Born of Magic (Channeler Series) (28 page)

After many drawn out conversations and tiring games
, night came. We went to sleep almost excited that the war would be coming soon, as it meant we would hopefully be released. That night, I waited for the mage to come to my dream again; I knew he would come to hear my answer.

He arr
ived to find me waiting for him. I was quick to greet him with a punch directly to his chest. It knocked the wind from him and he fell to the ground, gasping for air. I then brought my foot against the side of his head as it was now at my level. I had contemplated for most of the day what I would do when I saw him again. I decided I needed to send a very clear message back to them. I was relentless this time.

I climbed on top of his back and pull
ed his head up by his forehead and then dreamed a sword into my hand. I held the razor sharp blade to his neck as he coughed, still gasping for air.

“You tell your people this,” I said with
a furious anger into his ear, “if they come into the North, and they will never leave.”

As I removed my hand from his forehead his face hit the ground, he rolled off to the side and crawled away. I was pleased with how that had gone.

“You will suffer for this,” he said as he disappeared from my dream.

We awoke that morning to
a deafening clanging sound. The general was standing outside of our cells, bashing his sword against the bars.

Tevon rose to his feet.
“Believe us now?”

The General’s words were quick and
fierce, with a fire in his eyes. “The river that supplies us with water dried up yesterday, today I find my fields ablaze. No soldiers or army, just this.”

Tevon wasted no time.
“Let us out. We can help your people.”

The General bashed his sword against the bars again, and the piercing sound hurt my ears
as it echoed throughout the stone-clad room mercilessly. “How do I know this isn’t your people’s doing?”

“What benefit would it serve for us to do this? We are mages. There is nothing your land could offer us tha
t we could not create ourselves,” Tevon said, frustrated with the general’s pigheadedness.

“The same could be said for the enemy you tell me is responsible for this. Perhaps that is just a story to distract us from the real enemy.”

I spoke up as loud as I could, “They despise us all for who we are. They don’t want anything from us but to see us perish.”

Astonished by my outburst
, the General walked over to my cell. “And you’re the little girl that can save us, aren’t you?”

I nodded.
“Yes, I am,” I said, genuinely confident that I could. Why else would the Southerners bothered to make me the same offer as many times as they had? They perceive me as a threat.

“
All right. You’ll have your chance to prove you’re trustworthy. How do you propose to save my people?”

Tevon answered
, with little hesitation, “I can replace your crops overnight and Yurios can take care of the river, even use it to put out the fires before they spread too much more.”

“
All right, do it,” The General said with a scowl expression, as though the words left a foul taste in his mouth.

We were released from our cells and e
scorted out of the castle. The General walked with us. “My men will come with you,” he said, and one of the guards was quick to see to the General’s command as he ran off to the barracks, returning with twenty well-armed soldiers that met up with us before we had reached the inner city wall.

“Fi
rst we need to see to the river,” Tevon explained.

“We wil
l take you there,” The General said as he continued to walk with us. He made it apparent he would be watching over us. “If I for one moment think you mean to betray us, Dhamlaic will make quick work of you.”

It didn’t take me long to realize that the man he spoke of was the one
who walked directly behind him. His eyes burned a hole in my heart as he gazed at me. He was not dressed in any armor; instead, he wore a cloak and had two short swords on his sides, his hands firmly wrapped around both. Though he found us his main targets for the time being, I was relieved to see someone as frightening as him on our side.

The sky was filled with smoke. Bits of ash floated through the air like snowflakes, coating the roofs and streets of the city. The smell of burning wood filled the air as the intense glowing red color of flames could be seen in the clouds they
bellowed. The smoke came from every direction; we were surrounded by fire, just as had been promised.

“Tr
y to not breathe it in too much,” Tevon warned me as he demonstrated how to use the collar of my shirt as a mask.

The
streets of the city were empty. Sets of eyes could be seen from inside the houses as they watched us march through the city. The two wooden gates leading out opened and a gust of heat burned my face just as it had in Caspere’s dungeon. The flames stretched as far as we could see.

Yurios turned to the general.
“Tell your people to prepare for a flood.”

The general hesitated for a moment, but gave the order.
“Barricade the door and seal it water tight with whatever we’ve got; the city walls shall be our people’s sanctuary.”  Two men broke off and returned to the city to begin spreading the word. I didn’t bother to ask what we would do when the flood came.

Our horses were returned to us as the king and his soldiers mounted their own. The horse
s were skittish around the fire, and I found it difficult to control Tip Toe. We all raced through the road as it was the only clear area. The fire burned up most of the oxygen around us, makingit difficult to breathe as with every gasp our lungs were filled with ash
.
I could see the General in front of us. He rode with little concern for his own well being and seemed almost unaffected by the harsh environment around us. It was a short but difficult ride to where the river was meant to be.

We arrived and Yurios looked
up and down the still muddy bed. “Which way did the water flow?” He asked.

The general pointed to the South,
and Yurios then took off to the North. The fire had not spread here yet, so I took the opportunity to fill my lungs with the cooler air, though my throat still burned. After traveling up the creek bed a ways we came to a lake. The river had been cut off by a dam at the mouth of the creek bed.

The General dismoun
ted and walked towards the lake. “This was a valley... There has never been a lake here before,” he said as he stared at the newly formed lake in horror.

The dam was made of a smooth
, white marble, stone wall. We all ran over to the dam as Yurios inspected it. I could see he was channeling magic, feeling the force of the water exerted on the wall.

“It won’t hold li
ke this much longer. I can break the dam, but we will need to get out of the way quickly,” Yurios said as we stood at the base of the giant dam.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,
” someone shouted from behind us, followed by a ball of fire that came blazing by and hit several of the soldiers that were with us. They screamed in pain as they were set afire. I channeled as much magic as I could to Yurios and he brought a gush of water down on them. The fires had been put out, but they were still covered in burns and were unable to defend themselves.

Behind us stood thirty mages. They were dressed in the same clothing as the
mage that had invaded my dreams and their bodies were covered in similar chaotic tattoos, however their eyes did not glow red as the dream mage’s did.

Thirty, I thought myself, you can handle thir
ty. I looked at them in Etherea. They were all building up their magic, storing it to wipe us all out at once. I had to stop them before they could. Thinking about all that I was fighting for, I used every ounce of strength within my body and clung on to every bit of might that I could as I began to channel the magic away from them.

At first only a couple in the front were affected. The rest noticed and began to attack. A rock came tumbling from nowhere and landed on three of the soldiers. Two arrows were sent flying the mages way but were incinerated midair by another ball of fire.

The ground around us began to tremble. Small cracks opened up in the ground, and bolts of lightning shot down at us from the smoke cloud. Whatever they were doing, this seemed to only be the beginning. Not wanting to find out what was about to happen, I gave up every thought I ever had about my limits and tried harder than I ever imagined I was capable of.

“What sort of magic is this?” The General shouted as his feet slipped on the shuttering rocks.

A fountain of magic flowed away from the mages in Etherea. They realized their powers had been removed and wasted no time. With fury in their eyes they ran at us while they drew their swords. Dhamlaic removed his cloak and stepped to the front along with the remaining soldiers that were with us. The mages' swords were met with our own, and two of our soldiers fell in that first clash of steel.

While the mages fought well, they were no match for Dhamlaic as he held off four on his own. The other soldiers struggled. One after another the mages fell, as did the soldiers. The numbers on both sides dwindled in favor of the mages. The General joined in, his sword fiercely piercing the chest of a mage. He came at them with a thunderous roar and they fell at his sword one by one. Still
the mages seemed to have the upper hand.

I watched the magic that left them form into a cloud overhead as the battle ensued, it swirled around as I began adding more to it and sen
t it straight into Yurios.

“Now,
” I yelled to him.

He took all the power I gave him and pulled th
e water forward against the dam. It began to crumble under the stress and cracks formed all along the marble. Streams of water sprayed out. His muscles bulged as he held is hands up, using all of his strength to bring down the dam. Time slowed down for me as I watched. I could see every little chunk of marble fall to the ground as it broke away from the dam.

The dam reached a point where it could no longer hold itself up and collapsed in a thunderous clash of stone and water. Yurios held out his arms as the water came crashing towards us. Just before it hit us
, the water forked and began to flow around our group as if it were held back by an invisible wall.

“Fall back to me,
” Yurios shouted, his voice strained from all of the pressure he held back.

The remaining soldiers and t
he General joined us by Yurios’ side, Dhamlaic was the last join. Before doing so he kicked off a medium sized rock and launched himself in the opposite direction towards the mages, bringing both of his legs into the chests of two of them, knocking them back and slowing down the rest as they tumbled into one another. He ran back to us and Yurios let the water collapse around the mages. They were carried off by the water, disappearing into the disarray of rubble and stones that were caught in the wave.

The water continued to come roaring past us. Yurios struggled to keep it off
of us as the lake emptied, revealing the previously flooded valley again. The water levels returned to normal and we found it easy now to keep ourselves clear of the river. Yurios moved the invisible wall over to the shore, holding it back as we walked with him out of the path of the river.

When we were clear, he collapsed to the ground, and blood covered his face and chest. I cried out for him but Tevon held me back. Yurios
lied there. His eyes were open but were sluggish. His chest moving at a rate so slow that it terrified me.

“Help him up,
” The General commanded. The few remaining soldiers did as ordered and picked Yurios up and placed him on a horse with Dhamlaic.

“This day’s not over yet,
” Tevon added. The fires still went on around the city of Ordana.

We mounted our horses and hurried back in silence. We
rode south, down to where the river neared the fires and stopped when we could feel the flames on our cheeks. Dhamlaic dismounted and the soldiers helped him lift Yurios off of his horse. He was more alert now. Yurios stood on his shaking legs, but still seemed weary. He knew what he still had to do before he could pass out. The fires tore apart every crop in sight; there was nothing left but the city.

At the least the mage that had started them no longer could cause anymore.

While the water had doused some of the other crops, there was still a great deal that needed to be extinguished. Yurios looked to the General, “I’m sorry to say but you can forget that flood…” He fell down once again, this time he was too weak to stand back up.

“What can we do?” The General asked in desperation. He was now being pitted against forces he could never have imagined.

We all stood there and watched, helpless as the fires continued on, spreading on to the nearby forests. They were too great in numbers and size to ever be put out in time by hand. I remembered how I had pulled magic from the other mages before and used their own power. I looked at Yurios as he lay there in Etherea. I don’t know how I knew to, but I started channeling power through his body and out into mine. I stored up a massive amount of his magic as his body converted it for me. He must have been just conscious enough to help.