The D'Karon Apprentice (45 page)

“Will there be sufficient time for the
ceiling to be mended before the queen’s return? I do not want… Oh,
lovely.”

He looked in annoyance at the familiar swirl
of wind approaching.

Ether whisked in through the hole in the roof
and touched down in front of Croyden, bringing with her a stream of
stinging ice crystals that pelted those in attendance and sprinkled
the floor. When her windy form was near enough to do so gracefully,
she shifted to her human form again.

She began speaking to Croyden without regard
for the conversation that had been going on. She didn’t even
acknowledge the presence of the workers.

“All of this that happened here,” she said,
with an encompassing wave of her arm, “does it stab at your soul?
Does it feel as though something sacred has been desecrated,
something precious taken from you?”

Croyden looked at her curiously. There was an
edge, a fire to her words that had been absent before, and that
same fire was reflected in her eyes.

“It spits in the face of all I’ve come to
stand for. It is an affront to my kingdom and a personal insult
that cuts me to the bone.”

“Then you and I have much to discuss…” she
said. “Follow. I wish to speak to you in a place where others will
not hear.”

She paced toward the throne room. Her crisp
turn and quick pace made it clear she had no doubt whatsoever that
he would follow. Croyden had never encountered someone so
effortlessly presumptuous.

“I have duties to attend to, Guardian Ether.
I cannot abandon them simply to humor you.”

She spoke without turning. “Your duty is to
protect your kingdom and enact some measure of justice upon those
responsible for sullying it. I mean to aid you in that. Now
follow.”

Croyden tried to quell the surge of
irritation that her curt attitude conjured so efficiently.

“See to it that all materials are prepared as
soon as possible, and when the schedule is solidified, inform me. I
want the castle whole again for the queen’s return,” he said.

The men moved quickly to their tasks, and
Croyden set off after the infuriating shapeshifter. She pulled at
the heavy door to the currently unoccupied throne room. The door
was utterly massive, reaching from the floor nearly to the vaulted
ceiling, and made from the thickest wood anywhere in the castle
save the gates. The doors were meant to be large enough when opened
to allow the throne room to serve as a continuation of the entry
hall, yet sturdy enough to be barricaded and protect the king and
queen from anything short of a siege weapon. The handles for the
door were brass rings the size of serving trays, spaced regularly
from bottom to top and meant to be attached to ropes to help a team
of men open and close them quickly. Ether grasped the lowest ring
and hauled the door open with little apparent effort and no concern
for the colossal breach in protocol that such a thing represented.
Once inside she looked about the room with disinterest, then turned
to await him.

“Quickly,” she snapped, pointing her finger
at the floor beside her.

His expression hardened further. The woman
may as well have been addressing a disobedient dog. Nonetheless,
he’d heard stories of Ether’s feats and seen firsthand the
devastation she could produce and the ferocity with which she
fought when she deemed such a thing necessary. The strength
necessary to open the door was the least of her attributes. She had
been and continued to be a strong ally and, in any case, was not
the sort of person one should willfully irritate. He stepped beside
her, and she pulled the door shut with a thunderous rumble.

“The woman responsible for this is dangerous
for many reasons. First and foremost is her mastery and apparent
fascination with D’Karon magic.”

“That much is clear.”

“Silence yourself until I am through,” Ether
said. “The D’Karon seek power above all else. Not something so
petty and impermanent as the sort of power bestowed by politics and
wealth, but raw mana. They have devised means to harvest it that
are grimly efficient, and if she hopes to work their spells with
any regularity she will need them. To prevent things like this from
happening again, you must do what I would have hoped had already
been quite nearly completed. You must destroy any D’Karon influence
left. Do you know what a thir gem is?”

“I imagine they are—”

“Do not imagine. Be certain. They are the
stones so often found in the facilities the D’Karon had claimed or
constructed. They drink away one’s strength and take on a brilliant
violet light. They must be destroyed, turned to powder. Any
fragment larger than a walnut may have some value to her.”

“We are quite aware of that and have been
actively seeking and sequestering all such gems.”

Ether’s lips pulled into a grimace. “Do not
sequester,
destroy
. There were gems in that chamber. She
found them, she used them, and that hole in your palace was the
result. Anything and everything that the D’Karon touched should be
treated with distrust, and all that they created should be
destroyed. Not collected, not studied. Destroyed. D’Karon works are
an abomination and should be treated as such.”

“Understood.”

“Your second point of concern is the woman
herself. She is what you would call a necromancer, and as such has
the tremendous capacity to harvest strength on her own, quite
likely enough to fuel some of the lesser D’Karon spells in the
short term, and in the very long term she might match their
greatest feats.”

“And you are certain she is a
necromancer?”

“I only speak with certainty.”

“And
how
are you certain? How can you
determine such a thing?”

Ether released a mildly exasperated breath.
“The same way you can determine if something is red rather than
blue. When one is familiar with the finer details and able to
perceive them, it is plainly apparent. May I continue, or do you
wish to continue to interrupt me with your inane prattle?”

Croyden crossed his arms and held his
tongue.

“As a necromancer, she regards any living
thing as a source of energy and any dead thing as a source of raw
materials. She can commune with the dead to learn what they knew,
she can resurrect the fallen to serve her whims, and she may even
have the ability to return herself from death if not properly dealt
with. She should not be faced directly. Anyone near enough to make
contact risks only making her stronger.”

“Noted. Ranged tactics and mystics only.
Would you be willing at this point to endure some of my inane
prattle?”

“If I must.”

“Where did you go just now, what did you find
there that inspired you to be helpful so suddenly, and why did you
feel it necessary to enter the throne room to dispense this
information?”

Ether looked at Croyden evenly. “I am a
creature of the world as a whole. Not a single kingdom. Not a
single race. I serve as a protector for the world as a collective,
and therefore I call no one part of it my home, despite what your
military and government would choose to believe. But to the north
of this palace…
Lain’s End
… that is the one place I would
lay claim to. As near a home as any place in this world. It is my
sanctuary, a place to be alone with my thoughts and to ponder what
the past has brought and what the future may bring. She
soiled
it. Brought D’Karon magic to that place once more.
And she soiled the memory of Lain himself. I
cannot
let that
stand. And I realized that the same burning that I felt, I saw in
you when I arrived.”

She looked away, her words as much intended
for herself as for him.

“I have not been myself of late. I am
troubled by things that should not concern me. With little choice,
I’ve reluctantly sought wisdom from those who have been at the
whims of such nonsense all of their lives. Mortals. They have made
claims to understand my difficulties, and they have offered
solutions that are as useless as they are foolish. They speak of
family, and duty. You, though. You are different. You are an elf,
and thus more than mortal. And you do not have a proper family and
never have.”

“Do not have a proper family?” he said. “I
had a mother and a father… though I admit I was never introduced to
the latter.”

“He was and is a traitorous scoundrel. Your
life could only have been enhanced by his absence. And your mother
was worse, a traitor to not only her world but to her destiny. She
got what she deserved, though far too long after the damage was
done.”

Croyden narrowed his eyes. “My mother was
ceaselessly devoted to her kingdom. I shall brook no claims to the
contrary.”

“Your mother was Trigorah Teloran. She was
Chosen, or at least was meant to be. But her devotion to the
meaningless borders men draw between one another led her to turn
her back upon her true duty and instead serve the very beings she
was selected by the gods to defeat. At best she was a shortsighted
woman with poor judgment. At worst she willfully embraced her
world’s would-be usurpers.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Croyden said. “Your
advice regarding the proper tactics when defending against the
necromancer shall be taken into account in our future encounters.
Now please open this door.”

“I am not through.”

“You may not be through with me, but I am
quite through with you, Guardian. I have tolerated your venomous
tone for a good deal longer than I would have preferred, but when
you insult the memory of my mother, you cross the line.”

“You
must
lend me your aid,” Ether
commanded. “I require your insight.”

“Regardless of whether or not you require it,
you most assuredly do not deserve it. And if your opinion of me is
so low, one wonders why you would seek my counsel at all.”

“Because you are brash, willful, proud, and
blunt. You have no real family, you are in a position of
comparatively great responsibility, and you have recently lost
someone who could well be your only genuine connection to another
individual. I see much of myself in you. And at this moment you and
I feel similarly regarding the actions of the necromancer, but
while you are apparently composed, I am very nearly at my wits end.
You
must
share your insight into how to cope with such
emotion.”

“You see much of yourself in me… In an
exchange positively fraught with disrespect and derision, to
compare me to you is, by a wide margin, the worst claim you’ve made
thus far. If your mind is causing you troubles, then I will happily
leave you to them. Now open the door.”

“
My mind is all I have!
” Ether
growled. “You do not understand that, nor could you. I am not a
creature such as yourself, a husk of bone and sinew playing host to
a brief and ephemeral consciousness. I am little more than a mass
of pure elemental energy bound together through sheer force of
will. My will is everything. And I am losing my focus. This woman
who plagues the both of us, the necromancer who threatens your
peace and toys with the tools of the enemy… I should feel her
presence. In the months gone by I have swept from one side of this
land to the other, seeking out and crushing even the slightest
remnant of their influence. Now there is a woman cutting a clumsy
swath across the land with their teachings and
I cannot detect
her
. In the past it would have taken a peerless will to evade
me. Now this woman is but a vague sensation at the edge of my mind.
I cannot focus my attentions sufficiently to find her, and if this
lack of focus is allowed to spread, what then? Will I soon lack the
will to maintain form? Will I once again be spread to the far
reaches of this world, unable to gather myself together again? All
because of this
blasted
plague of emotions that your kind
has somehow foisted upon me?
You must help me!
”

He looked her evenly in the eye, noting the
flash of desperation mixed with the wall of arrogance that seemed
to compose the bulk of her personality. If there was one thing he’d
learned about her, it was that she seldom saw fit to misrepresent
herself. She had far too high an opinion of herself for that. So
her concern was genuine. It was odd to see even a flicker of
vulnerability in a being so thoroughly certain of her own
superiority.

“And what would you have me do, Guardian? I
have no secret to ease your mind. I cannot even begin to understand
the source of your unease.”

“Then at least explain why so many mortals
offer up the same pointless advice. How can so many of you claim
family as a source of strength and a solution for inner strife when
the one being who might have been near enough to be considered
family is the
source
of my troubles.”

“How so?”

“Lain. First he denied me his love, and then
he was taken from me before he could see the error in his
ways.”

“Mmm… And this is the only source of your
troubled mind?”

“No. My primary purpose, the literal reason
for my creation, has come and gone. In very real terms, I have
outlived my usefulness. These two feelings are the seeds from which
all others sprouted.”

“And how have you attempted to solve this
problem thus far?”

“As I have solved all others. I have set my
mind upon it. Reflected and meditated upon it. I have sought the
solution from within.”

“I think perhaps the nature of your
difficulties is reflected in the words you’ve chosen. You are upset
not because he did not find love but that he kept it from you, and
not that he died but that he was taken from you. And when these
feelings began to burn at you, you sought the answer in yourself.
Have you ever, in all of your years, thought about anyone but
yourself?”

“I have until now devoted myself to my duty
as a Chosen One above all.”