Joshua focused on his breathing. In and out, he took in the air. With each breath, omena tingled on his lips. It was just as the savod had told him. It was the real magic of the world. It was the real power.

  Joshua sat near a small grove of trees. The savod had led him there for some privacy. It was not something he wanted to do with prying eyes watching. He waited in the shade, his legs crossed and his arms folded.

  Joshua reached out and touched the rough bark of one of the trees. Deep inside of it, the tingling presence of omena called out to him. It was everywhere. Joshua did not understand how the Tower could not see this.

  They only cared about their runes and the safe use of them. They would never be brave enough to reach out and touch this power. The old men could stay reading their tomes and studying runes all they wanted. This power was Joshua’s alone.

  “In the visions,” Joshua said. “It’s the crystal that you tried so desperately to hide from Sarrack.”

  “What are you then?” Joshua asked. “That other savod couldn’t speak our tongue. It seemed more beast than sapient.”

  Joshua wasn’t sure what it meant, but he wouldn’t get anything out of the savod that it didn’t want to share. He would just have to watch it carefully. He concentrated on his breathing again, adjusting back into the lesson.

  Joshua did as he was told, drawing the stray strands of power out from between the ridges in the bark. Grasping strings stretched out to his fingers slowly, molding into a ball. He pulled harder on the strands and finally their anchor broke. In moments, all of the strands coalesced in his hand.

  He ate it.

  His eyes snapped open. It was as if a fire burned inside him, and the flames coursed through every muscle. Joshua smiled as the effect faded. He couldn’t hold it as his eyes flitted over to the tree.

  It was white and withered now, only a shadow of what it once was. That was what omena was, the essence of all life. He had yet to see what affect omena loss would have on a human, but he didn’t want to imagine it.

  Richard’s word’s echoed in his mind, “The atrocities of magic are too great.”

  Joshua shrugged off the words. He refocused on the omena, letting it comfort him as he started back to camp. It circled through his body like a pulsing light, every heartbeat marking its passage through.

  Joshua stopped, looking around expectantly.

  Joshua did as the savod told him, walking back to the tree he had drained and finding a branch. There was one nearly as tall as he was. The gnarled ends made it unfit as a walking stick, though it was long enough for Joshua.

  Joshua held the branch in his hands and did as the savod told him. The strands of magic flew from his mouth and into the wood. As it did so, it changed the branch. The gnarled shape disappeared and a dark surface coated the branch.

  When he finished, the branch looked like a functional staff, though there was no head to it. Joshua rubbed his hands across its surface. It was smooth. There were no remnants of the branch’s rough bark.

  “I will.” Joshua licked his lips as he held the staff.

  It practically pulsed with power as he walked with it back toward the camp. It took a while for him to get used to walking with it, but before the sun finally set, he was able to keep in step without tripping. The feel of it in his hands told him that it was right for him. He was destined to have it.

  Night was out in all of its glory as he walked through the forest. He took his time on the way back. There was no reason to rush.

  He didn’t feel tired, not with all the possibilities before him. The omena had taken over the limb and given it entirely new properties. Joshua needed to know what else it could affect. He needed to know if it could take over other things.

  Like his arm.

  Joshua ran his hand up and down the gold wristband. He hardly thought about it anymore, but its mark on his skin was so much like what the omena had done to the limb. He needed to know what would happen if he infused other things with it.

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  He stopped, leaning his head against the staff. It felt warm to the touch, like a living thing. Joshua closed his eyes to the night, and did his best to focus. A faint breath seemed to rise and fall with his breath inside the staff.

  The first step was to breathe, that was the key to all magic, his instructor’s words rang hollow in his ears. Through breath, he unlocked the gateways to the four towers of stone, air, water and fire. By drawing the energy into his body, he could control its flow.

  All power came through the Tower. Any time he tried to control an element without a conduit, he risked losing control.

  There are only four elements, no more, no less. Each was a representative of the primal forces that made all things.

  Joshua wanted to laugh. The more he thought on the old rules, the more he was sure that they weren’t true. Omena was the key to everything, at least that was what the savod kept telling him over and over.

  Joshua looked down at his hand. Sprawled across it were the ends of his runes. He could still remember the day he first received the markings. To gain power he had to endure the searing touch of the brand.

  “How much did they choose to keep from me?” Joshua whispered to the night. “They knew of wizards and other powers, but they made me limit myself.”

  He didn’t know why they would do that. Surely, they wanted to get stronger, to be able to control anything they could. That was the driving force behind any person who studied magic. Anything else was just a lie.

  Yet, every time he thought of crossing the boundary and actually using what the savod tried to teach him, his master’s words rang in his ears. The rules he remembered were holding him back, and defying them was hard.

  A haunted howl echoed through the night air, interrupting his thoughts. It was just the lonely call of a wolf, or at least that’s what Joshua thought at first. Its fellows soon joined in from very close by.

  Joshua held his new staff tight; there was something wrong with the howls.

  More and more of their cries called out to the night, each one getting closer. They were all around the caravan. Joshua looked around until he found the origin of the howls.

  He ran for the camp, slipping into the firelight just as the cries reached his heels.

  A shadow flitted in the corner of his eyes. A second one flicked across the other side before he could turn his head. The darkness outside the caravan seemed to contain a host of shadows, all moving in a tightening circle.

  Then the first scream pierced the night.

  “Attack!” One of the guards yelled before he screamed.

  Joshua backed up into the crowd behind him. The men around him rallied, all groggily drawing their weapons as they rose from the ground. These men were used to suddenly rising in the night to fight off enemies.

  Yet, nothing could prepare them for the enemy they were to face.

  Joshua tried to gather up his courage, but he couldn’t step out of the crowd of men. Shadows crossed men like ghosts. Some of them fell to the ground, but most were able to defend themselves.

  Joshua could not bear it any longer. He summoned the flame to his hands in the old familiar way, drawing power through his runes. With three shots of the orange flame, he lit up patches of grass.

  The creatures were visible only in momentary flashes of light. In each fleeting moment, Joshua could see a wolf warped by darkness. Spindly tendrils danced as they raced past and gnarled exposed teeth flashed with every attack.

  Joshua trembled.

  The creatures weren’t natural. He quickly called the flame into his hand and stood ready to defend himself, even as the men around him fell to the creatures. A single brush against his leg forced him to turn, and meet the monsters.

  His flames illuminated the creature’s face clearly, as it stared at him with hollow grey eyes. What once was a proud wolf was now rotted and decayed, its body torn apart by the magic. Black tendrils writhed all down its back. The wolf was torn open at its spine. The darkness was all that held the wolf’s body together.

  Joshua recognized the magic. It was just like the savod, magic covered in the veil of night. That was why the wolf sat back watching him instead of attacking. It wasn’t some feral beast anymore.

  “Stop this,” Joshua whispered. “Send them away,”

  “What is that?” Joshua could not take his eyes away from the creature.

  “No, I won’t.” Joshua held the flame out, ready to fight the creature.

  “You’re not controlling them?” Joshua asked.

  Joshua didn’t trust the voices, but they had given him a peek at greater power. So far, they had done what they promised to do. He knew that he could not die without a fight. He still had much more to learn.

  “Do what you need to do,” he said.

  He didn’t feel anything at first, and truly, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He did his best to relax, only focusing on the creature that stared at him. Then a wave assaulted his mind. He nearly fell over from the sudden onslaught.

  It was as if a thousand cawing birds had taken up residence in his head. For a moment, his vision blurred, and he fought to maintain his balance. Even the flame in his hand went out as the savod took control.

  Then it was over and all was silent in his mind.

  Without any warning, the wolves retreated into the night. Only their howls remained. They fled from the camp and the mercenaries yelled in triumph. The fools didn’t know the truth, and Joshua knew he could never tell them.

  “What brought those things here?” Joshua walked away from the mercenaries, finding a measure of privacy behind a wagon.

  “And what happened when you invaded my mind?” Joshua only barely kept control of the tremble in his voice.

  As Joshua looked out from behind the wagon at the camp, he found that he couldn’t be sure of the savod’s words.

  Elise looked down at the chains that bound her wrists. She breathed in and out deeply, doing her best to keep calm. She didn’t have her armor or her sword right now. She couldn’t afford to lose her temper.

  Nell sat beside her in the cell, kneeling with her eyes closed. She hadn’t said anything since the magistrate had arrested them. Not even one word of reproach for Elise’s actions, even though Nell had told her not to chase Elaine inside the town.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me something?” Elise asked, resting her back against the wall.

  “Tell you what, captain?” Nell asked, not even opening her eyes.

  “That I made a mistake,” Elise said, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the cold stone. “That I was too focused on catching the traitor to think.

  “You hardly need me to tell you that, captain,” Nell said. “You know what happened just as well as I do.”

  “Nathaniel won’t be happy about it,” Elise whispered.

  “Nathaniel isn’t happy about anything,” Nell said.

  “Very true,” Elise said, laughing softly.

  The traitor would be well out of the five kingdoms by the time that the magistrate released them from the jail. Elise grimaced at the thought. It was very likely that they wouldn’t be able to catch up at that point.

  Which meant the best option was to return to Nethas in defeat. Elise grimaced at the bitter thought. She had failed, and Nathaniel would not be kind to a captain who couldn’t fulfill her duty.

  “We will have to go back to Nethas,” Nell said. “Nathaniel will get word of our failure and our arrest.”

  “Another time, I guess,” Elise whispered, thinking of Elaine.