The Azure Wizard (20 page)

When it was just feet from smashing into her she let out an animalistic bellow, her light golden hair mimicking the mane of Lady Quinn, and she swung her hand axe in a downward chop as fast as thunderbolt from the Ancestor Lands. It buried itself into the heavily-plated forehead of the monster, but with her skill and greatly-honed blade, the weapon split the armor sunk to the shaft into the Wurm’s brain. Though its eyes faded to lifelessness, its momentum still carried it powerfully into her form and into Bear behind her. Both Foresters were very powerfully thrust backwards to crash terribly into stone and bone.

In a sickening display the beast coiled spasmodically and flung itself about the chamber as it died splintering stone and pulverizing the bones of its victims. Soon though the mighty Emerald Wurm lay lifeless, but before the wounded Foresters could even stir from their crumpled states the ruin about and above them began to shudder and buckle. It was about to finally cave in to bury its history and secrets forever beneath its broken stones. Bear crawled forward, his body a shattered husk, and he found his lover unconscious and bloodied.

When he failed to wake her with cries of panic and urgency he grunted and sobbed in pain as he struggled to his feet. All around them rubble poured from the walls and ceiling and he knew that soon they would be crushed or buried alive. He could barely see his surroundings due both in part to the choking dust billowing about and the blood that deluged from his face from a deep vertical gash on the left side of his face. Nonetheless he lifted her limp body and trudged forward over mounds of sharp stone and bones towards where the light from outside seemed to be fighting through the dust. He hoped that it wasn’t a trick of the light caused by the dust and his dizzy head or else they were surely doomed.

Thankfully he had chosen correctly and he stumbled from the ruin into waist-high putrid thick water shrouded in scum and muck. The ruin collapsed behind Bear in a horrific rumble that could be heard for miles in any direction. As the dust and debris began to settle on the surface of the decaying swamp and in the surrounding forest, Bear stood in the swamp holding the Axe Maiden in his arms, her dirty face inches from his own. He screamed at her to wake and tried to shake her into consciousness, but to no avail. Finally, sobbing, he closed his eyes and kissed her.

She kissed back.

Bear’s eyes shot open and he beheld his companion’s own rich brown eyes staring back at him and a feeble but radiant smile stirred upon her features. Overjoyed, he went back in and began to kiss her with all the passion he could muster. And so they stood there in each other’s arms in a revolting swamp, living proof of the passionate and overpowering love to be shared between heroes.

When Ethan finished his story, teary-eyed and blushing, the handful of Foresters that were present slapped the table top and shouted their approval of the tale and of Ethan the storyteller. He looked down beside him into May’s eyes and he could see that the story, particularly the final phrase, had struck a chord within her. She blushed slightly and grinned warmly up at Ethan, and he thought that her smile contained more beauty than what he imagined the Ancestor Lands could muster.

Many hours later when dusk was fast approaching an exhausted Ethan sat on the verge of sleep within his steaming washtub. After the midday meal and story he and May had replenished their supplies, new cuirasses and hand axes, and continued associating with the remaining Foresters. Bethany had kept to herself most of the day sitting quietly in her office or chamber, and Ethan couldn’t help but feel remorse for her. She had to feel much responsibility for the losses of their order, in particular O’Dell, but Ethan felt even more responsibility, for it was him that had been the conduit that released Wizardcraft back into the land of the Three Baronies.

He would never really know how many people would die from that act. Also the storyteller noticed as he bathed that his blue sigils and runes had crept now from his arms to symmetrical patterns on either side of his chest. Great, he thought, whenever I use Wizardcraft they will spread until I’m eventually covered in runes from head to toe.

As he stewed this over in his mind a gentle knock rapped his door. He sighed in exasperation and stood up. As he stepped out of the tub and strode over to the door he wrapped a towel around his waist and ran his fingers through his wet, chin-length hair and smoothed his red beard and mustache. He cleared his throat and then pulled open the door.

Ethan was relatively startled to see May standing alone out in the dark hallway. The single small window behind Ethan let the darkening golden glow of the setting sun shine upon the female Forester, Ethan’s one true friend.

She stood just beyond the threshold of the room wrapped in a thick linen lavender robe. Her hair was damp and her pale skin was once again pure and clean, and it was obvious that she had recently bathed. She wore a pretty face and a slight peculiar smile that the storyteller found enticing. “Hi, May. What is it?” Ethan asked easily, though he had a good feeling why she was standing in his doorway this evening.

In answer she walked smoothly forward into his room and she placed a hand on the back of his head so that she could pull his face forward into hers for a deep long, slow kiss. Her other hand clasped around his own that held his towel about his waist. As they kissed she reached a foot back and closed the door to his room with it. Ethan reached a hand forward and found that her robe hung open and her smooth flesh was naked beneath it. He began to kiss her harder and she returned it in kind.

Eventually they broke their kiss and May took a step backwards towards the door. She turned her back to Ethan, but looked at him over her shoulder and flashed him another alluring grin. Slowly and carefully she let her robe fall from her lightly freckled shoulders and pile in a heap of cloth about her bare feet. The curve of her spine flowed to her smooth, round bottom and her shapely legs beneath. She turned slightly to the left so Ethan could see the side of one of her rounded breasts. He could resist her charms no longer. He rushed forward and embraced her from behind, a hand holding her breasts and the other sliding past her navel and between her legs.

His own towel cascaded from him as she moaned and the last remnants of the setting sun vanished. The chamber was then concealed in shadow.

As the rose-tinted golden fingers of dawn crept into Ethan’s bedchamber through his open window he opened his colorful eyes and beheld May, his lover, still asleep next to him. She faced him, her blond tresses tumbling across her cute relaxed face, and her long eyelashes stirred slightly as she dreamt. Ethan smiled tenderly and pulled the blanket further up her body so that it covered her chest and shoulders, and then he fell onto his back upon the mattress. He stared at the ceiling, and sighed contentedly.

“What a night,” he whispered to himself with a smirk.

And what a night it had been for the two Foresters. True love, to Ethan, had always been a part of the stories that he learned, but it was nothing more than that. It was only a piece of a story. The girls of North Ridge never would have accepted an advance from the thin storyteller, though he had never offered one, and he had thus prepared himself for a long life without the Wizardcraft of love. May Kinsley had changed all of that.

He slid quietly out of bed and stretched until his back popped, and he sighed again as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. A groan emanated from the bed behind him and he turned around to see May stretching too. She arched her back with a smile and closed eyes, her chest pushing out firmly against the thin blanket that covered her, and when she was finished those beautiful blue eyes of hers fluttered open and she looked at Ethan. Smiling like a drunken fool he ambled over to her side of the bed and leaned over. They exchanged a long deep kiss, at the end of which May moaned, “Good morning, Ethan.”

“Good morning to you, May,” was his soft smiling answer, “Did you sleep well?”

She practically purred as she nodded in reply. Ethan lied down right against her and he whispered, “I go today to Lumberwall. Are you sure you want to tag along?”

“Of course,” she responded, “Somebody’s got to protect you from crazy monsters when you go into a coma.”

They both shared a laugh until Ethan retorted with a smile, “That was only the first time. Now I guess I’m a Wizard that can use Wizardcraft without the risk of dropping dead. It still makes me tired and these damned sigils keep spreading, but at least there’s no coma.”

Late last night, when both the Foresters were sweaty, thrilled and spent, May had told Ethan that the blue symbols had spread to his back as well as his chest. He wasn’t thrilled to hear it, but he had figured as much.

“Ethan,” she began in a softer voice, “do you think that there are any more Wizards now? Or do you think you are still the only one?’

“Well, it seems reasonable to me that there would be plenty of Wizards now because the Wizardcraft spread to numerous wild beasts that once possessed it. It stands to reason that it is now also present in human bloodlines that also could once use Wizardcraft, but for some reason,” he explained, “I feel a sense that I’m it. I have a strange gut instinct that I’m the only Wizard walking in these lands. I don’t know how or why I know that, or how and why that would be. But I’m almost certain that it’s the case.”

May nodded slowly in agreement after absorbing what her lover said, and the two of them laid there in bed, embracing, for the better part of the next hour. The sun was completely beyond the horizon of edifices and rooftops when Ethan said, “We had better get ready, my love. The sooner we warn Baron Fernhollow the sooner we can go to the Barony of Vhar and the Barony of Wendlith and warn their rulers. Then we come back here and wait out the storm beyond the walls of the towns.”

“And then …,” purred May.

“We, uh, began to rebuild the Foresters of the Three Baronies.”

“And then …”

He looked into her blue eyes, the blue of glacial ice on a clear winter day, and he answered in all seriousness, “Then I spend the rest of my days with you at my side, May Kinsley.”

Her eyes glistened with tears in the morning light and for a moment she just laid there looking into Ethan’s eyes. Then, abruptly, she smashed into him and wrapped her arms around his lean wiry torso, locking him in a hard embrace. She whispered into his tattoo-covered shoulder, “I love you, Ethan.”

An hour later they left the front door of the Foresters’ Compound dressed in new, polished, and neatly arranged Forester’s uniforms, dark brown cuirasses, gauntlets, and boots, thick brown hooded cloaks, bulging leather satchels, and each had sheathed a flawless silver hand axe engraved with coiling decorative vines. The golden eagle-symbol practically glowed in the sunrise upon the breastplate of each cuirass. Ethan wore a very tight-fitting simple long-sleeved white wool shirt with a tight turtleneck collar and light brown linen trousers while May wore beneath her uniform a short-sleeved green silk shirt with turquoise trim and baggy trousers of turquoise silk that she tucked into her boot tops like the fashion among Wendlithians.

May’s neck-length straight hair was pulled into short thick ponytail on the back of her head that she secured with a green silk ribbon. Ethan’s chin-length blond hair hung straight and loose and his reddish beard, which was now a couple of inches long, and moustache were groomed. They strode hand in hand from the building and Bethany walked just in front of them as she escorted them from the courtyard. She still wore the same clothes that she had been wearing the day before and her hair was as disheveled as her eyes were sunken.

Just passed the fountain and before the open gate in the ivy-enveloped iron fence Bethany stopped and turned to look at them. She managed a feeble smile at the two, especially when seeing their hands locked securely with one another’s. “Are you sure that you need supplies in your satchels? Aren’t you just using Wizardcraft to transport you?”

“Yes, Bethany, but with Wizardcraft this new in the world I still don’t completely trust it. It’s better to be safe than sorry,” answered Ethan.

Bethany nodded and looked at the two of them for a long moment, her daughter and her daughter’s lover, before she finally said quietly, “This will be the last assignment of the Foresters of the Three Baronies.”

Ethan and May both gasped in shock and May snapped, “Why, mother? Why in the Soul Wastes would you disband the order?”

Bethany came forward and placed her small hand on the side of her daughter’s pretty face and she replied, “Too many have been lost. We don’t have enough members for regular patrols. Also we would be useless against the Wizardcraft dangers that haunt our land’s forests. It is better if we disband and find safer work. I’m sure that the leaders of the Three Baronies will agree.”

“No, mother,” May choked as she began sobbing. Ethan let go of her hand as Bethany came forward and eased her daughter into a soft but all-encompassing embrace, the kind that only mothers can manage.

“I knew this would sorrow you, May, but it is what must be done. And besides,” she began as she looked over her daughter’s shoulder and into Ethan’s amber eyes, “you have a whole other life ahead of you. You have love and youth, and it is impossible to waste such things, for they’re in control of your life. Embrace those traits and those who would share them with you.”

Those last words, Ethan knew, were meant for him as well, and he knew that they meant, “Protect my daughter and love her.”

Ethan nodded stoically and May managed a feeble nod as the two broke their hug. Bethany backed up and held her hand out towards the gate as she faced the two companions. She cried out, “Go, Foresters of the Three Baronies! Tell the people of the Three Baronies of the dangers now resurrected into our land! In honor and duty!”

May and Ethan marched from the Compound and out into the bustling city streets of Greenwell City. As they walked the two Foresters kept their hands joined but didn’t say a word to one another. The white cobblestones passed beneath their booted feet and a cacophony of urban noise washed over them in their silence. They strode eastward, downhill towards the Three Baronies River, past the immense College of the Three Baronies and the Grand Cathedral of the Ancestors.