Elestar Ravencrest's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

The lessons began badly. Elestar sat Rowan on the tower steps and taught him to still his mind. But the boy's power leaked from him like heat from a fire. All morning, creatures crept from Darkwood toward the tower. A fox with silver eyes. A pair of moss-backed toads. Elestar spoke soft words to each and turned it home. The work drained him. For every creature he calmed, two more slipped from the trees. "Stop reaching," Elestar said. "You pull them without knowing." "I'm not reaching." Rowan's jaw was tight. "They just come." That was the trouble. The boy's gift ran on its own, past any leash. By midday a stag stood at the tree line with antlers of bone-white thorn. It pawed the ground and lowered its head. Elestar raised his hand to soothe it. He was too slow. The stag charged. Elestar shoved Rowan behind him and threw up a ward. The stag struck it and staggered back, then wheeled and crashed into the wood. The old wizard's arms shook. He could not keep this up. One creature would come that no ward would hold. So he chose a different path. "You called them," he told Rowan. "You will send them back. Together." He knelt behind the boy and set both hands on his shoulders. "Feel where the pull comes from. Then push instead. Like water finding low ground. Do not fight it. Turn it." Rowan closed his eyes. Elestar felt the boy's power rise, wild and huge. He guided it as his farmer teacher once guided him. Not against the current. With it. Rowan breathed out. The pull reversed. Every creature at the tree line turned at once and melted into Darkwood. The clearing went still. Rowan opened his eyes. "It worked." "For now." Elestar's relief lasted one breath. Hoofbeats came up the track. A nobleman rode into the clearing with three guards. His cloak was mud-splashed, his face grim. Behind him rode a greying knight in silver armor, a matching sword at his hip. "You keep this tower?" the nobleman asked. He did not wait for an answer. "Grain is gone from my villages. Cattle too. A family will starve this winter." The knight swung down. "We tracked the thief here." He set something on the ground. A tuft of coarse black fur, half fur and half scale. "No beast I know grows this." Elestar's stomach dropped. He had felt this shape before, three nights past. A pull deeper than the rest, gone before he named it. Not a stag. Something the boy had summoned and lost. He looked at Rowan. The boy stared at the black fur and said nothing. His silence was answer enough. "We will hunt it down," the knight said. "Every field until we do." Elestar had stopped the creatures at his door. But one had already slipped past him, into the world, wearing his apprentice's careless magic.