Elemental Read online

  We'd usually fight one at a time, but since I was alone I'd needed at least two. That got boring rather quickly, and soon I'd built an entire army. I pitted them against each other, like they were in training for a real battle.

  The spell itself was almost ridiculously simple. I’d never had trouble bringing forth the power I needed, and that was half the work of being a mage. Next came the image within my mind to show the power what form it should take. Finally the words, “N tasiado en ardre.” I couldn’t figure out why there had to be words, or what they had to do with the spell I was doing, but saying the words finally made it all either come together and work, or just fizzle out. Maybe it was like saying “the end” at the end of a bed time tale, to let the magic know that’s all you wanted and it was time to make it happen.

  “N tasiado en ardre,” I said under my breath. Another miniature soldier would unfold from the rock and begin to walk around.

  I was nearly caught at least half a dozen times that day, so the day that followed I went further, away from town this time, following the stream until I reached a clearing that my friends and I had discovered the year before. I rebuilt my stone army quickly and almost missed the sound of someone approaching. I turned quickly, cringing and looking sufficiently guilty in case it was an adult who would be upset at my blatant misuse of magic.

  The one who approached was a stranger, so I knew it must be one of Master Kavidrian's guests I hadn't seen before. His skin was pale in the same way my tutor had pale skin, from spending too much time indoors. Shock white hair topped his head and framed his face like a mane, and he wasn't all that much taller than me. I relaxed and offered a hesitant smile. "Hello." My tone and stance changed, offering a greeting of equals since I thought he must be a child like me.

  He nodded and found a tree stump nearby. "Hello," he answered in a deep voice that disproved my first impression. "What have we here?"

  I crossed my arms over my chest. "Just playing soldiers," I said, defensive once again. I willed the other soldiers to stand at attention instead of fighting, but they looked as uneasy and restless as I suddenly felt.

  "I've never seen such an army," he grinned, picking one up and looking it over. The tiny soldier yelped when he was turned upside down. "Not an army of such small men, that is." He looked at me, and his smile was both cheerful and kind. "I didn't know girls liked to play soldiers. What's your name?"

  I didn't bother correcting him, but it struck me as absurd that he'd think I was a girl. I was told I was a pretty child, but everyone knew I was a boy. Was it my long hair? My mother was distracted most of the time and forgot to cut it, so perhaps that was it. It didn't matter either way. I relaxed and sat back down on a patch of grass in the face of his absurdity. "I'm Agrad," I said. "What's yours?"

  He almost looked surprised for a moment, but he smiled and said, "Krecek."

  "Do you play soldiers, Krecek?"

  "All the time," he said, sitting down next to me and setting down the toy soldier he'd picked up before. "Not like this, though. What spell did you use?"

  He was delighted when I taught it to him, picking up five rocks and changing them instantly. They had tabards and armor of bright blue and silver, while mine were still slate gray. I was both surprised and delighted. "That's wonderful! I didn't even think about making them look so real." I concentrated a moment, closing my eyes so I wouldn't mess up as I whispered the words as quickly as I could. When I opened my eyes again, a miniature army in gold and green surrounded me. They began milling about, looking each other over in surprise.

  Krecek grinned and began making more soldiers of his own. "When we're even, shall we battle?"

  "Can you make soldiers that fast?" I frowned a bit, thinking. "I could give you some of mine."

  "I think I can manage," he said. "You look like you're…about ten? I'd say I have a few years of doing magic on you."

  Well, if he was part of the wizard's entourage, he was probably right. "I'm nine," I told him, concentrating on bringing all of my soldiers into a line. "I've only fought with one soldier at a time before, though. We're not supposed to do magic without a grown up."

  "I think I'm grown up enough that you shouldn't get in trouble," Krecek said lightly. "Now, since you have more experience with these particular soldiers than I do, I hope you'll go easy on me." His eyes sparkled as he matched my number of soldiers in an instant. He hadn’t uttered a word or moved his lips.

  I grinned and we talked over simple rules. He tucked his hair behind one ear, absently, as he listened to me. His ears came to a small point, I noted curiously. Was he an elf? I couldn't be sure because I'd never seen one before, but drawings I'd seen made me think they were slenderer, more delicate, and somehow more exotic. However, if he was an elf it might make it harder to beat him because there was no telling how old he might be.

  It wasn't much longer before we set our magical toys to fighting, and I could tell right away that he was the one going easy on me. My face was scrunched up in concentration while his was vaguely thoughtful and amused. To add insult to injury, he easily defeated me and I almost didn't catch how he had won. It wasn't his unnumbered years of experience that had brought about my downfall, I realized.

  "You cheated!" I protested, grabbing my last intact soldier as I figured out his trick. "Y-you made more while we were fighting!"

  "You did so well." Krecek shook his head, still looking amused in the face of my anger. "I forgot I was fighting a child, honestly. Give it a few years and I think you will be a dangerous opponent."

  "You broke my soldiers!"

  He waved a hand, and they returned to their natural state as mere rocks. Again, he used no words to end the spell. I tried very hard to remain more angry than impressed. "And now they are returned to their natural state, unbroken and waiting to be enchanted again. I won, yes, but you should be proud in your defeat. You did well, for your age."

  "You cheated," I insisted, dropping the lifeless rock in my hand and placing my fists firmly on my hips.

  "Yes, that's right," Krecek smiled. "I cheat."

  I stared in awe. He admitted it! He admitted to cheating! I wasn't prepared to deal with someone who would state it so boldly. "But, Mother says nobody likes a cheater and nobody plays with cheaters," I finally growled darkly.

  "Yet I predict," Krecek said, "that you'll play with me again. Even knowing I'm a cheater, you'll want to keep playing until you can defeat me."

  "It's no fun if I know I can't win," I muttered. I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring.

  "Who said you'll never win?" His expression was too confident, too smug. "The only way to be certain you'll never beat me, cheater or not, is if you stop trying."

  He had a point.

  I stormed off without another word. Still, before I walked into the house I picked up a rock. That night, instead of going straight to sleep, I practiced changing it into a soldier faster and faster, until I finally couldn't keep my eyes open at all.

  "Are you sure you're only nine?" Krecek asked a few days later. We'd continued our battles, of course. We met every day, spending hours playing and talking about strategy and old wars and all sorts of games. Every battle had been a resounding victory--for him.

  "Nine and a half," I said shortly, scowling as I tried infusing life into ten soldiers at once. No matter how I’d tried I couldn’t figure out his trick of casting spells silently. Converting so many at once with total silence was growing unnerving. Krecek had done so during our last battle, and had made it look effortless. I had to learn to do the same or I'd never beat him.

  Every fight he did something new and more difficult, but I wasn't going to let that hold me back. I redoubled my resolve to defeat him with every underhanded trick he pulled.

  "So, you're almost old enough to be apprenticed," he mused, looking thoughtful. "Too bad we have to leave so soon."

  "You're trying to distract me," I said. "It won't work." I made an effort, trying to force a wedge through his front line, but his soldiers allowed the break and closed in behind my forward advance, cutting them down from behind where they were vulnerable. I hadn't committed enough of my soldiers to the offense, and they were finished off.

  Still, I'd done more damage than before.

  "That wasn't my intent," Krecek said as if he hadn’t all but beaten me at my own game. Again. "We're leaving tomorrow, and hopefully taking a friend of mine with us. However, that will leave you without a tutor."

  "You're taking Master Kavidrian away?" In an instant my soldiers stopped fighting, reacting to my surprise.

  Krecek halted his own attack. "His only concern was that you should still have a teacher. You are what is holding him back from returning with us to Anogrin. It's an amazing city, full of magic, libraries, history--"

  "I couldn't," I shook my head, cutting off whatever other temptations he wanted to offer. "My parents would never let me."

  "I'm sure they would agree if you told them I requested it," he said.

  "I'm only nine."

  "Agrad," Krecek said softly, catching my eyes and holding my gaze as if to mesmerize me into going along with what he said. "You'd be apprenticed soon anyway. What's a year and a half, between friends?"

  "They'll still say I'm too young. And they'd never let me go so far away, especially not with a wizard."

  "There's no sense in waiting to begin your apprenticeship," he said with a proud smile. "You've clearly got all the talent you'd need for any sort of magic you could dream of crafting. Don't worry about rules or what's expected; where a wizard is involved exceptions can always be made."

  It's just what I'd wanted to hear all my life. I'd craved this sort of attention and being told I was special and deserving of an exception. Still, I hesitated, almost convinced but not quite. "I'd miss everyone. I wouldn't know anybody there and I'd be lonely."

  "I'd be there, and your tutor would be there."

  Rather than answer him I turned away, scared that I'd tell him yes if he asked one more time. I had to talk to Mother. I had to ask her. She would know what to do and what to say.

  Krecek grabbed my arm, and as soon as his fingers brushed my skin a shiver went down my spine. I'd felt something, but I didn't know what. From his gasp I realized he'd felt something as well.

  "I've found you," Krecek whispered so softly I almost couldn't be sure of what he'd said. "If you come with me I can offer you anything. Everything. Whatever you wish."

  I took a step back. My heart was pounding with fear that I just couldn't understand. "I have everything I want. If it's all the same, I'd just like to stay right here."

  "You're telling me no?" Krecek paused with a strange expression on his face. It made me think he was not used to being denied anything.

  "Yes," I said. "I mean no. I mean, yes, I'm telling you no. I don't want to go anywhere with a wizard. They're scary, and they do bad things, and I don't want to leave my family and my friends and my everybody here."

  "Do I scare you?" he asked gently.

  "Well, no," I said. He was starting to, but he hadn't been until a few moments ago. "You're my friend."

  Krecek hesitated just a moment, as if he'd been about to say something and changed his mind. "If we're friends, won't you miss me when I have to leave?"

  "But you can come back!"

  Silence fell for a time, and I started backing away toward home.

  "I won't be back here," he finally said, halting my backward motion. "They need me in Anogrin, and I can't come or go as I please."

  "But you have friends at home. Don't you?"

  "Not many. Not really." Krecek smiled sadly, seeming very old for a moment. "Most of my truest friends are gone."

  He meant dead. I knew he meant dead. I felt so bad for him, and I wanted to be his only real friend so badly, but there was some part of me that was yelling that if I gave in to him I would be swallowed whole and never return. There was something wrong with him. I had to leave. Now. It was almost like another voice inside me, telling me to run or I'd never be free.

  "I can't!" I yelled. "My parents would never allow me near a wizard, or his friends!"

  I turned away, intent on running home.

  He was already standing in front of me, and I could feel a rush of air and smell the tang of magic in the air. "I could make you come with me," he spoke just above a whisper. "It is my right."

  "No!" I screamed as I tried to push past him. "Then I'd never be your friend!" My heart was pounding, and something within me started to swell and build. It felt like magic, only much bigger. I wanted to use it to push him away, but I was afraid to touch it somehow. Like it was too big for me.

  "I won't kidnap you." Krecek grabbed my shoulders, and he started to smile kindly. "Don't worry. You're right. You have too many reasons to stay here. Of course you wouldn't want to leave everything you've ever known behind."

  I believed him, and I started to calm down. I chided myself for my irrational fear. He was an adult, after all. And I'd just said some rather unflattering things about him and those he associated with. It was time to placate him, before he set the wizard on my family and me. "It's not that I don't want to go. You've been a great friend. I just, I can't leave. This is home. This is where I belong."

  "I see," he said with a wry twist of a smile. "I understand. I would still like you to come, though. I can't stay here."

  "I'm sorry," I said, slumping a bit as he let go of my shoulders.

  "If you change your mind," Krecek said, "I'll be leaving tomorrow."

  I nodded and just walked home.

  I wish I could remember more of the rest of that day. I was quiet that evening, but my parents were even quieter. I was a little scared still about the conversation I'd had with Krecek, but I hadn't really entertained the thought of them being afraid. They didn't know what had happened to me. I didn't know why they were quiet, but it didn't occur to me to wonder at the time because I was so wrapped up in my own worries.

  I eventually fell asleep, though I don't remember it. I had to have been asleep though, because I woke up to the smell of smoke and the sound of fire roaring in my ears. I might have heard screams, or I might have imagined them and embellished the memory over time.

  I may have been the one screaming.

  I ran through the house, through the center of the conflagration consuming my home. I heard laughter, recognized it, and ran toward it.

  "Even magic flames cannot touch me. Don't you know who I am?"

  I turned the corner, feeling suddenly like time had slowed down. My parents were standing when I saw them. They didn't see me. Their hands were up, both of them casting a spell, chanting in unison, and I thought they were both taking a breath at the same time.

  Their chests didn't expand. Their eyes didn't blink. They just fell, and there was a thud, and my mother's head bounced against the floor. Bounced. One moment they were casting a spell, and the next they were lifeless things that couldn't even keep their heads from bouncing when they hit the ground.

  The air shimmered from the heat, but I didn't feel a thing. Not heat. Not grief. I just stared.

  It wasn't the fire that ended them, though it was hot enough that it should have. The fire would destroy their bodies and remove the evidence of what had killed them, but I knew.

  I could feel it.

  This was the work of a wizard.

  Part Two

  Krecek stood in the center of the burning room, as untouched as I was. He turned to look at me, eyes meeting mine. He took a deep breath and his eyes went wide momentarily and his jaw went slack. He may have winced, but the air was warping, shimmering between us.

  Finally, his mouth set in a grim line. "Come with me, Agrad."

  Krecek's hand moved forward, toward me, but it fell short, faltered, and returned to his side.

  "There's nothing holding you here now."

  He was right. There was nothing.

  But, I couldn't. Not with him.

  "NO!" I screamed.

  He opened his mouth to say something more, but the feeling that had built within me earlier had returned, bigger and more immediate and terribly sudden.

  There was a flash of light brighter than the flames, and then the feeling died just as suddenly as it had arrived.

  The cold air shocked me back to myself and I gasped. I felt the ground rush up to hit my knees and slam into the arms I'd tried to brace myself with at the last moment. Then I felt nothing at all.

  I was aware of sunlight on my skin, feeling it before seeing it. The warmth of it made me flinch, made me afraid for just a moment that I'd never really left my burning home. I whimpered like a hurt pup as I opened my eyes, terrified of what I would see.

  Everything was green. The loam beneath me, the moss on the trees, the leaves that rustled in the breeze; the green was transcendent in that moment of relief. There was no fire. It was the warmth of the summer sun and brightness of day.

  "Over here!"

  It was a woman's voice, close by.

  "It's a child, a little girl."

  I was still in my nightshirt. Soot stained and singed, but modestly covered in all the important spots. That was the second time someone called me a girl. I didn't fight it. I just looked down at myself and wondered if I should care.

  "I'm here, I'm here," grumbled a man, crashing through the woods toward us.

  "Come and pick her up," the woman said. "The poor dear looks exhausted."

  I was. I could fall asleep again and just not care if I lived or died.

  The man picked me up and he carried me, fussing over me. "She reminds me so much of--"

  "I know," the woman interrupted him excitedly. "Like a gift from the Old Gods. She looks so much like Eria did."