Dark Son
an excerpt

Excerpt

Not even the evening breeze could quell the fierce heat of the Khandoran Desert. Wave upon wave of burning sand dunes shimmered like reflected water and sucked the air dry as night fell. Bright stars dragged themselves up from the eastern horizon and wheeled across the heavens, blazing their arrival against a dark velvet backdrop and trumpeting their march across the sky with fiery trails of sliver dusted comets.

In the centre of a verdant hollow, a grand white tent sat snugly tucked into the corner of an oasis. A collection of smaller tents, red and yellow and the clearest blue were pitched between stands of palms. In another half turn night would descent, banishing the heat of day with the chill of a desert night.

Nothing moved; it was too hot to move. Even the camels hid their eyes behind slitted lids. They sat still as shadows in the shaded area between the well and small wooded copse.

Inside the tents, figures slumbered, comfortable in the magically cooled air. The barrier glimmered, rebuking the heat as a parent would their child, castigating the element for invading the freshness within. Like a slinking dog, the heat curled away, tail between its legs and burst from the tents directing its attention to the outside instead.

At last, a spritely zephyr slid across the bare sand, pausing to swipe across the faces of the camels; rousing their eyelids awake before it whistled around the oasis pushing back the heat. It skirled into the tents, bid the people inside a welcome and settled in the large white one, slipping between the barrier to nestle at the foot of a sumptuously slung hammock.

The man cracked open an eye and rolled over yawning before spying the zephyr. He sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes.

‘What is it, Wisp?’ he murmured swinging his legs to the ground. His white robe fell open and the little wind brushed up against him, tickling the hairs on his chest. The man smiled and pulled the robe shut.

‘You spoil my fun, Jason,’ Wisp said in a distinctive feminine voice. ‘You know how much I love doing things like that to you.’

‘If you were truly whole, perhaps it wouldn’t feel so much like a tickle and more like a caress,’ Jason laughed in reply.

‘Oh, Master. If caresses are what you want, I can give you the best...’

‘No!’ Holding his hands up, the disciple chuckled. ‘The last time you did that I couldn’t stop laughing for hours. I don’t think the message you carry me from the Mistress calls for hilarity.’

There was a pause, then a sigh. ‘I suppose you’re right, Master. The witch doesn’t like laughter; she loves to hear pain and suffering. How can she extract pain and suffering from a wind, Jason? But she does, she loves to see me suffer.’

The disciple frowned. How indeed, but Wisp was an elemental and as such she could be controlled by the witch. The cheerful little wind had been bagged by the Mistress several years ago and was summoned whenever the woman needed to send messages, which of late was quite often. Jason liked the air elemental immensely and would spend hours with her chatting.

‘So, what’s the message?’ he asked running fingers through his mane of dark golden hair.

‘The witch says; you’re late. You should have been here days ago. I don’t like having to wait, so get here before the sun sets in the morrow.’

The disciple was astounded how much like the witch the little wind could sound. He chuckled at the impersonation, then frowned at the message. It didn’t leave him much time. He hadn’t planned on getting to the temple before the day after, now he would have to beat time and travel through the night.

Disgruntled, but resigned to do the Mistress’ bidding, Jason shambled over to a copper basin in the corner of the tent and filled it with fresh cool water from a beaker. He dropped his robe and began wiping his body with a cloth.

His robe ruffled when Wisp became entangled in it, sliding through the cloth and making little sighing sounds.

‘What are you doing, Wisp?’ he said frowning at the wind.

The zephyr rose above the ground. ‘Taking in all your scents, Master. Your smell excites me.’

Perplexed by the zephyr, Jason rinsed the cloth out watching Wisp shimmer in front of him.

‘Excites you? The smell of a pile of camel’s dung would excite you, little wind,’ he laughed.

Wisp appeared to screw up her nose of which Jason was amazed. He had never seen a wind with so many expressions. In fact, he had never before meet a wind with any expressions let alone one who could talk. Wisp was an elemental with unique powers and Jason thought she probably had the sentiments close to a human, if that was at all possible.

‘Wisp, can you take a more solid form?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure, Jason. I’ve often wondered...especially when I’m...’ she trailed off leaving Jason to wonder what she was about to say.

The tent flap was pulled back and a wallah, one of the witch’s men walked into the tent.

‘Disciple, we travel this night?’ he inquired.

Jason looked over and nodded his head. ‘Yes, Benjih. Rouse the camp, we go when Arion rises above the horizon.’

The man bowed and left the tent.

The disciple quickly dressed, pressing any dust or smudges from his robe with a bit of sha and donning a light cotton shift beneath the gleaming white robe. Around his head he wrapped a white cotton strip and wound it carefully about his neck so he could pull it up at any time to keep dust out of his face. In the corner of the tent leaned his blonde ash staff crowned with a carved Mythral cap. The beautiful ash trees only grew near the plains surrounding the academy and were white as alabaster.

Trailed by Wisp, the disciple walked outside and turned towards the great tent. He exerted his sha and felt all the magical barriers throughout the tents unbind, then watched his tent folded itself away until it was a compact pouch no larger than a small pack. He picked it up and went across to where the camel handlers were releasing the animals from their pickets. He handed the pack to one of the handlers and stood surveying the sky. Arion, a milky orb dusted lightly by clouds, was rising above the eastern horizon. Nearer, the sand dunes were a reminder of the harsh heat the desert could become to the unwary. In the day it was foolish to travel and resulted only in death. At night a different kind of death awaited. Sinkholes could swallow up whole caravans in the blink of an eye and a missed turn could have them without water. It was easy to turn an element into another type of element, such as to make hot water cool, but it was a different matter to make water where nothing existed before.