Talismans Read online

  Owailion sighed with frustration and drew in the forest he saw between the coast toward the mountain chain in the distance. “What do you call the forest here?” he asked.

  The dragon cocked his head in puzzlement. “Do you name the place you get your food?”

  Owailion smirked at the thought. “Humans name mountains, rivers, forests, our towns, and everything we locate on maps. Then we write their names on a map. See, this is how I would write Jonjonel.” He then wrote out the script. “And this says Western Ocean.”

  “I still do not hear it,” the dragon muttered in disappointment. “This is a very clever drawing you have made. You are indeed what God called you; King of Creating. But isn't it dangerous to put names on the map?”

  Owailion did not understand that comment and simply asked. “How would names be dangerous?”

  In explanation, Mohan turned toward the volcano that loomed above them and demonstrated. “Jonjonel, erupt.”

  Owailion felt the ground beneath his feet heave and then the echoing rumble in the distance as Jonjonel belched out a column of gas and ash. “Any magician with enough power may command anything in nature as long as they know its true name. We name our mountains and a few rivers, but nothing more. It would be too treacherous.”

  Gulping, Owailion agreed and then looked down at the map. “I won't put real names on here but we need something to show where Zema is.”

  Mohan turned back toward the map and then concentrated as the volcano ceased its rumbling. “Well, I can add some things to your map, now that I understand the symbols. This is the Great Chain,” and accordingly a vast mountain chain, made in the same style as Owailion's original drawing of Jonjonel began to appear. The range moved across the map, west to east and then bent at a certain point, going almost an equal distance south creating an elbow in the middle of the continent.

  “And Zema is in that elbow,” Mohan added to Owailion's descriptive thoughts. “The eastern side of the Great Chain acts as a border of the Land.”

  Owailion looked up at the dragon in wonder. “Do you have any idea how long it would take me to map all of that? It would take hundreds of years. You are amazing, Mohan. Thank you for this.”

  “It is my duty to help you and if you need a map to do your work, then I will do what I can,” the dragon replied humbly.

  Owailion stood in the middle of the map, between the two major mountain chains, looking at Zema and then judging the distances. “Now, if I were a human sorcerer, what direction would I take to get the rune stones out of the Land as quickly as possible?”

  “A human? Carrying them? Their weight would be too great unless they used magic to float them. Up over the mountains into the land to the East would be least obvious, but what if they did not come from the east?”

  “Is there a river nearby? You dragons would not think of floating them down a river. It would not even require magic and they could take them anywhere once they were at sea,” Owailion suggested.

  “There is a river…” and Mohan began burning a long line out of the Elbow and down to the south. Slowly the two of them began filling in the rivers, boarders, forests and coastlines of the Land. Owailion had to prompt his mentor about land formations and distances, and then Mohan would provide the actual features on the map. Then finally Owailion wrote shortened titles to the long draconic words for each feature. Within an hour they had crafted a relatively accurate map of the Land.

  “Now all I have to do is find out how the rune stones departed,” Owailion declared as he rolled the leather up into a scroll.

  “I still think they would be easiest taken over the mountains into the land eastward.”

  “Perhaps, but you've never had to walk over high mountain passes,” Owailion admitted. “I want to know how a sorcerer got inside the Seal in the first place.”

  Mohan had no answers for such a question, and rumbled in discontent. “It seems that perhaps you were correct to think that maybe a dragon of the conclave has moved the stones, but to what purpose; to thwart the coming of humans to the Land? I will admit that not all of them felt favorably about the idea of the Sleep, or of humans taking over the protection of the Land.”

  “You have no reason to trust humans,” Owailion declared. “Are all your interactions with humans like the one where sorcerers trying to blast through the Seal?”

  Both Mohan and Owailion turned toward the west, looking out to sea. Fresh in their minds echoed the attack against the volcano as sorcerers tried to get past the Seal because Jonjonel had grown beyond its barrier. And it would only get worse once the Sleep began. That thought burned an ache in Owailion's stomach that he feared to name. How would life, even a magical life here in the Land, be worth living alone? The emptiness loomed like a storm threatening. He had enjoyed Mohan's curiosity and lively conversation, a perfect antidote to the sheer terror of amnesia, but that looming knowledge that the dragons would all be going into a long sleep, and that he would be left on his own in this vast land, with a pending demon problem and looming sorcerers to withstand, it threatened to swallow him whole.

  “Your thoughts have grown foggy again. Are you sleepy already?” Mohan asked, reacting to Owailion's alarm.

  “What if the Seal won't hold when you are asleep?” Owailion felt alarmed at the reminder he would be protecting an entire country from outlander invasions, possibly without the protections the dragons had already established. “I just assumed…”

  “And we dragons had hoped that the humans on the ships would have given up by now. We also assume the Seal will hold after we are gone, but it was built with our magic,” Mohan warned. “It is important that you learn how to use the Seal and also how to roast the sorcerers or however humans battle other magicians, before we sleep.

  “How do the human sorcerers come here?” Owailion asked. “On ships?

  Mohan rumbled uncomfortably and Owailion could hear his friend's discontent. “For the most part, and they keep trying. We do not understand why.”

  Owailion asked with trepidation. “Are they all sorcerers? How can you tell they aren't just traders?”

  “If they try to come close, they have a sorcerer with them.”

  “Do they know about the Sleep?” Owailion asked, also wondering as well why anyone would be so foolish to approach shores protected by dragons.

  Mohan rumbled again, “We do not know, and it is a worry for us. Perhaps that is why they keep throwing themselves against us; waiting to see when we sleep. What will the outlanders do when they realize that you are alone here in the Land? Let us follow the coastline and you shall see,” Mohan suggested.

  It did not take long to go aloft and reach the cliffs that plunged into the ocean. As far as he could see the continent fell sharply into the sea with no harbors or sheltered beaches for a ship to approach the Land. “Nowhere to draw up or even drop anchor,” Owailion observed.

  “Look, you can see them there,” Mohan commented, projecting an image to Owailion. “With the tall things sticking out, they are easy to attack.” Mohan's words stirred something and he projected a scene toward his human friend.

  In his mind's eye Owailion saw a memory of Tamaar, gilded silver flashing through a reflection of the light on the water, coming out of the glare at a large three-mast ship filled with dark clad sorcerers wandering among the sailors. She dove down out of the sky, tearing through the sails and then landed thunderously like some massive figurehead on the bowsprit. The shouts of panic from sailors carried over the water as the sorcerers and sailors gathered, hoping to shoo her away before her weight and fire cracked their vessel in two.

  “Tall things? Oh, masts.” Then, without Mohan's vision obscuring his sight, Owailion squinted as they moved south along the coast and indeed saw many ships, all running north or south along the horizon. They mostly gave the Land's shoreline a wide berth, perhaps because they knew the Seal would not allow them an opening and they dare not get dashed against it.

  “We know they have a sorcerer when they com
e nearer. Like that one there. It is moving south very quickly but it is also close to the cliffs. Perhaps it is the same ones who attacked you at Jonjonel? Shall we see?”

  Without waiting for Owailion's input, Mohan abruptly banked to the right and sped out over the ocean.

  “Now,” Mohan interrupted Owailion's thoughts about leaving the safety of the Land, “you must learn how to fight men. It might be more difficult than simply hunting an animal. The sorcerers on the boats are …are…”

  “Like me,” Owailion provided. “Do you ever have to fight some of your own kind?”

  Mohan sighed audibly. “Rarely. We send dragons into exile if they choose not to follow the mandates of God and the conclave.”

  “That cannot be easy,” Owailion added, expecting a lesson in magical battle. “What must I do?”

  “Can you sense the ship?” Mohan asked as he banked and circled high above the very visible ship. In other words, Owailion was to open himself to his magical senses.

  “No,” he replied in disappointment. “What am I going to do when you're in hibernation and I don't even know they are coming? Let them get closer? That's not going to be wise.”

  Mohan chuckled throatily at the panicking crew. “It is shielded so you would not sense it. Feel the void in the water? That is how you will be able to tell. As for how you will attack, I really don't know how a human can do this. Dragons do as I showed you; land on the ship and remind them to leave us alone or roast them. Humans can't blow that kind of fire.”

  Owailion sighed with worry. He would just have to figure it out. “We'll see. Sometimes these magic instincts come once I need them.”

  This ship displayed full sails, racing south, skirting the Land and now Owailion could sense something, a shield around the vessel. He tasted the fear of the crew who frantically brought down the sails in a vain effort to preserve the cloth from shredding at the talons of the rapidly descending dragon.

  “Are all the men on board sorcerers or are the crewmen non-magical?” Owailion asked as they approached close enough to see individual faces.

  Mohan's thoughts held an element of surprise. “Crew? What is that? We just tell them to go home or attack. Did we do wrong?”

  “The crew…the men who run the ship. I don't think they are magical.” Owailion pointed out over Mohan's nose. “Only he is.”

  This man stood tall and all alone on the prow wearing a flowing black robe with sleeves billowing in the wind. With his arms arrogantly on his hips, he glared up at the dragon above. He had probably commandeered the ship or purchased passage, but he was definitely separate from the crew and its goals.

  Owailion began frantically praying that his Wise One instincts would kick in. He recalled the demonstration of Tamaar nearly breaking a ship in two. In that vision the men had been scrambling and panicked when she landed on their vessel so he could not see which were magical and which were simple sailors.

  “We need to talk to them,” Owailion advised Mohan. “I cannot fight what I do not know.”

  “Then speak to them,” Mohan advised*. “But we will stay here aloft.*”

  Owailion peered down from the height the dragon maintained, glaring at the robed sorcerer. “Who are you?” Owailion asked, projecting his mind voice down in conversational tone. “Why have you come?”

  The sorcerer shouted back to him. “Finally a human has come to greet us instead of sending your dragons.” His accent was so thick Owailion could hardly understand him. “Many have doubted that there even were humans in the sealed territory after all. We thought it uninhabited.”

  Owailion snarled at the thought that dragons were just lackeys in this man's perspective. Mohan also roared his disapproval, startling the sailors and making even the sorcerer flinch.

  “Uninhabited?” Owailion barked back at the shielded mind. “The dragons live here. They came out every time and sent you back broken. Explain yourselves. Why have you come?”

  The ship-bound magician mocked disdainfully at Owailion's ignorance. “To come to your shores, trade with you, learn of your ways and share our own. Why else does one land visit another…but yours has been sealed. Why?”

  Mohan rumbled, and Owailion recognized this was getting him nowhere. Up until this particular voyage the idea of trading with an 'uninhabited' land was all that crossed their twisted minds? Unlikely, Owailion knew.

  Then he suddenly felt an inkling of a strategy. Privately he asked Mohan a quick question. “Is there some way to know if someone is speaking the truth? Is there a spell or something?”

  “A truth spell,” Mohan instructed. “If you wish to cast it upon just one person, concentrate on that one and wish to see them as they truly are. This man wears a shield so you must pierce it with a talon of your mind first, and then apply the truth spell. If on all of the men on the ship, think of it as rain, descending, wetting them all. Then observe. Evil shows itself.”

  Owailion nodded and then focused on the entire ship. He imagined the wall of shielding around the sorcerer and then gave himself imaginary talons as great as Mohan's. He pictured himself puncturing the shield wall, crushing it as he went and then flooding the inside of the shield with a mist of truth. The sorcerer's appearance changed immediately. The outlander knew that his personal defenses had been breached, for he panicked, racing to get off the deck, scrambling for the hold, but in his wake he appeared to carry heavy chains that trailed blood. Before he could escape, Owailion instinctively added a spell of time, slowing the man in his tracks before he could disappear below decks. The sorcerer stopped in mid motion like some strange statue.

  “I see blood, so he has killed before,” Mohan advised. “What would the …the things following after him mean?”

  “Chains? That he is a slave of someone else or he carries a heavy burden,” Owailion interpreted. “He's a liar too. His tongue is split like a snake and his skin is rotting…I would guess he is evil.”

  “And what of the other men…the crew?” Mohan asked.

  Owailion quickly scanned over the remaining men who also stood frozen, but in fear, not in a magical spell. He saw a few with rags, and many bloody fists. So they might be angry or brawlers. None of them seemed to be rotting or murderous. “They're alright,” Owailion observed. “Just simple men doing their job. We should send them home, but do something with the sorcerer here.”

  “Yes,” Mohan advised, “but you do not have a fire hot enough. How would a human deal with this evil?”

  As if to emphasize the point, a wave of pure power bolted up from the deck toward them as the sorcerer tried to swat them out of the sky. Owailion sensed this attack but it barely stirred Mohan, brushing over the dragon's shields, scraping and screeching like metal on metal.

  The human looked down at the vulnerable vessel, toy-sized at this height and felt his ire rising. All his life, the life he did not remember, Owailion must have battled his anger. He hated not understanding. He raged at being overwhelmed or at things not working out in his well-thought-out plans. Most of all he grew angry at frustration. The Wise Ones were supposed to be naturally good people but what stain did Owailion show under a truth spell. Were his chains even longer if he only looked at himself under such an enchantment?

  Furious at the sorcerer's brazen attack and racist assumptions Owailion reached out his hand toward the outlander who remained frozen. Here was a frustration, a danger come to mar the sanctity of the Land, hoping to invade, manipulate and spread his reeking arrogance over the plains and mountains of his new home. Owailion did not plan it, but that temper within him blasted out of his mind and lifted the sorcerer off the deck, caught him on fire and catapulted him into the sky. Owailion heard the startled consciousness of the villain snuff out about the time he hit the thin clouds.

  Mohan's pleased rumbled broke into Owailion's shock. “You do have the fire, I see.”

  Horrified, Owailion shuddered as he pulled back the magic he had invoked. What had he done? He should not have…

  Mohan interrupted
the growing wave of self-loathing. “It had to be done. If you did not, I would have roasted the entire ship.”

  Owailion looked guiltily down at the crewmen still on board. The truth spell still covered these men and Owailion did not remove it, but he needed to learn more and these sailors were his best source. “Can you tell me, did you take him to the volcano up north?”

  The frightened sailors looked at one another tentatively and then one of them stepped forward. “Yes,” he called loudly. “There were several magicians. We were commissioned to sail them to the volcano, but three of them died when it erupted. That one survived and swam back aboard.”

  “From what land did you sail?” Owailion asked next, watching the bespelled men for any sign that they were lying.

  “Malornia, to the west.”

  Mohan rumbled a warning at that. “That is where the most of the attacks originate. Why do they keep coming?”

  “I'll ask,” Owailion assured him. Then he raised his voice. “Who sent you?”

  Nothing changed in the crewmen's appearances as they shifted nervously. “Our king has commissioned many explorations of your land. He believes it holds great power, or it would not be locked close. We are only one of many ships that have come.”

  Owailion's heart sank with worry. “Then, can you tell me if one of the ships carried a set of rune stones as cargo. They would be very large, taller than a man and with writing on them?”

  “No, sir,” the leader admitted. “We only sailed to the volcano and now we are heading home.”

  “Home is that way, not south,” Owailion pointed. “You would be well to leave the shoreline. I do not care what currents you will fight. I will send a wind that will take you directly. Thank you for your honesty. Please do not bring anyone like that to our shores again. You can return home.”

  Owailion then brought a conjured wind forward which made the masts of the vessel shudder. Obediently the crew scrambled to put up the sails again. Then without waiting to see that they were truly floating away, Owailion and Mohan came about and turned for the shore.