Under the Shadow of Darkness: Book 1 of the Apprentice Series (16 page)

The men had little weight to shed but a few things they refused to throw down, trinkets, keepsakes, mementos and the like. They pulled them out for a few moments, looking at them longingly; a bracelet of small stones made by a child, a polished stone in the shape of a heart, a simple bracelet of twine that had an unknown memory attached to it. Bel and Kerlith watched them but had no such things; they had forsaken everything to become wizards and all that they carried of their previous lives resided in their minds. The barking grew louder and looking down the mountain into the valley they could now see motion in the darkness. The dogs were coming.

“Prepare yourselves!” Nes’egrinon hollered.

The soldiers tightened their grips on their swords; Kerlith gripped his stone; Bel and Nes’egrinon their staffs; the three men of magic called light to enter their implements.

“There! There!” Kephas said, pointing at the motion down below and to the right.

Another soldier yelled, “There’s another! And another! Two over here on the left! Coming in fast!”

Alexius, up in front, hollered, “Hold! Hold! Wait for it! Hold the line!” Several dogs bounded straight up the middle at them, barking excitedly.

Bel held power in his staff, it pulsating with life-energy, like an extension of his own body, his own life-force pushed out into the end of the glowing piece of mage-wood.

The dogs did not stop and snarl or bark when they reached them but continued their full speed run into a leap, mouths open, teeth glistening, sharp nails of their paws reaching out to strike.

Kerlith and Bel yelped, “” simultaneously, each repelling one of the oversized black dogs down the mountain. They fell onto the jagged rocks and tumbled down the sheer cliff edge. Another one of the hounds sprung from the left onto two of the soldiers, both swinging their swords. One missed and the dog chomped on his arm, him screaming terribly as the bones of his forearm snapped. The other struck home, his sword landing deep in the beast’s neck, impaling himself on the sword as his heavy weight pinned the two men down. The dog was larger than both of the two men combined, a giant hound of Hell. Bel and Kerlith ran to their aid, their eyes darting around them as Nes’egrinon banished dog after dog, and Alexius and Kephas faced down the animals from the front. Kerlith paralyzed the huge dog with his magic and the two boys rolled it off of the men, the dog not able to resist them with anything more than a guttural growl.

The two men stood up and one began sawing the dead dog’s head off, much as they did the ghoul-kind they fought at the Keep of the stonecutters. The other winced as he tucked his broken arm into his jacket and put his sword in his other hand; sweat mixed with tears on his grimy face.

Bel and Kerlith spun and leapt to Kephas’ aid as another dog dove toward him. The soldier parried with his sword, quickly slicing off one of the beast’s legs, it landing behind him, the dog whimpering for a moment then snarling with rage. Bel blasted the hound into the air and down the mountain.

The old mage looked back at him and frowned, quickly saying, “Not so hard! Don’t use so much energy!”

Three dogs bounded up the mountain at them from the front. Nes’egrinon touched his staff on the back of a large boulder, light slithering out of the end of his stick of mage-wood and spreading into the large rock threadlike, spiraling across the hard surface in small ringlets of power and light. The boulder struggled to move from its perch, then rolled slowly, then more quickly, gaining speed, tumbling down the mountain, hitting others on the way, creating a small landslide, unavoidable by the approaching dogs. The animals tried to dodge but were pulled under the bouncing rocks.

The band looked about, here and there for others but the silence told them that they were all gone. Kerlith smiled and said, “Was that stone magic, Master Archmage?”

“My hand never left my staff. I am a mage of the wood, not a heretic like Rylith who attempts to control all life,” he said shortly, clearly not liking the boy’s questioning attitude.

Alexius said, “Report! Are any injured?”

The soldier who was bitten heaved, saying, “I am sorry, my commander. The hound got my good arm. I can still fight though.” But everyone knew that he lied. He would not last long at all. His blood was everywhere.

Alexius gingerly slid the man’s arm out to see a mangled, bloody and broken piece of flesh, skin torn to ribbons, fibers and bone fragments exposed below. He said out loud, refusing to look the man in the eyes just yet, “Master Archmage, can you do anything?”

“I can. I can dull the pain. But that is about it right now. In this place.”

“Do it! Do it, please!” the man said, suddenly nearly in tears as he looked down at his arm.

Alexius slid the arm back into the man’s shirt then tied a piece of cloth to support its weight as Nes’egrinon placed his hand on the man’s head and pushed from deep within himself. The man exhaled slowly as relief poured into him.

The band did not speak as they began to descend the mountain, all somehow knowing that they shared a common fate with the man whose arm was destroyed. They trudged down for a time, going long past when they would have stopped for a few moments to take in some dry crusts or seasoned meats but they had no supplies left, not even water, so they continued on without stopping, all of their mouths growing more and more parched.

As they carefully stepped from stone to stone and rock to rock, Bel felt his mind drawn to the battle with the dogs.
Kerlith and I used the same magic yet his seemed so much stronger. I know we are in the land of the stonecutters and his magic should be a bit more effective, but it was much more than that. I wish I had not gotten stuck in Lasaat for that sixth year.
A mix of jealousy and resentment grabbed Bel’s heart. He did not flee from the responsibility of the challenge that trapped him in Lasaat and prevented him from moving on, but he also recognized Kerlith’s guilt. And now the one partially to blame for his setback had gained a year of private instruction, a year that Bel did not have, and it appeared that Kerlith’s magic was far more refined than his.
Maybe I am only a Fifth Year
, Bel thought, suddenly despising himself.

“Fifth Year,” Nes’egrinon’s voice rang out in the black, shaking Bel from his thoughts, “guard your mind. Kerlith, you too. Something is close. Something is here, trying to invade our thoughts. Do you feel it?”

Kerlith choked, “I feel it.”

When Bel did not immediately respond, the old man said, “Fifth Year, what were you thinking?”

“I… nothing.”

“Listen. Do not trust your thoughts right now if they would divide us. Do not listen to the enemy. He is here, somewhere, among us.”

“Yes, Master,” Bel replied but something gnawed at him in his thoughts.
Whatever the source of these thoughts does not matter,
Bel pondered,
even if they are from the enemy, they are still true. My magic is weak. I’m just a Fifth Year. What am I even doing here? I am going to get myself killed. I am going to get some of these men killed. I can’t do this! I shouldn’t be here!

Nes’egrinon stopped, holding his hand high. “Wait,” he said. They all looked about, straining their ears but all was black and silent, all except the faraway groan of a dead dog’s head, severed from its body, that they left back high up on the mountain, in what now seemed like ages ago. “Something. Something is here.”

A tear streamed down Bel’s cheeks as he squealed, “I can’t do this! I can’t! I’m only a Fifth Year!” then crumbled to the floor, his short staff falling to the ground in front of him.

Nes’egrinon dashed over to him, “No! Get him out of your head! Fight it! Fight! You can do it, boy!”

Bel refused to look up, blubbering, “You’re lying! Just like you did before. He told me! He told me you would!”

“Who?” said Kerlith, “Who are you talking about?” His voice trembled.

Bel looked up at Kerlith, suddenly feeling tremendously inferior to him, “My Master has had only two apprentices before me. He killed them both. Everyone knows it!”

Nes’egrinon’s face grew dark. Bel continued, now looking at his master full in the face, “He came to me. One of them. He told me. He told me that you lied to him! He told me what you did! You got him killed!”

“No…” the old mage said, stumbling back a few steps.

Bel’s accusations grew stronger, “He told me and I saw it! I saw his arm. It was blown clean off! Just a burnt stump where a boy’s arm should have been. And he was so young! How long did you teach him before he died? He was younger than me! And now I am fresh out of school and you are so quickly leading me to my death? And all of us too?”

Kerlith and the soldiers looked at the panic on Nes’egrinon’s face then at the pain on Bel’s, then at the ground and away. None of them could stand to look at it. Reality; it was reality; it was the reality that they could not last more than another half day or so. And for what? They followed an old wizard with no plan and with no clue what they were even up against. They did not have enough supplies. They were ill prepared and ill advised. It was a doomed mission from the start. One of the soldiers began to mutter to Kephas. He wanted to leave. He suddenly wanted to leave right now, to run, right now. Despair and anguish hung thick in the air.

The man with the broken arm began to sob loudly then howled, “We’re all going to die! Now! Now! Death is upon us! We are going to die now!”

“Quiet soldier! Grab a hold of yourself!” Alexius huffed, but it was no use; he felt it too. He was the chief of guards and he had left his post to die in the black. He didn’t belong here. He belonged at the Keep, where he could do some good, where he could lead his men to victory against the ghoul-kind, where he could protect his people. He had abandoned his people. Out here, he was a dead man walking. He didn’t belong here and he wanted to run and run and run. He wanted to flee from this place with all of his might. He was afraid.

Kerlith howled out in pain, “It was all my fault! My master is dead! I should have stopped them! I should have cast the love spell but I didn’t and now he is dead! Then I left him there like old trash to wander in the black! I don’t deserve to live!”

The soldiers began beating their breasts and crying loudly for they had left their children fatherless and their wives would soon be widows. One tore at his clothing and another ran in circles screaming. Alexius threw down his sword and howled, “I am not fit to lead! I am a failure!”

“Stop.” Nes’egrinon squeezed his eyes down tight. “Stop. Stop. Stop! STOP!” The old mage lifted his staff high and desperately pushed bright light into it not knowing what else to do, “”

The sky lit up brightly in hazy greens and blues, shining full of unnatural mage-light and about ten paces away stood a small, frail boy, staring at them, grinning intently, his ragged, dirty and torn clothing the color of a urine-stained sun, a short mage-wood staff in one hand and a blood caked flask hanging from his shoulder, a young child of a man, a boy with only one arm, grinning wildly.

“How did you like my dogs? I’ve been training them for some time,” The one-armed boy said.

The band slowly walked towards the boy, fanning out in a sort of arc around him, the soldiers with their swords nervously drawn, each realizing that the boy was somehow in their minds. As the mage-light overhead began to fade, Kerlith wiped his face then called light into the surrounding stones, the tiny chips of crystal and quartz in each of the rocks glowing brightly, casting a dim light up from the ground at the boy’s face. The one-armed boy turned as they approached, keeping his stump of a missing arm behind him.

“What have you done, Fleck? Why?” Nes’egrinon asked.

“Fleck? Hmmn. Yes, that was my name wasn’t it? I had forgotten. How long have I been dead? Looking at the age on your face it must have been at least thirty years. We have no time in the underworld, you know. One day or one hundred, it is all the same. It feels as if it is one continuous moment. But fortunately for me I had my dogs. And I trained them. You didn’t tell me. How did you like them?”

The band was a short distance from the boy and they halted their approach. They each tried to shake the feeling that still grabbed them: fear, dread, the desire to run away, far, far away from this place. The feeling was still there and even though they each knew that it was a false feeling, a sensation pushed into their minds by the dead wizard, it felt no less real than any other feeling that they had ever had. It was difficult to overcome. The old man continued to address him. “Fleck. You are insane, aren’t you? Why did you set the dogs upon us?”

“Why? Why not? All of you will soon be dead anyway. What does a few more moments of life for you or your men matter to me? Anyway, these others I have no quarrel with. I just wanted to see how my dogs would do.”

“And me? You have a quarrel with me then.”

The boy suddenly hissed, “You know I do!” He pulled his head back and smiled mischievously then drank from his flask and wiped his bloody mouth.

The mage looked over at Kerlith and Bel and nodded then continued speaking, “Listen son, I am sorry for what happened. You know that I am. I labored over your death for years. How many years has it been you asked? Yes, thirty, perhaps more than thirty, and only now have I taken on a new apprentice. In the moment of your death I would have traded places with you in an instant. But who can cheat death?”

Bel and Kerlith continued to move slowly, inching behind the boy. Bel shook his head a few times; he was so dizzy, tired and worn out; the fight with the dogs took more out of him than he had realized.

The boy smiled again. “No one can cheat death. Enough of these words, we will have much time to talk when you join me here in the underworld. All of you who surround me, leave this fight. It is between the two of us alone. If you would value your lives you will stay out of my way.” He took one more swig from his flask, a shudder passed through him and the hairs on his head began to glow brightly, greens and blues emanating from each hair like glowing tendrils waving in the air.