by LeRoy Clary
I said, “Flier, we’ve encountered that blue thing before. I don’t know if what Emma did was coincidence, or if she managed to banish it, but either way, we’re better off. The Blue Woman has never hurt us directly, but we believe she has tried. At the very least, she has lied to us.”
“How? How can an image of a woman hurt you?”
I said with a shrug, “We think of her as a rogue mage who appears to us in that female form now and then to scare us or drive us into danger. She might also listen to our conversations and perhaps passes that information on to others. Anna must have disrupted the mage’s spell if that’s the right word.”
His confusion had turned to cold anger. “How could she do that? She’s a child.”
Kendra whirled around and snarled, “Hey, Flier, pay attention to what he’s telling you. We don’t know the answers any more than you, but you’re scaring this little girl. If you have a problem with us, why don’t you go on ahead and we’ll catch up in Vin? I’m sure we can follow the trail from here.”
He shook his head vigorously. “No, it’s just that I’ve never seen anything like that. And the dragon that crushed the buildings in Trager was acting like it did that because you wanted it to. Like you ordered it. There are things happening around you that scare me.”
She didn’t back down. “Flier, you are free to leave us and go where you want. Do as you like. It’s not you that owes us, it’s us that owes you. You saved us and fought for us, risking your life. For that, we thank you.”
His shoulder slumped. He said quietly, “To me, it looked like that child faced down a mage. And won.”
“Maybe she did,” Kendra said, drawing herself up in a silent challenge.
Flier backed down. “I owe you my life, the way I see things. I’ll fight or help you in any way possible, but that does not mean I can’t be scared of strangeness, or shimmering blue images of women that float in the air like smoke.”
Kendra simply nodded her understanding.
He turned away and faced me.
I gave him a nod of encouragement and said, “We really don’t have many answers. However, we will tell you what we do know. All of it. Ask me, and I’ll do my best.”
He scowled, an expression of confusion on his face. The expression was growing more confused as he took the time to think. His eyes flicked from me to Kendra, then to each of the girls.
A slight breeze brought a touch of chill to the air. I felt like sitting and resting my legs but remained fixed, looking at him as hard as he looked back at us.
He held up his left hand, fingers splayed wide. With the index finger of his right hand, he pointed to his thumb. “You knew about the arrowhead in my knee. Not a guess, you knew. It was as if you could see inside my knee. How could that happen?”
His finger moved to the index finger next to his thumb. “The unending storm at sea was unnatural. Like something from an old story, the sort of thing my grandchildren will hear and never believe.” He pointed at the next fingers in order. “The dragon stays near you. The little girl has the powers to face down a first-rate mage.” His pointing finger moved on, “The Blue Woman, whatever that is, appears in front of the two of you repeatedly.” He’d run out of fingers, so he moved to the other hand, “You are the personal servants of a princess. Shall I go on?”
His words tumbled over one another. Kendra and I exchanged looks.
She said, “Damon, I have a hard time keeping secrets from a man who saved my life while risking his. We have already told him most of our story, or what we know. More won’t hurt.”
That said it all. I asked her pointedly, “Where is your dragon right now?”
“Near the path at the top of the pass where the snow recently melted.”
Flier winced. He said, “How?”
I continued without answering him, “Any mages near here?”
“At the extreme limits of my senses, there are both mages and sorceresses there and there.” She pointed to her left, which would be the sea, and ahead, but also slightly to her left, where Vin would be located.
Flier asked, “How can you know those things?”
She said, “I don’t know. A few days ago, I couldn’t tell where they were. After setting that dragon free, in my mind, I now see little flecks of light that are those people with magic. The brighter they are, the closer. Beyond that, I can’t tell you anything about what’s happening.”
“It scares me,” he said.
“And what do you think it does to me?” Kendra said softly. “I can’t tell you how much it scares me. My brother and I have been loyal servants to Princess Elizabeth since we were five and six, just normal people who didn’t even believe in Wyverns, let alone true-dragons. Within a dozen days we were involved in intrigue in three kingdoms, and we have no idea of what we’re doing or what’s required of us.”
The tears spilling down her cheeks made it impossible to believe she spoke anything but the truth. I said, “Your knee was the first time that has ever happened to me. I’ve always been able to make drinks spill, puffs of air to blow out candles, and control arrows in flight, so they hit the middle of the target. We call it small-magic. Think of what a mage can do and divide by a hundred.”
He looked at me disbelievingly. I flicked my eyes to Anna and puffed her hair from the side. Her hand smoothed it down, and I sent another puff her way.
Flier’s complexion paled as he understood what I was doing. He said, “That princess was with us on the ship. I never saw her talk to either of you.”
“She’s on a secret mission for her father, the King of Dire,” Kendra said. “We don’t know what it is, but at the last minute, we decided to jump on the ship with her. Elizabeth will tell us when she can—and how we can help her if that’s possible. In the meantime, we will protect her with our lives. She is sailing on to Dagger.”
“You don’t know what sort of mission?” he asked.
I said, “We think it might be involved with the mages or current rulers. Ours is the third kingdom to have a king fall ill or die and a ‘council’ rule in his stead.”
His expression turned cold. He said, “Trager, Dagger, and Dire? All of them?”
“Yes,” I told him shortly, wishing the conversation would end.
“Four, if you include my home, Vin. The story is much the same, there.” His voice trailed off near the end. Then he raised his head to look directly at us. “What other dangers can we expect to encounter?”
“I wish we knew,” Kendra said. “But if we wish to find our way over this mountain, we should continue walking and talk tonight.”
Flier didn’t move. His gaze shifted to me. “The little girls? How do you explain two girls who look like you but cannot speak your language?”
“As we have already told you, we found them after a storm and are trying to return them to their home,” I said deliberately using a friendly tone to ease the situation.
“We think they come from Kondor,” Kendra said. “They speak the language. So, we brought them with us. Now, either we spend the night here, or we walk. Your choice.”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to snap at me. You still haven’t explained the dragon.”
I’d noticed Kendra’s impatience lately, too. The difference was that I lacked the nerve to say so. Her face reddened, but she kept quiet. I said, “We will talk about it later.”
“One more thing,” Flier said. “Just to be sure we’re all thinking along the same lines, that little girl, the one you call Emma, just defeated a mage’s projection—if I saw what I think. Were either of you aware she had magic powers?”
We shook our heads in unison. Flier seemed to accept that and turned away as he trudged up the trail again. After a brief, confusing exchange of looks between Kendra and myself, we followed each other again, me again at the rear. For me, I wasn’t certain Emma had any magic, but her actions had certainly been coincidental, if not.
My mind was so lost in deep thought my feet did what was needed without me thin
king or looking at those in front of me. Flier was right. The idea that Emma might have magic powers had never entered my thinking, but something else along those lines nudged the back recesses of my head.
Anna walked directly ahead, through the spot where the Blue Lady had been, her thick brown hair tied back. It swayed from side to side with her steps, so I tested my magic and used a burst of air to push it to one side again, just to reassure myself that my magic was in place. Kendra’s dragon was close enough for it to share its essence, so my magic worked.
At the inn at the Port of Mercia the first morning, we had brought a sailor from Kondor to translate for us. That conversation held the item that now worried at my mind. A careful review revealed what had been obvious but forgotten in all else that had happened. He said the reason his language skills were so good, was because a mage had used magic to teach him our Common language.
The girls were learning remarkably fast, but a few hundred words only allowed the most basic of concepts to be exchanged. My magic had seen the arrowhead inside Flier’s knee, like the work a sorceress might do. I’d delved into the physical part of a person instead of dealing with external forces like rain and wind. What else could I do?
The problem was that the three of us, Elizabeth, Kendra, and myself, had kept my abilities secret, which protected me, but it failed to allow me to learn from others who knew magic so I might have progressed. Mages and sorceresses may have been willing to teach me, at least enough so they could test me and determine if I was one of them. The problem with that was if I failed to live up to their demands, what would they have done? Worse, if I was one of them, would they have removed me and sent me to some far-off place for training and indoctrination?
If my abilities matched those of other mages, or if they did not, the answer was simple. If they were a new subset or inferior, we didn’t know what would happen. My scant powers may have scared them, or perhaps they have a policy of extermination for those like me. None of us had ever heard of such a thing. However, walking uphill for hours on end gave me time to consider and wonder. I flipped Anna’s hair again and watched her hand smooth it down.
Carefully, as if my magic was fog slipping in on a winter’s night, my mind reached out. Like extending tendrils of a fog, it explored and probed Anna in much the same way I’d done with Flier’s knee. My search revealed nothing. With each advance, my powers ‘bumped’ into resilient obstructions, much like sleepwalking into a mattress hung from a wall.
I’d expected to either find my powers couldn’t reach her, or they could. Instead, I found myself stumbling in the dark and encountering soft resistance at every turn. I couldn’t move ahead, only stall or return and probe again.
After pulling back from Anna’s mind for the tenth time, I reconsidered my approach. I felt I’d ‘touched’ her in some manner that last time. There might be a way to test her a little more. An often-used trick of mine convinced someone an insect like a mosquito had landed on her bare arm and drew a slap from her other hand.
So, in the same way, I started thinking of words she wouldn’t know in our language, a concrete word I could point to and yet be sure she hadn’t heard it. Every word that came to mind, she might have heard. I needed an object, one so obscure that she couldn’t possibly know it.
Bouncing at my side was my sword and the four arrows in the new addition to the scabbard. Only the ends of the arrows showed, the fletching made from feathers. Fletching was a word she wouldn’t know but could point to when requested so I’d know she understood my mental teachings.
Fletching. The word was repeated in my mind. Directed at her. Images formed in my head, detailing an arrow, most centered on the fletching at the end of the shaft. The word was used over and over as I tried to instill the knowledge in her mind. I pronounced it mentally and provided a description. Then, the idea occurred that if it took this sort of effort to teach Anna something so simple, I was better off simply speaking to her.
Without drawing the attention of the others, I moved to her side and touched her arm. When she looked at me, I pointed to the arrows and said, “What is this?”
“Arrow,” she said immediately, although I didn’t know how she knew that word.
“No.” I fingered the feathers glued to the arrow. “This.”
“Fletching,” she said as if I was a dolt who knew nothing.
I fell back to my position behind her to consider what had happened. In my opinion, she had learned both arrow and fletching from me in the last few minutes. How she did that was unknown, but also how I’d done it with her was equally unknown. Which of my attempts had succeeded? And which had failed?
It didn’t matter. One of them had been successful on the first try. A few more experiments and the proper method would be determined.
When faced with complicated problems, my usual routine was to pull away and allow my mind to work on it while I did other things. Like a pot of stew simmering. At first, the broth is tasteless, however, after a good simmer, the flavors are spread and absorbed by the broth, meat, and vegetables. A few spices also help.
That was my plan. Allow my thoughts to simmer, perform a few additional small tests, and hopefully teach Anna to speak even faster than she was learning in the traditional ways. Emma? Well, we’d see. While Anna was receptive, my attention would focus on her. After learning the proper methods that worked, Emma might be easier to teach.
A while later, just before we stopped to eat, I wanted to be sure the dragon was nearby, so I landed another imaginary mosquito on Anna’s arm. She slapped it, examined where the insect should have been, and noticed me intently watching her. She turned away, and immediately I felt a mosquito land on my arm. I slapped at it.
There was no sign of a mosquito on my arm when I looked.
Anna giggled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
T he incident with the imaginary mosquito confused me so massively I tripped, and that drew another series of giggles from Anna. She didn’t turn to look or gloat, but in that single instant, I knew for a fact that she had used magic as retaliation on me. Small-magic. Not a lot. However, there was no doubt she had used it when not one in a thousand people could duplicate her feat. No, not one in ten thousand, I corrected myself. Those few who use magic are scarce, more so than two-headed snakes.
In the entire kingdom of Dire, only six magicians were known, four mages and two sorceresses. And of course, there was also me who was an unknown and didn’t count. Only three of us knew of my skills, and none of us had ever heard rumors of others like me. It would be unfair to mages to consider my meager skills on par with theirs, and my talents had recently bled to those of a sorceress. Yet, in our group of five on the mountain pass, there seemed to be four. Myself, Kendra since freeing the dragon, Anna with her mental mosquito, and of course little Emma who had banished the Blue Lady. The mathematical odds of calculating that were far beyond my abilities—but I knew the answer must be near infinity.
The oddest thing was that while magic ‘abilities’ or ‘powers’ varied between mages and sorceresses, all were essentially the same along the lines of sex. Those walking ahead of me were unknowns. I doubted if any of us had the power of true magicians, but until the last few days, I’d been the only example of a lesser one we’d ever heard of. Now, I walked with three others and couldn’t get that out of my mind.
We watched for food along the way since we had little. A fat, lazy grouse, a type of gamebird of a couple pounds stood at the edge of the path and watched. I slipped my little-used bow over my shoulder from my back as my right hand found an arrow.
The kill-shot was quick and anticlimactic. The arrow flew fast and sure—without my magical help, and the arrow skewered the bird. We made a fire and roasted it within a few steps of where it died. Two identical birds would have better satisfied our appetites, but no other showed itself. That wasn’t too odd that there were no others because the only places I’d seen them was in the lowlands, usually in meadows. Finding one high in the mounta
ins was strange but not unheard of.
We’d hardly continued our trek when Kendra pulled to an abrupt stop and dropped to one knee. Her action alerted us to do the same, although I sensed no danger. Her arm raised, and her finger pointed off to the side of the trail to a heavy stand of small evergreen trees. Since there were no larger trees, I assumed the area had either burned in the recent past or been totally clear-cut by people. The trunks on the new growth were uniformly thick and tall. The young evergreens seemed to put up a solid, impenetrable wall.
Kendra hadn’t ever knelt like that before. She acted as a military leader in every respect. Her action scared me, so without thinking my hands reached for the bow and an arrow. While pulling them free, I also loosened my sword and then bent the bow to string it.
As I fitted the arrow, my eyes remained where Kendra pointed, not on my weapon. The evergreens began to grow as a thick wall about twenty steps from us, only thin brush between. The trees were small, their trunks the size of my arm, and barely twice as tall as a person. There seemed to be few if any other varieties but evergreens in the stand.
Roars from human throats broke the silence of the high mountains as two men broke free of the evergreens and charged us, long curved swords waving wildly above their heads. They were heavy-set men who ran like bulls through a pasture, ignoring whatever lay at their feet as they concentrated on scaring us with their ferocious shouting and blades flashing in the sunlight.
My arrow took the closest man high in the center of his chest, which would be brag-worthy if I hadn’t been aiming just above his navel and shot too high in my excitement. The long shaft all but disappeared into him, with only the bright colors of the fletching protruding. He stumbled a few more steps and fell face first.