Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  ‘I know they laired in the Cape of Winds from time to time, where the mountains of Tormalin run into the sea.’ Velindre kept her eyes resolutely on the mad wizard’s face. ‘Where they were hunted for their hides and teeth and claws. One voyage could set a man up for life, if he came back. Plenty didn’t, from all I’ve read. And I’ve also read, in Otrick’s notes, that there always had to be a wizard on the ship otherwise the dragon hunters wouldn’t sail.’

  ‘But you don’t know why,’ Azazir taunted her. No, you wouldn’t. Hadrumal has been happy to see that knowledge erased from its dusty libraries and learned tomes.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Velindre.

  Azazir stepped close to whisper in her ear. ‘On account of all a dragon can do for a mage. Because of what a mage can do with a dragon.’

  Velindre spread her hands. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  Azazir’s grin had all the reassuring warmth of a death’s-head. No, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Then teach me,’ Velindre challenged, hands on her hips. ‘If you don’t want to see that knowledge lost up here in the wilds.’

  ‘Why should I care?’ Azazir studied her intently.

  ‘Because you want to see wizards exploring their full potential,’ Velindre shot back ‘How can they do that without a fuller understanding of all they might achieve?’

  ‘You think you’re up to it?’ His smile turned cruel.

  ‘I think I can take what I learn back to Hadrumal and share it with others,’ she said steadily. ‘Whereas you’ll be condemned out of hand if you go back.’

  ‘All right. I’ll show you what I know of dragons. Then maybe you’ll see why I live up here in the wilds.’ The emerald madness in Azazir’s eyes faded as cunning lit his face. ‘Whether you can learn from it, whether you can set aside your fears, with your mind hobbled by Hadrumal’s teachings, that’s another question.’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Velindre raised her eyebrows expectantly. She fought not to shiver, not with cold but with apprehension.

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ murmured Azazir as he squatted in the mud and thrust his bony white fingers into the cloying ooze. The ground trembled and the lake glowed suddenly green in its crystal depths.

  The spiralling clouds above fell apart to blow away. The sun flooded the valley with brilliant light and frail spring warmth. Velindre looked around to see the mud all along the shore drying out, the glistening rocks tuning dull.

  Dust wafted from the ridges of the valley’s edge, confused and helpless.

  She turned her attention to the lake. That was where all the water was going, concentrating all the elemental power the mad wizard had gathered here. She frowned. Why were the ripples receding from the shore? Shouldn’t the water be swelling the lake? She took a step forward, the parched ridges of mud now hard enough to bruise her unshod foot.

  ‘Careful,’ warned Azazir, intent on the depths. ‘You don’t want to catch its eye. It’ll be hungry.’

  The waters seethed, boiling into white foam shot through with cold green phosphorescence. A dragon erupted from the lake. The long, sinuous body seemed to flow endlessly upwards, water streaming from its glowing scales. Its underside was pale as the lightest jade, its sides dark as deepest agate. A crest of emerald spines snapped erect along its backbone, running up its snakelike neck to crown its long head with a diadem of lethal spikes. It spread vast wings, greater than any ship’s sails, leathery membranes translucent in the sunlight. It rose higher, long tail finally leaving the lake, water streaming from the viciously barbed tip. The dragon soared up and circled the lake, coiling around itself in defiance of the empty air and the pull of the ground below. It opened its long, predatory jaw and screamed out a challenge, its glittering white teeth as long and as sharp as swords. With the last echoes of the ear-splitting shriek still reverberating around the hills, it folded its wings with a clap like thunder and dived back into the water. A cascade of spray exploded from the lake, falling to vanish into the thirsty ground. Velindre couldn’t help but tremble, standing with her hands clasped to her face.

  ‘Did you feel the power? You should have done. Air and water are so often partners in magic. That’s why you were so open to me before.’ Azazir was at her shoulder, pressing his cold body against hers. ‘Did you feel the power? That’s why Hadrumal doesn’t want its wizards knowing how to summon dragons: because that dragon’s aura has a more powerful resonance for the likes of me than the highest, mightiest waterfall in the world. You could do more with the merest touch of a cloud dragon’s aura than with all the storms of a winter brought together. A fire mage wouldn’t know such power if he stood on the lip of a flaming mountain’s crater. There’s no place in the darkest depths of the earth that would hold such power even for the likes of Planir. That’s why Hadrumal doesn’t want us knowing about dragons.’

  ‘I felt power, yes . . Velindre stared at the water. ‘Pure power. I could have worked water magics far beyond my own affinity—’

  ‘It’s barely a hint of the power surrounding real dragons.’ Azazir squatted to sweep a hand across the undulating edge of the lake. Out in the deeps, emerald radiance rose lazily to the surface. The dragon broached with barely a ripple, lolling in the crystal waters, wings folded close to its long, lithe body. ‘That looks like a real dragon to me,’ Velindre observed, motionless.

  ‘Look at it,’ commanded Azazir.

  ‘I am looking,’ Velindre retorted.

  ‘Look at it like a wizard,’ he ordered with some irritation. Not like a gawping peasant.’

  Velindre narrowed her eyes and studied the dragon idling in the water. She could see the beast in all its savage glory, coiling this way and that to send countless little swells hurrying to the shore. More pertinently, she could half-see, half-sense the magic that pervaded it. She realised that elemental power was as much a part of the creature as the scales and sinew, bone and blood that a peasant would see, in that instant before he soiled his breeches and fled. What was there for a wizard to see? She focused on that roiling nimbus of elemental power, tracing the pulses, the ebb and flow. ‘There’s a void.’ She frowned. ‘Where its heart should be.’

  ‘Well done,’ approved Azazir. ‘It’s a simulacrum, not a true dragon. For which you should be very grateful; a true dragon would know you for a mage and see you as a rival to be slain. It would bite your head off before you could think of escape.’

  Velindre strove for understanding. You mean this is an illusion?’

  ‘Does it look like an illusion to you?’ Azazir snapped. Would I give up so much of myself, the power that I have amassed over a lifetime, to make an illusion?’

  Belatedly, Velindre noticed how the mage’s appearance had changed. He was still naked, but the shimmering patina of fishlike scales had faded, leaving his ancient skin wrinkled and scarred, mottled with age, his ribs visible. His hair and beard were a sodden mess, stray strands clinging to his hollow cheeks. His eyes, deep set and shadowed, no longer glowed with that unearthly light, for all they were still as green as emeralds.

  Discomfited at seeing the old man thus revealed, she turned back to the frolicking dragon now blithely lashing the lake with its tail and snapping at the resulting spray. ‘So this is something between an illusion and a true dragon?’

  ‘And it’s an innocent. It knows nothing of a true dragon’s magic or cunning.’ Azazir cackled suddenly, startling Velindre horribly. ‘It’s a mighty beast all the same and real enough to bite the head off anyone coming up here to bother me. Do the hunters and trappers still whisper about me, wondering what riches the mad wizard is hoarding?’ He laughed again, sounding quite insane enough to deserve the title. ‘They don’t get past the dragon even if they force their way through my other spells. It’s tied to me, you see, because I’m the one who made it.’

  ‘It’ll do your bidding?’ asked Velindre, incredulous.

  ‘Does that look like a lapdog?’ mocked the ancient wizard. No, but if I look on something and know it for an enem
y, the dragon feels it, too. Dragons kill their enemies. They’re creatures of unfettered power and untamed instinct, even such fleeting ones as this.’

  ‘You told me not to move, in case it ate me.’ Velindre tried to pick out the crucial questions from the clamouring maelstrom inside her head. But I’m no enemy to you,’ she insisted, emphatic, in case the old wizard let slip any doubts to the distant dragon.

  No, but you could be food.’ Azazir gazed happily on his creation. ‘I told you, I don’t control it. It’ll go off to hunt soon enough and there’s no man or beast in this forest that will escape it.’

  Velindre turned her thoughts resolutely from what Hadrumal’s Council would say or do if they knew Azazir was wont to set a dragon eating fur hunters. You called it fleeting. What did you mean by that?’

  ‘You don’t think I would reduce myself to this for long?’ Azazir studied his withered hands. ‘You saw the void at its centre. It has no heart, nothing to hold its power together or to hold the other elements at bay. It will fade, in time.’

  ‘How much time?’ Velindre asked immediately.

  ‘That depends,’ said Azazir with a sly smile, ‘on how much power went into its making.’

  ‘How do you make something like that?’ Velindre wondered aloud.

  ‘Simple.’ Azazir waved an airy hand. ‘And quite the most difficult thing you’ll ever attempt. The first step is like creating an illusion; I assume Otrick taught you that much? Summon all the elemental power you can, bring it together and use that to fabricate the creature. You’ll probably still fail,’ he predicted gleefully.

  ‘You said it wasn’t an illusion.’ Velindre swept her hair back off her face again, irritated.

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Azazir with biting precision, suddenly angry. ‘Once you have the shape of it in the midst of your magic, you summon still more power, if you’re capable, which I doubt. Force enough elemental power in on itself, letting none escape—none at all—and it will reach an intensity where the magic grows out of its own substance, doubling and redoubling. Once you’ve achieved that, the creature will live, for as long as the magic remains. While the magic remains, its aura is a source of purer power than you can possibly imagine . . .’ His voice trailed off, his expression avid. ‘Of course, the more you draw on it, the sooner the magic is gone. When the element exhausts itself, the dragon fades.’ The passion in his eyes dwindled to be replaced by something akin to weariness.

  ‘Simple, as you say,’ Velindre murmured sceptically. ‘How do you guard against being consumed by the magic you’re summoning?’

  ‘Like some mageborn taken unawares by their manifesting affinity?’ Azazir looked at her, sardonic. ‘That, my dear, is your problem. As is finding sufficient power. My element is all around me here. You couldn’t give yourself over to the air, even for a little while. What makes you think you can attempt such a spell?’

  ‘Otrick could do it,’ retorted Velindre, ‘without letting himself run howling mad on the wings of a storm.’

  ‘You think you’re the equal of Otrick?’ Azazir guffawed as if he had heard a ripe tavern jest. ‘I would be,’ Velindre murmured, more to herself than to the mad old wizard, ‘if I could do this.’ She gestured out to the water where the green dragon was now floating, wings outstretched, basking in the sun. What will that one do, if I can summon up another dragon?’

  ‘A rival coming into its territory?’ Cruel expectation lit Azazir’s face. ‘It’ll fight. They may be born of the elements but they’re beasts when all’s said and done. True dragons claim a territory for themselves where they hunt, where the elements are at their rawest, to give them power for working their own magics. They fight among themselves for the choicest territory, to the death or until the loser yields and flies away. That’s why dragons would come to the Cape of Winds, following the heights and the storms when they’d been driven out of the far mountains.’ As he spoke, his eyes drifted towards the north.

  ‘So they were never the strongest,’ he continued, ‘for all the hunters would boast of their bravery in taking on such a mighty quarry. Even a dragon isn’t so mighty if it’s already wounded, with its magic exhausted. Dragon and mage alike—spending too much of our substance on our spells can be the death of us,’ he warned Velindre with a sharp expression.

  ‘So the hunters just found them exhausted and “butchered them?’ she asked with distaste.

  ‘You think they needed a wizard along to help them do that?’ Azazir’s screech of laughter made her jump. ‘You think they’d pay a wizard half of everything they made just to whistle up a wind or calm the seas on the voyage? No, you stupid chit. Even a wounded, weary dragon could kill a boatload of hunters without blunting a claw.’

  He fell silent, one wrinkled hand absently stroking his straggling, knotted beard, dark-green eyes hooded and contemplative. He looked old beyond imagining. No, the wizard was there to summon up a simulacrum like that one, to fight the wounded dragon to utter exhaustion and sap what remained of its elemental magic so that it couldn’t breathe death or lethal illusion on the hunters. If a wizard could manage that, he’d more than earned his share, wouldn’t you say? Then dissolving the simulacrum was his problem while the hunters tracked the exhausted dragon to wherever it was laired and hacked it to pieces as it lay helpless. If they were lucky, it wouldn’t take their heads off in its death throes. That happened more than once,’ he added with ambiguous neutrality.

  He rubbed his hands briskly together. ‘Let’s see if you can do it. Let’s see if you’re even half the mage Otrick was.’

  ‘I don’t want to summon up a dragon just to set it fighting that one for your amusement,’ Velindre said with distaste.

  ‘That’s Hadrumal talk, all ethics and imbecile niceties. Besides, you’re assuming you’ll succeed. I’m inclined to think my beast is perfectly safe.’ Azazir clicked his tongue disdainfully. You came up here to learn. I’ve told you what you need to know. Where else are you going to try it? Down in the lowlands where the beast can gorge on some villageful of idiots? Or here where I can fetch you back if you summon so much elemental air you’re overwhelmed by it?’

  ‘You’d do that?’ Velindre looked searchingly at the old mage. And how could she let such an opportunity pass? she asked herself.

  ‘Otrick was a friend, the best of my friends,’ Unexpectedly, Azazir sounded almost sane. ‘I didn’t have many. I’ll help you for his sake and yes, there’s part of me that doesn’t want to see such knowledge lost at Hadrumal’s decree,’ he acknowledged vindictively.

  She had come so far and she could hardly hope to experiment with such beguiling, perilous knowledge back in Hadrumal. Velindre gazed out at the basking dragon.

  ‘You say it will fade in a day or so, regardless of what I do?’

  ‘Or when I get tired of lending it my strength.’ Azazir looked at the oblivious creature with faint resentment, his moment of humanity ebbing away.

  Velindre bit down on her qualms. Otrick had done this, after all, without disasters bringing down the wrath of the Council.

  ‘Will you watch my working?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me where I go wrong, if I should fail?’ When you fail.’ Azazir nodded. ‘For the first few times. Until I get bored.’

  ‘Then let’s see how hard this can be.’ Velindre reached up into the brilliant blue sky in search of breezes. Faint winds were just starting to rise from the bare slopes of Azazir’s valley, now that the unhindered sun warmed the bare earth and rock. She noted them but did not bring them under her control just yet, looking further afield. As colder winds blew in from the surrounding heights to claim the space those first breezes had just vacated, she caught them and wove them together. More gusts followed and she captured them, but these shallow wafts offered nothing like enough elemental power to try the process Azazir had described. She looked higher into the sky where the winds were stronger, following their own imperatives high above the distant snow-fields and mountainsides, shearing away from the bizarre disruption of the elemen
ts around Azazir’s lake. Velindre drew on the alluring recollections of the wild ride the old wizard had thrown her upon. She reached out and summoned the elemental force with unexpected ease.

  She reminded herself to feel the earth beneath her feet and the sun’s warmth teasing her hair, soothing her skin beneath her crumpled chemise. There was no birdsong in the barren valley but she could hear the splashing of the green dragon and the slapping of ripples on the muddy shore. This was never going to work if she didn’t keep firm hold of herself, denying the illicit temptations Azazir had shown her.

  ‘Get on with it.’ Velindre saw the old wizard wave a dismissive hand at the lake and the air shuddered with a rushing crash of water as the dragon dived for the depths. ‘He won’t stay gone for long and if he sees you working magic, he’ll most likely attack.’

  She stared unblinking up into the sky. Even as she drew down the power of the uppermost winds, she searched beyond them. There was one secret Otrick had taught her that few, if any, other wizards in Hadrumal knew. Maybe Rafrid knew it, maybe not. No matter. If she could master this spell, no one would dispute her pre-eminence over him. And Azazir could eat his mocking words.

  There, she had it. In the very highest reaches of the sky, just before the air became too thin to sustain them, the fleetest winds she’d ever encountered were racing unhindered by the rumpled earth below, indescribable power at their core. No wonder the early mages who had followed Trydek to find refuge from dangerous ignorance on the mainland had approved his choice of Hadrumal, when they’d found such strength in the upper air above it. And Otrick had made it his life’s work to find other such winds. She summoned the intoxicating strength and blue light crackled all around her as a ribbon of elemental energy fell from the cerulean blue. Velindre gathered all the lesser currents of air to it, braiding them around that sapphire heart of unfettered power. Blue magelight flickered and vanished, snapping and fluttering. Flurries of dust along the lakeshore died as the breezes hurried to do Velindre’s bidding. The air cooled as the heat of the sun fled in disarray. Spray danced up, impatient to join its sympa­thetic element. Velindre spared just enough concentration to banish it. The droplets ran away to hide in the lake, duly chastised.