The D'Karon Apprentice

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Myn straightened up and padded over to the wizards, looking steadily at her Tresson counterpart. The air of challenge and rivalry between them seemed to have faded quite a bit. Whereas previously there had always been tension in their gaze when they regarded one another, each seemed far more at ease with the other now.

  The meal went quickly, and less than an hour later they were in the air. Fields and towns swept by quickly below them. At first it seemed that Myn was up to her previous antics, as she seemed unwilling to trail behind Garr, but once she was able to maneuver beside him, she fell into a steady, swift rhythm. Though they were moving nearly as fast as the day before, the lack of unnecessary jockeying and general misbehavior made it far less taxing on both dragons. This permitted Myranda and Deacon to enjoy the journey a bit more. More importantly, it let them discuss matters.

  “I’m concerned, Deacon,” Myranda said, calling over the sound of rushing wind.

  “Many things of late are worthy of concern. What specifically is troubling you?” Deacon replied.

  “Even if we were to reach the site of the attack this evening, weeks have still passed since it happened. A trail that is even a few hours old is difficult to follow. And we don’t have much time to get new information to Valaamus.”

  “Perhaps, but we may well find evidence, or witnesses, who can tell us what we need to know, and if not, we are no strangers to tracking the D’Karon. If the D’Karon are there to be found, we shall find them.”

  “And if they aren’t? It is one thing to find something quickly, but how does one prove quickly that there is nothing to find?”

  “The truth will be revealed in time,” Deacon said.

  “But time is something we don’t have. If war begins again…”

  “It is a pity we’ve not yet heard from Valaamus regarding… wait… one moment.” Deacon carefully loosened his grip with one hand and rummaged through his bag. “We’ve been so distracted, it strikes me I’ve not had a moment to check our pad. It’s been tightly closed in the bag; if it were to receive a message the stylus wouldn’t be able to move to alert us.”

  He unearthed the pad in question. The very moment it was free of the confines of the pack it snapped open, nearly flipping itself from his grip. The stylus then swiftly traced out a series of messages, most minor notes from Ivy and of little consequence. Buried among them, however, was a message from Valaamus.

  “‘You may use passive magic sparingly, but only to track. Genuine evidence must be found to allay our concerns,’” Deacon read aloud. He cleared his throat. “The message looks to have been written some time ago. It seems the pad is not without its shortcomings. Perhaps…”

  “Later, Deacon. Let us… oh heavens…”

  She felt a chill rush through her. Though this far into Tressor the air was growing almost uncomfortably warm for those accustomed to the north, here among the clouds it was still brisk. The shiver that shook the young wizard had nothing to do with the cool breeze, however. She’d only just begun to open her mind, to allow the flow of magic around her to instead flow through her. And what it brought was something she’d simultaneously hoped for and dreaded.

  “Deacon…” she said.

  “I know… I feel it too. D’Karon magic. Freshly worked… not more than a day ago,” Deacon said. “Portals…” He shut his eyes. “One entrance point… two exits…”

  Without opening his eyes he began to rummage through his bag, pulling out a thick leather tome and flipping it open. The whipping wind tore at the pages, fluttering them wildly. He sliced the air with his hand, and it parted around him. His book calmed, and he willed a stylus into his fingers, blindly scribbling notes and tracing shapes.

  “Grustim!” Myranda called out over the howling wind. “Grustim! We need to talk. It is very important!”

  Her voice couldn’t cut through the howling of the wind. She shut her eyes briefly and reached out with her mind to the gem of her staff, focusing her will through it and weaving it into the air around them. Like a hot iron dragged across some wrinkled linen, her mind smoothed away the flutters and whirls of the wind around them, quieting the howl such that it fell into near silence.

  “Grustim!” she called again.

  “You were not to work your magics within our land, Madam Duchess,” he called gruffly.

  “At this moment I believe the others who are working magics within your land are the greater concern. Deacon and I are certain a D’Karon spell has been cast. If there are D’Karon within your borders, they must be found and stopped immediately,” she said.

  “Through what means have you determined this?” he said sternly.

  “We can discuss that later, but please believe me that there can be no doubt.”

  “He, she, or they are no longer within your borders… at least, not solely within your borders,” Deacon said, eyes still shut and the formerly blank page now virtually black with his hasty notes. “D’Karon magic has created two portals, and there have been two incursions into the Northern Alliance. I am still determining their exits, but one is certainly in the Kenvard region, and the other certainly in the Vulcrest region.”

  “We need to land and plot a course to wherever these portals originated,” Myranda said.

  “I’ll have it for you momentarily,” Deacon said.

  “It would not be wise to land now. We are passing over the Mistraal. Many people call this place their home. It may be difficult to find a place where we will not be seen.”

  “I cannot impress upon you how important it is to act quickly. These portals are not gentle spells, and they are unmistakably D’Karon. If there was anyone nearby when the spell was completed, I assure you, they are hurt.”

  “How can you be certain this is a D’Karon spell?” Grustim asked. “We have powerful sorcerers within our land. You could simply be feeling some of their workings, could you not?”

  “Grustim, we have nearly lost our lives to the D’Karon too many times. We are intimately aware of the texture of their magics.”

  “And this spell could only have been cast by a person who had been steeped in D’Karon teachings,” Deacon said. “With the defeat or departure of the D’Karon we knew of, it is fair to say that I am at least one of the foremost experts in their teachings. Or so I’d believed until now. Though I have tried, I haven’t been able to master one of these spells accurately enough to cast it, but this wizard has done so twice. This spell is rougher than those cast by the D’Karon, but functionally complete in a way that I have never been able to achieve. This is the result of guided instruction, I know it. And I can only hope that we are facing a group because, if this is an individual, we are dealing with someone of frightening focus and power.”

  “This is the very threat your military summoned us to help locate. We must waste no more time,” Myranda urged. “The nature of this spell allows the D’Karon to travel from place to place instantaneously. If they truly have access to this level of mysticism, it will take more than me and Deacon to track them.”

  “You realize that if you are as certain as you seem to be that we are facing a trained D’Karon, you have as much as confirmed that an act of war has been committed against our people,” Grustim said.

  “Grustim, if there must be war, there must be war. But in this moment, there may be people here and in our homeland who need our help. If you feel the need to take us prisoner after this, so be it, we will go willingly. This must be dealt with now.”

  Grustim rode his beast in silence for a moment.

  “Very well,” he said. “You will follow me closely. You will land where I land. If any Tresson people approach, you will not engage or interact with them. When you have made your determination of where you believe this spell to have been cast, we will change our destination at my discretion. Now, follow. And cease your spell craft. I cannot be expected to fly properly without the wind in my ears!”

  Myranda released her will, and howling wind washed away their hearing. Grustim leaned low, and not long
after, Garr cut his wings and dove toward a stand of trees a short distance from a road. Myn followed suit, keeping near enough to Garr to nearly touch him. Myranda was no stranger to flight on a dragon’s back, and Myn was quite a skillful flier, but when it came to the union of human and dragon working as one, Garr and Grustim were truly on another level. It genuinely appeared that every shift and lean Grustim made was done to help Garr slice through the air more effectively. Truly the two were better, more precise, and more maneuverable together than they were apart. They were effectively a single being.

  Nowhere was this more apparent than when they were landing. Grustim practically stood on Garr’s back as they neared they ground, setting his feet wide and rocking side to side as Garr honed his angle between the trees. When the beast touched down, Grustim absorbed the shock with a roll of his legs, keeping him comfortably atop Garr despite a landing that brought him from flight to a standstill in little more than a step. It would have been simple enough to dismiss the act as taking an opportunity to show off, but in this case it was necessary. They’d chosen a clearing barely large enough for a dragon to slip through the canopy, let alone for it to slow itself to a stop in the traditional way.

  Myn attempted to imitate the feat. With two riders, each untrained, even if she’d been flawless in her execution, it would have been problematic. She was far from flawless. The result was a somewhat graceless stutter step and skidding grind that nearly caused the dragon to fall to her side. Myranda held tight and managed to remain seated. Deacon, still consumed by the task of identifying the three points of magic that lingered in his mind’s eye, was not so lucky. He was sent tumbling from her back and rolled across the ground into a bush. In a less dire circumstance, Myranda would have had to stifle a laugh. As it was she simply hopped down and helped him to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Myn swung her head around, breath still heaving from the effort of flying, and looked Deacon up and down, flicking her tongue at a raw patch on his cheek where his face had met the ground.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine,” he said, ignoring the trickle of blood from the scrape in favor of collecting his notes and stylus and swiftly mending any tears in the pages.

  Myranda stroked her hand across his cheek, wiping away the injury as effortlessly as one might brush away some dust. She looked to their escort.

  Grustim was still atop Garr, having stepped up the stout dragon’s neck to the top of his head, and rumbled a command. Garr craned his neck, allowing his Rider to rise up above the cover of the trees to scan the horizon.

  “Listen closely,” he called down, “we have certainly been seen. A Dragon Rider so far south is a rare sight. No one seems to be coming yet, but the locals will be concerned and will likely investigate. Whatever needs to be done needs to be done before they arrive.”

  “Yes, yes. I agree entirely,” Deacon said with the frazzled tone of someone frantically attempting to hang tight to the last lingering details of a fast-fading dream.

  He held a book out before him and then took both hands away from it, leaving it to drift before him while he sought out a second from his bag and pulled it open. As he riffled the pages, first countless volumes of notes swept past, then sketches of every shape and size. Finally maps fluttered by. He slapped a hand down on a rather crude rendering of the land of Tressor.

  The map, though occupying both pages of the book, was rather sparsely labeled. The mountains, forests, and other features of the land were rendered in very broad strokes, and the names of rivers and cities were largely absent. Only the regions nearest to the northern border had any real detail. It was clearly a map drawn up by a military with little recent knowledge of their enemy.

  “Grustim, where precisely are we?” Deacon said, stepping quickly to Garr’s feet. “Can you show me on this map?”

  When he drew near, Garr released a rattling warning within his throat, tensing his muscles and digging his claws into the earth. Almost in reflex Myn released a rumble of her own, casting a sharp look at her counterpart and taking a protective step toward Deacon.

  Grustim slid down and placed a calming hand on the neck of his mount. “How can you claim to know where this spell was cast if you do not know where you are?”

  “I know how far it is from here, and in what direction,” Deacon said.

  The Dragon Rider gazed down at the map. “This is pitiful.”

  “We’ve not been able to get a more recent map of your land yet.”

  “Let me see it.”

  He ran his gauntleted finger across the rough page, tracing the edge of a river, then drawing it eastward. “Here. This is where we are.”

  Deacon nodded and marked the map, then dug into his bag and came up with his egg-shaped casting stone. A blue-white glow was conjured from within, and the black lines of the page began to glow a brilliant amber. They traced themselves beyond the pages of the book, weaving and painting themselves out into the air to fill out the more familiar mountains and plains of the land to the north. The map continued to weave itself in light, until as near an accurate depiction of a full map of the continent as he could manage hung before them. When he was through crafting the illustrative illusion, he closed the book and stowed it, leaving only the conjured image.

  “I am quite certain of the distances and directions. These points are the positions of the portals.” As he spoke, he dabbed the tip of his stylus in the air above the map, leaving two points of green light and one point of red. “Red is the entrance, green are the exits.” He added a final white point, nearer to the red one. “And this is where we are.”

  He shifted his hand and the points dropped down onto the map, the white one aligning with the position Grustim had indicated.

  “If this spell was the same sort that the D’Karon had cast, then they cannot simply exit anywhere,” Myranda said, looking over the map. “They would probably have traveled to one of the major D’Karon strongholds.”

  “It seems likely. Here…” Deacon pointed. “This point is quite near one of the forts Ether cleared.” He stirred his fingers, causing the points of light to shift until the nearest of them rested upon the location of the stronghold. “With those points known, then this other exit…” His eyes widened.

  The point was resting squarely upon Castle Verril.

  “We’ve got to get a message to them,” Deacon said.

  “You left one of your pads in the capital, didn’t you?” Myranda said.

  “Yes! Yes of course,” he said, scrambling for his bag.

  “No. I’ll handle it. Work with Grustim. Find out where these portals originated,” Myranda said.

  She reached into his bag and came up with the pad. Deacon turned to Grustim.

  “Grustim, here. This red point. Is there anything sensitive or distinct there? Anyone who might need help or who might have something of mystical value? The D’Karon value nothing more than mana. They harvest it in any way they can.”

  Grustim looked over the conjured map. For the first time since they had met him, his face hinted at something more than disinterest and contempt. The wonder of gazing at a precisely rendered map hanging in the air was not lost on him.

  “This would be near the northern edge of the desert. Not more than a day from here. Well north of our intended destination.” He gazed at what few landmarks were present on the near regions of the map. “A small military prison and training barracks may be there.”

  “Better that than a village. We need to get there as soon as possible. People could be badly hurt. Even if the D’Karon did not become hostile, the portal closing at the origin point can be terribly destructive.”

  “Can you offer me any evidence of what you say?”

  “If you will take us to this prison…”

  “No. I am your escort. My task was to protect you from my people, and to protect my people from you until such a time as you had determined if the threat to our land was indeed the D’Karon. My superiors have left it to my discretio
n where and how you are to be taken for the purpose of your investigation. If you are truly certain that it was the D’Karon, then by rights your purpose in our land is fulfilled. You have through your own methods determined that a group of warriors allied with your kingdom has unleashed weapons upon our land. That is an act of war. If I were truly permitted to act upon my best judgment, I would take each of you as prisoners of war.”

  Myn thumped her tail against the ground and huffed a searing breath through her nose, challenging Grustim to attempt such a thing. Garr adopted a similar posture, going so far as to hiss actual flame through the nostrils of his helmet.

  Grustim grunted an order and Garr hissed again, now flameless.

  “I am not eager to clash with you. Your beast is clearly devoted to you, and your mystic capacity is evident. And if blood is to once again be spilled on the field of battle, I do not wish to be the first to put blade to flesh. I will continue my mission as assigned for as long as is reasonable. But what you are asking is that I take you to a facility that we utilize to train our soldiers. Given your frightening capacity to observe, and to make much of very little information, that would give you an incredible opportunity to attain extremely sensitive information. Unless I can be given a compelling reason to change our course beyond your intuition, you will not see this place. I shall take you to a place which I know to be the beginning of a trail, however cold it may be, and we will follow it through means I can verify.”

  “Grustim, the proof is mystic in nature. It is evident to us and would be evident to you as well if you had the expertise to detect it. We were summoned to this task precisely because of this expertise. If you cannot take our word on this issue… what would convince you?”

  “Show me a boot print. Show me a drop of blood, a scrap of writing. Show me something I can see, that I can touch. Give me something to trust besides your word.”

  “My word and my thoughts are all that I have. Why is that not enough for you?”

  Grustim’s voice became more rigid, his expression held firm only through extreme discipline. “Because your people have been killing mine, and mine have been killing yours, for longer than either of us have been alive. A dragon sheds its skin. At times it is dull and hard. At times it is shiny and soft. But it is born with its teeth and it dies with them. It will always be ready to blacken you, tear you, devour you if you fail to treat it with the proper respect for even a moment. A centuries-long distrust is not repaired in six months of diplomacy. Trust is earned, and you’ve done nothing to earn mine.”