Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book One (3 page)

T. Zachery,

 
The Apothecary,

 
West Helveel.

Glancing at the letter in the man's hand Lusam said, “Sir, I know where the apothecary is in west Helveel, I can show this girl where to deliver it if you'd like.”

The man looked very shocked at Lusam's statement and said, “How can you possibly know where this letter is destined to be delivered young man?”

“I’m sorry, I just glanced at the address on the front of your letter. I didn’t mean to pry into your business sir, please forgive my rudeness,” he said, bowing his head slightly.

“Are you trying to tell me that you can read boy?” the man asked, with an almost comical look of disbelief on his face. The only people who could usually read and write were the high-born, the clergy or the scholars of this world. For a street kid to be able to read and write was unheard of, but Lusam had been taught from a young age by his grandmother, along with many other useful things.

“Yes sir. I can read and write,” Lusam replied beaming with pride.

“Show me your hands boy,” the man said pointing towards Lusam. Lusam tentatively showed the man his hands, wondering to himself why he would be interested in his hands at all.

“Well I never … A street kid who can read and
write, and has all his fingers, whatever next!” the man exclaimed, shaking his head slightly.
“The payment is two silver. One now, and one upon me receiving the reply from Mr Zachery. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” they both said at the same time.

“Good. Bring back his reply as soon as he gives it you. I will be waiting for you at my shop in the east district. It's called
`The Old Inkwell.`
Just ask anyone for directions in the east quarter, and they will point you in the right direction if you don’t already know the place.” The man handed Lusam one silver coin, gave him one last dubious look, then turned on his heels and headed back towards the town square.

“Here's your money,” Lusam said, offering the silver coin to Neala. “I'll show you where the shop is. Come, let's hurry, it will be dark soon. It's not good to be in that part of town when the sun goes down.”

“Thanks, but you keep the coin. The man said he would give us two silver for the delivery, that’s one each by my reckoning. Although I could be wrong, I’m obviously not the smart one here,” she said with a mischievous grin on her face.

“Oh, you don’t have to give me your money. You were first in line for the next job that came along. It doesn’t really seem fair if take your money,” he said, feeling his
cheeks flush red again.
“And I'm sure you're much smarter than me anyway,” he added, grinning right back at her.

“There you go again, with those lofty ideals of yours. I've told you once already at the gate, they'll only make you hungry,” she said, still smiling at him. “Besides, when you arrived at the gate I was about to call it a day anyway. So, if you hadn't come by to lecture me with your high and mighty morals, I would have missed the job anyway, so it's only fair that we split the money,” Neala replied, trying very hard to keep a straight face. Lusam stared at her for a few seconds before realising she was teasing him again, and they both burst into fits laughter, playfully nudging each other as they set off walking in the direction of the apothecary
.

Chapter Two

Although the sun had not yet passed the horizon, it was still much darker in the narrow streets of the west district. The tall houses loomed overhead blocking out what little daylight there was left, as they cast their long shadows onto the street below. As they began walking down the damp cobbled street in the shadows of the houses, Lusam began to realise why the man had offered to pay two silver coins so readily, for what had seemed like such an easy job at the time. During the day these streets were much like any other in Helveel, but at night they were not for the faint-hearted. There were numerous brothels and seedy bars in this part of town, all setting up for the evening trade to come.

Nobody walking past them so much as looked at them, let alone gave them any form of greeting. This part of town even smelled different, like a combination of rotting vegetation and old beer, with a strong smell of sewage mixed in for good measure.

As they passed through a short tunnel under a large
warehouse complex, known locally as The Arches, Lusam became aware of footsteps coming from behind them.
He glanced back over his shoulder, but couldn't make out anyone lurking in the shadows behind them. He turned towards Neala and began to inform her in a whispered voice that he thought someone was following them. Neala turned her head towards Lusam and gave him a slight nod, letting him know that she already knew, then just carried on walking as if nothing was wrong.

Lusam wasn't sure if Neala had understood correctly. Maybe she had nodded her head in answer to some other unspoken question, and didn't actually know about their pursuer lurking in the shadows not too far behind them. Nervously, he leaned towards her and whispered, “I think someone is following us back there.”

“I know!” Neala hissed back at him, sounding a little annoyed. “Keep walking, and stay quiet.”

They both increased their speed and rounded the next corner, only to come face to face with a filthy looking man holding a knife out menacingly towards them. When he smiled, he showed a mouth of missing and half rotten teeth. He had a vicious looking scar running down the left side of his face, from just under his eye, to the corner of his mouth.

Leering towards them he spat to the side, then in a rasping voice he said, “G' me your money, or I'll gut ya both here and now!”

Neala took a small step towards the man and calmly said, “Do we look like we have money to you?” All the time staring the man straight in the eyes. “I suggest you put the knife away, before you get hurt.”

Lusam couldn't believe what she was doing, he slowly put a hand on her shoulder to try and make her see sense before either of them got hurt by this man. Neala just turned and winked casually at him, then returned her steady gaze back to the man.

The man looked almost as shocked by her response as Lusam was. Then he started laughing, spat to the side again, and then said with a mocking tone in his voice, “And who’s going to hurt me little girl? You? … I warned you to pay up or else. Now …”

Before he could finish his sentence Lusam noticed something flash in Neala's hands, it was so fast, it was barely visible. The man fell in a crumpled heap on the floor clutching at his throat, as he bled out on the cobbled street.

“I warned you too,” Neala said to the man on the floor in front of her, now lying in a pool of his own blood. Dead. Standing there in complete shock, Lusam almost didn't hear the running footsteps behind him until it was too late. As he turned, he saw a huge man flying through the air at him, brandishing what looked like a meat cleaver. Without thinking, and on pure instinct, he released a huge blast of power towards his assailant. It literally stopped the
man in mid-air, and blasted him back down the cobbled street, sending him crashing into the wall of The Arches.
He hit the wall with such a sickening crunch it curled Lusam's toes, and the man sank to the floor, never to move again. He didn't need to go and see the results of what he had just done, he simply knew that nobody could have survived that kind of impact.

Lusam and Neala stood there looking at each other with equal measures of shock and awe on their faces.

“Let’s get out of here, before anyone else comes. The last thing we need is the town guard being called,” Neala said in a hushed voice. As they quickly walked away from the scene, Neala turned to Lusam and said, “What the hell was that you did back there?”

“I could ask the same question of you,” replied Lusam defensively.

“I've already told you that I grew up as part of a thieves' guild in Stelgad. You didn’t think they taught me to do needle-work there do you?” she spat back him. “I don’t remember however, having the conversation where you told me you were some kind of powerful sorcerer though!” she hissed at him.

“That's because I'm not a sorcerer. I've no idea how I even did that back there. I just panicked, and the next thing I knew he was flying backwards into that wall,” Lusam said, trying to match the brisk pace Neala was now setting.
“When I was younger, my grandmother taught me a few bits of magic, but nothing like that!” Lusam said in a hushed voice.
“Oh … just like that, she taught you, `some magic tricks`. You say that like it's the most natural thing in the world Lusam. Magic is supposed to be only myth or legend Lusam, not something your grandmother teaches you!  We need to talk about this later. Here isn’t the place. Let's just get this job done, and go get paid,” she said looking at him warily.

“Yeah, good idea,” he replied, as they both hurried to leave behind the shadier part of west Helveel.

As they approached the apothecary, they noticed a man leaving the shop and begin locking the door.

“Looks like we're just in time,” Lusam said, nodding towards the man.

“Yeah, looks that way,” Neala agreed.

When they got closer to the man, Lusam called out to him, “Excuse me sir. Are you Mr Zachery?”

The man turned his head to look at them approaching, and after taking in their shabby appearance replied suspiciously, “That depends who's asking, and for what reason young man?”

Lusam smiled at the man in an attempt to get him to relax, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

“Sorry sir. My name is Lusam, and this is Neala.
We have a letter to deliver to a Mr T.
Zachery from the owner of The Old Inkwell. We were instructed to bring it here to the apothecary in west Helveel, and to take any reply back to him,” Lusam replied in the most official voice he could muster.

“In that case you're in luck, I am Thomas Zachery, the owner of this establishment,” he replied, gesturing towards the shop behind him. “Please, hand me the letter, and I’ll see about that reply young man.”

“Thank you sir,” Lusam said, handing him the sealed brown letter.

The man opened the letter and started to read the contents. After a short time he looked up at Lusam and said, “Please inform Mr Daffer that I will have the items he has requested delivered to his premises in the morning by ten o'clock, and thank him for his patronage. If there is nothing else, I would bid you both good evening, and I’ll be on my way home now. My wife will surely be waiting for me to arrive for the evening meal, and she gets more than a little upset if I keep her waiting.” Mr Zachery nodded his goodbye, then he turned and started walking away from them in the opposite direction.

“Must be nice to have a meal waiting for you at home,” Neala said quietly in a wistful voice.

“Must be nice to have a home,” Lusam replied in a similar manner.

“Yeah, that too,” she agreed.

“Come on, let’s go back and get paid, then maybe we can go eat something too. I’m starving,” suggested Lusam.

“Sounds good to me. But, can we go back a different way from the way we came? By now it's a good bet the town guard will have been called, and it's probably best to avoid them if possible, just in case anyone saw us there and gave them a description of us,” Neala said, looking a little worried.

“I'd love to avoid that area, but unfortunately, if we try to go back through the northern quarter at this time of day we'd be arrested by the town guard for sure. Anyone who's not from the higher classes found in the northern quarter after dark is immediately suspected of criminal behaviour, and as we only have a verbal reply from Mr Zachery, we wouldn’t have any proof of why, and where we were heading. As much as I hate to admit it, it's still our safest way back to the town square, and then onto the east quarter,” Lusam replied, with an apologetic look on his face.

“Sounds like we better avoid going through the northern quarter then,” Neala agreed. “But, if we intend going back the way we came, we had better get going, before the place is crawling with guards.”

They turned and started to retrace their path back towards the town square, through the dark cobbled back
streets of west Helveel.
Just before they rounded the corner of the area where the earlier attack had occurred, they stopped dead in their tracks, and listened intently. In the distance they could clearly hear the approaching sound of marching boots on the hard cobbles. A unit of the town guard was approaching their location, and they seemed to be coming up the cobbled streets behind them; the sounds echoing off the houses of the built up narrow street.

“Quick, let’s get moving!” whispered Neala, as she quickened her pace towards the bend in the road, with Lusam trying to keep up with her. Acting on instinct, she glanced around the corner before making herself visible to anyone that might be waiting there. She saw a small group of guards already at the grisly scene inspecting the bodies. Neala grabbed Lusam by his shirt and quickly pulled him out of sight against the wall.

“What’s the matter?” he asked quietly.

“Guards. Lots of Guards. We’re trapped between them,” she replied in a hushed voice. As they stood there trying to decide what they should do, out of the corner of her eye Neala noticed the a patrol appearing from the direction they had just come. Without a second thought she grabbed Lusam around his neck, pulled him close to her, and started kissing him. “At least try to look like you're enjoying yourself,” she whispered in his ear.