The Sorceress of Aspenwood Trilogy Pack

by Sam Ferguson

  “Then hear me on my merits alone,” Janik pressed.

  “They won’t be satisfied with that either,” Herion replied. “Think of the rumors that would spread if the Masters believed that the Headmaster bends his ear to the janitor alone. No, there must be a punishment.”

  Janik was undaunted by the old man’s words.

  “Her mother has recently died,” Janik said quickly. “Her father has all but abandoned her here. He writes much less than any other parent who has a student here. She is alone.”

  “I know of her personal problems, Janik. I was there to deliver the news of her mother’s death myself, but that is no excuse!” Herion shouted in a raspy voice. “She threw Lady Priscilla into a wall!”

  Janik smiled. “Yes, well, she should have blasted Lady Priscilla into oblivion, from what I have seen.” Janik rose to his feet and slammed his good fist down on the table before Herion. “The other instructors spread rumors about Kyra, despite the fact that everyone here knows she has had no improper relations with my brother. It is not her fault that he works here. He checks in on her because she is alone. Furthermore, nothing would have happened today if Amelia hadn’t been taunting Kyra to begin with. You don’t see it because you are up here in your books all day, but I see it. I sweep the chow hall and clean the dorms. I have seen the apprentices throw food at her, or play tricks on her, and I have heard their nasty rumors. Given her talent, it is a wonder that Kyra hasn’t set fire to the Academy.”

  Herion mouthed a couple of words, but no sound came from his lips. He pressed his hands into the pages in front of him and then gestured about as if to redirect Janik’s attention. Janik just glowered into the old man’s eyes.

  “If that isn’t enough, then name your price,” Janik said. “I control the dowry promised to Kyra. She and I have discussed the possibility of making an arrangement that might persuade you to overlook her transgression.”

  Headmaster Herion slowly rose to his feet. “Janik, I am insulted that you would think this is a matter of money. I assure you, it is not.” Herion paused and pursed his lips while sucking in his cheeks for a moment. Then he took in a breath and nodded. “However, should an amount of funds find its way to the Academy’s coffers sufficient to cover the cost of hiring a substitute instructor who can fill in for Lady Priscilla, then I suppose we can come to an agreement easily enough.”

  “No expulsion,” Janik said. “Give her demerits and let her work them off with me. As janitor, there are many tasks that I have to complete that should be viewed by others as a punishment.”

  “Agreed,” Herion said. “She will spend weekday afternoons with you. Her service will go on until the Midwinter Festival. After that, her service will be finished.”

  Janik nodded. “How long will Lady Priscilla be absent?”

  Herion’s face turned grim and he looked to the floor. “Lady Priscilla is pregnant,” he said somberly. “That stunt today nearly caused her to lose the child.” Herion held up a hand and shook his head. “Our healers were able to save the child, but I think it appropriate she take an extended leave of absence. I think it best for everyone involved.”

  “I didn’t know Lady Priscilla was married,” Janik replied with as much sincere empathy as he could muster.

  Herion nodded. “After her first husband died at Ten Forts, she was sent here as an instructor. She and Master Fenn became quite close. Master Fenn’s first wife had died several years before during childbirth. The two of them married quietly and have only told me and a few others of their pregnancy. I expect you will keep this to yourself.”

  “Of course,” Janik said.

  “So we have our agreement. I would appreciate it if you would leave me to my work.”

  Janik nodded. “Thank you for your time,” he said. Herion waved him out and went back to his book. Janik limped out of the room and found a very nervous Kyra pacing the hall. She looked up expectantly.

  “Well, what did he say?”

  Janik smiled warmly. “Good news,” he said. “I managed to talk him into giving you janitor duty with me.”

  Kyra scrunched up her face. “What did you have to pay him?”

  Janik shrugged. “The windows can get really dirty, and with only one good hand it is hard for me to make them sparkle. With your magic, on the other hand, we should be done in no time. Then, I suppose if you happen to finish your work early, you could have more time for your personal studies.”

  Kyra’s face lit up and she froze in place as she clasped her hands in front of her. “So I can go to the library whenever I want?”

  “Well, when you are done with each day’s tasks,” Janik said.

  “But I can use magic?” Kyra pressed.

  Janik nodded. “There is no law that says we can’t use magic to make things clean. Seeing as how the other students have already gone home for the weekend, we can start on Monday. Go and clear your head for the weekend.”

  “Thank you!” Kyra jumped up and gave the man a hug. She was so sincere that he almost forgot himself. Then, as she ran away, he went back into his scheming again. Perhaps the amulet didn’t work, but there were other ways to gain trust. With Kyra now working with him each afternoon, he could ply other, subtler techniques to gain her trust. More than that, Janik had the perfect candidate in mind to replace Lady Priscilla.

  CHAPTER 6

  Kyra returned to the rocky hillside early the following morning. She crept up to the bowl-shaped depression where the egg had been when she left. She was careful to watch for any creature in the area. When she found nothing there, she felt both joy and sadness. Sad that the egg was abandoned, but glad that she would be able to examine it more fully without fear of being eaten by some unknown monster.

  After ensuring there was no animal nearby, she made her way across the boulders.

  She wasn’t more than forty yards away when the little gray lizard came skittering around a rock and chirped at her. Kyra was surprised to see the charm spell was still holding strong on the creature. She had only meant to set a temporary charm, but it also made her happy to see the little animal. It followed her, chirping as it jumped from rock to rock until she got to the site where the egg stood. She gently slid the flat stone aside and rested it on some nearby rocks. Then she reached around and pulled a small satchel which hung from the belt at her waist and set it in her lap.

  She pulled three books from the satchel and took in a deep breath of excitement. Being that it was the first day in the weekend, there would be no instructors looking for her. She could remain there all day long if she wished, which gave her the perfect opportunity to identify her find.

  “Let’s see what we have here, Guardian,” she said to the little gray lizard on the rock beside her. It chirped and launched onto her lap. Kyra laughed and watched as the little lizard extended its body slowly toward the nearest book and then tested it with its tongue. A second later it leapt away onto another rock and stretched out to sun itself.

  Kyra shook her head and opened the first of the books she had brought. It was a compendium on known reptiles throughout the Middle Kingdom. She flipped through the first few chapters, knowing that this far inland it could not possibly be a marine reptile from the sea. She started going through the list of various reptiles, discounting most of them by their size, as there were not many exceedingly large lizards in the Middle Kingdom. There were pages and pages on whiptails and racers and several different types of thorned lizards. She was nearly to the end of the book before she found something that appeared large enough.

  “A cavedog,” she said aloud as she read the name next to the expertly drawn image on the page. “These giant lizards are so large that dwarves ride them into battle.” She stopped reading and looked at the egg. She tried to imagine something as large as the egg coming out of a cavedog. “No, that wouldn’t work unless we were talking about some very big dwarves,” she said. Kyra confirmed her doubts when she skipped down to the length of an adult cavedog. “Ranging from five to nine feet,�
�� she said in frustration. “Definitely not a cavedog.”

  She skipped through the pages and then sighed when she realized that the last several pages had gone back to talking about smaller, more rare lizards. She took heart though when one of the drawings looked a lot like Guardian, the little gray lizard that was still sunning itself nearby. She read through the description, glancing back to Guardian after each line. If she was right, then he was a juvenile mountain pagona. A gentle-natured lizard that had all but gone extinct since the decline of the dragon. Though the entry didn’t mention why that was.

  “Is that it then? Guardian is a little mountain pagona is he?” The gray lizard lifted its head and offered two chirps. Kyra smiled. “Too bad you can’t tell me what is inside this egg over here.”

  Guardian jumped up and launched into Kyra’s lap. It must have been coincidence, she knew, for it couldn’t have been intentional, but Guardian landed on the book in such a way that his nose pointed to the word ‘dragon.’ He looked up at her and puffed his throat. He looked down, licked the page, and then jumped off to land on the egg.

  Kyra shook her head. It couldn’t be that easy. She flipped through the last few pages of the book. The entries on rare lizards had a few flying lizard species, all but extinct, a couple of mountain tegus and monitors, but nothing large enough to produce the egg in front of her. That is, until she turned to the final page and saw the very last entry.

  Her fingers trembled as she moved her index finger down on the page. There were several drawings on the left hand side, each with a small human figure drawn next to it for scale. They ranged from creatures as little as a sparrow to some that appeared larger than a manor. The title at the top of the page read simply ‘dragons’ and the page on the right held only a short entry.

  Dragons have been all but eradicated from the Middle Kingdom since the battle at Hamath Valley in 1130 of the Common Era. However, in the interest of compiling the most complete compendium on reptiles within the Middle Kingdom, we have included a brief reference to them.

  The term dragon denotes an entire family of species, each a very distinguishable and separate creature with its own several traits, abilities, and varied intelligences. There are entire chronicles dedicated to their study, the most complete set of which can be found in the library of Valtuu Temple. For our purposes, it is enough to know that they come from The Ancients, seven progenitors of the dragon kind, and that modern-day dragons inhabit most parts of Terramyr.

  Within the Middle Kingdom, they were once a fair and wondrous race of beings. The Ancients are credited with founding Drakei Glazei, the Middle Kingdom’s capitol, as well as Roegudok Hall, the mountain that houses the dwarven kingdom. Due to events detailed in other histories, despite the efforts made in Hamath Valley, the dragons of the Middle Kingdom have turned evil and chaotic. Initially, lesser dragons and drakes began to prey upon mankind, and any other animate creature small enough to be swallowed or chewed. Gradually, even the great dragons became an enemy to all living.

  For the last several hundred years, they have been hunted nearly to extinction within the Middle Kingdom, and a fair number of dragon slayers have ventured beyond the Middle Kingdom as well to take the fight to the winged demons. It should be noted that this is to the great lament of those priests who still devoutly, albeit naively, follow the old traditions of pseudo dragon worship.

  Should you ever come across a dragon’s egg, you would recognize it by its enormous size. There is no other beast that could lay such a large egg. If this should happen, destroy the egg. Do not let the demon within see the light of day, for if you were ever to find yourself in a dragon’s shadow, they would show you no mercy.

  Kyra flipped the page, but there was no more information. She glanced at the egg and a wave of fear washed over her. The hairs on her neck stood on end and she looked up to the sky when the hillside was darkened by a large cloud. Then she looked back to the egg and the fear left her. She knew there was a dragon inside. Yet, despite what the book said, she felt no fear of the egg.

  Who was to say that the hatchling would be as ruthless as the text presented it?

  If Kyra was to listen to what others deemed appropriate, then she would accept her betrothal as her destiny. She smiled then, finding great parallels between herself and the egg. Not only were both of them full of potential danger, but they also both had society deciding their fates for them. She was doomed to marry and live the life of a noblewoman, while the hatchling was condemned to die. Both had been judged, and their worth had already been assessed, yet neither were understood.

  “I will not destroy you,” Kyra promised the egg.

  The little guardian lizard chirped loudly and then dropped down into its hole.

  Kyra looked at the other two books she had brought. One of them, a treatise on the care of large monitor lizards, was entirely useless, but the other made her smile. She opened the cover and rubbed her hand out over the first page. She had been working faithfully to translate the book since her mother had let her take it from her father’s library. Now she intended to make a go of it without her notes and read it aloud to the egg, translating as she went.

  “You will like this story,” she told the egg. “It is about a mighty dragon who also faced great challenges. He wasn’t hunted by humans, like you would be, but he had his own trials. The dragon in this story is named Gorliad, and he lived in a place far from here. This book comes from a set in my father’s library. It is entitled The Dragons of Kendualdern. This volume is my favorite from the set. It’s called Ascension.”

  Kyra cleared her throat and began to read aloud. She spent the remainder of the day reading to the egg and sitting next to it. Guardian, the little lizard, even came up from his hole to sit in her lap while she read, in between chasing grasshoppers that is. She read until the sun hung low in the sky, forgoing lunch altogether and losing herself in the book. Only when the first several blue stars of night poked through the sky did she prepare to leave for the night.

  She cast the warming spell again, careful to hide the egg with rocks, and then returned to the academy.

  When she arrived back at the academy, she spied Janik in the dining hall, taking his evening meal. He waved at her and motioned for her to join him.

  She hesitated, just for an instant, as if something in the back of her mind was trying to pull her in another direction. She shrugged it off, reasoning that it was likely just her apprehension about Janik’s brother holding her back. Kyra moved toward the table and a few moments later one of the cooks appeared with a serving tray, carrying a pitcher of water, a wooden goblet, and a brown clay bowl filled with tomato with a side of toast.

  “Thank you,” Kyra offered as the woman placed the items down in front of her.

  The cook smiled and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “You were gone a long time today,” Janik noted. “Off in the forest again?”

  Kyra plunged her spoon into the soup and was quick to place the spoonful into her mouth. Luckily, it wasn’t so hot that it burned her tongue. It did, however, waken her stomach to the realization that she had only eaten upon waking that day. Her stomach let out a terribly embarrassing growl and she hastily took a bite of toast.

  “Hungry, I see,” Janik probed. He offered a half-smile and picked his own bowl up with his right hand and poured the soup into his mouth. Then he set it down and wiped the excess from the corners of his mouth. “There isn’t anyone else around to see if you wish to eat without the proper manners,” Janik said. “I do it all the time. If I always adhered to proper table etiquette, I would likely never finish.” He raised his crooked left wrist and waggled it at his bowl. “I was left-handed before this happened. It’s still hard to do things with my right hand.”

  “I am sorry,” Kyra offered. She looked at his hand, bent over permanently at the wrist and all red and purple in color. Even now it looked painful, as though it had only occurred a few days before.

  Janik smiled. “The pain is gone n
ow,” he said. “Mostly.”

  Kyra shot him a puzzled look.

  Janik shrugged. “It aches after a day’s work, or sometimes when it’s cold, or even just at night.”

  “So it hurts almost all the time, then,” Kyra surmised.

  Janik paused and then he chuckled with a nod, “I suppose you are right.” He slipped his right hand around his own goblet and pulled it up toward his mouth. “So what is in the forest?” he asked just before the drink touched his lips.

  “I just like to be alone,” Kyra mumbled with a blush. To cover the warmth she felt in her cheeks, she quickly took a drink of soup directly from the bowl as Janik had suggested.

  “Can I see the books?” Janik asked as he set the goblet down and gestured with his chin toward the small satchel. He didn’t wait for an answer. Kyra had already set the satchel beside her on the bench, so he had free access to it. She started to move, wanting to stop him, but then she thought that might make it appear even more suspicious, so she stopped.

  Janik pulled them out and set them on the table. He mumbled aloud as he perused the titles.

  “Research?” he asked.

  Kyra nodded. That was close enough to the truth.

  “So why the sudden interest in dragons?” Janik pressed.

  Kyra’s heart stopped. She hadn’t expected him to be able to decipher the title from her father’s library.

  Janik smiled and slid the books back into the satchel and placed them next to her on the bench.

  “Don’t worry, your hobby is safe with me,” he assured her. “I mean, it isn’t like you found a dragon out hiding in the woods, right?” Janik laughed and reached for his drink.

  Kyra laughed nervously and nodded, hoping that he wouldn’t see the fear in her face. She flicked her eyes down to her soup and took the bowl in both hands again. She raised it up and drained it before setting it down.