Magicians' Rivalry by H. L. Burke

Author:H. L. Burke [Burke, H. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2017-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Auric pushed through the face-high ferns, ignoring the glowing footprints beneath him, focused only on the sound of his father’s voice.

“Father?” he shouted, then paused. Another cry, faint, breathy.

A hand clamped down on Auric’s shoulder. He whirled, fist swinging.

Jericho ducked and grabbed him by the wrist. “Settle down!” he snapped. “Look, I know you want to get to him. I do, too, but you have to consider this might be a trap.”

Auric’s hands shook. He yanked away from Jericho and dropped his eyes. “What do you suggest?” he asked, forcing his voice steady. His father screamed again. Auric winced.

“Follow the sound, but not rush in blind.” Jericho took out a wooden quire. It had to be one of his last. “We won’t do your dad any good if we’re caught by whatever is doing that to him.”

Gripping his stylus in one hand and his tablet in the other, Auric nodded. Shoulder to shoulder, the two men sneaked through the overgrown garden. Blade-like leaves swiped against Auric’s neck, grating on his already frayed nerves. Father’s cries grew weaker and further apart, but closer, definitely closer.

They pushed through a veil of willow branches to reveal a mirror-like lake. Blue, translucent beings, about the size and shape of small children, skidded over the surface as if it were frozen. In the middle, wrapped in streams of water that twisted like chains, writhed Hedward Spellsmith, his face drawn, his eyes squeezed shut. The watery children giggled and pranced about him. Then as one they slid to his side and poked at him. At their touch, Auric’s father arched his back and let out a rasping cry.

Auric swallowed. “They aren’t very big.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of them.” Jericho rubbed the back of his neck. “I count fifteen, though I could be more confident of that number if they’d stop dancing about like panicked water striders.”

“Fifteen, sixteen, twenty, does it really matter?” Auric squinted at the surface of the pond. “I have an idea.” Like everything else in this world, the pond had to be made of Fey energy, which meant it could be manipulated. The bonds about his father appeared to be an extension of the pond. “All right, listen. I’m going to do a spell. The moment I activate it, I need you to run out there and grab Father. Then once we have him in hand, we’ll use the homing spell and get the hell out of here.”

“Sounds good.” Jericho nodded. “I can’t really run across water, though. I’m assuming you’ve included that fact in your calculations.”

“No, I just assumed anyone as perfect as you could perform the miracles of the Christ,” Auric scoffed. “Give me some credit, Jericho.”

Jericho chuckled, and Auric smiled. Somehow the exchanges with Jericho no longer felt malicious. For the best, he supposed. After all, they needed to depend on each other if this was going to work.

“Ready?” Auric wrote out the line of symbols but paused right before the activation spell.

Jericho returned his quire to his pack and hunched down in a racer’s stance.

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