Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alwyn
Alwyn was barely aware of his surroundings as they climbed the hill, his mind racing with half-formed escape plans.
He could try to kill Zesh now, but there were too many orcs nearby—surely he’d be struck down before he could get control of his horse enough to flee.
He could teleport himself back down into the camp to try to find Krujha, but it was far more likely that a hundred other orcs would see him first.
He could just teleport himself away entirely, letting all the other chips fall where they might.
That would be his most surefire way of surviving.
But Krujha would have no idea what had happened to him, might waste hours or days trying to find him, enough to get himself killed.
No, they had promised they wouldn’t leave each other behind.
And he had sworn he wouldn’t return to Tessarion a failure. His first responsibility was to the Mage Princeps and their Order, of course. Yet it was concern for Krujha, and what might happen to him, that consumed his thoughts.
The higher they climbed, following the switchbacks of the dirt path up the steep hill, the more impossible a clean escape seemed.
If he were lucky, they would be alone at the top of the hill, and he could take Zesh out quickly.
From all the activity in the camp the last few days, though, he doubted he would be so fortunate.
The sun was low in the east, and the morning air still had the bite of early winter, as they finally crested the high hill.
Alwyn recognized this viewpoint as where Zesh had taken him and Krujha just a few days before; now, a small campfire had been set up at the peak.
Just ahead of him, Zesh dismounted from his horse, then gestured for Alwyn to do the same.
As he haphazardly landed on his feet, Alwyn noticed Yarug was there, too, sitting on the opposite side of the campfire and facing away from them, toward the landscape below.
Above them, the druid’s old raven was circling the hilltop in a wide, slow pattern.
If he could act quickly enough, maybe—
“Look,” Zesh said simply, gesturing back the way they had come.
Hesitantly, Alwyn turned to look. From here, they could see the entire campsite sprawled out in the valley below. Already smoke was rising from various campfires, and the host was nearly twice the size as it had been a few days before.
He tried to push down the gnawing worry in his stomach at the sight. They should have acted faster. Things would be so much harder now.
He started to look back when something heavy and sharp plunged into his shoulder from behind him with a terrible, animalistic screech, sending him stumbling to the ground.
Wings flapped in his face, dark feathers obscuring his vision as he cried out—then magic was surging through him, cold and unfamiliar.
He tried to lash out, but his magic would not come—nothing inside him moved as he attempted to summon his power.
The raven released its painful hold, but Alwyn remained stunned in place, panic making his mind go completely blank. His magic was gone. The well inside him was now only a yawning chasm, bare and desolate.
What had the druid done to him?
“He’s been suppressed,” Yarug finally spoke. With tremendous effort, Alwyn stood, his eyes darting until they landed on the old druid. The orc wasn’t looking at him, but at Zesh.
Alwyn’s breaths were coming faster, and pain was radiating up his neck and down into his elbow, warm blood oozing from the wound. Some small part of him was trying to hold on to all his training and keep calm, but his frantic heartbeat felt deafening with how empty the rest of his body now felt.
Zesh met his eyes, and a slow smirk stretched across the orc’s tusks. Alwyn saw it then—the cruel tyrant he had expected from the start, finally peeking through the mask.
“You and your friend must have thought you had an easy job ahead of you,” Zesh finally said, resting his one hand on the pommel of the sword at his side. “Like the many dead before you who thought me a brute, a fool.”
But Alwyn could barely focus on his words.
He could barely focus on anything but the emptiness in his chest. He had never noticed how alive his magic felt inside him, constantly moving with him, waiting to answer the instant he called on it—its absence was so stark, it felt as though a limb had been lopped off.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered, mostly on instinct. The only weapon he had was gone now, and it took all his focus to not panic. The druid said he’d been suppressed—what did that mean? How could he undo it? In all his training, he had never heard of something like this.
Again and again, Alwyn reached for his magic, trying to summon it back into his control. Even when he felt a weak stirring inside him, it drained away the moment he grasped it, like carrying sand with a sieve.
“We were suspicious, but it was easy enough to confirm over time,” Zesh continued.
Alwyn had to struggle to focus on his words.
“Yarug has eyes all over the camp. We knew you and Krujha were meeting secretly. Though I have to admit, finding out you were fucking was more surprising than the plot to kill me.”
“That isn’t true,” Alwyn protested weakly. Humiliation burned his face, cutting through the primal fear that had so thoroughly consumed him.
“Enough,” Yarug interrupted. When Alwyn looked over at him, his sallow, wrinkled face was drawn tight in an expression of distaste.
“The fact that I couldn’t get more than a glimpse into your mind was more than enough evidence.
No run-of-the-mill High Sorcerer would have such training.
We know what you are. Besides, I heard the conversations myself. There’s no point in denying it.”
Alwyn fell silent. They had been playing with him from the start. There was no use in keeping up the act now. He was going to die.
A cold calm settled over him at the thought—now he could solely focus on how to complete his mission.
He didn’t have to worry about his own survival anymore.
He forced himself to think through the shock and pain—they had brought him up here alone.
For whatever reason, Zesh did not think his other guards needed to hear what was said up on this hill—probably to prevent rumors of spies in the camp from spreading.
So if they both died here, the knowledge would likely die with them; and with help from their contact, Krujha still would have a chance of making it out alive.
“What are you going to do to me?” he asked. His voice was surprisingly even. He’d expected it to shake, but at the end, it seemed he’d finally started to master his emotions.
“I haven’t decided,” Zesh replied, shrugging. “You seem too valuable to just use as ransom, the way I’m going to use the rest of the elves. But that makes you too dangerous to keep around. If you tell Yarug everything you know—truly this time—I might show mercy and keep your little lover alive.”
Alwyn closed his eyes, centering himself.
Though his fate was surely sealed, he kept trying to seize his magic, unable to stop himself—the way his tongue might continue moving to an empty socket in his mouth, the absence too great to ignore.
Now he could feel something inside him catching—a tiny shock of heat that was gone as soon as he touched it, as if he were trying to pluck the flame off a lit candle with his fingertips.
It was as if his magic had been made too small for him to grasp—like how it became smaller inside him when he’d masked himself.
Maybe that was the key; the thought was desperate, but it was the only way he could make sense of what was happening.
The druid had shoved his magic away, too far for him to grasp, but he knew what that felt like now.
If Krujha had never suggested it, he might have been completely helpless; now, he knew if he kept reaching for it, a little further each time, he might somehow find where it had been hidden away.
He kept trying, even as he forced himself to respond.
“What do you want to know?”
“We know the elves have developed an advanced method of teleportation,” Zesh said.
When Alwyn glanced up at him again, the change in his face made him shiver.
How had he been so easily fooled by the weary mask he wore before?
This was the crazed, desperate orc he had expected from the start.
“Don’t deny it—the sorcerer who helped my father confirmed it for us. Show us how it’s done.”
Alwyn balked at that. That knowledge was highly guarded, shared only with fellow mages of the Library. Even civilian elves did not know about such magic; there was no way he could give it to anyone.
“I can’t. Not without my magic,” he replied, letting an edge of his desperation come through.
“Of course you can. Draw out the sigils, as you did for me before. Explain it to me. You may think yourself above us, but I can assure you, I will understand,” Yarug said.
The raven landed on his shoulder. Alwyn would have expected him to droop with the weight; but instead, together they were even taller than Zesh.
Somehow, both he and the bird were looking down at Alwyn with the same expression of annoyed disinterest.
He had to figure something out. Drawing out the sigils might buy him some time, but he doubted the orcs would let him stall for long.
“I will try,” he said weakly, kneeling down in the dirt.
Silently, he began to trace out the first glyph, moving in slow and deliberate movements to try to buy himself more time to think.
“And make sure you do it right,” Zesh said from above him. “If it doesn’t work when Yarug tries it, it’ll be Krujha who pays.”