The D'Karon Apprentice (4 page)

“What was, what is, and what will be,” Ivy
said proudly. “What do you think?”

Myn stepped inside, finding she barely had to
duck to get through the large doorway, and looked over the mural.
Almost immediately she became more interested in the loft directly
above it, craning her neck to peek at the dusty cloth sacks piled
there. She sniffed at one and licked it.

“Oh no you don’t,” Ivy said with a giggle.
She climbed onto Myn’s back and scrambled up her neck to reach the
loft, hopping off to push the dragon’s head away. “Yes they are
potatoes, and yes they are for you, but not
now
. You already
had some.”

“They did fine work, didn’t they?” came a
voice from the door.

Myranda turned quickly to the source, a thin,
tall man, his hair nearly white and a beard to match. He wore a
fur-lined coat of rough but sturdy tailoring. There was something
about his stance that suggested, despite his slight build, he was
tough as oak, and something about his eyes that suggested he’d seen
far more than anyone would ever wish to see.

“Father,” Myranda said happily, hugging
him.

“My little girl,” he said, squeezing her
tightly.

Myranda held him for a long time. Each time
she saw him, the gratitude and relief in having reunited with him
washed over her as if for the first time. She hoped it always
would. She had spent far too much of her life wondering if her
father was still alive to ever take him for granted again.

Her father was only in his late forties, but
to look at him, you might think him to be twenty years older. A
short but remarkable military career, followed by a tour in the
legendary Elites, and then more than a decade in the dungeon
beneath Castle Verril had taken its toll. Nevertheless, his mind
was as sharp now as it had ever been, and once his feet touched the
ruined soil of his former home, his drive to resurrect the place
had been relentless. In all of the Northern Alliance, none wished
to see Kenvard live again more than Greydon Celeste. It was a
blessing, in that the city badly needed him, but a curse in that it
as often as not kept him and Myranda from one another.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon. The men
nearly didn’t finish.”

“I thought you were focusing on clearing the
road to the palace,” Myranda said.

“That is the focus, but with the workers
we’ve got and the state it’s in, it’ll be months before that
happens. Before it can be a city again, it should be a home again.
And any good soldier takes the time to care for his steed.” He
turned to Myn, who had stepped up and was now making her presence
known with an ominous rumble in her throat. “No matter how large
that steed might be.”

Myn settled down comfortably and rested her
chin on the ground, subtly sliding it forward until Myranda and her
father had to step apart to allow it between them.

“Curious creature,” he said. There was a
rigidity to his posture and expression.

It was clear he had not yet become
comfortable being so near a dragon. Myn angled her head slightly
toward Myranda and slid open an eye to look over Greydon, causing
him to tense a bit further. When she released a sigh that was near
enough to a hiss, Greydon reflexively took another step back. The
look of satisfaction on Myn’s face made it clear what she was up
to.

“This is my father, Myn. If you can learn to
tolerate Deacon, you can learn to tolerate him.”

It took a trained eye to read the expressions
of a dragon, but once one had the knack, one could read volumes
into their feelings by a twist of a lip or a shift of a brow. At
the moment, Myn may as well have been muttering under her breath
about how crowded her little circle had gotten and how much better
she’d liked it when it was just herself and Myranda. She relented,
though, curling her head aside to yawn and then tucking it under
her wing for a nap.

Greydon cast a wary eye at the dragon. “I
trust your meeting with the queen went well?”

She looked to him doubtfully. “Come with me,
Father. There is much that needs to be discussed.”

#

At the edge of a yawning chasm stood a figure
of unnatural beauty. It looked to be the form of a woman shaped
from the stone of the mountain itself, and her unblinking eyes
gazed down into the blackness of the abyss below. The place was
known as Lain’s End, and the figure was Ether. She was a guardian
of her world, crafted by the gods themselves for the sole purpose
of turning back the dark menace of the D’Karon. Now that task was
complete, and she was faced, for the first time in eternity, with a
future without purpose. Her path from this point was hers to
choose, but freedom was uncomfortable to her. So she chose not to
look forward. Instead, she looked back, lingering here at the site
of her final meaningful act, and her greatest failure.

For those lucky enough to have seen it,
Lain’s End was a wonder to behold. It was a gouge in the earth,
many miles across and with sides perfectly straight and extending
farther down than the eye could see. The pit was circular, save
where it curved in upon itself to a narrow point sticking up from
the southern side. It was at this point that the Chosen had taken
their stand, joining their strength to push back the cataclysm that
had swallowed nearly all in its path. What it spared from
destruction was perhaps even more awe-inspiring than the pit. Great
sections of land remained suspended in the air, some shifting and
spinning, others stationary. No two of these floating bits of
debris seemed to be the same. Some were lush and green, sprouting
with junglelike plants despite the icy cold. Others looked to have
been formed entirely from precious metals. It was a spectacle
unmatched anywhere in Ether’s world, but it did not interest her.
All she saw when she came to this place was one simple bit of
stone, just beyond the edge of the outcropping. The patch of rock
was stained black with the shadowy remains of a terrible being
known as Bagu. From the center of the silhouette stood a
masterfully crafted sword. And on either side of the remains was a
pair of footprints, etched into the stone itself. It was all that
remained of the mighty warrior known as Lain. He had given his name
to this tragic place, and his life to protect this world.

Ether would linger here for days at a time,
gazing down into the darkness or staring at the sword. Her mind
fixated on what she saw. None of it made sense to her. She was
Chosen. A product of the gods. Unlike Myranda, Myn, or Ivy, she had
taken her place in history as she was
intended
to. She had
not been changed, and she was no replacement. The only one who
could say the same was Lain. The two of them were unequaled in
their world. They belonged together, even if Lain hadn’t yet
realized it. She had allowed him time to come to the proper
conclusion. Both were immortal, after all. They had the luxury of
time… but then he had fallen. He who should have lasted until the
end of time by her side had been taken. There was no sense to it.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And if he could fall, then what of
her? What did her future hold? Until now she had been an immortal
protector of her world, but if she was not immortal, and her world
no longer required her protection… then what was she?

As the sun circled the sky again and her mind
spiraled ever deeper into this confounding riddle, she felt a
flutter in the back of her consciousness. It was difficult to know
how long it had been there. She struggled a bit to identify it.
Lately pulling her mind to order was more difficult than it had
been. After a few moments she heard the flutter become a voice. It
was one of the others… Myranda. The human was calling out to her,
requesting her presence. Ether’s stony eyes narrowed. It was likely
nothing, a ceremony or a celebration or some other mortal
foolishness. Myranda seemed to feel some obligation to involve
Ether in such trivialities. Twice she had been summoned for no
reason other than to be present at a meal shared between Deacon,
Myranda, Ivy, and Myn. Still, this beckoning was rather insistent,
and the interruptions thus far had been mercifully brief. The
sooner she addressed whatever simple task the human had for her,
the sooner she could return to her pondering.

She shut her eyes and allowed her substance
to shift, forgoing the solidity of stone for the fluidity of air.
Her consciousness bound together a loose form of churning winds and
allowed the rest of the mass that had been her body to whisk away
as a powerful gust. Now mixing with the frigid breeze around her,
she drifted skyward and set off to the lands to the south. It was
perhaps not accurate that she
enjoyed
traveling as wind, as
for her it was simply one of her many states of being, but after
spending any reasonable amount of time solid, there was a feeling
of connection to immersing herself in an element that cloaked the
whole of her world. She was completely unrestrained, her body
merely a point of focus, a small part of something that reached the
ends of the globe. If she allowed her focus to slip enough, she
could feel the coolness of the clouds and the prickle of the dry
grass, the solid mountains and the lapping ocean all at once. She
was one, she was all. It was the very definition of freedom, and it
at times was a difficult temptation to resist.

The land rushed by beneath her, cities coming
and going in the time it would have taken to blink an eye. First
was the bustling capital of Verril, nearly recovered from the
damage done during its liberation. Then came the Rachis Mountains.
She swept over fields and tundra, roads and lakes. In the time it
took the sun to cross half the sky, she left most of the Northern
Alliance behind her and approached the broken city of New Kenvard,
where she could feel what remained of her fellow Chosen awaiting
her. Her windy form touched down, scattering the dusting of snow on
the city streets, and began to draw in sufficient substance to
craft something more suitable for interacting with mortals. Bit by
bit she tightened her focus on the air that made up her body, and
it shifted to bone and tissue, each tiny component held in form
through sheer will. Though this too was more of a struggle than it
had been, it was still the work of moments to slip into the shape
that had become almost second nature to her: that of a beautiful
woman. To finish her transition, she conjured a few layers of fine
garments and topped them with a thick robe.

Ether glanced around the streets to see a
handful of people staring in awe at the woman who had appeared from
thin air. She gave them a nod of acknowledgment and stepped up to
the door of a building she felt certain contained her
associates.

“Are you Ether?” asked a tiny voice beside
her.

The shapeshifter looked down to a young boy,
his face positively aglow with excitement.

“Obviously,” Ether said wearily.

“Dana, come here,” warned a young woman, no
doubt the boy’s mother, as she rushed to his side. “Leave Guardian
Ether be.” She looked at Ether. “He’s heard the stories about
you.”

“Can you
really
turn into
anything
?” he asked, bopping up and down and trying to
squirm away from his mother’s grip.

“Given the time and the strength, most things
are within my power,” Ether said.

“Can you turn into a griffin?” he asked.

“If I can turn into nearly anything, then it
should be clear that I can turn into a griffin. I have been one on
more than one occasion.” She looked at the boy’s mother. “Is there
a reason for these questions?”

“He’s curious. When I told him we would be
coming to help rebuild New Kenvard, he said he wanted to meet all
of the Guardians of the Realm. He’s spoken to Myranda and Ivy many
times, and Myranda even let him scratch Myn. But he’s been hoping
to see you most of all.” She looked at her son. “You’ve seen her
now. Leave the Guardian to her work. I’m sure she is very
busy.”

“Can I see you turn into something?” the boy
asked.

Ether looked from the boy to his mother and
back again. “You’ve seen me take form. I’ve shifted from wind to
flesh. Is that not sufficient?”

“But I’ve
seen
humans. Can’t you be
something else?”

“I do not exist to entertain children. Now
this
is
Myranda’s home, correct? She is expecting me,” Ether
said.

“Yes,” said Dana, disappointed.

“Very well,” Ether said, making ready once
again to push open the door.

“Will you be coming here often?” Dana
asked.

Ether shut her eyes in frustration. “It is my
sincere hope that I will not…”

#

Inside her home, Myranda was seated at the
dinner table with Deacon, Ivy, and her father. Through the wall
shared with the coach house, the distinctive steady breathing of a
slumbering dragon could be heard. Myn, weary from her journey, had
eaten a heavy meal and slipped quickly off to sleep. Now the others
were preparing for their own meal.

Myranda’s present home was not the sort of
thing one might envision as the estate of a duke and duchess. It
was warm, clean, and sturdy, but it was hardly the lap of luxury.
The dining room shared a wall—and thus the heat of the
fireplace—with the kitchen. There were six seats at the table, and
when fully occupied, there was little room for much else. To one
side a staircase led to a second floor, which boasted four rooms.
In the days before its fall, three of these rooms were provided for
coach drivers staying the night during longer journeys, with the
largest for the owner of the home. Now Myranda and Deacon had
claimed the largest of them. Greydon Celeste slept in another. The
third was for the servants that the queen had quite firmly insisted
they take on, and the final room was intended for guests. As often
as not, that room belonged to Ivy, who had a home of her own
elsewhere in the city but had been reluctant to embrace the idea of
living alone.