Dragon's Rise

by Lou Hoffmann

  “I’d heard rumors,” Thurlock said, sounding surly and keeping his eyes straight ahead. “I needed to see for myself. I didn’t realize how much it would disturb you, though. Care to tell me why it did?”

  Lucky didn’t respond immediately. When he did, he circled the crux of the matter, beating around the bush, as they say. “Aren’t plays supposed to be fun? And, well, the whole bit about appeasing the fire god, of course. And, it didn’t seem like the City of Suns was a very nice place, and Thurlock, damn! Tell me, please: was the City of Suns ever a real place?”

  Thurlock turned in the saddle to get a good look at him, a frown spelling out his puzzlement. “I’m not sure,” he finally said. “It’s a very old legend, and most people do believe that sometime in the past, the City of Suns existed. Nobody knows where—it hasn’t been found. Although…. Funny I hadn’t thought of this before, but maybe Tiro has some memory of the place, if it is real. But why is it you’re asking?”

  Lucky chewed his lip, scratched the back of his head, and then scratched his twenty-haired chin, all to help him think clearly. Finally he decided not to tell Thurlock about the trip through time Ciarrah had taken him on. He didn’t know why he chose that way; he just felt it wasn’t time to talk about it. And besides, his stomach burned with hunger and they were passing a street vendor selling some kind of savory meat stew served in squash-rind bowls with big chunks of bread for accompaniment.

  “Can we get something to eat, Thurlock?”

  “You’re not going to tell me why you’re so interested in the City of Suns legend?”

  “Not right now,” Lucky said. “Okay?”

  “All right. I’ll get us some stew and bread. Will you try again to contact Han, please? Tell him first about the Ahmadou movement—”

  “Movement?”

  “Yes, Luccan, movement. Then tell him as much of what has happened today that you can remember and he has time to hear. Please.”

  Han, Lucky found, was no longer the Dragon, but he was in the middle of some kind of negotiation, so the conversation was short. He did tell Han about Mahros, Hehlios, and Ahmadou. The rest would have to wait.

  “That’s fine,” Thurlock said, when Lucky told him how it went. “If you weren’t with me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell him any of it except through messengers. It’s good that he knows at least some of what’s important.”

  They ate their stew by a deserted fire in an empty lot between two buildings, then mounted up and rode home under new-minted stars and a slice of moon. Because it was late, they stabled their own horses, Thurlock declining Lucky’s offer to take care of Sherah so he could go in.

  “Thank you, my boy. That’s a kind offer. But sometimes it’s good for me to do an ordinary thing in the middle of extraordinary times. I’m not sure why, but it always helps me feel hopeful.”

  Chapter Twelve: Gifu and the Six-rayed Sun

  “WHERE TO today?” Lucky asked as they rode away from the residence hall the next day. They’d gotten a later start, Thurlock having met with some wizards—“firma-location experts,” he called them—in the conference room on the floor below the apartment, and now the horses’ hooves kicked around the last tendrils of vanishing morning fog. The midmorning sun rested just above eye level to a man on horseback, and burned red, promising heat and possibly some nasty weather to follow….

  “We’ll take a long route through the city. I’d like to assess general conditions and changes, and it will be good for you to get to know the place too—what it offers and what it threatens as well. That should take the rest of the morning, and about lunchtime we’ll visit a café I know.” Thurlock didn’t look at him, and his voice didn’t betray any hint of his mood.

  Lucky had a funny feeling there was something Thurlock wasn’t telling him—that he was thinking about him. He’d often wondered if maybe he’d inherited a bit of the mind-speech ability Han had, and he thought this might be as good a time as any to test it. He tried to reach out with his mind and find Thurlock’s. It didn’t work, but for some reason he couldn’t explain to himself he suddenly had a burning question. “What was that meeting about this morning, sir?”

  “Not sir. Thurlock. It was about Terrathia. Or rather, Ephemera.”

  That was not an answer, so Lucky probed. “What about it?”

  “You know, Luccan, now is not a good time for this conversation. I need to get a sense of the city.”

  Shocked to a silence, slightly hurt, a little angry, Lucky rode along at Thurlock’s side, keeping his thoughts to himself. Thurlock chose a route through alleys and depopulated streets, each ripe with the smell of some kind of rot or waste. Lucky somehow had expected Nedhra City to be clean and friendly and safe and full of magical sparkle. He was more and more disappointed with every hovel or dive he passed.

  As their horses picked their way through yet another garbage-strewn mews, Thurlock—as if cued by Lucky’s thoughts—said, “The city is worse every time I visit. It’s sad. Once not so very long ago—at least to my mind—it was a bright, clean place full of mostly happy people. Now filth is the rule everywhere away from the city center, the citizens seem filled with suspicion, and even the children play mean games.”

  He fell quiet, and they continued on their way. Out of curiosity and without much forethought, Lucky allowed the Sight to open up—just a little bit—and he again saw the ebb and flow and wave of energy over the ground, and now even in the air itself. It made him a little dizzy, and he almost fell out of the saddle.

  “Behl’s whiskers, Luccan!” Thurlock said, catching him.

  “Sorry, sir—”

  “Once again, Luccan. I am not ‘sir’ to you.”

  “Thurlock,” Lucky said, reining Zefrehl to a halt. He waited for the old man to stop and turn to look at him. “I’m sorry, but I have to tell you: in that one thing, I just can’t do as you ask. If we both live another thousand years and I’m a very old man who’s learned a lot by then, I will still respect you too much not to call you sir at least some of the time.”

  Thurlock stared at him intently. “Truly?”

  Lucky met Thurlock’s gaze and nodded decisively. “Truly. You will always be sir to me.”

  Thurlock started Sherah moving forward again, and as Lucky drew even with him, he smiled, a different smile than Lucky had ever seen on him.

  “You are indeed a different sort of Suth Chiell, Luccan. Thank you. Now, what made you almost fall out of the saddle?”

  “I saw it again—the energy you were teaching me about yesterday. There’s so much of it.”

  “Ah. Well, maybe you shouldn’t try to do that while riding, for the time being, but since you did, we might as well talk about it. Did you notice anything different this time?”

  Lucky gave it some thought before answering. “I think so. I mean, for one thing, before I only saw it close to the ground—and maybe under it. This time it was in the air too. And… I’m not sure, but it was like there was some of it that moved around a lot more. I think that’s why it kind of made me dizzy.”

  “Oh, that’s very good!”

  “It’s good that I got dizzy?”

  Thurlock sighed. “Of course not. But that difference you see, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to sort out. The sluggish stuff is bound in the rocks and soils, deep within the world. The busier stuff is connected to life streams, closer to the surface, easier to spot, and readily available.”

  “So I’m supposed to use it to power my magic?”

  “Absolutely not. Avoid the life-bound energy at all costs.”

  Once again, Lucky found himself waiting for Thurlock to continue, but he didn’t. He guided Zef around a particularly noxious-looking puddle, and then asked, “So it could hurt me, the life-bound energy?”

  “Not at all. It’s available and can be used—has been used. But if you’re doing magic for a good purpose, that’s not the way, because you will hurt it. Those who have used it weren’t doing so with any kindness or goodness in their hearts.�
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  “Like Mahros?”

  “Exactly. But more to the point for our discussion, now that you’ve seen the world-bound energy, the slow-moving stuff, why not try touching it, with your mind—or perhaps for you it would be better to think of it as touching it with your heart.”

  Thurlock fell silent, and Lucky fell into thinking about what the wizard had said—about touching the energy, but also about using his heart instead of his mind. It made sense. Everything he did understand about what magic he could do pointed to the fact that it came from a place inside him, a place of care, of love even, though that seemed kind of a mushy way to look at it.

  He let his eyes fall half-closed as the horses continued to move through the streets at a fast walk, and tried to think of himself as blank. He wanted to find out if he could see or perhaps feel the energy when he wasn’t using the Sight. Maybe it would be less confusing that way. He sensed nothing, though, and after taking a drink of water from the skin attached to his pommel, he breathed deep and opened the Sight again.

  And was instantly sorry. What he Saw this time hurt like a fiery explosion in his eyes, like lightning flashing through his brain, searing the nerve endings as it passed through. A scream erupted from his throat—he couldn’t have stopped it if he’d tried.

  Instantly something sweet and light floated down, big flakes like snow made of sunshine, and each one blossomed as it touched him, and then joined the myriad others to form a shield. He couldn’t see—not with the Sight at all, and his ordinary vision gave him only shadowy outlines and trailing afterimages. But inside the shield of tiny lights, he didn’t hurt, and he wasn’t afraid.

  Thurlock had done it, of course, but now he sensed the old man’s confusion as he backed Sherah and Zefrehl—with Lucky clinging to the pommel of his saddle like a kid on a pony-go-round—into a corner sheltered by three walls and shadowed by the vine-bedecked remnants of a split-plank roof.

  “Thurlock,” he said, glad to find that his throat and tongue worked fine. “I have to tell you….”

  “First, are you all right? Or no, obviously not. What’s wrong?”

  “I… I can’t see very well, sir, but I think it’s clearing up a little. I feel all right inside this shield you made, though.”

  “Luccan, dear boy, I didn’t make that shield. Or at least not most of it. I admit I did add a touch of durability, but the dust that formed the shield burst from the Key of Behliseth all in one instant….”

  That news astounded Lucky. He hadn’t thought of the Key as something that actively protected him, but then he did remember once in Earth it had kept him from being harmed by a witch-driven lightning bolt. And maybe this time Ciarrah’s awareness could have helped focus the Key’s magic, too. No time to waste wondering about it, though, so he just let his gratitude settle.

  “Thurlock,” he started again. “I need to tell you what I Saw, if I can. It… it was like the mist-shadows, right there in the middle of the road, where it looks like there might have been a gate once? I think we would have triggered something bad if we rode through….”

  “Hm,” Thurlock said, looking in the direction Lucky indicated and scratching his beard thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I see nothing, Luccan, which means it is not like the mist-shadows we’ve encountered before.”

  “Yes, there’s some difference. This column, Thurlock, it’s drilled down into the ground and there’s not really much of it above the ground—just a little. I’m not sure how I know that, because I didn’t See it. Maybe I sensed it some other way—or wait. I do know, or I think I do. I was trying to look for the energy so I could practice like you said, and I Saw it. Lots of it funneling into that… shadow. Sort of looked like… little roots. With ants marching on them.”

  “Colors?”

  “Uh, green, I think. And black.”

  “Luccan, think carefully” Thurlock said, and his voice had that “you can’t help but do as I say” quality. “Where was the energy coming from?”

  Lucky didn’t think he knew that answer, but when he started to say that, he realized that, of course, he did. “Over there,” he said, pointing with his long nose across the road, where—even though he still couldn’t see—he knew a dying tree struggled to cast a meager shade over a long-abandoned garden at its feet. “It’s coming from the tree. And the tree is… hurting.”

  “Yes,” Thurlock said. “Even I can see it, now that you point it out. The tree is being bled of its life. And, just putting two and two together, I’ve figured out a couple of things. How are your eyes? Can you see now?”

  “Yes. I mean I can ordinary see. Not as good as usual, but almost back to normal. I don’t want to try the Sight again, though. It was different, this time. And not good.”

  “Different how, Luccan?”

  “Well, what hurt my eyes was something… sort of… nested inside that shadow, at ground level.”

  “Nested? Like something alive?”

  “Uh… no. I don’t think so. Not in the way you mean. A rune. Or a symbol. I know this is a strange thing to say, but it was beautiful, in a weird way. But when I tried to See it, whatever it was flashed at me. Like it… something… maybe someone detected me, or else detected magic, or the Sight.”

  Thurlock, clearly deep in thought, frowned slightly. Lucky tried to be patient, but he wasn’t in any way comfortable. Hyperalert, he couldn’t relax, and he was aware of every tiny sensation, including a smell like smoky rot, mounting heat from the strengthening summer sun, and sweat trickling down his neck. Finally, he could endure the wait no more.

  “Thurlock?”

  “Luccan, we’re facing a magical blockade, and we’re going to have to be damnably careful to get past it alive. Let’s not move, for the moment.”

  The thought of something made of magic lying concealed, just waiting for them to make a misstep shook Lucky to his core, and he shivered physically in response. He patted Zefrehl’s neck, calming the nervous energy he seemed to have communicated to her. Thurlock had gone quiet and distant in that wizardly way Lucky took to mean he was consulting some database at a distance—maybe a set of scrolls in his tower at the Hold, for instance.

  “All right, Luccan. I have a plan. I think.”

  “Sir, you don’t sound too sure.”

  “We-e-ell, Luccan. I’m as sure as I can be. Unfortunately this situation wasn’t covered in basic wizardry class, and I’ve never run across it before. But if you’re right about the underground energies, and if I’m right about my being able to protect you while you help direct my power, then my plan should work. And, unless you have ideas of your own for me to consider, we’re going to have to hope my plan flies.”

  “Can’t we back up? Go around?”

  “Maybe. But that means we leave it for someone else to stumble into, they get hurt or maybe killed, and we never have a chance to discover why it’s here. Is that what you want?”

  Lucky took a deep breath and closed his sore eyes. “I’m sorry, Thurlock. I didn’t mean to sound… ungrateful. Or uncaring. I’m just scared, I guess.”

  “Understood. It’s scary.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “We’ll start by getting off our horses—we need to be in touch with the ground, I think, and also I don’t want to risk the horses. I certainly can’t do what I need to do, protect you from what’s likely to come up, and protect them too.”

  When Lucky started to dismount, Thurlock held out a hand to stop him.

  “No,” he said. “Me first, just in case.”

  Not sure why he was surprised by that statement, Lucky looked over at Thurlock to find the ancient wizard looking back at him, his slight grimace conveying a troubled mind. And then, as surely as if he could read Thurlock’s mind, he knew what that look of concern was about. The magic Thurlock was about to do wasn’t foolproof because magic—by its nature—can’t ever be foolproof. He is afraid, and I’m the reason. Because Thurlock loves me.

  Lucky wanted to say something, to offer assurance th
at whatever the risk was, he trusted Thurlock to do his best to take care of him—and of everything. That Thurlock should do what needed to be done, should ask of Lucky whatever he needed Lucky to do, and never spare another moment’s worry. In Lucky’s mind, Thurlock’s good intentions and wisdom were beyond question.

  But the moment for such words passed as Thurlock silently laid a hand on Lucky’s shoulder for a bare instant, then turned away and swung down off Sherah’s back as spry as a man in his thirties. He held his staff out before him, closed his eyes in concentration, and carefully touched the heel of it to the ground. He puffed out a relieved breath. “So far, so good,” he said. “I can sense some distortion of the energy paths beneath my feet, but it should be fine for you to join me down here.”

  When Lucky had dismounted, Thurlock took Lucky’s arm and turned him so their gazes could meet. “My instructions are important, Luccan. More than usual, because our welfare—especially yours—may depend on your ability to follow them exactly.”

  “I understand, sir. I’m listening.”

  “One moment,” He stood with eyes closed for a few seconds, then raised his hands and mumbled a few words. He opened his hands palm up, as if releasing a bird to fly away. Three symbols appeared in front of where they stood. One looked like a simple X, one an odd-shaped P, and one a sort of C with flaring ends. Lucky had studied enough to recognize them. The first was Gifu, and Lucky didn’t really know what it meant. The second rune, Thurisaz, was the primary rune of Thurlock’s name. The last was Perdhro, and that was one of Lucky’s names.

  “We’ll stay behind these runes while we work—”

  “Thurlock, why Gifu?”

  “Ah! I’m glad to hear you do at least remember the name of the rune. But please don’t interrupt…. Believe me, I won’t ramble; not right now.” He smiled and it softened the mild rebuke. “As you know, two of the runes can mean, among other things, me and you. Gifu is about partnership, and that’s what we need. We will combine our magics, Luccan. My power will do the work of disarming the magical traps around us, while yours will guide my magic on its course. My magic will also help protect you, and I believe yours will help strengthen me. All three symbols I’ve used have other important meanings, and I’ve set them in a magical way that I hope will allow all their positive aspects to aid us. Are you with me so far?”