The Eastland commander has guessed wrong. A heavy oak door, secured from behind with crossbars, blocks the end of the tunnel. When the commander arrives at the door, he is stymied. Convinced the raiders are hiding behind its heavy planks, he is forced to back up and make space for men with axes to hack through the door. The commander’s decision to back up has to be relayed to the last man in a long line that leads back toward the tunnel’s entrance. The time he wastes in urging his mount backwards through the tunnel infuriates the commander. At that moment, Queen Fae arrives with her infantry. She orders her units to search the smaller passages. The infantry moves cautiously through the dark tunnels and ascends the staircases. They discover the tunnels are deserted. The searchers report only small storage rooms. All the tunnels lead to dead ends.
When Queen Fae is sure the smaller tunnels are empty, she begins ascending the wide staircase. They pass through the deserted dining hall. Fae splits her forces, sending half through the corridors that branched off the hall, and the remainder to follow her up the spiraling staircase.
Queen Fae is beginning to suspect a trap. She has led her entire force into an empty fortress that consists of a maze of tunnels. The only way out is back down the staircase. She gives the order to fall back to the entrance. That is when she hears the blast and feels the shock wave shake the mountain. “What is happening? Go find out,” Fae sends soldiers running down the staircase to investigate.
“We are trapped, my Queen,” reports the breathless soldier who returns a few moments later. The explosion collapsed the roof of the tunnel above the staircase. Queen Fae and three hundred of her infantry are trapped in the upper levels.
The explosion sends splintered rock and dust flying through the main tunnel. Queen Fae’s men are partially protected from the shrapnel by their armor, but the horses suffer horribly and many bolt toward the light coming through the fortress’ entrance. Before the stampeding horses reach the front of the tunnel, another explosion collapses the rock above the door, sealing the main entrance. Those whom Queen Fae counted on for rescue are now themselves trapped. The cavalry commander realizes it is up to him. He orders his men to clear the rock blocking the staircase and free the trapped queen. He tries to conserve his remaining torches and sends men searching the supply rooms for more. His men return with news, “The boxes in the storerooms are empty.”
As his men dig through the collapsed rock, it becomes clear the trap has been cleverly constructed. Tons of loose rock were positioned on ledges above the staircase and entrance to the mountain; the amount of debris released by the explosions is massive. The commander realizes that the oak door at the back of the tunnel is their only escape. It takes a quarter of an hour to hack through the heavy door. Instead of finding daylight, the commander finds the tunnel continues. He abandons his horse and leads his men down the tunnel until they emerge on the other side of the mountain. They walk into the dazzling sunlight to discover they are standing on a ledge overlooking a chasm. A drawbridge that connects the ledge to the other side of the chasm is raised, and fifty archers and fifty cavalry stand on the other side. Anyone who attempts to climb through the rift would meet a hail of arrows and spears.
The commander retreats back into the tunnel and spends the day freeing his queen. Queen Fae walks to the drawbridge and sees escape in that direction is impossible. She reasons, if they are able to clear the debris from the main entrance, her army could fight their way out of the trap. The army faces a more immediate problem; the soldiers are down to their last torches. The trapped Eastlanders gather everything they can find that is flammable and ignite a fire near the buried front entrance. They even burned what is left of the oak door.
In the smoky tunnel, Queen Fae sees her army slowly making progress. In a few more hours they will break out of the fortress. She becomes hopeful and begins discussing with her commander how to best engage the enemy that waits outside when a voice echoes through the tunnel. “Queen Fae your efforts to free yourself are in vain. There are more explosives embedded in the roof of the tunnel. I have but to light a fuse and you and your entire army will be buried. If you give up your weapons, I offer you the opportunity to walk out alive.”
“Where are you?” shouts the angry queen.
“I am in the fortress above you. As you must now know, what you thought was our fortress is merely a decoy. The true fortress is above,” Trak declares.
“I think you are bluffing,” retorts the queen. “You have no more explosives. If you had them you would have already used them.”
Trak lights several ceramic smoke grenades and rolls them down a tube into the tunnel below. They shatter, and fill the space with acrid smoke. The eyes of those trapped burn and tears run down their faces.
The queen and her army are forced to move away from the entrance. Trak speaks again, “Next time I will send explosives and not merely smoke.” The queen realizes her situation is desperate. Soon the fire she lit will extinguish and her army will be left in the dark.
Fae asks, “Do you guarantee the safety of my men?”
“After they toss their weapons into the chasm at the rear of the tunnel, they are free to return home,” Trak assures her.
The queen doesn’t trust Trak, but she can think of no alternative. She orders her men to proceed one by one to the back of the mountain and throw their weapons into the rift. She comes last and is preparing to throw her father’s great sword into the pit when Trak speaks from across the chasm, “It is not necessary for you to surrender your sword, Your Majesty. Please join me in my tent for a moment before I release your men.”
The drawbridge is lowered. Trak offers a courtly bow and escorts the queen to his tent where he orders a basin of fresh water brought. “Perhaps you would like to wash before we talk?” Trak suggests. When the queen has washed some of the soot and acrid chemicals from her skin, she sits opposite Trak who calmly waits.
“I am Trak Dragonfire, the commander of Goblin Fortress. I hope by speaking with you directly, I can better understand the reasons for the conflict between our kingdoms.”
The queen studies Trak’s strange half-goblin features that give his face a sense of the mystical. Cross-breeds are unheard of in her kingdom. “Five years ago King Red’s eastern nobles began raiding our border and we were forced to fight back,” the queen states accusingly.
“That is truly interesting,” replies Trak, “because King Red tells almost the same story. Only in his version, the Eastland nobles were the first to raid.”
“Does it matter how it started. Today, we were humiliated, an insult we cannot forget. We are a strong and proud people; we will return and seek revenge,” the queen threatens.
“I know you speak from your heart, Your Majesty, but there is another way. Let us agree to a truce. Let each sovereign demand under penalty of loss of lands and titles that their nobles stop raiding.”
“Before today, the plan might have succeeded, but now that I have been defeated, I doubt that any of my nobles will heed my commands.”
“Your Majesty, you are not defeated; rather, the battle has been avoided. Let us work together to clear the front of the fortress so that you might ride home and tell your people that your campaign brought an end to the border dispute. Perhaps, in a few months you and King Red can meet on the border and in a sunlit meadow sign a parchment to make it official.”
Events went as Trak proposed. After Trak’s men helped the Eastlanders clear the front of the fortress, Queen Fae gathered her wounded and dead and headed for home. When her army arrived at the border, they found all their weapons piled on the road. When King Red and Queen Fae met some weeks later to sign the treaty, they found they actually liked each other. The king was attracted to the blunt-spoken warrior queen who was the first women in his life he considered his equal.
Chapter 31
King Red’s Fortress, Bretwalda: The Prophecy
Trak did not attend the treaty signing. After he dispatched a goblin workforce to repair Goblin Fortress a
nd make modifications, he returned to King Red’s citadel to continue his study of sorcery. The Chronicles of Bretwalda recorded several historical events in which sorcerers performed magic. They had conjured great winds to drive invading ships onto rocks, brought a fire rain to pellet a goblin army, raised spirits of the dead to man a battlement, and so forth. These magical feats were embedded in such dry historical accounts Trak felt they must have actually occurred. But how? The histories never revealed how sorcerers work their magic. Trak spent days searching the royal library for clues without success, but in the workshop of Strand Beedle, the king’s alchemist, he found ancient parchments that were helpful.
Trak met Beedle three years before, when King Red ordered him to manufacture pyrotechnique weapons. Beedle reminded Trak of Krage; they both had prodigious memories. Lord Ran referred to Beedle as the “Book Eater” because of the mass of knowledge he had mastered. Trak soon realized that Beedle could have made the explosives the king coveted but kept his knowledge to himself. “Not everything that can be done should be done,” Strand warned. Trak showed Beedle the alchemy recipes he had copied from Krage’s alchemy texts nearly a decade before. Beedle confirmed the usefulness of some, denied the efficacy of others, and was pleased to discover some of which he was unfamiliar.
Together, they used a recipe to improve the metal used in the kingdom’s coinage. They added copper and silver to gold to produce an alloy that made the coinage brighter and harder. Trak designed the iron dies used to stamp the obverse and reverse sides of the coins. On the front, Trak placed the head of the king and surrounded his profile with goblin glyphs. The glyphs appeared merely decorative to those unfamiliar with goblin script, but read, “King Red, High King of Bretwalda.” The back of the coins varied. Some displayed the stone serpent that climbed the tower of the king’s fortress; others contained Trak’s personal mark, a dragon serpent entwining a flaming sword. The image haunted him, and he returned to it time and again to create new versions.
Strand Beedle was not particularly surprised the first time Trak entered his workshop. A new sorcerer was in the kingdom. Beedle had heard how Trak projected his voice into the king’s mind on the day the queen returned. He knew Trak commanded Underworld goblins to build magical fortresses. He had seen the mystical flicker produced by the Dragon Fire weapons. Beedle considered himself the greatest alchemist in Bretwalda and Trak’s equal in magical skill. He expected the sorcerer to seek him out.
What Strand didn’t expect was how much Trak resembled his old friend Krage and Queen Meriem. Trak had all of Krage’s features, softened by his human mother’s contribution. On the day Trak first entered his workshop and said, “I am Trak Dragonfire,” the alchemist replied, “Welcome, Son of Krage and Queen Meriem.” The greeting startled Trak, who retorted, “Please don’t mention my parentage. You will get me killed!”
Trak found among the books Beedle kept in his workshop a tome devoted to incantations. Each incantation followed the same basic pattern. First, the sorcerer prepared himself for the ritual by purifying his soul. Then he cleansed the space where the incantation would be performed. This meant establishing wards to keep out unwanted spirits. Each incantation called forth a powerful entity to serve the sorcerer. The summoned entity then performed the required task. This type of magic wasn’t about personal power as much as enlisting the services of powerful beings.
Trak asked Beedle what his experience had been with the incantations. Beedle replied, “I once summoned a demon to curse a rival. When I spoke the words of power, I lost consciousness and awoke several hours later on the floor of my workshop.”
“Did the curse succeed?” asked Trak.
“Apparently, it did,” replied Beedle. “The rival contracted a hideous disease that left his face and body covered with lumps. Surgeons excised the tumors, but they grew back. The man lived another ten years and became horribly disfigured before he died. The experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never tried to cast another spell.”
“In the royal library, there is a tale of a sorcerer who caused fire to rain on a goblin army. How do you think he accomplished such a feat?” Trak asked.
Beedle replied, “You speak of my great grandfather, the Fire Sorcerer. My father told me that my ancestor accomplished the feat by sewing several large bladders out of fine silk. He inflated them with hot air and floated them over a battlefield. He ordered archers to puncture the bladders with flaming arrows. Each bladder carried flammable liquid that ignited and fell on the attacking goblins. The trick caused little damage but much panic among the goblins.”
“I confess I’m disappointed; your great grandfather’s act was cunning but more trickery than magic,” Trak said.
“Magic of the type you seek is rare,” acknowledged Beedle. “Even what you call magic may just be trickery we don’t understand.”
“Allow me to demonstrate something.” Trak took a moment to calm himself and let the power of the earth enter his body until a blue glow emanated from his fingertips. “I believe this blue light comes from the earth’s magma. It helps me on occasion, but I know only a little about its secrets.”
“Well, your power is truly remarkable,” Beedle reflected. “I recognize its source; it was possessed by the original members of the Dragon lineage.” Until this moment, I thought the ability to harness the earth’s power was lost.”
“Krage has the ability. I have seen him use it, but his command of the power is limited, like mine,” Trak informed Beedle. “Can you tell me more about the power and how I can magnify and direct it?”
Beedle retrieved a book, the oldest in his library. “Let us consult The Chronicles of House Dragon. The original was penned nearly three thousand years ago. My edition claims to be an accurate copy. If any book in the kingdom contains a clue to the power of the earth, it will be this one.”
The script was archaic. Trak relied on Beadle’s command of ancient scripts to decipher the book’s contents. The tome began with the history of Septan Dragon, founder and greatest sorcerer of the House Dragon lineage.
Before Time, an orange light watched in darkness.
The Earth Spirit saw all things, knew all things.
It spoke the First Eloquence. The Earth formed.
A place for what was to be, both good and evil.
Last to emerge was Septan—Wonder Worker.
He delivered those seeking the light—First Sowing.
The Spirit slept, Septan absorbed its evil—splitting Father-Mother.
Overcome, Septan’s light extinguished.
The Chronicles of House Dragon
Beedle haltingly read, “In the beginning of our age, the Earth Spirit created Septan and endowed him with unique abilities. Of all the Earth Spirit’s creations, he alone was given the power to distinguish good from evil. The Earth Spirit commanded Septan to use his power to seek good and eschew evil. Septan’s senses were too acute. He found evil everywhere, even in the good he performed. When rain nurtured crops, it also brought floods, destroying lives. Fire kept people warm in the winter, but also burned their homes. Hunters fed the people but they also brought death and suffering to the prey. Septan was tormented because he found good and evil to be inherent in all things.”
“Septan’s torment drove him mad. In his madness, he schemed to banish evil. In an act of desperation, he grasped the power of flowing magma and attempted to draw all evil into himself. The evil was too great. Before he finished his task, it killed him. At his death the evil he had absorbed was released and Tironock Kan was born. In his madness, Septan had ripped the Earth Spirit into two separate entities. Tironock Kan began fighting Shenal Ken, the benign entity the weakened Earth Spirit had become, for dominion of the world.”
Trak began to grasp the magnitude of the Earth’s power. The prospect of such limitless power coursing through his body excited him more than anything he could imagine. The cascade of implications was overwhelming. Immediately, he wondered if he could shape the future using this power. He asked
Beedle about the prophecy of the Second Sowing. “How could the power of the magma be used to stop Tironock from gaining dominion over the earth?”
Beedle offered no solution. In the end, Trak was determined to return to Dragonton, where lava flowed near the surface. There, he would master the secrets of the magma.
Chapter 32
City of Neu Ardonbrae: The Threat
Each day the magma flowed more forcefully in the caverns beneath the Septantrak. The ceiling of the cavern containing the giant stone likeness of Septan was now fully illuminated and the Stones of Septan glowed blood-red. True believers of the ancient religion overcame their fear of the wraiths living in the Underworld and began making pilgrimages to the ancient place of worship. Entrepreneurs went so far as to sell drink and food to pilgrims visiting the site. Myrel warned Lord Lizardthroat and other city officials that the pilgrimages were dangerous and would end in disaster. No political figure had the will to oppose the religious fervor sweeping the city or to stem the financial benefits the pilgrims brought.
One enterprising business offered guided tours to the ancient ruins of Ardonbrae. The entrepreneurs publicized the tour as the adventure of a lifetime. For a large sum, a squad of mercenaries escorted the rich into the ruins. Tourists returned telling stories of seeing white wraiths lurking in the shadows of the city. The stories only compelled others to pay the high price for the experience.
Alrik was alarmed by the fad. He still visited the hive beneath Ardonbrae and knew of the developing unrest. The white goblins were weary of living under the threat of Tironock. To escape Tironock’s capricious cruelty, the Queen Mothers talked openly of migrating to Ardonbrae or to the surface.
Forging the Half-Goblin Sorcerer Page 32
