Wizard's Blood [Part One]

by Bob Blink

  The base camp was unfortunately almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance to the underground, but it provided shade, a small stream of water, and a comfortable place to sleep. The entrance itself was out on the flat without any such comforts. It meant a bit more of a walk, but everyone had agreed it was a better place to set up.

  “Have a look at this,” Nerila said when the tired researchers returned to camp at the end of the day to the barbecue Jolan and Asari had prepared.

  “Did you find something?” Jolan asked, but he knew already that it wasn’t the clue they sought. He didn’t get the right feeling from touching it.

  She shook her head. “No, but I thought you might find it interesting. It’s about the dragons. I remembered you had always seemed interested in them. It doesn’t tell that much, but it presents a different view than I’ve ever heard before. This book suggests there weren’t very many of them, at least near the time of the War. It says there were thirty-three of the dragons. It even lists their names. See, look here.”

  Jolan looked where she was pointing. There were indeed names, difficult to pronounce. He tried to pronounce them as his fingers traced along the list, Iach-Iss, Eld-erray, Throokelm-Sam, Den-Orok, Sarms-Ough, Awaq-Iad. The list went on for the full thirty-three names.

  “Why would there be so few?” he wondered aloud.

  “We know they were dying out. Perhaps they were the last of their species. It supports the fact they’re no more now. Maybe there is something else we don’t understand. I wanted to keep searching, but decided this isn’t the time for academic pursuits.”

  “Can I keep this?” Jolan asked. “Perhaps the time will come when we can investigate this further.”

  Nerila nodded and made her way over to sit beside her husband.

  * * * *

  Two weeks later Rifod and Nerila cornered Jolan when he returned to the underground to start his shift in the library.

  “Does this spell suggest anything to you?” Rifod said as he showed Jolan a written spell in one of the texts he had been studying.

  “It looks like some kind of a triggering spell,” he said after looking at the array of symbols.

  “You have been studying the language, haven’t you?”

  “It seemed like it would be useful to know what the pieces all mean,” Jolan replied. “But what would this trigger?”

  He looked at them suddenly. “The Nexus? You think this is the spell required to trigger a transition through the Nexus?”

  Quickly Nerila shook her head. “No, this is for something else. We know what this does. Come and see.”

  They led him back outside the library and across to the stone structure. Only the side of the structure could be seen from the library, or from the path they took each day to the surface. As soon as they stood in front of the structure, Jolan was aware that it had changed. Now it was alive. He wanted to say it hummed, but there was no sound. The hollow cavity at the front was no longer the simple tan stone, but instead a faint greenish light filled the area.

  “Dragons!” whispered Asari. Who’d come along to see.

  Jolan nodded to himself in agreement. “You’ve brought it to life,” he said reverently. “But what does it do? Did you find anything to tell you?”

  Rifod explained. “We probably should have waited, but we didn’t really expect it to work after so long. Still, the protective fields seemed to be working, so it was worth a try. The books say it is a transportation device. It will take you from here to any of the other structures that are activated essentially instantly.”

  “You’re serious?” asked Jolan, but he knew Rifod was telling him what they suspected from their reading. “Have you stepped inside the glow?”

  Rifod nodded, but frowned. “Nothing happens, and there seems to be no place to go. The books we have so far don’t explain how one is supposed to choose a destination. I hoped it might be obvious.”

  Jolan walked up and stood inside the glowing light. The wide expanse of stone waited, as if expecting him to act, but there was nothing he could see to do. Rifod was right. There had to be more.

  “Nerila thinks the problem is the fact we have only activated this one structure.”

  “So we need to find another one and see if the system really works. If I remember correctly, Asari’s book said there were supposed to be five of them here at the city.”

  “All out there somewhere under the sand,” said Rifod. “I thought I remembered the book showing some others not too far from here.”

  Rifod’s memory was good, and there were indeed several others shown, but most were widely scattered and far out into the desert. One was two to three days ride further west, along the hills, and might be their best chance of finding one close. Of course, it could be buried as well, so the trip might be a complete waste of time. Jolan was encouraged because the map indicated the structure was up in the hills rather than out on the desert plain.

  After discussions that ran well past dinner it was agreed that Jolan and Asari would go and search for the next structure. Even though Jolan was sure this wasn’t what had pulled him here, the potential value was beyond estimation. It would be well worth risking a week to go find the second structure and return to know if the system could be made functional. The next day was spent stocking up on supplies that had to be stored in a cool place, or in the case of the meat, dried, since Jolan wouldn’t be there to open the Mage’s Box.

  * * * *

  A hint of green back up the canyon had caught Asari’s attention as they looked into another opening between the hills that might be the area represented on the map. Encouraged there would at least be water here, they turned and headed into the hills. The ground was starting to show thin grass, and then small brush. Before long the trees began, and within a mile they were on a rich oasis. There was a stream coming from up in the hills, the water mysteriously vanishing at one end of a large pool back a quarter mile where they had stopped for water for themselves and the horses. As they continued the valley widened out, with a large grassy meadow that would provide good grazing for the horses. The trees blocked much of the sun, making it cooler and very pleasant.

  “Why can’t this be close to where we are?” asked Asari wistfully. “This would be a very pleasant place to be staying.”

  “There’s even a bit of a waterfall,” remarked Jolan, and then he realized he had seen only the bottom part. A series of staggered falls extended up for almost a thousand feet as the water cascaded down the side of the cliff wall. At the base of the waterfall was a very large pool, where the water collected, and then at one end began to flow down the valley to the point it disappeared near the entrance. There were a number of old stone benches, some badly damaged along the water’s edge, and a couple of small buildings a bit farther back. Clearly this was a place that had attracted visitors at some time in the past. Over to one side of the pool was the stone structure they sought.

  “Isn’t that handy,” remarked Jolan as they rode over to the structure and dismounted.

  “Do you think it will work?” asked Asari.

  After riding this far, it was suddenly time to be nervous.

  Jolan walked over to the structure and stood near the hollowed out section in front. It looked just like all the others. The fact this one had been exposed to the open air for centuries had not harmed it in any obvious way. Following the instructions from Rifod and Nerila, he triggered the spell that was supposed to activate the portal. Within seconds, the greenish glow they had seen back at the library appeared, much fainter because of the surrounding brightness, but clearly the condition had changed.

  Asari looked at him and grinned.

  Jolan walked up to the opening and stepped within the band of light. It was just like the other, except this time there was one difference. Suspended in the air in front of him, almost like a holographic projection, was a short string of characters. They stayed in front of him no matter which direction he faced.

  “Do you seen them?” he asked Asa
ri, who had stepped in behind him.

  “Yeah. What happens if you touch them?”

  “I’m guessing, but I think that is the name of the other station in some old language. It certainly isn’t familiar to me. Since there is only one other activated station, and there wasn’t anything when we were there, it seems likely.”

  “You want to try?” asked Asari eagerly.

  Jolan shook his head. “Let’s give it a bit and think this through. The last time I was transported, I ended up somewhere I didn’t expect. This thing is thousands of years old, and hasn’t been used in at least a thousand. What are the risks here?”

  They stepped away from the structure and back into the sunlight.

  “Let’s set up camp and we’ll consider how to proceed. I’ll put the horses over in the meadow.”

  Jolan had decided it was safe enough to simply turn the horses loose without restraint in the meadow. They had grass and water, and no reason to venture out into the harsh desert. He had just finished when Asari came walking over.

  “Best wash up for dinner,” he said.

  Jolan gave him a questioning look. “Company?”

  “Ronoran,” he said with a smile. “He’s back at the pool soaking his feet.”

  “The portal?” Jolan asked realizing what must have happened.

  Asari nodded. “He said all of a sudden it gave a bit of a chime. He went over to investigate and found the letters floating in the air. He didn’t stop to think, and simply reached out and touched them. Next thing he knew he was stepping out into the oasis.”

  The approach didn’t reflect the caution that Jolan would have preferred, but in the end someone was going to have to try it to know. Now they knew that it worked. The implications were phenomenal.

  “I guess we should go and tell the others. They’re probably wondering where Ronoran went.”

  Back at the portal Jolan greeted Ronoran, and then the three of them stepped into the entrance. Each reached out and touched the letters, and without so much as a flicker, then stepped out into the underground. They hurried over to the library to explain what they had found.

  When the surprise of their sudden return and the knowledge that the system actually worked had died down a bit, the rest of the team wanted to give it a try. Nerila was a bit timid at first, but once they’d made the transition and seen what the oasis looked like, an immediate demand was made to relocate the camp. Not only could they camp in relative luxury, but the time to and from the library was cut to nearly zero. Someone would have to bring the horses overland to the meadow, but everything else would be easy to relocate.

  Chapter 87

  The portals significantly changed the tone of life for the small group of adventurers. No longer did they have a long walk from a camp that was marginal to start with, nor were there anymore long walks through the darkened hallways from the surface all the way to the library. A walk that used to take almost an hour each way. Now it was a simple matter to cross from the oasis to the portal underground, walk across the courtyard, and enter the library building through the small entryway they had made some time back. The oasis was cool, with fresh fruit growing on many of the trees, and offered a wide variety of game. The horses had been relocated so they all happily grazed in the meadow against the day they would need to leave.

  “We need another portal located near a town,” Luzoke said one evening as they all lounged around the fire after dinner. “We could pop into town, grab a keg or two of ale, then pop back here to drink it. We could also add a bit of variety to our meals, and maybe go out for a bit of entertainment sometimes.”

  “The hearty adventurer,” said Ronoran sarcastically.

  “You know someone would enter the portal sooner or later and suddenly appear here. Then the secret would be out,” said Nerila.

  It was true, and gave them something to think about if they planned to extend the system. Anyone could use the portals, as shown by the fact Asari, who had no ability with magic, could jump between locations as readily as any of them. If they opened any portals where the general public had access, it was a given that the function would soon become common knowledge. The tactical advantage offered by the portals was beyond measure, and they’d talked about the need to get someone back to Cobalo to set up a system to support the war effort against Ale’ald.

  “There’s a way to turn on the whole system,” said Rifod, who’d been fully into researching the miracle they had found. This had taken him away from continuing to search for whatever had brought them here, since Jolan sensed that as useful and important as this discovery was, it wasn’t what had drawn him to Ygooro. Jolan realized they needed to understand the system, because it was going to become a major keystone of the future of the Settled Lands.

  “We don’t want that information to get out,” said Jolan. “If every portal suddenly became active, we would have a whole world of people popping around, including those from Ale’ald.”

  Asari’s map had suddenly become an item of great interest. As near as they could tell there were several thousand of the portals scattered around, some in places that would no longer be accessible. At least it appeared that any that were active would probably be safe to jump to, since the buried one here had a field of some type that protected it. If there had been no way out, one could have simply jumped back. The system had apparently been the “bus” system of the old empire, and had allowed everyone to move freely and easily between the widely dispersed cities. How far things had fallen.

  Every country had many of the portals, including Ale’ald. That alone was reason to make sure the whole system was not activated. They wanted to keep the system restricted to their use only. That appeared to mean activation on a case-by-case basis, which meant someone had to go to the specific portal that was to be added to the system.

  They had learned quite a bit about the system, and yet they knew so little. For example, a mage wasn’t required to activate a given portal. The small crystals that were called pairing-crystals these days had been called activators in the past. It appeared the current usage of the crystals was a bit of a bastardization of their initial purpose. A mage could load the activation spell, or deactivation spell for that matter, into one of the crystals, and anyone could take the crystal and place it into the small slot they had located in the structure to perform the task. Each crystal only worked once before having to be reinitialized, but they’d tried it after a lot of discussion and found it worked as described in the book Rifod had found earlier. There had been concern they might shut down part of their mini-system and not be able to restart it, but the value of the information was great enough they’d taken the gamble. Now they knew for certain.

  That meant they could send anyone with one of the crystals to a desired location, and activate the site. They all had wondered what would happen as many sites came on-line and how easy it would be to choose a location, but that was something they would work up to once sites were being added. They also had discussed sending someone back to Cobalo to activate the structure near the College. Jolan had known there was one there, but had never visited the site seeing nothing to gain by doing so. The problem they had was no one wanted to be the one to make the long trip back and miss out on whatever discoveries that might be made here. There was also a bit of concern at what kind of reception they might receive when they returned. No one was ready to allow the censoring Council of Mages access to their discovery of the library here until they had had time to complete their searches. Jolan wished that Chancellor Vaen were well and in charge because he knew how she would react.

  They had also experimented a bit with what could be taken through the portal. If they led a horse, it didn’t travel with them. If they sat astride it, then the horse made the trip as well. If all of them were going the same place, it seemed there must be a way to make that happen without each person making the selection themself. It wasn’t a hardship, but if they wanted to move a thousand troops to a location, it would be nice if they could ope
n the door and simply march them through. Rifod and Nerila were still looking, but so far hadn’t found a way to make that happen.

  For the moment, any action had been tabled. Jolan wanted to split the effort, and have one group, headed by either Rifod or Nerila, focus on the portals, and the other group, headed by the other, focus on finding what else might be of interest. Jolan had spent hours running his hands along the shelves and over books hoping to find something that triggered his special sense, but nothing had happened. That said, he still had a feeling deep inside that something here was a key to changing the likely outcome of the war that was raging far away. Sometimes he became impatient and frustrated, knowing that each day that passed meant Shyar was somewhere suffering for the lack of being rescued.

  Chapter 88

  The single level library they had found at Ygooro was far less extensive than the stacks of books and scrolls that existed in the College library back in Cobalo. There were surprisingly few volumes that dealt with spells, and those they did locate were mostly materials they had seen back at the College. Nerila had commented on the surprising limitations of the library, and after a couple of weeks of poking through the materials postulated that this was probably not the city’s main library. From what she knew of the vast holdings that had been taken from the other of the ‘lost cities’, there simply had to be a more extensive repository somewhere nearby. Of course, everything indicated that the rest of the city had been seriously damaged by whatever had destroyed it. The farther south they had gone the worse the damage that had been evident in the buildings. Jolan seriously hoped that there wasn’t going to be a need to try and find another library, because it was certain to be a monumental task, and they were already coming into fall.