“Not a bad idea,” Uncle Vic called from where he had stopped a dozen strides upslope.
Looking at the strain in his face, she realized he was even closer to his limit than she thought.
“No, we stay together,” she declared firmly, trying to channel Ma’s voice so the two of them would listen.
She caught up to him and said, “Let’s take a break and then make one last push to the top.”
“That airship could be almost on top of us,” Uncle Vic said, watching the leafy canopy above them with nervous concern.
“No,” Merry stated confidently.
She reached her hand into her bag and gripped the crystal, then closed her eyes, spun slightly, and pointed downslope and a little to the left of the path they’d taken upward.
“It’s down that way. It stopped moving away, but it’s coming no closer.”
She opened her eyes and saw Uncle Vic watching her with fearful concern.
“The sooner we toss that thing into the sea, the better,” he stated resignedly.
Considering his current frame of mind, Merry didn’t want to mention that the fortune teller was right; they could certainly find this crystal again once they start looking. It was attached to its eleven mates by lines of power linked to one symbol. That was the pattern that tied them all together and unified their power for the airship’s flight, and it was wickedly complicated.
Merry remembered one of the Lanfor stories she read where the hero was amazed by an eight-crystal ship. Synchronizing more than that was supposed to be impossible, according to that old tale. Apparently not, as that ship had twelve. She was very certain they would be after this crystal soon.
Merry took the opportunity of the brief break to dive deep into the crystal again, tracing the pattern with her eyes and building a picture of it in her mind. She burned the lines into the image, snaking them around. But every time she made it halfway through, the part she picked for the beginning began to crumble away.
“Alright,” Uncle Vic grabbed her shoulder. “Enough of that. Let’s go.”
She hadn’t realized how intently she was sitting there frowning into the crystal, and maybe muttering to herself until he snapped her out of it.
They tripled their pace in a frantic scramble to reach the top. Even Merry, who was dreading having to cast away the precious crystal, was starting to feel the urgency. How long until the powerful owners of the airship began following the telltale lines to their missing crystal? What could be distracting them from that all-important task?
They reach the top of the climb in a gasping tumble, settling for a moment in a small field of wildflowers at the top. Even Gully appeared winded slightly.
The far side of the clearing was just sky as if the world fell away at that point. At the end was an old stone platform about twice the height of a man. From this angle, it looked like little more than a carefully laid pile of rocks, twined with rose bushes gone wild. There was a weed-covered and crumbling stairway leading to the top of the platform.
Regaining his breath first, Gully bounded over and up the stairs.
“Wow, you can see forever up here!” they heard him call. “There’s the cove! And the airship’s landed in the ocean!”
“Just a moment,” Uncle Vic gasped, laying in the meadow flowers and waving weakly in that direction.
Merry had neither the breath nor time for reply. She took out the crystal and prepared to trace that pattern once more. But she found she couldn’t keep her eyes open in her exhaustion. She would close them just for a moment.
It was a shame; she was so close. But there was no time left; they had to throw it away now.
She traced the pattern again, not realizing her eyes remained closed, so clear was the vision of the pattern in her mind. The lines flowed through each other in interlocking loops. In her visualization, it occurred to her to think of it like a knot. Then the snaking lines kind of made sense. Suddenly the whole pattern snapped into place with glowing cerulean threads in her mind.
She gasped, realizing she knew instinctively what it did.
At her gasp, Uncle Vic snatched the crystal from her slack hand in concern. “We’re getting rid of this thing now!”
Merry panicked for a brief second until she realized that even without the crystal in her hand, the pattern was still there. Like the one for light, it was part of her now. Indelibly burned into her mind.
She glanced at the stick slipped through a loop in her pouch strap. It wasn’t magic, no more than any piece of natural wood, it just faintly echoed the magic previously cast on it, making it easier to do so again. Even the pattern wasn’t magic, it was just a way of directing and controlling a natural force. The power came from her, and through her from the world around.
She stood in the field of flowers, at one of the highest points on the coast, and felt it all around her. She felt like spreading her arms to the magic of the world and spinning and dancing. But she just smiled at Uncle Vic and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”
Tossing the crystal into the sea was a shame, of course, but she felt that one symbol was all she could hold at the moment. She had read of the tiers of magic spells, and she was certain that the one she held was the only one of the first order on that crystal. There was no way she could learn the others now, even if they had hours.
Looking at the size of those other patterns, she couldn’t even begin to envision them fully in the space she held the other patterns. She felt she had to somehow expand the canvas of her mind. But others had done so, and so could she. Merry just needed time to study, and she was very good at studying.
When she was ready, she would find another crystal, she promised herself and began to imagine it. Maybe she would travel across the channel to the magical Kingdom of Lanfor someday. There were other crystals there, not tied to such a dangerous ship. The stories claimed that the Queen’s knights placed single crystals into boards of wood that they rode across the skies like the southern island natives were said to do on the waves of the oceans.
All in all, she was riding a magical high herself, feeling that new symbol burning inside her. And she practically pulled her confused uncle up the rough stone steps to the top of the world.
The lookout summit was a circle a half-dozen paces or so across. Faint traces of rough cobblestones set in a starburst pattern peeked out below the blanket of creeping flowers gone wild. Four stone benches sat in an inner circle around a center-mounted sundial.
Surprise gripped Merry’s chest as her sun-dazzled eyes saw another figure standing there near Gully. But it passed as she realized it was a finely carved statue of a man set upon the southeast cardinal of the burst.
Looking about, you could see the knife-edged ridge marching in a serrated climb out of the rolling foothills to the west. It reached its apex here, at this grand peak above the sea. Seaward to the east, the spent remains of the ridge plunged rapidly down, to be swallowed by the water. To the southeast, it was a sheer cliff straight down to the waves of an inlet below. And to the northeast, the inclines they had just climbed fell in steep, undulating tiers of forest to the valley that ended in Fisheye Cove.
There, just outside the cove, the grand airship had landed upon the sea. At this distance, the ship looked like a toy, and the people tiny ants crawling on it. So far away, even the huge crimson dragon perched on the deck looked small.
She forced her gaze away from that dangerous ship to examine the statue. It was a man with a stone vase or pot of some kind in the crook of his left arm. It was filled with dirt that small yellow sundrop flowers improbably still grew from. Some had escaped the pot and also grew where soil had gotten caught in the folds of the stone arms. The statue had an amazingly expressive face. Its gaze looked longingly out over the cliff to the inlet with what Merry imagined was love and sorrow.
Carved at the base of the statue, the following lines could still be made out through the tangle of yellow blooms.
Her beloved flowers shall bloom forever with the
memory of her passing. I shall await here until that glorious day when the Lady Magdeena sails again.
The feeling of surreal peace and safety Merry hadn’t even realized she felt standing on this ancient platform was tinged with mournful sorrow and unending love. She now knew it was radiating from this statue.
There was a real-looking spyglass in the statue’s other hand, with actual lenses. Gully stepped onto the statue’s base and pulled on the spyglass determinedly, hanging his weight on the unmoving brass to no avail. He stepped down, disappointed.
A distant rumble faintly reached them from across the inlet, and their stony lookout seemed to shake in response. Merry reached out her hand, grabbing the statue to steady herself. Her hand grasped the spyglass and it came away, slipping easily from the statue’s now-loose grip. Something had changed. The stone face now seemed weathered and worn, its longing somehow seemingly relaxed.
Following the lifeless gaze of the now-ancient-appearing statue, Merry could just make out the white speck of a tiny sail on the glittering waters.
A quick, gentle buff on her skirt-hem left the spyglass surprisingly clear. Following the statue’s gaze, the first thing she saw was a cloud of dust not quite settled from a recent rockfall across the inlet. Moving down, she focused on the small sailboat moving away from that fall toward the cliff below them.
Her breath caught and relief flooded over her, as the view of Pa at the boat’s tiller swung into the glass. Then toward the mast, she saw Uncle Wex working the lines. Standing at the prow, she saw a slight blonde girl. The wind was blowing her fair hair, and she wore a pretty white dress. The yellow flowers on the girl’s bodice were unmistakably sundrops like the statue held. Was this young girl, the Lady Magdeena, mentioned in the inscription? But that was so old!
It was only when the girl stepped casually off the edge of the prow and a glittering bronze-scaled dragon danced like a dolphin around the boat’s wake that Merry realized her mistake. She hadn’t recognized that brightly smiling girl in the sunlight and pretty dress as the grimly determined dragon-girl in dark leathers from the shadowy chamber.
The bronze form of Ruka flashed up the coast, only breaching a few more times before vanishing beneath the waves. Regardless, she was too fast for Merry to follow with the glass. The boat continued sailing toward the base of their cliff so that she had to lean way out to follow it.
Uncle Vic grabbed the back of her dress with a “Whoa!”
She hung there for a brief moment, looking over the edge of the high cliff with the new pattern humming in the back of her mind, and realized she wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of that deadly plunge. Smiling at Uncle Vic only seemed to make him more worried. How could she explain it?
An amber glow from the deck of the distant airship captured her attention, and Merry focused her new spyglass in that direction. She looked for only a moment. Just a glance at the evil red dragon justifiably sent chills to run up her spine. But she couldn’t put a finger on the cause of dread on seeing the dark armored form confronting the dragon. She somehow just felt menace from it, and she believed that if it deigned to notice, it would surely know she had looked upon it.
The air of peace and security had vanished with the spirit in the statue. And suddenly, that airship beyond the cove was not nearly far enough away. All that distance they had exhaustingly climbed and a dragon could fly and be on them in minutes. She felt exposed up here. Passing the spyglass to Uncle Vic, she held out her hand and said, “Let me hold that crystal one more time.”
“Hurry,” he said, with only a mildly askance glance about what she would do with the crystal, and then he studied the airship through the glass.
Merry held the gem tightly with both hands and focused on it. There was so much she didn’t understand about all the rest of those symbols, but there was one thing singing loud and clear from the crystal. It wanted to fly.
“Holy…” Uncle Vic’s exclamation trailed off in shock.
“Whoa, check it out!” Gully cried, grabbing her arm.
Merry didn’t need the spyglass to see the conflagration that engulfed the ship’s deck. A vortex of flames was tossed about by titanic forces that she felt even from here. So much power conflicting, and such enmity! Her new senses screamed in silent shock at the immensity of it all. If that attention was turned toward them… she shuddered.
Soar! She cried to the crystal, in that spirit place where the crystal glowed so brightly. It felt like it wanted to leap out of her hand in its eagerness. And with a firm grip, she handed the faintly vibrating gem to Gully.
“Throw it,” she urged him, “with all your might!”
7
Spirit Battles
As the backlash of Theriaxus’ initial assault hit Sigfus’ shields, the strain brought him to his knees. As always, he was the only one prepared for the dragon’s assault. And he was used to creating a large enough ward to protect, not just himself and the princess, but her entire useless retinue. It was normally no problem, but this time was different. The raw power of this assault was crushing his mystic shields. And the attack wasn’t even directed at them!
The outer magic shield buckled, then shattered instantaneously into a thousand triangles of crimson energy under the raging forces without. The next layer lasted only a moment longer, cascading into broken diamonds of glowing orange. The third layer gave him a precious handful of seconds to bring up a reinforcing ward before being crushed into sparkling pentagons of amber.
Thanks to that reinforcement, the emerald layer held long enough for Jesira to finally react and get up a reinforcing ward of her own to buttress his shield.
As a Priestess of Lenara, the Lady of Battle, Jesira’s magical arsenal was more physical combat-oriented. But she had a potent ability to channel battle-spirit, and she had linked hands with Delandria the Spiritblade and Oripeah the Mystic Archer, to pump a formidable amount of power into that ward.
It was a little too late, as the next layer finally fragmented into green glittering hexagons.
Even with the multiple powerful reinforcements, the cerulean layer began to buckle, too. The subtle heptagons within complex lines of lattice began to glow an angry electric blue at the excess of enraged dragon spirit assaulting them.
Then Princess Anya stepped forward. As a dragon-blooded sorceress of the royal line of Lanfor, she understood the nature of the draconic magic arrayed against them more thoroughly than anyone. The power of her ward flowed outward and into the barrier like a golden wave, reinforcing it in subtle harmonics in tune with the draconic assault. The shield now held rock-steady around the princess and her retainers. She turned to them with a self-satisfied grin. All four of them would have to bear so much more than embarrassment for their liege having to assist them. Anya would see them pay for that failure in subtle cruel ways.
They couldn’t see anything beyond the sphere of their shield as the firestorm enveloped it with primal destructive rage. The ship was strongly warded against fire, of course. But that was normal fire, not flaming explosive dragon-spirit. The scream of heavy copper rigging cables being torn from their moorings overlaid the ping of nails flung from super-heated decking.
Thankfully, their shield blocked the command deck from the worst of the blast—some of the officers there might escape with only minor burns. But any of the crew caught on the main deck were certainly disintegrated, even their bones reduced to explosion-borne ash.
When the pressure of the fiery assault finally began to decrease a little, Sigfus coaxed a gust of sea breeze across the smoldering ship and visibility returned in smoke-strewn patches.
Theriaxus’ form seemed to waver in billowing veils of superheated air—or perhaps she also wavered after that tremendous outpouring of power.
The Dragon Master’s armor still stood, although pushed back several feet across torn decking. Its gauntleted fists were crossed in front of it, its head lowered and legs braced.
Theramon’s new avatar crouched behind the armor, seeming mildly s
urprised and impressed with the power of the attack. Although that damnable smug expression never left his face, and he looked satisfied as if this was an unexpected display of his own power, rather than a primal force bent on his destruction.
Sigfus extended a tentative probe out to the battlefield. The draconic inferno had extended multiple layers into the spirit plane, and he had to completely withdraw at the first sign of the burst.
What he sensed made him recoil in shock. Theriaxus was still building dragon-spirit for another destructive assault. How she had power for more was inconceivable. There was a slightly different feel to the energy this time. And even though the dragon’s spirit was flickering like a bonfire in a gale, what was growing was still a powerful fire, just of a different color.
Worse, the Dragon Master had raised one hand as if holding something aloft. And indeed, Sigfus could sense the huge, growing ball of captured dragon rage growing above its head. It felt like a colossal spirit hammer poised to fall on the dragon and the hapless ship she was standing upon.
“Reinforce the shield again!” he cried.
Jesira looked at him skeptically for a second, but complied instantly when Anya snapped, “Do it!”
Anya had begun bolstering the shield without hesitation. They had survived together through rebellion and bloody purges only through instinctive reactions and trust. Her mask of royalty and privilege fell away, exposing the will of steel beneath the gilded veneer as she focused. It was that which would make her the one to finally break the tyranny of the Eternal Queen.
They renewed the wards just in time. The shield was stronger than ever when the Dragon Master’s strike simultaneously hit the second burst from Theriaxus. The shockwave of the impact of those two forces rolled across the deck and shredded the cerulean shield into careening polygons of force.
The last layer lit up in a glowing violet mesh of interlaced octagons. It buckled and resonated with deflected force, the buttressing wards singing with impact—but they held. Barely.
Tales From Thac Page 38