“Well, they sent wizards to seek me out and kill me. More than once,” Sulrad explained. “How could you not know that?”
“I’ve kept pretty much to myself.” He smirked. “And I have been away from Amedon for a while. Garlath brought me here and I decided to stay. Before that, I was in the library most of the time.”
“Studying some arcane branch of magic, no doubt.” Sulrad relaxed, if only slightly. Kelnor sounded much the same as he always had, oblivious to the machinations going on around him.
“Indeed. I have studied an arcane branch of magic. Several branches, actually. When I combine the learnings from both of these, I believe I have found a way that we can do much as the wizards of ancient times did. We can harness the wild magic, coerce it into the form of a spell, and freeze it there. Any spell so created would last virtually forever.”
“What would one use such a spell for?” Sulrad asked.
“The ancient used such things to levitate entire cities. It is said that in ancient times, cities floated in the clouds and wizards flew between them.”
“No one has that much power,” Sulrad argued.
“No one does today, that is true, but the techniques I have devised will surely do this. Can you imagine it? An entire city like Frostan floating in the clouds. How grand would that be?”
“I cannot imagine it. Tell me. What happened to this small magic, then? Where did it go? Did magic simply fade away or did something happen? Was it natural or was someone responsible?” Sulrad already knew, but he wished to draw Kelnor out.
“Ah, that is the question, isn’t it? What happened? I never did find out. It’s not mentioned often in the lore in Amedon, and never outside of the wizards’ keep. It was only by chance that I discovered the truth. I was researching the founding of Amedon itself when I came across a passage about the time before the founding. The text mentioned an even more distant past when the small magic was prevalent. It spoke as if the reader were already familiar with things that we are ignorant of. It is often that way with the ancient text. They assume the reader is familiar with their lands and cultures, and no doubt when they were written, everyone probably was. Little did they know that a thousand summers later someone would be reading these texts and be completely ignorant of the culture and world in which the author lived.”
Sulrad laughed. How often had he run into the same thing when researching the ancient texts? Still, the thought of the small magic being available to everyone intrigued him. What could have made it fade? Why were there still wizards today? Was there something unusual about people like him and Kelnor? If so, what made them special?
“What else did that text assume we already knew, I wonder,” Sulrad demurred.
“None of them spoke of dragons.”
“That’s not strange. The dragons left after the founding of Amedon. Maybe dragons were so common, no one thought to write about them.”
“I don’t believe so,” Kelnor explained. “The texts from those times never mention dragons, but scrolls inked only a few centuries later spoke incessantly about them, as if they had only just appeared. There was speculation about them. The scrolls went on at length, arguing whether dragons were here to help or harm humans. From that, I’d gather that the dragons appeared not long after the scrolls I mentioned.”
“Do you think they came for the magic?”
“How is one to know?” Kelnor helped himself to one of the fruit tarts that the acolytes had brought.
Sulrad smiled. Kelnor had not changed all that much in the summers since they had been students together.
After he wiped the crumbs from his mouth, Kelnor continued. “The earliest scrolls that mention dragons also speak of powerful magic being wielded by wizards across the land. They speak of floating cities and great wars being fought with magic, and those tales are told right along with the small magic. It is only later, with the founding of Amedon, that magic seems to have faded. All the texts after that speak of magic as if it were scarce and precious.”
“How can that be?”
“Have you not found that to be true? Did you think I didn’t sense the crystals you buried beneath the temple? It was their power that helped to create the spell that Garlath triggered. I know you are familiar with how to store and draw on great power. What if that great power had once been available to everyone, and those who are wizards today wielded powerful magic, and those who are mundane today wielded the small magic. Imagine what such a world would be like.”
Sulrad thought back to the way he had been treated when his magic came awake in him. What if magic had been as common as spit? What if his powers had marked him not as someone odd, but as someone who had this gift more abundantly? Perhaps things would have been different then. Perhaps his own mother would not have abandoned him. He tried to imagine how different his life would have been.
“Sulrad,” Kelnor interrupted.
“Sorry. Just lost in thought.”
37
Sulrad rolled the thin parchment scroll out before him, glancing up at the candle that had burned almost to a stub. Morning would soon be here and he hadn’t slept or eaten. He was cold. The wizard’s study beneath the temple never seemed to warm up to anything like pleasant, and the ever-present dust was a constant irritant. His eyes were red and sunken from sneezing, and he was starting to wheeze when he inhaled. How had the wizard Skelek tolerated this, or had he? Something about the place made Sulrad think that it might have once been above ground. Long ago.
No matter; complaining about it wasn’t going to lead him to his goal any sooner.
He bent to the task of deciphering the parchment. It was old, older than most, and much of what it said assumed that he had knowledge that clearly he did not. What was a ley line and why did they congregate or gather? He wasn’t clear on that translation. The characters implied a bringing together of these ley lines, a concentration of force that occurred naturally. It was at the intersection of these ley lines that Amedon had been built. Somehow, the dragons were able to bend the forces of magic to focus them, if that was the right word. These focused ley lines increased the strength of magic at certain locations while depleting it everywhere else.
When the dragons discovered that certain individuals possessed an extra organ that could focus and store magic, they had decided to take action.
They bent the forces of magic away from the common man, focusing it in selected areas where they then built cities for their chosen servants. Those servants were recruited from the men and women who possessed this extra organ and were able to handle magic on a scale not possible in nature. Over time, they bred true and established their wizard cities, and as so was so often the case, they grew strong and prospered on the backs of those who lived in their shadow. The very people that the wizards had deprived of their magic now served their new masters, never guessing that those same wizards had subjugated them. While they were not slaves, they might as well have been.
Sulrad fumed.
“Ran. Give me the strength to set this right,” he muttered as he bent to the parchment once more.
“Set what right?”
Sulrad froze at the voice. Who dared intrude into his private sanctuary?
He looked up from his work, holding his finger on the symbol he had been trying to work out. Veran stood in the doorway, torchlight flickering behind the silhouette of his robes.
“Can’t sleep?” Sulrad tried to sound nonchalant when he really wanted to scream at the priest to leave him in peace.
“It’s nearly midday,” Veran said.
“And you haven’t eaten.” Ignal pushed past Veran with a woven basket that emitted an aroma of freshly baked bread and strong tea. She placed it on top of the parchment Sulrad had been studying.
“What’s gotten into you, Father?” she asked. She opened the basket and placed a linen napkin on top of his parchment, followed by a plate and eating utensils.
“I was studying.” Sulrad gestured to the now covered parchment.
“Plenty of time for that once you’ve filled the hole in you,” she said. “You’re starting to look like a skeleton, nothing but bones and skin. Can you tell us what’s bothering you, or is it something you need to do alone? Something between you and Ran?”
Ignal’s eyes had that look, the one that said she was expecting for, hoping for, some revelation about Ran that she had not previously been let in on. He almost hated to disappoint her.
“It’s nothing like that. It’s just that these ley lines are so hard to grasp. I feel as if the concept is just outside of my ken.” He made a gesture as if seizing something from the air before him, but stopped when he noticed that Ignal’s face had gone red.
“Is there something I need to know?” he asked.
“It’s a matter of great shame.” She held her gaze on her feet.
“How could it be of great shame to you? These parchments are almost a millennium old. You weren’t even imagined when these were written.”
“Not me personally, but my race,” she muttered.
Sulrad had never seen her so subdued. What could the dwarves have done to earn such shame to last for so long? “Come now,” he said. “Ran doesn’t judge us for the sins of our fathers. If he did, no one would be accepted.”
“The dwarves.” She paused. “We dwarves. We know about ley lines. They are our stock in trade.”
She paused again.
Sulrad waited, but she remained silent.
“Ignal. Just tell us what happened. In as few words as you can. Maybe that will help you get it out.”
She turned her face to him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “We’re killers,” she said.
Sulrad placed his hand on her shoulder.
She was shaking.
“Ran bless you. You are not a killer. You are a priestess of Ran and a holy woman. There is no guilt in you. You need to understand that.”
Ignal sniffed back tears. “We killed them all,” she said. “Every last one.”
“Killed who?” Sulrad asked.
“The elves. We killed them.”
Sulrad was taken aback. Had the elves and dwarves warred in the past? Had there been a particularly bloody battle? He’d never read anything about that.
“Was there a war?”
“Not a war, but a battle. When the men and elves realized what we were doing, they moved against us, but before they could reach us, their magic failed. The men were wizards who no longer had access to the powerful magic they once had, and the elves, well, they died rather quickly. Magic left the world except in a few secluded places. The elves, their lives depended on magic. When it left the world, so did they. Some of them simply faded away, but some of them suffered the most agonizing deaths imaginable. The wear and tear of summers upon summers they had lived through hit them all at once. Hale and hardy elves suddenly grew old and infirm. Every disease they had used magic to stave off attacked them at once. It was horrific, or so we are taught.”
“You’re taught this? Where?”
“At our mother’s knee. Dwarf children are taught about the horrific thing we once did so that it will never happen again.”
“You did nothing,” Sulrad said.
“I’m a dwarf.”
“Would you have done such a thing yourself?”
“Of course not.”
“Would you have stopped it if you could have?”
“Of course I would.”
“Then you have no guilt.” Sulrad placed his hand on her shoulder. “Ran does not hold a person accountable for the actions of their distant ancestors. And not even for their own once they have come to see his light.” Sulrad dug deep for the argument Ignal had often used on him. “You are a priestess of Ran. You cannot sin. You can never be guilty of anything again. You are pure. Holy.”
Ignal shuddered at his words.
He trickled the slightest bit of magic into her as he had done on past occasions. He imagined the magic as it flowed, trying to shape it into the form of acceptance and even love. She needed his forgiveness just as much as she needed Ran’s. She needed someone to tell her that she was valued and loved, and he and Ran were the only ones she truly cared for. And he cared for her. He realized that. He had come to depend on her and even love her in his own way. Not that he would abandon his vow to Ran never to take a woman, never to father a child, but there must be something short of that he could offer her.
He placed his free hand on her head and whispered softly in her ear, “You are innocent, my child. You are loved and valued.”
A single sob shook her. She straightened up and wiped the tears from her eyes.
He remained where he was until her breathing returned to normal and her sobs quieted. He had time. All the time in the world. If she could help him understand what was in these scrolls, he could reverse whatever they had done and bring magic back to the world once more.
“So, tell me,” he said when she finally looked him in the eye once more. “What did your forefathers do?”
38
Sulrad settled in as Ignal recounted the story of her elders. In the ancient past, the dragons appeared seemingly from nowhere. They were hungry for the earth magic, having depleted their own world. They were fading, dying. Their race was on the verge of extinction, that was, until they discovered the veil that allowed them access to the realm of man.
“They tricked us,” Ignal explained. “They told us what they were doing was for the betterment of man, that magic was not safe. Being dwarves, we were completely without the ability to use magic. No dwarf ever born was able to wield magic. The dragons convinced Zeralo, our leader, that men were better off if they too were like the dwarves.”
“This is the story we learn as children,” Ignal said.
In the days when the land was new and the creatures with and without magic mingled, there was a great injustice. The elves practiced magic to extend their lives and ruled for millennia as generations of man came and went. They used the power of the earth to make themselves beautiful in order to steal the hearts of men.
Dwarves, being immune to their charms, chose to separate themselves from the land above, digging deep beneath the roots of the mountains in search of precious metals and stones. They delved into the bones of the earth itself, prying into her secrets, learning about the formation of mountains and seas, and came to understand the true age of the earth.
It was only by chance that the dwarves came upon the streams of magic that emanated from the great depths. The water magic may imbue the waters with magic, but it does not originate there. All magic comes from one source, deep within the earth. The ley lines radiate from the very core of the world and reach to the heavens above, arching over the land and showering magic onto the earth, the water, the fire, and the wind. All of these are only secondary magic, a poor reflection of the raw power of the earth.
When the first dwarf touched the raw magic, something happened. He gained the ability to handle it. Not to cast spells, but he was able to direct the magic, change the way the power flowed, move the ley lines. The secret lay in the crystals that were found deep within the earth. These crystals acted to focus and direct the raw power of magic. They could store it, absorb it, and offer it up to one who had the ability to direct it.
The dwarves grew rich trading in these stones, but they soon found out that they had only made matters worse for the men to whom they traded the stones. Those with the small magic were unable to access the power of the stones. Only a few were able to access it, and those few grew more and more powerful as they acquired the crystals from the dwarves.
Soon wars were fought over the stones. Men coveted the power in them above all else. They used the stones to raise great cities into the air. They offered the dwarves crops that they could not grow themselves, and the working of iron, which was also foreign to the dwarves, and so the dwarves, in their ignorance, continued to mine deeper and deeper into the earth, accessing stones of greater and greater power.
When the wizard wars were at
their worst, the dragons appeared.
No one knew where they came from or why they had come, but they quickly allied themselves with the more powerful of the wizards and stopped the wars.
The dwarves took this as a sign that the dragons were benevolent and began trading with them. They offered the same stones to them as they had to the wizards.
The dragons consumed the crystals as a common farm fowl devours stones to help it grind the grains it feeds on. As the dragons grew sated with the stones, they increased in size to the great beasts you see now. Their magic grew stronger and stronger, and soon it was the dragons who were fighting amongst themselves.
One clan of dragons enlisted the aid of the dwarves. They said that if the dwarves were able to move the ley lines away from their enemies, the wars would end and peace would be restored once more.
Zeralo led the dwarves as they delved deep into the earth to create a network of tunnels. These tunnels were laid out in the shape of a spell. That much the dwarves knew, even though they themselves were denied access to magic.
When the tunnels were ready, stones were placed at key locations across the land. These stones focused the magic, concentrating it at the places where the dragons lived, removing it from lands of their enemies.
The war ended and the dwarves congratulated themselves for saving the realm of man from themselves, but soon they learned just what they had wrought.
Tribes of elves appeared at the door to the mines begging for stones. Without them, they had no access to the wild magic, and their spells were failing.
At first, the dwarves took pity on them and traded with them, but the elves became impoverished, even as they demanded more and more from the dwarves. The small magic had stopped working. The elves were fading. Men fell ill with no one to heal them. A great plague swept the land.
The dwarves closed the doors to the mines and isolated themselves from the land of man for a hundred summers, ashamed of what they had done, unable to face the devastation they had wrought.
Dragon Lord: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Origins Book 2) Page 24