Magic Astray (The Llandra Saga) (16 page)

“No good,” he chittered.

“Figures,” Randall sighed, tilting his head back and forth to try to work out the knot that was growing between his shoulder blades.

With Berry helping, the work went much faster, if not more productively. Half an hour passed and Randall fell into the same mindless repetition of his early rune training. The pile of failures steadily grew larger, but he was no longer thinking about them. He would scratch a set of runes, his mind wandering. While he sat here, Rhys was traveling toward Ninove, perhaps with an elven army at his back.

A tap on his shoulder interrupted his train of thought. “Good one,” Berry chittered, holding one of the etched metal blanks out to Randall.

“Really?” Randall asked, taking the tiny talisman from the imp. The ache in his neck and shoulders melted away, as did the slight throbbing pain from his nearly-healed chest wound.

“What is it?” Nia asked. “Did it work?”

“It worked, maybe even better than my master’s old talisman.” Randall said with a wide grin as he dropped the artifact down his shirt. Looking at the remaining metal bits, he sighed. There were only a couple left. “But I’m going to need more blanks.”

“Well, you two have been at it for at least a couple of hours. I’ll bet the blacksmith has a few more ready,” Nia said hopefully. “I’ll go get them while you finish with these.”

Randall shook his head. “No, we’ll all go.”

Nia opened her mouth as if to protest, but Randall cut her off. “You could hardly breathe after the last time. We all go.”

Nia closed her mouth and nodded. Gathering up the failed attempts, the trio quickly made their way back to the blacksmith, who was hard at work pounding out another flat sheet of steel. Seeing the group, the smith paused to wave his hand toward the wicker basket, and resumed his hammering.

Inside were another dozen or so metal blanks. “Excuse me, sir,” he shouted to be heard above the ring of the hammer as Nia stood back at a safe distance.

The smith looked up, momentarily pausing in his work.

“Where can I put these?” Randall asked, showing one of the failed attempts. “They need to be melted back down.”

The blacksmith scowled. “Make squares, melt squares. Blasted waste of my time,” he grumbled before nodding his head toward the forge. “Throw ‘em in the crucible.”

Randall reached out to drop a handful of the metal chips into the hole in the large clay pot that the blacksmith had indicated, only to quickly snatch his hand back. The heat from the forge was intense. He tried again, but snatched his hand back after only getting a couple of blanks into the pot. He took a step back and eyed the opening, trying to decide if he could toss them into the pot from where he stood.

“Oh, fer cryin’ out loud,” the blacksmith grunted, shoving the flattened metal bar back into the coals. “Give ‘em here.”

Taking the ruined blanks from Randall, the smith dumped them all into the crucible as if the heat were nothing at all to him. “Be here all afternoon at that rate,” he scolded.

“Thank you, sir” Randall said apologetically, before scooping up the new metal blanks and tucking them into his tunic. The group quickly made their way back to his room to continue working.

Once they were safely behind closed doors, Randall dumped the bits on the floor and resumed turning out talismans, with Berry sitting beside him ready to try to activate each one. It didn’t take long to get back into the steady rhythm of the work, and the pile of failures grew as the minutes ticked by.

Other than the steady scratching of the stylus, followed by the clink of another bit added to the failure pile, the room was completely silent. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door that made all three friends jump at how loud it seemed in the quiet room. A moment later, and the door swung open.

“Oh,
there
you are,” Kirsti said, standing in the door frame, her voice dripping with false concern. There were two soldiers flanking her. “I wondered where the three of you were when you didn’t show up for lunch.”

Randall had reflexively covered the metal bit he had been working on when the door had opened, and Kirsti’s eyes slid downward toward his hands. “Oh, I see that you’ve gotten some of the metal squares that you asked for,” she said, stepping into the room. The soldiers followed her. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Uh,” Randall stuttered. “I’d, uh, prefer you didn’t.”

The smile dropped from the Field Mage’s face. “I was only asking as a courtesy,” she said. “When you came running into the officers’ mess instead of limping, it was obvious that you had made another healing talisman. I want it.”

“Randall, you can’t,” Nia started before Kirsti cut her off.

“Shut up, girl. Do you know the advantage such an artifact would give any army? I mean to have it,” she said before turning back to Randall. “There is no need for this to get ugly. You can make as many as...”

“Tsan’laran,” Randall said, interrupting her speech and drawing magic as he did so. This was one of Erliand’s early dirty-fighting tricks: attack while your opponent is talking. If you can catch them in the middle of a sentence, their mind is on what they’re saying, and not on what you’re doing. It can give you a split-second’s edge, and with magic, that was often more than enough.

Randall had learned the trick as a way to get the first, and hopefully last, blow in a barroom argument, but he didn’t see why it couldn’t be used in this context. The Field Mage and the soldiers didn’t even have time to flinch before the magic overtook them. Their faces slackened, and all three began to look confusedly around the room.

“Change of plans,” Randall called to Nia, scooping up all the metal bits and tossing them to where she sat on the bed. “Grab those and let’s go!”

“Where are we going?” Nia asked as the three of them sprinted into the hallway.”

“The infirmary,” he answered. We don’t have much time before that spell wears off. We have to leave now.”

Chapter 16

Randall’s heart hammered as they raced to the infirmary. He expected to be stopped at any minute by soldiers, but no one took note of them as they ran through the hallways. Still, that could change at a moment’s notice as soon as Kirsti and her guards shook off Randall’s confusion spell. The sooner they got outside of the tower walls, the better.

It didn’t take long to reach their destination. Inside the large room were at least a dozen cots filled with wounded soldiers convalescing from the recent battle. Eamon was among them, unconscious and heavily bandaged. Luckily, the medic was nowhere to be seen. Once he had patched up all the wounded, he probably had other duties to attend to.

“Let’s hope this works,” Randall said as he fished the newly-created healing talisman from his tunic.

He placed the artifact in Eamon’s hand, and opened himself to Llandra. As the magic came to him, he pushed it down into the talisman, fighting the familiar resistance. Moments passed, and a dull red glow began to emanate from between Eamon’s fingers. Seconds later, and the young farmer’s eyelids fluttered and opened.

“Eamon, are you ok?” Randall asked anxiously.

Eamon levered himself up on one arm in the cot, his eyes darting around the small room. “Randall, is that you?”

Eamon’s eyes met Randall’s for a brief moment, and a smile began to tug at the corners of the young man’s mouth. The half-smile twisted itself into a frown as Eamon’s gaze shifted onto something just behind Randall. The farmer’s eyes widened and he scrambled backward in the bed until his back met the wall.

“An elf?” the farmer asked, terror elevating his voice into a shriek. He cast his gaze wildly around the room, as if looking for a weapon—or an escape route.

“Eamon! It’s all right,” Randall said hurriedly, acutely aware of the commotion his friend was making. “She’s a friend. She helped me rescue you. Settle down! We need to get out of here.”

“No! I won’t go...stay back!” Lacking any other weapon within easy reach, Eamon threw the only thing close at hand.

Randall flinched instinctively as the healing talisman struck him on the shoulder and clattered to the floor. Without its soothing influence, Eamon sagged back into the cot, and coughed weakly. “I won’t go,” he muttered before slipping back into unconsciousness.

Randall glanced at Nia as he bent to retrieve the artifact. There was such sadness in her eyes, tinged with guilt. “I would not blame him if he were to never trust my kind again,” she said, her voice cracking. She met Randall’s gaze for a brief moment before she wheeled and fled the room.

Randall looked back and forth between the doorway and where Eamon lay slumped on the bed, his heart torn. Several long seconds passed as he tried to figure out how to best salvage the situation.

“We must go,” Berry chittered softly in Randall’s ear.

“I know,” Randall snapped in frustration. He looked over at Eamon once more. “I’m sorry my friend. I hope we meet again.”

He found Nia far down the corridor, her face buried in the crook of her arm. She straightened up as he approached and smoothed out her clothing. There was a large, damp spot on her sleeve, and her eyes were red and puffy. She took a ragged breath and tried to regain her composure. There was an unspoken question in her eyes as they met Randall’s.

“He’s not coming,” Randall said simply. “Let’s go.”

Nia nodded, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. The trio traveled the hallways grimly, the silence only broken by the occasional sniffle from Nia. Randall feared that the confusion spell would wear off at any minute, but he forced himself to walk purposefully instead of running. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that the three of them were leaving the tower. He tried to tell himself that even if Kirsti shook off the spell and raised the alarm, she wouldn’t actually resort to open conflict. At least he hoped she wouldn’t. He wasn’t at all confident of their chances if it came to that.

Berry seemed to sense Randall’s tension, and chittered anxiously from his spot on the Mage’s shoulder. The donnan shifted his weight nervously, impatiently clambering from one shoulder to the other.

“You’re not helping,” Randall muttered. Berry chittered a non-committal apology, but didn’t stop his agitated fidgeting.

Randall breathed a sigh of relief once they made it to the courtyard, but they weren’t out of the tower yet. It felt like a thousand eyes were on his back as the group made their way to the outer gates. He felt like a condemned man walking toward the gallows, and the tension didn’t ease until they finally passed through the gates and into the field beyond.

Nia whistled for her cat, and the group began trotting across the meadow and away from the tower. Randall guessed if they could get a good distance away, the Field Mage wouldn’t waste the resources trying to track them down. She would have to conserve all her men on the chance that the elves attacked again.

They had gone a few dozen yards when there was a commotion from the tower. Looking over his shoulder, Randall’s heart leapt into his throat when he saw several dozen guardsmen emerge from the gates, led by Kirsti. They could try to make a run for it, but they were still well within range of the Mage’s magic.

“It looks like there’s to be a fight after all,” Nia said grimly.

“Not if I can help it,” Randall answered, opening himself to Llandra.

Gathering up as much magic as he could hold, he shouted the hiding spell. As the magic spun out of him, he grabbed hold of it with his mind, wrestling with it to cover his companions. He had never tried to push the magic so far before, and the effort brought a bead of sweat to his brow. A sharp, stabbing pain tore through Randall’s head, driving him to his knees and nearly causing him to drop his grasp of the spell.

“It worked,” Nia said excitedly. “They’re coming, but they can’t see us! How long will the spell last?”

“I don’t know. As long as I can hold it,” Randall gasped between breaths as he sucked in lungfuls of air. The pain had dimmed to a throbbing ache as he continually fed magic into the spell to keep it functioning.

“Well, then let’s go,” she cried as she hauled him up by his arm.

Every step was a like a sledgehammer’s blow between his eyes. Under other circumstances it would have been comical to walk among the guardsmen as they rushed about, but it took all Randall’s focus to put one foot in front of the other without dropping the spell. They would shuffle forward a few yards and then stop for a rest, only to start again once he had caught his breath. “Can you hold it much longer?” Nia whispered during one of their frequent breaks.

Randall nodded, panting. He didn’t even know how far they had gotten; looking up from his feet took more strength than he could muster. There was no room in his mind for Kirsti, the guardsman, or even his companions. Walk, then rest. Walk, then rest. And all the while, the pain behind his eyes grew.

He stumbled to his knees and knew he could go no further. He was dimly aware of Nia tugging on his arm, but it was no use; he lacked the strength to stand. What little strength of will he had left, he pushed into the spell. If he could just hold the spell, the soldiers would stop looking for them eventually. Then they would be safe. If only he could hold the spell a little longer. Nia’s voice came to him as if through a fog, and he labored to make sense of her words.

“Randall! We’ve made it,” she cried, a panic in her voice. “Please stop. Please,” she pleaded, the last word trailing off into a sobbing whisper.

“We made it?” he asked, tilting his head sideways to look up from the ground.

Nia’s expression was a mixture of panic and worry. They were surrounded by trees, and the sky was overcast. They must have been walking for hours. Randall sighed and let go of the spell, but rather than the relief he had been expecting, the pain exploded in his brain like a thousand pins and needles. He doubled over, clutching his head and moaning.

“What’s wrong?” Nia asked, dropping to her knees and cradling Randall in her arms.

“It hurts,” was all Randall could grind out between gritted teeth.

“Aether-blindness,” Berry chittered, though Nia couldn’t understand what he was saying. “Still not well. Pushed too hard.”