The D'Karon Apprentice

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “I wouldn’t call what she was doing here ‘living,’” Deacon said. “She must have spent most of the time in deep meditation. It is deeper than sleep. Quite near death. I cannot fathom the focus she must have developed. The power she must hold. Do you realize the strength of mind, the singularity of attention and desire it would require?”

  “If there is work to be done, do it. I would prefer to be gone before the soldiers arrive. And there is no doubt they will arrive.”

  “Yes… yes of course.”

  Deacon pulled his gem free and buried himself in the task. In his mind, the physical world dropped away, the veil pulling aside to the plane of spirits and magic. Most anywhere in the world had a vitality and life to it. The most innocuous stone was in some way pulsing with the power of the eons of its existence. But this place was cold, lifeless. It was as though his mind, Grustim’s, and Garr’s were the only points of light in an otherwise empty and darkened pit.

  “It is… it is truly remarkable… the power that has been gathered here… but to the mind, in the astral plane… it is entirely absent. So well hidden… The skill it must take to achieve such a deception, such a grand illusion. Using magic to hide magic,” he uttered, in genuine awe.

  “These D’Karon took your nation to war. Held you by the throat and sent your people to die for their ends, correct?”

  “Not my birth nation, but my adopted one, yes.”

  “And yet you admire their works?”

  “Ah… I apologize. It has been repeatedly observed such a behavior is… nonstandard. … Wait… yes… yes I feel the threads… the seams of it… Here…”

  He held out his hand and touched a point in the air just a few inches from the ground. The gem in his fist, already glowing with a warm light, suddenly began to pulse brighter, its color shifting from white-blue to amber-gold, and from amber-gold to deep violet.

  He could feel it, a point in space at once gorged and ravenous. Wrapped about it was a simple, elegant spell. That it could hide something so powerful was like concealing a battle-ax beneath a silk kerchief. And then, with a flex of his mind, he pulled the sheet away.

  The reveal of the unfinished spell was not a grand and showy thing. There was no burst of light or crackle of energy. It was simply as though it had never been there, and then a moment later it had always been there. Twisting in the air was a knot of shimmering light. Compound curves, like reflections of reflections, continued inward into a depth and complexity that seemed to be without end. The longer he stared at it, the deeper it seemed to become, as if the fist-sized churning mass of energy was miles deep.

  More chilling than the impossible complexity of it was the sensation. There was a will to the thing. It was mindful of its purpose, like a chained dog watching an intruder, patiently waiting until the trespasser came near enough to be bitten. In the back of his mind, he could feel the D’Karon on the other side. Watching and waiting, banging on the door and demanding to be let through.

  “You’ve revealed it. Now destroy it,” Grustim said, shattering the awed silence.

  “Grustim… it is not an overstatement to say that I am among the dozen most knowledgeable wizards alive today. I have seen acts of power that could lay waste to whole kingdoms at a single stroke. And I say this not out of ego but so that you will understand that it comes from a place of considerable experience when I say that this cave contains the sort of concentrated mystic energy that I’ve witnessed only a handful of times. I cannot destroy it. It cannot be destroyed. It can only be changed. Turiel’s work was very nearly done. If she is allowed to return here after having harvested any appreciable power, the keyhole will be opened. Undoing it must be done delicately. If I make a false move… neither of us will ever know.”

  “That may be difficult,” Grustim said, turning to the fields to the north. “The soldiers will be here soon, and I am quite certain they will not be pleased to find you working potentially disastrous spells.”

  #

  “I’ll stay and find Ether,” Ivy muttered to herself, both frustration and genuine concern flavoring her voice.

  She climbed over the thrice broken remains of the castle, pawing through the mounds of stone with one hand while holding a torch in the other. Her steps were unsteady, due in large part to the heavy bundle of firewood strapped to her back. She held the torch high and scoured every dancing shadow, looking for some hint of a clue as to where her ally might have gone.

  “What was I thinking? I don’t know magic. It isn’t like she has a scent for me to follow! She might not even be here! She could be anywhere in the north!” She crawled down into the pit that had been excavated by the latest set of portal blasts. “Ether! Ether, if you can hear me at all, answer me!”

  Her sharp ears twitched and pivoted, scouring her surroundings every bit as much as her eyes did. The wind wailed, the fire crackled, and her own heart pounded in her ears. Stones clattered under her feet… and also elsewhere, farther into the damaged halls.

  Ivy couldn’t explain it, but she knew instantly there was a will behind it. She scampered down to the source of the sound and held the torch low. It wasn’t a needle in a haystack. It was infinitely worse. If Ether was here, she could be anything. Any animal, a flicker of smoldering flame, a pool of water, even the air itself.

  “Where are you, Ether?” Ivy said, squinting at the stone.

  Finally she saw it, a curve of stone that had certainly been a finger. And here was a hollow that might have been the back of a knee. Ether had been stone, and what remained of her was here.

  Ivy turned and dropped the bundle of firewood onto the stone and pulled a cask of lamp oil from her belt, dumping it over the wood. When the cask was empty she touched the torch to the wood.

  “Come on… Come on, Ether…” Ivy said, watching anxiously as the wood took to light.

  Several minutes passed with agonizing slowness, then finally stones began to smolder and spark, both those below the wood and beside it. One by one they peeled away and swirled into the flames. Each one caused the flames to swell and intensify. Then, almost imperceptibly, a voice crackled from the flames.

  “Back away…”

  Ivy obeyed, and not a moment too soon. The flames grew orders of magnitude more intense, the wood reducing to ashes in moments. The fire gathered, flicking together into Ether’s form and then shifting to flesh, blood, and cloth. She stumbled forward, Ivy catching her.

  “Turiel… she…”

  “Myranda went after her. She’s probably at the front right now, or will be soon.”

  “We need to join her,” Ether said, trying to stand. “She needs our help.”

  “You’re not in any position to help anyone, Ether,” Ivy said.

  The malthrope held her tight and helped her stand up straight. Ether shook her head and clenched her teeth, furious at her own weakness.

  “Thank you, Ivy,” she said, stepping unsteadily from her support but gripping her arm tight for balance.

  Ivy looked Ether in the eye, genuine confusion in her expression.

  “Wow… you really aren’t yourself right now.”

  “I’ve not been myself for some time. My mind… I don’t think my former self exists anymore. These feelings…” Ether returned Ivy’s gaze. “You… you’ve played your music and helped others before. You’ve put bow to string in order to heal and energize Myranda and the others. It has never been of any use to me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ivy said, uncertain of what Ether was working at.

  “I’ve always affirmed that I have no emotions, no need for them. You’ve constantly affirmed the opposite, claiming I have emotions, but that I know only anger and hate. … My mind… my mind is awash with this poison you call emotion… But… but perhaps in that I can find some of the strength you’ve found. Perhaps…”

  Ivy’s eyes opened and she clutched her hands together, practically vibrating with excitement. “You want me to play for you!?”

  “It may have some value,” Ether said.


  “Come on! Come on, come on!” Ivy said, clutching her hand and tugging her forward. “It works better when there’re other people to join in the fun, and I think the people of Kenvard need a pick-me-up! I know I’ve got a spare fiddle I can use.”

  #

  “Here… oh, my dear Mott. Right here… can’t you feel it?” Turiel said, stroking her fingers through the tufts of hair running like a mane down the massive creature’s back.

  The pair had been flying through the clouds for a few hours. The time had given Turiel a chance to heal herself and her pet, though at the cost of a small share of the power she’d gathered in Kenvard. Flying through the freezing clouds, they’d been pelted with ice and covered with frost. Turiel seemed, as with all matters of the body, to shrug it off as, at worst, a mild annoyance. They had been navigating based wholly on the lure of restless spirits and generations of death that traced a line from west to east.

  Now, just as the clouds were thinning, that line was beneath them. Mott circled down toward the rust-brown line of churned-up earth that marked the bloodiest nearby stretch of the front. Mott, as a creature crafted from mad whims and in defiance of nature, was fairly ungainly in the air. At no point was this more apparent than when he tried to land. His long tail dangled down behind him, dragging along the ground until his upper body came slapping down onto his coiled legs and his head flopped to the ground. The impact produced an unpleasant, fleshy sound, suggesting it had done a fair amount of damage, but through great effort Mott had spared Turiel any serious distress.

  The necromancer climbed down and drove her staff into the earth, dropping to her knees to scoop up soil. Her eyes were wide and her grin wider, like she was looking over a banquet table heaped with delicacies after a long, hungry day. The reddish-brown soil ran between her fingers.

  “I can feel it. I can feel the blood that has been spilled here, Mott,” Turiel said, her voice hushed. “Wonderful… Glorious… The war… do you see? Do you see the brilliance of the D’Karon? This battlefront was like an altar, and every man and woman killed during the war was like a sacrifice to their greatness. And that power. That glorious power is here. Don’t doubt it represents a piddling amount for them… but for me it is so much. Enough to bring them back, and with enough to spare to show them how effective, how powerful I can truly be.”

  Mott stood, curling his tail around to adjust his jaw, which had been somewhat dislocated by the rough landing. He chattered something, eyes peering to the west.

  Turiel glanced in his direction, then to where the beast was looking. There was motion just visible on the dim horizon. Troops from both sides were not more than a few minutes away, and they were moving in her direction. She gathered her staff and used it to climb back to her feet.

  “Yes, yes, Mott,” she said, dusting off her hands. “The soldiers will come. Of course they will come. It doesn’t matter. … Well naturally there are a lot of them. That is why I remade the nearmen in Kenvard, but of course the adversaries had to destroy them. Honestly, they call themselves heroes, but they seem so eager to destroy things. … It won’t take but a few minutes, Mott. I can feel the power flowing into me. The spirits here aren’t as lively. They died with the hot blood of war in their veins. Most went to rest content in the knowledge they died for what they believed in. Not much strength to acquire from a spirit at peace. But there are so many of them. Sipping from a thousand glasses will slake your thirst just as surely as a tall, cool goblet all your own. … I’ve told you. Just a few minutes. … Well if you aren’t sure you can hold them off, then I’ll just give you some help!”

  Again Turiel drove the tip of her staff into the soil. She rubbed her hands together eagerly and then cupped them around the gem as if warming them. The glow from within intensified.

  “Mmm… It seems those from both sides make it a habit to collect their dead. A pity,” she grinned. “But in one hundred years of war, a few bodies are bound to be overlooked… And sometimes a battlefield grave is better than none at all…”

  Her ever-present filaments of magic uncoiled and threaded their way into the soil, spreading out and blackening the ground for dozens of paces in all directions. Here and there they looped upward, then drove themselves down. In those places, the earth began to quake. It split and spread, shapes churning it up from beneath. Then came the troops. Some wore shreds of blue armor, others battered remnants of red. Most were little more than skeletons, and many of them were incomplete. They were warriors from both sides, lost to the generations of war and forgotten, some for over a century.

  All told fifty or so skeletal troops emerged, with another clawing to the surface every few moments. Her black ribbons and threads wound across their bodies, holding loose bones in place and weaving into replacements for things missing or too badly damaged to do their job. When each was free of the ground and standing on its feet, the revenant would then march before her and stand at attention.

  “There,” Turiel said, opening her eyes to the resurrected troops. “An adequate force, don’t you think?”

  Mott looked at her doubtfully, then chittered and glanced to the west. There were easily a hundred Northern soldiers, and likely twice as many Tresson soldiers.

  “You really must learn to be more confident in your capabilities, Mott. I made you, have some faith in me!”

  He grumbled, then glanced to the sky.

  Turiel craned her neck and followed his gaze. Myn was emerging from the clouds. “Oh, very well then. If you are that concerned, I’ll conscript some sturdier soldiers.”

  She peered to the south. They were less than a mile from the nearest village, a settlement to the southwest called Crestview. Even at this distance it was clear the place was rather recently rebuilt, no doubt established as a way to hastily gain a foothold during a peace no one expected to last. It was barely across the border to Tressor, its northern wall perhaps half a mile from the row of wooden stakes that divided the lands. A cluster of Tresson soldiers had taken up positions just south of that border. Likely the Tresson troops were there to protect it from attack from the Alliance troops stationed a short distance across the border, who were in turn only there to keep an eye on the Tresson soldiers.

  “There. Men…” Turiel said, addressing the troops. She tipped her head in deference to one specific skeleton. “And you, madam. To bolster our numbers, head to yonder village and see if the people there wouldn’t mind terribly donating their bodies and souls to my defense. Feel free to make the same request of any soldiers who resist you. I promise their service to me will be brief. Mott, you stay here and keep the dragon busy. Let Mommy focus on her task.”

  The army she raised set off, Mott curled his body protectively around her, and Turiel opened her mind and soul to the power around her. It was glorious, like being immersed in a warm, nurturing bath. Thousands of lives over the years, each leaving a piece of itself behind. The soil was rich with their sacrifice. For one so tightly attuned to death, there was nothing to do but allow the power to flow into her.

  In a few seconds she could feel more strength flood her soul than she’d managed to gather on her own in years. The strength came at a price, of course. Each spirit added its voice to her mind. As she steeped in the crackling, humming power of the place, the final thoughts of each soldier and civilian who had spilled his or her blood here rang out in her mind. For a normal person, even another necromancer, it would have pushed a steady mind to madness. But for Turiel, who had marched that road for much of the last few centuries, it was no more bothersome than the buzzing of flies. For the madwoman, an unholy chorus of screams from beyond the grave is hardly a matter for concern.

  It wasn’t until the ground shook and Mott slithered forward to better guard Turiel that she finally opened her eyes again to survey the situation. She turned to the north to find Myranda standing, her staff ready. Myn was heaving exhausted breaths. Both heroes wore looks of iron-hard determination tempered with bone-deep fatigue.

  “Turiel—” Myranda
began.

  “Really now, Myranda!” Turiel interrupted. “You’ve argued your side, I’ve argued mine. We’ve found our differences irreconcilable and come to blows. In the end, I have emerged as strong and healthy as I’ve ever been, and you are at death’s door. What more is to be gained from more tiresome words? Perhaps you should ask yourself which one of us is truly mad.”

  “There must be some scrap of reason left in you! Some part of you that realizes what you are doing must not be done!”

  “Well of course there is, dear. Even as we speak I can hear the voice of reason in me, screaming to set aside my task before further blood is pointlessly shed. But one doesn’t last long as a necromancer without learning to ignore errant voices in one’s head. I’m afraid all that remains is for one of us to kill the other. And forgive me for saying, but I think I have a greater capacity for such things than you.”

  “You—”

  “Uh-uh-uh! You’ve got three tasks, my dear. You must stop me, you must stop Mott, and you must stop the troops I’ve sent across the border. None of them can be achieved by chitchat.” She grinned, raising her staff. “To arms!”

  Like an executioner dropping an ax, she brought the staff down, spreading her will through the thread-riddled ground and launching a vicious blast of raw energy at the same time. The attack was intended to end the battle before it began, ensnaring Myranda in ebony bonds to keep her from avoiding the attack.

  Instead, Myranda swiped her own staff, an arc of her own pure energy severing the creeping strands and dispersing the bolt of magic.

  In response, Turiel raised her eyebrow. This might be more interesting than she’d anticipated.

  #

  Grustim stood at the mouth of the cave, eyes set upon Deacon. The Dragon Rider had an awareness of magic. Elements of his training had been focused on defending against it. His armor and weapons had been designed to deflect and disperse black magic. All of his life he had felt that wizards were not true warriors. They toyed with forces that made them powerful in a way that did not pay proper respect to the training and discipline of even the lowest soldier. It felt unfair that they had been given a tool that put them in a position of power they did not deserve.