He had to focus on current issues, and locating deadman’s stalk was the most pressing issue on his mind. Luckily, one of the irua they were holding captive told them about several large apothecary shops on some of the lower levels. He decided to leave the two furthest locations to the younger humans in his army. The Portentist gift had signified that the closer location held something that was important to him. He needed the time to figure out if it was merely deadman’s stalk, or possibly something else.
The tunnels were dark, lit only by his wand, but it was more than adequate for his eyes. It was the perfect exercise to help him fine-tune his use of the Portentist gift. Turning right, Dredek was greeted by an expansive opening—the light from his wand only lit a small portion of the room. If it weren’t for the ceiling of stone above him, he would have sworn he had just turned into a market street. The walls were lined with small globes that began to come to life as he passed, and light slowly filled the expanse as he moved deeper into the chamber.
After the lamps came to life, Dredek looked closely at his surroundings. Water flowed from a central fountain. A large statue of an irua male stood in the center with a weasel perched on his shoulder, and water cascaded above a hand held over a spire that rose from the center of the pool of water. The way the lights reflected in the square made it appear that the water flowed up and into the outstretched hand.
Light continued to grow in the distance, and abandoned shops stretched on as far as he could see down rows of buildings. Portent had brought him to the location, but it was difficult to sense a direction from its pull. Dredek paced the area surrounding the statue, allowing the gift to become more familiar.
He allowed himself to drift, and two blue doors grew closer as he let his instincts guide him. Light brown walls stood sentry to the side, and a sign over the door displayed a bowl of bubbling liquid. Dredek felt compelled to enter the building.
He opened the door. As the light of his wand fought off the darkness, he saw wooden bowls stacked on shelves and dried herbs tied together and left dangling from hooks. He followed a path that led him around the low countertop laden with candles, and he opened the first drawer nearest the back wall. Three petrified deadman’s stalks rolled to the front of the drawer with a clatter. Dredek smiled as he pulled them free and stuffed them into a pouch at his waist. It was almost enough for what he needed, and he continued to explore the room.
Another drawer contained twine, swine bones, beeswax, ink, three quills, and a heavy coin box. At first, Dredek disregarded the contents to continue searching, but after a moment of thought he stowed the beeswax, ink, and quills in his pouch alongside the stalks.
He still felt the presence of something crucial to his plans, but what it was that kept pressing its urgency he could not tell. He turned over every bowl and opened every drawer, but not another stalk was found. He began to pace, walking to the back of the room and then to the front repeatedly.
His footsteps echoed throughout the small space, and after a time he could tell his location in the room by the tone of the footfall alone. Each knock of his boot filled him with rage as the source of the meaningful draw on his gift evaded him.
Thwonk, thwonk, thunk, thwonk, thwonk.
Dredek began to loathe whoever had built the shop. The walls and shelves appeared to be built of sturdy supplies, but he must have run short of materials when building the floor.
Thwonk, thwonk, thunk, thwonk, thwonk.
Each time he crossed the room he grew angrier, and imagining how he might kill the man was his only comfort.
Thwonk, thwonk, thunk, thwonk, thwonk.
He could rip the life strand directly from his body or pull it taut as a lute string, pulling more and watching as each anchor snapped one at a time while screams of pain rang out and echoed throughout the corridors. Until, days later, he would let the life strand and another new gift become a part of his own growing power.
Thwonk, thwonk, thunk, thwonk, thwonk.
Or, he could use his discovered ability to rend life strands merely to end the man’s life, not taking the gift for himself. He wouldn’t have to go through the long recovery process if he simply let Archana have its magic back. The man probably didn’t have a very useful gift anyway, or he should be able to raise the funds to cover the supplies for a decent floor.
Thwonk, thwonk, thunk, thwonk, thwonk.
Thwonk, thwonk, thunk, thwonk…
Dredek stopped as the memory of Aeya, his mate, forced its way into his mind. He trembled with pain as his memory of her replayed, as it often did in moments of stress.
“Make sure to remind Gidaun to check my calculations, love. The boys and I should not be too long, but if you are leaving camp tonight, I want to make sure our records of the natural well are correct.” She had been radiant in her lavender dress. He had heard others describe his race as clammy and pale, but as he remembered her face, that description did not fit. Her white skin was dewy and opalescent in the dim light of the room.
She had been in charge of collecting data on the many untapped minor wells they encountered on their trek to the Irua Realm. He, not being a Wand-Maker of any note, had been delegated the task of scouting the next day’s route for his entire race. That was the last conversation they had had before he left on horseback in the dark to scout a route to the next well. Verifying her calculations had been her way of making sure he was heading in the correct direction, but he loved the way her long, thin arms moved about gathering books and bags.
He hadn’t understood half of the things in her books, but over the hundreds of years of solitude since her death, he felt that he had gotten to know her better through studying her math and notes. She had been so careful, so meticulous in every detail. That was one of the many things he had adored, one of her many attributes that was so endearing. She had never let anything leave her desk until she was sure it was done right. It had been worked and reworked before any eyes other than her own had witnessed the contents.
He had kissed her softly on her shoulder, then bid Chehl and Tweggan goodnight. Watching the three of them walk off into the encampment was the last memory he had of his family alive. The human army had moved in and slaughtered every caldereth the next day. He returned three days later, after scouting, to discover the massacre, but if all went as planned, he would have another life to live with them. He would be able to tell them how much he had missed them.
A tear fell from his cheek and Dredek stepped back to watch it fall. The tear was his gift, his seed of love and of hope. Only he was the one to bear the sins of the last few decades to bring about the resurrection of his people. But that seed, that seed would grow.
Thunk, thunk.
His footsteps echoed again throughout the room, yet there was something more to it that he had missed as he had been throwing things around in the room.
Thunk, thunk.
Dredek stomped his feet hard in the center of the room and looked down. The footfalls in this spot had echoed, but not only in the room he now occupied. There was something else, and that something else was below.
He summoned the Wand-Maker sight and looked down, hoping to see some magical trigger that would release a mechanism to open a door, but he saw nothing. He then looked closely at the wooden panels, but nothing stood out. He decided he would have to take it one board at a time; he knew there had to be a pattern—something that would hint at a way to get to the opening below.
Before he could start, he noticed that a group of three of the wooden planks stood slightly higher than the others in front of the desk at the back of the room. He studied the oddity carefully, and as they extended away from the wall, a full stride passed before any nails secured them in place. The next two on either side of the three were shortened, but showed the same pattern. A triangular shape was laid out in rough, staggered boards, but only the edges had been secured with nails.
He pressed on the end of a short side panel. It took a bit of force before it gave way, flipping up as if on a hi
nge and revealing a metal handle. He wrapped his slender yet strong hands around the cold metal and pulled hard. The even, flat bottom of the triangle raised up to hinge on the point at the back of the room. A small stairway led beyond the back of the room and into a great darkness that slowly began to light itself with a soft white light.
With a weary eye, Dredek scanned the stairs. There were no magic traps, but there had been no magic in the door either. He stepped slowly back and then carefully went down the wide wooden staircase, watching carefully for some hidden trap. Portent surged that danger was approaching rapidly as his foot brushed the top of the third step. Dredek dove backward out of the stairwell and onto the floor of the shop. Three small thuds rose from the stairs in quick succession.
He rolled over, groaning from the former exertion, and sat up to rub his right knee where he had slammed it into the top step when he had tumbled onto the wooden floorboards. He turned to look in the stairwell. Three large, barbed darts with green-feathered tails pierced the backs of three steps—a viscous black liquid dripped from the barbed shafts and hissed as it hit the wooden stairs.
A voice swore in the irua language from somewhere below and Dredek jumped to his feet, drawing his wand. Footfalls sounded as three irua burst from below, casting spells blindly in their attempt to escape the room. The poorly aimed spells were easy to avoid, so Dredek stepped aside as the blasts knocked over a bookshelf. With a simple flick of his wrist, he locked the door with his wand from across the room. Even with the natural speed of his race, he wouldn’t be able to leap over the staircase and round the counter before they were able to unlock the door, but it would slow them down. And if he could manage to stun them, he had a chance of being able to capture them.
In a flash he moved out of the way of another blast—now they were taking the time to aim before casting. He pulled one of his daggers out from behind his back and threw it, knocking the wand out of the hand of the middle irua, a woman. The wand broke in half, taking one of the spell sources out of the equation. Dredek grinned a wicked smile as the other two turned with wide eyes to focus their attention on him.
The man at the door was thicker than most of the irua he had seen since capturing the city. He wore a thick woolen cloak, split at the neck, and his silver hair lent an ominous cast to his stern expression. Was this a family? They each had some characteristic of the older man at the door, and the younger man stepped in front of the wandless woman with fear and panic on his face.
Dredek dove behind the raised stair cover as both of the men cast spells at him. Quickly, he stood back up and darted out, stunning the younger male. The silver-haired man screamed in horror, launching himself across the room in a rage. After that, it was easy work to stun him and then the girl.
With the three unconscious, Dredek circled the desk and peered inside the eldest of the three. He had the gift of Brawn, but nothing that interested him. It wasn’t a gift worth stealing, and he was in no condition to attempt another merger at this time. There would be no time to add another gift before reviving the caldereth; he needed to gather his strength for that feat alone.
The young boy’s gift amplified his hearing, but he was wearing several useful charms that would ward away spells with more than a stun to them. He took them off of the boy. He had no use for them himself, but getting answers from someone was difficult if they were impervious to the torture.
When he got to the girl, he found a gift he was altogether familiar with. It wasn’t his gift, but another exceedingly rare gift. Aeya had been an Auctus as well. An Auctus could manipulate the structure and growth patterns of a plant without injuring it. With a great deal of skill, one could cause a plant to grow at an astonishing rate, and then stop it when it reached the desired size.
Aeya had had a special way of wielding her gift. Their home had been full of plants that she had carefully cultured over her lifetime. Several had been manipulated and altered to become completely different plants.
He had been so caught off guard by the sight of the gift that he nearly missed the sight of the curled, fibrous, and nearly invisible strand that wrapped itself around the young woman’s life strand. Dredek sat down, contemplating the discovery of the key into the Well of Strands and saddened by another forced remembrance of Aeya. Yet, in spite of his pain, he knew what he had to do. He knew, but he needed a few moments to gather his thoughts and his strength. The short battle had taken more out of him than he had expected.
I’ll have to bind their hands and feet, he thought while they were unconscious, and then I’ll sit and rest. When I’m feeling better I should call Jalyn to bring a few guards. I should be able to greet them on my feet by then.
13 — IronForge
Treethorn was as fast as Machai remembered, and though he feared the wind would tear him from her back at any moment, Machai found he was still quite fond of the petite green dragon. She was just as pleased to see him again, and her aerial antics turned his face a pale shade of green.
The sun had set, but Treethorn was familiar with the cold mountains. Since being released from her volcano prison, she had spent as much time as she could flying around the various realms of Archana. With the aid of the traveling spell, she had seen more of the world in a few months than any dwarf had seen in his lifetime. The gift of Endurism, the same ability that allowed dragons to use an immense amount of sustained magic to keep their bulky bodies in the sky, allowed them to use the spoken spell time and again without experiencing the fatigue felt by other creatures.
Treethorn had traveled as far by spell as was safe, but the IronForge clan’s home was located deep in the most treacherous region of the northern mountains. She couldn’t risk appearing too close to the jagged peaks or in the throes of an ice storm, so they would fly north for some time before reaching the dragon platform. Machai tried to calm the gnawing fear in his stomach that any of them might fail to find the gathering members—that he might fail. He tightened his leather hood against the cold wind and grasped the restraints tighter as Treethorn sped through the skies at top speeds.
She slowed considerably as they approached heavy, black clouds hanging in their path.
“You won’t have time to go on foot, but this is going to be a very unpleasant last leg of our flight. I had hoped the weather would favor us, but that isn’t the case.”
Machai felt the first stinging bite of sleet against his face as she spoke, and he bent forward to expose as little skin to the elements as possible.
“Ye just be getting us to the platform, little dragon. If ye can still be flying, I can be riding it out.” He gritted his teeth against the frozen air, and Treethorn increased her speed. She couldn’t fly any faster, as the ice storm was quickly limiting her vision and her wings were accruing a heavy coat of ice, but if she went any slower they would be in the cold too long and die from exposure. Machai let go of the straps with one hand, moving his fingers rapidly to restore the circulation, and drew his wand. He struggled to focus on the spell and his ability, but in spite of the frigid air that whipped around him he managed. It took all of his strength to maintain the spell, but he was able to use his Fire Elementalist ability in combination with a shielding spell to create a bubble of warm air around them. Luckily Treethorn was so small or he may not have been able to keep the shield around her whole body.
The ice melted quickly from her wings, and her muscles relaxed enough to smooth her movements and steady his wand hand. The warmth eased his own tension as well, and the shield blocked much of the wind. Though the sustained spell tested his stamina to its boundaries, he was able to keep them from freezing. There was nothing he could do to improve the dragon’s visibility, and his heart raced as rocky cliffs and icy peaks seemed to rush toward them with no warning. The lithe little dragon evaded them all, and they landed safely on the platform near IronForge as the moon was reaching its nightly apex.
Machai slipped from the dragon’s back, barely keeping his feet beneath him on the icy platform. With what little strength
he had left, he used his gift to light several fires on the stone slab around the dragon and his wand to erect a minor shield above her. The storm would continue to rage, but she would be relatively comfortable as she awaited his return. Machai sheathed his wand, too tired to ease his own discomfort from the cold and ice, and hunkered into his cloak as he made his way toward the entrance of IronForge.
While FireFalls’s door had been secreted away in a crevice, surrounded by the beautiful mountains and valleys Machai called home, IronForge needed no such precautions to prevent visitors. It was nearly impossible to reach the fortress without flying in, and the frequent ice storms deterred anyone from wanting to. The narrow path that led away from the dragon platform was dangerous enough, but at least the stone and gravel provided some traction to the ice and snow. Just ahead of him, Machai could make out the last span of his journey to the doors of IronForge: an iron bridge that spanned a great chasm, swaying in the icy wind.
Just before the bridge, a cave was carved into the mountainside. Machai ducked inside and warmed his hands above the small fire that was always burning there. He wasn’t sure he could wait out the storm before crossing the bridge, for this far north the ice could be hurled from the stormclouds for days without letting up. He sat against the stone wall furthest from the cold wind blowing across the entrance and rested. He needed to regain enough of his strength to travel by spell to the solid stone beyond the bridge, as each step on the icy metal could send him sliding off of the edge and plummeting to his death.
Machai struggled to fend off his exhaustion with thoughts of how important his mission was. Usually, after expending so much magic, he would need a hearty meal and a full night’s sleep to recover. He could afford no such luxury as sleep or sustenance. He sat motionless for longer than he felt he should, but he hoped it was enough. Rising from the stone floor, he warmed himself briefly close to the flames and stepped back out into the icy onslaught.
The Weaving of Wells (Osric's Wand, Book Four) Page 14