The Apprentice to Zdrell

by David K Bennett

  It was taxing work, the hardest thing Jonny had ever attempted. He could not have done it without the power ring to give him the additional strength and control. Jonny started to really understand what The Master had meant earlier when he had said that there were certain operations that a single wizard just was not powerful enough to accomplish. Creating this ring was taxing Jonny to his very limit.

  Finally, he could sense it was done. He allowed it to cool and then opened his eyes to see what he had created. It was strange to look at because the different metals were clearly distinct, but you could not say from looking at it where one ended and the other began. The different metals flowed together in a spiral throughout the length of the ring. It was a very odd mix. Still, looking at it Jonny could see that it lacked something; then it came to him, he needed the diamond chips he had used with The Master’s ring. But he was too tired now. It had taken too much out of him just to get this far. The final additions would have to wait.

  § § §

  Jonny did not wake until midmorning. When he went out to Kason and showed him the results of the night’s work, Kason looked puzzled.

  “Tis passing strange, Jonny,” Kason said, turning the ring over and over in his hand. “I’d have said it wasn’t possible to make metal do this, but clearly you have. I suspect though that for any but you, it still is impossible.”

  Kason shook his head. “You’ve passed me, boy. There’s little more I could teach you when you can make things like this. I take it, this is the last item for your journeyman project?”

  “Yes, Kason. It is, but it’s not done yet.”

  “Not done? What more will you do to it?”

  “I’m going to add diamond chips to it like I did with the ring for Master Silurian.”

  “How will you–-no never mind. I’ve no idea how you made this thing. You shouldn’t have been able to do it, so how am I to understand how you’ll change it.”

  “It was hard to do, Kason, but you can easily understand what I did. I just heated each of the wires to just below their melting point and pushed them together. Keeping them all at just the right temperature was the hard part.”

  “You . . . had them all at their own melting points, at the same time? No boy, I don’t get what you did, even though you tell me, much less how. All I can say is: it must be magic.”

  Jonny could see that Kason was right; he would not be able to understand what Jonny had done. Jonny was not even sure he could explain it with words himself. He had just done what seemed right. There was no other way to put it. Once he had started, he had just felt a sense of rightness as he had worked to bring the whole thing together. Now, for the same reason, he knew he still was not done and that he needed the added changes the diamonds would bring.

  § § §

  Jonny did not finish the ring that day, nor the next. He really had not realized how much making the ring had taken out of him. Every time he took off his power ring, he felt so drained and tired that all he wanted to do was sleep. He did sleep a lot those days and it was not until the third day before he felt recovered enough to attempt to finish it.

  Again, he waited until after the normal close of business to begin his work. This time Kason asked if he could be present to watch. Jonny was very happy to consent. Jonny prepared six small chips of diamond to embed in the ring. He did not know why he chose six, except that it felt like the right number.

  He moved again to a cold jewelry forge and brought the ring into the air and set it spinning slowly. He reached out and heated the metals that made up the ring and then pulled the first chip to it. He waited until he found just the right place where the pieces of metal came together and fit the chip into it. It was like finding the missing piece to a puzzle. Once he found the right spot, it slipped below the surface of the ring with almost no effort on his part. As the piece fit home, there was a brief flash of power from the ring. Kason cried out in surprise, but Jonny had somehow known this would happen and felt energized by the wave of power.

  Jonny continued working, fitting the remaining chips into the ring. As each found its spot, there was another release of power, each one slightly stronger than the previous. When he was about to fit the final piece in place, Jonny told Kason to shield his eyes.

  This time the flash was much stronger, but Jonny was ready. He soaked in the power using his power ring and then channeled it back to the new ring. Without waiting for it to cool, he reached out and put the ring on. It should have burned him, but it did not. As soon as he put it on, he felt the whole world change.

  He could see in ways he had never before imagined. His zdrell vision was there, and at a much greater level. He also could see much that before he had only seen when using the demon sight amulet, but where with the demon sight amulet things had a fuzzy, indistinct look to them, now he saw those things with razor edged clarity.

  When he looked at the new ring, it was like looking into the sun. The power and energy channeling through it was incredible, but he instinctively knew that it did not have to be that way.

  With a thought, he commanded the ring to be still, and it was. Just like snuffing out a candle, now the ring appeared to be nothing more than metal, though Jonny’s enhanced perceptions continued.

  Then he remembered Kason.

  The master metalworker was half hiding behind one of the workbenches.

  “What have you done, Jonny? That ring was glowing like the sun and you just reached out and put it on. For a moment, you looked like a picture of one of the gods or demons. You were glowing just like that ring.” Kason said with awe in his voice. “Now you’re not glowing, but what are you, boy?”

  “I don’t know Kason. I don’t think I am, myself, any different, but with this ring I don’t think things will ever be the same.”

  Neither spoke for some time. Reluctantly, Jonny removed the ring. The world snapped back to its normal, seemingly dreary look. The effect scared Jonny, but he knew what he had to do next.

  He took off the power ring.

  For the first time since he had begun his work that evening, Jonny realized the workshop was dark and he had been working without any lights. He saw Kason had a small lantern on the workbench by him, but its light barely reached where Jonny stood.

  With an effort, he brought back his zdrell sight, but it was such a pale thing compared to what he easily had with the power ring and was not remotely close to what he had with the new ring on. He used his sight to look at the ring and it still looked like nothing more than plain metal. With his other rings and amulets, there was always a sense of magic about them when he looked at them with his zdrell sight, but not with this ring. He had told it to be still, and it was.

  Now that Jonny thought about what it had been like to wear both rings, he knew that this new ring was very different from his power ring as well as from the ring he had created for The Master. The power ring gave Jonny direct access to the power in his surrounding environment. Like a man taking a small commission on a sale of a large parcel of land, the power ring took a small portion of the power all around Jonny and gave him access to a piece of it.

  This new ring was something different altogether. Jonny could tell that it did more and less all at the same time. He could tell that he could use it to store power, much the same as the ring he had created for Master Silurian. He could also tell that it too could tap into the ambient power around Jonny as his power ring did, but at a much higher level. He knew he could pull the power from things, more than just the ambient power that all things radiated into the environment, but the power that held them together. It was a great and terrible power that the ring possessed, yet it was not evil. Jonny felt this ring could control, or master, the power anywhere he could perceive, and with the enhanced perceptions Jonny had while wearing it, there was little he could not perceive.

  Jonny feared this ring, feared it for what it could allow him to do, and what he might become if he did some of the things it made possible. He was not at all sure he was ready
, or that anyone could be, for this much power.

  Unlike his power ring, Jonny was not afraid of this ring falling into someone else’s hands. He knew that it would only work for someone who understood how to see with zdrell. As the ring was now, he doubted anyone but he or possibly Master Silurian would be able to do anything with it.

  He resolved not to use the ring too much. He already knew that the enhanced perceptions he had when wearing it were too intoxicating. It would be much too easy to become completely dependent on it, much more so than the power ring.

  In his mind, he was already thinking of the ring as the master ring. It gave him mastery and control over all power in his reach. He felt that one day he would be ready to wear it all the time, but not now.

  Chapter 61

  Grimor

  The demon lord came through the portal into Jelnic’s work room. Before the wizard could speak, the demon spoke in his booming voice.

  “Whatever the reason for your summons, Jelnic, you will hear me first.”

  Jelnic was puzzled, as well as irritated. He sat for a moment with his mouth half open wondering if he was wise to allow this breach of protocol. He decided to hear the demon out before he decided if the reason justified the slight.

  “Say on, Karth. What is so urgent?” he said with a slight wave of his hand.

  “There is another line cutter abroad in the land.”

  Jelnic tried ineffectually to hide his surprise and irritation.

  “How can that be? I eliminated the last line cutter over three hundred years ago. Who claims this line cutter exists?”

  “A third circle demon was summoned and immediately detected it in the room where he arrived. He eliminated the foolish wizard who summoned him, but the line cutter remains.”

  The demon floated there, waiting for Jelnic to respond. Jelnic wished the demon who reported the line cutter had eliminated it itself, but, of course, demons were powerless (or claimed they were) to destroy the one thing that could harm them.

  “Where was this?” he asked.

  “In Salaways, in the castle of the wizard known as Silurian.”

  “Ah, Silurian. Strange that a third circle demon would be summoned there, he has always opposed us, but I guess that it was not Silurian that did the summoning?”

  “It was not.”

  “Well, Silurian has always been fond of poking into unlikely places and finding things. He must have found some hidden cache,” Jelnic said, almost talking to himself.

  Focusing his attention on the demon, he continued. “I will have the line cutter found and destroyed, if you will take a message for me to Feltran in Skryla. He can find someone with the appropriate skills to find and destroy the line cutter. I was going to have you take several messages to Skryla, this will only be one more.”

  “I will do this for you, Jelnic. Do not forget your charge. It is only to keep zdrell out of this world that I have lengthened your pitiful mortal life,” the demon rumbled.

  Jelnic was irritated by the demon’s tone, but he had not lived this long by being too impatient.

  “I do not forget, demon. I will act to eliminate this threat to you and your brother demons. Here is the message you must give to Feltran. Say to him . . . .” Jelnic told him the message to relay to Feltran, and also gave him several message scrolls he had originally summoned the demon to give to various wizards in Skryla. After that was done, the demon left.

  Sitting alone at his desk, Jelnic’s anger cooled. He thought over how this would affect his plans for the coming invasion of Skryla. It could easily upset the timetable he had spent the last hundred years putting into place. He turned it over in his mind, wondering how any zdrell cache could have escaped his notice.

  Finally, he smiled. He had been working by subtle means for decades with little outward to show for it. Perhaps a little action would give him a chance to see something happen directly. It might also give him an excuse to remove Silurian. Salaways had been a thorn in his side since Silurian took over. This might just be the chance to pluck it out.

  Chapter 62

  Nearly a week after he had completed the master ring, Jonny still had not gone back to work on his sword. He also had not put on the master ring again. Kason knew that Jonny was not working on the sword, but said nothing to him. In fact, Kason said very little to Jonny at all. Jonny could see that what Kason had seen the night Jonny finished the master ring had affected him even more than it had Jonny.

  Jonny didn’t want to work on the sword because he knew that to do the things he needed to complete the sword would require him to put on the master ring, and he was afraid to do it. The ring scared him, even though he knew he had created it. It scared him most because he was afraid that if he put it on again he would never want to take it off.

  Jonny thought about talking to Master Silurian about it, but for some reason was reluctant to do it. He felt he knew what The Master would tell him, besides he did not want to admit he was scared.

  § § §

  Jonny went nearly two weeks before he finally decided he could put it off no longer. He heated a forge at the end of a late spring day, got the sword and all his tools ready, and put on the ring.

  He felt his perceptions shift, and the world became much more profound and intense. When he looked at the sword, he could clearly see the power trapped in the blade, but now he could also clearly see the pathways he needed to create to channel and control the power. He placed the blade in the fire and watched until it was the right temperature, and then he pulled the blade out and began to work rapidly. In less than five minutes, he was able to do what he had been unable to do earlier while working for hours.

  He spent the next several hours working on the hilt and the guard of the sword. Previously he had done all his magical work with swords directly on the blade. On this blade, he knew that the pommel, hilt and guard had to all be one piece with the blade rather than separate pieces as in other swords.

  The hilt of this sword would link the wielder directly to the blade. Jonny knew this was important for this sword would truly be a line cutter. With it, Jonny would be able to cut lines of force with the same ease that shears cut fleece from a sheep.

  Jonny was still working on the sword when the other workers came into the workshop the next morning. They neither spoke nor disturbed him and he was completely oblivious to their presence. Finally, just past noon, Jonny noticed the sun was up and that the other workers even existed. He looked up at them, smiled, waved a greeting, then wrapped up the sword in a cloth, and walked out of the workshop. He relieved himself, then went to his room and lay down; still holding the cloth wrapped sword, he slept for two days.

  § § §

  With the sword completed, Jonny had technically completed the terms of his journeyman project and could, by presenting his items to The Master and Kason, claim the title of journeyman.

  Jonny was reluctant to do it.

  Though he knew he had more than fully proven his right to be a journeyman, he knew that on doing so everything would change. He was not at all certain he wanted things to change more than they already had.

  Jonny also knew that he needed to make one more thing before he presented his projects to The Master. He had completed the sword, but as with the power ring and the demon ring, it radiated power to any who could see it. When Jonny looked at it with his zdrell or demon sight, the sword blazed with a fire of power. He knew that if he were to safely keep the sword, he had to find a way to hide its power the same as he had with the demon ring.

  He determined that the best way to hide the sword was to make a scabbard that would obscure its power. Jonny knew that it could be no ordinary leather scabbard, so after some thought he opted to make a wooden scabbard similar to the one he had made for the duelist’s sword. This time, since he was not working in metal, he would have to carve the wood to channel the force lines to obscure the power of the sword.