Soul of the Sorcerer - Part Three: Daughter of the Dragon (5 page)

The stream of blood was running from her chest towards the side of her body, and where it reached the edge of her clothing a tiny thin strand hung suspended in mid-air about 3 inches from the surface of the plinth.

“Why does she look like she is frozen in time?” Bethany turned to ask the old man form of Ingemar. He had, however, withdrawn back into his melancholy encrusted shell.

“It’s bizarre isn’t it?” Lloyd added intrigued. He switched on his soul vision again and he stifled a gasp of surprise at how the image of the room changed before his eyes. So focussed had he been moments before, with his body craft, that he had missed the splendour around him. Within the azure beams of light he could see rivulets of silver energy, rippling down and surrounding the bodies on the plinth, he noticed that a body, on the next nearest plinth, a tall lady in fine dress, had a dark blue hand sized shadow just below her neck, but he ignored her and refocused his vision on Boadaiska. He could see now her serene face with her long blond hair plaited into a long ponytail. This lay alongside her body near the suspended strand of her blood.

He felt Kenelm step beside him, "She almost looks like she still clings to life, friend Lloyd.” The monk said with an awed sadness.

“Do you know anything about this magic?” Lloyd asked.

“The monks of Arrenloft have never dared venture here, so I very much doubt it.”

Lloyd very slowly and cautiously pushed his soul vision into the barrier; he was suddenly nearly overwhelmed by the impact of total stillness and Kenelm and Allen rushed quickly to catch his arms as he swayed, looking like he was about to fall.

“I’m okay” he managed to say, still feeling a little dizzy. He sent his mind towards the drop of blood which hung suspended and zoomed into the strand of red tinged with green, he zoomed until he could see a collection of blood cells; he also recoiled at the much larger thing which was no doubt a part of the Daemon venom, it was a very translucent green with strange hooks and points like icicles.

Lloyd zoomed into a red blood cell and gasped when he realised that at the molecular level there was still movement. He pulled his mind out of the cell and studied it closer, he waited and waited.

“Has he lost control?” Kenelm asked Beth with worry.

“No, he’s fine, just concentrating.” She replied, focussing on Lloyd with her soul vision.

“YES!” Lloyd suddenly said making her jump. “What is it?” she asked.

“Give me a minute!” he replied with determination.

He moved his mind into Boadaiska’s body and examined the crossbow shaft and wound. “I can’t believe this, but the shaft has only grazed her lung, it’s not penetrated it at all, I think it is the Daemon venom that coated the crossbow that is actually killing her.”

“Killing her, you mean she still lives?” Arden said right beside Lloyd making all of them jump, none of them had noticed him hobble up.

“Yes I believe that she still clings to life, but time is still passing within the beam, so she will still die if we cannot do something!”

“What about your Mother, friend Lloyd, would she know what to do?” Kenelm asked.

“Yes I have no doubt.” Lloyd said with determination. Inside, his stomach churned in frustration as he wanted so desperately to find Edala...he sighed to himself “Sorry my love, I am coming, but not as fast as I like, or as you may appreciate!”

“What do you need?” a strong deep male voice spoke and in place of the old man stood the hulking form of Arden the gold miner. Lloyd felt though, that he still somehow looked older and frailer than he had done when they first met.

“Arden?” Bethany looked up at the giant man, “How on earth do you manage to change your clothes when you change form?”

Arden smiled a warm smile, hope no doubt starting to return to a heart that had been shrouded in darkness. “Although I am no Sorcerer, I am not without my own kind of magic! Now Lloyd, tell me what we need to do?”

“First I am going to have to go home to my world and my Mother. I will need to take a sample of Boadaiska’s blood containing the venom with me. We will then have to pray to God... the Gods and the Lord Creator, to hope she can make an anti-venom.” He had seen television programmes about snake venom and felt that surely it would not be too different.

“Then I will need to bring my Mother back here and any medical equipment she thinks will give Boadaiska the best chance of survival.”

Lisa pushed forward and looked with reverence at the giant man, “My king, I have a vial here that may be used to contain your lady’s blood.” She took a small glass bottle from one of her dress pockets and pressed it into her King’s hand. The physical contact with Arden made her shiver involuntarily with excitement.

“You know friend Arden, I used to have that effect on women as well!” Kenelm said with a smile. Arden smiled with affection at the monk “I have no doubt my friend, but how can we get the blood? Even I dare not put my hand in the light of preservation and I will not turn it off lest it hasten Boadaiska’s demise.”

“Leave that to me.” Lloyd said with a determined look on his face. He focussed his mind on the tiny string of blood suspended in the air and carefully surrounded it with an electrical charge from his air portal. He then began to try and manipulate the charge to drag the blood out of the beam.

“Boy this is hard work!” he said clenching his teeth. It felt like trying to pull a tree stump out of the ground. He remembered from his training on the Isle of Retreat that using magic this way, outside a well-defined spell, was particularly hard and draining.

“Here let me help,” Bethany added; he felt a sudden rush of power as she merged a flow of electrical energy from her air portal with his. Allen reached to support her as she swayed slightly with dizziness.

“Blimey you weren't joking!” she said grimly as she added the weight of her mind to the young Sorcerer. A sudden snapping sound combined with a tiny and brief flicker of the azure beam, or light of preservation, as Arden had called it and they suddenly had the blood outside the beam. Bethany eased off her power as Lloyd carefully lifted the bottle to capture the blood. His own portals closed as he turned off the power and he placed the cork stopper into the top. “Right we need to move as fast as we can!” He said looking at Beth.

“Anything I can do?” the Dragon-Man asked.

“You can stoke me and Bethany up!” Lloyd smiled.

“Pardon?” the confused Dragon-Man did not understand the old Earth reference to stoking the boiler to get more power.

“Give our soul portals more power so that we can translocate further!” Lloyd chuckled while patting Arden on the shoulder.

Arden opened his dragon portal and moved it over to consume Lloyd’s smaller air portal, Lloyd felt tiredness lift as his portal grew to more than double its normal size. When Arden moved his now smaller portal to Bethany’s she gasped as the energy charged into her portal.

Lloyd then turned to Kenelm and Allen, “Listen, I am sorry but I think we need to move fast; so Beth and I will leap ahead to the Stones on Arrenloft.” Allen was about to protest but Kenelm quietened him with a hand.

“Friend Lloyd, do whatever you must to save our friend. I know that dragging the two of us has been a strain. Friend Allen here can keep friend Arden company. I on the other hand will start my own journey on foot to Arrenloft and see the impact that world events have, or have not, had up there!”

“Before we go Arden, where is Larissa?” Lloyd asked.

The giant man’s face darkened slightly, “She is on the plinth next to my wife Daria over there.” He pointed and Lloyd headed in that direction, the group including Arden followed after.

As they passed Queen Daria, Lloyd paused to examine the ethereal beauty. She was as distinctive looking as her husband; upon her breast lay a silver pendant of a dragon rearing, and at its heart a ruby. Lloyd knew immediately that this was a magic item and that it was this that had cast the dark blue shadow in his soul vision.

“What is the pendant?” he asked Arden. The giant man smiled sadly with love in his eyes as he looked at his long dead wife. The grey sheen of death quite clearly showing in her skin tone. “It was a gift from the Gods, an artefact to allow my family to store memories. You see the strange thing with being immortal, is that my memory is not. I can still remember many strong events such as the first day my Queen and I kissed, but generally they all fade. I can't even remember the true names of the Gods these days! So the pendant was a way for us to store other memories which we felt were important to keep.”

“A bit like a diary I suppose.” Lloyd replied “So why not keep it yourself?”

“Memories are painful Lloyd Brook, I’m sure even you are aware of this by now?”

Lloyd sighed in agreement. Unfortunately two memories returned to mind, the first his guilt ridden liaison with Wendy on the beach at the Isle of Retreat, the second, the beautiful yet terrifying vision of Edala as a dragon.

He turned to the next plinth and looked at the long haired beauty that was Larissa. His heart tightened, wow she was very like Edala. Unlike Boadaiska she had been dressed in attire suitable for one to lay in rest.

“Larissa, I promise I will find your daughter and never ever let her down again.” He said and then turned to Bethany.

“You ready Beth?”

She nodded. “We should have enough juice to get us all the way to the stones from here.”

As she had not been to Arrenloft before, having been trained on the Isle of Retreat, she let Lloyd guide their consciousness through the passages of Dragonmight, across the Daydark forest, and then to Arrenloft and the circle of stones.

Before finally casting the translocation spell they nodded their goodbyes to Arden, Kenelm and Allen. Allen smiled shyly at Bethany “Be safe Beth. And you your Highness, err Lloyd.” He added suddenly remembering that technically he was Lloyds self-appointed royal guard. Lloyd smiled at Allen and then turned to Arden;

“Keep an eye out for a signal from us when we return to the stones, just in case we need your help.”

The giant man nodded at Lloyd, who then turned back to Bethany. They then spoke the words and vanished in a flash of light.

They appeared right in the centre of the stones on the plateau above Arren’s Rise and both examined their air portals, “Mine still looks pretty stoked!” Bethany said with a smile, using the word she had learned from Lloyd.

Lloyd nodded, “Even so let’s rest for an hour before travelling to my world. I will need all of your power Beth so that I can translocate to my home when we arrive.”

“Is there much more to teach me about your world Lloyd?” Bethany asked; over their time together Lloyd had taught not just her, but also Allen and Kenelm, many things about Earth, its peoples, language and technology.

“No not really.” he replied, but then corrected himself “Well loads actually, but I think you will just have to learn the rest by experiencing it. Might not be a bad idea to refresh your memory on a few basics of the English language though.”

Lloyd wished he had more time with which to really prepare the bubbly redhead, as he would have used the techniques Darrion had used to teach him and his Mum back when all this had started.

Bethany listened intently as Lloyd started to teach her again the essentials of greetings, gratitude and niceties, which would get her through most initial encounters with people back home. Bethany was an enthusiastic learner and she grew more and more excited as the time to depart using the stone circle approached.

The City of Kon, Heart of the Crescent Empire. It sounded grand, it sounded like it should look like a shining beacon of Civilisation. It was, instead, only grand in one respect; size.

Having started as two small settlements on either side of a bridge spanning the great river after which the city was to become named, Kon had grown, year on year, century upon century. To walk from one side to the other took days. Kon was a place where all, other than wizards, were welcome. All races, colours, sizes, rich and poor, it mattered not. Kon was a place where no one remembered the race of the first settlers. Although some would say it was the people, who on Earth would be known as Oriental and that these people had arrived from the west.

Like its people, Kon’s architecture was a mishmash of all shapes and sizes; however, all workmanship was of a reasonable standard. Temples ranged from large square buildings with steeples, dedicated to one or more of the six Gods, to those with shining domes dedicated to the Lord Creator. These reflected light from the sun which felt like a hot poker in the eye, it was impossible to stare for longer than a second.

The abodes of the civilians of Kon were equally variable, not only in size and style, but also whether they were fortunate enough to be connected to any of the City's services, some for example were in sectors where sewers had been built, others also had access to a collection of aqueducts which, by using clay pipes, supplied the house with fresh water. These aqueducts were filled by a large number of wind turbines outside of the city, where the river was clean and above the tidal point of the river where fresh and salt water mixed.

The city itself, due to the way it had grown over the years, was a complex place to navigate around, sometimes there were thoroughfares wide enough for carriages to pass, in other places it would be difficult for even two people to pass.

In many of the smaller streets the overhang of buildings were so close to each other that the road below, no matter how bright the day, was nearly always in twilight. In all the areas where there were no sewers the streets stank and disease was always quick to thrive and take the poorest of souls. Like all great cities the poorest of its denizens were never very far from the wealthiest of citizens.   

  Because of its size, to help with management of resources and services, such as fire control and policing crime, the city was divided into a number of boroughs or wards, overseen by an Ealdorman.
(An alderman in modern language)

The daughters of Ingemar lived in a borough called Oldwealth which had been the Ward of Ealdorman Trevainian for about twenty years, and his father and father’s father before him. Oldwealth, was originally, hundreds of years ago, a country residence for the very wealthy merchants of Kon who used to stay there as a summer retreat. Over the years the main city boundaries grew and grew until the country estates of the wealthy were swallowed and in some cases flattened and replaced with a multitude of residences and commercial buildings.

The wealthy, of course, moved up wind ahead of the growth of the city, like a surfer on a filthy river rip tide;  leaving in their wake many empty old buildings to be rented or sold to the wave of new, usually poorer, residents following behind. Being up wind from the poor also meant that the wealthy experienced the fresh air before it was
fouled
by the stench of the lower classes.

The house of the daughters of Ingemar (not that it had a big banner saying that you understand), was a four story building in the very heart of Oldwealth. It was an old building now, but had been well maintained by the daughters. It was part of a terrace of three similar properties, each having a solid cast iron door and four windows on each floor. The daughters’ house had been painted a soft red recently and this colour was complemented by soft gold flowers blooming in a window box under each window.

Edala plucked a single flower and gently placed it in her hair.

“Careful child, don’t let Umaia catch you picking her Golden Clovers, she uses them to add a special flavour to one of her wines!” Maria said with a fond smile at Edala, who, this morning, was completely unrecognisable from the street urchin who terrorised Ealdorman Trevainian a few days ago.

Maria reached up and adjusted the flower in Edala’s hair,

“Light blue is normally your colour, but it does complement your dress today.”

Edala looked down at the beautifully crafted light blue dress, with a white lace neck line that Maria had made for her, she daren’t upset her elder sister and say that she only really felt comfortable in her leather leggings, long boots and of course her concealed daggers!

“It’s lovely thank you, I’ve never felt so lady like.”

“Will you two stop jibber jabbering and finish loading up the wagon!” Justina ordered as she emerged from the front door with two crates full of her
exotic
baking. Edala chuckled; Justina too was looking a little out of place in a clean pale coloured dress, she was also spotlessly clean, her mousy hair tied in two neat buns; one on each side of her head.

Once Justina had loaded her crates, she jumped onto the driver’s seat and was soon joined by Edala and Maria after they helped Umaia with some more crates of wine. Amelia’s wares, being jewellery, were not that cumbersome and the tall pale girl carried them in a small wooden box under one arm. The wagon was quite large and had an arched canopy for protection from the elements, Umaia and Amelia sat together, huddled underneath this, surrounded by bedding and the crates of goods they were taking on the one day journey to the royal market. All of the sisters had a small purse filled with coppers in their hands and as the wagon pulled away from their house, they dispensed, as prudently as possible, coins to the poor, all of whom in Oldwealth knew the reputation of the sisters when it came to dispelling darkness with kindness.