“Flunk, Zoran. You have given me an answer that I would expect to hear from one who has been brought up in the so called civilized lands of Adapazan,” she stated flatly and without emotion. Her comment raised the eyebrows of both Jarka and Zdenka, but for different reasons. Zdenka thought that this only confirmed her deep suspicions that Zoran was indeed a nobleman, probably from the civilized lands. Jarka, on the other hand, snickered; he was not such of a hot shot after all, and he certainly was not from around these parts.
“Would anyone else like to answer my question?” she asked softly, her keen eyes pausing for a moment on the others.
Zdenka decided to try. “Originally, Adapazan was populated by the Yellers, who built what one might call population centers. Highly intelligent, these were the first true civilizers of the planet. Then we, the humans, came here and began killing them, driving them off of the most fertile lands, forcing them out of the zones that we controlled. As the barons continued to enlarge the areas they controlled, the Yellers were forced further out into the less desirable portions of Adapazan. The Yellers now hate humans with a passion and fight us whenever they get the chance. They get their name from all the wild yelling they do when they attack us. Also driven from their old haunts are other nasty creatures, the banshees, the megalowolves, the slithers, and the paleowasps. All of these combine to make living in the non-civilized areas of Adapazan quite dangerous — hence the name Wild Lands.”
“Very good, Zdenka. Precisely so. The Yellers are more than justified in attacking humans. After all, we are slowly committing genocide of their kind. Now then, has anyone ever seen a Yeller? Can anyone describe what they look like, what they are afraid of, or how we mages may defeat them if we are attacked?” she asked.
Again, Zdenka replied first, “I had to kill one once. It came after me and my dad when we were out in the Dark Woods hunting for deer for our winter’s meat supply. It was at least eight feet tall, really hairy, like a giant ape. I hit it with five arrows to its head before it dropped.”
Bernard added, “According to our studies, Yellers are mean and vicious towards humans. They are afraid of fires; they scare easily, and are quite easily fooled by illusions. So fire based spells, fear causing spells, and illusions of same are our best defense against them. They are stronger than two of our fighters and can easily rip a man’s arm off. They have a very nasty bite as well. We should avoid all close combats with them, keeping our distance. Oh yes, they are known to use clubs as well.”
“Very good. Both of you. Now then, who can tell me about banshees?” she asked.
Zoran wanted to redeem himself, he answered this one. “Evil spirit like creatures, feminine in nature, it is said. Solitary creatures, they only come out at night, seeking male prey. Their screeching cry can paralyze their victims, which they then eat their flesh raw. I once saw the remains of a man who fell victim to a banshee, a really bloody, almost unrecognizable body. They are afraid of bright lights and can be more easily killed by electrical attacks and even water. It is said that they dare not cross water. The book suggests that is because they are terrified that they might see their reflections in the water.”
“Very good, Zoran. That is correct. Now how about the megalowolves?” she asked, continuing down the list of creatures.
Bernard answered this one. “I’ve run into these rather often when I am out with my dogs. They are an oversized wolf, really, with giant fangs that can rip flesh from bones. They often hunt in packs, which is when they are most dangerous indeed. They fear light and fire, so any spell that creates bright lights or fires will drive them off.”
“Very good, Bernard. Now then, how about the slithers?”
Emil chose to answer this one, reciting mostly what the book had said about them. From his description, he’d never actually seen one. “These are snake creatures, whose fangs deliver venom that paralyzes a person. Unlike normal snakes, these grow to be three feet in diameter and can reach thirty feet in length. Because of their girth, they can easily eat a human, which makes them dangerous. They are most easily slain by swords and by spells that do cutting type damage.”
“Good, Emil. Finally, how about paleowasps?”
“I’ll answer this one, because my hawks and I frequently run into these nasty flying creatures,” Karel growled. “They are a giant sized wasp, really, the adults reaching three feet in length. Their stinger delivers a nerve agent that first paralyzes the victim and slowly shuts down all bodily functions. If possible, the females then lay their eggs in the carcass so that their hatchlings will have a good supply of food upon hatching. Earth based spells and anything that cancels their flying makes a good defense against them. Also, my hawks are excellent at catching them while they are in flight.”
“Excellent. Now that you have an appreciation for the lands in which we live, it is time that we begin learning the spells necessary to protect ourselves and others,” she replied, knowing from all the smiles that her students were very ready to begin learning spells.
In early June, Zoran’s sister made telepathic contact with him for the first time. Zoran, can you talk? It was Rayna! At once from that gentle mental touch, Zoran realized just how much that he had missed his sisters all these months!
I’m here. Yes, please! I miss you and Lida loads. How is everything? Are you two okay?
Yes, we are fine, really we are. How about you? Lida and I really miss you too!
I’m doing great. I’m studying under a terrific Archmage, but I best not tell you who right now. I’ve made some new friends and am learning spells like never before.
I am so glad that you found a way to continue! Magic is so important. Well, dad was furious when he finally figured out that you ran away. He sent out messages to all the other barons inquiring if they had seen you. Of course, none had. He called on Milos to attempt to track you, but you did a good job of covering your trail. He even went so far as to ask the priests to track your Shadow Walk. He was fuming when they couldn’t pick up your trail! I’ve never seen him so mad. Radek isn’t of the same mind though. He keeps saying good riddance and all that. I think he really does dislike you, Zoran. Perhaps he was behind the three assassination attempts. Lida and I are keeping an eye on him.
Any news from the Court?
Well, dad held a secret conference with some other barons. He is now planning a big summer offensive against the Sholov Province and warlord Mikolas. He thinks that he can take that whole province this summer. I hope he loses big time. Oh! Mom’s coming. I best stop for now. More later when I know something. Love you, Zoran.
Love you too, Rayna. Tell Lida I love her too. The connection was suddenly broken. Zoran sighed, “I sure do miss my sisters.” He pulled his covers up and drifted into sleep.
Having finished their study of basic background information, the group began to work on learning actual spells. Archmage Nadia followed the same pattern as had Zoran’s previous teacher, that is, she began their education with the simple, useful spells that one might use around the home or workplace. Spells such as Mend, Warm, Chill, and Clean were easily learned by everyone in the group, though Zuzanna found them challenging. Zoran realized that Zuzanna was only going to be able to master the very beginning spells and would have to be content to be an Adept, which status she greatly desired.
Once they began to tackle the real spells as Bernard called them, things began to take a fascinating turn, at least as far as Zoran was concerned. When he was getting his training from Archmage Milos, he was the only student. Now he had the opportunity to work with his new friends and see how well others mastered the spells. The results he found surprising and unexpected.
Each person seemed to be able to learn only a subset of all possible spells, excepting himself, strangely enough. Then, perhaps not, he thought; I am a Duska, so perhaps that has something to do with spell casting. In fact, the ease and speed with which any given individual mastered a given spell varied in a way he began to find interesting. So much so, that Zoran began
charting each spell that his friends mastered.
He was not too surprised to find that Jarka tended to rapidly pick up any spell that had anything remotely to do with thieving. For example, the Intruder Warning, Alter Appearance, Charm Another, Understand Foreign Languages, Detection of Magic, Grow and Shrink, Erase, Gentle Fall, Hold Door, Identify Magical Item, Jump, Wizard Message, Create Magical Shield, Climb, and Scare spells she excelled at and learned very rapidly. Whereas with the key beginning attacking spells of Magical Arrow, Flaming Fingers, and Sleep, Jarka struggled mightily to learn them, nearly giving up on them.
Zdenka excelled with any spell that allowed her to exercise a good measure of control over an object. She readily picked up the Magical Arrow and Sleep spells, along with such spells as Alter Fires, Grow and Shrink, Gentle Fall, Hold Door, Jump, Fog Cloud, and Move Object. In fact, she realized that all along she had been using magical energies to move her arrows to hit the bull’s eye. “Every time I shoot an arrow, if I see it going off a little, I sort of pushed it back on track. No wonder I always won the archery contests!” she exclaimed in a rush of realization. On the other hand, she could not seem to master the creation of illusions at all.
Bernard picked up any spell that dealt with animals or of the earth very rapidly, whereas Karel rapidly caught on to any spell dealing with the air, such as Fly. He also picked up spells that dealt with animals quickly. Both men found spells that altered men’s minds nearly impossible to learn, such as Charm Another.
Emil and Renata also had a predictable side as well as an unpredictable aspect, Zoran soon discovered. Unlike the others, the spells that they managed to learn were far fewer and seemed randomized. For example, while they were able to learn Alter Appearance, they failed to learn Grow and Shrink, two closely related spells. With these two, Zoran soon learned that if the spell had anything to do with fire or electrical charges, these two were certainly among the first to learn it. Strange indeed, he thought to himself. Well, they are different and come from some distant land, he rationalized for a time.
On into June, this same pattern continued, as they all progressed through the fundamental spells through what Archmage Nadia called Grade 3. Zoran was very surprised to find that Emil and Renata were able to cast a Ball of Fire almost as soon as they read the casting details! Similarly, when these two got to the Lightning Bolt spell, both picked it up immediately, shocking all of the others, who really had to work with these two spells, their most powerful spells to date.
Of course by the end of June when they all finished up their attempts to learn the spells of Grade 3, everyone else had strange ideas about Zoran. He saw himself merely filling in spells that he had either not seen under Milos or had not yet had the time to learn. His friends didn’t see it that way, however. One afternoon after a particularly frustrating session, Karel griped, “Zoran, what’s with you anyway? You are mastering every darn spell we come across! No one else here is able to do that! Not Zdenka, not Jarka, not Emil, not Renata, not Bernard, not myself. Only you. What gives with you anyway? How come you are able to do all these spells, over a hundred of them now and we can’t? What do you have to say about that?” He was angry as usual.
“Yes, how is it that you are the superman?” Jarka sneered rather covertly.
Zdenka was going to suggest that this was because he was a nobleman, but thought better of it. After all, most noblemen couldn’t cast any spells. She was as baffled by it as the others.
“Probably because we are not as smart as he is,” Bernard added rather bored with the whole discussion. “Besides, he already had a good deal of training before he came here. He’s just ahead of us, that’s all.” Emil and Renata eyed Zoran, eager to hear his answer, perhaps wondering if he might share his secret for spell mastering with them.
Zoran couldn’t risk speculating; it would come too close to what he was. Instead, he picked up on Bernard’s statement. “Bernard’s right. I have studied under another Archmage a while back, so I already knew half of the spells. This time, I picked up some of those I missed and a few that he didn’t teach me back then. He and I didn’t get along, rather nasty fellow for my liking.” This seemed to appease them, but Karel still grumbled about it all and shot him a dirty look.
On the next Sunday, their day off, Jarka came back with some startling news. “Hey, you all need to hear what I just found out!” She was more animated than normal. “Dragons are back!”
“What?” exclaimed Zoran. Many other expressions followed in rapid fire.
“There’s no such thing as a dragon. It’s just stories made up to scare kids,” Zdenka added.
“No, really,” Jarka insisted. “Evzen, the Hunter — he was out hunting near Devil’s Peaks, and he saw one flying over the peak carrying something. Everyone’s talking about it. Dragons are back. Honestly, go to any inn and ask. Everyone’s heard about it now. Happened a week ago Friday night.”
“Jarka, there aren’t dragons around here. They are just a myth. No one has ever seen a dragon,” Bernard said, having already become bored with this talk of mythical beasts.
“I don’t even know what a dragon actually is,” Zoran added. “What do they look like anyway? Are they dangerous? Have any of you seen a dragon?”
Everyone shrugged their shoulders; no one had seen one. “I agree with Bernard,” Zdenka spoke up. “Honestly, Jarka, if dragons actually existed and if a dragon was around here, why hasn’t anyone else ever seen it? Answer that. Really, I think Evzen probably saw something unusual and is calling it a dragon. Maybe it was a paleowasp that he saw. Maybe he was really drunk and hallucinating. There could be lots of reasons.”
“I’m dead serious! I asked some of the older folks about dragons. Katerina, who works as a maid at an inn — she is in her sixties. She remembers seeing a dragon around here more than a quarter of a century ago. Go ask some of the older townsfolk. They’ll tell you so.”
“But what do they look like? Apparently they fly,” Zoran asked again. “Are they dangerous? How big are they?” He got no answers, except that they must fly, since that was how the hunter saw it. He decided to send a Message to the Archmage asking her about this news. Shortly after he sent it, she materialized into their study.
“What’s all this about someone seeing a dragon?” she asked. Jarka repeated what she had learned.
“Well, well, so we have a dragon in these parts again. Fascinating,” she said in her usual quiet manner. Zoran glanced at his friend’s faces. Strange, but Emil and Renata had not said even one word this whole time, and their faces were slightly flushed, he thought. She went on, “Yes, dragons are very real and very, very powerful creatures, highly intelligent, and many are deeply involved in magic, able to cast many of the spells that we cast.”
“However, Jarka and the rest of you, I caution you about drawing many conclusions from one lone sighting. That may well have been any number of things. I suppose that you all should get educated about dragons. I’ll never hear the end of this if I don’t. Come on; up to the third floor library.”
Oh’s and ah’s echoed. Never before had any of them been to the third floor, where her more advanced students lived and trained. Eagerly they followed her up the steps, though she took them excruciatingly slowly from their point of view. They entered another library similar to the one that they had been using. Book shelves lined the walls, along with a large scroll holder. She retrieved one small volume and laid it on a desk so that everyone could crowd around and see. Zoran read its title, A Treatise on Dragons, by Archmage Nadia Oldrich.
“Incredible! You wrote this book?” Zoran asked, very much impressed with her, far more so than ever before.
“Yes, I wrote this over a quarter of a century ago in my youth. You see, I once taught magic to a dragon. Yes, right here in this very tower. I traded the teaching of magic for inside knowledge on dragon kind. Now then, some simple facts. Dragons are usually between fifty and seventy feet long, with four legs, a long neck and tail, and a wing span of over a hundre
d feet. Huge indeed. Their bite can crush a human; their razor sharp claws can easily puncture all forms of armor known to man. Still, they possess something remarkable in the animal kingdom to which even we belong: what I call a breath weapon. Some dragons breathe out fire — a fire so hot it can melt iron. Others breathe out electrical charges akin to the power of our own Lightning Bolt spells. Other shoot out air so cold that our bodies would freeze into a solid statue in seconds. Still others pour out a stream of very caustic acid, one drop of which can burn through flesh down to the bone. A few shoot out a slime that causes living flesh to just rot away. One should highly respect dragons and never provoke one.”
“Now then, there are a number of different species of dragons, just as there are a number of types of humans, though I don’t know the entire story here. It has never been studied by a human. From our point of view not theirs, each species has a different temperament and disposition towards we humans. The only types which truly enjoy our company are the golden dragons. The one that I taught here was a golden dragon. You see, their species are differentiated by the color of their hides. They simply do not interbreed. Now the ones with the nastiest temperament towards we humans are supposedly the red dragons and the blacks. Reds shoot out hot flames, while the blacks spew out the caustic acid. Both the white dragons and the brown dragons are ambivalent towards us, usually ignoring humans. Only the green dragons totally ignore us entirely.”
“Finally, all dragons tend to love magic and spells and strive to learn all that they can. This basic drive is second only to their love of gems and sometimes valuable metals, such as gold and silver. The golden dragons collect only the finest of gems and could care less about metals. Many of the other species also covet gold and silver as well. Generally, each dragon has their own treasure hoard along with magical items they have found. Now then, Jarka, did your sources tell you what color this dragon was?”
Zoran Chronicles Volume 1 A Dragon in Our Town Page 6