The D'Karon Apprentice

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Ether braced herself as an explosion of energy splashed against her, forcing her fiery form back and taking a massive bite out of the cliff side. It was painful, but she was able to endure the blast without any lingering ill effect. Nevertheless, the damage was done. Her own blindness and oversight had allowed that thing to slip from her fingers once more. It burned her, shamed her. More than anything, it worried her. This affliction of her mind had caused her focus to suffer, that much she was certain of. Such had robbed her of the clarity of thought that would have made tracking this sorceress to the ends of the earth as effortless as it would have been in the past. But this was not a matter of focus, or at least not a matter of mystic focus. This was a matter of judgment. If her feelings were clouding her thinking as well as her concentration, then what could be trusted? How could she fulfill her task?

  She whisked back to the surface and touched down, shifting to humanity once more and moving quickly to Ivy’s side.

  “Did you… is she…” Ivy muttered. Her voice was less slurred, but she still clearly had to work at even forming the words. Her mind was not as it should be.

  “She and her pet escaped.”

  “I think… I think that’s best,” Ivy said. “I don’t know if… I don’t know if I know what I need to know.”

  Ether leaned low and took Ivy’s hands, hauling her to her feet and supporting her. “You are not well. Your mind is weaker than usual. And I cannot remember a time when your spirit has been so drained.”

  “She did something,” Ivy said, her eyes beginning to clear and her words becoming steadier. “I told her I needed to know where the keyhole was, and I promised to help her if she would tell me. She touched my head. It felt like…” she shuddered, “like what Epidime would do when they were trying to teach me. I think she was trying to show me where the keyhole was, but I don’t… it’s all a jumble in my mind. Can you track her? Follow her?”

  “Not at this time,” Ether said.

  “Why not?”

  “I am not myself right now.”

  “You’re never yourself. Why should that—”

  “Now is not the time to try my patience with your words,” Ether fumed.

  “Okay… okay…” Ivy said. She shook her head. “We’ve got to get word to Myranda and Deacon then. Mr. Celeste is on the main road. Or he should be…” She gazed out across the land. “Yes, I think I see him. If you can take me there, we’ll write what happened in the pad. They’ll see it. They’ll know what to do…”

  “Very well,” Ether said.

  She shut her eyes, and a moment later her human form vanished in a burst of swirling wind. She rose into the air and directed the flow of wind to coil about Ivy, lifting her as well. In moments she whisked over the stretch of sea and stone between the fort and the mainland.

  Ether set Ivy down by the road, a short distance from where Celeste anxiously waited. From the looks of Ivy’s frazzled expression, the short trip from the fort’s island had not been a pleasant one.

  “Ether,” she said, stumbling dizzily toward Celeste until he caught and steadied her, “I’m afraid of heights, and I can barely think right now. Don’t you think you could come up with a better way to carry me than with just wind? That was terrifying!”

  “I have little interest in your comfort. You are Chosen. You are strong enough to endure such things.”

  “Guardian Ether,” Celeste said with a respectful bow of his head, “it is as always an honor to have you among us.”

  “Yes, it is,” Ether said simply.

  “What happened in the fort?” he asked, addressing Ivy.

  “She was reasonable again, at first. But when Ether was on her way, she started to panic. I think she tried to share some knowledge with me, but she did it the D’Karon way. She forced me to know it. It’s still lost in my head at the moment, and I don’t know if what we need is among the memories she inserted. Even if it is, I don’t know where to find it.”

  “The sorceress used a D’Karon portal to escape,” Ether explained. “She may be anywhere the D’Karon have prepared an exit. Any of their forts, and any of a dozen other places. My own focus is ailing. I do not know that I can detect where she has gone reliably. Myranda or Deacon may be able to do so. And they will have to do so quickly. I badly injured the woman, but she is quite skilled, and quite powerful. She will recover quickly.”

  Celeste pulled the pad from the pack and readied the stylus. “Tell me what Myranda needs to know.”

  #

  Myranda sat with her eyes on the infirmary. The sun had finally slipped below the horizon and the heat had begun to wane, relieving Myn of her shelter duties. The dragon had gradually inched farther away from her and Deacon, rummaging through the remnants of the smoldering stable. Garr had taken to rummaging as well, poking his snout and dragging his claws through the rubble of the keep. Every few minutes he pulled something from the stone and set it aside, huddling close over the growing mound of recovered items.

  Despite the curious actions of the dragons, Myranda couldn’t tear her attention away from the tent. The sounds of pain… the sounds of torture… had long ago ceased. Now she was stricken with the thoughts of what exactly Grustim had done, and what had become of Commander Brustuum…

  Myn finally seemed to find what she was after, tugging a stone from the burnt structure and trotting back to the others. She dropped the stone on the ground and settled beside Myranda again. As the dragon lapped her tongue lightly over the smooth stone, Myranda finally pulled her mind away from the tent and looked to her friend’s new toy.

  “Where did you get that, Myn?” she asked. “That doesn’t look like the sort of stone one would find in the desert.”

  The dragon glanced at her, then quickly at Garr. Her glance probably wasn’t intended as an answer, though it left little doubt. Instead she seemed to be glancing to ensure that the male hadn’t heard the question, or at least not seen to what Myranda was referring. Satisfied that he’d not noticed, Myn quietly plucked the stone and crept around to between Myranda and Garr, such that when she placed it down again, her body blocked his view of it.

  Myranda grinned, momentarily forgetting the weight upon her mind.

  “Myn… did Garr give that to you?” she whispered.

  The dragon gave another sly glance toward him before licking away the last of the char that had collected on the stone. Myranda smiled warmly.

  “It’s so nice to see you getting along with one of your own. Perhaps, when all of this is through and the peace is more secure, we can bring Garr and Grustim up to visit us. New Kenvard isn’t so very far from the border,” she said, scratching Myn on the brow. “Deacon and I invite friends and family. There’s no reason you shouldn’t invite some of your own.”

  Myn tipped her head into the scratching and shook the ground with her rumbling contentment, much to the concern of the soldiers. Despite the decline of the sun, they had opted to remain near the wall, starting small fires and preparing their shares of the provisions.

  “Myranda,” Deacon said, suddenly fumbling with his bag.

  It was the pad, the tiny bell rattling with a muted sound while trapped within his pack. He pulled it free. The cover quickly flipped open, and the stylus scrawled out words in a large, careful hand.

  “‘Turiel escaped. May have shared knowledge with Ivy. May have taken knowledge from Ivy. Used a portal. Must find,’” Deacon read aloud. “Your father is extremely efficient with his writing.”

  “If she used a portal, why didn’t we sense it?” Myranda asked.

  “She used two portals here. This fortress is drenched with the residual aftereffects of D’Karon magic. Passively detecting the distant use of a new spell of the same kind would be like happening to spot a candle we didn’t know to look for a half a field away while staring through a bonfire,” Deacon said. “In hindsight, it would have been wise for at least one of us to remain remote to this place… though I suppose Grustim did make it clear that we were not to leave his s
upervision…”

  While Deacon reasoned his way back through the course of events that had led them to miss this crucial piece of information, Myranda snatched up her staff and set its head in her lap. For a man who, when he had a mind to, had crystalline mental clarity and impenetrable focus, Deacon’s propensity to allow his mind to wander was astounding.

  He was, however, entirely correct about the stain that the D’Karon magic had left. In her mind’s eye, it hung all around them, like a thick fog choking out the healthy, vibrant glow that existed in those places untouched by their influence. To see past it, she had to deepen her concentration and expand her view beyond the stain. It was precisely the sort of magic she’d promised not to deploy within Tresson borders, but in light of recent disastrous events she very much doubted there was any merit in restraining herself any longer. At this point the only thing that mattered to her was preventing further disaster. And this woman, this Turiel, brought disaster with her everywhere she went, and her stated goal was to return to this world the greatest disaster that had ever befallen it.

  The key difficulty of tracking movement through such means was that the spell left massive, unmistakable scars wherever the caster departed. The marring where they arrived was barely a ghost of an echo by comparison. The mind’s eye, no matter how rigidly one trained it, was drawn to the most substantial disruptions, making glimpses of the lesser ones fleeting and imprecise. It was to the north, certainly. And it was closer to the west coast than the east.

  Then, all at once, it snapped into clarity. Deacon, having reached the end of his line of reasoning had taken his own gem in one hand and her hand in the other. Given time to steady the storm in her mind, Myranda would certainly have reached this same state. Deacon, perhaps even more quickly, could have done the same. But together it seemed effortless. For a precious moment Myranda allowed herself to bask in the strength and serenity that came not from her, and not from him, but from the pair united. It was something that this purpose or that always seemed to push aside, but there was no doubting that the two were perfectly attuned, matched together on a metaphysical level, and in a way that she had too often taken for granted. She resolved, as soon as the task was done and they and their world were permitted a moment of peace, to make it clear to Deacon how much it meant both to have him by her side and for him to have the patience to remain there when so much else required their attentions.

  The moment passed, however, and the gentle feeling of completion was chased away by the cold truth that their focus had revealed. Only a single fleck of black was different from the others, an exit that was not also an entrance. This was the place that Turiel had arrived but not yet departed, at least by the same mystic means. It sat at the northern edge of a dim but strengthening mass of souls. The souls were instantly, chillingly familiar. It was a place she knew.

  As quickly as it had come, the focus was gone, broken by a voice.

  “Duchess Celeste.”

  Myranda opened her eyes. Grustim stood before her. Still affected by the sharpened focus, in the space of a single moment she saw a thousand telltale signs of the deeds done within the infirmary. Flecks of blood, not his own, smeared his hands. The depressions left by cords wrapped tight around them still lingered across his palms. Most of all, there was the look in his eyes… Torture left a stain on the soul just as black and just as deep as the one D’Karon magic left on the world.

  “I am afraid Commander Brustuum cannot tell us precisely where Turiel first arose. He does not know. She was certainly fostering this keyhole you’ve spoken of, but it is also certain that she first arose some weeks ago, and that she came from a place far deeper in the Southern Wastes than we first believed. She’d traveled from there to a nomadic tribe near the west coast, and Brustuum’s men captured her there and sequestered her here over a month ago.”

  “Deacon, you stay here and work with him,” Myranda said, climbing to her feet. “If you can get close to the keyhole, do it. We’ll all work on finding its precise location. The nearer you are, the more quickly you can tend to it.”

  “Certainly,” Deacon said. He began to dig through his bags to find a certain book. “Grustim, can you show me on a recent map—”

  “Wait. Duchess, why assign this task to him?”

  “I have to leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Turiel is in New Kenvard,” she said, agony hardening her voice.

  “You know this? That she is there, and that she is still there?” Grustim asked.

  “She opened a portal to New Kenvard not more than a few minutes ago,” Deacon explained.

  “Then deliver a message to the local defenses,” Grustim advised.

  “I shall begin the message immediately,” Deacon agreed.

  “Regardless, I will be there to help them,” Myranda said.

  “You do not have permission to leave. There is work to be done here,” Grustim said.

  Myranda was beside Myn, readying to climb onto her back. She turned to Grustim. “Grustim, when I was six years old, I watched my city be overrun and my people destroyed. For years I thought it was your people who were responsible. I later learned it was the D’Karon. It remained in their grip until the end of the war, and since then I have been doing all I can to restore it. And at this moment the woman who brought the D’Karon to our world has set foot there. It is my home. I will not allow harm to come to New Kenvard. Not again.”

  “Even with Myn to carry you, you are days away,” Grustim reminded her. “There is no telling where she will be by the time you arrive. And even if you were hours away, you are suggesting that I allow a member of the Northern Alliance to ride a dragon through the skies of my land unguided and unwatched? You have proved yourself to be honorable and trustworthy, Duchess, but what you are asking must not be allowed.”

  “Grustim, I apologize deeply, but I am not suggesting and I am not asking. If I can keep my home safe, I will. If I can be there to heal the damage that is done, I will. This is something I must do.” She climbed onto Myn’s back. “You will not stop me.”

  Grustim turned to his former mount. Garr was standing among the rubble, watching intently as the exchange grew more heated. He stepped forward. Myn turned. The two dragons locked their gazes. Not a growl or roar was exchanged. Not a wing or tail twitched. There was only the stare, the silent measurement of the other.

  When the decision came, it was clear to even a novice in the ways of dragons precisely what decision was made. Garr’s tense stance eased, he shifted his gaze to Grustim in what might have been shame and might have been defiance, and then he finally sat. There was no fear, no intimidation. He wasn’t backing down from a challenge or bowing to a superior opponent. He simply chose that in this moment, in this instance, this dragon and her rider should be left to their task.

  Myranda didn’t linger, nor did she gloat. She looked first to Grustim.

  “If, when we are through, you feel justice is deserved, then justice will be served. You have my word.” Her eyes turned to Deacon. “Be safe. I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  “Until then, may we each find what we are searching for,” Deacon said.

  With that, Myn curled her neck and plucked her stone from the ground, flashing a quick glance at Grustim before dropping it beneath her tongue, and the pair took to the sky with a few powerful thrusts of her wings.

  Myranda, in times of great need, had learned the techniques to funnel her own considerable mystic strength into that of her mount to speed their motions and to ease away fatigue. She’d used it to great effect in more than one chase that would have exhausted a normal horse, and the same tactics had helped Myn match even Ether’s speeds for short periods of time. As the seemingly endless desert opened up beneath her, Myranda knew that Grustim was right. Under the best of circumstances it was likely a longer journey than could reasonably be made in a short enough time to make a difference, but that didn’t change a thing. She would reach them. She was the duchess now. It was more than he
r home, it was her responsibility. She would not see it fall again.

  #

  Deacon stood beside Grustim, watching Myranda and Myn soar off to the north. He understood precisely what she was doing and why, but there was the concern that Grustim and, moreover, the whole of the Tresson people might not. He turned to the Dragon Rider, expecting to have to calm him down and make it clear that Myranda meant no disrespect, but at the moment, it seemed the ire was not between Grustim and Myranda, but Grustim and Garr.

  The Rider stared at his former mount with a look of disappointment and irritation. He was “speaking” with the beast in the grunting, growling imitation of the natural dragon language that Deacon had become increasingly fascinated with during their time together. It wasn’t precisely the language he had learned when under the tutelage of Solomon back in Entwell, but that much was to be expected. Languages had regional variations, and soldiers had their own jargons. Adding in the varied anatomy of the two speakers made for a linguistically remarkable demonstration. By the end of the exchange, Deacon was fairly certain he’d worked out the nuances of the speech.

  “… She is not of our land,” Grustim rumbled.

  “She is of our kind,” Garr replied.

  “It is not our way.”

  “To protect our own is our way. To serve our own is our way. The Rider is wise and just. The mount is strong and loyal. They are of our kind, and they are of our way.”

  “… I saw the stone.”

  Garr craned his neck, pride on his face. “She kept the stone.”

  “She is a child, though she does not look it.”

  “Children grow. I am patient.”

  “It was not the way of a mount.”

  “I am not a mount.”

  Grustim crossed his arms. “It is well that you are not.”