Son of a Dark Wizard by Sean Patrick Hannifin Page A

Sorren could
feel it. Now it was only the flow of his power that kept the ship
afloat.
    “You didn’t see a boy around your age back
there,” Sorren asked Thale, “did you?”
    Thale shook his head. “Only Zolen
soldiers.”
    Sorren put a hand on Sage’s shoulder. “Fly to
the front of the ship and turn and rise.”
    “What?” Sage asked.
    “Bring the ships face to face,” Sorren said,
twisting his staff in his flesh-and-blood hand. “I will send them
fire of my own.” Then he clutched his staff in both hands and
pointed it out the front window, trying to remember the words of
the fire spells he had mastered years ago.
    Sage nodded and pulled some levers at the
control board. “By the way,” he said. “I think they know you’re
alive.”
    It was odd that they had attacked an
otherwise harmless cargo airship so quickly. Did they attack every
suspicious airship like that? Or did they know Sorren himself was
onboard? It doesn’t matter , Sorren thought. If they
didn’t know I was alive, they’ll know it soon.
    Sage began reversing the cargo ship’s
orientation as it neared the head of the ship above. When they
finally flew out from under the royal airship, Sage sent the cargo
ship rising upward. The walls of the royal airship before them
seemed to slowly descend, floor after floor of long rows of windows
and balconies made for a king.
    When the cargo ship rose to face the top
deck, there he was. Atlorus, just as he had looked on the night he
killed Sorren’s father. He stood at the edge of the top deck, arms
against a wide railing, staring straight at Sorren. A taller figure
stood behind him, his face lost in shadow. Sorren guessed it to be
Gashdane, head of the Zolen army.
    “It’s him,” Thale said. “The Chosen One.”
    “Yes,” Sorren said, gazing at the boy,
willing the green flame of his staff to burn bright enough to
almost blind the boy gazing back.
    They stood there, staring at each other,
Sorren in a stolen cargo airship, Atlorus on his father’s royal
airship.
    On second thought, Sorren decided Atlorus did not look the same. His eyes were cold, his face was relaxed,
his arms did not tremble. He was calm. He was no longer a coward.
The way the moonlight struck his face reminded Sorren of a painting
he might’ve seen in a dream.
    Sorren kept the boy’s gaze as he repositioned
his hands on his staff, preparing to blast a stream of fire through
the window, aiming at the railing below the boy’s hands.
    But as he did so, Atlorus slowly brought his
left hand to his side, raising it behind his head and making a fist
as if preparing to throw a punch.
    “He’s holding something,” Thale said.
    The tove that killed my father , Sorren
thought.
    Thale’s eye spun madly as Atlorus flung his
arm forward. “It looks like a small black cry—”

TWELVE

    It happened quickly. It appeared above them
like a hole in the world, a wide hole that twisted the world at its
edges, forming a tunnel above them that led to nothingness, a vast
and empty nothingness, a void blacker than the sky. Its edges
seemed to shimmer, to pulsate, singing in tones both high and low
like a crowd of children wailing in agony under the deafening roar
of a crumbling mountain. The void was pulling the airship inside as
if it were the throat of some starving beast seeking to devour all
it saw. The winds cried through the walls.
    Sorren’s heart pounded in his ears. His
connection with the airship was quickening his pulse, sending
tremors through his limbs. He could feel the force of the dark
vortex working to rip the ship apart, and he understood what he had
to do.
    Sorren closed his eyes, cut his connection
with the airship as he might cut a rope with a knife, and went
weightless. The choir of children seemed to fade into the distance.
Sorren opened his eyes to find the hole shrinking back into the
sky. It seemed to happen in slow motion. The cargo ship flipped
backward, tumbling from the sky like a struck bird, dead