A Touch of Magic (31 page)

Edwin nodded. “Aye, that’s a hard one on the throat. It’s demonic, too. Three times? Incredible! How many times did you have to hear it before you picked it up?”

“Just once,” Randall croaked, his voice raw.

“Once? Incredible.” Edwin breathed. “You’re a prodigy. An idiot savant. You can parrot back words, sounding like a master, and you have no idea what you’re doing. What am I going to do with you?”

Randall’s heart swelled with pride. Finally, he had open confirmation that he
was
special, that he wasn’t doomed to be a second-rate failure. Not only was he a Mage, one of a rare and unique breed, but even among them he had an extraordinary gift. Edwin had said so! Randall’s mind swam with visions of a future where he was feared and respected by all as a great and powerful Mage. But that would be far in the future. As long as the Rooks were in power, he would have to remain in hiding, keeping his abilities hidden. The realization brought Randall’s mind back to the present.

“Well,” Randall croaked, his voice a painful rasp. “You could teach me some spells. I can fight.” A tiny trickle of blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.

Edwin’s eyebrows knitted together in concentration. After a moment, he came to a decision. “I could, at that. You’re barely a young man, and it’s not right of us to ask you to take that risk. But we are going to need every able-bodied Mage we can get if we are to have any hope of winning. Let’s start out by cataloguing all of the spells you know.”

Randall nodded and tried to clear is throat. “I only know a couple more,” he said. “I know ‘tsan’laran’ and ‘vinn’.” The last word made Randall’s already abused throat close in a painful spasm. He broke out in a fresh round of coughing before he could mention the word ‘yaosheen’.

“Vinn? Hmm. Vinn,” Edwin repeated, trying to get the inflection correct. “It’s demonic, but it’s a word I’ve never heard. If I am translating it correctly, it means ‘to turn the flesh’ or ‘twisting the body’, I think. Something along those lines. What does it do?”

“It kind of...well, it kind of makes someone explode from the inside out, sort of,” Randall answered after a moment, his voice hoarse and barely audible.

Edwin’s eyebrows shot up, and he repeated the word again to himself, but Randall could tell that he didn’t have it quite right. After a couple of tries, he looked back toward Randall.

“Where did you hear that word? It’s not one of Erliand’s. Or at least it wasn’t the last time we met.” Edwin stated with a hint of accusation in his tone.

“Aidan,” Randall lied after a brief hesitation. The name was a barely audible wheeze. There was no other way Randall could explain how he knew the spell without letting the cat out of the bag about Berry, and luckily, with his voice failing, he didn’t have to try to explain further.

Edwin nodded. “Then this fight is going to be a lot tougher than we thought,” he declared, with a tone of foreboding.

“Why?” Randall asked. The word trailed off into a kind of high-pitched squeak as his voice gave out completely.

“This word of yours is a new demonic spell, unknown on Tallia. It’s a good bet that Aiden has made a pact with something sinister from Llandra. Something powerful.”

* * *

When Shawncy returned that afternoon, he and Edwin got into a large argument about Randall’s role in the upcoming war. Shawncy had hoped to keep the young man away from the fighting, at all costs. In his eyes, Randall was still a boy, to be protected from the atrocities of war. Edwin countered that if Randall was to be believed, he had already killed more men then the both of them had put together, and didn’t need any protecting. The two men ended up shouting at each other, both stubbornly clinging to their own point of view.

Edwin won out, after making it clear that Aidan had learned at least one new demonic spell, pointing to a pact with an unknown and powerful denizen of Llandra. Randall’s special gift with Words made him invaluable for turning the tide of battle against the Rooks. In the end, it was decided that he would learn some magic that would be practical in the upcoming conflict, and would spend the majority of his time practicing in the open country outside of Ninove.

The argument left Randall with mixed feelings. He wasn’t proud of the fact that he had been forced to kill in order to survive. And the men that he had killed were bandits and small-town militiamen. He had never had to stand up in a battle against an experienced Mage. Plus, he felt bad about lying about the origin of the Word ‘vinn’. He knew Berry wasn’t some great powerful demon from Llandra, bent on the enslavement of mankind. But where did Berry learn the Word, and why was it such a big deal? It was a puzzle that Randall could not resolve on his own.

He decided to ask Edwin about it. Though the man was a grouch, he seemed to take a more practical view of things than Shawncy did. Randall felt like he was more likely to get a straight answer from him, even if he gave it only to get Randall out of his hair.

“Edwin, why does it matter that Aiden knows a new spell?” Randall asked, after Shawncy had stormed out of the home to blow off steam. “Don’t Mages learn new spells all the time?”

Edwin snorted as if the question was ridiculously simple-minded. “Hardly,” he said. “Do you know where the Words you’ve learned came from?”

“Well,” Randall said, thinking. “Tsan’laran is elven. The rest are demonic, right?”

“Yeh,” Edwin grunted. “You know any words from your own tongue that can alter reality? No? Let that sink in a minute. Men don’t have a magical language. Every spell we know has come from one of the fae. You think they give up that knowledge easily? They don’t. Most fae work Llandra with Will. Only the most dangerous and cunning of them use spoken magic.

Elven Words are subtle, dealing with the mind and emotions. Demonic words, as you have seen, are more...dramatic. In all of recorded history, Mages have only learned a score of demonic Words. If Aidan has learned a new one, it does not bode well for us at all.”

Edwin’s answer did not sit well with Randall. In fact, he wished he hadn’t brought it up at all. It took his mind down dark and suspicious paths. He didn’t want to think of Berry as dangerous. He still preferred to think of him as a pet—a benevolent creature that could parrot spells. Why was that so unlikely? He could practically do the same thing.

The next day, Randall found himself camped out under the cold autumn sky several miles northwest of Ninove. Edwin and Shawncy had figured it would be as safe a location as any. Only the forbidding Ironpike Mountains lie in that direction, and so Randall was far from any trafficked road. The chances of running afoul of any Seer or Mage who could detect his use of magic was remote, and so he was free to practice to his heart’s content.

Berry had leapt from the travel sack as soon as they had left the confines of Ninove, eager to be free. After giving Randall a brief scolding, he took his customary place on the boy’s shoulder. Breaking into laughter, Randall found that all doubts that he may have had about his small friend had fled. There was simply no way that the words ‘sinister’ or ‘cunning’ described the donnan. Berry might be ‘dangerous’ perhaps, but only in the best sense of the word. Randall was relieved to know that his friend had his back when the chips were down and he was fighting for his life.

Randall was beginning to understand why Master Erliand had chosen to live so far from Geldorn. Out here, away from people, he and Berry were free to be themselves. They didn’t have to constantly be on guard for fear of alerting an ever-present enemy.

With Berry for company, Randall was beginning to feel like he could live out in the countryside and away from people forever. Of course, he couldn’t really do that, so long as the Rooks were in a position to hunt down those of his kind. Even living the life of a hermit, they would eventually track him down. They had found Master Erliand, after all.

True to his word, Edwin had given Randall a new Word to practice. He had been unable to repeat it back to the old Mage that day, owing to his abused and ravaged throat, but Edwin repeated it carefully several times, to ensure that he could remember it.

‘Alwyn-vysha’ was an elven word, used for hiding one’s presence. Being spoken magic, the spell was ‘external’ magic, and couldn’t be used on oneself. So, while it didn’t exactly make the caster invisible, it did the next best thing. Like all elven magic, it affected the mind of the target. Basically, anyone within range of the spell should simply fail to see Randall as he moved among them.

You don’t need to be invisible if nobody really notices you
, Randall thought. Of course, if he made too much racket, or forced someone to look right at him by moving directly in front of them, the effect would be lost. But for all practical purposes, he would be invisible. Anyone who would normally see and take note of him would find something more interesting to look at when he passed their way. Perhaps they would discover their boot laces needed retying, or perhaps they would find their attention caught by a bird or a pretty girl walking by. Those caught in the spell’s power would see virtually anything else when Randall passed their way.

It only took him a few tries to get the knack of the spell, though it didn’t seem to work on Berry at all. Randall would gather power, which came easily to him now, and he could feel it infusing the Word, joining power and purpose to create the spell. But, stubbornly, Berry would act as if nothing had happened. He would continue to chitter angrily at Randall whenever he was hungry, and in all ways behave completely normally. Randall began to suspect that he was doing something wrong, at least until dinnertime came around.

Randall began checking his snares, hoping one of them contained a rabbit or a woodchuck that he could use to supplement the night’s meal. Near one of his snares he spotted a large white hare that had evaded his trap. He froze, and the hare’s head popped up, sniffing the air as if sensing danger. He knew there was no way for him to catch the animal now, until he was suddenly struck by a flash of inspiration. He began drawing power from Llandra gently, so as not to spook the animal, and when he felt he had a sufficient amount, he spoke the Word he had been practicing all day, pitching his voice to just carry across the field.

The rabbit twitched its whiskers once, and then went back to nosing around the base of a bush, turning its back on him. His heart racing, Randall crept up on the animal until he was within arm’s reach. The animal never even looked up from its feeding as he eased his dagger out of its sheath and pounced.

We’ll be having meat with dinner tonight!
Randall thought to himself proudly as he quickly skinned and cleaned his kill.

Berry sat on his haunches, eagerly sniffing the cook-pot as Randall prepared their evening’s repast. As he often did, Berry would scamper off and bring back bits of leaves and twigs, hoping to make his own contribution to the meal. Randall would consider each one with mock seriousness before rejecting them. During one trip, Berry struggled to offer a plant with several large leaves, each much bigger than he was. Randall laughed at the sight of his friend pulling the uprooted plant this way and that, chittering angrily at it when the leaves would snag on a twig or a clump of grass. After watching him battle with the haul for a few moments, Randall got up to relieve his friend of the burden.

“Mustard greens!” Randall exclaimed as he examined the offering. “These will go great, actually!” He quickly stripped the stems from the large leaves and added them to the pot while Berry purred contentedly.

After the evening’s meal, both companions curled up under the large woolen blanket that was one of the few luxuries that he allowed himself for the trip. Soon they were fast asleep.

Sometime later, Randall was awakened by the sound of rapidly approaching hoof beats. Quickly rolling out of his makeshift bed, he grabbed his dagger and prepared to defend himself if necessary. He didn’t sense that the midnight visitor had gathered any magic, but Randall prepared himself for any possibility. He wasn’t supposed to return to Ninove for two more days, and only Edwin and Shawncy even knew where he was going to be camping, and even then, they only knew the general area.

Randall spotted the rider long before he reached the camp. It was Shawncy! He was easy to spot because of the long pole he held extended over his horse’s neck, like a lance. At the tip of the pole was a globe that was glowing so brightly that it made the area for a dozen yards around the horse as well lit as if it were the middle of the day. An elf light? Randall had heard about them in the folk stories his grandmother told him at bedtime as a small child, and he was certain he was seeing one of them now.

He waited patiently for Shawncy to approach, though he didn’t sheath his dagger. The reckless way that Shawncy was riding across the plains belied some sort of danger, and Shawncy’s body language screamed of panic. He didn’t have long to wait before he learned the news.

“Randall!” Shawncy cried as soon as he was within earshot. “You have to run!”

“What is it?” Randall asked as Shawncy closed the distance. “What’s happened?”

“It’s Edwin,” Shawncy breathed, sucking air in large gasps between words. “He’s been working for the Rooks!”

“No!” Randall cried in disbelief.

“It’s true,” Shawncy said, as his breathing began returning to normal. “He’s been giving them information for months, waiting until all of us were in Ninove, so they could take us all out in one clean strike. When Aidan heard about your gifts, I guess he decided to act early. They attacked all of our safe houses tonight! Many of us have already died. The battle still rages in the capital, but it’s hopeless. We’ve lost,” he finished with an air of despair in his voice, looking down at the ground in front of him.