Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book Four

by Dean Cadman

  “I wonder if that’s where you got your ability from? Maybe one of your ancestors was originally from Podrana,” Neala suggested to Lusam.

  “It’s possible, I suppose. But until today, I’d never even heard of Podrana,” Lusam replied.

  “That’s not surprising, lad. For an awfully long time now, Podrana has been a very insular continent. But it hasn’t always been like that. In fact, Afaraon used to trade freely with Podrana, right up until about a century after The Great Rift was closed. And from what I’ve read, both continents benefited immensely from importing each other’s goods. We used to buy their farmed produce, and in return they bought our magical goods.”

  “Magical goods?” Lusam enquired.

  “Aye lad, back then we had many magi here in Afaraon. And one of the many benefits of that, was the abundance of magical goods they used to create, both for the people living here in Afaraon, and for export to Podrana. Everything from magical lanterns and fire starters, to heat sources and enchanted metals were traded. It was a perfect partnership. Podrana had immense areas of fertile farmland, but no magi to create their own magical goods, and we were a nation of magi with little appetite for farming, or the fertile land in which to do it,” Renn replied.

  “So what happened?” Neala asked.

  “Well, after The Great Rift was closed, the then King of Afaraon ordered our forces to pursue the fleeing Empire soldiers all the way back to Thule. He wasn’t content with simply defeating them, he wanted to destroy them entirely. Although that turned out to be much harder than he’d anticipated. The Empire’s forces soon became disarrayed and splintered into much smaller groups, and each of those groups were then taken over by local warlords. The King never lived to see his victory, nor did his successor. In fact, for almost a century, Afaraon was embroiled in a fruitless campaign against Thulian people. We lost many lives to the Thulian forces over that time, but that paled into insignificance, compared to the numbers that we lost when a sudden plague hit the continent. It was devastating. People died in their tens of thousands, and it soon marked the end of our campaign in Thule.

  “Survivors of the plague were sent to The Isle of Lost Souls to convalesce. But most of the poor souls who stepped foot on that island, never left it again. Which incidentally, is why it gained its rather grim name in the first place. The ruling classes of Podrana tried to take advantage of Afaraon’s perceived weakness, and invaded our northern shores. But the battle that ensued was swift and decisive. Afaraon destroyed Podrana’s forces within a month, and sent them fleeing back north to their homeland. And as you can imagine, that was the end of our trading relationship with them.”

  “And no one has tried to make peace with them since then?” Neala asked, sounding a little shocked.

  “For many years after their failed invasion attempt, small raiding parties still continued to cross the northern sea and raid our coastal towns and villages. They pillaged whatever they needed, and usually left a lot of death and destruction in their wake. Eventually, Afaraon sent a flotilla of warships to patrol the northern coastline, and soon they had destroyed dozens of their raiding vessels. It still didn’t put a stop to their raids entirely, however, and they continued raiding our shores sporadically for another two decades. No one knows why, but one day, they simply stopped coming.

  “About fifty years later, we started sending emissaries to re-establish contact with Podrana. But no matter how many times we tried, or how many ships we sent, no one ever returned. There were fears that Podrana had somehow managed to create a new type of weapon, and they would soon invade our shores again. As a result, our defences were quickly bolstered on the northern coastline, and scouting vessels were sent to discover what they could about any new potential threats we might face. But none of those ships were ever seen again. The fortifications along the northern coast were manned for another few centuries, but no attack ever came. Historians still argue to this day, that it was the wasted time Afaraon spent looking north to an imaginary enemy, which allowed a strong Thulian Empire to rise again in the south.”

  “Has anyone tried recently to get to Podrana?” Neala asked curiously.

  Renn shook his head. “Not that I know of, why?”

  “Well, if we haven’t seen any of their ships for hundreds of years, and our own ships can’t reach Podrana for some reason, I was just wondering, how did Durlan’s father-in-law and the Nylian trackers get here?” Neala said with a puzzled look on her face.

  “That’s a good question,” Renn replied, turning his attention to Durlan.

  “I don’t know how the Nylian trackers got here, but I did once ask my father-in-law the same question. All he said was that he’d used the Rufihm.”

  “Who are the Rufihm?” Lusam asked.

  “Not who. What,” Renn replied. “The Rufihm is what the northern people of Afaraon call it when the winter becomes so cold, that the surface of the ocean freezes solid. It only usually occurs once every three or four generations, but when it does, the ice is thick enough to walk on.”

  “It seems like someone has spent too much of their time in the High Temple library,” Lusam said chuckling to himself.

  “You’ve no idea, lad,” Renn agreed, laughing along with him.

  “So you’re saying that he just walked across the ice from Podrana?” Neala asked Durlan, completely ignoring Lusam and Renn.

  “Well, yes, but I would hardly say, ‘he just walked across’. From what he told me, navigating the Rufihm was an incredibly hard and dangerous thing to do. Not to mention you need a damned good slice of luck too. The sea ice shifts constantly and can swallow you in an instant. And the blizzards can be so bad that even the best navigators can lose their way. He told me that it was far too dangerous to navigate by day, as even the weak winter sun was enough to sometimes weaken the thin ice too much. He told me that he left the shores of Podrana with sixteen other people, but only three of them made it to Afaraon alive. Himself, his sister, and one other,” Durlan replied.

  “Why would anyone risk all of that just to travel to a foreign land?” Neala asked.

  “I really don’t know,” Durlan replied. “I did ask him that question too, but all he would ever say was, ‘life is simpler here’.” It was a chilling thought for them all, that anyone would risk such a dangerous trek across a frozen ocean, simply to escape their old lives, and start a new one in an unknown foreign land.

  ‘Whatever he was leaving behind must have been truly terrible,’ Neala thought to herself.

  Lusam sat with his back against a large tree, listening to Renn and Durlan swap tales with one another. Neala listened intently, and for some reason seemed especially keen to learn anything that she could about the Podranian people. But Lusam’s mind was firmly fixed on something else which Renn had mentioned earlier. He was extremely curious to know more about what kind of magical items Afaraon had traded with Podrana in the past. What each of them did, and how they were made. How long they had lasted, and what materials were used in their construction.

  He’d never really given it much thought before. Magic to him had always been something that he did in the here and now, not something he could package up for someone else to use later. Sure, he had placed enchantments on Neala and Alexia’s knives, and when he thought about it, he supposed that was the same kind of thing. But he wondered just what else might be possible.

  His mind wandered to the magical enchantments that had been placed on the High Temple in Lamuria. Preservation spells for the wood and metal outside. Magical lighting and heating in the main chamber, and no doubt many other unseen enchantments throughout the rest of the building. He knew that they were all powered by The Heart of the City: the giant power crystal which floated above the High Temple. But what could have powered the items which had been sold to Podrana?

  It was obvious that the ancient magi must have used something as a power source for their magical items. At first he thought it might have been a smaller versions of the power-orbs he’d seen at th
e High Temple, but he doubted it.

  Lusam knew that just about everything in the world naturally contained a certain amount of magic. Even an inanimate object such as a rock contained a small amount. But whatever the old magi had used to power their magical items, had to have contained a relatively large amount of magic, especially if it was to power something like a lantern, or a heat source. And when that magic was eventually used up, what would happen to the item then?

  Then it suddenly occurred to him that maybe they hadn’t used a ready-made power source at all. Maybe instead they used a common everyday item, and simply imbued that item with the magic it needed.

  He decided to quietly test out his theory while the others were busy talking amongst themselves. He picked up a small rock about the size of his fist from the ground beside his leg. Then using his mage-sight, he studied the rock to see how much magic it contained. He found a trace of magic running through the rock, but certainly not enough to power anything. Next he tried to imbue the rock with magic from his own reserves, but soon found that it had a very small capacity to hold magic.

  He wondered what would happen if he tried to force more magic into the rock than it naturally wanted to contain. He knew that it might be dangerous, and the last thing he wanted was for it to explode in his hand, or near his friends. So he placed the rock on the ground by his side, and encased it in a magical barrier just to be safe. Then he slowly began to force the rock to accept more and more magic, whilst watching the results closely with his mage-sight.

  At first he didn’t think anything was happening. The rock appeared to be absorbing no more magic than it had after his initial attempt. So where was his extra magic going? Then he noticed something strange happening to the pine needles around the rock. It took him a moment to realise what was happening to them, but when he did, it all started to make a lot more sense to him. Because the rock was unable to hold any more magic, the excess magic that he was forcing into the rock, was being expelled as heat instead. He felt sure that if he hadn’t encased the rock in a magical barrier, it probably would have caused a small fire around it.

  He allowed the build up of heat to slowly escape his magical barrier, and once he was satisfied that the rock was cool enough not to cause a sudden brush fire, he removed his barrier entirely. He could clearly see that the rock contained no more magic than when he’d first imbued it. But as he held his hand above the rock, he could now feel the heat rising from it. “So, it definitely wasn’t rocks that they used to power their magical items,” he thought to himself wryly.

  Next he tried it on one of his gold coins, and was very impressed by the amount of magic it held. It was far more than the much larger rock had held, but even so, he couldn’t imagine the ancient magi wasting gold like that. Then he remembered his mother’s amulet. That had contained a great deal of magic before it had shattered on the night he’d used it to find her. He had no idea what type of crystal it was, but maybe they were in plentiful supply in ancient times, making them the perfect power source for any magical item.

  He just wished he’d known about the magical items before leaving Lamuria. He felt sure that the High Temple library would have contained all the information he could ever have wanted to know about them. But now it was too late. He had no intention of ever returning to Lamuria again if he could avoid it. So if he was ever going to discover how the magical items had been created, he would have to do it by some other means.

  Just as he turned his attention back to conversation of the others, his hand brushed against something in the darkness. As his fingers ran over its bumpy surface, he immediately recognised it as a pine cone, and absent-mindedly picked it up in his hand. He found himself toying with the pine cone, whilst listening in on one of Renn’s old tales about his life in Stelgad as a fresh recruit. When he realised that he had heard the story before, he decided to check for any movements in the valley below. What Renn had said about the trackers making their camp at the other side of the valley had made sense, but he knew he would feel better if he checked all the same.

  He stood up and stretched out his sore muscles. It had been a long hard day in the saddle, and he was looking forward to getting some sleep. They hadn’t decided the lookout duty roster for the coming night yet, but he knew they would soon have to. He groaned inwardly, as he suddenly realised it would have to be shared only between himself and Renn, as they were the only two who could see a moving aura in the darkness. He scanned the valley below for any signs of movement, but all he saw was an occasional small animal scurrying around after its food.

  He suddenly remembered that he was still carrying the pine cone he had found earlier, and was about to throw it away, when he noticed something strange about it. The pine cone seemed to glow to his mage-sight. Not a large intense glow like a person or an animal, but a small concentrated glow like a star in the night sky. When he looked more closely at it, he discovered it wasn’t actually a single point of light at all, but a collection of tiny specks of light. He smiled to himself as he realised what he was looking at. It was the living seeds inside the pine cone that he could see. The pine cone itself was only a vessel for its precious cargo.

  He began to wonder if a living thing would be able to store more magic than the rock or gold he had tried earlier. Carefully, he began to feed each seed with his magic, and the answer soon became clear. The pine cone began to glow brighter and brighter to his mage-sight. And by the time each seed was filled to capacity, it was like holding a bright light orb in his hand. He was amazed by how much magic each tiny seed could hold. It was as if each seed had the ability to hold the magic of a fully grown tree. He supposed it made perfect sense if he compared it to a mage child. They too were capable of holding their full capacity of magic at birth. After all, that was how a newborn mage was discovered in the first place.

  Lusam scanned the valley one last time before turning back towards the others in camp. As he did so, a thought suddenly occurred to him. He wondered if he could use the magical power within the pine cone to create a magical item of his own. But what could he make? Or more to the point, what did he need? The answer came to him almost instantly, even though he had no idea how to achieve it. What he and the others needed the most right now, was to know if they were being followed, and if so, how far behind were their pursuers?

  He soon realised that there would have to be two components to the magical item he was trying to create. The first would be the detection part of the device. It would need to be able to sense any movement nearby, and possibly as far away as several paces in all directions. He began experimenting with various enchantments, but soon found that the pine cone’s magic was depleted far too quickly to be of any real use. The larger the area of detection, the faster its magical power was used up. But even when the detection range was confined to a very small area, it still bled its magical power away far too quickly.

  What he needed was a way for the pine cone to recharge itself, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t make it happen. Next he tried linking the power of several pine cones together, but all that did, was delay the inevitable power loss a little longer. Then it suddenly occurred to him, he might be going about this the wrong way. He didn’t need more power, or the ability to self-recharge. What he needed was for the pine cones to keep hold of the power they already had. All he needed to do was connect two pine cones together, and then get them to exchange power with each other.

  He quickly recharged two of the pine cones, and placed an enchantment on them so they would exchange power with one another. It was strange to see the two pine cones connected by a thin green line-of-power. Watching them very closely, he held one in each hand and moved them further apart. The line-of-power stretched as the distance increased between them, and the magical power inside the cones dimmed slightly. As he brought them back closer together, the exact opposite occurred. The line-of-power got shorter, and the power within the pine cones grew brighter again. It became obvious to Lusam that the maximum distance apart
which the pine cones would operate, was only limited by the amount of magic they could hold.

  To test his theory, he tossed one of the pine cones deeper into the trees. The thin line-of-power stretched out in front of him, following the arc of the pine cone through the air. He watched the one in his hand rapidly dim, as its partner vanished into the night. Then suddenly it went completely dark. All signs of life and magic extinguished in an instant. He tried to recharge its power again, but it was no longer a living thing. Now it would only take a fraction of its former magic. Now it was just another inanimate object, just like the rock.

  Feeling strangely guilty over the two pine cones, he quickly sourced another two from the ground nearby. It only took a few moments to have them fully charged and ready to use again. He placed one on the ground by his side, and held the other in his hand. Then he passed his other hand between the two pine cones, attempting to break the line-of-power between the two.

  It didn’t work.

  Instead, the line-of-power simply rerouted around his hand. After adjusting his enchantment slightly, he was able to sever the line-of-power by passing any object through it. So now if he placed one pine cone on each side of the road, anyone passing by would disrupt their power exchange. But that was only the first part of the problem solved.

  Next came the second component to his detection device. He needed to find a way of knowing when the line-of-power had been broken. Without that, the whole thing was useless. It wasn’t for the first time that he wondered how the Empire magi created the links to their undead-minions. He had easily been able to lock onto those thin tendrils of power, and use them to his own advantage. But he had no idea how to create them in the first place. And something similar to that would be very useful right now.

  He reached out with his mind towards one of the pine cones, and made a connection with it. He could feel the tiny amounts of power flowing between the two cones, and when he passed his hand between them, he could also feel it snap. He was so engrossed in what he was doing, that he didn’t even notice Neala approaching him. When she stood on a dry branch by his side and it snapped, he visibly startled.