Songs of the Silver Wizard

COMPENDIUM

“The thing about dangerous friends is that they are dangerous, even if they are your friends.”

Flames licked the air, dancing like tendrils of smoke that still carried the warmth of the fire. Thaddeus slammed his staff into the ground, and the courtyard shuddered as the wall of water met the unholy bonfire.

“Wardens to the walls! To the walls!” Antonia unsheathed her silver sword and flung herself into the fray. The thum of bowstrings mingled with the clang of steel. The walls above were a blur of motion as the wardens met the host of evil assailing them. The warriors of the forest flowed with the strength and majesty of the raging Ishtar River. Thaddeus knew without aid, they would still eventually succumb.

Antonia would have to handle that; Thaddeus had more dangerous foes to deal with. He saw them sitting crossed leg in nook of the open gate, a cadre of Gothinian soldiers and lesser mages surrounding them. Thaddeus the Silver Wizard, one of the most powerful creatures in all of Adrusian, feared neither flame, nor beast, nor steel, nor ghost. He’d faced down hordes of orcs and been dropped in a den of werewolves at the full moon without fear, yet here he stood fighting back terror.

The cadre of mages and soldiers around the two identical crossed legged figures, the human hosts for the pair of fire Djinn’s, closed ranks, spears out and hands raised. The whirling firestorm abated ever so slightly, their strength regathering in the face of this new foe.

No, the one thing Thaddeus the Silver Wizard feared was twins.

He knew instinctively he shouldn’t. For example, he knew just because the tusked orc looked dangerous did not make the one sitting at the inn more likely to stab him—though he did concede that the lot at that moment vaulting over the ramparts almost certainly wanted to stab him—and he also knew that just because a set of twins traveling along a certain road in the veil of Gorlath under the waxing moon were only fifty percent likely to have their souls burned out and replaced by fire Djinns (long odds most days), and he knew that it was unbecoming of a wizard to judge a tome by its dusty cover.

Still, he feared twins. And the two pale, possessed children sitting crossed legged in the courtyard—although they now were almost certainly ancient beings—made his skin crawl. The flames disappeared momentarily, and Thaddeus tightened his grip on his staff held before him in a defensive posture that had absolutely no practical purpose.

The twin’s fiery possessors erupted forth in new spectral forms with such fury that even those fighting on the walls paused their battle to watch—all but Antonia who took the opportunity to skewer a poor Gothinian spearman through the neck. Thaddeus held his staff aloft and let the wave of fire wash over his protective bubble. In its wake, two figures made of ghost-like flaming tendrils towered over the courtyard. Thaddeus traced their orange and red tails leading back to where the two twins sat in silent mediation.

“Ah Thaddeus, I’m glad our scouts spoke the truth when they said you’d be here,” their disembodied voices spoke in perfect unison, though the mouths of their ghost-like fiery avatars did not move.

“Did you think it wise to desecrate the halls of the forest warden?”

”Was it wise to declare war on our master from the walls of Rannia?”

“Mayhaps that was a wee bit hasty,” Thaddeus said, stamping his staff into the ground and ushering forth a wall of piercing light. Their enemies around Thaddeus cowered, stricken blind. Antonia took advantage of the break to rally more of the wardens. They would hold for a time. “Still, the bells toll for your master. His time has come.”

“Fool. His age dawns. Your powers are nothing before him,” the twin apparitions of fire hissed as they hammered on Thaddeus’s wall of light. With a smash, they seemed to drain the light, the apparitions growing ever larger. He cursed himself; light magic was only one school over from fire magic. Headmaster Sefodarus would be so disappointed in me.

Unfortunately, unless the knights of Rannia or some other force unlooked for quickly arrived and tipped the scales, the powers Thaddeus needed to draw on to defeat these two carried some… dangerous consequences. He sent another blast of air strong enough to peel flesh from bone toward the apparitions, and Thaddeus swore they mocked him with their nonchalance.

“Yeah… sure… as you say,” Thaddeus said, admitting to none but himself that he had no quips prepared. If he had to use those powers, it would be no laughing affair.

“And now you die wiz–”

As if to save him from this embarrassing lack of eloquent quip, the walls of the castle above the courtyard exploded in a shower of wood and stone. The figure appeared on the ramparts, cape billowing.

“In a unanimous, two to one vote, we elected to stay and fight!” Sodentra the Dreaded Dread pirate yelled from the ramparts, heaving the sack he carried over his shoulder onto the grass. From above, Ed tossed bomb after bomb into the horde of Gothinians and Orcs. They cowered and retreated while Antonia rallied the remaining wardens and Kallens and Reginald led a host of pirates and vampires, now liberated from what Bowlorn would surely agree was unwarranted imprisonment within their dungeon cells.

“Delightful…” Thaddeus grunted, keeping his focus on his conjured water serpent facing down the fire Djinn’s like a badger circling a cobra.

“By a brush of fate, we passed the sleeping Bowlorn and my friend Kallens here, ever the curious bloke, realized that his wound was not stuffed with the balm of the Enderroot, known for its obvious healing properties, but the very similar eccentric wormwood balm,” The pirate casually unloaded a warning shot from his pistol in between the eyes of an onrushing orc. “Our friend Kallens has extensive experience with such… magical herbs.”

“What does all this mean?” Thaddeus asked through gritted teeth; the merged power of the Djinn’s threatening to overcome his own apparition. Despite their extensive knowledge of herbal remedies, these pirates had little comprehension of how much attention conjuring a water familiar required.

From somewhere within the depths of his billowing cloak, Sodentra produced an apple. “Well, apparently, and as a good and honest captain would never have personal experience with such things, such a balm produces a deep sleep that some shaman of the Ender Isles utilize to commune with their gods. I’ve seen the after effects. It usually involves sleeping on a beach in various forms of undress, mouths full of the roots.”

A great roar shook the courtyard with such vigor, Thaddeus felt the sudden need to brace himself. He realized, as he stood there contemplating if the very timbers of the castle were about to collapse, that he did make an absolutely terrible error that would have assuredly earned him even lower marks from his old headmaster.

Oblivious to the shaking, the captain continued. “The funny thing about it is, all you have to do is remove the eccentric wormwood root and all is ship shape,” Sodentra snapped.

Thum…

Thum…

Thum…

The Djinn’s fiery tendrils receded back into their flesh and bone hosts and Thaddeus pressed his advantage. Sending forth a new wall of water, the twins and their retinue scampered back into the forest, unsatisfyingly hale but no longer brandishing their fiery strength. Without their presence though, the rest of the host lay exposed.

Thaddeus had indeed made a crucial error. A truly rare thing for him.

At least this time, said error was to his benefit.

Bowlorn burst forth from where not long ago he lay fighting death, not the man clinging to life on the dais as Thaddeus and Antonia left him, but as the King of his Forest. Reinvigorated and transformed, his body was that of a horse twenty hands tall, four hooves galloping through the air as he jumped from on high directly into the dread horde.

Yes, Thaddeus was a fool for thinking the King of the forest shapeshifted into a simple bear.

“We’ll leave this one for him then,” Sodentra said, kicking the sack and drawing his sword in a smooth and impressive display of athleticism. He disappeared back into the fray.

Bowlorn charged through the Gothinian spear wall with a sickening crunch. With the arms of a bear, he ripped asunder one Gothinian after another. In all his travels, Thaddeus had seen many men stabbed, skewered, and otherwise impaled on all manner of bladed weapons. Still, the sight of four orcs hanging from the great pointed antlers of Bowlorn’s stag shaped head was, even for him…disquieting.

Scattered and broken, the enemy skittered back into the forest after the Twins, pursued by those defenders who still stood. Thaddeus knew most of their enemy would not survive the night.

A calmness descended around the courtyard

“So what’s in that sack?” Antonia asked, approaching with Reginald ever in tow. All around them the surviving wardens, pirates, vampires, and thralls licked their wounds. They had taken more casualties than Thaddeus thought. They would need reinforcements. Reginald bent down and examined the sack which thrashed ever so slightly.

“Ahh this? This is scum,” Kallens said with a swift kick. Ed stood silently nodding as Sodentra said something bombastically enthralling to the survivors warriors.

Reginald bent down sniffing the sack. He pulled a jagged black blade from his belt and cut the figure through the burlap. Thaddeus saw a bead of dark red blood roll down the blade. Reginald’s tongue darted out and swallowed the bead in a way that caught the saliva in the wizard’s throat.

“Fiend! Monster!” Reginald hacked up the lick of blood he took from whatever rolled in the sack. In a bloody frenzy, the thrall stabbed the burlap.

It happened in an instant. From within sprung the Shaman, bloody but now unbound. A fury of blows followed under a chorus of swords and daggers unsheathing against the interloper. The shaman stood, holding the jagged knife to Reginald’s neck, eyes flitting this way and that, trying to find an escape route. He backed up slowly toward the gate where Thaddeus saw he indeed had an opening.

“Everyone, lower your weapons,” Thaddeus said. “No one else needs to die today.”

He knew it was futile, but he had to try. An agent of the enemy deep within Bowlorn’s Keep was a minor detail that would keep him awake deep into the night. Ideally, he’d have the opportunity to interrogate this one.

From the forest depths, Bowlorn bellowed and the shaman jumped ever so slightly. Without consideration, Thaddeus struck with his staff, sending both the Shaman and Reginald tumbling to the ground with a gust of air.

“Reginald, no!” Antonia yelled and dove onto the bodies tumbling on the grass courtyard. Thaddeus saw a fountain of blood followed by a whimper from one and a screaming wail from another of the twisting bodies.

Antonia rose alone, lifting the shaman aloft with one hand. Reginald lay motionless on the ground, a dagger impaled in his still chest.

With a piercing scream that split Thaddeus’s skull, Antonia sunk her teeth into the Shaman’s neck. His eyes went painfully wide. The color drained from his face to a pale shade of white. She took him by the shirt, lifting him aloft with an ease that somehow terrified Thaddeus more than Bowlorn ripping a Gothinian in two. As the man’s mortal soul drained from his eyes, replaced by the dark magic that coursed through Antonia, Thaddeus knew there was no hope in gleaning any information from the shaman. What memories he may have had vanished to the darkest recesses of his husk, and no amount of magic, light, dark, or blood, could coax them forth.

“You took Reginald from me. You really should not have done that, Thrall.”

The Shaman’s eyes snapped wide and faded to a dull white. Spasms wracked his body as the dark magic took its hold on his flesh.

“Let’s go. I’d hate to keep Shaggurt waiting any longer,” Antonia said. She disappeared through the gates, and Thaddeus thought it was best that no one tried to stop her.

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A/N:

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