Kashur

He could have used a flying spell, but he was itching to use his muscles, so he jumped for a high branch and hoisted himself up instead. Swishing his cape out of the way, he scaled the branches to a shard of crystal that had embedded itself in the trunk high up. Wincing with effort, he worked at it with the tips of his gloved fingers—the thing must have come flying in with impressive force. He managed to dislodge it, but as he yanked it free, it slipped from his fingers, falling end over end to the ground. He peered down to where it lay, a twinkle of purple in the dirt, right before it shuddered and burrowed into the soil, as if swallowed up by Terris herself.

“Curious,” he murmured. But this was a great vantage point for his search. He picked an apple and crunched into it, letting the tartness play across his tongue as he surveyed the grounds. Movement in a strange place caught his eye, but it wasn’t the creature. It was the Elf Queen, Yelora, picking her way across the rocky terrain at the edge of the Wizards’ castle. Her movements were graceful, yet purposeful. Her long hair, the pale yellow of sand dunes, caught the breeze and lifted off her shoulders almost magically. She was searching for something—probably the same thing he was: her weird baby.

Well it wasn’t a baby anymore, was it? Because of him.

Broken fates! Feeling it develop in his hands like that reminded him too much of the times his power had gotten away from him: When he was young, and other boys used it to launch into manhood, only to go too far. The time he’d tried to help a stranger and took decades off their life instead.

And it hadn’t only happened to strangers. It was his mother who’d discovered his power when he was just a small boy. Neither had realized what a touch would do to her.

Not that he hadn’t used the curse on purpose, too, in certain unfortunate circumstances, although never without regrets.

A familiar wave of nausea struck him, and he sank back against the tree trunk and pressed a fist to his solar plexus.

No way out but through. No way out but through.

That’s what Mol Morin had said to him when the dragoons had delivered Kashur to his doorstep—drunk and disheveled, eyes puffy with the latest fresh horror he’d wrought. By then, the Imperials had discovered that locking someone like him up in a jail cell with belligerent men wasn’t a feasible long-term option.

Life is long and unfair, he’d told Kashur over a cup of nettle tea in his musty-smelling study. But we must all brave it. Kashur had looked into his dark, sympathetic face and seen what he hadn’t seen in his own grieving father’s—understanding. Acceptance.

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And potential. The potential to be rid of this horrible magic he hadn’t asked for. Magic could only be fought with magic.

From his perch in the apple tree, Kashur caught movement at the lake’s edge—the creature, loping downhill into the marshlands. He sighed. He should go after it, but he did want to apologize to the Elf Queen. And if she was looking for the creature, he could point her to it, although she’d wanted to kill it, and Kashur wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Would this new Elf Queen be so quick to do the same to something else, or someone else, if it suited her?

A commotion in the grassy clearing near the stables captured his attention. A girl wearing the purple robes of the Disciples was lying on the ground, her body jerking and shaking. A crowd had gathered around her. Kashur lowered himself from the tree and hurried over.

“What’s going on, Rellis?” he demanded of her overseeing Wizard as the Disciple seized and frothed at the mouth. She was so new to the Order he didn’t even know her name.

“We’re not sure,” Rellis replied, steadying the thrashing girl’s head.

“Did she eat the berries by the lake?” Kashur knelt down and worked a healing spell on her. The girl bucked like a newborn colt, but at his touch, she stilled, eyes closed, foam trickling from her mouth.

“No,” her mentor replied. “She was here, with us, cleaning up after the quake.”

“What’s this?” Moyshec pried something out of the unconscious girl's hand and Kashur saw the flash of purple. The Dwarf held it up to his large nose, studying it. “I sense magical properties.”

“Summoner, sir?” Tershan, an Imperial Disciple several rotations younger than Kashur, pulled a crystal from his purple cloak pocket. “I found one, too—” But before Tershan could finish his sentence, he choked, eyes rolling back, and collapsed to the ground, the crystal slipping from his grasp onto the grass.

Kashur swept the crystal into the pocket of his cloak with a gloved hand. “No one touch the crystals!”

But Moyshec still held the girl’s shard as he placed a healing hand on the unconscious boy. Tershan’s eyes popped open almost immediately and he sat up. “What happened to me?” He looked around. “Where’s my gem?”

Kashur shot Moyshec a surprised look. “I didn’t know you were that good a healer.” The girl he’d healed remained motionless on the ground.

Moyshec raised a bushy eyebrow. “I didn’t either.”

Kashur’s brain churned. Had the convergence augmented Moyshec’s healing powers, and, if so, why hadn’t Kashur’s risen to match them? Why were the crystals making these Disciples sick in the first place? And why hadn’t the Sky Engineers warned them of the impending meteorite strike? Surely they had to have seen it. Everything felt off—unsettling and wrong.

“What’s that?” Tershan squeaked.

Underneath where he sat, the grass was turning yellow and brittle before their eyes. Within seconds, it withered completely and blew away, leaving a lifeless patch of sand.

Kashur inspected his hands, but his gloves were still on. It couldn’t have been him. Besides, his power wouldn’t have killed the grass; it would have made it grow.

With a grim look, he extended his hand to Moyshec. “Give me that crystal.”

Yet, when the Dwarf moved to comply, only purple dust remained.