The Ancient Ones (The Legacy Trilogy Book 3) (2 page)

‘Magic is forbidden!’ someone howled.

‘The Truth Seekers will come!’ hissed another.

‘That’s right,’ the hooded magician in the doorway agreed. ‘Offend me any further and you will regret your brazen tongue. You will … you will suffer beyond imagination!’

Some shook with fear at the threat, but others were fascinated by the daring of the seated stranger and waited eagerly to hear his response.

‘Go away, young fool,’ the seated man said, not bothering to turn his head from his meal. ‘Be gone before you get yourself hurt. These folk will not look kindly upon your charade. Everyone knows that Samuel speaks with the accent of a Turian, yet you have the country speech of a Greenhills farmer, not long off his farm, if I am not mistaken.’

‘Why you—!’ cried the magician, and he reached for his box once more to threaten them further. In his rush he fumbled and the container crashed to the floor, cracking open. Utter dismay flourished upon the cloaked fellow’s face.

Some shrieked and primed themselves to run; but they need not have worried, for it was a simple, empty box that lay shattered upon the floor. There was nothing within it to cause them fear and slowly the realisation of such permeated through the room.

Old Rufus, still sitting on the floor and oblivious to everything, reached out and began gathering up those pieces of wood within reach, popping them into his bucket along with the broken dishes.

The magician’s expression turned from surprise to fear as the crowd regained their bravery. He turned to flee, but had not reached the bulky door handle before some of the sturdier men rushed forward and took hold of him. He wailed and struggled, revealed to be a mere whip of a man in a threadbare cloak, and they dragged him outside to an unknown fate. The door shut firmly and his cries of protest vanished amongst the howls of the storm.

‘Who was that?’ someone asked, voicing the confusion in the room.

‘He was a southerner, no doubt,’ Pietrick the merchant explained aloud, ‘looking to cheat us out of our hard earned coins. There’ll be more and more of his kind soon enough, and rougher, more desperate sorts than him, to be sure. And they’ll come in groups, and armed. Someone should tell Earl Edgely of this.’

It ignited quite a debate, with everyone arguing over who should see to the task. Only Omer thought to approach the mysterious fellow still seated in the corner.

‘Thank you, stranger,’ he said to the man. ‘I feel so foolish for being taken in by that vagabond.’

The seated gent looked up at him, but showed no change in his expression and did not utter a word. His eyes did not blink; they seemed to look straight through him—or into him.

Omer cleared his throat and forged on nonetheless, somewhat uncomfortably. ‘Ah, tell me, kind sir: how did you know it was not the real devil Lord Samuel, while the fellow had all of us so fooled?’

The man continued to gaze hypnotically at Omer as he spoke. ‘Because there cannot be two of me in the world now, can there?’ With that, he pushed back his chair and stood.

The barman stepped back involuntarily as he spied the black cloth beneath the man’s greying, sun-bleached cloak. He tried to say something, but could only stammer, and he remained frozen as the stranger stepped neatly past him to approach old Rufus.

The old fool was now lying almost with his cheek on the floor as he continued retrieving each and every tiny speck of broken crockery and scrap of wood, ignorant to the happenings around him.

The magician bent down and hoisted him to his feet. He took off his great cloak and wrapped it around the confused old fellow, with the crowd only now noticing the jet black of his robes underneath. Their heated argument dissolved mid-sentence and the agitated din once more crumbled into an ill-at-ease silence.

‘Salu, I have found you after all these years,’ said the magician to the old man, his voice now the only noise within the room, backed by the muted rumble of the storm outside. ‘Come now, I have need of you.’ The old man had no idea, muttering and fidgeting, and it gave the magician reason to pause. ‘Well?’ he prompted, but old Rufus continued stubbornly, rolling his head, mumbling incessantly with his eyes tightly shut. The magician grabbed the man’s shirt front and nearly lifted him from the ground as he looked the old fellow full in the face. ‘I have been searching for you for many years, Salu. I need your help. I know it is you. Can you not hear me?’

Slowly, Rufus raised his face, but his eyes remained clenched slits. ‘Darrig,’ he croaked—a word that held no meaning. ‘Your son is here with us now. Finally ... he is returned upon the world.’

‘I know,’ the magician responded. ‘That is why I need you. We must stop him. Come with me, Salu.’

But the old man squirmed from Lord Samuel’s grip and lost his focus, returning his attention to the floor and muttering once again. The magician was baffled.

A tugging at his robes gained his attention; the boy Toby was pulling on his hem.

‘What is this?’ the magician asked, looking to the barman for answers. He noticed that the patrons in the room were again pressed against the walls to be as far from him as possible, feverishly attempting to remain unnoticed.

‘The half-blind old fool babbles occasionally, but doesn’t understand anything I say,’ Omer explained, being the unfortunate one Lord Samuel singled out for an answer. ‘The boy can comprehend at times, but doesn’t talk. He was taken by a fever as a babe and never awoke. He was alive, but only just, swallowing whatever was put in his mouth, but doing precious little apart from that. His parents died and he had only his aunt to take care of him. Then, a few months ago he just stood up for the first time in his life and wandered over here. I asked him, “Simon, what do you want?” and he corrected me, saying, “Toby”. That reply is all I ever heard from him. He has stayed here ever since. His name was Simon but we call him Toby now. It seems to get his attention. His aunt says it’s a miracle, and she’s not about to question his lack of sense, considering how he was before. He and Rufus get on well together. If you want one, you may have to take the other.’

The magician scrutinised the both of them reluctantly, scowling. ‘Very well. Toby, tell him he is coming with me.’

The boy tugged on the old man’s clothes and pointed to Lord Samuel, laughing gleefully as he did so.

Old Rufus stopped his mumbling and raised his quivering chin. ‘Ah,’ was his gasping response. He nodded solemnly, as if in understanding.

Toby then clasped the old man by the wrist and led him shuffling towards the door, leaving Lord Samuel to draw up his hood and follow them.

Everyone there watched them depart into the blustery night—the magician, the fool and the mute—silent and in disbelief at the turn of unexpected events. Omer shook his head; to think it commenced as one of the most enjoyable and unremarkable of nights, sheltered away from the cold.

Son of Thann

A BROWN-HAIRED man, barely into his seventeenth year, sat on a rock by the edge of the sea. He scratched at the few, sparse whiskers on his chin and sighed, enveloped in complete mind-numbing boredom.

The waves lacked passion and ventured onto the beach timidly—creeping fingers of foam exploring the sand before scuttling back to safety. Even they seemed tired of the island today.

He dragged his gaze along the horizon, pausing momentarily on the familiar specks of sail in the distance, naming their owners in his head one by one. Not taking his eye from the scene, he pulled his hands over each other and scraped his net onto the shore. Two gasping fish flapped about, trapped within the twine. It took a moment to untangle them and drop them in the bucket at his side.

With the task complete, he sighed once again.

Everything on the island was wet or salty or smelled of fish, including him. He was sick of it. Throwing out his arms, he flung his net far, watching it spread in the air and drop back into the sea with rapid plops from its weighted edges.

‘Leopold!’ sounded a cry from behind, and he turned to see his mother tramping over the dunes, holding her skirt hems high out of the sand. ‘Leopold, come home. Dinner’s ready.’

Leopold sighed for the third time in as many minutes, for her voice conveyed her regard for him: still a boy. His father thought the same and Leopold could not blame them; he had done little to prove them wrong.

His mother was a noble woman, beautiful and proud, her long dark hair carefully braided, falling down the centre of her back. The local fishermen mentioned how well aged and beautiful she was. She was more attractive than any of their wives and daughters, and more civilised, which accounted for their lingering stares. He had nothing against the other families; it was not their fault they were ill-mannered and unkempt. They displayed nothing of the decorum and proper behaviour his parents had instilled into him, but then again, what need did he have for such things out here? What use were civilities to salt and fish? What good were manners to the wind?

He barely remembered his life before coming to the island—a few flashes of objects, events and places impossibly far away. Mother reminded him often they may one day go back to the mainland, and then all his lessons would be vital to him. However, it was becoming ever more apparent that such a time would never arrive.

‘I’ll be a moment,’ he called back to his mother as he reeled in his net once more—just cast as it was—letting her turn back home without him.

He rolled up the dripping net, folding it over until it was a neat bundle, and tucked it into the top of the bucket. It infuriated him, always getting knotted and tangled—far too much trouble—another of the dreary chores he was expected to complete. He was a man with a mind and a destiny, but his parents kept him here, trapped on the island, a hermit with only a few other families on the entire god-forsaken rock. He had tried to make his chores less bothersome; however, it only proved to cause more trouble. He had once left his net on the beach to save him packing and unpacking it, but the gulls had flown down and entangled themselves in it, resulting in hours of work freeing them and unknotting the mess. The birds had pecked and beaten him with their wings all the while.

Five small fish now squirmed beneath his net—five fish that would tomorrow be their breakfast—and he readied to return home. Even the fish were disinterested on this tiresome afternoon. Only five had made the effort of blundering into his net. Why his parents insisted on such trivial tasks he would never know. Father could wave his finger and have a hundred fish leaping from the sea and onto their dinner plates, but of course, Father never did. He instead preferred to keep Leopold busy with endless mundane tasks.

Leopold had learned of his father’s power as a child, and even back then he would use his magic sparsely. These days he used it even less.

Now he was grown, Leopold questioned his parents about magic and his father answered openly but curtly, making it clear that it was never to be discussed with others or where those outside their family could hear. In that, Leopold had followed his father’s instructions precisely. He had never divulged their secret to any of the fishermen or their families—seldom as they met.

Magic was a loathsome word to them. The fishermen cursed magicians when the fish were not biting, when the wind was foul, or when their wives were champing at their heels. They blamed magic and spells when their children were sick or when they suffered a splinter under their skin. To everyone else in the world, magic was a curse. Leopold considered it to be exciting—imagine the possibilities!—yet he was alone with that thought.

Father was undoubtedly a magician, and had been disappearing for days on end these recent months, never saying where he was going. Mother and Leopold were left to fend for themselves, and Leopold was sure it was to do with magic. What else could it be?

Father did not take a boat when he left—he slipped out the door and was gone, departing the island mysteriously. Leopold often thought about following him out the door or spying upon him, but the thoughts left him quickly. Father would know. He always did. He knew everything that happened within the confines of their tiny, windswept world.

As if hearing his thoughts, the wind gusted up, shifting about to blow in from the east.

If only there were something else to life, Leopold thought. He longed for more than this unbearable island and the abominable schooling he tolerated from Mother. He would escape at the first opportunity to investigate the lands beyond the horizon, where rumour told of great wrongs that needed righting, of unnatural beasts that required slaying, of dark armies that had risen against the common man, of many changes that had arrived spontaneously with a shadow in the sky.

Instead, Mother taught him things he would never have any reason to use—lectures of wars and battles that had happened long before he was born, lessons on keeping stock of goods and tally of taxes, on diplomacy and negotiation and tact. What good would such things do him here? He retold his lessons to the sand, and spoke his wisdom to the stones; but they were not interested, and remained steadfast and silent.

Finished with his thoughts, Leopold was about to turn for home, when something caught his attention—a strange red sail in the distance—and his senses became alive. It had been weeks since he had spied such a visitor. Whenever he did, Father appeared shortly after, knowing when such a wayward craft was near. He would come and stand on the dunes, peering out into the ocean beneath his dark brows, sometimes waiting until the ship had passed, other times getting in one of their boats and going out to meet it. More often than not he told his son to go home and lock the door, and Leopold did not get to see what followed.

On those rare occasions when Leopold was defiant and hid in the bushes nearby, he saw his father go out to meet the other craft. The crew usually turned around once he neared, headed back to wherever they had come from. Once, a long rowing ship had disappeared as Father met it, swallowed by the sea. Upon his return he refused to speak of it, scolding Leopold instead for disobedience.