When Dragons Rage

46

Kerrigan awoke with a start. Bok had clapped a knotty hand over his mouth, stifling an outcry. The mage clawed at the hand, but could not move it. The urZrethi’s hand remained in place for a moment or two more than it needed, then finally moved away as Kerrigan stopped fighting him.

The young mage blinked his burning eyes. He’d not intended to fall asleep when guided to his chamber. He just lay down on the bed while Bok went for the luggage and shifted things around. He remembered yawning and deciding to close his eyes for a moment—then the hard press of Bok’s hand on his mouth brought him back to consciousness.

Rym Ramoch, standing there at the foot of the bed, shook his head. “I asked you to awaken him, Bok, not scare him.”

The urZrethi sank to the floor in a low crouch and mewed an apology.

Kerrigan pulled himself upright and banged his head on the headboard. “Ouch.”

“Don’t be doing that, Kerrigan. We can’t have you dashing your brains out when we need them.” Ramoch moved stiffly to an overstuffed chair near Bok’s corner and seated himself. “I apologize for my absence, but when you detoured into Bokagul, reaching you was too difficult. Knowing your goal, however, I was able to come here ahead of you. I have learned some things that might be useful in your quest.”

“Learning how to detect fragments of the DragonCrown?”

“The same. But first, however, I need to know what happened in Bokagul.”

Kerrigan yawned as Bok slunk across the room to Ramoch’s side. The elder mage idly tangled fingers in the urZrethi’s hair and scratched him as one might a dog. The younger man smoothed a wrinkle from the blankets upon which he’d slept, then began to recount his adventures beneath the mountains. Rym Ramoch did not interrupt him, and because his face was masked and shadowed, Kerrigan had trouble telling if he was even listening.

When he finished his recital, the crimson-robed mage nodded solemnly. “The power you displayed is impressive. If you are able to harness that and direct it toward our goal, Chytrine will not be able to stand against you. And this thing with Will and his blood is surprising. You’ve seen nothing like this before from him?”

“Well, he curses all the time, but this… I could feel the magick pulsing off him. The effect his blood had on the Aurolani and their allies was horrible—and incredible. Even when we were leaving, after the hallway had been washed clean, I could still detect the magick. It would not surprise me if an araftü flying above that spot would not be stopped by the columns of power marking where his blood lay.”

Ramoch drummed his right index finger on the arm of his chair. “Something must have happened to him. What was different?”

Kerrigan shrugged his shoulders. “I think maybe he likes Princess Sayce, and she had been hurt when he acted.”

“A factor, certainly, for it lent power to the oath, but something else.”

“Well, before Bokagul, while you had me, he had been bitten by a sullanciri and said a woman in white healed him. He has two burn scars on his neck and is always cold.”

The elder mage’s head came up. “You have examined him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And he seems normal.” Kerrigan frowned. “Normal except that I can’t detect the scars. They should be there and wrong, but his body seems to have accepted them.”

Ramoch pressed the fingers of his left hand over his mouth for a moment. “That is fascinating. Watch for more symptoms, more signs.”

“What is it? Is he okay?”

“I’m sure he’s fine. More than fine, actually. Still, it will bear watching.” Ramoch nodded. “Now, tell me, did you notice anything particular about his magick? Something that marked it as his?”

Kerrigan smiled. “I thought of that. Not at the time; we were too busy fighting. But later when I got a chance to examine the places his blood had fallen, there was something about it that had an essence of Will. It’s very hard to describe. When I cast a diagnostic spell, I would get odd echoes in the back of my mind: hearing a word as he spoke it, or catching a flash of his grin, or even seeing him as he was in Yslin, running away from me.“

That latter memory brought a frown to Kerrigan’s face. Granted that had been before Will had known him, but Will had run from a gang of youths beating him up. Had the situation been reversed, Kerrigan would have waded in to help. At least, I think I would have. Will had apologized, and had since become his friend, but some bitterness remained because of that incident. Because of it I was given the dragonbone armor to protect me.

“This is good, Kerrigan, very good. You are sensing his essence. Your mind is relating that to memories you have of him. This indicates you are capable of perceiving a great deal more information related to a spell than most other mages.”

Kerrigan smiled. “I’ve had a chance to think more on that, too, based on our previous conversations and what I noticed in Bokagul. I’ve identified at least seven different dimensions I think I should be able to find in a spell. They are: Person, School, Race, Nature, Intent, Influence, and Power Source. Person, School, and Race I know are there. I picked up on the difference between a diagnostic spell cast by Prince Murfin of the Caledo Academy and the one I would cast. Since I know it was a diagnostic, I guess I got Nature, and Intent, too. Influence I know about from you, since you said I have the taint from the DragonCrown.”

“And Power Source?”

He frowned. “I have cast spells that draw on my own physical strength. That’s how I learned to do things at Vilwan, but then there are some other spells I’ve cast in an emergency, like diagnosing and healing the urZrethi infant in the womb. I wasn’t tired afterward. It was as if the energy for that spell was taken from somewhere else. I could guess my further training at Vilwan might have showed me how to access other power sources.”

“Clearly, Kerrigan, you were shown those paths, but in a subtle manner so you do not have conscious control of those flows. Were this not true, you’d not have been able to draw from those sources.” Ramoch waved his left hand idly. “That matters not at the moment, however. Your analysis is very good, and there are dimensions you have missed, but those are largely inconsequential—temporary things dealing with local factors at the time of the casting. Your further thoughts?”

“Well, I thought about how it would be possible to remove the taint from someone or some thing. The closest analogy I can come up with is thinking of the item as a piece of cloth that has a stain on it. You have to clean the item, dye it, or put a patch over that stain. Patching would be the most crude, but could take as little as laying another enchantment over the first. Wheele—the Aurolani mage who killed my mentor—did that sort of thing to hide a spell beneath another spell. I did that with my duplicate fragment of the DragonCrown. The problem there is that, if one looks closely, the patch can be detected, and then the real stain can be seen, as you managed when sorting the dragonbone armor from the DragonCrown taint on me.“

“Your analogy will suffice, however weak. Overdyeing, then, would be a more integral form of patching. You would weave more magick through the item to draw a searcher away from the stain, making it appear to be part of some other pattern.”

Kerrigan nodded. “I guess so, yes.”

“And cleaning?”

The young mage shifted uneasily on the bed. “That I am not sure of. It would require getting into the fabric of the spell, separating out the tainted aspects, and substituting something else—which may or may not have its own taints. Just taking the time to get in to identify the taints and their parts and what they do in the spell would take a long time. Crafting replacements would take a long while as well, and then actually doing the cleansing, well… That would be very difficult.”

“But could it be done?”

Kerrigan’s shoulders rose and fell abruptly. “The trick is keeping other taints out. In a ritual setting, in an arcanorium where all was calm, where all ingredients were pure, where all outside influences were eliminated, it might be possible to minimize those things.”

“And might it be possible to fashion yet another spell, a thaumaturgical simulacrum, that would actually insert trace influences such that your weaving could have the racial taint of an elf, or the training taint of someone from Caledo?”

The young mage’s eyes opened in surprise and his head went back, banging off the headboard again. “Ouch!” He rubbed at the rising lump on his head and let the pain disguise his surprise. If someone could do that, they could hide the intent of a spell, taking a mage off-guard completely. They could lay blame for something on someone else. They could do almost anything.

“I guess that would be possible.”

“It might be necessary. The question for you is this: are your spells identifiable as being cast by a human, or do your elven spells seem elven?”

“I don’t know.” Kerrigan frowned. “Why is that important?”

Bok grunted as if that were one of the most stupid questions he’d ever heard.

“In your analysis, you’ve forgotten one very important thing. It is this: how are you going to detect all these aspects of spells?”

“With a spell.”

“Very good. Now, with the patch idea, you have a spell hiding aspects of another spell. What if the patch is reactive? What if the patch is a spell designed to send a different message back to the caster depending upon aspects of the spell being used to monitor it?“

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Take Will, for example. You can see the scars on his throat, yet the spell you cast on him does not reveal him as changed at all. Clearly, from the scars, from the magick that accompanied his oath and the spilling of his blood, he is different.” Ramoch opened his gloved hands. “You used an elven diagnostic spell on him?”

“It’s the best one I know.”

“It’s the only one likely to be cast on him in your company, isn’t it?”

Kerrigan nodded slowly. “Human diagnostic spells work fine for assessing trouble, but the elven is better. UrZrethi would be another possibility, but unlikely.”

“So, a spell masking what was done to him that reported back null results in response to human, elven, or urZrethi spells would effectively hide what was done to him. And any other dimensions of that spell that might reveal the identity and intent of the caster.”

“Yes, exactly.” Kerrigan slowly began to smile. “And any masking spell that was used to hide a fragment of the DragonCrown might similarly be tailored to deflect spells depending on the race of the person using it, the school of magick, or the very spell itself.”

Rym Ramoch clapped his hands. “Splendid; you have it.”

“Do I?” Kerrigan frowned again. “I’m actually pretty confused. I have the key to learning what happened to Will? I have the key to finding the DragonCrown? I have the key to hiding the taint on me?”

“Some of all.” The crimson-robed mage pressed his fingertips together. “Among those dimensions you mentioned, there is some overlap. The taint of the DragonCrown is mostly tied to the source of your magickal energy. It is an item of power and has poisoned the source of your power. When you draw on your personal strength, it bleeds into the spells. When you are summoning other energy, there is much less of the taint. It is good you are here in Caledo because the magickers here rely on a ritual purification before working important spells. You will learn this from them, and flood pure energy into yourself. That should burn out most all of the DragonCrown taint.”

“And the armor?”

“That should be the least of your worries. There are few who would recognize the spell, and the sense of intent you give it is entirely different from the previous user.”

The younger mage stared intently at his new mentor. “If I heard you correctly, I could assume you were around when Kirun was alive.”

“You could, and you could be wrong. Recall my mention of simulacra previously. A simulation might not be exact, but sufficient for my purposes.”

That defense, Kerrigan noticed, was not a denial.

“Your first job here will be to cleanse yourself, Adept Reese. Listen to what they tell you to do and follow their instructions completely. This is one spell you will not need to modify. Not yet, at least.”

He arched an eyebrow. “But someday?”

“If all goes as planned, yes, but this is far afield from where we need to be now.”

“And after that?”

“I would have thought it would be obvious.” Ramoch cocked his head slightly to the right. “Mask spells identify searching spells through particular dimensions. Once they know what the spell is, they know what results to let it report. You need to fashion your own spell that will confound the masks and allow you past them.”

“I can see that. With your help, I’m sure I can do it.”

“You’ll have to do without my help.” Ramoch held a hand up. “No one can know I’m here, Kerrigan. Though Caledo’s people are stalwart, there are those who are agents for the enemy. If Neskartu learns I am here, there will be yet more trouble than any of us want. I will come to you as I can, but my presence must remain a secret.”

“But… If I need you?”

Ramoch stood and bowed in his direction. “You may think you need me, Kerrigan Reese, but you are wrong. All you need is already inside. I am but a catalyst—for now, anyway. Nothing you will face here will require more than your native caution and intelligence. If that were to change, you would have my help.”

Kerrigan snorted. “So if I don’t see you, I can handle anything I face?”

“Yes, that, or I’ve been slain by the enemy.”

“That’s not much comfort.”

“I didn’t mean it to be.” Ramoch laughed. “There is little comfort to be had in these dire times. Accept that as a fact, then work to change it.”