The D'Karon Apprentice (64 page)

Tresson soldiers had only just reached the
village walls and scattered warily at Myranda’s arrival. They too
had been stationed at the front and had come to know Myranda and
Myn by sight, but the circumstances would have been trying for even
a well-earned trust. Myranda wouldn’t waste her time or breath
trying to steady their fears. Actions spoke louder than words. As
the nearest of the skeletons stepped into range, Myn pulverized
them. The bony troops spread, and soon the threat of the skeletons
was a far greater one than the dragon and wizard.

The southern troops put their weapons to
work, hacking and bashing at bone that was all-too eager to repair
and resume its march. Between Myranda, Myn, and the troops, the
skeletal march was outnumbered and overpowered, but the endless
flow of magic kept their numbers from diminishing. The Alliance
troops carved their way in from the back, bashing skeletons to
pieces and trampling them under foot.

Then the moment came. Battling soldiers from
both sides shattered through the wall of bone and corroded armor
and came face to face, red to the south, blue to the north. Their
weapons were raised, their blood already racing from the intensity
of combat. The war had ended only months before. Each of these men
and women had seen battle, perhaps even against one another. And
now they stood on the battlefield.

Bones clattered and fresh threads coalesced.
The fallen enemies at their feet clattered and tugged, drawing
together piece by piece and assembling on the nearest patches of
ground large enough to accommodate them. A man in blue looked to
the Tresson soldier before him, then to the restoring army. He
turned, putting his back to the Tresson soldier and raising his
weapon in the former foe’s defense. One by one the other Alliance
soldiers did the same.

“Really now. Am I to believe we can’t even
trust
soldiers
to spill a little blood?” Turiel said. “Well,
I’m through waiting. I’m quite sure I have enough, and if I don’t,
it’ll just be a quick jaunt there and back again to get what I
need.”

She waved her staff, and the familiar point
and window of a portal began to form before her…

#

Grustim stared down at the troops at Garr’s
feet. When the time came to intimidate, there was much to be said
for requiring another soldier to look up to address you. This was
particularly true when that soldier was on horseback. And he would
need all of the intimidation he could muster. All told, the troops
who had been gathering at a safe distance didn’t approach until
there were nearly fifty of them. A dragon was a formidable foe, and
a dragon with a Rider was, if anything, more so, but even Garr
would be hard-pressed to take on so substantial a force.

“Stand aside, honored Dragon Rider. We have
orders from a trustworthy source that Northern aggressors are
lurking within this cave.”

“You do not have the authority to order me
aside, and if there was anything for the military to concern itself
with, I would have seen to it myself.”

“I have my orders,” the soldier replied.

“And I have mine,” Grustim said.

Hands tightened about lances and bows.
Horses, fearful of the massive predator looming before them,
shuffled and fidgeted. For a moment there was a stalemate, neither
Grustim nor the soldiers willing to make the first move in what
would be a battle that would not only spill blood, but blacken the
honor of one or all of those to do battle.

“I will not ask again,” said the spokesman, a
man with the same markings of commander that Brustuum had worn.

He was a match for Grustim’s rank and he knew
it. The Dragon Rider could not countermand his orders. Proper
training suggested the resolution was to defer to the commander
with more recent orders. A Dragon Rider could credibly make a claim
that he’d been more recently informed, but there was no way to be
certain. It came down to the judgment of the troop commander, and
from the set of his jaw and the hardness of his gaze, there was
little doubt which he believed to be true. Muscles tensed and
breathing quickened across the whole of the troop complement. Each
knew the decision had been made. There would be combat between
Tressons. All that remained was the order.

Arrows nearly flew and swords nearly swung
when the next voice rang out, but it was a soldier, not a commander
who spoke.

“Commander!” called an alert mounted soldier
deep within the ranks.

The commander turned.

“Sorcery! Take cover! Safe distance!” the
commander barked, pointing his lance in the direction of the
threat.

The soldiers scattered, pulling back in an
almost chaotic retreat. A swirling black point grew into a circle,
the exit of Turiel’s portal. The window to the border revealed the
cool and collected figure of the necromancer. She stepped gingerly
through, careful to keep her hem from the swirling edge, then
turned back to call into the icy portal.

“Mott! Where have you gotten off to? Bah. The
rascal will turn up. Best not to waste time,” she said.

“Hold! Northerner, you are trespassing on
Tresson land!” called the commander.

Turiel turned, noticing for the first time
the dozens of soldiers gathered about her portal. Her eyes widened
in shock, but not the sort of shock that comes from fear or
surprise. She seemed aghast, offended to find anyone in this
place.

“I…
I
am trespassing? I’m quite
certain I can stake a far older claim to this cave than you. Just
what are you doing here?”

“This is the Kingdom of Tressor. No
Northerner may—” the commander repeated, but his words choked off
in his throat.

“That isn’t an answer,” Turiel said, her
staff thrust toward him, and stout, thorny threads piercing his
throat. “And honestly, I’m no longer interested. Be gone, all of
you, there is work to be done.”

Color drained from the commander’s face, and
he pitched to the side. Before his body had struck the ground, the
rest of the accumulated soldiers burst into the chaos of battle,
each seeking to be the first to strike the sorceress who had
injured their commander. Turiel paid them little mind, walking with
purpose toward the mouth of the cave. She waved a hand irritably,
as if swatting a fly, and her staff began to crackle with energy.
Bolts of purple and blue hissed forth and seared any who came near
her. The air filled with the stench of charred flesh and howls of
pain.

“Soldiers, back!” Grustim barked. In the same
breath he coughed a sharp, simple order to Garr.

The soldiers who were still fortunate enough
to be mobile barely had time to roll aside before the green dragon
belched a column of intense, sustained flame. Dragon breath rushed
around the dark sorceress, completely wiping her from sight. The
blinding flames broiled the earth beneath her and blistered the
friendly troops who hadn’t retreated far enough, but Garr did not
relent. His jaws thrown wide and his eyes wild with fury, he
continued to heave the white-hot flames over the spell caster. So
thick and bright were they that no one could see so much as a
shadow of the woman who served as their target.

Then, from deep within the core of the blast,
a thick bundle of black ribbons spiraled out. It speared into this
throat and coiled tight around his upper and lower jaws, pulling
them shut and causing the flames to splash aside, scalding a few
more friendly soldiers before cutting off entirely. The lingering
flames flickered away, leaving a glassy, crackly patch of sandy
soil. For a moment, it looked as though Turiel had been charred by
the attack, but slowly the sooty and mildly smoldering surface of
her body peeled away. She’d managed to cocoon herself with
tendrils. Beneath them her skin had been reddened here or blackened
there but was otherwise whole and untouched. From the tip of her
outstretched staff, the bundle of darkness that had muzzled the
dragon began to thicken and flex. The bands sizzled at the iron
mask he wore, bending and buckling it before slicing through and
hissing against his scales.

“That is
quite
enough,” she growled,
her voice rough.

A swipe of her staff traveled down the length
of the bundle like the crack of a whip, throwing Garr viciously and
effortlessly aside. Grustim held tight to the dragon as he was
thrown. The bulk of the dragon came down hard upon his leg. Despite
the remarkable armor he wore, the impact was enough to shatter the
bone. Grustim didn’t even cry out, unwilling to waste the time and
breath to do so. Instead, he shouted a warning.

“Deacon! She is through!”

Soldiers charged Turiel, but she turned and
caught the throat of the first man to reach her. He didn’t even
manage a howl of pain before the life was gone from his eyes, his
body shriveling under her grasp.

“Defend me,” she said simply.

He pivoted and raised his weapon against his
own brethren, motions jerky and unnatural. Three more soldiers
reached her, each getting the same treatment, before she finally
disappeared into the mouth of the cave. The subverted Tresson
soldiers closed ranks, blocking off the way forward.

#

Deacon was breathing quickly, his fingers
curled around a swirling mass of light that was now barely the size
of a marble. He watched over his shoulder as Turiel marched
closer.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked, the cool
demeanor gone as she saw him tinkering with the very thing she’d
come to complete.

“Necromancer Turiel,” he said breathlessly,
“the proper question to ask…” the last of the light swirled into
his fingers, “is what have I done?”

Twisting before him was a sliver of
odd-shaped metal. It didn’t have any rhyme or reason. There was no
design. If anything, it resembled the twisting, rounded, fluid
shape of what might result from dropping molten iron into a pool of
ice water, except its surface gleamed like silver. It was small,
not more than one could hold comfortably in a single palm, and yet
the way it shone in the darkness of the cave spoke volumes of the
power it contained.

“Where is the keyhole!?” she demanded,
leveling her staff at him.

“The keyhole is no more, Turiel,” he said,
wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his gem-wielding hand
and snatching the curl of metal with the other. “What remains of
the power you used to create it is here.”

“No… no!” she growled, thrusting down her
staff. The tip dug into the stone of the cave floor and split it,
sending a fault running up the walls and across the ceiling. “You
couldn’t have managed such a feat! No one could!”

“I have no doubt you were one of the greatest
sorceresses of your day, Turiel, but time has marched on. There are
those who know far more now.” He held up the sliver of metal. “This
is the least of the things we have learned. I know that you seek
the D’Karon for what they could teach you. In light of what you’ve
seen here, and what you’ve seen Myranda and the other Chosen do,
perhaps—”

In a flicker of motion too swift to see, let
alone react to, Turiel jabbed her staff forward, driving its jagged
head into Deacon’s belly. The anger-fueled and mystically empowered
force of the attack was such that it dug deep into his flesh. Blood
flowed from the wound when she pulled the staff free, and Deacon
stumbled backward, clutching his gem to the injury.

“I suppose physical violence
does
have
its usefulness,” she growled.

Deacon stumbled back, coughing. A spattering
of red flecked his lips. She grasped the wrist of the hand holding
the sliver of metal and pulled him forward, but he locked his
fingers around the artifact, hiding it from view.

“Please…” Deacon said.

“Don’t beg. It cheapens both of us. And don’t
try to reason with me. As Myranda has refused to acknowledge, I
have no reason left. Just give me the magic and give in to death.
The other side of the veil is not a place to be feared.”

“If… I must…” Deacon said.

He opened his fingers and the artifact
slipped free, plummeting toward the ground. Turiel released him and
snatched it from the air.

“Now, tell me how to unlock the power,” she
demanded, holding it to his face.

Deacon slumped against the wall and slid
down, his face ghostly white.

“You do
not
have my permission to
die!” she barked, raising her staff and readying a spell to weave
into his mind and body.

When the magic spilled forth yet had no
effect on the waning figure before her, her expression hardened.
She looked at the item in her hand and watched as it seemed to
dissolve, separating into points of light that drifted apart.

“I apologize for the deception,” Deacon said,
his voice distant and growing more so as similar light trailed away
from his extremities. “Such dishonesty does not come easily to
me.”

The rest of his form wavered away into a
galaxy of flickering lights, and Turiel whipped around to the sound
of quickening footsteps. The true Deacon, not the illusion he’d
conjured to distract her, was sprinting out of the cave. The
usurped soldiers were lying lifeless on the ground, her influence
banished from them, and the astonished and reeling members of the
Tresson force were still trying to work what to do about this new
and unknown threat.

Turiel dashed toward him.

“Keep back from him! Let him escape!” cried
Grustim, his voice pained.

Deacon ran for the closing portal. His arms
were crossed in front of him and his head was down, ready to defend
the precious items he held from any who would seek to stop him. In
a diving leap, he slipped through the nearly shut portal to the
north.

“No!” Turiel screeched, holding out her staff
and working a hasty bit of D’Karon magic.

Energy poured into the portal, and it widened
massively, back to its full size and stretching further, until its
bottom dug deep into the Tresson soil and it yawned wide enough for
a whole company of soldiers to march through. The breeze of the
north mixed with the air of the Southern Wastes. On the other side,
the battle she’d left behind still raged, Tresson troops fighting
alongside Alliance troops as her skeletons continued to march
toward the village.