Awakening

by P D Dennison

  Ravak blushed visibly and apologized. “I am truly sorry, mah’ lady. I am dumb to the customs of your people.” He reached out and kissed the young lady’s hand and abashedly headed back to his bed on the other side of Turynn and sat facing the fire.

  “It’s quite alright, Ravak. I must thank you for your aid. Had it not been for your quick reaction and heroics, we’d be at the bottom of the lake now or in the belly of that foul rotting Swamp Troll.”

  Ravak glanced over toward her as she spoke. She appeared young, not more than twenty by the look of her face and eyes, but to Ravak, still his senior. He felt shy around her and intimidated by the fact his two new companions were both Southerners.

  She had long, thick hazel ringlets that hung about her youthful, smiling face like the bows of a willow, if somewhat mussed from the crusted blood from her ordeal. Her cheeks were rosy in spite of her fragile state. Her eyes told a story of wisdom and a great mystery Ravak could not understand, perhaps not even Manya understood it. Ravak could not quite put his mind to what he felt in that moment, but decided he quite enjoyed it, whatever it was. He’d decided her beautiful beyond any woman he’d ever laid eyes on in the horde.

  As he spoke to her and examined those sweet young eyes trying to determine just what it was that set his mind to mystery about them, he inadvertently flicked an eyebrow up at her while he spoke. He’d never done that before. He smiled broadly at the beautiful young Southern woman and sat back against a log near the fire to watch the red-hot embers at the bottom of the pit dance as they kissed the night air.

  Turynn was also a good-looking specimen of a Southerner. Ravak had more of a basis for judgment of Turynn’s appearance due to the traders he’d seen come and go from the village of his family. He wasn’t a particularly tall man and nor his sister Manya a very tall woman. She was of average height for a woman and he was of slightly less than average height for a man. Not to say the Southerner was short, but he was nowhere near as tall or broad in the back as Ravak. Turynn also had dark ringleted hair he kept short poking out from behind the bandages that now wrapped his wounded skull. His dark eyes had far less joy and mystery to them than those of his younger sister. Turynn looked to be in his thirties to Ravak, but he was unsure as the man’s face was somewhat weathered and the massive claw wound made it difficult to ascertain much more. Still, Turynn had a smile and a way about him that made a person want to go along with just about anything he said. That actually unnerved the Winter Wolf to some degree.

  “So what do you do?” asked Ravak to break the silence.

  They had all been quietly staring, hypnotized by the shifting and scintillating lights of the red coals. Turynn looked at Manya and smiled coyly then poked at the fire with a small stick he’d been fiddling with.

  Manya spoke up first, “We run an inn and trading post called the Black Dragon in the city of Hilltop.”

  “I already told him that,” Turynn interrupted.

  “No, no, I mean what do you REALLY do? I know Hilltop is your home and you make your living running an inn, but I sense there is more to the two of you than simple traders. For instance, Turynn, I noticed you fashioned a handily crafted bow and several arrows last eve before I arose, which leads me to believe you also know how to use that bow as a weapon or hunting implement or else why craft it? I also notice you wore the clothes of people who were accustomed to a very soft lifestyle when you were accosted by those goblins, judging by your soft cloth pants and your white blood stained blouse. A man who makes his living off the land does not dress thusly to venture into the mountains unless he is naive to the ways of the wild. And you, Manya, I notice you have very fine hair with a shine and fullness I’ve never seen on any of the women of my clan.” She blushed and lowered her gaze timidly.

  “For that matter you both simply seem to carry an air of dignity and honor about you not befitting most of the Southern traders that have come my way in past seasons. No, I would say that the Black Dragon Inn & Trading Post is not your purpose for being here, unless there is much more to this place than you have let on.” Ravak booted at the fire some, playing with the coals as he finished his assessment of the two Southerners.

  “Ravak, you’re right on all accounts. You are a much more astute and less a savage beast than I would have originally taken your for after seeing you dispatch that ghoul last night. We are no travel-hardened traders by any means, though we do own and operate a rather unique trading post back in Hilltop. What we do is acquire things of great value. Then we resell them to the people of our city and to wealthy customers in other nearby cities and kingdoms. So we are in fact as I have said, humble traders, merchants; it’s just we sometimes take on very specific and pricey tasks that seldom, but in this case, required our venturing out into the wilds.” Turynn drawled on the word acquire, lending an air of mystery to it, and again that coy smile found his lips as he finished his fanciful little blurb to the Barbarian. He took a nice sized swig of the Northern Ale.

  Turynn had a smile with the curve of a rapier. There was something about it Ravak simply couldn’t make sense of. It might have been wisdom, but it was more of a slyness that he picked up from Turynn when he smiled like that. As if the Southerner were saying something without using his words.

  “Ok, you acquire things and resell them. That still doesn’t really explain what you would have been doing up here in the Mystpeaks. What do the goblins have to do with any of it?”

  Manya responded to Ravak’s inquiry. “We were commissioned by my master, Rostioff Fastelaine, the Arch Mage of Elemental Sorcery at the Tower of High Sorcery in the city of Stromsgate, to acquire something quite rare and unique rumored to be in these mountains. When the goblins had set upon us, we were actually just searching for a pass up into the Mystpeaks. We’ve never been on this side of the range before. We weren’t making any headway either. We couldn’t even find this pass!” She turned to look over at her older brother.

  His face reddened slightly as if he were embarrassed he’d been unable to find the mouth of the vary pass they were now camped in. “No, I don’t suppose we could, sister. We had come back and forth several times across the south side of the range searching, but the mouth of the far side of this very pass eluded us as it lay hidden from us in the tree line. From what I can ascertain, we wandered too far off the main trail onto sort of a goat path. I suspect those goblins were watching us for some time, moving back and forth across the base of the south range when they finally decided they were hungry enough to attack our party. They captured us, killed two of our guards, and took the rest of the party hostage. They ate our fellow men, Ravak. They ate them. They cut them up right outside our cage! We had to watch as they strapped people down and butchered them into cuts of meat for cooking right in front of us. It was the most terrible ordeal I’ve ever faced and I don’t think I’ve come away from it a sane man. I’ll never forget that smell, the smell of man meat cooking, like burnt boar.” His knuckles had turned white.

  Ravak could see the man’s terrible mental scars and he felt for him. He’d been made suffer, being forced to watch what he thought would soon happen to himself and his beautiful young sister. They both turned to look back to the dwindling fire and said nothing for a few moments as the fire cracked and popped, echoing up the dark canyon walls above them. Ravak stoked it up by throwing another log on and blowing hard into the coals at the bottom of the pit. A sharp crackling came from within and then Ravak spoke again.

  “So what is this ‘commission’ you mentioned?” he asked.

  Manya answered again. “A commission is a job assigned to you by another for a price. We were commissioned to find some very rare artifacts rumored to be only myths. Our employer told us he’d found proof that these rare items were in fact no myth at all and their location had simply been long forgotten or kept secret from an age gone by. So with a map he had acquired, we were to set out in search of these items. The only problem was the damn map only showed the location about twenty miles around the ancient
hiding place of the items. So without prior knowledge of the region, we were searching for the locale blindly.” She looked down at the fire and sighed as she continued. “We knew the relative locale and we knew we had to get up into the eastern Mystpeaks, but from there, it was a bit of a guessing game. We couldn’t even find the mouth of the pass to lead us up into the range, let alone a twenty mile area surrounding the place.”

  “What are they? You keep referring to them as objects and items. If we are to be companions, you must tell me everything. Mayhap we can find them before we head back down and out of the mountains?” He tried to persuade them to tell him what it was they searched for and it worked. Turynn was drawn in immediately.

  “Yes, I suppose we could, couldn’t we? We’re both armed and dangerous men in our own rights and you know the lay of the land as good as any local tracker might. After another day or so of rest for Manya, maybe we could resume the quest. What do you think?” He seemed excited at the prospect and whirled around to get a look at his sister’s expression. He wanted to see if she shared his ambition.

  “Oh no, Turynn! Absolutely not! You almost got us killed up here the first time. Once I am well enough to, I am walking straight down out of these mountains right back to my nice cozy shop behind the Inn and that’s that! I’ll tell Rostioff we can’t fulfill his commission and return his retainer to him.” She crossed her arms, frustrated with her brother and the whole harebrained idea, and then rolled over to lie back down. She looked up at the thin strip of clear night sky visible at the top of the pass above them. "Besides, Turynn, the map is gone. The goblins burned it along with all of our other stuff.”

  “Ah, sister, no, they didn’t.” He stood up smiling, crossing his arms, that big coy smile forming on his lips again. As the two others turned to look up at him, he proceeded to reach down into his pants down below his family jewels and pulled out from there a small leather watertight pouch. He grinned from ear to ear now like a snake.

  Ravak was getting curious and sat up to see what was within.

  Manya turned over and propped herself up on her elbows, wincing slightly at the left over pain of her injuries. Turynn unbound the small pouch and from within produced a piece of vellum very neatly folded over several times. He began to carefully unfold the paper into the map they had spoken of. He laid it out on one of the logs by the fire where they could all see.

  “As you can see, the map is well made and inked so it has not faded or run during our ordeal. We can see here what is clearly marked as a castle with the title ‘Dragon’s Maw Keep.’ Do you know of this place, Ravak? It appears the small valley that surrounds the keep is entered via a narrow stone pass deep in the center of three peaks somewhere in these very mountains. See, there is a bridge up here and then the path looks to enter this valley below. It’s not far from this waterfall and I’d bet my left foot it’s the Misty Falls that lie at the head of the Sarandanus before it divides in the South of Shaarn.” Again he smiled coyly at his two companions with a renewed vigor for the hunt and awaited both approval and replies.

  “Dragon’s Maw is a faerie tale. It’s an old Barbarian legend and to the best of my knowledge, it never existed. It was a story told to us to inspire us to the great warrior prowess of our ancestors who supposedly built this massive keep in the mountains and rode dragons into battle. So, yes I know of it, but to find it I would say is impossible as I don’t think it ever really existed. If it’s in these mountains, which I doubt, it is very well hidden or has fallen into such a state of ruin as to be unrecognizable from the surrounding terrain. However, those three peaks seem familiar and I definitely know the way to the Misty Falls. I almost wonder if these are the peaks of the three massive mountains I have seen from the road to the White Bear and Black Crow lands. You still haven’t told me what it is we’re to go after. To say the keep you seek lay somewhere within these very mountains is like trying to find a single flea on the back of a yak. There must be hundreds of peaks aligned in a similar three point fashion to what is shown on this map.” He looked over at Manya and smiled, “I certainly hope this Master Rostioff of yours didn’t pay a map maker any great sum for this.”

  She rolled over to look up at the stars again and lay in silence for a moment before she spoke again. “Dragon’s eggs.” That was all she said.

  The air went silent for a moment and Turynn turned his head from his sister over to Ravak to see the reaction on the face of the Winter Wolf, which was quickly going from that of a cocky young boy flattering a young lady with his bad sense of humor to that of astonishment in trying to comprehend the tale he’d just been told. His brow flicked up and down a couple of times and he appeared about to say something, but paused to think on his words a moment longer.

  She rolled back over and said it again, this time looking him in the eye inquisitively. “Dragon’s eggs,” the mysterious phrase came again. “Do you believe us, Ravak? Or do you think us mad?”

  “He thinks we’re wonky, sister, look at his face,” said Turynn.

  Ravak was now wide-eyed and slowly shaking his head in disagreement with Turynn’s statement about their madness.

  “He thinks we’ve gone right off the bloomin’ deep end, he does!” Turynn stood and kicked the dirt and walked a ways out of the firelight, visibly frustrated, to look up at the stars and regain his composure. Clearly this wasn’t the first frustrating conversation they’d had on the topic.

  Ravak also rose, still slowly shaking his head in dumbfounded bewilderment, but now his mouth began to open as the words he sought finally came to his lips.

  “Look, Turynn, I never said I thought you crazy, or that I didn’t believe you, it’s just that you’ve got to give me a minute to think. This is all a little...”

  Turynn cut him off sharply, “A little what? Crazy?”

  Ravak cut back in abruptly with his hands out. “No. A little complicated is what I was thinking. My people have told the tales of the ancient times to all the past generations of our clan, but these stories don’t even seem real anymore. They seem more like children’s stories to me. No one has seen a dragon in these parts for thousands of seasons. No one has ever come across the mysterious Dragon’s Maw Keep and my whole life I have thought of these things as faerie tales. That’s not to say there hasn’t always been some part of the boy in me holding onto those fanciful tales from my youth wanting at least some of it to be true. Somehow I always knew there was more to it than just children’s stories. I’ll tell you this; had I not seen those goblins yesterday and experienced the attack back in my village last moon, I would have a lot more trouble believing in dragons today!” He smiled and nodded at them both. He’d seen and done more in the last moon of his life than many in his village had done in all their days in the Land of Shaarn. He was up for believing in dragons, goblins, ghouls, undead Swamp Trolls, and whatever else life had to offer. He may have had a rough go of things recently with his father and had to make his own way, but he finally felt truly alive.

  “Well then, if we have your confidence, we will continue on with the tale,” Turynn smiled and looked quite happy to hear Ravak would listen to more.

  Ravak listened, mesmerized as the two Southerners spun a yarn of Turynn’s time as a lad in Stromsgate serving in a thieves’ guild called the Hand of Shadows, after their parents had passed away from Black Fever. He spoke of how his sister studied at the Tower of High Sorcery, also in the city of Stromsgate on the coast of the vast Orcun Ocean, which Ravak simply knew as the Southern Ocean from his people. Ravak’s head spun as the tale unwound. Turynn’s story of the thieves’ guild confused him. He seemed like such an honorable man, yet he’d just admitted to being a well-trained thief. However, it was simply a means to an end to get his sister through her seasons of tutelage at the Tower and to earn enough money for them to begin a real life in one of the other southern cities, Hilltop. He certainly couldn’t hold that against them. After all, they’d been orphaned as children and had to do what they could to survive. Manya seemed
mysterious and he felt the title of wizard or sorceress fit her well. There certainly seemed to be an air of mystique to the woman he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “Manya, if you’re a sorceress, does that mean you can cast magickal spells?” Ravak asked. He knew of the tribal magick the old witchdoctor in his village practised, but he’d only heard legends of wizardry.

  “Yes, I can. But unfortunately, those wicked little goblins stole my spell book away from me. They also took my staff and I’m pretty certain they burned them when they captured us. Since they are far too stupid to understand something as rare and valuable as a wizard’s spell book when they come across one, they would have had no use for it. As for the staff, well, I liked that one, but I have more back at the inn. So for now, all I can do is cast minor spells we call cantrips. More trick than magick. I can light a fire or move a shadow. I can manifest a bit of water in my hands or palm a coin and disappear it into my pocket. Until I get one of my other spell books from home, I am more or less powerless.”

  She looked down at the fire with a frown, quite disappointed that she was unable to demonstrate her power to Ravak. He looked equally dispirited as he had wanted to see some wizardry performed. They talked on for another couple of hours until all three of them grew tired and finally decided it time to get some sleep. Depending on Manya’s state in the morning, they all agreed they might head out.1

  1 The Fulcrum Orb

  The Dragon Orbs are ancient and powerful artifacts that survived the First Age of the Land of Shaarn. Constructed from various dragon eyes and powerful magicks, they are said to hold the greatest of all arcane power in Midgaard. There are nine orbs in total. Each with different purposes and powers in mind. Of the nine, one is more powerful than the rest; it is called the Fulcrum Orb. But since no one knows who created the orbs or for what purpose and no record remains on how to control their power, it is a mystery as to how to unlock the great power of each orb. Many were lost to time, but one has remained under the guard of the Tower Magi. Danthalas Whiteash holds an orb; the Bronze Dragon Orb. The elves of Rowendale possess the Blue Dragon Orb. Daria, the Lady of the Faerie Wood, possesses the Copper Dragon Orb. The White Dragon Orb was last seen in the charge of a Dragon Rider named Jaarnus back in the First Age, but both Jaarnus and the whereabouts of his orb were lost to a time where records were not kept as they are now. The locations of the remaining orbs remain a mystery. Their power is too immense for them all to be assembled under the control of one hand and thus the gods saw fit to have them separated and scattered across the face of Midgaard. The Fulcrum Orb holds the power to control and locate the other eight orbs so long as the wielder has at least seen the orb he seeks. It also contains the powers of all the realms of magick combined and gives the wielder the immense power to cast spells from all the schools of magick.