“I have a sister, but she lives near the Dagger Gales. I haven’t seen her in fifteen years.”
“Then you have no family, and your duty is to simple things like carrying bags and washing clothes. Why do you go on? What drives you? How do you continue to live your life when there is nothing else for you to do or to become?”
Celia smiled sadly. “We just go on. Sometimes the promise of another day is all we have. I may have lost my family, but they are still with me in my heart and my mind. I carry them with me, and as long as I carry on, so do they. That’s enough.”
“It takes great strength to do such a thing. I would not have imagined a mortal would be able to bear such a weight.”
“I suppose it is the sort of weight mortals are best suited to bear.”
Ether turned aside, the words filtering through her mind. She tightened her fists and felt the sudden, intense desire to be free of this place. “I will leave you to your work,” she said before turning to the door.
“Wait,” Celia said quickly.
“What is it?” Ether said, turning back.
“… Thank you for telling me what happened to my girl. And for letting me see her face again. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to say goodbye.”
Ether lingered, eyes upon this frail woman. “Goodbye, Celia.”
#
Turiel’s eyes fluttered open. She was in total darkness, and she was lying on a cold stone floor. For a few moments, her addled mind disregarded the events of the last few months, and she believed that she was back in her cave, eagerly awaiting the return of Teht for further instructions.
Gradually her thoughts cleared, and she hauled herself unsteadily to her feet.
“Ugh… the portal spell requires a bit more nuance to cast than the keyhole,” she said, shaking her head. “Still, if it only cost me a brief slide into and out of unconsciousness, I must have been close to proper execution. Not bad for a first casting.”
She took a step forward and thumped into something heavy and wooden. Quietly cursing herself, she stirred the air with her staff and conjured a deep violet light. It spilled across her surroundings and revealed a small, cramped room. A heavy wooden desk sat near the center and shelves stood along two walls, but each seemed to have been largely stripped of its contents. The whole room had the overall feel of a place that was in the process of being moved.
Dust had caked most of the surfaces. She ran her fingers through it.
“This place hasn’t been disturbed for weeks, or longer… Not a good sign. Teht insisted Bagu could almost always be found at this portal point.”
Turiel peered at the wall. A map of the Northern Alliance was mounted there. It was stunningly comprehensive, with every city named and detailed in intricate writing.
“Troops… armories. There has been a war…” she observed. “And where are the borders? How… how could the whole of the north have allied? How long has it been…”
She shuffled in the dim light to the desk. A carefully written piece of parchment rested on it, its lettering large and highly visible.
“‘The contents of this room are the work of dark magic. Any and all items found within are potentially tainted with D’Karon magic. Do not disturb anything without the blessing and guidance of palace mystics,’” Turiel read aloud. She snatched the parchment and crumpled it. “A matter best left to students of the D’Karon, that much is certain.”
The front of the desk had six large cubbyholes, each stuffed with small boxes and tightly rolled scrolls. She pulled open the first of the scrolls. Her eyes darted across the words.
“Death toll… Production schedule… By the order of General Bagu…” She pulled out scroll after scroll. “Seasonal reports… Going back so many years… Gods, is it true? It can’t be. This isn’t possible… It isn’t possible… The D’Karon wouldn’t have bothered to take sides in a petty squabble… And if they did, the D’Karon have too much power, too many resources. It wouldn’t have lasted this long unless they’d deemed it necessary. They would have had to choose to let the war last. There must be an explanation. There must!”
Turiel had not taken care to keep her voice down, and as her muttering turned to raving, voices began to filter through the thick door.
“Who is searching the general’s chamber?” barked a voice angrily. “You know the chamber is off limits. I don’t want to have to deliver another letter of condolence to the family of a foolhardy guard who didn’t know a D’Karon trap when he found it.”
“No one has been assigned to search Bagu’s chambers, Commander. It has remained barred for weeks.”
“Well then get this door open! There is someone in there, I can hear them.”
Turiel muttered irritably at the bothersome din outside her door. “It seems my countrymen have become inconsiderate in my absence.”
She pulled boxes from the desk and dumped out their contents, shuffling madly through them in search of some indication of why it seemed the D’Karon had both dirtied their hands with a war between the locals and held themselves back in order to allow it to continue.
Thumping footsteps and bellowing voices in the hallway went silent, then splintering creaks began to shake the door on its hinges. Turiel ignored them, abandoning the largely logistical matters she’d found in Bagu’s desk and instead turning to the artifacts that had not yet been hauled away. At the base of one largely cleared shelf sat a sizeable chest. It was wrapped in heavy chains and secured with a stout lock. She drove her staff’s tip into the lock and conjured a coil of black tendrils that tore it apart from within.
Turiel flipped the lid open. Behind her the door was beginning to succumb to the prying and pulling of the castle guards on the other side. She paid it no heed. What was before her was far too important.
Four things were nestled in the chest, ensconced in straw to keep them from damage. Three were brightly glowing crystals, each with the same violet color of the one mounted in her staff. The fourth was a large sand timer lying on its side. Her hand shook as she reached for it, as though it was a sacred artifact.
“The portal glass…” she breathed, clutching one of the brass struts that connected the mounting plates on the top and bottom.
She slid the device upright, then removed her other hand from her staff to more securely grasp the precious piece. Her weapon remained upright, drifting in the air beside her. A slight twitch of her head sent a wave of energy from her staff, blasting the pages and scrolls from the desk to clear it for the far more precious discovery.
Once she’d set it down, Turiel scrutinized it. All of the sand had gathered in the bottom bulb. She grasped the supports and inverted it. Rather than spilling through the pinch of the timer in a thin stream, the fine sand fell to the center but remained in the top bulb.
“No… no, the moment they arrived they began work on the full portal. The sand should flow.” She shook the timer violently. Not a single grain fell through a pinch that was more than large enough to allow it. Her eyes darted about. “This can only mean that the portal is completed. The key is turned, the door is opened. But… but why can’t I feel it?”
She shut her eyes and plucked her staff from the air. Her mind churned madly with doubt and confusion, but a moment of concentration began to tame it. For longer than she could recall, her every waking thought had been curled about the spells and incantations that would open the gateway to the D’Karon realm. Even half a world away, the unfinished spell she’d been working to open a second keyhole stood like a searing ember in her mind’s eye. If there was a gateway anywhere in the world, she should see it like a full moon on a starless sky. And yet there was nothing. It didn’t make sense. Nothing was making sense anymore.
Turiel scowled and shut her eyes tighter when the guards finally tore away the last brace and pulled the tattered door open.
“You there! How did you get here? You are trespassing in the royal—”
“I am trying to concentrate! Kindly be silent while I wor
k at this riddle,” she growled, irritably turning her back to the door.
“You will drop your staff and surrender yourself to the—”
“I said be silent!” she hissed, pivoting back to the door and opening her eyes.
The man before her was clearly a veteran guard, a few years older than one might expect to see in active military service. He still clutched a flat metal pry bar in one hand. Her mere gaze was enough to inspire the guard to take a few steps back, bumping into two of the men who had helped open the door. He dropped the bar and fumbled at his belt for his sword.
When the bar hit the floor, rattling noisily, Turiel slapped one hand over her ear and winced at the din. “What part of silent was too complex for you? There is important work to be done, and you are being terribly rude! How can I be expected to concentrate if you won’t be silent?”
For emphasis she thrust her staff forward. A crackling bolt of black magic issued forth, striking the guard squarely in the chest. He wheezed in agony and launched backward, bowling his fellow guards aside. The whole group, five in total, went sprawling out onto the floor of the grand entryway of Castle Verril. By the time the first of them had scrambled to his feet, Turiel had stalked out of the room and squinted at the comparatively bright light of the vaulted hall.
“Ah, yes. Castle Verril,” she said, taking a brief moment from her task to gaze about at the hall.
In her youth, she had briefly served under the king. She couldn’t remember the man’s name. Like most thoughts more than a few months old, it was a distant and blurred memory lost to time and madness. The entry hall, though. This she remembered. The plush carpet of regal blue. The pennants and banners hanging upon the walls and the brightly burning sconces on the walls and columns.
“Wh-what did you do to him?” cried one of the guards.
She turned, her expression souring. For the second time the inconsiderate palace staff had interrupted her thoughts. Did they not realize how difficult it was to gather her mind these days?
The man she had assaulted was shaking and pale. His breath had been reduced to wisps of curling black vapor, and his eyes were milky white.
“I illustrated to him the folly of interrupting my task. I would have thought it would have been sufficient to convince the rest of you as well, but clearly additional lessons are in order.”
“Mystic! Call the palace mystic, and the healers!” cried one of the guards.
Two men hauled their stricken partner from the ground while the others raised their weapons and attempted to offer them some degree of protection.
Turiel shook her head irritably while the call for assistance rang through the halls.
“I am quite certain the palace staff was more mannerly in my day. At the very least they were more intelligent. Alas, I suppose things seldom improve with time. Now, the gateway. I can’t detect it at all. Perhaps traveling here sapped my strength. I need to replenish.” She looked briefly to the guards, who were now at the edge of the hall. “Bah, more trouble than they’re worth.”
She paced back into the darkness of Bagu’s chambers. The open chest with its three gems offered the only light in the room now. She smiled as she approached them.
“Ah… thir crystals. And fully sated at that. To think, I didn’t think I would ever have occasion to work with one any larger than the one Teht gifted to me.”
The dark sorceress leaned down and clutched one of the gems. It was almost too large for her to properly grasp. When her flesh touched the smooth facets of the stone, her smiled widened. She could feel the gem tugging at her, drawing weakly at her spirit like an infant sucking its thumb. It was filled to capacity with stolen mana, but still it wanted more. Such delightful, artful constructions the D’Karon could make. A simple piece of crystal that fed like a living thing.
She lifted the stone from the chest and shut her eyes. A simple twist of magic, an unspoken command, was all it took to reverse the gem’s thirst and send its power coiling up her arm and into her soul. It was invigorating, like a long night of sleep and a refreshing drink of water after a long journey. A few moments of glorious feeding left the gem dark and lifeless once more. Its hunger returned, and it tried to steal back the power it had given, but Teht had shared the technique for denying the hunger of the thir gems. She set it carefully into the chest again.
As it was designed to do, the gem had offered up all of the strength it had gathered. With strength came clarity, and with clarity Turiel was certain would come the long-awaited image of the open gateway in her mind’s eye. She again tightened her mind in concentration and sought the portal.
Steadily the smile faded and turned to a snarl. There was no denying it now. If she could not find the portal with her mind and spirit in this state, it could only mean that there was no portal to be found. She turned to the door just in time to find a young woman step cautiously into view.
The woman was a mystic in only the broadest possible sense, that much was clear from a single glance. She was dressed in robes just a bit too pristine to have been worn by a seasoned spell caster, and the amulet she held shakily in one hand was still glossy from the jeweler’s wheel. Her spirit had the pulse and vitality of one who had learned to focus, but it was fragile as an icicle, unforged and unpracticed. In her eyes Turiel saw the bone-deep fear of a novice who knew she was facing a master. To the woman’s credit, she did not falter.
Power gathered within the woman as she pulled her freshly trained mind together about a spell. Her lips formed quiet, carefully phrased incantations. A golden haze filled the air between her and Turiel, and after a few more iterations of her chant the haze tightened into a glimmering shield.
Thus protected, she spoke. Her words had the slow deliberate cadence of someone with a tenuous grip on concentration.
“By the order of the crown of the Northern Alliance, I command you to—”
Turiel stalked forward and thrust her hand at the woman. The necromancer’s fingers touched the shimmering veil of protective magic, and the golden shine parted like smoke. A gasp of fear was all the palace mystic could manage before Turiel’s fingers were about her throat.
“You are a magician. You at least should understand the nature of the woman with whom you are dealing, correct?” Turiel said, her tone like that of a woman who had finally found an adult among children.
Her foe nodded stiffly, fighting for air.
“Excellent. Now, to the north there should be a portal. I am searching for it, but I cannot find it. Are you or any of the other palace staff hiding it somehow?”
The mystic shook her head. She had yet to get a single breath past Turiel’s iron grip, and her face was beginning to redden.
“Have the D’Karon hidden it then?”
Again she shook her head. She’d released the amulet and clawed desperately at Turiel’s fingers.
“Release her!” barked a guard at the end of the hall, the foremost of a dozen such reinforcements that had answered the call for aid.
Turiel made a sound of frustrated disgust and waved her staff in a small circle. Black threads poured from the cracks between the stones of the floor and formed a wall around her and her captive. The guards rushed forward and attempted to bash their way through the circle of black tendrils, but the spider-web-thin threads may as well have been inch-thick iron.
“But there is a portal, yes?” Turiel said.
Her captive shook her head weakly. The woman’s eyes were beginning to flutter now.
“Lies!” Turiel spat. She hurled the woman against the conjured wall. “I know the portal exists. The timer has finished, so the portal has opened. Where is it?”
“It…” the woman gasped, “has been closed.”
“Impossible! The opening of the portal is like the dawning of the sun on a brave new era for this world. You would have me believe that somehow the sun chose instead to retreat back beneath the horizon?”
“The Chosen closed the portal.”
“What is this madness you s
peak? The chosen? The chosen what?”
“The Chosen warriors! The beings of prophecy who arose to defeat the D’Karon,” the mystic said. Her eyes were wide with fear as the continued assault upon the conjured wall filled the air with chaos.
Turiel’s confusion shifted first to realization, then to fury. “You speak of the adversaries. The foolish creatures that would stand in the way of my masters. That, too, is impossible. The adversaries could not band together unless the D’Karon attacked the people of this world unbidden, and they would never be so careless.”
She leaned forward and grabbed the woman by the front of her tunic, dragging her effortlessly behind her as she stalked back toward the doorway to Bagu’s chamber. The wall keeping the guards at bay shifted along with her, receding behind and emerging in front to keep her safe. When she stepped fully inside the chamber, the threads wove themselves into a solid black barrier across the doorway.
“What is your name, woman?”
“Y… you are a necromancer. I can feel it.”
“That isn’t an answer,” Turiel said, throwing her prisoner to the ground beside the chest and leaning down to fetch a second thir gem.
“A proper wizard would never tell her name to a necromancer. It could give her power over us.”
“You are hardly a proper wizard, that name nonsense is only for necromancers who haven’t reached full mastery, and I’ve already got all of the power I need over you. So for the sake of civilized conversation, tell me your damned name.”
“Kintalla.”
“Kintalla, all that you’ve said to me is either fallacy or madness, but at the moment I don’t have any evidence to contradict it. I opened the keyhole. And the portal would only be where the keyhole was centered. So I know precisely where it is.”
“But it has been closed, I’ve told you,” Kintalla said, taking the amulet in her fingers again.
Turiel frowned and slapped it from her hands. “Come now, I’ve let you live because I need to prove to you that all of your lies and foolishness can’t keep me from the truth. Don’t make me kill you before I do so. Then I’ll have to find another witness, and this whole endeavor has been an untenable waste of time already.” She paced to the map on the wall and held the glowing crystal to it. “When I created the first keyhole, naturally there was no portal point there, because the D’Karon had only just arrived. And Teht only gave me a small list of points, in the event I needed to contact them in a dire emergency. But I am quite certain they would have created a portal point for the keyhole as soon as they were able.” She peered at the most northerly marked point on the map. “Ah, yes… they added quite a few more. But this one is the one I need.”
The D'Karon Apprentice Page 20
