The Azure Wizard (30 page)

The Baron slowly looked up as Ethan pulled off his heavy wool hood, eyes all aglow, and the royal presence finally asked, “Or is it again a Wizard, come to bear ill tidings, foretelling to me something that I already know?”

“And what is that, Baron?” replied Ethan when the four final reached the base of his high throne.

“That my barony is being erased, its folk slaughtered and its settlements overrun with monsters and chaos. And it is not just the Barony of Greenwell, mind you. Too few refugees from Wendlith have ridden their horses in a hurry northward, proclaiming an apocalypse of fire and carnage among their green lands. The Wendlithian people have almost been completely eradicated in a very short amount of time. Taedroke and Baroness Jhinae lay in ruins,” explained the Baron grimly, his dark green eyes falling remorsefully to the young Wendlithian child in Kraegovich’s protective arms.

“And Vhar, my Baron? What of Lumberwall?” asked May.

“Aye, contact with the northern barony has ceased. All couriers and patrols sent forth do not return. But, the resolve and tenacity of the Vharians makes me think that rustic Lumberwall will remain, proud and stoic, even when our fair Greenwell City is lost to nature and Wizardcraft.”

At the Baron’s statement both Kraegovich and Ethan couldn’t help but smile briefly in pride at the virtue of their fellows in the north. The Baron ran his thumb absently along his gleaming golden blade in his lap, a vacant stare evident on his hard, weathered face.

“Just how bad is it?” asked Ethan, blue eyes flaring.

Baron Fernhollow sighed and began his explanation. “It is so bad, Wizard, that my only daughter, Heiress Ambria, not older than that Wendlithian girl,” he said indicating Nythee, “will grow up to rule only this city as Baroness. There will be no Barony of Greenwell for Baroness Ambria in the dark days ahead. There will be no Barony of Vhar for the heirs of the Ruauld’s. And already the Barony of Wendlith is lost. The land of Two Baronies we are now, but soon I fear none will remain.”

He continued, “My few knights that have returned have informed me that every settlement along the East Road and the Three Baronies Road is in ruins. Enormous and cruel packs of Deep Wolves, filled with acid, slaughter all inhabitants systematically and move on, leaving smoldering wreckage in their wake. In the south, between here and the burning plains of Wendlith, brutally-powerful Emerald Wurms, no more than a myth to many, have slithered into all southern communities bearing bestial slaughter and destruction. Along coastal settlements, mythic and titanic Sea Wurms have ascended from the mysterious depths of the sea to pull the folk and the ruins of the towns they crush with their colossal bulk into the dark waters. Woodfolk tribe battles Woodfolk tribe in the shade of the Forest of Greenwell for supremacy in the chaos unleashed in the sylvan landscape. It is a matter of time before the savages are slaughtered as well. That, Wizard, is how bad it is.”

The weight of it all settled upon the shoulders and brows of all present and nary a word was uttered by any for quite some time. The Three Baronies was on a sword’s edge and about to fall into ruin, but there would be no heroes to rescue it at the last moment and pull it back to goodness and right. With Wizardcraft’s return, the land was being very quickly retaken by ancient primeval powers, by enchanted beasts, and there was no reason to believe that it would stop at the last moment, a band of merry heroes putting things to rights. Ethan was beginning to doubt that his own death would even take the powers away from the creatures in that Wizardcraft had returned to. If he knew without a doubt that his death would have stopped things from getting as bad as they were, then he would already be dead.

Finally Ethan had some information to impart to the baron, and he did so by stating, “As I told you would happen when we last spoke, the Foresters have indeed been disbanded. It wasn’t really much of a choice seeing as how we three,” he said indicating he, Kraegovich and May, “are the final Foresters that were left alive from the Troll.”

The Baron nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry for your losses and the dissolution of your order. And what of the Troll? My knights had not reported the beast attempting to gain entry into the Old District walls.”

“I have slain it, with my Wizardcraft. That foul creation from the Ancient Age has vanished into the powers from which it was ripped forth,” was Ethan’s cryptic answer.

“Aye, that is well,” Baron Fernhollow grumbled.

“I noticed, my Baron,” May began, “when I gained entry to the city that many of your Greenwellian Knights that remain are positioned upon the walls and gates of the Old District here in the city’s center. What of the greater portions of town, those outside of the old walls?”

The Baron sat there brooding before looking at her with weary shielded eyes and speaking, “Already, extensive packs of Deep Wolves and even sightings of Emerald Wurms have been rumored and even glanced at in the forests just beyond the edges of the city. Soon nature itself and Wizardcraft, old and mighty beasts and primeval powers, will besiege the city. When that happens, I will order my remaining knights to drop the portcullises and seal the gates of the Old District. I fear that anything outside of the old walls is soon to be vanquished.”

May and Ethan looked askance at one another and then at the statuesque unreadable face of Kraegovich. May then looked back to the Baron and said, “Well, my Baron, have you proclaimed as much to your city’s inhabitants? Shouldn’t you begin the evacuation into the Old District before lives are needlessly lost?”

“There will be no evacuation, lass. The Old District contains most of the old bloodlines of Greenwell, the College of the Three Baronies with its sages and scribes, the Grand Cathedral of the Ancestors, and the Castle of Greenwell. With the survival of this district our knowledge, faith and boldest folk will hopefully survive the onslaught. The old walls surrounding the Old District are stronger and higher than any settlement’s walls found throughout the barony. We will weather this storm here. And we will salvage some sort of future out of the ruin that will be there when the tide has ebbed.”

Ethan furrowed his brow and asked a bit testily, “You mean to sacrifice most of your city’s inhabitants? Have you no care for your subjects?”

The Baron’s eyes turned cold and narrowed at the impertinent Vharian Wizard. He growled, “Your time for advice has passed, Wizard. I’ll have no more of it. Was it not you who brought all of this ruin down upon the land? Was it not you that changed all of the beasts and granted them the verve to reclaim the wilds from us? Was it not you that led to the destruction of your order as well as countless other enterprises across the Three Baronies? Was it not you who has brought all to their doom? Is it not you that is the one Wizard in the land? You, Vharian, have wrought more despair than ever was unleashed by Illumis in the Ancient Age. You are a curse, a plague upon the land. And you would be wise to use your Wizardcraft to vanish from my sight before I split you in two.”

The royal words of Baron Fernhollow were a confirmation to dark thoughts and feelings that Ethan had already come to suspect about himself. The glow in his blue eyes dimmed as they welled with tears. His arms hung loose at his sides and he slowly went to his knees upon the cool stone of the floor of the Great Hall. Tears dampened his red beard and he grasped fistfuls of his chin-length blond hair as he began sobbing.

May Kinsley looked up at the baron accusingly, her knuckles white about the handle of her stone dagger. Kraegovich held a confused Nythee warmly to his torso, but his Vharian hard brown eyes stared dangerous promises to the ruler of Greenwell.

The Baron stood up before his throne, sword in hand, and finished, “I can no more mourn for my subjects that will die. I have mourned too much already. Bringing in the entire populace of Greenwell City will cause nothing but sickness and starvation as we wallow in overpopulation. It is better that tradesmen, laborers, and whores fall so that sages, nobles, scribes, and priests may live. It is in these occupations that our culture and our future will still survive. You are not barons or rulers, and I cannot expect you to understand my decision. Trust me to rule what people I can save, or don’t trust me and leave my city.”

As ominous silence stretched, none saw a lone figure stalk into the shadows of the Great Hall. They never saw him creep closer and closer amongst the forest of pillars. None knew that he was listening to most of their conversation until he revealed himself to those present. He did so with a bold statement.

“My Baron, the Wizard will trouble you no more! He is coming with me!”

All the chamber’s previous occupants turned in a rush to behold the mysterious speaker before they suddenly were blinded in a duo of bright green flashes.

“So you mean to tell me, that you’ve been looking for me my whole life?”

Ethan still paced confusedly, as he had been for the better part of an hour since he and his abductor had appeared somewhere upon the shore of the sea on the east coast of the Three Baronies. The afternoon sky was warm and smelled strongly of salt and rain, likely from the rumbling overcast sky that churned about above the shoreline. Gulls screamed and wheeled about in the air before the storm.

He was speaking with a thin tanned-skinned man in a featureless white robe. His head and face were shaved to the skin and his red eyes held, surprisingly, a strong sense of empathy and benevolence. About his neck hung a wide iron amulet emblazoned with an open hand with an eye upon its palm. Soon after their instantaneous arrival here, the man had explained that his name was Marros, and that he was the senior member of an order called The Prophets that were tasked with seeking out the Wizard that would return Wizardcraft to the Three Baronies. The order had been established for this task all the way back in the misty realms of history at the dusk of the Ancient Age, when Wizardcraft still stirred within the blood of a number of individuals. For a thousand years they had awaited the rebirth of Wizardcraft, and awaited the finding of its Herald within the Barony of Greenwell, as was foretold to the ancestors of the order as their divination Wizardcraft powers diminished with the Ancient Age. The Prophets had saved the only known Wizardcraft-powered artifacts of the Ancient Age in the hopes that they would locate the Wizard responsible for the rebirth.

When Marros had tiredly wandered into the Castle of Greenwell, his hope failing at finding the Wizard despite the sightings and monstrous reports of bizarre mutated beasts, he was almost struck with a fit of fainting when he saw the very Wizard that a thousand years’ worth of brethren had lived and died to one day find. It took only a moment for Marros to fish two teleportation crystals, relics of an age when Wizardcraft was rampant in the lands of the Three Baronies, from the deep pocket of his pale robe and use the last of their power to transport him and the Wizard back to the headquarters of his ancient secretive reclusive order. It was soon after their arrival, that Marros had thrown the now-useless teleportation crystals into the sea.

“Aye, boy,” Marros finally replied with a contented smile, “you are the Wizard and Herald that the Prophets were designed to one day find and bring back here, to our residence in the Priory of the Prophets. It is all for you that we exist here at all. A thousand years ago our ancestors were tasked with awaiting your arrival in the land and with you, the return of Wizardcraft. And finally after ten centuries of stagnation and longing, you have been born and brought to us.”

Ethan’s perplexed condition was written blatantly on his bewildered features as he stared and the Wendlithian-blooded man before him. “But why, Marros? Why bring me here at all? For what purpose?”

Marros laughed lightly and responded in a very matter-of-fact tone, “We are here to watch over you, and to see if the wrongs that Wizardcraft has wrought in the Three Baronies may be undone.”

A silence stretched between the two on the beach beneath a grey rumbling sky. Ethan walked over so that the surf of the tide rushed against his dark leather boots, and sighed. “What must I do, Marros? I would give anything to save the Three Baronies, or what’s left of them.”

Marros ambled over to the Wizard as he stared over the slate-blue waves of the vast sea and he put his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “That is very good to hear, Ethan. We think that something can be done to sever any further crisis wrought upon the Three Baronies by the return of Wizardcraft. But you must come with me to the Priory of Prophets so that I can more easily explain.”

Ethan’s shoulders slumped in relaxation and resignation as he let tension that had been plaguing his body and heart for too long release. He nodded slowly and replied, “Aye, Marros. I’ll go with you.”

The duo found themselves soon walking upon a gray flagstone pathway that led from the beach into the rising tree-cloaked hills that overlooked the sea. A rain had begun to gently drizzle down upon them from the churning overcast sky, and Ethan was quick to offer his thick, brown woolen cloak to his new companion.

In less than an hour’s time the two of them, the Wizard and the prophet, had reached the end of the forested pathway. Before them was a very old moss-smothered ruin of an ancient keep. Some portions had crumbled into ruin while some still stood dark and proud upon the pinnacle of a steep cliffside overlooking the sea, now a shade of grey matching that of the raining sky. “Welcome, Ethan the Wizard, to the Priory of Prophets.

Ethan spotted a few white-robed prophets, male and female alike, toiling about the Priory. Some were placing torches that burned with various hues of flame on each side of the main portal into the Priory while others rushed indoors to escape the rain and coming night, arms laden with baskets of garden vegetables and various gardening tools. Only a couple spared a quick curious glance towards Marros and Ethan as they made their way into the shadow of the Priory. Soon, these few observers began conversing with one another excitedly and some rushed away into the Priory, likely to alert their companions of Marros’s arrival with a strange visitor in tow. As Ethan and Marros walked side by side into the damp cool interior of the ancient Priory, the Vharian noticed that the peculiar torches burned with odd colors, didn’t put off heat, and seemed to be unaffected by the rainfall. They were obviously magical relics such as the crystals that Marros had used to transport the two of them from Greenwell City to the lonely stretch of beach on the eastern shore of the Three Baronies. Ethan wondered to himself what other magical relics of the Ancient Age remained stored within the Priory of Prophets.