"Yes, yes. The beasts almost universally draw their power from the crystals. I am quite familiar with his creations," Ether said, losing interest.
"But the most disturbing thing about their magic, as opposed to ours, is that our spells merely re-purpose existing forces, eventually returning all magic from whence it came. The D’karon spells actually consume it, convert the mana completely into the effect, never to return again. Any spell upsets the balance, however slightly. If such spells were rare, then time could repair the damage, but if they are allowed to continue . . ." Deacon explained.
As Ether listened, her expression grew more grave.
"And you are certain of this?" she asked.
"Most certain," Deacon assured her.
Ether became visibly angered.
"There is no end to the abominations that they unleash upon this world," she hissed. "What more did you learn from Demont's workshop? What more did you take?"
Deacon began to slowly empty the contents of his bag out for Ether to inspect. Most repulsed her, but one item drew her attention. It was a case filled with vials. The slender glass containers were tiny and many. Each was labeled with a word or two of the D'karon language. She opened the case and removed a vial, opening it and looking over the liquid within.
"Blood," she said, "of a lion."
Each vial was a small sample of the blood of another creature, except for the cases of some of the smaller creatures, when the entire creature was stored in the vial. Ether systematically sampled each. The usefulness of having a sample of so many beasts could not be overstated, as each sample was another form she could swiftly assume, another weapon in her arsenal. None of the other things interested her.
When contact had been made with most of the samples, Ether returned them to the case and returned the case to Deacon. When it was stowed, he removed his book and stylus and eagerly began to ask Ether questions regarding the nature and extent of her powers. Perhaps out of the desire for more of his endless praise for her, she indulged him, but her patience for such things was short, and before long she ordered him to be silent. Deacon thanked her and began to expand upon the notes he'd taken on her answers. Perhaps an hour passed without a sound, aside from the hushed rustle of the northern night and the scratch of Deacon's stylus.
"Deacon," Lain said, breaking the silence.
The young wizard's head snapped up instantly.
"Yes," he said, scrambling to his feet.
"Armories. Barracks. Have you identified which marks might indicate them?" he asked. It would be more important to avoid such places on their path south than mere fortified buildings.
"Not with any certainty. I believe that I am close to determining that. Might I ask why you wish to know?" Deacon said, glancing over the words on the map once more.
"This. This is an armory. I have seen it," he said, pointing to one of the black marks.
"Ah . . . so this . . . and here. They have the same marks. Perhaps armories as well. And . . ." Deacon began.
"I believe that troops are trained here," Lain said, indicating another fort.
For several minutes, Deacon combined Lain's observations with his own, and it became clearer and clearer what each mark meant. Before too long, Ivy awoke and groggily approached them. She'd been in the healing sleep for much of the last day and could not sleep any longer.
"What are you doing?" she asked, curious as to why the pair was hunched over a map.
"Well, the D'karon have a very strange language. We are hoping to determine what the markings on this map might--" Deacon began to explain.
"Troop production. Troop production. Research. Prisoner retention. Research. Prisoner retention . . ." Ivy began to recite, pointing to various marks on the map.
Deacon stared at her in disbelief.
"You can read this!?" he asked in wonder.
"Uh-huh . . . you can't?" Ivy asked, tilting her head.
"Teach me," Deacon said, pulling out his book and setting one of the more cryptic sheets before her.
"Let's see. 'The energy requirements of' . . . uh . . . well, this word sort of means poison and acid . . . and disease, all at the same time . . . I'll just say poison acid . . . ‘poison acid production are . . . very high. A second' . . . this isn't a word that translates. It is just what they call those crystals. Thir," Ivy said, uncertainly at first.
"Fine, excellent. Continue, please," Deacon said, almost overflowing with enthusiasm.
Ivy smiled. Happy to be helping, she continued. "'A second thir crystal will . . . help spread the load . . . but will . . . make for a single point of failure . . .'"
When Myranda finally could not bring herself to endure the nightmares any longer, she awoke to Ivy merrily filling in the gaps in Deacon's knowledge.
"No, they aren't numbers. Well, they are like numbers. But they are like measures of . . . distance? It isn't distance, but it is." Ivy struggled to explain, indicating another component of the labels for the forts.
"What is going on?" Myranda asked.
"Ivy can read their language! The D'karon language. I think that I almost understand it now," Deacon said.
"How can you read D'karon?" Myranda asked.
"I don't know . . . I just know it. I don't think they taught me. But I know I didn't know it until they started teaching me," Ivy tried to explain. "But I've been helping! Look!"
Myranda looked over the nearly fully-translated map.
"It looks as though your newest lapdog is not completely without merit," Ether said.
Myranda's eyes widened at the near compliment coming from so unlikely a source.
"Enough," Lain said. "We need to move."
Chapter 5
The loose papers and gems were quickly gathered, horses were mounted, and the group moved off. One horse bore Deacon, the other Ivy and Myranda. Lain and Ether traveled by foot. The latter, for reasons hardly inscrutable, took the form of a snow fox. Lain stayed a dozen paces ahead, straining his senses to be sure that they were not followed. Once again, the emptiness of the north was in their favor, and travel, though slow and cautious, was uneventful.
Deacon, with the language he'd been grappling with all but unraveled, found himself with his mind unoccupied, a rare occasion that he sought to avoid. His eyes turned to Ivy.
She was riding behind Myranda, arms wrapped around her to steady herself. She could not have looked more out of place among the solemn group of warriors. Her eyes were lively and excited. A smile was on her face; she was clearly thrilled to be with the people who cared about her. He only truly knew what he had been told about her, and precious little of that.
He reached down into his bag. There was more to be learned, though he hesitated to do so. It was Demont's workshop he had liberated these notes from, after all. He was her creator. Surely she was mentioned. It wasn't long before the bundle of pages devoted to her emerged.
Now that the symbols had meaning, the coldness of the process became clear. Notes were carefully taken, speaking of vastly different earlier revisions. Flaws were noted, addressed. The variations from the basis--in this case, Lain--were outlined and recorded. It was every bit a recipe, a procedure. Later pages skewed toward art, dealing with nuances and coloring, clearly still left to be done when she'd been liberated. The details of the connection between mind and soul were listed, with potential difficulties. Finally, there was a series of sketches of the various stages of development. The nearest that the notes came to discussing her as an individual came in the description of the "extractor" that contained "Epidime's contribution."
It was her soul. No name. No history. Just another component in the final product. There was nothing describing her as a person, because, to him, she was never anything but a concoction. The last few lines he'd scribed spoke of the level of development when the "vessel" would be "sufficient." This final word, it would seem, assumed all of the wonder and splendor of life. A body that was completed, able to support the evanescent spark that was the spirit, was "suffic
ient."
As a student, always eager for knowledge, particularly of a mystic nature, he had never turned away from anything. This made him recoil. These things Epidime had done were the tasks of gods, and yet he spoke of them with sterility and detachment.
A motion out of the corner of his eye distracted him. Ivy had slipped off of the back of Myranda's horse and was jogging over to his. He quickly began to stow the papers, but the last was still in his hands as she hopped onto the back of his horse. She noticed it and reached around to snatch it from his fingers.
"Is this . . . is this me?" she asked.
"I-I believe so," he said, anxiously eying the page that she held. It fortunately bore only a handful of markings, nothing that might upset her. Mostly measurements.
"It looks like me. Why am I standing like that, with my arms held out? Did you draw this?" she asked.
"I didn't," he said. "Would you like me to?"
"I'll do it! I am very good!" Ivy twittered eagerly.
He fetched his book and the stylus and she quickly set to work. He nearly led the horse off course trying to watch her, prompting her to scold him to keep it steady. Before long, she was finished and she presented it proudly.
"I made some mistakes. I don't look at myself very often," she said.
The work was truly exquisite. She'd managed to capture every ounce of the playfulness and innocence he'd been admiring earlier. More telling, perhaps, was the pair of scribbled out errors. Each was a barely roughed-out form. It was difficult to determine what they were, but they were not malthropes.
"I must say, it is far better than I could do. How did you learn to do such fine work?" he asked.
"I don't know, I just can. You should hear me play . . . oh . . . no!" Ivy pouted. "My violin. I left it. I . . . we have to go back."
Myranda cast a sympathetic glance that at once soothed Ivy and made it clear that it could not be.
"I really am very good at that, too," she said dejectedly.
"Well, the least you can do is sign your work," he said, offering the book and stylus to her again.
She nodded, hesitating briefly before making a large, stylized I and V.
"It would have been better if I wasn't on horseback. Can I draw some more when we stop for the day?" she asked.
"Well, of course," Deacon said.
With the exception of a brief retreat to the nearest cover as a black carriage crept along ahead of them and out of sight, the rest of the night's journey went by without incident. Their path took a fairly sharp westward turn, and they found themselves at the foot of the mountain that ran the length of the north. They were on the western edge of the Low Lands. If the sun had been up, Ravenwood would be visible to the south. As it was, a shallow cave would serve as shelter for the night, with food supplied by Lain's remarkable hunting skill. Ether started a fire and vanished into it as she always did.
"Do you feel any better?" Deacon asked, concerned for Myranda, who still seemed distant, the act of taking a life still heavy on her mind.
After a long pause, Myranda answered, "I will be all right . . . I just. I can't . . . What if I do it again?"
"Myranda, listen to me. You know yourself better than I. Do you honestly believe that you will let that happen? You didn't know that Arden was not to blame, that he was not Epidime, and now that you know, you will not make that mistake again. You just have to trust yourself," Deacon said. "I cannot even imagine you taking the lives of the innocent unless there was no other choice."
"I . . . I don't want to be the sort of person who to whom this sort of thing comes easily," Myranda muttered, tears in her eyes threatening to roll down her cheeks.
"Do not fool yourself," Lain said.
All eyes turned to him.
"It never becomes easy. It takes tremendous effort to bring yourself to take a life. The only change that comes is a keener sense of when it has to be done. It makes the decision a quicker one to make, not an easier one," he instructed.
Of all the heroes in attendance, Lain was the one most experienced in the matter. He was, after all, an assassin. From time to time, Myranda had wondered what type of a man could do such a thing. Did he have a heart at all? Did he feel any guilt, any pain when he took a life? This was the first glimpse she'd been given. As the words began to sink in, Ether stepped from the flames and spoke. As usual, it was anything but helpful.
"Besides. The fact of the next death on your hands is already established," Ether said, assuming her human form once more.
Deacon, Myranda, and Ivy all turned their heads and cast the same look of anger.
"Ether, when are you going to learn that you should never, ever talk?" Ivy asked irately.
"Ignore it if you must, but any creature that curls in Myranda's lap without bearing the Mark is doomed. The lizard was first and now Deacon," Ether tossed off casually.
"Don't you dare wish death upon him!" Myranda raged, rushing forward at Ether.
Ivy found herself in the uncommon role of trying to hold Myranda back.
"Calm down. It is all right. You know she is too stupid to know what she is saying," Ivy said.
Ether scoffed and made ready to retort when Deacon spoke up.
"Ether is probably right," Deacon said.
Ivy looked to him with confusion.
"You know you don't have to agree with everything she says," Ivy huffed.
"The prophecy never explicitly says that the mortals who aid you will die, but the phrase 'tasks which no mortal could survive' is not an uncommon one. Indeed, most interpretations of the prophecy predict that even one of the Chosen will not survive the journey. I harbor no illusions that I am anything more than a mortal, and as such I must accept the very real possibility of my own death," he explained.
"I won't let that happen. I don't care what we face. I will not let you die!" Myranda declared.
"This is--" Ether began.
"You shut your mouth before he agrees with you again! And Deacon! Not another word! Everyone just be quiet for a while!" Ivy ordered authoritatively.
Ether crossed her arms and turned to Lain.
"Surely you agree with--" she attempted.
"Silence," he interjected.
When Ether reluctantly complied, Ivy crossed her arms and huffed again triumphantly. For once, she was the one reining in the emotions of others. Tensions were slow to ease, a fact that Ivy decided needed work as well. She borrowed Deacon's book and stylus and directed him to sit beside Myranda.
"I want to show you what a good artist I am, so help me out by putting a smile on. This will look much better if the two of you are happy," she said, carefully positioning them, placing Deacon's arm across Myranda's shoulder.
"I didn't know you were an artist, Ivy," Myranda remarked.
"Oh, yes, an excellent one. You should see what she--" Deacon eagerly offered.
"Shush. And look at me. This won't take long and you two can take a look at what I can do when I'm not bopping around on a horse's back," Ivy said.
After a few minutes, and a number of minor adjustments and instructions, Ivy was finished. The rendering was astonishing, even ignoring the fact that it was done in virtually no time. It had a tremendous amount of detail, while still having a definite style to it. This was a portrait intended to describe not just what the pair looked like, but who they were, and it did a remarkable job. She marked the portrait with her name and then turned to Lain and Ether.
"We may as well capture the other two lovebirds," Ivy said, plopping down before them and quickly setting to work.
"Lovebirds?" Myranda questioned.
"Oh, you didn't know? Ether is in love with Lain," Ivy said with a smirk as she worked.
"The little beast doesn't know what she is talking about," Ether retorted.
"She gave Lain permission to love her instead of me," Ivy snorted.
"I was offering Lain an alternative to being distracted by you," Ether hissed.
"Well he didn't take you up on it, did he." She
giggled again.
"Ivy, it isn't nice to make fun," Myranda scolded, all the while trying to keep from laughing herself.
Truthfully, this glimpse into the way Ether truly felt made Myranda respect her much more. They were not so different after all. By the time the second sketch was through, the mood had lightened greatly. Ether was, of course, silently furious, but the remarks she had made were nearly forgotten. The drawing of the other Chosen was, if anything, even more remarkable than the one that preceded it. The quiet dignity and nobility of Lain came through, and somehow Ether's aloofness and transitory nature seemed to leap out at the viewer.
"Do you mind if I keep drawing?" Ivy asked after showing off her latest work.
"Don't fill up Deacon's book," Myranda said.
"Oh, I assure you she can't do that. Watch," Deacon said, taking the book and riffling through the blank pages.
After a few seconds, it became clear that the stack of fresh pages was not getting any smaller. He then flipped a few pages back and the artwork that should have been buried in hundreds of blank pages revealed itself.
"It will never run out. Every note I have ever written is still in this book, and I have a second that features every last page of our library, but it is no larger than this. I used to do much of my research at night, and the library was off limits at that time, so I received special permission to create a book that would link to it all. For some reason, the spells that deal with the books and my stylus are virtually the only ones that will work through that confounded mountainside without any difficulty," he explained.
Ivy blinked again.
"So does that mean I can?" Ivy asked.
"Later, when we are into Ravenwood. For now, rest," Lain said.
"Oh. All right," Ivy said reluctantly.
That day passed quickly, rest finally coming easily to all. When they mounted and set off the next day, it was with renewed speed. As before, the denseness and size of Ravenwood would make tracking them difficult, and discovering them all but impossible. It had been just less than an hour away when they had sought shelter the night before, so in almost no time, they were among the trees. As the thicket closed behind them, a tenseness was lifted. The nagging feeling of fear, that any corner hid eyes that might betray them to their enemies, quickly faded away.
The Book of Deacon Anthology Page 92
