Chương 30: Get Rid of Kalen

Kalen and Lander sat side by side on the trunk of one of the downed trees, looking out over the circle of devastation in the bright moonlight. Kalen's panic, which had been a howl in his mind for the past day and a half, had faded to more of a soft whine as his cousin told his story. So much of what I've been afraid of is true, he thought. But it's easier somehow to know it for a fact. Maybe an uncertain terror was just harder to wrap one's head around than one that had a shape and a name. Leflayn.

Apparently the family that had indirectly given Kalen his very first magic book was also one of the ones that would kill him if they knew who he really was.

"Da ignored all the promises and the contracts in the end and sold half of our cargo directly to the warehouse owners at the docks in Lerit's Tare. We didn't get as much as it was worth that way, but we still got more than we would have if we'd kept to the original prices. The only things we bought were fresh provisions. Then, we set sail with Captain Kite's ships."

"How does one person captain two ships anyway?" Lander gave Kalen a funny look at the question, but then he shrugged.

"His wife is in charge of directing the sailors on the second ship. They always sail together like that. And if one ship has trouble the other can lend a hand." Kalen tried to imagine his mother captaining a ship. He found that it was easy, except for the fact that she didn't like sailing, so as soon as they'd made port somewhere, she'd probably refuse to re-board.

"We were all going to sail down to Swait, but Captain Kite had word on the way through some magic thing on his ship that Swait had outlawed their portal makers, too. So we went to its southern neighbor instead."

"Circon right?" said Kalen. He'd heard about the voyage, of course, though he'd only thought the Ayagull's route had changed due to problems fulfilling their orders in Lerit's Tare. He'd never heard anyone who'd gone on the trip talking about the reason for those problems. It was all just a lot of complaints about the city being less than it had once been. He thought of Nanu's map. The southernmost countries that formed the Ossumun Empire were right above Swait.

Then there was Circon, which wasn't a place he knew much about. It really wasn't very far, on paper, from the place where his cousin had seen the Orellen girl die.

"Right. It's almost all farms there. But they have good seaports on both coasts, just like Swait does. And it wasn't illegal to be an Orellen, so they still had portal wizarns sending and receiving from other places on the continent. We just bought and sold at the docks again. But Captain Kite purchased the Corie Shells from us, and he actually paid for them and some of his own goods to be shipped directly by portal to buyers he knew in other places.

He said the portals were so expensive he lost a piece of his soul when he turned over the coin for them." So not everywhere in the world is dangerous, thought Kalen. Or at least it wasn't last year. That's a relief.

"I knew you'd had trouble on the trip, but why didn't you ever tell people about the Orellens? Why didn't any of the crew talk about it?"

"Well, they heard plenty of stories about one of the wizarn families being in trouble in port, but it's just continental gossip. Nothing to do with them. And they don't know the worst of it. We didn't tell them about that girl I saw, and what…what happened to her." Kalen shivered. What would it be like to die that way? Lander's face was dark.

"Da didn't want people to think we were leaving Lerit's Tare behind just because of me. If they knew what I'd seen, the crew might have suspected I'd made trouble, and they'd have doubted his decisions. Which were good ones. We made more money for ourselves and the people who hired us in the end than we expected."

"What about the diamonds?" Lander wrinkled his forehead.

"What about them?"

"Well, where are they?"

"Are you serious?"

"What?" Kalen said, his tone defensive.

"I've never seen a real diamond before. Are they pretty?"

"You greedy…I didn't keep them myself, Kalen. It wouldn't have been right, knowing where they came from. Da changed them for money and divided it up for the crew's end of voyage bonus."

"Well," said Kalen, after a moment's consideration, "I think you could have kept them. If someone sticks a burning knife in my eye, I hope they give whatever is in my pockets to a nice person." Lander shoved him off the log so hard he landed face first in a pile of pine needles.

"Ow!"

"Stay down there. If you joke about dying that way ever again, I might just kill you myself." # They slowly made their way back home. They still argued about what should be done, but in a calm, exhausted way that made everything seem much more serious.

"Lander, if anything happened to you all because of me, I wouldn't survive it," Kalen said as he dragged his feet down the trail.

"And that's not a joke, so don't beat me up." Lander groaned.

"Think about what you just said, stupid. If you fake a horrible death, your family would feel exactly the same way." Grimacing, Kalen scratched at a patch of sticky tree sap on his forehead.

"Well, if we could tell our parents the truth and fake my death for the rest of the world, I guess that would be fine. But I don't think they'd go along with it."

"They wouldn't. Just let go of the 'Kalen pretends to die' plan. We need to make a new one."

"Like what?"

"Well, you could just run away without pretending to be dead. That is an option. And if some evil wizarn ever comes looking for you, we'll say 'Look all you want. He's been gone for ages.'""What if they don't say that? What if they don't believe you? What if they torture you all, hoping I appear?"

"What if lightning strikes us dead from the sky?" Lander retorted.

"Just because it could happen doesn't mean it's likely to." Kalen considered the matter.

"Would you help me run away, then? If you won't tell everyone I'm dead, you could at least cover for me while I find a way to get off the island." Lander fell quiet. He stared at the ground as his long legs carried him forward, a frown on his face.

"I would," he said finally.

"I guess. If you really wanted to do it, you'd need help. But it would be hard to put you on a ship. Nobody in the village would take you without Aunt Shelba and Uncle Jorn's permission, and I think only a bad captain or two in Baitown would. And while you're useful enough when you want to be, you really don't look like you could do a sailor's work."

"You don't have to put it that way!" Lander gave him a smug look.

"You'd have to be a stowaway, which is too dangerous if you get caught. Plenty of people throw stowaways overboard as a matter of course. I guess bobbing around on your own in the ocean might be a nostalgic experience for you, but I don't recommend it myself." Kalen grimaced.

"You could maybe wait for a foreign vessel to come to port in Baitown and pay them to take you as a passenger," Lander said.

"But that's got its own difficulties." Kalen knew what he meant. Even if he stole money to pay for his passage, the kind of ship that would agree to take someone his age without asking about his family or his purse would be full of scoundrels. They might very well gut him like a fish as soon as Hemarland was out of sight.

"Maybe I wouldn't get caught as a stowaway," he said.

"I'd be careful."

"Stowaways always get caught. Ships aren't so big that you can hide on them forever. If I have to help you do that, I'll make sure you stow away with someone who knows our family. That way they'll feel obligated not to let you drown. But they'll also probably beat you when they find you and make you work 'til your hands bleed." That sounded endurable but only barely. Perhaps sensing that Kalen's gloom was beginning to overwhelm him, Lander softened his voice.

"Maybe it won't come to that. Maybe, once they know what you've done in the forest, your parents will see the need for you to have your wizarn training sooner rather than later. There must be some way for you to convince them. I know you tried, but I don't think you tried as hard as you could have." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Kalen hadn't. Because he hadn't been completely sure he wanted it.

But that didn't change the fact that Jorn and Shelba would be less likely to send him away if they learned of the Orellen matter rather than more.

"If you don't tell them what I am, it might work. Maybe. If you back me up."

"Caris, too."

"What?" Kalen was startled.

"Why her?"

"We can't have them dismissing it as a childish whim. We'll have to show them how serious we are and that we've thought everything through. Caris is… well, you know how she is. If she agrees with the two of us, they'll at least consider it in a different light." Caris was a year older than Kalen and a year younger than Lander. Officially anyway. Kalen sometimes still felt bitter abut his stolen birthday, which would have put him on equal footing with her age-wise.

It was hard to be on equal footing with her in other ways. Caris was so weirdly responsible in all matters that she sometimes shamed adults for their behavior. She never complained about a chore or shirked a duty, and she had an upsetting habit of recalling every time anyone else ever had. The other children in the village didn't like her much.

"I don't think she'll help," Kalen said.

"She will. She wanted you to go away with that sorcerer woman who came last year. She only brought it up once with our mother, though, and she got such a tongue-lashing for it that she was afraid to mention it again. Illes told me about it. She's been mad at Caris ever since."

"Caris wants to get rid of me?!" Kalen was too surprised to feel hurt. He'd thought his relationships with all of his cousins were good. It had never even occurred to him that one of them might want him to leave the family.

"You're so cocky sometimes, and such a baby others. My sister doesn't want to get rid of you. She's upset about your future prospects and thinks it's time for Aunt Shelba to stop spoiling you so much. She's afraid you'll grow up to be useless."

"That's harsh," Kalen said.

"And I don't understand what she means by it at all."

"You know how Tondy left the village last year to apprentice under the master cooper in Baitown?" Kalen nodded.

"He's my age. And I've had my first voyage to the continent. I'd be away again this year if Da had decided to go. And I know Caris is a bad example since she was an old woman when she was born, but she spends almost all of her own day working now. She made the shirt you're wearing. You see what I'm saying, don't you?" Kalen did. He didn't like it, but he did.

"Caris thinks it's time for you to be a proper wizarn, if that's what you're going to do, or find a different path. She feels like anything else is just the adults coddling you while you play around." Kalen winced.

"I should have gone with Sorcerer Arlade." He should have taken Zevnie's place after all.

"I don't know that that's true," Lander replied.

"Even if Caris thinks so. It's different to do your training with a cooper in Baitown than it is to travel with a stranger to live an unknown life in a foreign place. But if that wizarn had come just a few years later than she did, you'd have wanted her to take you, wouldn't you?" Yes. Only that isn't what happened.

"I'll bring Caris to see your little mishap tomorrow. I'll probably have to drag her, but…we'll talk to her. Don't tell her the Orellen part. I've got no idea what she'd decide to do if she knew about that. Just say all those trees you knocked down is proof you're ready for a proper teacher, and the only place you can get one is at the Archipelago."

"She'll help us, then?"

"I'm sure of it," Lander promised. #"Obviously, I don't think you should go to the Archipelago after seeing this," Caris said.

"I don't think you'll ever be able to leave the island at all." It was the next afternoon, and the three of them stood on Kalen's rock, examining his handiwork. Under the old straw hat she wore to cover her pale hair, Caris's gray eyes were wide. But her voice was remarkably calm as she delivered her verdict.

"What?!" Lander exclaimed, while Kalen let himself collapse onto the rock with an arm over his face to shade his eyes from the sun.

"Caris, you—""If he's a wind wizarn who has problems of this magnitude, then he can't ever travel by ship," Caris said, hands on her hips as she gave her brother a severe look.

"He could summon a gale. He could capsize them. It's very irresponsible of you to propose it, Lander. I'm surprised." From his defeated position, Kalen could hear sputtering sounds as Lander tried to formulate an argument. But, honestly, he was too tired at this point to bother defending his own cause anymore. He'd been attacked by the sylph, had his soul yanked out of his body, walked miles and miles, fought with Lander, been terrified in a dozen different ways, and he hadn't had nearly enough sleep. He was done.

I'll just lay here on the rock until someone comes to drag me off it. That person could decide whether Kalen needed to be set on fire or imprisoned in a woodland hermitage as Caris was currently suggesting or taught magic.

"Wait, wait. No!" Lander said. Kalen could practically hear him grabbing Caris by the shoulders.

"This is because you don't understand how Kalen's wizarn stuff works at all. Explain it to her, Kalen! Kalen? Why are you lying there, you lump?" Maybe they'll put me in a hermitage, and I'll live there with Sleepynerth for a few years, and then that Beatrice person will come stab me. Or Arlade will come cut me into little bitty pieces so that she can figure out how I work.

Instead of paying attention to Lander's inaccurate description of how he cast spells, Kalen imagined what would happen if the two practitioners arrived at the same time. If there was a fight, he was sure Arlade would win. That would be nice. She could avenge the dead Orellen in the pink dress before she turned Kalen into an experiment. He tried to picture what a battle between practitioners would actually look like.

He knew from Zevnie that Arlade was not primarily a healer and potion maker, as the rest of Hemarland assumed. She just performed that service for the islanders because it was needed and easy enough for her. She was also not some kind of a water practitioner, as Kalen had guessed when he first saw her bringing her boat into shore during that storm. She specialized in body magic, as did the majority of the practitioners on the Archipelago.

It was just that she was a high sorcerer who was nearly two hundred years old. So she'd had plenty of time to study other types of magic, and she was powerful enough to use them at a fairly high level. Kalen had seen her use no body magic at all when she was working on Hemarland, though he guessed her unnatural youth was probably a product of her power. Wouldn't a high-ranking sorcerer who practiced body magic be able to rip an average practitioner in half like a sheet of paper? That sounded gruesome.

Maybe he didn't want to see their fight after all.

"Kalen. Kalen, you laze-about, I asked you a question." The wooden sole of one of Caris's clogs nudged Kalen firmly in the ribs, and he opened his eyes.

"What?" She crouched over him.

"Is what Lander says true? Can you only do this kind of dangerous magic if you use that expensive paint and sing one of your songs?" Kalen considered it. He hadn't really analyzed how he'd destroyed the forest. Lutcha had said the symbol he'd drawn in the air and pushing magic wildly through his wind nucleus was what had called the sylph to him.

Though the fact that he was drawing in absolutely enormous quantities of power through his array and chanting must have helped, Kalen assumed the symbol and the push were actually the cause of the wind burst. That meant the "blow everything in my vicinity down" spell was… probably… castable without any sort of array or cantrips at all. Its impact would just be more moderate.

But Kalen didn't know how much more moderate, and he wasn't willing to find out since he didn't want to rely on Lutcha's questionable benevolence again anytime soon.

"I can't just cast it," he told his cousin. Better to keep his explanation simple for her sake.

"I won't do it again. It's not the sort of thing that will happen accidentally." One of Caris's blonde eyebrows lifted, "You said, 'It was an accident, Caris.' When we walked up, that was the first thing you said to me." Kalen crossed his arms over his chest and blinked up at her.

"It was an accident, Caris. It was just…an accident with a lot of steps involved. I worked very hard to make it happen." Then, still smarting from the revelation that Caris thought he wasn't as serious-minded about his future as a boy his age should be, he added, "I'm not lazy, you know. I study magic as well as I can on Hemarland without a teacher or the right books." Kalen couldn't see around Caris's skirt to the place where Lander stood, but he heard a groan. Caris only looked thoughtful.

"So you want to go study your magic with a good master and make something of yourself. It is safe enough for you to travel. And you want me to speak to our parents on your behalf. I will." Kalen sat up.

"You will? Do you think it will work?" Kalen didn't think it would. But it would make him feel better if Caris said yes.

"It's a problem that you have no guarantee you'll be chosen as an apprentice by a master wizarn," she said instead.

"How are our parents supposed to have faith that you will? And if you don't acquire a master at your special tournament, how will you return home safely?"

"Zevnie said it wouldn't be a problem for me at all. She said people would be interested in teaching me. She said Arlade would for sure. And I…well, I'm pretty sure I could be…um…powerful." What an embarrassing thing to say about myself, he thought. But standing here, in the middle of his mishap, neither of his cousins seemed inclined to disagree. Caris peered into his eyes.

"Kalen, I think you should be a wizarn. It's a strange profession on Hemarland, but it's the only one you've ever really been interested in doing. And Nanu says you are gifted."

"Thanks…?" said Kalen.

"Zevnie was just a girl. And she was a strange, unfriendly girl. It would be better if Arlade had offered you an apprenticeship herself. Then your future would be secure."

"I can't change the past. I was going out of my way to avoid her interest the whole time she was here." Caris didn't blink.

"It would be better if Arlade wizarn had offered you an apprenticeship herself."

"Are you telling me to lie about it?" Kalen said, shocked. But…he could immediately see the benefits.

"Caris!" Lander sounded scandalized.

"That's too serious a thing to lie about! He can't just use a powerful wizarn's name however he—""I can do it!" Kalen leaped to his feet.

"That's a great idea."

"No, it's not!" Caris was nodding.

"After all this time, it would be suspicious for you to suddenly reveal that you'd discussed such a matter with her, but if we think of a good excuse—""I could say I never brought it up before because she told me I couldn't come with her until I became a magician! I'm a magician now, by the way. Or…or that she wanted me to prove myself somehow?" Caris pursed her lips thoughtfully. Then, she smiled.

"You could say she gave you the spell that did this. And that she wouldn't accept you until you could cast it." She gestured at the forest. Kalen's eyes brightened. His heart lifted.

"That's perfect, Caris!" Why hadn't he ever been devious with her before? If Sorcerer Arlade had given Kalen the spell that had done this…. well, it still wasn't ideal, but his responsibility would be halved. At least. After all, she was the mysterious, mighty wizarn who'd given his parents a baby. Who was Kalen to question her judgment? The story would need a lot of tweaking before it was presented, but it was a better solution than he'd come up with on his own.

"Are you two seriously talking about blaming a great and powerful sorcerer for Kalen blowing up the forest? Won't she be angry? And why would anyone believe you?"

"You didn't even meet her, Lander," said Kalen, choosing to ignore the question of whether or not Arlade would be angry.

"Everyone will believe it."

"Yes," Caris agreed, tossing her braid over her shoulder.

"Arlade Glimont was very impressive, but she pursued odd interests with intense focus."

"She spent an entire day embracing a tree with her eyes closed," said Kalen.

"She summoned hundreds of lobsters onto the beach."

"She didn't even want the lobsters. She was really mad about that."

"She—""Never mind," said Lander, holding up a hand to stop them.

"I'll go along with it if you both want. Let's figure out the rest of it so we can get rid of Kalen."