It took Maziar about a week to get to a town called Barx. Roughly halfway between the Kreeth Dukedom and the Tower, Barx was a good-sized crossroads town that anyone who needed to travel to either place from the capital needed to go through. War, Maziar confirmed, was indeed not a horse but a very adept shapeshifter—which came in handy when Maziar needed a hand, or struggled to find shelter. Had War been a normal horse, the trip should have been significantly longer, and had Maziar not been ill, they could have arrived much sooner, but at least the journey had allowed them both time to grow accustomed to one another’s presence.
After securing a place for him and War to stay in town, he sent a letter to his mother, hoping that he could somehow avoid the scrutiny that came with trying to apply for entry to the Tower—and if he had to admit it, hoping that she might welcome him and not force him to threaten her or worse—turn him away. His hopes were quickly brought back down to his reality when Maziar saw the face of the postmaster when he noticed the letter was addressed to Yulda Izaria.
The postmaster was familiar with the name and the people who wrote to the Grand Northern Wizard. Many poor people wrote to Yulda Izaria. It wasn’t that they didn’t receive replies—nearly all of them did—but rather that, more often than not, writing to the Grand Northern Wizard just led to disappointment.
The boy in front of him had come off a mighty, massive stead that could only have come from nobility, but he himself was shabby and downtrodden and didn’t seem to have hardly any magic at all, given that he chose to write a letter and not send a tele-crystal instead. The postmaster assumed Maziar was just a thief looking for a place to hide, but he wasn’t one to judge nor complicate the matters of paying customers. He was young, though, and that was a pity.
“Erm,” the postmaster cleared his throat as he took the letter and Maziar’s money. There was no return address on the envelope. “If I may, if you’re expecting a reply…”
“I’m not,” he said as if he already knew the fruitlessness of his letter.
“But if they want to…” the postmaster started, but Maziar shook his head.
“They can tell me in person when I get there,” he said.
Though he didn’t know it, this response earned Maziar a great deal of admiration from the postmaster, who slipped the letter into the box labeled ‘Tower - Urgent’ instead of the usual ‘Tower - Obligatory’ box that most such letters would find their way to.
Which was lucky, because it just so happened on the day the letter arrived, Yulda Izaria was actually there to read it.
Yulda was a busy woman. Being the Grand Wizard of the Northern Tower came with responsibilities most people could only dream of, and with so many idiot casters and their students under her watch and the monsters of the Darklands constantly hopping plane borders, she had little time for herself, let alone anyone else.
As busy as she was, however, she never intended to be too busy for her children—she was just too busy for her worthless ex-husband, Walden Kreeth. That the man had used the king to cut off her communications with her children so competently was the only impressive thing he had ever done next to coaxing her into his bed for the early years of their marriage. In the later years, that only happened when Yulda failed to find an adequate reason not to uphold her duties as his wife and duchess or when she was so very drunk that she could pretend he was someone much more pleasant.
When she heard that her son, Maziar, had become a prodigy, she could hardly contain herself as she excitedly spoke of all her hopes and dreams of meeting him. It’s not that she didn’t have any affection for her daughter, but after so many years of writing letters and sending tele-crystals and receiving nothing in response, her enthusiasm had waned a bit.
She’d even commissioned expensive jewelry to try and sneak something past Walden’s security—but the man clearly knew who he married and, for some reason, was intent on squandering more resources screening his mail than improving his territories.
Not that she was surprised at this, of course. The amount of time and money the man could waste was incredible.
But while Walden could stop mail from going in, she felt it was much less likely for him to stop any mail from going out. Or, so she hoped, at any rate.
As time passed with no letters from either of her children, she was resigned to the fact that the venomous toad of a man had thoroughly poisoned her children against her and that it might be for the best for her to stop having any expectations at all. Though unsatisfied that someone as powerful as she was needed to bend to the will of a failed political turd who only had any power at all because his cousin was the king, Yulda contented herself to watching at least her son grow up in the spotlight of the kingdom.
So when she saw the letter on her desk, she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
It was a simple thing, just like any other letter she’d ever received. It was a burnt tan color with clumsy words in black scrawled across the front and a plain blot of red wax holding it shut on the back.
Usually, she would ignore letters of such simplicity. In fact, her secretary, Marlen, would normally never let them pass through to her office. Too many of them were mindless requests to join her Tower, become her apprentice (because they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, didn’t you know?), or even more annoyingly, they were letters proclaiming to her that they were perfectly willing to take a wife that was stronger and smarter than them, so if she didn’t mind, they would like to ask for her hand in marriage. Given that Yulda had already married one stupid rat, she very well did mind and had the latter letters burned without remorse. The former received tart replies penned by Marlen politely asking them to please follow the submission guidelines and report for testing if they wished to join the Tower.
Most of them never showed—and the ones that did usually performed so poorly that she and the instructors genuinely appreciated the entertainment they provided for the day.
But this letter was different.
This letter had the words:
‘From Maziar Kreeth’
Yulda’s heart swelled as she ran her fingers over the chicken-scratched letters. As she went to open it, however, she paused and got her expectations in order. How angry would he be? How much would he have misunderstood her under his father’s thumb? What words could he possibly have for a mother who had left him before his second birthday?
Her excitement suitably tanking into fear, she opened the letter and held it in her hands as if it were a priceless artifact.
After reading it through once, she read it again. And again. And again.
She frowned. Everything about the letter was normal. It contained a greeting, an admission that he’d been neglectful of her in the past, and a wish to get to know her better. The sheer ordinary nature of the words could have been considered odd in her case, but what really caught her attention was the part where he wrote about a mysterious illness that had taken his magic, and he was hoping that she might be able to help him.
A few things caused Yulda’s heart to ignite at that moment: One, that her son felt that he needed to ask anything of her. Two, that he made it sound like his letter might be considered an undesirable disruption to her. Three, that her son had been so deathly ill that it had affected his magic, and Walden didn’t seem to think that that was important information for her to have. And the last thing was that, to Yulda’s knowledge, there weren’t many natural illnesses that could have had such an effect on anyone. Either someone was out to hurt him, or Maziar had made a very, very poor decision in regard to something very, very important.
More urgently, her son was asking for her help. Her son was coming to her. By choice.
It was a chance she simply couldn’t pass up.
For the first time since she’d left the Kreeth manor, she had the opportunity to do something for him.
“Marlen!” Yulda called, and her secretary appeared beside her in a puff of smoke.
“You found the letter?” Malren asked, adjusting his glasses as he peered over Yulda’s shoulder.
“Prepare a room in the South Cradle,” Yulda grinned. “If he’s coming, we may as well make an effort to convince him to stay.”
Calling any caster’s tower ‘the Tower,’ was a bit of a misnomer. If anyone actually went to a caster tower and observed its high middle tower, they might have assumed that that tower was the Tower, but this would also be incorrect. The structure known as ‘the Tower,’ was more akin to a castle with a keep surrounded by high walls.
Entering the grounds would reveal that there wasn’t just one tower either, but a series of towers of various styles and sizes. Were one a city planner, they might have found such a structure offensive, as to the layman’s eyes, it was chaotic and haphazard—and, if truth be told, really quite ugly—but visuals were never all that important to casters who actually knew what they were doing.
The secret was that every tower had a purpose. They were all aligned to a magic circle formation that could be utilized by its denizens as a means for attack or defense at any moment. As an additional benefit, the energy gathered under the castle because of this circle made it an optimal place for casters of all shapes and sizes to study and cultivate.
The real ‘Tower’ was, in fact, what they called this magical formation.
There were other formations within the primary formation as well. While she would have liked to have just given him a room in the central tower where she could have had access to him 24/7, there was a limit to what she could do without reason or approval from the High Council. The South Cradle’s formation was the best support for young magi to safely grow their abilities. Placing Maziar there was saying he had already been accepted to the Tower regardless of his ability or potential. It was the most she could do until she understood what happened to him and his powers. At best, she’d be able to cure whatever ailed him. At worst, he’d have to remain in the Cradle until he left of his own volition or was expelled.
The day he was due to arrive, according to his letter, came, and she was determined to wait outside at the gates until he arrived.
But when she saw the lonely, ragged young man who looked like he was about to fall off the back of his massive destrier, she didn’t believe for a moment that he was her son. The only reason she even gave him a second glance was the Kreeth sigil on his saddlebag.
“You are…?” she managed to breathe as she took the horse's reins and steadied him as he swayed on the back of his horse. His lips were chapped, and his skin was a pale gray pallor that was unnatural even to her eyes. Black eyes were set in a sunken face as his straw-like, crinkled, sandy blonde hair hung long past his shoulders, damp and matted with mud and rain.
“I… am Maziar Kreeth,” he croaked, his voice sounding like he had sandpaper lining his throat. “I… have come for an audience… with the Grand Wizard—”
“Maziar!” Yulda cried as her son started to fall from his horse. She cast a spell of levitation to ease him off onto the ground and called for the healers.
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