Hunted Sorcery (Jon Oklar Book 2), B.T. Narro [digital book reader txt] 📗

He might be on his way to see who did it. I suggest you take the day off.”

I gave Leon a look, silently asking if this was true. His eyes darted toward me for a moment before shifting back. I thought I noticed a slight nod of his head, but I wasn’t sure.

“Can we go with you to the castle?” Greda asked.

“You would be safer staying away from us,” Leon said. “I promise our enemies have no interest in your family.”

“I see,” Greda said. “Mother? You are feeling better?”

“Much better. Let’s go home, Greda.”

Greda nodded, but then she stepped up to me and hugged me again. “Thank you so much, Jon. I really hope to see you again when you are safe.”

“We’ll be fine,” Leon answered for me as I parted from her. “I’m sure you’ll see him soon.”

“Take care,” I told Greda

She rose up and kissed me on my cheek as I was about to turn, this time holding her lips there.

“Thank you,” she murmured when she parted, her face red.

“You’re welcome.” I followed Leon out as Greda and her mother stayed back to close their shop for the day.

We headed toward the castle. As soon as we were far enough away, I asked Leon, “How much of what you said is true?”

“All of it.”

So that meant someone really could be coming here to find out who had destroyed the curse. I didn’t feel endangered, though, not with Leon here. During the battle in the forest, I had seen some of what he could do. I imagined he would be able to stand up to Cason or whoever else might’ve set the curse.

“You really think it was someone besides Cason who cursed Pamela?”

“Tell me something, and I will answer. How difficult was it for you to destroy the curse with your spell?”

“I almost couldn’t do it.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I figured it was powerful. A weaker curse would’ve been destroyed by her body by now. I’m sure it wasn’t him.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because Cason was never good at curses. He doesn’t understand them just like I don’t understand them.”

“Couldn’t he have learned how to curse since you’ve known him?”

“I doubt it. You will discover as you progress that there are certain spells you are just incapable of casting. Even if you were corrupted in solitude and went down a different path, studying dteria instead of dvinia, I doubt you ever would’ve been able to curse anyone. It takes a sick kind of mind to understand how to set a curse on someone, especially a curse as powerful as that one.”

“How do they work?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” he asked as if I was dimwitted. “I already told you I don’t understand them.”

Back to his old self, I see. “You have to at least know a little something.”

He sighed. “All I know is that curses require ingredients, like an enchantment. There are rules to them that are either learned by the witch through forbidden texts, or, in the case of some witches, the rules come intuitively. Those are the most dangerous witches, and I believe that’s what we’re dealing with. Cason never cared for curses. Why would he want to slowly debilitate someone with a curse when he could decimate them with Dislodge? This witch isn’t Cason, but he or she has to be working with Cason.”

“I see.” So Cason had help from very powerful people. That had been obvious already. He had a whole secret army. It was what they had planned that was still a mystery. “Should we be worried about this witch telling Cason that we’re here?”

“I hope Cason shows up. There’s a reason he’s remained hidden, Jon. He knows he would be captured if he showed himself during the day.”

We did have guards everywhere now, and they were all loyal to the king. But I didn’t know how many loyal people Cason had.

There would be a fight one of these days. More than anything I wanted to know when and where it would happen. I couldn’t handle waiting.

“How do you know Cason at all?” I asked.

“He was a young sorcerer in Tryn at the same time that Jennava and I were there using sorcery to earn coin.”

“So he’s younger than you?”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t going to forget Cason’s face anytime soon. He looked older than Leon.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“None of your business.”

We fell silent.

“If you don’t tell me,” I cautioned, “I’m going to assume you’re much too old to be flirting with Aliana’s mother, and that’s the reason you won’t say.”

“When you get to be my age, you don’t flirt. You talk.”

“What age is that? Seventy?”

He glared at me in shock.

All right, not seventy. I tried to think about how old Cason looked. Could he have been fifty? No, he had no gray hair. But what if he’d used uF on himself like Leon and wasn’t as young as he appeared? There was no telling how old either of them were, though I had to guess both were older than thirty but younger than a hundred.

“Sixty?” I tried.

He looked ahead. “I’m not playing this game.”

“Sixty is far too old for Aliana’s young mother.”

“Drop it, Jon.”

“Tell me more about Cason then. How old is he?”

“You just want to know so you can figure out my age. I will tell you something else that might interest you if you drop this.”

“All right.”

“Out of the three sorcerers in Tryn, before the spread of dark magic, Cason was the only one eager for patronage. You might have a guess as to who recruited him.”

“Not Nykal?”

“It was Nykal, yes. There was a competition among nobles at the time to find young sorcerers in need of patronage. Nykal was young as well and desperate to get into the game, and Cason was desperate for patronage. He was an orphan and struggled to support himself before he learned a water spell to earn him coin. Jennava helped him for a while; I left him on his own. I saw how great he might be