Soul of the Sorcerer - Part Three: Daughter of the Dragon (7 page)

The murmur of voices in quiet conversation from the surrounding audience, pulled the albino mage Ziron, back from the brink of tears.  He blinked away the blurriness and lifted his head to stare angrily at his brother Airon. Behind his brother the backdrop was an auditorium with stepped seating filled with an audience; the senate of the Bremethren, minus the elders, some five hundred plus powerful magic wielders.

“Ziron, embarrass us in front of our new family again and it will be much worse!”

His brother, Ziron’s mirror image in every way, except the magic they used, looked at him with anger, but Ziron knew that behind it Airon was as terrified as he was of upsetting the Bremethren.

“I’m sorry Airon, but it is difficult to undo all those years of training!”

“I know.” Airon said with at least a touch of kindness.

The two brothers turned to face their absolute replicas, the other two brothers they had been separated from at birth; cruelly snatched as it had turned out by a rival family.

“Caikan, Kankai, please forgive us. The way you open your soul portals or
Wielder Fonts
as you call them is incredibly alien to us!” Airon said to his brothers.

“As is the way you easterners cast spells!” Caikan replied, a hint of temper in the Fire Wielders voice.

“Brother, calm yourself.” Kankai said with an arm patting Caikan on the shoulder, Ziron felt that this brother was as solid as the Earth he wielded.

“This is difficult for us all; we four are rare and a huge threat to any who would stand against Mother and father as lead senators” he concluded.

“Yes let’s try again. Please forgive my temper” Caikan added.

Ziron opened his portal, almost saying silently in his mind the command words
Aquastream, Aquafast; but he no longer needed these words to open the Wielder Font
to its full size. Instead he had been taught a new way, which he could only explain as almost feeding his portal in on itself, threading it through itself faster and faster until the force of rotation caused it to form a spinning ring like undulating soft dough as it becomes a donut.

In this form the power he could draw from the elemental plane of water was many times higher in magnitude than what he had been able to do before. The magic of the Bremethren was more brute force than the refined magic back in Kalana, it needed no command words, but just practice in manipulating the energies and forces to intertwine with the physical world to get the desired results. In this respect it was faster to wield than Kalanan magic, but it was difficult to sustain for long periods...at least for Airon and Ziron at the moment.

Caikan nodded in satisfaction at the azure blue font of Ziron and the light blue font of Airon as they undulated. “Brother” He nodded to Kankai and they both opened their fonts, his the red of fire and Kankai’s the brown of earth.

“Now we must try what has never been tried before, we must attempt to entwine our fonts, so that each overlaps a little with the other.”

The four brothers concentrated and a small stream of bright red blood began to trickle from their nose down their white alabaster like skin.

At the moment when the four fonts first touched, each brother shivered, their skin becoming rough with goose bumps. When they entwined fully, each brother dropped to his knees, their eyes became light illuminating red lanterns and their hair began to wave erratically with a life of its own, like hair reaching for a static charged balloon.

“It’s wonderful!” Ziron gasped.

“Yes, like being whole for the first time.” Kankai added.

“Like being a God!” Airon trembled.

“There are no Gods, just Bremethren.” Caikan said with a grin. “Submit control to me my brothers.”

Ziron released himself to Caikan’s will and could suddenly see through his fire brother’s eyes. His gaze hunted quickly around the auditorium, seeking a particular family of senators sat together. Ziron could feel the emotions and basic thoughts of his brother; this family had long been believed to have been those responsible for arranging the kidnapping all those years ago. They had tried to snatch all four of the baby boys; hoping to raise them and subvert them to their own cause, but they had only been successful in grabbing two, and these they had lost at sea in a terrible storm.

Ziron felt his brothers anger rise, then too his own along with Airon and KanKai, oh how glorious the rage was but it was nothing in comparison to the power that Caikan ripped from the combined Wielder Fonts.

Where the thirty wielders of family Livarious had been sitting just moments before, an empty hole, burned through by sorcerous energies the like none of them had seen before, now shimmered with heat. Not only were their no remains of the wielders, but where smooth black marble should have been was a seamless circular passage reaching right out to the outer wall and through several buildings beyond!

Ziron opened his eyes and found his face resting, in a small pool of his own blood, on the marble floor. His brothers too were just coming round and starting to rise from the floor. A slow clapping sound started, gradually growing in volume, as more and more of the Senate applauded the power they had witnessed.

Airon smiled at him “I guess no one liked the Livarious family that much?”

Ziron felt sick to the very core of his being.

Lloyd and Bethany sat next to each other on the settee in the lounge of Amy’s house, each with a large mug of cocoa and some chocolate biscuits. They were currently dressed in thick white bath robes, the type you find in posh hotels, each having had a hot bath. Bethany also had her hair wrapped in a cream coloured towel.

Lloyd smiled to himself as he watched his Mother and Master look through one of her medical journals on venoms and serums; it was weird seeing Darrion dressed in a blue pair of jeans and a t-shirt dedicated to some heavy metal band.  It had been over an hour now since Lloyd and Bethany had told them of all of the events back home...home, he mused, it was weird to think that although he had no permanent residence in Kalana, he did think of it as home. His Mother had been very intrigued about how he had used his magic to save Edala on the beach that day; which seemed so long ago now. He had decided not to mention how he had virtually slaughtered Mal and the other apprentices who had tortured Edala and he also deliberately avoided any mention of what had happened between Wendy Walsh and himself. He had been worried, for a second, that Bethany might have dobbed him in, especially when she raised her eyebrows speculatively as he swerved the bit about Wendy!

Darrion had been very relieved that the Daemon portal had been successfully closed and the Daemen defeated, although at great cost.

His Mother turned from the book with a smile at Darrion, before then turning towards Bethany and himself. The squeaky clean girl took a final sip of cocoa before resting the mug in her lap.

“I think we can do it, but it won’t be fast.” Amy said. Lloyd was amazed that his Mother’s grasp of the common tongue used in Kalana was still excellent; even after a long time without use.

“What do we need to do?” Bethany asked, failing to conceal her excitement at the possibility that her and Edala’s friend Boadaiska could be saved.

Amy turned back a few pages.

“If the Daemon venom is anything like that of a creature on Earth, say a snake, then we will need a lot more venom and probably several weeks of time. Plus an animal, possibly a horse, that we can apply regular small doses of the venom to, to help it build up the necessary antibodies. We will then need to harvest the antibodies from the blood.”

“But we don’t have weeks! Boadaiska’s life is slipping away!” Bethany protested.

“We have no choice Bethany. To generate enough antibodies we are going to need a large animal. I would prefer to do it within the confines of these walls, but small animals will not be strong enough to withstand the venom, or large enough to generate anywhere near the amount of blood we will need.” Amy replied.

“So any idea where we can find an animal?” Darrion asked.

“Well we have several farms in the area, but getting regular access without getting caught is going to be a challenge. I will have a think on it overnight” His wife replied.

“Mum you said we need a lot more venom; is that something you think I will be able to do using magic, like I did with Edala’s blood?”

“Not in the same way, you accelerated the processes within the bone marrow which manufactures the blood. Venom is far more complex, it could have hundreds of different compounds including enzymes and proteins. You would have to try and construct these from scratch! You just wouldn’t be able to see the compounds as they would be far smaller than a cell.”

“Mum,” Lloyd interrupted her, he then looked to Bethany with a nod, before turning back to his Mother, “I think we can, we did something similar within ourselves!”

“What did you do?” A frown creased across Amy’s brow.

“We tried to give ourselves a dragon portal.” Bethany replied earnestly.

“And how did you do that?” Amy asked, concern creeping into her eyes.

“I copied a piece of Arden’s DNA into ours.” Lloyd said as if it was of no great concern.

“WHAT THE HELL LLOYD! DO YOU KNOW HOW DANGEROUS THAT IS?” Amy yelled as she leapt out of the chair and took Lloyd’s head in her hand inspecting him for any sign of change.

Darrion also leant forward “And did you succeed Lloyd, in creating a Dragon Portal?”

Lloyd shook his head “We have silver cells in our blood stream now and they grow a little more each day, but I can sense no other portal, or even see any sign of silver around our own portals!”

“and you have felt no other changes or felt ill, or have unusual pains or”

“Mother will you calm down! We are fine!” Lloyd interrupted his Mother before her rant could continue.

“Now let me get the venom from the fridge and see what I can do!”

When Lloyd returned he sat with the small bottle in his hand and focused his soul vision into the mix of Boadaiska’s blood and the Daemon venom from the arrow.

Although his Mother had explained that venom was not typically a cell, he was convinced that the strange green hooked thing he had seen before was a cell of some kind. He wondered what would happen if he made it touch one of the nearby red blood cells, so he opened his portals so he could nudge it with a piece of power.

“Quadraplanus, Primuspower” The four coloured portals appeared and expanded; the blue air portal was still a little on the small side after the journey from Arrenloft. He first applied a tiny amount of electrical energy from his air portal and this forced the Daemon cell towards a red cell; like it was being directed by a magnet. Initially, when they touched, the smaller blood cell stuck to one of the hooks on the venom cell, then one of the prickly points of the venom thrust forward into the red blood cell and some kind of liquid passed from the venom into the blood cell. Lloyd watched in fascination, from his peripheral vision he also guessed that both Beth and Darrion were also examining what he was doing with their own soul vision.

They watched and waited...and waited.

“Whatever it’s doing it’s very slow.” Lloyd said quietly.

“WOULD ONE OF YOU PLEASE BLOODY DESCRIBE WHAT YOU ARE SEEING!” Amy said in frustration.

“I think the venom is cellular Mum and not how you described, it injected something into a blood cell and we are waiting to see what will happen.”

“Hmmm, you may have to wait hours if it is some kind of cell division process.” Amy added helpfully.

“Okay I will try and speed it along.” Lloyd replied.

“Quadraplanus, Primuspower, power of life, feed it power!”

This was essentially the same spell he had used to save Edala, but this time, without raw emotions blinding his purpose, he was totally in control as he gently fed energy into the red blood cell. Suddenly its colour drained and then began to turn green, it then began to swell in size and the points and hooks of its parent began to sprout from its walls. Lloyd described this to Amy.

“That’s good, so we know it replicates, but we need to know what effect white blood cells have on it.”

Lloyd nodded and hunted for one of the cells which helped fight against attacks on the body. When he found one of the spherical, bumpy white cells, smaller in size than a red blood cell, he moved it towards the two venom cells which had now separated from each other. When the white cell made contact with a venom cell, one of the spikes thrust into the white cell, causing the white cell to burst; however the spike that stabbed it also snapped free.

Again Lloyd described this to his Mum.

“Keep finding the white cells, Lloyd, you should find several different types, but just throw all types at it.”

Lloyd complied, but each type of cell had the same type of effect on the cell, bursting and destroying one of the spikes. Finally though the cells began to stick to the venom cell until it was surrounded and then died with a small pop; the white cells sticking to it dying as well. Lloyd described this to his Mum, who paled when he told her a rough approximation of how many white cells it had taken to kill the venom cell.

“Sounds like we are going to have to use your power, to make sure enough white blood cells can be produced to overwhelm the venom” Amy said to Lloyd.

“That is going to make it very difficult to do it covertly!” Darrion said, looking at his wife.

“Well, we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it!” Amy said, “Now Lloyd keep working on replicating the venom”. Amy walked to a pile of boxes upon which sat her medical bag, she opened this and retrieved four syringes and a tourniquet.

“I will take a syringe full of blood from each of us to add to the venom so that the red blood cells can be consumed to make venom cells.”

With Darrion’s help she tied a tourniquet around her upper left arm and then found a vein in the middle of the arm to take some blood; this she then deposited into the bottle containing Boadaiska’s blood and the Daemon venom. She next turned to Lloyd and did the same. Bethany had gone very pale by the time Amy got to her, “Are you right or left handed?” Amy asked.

“Left” the petrified redhead said. Amy tied a tourniquet to Bethany’s right arm and took some blood. “Right hubby, your turn” she said lifting a needle in front of his equally pale face; his eyes suddenly rolled up and he slumped to the floor before Lloyd and Amy could catch him!

A moment later he started to come to.

“Well I learnt something new about my husband today, he hates needles!”

“I actually hate getting stabbed with anything, that’s why I never carry a sword!” he said with a grimace as he sat up.

“I will start working with what we have.” Lloyd said with a smile towards his Mother and Master, before turning his attention towards the bottle of blood and venom. “Quadraplanus, Primuspower”. His four portals reopened and power began to seep gently into the bottle, under the ever watchful gaze of Bethany.