“Oh my God, we haven’t much time and I didn’t raise you to be an idiot,” the ghostly woman said. “You need to grab whatever valuables you have, and get ready to run, now. I can’t explain why I’ve come. But I can tell you that you are in very grave danger, my boy. It’s time to go. Now!”

  The ghost of Sylis’s mother looked exactly as Sylis had last seen her, except that her skin and body was made entirely of pale transparent gray mist, like a fog breathed into the shape of a human being. She had long hair, a slight figure, and wore the clothes of a Blue wizard, with a floral design of big flowers stitched into the fabric of her robes. In life, the flowers had been bright blue thread against the intense dark blue of her robes; in death, it was gray on gray. She wore her wizard’s mask in death exactly as she had in life, but her mask was a thick veil covering her entire face and was not a typical cloth wizard’s mask, so he could see a lot of her face: her round face, small eyes, wide lips, and even her button nose, looked just like he remembered. She also had both of her hands balled into fists jabbed into her sides at her waist. She only stood like that when she was truly angry at him or terribly upset with him.

  “What did I say, Sylis? Get up! Get moving! They are coming! And they’re going to try to kill you! They’ve set fire to the nearby farms already, because they aren’t smart and they don’t know which farm you’re in, but if they find you, you’ll be as dead as me!”

  “What?” Sylis asked. Suddenly his eyes widened, all traces of his recent sleep replaced by an alert gaze, which stared at his mother, and then, finally, looked out the window. In the distance, at a time of night when it should have been near-total black, the red light of a fire shined along the horizon, illuminating sheets of thick black-gray smoke rising up into the sky.

  “Who is? Who is coming?” Sylis said.

  “I can’t tell you! I said that! Now do you want to run, or do you want to die?”

  Sylis stood up, grabbed a leather bag, and began stuffing it with the most valuable trinkets and possessions in his room. He did not own many things, so this only took a few moments. He made sure to grab his small pouch where he kept his coins and to throw that into the bag. He slung the bag across his back using the leather strap attached to it. He began to walk towards his door.

  “Not that way! Out the window!” his mom said.

  “Really? And wait, what about Stepdad? Or Fann?” Sylis asked.

  Sylas heard a commotion coming from downstairs. He could hear his stepdad talking, and someone else talking, also. Suddenly Nedlerd raised his voice into a scream—and then, just as suddenly, there was silence. Sylis winced.

  “I went to save you first,” Sylis’s Mom said. “My boy, my baby boy, my favorite person in the world, my son. Sounds like I was too late for Dad. He’s gone now. They got him. And they will get you too, Sylis, if you don’t hurry up!”

  “Where should I run to? Up to Tamm?”

  “No, they’ve set fire to the town, and it’s crawling with them.”

  “Oh no! My friends!”

  “You can’t help them. They’re on their own. Twenty of these assassins came crawling around our farm tonight, with a dozen of them in this house at this very moment, but some forty more of them are up by Tamm town. Their intent was to cut off your every avenue of escape. Some folks in the town are putting up a fight, which they did not expect. But that just means they are distracted right now, which gives you some narrow hope to escape. Head west away from the farm, Sylis. Go into the woods and get as deeply into the woods as you can. That is your surest path to safety. I’ll explain why later. And for God’s sake hurry up!”

  Sylis could hear heavy footsteps coming up the stairs in the house. Many men, and they were coming upstairs quickly, judging by the loud rapid stomping noises of their boots and the creaking noises of the old rickety wooden staircase steps.

  Sylis went to the window, opened it, and poked his head out. The cold, dry wind of the night was tainted by the smell of the distant fire, a dirty, smoky scent of things burning. Sylis looked down. The ground was there, a flat area of solid dirt. None of these strangers were there; they must all be in the house, coming for him. Sylis wedged his body through the window, and, without hesitation, pushed himself all the way out. He fell out the window.

  In an instant, he cast a Blue magic spell, slowing time down around himself. He slowly, gracefully fell down the two stories from his bedroom window, giving himself several hours’ worth of time to make the descent that only lasted a few moments. He landed, as lightly as a feather, on a patch of dirt by the side of the house. He came to his feet as gracefully as a cat and ended his time spell. He had to use up several hours of his own lifetime to fund the spell, so he was a few hours older now, but, right now, he chose not to think of that.

  “Good job! I knew I taught you well! Now start running!” his mother’s ghost said.

  Sylis could hear men come out the front door of his house, and he could hear them talking to one another, but the words were unclear. Sylis slowly, cautiously crept around to the back of the house and then descended a slope, until he came to a small dirt path, which would lead him out to the woods out west. If he wanted to go to a place where no one could find him, that was the best place. I’ll bet there are a lot of places in my farm I can hide behind, and they won’t see me if I creep and crawl forward, Sylis thought. Then he shuddered. But once I get near the field of grass between the farm and the woods, there is no shelter or cover until I reach the trees. I’ll just have to run for it and pray they don’t see me. They probably will. As he walked forward into the night, he saw his mother floating next to him. Her ghost moved through the air and darkness like some sort of fish swimming through water, or like a ripple cascading across the surface of a stream.

  Sylis crept forward, hiding behind first a hay wagon, then behind a barn shed, then a small hill, then a mound of manure, darting from hiding place to hiding place, and constantly looking back over his shoulder to see if he saw “them.” He saw no one in the darkness. But the air was thick with smoke, and he could hear the roar of a nearby fire burning out of control.

  “Can you please tell me how it is that you’re back, Mom?” Sylis asked as he went. “I assume you’re undead. Thank God you’re a ghost and not a zombie or a vampire or something. Who brought you back to life?”

  His mother laughed. “I brought myself back to life.”

  Sylis stopped walking. He turned and looked his mother in the eyes. She returned his gaze, her eyes now a pale ghostly shade of gray instead of the deep sapphire-blue they had been in life. “That’s an ability only Black wizards have! You’re a Blue!”

  “I was a Black wizard in my youth,” Sylis’s Mom said. “I only changed colors and became a Blue after you were born and I came here and decided to live on a farm.”

  “You never told me that!” Sylis said.

  “I didn’t tell you many things,” Sylis’s Mom said.

  “When did you come back to life?”

  “Soon after I died. I’ve been here, watching you, this whole time, ever since my funeral. I did not tell you. But I was waiting, in case the time ever came when you would need me to protect you. I feared that a certain danger might come after you. And that danger has come.”

  “You were watching over me this whole time? But… why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I can’t tell you that, for the same reason that I couldn’t tell you anything about my past before, and still can’t tell you most things now. I lied to you when you were a child and you asked me about my past and where I was from. I could not, and cannot, tell you the truth, and I cannot tell you why that is, either. But I can tell that, while you’ve been standing there dawdling like a moron, they have been gaining on you! March, young man!”

  Sylis shook his head, but he began to walk forward, and now he moved a lot faster in his strides and did not bother to hide or look behind him anymore. Soon, he came to the area of grassy fields that lay in between his farm and the forest. He turned around, to take a glance at his farm, his home, for what might be the final time he ever saw it. His jaw dropped, and his eyes were wide and lit up by the reflection of red light.

  His farm was in flames. Fires had been set, to the house, to the stables, to several of the barnyard buildings. Thick, huge sheets of flame licked their tongues of fire up to the sky in yellow, orange, and red, red, red. Thick plumes of smoke rose into the sky. The entire night sky above his farm was a solid cloud of billowing, roiling black smoke. The smoke made the air thick and heavy and gave it a burnt, foul smell. The smoke was burning his eyes and his lungs, causing pain with each breath, and making his eyes want to tear up and cry.

  “The animals!” Sylis said, and he raised out a hand, his fingers open and reaching forward, as if he could somehow grab them and move them, from a great distance away.

  “I’m sorry. It’s too late, Sylis. Keep moving.”

  “And Fann! I need to warn her!”

  “Who?” Sylis’s Mom asked.

  “My farm worker. She lives in that little cabin by the stream on the east side of the farm. The one that was abandoned and unused back when you ran the farm.”

  “If you cut back across the farm in that direction, you’re dead. It’s too late. Anyway, they came from the north, and went directly to the house, coming after you. We can pray that they never even would have known she was there.”

  Sylis clenched his fists so hard his fingers tightened the fabric of his gloves about his hands. He turned and stared into the night in the direction of the east side of the farm, where Fann’s cabin was. He did not see any red light of flames in the area where she was. Getting myself killed won’t help either me or Fann. There’s nothing I can do. Except to save myself.

  Sylis turned back to face west, and he ran across the grassy fields, his mother floating by his side. He had no cover, so anyone could see him. He chose not to look back and see who, if anyone, was following him. Looking back was only going to slow him down, for no further purpose.

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s going on, Mom,” Sylis said defiantly, as he rushed.

  “And I want you to. I would tell you if I could. I want you to know. And I’ll help you figure it out. I will tell you what I—oh my God, duck!”

  Sylis’s instinct for obeying his mother was well developed from years of steady exercise and by the many times as a child and teen when he had defied his mother, only to learn later that doing so had been a huge mistake. He instantly dropped to the ground. He heard the sharp “zing” of arrows shooting past him, above him, where he had been standing moments ago. He turned his head and looked back, even though this forced him to see his farm burn once again.

  Three men dressed head to toe in black, and a strange, large dog were coming down from the farm, coming at him. The dog’s eyes glowed with red light as though lit up inside by fire; it was the precise same shade and brightness of red as the flames currently consuming Sylis’s farm. Its body was twice the size of any normal dog, and its teeth were so big in size that they seemed like the tusks or giant fangs of some ancient predator, despite having the overall shape of dog teeth. In the darkness and at a distance away from Sylis, the dog was just a huge mouth below two red eyes, with its dog body merely trailing behind its eyes and mouth. The three men were thin, sinewy, and dressed all in black; their clothing was some sort of leather armor and was studded all over with metal studs. Their faces were unmasked but looked like barely more than oval smears in the shadowy pale moonlight; Sylis did not recognize any of them.

  The men were holding bows notched with arrows and had curved swords at their belts. One of the men made a hand signal to the other two. The third man then stopped and ran back in the direction from which they had come, while the other two men and the dog kept moving forward. Probably going back to find his other friends and alert them that they have found me. And then they will all be out here soon.

  Sylis had reached the edge of the forest, and he rushed in, ignoring the dim visibility of night beneath a canopy of trees that obscured any moonlight he might have had. He walked, step by step, rapidly and without hesitation, often walking within total shadows where he could see nothing. He did not glance backward anymore. If he had, he would see nothing among the darkness and the many trees. And, likewise, they won’t see me. I hope.

  “What was that dog? Can you at least tell me that? And can you tell me who are those men chasing me?”

  “I can’t tell you who they are, but I can tell you what they are. They’re assassins. I can’t tell you who sent them, or why. That was no dog. It was a goblin-hound. A beast, bred and trained by the goblins, used often in goblin armies, with one purpose: to smell, track, hunt and kill humans and elves. The goblin warriors use them often in battle, but some human assassins use them as well. They can track anyone’s scent as well as any dog, but they tend to be more vicious and savage than even the cruelest attack dog when they maul their victim.”

  “Oh, that’s great, I love animals, dogs are great,” Sylis said sarcastically.

  “Wait! Stay quiet. Hide.” Sylis at once ducked behind the trunk of a very wide tree, and knelt on the ground, making himself as small as possible. He kept very still, fighting to hold every muscle rigid, to make no noise. He waited. Eventually he saw a gray, misty hand lowered before his eyes, pointing up.

  Sylis stood up.

  “They were close, but they walked past you and went in the wrong direction,” Sylis’s mother said. “It should be safer now. Now I can tell you why I told you to come to the woods.”

  “To hide?” Sylis asked.

  “Yes, but not only for that reason,” Sylis’s mother said. “Do you remember the clearing way out in the western part of the woods, where there’s an old stone structure, some big stone slabs on the ground in a weird pattern, and what looks like an old stone arch, like as might have been the door to a building, except no building is there?”

  “Yes, I know that clearing well. I’ve been to those stones. I never sensed any magic in them.”

  His mother laughed. “That’s because it’s Yellow magic, Sylis. It’s not human magic. It’s fae magic, the sorcery of the elves. Yellow spells are impossible for humans to create and nearly impossible for us to use after the fae have cast one. But I know the secret of this arch, a song with fae lyrics that an elf told me a long time ago, such that I can activate the fae spell in the stone by singing to it. The archway becomes a magic door, a portal with a fae teleportation spell. If we walk into that arch, we walk out of another arch, in another clearing, in Brightwood Forest, up by the village of Leree. It’s one of the reasons I chose to buy this farm, because I knew that I might need a fast exit one day. Well, today is that day.”

  “Leree? That’s a hundred miles to the north!”

  “I know. The assassins tracking you won’t know where you went. To them, you will have disappeared. Or so’s my plan how you escape.”

  “I’ve never left Tamm. Never, ever, not once, in my entire life. My whole life was in this town. And this farm.”

  Sylis’s mother said nothing. Sylis also stood in silence. He looked at his mother. She looked back at him and met his eyes. She frowned, the frown drawing sharp wrinkles into her face, but she did not speak. A tear dripped down her cheek. Or at least, Sylis thought that maybe one had. In the darkness, with her ghost-body nothing more than a cloud of gray mist in a human shape, he could barely see her face.

  “Your life is gone, Sylis,” his mom said. Sylis missed the peaceful silence from moments before. “It’s gone. Burned up in flames. It’s over. Right now, just keep running, keep moving, stay alive. You will build a new life, one day. But, to do that, you must first survive.”

  “I will stay alive,” Sylis said. He moved his lips firmly together and formed his hands into tight fists. He held his gaze up, looking straight ahead, his eyes not wavering one inch to look down or look back. He marched ahead.

  The clearing came into view. The strange stones were there, lit a pale grayish white by the moonlight. The stones formed a circle, and in the center, the stones were arranged into an arch. Stars and a vast and empty darkness shone in the sky above; the smoke from the fires was not thick enough to obscure them. The giant empty archway made of stone jutted up in the center of the clearing, looking like the last remnants of some ancient building that had decayed away after thousands of years. The stones were smooth, but strange writings and markings were carved into them, marring the perfection of their smoothness. The marks were made of rough, thick cuts, which ran deep into the stones, as if someone had hacked the runes into the stone with a giant axe. Some sort of magic words for a Yellow magic spell, Sylis thought.

  Sylis walked out toward the arch. He heard a crunch behind him, as of a foot stepping on dried fallen twigs and leaves. Sylis turned around.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Two assassins, a goblin-hound, and the Blue wizard who had been at the Tavern emerged from the shadows among the trees. The two assassins immediately notched arrows and aimed them at Sylis, but the Blue wizard raised his hand up, his palm flat and vertical, and the two men lowered their weapons at his signal.

  “Flora, I should have known it was you,” the wizard said. Flora was the name his mom had used when she was alive, so about that, at least, she had told him the truth about.

  “Renard Shass of House Dirkmentis,” Sylis’s Mom said. “I have not seen you in twenty-five years, and yet even that lengthy period of time was not long enough. And how is it that you can see me? Ghosts are seen only by their loved ones, those who murdered them, and Black wizards. You are still a Blue, or, if not, your choice of colors for clothing is very much mistaken.”

  Renard laughed dryly, and then coughed into his hand. “I am Blue, but I have many magical devices hidden about my robes, and one of them is a gnome trinket that increases my sensory perception. I assume the boy is yours, Flora. And I assume that you told him nothing. You would not have been able to tell him anything, after the magic spell that was cast upon you when you left. How it must have tormented you, for your own son to think that his mother was a simple farmer, to be forced not to be able to tell him the truth about who you are.”

  “Yes, Renard. He is my son. The boy is mine. And you know who his father is.”

  Sylis’s looked at his mother, blinked his eyes, and then looked at her again. She was there right in front of him: his mom, a ghost, looking exactly as she had in life, except for being a gray transparent undead.

  “Exactly as my masters had suspected. I doubted them when they said it, but I am proven wrong. It will be such a shame that you will have to watch him as he joins you in death. Except that he, unlike you, was never of Black. So, when he dies, he will die his final death. And, after he is dead, I shall banish your ghost, and you will die your second and final death, Flora.”

  “So, this long, and she still has it out for me,” Sylis’s Mom said. Who is Mom talking about? Sylis thought. Where do they know each other from? What is all this about?

  “You have been away from court for so long, you know so few things that are still true. Although, of course, you never knew anything that was true, even back then,” Renard said. “She is dead, although her two boys live yet, and her boys have grown strong and become men.”

  “I relish the news of her death,” Sylis’s Mom said. “May she be forever burning in Hell.” Sylis blinked again and looked at his mother yet again. She had never made mean or cruel statements in life, at least not that Sylis had ever heard her say. She had been a kind, gentle, and loving mother. “There were many who coveted her death,” his mom said. “I am glad one of them finally did her in. Are her sons, then, the ones pulling your strings? You always were such a coward, Renard. You prefer to be a puppet dancing for someone else on tangled strings, never content or happy to be your own master or to be responsible for your own fate. Are her boys your puppet-masters now?”

  Renard laughed, but this led to a heavy fit of coughs. After he finished coughing, he fixed Sylis and his mother with a cold stare.

  “I think you always resented the fact that I was not one of your puppets on your strings, so you begrudged me the right of being a puppet on anyone else’s strings,” Renard said. “Life goes so much better when things are organized into a carefully crafted and well-executed plan, regardless of whether you call me a puppet. In any case, you are quite wrong. Your ignorance about the way things work at court these days shines as bright as the sun and the moons and the stars. A new conspiracy has taken hold, one which will grant me powers that no Blue wizard, indeed, that no human or elf or any other, has ever wielded before, not since the time of myth and legend ten thousand years ago. You cannot imagine the power I have been promised, Flora. It would make your head spin.”

  “I know not of which you speak. What madness is this?” Sylis’s Mom asked. “And for what purpose then do you seek out my boy?”

  Renard gazed at Sylis from out of the darkness, still close to the line of trees and well within the shadows cast by the trees blocking the moonlight.

  “Although I no longer work directly for her, yes, her boys do want him dead, and her boys have the favor of my new master. I am sure you can easily guess the reason her boys would want your son dead. This is why I was sent here: to murder your son. The boy must die. Not that I would not have killed him anyway, for no reason at all, or just for sport, or to spite you, Flora. Red wizards should not get to have all the fun. I must have fun sometimes, too.”

  “I won’t let you kill my son, Renard,” Sylis’s Mom said, and she floated over into the space between him and the attackers, and she outstretched her arms as if to shield him. “I will protect my child. And where are your other assassins? You underestimate us if you think a mere handful of goons can defeat me.”

  Renard laughed, and coughed a wretched, hacking cough. He wiped his mouth with his right hand, and then curled one arm over the other and wiped his hand onto the left sleeve of his wizard robes. “You may try to protect him, Flora. You certainly may try. My other soldiers spread out to comb the forest to look for you. We only have one goblin-hound, and it caught wind of your scent, so I stayed with this unit. I am more than enough to kill you both by myself, even without help from these two assassins and their dog. Still, I think I will let my men and their dog have some fun first, while I watch. No need to get my robes even more dirty; I have crazy-leaf resin stains all over these robes already. By the time more of my men arrive, you and your boy will already be dead.”

  The Blue wizard raised a hand and pointed at Sylis, his finger long and thin as it jabbed into the air to show a target to the assassins. The two men walked forward, both of them holding bows notched with arrows, their goblin-hound growling and its eyes glowing red as it followed behind.

  Both men raised their bows and shot arrows at Sylis. Sylis rapidly raised his arms in front of him as if to shield himself, closed his eyes, and cast a spell. He made no gestures and spoke no words, but just willed it to exist with his mind. He waited, expecting to feel the sharp pain of an arrow in his chest. He felt nothing. He opened his eyes and dropped his arms to his sides.

  The arrows were suspended in midair, having been frozen in time by Sylis’s spell.

  “Bravo, Flora’s spawn,” Renard said. “I see you are not without some talent. Kill the boy!”

  The goblin-hound howled and then charged forward at Sylis, leaping at him with its mouth open and drooling. A flash of blinding bright white light illuminated the clearing. In the next instant, the light was gone, and the clearing was again lit only by dim moonlight. The goblin-hound was gone, and a pile of smoldering ashes and small charred and blackened bones lay on the ground where it had been. His Mom’s ghost’s arms were outstretched and all ten of her fingers pointed at where the monster had been. She used a Black magic spell to kill it. She really was a Black wizard before she became a Blue!

  The two assassins drew their swords and rushed at him. Sylis’s Mom floated down and alighted on the ground in front of the attackers, but they ran right through her, with her ghostly body rippling like mist as they passed through, unharmed. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she turned around, but by then the two men were past her. The two men charged at Sylis with their curved swords held out in front of them, and they came upon him so fast in the darkness that he only had time to do one last thing before they and their swords reached him. Sylis cast another Blue time spell. The two men came to a halt right in front of Sylis. The two assassins looked at each other, and they screamed. One of them seemed to collapse inwards and vanish, his black clothes falling empty down into a pile where he had been, except that there was something within the clothes. The other began to shake and tremble violently, and then he aged, fast, growing older by years, then decades, in an instant, until he was an old man, who fell to his knees, and then let go of his sword and stared at his wrinkled, frail hands. Next to him, a newborn baby was crawling out of the clothes where the other assassin had been.

  “You took time from one and gave it to the other. Impressive,” Renard said. “Textbook Blue combat magic. Exactly what they teach young Blues. Do you duel many people, out here on your farm, with the pigs, the sheep, the cows, and the filth that they produce smeared all over your hands?”

  “I taught him, Renard,” Flora said. “And I taught him well.”

  “Not well enough,” Renard said. Renard chuckled. Sylis moved to cast another spell, but too late: he could feel himself freeze, his body stuck motionless in a time stop spell, although his mind was still moving forward in time, so he could see, think… and experience his impending demise.

  “Don’t make me kill you, Renard,” Sylis’s Mom said. “There was a time once, many, many years ago, when you and I did not hate each other. Do you remember?”

  “I will not yield to you, Flora. Your Blue magic is not competent to defeat mine,” Renard said.

  “Ah, but it is not with Blue magic that I intend to slaughter you, Renard,” Sylis’s Mom said, and her voice had a luminous, fiery confidence that he had never heard from her before while she was alive. Is this really my mom? Was she like this the whole time when I was a kid? “I intend to slaughter you with the color of my best magic, which I never forgot or unlearned, and which is now magnified a hundredfold as one of the undead: Black.”

  In the blink of an eye, so fast that she was a blur, Sylis’s Mom’s ghost leaped up into the air and descended upon Renard… and then she vanished. Renard’s eyes seemed to bulge in his head, and he was choking, and he raised his hands and jerked them around, as if he were fighting to control the motions of his own arms. Oh my God, Sylis thought, realizing what was happening based on his knowledge of magic. She’s possessing him! She’s using her power as a ghost!

  Renard violently wrenched his arms up into the air, his eyes narrowed, he snarled, and he took control… but then his eyes widened, and his mouth formed an O of horror. He stared at one of his hands, his right hand, and his right hand reached for his neck. He tried to back his head away from his hand, but as he backed away, his hand went with him. He grabbed the wrist of his right hand with his left hand and tried to push his right hand away from his neck with his left, but his right hand was the stronger hand. He struggled against himself, his head twisting this way and that as his hand came for him, but to no avail. His right hand reached his neck and traced a line along his throat using the sharp pointy claw of the interlocking rings adorning the ring finger of his right hand. The claw cut a horizontal line across Renard’s neck. Rivers of blood poured from Renard’s throat down his neck; Renard’s eyes glazed and rolled back in his head, and the Blue wizard collapsed in a pile on the grass.

  Sylis’s Mom’s ghost rose up out of Renard’s corpse, like a swimmer coming up from a pool of water. She waved her hand at her son, and Renard’s time stop spell vanished, having been countered. The instant that Sylis was returned to time, he breathed sharply, hyperventilating, and his body tingled as his heart pumped again and blood flowed through his veins. His eyes were glued to the sight of Renard’s dead body on the grass.

  “Get used to the sight of people being killed, son,” his mother said to him. “You will see plenty more if you are able to stay alive. They would not shed one tear for you. Shed none for them. Think of it as having no more significance than when you slaughter a chicken or a cow.”

  Sylis did not move. He was still staring. I have never seen one human being kill another human being like that before, in cold blood. Never.

  “It’s time to go, Sylis. More of them will come, and soon. We need to get through the faerie portal, and now. Come on. I didn’t do all this just so you could die now from being lazy and stupid!”

  I’m not stupid, Sylis thought. That was mean. She can be mean, although she’s usually nice to me. Not to other people, apparently. He turned and followed his mother as they walked towards the fae archway. He could already hear his mother reciting the words of a fae song; he could see the runes carved into the stone begin to glow with yellow light, which cut sharply into the dim darkness of the fallen night.

  “I want to go back to my farm, Mom. I want to go back to Tamm. See what’s left. See if anything survived, beyond just a pile of burnt cinders. See if my friends are still alive.” Sylis was lying face up in the bed of his room at an inn in the town of Leree. His mother floated in the air at the far side of the room. Ghosts never got tired and needed no sleep. Sylis was not wearing his wizard robes or his mask, but he was wearing his underclothes, which were a light pale shade of blue.

  Sylis’s Mom said nothing. She just hovered there, in midair, a transparent gray woman. Her body had the distinct appearance of a cloud of fine droplets of gray mist suspended in the air.

  “But I can’t,” Sylis continued, half to himself, half to his mother. “Because those assassins are still chasing me. If I return, they’ll find me. Two of them rode into Leree two weeks ago, and asked if anyone knew of someone who fit my description. I saw them and ducked behind a building, and the people they asked did not remember me, so they were told nothing, and they rode off. And I was at a Leree tavern yesterday, not drinking or smoking but just playing darts with some strangers, when I overheard someone telling a story to some other people at the bar. They said that they had seen four men in the woods nearby at night, who fit the description of those assassins, and he didn’t dare get near them, but he could tell they were hunting.”

  “I’m glad to hear you weren’t drinking or smoking,” his mother said. Sylis’s eyes darkened, and he frowned.

  “They’re obviously here, in Leree, or else somewhere nearby. Where are they coming from? When will they come back into town? How many of them are there? Where are they? Every town in this region might be under watch, with these assassins just waiting for me to show myself for them to find me, corner me and kill me. They are not smart. They will not find me. But they are hunting me. Why? Who are they? And why do they want to kill me?”

  “I know the answer to those questions, but I cannot tell you,” Sylis’s Mom said. Sylis could see that she looked as though she was crying, although in her gray blurry ghostly form he couldn’t be sure if he was seeing her correctly.

  Sylis scratched his head, and then absentmindedly patted down his mustache, which was becoming a lot thicker. He had not been relaxed enough to shave with a razor; his hands would shake when he tried. “Is it because of this magic spell, this charm, this curse you’re under, that Renard Shass mentioned?” Sylis said. “I know you can’t even answer that question. And why, might I ask, are you subject to it? Who would cast such a spell on you, and why? And you can’t say that. You raised me to believe you were a simple farm wizard, and I, a simple farm boy and the son of a simple farm wizard. Obviously, you never told me a lot of things that you knew. Was any of it true? Was it all just a lie? That farm was my life. Was any of it real?”

  Sylis’s Mom made no reply, but now, Sylis was sure that he could see tears leak down her ghostly cheeks. She grabbed her long, gray hair, and dabbed at her cheeks with it to dry her face. An empty gesture, Sylis thought. The tears aren’t real. Just a ghost made of gray mist. Like everything else about her.

  “It was real!” It was REAL!” Sylis’s Mom cried, so abruptly that Sylis jumped. “My love for you was real! I was trying to protect you! I’m sorry I failed. But that life, on the farm, was real. Your childhood was real.”

  Sylis turned sharply, so that he was facing the wall, and he could not see his mother. The wall was bare wood, a few nails, simple, unadorned. The wall was honest. It looked exactly like what it really was.

  “If you want to protect me, can you at least teach me some more powerful Blue magic? I assume that you were a more powerful wizard than you ever led me to believe when I was growing up.”

  “I was a powerful wizard—but, right now, so are you! I already taught you all the best Blue magic spells when you came of age. You never knew this back in Tamm because there were so few other wizards for you to compare yourself to. But you inherited my talent for magic, and you are well above average in your magical powers. You are a Blue wizard. I have nothing to teach you that could help. In any event, the solution to your problem is not magical. The solution to your problem would be political.”

  “Political?” Sylis asked. “Well, if you tell me it’s not magical, that it’s political, then you can tell me something about it, despite your supposed curse. You did just tell me something about it. You told me that magic won’t solve it.”

  “No! No, I didn’t.”

  Sylis turned back around in the bed so he could face his mom, to argue—and then saw that she was frantically nodding her head up and down to say yes, even while she said: “I didn’t say anything! I told you nothing!”

  So, whatever Mom’s curse is, she can imply things to me in a very indirect way, but she can’t say them openly? Sylis thought. And what exactly does “political” mean?

  “If your problem was political, and I am not saying that it is, then you would need money to solve it,” Sylis’s Mom said. “In politics, if the right sum of gold coins changes hands, money can solve any problem, regardless of whether the problem wants to be solved or not. Men like Renard Shass talk a big talk about achieving godlike magical powers, but when gold coins are placed on a table in front of them, their eyes light up and they forget their loyalty to whoever their master is today in favor of their own selfish greed. Every man like him always does. Trust me, I have experience dealing with such men. I don’t know where you would find a considerable sum of money. But it could help end your problem, and it might be the fastest and most efficient solution. In theory, I mean. I could say this only as a mere hypothetical thought experiment. Obviously, I could not say whether that would ever really be true.”

  “I also need money to buy food to eat, Mom,” Sylis said. He was eating nothing other than bean soup and bread for dinner, which was the only meal that a single copper coin would buy at an inn, and he could only afford one meal a day. He was already a thin young man, but he was becoming even more slender on a diet of poverty. He needed to save most of his remaining money to pay for his room at the inn. When he arrived in Leree and counted his coins, he realized that he did not have as many as he had thought. He had felt like he had made some money as a farmer, but the extreme joy he had taken in living his life on the farm had clouded his beliefs of how well off he was. I’m not sure whether Mom is right that money would help buy off whoever is sending these assassins. But I am sure it would help my hungry stomach.

  “The bag of coins I grabbed on my way out when we fled the farm is getting low, and I’m running out of food. Let me get enough coins to buy some food to eat first, and then I’ll worry about getting enough money to bribe all the Noble Houses of the Imperium, if that is what is needed to end this madness. How exactly do you expect me to get such a hefty sum of coins as I would need to bribe people with?”

  “I’m sorry, Sylis. I don’t know. My life was a simple farmer’s life for twenty years, with you, and I cannot tell you about what my life was like before that life on my farm. But I was never good at obtaining gold, and I never had to. The men in my life provided my money for me. Even the money to buy the farm was given to me.”

  “Do you know what I miss most about the farm?” Sylis asked.

  “Yes,” his mom said. “The fields at sunrise.”

  “That’s right,” Sylis said, and he felt warm inside to know that his mom had noticed that about him, although he did not know how obvious he had been. “I miss the way I would stand, in the early morning, at dawn, right after waking up, every work day, and look out over the farm, in the darkness just as dawn was beginning, and see all the work I had ahead of me, and see the progress I knew I had to make that day, and see fields of opportunity opening in front of my eyes. A glowing orb would rise over the distant hills, shining light would creep over row after row of thick, tall, healthy plants, the vegetables crisp in outline against the light, the air warm and fresh except for gusts of chilly wind, and I would smile, and I would laugh. I would watch as the tomatoes, the wheat, the lettuce, the carrot-sprouts, and the patches of dirt which I knew I would plow and seed later that day, would go from darkness into light, and just appear, there, out of the darkness, bathed in the dawn sun’s glow, and I felt refreshed by the new day to come.

  “I never have that feeling now. Now, I feel like a hunted animal. Now, I feel like I’m one of our sheep or horses that somehow got out, and the wolves in the forest are chasing me, and I’m afraid and alone, and I have no escape. No farmer is coming to rescue me. No farmer can find me. It’s just wolves.”

  “I’m sorry. I never meant this for you. It will get better. I promise.”

  Sylis smiled instinctively, then forced his lips back down, resisting his emotions. In his youth, as a little kid, his mother would often make wild promises to him, just for fun, although they both knew they would never come true. She would bring an army of trees to life and invade the town. The fae and the dwarves would come over the hills and bring a circus for him to play with. If he talked to the vegetables, they would hear him, and sing to him while he slept. Silly things. Child’s things.

  Then he remembered how much he had missed his mom, when she had died. He remembered eating breakfast at the kitchen table with Stepdad, with Mom’s place at the table empty, a chair left in her spot and room for another plate at the table. Those breakfasts after she died had been held in perfect silence: Mom was the one who did all the talking at meals; Stepdad was not a talker. Sylis had mourned her, knowing that he would never see her again, at least not until the afterlife. That sadness, that pain, had never gone away.

  But now it was gone. That pain had healed, almost as if it had never existed. Now she’s back! I have her again. She’s here. And she’s my mom.

  “I’m sorry too, Mom,” Sylis said. He got up out of the bed, walked over to his mom, and tried to give her a hug. But his arms and hands merely passed through the thin gray mist of her ghost, as if nothing was there, as if he was grasping at air. Still, he held his arms tightly, wrapped around the space where her ghost floated. He closed his eyes. He thought he could feel her ghostly arms hug him back; her ghost felt neither cold and dead, nor warm and alive, but like a thin wet mist after it had rained.

  “Things will get better for you,” Sylis’s Mom whispered into his ear. “They will. I promise.”

  Sylis did not even hear her words. He was just content, with his eyes closed, giving his mom a hug.