The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3) (31 page)

It seemed a prodigious task to undertake, to create thousands of enchanted swords, he told himself.  He pulled his wand from his belt and began to idly charge it with energy as he strolled around contemplating the challenge ahead, even as he additionally questioned whether he truly understood the challenge.

He needed to talk to someone.   Huem’s priest seemed the logical choice.  The man had listened patiently every time Grange had gone to the temple, and he had offered sound advice each time.

But Grange felt a sense that he needed to attempt to see Acton again.  He’d been in the city for several days without conversing with his partner-deity, and he felt uneasy over the lack of communication. Yet he didn’t know a way to force Acton to open his door to Grange, and he didn’t want to be humiliated by Hockis yet again.

His choice seemed to come down to Huem’s priest or Brieed. Or both.

He looked up in the sky, at the eastern horizon, and saw to his relief that the growing moon was breaching the cloud remnants on the eastern horizon.  His opportunity had come, so he called upon the power to transport his words.

“Master Brieed, I hope you can hear me, and I hope all is well for Palmland and its forces.  There were clouds in the sky yesterday, preventing me from contacting you,” Grange began.

“I have a question, Master Brieed, about the use of power,” he started his story.  “I was with a friend who was hurt in an ambush, and I was angry.  I began to use the power, causing the energy to do many things immediately, without long requests or explanations – I just ordered things to happen and they did.  Some of them were easy, but some were more complicated.  I was full of concern and anger.

“Am I,” he paused as he shaped his question, then decided not to be delicate, “am I becoming a sorcerer?

“And I have another question too, if you would answer it,” he added after a pause.  “I had a conversation with the goddess Miriam, and she told me to recreate a weapon against the demons.

“Did she mean I can bring the jewels back to life?” Grange asked.

“If you could send answers, I would,” he stopped talking, as he heard a woman’s voice sudden speaking.

He turned around to look, and saw that Jenniline was standing at the top of the stairs, watching him.

But she was not talking, although the woman’s voice was speaking.

And it was speaking in a foreign tongue.  He shook his head, trying to orient his awareness, and the sounds of the voice became words, and held meaning.

“…your music made all the difference,” the woman was telling him, as he translated the voice.  “I owe you so much for helping to heal me.  Master Brieed says that this idea of making voices travel so far is your invention, which just goes to show that you’re even brighter than Selebe gave you credit for,” the woman spoke.

It was Lady Selene, Selebe’s younger sister in Palmland, the one who he had played music for at the birthday party on the boat so long ago – seemingly, and then just recently, he’d transmitted his music to be joined with Grace’s voice, to help heal the wounded lady.

“I’m so sorry that we weren’t able to invite you back to our home more often,” her voice continued in its monologue from far away.  “But Brieed tells me he expects that you will return someday, and I hope I’ll be able to thank you personally when you do.

“And we won’t be so shocked when we kiss next time!” she laughed lightly.

“Master Brieed was kind to let me send you my thanks; he wishes to speak to you, in that strange language of wizards that you know.  Be careful Grange.  We want to see you back here safely, soon,” she finished.

“Grange, I hope you receive this,” Brieed began to speak, reverting to the ancient language used by the power and the Southgar people.  “We did not hear from you yesterday, and so I’ve let the lovely Lady Selene express her thanks to you, as I test our communication.  Tomorrow will be our last day to speak from the palace – we’re abandoning the city and moving into the western mountains, into the fastnesses, strongholds, and castles there where we can hold off the invaders longer.

“I’ll communicate with you before we leave, and then after we’re on our way, I hope,” he said.

“I hope you’re well, and I look forward to hearing from you,” Brieed finished his abbreviated communication, and then his voice was gone.

“You have an admirer in the far off place, one who speaks the outsiders’ language?” Jenniline asked.  She had clearly heard the whole communication, and Grange recollected that she knew the common language, as she had communicated with him while he had been lost and witless in the wilderness.

“She is a member of the nobility, and they like to use flattery,” Grange replied carefully.  “I saved her life, and she was just being kind in saying thank you.”

“I was coming upstairs to thank you for saving my life, but I don’t want you to be burdened with too much appreciation,” Jenniline said.  She walked over and sat down on one of the chairs.

“Is she pretty?  Does she have the refined elegance those northerners are so proud of?” Jenniline asked.

“Bah, never mind,” she cut off Grange’s answers.  “What were the things you said to the people far away?  You think you are a sorcerer?” she searched his face with a piercing stare as she asked.

“After Brady’s ambush hurt you, I was angry,” Grange said.  “And I realized afterwards that I was,” he paused to describe his actions, “I was using my powers more easily than ever before as I punished Brady and his stooges.  I’m worried that it seemed to be too easy.”

“If you’re worrying that you’re doing something wrong, but you don’t know why it’s wrong, knowing you a little now, I’m sure it’s not anything to worry about,” Jenniline said.

“What did the goddess tell you when you saw her last night?” Jenniline asked.  “That’s something else you’re worried about?”

Grange stepped over and sat down in the other chair, still holding his wand and idly pouring energy into it as he talked, powering the wand without thinking.

“My adventures really started when I was working in a tunnel, and found a cache of jewels,” he began, and he proceeded to tell Jenniline the story of his life with the jewels, up until they were destroyed by the demon lord at Persole’s mine in the wilderness.

“And that’s how you ended up wandering to the Yellow Spring, where I found you?” she asked.  “I had no idea when I found you, obviously,” she stated.

“How will you create these jewel creatures?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Grange said.  He glanced down at the wand in his hands, as it continued to absorb the power he poured into it.

“Hope and Halsten kept me from killing Brady outright,” Grange told the princess.

“Do you know what the odds are on who I’ll pick as my mate?” he asked, as he recollected Hope’s claim that he and Jenniline had already become a couple.

The girl sitting in the other chair looked away, and Grange saw a slight flush on her cheeks.  “I haven’t checked recently,” she prevaricated.

“Who was the favorite last time you checked?” Grange asked.

“I am,” Jenniline said in a low voice, still not looking at him.

“Who is?” Grange asked again, pretending not to hear.

“I am!” she replied loudly, looking at him at last, with flashing eyes.

She saw the smile on his face, and leaned over to punch him.  “You knew that!”

“Hope told me she didn’t have to bother with her interview with me since I had already decided on you,” Grange told her.

“She’s going to be disappointed when she finds out you’ve really settled on her, isn’t she?” Jenniline asked with a note of false lightness in her voice.

“We’ll see,” Grange said.  His wand felt full of energy, he decided.  He stood up and pointed it at the sky overhead.

“What does that mean, ‘we’ll see’?” Jenniline demanded.

Grange released the energy in the wand, letting it spew forth a combination of colored smoke and strokes of lightning, as well as balls of glowing energy and peals of booming, explosive noises.  After several seconds he stopped the discharge.

“I still don’t expect that I’m going to live in Southgar for the rest of my life.  I’m not going to really wed anyone here; I’m not going to be the king here.  I’ll just fight this battle against the demons, and if I win, and if I live, then I’ll go on with my life, back in Palmland, or where ever,” he told her.

“But Acton said that you would become king here, and reunite the nation,” Jenniline protested.

“I know,” Grange acknowledged woefully.  He raised the wand again, prepared to discharge the rest of the power in it, to restart the cycle of preparing it for the impending ceremony.

“Stop,” Jenniline said.  “Can’t you do something less showy with that thing, instead of disrupting everyone’s day?”

“And you still haven’t answered the question I asked – are you going to choose Hope as your fiancée?  Even if you don’t truly marry her because you’re going to leave, won’t you choose her as the one?  Because you know that you and I just aren’t truly a pair,” she told him.

She had said it, out in the open, making him pause.  She had said that he shouldn’t choose her, that the two of them – Champion and Counselor – were not destined to be a pair, at least not in her eyes.

He had a sudden impulse, and knew something he could do with his wand, something she would not object to.  He raised it and pointed it at an angle into the sky, then gently commanded the energy within.  “Create a scent like flowers over the entire city,” he told the wand.  There was a glow at the end of the wand, as the energy within began to discharge, and the air around him immediately grew fragrant.  He watched as the glow spread out from the end of the wand, arcing through the air before it dissipated too widely for him to discern its reach.

“You’re right,” he told her.  “I would be honored if you would continue to be my counselor, but not my mate.  I think you have been very honest and good for me and very hard-working on my behalf.”  He felt a sense of relief at the thought that he wouldn’t ask Jenniline to marry him, and that convinced him it was the right decision.

“Well, I never would have expected that,” Jenniline said as she sniffed the air.

“The whole city can smell that now,” Grange said.

“When we first met, I never would have even dreamed of looking at you twice, if you hadn’t been such a pitiful mess.  And then when we broke you out of the dungeon, we only did it because Hope asked us to,” the princess explained.  “But now, I’ll admit, if there wasn’t something telling me that we aren’t right for each other, I’d probably be handling this conversation a great deal differently.”  She stood up, and walked to the steps.  “I’m going to go rest some more; I still feel weak.”

“Call me if you need anything,” Grange told her, as she left.

He sat back down, and took a deep breath.  The scene had certainly been unexpected, but perhaps necessary.  He knew that with Jenniline declared off-limits, Hope was the only one of the other princesses he felt comfortable asking to be his mate.  And if Jenniline’s reminder was right – if the prophecy of Acton overpowered Grange’s personal wishes – and Grange was destined to remain in Southgar and rule the nation, then Hope was the one who he would most appreciate as a spouse.

And he had done something unexpected with the wand, he realized.   Fragrancing the entire city with the power was not something he had ever expected to do, nor was it anything he was likely to do again.  But it had demonstrated that there were uses of the power that he had never considered before.

“Grange?” a voice called.

Grange, this is Brieed,” the man’s voice spoke.  “I hope you can hear me.  I’ll speak again later today, but I’m so struck by the report you’ve given that I have to respond immediately.

“If you have to ask whether you’re becoming a sorcerer, and if you know for a fact that there are no demons giving you your powers, then you are not a dangerous sorcerer.  The things you say you’re doing are incredible, but I’ll have to do some research in the old records to try to locate a reference I vaguely recall reading many years ago,” Brieed told him.

“Do not worry – you are not anything bad.  You’re something special,” Brieed told him, attempting to comfort him.  The man gave a quick laugh.  “The Lady Selene thinks you’re quite special at any rate; her eyes were sparkling the whole time she sent her message to you.

“But as for the notion that you might restore the jewels to existence, I have thought about it, and I cannot say that it is impossible.  If a deity told you about it, then it must be possible.  You would have to be able to pull back together the same essences of energy that had constituted the jewels in the first place, and that seems to be a very large order to fulfill.

I will do research on that as well, while I can.  Our withdrawal from the city is approaching quickly, so I must continue to pack and prepare for that, and I’ll pack as many scrolls as I can so that I can study them,” he offered.

“You keep doing what you do, and I’ll let you know when we settle into new surroundings,” Brieed told Grange.  “Good luck, my extraordinary student.”

Grange waited for any further words, but when none arrived, he resumed pacing on the tower.

Brieed’s message was a hopeful one, and it lifted his spirits.  He could manage to forget about Hope and Jenniline and marriage proposals and Acton and Shaine and other irritants in his life, and focus on the use of the energy.  Brieed had told him that his power wasn’t the power of an evil sorcerer, and that was good, although Grange knew too little about sorcerers to know what the alternatives might be.

He tried to imagine how he could possibly recreate the jewels.  Brieed’s idea of pulling back together the exact same energies that had constituted the jewels originally sounded far-fetched; Grange had only known one of the jewels deeply, and a pair of them not at all.  His intimacy with them had diminished with each new jewel he had encountered, he realized.

He abruptly stopped pacing, one foot still in the air, not yet on the ground when an idea struck him and froze him in place.  He could perhaps recreate the gems one at a time.  He could start with Ariana, the jewel he knew so well, and if he succeeded with her, she could guide him in the restoration of the others.