The Phoenix King: The Thunderheart Chronicles Book 2 Read online

  “My father,” he said. “The egg. I need to get it to him.”

  “I am aware of your predicament,” Hollianna said. “You spoke much during your rest. Do not worry, all will soon be explained. As for the egg, I have it right here.”

  Hollianna handed him the precious object. As she did so, she took his hand.

  “Aidan, you are about to be shown things you will not understand, and some of them will hurt you very much. As your world is opened, there is one thing that you need to remember.”

  “What?” Aidan asked. He could feel excitement and fear rising in his chest.

  “You are not alone. Now come. There is someone who wishes desperately to meet you.”

  Aidan threw his legs over the bed and stood. Hollianna led him out of his little cave and into a bigger one that had several smaller tunnels branching off of it. The air felt as warm as a summer’s day.

  “It is disgraceful for our people to live in the ground like dwarves, but sacrifices must be made if we are to survive,” Hollianna said.

  She kept leading Aidan through caves and tunnels until he was hopelessly lost. They passed a few other elves, but all of them avoided eye contact with Aidan and stared at the floor. Eventually, the two came into a room dimly lit by a magical floating orb. The furniture in the room was sparse, save for a desk and a large, black curtain hung over the back wall. A single map was stuck to the wall. Aidan had seen it before, in Aeron’s tent back in Sortiledge. It was a complicated diagram of nine balls, each labeled. The wizard didn’t understand it any more now than he had then.

  Three figures stood in the room. The first person Aidan recognized as Aeron. The old elf still looked majestic and strong, though the wrinkles in his face told of new burdens.

  The second person was an old man. Aidan could feel the power of the mark on him, but not much else. He didn’t seem to have any more magic than a mage would at Fort Phoenix. He was green-eyed and bald, and leaned on a cane of rowan wood.

  The third figure startled Aidan the most. It was a white bird, at least as tall as the man, with red stripes running down its luscious feathers. It turned to look at Aidan with eyes that seemed to radiate intelligence.

  “A phoenix,” he whispered.

  Aeron smiled at the two visitors. “Hello Aidan. It has been far too long, and far too much has been left unsaid. Matthias, I will leave you two in peace.”

  The elf left the room, followed by the phoenix. Aidan felt massive amounts of power radiating from the creature as it brushed past him.

  Hollianna also left his side, and Aidan was left alone with the old man. There were a few awkward moments of silence before he spoke.

  “By the dragon’s breath, how you’ve grown,” the man said.

  Aidan suddenly began to notice things about the person in front of him that he hadn’t seen before. Green eyes that looked like their owner was up to no good. Ears that stuck out just a little more than Aidan would like. Those accursed dimples that Aidan’s mother thought were so cute. The same features Aidan saw every time he looked in the mirror.

  “Dad?” Aidan asked. Anger and pain rose to the surface of the young wizard’s mind.

  “Hello Aidan,” the old man said.

  Aidan’s other emotions were quickly replaced by confusion. According to his mother, his father had been a young man when they met. How was this relic of a human related to Aidan at all?

  “What are you?” he asked. He had meant to say ‘Who are you?’ but in hindsight the former was probably more correct.

  The old man hobbled over to the desk and sat on it, then gestured for Aidan to do the same.

  “Come here, Aidan. We have much to discuss.”

  The young wizard numbly sat next to this person who claimed to be his father.

  “My name is Matthias. As for what I am, well, I have been called many things. Traveler, god, demon, Ancient. I’m no longer quite sure what I am. But I can tell you where I am from.”

  The old man pointed to the strange map. For the first time, Aidan was able to study it in detail. There were eight spheres arranged in a circle, each painted various colors. At the bottom was a blue and green ball labeled “Terra.” To the left of that was a very similar sphere, but with a lot more blue, labeled “Sortiledge.” The next had even more blue, and was marked “Avalon.” After that was a dark sphere with a large question mark on it. Underneath were a few different labels, each with more question marks after them. The two largest were “Neverland?” and “Eden?” At the very top of the map, directly above Terra, was a massive white circle with the word “Legend” written across its center. Descending back down towards Terra on the other side of the map were “Hades,” “Asgard,” and “Olympus.” Between each adjacent sphere were several thin lines that linked them in various places.

  “Does anything there look familiar to you?” Matthias asked.

  Aidan shook his head. “I know Sortiledge, and I think I’ve heard of Avalon. I’ve never seen the rest.”

  Matthias smiled. “Those are the eight realms, or dimensions if you prefer. We don’t know if they are different planets in the same universe or the same planet in parallel universes. Though the Asgardians have some interesting theories on interdimensional time fluctuations that may prove to be correct in the next thousand years or so. Are you following this?”

  Aidan felt like he was back at Fort Phoenix for the first time. Only now, it wasn’t a bearded warlock sitting in front of him. It was his father. An Ancient.

  “I don’t understand,” Aidan said. “What’s a planet?”

  Matthias slowly nodded. “Right. This world won’t discover that it’s round for another few hundred years. You only need to know one thing.” The old man pointed to the Sortiledge ball. “This is your world. Everything you have known or seen or visited is right here. But people have existed long before anyone ever knew of this realm. And they came from somewhere.”

  “The Ancients,” Aidan said. “Malachi said they made them. But … you’re an Ancient?”

  Aidan wanted to cry his head hurt so much.

  “Yes,” Matthias said. “I am an Ancient. But no, we did not create humanity. We found it.” The old man pointed back to the map, at the Terra sphere. “They came from there. Most of them were here by accident, some on purpose. They fell or jumped through portals that can only be opened with great amounts of power. They came in batches from every time and every place on Terra.”

  Aidan put his head in his hands. This wasn’t making any sense to him.

  “But you didn’t come from … Terra?” The boy asked.

  Matthias shook his head. “No. I came from Avalon. There were three of us. Tara, Rhovack, and myself. Rhovack was a master of the physical world. He could bend the shape of living creatures, make them his own. Tara could see into the future, though often times it was more of a burden than a blessing. And I was a master of the unseen powers.”

  “Magic,” Aidan said. “You’re the one who made the sorcerers in those old legends.”

  The Ancient chuckled. “Magic. Yes, that is what some people call it. The antithesis of reality.” He pointed back to the top of the map, at Legend. “That place is the center of magic. Terra is the center of reality. The people of earth believe magic is impossible, but in truth it is the only possible explanation. Nature abhors imbalance. For every up there must be a down, for every light there must be a darkness. For everything that is real there must be a magic to contradict it.”

  Aidan had pretty much given up on trying to understand anything that this old man in front of him was saying.

  “Is everyone in Avalon so powerful?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Matthias answered. “That is why we had to flee. The three of us got our power thousands of years ago. For some reason the epicenter of energy on Legend let out a pulse of magic. It … infected people in every realm and changed every dimension. On Olympus and Asgard, gods and titans were born. Demonic creatures were created in Hades. Terra was ripped out of an ice age
. Here, the unicorns and pegasi came to life. In Avalon, the phoenixes were born, and Tara, Rhovack, and I were given immense power and knowledge. As the centuries turned to millennia, Oberon, the king of Avalon, became afraid. He sent people to kill us. I used my power to rip open a portal and we found ourselves here.”

  Finally Aidan understood something his father was saying. The young boy knew all too well what it was like to use magic to escape from danger.

  “I’m sorry,” the wizard said. “But what does this have to do with me?”

  “I’m getting there,” Matthias said.

  Aidan felt anger push up inside of him. This was his life, not a footnote in a long story.

  “Anyway, to answer your earlier question, yes. I gave the sorcerers their magic. Rhovack gave the dwarves and elves their shape. Tara gave the sorcerers the ability to foresee the future, with great limitation.”

  “The premonitions,” Aidan said. “I don’t have them.”

  “That’s because you are not a normal sorcerer. I have no ability to see the future, and neither do you. Now, back to my story—we only have a little bit of time. It was not long after the other Ancients and I separated the three races that they began to turn on us. The elves blamed us for their weakness. The dwarves felt fat and ugly. And the men were threatened by our power. We could stay and fight, but not without killing a great many of the people we considered out children. So we ran again. This time, we came here, to Aranumis, The Golden Lands. That is when we made a mistake.”

  “What?” Aidan asked.

  “We got bored. At first we just created things and races. Our enemies pursued us, so we changed them. Turned them into gnomes and goblins. Sometimes our power went a little awry, and thus the trolls and Jotuns were born. Tara even went so far as to give a piece of her soul to a group of witches fighting the sorcerers we’d created. I believe your friend Kyra bears that piece now. But after a few hundred years, we began to play with the portals that brought us here. First, the phoenixes came through. Then a roc. Finally, Oberon sent an assassin who could walk between worlds, bearing a void weapon that was created when the magic pulsed.”

  “Garret,” Aidan said. The wizard remembered his foe’s burnt and broken body lying amongst the wreckage that he had caused.

  “Yes. The Dark Angel. When he came through, Rhovack and Tara made up their minds to leave this world. With my help they opened a portal to Terra and fled. I went into hiding and watched the world we had founded throw itself into chaos for four hundred years. After a time the Dark Angel realized that there was no way back to Avalon and stopped hunting me. Then, eighty some odd years ago, the best and at the same time worst thing happened to me.”

  Aidan looked at him blankly.

  Matthias stared at the map, his eyes glazing over as a smile broke his creased face.

  “I fell in love,” the Ancient said. “Beatrice was perfect in every way. She was the daughter of a wealthy politician. I was posing as a farmer in Gurvinite when we met. The loneliness of hundreds of years spent by myself seemed to fall away when I was with her.”

  “What happened?” Aidan asked.

  “She got pregnant and gave birth. We couldn’t live together, though. As far as the world was concerned I didn’t exist, and for our child’s safety I needed to keep it that way. So, we hired a rich man to marry her. In public we would pretend that I was her bodyguard and he was her husband. In private, he got his money and Beatrice and I could stay a couple. For ten years we maintained the illusion. Our son grew into a fine young man, though Beatrice grew ever more frustrated that he could never know his true father. Then, one day, we found that she was pregnant again.”

  Aidan began to feel bits and pieces of his father’s story begin to make sense. And he didn’t like where it was going.

  “Soon after our second child was born, Beatrice became obsessed with the idea of magic. She felt that if we could become more powerful than the Dark Angel, we would no longer have to hide. She began to dabble in witchcraft.” Matthias’s eyes clouded with pain. “This was when Sortiledge was first conquering the Southern Lands, or as your people call them, the Nefarious Lands. The sorcerers in the council had made witchcraft a crime punishable by death, and the rewards for catching a witch were high. One day, when I was away, the man we had paid to be Beatrice’s husband sold her out. When I came home the place had been ransacked.”

  Aidan saw a tear drop from the old man’s eye.

  “They hanged her in front of our son. I could not save her without exposing my true identity to the world, and I didn’t have much power left as it was. I had used it all up when I created the sorcerers who took Beatrice’s life. I could only stand from the crowd and watch.”

  Aidan saw the Ancient clench his fist, and realized he was doing the same. The wizard couldn’t help but think of Kyra as his father described Beatrice.

  “I could not save my first son. He was too well known. The council took him in, and he grew very powerful. The second son, though, I left with a good family. They taught him the meaning of hard work, and the difference between right and wrong. He was not as strong as his brother, but he was kind and brave.”

  “What were their names?” Aidan asked, though he had a feeling he knew the answer.

  “You’ve met them both. The first we named Malcommer, after Beatrice’s father. The second was called Marcus by his family. Thunderheart was the name I left for him.”

  Everything in Aidan’s world was starting to make sense. Like why he was able to wear Marcus’s ring, and for a time bore Malcommer’s staff. And Kyra’s first prophecy, with its last line, “When the brothers go to war.” He and Malcommer were brothers, and they were certainly approaching war.

  Aidan pushed down the emotions that threatened to explode. He needed to ask one more question.

  “What about me? Where do I fit in to all of this?”

  Matthias lowered his head. “Twenty years ago Malcommer began building an army to destroy everything that Marcus had given his life to save. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I tried to hinder his progress, but I wasn’t strong enough. It was then that I realized there was only one way to stop him. I needed another Marcus. Someone as strong as Malcommer. So I found the most kind-hearted woman I could. I used magic to turn myself into a young man, as I had when I was with Beatrice. And … you know the rest.”

  Aidan felt his heart turn to stone, then fire.

  “So I was never anything more than a weapon?”

  The Ancient turned to look at him. “I’m so sorry Aidan.”

  The young wizard’s blood began to boil. All the pain and rage he had ever felt was brought to the surface. This was the man who had single-handedly ruined his mother’s life, who had left them both with nothing but a small sack of coins and a phoenix egg that was useless by itself. The rage built into magic. It would be so easy to end this pathetic shell of an Ancient. To make all of Aidan’s past disappear in a pile of ashes. The wizard raised his hand to deliver the killing blow–

  And stopped. Images began to flow through his mind. Of Aaliyah, standing there as he tried to murder her. A squad of soldiers lying dead and burned on the ground. Kyra’s terrified face as she witnessed his rage.

  The young boy lowered his arm. His father hadn’t moved. It was as if the old man had simply accepted his death.

  Aidan turned away and ran from the room. He couldn’t bear to look at the Ancient right now. He shoved past Aeron, Hollianna, and the phoenix, who were waiting far enough away that they couldn’t hear the conversation.

  The wizard didn’t know where he was going, he just knew that he needed to get away from this place. He made his way through the tunnels until he was hopelessly lost, then found a corner to curl up in.

  This time, his emotions didn’t let themselves out in fire or rock-smashing. They came out in sobs. Huge, unrelenting sobs. He didn’t want to be here in this place any more. He didn’t want to be a sorcerer whose destiny was to fight to the death with his brother. He wanted
to be home, with his mother, where his biggest responsibility was hoeing dirt or milking a cow.

  He heard footsteps echoing through the tunnel and forced himself to sit up and wipe away his tears. Hollianna came into his little corner and sat down next to him. For a few moments they sat in silence, then the elven girl began to speak.

  “My father has known yours since he came to Sortiledge.”

  Aidan glanced at the elf.

  “Aeron was from Avalon too?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, he was from Terra. Though he calls it Earth. But in all those centuries, my father says that yours has never been eloquent with his words. We pleaded with him to compose a manuscript that he could read from when he met you, but he denied us. He said he wanted it to be real. I suppose he got what he wished for.”

  Aidan stared glumly at the wall. He wasn’t sure if this was how elves made people feel better, but if so it was not working.

  She looked at him for a little while before speaking again.

  “Firebird, what did you come here to find?” she asked.

  Aidan pulled the phoenix egg out of his pocket.

  “A way to hatch this,” he said.

  “No,” the elf said. “That was merely an excuse. You haven’t even told your father you have it yet, have you?”

  Aidan sighed and put his head back against the wall.

  “I wanted to know who my father was,” he replied.

  The elf shook her head.

  “Wrong again. You knew who your father was. He was a man who met your mother in a bar and conceived a child for selfish reasons. Look inside yourself. Why are you here, Aidan?”

  Aidan looked down at his ring.

  “I guess … I guess I want to know who I am,” he said.

  Hollianna smiled.

  “And who do you want to be?”

  Aidan had to think hard about that question. Until he was sixteen, he had always been a ranger’s son who was bound to follow his father’s legacy. When he found out that he was a sorcerer, he had become the heir to the Phoenix Ring, the person who would one day face Malcommer. He had never before tried to answer that question for himself.