The D'Karon Apprentice (51 page)

“Not at this time,” Ether said.

“Why not?”

“I am not myself right now.”

“You’re
never
yourself. Why should
that—”

“Now is not the time to try my patience with
your words,” Ether fumed.

“Okay… okay…” Ivy said. She shook her head.
“We’ve got to get word to Myranda and Deacon then. Mr. Celeste is
on the main road. Or he should be…” She gazed out across the land.
“Yes, I think I see him. If you can take me there, we’ll write what
happened in the pad. They’ll see it. They’ll know what to do…”

“Very well,” Ether said.

She shut her eyes, and a moment later her
human form vanished in a burst of swirling wind. She rose into the
air and directed the flow of wind to coil about Ivy, lifting her as
well. In moments she whisked over the stretch of sea and stone
between the fort and the mainland.

Ether set Ivy down by the road, a short
distance from where Celeste anxiously waited. From the looks of
Ivy’s frazzled expression, the short trip from the fort’s island
had not been a pleasant one.

“Ether,” she said, stumbling dizzily toward
Celeste until he caught and steadied her, “I’m afraid of heights,
and I can barely think right now. Don’t you think you could come up
with a better way to carry me than with just
wind
? That was
terrifying!
”

“I have little interest in your comfort. You
are Chosen. You are strong enough to endure such things.”

“Guardian Ether,” Celeste said with a
respectful bow of his head, “it is as always an honor to have you
among us.”

“Yes, it is,” Ether said simply.

“What happened in the fort?” he asked,
addressing Ivy.

“She was reasonable again, at first. But when
Ether was on her way, she started to panic. I think she tried to
share some knowledge with me, but she did it the D’Karon way. She
forced me to know it. It’s still lost in my head at the moment, and
I don’t know if what we need is among the memories she inserted.
Even if it is, I don’t know where to find it.”

“The sorceress used a D’Karon portal to
escape,” Ether explained. “She may be anywhere the D’Karon have
prepared an exit. Any of their forts, and any of a dozen other
places. My own focus is ailing. I do not know that I can detect
where she has gone reliably. Myranda or Deacon may be able to do
so. And they will have to do so quickly. I badly injured the woman,
but she is quite skilled, and quite powerful. She will recover
quickly.”

Celeste pulled the pad from the pack and
readied the stylus. “Tell me what Myranda needs to know.”

#

Myranda sat with her eyes on the infirmary.
The sun had finally slipped below the horizon and the heat had
begun to wane, relieving Myn of her shelter duties. The dragon had
gradually inched farther away from her and Deacon, rummaging
through the remnants of the smoldering stable. Garr had taken to
rummaging as well, poking his snout and dragging his claws through
the rubble of the keep. Every few minutes he pulled something from
the stone and set it aside, huddling close over the growing mound
of recovered items.

Despite the curious actions of the dragons,
Myranda couldn’t tear her attention away from the tent. The sounds
of pain… the sounds of
torture
… had long ago ceased. Now she
was stricken with the thoughts of what exactly Grustim had done,
and what had become of Commander Brustuum…

Myn finally seemed to find what she was
after, tugging a stone from the burnt structure and trotting back
to the others. She dropped the stone on the ground and settled
beside Myranda again. As the dragon lapped her tongue lightly over
the smooth stone, Myranda finally pulled her mind away from the
tent and looked to her friend’s new toy.

“Where did you get that, Myn?” she asked.
“That doesn’t look like the sort of stone one would find in the
desert.”

The dragon glanced at her, then quickly at
Garr. Her glance probably wasn’t intended as an answer, though it
left little doubt. Instead she seemed to be glancing to ensure that
the male hadn’t heard the question, or at least not seen to what
Myranda was referring. Satisfied that he’d not noticed, Myn quietly
plucked the stone and crept around to between Myranda and Garr,
such that when she placed it down again, her body blocked his view
of it.

Myranda grinned, momentarily forgetting the
weight upon her mind.

“Myn… did
Garr
give that to you?” she
whispered.

The dragon gave another sly glance toward him
before licking away the last of the char that had collected on the
stone. Myranda smiled warmly.

“It’s so nice to see you getting along with
one of your own. Perhaps, when all of this is through and the peace
is more secure, we can bring Garr and Grustim up to visit us. New
Kenvard isn’t so very far from the border,” she said, scratching
Myn on the brow. “Deacon and I invite friends and family. There’s
no reason you shouldn’t invite some of your own.”

Myn tipped her head into the scratching and
shook the ground with her rumbling contentment, much to the concern
of the soldiers. Despite the decline of the sun, they had opted to
remain near the wall, starting small fires and preparing their
shares of the provisions.

“Myranda,” Deacon said, suddenly fumbling
with his bag.

It was the pad, the tiny bell rattling with a
muted sound while trapped within his pack. He pulled it free. The
cover quickly flipped open, and the stylus scrawled out words in a
large, careful hand.

“‘Turiel escaped. May have shared knowledge
with Ivy. May have taken knowledge from Ivy. Used a portal. Must
find,’” Deacon read aloud. “Your father is extremely efficient with
his writing.”

“If she used a portal, why didn’t we sense
it?” Myranda asked.

“She used
two
portals here. This
fortress is drenched with the residual aftereffects of D’Karon
magic. Passively detecting the distant use of a new spell of the
same kind would be like happening to spot a candle we didn’t know
to look for a half a field away while staring through a bonfire,”
Deacon said. “In hindsight, it would have been wise for at least
one of us to remain remote to this place… though I suppose Grustim
did
make it clear that we were not to leave his
supervision…”

While Deacon reasoned his way back through
the course of events that had led them to miss this crucial piece
of information, Myranda snatched up her staff and set its head in
her lap. For a man who, when he had a mind to, had crystalline
mental clarity and impenetrable focus, Deacon’s propensity to allow
his mind to wander was astounding.

He was, however, entirely correct about the
stain that the D’Karon magic had left. In her mind’s eye, it hung
all around them, like a thick fog choking out the healthy, vibrant
glow that existed in those places untouched by their influence. To
see past it, she had to deepen her concentration and expand her
view beyond the stain. It was precisely the sort of magic she’d
promised not to deploy within Tresson borders, but in light of
recent disastrous events she very much doubted there was any merit
in restraining herself any longer. At this point the only thing
that mattered to her was preventing
further
disaster. And
this woman, this Turiel, brought disaster with her everywhere she
went, and her stated goal was to return to this world the
greatest
disaster that had ever befallen it.

The key difficulty of tracking movement
through such means was that the spell left massive, unmistakable
scars wherever the caster
departed
. The marring where they
arrived
was barely a ghost of an echo by comparison. The
mind’s eye, no matter how rigidly one trained it, was drawn to the
most substantial disruptions, making glimpses of the lesser ones
fleeting and imprecise. It was to the north, certainly. And it was
closer to the west coast than the east.

Then, all at once, it snapped into clarity.
Deacon, having reached the end of his line of reasoning had taken
his own gem in one hand and
her
hand in the other. Given
time to steady the storm in her mind, Myranda would certainly have
reached this same state. Deacon, perhaps even more quickly, could
have done the same. But together it seemed effortless. For a
precious moment Myranda allowed herself to bask in the strength and
serenity that came not from her, and not from him, but from the
pair united. It was something that this purpose or that always
seemed to push aside, but there was no doubting that the two were
perfectly attuned, matched together on a metaphysical level, and in
a way that she had too often taken for granted. She resolved, as
soon as the task was done and they and their world were permitted a
moment of peace, to make it clear to Deacon how much it meant both
to have him by her side and for him to have the patience to remain
there when so much else required their attentions.

The moment passed, however, and the gentle
feeling of completion was chased away by the cold truth that their
focus had revealed. Only a single fleck of black was different from
the others, an exit that was not also an entrance. This was the
place that Turiel had arrived but not yet departed, at least by the
same mystic means. It sat at the northern edge of a dim but
strengthening mass of souls. The souls were instantly, chillingly
familiar. It was a place she knew.

As quickly as it had come, the focus was
gone, broken by a voice.

“Duchess Celeste.”

Myranda opened her eyes. Grustim stood before
her. Still affected by the sharpened focus, in the space of a
single moment she saw a thousand telltale signs of the deeds done
within the infirmary. Flecks of blood, not his own, smeared his
hands. The depressions left by cords wrapped tight around them
still lingered across his palms. Most of all, there was the look in
his eyes… Torture left a stain on the soul just as black and just
as deep as the one D’Karon magic left on the world.

“I am afraid Commander Brustuum cannot tell
us precisely where Turiel first arose. He does not know. She was
certainly
fostering this keyhole you’ve spoken of, but it is
also certain that she first arose some weeks ago, and that she came
from a place far deeper in the Southern Wastes than we first
believed. She’d traveled from there to a nomadic tribe near the
west coast, and Brustuum’s men captured her there and sequestered
her here over a month ago.”

“Deacon, you stay here and work with him,”
Myranda said, climbing to her feet. “If you can get close to the
keyhole, do it. We’ll all work on finding its precise location. The
nearer you are, the more quickly you can tend to it.”

“Certainly,” Deacon said. He began to dig
through his bags to find a certain book. “Grustim, can you show me
on a recent map—”

“Wait. Duchess, why assign this task to
him?”

“I have to leave.”

“Why?”

“Because Turiel is in New Kenvard,” she said,
agony hardening her voice.

“You know this? That she is there, and that
she is still there?” Grustim asked.

“She opened a portal to New Kenvard not more
than a few minutes ago,” Deacon explained.

“Then deliver a message to the local
defenses,” Grustim advised.

“I shall begin the message immediately,”
Deacon agreed.

“Regardless, I will be there to help them,”
Myranda said.

“You do not have
permission
to leave.
There is work to be done here,” Grustim said.

Myranda was beside Myn, readying to climb
onto her back. She turned to Grustim. “Grustim, when I was six
years old, I watched my city be overrun and my people destroyed.
For years I thought it was your people who were responsible. I
later learned it was the D’Karon. It remained in their grip until
the end of the war, and since then I have been doing all I can to
restore it. And at
this moment
the woman who brought the
D’Karon to our world has set foot there. It is my home. I will
not
allow harm to come to New Kenvard. Not again.”

“Even with Myn to carry you, you are
days
away,” Grustim reminded her. “There is no telling where
she will be by the time you arrive. And even if you were
hours
away, you are suggesting that I allow a member of the
Northern Alliance to ride a dragon through the skies of my land
unguided and unwatched? You have proved yourself to be honorable
and trustworthy, Duchess, but what you are asking must not be
allowed.”

“Grustim, I apologize deeply, but I am not
suggesting and I am not asking. If I can keep my home safe, I will.
If I can be there to heal the damage that is done, I will. This is
something I must do.” She climbed onto Myn’s back. “You will not
stop me.”

Grustim turned to his former mount. Garr was
standing among the rubble, watching intently as the exchange grew
more heated. He stepped forward. Myn turned. The two dragons locked
their gazes. Not a growl or roar was exchanged. Not a wing or tail
twitched. There was only the stare, the silent measurement of the
other.

When the decision came, it was clear to even
a novice in the ways of dragons precisely what decision was made.
Garr’s tense stance eased, he shifted his gaze to Grustim in what
might have been shame and might have been defiance, and then he
finally sat. There was no fear, no intimidation. He wasn’t backing
down from a challenge or bowing to a superior opponent. He simply
chose that in this moment, in this instance, this dragon and her
rider should be left to their task.

Myranda didn’t linger, nor did she gloat. She
looked first to Grustim.

“If, when we are through, you feel justice is
deserved, then justice will be served. You have my word.” Her eyes
turned to Deacon. “Be safe. I’ll return as soon as I can.”