The Sorcerer's Destiny (The Sorcerer's Path) (25 page)

“I do.”

“Good, now fly off and attack me. Show me what you have learned.”

Sandy banked to the left and Mordigar to the right. She flew a long circuit around the mountain for several minutes before climbing to a higher altitude. It did not take long for her to spot Mordigar drifting lazily along a warm air current, pretending to be oblivious to everything around him. Sandy adjusted her angle, matched his heading, and called on a tailwind to silently catch up to him. She brought her wings in close and angled them to prevent the wind from rustling the leathery membranes and betraying her approach.

She kept herself centered on the bright disc of the sun just in case Mordigar happened to glance in her direction. A smile spread across Sandy’s face as she neared striking distance. She curled her toes inward so her incredibly sharp talons would not rake Mordigar’s back as she homed in on the spot just ahead of his wings. A moment before she could deliver a thump between his shoulder blades, Mordigar dropped ten feet, rolled onto his back, and delivered a stunning blow to Sandy’s side and belly with his tail.

Sandy suddenly knew what a fly must feel when it gets swatted as she began an uncontrolled tumble to the ground. She writhed in midair, twisted her wings, and slung her tail around in an effort to right herself and regain control. Still falling too fast to regain altitude, runes flared across her body, and a great geyser of water sprung from the lake below and struck her in the belly. She rode the column of water into the lake where she struck with an enormous splash and a brief shout of profanity that got cut off as she began coughing out large quantities of water.

Mordigar landed next to the lake with a dull thump and a powerful wind kicked up by his wings. “You failed.”

Sandy shook her head and looked up at her mentor. “You think? What did I do wrong? I had the sun at my back just like you told me to.”

“Having the sun at your back is not always optimal, particularly when it is also at your foe’s back. I was able to see your shadow on the ground, and when yours and mine converged I knew you were within striking distance. Also, you must use your magic to part the wind in front of you. I was able to feel the air pushing ahead of you upon my back.”

“Oh. You didn’t have to hit me so hard.”

“I have confidence in your abilities and cleverness. I felt you were ready for more vigorous training.”

“Well, you nearly killed me! How would that have made you feel?” Sandy demanded.

“If my assessments were misplaced then I would have felt annoyed with having wasted my time on you.”

“Oh.”

“Do not dwell on what could have been. Focus on what is happening now. I have seen people of all races waste a lifetime on what might have been. Dwelling on things you can no longer change is to squander the preciousness of life. Learn from what has happened and move forward. Are you ready to continue?”

“I am.”

“Good, now listen well. You will certainly be outnumbered, particularly in the sky. This means you will find yourself on the defensive far more often than not. However, a good defense can prove to be even more effective than a desperate offense. Take to the sky, and I shall show you.”

Sandy heaved herself into the air and Mordigar followed, rising into the sky in lazy, concentric circles as the warm updraft aided their wing beats. The ground fell away then sped past as the two dragons took up a game of chase. Sandy dropped lower, and Mordigar dived to follow. She spied his shadow rippling along the contours of the ground and watched it quickly catching up to hers. She waited until the two silhouettes nearly converged, rolled onto her back, and lashed out with her tail just as Mordigar had done to her. The giant wyrm grabbed her tail and yanked it with enough force to make her yelp in pain and throw her roll into a tumble.

“You will not surprise me with my own tricks. You are neither stupid nor unimaginative. Use your cleverness to devise countermoves of your own. If you try to fight your foes with tooth and claw, then you are on a short path to defeat.”

Sandy accepted the rebuke and studied her surroundings as Mordigar had taught. She called upon the power invested in her runes and summoned a powerful wind to greatly increase her speed. She understood now why Azerick had done what he did and knew it was a painful choice for him to make knowing it would hurt her deeply. Without the runes, Mordigar and most other dragons would make short work of her in the air, but with them, she was a match for almost any dragonkind and better than most. She sensed the use of dragon magic and knew Mordigar was calling upon his own innate abilities to speed his flight in order to keep up.

The younger dragon dived for the ground and glanced behind her to ensure her mentor was close behind. Azerick’s rune magic was not her only source of power however. Using her sand dragon heritage, she called up a fierce dust storm and dived into the heart of it. Despite the sudden drop in visibility, Sandy was far from blind. Racing through the gritty cloud, she barked out short, sharp roars, and her ears created a sort of map in her mind as it processed the returning echoes. One of the advantages of spending a great deal of time beneath the surface was the ability to see without one’s eyes.

“Very good, young one!” Mordigar called out behind her.

Sandy darted for a series of ravines and deep fissure cutting through the mountainous region like knife wounds on the skin of the world and pulled her dust storm along behind her. She weaved around jutting rocks as she raced through a twisting labyrinth of cuts and draws. Despite her obscuring cloud and evasive moves, Mordigar stayed close on her tail, and she could hear him chortling his pleasure at her seeming inability to shake him.

“I may not be able to see well, youngling, but my memory is impeccable despite my great age.”

Sandy knew Mordigar was following her by sound as well as memory and led him toward her trap. She remembered a low waterfall spanning the gap between the walls of one of the canyons along which tracked a narrow but deep river. Sandy called to the stones lining the canyon, pulled them free with her magic, and bombarded the elder dragon. Mordigar swooped right and left, avoiding most of the stones and letting his powerful wards deflect the others. Sandy knew the old dragon would not be phased by such a simple assault, but such was not her intent. Her earth runes flared and the waterfall’s riverbed rose several feet. Sandy skimmed just over the crest with Mordigar practically shadowing her every move. With any luck, he would not differentiate between the magic used to raise the ground from that which caused the continual dust storm and falling stones.

Sandy heard a great splash and cursing as Mordigar struck the lip of the falls. He began laughing when he realized what his student had done, but sandy was intent upon cutting that laughter short. He was off-balance, and it now was her best chance to make a decisive strike. As Mordigar floundered and struggled to right himself, Sandy quickly reversed her course and summoned a great spout of water from the river. The column struck the massive dragon under his left wing, throwing him further off-balance. Mordigar cursed again but did not have time to get inventive with his expletives as Sandy struck him in the back and summoned a powerful gust of air to add power to her attack. Her mentor was unable to counter the triple onslaught and crashed heavily into the river.

Sandy landed on a sandbar and beamed as Mordigar dragged himself from the river and coughed out water from his lungs. She could tell he was trying his best to look fiercely dignified but gave up the pretense and laughed heartily.

“Well done, little one! I am wet and hungry. Let us leave this place and get something to eat.”

***

Student and master lay curled into two scaled mounds, one large, one beyond enormous, digesting their heavy meals. Sandy was just on the edge of consciousness when Mordigar tensed and anxiously raised his head.

“I fear our time together is at an end,” he said with tension in his voice.

“No, there is too much for me to learn still!”

“It would take me a century just to begin to teach you all I know, but that was never my intent. I showed you how to mix the colors. It is up to you to paint your masterpieces. You are tenacious and brilliant, and it will carry you very far. The Scions are breaching the walls of their prison. You must leave now. Once they come through, we will be enemies.”

Sandy’s stomach twisted into a knot and she denied his words with every fiber of her being. “No! You can fight them. We will fight them together!”

Mordigar bent his head down and nuzzled her cheek. “It is not possible. Believe me when I say I have tried and with the most powerful of motivations.”

“I cannot fight you. I won’t.”

“You will!” the ancient dragon roared. “You will fight me and you will kill me because if you do not I shall certainly kill you, and I cannot live with that. I am old and I am tired. I have suffered at the hands of these so-called gods, and I do not wish to do so again.”

“What did they do to you?” Sandy asked softly.

Mordigar’s eyes became haunted as the ghosts of the past peered out of them like windows of his soul. “I once had two daughters. You remind me of them both so much. My eldest was kind and wise beyond her years. My younger was fierce and full of fire. She had so much she thought she had to prove.”

“What happened to them?”

“The war happened. My little one died in the fighting, unwilling to back down no matter how terrible the odds. My older daughter survived the insurrection, and when the Scions were banished and the dragons no longer under their spell, she tried to be a bridge between us and our former enemies. She thought she could be an ambassador to help the freed people rebuild their lives and repay what we had done to them. The humans pretended to be willing to talk, but it was a ruse. They did not believe we too were victims and only saw us as the tyrants who oppressed them. They killed her before she could speak a word of peace. I know we have only spent a few days together, but for those few days I had a daughter once again. I will not lose another! So when I tell you to fight me with every ounce of strength and every bit of cleverness you possess, you will do it if you give one fraction of a damn about me!” Mordigar softened his tone and Sandy felt the mountain cease its trembling. “It is a mercy for me and a chance for you to live the life my daughters never got. Do this for me,
One Whose Brilliance Outshines The Sun
. Survive this and tell the races we too lived as slaves with less freewill than they.”

“I will save you, Mordigar, I swear.”

“Survive and you will. Now go, the barrier is falling.”

Sandy ran down the short passage and hurled herself into the air, flying desperately westward. She was buoyed with new wisdom and a new name, but she dragged an anchor of despair behind her. She had known no other dragon in her life but her mother, and this one was about to be taken from her too, and long before it was time. Her mind flashed to the thought of the Scions. The rage and hate filling her was greater than any in her entire life. Even her breaking at the hands of the Sumaran lord paled in comparison, and she swore to unleash every bit of it upon the Scions and their horde. She was more brilliant than the sun, and she would explode in a supernova to scorch them from the face of her world.

CHAPTER 13

Ghost raised his black muzzled to the night sky and released a long, wailing howl. Wolf finished tying off another lethal trap and looked up into the trees to check the placement of one of his many ropes strung through the branches. He had spent more than a year making roadways of ropes and bridges through the trees and creating thousands of traps to show the invaders they were not welcome in his woods. Borrowing from the vast cache of arms Azerick’s people created, he had dozens of bows and hundreds of quivers of arrows hidden in the treetops of the thousands of acres of forest he claimed as his.

“For crying out loud, would you give it a rest?” Wolf groused. “You’ve been shouting at the sky for the past week. It’s a new moon, and all your whining won’t make it come out.”

Ghost turned his golden eyes on Wolf, huffed loudly, and resumed his howling. A glimmer of light caught the corner of Wolf’s eye and drew his attention to the west. There was a glow far out on the horizon as if the sun were rising; only it was a white light not orange, and it came from the wrong direction. Brilliant bolts streaked out from its epicenter and cracked the sky like a massive burst of lightning only it continued to split the sky like cracks across glass.

“Way to go, stupid! Your shrill caterwauling broke the sky!” Ghost looked at Wolf and glared. “Yeah, I know it wasn’t you. This can’t be good, and you know I’m going to get blamed for it.”

***

Raijaun bolted upright and nearly fell to floor as he rolled out of his bed seconds before realizing he was awake. His heart raced, and a cold sweat traced lines down his grey skin. It was an odd sensation. He could not ever remember sweating before. He ran to his window and immediately saw the source of his fear. Raijaun sent half a dozen intense orbs of light streaking out of the window to hang in the air and illuminated the entire school grounds.

A bell clanged in alarm at nearly the same instant he lit up the grounds. Raijaun hastily threw on a robe, grabbed a ready travel pack, and raced down the stairs. He called into Miranda’s room on his way down, but she was already standing in the stairwell by her door, sword held ready in a white-knuckled grip.

“Raijaun, what is it? Is Azerick back?” she asked hopefully.

“No, the Scions have breached the walls of their prison and torn their way into our world. We need to get everyone to the city.”

“Go, I’ll be down in a minute.”

Raijaun nodded and ran down to the remaining stairs to the ground floor. He met Alex and the mage leaders just outside the tower. The school was in a controlled uproar as people hustled to pack gear, load wagons, and readied themselves for war. Only minutes had passed since the alarm sounded, but Alex and most of his warriors were already fully armed and armored and leading the efforts to mobilize. Such was the state of their constant readiness training.