by Aaron Pogue
"He should. He does, though time has aided my disguise. I have been five years a Justice and am only newly returned to the Academy. But it aroused his suspicion that I refused any escort at all. If we were seen chatting so easily, if you were seen off your leash, he might still send warning to the Academy."
I frowned. "We are not going to the Academy?"
"Your father made few friends there, and at least one true enemy."
"Then where—"
"Just ride, Taryn. All will be made clear."
Another hour we rode, until the sun began to sink toward the west and I could no longer stifle the groans. Then at last my uncle took pity on me and pulled to a stop beside an ambling river.
I slid from my saddle and collapsed on the narrow shore. While I rested, the wizard tended to our horses. He was precise and methodical in his movements, showing a level of attention to the mundane work I would not have expected from a man of such authority. It reminded me of my mother, though. Then he turned and stooped over me with the same focused care.
"You look wretched," he said.
"I feel battered and broken," I groaned.
"Are you so badly beaten as that? Othin swore they did not torture you."
Feebly, I shook my head. "I am only worn and tired. For as long as I can remember now, the only break I've had from hard riding has been some days spent on the bare floor of a dungeon buried in heavy chains."
He nodded slowly. "I see. Hard riding can be a torture of its own, to someone unaccustomed to the saddle. But I'm surprised—and a little pleased—to see old Caleb hasn't beaten all the weakness out of you."
I bristled at that, heaving my shoulders up off the ground so I could at least face him sitting up. "I am not weak!"
He smiled and pushed me gently back to rest. "I meant no insult by it."
"It is just the riding. I was not...allowed...."
"Ah." He gave a knowing nod. "You may say no more. That, at least, I understand."
He went to the saddle bags and rummaged among them, speaking to me over his shoulder the whole time. "Your father couldn't ride, when I first met him. He was in a state...well, worse than this, I should say, but only just. Master Claighan had forced him to ride for days, and I don't think he'd ever sat a horse before that. At least you know how to handle one."
He came back with the crusty end of a loaf of bread and a leather mug full of something thick and brown. He waited until I struggled upright again, then pressed them both upon me.
"Eat the bread. Your stomach will demand it. And drink the broth. It's bitter as sin, but it'll see you better."
I raised my brows. "Is it an elixir?"
"A special brew, be sure."
I sniffed, and it smelled foul. But that was as it had to be. It tasted worse, but I gulped as much as I could before I had to break for air. Even then, it felt like sludge thick in my mouth.
He nodded to the bread while he prepared himself a pipe. "Eat that up, too, or you'll feel worse by dawn tomorrow."
"Ah," I nodded, sage in this at least. "The magic's bound to moonlight, eh?"
He grinned, lips tight. "It is a strange circumstance, but you have never seen much magic, have you?"
I shrugged, pretending nonchalance. "There is some magic built into the Tower."
He waved it away with a little trail of pipe smoke. "Helpful and efficient, but it's dead. It's...trapped. It's not a living magic like a wizard's active will."
"No. No, it's not." I sighed. "I always waited for the day...."
I trailed off, and Themmichus looked away. For a moment he said nothing, then, "You never knew old Lareth."
"Not really."
"Then again, you never really knew me, either. That's...that's an oversight I wish I hadn't made. I remember you as just this little boy...." He waved the pipe down near his knee and shook his head. "But after Daven left the Tower, there was so much to do."
"For Mother, too. That's the oversight you should regret. She could have used your help."
He barked a disbelieving laugh. "Isabelle would not have welcomed that at all. If I had every last Master of the Academy answering my beck and call, she still would only see me as her snot-nosed little brother."
I drank another swill of the bitter brew. "You might not recognize her now. She's had to do so much—"
"We all have had our burdens, Taryn. At least she had her friends. Caleb, and the people of the Tower."
"They all ask too much of her!"
"And yet they all give back too. I have had to live among the ones who hate your father's name, to play their petty games so he might have some ally when this day came."
I almost snapped at him again, but then some hint of recollection crossed my mind. I swayed a little where I sat and had to focus to see my uncle clearly through the haze of pipesmoke, but I remembered what he'd said in the dungeons of Tirah.
"I will wrap this child in power." I spoke the words dreamily, quoting him, and I saw him blink in surprise as he recognized them. "But I will see he stands before the king. You have my word."
His eyes narrowed. "You do sometimes pay attention."
"You meant that, didn't you? Not the way the jailers heard it. You want to wrap me up in power and let me stand before the king."
"Words spoken in anger, Taryn. I didn't like to see you under all those chains."
I shook my head and had to catch myself short of toppling with the motion. Once I felt a little steadier, I met his eyes again. "I will not go to Sariano with you."
The name of the capitol slurred on my tongue, and the wizard smiled down at me. "You will go to sleep." He reached down lightly to pluck the mug from my hand, glanced inside, and finished it off in a quaff.
Already I could feel myself slipping away, darkness wrapping me up like a warm blanket. I fought against it long enough to ask, "What have you given me?"
He smiled and patted my shoulder. "Northern bread and dwarven beer."
"That's...that isn't magic!" I mumbled.
"Ah, but just the thing you needed here and now."
I couldn't force my eyes to stay open, but still I forced the words. "You must...you must get me to the Tower. I don't have time to sleep."
He chuckled. "Everything happens in its proper time. You can trust in that, and get your rest whenever fate allows."
"But you will...take me...." I yawned so hard my jaw creaked, then dropped back on the ground. "Home?"
"Tomorrow," the wizard said, spreading a wide cloak over me where I lay. "I'll tell you more tomorrow. But I need you strong—"
"Me? Why?"
"Because there's someone you must meet. And for that you must be sharp, and sure, and strong."
I fought to shape the simple word, but he forestalled me with a strong hand on my shoulder. "Tomorrow. Now, you sleep."
And I obeyed.
13. In the Ruins of Gath
I woke to warmth and the clop of horses' hooves, my whole frame rattling with the sensation of motion. My head throbbed with a dull ache and my mouth tasted of dust and sludge. Otherwise...I felt much better, really.
I opened my eyes staring straight up at the searing sun. That brought a groan as I raised a hand to shield my eyes. Something like a hammock had held me, a litter made of cloth dragging behind my horse, but my abrupt motion spoiled my balance and spilled me across a weedy, graveled path. New bruises dashed the unfamiliar and short-lived feel of well-being, but at least I had the energy to find my feet. I slapped at the dust and grass stains on my leggings while Uncle Themm brought his horse around.
I'd come to recognize the mocking grin. It was not the sneering contempt of a court Justice I'd imagined before but sly amusement at the world. Now he directed it at me. "Did you enjoy your ride, my lord?"
I rubbed a bruise above my left elbow then walked by him to investigate the sling. I recognized the cloak he'd spread over me before, dusty now and worn. Its corners gathered up in knots like they'd been tied with straps to my horse's collar.
But there were no straps. There was no collar. I raised my hand to where one should have been and felt its invisible shape, malleable beneath my questing fingers. I looked back toward the litter and saw its base was resting gently a hand's width above the earth.
I turned to Themm and found him watching me. "You knew all along?" I asked.
"Of course I did. I did not expect the waterskin, though."
I winced. "I didn't know—"
"No. You didn't." He said it as a pardon. "And I'm pleased to know my nephew can deliver such a solid strike with an improvised weapon. I never saw it coming."
"I'd already planned to sever the chains of fire. I didn't want you to know I could. It seemed such a lucky break when you didn't lash your chains around my skin."
"Hah! No, I was as worried you might break the spell as you were."
I hung my head, feeling sheepish. "So you have always known I could do this? Does Mother know? Does Caleb? They have kept a thousand secrets."
"Oh. Ah...no. I have not known long at all, though perhaps there were hints. But I first learned the shape of it from the letter Dellis sent Seriphenes."
"What is it?" I asked. "What is the shape of it?"
"Every working I've attempted tends to melt wherever it touches your skin. Magic dies around you."
"Oh. What...what does it mean?"
"It means that you are your father's son. Beyond that...it will take much studying to say."
His eyes darted nervously to the horizon once again, though we must have been well outside Tirah's lands by now. Still, he glanced south, and now to west as well.
So I caught his cloak out of its web of air. The magic fought my tug, but the cloak came free as though from sucking mud. I tossed it to a wide-eyed wizard, then scrambled to my saddle. Once we were on the move again, I asked, "Are there no others like me, then?"
"No," he said. "And then again...yes. But the others belch flame and dress in scales."
"I'm...I'm a dragon?"
He laughed at the note of panic in my voice. "You are not a dragon. But your father bonded three, and something of him was changed by that connection. I know he does not dissolve a wizard's will like this, but it has to be his legacy at work in you."
We rode in silence for a while after that, north and sometimes slightly west along the bank of a lazy river. It was not the same river I had fallen asleep beside. I would not have guessed that so confidently, but the rest of the land looked different, too. Gone were the wide, endless grasslands, replaced by rolling hills and brambled prairie marked here and there with wild wheat. I'd left the rust-red rocks of my homeland far behind and passed through verdant green to the tired brown here.
Every time he glanced off west I thought I saw a smudge against the sky. Not the wide, jagged range of the mountains that hugged the western coast, but a low, dark shadow on the land that might have been a forest, and in its heart a single soaring peak.
In all my life I'd never left the Tower of Drakes, but there had been maps enough to draw a dozen worlds. Some of them had been recovered in ancient bone cases from dragons' hoards, some received as gifts or supplication from landholders begging Father's aid, and many more designed and drawn by the men my father sent out flying over field and stream, over mountain and sea as far they could roam.
I knew the land. I'd memorized its contours and explored the farthest corners in my dreams. And now I rode north along the bank of a rolling river, with a forest to the west with a mountain in its midst.
Those woods had to be the Sorcerer's Stand, and that mountain the one where Father first faced a dragon. That wouldn't be what drew my uncle's nervous glances, though. He chewed his lip and looked across the many miles toward the Academy of Wizardry, where I had enemies aplenty.
And yet...that was impossible. It was a week or more across the open plains from Tirah to the river Brennes. With narrowed eyes, I turned to Themmichus. "How long was I asleep?"
"Almost a day."
"And where are we?"
He laughed. "We're near a place they once called Gath, upon the river Brennes."
"I know of Gath," I said. "It's closer to the northern coast than to Tirah. How in Haven's name—"
"I dragged you through a portal," the wizard said. "Before I'd seen what you can do, or I would not have tried. I didn't dare leave you sleeping so close to Tirah, and the land this way is so empty, no one should have cared."
"You brought me by portal?" I couldn't keep my voice from coming out a growl.
He frowned, confused. "Do you object?"
"I've waited all my life to meet a wizard. I've waited all my life to see true magic done. Father took it with him when he left, and the king brought me a handful of magicians I was not allowed to see. Now you've brought me by portal across a thousand miles...while I was sound asleep."
Understanding dawned in his eyes, and then he grinned. "Ah, worry not, my boy. There's wonders still for you to see."
"I didn't break the portal, then?"
He shook his head. "No. It is another kind of magic. It's a...spell I cast upon another place, to make it so like this place, that they're both the same. I think perhaps if I let you stand too long at the other end, you might dissolve the working by your presence. But if you only took a step away, even that much seems unlikely."
I licked my lips then glanced sideways at him. "Then why are we at Gath?"
"We're not at Gath. I didn't dare open a portal even that close to the Academy, lest they notice us. And I suspect they watch the garden almost as well as their own grounds."
I frowned. "Who are they?"
"The Masters of the Academy," Themm said. "I should say, 'we,' but I have been so long at court. Still, if they knew you were here...."
He let the thought hang in grim foreboding, but my attention was on other things. "Forget the Masters. Why have we come so far at all? This is opposite the way I need to go!"
"No, Taryn. I understand you must want to be at the capitol. But Isabelle has Caleb to protect her, and you're far safer away from there."
"I know!" I shouted. "I left them at Cara with good reason."
"You left on purpose? Oh, Taryn. This is an awful time for an adventure. Tirah alone could have been devastating—"
"I never meant to go to Tirah! I only want to go home. Take me to the Tower. Now."
For a long time he stared at me. Then he pursed his lips. "Well. This is unexpected. I'd anticipated difficulty convincing you to go."
"You'll have none. I want to go. Make a portal for me to see and take me there."
"There are certain magics that will prevent—"
"I know the Tower's defenses!" I snapped. "But you can take me close."
He glanced back west again then met my eyes. "I want to take you to the Tower. You have my word. But there is something we must accomplish first."
"No. I'm sorry to defy you, but it's just as you said: This is an awful time for an adventure. I have responsibilities."
"And none greater than this." He said it with such sincerity that I stopped to listen. He nodded. "There's important work for you at Gath."
"Whose work?"
"Hm?"
"Whose work?" I demanded. "Is it the Academy's? Is it yours? Is it somehow Father's? Whose?"
He caught my shoulders and met my eyes. "Taryn, it's yours."
"I don't believe you."
"There is nothing in the world more important for you to do than this."
"You're wrong. There's nothing more important than my mother. I ran away from her to save her heartache, not to take wild risks."
"But Taryn, your father—"
I shook my head. "Father gave his life to save the world, and perhaps I can call him a hero for it, but that price is paid. When he left Mother behind, when he left the whole world on her shoulders, he made her my priority."
My uncle smiled down at me, patronizing and unashamed of it. "You do him proud—"
"No. It's not for him. I've learned to understand the
choice he made, but I do what I do for my mother's sake. And for my own. It is not for him."
He chuckled. "That...is precisely what I mean. He'd make that very speech if he were here. The man I knew, I mean."
"You were friends?"
"Before he met your mother, even. Or...almost. Yes. We were friends. He taught me things that made no sense at all inside the Academy's walls, but they served me well indeed in Timmon's court."
I looked away. My father had taught me nothing, but that hurt too much to say. My hands clenched into fists around the leather reins. "I have no wish to visit Gath! Take me to the Tower."
He shook his head. "That would not be fair."
"I am not concerned with fair. I have responsibilities. Take me to the Tower, now!"
The wizard sighed. "There is much you do not know."
My horse whinnied his complaint as I reined too sharply. "Then tell me! Tell me everything or take me home."
His mouth opened and closed. He looked away. "I think the words would do more harm than good."
"That suits me well enough. I don't really want the words."
He sighed and shrugged. "Give me three days. Four, at most. Long enough to see—"
"No. I've wasted too many days already."
"Just one then. Just until the dawn. That's not too much to ask."
I caught my breath and stopped myself short of shouting at him. It was not too much to ask. There was nothing in my power to force his hand. And yet...I couldn't bear to wait. I shook my head. "Today. It has to be today."
Instead of answering he turned in his saddle, staring north along the river's bank and calculating. "Very well. We'll try. But first you'll have to ride for all you're worth."
"Why?"
"Because I will not take you from this place until you've been to visit Gath. I swear it on my father's name. And I believe once we are there you'll change your mind."
I raised my chin. "The Tower is my first priority. You will not change my mind."
He smiled, so assured, but I could see the shades of sadness in his eyes. He only said, "We'll see," then he was racing on ahead. I stretched out low over my horse's neck and chased him all the way to Gath.
I knew the place long before we arrived. The land out here was empty, but it was mostly healed. But we came to a place where the angry orange rays of the setting sun showed scars as black and raw as if the dragons were still flying.