A Touch of Magic (26 page)

Randall spent the next few days in captivity following the same routine. He would usually be allowed to stretch his limbs, drink, and sometimes get something to eat. He would always be drugged before being put back into the wagon. He was pretty sure that his captors didn’t realize that the drugs didn’t keep him sleeping for very long. On the third day, as he was getting placed back in the wagon, he decided to test a theory he’d been mulling over.

Whatever drug they were giving Randall took a few minutes to take effect. Usually he would lie in the back of the wagon and let the drunken wooziness overtake him until he passed out. This time, instead of waiting for the drugs to take effect, he tried to summon magic from Llandra. He hoped the power would come quickly. If he failed, he’d have to wait until the next time he was let out to try again. But he had never tried to do it while drugged! Fortunately, just as the waves of dizziness began to crash into him, the power came.

And Randall had a purpose for it. His captors were right: he couldn’t really say any words of power with a wad of rag in his mouth. But there was something else he could do—something he had seen Master Erliand do once before. Randall took the power he was gathering and pushed it down into the talisman still hidden under his shirt.

A tiny trickle of magic flowed into the talisman, but it wasn’t anything like what Randall was expecting. When charging a rune for the first time, it was almost as if the artifact sucked out as much power as it needed to start functioning. But the healing talisman didn’t greedily suck up the power. Instead, it pushed back. He could force power into it, but it didn’t go willingly. He pushed harder, trying to break through the resistance.

It worked! Randall felt the talisman grow cold on his chest as it accepted more power. The harder he pushed, the more energy trickled into it, but it was a herculean struggle. He pushed with every ounce of his will, but was only able to get the artifact to accept a tiny fraction more. Still, he felt all of the cobwebs in his brain being swept away. The healing talisman was fighting the effects of the drugs, just as he had hoped!

The act of powering up the talisman was much more difficult than Randall had imagined it would be. That was a valuable learning experience, and it meant he’d have to take that into consideration in the plan he was forming. He remembered how exhausted Master Erliand had looked after he had charged the healing talisman, but had originally thought it was because doing so took so much power. Now he realized that Master Erliand’s weariness had more to do with the sheer effort involved.

Randall imagined that if he weren’t holding the talisman himself right now that he would be much worse off than his master had been. Luckily, the talisman itself seemed to be keeping the exhaustion at bay. That was another helpful piece of advice which he filed away for later consideration.

Half an hour later, Randall wished that he had let the drugs take effect. Laying in the wagon, looking at the canvas walls was mind-crushingly dull. And being full of vim and vigor from the effects of the talisman, he couldn’t even get himself to fall asleep to pass the time. Still, being awake for an entire day meant that he got a good measure of his captors routine. They traveled constantly, taking a rest every couple of hours before switching riders and pressing on.

Randall had delivered a fair amount of flour with his mother, and so he had a good idea how much a cart horse could travel in a day. While it might seem like the men were taking a leisurely pace, he knew that they were pushing their horses too hard. He thought that the horses must be close to the end of their endurance, especially taking into consideration that the trio was traveling all night, too. At this pace, they were probably making thirty or forty miles a day, which had to be murder on the animals. He assumed that they had to be close to their destination, wherever that was, because there was no way the horses would last much longer under these conditions.

Later in the day, the wagon came to a stop earlier than Randall expected. Even though he was trussed up in the back of the wagon, he could hear Brody talking to someone whose voice he didn’t recognize, and could also hear the sound of running water. Soon, the wagon started up, but they traveled only for a few feet before stopping again. Then the wagon lurched and slid smoothly sideways and began to bob steadily, pulling Randall’s stomach up into his throat

They must be on a ferry! That gave Randall a pretty good idea which direction the men were heading. The only river he knew of near Paranol was the Great Red River. The Great Red River came pouring out of the Ironpike Mountains and bisected Tallia, neatly separating the East and West coasts. After that, Randall’s knowledge of geography failed him. In his mind, anything east of the Great Red River was faraway and exotic. He assumed that they were traveling in the direction of Ninove, the capital, but he had no idea how much further they had to travel, or what stops they might make along the way.

It took a long time to cross the river, longer than Randall would have expected. At one point, he feared that he had guessed incorrectly and that they might actually have gone to the coast instead and had smuggled him onboard a seafaring vessel. But after a little over an hour, the ferry touched down on the far shore, and the wagon began moving again.

Shortly after reaching dry land, the wagon stopped and Randall could hear Brody and Declan arguing heatedly. Soon their voices were carrying loud enough for him to make out what they were saying.

“I’m telling you, Brody, we need to take the normal route! We don’t know what the country’s like the way you want to go!” There was concern in Declan’s voice.

“Yeah, and if we go the normal route, it’ll be nearly three months before we reach the capital,” Brody shot back hotly. “I would like to get paid before then. It’s only four weeks if we cut around north of Red Lake.”

“No towns that way, either,” Declan retorted. “Which means we don’t get paid for half of our run.”

“And I told you that the boy’s worth more than triple anything we’d make along the regular route,” Brody shot back quickly. “And there’ll be nobody around to stick their noses into our business.”

“Fine. Have it your way. But we take six weeks. And that’s pushing it,” Declan said firmly, his voice sounding resigned. “We can’t keep riding the horses at this pace, Brody. They’ll founder! Then we won’t be going anywhere!”

“Fine!” Brody retorted. “Six weeks! I’ll abandon the whole damn cart if I have to. You know the boy’s worth the cost.”

That seemed to be the end of the conversation, as Randall heard no more from either man. It was the most he had ever heard Declan speak in one sitting. He had no idea how many times the men had carried out this particular argument before, but it sounded like one that they had rehashed many times. If he had not used the healing talisman to ward off the effects of the sleeping draught, he would have likely missed it this time, as well.

Six weeks! That would be an eternity trapped in this wagon the entire time! He would have to find an opportunity to escape soon, but there was still time enough to refine his plan. If he could get his elven dagger away from Brody, he thought he might even have a chance of defeating the men in combat, if it came to that.

After the argument, the caravaners traveled at a much gentler pace than they had been taking. Breaks were longer, and the group no longer traveled at night. That suited Randall’s purposes nicely, as it gave him more opportunities to survey the inside of the wagon while the men were away building campfires or foraging for food. If he was going to escape, he would have to figure out how to get out of these bonds, for sure!

Each time Randall was drugged and placed into the back of the wagon, he would summon magic to charge up the healing talisman under his tunic before the drugs had a chance to take effect. It was good practice, and with his newfound sense of purpose, he found that he preferred to be awake and ready for any opportunities that presented themselves.

Randall had already located several nails and pegs inside the wagon that thought he could use to leverage the gag out of his mouth, but he still hadn’t found a good way to get out of his rope bonds. There was a crossbow that Brody kept lashed to one of the crossbeams holding up the wagon’s roof, but the weapon was of no use to him until he got free of his bonds. He just didn’t have enough mobility to reach it, and the crossbow bolts probably weren’t sharp enough to cut through his ropes in any case.

Randall tried to get Berry interested in his bonds, but immobilized and gagged, there wasn’t much he could do to influence his friend. Occasionally Berry would pluck at Randall’s gag, or examine the rope knots as if he found them interesting. Whenever that happened, Randall would nod furiously and try to say “yes” to encourage Berry, but the donnan always grew bored quickly and skittered away, presumably to find something more interesting to do.

The little creature seemed to have a natural distrust for the three caravaners, though, as he never grew comfortable enough to reveal himself to the men. Every time one of the caravaners was near, the sprite would immediately fade from view and quiet down. Randall was glad to see that his friend had not lost its wild instincts. He had no idea what would happen if one of the men happened to catch a glimpse of the donnan.

Still, bound as he was, Randall used his time productively. He would spend his days planning his escape, as well as practicing magic. He spent most of his time drawing power from Llandra, though, as there was little other magic he could do while trussed up. Eventually, he learned to consistently draw power at different rates. He could draw power in quickly, like a whip crack, or draw in very small amounts, slowly over a long period of time. The latter ability would come in handy if he needed to draw power stealthily, without being detected by other Mages or Seers.

Likewise, Randall became proficient at utilizing his power in smaller increments, as well. He had never practiced much at conserving power before. Previously, every spell he had cast or rune he charged had sucked all of the energy out of him at once, leaving him spent. But since charging the talisman was slower work and took more effort than spell casting, he had the luxury of being able to analyze the sensations as they happened, and soon learned to regulate how much energy he doled out, and how much he was able to keep in reserve.

     One morning, Randall heard the men talking agitatedly at the campfire shortly after they had put him away after breakfast. They never were really close enough for him to make out much of what they were saying, but he could sense that something was wrong in the manner in which they spoke. They sounded upset, but they weren’t yelling at each other. Rather, they spoke in hushed, clipped tones.

Then, without further warning, Randall heard all of the men scrambling wildly. One of the men leapt into the front of the wagon, though he was not in a position to easily see which one. Whoever it was, he spurred the horse with a loud yell, and Randall could hear the crack of the reins as the driver laid them into the horse’s flanks. The horse immediately broke into a gallop, throwing the contents of the wagon from side to side, Randall included. He could hear the other men following closely on horseback.

Whoever was driving the wagon did so with reckless abandon. The vehicle bounced hard as they ploughed into ruts and clumps of earth. Randall bounced along with it, like a sack of flour, tossed this way and that, slamming painfully into the bottom of the wagon with each jolt. He hoped that one of the men had decided that he had a change of heart about kidnapping a child, and was making a run for freedom. More likely, though, one of the men had decided to double-cross the other two by spiriting their captive away and claiming the reward for himself.

Randall would be happy if that was the case, though. One man would be much easier to deal with when he made his escape than a trio of men would be. If this madcap wagon race didn’t kill him first, that is. On more than one occasion, Randall felt the breath driven out of him as a bump lifted the wagon off of the ground, only to have gravity reassert itself and slam him painfully into the floorboards.

After one particularly mighty jolt, Randall found himself tossed a good two feet into the air, landing on his shoulder with a painful crunching sound. He was sure his shoulder was dislocated, and he gave out an involuntary scream which could be heard even through the gag. Afterwards, he rolled on the bottom of the cart, moaning in agony. A harsh voice shouted from the front of the cart.

“Shut up back there!” It was Declan!

He was pretty sure that Declan hadn’t had a change of heart about kidnapping him. The close-mouthed caravaner had been the man most vocal about slitting Randall’s throat. In that case, his other theory was probably the correct one: Declan was trying to get all of the reward money for himself! That didn’t bode well. He figured that Declan would just as soon slit his throat and claim the smaller reward than go through the elaborate threats and confinement that Brody preferred.

Declan yanked the wagon sharply to the left, and Randall slid across the floor causing pain to flare up in his shoulder and another moan forced itself out from between his lips. But something else had also happened as he slid across the floor: the ropes that had been wrapped tightly around his torso and arms had slipped up over his dislocated shoulder. He could wiggle free!

Fearing that he was dead if Declan managed to escape Tobsen and Brody, Randall bit down hard on the wad of cloth in his mouth and desperately began wiggling and twisting, trying to move more loops of rope up over his slumped shoulder. The pain was immense enough without the occasional lurch and bump that would toss him into the air and slam him back into the floor. These incidents caused him such intense pain that all he could do was lie on the floor and gasp for a few minutes before resuming his efforts. Eventually, though, he managed to wiggle out of enough knots that he could slide the rest of the ropes over his head, leaving only his wrists bound together behind his back with a simple knot.