Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons 1)

Perhaps I had burnt the wrong incense, or drank the wrong tea? Had it been the tea, then? Or the incense and the tea together? I stopped asking myself questions.

Something was happening in the circle.

The girl was staring at something to her right. I took a step to the right to see what she was looking at. There was someone at the door of the shop, peering out through the stained wizard glass of the door.

I knew that glass well; I had once lived in a castle made of it, and my tutor had shown me how it was formed and shaped. It was incredibly hard, yet perfectly transparent. While the spell was still fresh, you could pour it like melted sugar, and form it into all kinds of complicated and intricate shapes. But once the spell’s effect was over, it was hard forever — at that point only a wizard of the 9th level could break it, and after a lot of time and effort.

The shopkeeper stayed at the door, and then there was movement: a blur out of the corner of my eye. I turned and the circle moved with me this time.

It was the beautiful girl with perfect skin. She had jumped out from under the table and now she was running towards the door.

She reached out and grabbed something off a shelf.

Was it a bag of spice?

A spellbook? An artifact? I couldn’t see.

I heard nothing either. Either she was really quiet, or no sound came through the circle.

Then the shopkeeper turned, in alarm, it looked like, and shouted, his hands up, “What the hell?”

Well, I guess I could hear through the gateway.

No one I knew was so quiet or so fast. The girl must have been a thief, or an elf, or an elf thief. But Gerard, the shopkeeper, was quick too. And he was a powerful wizard. I’d heard rumors about him selling other things besides spices. People said he dealt in knowledge and power, as well.

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Anyhow, Gerard was a trained and practicing magician — not a “failed” magician like my tutor, and he looked furious.

His mouth moved now, his face contorted, and words flew out in a buzzing whine. His hands fell to his waist, and then he was holding a wand in his hand, and I heard the words: ... alam kazhi nikim.

Words of power from some dead language I didn’t know and hadn’t really believed in. I still hadn’t got past Germanic and Romance.

My ears buzzed and my chest vibrated. There was a roar in my head. Heat blasted everything, hitting my face.

The girl turned and spat out a word. Just one word.

But what a word! Í wouldn’t be able to wrap my lips around it. It was like a slap in the face with a wooden paddle.

I staggered back, realizing that in my room, I must only be feeling the aftershocks, some ripple that made it through the barrier.

Gerard would be hit with the full force.

The lights in my room dimmed. In Gerard’s shop they went out completely. I shivered. I smelled damp earth, as if the whole shop had been buried in cold wet soil.

I crouched, shivering, staring at a black circular disk. I thought for a moment that I’d lost contact completely with the shop. I couldn’t see anything.

But then I heard cursing: coarse and deep, as though the curser had lost part of his voice, was coughing out the syllables.

Nothing magical about it, I thought at first. Just terrible anger. I could feel the rough menace all the same.

A moment later I realized there was magic after all. Just of a kind completely alien to me. It was darker and more elemental than anything I had ever seen or imagined.

The words scorched the dark air, an angry fire that hungered after its enemies. I felt a familiar buzzing in my ears. This must be an old Germanic language, or some old Anglo Saxon low tongue, some ancient language of hate, that now made my teeth ache and my face sweat.

The cursing grew more rhythmic and louder, and the heat grew. And though I could feel sweat on my forehead, I shivered.

I didn’t want to believe, but I couldn’t doubt anymore — this was the darkest of elemental magic, the magic of hate, of destruction and revenge.