Free Twixt Heaven And Hell by Tristan Gregory

deliberately.
    “Balkan, are you telling me that you have created a way for magic to be worked by somebody who is not a wizard? ”
    Darius’s friend looked at him blankly for a moment. Then dawning realization animated his features as wonder spread over his face. “By the Choirs, so I have. This is… quite important, isn’t it?”
    “I think it is, Balkan. I truly do.”
     
    Over the next hour, they decided that a great deal of research still needed doing before Balkan brought his work to the attention of the Council.
    “I’ll need to enlist acolytes to help me test the runes,” Balkan stated, sitting in the large comfortable chair while Darius perched upon a stool. “And have a proper laboratory set up.”
    “And,” Darius said pensively, “You’ll need to find somebody who can carve a proper frog.”
     

Chapter Eight
     
    Torrey stumbled into the bushes to relieve himself, nearly tripping over his own feet on the way. He was glad none of the others were paying attention – he was always loudly boasting that a mountain dweller was hardy and sure-footed. If his comrades saw him stumble in these lowlands – with hardly any proper hills even, much less mountains – he would never hear the end of it.
    Torrey grinned in the dark as he loosed the laces on his breeches. Chances are, even if they had seen, none of them would remember it come morning. One of the others, a good bloke, had produced two skins of a rough, tasty drink as soon as they’d set camp. The soldier claimed to have saved it all the way from Riverside, waiting for a good reason to celebrate. They had all agreed that being pulled off the border for the first time in six months qualified.
    Two skins wouldn’t have been enough for even a swallow amongst the hundred men in the camp, but several other men had wine they’d managed to wheedle out of the officers before the split. Wine didn’t have the kick of the other stuff, but plenty of men accepted it all the same. Torrey had decided to try something new. The warmth in his belly had been fierce after the first swallow, and had since spread to his limbs.
    It was a clumsy heat, Torrey decided as he tried – thrice – to lace up his breeches. He chuckled at the way his fingers fumbled the familiar motions.
    The camp was a stone’s throw away, and Torrey could still clearly hear the singing and yelling. The latrines weren’t dug yet, which was why he was watering the plants. He imagined they’d be put somewhere out here. The army had split off into smaller groups of one or two-hundred in order to stave off the ‘camp smell’ - that foul stench that accompanies any large group of soldiers. It could be staved off yet longer if they placed the latrines as far as conveniently possible from the orderly rows of their tents.
    Torrey hoped they’d be here for at least a ten-day, maybe even a full fortnight, though there was no telling. The skirmishes and raids on the front made for constant attrition, and the officers never did bother to ask the soldiers if they were ready to go back to the fighting yet.
    Before he started back to the company of his fellows, Torrey took a moment to look out at the land. The grassland stretched to the horizon many miles away, illuminated by the nearly- full moon and broken occasionally by the silhouette of a tree. It had an eerie beauty that was sharply removed from the cluttered vistas of his tribe’s mountainous home.
    As the mind of a man in his cups will, Torrey's wandered down many paths; Past battles, futures hopes. Past lusts, future loves. He contemplated them all -
    - until the sky was lit with a pillar of fire, as if the sun had decided to rise again in fury – on the wrong side of the world.
    At first Torrey thought he was having a vision, as men say wizards oftentimes do. Surely, this great inferno in the sky was not real? Then a great wind ripped across the grassland and Torrey was nearly knocked off his feet by the blast of hot air.
    Then the world