Flight of the Dragon Knight

by D. C. Clemens

  “Do they all have wings, or is it only females?”

  “Males have them, but only for display.”

  “Interesting. What ab-”

  “Ghevont,” I said. “The sages can’t hold the summon forever. Let’s give the sages a chance to have their say.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  I nodded at Quandell. The head sage nodded back and took a step closer to the looming beast.

  “Iterra, Voice of Slypso, we, eternal keepers of the Dragon Spire Temple, are honored to have borne witness to your form and hear your words after generations of concealment and silence.”

  The dragon bowed her head. “And I commend you, sages, for keeping alive what mark my race has made in your realm. Perhaps someday it will be the site where our races reunite. For now, use your knowledge to bring about the best of this latent Veknu Milaris. I hope we meet again. Breathe deep and fly high.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ghevont, being his ever proactive self when it came to oddities, walked right up to the ice ball after Iterra left. He crouched beside it and tapped it with his finger. Sensing no negative effect from the act, his fingers traced the surface of the ball.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “This is no mere ice ball,” he replied. “Pure ice water would be clear and immediately start to sweat in this air. As you can see, the ball has a blue tint to it, and its surface, while cold like ice, is remarkably dry. I should have asked her about the preservation spell.”

  “You should have asked her a hundred other things. Master Hermoon, Iterra suggested we place this in a staff. Do you have any?”

  “Only as old relics, but we do carry the knowledge and tools to make a new stave. If we can find one, then I believe the wood of a night palm will be perfect for the purpose. I will send a party tomorrow morning to locate one.”

  “May I join them?” asked Ghevont. “I would love to collect a few samples of flora and fauna while I can.”

  “Of course, I see no harm.”

  “I can,” I said under my breath.

  “Pardon, Master Eberwolf?”

  “Nothing. Do we leave the crystal in the ice ball?”

  “Yes. We’ll move it into the temple and keep an eye on it. We’ll see if it melts on its own. If not, then we’ll take less patient measures.”

  “Ghevont, start researching world maps and mark down which forests will be our best bets to find a nismerdon.”

  “I can do that,” said the scholar. “The Imperial Forest should actually be the first place we look.”

  “As due diligence, but I doubt a nismerdon will choose to be between two major nations. Not to mention being under the shadow of sages who can summon a dragon at a moment’s notice.”

  “What about Gremly?” asked Clarissa. “There’s a whole disorientation spell there already.”

  “It’s not nismerdon magic, however,” said Ghevont. “They might take advantage of it, but whatever is in Gremly’s deepest reaches will likely choose to fend off a nismerdon rather than protect it.”

  “Still, due diligence and all that.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” I said. “Until I can summon Aranath, checking the world’s forests is beyond us. Master Hermoon, it’s time I finish my day’s training.”

  Without anyone proficient in swordplay around, my training stayed limited to prana efficiency. Hours and days melded into one another as I sat perpetually by those weak-ass wards. Ghevont’s and Clarissa’s days were a little more varied.

  The scholar joined the sages who flew down to the forest floor to seek out the night palm. They also gathered useful rainforest specimens they knew would help create healing balms, tonics, and other concoctions useful for those seeking danger. Moreover, these excursions served to collect animal blood for the vampire’s use. A full week passed before a healthy night palm was found, and so Ghevont spent the days after the discovery assisting the sages in the making of the stave. The ice ball began to melt, but at the pace of a droplet an hour.

  As for Clarissa, she practiced her water spell with as much urgency as I had ever seen from her. I thought her capable already, but she must have been recalling her water spell’s ineffectiveness against my brother—ignoring the fact she helped topple a corrupted troll with it. She got support from the sages, who delivered elemental attacks for her to counter and cast defensive spells for her to find a way around. When she wasn’t training with spells, she liked using the stoves to learn to cook the beans, rice, meat, and vegetables available.

  My constant training offered little time to mingle with the sages, but our close proximity made it impossible not to learn something about them. Quandell, for example, had only been head of the sages for six years. He was voted leader shortly after the last one died in her bed. Eloise had the distinction of being the most experienced summoner and being the “grandmother” to Ning.

  The old woman first encountered a five-year-old Ning when she visited Sokomasi during the Solstice Festival. An orphaned Ning had essentially been passed down from person to person until she ended up in Sokomasi. Here Eloise learned that her thelki took a great liking to the girl and vice versa. Eloise then took Ning to the training temple and raised her there until Ning summoned her wings thirteen years later. As for how Ning became orphaned in Dracera in the first place, well, the handed down story stated that a slaver ship sunk off the coast and that a little girl floating on a boat was the only survivor. Exactly who or how the foreign born girl started hopping from person to person remained unknown.

  Exempting Ning’s uncommon journey to the spires, the other summoners decided as young adults or older that they wanted to be dragon sages. Still, not everyone who summoned a thelki became a sage. A few headed back to families or used their new companion to travel, but those who became a sage had to sever their connection to the wider world, including their families. In some cases, there was no family to return to, making the decision to isolate one’s self from larger society an easier one. This turned out to be Everson’s circumstance.

  A pestilence swept through Everson’s village and killed many of the adults, including his parents. He and his brother went to live in a city, but the bustle of the cramped life did not suit him. When he heard he could live in peace in the mountains, he jumped at the chance to test his placid personality. This placidity loosened when his thelki showed him what true independence from the ground felt like. Everson could thus be called the most unreserved of the sages, which was equivalent to pointing out the most dangerous rabbit in a herd.

  All things considered, I liked the sages. Their personalities were predisposed to keeping to themselves and not force me into their discussions on subjects I cared nothing for. Yes, that meant they were sort of boring, but fuck it, I needed a little tedium in my life. What had been my alternatives to boring? Fighting for my life? Hoping I didn’t drown going from one point on a map to another? Or that a mountain didn’t collapse on top of me and my friends? In my life, at least, boring meant stability, a rare state for my mind and soul to be in, so I had no reason to refuse it when it came.

  Ten days after felling its tree, the staff was nearing completion. The stave had been made by warping thin layers of the gray-black wood around a narrow core of compacted rock, giving it a spiraled appearance. Every sheet of wood was imbued with prana so that it could be enchanted by an earthen hardening spell. The wood kept its twisted shape until it met the carving of a croaking raven’s head at the top. To promote a faster end to the process, a ring of fire was cast around the stone pedestal the ice ball had been placed on. The warmth did shrink the ball quicker, but sheering off even more of the wait time came when water spells tore off the tenacious lumps of ice.

  Half a day of work later and the prana crystal came free of its frost prison. Three inches of it was rooted below the raven’s open beak, leaving the rest visible so we could recognize a potential reaction. The upright stave stood as tall as Ghevont’s nose, and being that he was going to be in charge o
f it, the scholar spent time getting used to its weight and reach. He couldn’t use it to power spells, but as long as he kept fortifying the hardening spell enchanted on the wood, the stave would still make for a good last defense against a blade’s swing. I also expected that Ghevont expected to someday replace the nismerdon crystal with another he could use to supplement the power of his spells.

  Measuring my training’s slow headway was done by how much flame I goaded out of the wards. The best motion that facilitated the flame’s exit looked similar to how one would carefully pull a long, heavy rope toward their chest. The fire responded by shaping itself into a heavy-to-my-soul thread that gently slipped inside the gaps. I started getting three or four inches out of the smaller gap before I lost control.

  Glaring at fire all day meant having to see it every other night in my dreams. It was damn annoying. Sometimes everything in the dream would be made of fire, including the people. Other times it would only be a very specific thing, like hair or flowers, or that sea of flames I sometimes swam in. Of course, the dream people wouldn’t react to their head being on fire, which always threw me off because people should react to being on fire, and I was not always lucid enough to tell the difference between dreams and reality. They weren’t exactly nightmares, but they bothered me to the point that in the times I did get roused in the middle of the night, I often chose not to go back to sleep.

  One spot I became fond of lied on the eastern pillar’s northwestern edge. A tree with broad leaves and high roots made for a good seat to watch the starry sky and moonlit forest canopy. Unless a downpour made going out unpleasant, then the pillar’s inhabitants frequently found me asleep under this tree if my room turned out to be empty. The active winds barred many of the flying bugs from reaching me, but the crawling type did occasionally cross my smoking dragon stones and leave a mark.

  During one of these nights under the tree, I heard someone with three steps walking toward me. The third step came from a staff being used like a cane. Ghevont leaned the staff by the tree next to mine and sat down.

  “A lovely night,” he said.

  “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  “I do hope to get the opposite of an argument from you.”

  “An agreement? On what?”

  “Wait, isn’t ‘advice’ the opposite of ‘argument’?”

  “Uh, I guess it could be, but I think ‘agreement’ is a stronger opposite.”

  “Hmm… Well, anyway, I want your advice on something.”

  “On what?”

  “Dashay.”

  “Ah. I suppose I can help with that, but my experience wooing a woman is as extensive as your own.”

  “Weren’t you with Sophia?”

  “The mere fact I could someday summon a dragon wooed her. Even the first woman I bedded was riding a kind of high after fighting vampires.”

  “The same vampires Clarissa was with?”

  “Aye. There are probably sages with more experience courting a woman than I.”

  “Still, what do you think is the best way to proceed?”

  “Depends what you want. Depends what she wants, too, I suppose. It’s pretty simple if both of you just want a few nights together, but if either of you want something more enduring, that’s something you’ll have to figure out with her. It’ll probably be best to be blunt with her. Not too blunt, of course. Uh, just between us, what do you want from her?”

  “A fine question…”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Not at all, no. At first I didn’t even recognize that I was acting different around her, not until you and Clarissa started specifying the changed behavior. Then I tried studying why her form and words had such an effect on me, but I would lose sight of my goals halfway into conversing with her. I am thus slow in ascertaining what particular facets she carries that hold such sway over me. I’ve read accounts of people conquered by similar emotions, but only now do I realize how swift and prevailing such sensations really are. Have you felt such a draw before?”

  “Yes.”

  “With who?”

  “Odet.”

  “And how has she responded to your advances?”

  “Uh, there haven’t been any. She’s a princess already involved with someone else.”

  “True, true… Her sister remains unattached, however. The older one, I mean.”

  “You haven’t been talking to Clarissa, have you?”

  “I always speak with Clarissa, why?”

  “I meant about Beatrice.”

  “Oh. No. Has the idea crossed her mind as well?”

  “In a sense.”

  “And what did you think of the notion?”

  “That a few conditions must first be meet. It doesn’t exactly sound romantic, but I don’t think I’m the type, anyway.”

  “I believe we share camps in that respect. In any case, I’ll try out your ‘blunt’ suggestion and learn where Dashay stands.”

  “There’s no rush yet, scholar. I could summon Aranath tomorrow, but I’ll still need training to keep him summoned for more than a minute. We’ll be here a while yet.”

  “Ah, speaking of your training, have you ever noticed how your dragon flame always stays a consistent orangey-red color?”

  “Uh, sure. What’s your point?”

  “Well, a natural flame changes colors depending on what it’s burning and how strong it burns. Most fire spells share comparable reactions. Your dragon flame, however, burns through different kinds of rock and wards without ever so much as shifting in shade. On top of that, while the flame itself is blazing orange, the light it generates is closer to a shade of white than not.”

  “And what does this tell you?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I am certain it says something fascinating.”

  “Let me know when you figure out what that is.”

  “Will do.”

  The next few days didn’t show a noteworthy change in the relationship between Ghevont and Dashay, so I assumed he took my suggestion not to rush anything. There did come a morning when Dashay and Ghevont joined a group of sages who flew closer to the forest’s epicenter every day. They hoped to eliminate the region as a nismerdon hiding spot. Though I didn’t believe a nismerdon somehow made it there, I still wanted to accompany them in their investigation, but Quandell said that would take too much time away from my training. I ultimately agreed with him. If there was any hint of Advent nearby, then the group would return and summon Iterra.

  It grated on my sanity that I had no one to spar with. The best I could do to release pent-up frustration was to slash at rigid wards cast by the sages. Lamentably, slow moving wards did not force me to evade or counter to the best of my ability, and no matter how much I insisted, the sages were too afraid of hurting me to attack with full forced spells. I therefore feared my reflex time was being dampened by a lack of pressure. Clarissa’s water spell pushed me some, but her not so great weapon skills removed the ring of steel I liked hearing every time sword clashed with its challenger. If I had foreseen the problem, I would have invited a pirate or two to join me.

  Weeks of plodding progress combined with an appreciation of the routine birthed a mental arena where my restlessness fought my tranquility to a daily truce. It wasn’t much different than the weather on top of this forested mountain. Was it going to be hot and calm? Windy and rainy? Gray? Bright? And I had to ask that every hour. The same went for my concentration. Some days had my mind in a dismal haze I couldn’t escape until I found sleep. Others found me ready to take on nismerdons and all their servants.

  “I’m going mad, Aranath,” I said as one mire of a day ended. The sages were heading for the stove temple to get supper, but I lagged behind.

  “Ah, so you finally broke your silence.”

  “What?”

  A small snort escaped the dragon. “It’s time you let your prana completely recover. Do nothing for the next two days.”

  “Uh, okay. Why? And what did you mean when yo
u spoke of my silence?”

  “Draining one’s prana to such a low point as often as you do tends to erode one’s reason. Griping about your state this far into your training is a testament to the grievances your body has experienced.”

  “Yeah, ‘grievances’ is how I would describe them. So, what’s after the rest? More training?”

  “Of course, after you attempt to summon me.”

  I stopped walking, which had me at the middle of the bridge. “You think I’m ready?”

  “I can’t be sure, but you are close enough to try. I suppose that should count for something.”

  “And there’s nothing more I can do to give me an edge? No secret, dangerous technique that will enhance my prana?”

  “To be sure, but they will not be worthy of a Veknu Milaris. I also doubt any sage here would be familiar with the spells required for such forbidden arts. They would otherwise not have been able to summon a thelki.”

  “There really aren’t any bloodthirsty thelki out there?”

  “I suspect one or two in a generation might be inclined to bite rather than squawk, but these might be more ill than anything. Now then, eat and sleep as much as you can these next two days. Summoning me will require you to be at your most hale and hearty, as you humans say. I too will use your rest period to sleep.”

  Quandell assented to Aranath’s recommendation after I told him of it. The next two days thus had me resting in the temple. Most of the minutes were disbursed in the usual activities of eating, sleeping, or bathing in a tub of collected rainwater. Reading extraneous stories and listening to sages strumming or blowing into their instruments also contributed to the passing of time. I already felt quite refreshed once I gained a full day’s of respite. I took breaks before, of course, but they did not last a whole day and still often found me doing something on par with basic military drills.

  The thelki scout party returned from their latest outing in the middle of my second day of rest, so everyone would be present for my summoning attempt. Clarissa, who assumed I’d be feeling pressure, which I was, eased the stress in on my back with massage techniques she learned from a sage. Sometimes she pinched or rubbed too hard, but it sort of worked.