Bacorium Legacy (2 page)

The other figure was very different. A young man with hair as white as snow, dressed in heavy fur robes. He was armed with a sword, which he held in a reverse-grip. Blood dripped from his chin as he stared down the armoured man. He drew his breaths in heavy, pained gasps.

Emila did not know why they were fighting, but she had no desire to get between two warriors in combat. She would have turned and fled back to the inn, were it not for the fact that she would have been noticed by both men if she tried.

The two fighters stood still as statues, warily watching each other from a distance. Each was waiting for the other to make a move. After a few moments, the man in black armour lifted his battle axe and moved in for the kill. The white-haired man held his sword at the ready.

It was obvious who was going to win. The white-haired man was clearly exhausted, drawing painful and ragged breaths. His heavy fur robes were weighing him down, he bled freely from several spots on his body, and he had an arrow stuck in his leg. The Acarian, on the other hand, was untouched, much larger, and moved with surprising speed for someone in full armour.

Emila watched as the Acarian closed in on the white-haired man, swinging his axe for what was certainly a killing blow.

She couldn't help but gasp as the exact opposite happened. The white-haired man threw off his robes, and moved with unforeseen speed, not dodging, but blocking the Acarian's heavy axe with his sword. Emila had thought the man untrained because he was holding the sword in a reverse-grip, which was universally discouraged. Perhaps the Acarian had thought the same thing. It certainly wasn't an unreasonable expectation, but it was one that turned out to be wrong. The white-haired man flowed around the Acarian like a dancer, blocking each swing of his axe, and countering where he could.

The Acarian took several glancing blows in the gaps in his armour, but made no vocal sounds. He did not fall back or change his strategy. He should have, for the next stroke of the white-haired man's sword decapitated him even as he raised his axe for another swing. The severed head flew away, helm and all, and landed in the river.

The body stood on its own for a moment, as blood sprayed from the headless torso like a fountain of red. The Acarian's blood mingled with the boy's. Then, the armoured man let out one last breath, and fell back into the mud with a splash.

Silence returned.

Emila hesitated. The Acarian was dead, and the white-haired man was clearly clinging to life. He did not breath as a healthy man did. He would die in minutes, if he did not get any healing. She could not have asked for a better outcome to the conflict - and yet she found herself unable to leave the boy to die.

She knew it would be wiser to turn away, and forget about this. The man had been fighting with an Acarian. Helping an enemy of an Acarian could get her involved in whatever conflict this fight had been a result of. But her conscience urged her to him. If she had the power to save someone, it was her responsibility to do so. That was one of the basic laws of healers - one of the lessons her father had instilled in her. Cursing herself, Emila stepped out from behind the tree, and ran to the white-haired man.

The Acarian had already vanished, his body dissipated into mana as every human did in death. Only the black armour remained. The white-haired man lay unconscious in the mud, covered in filth, blood, and snow. He still lived, at least.

She blinked at the sight of his clothes - it was early summer in the middle of
Saeticia.
This snow was not the artificial stuff one could create with mana. It was real, true snow, covering the man's fur clothes. As an ice-form magus, she could tell the difference. Bits of the
snow were in his hair, which was so white itself that one could hardly tell they was there.
 

How was this possible, Emila wondered. How could this man, who appeared from nowhere with an Acarian soldier trying to kill him, be covered in snow?

But there was
no time to worry about that. She would have to move quickly if she wanted to save his life. The dark stains in his clothes were growing. Whatever his injuries were, they were severe.
 

She pulled the man up out of the thick mud, half-dragging him as quickly as she could manage back to the inn. She passed the well, kicking the bucket aside on her way. It was difficult for her - he was heavier than he looked.

Once she got him back inside, she pulled him atop the kitchen table, and examined his injuries. He had a nasty cut across his left cheek, running from his jaw to his ear, which bled profusely. The arrow in his leg was broken in half. And he had several other injuries which bled, but nothing too severe.

What was killing him was the broken short sword that had pierced his lung.

Emila gathered her mana up and ran her hands over his chest, sensing the full extent of the injury. He must have fallen at some point, driving the small blade between his ribs. The hilt had broken off, leaving only the top half of the blade, which would make it an nigh impossible to remove. She allowed herself a rare curse, for she realised how difficult it would be to save this man.

Emila considered her options. The healing abilities of ice-form magick were not as strong as light-form or spirit-form, but they were better than the other seven schools. Her little sister, a spirit-form magus, had been far more skilled at healing than Emila was. She would not have had a problem with this. Emila, on the other hand - though she had trained at healing for years, she still had problems with it. They said a true healer never left a scar, but Emila sometimes did.

An injury like this was difficult, but not impossible. As long as she was careful, she could pull the blade out of his lung and repair the damage. The problem was, she did not have time to be careful. The man's breathing was growing worse by the second. If she did not do something quickly...

An idea popped into her head.

And just as quickly, she cast it aside. She could not use such a spell on a complete stranger. Her father had told her so when he'd taught it to her - how vital it was not to do so. The risks were too great.

The spell she was considering was dangerous. She had been told that she should only use it to save the life of another if there was no other option available, and even then, only on close friends and family. If the healer and patient were too incompatible, then the risks were said to be worse than death itself...

Emila bit her lip. She didn't have time to think about it. It was the only way to save him. He would die if she did not. If he woke, and he turned out to be an evil man, she could always take off running.

She was taking a huge risk to save the life of a stranger.

Undeterred, Emila placed her hand on the man's forehead, and placed her other on her own. She gathered her mana, wove the spell, and released the energy.

There was a flash of light in the room, and the temperature briefly dropped. Emila saw her breath as she gasped. A strange feeling ran through her, making her dizzy and causing her knees to buckle. She had to grab the edge of the table to remain standing.

It took a minute or so for the effects to fade, but time was no matter now. The man's life was in no danger. When Emila returned her attention to him, his breathing was steady, his pulse was normal, and his face looked at peace, even though his injuries were still untended, including the pierced lung.

That was it, then. There was no going back now. Emila wondered if perhaps she'd just made the greatest mistake of her life.

No. Not her greatest mistake, she remembered. She had already made that two years ago.

Emila sighed and drew up a wet cloth, wiping the blood and dirt from the man's face. She could already feel the effects of the spell. But until he woke, she wouldn't truly know whom it was she had just linked herself to.

The man's closed eyes looked troubled.

“I wonder who you are...” she asked him, half hoping he would answer. A moment passed, and he did not.

Emila gathered her mana once more, and began the long process of healing his wounds.

She worked well into the small hours of the night.

Chapter I

How to Bring a Blush to the Snow

He shivered. Even though he had lit a small fire, closed and locked the door, and closed the windows of his small hut, it did little to keep out the cold. The harsh winds of the north were unstoppable.

He hated the cold.

He shook his head. How it infuriated him that his father had chosen to come to such a place - of all the places they had gone in the past decade, this was the worst. It was too cold outside for him to practise swordplay or magick, leaving him with nothing to do but read. He enjoyed to read usually, but today he felt restless.

With a frown, he returned his attention to the small, hand-written journal in his hands, which he had been given by one of the people in the unnamed village he was staying in. It was the account of an anonymous writer who had set out to remote parts to discover great secrets.

It read:

Although these cold nights in the mountains have brought me little comfort or satisfaction, my resolution remains untarnished. The sanctum I seek must rest somewhere in these hills. My research has brought me to this location for a single reason; the lost and forgotten arts of the Magi. These great men of ages past were recorded by written account performing feats of magick unseen in this age.

Such a tragedy, it seemed to me, that such greatness would be lost. Therefore I set out to rediscover at least some fragment of their lost knowledge. But the discovery I so eagerly seek has yet to manifest itself in any shape or form. All I have found out here is ice and monsters.

But as I have said already, my resolution remains untarnished. If what I seek exists at all, then I shall find it or die.

Tomorrow, I will search further.

It would seem there was no escape from the freezing hell he was in. Even his book saw fit to remind him of it. He closed the book, rose and drew his robes tighter around himself. He paced relentlessly, hoping the movement would warm him up.

Though it was always cold in the village, this day in particular was merciless. He prayed the storm would die down at least a bit before his father returned. Once he was back, they were to go out hunting. And he knew that no weather, no matter how fierce, would keep his father from a hunt. Not because the man enjoyed it - he seldom did - but because they were the only two hunters the village had left, so without them, there would be no food.

How the people of this village had survived before their arrival, he did not know. The Arimos region was a deathly and desolate place, barely habitable by humans. Only certain parts of it could be safely settled, and even those were far deadlier than the more southern lands of Bacoria. The monsters of the north were more vicious, food and supplies harder to come by, and of course there was always…

The cold.

He made his way over to the lone door of the small hut, and peered out at the raging blizzard through the cracked frame. The howling winds gave no sign of relief. If his father was on his way, he would not be able to see him approaching through that haze.

His father was a tough man, tempered by many years of living in the farthest corners of Bacoria. Humourless and determined, he had trained his son vigorously for the past fourteen years, almost all of which they had spent travelling, stopping only to rest in the occasional remote village for a month or two at a time. They had passed through Torachi and Samgo and Mainyu, and even the dead kingdom of Freidu. The more populated lands, like Sono and Saeticia, his father seemed to avoid, though they did pass through the edges of even those from time to time.

The training had made him as tough as his father. He knew how to wield a blade well after nearly a decade and a half of practise. Though he was nothing compared to his father, he figured himself skilled enough in swordplay to handle just about any monster he came across. He had never fought another man, though. Sometime he wondered what it would be like to kill someone.

His father never gave him a reason for the constant travel. He knew little about his father's life, or where they had come from. He had vague memories of a home he had once lived in, and a beautiful mother with golden hair. Whenever he brought this up, his father always grew quiet, and his eyes would fill with the weight of memory. And regret.

For seven months now he had been staying in this village, longer than any of the other places they had gone to, and he was starting to feel restless. While he was no stranger to staying in areas all but untouched by mankind, he felt almost claustrophobic whenever he stepped outside the hut he shared with his father. Part of this perhaps was because of the tall cliffs surrounding the village, but the minuscule population was the true reason. That tight feeling, coupled with his disdain for the cold, had led to him becoming something of a shut-in for the past two weeks or so.

Calling it a village in the first place was a compliment, really - it was more like a glorified group of huts. The population probably didn’t even exceed fifty. He wasn’t quite sure, as the only people he saw regularly were the village elder and a girl named Arlea. The girl seemed to go out of her way to ‘bump’ into him often - the reasons for which were all too clear with the obvious lack of young men in the town. He would have been flattered if the whole affair hadn’t been such a bother to him. He liked girls, sure - but he had learnt long ago not to get attached.

Indeed, it wasn’t only girls that he had made a habit of avoiding. He had learnt long ago not to bother making friends in the small towns and villages they passed through. He had made a decision to walk alone - one of the most important books his father had ever given him had instilled in him a sense of duty and honour which he had swore never to sway from.

He turned his attentions back to his books, exhausted and frustrated by his thoughts. The diary of the traveller which he had been reading moments ago was nearing its end - only a sliver of page length remained in the binding. Wishing to save the rest for another time, he returned it to the wooden chest he kept his books in. He withdrew instead a thick tome of Bacorian lore, which he had already made considerable progress in studying. He returned to his comfortable mattress beside the fire, and opened to where he had left off - a chapter on myths told in the early days of Bacoria.