Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons) (3 page)

I stared at the wall and wished for a change, took in a deep
breath and tasted the incense in the air. I still felt nothing. Nothing but the
itchy green clay on my face.

Was I going to spend my whole life locked in this room doing
this pointless homework? I’d had enough. I felt anger surge up in me, anger at
the years I’d spent stuck here doing nothing.

I took a deep breath and held it. I stood up and picked up
my homework. My hands tingled as I crushed all the paper together in a ball.
Without thinking about what I was doing, I walked over to the narrow window and
stuffed all the paper through.

I sat back down at my empty desk, letting out my breath in a
long sigh.

And then the wall fell away.

Chapter III

A bright circle of light blinded me. I closed my eyes. When
I opened them again, the circle was still there, around four feet wide. But now
my eyes must have adjusted to the light. I could see a spice shop, and, in the
background, a bright summer day shining through an open window.

It was Spice, the shop I had just been thinking about.

I blinked, tried to turn away, but my eyes were drawn back
to the circle.

I squinted my eyes and looked at the edges.

You could see a little jagged edge where the dark wall of my
room in the tower met the circle of the brightly lit spice shop.

I stood up and shook my head, to see if the image wavered.
But it all stayed rock solid. Now, standing up, I saw something in the shop.
Something, or rather, someone, was crouched towards the back.

In the corner, underneath a table.

It was a girl, maybe my age. She was beautiful. Her perfect
skin seemed to glow in the bright golden light. Her hair, too, was golden like
corn silk.

She seemed to be waiting silently for something, her eyes
wide open, her body tensed, as if she was ready to run, or to strike.

She moved her head silently from side to side, and then,
suddenly, she froze.

She was staring right at me.

At my face covered with green clay.

She raised a finger to her full lips. She winked her
beautiful emerald eyes, and she smiled.

I started to say something. I wanted to explain why my face
was covered in green gunk. I wanted to ask her who she was, how come her ears
were slightly pointed, why she was crouched in the corner of the shop. But she
shook her head, and put her finger to her lips again.

I nodded, hypnotized by her beautiful skin, her full lips.

She must have been my age, give or take a year, but she was
beautiful.

What was going on?

This was clear thinking?

Putting holes in reality, creating circular gateways in the
walls of my small stone room? Looking at beautiful girls?

Perhaps I had burnt the wrong incense, or drank the wrong
tea? Had it been the tea, then? Or the incense and the tea together? I stopped
asking myself questions.

Something was happening in the circle.

The girl was staring at something to her right. I took a
step to the right to see what she was looking at. There was someone at the door
of the shop, peering out through the stained wizard glass of the door.

I knew that glass well; I had once lived in a castle made of
it, and my tutor had shown me how it was formed and shaped. It was incredibly
hard, yet perfectly transparent. While the spell was still fresh, you could
pour it like melted sugar, and form it into all kinds of complicated and
intricate shapes. But once the spell’s effect was over, it was hard forever —
at that point only a wizard of the 9th level could break it, and after a lot of
time and effort.

The shopkeeper stayed at the door, and then there was
movement: a blur out of the corner of my eye. I turned and the circle moved
with me this time.

It was the beautiful girl with perfect skin. She had jumped
out from under the table and now she was running towards the door.

She reached out and grabbed something off a shelf.

Was it a bag of spice?

A spellbook? An artifact? I couldn’t see.

I heard nothing either. Either she was really quiet, or no
sound came through the circle.

Then the shopkeeper turned, in alarm, it looked like, and
shouted, his hands up, “What the hell?”

Well, I guess I
could
hear through the gateway.

No one I knew was so quiet or so
fast
. The girl must
have been a thief, or an elf, or an elf thief. But Gerard, the shopkeeper, was
quick too. And he was a powerful wizard. I’d heard rumors about him selling
other things besides spices. People said he dealt in knowledge and power, as
well.

Anyhow, Gerard was a trained and practicing magician — not a
“failed” magician like my tutor, and he looked furious.

His mouth moved now, his face contorted, and words flew out
in a buzzing whine. His hands fell to his waist, and then he was holding a wand
in his hand, and I heard the words: ... alam kazhi nikim.

Words of power from some dead language I didn’t know and
hadn’t really believed in. I still hadn’t got past Germanic and Romance.

My ears buzzed and my chest vibrated. There was a roar in my
head. Heat blasted everything, hitting my face.

The girl turned and spat out a word. Just one word.

But what a word! Í wouldn’t be able to wrap my lips around
it. It was like a slap in the face with a wooden paddle.

I staggered back, realizing that in my room, I must only be
feeling the aftershocks, some ripple that made it through the barrier.

Gerard would be hit with the full force.

The lights in my room dimmed. In Gerard’s shop they went out
completely. I shivered. I smelled damp earth, as if the whole shop had been
buried in cold wet soil.

I crouched, shivering, staring at a black circular disk. I
thought for a moment that I’d lost contact completely with the shop. I couldn’t
see anything.

But then I heard cursing: coarse and deep, as though the
curser had lost part of his voice, was coughing out the syllables.

Nothing magical about it, I thought at first. Just terrible
anger. I could feel the rough menace all the same.

A moment later I realized there was magic after all. Just of
a kind completely alien to me. It was darker and more elemental than anything I
had ever seen or imagined.

The words scorched the dark air, an angry fire that hungered
after its enemies. I felt a familiar buzzing in my ears. This must be an old
Germanic language, or some old Anglo Saxon low tongue, some ancient language of
hate, that now made my teeth ache and my face sweat.

The cursing grew more rhythmic and louder, and the heat
grew. And though I could feel sweat on my forehead, I shivered.

I didn’t want to believe, but I couldn’t doubt anymore —
this was the darkest of elemental magic, the magic of hate, of destruction and
revenge.

Although I wasn’t the target, I needed to shield myself —
needed to speak my own words of power. Not something I had learned with my
tutor, but words whispered in my ear when I was only eight years old by my
grandfather.

I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped.

I could feel black tendrils of spell smoke reaching out for
me from inside the spice shop. I figured they weren’t looking for
me
now. But what would happen if Gerard heard or sensed me? Would he blast me out of
existence? I certainly didn’t have the skills (or the skin) of that beautiful
girl in there. What if he attacked
me
instead?

Until then, no one except the girl had seen me, and I hadn’t
even made the smallest noise, since the moment when the girl had put her finger
to her lips. After all, hadn’t that been a warning, from the girl, to be
silent?

But should I trust her? Just because she was beautiful?

I had always trusted Gerard, even if he was more than a
little frightening, and this girl seemed to be Gerard’s enemy.

But the magic that Gerard used was clearly dark magic. And
had I really trusted Gerard? Everything was so confusing.

Where was the girl now?

I had to do something, and the black tendrils were growing
thicker around me. They were about to sense me anyway.

No more time to think. I spoke a small word of power, the
same word spoken by my grandfather Karl Hendrik, and the word was:
Licht
.

A ball of light burst forth, small and tight, in the middle
of the circle.

The tendrils of smoke dove into the light and disappeared,
and the light burned on.

The last time I did a spell like that was with my tutor.
That time I made a little ball floating above my left hand using the word
lumière
,
the word in my school books.

This time was totally different. I had formed a ball of
Germanic light that burned somehow on both sides of the gateway. The light
burned bright not only in my room in the castle, but in the shop as well.

If I wanted to escape detection or avoid attention, I’d done
a very poor job of it. My spell work was there on display in the spice shop,
making a small bright fight against the dark spells of Gerard and the girl.

Things happened very quickly, then.

I saw two faces, as my spell burned brighter, and I felt my
stomach burning too, a warm good burn, as if my stomach was full of spicy food,
or a little ginger beer.

The girl was staring straight at me, looking puzzled but
unharmed. Gerard, however, didn’t look so good. His face was darkened by her
spell, his eyes bleary, his pupils huge and black from the darkness. Now he was
blinded a second time by my bright Nordic light.

Then his pupils narrowed, and he saw me.

A deep guttural roar came out of his open mouth.

The girl took one last look at me, spoke a word of power:
durch
,
and jumped, her hand outstretched.

I reached out and got her hand in mine.

Her hand felt warm and firm and her fingers clasped my
fingers.

Now this was the first time I’d ever held a girl’s hand,
believe it or not. And my face was covered in green clay. At least she couldn’t
see me turning red under the green. I pushed these silly thoughts aside — this
was no time to get embarrassed. Not if I wanted to outlive my pimples.

I pulled at her, through the dark circle.

It was like when I helped Carlo, the veterinarian, with the
birth of his filly,
Luce
.
Luce
had not wanted to come out either,
and we had to pull with all our might.

There was the same resistance here.

I had her hand, and then her head popped through.

“Pull, hard!” she shouted then at me.

I pulled, and looking up, I saw that Gerard held her.

Gerard was looking at me, and there was a glint in his eye.

I really thought at that point the game was up. Whatever
game we had been playing. Because there was that evil glint in Gerard’s eyes,
and he opened his mouth.

“Let her go, Anders,” Gerard said.

How could he recognize me, with my face covered with clay?

I felt the power of the Gerard’s sixth level wizardry in his
words. My grip loosened. My hands had to obey, I had no choice — I was going to
let her go. But then the girl did something that no one had ever done before.
She squeezed my hand. And her hand was so warm. Still I felt my fingers
loosening, against my will.

“
Hilfe
,” she said.

Her word of power must have balanced his words of command.
Suddenly I had control of my hands again.

I pulled with all my might, and I opened my
mouth. My
ancestors spoke through me, my mouth stretching, my throat tightening, and the
word rolled out and smashed into Gerard, who was opening his mouth to speak
again. The word was: “
Feuer
.”

Flames hit Gerard then, wizard flames that formed in my
stomach and flew through my body. My own hair and skin burned, as the fire
coursed through me into Gerard. I leaned back, pulled at the girl again with
all my strength and we fell together in a tumble to the floor.

Talk about embarrassing.

But the gateway was still open.

We looked at each other. We looked at Gerard in flames,
opening his mouth once again.

The girl was quicker.

“
Schluss
,” she said.

And where the gateway had been there was wall.

The girl felt warm and smelled of flowers.

Perfume. I hadn’t seen a girl my age for quite a while. Her
face was beautiful, her skin a perfectly smooth light brown. I held her with my
hands and she grinned at me with white even teeth.

She kissed me on the lips and I let her go in surprise.

Her lips were warm and tasted like strawberries. Or maybe
that was her perfume. It was all very confusing.

She giggled. “You don’t get kissed much, do you?” she asked,
still holding my hand.

I shook my head, feeling even more embarrassed.

“What’s with the green face?” she asked.

“It’s for my skin,” I said.

I didn’t want to tell her more. Maybe it was better to be
covered with the green stuff, than have her see my face. But how it itched.

“Oh,” she said. “Well that’s
interesting
.” She stared
at me for a moment. “Have you tried charcoal soap?”

I shook my head in confusion.

She looked around then, serious once more. “Come now,
wizardling, no time now for beauty secrets,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.
Gerard will be looking for a way through.”

Her face looked very serious now.

“And we need to get out of here before he finds one,” she
added.

Chapter IV

The beautiful girl with perfect skin was beating at the door
with her fists. She turned to me. “What
is
this? Some kind of cruel joke
between you and Gerard? How do we get out of here?”

I looked around the room.

There was a little window a cat wouldn’t fit through. Not to
mention that we were six stories up. There was the locked door. There were
books, and bookshelves; there was burning incense, and tea. There was a tiny
gap under the door to put my homework through — not that I would need it now.
There was my chair and desk.

But there was no way out.

“Who are you, anyway?” I said. “Why are your ears pointy?
What were you doing in Gerard’s shop?”

She shook her head violently. “We have no time for that now.
He knows you, right?”

I nodded. “I bought spices in his shop. I think he knows my
father as well, although I’m not sure my father likes him.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be telling her all this. All I
knew about her was that she was young and beautiful, that she knew how to cast
spells. And how to steal books.

And she smelled nice. With lips like strawberries.

And she was warm to the touch. With perfectly smooth brown
skin. And pointy ears.

Obviously, I felt a need to trust her. Maybe just because
she was beautiful, the first girl to ever hold my hand and kiss me. But I told
myself it must be more than that.

I was afraid it was all a trick. But like she said, we had
no time. Gerard knew me, knew my father. He wouldn’t take long to figure out
where we were, and when he found us...

She cursed under her breath, and I smiled.

“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”

I shook my head.

The truth was, nothing was funny. She was just
really
cute when she was angry.

We were both in danger. You didn’t have to be some high
level wizard to feel the threat when Gerard had talked to me.

I had no idea what Gerard would do to this girl, but I knew
he would thrash me, at the very least. My parents could complain all they
wanted, but there was little you could do about a magician of Gerard’s level.

And my parents would probably beat me too.

“Who are you, anyway?” I asked the girl. “What’s going on?”

“You can call me Kara,” she said.

She smiled at me again. I stood there grinning like a big
idiot with my green face. I wondered if she was going to kiss me again.

She shook her head like she had fished the thoughts right
out of my head.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “I took something from
Gerard, something he stole from my people.” She paused, bit her lip. “After he
got rid of my father, and my mother. And I don’t think this time, if he finds
me, he will hesitate before getting rid of me. Or any witnesses.” She looked
around. “Why are you locked in here, anyway?”

I shrugged. “It’s supposed to keep me safe and working. My
parents say it increases magical concentration, frees the mind from
distractions.”

“I guess it didn’t work this time,” she said, smiling again
despite the danger we were in. “I’m a pretty big distraction, aren’t I?”

“You can say that again,” I said, with a grin. “But really,
I wasn’t concentrated on anything. It was hard enough to forget about this clay
mask.”

“But you felt me reach out for help.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I said, honestly.

“There must be some link between us. Maybe we’re distant
cousins, or born on the same day, or we ate the same food, or drank the same
tea. No connections, no gateway, not even a little one like we had.”

“Are there bigger gateways?”

“Some of my people can create gateways as big as a house.”

“Your people?”

“I’m Kriek.”

“Kriek? The teleportation people? I thought they just
existed in books.”

“I’m real, and I’ll prove it,” she said, pinching me on the
arm.

“Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”

“You must be Kriek too, or I couldn’t have connected with
you.” Kara stopped to look at me. “You really need to get that off your face.
It looks silly.”

“I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“My face underneath this stuff doesn’t look much better,
either.”

“Now I’m
really
sorry,” she said. “But you could try
the charcoal soap. Let me see…”

Kara stared off into space. I had this feeling she was
thinking about how to treat my skin.

“Look, forget about it,” I said.

She bit her lip. “We really need to get out of here,” she
said. “But let me see your hands.”

I held out my fists, thinking she was still interested in my
skin.

“Your palms, silly.”

Kara shook her head, examining them. “Your lines are very
faint. Maybe your great grandfather. But you have our blood.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Only our people have this line on their palms.”

She ran her fingers down lines on my left and right palms. A
buzzing warmth in my hands stretched up all the way to my itchy face and down
to the rest of my body.

It was almost like she had kissed me. Wow.

She nodded.

“You feel it now, don’t you?”

I nodded. Did I ever. “And Gerard, is he Kriek too?” I
asked.

She shook her head violently. “It would take too long right
now to explain what Gerard is. We need to get out of here. Think, boy, think.”

“I’m not a boy. And my name is Anders.”

“Think, then, Anders. We can’t get out the window. We Kriek
don’t transform ourselves. You really can’t open the door? Is the lock
magical?”

I nodded. “Magical and mechanical. The locks of this castle
can’t be broken by spell or lockpick. I’ve heard that even professional
lockbreakers have wasted whole days blasting away at these doors. When I was
little they got a 4th level breaker from Siena when the Baron lost one of the
keys. It took several days, and it cost us a fortune.”

“The Baron?”

“The Baron Luigi, lord of Firenze.”

“Who has the key to this door, then?”

“Mom and Dad. The castle keymaster, maybe. No one else.”

“Can you contact them?”

I shook my head, again. “They’re gone. My father locks me in
when they leave, and when they come back, they check to see if my work is done.
If it is, they let me out. I get to eat and go out. If not I just have to sleep
and drink here until everything is finished.”

“Has anyone been by to check on you?”

I shook my head. “No one.”

“Then when can we get out of here?”

“If they don’t make it home, the door won’t be opened until
tomorrow morning, when Giancarlo realizes that I’m still locked in here. And
even then, he’d need an extra key.”

Kara kicked at the door. “I can’t make a gateway, not
without help, not after that fight with Gerard. And I don’t know who I could
connect to right now anyhow.” She paused, looked at the dark slit of window.
“There’s something else. Something about the light.”

I looked at the window. “It was day, in the shop, before you
did the spell. And now it’s night. We didn’t just connect different places, we
connected different times.”

Kara shook her head. “Anders, you make it sound so simple.
What you’re describing, I just can’t imagine it. There’s no way.”

“When the circle opened here, it was early evening,” I
insisted. “The sun had just set. When I looked in at you, the sun was shining
brightly.”

Kara looked at me in panic. “Wait, what day is it then,
now?”

“Friday, or Venerdi, like they call it here.”

“The winter solstice?”

I nodded, worried about what she was going to say.

Kara looked pale. “Then the day was the same, but the time
was different. We just lost three or four hours.”

I felt a sinking feeling is my stomach. “That means...”

Kara nodded. “Gerard should be here any moment,” she said.
“Even if he just walks over here, taking his time.”

There was a rumble from deep down underneath in the castle,
a crash, and a scream.

I cringed. “I think Gerard just arrived,” I said.

Kara looked at the door. “How long do you think that door
will hold him?”

“It’s one of our normal doors.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe an hour? Two hours? Unless he’s brought help.”

There was a banging at the door. Whoever was out there was
moving faster than any person I knew. The door shook. Okay, maybe it
wasn’t
a person. I heard a roar of frustration.

“He’s brought help,” Kara said.

Something slammed into the door, and we heard another roar.
The door, itself, did not budge.

“I feel like that myself sometimes,” I said, trying to
smile.

Kara glared at me. “There’s nothing funny. We’re about to
die, and you’re making jokes.”

“Sorry.” I looked to Kara hoping she was joking, too. But
her eyes showed me she meant it.

“We have to get out of here,
now
,” she said. “How did
you create the portal?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, what did you do right before you saw that circle,
with me in it.”

“I burned some incense,” I said.

“Incense? From his store?”

I nodded.

“Whatever you do, don’t do
that
again. All we need is
to make more connections back to him. He’ll get here soon enough as it is.” She
sniffed, looked around, found the brazier by the window. “Is this it?”

I nodded.

She took the brazier full of still smoldering incense, and
knocked its contents out the window.

There was more banging from outside the door.

“What else did you do?” Kara said. “We need to recreate the
rest of what happened, and fast.”

I looked around. “Tea. I drank some of this tea.”

“Drink some, and give me a cup too.”

It felt ridiculous, to be drinking tea while the room shook
and a monster on the other side of the door roared in anger. But I sipped and
swallowed. The tea was still warm, heavily spiced, and it felt good on my
throat as it went down. I felt clearer headed as it reached my stomach.

A shock wave hit us then, and I stumbled. The whole room
shook, but the door itself didn’t move. I stood up straight again, and felt
oddly relaxed. I refilled the cup calmly, with the last of the tea. I handed
the cup to Kara, whose eyes were wide with fear.

She drank the tea in quick small sips.

Then Kara smiled, put the teacup down, and took my hand.

She closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate for a moment,
then opened them again, shaking her head. “There’s something I’m missing here.
Anything else you did before you saw me?”

I shook my head.

“You sure?”

I started to nod, then stopped. “No, wait, I threw my
homework out the window.”

“You threw your homework out the window?”

I nodded.

“Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was angry.”

She looked puzzled, for a moment, but then she smiled. “Well
that’s easy.”

She kicked me in the shin.

The sudden pain filled me with just as sudden anger. Just as
I was about to open my mouth and swear, she said one last thing — but as her
lips moved I heard a second voice as well, in my head. The two voices said the
same thing: “Now, open your mind.”

Open my mind? What was
that
supposed to mean? And why
had she kicked me?

She smiled again, and this time her lips did not move:
Open
your mind to me, and to our kin.

The door rocked, and I wondered how much longer it could
hold. I heard cursing from the other side, which was probably a good sign. I
hoped they would give up in frustration.

I looked at Kara then, and saw her staring at me, still
smiling and smug. It was the smiling after she kicked me that got to me. What
the hell was she thinking?

I was about to say something ugly, when she took my head in
her two hands, and kissed my forehead.

Whoa. Just like that, my mind opened.

How exactly did it feel?

Like coming home to a home I had never known.

I felt closer to Kara than I had ever felt to Mom and Dad,
even in the few moments when we were all getting along.

Nothing in my past, no kiss or hug, came close to what I
felt when Kara’s lips touched the middle of my forehead. My whole body buzzed
with energy, energy that seemed to feed off my anger and pain and change them
into something else.

Suddenly I could see things, things that had been invisible
just a moment before.

My inner eye was open, and a glow around Kara and my body
stretched out in all directions, even through the walls of my castle room.

Focusing on these webs of light, I could see far beyond the
walls of the castle, farther than I had even realized existed.

Her lips left my head, but the third eye she had awakened
stayed open. Her hands ran down the sides of my body. I felt a wave of energy
rush over me, and then she was holding my two hands in hers.

Sorry about the kick. I had to get you angry.

What’s going on?

It’s amazing, isn’t it? I still remember when my eye was
opened. But we have no time. I can see the walls weakening. Even if the door
resists, the walls will not, and they will be in here in any case. We must seek
someone, now.

How? I don’t know what to do.

She smiled at me and the smile extended into my mind. It was
as if her smile had more than three dimensions — not only height, depth and
width, but a fourth dimension, too. I found the name for it:
luminosity
.

Her smile was
luminous
, golden in the fourth
dimension.

Hold my hands and follow my thoughts... Our only hope is
to find someone alert and open in a safe location.

She squeezed my hand. Her mind shouted then, and my voice
inside echoed hers and we were one voice, shouting a word that somehow my blood
remembered: