by Lisa Lowell
By the time dawn arrived Owailion could make out the sturdy stone walls of a small port town with two jetties and dozens of ships leaving the protection there. The forest pushed right up against the walls and he looked closely for clues on how to approach. No roads left this outpost village on the north side so he could not claim he had come from some outer village. That is if he could speak the language. That question just occurred to him as he hiked up the side of the northern jetty and looked over the town.
The walls that surrounded the village were marked with arcane symbols he could not understand. They were not writing but stars and beasts painted on the stone as if in blood. He gulped in fear, tasting the potency of magic here. So how was he to tell the sorcerers from the non-practitioners?
“Truth spell,” Mohan sent to him helpfully.
Owailion thanked his mentor for the reminder and began walking up the boardwalk atop the jetty, toward the town. Perhaps he could pretend he had come from another land on a ship that had just docked, although this village seemed very small for foreigners to visit. And the gate, iron clad and sturdy, spoke more of the fear this town harbored toward attack than its wealth. So he would not come in as a tourist. The fishing boats leaving port provided most of the foot traffic but as he passed a donkey drawn cart of fish he helped push the heaping load in through the gates and no one looked at him twice as a visitor or someone out of place.
Inside he paused to listen to the chatter and realized that he could understand it even though the words were completely different from what he had been speaking with Mohan. He looked around for a sign above a shop and was delighted that he could read them as well although the characters were strange. Greatly daring, he threw a truth spell over the streets as he walked toward the village green filling up with fishwives selling their wares.
And what he saw made him almost vomit. The roadways flowed with sewage and blood. Demonic lizards and thorny vines clung to the walls and roof of almost every building as they were innocent like house pets and kitchen herbs. And those passing fishwives appeared to be leprous invalids, creeping under the weight of chains bound to their necks. A few soldiers stood in the doorways wearing steel armor that fairly glowed with protection spells. Even the trees planted at the corners of the village green took on the look of twisted spikes with hissing snakes for leaves. What kind of spells had this place undergone?
Owailion let the truth spell fall and breathed better for it. He did not want to suspect all the evil magic required to impose all he had witnessed. Instead he looked around for a church on the square. If his memory served a church should be visible from a town square. And it was. Owailion saw the tall building with double doors and a bell tower. He did not dare cast a spell on the church as he approached. Better to save that, and his probable reaction, for the priest instead. He walked up the steps and pulled open the door.
Even without the truth spell he recognized a poor church when he saw it. Only a few benches in the atrium lined the aisle and no one had tended the stubs of candles that poorly lit the hall. Its windows were dirty and plain and the woodwork in need of a polish; a very rustic church for an even more rustic town that ignored its religious life. A priest here was more likely to be starving himself than able to help those less fortunate. He would probably be among the poorest of his members.
But he had fine hearing. The door creaking echoed loudly and brought an old man scurrying into the hall, pulling on a threadbare robe as if he had just been wakened. “Welcome, sir. How can I be of service?” the old priest asked, smiling a nearly toothless grin.
Warily Owailion threw a truth spell over the man and observed what it could share with him. Other than fine teeth and a straighter bearing, this man changed little. So he was a good man with nothing to hide and no poisonous spells cast over him.
“Sir,” Owailion began. “I am looking for a priest to perform a marriage. In a few months we plan to be married but…but not here; across the sea. My lady will not come here, so we must go to her. Are you willing to marry us? I will provide for your transportation and lodging as well as putting money in your coffers to keep your church for a year.”
The priest rocked back on his feet at that offer. His amazement passed unchecked across his face. “Across the sea? I cannot leave my flock for so long, sir. How far…?”
“Your flock seems to have left you long ago, sir. It will be at most two days. I will bring you there by magic…” and Owailion waited to see how the churchman reacted to magic. Were magic and God opposed here? Or was there an acknowledgement that all gifts came from above, as Owailion had learned since his own arrival in the Land.
The priest did not react visibly but he grew still as if waiting for something more. “What is your name, my son?”
Something strange burned across Owailion's mind and he recognized the hand of fortune had brought him here. He need not fear this man, for he was meant to come. “I am Owailion, King of Creating.”
“From the Land?” the priest added with the last rags of his breath.
“Yes. You know me?” Owailion gasped in wonder at his luck.
The priest reached for Owailion, drawing him down to sit on one of the worn benches. “I have been waiting for you all my life. I am…I am your servant. When I was a child I found my way into the church because I have a gift of…I was given something to give to you. It is a key. You will use it to open the palace that is yours. Each of the Wise Ones will have a door steward that holds a pendant. That pendant will open their palace. Each must Seek them as they would the Talismans. You may call me Enok. I have no gift for magic but I am over four hundred years old and have waited for you to come most of my life. I am your servant, my Lord.”
Then the truly ancient man pressed into Owailion's hand a small hard piece of cut gem. It looked like one of the stones he had seen cut on Lake Ameloni, milky and hard as ice but lined with black flecks of jet. And within the stone he could see a tiny replica of a tall towered palace, exactly as he would eventually craft it. His palace set in ice.
“Your pendant, sire, for when you need it.”
Owailion looked up again at the priest as the old man closed Owailion's hand over the gift. “I…I cannot.” he answered breathlessly.
“I know right now this is all too new for you and we must not speak of it,” Enok whispered as if the very walls would overhear them. “You have far to go but I will be there to support you. My only gift is a long life…and my loyalty. I am your man.”
Owailion found he could start breathing again. “Are you safe here? With all the evil magic about, how can you bear it?”
Enok scoffed at that. “Blood magic, we call it. Animals, plants, and sometimes even people are sacrificed to call up the demons that bring this magic. I've lived with it all my life. I am well enough here. The leaders do not bother me for I keep the people at ease and do not make demands on them. The demons do not know me for a magical being and so I am worthless to possess. But I do look forward to coming to the Land and witnessing your work there. It will be wondrous.”
Owailion felt overwhelmed and on the verge of tears at the amazing coincidence. “You are the first person I have spoken to in this whole nation. How did I come upon you of all the citizens of Malornia? I have only just arrived.”
Enok gave Owailion a strange look. “Why, the same way you came to the Land. God has guided you in all your work. Do you doubt this?”
Owailion shook his head. Of course he did not doubt, seeing as the magic he had been given had infused every breath he took and every memory he carried, but it still amazed him that it kept happening; God moving the pieces of his life. “I do not doubt. I only feel amazed. I also came to Malornia with another goal that perhaps you can help with. In the Land there were some rune stones. They disappeared. In a land sealed against invasion and inhabited only by dragons, these stones had human writing on them. I have reason to suspect they came here to Malornia.”
“And you think I might know of them? No, not here. In
this small town we have little interaction with the powers in the capitol. The king here is very powerful in blood magic and he will never have enough. No, do not try to find the stones here. One day these stones will be found again, but for now, while you are so new to the Land, wait until the right time.”
“The right time?”
“When the Wise Ones are all at full power,” Enok insisted. “You do not know what you will be facing.”
Owailion sighed. Of course he did not know what he faced, but he also had a mandate from God to find out who had taken the stones and…Owailion's thoughts ground to a halt. He was told to find who had taken the stones, not retrieve them, not read them. No, he had to learn, not act. That he could do and still remain safe. Eventually, maybe in a thousand years he would know what the stones had to say and why they were lost, but for now he only had to find the thief.
“So will you come with me? I really am looking for a priest. I have a fiancé and…”
Enok interrupted, “Of course, but not yet. You said in three months?”
“On mid-winter's day. The dragons must approve and are most curious about how a human marriage is to be performed. Shall I come and get you then?”
Enok smiled like he had been given a present. “My greetings to your lady,” he almost laughed. “I must tie up my dealings here but I will await your return.”
“Raimi will be delighted,” Owailion replied and then rose to leave, putting the precious pendant in his pocket, but then stopped by a stricken look that passed over Enok's weathered face.
“Do not speak her name again, I pray,” he hissed in alarm. “There are ears everywhere. Now go, and do not come here again. Instead just speak to me as you would your dragon friends, from a distance. I will hear.”
And with that the old priest scurried back into his confessional and left Owailion to walk out of the church alone but elated. He was not alone.
Owailion did not notice the soldiers in the doorways, the demon lizards on the walls or the blind stares of the fishwives as he departed the nameless town. He only knew he had a new friend and a hope for the future.
Chapter 13 – Demon on the Mountain
Raimi had to insist, as they traveled up the Don, that Imzuli feed every night. Over the weeks the urge to hibernate had descended with the change of season on the young dragon. Although the Great Chain Mountains now dominated the horizon and Raimi had found two sites for palaces, little could keep Imzuli's concentration. She seemed distracted and too often Raimi had to insist she go do something else so she herself could eat or sleep regularly. Conversation about humans no longer even stimulated the expected excitement.
“What am I going to do with her?” Raimi asked Owailion during one of their nightly meetings. “I feel like I am harassing her even to simply talk to me. What could have happened to make her so…depressed?”
Owailion could not advise her, for he had little of that problem with Mohan. The gold dragon had willingly gone out of his way to help traverse Malornia, looking over the strange land, finding whole pockets of magic, the major ports and reconnoitering the capitol. That the dragon had to do so invisibly and had to feed from dangerous forests might be enough to keep Mohan more alert.
“Imzuli is young,” Owailion suggested. “Perhaps she is not happy about the Sleep. She has so little experience. Shall I ask Mohan to speak to her?”
Raimi, with her independent streak rejected that idea. “No, I will make do. It's like I'm flying alone. It makes me question if the dragons will even make it to mid-winter. If we let them, they would drift off right now. I'm going to miss them,” she added regretfully, feeling her eyes ache with unshed tears at the idea.
“Think on this then, we will be alone together at that point. I will not be stuck here in Malornia much longer. Have hope for that.”
Raimi smiled at that suggestion and in response sent Owailion a magically blown kiss. They would be together soon enough.
At dawn Imzuli came back from feeding and Raimi greeted her with as much cheer as she felt would not be offensive. “I think today we will pass over Zema. I wish to see where those stones were, and then you can take me up to your mountain. It is close by, is it not?”
Imzuli gave a non-committal rumble. “Yes, it is close by.”
Rather than comment on that, Raimi climbed aboard and they were off, skimming over the forest and through looming clouds that threatened snow, the first of the season that would reach the valley floor. “Would you rather go higher, out from beneath the clouds?” Raimi asked politely.
“Here is Zema. Be wary,” Imzuli warned curtly as she spiraled down into the forest.
Even in the brightest summer sun, the place would have seemed gloomy, Raimi noted. Imzuli set down yards away from the bare spot in the forest, as if she dare not use the obvious center of the ring as a landing spot and would rather battle the branches fouling her wings than enter Zema. Raimi thanked the dragon as she slid down. “If you do not want to be here, I will understand. Go to your home, my friend, if that will ease your mind.”
“No,” Imzuli grumbled. “I just do not like this place. It brings me bad memories. I will wait here for you.”
And that was as much as the dragon had spoken in over a week. Raimi patted Imzuli on the flank and then turned to weave her way toward the strange bare patch in the forest. The rain arrived before Raimi managed to push her way through the undergrowth and saw the light of the sky. Her first impression of Zema was the smell; it reeked of dead flesh. The ground within the circle was muddy from near constant rain without any plant material to absorb it. No trees, grass, ferns or even moss would grow in the space.
Then Raimi looked closer. Something, she thought perhaps the roots of trees, was trying to push up through the mud. Without entering the circle itself, Raimi squatted at the edge and brushed at the stubby growth that had pushed up perhaps a hand-width from the floor of Zema. And it wasn't a root. It was stone.
“There's something growing here,” Raimi announced aloud, knowing Imzuli would hear her. “What do you make of this?”
That did indeed get Imzuli's attention. Raimi felt the dragon's presence in her mind, utilizing her eyes and could hear the muttered snarls as the dragon belatedly tried to weave her mass through the trees so she could see for herself. “That smell, it is demon,” the dragon announced.
“A demon start? I've not found one of those yet.”
“No,” Imzuli insisted as she finally made it physically to the edge of the clearing. “That smell is a full blown demon, coming here from wherever we banish them. I think Zema is a portal to that other place. This is where demons come, bypassing the Seal. And that portal has not been used since…”
“Since the stones were stolen? And what about these little stones, the ones that are popping up here like weeds? Are they the remains of the old stones or are these new ones, growing here faster than new trees can sprout?”
“In the summer when Owailion came here to investigate, there was grass and a few other plants in the clearing and no little spikes of stone. These have come up here since then and all the plants have gone. It is the entrance of a demon…and very recently. That smell…”
Raimi did not hesitate. She pulled her bag from her back and dug inside, pulling out the Talisman bowl. She conjured water into the bowl and then waited for the surface to settle. She had to place her head directly over the reflection to keep the steady rain from marring the image. Staring at her own reflection she concentrated and then made her command. “Show me what has happened here at Zema to make the stones start growing back and the plants to disappear.”
Raimi watched as the gloomy clouds of the reflection shifted and she saw the dark deepen as night fell on the image of Zema. The trees dripped with rain and in the circle, a blanket of moss and low grass had struggled to fill in the space. No little knobs of stone had poked through the earth. Then, as they watched, a blood red light began to form in the center of the clearing, floating a few feet above the ground. The
glow began to pulse and then with a snap, disappeared, leaving something misshapen in its place.
The creature in the center of the circle stood on the shaggy hind legs of a man-sized goat but the upper half of its body appeared to boast stumpy tentacles of a squid and the smashed face of something that might have been a pumpkin once but now had been stove in and rotted to form glowing eyes and a sagging mouth. The demon looked toward the sky and then leaped from the center of the circle into the clouds above. The observers were left to see the steady rain had marred any hoof prints left behind in the circle where now not a single plant remained. Finally the bowl showed that only an instant later sixteen small stones thrust up through the mud like teeth through gums.
Disgusted by what she had witnessed, Raimi dumped the water from the bowl, adding it to the mud of the circle they dare not enter.
“A true demon,” Raimi whispered in horror.
Imzuli began groaning as if in pain*. “The stones grow when a demon comes through. How many might have come over the ages to have them grow so tall in that time. We did not know. They were…the stones were so much more than we thought.*”
“Do the other dragons know this is a portal, or was that a theory of your own?” Raimi asked as she put away the bowl. “Should we share what we have learned?”
Imzuli shook herself in irritation. “No, I never told my suspicions. None of us gave Zema a thought. We know where the smell comes from now. We can follow that demon and hunt it down right now. Then we can share this at the conclave. Climb aboard.”
“What if a demon took the stones originally?” Raimi suggested. “They apparently can breach the Seal.” Meanwhile she did as Imzuli asked and clambered up onto her customary spot on the dragon's back.
Imzuli launched herself into the sky before she replied. “No, if this is their portal they would not wish it damaged. They would want it open. Changes in it would only draw attention. The demons did not take the stones.”