Return To Sky Raven (Book 2) Read online

  Return to Sky Raven

  Book Two of the Enchanters of Xarparion

  By T. Michael Ford

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  With the release of my second book, I would like to again thank the individuals who have stood by me and supported me the entire time. First and foremost, I would like to thank my father. His aid, attention to detail, and creative suggestions have helped make these books what they are. Second, I would like to thank Betty, my editor, who has put even more hours into this book than the last, even as we have started ripping apart her house for remodeling. I would like to thank Jenny Hentges again for the amazing cover art. When she said she could capture Maya’s essence, she wasn’t joking. Thank you, Jenny, and good luck with the move! Then there are my Beta readers, who once again threw their ‘constructive’ feedback right at me. Some of it I followed and some of it I didn’t, but I never questioned your commitment to make each book the best possible. Seriously, thank you, guys! So thank you Tammy, Cathy, George and Kaitlin for all your work. And last, but not least, I would like to thank everyone who supported my first book after launch. It means a lot to me that you took the time to write a review and to post on the author’s page. I love to hear from you guys and your kind words and suggestions definitely kept me going; I really hope you like Return to Sky Raven.

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, situations and events portrayed in this novel are from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical without expressed written permission from T. Michael Ford.

  No actual marmots were harmed in the writing of this book.

  Copyright © 2014 T. Michael Ford

  Prologue

  “So why did the Duke want to take over the world?” asked the little girl of her mother. They had spent several nights together and had read a portion of the story each night. The mother tried her best to smile reassuringly at her child, but it was a difficult question to answer. A question made even harder as too-complete an answer would ruin the ending. She drew up her white, feathered wings to cradle the girl comfortingly as she struggled to come up with a worthy response.

  “That’s never an easy question, my child. What do your lessons say about power and how it corrupts?”

  The girl nodded as her face contorted in concentration before seemingly coming up with an answer as well as another question. “I understand that, but if power corrupts then why are you and daddy not evil?”

  “A fair point; look at it like this. Power makes you stronger in all aspects. If you are a good man then you become a great man; if you are a bad man, you become an evil man. This Duke was both a bad man and had an unquenchable lust for power, and he had no patience to earn it. That, my dear, is a very bad combination. Soon, the Duke was delving into black magics, raising the dead, and trafficking with demons. The stories even claim he had a demon consort that he called up from the underworld himself. A horrid, evil creature, but with her by his side, even kings feared him.

  The little girl settled even further into her mother’s embrace and pulled her blankets up tight under her dainty chin waiting for the explanation to continue.

  “Soon, his demon partner promised even more power to the Duke, but first he had to obtain a special kind of sacrifice pleasing to the demon’s master - a powerful being known as the Kerr. She directed the Duke’s attention to Sky Raven Fortress and the Queen and her little girl who lived there. To aid him, the demon cast a fog on the battlefield to hide the Duke’s mortal armies from the defenders, as did she hasten their attack so, no matter how far away the Duke’s forces were, it only took them the span of one day to arrive at the battle. But even with the help of the demon, her Kerr master, and 11,000 soldiers, the Duke could not break the fortress. For days, the eighty defenders battled against the attackers…”

  “Hey, I know this part! It’s Winya’s story from the book, isn’t it?” the daughter interrupted. “And the Queen and her little girl tried to escape, but the evil Duke caught them and took them back to his capital, and made the Queen marry him and then he killed them both.”

  “Sacrificed…he sacrificed them both, actually,” the mother corrected sadly. “Their souls were the price the demon demanded for its assistance, in addition to the Duke’s own soul, of course. But the Kerr had a additional price of its own…I think now would be a good time for me to continue the story.

  Chapter 1

  Alex

  That morning, the day after we fled Xarparion, dawned cold. There were snow crystals in the air that fell in feathery whispers across the huddled figures in the camp. I stood examining the now deactivated and locked portal that had been our escape passage. It had done its job; however, from what I could decipher of Rosa’s jumbled thoughts at the time; this location is not where she expected to arrive. More troubling yet, Rosa doesn’t remember this destination site at all, and she’s been through every one of the portals numerous times. She built them, after all.

  Stepping away from the portal shell, I put a gore-splattered armored foot up on a convenient rock and watched as the pale first light of the sun brightened the horizon. Shaking my head in wonder, I looked back on what brought me to this juncture. Less than a year ago, the Alex Martin that I was had been living a boring life as an assistant blacksmith in a sleepy little agricultural town. A slight accident in repairing a cooking pot of all things, led to the discovery that I was an enchanter and my life drastically changed. I was taken away from the life I knew to live in Xarparion, the school of wizardry for our part of the world.

  Taken in by Rosa, my 700-year-old mentor and the only other enchanter in existence, I discovered a whole new world of magic and an affinity for the manipulation of items, especially metals. Life at the school was pretty good, about what you might imagine; hard work and a lot of fumbling about to get things right.

  Speaking of getting things right, about that time, two other women came into my life. First there was Nia, a pixie who was assigned to be my bodyguard for life. Apparently, the pixie king was anxious to get rid of her and thought assigning her to me was a good move just in case I actually became someone important someday. Nia is a joy to be around and my best friend. The second female to come into my life about then was my weapons instructor at Xarparion. It was complicated, but I think I fell in love with her before I ever saw her face. Once I did, I knew she was the one I wanted to spend my life with. Maya is a dark elf and was hiding out in Xarparion rather than stay with her people and be subject to orders from Duke Pharmon, also known as the Lifebane. The Duke is a necromancer of enormous power and his armies of undead already rule half of the known world. Rumor has it that he’s trying for a clean sweep.

  Things were going well with my courtship of Maya until a couple things happened that would really start my life spinning in new directions. First, Maya was the victim of an assassination attempt, which thankfully we thwarted. Second, my new friends and I went back to my home village to see my parents on my birthday. There, I found out that they weren’t my parents at all and, in fact, my real parents are magical beings of some kind. Gifted with some metals, a pair of warhorses and acquiring the services of two young silver dragons who appear as young women, we all travelled back to Xa
rparion to prepare for the annual Wizards’ Tournament. As enchanters are incapable of casting normal-type spells like the mages in the school, I had to craft a set of armor and weapons that would stand up to mage spells and give me the offensive punch to actually win. After winning the tournament, things were blissfully quiet for a couple weeks - up until yesterday.

  Yesterday, a portal opened outside the academy and the Lifebane’s horde poured through, besieging the school in less than two hours. If that wasn’t bad enough, more portals opened inside Xarparion and, in short order, the fight to save the school became a fight to evacuate as many as possible and get out. Unfortunately, we were only successful in rescuing two towers of students, a few of the staff and school servants, and a handful of guardsmen. I shook my head in disbelief at what had already transpired and what now lay ahead of us.

  The sun had finally crawled high enough in the sky to illuminate our surroundings a bit more. This portal pad was halfway up a rocky mountain. Above and behind us were all sharp rock peaks and crags, some of which were now dusted in snow. We were high enough to see for miles from this vantage point. Below us, a large dark forest stretched into the distance and, through the trees, a small sky-blue lake was visible. One thing I noticed right away - the lack of any visible smoke of any kind. If the area was inhabited, there should be evidence of camps, homes, or settlements. There was something that looked a little like smoke at one spot in the forest below, but to my inexperienced eyes, it could just be forest mist.

  It didn’t take a wilderness scout to come to the conclusion that we would have to get down off this mountain and travel through that forest to get to any destination. With all the wounded and non-combatants we had with us, we weren’t exactly a major expeditionary force, so I hoped the forest was friendlier than it appeared from up here.

  Nia was still on my shoulder from the battle and only roused long enough for me to feed her a bite of food before she gave in to exhaustion. Now she seemed to finally be waking up again. She stirred as I melted away the armor I had wrapped around her to warm and protect her. Nia’s oversized eyes fluttered open as she looked around and, seeing me, smiled. “I take it we’re not dead?”

  Seeing her, even in such a grim surrounding, I couldn’t help but smile back. “No, not quite.”

  I caught her up on the aftermath of yesterday’s events. She took the news well until I told her just how many friends and classmates we were forced to leave behind. After a small fit of pixie rage and a bit of crying, she quieted down and hugged me; then the two of us looked out over the forest.

  Finally, I snapped us out of it. “Come on, let’s go check in with the others. I think they would like to know you’re alright.” She nodded as we headed back.

  It’s hard to believe that the people I see around me are the same group that woke up yesterday among their friends in their nice safe towers, got dressed, had a great breakfast, and went on with their day of learning. This morning’s wakeup call was much more grim. I tried not to think of how many we had lost yesterday. It may well be that the two towers that were sealed up and left behind were the lucky ones. They didn’t have twelve- to sixteen-year-old kids running the gauntlet of zombies and ghouls to try to escape, and to where?

  As I walked around the main body of camp, I noticed that most of them were still asleep. Wizards who overextend themselves are usually too tired to care and will collapse on the hard ground as easily as a soft bed. There were still a lot of sleeping wizards scattered on the ground in random puppy piles. I approached the tent area set up as an infirmary with makeshift cots and tents; almost everyone here was asleep, too. There were, however, a few healers who looked to be doing their best to stay awake as they were still tending to their patients. I noticed that Alera was one of them so I walked over to her. She was sitting on an empty cot next to a similar setup containing a guardsman. Her normally spotless gray and red robe was considerably more reddish now and there were frays and rips that attested to the need to restrain some of the wounded, possibly because they were half crazed with pain, or worse, the victim of ghoul bites. This man had been slashed, the wound extending from his shoulder to wrist was very swollen. She finished doing what she could and packed the wound, leaving a small hole to allow for drainage. I sat down next to her and she turned to look at me with dark hollow eyes. I was shocked at how pale and desperately fatigued she looked. Alera is one of the most beautiful women at the academy, but today she looked twice her age and near collapse.

  “How are they doing?”

  She exhaled heavily and pulled her robes more tightly around her for warmth. “No one else is going to die. We lost a few already to ghoul bites that we didn’t identify right away and a couple that were just too injured to save. I’ve never seen human flesh corrupt and fester so fast; these bites and scratches are almost like a deadly beast in themselves. Right now, we’re just trying to close up the last of the open wounds so we don’t get cross-contamination from these conditions; many of them will be scarred though. It got so bad at the end we had to amputate to save some of the kids. I feel worse for the guards and staff who came through though. A one-legged wizard on a crutch is still a wizard and is valuable to society, but for some of these people, the loss of an arm or leg means everything to them.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told you the other twenty times you asked tonight…no.” She groaned, running a hand through her hair. “Really, I appreciate it, but this is one instance where your enchanter spells don’t cut it. We just need to get through the night and pray that things get better.” She squared around and looked me in the eye. “Alex, you realize that you enchanters are now the de facto leaders of this mess, right? We badly need shelter, food and security for these wounded or we’re going to have more losses.” She sighed and attempted to wrap herself tighter yet in her robes. “But I can see that you can’t magically produce all that on this rock of a mountain, so we’re going to have to travel…somewhere.”

  “If we give you the rest of today to work and rest, would we be able to move them tomorrow morning?”

  “If we can utilize the donkey carts that came through and if we can get enough food to get some of our strength back, yes, it’s possible. But the day after is probably more realistic. It’s a good thing we dragged a couple of water wizards along with us, at least we can get fresh water here. Thank you for taking your warhorse down and snagging some dead trees; we can use the firewood to keep the wounded more comfortable,” she said, teetering shakily where she sat.

  “Alera, you need to eat and sleep.”

  I could see fear and revulsion in her eyes. “I don’t think I can, Alex. Blood and gore I’m trained to handle, but these undead are just so wrong! Such a perversion of life; they make me soul sick just looking at them…I don’t understand how you enchanters can handle seeing what you’ve seen without going crazy.” She was right in a way, we were the only ones who didn’t seem to be overly affected by the sight of the undead. Facing them just made me mad, not really scared. Oh well, something to ponder when life wasn’t so crazy.

  I crouched down, looked her in the eyes and told her, “Things will get better.” Then I placed my hand on her shoulder and placed the enchantment to make her sleep, catching her easily as she slumped over. I got up and gently straightened her out on the cot. Nia dragged a blanket over from somewhere and helped me tuck the exhausted healer in, brushing the hair off her face. Looking down at her childlike sleeping form, I felt a wave of affection for her, not in the physical attraction sense, but more just knowing what a good, kind, and caring person she was, someone who will always be there for others. I was honored to call her a friend.

  Nia flittered up to my shoulder and watched her for a moment as well, picking up on my thoughts as she simply commented, “Heart of a paladin.” I agreed.

  Nia and I continued around and put the remaining four healers in the area down for naps as well. Grabbing a couple of Maya’s guar
ds, who were in far better shape than the wizards and staff - probably due to the ability of most soldiers to sleep anywhere, anytime when the opportunity is available - I instructed them to watch over the wounded and only wake a healer if it appeared someone was in real distress.

  I finally found Rosa and Maya talking with the captain as they looked over a map laid out on a large flat rock. They seemed to be trying to figure out where in the world we were.

  Captain Jarsin threw his arms in the air. “We’re on a bloody mountain! There can’t be that many of them on that map; this shouldn’t be that hard. And besides, you built this portal, don’t you know where the hell it comes out?”

  The twins fidgeted uncomfortably in their enchanter staff robes as they stood behind Maya waiting for orders or possibly to see if all this yelling was going to turn into violence. Rosa gave me a nod from the other side of the rock before addressing the captain. “The problem, Captain, isn’t that there are a lot of mountains on this map but the fact that there are almost none on these maps. This is the most up-to-date map we had at the academy, but it only has details in the land of the three kingdoms and the area surrounding the academy. As far as where the portal was designed to take us…well, this isn’t it! But we’ll have to make do.”

  The captain’s mouth dropped open and he was boiling with rage. He wasn’t really mad at us, though, but at the loss of almost all his men. The academy had a guard force of just under a thousand but fewer than sixty made it through the portal in time, and three were wounded so badly that the healers couldn’t save them. I think we were all feeling the weight of the world on our shoulders at that point.

  Corporal Higs jogged over and nodded to me, saluted Maya, the captain, and Rosa. “Headmaster, we finished taking inventory of the emergency boxes that made it. Out of the twelve total, six were filled with food, three with clothing, one with general materials like rope, nails, etc., one with tents, and the last one is filled with shovels, rakes and picks.” Rosa winced at the totals and sighed. “I would have liked to have at least one box with travel gear and equipment, as well as one with weapons, but we will at least survive with what we have.” Higs raised a finger, “Headmaster Rosa, we also managed to bring along three donkey carts filled with hay, each with two donkeys to a team.” He grinned. “Someone had just left them loaded, hitched, and tethered right next to the portal, so when we started shooing people through the portal, we brought them along as well.”