The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (6 page)

“
Wow, we are in luck! The
gehdrin missed our trail, or they picked up on someone stronger
than us. They tend to go after those with the most
power.”

I looked at the long knife in my hand,
“What do I do with this?” I asked.

He shrugged, “Give it
here.”

I handed it over, and he made it
disappear, like some magician’s trick and some fake flowers. It was
just suddenly, gone, and so was his weapon.

“
Now, weren’t we talking
about drinking something that will do these bodies harm?” he asked,
as if barely escaping werewolves was nothing to comment
about.

Chapter Three

With just one look I was a
bad mess

Cause that long cool woman
had it all.

-The Hollies

We walked about three miles and
entered the town of Amesbury. Hydan unerringly arrived at a small
family owned establishment, called the Rose and Crown. Just before
we got there a chicken ran across the road in front of us, and
Hydan stopped, and then laughed. “That is the dumbest looking fowl
I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. There is NO WAY that fat
thing can fly!”

“
It’s just a chicken,” I
said.

“
A chicken? Dumb name, for
a dumb bird. I like it! Gaia must have had some real fun
here.”

I had no idea what he was talking
about, so I let it go.

As soon as we entered the Rose and
Crown Hydan arranged a room for us in their Bed and Breakfast room
for rent, which was located just above the bar. When we then sat
down in the pub I learned something immediately, Hydan could
drink.

Let me say it again, that boy could
put down the booze like a sailor on a three-day pass. Within
minutes, he had some of the locals singing and soon joined in,
learning the words as he went, rather quickly. A young lady of
about 23 years, with blonde hair, smiled at his antics, and he soon
had her perched on his lap, while he downed yet another mug of the
local brew.

“
This is the life!” he
called to me, lifting a freshly filled mug as a toast.

I shook my head. Unlike my boisterous
friend, I had taken a quiet seat in the corner, where I could keep
an eye on the door. I was sipping from my first mug sparingly, just
enough so it looked like I was drinking. I was far from
comfortable; there were too many unanswered questions, too much
emptiness in my head for me to enjoy life. Eventually, Hydan, and
his new female companion, slipped out and upstairs. Well, they
would have, if Hydan had not turned at the door, with his arm
around Saphron, and called out loudly, “I shall return once I have
been vanquished by fair Saphron!”

There were some hoot and cat calls,
and then Hydan took the blushing Saphron off to our room. I didn’t
begrudge him his fun, but I was still deep in thought.

First off, I considered these
werewolves Hydan had alluded to, I hadn’t actually seen them. Maybe
it was just his overactive imagination or alcohol induced
delusions. He certainly drank enough, and might have been drinking
earlier. But, if those were just wolves, then where did they come
from in England? Then, there was the fact that he had appeared out
of thin air. When one strange thing happens, you have to assume
other stranger things are possible. So, if I, for the moment,
accept the idea of werewolves, the next question is why were these
werewolves out searching the countryside? I’m not much of a
believer in coincidence.

So, this means they were likely after
me, or Hydan. Since this was Hydan’s first visit to this area, and
he didn’t seem concerned that someone was after him, it followed
that they were after me. I was the one with someone hunting them,
that psychopath Stewart Hentan.

I sighed and took another sip of my
drink.

There was a faint sound of creaking
bedsprings in a steady rhythm from upstairs, so one of the locals
picked up a violin and started playing to the rhythm of the
creaking springs. Some of the others laughed, and soon a guitar and
an accordion joined into the tune, effectively drowning out the
noises from upstairs.

That’s when a mysterious woman entered
the room, coming out of the cold night. I say ‘mysterious’ because
you couldn’t help but look at her, and wish she would look your
way.

She had a navy blue cape wrapped
around her, and a large hood up over her head to protect her from
the night dew. I could just make out her eyes inside the gloom of
the hood as she took in the room silently.

Like me, all of the locals were
staring at this woman, so I figured she couldn’t be part of the
local crowd.

Talk and laughter petered out as
everyone’s attention went to the new arrival.

Her eyes landed on me, and it was like
time was stretching into slow motion. I felt heat rise in my face.
Then, wonder of wonders, she headed my direction. I felt a joy like
a child on Christmas morning, mixed with a teenager who has the
prom queen on his arm entering the dance hall.

Slowly the mumble of voices came back
up in a low kind of background noise.

There was something… powerful, about
her. I can’t explain it; perhaps it was how she moved through the
room like she owned this entire province. She was graceful in ways
which were indefinable. She arrived at my table and spoke in a soft
alto voice which sent shivers of pleasure up my spine. It just
wasn’t fair; no girl should sound so pleasing to the
ear.

“
Is this chair taken?” her
melodious voice breathed.

I didn’t trust my voice to reply; it
might break like some school boy, so I tipped my mug toward the
chair and nodded, letting her know she could take it. But she
didn’t pull the chair away; she sat down at my table.

“
D-d-do I know you?” I
stuttered.

She smiled slightly, the corner of her
perfect lips pulling up. I felt like I had been given a
gift.

Then she said, “No, but I know
you.”

Something like an actual thought
managed to get through the buzz clouding my brain from her
presence, and I remembered that strange beings were hunting me, and
the allure of this woman was more than humanly possible. My eyes
darted toward the door, gauging my escape routes.

She chuckled low in her throat, with
such genuine amusement she froze me like a deer in the headlights.
Then she spoke in her wondrous voice, “I am not here to harm you,
far from it, Nicholas Sivaeral, I am here to help you.”

I knew her voice; though it was twice
as powerful and beautiful in person, I had already heard it once
before this evening, “Fiona?”

She smiled, and then lowered her hood,
revealing a strikingly beautiful face which would have made
Angelina Jolie viciously jealous. She had long silky blonde hair,
with sweeping bangs going across her face from left to right, like
the perfect feathers of a bird’s wing. Her nose was small, her lips
full and nearly red, yet I could detect no makeup on her beautiful
face. Her eyes were incredibly striking, a brown which was almost
amber.

But her most eye-catching feature was
the Glyph on her left cheek. It was made of crisscrossing, but
unconnected, slashing marks and curves, with the center yellow and
changing through orange to red on the way out to the left and right
extremities. I didn’t see the shape instantly, but then it came to
me, altogether the slash marks made a highly stylized spider. It
did not detract from her beauty at all; it just made her look more
exotic.

Like the Glyph on my face, or the
other two I’d seen, Fiona’s was vibrant and etched right into the
skin slightly.

“
Well met, Nicholas,” she
said in a warm voice which sent pleasant chills up my
spine.

I nodded to her, trying to affect a
much steadier appearance than what I actually felt. Inside my
emotions were like a bird in gale force winds, while Fiona looked
as steady as a stone column. She looked like someone who knew what
the hell was going on, and I envied her that knowledge. I must have
looked like a boy trying to ask a girl who is way out of his league
on a date.

The music players were off onto
another tune, and even though we were in a small room full of
people I had the feeling that they could not even see or hear us.
No one was looking our way, or staring at Fiona, and she was worth
staring at, permanently.

“
You may speak freely,” she
noted to me when she noticed my eyes taking in the room.

I nodded, “OK, I don’t know where to
start, but let’s begin simply with, what the hell is going
on?”

She smiled, and a lesser mortal would
have passed out from the pure pleasure of seeing her beauty; I’ll
admit, I actually did feel a little light headed.

Then she said, “I know you are
worried, and a little overwhelmed. Do you remember me,
Nick?”

Damn it! I wanted to say, ‘Hell yes,
who could ever forget you!’ But for the life of me, I couldn’t ever
remember seeing her face, and you would swear you could never
forget it. I couldn’t form the words, so I just gave her the
slightest of shake of my head. I expected her to frown and stand up
to leave; you didn’t insult Aphrodite with
forgetfulness.

But Fiona only smiled sadly, and I
felt like weeping at her expression.

Then she said, “All right, I had hoped
some of your memories had returned, but before I start filling in
some of the blanks, can you tell me if you already remember
anything? Do you know the Houses or about the
Archimages?”

“
Houses, Archimages?” I
said, furrowing my brow in puzzlement.

She nodded, “I see. I was afraid of
this, my love.”

When she said ‘my love’, I nearly
passed out, and almost didn’t hear the rest of what she said, but I
sort of re-ran it in my head.

“
The thing is Nick,” Fiona
continued, “you were hit with a very powerful dark spell, one which
locked away your memories, or erased them. This was done so you
could not defend yourself against attack.”

“
Right,” I said dubiously,
“A spell.” Normally when someone says something that dumb I would
have replied with biting sarcasm, but I just couldn’t do this to
such a beauteous example of the female form.

“
Yes, a magic spell, a very
dark one,” she answered.

Some of my natural acidity seem to
break through my infatuation, and I gave her a kind of stern look
as I said, “The hell it was, I don’t even believe in
magic.”

A half smile pulled at the left side
of her mouth, “That is unfortunate, Nicholas Sivaeral because you
are a powerful wizard, a mage.”

I let her statement sit around in the
air for a minute while I contemplated her words and enjoyed just
looking at her face, but I finally kind of snorted with mirth as I
said, “A wizard, like Harry Potter?” I had remembered the character
from the book in the airport, but I was being sarcastic, the whole
idea of me being a wizard, of ANYONE being a wizard, was
ridiculous.

She laughed gently, but even that
small sound made the room feel like a party. “No, not like the
wizard named Harry in those books, nor like the wizard named Harry
Dresden in other books, you are part of something else, something
different, something real.”

“
Bull shit,” I replied
simply. Even for such a desirable woman, I just could not fake my
reaction to such a ridiculous notion.

She just smiled slightly and looked at
me with those twinkling eyes of mystery.

Something about her expression made me
start to doubt myself, and wonder if by some strange chance I
should believe her; so I said, “A wizard,” like I was saying, ‘a
pink elephant.’

She nodded her perfect head and that
movement made her long blonde hair ripple gently in a wave of
shining light. Then she added, “Nicholas, you are a wizard, and far
up the Tiers. You were once powerful, and have the potential to be
powerful once again.”

“
And pigs can fly,” I noted
with a snort. “Now what is the real story?”

Her eyes practically sparkled as she
replied, “You could make a pig fly if this was how you saw a pig in
this world.”

I considered her words, and then said,
“Could I make a knife appear out of nothing?”

Fiona drew a small dagger from her
waist and it elongated into a sword. It was silver, with an
extraordinarily beautiful grip which seemed to naturally weave
itself out of the cross piece, which was studded with diamonds
large enough to buy the town of Amesbury, let alone this
tavern.

“
You mean like this?” she
asked pleasantly, and then added, “You see, Nick, I am a sorceress,
which is what we call a female mage. I am a Second Tier sorceress
of House Albus.”

She said it like she was saying, ‘I am
a Princess of the Universe.’

But this wasn’t the first time I had
heard of ‘Seconds’ and ‘Thirds’. So I asked, “What does ‘Second
Tier of your House’ mean?”

“
The Tiers denote how far
you are down the family tree from your First, your Archimage. A
Second Tier mage is a direct descendant of an Archimage. A Third is
a direct descendant of at least one Second Tier parent, and so on.
There is much more to this, but that is the basics of the House
Tiers. You are a Third, which is very high in the ranks. There are
Fourths, Fifths, Sixths and Sevenths below you, plus all the
mundanes. Not only that but the further down the Tiers you go, the
more people there are in that Tier. Think of it like a pyramid
shape, with the Archimage on top, and you are in the third row of
bricks down the Pyramid.”