by Cyn Bagley
Michael wanted to drop down, put his hands in the stream, and drink from them. His logical mind told him that if he did that, he would leave knee prints in the bank of the stream. It was tempting, though.
Plus his legs and back ached from walking through the night. If he sat down, it would be hard to get up and his muscles would twitch and cramp.
While he was staring at the stream, Elita was already upstream several feet. She looked back to see if he was following. When he noticed, she gave him a disapproving glance.
It’s never a good thing to camp beside a stream, Michael remembered from one of his journeyman classes. The small trails led animals to the water. The predators followed the trails to find food. So if you were there, you became food. The teachers tried to make the information as simple as possible. Mages were known for their magic and not their survival skills.
So he followed Elita when she took a left branch from the trail that led to a small clearing away from the stream.
“Do you have anything in that pack that smells like food?”
Michael nodded his head, yes. He was too tired to say anything. He dropped his backpack. Elita took the packs, tied them together and levered the packs into a tree a few feet from their camp. Michael lay down in the dirt and Kayla cuddled next to him. As his eyes closed, he saw Elita sitting against a tree trunk. She had claimed first watch. He didn’t argue, just fell asleep.
She would protect them while they slept. He wasn’t worried that she would fall asleep. There were tales of what happened to people who woke a sleeping dwarf. It was never good for the human.
As he slept he dreamed. They were walking up a hill. When he looked behind him, he saw cliffs and ravines. Far, far below him he saw a tint of green that looked like the forest he was sleeping in. Before him was Kayla. He thought that Elita was at his back.
When he looked down, there was a rope around his wrists. He tried to call his power to start a spark, anything to burn the rope. He stumbled when someone pulled on the rope and he saw a stone man, a golem. There was a grumble as if the mountain was ready to open its mouth and devour them.
He continued walking until they came to a cave. The opening became bigger and bigger. He could see teeth, and he began to shiver from fear. “Michael.” He heard a dragon roar and he trembled in fear.
Elita shook him awake and he opened his eyes. The dream must have lasted an entire day. He didn’t feel rested.
“Michael, Michael,” she shouted. “We need to leave. They’ve found us.” She had already dropped the backpacks. Kayla was opening her eyes. Elita handed her some dried meat. “We need to leave now.”
“How?” Michael asked as he put on the backpack. The night sky was dark and the stars were beginning to shine.
“You were there.” Elita said, her voice shaky. “The dream, you idiot. The dream. We need to leave now.”
He could hear her mumble about trusting a dumb human and that they were treacherous sorts. He was marked, she mumbled. Elita grabbed Kayla by the arm and ran down a trail that led off into the deeper part of the forest.
He ran after her, but the darkness and the forest wrapped around the woman and the child. He didn’t dare call out to them because they had been found. It was his fault.
North Forest
Michael Ordson
Michael stopped in the middle of the dirt path. His body wheezed as his lungs tried to catch up with his body. When he began to breathe normally, he looked at the trees and bushes, searching for a place to hide a full-grown man with an aching leg. He had overstretched his abilities and his leg was groaning under his weight. He should just stand right there in the middle of the path. He would be captured anyway. It was his fault. His magic was slowly coming back, but it had made their party vulnerable. The dwarfs had been able to contact him.
Hopefully the dangling backpacks left at the small camp, the fire, and the blankets would deceive their pursuers for a few moments so that the three of them could escape. His heart sank. It was every man for himself. Elita and Kayla would not be coming back to look for him.
“Psst, psst,” a soft sound in the stream caught his attention. The undine that had been whispering in his head now for weeks popped her head out of the stream and motioned to him. What the heck. He really didn’t have any options. He slowly walked to the stream.
“What do you want?” His voice came out surly.
The undine looked less sensuous and more kind as if the fresh water had washed away some taint. “I can hide you,” the undine said.
“No,” Michael said. Even though the undine’s aura was cleaner, he still didn’t trust her.
She smiled at him sadly. “At least let me show you a small cave underneath a waterfall. If you are found there, you’ll lead them away from the woman and child.”
Only a few months ago, he could have hidden his tracks from mundane and magical trackers. Now, without his magic, he had to rely on the kindness of strange elementals. He knew from practice and from instruction that trusting an elemental was dangerous. In the university, they were taught that elementals had to be captured and tamed to work with a mage. Elementals didn’t take kindly to this training. They used to be the natural ally of the mage, but with the enslavement, an enmity had sprung up between the free elementals and the mages. The question was “Could he trust this undine?”
He heard baying as the dwarfs found the campsite. He had less time than he thought. And there was no more time to think if it was right to put his life into her hands.
Afraid to make noise, he nodded his head, yes. She swam up the stream, and Michael followed her. His feet sank into the mud bank. They would find him anyway. Behind him the long notes of the hound told him the hunting party was coming. They had his scent.
Soon he heard the roar of the waterfall as it hit the small pond below it. He tried to hurry but he was still tired and his feet became heavier as more mud stuck to his boots. He pushed forward, until he walked around another bend stood in front of the waterfall. He forgot the scratches from branches he had broken to get here. He felt a sense of awe.
The waterfall was several feet high. Not impressive as some waterfalls, but it had carved its own place.
As the undine had said, there was a small hole behind the waterfall. He walked through a shield of water to find it. He shivered with the cold as the water soaked through his clothes and skin. Even his leather boots were wet. He began to shed his clothes.
The undine stood in front of him. Before he had pulled off his pants, she touched them. The water bled the water from his clothing. She muttered a little, but he didn’t catch her words.
He was instantly warm. He handed her the shirt and sat on the floor of the cave with a thump. His cheeks were flushed. He couldn’t keep his eyes open so fell asleep to the water’s roar. His last thought was that lying in a dark cave, and listening to the water, was like being born again. The roar cleaned his mind of the last of the Grimoire taint. It softened the scars.
While he slept, the undine touched the top of his head. She healed him body and soul with water. It was a cleansing and a healing. It was a big chance on her part. After this healing, he would hear her forever. She was also bound to him for as long as he lived.
The elemental had found her mage. The undine had fought this bonding her entire existence. After seeing the lesser beings her brothers had become when they bonded, when the mages had used their power to the point that they almost blinked out of existence, she had vowed to never be used this way.
Now, voluntarily, with this mage she had bonded herself to him. It didn’t make her happy. Rather this one, who had ethics, than to another. She sank back into the water and waited for the arrival of the hounds.
Michael would sleep better than he had since his scars. He would be a fire mage no longer. His magic was now water based. If the undine could feel laughter, she would have laughed at the mage’s future. Water was for divination, it was for cleansing, it was for drowning. Water was typically a woman’s m
agic because it coursed with the tides.
It worked against fire.
Chapter Sixteen
Dragon Cave
Hilda Brant
Davi slept and slept. At first it was an abnormal sleep. Hilda lay next to him so that she could hear his breath. It was very slow, but steady. She attempted to check his pulse, but she couldn’t feel it. Hours later the she-dragon, Varia, landed on the grass near them.
She took one look at Davi and her nose changed from a slight rose to a pale white. Hilda was sure that Varia was going to change to human form. Instead she felt a probe in her mind. Sassy flew up on Hilda’s shoulder and started to scold the dragon. The dragon and fire elemental conferred for a moment, and then Sassy seemed to give her consent. Sassy flew back to Hilda and huddled in her arms. Sassy kept watching the dragon and Hilda thought she saw the two nod at each other.
At first there was static in her head, and then Hilda heard a voice. “Do you hear me?” The voice was so loud that Hilda dropped Sassy and put her hands over her ears. She dropped to the ground and rolled back and forth. Sassy screamed at the dragon, although Hilda was in so much pain that she could not hear the words.
“Sorry.” The voice in her head was less intrusive and not as loud. “It has been a long time since I talked this way to a human, even a human mage. We need to get the dragonling to my cave. It is dangerous for him to be like this … here.”
“He killed the other dragon,” said Hilda. The voice felt more like a conversation between two people than an invasion of privacy from a fire elemental.
She could hear Varia laugh in her head. “Oh, dragons are not elementals. We are much more than that. At one time the humans worshiped us as gods.” There was a small sigh and a little nostalgia in the voice.
“The other dragon? Oh no, no one could kill that dragon. Davi banished him for a time. That dragon will be back… hopefully in a millennium.”
Hilda looked down at Davi. His breath slowed from a pant and she could see his chest rise and fall. He was breathing normally, but when she touched him, he was cold. “How are we going to get him to the cave? Did you want to fly him there?”
“It would be easier,” the she-dragon said “if you tie him on the horse and follow me. It is too hard to tie a rider to me for I am too large.” She preened a little at that description. “But you know that the little fire elemental can give you temporary strength. You don’t want to do it too often because it will burn you out…eventually.”
Sassy whirled around Hilda’s arms and legs. Hilda could feel the strength return to her limbs. She felt like she was in her twenties again, but stronger. She lifted Davi onto the horse and tied him on the saddle, face down. She quickly packed the saddle horse. When she was ready, the she-dragon leaped into the air. Her scales sparkled like jewels.
It was a magnificent sight. To see something so large using wings to keep their heavy bodies in the air, they had to expend a lot of magic. Hilda felt awe and just a little envy.
The strength Sassy had lent her still coursed through Hilda’s body. Hilda took the reigns of the lead horse—the pack horse was tied to the saddle—and led them as she followed the she-dragon. Davi dangled over the saddle, still unconscious.
The dragon flapped her wings, her flight following the up and down pattern of a swallow with each flap. Hilda kept an eye on her as she looked for a path or road for the horses.
Hilda had heard stories that dragons lived in caves built in the side of steep mountains. The closest mountain looked miles away. It would be a long walk. She thought about riding, but then she would have to dump their supplies. She continued walking.
When Hilda and the horses reached the road, she was relieved to see a clan of dwarfs with a cart waiting for her. They lifted the dangling Davi off of the horse and put him on some cushions at the bottom of the cart. They didn’t speak to Hilda, just tied the horses to the wagon and put her in the cart beside Davi.
There was some muttering and then two dwarfs, one a driver and the other riding guard, left with the cart and Hilda. The rest of the dwarfs melted back into the brush. She couldn’t see them because they blended into the forest.
They were obviously hunting something. Any good mercenary knew that you slept when you could. She could feel each bump in the road. The dwarfs were driving at a faster speed than she was used to. She leaned against the side of the cart, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep past the bumps and jerks.
She must have been really tired, because soon the darkness welcomed her.
It must have been a few hours because she woke up groggy and sore. A dwarf shook her awake. The strength from Sassy was gone. She glanced around. They were in a big cave with torches on the wall, lighting the cave. The floor was hard-packed dirt. “We’ll leave the horses here,” said one of the dwarfs.
Hilda fell out of the cart. She was so stiff that she had to stretch to get the use of her muscles back. “I’ll groom them.”
The dwarfs looked at each other and spoke a language that Hilda had never heard before. She could tell they were talking about her because the larger dwarf kept pointing at her. Finally her translator said, “No, we have someone to care for them.”
Hilda took them at their word because Davi was still unconscious and breathing. He needed a healer. Later she would come back and check on the horses. The dwarfs carried Davi to a mining cart that was on metal tracks. She had never seen anything like it. Mostly roads were for carts, horses, and people. Not for a strange mechanical cart.
She got into the cart and one of the dwarfs lifted the brake. They were rolling down the track into the darkness.
“How?” she asked. She could feel the darkness press around her. The dwarf didn’t say a word. She supposed it was a slight incline that gave the cart some momentum. How they got the cart back to the entrance, she had no idea. The dwarfs were known for their swords and magical items. She had heard rumors that they were masters at other types of metal work.
Magic— it was all magic to her.
North Forest
Michael Ordson
Michael heard the undine’s voice over the roar of the waterfall. “Michael, Michael.” He opened his eyes. The undine was kneeling beside him, her cold wet hand was on his cheek. “Michael,” she said again. “They are coming. They’ve found you.”
Michael sat up. His heart went from 60 beats per minute to 100 beats. His body went through thoughts of flight and then fight. There was no place for him to go. He grabbed his belt knife and held it in front of him. He didn’t have combat training, but he wasn’t too bad at defense. He had sparred with Hilda before with a staff.
The undine slipped into the water to hide. If she wasn’t careful his pursuers would sense her. He got tired of standing there with a knife in his hand. He sat down and looked for something to chew on. He thought longingly of the jerky Josephine had packed for him. He tried to calm his mind as the hounds bayed closer and closer.
He heard shouts, then someone yelled for him to come out. He waited for them to come to him. A dwarf stood, dripping wet, with both of his hands in front of him. He wasn’t armed. The dwarf tried to speak to him, but Michael didn’t understand dwarvish. It hadn’t been taught in the mage university. For a moment, Michael wished he had learned it.
When he didn’t respond to the first dwarf, another small man stuck his head through the curtain of water. He didn’t seem to feel the cold like Michael did. Then he was through. A third small man or dwarf, he corrected himself, slipped through the curtain of water that had hidden Michael so successfully all night.
Michael stood up and stretched. One of the dwarfs gestured for him to follow. He followed, two dwarfs in front of him and one behind. The air was thick with tension. He stayed calm and moved slowly. It was better to be captured than to be killed. The spears that the dwarfs carried were sharp.
His mind idly wandered to the height of the dwarfs. If he put Elita beside them, Elita would have six inches on the tallest of them. She must have been a
giant in her land. In human cities she was barely the size of a small woman.
As soon as Michael walked through the curtain of water, he was wet and cold again. The spray against his skin with the cold air made him shiver. He stopped on the bank of the river, hoping that the undine would do something to relieve his cold. She didn’t. She was hiding.
He followed the dwarfs on the dirt path leading to the main cart road. A small cold hand touched his neck. He felt a sense of relief. The undine hadn’t left him.
Around him ten other dwarfs had spears ready if he bolted. He saw a flicker of light as he looked up into one of the trees. A dwarf was on a branch, ready to shoot his arrow. The dwarfs were dressed alike in boots, woolen socks that came to their knees, shorts, and a leather jacket. They didn’t seem cold.
Michael felt the spray of water on his back. The undine was warning him. A dwarf approached him. He first spoke to Michael in dwarf and when Michael didn’t respond, he frowned and spoke slowly in human—“Who are you?”
“My name is Michael and I am an innkeeper.” He said. His body shook so much from the cold and the water that was freezing against his skin that his words were also shaky.
The dwarf sniffed. “You have been traveling with a blacksmith. Her scent is on you.”
It was then that Michael saw the hound standing next to the dwarf. It’s nose was up and ready to pounce on him if he moved. He sighed. “There was a woman and girl who were traveling the same road.” He hoped the dwarfs would take his words at face value. Lying to a magical race, who could smell a lie, was a risk. Still he had to try.
“They went—” he pointed south, “and they said they had a long way to go.”
Dwarfs were a magical race like dragons. There wasn’t much information about dwarfs at the university unless it was stored in the forbidden archive. Plus dwarfs were careful about keeping their magical abilities hidden so no one had a clear idea of what they could do. One thing everyone agreed upon was that dwarfs could build magical objects and things.