Dragon Lord: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Origins Book 2)

by James Eggebeen

  He recalled his old friend Sulrad. Sulrad had been one of the rare ones. He had the gift like few others. Most of the senior wizards had feared him. They had taught him, but had refused him access to the more powerful and ancient spells, worried what he might do if he mastered them. Ultimately, they had driven him away.

  Kelnor had no illusions. He would never be like Sulrad. He might never be famous, but at least he was a wizard. Still, a world where everyone possessed magic? What sort of place would that have been? Would he have been able to wield the strong magic that was hinted at in the text? For it claimed that there were those rare wizards who could touch a wilder source of magic, one denied to those who practiced what was called the small magic.

  The next scroll was written in a hand so small, he had to squint to make out the characters. It spoke of a spell for containment, but not just any containment. He furrowed his brow as he tried to make out the characters. Did it say that the power that drove the spell came from within? How could that possibly be? He read further, but there was little to explain what the spell truly meant, and even if it did, he was uncertain he’d ever be able to invoke such a spell. He was just a researcher, not one of those memorable wizards who haughtily roamed the halls of Amedon. For a moment, he imagined himself as one of those — a powerful wizard among a crowd of lesser wizards. He would be respected, looked up to if he could only find the right spell.

  He rolled the scrolls shut.

  Who was he kidding? He would never be one of those.

  No matter how powerful he might become, there was always someone more powerful.

  He rolled open the next scroll. At first, it felt like a text used to teach, but soon it drifted into a story about a wizard and his apprentice. In the story, the wizard had created a staff using special hard wood and a crystal only found deep beneath the earth. He had bargained with a rogue dwarf for the crystal, securing something that should have been priceless for a handful of seeds that grew only in the densest forests on the flattest plain far from the mountains, yet seemed to have an intoxicating effect on dwarves.

  This wizard had imbued the crystal in his staff with magic. Siphoning off his own personal stores and secreting them in the stone slowly over the summers, he had filled the crystal until it contained ten times the magic he himself was able to store. When he wielded the staff, it supplied the magic, not he himself.

  Kelnor wondered if that would work for him. Maybe if he could find a staff like that, he could perform more complex and powerful spells. It was worth digging into. Perhaps his random choice of scrolls was more fortunate than he had imagined.

  He continued.

  The wizard’s apprentice, it seemed, was completely without magic. The apprentice had studied the texts and learned the wizards’ tongue, but was unable to raise so much as a candle flame.

  Kelnor felt an affinity for the poor apprentice.

  One day, when the wizard was occupied, he left his staff behind. The apprentice took the staff and one of the spell books and departed. It seemed the apprentice had become smitten with a maiden, and found a love spell he thought would work, if he only had the power.

  He journeyed to the home of the maiden and read the spell, but nothing happened. He was about to give up and go home, when he hit upon the idea of using the hand motions that the spell indicated would reinforce the magic. He used his finger to carefully trace the characters in the air that the book specified.

  Nothing.

  He sighed.

  There was one more thing to try. That was why he brought the staff, after all. The staff was the key. He used the staff to draw the characters in the air.

  This time, it worked.

  The staff left behind a vermillion trace that recreated the figure from the spell book.

  The maiden immediately rushed to the apprentice and worshipped him.

  Of course the story spoke of how the apprentice was later disciplined by the wizard and how the girl had grown into a bitter and angry woman who made the apprentice’s life miserable. It was a cautionary tale, but caution about what? Love potions? Kelnor had seen firsthand how those could go awry.

  Use of magical artifacts?

  It appeared that one didn’t need to personally possess magic to cast a spell. If the text was true, and the events it depicted had actually happened, then a person totally devoid of magic had created a spell using a crystal dug from beneath the mountains.

  Kelnor looked around as if checking to see if anyone was watching him. He climbed the ladder and placed the scroll back into its cradle. He blew on the dust to cover it once more, hoping that the signs of his presence would be obscured by his effort.

  Yet, as he packed the remaining scrolls and prepared to return to his room, something nagged at him.

  A mundane had cast a spell.

  9

  Kelnor sat at the corner table in the dining room of the Cross and Keys. He’d chosen the location because it was a bit out of the way with a reputation for being friendly to wizards. He settled in and waited for the server to appear. He was hungry, but mostly, he was worried. His research both excited him and caused him great anxiety. A mundane had cast a spell. He was little better than a mundane himself. Did that mean that he might be able to cast spells that he had always thought beyond his capabilities? Was there a way for him to be one of those wizards who was written about in the scrolls as more than a footnote regarding someone who had clarified some obscure text?

  “You going to sit there all day, or are you eating?” A young woman with the blackest hair Kelnor had ever seen stood over him. She wore a leather apron snugged about her waist with a stained towel tucked into it. She appeared to be a few summers older than Kelnor, but not many.

  “Sorry. Sweet meat pies?” he asked.

  “You wish. Not at the midday meal. What sort of place do you think this is, some fancy inn?” She punched Kelnor in the arm and took a quick step back. “Roast pork. Fowl in brown gravy. Bread. Ale. No wine. We’re not that sort of place either.”

  “Roast pork.”

  “Ale?”

  “Ale.”

  “Seven coppers. Five for the pork. Two for the ale.”

  Kelnor fished the required coins from his purse and paid the girl. She spun on her heels. “I’ll be back just before you die of hunger.”

  “Crystals,” he muttered to himself. Crystals were a big part of what he planned to attempt, but where to get a crystal? Wizards didn’t discard their staffs. Many of them were buried with theirs. When a wizard decided he needed a staff, he sought out the crystal. Most of them found theirs while on some quest or another. Not that he would ever be on such a quest. Was there some other place he could find one?

  “You’re a wizard, aren’t you?” the girl asked. “By the way, name’s Zahudi.” She held up her hand. “I know. You never heard such a name before. My folk are from the distant mountains. We have strong customs there.”

  “I don’t think it strange. I think it’s unique. No one else has it. That makes you special.”

  Zahudi blushed. “Well, aren’t you special.”

  “To answer your question, yes, I am a wizard. Not much of one, though.”

  “How so? I can’t do magic. That means I’m no wizard. You can do magic. That sort of makes you a wizard, doesn’t it?”

  “I can do magic, but not very much. I’m not very powerful.”

  Zahudi snorted. “More powerful than me.”

  “That’s not saying much.”

  The girl punched him in the arm once more. “You trying to insult me?”

  Kelnor flinched and rubbed his arm. “No. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “S’alright,” she said. “I was just jesting with you.” She shoved his hand away from his arm and massaged it. “Sorry. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength. I thought all wizards were powerful. Never imagined that there were some more powerful than others, or that anyone would be wanting more power than they already had.”

  “Most wizards hav
e sufficient power. Only a few have true strength. And only a few lack it.” He was growing uncomfortable talking about his deficiencies with Zahudi. “Can we talk of something else?”

  “Sure. You looking for a bondmate? I’m getting a bit desperate.” She swung her hips into Kelnor, almost knocking him off the bench.

  Was the girl jesting again or was she serious? Kelnor felt certain it was another jest, but he was finding Zahudi hard to read. She seemed friendly enough, but he was in no position to even think about settling down.

  “You look like you seen a ghost. I was only jesting with you,” Zahudi blurted. “You do look sweet all red like that. You really thought about it, didn’t you?”

  Before Kelnor could answer, another patron whistled and Zahudi rushed off. What a strange woman. Perhaps she was worth getting to know a bit better. Once Kelnor had settled into his new role, he would make it point to return to the Cross and Keys.

  Over the next few days, Kelnor searched for a way to secure a crystal. He asked a few of the senior wizards who carried staffs how they had come by their crystals. Their stories were as varied as the wizards themselves. One had won the crystal in a battle where he had defeated a rogue wizard who was terrorizing a town. Another had found his as he travelled through the tunnels deep beneath the mountain. The wizard had been on a mission that required he visit the dwarves and negotiate some sort of treaty that he refused to elaborate on. Most of the wizards declared that the jewels in their staffs were more precious than life itself and all claimed that they would be buried with their staff in their hands when the time came.

  That last gave Kelnor an idea. Most wizards were cremated when they died. Their ashes were tossed into the breeze that continually whistled through the chasm separating the library tower from the main keep. Their ashes were whisked away on the breeze, symbolizing a return of their magic to the sky from which it had come, but senior wizards, those who had served the council with distinction, were buried, along with their staffs. The burial grounds were not within the keep, but just outside of it.

  Kelnor had been there once to witness the internment of one of his instructors who was killed in a training accident. The wizard’s body had been dressed in his formal robes, anointed with spices and aromatic oils, and then carried to the crypt, where he had been laid to rest. The crypt initially was covered with a flat slab of marble, but soon was decorated with a carving in the likeness of the wizard.

  The whole thing seemed rather barbaric to Kelnor. Why bury someone? Their body would just be eaten by worms and insects. Was it the carving that made it special? Yet some crypts bore no carving. Did that mean they were empty or that the wizard buried within was not respected? He had no idea, but the thought that the very crystals he needed lay nearby was intriguing.

  How to get one out? That was the problem.

  He searched the library for a simple spell, one that would allow him to remove the stone. Levitation? Some way to make the stone permeable to his flesh? Sadly, the scrolls held not even a hint of such a spell.

  Yet there had to be something.

  The solution he found was not magic. It was an application of the physical laws that governed the entire world. The text spoke of levers and wedges that could be used to move anything. That was all he needed. Levers and wedges. He spent some of his hard-won stipend purchasing a long, stout bar of iron. He asked the blacksmith to sharpen the end of it until it was almost as sharp as a knife blade. The wedges, he had made to the specifications on the drawings he had seen. They were sharp at one end and taped to a thickness about the girth of his arm at the other. He added a wooden mallet to his list of tools and prepared a pack with everything he would need.

  He waited until a full moon and snuck to the crypt he’d selected. It was the one at which he had witnessed the burial. He knew that the wizard’s staff had been entombed with the wizard.

  When he arrived, he knelt down beside the marble crypt and checked for spells. He expected to find protection spells at the very least, but there was nothing. Were the wizards unafraid that someone would rob the crypt? Did they consider it sacred? Sacred enough to deter would-be robbers?

  Strange.

  Kelnor inserted his bar between the lid of the crypt and the crypt walls. The gap was small, and the bar would not slide between the slabs. He hadn’t anticipated that. He took one of the wedges out and placed it in the tiny crack that separated the lid from the wall. A few taps of his mallet and he’d made enough of a gap to slide the edge of the bar in. Not far, but enough.

  He levered the bar up and the lid slid ever so slightly.

  Not far.

  Not what he had expected.

  He drove the wedge in once more.

  Again he levered the bar.

  The lid moved anther hair’s breath.

  At this rate, it was going to take all night.

  Tap - tap - tap - lever - slide - tap - tap - tap - lever - slide. The process was agonizingly slow, but the lid was moving. He shoved the bar into the gap once more. This time, the bar plunged into the crypt. With a great crash, he heard something shatter.

  He levered the lid open further.

  What bad luck. When he’d slammed the bar into the crypt, it had dislodged the wizard’s staff from his hands. The staff had crashed into the wall of the crypt and the jewel cracked.

  He hadn’t planned to use the entire crystal. He could work with it, broken or not.

  As Kelnor’s hand entered the narrow gap between the lid and the walls of the crypt, a light burst into life. Something inside the crypt was glowing. It could only be one thing. The crystal had come to life.

  Magic washed over Kelnor.

  A repulsion spell.

  The crystal from the staff was generating a spell. A powerful one.

  Kelnor tried to resist. Tried to jam his hand into the crypt, get a grip on the staff.

  The magic was too strong.

  His hand trembled as he valiantly tried to grasp the staff.

  His fingers shook.

  He pressed with all his might, but he could not grasp the staff.

  His hand slid down and contacted something dry and bony.

  The wizard’s hand.

  He almost pulled his own hand out at the thought of what he grasped, but he did not. Not only did he feel he wizard’s hand, he felt a ring. He recalled the wizard wearing a ring on his finger that was formed of a blue-green crystal, much like the one in the staff.

  Was it the same?

  Kelnor let his fingers close around the ring.

  As he did, it to burst to life, emitting the same glow that the staff did.

  His fingers started to slip, but he yanked at the ring.

  It slid from the wizard’s finger and into his hand.

  He jerked his hand free of the lid and jammed the ring into his pack.

  As he released it, the glow stopped.

  The crypt flashed once more, and the lid slammed shut, leaving Kelnor alone in the darkness. The only light remaining was that of the full moon.

  10

  The baron’s demand for an increased temple tax weighed heavily on Sulrad. So far, Ignal had been able to stall the baron’s men, but he knew that soon enough the golds would flow out of the temple and into the castle. Eager to hear how Ignal was faring, Sulrad went in search of her. She had a study not far from his own where she maintained the books and temple accounts. She had decorated it in a most restrained manner compared to her personal abode. He supposed she did this to imitate his own minimalist surroundings. He did not expect it of her, but she was eager to please, sometimes too eager.

  Sulrad paused at the doorway to Ignal’s study, when he heard voices. He did not want to interrupt whomever she was talking to. When he appeared, she had a disturbing tendency to drop everything and turn her attention on him. Let her finish. He was in no hurry.

  He leaned against the doorpost and listened, but the words she spoke were not in the common tongue. She was sounding out words in the wizards’ tongue. W
hy would she be doing that? She was no wizard. It was very rare that a mundane could read the wizards’ tongue or cared to. What use was it to study spells if one could not cast them?

  “Istum mihi ligaveres,” Ignal muttered. “Absolvisti.”

  The rustling of parchment told Sulrad she was shuffling notes. Was she cataloging spells? Spells she could never cast?

  “Veritatem,” Ignal said with trepidation. She had nearly perfect pronunciation. “Infusco.”

  Sulrad stepped into the doorway and paused. “Obtenbro. You want to obscure, not darken.”

  Ignal flinched and spun around to face him, her face a mask of anger until she saw who it was. Her expression melted to one of contrition. “Obtenbro?”

  “Obtenbro. You were close.” Sulrad entered the room and took a seat beside Ignal. Her desk was littered with parchment and scrolls. She had three inkwells before her. One black, one blue, and one red. Her notes were written in black, but she had made notations in blue in the margins and occasionally underlined something in red.

  He picked up one of the pages. The writing was in her hand, but the words could have been written by a scholar of magic from Amedon. He read the introductory paragraphs. This page spoke of how a spell was created and how the characters used to create it or the words that drove the magic determined the counter spell. She went on to explain how counter spells were created and why it was essential for the wizard creating a counter spell to fully understand how the spell was created. An improper counter spell could, if not done correctly, cause the original spell to become stronger.