The D'Karon Apprentice (29 page)

To reach their current perch, the carriage
and its escort had first crossed a fifty-foot-long bridge to reach
a roundish stone island large enough to comfortably fit a cottage
if someone were mad enough to build one there. From there they’d
crossed another thirty-foot-long bridge to a much larger plateau.
It was just a bit wider than the first island, but easily miles
long, forming a strip of stone that led almost perfectly
perpendicular to the shore. It was an elevated road of sorts,
connected via a final bridge to the final island, which was home to
the fort. They’d stopped a few dozen paces shy of this last
bridge.

Ambassador Krettis eyed the bridges they had
crossed to get this far.

“I must say… I am impressed by your
construction skills. These bridges seem sturdy, and yet they are
still but wood and rope. I would think this stiff wind and moisture
would turn even the finest bridge to a rotten and splintered mess
in no time.”

“We build these bridges as we build ships,
both rope and planks coated with pitch to ward off rot. I’m sure
your own builders do the same,” Ambassador Celeste said.

“Perhaps… I suppose I’ve never considered it.
Most of the times I’ve crossed bridges I’ve not been so…
aware
of the consequences of their failure.”

The gap that separated the long island from
the fort was only a dozen feet, and the bridge that spanned it was
as wide as the island itself. Beyond it lay a short strip of stone
courtyard, then the low, rectangular structure of the fort itself.
It was large. A small village could fit beneath its flat roof, and
it occupied almost the entire island. What had not been covered by
the simple stone building was home to an odd assortment of plants.
There were a few sturdy northern pines and oaks, but joining them
were shrubs and trees from all over the north. Some even had
remnants of the broader leaves and smoother bark of Tresson plants.
Most had withered and died long ago, the only evidence of their
former lushness lingering as shriveled leaves encased in ice like a
display piece in a museum. Now husks of trees stood dead throughout
the courtyard. The remnants of gnarled vines clung to some
stretches of the fort’s windowless walls, and thorny skeletons of
bushes stood beside the entrance like a grim warning. How such an
assortment of flora had been assembled, and why it had been planted
in a place that couldn’t be expected to support much of it, was a
curiosity.

“Such a strange place…” Krettis said.

Her earlier insistence that she be allowed to
see the D’Karon facility had eroded somewhat, and for the moment
she was content to observe from beside the carriage rather than
following Ivy as she stalked toward the fortress itself.

“We call them the river stones,” Celeste
said, his eyes locked on Ivy as she stepped carefully onto the
ice-crusted bridge. “For a day’s travel in either direction one can
find such islands stretching off into the sea. Some house sea forts
to guard against invasion. Most are too scattered to be bridged as
these have.”

“Yes… I’m sure you are quite proud of your
land’s natural beauty,” Krettis said. She’d managed to voice the
final word with an almost surgically precise level of irony. “But I
was speaking more of the structure. These plants did not find their
way here on their own. I see a Taarsin cottonwood, or what is left
of one. I can’t imagine it chose to grow here.”

“General Demont was a collector of such
things. He was fascinated by plants and animals. I am told that
early in his tenure, when he still had troops under his direct
command, he would use them almost exclusively to gather samples of
the wildlife and plantlife from across the kingdoms.”

“An odd predilection for a military man.”

“He was no more military than you, Ambassador
Krettis. Like most of the D’Karon generals, the title was simply a
means to an end, a way to exert authority in a time when the war
was all that mattered.”

“And yet you followed them.”

“As I said, war was all that mattered. Your
people were strong. If we were to survive, we needed their troops.
Those troops came at a price. We paid dearly for the aid the
D’Karon rendered.”

He turned to the troops and the carriage. The
soldiers were uneasy. A seasoned warrior knew a place of battle
when he or she saw it, and this fort reeked of spilled blood. Even
the ambassador had the cold, focused stare of someone expecting
violence.

“Let us get this carriage turned around,”
Ambassador Celeste said. “Escorts, eyes on the fort and all be
ready to move.”

“Turning the carriage?” the ambassador said.
“Surely you do not intend for us to leave without Ambassador
Ivy.”

“No,” he said, ushering her aside so that the
carriage driver could begin the complex maneuvers necessary to
pivot on the relatively narrow island. “But if the time comes to
move, I want to be able to move quickly.”

“What manner of threat could this place offer
if you have disabled and destroyed any remaining D’Karon troops and
technology?”

“Such was our aim. And so we believed we had.
But as I’m sure your troops can attest, the D’Karon are not so
easily dispatched.”

Krettis pulled her cloak a bit tighter and
squinted against the sea spray. “The fort is a large one, but not
so large that one could hide a regiment of soldiers for months.
What surprises might be found?”

“Demont was the man responsible for crafting
the creatures so often wielded by the D’Karon. Many such beasts are
small enough to be missed but still large enough to be a threat.
And the fort is larger than it seems. The D’Karon tended to dig
deep for their forts. It may well fill the whole of this island, or
even beyond.”

“Wouldn’t the lowest levels of such a
fortress flood?”

Celeste turned back to the fort. “Perhaps.
Perhaps by design.”

#

Ivy shuddered and released a shaky breath as
she approached the door of the fortress. She knew that the icy
sensations rushing through her, growing with each step, had little
to do with the wind and moisture. This was a D’Karon fort.
Demont’s
fort. There were dark spells at work on such
places. One could hope that such enchantments had withered and died
without his oversight, but hope was a terrible defense against such
horrid creatures as she knew the D’Karon to be.

The one heartening thing she’d observed as
she approached was the state of the door. The massive wooden planks
that made up the fortified entryway were splintered and shattered.
Where they still hung weakly from their bulky hinges, they were
blackened and charred. Ivy smiled. It was Ether’s handiwork. The
shapeshifter had scoured the Northern Alliance in the months
following the war’s end, and few things were more devastating than
Ether’s wrath when she found something she felt no longer deserved
to exist. She was terrifying when she had reason to be and thorough
to the point of excess in her devastation. If she had been here,
then it was likely the inside would bear only rubble and ash.

Ivy flicked her ears and twisted them to the
yawning doorway. Somewhere, deep inside, she’d heard something. It
could have been the crackle of ice dislodged by the wind… or it
might have been the skitter of feet. Ivy turned to a dead tree not
far from the door and bounded up to it. With a firm grasp and a
quick twist, she heaved at one of the lower branches and managed to
tear an arm-length portion of it free. A club had served her well
enough in the past. In the absence of the blades she’d come to
embrace as her weapon of choice, it would do.

To her great relief, Ivy found that the
inside of the fort was not entirely dark. Ether’s typical level of
fury had caused a long section of the roof to collapse, filling the
center of the largely vacant floor with pale light. It also left
the floor glittering with ice where the spray had settled. She took
a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the place. It was musty and
damp. Moldy cloth and rotten wood were the most prevalent scents.
Beneath them a sharp, acrid smell asserted itself. It was strange,
unnatural, but not unfamiliar. That smell was left behind at many a
battlefield during her days fighting these creatures. It was the
syrupy black muck that most D’Karon beasts used for blood. That it
had been spilled was again a relief. Ether had found and destroyed
some monster or another, but knowing that did little to quell the
bone-deep anxiety and the terrible memories that the scent brought
rushing out of her mind. Joining those scents was the smoky,
charred sting of Ether’s aftermath and… something else… something
warm and alive, but unlike anything she’d smelled before.

Ivy tightened her grip on her makeshift
weapon and cast her eyes around. Stone columns held up what
remained of the roof. Here and there a pile of stony fragments or a
scrap of leathery hide marked the remains of what had briefly been
a D’Karon beast before Ether had snuffed it out. No hint of the
source of the living scent. She licked her lips and swallowed hard.
She was going to have to go deeper.

Her footsteps echoed in the vacated hall.
Unlike the two other forts of Demont’s that Ivy had the great
misfortune of having visited, this one was not cluttered with bars
and walls to hold various specimens. She approached the stairway at
the far side of the floor and gazed down. Again she saw that it was
not entirely dark, though this time it came as a source of concern
rather than relief. Just barely detectable to her sensitive eyes
was the gleam of violet light. She hesitated.

“Those gems… don’t tell me there are still
gems left here,” Ivy said aloud.

When she moved again, it was with great
caution. Her eyes widened to take in every scrap of the dim light,
her ears darted madly at the source of every echo, and her nostrils
flared to draw in the scent of her target, whatever it might be.
Ivy rounded the turn of the massively wide staircase and moved to
the next level. Now without a direct opening to the outside, the
splashing waves and wailing wind could be heard only as a dull hiss
filtered through thick stone. Her eyes adjusted to the indigo glow,
which she could now see was coming not from full crystals but the
shattered fragments of them. Again Ivy grinned. If there was
anything Ether hated more than D’Karon beasts, it was D’Karon
magic. Their gems burned the elemental terribly. Naturally she
would have smashed them. Now all that remained of the horrid
things, which had formerly been mounted on the walls, was a dusting
of fine crystal slivers across the floor. They created just enough
light to give the shadowy structures of the floor enough form for
her to navigate. This level was marginally more crowded, a few
broken walls marking where holding cells had been. The air was also
thicker with spilled blood and charred flesh. Ether had been quite
busy. But there was no doubt now that there was something alive.
Without the wind pouring through the damaged door and roof, the
trail was undisturbed, and the details of the scent were bright and
clear in her mind. Clarity, however, did not dispel confusion in
this case. She could detect canine elements, but also traces of
goat and reptile and even human. It smelled like a small menagerie
had been wandering through this place, but the scents were
commingled and always present in the same mixture. Ivy didn’t know
what it meant, but she couldn’t imagine the answer would be a
pleasant one.

Ivy twisted her ears about and gazed across
the floor. She was alone on this level, that much was certain. As
her eyes became more and more adjusted to the low light, they were
able to discern something chilling in the arched doorway of the
stairs at the end of the floor. The light was brighter there… and
the shadows were moving. She stepped lightly toward the stairs,
careful not to make a sound. Each step allowed her to make out more
details. A brighter light came in from the floor below, and as it
shifted from side to side, it painted shadows across the rear wall
of the stairwell. Steeling herself, Ivy began to descend, stopping
when she reached the landing so she could peer around the bend.

Her eyes widened. Something was there, though
seeing it did little to answer the question of what exactly it was.
It was a jackal head perched at the end of a serpentine neck and
body, skittering about on eight clawed spider legs and flapping
black feathered wings. In its mouth was a fist-sized chunk of
fairly intact D’Karon crystal, which it used as a makeshift torch
to investigate the darker corners of a floor that had at least
some
relatively intact remains of D’Karon beasts.

In the brighter light, Ivy could see stony
wolves and small, strangely smooth dragon-like beasts. The wolves
at least were just as she’d remembered them, a rare but familiar
part of the D’Karon arsenal. The other beasts looked like
dragoyles, but they weren’t much larger than the wolves, and their
hides were much smoother than Ivy remembered from the dragoyles
she’d fought. Their claws were also stretched with filmy fins.

The jackal-headed curiosity was clearly
intrigued by the most complete example of these new dragoyles, as
it was holding the gem close and sniffing at the beast. It sampled
the scent with the excited, rapid sniffs of a puppy confronted with
a new toy. Then, in a motion that was almost terrifying in its
speed, the beast raised its head and twisted it aside, turning to
the door and locking its eyes on Ivy.

She gritted her teeth and fought the urge to
run, though a flutter of blue aura stirred around her as her fear
began to leak through to the surface. The aura flickered again when
the jackal beast skittered toward her. It moved in a darting
zigzag, sweeping across the floor as a blur and coming to a stop a
few paces away.

“Stop!” Ivy warned, her voice echoing through
the fort.