The D'Karon Apprentice (23 page)

“This is the very threat your military
summoned us to help locate. We must waste no more time,” Myranda
urged. “The nature of this spell allows the D’Karon to travel from
place to place instantaneously. If they truly have access to this
level of mysticism, it will take more than me and Deacon to track
them.”

“You realize that if you are as certain as
you seem to be that we are facing a trained D’Karon, you have as
much as confirmed that an act of war has been committed against our
people,” Grustim said.

“Grustim, if there must be war, there must be
war. But in this moment, there may be people here and in our
homeland who need our help. If you feel the need to take us
prisoner after this, so be it, we will go willingly. This
must
be dealt with
now
.”

Grustim rode his beast in silence for a
moment.

“Very well,” he said. “You will follow me
closely. You will land where I land. If any Tresson people
approach, you will not engage or interact with them. When you have
made your determination of where you believe this spell to have
been cast, we will change our destination at my discretion. Now,
follow. And cease your spell craft. I cannot be expected to fly
properly without the wind in my ears!”

Myranda released her will, and howling wind
washed away their hearing. Grustim leaned low, and not long after,
Garr cut his wings and dove toward a stand of trees a short
distance from a road. Myn followed suit, keeping near enough to
Garr to nearly touch him. Myranda was no stranger to flight on a
dragon’s back, and Myn was quite a skillful flier, but when it came
to the union of human and dragon working as one, Garr and Grustim
were truly on another level. It genuinely appeared that every shift
and lean Grustim made was done to help Garr slice through the air
more effectively. Truly the two were better, more precise, and more
maneuverable together than they were apart. They were effectively a
single being.

Nowhere was this more apparent than when they
were landing. Grustim practically stood on Garr’s back as they
neared they ground, setting his feet wide and rocking side to side
as Garr honed his angle between the trees. When the beast touched
down, Grustim absorbed the shock with a roll of his legs, keeping
him comfortably atop Garr despite a landing that brought him from
flight to a standstill in little more than a step. It would have
been simple enough to dismiss the act as taking an opportunity to
show off, but in this case it was necessary. They’d chosen a
clearing barely large enough for a dragon to slip through the
canopy, let alone for it to slow itself to a stop in the
traditional way.

Myn attempted to imitate the feat. With two
riders, each untrained, even if she’d been flawless in her
execution, it would have been problematic. She was far from
flawless. The result was a somewhat graceless stutter step and
skidding grind that nearly caused the dragon to fall to her side.
Myranda held tight and managed to remain seated. Deacon, still
consumed by the task of identifying the three points of magic that
lingered in his mind’s eye, was not so lucky. He was sent tumbling
from her back and rolled across the ground into a bush. In a less
dire circumstance, Myranda would have had to stifle a laugh. As it
was she simply hopped down and helped him to his feet.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Myn swung her head around, breath still
heaving from the effort of flying, and looked Deacon up and down,
flicking her tongue at a raw patch on his cheek where his face had
met the ground.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine,” he said, ignoring the
trickle of blood from the scrape in favor of collecting his notes
and stylus and swiftly mending any tears in the pages.

Myranda stroked her hand across his cheek,
wiping away the injury as effortlessly as one might brush away some
dust. She looked to their escort.

Grustim was still atop Garr, having stepped
up the stout dragon’s neck to the top of his head, and rumbled a
command. Garr craned his neck, allowing his Rider to rise up above
the cover of the trees to scan the horizon.

“Listen closely,” he called down, “we have
certainly been seen. A Dragon Rider so far south is a rare sight.
No one seems to be coming yet, but the locals will be concerned and
will likely investigate. Whatever needs to be done needs to be done
before they arrive.”

“Yes, yes. I agree entirely,” Deacon said
with the frazzled tone of someone frantically attempting to hang
tight to the last lingering details of a fast-fading dream.

He held a book out before him and then took
both hands away from it, leaving it to drift before him while he
sought out a second from his bag and pulled it open. As he riffled
the pages, first countless volumes of notes swept past, then
sketches of every shape and size. Finally maps fluttered by. He
slapped a hand down on a rather crude rendering of the land of
Tressor.

The map, though occupying both pages of the
book, was rather sparsely labeled. The mountains, forests, and
other features of the land were rendered in very broad strokes, and
the names of rivers and cities were largely absent. Only the
regions nearest to the northern border had any real detail. It was
clearly a map drawn up by a military with little recent knowledge
of their enemy.

“Grustim, where precisely are we?” Deacon
said, stepping quickly to Garr’s feet. “Can you show me on this
map?”

When he drew near, Garr released a rattling
warning within his throat, tensing his muscles and digging his
claws into the earth. Almost in reflex Myn released a rumble of her
own, casting a sharp look at her counterpart and taking a
protective step toward Deacon.

Grustim slid down and placed a calming hand
on the neck of his mount. “How can you claim to know where this
spell was cast if you do not know where you are?”

“I know how far it is from here, and in what
direction,” Deacon said.

The Dragon Rider gazed down at the map. “This
is pitiful.”

“We’ve not been able to get a more recent map
of your land yet.”

“Let me see it.”

He ran his gauntleted finger across the rough
page, tracing the edge of a river, then drawing it eastward. “Here.
This is where we are.”

Deacon nodded and marked the map, then dug
into his bag and came up with his egg-shaped casting stone. A
blue-white glow was conjured from within, and the black lines of
the page began to glow a brilliant amber. They traced themselves
beyond the pages of the book, weaving and painting themselves out
into the air to fill out the more familiar mountains and plains of
the land to the north. The map continued to weave itself in light,
until as near an accurate depiction of a full map of the continent
as he could manage hung before them. When he was through crafting
the illustrative illusion, he closed the book and stowed it,
leaving only the conjured image.

“I am quite certain of the distances and
directions. These points are the positions of the portals.” As he
spoke, he dabbed the tip of his stylus in the air above the map,
leaving two points of green light and one point of red. “Red is the
entrance, green are the exits.” He added a final white point,
nearer to the red one. “And this is where we are.”

He shifted his hand and the points dropped
down onto the map, the white one aligning with the position Grustim
had indicated.

“If this spell was the same sort that the
D’Karon had cast, then they cannot simply exit anywhere,” Myranda
said, looking over the map. “They would probably have traveled to
one of the major D’Karon strongholds.”

“It seems likely. Here…” Deacon pointed.
“This point is quite near one of the forts Ether cleared.” He
stirred his fingers, causing the points of light to shift until the
nearest of them rested upon the location of the stronghold. “With
those points known, then this other exit…” His eyes widened.

The point was resting squarely upon Castle
Verril.

“We’ve got to get a message to them,” Deacon
said.

“You left one of your pads in the capital,
didn’t you?” Myranda said.

“Yes! Yes of course,” he said, scrambling for
his bag.

“No. I’ll handle it. Work with Grustim. Find
out where these portals originated,” Myranda said.

She reached into his bag and came up with the
pad. Deacon turned to Grustim.

“Grustim, here. This red point. Is there
anything sensitive or distinct there? Anyone who might need help or
who might have something of mystical value? The D’Karon value
nothing more than mana. They harvest it in any way they can.”

Grustim looked over the conjured map. For the
first time since they had met him, his face hinted at something
more than disinterest and contempt. The wonder of gazing at a
precisely rendered map hanging in the air was not lost on him.

“This would be near the northern edge of the
desert. Not more than a day from here. Well north of our intended
destination.” He gazed at what few landmarks were present on the
near regions of the map. “A small military prison and training
barracks may be there.”

“Better that than a village. We need to get
there as soon as possible. People could be badly hurt. Even if the
D’Karon did not become hostile, the portal closing at the origin
point can be terribly destructive.”

“Can you offer me any evidence of what you
say?”

“If you will take us to this prison…”

“No. I am your escort. My task was to protect
you from my people, and to protect my people from you until such a
time as you had determined if the threat to our land was indeed the
D’Karon. My superiors have left it to my discretion where and how
you are to be taken for the purpose of your investigation. If you
are truly certain that it was the D’Karon, then by rights your
purpose in our land is fulfilled. You have through your own methods
determined that a group of warriors allied with your kingdom has
unleashed weapons upon our land. That is an act of war. If I were
truly permitted to act upon my best judgment, I would take each of
you as prisoners of war.”

Myn thumped her tail against the ground and
huffed a searing breath through her nose, challenging Grustim to
attempt such a thing. Garr adopted a similar posture, going so far
as to hiss actual flame through the nostrils of his helmet.

Grustim grunted an order and Garr hissed
again, now flameless.

“I am not eager to clash with you. Your beast
is clearly devoted to you, and your mystic capacity is evident. And
if blood is to once again be spilled on the field of battle, I do
not wish to be the first to put blade to flesh. I will continue my
mission as assigned for as long as is reasonable. But what you are
asking is that I take you to a facility that we utilize to train
our soldiers. Given your frightening capacity to observe, and to
make much of very little information, that would give you an
incredible opportunity to attain extremely sensitive information.
Unless I can be given a compelling reason to change our course
beyond your intuition, you will not see this place. I shall take
you to a place which I know to be the beginning of a trail, however
cold it may be, and we will follow it through means I can
verify.”

“Grustim, the proof is mystic in nature. It
is evident to us and would be evident to you as well if you had the
expertise to detect it. We were summoned to this task precisely
because of this expertise. If you cannot take our word on this
issue… what would convince you?”

“Show me a boot print. Show me a drop of
blood, a scrap of writing. Show me something I can see, that I can
touch. Give me something to trust besides your word.”

“My word and my thoughts are all that I have.
Why is that not enough for you?”

Grustim’s voice became more rigid, his
expression held firm only through extreme discipline. “Because your
people have been killing mine, and mine have been killing yours,
for longer than either of us have been alive. A dragon sheds its
skin. At times it is dull and hard. At times it is shiny and soft.
But it is born with its teeth and it dies with them. It will always
be ready to blacken you, tear you, devour you if you fail to treat
it with the proper respect for even a moment. A centuries-long
distrust is not repaired in six months of diplomacy. Trust is
earned, and you’ve done nothing to earn mine.”

Myranda handed the open pad to Deacon, her
message scrawled upon the page, and finally raised her voice. “What
if you do it without us?”

“I do not understand.”

“See to the facility without bringing us
along.”

“That would require you to be left unattended
while I was doing so, an even greater abandonment of my
duties.”

“Then what if you contacted anyone else? Send
someone in your stead. What we know is that someone with D’Karon
teachings was in that place, whatever that place might be, and that
one or more of them left that place for our own kingdom. We have
sent word to all of the keepers of these pads, warning them of the
consequences, and that includes your superiors and mine. At any
moment, this pad could provide us with fresh orders—”

“Orders that I have no way of knowing are
genuine,” Grustim said.

“Granted, but our people will be sending
anyone they can spare to contain the threat that may have arisen
within our borders. Please do not let something as simple as
lingering distrust rob your own people of help they might badly
need. I give you my word, we will do anything in our power, follow
any order, grant any request if it will make you comfortable enough
to see to your people now.”

“Our people can see to ourselves. We have
fought D’Karon for the duration of this war.”

“Not like these,” Deacon said. “You have
fought nearmen, cloaks, and dragoyles. Even the spell casters they
deploy do not approach the level of prowess that fueled the spells
we have detected. I have only known the generals to cast spells
such as these. The generals
created
and
fueled
the
D’Karon you faced. They manufactured the army that held you at bay
for all of these years. And they did it all while keeping control
of the entire Northern Alliance.”