The D'Karon Apprentice

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Watching Deacon work had begun to give him a new appreciation. This… keyhole was monstrous. Even without a drop of genuine mystic training, he could feel the fearsome forces at work. There was the sense that Deacon was doing battle with a wild animal with only his mind to defend him. And yet he worked with unshaking hands and slow, calm breaths. With a sword dangling over him by the thinnest of threads, he showed no hint of fear or concern.

  One of his hands gripped his gem tightly, and the other was plunged deep into the churning knot of lights. Between his hands was a sliver of metal drifting and slowly rotating. He hadn’t placed it there; it had simply appeared, accumulating from thin air.

  Garr rumbled a warning and Grustim turned.

  “What is it?” Deacon asked, not willing to turn away from his workings.

  “The soldiers have held their position several hundred paces due north. A second and third group has met and combined ranks, but they are not advancing.”

  “That is good news.”

  “No. It is very, very bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it confirms what I had already suspected. They are coordinating. That implies they were well aware that what they would find here would be a threat. And a significant one. How much longer will it take you to finish?”

  “Impossible to tell. Several minutes more at least. Possibly an hour. And when we are through, we’ll simply be left with the same quantity of power condensed. To be certain Turiel can’t put it to use again, we’ll have to keep it from her.”

  “Then keep working. When they arrive, I cannot conceive of any outcome that will preserve our peace, and very few that will preserve our lives. I will speak to them. If they do not like what they hear, they will attack. If I attempt to fend them off, it will be treason. If you do, it will be war.”

  “Can you release Garr from his oath again?”

  “I should not have done that once, but I will not do it again. It would only ease my conscience in any case, because if any of these men die while you are near, those who wish for a reason for war will have all that they need to justify it.”

  “But—”

  “Focus on your work. This stone has been set in motion. No amount of questioning will keep it from the bottom of the mountain.”

  #

  Myranda’s mind burned and her soul wavered. She’d begun the battle with little strength, and the tasks at hand were many. Turiel was relentless, levying attacks of devastating intensity. Myranda absorbed, deflected, and countered all she could, no stranger to battling a foe who massively outclassed her, but every passing moment only made her opponent stronger.

  Worse, Myranda had to split her attentions between the necromancer and the troops she had raised, who now marched relentlessly toward Crestview. The skeletons were fragile, no sturdier than the bones that composed them, but striking them down was only a delay. As soon as one fell, Turiel restored it, and as the battle crept closer to the village, more of the battlefront came under Turiel’s expanding influence, and thus more of the skeletons rose.

  “You put forth a noble effort, Myranda,” Turiel said, her voice booming with the power that was still building within her. “If I do manage to kill you, I look forward to the chats we’ll have afterward.”

  An earsplitting howl pierced the air, drawing both Myranda’s and Turiel’s attention. Myn’s battle with Mott had been truly savage, the dragon more driven to conquer this supernaturally resilient beast than Myranda had ever seen. She’d clamped her jaws about the back of Mott’s neck and blasted a breath of fire. It didn’t incinerate Mott, but it was clearly more damage or pain than the beast could shrug off.

  “Mott!” Turiel said, her voice scolding. “Honestly. I made you better than that. I’m beginning to think you weren’t ready for the additional size. If you can’t use it properly, I’ll take it from you.”

  She raised her staff and snapped her fingers. Mott’s form shuddered and shifted to black. The details dropped away and began to unravel into a nest of threads that wove into the ground. A tiny bundle of the threads separated from the rest, and after a moment of struggle, Mott’s original form broke free.

  Myn shook her head and recovered from the sudden disappearance of her opponent, then locked Mott’s tiny scuttling form in her gaze.

  Showing a remarkable amount of logic and awareness for so bizarre a creature, Mott chose to retreat rather than tangle with a still furious dragon that was now dozens of times his size. Working with the undersized vulture wings he’d started with, he alternately fluttered and scrambled off to the north. Myn turned to follow.

  “Myn, no! See to the city! Make sure the people are safe!” Myranda ordered.

  The wizard rushed toward Turiel, her staff braced between her hands.

  Turiel turned to her and smirked, raising her staff to summon a shield. Myranda gathered her weakening will into her crystal and thrust if forward. It was enough to shatter the shield, just barely, but with no power left for a proper attack. Turiel seemed aware of it, the beginnings of a grin flashing on her face.

  A moment later the grin was wiped away as Myranda continued her forward charge. If there was no time and little magic to spare for a mystic attack, there were other options. Her time in Entwell had largely been focused on sculpting her mystic aptitude into its present level of mastery, but she’d learned other lessons as well. Much as she’d resisted, she’d been required to take instruction in combat, too. Though she was loath to put it to use, times like these made it clear why her instructors had insisted she learn. She drove her shoulder hard into Turiel’s chest, throwing her off balance. Before she could regain her feet, Myranda hooked the tip of her staff behind Turiel’s foot and pulled it out from under her.

  The necromancer struck the ground, startled and confused. She drew in a breath, but before she could release it as a threat or a spell, Myranda planted a boot on her throat and thrust the head of her staff between Turiel’s eyes.

  “Drop your staff and end this madness,” Myranda demanded.

  “You’ll… have to kill me,” Turiel croaked.

  Myranda pulled her mind to a new task. From the start there’d been no hope of overpowering the necromancer, but now that she was so close, and she’d interrupted the woman’s focus for even a moment, there was the chance to keep it from returning. She set her will against Turiel’s, wrapping her own mind and spirit around the dark wizard’s, walling her off from the churning spirits that surrounded her. It wasn’t a matter of being stronger. It was a matter of keeping Turiel’s will from her power. Tiny shoves and prods of her mind, constantly shifting, kept the necromancer off balance mentally in the same way she’d been knocked off balance physically.

  “My, my, my…” Turiel breathed, trying and failing to break through Myranda’s confounding influence. “I’d not expected such savagery. Brute physical force?”

  “I will do what I must. That much I learned from your beloved D’Karon,” Myranda said.

  “Then kill me. It is as simple as that.”

  “You are a necromancer. I very much doubt killing you would do much good, and I don’t kill for no reason.”

  Turiel rolled her eyes. “I’m no Epidime… but I have been curious how simple it would be to work my skills from the wrong side of the grave.” She drew in a breath, struggling. “This is taking all of your mental agility. How long do you suppose you can keep me down?”

  “Long enough,” she said, sweat trickling down her face. At the border it was not as warm as at the heart of Tressor, but the sweat had nothing to do with the temperature. “Perhaps long enough to convince you to—”

  “Fah! No more of that!” Turiel said.

  “You are betraying your world for the sake of the memory of your sister!” Myranda growled.

  “What better reason to betray a world than family?” Turiel asked.

  Myranda felt a vicious, potent rush of strength, Turiel making an earnest and very nearly successful attempt to break the stalemate.


  “Tell me, Myranda,” she said. “What side of the border are we on? And what is that delightful, rhythmic sound?”

  Myranda cast a precious glance aside. Myn was running herself ragged keeping the scattered skeletons from advancing, but for now the situation was in hand. The troops of both sides were only a few hundred paces away. The battle had drifted well south of the border between the kingdoms. They were on Tresson land. The Tresson soldiers were looking upon a dragon, two wizards, and a cluster of the shambling dead doing battle dangerously close to a settlement. The Tressons were within their rights and their duties to defend their people. Worse, Myn was a common sight at the border. The Alliance soldiers had certainly recognized her, and they were within their duty to come to her aid. And so they had. It was by any measure an invasion, Alliance soldiers rushing across the border with weapons in hand and the intention to use them.

  Her realization was soon followed by a sharp, dizzying pain in the side of her head. The distraction had freed Turiel enough to deliver a punishing blow with her staff. Myranda had no sooner struck the ground than she could feel the necromancer’s power surge like a torch flaring to life. Instinctively she rolled aside. A line of black filaments erupted from the ground, and every last skeleton Myn had shattered rose again, bound and bolstered by more of the unending black threads.

  Myranda climbed to her feet and turned to Turiel. The necromancer was standing and wringing her hands.

  “Direct physical violence. It seems so beneath a spell caster. I’m not certain if I should admire or pity a person such as you who willingly resorts to it,” Turiel said. “I’d much prefer to leave it in the hands of the specialists.”

  She looked to the soldiers, who were aligning themselves into ranks, now approaching the raging battle between Myn and the skeletons with caution. Their eyes flitted from the undead assailants to their counterparts from the other land and back again, clearly viewing them as equal threats.

  Myranda tried to rush toward Turiel again, slashing at the threads the necromancer conjured. She made little progress, Turiel having no trouble keeping her distance with a few lazy steps backward. Myranda had simply pushed herself too far. Days with barely any sleep, massive expenditures of energy—her spirit had been wrung out, drained. If the battle persisted for much longer, there would be no chance for her to even defend herself, let alone defeat a woman who was growing stronger by the moment.

  Myn was having similar trouble. It took little more than a single swat of her claws or a curl of her tail to bash the skeletons apart, but they rose as quickly as they fell, and there were so many of them. Bony fingers and scattered, timeworn weapons scratched and gouged at her. Thick, potent blood was seeping from a dozen minor wounds, and she was huffing great exhausted breaths as she continued her assault.

  “It’s been so long since I folded in a dose of energy to the keyhole. I feel shamefully lax in my responsibilities. But I suspect a bit of fresh bloodshed will be the last scrap I need,” Turiel mused.

  Myranda shook her head and stumbled back. As surely as she needed to stop Turiel, she knew it was still more important to stop her people and the people of Tressor from tearing each other apart. It might already be too late to keep Turiel from getting what she needed to finish her spell. Likewise, the consequences of the actions she and others had been forced to take could well have already broken this fragile peace beyond repair. In the end, though, everything she’d ever done was to stop further bloodshed. If nothing else, Myranda knew she had to keep these troops from each other. To keep them focused on whom she knew to be their common enemy.

  The leading soldiers were less than a dozen paces apart now. In seconds they would meet. Myranda ran to them, ignoring the slashing attacks of the lingering threads she was leaving behind. She poured a bit of magic into her voice, allowing it to rise above the din of battle, and addressed the troops.

  “Listen to me! I am Myranda, Duchess of Kenvard and Guardian of the Realm. All Alliance troops, you are ordered to defend Crestview from the undead. Until I say otherwise, we are in a truce, and Tressor is an ally. Defend that village as you would defend your own home! Myn! Come here!”

  The faithful dragon thrust herself into the air, a spring of her powerful legs and a flap of her massive wings bringing her to Myranda’s side in a single bound. Myranda climbed onto her back, and allowed a precious dose of her flagging mystic reserves to trickle into her friend and seal the worst of her wounds. She did not speak, offering not so much as a single command to Myn. The two knew each other well enough that such was not necessary. Another wing-assisted leap brought the pair to the narrowing strip of land between the foremost troops of Turiel’s army and the flimsy walls of the settlement.

  Tresson soldiers had only just reached the village walls and scattered warily at Myranda’s arrival. They too had been stationed at the front and had come to know Myranda and Myn by sight, but the circumstances would have been trying for even a well-earned trust. Myranda wouldn’t waste her time or breath trying to steady their fears. Actions spoke louder than words. As the nearest of the skeletons stepped into range, Myn pulverized them. The bony troops spread, and soon the threat of the skeletons was a far greater one than the dragon and wizard.

  The southern troops put their weapons to work, hacking and bashing at bone that was all-too eager to repair and resume its march. Between Myranda, Myn, and the troops, the skeletal march was outnumbered and overpowered, but the endless flow of magic kept their numbers from diminishing. The Alliance troops carved their way in from the back, bashing skeletons to pieces and trampling them under foot.

  Then the moment came. Battling soldiers from both sides shattered through the wall of bone and corroded armor and came face to face, red to the south, blue to the north. Their weapons were raised, their blood already racing from the intensity of combat. The war had ended only months before. Each of these men and women had seen battle, perhaps even against one another. And now they stood on the battlefield.

  Bones clattered and fresh threads coalesced. The fallen enemies at their feet clattered and tugged, drawing together piece by piece and assembling on the nearest patches of ground large enough to accommodate them. A man in blue looked to the Tresson soldier before him, then to the restoring army. He turned, putting his back to the Tresson soldier and raising his weapon in the former foe’s defense. One by one the other Alliance soldiers did the same.

  “Really now. Am I to believe we can’t even trust soldiers to spill a little blood?” Turiel said. “Well, I’m through waiting. I’m quite sure I have enough, and if I don’t, it’ll just be a quick jaunt there and back again to get what I need.”

  She waved her staff, and the familiar point and window of a portal began to form before her…

  #

  Grustim stared down at the troops at Garr’s feet. When the time came to intimidate, there was much to be said for requiring another soldier to look up to address you. This was particularly true when that soldier was on horseback. And he would need all of the intimidation he could muster. All told, the troops who had been gathering at a safe distance didn’t approach until there were nearly fifty of them. A dragon was a formidable foe, and a dragon with a Rider was, if anything, more so, but even Garr would be hard-pressed to take on so substantial a force.

  “Stand aside, honored Dragon Rider. We have orders from a trustworthy source that Northern aggressors are lurking within this cave.”

  “You do not have the authority to order me aside, and if there was anything for the military to concern itself with, I would have seen to it myself.”

  “I have my orders,” the soldier replied.

  “And I have mine,” Grustim said.

  Hands tightened about lances and bows. Horses, fearful of the massive predator looming before them, shuffled and fidgeted. For a moment there was a stalemate, neither Grustim nor the soldiers willing to make the first move in what would be a battle that would not only spill blood, but blacken the honor of one or all of those to do batt
le.

  “I will not ask again,” said the spokesman, a man with the same markings of commander that Brustuum had worn.

  He was a match for Grustim’s rank and he knew it. The Dragon Rider could not countermand his orders. Proper training suggested the resolution was to defer to the commander with more recent orders. A Dragon Rider could credibly make a claim that he’d been more recently informed, but there was no way to be certain. It came down to the judgment of the troop commander, and from the set of his jaw and the hardness of his gaze, there was little doubt which he believed to be true. Muscles tensed and breathing quickened across the whole of the troop complement. Each knew the decision had been made. There would be combat between Tressons. All that remained was the order.

  Arrows nearly flew and swords nearly swung when the next voice rang out, but it was a soldier, not a commander who spoke.

  “Commander!” called an alert mounted soldier deep within the ranks.

  The commander turned.

  “Sorcery! Take cover! Safe distance!” the commander barked, pointing his lance in the direction of the threat.

  The soldiers scattered, pulling back in an almost chaotic retreat. A swirling black point grew into a circle, the exit of Turiel’s portal. The window to the border revealed the cool and collected figure of the necromancer. She stepped gingerly through, careful to keep her hem from the swirling edge, then turned back to call into the icy portal.

  “Mott! Where have you gotten off to? Bah. The rascal will turn up. Best not to waste time,” she said.

  “Hold! Northerner, you are trespassing on Tresson land!” called the commander.

  Turiel turned, noticing for the first time the dozens of soldiers gathered about her portal. Her eyes widened in shock, but not the sort of shock that comes from fear or surprise. She seemed aghast, offended to find anyone in this place.