“What sort of things?” Vanx asked, as he took his long, thin sword from a Zwarvy and used a cloth he took from another to clean the dried blood and blue stuff from its blade.
“There are huge lizards out there. They blend with the rocks, and there are the bzacha. They see the heat of things as much as their external appearance, so we won’t be completely invisible.”
“I’m not worried.” Vanx looked at the master wizard. “You’re the greatest wizard who ever lived. You’ve got warding spells for all of that, right?”
“Nah, nah, not the kind your thinking about,” the wizard said seriously. “I was hoping you and your dog’s keen nose would help us detect anything as we go. I know battle spells, though.” A flash of darkness passed across the master wizard’s eyes when he said it. “I have battle spells aplenty.”
Two of the Zwarvy led the group. Vanx and Poops followed the wizard, and the other four followed them. Vanx noticed that the wizard had called them zwar, not Zwarven, or Zwarvy, and continued to do so. He also noticed that they emerged at a point different from where Vanx and Poops had entered their underground cave way.
They were directly on the road here, and just before they exited the shadows and entered the bright daylight, the old wizard cast his spell on them. The Zwarvy shimmered from sight. Only the outline of their form could be detected. A moment later they were gone completely.
“You didn’t say I’d not be able to see our Zwarvy, or zwar, or whatever they are,” Vanx grumbled. “Yet I see you plainly.”
“Use your familiar’s senses, and you’ll know just where they are. You can only see me because I want you to.” Then the wizard blended away into the terrain, as did Sir Poopsalot.
Vanx did as instructed and submerged himself into his dog’s sensory perception. He found them then, by their scent alone. Then the whole landscape opened up, and he took in so much more.
Over there was a snake slithering away from the clamor of vibration they provided. And there was a clump of cacti and grass, not far above them on the sheer mountainside, hosting its own little world of insect, reptilian, and animal life. Then there were the six Zwarvy, two in front of them and the wizard, with the other four behind. Their smell was musky and potent, but they each had different qualities about them. The wizard smelled of soap and fresh linen, though he had looked like a skinny, two-legged lion with a bushy mane before he’d faded into the spell’s workings.
As they approached the tower, it was hard not to get lost in the visual beauty of it all. The surrounding peaks glimmered purple, and their icy tops reflected the blue sky like sparkling sapphires. Even the sea was a shade of bright green that jades and emeralds would envy. And amid it all was the dark, glossy substance of the tower structure. It wasn’t shiny like obsidian, or flat like coal. It was jet black, though, just like the Sea Spire back home, and somehow it was more breathtaking than the nature that surrounded it.
Just then, the master wizard called a sharp halt, mainly to those ahead of him. His words were enough to stop Vanx and the Zwarvy behind him.
In the distance, a group of dark, winged things was approaching. They were Trigon wyrms, Vanx could tell, and there were so many of them that Vanx figured they wouldn’t stand a chance. Not trapped out in the open as they were. Some of them had riders, and they seemed focused on the hunkering, supposedly invisible, group.
“Prepare any protective spells you may know, Phenzythian, but do not release them until I say, for they will detect it,” the master wizard said.
Vanx did as told, and watched on, finding part of him ready to fight to the death. But the Trigon wyrms and riders didn’t come far past the tower; instead, they started circling it.
A sickening knot twisted in Vanx’s stomach.
No, Zeezle, no.
There was a strike of lightning as thick as the Heart Tree’s massive trunk. It struck the tower’s top, and there came Zeezle riding the green dragon called Kelse, followed by Chelda on a mighty red dragon’s shoulders. They were strung together with drooping lengths of rope.
“That is your Pyra?” the master wizard asked, as if he were impressed with her, or somehow relieved by her coming.
Vanx could only nod. The last of the people he loved were being coated, for long, endless moments, with that foul blue muck, until they tumbled from the sky.
Vanx started to cast a spell, but found he was kept from it by the master wizard’s power. Now Vanx was held completely still. He couldn’t move no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t even speak. This only angered him further. Nothing in his life ever hurt worse than watching helplessly while Zeezle, Chelda and the two dragons were dazed and then taken captive because they’d come to save him.
The Paragon’s minions used huge nets strung between five or six of the larger stunted wyrms to slowly lift and haul all four of them away, over the treacherous mountain terrain.
“I guess you are no longer leaving?” the master wizard asked, as he released Vanx from the hold that had kept him from helping his companions.
You’d have just gotten us killed, or taken, too, he mentally voiced before Vanx could speak his protest.
“I might have saved them!” Vanx’s outrage caused Poops to bark.
“Maybe you still can,” the wizard sighed. “But you’d have gotten us all killed.” The look through all that hair was clearly grim. “He took them as bait. It is you he wants. You banished him from the other half of the world. I think he will do all he can to keep you in his half, including using your friends and loved ones to draw you to him.”
“I figured he thought me dead.” Vanx wiped a tear from his eye. “How can we find them?”
“They will be in the Trigon citadel, near Port Harthgar, possibly in the cages that hang inside the Trigon stronghold’s main trade center. Your friends will likely be there, at least. The dragons will be tortured until their ducts yield dour, and then dazed. There is little we can do for them.”
“No,” Vanx said. He was about to say he’d try to free the dragons first, but Poops’s insistent barking brought his attention to something flashing and reflecting on the ground just beyond the tower. Before he could do anything, Poops was running that way. Vanx followed him, unsure of why.
He was glad when he turned to see the wizard keeping up, and the Zwarvy trying their best to.
“Is there a tunnel to Port Harthgar?” Vanx called back, as he jogged down the road after his determined familiar.
“There is, but I can just send you there.” The wizard stopped running.
Apparently, the old mage just realized he could do the same now. When the short-legged Zwarvy caught up with him, he teleported them, and himself ahead of Vanx, to the area where he guessed Poops was heading.
They didn’t start searching, but waited patiently, if looking a bit nervous as Vanx and the dog approached.
Poops stopped finally, a short way onto the tower grounds and to the landward side. He started barking at something, as if he knew he couldn’t mouth it as he wanted to. When Vanx allowed himself to look through the dog’s eyes, he was surprised to see that it was the last shard of the Mirror of Portent, half stuck in a muddy patch of ground.
Zeezle or Chelda had dropped it for him.
No. Vanx shook his head. They’d dropped it for the hope of him, for they had no idea if he had been there, or what had happened to him. For all they knew, he’d been captured, too, and was long dead. Or maybe they’d seen him in a portent of their own?
The zwar started searching the area then, despite the wizard’s protest.
Chapter Nine
Where there is magic,
there is always danger.
Vanx couldn’t have felt more terrified. Not for himself, but for Chelda and Zeezle, who might be tortured to the point of death and left as so much meat in a trap. And mighty Pyra would die fighting before she let the Paragon twist her apart. Green-scaled Kelse, Vanx wasn’t sure had that sort of fire of will to resist, but she was High Dracus, not some ill
-blooded inbred. She wouldn’t be broken so easily, either.
The wizard explained that he made his assumptions of what the Paragon would do based on the thoughts he’d read from Vanx’s mind, and the nature of the Trigon. He looked a little guilty, and a little hopeful, as he explained that he could be wrong, and that the Paragon Dracus might just kill them all.
Vanx didn’t have to tell the wizard that the enemy had been reduced down to the Paragon and only one of the original three Trigon sorcerers. Vanx and his companions had killed the other two powerful magi on the other side of world. The master wizard had read his mind already. But it gave more merit to the idea that the Paragon would want revenge.
“You need to get back, gather your mind, and re-provision,” the wizard said calmly. “I’ll not be going with you, but I will get you there. And since we are almost on the doorstep of this Octron, I will instruct you now, on how to use the towers, without having to have a token of power to trigger them. It is bafflingly easy, and over there, in the citadel, you will be closer to the tower the Paragon used to use most.”
The master wizard chuckled sarcastically. “You’ve taken half the world away from him.” He nodded as they started toward the building nearest the tower’s base structure. “You may have already saved dragonkind, and ended the Paragon’s reign without even knowing it. There are only so many dragons to torture on this side of the world. Once he runs out, his power will dwindle, but you may have doomed the zwar.”
“Doesn’t he have breeders?” Vanx asked, seeing the long-term implications of what he’d done. Knowing he may have caused more damage to the evil power than he’d thought didn’t help him feel any better, though. He was going to save his friends, or die trying, and his familiar was in full agreement with that notion.
“How have I doomed the zwar?”
“This is the only tower the Paragon can use now,” the skinny wizard said. “If you don’t destroy him, his sleepwalkers will soon occupy these very grounds. There will be Trigon forces everywhere, and this kingdom of zwar, who have nowhere to go, will fight until extinction, because they are too stubborn and stupid to leave.”
A while later, they were in a building that Vanx and Poops hadn’t explored. It was like a small classroom that was set up to teach about the tower, for there were four of the tower pedestals mocked up in a row, and another opposite them, for the instructor.
“They are called Sixstonts, the controlling devices, I mean,” said the wizard. He then pulled off a dark, draped cloth Vanx hadn’t even noticed. Vanx took in the huge globe formed of bent iron wire that was revealed. It was easily ten paces around and almost intriguing enough to take Vanx’s mind off of his trapped friends. Vanx, having seen many a globe before, searched out, and recognized the shape of the Isle of Zyth, Dragon Isle, and then the Sea Spire.
The master wizard gave the globe’s thick metal frame a thump, and to Vanx’s surprise it began to hum and sputter. The parts between the metal, which represented water, became shimmering blue. The land masses turned translucent green and brown and had texture, showing the elevation of the mountains, the depths of the canyons, and of course, the Octron towers.
Once he saw it, Vanx grasped the ring of six stones and their locations perfectly, for there was a glowing tower on the globe that exactly matched the color of each stone on the Sixtont.
“You can use the combination of three stones, and the amount of pressure applied to each, to transport just about anything to a precise location inside the triangle formed by the stones you touch. Watch.” The master wizard put his hand on one of the mocked-up tower pedestals and touched three stones.
A distinct blue light appeared on the globe between the three towers, whose stones he was using. “This was for the most advanced students,” he said while he moved the blue light around over the surface of the globe, between those towers, by the amount of pressure he put on the three Sixtont’s stones. “A few High Dracus can use these with their mind.”
It was impressive. Vanx was amazed by it all, but the nagging need to get on with it wouldn’t go away. To travel from tower to tower, he learned, was far simpler, and Vanx made sure to memorize the color of the stone that represented the Sea Spire back home, for that was the only one that really mattered to him.
Operating the tower was as simple as touching the smooth stone between the six stones with the tip of one’s index finger, while touching either three, or even just one, of the six stones.
The master wizard understood the urgency Vanx was feeling, for he went on explaining as he led them out of the building.
He said that not all who used the towers in the past were capable wizards. “Those who have enough magic inside them can use the towers by touch,” he told Vanx. “Those who do not, must present a token that contains enough magic to activate the portal, and place it in the offering bowl, with their blood.”
When they exited the building, they still traveled in a tight group under the wizard’s camouflaging spell. But Vanx wasn’t worried about being attacked at all. He had Chelda, Zeezle and the dragons on his mind, and he couldn’t help himself when he chanced a look into the Mirror of Portent.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
The cages at the citadel looked just as the wizard had said they would, only there hadn’t been enough time for this scene to be a near future, so Vanx felt a little hope. A portent the mirror had shown him before had been changed. It was his hope that he could change it again, for he could see his friend Chelda up in one of the cages, eating human flesh to sustain herself. He also saw the dragons, and he knew if he got there before they did, he could heal them quickly, and free them, before their torture began.
“Come on, man,” the master wizard barked. “You’ll break the spell, if you don’t keep up.”
“Can you teach me the healing spell you used on my arms and my familiar?” Vanx asked, as he hurried to catch back up with them. Poops yipped and pawed his thighs, as if to tell him not to stray off again.
“When we are back in the zwaralan, I will see if you can comprehend such a casting.”
“Bah,” Vanx growled. “I’ll not have time. I just need as many of these arrows as—”
“You need to remember the greatest weapon you have,” the wizard snapped back at Vanx. “You know the true name of the Paragon Dracus, but now, so do I. The only problem is, I can’t use it against him. He will have to use this tower to move his forces now, at least until one of his dazed wizards comes up with a way to defy your banishing. Either way, this whole kingdom of zwar are going to be affected in a terrible way. You need to start thinking about what you can do with his name. Stop reacting to the damn evil thing, and start taking control of its demise.”
“Why can’t you go with me?” asked Vanx, now that he was starting to think clearly again.
“I told you, I am waiting for someone,” the wizard said, as he herded them back into motion. He was clearly keeping something from Vanx, and Vanx was pretty sure that the wizard wanted to go quite badly, but couldn’t. “…And I’ll be here when they return. And that is the end of that.”
“What if they came while we were out today?” Vanx said, joking around just to ease the tension.
“You’ve not finished,” Vanx thought the man mumbled under his breath, but it sounded like he’d been talking to himself, or maybe even to someone else.
Vanx wasn’t finishing anything for him, or was he? Either way, the wizard led them back to the zwaralan at a double clip.
It turned out that Vanx couldn’t grasp the kind of magic the master wizard’s healing spell was formed of, but he had an idea of how to use the Paragon’s true name. It was one of the Hoar Witch’s spells he’d remembered, and now he was eager to be teleported to the Trigon citadel, so that he could try to cast it.
He hadn’t seen Zeezle in the mirror, which disturbed him. He wanted to save him, too. Zeezle was his oldest friend, but the dragons needed him immediately, and Zeezle would want him to save them first anyw
ay. They were not the typical inbred type of dragon these fools were used to dealing with. If they survived the gooey blue muck and all the spells they were bombarded with when they came through, they would be formidable.
He could only hope they could all stay alive until he got there.
Vanx sat and sipped as he waited for the master wizard. The curiosity of how the Paragon had anticipated, down to a certainty, the moment when Zeezle and the others would arrive kept gnawing at the back of his mind. Then the master wizard returned with a map, of all things.
“If you save your friends, or even if you can’t,” the wizard interrupted Vanx’s train of thought, “you’ll want this.”
He gave Vanx the map. It showed the Trigon’s three-towered citadel complex amid a rather large cluster of buildings, with some mountains off to the west. This city was easily twenty times the size of Flotsam, and that was saying something. Hell, the city was almost as big as the whole Isle of Zyth.
“See here.” The wizard traced a line with his finger. A red glow stayed on the page, and he gave a wink, as if that were high magic at work.
Vanx had to admit it was pretty amazing how the line now moved with the page, as if it had been drawn with ink, but already it was starting to fade away. Vanx found himself impressed by the minor spell, and its usage, and wondered briefly why none of his Zythian masters had ever used it.
“The Paragon can no longer go west of that line, but his minions can. Here…” The wizard made a small “x” over a similarly marked “x” on the map. “Here lies the Emerald Earth Stone, placed deep in an old cart mine a few eons ago by a friend. It will be heavily warded, for he was a trickster in those days, but if one were to unleash the full power of the Earth Stone, and destroy it at the altar dais centered between those towers, one might be able to heal the festering infection the Trigon has turned out to be, for all of time.”
The Far Side of Creation (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 7) Page 4