Chapter 9 - Llewel Recaptured.
The city guard searched every street, alley, lodging and alehouse. Llewel was nowhere to be found.
“I’ll just pop back to Wrth y Môr to see if Llewel is there, it is his home city after all,” said Flintock.
“No, your primary task is to seek the hand of the Master. I will send some Wizard Guards to Wrth y Môr for you.”
Wizard guards are set apart from the city guards, they are fully-fledged, extremely powerful, and gifted wizards who specialise in security, guarding visiting dignitaries, intelligence, and undercover operations. All of them have highly honed fighting skills and were way ahead of Jonathan with the invention of light-absorbing black clothing. They are the wizarding equivalent of MI5 or the CIA.
There was a pop as Flintock left the council chamber. He had had the honour of being the first person except for Llewellyn to officially apparate out of the chamber.
Three Wizard Guards then entered the chamber. At first, they were a little taken aback by the presence of the new High Elders and slightly shocked to see Llewellyn sitting in the Elder’s chair. Llewellyn quickly brought them up to speed about his election, knowing that apart from other Wizard Guards, the secret was safe until proclamations had been made. Once the briefing was over, they turned to leave.
“Oh, and another thing,” Llewellyn added, “we’ve changed the rules, you can apparate straight out from here, but keep that to yourselves, we can’t have wizards apparating all around the city, there will be wizards stuck in walls and even each other if they don’t get their aim correct, so please do not apparate within the city in the sight of others. Thank you and good hunting.”
Meanwhile, Flintock arrived in the Blue Mountains of the Dragonlands. He had not disobeyed the Elder and taken either of the boys with him, but he did ‘borrow’ Bevon for some backup. Jon genuinely wanted to go, as did Tom, but Flintock explained that their dad had said no, and now he was officially the new Elder of Elders, they had to stay in their lodgings. They grumbled for a few moments, but obeyed anyway, especially as their mum was there watching them.
Flintock headed straight for the entrance of the cave, still blackened from the burning Blue Dragons, but now clean of all the congealed blood and gore which had all been stripped away to a pristine clean by the millions of flies and maggots that they had seen on an earlier trip. The smell was still somehow hanging in the air. Flintock looked around, looking for clues, looking for any sign of an ebony black hand with a pink palm, just like his own.
“Bevon, your sense of smell is superior to any human, can you sniff out anything?”
Bevon was cloaked in invisibility but allowed a small amount of ‘substance’ to reappear so that Flintock could see where he was, and skilfully stepped around the ridge, nose to the ground, sniffing.
“Oh, how rank is that!” exclaimed Bevon, “nothing quite as foul as the smell of ten day old, burned dragon. No wonder young Tom throws up his breakfast when he comes up here.”
“Any sign of the Master’s hand Bev?”
“Not that I can sniff, but any scent left by his hand is being masked by that dreadful smell of roasted dragon. I don’t know why I find it quite so offensive; I have bar-b-qued so may Blue Dragons myself, you’d think I’d be used to it by now,” he visibly grinned as he said it, “let's move further afield, see if I can pick up anything.”
They moved along the ridge, Bevon sniffing as they went. They rounded a bend in the path and up ahead they could see a figure sitting alone in the opening of a recess in the mountainside.
“Funsan, you have gone up in the world, who would have thought that my little great-nephew would be a High Elder of the Council of Blaenoraid?”
“Great uncle Faraji,” Flintock stood, shocked, and glued to the spot, he even felt a trickle of fear, “what are you doing here and, more to the point, why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” he replied in his deep, resonating West African tone, “why do you assume so much?”
“I saw you in the cave, I heard you as well, and I would know that voice anywhere; you are the Master, the misanthropic despot out to destroy everything and everyone I love.”
“So, great-nephew,” he continued, ignoring Flintock’s question, “why are you here, this is no place for a High Elder of such standing.”
“I was sent on a task by the Elder.”
“Llewellyn the Brave, now there is a force to be reckoned with.”
“How do you know? It has not been announced, the election was less than an hour ago. You could not know.”
“But I do, and you have not answered my question, why are you here?”
“Great uncle Faraji, if you know of the Elder, you will know of my quest.”
“To seek the hand of the Master, and I don’t mean in marriage!” he said with a smile.
“Yes,” Flintock admitted, now even more nervous and scared.
“Well, that is my quest as well. I too seek the hand of the Master.”
“But surely, if you are the Master, you have that knowledge already or you could not be here.”
“Wrong,” Great uncle Faraji said moving his sleeves up his arms, “as you can see, I have two perfectly matched hands,” his wand appeared, “and a wand, which the Master neither has nor needs.”
“But I don’t understand, I was sure it was you we met in the cave, your voice....”
“No, it was not me, but my nemesis, the one who I too have hunted for most of my life, the one who was born as I was born, in a village of the Yoruba peoples of Benin, one whom I once called brother. The Master, as you and he now name him, is my twin, seventeen minutes younger than me. He is your great uncle Muenda Mwita Osei.”
This revelation was a great shock to Flintock, he did not even know he had another great uncle, his family had never mentioned him, ever. Flintock sat down on a rock to think, to sift through what he had just heard, to try to understand the enormity of what he now knew.
“But I still do not understand, how did you know about my friend Llewellyn?”
“Because I am not on this quest alone, I too have a partner in crime, a mystic wizard, Songhai Chen.”
“But it was he who told me to return to Trymyll, the dragons told us that they came upon him by chance in the...”
Faraji held up his hand and cut him short. “No one comes across Songhai Chen by accident, he is found when he wants to be found, happenstance does not come into it.”
“Well, have you found the hand?” Flintock was still very wary, his great uncle could be lying about having a twin brother and have restored the hand to his wrist, or even worse, he and Muenda could be working together, and that would make an awesome, powerful, and extremely dangerous combination.
Another voice joined the combination.
“Well, isn’t this just a nice little family reunion, my twin brother and my great-nephew,” the Master, or Muenda, stood at a distance and projected his voice over to them. “I could, of course, kill you both now, I could have and probably should have, killed my elder brother many times, but blood is thicker than water, and neither of us can quite bring ourselves to do it. I always spare him in the hope that he will join me in my dark quest, he never engages me in battle in the vain hope that I will repent and join his pursuit of the greater good. Both of us know that neither scenario will happen, but we both live in hope. And now you, great-nephew Funsan, we have the same situation between us, I cannot kill you, and you cannot kill me for the same twisted and sentimental reason,” he paused, “don’t waste any more of your precious time here, I have my hand, so do run back to your precious little council, and give them the good news. I am back!”
Before anyone could answer him, he vanished.
“Is that true great uncle? You will not kill each other because there is a bond of love between you?”
“No, it is not true,” Faraji answered, “we are not only twins by birth, but we are also bound by magic. If one kills the other, we both die, if I kill my twin, I also will die, if he kills me, he also will perish.”
“What if someone else kills him?”
“That is something we do not know and neither of us is in a hurry to find out.”
The three Wizard Guards disappeared and arrived in the peaceful city of Wrth y Môr. No one noticed or knew their arrival due to their cloaks. Not even Llewel. The city is quite small, so a search of the main thoroughfares and the square only took a few minutes. Llewel was quickly found in the city square. He was, as usual, making a speech for any who would listen. He used to be the High Elder for the city of Wrth y Môr, so was well known in the city and had many acquaintances, no actual friends, just people who knew him and disliked him.
“The Elder himself came and released me from the dungeons, gave me a free pardon. You see, it was all a terrible mistake, most of the so-called evidence against me was just lies and more lies made up by Llewellyn the so-called Brave and his hideous sons Jonathan and Thomas. How they were suddenly pronounced wizards, I have no idea. Neither of them can do more than a cantrip each. No real power at all, horrible, obnoxious, over testosteroned teenagers....”
He was just about to go off on another tirade of lies when there were two pops just above his head. There, on their staffs sat Jon and Tom.
“Where did you two brats appear from.”
“We’ve been here all the time listening to your little stories, but cloaked in invisibility, you should write it all down Llewel, it would do well in the fiction section of the library,” Tom said.
Llewel then started to rise into the air, hovering at the same level as the two boys.
“Put me down you wretches, put me down?” Llewel shouted indignantly with his arms and legs flailing around.
“Oy! Llewel!” shouted someone in the crowd, “thought you said they had no magic.”
The crowd laughed and continued to watch the spectacle.
“Our dad wants a word with you,” Jon said. Before the Wizard Guards could intervene, there was a pop, and Jon, Tom, and Llewel apparated back to the city quickly followed by the three Wizard Guards. They all arrived by the city gate at the same time, where the Wizard Guards assumed control again.
“Okay boys, we’ll take him from here. Thanks for your help, but no bounty I’m afraid,” said the chief guard. They then marched Llewel off again with him shouting his innocence and muttering curses at the two boys, for a change.