The D'Karon Apprentice (53 page)

“Yes… yes, I agree, of course. Do you agree
with my assessment, regarding where to begin our search?”

“Your reasoning is sound.”

“Then I do not think we can afford to delay.
I think you, Garr, and I need to set off for the Southern Wastes
immediately.”

“I agree. But that choice is no longer mine.
Garr has been freed of his oath to me. I am at this point no more a
Dragon Rider than you. That he has remained behind is more than I
would have expected of him.”

“But you said you’ve released him of his oath
before.”

“I have. The first time he took to the
mountains and returned three months later. True freedom from their
duty is something most dragons never have, and never seek. More
than any other beast, a dragon understands loyalty and honor. Garr
is a fine soldier, but in those moments that are his own he is…
perhaps driven by
different
instincts than most.”

Deacon turned to the dragon. Garr stood among
the rubble. He’d been watching as the sentencing and discussions
had progressed.

“Garr…” Deacon began. He cleared his throat.
“You’ll forgive me if my diction is not as precise as Grustim’s.”
When he spoke again, it was the guttural rattles of a human
approximation of a dragon’s tongue. “Thank you for your aid. You
have your freedom now. It is deserved. You should enjoy it. But
much—”

“Stop,” grumbled Garr. He lowered his head.
“I do not like you. I do not dislike you. What you say does not
matter to me. The woman I like. The dragon I like. The woman likes
you. The dragon likes you. What you ask was my duty. What you ask
is his duty. I have reasons to do it. The dragon. If the dragon
would like this, it would be another reason to do this. A very good
reason to do this.”

Deacon grinned, abandoning Garr’s language.
“It seems I always must work hardest to earn the respect of
dragons. I can assure you that Myn will appreciate anything you can
do to help us keep this terrible thing from occurring.”

Garr raised his head and flicked his tongue
across his snout. He then turned and lowered his head, snatching
something up from among the rubble. With it clutched within his
jaws, he padded to Grustim. He lowered his head once more and
dropped the pieces of Grustim’s armor at his feet, then stepped
back and bowed to the ground. Setting his head and neck on the
earth, he rattled out a vow.

“I pledge my tooth and claw, my scale and
flame, to you and to your blood until such time as our oath is
broken,” Garr grumbled.

“And to you I pledge my mind and hand, my
armor and blade, to you and to your blood until such time as our
oath is broken,” Grustim said.

Garr huffed a breath and rose to his full
height again. Grustim began to put on his armor. It was an
incredible testament to the quality of the armor that it was barely
marred despite enduring a building collapse.

“It is not lost on me that you had already
gathered the armor,” Grustim muttered. “I wonder if you were
waiting to be asked.”

“Regardless, I must ask, how quickly can we
reach the possible location of the keyhole?” Deacon asked.

“Garr has not rested. None of us have. But he
is well fed and well trained. We may be able to reach it in a day
and a half, but we will be exhausted. And there is the matter of
carrying you.”

“Is that a problem?”

“I am a Dragon Rider, and he is my mount.
No one
but I may ride on his back.”

Deacon released a breath that was just shy of
exasperated. “And I’d believed
Entwell
was a rigidly
codified culture. I suppose I shall need to be carried then?”

“Indeed. It is not the most pleasant way to
travel.”

“I’ve had worse. Let us not delay any longer.
There is work to be done.”

“Indeed. Garr, find your helmet. We shall at
least face the challenge ahead properly equipped.”

Ivy was still reeling beside the fire when Deacon’s
writing began to scratch itself out on the pad. Ether had gathered
additional wood and stoked the flames quite high before stepping
into the flames herself to replenish what she had squandered in her
battle with Turiel. This left Celeste to squint at the precise
lettering.

“I believe… my daughter and her husband have
found Turiel’s destination. It says… she has appeared in New
Kenvard.”

“No… no, no, no,” Ivy murmured. “She can’t go
there.”

“I shall require some time to recover my
strength if I am to make so vast a journey quickly enough to be of
any use to combat her,” Ether said, her voice crackling from the
flames.

“This information will be long stale by then.
She moves far too quickly. If we are going to effectively combat
this woman, we need to know more about her. It isn’t enough to know
where she is. We must know where she is
going
,” Celeste
said.

“She… she left… she gave… she
forced
a
lot of her mind into mine,” Ivy said. “Why must they always toy
with my mind…”

“What have you learned of her? What did she
tell you?”

“It isn’t like that. She didn’t tell me
anything. There aren’t facts… Well, there
are
, but they’re
wrapped in experiences. And she…” Ivy held her head, “she can’t
think straight. Her thoughts are swimming in my head. She’s not
sane
. It is like a hive of bees…”

“There are two things we need to learn. Where
the keyhole is located, and how she intends to open it. Do you
believe those things are within the memories she’s given you?”

“I don’t
know
. I asked her to tell me
where to find the keyhole, so it must be there, but she gave me so
much more than that. And they aren’t
my
memories. It isn’t
as though I can simply think back to the moment in time that I
experienced these things. I
didn’t
experience them, and I
don’t know when I might find the moments when she did. Her thoughts
and mine are jumbled up.”

“Start at the beginning then. Why is she
doing what she’s doing?”

“Sister,” Ivy said instantly. “That much is
certain. Her sister is constantly on her mind. She never thinks of
her name. Barely thinks of what she looks like. It isn’t… it isn’t
even as though she is a person anymore. She’s this all-powerful
figure, this presence that fills her mind. Sister.”

“What do we know about this sister?”

“She’s… I have to think back so hard just to
see her face… Yes… Yes she was tall. Thin. She was older, but just
by a few years. Both knew magic, but her sister knew more… or at
least knew it better. Turiel spoke to the dead, she could give and
take life. Her sister could
change
things. She worked
enchantments. There was this one instance, long ago, when she made
a pendant or brooch. It was supposed to bring luck and protect from
misfortune.”

“What happened to her?”

Ivy shut her eyes tighter and seemed almost
pained by the remembrance, as though the intensity of the memory
harkened back to a tragedy in her own life.

“She believed she was the finest wizard in
world and sought to prove it. She entered a place… a cave. She was
determined to do it alone. It was… it was the trial of the cave.
She was facing the
beast
of the cave. And she failed,
vanished. It was devastating to Turiel. That beast… that beast is
just as big a figure in her mind. A towering darkness, casting its
shadow across all that she does. They are like… the two sides of a
coin. The ultimate good and the ultimate evil. White and black. In
the face of the perfection of her sister and the evil of the beast,
nothing she does is ever truly good or evil in her mind. It is like
nothing she can do will ever matter until the beast is defeated.
And to kill the beast, she believes she must become even more
powerful than her sister was. That’s what all of this is
about.”

“The beast of the cave? But as I understand
it, there
is
no beast of the cave.”

“Lain was through the cave many times.
Myranda was through it once. Deacon lived with the people of
Entwell his whole life. None had seen or heard the beast. It
doesn’t
exist. Her sister must have been killed by the
cave.”

“Unless she survived.”

“I don’t know. She’s…
hundreds
of
years old. She lost her sister… I think Deacon said Entwell is…
maybe four hundred years old? I think her sister went through
before that… I don’t know. The years back then were different. The
fifth year of this queen or the seventh year of that king. None of
them make sense. I really don’t know how long ago any of these
things are. There are long periods of just sitting in the mountains
in the north, or sitting in a cave in the south…”

“The cave. That is what we’re after. Do you
remember anything about it?”

“It was dark. It was filled with animal
bones. She almost never left it. She…”

Suddenly Ivy gasped and her eyes shot
open.

“What is it?”

“Teht… I saw her.” She was almost shivering
at seeing the face of one of her keepers. “Teht visited her so
often. Turiel adored her. Took her instruction to heart and was so
hungry for more. In my… in
her
memory there is such
affection for her.” She squeezed her fists tight, subtle flares of
red and whispers of black sparking around her. “I can’t
stand
it. To have those feelings inside of me. That
face
in my head…”

Celeste gripped her hand. “They aren’t your
thoughts. Set them aside. You need to focus.
Where
is the
cave?”

Ivy squeezed his hand tightly. “She… I can’t…
every time she steps out of the cave, it’s just… dry and cold. The
horizon is flat. There aren’t even any plants. And I… wait…” Her
hands loosened and she reached out. “The pad, give me the pad!”

He quickly handed her Deacon’s pad and the
stylus, and instantly she began sketching, never once opening her
eyes.

“I can see it. She looked back upon it once,
when she left to begin this. I can see the cave, and the
cliffs.”

The tip of the stylus sketched madly at the
page, tracing out with remarkable fidelity a cave-riddled cliff
side. When she was through, though it was no doubt a perfect
representation of what the true cliff looked like, there was
nothing terribly distinctive about it, and she knew it. She opened
her eyes and looked over the drawing critically. The page was very
small, but she realized there was one feature that stood out. She
circled it and flipped to a new page.

“This, back here. It’s a pointy mountain, or
a spire. Very tall and narrow, and beside it there is a tree. Even
taller than the spire, and with very few branches.” She sketched
the spire in greater detail as she described it. “You can probably
see it from a long way away.”

When she was through, Celeste took it and
looked it over.

“Short of a point on a map, I believe this is
as accurate as we can hope to have. Is there anything else you can
tell us?”

“She won’t hold anything back. Anything that
she can do to bring her closer to her goal of vanquishing the beast
is justifiable in her eyes.”

“A beast that does not exist. Do you believe
she might stop her quest if she were to learn the truth?”

“I don’t think so. She’d never believe it. It
would be like telling a monk that his gods did not exist. Her
belief goes down to the core.”

“Anything else?”

“She’s… gleeful in what she does. Eager. And
she is resourceful. If she has the
remains
of a creature, or
if she senses that someone has
died
in a place, she can turn
that to her advantage. She can…
recruit
the dead in the same
way that you might recruit the living. The more violent and tragic
their deaths, the more easily she can use them. And she…”

“She has greater power where someone has died
violently?” Celeste interrupted.

“Yes.”

“… She is in New Kenvard. She has the whole
of the Kenvard Massacre to feed upon. And she is a stone’s throw
away from the front, where generations of lives were lost.”

Ivy’s eyes widened as the depth of the
realization struck her. “Gods… You’re right…”

The fire flickered and then dimmed, swirling
and wicking together as Ether shifted back to humanity.

“Then there is no more time to waste
restoring my energies. Prepare yourselves. Comfort will not be a
consideration. We must move with speed. And we must move now.”

#

Turiel rolled herself painfully onto her
back. Her arrival in the palace of Kenvard had been far rougher
than she’d intended. Part of it was the speed at which she’d had to
enter the portal. The plummeting entry had been turned into a swift
sideways tumble as she passed through the conjured gateway. But if
she’d understood the placement of the exit point properly, she
should have arrived in a hallway. It would not have been
comfortable, but she should have struck smooth ground and slid to a
stop. Instead, she’d found only mounds of jagged, broken masonry.
It had taken almost an hour of careful working of her magic to
repair herself sufficiently to sit up, which meant she was only now
seeing the nature of the devastation in what should have been a
glorious palace.

The sun had set, sending a deeper chill over
the land and casting her in near-complete darkness, but that was
little concern to her. Years within the cave had trained her to
make do with barely the flicker of a candle. Even the rising moon
filtered through the thick clouds of the north was light enough to
reveal that there was little left of this place. Work had been done
to at least prepare it to be rebuilt though. Here and there the
most intact of the stones had been piled neatly, narrow paths of
jagged brick had been cleared to allow workers to access the most
unreachable or worst-damaged parts of the fallen structure, but
save for scattered remnants of a spire and the crenellations atop
some of the rubble, this once grand palace looked more like a
quarry than the glorious symbol of a kingdom’s wealth and
power.