Magician Prince (17 page)

Small hands helped him to his feet and Sane
found he was face to face with the young Jin Tanner. “Is that how
you use multiple disciplines to complement each other?” he asked
Sane, referring to their lesson earlier that day.

Sane nodded and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Have
you seen my friend Byrn?”

Jin pointed at the gate and asked, “When will
I be able to do that?”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to,” Sane
told him as he ran off.

The boy turned to where Sane had almost
smashed into the ground and saw a second shock to his young life as
Xander Necros came floating slowly to the ground. He rested
comfortably in front of Jin and asked, “Which way did he go?”

Once again Jin pointed at the gate and the
grandmaster followed after.

The first clue that something was amiss in
Wolfsbane was when Byrn saw his old master throwing a pair of
magicians down the street with a flick of his wand. The sorcerer
stopped for a moment to catch his breath and that was when he
noticed Byrn and Kaleb. From his vantage point Byrn could see magic
pooling around the sorcerer and infusing his body with energy, so
that the old man could sprint to Byrn’s side.

“Whatever this is, it cannot be good,” Byrn
muttered to his young companion and Kaleb agreed as Sane met up
with them.

“Xander…” Sane panted, “He means to take
control of you. It all makes sense now: Korok’s vision of you as a
manifestation of dark power and my own of darkness spreading out
from Wolfsbane. They were warnings about this event.”

“How?” asked Byrn, “Alia told me the control
collar in the Collective’s possession was disabled.”

The sorcerer’s head shook. “I don’t know.
Perhaps she lied or Xander has another collar that no one knows
about. To make matters worse, he told me that he is dying. I think
he intends to take all of the non-magic users in the kingdom with
him before he passes.”

Further discussion would have to wait as
Xander came into view. He boiled with power and anger that only
seemed to intensify when he saw Byrn and Sane together.

“You need to go,” Byrn told Sane firmly,
“Transport away from here and take Kaleb. He means to destroy
us.”

“No, we will fight him together,” Sane took
up a position beside Byrn and held his wand like a rapier pointed
at the approaching necromancer. “Besides, I don’t have a rune on
me.”

“Sane, listen to me and get out of here. I
don’t know what he plans for me, but he plans to kill you. Wherever
you end up, it will be better than here.

“I can protect myself,” added Byrn.

“You have saved me twice, now,” Sane told
him, “and
you
are my prince. Kaleb, you need to get out of
harm's way.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy answered, showing more
sense than Sane and ran down the street, hopefully to someplace
safe.

A strike of tendrils surged from Xander
towards the sorcerers cutting off their exchange and Byrn raised a
wall of protection to withstand the onslaught of magic that
desperately tried to reach them and drain their energy or their
very lives- it was difficult to tell which Xander intended. The
battle would have to be ended quickly before Xander used up enough
of his own energy that he would find it necessary to take strength
from the other citizens of Wolfsbane as he did in Colum.

The air became superheated as Byrn forced a
fiery flare into the mass of tentacles consuming them as it bore
down on Xander Necros, who summoned a wall of earth at his feet to
turn aside the massive fireball.

From behind the wall a dozen war wraiths
swarmed out and charged the sorcerers. Byrn was the first to act
with a wall of fire meant to destroy the wraiths, but only
succeeded in destroying half as the others veered out of the way.
Sane answered with a Moran’s Circle, a wind based spell that acted
as a personal whirlwind providing protection on all sides, that
held the others at bay while Byrn conjured another fire spell.
Byrn’s next spell created a constant rush of fire into the circle
transforming the whirlwind into a tornado of fire.

“Let loose the circle,” Byrn shouted over the
raging wind that surrounded them and Sane did as he was told. Then
Byrn pushed out the tornado until the remaining wraiths were
consumed before he allowed the spell to dissipate.

A sudden surge of energy rushed from behind
Xander’s earthy barrier. Byrn silently cursed. The wraiths were
just a ploy to keep them occupied so that Xander could summon
something much more powerful. This time a pair of molten creatures
that Byrn had never seen before emerged, one on each side, from
behind the wall. From their size and form they could only be fire
elementals.

Shrieks of fear came from several onlookers
who had gathered some distance away to watch the battle unfolding
before them. The fire elementals were grotesque creatures of a
substance that could only be described as liquid fire whose faces
oozed into elongated approximations of what human faces should be.
They slithered forward like snakes on their bellies and were nearly
as quick. Byrn wondered if his invulnerability to fire would extend
to these elementals, but decided not to take the risk. His mind
raced as he mentally catalogued the non-fire spells in his
repertoire that might hurt the creatures.

Water shot past Byrn’s head as Sane engaged
the elementals, causing steam to fill the air as the liquid touched
their flesh. Byrn followed with a torrent of waves that shot forth
from the air, but the elementals were barely slowed in their
advance.

Dread passed over the young sorcerer as the
elementals surged past him and went for Sane. He reached out with
his mind and grabbed the elementals willing them to halt their
attack.
If I can control fire, then I can control these
things,
he told himself and miraculously he held them against
their wills, but it required all of his concentration. Unlike a
natural fire that bent willingly to his thoughts, the elementals
were sentient beings and preventing them from moving required his
complete focus.

“I can’t hold them for long,” Byrn grunted at
the exertion.

Sane showered the elementals with water and
ice, but the damage he was doing was negligible against their
molten hides.

Searing pain surged up Byrn’s spine forcing
him to his knees and releasing his hold on the fire elementals,
which immediately went after Sane. He gasped; as the air was sucked
from his lungs- no, not air… his magic… his very life force was
being drained by Xander’s deathly tentacles lodged into his
back.

“Go!” shouted Byrn through the excruciating
pain as the elementals backed Sane against a wall. If he did not
flee now, then he would be dead. Sane blinked out of existence
before Byrn’s eyes.

The last sounds he heard were the footsteps
of the grandmaster and his words: “You have power to match my own-
perhaps even more, which is astounding enough in its own right, but
I have something that you will never possess: Four hundred years of
experience and the will to do what must be done.”

Avelice tugged at Kaleb’s finger as he made a
valiant effort to keep her entertained while the grown ups
discussed matters that most would consider too weighty for the boy
to understand. Alia knew better. He was a bright lad and proved not
only his resourcefulness and quick wit by choosing her of all
people to come to, but his bravery as well. There was little reason
to suspect that she would side with a ten-year-old lesser over her
own father, but he came to her anyway and she had listened to his
tale.

It was a month earlier that he was banging on
her door with enough gusto to set Avelice to crying at the sound
that must have been frightening to little ears that recoiled from
such loud, abrupt noises. Alia had stormed to the front door and
swung it open determined to give whoever was foolish enough to do
such a thing a verbal beating that they would not soon forget, but
when she saw the terrified face of Kaleb hurriedly wiping the tears
from his eyes and cheeks, his chin quivering as he fought to be
brave in front of her all she could do was bid him to enter and
offer him a seat while he told his story.

He told her of the confrontation between
Byrn, Sane, and her father. At first Kaleb thought that it was some
kind of joke when he saw Sane running towards them like a
jackrabbit all soaking wet, but soon he understood that something
very bad was about to happen as the sorcerer kept telling Byrn
about how Xander intended to use him. When the fighting started
they made Kaleb run away, but didn’t tell him where to go. He ran
and ran without thought to where he headed, but when he stopped he
was standing outside of Alia’s door. It was one of the places that
he knew best in Wolfsbane and she was the only person that he ever
saw stand up to Xander Necros besides Byrn.

Alia left Avelice with Kaleb and went to see
her father immediately who admitted to the confrontation, but swore
that he was the innocent party and that the sorcerers tried to kill
him upon hearing of their king’s death. Sane fled like a coward
once it was clear that Xander had taken the upper hand, to hear the
grandmaster tell it, but Byrn was determined to take the
necromancer’s life. It took a considerable amount of Xander’s
strength to subdue him and he was held in a safe location that was
known only to Xander. He swore that he would not let Byrn pollute
the minds of anyone else until he had gotten to the bottom of
Byrn’s trickery.

It was a compelling story and Alia guessed
there was some seed of truth to it. There had to be considering the
number of witnesses that saw the clash, but she could not deny the
sneaking suspicion that she was being lied to. Byrn loved Kaleb
like a little brother. He would never provoke a fight with Xander
while the boy was around.

There was also the little known fact that the
goddess of life, Ashura, cursed Byrn years ago so that he could
never kill without sacrificing his own life in the process. For
that reason alone, he was unlikely to aggressively try to kill
Xander or anyone else on his own.

She longed to trust her father, but her
belief in him had waned since his rescue from prison. The man he
was did not measure up to the memories she held of him as a child.
She remembered him as being a larger than life figure who could do
no wrong, but now she saw a man who was flawed by his own lust for
vengeance and whose sole focus was on sating that desire no matter
the cost. Perhaps her mother had been right all along to never try
and rescue him. Had she known this side of him or was this
something he had kept hidden from her too during their
marriage?

After that day, Alia knew she had to discover
what her father intended to do with Byrn. He could have executed
the sorcerer at any time if that was his wish, or asked Alia to
delve into his mind to find out why he would want to kill Xander
and she would have done so willingly, but neither of those things
happened and it was for that reason that she decided that it was
necessary to begin spying on her father.

Ever her faithful student and friend, she
asked Tomlin first who agreed to help without a moment’s
hesitation. Tomlin joined her when he was only a little older than
Kaleb and became the second member of the Collective. Despite his
often-lackadaisical attitude and penchant for bravado, he could
always be relied upon when she needed him. He was possibly the
Collective’s best man when it came to finding information that no
one else could and for this reason Tomlin was invaluable for her
needs.

The only other person she had included in her
search for the truth was Ryonus Southsun. He had proven himself
reliable with the breaking of the control collar and had earned her
trust as one who was able to look at the bigger picture and act
accordingly. Though he was a friend of her father’s, Ryonus was
also a friend of Byrn’s going back to Baj and she hoped that would
be enough to convince him to help her in this. Being one that
always tried to consider all sides before acting, Ryonus did not
agree as swiftly as Tomlin did, but soon came around to Alia’s way
of thinking.

Now, as they all met in Alia’s home and
talked in a hushed discussion, the first bit of good news came
forward. “Byrn is being held in the northern tower,” Tomlin told
them, “Xander declared the tower off limits to all save himself for
his own needs about two months ago, shortly before Byrn showed up
and well before last month’s attack.”

“You think that Xander planned this?” Ryonus
asked incredulously, “To what end?”

“That is the question,” Tomlin agreed. His
usual aloofness barely masked the seriousness of his reply. Few
would notice the difference except for those lucky enough to say
that they knew him well.

“What you are suggesting borders on treason,”
Ryonus warned, “If anyone outside of these walls heard you.”

Tomlin’s face became flushed at the
implication. “I’m stating facts, Ryonus, and nothing more. It is
common knowledge that that tower is off limits to all except
Xander. It is also commonly known that Xander holds Byrn; he
admitted that openly, but no one knows where. No one put these
together before now, because the tower was closed off well in
advance- that and no one outside of this cabin really cares that
much what happens to Byrn enough to push the issue with
Xander.”

“Then how can you be sure? My father could
have easily taken Byrn anyplace in the kingdom. Would he really
keep him so close?” It was Alia that asked this time. Another
person might have viewed the question as a sign of doubt, but
Tomlin knew it for what it was- a leader collecting as much
information as possible before making a potentially deadly move.
Alia could openly defy her father on small matters and council him
against certain actions privately, but this was the first time she
had ever gone behind his back and there was no way of knowing how
he might react if he found out.