Son of a Dark Wizard (14 page)

As the sky grew black, a crowd formed around
the bonfire, and drummers and whistlers began making their little
songs. Sorren found Sage in the crowd, carrying around the walking
stick Sorren had left behind.

Sorren was careful to keep his voice low.
“The tools are ready, over there.” He pointed to where the hunters
had piled their traps and equipment. “We’ll leave as soon as the
ship is ready.”

“Look at everyone,” Sage said, waving the
stick at the crowd. “They’re all so excited. Don’t you want to
celebrate?”

Sorren ignored the question. “Have you
decided whether or not to stay with Thale?”

Before Sage could respond, Thale stepped
forward beside him. “I have to stay?” The boy leaned on a tall
walking stick of his own, crouched to the side like an old man.
Dark leather bandages covered one arm, which hung from his neck in
a sling made of thin straps. His hair was a wild mess; he’d
obviously rolled out of bed only recently. His blue and gold eye
whirred, zooming out toward Sorren.

“You need more time to heal,” Sorren
said.

“I can heal in the caverns,” Thale said. He
leaned forward and whispered. “These people are mad. Their beds are
uncomfortable, their food makes me gag, and I think they pray to
the owls.”

“They don’t pray to the owls,” Sage said,
adjusting his spectacles. “They just admire them.”

“And they . . .
well . . . they smell,” Thale said. “This whole
place smells. I can’t stay here.”

“You should be in bed even now,” Sage
said.

“Come on, Sorren,” Thale said.

“Shadowvin,” Sage whispered.

Thale leaned forward, his movements slow and
stiff. “Let’s all leave this place together.”

“You know what I’m after,” Sorren said. “You
saw what I’m up against. You’re safer here.”

Thale’s shoulders slumped. He opened his
mouth, paused, then closed it again.

“Shadowvin,” someone said, tapping Sorren’s
shoulder. Sorren turned to see Rozzom, the wolf head he wore once
again hanging across his chest. The man motioned for Sorren to
follow him.

Sorren grabbed the walking stick from Sage.
“My leg still hurts.” He leaned on the stick as he limped along
behind Rozzom, following him to a wide log that sat near the fire.
Rozzom motioned for him to sit. A small crowd had gathered around
the empty spot.

“What is it?” Sorren asked.

“Sit, sit, sit,” Rozzom said.

Sorren sat.

Rozzom accepted a wide wooden platter from
someone beside him. On top, something was wrapped in cloth. It was
the size of a loaf of bread, but oddly shaped, like a stone found
on a mountainside. Rozzom knelt down and held out the platter.

“As slayer of the rire, this is yours,
Shadowvin,” Rozzom said. “It’s a tradition.”

Sorren put his walking stick across his lap
and took the bundle, pretending to be interested in the strange
gift. It weighed about the same as a stone, but was soft and warm
to the touch. He slowly unraveled the greasy cloth around it,
already knowing what he’d find.

The chunk of meat sat there in his palms,
well-cooked and steaming.

“The heart of the rire,” Rozzom said,
smiling, the side of his face outlined by the fire that roared
behind him. “Have a bite.”

What a horrible tradition
, Sorren
thought. He drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pretended
to be intoxicated by the scent of the offering. Then he brought the
heart to his mouth and bit into it. The meat was chewy, and Sorren
was pleased to find that it tasted more like burnt wood and strange
spices than anything else.

When he finally swallowed, the small crowd
around him rewarded his fake smile with light applause. A woman
offered him a cup of some sort of juice, then they turned back to
their own plates and drinks and conversations.

“I wish I could’ve seen you do it,
Shadowvin,” Rozzom said, placing the platter against the log beside
Sorren and rising to his feet. “Is there any chance you’d be
willing to teach us what you know?”

Sorren licked his teeth, trying to work out
the bits of meat that had burrowed between them. “I’m afraid I may
be gone tomorrow. Time is precious in our business.”

“Ah, of course,” Rozzom said. “We ourselves
won’t be here for very much longer. Just until we get word of
Atlorus’s coronation. Then it’s back to the north, back to the
castle. Perhaps we’ll see you there someday.”

Sorren nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

Rozzom smiled politely and left.

Sorren stared at the fire before him, letting
its heat warm his face, watching the colorful flames as they
shifted and warped and curled into and out of each other like some
endlessly flowing braid.

Sage walked up beside Sorren, whispering.
“I’ll work on the airship as soon as I get a bite to eat, all
right? I’m starving.”

“Here.” Sorren wrapped the rire heart back in
its cloth and shoved it into Sage’s hands. “Take it with you.”

“Oh, Sorren,” Sage whispered, “must you be so
heartless?”

“If you’re not going to fix the ship, I
will.”

Sage grunted and held out a hand. “Give me
your drink too.”

Sorren took one last sip from his cup and
handed it to Sage.

“Enjoy your celebration,” Sage said. “I’ll be
back when I’ve finished.”

“Don’t bother,” Sorren said. “I’ll be there
at midnight.”

“How will you know when it’s midnight?”

“The Nyrish moon.”

Sage looked up. “Can you see it from
here?”

“I don’t have to
see
it,” Sorren
said.

Sage was silent for a moment, then whispered
excitedly. “The Nyrish power! Of course! See, that’s the sort of
thing I need for my research. It means the energy from the Nyrish
moon can be measured with a period equal to that of the rotation of
the planet, which means if I can calculate—”

Sorren held up his silver-copper hand. “Put
it in a book.”

Sage grunted again and turned away, mumbling
something to himself as he disappeared into the shadows of the
night. Sorren thought he heard some rather impolite words in the
air.

* * *

Beyond the bonfire’s clearing, invisible in
the blackness of the forest’s shadows, four Zolen soldiers stood
behind trees, eyes peering through the branches.

“See that silver arm?” one of the Zolen
soldiers whispered to his three comrades. “That’s him. Sorren.” He
put a hand in the satchel that hung at his side.

Another soldier caught his arm. “Not yet. We
have to wait until—”

“Until he’s alone? Look at that crowd. He
won’t be alone tonight.”

“Atlorus said not to hurt anyone else.”

“Of course he did, he grew up here. But we
have a chance to end this.”

The other soldiers were silent.

“Here.” The Zolen soldier began taking the
small hand bombs from the satchel, handing them to his comrades.
“We’ll attack on my count. Five . . .
Four . . . Three—”

“No,” another soldier said. “We cannot hurry
into this.”

“If Sorren lives, the blood of his future
victims will be on
our
hands. We
must
do this.”

“Let’s at least wait a bit. Perhaps the crowd
will thin.”

The Zolen soldier sighed, gripping a hand
bomb. “I will
not
wait until it’s too late.”

“We won’t. We’ll only wait for the best
moment to strike.”

“Very well. Sorren dies tonight.”

* * *

Sorren walked to the other side of the
colorful bonfire, where baskets of bread, bowls of fruits, cups of
rice, and a large dish of steaming rire meat had been set out on
narrow tables. Sorren gathered himself a small plate of bread and
rice and another cup of juice.

Returning to his place by the fire, Sorren
found Thale sitting nearby. He was leaning awkwardly to the side, a
cup in his good hand, his tovocular eye pointing at the fire,
slowly twisting around. The colors of the flames glinted on its
lens.

Sorren sat next to him and held out his
plate. “Hungry?”

Thale shook his head, grimacing. “Maewyn’s
medicine took away my appetite.” He shifted his arm in his sling.
“And my sense of taste.”

“A mouthful of bread might bring it
back.”

Thale only shook his head, keeping his gaze
on the fire before them.

Sorren stuck some bread in his mouth. He
didn’t have much of an appetite either, but he knew he needed to
eat something.

Thale was obviously not happy about having to
stay in Owl’s Grave. Sorren couldn’t blame him, but there was
nothing for it. Part of Sorren wanted to explain himself, wanted to
remind Thale just how he’d been injured, wanted to remind Thale of
the void they’d both seen, that terrible trembling twisting tunnel
to a great nothingness in the sky. But what good would it do?

“Have you seen any owls?” Sorren asked. “You
have the better eye.”

Thale sipped his drink. “Plenty of owls. They
stay high in the trees. They keep closer to the sky.”

Sorren looked skyward, but all was twisted
branches and shadow above. “I’ve only seen one.”

“They know who you are.” Thale said it as if
he almost wanted to laugh. “That’s what Maewyn says. So they must
be afraid of you. Do you know why they call this place Owl’s
Grave?”

“Something to do with death?”

“They come here to die for some reason,”
Thale said. “They come to Maewyn. She holds them until they die and
then she burns them.”

“Strange.”

Thale gathered some dead twigs and leaves in
his hand and tossed them into the fire. The leaves blackened and
shriveled and shrunk until their ashes flittered away in the
sparks.

Sorren was suddenly filled with visions of
his father being sucked through that tunnel into the void, his body
writhing and twisting and deforming in the vortex.

How was he supposed to defeat Atlorus? How
could he do what his father could not?

Sorren bit off another piece of bread and
washed it down with a gulp of juice. “You never told me what
Atlorus had in his hand,” he said quietly. “What did he use to
create that void?”

And now Thale turned to face Sorren, his
tovocular eye winding backward. “It was a small black crystal.” He
set down his cup and held up his hand, imitating the size of the
crystal with his fingers. “I could only see a bit of it. He was
holding it tightly.”

Sorren sipped his drink slowly. How could
Atlorus be the chosen one of a prophecy if his power depended on a
weapon? He could not have been born with the black crystal in his
hand. Someone had given him that tove. Someone here in Owl’s
Grave.

Where was Maewyn? Sorren glanced around the
bonfire. He hadn’t seen her since he returned from the hunt.

“We need a new story.”

Sorren turned to find a young girl at his
side, seven or eight years old. She was cloaked in light brown bear
fur with white rabbit skin draped over her shoulders, rabbit paws
dangling beside her arm.

“A story?” Sorren repeated, noticing a small
group of children watching him from a distance.

“Do you know any stories?” the girl asked,
glancing back and forth between Sorren’s mechanical arm and Thale’s
tovocular eye.

“Oh, forgive me,” Rozzom said, appearing
behind the girl and putting his hands on her shoulders. “I told
them they could ask you if you knew any stories. They’ve grown
bored with our tales. We tell them the same stories over and over.
But that was last night. Tonight, we’ll leave you alone.” He gently
began pushing the girl back toward her group of friends.

“I know a story,” Sorren said, looking at the
girl. “Have you ever heard of the maker of the twenty-first
moon?”

The girl shook her head.

Moments later, Sorren had reversed his
direction on the log so that his back was to the fire. A small
group of seven young children sat before him on the forest floor.
In their thick fur clothing, they looked like they were wrapped up
in blankets, ready for bed. They watched Sorren intently and seemed
to focus mostly on the movements of his silver-copper arm.

Sorren told the short story of the maker of
the twenty-first moon as he remembered it, embellishing things here
and there as he saw fit. He wasn’t sure he was a particularly great
storyteller, but he found he held the children’s attention well
enough. For a few moments, he forgot about Atlorus and the crystal
and the void, instead trying to recall the way his father had told
him stories in their castle, the way his voice and pacing had made
almost every word feel important. Though Sorren could still hear
his father’s warm fireside voice somewhere inside, it was distant
now, like a memory from someone else’s life.

As Sorren approached the part of the story in
which the main character beheaded the man he feared was a wizard,
he considered that perhaps the story was too dark for some of the
younger children. Perhaps he should somehow change the ending so as
not to frighten anyone.

They sat before him, staring at him with
their wide white eyes.

No
, Sorren thought,
they’ll hear
the real ending. It’s part of the story
.

The children were dead-quiet as Sorren raised
his walking stick over his head with his mechanical arm, imitating
a soldier’s sword preparing to strike.

Sorren spoke slowly. “Turning his eyes from
the moons in the sky, he took one last glance at the crying man
kneeling before him. He told him to hold his head up high, so that
his blade would not miss his neck. And then, in the stillness of
the forest—”

Quove dove down from somewhere, squawking
madly before swiftly fluttering back into the darkness.

Clang!

Something struck Sorren’s mechanical forearm
from behind, and his walking stick tumbled from the grip of his
silver-copper fingers.

Children gasped. Adults let out cries of
surprise.