LITMIR.BIZ

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sword. It’s so rare! You see how old I am and I’ve seen that done only once in my whole life. Thirteen years ago. I was leading a team of young mages through the Firaskian forest and we met a whole pack of moroks: four ancient monsters hunting together! Their illusion was extremely convincing: they pretended to be a family – wife, husband, two kids – and played their parts so well that it took us long enough to recognize the trap. By the time we did that, we were doomed. My companions were no battle Seven, and a single mage, even a mage of my calibre, was no match for a morok pack. A young woman saved us that day and she, too, like you say you did, killed the moroks with only a sword. Only her sword had a handguard, unlike yours, and was not a katana. But that woman was immune to the horror magic, just like you must be if you’re indeed a morok-slayer. She had raven-black hair, black eyes, and – I never forget a face, my dear! – she even looked somewhat like you.” Sarien looked Kosta in the eye, a silent question in her gaze. “Well, what else? The woman was wounded in the fight and I treated her wounds; it was the least I could do to repay her. That encounter left her four claw marks on her right shoulder. She didn’t say much about herself, not even her name, but she mentioned that she was from the No Man’s Land.”

      Aven and her fellow mages were listening to Sarien with bated breath, surprised, to say the least. Why was she suddenly so friendly and open with the boy? Even they, her battle brothers and sisters, had never heard that story!

      Kosta Ollardian was silent for a long time but Sarien Sarra didn’t say anything to hurry him up. Aven had no idea that her boss could be so patient.

      “That woman was my mother,” Kosta confessed at last.

      “Small world!” Sarien smiled admiringly. “Tell me, my dear, are you your mother’s only child?”

      “No. I have siblings,” answered Kosta, as honest and vague as Juel was with Aven when they first met.

      “Ah, don’t worry, I’m not going to interrogate you about personal things,” said the old mage in a warm, soothing voice. “It’s the way you and your mother resisted morok magic that interests me greatly. Your mother never taught me her secret. Will you?”

      “No,” Kosta shook his head.

      “But my dear boy,” Sarien chastised him softly, “it can save countless lives. Just think about it!”

      “It’s just impossible to learn,” explained young Ollardian. “It’s what you can only be born with.”

      Sarien Sarra looked disappointed but didn't change her sweet attitude toward the boy.

      “Tell me, where is your mother from?” she moved to the next question. “Are all people in her native land like her?”

      “There is a small settlement in the No Man’s Land. It’s almost near the Karmasan Sea, in the forest. The name’s Marnadrakkar.” Kosta shrugged. “But my mother is an exile. She was not like the other people there, so they told her to go away. That’s all I know. My mother rarely spoke about her past.”

      The younger Crimson Guardians exchanged a few silent gestures when their boss wasn't looking. After so many years of working together, they had their ways of understanding each other without words. It was as clear as day to them that the old mage had big plans either for the boy himself or for his mother’s people.

      Before his simple no, she must have dreamed of legions of specifically trained monster-slayers marching through the No Man’s Land. But after that, the flow of her thoughts changed: now it was Marnadrakkar people that interested her.

      Sarien Sarra had a way of making a suspect spill everything out and was very creative in her approach. The grandmotherly tone she had chosen for that shy little boy was working extremely well. Slowly, one tiny confession at a time, the young Lifekeeper was opening up.

      He knew little about his mother’s origins, indeed. Her ancestors called themselves Marns and were a small tribe surviving between a rock and a hard place, with yellow dragons reigning over the Karmasan Sea and children of the night prowling in the No Man’s Land. That must have been why there were so few of them.

      Aven and her three fellow mages listened to Sarien Sarra with breathless attention. One word from her – and the Elder Rule would be enforced; one word from her – and the massive raid on the No Man’s Land dark creatures would begin. That meant a bloodbath, the end of the fragile peace they all were working so hard to keep, that meant a lot of mages, warriors, and civilians would die… One word. Just one word. Maybe not even Sarien’s but Kosta’s if he really knew something the old mage needed.

      There was a moment when Aven was sure that her worst fears would come true: Sarien fell silent for a while, thinking, brooding over something, a frowning, pondering expression overshadowing her mask of grandmotherly kindness. Finally, she wished the young Lifekeepers goodnight and signed to Aven and the others to leave the room.

      ***

      “You didn’t tell her everything, right?” asked Orion, a shaky mix of optimism and desperation in his voice. He was the one who broke the silence that followed Kosta’s report of the last night’s events. “That disease of yours is gone. You are no longer coughing.”

      “Yes. I didn’t mention that to lady Sarra,” nodded Kosta.

      Bala opened his mouth to say something but dropped the idea as he suddenly recalled the end of Kosta’s illness, that mass of black clots and red blood he had coughed out…

      “My father warned me against telling anyone about it, even you. I was allowed to speak about my immunity to wild horror magic but never about the cause of my magical addiction,” he explained looking at Orion alone.

      “Why?” a question followed. That was Lainuver.

      “It would make me too valuable to Greys and Crimsons, Father said. They would recruit me whether I wished that or not.”

      “Call me a shlak if I get what’s going on,” Oasis shook his head. “Kosta, can you just… explain that to me that like I’m five? I swear – and everyone else will join me, I bet – that your secret will be safe with us. We’re all your brothers of the Order, after all. And your friends.”

      Not a single muscle moved on Juel’s face to betray his emotions but the last phrase hit him hard. Since the very beginning of the journey, he was doing his best to be distant. He failed. Those boys were good people. The more time he spent with them, the better he got to know them, the more he liked and respected the whole lot.

      That peaceful time they were having together in Firaska worked wonders on the team’s mood. Also, it made Abadar’s words about the true purpose of the journey and the true fate of everyone under Juel’s command seem distant, almost unreal. Now, Juel’s memory shoved all that into his face again.

      Anger, terrible, uncontrollable like a forest fire, rose in the young Faizul’s heart, consuming everything he held dear, leaving only duty and oaths behind…

      “Shut up!” he growled at Oasis but instead shut up himself, terrified by his own inner rage.

      Oasis took no offence. Just like Kosta was immune to horror magic, the urban jungle boy was immune to insults of any kind. He didn’t care to reply to Juel’s outburst – indeed, he barely even noticed it. Only Kosta mattered to him at the moment.

      “I wasn’t going to keep you in the dark forever,” said young Ollardian. “I just had hoped that it would go away like it always had before. And, honestly, I didn’t know how to explain such a thing to you properly…”

      “So your magical addiction is a reversed one: not absence but presence of the addiction’s target triggers it, right?” said Milian, excited. “It’s an extremely rare type!”

      “Yes,” Kosta nodded again. “But not only a morok can trigger my illness. Any other child of the night can: drekavak, navka, siren, vetala, bargest, werewolf… you name it. The closer they are to me and the longer I stay close to them, the worse my illness gets. You saw that yourself. It started with just

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