The Azure Wizard (28 page)

Her only reply was a shocked, “A Wizard? Like in the old stories?”

Ethan smirked and nodded. “Indeed, Nythee. Just like in the old stories. Now, is it alright if I use my Wizardcraft to get us out of here, just like the Wizards used to do in all those old stories?”

Nythee nodded as her mouth hung open in wonder. Ethan’s vibrant blue eyes had begun to glow. He stood and grasped her little bronze hand in his own.

“Shut your eyes, Nythee. This is going to feel kind of silly.”

Again, with Wizardcraft as his steed through time and space, Ethan Skalderholt traversed the Three Baronies in the blink of an eye. Opening his eyes, he beheld Lady Quinn, all moss-dappled and still, above the fountain of green slime before the Forester’s Compound. He was back.

Nythee whimpered slightly at his side and she buried her soot-stained face in fistfuls of Ethan’s black cloak. The Wizard placed a reassuring hand on her white hair and whispered, “Easy, Nythee. It’s over. We’re safe now.”

The young Wendlithian girl warily eased open a brilliant orange eye and scanned her surroundings, and she beheld Lady Quinn. She moved her face away from Ethan’s cloak slowly, mouth agape and eyes wide at the ancient statue of the heroine of the Three Baronies of the Ancient Age.

“Where are we, Ethan?” she inquired squeakily.

“We’re far north of Wendlith, dear. We now stand in Greenwell City, safe and sound from monsters. The dizziness will pass soon enough. It’s just an after-effect from the Wizardcraft.”

She nodded slowly, and Ethan lifted her lithe form up and held her against his chest as he began striding forward. Hopefully May was here safe and sound with her mother.

“Ethan!”

The Wizard with Nythee whirled around to the speaker of his name across the courtyard. In the brilliant amber light of the rising sun May Kinsley stood there, garbed in revealing Woodfolk winter clothes, a stone knife tucked into the belt of her loincloth. Her neck-length blond hair was disheveled and scratches and smears of mud streaked her bare flesh. On her abdomen a healing circular scar was all that remained of her impalement upon the Woodfolk spear from around ten days ago.

“May?” was all Ethan could mumble confusedly as he gently set Nythee on the cobblestone ground at his side.

They walked towards each other, tears glistening and smiles breaking forth, and both their paces increased until they jogged into each other’s arms. Ethan’s heavy black hood fell away from his head in the impact of their bodies. As they embraced Ethan squeezed his eyes shut beneath a furrowed tattooed brow, and streams of tears trickled from the corners of his eyes. May wore a similar expression and lightly kissed his neck.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again,” he groaned as he held his beloved tight against his soot-speckled outfit.

“The same thoughts crossed my mind, Ethan. I thought I had seen the last of you.”

They held each other tight for a few more moments until Ethan finally broke the silence and chuckled, “I’m assuming Férfa dressed you for your return journey? I suppose I should be thrilled that you’re at least wearing clothes. I hope the knights at the gate didn’t give you too much trouble.”

She just giggled in response, eyes still shut and entrapped in his thin arms. “I saw your tattoos on your face and that your eyes are continuously blue. I’m assuming you’ve had to use a lot of Wizardcraft these passed ten days?”

“Aye, I’ve evacuated every village in Vhar, two folks at a time.”

“Did you go to Taedroke?” asked May as they finally separated their torsos to look into each other’s eyes.

His heavily tattooed face became grim and he nodded slowly. “Aye, it’s lost. The Sun Cats have destroyed the whole barony with their flaming bodies. I’ve heard that some refugees have come north though.”

The Wizard continued, “I fear that most of the Three Baronies will fall to these beasts throughout the land. They mean to slaughter us all. It appears that Greenwell City is the safest place to be.”

“Not if the Troll is here,” whispered May.

Ethan nodded solemnly. “We have to check on your mother and the others. Then we need to check with Baron Fernhollow, and see what news he has of outside the city.”

May looked down to Ethan’s hand, blistered and charred as it was. “What in the Soul Wastes happened to your hand? That burn looks fresh!”

“I grabbed a Sun Cat by the face.”

May looked back up into his tattooed blue-eyed face with a look of shock. “Small price to pay,” he began as he started to turn around towards the statue of Lady Quinn, “to save an innocent life.”

They turned to behold Nythee standing small and nervously alone aside the moss-speckled fountain. The Wendlithian girl hugged herself and her chin quivered.

“Who’s that?” whispered May as her and Ethan began walking forward hand in hand.

“Her name is Nythee. She’s an orphan that I rescued from Taedroke as the Sun Cats burnt and slaughtered the populace.”

The two adults walked forward to Nythee, and May knelt down before her.

“Hello, Nythee, my name is May Kinsley. I’m this Wizard’s very good friend. You’re going to be safe now, alright?”

Nythee nodded shakily as May grinned warmly at the child. The woman stood back up and grasped Nythee’s hand as the trio strode into the Forester’s Compound.

As they cautiously strode up the stairs and skulked through the corridors of the headquarters of the disbanded Foresters of the Three Baronies, the nerves of Ethan and May began to fray more and more. None of the remaining Foresters were about. No voices echoed through the stone halls. No stirrings could be heard behind any closed door. That is until they neared the grandmaster’s office.

The door to Bethany’s office was closed tight, like all the doors that they had encountered thus far within the building, but beyond it they could hear some muffled pained moaning. The faces of all three individuals streamed beads of sweat. Ethan firmly but gently pushed Nythee to the side away from the door and gave her a look with his blue faintly-glowing eyes that said, “Stay here.”

His azure orbs gazed from the child to May. The warrior-woman soundlessly slid her stone Woodfolk dagger from her buckskin belt and she gripped it steadfastly in her white-knuckled fist. She nodded her readiness to the Wizard and Ethan nodded back to her in confirmation.

His blistered tattooed hand inched to the door knob and slowly he grasped it in his fist. He drew in a long, steady breath and closed his eyes, and following a long, slow exhale he turned the knob and threw his shoulder into the door with all of his weight.

The Wizard and the warrior darted into Bethany Kinsley’s office, May with her Woodfolk blade brandished menacingly forward behind her rage-contorted face and Ethan with his blue eyes ablaze with luminescence and his tattooed hands in fists before him. Nythee shut her eyes as hard as possible and covered her ears with her shaking hands as she slid down the wall until she sat on her butt in the hall outside the door, her forehead pressed against her blackened knees.

Bethany Kinsley, grandmaster of the recently-disbanded Foresters of the Three Baronies, sat calmly at her desk in her high-backed wooden chair. Her bright clear green eyes gazed amusedly at her daughter and her daughter’s lover. “Calm down, you two, I’m alright. I have the Troll captured right here.”

The middle-aged small woman motioned with her hand to the floor on the left side of her desk. There, bound in numerous thick coils of hemp rope and with a tight gag wrapped around his mouth, was Kraegovich. The old enormous Forester was wearing only his trousers and a single hide boot, both of which were soaking wet, and his face was speckled in silver whiskers. His bloodshot brown eyes were wide and pleading and the left side of his face was much bruised.

“It has assumed Kraegovich’s form and gained entry to the city, on high guard as it is, by swimming and clawing his way determinedly up the Three Baronies River. Trust me when I say that it took all eight of us Foresters remaining here in the Compound to contain it. And it cost the others their very lives. But here, May and Ethan, is the Troll, a plague in the heart of the Foresters no more.”

Bethany looked into the face of the bewildered Wizard and commanded, “Use your Wizardcraft, Ethan. Destroy this fiend!”

Ethan stammered nothing in particular and looked from her to Kraegovich, the Troll, with a face contorted with anxiety.

Bethany stood and screamed in a surprisingly deep voice, “Do it, Wizard! Kill him!”

A startled Ethan jumped at her forceful command and mumbled shakily, “I don’t know how, Bethany. My transportation powers will be of no use to the Troll. I could drop it from the clouds and it would only heal itself to begin anew.”

The Troll in Kraegovich’s form whimpered and struggled violently against his bonds that held his arms at his sides and his legs tight together. His brown eyes looked up to Ethan and welled with tears. May pushed angrily passed Ethan and abruptly kicked the beast across the face with her booted foot. Its head snapped back and blood spurted from his nose as he rolled over unconscious, his back to the two companions.

“No, don’t waste your energy, daughter! You can’t hurt him!” screeched Bethany in an uncharacteristically panicked tone.

May and Ethan both looked confusedly at their grandmaster. Bethany regained her composure and settled herself back in her chair. “I apologize. My stress level is somewhat high at the moment,” the older woman explained.

Ethan looked down at the Troll’s blood spattered on the floor around its unconscious form. He looked at crimson blood.

He ambled slowly forward to stand beside May, all the while eyeing Kraegovich dangerously. “I think I know what to do. Give me your knife, May,” whispered Ethan.

May hurriedly handed it over, trusting in her companion. He bounced the stone blade easily in his hand, and growled, “This Troll ends today, once and for all!”

In a flash he swung the dagger in a hard backhand swing from left to right and it sliced Bethany viciously across her pale face. Oily black blood splattered from the grandmaster’s pained shocked face and speckled thickly across the surface of her hardwood desk. Bethany rolled from her chair and thudded into the floor on the opposite side of her desk from Kraegovich’s silent form.

“Ethan!” screamed May as she grabbed a fistful of his cloak, meaning to pull him backwards.

He unclasped his cloak so that she fell backwards with the garment clenched in her grip. The Wizard darted forward and dropped to his knees beside the prone form of Bethany, and he plunged the blade into her neck again and again. Black fluid flooded over his violent slippery hands and splattered into his face and clothes as well as the desk and floor.

May threw the cloak to the side and launched herself to her feet in time to see Ethan sever his victim’s spinal column and tear the head free with a rip and a crunch. Holding it by a fistful of its dark brown hair, he stood shakily to his feet. He was covered in thick, oily black blood and he tossed the head behind the desk with a dull wet thud.

May staggered towards Ethan, pale and weeping in horror and confusion, and he dashed up to her, wrapping her in a firm embrace and holding her back from the ruin of her mother’s headless form. She sobbed feverishly into his shoulder as she choked, “What have you done, Ethan? What have you done?”

He held her head tight against his neck and he replied, “That wasn’t your mother, May. Your mother is gone. That creature behind the desk is the Troll. It must have taken Kraegovich captive when we left him to do battle with the beast, and it entered the city with him. The Troll has taken the form of your mother and has killed all of the rest of our Forester comrades. You saw her blood, May! Think of what you saw just now! Kraegovich is alive. We’ve got to help him.”

May struggled against him and the warrior forcefully threw the Wizard back away from her. She took a couple quick steps forward towards the ruin of her mother, but stopped dead in her tracks. Her face became paler and her mouth and eyes widened in horror.

Bethany, headless and enveloped in her own pitch slick gore, smoothly lifted herself from the floor and stood horrifically erect aside her desk. She determinedly strode back behind the desk and bent over to retrieve something from the wet black floor. In terrifying conclusion, she stood back up and in an ultimate macabre and grotesque spectacle she held her decapitated head unto the shredded ruin of her throat. Black bloody tendrils of flesh snaked upward from the meaty neck and connected to the head, and in but a moment her skull was reattached to her blood-soaked body in its Forester’s armor.

Bethany’s face, speckled in black globs of greasy fluid, broke into a vile predatory grin and she snarled in throaty deep voice, “Is that all you have got for a plan, human?”

May stumbled backwards in the utmost horror and her heel caught upon the corner of a messy rug. She fell hardly onto her bottom as the Troll in her mother’s form prowled forward, her fingers claw-like and tense.

“This will be slow, ‘daughter’. And, with you three dead my task shall be completed, done after a millennium of frustration and pain,” it sneered through bared teeth stained with black blood.

Suddenly, Ethan stepped between the two.

“I think not, Troll. You’re done here. It’s time to leave,” he growled menacingly.

The Troll chuckled mirthlessly and spoke, “What is it you intend to do, Wizard? Whisk me away to the bottom of the sea? No matter the crushing depths, I’ll still find my way back here. Will you whisk me away to the rim of the sky? I’ll gather myself together from the fall. Will you leave me stranded in some foreign strange land on the backside of the world? I’ll find my way terribly back to you. There is no way to rid your Three Baronies of me! Just lie down and die, fools!”

As it spoke this it began to change, increasing in height and girth as it began assuming its true horrible form for the first time in centuries. Bones popped and contorted beneath darkening flesh and muscle, and its voice continually grew deep and more feral, alien almost to any comparable vocal chords. Its borrowed clothing ripped and shredded from its growing figure to lie in heaps and tatters about its quivering feet. When its statement was completed, so too was its terrible transformation.