Dragon's Rise

by Lou Hoffmann

  Luccan

  (P.S.—If something goes wrong and I don’t get to say it later, thank you and Han for everything in the world and I love you both.)

  After he’d finished the notes, he chewed the end of the quill for a moment, reading them over. He knew what he meant to say, and he hoped his poor skill with the common runes was enough to get his ideas across correctly. He didn’t think his note to Jaffy said enough, but he didn’t know how to say what he felt. He wasn’t sure he should claim his future title now by putting the S. C. behind his name on the note to Almirah, but he decided leaving it was better than scratching it out or starting over. About the note to Thurlock… well, it didn’t bear thinking about, so he left it alone. Where to leave the notes was another question, but ultimately he decided to just fold them up and drop some sealing wax on each one, write the names on the outside, and leave them where they were.

  He didn’t have anything to pack, but he was hungry. He found apples, cheese, and hard, thin bread almost like crackers in the cupboard, as well as a pitcher with fresh, cold water. He drank some of that and stuffed food in his pockets. Then he headed for the stables, steering clear where he saw knots of people and keeping his head down and his hood up—which worked out well because it was raining. Nobody challenged him, and when he got to the stables, he crept to the small side door, and saw the two grooms on duty huddled around an iron and stone stove in the center of the dirt floor near the main double doors. With a heartfelt Wish for stealth and a hope that it was for the benefit of more than just himself, he crept into the building and along the row of stalls until he found Zefrehl. She was fed and brushed and alert, and her tack was easy to find in the small tack room that served only four stalls.

  Trying as best he could to keep anything from jingling, deliberately taking only a few steps at a time and keeping their progress uneven, he guided her out the door and then, using all the skills he’d learned from Morrow and Han, he let her know they needed to make haste. She raced for the paddock fence and leaped, and in a matter of minutes they were out of the Quarter.

  Lucky smiled about his escape and gave Zef a pat on the neck and some praise. But his lifted spirits only lasted a moment. Instantly he suffered a feeling of loss. A lot of it was about Jaffy, and he wished this once that he could mind-speak like Han. He articulated his thoughts even though he knew they wouldn’t reach the boy. If I ever had a little brother, Jaffy, I’d want him to be just like you. I hope I’ll see you again, but if I don’t, please try to think happy thoughts when you think of me. Be well, and grow strong.

  He let that go, and instantly the sense of loneliness was replaced by other thoughts. First, he had to do what he could about that tainted mage-energy that had flooded Followers Quarter. It was still “out there,” fouling the life of the city, the Sunlands, and Ethra. He had seen it not with Sight, but the way he’d seen the streams of energy in the shaping shrine. He’d followed it back to its source, and there it turned monstrous, with tendrils like feelers reaching for every bit of life it could find. If Thurlock were present, the wizard could handle it, but he wasn’t. Lucky knew everyone would argue he wasn’t ready to fight this darkness, but he knew he could stop it, or at least push it back. Besides, even if it went wrong in the end, he had to try—no matter what it would cost him.

  He turned Zefrehl to a route that he sensed—and hoped—would take him to the place beneath which lay the catch basin the Followers’ shapers had made. On the way, he had a lengthy discussion with both the Key and Ciarrah, mostly one-sided as he made it clear what he wanted to do, why he wanted to do it, and that he needed their help. He was pretty sure they were on board, and he was grateful for that, because he wasn’t sure of anything else about how to get the job done. He did, however, have a strong feeling that he’d know what to do when the time came to do it.

  In less than an hour, he was there, looking at a pool of trapped, diseased energy. Right, he told himself. Not normal! But by now he knew that made no difference at all—this was real. Besides, he wasn’t sure anymore any such thing as “normal” existed. He repeated his new mantra aloud: “It is what it is. Deal with it.”

  The energy he was looking at was the same stuff that flowed everywhere in this world, the source of all the life in Ethra, and in one way or another all the magic. Usually, it looked pure and clean, but the little pool behind the shapers’ dam and all the stuff feeding into it had been fouled by something—or someone—truly wrong. Despite everything that had happened to Lucky over the last couple of years, he still tried to avoid thinking of things as evil, but he admitted to himself that probably, that was the right description here. Pooled, the energy seemed to lose some of its potency—it stank, but it didn’t crackle and snap and flash like the stream of it that still kept rolling in.

  For a moment, Lucky mused about how odd it was that he could sense all this—the flow of energy, its nature, its potency—without using the Sight. What he’d said in his note to Almirah was true. He had learned a hell of a lot while he was with the Followers of the Simple Way.

  Stop standing around thinking, Lucky, he told himself. Just do what you came to do.

  I’m not sure I can, his more weaselly voice replied.

  He wished he could talk to Han, but he still couldn’t “find” him with his mind.

  So, he concluded, I’ll give it my best shot. It would have to be good enough.

  Getting down to business, he left Zefrehl about a block from the befouled energy pool, explaining that he thought she’d be safer there. He was no Han and no Doolittle—he couldn’t talk to the animals—but she was smart, and he hoped she got the gist.

  He felt hungry, thirsty, and tired, but the need to act, to just do something, drove all that from his mind. He stepped out, walking at a good clip, tracing the path of the primary “feeder” of fouled energy. As he neared the source, he felt twisted magic reach for him wherever his feet hit the ground. Ciarrah woke up without being asked and created a humming magical shield beneath his feet. The Key lay quiescent but warm over his heart. Still, even with protection from Ciarrah and the Key’s quiet blessing, he felt the foul energy crawling around him, maybe searching for a way into his soul.

  Lucky hated it. He wanted to destroy it. It pissed him off that whoever had seen fit to send this sick power out to hurt him hadn’t even cared about all the others—the bystanders—who might also be destroyed, hadn’t cared about the mountains of pain and loss it would leave in its wake. Anger was too soft a word for what he felt. His skin prickled with a nervous need to move, and he picked up speed until he was jogging, and then running. He wanted more than anything to get to the source so he could give in to the need to lash out and destroy whatever he found there.

  As his rage built, Ciarrah’s song changed until it grated on his ears, and the Key heated up until burned where it touched his chest. It reminded Lucky he was dashing headlong toward overwhelming danger—whoever was responsible for this had huge power. He tried to force himself to slow down, to stop, to breathe. But the defiled life force—the horrid fact of what it was compared to what it should have been—was too ugly, too disgusting, and soon he couldn’t think at all. He raised Ciarrah with both hands, and then stabbed with all his might straight down into the ground, hoping to blaze away the rot.

  It didn’t work. The Key of Behliseth grew cold; its light flashed silver-white and wrapped around Ciarrah’s beam. Ciarrah shook and what felt like electrical shock shot through Lucky’s arms. He fell to his hands and knees on the spoiled land, breathing hard.

  “You would use me so?” Ciarrah asked, and Lucky felt hot shame rising to his cheeks.

  He shook his head to clear it, not sure how he’d gotten from feeling general disgust to hurling anger like a weapon. Maybe he’d fallen under the spell of the same dark magic he’d wanted to destroy. He knew the Key of Behliseth had stopped him—contained his magic. He thought he understood why. He climbed to his feet and started to walk again. “Ciarrah, I’m sorry.”

&
nbsp; The anger receded quickly, his mind cleared some, and he realized the dark magic was rolling along what Thurlock had called a ley line.

  “They work like riverbeds,” the old wizard had said, “for the streams of energy—magic and life—that cross the land masses of the planet that Ethra shares with Earth, weaving through the worlds and Naught, binding them together.”

  Now Lucky began to feel the drain of Naught’s hunger; it felt like a personal attack, as if all the unmaking power of eternal emptiness was directed at him. Even though he suspected that wasn’t true—it was more likely just the nature of the awful stuff, it scared him. Moments ago, he’d been too angry to think; now he was brimming with fear. Capital F.

  Maybe it was the sick energy he was walking over, maybe it was the fear itself, but for whatever reason, he started having trouble getting enough air, and he was sweating so much it dripped off his forehead into his eyes. His eyes went wonky—he couldn’t see anything but hazy gray shapes wherever he looked. Desperate, he wondered if he could try again to push Ciarrah’s magic down into the ground and burn the darkness out.

  “Ciarrah,” he rasped, his throat dry.

  “Breathe, Blade-keeper,” Ciarrah responded. “Think. Fear isn’t wrong, in its place. But a strike dealt in fear carries little power against true malice. Lay the fear to one side and find your true Wish.”

  After several calming breaths, Lucky pushed his awareness of the corrupted life force to the back of his mind, and when his eyes cleared, he took a slow look around. He’d come maybe the length of a football field from where he’d left Zefrehl, and he could still see her, standing patient, but ignoring the sickly grass under her nose. Like a wide band of the meadow he’d crossed, it looked as though it had motor oil poured over it. Dead things—blackened carcasses of bees and beetles and worms—lay under Lucky’s feet.

  He started walking once more, continuing along the ensorcelled ley line. If he had been unable to see its effects on the life of the land, he still would have been able to follow it blindly. It drew him like a magnet. That ley line was like an energy highway, usually teeming with life. He thought of all the beautiful living things being tainted and killed, minute by minute, and now instead of anger, replacing fear, sadness washed through him like a flood. He grieved for all the lost lives, large and small, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Movement on the edge of the polluted strip of land caught his eye: a crowd of yellow flowers like dandelions waving in a wind; a pair of blue-and-yellow butterflies dancing over them; a baby bunny raised up on its hindquarters trying to sniff at their flashing wings. The misused magic hadn’t touched them yet, and in Lucky’s mind these small beings represented every life, every love, every good thing in the world. That was what he wanted to fix, why he wanted to stop the corruption flowing through Ethra’s veins. He wanted to save it all.

  And the magic worked.

  From Lucky’s heart, his Wish blossomed where the Key lay on his chest, enveloping him and Ciarrah in golden warmth. Ciarrah’s light split into a twelve-rayed sun, and the power of it took his breath; her song—so loud it probably rattled mountains—shook him off his feet. The magic grew and grew, and for a moment he thought he’d somehow overdone it. But then the power shrank into itself, condensed to a single bright star at the very tip of Ciarrah’s light—twelve sharp white blades spinning around a small golden sphere.

  “Blade-keeper?” came Ciarrah’s question.

  She said no more, but Lucky knew what she asked, and he answered with action, plunging her blade down into the earth, into the stream of polluted magic. The putrid taint burned away, and the life force began to flow free once more.

  The action used Lucky’s magic up, and with it, most of his ordinary strength. He lay panting on the grass, which was already fresher, greener, beginning to thrive. Lucky sensed his magic continuing to reach out, flowing along the ley line and its branches to heal more of the land and the magic underlying this corner of the city. But he knew he hadn’t yet touched the source. Ignoring his fatigue, he called up the Sight and scanned ahead. Maybe a quarter mile away, his magical probe reached a pulsing node and stopped. Beyond that….

  Gods! What is that?

  A thick, seething fog blocked his magical Vision. He could neither See, nor see, nor sense in any way what lay ahead, except instinct told him three things.

  One, that’s not normal. Two, it’s not good. And three, I have to go there. Now.

  “YOU’LL FORGIVE me,” Pahlanus said, “if I maintain the bonds on your person for the time being. I would love to give you the freedom of Ephemera, but it isn’t clear to me if you are here as scholar or friend or foe. I understand that as a wizard, you are a great lover of knowledge. Perhaps you have come to learn?”

  An orderly placed a wooden frame before Pahlanus, and the Prime stepped into it, resting his thin arms at shoulder height. A glance around the room showed Thurlock many of the other Primes also leaned into similar frames, some apparently built into workstations, some portable. They lacked the strength to stand and work unaided. This was despite the low level of the force Earthborns had termed gravity—a circumstance contributing to Thurlock’s queasy stomach.

  Thurlock answered honestly—as he must, given that a lie would rile his Ol’Karrigh blood and make him sicker still. “I do seek knowledge.”

  “Ah! That is good, though I wonder if that statement might be a bit evasive. But I will treat you to a taste of our vast knowledge. I admit I would like to tempt you to our table, so to speak, Thurlock. Your ability to utilize the magic of Ethra is legend, your knowledge of your world and of Naught nearly encyclopedic. You could help us, Master Thurlock. You could lead us to a peaceful resolution with your world. All we ask is a place at the table.”

  Thurlock couldn’t help himself, couldn’t let it pass. “Do you mean for me to believe that what you’ve been doing to Ethra and its people—and to Earthborns too—that this corrupted magic and the draining of lives, the mining of children… I’m to understand that this is all intended as a peaceful overture?”

  “Ah. Things got off to a bad start. Understand, however, that what your Liliana became was a result of the vengeful nature she harbored within herself long before we made contact with her. And she is part of the reason things have gone poorly. We would have preferred a peaceful entrance.”

  Thurlock’s anger at this twisting of the truth seethed, but he wanted information more than he wanted to lash out. “What exactly is it you are offering, Pahlanus? Peace in exchange for what?”

  “Help us to find our place in your world. You already know what Ephemera is, I’ve no doubt about that. You know Terrathia was lost—due to our own mistakes, yes. Ephemera is but a temporary shelter, and the cost to maintain it is great.”

  “The cost in lives, of course.”

  “That is true. I cannot apologize! Would you not sacrifice a few lives in order to save your world? But wait—before you answer. You have already done so, have you not? In the mistaken idea that your world can withstand the power and wisdom of Terrathian Primes united in purpose, you’ve suffered slain soldiers. And you yourself have personally taken the life of one of your more powerful citizens. Do not pretend to holiness.”

  Not holiness, Thurlock thought, humanity. But he still needed information, so he held his temper and his tongue. “I ask again, Pahlanus. What is it you ask in exchange for the peace you purport to offer?”

  “Help us. Lead us to a place at Ethra’s banquet. Bring along those who are strong and can join us—your Luccan, even the warrior, Han Shieth. We will take small space for we are not now and never shall be a numerous people—a corner of land is all we require for our homes. You will see the cost in lives reduced as soon as we do not have to sustain Ephemera as well as our own lives.”

  “Reduced?”

  Pahlanus took what might have passed for a deep breath in Prime terms, and shifted uncomfortably as his Echo suddenly flickered into an almost solid state. His eyes closed and he seem
ed to concentrate, and gradually the echo faded to a faint, nearly shapeless flicker of shadow and light. It was difficult for Thurlock to remember that the Echo actually shared identity with Pahlanus and was not a separate person. It tugged at his empathy. But being caught up in pity for one half a villain such as Pahlanus would serve no purpose, so he was just as glad to have the visual evidence of the thing’s pain recede.

  Pahlanus returned his attention to the conversation and answered Thurlock’s question, though his voice sounded more strained, and he seemed more tired and weak than before. “Reduced, yes. How shall I best explain. We do indeed require lives. Let’s say, though, we can reach agreement that Ethra may be better off with some of its burdens removed. You understand culling a herd? Taking the weak? Those with undesirable characteristics? Those who require constant care, or who discolor the population—”

  “Enough!” Thurlock hadn’t done what he’d meant to do—he’d learned little about the Terrathians that might help defend Ethra against them—but he could hold in his rage no longer. Such disregard for life, such assumption and judgment, such misconception as to what rendered a life—human, fauna, or flora—valuable! It was too much to bear for someone like Thurlock, who had spent a millennium defending life and its true partner, love, from attack and abuse. He produced the flasks of Behl’s light from his robes and dashed them to the ground, inhaled the freshness of Ethran sunshine and with it the power of true magic. He knew his power was insufficient to quell Ephemera and all the population of Primes, but hoped by destroying this place and these Primes he could set them back. As he prepared to smite those present, he lifted his staff, feeling the restraints of the mist-shadow bonds strain weakly against Behl’s strength as he called his magic forth.