Young Adult Epic Fantasy Adventure Book Series

Half-Wizard Thordric by Kathryn Wells

Series Excerpt

Wizard Vey sat there blinking. His soup lay cold in the bowl, untouched, as he tried to absorb what the Inspector had just told him. Thordric hadn't thought about how much of a shock it would cause everyone to say that Kalljard had been murdered. Who would be brave enough to do it, and why? High Wizard Kalljard had been the most powerful wizard in history.

'What…what needs to be done?' Vey said after a moment.

'Well, as we mentioned earlier to…er…Rarn, I believe you said? Yes, well as we mentioned to him, you'll need to sign the body over to our pathologist here so she can make an official report,' the Inspector said.

Vey sighed, 'Very well. It will take a few hours though, as I need approval from all the Council before I can do it.'

'Do you think you can get them all to understand?' the Inspector asked, raising an eyebrow.

'I have no doubt. I'm sure that as soon as I explain the situation, they'll be only too anxious to discover who the killer is,' Vey said with conviction.

'You do realise, of course, that if he truly was killed by magic, then it puts the whole Council under suspicion?' said the Inspector.

'Yes, Inspector, the thought had crossed my mind,' Vey replied. 'This will be a blow to everyone if it's true; our whole way of life will change if people start to doubt us.'

The Inspector rose, extending a hand to help Thordric's mother, while subtly kicking Thordric in the shin to stand up. 'We will be discreet, Wizard Vey. If it is someone on the Council, then the papers shall never find out.'

'Thank you, Inspector. And thank you, young man, for speaking up. Had you not, we would all have been deceived.' Vey held out his hand to Thordric, who shook it respectfully, despite the sharp pang that ran through him as their hands touched. It was probably just his magic clashing with Vey's. At least, he hoped so.

Back at the station the Inspector sent out two constables to find Macks, the reporter he'd clashed with the day before. Having had no grounds to keep him in, he'd been forced to let him go, but with all the new developments, the Inspector wanted Macks where he could keep an eye on him.

Thordric was set to his normal duties again, and was just making the Inspector a fresh batch of tea when the constables came back with Macks struggling in their arms. 'I'm telling you, you have no right to do this! What is it you think you can charge me with, eh?' Thordric heard him say. The Inspector must have heard him too, for he emerged from his office with a grin so large it obscured his moustache.

'Ah, Macks, so good to see you,' he said, bouncing on his heels. 'I'm afraid that your cold-hearted display for the High Wizard's death has earned you some more time in the cells.'

'What a load of nonsense! You can't keep me here based on that! That's why you had to release me yesterday,' Macks said, still struggling.

'I beg to differ; I've had word that you've been snooping around trying to get a glimpse of the body so you can write about it in that foul paper of yours. Such disrespect for the head of the Wizard Council leaves me no choice but to lock you up until after the official burial. After all, there are laws dealing with public menace,' the Inspector smirked.

Macks made a rude gesture at the Inspector, which earned him a hard kick in the back of the knee, sending him crashing to the floor. The Inspector chuckled and gestured for the constables to drag Macks down into the cells. Thordric watched them go, forgetting the tea he'd been brewing. The Inspector saw him.

'Thornby, stop gawping,' he said.

Thordric looked down, and noticed that the tea was now almost three times as strong as the Inspector liked it. He groaned and poured it away to start again. When it was finally ready, he took it into the Inspector's office with a generous plate of Jaffa cakes and laid it all on the desk. The Inspector gave it a single look of acknowledgement and waved Thordric away to the far wall, where he always stood when he had no tasks.

He watched the Inspector dip one of the Jaffa cakes into his tea, cursing as someone knocked on the door and it sank to the bottom of his cup.

'Come,' the Inspector said, fishing into the cup with his fingers. A constable entered and waited patiently while the Inspector retrieved the soggy Jaffa cake and ate it.

'What is it, constable?' the Inspector asked.

'We've just had word from Wizard Vey, Inspector. He has managed to attain the approval of all the Council members and is signing the release form as we speak.

'Excellent! Thorsted, go and tell your mother that she should be receiving the body shortly.

Thordric didn't hesitate. He left the office, hurrying past the constables' desks, and went out into the bright afternoon sun. He shivered. Despite the brightness, the cool thrust of winter had begun to set in.

He ran to the morgue, arriving with a curious mix of sweat and numb limbs. His mother was sitting in her office, busy writing a report.

'Hello, Thordric,' she said, looking up and setting down her pen. 'I can only assume that you've come to tell me I'll be getting the body soon.' Thordric nodded, and they heard a tap at the main door. 'Very soon, apparently,' she said. 'Let them in while I set up my equipment.'

He opened the door to find four members of the Wizard Council personally delivering it. They had wrapped it in a deep purple velvet sheet, covering it completely, and had placed it on a rolled glass stretcher. He wondered how no-one had seen them bring it here. 'Please, try not to damage his reverence's body too much,' one of them said, casting a suspicious eye at Thordric.

'Don't worry, gentlemen,' his mother said, gliding across the room towards them. 'I will be as gentle as I can.'

They put the body down onto the work slab and huddled out of the building. Thordric shut the door after them and turned to see his mother delicately removing the velvet sheet. It came free easily, and she gasped as the face was revealed. They had clothed the body in a simple white robe, which she removed too. 'I knew he'd deteriorated, but I didn't expect him to look like this!' she said, staring.

Thordric thought he heard a slight catch to her voice, but when she spoke again there was no trace of it. He supposed it was a shock. 'Is this what he looked like when you saw him yesterday?' she continued.

Thordric, from his position floating by the door, went to have a closer look. 'Yes,' he said, somewhat surprised that it hadn't deteriorated further.

'If the Council come out with any anti-ageing potions, remind me not to take them,' she murmured. She placed a hand on the body, nodding to herself. 'As I suspected, his skin has hardened.' She made a note of it on her clipboard. 'Where did you say that mark was?'

Thordric showed her, and she made another note. He could still smell the strong metallic odour of before. It must have been a very powerful spell.

'Are you certain it was made by magic? It looks just like an ordinary mole to me,' she said.

'I'm certain. The smell is still there, too.'

'Smell? Are you sure?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said, adamantly.

'Okay, I'll make a note of it. I wish I could compare the mark to something.'

Thordric caught her hint, and slightly nervous that she would disapprove, focused his powers and landed a red mark on one of the anatomical figures dotted around the room. He fetched it over, and his mother held it next to the mark on the body.

'Well, aside from the colour difference, it does look awfully close. But yours is slightly rougher than that one,' she said.

'It doesn't smell as much, either,' he said, frowning.

She ignored him and made to rub his mark off. It wouldn't go. 'Now that's interesting. If I can't remove his one either, then I could be certain of it for sure.'

She tried it, at first just using water, but when that failed, she used some of the chemicals she had, including some acids. Nothing worked. The mark remained untouched.

'I think you're right, Thordric. It really was put there by magic.' She thought for a moment. 'Go back to the Inspector and tell him what we've discovered so far. I'll carry on with the post mortem and see what else I can find.'

The Inspector almost purred when he heard the news, and was so pleased that he gave Thordric the rest of the day off. Thordric, of course, hurried straight off to Lizzie's so she could continue teaching him.

He found her waiting for him on the doorstep. 'I had a feeling you'd be coming,' she said, smiling.

She led him into the kitchen again, where she promptly found him some more things to mend. When he tried to use his magic on the first one; an old pot so black inside that it looked like she'd used it to store coal in; he found he just couldn't concentrate.

Lizzie watched him struggle. He got more and more flustered by the minute, and finally gave up and threw his hands in the air. With a yelp, he found that he'd propelled himself to the ceiling, and was now floating up there, hitting his head as he bobbed up and down.

'It seems like you've had an exciting day,' she said. 'I'll fetch out some cake and you can tell me all about it.' She disappeared into the pantry, leaving him still bouncing into the ceiling. He tried to push against it in the hopes that it would send him sailing towards the floor, but it just made him bob about more violently.

She appeared again and set the cake down on the table, and then brought out a rope from under her arm. She threw it up to him and said to tie it around his foot. He did so, bending over so that he could reach, and found that he was now upside down. He got dizzy as the blood rushed to his head. Lizzie tugged on the rope, arm over arm, and he flipped back up as she slowly lowered him to the floor. When he was at ground level, she tied the rope tightly to the table in case he floated off again.

'There,' she said, sitting down. 'That wasn't so difficult, was it?'

After he had eaten a rather large amount of cake, Thordric told her everything that had happened since he and his mother had left her house last night. Her eyes widened when he told her about being taken to the Wizard Council's private garden for lunch, and a smile touched her lips as he revealed what his mother had discovered so far.

'Well, that is quite the story,' she said when he had finished. 'So, you were able to make a mark without any hesitation? That's good. It shows your training is starting to sink in.' She untied the rope from his foot, and to his amazement he found he was able to stay seated in the chair.

'I'm not floating,' he said.

'You've calmed down now, that's why. My husband learnt that magic is always harder to control when you let your emotions get in the way.' She placed the blackened pot back in front of him. 'Try again.'

He did. It worked straight away; the pot was gleaming as though he'd been scrubbing it for hours.

'Good,' Lizzie said. 'Carry on with the rest; I have some work to do. Find me when you've finished.' She got up and left the room, leaving him there.

He gritted his teeth as he looked at the huge pile, and went about fixing them all one by one. It began to get easier with each one he fixed, and within half an hour he had finished. Standing up with a huge grin on his face, he went off to find Lizzie.

She was in one of the rooms upstairs, and had covered her dress with a large white overall. Tins of bright paint lay around her feet, and she had a paintbrush in one hand. Half of one wall had been painted a bright green.

'You've finished already?' she asked.

'Every last one,' he said, pleased with himself.

'You're learning fast then.' She looked around the room, her eyes alight. 'Think you'll be any good at painting?'

'I did help mother redecorate a few years ago,' he replied.

'Good.' She picked up another paintbrush and gave it to him. 'I need you to paint the back wall in this orange,' she said, undoing one of the paint tins. He dipped his paintbrush in, about to brush it along the wall.

'Oh no,' she said. 'You have to direct the brush with your powers, not your arm.'

'I-I can do that?'

'Of course you can,' she said. 'Just think of your mind as an extra hand, and feel the weight of the brush in it.'

He tried, and the brush flopped about and fell on the floor, marking the floorboards with a large orange splotch. 'Are you sure this is possible?' he asked.

'Yes, yes. My husband used to do it all the time. Try not to paint the floor too much, because you'll be the one clearing it up.' She turned away, continuing to paint her wall green.

He looked at his brush, still weakly flopping about on the floor, and groaned inwardly. With a mighty push, he willed it to float up to shoulder height. He watched it hover there, trying to direct it over to the wall. Instead it came towards him and hit him in the face with such force that he staggered back and put his foot in the paint tin. Lizzie turned around to see his face and half of his leg covered in orange paint. She laughed so hard that her hand went weak and she dropped her own brush.

Thordric scowled and used the same technique he'd been working with to clean the pots on the paint that he was covered in. He felt an odd sensation of something very hard and thin scraping across his face and leg, and saw the paint being forced off him into a giant floating ball. Trying not to lose his focus this time, he grabbed the paint tin and held it under the ball. He released the ball and it fell neatly into the tin with a wet splat. He then turned to Lizzie, who was still watching him, and made a grabbing motion with his arm, lifting her paintbrush up and floating it back into her hand from where he stood.

'I told you it was possible,' she said. 'You've just got to be determined.' After that, he managed to keep his brush floating in the air and had painted most of the wall when they heard a knocking from downstairs.

'Who on earth could that be?' Lizzie said. 'I'm not expecting anyone at this hour.' She put down her brush and took off her overall. 'Wait here,' she said.