Zoran Chronicles Volume 1 A Dragon in Our Town

by Broquard, Vic

  Poor Zoran, all he could do was to continually support her and help calm her fears. Six advanced students of Archmage Oldrich were still here and Zdenka was now going to be their teacher, though Nadia had promised to help her with anything she might need. Indeed, Archmage Nadia had spent a good deal of time with Zdenka, instructing her on what to do. Marek was still the door warden, though he hoped to work on his topmost spells this year. Perhaps this would be the year that he achieved Archmage status; he certainly hoped for it. He’d also volunteered to help her out with the other students, which she greatly appreciated.

  Making matters worse, she could not just go to the Stodgy Inn by herself to conduct her Picking. Since she was now a baroness, she would be a prime target for Zoran’s enemies. If they could get to her, they could use her to get to him. Thus, the Archmages and Mages worked out a plan. Jarka would cast Invisible and take up a station behind where Zdenka would be seated, guarding her rear. Karel would be Invisible and perched just above the door to the inn, surveying and studying all who entered the inn on Saturday. Zoran and the twins, also Invisible, would station themselves near her, yet out of the way of those in the inn. Finally, they put all of the protection spells possible on her, before she went into the inn on Saturday. Bernard had already gone into the inn the night before and was pretending to be spending the night there. He would be scouting out all of those staying at the inn and be sitting at the bar during the Picking.

  “Well, here I go,” Archmage Zdenka said to Mage Marek on Saturday morning as ten o’clock approached.

  “You will do fine, Archmage,” he said softly and encouragingly. She cast her spell and stepped into the center of the Stodgy Inn. A dozen had come for this year’s picking, eight young women and four young men. Most of the men of Brn were now engaged in the fortress construction and its supporting tasks. The pay was so good that few could refuse this golden opportunity to make double their usual income this year.

  Zdenka walked to the middle of the room and made her announcement. “Hello everyone. I am Baroness Archmage Zdenka Vladislov. Once again, it is Picking Time, when we accept new students into our magic school. This year because of the extensive construction that is going on, I will be accepting only four students. If the construction has subsided next year, I will accept the usual dozen. If you are not chosen this year, please try again next year. Age is not a factor to gain entry into Brn Tower. Now then, those of you who wish to apply, see me at yonder table, one at a time please.” She walked to the very same table at which Nadia had sat and chosen her.

  One by one the hopeful young teens came up to her. She noticed that a pair of twin girls was present; both had long brown hair and oval faces. She found it difficult to tell them apart. Their clothes were in a terrible state, a patchwork of patches. That they came from a very poor family was more than obvious. Yet, as the first one sat nervously before her, she could see that they were clean.

  “And what is your name?” she asked.

  “Markéta Tehov, your Archmage-ship,” she replied timidly, totally uncertain just how to address Zdenka.

  “I’m glad that you decided to come for the Picking. Now then, I have a little situation to describe to you and then I will ask you some questions about it.” Markéta nodded, fingering her long brown hair with long slender fingers. She guessed that Markéta was perhaps fourteen.

  “You enter a room only to find a table with a bag containing one thousand gold coins in it. Sitting at the table is a young man who is bleeding badly from a sword wound. You see no sword in the room. Cowering against the back of the room is young mother shielding a small child. What do you do?”

  “Oh my, so much gold. I’ve never seen more than one gold coin that my mother once had. What do I do? He’s going to die if we cannot stop the bleeding. I can use part of my dress to make a bandage somehow. I have to get him to the doctors. Is there a doctor anywhere nearby?” she replied, compassion flowing from her eyes.

  “Very good, Markéta. You are chosen. Please take a seat over by that man at the bar. His name is Mage Barnard.”

  “Oh! Really? Me? Accepted? Oh thank you, thank you. Oh, please, you must pick my sister too, please? We are never parted,” she begged.

  “Well, that depends on her. She will get the same opportunity as everyone else.” Markéta seemed satisfied and moved over to Bernard, who began talking with her.

  Her sister came next. “Hi, what is your name?”

  “Karina Tehov, your Archmage-ship,” she replied in an nearly identical tone of voice. Zdenka asked the same questions of her.

  Much to Zdenka’s surprise, Karina’s reply was word for word, emotion for emotion the same as Markéta’s! Quite amazed, she said, “Well, your answer is identical to your sister’s. You are also chosen, but how is it that your answers are so identical?”

  “We always know exactly what the other is thinking, your Archmage-ship,” she replied timidly, as if perhaps she had done something wrong.

  “Fascinating, Karina. We must talk about this at length. Please go join your sister with Mage Bernard.”

  A boy answered that he would take the gold and then go in search of a doctor and use the money to pay the doctor. Zdenka cast her Forget spell on him and politely asked him to try again next year when she would be taking more students.

  A bit later, she chose a fifteen year old girl with short black hair and an infectious smile. Her name was Jitka Liten and was already a seamstress, but wanted to see if she could learn magic as well. The last person to come up to her was Gustav Tava, a lad who had turned sixteen. His father had trained him as a blacksmith. He was well-muscled, but had found smithing not to his liking. Now he had a chance to learn magic, which he hoped that he would like. He too was chosen.

  Just as Zdenka was about to tell the four what to do next, Archmage Karel’s Message spell contacted all of the mages. “Help outside. Got me an assassin red-handed. Little help, please, Jarka!” Instantly, the Invisible spells cancelled, surprising the four new students and the bar keeper himself.

  “Stay here kids. Bernard, guard them. Karel’s captured an assassin outside the inn. Be right back!” Zdenka exclaimed, and joined Jarka, Renata, Emil, and Zoran as they raced to the inn’s doors.

  Outside, Karel had a man entrapped in a mass of sticky Webs from his spell. Six of his hawks were perched on the horse rail nearby. The man’s eye sockets were bloody and empty, hawk claw marks covered his bearded face. “Hawks helped me out. He’s now more or less harmless as he can’t see. Jarka, what do we do with him? I don’t want to get poisoned.” Karel was more than angry. He’d spared no punches stopping the assassin from entering the inn — that was abundantly clear!

  Jarka cleverly and cautiously removed the assassin’s daggers and short sword. She checked his boots and pant legs, disarming him of his two concealed throwing daggers. “Who sent you to kill Baroness Archmage Zdenka?” she spat on the wed-tangled man, thrashing about in terror and pain.

  “None’o you damn business,” he screamed, wildly trying to free himself.

  “Should we torture him to find out?” Karel asked. “I can figure out some painful means!”

  Zoran laughed, “I’m sure you can, Karel. No, I have a better way, the Duska way.”

  “No!” the man screamed, his voice going up an octave in high pitched terror!

  Everyone looked at Zoran. He realized that none knew what he was talking about, but that the assassin did. “A Duska can read men’s minds, though I have never done it yet. I guess there is always a first time for everything. Here goes.” He wanted to put his dear friends and wife at ease about this revelation of a Duska skill. They might suddenly believe that he had been probing their minds all along.

  Zoran concentrated. However, something was very different about his mental skills now. Admittedly, he’d not used anything but his Shadow Walking, communication ability, and danger warning skills for a very long time. Still, something was vastly different. At first, everything in his mind turned sky blu
e, the color of his Circle’s thread. Peculiar, he thought. Then, he focused on the man before him and to his surprise he found that he could easily slip into the man’s mind and thoughts! He’d learned how to do this from his sisters, but it had always required his utmost concentration. Even then, the images and thoughts were faint and hard to decipher. Now, the images were vividly real; the man’s thoughts, quite clear!

  “Ah, he was sent on behalf of Kazimir by Bogdan. He was supposed to kill Zdenka,” Zoran reported to his friends.

  Jarka spat on him once more. “Bastard. Death is too good for you!”

  “What do we do with him? We cannot turn him loose,” Zdenka asked, torn between the man’s injuries and the fact that he had been intent on killing her.

  “We need to send Bogdan a clear message!” Karel angrily declared. “I know, let me remove his arms too and bandage them up. Then, we send him back to Bogdan!”

  Unable to stomach the retribution being put forth, Zdenka went back inside to her new students. Emil said quietly, “It is too dangerous for you to Shadow Walk to Bogdan’s castle. Your Uncle would have a fit. Please allow Renata and me to return him to Bogdan on Rehor.”

  “Okay, thanks, Karel, Emil, Renata. Well done all of you.” He went back inside to check on how Zdenka was handling this attempt on her life. Karel was true to his anger. Two quick whacks and the man’s arms were removed below his elbows. A quick pair of tourniquets stopped his bleeding. The twins changed into their normal dragon forms. Emil picked up the man in his claws, and the two dragons swooped gracefully into the sky and then disappeared. Meantime, Karel and Jarka cleaned up the mess.

  When they were done, the twins returned. Renata said, “That’s done. We took the opportunity to test out our fire breaths once more.”

  Emil chuckled, “We gave the Baron a wake up call and burned quite a few of his men in the process.” Karel laughed loudly, and they all went inside to escort the new students and the others back to the tower.

  Meanwhile inside, Zdenka was quite shaken by the assassination attempt. “I am truly sorry, Zdenka, to have brought this down on you,” Zoran consoled her.

  “I know you are. I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I do so love you, Zoran. It’s just the awfulness is only now coming home to me. I will be okay. I am just glad that my new students didn’t have to see it. I’m okay.”

  A bit later, Zdenka began introducing her new students to life in her tower. One of the first actions she did was obtain new dresses for the twins. By late afternoon, all four were beginning their initial studies of the history of magic and of Adapazan. She now spent her time with the older students.

  Meantime, Karel and Zoran held a discussion with the engineers on the fortress construction. Karel had come up with a bright idea several days ago. Zoran held a conference with his friends, and all agreed that it was a brilliant one. Now the two set about seeing how it may be accomplished. Essentially, Karel had suggested, “Look. We have dragons protecting us, but let’s not put all of our eggs in one hen house. We know that there are other kinds of dragons on Voss. What happens if Kazimir or Bogdan gets their hands on some of them and sends them here to attack our new castle and fortifications? We have seen the damage that the teens can do to stone with just their bodies. Remember how they nearly caved in the exit from Mikolas’ castle? Well, suppose our fortifications get attacked by some other dragons. We ought to build in some additional protections.”

  “My idea is to put an impenetrable Force Wall down the middle of all of the wall sections and then inside the castle-manor house walls and on top of the roofs. Make the spells permanent and you’ve got a hidden extra measure of protection. What say you all?” Everyone thought Karel’s idea was sound, practical, and brilliant. At this point in time, Zoran and Karel had to work out its implementation with the five top engineers.

  The high, impassable, rugged mountain valley just behind the Wizard Tower and northern walls of Brn was filled with work crews. Like ants, they cut through the hard granite, leveling off the surface which the outer walls would eventually surround. The stone that they removed was carefully cut and polished and stored for use in the wall construction proper. Another crew had just begun assembling the first section of the mile in circumference walls. Each section was fifteen feet long and would be three feet thick at its top, each rising fifteen feet above the ground. Three hundred fifty-two such sections were required, yielding nearly two hundred fifty thousand cubic feet of stone to be quarried, shaped, polished, and set into position.

  The forty work crews that the two barons had sent would require nearly ten years finishing the outer walls, ignoring the inner castle and manor house! However, the barons sent along ten Mages who would use their magical spells to help the workers, cutting the time down to one year for the outer walls to be finished. Zoran began to fully realize just how indebted he was to his uncles Milan and Viktor!

  While they were discussing the alteration of Karel’s, two workers came running up to their chief engineers. “Come quick! We’ve struck something important. Gems, we think.” Everyone rushed after the two excited workers. At the center of the area being cleared, where the base of the castle was going to be positioned, workers having removed a good deal of stone, discovered two ore bearing veins, running on down into the mountain. The jubilant workers quickly pointed out what appeared to be a large green gemstone affixed to the rocky vein and nearby was a clear, white crystal in a similar vein.

  Zoran sent off a Message spell and shortly an enormous gold dragon swooped down, landed, and changed into the familiar form of Aldrick. Naturally, the workers all stopped to stare at this incredible sight. “What have you found?” he asked curiously.

  “Well, that’s what I need you for — have a look see. Valuable gems perhaps, at least we think so,” Zoran replied. He kept his fingers crossed. Could he be this lucky? Obtaining enough money was a major problem he faced. Aldrick squatted down and began examining the green stone. “Yes, it is an emerald! Looks like they’ve uncovered a vein here. Now this other is a diamond, Zoran. You need to carefully extract these. The emeralds are particularly prone to breakage when you try to break them free from the stones to which they have grown. You need to mine these veins carefully.”

  “Well, I have not got any miners around. Those who can do this are up at the mountain mines beyond the Dark Forest. Would you be interested in doing the mining here for me?”

  “Certainly. I can use this opportunity to train my twins properly. What say you to our keeping a quarter of what we find?” Aldrick struck a hard bargain. Zoran, however, readily agreed. He needed all the help he could muster.

  “Deal.”

  Aldrick was surprised that Zoran had not bargained for a lower price, and he felt a bit guilty having asked such a high price. “We’ll throw in the cutting of the gemstones as well. It will give my twins much valuable experience. They must know how to precisely cut a raw stone so as to bring out its true inner beauty. Sofie, the twins, and I will get on it now, if we are not going to be in the way.”

  The plans for the castle portion now had to be slightly revised to allow for the two working mines in its basement. The excavated rock the dragons generated was used in the construction of the walls, so it did not go to waste. However, easy access had to be provided in the castle plans for the mines once it was built.

  While they were reworking the plans, Jarka made a suggestion. “Based on what I have seen with the other Baron’s Circle of Ascension protections, I think that we can do it better. Suppose that we cast and make permanent a Mind Maze spell in the corridor just before the Circle’s room. As long as one speaks the password, nothing happens. However, if someone should try to sneak in via your Circle, when they reach the Mind Maze, they will become trapped in an endless maze until we let them out. That ought to stop any assassins trying to sneak in that way.” Oh, Jarka was brilliant, Zoran thought. He readily adopted her idea and thanked her profusely for coming up with an excellent use of magical spe
lls.

  The next day, Mayor Bogdan Oldrich came to visit Zoran. “Baron, about these road improvements. We’ve drawn up these plans and I would like to make sure that we are going to be meeting the proposed needs. As you know, the mountain peaks here in Brn Province pretty much dictate the path that our roads must take. I know that it is a long, circuitous route to get to Ves, Valy, and Veklov Provinces from here. We are in the very north of our province. The mountains and Dark Forest rather force us to go very nearly to the southern edge before we can go east or west to Valy or Ves.” Zoran examined his proposals and decided that they would suffice.

  “Have you coordinated with the other three provinces to make sure those will be the routes that they will be improving? We don’t want our improved roads to wind up in some isolated valley of Ves Province,” Zoran asked.

  “Not exactly, but those are the only real road into those provinces from here. Can you contact those warlords and make sure we are going to meet up with their improved road systems?” Zoran agreed to do this.

  “Now then, the cost of these improvements. Brn treasury is unable at this time to finance all of these improvements at once. Nor do we have the manpower to do three at the same time. I believe that we can finish one of these road improvements yet this construction season.”

  “Okay. I suspect the other warlords will be having similar problems. Let’s see if we can get the improvements made to Veklov Province. Next year, the two east-west side spurs to the other two provinces can be done. How’s that?” Mayor Bogdan was pleased and left to attend to the details. This was going to be a major expense for Brn this year; he’d have little left over for anything else.

  That night, Zoran began having nightmares. At least he called them that. In the middle of the night, he awoke in a hot sweat. He’d seen a mermaid swimming around a Circle of Ascension. Somehow the mermaid was drowning and he was trying to help her, but continually failed.