Wizard's Resolve (Ozel the Wizard Book 3) Read online

  Wizard’s Resolve

  Ozel the Wizard 3

  Jim Hodgson

  For T & D. May they know when to be strong.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Afterword

  Chapter 1

  Serhan Asim had always wondered what it would be like to strike out across the water. Now he knew the answer. It was bloody terrifying. It was as if he had lived his entire life without knowing that he was on the lip of a gigantic beast and one day that beast opened its mouth. Now that he and his crew were out of sight of land he could feel the depth yawning below him. When he looked up, the sky offered no help. There was only the wind. And then the wind was gone too.

  For days they floated. The sails whispered occasionally but wouldn’t fill. The spiders, as he’d known they would, had become a problem.

  The wizard had explained that she’d been working for years to teach her spiders to ride on the backs of birds. Serhan had thrown this idea immediately from his mind as one might throw a gibbering drunk out of a dockside pub, but the wizard didn’t appear to be kidding. The upshot was that he, Asim, had been asked — by King Usta himself, no less — to assist in getting said spiders to the faraway lands.

  Asim didn’t understand why this was necessary. There was peace in Dilara. The kingdom was rich in gold thanks to the mining efforts of the liberated workers of Kanat. Ilbez was getting back on its feet, from what Asim had heard. In short, everyone seemed to be making money peacefully.

  Except Serhan Asim, who had been asked to strike out across the stupid ocean to a stupid faraway land to deliver some stupid spiders. Asim lamented his luck and tried not to let his face show it. Another windless day was coming to a close as the sun sank into the sea.

  “Captain?” a crewman approached.

  “We have been tasked by our king to deliver the cargo,” Asim said, pre-empting the sailor who was about to complain — again. “We represent Dilara, our fathers and mothers, all our brothers and sisters on the waves. We will deliver the cargo.”

  “But one of them bit me, Captain.”

  “That’s impossible,” the wizard’s representative scoffed. Her arms were crossed. “Spiders don’t bite humans.”

  “Well, one of them bit me,” the crewman insisted.

  What was the crewman’s name? Asim couldn’t remember. The man was new. Asim couldn’t remember the wizard’s representative’s name either. Was he getting old? Forgetful? He’d been preoccupied with dread and trying not to show it. “They never bite humans? Ever?”

  The woman’s face rearranged itself slightly. She sighed. “Okay, it’s not exactly true to say they never bite.”

  “You see?” the crewman cried, pointing at her.

  The woman talked louder. “But it’s rare. You’d have to surprise the spider somehow. Think of spider bites like horse bites. They happen, but it’s uncommon. A spider would much rather run and hide from a human than bite.”

  Asim considered this. As he did, the woman said, “Why don’t you ask him to show you the bite?”

  The crewman looked sullen and a little guilty. “I might be willing to show the captain my injury, if it comes to that, but not in front of you.”

  “Why not in front of her?” Asim asked.

  The crewman gave him a look.

  Asim peered at the man, thought he understood, but it only made him want to question more. “Wait, are you telling me the spider bit you on the ...” he hesitated. “Yardarm?”

  The woman snorted. “I didn’t want to be the one to say it.”

  “Oh, this is funny to you, is it?” the sailor barked. “Very nice for you, rolling around in heaps of spiders all day long. Maybe they bring you little flowers? But one of the little beasts bit me, I tell you. Bit me!”

  “Steady on, sailor,” Asim said.

  The woman was trying not to laugh, which made Asim want to laugh too. He fought to keep his face still.

  She said, “Captain, honestly, it’s not even possible. A small spider wouldn’t have the mandible strength to bite through human skin, so it’d have to be a big one. The only way that happened is if this man ran at the spider, screaming bloody murder and flapping his dingus around like a monkey’s fist.”

  “Captain!” the sailor howled.

  “Madam, please. I have an injured crewman here. I think we can forgive him for being concerned about his injury. It’s not uncommon for a man to be very concerned about … these things.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she muttered under her breath.

  Asim glared at her.

  She withered a bit under his glare. “Yes, Captain. You’re right. I apologize.”

  The sailor still looked put out.

  Asim thought he saw the path ahead. He drew in a breath. “I’m afraid I’m not an expert on the behavior of spiders, but luckily for us we have one on board.”

  The sailor let out a sigh to express his dismay. Asim ignored it for now and went on. “If the situation was reversed, we would expect our guest to take our assessment of a nautical problem for granted, would we not?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the sailor grumbled.

  “Is it possible that you’ve come by the malady some other way?” the captain asked.

  The sailor winced, but didn’t say anything. Dangerous territory.

  Asim changed tack. “Madam, can you heal this man?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely, Captain. I’ve said so all along. But he was determined to make his case against the spiders.”

  “Sailor, please accept the offer of healing.”

  “I don’t want any black magic on my body,” the sailor said, but it sounded a bit like a whine.

  “Do you want to keep the bits you have on your body?” the woman asked.

  The sailor glared. “Yes,” he said, teeth gritted.

  “Both of you act like the professionals you are,” Asim scolded. “We’re a long way from home and each of us depends on one another. Even if we don’t understand each other, we’re all planks in the hull. Got it?”

  “Yes, Captain,” they chorused.

  He gave them each a pointed glare to show he meant business, then nodded. “Dismissed.”

  These sorts of squabbles were to be expected, Serhan knew. If they didn’t get any wind for another few days, there would be more clashes. Sailors being the superstitious lot they tended to be, they’d continue
to blame the most notable change in their circumstance; the spiders. It wasn’t very clear thinking, and Serhan looked forward to a future in which his cargo was something inanimate once again.

  As he stepped out on deck, his spirits lifted. The air was moving. With luck, they’d reach Karvit’s Harbor by the morning. That reminded him. He needed to give orders not to approach the harbor at night.

  Though Serhan had never been to Karvit’s Harbor, he’d heard stories about it. None of them were particularly complimentary. He understood that it was a geographically convenient place for sailors making transit to faraway lands to put in, take on supplies, and probably get into a bottle of rum and then into trouble. It happened all the time in the coastal Dilara cities where Asim and his crew usually plied their trade. Adding who-knew-what distant lands into the mix had to be even worse. He wanted to put in the next morning, offload the spiders, and be on his way back to Dilara by noon.

  Chapter 2

  The call came just before dawn. Serhan was dozing in his quarters, but still heard “Land ho!” His eyes snapped open. The sky looked black, but he could sense the night’s failing grasp. He pushed himself to his feet, arranged his clothes and headed topside.

  It was dark in the direction his first mate indicated, but he could see lights. There was something decidedly odd about the quality of the lights, though. They seemed to shimmer somehow.

  “Fire,” he said. Cooking fires? Someone burning underbrush along the shore?

  As they drew closer and dawn arrived in full, they could see the pall of smoke hanging over what used to be Karvit’s Harbor. The wizard woman was standing nearby, peering out over the water.

  The closer they got, the more they could see the island was devastated. The remains of wooden structures were everywhere, some still burning.

  “We must turn back,” Asim said, looking at the pall of smoke. “We can’t risk an ember rising on that smoke and landing on the ship.”

  “Captain, we have to do what we came to do.”

  “You want to leave your spiders here even if the place is burned to the ground?”

  The magic-user nodded. The way she made the gesture gave Serhan the impression that she was not surprised by this turn of events. Perhaps her master had foreseen a burned-down Karvit’s Harbor. Maybe he was reading too much into it. There was nothing he wanted more than to turn around and go home. But there was nothing he wanted less than to be known as someone who shirked his duty.

  They found that one of the docks wasn’t completely burned. They were able to get the ship into the pier and tie up, but there were gaps where the dock had been burned away. A small team of sailors were dispatched in a dinghy to another, more heavily damaged dock to salvage planks. They used those to ensure the spiders had an easy path to dry land. Serhan walked it himself to make sure. At the end he could see the devastation of the town was total. The fire had burned hot enough to melt the glass in a window of a nearby building. From the charred circles of wood he guessed it had been a public house. The smell was acrid, with a touch of the foul odor of burning hair. There were bodies, too. He’d seen dead people before, but these were ghastly beyond his experience. Seeing a man cut open by a knife was bad, but a burned body, he now knew, was an altogether different level of horror.

  Luckily, though, he didn’t have to stay. He could see the spiders were making their way off the boat and were indeed able to reach land. He turned, pausing to make sure he didn’t step on any of his now former cargo. He thought, this is the first step toward home.

  That’s when he heard the scream.

  The scream had that quality to it that, when heard, all humans understand. This scream is not frivolous. It is not born of any shred of happiness. It is despair, fear, and misery.

  Serhan went back to the ship and gathered a few capable men. His most trusted he left in charge of the vessel. The magic-user stepped forward and he raised an eyebrow at her. “Can you fight?” he asked.

  “Better,” she said. “I can heal.”

  How lucky he’d been, only a few minutes before, when he merely needed to stand at the dock. Now, walking through town, he knew it was as bad as he’d thought it might be and worse.

  They passed the bodies of animals as well as humans, and the stench of death was thicker here without the benefit of the sea breezes to sweep it away.

  In the street they passed a body with the burnt ends of what looked like a thick spear driven through it. The body was human-shaped, but was at least half again the size of any man Serhan had ever seen.

  The scream came again, closer. The magic-user started in that direction in haste, but Serhan grabbed her wrist. “Careful, if there is danger to face here, we face it as a group.”

  She didn’t like being held, he could tell, but she knew he was right. He let her go, then made a small gesture as a silent apology. He led the way down what used to be an alleyway. Ahead he could see that the alley opened onto a courtyard. Anyone out of sight in the courtyard with a bow, or even lurking with a club, would easily be able to kill him. He readied his saber. Much good it would do him against a bow or a club, or a pike for that matter, but he’d rather die with it in his hand than hanging at his side.

  He motioned the rest of his team to stop, then took a deep breath. Well. This was what being captain was all about. He threw himself into the courtyard, ready for anything.

  Nothing hit him on the head. No crossbow bolts pierced his skin. No one ran him through with a sword. But the relief was mixed with revulsion as he beheld, lying slumped against a trickling fountain, the charred body of a man. The man’s face was turned toward the sky, his jaw hanging open. His teeth stood out against his soot-smudged face. There was something vulnerable and indecent about dying that way, Serhan thought. He stepped closer as the other sailors filtered into the little courtyard.

  Serhan didn’t want to disrespect the corpse by moving him, but it seemed the least he could do for someone who died in great pain. He leaned over the body, trying to get in a position to move it so that it could at least lie flat on the cobbles.

  The corpse made a desperate rasping sound, then yelled for help.

  Serhan’s pulse skyrocketed, but he was acutely aware that his men were behind him, watching him. It took every fiber of his being to stand up slowly rather than screaming like a child, but he managed it. One of the crew behind him yelped.

  Serhan turned. “Get this man some help,” he said evenly.

  The crewmen stood, wide-eyed. The magic-user began whispering to herself and a vial of healing potion appeared in her hand.

  “Now,” Serhan said, a little more forcefully. The injured man was drawing ragged breaths that sounded like someone losing a boot to a muddy riverbank. Between these, he was trying to whisper. Serhan thought he heard the word “name.”

  He turned, squatted, looked at the man’s face. He was sucking at the vial of liquid being held to his lips by the magic-user. His head lolled backward as the liquid took effect. The magic-user wet a rag in the fountain trickle and wiped at the man’s face, clearing away the soot and the dried blood. As she did, what Serhan saw startled him as bad as or worse than anything so far in this day of horrors.

  He knew that face. “Sozer?”

  Chapter 3

  It had been a long and difficult period for Alper Usta of Dilara, but despite the difficulty, the few years past had not dragged. In fact, he felt like he’d been sprinting the whole time.

  He’d never expected to be anything but a military man. He’d hoped to someday rise to just a respectable rank, nothing too grand. He’d ended up king, of all things. King! If he could return to himself as a younger man, he’d slap his youthful self lopsided for not being more careful wishing for higher station.

  When he’d learned that he was in line for the crown, he’d wanted to run screaming. He could have made a happy life for himself in his adopted land of Ilbez, surely. But duty isn’t simply showing up for the tasks one picks for oneself, is it? Duty is showing up even
when showing up terrifies you.

  He sighed. All things considered, in his opinion, he’d not done a terrible job. After all, the kingdom was still here. They’d been threatened with famine. They’d not only avoided it for themselves, but fed Ilbez as well. A small group of nobles in the country threatened to overthrow him and install someone else in his place, but that hadn’t happened either. Not yet, that is. They’d liberated the undead from slavery. Usta had personally worked his fingers near to the bone helping the extramortals found their own nation.

  He’d even begun to think of his situation as “just might squeak by” rather than “doomed.” It was a nice change, but it brought a few new concerns along with it. Well, one concern in particular. One important, shapely, brilliant, utterly compelling concern by the name of Elgin Ormuz.

  Since Alper had met her, she’d been woven irrevocably into the fabric of his mind. He had been attracted to women before, but the way Elgin affected him made him want to sing at the top of his lungs with pauses only to kiss her and maybe cry a little bit from purest happiness. The absurdity of this mixture was not lost on him.

  Usta knew in his heart that being burdened with the office of king, and Elgin’s future place at the head of Ilbez, meant that they could never be together. He felt that certainty like someone had cut a slice in his heart, filled it with broken glass, and then lit it on fire.