This time, Denor returned to the village with a sense of calm. Why rush? It was unlikely that Litarn would crawl out of his dungeon and chase after him. And if he did, what would it take to deal with a frail old man? Surely all this talk of powers was bluster, and he used his henchmen for his bidding instead. It would be even better to face him here, one on one, away from the villagers, rather than flinching every time he felt the scorching gaze of Litarn's eyes. But the sorcerer wouldn't fight openly; no, he'd strike from the shadows, like a viper lurking in tall grass. Though the proverbial viper really wouldn’t appreciate the snow-covered hills it would have to crawl across in order to find any tall grass to lurk in for the sake of an analogy.

This was all assuming that Sulas was overselling just how evil the sorcerer was. He wouldn’t fly out of his lair and murder the entire village, right?

Right?

The boy walked slower as this realisation started to dawn. Trying to calm his racing singular thought that consumed his entire brain capacity, and instead free up some space to decide what to do next, he tried to weigh his options: Forget and give up, as Sulas had urged him? Even if he wanted to forget, those poison-filled eyes of the sorcerer would remind him every day. There was no way the sorcerer would leave him alone. Should he talk to Hevath again? Hevath would probably accuse Denor of slandering and insulting the man’s memory, since Sulas had died a glorious death on the battlefield, mid-pun. Should he tell someone else? Only boys younger than him might believe in this black sorcery, and only because they had large imaginations. Denor's fists would soon show them who was lying and who was telling the truth, as everyone knew that the man with the strongest fists was always telling the truth. Besides, what good were they, these curious youngsters? If Charan were alive, he would believe him. They always trusted each other with half a word, half a glance, and in Denor’s case, half a thought. Together, they would surely come up with something, even if he was a zombie!

Denor made decisions quickly. It wasn't in his young nature to think, weigh, and consider things for long. Once he made up his mind, he acted on it immediately, consequences be damned! The sorcerer Litarn couldn't be killed until they found where he hid the sparks he had stolen? Fine! They would just have to find those sparks—and as soon as possible. The best time was tonight.

A plan formed in Denor's head at glacial speed. He clearly needed an ally. After some detailed consideration where he picked the first person that came to mind, Podrig became the target of his attentions. Confirming our hero’s lack of thought, this was also the boy who lived next door. Podrig was like most boys in the village and didn’t care for Denor, but he had a vivid imagination and was utterly curious, if Denor confided in him then he had no doubt the younger boy would obey any command without question.

That’s right, Denor was the older boy that parents disapproved of due to being a Bad Influence.

As soon as it got dark, Denor lured Podrig out of his house and spent a long time whispering instructions to him. The task Denor assigned wasn't difficult, but he repeated it several times to make sure Podrig understood, glaring sternly into the boy’s wide, devoted eyes. Those wide eyes made it obvious exactly how malleable he was.

“You want me to what?” Podrig asked, his voice tinged with a mix of incredulity and resignation.

Denor, with his usual earnest look in his eyes, repeated his plan, as if it made perfect sense. “Pretend to be sick. Really sick. You know, like you’re turning into a frog or something.”

Podrig blinked. “A frog? Why a frog?”

“Because it’s dramatic,” Denor explained, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “And Litarn, the evil sorcerer, won’t suspect a thing. While he’s busy trying to cure you, I’ll sneak into his home and, um, sort of…liberate a few things.”

Podrig sighed. “And what if he doesn’t fall for it?”

“Then you’ll just have to improvise. Think of it as acting. You always said you wanted to be an entertainer. Besides, you don’t have to pretend to be a frog, just act sick!”

“I said I wanted to be an entertainer, not blasted to pieces by an evil sorcerer,” Podrig muttered.

“I’ll get you a blaster from my father’s stock if you do it,” Denor replied, wiggling his eyebrows in a fashion he hoped would seal the deal.

“No fooling? An actual blaster?!” Podrig replied, clearly convinced, but Denor was already marching away, completely ignoring the ramifications of giving a small child a dangerous weapon.

Litarn, as had been established already, was a sorcerer of the old school. He dressed in robes embroidered with arcane jewels and had a beard that could house a family of sparrows. He also had a temper that could boil an egg at twenty paces, which is a handy skill in a chef but not so much in his current line of work. This would have given Denor cause for concern had he cared remotely for the wellbeing of Podrig, who as instructed had now begun to groan theatrically.

“Ooooh, my stomach! I think I’m falling deathly ill!” He threw in a ribbit for good measure, which confused his parents even further.

As with most meticulously crafted plans of young boys, it was destined for abject failure.

The village had fallen into a serene sleep, but this was pierced by a child's screams erupted from inside one of the houses. The thick walls and roof covered in dense solar corrugation couldn't muffle the sound, which was guaranteed to anger adults within a two mile radius.

Podrig was doing a splendid job. He screamed and writhed on his bed as if large rats were fighting inside him. His frightened mother could barely understand through the howls and sobs that his stomach hurt, and not just hurt but cut, burned, and stung so badly that he couldn't bear it. The concerned woman tried putting ice on his stomach, then gently stroking him and talking to soothe the pain, but Podrig didn't let up. On the contrary, he began thrashing and bouncing on the skinny mattress like a fish being fried alive. His awakened and irritated father finally had it suggested to him that he go out to fetch the healer before the boy's soul left his writhing body. Like many fine fathers, he was more annoyed than concerned, proving that Podrig was a serious drain. Nevertheless he sleepily agreed. The mother bristled at this inaction, and insisted she do it herself, since the man would probably mess it up somehow. This explained their relationship quite nicely in a single paragraph, since it was clearly a decidedly important part of this interstellar opus.

Throwing a coat over her shoulders, the mother rushed to Litarn's hut, and straight past stealth-master extraordinaire Denor Kara, who couldn’t have made it more blatantly obvious that he was both hiding and culpable. All he needed now was a big red arrow saying ‘guilty party’ above his head.

As soon as the woman ran out of the gate, Denor, who had been watching everything from his fence, slipped through their door, pretending to be an alarmed friend awakened in the middle of the night. He wasn’t a convincing actor, but Podrig’s father wasn’t in the mood for caring about things right now.

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“Keep shouting!” he whispered, bending over the boy. “And don’t you dare stop until I come back and whistle three times under the window.”

He heroically punched the small child in the stomach while the father wasn’t looking, hard enough that poor Podrig howled even louder, and genuine tears rolled down like peas from his tightly shut eyes.

Jumping out into the yard with the grace of a felled Aurox, Denor hid behind the thick growth of juniper, just five steps from the gate, despite living next-door and having a perfect alibi for being there. Soon, Podrig’s mother rushed past him, quick and breathless and there stood Litarn, looking as if he had just been interrupted from some extremely evil business. “What’s this, then?” he snarled.

"My husband will repay you well of course," the woman repeated, breathless with concern. "He screams as if someone is cutting him from the inside... the best you can choose... my poor sweet boy..."

Denor caught snatches of the conversation as he resumed crouching behind the rather unconvincing shrub in the front garden of Podrig’s house, his curiosity piqued and his legs slowly going numb. He had planned to immediately sprint off to Litarn’s house, but the sight of Plumela dragging the clearly frazzled sorcerer had caught his attention.

Before stepping into the odious abode from which the noise eminated, Litarn stopped and looked back. Denor involuntarily curled into a ball. It seemed that the old man’s evil eyes saw as well in the dark as in the light. He felt a wary spark under those ragged eyebrows as Litarn’s gaze wandered over the bushes where Denor was hiding with all the stealth of a charging rhinoceros in an open field. For a moment, Denor almost abandoned his quest, but then he scolded himself, spurring himself on like a hesitant stallion, calling himself a coward for even thinking of deviating from this, his most meticulous and masterful of plans.

Denor had forgotten that Plumela was a formidable woman and the head of all the local events organised, including last night’s festival. She had a voice that could strip paint from walls and a single-mindedness that would put most hobbyists to shame. This worked in his favour immensely, as this was the one woman that Litarn was quick to obey without question in order to maintain his reputation. Today, she was wielding both aspects of her character with the malice of a freshly-woken mother as she had practically dragged the sorcerer to her doorstep, before banging it with a fist that looked ready to knock it clean off its hinges.

“Husband! Open up! I have acquired Litarn!” she proclaimed, like the evil sorcerer was some kind of useful accoutrement.

The door creaked open, revealing Podrig’s father in all his mousey, disheveled glory. His beard was even more unkempt than usual, and his wincing face looked like he had recently been through a small explosion. This was mostly due to the nature of their marriage, rather than any immediate plight that had befallen them. If you marry wrong in a small village, the plight is permanent.

“Thank goodness you’re back, dear,” he said, clearly not pleased at either having to deal with Podrig alone or the return of his battleaxe of a wife.

Plumela ignored her husband and turned to the sorcerer. “My son is in agony! He’s been screaming for ages, and none of the usual remedies have worked. You’ve got to help him!”

Litarn peered over Plumela’s shoulder at Podrig, who was indeed wailing at the top of his lungs, clutching his stomach and writhing on the ground. The noise was impressive, even by the boy’s excessively loud standards.

“Looks like he’s just got a stomach ache,” Litarn muttered, clearly unimpressed. “Have you tried giving him some peppermint tea?”

Plumela drew herself up to her full height, which was quite formidable even without the furious glint in her eye. “Do I look like an idiot, Litarn? Of course I’ve tried peppermint tea! And chamomile! And some of that horrid stuff Thysil swears by, made from boiled onions and Tamet knows what else!”

Denor, peeking through the leaves, stifled a giggle. Thysil was the local herbalist and the sorcerer’s main competition, but her remedies were infamous, mostly for their ability to make anyone forget their original ailment in the face of such foul concoctions.

Litarn sighed deeply, as if the weight of the world rested solely on his shoulders. “Very well, I shall see to the boy. But if this turns out to be nothing more than indigestion from eating too much festival fare, I shall be most displeased.”

Denor shuddered at the reluctant yet agreeable act that the sorcerer was putting on, it all felt so hollow now that he knew the truth of the man.

Litarn allowed himself to be dragged inside, and Denor, driven by a mix of curiosity and stupidity, crept closer to the open door to listen instead of enacting his bold plan. The time-sensitive plan. The plan that he most definitely had to get on with.

Inside the dimly lit room, Litarn was already muttering incantations and waving his hands over Podrig, who continued to howl with impressive vigor. Plumela stood nearby, her arms crossed and her expression one of grim foreboding of disapproval to come.

“Hmm,” Litarn said after a moment, peering at the boy with a more serious expression. Denor fully expected him to see through the tomfoolery, but blinked at the man’s response.

“It seems he has indeed been cursed.”

Plumela’s eyes widened. “Cursed? By whom?”

“That,” Litarn said, straightening up with a look of satisfaction, “is the question, isn’t it? But never fear, I have just the thing to break a curse of this nature. Hold still, boy.”

Denor watched as Litarn produced a small vial from his robes and poured a few drops of a shimmering liquid into Podrig’s mouth. There was a moment of tense silence, followed by a sudden, ear-piercing scream from the boy.

And then, just as suddenly, the screaming stopped. He lay still, his eyes wide and blinking up at the ceiling.

Denor only now realised that he needed to be very far away from this house. If his functioning brain cells had arms, they’d be giving him a very sarcastic slow clap.

“Better?” Litarn asked, though his tone suggested he was only mildly interested in the answer.

Podrig nodded, looking slightly dazed. “I feel... fine. Hungry, actually.”

Plumela let out a breath she’d clearly been holding for hours. “Thank you, Litarn. Really, thank you.”

Denor, his curiosity satisfied and his legs now completely numb, began to carefully extricate himself from the nearby surroundings.

With his botched plan buying him scant minutes, he dashed to the sorcerer's home, trying to move silently and swiftly, like the shadow of a bird in flight.

He thought he was undetectable, but it was a genuine lack of interest from everyone around that prevented him from being sighted.

In Andronian villages of such a small size, they did not know what door locks and bolts were, so Denor entered the rather spacious and prosperous abode freely and looked around. Luckily for him, there were a series of full moons; their well-polished silver shields loomed in a small window, filling the room with a gentle ghostly light. He tried to act as quickly as possible, but without fuss. Sparks... sparks of life... It was unlikely that the old man would store them out in the open. No, better not to touch things on his desk, he’d know that someone had been here. It was also unlikely that sparks would be stored in a wooden casket, as they would burn through oak or pine too.

Yes, at this point Denor had taken them literally, and assumed he want hunting for actual physical sparks.

Just in case he was improbably correct, he opened the casket, abandoning all pretence of subtlety and hacking off the simple lock with a nearby handy knife of Litarn’s. Inside, he found dried and twisted snake skins, shiny beetle pieces, fragile bird bones... It was a very odd collection. Having rifled through everything he could find on the walls, on the benches, and on the floor, the boy stopped in confusion, which to be fair to Denor was his default state at the best of times.

An unpleasant thought struck him: what if Litarn stored the stolen sparks in the same dungeon where his silent slaves toiled? Underground was certainly safer than in a hut without a lock. What a fool he was...

“I swear by Tamet, I’m a complete fool!” the boy exclaimed sadly, forgetting about caution yet again and showing a rare glimmer of self-awareness in the process.

“That’s for sure: you’re a complete fool, and a brazen thief at that!” a well-known voice, vibrating with sweet gloating, responded from the door.

In the moonlight, with his flaming eyes and excitedly trembling limbs, the old man looked very little like a man. More like some kind of swamp demon or cave spirit that had crawled out towards the warm smell of the living. A demon that was filling his lungs as Denor stared at him with a gormless expression.

“Thief!” Litarn shouted, this time at the top of his voice.

It seemed strange that such a full-bodied, wall-shaking roar could come from a frail and bent body. “Hey people, wake up! Here! Come here quickly! A brazen thief has broken into my house! Grab him!”