“Well then, he probably followed you to the portal and snuck in after the three of you had gone through. Am I right, lad?”

  Kalom raised his shoulder and smirked.

  “Excuse me.” Nathaniel waved his hand in the air to get everyone’s attention. “Can we talk about what’s important here, like where we are, why we’re here, and when can we return to Merigor?

  “As things stand now, Amelon and his army think I ran away from the battle. I need to find him and explain what happened. And if there are still hostile Raponian soldiers wandering around, he’ll need my help to round them up.” He began to pace as he warmed to his subject. “Not to mention Heldibor is still on the loose with his undead attacking Merigonian troops. I need to go back to try to stop that as well.”

  Ayah’s grunt of laughter had the ring of insult attached to it.

  Nathaniel stopped pacing long enough to send a scathing look her way.

  Unfazed by his glare, the mage grimaced as she arched backward slightly, placing her knuckles in the small of her back. “If the alternative to aging wasn’t so cold, I might prefer that to aching bones and joints.” She pointed to a blank spot on the wall. “Cathedra.”

  That part of the tree began to mold itself into a rather uncomfortable-looking chair. When it had fully formed, she stepped to it and ran a tentative hand over the splintery seat. She scowled as she looked up at the wall.

  Nathaniel frowned at her transformational skills. The Archmage’s power lay in the healing arts and in her uncanny, magically assisted gifts as a political tactician. She’d been renown, a thousand years earlier, for her ability to manipulate kings and kingdoms, to change the course of history with a single closed-door meeting. She’d held ministers spellbound with her oration, and her debating skills had been second to none.

  “Allow me?” At her nod, Nathaniel took out his wand, changed it into his mage staff, and swept it along the splinter-filled curve of the seat. The wood turned to a striated light brown liquid, and solidified into the texture of windblown glass. He ran his hand along the surface to make sure he hadn’t missed any splinters or rough edges.

  Bowing slightly, he waved his hand at the chair. An unusual weakness overtook him, but he attributed it to the aftereffects of his earlier magical bleed.

  With a scowl, Ayah slid onto the chair, sighing when it made minute adjustments until it had molded itself to the contours of her body. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate your fancy work, Son of Fallon. But if you hope to survive your time here in Tarvis’ forest, you’ll need to conjure your wand faster than that and use it one hundred times less than you’re used to doing in Merigor.”

  “Survive my—” His voice broke as he spoke. He cleared his throat to bring it back down to its normal register. “I’m going back to Merigor, with or without you, Master Minuet. I have neither the time nor the desire to stay here, no offense meant to our host.” He nodded slightly to Tarvis.

  Moving to stand by his side, Garenth patted him on the back with a gesture of brotherly commiseration. “It don’t look so bad here, Mage. You’n the hedger’ll likely come to be good friends. I’ll even bet—”

  Ayah said, “Oh, you’re staying in Ramduin right along with him, Healer. Do you remember me telling you that he will be your master of magical healing, and you will be his healer and master of the warrior’s art?”

  That deceptively nonchalant tone worried Nathaniel. Waving his hands dismissively, he backed slowly toward the door. “No, no, no, no. I’m an academic Mage of Merigor.” He stopped to gather his thoughts. “Okay, so I died in the first magical duel I ever fought, but the last thing I need is training to become a warrior. I mean, look at me.” He pointed to his lean but far from brawny body. “Now, look at him.” With a slightly shaking hand, he lifted Garenth’s massive arm. “This is a warrior.” He motioned to himself again, “This is an academic mage. I have no intention of—”

  “Heldibor will pull your liver from your living body and eat it in front of your academic eyes! You have no choice, Son of Fallon.” She smiled to soften her words. “Consider it a quest. An adventure if you will.”

  Suspicion darkened his features. “A quest? Here? Where barghests and avorals hunt the forests?” He shook his head once more. “No.”

  Tarvis’s face lit with enthusiasm. “Not just those, they both have natural enemies, such as manticores, who love nothing better than fresh barghest meat.” His brow wrinkled as a thought occurred to him. “Of course, human meat comes in a close second. But there’s also the horn-capped lammergiers. They’re ten times more vicious than the avorals and ten times more deadly.”

  Excitement sounded in his voice. “Oh my, there are so many more. It’s difficult to remember them all.” A contented smile spread across his face. “So, you see, there’ll be predators hunting the predators, and hopefully, they’ll be too busy to hunt you.” This time he hooked both thumbs into his pockets while waiting expectantly for relief to appear on their faces.

  Both men stared at the hedge-wizard. Garenth was the first to break the silence. “Sounds like fun.”

  Incredulous, Nathaniel rounded on the giant, having to crane his neck up quite a bit to glare into his face. “Fun? You can stay and have fun. Not me. I’m sorry, Master Minuet, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going back to help Amelon.”

  Zee made a soft, chuffing sound. Ayah glanced at the chub, nodding as though she understood what the creature was saying. “I wish I could give you the option to refuse, but the problems of Merigor, Raponia, Kanumbria, and even of this world of Ramduin go far beyond petty squabbles and imagined grievances. There was a reason I told Princess Laucwen to bring forward either Jancor or Quondin.” Sighing, Ayah rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Only the goddess knows why she brought you, but you’re here now, and we have no other choice but to use you.”

  Nathaniel threw up his hands, irritated that she had to keep bringing up the fact that apparently, he’d been third or fourth choice to carry out the Archmage’s schemes. “Okay, you’re right, I’m not Quondin. I’m not even Amelon or—or—” He cast around for the name of another warrior. “Or even Laucwen, for Theribor’s sake. You need to take me back to Merigor and exchange me for one of them because obviously, I’m not meant for adventures or quests. Do you have an ancient scroll to translate? Then I’m your man. Need a sickly field made healthy again? Here I am. But as you are so quick to continually point out, I am not a battle-mage, and therefore, I am not the person you need for your quest, whatever that may be.”

  Everyone in the room waited silently, curious about what Ayah’s response would be. “It’s true. You’re not the hero I would have chosen. But the goddess, in her wisdom, has given you to us, and you will either rise to the occasion, or you will fail and die here in the forests of Ramduin.” She paused, expecting another outburst.

  But Nathaniel only sighed. There were no other chairs in the room, so he sat wearily on the floor with a markedly defeated set to his slumping shoulders.

  Ayah continued. “As you know, except for myself and Heldibor, you have the most magical training of anyone alive today. Your formal training, although lacking in many areas, was second to none.”

  She gave him a pointed look. “It’s for that reason, and that reason alone, I cannot simply exchange you for another mage. If Merigor and the other countries are to survive, it’s your knowledge and training in magic, coupled with a warrior’s heart and fighting abilities, that will save us all.”

  She sat back in her chair and let that sink in. The dampness of the forest deepened the ache in her fingers, and she absently rubbed the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. “One of the most powerful Archmages of this time, the Lady Ebalea, High Priestess of Theribor, languishes in a magical prison built by Heldibor himself. The spell he used to conceal the key to free her was supposedly taken from an ancient text that, until now, no one believed existed outside of fables and magical lore.”

  The mention of ancient texts caught Nathaniel’s attention. There was nothing he loved more than discovering and translating forgotten magical tomes. His stubborn disinterest thawed just a little as she continued. “My spies have told me that Heldibor has boasted that he found the Book of Amron. Did you pay close enough attention in your studies to know what that book contains?”

  Sitting up a little straighter, Nathaniel gazed up at the ceiling, trying to recall what he’d read. The times he’d snuck away from sword practice, he’d crept down to the bowels of the collegium where the oldest of the manuscripts were meticulously kept and guarded against casual perusal. The offices of the Master Archivist resided on the second landing of the stairs leading down to the dry caves. Since he shared Nathaniel’s love of the written word, he’d more often than not find a particularly interesting tome to study whenever Nathaniel snuck past his door.

  He remembered a section of manuscripts describing ancient Merigonian fables. “Let’s see, according to legend, the archivist Ticinio wrote the Book of Amron when the gods walked among men. He supposedly chronicled the earliest days of mankind, which had been spent catering to the whims of the gods. He spoke of the gods’ avarice and cruelty, of the petty battles between them. Oh, and how Theribor, the most powerful and benevolent of them all, had finally been able to banish the last of them to other realms of existence.”

  Nathaniel relaxed against the wall, relieved to finally be in his element. “Ticinio’s writings were said to be extremely detailed, as the gods had tasked him to chronicle what they considered to be the most magnificent achievements of their existence.”

  He leaned forward and smirked. “But you can’t possibly believe the Book of Amron actually exists, can you? I mean, a book that chronicles the mythological lives of mythological gods who supposedly walked the worlds of Tathuria, and I suppose Ramduin, eons ago?”

  “You mean the same way chubs can’t actually exist? Or the barghest that almost ate you for lunch can’t exist?” Ayah’s raised her eyebrows dared him to disagree. “Think, boy. What else did Ticinio write in his book? The book that Heldibor claims to have found?”

  Nathaniel regarded Zee for a moment. The chub calmly returned his stare, blinking occasionally, first with a nictitating membrane that rolled from under the top inside corner of her eye, then with an eyelid similar to his own that languidly closed and rapidly blinked open again.

  As the two of them gazed at each other, Nathaniel remembered some tiny snippets of information he’d learned from his antiquities professor. “Once Theribor had freed mankind from the enslavement of the gods, she took Ticinio’s book and hid it away. No one knows where—”

  “What was the final entry she’s said to have ordered Ticinio to write before she banished it and herself into the beyond?”

  Nathaniel’s gaze jerked back to the Archmage. They stared at each other a long while before he whispered. “She had him record a riddle, giving the location of her scepter.” He felt his heart begin to race. “The scepter of Theribor.”

  “Precisely. If the book exists, which I now believe it does, and if Heldibor finds the scepter before we do, he will destroy the worlds as we know them and free the gods in exchange for— What? Absolute power? Wealth? Dominion? Our freedoms, the very existence Theribor worked so hard to bring about, will cease to exist.”

  She stood and began to pace. Now, this is only conjecture on my part, but why do you think Heldibor imprisoned the High Priestess of Theribor?”

  “Well…you said she’s an incredibly powerful Archmage. And, she’s Theribor’s representative on Tathuria. If the goddess was going to help anyone defeat Heldibor, it would be her.”

  “Correct. Not only do we need to keep Heldibor from finding the scepter, but we also need the key that breaks the spell holding the LadyEbalea prisoner, Nathaniel. For reasons I’m not at liberty to discuss, I believe Heldibor used a spell he found in the book of Amron to hide the key. But the magic invoked by the spell—Theribor’s magic—sent the key to a completely different hiding place instead.”

  The logic of her argument caused Nathaniel’s voice to rise several octaves. He stood and waved his arms about. “And how, exactly, do you expect me to find the scepter that no other man or sorcerer has yet to discover? I’ve never even heard the riddle spoken aloud or seen it written in any text. I doubt anyone alive has. Well, other than Heldibor. If he really did find the book.”

  Garenth swatted his arm.

  “Ow!” Nathaniel looked up at Garenth.

  “You ‘n me, ya mean! This is what th’ bards sing about ‘round the fires!” The big man’s wide grin lit up his face. “Ain’t gonna let you hog all th’ fun! Never in my life did I b’lieve a storyteller’d sing about yer’s truly!”

  Nathaniel felt a lump rising on the upper part of his arm. He angrily punched Garenth back and tried to duck away when the big man swatted him again. The swat nearly knocked him down, and he was secretly glad the giant hadn’t returned fisted punch for fisted punch.

  There wasn’t much Ayah hadn’t seen at the Collegium or during her stay in Eldonmere’s court. Over the years, she’d developed a look that quelled even the most rambunctious students and royal progeny.

  Sitting once again in her chair, she cleared her throat, which got their attention and applied that look.

  The two of them stopped.

  She said, “Would you rather I continue? Or shall I leave you two to puzzle out the problem on your own?”

  Both of the men sat quietly staring at their plates.

  Ayah said, “Good. Now we know that Heldibor hasn’t ever made an appearance in this world in Ramduin, so we’re hoping he doesn’t yet know it exists. Zee believes, and I concur, that the Scepter of Theribor is hidden here somewhere rather than on one of the continents of our world.

  “While you and Garenth, with Zee’s help, try to find the scepter and the key, you will either learn the skills of a battle-mage or—” She shrugged. “When you do finally meet Heldibor again in battle—and I guarantee you will—you will last just long enough for him to casually remove your head from your shoulders or incinerate you again with a simple blink of his eye.”

  She folded her hands in her lap. “Oh, there’s one other small detail. Try to use your magic in Ramduin when a sword or an ax will do, and it will backfire on you. Magic works differently here. If there’s a way to accomplish what you need without magic, that’s what you have to do. Your use of magic here drains your strength at three times the rate you’re used to. The last thing you need is to pour forth all of your power to defeat one manticore and not have the strength or magical reserves to kill the other five charging toward you.”

  The idea of forsaking his magic for mundane activities didn’t sit well with him. “How are you lighting up the room then? Shouldn’t your power be draining away as we speak?”

  “Don’t be pert, young man. Certain small magics are exceptions to the rule. Illumination spells are one of those exceptions.”

  She rose and took hold of Kalom by the back of his tunic. When she pulled him to his feet, she had to steady him with her other hand since the effects of the Scorpion Spiced Grog hadn’t yet worn off. “You and I are not so bound, young Kalom. There’ll be a time for you when the goddess ordains it. That time has not yet come.”

  She began to push the boy toward the door, only to be stopped by Zee.

  The chub moved in front of them and gently placed the palm of her hand on Kalom’s chest. She chuffed several times, making it very clear that Kalom would be staying with her.

  The worried expression on Ayah’s face as she gazed down on the boy did nothing to assuage Nathaniel’s fears. But he knew what the old woman had said was true. Other than Heldibor and Ayah herself, who no longer had the strength and stamina necessary to defeat the necromancer, he was the best-trained mage in Merigor. Or on the entire world of Tathuria, for that matter.

  In the time period in which he now found himself, the collegium no longer existed. Or at least it was no longer a training ground for those gifted with magic. Here, a thousand years after his death, young noblemen and women paced the hallways where he once trudged from one arcane study to another. Masters instructed students in the art of courtly deportment and in the basics of reading and writing, rather than in spell casting or transformation.

  In the case of those not blessed with having been a firstborn child, tutors stressed arithmetic and accounting since the younger siblings managed the estates of the firstborn upon their inheritance of their parents’ lands and properties. And now, both sons and daughters were taught to fight with swords and shoot with bow and arrow.

  Children as young as three attended the lower collegium, where they were taught the proper ways to address a duke as opposed to a squire, the nuances of the bow or curtsey, and other skills necessary to survive the complicated milieu of life in the king’s court.

  All of this ran through Nathaniel’s mind as they waited for Ayah to make her decision. Sighing, she released Kalom’s tunic and strode from the room.

  Shocked at her abrupt departure, Nathaniel ran to follow her, hoping for more information on exactly how he and Garenth were supposed to locate the scepter and the key. And more importantly, what they were supposed to do with it once they found them. “Wait! You can’t—”

  Shock and disbelief caused his heart to stutter when he turned the corner to the other room and found it empty. No Archmage. Only empty space.

  As suddenly as Ayah had disappeared, the light she’d provided winked out as well, leaving him in utter darkness. He backed to the nearest wall and slid down in despair. Nothing in his wildest nightmares could have prepared him for this. He was a prisoner in a hostile land with a berserker, a boy, and a mythological being for his only companions. And it was only going to get worse.

  Chapter 7

  An orange light illuminated the doorway to the next room, and soon Tarvis stuck his head around the corner. “Come, my boy. It’s not all gloom and doom. Friends in the nearby villages and I have managed to collect all manner of supplies over the last few moon cycles in expectation of your arrival.