The D'Karon Apprentice

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “You’ve spoken of Teht and Demont. We know these to be the names of Alliance generals, in addition to Bagu, Epidime, and Trigorah.”

  “Trigorah? I’m afraid I don’t know the name. The others are D’Karon, though. And I’ll thank you to speak their names with reverence. I must say it is a tremendous relief that you know of them all already. I’m quite sure if I had been the one to make their presence known, they would have been cross with me. But if you know of them, then they must have revealed themselves.”

  “Following their defeat, there has been considerable information of dubious reliability spread about their—”

  “Defeat?” Turiel said, eyebrows rising as she suddenly realized what had been said. “Surely you are mistaken. The D’Karon cannot possibly have been defeated.”

  “If your own people are to be believed, some six months ago they were banished or destroyed by a group who claim to be the prophesied Chosen.”

  “No… No, no, no, that is absurd,” Turiel said, her voice rising. “I refuse to believe that the D’Karon have been defeated.”

  “I’m growing weary of your feigned ignorance on the matter,” Brustuum growled.

  “And I’m growing weary of your attempts at deception. I don’t know what your game is, sir, but you’ll get nowhere by attempting to convince me that the godlike entities that I have devoted centuries to calling forth and serving—entities that have promised to bring our world to order under their wisdom and guidance—could have been so much as hindered by creatures of this world. No, sir. They live. They must. You could sooner destroy the night itself than destroy the D’Karon, to say nothing of the things that would follow.”

  “You claim to have ventured out of this cave of yours—which, I assure you, I’ll be sending troops to investigate once we determine its location—specifically because your masters had not answered your calls. Did it not occur to you that they have been silent because they were defeated?”

  Turiel shook with fury, tilting her head down slightly but keeping her eyes locked on Brustuum’s. “These words are blasphemy and sacrilege.” She twitched and beside her several of the desiccated rat carcasses shuddered.

  “Caster, are your protective spells in place?” Brustuum asked.

  The caster’s voice was steady, but his posture stiffened. The rats were beginning to stir.

  “She’s… she’s overpowering me, sir.”

  Turiel spoke again, her voice seeming deeper not in tone but in intensity, as though it was booming from the bottom of a yawning cavern. “I have focused my mind, gathered my spirit almost to the point of death, since a time before your grandfather was born. Do you believe your fledgling hedge wizard could hope to hinder me in any meaningful way? This is precisely why it shows nothing less than contempt to suggest that the D’Karon would make war with us for more than a month, let alone this multidecade fiction of a war.”

  Brustuum backed to the door and threw it open.

  “I don’t care what you must do, short of incinerating her. I want her toothless. I want her helpless.”

  “It will take everything I have,” the caster said, placing his hands together. His rings took on a brilliant glow.

  Brustuum slammed the door shut, though Turiel had barely moved let alone made any attempt to escape. Her gaze remained locked on Brustuum, but she seemed to be unconcerned, or perhaps unaware that the cell was meant to hold her.

  Scuttling and scratching began to filter through the door. A dozen rats, or what remained of them, scurried out from the slot beneath it.

  “I told you to contain her!” Brustuum barked, stomping on three of them. The rest were able to evade him and pour down the hall.

  “There is no active spell. They are alive now,” the caster said.

  He shut his eyes and began to chant ancient, potent incantations until the air seemed almost thick with magic, shield upon wall upon barrier conjured from his mind to counter the thrumming energy that radiated from the cell.

  “She’s… beginning to… push through…” the caster said. “I… may be able to hold her… but her focus is terrifying. If she were to get her staff…”

  “Just keep her here!” Brustuum said. “I need her mind and her voice. The staff can be destroyed.”

  Having sent the other guard away, and with precious few to spare after deploying the others for their fruitless search, he dashed through the halls personally. The staff was kept in an equipment room several floors above. He climbed the stairs shouting for aid.

  “Anyone near weapon storage, destroy the staff! Grind it to dust!” he bellowed.

  In reply, he heard the cries of the nearest men. One stumbled out into the hall, reanimated rats tearing at him. Brustuum charged by, shouldering his way through the slightly ajar door to the equipment rooms. To one side a fortified door was open, the guard he’d sent to see to the crated beast motionless on the ground as more rats emerged from chewed-through holes in his armor and returned to the task the man had tried and failed to stop. Their chisel-like teeth had carved deep gouges into the gray planks of a once-sturdy chest. The contents of the case were rattling and scratching viciously, all the while releasing a familiar chitter.

  Brustuum dashed past the doorway and continued to another one, an ominous violet glow already lighting the interior. Heaving the brace aside, he tore open the door. Inside was the staff, with Turiel’s black robes tied about it. He pulled a dagger from his belt and raised its thick pommel to shatter the gem. The rattling and chattering in the room behind him was replaced by the sound of splintered wood and scrabbling feet. In a heartbeat the piecemeal creature that had accompanied the witch bounded over Brustuum, snapping up the staff and robes in its jaws. He slashed at the monster, hacking into two of its legs, but it ignored the dire wound and worked its remaining legs and its wings to scramble along the hallway back toward the stairs to the cells below.

  The air within the hallway was beginning to darken, as though the light was being drawn away. The depth and reverberation of Turiel’s voice intensified further. No longer was she speaking Tresson. Now she spoke Varden, a Northern dialect, and one that seemed archaic to Brustuum’s ears. Though there were walls and floors separating them, the Tresson could hear the voice as though she stood beside him.

  “Answer my call. I need guidance. I need knowledge,” she chanted. Now the air seemed to grow warmer. “Why will you not answer? Why can I not feel your presence?”

  Though the mismatched beast seemed like it should be ungainly, it moved with astonishing speed. By the time he’d reached the hall, it was already disappearing down the steps. When he stumbled back into the hallway with the witch’s cell, the monster had reached her door and was scratching madly at it. The Tresson caster was standing aside, sweat pouring from his brow as he muttered his incantations in tighter and tighter sequence.

  Brustuum hurled himself at the witch’s familiar, slashing and stabbing. He was trying to kill the monster, to shatter the gem, splinter the handle. He wanted to do anything to disarm the sorceress, but the monster eagerly and expertly clambered out of harm’s way. It lashed at his feet with its tail, buffeted him with its wings, and did everything else necessary to keep its grip and force him to keep his distance.

  “Damn it, man, help me!” Brustuum ordered the caster.

  “I am trying, sir. The spells she’s throwing off… if I do not concentrate… she… she isn’t trying to escape. She’s breaking through the best I have… and she’s merely attempting to communicate. … I will not be strong enough to hold her.”

  “Answer me!” Turiel cried, the very walls trembling with her voice. “Something is wrong… They cannot have been defeated. They cannot have been banished. … I must know… I must see.”

  She looked to Brustuum again, gazing through the barred grill at eye level on the door. She had stared him down before, all through the interrogation. It was not until that moment, when her gray eyes locked on to his again, that he realized the degree to which she had been restrai
ning herself. Her gaze cut through him. The eyes seized his mind, seemed to sear at it like embers kicked up from a long-burning fire on a dry, windy night. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. His whole being was skewered by her stare like a pig on a spit.

  A dozen spells had been cast upon the door, the whole of the will and wisdom of his caster rendered down into supernatural bonds keeping the brace in place and the locks secure. With a sequence of crimson flashes she shattered them all, and the door hurled open, narrowly missing the caster.

  The familiar had sprung back, perhaps on instinct or perhaps heeding an unspoken command, and when the door was open, it leaped inside, delivering her staff to her. When her flesh met the bony grip of her casting-rod, Brustuum felt something inside him and all around him recoil. It was as if the very fabric of his being was sickened by what had been allowed to occur.

  “Listen to me, Tresson. If the D’Karon live, and you have forced me to squander some of my precious gathered strength to expose your lies, I will be displeased. And if what you say is true, and the D’Karon have fallen or been chased from this world after all I did to summon them… I will be very displeased. And there will be consequences. To say nothing of the consequences of what you’ve done to Mott. My sweet little beast. I am sorry to say I do not have the time and materials to repair you properly. It shall have to be a patch.”

  Turiel curled her fingers, scooping at the air and gathering up from nothing a handful of pure night. She then flicked it at her pet. Where it struck the beast, its flesh blackened, then the stain crawled along and found the wounds and bits that were hacked away, filling them in with tarry scar tissue.

  With her pet repaired, she turned to the far wall. This exposed her back to the soldiers without fear or regard, something that burned Brustuum all the more as his body refused to allow him to capitalize on the opportunity. Slowly she stirred the air and muttered words that seemed ill-suited to a human tongue. From a single circle, she shifted to a figure eight. At the center of each loop, a black point formed. They widened until they filled the loops traced by the staff’s head. When twin black circles hung in the air, at their centers a point of light appeared. More than that, from each point of light came a piercing cold breeze, brisk and bracing in the baked air of the Tresson facility.

  Satisfied, Turiel stepped back and watched as two windows opened in the air. Combined, they were nearly large enough to fill the cell. Each opened into the interior of a stone structure. One was lit only by what light spilled through the portal itself, offering barely a glimpse of the shadowy shapes within. The other was lit with the cold blue-tinged light that could only be reflected from snow and filtered through distant windows.

  “Mott, you will seek Demont. If I recall correctly, Teht claims that is one of his workshops. Search the facility for him and remain with him if you find him. If you don’t, attempt to awaken some of his creatures. He will certainly seek them out if they awaken. I shall find you when the time comes. I shall seek Bagu.”

  Mott chittered something. Turiel shuddered.

  “No… not Epidime. We will never find him, and I dare not speak to him regardless. He of all of them, I would prefer not to find… Now off with you. I shall see you soon.”

  Her familiar bounded through his portal and off into the dimly lit facility. She stepped carefully through her own portal and turned back.

  “And you, sir,” she grinned as the portals began to close, “do remain nearby.” She wavered slightly, her eyelids fluttering as though she had been struck with an intense wave of fatigue. She managed to hold the wavering sensation at bay long enough to deliver a final, ominous statement. “I look forward to seeing what sort of scars you shall have when I return…”

  Chapter 4

  Early the following morning, back in Kenvard, Ivy was preparing to once again face the Tresson delegate. Her first impression hadn’t been a victory, but it certainly could have gone worse. Once the servants and staff had joined the meal, Krettis at the very least had been as off balance as Ivy. A bit of wine and some good food had coaxed several of the servants and staff into conversation, and she was quite sure she’d earned a few friends among them. The same could not be said of Krettis, who said less and less as the night wore on.

  She pulled on her traveling cloak and looked at herself in the mirror. As glamorous as it felt to be wearing a beautiful dress the night before, her simple gray cloak, comfortable boots, and warm clothes made her feel strangely at ease, as though the night before she’d been playing a character on stage and now she was finally herself again.

  A gentle knock at her door came as she was pulling her white hair back into a ponytail.

  “Are you nearly ready?” asked Celeste.

  “Nearly. Come in, please,” Ivy said.

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Is the ambassador ready yet?” Ivy asked, spitting the title as though it was a loathsome insult.

  “She will be shortly. It would be best if she was not kept waiting.”

  “My bags are packed. I’m just making sure I’m decent. Not that it matters. Something tells me it doesn’t matter how I look; Krettis isn’t going to want to have anything to do with me.”

  “You both had your share of diplomatic black eyes last night, and of them, I believe yours were more forgivable.”

  “But this mission is already going in the wrong direction, and we’ve got weeks to go yet.”

  “Then there is plenty of time to turn it around,” he said. “The rest is very straightforward. You and I will ride in a carriage with Ambassador Krettis and one of her aides. She will—or, based upon her attitude thus far—will not ask questions about our kingdom and its history. You will answer or defer to me if you are uncertain. Pleasant conversation and a greater understanding of one another are the intended goal, but I believe that we shall call this mission a success if at no point it descends into name-calling and violence.”

  “We’ll see…” Ivy said. She picked up two cases. “Let’s go.”

  “What are you taking with you?”

  “My secret weapons. If all else fails, they’ll be a lifeline for me.”

  The pair walked downstairs to find that their timing at least was right on target. Ambassador Krettis was just stepping out of her quarters, one of the most recent Kenvard homes to be fully restored. She was wearing her fur cloak, though the rest of her clothing was more understated than it had been for the banquet the night before. A woman several years younger aided her, dressed simply in a rougher fur coat.

  Each ambassador climbed inside, Ivy sitting beside Celeste and Ambassador Krettis beside her aide. Ivy slid her cases under her seat and smiled.

  “Hello!” Ivy said brightly, holding out a hand of greeting to the aide as the carriage lurched into motion. “Marraata, right? You were the one who loved the ice cider and the stuffed cabbage leaves. You really should have saved room for the snow candy.”

  Marraata nodded sheepishly and shook Ivy’s hand without a word.

  “Yes… we will discuss her behavior at the banquet when we return to Tressor,” Krettis said. “I’m told the itinerary for this trip was still in transition prior to my departure. What sights of this fair land do you plan to share?”

  Celeste unfolded a parchment and handed it to Ivy.

  “Oh, wonderful!” Ivy said, glancing over the list. “I’m only just learning the final details of the journey myself, but it is going to be lovely. We will be heading along the coast, stopping at many of our most quaint and comfortable inns. In three days we will reach our first stop, which will be the Azure Saltern, a centuries-old source of salt for much of the Northern Alliance. Then we’ll continue to the hot springs four days later…”

  Ivy continued to list off the most interesting sights that the north had to offer. Ambassador Krettis feigned interest for a time, and her aide dutifully recorded the descriptions, but it became clear to all that Ivy may as well have been talking to herself. Because she knew that it was part of
her role to finish reading through the list, she did so, but her own genuine enthusiasm for the exciting new sights they would visit faded swiftly in the face of Krettis’s obvious disinterest.

  She looked the ambassador in the eyes. Krettis looked back, but Ivy felt uncomfortably as though the Tresson was looking through her.

  “I’m particularly looking forward to the orchestral performance in Martinsford,” Ivy said, hoping in vain to initiate discussion.

  “Mmm…” the ambassador murmured.

  Ivy crossed her arms. “You do not seem terribly impressed with the planned events.”

  “I’m sure they will be quite acceptable.”

  “If in the future you were to host a tour of Tressor, what sort of things would you like to show me?”

  “I would not be in a position to make those selections. It would be done by a tribunal. I would not hazard a guess, for fear of raising your hopes of seeing them in the unli… in the event of a Tresson diplomatic tour.”

  Ivy tried to push away the flutter of irritation she felt. Clearly the sting of Krettis’s prior behavior had faded. She was back to her less than diplomatic mindset.

  Ivy furrowed her brow and turned to Marraata. “It is your job to write things down during this trip, right?”

  Marraata looked uncertainly to Ambassador Krettis.

  “She is the record keeper, yes,” Krettis said.

  Ivy kept her eyes on Marraata. “As you saw last night, Ambassador Krettis and I are both new to this, and we’re likely to say and do things that won’t be in keeping with the spirit of this tour.” Ivy turned to Krettis. “We can sit here and woodenly quote back to one another the civil little fibs and white lies that we know we are meant to, but I don’t think that will do any good, do you? We’ll just go home knowing that the other side can follow the same rules as we can, which I think we already know. Marraata could probably write down every little flavorless comment and empty observation we would have said for this whole trip without us even saying them. I say we should let her do that. Let her write down what would have happened. Meanwhile you and I can say what’s really on our minds. That way at least the people in this carriage will walk away with a genuine understanding of one another.”