by Jordan Baker
"I will try to take that as a compliment, old man," Calthas said.
"Please do," Stavros replied as he leaned in and looked more closely at the gemstone, which now glowed with power.
There was a noise outside the workshop and they both turned toward the door.
"Someone is here," Calthas whispered as he cast a glamour over the work table and doused the lamps with a flick of his finger.
"Does our uninvited guest seek entry to this room?" Stavros asked, keeping his voice low and quiet.
"No," Calthas said, gently testing his warding spells to see if he could discern any movement outside the room. "The spell that obscures my workshop and its entrance would tell me if someone were to search the house for signs of magic. Oddly, I do not think whoever it is, has any interest in this place."
"Whoever it is, we are effectively trapped here until they leave," Stavros pointed out. "Can you tell what it is that they are doing?"
"Nothing, it seems," Calthas replied. "Sitting at my kitchen table, if I am not mistaken."
"That does not make any sense," Stavros said. "I will take a look."
The elder mage obscured himself with the most powerful ward he knew, then he quietly left the room, while Calthas waited in the dark, hidden by his own magic, and using his warding spells to listen for movement outside his little workshop. It was not long before Stavros returned, reigniting the oil lamps in the room himself, and Calthas saw that he had someone with him, an old woman, who was strangely dressed in a simple cotton smock, the sort of thing a child would wear.
"Please," she said, her eyes wide with fear. "I mean no harm. She said I would be safe here."
"Who said this?" Stavros asked, standing behind the woman, and holding her with his power.
"The blue girl," the woman said. "She said you would help me."
Stavros glanced over to where he knew Calthas stood, still hidden by his magic, but detectable if one knew what to look for.
"A blue girl? What was her name?"
"She called herself Lexi," the woman told him. "She was very strange, but she helped me."
"Lexi." Stavros was only half surprised. "Did she say what she was doing in the city?"
"I don't want to say it," the woman replied, her voice shaking. "I fear the worst will happen to her."
"If she sent you here, then you can trust us," Stavros said
"She said she was going to kill the queen, Calexis," she told him.
Suddenly, Calthas suddenly appeared and he walked up to the woman and looked closely at her face.
"Goodness, Coraline, is that really you?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, her expression obviously confused. "Who are you?"
Calthas looked up at Stavros and the old mage nodded and released the woman. Calthas caught her as she fell forward and he helped her over to one of the chairs next to the table, which appeared to be empty.
"It is you," Calthas said. "I am sure of it."
"Then you know me?"
"Yes, very well," Calthas said. "You say Lexi brought you here?"
"Yes, she said that was her name," she replied with a nod. "She was sort of like the lizard men, but she was different and she was kind to me. She carried me here."
"And she wants to kill Calexis." Calthas shook his head in frustration.
"That must have been the strange power we felt earlier," Stavros commented. "I am curious to know what happened. We will have to investigate.
Calthas was now worried about Lexi, but he took some comfort in the fact that the coin Aaron had put a spell on was still as light as it was when he had given it to him, which meant that he was still alive.
"What are you doing in the city?" Calthas asked.
"She is a black robe," Stavros said. "I saw her on the street earlier, but could not risk her seeing me. I suspect she was released when the books were destroyed."
"Then you were the one who dropped the vial," Caroline said. "I hoped it might be poison, but it gave me strength."
"You hoped it was poison?" Calthas was mortified. "Why?"
"If it was poison then I wouldn't have to go back to the temple."
"How do you know this woman, Calthas?" Stavros asked.
"Coraline was a student of mine a few years ago," Calthas said. "She came into her power at a young age, and she was very talented."
"I am glad you know who I am, but I don't remember you," she said, looking at Calthas, but still unable to recall having seen him before. "I am sorry, it is like a part of me is missing and I know there are things that I should know."
"Once, you knew me quite well," he said. "Your family sent you off to train with the mages at Blue Island, and I saw you off the day you left."
"I don't remember anything about that," she said. "The only thing I remember is working in the temple and hating everything I was doing, that and the shadow listening to me and laughing at me."
"How did you escape?" Stavros asked.
"The shadow went away, and the feeling of being watched went away with it." Caroline rubbed her arms with her hands. "When that happened, I heard a different voice inside my head, like a whisper, telling me to run, and I did. I ran out of the temple and into the city, but I was too weak and I couldn't run very far. Then I fell, and I was sure the soldiers would find me, but I drank the potion in the vial and I ran again and found myself at a house that felt familiar and that was where the girl found me."
"Was the house you found over in the western noble district, right at the inner city wall?" Calthas asked.
"Yes, that sounds right," she said, and Calthas smiled.
"Well, you may have lost much of your memory, but it sounds like you found your way home," he told her. "I visited you there often when I was your tutor."
"I am truly sorry I don't remember any of it," she said, with obvious frustration.
"It is fine," Calthas said, reassuringly. "You have been under the power of the book. It isn't your fault."
"You say you remember working in the temple," Stavros said. "Do you remember anything about the crystals?"
"The crystals? Yes, I remember them well. All the time I had to make sure the magic stayed focused, and I could feel their horrible power reaching inside of me every time I touched them."
Stavros looked over at Calthas.
"Caroline," Calthas said. "Do you know how to change the direction of the magic in the crystals, to reverse the flow of energy?"
"You would have to realign the crystals and imbue them with a different feeling."
"What do you mean by imbue them with a different feeling?" Stavros asked.
"The crystals work using emotion," she said. "That is why they constantly have to be realigned, because emotions are not simple like a line you might draw or a reckoning of numbers."
"What emotions do you imbue into the crystals? "
"It is difficult to describe with words." Coraline frowned and thought about it for a moment. "It is like fear and the promise of being safe, but it is a lie, for there is only hatred and contempt behind it."
"The god of lies," Calthas commented.
"With the power of the shadow," Stavros said. "It is a dangerous combination."
"Why do you want to know so much about the crystals?" Coraline asked.
"To break the spell," Calthas replied. "Without killing everyone, of course."
Coraline considered it for a moment.
"It might be possible," she said, then she looked up at both Calthas and Stavros. "You will need five mages to make it work and you would have to break the flow from the god, which I don't think is very likely."
"Let's not worry about the god for now," Stavros said. "And we do not have five mages, we have three."
"Impossible," she said. "The large, star crystal in the temple holds most of the power, and it is dark with the power of the shadow, which even tries to move against the flow of energy and into the other crystals in the temple and the city. Even if you could break the link with the god, it would tak
e at least three mages to confine the shadow, and then you still would not be able to reverse the flow of power."
"What if we could remove the shadow from the power in the crystal?" Calthas asked.
"You mean purify it?" Coraline scratched her head. "If you could do that, then there would be no danger. It would simply be a matter of reversing the flow of energy by imbuing the crystals."
"Could you imbue them?" Stavros asked.
"You want me to do it?" Coraline suddenly seemed very fragile and more than a little afraid. "I can barely stand, and my power is very weak, and I don't know if I ever want to see those crystals again."
"If anyone would know what emotion would properly reverse the flows, it would be you, and it would undo the harm that has been done," Stavros said, and Calthas glared at him for prodding the woman with unnecessary guilt, but the older mage stared right back at him, for they were running out of time. "If you were stronger, would you help us?"
"I could try," Coraline said, nervously. "What if it doesn't work?"
"Nothing is ever sure in the world," Stavros said. "So let us do what we can."
*****
Night fell over the city of Maramyr and the sky was surprisingly clear, with stars shining overhead. The people of the city who shuffled outside of their homes to look for scraps of food in the refuse of the streets did not notice the wondrous night sky for they could not raise their heads, so bound were they by the power that slowly consumed their lives. Outside the walls, down among the trees, not far from the edge of the lake to the west of the city, Jax found himself arguing with the willful young Ansari girl, who was now dead set on running off to war.
"I don't know if that is such a good idea, Tash," he said. "I think your friend Lexi is long gone and the direction she was headed is not somewhere you want to be."
"I will find her," she said. "I can fly like a bird."
"That might be true, Tash, but if those winged lizard men see you, what then?"
"I can fight," Tash said, but the thought of it frightened her, not just the vicious Darga, but the feeling she had when she taken dragon form that one time.
"Yes, I am sure you can," Jax said. "But I would imagine your friend can handle herself fairly well, being a dragon."
He was still trying to comprehend the size of the creature that had come plummeting down over the city wall earlier, almost right on top of the spot where the two of them had decided to hide out. At first, Tash had insisted on staying near to the city, in the hope that she might rescue Lexi if she got hurt, and she kept saying she would rescue Aaron as well. Jax could not bring himself to let the girl run off on her own, so he stuck around to try to talk some sense into her, at the very least.
The city of Maramyr was not a safe place to be and the nation was at war once again, this time with the elven people of the forest. Earlier, they saw the winged lizard men, led by what looked like the half-Darga Prince Draxis, fly in and out of the city, leaving just as the sun was setting, and carrying what looked like large, heavy baskets of some kind, no doubt supplies or weapons of some kind, considering Draxis himself had come. They flew off in the same direction as the blue dragon, and while Jax was tempted to follow up on Tash's latest idea of making the journey west, for his own reasons, he considered it lucky that they had agreed to wait until the cover of night.
"I just want to help my friends," Tash said, pouting a little. "I don't know what to do. I'm not big and strong like Lexi, and I'm not powerful like Aaron, and I don't have magic like the grumpy old mage, Stavros, and I can't fight like Kasha and I don't know things like Ashan."
"Well, there's a saying I heard once," Jax told her. "Do your best and the rest will take care of itself."
"That sounds stupid," Tash said. "What if it doesn't?"
Jax could not help but laugh. Tash seemed old enough that she was no longer entirely a child, but she still had the brutal honesty of someone very young.
"Why do you laugh?" she asked. "It makes no sense."
"It means you cannot control everything in the world," Jax explained. "You do what you can do, and others will do what they can do, and with a little luck things might work out."
"And if they don't, then everybody dies," Tash said, jutting out her chin, angrily.
"Sometimes that happens too," Jax said with a shrug and he eyes went wide.
"Really?" She suddenly looked as though she might burst into tears.
"No." Jax shook his head. "I was trying to be funny."
"Well it wasn't funny," Tash said.
"I'm sorry, Tash, but you can't save everyone or be everywhere," he said. "You have to pick your battles. Now think, what is the most helpful thing you can do? And it has to be something that you can actually do, so don't say you want to go fight that crazed queen up there. It would likely take an army to bring her down."
"An army," Tash said. "We need an army."
"Yes, an army," Jax said, failing to rein in his customary sarcasm.
"You said it, it would take an army, right?"
"Yes, I believe it would."
"Then that's what we need."
"And where will we find an army?"
"In the desert."
"I thought you told me the Ansari were not going to come."
"They don't know everything that is happening," Tash said. "They don't know about the things you know. You could convince them to fight and then we can save Aaron."
"I was under the impression that he did not want to be saved," Jax said.
"Aaron acts that way because he doesn't want anyone else to get hurt," Tash said. "Kasha was mad at him for that."
"Kasha?" Jax felt his memory catch at the name. "You mentioned that person before. Are you talking about the champion swordsman?"
"Swordsman?" Tash looked at him with one eye scrunched closed, then she nodded. "That's right, you don't know about Kasha."
"What about Kasha?" Jax asked. "Are we talking about the same person?"
"You don't know Ansari," Tash said.
"Don't give me that nonsense," Jax told her. "I've heard the desert people say that meaningless old expression a thousand times."
"It isn't meaningless!" Tash exclaimed.
"Then what does it mean?" Jax waited, but Tash just stared at him. "You don't even know, and you're supposed to be one of them."
"It cannot be explained with words," Tash said, he eyes half lidded as she did her best to appear wise.
"Well, then it isn't much of a concept, now is it?" Jax replied, shattering her sage moment, and she scowled at him.
"You wouldn't say that if you knew Ansari."
"And how would I get to know the Ansari?"
"You would have to come to the desert," Tash said.
"I really should go back to White Falls," Jax said. "That's probably what I should do."
"Is it on the way?"
"Not really."
"What if you could fly?"
"And how would I do that?"
"I could become a griffin."
"What is a griffin?" Jax asked, never having heard of such a thing.
"It is an ancient creature of the desert," Tash told him. "Ashan taught me about lots of creatures."
"Ashan is a person?" Jax asked.
"Yes," Tash said, rolling her eyes at him. "He is a wise old man, who knows Ansari."
"All right," Jax said. "No need to get angry. Obviously I don't know Ansari."
"Obviously," Tash said, nodding her agreement.
"So how does you being a griffin help me fly?" Jax still was not sure what Tash was talking about.
"I will show you," she said and she took a few steps away from him, then she squinted her eyes and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and began to concentrate.
Jax was amazed at what he saw, as the girl suddenly began to shift in front of him, growing almost as large as a horse, but with the body of a giant cat and the wings and head of an eagle. It was already fairly unnerving to have seen a real, live dragon, but
to see Tash turn into such a strange looking yet majestic creature, was something Jax knew he would never forget. She looked down at him, with the piercing eyes of a raptor.
"Get on," she said. "I can carry you."
"When you said you could become a griffin, I didn't imagine that you would turn into something like that," Jax said.
"Obviously you don't know Ansari," Tash said. "If you did, you'd know that Ansari can be all kinds of things, and you would know that Kasha is the best swordfighter in all the circles of Ansara, but she isn't a swordsman."
"She?"
"See, you don't know Ansari," Tash said. "Now climb on and we will go to this White Falls place."
"As long as you promise not to say that I don't know Ansari," Jax said. "The people at the fighting circles used to say that all the time and it was really annoying."
"Fine," she said. "If you hate it that much, I won't say it anymore. Now come on."
"Well, I don't hate it," Jax said as he climbed up onto the griffon's back, trying to put it out of his mind that the strange creature was also Tash. "There is very little in the world that I truly hate, except for bitter sprouts. Can't stand those."
"What are bitter sprouts?" Tash asked as she took a few steps and spread her giant eagle wings.
"They're round green sprouts, like tiny heads of cabbage, and they taste terrible," Jax said. "My mother used to make me eat them when I was your age."
"You knew your mother?" Tash flapped her wings slowly.
"I did," Jax said, holding on to her feathered neck as she turned around again. "Didn't you?"
"I was an orphan in Ba'shan,"
"I'm sorry to hear that," Jax said. "It's a wonderful city, but I don't know if it would be so great to be an orphan there."
"It's okay," Tash replied. "I was raised by an innkeeper and he was good to me. It sounds like you have been a lot of places and you know about the fighting circles and you have been to Ba'shan." Tash took a few more steps. "Are you sure you don't know..."
"Don't say it, Tash," Jax cut her off. "Tell me, are we going to fly or just walk around in circles in the forest?"
"I haven't flown as a griffin before," she told him, then she took a few more steps and Jax was barely able to hold on as she broke into a bounding run and leapt into the air.