Dragon's Rise

by Lou Hoffmann

  Lucky’s mouth fell open. He felt like he’d been drowsing and got doused with a bucket of cold water. When he looked from Thurlock to Almirah, he saw surprise written on her face too.

  “Sir,” Lucky began, but then he couldn’t think of what else to say, so he just stopped.

  “Are you sure that’s wise, right now, Thurlock?” Almirah spoke quietly, hesitating the slightest bit between words.

  Thurlock wasn’t offended. “To be honest, I can be sure of nothing. But the enemy has the advantage of us, and while Han’s spies—and possibly yours,” he added, smiling, “can tell us about their movements, we’ve been able to figure out very little of what they do, who they are, how this power they have works.”

  He stopped for a moment, his gaze directed down near his feet, and Lucky saw that for all his greatness and his age and his magic, he doubted himself like any other human. He’s only trying to do his best, and he hopes that’s enough. After he chewed on that for a moment, he thought, It’s something we have in common.

  Thurlock took a deep breath and smiled, perhaps wryly. “There’s this book Han likes to quote, in all his military mindedness. It was written some time ago by an Earthborn named Sun Tzu. The Art of War, it’s called. I’ve read it, of course, but possibly since I don’t usually care too much about battles and such, I don’t remember much of it. But I do remember this:

  “‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.’”

  He intoned that proverb exactly as Lucky would expect a proverb to be intoned, with slightly facetious gravity. And when he finished, he laughed. But then he sobered again, sighed, and continued.

  “I’m in a unique position to help us know this enemy, don’t you think? So, I’ll do what I can.”

  “When?” Lucky asked, trying to mentally prepare himself for such a journey.

  Thurlock’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh! Not you, Luccan. This isn’t a journey for you right now.”

  Lucky didn’t want to go. He wanted not to go quite a lot, in fact. But something about the way Thurlock uttered that “not you, Luccan” made him want to argue that of course he should go. “Why not?”

  “Well,” Thurlock said, “I’m hoping you can stay here in the city and learn some things while I’m gone. It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to meet Almirah. I’m hoping to impose on the hospitality of the Followers for a time, and perhaps they’d be willing to teach you.”

  Almirah smiled and prepared to speak, probably to agree to Thurlock’s proposal, so Lucky hurried to speak first. “Uh, well. No offense, Almirah. But Thurlock, with all due respect, wouldn’t I learn a lot if I went with you? And you told me they do no magic here, so they can’t teach me that.”

  Almirah spoke up then, and she addressed Lucky rather than Thurlock. “I think you have some mistaken ideas, young man. First, all people, and perhaps especially a future Suth Chiell, need to learn many things even more important than magic.”

  Thurlock nodded in grave agreement. Lucky wanted to apologize for making such a thoughtless statement, because of course what Almirah said was true, though he wasn’t convinced that meant he should stay behind while Thurlock went world-hopping. But Almirah wasn’t finished.

  With eyebrows raised almost in challenge, she said, “And do you seriously believe that because we don’t do magic here, we can’t teach you things that will help with your magic? If so, you’re quite wrong. You see, being free from the need to control the forces that animate this world, and also free from the restrictions of any god-belief, we’ve had centuries here to develop our understanding of the life of the world, its energy, or if you will allow us to use our term, its spirit. And because we understand it, we can direct it to certain purposes, even if magic is never one of them.”

  “Precisely,” Thurlock pronounced. “You know that energy you’ve been Seeing, Luccan? You do that in a very different way from myself or any other user of advanced magic I know. Because you use the Sight to find that energy. I and a number of others call upon Behl to put it at our disposal, to draw the energy into ourselves, so to speak. Others have their methods. I believe the Followers can help you learn to direct the energy without absorbing it, and considering the mix of magics residing within you, that may be very helpful indeed.”

  Lucky understood the reasoning. He believed, of course, that both Almirah and Thurlock were telling him the truth, and that they had his interests at heart. But he didn’t want to stay behind while Thurlock went to another world. To himself, he admitted the truth: it scared him. “But….”

  Thurlock laid his big hand on Lucky’s shoulder. “And then too, Luccan. You’ve had some real trouble with Portal crossings in the past. And they’re not working very well at the moment. Perhaps it’s best you avoid them—especially since I’m not one hundred percent certain of where I want to go.”

  Lucky sighed. He’d lost the argument, and honestly he knew it was good that he had. Swallowing his fears, he said, “Okay. When will you leave?”

  Thurlock gazed at him, and then with sympathy written into his narrowed eyes and gentle smile, said, “Now, I’m afraid.” Then he turned to Lucky and wrapped him up in a hug that was strong and warm and about as grandfatherly as a hug could get. He held Lucky there for a moment, then released him with a final squeeze and turned to Almirah. “Dear one, your hospitality has been wonderfully refreshing, as always, but it’s time for me to go. Thank you for all you have ever done for me and for Ethra, and for what you and the Followers will do in keeping Luccan safe, letting him know he’s cared for, and helping him learn. It is truly above and beyond what most would consider duty. Yet there is one more thing I’d ask of you. The city—it is under an insidious kind of magical attack. We found a sigil-bound set-spell in the middle of the road on our way here—apparently an attempt to keep some evil activities hidden. Worship of Ahmadou is on the rise, and it seems to me the discontent, fear, and decline we’ve seen may be spurred on by magic rather than ordinary politics. If you can see your way to direct some healing outward through the paths of life…?”

  “Consider all those things done as well as we can do them, dear old man,” she said, and looked for a long time into Thurlock’s eyes before she concluded, “Until someday, then.”

  Thurlock nodded slowly, leaned over and kissed Almirah on the cheek very tenderly, and said, “Yes. Until someday.”

  As he walked with Thurlock to where Sherah waited, Lucky looked back over his shoulder to see Almirah waving farewell. She was smiling, but he thought he detected the gleam of tears on her cheeks.

  Now there’s a mystery, he thought. He wondered if he would ever know the whole story. He hoped so, but whether or not he would know the secret of Thurlock and Almirah, he promised himself he’d make every effort to learn the secret to the gentle power held by the Followers of the Simple Way.

  Chapter Fourteen: Going to Ephemera

  THE FIRMA-LOCATION experts Thurlock had consulted mostly agreed with what he already knew about how to get to Ephemera, rather than wandering aimlessly through unknown worlds and pockets of creation. Since he’d met with them, he’d spent hours deep in his own thoughts, cataloging what he knew about Terrathia and its child-world, Ephemera, what he felt about it, and what he wanted to find out about it. Of course he needed to have those things firmly in mind. Other than consensus on that, the experts had little to offer, but they did give him a recently developed “virtual M.E.R.L.I.N.,” a device that didn’t need a physical item as a link to the Portals, using instead a magical formula similar to a spell, which he could then empower with a bit of Behl’s light. It should bring him home if he became lost, they said. It was still in the testing phase, but mostly because not everyone could access Behl’s light, and they were looking for alternative ways to switch the spell on. Also, they advised him to start
his journey from Portal One, Entrance B. In their studied opinion, that was the gateway most likely to get him where he wanted to go.

  Portal One had the distinction of being the first ever used by the people of the Sunlands, as far as histories could tell the tale.

  About three centuries before Thurlock’s birth, a curious woman named Tohlani had several days in a row noticed an energy shift in one area as she performed some daily magic to keep insects from ruining her crop of potatoes. She had other things to do, but couldn’t resist investigating, and by focusing her senses—which included the Sight—she traced the source of the altered stream of energy to an unusual cave. The entrance to the cave was a cleft in a single house-sized stone, and as soon as she passed the entrance, a narrow passage led her steadily and quickly down to a cavern a hundred feet or so underground. The cavern had an eerie feel, but at the same time seemed to invite closer inspection—especially in one corner behind a pool. When Tohlani trained her attention on that place, she couldn’t seem to get her eyes in focus. When she hopped over the little pool, she landed on a slick surface and slid straight into Naught.

  Reflecting on the tale as he headed for the university—which had been built up around that very Portal—he thought as he always did that it was amazing she survived and even made it back to Ethra to tell her story. When she came back, she reported spending years as a prisoner in the south of the East March, where the superstitions of the times were especially strong. When she finally won her freedom, it took her months to get home. She’d only been gone a few days from her home, however, which was a difficult thing to take in. After a few weeks of recovering mainly by tending her farm and staying away from Portal One, she’d undertaken a more ordinary, horseback journey—to Hoenholm, which was then the seat of governance and magical strength in the Sunlands—to tell the wizards there what she’d found.

  This was the time of the first true Suth Chiell, a very wise and talented woman named Quahn. Quahn visited the Portal Tohlani had found and then gathered a force of wizards and helpers and dispersed them throughout the Sunlands and beyond searching for places with the energy signature of a Portal of Naught. And that was the true beginning of the Age of Magic in Ethra.

  Thurlock wondered if the Terrathians wouldn’t spell the end of that age, but he put such worries aside and spent the last hour before sundown communing with Behl and gathering the light that fueled his own magic into various containers with useful spells upon them, into his person, and into his staff—which could hold a lot. That done, he refreshed himself with food, tea, and an hour’s magic-enhanced sleep, then set out for that very same Portal One.

  Most Portals could be accessed from any other Portal, but could only be the starting point to travel to a limited number of destinations—often only one, sometimes two or three. The way in which that fact was established, centuries ago, is an awful tale full of lost travelers, time anomalies, and good minds lost to insanity. Portal One was a particular monster, because it wasn’t really a single gateway, it was a gateway complex. There were, in fact a total of three entrances to the Portal at the university, and each of those three could be traveled in more than one way. One of the entrances had been called the Obscured Doorway ever since Willock had called it that in a letter to the dean explaining why he’d not been teaching his classes. That was One B, the Portal Thurlock wanted.

  He checked his impossibly deep pockets and found his magical containers, a few devices that might prove useful, and some basic supplies—he remembered how hungry he’d been the last time he visited the Terrathians. He wasn’t quite sure if the world he’d visited then had been Terrathia, or whether they were already stationed on Ephemera at the time. Of course, “at the time” was a relative concept. Because it was less than a year ago in Ethra, but could have quite literally been ages ago in Terrathian time. But all that had little bearing on the task at hand.

  Quit thinking about it and get on with doing it, Thurlock, you old fool. It occurred to him to wonder why he was always calling himself a fool, when he was basically the opposite.

  “Stick to the business at hand, Thurlock!” That exasperated instruction came at him in the voice of his old teacher. The man was long gone from the world of the living, but his orders seemed to have lost none of their effect.

  With his staff brimming with Behl’s power, he grasped it firmly with both hands, filled his mind with images and ideas and emotions that, for him, meant Ephemera, fixed a time in his mind not based on clocks or seasons or years but on what he knew was happening in Ephemera, and stepped boldly into Portal One, entry B.

  He saw no lightning, felt no pain, suffered no confusion.

  When he exited, he stood in the midst of a nightmare where humans and animals waited in cages for their turn to be strapped into the machines; where narrow-skulled faces bore traces of no emotion except a vague, cold desperation; where the pain and anguish of captive, abused children, adults, and myriad living things flowed so thickly the air became difficult to breathe.

  Yes, by the gods, he thought, this is Ephemera. And if I could I’d curse the creatures who created it to the lowest hell of the cruelest gods in any world.

  Chapter Fifteen: The Shaping Shrine

  THE FOLLOWERS left Lucky to his own devices for much of his first night under their watch. He was allowed to explore, and he discovered that the area they occupied—or minded, to use their own word—covered a lot more than the few city blocks he’d seen with Thurlock. Those blocks boasted shops with living quarters above or below, tiny public parks and bath facilities, and even two libraries. But beyond the main square, cobbled streets led to more of the bright houses and then, eventually, broad acres of green or flowered fields, stretches of forest, creeks, and a river with foaming rapids and a waterfall. Wildlife roamed freely, and when Lucky approached, they didn’t run.

  Lucky was so lost in wonder that he didn’t notice the sun had sunk half below the horizon. He also hadn’t noticed that someone had kept tabs on him. He had just turned to wonder if he could find his way back to Almirah’s café—the only place he knew to go—when a boy of about ten came out of the trees.

  “Our Almirah says she’d like to see you come back to dine and bathe before bed, sir.”

  Lucky smiled at him. “You don’t have to call me sir. My name’s Luccan. Some people call me Lucky. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Jaffy, sir.”

  Lucky refrained from arguing about the sir, instead saying, “Well, Jaffy, I’ll be glad to return to Almirah, but I might be a little lost. Show me the way?”

  Jaffy’s smile was contagious, and his friendly chatter as they walked back through deepening dusk soon had Lucky smiling too. After seeing the beauty of the quiet place the Followers of the Simple Way had made in the center of the bustling—and at present evidently troubled—city, he fell into a kind of ease. Even though important things were happening, the urgency, constant anxiety, and feeling of impending doom he’d been coping with—not even fully aware of it—slipped away, or was stripped away, perhaps. For the first time, he realized that the only way to deal with everything was one thing, one day, one step at a time.

  So he could breathe.

  He met only briefly with Almirah, long enough to discuss the plan while he stayed with the Followers. He was there to be safe and not be alone, but also to learn, she said, and Lucky understood that was the “step” he was on, when it came to dealing with problems. She laid out a plan for the piece of his education the Followers would be helping him with, and then she took him to get food and led him to a comfortable room of his own. It was small. The walls were stone and around the bed they were hung with thick velvet tapestries depicting starlight and fireflies. The room lay on the outer edge of a row of houses, and the window, uncovered for the mild summer night, looked out on a field studded with daisy-like blooms that opened at night and glowed in the moonlight.

  After dinner, he’d bathed quickly in the shared baths that served a cluster of four buildings, and
by the time Almirah left him alone in his room, he was so tired he undressed immediately and fell into the bed. He’d almost fallen asleep when Jaffy knocked on his door, opened it without waiting for a response, and brought in a set of three camp stones and placed them in the empty fireplace.

  “They’re cold now, but they’ll be warm come morning, when there’s a bite in the air. Good night to you, sir.”

  Lucky decided there was nothing he could do about the sir, and he may as well get used to it. “Good night, Jaffy,” he said, and then followed that with the Suth Chiell’s blessing—the first time he’d ever performed it without being told to, the first time it had felt natural. It was enough of a shock to hear himself say it that it woke him up. Jaffy thanked him, but as the boy left, Lucky worried whether by giving the blessing he’d broken the “no magic” rule. Swift on the heels of that fear, though, came the realization that the blessing had no magic in it at all, only the benefit of kindness and good intention.

  He watched the moon wink out, or else his eyes fell closed, and he slept long and deep and dreamless.

  MORNING STARTED early for the Followers. When the noise of human activity woke Lucky, his east-facing window held a sun-glow struggling to lift the dark, and not a trace of the actual sun. The camp stones were lit a deep orange, though, and small licks of yellow flame flickered around them. He rose, refreshed as he hadn’t felt for some time, but still wished he could stay wrapped up in dreams and bedcovers for at least a week.

  That wouldn’t happen. He was expected early for breakfast, and then, according to the plan Almirah had laid out, Jaffy would take him to meet the weavers. Lucky wasn’t sure why, but he wasn’t going to argue. From there, though, he’d go to a place they called the shaping shrine, and though he didn’t know why they had a shrine in a place where gods were not even acknowledged, much less prayed to, Lucky figured that was where he’d really begin his education. Lunch after that, then off to the greenhouses, again for unexplained reasons.