by Joseph Lallo
Myranda's eyes wandered to Leo's legs. They were twisted and bent. She tried to be strong. She tried to think of the wrongs he had done. The lies he had told. Alas, among all of the half-truths and outright lies, there was one undeniable fact. He was right about her. As angry as she was, she found herself searching for some way to help him. It didn't take long for her to realize that if there was something keeping their spells from affecting Myn, there could be only one cause. There, on the little dragon's neck, the cord that held her souvenir still held firm. The trip through the water had twisted the trinket around, where it came to be nestled between her folded wings.
With a bit of difficulty, Myranda managed to untangle the charm and remove it. The dragon seemed upset, and became more so when the door was opened to allow the healers back in. Without the charm to protect her, Myn was quickly put into a deep, harmless sleep. After a final, stern exchange of looks, Myranda lifted the little dragon and took her leave. Outside, Deacon gave her a hand with the sleeping creature.
"Might I ask what the problem was?" Deacon wondered.
"A few days ago, Myn managed to chew this little ornament off of a helmet she separated from its owner. I gave it to her as a necklace, but apparently it had some sort of enchantment," Myranda explained as the trio moved back to her hut.
The dragon was set on Myranda's bed.
"Would you mind if I had a look at that charm? If it was able to ward off our spells, it must be quite powerful," he said.
She shrugged and handed it to him. Even before it dropped into his hand, he assured her that it was the work of an Entwellian. Looking it over only confirmed it.
"Yes. Yes. I know the man who invented this technique. I believe he is still about if you would like to meet him. Well, in time you will meet everyone," he said, before returning it to Myranda, who affixed it to the sleeping beast's neck.
"What do you do for food here?" Myranda asked. Right now she was a mass of hunger and anger, and she had to do something before one or the other overcame her.
"Oh, of course, you must be famished. This way. I'll join you. I haven't eaten yet," he said.
Myranda was lead out of the hut and along a well-worn path. Around the hut she had been given were a dozen others just like it, simple structures of wood with a thatched roof. Young people of every race lingered in the area, each wearing a similar blue tunic. As they continued, Myranda came to realize that the whole of the village, and a sizable one at that, was arranged in small clusters around courtyards with a larger hut at their center. Different groups of dwellings seemed to be populated by different groups of similarly dressed residents. There were people dressed in white, others in black. There were tunics of red, brown, aqua, and yellow. Scattered among them were older figures, some in deep conversation with one another, others trailing groups of younger villagers. If this was a place of learning, as Deacon had said, then these must be the teachers.
The pair came to a wide, stone-paved road that divided the village down the middle. It ran from the now-raging waterfall to a vast courtyard ringed with short walls. At its center was a majestic-looking structure, the only place she'd seen thus far that seemed to have been built as anything more than a shelter. It had tall, glass windows, a shingled roof, and painted patterns on its walls.
Myranda was led across the central path and around the rim of the courtyard. The huts around her now were somewhat different to those on the other side of the road. Targets and training dummies could be found in the center of the gatherings of huts. The students in this area wore sturdier clothing than the simple tunics she'd seen thus far, each adorned with various intricate badges and patches.
Finally she came to a long, curving hut with smoke rising from a pair of chimneys at one side. The walls were covered with windows, and a scattering of the village's people sat at tables within. Once inside, a simple earthenware bowl for each of them was filled with a thin vegetable stew and a coarse loaf of wheat bread was split between them. Myranda made short work of the stew, abandoning a spoon in favor of the bread, dipping and eating. She had messily dispatched half of the bowl in this manner when she realized the attention she was attracting. She smiled meekly when Deacon handed her a spoon.
"I am sorry," she said.
"No need to apologize. I am always happy to see a new technique," he said.
"The last thing I ate was a half-cooked bat and a few raw ones, and I would hardly call them a meal," she said with her mouth full.
"Ah, yes. Bat. Some of us here see it as a rite of passage to have to resort to bat to survive. There is only a handful who have managed to avoid it. I, alas, have never had the pleasure. Already you fit in better than I," he said.
She merely smiled between bites.
"Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe I heard a few harsh words tossed about behind the closed door. How did things go in there?" he asked.
"He . . . I . . . That scoundrel has been lying to me since I met him, and now he refuses to set things straight! He tells me if I want it, I ought to find it myself!" she raged.
"Well, that should be simple enough. It hasn't been long since the three of you appeared, and already some of the elder members have been telling tales of the last time he was here," he said.
"What do they say?" she asked, taken aback by the sudden source of new information.
"I am afraid I did not linger long enough to hear the tale. It was Keller doing the recollection. He is a rather narrow-minded member of the warrior school, and all of that hand to hand miscellany just cannot hold my interest. I believe he called him Lain more than once," Deacon recalled.
"Lain? Then Leo isn't even his real name?" she fumed.
"Oh, it is . . . well, I don't know that it is, but it certainly could be. You see, Lain is less a name and more a title. The stealth masters tend to attach it to the most prized of their pupils," Deacon explained. "If your friend is rightly called Lain, then he would be the only living one. They are a rare breed."
"I wish I knew more," she said.
"I will show you to the library one of these days. You should be able to find something in his records," he said.
"You keep records?" she said.
"Of course. Otherwise it would be very difficult to assign credit where it is due," he said.
The promise of information about the infuriating malthrope was enough to calm Myranda's anger for the time being, and the first bowl of stew took the desperation from her hunger. As she refilled her bowl, she became curious about her newest friend. He was equally curious about her, and the two decided to start what would turn out to be a lengthy question and answer session.
"When I first came here, you called this place Entwell . . . Entwell Num . . ." She struggled to remember.
"Entwell Num Garastra," he said. "The Belly of the Beast."
"That is it. Why do you call it that? And what is this place?" she asked.
"Oh, well. You see . . . Are you sure you do not know this story? What I am about to tell you is generally the reason people find this place," he said.
"I came here because I was being followed and Leo promised me safety," she said.
"Ah, well, then I will enlighten you. You see, long, long ago, people began entering the cave and not returning. Before long, people began to believe there was a creature within that was taking their lives. Periodically, a hideous roar would serve to support that theory. So it became a test of skill. The king of . . . Ulvard at the time, called upon the strongest warriors and mages to rid the kingdom of this foul beast," he said.
"I do know this tale! The cave we just went through . . . that was the cave of the beast!? I never would have let him take me in if I had known that!" she said, flustered.
"I am told it is clearly marked," he said.
"We rode by a number of signs on a horse. I didn't have time to read them, and the rest were worn and faded," she said.
"Well, the finest warriors, wizards, and adventurers the world had to
offer began to file one by one into the cave. The first to return with the head of the beast would be hailed for all of time as the greatest warrior that ever lived. Now, it became clear to each individual adventurer that it was the cave itself, and not some beast, that had taken all that had come before, but that epiphany usually came moments before they joined the fallen.
"Eventually, a remarkable wizard by the name of Azriel found this paradise. She felt that if there was a beast in that cave, then this must be its belly. She was going to turn around and return to the outside world to tell the others, but she needed time to recover. As the days turned to weeks, she fell in love with this place. In time, a second warrior made it through, and then another, and then another. This place became a village populated by the best of the best. With each new arrival, the knowledge pool increased. Now we live to teach, and we live to learn. Unfortunately, in the last few decades the flow of fresh blood has slowed to a trickle," he said.
"Yes, well, these days we have found a much more efficient way to rid ourselves of our finest men and women," she said.
"I assume you speak of the war. So the war is still on? Good heavens, the last new arrival was over thirty years ago and he assured us that the north was on its last legs," he said.
"It has been for some time. Somehow we still manage," Myranda said with a sigh.
"I wonder how the army has managed to . . . one moment, we have a visitor," he said.
Myranda turned to see a dragon, mostly gray with a slightly lighter shade on his belly, push the door open. To her surprise, the creature was only a bit larger than Myn, perhaps as large as a mastiff.
"Solomon, this is Myranda. Myranda, this is Solomon--I was telling you about him," he said.
Myranda crouched down and began to scratch the dragon on the head the way she knew Myn liked.
"You didn't tell me he was just a little baby," she cooed.
Rather than the joyous look that Myn tended to give, Solomon wore a very stern look on his face. Deacon wore a look of concern.
"Myranda . . . Solomon is among our eldest and most sage wizards," he said.
"Oh. I . . . I am sorry. It's just that, oh my, he is so small. I didn't know," Myranda said, mortified.
The dragon turned to Deacon and began what must have been a conversation. Solomon spoke in a near inaudible series of low hisses, guttural growls, and slight movements. Deacon did the courtesy of answering in northern dialect, so that at least she could follow half of the conversation.
"Yes, she did bring the other dragon in. . . Well, we had to do some reconstruction on the legs of the other newcomer and she was protecting him from the healers. . . I would have, but Myranda here was closer, so I asked for her help first. . . Yes, she did," he said, turning to Myranda. "Unprecedented, by the way--I've checked. You and your friends are the first to ever enter this place after the falls had given way."
He turned back to the dragon and continued.
"Yes. . . As a matter of fact, I was able to test my temperature restoration spell on her. . . Well, clearly she is. . . Oh, it is not that dangerous." He turned to her. "You feel well, correct?"
"Yes," she said, made a bit nervous by the direction the conversation was taking.
"There, see? . . . I do not know." He turned to her one last time. "Do you speak any languages besides the northern one?"
"I am rather well-versed in Tresson," she said.
Solomon's reptilian eyes rolled. He let a harsh, grating hiss loose that startled Myranda. His mouth then yawned wide and cracked and snapped as he tested its movement.
"Of the two . . ." he said in a very harsh but understandable voice. Another hiss, twice the intensity of the first, was released before he finished the statement. "I prefer Northern."
After clearing his throat, the dragon's voice was smoother. It was deep, but not outlandishly so, and resonated with power. There was an unquestionable sense of authority in his words. His tone was steady, and there was a slow deliberate cadence to his speech.
"Where did you discover your dragon?" he asked.
"I was in Ravenwood. It was beginning to snow, and there was a cave nearby. I ventured inside for shelter. I didn't know that there was a dragon inside. Then a second one arrived and they began to fight. I blacked out, and when I awoke, Myn was on top of me," she explained.
"Then she is wild-caught. Have you trained her?" he asked.
"Whatever she has learned, she has learned on her own. And I did not catch her. She followed me. I tried to get her to stay, but when I found that her mother and siblings were killed, I couldn't bear to leave her," Myranda explained.
Solomon gave her a long, calculating stare. Finally he spoke.
"Send her to me first. I want her before any others," he said. "And I want to meet the dragon when she awakes."
With that he turned and marched out of the eatery. Deacon leaned close to Myranda.
"This is a great honor. Solomon has chosen you as a pupil. I myself had to endure more than three years of training by lesser teachers before he would see me," Deacon said. "I see great things in your future. Which reminds me. Now that I know that you did not come here as a test of skill, I wonder, what skills have you to test?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Are you a warrior of any sort?" he asked, quickly pulling out the book from his bag.
"No. I can use a short sword and a dagger, but I don't like to," she said.
"Well, that is going to change. Now, magic. Anything?" he asked.
"I just got through learning a bit of healing magic. What do you mean 'that is going to change'?" she asked.
"A healer? Excellent! We do not get many new healers, and even fewer that are native to the north," he said.
"What were you saying about the warrior part changing?" she asked again.
"You are required to pass a few basic weapon-handling and combat trials, aside from whatever magic you may wish to learn. We like to be complete. The northern side of the village is what we call the Wizard's Side. As a healer, I assume you will be spending most of your time there. Here in the south side of the village, Warrior's Side, you will be learning a bit of combat theory and master three types of weapons at the very least. It is the minimum required physical instruction," he said.
"I don't want to learn that. I hate weapons. I hate the war! If I learn how to kill people, I become a tool of the war like the men and women who have been forced to squander their lives in the pursuit of ending other lives," she said.
"I don't think you will need to worry about that. You see, we won't be letting you kill any of us, and you are not likely to encounter anyone else. It is entirely academic," he said. "So, what sort of healing have you learned? Our healers tend to specialize in--"
"You are talking as though I am never going to leave this place," she interrupted.
"Very few of us ever do leave," he explained matter-of-factly.
"Am I a prisoner here?" she asked.
"In a way, but not because of us. That waterfall is blocking the only semi-safe means of egress, and it stops its flow for only a few days every few months. When the falls have relented, escape is possible, but . . . well, for most of us there is nothing for us outside. Here there is comfort, safety, and enough knowledge to live a long, full life learning and perfecting it. I, for one, have never even become curious about the outside," he said.
"You have never been outside of this place?" she said.
"As I mentioned, we have not had a newcomer in more than thirty years, and I am only twenty-five. I was born here," he explained. "Frankly, being outside would be unbearable to me. There is so much to do here. So much that needs to be done. If I had to worry about things like the war or where my next meal was coming from, I would never get anything done."
"That seems sad to me," Myranda said.
"There is no need to pity me. If you are through eating, I would like to show you around this prison you are so sympathetic about,
" he said.
She agreed and the two were off.
Chapter 20
Out of habit, Myranda braced herself as they left the dining hut, ready for a blast of cold, but none came. Anywhere else that Myranda had ever been would still have patches of snow at this time of year, but here it was heavenly. The air was cool, the breeze was mild.
There was something majestic about the waterfall to the west as it fell from ledge to ledge along a sheer cliff, finally reaching the ground to bathe a corner of the valley in its fine mist. The whole of the village was in a vast, half-moon-shaped valley. The curved side was composed of the cliffs of the mountain. On the other side, the ground dropped off sharply. Beyond that was ocean. The end result was a sparse village spread out over a piece of land the size of a large city, nestled in a notch cut into the endless forbidding seaward-face of the mountains. They were far too high to be seen by a passing ship, and Myranda had heard tales of the rough seas that plagued the east coast of the continent. It was no surprise that none had ever seen this place.
None, of course, but the people who now lived here. In a way, the people made the place all the more wonderful. In the north, there was naught but a mass of gray-cloaked forms. No faces, no conversation, just a cloak marching along, stopping here or there to spread the latest word of the war. Here, there was more than the scraps left by a war that had picked the populace clean. There were men, women, and children of all ages. More incredible, there were examples of virtually every race. Peoples she'd seen only a few examples of in her life were plentiful. Stocky dwarfs, graceful elves, and many she'd never seen before. Each spoke their own tongue, filling the air with a symphony of different languages. When approached, some were too busy, but most would offer a hello. Deacon would translate as pleasantries were exchanged, and they would be off.
Their wanderings took them to the Wizard's Side once more, and Deacon began to explain the different areas. There were the yellow-clad novices studying wind magic as a specialty. The people wearing aqua, most lingering near a small lake on the eastern edge of the village, were water wizards and their students. Those dressed in brown were focused on earth magic. Fire apprentices and instructors wore red. The white tunics belonged to healers, and those in black were the war wizards, black magic users.