The Dragon Healer of Tone (World of Tone) (2 page)

The legends continued with the four remaining Solans defending and providing what help they could to humanity. It was said fifty full sets of seasons later that the black Solan, “Obecka,” was born; a sun-rising that would prove to be the beginning of many dark times for the valley peoples. The birth of Obecka was at first greeted with celebration, for another great Solan now existed to help. As she grew so did her magical powers, which she used to get whatever she wanted, not seeming to care that she hurt others in the process. The four remaining Solans of Tycarr usually stopped her from harming the people who had already suffered the devastation of their world. Over the seasons, however, she ever so slowly became increasingly enraged at being controlled by the others. This eventually drove her to a deadly act. Her magic grew with her overbearing manner until she was the most powerful of all the five Solans. She attracted the four to a cave in the valley of Herston by asking the other Solans for a meeting to discuss her future as their queen. The other four became enraged by her assumption that she would rule them and came to deal with her insolence. As the four angrily waited in the cave for her to join them, Obecka trapped them by diverting a stream over the cave’s mouth and freezing it. The trapped Solans could not penetrate the magically created solid door of ice. She then caused an avalanche that she thought would trap the others only until she could come up with a way of controlling them. Unfortunately, the mountain was very unstable, and the cave started to collapse. The four tried to support it with their power, but the enormous weight of the rock above them finally overwhelmed their combined magic. The cave collapsed killing them all.

Obecka, realizing what she had done, went deep into the mountains and found a dark cave in which to hide. For the first time in her life, she felt guilt for the act she had committed, and over the next several moon risings, her guilt grew, finally driving her mad. In her madness, she decided to punish forever the people who had treated her with disdain.

As a young girl, she thought that her special powers made her greater than the ordinary men and women of the valleys and that they owed her whatever she demanded, but instead they avoided and distrusted her.

Her madness drove her to punish them by taking twenty small black fliers and changing them into monstrous black feathered creatures with twenty foot wing spans that were capable of killing anything moving on land. She called them Averons and trained them to prey upon humans and beasts alike from their nests in the mountains that once protected and now ravaged humanity.

No one had seen Obecka for hundreds of seasons, but her legend grew. The Averons were seen only on the brightest of sun-risings flying about the edge of the valleys looking for their next victim. The legend held that Obecka and her Averons could not come into the valleys because the magic of the four was in the valley mists. The storytellers weaved the song of the icy door created by Obecka and how it slowly melted and absorbed the magic from the blood of the four murdered Solans. The blood red water trickled into the valley streams spreading across the land and eventually evaporated into the mist, combining the power of the four into a magic laden shield that Obecka and her Averons could not or would not enter. The origin of the legend and who first sang of it was lost in the shadows of time. The mist still filled the great valleys sun-rising and sunset protecting the people from the one that would harm them. It was said that one sun-rising a woman would come and gather all the power of the mist. She would then take revenge for the deadly act of murder the black Solan had committed. This one would restore humankind to its proper place in the world. It was thought that a great Solan would be born to accomplish these tasks, since the magical power of healing was born only in the women. No man had ever shown the power of magic, so it was known that it would be a woman who would bring humanity out of the mist and into the world of light. Newborn female babies were always carefully watched to see if the great Solan had come, but none ever appeared, and after many seasons, the search slowly vanished as time swallowed the past, changing it into legend even though the people still held the hope that one sunrise she would come.

One other evil plagued man, the great coastal dragons, which were frighteningly familiar. Little was known about these great beasts; it was thought the dragons killed for food not pleasure. Man was not a favored meal, but would be taken when available. It seemed the dragons liked to stay near their dens in the coastal cliffs where they could bathe and sun themselves. They were able to protect themselves from magic, for it was said that even the black Solan could not affect them. The dragons were beautiful animals with their great wings and multicolored skin, but they were more dangerous than any Averon. They were four to five times larger than the Averons and apparently liked the taste of their flesh, for they could often be seen on clear sun-risings carrying an Averon carcass to their dens. The dragons rarely came close to the human villages and farms even though the mists did not seem to bother them. The farmers kept their plow beasts under roof so the dragons would not see them. Dragons had been known to swoop down from the sky and take an entire plow beast while the farmer was plowing. They would carry the beast as well as the plow away. Once a luckless planter was taken; he had gotten tangled in the plow harnesses and was carried away with the plow beast, never to be seen again. So it came to pass, that the Averons would not venture too close to the dragons’ domain or the valley mists, and the dragons stayed near their coastal dens, leaving the muddy misty valleys to humanity.

Chapter 2 - The Birth of a Child

(Life Forever Starts Anew.)

333 set of seasons since the coming of the Averons

It was a typical sunrise, RAIN; but Reicka was happy for she was pregnant with her first child. She was a beautiful woman with a gentle round face framed by long straight brown hair and a small but strong body. She glowed with life, as her body grew larger with child. Her husband, Adam, was a large muscular man with wavy brown hair, almond shaped eyes, and fair skin. This sun-rising he was in the field trying to divert water away from their seed crop. Reicka’s mother, Sadi, was with her. Sadi was the local healer with minor healing power.

Reicka also had healing magic, but pregnant women did not dare use it because it could weaken them to the point of losing the baby. This had happened to others, and Reicka was not going to take any chances with her first-born. She was in her last sun-rising before the birth. Her pregnancy had given her no problems at all. She thought this was a little odd. Normally, women did have at least some troubles, especially first time mothers. In fact, she felt better than she ever had, even so, her mother made her sit most of the time since it was her first, and she was unusually large. So she sat patiently in the corner with the glow of the fire lighting her knitting, which would one sun-rising, clothe her baby.

Their home was typical of the planters: a low box made of stone blocks that were roughly one man’s foot square. The roof was secar wood, which grew in the valleys. It kept the interior dry but had an odd smell, which the village dwellers disliked. The odor did keep bugs and small vermin away. There were two rooms. The first was large with a stone table and a fireplace for cooking. Four well-worn chairs sat near the fire for warmth. Cooking utensils hung from pegs in the walls surrounding the hearth. A strong bow with long straight arrows hung over the fireplace’s mantel. It was a place of peace and warmth in a world of dampness and cold. The second room was a small bedroom with a bed made of feathers stuffed into a cloth bag. Other than a bed and one chair there was little in this room. The final room was the loft, which was used for food storage. In the loft, food was safe from the hungry animals that lived in the world. A strong ladder was kept by the door and used to enter the loft through a rough square hole in the ceiling. The house was clean and neat, for Reicka did not like disorder.

A second building that was not much more than a roof with supporting timbers stood behind the house. A small area surrounded by a wooden fence encompassed the building, allowing their beasts to move about. The couple had one plow beast, which was kept here along with five jumper beasts, whose ancestors had originally been caught in the mountains before Obecka made it impossible to go there. Adam and Reicka milked the females each sunrise and slaughtered a male in the middle of each cold season. A waist-high rock wall defined the farm boundaries.

That sunset Adam returned exhausted from the sun-rising’s work.

He had managed to save the field. He was a strong man who was able to keep his farm fairly productive despite the rain. For this reason, he fed himself and his family well from his own labor. His mother-in-law had prepared him a good strong stew, which she ladled into a large wooden bowl. Adam took the bowl and a tore off a chunk of bread from the large round loaf in the center of the table. He took his meal to the chair next to his wife and sat near the woman he obviously adored.

“Um! Something wrong, my love?” Adam said in concern.

“I had a cramp; it’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, eat your supper. I’m fine.”

The cramps worsened, and Sadi knew it was her time. As Adam paced the main room, Sadi and Reicka were in the bedroom. Time passed slowly as Reicka’s cries of discomfort became louder and louder. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Adam heard his mother in-law saying, “push, push hard” and then the strong cry of a baby came from the room. Just as he heard the cry, a single ray of sunlight passed through the crude window and lit the bedroom door. The door opened, and Sadi came out holding in her hands a small baby boy who seemed to glow from the light. She handed him his new son, and he held the baby carefully; it was hard for the baby was large and full of life. He wiggled about in his father’s large arms. Adam looked into the face of the small life within his grasp and was struck by the baby’s eyes. They looked as if they were carved from an ancient piece of hardwood that had been colored with age, in deep rich orange and brown tones and gleamed with mirror-like gloss. He had never seen eyes of such color or depth. His son’s small round face glowed with health and strength.

Adam had not expected such a child because the other newborns he had seen were small and weak with little life within their frail bodies.

Over the next few sun-risings, Reicka recovered from the birth. The baby was larger than any she had seen in the village, but the birth was much less difficult than she had expected. There was little pain, and it seemed almost a pleasure to birth this son of hers. The baby grew stronger and stronger as the sun-risings passed. He was a quiet baby who cried little, but when he did cry, it could be heard all over the farm.

Several of the neighbors visited and said they were lucky to have such a fine strong child, for it was not uncommon for a baby to die during or just after birth.

Chapter 3 - The First Year of Life

(Life is learned by Stages.)

334 set of seasons since the coming of the Averons

For the first three full moon risings, it was the custom not to name a new baby. The child was watched, and a name was chosen based on the child’s personality. In this case, the baby boy was named Terra. He seemed to love to crawl around in the dirt making the name obvious.

When Terra was seven full moon risings old, an odd thing happened.

Reicka was chopping some vegetables for supper when the knife slipped. Her index finger was cut almost to the bone. Once she recovered from the pain, she tried to heal the cut with magic, but it was too deep, and she was only able to stop the bleeding. Terra came crawling to his mother as she sat in her chair. He had heard her scream and wanted to see if his momma was all right. Reicka was trying to bandage the cut when Terra reached up and touched her finger. In an instant, his little hand began to glow orange, and her finger completely healed in a few moments. Reicka was so surprised; she dropped the bandage and just stared at her little son. Unconcerned, he moved away to find his toy drum.

When Adam came home that sunset, Reicka told him the story, but he had a hard time believing that his son possessed magic powers. No man had ever been gifted with magic, let alone healing magic. So Reicka took his finger and pricked it and brought Terra to him. Terra reached for his father’s hand and healed it in the same way he had healed his mother.

“Reicka, we should not mention this to others.”

“Why?”

“If others knew, they might try to take Terra away from us so they could control his power.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

The new parents kept the secret of their son’s powers except for one, Sadi, Reicka’s mother. When Sadi was told, she wanted to see the child’s power. Reicka pricked her finger, and little Terra healed it. Sadi was surprised and seemed a little worried about Terra’s power.

“What’s wrong, Mother?”

“Well, there is an old legend about a man that would heal the Dragons. I don’t know much about it, but I understand that he would be in much danger even with his power.”

“Do you think it is Terra?”

“Oh, I don’t think anything bad could happen to you and your little one.”

Sadi held an awful truth from her daughter, hoping it would not be true for them. She did tell them that their decision to keep Terra’s magic a secret was right. Sadi knew that if the villagers found out they would want Terra and since they had little respect for the farmers, they might come and take him just to heal their bodies. She knew he had an unusual future in store, but what, she could not conceive.