A Mix of Magics (Arucadi: The Beginning Book 3) Read online

  A MIX OF MAGICS

  ARUCADI, BOOK 3

  E. ROSE SABIN

  ARUCADI ENTERPRISES, LLC

  2019

  A MIX OF MAGICS

  E. ROSE SABIN

  ©2014

  Reprinted 2019

  ARUCADI ENTERPRISES, LLC

  COVER ART BY IGOR DEŠIĆ, ©2018

  https://igordesic.artstation.com/

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ASIN: B00NO94CAI

  ISBN: 0692295054

  ISBN-13: 978-0692295052 (Arucadi Enterprises)

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  A GOOD IDEA

  LETTERS

  PORT-OF-LORDS

  PREPARATIONS

  NAMING-DAY

  LOSS

  SEPARATION

  DISASTERS

  SEARCH

  ERRANDS

  PERSUASION

  THREATS AND RESOLUTIONS

  LIES AND TRUTHS

  GATHERING

  WATER

  CONFUSION

  TEARS AND TRIALS

  SMALL VICTORIES

  WIND AND SAND

  SO MANY DEATHS

  EXCHANGE

  HOPE

  FINAL BATTLE

  A MEETING OF THE GIFTED

  EXCERPT: DENIABLY DEAD

  PROLOGUE

  When he first came to the land, its bounty had satisfied his physical hunger. Heavily laden fruit trees offered tasty fruit the year round. He could gather an abundance of nuts fallen beneath the caronut trees. The fish in the stream were easily trapped. After he learned to make a fire using sticks and dry leaves, he feasted often on baked fish, roasted apples or peaches, and caronuts that burst from their shells when placed on the embers. Later he learned to trap and skin small game such as rabbits and squirrels to vary his diet.

  The meadows and hills were fair with wild flowers the year round. They swayed in a gentle breeze sweet with their perfume. White clouds drifted gracefully across a calm blue sky. Birds sang from the trees; butterflies drank nectar from the blossoms.

  With the passing of the years, the hot wind of his anger blew across the land, withering the fruit trees, making barren the nut trees, turning the flowering meadows to fields of sharp, sword-like grasses and then to stubble. The stench of decay replaced the fresh scent of blooming trees and plants. A pall of dust choked the air.

  Game became scarce and fish avoided his traps. He grew gaunt with hunger But the land proved bountiful in another way. It provided him with plenty of time to practice magical arts, to test his abilities, to experiment and hone his power. And the less it fed his physical hunger, the more the land fed his rage.

  Soon, very soon he would have the power to flee this lonely land and return from whence he came.

  Then he would hunt down those who exiled him here and he would take his revenge.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A GOOD IDEA

  Veronica slammed into the house and threw her schoolbooks onto a convenient winged-back armchair. She stormed through the sitting room and into the dining room beyond it. “Aunt Kyla,” she called. “Aunt Kyla, where are you?”

  “In the kitchen,” came the answer.

  She found Kyla, her guardian and honorary aunt, seated at the kitchen table, staring at a paper.

  “Aunt Kyla, I can’t stand that school another day! Pleeeease, you have to let me quit. Aunt Abigail and Aunt Leah can teach me like they used to. I learn more from them than I do from the stupid teachers at the stupid school. All the kids hate me. They make fun of my red hair and how short I am and they say I do funny things. If they only knew! But I haven’t done anything to them. I swear I haven’t. Not since I—”

  Kyla had turned toward her halfway through her diatribe, and Veronica finally noticed her red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

  “Aunt Kyla, you’re crying! What’s wrong? You’re not upset with me, are you?”

  “No, no. I’ve just gotten very sad news.” She swept her hand across the paper she’d been staring at.

  “What is it? What’s the news?”

  “This letter,” Kyla said. “It’s from Lisbet’s parents. You know the letter I wrote telling them of her death and asking them if they could come here for their grandchild. This is their answer.” With thumb and forefinger as though touching something vile, she picked up the single sheet of plain white stationery and read from it. “We want nothing to do with the bastard child. You may drown it in a bucket if you wish. So far as we are concerned, we had no daughter, and most certainly we have no grandchild.”

  “How awful!” Veronica gasped, her own troubles forgotten. “As sweet as Lisbet was, how can her parents be so mean?”

  Kyla shook her head. “It’s the prejudice we too often encounter against the gifted,” she said.

  “But their own daughter! And a granddaughter they don’t even want to see. That’s so hateful.”

  “It’s more fear than hate, I think,” Kyla said. They’re afraid of what they don’t understand.”

  “Yes, I guess it’s that way with the kids at school. But they aren’t that bad. The kids can be mean, but they don’t want to kill me or anything. At least, I don’t think they do. But will they just get worse as they grow up?”

  “They will if they don’t learn any different. But they can learn—from you. If they see that there’s nothing to fear from you, they may also decide there’s no reason to hate you. Let’s hope so.” Kyla picked up the letter and shook it. “But the question we have to answer right now is what we’re going to do about the baby.”

  “We can raise her, can’t we?” Veronica asked eagerly. “Now that you found someone to nurse her, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Kyla sighed. “It’s a bigger problem than you realize. I have no experience taking care of a baby. Neither do Abigail and Leah, even if they could be persuaded to move back in with us. And Mayzie can’t stay here all the time. Her husband wouldn’t like that, and her little boy wouldn’t either. Bennie needs his mother. Mayzie’s only hired to nurse the baby. She will have to spend a lot of time here for a few months, but as the baby gets older and starts sleeping through the night, Mayzie won’t have to stay nights and can even go home now and then during the days.”

  “Well, but we’ll be here,” Veronica objected.

  “You’ll be in school most of the day,” Kyla reminded her. “And I have the responsibility of guiding the Community and teaching the new members to use their powers. Anyway, a baby needs a mother and a father, not a bunch of aunts.”

  Veronica subsided into thoughtful silence, brooding over what Kyla had said. Inspiration struck and she looked up, wiggling with excitement. “I have it!” she said. “You can write to Ed and Marta and tell them about the baby. They’d be the perfect parents for her.”

  Kyla thought in silence a few moments, considering. Then she smiled at Veronica. “You know,” she said, “I think you’re right. That would give me the reason I need to bring Marta and Ed here to Port-of-Lords.” She rubbed her hands together and beamed. “Yes, that would solve several problems. It’s a very good idea.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  LETTERS

  Marta had only to finish the Janlon baby’s white silk naming-day dress and she’d have completed all her current commissions. She gazed pensively at the sewing machine Ed had bought her with his earnings as a hansom driver and smiled, knowing how proud it had made him to purchase it for her. This work, though, was too delicate
to be done by machine. She took a seat by the front window and commenced hand-stitching lace to silk by the light of the afternoon sun. As she drew her needle gently through the delicate lace, carefully attaching it to the underlying silk, she thought how wonderful it would be to make a dress like this for an infant of her own. A pang of sorrow accompanied the thought. The only flaw in her marriage to Ed Robbins was her failure to conceive a child.

  She and Ed had done well settling here in Sharpness. The town had proved hospitable, its people friendly. They’d found jobs quickly, and their new neighbors welcomed them without prying into their backgrounds. So they’d stayed, and for the first time in her life, Marta felt that she belonged. Only the lack of a child kept her happiness from being complete.

  The window gave her a clear view of the walkway up to her house. She was intent on her sewing when she heard a cheery whistle and looked up to see Ed’s cab and horse by the hitching post and Ed walking briskly toward the house. Quickly she put the silk and lace aside and rose to greet him.

  He saluted her with a smile and a tender kiss. “Not much business this afternoon,” he said, hanging his cap on the hat rack by the door. “I thought I’d come home and get an early supper. I’ve promised to drive the Kramers to Essell this evening for a lodge meeting.”

  “I wish you’d told me,” Marta said, breathing in the warm, horsy scent that always clung to him. “I don’t have anything ready.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t need much. I’ll be invited in for a share of the buffet after the lodge meeting. A bit of smoked ham on a slice of the bread you baked yesterday will hold me till then.”

  She laughed and kissed his cheek. “You’re easy to please,” she said. “But you’ll be home late, then?”

  He nodded. “I won’t get in until near midnight, and then I’ll have to take care of the horses. So don’t wait up for me.”

  She made a face. “I don’t like that.”

  “They’ll pay well,” he reminded her. “Oh, and this should make you feel better.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a brown envelope. “This was waiting for us at the post office today.” He handed it to her with a grin.

  She glanced at the sender’s name and matched his grin with a big smile. “It’s from Kyla! I haven’t heard from her in months. Why didn’t you open it?”

  “I wanted to wait and let you have the pleasure.”

  She tore into the envelope and pulled out the folded letter. A smaller white envelope fell out, and she put that aside to read the letter first.

  Ed sat in his easy chair and she plopped down on his lap and read aloud:

  “Dear ones,

  “Sorry I haven’t written in such a long time. I’ve been coping with Veronica—her schooling, her growing powers, and her volatile nature as she enters her teens. I’m always having to deal with complaints from the school she attends now. Abigail and Leah insist, though, that she needs the socializing with other young people, and I agree. She also needs instruction in subjects outside their areas of expertise. They continue to work with her at home, but at school she is studying advanced courses in science and mathematics. Part of the problem she has is, I fear, due to the instructors’ conviction that ‘young ladies’ ought not to study such subjects and their consequent readiness to find fault with the least little infraction on her part. She does try, but being a high-spirited girl, she lets her back-talk get her into frequent trouble. Too often she speaks before she thinks.

  “Well, I don’t need to burden you with that, all the more because you may be tempted to say, ‘I told you so.’ I don’t regret taking Veronica under my wing—not at all. She has wondrous talents, which I hope you will have the opportunity to witness soon for yourselves. Which brings me to the purpose of this letter. Not that I need a purpose, when I am so overdue in writing and have, after all, the obligation to keep in touch.”

  “When is she going to get to the point?” Ed asked impatiently.

  “Soon, I think, but you know Kyla and her high-blown style. It probably comes from having a father who was a scribe.” Marta went back to the reading.

  “As I have told you in previous letters, I have gathered a fine group of people able and, unlike Abigail, eager to receive power. Here in Port-of-Lords we have not encountered the sort of opposition we faced in Line’s End, Dabney, and Carey. I meet with my trainees regularly, and some have become quite skilled at exercising their magical gifts, though none has displayed as much talent as Veronica.”

  “She’s told me all this before,” Marta muttered, looking up at Ed. “I’m afraid this is just another plea for us to come out there and work with her.”

  “Well, hurry and read the rest so I can grab my snack and be off.”

  “I’ll hurry, but there’s quite a bit more. Here goes:

  “One of the first to receive the power gift and one of the fastest learners was a young woman named Lisbet. I believe I mentioned her in an earlier letter. Now I must tell you that we have lost her under tragic circumstances.

  “Lisbet is from a wealthy family, and her parents arranged a marriage to a younger son of one of the lords of the port for whom the Port-of-Lords is named. She did not wish this marriage. She had a lover who was of a lower station. In defiance of her parents she ran away with her lover and wed him. The affronted suitor went after them, found them, and shot her new husband. Her family praised him for this deed, and they and her vengeful fiancé repudiated her. Homeless, she came to me in despair, and I took her in, though it made our small home a bit crowded.

  “Lisbet was deeply depressed, and, what was worse, we soon learned she was pregnant. I hoped that having a child to care for would lift her spirits, but she grew even more despondent as the time of birth drew near. The baby, a little girl, arrived after long and hard labor that left poor Lisbet depleted of energy and will. Abigail and Veronica both tried to heal her, but she used her own power to resist them, having no desire to live. Despite all we could do, she faded away and passed from this life three weeks ago, her babe only days old.

  “We got in touch with Lisbet’s parents to tell them of her death and of the birth of their grandchild, but they wanted nothing to do with what they termed ‘the bastard infant,’ and left her care to us. I have secured the services of a wet nurse for the babe, but that is a temporary arrangement.

  “Marta, I know how you and Ed have wanted a child. I wonder if you would be willing to take on the care of Lisbet’s poor little girl. She is a normal and healthy baby, despite the frailty of her poor mother. I do not feel I can or am qualified to raise her. I’ve had no experience with infants (except for a brief time when Claid—but that’s another story, and one you know), and I really have all I can do to see that Veronica is properly raised.

  “In the hope that you will want to take and love this little orphan I have enclosed two railway tickets to Port-of-Lords. If your decision is contrary, you may return the tickets by the next post, and I will redeem them for their full value. But I pray that you will not say no to this child who so needs the loving parents that you and Ed would be.

  “With the tickets, I have enclosed instructions for finding our house. I hope to see you within two weeks. And if you are grateful to have this beautiful little girl, there may be something you can do for me in return.

  “Faithfully yours,

  “Kyla”

  Marta had read more slowly as she realized what Kyla was proposing. When she finished the letter, she gazed into Ed’s face, hardly daring to breathe.

  He took from her hand both the letter and the small white envelope that had accompanied it. From the envelope he withdrew two train tickets and a hand-drawn map. He stared at these for a moment, then met Marta’s gaze. “Well, do we go?” he asked.

  Wetting lips suddenly gone dry, she answered, “Of course we do.” Then after a moment’s thought, she added, “I can guess what Kyla wants from us in return. She’ll try to keep us there in Port-of-Lords. We may have to do some very clever bargaining.
”

  Veronica pounded on the door of the small apartment shared by Abigail Dormer and Leah Wesson. Not waiting for a response, she tried the door. Unlocked!

  She burst in, waving a sheet of blue stationery. “Aunt Abigail, Aunt Leah, they’re coming! Marta and Ed are coming. They’re going to adopt Lisbet’s baby.”

  Abigail hurried out from the kitchen, and Leah carrying a dust mop, came from the apartment’s single bedroom.

  “How did you get in?” were Abigail’s first words.

  “The door wasn’t locked,” Veronica said.

  “Oh, Leah. How can you be so careless?” Abigail turned to berate her partner.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” Veronica demanded. “Marta and Ed are coming here. They’ll adopt the baby.”

  “That’s wonderful news!” Leah enthused, hurrying to embrace Veronica. “It will be so good to see them, and I know how happy Kyla must be to have found a home for the little one.”

  “Yes, and they’ll name her, and we’ll have something better to call her than ‘the baby’ or ‘the little one’,” Veronica said, hugging Leah, while Abigail marched past to lock the entrance door.

  Abigail returned and pointed to the sheet of stationery clutched in Veronica’s hand. “Is that her letter? May I read it?”

  “Actually, it’s from Ed,” Veronica said, handing her the letter. “It’s short. Just says they’re coming, they want the baby, and it tells what day and time they expect to arrive.”

  Abigail perused the letter. “Hmm, says they’ll be glad to see everyone. It doesn’t mention me—or Leah. Ed probably still resents me for not telling him for so long that he’s my cousin.”

  “Oh, Abbie,” Leah said, slipping her arm around the older woman’s waist. “Ed forgave you for that a long time ago. It’s your guilty conscience that makes you read that into something he didn’t say. You need to put it behind you. I know Ed has.”