Fortunately, my staff only woke me five times during
the night by shooting bursts of magic at nothing, and I only had to put out two
fires.
In the morning, my wand was apparently irritated with
me, because although I was able to turn a lump of clay into a lump of bread, it
tasted like broccoli and apple. I ate my breakfast despite that and was back on
the road by sunrise.
* * *
The sun was high in the sky and the cool breeze that
made the previous day comfortable was absent. It occurred to me that I didn’t
have to rush to get to my aunt; I lived my entire life with my sorcery, so it
wasn’t likely that I would accidentally hurt someone in the next two or three
days.
Then again, until I accepted my light magic, I
couldn’t really do dark magic. My mother had taught me all kinds of sorcery
that I either refused to do or failed miserably. It wasn’t because I didn’t
understand or that I was weak. I was still a Dracre. Or, at least I would be
until I had my sorcery removed.
My bloodline only consisted of the most malevolent
sorcerers and sorceresses. If I convinced Livia to remove all dark magic from
inside me, could I still call myself a Dracre? My mother would spit on my name
if she knew what I planned to do. Then she would kill me painfully.
Just as I decided to stop at the next village I came
upon in order to cool off and get a nice meal, I heard a commotion from the
right. There was some screaming and cries for help, so I decided to check it
out.
I followed the dirt path over a hill, where I saw a
quaint village in a shallow valley. Well, normally it was probably very
pleasant. At the moment, though, it was on fire. It occurred to me that this
was extremely familiar. Fortunately, I didn’t see any pillagers running around,
though.
When I originally ran away from home to prove myself,
I had planned to cause havoc along the way. I failed miserably. It made sense
to me that since I set out to request that my aunt make me a full wizard, I
should act like a wizard.
That meant helping strangers, always acting
honorably, and smiling at babies. I shuddered at the thought of babies.
Children were fine, but the only babies I had ever seen were unimpressive to
say the least.
As I wandered into the town, a strong, distinctive
odor of dirt and decay hit me. My magic recognized the presence of another
magic user. I stopped right in the middle of the road, put my sorcerer robe on,
and held my staff tightly in my hand.
Protect
, I thought to the staff. After my
staff made my skin impenetrable several times, I was shocked when the magic
instead transformed the staff into a sword. I scoffed. “Coward.” I couldn’t
really blame the staff, though; I was worried for myself as well. Nevertheless,
I charged forth. There was no mistaking the presence of a necromancer, and had
I known when I was still on the main road, I might have kept walking.
The first huts I reached were burning, but silent.
All the screaming came from the center of the town. I fully expected something
to attack me, so every little snap, crackle, and pop made me nearly jump out of
my skin. I pulled my wand out of my pocket.
As if I wasn’t confused enough, I didn’t encounter
any zombies. Instead, I reached the center of town easily and found a few dozen
civilians gathered around a pit. Several of the residents were shoveling dirt
into the pit, where I saw a hint of metal. “What’s going on?” I asked the
closest person.
The woman was middle aged, covered in dirt, and had a
couple of scratches on her bare arms. “We are burying a necromancer.”
“What? Why?”
“One of our elders, Narcis, lost a granddaughter and
tried to hire the necromancer to bring her back. When he said he didn’t
resurrect children, Narcis locked him up. Then a group of zombies followed him
and he refused to call them off! He wanted to run away and leave them with us.”
“But wouldn’t burying him guarantee that the zombies
will overrun this town?”
“We are not fools; we covered his mouth so he can’t
call them and we bound him with ancient plants that can drive away the dead.
The zombies went away as soon as we bound him.”
“You angered a necromancer and then separated him
from his servants?! You’re definitely fools.” A necromancer wasn’t able to do
any magic without words, but the idea that they could die was unheard of. I
only met two necromancers in my life and they were both kind people, albeit a
little creepy. “You invited him here and then locked him up!” I glared at her
and people started backing away from me.
Anger stirred the magic inside me into a storm and my
sword changed back into a staff, the crystal burning with a deep red glow. I
wasn’t easily angered, but this was bullying. Although my brothers tried to
kill me many times, they were family and that was how they were raised. These
people tried to take advantage of a man’s abilities and then tried to kill him
for having those abilities.
“Sorcerer!” one of the women shouted. “He’s come to
save the necromancer!”
The crowd scattered as the women tried to get their
children into the burning homes.
“He’s going to turn us into toads!” someone yelled.
This was definitely a wizard-friendly village.
I ignored them, approached the pit, stuck my wand
back into my pocket, and waved my staff over the pit. “Lift,” I said. Magic
surged into my staff. I imagined the large, half covered, metal cage lifting
out of the pit. The magic that spewed from the crystal in my staff was white,
not the goofy glittery form that my wand liked to produce, and the cage easily
lifted out.
As the dirt fell away, I was shocked to see the
necromancer. Except for myself and my aunt, every sorcerer I had ever met
looked like a sorcerer. Every wizard looked like a wizard, every mage looked
like a mage, every seer looked like a seer, and every magician looked like a
magician. There was rarely any mystery as to what a magic user was. The two
necromancers I met were similar to vampires in appearance; very tall, thin, and
pale, with long black hair and matching robes.
This necromancer looked even less like his kind than
I did; he was scrawnier and shorter than me. The cage touched down on the ledge
right beside the pit and the dirt-covered necromancer reached through the bars.
“Thank you, sorcerer! You saved me!”
I pulled my wand from my pocket and waved it at the
metal cage, which was just large enough for the man to sit up in.
Open
.
Obediently, the gate popped open, the cloth sack over the necromancer’s face
fell loose, and he rolled out… right into the pit.
I turned and started walking back to the main road,
not at all interested in making sure the necromancer got out alright. As I
passed the huts, I waved my wand at them. Pink, glittery magic shot from my
wand and doused the flames easily. I was certain the wand was both showing off
and trying to embarrass me. Unfortunately, since the powers of the wand and
staff merged, there really wasn’t much need for both of them, so one of them
was always being neglected.
Before I reached the main road, I sensed the
necromancer following me. I groaned, but didn’t stop or even glance at him when
he caught up to me.
“Thank you for saving me!”
“You’re welcome. Now, if you would---”
“They were going to bury me!” the necromancer
interrupted.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t have---”
“My name is Asiago, the Great Necromancer of the
North.” He had shoulder-length, wavy, blue-black hair and dark blue eyes. He
tried to brush all the dirt off his black robes.
“I’m Ayden.”
“Undoubtedly the greatest sorcerer of your land,” he
prompted.
“Not hardly. How do you know I’m a sorcerer, anyway?
I have blond hair.”
“You’re not the first sorcerer I’ve ever met in disguise.
No wizard would save a necromancer.”
“I only did it because I didn’t like their treatment
of---”
“And the way you put out the fires was so
impressive.”
Not really
. “It’s not a big deal. You don’t
have to follow---”
“Where are you headed?”
“To my aunt’s house.”
“What a coincidence; I’m headed that way, too. We
should definitely go together.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you want to come with me? You don’t know me
or my---”
“I owe you my life.”
“Keep it. I don’t need---”
“I don’t think you understand. I’m a
necromancer
.
We take life debts seriously. A lot of people think we can’t die, but we can,
just as easily as anyone else. You just saved my life, and thus, it is yours.”
“I don’t want---”
“Not forever, of course. It’s only until I save your
life or die trying. You’re on your own after death.”
“That makes it sound like you’re free when
I’m
dead.”
“I like to plan ahead. So, why are we going to see
your aunt? Is she an ally or a rival?”
I sighed. “I really don’t need any company.”
“Of course you do! Traveling is so lonely when you’re
alone.”
I sighed again. “Fine. You can come with me as far as
Red Rock, but that’s it.” I was regretting it already.
“If you must know, I’m going to request that she
remove my sorcery.”
“What?! Are you insane?! Why would you do that?”
Mostly to keep him from asking more questions, I told
him my entire story, from my brothers torturing me for not being a proper
sorcerer to my decision to become a full wizard. When I was done, his mouth and
eyes were wide with shock.
“You are insane,” he said.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Sorcery is in your blood, and you can use it without
hurting people. I’m a necromancer and I don’t hurt people… much.”
“Our situations are not the same. Besides, if I
weren’t doing this and trying to be a wizard, you would be buried right now.”
Or, perhaps that was a negative. “Why were they burying you alive, anyway?”
“What’s the fun in burying someone if they’re already
dead?”
* * *
“It’s just a shortcut.”
“We should stay on the road,” I argued, eyeing the
dark forest with suspicion.
“But that will take half a day. Maybe even a full
day!”
“If we get lost, it will take even longer.”
“You’re a sorcerer. Are you saying you can’t find
your way out of the forest?” he asked.
This sounded eerily familiar. Still, it wasn’t a
particularly spooky looking forest, and it wasn’t troll season. I couldn’t deny
the fact that I often took shortcuts. Why, exactly, I didn’t know. “I guess it
couldn’t hurt. You know this area, right?”
“Of course! I’ve been through this forest hundreds of
times and I’ve never been attacked by anything I couldn’t handle.”
I gave in and we left the road for the forest. I used
my staff as a walking cane, mostly because I was worried about traps of some
kind. It wasn’t very dark, so I could see where we were going, but there wasn’t
much coverage from the hot sun.
“Do you ever wonder what happened to Thaddeus?” he asked
me.
I nodded. My youngest older brother was the only one
who ever showed me mercy, so when I teamed up with Magnus, I gave Thaddeus the
chance to run. He took it, and I hadn’t seen him since. “I expect he returned
to Mother to tell her that I betrayed the family. I wonder what she’s doing.
She must be so angry.”
“Maybe your brother didn’t return home out of fear of
repercussions.”
“She can find us anywhere, except perhaps Magnus’s
castle. If she thinks all of them were killed by Magnus, then she may not be
looking for Thaddeus.” I stopped walking as I felt hope for the first time
since I joined Magnus.
Maybe she doesn’t know I betrayed her
. Maybe she
thought I fought against Magnus, or that I just ran away. I had assumed that
she was all-knowing, but Magnus had protection over his castle that made it
impossible for people to spy on him. I entered the castle with every intention
of defeating Magnus, so maybe my mother didn’t know I had changed sides.
I could use that to my advantage.
What was that
? After a moment, the sound came
again. Asiago started speaking, so I put my finger to my lips. It was something
my father sometimes did and I was shocked when Asiago fell silent. The sound
was softer the third time, but not further away. “There’s something out there.”
Asiago glanced around. “I don’t hear anything.”
He was right; it was quiet. Too quiet. “Where did the
birds go?” I whispered. It felt like I shouted.
“What birds?”
“There should be birds chirping.”
The sound came a fourth time, and this was when I
realized we had walked right into a trap. I didn’t even have enough time to
think of a spell before ropes wrapped around my legs and jerked upward.
Suddenly, I was hanging upside down in the air and Asiago was screeching up an
awful ruckus, as he was hanging next to me. I reached for my wand, but my robe
was in the way. Unfortunately, in untangling my robe, my wand fell.
“Stop screaming; I can’t think.” Asiago abruptly
stopped talking and I reached for my staff. “Come on, staff. Come to me. I know
you can.”
The staff ignored me.
“Can’t you do magic without your staff?” Asiago
asked.
“Sometimes, but I don’t want to blow my feet off
trying to break the rope.”
“Would you rather be eaten?”
“You could help instead of complaining!”
“I’m a necromancer, not a sorcerer!” A heavy footstep
made us both freeze. “What was that?” Asiago whispered.
“Trouble.” I reached up to the rope around my ankles
and squirmed, but it was no use. I heard the footsteps get closer and refused
to look. I tried to get my wand and staff again, but neither of them leapt into
my hand as I had hoped.
“Watch out!” Asiago yelled.
Too late. Something hit me on the head and the world
spun. As spots formed in my vision, I caught a glimpse of the massive form about
to knock Asiago out. It was as I feared; we were caught by a troll.
* * *
I woke with a terrible headache and something sharp
digging into my back.
I really don’t like trolls
. It was dark when I
opened my eyes, but my eyes focused after a moment. To my great surprise, I
wasn’t tied up. Instead, I was just lying on some blankets on the floor in a
cave. It wasn’t a large cave. I could see the scant light of dusk from the
doorway on the south end of the cave. There was an oddly-shaped door, but it
was wide open. A long table took up most of the east wall, while the blankets I
had slept on took up the entire west wall. Asiago was sleeping in the
north-east corner of the room.
I heard the troll moving around outside as I stood
and found my bag, wand, and staff on the table. Aside from my things, there
were jars of what looked like herbs and spices. Outside, I could see the
troll’s huge back, which was almost blocking the cave exit. I could also hear
the crackling of a fire.
Not wanting to alert the troll, I put my right hand
over Asiago’s mouth before I shook him with my left hand. He jerked awake and
tried to fight me off until he realized it was me. I removed my hand. “There’s
a troll outside.”
“But it’s not troll season.”
“Well, someone needs to tell the troll that.”
“How long have we been here?”
“I can’t be sure, but it looks like it’ll be dark
soon.”
I wasn’t expecting to see his eyes widen with panic.
“How are we going to get out of here?” He scrambled to his feet, hit his head
on the curved wall, and squawked in pain.
“Be quiet and calm down. It’s going to take patience
to get out of here.”
“No, no, no. We have to go now. We shouldn’t have
been here for this long.”
“We wouldn’t have been caught at all if
you
hadn’t insisted on taking a shortcut!” I hissed.
He glanced past me at the door and his face blanched.
Knowing exactly what he was looking at, I turned to see the troll standing in
the doorway of the cave. He was taller than a person, though not as big as a
giant, with a slightly small head compared to his body. Although most trolls
were quite fat, this one seemed to have more muscle than fat. His skin was
gray, his eyes were small and beady, and his brown hair was very thin on his
head. In fact, there was more hair in his ears than on his head. He wore a
dingy white tunic and dark brown pants with a rope as a belt.
“Please don’t eat us!” Asiago whimpered. “Ayden, do
something!”
Unfortunately, I hadn’t grabbed my wand or staff when
I had the chance, and if I made a dive for them, the troll would certainly grab
me first. I held my hand out to the staff.
Come on
, I thought.
Please
come to me
. My staff either didn’t hear my thoughts, or it didn’t care.
To my horror, the troll reached over and grabbed my
staff.
“Please don’t break that!” I begged.
He didn’t seem to notice my words and instead studied
the staff like it was a fancy toothpick. I cringed when he licked the crystal.
“Ayden Dracre, do some sorcery and get us out of
here!” Asiago yelled.
That got the troll’s attention; he glanced at Asiago
before locking his eyes on me. “Ayden Dracre?” the troll asked. His voice was
deep, but not as loud as I expected it to be.
“Um… yes?”
When he reached for me, I squeaked and put my hands
over my eyes… but I wasn’t immediately picked up and thrown into the pot, so I
spread my fingers to peek between them. The troll’s eyebrows were furrowed in a
deep frown and he was holding my wand out for me to take. I took it carefully
from his huge hand. Although I wanted my staff as well, I wasn’t dumb enough to
try to take it from him.
“Nice to meet you, Ayden Dracre,” he said. “I am
Yavo.”
“You… too? You aren’t going to eat me?”
“Of course not. Why would I eat you?”
“Because you’re a troll and trolls eat people.
Right?” I asked, glancing at Asiago for confirmation. The necromancer nodded.
“The last troll I ran into tried to cook me.”
Yavo laughed. Asiago hid behind me. “I have no
interest in eating you, little sorcerer.”
I frowned, insulted. “Is it because I’m blond or
because I’m too skinny?”
He laughed again. “Neither, little sorcerer. I have
no interest in eating you because I’m a vegetarian.”
I almost heard Asiago’s jaw hitting the floor with
shock. “You’re a vegetarian? As in, you don’t eat people?”
“That is what I mean, yes.”
“Isn’t that a little… odd?”
“No odder than a sorcerer who can only conjure apples
and broccoli.”
I felt my face heat up with embarrassment. “Is that
common knowledge?”
“Not that I know of. I met your brother, Thaddeus,
awhile back. He was good company and mentioned you when he found out I’m a
vegetarian. You see, even though I don’t eat meat, I still like good tasting
food. Unfortunately, my two favorite foods don’t grow around here.”
“Broccoli and apples?”
“Precisely.”
“Why did you capture us and bring us here if you had
no intention of eating us?”
“I was not the one who set that trap; I only freed
you from it. There are hunters in this forest. Although they wouldn’t eat you,
you would have been hanging there for days if I didn’t let you go. I hit you
because I can’t trust sorcerers not to attack me, but then I felt bad that I
knocked you out, so I brought you back here, out of the path of hungry
animals.”
In that case, I owed him. This was not the same kind
of troll I’d met before. “Okay. I haven’t conjured apples and broccoli for a
while because I’ve learned to conjure other stuff, but I think I can manage it.
I need something to transform into…” I trailed off as Yavo set my staff down on
the table, opened a jar, grabbed a wooden bowl, and dumped the contents of the
jar into the bowl.
It was edible clay— a substance that wizards and
sorcerers often used to create food because it could change flavor and texture
easily. It was nutritious and didn’t rot until it was transformed into
something else. It could actually be eaten as it was, but it tasted very bland
and had the texture of thick, sticky mud.
Although I called it “conjuring,” it was really just
transformation when I changed an edible substance into food. I could change
meat into something like bread or potatoes, but I couldn’t change anything into
meat because that required a sacrifice of an animal, which I had never been
able to do. I had managed to transform things into tofu when I attained my
staff, but Merlin eventually explained that it wasn’t real meat. Even though I
learned to do some sorcery, killing was still too malevolent.
Yavo stepped aside and I approached the bowl. “Change
into broccoli and apples,” I said as I waved my wand over the bowl. Glittery,
sparkly, pink magic sprinkled from my wand into the clay and changed it into a
bunch of apples and broccoli. It was so much, in fact, that it started spilling
out of the bowl and I had to catch the apples before they hit the floor. By the
time it finally stopped, the entire table was piled high.
The troll was ecstatic. The necromancer was
suspiciously nervous. “Can we go now?” Asiago asked impatiently.
I grabbed my bag and staff and pocketed my wand.
“Well, we should be going now. When my friend returns, I’ll ask him how to grow
an apple tree and broccoli plant with magic. Thank you for…” I stopped talking
when I heard a sound outside. “What was that?” Asiago paled even more. “What
did you do?” I asked.
“It’s not my fault.”
“But you know what’s out there?”
He nodded and swallowed. “A few nights ago, I was at
a graveyard and I tried to raise a man to find out who killed him. I… sneezed
in the middle of the summoning ritual and… the entire graveyard was
resurrected.”
I gaped. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I was.”
“There are zombies outside?”
“They are drawn to me, so if I’m in one place for too
long, they will find me. They’re after me because they’re mad at me for
resurrecting them.”
“You’re as big a screw up as I am. Why don’t you just
send them away?”
“I have to have their name in order to control the
dead. Most of the graves didn’t even have names on the markers and I don’t have
enough time to read the names that are there before the zombies catch up.”
“I don’t like zombies,” Yavo said, stepping away from
the door.
“If we leave, will the zombies leave Yavo alone?” I
asked. Asiago nodded. “Okay. I really hope this works.” I grabbed Asiago’s arm
and focused my power through my staff. Since I had only been to my aunt’s home
once, I couldn’t see the castle clear enough in my mind to transport us
magically. I did, however, remember the city I faced my brothers in. I closed
my eyes and focused on Red Rock.