“He was captured,” Mansel said without a trace of emotion.
“Yes, I understand that, but why didn’t you try to rescue him?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m just wondering what’s really going on. You don’t seem like yourself.”
“Keep your nose out of my business or I’ll bloody it for you,” Mansel warned.
“Mansel, I’m your friend. I only want to help.”
“You can’t help, you’re just an old man who doesn’t know when to butt out.”
“Why aren’t you drinking?” Kelvich said, pressing Mansel for answers. “Why didn’t you tell us from the outset that Quinn had been captured? I doubt he would have left you behind.”
“I’m warning you. .”
“To what, stop digging for the truth? Look, I’m on your side, but you’ve got to level with us.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“I think you’re lying,” Kelvich said. “I think something happened in Lodenhime that you aren’t telling us. Is Quinn dead? Why are you so anxious to-”
Kelvich never saw the knife that Mansel had slowly drawn. The thrust was quick, and it seemed to suck all the strength out of Kelvich. At first there was no pain, just surprise. Mansel stared deeply into Kelvich’s eyes with a look of deadly intent. He was just about to rip the knife upward when someone shouted.
“There! Look there!”
Mansel looked up, thinking he had been discovered. He let Kelvich fall, the small knife handle protruding from his stomach. He ducked around the stable and saw Zollin and the soldiers looking up into the sky. Mansel glanced up and saw the dragon flying overhead. It was high in the sky and moving at speed, but even from a distance it was obvious that it was the dragon.
Zollin ran and jumped onto his horse. Before anyone could stop him he was galloping away. Mansel ran to meet the soldiers, who were hurrying to catch up. They rode away from the small farm without a word about Kelvich. In the excitement he seemed to have been forgotten.
The elderly sorcerer lay in the grass, his stomach on fire with a searing pain that made it difficult to breathe. It took two hours for the farmer to stumble upon him.
“What happened?” the farmer asked, but Kelvich couldn’t answer.
The farmer removed the knife from the sorcerer’s stomach. The blade was short, only slightly longer than the farmer’s middle finger, but it had done the job. He carried Kelvich inside the farmhouse and tried to make him comfortable. The farmer’s wife fussed over him, but there was nothing to be done. Kelvich was slowly bleeding to death.
“Parchment,” he told the farmer’s wife.
Writing-quality parchment was rare on a rural farm, but after a frantic search she found some. She brought it back and waited.
“Can you write?” Kelvich whispered.
“A little,” she said.
“Write this down,” he said, panting for breath.
His body cavity was filling with blood, which pressed against his lungs and made it hard to breathe. His mind was growing foggy from lack of blood. He knew his time was short, and his only regret was that Zollin was exposed. He didn’t know what Mansel had done, but Kelvich was certain the young warrior had killed Zollin’s father. Kelvich had lived a long life, easily three times as long as most men, still time seemed short.
“To Zollin,” he began. “Mansel killed me. Don’t trust him. I’m proud of you. Don’t let death,” he was having trouble speaking, and it was taking the farmer’s wife a long time to write the words down, “make you bitter. You will wake up the magical world. That is your destiny.”
“Give it here,” he said weakly.
The farmer took the paper from his wife and held it up. It took Kelvich a full minute to read the words. They were poorly written and his eyes kept losing focus. He was dying and he knew it. He was ready for it. Ready for the pain to end. The pain, growing worse every minute, was threatening to rob him of the capacity to finish his task, but the old sorcerer was determined. The farmer’s wife dipped the quill in their small supply of ink and handed it to him. His hand shook as he signed the paper.
“You have to take it to Zollin,” he said. “He’s a wizard. Take it to Zollin.”
“We will, you have my word on it,” said the farmer.
Kelvich lay back then. He had done all he could hope to do. The world grew dim, and he could see the farmer and his wife fussing over him, but he no longer cared. There was a light shining on him from somewhere that he couldn’t see. His body had grown cold, but the light was warm and inviting. He wanted to go to the light, to let it shine on him, to feel its warmth always. Nothing else mattered. He let the world grow dark around him.
He died peacefully despite the pain. His eyes were open and his body composed, but he was clearly dead. His features that had always been so animated, were now waxy. His eyes lost all their vibrancy and grew dull.
“What shall we do with him?” the farmer’s wife asked.
“We’ll bury him,” the farmer replied.
“And the note?”
“We’ll send it west with the next traveler that passes by.”
“But you promised him you’d deliver the message,” she insisted.
“And I’ll send it along, but I can’t leave the farm. There’s work to be done.”
They folded the note and sealed it with candle wax. The farmer’s wife wrote Zollin’s name on the paper and set it on the windowsill by the door. The farmer dug a grave and then returned to his fields. The farmer’s wife fixed supper and shortly before they ate, together they laid Kelvich in the ground and buried him.
Chapter 26
Zollin slapped his horse with the reins to coax as much speed as he could out of her. It was dangerous, he knew, but in that moment all he was thinking about was Brianna. He strained to see the dragon but there was no sign of Brianna.
“Wait!” he screamed, but the dragon was too high to hear his voice.
Then his horse stumbled and Zollin was thrown though the air. He reacted magically on instinct, sending up a shield to protect his body and levitating himself higher into the air. The fall only lasted one terrifying moment. He came floating down on his feet and turned to see Lilly, Brianna’s beloved horse. She was lying on the ground, neighing in agony. The horse’s right foreleg was broken and lay at an odd angle. Zollin felt a sense of hopelessness. The poor beast was dying because Zollin had rushed after the dragon and wasn’t paying attention to where they were going. He’d ridden far from the Weaver’s Road, and neither it nor the farm they’d just recently stopped at were in sight.
Zollin knew that a horse with a broken leg would never be able to hold a rider again. It would be unable to pull a wagon or a plow. It would spend weeks in pain and then become a cripple. The humane thing would be to put the horse down, but Zollin refused to even think of that. He had won Lilly from a traveling illusionist, and the aging mare had carried Brianna when they fled Tranaugh Shire. In his mind, as long as he had Lilly, there was still hope that he might find Brianna. He knelt by the horse’s head.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said in a soothing voice.
He immediately pushed feelings of peace and rest toward the horse with his mind. At the same time he let his magic flow into the animal’s leg. He felt the bone, broken and splintered. It was beyond hope of being set by traditional methods, but in moments Zollin was hard at work repairing the damage. There was muscle damage and torn tendons and ligaments, which all took time to heal. He was almost finished when he heard the other horses cantering toward him. He finished his work without looking up, his magic churning inside him. He felt a deep sense of hopelessness and white-hot anger that was boiling just beneath the surface. His magic felt like a caged beast just waiting to be released. It took all of his control and concentration to hold himself together.
“If your horse’s leg is broken,” said one of the knights who had come with Commander Hausey, “you should put it out of its misery.”