Summoner 5

by Eric Vall

  “Right then.” I uncurled my legs from beneath me and stretched as I stood. “Let’s go tell her the good news.”

  Gawain shook his head. “You go ahead.”

  I stopped and studied him for a moment. Maybe it was because I myself was tired and could stand another hour or three of sleep, but Gawain looked outright exhausted. Dark bags hung beneath his reddened eyes, and I almost asked if he’d been crying. It certainly looked like he could have been.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I questioned carefully. I didn’t want him to get pissed and suddenly shoot off at me. Maker knew he had a penchant for being moody.

  “Fine,” he answered with a yawn. “Just more tired than usual. I think I need to rest a bit more.”

  I looked him up and down skeptically but found no evidence of foul play, so I left him to get more rest. I should do so, too, but the longer we sat on this decision, the less likely Ashla would be willing to share her information.

  I closed the door behind me and turned to descend the stairs. Lo and behold, the woman I was looking for stood in the middle of them. She was examining the portraits on the walls, and I almost felt bad for making the stairs creak and drawing her out of her thoughts.

  “You are awake,” Ashla said as she turned to smile at me.

  “Yeah.” I returned the gesture and stopped beside her.

  The portrait in front of us was of one of the two women who hung in the stairwell. She had long, dusty rose-colored hair, and deep blue eyes that were easy to get lost in. A green cloak fell over her shoulders, and her fingers were decorated with various sized gaudy rings. Beneath the portrait, the name placard read Farrah Vespers.

  “Who is she?” I asked quietly.

  Ashla looked back to the portrait. “Farrah Vespers, supposedly the only other remaining elder of the libraries.”

  I blinked rapidly in surprise. “Seriously? How old is she?”

  “It’s rude to ask a woman her age,” Ashla giggled, “but she’s old, too old to still be alive.”

  “Then how do we know she is?” I questioned. I knew mages could grow to ages well over that of an ordinary human, but it wasn’t as common as people might have thought. A mage’s mana had the tendency to eat away at their lifespan more often than not. To find a mage older than seventy-five was a rarity anymore.

  “We don’t,” Ashla added simply. “All we know is her library is still intact, or at least it hasn’t ever been reported as destroyed.”

  I nodded. “Any ideas where her library is located?”

  “That depends.” Ashla smirked. “Have you decided on whether or not you’re going to share your information with us?”

  A chuckle bubbled from my chest. So, that’s how it was now.

  “As a matter of fact,” I began, “we’ve agreed to tell you what we know. It isn’t much, but maybe it can help.”

  A wide grin spread over Ashla’s features, and it sparkled in her beautiful dark eyes. I resisted the temptation to cup the back of her head and kiss her again from the sheer beauty of it.

  “Truth is,” she started, “I was going to give it to you regardless if you decided to share with me or not.”

  I crossed my arms. “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m going with you,” she replied simply.

  My mouth fell open as her words sank in. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I’d like to join you and Gawain on your quest,” Ashla clarified. “That is if you’ll have me?”

  I stared at her as I scrambled to find coherent words.

  “Maybe not?” She laughed nervously.

  “No, no,” I started as I shook my head. “I mean, yes? Why?”

  Ashla’s smile turned sad, and she looked to her feet. “For the last few months, I’ve dragged these men around on what I was starting to think was a wild goose chase. Now, we’ve kind of settled here. We could leave whenever, that much is true, but we’ve fallen into a routine, a lifestyle. I don’t want to take that away from them.

  “I follow you, but don’t you want them to be a part of this?” I pried. “From what it sounds like, they wanted to help.” Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t know the intimacy of the relationships she had with the other Wild Reds. It wasn’t really any of my business.

  “Some of them do,” she agreed, “but they’re all tired. If there really isn’t anything to follow, then I’d feel bad for dragging them along with no real end in sight. So, I’ll go it alone, Drew can run the operation without me while I figure things out. We’ve done this song and dance before.”

  I gasped under my breath. “This isn’t your first time leaving the Wild Reds, is it?”

  “The first break I took was only months after I joined.” Ashla shook her head with a deep sigh. “We lost a lot of our squad to a rift gate that opened outside of Garvesh. I needed to step back and think about things for a while. Drew eventually talked me into coming back, but not before I did some of my own soul searching.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” I quietly inched closer until we were shoulder-to-shoulder, well, as close as shoulders could get when we were on different steps of the stairs.

  “I don’t know,” she answered with a wry smile, “but I came back more ready and willing to do whatever it took to bring an end to the war between man and monster. That has to count for something.”

  I turned and looked at her then. I could see a bit of doubt still lingered in her features, but beneath that was a world of confidence and strength. Even if she wasn’t sure about leaving the Wild Reds again, our goals were the same. All any of us wanted was peace.

  “I think that counts for everything,” I told her quietly.

  Ashla drew her attention away from the portrait to look up at me, then without another word, she leaned up and kissed me. It was soft but so full of passion I couldn’t comprehend how one person could carry so much of it in their body. I threaded my fingers through her braids and swiped my thumb over her cheek. When we broke apart, we were both properly flushed, and I couldn’t contain the giddy little laugh that slipped past my lips when our noses brushed together.

  “As soon as Gawain and I are well, we’ll be leaving again,” I told her. “You have until then to tell the Wild Reds of your decision.”

  Ashla hummed, and I almost leaned in to kiss the pout of her lips again as she reached up and placed her hands on my chest.

  “You have my word,” she whispered.

  A day had passed between then and now. Ashla informed the Wild Reds she was going to take her leave. For the most part, it went smoothly, though some of them were more receptive than others. Still, they respected her, and they agreed they would remain here until she came back, or heard from her otherwise. For that, I could tell she was grateful. She really had a good team on her side.

  Gawain and I took the few days to go over the notes Ashla had versus what we already knew. As we suspected, there wasn’t a lot of new information, but Ashla had the advantage of being able to travel and explore whilst doing her freelance work as the leader of the Wild Reds. That made the poems a little more interesting to read over.

  “Obviously, this one is by a body of water,” I pointed out to Gawain, who scoffed as he sifted through a different stack of papers.

  “Brilliant deduction,” he joked. “Take you all day to come up with that one, did it?”

  “Oh, piss off,” I snorted. “What have you found, if you’re so much better at this than I am.”

  Gawain was quiet for a moment before he shrugged. “Maybe this one is in a volcano.”

  I outright laughed, and then remembered Arwyn and Almasy had been sent to a fiery mountain to find their cipher.

  “You might be onto something there.” I leaned over to look at the papers in his hands. There were notes scribbled around it in different colors of ink, possibly made at different times, or maybe the colors were some kind of code? I’d have to ask Ashla when she came down for dinner.

  “Boiling magma rips terra asunder…”
I trailed off.

  “Volcano,” Gawain said flatly. “What else in the world could that be in reference to?”

  “Ashla seems to agree with you there.” I pointed out a note that said more or less the same thing. “The question is where. I only know of one volcano in Mistral.”

  “Looks like your friend has answered that as well.” Gawain pointed to a scribble near the volcano note. “Topaz Isle?”

  I sat back and looked at Gawain. “Can’t say I’ve heard of it.”

  Gawain shrugged and tossed me the map Sleet had given us at the start of our journey. I spread it out over the table and gave it a long look. Sure enough, in the far northeast, there was a small archipelago called the Topaz Isles.

  “There.” I pointed to it on the map, and Gawain leaned over the other side of the table to get a closer look.

  “The second and third lines of the poem are self-explanatory,” Gawain mumbled. “Yet in the brimstone lies a wonder’ is obviously telling us the cipher is somewhere inside of the volcano, and ‘through the ashen clouds you’ll climb’ is probably in reference to having to get inside it through the top of the mountain.”

  I strained my neck to look at the last line of the poem. “But be quick, you’ll have little time.”

  Gawain and I met each other’s gazes before we both returned to the notes.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “She suggests that it might have something to do with the volcano erupting when you take the cipher.”

  “Yikes.” I gulped. “That’s not a predicament I want to be in.”

  “You said this is where Ms. Hamner and the pilot went, right?” Gawain asked.

  I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “I’m not sure. All they told me was they were going somewhere in the north. I’m pretty sure they were going to check out the mountain range near Bathi Highlands or maybe even the ones outside of Bedima.”

  “Bedima wouldn’t be a bad place to look,” Gawain noted. “They’re coal mountains, after all, and the rock has to come from somewhere.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think there was a volcano there,” I scowled. Suddenly, I was worried for Arwyn and Almasy. I hoped wherever they ended up they were going to be okay. Being inside of a volcano, active or not, was no easy task.

  “We should be focusing on our own cipher,” Gawain reasoned.

  I nodded. I was more than happy to change the subject.

  “Read me the one you think we’re looking for again,” I told him.

  Gawain sifted through the notes and pulled out a slightly more tattered page than the rest of them. I wondered if Ashla had been referring to that particular page more often than the others.

  Shield your eyes; a storm comes

  Its heart will beat just like the drums.

  The sands of time will weather you

  And lead you to untimely doom.

  I pondered over the words for a moment before I opened my mouth again. “Clearly it’s the desert, right?”

  Gawain and I looked back at the map. The only desert area was less than half a days ride from Wildren to Ortych Sands, and the little outlying areas around it.

  “What about the next part though?” I asked him.

  Gawain shook his head and put the paper back on the table with a sigh. “There are a few notes, but nothing conclusive outside of what we already assumed.”

  I slid the paper toward me and scanned it myself. Sure enough, all Ashla had written were some wild ideas about whatever the beating heart might be referring to.

  “Who is Veld Schymir?” I asked. That wasn’t a name I’d ever heard of.

  Gawain’s eyes lit up, though, and I followed his gaze to the stairwell. At the same time, we jolted out of our seats and rushed for the stairs. We got about three-quarters of the way up when we both stopped in front of one of the portraits.

  “Veld Schymir,” he read aloud. “He must be one of the old elders who lost their library.”

  “So that is who these people are!” I exclaimed excitedly. I’d had my suspicions earlier, but there was no way this was a coincidence anymore.

  Veld was a skinny fellow in his youth and wore a monocle over his dark brown eyes. His blond hair was so vibrant it almost looked like a light shade of green, and his burgundy colored cloak sat pristinely on his narrow shoulders.

  “He went missing some hundred years ago,” Ashla’s voice came from the top of the stairs.

  Gawain and I looked to her as she descended and stood on my other side.

  “What connection does he have to the ciphers?” Gawain asked her.

  “He was an expert in linguistics,” she explained. “His knowledge of languages was unrivaled. Even today, no one can understand or speak the proper dialects of as many as he was famed to be able to.”

  “So you think he would have been able to decipher the language on the tablet without the ciphers?” I cocked my head to the side.

  Silence hung in the air for a moment, and at the same time, Gawain and I seemed to hop on the same train of thought. We looked at each other, then to Ashla.

  “You think he created the ciphers?” I gasped.

  Ashla laughed a little and put her hands on her hips. “Now you’re thinking. I’ve been trying to track down his lineage in hopes there’s someone who he might have passed his gift down to, but I’ve come up short. Everything about him, as well as most of the other elders, has been lost to time.”

  I frowned. That was really a shame, but surely there was some lead we had overlooked somewhere. I pursed my lips and turned back to the painting.

  “Let’s stick to what we know for now,” I suggested. “It isn’t much, but maybe just taking the trip out to Ortych Sands will give us some kind of clue.”

  Ashla looked over us with concern. “Are you both sure you’re up to it?”

  I eyed Gawain, who cast a sidelong glance at me, and we nodded in unison.

  “Yes. We’re ready,” I assured her.

  Ashla nodded. “Then it’s settled. We’ll leave tomorrow at dawn.”

  With that, she strode past Gawain and I and headed to the table where we’d had our notes laid out. I followed her with my gaze and watched as she sifted through each of the papers and tried to make sense of it all. I could see the proverbial cogs turn in her mind as she attempted to piece things together but to little avail.

  The sun had started to set in Wildren, and the orange glow of the sun as it descended beneath the horizon shone through the glass windows. It illuminated Ashla and gave her an almost angelic aura. She was really something, and more and more I found I was quite taken with her. While she reminded me of Arwyn, there was something unique about her, something I couldn’t place my finger on. I knew for sure though that Ashla was someone I wanted to be around more often and get to know more of. I’d already learned so much about her in these last couple of days, but I knew there was more to her, and it excited me.

  I jerked out of my trance when Gawain snapped his fingers in front of my face. I blinked several times and had the decency to sheepishly scratch the back of my head and laugh when Gawain rolled his eyes.

  “It’s getting late,” he informed me. “We should consider turning in earlier than normal if we’re to leave at dawn.”

  I nodded. He had a point. As much as I wanted to stay up and pick Ashla’s brain about what she knew, it would have to wait. There would be plenty of time to talk while we were on our way to the desert.

  “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up to you in a minute,” I told Gawain, and he hesitated before he stepped around me up to the room we shared. I watched as he disappeared behind the door without a word. Was he acting strangely? Maybe, but he was always a touch moody, so it was hard to say whether this was abnormal for him or not.

  On the flip side, it wasn’t as though he and I were the best of friends, either. If anything, we were partners on the field, mutual comrades at best. In the beginning of my time at the Academy, I would never have thought we’d be mo
re than rivals, but maybe we could work our way to friends. My charm had worked on Varleth. There was a chance I could befriend Gawain and put our differences aside once and for all, too.

  I left him for a moment and descended the stairs again. Ashla still stood at the table we had been working at, and she poured over the notes. I cleared my throat to gain her attention.

  “I just came to get our things,” I informed her with a soft smile. “Gawain and I are heading to bed so we can be refreshed in the morning.”

  Ashla smirked and crossed her arms. “You’re diligent and responsible. I like that.”

  “I’m just eager to get out again,” I chuckled and forced a flush from creeping up the back of my neck. “We’ve been here for days, and I haven’t seen the outside of the tavern at all save for looking out the windows.”

  “A case of cabin fever then?” Ashla teased as she giggled.

  “You could say that,” I replied. Then I started to gather up our things. We really shouldn’t have left our mission files out in the open like we did, but we’d gotten a little excited over Veld Schymir.

  “Well, not that it helps,” she started, “but you aren’t missing much of anything. It’s a small town with a few small roads and a main avenue that’s used as a hub between Varle and Balvaan.”

  “Balvaan?” I stopped and raised my eyebrow in question. I’d heard of the port city before, but I didn’t realize it was so close to here.

  “It’s through Ortych Sands, just on the other side of the mountain.” Ashla nodded. “It’s quite a trek, though. Only way there is either to climb the mountain east of the desert or cross the desert and go around the mountain. Either way, you run the risk of facing some kind of peril.”

  I gathered the rest of our things as I soaked in that bit of information. There was always a chance for danger, it seemed. I wondered if we would ever live in a world where we didn’t have to worry about monster attacks in the desert or go on secret missions to avoid the politics that oversaw our culture as mages. The possibility didn’t seem likely, but I was up for any challenge.