Richard Baker - Prince of Ravens

“If they even know I am alive. Fetterfist and his gang killed or carried off everyone in the caravan. There was no one left to tell the tale.” Seila scowled at the vat of porridge. “If we ever get out of this, I’ll have my father put a price on his head that he’ll never outrun, not if he flees to the very ends of the world. That … pig has much to answer for. And I’ll tell you something more: Fetterfist knew exactly where to find my caravan and how strong our escort would be. How did he know those things? Did he know I would be there, too?”

“I’ll be delighted to put those questions to the slaver when the time comes,” Jack promised. The fact that someone would be looking for Seila was an interesting angle he had not considered before; if he failed to find the opportunity for escape, her family’s agents might come to her rescue and provide him with a chance to accompany her to freedom. And of course it was equally interesting that Seila’s father had the means to set enormous prices on villains’ heads, since in the right circumstances those same funds might also make for a handsome reward, indeed. Once again Jack promised himself to mount an escape at the first opportunity. “For now, be patient, endure as best you can. I will think of something.”

“I hope it is sooner-” Seila abruptly stopped herself as Grelda the overseer approached. The porridge-pails were all filled, and despite Jack’s brave show of arranging them carefully on the cart for the trip back to the paddocks, it was clear that their work was done.

The half-orc paused to glare at Seila. “There’s to be no cavorting with the field-slaves,” she snarled. Then she fixed her piggish eye on Jack. “And you, my handsome fellow, can go back to your rothe. Don’t let me catch you sniffing around my kitchens again.” Her hand dropped to the grip of the stinging-rod at her hip, and Jack quickly retreated. It would be bad enough if the kitchen overseer beat him, but the last thing he wanted to do was give her an excuse to flog Seila on his account. Discretion in this case was the better part of valor.

He caught Seila’s eye one last time as he pushed the cart out of the kitchen, and gave her a quick wink before setting out back down the path to the paddocks.

After the encounter with Grelda, Jack decided to avoid the porridge detail for a day or two, for Seila’s safety and his own. He went back to the fields, dragging sledges full of the rothe fodder out to each of the paddocks, then shoveling the inevitable product onto other sledges that were then dragged back out to the fields where the fungus was cultivated. Working in the dark elves’ pastures was an ironically circular labor, when he reflected on it. He spent no little time wondering why the dark elves didn’t just pasture their livestock in the middle of the fungus-crops and save all the back-and-forth. Failing to come up with an answer, he turned his attention back to the puzzle of his failing spells, muttering nonsense and making odd gestures as he worked alongside the rest of the field-slaves.

Finally, a month or so after the wool-shearing, Jack found his break.

He was toiling to reinforce the fieldstone paddock-fence by the castle road with fresh stones, when a team of trolls pulling a heavily laden wagon up the road got their vehicle stuck. The dull-witted creatures broke the wagon’s axle trying to work it loose, infuriating the dark elf wizard overseeing them. “Stupid oafs!” the mage shrieked. “I will teach you to be more careful.”

With a single swift syllable and a subtle motion of his left hand, the wizard expertly conjured a whip of emerald fire to lash the clumsy trolls … and Jack realized that he could dimly sense the subtle strands of magic that shaped the spell.

As the hulking monsters yammered in pain and fright, Jack quickly ducked back down behind the stone fence. “Something has changed,” he murmured. He hadn’t been able to sense any sort of magic since he’d awoken from his slumber in the mythal stone, except when he was brought back to the stone’s locale to tell Dresimil and her brothers stories of Myrkyssa Jelan. Then he’d felt a faint whisper of something in the mythal stone itself, most likely as a result of the powerful enchantments the dark elves were using to restore the device. Now it seemed that he could glimpse magic at work, even when he was quite a distance from the stone. But why now?

Crouching by the wall as the trolls fled back down the road, pursued by the wrathful dark elf, Jack thought carefully. Then it came to him, a recollection of a conversation long ago. “Yu Wei,” he said aloud. Long ago, Jelan’s Shou wizard had told him that his magic was a manifestation of the wild mythal’s power. Perhaps, as the dark elves repaired their ancient mythal, they unknowingly restored something of Jack’s own knack for magic. After tendays and tendays of captivity, the repairs had proceeded to a point that finally returned him some small capacity to sense magic-and perhaps work it.

Jack glanced about, then repeated the same arcane gestures and words he’d been trying for tendays. It took a half-dozen tries, changing the somatic motions and trying out different mental approaches, but then suddenly he felt the subtle sensation of magical energy rippling and responding to his touch.

Quickly he pressed on with one of the most basic spells he knew, a simple cantrip of minor telekinesis. Magic hummed softly in his mind, answering his call. He crooked his right hand and raised it, and at his gesture a large rothe patty twenty feet away quivered and rose into the air. Jack motioned with growing confidence, and the patty bobbed up and down in his telekinetic grasp before he flung it into the air with one final wave of his hand.

“Now I am getting somewhere,” Jack said to himself. He glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to him and ducked down to hide among the rothe as he continued his experiments. He attempted another spell-a spell of teleportation, designed to let him step through the dimensions and reappear hundreds of feet away in the blink of an eye. He’d always found that to be a useful talent, especially when it came to evading capture … but this time the subtle energies refused to acknowledge his command. Jack scowled in frustration, repeating the experiment, but still his dimension-step spell eluded him. Perhaps he wasn’t getting along quite as well as he’d thought.

Did the mythal fluctuate in some way? he wondered. If his powers were indeed born in its magic, the manipulations of the drow might conceivably affect his ability to wield magic. Or had he simply met the limits of his arcane talents in this Weave-less day? At the height of his former confidence and skill, a minor teleportation was about the most difficult spell he could perform. Jack scowled, wondering exactly how many spells remained of the repertoire he assumed to be at his fingertips. Why, he might be no more skillful than a clumsy apprentice, fumbling to strike a small light or levitate a rothe patty a few feet in the air! “An unacceptable outcome to months of trial and error,” he muttered blackly.

“Where is that shirking fool of a human?”

Jack looked over the backs of the nearby rothe and spied Malmor striding in his direction, glaring furiously from side to side. The bugbear fumed and swore, but he hadn’t quite caught sight of Jack yet. The last thing in the world that Jack wanted was for the fat bugbear to find him avoiding work and playing at magic; he ducked back down again and tried one more familiar spell. This time the magic responded to his words and gestures; just as Malmor swaggered into his paddock, scattering the rothe, Jack completed a spell of invisibility and vanished from sight.

Malmor peered about the enclosure, muttering under his breath, then turned and stomped back in the direction of his filthy hut by the feed bins and silos. There would be several overseers and more trustworthy slaves working there; no doubt the bugbear meant to round up a search party and comb the fields until he found Jack. That was the usual procedure when Jack was trying not to be found. The rogue took the opportunity to quietly slip past the restless rothe and hurry two paddocks over, exulting in his momentary ability to avoid whatever unpleasant task the bugbear had in mind.