by Vox Day
“Well, no, of course not! It was long ago!”
“Was this imaginative gentleman, this seigneur Maupertuis—was he there?”
“No, but—”
“Was any Man there at all?”
“No, but that’s the whole point of the common ancestry!” Laurent was speaking rapidly now, attempting to forestall another question. It didn’t work. Lithriel simply leaned forward and placed one long, slender finger across the young mage’s lips. His eyes widened and he blushed, but his mouth stayed closed and he held his tongue.
“I was not there either. But my people were, and I have read the records of those times. Neither man nor orc nor goblin existed in those days. There were trolls, of course, for they are a very ancient race, even older than the elves. But the dragons did not come about by chance, as your beloved Maupertius thinks. They were created by the people who came before. I think in your tongue you would call them the ascendants. They were great masters of magic. They had skills far beyond your Academie or even our own Collegium Occludum. It was ascendants upon whom the Witchkings patterned themselves, and it was their attempt to become ascendants themselves that drove them to madness and fell deeds.”
“Will you three shut up?” someone snarled at them.
Theuderic whirled around to snarl back at the voice, until he realized it was one of the immortels who had spoken.
“Yes, of course. My apologies, seigneur.”
Lithriel elbowed him, and he could see she was stifling a laugh. He didn’t quite understand why, but the older and more crotchety a mage was, the more amusing she found him. He was relatively certain that it had something to do with elvish longevity, but precisely what she found so funny about the old men was still a mystery to him.
“seigneur de Segraise is beginning the spell,” someone whispered.
In the crystal, Theuderic could see that the haut magicien was beginning to move his arms. He appeared to be speaking as well. Sound did not project through the crystal, so it wasn’t entirely clear if he was actually chanting the incantation or not, but the general consensus in the room was that he had begun.
The five other mages at the location far away didn’t appear to be doing anything. Their job was simply to maintain the circle in which de Segraise and the dragon were bound. If things went very badly awry, only de Segraise, and not the other mages, would come to harm. At least, that was the theory.
Theuderic was of the opinion that five royal battlemages would be far more usefully occupied riding the borders in the west or hunting reavers in the north than serving as living candles in de Segraise’s pentacle, but no one had inquired as to his thoughts on the matter. And he knew very well what hopes the King, and perhaps more importantly, the Red Prince, were placing in this outrageous experiment.
“This will be the difficult part,” Lithriel told him as the small shape of the mage in the crystal lifted both his arms, threw back his head, and shouted. “The rest was all foundation. Now he has to take the forces he drew from earth and sky and apply them to the beast’s mind.”
“Uh, oh,” someone said.
The dragon moved. Its wings, folded across its broad horny-spined back, twitched like a horse’s skin shedding flies. Then it lifted its massive head and turned to stare de Segrais in the face with great yellow eyes that looked more like a cat’s than those of a snake or a reptile.
“No, no,” someone else said, “I think he’s got it under his control now.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” Theuderic didn’t like the way the huge creature was staring at de Segraise, and he really didn’t like what the increasingly rapid motions of the haut magicien’s arms implied. It was hard to be sure, as he couldn’t easily make out his facial expressions, but it looked very much as if de Segraise was panicking and either trying to cast another spell or recast the one that he’d just used.
“I wish we could hear what he’s saying,” Laurent complained.
Then the entire room, Theuderic included, emitted one great collective gasp of horror. For in the crystal, the dragon lunged forward without warning. With one mighty snap, it seized the upper half of de Segrais in its fearsome jaws and tore him in two. His legs fell to the ground in the pool of blood that suddenly surrounded them. Lithriel clapped her hands and shrieked with laughter.
“You see, Sieur Laurent? Dragons aren’t birds! I told you it wasn’t going to work!”
“Lady Everbright!” One of the immortels started to protest her hilarity, but events in the crystal were demanding everyone else’s attention.
After swallowing half its would-be tormentor, the dragon nosed at the bloody remains then attempted to take flight. But the magic circle was also a dome, and the beast couldn’t force its way through the invisible walls that surrounded it above it and on every side. De Segraise might be dead, but the pentacle he’d constructed was an extraordinarily powerful one, with lines connecting each of the five mages standing inside a sorcerous circle made from his own blood to each of the others.
“The circle—it’s holding!” The dragon threw back its head, roaring in frustration, anger, or perhaps even pain, and then tried again, only to be flung back to the ground. The earth appeared to tremble with the impact, and Theuderic fancied he could feel it. But either the earth shaking or the sheer effort of maintaining the dome was troubling the mages of the circle, as two of them swayed and nearly stumbled.
“Don’t break the circle, you fools,” one of the younger mages shouted.
“Easy to say,” an immortel snapped. “Those lads are strong ones. Absorbing that much force will drain you straight off if you’re not careful. Now what is the cursed beast doing?”
The red dragon turned slowly around inside its magical cage, stopping to angrily glare at each of the five mages in turn, as if committing them to memory. Each met the beast’s fearsome gaze without betraying too much alarm, although the legs of the man standing at what from their perspective was the upper left of the pentacle were shaking.
“What on Earth do they expect to do with it now?” Theuderic wondered aloud. “They can’t keep it in there forever, not so long as they’re holding the circle up themselves.”
“It will be tricky indeed,” the immortel who’d earlier hushed him commented. The room quickly fell silent. “Narcisse was prepared for this possibility. We discussed it last week before he left for the mountains. He’ll have told them to have candles ready, I assume very large candles made of some particularly potent fat. Dragon fat would be best, but I doubt they have any of that. In which case he might have elected to use human fat, or now that I think of it, dwarven fat would be even better.”
Theuderic glanced at Lithriel. She was staring at the old sorcerer and looking vaguely disgusted, although whether it was the idea of the candles made from human fat or just the mere mention of dwarves, he couldn’t tell.
In the crystal, he saw each of the five mages withdraw a large candle from a satchel slung beneath his robes. They were huge, nearly as wide as they were tall, and Theuderic guessed that they would last for hours, if not days. And if they were sufficient to keep the magical shield intact, they would burn long enough to give the mages time to vacate the vicinity—probably in five different directions—before the furious dragon could escape.
The watchers at L’Academie held their breath as the mage at the point of the pentacle touched his finger to the candle wick, lighting it with a simple spell, then leaned down to place it in the precise center of the bloody circle in which he’d been standing. He adroitly stepped out of the circle without marring it. The mages around Theuderic applauded, and one or two of the younger ones actually let out a cheer.
“Does it matter if they go widdershins or not?” one of them asked.
“Widdershins?” The elderly immortel scoffed. “What are you, a hedge witch? No, it makes no difference if they proceed with the needles or contraire. It’s a simple matter of placing the candle and leaving the circle intact.
As they spoke,
it became apparent that they were not going according to a counter-clockwise sequence. The mage to the first mage’s left followed his example, lit the candle, and stepped out of the circle without incident.
The dragon continued to sit motionless, watching them, and it was impossible to tell if the beast had any understanding of what the five men were doing. But Theuderic didn’t like the way its eyes seemed to be focused on the mage who was exiting the circle, although it was entirely possible that this was nothing more than movement drawing its attention.
Another round of applause filled the room when the third mage successfully extricated himself as well. He must have been aware of the crystal, because he smiled and waved directly at them once he was safely out of the spell.
The fourth mage had just lit his candle when the dragon struck. It leaped directly at him, spreading both its wings and its jaws. Although no sound could be heard through the crystal, the flames that erupted from the dragon’s mouth were terrifying even from afar. Theuderic, his arm around Lithriel, felt her start with alarm. The mage was also startled at the violent onslaught of the massive creature, and despite being protected by the safety of the magic field, he inadvertently stumbled backward out of his blood circle, still holding the lighted candle in both hands.
“No!” screamed several of the mages.
“Oh, the poor fool,” Theuderic murmured to himself. He groaned and shook his head. Next to him, he could feel Lithriel’s shoulders shaking, and even without looking he was certain it wasn’t because she was crying.
With the pentacle broken, the magic shield abruptly vanished, and the clumsy mage was immediately engulfed in the deadly fire of the dragonflames. Extending its wings, the dragon threw back its head, presumably roaring in triumph at its newfound freedom, then took to the skies. For a moment, Theuderic dared to hope it would fly harmlessly off to its lair. But his hopes were dashed when a huge shadow appeared in the crystal, rapidly closing in on one of the fleeing mages.
“Is that Tyecelin?” one of the mages cried in dismay.
It was. But Tycelin was not helpless, and in his courage showed himself to be a true royal battlemage. Staying calm despite his imminent peril and somehow sensing the dragon’s descent, he whirled around and hurled a pair of thunderbolts that struck the beast in the face, not far from its eyes, causing it to veer away from him and retreat higher into the sky.
“At least he has the sense to try le coup de foudre instead of l’enflammer,” Theuderic commented to no one in particular. Fire spells would be of little use against a beast that breathed it.
The dragon circled around again, and this time when the mage hurled another pair of thunderbolts, it closed its eyes and ducked its massive head. The bolts crackled and sparked impressively as they struck against the horned skull but didn’t even slow the dragon as it bore down upon brave Tycelin. The young mage disappeared in a hellish blast of fire that melted the flesh from his bones. When the flames died down, there was nothing to be seen but charred rocks and something scattered across them that might have been a widely dispersed collection of blackened bones.
The fleeing mages were gone from the picture, as was the dragon.
“I can’t see anything,” someone complained.
Then the view from the crystal abruptly shifted to a vantage point from up in the sky, although Theuderic didn’t see which of the immortels was controlling the spell. The tiny shapes of the mages were now visible, as well as the much larger shape of the angry monster that stalked them.
It didn’t take long for the dragon to hunt down the three remaining survivors. The landscape was too broken and stony for the men to run, but even if it had been flat prairie, there was no way they could possibly have hoped to escape the murderous wrath of the vengeful beast.
The third mage did not resist. He kneeled in what looked like prayer as the dragon fell upon him, but his divine implorings availed him little—the great dagger-like teeth closed over him. A moment later there was no sign of him except for the dark blood trickling down over the lighter red scales of the beast’s chin. The fourth mage’s death was by far the worst to watch, as he was seized in one huge clawed foot and shredded into bloody tatters by the repeated application of the other foot as the beast soared into the sky.
Only one mage left. Theuderic hoped he might have somehow escaped. The cries of horror and dismay voiced by the watching mages were interrupted by high-pitched peals of elven laughter. Lithriel was no longer shaking in silence, but was now laughing openly. Her slanted eyes were glistening with tears, and she was shaking almost uncontrollably. The other mages were beginning to look at her with disbelief and even a little disgust. It was one thing to hear of the famous cruelty of the elves, but it was something else entirely to witness it as your colleagues, brothers-in-arms, and in some cases, friends, were torn to shreds by a dragon.
“Stop it,” Theuderic hissed at her. “You may not care about these men, but their friends and colleagues have just watched them die. So for the love of all that’s clean and holy, hold your tongue!”
“I…I’m sorry,” she gasped. “His face, it was just so f-f-funny!”
Theuderic put his head in his hands, abandoning the attempt to talk sense into her. He wasn’t sure it mattered anyhow. The elfess had been a tremendous help to Narcisse in trying to adapt the spell, but given the spectacular failure it now appeared to be, she would also make for the ideal scapegoat.
She elbowed him. “Theudros, darling, do you know how to break the link to the crystal?” Her voice was suddenly under control again, and a worried note in her voice made him feel tense.
“I know the basic idea behind it, but I’ve never even tried the spell. It’s an advanced one and requires some very expensive materials, if I understand correctly. Only the immortels make use of them.”
She frowned at him. “So, you don’t. But do you see that the last of your little mages is standing in front of the crystal there? He seems to be shouting at it.”
Theuderic noticed. The view had shifted again and was now focused directly on the one mage who still alive. Theuderic recognized him. His name was Charles-Francois, he was from a noble family in the Seven Seats, and he was about to die. Behind and above him, the shape of the onrushing dragon rapidly grew larger.
“The sound doesn’t come through the crystal. The light does,” Lithriel said. “Do you know if anything else comes with it?”
Already annoyed with her, Theuderic almost dismissed her seemingly cryptic and untimely question with a mot sarcastique when its significance struck him like a thunderbolt. He realized, to his horror, that heat tended to be rather more closely akin to light than to sound. “seigneur Gabrien,” he called to the oldest academicien present. “Break the link to the crystal now! You must break the link!”
“Why must we do that? It’s a terrible sight, but there is still much to be learned. If you have a weak stomach for such things, Sieur Theuderic, I advise you to look away.” The old man shook his head and leaned toward seigneur Josce-Robinet. “Are all the young ones so tender these days? In my day, they were made of sterner stuff.”
“The heat from the dragon’s flames,” Theuderic said desperately, seeing the dragon looming behind the Charles-Francois’s head. “It may come through the link!”
The old master of magic looked vaguely surprised. “The heat? Oh, yes, the flames. Do you know, I hadn’t considered that.”
Theuderic had heard enough. “Everyone, get down and shield yourselves!” He grabbed Lithriel and rolled off the divan with her. As soon as she was safely beneath him, he summoned his strongest shield, one that had saved him from many an arrow or sword thrust, to cover them both.
It belatedly occurred to him that a shield with a stronger Water component might be better suited to defeat the heat, but his instincts were faster than his reason, and anyway, it was already too late now.
For, as he looked over his shoulder, he saw old Gabrien kneeling in front of the great crystal, his aged hands reachin
g out for it as he sought to dispel the arcane link that connected the two attuned crystals. Then there was a blinding but silent burst of pure white light so bright that Theuderic was forced to look away.
But he could still hear. He heard the old sorcerer’s scream as the terrible heat from the dragon’s fiery assault was transmitted through the magical connection. Theuderic could feel the sudden heat flaring against his shield as a sort of psychic pressure, but it was less than he had feared, and it lasted for less than a ten-count.
As suddenly as it appeared, the heat vanished, although from where he lay, it was impossible to know if that was because the link had been severed, the crystal on the far side had been destroyed, or if the dragon were simply preparing another blast. He released his shield and rolled off Lithriel. To his horror, he saw Gabrien covered with flames and thrashing madly at his robes as he burned. Smaller fires were burning on various paintings, chairs, and two of the couches.
Fortunately, he also saw that all the young battlemages had proven worthy of their training and reacted with alacrity in raising their own shields, as had the three other immortels. Everyone with the exception of Gabrien appeared to be unharmed. With a gesture, Theuderic extinguished the flames and wrinkled his nose at the scent of burned flesh mixed with smoke. But the old immortel’s screams continued.
A quick-thinking mage with black hair cast a soporifique spell on the badly burned sorcerer, who immediately slumped into blessed silence. But it was clear from a glance that the extent of his burns was too severe to survive. Standing directly in front of the crystal, now cracked and smoking, Gabrien had taken the full extent of a blast that had been hot enough to spark fires on the far side of the chamber more than forty feet away.