The Magic Rain

Chapter Three: The Necklace

"How much further?" Kawille asked, giggling in mock exasperation.

Jo-Bri smiled. He was leading her by the hand, careful to keep the brush from striking her as they pushed through it. She held her other hand over her eyes and a glance told him she was being what she liked to call a "good girl," keeping her eyes shut and covered at his request.

He stopped.

"Are we here?" she asked.

"We are," he said.

"May I uncover my eyes?" she said, and he wanted to kiss her and hug her to him, because it was just the kind of sweet and innocent thing she would say, asking his permission, and though he knew there was an element of what his mother would call "male arrogance" to it, he was pleased that she cared enough about him to want to please him. He knew that he too would go out of his way – far, far out of his way, to please her.

"Yes, my little Hertza," he said. A Hertza was an unbearably cute animal about twice the size of a human and the name fit her perfectly – she was cuter than any girl he’d ever been with or ever wanted to be with, and yet she was still, he sighed, taller than he was.

She giggled, hesitated, savoring the moment, then pulled her hand away from her lovely brown eyes, which she opened.

"Oh my!" she gasped.

He beamed.

They were at the edge of a lake that miraculously stood in the middle of the otherwise barren desert. The suns reflected off the water and the green sky made the water itself a stunning emerald color.

"It’s… it’s beautiful," she managed, her eyes wide as if desperately trying to take it all in before it vanished.

It had been a magical summer, he thought, and they had fallen in love. Which had driven Janessa and every other girl in the village wild. Right after the dance, word of his adventure with the Ghiri had circulated around the village and he had become a minor hero. Every girl in town now wanted the famous wizard’s cute little son, but by then he had wanted only one person – Kawille. And he had her – or more accurately she had him, completely and irrevocably.

"Here" he said and she looked away from the lake to him. He marveled again at the beauty of her eyes, the innocence and sweetness of her face and the spirit that shone in that face.

She looked down and saw him holding a necklace and pendant. She gasped.

"It’s for you," he said, and laughed at himself. Who else would it be for? Would he always be this awkward, he wondered? He placed his palm over the pendant and closed his eyes, muttering words in the Old Language. Kawille had been good for him in many ways, one of them being that she had urged him to pursue his studies more seriously, and he placed a special protective spell on the pendant now, just for her.

"Now you’ll always carry a bit of my magic around with you," he said.

She smiled and primly turned her back to him. He stepped forward and placed the necklace around her neck, his fingers brushing the bare skin at the base of her neck and shoulders. He felt the tingles run through him and laughed at himself again.

She twirled around, already caressing the necklace. "It’s beautiful!" she exclaimed, with such genuine excitement that he was again swept away by her.

"It was my mother’s," he said.

She gasped again, shaking her head. "I can’t –"

"She wanted you to have it," he said. "My father made it for her when they were dating a million years ago. She likes you, you know. Both my parents like you." He hesitated, then took the plunge: "Almost as much as I do."

She laughed. "Oh, so you like me, do you?" she said, teasing.

He stared, shaking his head slowly, marveling at how much he really did like her. Love her, though he had not told her so yet.

She seemed to understand that he wasn’t quite ready to admit the full extent of his feelings yet and she obviously cared enough about him not to want to make him uncomfortable, so she turned to face the lake again.

"How?" she asked, indicating the lake.

He shrugged. "No-one knows, not even my father. He thinks there must be an underground spring feeding it. It has disappeared at times over the years, but always returns."

"But why didn’t I ever hear of this?"

Jo-Bri frowned slightly. "Well…"

She turned to him, eyes wide in realization. "You weren’t supposed to bring me here, were you?"

He blushed. "No. My father fears that if the villagers knew about this lake, they would take the water and there would be none left for when we might need it, during a drought or a siege."

She laughed. "A siege?"

His frown deepened and he walked up beside her.

"I’m sorry," she said, seeing his expression. "It’s just that there has been peace for so long – "

"I know," he said, touching her shoulder tenderly to reassure her he was not angry with her. "But… "

He realized he did not want to frighten her, but at the same time he did not want to patronize her either. He studied her face, wishing he could spare her from the harsher realities of the world.

“But what?” she asked.

He took a deep breath. “You are right,” he said, nodding and staring past her into the distance, as if staring into the past, and not just his own past either. “We have had peace for a long time, here in the village. But… things have not been as peaceful in the former Empire.”

She studied his face as well now, as if seeing him in a new light.

“Outside our little village the world has been undergoing a major shift away from the prosperity and peace of the Empire to a time of chaos and violence. My father told me about it when I turned twelve, as part of my manhood ritual. The name my father mentioned most was Hodon.”

The name inspired fear in Jo-Bri, as if Hodon were the monster waiting under his bed for the lights to go out so that he could come out and ravage everyone in their sleep. Well, the world had been asleep. They had thought that the good times they had enjoyed under the Emperor would last forever and they had let down their guard, turned off the lights and Hodon had risen from under the bed.

“Hodon,” Kawille said softly, picking up on Jo-Bri’s fear.

“Hodon just… appeared one day,” Jo-Bri went on. “No one knew who he was or where he had come from. Only that he possessed fearsome powers that no one, not the Emperor or even the Emperor’s famous wizard, my father, could counteract or defend against.

“Once Hodon conquered the capital city of Brekeela, my father fled with my mother and me, fighting his way through Hodon’s forces with his powerful magic.”

A magic that would be talked about for years to come, though always in quiet, away from the ears of Hodon’s ubiquitous henchmen.

“We ended up here, in this long-abandoned village.

“But the war continued outside the village, various factions battling each other. My father and mother were able to magically receive news from the outside, from other wizards who had survived the wars and Hodon’s attempts to destroy them.

“Over the years Hodon slowly consolidated his power, ruthlessly defeating and slaughtering his enemies until finally no more reports came from the outside, magically or otherwise, and my parents came to believe that they were the last surviving mages from the old Empire.

Except for one: Hodon.

Jo-Bri shook his head and turned away, troubled.

Kawille touched his shoulder and gently turned him back around to face her. She kissed his cheek, and then stepped back, waiting for him to continue.

“I…” Jo-Bri began, shaking his head as if trying to shake the fear out of him. “My father described how Hodon swept to power using not just a magnetic personality that attracted an army of merciless followers, but also through the use of dark magic that exceeded even my father’s abilities.

“Hodon magically masked his activities, carefully and slowly using his powers to co-opt or defeat governors and then gather their armies into his so that his forces grew by leaps and bounds and though my father eventually became aware of the threat, he was able only to slow Hodon, not defeat him or even stop him.

"My father said it was like watching a dark, giant cancer overtake the land. And for the first time, I heard despair in my great father’s voice. His great head shook from side to side as he described Hodon’s march on the capital, and the Emperor’s rash decision to meet him on the field of battle outside the city, against my father’s advice.

“My father rode out of the city by the Emperor’s side. At first Hodon was stunned. My father had been building his energies, readying for what he knew would be the battle of his life, and he was as strong as he had ever been.

“My father has never bragged of being the emperor’s sorcerer and the greatest mage of his time. But he told me about the way the sun shone down on the battlefield, and how he called upon every ounce of lore and craft, upon his faith and the energies of the universe, at least the small part of those energies he was able to control and wield.

“Hodon and his troops fell back in surprise as my father cleared a path for the Emperor, single-handedly decimating hundreds of the enemy with magic as the Emperor’s fanatically loyal troops did their part as well, setting Hodon’s larger forces on their heals.

“ ‘We came so close,’ my father told me, and he sounded so wistful. He was sure that Hodon was about to turn and flee. And then… something happened. My father doesn’t know if perhaps he faltered in some way, or maybe just that Hodon had simply been gathering his own strength…”

It had hurt Jo-Bri to hear his father speak of defeat, and it had frightened him too. If there was one person he had always thought invulnerable, it was his father. To learn that the great man, the great wizard, had been defeated…

Jo-Bri’s father had not collapsed, but rather had held his ground against Hodon and Hodon’s coterie of magicians and huge army of soldiers, until finally Jo-Bri’s father had fallen back. Just a bit at first, then a bit more, until finally they had there backs almost literally against the city gates. The Emperor fell to an enemy lance and the cause had obviously become hopeless – if it had ever been anything else.

“The Emperor fell,” Jo-Bri said grimly. “My father led the enemy away from the city in order to give the citizens of the capital the chance to flee. The Emperor’s soldiers suffered catastrophic losses and yet never wavered, following my father the way they had followed the Emperor.

“Finally my father used the last of his powers to launch a final attack on Hodon and his dark forces, engaging them while the Emperor’s remaining army fled, and then he just… disappeared… in front of the enemy’s eyes, leaving… nothing…. except defeat.

Jo-Bri took another deep breath, centering himself. Kawille stared at him with hurt in her own eyes at seeing the pain in his.

“My father had sent my mother and me away before the battle. He appeared by our side as we were fleeing through the deserts far to the southwest of the fallen capital, heading for a village that was abandoned and outside of Hodon’s sphere of influence.

“Weeks later, we reached the village; one wizard, his sorceress wife, infant child and a band of frightened but determined people who would rather live free in the wilderness than in a great city under a tyrant’s thumb.”

He smiled. “Your family was among that group, Kawille. Brave, strong people.”

Jo-Bri saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned to stare past the lake to the desert beyond. He waited a moment, then saw it again – dust.

Kawille followed his stare, noticing the intensity in his face. "What is it?" she asked, not able to see what he saw.

"Riders," he said, and cursed himself for allowing the tension into his voice. "A lot of riders."

She gasped.

"I see it!" Kawille exclaimed, bringing Jo-Bri out of his reverie. He looked out again onto the desert beyond the lake and saw that the dust was now closer on the horizon.

"I don’t understand," Kawille admitted, sounding a little frightened now.

Jo-Bri wished more than anything that he could comfort her without lying to her. But he had decided weeks ago that he wanted to be with Kawille for the rest of his life, and honesty was the only way to ensure that. "Because no-one was supposed to know we were here," he said simply.

"Maybe they’re friendly," she said hopefully.

He shook his head. "Since when does an army come racing toward you for friendly purposes?"

Jo-Bri’s head jerked to one side.

"What’s wrong, Jo-Bri?" Kawille asked, concerned.

"It’s my mother," he said, hearing his mother’s words ringing in his mind. "We have to get back to the village. Now!" He felt a rising sense of panic and was surprised by the strength of that fear.