The Sorcerer's Return (The Sorcerer's Path) (14 page)

Duchess Mellina grimaced.
“Well, I am glad you saved that part of your speech for closed doors. Should the people hear it, they would likely flee in terror.”

“
And they would get to witness the death of our species before they too were found and crushed.” Azerick pulled a book from his satchel. “This is the training plan I devised. It details what I want and what I hope to accomplish by doing so. General, I meant what I said about my opinion of your battle prowess. If you see ways to improve upon what I have written, I will certainly welcome your input. I will warn you now, it is brutal in training and execution, but that is what is necessary.”

“We will do what we must.
When will you speak with Jarvin?”

“I sent a courier yesterday. You should have issued him a license to use the Blackguard’s relay stations.”

“Yes, the short young man.”

“I expect him to reach the capital the day after tomorrow. Allow four days for a reply
, and I expect to engage him and his council within the week.”

“Good luck with that lot. They are twice as arrogant and prickly as mine are.
” Mellina stood and approached her daughter and son-in-law. “I had best get busy then, and I am sure you have plenty to do as well.” The Duchess hugged Miranda and then Azerick. “Do not go off and get yourself killed again. After all this, I cannot afford another state funeral.”

“I will do my best,” Azerick replied as he returned
Mellina’s embrace.

Miranda turned
and looked to Azerick as they walked the halls on their way out. “Darling?”

“It would seem your mother and our es
teemed general has become close.”

“Can you imagine if they marry? That will make for some very interesting dinner conversations.”

“I expect so, but I will return to the abyss before I ever call him Father.”

***

Duncan spent several sleepless days and nights in the archives in search of something to support Azerick’s claim. He did not doubt the human’s concern and the belief they were all in danger, but dwarves needed more than belief to act. They were a people of hard facts, and that was what he needed to find before taking it to the clan heads.

Dwarven studies were as physically taxing as mental. He had spoken true when he told Azerick dwarves kept anything worth writing forever. Some books and scrolls were printed on ve
llum, their characters permanently burned into the skin where ink would absorb and fade over time. Many of them, almost all the most important words, were carved and etched in acid upon sheets of paper-thin gold or slices of stone. A moderately-sized book could weigh upwards of a hundred pounds. The big ones took two or three dwarves to tote about. A dwarven library was the only kind a studious person brought a lamp and wheelbarrow.

It had not taken long to find the complete story of The Great Revolution. The dwarves all remembered Dundalor Ironforger and
the suits of armor he crafted to fight the dragons, but no one he knew was aware of the Guardians and their battle with the Scions. What he discovered made his blood run cold.

Being a citizen of high-standing, Duncan was able to call for a meeting of the clans. He spent the next three days drawing up plans for war machines to fight a battle unlike any in their history
while waiting for the assembly to gather. He burned his designs into velum until his eyes blurred to the point he could not continue.

On the day of the assembly, Duncan stood in The Hall of Equals with his wheelbarrow laden with the golden archive and dozens of battle plans and war machine diagrams burned onto velum.
A hundred dwarves from the ten clans engulfed him on three sides of the amphitheater-like hall.

“Duncan Runecarver, the clans have agreed to gather for your call to emergency assembly. We will hear you now,” the Master of Assembly formally declared.

“Thank you all for hearing me. I bring to you word of impending war,” Duncan stated without preamble.

“Who
is foolish enough to consider assaulting us in our mountain?” a clan leader called out above the grumbling voices.

“We all remember The Great Revolution, but we do not recall it in its entirety. There was another battle being waged while we were fighting the dragons alongside the humans and lower races. While we thought the elves remained detached from the frontline bloodshed, they were in fact
battling the greater foe.”

“What foe was greater than the dragons and their slave army?” another dwarf asked.

“Before the creation of the gods we know now, there were others called Scions. These gods controlled the dragons. It is against these Scions that the elves created creatures to be used as weapons against them. The elves and Guardians banished the Scions and stood guard over their prison. But now the Guardians are dead, and the Scions are soon to escape to enact a terrible revenge upon us all.”

“A fanciful tale. Who brought you this story of doom
, and what do they want of us?” a speaker called down derisively.

“You have heard of the young sorcerer called Azerick, named Dwarf Friend, for his act
s of valor and contributions to our people?” Several bearded heads bobbed up and down while those who heard of the human second and third-hand through the dwarven grapevine gave little more than a twitch. “Through a series of incredible events only a wizard could possibly find himself in, Azerick had a brief stint in the abyss where he spoke with the goddess Sharellan. The goddess sent him to the remaining Guardian, who showed him the face of the enemy before she died. He is now working to gather the races together in an alliance to save us all from annihilation.”

Co
arse grumbling and arguing instantly filled the hall and more than one fistfight broke out. So far, the meeting was going much like any other assembly, which made Duncan hopeful of convincing his kin of the threat they faced. Once the individual disputes were settled and the assembly returned to their seats, one of the clan heads returned to the point of discussion.

“We know how humans are
prone to flights of fancy, and wizards are all crazy. You would have us gear for war on the tale of a boy wizard? Friend or no friend of the dwarves, I’ve eaten rocks easier to digest than this story.”

Duncan opened the book of gold resting in his wheelbarrow. “I quote from the writings of Ferrous Lorekeeper:
‘
Even as the blood of our fellows in battle turned the rivers red, I met with Tuharhuln Oakroot, new king of the elves, thrice removed from the throne as his mother, father, and grandsires have given their lives in battle against the gods called Scions. They succeeded in banishing the Scions but feared their prison was insufficient. Tuharhuln bade me to immortalize this history, knowing the forgetfulness of humans and the easily distracted ways of the elves. So I etch this history upon pages of gold to serve as a permanent reminder that our revolution has not achieved victory, but only a temporary cessation in battle. It is up to we dwarves to remember for all the races and to never let our vigilance falter.
”

Duncan looked up from the golden tome and struck the assembly with
a gaze like a hammer forging steel. “We have failed to maintain our vigilance. We have allowed ourselves to forget, and now we find ourselves woefully unprepared to do our part. Such laxity is an embarrassing affront to dwarfkind. We have become as fanciful as the elves and as forgetful as the humans. It took a human to remind us of our duty; I only hope it shames you all as much as me to motivate us into action.”

“Is there more of these Scions within the lore?”

“There is. Ferrous goes on to advise future generations that the second revolution will be far more savage than the first. During The Great Revolution, the Scions had only the dragons, the slaves too cowardly to stand against them, and themselves to bring to the battle. This time, they will have an army two thousand years in the making to scour the land like a plague of locusts.”

“We can seal the doors, dig deeper, and collapse the tunnels behind us,” a dwarf suggested.

Duncan’s rage boiled to overflowing in an instant. “You speak like a coward and a fool! The Scions raised the Great Barrier Mountains during the Revolution; they can surely bring them down upon us! If we abandon the races, we abandon the only hope we have of surviving. Will you let the few who survive live as slaves to these false gods, or will you pick up hammer and axe and fight to the last breath of the last dwarf as our dignity and honor demands?”

The hall reverberated with the call to arms even as several more fistfights broke out as each clan member laid claim to glor
y well before the first axe was swung.

“What would you have of us, Duncan?” the Master of Assembly asked as the ruckus died down.

“This will be a battle unlike any we have faced and on a scale none can imagine.” Duncan handed out his diagrams to the clan heads and chief engineers. “I have some ideas of war machines to better our odds, but it relies heavily upon rune lore. I need you all to search within your clans for those showing the propensity for rune carving and send them to me. When we march into battle, we will make the world shake beneath our boots and remind man, elf, and gods what it means to awaken the mountain!”

***

Azerick checked the arcanum-inlaid runes carved in his laboratory floor against those written in the Codex Arcana for perhaps the tenth time. Finally confident he had everything correct, he fed power into the design. The sigils flared brightly and the floor began to vibrate. The entire room began to thrum with the pulse of a giant beating heart.

A crack appeared
in the floor and quickly spider-webbed out from its center. A small section of the floor buckled upward as if something were burrowing out of the ground and into the room. A round object breached through the stone floor like a creature being birthed, rising as the ground expelled it from its earthen womb.

The
head-sized crystal sprouted from the floor on a stock of polished stone, waiting for its master to command it. Azerick placed his hands upon its glassy surface, closed his eyes in concentration, and fed power into the stone. Even through his closed eyelids, Azerick sensed the change in the light around him. The smells of his lab vanished and the moist, seaside air became dry and sterile.

“
The false Guardian returns. Have you come to plead for mercy?”

Azerick ignored the Scions’ projected thoughts as he pressed his hands against the unending magical barrier in search of weaknesses. It did not take long to find the first one.
He channeled power into the weave, fusing the many broken strands of magic like a fisherman mending a net.

“
It does not want to talk to us. How rude.”

“
It does not want its voice to betray its fear.”

“
How incredibly pointless. Its mind is awash in fear.”

“
At least it has the intelligence to be afraid.”

Azerick continued to repair weaknesses in the barrier even as the Scions bombarded his mind with images of the horrors they were going to inflict upon the races.
Despite his mental defenses, the gods extracted bits of his memories and used them
in a collage of nightmares. Azerick finally finished his work and broke the connection to the Scions’ prison. He slumped down into his chair, physically and emotionally exhausted.

Daebian sat on the floor of his room carefully arranging his tin soldiers into battle formation.
He played alone, like usual, since his new brother was off with Father or practicing with Ellyssa, and he could not stand the banality of children his own apparent age. Most people would see a boy playing with toys, but anyone with respectable military training would see the perfect arrangement of soldiers.

The smaller force stood poised behind barriers of wooden blocks and trenches drawn with chalk. Spearman, cavalry, and archers
were all arrayed in perfect formation against the horde of beads and tokens used to identify the vastly superior enemy army. Five dolls towered over the battlefield, the five great generals of the enemy.

Daebian commanded the two armies to clash but did not touch a single piece. In his head, a dozen different battles played out in a dozen different ways but
all with the same conclusion. Even with the tactical advantage of the smaller army, the power of the five generals and their much larger army resulted in an enemy victory every time.

You have an incredibly keen mind for battle.

Daebian looked up from the floor and stared into the shadowy corner of his room. “Who is there?”

Someone who cares about you.

Daebian looked back at his soldiers. “Only my mother cares about me.”

Your father cares about you.

“No he doesn’t. He only cares about Raijaun and magic. He probably would not care about him either if he did not have magic.”

What you say is true, but I meant your other father.

“You mean the demon. He is not my father.”

He is much more your father than Azerick. I am here while he avoids you in his laboratory, teaching and bonding with your brother.