Diary of a Conjurer (16 page)

“Wicked trespasser! No one comes to Bandene
Forest from the north, not rowing boats in a stormy sea, they
don’t! This reeks of Taikus. Sorcery!” He grumbled quietly to
himself, his saliva catching on his beard as he hissed.

Silvio had seen the same leather armor many
years ago, before his exile. And those silk balloon slacks soaked
from swimming were a sure giveaway of her sect. Were she indeed a
sorceress, he would stay camouflaged until he learned more. With
one eye, he guarded the campfire left smoldering; the other stayed
fixed on the invader.

Once beached, the woman bent over the skiff,
and much to Silvio’s surprise, she lifted a body out of the boat
and slung it over her back, trudging up the shore to drier sand.
She must have smelled the burning embers, for she walked toward
them quickly. She laid the body down, fussed over it, and took off
one of her fur wraps, held it to the flames to gather warmth, and
then placed it over whomever lay motionless at her feet.

Silvio grunted. He wouldn’t be fooled by
kindness! Still, his curiosity drew him closer.

The woman threw several
pieces of driftwood on the coals. She blew on the embers until
flames shot into the night sky. Silvio could see her better now.
The dancing light silhouetted her figure. “Sorceress, just as I
thought! There’s no mistaking that yellow aura. Cursed wickedness!”
He wiped the drool off his beard with the palm of his hand. “Not on
my beach, you won’t. Hacatine will not haunt me again. Not here.
Not her cronies either.” Conjuring his magic, he stretched out his
crooked fingers. “
Baldervinquish
Smote
!”

The spell traveled through
his body, lighting his veins with an ominous green. His lips
trembled as he spoke, his curse sending a bolt of wizardry at the
woman. His boorish growl upset the silence and she spun around, but
it was too late for her to react. The magic stunned the woman and
she froze solid as stone
.

Silvio waited. The sound of sparking embers
rose from the fire pit but no movement came from either of the
trespassers. With cautious steps the wizard approached his victim.
He glanced at the body lying helplessly under the fur. Ebon hair
hung in wet tendrils over the young human’s forehead; his thick,
black lashes sealed his eyes shut. Though the moon cast a blue glow
over the entire beach, Silvio could tell the boy’s complexion was
dark, not pale like his own. The intruder wasn’t a man, not yet,
but he wasn’t a boy either.

“Fool youth,” Silvio grunted and turned his
attention toward the statue. Circling her, he sniffed
disapprovingly, his mouth curled in distaste. “Hacatine’s puppet.”
Silvio removed the sword from her sheath and tossed it into the
woods. As he did, the weapon turned into a stream of sizzling green
smoke, disappearing into a puff of flakes that settled quietly on
the forest floor.

“Cursed sorceress!” He stood on his toes to
look into her eyes, his own wide with contempt, and then he clamped
his teeth together and let out a long disdainful hiss. Knowing she
couldn’t respond, he growled and then smiled as he planted his feet
back in the sand again. His body relaxed into its natural bent
position.

He cast one more glance at the young man
lying on the ground. Friend or foe, he didn’t know, but he’d find
out soon enough when the boy awoke. The old man walked to his
stump, sat by the fire, and sipped his tea. Deep into the night he
kept watch over his two captives. Finally, his head bobbed over his
beard, his weary eyes closed, and he fell asleep.

The First Clue

Smoke drifted in front of Ivar’s eyes
partially masking the huge stone that towered over his head.
Perhaps the pillar was a tombstone. Maybe he was in Elysian Fields
where the Kaemperns bury their heroes. It didn’t seem right,
though! He was too young to die.

Ivar blinked the structure into focus.
Incredibly tall for a tombstone, and he didn’t feel like he was
buried. There weren’t any dirt walls that would indicate he was in
a grave. Only large piles of smooth, white driftwood logs
surrounded him.

Fog hovered low, mingling with the smoke.
Both were blue-gray. The smoke he could smell. The fog he could
feel because it seeped into his bones and sent chills throughout
his body.

Don’t move Ivar. If you
move, you might find out you can’t because you’re dead. You don’t
want to know that you’re dead.
He lay
still, listening for his pulse, feeling it pound in his head. Pain!
When he drew in a breath he coughed and then his chest
ached.
You’re not dead. Good. But you’re
close to it.

The gentle roar of ocean brought back the
images of the night before. There had been a ship and a terrible
storm. He remembered the ghostly face of a sorceress, and ropes
bound tight around his body. A rapier slashing at him, women
pulling him on deck and then the crash of water over his head
sucking him into a raging sea. That was all he remembered. He had
no idea how he got on a beach unless the tide washed him ashore,
but that didn’t account for the fire pit, or the fleece that he was
bundled in, or the fact that he could still breathe. Someone must
have helped him.

The statue stared at him with stone cold eyes
against the backdrop of a cloudy sky. A statue? Why would they bury
me and then erect a statue?

He squinted as daylight shone behind the
figure.

“You’re alive!”

The voice startled him. It wasn’t the statue
that spoke. It was a man’s voice. “I am?” Ivar asked. He tried
sitting up, but his body didn’t obey so he got no further than
lifting his head.

“Bah!” the man spoke in a raspy tone. “For
what good it is, half-man, half-dead. Wake up if there’s any waking
left in that skinny shell of yours. There are questions you need to
answer.”

Ivar felt a nudge on his shoulder and turned
to the touch, finding an arthritic foot a few feet from his chin
with toenails thick and twisted so awkwardly that they bent
backwards, pointing at the silver hairs curled on its owner’s
feet.

Ivar immediately bolted in an upright
position. “Who are you?”

“Does that matter? Who I am? Eh? What matters
is who you are,” the man’s green eyes peered through the slit of
bushy brows, his nose red as a holly berry. He wiped the drool from
his mouth and rubbed his hand dry on his knee britches.

“I’m a Kaempern,” Ivar answered, still
shocked. He brushed the sand off his hands and studied the old
man.

Hunched over, he had long silver hair that
hung almost to his knees, covering his suspenders. His skin was
weathered and wrinkled, hanging from his gnarly bones as though he
were half starved; yet his color was a healthy tan from the
sun.

“Humpf.” The man turned and waddled to a log
by the fire. He picked up a dark iron kettle and poured steaming
liquid into a clay cup. “Kaempern are you? And who’s your friend?”
He nodded to the statue.

Ivar studied the stone sculpture. A lovely
piece of art, her skin, though gray as the smoke that drifted
around her, was smooth and sheen. Chiseled fur fell over one
shoulder, and armor formed a breastplate under the stole. Wavy long
hair framed her gentle face and draped down her back. An empty
sheath hung from a wide belt around her waist. The more he gazed at
her, the more familiar she looked.

“Eh?” the silver haired stranger pressed him
for an answer.

“I have no idea,” Ivar whispered, wondering
what a statue was doing on a desolate beach. He’d only seen a
statue once before on a merchant’s table in Menek–a figurine the
size of his palm, made from solid gold, a treasure retained from
the days of trade with the pirates.

“She knows you.” The old man didn’t look at
him when he said it; he just kept sipping his tea.

“What do you mean? It’s a statue. How can it
know me?”

“Thirsty?”

Ivar took the cup that was handed to him and
sniffed its contents. A sweet aroma traveled on the steam,
delighting his senses, reminding him how empty his stomach was.

“Fool youth. Drink. Hurry up! You think I
would poison you, eh? Feeling guilty are you?” The old man set the
kettle back into the coals and took a seat next to Ivar, holding
his own cup with both his hands, though the way his fingers twisted
around it looked painful. “Might ought to be rid of you for making
a mess of my beach, littering it with Sorceress breath. Lucky for
you, I don’t kill people. Maybe freeze them for a little
while.”

“Freeze? You froze her?” A sudden fear rushed
through Ivar as he recalled where he had seen that face. It was the
woman who had tied him to the post, the woman named Promise. “You
turned her to stone?”

The old man didn’t answer.

“Who are you? Where am
I?”
If the old coot turned a beautiful
girl to stone, what else is he capable of?

The man’s stare sent a chill down the Ivar’s
back. “Silvio,” he answered. “Who are you?”

Ivar hesitated to tell the old man. A name
added to magic could do great harm, or so Meneks fablers had told
him. Yet, Ivar didn’t want to stir the magician’s temper, either.
“My name’s Ivar.”

Silvio’s ominous green eyes didn’t let Ivar
go, nor did they blink. Instead they poked into his being like a
needle, burning his veins with sorcery. The magician had to be
searching his soul. Ivar stood.

“Indeed!” Silvio scratched his beard. “Sit
down, I won’t hurt you. Not right now.”

Ivar felt his body turn morbid cold from
fear. He sat.

“A Kaempern?” Silvio chewed his tealeaves
for a while as he inspected Ivar. Then in a fit of disgust he spat,
“Holderwash! No you aren’t!”

Ivar gulped and scooted away from him.

“Liar! You think I don’t know a Kaempern when
I see one? Bah!” He faced the campfire. “Kaempern my skillywag.
Don’t know why you want to lie, but you’re no Kaempern!”

“My father is Aren of the Cave Clan, good
friends with Amleth, chief and elder.”

“Is that right? Then tell me this. Why is
your hair the color of charcoal, and your eyes as deep as night?
Tell me that! Kaempern, bah.” His crooked fingers trembled so
violently that the little bit of tea left in his cup spilled to the
ground. “Everyone knows the Kaemperns are a northern race;
fair-haired and light-eyed. Jellbedash, Kaempern my toenails!”

The youth watched the crooked man stand, and
with an abundance of noise, empty the pots around the campfire.
With a muffled clunk the iron skillet dropped to the ground. Silvio
swept sand from the log with his long bony hands, giving Ivar a
foul look when he was finished.

“Half-breed no doubt. Mixed with the likes of
Taikus,” he grumbled, nodding to the statue. “Sorceress blood most
like. Who is she? Your sister?”

Ivar was tongue tied. He knew he didn’t look
like a Kaempern. He couldn’t argue, but he wasn’t going to go into
depth about his adoption with this cranky fellow. It wouldn’t
satisfy the old man’s accusations anyway. For all Ivar knew he did
come from Taikus.

“I don’t have to prove anything to you, old
man,” Ivar stood again, this time his anger prompted him. “I know
who I am.”

Silvio spun to face him in wicked surprise,
one green eye so wide it looked as though it would pop out of its
socket “You know who you are, do you? But you don’t know who she
is?”

Ivar’s gaze followed Silvio’s shaking finger,
the statue his mark.

“No. I mean she looks like the woman that
held me captive on the ship that pulled me from the serpent’s
clutches. Her name was Promise. But I never saw her before last
night.”

“Promise? Some promise she is, a promise to
your end maybe. Take a good look at her. Stands before you a
Taikan, strong-arm of the sorceress Hacatine. Evil, I tell you.”
His face leaned into the youth’s; his hot breath blew hair into the
lad’s eyes as he hissed. “Evil. And she took a liking to you. Saved
your life, from the looks of it.” He unfolded his body as best he
could and turned his back to Ivar. “You’re no Kaempern, I can tell
you that. No wizard, either,” he added, the last comment accented
with a grumble as he waddled toward the forest.

Ivar watched him as he disappeared into the
shadows of the woods, relieved to see the old man go. The trip had
been traumatic enough without a stranger badgering him. He
questioned his own sanity even now, for he thought he saw little
people running alongside the magician’s feet. Ivar attributed the
vision to having swallowed too much seawater the night before.

Glad for the silence, Ivar sat in the sand,
leaned against a log by the fire, and drank his tea. The liquid
felt warm in his belly, and the flavor was pleasant. Despite what
he had gone through the night before, Ivar was comfortable. A
breeze from the ocean picked up, quickly shifting the fog, though
low clouds still dampened the day. The salty mist of the ocean fog
fell leaving tiny droplets on his hair, on his bare arms, and on
the stone statue.

Ivar glanced at her again. Daylight had her
color to dull rust, not unlike the color in Promise’s eyes the
night before, eyes that had traveled deep into his memories. How
painful that experience had been. Still something had filled the
void when she finally released him. Ivar didn’t quite understand
what it was. Now she stood frozen in time, and he was drawn to her,
wishing she would wake up so he could ask her what she had
done.

A slanted smile grew across Ivar’s face. He
thought he saw her breathe. “So I’m a bit enchanted by your magic!”
he said to Promise. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Even
frozen into a piece of stone her beauty was mesmerizing. “I bet you
didn’t know that my people, the Kaemperns, have magic, too. We have
a magical shield that protects us from sorceresses like you. Why,
if we were back home you’d never be able to do what you did to
me.”