Enchanted Realms

Chapter 8

“This is Euphony,” Threnody said. “And she has consented to carry Alyson. Queen Aria has asked me while she convalesces today to take you to show you the ancient city of Fontaine.”

The wyvern standing beside Threnody was a roan female just a foot shorter than he, her red-brown skin lustrous with health. Along her neck where scales should have been was scarred and pitted skin.

Josh introduced them, wondering how they would communicate.

“Euphony understands the human talk,” Threnody said, as if in answer. “She is among the few of us who once lived alongside humans.”

Euphony shook herself and squawked at Threnody.

Josh was taken aback and didn"t dare repeat what she"d said.

“She admonishes me not to withhold the truth. She was held slave by her Aquitaine masters for nearly sixty years, and they tortured her terribly.”

After hearing the translation, Alyson stepped up the wyvern. “Are these scars from that time, Euphony?”

She nodded, appearing to need no translation.

Alyson caressed the place a scale had been, an angry purple divot in the roan hide. She licked a finger and caressed the next, and the next.

“What—?”

Josh gestured Threnody not to interrupt, not understanding but sensing something deep happening inside Alyson.

She worked her way around the wyvern"s neck, her eyes not seeing, wetting her finger and placing it into the wyvern"s pitted scars, one after another.

Euphony bent herself so Alyson could reach, and the girl continued until she had wetted every scar.

Then she froze.

“What"s she doing, Josh?” Threnody asked, whispering.

Josh hushed him, not taking his eyes off Alyson.

The girl stared off toward the cavern entrance, seeming not even to breathe. Spots on her neck and upper shoulders began to darken toward the same angry purple as those on Euphony"s neck. Then they faded.

“What"s everyone staring at?” Alyson said. “Let"s go.”

Josh didn"t hesitate, gesturing Threnody to kneel. “Where"s this city at?”

“Fontaine? On the continental isthmus toward the North-Eastern sea, unclaimed territory between Aquitaine and La Marche.”

“The badlands?”

“Ah, the human name for it, yes.”

He saw Alyson had mounted Euphony. She looked curiously at peace. When he"d told her where they were going, he was bewildered at her reply.

“I"ve always wanted to go.”

Threnody strong under him, Josh thrilled at their plunge out the cavern mouth and into the cooler air above the lake.

This is what freedom feels like! he thought, reveling in the wind past his ears, the nearly unrestricted view of everything around them.

To the south, he caught a glimpse of Alsace, whose circumstance now seemed petty. Not as though beneath his attention, but as a matter within his ability to resolve. It would require time, attention and work, but it was by no means daunting, as it had once seemed.

To the north, he saw checkered fields amidst rolling hills and what looked to be a city, larger than anything in Alsace, likely the capital of La Marche.

To the left, at the foot of the mountains, was a single building high on a hilltop, its shadow long on the valley floor. “The Notheist Monastery,” Threnody told him. “They don"t believe in magic.”

To the east and west marched the mountains, the western ones heading straight for the sea. To the east the mountains bifurcated, one spine sending up peaks to the southeast, and another to the northeast. In between the two spines lay Aquitaine, not yet visible beyond three other peaks.

Josh smiled at Alyson, riding Euphony abreast but some thirty feet starboard.

“So what was she doing?” Threnody asked, his head to one side.

The wind whistling in his ears, Josh knew the other two had not likely heard him. “I don"t know, but she knew what to do, even if she couldn"t really tell us, and I didn"t want to interrupt her.”

Threnody nodded turned his head back forward. “You really trust her.”

Up in the air, where the only barrier between him and a plummet of a thousand feet was the strength of a wyvern, Josh knew trust. The trust of placing his life in the care of another being with the sure and certain knowledge that he would be safe.

Yes, he really trusted her.

And within the wonderful and fabulous miracle of such a relationship with another human being, Josh also felt certainty of his future. Not that he knew what it would be like, only that he would discover and fully develop his potential and that he would be happy.

He looked over toward Alyson, her open, laughing face trailed by her streaming, tangled hair, and he felt proud.

Proud to have her company, proud to have her friendship, and proud to be on a journey with her.

* * *

“You know Queen Aria is to be your wyvern.” Threnody looked at him with a sly smile.

Josh considered. Yes, he knew, just as he"d known at some inner level at the moment her wings had snapped open inside the audience hall at Castle Alsace. “What about the raw diamond?”

“Don"t you know?”

“It"s to be mine as well, isn"t it?”

“Indeed.”

Josh looked over the mountainous landscape below, the lake almost gone from sight behind them, the plains of Aquitaine a thin line on the horizon to the east, and he considered the implications. Beyond the obvious ones.

The diamond was the gemstone of communication. With it, a person might send a thought across town or eavesdrop on a neighbor without their knowing it. A person might know another"s obscured motivation or sense where the word contradicted the thought.

The size of the precious gem corresponded to its range and scope. The tiny diamond at Alyson"s breast might work well in close proximity to filch the surface thoughts of Thaddeus Corntassel inside his cave, but was useless for detecting his intent from far downstream. It was also helpful in transmitting a thought or feeling when her face was close to his, but Alyson could not send Josh a thought across even the short distance separating them now, in the skies above the mountains. In extremis, she might, but would likely discharge the gem in doing so.

The huge diamond that might yet be carved from the raw stone that Queen Aria had filched from Castle Alsace would likely have powers beyond Josh"s reckoning. Sending a message across the sea would likely be within its capability. Persuading an entire populace as well. Compelling a large group seemed plausible. Josh wondered with not inconsiderable trepidation what might be done to a single individual at short range. He shuddered at the implications.

He wondered how Queen Aria had compelled him to break the glass case at Castle Alsace.

A peak jutting up on either side, Josh looked to the left and right. La Marche to the left was a hilly, forested land, the terrain looked impassable, the city in the distance visible only because it stood on a promontory, above the surrounding hills. In contrast, Aquitaine to the right looked nearly flat, checker-boarded with cultivated fields, ribbons of river meandering in between, the high stone walls of the castle at Bayonne dominating the surrounding plains, looking almost intimidating in spite of the haze and the distance. From the castle issued a road, and the fact that it was visible declaring how grandly broad it was. Josh traced it intermittently to the base of the mountains where it began a winding ascent.

Directly below, nearly a thousand feet, the road snaked along the mountainside, heading for a summit, the people and their conveyances dotting the path, their antlike progress difficult to discern, the dark tops of heads changing to the whites of faces as Josh watched.

The road cleared suddenly.

Bewildered, Josh looked more closely. “What happened?”

“They saw us, and fled for fear of attack,” Threnody said. “Too rarely they see wyvern aloft, and when they do, they bode it as an ill omen, a perception that we have done too little to disabuse them of.”

Josh frowned, remembering the awe generated when a wyvern was sighted from a great distance, the terror when sighted directly above. Queen Aria"s theft of the raw diamond didn"t help matters much, he thought, wondering at the mutterings he"d heard from the town folk just before he"d departed deep in the dark of night.

The rift between wyvern and human yawns wide, he thought, wondering how to bring the two races together again.

Ahead, the mountains were of diminishing height, and Josh glanced over at Alyson and Euphony. The girl lay against the wyvern, the length of her trunk along the Wyvern"s neck, her head at the base of the bony crest, the tiny diamond on its chain twinkling.

Then Josh realized it was glowing. Had they found a way to talk without use of words?

The coastlines of the continent converged at a still unseen point ahead, but both northern and eastern seas were visible, the green of earth and blue of ocean separated by the thin white line of surf.

On the plains of Aquitaine, Josh saw some distance back that the squares of cultivation had become fewer and farther between until they yielded entirely to the wild grasslands dotted with copses of tree. Does no one live this far north? he wondered, finding the absence of human habitation puzzling.

Called the badlands among the Alsace, the area known also as Fontaine occupied the northeastern isthmus between the northern and eastern seas, a land locked by ice for a few weeks in winter, the currents on both sides cold and unforgiving.

Josh saw as they rounded one last peak that the grasslands of Aquitaine ended abruptly, a road bisecting from mountain base to coastline. To the north a similar straight line separated the forests of La Marche from Fontaine, the area to the northeast seeming desolate, the terrain unnaturally white but jumbled, the land from this height looking oddly like a jigsaw puzzle of a single color whose pieces had been thrown atop one another.

And whose pieces can only be put back together, Josh thought, with painstaking trial and error.

I hope the rift between human and wyvern isn"t as difficult to piece together as a single-color jigsaw puzzle.

Josh instinctively leaned into the bank as Threnody tucked and dropped toward the jumbled land below.

* * *

“A city of white stone,” said the wizened man with eyes aglow like the setting sun. “Every wall coated with a limestone wash.”

Josh wondered how the man had got here so quickly from Alsace. He supposed a person traveling non-stop on the ground might get from Alsace to Fontaine in that time, but it was unlikely. And especially not along the mountain spine.

“What"s your name, Sir?” Josh asked.

“Harbinger O"Cataclysm, I am. Not of the one that"s already struck this poor city, mind you, as they might have survived if they"d had some notion.”

Josh tried to make sense of the old man"s speech. He"s like the Alsace Wizard Constance Whipplethorpe, Josh thought.

“How"d you get here so fast?” Alyson asked.

How"d she know? Josh wondered, fingering the ring of stones under his tunic.

“Not your business. What brings you here besides this meat locker full of barbeque wyrm?” He hooked his thumb at the wyverns.

Josh shifted over to stand between Threnody and O"Cataclysm. “We"re here to look at the ruins and to learn something by it. Why are you here, besides to act rude and call people names? If nothing more, then be gone with you. We"ve no need of any.”

The fires in the sockets dimmed somewhat. “Pardon if I"ve offended. I know the time before, studied its ways with the sapphire of time, not a more glorious age than those when wyvern and human lived alongside, not a happier time for either race.”

“What happened?” Alyson asked, glancing out over the jumbled landscape.

They stood at the base of the last small peak, its top a mere thousand feet above sea level, the land spread before them and visible even to the isthmus. From the promontory where they stood, the slope fell away in even if disordered chaos, no two blocks canted at the same angle, no two shapes a-match.

“The one question, young lady,” O"Cataclysm replied, “that we"d all like the answer to. Like asking how come a wyvern"s got wings? Happened slowly, across thousands of years, nothing particular caused it, except an incremental accumulation of pressure, and their dependence on land dwindled as did the number of people and wyverns living harmoniously here. To us it seems impossible that such a time might have ended but to them, it was surely slow t*****e, lives lived out in despondence that the young ones had left with the wind under their wings and the vow never to return. But even with the sight granted to me by the sapphire of time, I"m unable to determine what led to the gradual decline of this once great city.”

“What pressures?” Alyson asked.

Justin was trying to signal to her that they really didn"t want to draw out this encounter, that the fewer questions they asked of this rambling old man, the better.

“Variety of them, like the tenuous balance between wyrm and wyvern. The more wyrms the fewer wyverns, as you know. The number of wyvern talkers, too. The fewer wild wyverns there are, the more the magic is harnessed, and the fewer wyvern attacks on human settlements. Seems the number of wyvern talkers is far fewer than it once was. What about you, girl? Are you a wyvern talker? And if not, why not?”

Alyson was taken aback, Josh could see.

“Look, we"ll just be on—”

“Tis fear, boy, fear, I say! Don"t you know the people hide away in their castles whenever wyvern-sighted fools call out? Wyvern-benighted is more like it, as the creatures mean no harm. Ever wonder why they eat the wyrm? Why the two populations ebb and flow inversely? Your father runs a wyrm ranch and you don"t know those simple facts?”

Josh was getting annoyed. “Why don"t we just—”

“Without the facts, the human kings ignored the forces that led to their city"s decline. The very mechanism they needed to recharge their stones became scarce and hence their power faded. That enclave where wyverns hide, like the castles people huddle in. Look below you. Do you see city walls? Do you see castles, battlements, guards, or arms? None needed. They fought no wars. They had no need of arms, of guards, of battlements.

“But I see you"re eager to go. Very well. I"ve said my piece. I"ll talk no more. You have my guarantee of that. When you see Queen Aria, give her my regards. Farewell, my human and wyvern friends.” O"Cataclysm turned, eyeballs blazing, and walked to the north around the base of the mountain, talking ceaselessly.

Threnody and Euphony exchanged a shriek and Josh"s numbed brain belatedly translated. “By the balls of the wyrm,” one said to the other.

“Queen Aria indeed,” Alyson said. “Like as not one of her traps.”

Josh chuckled, shaking his head as he watched the forlorn figure recede. In his circumlocution was elocution, but much remained a mystery. He turned to Threnody. “What did you come here to show us?”