Spirit Speaker

Anna looked into the flames, silently. 

"I was thrown into that pit after saving Ayenna from a guard." Rowan said, his voice warm, his eyes far away. "They threw wave after wave of beasts at me. Eventually one tired and ripped my arm from its socket. That's when the clay dolls arrived."

"The next thing I knew pain jolted me awake, and I was looking at my master over there." He pointed to me. 

He then drew his sword, and handed it, hilt first to the princess. "And this is the sword I used to defend myself."

"How old were you?"

"Let's see… it was fifteen? Sixteen years ago wasn't it sir?" He said, asking me. He looked apologetically at the princess. "I'm not quite sure how long ago it was, to survive the slave pens, I had taken to chewing the gora root. It tended to make things fuzzy."

"Seventeen years this August." I said. 

"Which would make me thirteen, back then."

And Anna turned to me. "And how old were you?" 

"This was just before I entered the Academy. I must have been about to turn seventeen. Not much older than you are now."

"After that, I cut all ties with my master." I said, leaning back on my hands, and looking up at the sky. "It was only after I graduated that we were reunited, I was older then, wiser. I understood."

"Why did you go back?"

I blinked at the princess, thinking carefully. 

"There is something peculiar to the way he taught me, and the way I'm teaching you. To graduate to a full Master Mage, I had to beat him in a duel."

"This is when you threw him down the mineshaft?"

I nodded, smiling faintly at the memory. "I had Illargia, but didn't use him, Master Fereth wasn't strong enough to handle a full-blown duel if we got focuses involved. Though he cheated by challenging me in the mountains."

"And the girl, Ayenna? What happened to her?"

Rowan held up his hand, showing the princess a thin black band around one of his fingers. "I spend three nights a week in the palace and all the other ones with my wife. She followed us to the Academy and found work at a tailor in the city. I entered the Academy with Master Lukas there, and was accepted into the Blademasters school."

"Full ride scholarship." I pointed out. "He drew a circle in the dirt and knocked out every single opponent that tried to pull him out of it. Eventually, it took an instructor to put him down."

Rowan smiled. He stretched, yawning. "It's late highness, master. I'll turn in for the night." 

He looked up. "Good night Master Ilyas."

"Night!" Severan replied cheerfully, from somewhere above us. 

I didn't even know he was up there. 

Anna stared into the fire. She was visibly disturbed by what she'd heard. 

"It's alright, princess," I said, cheerfully. "The good guys won in the end."

"It isn't that they won, master. It's how they won that I can't deal with."

"The dolls?"

"Evil."

I smiled. "Yes. Evil. Wicked. Ugly, forbidden magic." 

"And still he did it."

I nodded. "My master isn't one to play by the rules. He saw a problem, saw the fastest way to fix it, and acted accordingly. But he paid a price for what he did, Anna. A terrible price."

I pulled Ilargia from his holster. 

"Describe what you see," I said, handing the staff to her. 

"A white stone, set on a black shaft. There are rune carvings I don't understand spiralling up the shaft."

"Before that night, Ilargia was white." 

I stared into the fire. "Ilargia was stripped from him and passed to me. Within ten years, he had lost his ability to speak to spirits. They wouldn't answer his call, no matter how hard he tried."

I took Ilargia back and put him in his holster. "He's now an old man, living in the Elven Forests, in my clan. He says he's happy but…" 

I raised my palm, and a white spirit floated above it. I focused for a moment, and it began to sing. "How can anyone who's heard this song, sang it, felt it fill his soul, and then have it all ripped away possibly be happy?"

My voice quivered. Anna put her arm around mine and rested her head on my shoulder. "He's a good man, Anna, a kind man, who made a mistake. And I wish with every fibre of my being that I could go back further, and stop him from doing it." I drew in a shaky breath. "But that won't happen."

"You can't change the past, Lukas." Anna said, trying to comfort me. "What's happened, has happened, and we must learn to live with it."

"Gods, I hope not." I said. I gently removed my arm from hers. "Go to bed, highness. It's late, and Rowan's going to want to beat us up before we set off again."

Anna stood, looked at me for a moment, bent down, and kissed my cheek. 

"Good night, master." She said. 

I smiled. "Good night, Anna."