Fallen Magician (The Magician Rebellion) (22 page)

The wooden cage Sane sat in rattled desperately, but did not budge as Kellen tried to break the bars apart with his bare hands. Once Sane was knocked out and taken captive, the orcs began their assault in earnest and Everec fell in less than a day. A banding together of miners and city guards were next to nothing against the army arrayed against them. All of the humans were either routed or killed as the orcs flooded the city and made it their own.

When Kellen and Byrn were brought before Zakux and Korok, it was Korok that saved Kellen’s life declaring him as another of the heroes from his vision. He was allowed to keep his armor, but his warhammer was not returned and he was kept as an honored prisoner along with Sane. However, Byrn did not do so well. Korok nearly killed the weakened magician when he saw the young human.

“
This one,” Korok had pointed at Byrn with a trembling finger, “He is the great evil that I foresaw! We must destroy him!” and so the pyre was built to do away with the threat that Korok perceived before it even began fore nothing could destroy evil like the cleansing power of fire.

Kellen rattled the cage again. “How can you sit there so calmly?” he accused, “They are going to burn him at the stake!”

“
What would you have me do?” Sane projected a calm attitude, but there was an audible strain in his voice under the surface belying his true fears. “I could slit my wrist and free us, but what would that accomplish?” he tipped his head in the direction of the magikans, “We would be overpowered.”

“
Nonsense, we can handle a few magicians.”

“
To what end?” Sane asked again.

Kellen could only stare at him in silence. He did not want to admit it, but escape was impossible. He could not save himself or anyone else for that matter.

The sorcerer and the Kenzai watched helplessly as Commander Zakux tossed a torch into the pyre.

Suddenly, Sane sprang up with an idea in mind, “Korok, listen to me! If that boy is the great evil that you think he is, then you cannot hope to kill him, but there he is tied to a stake about to be burned alive. Does that not show you that he is NOT this great evil from you vision?”

Korok pondered this, and then surprisingly he agreed, “Yes, that is true. So we will light him on fire and if he lives that will be proof that he is the evil one and it will fall to the two of you to kill him, and if he dies, then that will prove you right and we will give him a proper burial as befits a warrior.”

“
What kind of backwards logic is that?” demanded Kellen.

Flames licked at Byrn’s cloak and boots as it quickly surrounded him some twenty yards away. Sane’s heart sank to be so close, but unable to act. If Byrn could only cut open his skin, then he could use the blood source to control the flames making what would be his undoing his salvation instead, but that was not possible; Korok would have seen to that. There would be no possibility for Byrn to make an escape.

“
You leave me no choice,” Sane told Korok.

The sorcerer nodded to Kellen who rammed his body into the cage rocking it forward, but his aim was not to turn over the cage of even break free. Kellen reached for Korok and as the wooden cage swayed forward, he grabbed the magikan’s arm. The cage tipped backward and Kellen went with it pulling Korok into the bars with a heavy blow to the orc’s head. The Kenzai’s hands burst to life in stunning blue-white brilliance as he absorbed Korok’s magical essence in a matter of moments.

Sane bit down on his own arm doing his best to ignore the reality of what he was doing. The pain was all the more intense for it being self-inflicted, but he did not let up until he broke the skin and felt the wet, salty taste of blood in his mouth.

“
Ashura’s ass! That looked like it hurt!” Kellen exclaimed.

“
That is because it did.” Sane spat blood on the floor. He risked a glance at Byrn who was now nearly engulfed in flames. “We must hurry.” Sane touched two of the wooden bars and felt their essence enter and intertwine with them. He mentally pushed the bars to either side and they obeyed readily making a gap large enough for them to escape.

The other two magikans, who Sane learned during his captivity were old pupils of Korok, were nearly to the escaping prisoners even as others began to challenge the Kenzai master and his sorcerer friend. Fortunately, most of the orcs’ attentions were on the burning magician, but that would only last a few moments more.

“
I can handle these two,” Kellen assured Sane with a punch of his plated fists together that ignited in blue flame, “just get him down and be quick about it. If we can make it to the castle…” If they could make it to the castle, then they could retrieve Sane’s possessions and use his runes to flee this nightmare.

Sane stole Korok’s bone staff from the sleeping orc’s body and waved it across the battle hungry orcs, spewing a geyser of water at them and clearing a path to Byrn. More orcs jumped to take the places of those that Sane defeated and it became a constant battle to move even a step closer to the pyre as Sane became surrounded.

He looked to the pyre and saw that Byrn was fully engulfed. His body was visible through the thrashing flames, but that was all the sorcerer could see. “You are too late!” cried Commander Zakux triumphantly.

To Sane’s sorrow, he saw that Zakux spoke the truth. Byrn’s body was limp, half hanging from the pole he was tied to as the ropes burned away. The young magician did not cry out in pain as the blaze ate his flesh. The will to fight drained from Sane, and then the ground began to quake.

It began as a light tremble that could easily be ignored amidst the constant fighting, but soon erupted into a vicious shaking of the earth. Some struggled to stand, but most were tossed to the ground. His first thought was that one or both of the magikans had overpowered Kellen, but looking back he saw that his old friend had been holding his own up to this point and Korok was still lying unconscious by the cage.

“
Stop this or I will strike you down!” Zakux shouted at the sorcerer believing that Sane was responsible for the rumbling beneath their feet. The orc commander appeared to be more annoyed as if this was nothing more than theatrics rather than being genuinely scared.

The pyre’s flames raced into the sky more than fifty feet at their highest point and strangely, unbelievably they began to coalesce into a shape. They took the form of a humanoid like a golem, but still as insubstantial as a candle flame and the orcs stumbled or crawled away in fear from the massive flame-beast. Wicked red-hot appendages pointed at various buildings throughout the city and sent streams of fire to their roofs burning wooden and grass matted homes with ease. Sane was struck dumb with silence. This was Byrn. Was this the darkness, or at least the beginnings of it, that Korok foretold? When he had proclaimed that Byrn was some sort of omnipresent evil Sane had foolishly doubted him, but there was no denying this. This was… “Byrn!” Sane heard his own voice ring out.

The flame-golem turned his head toward Sane and stared at him for what seemed an unbearably long time. Then it lifted its gargantuan arm and pointed at Sane, though it had nothing like hands or fingers its intent was clear, and the ground rumbled angrily beneath Sane’s feet and his world became a sea of darkness in the time that it takes for the single beat of a heart.

The darkness was all enveloping, but cool and… peaceful. A minute passed in the blackness and Sane thought he might be dead. He had been in the middle of an impromptu battlefield with orcs yelling and fires raging just moments ago. He must be dead, but then where was Kassani to claim him as one of her own?

Sane calmed his mind, because there was nothing else he could do and he reached out to feel the flow of the world’s magic. He could feel its gentle flow and that reassured him. Sane listened intently and heard the muffled sounds of orcs nearby. There was the smell of fresh turned soil too. Reaching his hand out into the dark tentatively, it rested on a wall of dirt before him. He felt in every direction including above and below him and found that the earth surrounded him. “If I’m not dead, then I’m buried alive!”

Sane stifled a panicked laugh when he unexpectedly fell over, because the ground was shifting around him and he could no longer keep his footing, the old sorcerer decided to give up on guessing what had happened to him.

Gravity, at least, had not abandoned him, so Sane had a good idea of which direction was up and down. He began to draw power to himself and was about to release it upward when he heard Byrn’s voice, but it was much deeper and louder and he knew the boy was speaking to him through the golem.

“
Don’t do that or you will die,” the golem’s voice bellowed as it came from nowhere or everywhere. It was not a threat, but a warning.

“
What is happening?” Sane demanded loudly.

“
Concentrating,” the golem rumbled the one word answer, but that one word spoke a volume to the sorcerer. Byrn was in control of, or perhaps he actually was, the golem, but the stress of maintaining this level of magic energy was taking its toll and required his complete focus.

An hour or perhaps more passed as Sane patiently waited in his dirt enclosure. Having nothing else to do he meditated and felt the magic as it flowed around him. The fire-golem, the earthen construct, and cooling the air within: Byrn was manipulating three elements at once and in an awe-inspiring fashion; it was an impressive feat even for a master.

Finally, the earthen box began to descend and safely came to a somewhat jolting stop as it reached the ground. The box dissolved around Sane leaving him standing in a mound of dirt at the edge of a great forest.

Above him stood the golem burning brightly in the sun. The air was charged with heat that forced Sane to step back. The golem rapidly shrank and the silhouette of a man could be clearly seen in the middle of it descending to the ground. His feet touched lightly as the last of the golem construct wafted away. Byrn turned to Sane and greeted him with an exhausted smile of gratification. The fire master looked as if he could barely stand and needed to lean on a…

“
Where is your staff?”

Byrn shrugged, “Back in Everec, I think.”

“
Along with my warhammer,” Kellen groaned. He was standing in his own mound of dirt stretching, “What exactly happened back there… and where are we?”

“
I will do my best to explain, but first we must meet up with the survivors.” Byrn told them, “Truth be told, I am only still standing thanks to the adrenaline pumping through my body. Once it wears off, Kellen will have to carry me the rest of the way.” He smiled at the warrior to show he was joking, but it was obvious that Byrn was not lying about his exhaustion.

They traveled heading at a northwestern route deeper into the forest. Sane guessed they were in the Black Woods although he could not be entirely sure. The Black Woods were said to be haunted and monster infested, but there was little evidence to support such claims. Bandits were more likely the only threat worth worrying about in this place and the cause of such rumors.

Sane and Kellen swapped stories of their recent travels as Byrn listened intently offering little even as Kellen recounted the breakout at Baj and his capture at the hands of the Collective.

He nodded in agreement at Sane’s questioning glance, “Kellen speaks the truth, but he fails to understand my reasons. It is my hope that saving both of your lives will at least convince you to hear me out once we have a chance to rest.”

“
You are not the only who has done questionable things,” Sane admitted with a sidelong glance at Kellen whose face was impossible to read. Sane described his encounter with the Kenzai assassin, Bertran, and how Sane ended his life causing Byrn’s ears to perk up like those of an excited dog.

“
I thought that I killed Bertran,” Byrn mumbled to himself, “and that Kassani came to take my soul for it.” A smile creased his face and he began laughing more due to his weariness than any true humor. He used a tree to support himself and began to slump forward.

“
You were not kidding about me carrying you,” Kellen said dully as he put his arm around Byrn, but the magician had already fainted. Now that Byrn was asleep Kellen began to speak freely. “Your story disturbs me on several levels,” he told Sane, “I cannot abide the idea of making anyone slaves as you describe, but my loyalty must be with my king and if you have renounced your fealty...”

“
Then we must be enemies,” Sane finished for him, “I would hope that our shared history would at least buy me your ear until we are clear of the forest.”

“
You still live, do you not?” Kellen laughed.