The Sorcerer's Scourge (35 page)

General Brague shot the smiling sorcerer a look that promised great retribution in the future.

***

Ellyssa awoke with a pain in her head so great she begged to return to unconsciousness. By the vomit-inducing rocking, she knew she either was on a ship or had suffered a severe head injury. She prayed for the latter since being on a ship promised the greatest amount of danger.

She opened her eyes, took in her surroundings, and surmised that she was indeed on a ship. Ellyssa slowly replayed the night’s events through her pain-addled mind as she slowly began stitching the bits of the memories back together. She remembered the guards chasing her from the castle, getting lost in the city, and then being chased again. Ellyssa recalled the fight in the alley. She thought she had defeated them, but then something hit her in the head and she blacked out.

Slavers! Slavers had been chasing her and now they caught her and she was on a ship probably bound for Sumara! Well, she would make them regret taking her! Ellyssa tried to move her hands but found them shackled together. She looked across the cramped cabin and saw a man sitting at a small table watching her. He was dressed in leggings that had possibly once been black but the sun and salt had faded them to a dark grey. He also wore a russet shirt of decent quality. His black beard sported far more hair than his balding head did and his smile reflected a bright gold eyetooth.

“Good, you are awake,” the man said. “For a while there I feared I had hit you too hard and ruined the goods.”

Ellyssa sat up and glared at the slaver. “You had best let me go if you know what’s good for you.”

The slaver captain’s gold tooth flashed once more. “What’s good for me is a chest full of gold, which is precisely what I’ll get when I get you to Bakhtaran.”

“What you’ll get is your own death!” Ellyssa snarled and reached for the Source.

Despite her hands being shacked, the fool had made the mistake of clasping them in front of her. It was clumsy, but she could still shape a weave into a spell suitable to burn that smile off his greasy face.

Ellyssa’s snarl vanished with a gasp when she found the Source completely beyond her grasp. She could sense its existence, but no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to grasp even the tiniest thread in which to shape even the most rudimentary spell. Panic almost overwhelmed her as she instantly realized how much she had come to depend on her ability to weave magic. Not being able to touch it was like waking up and finding her legs missing.

“What have you done to me?” she demanded, the fear evident in her voice.

“I wondered if those things would work or not. Those wizards in Bakhtaran promised me they would when they tasked me to bring back some captives able to use magic, but you just never know until you try it out for the first time.”

Ellyssa looked down that manacles clamped around her tiny wrists more closely and saw several runes etched into the surface of the iron. She quickly deduced that the runes must prevent her from being able to access the Source. She slumped back against the cabin wall as she let the despondency of her situation overwhelm her.

NO!
She shouted to herself.
Azerick would never let something like this beat him and neither will I!

“What is your name?” She asked the man watching her, obviously amused at her inner turmoil.

“The name’s Captain Jake,” he said with a shrug, figuring it could not hurt to tell her. “What’s your name, girl?”

“My name is Ellyssa, but that’s not the one you should care about. You should be far more concerned with the name of my master, Azerick Giles, since he will be the one that will find and kill you if you do not let me go. What I have seen him to people that hurt or threaten his family would give you nightmares for the rest of your life.”

Captain Jake leaned forward in his chair. “Sweetheart, if he ain’t on this boat already, you and he will be somebody else’s problem by the time he finds you, and I’ll have sailed to some other port at the far reaches of the sea.”

Ellyssa sprang from the cot she was on with a snarl of defiance, spit in Jake’s face, and tried to claw his eyes out but managed only to score three red stripes down one of his cheeks.

The slaver grabbed the short chain linking the manacles with one hand, slapped the furious girl across the face with the other, and threw her against the wall to land heavily back onto the cot.

He wiped his face with his hand as his eyes took on a murderous glare. “Girl, I keep you in my cabin because you are more valuable than the rest of the chattel in my hold put together. But you make me regret it, and I’ll toss you down there with them. You’re too young for most my men, but not all of them. I only need you alive to get paid. You best remember that!”

Ellyssa hugged her knees and sobbed as Captain Jake stormed out of the cabin. She desperately wanted to be brave like Azerick, but all she could feel was the terror of being helpless and the shame of knowing that it was her own selfish foolishness that had gotten her in this predicament.

She prayed to every god there was that if Azerick came and saved her, she would do what she was told and never misbehave again. She would be polite and study just like Roger did. She would not let her ego try magic that was beyond her. She would be the perfect student, she swore. Yet the ship continued to sail south, undeterred. The gods did not whisk her away and Azerick did not magically appear to save her and punish her captors.

CHAPTER 13

Borik had been ranting for the better part of fifteen minutes. It started out as generalized complaining about the cold and being lost, but soon he targeted his ire squarely on Tarth whose job it was to locate the source of the gathering arcane energy and presumably the location of their foe.

Tarth sat near a tree, hovering over a small brazier, and inhaling the burning incense it contained. Lost in whatever semi-dream state the fumes put him in, Tarth seemed completely oblivious, or at least immune, to Borik’s verbal assault.

“More than two weeks we’ve been running around this cursed forest, trekking through snow that for a dwarf is at an extremely uncomfortable depth! Maybe if you pulled your head out of those fumes that are destroying what little intelligence that feeble elf brain of yours contains, we would stop walking in circles, get to where we’re supposed to go, and get on with having our souls sucked out by the granddaddy of undead!”

“Borik, leave him be,” Maude ordered. “I’m sure he’s doing the best he can. Malek isn’t having any better luck finding the source of this thing than he is.”

Borik turned his glare on the big woman. “Malek ain’t huffing loopy fumes and impairing an already dysfunctional brain! I’ve had it!” Borik yelled and kicked the small brazier over, spilling the smoldering incense and glowing coals into the snow with a hiss. “You best pull your head outta wherever it’s stuck and start being of some dang-blasted use!” Borik continued shouting, now punctuating his words by poking Tarth in the forehead with a short, thick finger.

A thick arrow appeared as if by magic right under his nose, causing him to sneeze violently as the shaft vibrated in the tree trunk next to him and the fletching tickled his nose. The unexpected near-skewering of his thick skull instantly extinguished the dwarf’s fired up temper.

 Borik crossed his eyes in an attempt to focus on the arrow then looked at Tarth with his finger still touching the elf’s forehead. “That yours?”

Tarth smiled vacantly at the dwarf and the arrow and replied, “It is not mine.”

“Remove your filthy finger from that elf or the next one pins your beard to your chest, dwarf!” came a soft but strict command out of the darkness.

Borik snatched his finger back as if burned while Maude and Malek leapt to their feet with weapons drawn and faced the direction from which the order came. A dozen short and slender figures appeared silently out of the darkness from all directions, except the location from where the order was issued, with longbows drawn and pointed at the two humans and the dwarf.

One of the figures strode forward, lowered her hood, and dropped to her knees in an almost supplicating fashion in front of Tarth who was still sitting in the snow, reassembling his brazier. She reached an unsteady hand towards Tarth’s face but stopped short of touching it.

“Tarthalis Moonglow, it is you,” the female elf whispered almost reverently.

The other elves dipped to one knee in a show of profound respect.

Tarth smiled and wiggled his fingers at the newcomers. “Hello.”

“Tarth, where have you been? Lahilonah misses you terribly,” the elf kneeling in front of him said.

Tarth’s vacant smile slipped a bit as he responded, “I was right here. Now I am going over there. Please excuse me.”

Tarth stood up, hugging his arms around his thin body, and strode out of the circle of light cast by their campfire. The elf woman’s face dropped in despair, stood, and faced Maude and the others.

“Are you companions of Tarthalis?” she asked.

Maude nodded her head. “Yes, for nearly ten years now.”

The elf motioned to her comrades and they all lowered their bows. “I am Corana.”

“Maude, Borik, and Malek,” Maude replied, pointing to the dwarf and cleric.

“Where did you find him?” Corana asked.

“Several days northeast of Brelland, sitting in a patch of wildflowers in the middle of nowhere, humming a tune, and braiding the blooms into his hair.”

Maude could not keep the smile from her face as she recalled that fateful encounter. She, Malek, and Borik were on one of their first treasure hunting forays as a group and came upon the strange elf sitting in a small clearing amongst the blue wildflowers. Maude tried to speak to him, and Malek even cast a spell to determine if he was afflicted in some way when he did not respond.

After a short rest, they had decided to leave the elf where they had found him, but he stood up and followed them like a lost puppy when they set out. He did not say a word for days. He simply followed them when they moved and stopped when they stopped. It was not until a group of hostile group of orcs set upon them that Tarth showed his magical ability, and an unpredictable one at that. Shortly after that encounter, he began talking, mostly incoherent nonsense.

“Corana, you seemed to show Tarth a significant amount of deference. Is that typical when you meet your kind? Tarth seemed a little uncomfortable with it.”

“Is he royalty of some kind?” Malek asked.

“Oh, is he rich?” Borik inquired, greedily rubbing his hands together.

Corana paused before answering. “Tarthalis is special.”

“You can sure say that again,” Borik grunted and twirled a finger next to his ear.

“Shut up, dwarf!” both women ordered at once.

Borik fumed but wisely held his tongue as Corana explained. “Tarthalis Moonglow is one of the greatest heroes in elven history. He is a living legend to our people.”

Maude and her crew gaped incredulously. “Tarth? Our Tarth is a legend?”

“Legendary idiot maybe,” Borik rumbled into his beard, which failed to keep his words from reaching the acute ears of the elves.

Corana and the other elves glared at the dwarf once more but did not comment.

“Has he ever spoken of himself or his home?” Corana asked Maude.

“Not once, and I have asked him, but he always drifts off and won’t answer.”

“I imagine it is hard for him to talk about anything that reminds him of everything he lost and the horrors he endured. I would not inflict our presence on him, knowing how much it must hurt him to see us, if our mission were not so vital. Have you come to destroy the monster that gathers the dark energy for his nefarious scheme?”