The Wizard: The Erlingue Series, #3

Prologue

eighteen months before The Crown

Aidan stared out at the battlefield, the rows upon rows of enemy soldiers facing their own army, lined up and poised to charge. He gave a nervous glance over to his father, King Alfred of Arbinad, sitting atop his white warhorse, the massive beast chomping at the bit, ready for action, and clutched the reigns of his own charger tighter with his gauntleted fist.

His father gave him a reassuring nod. It’ll be alright, son. You’ll see.

He nodded back as he turned to face the enemy again.

This was it. This was the battle that would decide the fate of his country. The enemy clutched the strangest weapons, great long wooden sticks that didn’t appear to have a sharp end at all. Aidan could only guess how the Erlinguians planned to fight with them as he got a tighter grip on his trusty sword hilt, still in its scabbard. He could almost smell the fear and uncertainty permeating the Arbinadian army as they stared down their enemy.

From where he and his father sat atop their warhorses behind the army, along with the rest of the generals, he could see everything. He saw the enemy commander signal his man to blow the huge battle horn. He saw the man put the horn to his lips and blow out a loud, clear note. And he saw the enemy come charging at them.

The Arbinadian horn answered them, and the soldiers ran to meet the Erlinguians in battle with a great war cry.

When the Erlinguian army was about fifty feet from the Arbinadian line, they stopped and aimed their weapons at the oncoming men. There was a thunderous noise as if two hundred lightning bolts had all struck at once, and the battlefield erupted in smoke. Everything was confusion. Then the smoke cleared.

For a second, Aidan wondered what had just happened, amazed that their weapons could make such a deafening sound. When the first line of Arbinadians fell, he realized for the first time in his life the power of the new weapon invented by Erlingue and being tested in this battle, the rifle.

His blood turned to fearful ice in his veins as the second line of Erlinguians fired their rifles at the helpless Arbinadians. All he could do was sit there and watch it unfold, unable to help his fellow countrymen.

His heart sank as he watched the battle go so wrong for his country. They were powerless against the guns Erlingue had. Soldiers died left and right all around him. His father stood beside him, watching the chaos. He knew, just like his father knew, that there was nothing they could do to stop it. They had to stay with the battle, fight alongside their army, and die alongside their army. If they retreated, their entire army would retreat and flee, Erlingue following close behind to either slaughter or enslave them. He didn’t know enough about the Erlinguians to know which one they would decide to do.

Run! his father shouted at him as the first line of Erlinguians stood up again and fired their reloaded rifles at the Arbinadians.

What? Aidan asked, all in a daze. His father would never tell him to run.

Run! King Alfred repeated, his eyes dead serious as he looked at Aidan. You have to escape from the battle. Run far away from here and stay safe!

Then Aidan’s father enveloped him in a bear hug, holding him tight as their armor clashed together.

Get out of here. Preserve your life. Go! were his father’s last words as he pushed Aidan away.

Aidan took a few stumbling steps backward, staring at his father, trying to decide which way to run.

Alright, Father, I will. His voice sounded hollow and small amidst the noise of the battle, and he felt so dazed. He couldn’t believe what his father was telling him to do after all those lectures he’d had in his schooling about how you never leave your army behind. I-I love you. I’ll see you soon, Aidan shouted, still not wanting to turn away from his father, knowing he’d probably never see him again in this life. There was no surviving this battle.

Then he did the hardest thing he’d ever done. He turned around and ran for his life, leaving his father behind in the fray.

Having decided it was best not to go back to the capital, that was the first place they’d look for him. He ran straight for the thick forest that was the border between the two countries, trying to think where he could go to escape. As he ran, he realized it was dangerous to run to any of the castles and palaces in Arbinad. He was homeless, with no friends, and no one to help. Everyone back in the battle fought for their lives, their wives and children back home feared for their own safety, and the Erlinguians wanted him dead.

He tripped over an old, dead log and fell flat on his face. He stayed there for several minutes, his thoughts whirling around in his head. Where could he go to escape? The other countries of the world might welcome him, but they could always betray him and turn him over to Erlingue. He didn’t want to risk it.

Slowly picking himself back up off the leaf-strewn ground, he finally made up his mind. He knew exactly where he would go. Or at least where he would attempt to go. There was one being in this universe who would welcome him with open arms.

Aidan ran. He ran as fast as he could back to Arbinad castle. Back to his bedroom where the books were hidden, the books that would help him escape this very present danger.

It took him several hours to get there, but then he was in his bedroom, panting, having shed his armor some minutes before. He thumbed through the book on magic that he had accumulated in the past year. It was a large volume, and he hadn’t gotten very far into it, but he remembered reading about how to create a portal to Nefrodan, the person who would help Aidan.

Here it was, the page that explained how to create the portal that would take him to Nefrodan’s world. The words were in a foreign language, but as Aidan looked at them, he discovered he could read them, even though he had never learned this language. He had known this property of the book long ago. It had baffled him when he’d first opened it and seen the flowing script, which was entirely unreadable, then magically understandable after he stared at it for a few seconds.

A few minutes later, he grabbed a charred stick from the fire and drew a circle around where he stood on the floor with the black ash. He stepped out of the circle and filled the small white cup that sat on the bedside table with cold water from the pitcher. Entering the circle again, he set the cup down on the ground in the very center of the circle, then pulled out his dagger and pricked his right thumb. A single drop of blood fell from his thumb into the glass, turning the water light pink. He plucked a hair from his head and stirred the mixture with his forefinger while reciting the incantation.

Emfanizetai pyli, he closed his eyes and murmured.

When he opened his eyes, the room shimmered before him as if a wall of water had come up along the circle he’d drawn on the floor. The shimmering wall turned from clear to burnt orange, the color of a bonfire, to flaming red, the color of blood. Then everything went black, and the room disappeared.

Aidan’s heart pounded in his chest as if it was about to explode from sheer effort. His breath came quick and unsteady, as if he were being suffocated or strangled. His legs were unsteady as if they wouldn’t support his weight for much longer. He felt horrible, sick to his stomach. A splitting headache drove into his temples, and the world spun in the blackness before his eyes. Willing it to stop, he clenched his jaw and balled up his fists till his fingernails bit into the skin of his sweaty palms.

Just as quickly as it had begun, it ended, and everything came to a standstill. He got his breath back, and his heart stopped pounding away as if it was trying to win a horserace. It was still utterly dark, and he was still completely terrified. Just as he thought he couldn’t take the darkness anymore, everything gradually grew lighter around him. He slowly made out shapes and colors before him and found himself standing at the top of a cliff, utterly alone, the mournful sound of waves crashing against the rocks below.

Carefully walking over to the edge of the cliff, he peered over the side, then wished he hadn’t. The sudden three-thousand-foot drop made his stomach queasy, and he was instantly dizzy. He quickly stepped back and nearly tripped over a giant tree root.

Regaining his balance, he turned and realized he was in a lonely forest that ran right up to the cliff behind him. Ancient trees, firmly planted in the ground, swayed over his head, as if dancing to a merry tune only they could hear. He saw the root he had nearly tripped over; it was small compared to the many other roots around the vast number of other trees.

For a while, he wondered what he should do. He was alone, at the edge of a cliff, and had no idea where he was. He had never felt more lost in all his life.

Slowly, he picked his way over the sprawling tree roots, going deeper into the quiet forest.

He walked for a long time. After walking through the forest for about ten minutes, it struck him like a thunderclap that everything around him was perfectly still. There was absolutely no sound. This frightened him for a few more minutes, as he wondered if he’d lost his sense of hearing by traveling through that portal. Then he realized he could hear the soft sound his shoes made on the ground beneath his feet and breathed a sigh of relief. All his senses were intact. He was simply in another realm and completely alone.

Nothing to be too frightened about, really, he thought sarcastically.

It puzzled him that the forest was so quiet. Though the trees swayed incessantly, he couldn’t even hear their leaves rustling in the gentle wind. There was no sound of the little forest animals scurrying through the underbrush or of tiny insects buzzing around as they flew mindlessly about their business. Was this forest completely empty of life except for the trees that waved their branches overhead?

He couldn’t figure it out, and he wished more and more that he would find somebody, anybody. The wizard, Nefrodan, would be nice. This was supposed to be his realm, after all.

If this was his realm, where was Nefrodan? Surely the Wizard of Ages, as he was called in Aidan’s book about magic, would know when someone entered his realm. He would know and come looking for that stranger. And yet, here Aidan was, having entered Nefrodan’s realm and having seen no sign of anyone.

He was beginning to think about trying to go home, back to his own world, and wondering how he was going to do that as he no longer had the book with him and did not know how to re-create the portal that would take him home, when the forest ended abruptly. There was a straight line where the forest stopped growing, and before him was bare brown earth, stretching for miles ahead, as far as the eye could see, and no sign of anything living.

His mouth went dry with fear because there was nothing he could do but press forward into that nothingness of brown earth, hoping he would come across something living, eventually. He took a deep breath, hoping to still his beating heart, let it out, and plunged forward onto the bare earth.

As soon as he stepped on the earth, he gave a shout as he felt himself being pushed forward by some invisible force at lightning speed across the ground. He noticed his feet were a few inches off the ground, hovering above it as the force pushed him faster than any horse could run across the earthy desert. Again, his breath came out in gasps, and his heart raced as he hurtled along. He tried to make whatever was pushing him stop by trying to turn around and push back against it, but he found that his body was stiff as a board, totally unable to move as this invisible force carried him along.

After several minutes of near panic, he realized there was no getting out of this, so he settled down and tried to enjoy the ride. Then, as suddenly as the ride had started, it stopped, and he nearly fell flat on his face right in front of a row of small, domed cottages that looked homely and welcoming.

He looked around for any sign of movement, anything that would tell him that someone lived here in these cottages. It wasn’t possible for him to have landed in an uninhabited, silent realm, was it?

He took a few timid steps forward and he pushed his way among the cottages. Their thatched roofs came just barely above the height of his head. He would have to stoop to get through the doorways, if he had wanted to get through them, that is. There was still no sign of anyone around, and his palms grew clammy from fear. He didn’t want to be all alone here in this new realm. He had to find whoever lived here.

He walked the length of the village, still not spotting anyone. Just as he was about to turn back the way he’d come in despair, he saw an old man sitting cross-legged atop a rock about two hundred yards outside the village. He wore a black cloak, his shaggy silver hair glistening in the twilight. A staff lay beside him on the rock, and he faced the setting sun, his back to Aidan.

Slowly walking closer to the rock, Aidan cleared his throat when he was a few feet away, and the old man turned to face him. His face was wrinkled and aged, and a large beak of a nose seemed to take up most of his features. Two piercing blue eyes stared back at Aidan, seeming to see through to his very soul. Aidan instantly had respect, if not a little trepidation, for this man.

May I help you? the man asked, seeming slightly annoyed at being interrupted by whatever he’d been doing, but still trying to be polite.

Are you Nefrodan, the Wizard of Ages? Aidan asked.

I am, the man said, nodding.

Chapter 1

PRESENT DAY

Lucy rushed through the Everscenian palace, excited and breathless. She had to find her husband, Marcus, and tell him the news. He had to be in his office. That was where he spent most of his time, taking care of the business of running the country of Everscene since he was now the king.

She had been going through her daily mail in her morning parlor. The servant had laid it on the table next to her favorite chair, so of course, that was the first task she had done that day upon waking. Never mind breakfast; that could wait. When she’d reached this particular letter, she’d eagerly read its contents and flown off to find her husband. He would be excited to read this letter too.

Thankfully, he was in his office and looked up at her, smiling in greeting when she entered the room, a questioning look on his tanned face.

What is it, Lucy? You’re all out of breath. Have you been running? he asked from where he sat at his desk.

Maybe a little, she answered sheepishly, smiling down at him, knowing it wasn’t queenly of her to run through the palace halls. She took a seat across the desk from him and thrust the letter onto the flat surface before them. I have news from King John of Halifeth.

Whatever does he have to write you about? Marcus asked, the look in his eyes becoming even more puzzled.

Just this, Lucy said. He’s holding a great tournament. For all the kings of the world to attend. She beamed up at him, bursting with excitement. That means we’re invited, she added when he just sat there, openmouthed, saying nothing.

He snatched up the letter and skimmed its contents, a grin creeping across his clean-shaven face as he read.

Well, this is great news, Marcus said when he finished reading, looking up at her, his deep blue eyes shining almost as bright as her lighter blue ones. It means you’ll get to see your sister sooner than we’d planned if Kat and Thomas can come too.

Oh, I’m sure everyone will be there, Lucy said, tossing a lock of her golden hair behind her back. Nothing like this has ever happened, not in our lifetime, at least. Think of it, a tournament filled with jousting and melees and masks and balls; every kind of entertainment imagined, all in one glorious week of fun. This will be better than the signing of the Treaty of Everscene we had here just a few months ago. Oh, I can hardly wait!

Marcus laughed merrily. Well, I’m glad you’re happy, my love. But you know this means we’ll have to work extra hard here in Everscene for the weeks before this brief holiday, so we can take a break from our work and enjoy ourselves while in Halifeth.

I know what it all means, she answered impatiently. But even if we don’t get everything done ahead of time, we can always take our work with us.

Yes, but I’d rather not take our steward and secretaries and papers that need signing with us, Marcus said, running a hand through his dark hair as if he felt stressed just thinking about taking his entire staff to what was supposed to be a week of fun. I want a proper holiday where I can relax and enjoy myself and spend time with you.

She smiled and took his hand in hers. I want that too, she said. So, I will work extra hard for the next week, just like I know you will, and then we can have a true holiday. We’ve been so busy since you took the throne, and I became your queen. We need a break like this, even if it’s only for a week.

They sat in silence for a moment, casually holding hands. Then Marcus withdrew his hand and picked up his quill pen again.

Well, let’s make true on our promises then and get back to work, he said with finality.

Lucy was soon at her own writing desk in their shared office, answering the letters she’d read in her room.

***

Kat and Thomas sat in their morning parlor after breakfast, enjoying a cup of coffee before they started on their day’s tasks. They were in Arbinad now, and the warm sun shone in through the open French doors, but there was a decided nip in the fall air. Slight gusts of wind blew in, welcomed by the two royals after how hot the summer had been. She heard the servants beginning their morning tasks around the castle in the yard below.

I’ve had a letter from Lucy over in Everscene, Kat said, smiling at her husband. He seemed to grow more handsome every day in her eyes. The way a lock of his brown hair kept falling into his eyes and how he had trimmed his beard with extra care this morning made her heart beat faster just looking at him.

What does she say? Are the newlyweds still enjoying themselves? Thomas asked, taking another sip of the hot coffee he held in his hands.

Yes, they’re very happy together, but Marcus is quite busy rebuilding Everscene. Lucy didn’t mean to complain in her letter, but she said she doesn’t get to spend as much time with him as she thought she would. Kat’s gaze went over to the balcony where a robin had landed and was singing merrily.

And how is the rebuilding of Everscene going? Thomas wondered, pushing the lock of hair out of his eyes once more. It did not surprise Kat that his mind instantly went to the running of a country, for that was what was often on his mind as well, being the king of Erlingue.

I think it’s going as well as can be expected. Lucy didn’t focus on telling me about that in her letter.

What was the focus of her letter then? Thomas asked, a curious glint in his dark eyes.

She and Marcus received an invitation from King John of Halifeth to a tournament at the Halifethian capital, Kat told him. Lucy was wondering if we’d received one too. She sounded excited at the prospect of all the kings of the world meeting together for a tournament to continue good relations between our countries. Have we gotten an invitation?

Thomas shook his dark head. I haven’t received anything yet. She said it was for all the kings of the world?

Yes, that’s what it sounded like.

Then I suppose our invitation is coming soon, he said with a grin. What an exciting prospect.

Yes, it would be good to see Lucy and Marcus again, Kat said as a mischievous smile slowly spread across her face, her blue eyes dancing. "And I know you’re very excited to see Princess Marie again."

Thomas groaned and leaned back