Magic's Daughter ~ Sample

Chapter One: 

1362AD

The minute the black carriage halted, I knew my end was near. I pulled the curtain, which was drawn over the window, back just a bit, and caught a glimpse of the grandest castle I’d ever seen. 

What a pity it would be to be murdered in it. 

A guard pulled the door open and bowed low. He offered his hand, and I took it, using it to pull myself from the carriage. I smoothed the wrinkles from my dress, black is ink. The color of death.

Guards behind me took down my luggage. A maid appeared before me and offered to lead me to the King. I agreed. Face my fate with dignity. 

She led me into the palace, a different world of color and beauty. She led me to ornate doors. Doors to the throne room. She rushed off, leaving me alone to stare straight ahead of me, waiting for the word to come to meet my fate. 

Inside the doors, I heard the name Adralie Kiraline, Princess of Ashen, echo in the chamber. The door began to creak open before me. I bowed my head. 

I made my way to the front of the throne room, my blue eyes never leaving the plush red carpet before me. 

I bowed, the low curtsy only used for royalty. 

“My King.” I curtsied deeper, not daring to look at his face. 

“Greetings, Princess. Though we are far beyond formalities such as that, are we not?” He murmured from his throne. I bit my tongue so as not to scream at him, curse him for all he had done to me. 

I heard boots on padded carpet above me, until the King stood before me. He placed one hand on my chin, gliding my face upward until I looked him in the eye. 

I stared unsmiling into the face of what was my best friend in the whole world.

1361AD - Almost a year prior

When I finally woke, I knew I was in trouble. My brain felt foggy, and my eyes and other senses were blurry, but I could still vaguely make out the two Ogres, who were discussing eagerly how they were to kill me. Their speech was slurred, like men who were back from a tavern, and they seemed to mix in foreign words with those of Ashen and other countries. I may have heard a mix of Sleen or Ondak. Soon, I was able to make out where I was and what had happened. I wasn’t bound or tied, but the Ogres had pinned me down with the log of a tree. It lay across my chest, and I knew there was no chance that I could force the log up, even though my hands were also pinned under it. My legs were numb from the lack of blood flow. I looked around. I seemed to be in a clearing. I had no idea how long I had been out. Seconds, minutes, hours, days? I tried in vain to sit up, but the log weighed heavily against my chest. I looked around, but I couldn’t see any of my things. 

All of a sudden, a coarse hand covered my mouth, muffling my scream. Someone whispered two brisk words in my ear. 

“Don’t scream.” A young man dropped his hand from my mouth and overturned the log that held me down. I felt blood rush back into my legs. I stood up shakily and scanned the area for my supplies. I noticed my leather bag in a heap behind one of the ogres. My quiver lay next to it, but my bow was nowhere to be seen. My dagger was still in my sleeve, but my sword lay in the pile with the Ogre’s other loot. I sized up the space, deciding how long it would take to sprint there and back, when the young man grabbed my hand. He pulled me away from the Ogres, and my supplies, and back into the ‘safety’ of the trees. Without my bow, I felt as if I were weaponless, as though I had lost a part of me. He led me farther back into the woods. Soon, he turned to me and looked me up and down. 

“Are you okay?” He held me at arm's length, surveying me with worried eyes. His hair was a mop of messy black, and his eyes were an unmistakable whiskey-brown. 

“I have to go back there!” I hissed, completely ignoring his question. 

“What?” He asked. He had been taken off guard. All at once, I realized how I must’ve looked to him. I was a young girl who was wearing palace clothes, with a couple of rich items that had to have come from the palace. He must know now I’m someone of noble rank, if not a princess. 

“I have weeks of food in that bag, and a sword and a quiver of arrows!” I whispered urgently. The offer of food seemed to tempt him; he seemed thin and may not have eaten in days. He had a hungry look in his eyes and seemed to be mulling over the offer I had presented him with. 

“Alright,” He gave in. I released a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. “You stay here, I will go and get them.” He said hurriedly. He dashed back, sprinting back to where my stuff lay. 

“What?” I called after him. It was my turn to be shocked. He didn’t seem to hear me. He waved his hand, as if reinforcing his words. I was trying not to scream at him. I hated being underestimated. I decided that I didn’t care what he said. 

I pulled my dagger and crept over to the clearing, looked through the trees, and saw him on the other side, his eyes focused on the bag. I flattened myself to the bark, hoping he wouldn’t see me. I clutched my dagger in my right hand, aiming carefully, and threw the dagger. Luckily, ot maybe Fate itself had ordained it, I hit it in a soft spot. The Ogre closer to the pack clutched its eye and wailed mournfully. The other Ogre stood up and turned around in a clumsy circle. To my horror, he laid eyes on the man who had saved me, who had taken a sprinting run towards the pile of loot. He grabbed the bag and slung it over his shoulder, completely oblivious to the Ogre lumbering towards him. The second Ogre still lay on the ground, clutching his eye and screaming. I couldn’t draw his attention to me by yelling, which had been my vague plan, not over the other Ogre. 

I clung to the first idiotic idea that appeared in my mind, and sprinted over to the pile, praying I would reach it before the Ogre. I failed, but only by a few seconds. The Ogre hit the man on the head, and he crumpled to the ground. I snatched the sword from the ground, which lay a few feet from where the bag had been, and stabbed it at the Ogre. It hit him near the stomach, and he fell backward to his knees. He touched the spot where the sword had struck him and pulled it back. A bit of red stained the tip of his finger, and he mumbled something unintelligible. Then, he turned on me. He tilted his head at me, quizzically. He seemed to be trying to put these things together, what I had done to him. Then, fury lit up in his eyes. He pulled the sword from his stomach and stood up wobbly. He thrust the sword behind him, and I stood before him, weaponless and weak. A couple of feet over, I saw the young man open his eyes wearily. I couldn’t count on him, though. My mind raced to set up some sort of plan. I couldn’t reach the sword without him grabbing me, and the other Ogre, thought half-blind, would soon join his comrade to finish me off, as I could see him slowly rising to his feet out of the corner of my eye.

A mad idea came to mind, but I knew I had to try it anyway. I pointed at the Ogre who was coming for me now, and uttered a single word under my breath.

“Congelo,” The Ogre’s arms dropped to its side, as if it had been tied up. He fell over, strangling against invisible bonds. I gasped. The magic felt like a kick to the gut. I bit my tongue as I did the same to the other one, trying not to yelp. I watched them for a moment, wrestling against magic. The bonds would only last for a minute or so, so I needed something to aid in our escape. I held my hands apart about a foot, and murmured yet another spell. I could feel myself getting lightheaded and drowsy from the magic, but I couldn’t afford to break down now. 

“Calego,” 

A perfect sphere of fog appeared, drifting between my outstretched hands. I blew it, and instead of dissipating, like that amount of fog usually would, it grew, and grew until the entire clearing was covered by a thin layer of fog. I knew that it would only grow. I had to get out of here, with my stuff and the young man who had saved me. 

I turned in a circle, but my own spell was used against me in the fact that I couldn’t see around me. I could do a spell for wind, but that would undo the entirety of the fog and our cover for escape. I took a moment to collect my bearings, then took my best guess at where my supplies lay and sprinted over there. 

I found the sword first, as it had been tossed backwards. I could kill the Ogres now, but I don’t think I could bear it. I followed that forward, and soon found the man; he seemed to be about to launch in the smoke, to make a run for it perhaps. He still had the bag and quiver hung over his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” I said. He spun around and faced me.

“What—where did the fog come from?” He shouted at me quizzically. 

“Doesn’t matter—Let’s go!” I shouted. I took off into the fog and hoped that he would have the good sense to follow me. As we got farther and farther from where I had cast my spell, the fog got thinner, until I had decided I had gone far enough that the Ogres wouldn’t pursue. I crouched over, catching my breath. Soon enough, the man—I had yet to learn his name—caught up with me. He also panted for breath, but didn’t take a moment to breathe. 

“What were you doing?! You could have gotten me killed!” 

For the first time, I got a good look at him. I couldn’t believe what Fate had done to me. He was Tish. He had dark hair, which looked almost brown in this light, and dark skin. Unlike most Tish I knew, he had brown eyes, instead of the usual blue or green. He even had the Tish accent. 

For the first time, I wished I looked more like Elisa, instead of my father. I clearly had the looks of an Ashen; there was no mistaking that. Elisa would perhaps be mistaken for an Ondak, or probably a Highcalere, which was what my mother was. I was, of course, already labeled as Ashen royalty, while I had yet to discover anything about him. 

“I could have gotten you killed? You would’ve gotten yourself killed!” I argued back. I was in no way going to let this boy, who only wanted a scrap of bread and a blade of steel, decide that he had defeated the Ogres single-handedly. He glared at me.

“You’re quite a naive young girl to wander around the woods by yourself.” He said. It was my turn to glare.

“You're a marble-brained boy to get hit on the head by an Ogre like that.” I retorted. His head went up to his head, where I’m sure there would be a sizable bruise. 

“Well, Princess, why don’t we find our way back home to your palace and leave the monster slaying to others?” He laughed. I sheathed the sword I had been holding for so long, and only now did I realize that I had left my dagger in the eye of an Ogre. 

“I think I will be fine on my own, thank you very much,” I said simply, motioning to my bag and my quiver, which still hung over his shoulder. He dropped the quiver at my feet, which I hung over my shoulder, but it lacked about half its arrows. It felt meaningless without a bow. I noticed that he still clung tightly to my bag of food and provisions. 

“You do know you will need a bow to shoot arrows, right?” He laughed mockingly. I glared at him. 

“I lost it when the Ogre attacked. May I have my bag now?” Instead, he replied with yet another question.

“What are you even doing in these woods? It’s no place for a noble like yourself!” 

“You ask too many questions, you know. Please, return my bag and we can both forget about this.” I was tired of this. I couldn’t be far from where I entered, and if I kept up at this pace, I would never reach the Tene mountains. 

“Are you running away?” He asked, his eyes lighting up with the thrill of conspiracy. 

“Maybe I am. Maybe I am not. What’s it to you? I have places to go, so I can’t be bothered with you much longer.” 

“Eh, you talk like a noble girl. Where is it that you're going, if you don’t mind me asking?” I didn't mind very much. “If you tell me, you can have your bag back, and I will cease asking you questions.” 

“I’m going to join the Tish army, trying to find the Occult stone.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but it wasn’t very close to the truth either. 

He dropped the bag at my feet, which I slung over my shoulder gratefully. I nodded to him and began to set off. He turned and fell into stride with me. 

“So, why are you running to the Tish?” He asked. I didn’t answer. “The idea I’ve got in my head, you're running from a noble life because… what? Arranged marriage? I hear the noble girls really dislike those. Are you running to the Tish to plead for mercy? He won’t grant it.” He laughed. “The king is the most hardened and despicable man you’ll ever meet. He will most likely make you a slave, you know.” I nodded absentmindedly. He seemed to take that as a sign to continue. 

“Now, Princess, you have something I want, and I have something you might need,” 

“What is that, then?” 

“Experience. You’ll need another person to defend from some of these monsters. I assume you know that.” I stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t thought about that.

“And what do I have that you want?” I asked.

“Food, a weapon, conversation,” he ticked it off on his fingers. I laughed involuntarily. 

“So what is that? Do we have a deal, Princess?” 

“I would say so. I’m Adralie.”

“Espin.” 

Just like that, one became two. 

This is an excerpt from the full-length fantasy novel I'm writing.