The Almost Champion

by Daniel Lawlis

  He passed what he felt was surely the town of Ringsetter. From the height of the tallest trees surrounding it, it appeared a small dot compared to the City of Sodorf. Deeper and deeper into the forest he travelled, until the town behind him was not visible in the slightest behind the thick mass of gargantuan trees.

  Suddenly, he felt himself stopping, and his heart began fluttering even more than it had done while he had been beating his wings at nearly full speed. Then, he saw him.

  While the unpracticed eye may have seen a somewhat scholarly looking old man sitting as comfortably on the branch overhanging hundreds of feet of empty space with the same ease and dignity with which he might assume a seated position in a leather chair within some professorial office, and while the practiced, yet hostile, eye may have seen a demon seated in attack position waiting to spring from its position and somehow defy merciless gravity, the awestruck eyes of Chip saw a regal god seated on his royal throne awaiting the arrival of an audacious subject.

  Chip took some small comfort in the fact Master had drawn him here, but Master’s purpose in doing so might be to dispense with this insubordinate bird without delay.

  Chip approached.

  “Have a seat,” Tristan invited. “You’ve flown along way and have a lot to tell.”

  Chip flew to a portion of the branch some feet away from Master, bowed as low as the branch would permit, and said, “Your Majesty, my life is in your hands. I have disobeyed by coming here.”

  “Look at me,” Tristan commanded. This Chip did not find entirely pleasant. The piercing blue eyes of his master were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen yet even more terrifying. A mystical energy emanating therefrom was almost palpable as it pierced Chip’s soul and searched around as if it were merely a question of opening a book in large font and reading the pages. Tristan looked at him long and hard, Chip maintaining eye contact only because of a kind of lock he felt around his head that would have made any movement impossible had he willed it.

  Tristan’s own thoughts were as imperceptible to Chip’s as Chip’s were transparent to Tristan. Tristan had felt extraordinary alarm when he sensed the presence of something looking for him, even when it had been several dozen miles away. He was beginning to think he was no longer safe here.

  He had initially felt some relief when he realized it was just one measly konulan, but this was short-lived: How did Chip find him? Why would he want to find him? Who else was looking for him?

  Although Tristan detected benevolence issuing from Chip, more thorough information would have to be derived through questioning.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Black De—I mean Koksun—told me you would escape through an underground passageway that went almost all the way to Selegania, opening near the town of Ringsetter. I found the passageway and flew through it.”

  Tristan became alarmed upon discovering the passageway was accessible. He had considered the pholungs’ use of pheorite—whose use he had recognized by the earthquake-like repercussions that had ricocheted throughout his passageway during his brisk trot away from his lair—almost fortuitous, in that he assumed it would destroy all evidence of a passageway. The knowledge this passageway was accessible and quite capable of leading anyone to the area where Tristan had just begun to feel a sense of comfort left him as alarmed as his poor winged subject.

  Then, his thoughts were distracted—“Koksun’s alive?!”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Tristan had assumed his chances of survival to be nonexistent, and at the moment he had left his furry fiend behind, he had been unsure if his feeling of sadness was due to separation from his longtime adviser or fear of his imminent demise, as he did not expect the treacherous pholungs to show him any quarter.

  “Where is he?”

  “I led him on a harrowing journey to a safe home, Master.”

  Glad to learn of his esteemed counselor having at least reached temporary safety, his mind returned briefly to the traitorous pholungs and burned with rage.

  Putting aside that issue for further reflection later, the way one might place a file into a carefully chosen slot on a bookshelf titled Cases for Review, he decided to focus on the matter at hand.

  “Why did you leave your vacation?” Before Chip could answer, Tristan felt his insights into Chip’s mind deepening, the way a nail, after many skilled strokes with a hammer, begins to burrow its way deeply into wood.

  “That’s okay, little one. You needed something to do, I take it. Vacations never end up being as fun as we think they’ll be, do they? Life’s true joy comes from arduous pursuits and challenges.”

 

  Chip felt his fear disappear to be replaced with an awe he himself had never experienced.

  “Since Master already knows my heart, I cannot even think of obfuscating the truth.”

  “You’ve always been special, Chip. And I’ve always appreciated that about you. The vacation was a test—to see which konulans preferred working for me and which would just as soon be rid of me. After all, no honest konulan could really think that a year-long vacation was more than a test, could it?”

  “No . . . Master,” Chips said, unsure if this was a trick question.

  By now, Tristan had burrowed through almost every layer of Chip’s brain, aware of thoughts and memories Chip himself was not.

  “You’ll have to set an example, Chip. It’s a hard thing to ask of you, for they’re your brethren. But I know personally that Max has betrayed me. He convinced the pholungs to turn against me.”

  Horror filled Chip’s heart, quickly turning to rage. Not thinking it wise to show anything but deference in the face of his master, he concealed his fury, but said, “I am your humble servant for whatever task you choose for me.”

  “Kill him,” Tristan said calmly, as if he had said, Warn him, or, Keep an eye on him.

  Tristan was inside a library entitled Chip’s Mind, wherein all thoughts, feelings, and inclinations were carefully organized and on display for Tristan’s viewing pleasure. What Tristan saw nearly took his breath away and fully brought him a sense of satisfaction he had perhaps never felt before in his entire life. In a word: loyalty.

  “You’re going to be promoted, Chip. Firstly, your name has changed. You are now Harold the Loyal. Such a name would be better suited for a slightly larger animal, don’t you think?”

  Chip believed he was about to die. He had so many thoughts rushing through his mind he believed his small head was about to explode.

  “Master decides; I merely follow,” Chip said.

  Tristan stood, stretched his hands out, lifted Chip into the air, and began chanting.

  He felt his body growing hot—sizzling hot—and it began shaking. Then, he started to feel pain all over. It felt as if the several dozen pholungs had hooked him with their beaks and begun pulling him in different directions. His body quivered. He moaned. Suddenly, he felt popping all over his body. His wings grew on each side. His head expanded like a fleshy bubble. His talons extended as if they had been the retracted claws of a cat. His beak protruded longer and longer and with razor-like sharpness.

  He now had a torso the size of a lion, a wingspan that would dwarf an eagle’s, and talons that would make a pholung jealous.

  “Hold out your wings,” Tristan commanded calmly.

  Harold obeyed.

  “Do you swear unquestioning fealty to me, without exception, until the day that you die?”

  “Yes, Master,” he said, glad to receive such an easy question.

  Tristan now scanned the depths of Harold’s psyche that he had already reached, perusing every catalogue in his mind, searching for the slightest whisper of doubt or treason. The mere suspicion of either would have ended Harold’s life immediately.

  SHINNNGGG!!

  Harold heard something near the edges of his wings but felt nothing other than the slightest added weight, though nearly imperceptible.

 
“Look at my hands,” commanded Tristan.

  Harold watched as Master touched the edge of his wings with the slightest caress and blood began to trickle down from Master’s hand. The thought that he had injured Master alarmed him so much that he gave little thought to the lethality with which his wings had just been endowed.

  “You are my most important agent, Harold. Do not let me down.”

  Harold bowed.

  “You will have a new master one day, Harold. His name is Ed. You’ll meet him when the time is right.”

  “As Your Majesty commands,” Harold said.

  “Bring me Max’s head.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Once a konulan, now a savage beast devoid of description in the most voluminous annals of zoology flew off into the sky.

  Chapter 34

  After Harold the Loyal went flying off into the horizon, Tristan’s mind returned to a gnawing feeling that was beginning to grow with ever-increasing intensity: He was being stalked. This feeling had been weak for a while, but upon seeing Harold arrive so near his exact location, he realized his suspicions were well-founded.

  It was time to move on, but this sense of self-preservation clashed with his desire to continue the mentoring of his protégé. Then an idea occurred to him.

  While Tristan grappled with this dilemma, Eddie dueled with another. His rival was confidence, and Eddie’s concern was that it had grown too fast, too prematurely. Mere months after Master had given him the assignment of mastering balance through the use of the chant, he felt he had it. And that was what worried him. Because he could recall Master saying: “When you think you are ready to move on to the next stage of your training, you will receive a rigorous test—one that could prove fatal to you if you do not pass it.”

  Yet, he felt he was ready, come what may. Just yesterday he had been perched atop a branch hundreds of feet above the ground when a savage tempest came out of nowhere and began to cause the branch to sway back and forth violently like a porch door. But he had retained his balance even though at one moment—he was quite sure of it—his body had listed so much to one side that there was no natural explanation for his not plummeting fatally to the ground. Yet he had stayed there as firmly as if he had been but another branch protruding from the tree.

  Having recalled this to his mind, he decided the time had come. He was ready. Not entirely sure whether Master would be able to sense his state of mind, he nonetheless focused deeply and sent his thoughts out into the air as if they were correspondence dispatched via invisible birds.

  Tristan heard Eddie’s thoughts as he neared him for his own purposes and found himself relieved to find Eddie calling him simultaneously, a sign Tristan interpreted as auspicious at first, but then he began to feel a sense of dread for Eddie, as he realized that for Eddie’s own benefit he could not hold back in the slightest. To do so would encourage Eddie to complacently announce readiness on future tests that would be far more dangerous and kill him as a result. If it has to be so, better for it to happen before you invest too much in the boy, a cynical voice retorted. Tristan found it convincing and smiled.

  Tristan was soaring through the air with his staff, something he did only rarely, due to the amount of energy it drained, but he felt perhaps its appearance would further challenge Eddie’s resolve.

  Tristan alighted at the end of the branch Eddie was standing on.

  “Are you ready, Eddie?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Gone were all of Tristan’s avuncular concerns. Self-interest beckoned him to leave this place quickly. A silent snarl spread across Tristan’s lips as naturally as if he had been a wolf.

  He went bounding down the branch with the ease of a squirrel. As he reached Eddie, he pushed him as hard as he possibly could without the use of magic and discovered to his extreme surprise that he felt as though he had just encountered the trunk itself.

  Eddie was looking at him with a haunting stare and a focus so intense, Tristan almost shrieked in terror. Glad upon remembering that he had merely used physical power against the boy, he recovered his confidence but did not lose his awe. He had half-expected Eddie to fall to his death and half-expected Eddie to survive but only after a lot of undignified windmilling of his arms in a desperate fight for balance. He had not expected this in the slightest.

  He felt an internal ecstasy upon realizing this boy was indeed special and that any efforts invested in him would not be wasted and on the contrary would generate a wizard perhaps even more powerful than he had been at the zenith of his powers.

  “Today, you have survived your first test. There will be many more to follow, but only if you can leave this place. It is no longer safe for me here.”

  Reading Eddie’s thoughts, Tristan said, “Don’t worry about that. She’ll approve. I loved my mother very much too, you know. Just wait and play the part. You’ll know what I mean soon enough. The only thing I need to know is whether from this day forward you will obey unquestioningly all that I ask.”

  “I will, Master.”

  “Then, I formally accept you as my apprentice.”

  Chapter 35

  “Mrs. Reichart, I presume?”

  Mrs. Reichart looked up calmly from her lessons plan for the day. She had about ten minutes before school started and then approximately seven hours to look forward to dealing with students that ranged from rascals to diligent.

  “It is. To whom do I owe the pleasure?”

  “To Sir Baron Henderson, Esquire, formerly professor of antiquities at the esteemed University of Sodorf, where I specialized in pre-Dachwaldian civilizations in the regions that lie to the west of our esteemed nation. Upon relinquishing that noble chair, I found great satisfaction in the proffering of my services as a tutor to brilliant young minds. I recently had the bittersweet experience of seeing my last apprentice accepted into Sogolia’s elite bar as a barrister at the age of eighteen! Can you believe it?

  “Normally, an attorney-at-law must struggle quite arduously until the age of twenty-five before such a post could be deemed less than fantastical, yet there he now practices, using the subtle philosophical arts of persuasion and inquiry to ensnare both judge and opposing party alike as if he were merely a prestidigitator putting on a routine performance at a theater. But, alas, in an age where philosophy is seen as meriting no inclusion in primary or secondary schools and is at best offered as an elective in most ‘universities’—if that name can be honestly applied to what nowadays substitute for the bastions of brilliance and learning of the past—can a contrary result genuinely be expected when a man has embraced the heavenly disciplines of philosophy, logic, and rhetoric since boyhood?”

  He then handed her “letters of introduction,” which she could promptly see were written in the most exquisite calligraphy on august sheets of beautiful stationery, worthy of use as a doctoral diploma from an esteemed university. She also promptly noticed they were written in Ridervarian, a dead language used currently mostly for decorative purposes, such as on monuments, but also used in correspondence by the most elite scholars, as it was a language from which many of the surrounding countries’ modern languages had formed, and thus fluency in Ridervarian enabled academics from various countries to engage in scholarly debate with one another even if not fluent in the vernacular languages of their colleagues’ respective countries. Mrs. Reichart decided she did not want to announce to this esteemed guest that she could understand very little Ridervarian.

  With the exception of the two or three students that made what could generously be described as “an effort” in her class and whom she actually taught, Mrs. Reichart generally spent most of her day scolding, rapping knuckles, and handing out lines to the rambunctious, uninspired oafs that filled the currently empty chairs of her classroom. She had long ago begun to count the days till retirement with the same passionate obsession as a man serving a sentence in a damp prison.

  To hear this visitor talking about focusi
ng his energies on an apprentice whom he chose caused a wave of envy to flood over her, but in her sweet mind it was quickly replaced with a thrill for at least having the opportunity to help guide this learned man in his decision. After all, in the hands of this august instructor, she might be able to one day point to a celebrated professor, an esteemed attorney, or perhaps even an eloquent statesman and state, “He was my student!”

  “Well, Baron Henderson, Willie is probably the sharpest, but he has a tendency to misbehave. Julie is the hardest worker but perhaps a hair duller than Willie. Then,” she began but paused.

  “Yes?” said the baron, with the sincerest interest. His blue eyes seemed so calm and captivating to her. She could imagine herself thirty years earlier. Young, beautiful, and idealistic, being courted by Robert Johnson, who was now her beloved husband. She imagined that if she and this wonderful gentleman had met, she would have used every wile imaginable to divert his pleasurable gaze towards her.

  Snapping out of her daydream that combined nostalgia with alternative history, she said, “There’s Eddie . . . .”