A/N: Thanks for reviewing! I didn't update yesterday, because I was at my friend's Bat Mitzvah celebration, which went from 10:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night. Yeah, too much partying. But, this chapter is a little longer than usual, about as long as chapter 1, which was my longest chapter. Anyways, enjoy!
xxxxxx
It had not been hard to get behind the wall and continue towards the castle, but it was extremely hard to figure out why the wall was there. Obviously, it was meant to stop people from going to Cyvit's castle, but none of us could figure out why that was the case.
"Maybe something bad has happened at the castle." I mused.
"Perhaps. We'll just have to go to the castle and see. But that doesn't seem right. If something bad happened, they would have actually closed off the road, instead of pretending that it was closed off." Ridillyn responded. This was frustrating. I couldn't wait to get to the castle, just so we could get answers.
Unfortunately, it would be another day and half a night before we reached the place. It was already nearly dawn. While Sirros and Kysis slept, Ridillyn and I would discuss strategy.
"How will we get inside the castle?" I asked.
"Through the front door." Ridillyn responded sarcastically. I rolled my eyes.
"You know what I mean."
"Brother and sister, husband and wife, master and servant?" he suggested.
"With what business?"
"Pick one first."
"Fine, master and servant, because it makes the most sense for a business trip." I grumbled. I didn't relish the thought of pretending to be Ridillyn's servant.
"I'm not sure what we could be going for." he muttered.
"We could just be diplomatic Sonfians." I suggested.
"Nah, they'd try to murder us in our sleep."
"How else will they let us in, besides for messages or negotiations?"
"Slave trade." he murmured quietly.
"What?"
"Some poor farmers sell their children into slavery. They usually end up working for the lord of the area. Rich people can buy slaves from each other, however. That's the only way we'll get in. I'll have Lanveld get us some gold." he explained. I shuddered at this unpleasant concept. Ridillyn busied himself with writing a note to the Archwizard.
"What do we say to the castle guards though?" I mumbled.
"We're here for the trade. Then you show them your money and they let you in."
"How do you know this?" I asked suspiciously. He shifted uncomfortably.
"I can remember from before I was born. I tailed a lord around, 'haunting' him. Well, only for awhile, I got bored later." I gaped at him. He remembered from before he was born? That was new.
"Er, okay. I'll take your word for it." He nodded absent-absent mindedly. I decided to get some more rest.
xxxxxx
We finally arrived at the castle gates near midnight the next night. Hurriedly, we changed into more appropriate clothes for the region. Sure enough, Ridillyn's magic words and money were able to get us into the castle. A man spoke to Ridillyn as he led us down a dank stone passageway lit by torches.
"Sir, what kind of servant are you looking for?" the man asked.
"Oh, just someone to help, ah, file things." Ridillyn responded smoothly. I could tell that he had hurriedly made up the last part, but his naturally intimidating aura made it hard to notice.
"Oh yes, we have ones skilled in domestics and gardening. We've also got stable boys, if you need them. You can train them yourself, or buy one of the broken ones for a bit more." I couldn't believe how the man was talking. Sure, they were slaves, but they were still people! He was talking about them as if they were animals, pets.
"I don't need any specific skills. And I think I can hold my own against a rebellious servant." Ridillyn said coolly.
"Well, here we are." We had arrived in a dungeon like chamber, where miserable children of various ages sat huddled in tiny cells, chained to the walls. They had collars and leashes, like dogs. Some stared at the ground, and others glared at the man who had been leading us. A few looked up hopefully.
"Why don't you line them up? I can't judge very well through the bars." Ridillyn said. As a looked over the slaves again, I couldn't help but notice that all of them were human. I pointed this out quietly to him. He nodded and shrugged, which I took to mean that he had noticed, but didn't know why.
The man dragged the children out of their cells and jostled them towards the wall. They lined up reluctantly. Ridillyn looked them up and down. He scrutinized each, staring into their eyes and sometimes sniffing them. Finally, he moved back to the middle and said, "This one." The girl gaped. She looked to be about eleven or twelve, and her eyes had a determined spark to them. The man nodded and told Ridillyn the price. Wordlessly, he handed him a ridiculous amount of gold.
"You can stay for the night in one of the guest rooms." he told us. Ridillyn thanked him and followed him again. He handed the girl's leash to me. Once the man had left us in the room, he unhooked the chain.
"What's your name?" he asked the girl in a soft voice.
"Ama." she responded, looking down.
"Just Ama?"
"Ama Watkins."
"I'm Ridillyn Esoritus. And that is Kitaek Fen."
"Why are names important?" Ama asked. She seemed to be nervous.
"Well, what do you call people if you don't know their name? So, Ama, tell me honestly, do you have any friends in this place?" Ama shook her head no. Ridillyn smiled, and she recoiled. He turned to me.
"Kite, did you feel anything?" he asked me. What was he talking about? Then I remembered the book! It'd completely slipped my mind. My guilty expression must have shown.
"You forgot all about it, didn't you? It doesn't matter. If it was in range, you would have felt it, and known it. Well, now that leaves most of the rest of the castle to search. At least we've got the more secret parts down." he sighed.
"I hope it's in the castle. I'm already weary of this trip." I muttered.
"Do you want to go back?"
"Go back to where? Of course not, I'm staying. Besides, I'm your long distance magic radar." Ridillyn chortled, and I laughed a little too. Ama stared at us with wide eyes.
"What're you talking about?" she asked. She seemed a little less uneasy.
"We're looking for a book." Ridillyn told her.
"It was stolen, we need it back." I added.
"Oh."
"I'm thirsty." informed Ridillyn.
"Don't even think about asking me." I muttered. "And you said you could go for a long time without feeding."
"I can go for a long time. I just don't like to." he corrected.
"There's no way you're persuading me again." I sat down on the ground resolutely. Ama's eyes were darting between us, and her brow was furrowed. She must have been trying extremely hard to figure out what we were talking about.
"What if I got you a knife?"
"No. And you promised never to pester me again." He stuck his tongue out at me and sat down too. Ama looked bewildered. "Ask him." I told her, pointing to Ridillyn. She did.
"I'm a vampire." he mumbled. Her mouth fell into an 'O.'
"He's the next royal Nosferatu." I snorted. "It's burned into his arm." He hugged his right arm close. I laughed. He glared at me.
"So, where were you from, before you got put into the slave pit?" he asked Ama, changing the subject.
"Ken's Wood Village. They're still afraid of the demon in the castle, so they give up a kid every year." she replied.
"What demon?" Ridillyn inquired, perking up.
"Cyvit. The one the castle's named after."
"What? But there isn't a demon named Cyvit at all!"
"Exactly what I said. Demons don't exist."
"No, demons definitely exist. But the demon Cyvit doesn't. The closest I can think of would be the demon Cecil, and that's not particularly close."
"Right, we need to search for the book. Are you coming?" I asked Ridillyn. He nodded.
"Ama, stay here and make yourself comfortable. I don't think it'd be a good idea to take you along. Hopefully, we'll be back undetected and unscathed." he said in a cheerful tone. Ridillyn was so weird sometimes.
We set off, strolling out the doors casually. Ridillyn used his memory of his "haunt" and his natural wizarding and vampiric intuition to guide us. This meant we got lost rather quickly. Multiple times, we found ourselves in dead ends or walking in circles. So far, I hadn't felt anything magical.
That abruptly changed as we ambled down another staircase. I froze.
"I feel something." I told Ridillyn. He shrugged, and made a motion for me to lead the way. I followed the faint pulse. After a while, he could feel it too, and we both made for it. The waves congregated at a bedroom door. "Is it the book?" I asked excitedly. Ridillyn shook his head, and I sighed in disappointment.
"No, but it's still worth investigating. Why would someone have a clearly magical item in the anti-magic state of Inctum? This looks like the permanent residence wing."
"Should we go inside?"
"Let's go, there's no one near this place."
We stepped in, and lying on a table, at the center of the thrumming, was a book!
"What in all the magical worlds!" Ridillyn exclaimed "It's another copy!"
"Do you think our thief has learned about magic?" I asked him.
"No, the magic isn't even coming from the book. It's that rock over there." I glanced over at the table again. Sure enough, a strange rock was sitting on top of the fake book. I groaned. Ridillyn's eyes widened, and he put a finger to his mouth. "Someone's coming, hide!" he hissed. I ducked behind the sofa, and he crawled under the bed. We were just in time, as the door opened a second later.
I was glad we had not gotten to actually looking at the book. If we had moved it, the resident of the room would have surely known that someone else had been interested in it! As I glimpsed said resident, I had to stifle a gasp. It was the inquisitor! What was he doing with the book, or a magic rock? He was the one who kept preaching all that junk about how magic was evil!
The inquisitor walked over to the table with the book and rock on it. He picked up the rock and passed it over the book.
"Tell to me all your secrets!" he muttered. I heard a choked hiccup from under the bed. Ridillyn seemed to be attempting to stifle hoots of amusement. Fortunately, the inquisitor was too focused on chanting and waving the rock around like a fool to hear.
I saw the tip of Ridillyn's wand poke out from under the bed. I hoped he wasn't doing anything stupid. It twitched, but nothing seemed to happen. The inquisitor set down the rock and opened the book.
"It worked!" he exclaimed, and strolled out of the room excitedly. As soon as he was out of earshot, the bed shook with a demonic cackling.
"What did you do?" I asked Ridillyn. He gasped, clutching at the carpet, still laughing uncontrollably.
"I made his bogus spell 'work.'" he said between snorts. "It filled up the pages. But with a ton of nonsense." I couldn't help it, I started laughing too. Then our current situation hit me in the face, and I stopped.
"Let's go back to our room before he comes back to find us giggling on his carpet." I told Ridillyn. He nodded, still shaking, and we walked out, innocent looks plastered on our faces. After awhile, we realized that we were lost.
"Oh bother." Ridillyn grumbled.
"Let's ask someone." I suggested.
"Ask who?" he muttered. I looked around. The halls were empty. Just our luck.
"Let's follow the left wall. We'll have to get out of here some time." I said.
"That only works in mazes. But we can, since there's nothing better to do." So we proceeded to do as such. Like Ridillyn predicted, it didn't work. We just got more lost.
"This is hopeless! Why can't this place have been built around a controlled termite hole too?" I complained.
"We could unravel string to see where we've been. Then we could go around the entire castle. We'll find our room eventually." Ridillyn said. I turned to stare at him. He was being serious.
"Don't you think the castle staff would notice if we unraveled string all over?" I pointed out, annoyed.
"We could unravel our magic."
"What? Wouldn't that be dangerous?"
"No. People can't steal your magic unless they absorb your soul or something."
"Fine, let's do it." Ridillyn showed me how to unravel magic. You just had to imagine that it was like string. The magic unraveled as we walked, leaving an invisible trail behind us. We could tell if we were walking in circles, and by going down different hallways each time, we finally did manage to get back to our room. By that time, we were absolutely exhausted, and nearly out of magic. I reeled mine back in like a spool of thread, and felt Ridillyn do the same next to me.
Ama looked up as we stumbled into the room.
"Did you find it?" she asked.
"We found another fake." I answered. Ridillyn and I sat down on the bed, exhausted.
"What do you mean another?" He pulled the first book out of his sleeve, opening it to show Ama that it was blank.
"This was the first fake we found." he informed her. She looked at him, wide eyed. "Anyways, we should go to sleep. I don't want to lose more spiritual energy than I need to."
Following this pronouncement, we both lay down and fell into nothingness.
xxxxxx
Ridillyn, Ama, and I were seated in the back of the cart. Sirros was driving again, and we were headed to Ken's Wood Village to drop Ama back off with her parents. Apparently, she had been selected for the "sacrifice" because she was runty, and her parents had been heartbroken. Ridillyn would tell them some bogus story about the demon having refused such a small sacrifice, and given it to another to take.
The cart rattled into town. Ama directed Sirros to her home. Ridillyn hopped off and knocked on the door. A tired looking woman opened the door. Her eyes widened at the sight of Ama.
"Mother!" Ama shrieked, hugging her tightly. The woman buried her face in her daughter's hair, crying tears of joy. Then she looked up at Ridillyn.
"Thank you." she rasped. Her voice was hoarse, probably from too much weeping. "What are you?" she asked again, probably having seen his red eyes.
"He's a vampire." Ama piped up. Ridillyn smiled slightly.
"That I am." he said. Her mother recoiled slightly. "Don't worry, I didn't touch Ama."
"Yeah, you were too busy irritating me." I muttered. He gave me a glare that would have made anyone else flinch in fear, but I knew that he was just teasing.
"Well, we'd best be off." he told Ama's mother.
"No, please, wait. The townspeople will never believe that a demon came in the night to return my daughter. You have to stay and tell them!" she pleaded desperately. Ridillyn shifted uneasily.
"Do you think I could round us to Keave?" he asked me.
"We're going all the way to Keave? Definitely round us!" I half shouted. It would take forever for our cart to get as far north as that, especially if we could only move at night.
"I'll have to make the pentacle bigger for the cart. That means more everlasting ice used."
"Couldn't we ask Lanveld for more if we needed it?"
"Oh, good point. I forgot all about our handy cabinet! Alright Mrs, Watkins, we'll stay for now."
Ama's mother sighed in relief.
"Would you like to stay with us for the night?" she asked. Ridillyn shrugged.
"Do you have a stable?" he inquired.
"Yes we do." a new voice said. A man appeared behind Mrs. Watkins. I assumed that he was Ama's father.
"Where is it?" Ridillyn followed Mr. Watkins, and Sirros went after them with the cart. I turned to Mrs. Watkins, who was still standing in the doorway.
"Er, I'm Kite." I said awkwardly, holding out my hand. She took it and shook it stiffly.
"Are you a demon too?" she asked nervously. I shook my head hard. She seemed relieved. Ridillyn came back with Mr. Watkins.
"I'm thirsty." he said, when no one spoke.
"No you're not." I responded. He grimaced at me.
"What if I am?"
"I know you're not."
"Would you like to come in?" Mrs. Watkins muttered uncertainly. I nodded, and dragged Ridillyn in with me before he could make more awkward comments.
"Thank you." I said. Mr. Watkins walked in, and she shut the door. She found some blankets for us and set them up on the floor.
"Sorry about the shoddy accommodations." she apologized. I told her that it was fine. With nothing better to do, I lay down to sleep. Instead of doing the same, Ridillyn crawled over and rested his nose on my neck.
"What're you doing?" I mumbled, my voice muffled by the blankets.
"Breathing you in." he replied. I couldn't think of anything to say in response to this. He took deep breaths, each exhalation tickling me lightly. I squirmed. "If you're going to be the Royal Archwizard in the future, you should get used to this."
"I never said I was going for that position. It was your idea." I responded. I couldn't sleep with him leaning over me. "What does being Royal Archwizard entail anyway?"
"The Royal Archwizard oversees all warding spells on the citadel, and tends to the king personally. He or she manages the traffic in the castle termite passage, and is also responsible for resolving any identification issues. The king is entitled to drink the blood of the Archwizard at any time, as long as it is in reasonable amounts." he finished with a smirk. I narrowed my eyes.
"I bet you love the last part." I grumbled. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply again.
"By the time you make the position, I'll be king." he whispered quietly, nuzzling my neck. I prodded him in the forehead.
"I still haven't said that I would go for the position at all."
"You will. I just know it." I harrumphed and moved my arms up to cushion my head. Then I tried my best to ignore Ridillyn and go to sleep.
xxxxxx
Something was prodding me on my side. I recoiled, moving away from it. It followed and kept poking.
"Stop it!" I mumbled incoherently.
"Rise and shine, Kite! I'm going to teach you to use some magic today." This effectively woke me up. It was not the message really, more of Ridillyn's voice in my ear. I batted him away and looked around. It seemed to be a little after dawn. No wonder I was so tired.
"Did you sleep at all?" I asked him, seeing the still neat pile of blankets next to me.
"I did, but I used you as a pillow. You didn't seem to mind." he said. I gaped at him. He just smiled. "Come on, get up. We need to go explain how Ama appeared back here in the middle of the night." I nodded numbly.
"Do you have a hairbrush?" I asked him. He looked around in his sleeve, and then handed me one. I took it silently and dragged it through my tangled mop of hair. He took it back from me and brushed his own out as well. I noticed that it was actually really long, hanging down to mid back, only a tad shorter than mine. I hadn't ever seen his hair down before this.
He dragged me out of my thoughts- literally. Ama's mother was just coming out of the bedroom.
"Oh, you're up. Can you go talk to the mayor now?" she asked Ridillyn.
"Of course, whenever you say." he told her. She nodded and smiled gratefully.
There weren't many people about as we walked in the direction of the mayor's house. Ridillyn wrinkled his nose at the splendor of the place compared to the rest of town. We knocked on the door, and an irritated looking butler opened it.
"Excuse me, we need to see the mayor." Ridillyn said softly. The man's expression immediately switched to bewilderment. He nodded slowly.
"Yes, please come with me." he murmured. We were led upstairs to a room with lavish decorations. The mayor, in his nightclothes, was sitting on the bed.
"What is the meaning of this?" he shouted, outraged. He seemed to have anger issues.
"Just something about your, ah, 'sacrifices' to the demon Cyvit." Ridillyn replied calmly, the corner of his lip twitching.
"What about them? It appeases the demon and rids the town of useless riffraff."
"Riffraff, you say? And how exactly is the daughter of a respectable herder considered 'riffraff?'" Ridillyn's tone was icy, but the mayor didn't seem to notice.
"Well, she's so small! Useless to the community." he muttered.
"Small? I was under the impression that children are supposed to be small."
"Yeah, well what is it to you?" he grunted.
"The demon is displeased." was all Ridillyn said by way of response.
"How do you know?" the mayor snapped. "Actually, you don't. Hate to break it to you, but demons are a myth, and I get money when I sell off the villagers." Ridillyn smiled widely.
"Dear mayor, you are a little off there. Demons are not a myth, although Cyvit is. And there is a displeased demon- in your room." he hissed. This was the first time the mayor glanced up. And what he saw made his jaw drop in terror. Ridillyn was grimacing diabolically, red eyes aglow.
"But, you... you can't, there's no such thing, demons aren't real!" the mayor stammered.
"I could just stop here, to teach you a lesson. Or I could tear you apart..." Ridillyn crooned. The butler seemed to have come to his senses. He lunged. Ridillyn snarled, grabbing him by the collar, and slammed him into the wall. The man punched and kicked, trying to get out of his grasp. "But your blood is corrupted, disgusting." he continued, ignoring the butler's struggling. "So I'll just demonstrate with this one here."
Ridillyn sunk his teeth into the man's neck before the mayor could speak. He gulped loudly, turning into an animalistic monster before us. The mayor trembled, looking slightly green. I didn't relish the thought of watching Ridillyn kill again. But he didn't kill the man. He stopped when the butler fell unconscious, but not dead. Ridillyn turned to me.
"Magic lesson number one: healing." he said, whipping out his wand. "Channel your magic through the wand, imagining the flow of power. Direct the power to repair damage done." He pointed at the man's neck and flicked his wand. The wound healed. "Just like when we unraveled, picture your power as a tangible thing."
"You... you... how?" the mayor croaked. Ridillyn whirled around to face him.
"As for you, you should consider this a fair warning. Appreciate the fact that you are alive and unscathed. Appreciate the lives of your townspeople." The mayor nodded slowly. Ridillyn scowled and stalked out the door. "Come, Kite. If we are to do long distance rounding, we must be meticulous in our setup." I followed him, not looking back.
xxxxxx
Half the town had gathered to watch us as we drew the pentacle. Ridillyn murmured under his breath, twisting his wand. I felt a surge of energy spout from the tip, and saw the etching that resulted in the ground. I sprinkled the everlasting ice into the outline, making sure that there was no overflow. Directing my magic as he had taught me, I made the spread of the "ice" as even as possible.
It was night, and we were ready to go. The cart was sitting in the middle of the pentacle, and Ridillyn stood upon it.
"Redrob Sorca, adaven fo ymedaka nostivad et, Evaek!" he shouted, and we were surrounded by a huge smoky cyclone. I was lifted up and thrust effortlessly, finally being smashed into the ground. The smoke died down, and I saw that everyone was okay, if a bit windswept.
I could tell at once that we were in Keave. For one, it was swelteringly hot, especially after the cool climate of the south. Plus, there was a stone sign that read: "Maweklaw Aet Keave." I supposed that that meant "welcome to Keave." We were in the middle of thick jungle, but fortunately there was a road.
"Ridillyn, what do they speak here?" I asked him as we settled down into the cart.
"A mixture of Droscan and Lithian. Maybe some Anglian." he responded.
"Well, I can only speak Lithian!" I hissed. He shrugged.
"It doesn't matter. We won't be talking to anyone. And I can speak all three."
"Good for you." I muttered.
"You should learn Anglian. A lot of people in other worlds speak it." he remarked.
"What use is that? Almost no one in this world speaks it!" I huffed.
"Well, you'll have to traverse the twenty magical worlds before you can become Archwizard." he said. I glared at him.
"All the more reason to not become Archwizard!"
We continued to argue about languages and the point of becoming the Royal Archwizard, when the cart jerked to an abrupt stop, and Sirros turned around and mouthed, "Shh," putting a finger to his lips.
Ridillyn and I got out of the cart carefully. He whispered to Sirros to stay, and then beckoned for me to follow him. We snuck through the underbrush, trying not to snap twigs or bump into things. After awhile, I heard what Sirros and Ridillyn must have heard earlier: the sound of voices. We finally made it near enough to hear what they were saying.
"What do you mean you lost the book?" a raspy male voice shrieked.
"I didn't lose it, I sold it!" a second voice, this time younger sounding, replied.
"You sold it! Do you know how much we had to pay to get our hands on that?" the first voice demanded.
"Yep, and I sold it for more! You should be grateful I got such a deal."
"I didn't want the book for money! I was going to read it, so that we could summon up a demon! You could have sold it after I'd finished."
"Why'd we want to summon a demon?" the second voice questioned.
"So we could steal things more easily. Think of it, a demon at our disposal!" Ridillyn had to fight off laughter, clamping his hand over his mouth and plugging his nose.
"What was the book called again?"
"Demonica. I think it means 'Book of Demons.' With a name like that, it definitely would have had instructions on controlling demons! Anyway, I only got to read the first bit."
Ridillyn was curled up in a ball, elbow in his stomach, shuddering with the effort of keeping silent. I slapped him upside the head. He gasped, gulping in air, and mouthed "Thank you."
"Well, what's gone is gone. At least you got us more money than we had before." the first voice sighed.
"Yeah, I'm sorry. If I'd known..." the voices were getting farther and farther away. Once even Ridillyn could no longer hear them, he spoke.
"Do you think they have the real book?" he asked.
"Well, they obviously don't have it anymore, but I think they did have it before." I replied.
"Do you think it may have been the inquisitor's copy that I filled with filler text?"
"No, it's only been two nights. Unless he rounded too, the inquisitor couldn't have gotten this far."
"I suppose."
"So this means that the book is probably still in Keave!"
"Yep."