Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (41 page)

He dug the toes
of his boots into the ground, sliding helplessly towards certain death as he
tried to find something to latch onto. “Don’t worry — I won’t let go!” he
said.

“Well you
should!” Aerilyn’s voice shrilled from over the edge. “If you don’t let go,
we’ll both die!”

“Never!”

He was almost
halfway off the cliff when Kael grabbed him by the legs. It wasn’t the best
plan: the rocks were slippery and when he tried to get his feet situated, he
lost his concentration. In that split second of distraction, he lost his mind’s
strength — and the weight of two bodies dragged him to the edge.

He was preparing
himself for the fall when Kyleigh’s arms wrapped around his waist in an iron
hold. With one mighty step backwards, she dragged them all a foot towards
safety.

Across the rift,
Thelred stepped in front of the mage and raised his cutlass to strike. A spell
hit him in the chest and he fell over with a grunt. Kael thought he was dead at
first, then he moved. He got back on his feet, but couldn’t seem to lift his
sword off the ground. He jerked madly, trying to wrench it free.

“Just let go!”
Lysander snapped at him, his voice a little strained from being stretched out
so far between Kael and Aerilyn.

“I can’t,” he
shouted back. “My hand’s glued to the hilt!”

Lysander’s cry
caught the mage’s attention. He looked up at them, saw the plight they were in,
and sneered.

“Kael, you have
to shoot him,” Kyleigh said in his ear. “You have to shoot him now!”

“I can’t! If I
let go, the others will fall.”

“Let me take
care of them,” she said quickly as the mage raised his staff. “Take your shot!
Move!”

The staff was
pointed in their direction, aimed for Kyleigh. Strange, muffled words were
already on the mage’s lips. In a second, the spell would come whistling for
them. It would strike Kyleigh in the chest and send them all to their deaths.

Kael decided
quickly. He let go of Lysander’s legs, leapt to the side, whipped out an arrow
and drew it to his chin. Blue light had gathered at the end of the mage’s staff
when Kael’s arrow struck his shoulder. The blow knocked his aim to the side and
his spell struck the cliff beneath them. Dirt and pebbles exploded out as huge
slabs of rock crumbled off the cliff and crashed into the ocean with a spew of
foam.

Dark red blood
spurted out from the mage’s wound. He collapsed on the ground and clutched the
arrow with a shaking hand. The stench coming from his blood was incredible. It
burned Kael’s nose and made anger pulse at the backs of his eyes. Rage billowed
up from the soles of his feet, climbing higher and higher until it consumed
him.

He forgot about
his friends, forgot about the Witch and all the danger they were in. He must
stop that blood. He must rip the mage’s heart out of his chest and hurl it into
the deepest part of the sea!

“Stop it!”
Kyleigh’s voice was in his head, warring with his anger. He hardly felt it when
she pinned him on the ground. “Stop hitting him! Can’t you see the man’s
begging for his life?”

It was the shock
behind her words that brought him back. The second he stopped fighting, the
full weight of Kyleigh’s body nearly crushed him. She had to roll away to keep
from breaking his every bone.

“Were you trying
to kill me?” he shouted when he had air in his lungs again. “Why would you do
that?”

“I’m sorry, but
it was the only way I could get you to stop.”

“Stop
what
?”

She pointed
behind him, and he couldn’t help but notice the slight tremble in her hand.
“That.”

He wrenched his
head around and saw the mage lying in the dirt, spread-eagle and unmoving. His
face was covered in blood. He coughed, and red drops went spraying everywhere.
“Couldn’t help … couldn’t stop,” he moaned, his head lolling from side to side.

Kael looked up
and saw Thelred, still hunched over and bound by his sword, staring at him in
shock. Across the rift, Lysander and Aerilyn sat safely in the middle of the
road. Their eyes were on him and their mouths hung open.

That’s when he
looked down and saw the blood on his knuckles … and he realized what he’d done.

“They say the
whisperers hunt mages like the shark hunts blood,” Thelred said, his eyes still
wide. “But I never believed it … until now.”

“It’s in your
nature,” Kyleigh said to Kael, placing a steady hand on his shoulder.
“Whisperers hate magic, and the blood of a mage is magic in its rawest form.”
Her grip on his shoulder tightened. “You controlled your anger well.”

Kael heard
himself make a sound that was halfway between scorn and disgust. “I pummeled a
man for no reason.”

She smiled
softly. “I’ve seen full-grown whisperers, men much older who should know
better, fly into a rage and tear mages limb from bloody limb. For as young and
powerful as you are, believe me when I say that you controlled yourself well.”

He still didn’t
think she was right. But then the mage groaned again, and he forgot about
arguing with her. He crawled over and tried not to breathe as he inspected the
damage. The arrow needed to come out, that much was certain. The rest of his
wounds were mainly on his face: a busted lip, broken nose and an eyebrow split
neatly down the middle.

He grabbed onto
the arrow and was preparing to break it in half when the mage’s hand clamped
down on his. “Please,” he said thickly. He held his arm up to Kael’s face and
he saw a rusty iron shackle clasped around his wrist. “I know our people are
enemies, whisperer. But I beg you — free me.”

Kael was going
to ask him what he was talking about when he noticed something odd: a thin,
milky white film covered the shackle’s surface. He touched it, and it felt
sticky.

“A spell?” he
asked, and the mage nodded. “If I release you, how do I know you won’t just
attack us again?”

The mage turned
his wrist in reply, so that Kael could see the symbol stamped into the metal.
It was a sea serpent being pierced in the tail by a harpoon — the symbol
of the High Seas.

“I’ve never been
my own man. The Duke captured me when I was a child and had his court wizard
bind me by this spell. You might say I was raised in captivity.” He tried to
take a breath and coughed as blood ran into his mouth. “Gah … I served
unwillingly as a battlemage on one of the Duke’s trade ships until we ran
aground here. Then the Witch, she’s kept me in that stone prison for three
years.” He brushed an impatient sleeve across his mouth and gripped Kael’s arm.
“Please, the pain clears my head for a moment, but I can already feel the
madness creeping back in. The voices are trying to take me. Break the spell,
whisperer, and I’ll be forever in your debt.”

Kael didn’t want
that, not at all. He already had a halfdragon following him around because he’d
saved her life. But when he met the mage’s eyes, he saw the cold edge was gone
from them. They were clear blue and intelligent, even kind. Though he still
smelled horrible, it was obvious the mage meant them no harm.

Kael turned his
head to the side to get another breath of fresh air before he went to work. He
dug his fingernail into the white film, and it broke. After that, it was simply
a matter of peeling the spell off — one milky strip at a time. When the
film was gone, he put his fingers between the shackle and the mage’s skin and
thought:

It isn’t iron — it’s only a piece of
parchment
. The iron changed to paper in his hands. He tore the shackle
clean in two and tossed it aside.

The mage gasped
in relief. “Thank you —”

“Yeah, all right,”
Kael said quickly. “Just hold still while I patch you up.”

The mage picked
up his now slightly-bent spectacles and placed them gingerly on the end of his
long nose. “Do you mind if I watch? I’ve never seen a whisperer at work before,
but I hear from the older mages that it’s quite a sight.”

“Sure,” Kael
said. “Just as long as you hold still.”

It didn’t take
him long to close the mage’s wounds or set his nose straight. After everything
Morris made him do, healing came back to him easily. The worst part about it
was how horribly his blood itched: Kael had to rub dirt on his hands to keep
from scratching his palms off. The mage went on about how amazing it was to see
a whisperer heal until Thelred very grumpily said:

“Yes, we’re all
excited for you. But if I have to stay bent over like this for another second,
I might rip my own arm off — and then I’m coming after you with the other
one, mage.”

“Ah, yes. Sorry
about that,” he said, getting quickly to his feet. He picked his staff up and
cleared his throat. “I know what you’re thinking: it’s embarrassing for a
full-grown mage to still be carrying around a child’s impetus. But I was never
allowed to make my own.”

Kael didn’t
understand three words of that. But Kyleigh explained. “An impetus is the
object a mage uses to channel his magic. And I’m no expert, but I think a
smaller impetus is a sign of a more powerful mage.”

“Yes, because it
takes a great deal of skill to link spells tight enough to fit into something
as small as, say, a ring,” the mage said. He touched his staff to Thelred
— who went toppling backwards as the spell suddenly released them. “A
long time ago, a wizard made the mistake of toying with Fate. So great was her
ire that she separated our souls from our magic. Now we must be content with
scribbling them onto things and casting like that.”

Kael had never
heard that story before, but he wouldn’t let the mage think he was interested
in it. He moved behind Kyleigh — just incase. If the anger took him
again, she was the only one who could stop him.

Lysander and
Aerilyn were making their way over the rift, edging across the narrow ledge
left by the mage’s spell. Lysander kept trying to take her hand, and she kept
batting him away. “I’m quite capable of walking on my own,” she snapped.

“I’m only trying
to help, my dear. Let me be a steady hand to you.”

“I’m not your
dear
. And you’d do well to keep your
steady hand away from my rump,” she said, smacking him away again.

“Don’t be
preposterous.” Lysander sounded hurt. But when he looked up, Kael saw he was
trying to hide a grin.

The mage offered
his staff to Aerilyn, and pulled her over the last bit. Then he helped
Lysander. “Thank you,” Aerilyn said to him. She pushed by Lysander, tossing her
hair rather primly as she went.

He ignored her,
and held out his hand to the mage. “Thank you … uh?”

“Jacob,” the
mage supplied.

“Well I thank
you, Battlemage Jake,” Lysander said with a toothy smile, and shook his hand so
hard that the poor man’s spectacles nearly slid off his nose. “We’d love to
stay and chat, but I’m afraid we’ve got some witch-slaying to do.” He stepped
to the side and clapped his hands together sharply. “Come along, lords and
ladies. We don’t have time to waste —”

“Wait a moment,”
Jake said.

Lysander
stopped. He turned around, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

Jake pushed his
spectacles back up his nose and clutched his staff nervously. “I was just
— I was wondering if I might come with you, seeing as how it was the
Witch who held me prisoner for so long. I’d like to help.”

“You want
revenge?”

“Yes,” Jake said
firmly. The knuckles clamped around his staff went white.

Lysander
sauntered over to him, tapping his chin. “Interesting … but I’m afraid I run a
tight ship. I can’t let just anyone join.”

“But I’m a
mage,” Jake said. “I’ll bet you don’t have one like me in your crew.”

Lysander looked
surprised, like he hadn’t thought of it before. “True. I suppose you could be
useful. But you should also know that we’re all pirates.”

“Not all of us,”
Aerilyn interjected.

“Right. Some of
us are stubborn-arsed merchants,” Lysander said, and grinned when she gasped
indignantly. “The point is that we aren’t exactly on good terms with the
Kingdom. Sail with us, and you might never see decent society again.”

Jake didn’t seem
at all put off. In fact, he stood a little straighter. “That’s well with me,
Captain. I’ve got no love for the Kingdom.”

Lysander held
out his hand again, and this time when Jake took it, he said: “Welcome to the
crew, dog.”

At long last,
they reached the top of the cliff. Up close, Wendelgrimm castle looked like
little more than a crumbling pile of rocks. Three of its towers reeled like
they’d been hit by a strong wind and never quite recovered. The fourth tower
stood tall, but had a hole in its roof large enough for a dragon to land in.
Vines took over what was left of it.

Blood-red
flowers sprouted up from their stems and nearly covered the outer walls. The
sharp tang of magic seeping off their petals was enough to make Kael take a
step back.

“Don’t let those
vines touch you,” Jake warned. “If you get too close, they’ll reach out and
strangle you.”

“How
enchanting,” Aerilyn muttered.

The only part of
the castle that wasn’t covered in vines was the entrance. A pair of wooden
doors filled the archway of the castle’s outer wall, and they didn’t look
particularly sturdy: large patches were simply rotted through.

“Well, this
shouldn’t be difficult,” Lysander said. Then, with a glance at Aerilyn, he
marched straight for the doors. “There’s not a plank on this whole thing that
could withstand a blow from my boot.”

He was preparing
to kick it in when Jake said: “I wouldn’t —”

Lysander’s boot
struck the wall and his whole leg bounced off of it. His knee snapped back and
hit him squarely in the chin, knocking him onto his rump. It was easily the
most ridiculous injury Kael had ever witnessed.