The Mage From Nowhere, page 1
The Mage from Nowhere
By B.T. Narro
Legends of the Tainted:
Book 1
Copyright 2023 by B.T. Narro
Cover and Map by Beatriz Rare
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the copyright holder.
CHAPTER ONE
The cold wind nearly took Tarak off the edge of the mountaintop. He stumbled to a stop, managing to stay on his feet. Another freezing gust tore through him, sending him to his knees.
“I am damn well tired of this!” Tarak yelled to his father. “Either you tell me what I am to do up here, or I will climb down without you!”
His father stood tall, seemingly unaffected by the wind. He didn’t bother to help Tarak up.
“You will fall without my aid,” his father said. “You will die.”
“I may challenge you on that.” Tarak crawled over to the only protuberance on the flat mountaintop, a cluster of rock slabs that seemed as if they had been stacked and leaned against each other by the hands of man. He held onto the rough edge nearest to him.
“I cannot explain.” His father finally seemed troubled by the wind as he kept his body low and followed Tarak to the slabs of rock.
Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. Sleet pelted Tarak’s back as he took cover against the tall standing rocks.
“Fine! Fine! As long as you finish this fast!”
His father went around the side of the rocks and took hold of one large slab with his massive hands. He groaned as he pulled it away from the rest, creating an opening just large enough for Tarak to squeeze through.
“Walk inside,” his father instructed.
Tarak peered in cautiously. It was dark inside, but there seemed to be something within. It looked like a shimmering sphere of sorts but made from something intangible.
Sorcery, he figured. My father’s sorcery. What could he possibly want with this?
“Is this because you think me to be difficult?” Tarak asked rhetorically. “You would not consider me difficult if you left me alone—”
“I only wish to keep you safe,” his father interrupted. “This is the only way. I cannot explain more, or this will not work.”
His father was always cryptic, but this was different. There was desperation in his father’s tone that Tarak had not heard before. If Tarak was not mistaken, his father actually sounded worried.
“Because if you do explain,” Tarak realized, “then I will refuse to obey you.”
“Tarak, this is the only way. Walk inside.”
“If you will not explain, then you will have to force me, because—”
His father shoved him inside and pulled the slab of rock across Tarak’s only means of escape.
“He actually pushed me!” Tarak muttered to himself in shock.
His father had done a lot of disagreeable things, but pushing him was new. Light pierced through crevices of this enclave, reflecting off the sphere of sorcery. It was close enough for Tarak to reach with his hand if he was to lift his arm.
Unwilling to touch it but curious as to what it was, he moved his palm close to see what he might be able to feel.
Nothing.
Tarak’s father had implored Tarak to learn sorcery, claiming he would need it one day. Perhaps that day was today, and this was nothing but an annoying test.
Tarak had wanted to skip all the boring studying, the painful errant spellcasting, and the frustrating moments of near success that young sorcerers invariably went through. He had tried to convince his father to start with teaching him a real spell, an illusion, but his father said that could not be done.
Illusions were some of the most complicated spells to learn and even more difficult to maintain once successfully cast. Tarak needed to start with something simpler, like casting a spell of light.
Tarak had tried and failed, over and over, countless times. If he could not even make light, how could he ever hope to do anything more? Even fire and water were out of the question.
He had plenty of healthy hobbies to keep him busy while trying to avoid his father’s ineffective lessons. He frequented taverns to keep up his wit and charm. He never shied away from a fight, which kept his senses keen and his body in top shape. Both hobbies went hand in hand and were so exhausting that he often needed much of the day to rest and recuperate—another hobby—but he still managed to find time to chop down a few trees here and there. Always at night, of course. It had to be at night, and usually while drunk, incidentally, though chopping down trees while intoxicated didn’t go together as well as his other hobbies.
After he’d been felling trees for a couple years, the lord’s guardsmen had begun looking for the people responsible for the illegal logging. Little did they know that it was only one man responsible, a teen who needed coin because his father was stingy.
Tarak had a portion of his father’s strength, and a portion was enough to make a living his own way—without having to wake up early and report to anyone. His father didn’t approve, but then again, his father didn’t approve of just about anything he did.
This is not a test, Tarak thought. It is a punishment.
He tried to move the slab of rock blocking his exit, but it was far too heavy.
“Are you still out there, Caarda?” he asked.
“If you had kept up with your studies,” his father replied, “you would be able to sense I was here without asking.”
Tarak rolled his eyes. “My ears work just fine, though.” He looked back at the shimmering sphere. It took up nearly the entirety of the small space within these huge rocks.
“What in the hell are you?” he muttered to the sphere and gave it a poke. The edges rippled as if it was made of water, though he felt nothing on his finger.
“What do you want me to do with this?” Tarak called out. Caarda had mentioned earlier that this was the only way to keep Tarak safe, and his father was not someone who usually used tricks.
“Step inside,” Caarda replied.
“What have your siblings done now?” Tarak asked.
“Why do you think this has to do with them?” his father replied.
“Because everything always has to do with them. Mother’s dead because of them. No one can know we are related because of them. I have to learn sorcery because of them. Everything you do is because of them. You must be tired of it! I am, and I have not even met any of them!”
There was no reply for some time.
“You are correct,” Caarda said. “You are here because of them. However, you will not have to worry about them when you leave that place.”
“How is that possible?” Tarak yelled. “Am I supposed to suffer in here for years?”
Caarda had many siblings, all powerful, all narcissists. As strong as Caarda was, there was no way even he could fix all his siblings’ issues before Tarak starved to death in here.
“It will not feel long,” Caarda said. “I will see you shortly after you enter the sphere. Stay inside until I fetch you.”
It was years ago that Tarak realized there was no point in arguing with his father. Caarda was not someone whose mind could be changed. That was why Tarak started ignoring him instead. This, however, was not something that could be ignored.
Tarak let out a breath of defeat. “Fine.”
Steeling himself for what he might face, he walked into the sphere.
CHAPTER TWO
Besides noticing a bit of resistance as if he was moving his body into water, Tarak felt nothing else as he reluctantly entered the sphere. It was just as dark in here as in the rest of his small enclave. The air still smelled like dust. In fact, nothing seemed different at all! What was the point of climbing up a mountain and enduring freezing wind just to step into a sphere and feel nothing? It seemed idiotic.
His father was many things, but an idiot was not one of them. There had to be a point to this.
Tarak moved his arms around expecting minor resistance, at least. He was within a bubble of his father’s sorcery, after all. There must be something, anything.
There was not.
He could no longer hear the howling wind outside. In fact, he could hear nothing at all.
“Father?” he called.
There was no response.
Maybe he is right. I should learn some sorcery.
It wasn’t that Tarak was unmotivated. It wasn’t that he was lazy, either. It was that…well…perhaps it was laziness.
Normally Tarak had many excuses, such as his hobbies that kept him busy and how happy he was with his life. He didn’t need sorcery. He hadn’t before, at least. What had his father told him the other day?
“Hard work is laziness leaving the body, and you have not had a single day of hard work in your life. Your laziness accumulates like the poison you drink, but unlike ale it will not leave your body the next day. You are years of bad habits in the making. If you will not start to correct them now, it will soon be too late.”
Tarak was starting to realize that his father might be right. He never understood how someone could wake up and begin their day with work, only to end their day with work, sleep, and repeat it all over again. They must get used to it somehow.
Tarak never could do that, but at least he’d have some spells to show for his trouble by now.
Oh hell, is t his lesson actually working on me?
Before Tarak could mull that further, Caarda pulled away the stone covering the exit.
Caarda’s white robe still fell over the length of his body, though it was stained with blood and dirt. He was so damn tall that Tarak, who stood a head taller than most men, had to tilt back to meet his father’s eyes. The weather was oddly calm. Not a single gust of wind dared to disrupt them as Tarak stepped out from the alcove.
All clouds had disappeared from the sky. There was a fresh smell to the air. “Is it morning?” Tarak asked, noticing the sun on the eastern horizon.
“It is,” his father answered.
“I was in there all night?” Tarak asked in disbelief.
“You were in there for many nights.”
He felt a pit in his stomach. “How many nights…” Tarak grumbled fearfully.
“It would be easier to tell you in years.”
“Years?” Tarak yelled. He ran to the edge of the mountaintop. “Everything is changed!” Tarak no longer recognized the land below. What was once a small town was now a large city, surrounded by walls. Farms covered the land westward, thinning out along the edge of the forest. A large road flat and incredibly well-made seemed to stretch for miles, winding out of the large city and curving around the southern mountains.
“Lord and bane! How many years did you put me in there?”
“Anger makes you small, Tarak,” Caarda replied with maddening calm as he closed off the alcove. “Acceptance makes—”
“I will not listen to your nonsense right now! Tell me how many years I was in there!”
“I will tell you once you calm down. That is the only way you will accept your new fate.”
“I will not calm down! I will damn well shout until you tell me how many years I lost! Now say it!”
“Four hundred, Tarak.”
“What? Shut up!”
His father raised his eyebrows and turned over his hands. “Shut up?”
“You are making a jest, right? Four hundred?”
“Four hundred years have passed.”
“No,” Tarak muttered as he looked down off the mountainside once more. “It felt like moments. That cannot be possible.” But it must be. The land couldn’t have changed this much in a shorter time.
“I think you know by now I would never lie to you. There is no reason for it.”
Tarak’s moment of calm devastation ended as a new fit of rage came over him. He stomped back toward the alcove. “Send me back!” he demanded. “Send me back four hundred years!”
“That is impossible.”
Tarak ignored him as he tried to pull away the stone slab covering the opening, but it was far too heavy. Caarda stood nearby and folded his arms.
“You will do it!” Tarak demanded, still struggling to make a new opening to the alcove. “Damn this thing!”
“You are not listening. I said it is impossible.”
“You sent me forward, did you not?”
“No. Nobody, not even I, has that kind of mastery over time.”
“Then what did you do?”
Caarda’s honey-colored eyes sharpened. “If you had taken my lessons of sorcery with even a little bit of gravity, you would understand the capabilities but also the limitations of mana!”
“Anger makes you smaller, father,” Tarak replied.
“It is not anger but frustration that you are hearing. I have explained how to keep yourself safe, but you ignore every lesson. So I had to take drastic measures. I created a bubble of time that progressed at a fraction of the speed you are accustomed to. When you stepped inside, your time slowed as the rest of the world continued. Like time, it cannot be reversed.”
“I was not asked!”
“You would not have agreed. I saw the paths available to you, and I made a decision for your future.”
Tarak tossed up his arms. “I do not care if you thought this was best for me. Everyone I know is gone. My world has disappeared. I am an afterthought to what you find important.”
“You are not an afterthought. This is the best way to protect you.”
“But is it the only way?” Tarak challenged.
Caarda hesitated. “No. But it is the safest.”
Tarak shook his head and turned away.
Caarda continued, “You might have been killed had I not done this. I had to ensure you would live.”
“Who cares if I am alive if I have nothing to live for?”
“Tarak,” his father scolded. “You had nothing to live for anyway. Now you have a chance to remake yourself.”
Tarak gathered his thoughts. It took him a single breath to figure out what he wanted. Yes, he would punch his father. That was it.
No…that would not make him feel better. There was something else he could do.
He started to descend the mountain. “I will remake myself,” he called up as his father looked down upon him. “First by vowing never to speak to you again.”
“Tarak, of all the paths you could choose right now, this is the worst.”
He ignored his father as he looked for another foothold but found himself stuck. He glanced around and realized he had chosen an impossible way to get down from here. Grumbling a curse, he pulled himself back up.
“I want to hear nothing more from you.” Tarak swiped his finger in his father’s direction as he looked for a better place to descend.
“Tarak, stop.”
He ignored his father and found a place with more grooves along the mountainside.
“Stop!” Caarda boomed.
Tarak froze. The power of his father’s voice seemed to hold the mountain in its grasp. Of all the arguments they’d had, this was the first time Caarda had yelled.
“I will not allow you to kill yourself!” Caarda twirled his hand around, and Tarak felt weightless as he floated up from the mountaintop.
Caarda gave him a subtle push. Tarak descended like a feather, his father floating just beside him.
“We are leaving Dorrinthal,” his father informed. “I do not know what we will discover.” He paused, as if waiting for Tarak to respond, but Tarak refused to even look at him.
“If you are choosing to leave, then I choose to stay here.”
His father did not give reply.
They went down the mountain in silence and eventually landed at the bottom. The bubble of transparent sorcery around Tarak dissolved, and his father still hadn’t said a thing. Tarak finally glanced over to find Caarda with his eyes shut and his palms out. Caarda grimaced a few times.
He let out a groan, then a sigh. He opened his eyes.
“I have seen your path if you follow me. You will become someone great, though it will take time. But if you stay, Tarak…I cannot say what will happen. There is something unclear blocking the avenues of time—a force I cannot discern. Perhaps it is what the people have called a god, like your grandfather was. Now they refer to them more accurately as Ancients, and beings like me as Deviants. Or it could be something besides an Ancient or a Deviant, such as a cataclysmic event like what killed your grandfather. It will no doubt be dangerous.”
“I will be fine.”
His father frowned. “Because you plan to spend your days sleeping and your nights in the taverns.”
“Precisely.”
“Do not be a fool! You must involve yourself with the people—not the drunkards but the workers who supply your food, the combatants who keep the peace, and the sorcerers who maintain balance. I have imparted to you a gift. You are blessed with strength and the capability to learn great and powerful spells. I have seen them in your future. You need purpose, or you will never discover them.”
“Discover them? You must see how fathers usually behave toward their sons? They teach them.”
“Your failures are not my failures. You cannot separate from your family without accepting responsibility, or you will come looking for me only to find that I am not there.”
“I have had enough of your abstractions and more than enough of this conversation,” Tarak said. “Do not sire more children, father. Heed my advice.”
“I plan not to. I leave because there is little left I can do for Dorrinthal. I have convinced my siblings to leave with me, though all of us will go our separate ways. It is the best gift I can give to those who remain here, including you. There is a chance we may never see each other again. You might regret your actions if you end our time together in anger.”
