Venk covered Lukas’ ears with both hands.
“I think we all know what that means. There’s no need to go into further details.”
Kasnar nodded. “As you wish.”
When Bastion met with the fellow, like he typically did at whatever tavern the two of them frequented, the man noticed the bands immediately. He demanded to know how Bastion had acquired them. Thinking quickly, Bastion claimed he had relieved the bands from a drunken traveler. Liking how they had looked, he decided to keep them.
Apparently Bastion learned of the nature of the bands and where they hailed from because as soon as he returned he threw enough food in my cellar for several weeks and disappeared. He was absent for three weeks. If I were to venture a guess I would say that was when Bastion began searching the blacksmith shops. The search for valuable trinkets was over. He had discovered a much more lucrative commodity. Armor.
The armor was the key, Bastion figured. He had to unlock the secrets of the armor, and in order to do that, he needed a scholar. He began financing excursions to other cities. He hired mercenaries to do his searching for him, thereby leaving him with an irrefutable alibi in case any questionable actions had to be taken. Word trickled back to him of a toymaker who could make wonderful toys and was only interested in exchanging the toys for genuine Narian artifacts. He had one of his men approach me and claim that they wanted to purchase the most expensive figurine I had available and to personally deliver it to Bykram.
I’m ashamed to say that I fell for it.
“That explains how your path and Bastion’s crossed,” Breslin thoughtfully observed. “But that doesn’t explain how jhorun became involved. What happened there? Bastion simply gave you a spell book? Didn’t he check the titles before he gave them to you?”
“He couldn’t,” Kasnar said with a shrug. “He couldn’t read Narian. I could. I had been researching it for so long that by then, I had taught it to myself. To this day I don’t think he realizes what he’s done. May I finish now?”
“Sorry”.
As I was perusing through the latest batch of books delivered by my captor, I was startled to find a tome of spells. I was so surprised that I flipped the book over and re-verified it was Narian. It was. It was written in the same fluid language that the rest of the books had been written in, so this was no fluke. Narians had jhorun and they obviously had used it.
I don’t think I need to tell you that I read that book from cover to cover. Not only did the Narians practice jhorun, but as with the humans, some had become very adept at it. One such Narian, a skilled spellcaster by the name of Oricfed Galfodin, decided to put his favorite spells to the pen. That book is the result.
Most of Oricfed’s spells were useless as what need have I to turn brown leather boots black? But interspersed throughout the book were much more useful spells, such as how to keep metal as hot as you want it without melting it. While it made for some incredibly interesting reading, it still didn’t help me out of my present predicament. Nothing in the book was powerful enough to break out of this cell. Perhaps Rahygren had checked the book after all and since it was harmless, felt he could safely give it to me. I don’t know. I was discouraged. I memorized what spells that I deemed useful and returned to my research as I had Bastion checking on my progress every three or four days.
I kept returning to the volume of spells as I couldn’t help but feel there was something I was missing. It was a book of spells! There must be something in there that could help me escape! Two more hours of fruitless searching yielded no extra insight, so in disgust, I threw the book across the room. It hit the back wall and slid down on to the mattress, falling open somewhere around the middle of the book. The scholar in me detested mistreating any type book, so I bent to retrieve it when I noticed the page it had fallen on. Apparently there were two pages that had been stuck together, and the jolt against the wall and separated them. While parts of the page had ripped away, as whatever adhesive was holding the two pages together were too strong to break, the note on the page was still legible.
It was simply entitled ‘layering’.
“As in the layering of spells?” Tristofer eagerly asked. “Shardwyn started to tell us how complicated a multi-layered spell can be.”
“I’m not familiar with that name. I’m assuming he’s a wizard?”
Tristofer shook his head. “Yes.”
The note was only three sentences long, but it was enough to get my hopes soaring again. Oricfed wrote that it was possible to combine two spells together and make them work in tandem with one another. Everyone with me so far?
Breslin, Athos, Venk, Lukas, and Tristofer all nodded excitedly.
Good. I thought back to what this book contained. Spells. Lots and lots of small insignificant spells that individually are inconsequential, but when layered with another, render completely unexpected results. I resolved right then that I had to master each and every spell contained in the book. And, funnily enough, I had to come to terms with the fact that I clearly had some level of jhorun in me as I could perform several of the less complex spells contained in the book and attain successful results.
You can imagine I kept this hidden from Rahygren. Every time he left me alone I’d retrieve that book and begin to experiment. Let me tell all of you that when it comes to mastering your jhorun, it’s not an easy thing to do.
“How did you do it?” Tristofer softly inquired.
“With time,” Kasnar answered. “Something that I had lots of.”
I began with a spell that would sketch out the dimensions of the room I was in. The spell was designed for cartographers, and I figured if I could make it draw out my chambers here, then I could start from there.
It took many attempts to get it right. Jhorun is very fickle. Your mind plays just as an important role as does the spell itself. If you’re not thinking clearly about what you want the spell to do then it can easily backfire or give you unexpected results. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that after much trial and error I could get it to map out not only my room but the existing city of Nar.
Consequently, Nar is much larger than I ever dreamt it’d be.
With that spell mastered, I moved on to the others. I learned so many, and could perform them so well, that I then started to experiment with layering. I fetched a fresh sheet of parchment, laid it on the table there, and tried my cartography spell once more, only this time I added in a seeker’s spell, specifying I wanted to know where my family was by showing me on the map. At the same time I imagined holding a map of Lentari, with dots indicating where my family was at that moment.
It didn’t go over so well. I got my map of Lentari, but it had so many dots all over it that I could barely recognize the map for what it was. I tried again. And again. And again. Each time I got something a little different.
With luck, and a little perseverance, I chanced upon the key to making a multi-layered spell work. You had to have all possible outcomes planned out. Give it a ‘if this happens then do that’ clause. I went through every formulation I could think of and asked yet again for the seeker/cartography spell to show me my family. A single dot appeared, and it was right over the Bohanis where Borahgg was.
I was elated! I modified the spell to map out the city of Borahgg and then show me where my family was. I cried right then. There, in the family home that I remembered, was a dot with a tiny label next to it: Neika. Maelnar was nearby, as were several of my siblings and their children. It had worked!
I should also mention here that it had taken me several months just to modify my spell from showing me my family in Lentari to showing them in Borahgg. It wasn’t easy, but it was possible, and that gave me hope.
Now that I knew I could do it, I expanded my experiments and tried to see if I could find inanimate objects. I thought back to my home and knew that Neika would never do anything to the map I had received from the little human girl all those years ago, so I began the painstaking process of modifying
the spell to no longer look for my family but instead, display the location of the map in Borahgg.
Sure enough, a tiny dot appeared on my map. It was right where I remembered it being, namely in my home. I decided to see if anyone else in Borahgg had anything from Nar, so I modified my map again to see if there were other types of Narian artifacts nearby. You can imagine my dismay when after six months of creating my spell, nothing appeared on the paper.
To make sure I had the spell right, I thought back to my favorite chisel back in my workshop. I modified the spell, again, to find and display that tool on my map. It worked! It was still in my workshop, provided my workshop was still mine. The map merely displayed the chisel’s location; it didn’t tell me whether or not the workshop was still mine. I had hoped it was.
“Why not just send a message?” Venk interrupted. “Why go to so much trouble to create a multi-layer spell when a simple plea for help would have sufficed?”
“Rahygren began to suspect I was up to no good,” Kasnar answered. “Bastion had passed away years ago, and unfortunately for me, Rahygren took over the family business. He was much smarter than his father ever was. He kept a much closer eye on me. The only way I was allowed to work on the spell was by convincing him that I was attempting to decipher ancient pictographs. I knew he would only believe that story for so long, but I had to try. I needed time. The problem was, I had run out.”
“What do you mean?” Venk asked as he nervously looked around, as though Rahygren himself would jump out of the shadows at any moment.
“Suspecting I was plotting something, and in retrospect I can only figure it was because my attitude had gone through a complete reversal because I was happy, even hopeful. I guess I hadn’t ever been like that because Rahygren grew very nervous. A week later that behemoth of a door had been installed.”
Everyone turned to look at the heavily damaged iron door fifteen feet away.
“I needed a way to defeat the door. Rahygren alone had the key, which he kept on a pendant he wore at all times. There was no way to wrest it away from him as I had become old and feeble. He had me stymied, and he knew it. What he didn’t know, though, is that I had a few tricks up my own sleeves. I just needed time. And thankfully, that’s what he gave me since he was certain there was no way I was ever going to get through that door without the key.
Confident in my new-found abilities, I began to formulate an escape plan. First, I had to solve the door problem. I remembered reading something about special tools the Narians favored. I only remembered something about having special enhanced power. Maybe something like that could break the door down? I had to look, and now thanks to the spell book and my ability to find inanimate objects, I might be able to find something Topside that could be used to free me.
The seeker/cartography spell took close to a year to write. It was the most complex spell I had ever written, but if I wanted to be successful, I knew I had to be as thorough as possible. Any changes once it been had completed would necessitate a year long wait to plot it all out again. Once I was done, I activated the spell and held my breath. Would there even be anything out there to find, let alone be useful enough to be able to help me attain the freedom I so craved?
My map lit up with speckled dots. Turns out remnants of the once mighty Narian people were everywhere. The problem was, however, I didn’t know enough about what could be out there to include that in the spell.
“No labels,” Breslin guessed.
Kasnar nodded.
There were plenty of things to find, but not enough information to identify. What I needed now was to figure out what I was looking for. What was capable of breaking down that door? Maybe a chisel to cut away the stone from the locking bars? Perhaps a file to cut my way through the door? Perhaps a drill to bore through the locking mechanism?
The answer came when I learned of the existence of the power hammers. There was a tool that was capable of pulverizing the largest boulders with minimal effort. Surely a tool of this magnitude could help me out. However, the more I researched, the more I realized that their hammers were closely guarded secrets. Apparently their construction was passed from father to son by word of mouth only.
My gaze dropped to my map. I had the means to locate one! Surely I must try! Hopeful again, I returned to my spellbook and began crafting an even more complex spell, as this time I needed to narrow my focus. After a year and a half I was ready. I activated the spell. Much to my chagrin, nothing appeared. There were simply no power hammers left in existence. My hopes fell. Then the tinker in me wondered if the parts to make one still existed. I went back to my books and learned there were four parts comprising a power hammer: handle, head, counterweight, and helix.
“You’re talking about the ruby whorl, right?” Tristofer asked.
“To the Narians, it was simply a helix,” Kasnar explained.
Two years later I was ready yet again. I activated the spell and waited to see what would happen. Four dots appeared on my map. I held my breath. Since I had specified I wanted one of each component, I knew that I had found what I was looking for. My luck held!
I studied the four areas on the map where the dots were. One was in a tiny lake. Another was in a waterfall on the eastern coast. The third location was in the Selekais.
“And the fourth?” Athos prompted.
Venk regarded his brother with such an incredulous look that Athos was taken aback.
“What? What’d I miss?”
“The fourth is Dual Tree.”
“Oh, right. Forgot about that. Sorry.”
Kasnar gingerly picked the hammer up and inspected it. Turning it over and over in his hands, he looked up at his grandson.
“Which location held which component?”
Breslin tapped the hammer’s head. “This we found at the waterfall. The weight was at the bottom of the nixie lake, and the gem was in the collection of a Zweigelan. The helix was a real pleasure to obtain, let me tell you.”
Surprised, Kasnar smoothed down his long thin beard. “Really?”
“No. I was joking.”
“Ah.”
Kasnar closed his eyes and gave the appearance of having fallen asleep. Breslin eyed the others before subtly clearing his throat. Kasnar’s eyes snapped open.
“I’m still alive, lad.”
“We thought you had fallen asleep.”
“Oh. It’s a distinct possibility.” Kasnar chuckled. “Will you answer me something?”
Breslin nodded. “Of course.”
“Was there an entrance to Nar in the cave under the tree?”
Breslin nodded again. “Aye. That’s how we entered the mountain.”
The frail old dwarf clapped his hands with glee. “I knew it! If only I had time to look!”
“It’s good that you didn’t,” Breslin pointed out.
Kasnar sat up straighter. “Eh? How so?”
“Had you gone into the mountain, you would have encountered a sealed Narian door. Without a helix, you wouldn’t have made it very far.”
“And because you had the hammer, you were allowed to pass,” Kasnar thoughtfully observed.
“Exactly,” Breslin confirmed.
“I think it’s high time we got out of here,” Venk declared as he rose to his feet. He pulled Lukas up as well. “I don’t know about any of you, but I’d like to be long gone from here before our gracious host returns.”
Breslin scrambled to his feet. He gently picked up his grandfather and set him on the ground. Kasnar slapped his hands away.
“I may not be as young as you,” the wizened little dwarf snapped as he straightened as much of his three and a half foot frame as he could, “but I am no invalid. I can walk.”
“We may have to run,” Athos pointed out as he pulled his large battle axe from his back. He also pulled his smaller close-range axe and began fussing with his two baldrics crisscrossing across his back.
“What are you doing?” Venk wanted to know. He caught his brother’s large sin
gle-bladed black axe as it was thrown to him.
“Can you carry that for me?”
Comprehension dawned. Venk nodded and fastened the axe to his baldric so that it lay next to his crossbow. Having finished arranging the leather straps, Athos motioned for Breslin to pick his grandfather up and place him in the harness he had created on his pack. Nodding gratefully, Breslin moved towards his grandfather.
“Don’t even think about it,” Kasnar warned. “I’ll not be slung over anyone’s shoulder like a slab of meat, thank you very much.”
Frustration flared.
“Want to see grandmother again?” Breslin snapped.
Kasnar’s mouth closed.
“I thought so. This is not ideal, but it’ll get us out of here. Master Athos is right. I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll need to make a speedy departure. There we go.”
Breslin easily lifted his frail grandfather onto Athos’ back and strapped him into place. Once he was sure Kasnar was secure, he picked up Athos’ smaller axe and added it to his own belt.
“Everyone ready? Let’s go.”
Tristofer was flabbergasted.
“We can’t go! We’re in Nar! We have so much to do!”
“What’s more important?” Breslin countered back at him. “Stay here longer to look around and run the risk of running into this Rahygren fellow or getting out of here in one piece so you can be the one to announce the discovery of Nar?”
Tristofer hurriedly slung his pack over his shoulder.
“It can wait.”
Breslin grunted. “I thought as much. Let’s go. As soon as we make it outside Rhamalli can take us back to the valley just as quickly as he can. Rhamalli, is there any chance you can hear us?”
Lost City Page 30
