by Oxford, Rain
“But I only signed the book a few---”
“You were born to be a Guardian, Dylan. You couldn’t become a true Guardian, though, because Ronez was Earth’s Guardian, so your power was restricted until you could sign a book.”
“By who?”
“Well, by no one. The gods figured you’d die and didn’t need to be dealt with. Because you were something they didn’t create themselves, they assumed you would never be able to handle the power. The prophecies only annoyed them at first. But you lived, and now it must infuriate them that their greatest Guardian wasn’t their creation.”
“That makes me sound kind of…”
“Freakish?” he asked innocently.
“Thanks. But if the Guardians are all taken from their parents, who raised them?”
“I’m surprised Edward hasn’t explained this to you, but all Guardians are raised by monks,” he said.
That wasn’t what I was expecting. “Like, religious monks?”
“Every world has a degree of religion. The gods pick a small number of monks, priests, whatever, from one or two religions that are relatively accurate and have appropriate ethics. They teach the monks and give the baby Guardian to them.”
“But Ronez and Edward stayed on Duran.”
“They were given to the monks of a small island. Soon after their birth, there was a world-wide war, and before that every major land had a different religion. These monks had learned the truth of the gods from ancient history and magic, so the gods chose them to raise the boys and it became tradition. Until you, that is. You remained with your family.”
“I want to say I wish I hadn’t, but I have no idea what my life or personality would have been like if I had been raised by monks. I bet they’d have been Japanese Buddhist monks.”
“Why do you say that?” Nano asked.
I shrugged. “A lot of Duran reminds me of Japan, a country on my world, and Buddhism and Shinto are the religions of Japan.”
“Perhaps Japan was influenced by Duran. All worlds have some cultures influenced by other worlds,” he said, as if it were the most natural conclusion in the world. Before I could comment, he continued. “We are now entering the swamp lands. Be mindful not to fall in.”
The tunnel opened into a gigantic swamp. Moss covered the cave floor, leading to the murky green water. The only light in the cave came from the trees growing out of the water. In the large swamp, there were about a dozen thin trees, all glowing a gentle white light. In the center of the swamp was a huge tree with a white glowing trunk and glowing leaves that put out different colors.
“How do we cross?”
He smirked at me. “How do you think?”
“Magic.”
His answer was to face the water, raise his right hand, and yell in his deep, powerful, commanding voice, “Van hyet!”
Answering his call, the water was suddenly separated as stone pushed out of the ground to form a narrow, jagged, treacherous looking path across the water. “Oh, yes, this is going to be fun.” I stepped forward considerably slower and more hesitantly than Nano.
I was expecting it to be slippery, and I was right. There was a slight layer of algae, glittering softly in the dim light. Walking slowly, I was able to make it halfway across before slipping. After hours of work with Edward just a few days before on the art of falling, I was able to avoid diving clumsily into the water. Not all of me landed on the narrow walkway, though, and as Nano tried to help me, something grabbed my leg before I could pull it out of the water. I grabbed the other edge of the walkway, but nearly let go from shock when the water creature started to lick my calf.
Nano grabbed me and pulled me away, but the creature dug its claws in deep. Finally, after several agonizing moments of tug-a-war, Nano won and pulled me firmly back onto the walkway. I rolled onto my back to see the creature, which looked very similar to Gollum, in Lord of The Rings, recede grudgingly back into the water.
“Be careful,” Nano said. I just glared at him, still catching my breath. “Don’t worry, it didn’t want to harm you. It was probably lonely and wanted attention. You would have drowned, though.”
This was the point where I started to wonder if maybe Nano was just a little bit insane. “Sure, and drowning is nothing to worry about. There’s something seriously wrong with you Guardians.”
“You’ve only met two of us. You don’t know the half of it. Wait until you meet the Guardian of Vaigda. Don’t be mistaken; we’re all insane.”
Maybe I’ll fit in after all. “If I get eaten, poisoned, torn apart, or worse, Edward will kick your butt,” I said, almost certain of my threat.
“Would you rather be here, or on Duran alone?” he asked. He walked away without waiting for an answer.
I decided to go along with it, seeing as how the alternative was staying with the lonely water goblins. At the end of the swamp, we came to the entrance of another cave. “Where is the torch? And why do I feel like this is the wrong way?” I asked. The chill from the mouth made my skin crawl. Goblins behind me, the unknown before me.
“It fell into the water when I tried to pull you out. This is Aranisia. Otherwise known in English as ‘Spider Caves.’ I hope you don’t have arachnophobia.”
“I could hardly call it a phobia. I don’t like spiders, but they eat bugs I dislike, and they don’t particularly bother me.”
“They may after this.”
Well, shit. “What are spiders doing on this world?”
“They were imported. I’ll explain after we get out.” With that he entered the cave. This habit of his was proving quite irritating.
Now, I am quite aware that if you step into a creepy old house, the door will slam shut behind you. I was not prepared for the mouth of the cave to collapse behind me! The terrible rumbling of massive rocks colliding wasn’t nearly as foreboding as the sudden darkness and sound of hissing from deeper in the cave.
“Do not be alarmed; the cave must close to prevent the spiders from escaping.”
Oh, yes, that’s very comforting. “Are you sure we have to go this way?”
I didn’t like his thoughtful silence.
“Well, now that you mention it, there is another way that would have been much safer, but it’s too late now.”
I didn’t know where he was, but I gaped at the darkness and hoped my glare was pointed at him. “Where are you?” I asked. I jumped when I felt him touch my hand.
“Come on.”
“I am not holding your hand.”
“Fine, then, you can just follow my overwhelming presence.”
With that, he was gone. Panicking, I tried to run after him, but instead ran smack into the cave wall, barely avoiding hitting my head.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“I know that! You can see fine, can’t you?!”
“Of course,” he said.
I growled. Like an angry wolf.
He laughed. “You sound like a furious kitten!” he said, his laugh growing in volume. I was able to follow the sound until I could smack him in the head, which only made him laugh harder. “Let’s go, before the spiders all die from laughing, too.”
“At least make a---” My request for light was cut off as he said something quietly in his language. A gentle light kindled from the end of a wooden wand that Nano was holding. As the light increased in a pulsing rhythm, I could make out intricate writing carved around the wand and that the light was actually emanating from a small crystal on the end. “You have a wand,” I said brightly.
Nano looked confused. “I have a stick.”
“Yes, a stick that does magic. You have a wand.”
“It’s the stone on the end. Any stone, clear object, or iron object can be easily used as a focal point for magic. Many wizards carry a stone or crystal to focus their more difficult or dangerous magic.”
“So creating light is difficult magic? Why not just use a flashlight?”
“What’s a flashlight?” he asked. I just stared at him. “No,
light isn’t difficult to create. In fact, that’s why I use the stone. We Guardians always have something with us to fiddle with. As I expect Ki… Edward has probably explained to you, your magic will spark when you have uncontrolled emotions. This is manageable but never goes away. We each have come across an object that we like to fiddle with. Over time, our magic sparks are pulled into that object by unconscious intent.
“That object can become incredibly powerful and we start to use that object to do the spells we’ve outgrown or just mastered so easily we became bored with it. Mine is that stone. Unfortunately, the magic in it has started attracting attention. People and creatures want it, and they don’t know why, so I put it on the end of this wand to make it easier to protect.”
“Wow. Edward never explains things that simply.”
“He’s more of a show-and-tell person than one to give a lecture on how something works. He also tends to leave things vague in order to make you think. He has had many more apprentices than I, and he’s much older than me.”
“What is his magic object?”
“A stack of cards. Every time he meets someone powerful that he wants to know, he asks them to a game of cards. Through that game, and his cards, he can learn a lot about someone. He also uses it with friends as a bonding thing. That creeps me out, though, I never let anyone play with my crystal.”
I remembered the cards Edward used to play with Divina and to teach me mind reading. “He never played against me. I’ve never touched them.”
“That’s odd; he usually plays all his apprentices before taking them in. Do you know how to play anything with cards?”
“Poker and Go Fish. What was Ronez’s magic object?”
“I don’t know. He never told me, and I never really bothered to find out. It’s not usually a big deal.”
“Do I have one?”
“I highly doubt it. When you find your object, you will not realize it until one day you reach for it when you’re upset and you realize that it makes you calm. When Edward is very stressed, you’ll probably find him reaching for his cards, even if it’s only to touch them. Now we need to go before the light irritates the spiders.”
I realized with a start that I could hear them. They had to be huge spiders! I followed Nano through the caves, paranoid that there were thousands of eyes on us. The cavern walls were shaped like any general cave, but there were crystals sticking out of some and webs along many.
It was about an hour in that we came to an open area with a stream. In the stream was moss. “How does moss grow without light?” I asked.
“It’s the water.” He kneeled down and picked up a small silver bowl beside the brook. He dipped it into the water and held it up to me. “Do you think your master would mind me teaching you a survival skill?”
“I think Edward needs all the help he can get with my survival,” I answered dryly, sitting cross-legged beside him.
“Then I will teach you to purify water to drink. Clear your mind and look at the water.”
“Edward always tells me to close my eyes.”
“Only until you can clear your mind with your eyes open. Never close your eyes in battle. I assume you know how to clear your mind easily enough, now you should learn to do it facing the world. Imagine all the little bits of stuff that isn’t water in this; germs, bacteria, dirt; imagine it glows a color. It doesn’t matter what color. Don’t think about how much it glows, that will come on its own. If it’s too hard for you, start daydreaming about water, but keep half your mind on the glowing water in this bowl and do not look away.”
After about five minutes, I let my mind wander to the haunted springs. Edward said it was clean and I hoped it was because I did plenty of swimming in it. If I learn this spell, would he want me to practice and drink from the springs? Eww… Ghost pee.
“It’s glowing!” I burst out before I even realized the water in the bowl had a green glow to it.
“What color is it?”
“A greenish color.”
“That’s good. Green is natural plant matter. Red is poison. Stay away from that. Yellow is bad, too, it’s fungus and mold matter. And black is rot. Really, if it looks bad, you should avoid it. Now, to get rid of the impurities is going to take work. Push your energies into the water to line the inside of the bowl. Imagine it as something you can see clearly, like a paper. Then you pull that energy together and filter out the impurities. Use the energy as a semipermeable membrane.”
“Like a coffee filter?”
“I have no idea what that is.”
I put my overactive imagination to use and imagined the energy I could feel inside me flow out in little whiffs of mist to form a solid piece of paper.
“Does it need to be that strong?” he asked in a dry tone.
“It takes a lot of mist to form solid paper.” I settled my energy paper into the bowl and let it wrap around the insides.
“It’s not the water that glows, it’s the impurities. You’re filtering out the glow.”
I imagined the extra-thick coffee filter lifting up, letting the water flow through it. The flow was slow, but glowless. Finally enough water had drained out that I could bring the edges of the filter together. I tossed the imaginary filter with the plant sediment somewhere in the dark for the spiders to ponder.
“Good job! And that’s probably not something you’ll hear very often from Edward.” That sounded a little foreboding. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great mentor, and I couldn’t think of anyone better, but this is the worst time to be his student.”
That I understood. “I’m like a constant reminder that his brother is dead.”
“Absolutely not. It’s the worst time because he has to protect both worlds, train you, and he just lost his brother. You’re not a reminder of Ronez’s death.”
We both stood. “What about Vretial? Isn’t that another reason this is a bad time?”
“The gods tell us Vretial isn’t a threat.”
“And you believe them?”
“That would be really stupid of me; they don’t even believe it. They’re just telling us what they want us to believe so we would blindly trust them and stay out of their way. Most of the gods treat their Guardian like slaves. If we have even a whisper of a thought that they could not predict, we’re held in suspicion.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very fair deal.”
“No, but at least we have power and free time to enjoy our immortal lives. I once met an old man complaining that he was too old and wanted to die. I wanted to smack him.”
“For not making the most out of life?”
“No, jealousy. It’s hard sometimes to feel so old and look so young. On the other hand, the alternative is looking my age, and that is even less appealing.”
“I think you’re crazier than a box of purple elephant crackers.”
He leaned closer to me with a glare in his eyes. “Listen to me very carefully, because this means life and death as a Guardian. I am crazier than a box of purple elephant crackers. We all are, and if you want to live, you need to be, too.”
He continued on his way and I hurried after the light. “That doesn’t make any sense! Edward isn’t crazy!”
“Oh, yes he is. We all are. We’re just crazy in our own ways.”
We trekked through the caves until we came to a dead end. I didn’t even have a chance to suspect that we were lost, because Nano clearly had no concern for the laws of physics. He walked right through the stone wall as if he hadn’t even seen it. Due to my track record for physical damage, I slowly inched forward with my hand outstretched. Unfortunately, Nano took the light with him, so I had no clue how far away the wall was. Then I felt his hand grab my arm as he forcefully yanked me through.
There was no wall.
We stood inside a massive, stone hallway, well lit with torches. One direction led to a large dining room and the other led up a grand staircase. We were surrounded by creatures I could only hope I would never see again. While they had the
general body shape of short, stubby humans, they were far from humanoid. I couldn’t tell the difference between their armor and skin at first, but I realized it didn’t really matter because nobody in their right mind would attack the creatures. Their skin, or hide, was made of scales the same dull gray as the metal armor. The creatures stood roughly a foot shorter than me, but made up for it in bulk. However, incased in armor, I really couldn’t tell if it was fat or muscle. Every one of them had frowning, thin-lipped mouths and suspicious, narrowed eyes. Eyes which were yellow, I might add.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Goblins.”
“Are they mad about something?”
“I would guess not. In fact, they seem positively enthusiastic. There must be a troll down somewhere. These goblins guard the castle, for a high price. Goblins are master swindlers and greedy as all hell. If you think you’ve been given or arrived at a good deal with a goblin, don’t take it. They also cheat the entire kingdom and will not let you into or out of the castles without paying their fee. The trolls work for the kingdom at clearing out the caves and making them safe. Trolls turn in all gems and precious finds into the king. The goblins have been rumored to gang up on and kill a troll to take the finds. They also get unlimited drink and have never let the opportunity to harass the women pass them by.”
“Sounds like the kingdom is covered, then. No one in their right mind would want to have anything to do with this place, let alone be brave enough to steal from it.”
“Exactly.”
Now I understood why Nano was sure that the High King’s guards were not the ones behind the assassination scheme; the goblins had too cushy a job to lose it. “But how are you going to get in to see the king? Will the goblins obey you because you’re a Guardian or are you going to use magic to get passed them?”
“I could do either one, or I can walk right in seeing as how the king is my nephew.”
“Great. Just leave me here with the goblins and I’ll try not to die.”
“Oh, no, no, no. No. Nuh-uh. Not happening. The last thing I need is for you to get lost and eaten. Edward is much more powerful than me, and he would feed me to his evil black Tibbit if one hair on your head was harmed. You’re in my care now and I’m not leaving you for the goblins to babysit.”