The D'Karon Apprentice (47 page)

“It’s Myranda’s writing,” she said, releasing
a sigh of relief. “I was getting worried about her.”

“What does it say?” he asked. “My eyes aren’t
what they once were.”

“She says, ‘We have reached a small
stronghold. The woman, Turiel, was here. Possibly for some time. A
commander here may have kept her in secret. We hope to have that
answer soon. Lives have been lost by Turiel’s hand. The stronghold
was damaged and now is destroyed. We were briefly taken prisoner,
now free. If Turiel hopes to restore the D’Karon, she will have
started to open a keyhole. Her work must be reversed, and with
great care. Therefore it must be found. We will search, but the
surest way is to get the information from Turiel herself. If at all
possible, Turiel must be kept alive until we can find and eliminate
the keyhole. If she dies and we have not found it, we can never be
sure if we’ll be able to keep it from opening and allowing the
D’Karon to return.’”

With that, the stylus fell still again, the
message complete.

“Goodness…” Ivy said, staring at the dire
message on the page. She looked back to the fort. “We need to do
something.”

“What can be done?” Celeste asked. “You’ve
said yourself that you cannot face her alone. And there is no way
to know what she has been doing in the fort. She may be even more
formidable now.”

“Maybe… maybe if I let myself change. I’ve
beaten magical things before when I was changed. I know I could
defeat her if I was angry.”

He shook his head. “Even if you could depend
upon yourself to change, which as I understand it you cannot be
certain of, do you think you could hold yourself back? Could you
keep yourself from killing her?”

“I… I’m not sure I could…”

“Then better not to risk your life and
hers.”

“But we’re the only ones near her. Something
has to be done, and we’re the ones to do it.”

“Sometimes the wisest thing is to keep vigil
until reinforcements arrive.”

“You said it yourself, a few soldiers won’t
make a difference against her. And what if she leaves before
someone who can help us arrives? We’d have to find her again, and
who knows what sort of damage she could do before then? There’s got
to be a way…” She clutched her fingers and looked nervously to the
fort. “You’re smarter than me, Mr. Celeste. You must have
some
idea. If you can think of anything, anything at all,
tell me.”

Celeste gazed into the fire briefly. When he
spoke, it was not with the tone of one who had a moment of
inspiration, but as one who simply had taken the next step down a
line of reasoning. “Perhaps it is wise to remember that you are not
only a Guardian, but an ambassador.”

“What do you… oh… you mean I should try to
talk to her again?”

“I don’t think you should try it at all. But
if something must be done, and quickly, it may be a solution. You
said she was kind. That she comforted you.”

“We had a little bit of a falling out at the
end of it,” she said with a weak grin. “But… maybe… maybe it is
worth a try. I got away from her once. If something goes wrong, I’m
sure I could get away again.”

“Then we shall need to find a way for you to
reach her.”

Ivy looked to the charred remnants of the
bridge. In the fading light she could see that some of the supports
and dangling ropes still smoldered. She paced carefully to the near
bridge, the one that was still intact, and peered down. The waves
were choppy and rough below. Despite the salty seawater, the cold
had left a sort of slush across the surface.

“If you are considering climbing down and
swimming, forget such foolishness,” Celeste said. “The water will
numb you in moments. Even if you could survive the swim, numb
fingers attempting to cling to an icy cliff side are a recipe for
death.”

She looked to the fort again. After a moment
of thought, she pulled her cloak a bit tighter and began to march
toward it.

“What are you doing?” Celeste asked, walking
briskly after her.

“I don’t know. But sometimes when I’m neck
deep in a problem, that’s when I figure a way out of it. I’m hoping
that happens now. Go back to the fire. Watch the equipment and keep
an eye on me.”

“Ivy, I can barely see in this light. In a
few minutes I won’t be able to see at all.”

“I promise you, if something happens between
me and Turiel, you’ll be able to see it.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” he said.

“We need someone to stay back and spread the
word of what happened,
if
something happens.” She glanced
ahead again, a flicker of doubt in her gaze. “You and I both know
if something happens to me, you’re better suited to figure out how
to handle it than the other way around. Don’t worry about me. I’ve
faced worse than this before.” She shrugged and smiled. “Hey.
Probably I won’t get any farther than the bridge, right?” She
looked about briefly. “I suppose I should bring a weapon…”

“No,” he said. “If you are going as an
ambassador, then it would send the wrong message to do so
armed.”

“Right… Right, that makes sense. See? The two
of us are a great team.” She gave her cloak one final tug and
huffed a breath. “I’ll be careful. It’ll be fine.”

With a stiff nod, she set off toward the
burnt bridge, hoping it wasn’t terribly obvious how much her final
statement was intended to bolster her own confidence rather than
his. Once she was on her way, she did her best not to look back to
Mr. Celeste. As worried as she was about what could happen, she was
more worried about what he must think of her for going out with
such a malformed and, frankly,
foolish
idea. In very short
order Mr. Celeste had become an important person in her life. She
couldn’t decide if she was venturing off to do this in an attempt
to impress him or hesitant about doing it out of fear of
disappointing him.

Each step toward the ruined bridge gave her a
clearer look at the remaining creatures. Most lay in unnatural,
limp positions. They looked for all the world like puppets with
strings that had been cut. Others, like the bridge itself, still
smoldered with a weak glow, mostly between joints and in the
hollows of their eye-less sockets. None of them offered so much as
a twitch of motion at her approach. This, at least, set her mind a
bit more at ease. In Ivy and Celeste’s vigil, they’d not seen
anything scale the cliff and venture off toward any potentially
undefended innocents, but they weren’t certain they hadn’t missed
anything. If these monsters, so near their creator, had fallen
still after only hours, there was little concern that any others
might have survived the waves, the cliffs, and the journey to even
the nearest town.

Ivy stopped just short of the charred wooden
planks of the bridge they’d destroyed. With little else to do, she
took a deep breath and called out.

“Turiel!” she cried. “I need to speak with
you!”

The fort was still quite a distance away, and
Ivy’s voice had the wailing wind and chopping waves to compete
with, so she had little hope that she’d actually been heard. She
placed two fingers into her mouth and curled her tongue, conjuring
a piercing whistle that she’d only a few weeks prior learned to do
from one of the hunters in Kenvard. Doing it wasn’t quite as simple
for her as it had been for him thanks to their anatomical
differences, but with a little adaptation she’d been able to get
the hang of it.

She gave three more powerful trills with no
apparent response from the distant fortress and was about to turn
and return to the shore when a dark form flitted out from the
doorway and flapped awkwardly through the air. As it got closer,
the thing lilting through the air like an old rag caught in a gale
turned out to be the mixed-up concoction of a creature that
faithfully served Turiel.

It dropped heavily to the ground, knocking
one of the smaller unmoving creatures aside, and glared at Ivy
across the gap. Despite its primarily canine head, it did a
remarkably good job of communicating a look of disappointment.

“Um… Hello… Mott, was it?” Ivy said.

Mott threw his head up in a decidedly
theatrical manner, looking away from her and uttering a disdainful
chitter.

“I, uh… I’m sorry about before,” Ivy
offered.

The creature skittered its many legs and
turned its back to her, flapping its undersized wings. It was as
near a physical interpretation of the word “harrumph” as the beast
was able to deliver.

“Listen. I know you only want to make Turiel
happy and to do what she says. Just… just tell her Ivy wants to
talk. No fighting, I just want to talk.”

It curled its serpentine neck back, glancing
at her with one eye.

“Look,” Ivy said, turning slowly and holding
her hands out. “I didn’t bring any weapons. I don’t want anyone to
get hurt. I just want to talk. Just ask her. Please?”

Mott skittered back around again and crouched
low, waggling its body and fluttering its wings. For a nonverbal
creature, it did a remarkably good job of making its intentions
clear.

“No! Don’t try to jump! You won’t—” Ivy
called out.

Predictably the creature didn’t pay any
attention to her, springing out over the water and working its
poorly suited wings with the wind. The flailing and flapping did
extend its leap quite a bit, but not nearly enough. It dropped like
a stone as soon as it was below the top of the cliff and the wind
was no longer aiding its trip. With a meaty thud it struck the icy
cliff just below and to the side of the ruined bridge on Ivy’s
side.

Acting more out of instinct than logic, Ivy
raced to the edge and held tight to the sturdiest remaining bridge
support. As soon as she looked over the edge, she could feel the
world begin to spin. Though she’d been working hard to overcome her
many weaknesses, one flaw she’d not been able to correct was the
fear of heights. Nevertheless, and out of a concern far more
genuine that she would have expected for the familiar of a woman
who might be actively seeking the slow demise of her own world, Ivy
felt the need to help Mott. His spiderlike legs scrabbled and
scraped at the cliff face, but he was so far managing only to
barely keep from sliding farther down, and then only
just
.

She looked around quickly and found a short
length of support rope on the second strut that had been largely
spared the worst of the flames. She hauled it up and pulled it
over, dumping its slack down to Mott. He clamped on to it with his
jaws, but the buffeting of the swirling breeze combined with the
ice-encrusted stone caused the dangling beast to bash painfully
against the cliff. Ivy pulled slowly and steadily at the rope to
avoid dislodging Mott, and before long he was scrabbling his way up
onto relatively solid ground.

Mott swung quickly around behind Ivy and then
chomped his jaws on to the hem of her cloak, urgently pulling her
back as well. When they were both safely away from the edge, the
creature wrapped himself around her legs. From tail to head, he was
able to manage several full coils, embracing her tightly with his
head resting on her chest. He churred affectionately and licked at
her chin once before uncoiling himself.

“Okay… friends then?” Ivy said, reaching down
to pat the scraggly and scaly head.

He chittered and wrapped his tail around her
leg again, flipping his head entirely upside down so that her
fingers instead were patting his chin. Ivy took the hint and
started scratching it.

When the beast decided he’d had enough, a
decision that came rather suddenly, he flipped his head around and
chomped lightly on to her hand. He didn’t bite hard enough to cause
any pain, just in the sort of playful way that a not overly
well-behaved dog might. Then he pulled back.

“So what are we going to do now? You’re
definitely not going to be able to make the jump back,” Ivy
said.

Mott “sat,” which was a far more complex and
curvy motion for a creature with eight legs and a serpentine spine,
and raised his head high. The sound that croaked forth couldn’t
have possibly cut through the wind and waves to reach the fort, but
even to Ivy’s untrained senses there was something more to it than
what she was hearing. As quickly as it had begun, the croaking
ended. Mott then wrapped a few more coils around one of Ivy’s legs.
From the chill of his body as it touched her, even through her
clothes, Ivy reasoned he was after some warmth. She managed to
kneel beside him, shuddering a bit as his coiled tail squirmed
before sliding free, and then threw her cloak around him. Clearly
appreciative, he released another low, contented churr that made
Ivy feel oddly pleased with herself.

The pair waited and watched for a time, but
within a few minutes, Mott’s head perked up and his alert green
eyes locked on to a slow moving form approaching along the rocky
island between them and the fort. As the form drew nearer, Mott
became incrementally more excited.

The form, moving a bit unsteadily, revealed
itself to be Turiel, though despite the mere hours that had passed
since their clash, the sorceress looked
years
older. Her
single streak of gray hair had thickened to pepper most of her
head. Lines cut deep into her face, and her movements were stiff
and uncomfortable. As she passed the lifeless creatures, they
stirred briefly, mechanically shuffling out of her way before
dropping down again.

Turiel stopped at the opposite side of the
bridge and gazed across at Ivy. She looked weary, both physically
and emotionally. Rather than the anger or distrust Ivy would have
expected, her eyes were twisted with distant, helpless sorrow.

“So you’ve returned,” she said.

Though the woman made no attempt to raise her
voice, it reached Ivy effortlessly. The sound of the waves and the
gusts seemed to part around it, allowing it to reach her ears with
crystal clarity.