Choice (Majaos Book 3)

by Gary Stringer

  “Well, assuming it’s a yes from Bernice, the pattern fits perfectly except for one component. Therefore we have to treat it as an anomaly, and anomalies occur in all sorts of patterns.”

  Eilidh agreed. “All it takes is a single rogue element to throw up an anomaly. Something unique that could affect that one component in the pattern.”

  “Exactly, so we need to figure out what this unique rogue element is. Something we would find there that doesn't exist anywhere else.”

  Toli jumped in, “The dragon predator!” Suddenly all eyes were on her. “Why not? It's unique, isn't it? It's there and you won't find one anywhere else, thank the gods!”

  “That would make a brilliant rogue element,” Tanya agreed. “So is there a reason in magical lore that might explain the anomaly?”

  “It's magically reflective,” Rochelle pointed out. “It must generate an anti-magic field of some sort and a powerful one at that.”

  “Aye,” Granite concurred. “A creature powerful enough to deflect fire breath and use it against a dragon that's supposed to be fire proof. The mind boggles!”

  “You're right!” Eilidh cried, enthusiastically. “Of course! Who knows how long that dragon predator has been there?”

  “By all accounts, long enough to slay a good number of dragons,” Granite pointed out. “In an area that’s likely to have relatively little traffic.”

  “And you think the creature could be causing the anomaly?” Tanya asked.

  “Generating a powerful anti-magic field right on top of a Life node," Eilidh replied. "It's got to play havoc with the flow of magic in the area, so yes, why not? Yes, I think that's got it right.” “You're right about something else, too!” Bunny remarked as she re -entered the room. “The Prince wasn't having a meeting or a bath, actually. He was taking a break - quite boring, really. He needn't think he's getting his stuff back afterthat!”

  “Bunny...” Eilidh prodded, trying hard to hold on to her impatience. “Oh yes, as I was saying, you're right about the Water node. There is a Life Eddy down there. Some palace official spotted it during a visit not long ago – just before the war broke out. It's become a natural tourist attraction, if you can believe that, but the sea elves consider it to be quite unremarkable.”

  Eilidh was delighted. “Well done, Bunny! That's fantastic news!”

  The sumorityl took a little bow. “It's alright, you can kiss me later.”

  “That would probably be worth it.”

  “Probably?” Bunny demanded. “Trying hard here not to feel insulted. Actually,” she reconsidered after a pause, “forget that. I am insulted.”

  “You’ll get over it,” Eilidh assured her. Tanya moved over to the sumorityl’s side and whispered something in her ear. Bunny looked briefly startled, as if the Knight had said something unexpected, but her look quickly changed to an unspoken question, to which Tanya offered a facial shrug. Eilidh saw Bunny respond with the purest, most genuine smile she had ever seen her give anyone, but the Catalyst said nothing. Whatever it was, it was obviously private and none of her concern.

  Returning to the business at hand, Eilidh continued, “This isn't the end of the proce ss - not quite. We have confirmed all the Elemental nodes, and two out of four Ethereal nodes with no way to find the last two: Time and Techmagic.”

  “Actually,” Rochelle piped up, “that's not strictly true.” she showed Eilidh the map onto which the six known nodes were marked. “From what I've learned in these books, I can extrapolate rough areas in which the final two nodes should exist.”

  “That's brilliant, Rochelle!”

  After scribbling frantically in her notebook for several minutes, the gnome drew two circles on the map. “There!” she pronounced. “Now we just need a team to explore each of these two areas.”

  “Agreed,” said Eilidh.

  Rochelle shot up, ready to go instantly. “Right, I'll take one; you take the other.”

  “Ah, not agreed.”

  “But-” “Sorry Rochelle, but you've kind of stabbed yourself in the foot a bit.” Eilidh placed a firm but friendly hand on her shoulder, sitting Rochelle back down. “You've proved to be such an expert with these references, I'm afraid you're quite indispensable. I need you to stay here and learn more...and get me up to speed as well.” The Catalyst gave a wry smile. “Never thought I'd hear myself say that about studying.

  “As for me,” she added, “I’m not qualified to look for Life Eddies; I can see magic at lower concentrations.”

  If Phaer were here, she thought, he'd be ideal. In the end, it seemed natural to group the three Knights together, embodying the treaty that existed between their respective orders. Since they had purged all magic, they were effectively blind to all but the most concentrated Life flow. They would seek the Techmagic node, because though it was two centuries since the Tech Wars, there were still tensions in some quarters between Techmages and regular magic-users, but any Techmages working in the area would surely have no quarrel with a trio of Knights.

  The second group would have to include Jayne - she was barely Life Potential, practically next door to being magically Dead. But she wasn't exactly the sharpest sword in the armoury, and getting too close to Temporal magic could play some odd tricks on the uninitiated. Therefore, she would send magical backup in the form of a magician and a sorceress - Toli and Bunny - with Granite to serve as Catalyst.

  Toli objected to leaving Eilidh's side. “My place is with you, my friend,” she complained. “We've been in this together from the start and I think we should finish it together. Sending me off like this is-” “Toli, I promise, we will see this through together, but right now...” she broke off, taking the h obbit to one side. In a hushed tone, she continued, “I need to be here and I need someone out there I know I can count on. We can't have Jayne wandering about unsupervised, Granite is usually rock-steady and dependable, but if he gets in one of his moods...and you know how Bunny loves to wind him up. You're the only one I can truly depend on to keep an eye on them, do you see?”

  Toli nodded, delighted to have her friend's confidence. “Of course, I should have realised. I'll keep my eye on them and make sure they come back in one piece - well, three pieces, obviously. Four if you include me. I mean, we're not going to come back all squished into one piece because that would be just so gross! Can you imagine if-”

  “Alright, everyone!” Eilidh spoke up, interrupting. “Make sure you all know where you're going, then get whatever you need for the journey I'm sure Prince Garald will provide anything you ask…Within reason, Bernice!” she added hastily, catching Bunny's eyes as they lit up with mischief.

  The Sumorityl stuck her tongue out at Eilidh.

  “Be swift, but be safe.” She pointed at the three Knights. “That means no heroics; no unnecessary risks. The time for battle will come I'm sure, but not yet, is that clear?”

  The three saluted. “Get there, find the Life Eddy and get back as soon as possible,” Eilidh summed up. “For the first time I feel like we're ahead of the game. This is our chance - a major stepping stone towards locating the Well of Life and working out a way to stop Niltsiar. Time is of the essence. Any questions?”

  There were none. “Then go swiftly and return swifter still.” For some reason, Bunny seemed to be unhappy about being separated from the Knights, but before she could object, Tanya placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and once again Eilidh noticed a brief, quiet conversation pass between them, after which, Bunny appeared to relent.

  Eilidh watched the two groups file out and then all was silence. Just Rochelle and Eilidh alone.

  “So what do we do now?” Rochelle asked. “Well, I don't know about you - you can stay and study if you like, but I need a break. I'm going to go and find Mystaya; see if I can practise these social skills of mine.” She took a couple of paces towards the door and stopped. “Wow,” she remarked. “Did I really just say that?”

  Rochelle nodded and tried to look suspicious. “Who are you and what have you d
one with Eilidh?”

  Eilidh gave a half smile. “I like to think that in some other reality she slept in this morning and is still lazing around in bed in a peaceful, intact Merlyon.”

  “A nice thought,” Rochelle said. “Do you suppose there really are other realities - parallel worlds, you might say?”

  “If there are, I think I might just take my next holiday in one of them. This reality's getting a bit too real for my tastes. Still, if wishes were horses...”

  “...they'd have all bolted with their barn doors shut firmly behind them,” Rochelle finished.

  “At least if I was on one of them I could run away,” Eilidh pointed out.

  “Good point.”

  “Ah well,” the Catalyst sighed. “I'll see you for more reality later!”

  “Yeah, see ya.” Eilidh stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind her.

  Chapter 10

  Callie was depressed.

  She was a silver dragon, whose joy was in flight, completely paralysed. The only things she could still do were blink and breathe. She greatly regretted the latter. Looking back on the events that led to her flying accident, Callie had no doubt that she could easily have outpaced the dragon predator once she attained full speed, but in the time it would have taken her to accelerate, she would have been vulnerable - easy prey. The thing was, they had been right next to the magical barrier that separated the Realm of Fire from the `real world`. Loric had only to move two dragonlengths to the right and he would have been safe. However, Loric had got it into his head to buy her time to get away from the dragon predator by fighting it himself. Foolish dragon. Brave to the point of recklessness.

  Now, Loric was seeking the Penta Drauka, and while she didn't know exactly what that was, it seemed to her that destroying the dragon predator would require a dragon with an edge. So Calandra had made a choice: she had physically knocked Loric through the barrier. Their tests had proved that at ground level, she could pass the barrier, although she would remain in the real world while Loric safely entered the Fire Realm. That was the theory.

  She had not been prepared for the shock of actually entering the Fire Realm herself. It had never happened during the tests. She didn’t know that crossing the barrier `as one` would fool the magic. There had been little control over her short, explosive flight, since she had expected to be exposed to the dragon predator. It would have been a worthy sacrifice and infinitely better than this.

  The air in the volcanic Fire Realm was so different to the desert of the real world and she didn't handle the instant transition at all well. To be fair, she had been holding Loric at the time, which destabilised her. She defied any dragon to have flight control in that situation. Even so, she was terribly unlucky to hit the ground quite as she did. The Elder Dragon of Fire had told her that she was lucky not to have snapped her neck. She didn't think that was lucky at all. On the contrary, she had been prepared for death, ready to be with her Father Patrelaux in Paradise. She had not been prepared for where she was now.

  This was hell. In terms of a natural lifespan, Dragons were essentially immortal. Barring accident, a dragon lived as long as she cared to live. What was time to a dragon? At some stage, a dragon would get bored of life, believing that she had seen everything and done everything she would ever care to. At that time, the dragon would find a nice, comfortable spot somewhere and choose to die. Callie was at that point now. Remaining in this world in this state was an affront to everything she was. This was not where she would have chosen to die - the barren, fiery wasteland was a far cry from her living forest home - but she didn't have much choice. It would have to do. She supposed it didn't much matter in the end: dead was dead, no matter where she was when it happened.

  Looking back, Callie's major regret was wasting so much time hiding from her true nature as a dragon, pretending to be something else. Phaer had figured it out first - he was a smart one and cunning, too a good match for Eilidh, despite their obvious differences. He had known she wasn't an elf and circumstances forced her to reveal her true self.

  Flying with Loric had been such a revelation! The most dragon-like time of her life. It would be nice to see him again, one last time. She never did get to explain why she had hidden the truth about herself. She supposed she regretted that, too. She would have liked to tell Loric her story - and Eilidh and the others, too. But they weren’t there to hear it.

  Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to tell it to myself, she decided.

  They would be her last thoughts before the end…

  * * * * * Callie remembered being a young adolescent dragon, the last hatchling of her mother's first egg cluster. Barely old enough to leave her mother's nest in the heart of some elven woods in a land beyond Mythallen, out across the ocean, on another continent known as Sylfrania. Callie had always adored elves, and spent much of her time in elven form, to better relate to them. She was honoured and delighted when her sylvan friends gave her an elven form of her name: Calandra.

  Callie was born into an all-female nest: no brothers and her father had been killed in a fight with blue dragons before she hatched. In time, human settlers, explorers, came to the region - the first humans she had ever met, and she was curious. They lived their brief little lives in the time it took her to blink and yet achieved so much. That both fascinated and frightened young Callie.

  One day, she made her first true human friend, a twenty year-old named Ellie. Ellie lived alone in a little wooden hut on the fringes of Callie's homeland, and it was she who first explained to Callie the concept of measuring time in hours and days, weeks, months and years. Callie remembered being astonished, when she learned what twenty years meant - that any creature could even know how to stand up in that time, or talk. Yet Ellie could do such amazing things: she was an artist. With a strange implement called a `pencil`, coloured pigments called `paints` and sheets of canvas or paper apparently made from trees - surely a most powerful feat of magic - she could create images that were so incredibly life-like, it took Callie's breath away.

  At first, Ellie had not known that the elf Calandra was in fact a silver dragon, Callie. When Callie changed to her true form for the first time, a few years into their friendship, Ellie gasped and called her, “the most magnificently beautiful creature I have ever seen.” Ellie had never seen a dragon up close before, and she simply had to paint her.

  Callie was flattered and only too happy to...what was that word again?...Ah yes, `pose` for Ellie. A strange word, `pose`. A word to describe remaining perfectly still in position for a while. Apparently humans found this extremely difficult, and seeing the way they always seemed to be rushing around, Callie could believe it. For her, it was no more than a fistful of heartbeats.

  Callie became Ellie's favourite subject and the young woman created many more paintings and sketches of her. Callie reverently accepted one of the paintings as a gift from her friend, and took it back to show it off to her nestmates. As she flew away, she called back, “I'll be right back!”

  Ellie waved and called back, “See you later, Callie!” Callie's nestmates were fascinated by the painting. It wasn't that the elves they knew didn't have art, but this was different. The dragon in the picture wasn't just a dragon - it was unmistakably Callie. Somehow, Ellie had captured not only her physical shape, but also her personality, her heart, the very essence of her being. It was so vital, so alive - it was a very human perspective. One of Callie's sisters was particularly taken with the idea, and asked if she thought Ellie would paint her, too. Callie didn't see why not, and promised to ask her human friend the next time she was with her.

  A short while later, from a dragon's perspective, Callie returned to the hut, feeling very excited at the prospect of seeing her friend again. She couldn't wait to tell Ellie how much her nestmates loved her work, but when she got there, she was shocked to find that Ellie was gone.

  In the time Callie had been away, her human friend had grown up, got married, had children and died peacefully of
old age. Ellie's home was now owned by her granddaughter Vicki and her family. Vicki still had all of her late grandmother's dragon paintings and apparently some other humans had offered her a lot of money for them - a small fortune, according to Vicki, whatever that meant. Callie didn't really understand money, but she understood the concept of value, so she got the basic idea. But Ellie had left strict instructions in her Will that they were to be kept in the family and never ever sold because she always believed that her dragon friend would return someday and want to see them.

  From Callie's perspective, she hadn't been away for that long, just as the ten years she had spent with Ellie had been but a moment to a dragon. Ellie had understood that, even as the months and years ticked by and it became clear that she would never see her `most magnificently beautiful creature` again. Ellie had been sad, but she held no resentment, harboured no thoughts of abandonment. She simply accepted her friend and loved her with all her heart for who and what she was.

  Vicki promised that Callie would always be a revered figure and a dear friend to her family. Moreover, her family would always own that little wooden hut so that someone might be there to greet Callie with a smile and a wave whenever the dragon wanted to visit. Incredibly touched but too distraught to stay, Calandra left Vicki's hut, left her mother's nest, left the entire continent of Sylfrania and flew to Mythallen where she sought solace in the permanent, constant love of the god Patrelaux.

  Callie couldn't get over the loss of her friend and irrational though it was, the guilt she felt for having left her never faded. What was a human lifespan to a dragon? She could have stayed with Ellie for all her friend's life, and got nothing worse than a mild scolding from her mother for being late home. She couldn't take losing anyone else like that again, so she hid - hid from herself, lived as an elf and tried to forget she was a dragon.

  Callie hadn’t chosen her new home at random. She was there for a reason, guided by Father Patrelaux’s divine hand. Ellie’s art had become famous, eventually even making its way across the ocean to Mythallen’s shores and ultimately to Shakaran City where it was being displayed by one particular Temple of Light as a testament to the beauty of life. The elven Clerics normally lived in seclusion, but upon seeing Ellie’s art, had been moved to open their doors, so they could display it and in so doing enrich the spirits of all who saw it. Callie visited the display in elf form, as Calandra, and took it as a sign from the Father of Light that this was where she was meant to be. She spoke to the Revered Children of her desire to enter Holy service, to train as a Cleric of Light, and so she had lived until that fateful day, when a Knight of Paladinia entered the temple and told her that a human girl named Eilidh needed help and protection.