by Joseph Lallo
She did as she imagined she was being told. Once the faint rhythm was coaxed out of the earth, she found it a very strange sensation. It did not feel like it was shaking her like a pounding of a drum, as she imagined it would. The pulse changed as it blended with her own strength. It moved through her as it had through the ground, but in a way that she felt in her spirit, not her body. Somehow, Cresh was able to monitor the strength of the ripple, and instructed her to release it, through the staff, back into the earth from whence it came. She did so, and was shocked by the result. A tremor, small but noticeable enough to make Myn fairly jump out of her skin, was created, with her staff at its center.
Cresh was quite pleased and declared the day to be a success. He returned her boots to her and retired.
No sooner had the dwarf shut the door of his abode than the people of the village returned to ask their questions. She was forced to tell her story again and again. She was hungry, but frowned at the thought of entering a crowded hut filled with equally enthusiastic people. Fortunately, an alternative presented itself, as Myn was already off in the direction of Solomon, who was just exiting his hut for his weekly hunting trip. She took her seat beside the crystal arena. At least here she didn't feel cooped up as the mob of people besieged her.
Myn returned, happily presenting Myranda with a pair of fish. She suddenly realized that when the time came to cook the fish, it was Deacon who always did the honors. It seemed a shame to break the tradition, particularly in light of the fine job his spell always did. Myn anticipated Myranda's plan and cleared a path through the crowd, leading the way to Deacon's hut. While the little dragon had learned to control herself in crowds, her manners left something to be desired. She pushed the door open with her head and barged in.
Deacon was at work as he always was. The door closed against the crowd once more.
"What brings you here?" Deacon asked.
Myranda held up the fish.
"Don't you know it is bad luck to break tradition?" she said.
"I suppose so. Particularly when a dragon is involved," he said, providing the treat that Myn had been anticipating since her arrival. Meanwhile, a snap of the fingers prepared the fish.
"One of these days, one of us will have to remember to bring a plate along on hunting day. Eating fish out of one's hands can get a bit messy," he said.
"Agreed," she said.
"You know, most people here don't get to have fresh fish but once or twice a year. Solomon being the only carnivore, he tends to be the only one who gets them before they get stewed," he said.
"Well, it is yet another benefit to having a dragon as a friend," she said. "But, then, you haven't been around lately."
"You are busy," he said.
"It would seem that no one here is ever otherwise," she said, enjoying a bit of her meal.
"I have been falling behind in my scribing," he said.
"You've always been able to scribe while out and about. It isn't like you to make excuses," she said.
Deacon sighed.
"Myranda. You have been here for just a bit under three months. I have been here for two and one-half decades. You have achieved more than I have, become more than I have. I have grown to the limit of my abilities while you have only begun. Look at how the others follow you. The crowds may thin after they have all heard what they seek, but they will always see you as something remarkable," he said.
"Don't tell me you are jealous," she said.
"Oh, no. To say I was jealous would be to suggest that you did not deserve all that you have. I know that you do. Fact of it is . . . well, I don't deserve to be near you. Were I not your guide through this, I would scarcely be tolerated among the other Masters. You are destined for far greater things than I. It is past time I gave you the space to grow," Deacon said.
"I don't care about any of that. Unless you have grown tired of my company, I want you to come see me whenever you like," she said.
"Well . . . thank you," Deacon said.
With that misunderstanding behind them, they spent the next few hours discussing what she could expect from Cresh. He was not the most thorough of instructors, but he had far more subjects to cover. Also, if ever she was to get on his bad side, she need only request a demonstration. He reveled in displaying his art.
Unfortunately, sundown came all too soon. The crowd had grown tired of waiting and dispersed, so she quickly set off to the Warrior's Side and found Lain waiting. As soon as she saw his face, she felt all of the anger return. He handed her a short sword. Unlike the one he'd been using, this one was steel, every bit a lethal weapon.
"You must be very brave, handing a real sword to me after telling me what you did," she said.
"I understand you've had experience with the short sword," he said.
"I have," she said.
"We will spar a bit to see how skilled you are," he said.
"And how shall I earn my questions?" she asked.
"Still interested, are we? I thought you were content to assume and jump to conclusions," he said.
"Lain, you told me you had the leaked information in your hands! You had to know what was going to happen, and you did nothing! What am I supposed to think!" she cried.
"If you thought at all, you would not be acting as you are, but that is irrelevant. Prepare yourself," he said, lifting his own sword.
"But this is not a training sword," she said.
"I will pull my attacks if they are going to land. As for you . . . I seriously doubt that you will even come near, but if you manage to strike me, I will give you ten questions," he said. "And the offer still stands that if you draw even a single drop of blood, every answer you wish is yours."
"But--" she began.
"Begin!" he said.
He attacked slowly at first, one at a time. Her blocks were a bit sloppy, as she hadn't practiced with a sword in years. Worse were her attacks. The weapon was quite a bit heavier than the staff.
As she began to recall what her uncle and father had taught her, her performance improved. Lain noticed it and increased his attacks in both rate and intensity. The attacks were followed by a pause for her to attack. She was holding him off well enough, but her attacks were still slow. The clash of steel against steel was unnerving. Perhaps that was why he had chosen not to use the training swords. He was toying with her.
Anger had as powerful an effect on combat as it did on magic, it would seem. She fought back harder and faster. As she did, her defense suffered. More than once, an attack slipped through. She didn't even pause when it did. Lain pulled his attacks so effortlessly his flow of attack and defense was not even interrupted.
Despite the accelerating attacks, Myranda never came close to landing a blow. After a few minutes, Lain called the sparring to an end.
"You are not a cold beginner, but you can benefit from practice. A bit of discipline is in order as well," he said, not a hint of fatigue in his voice.
"Oh?" she remarked, trying to catch her breath.
"You fight as though I am trying to teach you," he said.
"Is that wrong?" she asked.
"You should fight as though I am trying to kill you," he said. "Those strikes that you trusted me to pull would have been enough to end your life. A bit more care is in order, even when the weapons aren't real. We will be switching back to training swords for the rest of the training, but I will not be pulling my blows quite so far anymore."
"You are planning on hitting me!?" she said.
"This is combat training. You need to learn about consequences," he said, tossing her the replacement for her weapon.
It was lighter, but solid. She would be able to swing it faster and more easily, but the thought of being hit by a blow as powerful as Lain was capable of was not appealing.
"We will dispense with the offense and defense drills. This will now be proper sparing. Attack or defend when the opportunity arises. Until now, you haven't had to consider counterattacks, so that is how you will earn your questions
. You will earn one question for each counter you land. I will not throw any until you have thrown your first. A counter is quite different from a normal attack, so I will demonstrate the times when they are appropriate," he said.
Myranda thought she'd had enough to think about before--trying to identify when to attack, when to defend, and whether a counter was possible was like playing a game of chess in a heartbeat. The position of limbs, the distribution of weight, the speed, direction, and location of the weapon . . . she could take an hour to consider each one and still be wrong.
All too soon, the demonstration was over and the sparring began. She quickly found that during an attack or while defending, things were clear. The tenseness came in the moments when she and Lain were between attacks, quietly measuring each other, deciding what would happen next.
Finally, it happened. Myranda had leaned in for a downward strike. Her arms were raised, leaving her abdomen undefended. Lain struck with what looked to be one of his slower attacks. It most certainly did not feel like one. Myranda cried out, dropped her weapon, and doubled over. In an instant Myn was between them, desperate to stop them from fighting. The pain shot through her. It was a moment before she could regain the wind that had been knocked out of her.
"That was a kill," he said, as though his point had not been made clear enough.
She managed to recover after a minute or two and tried to continue, but Myn would have none of it.
"That is all for today. I imagine that Myn will be cutting our next few sessions short. But if she can get used to your attacks connecting, she can get used to mine," he said.
"Don't be so sure. My attacks were not as cruel as yours," she said.
"Oh, no? You were swinging with all of your might. You came near to breaking a rib once," he said.
"Impossible. You didn't make a sound," she said.
"In my line of work, it is wise to keep silent," he said.
"I don't care how disciplined you are, you would have doubled over, too, if I'd hit you as you did me," she said.
Lain dropped his weapon to the ground and grasped his right little finger with his left hand. With a sharp twist and a horrid snap, he wrenched the digit out of place. The merest flutter of his eyes was the only indication he'd felt anything. He took his hand away. Myranda cringed and turned away. When she heard a second snap, she knew that the finger would at least be where it had started.
"Why didn't you tell me? I wouldn't have struck so hard," she said.
"You will never learn to fight properly if you are pulling your attacks. I want you to fight as you had before, or I will never answer another question," he said.
A terrible guilt filled Myranda.
"Let me see your hand," she said.
"No need," he said.
"Just let me see. It is swelling already," she said.
A whisper of a thought was enough to heal the minor damage he'd done. While she was at it, she healed the blow she had taken.
"Unlike you, I can't stand idle while someone suffers," she said.
"Sometimes standing idle is the best course of action," he said before retiring to his hut.
Myranda gritted her teeth in anger as she walked away. Myn canted sideways behind her, trying her best to keep an eye on both of them. Past sundown, it would seem that the throng of admirers had better things to do, as she was not assaulted by them as she headed back to Deacon's hut. Myn barged in as before, and rushed over to him to start sniffing at his tunic's pocket.
"Stop. I said one per day. You've had yours," he said, protecting his pocket from her search long enough for her to give up and retreat to Myranda for a scratch on the head.
Deacon could see that something was on Myranda's mind.
"I suppose that things didn't go well today," he said.
Myranda fumed for a moment before she could answer.
"Deacon. Lain . . . he could have done something about the massacre," she said.
"What massacre? Ah! The one you told me about, at Kenvard. He could have prevented it? How?" he asked.
"He found the person who leaked the information! He knew it was going to happen!" she said.
"What did he do with the information?" he asked.
"Nothing!" she said.
"Well, that was decent of him," Deacon said.
"Decent of him!? I cannot think of something worse he could have done!" she cried.
"He could have sold it to a higher bidder, or delivered it himself to receive the payment intended for the man he killed," Deacon said.
Myranda paused for a moment. Each was admittedly far worse than doing nothing at all.
"But still--he could have warned them!" she said.
"Well, I suppose you are right," he agreed. Almost immediately, a confused look struck his face as a thought came to mind. The same thought struck Myranda as well.
"Why would he need to?" she realized. "If the intelligence never got delivered, the Tressons couldn't have known about the weakness . . ."
"Indeed. One wonders how the massacre could have happened at all. That is, if Lain's word can be trusted," Deacon said.
"I don't think Lain cares enough about what I think to lie to me anymore. And after how I have acted, I don't blame him," Myranda said.
After having a late meal, Myranda retired.
#
The days to follow began a new routine for her. She awoke, had breakfast, and played with Myn for an hour or so. The little dragon was now quite the flier. Once airborne, she could stay aloft seemingly indefinitely, and before long, she was able to take off from the ground rather than a rooftop. Once the flight was over, either through the fatigue or choice of Myn, Myranda would stop by Deacon's to look for any tips before venturing to Cresh's hut.
Once there, she would learn the next step in a long string of earth magics. Despite the language barrier, Cresh was a very good teacher, managing to coach her through refining the size and direction of her tremors, identifying the qualities unique to each type of earth, and even coaxing plants to grow faster, larger, and stronger. This last topic was the most difficult, and required nearly three weeks to complete. In this time, Myranda found that she had come to understand his odd language well enough to not rely so heavily on the gestures.
Her time with Lain was the most trying. Over a week of battle was needed to finally convince Myn that Lain and Myranda were not fighting out of anger again. This, however, was not completely true. Myranda's apology for her behavior prompted no response at all from Lain. He fought in almost complete silence each day. She managed a pair of well-placed counter attacks, several days apart, but they differed from her other achievements. She stumbled upon them less in a moment of epiphany, and more through some new instinct that she was developing. They were almost mechanical in nature. Lain's only words on the topic were to remark that such was as it should be.
Further trying was the fact that, with each passing day, sparing with Lain was becoming more difficult. A bit more speed and a bit more accuracy found their way into his maneuvers every time they fought. He was keeping his skill level just beyond hers. Before long, the clear openings for her to attack vanished, and the split-second openings for counterattack were shaved thinner and thinner.
Five weeks after starting her work with Cresh, the dwarf indicated that it would be a fine time to offer her the final test. There had been no warning that the end was near until now. At least, none that she'd managed to understand. He produced an apple from his pocket, proclaiming it to be, apparently, the last fresh one to be had in the village. Myranda wondered where the others had gone, and how many there had been, considering in all of her time in Entwell she'd seen neither an apple nor an apple tree. The latter fact, it would appear, would soon be remedied.
Cresh took a bite of the fruit, dug his fingers into its core, and retrieved a seed. The dwarf launched into a speech that was apparently very amusing, as he punctuated it with stifled laughter. A quick tremor churned up the earth beside his hut enough to yield to the
seed when he dropped it. After pushing it into the soil, he requested that Myranda replace the lost apple, as well as supply the pantries of the whole village. Her success would hinge upon how the apples tasted. He expected to be sinking his teeth into one by sundown.
"Sundown!?" she objected, hoping that perhaps she had misunderstood him.
The dwarf replied with the beginnings of yet another long-winded exposition on one subject or another, but the vigorous nodding that preceded it was all the answer she needed. Had Myranda known that the test would be on this day, she would have arrived earlier. The sun was only a few hours from the horizon. She set to work immediately. The method was one she had practiced time and time again. She would mingle her energies with those of the seed, coaxing it to sprout. Once the growth had begun, she would provide for its every need from her own strength. Until now, she had only done so with weeds, and in some occasions, flowers. The tree required far more nurturing than any of the previous plants.
Halfway through the first hour, the sapling of the tree had emerged from the ground, and leaves were beginning to form. This test was unlike the others. Whereas the fire and wind were enormously taxing to keep fed for the appropriate amount of time, they required only one type of energy. The tree's needs were many and varied, requiring her to call upon nearly all of what she knew of earth magic to meet them. The elements in the soil had to be drawn into the still-growing roots at many hundreds of times the speed that nature would have allowed. Similarly, Myranda's spirit took the place of the sun as the source of energy for the leaves to feed on. Only water was provided by Cresh, as water was not the point of this test.
Another half-hour saw a tree as tall as she.
The task of growing the tree, while growing in intensity, decreased in complexity as the end grew near. Though dizzied by the energy she'd spent, Myranda was able to push enough of the spell to the back of her mind to be able to appreciate the completion of her handiwork. It was a sight to behold as new cracks in the bark appeared. The leaves shriveled and dropped away onto a growing mound beneath the tree. Almost immediately, the greenish brown leaf-buds reappeared, followed in turn by the brilliant white apple blossoms. A breath of wind that she conjured pollinated the flowers and the resultant fruits plumped before her eyes. She cut off the flow of energy just as the last of them reddened.
