A Shadow Thief's Magic Read online

  Katy looked thoughtful.

  Erin sighed, “Depending on how long the training is, and that will take months, if not a year or two before your competent enough, then we need to invade a heavily fortified and defended structure, enter a highly protected vault in its depths, and reclaim the item that was stole from Katy. Although I don’t see how you can help us fight past elite guards and sorcerers.”

  He grunted a short laugh and smiled drawing a strange look from them both.

  Katy said, “This isn’t a laughing matter Daniel, a lot of lives depend on this.”

  He shook his head, “Call me Dan Ka… are you sure I can’t call you Kat, it suits you I think.”

  Katy blushed, “If you must Daniel, now what was so amusing?”

  He smiled, “My payment won’t cost you a thing. How about I can take everything I can carry out of that vault of yours, minus the little trinket you want, is that acceptable?”

  Erin growled and went for a dagger, but Katy stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “Acceptable, but no magic, whatever you can carry with your muscles and not a thing more. But what makes you smile as if it will be easy?”

  He shook his head, “I didn’t say it would be easy, it just sounds like a challenge for my skills.”

  Erin snorted, “I thought you said you didn’t have magic, how is fighting your way in part of your skills.”

  He shrugged, “It isn’t, we aren’t going to fight our way in. I’ll make a plan to steal it of course, that must be why your gods picked me, as I’m an exceptional thief on my world.”

  He laughed at the scandalized look on Katy’s face when he said the word thief.

  Erin didn’t look any happier said softly, “What have we done…”

  He shrugged, “So, what’s the rest of the story?”

  Katy looked conflicted, “How about we train you first, and then I’ll answer all your questions about who we are, what we want, and where it is.”

  He blew out a breath, “Okay Kat, it’s your show, but when the job starts I’m in charge. But I already gave my word, I won’t back away from that, although I guess you don’t feel the same?”

  He shouldn’t be surprised. He couldn’t trust anyone, much less a gorgeous woman. Plus, people tended to get judgy around thieves, and they obviously felt that way.

  Erin broke the silence, “Let’s go in and eat, and get some sleep. We’ll start training in the mornings, Katy will teach you magic in the afternoons. We’ll have a better idea how long it will take by tomorrow night.”

  He nodded coldly and ignored Katy’s pleading look for understanding when he marched into the cabin. He no longer even cared what their secrets were, as long as he could walk away with a big score and have a chance to make it here in this new world with their training.

  He’d need it, neither of them had said so, but he’d read it in their eyes. There was no way for them to send him home, they would have offered it as part of his payment if there was.

  He was stuck here, and right now he was dependent on a sexy woman who acted the naïve child and her hot bloodthirsty guard. He would make sure that didn’t hold true for one more second than it needed to, and if he thought they’d go back on their word, well… he would walk.

  Chapter 2

  The cottage wasn’t all that large. The main entrance opened to a fairly large room that had some comfortable furniture on one end, a dining table on the other next to the door to a kitchen. The kitchen had wood burning stoves, a basin, and a water pump, there were also a number of work surfaces. The pantry was full of dry foods, apparently the meat would be hunted fresh by Erin in the afternoons.

  There was a hallway on the other of the main room from the kitchen, which led to the room he was staying in, and another room past it. He was told not to go in there, but from what he saw it was a double room, Erin stayed in the one immediately off the hallway, and a second room behind it for Katy to stay in. That made him think this cottage was built with the idea of protecting someone important in mind.

  He’d studied the way they acted last night, and the following morning at breakfast. He no longer thought they held back information to hold an advantage, Katy was someone important, and maybe they were operating on the principle that what I didn’t know I couldn’t betray. It also meant that the job was probably much more difficult than was intimated last night, which wasn’t great news, but on the other hand he wouldn’t shrink from a challenge.

  Outside looked a lot like the mountains somewhere on Earth, it was beautiful really, surrounded by forests, mountains and the mountain lake. Erin and Katy were definitely out here hiding though, Katy didn’t give off a girl from the woods vibe at all.

  “What the fuck was that!” he said loudly as he looked up in the sky.

  Erin snickered and he looked down fast enough to catch her smirk, “I guess there are no dragons on earth either? Don’t worry, he won’t bother us. We should get to training though if you’re done site seeing. Do you have any skills at all?”

  He sighed, “Alright, I do have some training in hand to hand fighting, a little sword but not much. I guess I’m ready to get beaten up.”

  Erin’s eyes were glowing with excitement, she seemed to take his measure with her eye, and then go over to a smaller structure. His eyes widened a bit, there were all sorts of weapons in there, she chose a wooden long sword and tossed it to him, and grabbed one for herself that was a little shorter.

  She said, “You seem to be in shape, but let’s see what you can do with it.”

  He raised an eyebrow, his mind not going to the wooden sword in his hand, but another kind of work out altogether.

  She winked, “I may have noticed while tying you up, we need to get you some clothes too, or you’ll stand out, but it will have to wait.”

  Then she attacked, coming in low with a lunge that would have stabbed his leg, if he’d stood still. He danced to the side and then forward, not even bothering to parry, and tried to swat her hip lightly.

  She wasn’t a slouch either though, and easily recovered her lunge and spun slightly to parry his sword and tried to hit him with her left hand. He jumped back getting his sword back into position, and Erin’s eyes were even brighter now, and she rushed him and started a combination of sword strokes he barely kept up with, and then felt her foot in his gut and rolled backwards to get some distance.

  She was really good. He was a black belt, and he’d messed around with swords before, but this woman lived it and he could tell. It was going to be work trying to keep up. He answered her with his own grin and they made another pass. He was in great shape, but he wasn’t used to so heavy a sword, a longsword and a katana were completely different in style as well.

  He’d held his own for a while, maybe twenty minutes, but now he was just embarrassing himself.

  She barked, “Hold, enough. You’ve got an interesting style I’ve never seen before, it might take me longer to break your current style before I could teach you mine, so we’ll just spar I think and let you improve with practice as you learn to defeat my style, which is used all over Lendaran.

  “That should give you a major advantage. But right now, you need to build up your stamina, and your sword muscles. You shouldn’t be flagging after only twenty minutes.”

  She took his practice sword and went over to the shed, and pulled out something bigger and gave it to him.

  “You’re not to practice against me with that, but use it to build up muscle. I want you to attack that post over there, for the next few hours.”

  She stood and showed him with her sword, “Slice down to the right, reverse it and slash left across the center, and then again at neck level. Then step back into a defense stance, and do it again.”

  She walked away.

  “Until when,” he asked her retreating back.

  She looked over her shoulder, “Until I come get you for lunch.”

  Shit, that was like… three or four hours away. After an hour, he kept going by pict
uring Erin’s body instead of the post, after two hours his arm felt like rubber, but he kept going by picturing all the gold and treasure he’d be walking away with if he toughed it out. By the third hour it was just habit, he could barely hold the sword up at all.

  Erin sounded bored, “That’s enough Daniel, go ahead and put that sword away and get something to eat.”

  He growled, “You can call me Dan too, and why does this post look so perfect, and the wood on this sword isn’t even scraped.”

  She smirked, “Magic.”

  He grabbed the sword with his left hand before he dropped the damn thing, and put it up in the weapons shed, he guessed it was called. Lunch was very good, but he had to do everything with his left arm. It wasn’t until after lunch, when he was in his first lesson of magic, that Katy did something with that staff of hers and took the pain away.

  He wanted to kiss her for that, but wondered why she’d waited. That’s a lie, he really just wanted to kiss her, but he held back from any advances, he didn’t know enough about them or their world yet.

  “Why now? I could have used that arm eating lunch.”

  Katy smiled at him, “I didn’t actually heal it, it needs to rebuild itself to come back stronger, or I’d be undoing your work from this morning. All I did was remove the fatigue poisons which built up in your muscles, if I’d have done it sooner, they would have just built back up again quickly.”

  He got caught in her eyes where her genuine smile clearly reached, and her explanation actually made sense, “Thanks Kat.”

  She blushed, and he turned away, he really needed to stop doing that, he was acting like he’d never seen a beautiful woman before. The truth was she was about a ten in that way, and he’d seen and been with women on Earth that hot, but there was more to it than simple looks. The reason he couldn’t look away was the aura of magic he could sense which seemed to magnify his attraction, and her naïve innocence also played a part…

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts, “So our first lesson?” he asked in a neutral voice.

  She nodded, “Magic is a multiple step process. First you have to harness your magic, find it and wield it. Second comes understanding, third visualization, and finally feeding your magic to that visualization and willing it into reality. The more complicated spells often need to be broken into parts, or even inscribed in parchment or on a staff, but we won’t get into that for a long while.”

  She watched him curiously and he realized she was waiting for feedback.

  “Okay, I noticed you use a staff for everything I’ve seen you do, don’t I need…?”

  She shook her head, “No, the staff is only used in destruction and death magics, or inscribed complicated magic. In my case I have one because of the former, as this staff has no spells inscribed. It acts as a buffer so we aren’t harmed by our own spells. At the same time, it can be used for any of the spheres, but you don’t have either death or destruction, so you don’t want to get into the habit of using something you don’t need. I use it all the time because it’s attuned to me, and it’s one less step to think through, it’s just habit really.”

  He nodded slowly, “Alright, I think I got it. So what’s the plan?”

  She winked and leaned forward slightly, she was mesmerizing to him. Her beauty, her power, and even her voice was like a gentle caress. He reminded himself firmly getting involved was a bad idea. He didn’t trust anyone, especially a beautiful powerful woman with the sexiest voice he’d ever heard.

  “Step one of course. We can’t do anything until you can touch and channel your magic. It might help to close your eyes and concentrate, look within to the center of your being.”

  He grunted, sounded like meditation to him, finding his center. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to relax, but instead got a nose full of Kat’s scent. It took him a minute to clear his mind and relax. He searched himself, but it wasn’t like meditation at home, it was… more than that somehow. He felt a warmth inside the core of his torso, and tried to touch it with his mind.

  Nothing happened.

  He blew out a breath and opened his eyes, “I saw it, but I’m not sure how to interact with it. Any advice?”

  Kat looked distracted for a moment, and then asked, “What did you try?”

  He shrugged, “I tried to touch it.”

  She tilted her head cutely and he felt his IQ drain, “They say everyone is different, but what I do is kind of… invite it. I see it in my mind, and beckon it to come to me, rather than me touching it. Subtle is better, you don’t want to have to wrestle with magic while your visualizing the results.”

  He had to think for a moment, what did she say? Right, invite it for tea…

  He closed his eyes again, it didn’t take him long the second time to find the power within him. He felt a little weird about it though. Skeptically, he reached out for it with his mind, and asked it to send a flow of magic his way. Nothing happened. He tried a few more things, beckoning it, wheedling, ordering, and none of it seemed to work.

  He felt her pat his knee, his eyes snapped open and she was at least five feet away, she must have used a spell.

  “What is it?”

  She looked at the sky and he followed her gaze, the sun was sinking into the horizon already. Huh, it didn’t seem like hours had gone by, only about ten minutes.

  She said confidently, “Once you get it, you won’t have trouble with it again, but it may take time. We should eat, and you should turn in after, you’ll need the sleep, you worked hard this afternoon even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

  He frowned, “Can you tell me about the other three steps?”

  She nodded, seeming pleased he asked a question, “Sure. Understanding means knowledge. To make something happen you need to understand it. In the case of taking the pain in your arm, I needed to understand what caused it, before I can visualize in my mind how to fix it. If your understanding is incomplete, then so will your results be.

  “For an illusionist, you have to understand what you’re making an illusion of. For instance, if you make an illusion of a wolf, you need to understand what a wolf looks like, how it moves, the sound of its howl, how the legs bend when your illusion runs, all of it. Obviously that’s one of the hardest examples, moving creatures is very advanced illusion magic, where as creating a wall, or something else inanimate and stationary is fairly simple to understand, and visualize.

  “For shadow magic, it’s a bit more esoteric. You have to understand what you can do with shadows, use them to move from place to place, hide, and even send your consciousness inside to travel or spy. Shadow magic is one of the spheres that doesn’t actually create anything, it just manipulates shadows for different ends.

  “The third step is visualization. So you know how a wolf moves, sounds and all that, but now you need to visualize it. So is it a big wolf, a small one, a female or male, what color. Visualize the wolf, or the wall you want to create, shape, texture, all that.

  “Once the visualization is ready, you channel the magic you’re holding into the visualization and will it into existence. But first, we have to get you to wield and release your magic at will. I’m not sure how long that will take Dan. But I’m sure we can get it done. Enough, we’ll try again tomorrow, let’s go eat.”

  He nodded and stood, and then reached a hand down to help Katy up.

  Katy looked at his hand a moment in surprise, but then she took it and released it as soon as she was on her feet.

  He asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

  She blushed, “No. Not exactly. Helping a woman up is a good thing, but…”

  She trailed off helplessly.

  He drawled, “But you’re a law unto yourself?”

  She looked at him sharply for a moment as if he surprised her, and then nodded in assent.

  He wondered if it was because she was a grand sorceress. Just how rare were they? He didn’t bother asking, they wouldn’t answer any of his questions until they were ready
to. He’d just have to watch and see what he could pick up in the meantime. One thing was for sure, if she hesitated to take a hand up, then he probably didn’t have much of a chance to get into bed with her, especially with her guard around, so he tried to push all that down deep inside and lock it up.

  Chapter 3

  They sat down around the table, apparently Erin had both hunted and cooked while he’d been training with Katy.

  Erin studied him for a moment, he felt like a side a beef whenever she did that, and she did it a lot.

  “I dug up some clothes that will probably fit you and put them in your room. Obviously we’ll have to pick up something that fits better when the training is done, but until then you’ll need more than one set of clothes. You also may want to bathe tonight…”

  He felt relieved by that, but…

  “Where is the bath? I haven’t seen one.”

  Erin shook her head, “Behind the kitchen.”

  He nodded, he hadn’t really looked at that room very hard. He wasn’t much of a cook.

  Erin turned to Katy, “How’d he do?”

  Katy shrugged, “Better than some, he didn’t touch his magic, but he could see it.”

  Erin studied him again, he felt like a bug under a microscope. Tired of it, he studied her back as they started to eat in silence. She was very attractive, but… guarded. He could tell she didn’t really trust him yet, which worked to a certain extent but it wouldn’t make things any easier. Erin had none of the tentativeness that Katy had, and he had no doubt if Erin ever thought him a danger to Katy she’d slit his throat without blinking. There was also something wild about her, in the eyes.

  Not that he could throw stones about trust, he didn’t trust either of them and the way they hid things.

  Erin asked him, “What were you feeling when you tried to access your magic?”

  Katy looked up surprised that Erin would put her nose in on that side of things.

  He shrugged, “I tried to coax it, invite it, order it, grab it… I just couldn’t get it to connect.”