Summoner of Storms

by C. Greenwood

  “Kalandhia will not trouble you. He is not as fearsome as he looks,” he said. As he spoke, he wondered at his confidence. Only a few days ago, he had had his own fears about the dragon. But the creature had possessed some strange bond with Keir, and since the boy’s death, it appeared to have transferred that loyalty to Geveral.

  The rumbling of Geveral’s belly interrupted the conversation.

  “Forgive me for forgetting to offer you something to eat.” The old man laughed. “By the look and sound of you, you have need of a meal.”

  “It is some days since I last ate,” Geveral admitted, watching hungrily as his companion produced bread and cheese from a basket atop a shelf.

  It was all he could do not to snatch the food impatiently from the man’s hands and bolt it down immediately. But he forced himself to accept the food with thanks and to chew slowly. His stomach was unaccustomed to food and might rebel at receiving it too quickly.

  The crusty bread was stale and the cheese slightly moldy, but they still tasted like the best things Geveral had ever eaten. The jug of water he was offered was equally refreshing.

  His host looked on approvingly while he ate, and Geveral couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something mysterious about the man. His face and his manner were more familiar than their brief acquaintance could explain.

  Suddenly it came to him in a flash of memory. A glass house, a great rain storm inside it, and an old mage who had helped him unblock his weather magic.

  “You’re him!” Geveral exclaimed. “The mage from Asincourt City.”

  “So I am,” the old one admitted with a smile. “I was beginning to think you would never recall our first meeting, brief as it was. Or perhaps it was my fault for failing to make myself more memorable.”

  “Your face may have faded from my mind,” Geveral said, “but your actions that day certainly left a lasting impression on me. I have made a great deal of use of the weather abilities you helped me to attain. Although sometimes with terrible results.”

  “Terrible results? I am sorry to hear it,” said the old mage. But something in his look suggested he was not really surprised by the information.

  Suspicion stirred in Geveral. It struck him as a strange and unlikely coincidence that he should meet this same man, unlooked for, twice now. Always in out-of-the-way places and always at times when Geveral was at a crossroads, in trouble, or in need of direction.

  The old one watched him intently, waiting for… What? For Geveral to put things together and ask the inevitable question?

  He would not have long to wait.

  “Who are you?” Geveral demanded.

  “I gave you my name at our last meeting,” came the answer. “I am Janya, formerly of the city of Asincourt and, before that, a Drycaenian inhabitant of the Ashwoods.”

  Geveral brushed aside the information he had heard before. “Who you claim to be is not the mystery. But this time I would have the truth. Who are you truly? I thought it was only casual interest you showed in my troubles back in Asincourt City. A passing feeling of kindness that prompted you to remove my magic block. Nothing more. But I was wrong, for something has compelled you to seek me out again. Lythnia is no small country, and our finding ourselves in the same time and place today cannot be explained by mere chance. Somehow, you have followed me this far.”

  Old Janya raised his thick gray eyebrows. “That would be an impressive trick indeed, stalking you and your friends halfway across the kingdom without any of you taking notice.”

  Geveral set his jaw stubbornly. “Maybe you didn’t follow me from Asincourt. But you’ve inquired after me. You’ve tracked me down, although I can’t imagine how you did it. I have hardly lighted in one place for more than the space of a few hours since fleeing the fall of the seclusionary.”

  Janya looked amused. “There are sources of information open to me that it would not occur to many men to pursue. Let us just say there are others like me who have noticed you and your brave companions and the quest upon which you are set. There are tongues that murmur and hidden eyes that watch to see what will befall you.”

  Geveral frowned, confused. “Watching eyes?” he repeated. “Whose eyes watch Eydis, Orrick, and me? And what do you mean these others are like you? Are they dryads? Mages?”

  “Although a dryad and a mage I am,” Janya said, “I am also something more. Are you familiar, my young friend, with the stories of the eternals?”

  “Of course. Eternals are immortal beings blessed, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, to roam the earthly realm forever. They are sometimes depicted as benevolent guardians, other times as evil or mischievous meddlers in the affairs of mortals. But these are only tales for children. No such creatures exist.”

  “Perhaps they don’t exist quite as the stories describe,” Janya corrected. “We are not, for example, immortal. Merely ancient beings, living many lifetimes longer than ordinary folk. Something else the stories get wrong is that they describe eternals as being anchored to one place. In reality, there are mortals tied to specific lotions, either through curse or preference, but others roam freely across Earth Realm.”

  “And you are one of these unnatural folk?” Geveral was surprised to find himself accepting the information as easily as if he had always known it. He had seen too many strange and impossible things lately to question even something as incredible as the existence of eternals. Or the fact that he was apparently sitting opposite one of them.

  “So what kind of eternal are you?” he asked. “The good or the mischievous sort?”

  Janya laughed. “Good, I hope. Or at least, I bear no one any ill will. I might even be able to aid you.”

  “And the other eternals you spoke of? Are they friendly also?”

  Janya sobered. “Until proven otherwise, you had best consider me the only one of my kind who is likely to look kindly on your quest. Eternals are largely indifferent to the struggles of ordinary people. But it’s possible some would go so far as to be opposed to your aims.”

  “Opposed to the defeat of evil?” Geveral frowned. “Why should that be?”

  Janya shrugged. “Eternals, like anyone else, have individual purposes. Greedy ambitions, selfish plans… We answer to no one, not even to one another.”

  “Then why do you trouble yourself to help me?” asked Geveral. “How do I fit into your purpose?”

  Janya shifted to rearrange himself, as though he grew uncomfortable on his little stool before the fire. “I like to imagine myself one of the more compassionate examples of my kind,” he said. “I bring no harm to anyone. I mind my own business, and occasionally, when the opportunity presents itself, I even attempt to lend a helping hand to those in need. When I saw you in Asincourt, I recognized at once that you were one such case. A dryad mage who can’t access his natural talents makes the most tragic of figures.”

  “So you lifted the block preventing me from using my powers.”

  Janya nodded. “Having done so, I went on my way. But I could not long put you from my mind. You piqued my curiosity and my interest. I regretted abandoning you in such a hurry before seeing if you were able to master your powers. So I inquired among one or two other eternals and learned that you and your companions were known to them. It seems the three calling themselves catalysts of chaos have cut quite a swath of violence through the Lythnian countryside of late.”

  “Whatever violence occurred sought us out and not we it,” Geveral protested.

  “Even so,” Janya answered. “There were rumors of a quest, of a mission to combat a rising power in the name of the oracle of Silverwood Grove. It was following such whispers that brought me to you again.”

  Janya paused and tilted his head to one side, his gaze searching. “Tell me. Are they true, these rumors?”

  Geveral’s instincts told him he could trust the old man, so he said, “I have never met the oracle of Silverwood Grove. But I have joined Eydis’s cause, and she pursues the aims of the oracle.”

  �
�Hmmm. For good or ill, I wonder?” mused Janya.

  Although the old man spoke as if to himself, Geveral felt compelled to defend Eydis’s quest. “Eydis is my friend. She wouldn’t involve herself in anything that was wrong.”

  Janya said, “Believe me, when you have lived as long as I, you will learn it’s possible for someone to be both your friend and capable of following a wrong path.”

  “Not Eydis,” Geveral insisted. “You don’t know her. She does nothing for herself but endangers her life at every turn for others.”

  “And endangers your life too,” Janya observed. “But never mind. I will not criticize your friend or ask what orders of the oracle she so loyally follows. That is your affair, not mine. What I have come for is to ensure I did not give you the key to unlocking your weather powers only to leave you to kill yourself with them for lack of preparation.”

  Geveral was startled. “You came all this way to train me?”

  Janya nodded. “I told you, you intrigued me at our last meeting. And you are a dryad of my own kind, which gives me a responsibility toward you. I seem to remember you’ve had some instruction in the use of your talents?”

  “Back in Treeveil, my mentor was training me when—when he died.”

  Geveral decided not to go into the details of how Mentor Kesava had killed himself by wielding more power than he could safely handle. Remembering his mentor’s death during the aviad attack on Treeveil made Geveral think of Eydis. She too might be lost to him if he did not act.

  “I am grateful for your offer to finish my training,” he told Janya. “But I can’t accept. Not now. I left Eydis behind in the Arxus Mountains. The last time I saw her, she was separating from the rest of our party to draw away a griffin that hunted us. That beast is now dead, but Eydis’s fate remains unknown. I must return to search for her. If she survives, wandering somewhere in the freezing wilderness, she will need rescue.”

  “How was it you came to leave the mountains and all your friends behind?”

  There was no accusation in Janya’s question. Only curiosity.

  So Geveral told him of all that had happened since last he and the old mage had seen one another. Of how the catalysts had gathered a small army of defenders on leaving Asincourt City and attempted to protect the seclusionary from the attack of an undead army. Of how Geveral had used his weather powers to little avail and how he, Eydis, and the women and children inhabiting the seclusionary had finally been forced to flee through an underground tunnel, abandoning Orrick and the other defenders to their fates.

  Here Janya interrupted. “Then you don’t know for certain what befell this Orrick?”

  “I can only imagine he and the rest were destroyed when the seclusionary was overrun by the enemy.”

  A sudden thought struck Geveral. “You must have heard something in the town. Word of the battle must surely have spread.”

  “The news did reach us,” Janya agreed. “It was said that an army of monstrous creatures had taken the seclusionary and remained encamped there. No one knew quite what these creatures were or where they came from or what they wanted with the seclusionary. There was talk in the streets that Lord Karol would perhaps muster his fighting men and attempt to drive out the invaders so near to our walls. But as of the time I left the city, this had not happened. When I departed it, Asincourt was still in a state of uncertainty and dread.”

  Disappointed that the old mage knew no more than he, Geveral returned to recounting the events that had befallen him in recent days. He described the hardships the party had faced as they traveled through the mountains hoping to escape their enemies and to return the dwarf children who had been schooled at the seclusionary to the dwarven city of Runehaven. He spoke of the attacks of the griffin and how Eydis had split away from the rest of the company, not to be seen since.

  Only one detail did he leave out. When he told of the deaths of the adherents and dwarf children, he could not bring himself to confess his role in their destruction. He said they died in an avalanche but did not specify that it was he who had accidentally created it.

  Rushing past that part, he told how he had found the lone survivor, the boy Keir.

  He could feel the old man’s interest grow as he explained about Keir’s wings and his magical abilities. About how his strange kinship with dragons had enabled them to tame Kalandhia and ride off on the dragon’s back, bound for a mysterious quest only Keir understood.

  “What knowledge compelled Keir to lead us from the mountains, I don’t know,” Geveral finished. “He insisted he could not see far into the future. That his part in it was revealed bit by bit, as he needed to know it. But some inner voice led him to the meadowlands. There he died, destroying an invisible monster that was more wind and shadow than blood or flesh. After our mission ended as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun, I didn’t know what else to do but return my thoughts to Eydis and our greater mission. Kalandhia and I hastened back toward the mountains, but…”

  “But you drove yourself too hard,” Janya finished for him.

  “After some days without food,” Geveral agreed, “I passed out and fell from Kalandhia’s back. Luckily, the dragon was flying low and I didn’t have far to fall.”

  “Even so, you won’t soon be walking on that bruised leg, I think,” Janya said.

  Geveral didn’t disagree. Even attempting to reposition his leg made him wince in pain.

  “Fortunately, I have no need to walk. Not when there is a dragon to carry me,” he told Janya.

  “You can’t climb onto the back of that creature again until your strength has returned,” Janya argued. “The next time you fall, you might not be so lucky in your landing.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Delay for a day or two. In this wagon, you may journey slowly but safely toward the mountains. You may rest and recover along the way, and it will give me opportunity to help with the magic that is troubling you. Whatever you encounter on your return to the mountains, you will be better equipped to deal with it when your powers are in order.”

  “Who says there is anything wrong with my magic?” Geveral asked guiltily.

  Janya’s look was sympathetic. “I have been listening, not only to your story but to all the details missing from it. And I can't help but think that if you had been in full command of your abilities, you would have used them to help your friend Kier defeat the shadow monster. But something held you back. It was as though your powers had failed you before and you feared trusting them again.”

  Geveral said nothing. A fragment of memory flashed through his mind. For an instant, he saw again the avalanche descending, burying alive the adherents and the children.

  Maybe it was the awful memory that made him dizzy. Or maybe it was simply his weariness returning. He only knew that he felt a sudden urge to lie down.

  “You are tired,” Janya observed. “We can speak later. For now, you must rest.”

  Geveral closed his eyes obediently and lay back against the cushions. But something dug uncomfortably against his hip. He had forgotten about the golden scepter-like object he still carried tucked into his belt. He pulled the scepter free and dropped it over the side of the bed.

  “What is that?” Janya asked.

  “Not sure,” Geveral muttered drowsily. “The shadow monster was carrying it. When he and Keir were consumed by flames, only this was left.”

  “Interesting.” Something in the old man’s voice changed. “You had best keep this item close.”

  Geveral cracked open one eye and watched Janya pick up the scepter and turn it over in his hands.

  “Why? Is it something important?”

  “I think,” answered Janya, “that it may be very much so.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Geveral slept most of the day. The next time he woke, he had lost all sense of time. But the sunlight filtering through the small round window above had grown weak, suggesting the approach of evening.

  Cautiously, he tried sitting up
. There was still some pain, but he discovered that his dizziness had passed. A sweeping glance around the interior of the wagon informed him he was alone. He vaguely remembered Janya returning to the driver’s seat out front earlier, leaving him to be rocked asleep by the rough bumping of the wagon as it rolled down the road.

  But they were not moving now.

  Easing himself carefully out of bed, Geveral limped to the rear of the wagon and pushed open the door. Expecting to be met with a view of grassy meadowlands, he was startled at the scene he saw instead.

  Gone was the green meadow. In its place were great elderwood trees looming on either side of the narrow dirt lane. Their thick canopy of leaves blotted out the sky overhead, accounting for the deceptively dim light he had seen from the window. Far in the distance, he could make out a brighter light farther down the road in the direction they had come from. There was the entrance to the forest, the place where they had traded the sunlit meadow for the deep shadows of the woods.

  Taking in the lush undergrowth, the climbing vines, moss-covered tree stumps, and wild brambles, Geveral’s first feeling was one of relief. He had grown up in the forest of Treeveil and always felt most at home beneath the shade of great trees.

  But as a strange chill swept down the lane and stirred the leaves in the trees, his initial pleasure faded. He did not understand why, but something about this place felt wrong. Many of the trees that should have stood tall and proud were stunted and twisted into grotesque shapes like figures in pain. No birds sang in the treetops. No squirrels clambered among the drooping branches. Yet despite the lack of any living creatures in sight, he had the unsettling feeling of hidden eyes upon him.

  “You feel them too. The unseen eyes.”

  Geveral started, but it was only Janya coming around to the back of the wagon.

  “Many travelers go the long way around to avoid Blightwood,” the old mage continued. “They say this is a haunted place.”

  “And do you believe that?” asked Geveral.

  Janya eyed the surrounding woods gravely. “I believe the trees and the creatures in this forest do not like to be intruded upon. But for all their silent watching, they will do no harm to you or me. For we are dryads and folk of the wood. A forest as ancient as this must recognize us as the natural protectors of such places.”