Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (12 page)

“To speak of monsters, that is a very big bird indeed.” She pointed at the slumbering dragon. “I have my doubts about your high mage’s ability to tame him. Anyway, I still fail to see why you think a spell created for birds could possibly work on a dragon. They may both have wings, but can you not see dragons have six limbs to the bird’s four? To say nothing of their intelligence. Our warhawks have been bred for intelligence for millenia, but even though my Eveanor understood my commands, he could not speak, and neither did he reason.”

Laurent, one of the younger battlemages, overheard them and joined their conversation. “As strange as it seems, Lady Everbright, the bird and the dragon share a common ancestor. Maupertuis, who I myself consider to be the greatest of the immortels this academy has ever known, explained most convincingly in his writings how birds, lizards, and dragons all came into being from natural processes and from a single origin. One might go so far as to say that, in a certain viraisonique sense, a bird is merely a lizard that is capable of flight, or that a dragon is nothing more than extremely large bird capable of speech.”

“One might go so far? Even to say that a lizard is a flightless bird?” Theuderic said with a smile. “So, is the peacock more truly a colorful crocodile, or shall we say that a crocodile is nothing more than an ill-tempered peacock?”

“Neither is true,” Laurent said. “It is merely that chance produced by an innumerable multitude of individuals, and a small portion of this multitude found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs. However, it was far more commonly the case that the parts were not harmoniously arranged and there was neither fitness nor order. Of these latter examples, all have perished. Just as animals lacking a mouth could not live, those lacking reproductive organs could neither breed nor perpetuate themselves. The animals we see today are but the smallest part of what blind fortune has produced, and they all stem from a common source.”

Lithriel threw back her head and emitted a piercing peal of laughter. “Oh, how beautifully you put your nonsense,” she told the mage.

“Nonsense?” Laurent said. Theuderic was glad the boy was so young, otherwise he might have expired from apoplexy. His face was as red as a beet. “It’s not nonsense at all!”

“Of course it is, you silly child ,” Lithriel said. She was eighty-six years old, and she naturally considered young men in their twenties to be children, as elves of that age truly were. But since her appearance was that of a very tall, very slender eighteen year-old girl, her contemptuous treatment of the prideful young mages seldom went over well. “Were you there?”

“Well, no, of course not! It was long ago!”

“Was this imaginative gentleman, this seigneur Maupertuis—was he there?”

“No, but—”

“Was any Man there at all?”

“No, but that’s the whole point of the common ancestry!” Laurent was speaking rapidly now, attempting to forestall another question. It didn’t work. Lithriel simply leaned forward and placed one long, slender finger across the young mage’s lips. His eyes widened and he blushed, but his mouth stayed closed and he held his tongue.

“I was not there either. But my people were, and I have read the records of those times. Neither man nor orc nor goblin existed in those days. There were trolls, of course, for they are a very ancient race, even older than the elves. But the dragons did not come about by chance, as your beloved Maupertius thinks. They were created by the people who came before. I think in your tongue you would call them the ascendants. They were great masters of magic. They had skills far beyond your Academie or even our own Collegium Occludum. It was ascendants upon whom the Witchkings patterned themselves, and it was their attempt to become ascendants themselves that drove them to madness and fell deeds.”

“Will you three shut up?” someone snarled at them.

Theuderic whirled around to snarl back at the voice, until he realized it was one of the immortels who had spoken.

“Yes, of course. My apologies, seigneur.”

Lithriel elbowed him, and he could see she was stifling a laugh. He didn’t quite understand why, but the older and more crotchety a mage was, the more amusing she found him. He was relatively certain that it had something to do with elvish longevity, but precisely what she found so funny about the old men was still a mystery to him.

“seigneur de Segraise is beginning the spell,” someone whispered.

In the crystal, Theuderic could see that the haut magicien was beginning to move his arms. He appeared to be speaking as well. Sound did not project through the crystal, so it wasn’t entirely clear if he was actually chanting the incantation or not, but the general consensus in the room was that he had begun.

The five other mages at the location far away didn’t appear to be doing anything. Their job was simply to maintain the circle in which de Segraise and the dragon were bound. If things went very badly awry, only de Segraise, and not the other mages, would come to harm. At least, that was the theory.

Theuderic was of the opinion that five royal battlemages would be far more usefully occupied riding the borders in the west or hunting reavers in the north than serving as living candles in de Segraise’s pentacle, but no one had inquired as to his thoughts on the matter. And he knew very well what hopes the King, and perhaps more importantly, the Red Prince, were placing in this outrageous experiment.

“This will be the difficult part,” Lithriel told him as the small shape of the mage in the crystal lifted both his arms, threw back his head, and shouted. “The rest was all foundation. Now he has to take the forces he drew from earth and sky and apply them to the beast’s mind.”

“Uh, oh,” someone said.

The dragon moved. Its wings, folded across its broad horny-spined back, twitched like a horse’s skin shedding flies. Then it lifted its massive head and turned to stare de Segrais in the face with great yellow eyes that looked more like a cat’s than those of a snake or a reptile.

“No, no,” someone else said, “I think he’s got it under his control now.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” Theuderic didn’t like the way the huge creature was staring at de Segraise, and he really didn’t like what the increasingly rapid motions of the haut magicien’s arms implied. It was hard to be sure, as he couldn’t easily make out his facial expressions, but it looked very much as if de Segraise was panicking and either trying to cast another spell or recast the one that he’d just used.

“I wish we could hear what he’s saying,” Laurent complained.

Then the entire room, Theuderic included, emitted one great collective gasp of horror. For in the crystal, the dragon lunged forward without warning. With one mighty snap, it seized the upper half of de Segrais in its fearsome jaws and tore him in two. His legs fell to the ground in the pool of blood that suddenly surrounded them. Lithriel clapped her hands and shrieked with laughter.

“You see, Sieur Laurent? Dragons aren’t birds! I told you it wasn’t going to work!”

“Lady Everbright!” One of the immortels started to protest her hilarity, but events in the crystal were demanding everyone else’s attention.

After swallowing half its would-be tormentor, the dragon nosed at the bloody remains then attempted to take flight. But the magic circle was also a dome, and the beast couldn’t force its way through the invisible walls that surrounded it above it and on every side. De Segraise might be dead, but the pentacle he’d constructed was an extraordinarily powerful one, with lines connecting each of the five mages standing inside a sorcerous circle made from his own blood to each of the others.

“The circle—it’s holding!” The dragon threw back its head, roaring in frustration, anger, or perhaps even pain, and then tried again, only to be flung back to the ground. The earth appeared to tremble with the impact, and Theuderic fancied he could feel it. But either the earth shaking or the sheer effort of maintaining the dome was troubling the mages of the circle, as two of them swayed and nearly stumbled.

“Don’t break the circle, you fools,” one of the younger mages shouted.

“Easy to say,” an immortel snapped. “Those lads are strong ones. Absorbing that much force will drain you straight off if you’re not careful. Now what is the cursed beast doing?”

The red dragon turned slowly around inside its magical cage, stopping to angrily glare at each of the five mages in turn, as if committing them to memory. Each met the beast’s fearsome gaze without betraying too much alarm, although the legs of the man standing at what from their perspective was the upper left of the pentacle were shaking.

“What on Earth do they expect to do with it now?” Theuderic wondered aloud. “They can’t keep it in there forever, not so long as they’re holding the circle up themselves.”

“It will be tricky indeed,” the immortel who’d earlier hushed him commented. The room quickly fell silent. “Narcisse was prepared for this possibility. We discussed it last week before he left for the mountains. He’ll have told them to have candles ready, I assume very large candles made of some particularly potent fat. Dragon fat would be best, but I doubt they have any of that. In which case he might have elected to use human fat, or now that I think of it, dwarven fat would be even better.”

Theuderic glanced at Lithriel. She was staring at the old sorcerer and looking vaguely disgusted, although whether it was the idea of the candles made from human fat or just the mere mention of dwarves, he couldn’t tell.

In the crystal, he saw each of the five mages withdraw a large candle from a satchel slung beneath his robes. They were huge, nearly as wide as they were tall, and Theuderic guessed that they would last for hours, if not days. And if they were sufficient to keep the magical shield intact, they would burn long enough to give the mages time to vacate the vicinity—probably in five different directions—before the furious dragon could escape.

The watchers at L’Academie held their breath as the mage at the point of the pentacle touched his finger to the candle wick, lighting it with a simple spell, then leaned down to place it in the precise center of the bloody circle in which he’d been standing. He adroitly stepped out of the circle without marring it. The mages around Theuderic applauded, and one or two of the younger ones actually let out a cheer.

“Does it matter if they go widdershins or not?” one of them asked.

“Widdershins?” The elderly immortel scoffed. “What are you, a hedge witch? No, it makes no difference if they proceed with the needles or contraire. It’s a simple matter of placing the candle and leaving the circle intact.

As they spoke, it became apparent that they were not going according to a counter-clockwise sequence. The mage to the first mage’s left followed his example, lit the candle, and stepped out of the circle without incident.

The dragon continued to sit motionless, watching them, and it was impossible to tell if the beast had any understanding of what the five men were doing. But Theuderic didn’t like the way its eyes seemed to be focused on the mage who was exiting the circle, although it was entirely possible that this was nothing more than movement drawing its attention.

Another round of applause filled the room when the third mage successfully extricated himself as well. He must have been aware of the crystal, because he smiled and waved directly at them once he was safely out of the spell.

The fourth mage had just lit his candle when the dragon struck. It leaped directly at him, spreading both its wings and its jaws. Although no sound could be heard through the crystal, the flames that erupted from the dragon’s mouth were terrifying even from afar. Theuderic, his arm around Lithriel, felt her start with alarm. The mage was also startled at the violent onslaught of the massive creature, and despite being protected by the safety of the magic field, he inadvertently stumbled backward out of his blood circle, still holding the lighted candle in both hands.

“No!” screamed several of the mages.

“Oh, the poor fool,” Theuderic murmured to himself. He groaned and shook his head. Next to him, he could feel Lithriel’s shoulders shaking, and even without looking he was certain it wasn’t because she was crying.

With the pentacle broken, the magic shield abruptly vanished, and the clumsy mage was immediately engulfed in the deadly fire of the dragonflames. Extending its wings, the dragon threw back its head, presumably roaring in triumph at its newfound freedom, then took to the skies. For a moment, Theuderic dared to hope it would fly harmlessly off to its lair. But his hopes were dashed when a huge shadow appeared in the crystal, rapidly closing in on one of the fleeing mages.

“Is that Tyecelin?” one of the mages cried in dismay.

It was. But Tycelin was not helpless, and in his courage showed himself to be a true royal battlemage. Staying calm despite his imminent peril and somehow sensing the dragon’s descent, he whirled around and hurled a pair of thunderbolts that struck the beast in the face, not far from its eyes, causing it to veer away from him and retreat higher into the sky.

“At least he has the sense to try
le coup de foudre
instead of
l’enflammer,
” Theuderic commented to no one in particular. Fire spells would be of little use against a beast that breathed it.

The dragon circled around again, and this time when the mage hurled another pair of thunderbolts, it closed its eyes and ducked its massive head. The bolts crackled and sparked impressively as they struck against the horned skull but didn’t even slow the dragon as it bore down upon brave Tycelin. The young mage disappeared in a hellish blast of fire that melted the flesh from his bones. When the flames died down, there was nothing to be seen but charred rocks and something scattered across them that might have been a widely dispersed collection of blackened bones.

The fleeing mages were gone from the picture, as was the dragon.

“I can’t see anything,” someone complained.

Then the view from the crystal abruptly shifted to a vantage point from up in the sky, although Theuderic didn’t see which of the immortels was controlling the spell. The tiny shapes of the mages were now visible, as well as the much larger shape of the angry monster that stalked them.