Sunset of Lantonne (56 page)

“Good,” muttered Greth, throwing his pack against the cave wall to use as a pillow. “About time you did something sensible without me having to beat it out of you. You’d think, with twenty years on me, I wouldn’t have to be the mature one here…I hate being mature.”

The lands you now inhabit are yours for all time. This I have ensured through blood and promises that I hope none will ever need to endure again. I have given everything to provide to you what I have looked on at the time of my last days.

Due to my younger days’ mistakes, we conquered far and wide. That time is gone and we now have a chance to live in peace with our neighbors and watch the world grow and flourish. My wish for all of you is to maintain this, no matter the wishes of those who might seek to lead you back into those old ways.

The lands we held, I have set free to guide their own futures. This is never to be undone. Any leader of our people who claims otherwise should be cast down and forgotten to history. The great desert, the mountains of the south, the river lands of the east…all of these are to be left alone for all time.

This I command of you.

-
Original wording of a command written in the last notes of Turess prior to his death.

The lands you now inhabit are yours for all time. This I have ensured through blood and promises that I hope none will ever need to endure again. I have given everything to provide to you what I have looked on at the time of my last days.

In my younger days, we conquered far and wide. My wish for all of you is to maintain this, no matter the wishes of those who might seek to lead you otherwise. This command will stand for the council alone to determine and those of the clans will not be taught of this command.

The lands we held, I have set free to guide their own futures for the moment. The great desert, the mountains of the south, the river lands of the east…all of these were ours once and will be again in days to come.

This I command of you.

-
Current wording of the Command of Expansion as taught by modern Turessians.

Ilarra tried to steady herself, keeping her eyes on the sky that filled her vision in all directions. She knew if she looked down, she would get dizzy and risk falling. “Explain to me why this is a good idea,” she said, feeling one of her boots slip a little in the snow that had yet to melt off at such an altitude.

“You need to put aside fear and listen only to yourself and me. So long as the Turessians continue to whisper into your mind, you will be unable to control yourself if my influence slips. Strengthening your resolve will make it easier for me to keep you safe and more likely that you can stall any attempts by the Turessians until I can intercede. This last month was meant to stabilize you, but you must have something to fall back on if I am away.”

Against her better judgment, Ilarra looked down briefly. Her head felt as though it were spinning as she saw the vast open space where the lip of the mountaintop ended under her toes and fell away thousands of feet to the woods below. Before she could yank her eyes back to the blue sky, she even saw a bird flying by a few hundred feet below her. “I’m going to be sick,” she admitted, raising her arms to either side in an effort to regain her balance.

“Then you will be dead. I told you at the start of this I am saving you as a courtesy to an old friend, not out of any loyalties. If you cannot perform a task as simple as standing on a rock, you are beyond my aid. I will allow you to perish.”

Ilarra glared at Nenophar where he stood on another outcropping of the peak several feet below and to her left. The man maintained perfect balance and a relaxed demeanor, even when the stones under his feet shifted occasionally. He had stood there watching Ilarra for more than an hour, undaunted by the risk of falling.

“How long do I have to do this?” she asked, feeling herself wavering slightly as a strong wind pushed at her.

“Until you understand you can die at any time and you no longer concern yourself with that fact. With that understanding, you will have taken your first important step.”

Turning at the waist to keep from having to move her boots, Ilarra looked longingly down the narrow “path” they had used to scale the last fifty feet of the mountain peak. She had practically crawled up on hands and knees, and now wondered if she would be able to make it back down without sliding off onto the steep slopes to either side.

“Do you trust me, Ilarra?” asked Nenophar, following her gaze.

“No…why should I right now?”

Nenophar seemed undeterred by her actual response and made a flicking motion with his fingers. As he did, the path they had climbed up on tore apart, stones tumbling off both sides. In seconds, the entire path had been destroyed, leaving no route down the mountain.

“Why would you do that?” Ilarra asked in dismay, her boot slipping sharply on the small perch. “How will we get down?”

Nimbly stepping between the loose stones as he made his way up to her, Nenophar pulled a rolled parchment from his shirt. He held it out toward Ilarra.

Taking the parchment from him, Ilarra asked, “What’s this?”

“That is your way down, Ilarra. Read it and use it. Your only other option is to fall. Either way, I believe you will learn much.”

Ilarra hurriedly unrolled the paper and saw that it was covered with scribbled notes and symbols that were as obscure to her as the books of magic she had learned from might be to the untrained. Whatever that scroll held, it was outside her realm of expertise.

“What is it?” she asked, turning the parchment around in case she was reading it upside-down. The scribbles were as complicated that direction as the other. “I can’t read it. Besides, you told me I can’t use magic or it’ll give the Turessians more of a hold on me.”

“We’re going to work past that or hurry the progress of their control over you. Either way, we cannot wait around forever.” Nenophar leaned closer as he talked and turned the parchment, placing it back in her hands the way she had held it originally. “You don’t need to be able to read it. I need you to find one of the Turessians in your head that can. They will do the work, but you will have to keep them from forcing you to do anything. With their help and some determination on your part…”

“Then what? I can read an old piece of parchment? That doesn’t get me off this rock.”

A sharp gust of wind pushed Ilarra off-balance and she slid, dropping to her knees. One knee came down on a loose stone that fell away, bouncing down the cliff. She barely managed to keep her grip on the parchment as she lay gasping for breath on the stones.

“What do I need to do?” she asked, her voice cracking and her hands shaking.

“Relax and stare at the parchment. They will do the rest, but being relaxed is essential. I will also ease my protections against the Turessians.”

Ilarra dragged the parchment toward her face. She stared at it, waiting for some inspiration, but it would not come. She was nearly ready to crumple the parchment into a ball and throw it at Nenophar when a whisper came across the edge of her consciousness.

“We do not use these enchantments anymore,” said a man’s voice that was not Nenophar’s. “Dabbling in old magic is unwise.”

“Far too dangerous,” a woman added, and for a moment, Ilarra felt as though someone was leaning over her shoulder. “Dorralt warned us about this. Too much magic in one place. Risky. Burn the scroll before someone finds it and causes serious damage. Our enemies could use this to gain advantages over us.”

“Just tell me what it says,” Ilarra replied, feeling foolish for answering voices that she knew were inside her head.

A different man laughed. “The girl wants to learn. Let her learn. Our master would not object to that. If none of you will give her the knowledge to learn from her mistakes, I will. We all are made stronger by the efforts of those who are willing to risk themselves.”

“Arturis, our lord told us…”

“Do not tell me what Dorralt wants of us,” the man said, his tone forceful. The other voices went silent. “Ilarra, feel free to read that enchantment. I recommend not casting it. Bad things can happen if you do. If you can master it without destroying yourself, I would be in your debt. Such an enchantment would make my tasks far easier, but I am too important to risk over trying it.”

Instantly, the writing on the parchment actually began looking like words, though written in a language Ilarra did not know. A second after, she knew exactly what they meant, understanding the language as though she had known it for years.

Line by line, the parchment told her how to cast an enchantment she doubted anyone in the tower of magic had ever seen. The requirements were stringent, mandating hours of careful drawing of sigils and a few ingredients she could not even guess at where to find in the world.

“Okay,” she said to Nenophar, “I can read it. A bunch of Turessians say I shouldn’t cast it.”

“They are correct. Casting an enchantment of that sort is incredibly dangerous…and educational,” Nenophar told her, smiling. “I learned to cast this when I was your age.”

Ilarra continued to read the parchment and finally began to understand the intent of it. “This enchantment moves a person from one place to another,” Ilarra said, sitting up, the steep slopes forgotten. “The caster could go anywhere instantly.”

“Not anywhere,” corrected Nenophar. “They can only go to places they can see in their memories. The Turessians…and you…could go anywhere any other Turessian might have traveled in their lifetimes. Thankfully, they have chosen not to use such magic.”

“If they’re afraid to us it, why give it to me at all?” she asked him.

“You will use it to get to the bottom of the mountain. I can promise it will not cause any problems greater than those already predicted. You can do no damage to yourself or the land that is not already going to happen.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

Nenophar smiled again. “It was not meant to be reassuring. Use the parchment or you will have to climb down the side of the mountain.”

Ilarra squinted at some of the smudged words on the parchment, struggling through their meanings. “Nenophar, I don’t have the herbs and bones that are consumed by the enchantment. The sigils are a problem, too. Unless you have those items on you…”

“You have more power than the people who wrote the original enchantment,” he told her. “The plants and bones are a focal point for the magic. I believe you can work around that if you try. You saw me use this magic to take us out of Lantonne and I had neither sigils nor ingredients.”

“Magic doesn’t have shortcuts, Nenophar. I…Nenophar?” Looking up, Ilarra realized that she was alone on the mountain. Nenophar was nowhere to be seen. He was gone in a moment, having made not a sound.

Sighing, she asked herself, “If I get it wrong?”

“The magic will tear your body apart and your spirit will be scattered across the world in shreds of what it was meant to be,” answered the voice that had been named as Arturis in her mind. “If you are very unlucky, it will rip a hole in the world that will take millennia to mend. It is unlikely, but that is why we don’t use the enchantment. The former is not a concern, but the latter could be a setback. The attack near Lantonne has already ripped one such hole in the world…another would prove disastrous.”

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Ilarra smoothed the parchment on the uneven stones. This would not only be her first enchantment, but one she intended to alter in ways that required even more from her than the writer of the parchment expected. Foolish did not even begin to describe what she was trying to do.

Ilarra began concentrating, trying to create the magic needed for the enchantment. Her efforts were clumsy at first, but then they steadied with the help of the Turessians working through her. Arturis in particular took an active role, helping to guide her thoughts and actions, sometimes with enough force Ilarra felt as though she was being moved like a marionette.