The Dark Shadow of Spring (10 page)

“Hopefully,” his father said, “that will keep anyone else from accidentally falling into the cave.”

“What about the voice?” Alex asked, admiring his father’s work and wondering how long it would have taken him to accomplish half as much.

“I don’t know,” his father said, turning from what had been the cave entrance and leading Alex back through the frost-covered trees toward the deer path. “Honestly, I hope it was your imagination.” Alex frowned at this and opened his mouth to protest, but his father cut him off. “A knock to the head strong enough to leave you unconscious can cause a number of side effects, hallucinations among them. And I would prefer that it was a hallucination, because the other possibilities are less pleasant.”

“What other possibilities?” Alex asked before he realized he might not want to know.

“Firstly, that there is something in that cave that wants out and wants revenge,” his father said, his voice grim. Alex didn’t think that was just a possibility. He had heard the voice in his head and felt the pain. “And second,” his father continued, “if something that wasn’t living did speak to you in your mind, that would imply some sort of Spirit Magic. Ka’Neff. And while it might be that you are the first after Old Batami to remember any of the Spirit Tongue, it might also mean that whatever spoke to you has established a connection.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked, his voice breaking with concern.

“I mean,” his father said, pushing a tree branch out of the way and looking into Alex’s eyes, “that if there was a voice, and there was something using Spirit Magic behind it, whatever that thing is, it might be able to find you no matter where you are.”

“Great,” Alex said, staggering onto the deer path. “Aren’t there enough wicked creatures in this valley to worry about?” He wasn’t sure if he should mention that he might have heard the voice when he fell asleep the night before. It was probably a dream. And mentioning might make his dad worry. And to be truthful, even thinking about it was making Alex worry.

“I want you to stay out of this forest and off the mountain for a while,” his father said. “As a precaution.”

“I never want to be anywhere near that cave again, Dad,” Alex said.

“Good,” his father replied. “I also don’t think you should be alone for a while. Make sure one of the kids in your club is with you all the time.”

“It’s a guild, Dad,” Alex said with a little annoyance. His parents could never seem to understand the difference between a club and guild.

“Whatever you call it, have someone with you when you’re not at home,” his father said. “Even if it’s just your sister.”

“Lot of good she’ll be,” Alex said with disdain.

“Just do as I say,” his father said.

“Why?” Alex asked, nervous at the suggestion he needed bodyguards. “What do you think might happen?”

“Nothing,” his father said. “I’m just being cautious. And so should you.”

“I thought dads were supposed to be all reassuring and tell their kids that everything was going to be fine and there was nothing to worry about,” Alex said.

“Some fathers might,” his father said, “but your father is the town warlock. It’s my job to instill a healthy dose of fear and paranoia in people, especially my son. There are evil things in the Valley and those who do not plan ahead often lose their heads. So mind yours, it’s very dear to me.” His father reached out a large hand and ruffled Alex’s hair gently. Alex laughed in spite of the seed of fear his father had planted in his gut.

They walked in a happy silence until the deer path emerged from the forest into the sun and the valley north of town. Their steps came to a stop as one and they looked out at the fields, still covered in deep frost, even as the midday sun of spring shone down from the pale blue sky above.

“I’ve never seen a frost hold this long in the sun,” Alex said, his throat dry for some reason he didn’t want to examine too closely.

“Neither have I,” his father said, his eyes becoming thin slits. Alex was good at sensing people’s moods and especially those of his family. His father’s mood had shifted from happily protective to seriously dangerous in the span of a heartbeat. “Something is wrong,” his father continued. “Something is seriously wrong.”

“With the weather?” Alex said, lurching to follow his father’s long strides.

“With the valley,” his father growled. “Something is deeply wrong with the Rune Valley.”

Alex fell into a light jog bedside his father, wondering against all his better sense whether what had gone wrong with the weather in the Rune Valley was related to the voice in the cave. The voice in his head. There was no clear connection, but he knew the answer. Alex prided himself on the planning of his adventures and knowing what might come next. Feeling the seed of fear in his stomach begin to grow, he realized that this wasn’t an adventure and he had no plan and he had no idea what was going to happen next.

Chapter 9: Looking For Answers

When they returned home, Alex’s mother had a large pot of chili and a pan of cornbread muffins waiting for them. His father recounted the exploration of the cave to his mother and sister, omitting any mention of Alex descending back into the cavern. Alex ate in silence and noted a strange look that crossed his mother’s face while his father spoke. If she suspected any misdirection by his father, she said nothing about it.

After their late lunch, Alex’s father left to talk with Mayor McClint, Dillon’s father, about the frost. Alex’s father regularly made reports to the mayor and the town council about things around the valley that seemed odd or suspicious. The safety and security of the citizens of Runewood were his father’s duty and his father took duty very seriously. Too seriously sometimes, Alex reflected as he waved goodbye to his father.

He had lost track of the number of times he had been punished for infringements that others kids would have received a slap on the hand for having committed. His father always insisted that there could be no hint of favoritism toward his own family and that, as Alex was likely to become town warlock himself one day, it was important that the people of Runewood never think that the Ravenstar family was above the law in any way. Alex could agree with his father in principle, but he always felt that in practice, his father was a bit too duty-bound.

Alex took the opportunity of helping to clean up after lunch to ask his mother something he had been wondering about on his walk back from the forest with his father. “Do you have any books on the history of the valley?” Alex asked as he dried a bowl.

“I’m sure I do,” his mother said, cocking her head in thought. “Yes, I seem to remember at least a couple.”

“Any idea where they are?” Alex asked, looking past his mother at a stack of books nearing collapse at the edge of the kitchen counter.

“Oh Alex, you’re so amusing some days,” his mother said.

“Any best guesses?” Alex asked, thinking about all the piles of books on shelves and floors around the house.

“Maybe the den,” his mother said, scratching her head. “Or the dining room?  I seem to remember a pile of history books on the stairs to the attic.”

“Hey, Sis,” Alex said, handing a dry bowl to his sister for stacking in the cupboard, “wanna help me look for books?”

“What’s in it for me?” Nina asked with a smirk.

“The warm feeling that comes from doing a good deed,” Alex said, smirking back.

“As long as that warm feeling tastes like chocolate, I’m in,” Nina said.

“Done,” Alex said. He had long gotten used to bribing his sister for assistance with candy bars. She was a sucker for a Seven Up Bar, with its cherry, coconut, maple, jelly, Brazil nut, caramel, and fudge centers in each of its seven sections. They were one of the few Outsider candy bars available in town.

“No candy before dinner,” his mother said, drying her hands. “What do you want a book on the history of the valley for?”

“A research project,” Alex said. “For the Guild.” Which was true. Sort of.

“Well, I’ve read most of the books in the house,” his mother said. “I could probably save you some time. I never read of anyone reporting hearing voices on the Black Bone Mountain. People sometimes claim to hear voices in the Whispering Woods at the edge of the Dead Forest, but that’s all in the south of the valley.”

Alex was silent as his mother eyed him. He hated it when he was so transparent that she could tell what he was thinking. He often suspected that she was using Mind Magic on him.

“And while I’ve read about several caves and suspected treasures buried in them,” his mother continued, “I’ve never read about any cave in the Black Bone Mountains except the one that the dragon Gall’Adon is sleeping in.”

Alex tried to keep his face neutral at the mention of the dragon and covered his surprise at his mother’s insight into his plans by asking a question. “Are there any books you haven’t read?”

“A few,” his mother said.

“I think we should search, just in case,” Nina said, a conscientious look on her face.

“You just want the chocolate,” Alex said, rolling his eyes.

“If I help you look, do I get chocolate?” his mother asked, a hint of mischief in her voice.

“Deal,” Alex said. His mother loved chocolate even more than his sister, and with her help, he might actually find a book that would explain what was in that cave.

Alex and his mother and sister spent the rest of the afternoon and some of the evening looking through stack after stack of books piled in the rooms around the house. Normally he would have asked the Guild to come and help, but the parents of the Guild members, his in particular, had long ago decreed that Sundays were to be family days since the Guild spent nearly every waking moment of every other day together.

Alex’s father came home a few hours after they began and, after sneaking a couple of spoonfuls of leftover cold chili from the pot in the refrigerator, he dove in to help with the search. A family book hunt was not an uncommon occurrence in the Ravenstar household. Since his mother had nearly as many books as the town library, and on nearly as many subjects, research for school papers was usually conducted at home. The whole family was regularly called out to hunt down a volume on a particular subject.

Digging through a dust-covered heap of books in the upstairs hallway with his mother, Alex reflected that searching together as a family was possibly slower than searching alone, but more fun. His mother and father would always find books they had forgotten they owned, which would inevitably elicit a story about where they had found it, which would lead to a digression about some journey or adventure they had been on together.

By dinnertime, they had a small mound of history books assembled in the middle of the table and had heard a number of tales of their parents’ youth that he had never known of before.
When were they going to mention that they had tracked down two evil mages hiding out in Venice, Italy?
Alex wondered to himself. And why had his mother given up being a warlock herself to work at a bookstore?  That was a question for another day.

After a dinner of roast pork and rosemary potatoes, and a dessert of chocolate provided from Alex’s personal stash, he and Nina spread the books out on the dining room table and began in earnest their search for clues about the cave and the voice. Alex’s parents left them to the search alone, both sitting down with forgotten books, reading and reminiscing in the living room. The frost still gripped the ground outside and left the air even chillier than during the day. Alex’s father started a fire in the fireplace and the house soon warmed up considerably. The fire used endless logs that magically remained whole no matter how long they burned. It was similar to the magic used in the endless oil lamps that provided light throughout the house, never needing to be filled, and burning with a smokeless golden light until doused.

His mother had been right about the books containing nothing about the cave or voices being recorded in the history of the valley, but they did provide two clues he was not expecting in other directions. One book,
The Illustrated History of the Rune Valley
, mentioned a book that his mother did not own. Its title was
A History of the War of the Dark Age
and Alex did not bother to ask his mother if she had read it. Asking her that would be a hint as to what that title led him to suspect might be up in the cave. And talking about that suspicion aloud was more frightening than thinking about it.

The Dark Age had come at the end of the Great War, The War of the Shadow, that had burned the magic completely out of most of the land, oceans, and seas. It was a war fought between the mages of the world and a being of a dark and powerful nature called the Shadow Wraith. That was all that Alex really knew about the war. Much more than that wasn’t taught in school and Alex had only been able to glean a little more from the books strewn across the thick oak dining table. There was no mention of where this dark being came from and only vague accounts of how it was defeated. Some said it was bound up in the earth, others that it was vanquished utterly and destroyed, and still others said that it had been forced into some other realm of existence altogether. The one thing that all the stories did agree upon was that this dark being, this Shadow Wraith, used Spirit Magic almost exclusively, possessing a person’s soul and controlling them to work other kinds of magic in the Great War.

When he finished reading all he could about the Shadow Wraith, Nina hovering closely over his shoulder, Alex felt the seed of fear in his stomach beginning to grow again, digging roots down deep into his gut. He looked at Nina and saw that she was just as frightened. For him, he realized. She was frightened for him. He whispered for her to say nothing to his parents and she responded by sliding an open book toward him, pointing to a short paragraph.

“
The workings of dark Spirit Magic, of the Dra’Ka’Neff, are known to only a few demented mages who have abandoned the light of sanity and reason. Some have even attempted to contact, resurrect, or return the dreaded Shadow Wraith. I know of only one book that has ever studied Ka’Neff and how to wield Spirit Magic and copies are rare indeed. That book is
Radiant Spirit: Ka’Neff Magic Uncovered.”