The Hidden Realm: Book 04 - Ennodius (18 page)

“Let us wait here then,” said Elerian. “I will take the first watch. I am not tired, and my night sight is sharper than yours.”

Slipping off his pack, Elerian sat down with his back to a great, water blackened oak tree, pulling his hood low down over his face. From here, he could watch the cliff face Ascilius had pointed out without being readily seen, for his cloak blended well into the bark of the tree. Shouldering Elerian’s pack, Ascilius silently withdrew under the trees where he took shelter under an overhang of rock.

Ascilius found that it was not much better under the outcropping of rock than it was out in the open, for the cavity under the overhang was shallow, and the gusting wind constantly blew sheets of rain into it. Too discouraged to care about his personal comfort, he sat listlessly against the cold rock at the back of the shallow cave. Pulling his wet cloak tight around him, he fell into a restless sleep.

Under the oak, Elerian passed a miserable night as he kept a close watch on the cliff face. The rain continued all night, and by morning, there was not a square inch of him that was not cold and wet.

Ascilius appeared at first light. Sleeping on cold stone with rain blowing over him all night had not improved the Dwarf's disposition. His face was now as hard and unyielding as stone. Without speaking, he took Elerian’s place under the oak after Elerian stood up. Wrapping himself in his cloak, Ascilius fixed his eyes on the side of the mountain, fixing a burning, unwavering look on the cliff face where the gates were located.

“What a warm welcome,” thought Elerian wryly to himself. “Not a word of thanks for keeping watch all night long in this miserable weather.”

Retreating into the forest, he soon found the same overhang where Ascilius had spent the night. Opening his pack, he found that the well-oiled leather had kept its contents dry. A biscuit washed down with wine from his water bottle served for his breakfast. Closing his pack, he stowed it out of the wet as best he could before settling down to get what rest he could. The wet, gray weather and Ascilius’s sour mood had begun to weigh on him, but it did not weaken his resolve to help the Dwarf.

Huddling under his wet cloak, Elerian tried to rest. Beyond the overhang, the rain continued to fall in steady sheets from the gray sky, making a steady pattering sound as it splashed on the leaf covered ground under the trees. Retreating to the dream paths in his mind, Elerian walked through the vanished beech forest of Fimbria, gaining some relief from the unhappy situation he now found himself in. When the dim light of the gray day finally began to fail, he roused himself.

“Still raining,” he thought to himself, looking out at the downpour falling past the lip of the overhang. “I am not looking forward to another wet night under that oak,” he thought to himself as he ate a light, cold meal. Closing up his knapsack when he was done, he left the inadequate shelter of his shallow cave to relieve Ascilius.

Still in a surly mood, the Dwarf left his post under the oak without a word.

“Good evening to you too,” thought Elerian to himself as he watched Ascilius retreat into the trees. A hard gleam suddenly shone in his gray eyes as he watched Ascilius stamp through a deep puddle that had collected in a depression that lay across his path. Because of Ascilius’s heavy footsteps and the falling rain, there was a great deal of magical energy in the puddle, which looked like a pool of molten silver to Elerian’s third eye. Acting on impulse, he suddenly raised his left hand. A small golden orb, tethered to his hand by a slender golden thread, suddenly flew from his fingers, striking the puddle near Ascilius’s feet.

The orb lengthened and grew, trapping a long cylinder of clear water within its boundaries. The elemental immediately took on the shape of a glistening serpent the length of a man’s leg. Under Elerian’s guidance, the gleaming water snake whipped up Ascilius’s right pant leg with supple speed. Ascilius promptly underwent another of his remarkable transformations. As Elerian’s elemental wrapped its cold, sleek form around his leg, he shot high up into the air.

“Help, a serpent,” he bellowed in a horrified voice, for Ascilius disliked snakes intensely. Before Elerian’s delighted eyes, the Dwarf began to perform a sort of odd dance, vigorously shaking his right leg, while hopping around on his left, all the while vigorously pummeling his right thigh with his knotty fists. As the elemental crept higher and higher up his leg under Elerian’s direction, threatening his most intimate parts, Ascilius’s gyrations increased tenfold so that he became a veritable dynamo of activity. By now, Elerian had tears of laughter starting from his eyes, but he was not done yet. Tearing off a thick limb from a fallen branch that lay on the ground nearby, he ran up to Ascilius and commenced to beat him on the legs and buttocks with his stout branch.

“Hold still, old friend. I will save you,” he shouted as he vigorously plied his branch.

“Ouch! Stop!” roared Ascilius, who had now taken a death’s grip around his upper right thigh with both his powerful hands, desperate to stop his unseen assailant from climbing any higher.

Afraid that he would dissolve into helpless laughter and give himself away, Elerian called his elemental away from Ascilius’s leg. Too quickly for the eye to follow, it slid out of Ascilius’s pant leg and darted off across the forest floor, disappearing into the rain. Elerian broke the magical thread that connected him to the water snake, which reverted back to its liquid form.

Breathing heavily, Ascilius let go of his leg. He had a wild, strained look in his dark eyes, and his left eyelid had begun to twitch wildly.

“Stay away from me, you assassin,” he suddenly roared at Elerian before rushing off into the forest.

“You can thank me later, for saving you from the snake,” Elerian called after the retreating Dwarf. Heedless of the wet, he sat on the ground, holding himself with both arms in an attempt to stifle the laughter that racked his chest.

When he had regained control of himself, Elerian stood and walked back to the same oak under which Ascilius had maintained his vigil. The prank he had just played on the Dwarf was now a part of his treasured memories, his to enjoy whenever he wished, for it would remain forever fresh and clear in his indelible memory.

Sitting with his back against the rough bark of the tree, Elerian laughed quietly from time to time, despite the steady shower of raindrops that dripped down from the leaves above his head, soaking into his cloak and running down his neck and back in steady, cold trickles. He felt the cold, but he was not as troubled by it as a man would have been. His cloak also helped a little, for the heavy wool of which it was made held in his body heat even though it was soaked through.

“I wonder how often dragon’s eat?” wondered Elerian to himself when he finally settled himself into a more serious frame of mind. A disturbing picture of him sitting under the tree for months appeared to trouble his mind. “Well, there is no help for it,” he thought to himself determinedly. “I will sit here until the seasons change if I must.”

 Patiently ignoring the rain, he kept a close watch on the cliff where the faraway gates of the city were located. The gathering darkness did not trouble his night wise eyes, but the rain partially masked his view.

“I doubt that Eboria will emerge into this wet,” he reassured himself.

From time to time, he briefly took his eyes off the cliff, opening his third eye and staring intently at the silver ring on his left hand. The ring’s single blood red ruby still throbbed with a deep crimson light in its depths, regular as a heartbeat.

“At least she still wears my ring,” he thought to himself, wondering how Anthea was faring in far off Tarsius and whether she still thought of him. Concentrating on the golden thread which led from the ring, he cautiously tried to extend some of his shade into it and through the portal at its end.

Elerian started badly when a soft voice suddenly said, “A master ring could be made in the city with the Dwarf's help.”

THE WRAITH

Thoroughly alarmed, Elerian sat up and looked quickly all around him, but he was quite alone.

“Where in the Middle Realm does that voice come from?” wondered Elerian agitatedly to himself. The image of Dymiter's spell book suddenly appeared in his mind.

“If you wish to find out, call my book and open it,” said the mysterious voice.

Hesitantly, for he harbored grave doubts about the source and intent of the voice, Elerian opened his right hand and called Dymiter’s spell book. A moment later, the soft leather bound volume appeared on his open palm. Protecting the book from the rain with a shield spell, hardly daring to breathe, Elerian placed the long, strong fingers of his left hand on the supple cover.

This time, there was no resistance when he opened the book. Black script, written in a fine hand, appeared on the empty white pages that were revealed. Then, Elerian almost dropped the spell book, for his third eye opened on its own, as it was wont to do when there was magic afoot. It showed him the form of a pale, golden shade rising from the pages of the book. When half the shade had emerged, a thin thread of golden light extended from it, touching his right hand. Elerian then heard the same voice in his head that he had heard several times before.

“At last we meet. Greetings to the heir of Fenius, for such you must be to possess and open this book.”

“Who are you?” asked Elerian warily, for he had no good opinion of wraiths, looking upon them with suspicion because of his experiences with them in the past. In his youth, the shade of Drusus had nearly stolen his own body from him.

“I wonder that you have not guessed already,” said the shade in an amused voice. “I am the shade of Dymiter. After my physical death many years ago in Tarsius, I took up residence in the book you hold against the day that it would be opened by an heir of Fenius. You are barely in time, for despite all my care, I have begun to fade.”

At once, Elerian broke contact with the golden thread touching his arm. He knew all too well how wraiths nourished themselves when they became weak. Who was to say that this was truly Dymiter and not some other creature impersonating him in the hope of stealing his life force.

A minute orb of pale gold flew from the shade’s hand, striking his face. Immediately, he heard the wraith’s voice in his mind.

“You need not fear me. If I wished to steal the power I need to stay alive, I could have taken what I required from Anthea, for she had no defense against me.”

“She must have spoken to him, then,” thought Elerian to himself. “He was the source of her knowledge about my history. Still, I had best be on my guard until his motives are more plain to me.”

“How is it that I can still hear you even when we do not touch?” asked Elerian, briefly contacting the wraith again with a slender extension of his own shade in order to convey his question.

“Thoughts can be cast like spells,” replied the wraith. “Try it for yourself.”

“How did you know the book would come to me?” asked Elerian, raising his right hand and casting the thought at the shade.

“I did not know it would come to you specifically,” replied the wraith. “Before my death, I foresaw only that a survivor of the house of Fenius and one of my own descendents would one day find three talismans that I had left behind for them. After the destruction of Fimbria, I fled to Tarsius and prepared the pedestal against that day.”

“How did you see into the future?” asked Elerian, thinking of his own failed efforts to do the same.

“I created an orb,” replied the shade, “which showed the past, the present, and sometimes the future.

“I also created such an orb, but it works only randomly,” said Elerian. “Can you show me where the flaw is in my spells?” he asked, willing to accept advice even from a shade if it meant advancing his magical knowledge.

“Perhaps some other,” replied the wraith. “I have little strength left, and there are other more important matters to attend to first.”

“It might also be that you wish the future to remain a mystery to me,” thought Elerian skeptically to himself, but he did not reveal his doubts to the shade. Instead, he asked another question. “Why did you not reveal yourself to me before? You must have spoken to Anthea at the time she discovered the pedestal.”

“Anthea’s character was made plain to me from the moment when I first contacted her, for she is my own descendant, and we share a close bond,” replied the wraith. “I trusted her at once and did not fear to speak to her. You, on the other hand, were a mystery to me. I wished to observe you first before I revealed myself to you, for your heritage alone was not enough to guarantee my trust. The best stock can give rise to flawed seed; therefore, I wished to see if you had the proper courage and wisdom to use the spells that are contained in the book you hold, for some of them could cause great harm if wrongly used. The greatest and most dangerous of the charms that I have written there would allow you to make a ring of power such as Torquatus wears.”

“Ah yes, the ring you keep urging me to make,” said Elerian suspiciously. “Why did you not make your own ring?”

 “I was afraid,” replied the shade. “To take up the weapons of the enemy is to risk becoming like him.”

“Are you not afraid that the same fate would befall me, if I made this ring of power?” asked Elerian, distrustfully.

“Yes and no,” said Dymiter cryptically. “I learned from looking into my orb that the future is mutable, for the sphere often showed several different results or possible futures for each action that I might take. One your futures showed you wearing a ring of power, but there was no lust for power or dominion in you as a result of wearing it.”

“What did the other futures show?” asked Elerian suspiciously.

“We will speak of that another time,” said the wraith abruptly. “Each time I appear, it diminishes my power a little more. I must leave you now to conserve my strength.”

As Elerian watched with his third eye, the wraith slowly faded back into the book. Of their own volition, the pages of the spell book turned as if a breeze had suddenly blown across them. A treatise on ring lore written in graceful elvish script appeared on the blank pages.

“How convenient,” thought Elerian to himself. “He urges me to make a ring that he fears to make himself and then fades away without answering any of my questions. What did his own futures show, I wonder, to make him afraid to fashion his own ring?”

With deep distrust, Elerian regarded the pages of Dymiter’s spell book. Could he trust this wraith? What had happened in his other futures that the wraith had refused to reveal?

“Did I make the ring and become like Torquatus?” wondered Elerian to himself. “If he appears to me again, I will press him hard for the answer. I must also ask him about the armband and the necklace that Anthea discovered with the spell book,” he thought to himself. “He should at least tell me their purpose.”

Despite the clear feeling that the wraith was manipulating him for purposes of its own, curiosity finally overcame Elerian’s suspicion. Cautiously, he began to read from the open spell book in his hand, for it was near impossible for him to resist new magical knowledge. When the ring spells recorded in the book ended, no writing appeared on the following blank pages, renewing Elerian’s suspicions. No matter how hard he tried to make the invisible writing covering them appear, they remained stubbornly empty.

“So, I am only to have what he allows me,” thought Elerian to himself.

He sighed in frustration as he mulled over what he had read. From his own ventures into the art of ring making, he recognized that the spells he had been shown would indeed make a ring of power, but there was one obvious risk. Since the wraith had never attempted the spells, there was no certainty that they would work.

“I could try them and end up destroying myself,” thought Elerian to himself.

Despite his doubts about the spells, Elerian called his own spell book to his right hand. Unable to resist the lure of new knowledge, oblivious to the wind and rain, he covered page after page with finely scripted letters as he set down Dymiter’s spells.

“Knowledge is knowledge and not to be discarded lightly,” he thought to himself as he wrote.

When he was done, he sent both books away before resuming his watch over the faraway cliff face where the gates to Ennodius were located. His eyes remained fixed intently on the cliff, but his restless mind continued to think of rings, their making, and their properties.

“I would require help to make this ring,” thought Elerian to himself and thought immediately of Ascilius. The Dwarf had the power to help him, but Elerian was certain that he would not be in favor of making a ring of power similar to the one Torquatus wore. Elerian already had the distinct impression that Ascilius disapproved of the idea of magic rings in principle.

 When he was done thinking about rings, Elerian considered Dymiter's claim that he came from the house of Fenius. Despite the wraith’s claim, Elerian did not feel like a prince or even an Elf. It was true that he was strong, quick, and gifted in magic, but he still felt like the youth who had grown up on a simple hill farm. He knew what it meant to feel human, but the nature of an Elf was still a mystery to him.

“As if that were not enough, I am evidently only half an Elf,” he thought to himself. “Will I ever find out what the other half is?” he wondered bleakly.

Putting all his questions aside, Elerian relived some of the times he had spent with Anthea, the memories as clear and real as if they were happening for the first time. Still as stone, he sat the rest of the night, dreaming and keeping watch, but as dawn approached, he suddenly came fully awake, roused by a sudden feeling that the dragon would emerge today. The rain gradually ended, and the dark clouds overhead began to break up. Behind him in the east, the sun rose above the hilltops, turning the undersides of the clouds a vivid orange color.

Suddenly, a sinuous green-gold shape appeared above the flanks of Geminus, its enormous wings shooting it high into the air. Elerian involuntarily pressed his back hard into the rough bark of the tree at his back, but after circling the mountain once, Eboria streaked across the sky, heading in a southwesterly direction.

“She is hunting for me and Ascilius,” thought Elerian to himself, leaping lightly to his feet as soon as the dragon disappeared into the distance. Running back to where the Dwarf was sleeping under the overhang, he shook Ascilius awake.

“The way into the city is finally open!” shouted Elerian, his gray eyes flashing with excitement. “Eboria has gone hunting.”

Ascilius immediately leaped to his feet. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his left hand, he picked up his pack and cloak with his right before running through the trees to the edge of the gorge. Picking up his own pack, Elerian followed on his heels.

“Let us wait a few moments to see if she returns,” said Ascilius cautiously as he struggled to clear the fog of sleep from his thoughts. “She may have set a trap for us.”

Side by side, they waited anxiously under the cover of the trees while the sun rose higher in the sky behind them, but the dragon did not reappear. 

“She must truly have gone hunting,” said Ascilius abruptly. “We must move quickly now, for there is no way to guess how long she will be gone.”

“Let us go under the protection of my ring,” said Elerian. “With the sun in the sky, Eboria will not find it so easy to see us if she does return.”

“Very well,” said Ascilius, “but hurry!”

The Dwarf was burning with impatience to enter the city now that the dragon was gone. He shifted impatiently on his feet while Elerian called his silver ring to his hand. After they both disappeared from sight under the mantle of the ring, Ascilius began climbing eagerly down the side of the river gorge.