Renegade Wizards (2 page)

Let it be hobgoblins, he prayed.

Or better yet, let it be the Kagonesti elves that inhabited the Darkwoods, though the boy had heard that they would never be so clumsy as to be heard in the forest. Perhaps it was merely an animal, but almost immediately, the boy heard a voice, a whisper.

Whoever was out there was sneaking up on him. The hairs on the back of his neck told him so. The flutters in his stomach added their warning as well. There was more than one someone out there, and they knew where he was hiding.

The boy panicked and broke through the curtain of leaves and branches. He shouted an arcane word and felt eldritch magics spark along the surface of his scalp, raising the black hairs on his head. It thrilled him to utter those words that unlocked those strange and hidden doorways in his mind. He ran, one hand cradling the heavy pack, the other holding the dagger aloft. The magic coursed through the pommel of the dagger, and a sphere of light burst from the tip of his blade. Shadows scattered as the white light blossomed and lit his surroundings.

The two men screamed at the sudden light and dropped the net suspended between them. They clutched their eyes and cursed. The boy, however, ran as fast as he could, the beacon torch of his dagger lighting his way. Trees appeared from the shadows, and the boy dodged some and careened off others. Already, he was lost, but that didn’t matter right then. He would run straight back to the town of Elmwood if it meant losing his pursuers.

Maybe they’re brigands, he thought, trying to console himself.

Or perhaps they’re exactly who you think they are, his subconscious pointed out.

He ran and whimpered when he heard footfalls pursuing him. He glanced back and saw one figure hurdling over exposed roots and past tree trunks with catlike grace. The boy ran harder, his frantic sprint nearly sending him to the ground.

A voice called out from behind him. It sounded female. By the time the boy realized that it was a word of power, the air was sizzling with eldritch force and a bolt had struck him in the back, toppling him head over heels. The blow ripped
the pack from his arms, and the dagger plunged into the soil and extinguished itself. The boy’s body screamed at the pain. Only slowly did the effects lessen, until finally, the boy lay there in the darkness, spent of everything but his fatigue. That he had in ample supply.

He couldn’t move as the footsteps approached. Three forms in the dark loomed over him. He heard someone spit and felt a wet gob splatter on his cheek.

“That was for running, boy,” a rough voice said. It was the woman’s again, but it was ragged as though coarse with smoke.

The boy heard a sword being drawn. The blade was thin, like a rapier that had been flattened. It emanated a strange, pale blue light from the delicate azure runes that had been etched into its side.

The person holding the blade was a woman. She wore a black cape and brown leather pants tucked into her black, flared boots. Across her quilted, brown jerkin was a bronze-bound tome, like a shield protecting her flattened chest, and held in place with four chains that vanished beneath the cloak. The book’s cover was an intricate pattern of silver ivy leaves and thorns, so delicate in the carving that it looked elven. Her eyes were almond shaped, and her features carved and cold. From her hood fell luxuriant black hair. Her two male companions were similarly attired, but an eldritch silver script trimmed her clothing.

The woman pressed the edge of her blade against the boy’s face, and with a gentle flick of her wrist, slashed his cheek. He screamed and pushed against the wound with his hand. Blood flowed over his fingers and splattered on his filthy robes.

“And that’s for betraying your master, thief,” the woman said. Her accent was faint, almost musical. “By order of the Wizards of the White Robes, I am taking you back for judgment, Virgil Morosay. You have been branded a renegade.”

The boy’s heart sank. They weren’t hobgoblins or the
undead. They were worse and the very thing he feared was after him: they were renegade hunters.

The woman nodded to the man next to her, a bear with thick arms and a beard that filled his hood. He grabbed the pack from the ground and pulled it open. There were only four small wooden logs within.

The woman returned her attentions to the boy. She pushed the tip of her blade beneath his chin, forcing his head back.

“The books you stole from Master Pecas,” she said. “Where are they?”

If the woman expected Virgil to plead for his life or cry, however, she was mistaken. Virgil met her eyes, gaze for unflinching gaze. “Already gone,” he said with a half smile. “Safe from you and
your
kind!”

The woman snarled, but it was the thin, rakish man with blond hair who kicked him hard in the jaw.

The largest of the trio tied the arms and legs of the unconscious boy, while the blond hunter went off to retrieve their horses. The woman sat upon a fallen, moss-covered log, fuming. She played with a dagger, gouging troughs in the trunk.

“He handed it off already,” she said.

“I heard,” the large man said. He dropped the trussed-up boy back to the ground. “The orders won’t be happy.”

“No, they won’t,” she said. “But more work to come for us.”

The bearded hunter grunted noncommittally before his gaze flitted to the darkness between the trees. A crossbow appeared in his quick hands. The woman had heard it as well, the brush of fabric against wood. She drew her blade and stepped forward, pushing light into the shadows.

“Who’s there?” the man barked. “Speak or be killed for your silence.”

“Don’t kill me,” a voice cried out. “Forgive me, I meant no intrusion.” Into the light stepped a woodsman with sea-blue eyes. His hands were raised. “I live in these woods,” he said. “I thought you might need help.”

“We need no help,” the woman said. “Be gone with you.”

The woodsman nodded and retreated into the darkness.

It was time he left anyway. This particular chapter had played out, and he wanted to commit it to the page before memory tarnished it. Besides, the main characters in the little drama had yet to appear, and the woodsman needed time to position himself for what he knew came next.

The Trinity

N
othing of the city intruded upon the Three Eyes Academy—no reek of the animal pens and butcher stalls of the Merchant District, no cries of the Guild militia training in the Hall of Knights, nothing to suggest a thriving city of twenty-four thousand souls living and breathing and struggling to survive within the great walls of Solanthus.

The Three Eyes Academy was meant to be a refuge for the study and training of the magical arts. It imparted a sense of seclusion, a monastic devotion to the arcane, free of the mundane distractions of life outside. In truth, however, the wizards built the academy for students whose blood ran distinctly blue and whose purses bulged with steel. It was a place of privilege, a showpiece to display the respectability of the Orders of High Sorcery.

The Star Chamber of the Three Eyes was domed and made of the finest marble slabs from the quarries of Kayolin. While dwarf stonesmiths had cut the stones, elf artisans had sculpted the eight lithe and long-limbed statues of wizards that stretched along the curved wall. Between the statues rested pairs of fluted columns. The marble veins glittered like emeralds in the torchlight, and upon the great semicircular dais sat the three mahogany chairs with bronze trim and silver
overlay. The floor was also marble, intricately carved, with inlaid brass patterns of magical knot work. From the flattened edge of the dais descended a handful of curved steps.

The light of the white moon shone into the great assembly hall from the starburst aperture in the ceiling. Although only the white and red moons shone over Krynn for most, black-robed practitioners alone could see the third moon, an ebon disc as though forever eclipsed.

Tythonnia marveled at both her surroundings and her circumstances. The uncertain honor that had her squirming in her seat, almost fidgeting with anxiety. She did not know why she had been asked to attend a wizards’ conclave, of all things. Or why the meeting was being held here and not at the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth.

She sat before the dais in one of three sections, each angled to face the thrones. In each section were three rows of wood benches upon which sat the members of the conclave. It was the gathering of the greatest magical power of Krynn, an assembly of spell weavers dedicated to the responsible tutelage and understanding of the mystic arts; and Tythonnia certainly didn’t count herself among them. The White Robes sat to the far left, upon frost elm benches bleached and lacquered to the color of snow; the Black Robes sat to the far right, upon dark oak benches stained a glossy black. Tythonnia’s own order, that of the Red Robes, sat upon the middle row of mahogany benches stained cherry red.

All the hushed conversations layered atop one another, building into a buzz of noise. Conclave members seated themselves out of respect for the three presiding wizards who were perched upon their own chairs, but they chattered excitedly with other men and women who they hadn’t seen for as many as several years. Despite any racial misgivings, humans conversed freely with elf and dwarf mages. Their craft united them. And yet Tythonnia felt like an outsider, an intruder in such august company. Her gaze wandered,
drinking in all the attendees. There were more than just the seven conclave members of each order. There were other luminaries who made
wizards
a feared word—men and women, elves and dwarves, who could strike foes cold with a glance. Tythonnia couldn’t help herself; she tapped her foot more quickly, nervously.

A hand wrapped in red silk and tapered into elegant, henna-painted fingers touched Tythonnia’s knee.

“Be still,” Amma Batros whispered. She smiled, a flash of pearly white teeth against a backdrop of lustrous mahogany skin. A tiara rimmed with a trim veil of glass beads rested on her forehead; her brown eyes shone thanks to heavy kohl that blackened the rims of her eyes and painted her cheeks in unblemished arcane script. Her ruby nose stud sparkled.

“I’m sorry,” Tythonnia said, immediately intimidated and taken with her mentor’s beauty. She felt small and lumpy in Amma Batros’s presence, her skin too pasty in contrast to her teacher’s rich brown hue, her dirty blonde hair dusty in comparison to Amma Batros’ luxuriant black mane. Where Amma was lithe and supple, Tythonnia felt pudgy and stout—like nothing but a farmer’s daughter in the middle of all the Conclave’s finery. “I’m nervous,” she admitted.

Amma Batros laughed delicately in a way that was both simple and enchanting, and Tythonnia blushed.

“As well you should be,” Amma whispered. “Our greatest are here tonight. See that Black Robe there,” she said, motioning to a seated dwarf with a pale complexion; a black, scraggly beard; and dark, scowling eyes. “That’s Willim the Black. And over there,” she nodded to a white-robed human with a youthful smile, “is Antimodes.”

“It’s Master Merick,” Tythonnia whispered. Amma followed her gaze to the grizzled old man in red robes who sat to the back, away from everyone. He appeared lost in thought. “I want to ask how Justarius is doing.”

Amma, however, shook her head. “No,” she said simply.
“Justarius was gravely injured during the test, and Merick is taking it hard. It’s not easy for any of us to see our pupils hurt so.”

“But he’ll recover, right?” Tythonnia asked. Her thoughts flashed on Justarius, on the hollow in his eyes. The test had changed him. It was the last and only time she’d seen him since his ordeal, and she wondered if her cousin would ever be the same.

“Time will tell,” Amma replied.

Tythonnia went quiet at that. She’d undergone the harrowing Test of High Sorcery, the three final exams that push a wizard beyond their limits, near to the point of failure or, in many cases, past it. Each test was unique, and more often than not, it permanently affected the wizard. Most escaped physically unblemished but forever mentally scored. Their thoughts would never leave that fateful day; they would remember it with a clarity that would forever reopen their wounds. They remained haunted.