* * * * *
Eynon snapped a sprig of holly off a tree he passed and tucked it into his warm fur hat to remind himself he was still on his wander year. He was cold, despite the hat, the thick wisent-skin coat Nûd had found for him, the fur-lined gloves on his hands, and the long wool scarf he’d wrapped three times around his neck.
He was beginning to learn how to walk effectively in snowshoes and was pleased they kept his feet on top of the foot or more of snow covering the ground. His staff helped him maintain his balance as he shifted weight from shoe to shoe. It was straightforward to stay on the path because someone had marked the trail with splashes of red paint on tree trunks at regular intervals.
Winters must be harder and longer in Melyncárreg than the Coombe, mused Eynon as he increased his pace and pushed on toward the west. The extra exertion helped him stay warm. Frigid air bit into the exposed parts of his face. He resolved to figure out how to use heat and fire magic to help him cope with the colder climate as soon as he had a chance.
Chee insisted on staying with Eynon on his quest. The raconette wore a discarded woolen mitten Nûd had adapted to fit his small body. He was nestled inside Eynon’s coat with only his head poking out above the top fastener. From time to time, a soft chee-chee-chee would float up from below Eynon’s chin.
The small crossbow Eynon had found near the oak tree back in Applegarth swung at his belt and the long, sharp shard of mysterious magical material he’d been using as a sword was attached to his pack where he could easily reach up and grab it. Old Damon’s descriptions of the dangerous animals in the area had been sobering, so Eynon paid close attention to his surroundings.
He’d been climbing for three hours, making his way through stands of tall, straight pine trees with most of their needles clustered on branches far above him. The high boughs had captured some of the snow, which made the forest floor much easier going. He saw a gap in the trees ahead and the ground began to flatten out. When he got closer, he saw the gap opened into a broad meadow where a few sparse stalks of amber grass poked above a blanket of crusted snow.
Eynon froze when he heard bellows of anger and screams like an eagle on the hunt. He could feel Chee’s head popping down into his coat in response to the sounds and wished he had a refuge of his own. Slowly, Eynon eased back to the edge of the trees and peered around the trunk of a large pine.
A tawny gryffon with a white-feathered head was facing off with an old bull wisent a hundred feet away in the center of the meadow. The old bull had formidable horns. Its hide was shaggy, with thick, curly, dark-brown hair on its forequarters and scars on its flanks. The bull’s head was lowered and its horns were pointed at the gryffon which stood almost as tall but must have been only half the wisent’s weight.
The gryffon’s eagle head screamed again and the wisent charged. Wings unfurled, the gryffon rose above the wisent, rotated in flight, and came down with outstretched talons on the wisent’s back. Seconds later, Eynon watched as the gryffon’s beak opened the wisent’s neck. The gryffon’s white feathers were suddenly red as the old bull sank to the ground. He turned away, impressed by the gryffon’s talent in taking down such a large enemy, but not wanting to draw the predator’s attention.
Attack from an unexpected direction, thought Eynon. He filed the memory away for future reference.
Eynon circled the meadow and continued on, moving west and a bit north toward the rising towers of steam, keeping as far away from the feeding gryffon as he could manage. He could smell the tang of spilled blood and hear the dying chuffs of the wisent as the gryffon began to feast. A cat’s snarl joined the sounds from gryffon and wisent. Eynon turned and saw an opportunistic mountain lion had staked out the wisent’s hindquarters while the gryffon’s beak and claws were tearing through the wisent’s neck.
He increased his pace before the fresh kill drew a pack of wolves who might find him a less-contested meal.
After climbing for more than two hours, Eynon was glad to start heading downhill a quarter mile past the meadow. His path took him near a formation of rock spires interspersed with flat tables of granite. When he looked closer, he saw that the granite had the same pattern of colors as the polished slab next to the main sink back in the castle. He hoped the person who’d lugged the slabs back to be polished had a sturdy cart or magical assistance to move them.
Judging that he was far enough away from the gryffon and mountain lion, he sat on the edge of a broad, flat piece of granite bathed in late-morning sun. What looked like a strange formation of black stones was piled in a circle quite far back on the slab. Eynon knew he couldn’t take a long break, but didn’t think a few minutes off his feet would pose a problem. He put his staff on the table of rock, placed his pack next to it, and leaned back until he could look straight up into the clouds. A few deep breaths calmed him after the excitement of seeing a gryffon make its kill.
He couldn’t stop for long, so he shifted to take off a glove and remove one of the rolls from his pack. He enticed Chee’s head out of his coat with a generous morsel. The raconette ate gratefully, then licked crumbs from his paws. Eynon ate the rest of the roll, pleased with how his baking had turned out. The yeast was good here, at least. It gave the rolls a nutty flavor.
After eating the roll, Eynon realized he was thirsty. He squirted water from his goatskin into his mouth and swallowed. It tasted better than he’d expected—he must have been a bit dehydrated. Chee pointed to his own mouth and Eynon understood. He allowed his little friend to hold the skin up while he squeezed, then returned the goatskin to his belt.
It felt wonderful to sit in the sun now that the temperature wasn’t cold enough to freeze his earlobes off. It almost made him wish he didn’t have to hurry to get to the hot springs before noon. Eynon leaned back again and closed his eyes against the light. He promised himself it would only be for a minute, but it wasn’t even that long before Chee insisted on attention with a loud chee-chee-chee-chee, followed by a retreat deep into Eynon’s coat.
“What is it?” asked Eynon. “I didn’t fall asleep.”
He felt a warm breeze on his face and opened his eyes slowly. A pair of copper-colored eyes as wide as his palm stared down at him. They had vertical pupils and seemed to shine out from a leathery black face. Eynon froze. Below the eyes was a long snout, and below the snout were rows of sharp teeth the size of eating daggers. The analytical part of Eynon’s mind said wyvern, while the more primitive part of his brain was torn between don’t move and run. For the moment, don’t move won.
The nostrils at the end of the wyvern’s snout sniffed him. Eynon hoped his wisent-robe didn’t make him smell too much like a wisent himself, since he expected the big bovines were frequently on the menu for wyverns. While his body remained still, Eynon’s mind raced. He was an apprentice wizard, after all, if a very junior one.
He called on the blue magestone around his neck and summoned a sonic shield to cover his body. None too soon, it snapped into place above him, like the upper half of one of the lenses he’d created to distill clean water.
The wyvern’s tongue reached out to taste Eynon, but encountered the magical shield instead. Surprised, the huge beast licked again. It liked the taste of magic. Eynon needed to get the wyvern to back away so he could attempt to escape. He pulled one of the five remaining rolls from his pack and tossed it over his head, farther back on the flat rock.
With its wings still furled, the wyvern turned its sinuous neck and sought out the roll, using its long, forked tongue to pick up the bread and convey it to his mouth. The beast swallowed the roll in a single bite, then moved its head from side to side quizzically, as if trying to decide what to make of the baked dough.
Eynon took advantage of the wyvern’s distraction to stand. He quickly closed his pack and donned it, snapping the back half of the sonic shield in place around his body. Before he could reclaim his staff, th
e wyvern decided the roll wasn’t nearly as interesting as the taste of Eynon’s magic. It turned back to run its tongue across the front surface of his shield again.
“Magic tastes good to you, does it, big fellow?” asked Eynon softly, as if he was soothing a plow horse.
The wyvern answered with another lick. It didn’t seem like he wanted to eat Eynon—just taste his shields. The beast’s hide was both leathery and scaly, with its wings more the former and its body more the latter. It was massive, twice the size of the gryffon, with a pair of thick, chicken-like legs and wings that extended six or eight feet above his back when they were furled. The wyvern’s wings were membranes across what would have been the fingers of its hands, like bats, though when the creature was on the ground, it looked like it was walking on its elbows. A snake-like tail as long as its body stretched behind.
The constant licking from the wyvern’s long tongue was rapidly shifting from intriguing to annoying. It would slow Eynon down just as much to be licked by a wyvern as eaten by one, though the former outcome would be less permanent, or painful, than the latter.
“Are you hungry?” Eynon asked. “I’m not much of a meal, but I know where you could get most of an old bull wisent if the gryffon and mountain lion haven’t eaten it all yet.”
The wyvern stopped licking for a moment and stared at Eynon, almost as if it understood him. Eynon concentrated and created a bright yellow ball of solid sound at a slightly higher frequency. It was the first time he’d tried making solid sound that was anything except transparent, but the blue magestone made it easy and helped him adjust his spell.
He guided the ball to float in front of the wyvern’s nose. The beast’s tongue shot out and licked the ball tentatively, then with enthusiasm. As Eynon hoped, the ball tasted better than his shields.
Not knowing quite how he did it, he used wizardry to send the ball flying hundreds of feet into the air. It moved in a huge arc back in the direction of the meadow.
“Fetch,” said Eynon with a grin.
The wyvern bounded up, giving chase, and was soon out of sight behind a stand of tall, straight pines.
“I hope that gryffon is wise enough not to put up a fight, big fellow,” said Eynon. “And I hope there’s enough wisent left for you when you get there.”
Eynon made the best time his snowshoes allowed as he tried to hurry away from the sunny spires and flat rocks. From the position of the towers of steam to the west, it wouldn’t be long until he reached the hot springs—unless he ran into a pack of wolves or a dragon or something.
He was glad the wyvern hadn’t had a toothache.
Chapter 18
“Curiosity is best when mixed with caution.”
— Ealdamon’s Epigrams
Eynon pushed his way through tightly packed pines. He sensed he was getting closer to the hot springs when the rotten eggs smell grew more intense. After a dozen paces, he reached the top of a rise, but suddenly stopped because the trees ended and a bowl of barren white ground stretched before him. There were patches of scrubby grass and stunted trees here and there, but most of the vista was white, dotted with multicolored pools of steaming water and natural cauldrons of bubbling gray mud.
Damon had been right about the snow—there was little of it to be seen and that only on the edges of the odd landscape. When Eynon looked closer, he saw that the white-colored ground was grainy, like it was covered with salt. He knew Melyncárreg in general was strange, but the current locale was particularly so.
Far in the back of the field of hot springs, one particular spring stood out for its spectacular colors. The center of the spring was red and circles of orange, yellow, green, blue and purple formed a rainbow of well-defined rings out to where the spring’s edge met the basin’s stark white ground. Eynon felt compelled to explore it and resolved to check out the rainbow-colored spring first, if only to determine why it had such a fascinating color pattern.
A steep, snow-covered slope, more suited to a goat than a man or woman, led down to the bad-smelling basin. Someone had set narrow, upright pine logs into the hillside every six feet and lashed long poles between them to help visitors ascend and descend. Eynon silently thanked the people who’d made the railing for their efforts.
He held on and eased his way down, taking in the odd landscape below him as he shuffled along. A bubble as big as his head formed and broke with a lugubrious plop in a mud pot close by. Mud pots were the name Eynon remembered Nûd had used for them, at least.
The big servant had been more forthcoming than Damon about finding magestones when he’d helped Eynon strap on his snowshoes several hours earlier. Eynon replayed their conversation.
* * * * *
“I’ve been told by the Master that magestones are formed deep in the earth,” said Nûd. “That’s where their congruencies are created by the cuddio tân.”
Eynon nodded as his boots were secured. That made sense, he reasoned. There were stories from across the sea about mountains that belched fire and rivers of molten stone, after all. Why couldn’t hot springs toss up magestones?
“From time to time, magestones find their way to the surface,” Nûd continued, “especially where the ground is weak and water and mud seep through.”
“I understand,” said Eynon.
“Not all magestones are found that way,” said Nûd. “Some are buried in very old rocks that have been squeezed and folded deep underground. Hot springs and mud pots make them easier to find without mining.”
“We have mines for green slate and marble in Wherrel, back in the Coombe,” said Eynon. “Mining is backbreaking work. I’d rather pick magestones up off the ground, if I had a choice.”
“I hope your magestone shoots out of the first hot spring you pass and lands in your hands.”
“Where’s the adventure in that?” asked Eynon. If only it could be that easy.
“Getting back to sharing one of the Master’s lessons, slate and marble are shale and limestone that performed well under pressure,” said Nûd. “Magestones need a lot more time and pressure to cook.”
“Are there magestones in the hot springs and mud pots?” asked Eynon.
“Sometimes,” Nûd replied, “but if they are, you won’t be able to get them. You need to look for ones tossed out onto safe ground by jets of steam or bubbling mud.”
“What if I see a magestone in a hot spring? Couldn’t I stick my hand in and grab it?”
“There’s a reason hot springs are steaming,” said Nûd. “If you reached in, your hand and arm would be cooked in seconds.”
“Then I definitely won’t do that,” Eynon said with a smile.
Nûd raised an eyebrow, then wiggled it until Eynon laughed.
“You’d better not,” said the big man. “Then I’d have to go back to eating my own cooking.”
Eynon tested the snowshoes on the thick powder a few feet beyond the castle’s side door. They worked well on the deep snow.
“We can’t have that, so I’ll be careful,” said Eynon. “Thank you for the snowshoes—and the good advice.”
“Glad to help,” said Nûd.
“One more question,” said Eynon.
“Only one?” asked Nûd.
“For now,” said Eynon. “Damon didn’t want to tell me, but how will I know a magestone when I see it? How can I tell a magestone from an ordinary piece of rock?”
“Damon was right to say little,” Nûd answered. “Anyone with the talent for wizardry you’ve displayed using a training magestone will be able to sense which is which.”
“If you say so.”
“I do,” said Nûd. “And be careful where you step. Use your staff to test the ground before you put your weight down anywhere, though usually if something is growing on it, the footing is solid.”
“I’ll remember that,” sa
id Eynon.
Nûd rubbed the top of Chee’s head where it showed at the collar of Eynon’s coat underneath the bottom of his long scarf.
“Be sure to keep this little fellow out of trouble. Hot springs and mud pots are not good places for raconettes,” said the big man.
“I’ll watch out for him,” said Eynon. But who will watch out for me?
* * * * *
When he reached the bottom of the slope, Eynon answered his own question. I’ll have to watch out for myself.
Nûd’s scenario about a magestone shooting out of a hot spring and into his hands wasn’t likely. Eynon was more interested in the polychromatic spring farther back than anything close at hand. It pulled him, somehow. He’d have to figure out how to get from where he was to where he needed to be, without scalding himself or falling into a sinkhole.
Eynon checked on Chee, but the raconette remained burrowed deep inside his coat.
Maybe it smells better in there than out here? he considered.
The rotten-egg smell was particularly bad near the field of mud pots to his right. Eynon saw ground ahead of him supporting grass dusted with gray mud and stubborn shrubs with a few small leaves clinging to their branches. He sat on a nearby rock and took off his snowshoes, which weren’t much good without snow. He put them on top of the rock, gripped one end of his staff, and walked forward, testing the ground with every step.
A crystal-clear pool was on his left. It was only gently steaming and had an orange and yellow ring around its edge. Eynon spared a moment to look for stones or clods of earth that might be magestones anywhere around the pool, but he didn’t see anything promising. He carefully steered his way between mud and water hazards, making slow progress toward the multicolored spring farther back.
The Congruent Apprentice (The Congruent Mage Series Book 1) Page 22