feigning innocence, it fell to the ground. I
rolled my eyes, picked it up, and shut the door on the way out. Sneaking out of
the castle was almost too easy; it was even easier than sneaking away from my
home.
With my staff, wand, and bag, I started the long trek
to my aunt’s home. I could have tried to transport myself with magic, but that
was more likely to screw up the further away I was.
* * *
It was a nice day to begin a journey; warm without
being too hot, sunny with some clouds for shade, and a nice breeze. Mokora, the
land Magnus lived on, had more mountains and larger cities than Akadema. There
were quite a few traveling salesmen transporting their goods in colorful carts.
I was tempted by the colorful clothes and fancy foods, but didn’t have any
money.
I did, however, enjoy chatting with the travelers. I
learned about the local myths and that everyone was curious about Magnus’s
castle. Everyone thought Magnus had packed up his castle and moved it, so some
people weren’t sure it still belonged to the powerful wizard. The castle was
also known to move. However, that rumor might have been spread because the
castle was invisible when the chimera had been guarding him.
When I had asked Magnus why the chimera was keeping
him, he said he wasn’t sure. He believed someone sent it to him to protect him,
but the chimera’s natural instincts were too strong. While it kept others from
attacking him, it also kept him from going anywhere.
When there was a lull in travelers on the road, I
practiced my wizardry. The two kinds of wards I was taught could be wizardry or
sorcery. The first kind was created just to warn the wizard or sorcerer of an
intruder. This put very little strain on me and could be sustained for days by
a fully trained magic user. The second kind was a defensive ward, primarily
used by wizards. It only protected against magic attacks, not a blade.
Sorcerers used the same kind of ward, but they used more magic to make it hurt
anyone who tried to cross it.
I sat on a large boulder a little ways from the road.
As I had been taught, I relaxed my muscles and cleared my mind. The scent of
dirt and grass filled my nose and I focused on the warmth of the sunlight
beaming down on me. I imagined my magic spilling out of me to form a bubble
around me. It was not a bubble to keep out air or light, only magic. If magic
struck it, that magic would bounce off.
Second, I imagined levitating all the rocks around me
except for the one I was sitting on. As my magic spread out, I sensed the
rocks. They felt similar to the dirt, but they were more concentrated. A few dozen
rocks of various sizes rose from the ground. I pulled them towards me,
imagining them stopping only when they reached the ward around me. They did
exactly as I commanded, and then began swirling around me. Once they got up to
a decent speed, this magic would be extremely protective.
It could also hurt someone.
The thought was sudden and doused my enthusiasm. As
it did, my magic went quiet and the rocks collapsed to the ground.
* * *
As the sun began to set, I strayed from the road to
look for a good spot to sleep for the night. I wasn’t too tired, but I didn’t
want to get caught out in the open by a band of thieves or a vampire. Before I
found a comfortable place, I felt something wet and cold land on me.
“What in the world?” I asked, looking up. Two more
frigid, wet drops hit my face. Akadema never got snow, but I knew snow was
white and fluffy from the stories I had heard. This was wet like rain, yet
colder than any rain in Akadema.
There were thick clouds, not directly over me but
close enough. The rest of the sky was clear and sunny. In fact, the clouds were
too low to be natural, like when my mother would create storms over a village
or vegetable garden.
Even knowing it was a bad idea, I headed further into
the storm. With every step, it became colder and the rain became more sludgy. I
slipped my robe out of my bag and put it on to shield me from the cold.
Finally, the rain changed into a light, powdery snow, which would have been
beautiful if it wasn’t also very dark since the last glimmer of sunlight was
blocked out by the clouds.
I quickly found that the storm was centering around a
small clearing where a young man was sitting on a large, moss-covered log. “Are
you okay?” I asked. He had his face in his hands.
When he looked up, his face was pink from the cold.
“I’m fine. You shouldn’t be near me.”
“What’s going on with the weather? Are you doing
this?”
“I’m not doing it, but it is my fault. I’m cursed.”
“That seems to be going around lately. Don’t tell me
you tried to steal from some sorceress.”
“No, of course not. My sister was courted by a
sorcerer and when she turned him down, he cursed me instead of her on accident.
My parents sent me away until I could get this curse removed. The storm just follows
me around.”
“Well, I could try to break it.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I didn’t ask for any money.”
“Why would you help me?”
I shrugged. “Because I can, I guess.”
“Are you a mage?” he asked.
I scoffed. “Mages are for healing cuts and illnesses.
Only a wizard or sorcerer can break a decent curse.”
“I didn’t mean to offend; I don’t know a lot of magic
people. You’re a wizard, then?”
Sort of. “Sure.” I stood in front of him and studied
him closely. Curses like this were no more complicated than scramble spells and
minor transformation. I set my bag aside, leaned my staff against it, and
pulled my wand from my pocket.
“This isn’t going to hurt, is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I never asked.” It never hurt when I
broke curses on myself, though. I waved the wand.
Break this curse
.
Magic poured out of me, through the wand, and into the man. I quickly felt it
encounter the curse. It was easily as powerful as the curses my brothers used,
but not as powerful as the one used on Eva’s family.
The person who used this was angry, selfish, and
definitely clever. This curse was created to humiliate the victim. In fact, I
sensed that it was supposed to get worse if the victim fancied anyone in
particular. The sorcerer’s resolve was strong, the details of the curse were
thought out, and the construction was skillful. It seemed the only weak point
was that the curse was meant for someone else.
This man had no way of fighting the curse, but I
could. I hacked away at the curse inside him by creating a ward just like
Magnus and Merlin had taught me. The difference was that I created the ward as
deep inside the man that I could and expanded it outward. It felt like the
curse was pushing down on my body, but I kept expanding the ward even as I
struggled to breathe. I kept pushing.
Lightning struck the crystal in my staff, strangely
missing my bag.
Finally, the curse snapped, the ward turned on my own
magic, my magic retreated, and the ward collapsed. The man and I were both
panting. Apparently, he had felt the same pressure of the curse. When the
clouds above us dispersed, he grinned with excitement. “You did it! Thank you!”
“No problem.” I was going to miss the snow, though.
I picked up my staff and gasped when it shocked me. A
small, white cloud instantly formed right above me and thick snow began
falling, only to melt before it reached the ground. I glared at my staff.
“Don’t start acting up again!” I demanded of the staff as I reached up and
waved the cloud apart.
The magic faded, almost reluctantly, and the cloud
disappeared. That shouldn’t have made me so disappointed.
“What is your name?” the young man asked.
“Ayden.”
“I’m Jedrin. Thank you again for helping me.”
I left him and soon found a comfortable spot under
the cover of a massive tree. I didn’t bother to make a fire or even eat. I used
my bag as a pillow and my sorcerer robe as a blanket. As I gently settled the
staff over a thick root so that I could reach it without the risk of rolling
over onto it, I whispered, “Don’t do anything silly while I’m asleep.”