Kashur

Kashur gave himself a pep talk as he mounted the stone steps of the Wizards’ Lair up to the Alchemist’s quarters at the very top. Mol Morin had been in a terrible mood for the past fortnight, and that didn’t bode well for Kashur, but he was done waiting. He’d have to charm him, that’s all. It shouldn’t be that hard.

He snapped his fingers as he climbed, each snap momentarily erasing the Lair’s magical facade. For a fraction of a second of each footfall, Kashur could see this place for what it really was—a pile of ruins that was once the Oracle, enormous chunks of rock strewn amongst tufts of grass, and the great, stone horse head lying on its side, eyes milky and dead.

The finger-snapping was petty magic, nothing more. But there was a comfort in being able to see things as they truly were, without the veil of illusion, even if the horse head was eerie and, if his fellow Wizard, Moyshec, was to be believed, haunted.

But Kashur was a man of science, not superstition. And so was Mol Morin, which is why, regardless of his moods, Kashur was certain this was a good time to bring up the promise. A convergence was upon them—a powerful aligning of planets heralded moons earlier by the Sky Engineers—and the effects of it simmered in Kashur’s blood. With the Wizards’ magic heightened, surely Mol Morin could lift the curse.

He was at the top of the tower now. The thick wooden door leading to Mol Morin’s alchemy room was ajar. Kashur peered through the crack. The grizzled old magicker was leaning over his scrying bowl, spying on the Elementals again. Did it never get old? Perhaps the old man treated it like birdwatching, except these birds were behemoths made of dirt and stone and barely ever made an appearance.

Spying on the Elementals always made Mol Morin sour, but oh well. No way out but through. Kashur pushed the door open and cleared his throat. Mol Morin didn’t move. Not a good sign. Kashur began humming a tune. He could always tell which songs Mol Morin preferred by the way the lines in his forehead softened between his bushy gray eyebrows. Sentimental old mushroom.

“What is it, Summoner?”

“At your service, Alchemist.” He made a flourishing bow. He’d been practicing doing it in a way that made his indigo cape swirl just so. It had taken a lot of practice.

“You disturb my work to tell me what I already know?”

Perhaps too much charm? Kashur joined his mentor at the scrying bowl. The shallow gold basin swirled with murky water, nothing more.

“The entertainment’s top notch today, I see.”

Mol Morin’s scraggly beard stretched into a frown. “I’m not in the mood today, boy. Out with it, or I’ll send you to the mud flats again for snails.”

“Fiery heavens, not that!” Kashur put a hand to his heart. Truth was, he hadn’t minded that assignment. The whole day he hadn’t used magic once, just his gloved hands plucking fat, sweet snails from the edges of tidepools while the sun baked the back of his neck and the old minstrel songs of his hometown rang out from his lips. It reminded him of long fishing days back before he’d joined the Arcane Sect. But it was not time for nostalgia. Kashur took a deep breath.

“A convergence is upon us, Sir. I was hoping...” He trailed off, transforming in a single, gut-wrenching moment from a powerful protector of the Wizards into nothing more than a wiry young man of 20 rotations with a well-documented disdain for authority asking for what basically came down to a favor. What if the old man said no? Kashur had left all other options behind him.

“Hoping what? Spit it out. I’m an Alchemist, not a mind reader.”

No way out but through.

He pulled himself together. “I was hoping we could try again, Sir.”

“Try what again?”

“To fix this.” He pulled off his gloves, letting them hang from their wrist straps, and splayed his fingers. While the rest of his skin was smooth and olive-colored, like that of his people from the northwest seashore, his hands were a splotchy pale pink, like he’d been soaking them in lye water.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“I still see ten fingers,” Mol Morin said, turning back to his scrying bowl.

So it was going to be like that, was it? If charm wasn’t going to work, Kashur would try a different tactic. He gritted his teeth and reached into his pocket bare-handed, retrieving the baby snail he’d tucked there. He thrust his fist over the scrying bowl and opened his palm, forcing the old man to watch as the snail grew and swelled before their eyes, peaking at the size and color of a ripe plum, then growing chalky and pale as it withered and finally grew still and dry in his hand. A lifetime in a matter of seconds.

Kashur closed his hand over the dead snail and shook it at the Alchemist. “I still have ten fingers, but look at what they do!”

The Alchemist snatched a beaker from the shelf and threw it to the ground, his face twisting. Kashur tried to step back, but the Alchemist’s hand shot out, and Kashur felt the tightness around his throat even though it was only a pillar of hand-shaped smoke.

“It is a great power you seek to simply throw away.” The Alchemist’s voice took on the throaty, echoing quality of material magic, not petty tricks; these were no snapping fingers.

Kashur squirmed and clawed at the smoky hand strangling him, but there was nothing to grasp. “If I wanted to destroy everything I touched, I would have become a dragoon!” he gasped.

“Your gift doesn’t always destroy. It also makes things grow.”

“Everything that matters doesn’t grow,” he choked, doubling down. “It ages.”

“It is too powerful to remove. We tried once before.”

Kashur took shallow breaths so he wouldn’t pass out before he said everything he had to say. “With the convergence... both our powers... will be at their peak. If there was... ever a time... to free me of this curse—”

“Stop calling it that.” The Alchemist dropped his hand, letting Kashur fall to a knee. “A curse is something that is done to you. This came from you. It is a part of you. Those are not so easily banished.” He paused. “And it makes you a valuable military asset to the Wizards, not to mention in the garden.”

Kashur got to his feet. “We’re at peace, Sir.”

“We may not always be.”

“We have been for centuries.”

“The past does not dictate the future.”

“Don’t do that. That’s not fair.”

“Nothing is fair.”

Kashur laced his fingers together as if in prayer. Sometimes he did the same thing in his small private chamber at night. It was a strange feeling—his two bare palms pressed together, his fingers interlacing. Every time he did it, it was a reminder that the only other skin he would ever touch again was his own. The only fingers that would ever lace with his were these.

“Please.” He was not too proud to beg. He was not too proud to do anything, come to think of it. “I’ve done everything you’ve said, Mol Morin. Everything you’ve asked of me.”

The Alchemist’s gaze softened. “And what will you do if we succeed?”

Kashur thought about the question as he slid his gloves back on. Would he go back to his parents’ home on the shore? Open the cupboard to smell the familiar spices? Hug his mother and tell her, again, how sorry he was? His presence might tax her ailing heart irreparably. His father might try to chop his hands off, like he’d threatened to on that first day when the curse made itself known. They would certainly send him away again.

Would he remain here serving as a Summoner? Perhaps he could take on a Disciple of his own. Or he could seek his fortune as a fisherman in a new town. Buy a boat; spend long days on the water, fall into a soft bed at night, muscles deliciously spent. Maybe there would even be a woman in that bed.

“I see,” the Alchemist said, as if Kashur had spoken these uncertainties out loud. “Have you considered that carving out this part of yourself might not be so simple? What else might it take with it? Everything has a purpose.”

I don’t care, he thought. I just want to be rid of it.

The sound of bubbling water pulled Kashur from his tangled thoughts. The scrying bowl! Inside, the waters boiled into the image of an Elemental rising up from the ground and towering over a small contingent of Imperials on a road. There were Elves, too—three of them crouching beside a broken carriage. The great behemoth roared soundlessly in the scene, its fist crashing down with chilling force.

Kashur pulse quickened. When an Elemental attacked, no good could come of it.

“Well, well,” Mol Morin mused. His hand closed over a metal compact on the shelf above him. “Prepare yourself for the portal, Summoner.”

“I thought we were talking about my curse.”

The corners of the old man’s mouth turned downward, brows knitting.

“Um, what I meant to say”—Kashur backpedaled—“is, where am I going, Sir?”

Mol Morin gave a weighted glance to the raging Elemental in the bowl. “There, of course. To find out what Mother Terris is so afraid of.”