Diary of a Conjurer (33 page)

It wasn’t only that he
didn’t trust her, he also wasn’t sure if he could balance himself
on that silky pant leg of hers.
What if I
cut her with my toenails like I did on the ship when Hacatine’s
warriors tied me up? I stink. She’s so sweet smelling,
I smell worse than a rotten mushroom. The little
people don’t mind my odor. They’ve grown accustomed it. They aren’t
so rosy themselves!
But a sorceress? Well
what if she decides to use it against me later? Besides, I’ll have
to touch her . . .

“Sir,” Xylepher nudged him again.

“All right, all right.” Silvio mumbled and
slowly lifted his crooked foot up, bent toenails and all. His bones
wouldn’t bend as much as they needed, and his foot slipped without
nearing his destination.

“Miss,” Xylepher tried to sound polite.
“Could you bend your knee a little lower, he can’t seem to, well,
you know. He’s got problems.”

“Certainly.” Promise kneeled and grasped for
something to hang on to. Seeing her struggle, several Xylonite
women took her hand and gave her support.

Silvio watched. Seeing how willing Promise
was to help him, he waved Xylepher closer, took hold of Promise’s
shoulder, stepped on her knee, and with a boost from everybody
rolled his body onto the horse. After a round of applause to
celebrate success, the little people led Promise back to her
dapple. She mounted gracefully.

Silvio huffed and looked away. In his
younger days he’d been that agile. Shame it was, his bones were all
twisted and bent, all because of Hacatine. If he’d never hidden in
the forest as a tree, he’d never had aged like he did, missing most
of his younger years as a decrepit old stump. His face soured, the
corners of his mouth falling into a pout as he reined the roan
toward the mountain.

The Xylonites and their weasels lunged
alongside the horses, the day’s heat beating on their heads. They
would have left sooner, been in the shade of the mountain before
now if Silvio hadn’t take so long to mount, but at least they’d
arrive in the foothills before the sun reached its zenith. Then it
was just a matter of finding the right passage to the Kaempern
village.

The hilly trail brought them into the shadow
of the mountain. On they rode, and not without tiring. Silence won
the battle over conversation. Silvio’s body groaned in pain. He was
not used to sitting in such a position. If he ever made it off this
horse, he would not be able to walk, he thought.

“You know, sir, the war’s still going on.”
Xylepher said.

Though they could no longer see Menek, the
Dragon Shield’s light glowed from behind the hills. The sky in that
direction had gradually darkened. It would be night soon. The
fading blue was lit sporadically with bolts of white lightning.
Streaks of red and yellow fire bolts flared across the sky.

“Yes, it is,” Silvio admitted.

“What are those explosions, sir?” Xylepher
asked.

“Those? Not sure.” Silvio answered, watching
the sky to the northeast as he rubbed the ache in his back.

“Are they bursts of white light?” Promise’s
blank stare rose toward the heavens.

Silvio had forgotten about Promise’s
condition; she rode so quietly with little complaint.

“Yes, Miss,” the soldier answered.

“That’s Hacatine’s power colliding with the
Kaempern’s shield. I’ve seen it before. It’s an incredible sight up
close.”

“It’s a fearful thing.” Xylepher nudged his
weasel closer to the long legs of Silvio’s mount. “So far away, and
yet so resonant even on the prairie. Do you think she’ll win?”

“She’s not giving in,” Promise answered.

Silvio looked at her, riding tall on the mare
as though she and the creature were one. He wondered what she was
thinking, if she hoped for a Hacatine victory.

“Wish you were with them?” he sneered.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

Silvio raised a brow. “Worked out our
differences, did we?” his tongue rounded a ball of saliva as he
looked for a safe place to discharge it, not wanting to hit his
friends below.

“Our differences, perhaps. Not theirs.”

“You think our differences don’t line up with
theirs? You think there’s more than two sides to this conflict, do
you?”

“I have friends on Taikus, friends that stand
alongside the queen. I would give my life for them, and they for
me.”

Silvio shot his spitball into the grass at
the mare’s feet. “Bah,” he said as he wiped his mouth. “Should
leave you here in the sand then. Just like your queen tried to do.
Blasted Taikan. Blasted sorceress.” He shifted in his saddle. This
confession of her allegiance turned his stomach. Why should she be
riding with us? Has he put the Xylonites in danger bringing her
along? Here he thought she hated Hacatine and now she wants to
fight alongside of her. I should slay her. Now. He grabbed the hilt
of his sword but his soft heart prevented him from drawing it.

“You’d do the same for your little people,
Silvio,” she added softly.

“I would,” he growled, though he wasn’t sure
how he’d fight without his magic. “Seems your queen won’t do the
same for you.”

“It’s her prerogative. She’s sovereign. If
she chooses to pluck me from her flock, there’s nothing anyone can
do. I’m exiled, like you are. You know the feeling. I would think
you’d be a bit more understanding.”

“Bah!” Silvio shifted positions, waving the
idea away. “I understand. She’s ruthless. No leader at all. Not
mine even if I do come from Taikus.”

“If it’s any consolation, for you. I hate her
as well.”

“You hate her?” Now he was alarmed for he had
no idea where she stood.

“I do.”

“But you’d fight alongside of her?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I would give my
life for my friends that stand alongside her. As for Hacatine, I
would lift a sword of mutiny against her at the wink of an
eye.”

That silenced Silvio. He watched her ride,
her chin held high. Didn’t trust her, not completely, but he
admired her.

Once they arrived at the foothills, a
scramble took place. The weasels balked at the cliffs and had to be
coaxed up the mountainside one by one. It was a long drawn out
process so Silvio rode with Promise into the shade of the rock
over-hang by the shore. This slow traveling tested his patience. He
wished he were in the Kaempern village already.

Mid-afternoon found them atop a hill near a
stretch of dark rocky cliffs that over looked the ocean. Silvio
expected to turn toward the forest at that point, but Xylepher kept
his men moving toward the bluff on a road that meandered above Moor
Cove.

“Are you sure this is the way?” Silvio asked
him. “Shouldn’t we have been to Kaempern by now? At least we should
be in the trees. What do you remember about this trail?”

“Sir, it’s been a long time. I haven’t come
this way since I was a child.”

“I thought you traded with the
Kaemperns.”

“I do, sir, every year. But we always meet in
Alcove Forest.”

“Bungersaltch, Xylepher! I thought you knew
where we were going?”

“Well, sir I do. We’re going to the Kaempern
village, sir. I’m just not sure how we’re getting there.”

Silvio reined in his horse. He hadn’t ever
been to Kaempern. The farthest north he’d been was the graveyards
and that was only once, when they buried Vilfred the Kaempern
Sage.

“Do you know where we are?” Silvio asked
Promise.

She shook her head. “No, Silvio. All I see
are dark shapes against a gray light. I have no senses anymore, no
sight whatsoever. But if we are following the water east, I would
guess we’d be in Menek before too long. Perhaps fate is calling us
to battle.”

Silvio grunted.

“The man who has your power will most likely
be drawn to the war. That may be our destination,” she added.

He gave her his green eye. “What do you
know?”

“I know that a warrior is lured to the
battlefield. Someone with the abilities Ivar possesses won’t be
able to stay away from the challenge. He’ll be there.”

“The battlefield? You don’t think he’d go
home to Kaempern?”

Promise scoffed. “Is that what you’ve been
thinking?”

Silvio shifted his weight on the mare and
looked eastward. Smoke rose and faded into the clouds. They were
near enough now to smell the battle and the explosions sent the
earth beneath them rumbling.

“Yes. That’s what I’ve been hoping.
Evidently I’m as blind as you are,” he whispered, and nudged his
mare onward. “Take us to Menek then, Xylepher.”

Golden Arrow

There’s only so much running a man can do
before his knees start to crumble under him, his lungs tighten so
that he wheezes, and the muscles in his sides and stomach cramp.
Ivar would have run his body into the ground if he hadn’t slid
across the cavern floor, sprawled on his hips, and spun circles
over the ice. When he finally stopped, he lay motionless, staring
at the cold blue above his head.

At first the frost soothed his overheated
body. Then it numbed his nose, his chapped lips, and the tips of
his fingers. Ivar covered his ears with his hands to warm them, and
that’s when he heard a tapping sound.

He sat up, careful not to send his body in a
spin again. The sound came from an abyss not far from him. A steady
beat. A drumming slower than his pulse.

Tap, tap, tap. The man hanging from the
ropes over the pit chiseled away at the ice.

Daryl had a secret hideaway he could see the
Kaemperns from. There were sixteen men in all. Most who waited
nearby, idle, but the chief-man, the one with the long curls, he
guarded the stakes that held the rope. That man, he was the boss.
Daryl was going to keep an eye on him because when that man gave
the word, they’d pull the miner up from the pit. This time they
would also pull up the sphere that held the secret to the portal.
Daryl knew because he heard them say so earlier that day. Soon it
would be Daryl’s sphere. He just needed to keep the dragon nearby
with his magic dagger. And he needed to wait patiently in the
shadows so no one would see him. He listened to the tap of the
miner’s pick.

Ivar moved slowly to the mouth of the abyss,
not too close, for fear of falling, but close enough to gaze into
the hole. Black as night and deep as eternity, his eyes followed
the spiraling pillars of frozen liquid down into the dark. There
were shelves along the way, formations of ice, some flat, and some
circular. One of the shelves glowed, radiating light from an object
that lay on it, an object not natural to the cave, gold in color,
metal. A dagger.

Balls of liquid rolled off the edge of the
shelf that the dagger lay on, and fell into the deepest hollow of
the abyss, tapping slowly somewhere onto the floor below. Drip,
drip, drip. A slow steady sound as ice melted.

Enchanted by its beauty, Ivar stared at the
golden weapon. Pools of water surrounded its hilt causing circles
of color to shimmer throughout the cavern, and on Ivar hands and
face.

It’s real. That dagger is not a vision. It’s
so real that ice melts around it.

Well beyond reach, there was no physical
access to it, unless to fall into the depths of the crater and
never return. Ivar smiled, wet his lips, and then his tongue found
the space between his teeth. He knew a way. All it would take is
willpower. Silvio’s will power.

“There’s one more thing you need to know
before returning the dagger to me,” a voice echoed through the
cavern.

Ivar scurried away from the dark hole,
pushing against the frozen floor until he was sure he wouldn’t fall
into the aperture. Then, with careful footing, he stood and moved
slowly toward the light. The voice had come from one of the
tunnels. Hacatine was not yet in the ice cavern.

She mustn’t know I found it. She mustn’t
know where it is.

“I can show you now, or let you find out for
yourself. Either way, it will break you, Daryl.”

Her figure was nearly camouflaged by the
darkness of the tunnel that she stood in, but her face paled in the
blue light, and her silver hair gave up her hiding place as it
shimmered like mist on a moonlit night.

“I don’t believe your visions,” Ivar said.
“They’re lies.”

“Are they? Which ones are lies?”

“I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t kill
Adrian.” Talking to her was painful, but he saw, now, there was no
way to escape from her presence. His legs were so weak that he had
to press his body against the wall of the cavern to keep his
balance.

“No?” She asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t you remember Adrian?”

“I remember him. He raised me. He was the
only friend I had when I was small.”

“His blood is on your hands, Daryl.”

Ivar looked at his hands. Marbled into the
green and yellow magical powers that traveled through his veins
wove a thread of red. His body shook, sweat streamed from his
brow.

“Go away!”

The figure turned back into the tunnel and
disappeared. Ivar folded his fists together, holding them tight in
an attempt to calm the trembling. But he didn’t stop shaking any
more than he didn’t stopped Adrian from dying.

He inched his way toward the light, hoping to
be out of the caves and into the sun, back to an environment he
knew. But the light he walked toward wasn’t daylight. It was moving
at amazing velocity directly toward him. He felt the heat of it as
it neared, and ducked so that it spun over his head.

If it was another of Hacatine’s visions, why
did Promise’s magic glow from his hands. As much as he wished he
were wrong, the power inside of him told him it was a memory. The
light was a fireball and it headed toward the cavern.

That’s when Ivar saw the Sage crawl from the
pit, swinging a leather bag up over the ledge. Amleth and Aren
pulled the ropes that dragged him. When the cave exploded the men
raced for safety and were spared. The fire crashed against the
cavern walls.