A Mischievous Tale of Magical Mayhem

5 | Connections and Confrontations

Tallon didn't sleep.

After Ben drifted off, Tallon held him close while Maisie tended to the animals and cooked up a pot of stew. When he tried to sit up, she pointed her ladle at him. "Don't you do it, m'lord. You've scared us enough!"

She turned away and ducked over the cooking pot, shaking with repressed sobs.

"Maisie, I'm sorry," he whispered.

She wiped her face and sniffed. "Ye should've told us you were ill. If not as our friend, then at least as... a... a master so we could help yer sorry arse!"

His father's words too recent for his liking, Tallon flinched. Then, he carefully shifted and moved Ben off his chest. Maisie had lain out the bedrolls, hung her soaked garments to dry beside the fire, and had done all the chores by herself.

Tallon remained in his wet clothes, aware of his trousers clinging to his buttcrack. Ben was also soaked, yet slept on unperturbed.

"How long was I out?" Tallon asked, kicking off his muddy boots and peeling his socks off each pruned foot..

"'Bout four hours, m'lord. Just when I thought ye'd died, Ben went into a sort of fit. Ye stayed that way at least an hour. Ye woke up for a minute 'fore ye went to sleep again, but yer breathin' was normal after that, so I didn't bother ye."

Spooning seasoned herb broth into a tin bowl, she handed the mug to Tallon, then fetched a blanket to drape over his shoulders as he removed his soaked tunic. "Ye should eat and rest up, m'lord."

Sipping his broth, Tallon shook his head and shuddered. "I can't sleep after that. I don't think I can ever close my eyes again."

Sitting on her own bedroll, Maisie drew her legs up and wrapped her blanket tighter around herself. "What happened?"

Scamp roused and crawled into Tallon's lap. As she licked his hand, an image of himself lying in the mud played inside his mind. Then he saw Ben over him, wielding magic so naturally it was like breathing.

Who is he? He wondered. Or rather, what? He'd noticed the wrongness the moment he'd set foot in Deadwood. A malevolent presence called from the easterly direction, growing louder the longer he listened.

"Something is leeching my life force through my magic." Running a hand through his tangled hair, Tallon inhaled deeply. "What destroyed the original college? Did Raebel ever tell you?"

Blushing as she often did when Raebel's name came up, Maisie shed the blanket and rose to stoke the fire.

"Aye, she spoke of it, when she'd had too much ale and got 'erself worked up."

"She was part of the old college?" Tallon asked. He hadn't thought she could be more than thirty.

Maisie snorted. "No, that was long afore her time. But what happened there is like a warnin', an' some at the new college en't heedin' it."

She crouched and poked at the fire, sending up a little stream of sparks.

"I don't understand the half of it" she continued, "but the old college wasn't just for alchemy, but for all sorts of magical arts. Summoning, elementalism, healing—you name it. According to Raebel, the motto was 'knowledge above all,' and there were no restrictions on what scholars could pursue. There was a faction there that got deep into dangerous shite—in over their heads, as it were—and one of their 'speriments went... wrong."

Maisie set aside the stick she'd been using as a poker and shuddered.

"Raebel says she doesn't know the specifics, buta lot of people died—most of the scholars working on the 'speriment, and a bunch who got sick after. The land's been like this ever since: withered and haunted, and worse the closer to the old college you get."