by A. Giannetti
Elerian started badly when a soft voice suddenly said, “A master ring could be made in the city with the Dwarf's help.”
THE WRAITH
Thoroughly alarmed, Elerian sat up and looked quickly all around him, but he was quite alone.
“Where in the Middle Realm does that voice come from?” wondered Elerian agitatedly to himself. The image of Dymiter's spell book suddenly appeared in his mind.
“If you wish to find out, call my book and open it,” said the mysterious voice.
Hesitantly, for he harbored grave doubts about the source and intent of the voice, Elerian opened his right hand and called Dymiter’s spell book. A moment later, the soft leather bound volume appeared on his open palm. Protecting the book from the rain with a shield spell, hardly daring to breathe, Elerian placed the long, strong fingers of his left hand on the supple cover.
This time, there was no resistance when he opened the book. Black script, written in a fine hand, appeared on the empty white pages that were revealed. Then, Elerian almost dropped the spell book, for his third eye opened on its own, as it was wont to do when there was magic afoot. It showed him the form of a pale, golden shade rising from the pages of the book. When half the shade had emerged, a thin thread of golden light extended from it, touching his right hand. Elerian then heard the same voice in his head that he had heard several times before.
“At last we meet. Greetings to the heir of Fenius, for such you must be to possess and open this book.”
“Who are you?” asked Elerian warily, for he had no good opinion of wraiths, looking upon them with suspicion because of his experiences with them in the past. In his youth, the shade of Drusus had nearly stolen his own body from him.
“I wonder that you have not guessed already,” said the shade in an amused voice. “I am the shade of Dymiter. After my physical death many years ago in Tarsius, I took up residence in the book you hold against the day that it would be opened by an heir of Fenius. You are barely in time, for despite all my care, I have begun to fade.”
At once, Elerian broke contact with the golden thread touching his arm. He knew all too well how wraiths nourished themselves when they became weak. Who was to say that this was truly Dymiter and not some other creature impersonating him in the hope of stealing his life force.
A minute orb of pale gold flew from the shade’s hand, striking his face. Immediately, he heard the wraith’s voice in his mind.
“You need not fear me. If I wished to steal the power I need to stay alive, I could have taken what I required from Anthea, for she had no defense against me.”
“She must have spoken to him, then,” thought Elerian to himself. “He was the source of her knowledge about my history. Still, I had best be on my guard until his motives are more plain to me.”
“How is it that I can still hear you even when we do not touch?” asked Elerian, briefly contacting the wraith again with a slender extension of his own shade in order to convey his question.
“Thoughts can be cast like spells,” replied the wraith. “Try it for yourself.”
“How did you know the book would come to me?” asked Elerian, raising his right hand and casting the thought at the shade.
“I did not know it would come to you specifically,” replied the wraith. “Before my death, I foresaw only that a survivor of the house of Fenius and one of my own descendents would one day find three talismans that I had left behind for them. After the destruction of Fimbria, I fled to Tarsius and prepared the pedestal against that day.”
“How did you see into the future?” asked Elerian, thinking of his own failed efforts to do the same.
“I created an orb,” replied the shade, “which showed the past, the present, and sometimes the future.
“I also created such an orb, but it works only randomly,” said Elerian. “Can you show me where the flaw is in my spells?” he asked, willing to accept advice even from a shade if it meant advancing his magical knowledge.
“Perhaps some other,” replied the wraith. “I have little strength left, and there are other more important matters to attend to first.”
“It might also be that you wish the future to remain a mystery to me,” thought Elerian skeptically to himself, but he did not reveal his doubts to the shade. Instead, he asked another question. “Why did you not reveal yourself to me before? You must have spoken to Anthea at the time she discovered the pedestal.”
“Anthea’s character was made plain to me from the moment when I first contacted her, for she is my own descendant, and we share a close bond,” replied the wraith. “I trusted her at once and did not fear to speak to her. You, on the other hand, were a mystery to me. I wished to observe you first before I revealed myself to you, for your heritage alone was not enough to guarantee my trust. The best stock can give rise to flawed seed; therefore, I wished to see if you had the proper courage and wisdom to use the spells that are contained in the book you hold, for some of them could cause great harm if wrongly used. The greatest and most dangerous of the charms that I have written there would allow you to make a ring of power such as Torquatus wears.”
“Ah yes, the ring you keep urging me to make,” said Elerian suspiciously. “Why did you not make your own ring?”
“I was afraid,” replied the shade. “To take up the weapons of the enemy is to risk becoming like him.”
“Are you not afraid that the same fate would befall me, if I made this ring of power?” asked Elerian, distrustfully.
“Yes and no,” said Dymiter cryptically. “I learned from looking into my orb that the future is mutable, for the sphere often showed several different results or possible futures for each action that I might take. One your futures showed you wearing a ring of power, but there was no lust for power or dominion in you as a result of wearing it.”
“What did the other futures show?” asked Elerian suspiciously.
“We will speak of that another time,” said the wraith abruptly. “Each time I appear, it diminishes my power a little more. I must leave you now to conserve my strength.”
As Elerian watched with his third eye, the wraith slowly faded back into the book. Of their own volition, the pages of the spell book turned as if a breeze had suddenly blown across them. A treatise on ring lore written in graceful elvish script appeared on the blank pages.
“How convenient,” thought Elerian to himself. “He urges me to make a ring that he fears to make himself and then fades away without answering any of my questions. What did his own futures show, I wonder, to make him afraid to fashion his own ring?”
With deep distrust, Elerian regarded the pages of Dymiter’s spell book. Could he trust this wraith? What had happened in his other futures that the wraith had refused to reveal?
“Did I make the ring and become like Torquatus?” wondered Elerian to himself. “If he appears to me again, I will press him hard for the answer. I must also ask him about the armband and the necklace that Anthea discovered with the spell book,” he thought to himself. “He should at least tell me their purpose.”
Despite the clear feeling that the wraith was manipulating him for purposes of its own, curiosity finally overcame Elerian’s suspicion. Cautiously, he began to read from the open spell book in his hand, for it was near impossible for him to resist new magical knowledge. When the ring spells recorded in the book ended, no writing appeared on the following blank pages, renewing Elerian’s suspicions. No matter how hard he tried to make the invisible writing covering them appear, they remained stubbornly empty.
“So, I am only to have what he allows me,” thought Elerian to himself.
He sighed in frustration as he mulled over what he had read. From his own ventures into the art of ring making, he recognized that the spells he had been shown would indeed make a ring of power, but there was one obvious risk. Since the wraith had never attempted the spells, there was no certainty that they would work.
“I could try them and end up destroying myself,” thought Elerian to
himself.
Despite his doubts about the spells, Elerian called his own spell book to his right hand. Unable to resist the lure of new knowledge, oblivious to the wind and rain, he covered page after page with finely scripted letters as he set down Dymiter’s spells.
“Knowledge is knowledge and not to be discarded lightly,” he thought to himself as he wrote.
When he was done, he sent both books away before resuming his watch over the faraway cliff face where the gates to Ennodius were located. His eyes remained fixed intently on the cliff, but his restless mind continued to think of rings, their making, and their properties.
“I would require help to make this ring,” thought Elerian to himself and thought immediately of Ascilius. The Dwarf had the power to help him, but Elerian was certain that he would not be in favor of making a ring of power similar to the one Torquatus wore. Elerian already had the distinct impression that Ascilius disapproved of the idea of magic rings in principle.
When he was done thinking about rings, Elerian considered Dymiter's claim that he came from the house of Fenius. Despite the wraith’s claim, Elerian did not feel like a prince or even an Elf. It was true that he was strong, quick, and gifted in magic, but he still felt like the youth who had grown up on a simple hill farm. He knew what it meant to feel human, but the nature of an Elf was still a mystery to him.
“As if that were not enough, I am evidently only half an Elf,” he thought to himself. “Will I ever find out what the other half is?” he wondered bleakly.
Putting all his questions aside, Elerian relived some of the times he had spent with Anthea, the memories as clear and real as if they were happening for the first time. Still as stone, he sat the rest of the night, dreaming and keeping watch, but as dawn approached, he suddenly came fully awake, roused by a sudden feeling that the dragon would emerge today. The rain gradually ended, and the dark clouds overhead began to break up. Behind him in the east, the sun rose above the hilltops, turning the undersides of the clouds a vivid orange color.
Suddenly, a sinuous green-gold shape appeared above the flanks of Geminus, its enormous wings shooting it high into the air. Elerian involuntarily pressed his back hard into the rough bark of the tree at his back, but after circling the mountain once, Eboria streaked across the sky, heading in a southwesterly direction.
“She is hunting for me and Ascilius,” thought Elerian to himself, leaping lightly to his feet as soon as the dragon disappeared into the distance. Running back to where the Dwarf was sleeping under the overhang, he shook Ascilius awake.
“The way into the city is finally open!” shouted Elerian, his gray eyes flashing with excitement. “Eboria has gone hunting.”
Ascilius immediately leaped to his feet. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his left hand, he picked up his pack and cloak with his right before running through the trees to the edge of the gorge. Picking up his own pack, Elerian followed on his heels.
“Let us wait a few moments to see if she returns,” said Ascilius cautiously as he struggled to clear the fog of sleep from his thoughts. “She may have set a trap for us.”
Side by side, they waited anxiously under the cover of the trees while the sun rose higher in the sky behind them, but the dragon did not reappear.
“She must truly have gone hunting,” said Ascilius abruptly. “We must move quickly now, for there is no way to guess how long she will be gone.”
“Let us go under the protection of my ring,” said Elerian. “With the sun in the sky, Eboria will not find it so easy to see us if she does return.”
“Very well,” said Ascilius, “but hurry!”
The Dwarf was burning with impatience to enter the city now that the dragon was gone. He shifted impatiently on his feet while Elerian called his silver ring to his hand. After they both disappeared from sight under the mantle of the ring, Ascilius began climbing eagerly down the side of the river gorge.
ENNODIUS
The descent down the steep side of the gorge was difficult for Ascilius. Because the saturated ground beneath the trees was covered with slick leaves and knobby roots, he constantly slipped and stumbled, his invisible hands and feet adding to his difficulties. Behind him, Elerian had advantage of being able to see his golden shade with his magical third eye. His light steps took him easily down the hillside without the least difficulty.
Halfway down the slope, the trees ended and the devastation of the dragon began. From that point on, the two companions made their way down the precipitous slope in the open, walking between the black stumps and fallen trunks of trees burnt up by Eboria’s scorching internal fires. The wanton destruction of so many ancient trees both angered and saddened Elerian.
“It will take a hundred years for the trees to return here, and centuries more for them to reach their former grandeur,” he thought wrathfully to himself. “For all her beauty, Eboria is as evil as the Goblins,” he decided, recalling the destruction caused by the Goblins that he had witnessed in Fimbria.
In front of Elerian, Ascilius now sank up to his ankles in mud, for the rain had softened the bare ground between the burnt up trees. His heavy footsteps splashed liquid brown earth liberally all over his lower legs. Elerian, whose booted feet barely sank into the soft ground, drew as far away from the Dwarf as he could while still maintaining the invisibility spell that hid them.
When, the two companions finally reached the bottom of the gorge, they walked across a narrow bank to the edge of the Catalus. The river was swollen into a torrent of brown water by the steady rain of the past two days and the mud that had washed off the bare hillsides.
“Even dragon fire could not force me into that water,” said Ascilius with a shudder. “We should walk down to the bridge down river. It is not more than five miles away.”
“Five miles there, and five miles back. That is more than two hours,” Elerian pointed out. “We dare not stay out in the open that long, for Eboria may return at any moment. Let us search instead for something along the riverbank that might support your weight.”
Ascilius could not swim a stroke, but the two companions had used this same trick to cross a river before. Grumbling to himself, Ascilius walked slowly south along the riverbank, reluctantly helping Elerian search the shore. It was not long before they found the remains of a fire-blackened bough as thick as a young tree that looked as if it would support Ascilius and the two packs. Despite its weight, Elerian and the Dwarf easily carried it to the edge of the river, the limb disappearing from sight at the touch of Elerian’s fingers.
Elerian tied their packs to one of the charred stubs projecting from the invisible branch before stepping into the strong brown flow of the river. Easily pulling the end of the weighty bough in after him, he held it steady against the current, watching with his third eye as Ascilius’s golden shade waded into the waist deep water near shore.
Groping around with his hands for the invisible branch, Ascilius suddenly felt his feet slip on the slick river bottom. A sudden push from the current swept him off his feet. He just managed to grasp a protruding branch with his strong right hand before disappearing beneath the cold, rushing waters of the river.
The Dwarf’s weight violently twisted the end of the bough in Elerian’s hands to the right. He watched helplessly as their packs disappeared beneath the surface of the river, but his greatest concern was that the limb would be torn from his grasp by the force of the current. With his third eye, Elerian watched as the silver river spun the dead black branch around until Ascilius’s end was facing the far bank. Bracing his feet against the slippery river bottom, Elerian tightened the grip of his long, strong fingers on the slick surface of the scorched bough.
“If I lose my grip, Ascilius will be swept away and drowned,” he thought grimly to himself as he fought the relentless pull of the current that seemed intent on wrenching the branch away from him. Because of his struggle with the river current, Elerian now found it difficult to maintain the integrity of his invisibility spell, for it was diffic
ult to compensate for sudden movements, both his own and those of the branch. If the dragon returned now, turning her eagle eyed gaze on the river, she was sure to glimpse either parts of his upper body or sections of the limb as they briefly emerged from behind the cover of his spell.
Suddenly, to Elerian’s relief, Ascilius reemerged from the turbulent water of the river, pulling himself onto the invisible branch with his powerful left arm. His right hand still maintained a death’s grip on the stub he had seized when he first went under. Ascilius was now straddling the limb with his back to Elerian, both strong legs and arms firmly wrapped around the invisible branch.
“Just when I thought I could not be any wetter and colder, I am proved wrong again,” he spluttered grumpily, after spitting out a large quantity of river water.
“At least you are not drowned,” said Elerian dryly.
Seeing with his third eye that Ascilius was now firmly attached to the limb, Elerian gave a powerful push with his sinewy legs. The thick bough shot out into the current, carrying Ascilius and Elerian with it. His left hand firmly wrapped around the charred remnant of a small branch, Elerian slipped easily through the water next to the buoyant limb. Thrusting strongly with his legs and free hand, Elerian pushed the heavy branch through the murky, cold waters of the river. Briefly closing his third eye, he quickly examined the blue, cloudless sky above them, but, thankfully, it remained empty.
It took all of Elerian's strength to keep the branch moving diagonally across the river, for the swift current constantly threatened to send the bough spinning. Ascilius was little more than dead weight, hugging his end of the branch with his strong arms as if it were an old and dear friend.
They were carried a quarter mile downstream before Elerian was finally able to push the limb into an eddy after they swept around a bend in the river. When the branch bumped up against the stony shore, Ascilius scrambled out of the water, easily pulling the limb after him out of the grip of the current. Elerian breathed a sigh of relief as he waded out of the water. Pushing the heavy bough through the turbulent, cold river would have brought a strong man to the verge of exhaustion, but Elerian felt only slightly winded, filled with a pleasant glow brought on by his exertions and the satisfaction of pitting his strength against the wild water behind him. A sudden image suddenly appeared in his mind of Anthea, blue eyes gleaming with excitement and her slim form supple as spring steel. As he stooped and untied the invisible, sopping wet packs, a sharp pang of regret suddenly swept through Elerian that she was not by his side.