The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3) (26 page)

"Begging your pardon," Geric added.

"Let’s go find out," Grange suggested.  "We ought to eat together on our first night together."

"As you command, my Champion," Jenniline replied with a roll of her eyes.

When the group entered the humble space of the servant’s dining hall, a few of the servants left, and many others scrutinized the appearance of Jenniline – who everyone knew was a princess – and Grange – who was still unknown to many of them.

But when they quietly picked up trays of food then sat unobtrusively in a corner of the room and kept to themselves, the atmosphere in the hall relaxed, and they were soon forgotten, while they enjoyed their delicious meals.  Afterwards, they left the hall in the deepening gloom that was falling outside, and agreed on their walk to the tower that the food was at least as good as what the nobility ate.

“Of course, the King’s table still gets the best of everything,” Listrid said.  “But the servants don’t get short shrift.”

They climbed the stairs and rediscovered the two pieces of furniture that had not been moved from the roof, but Grange used the energy to waft them into their respective places, before saying good night to everyone.

“You don’t need any help with anything?” Geric asked as Grange stayed on the roof.

“No, I’ll just sit up here and work with my wand,” he told them.  The results of using the light power to levitate objects – the change from the intended use had substantially reduced the effectiveness of the power he had stored in the wand – made him want to experiment with the energy and the wand and a number of different iterations of combining intent and action, to see if he could overcome the loss of endurance.  He would ask Brieed about it as well.

He thought the last thought, about asking Brieed, and he decided to send the question to Brieed at that moment.  Though the master wizard might not receive Grange’s request, if he did, he could send the answer the next morning.  If he did not, Grange would simply ask it again in the morning, and wait another day for the answer to come.

“Master Brieed,” he began, energizing his message so that the words flew towards the rising moon on the eastern horizon, leaving softly glowing trails through the sky as they traveled.  He explained what had happened and what he would like to correct.  When he was finished he was satisfied, so he sat down and began to focus on filling his wand.  The sky had grown completely dark, as the waxing moon hung low in the east, while Grange sat and watched the glowing process of energy that only he could see, power that congregated from the seeming nothingness of the air, and fell and slid together at the tiny vortex where it all entered the wand.

The activity was mesmerizing, Grange found, when he discovered that his legs were stiff from having sat still so long.  He had tried to alter the purpose of the energy that he stored in the wand – some of it was for levitating, some was light, some was heat, some was loud sounds – but he hadn’t needed to physically move to make the purpose of the energy change.

He stood up, aware that the moon had risen and the stars had moved and the night was passing rapidly.  He needed to get some sleep in order to be sure to wake up in time to “converse” with Brieed, he realized.

Grange decided to empty the wand of its energy with a spectacular discharge of its stored energy, one that many people would not see because they had already gone to bed.  He looked across the islands of light spread out through the city, and spotted the total darkness that loomed outside the gates.

It would be harmless to create a storm that spewed its wrath on the harbor outside the city, he told himself with a grin.

He spoke to the wand, “Energy, find the harbor, and raise its waters as rain that falls back down on the harbor, within sight of the city, but safely outside the city,” he began the commands.  He pointed the wand up in the sky, and watched as a beam of energy emerged and arched instantly through the sky.

“Energy, create light of all colors, to flicker and flash above the open waters of the harbor,” he added, and shook the wand dramatically, sending bolts of energy searing away.

“Energy, create the sounds of thunder that rattle windows, and make them clash above the harbor waters,” he directed again.

He felt the multiple streams of power leaving the wand, bright streaks that flared through the night sky, heading north towards the harbor.

Lights began to flicker on the horizon, and their illumination revealed sheets of water moving through the air, some rising and some falling.  The flashes of lights began to grow more constant, turning from intermittent light amidst the darkness to intermittent moments of darkness among the nearly constant colored lights, while booming and howling noises dimly filtered all the way back to where Grange stood, observing the spectacle.

The rays of energy emitted from his wand trickled to a halt, as the wand was emptied once again.

Grange stood and watched, waiting for the end of the flow of his energies to reach the dramatic storm, so that the tempest would also diminish.  But the minutes passed, and the storm continued to churn.  If anything, it appeared to Grange to be growing more powerful, feeding upon itself, as if he had created a monstrous disaster that had become self-sustaining.

“Energy, dampen the storm!” he called out.  He tucked the now-useless wand in his belt, and held his arms wide, his fingers pointed at the harbor.  The power began to condensate from the atmosphere, becoming visible as it gathered along the length of his arms, in a scene that was extraordinary to watch.  It gathered with increasing speed, and slid along his arms at an increasing pace, while it conglomerated upon his hands, forming a quivering, glowing ball of energy, that suddenly launched itself outward from his fingertips with a speed greater than arrows released from bows.

The glowing energy flew through the air, receded from sight as it gained distance, and for a long moment, nothing happened.  Then, as Grange waited anxiously, his heart pounding, his arms still held suspended in the air because he didn’t think to lower them, the storm abruptly ceased.

The noises quit and the air fell silent, as one or two last flickers of light marked the end of the unnatural storm.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” a woman’s voice spoke in a shrill tone behind him, and a forceful blow buffeted his back, sending him staggering forward unexpectedly.

He whirled around to face his unknown assailant, ready to draw his sword, then stopped in a split second, as he immediately recognized who had joined him on the roof.

It was Shaine, the goddess of punishment, physically present and standing before him, her eyes glowing red.

“My goddess,” he said in shock, and he dropped to one knee.  She had to be there because of the storm he had just formed, he was sure.

“Do you know what a disaster you almost unleashed on this city?” her next words confirmed his suspicion.  “If you hadn’t dampened that monstrosity within the next minute, it would have grown and moved and killed dozens of people; it would have destroyed every ship in the harbor.

“Did you even know what you were doing?” she was screeching at him.  He had never thought that he would see a deity appear so angry, especially with wraith aimed at him.  He felt a tremor of fear run through his body.

She strode forth and approached him, then stretched her arm forth, her hand hovering in front of his face.  “I can’t do anything to you at the moment,” she hissed, “because of the role you must play.  But I owe you severe punishment, and I want you to know it and remember it.”  Her hand slid forward, one finger extended, and it pressed him on the forehead, right where his hairline began, as he squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of pain.

“Here is my mark,” she told him.

The pain struck him like a blast of fiery heat from an open oven, only a hundred times worse, as it began at the single point of contact at her fingertip, and radiated outward.  It made him shriek in terror, a long wail of pain and despair.

And then the pain receded.   It drew back from afflicting all parts of his body to only the single spot on his scalp, and then that too disappeared.

He opened his eyes cautiously, worried about what the goddess would do next.

She was gone.  There were two people standing by the staircase, Jenniline and Geric, staring at him.  He could see them clearly, by the light of a reddish glow, a glow that was emenating from him, he realized in shock.  He looked down at himself and saw that his flesh and his clothing both were growing dimmer, but still retained a vestigial glow as a result of the touch of the goddess.

“Grange?  Are you alright?  What happened?” Jenniline asked in a shaky tone.  “I thought I saw someone standing with you for a split second, and then you were alone, looking like that, with your glow and your hair the way it is.”

Grange felt a release, and partially collapsed, leaning forward to rest on his hands as well as his knees.  As he did, he saw the last of the glow from the goddess’s touch fade away.  He gagged and retched, then looked up, a haggard expression on his face.

“I’ve had another encounter with Shaine,” he gasped.  “That was her you saw visiting.”

He stood up and staggered over to them.  “I need some water,” he said.

“I’ll fetch it immediately,” Geric answered, then ran downstairs.

“Have a seat,” Jenniline motioned towards his bed, where he did sit down.

“I was testing my powers with a storm over the harbor,” Grange explained, “and Shaine said it was too dangerous.  She punished me, and promised more, later.

“It was terrible,” he added.

“Are you feeling better now?” Jenniline asked.

“My body is better,” he told her, as Geric arrived with the water.  Grange paused to use the pitcher.  “It hurts just to remember what it felt like.

She marked you,” Jenniline told him.  “You have red streaks in your hair.”

“Thank you,” he belatedly told Geric.  “That helped.  I feel better.  I’m going to rest now, and you two can go back downstairs and do the same.  I’ll call if I need anything.”

They both bid him to sleep well, and then left with worried looks on their faces, while he lay on his bed, too wounded to undress, and relived the pain of Shaine’s touch over and over until he finally fell asleep.

Chapter 19

Grange awoke with the arrival of dawn in the eastern sky.  He sat up groggily, his poor night’s sleep disturbed by various nightmares of the goddess Shaine torturing him through eternity.  He put his hand to his scalp, wondering if the redness Jenniline had described had been smears of blood from the painful wound Shaine had inflicted upon him, but his hair did not feel matted or damp.

He rose and went downstairs to the bottom floor of his tower enclave, then created a floating globe of light as he stood in front of the only mirror in his rooms, and looked at the mark of the goddess.  Five bright red streaks all emanated from the same point just left of center at his scalp line, and spread broadly out, finely defined marks that traveled to the far ends of his hair.

“Admiring yourself?” Jenniline asked from the doorway of her room.

“How do you think the court will react to the news that Shaine has marked me for punishment?” Grange asked.

The princess paused.  “Those who don’t like you will continue to not like you,” she told him.  “I think, personally,” she said after a further momentary pause, “it makes you seem that much more dangerous if the goddess herself is paying that much attention to you.  She must see you as something special.”

“It’s an honor I’d pass on,” Grange said wryly.  “I’m going to go to the harbor front to see what it looks like,” he told her.  “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“Don’t forget you’ve got a princess interview today,” she told him as he headed out the door.

Grange left the palace grounds and walked down to the harbor.  A large number of fishermen were on the docks, tending to their boats and nets.  Grange listened to their comments as he walked among them, listening to the relief they all expressed that no great damage had been done by the storm.

“That was the worst storm I’ve ever seen,” several said, as they all pondered its inexplicably fast development from clear skies, and its equally abrupt disappearance. 

“The gods must have been playing,” one said.

Satisfied that no harm was done, Grange walked back towards the palace, but stopped when he found his path crossing the square in front of the temple of Huem.  On the spur of the moment he turned and entered the temple to contemplate his future, hopeful that the same priest who had counselled him before might be available to talk.

Moments after he sat down, the man appeared and took a seat in the next pew over.

“Are we going to convert you to be a follower of Huem?” the priest asked whimsically.

“Perhaps,” Grange grinned.  “He’s not likely to do things like this to me, is he?” Grange asked as he pointed to the red streaks in his hair.

“You’ve had a conversation with Shaine, I see,” the priest remarked.  “She only marks the ones she really is concerned about.  Either she thinks you’re already too great for her to control, or she thinks she has to prevent you from growing beyond her control.  It’s a sign of a healthy respect from the goddess.  Not many mortals ever receive such a mark.

“You should be honored,” he added.

Grange laughed at the comment that echoed Jenniline’s earlier observation.  He thought about the princess, then abruptly remembered that he was supposed to have another exchange of messages with Brieed.  He stood up.  “I apologize, I have to go,” he told the priest.

“Have a good day, and don’t worry about Shaine,” the man said as he stood.  It seemed strange, Grange thought, for a priest to advise not to be concerned.

Grange left the temple, then stood outside and looked up at the moon on the western horizon.  He’d have to hurry to deliver his message and receive the return before it fell below the horizon.

“Master Brieed,” he said urgently, standing amidst the moving traffic of the square, urging his words to travel as quickly as possible.  “I will be ready to receive your message as soon as you can send it.  I hope all is well.  Please tell me how the troubles in Palmland are going, and how I can help,” he pleaded, as he watched the glowing words of his message shoot across the western sky towards the moon.