“Deciding when a novice has reached the ability level where we can let them out into the world and be confident that they aren’t going to get themselves killed, or worse, cause a disaster that kills others, has proven to be more of a challenge. So we came up with five tests that would give us a good indication, and this is the current iteration.” She spun the sheet around so Solène could get a better look.
The first test made her smile—to create a light that persisted after the caster had ceased to focus on it. She had done that on her first meeting with dal Drezony, and knew her next attempt would be even better.
The second was to lift a small object into the air and hold it steady for a certain amount of time. That sparked her imagination—she had never thought of trying something like that. Her use of magic had always been needs-based, and she had never needed to levitate something. Nonetheless, it didn’t seem like such a difficult task, and she was confident she could do it.
The third task looked more challenging, and she could immediately see the relevance. It was to perform what it called “a push” while in a heavily distracting environment. The requirements seemed obvious enough, but she did wonder what a “heavily distracting environment” would involve.
“Heavily distracting?” Solène said.
“It’s all well and good being able to shape magic in the serenity of the Priory, but you’ll need to be able to do it, and control it, out in the real world too. Perhaps in a fight. We’ll try to simulate that confusion in the test.”
Solène nodded and looked at the next item on the list—the creation of a barrier that completely surrounds the caster and blocks both magical and physical attacks. The fifth and final test was called a “stilling.” She looked at dal Drezony and raised an eyebrow.
“That’s an interesting one,” the woman said. “We discovered it in some old papers the Prince Bishop found, but we’re not sure what it was used for. We can speculate, but the important thing for these purposes is that it’s a complicated piece of magic that takes quite a bit of skill to shape. It slows the world around you, or at least the part of it you’re focussing on. Time moves normally for the caster, and others if you’re able to extend the effect to them, but that’s very difficult. I sometimes wonder if I should try using it to help me get through all of this.” She gestured to the pile of papers on the side of her desk.
Solène sat back in her chair and thought about it. Other than the first one, she hadn’t attempted any of them. The challenge of trying to do them in a controlled way was an exciting prospect, and she wondered if she might be able to manage them all. She chewed her lip for a moment, then made her decision.
“When can I take the test?”
Dal Drezony laughed. “Well, I commend your eagerness, but as I explained, we have to be careful. Your talent is obvious, but there are huge dangers that you need to be aware of and trained to avoid. How far you’ve learned to use this talent is an entirely other matter, and it’s my responsibility to help you develop it, and most importantly, learn how to control it. The greater the power, the greater the importance of control, and you are most certainly the most powerful mage I’ve encountered.”
Solène blushed at the compliment, but wanted to take the tests even more. She had spent too long hiding from this. Now that she was free to explore it, patience was a very hard thing to come by.
“How can I show you that I have control?”
Dal Drezony laughed again. “Well, I suppose, by completing all the tests. Usually we know that a novice is going to be able to pass before allowing them to attempt them, but admittedly, these tests are new. There are a number of brothers and sisters here who I suspect might not be able to pass them even now. As I said, it’s early days for us, and we’re still trying to organise everything in the best way. For the first few years, there were no tests at all.”
“I’d like to try,” Solène said. “If I can’t then I’m happy to spend as long as it takes to pass them, but I’d like to know where I stand now. How much work I need to do.”
Dal Drezony chewed on her lip for a moment, her gaze drifting to her window, and the courtyard garden. After a moment, she nodded. “Very well. I’ll make the arrangements and you can attempt them this afternoon. As you say, at the very least, we’ll know what we have to work on. We’ll meet again after supper at the crafting gallery. Will you be ready?”
Solène smiled, and nodded.
CHAPTER
26
“How did you even find your way out here the first time?” Guillot said. He stared up the narrow valley and shivered in the chill breeze. It had taken them the entire morning, since well before dawn, to get to the valley that led to the mountain Leverre said was home to the dragon.
“We have our methods,” Leverre said.
“Remind me what you were looking for?” Guillot said.
Leverre glared at him. “I didn’t tell you, and I’m not going to now for no other reason than it’s a waste of our time.”
“Whatever you say, Banneret-Commander Leverre.”
Dal Sason cleared his throat. “I’d very much like to be there before nightfall. The uneven ground ahead will be treacherous in the dark.”
It was barely noon, but with dal Sason, it was difficult to identify irony. Still, Guillot couldn’t quite take the comment seriously. “I have to admit, the danger posed by the uneven ground does very little to bother me, all things considered,” he said.
“Another thing we agree on,” Leverre said. “We should camp soon. If we keep going, there won’t be enough daylight left to fight the dragon when we reach its cave. I’d rather not face the thing in the dark.”
“Indeed,” Guillot said. “If we keep agreeing, we might end up friends.”
Leverre gave him a thin-lipped smile, but said nothing.
“Let’s find somewhere sheltered and out of sight to make camp,” Guillot said. “If we’re close to its home, we should stay hidden.”
“There was a copse of trees not far from here, if I recall correctly,” Leverre said. “It should give us enough cover.”
“Lead on,” dal Sason said.
Leverre took them into the valley along the track of a streambed. While the water was currently little more than a trickle, Guillot knew that during the spring thaw it would be a raging torrent capable of washing them back to where they had started. The ground grew rockier as they moved into the pass and the scree from the mountains rose on either side. He could feel his horse slipping on the rocks and had to admit that he was more concerned about a bad fall than he had led dal Sason to believe.
“That’s the copse up ahead,” Leverre said.
The trees were clustered in a hollow, safe from the howling winds that swept through the valley every winter, and far enough from the stream to avoid the torrents of meltwater every spring. They were the last trees in the valley, and there was something sad about their loneliness yet defiance in their continued existence in such a harsh and remote place. Guillot hoped their using it as a campsite wouldn’t lead to the dragon burning it, and them, to ashes.
“It’ll be a chilly night,” Eston said when they gained the shelter of the trees.
“We won’t freeze,” Guillot said, “but if we light a fire, our flame-spurting friend might decide to come over and contribute. I’ll take a night of discomfort over that, thanks.”
“He’s right,” Leverre said. “While we’re here, we have to be invisible.”
They made their camp as comfortable as possible, piling pine needles up under their bedrolls and into mounds to give them shelter from the breeze. Guillot spotted Leverre standing at the edge of the copse, looking up at the mountainside. Making his way over, he followed Leverre’s gaze up to a gaping maw in the mountain.
“It’ll take time to get up there,” Guillot said. “We’ll be pretty exposed.”
“Yes,” Leverre said. “You’d be surprised how quick you can get back down when you’ve got a fire-breathing dragon chasing you, though.”
>
Guillot let out a sober chuckle. “I’m sorry about your people. I’ve lost men in battle, and I know how hard it is.”
Leverre nodded. “I’m sorry too. For your people. Your village. It was a horrible thing. Makes what we’re doing here all the more important. No one intended any of this to happen. We had no way of knowing the creature was up there.”
Guillot let out a grunt, not knowing what to say. Stopping the dragon was important, but he couldn’t help feeling they were getting in way over their heads. If anyone was relying on him to have some miraculous superpower because he was a Chevalier of the Silver Circle, he feared they were going to be sorely disappointed. He had tried to recall the ceremony many times over the past few days, without much success.
“What’s it like up there?” he asked.
“It’s a huge cavern, pitch black. I think there’s another chamber toward the back. The beast seemed to come out of there, but I didn’t see myself. I was at the cavern mouth, overseeing the search.”
“The dark will give us problems. We don’t have many torches.”
“We won’t need them. I can fill the cavern with as much light as you want. Magic has its benefits.”
“That brings me to my next question,” Guillot said. “What can your people bring to the effort? Magically, I mean.”
Leverre took a deep breath. “Magic is a new science. We can do a number of things that make life more convenient—move objects around, create light—but real power, like you hear of in stories about Imperial mages? We’re a long way from being able to do anything close to that.
“That’s what brought us up here. The Prince Bishop thought there might be something in this cave that could give us a boost. Instead, we lost several of our strongest and most promising mages, all dead before I knew what was happening. I’m not sure why it let me get away. It just sat down at the mouth of that cavern and watched me with its big, soulless eyes as I ran away. It was the most humiliating thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Guillot felt awkward at Leverre’s openness, though he supposed that if there was to be a rapprochement between them, now was the time.
“No one could expect you to have done differently,” Guillot said. “I ran the first time I saw it too. It’s a terrifying thing. Dragons have been the scary monster in children’s stories for centuries. No one could expect to see one.”
Leverre nodded. “No, I suppose not. To answer your question: we Spurriers can distract it, we can harry it, we will most likely be able to hurt it, but we don’t possess the power to kill the beast.”
“Thanks for being honest with me.”
“To lie about that would simply get us both killed,” Leverre said, then excused himself and returned to the campsite.
Guillot studied the black void in the mountainside, wondering if the beast was up there at that moment, resting in anticipation of destroying another village, or worse. He wondered if it suspected men were on their way to kill it, then wondered if it could even think. Did it know fear? At that moment, Guillot certainly did. The task ahead seemed as monumental as the mountain before him and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think of a way to complete it.
* * *
Guillot felt like a condemned man when the light of day grew strong enough in their shady enclave to make it impossible to pretend to sleep any longer. He rolled out of his bed of blankets and pine needles and started preparing for the day. There was no chance of a campfire, and while he didn’t like the idea of going up the mountain without a hot meal in his belly, he preferred it to the thought of being a hot meal in the dragon’s belly.
Movement spread through the camp as the dragon hunters went about their morning routines in silence. Even dal Sason seemed to lack anything encouraging to say. He checked his gear, his face gone pale, as though realisation of what they intended to do had finally hit him.
Guillot drew his Sword of Honour and family sword from their sheaths and placed them on his blanket. The Sword of Honour, with a broader Telastrian blade, was something of a jack-of-all-trades. It would serve admirably on the battlefield or in most of the regular fighting a working banneret might set his hand to, but was too heavy to duel with, where speed meant the difference between life and death. Still, he wasn’t sure it was the right weapon for this mission.
That left his family blade, Mourning. He had no idea of its age, only that it had been paired with a new, more fashionable hilt in his father’s time, which in itself was not the first time it had been updated. The blade was broader at the base with a full-length fuller and lines that drew together at the tip in a smooth curve rather than the more angular design of the duelling blade. An ancestor, somewhere back in the almost forgotten mists of time, had been one of the founders of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle, and Guillot had often wondered if the blade had been his. Might it already have tasted the blood of a dragon?
He picked it up and hefted it in his hand. He was much the same size as his father had been in his prime, and the handle couldn’t have suited his hand much better if it had been made for him. The new hilt was tastefully done—it had been sent to Carlujko, the celebrated Ostian bladesmith, all the way on the other side of the Middle Sea, so the new Telastrian hilt would match the quality of the old, beautiful blade. While regular steel rusted over time, Telastrian steel aged like vintage wine, growing stronger and more beautiful. The swirling blue grain in the dark grey steel had developed a more vibrant hue with age, which made Guillot’s other two newer swords pale by comparison.
Tightening his grip on the handle of the old sword, he chewed his lip. If Mourning hadn’t already shed the blood of a dragon, then it was long beyond time. Perhaps the spirits of his ancestors would look down on him from the heavens favourably and aid him in his most dire moment. He laughed at how foolish this thought was, and how much more receptive he was to the teachings of the church and the benevolence of the gods now that he faced death.
“I’d love to know what can make you laugh on a morning like this,” dal Sason said.
“Better to die laughing than screaming,” Guillot said.
“That definitely isn’t the cheery thought I was looking for,” dal Sason said. “Are you near ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Guillot said. “The others?”
“Likewise,” Leverre said. “Although I’m beginning to wish we’d gone up the mountain in darkness. It might have been better to risk turning an ankle rather than be picked off one by one on that slope.”
“Wouldn’t make any difference,” Guillot said as he started buckling on pieces of armour. “It was hunting around Villerauvais at night. I suspect it can see perfectly well in the dark.”
“I wonder if it’s too much to hope for that it doesn’t see all that well in daylight,” Sergeant Doyenne said.
“We can always hope,” Guillot said. “If you wouldn’t mind?” He raised his arms to expose the straps on his armour that were awkward to get to himself. Leverre stepped over and started tugging them tight.
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” Leverre said, giving the buckles one final pull. “Let’s get to it. Nothing to be gained by putting it off any longer.”
“Agreement again,” Guillot said.
The group moved to the edge of the copse and surveyed the slope. Loose scree and boulders covered the steep mountainside. He couldn’t see them all reaching the cavern in less than an hour, more likely two—a long time to be out in the open, on a surface impossible to move silently on.
“We should spread out,” Guillot said.
“Sounds like a good idea,” dal Sason said. “No point in making things any easier for it than we need to.”
“Well, see you up there,” Guillot said. “We can reconvene under the lip of the opening.”
Everyone nodded in agreement and Guillot set off, leading the way. In addition to his old sword, he carried one of the modified belek spears. Intended to be used from the saddle, it was long and heavy and was awkward to
haul up the mountainside. He felt it would be worth the effort, though. Every wrong choice, every concession to laziness, could be fatal.
Despite his best efforts, Guillot failed to keep his boot tops clear of the water when he crossed the stream, and they squelched as he walked. Dying with cold, wet feet didn’t appeal at all. Added to his empty stomach, Gill expected he was about to have a particularly miserable experience.
His boots slipped on the loose stones as he started to tackle the slope and the cumbersome spear threw him off balance. It was too large to use as a walking stick, so he slung it over his shoulders and hung onto it with both hands in an effort to stay balanced. That worked, to a degree, but the scree shifted with each step, so he was breathing hard after only a few steps.
By the time he was halfway up, his thighs burned, and it felt as though the air wasn’t thick enough to sustain him. He looked around and felt guilty disappointment to see the others making better progress than he, while looking as though they weren’t finding the climb nearly so difficult. Before the day began, he had worried if he would be capable of fighting when he got to the top. Now he worried his heart might fail and he would drop dead before he even got close.
He wasn’t going to be shown up by the others, however. At one time, other people had admired him, and he didn’t intend to be considered an embarrassment now. He put his head down and drove with his legs, one step at a time, doing his best to ignore the distance he still had to cover.
CHAPTER
27
Solène arrived at the crafting gallery as the bell in the Priory’s small campanile chimed the hour signalling the end of supper. She hadn’t eaten—filled with nervous energy, she had no appetite. She hadn’t been in the crafting gallery before, and found herself in a large, high-ceilinged room much like the fencing hall, but without the racks of training weapons.
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