Mystic Quest

by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Sagas; Science Fiction

Synopsis

Now, after Mystic Warrior, comes Mystic Quest, Book Two of the Bronze Canticles, a trilogy of magic and heroism, mystery and splendor.

Twenty-three years have passed since Galen Arvad first exposed the deep magic. Now, that magic brings tragedy and darkness to the lives of all who wield it in the world. Galen and his clans suffer an endless war in the realm of the dragonkings, the fairies contend with a gruesome kingdom of the undead, and in the realm of the reanimated, rusting titans, a tyrant goblin’s lust for conquest goes unchecked.

A new generation of heroes will set out on separate, life-altering journeys. Whether in search of freedom or atonement, each will find their redemption may be beyond the power of magic—for their darkest secrets and greatest dangers are those they bring with them.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: December 1, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 464

Sample

1

Fool’s Errand

Near the close of the 492nd year of the Dragonkings, the revolt of the mystics on the Election Fields shattered the pact that for over four hundred years had limited the conflict between the dragons to a grotesque organized amusement. Satinka—Dragon-queen of Ost Batar—believed she had been betrayed in the Battle of the Election Fields and drove her remaining troops with blind rage to annihilate her retreating enemy. The broken lines of Vasska’s warriors fled northeast, scrambling down the Dragon’s March Road with Satinka’s warriors at their heels. It was not until they reached the River Serphan that Vasska’s insane Elect turned to make their final stand.

There, at Dragon’s March Bridge, the battle raged for eight days before reinforcements from Vasskhold and its surrounding provinces bolstered the sagging and tired lines at the riverbank. Satinka’s own reinforcing column was met as they moved north across the Vestron Marches by a second force under Vasska’s banner that was marching westward from the coastal cities. They met at Waystead Gap, denying Satinka her reinforcements at the river but exacting a heavy price from Vasska’s forces in blood.

Panas, Dragonking of Enlund, convinced the Grand Duke in Pantaris that these events were a sign from heaven and that his own troops must march down the Enlund Plain against Satinka’s western flank. Her forces split, Satinka pulled back, but the Enlund troops smelled victory. The Grand Duke sent a second army south across the Plain of Umath in an effort to cut off Satinka’s western retreat. But the Enlund royalty had not counted on the Thanes of Urlund, who under direction and support of their own dragon—Ormakh—rode their battle torusks against both Satinka’s western retreat and the Emperor’s troops from the north. It was then that the dragon Jekard saw his chance and drove his own warriors deep into the soft flanks of Satinka’s lands.

The Five Domains had played at war for four hundred years—now their toys had broken and the struggle had become, for each of them, viscerally vital. To the common peasant, little had changed; the war before and the war now were one and the same. Sons and daughters went to battle. Sons and daughters died. That their numbers were no longer limited to the Elect was something of which no one spoke aloud. Yet in the halls of power the sad acceptance of ritual human sacrifice in the name of the common good had been replaced by something more desperate. The order of the world itself was now uncertain, and for the powerful atop their suddenly teetering thrones, the stakes could have gotten no higher.

By the 519th year of the Dragonkings, the escalation of the War of Scales ground into its twenty-sixth year with no end imagined. The memory of dragons has ever been long and the price of Satinka’s insult on the Election Fields continued to be paid in human blood. It gushed from the wound of a dragon’s pride that would not be healed. Open warfare between the Five Domains had settled into a dreary cycle of battle without conquest, sacrifice without purpose, and loss without victory. Battle lines swept back and forth across the same scarred patches of land that stank from death. War itself became the consuming preoccupation for the Dragonkings who perpetuated it, the Pir who struggled to end it, and the mystics who fought for their own survival because of it.

So it was that as all eyes cast their fearful glances toward one another, the doom of the world crept unnoticed even by the mystics, who alone were prepared to see it.

Yet all that would change in a single, fateful year.

BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME III, FOLIO 2, LEAF 23

“You!” a voice rings out from the darkness.

I peer through my conjured mask, an ornate facade of white and red painted leather in which I may hide. I squint into the void, trying to shield my eyes from the glare of the lights.

“Yes, you on the stage! Are you ready?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. “What am I to do?”

“Amateurs! All they send me are amateurs!” The voice bellows. “Just get off the stage and watch.”

I can already hear an enormous thick curtain rising behind me. I glance awkwardly about, then jump gingerly over the unsteady flames of the footlights, landing on a giant plain that stretches to the twilight horizon.

The curtain vanishes into the sky, revealing a sparse setting. Painted wooden mountains hang from cords at the back of the stage, waving uncertainly in a breeze that drifts across the plain. There are several statues of metal warriors swinging at one side, while on the other side a false sea hangs just above the stage. All three of these pieces are suspended from an ornate bronze globe overhead, the sphere itself also suspended from the darkness. Each piece drifts slowly in the wind, sometimes circling forward on the stage while the other two circle back under the orb.

Then the players enter from either side of the stage. The footlights are inexplicably working against me, shining off the edges of the eyeholes in my mask. I cannot see the players clearly. My mask is supposed to hide me from them—not the other way around.

One of them is a woman with paper wings mounted to her back who dances beneath the false waves suspended over her head. I cannot see her face but she reminds me of my own mystic twin, the winged woman through whom the power of my Deep Magic is made real. She looks awkward as she dances across the stage, her faux wings bouncing unnaturally.

Nearby, a short, demonic little creature attempts a dance of his own beneath the metal statue suspended over him. As he dances, he is trying to carry something in his hands—letters and figures of some strange and unreadable script. He tries to be careful in his movements but the letters fall from his awkward hands, shattering against the hard floor and vanishing at once.

At the back of the stage, however, beneath the shadow of the wooden mountains, stand two tall figures—twins by the look of them, though their faces are hidden behind masks that are in every respect identical to my own. Each holds a sword in his hand. Both of them step forward.

“What do you think of it thus far?” says a voice in my ear.

I turn and find myself staring into the eyes behind another mask. Gasping, I step back.

This creature, too, wears a mask that is identical to my own. Its body, however, is hunched over, leaning on a walking stick clutched firmly in its left hand. A long gash rends its coat from the left shoulder down to the middle of the back, exposing a long, white scar. It gazes back at me with burning red eyes—vertical slits of darkness that are wholly inhuman.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“If you don’t pay attention, you’ll never get it right,” the hunched figure snaps, ignoring my question.

I turn back to the stage, the wind whispering around the edges of my mask. The winged woman lies dead on the stage, her head severed from her body. Her blood seeps across the stage, a growing stain moving inexorably toward me. I shudder, trying to step out of its way as it drips off the stage, but it follows me as I move.

The players on the stage begin applauding, their sparse clapping echoing hollowly throughout the vast hall. I stare up at the masks of the twins—both still rapt in their ovation—knowing that one of them had destroyed this winged woman.

“Not bad for a rehearsal,” the stooped figure calls out, his voice trying to carry over the sudden gust of wind. He grabs me by my arm and pushes me up onto the stage. Off balance, I clamber upward, my hands sliding on the winged woman’s blood. I stand on the stage, aghast.

The stooped figure is suddenly beside me. It reaches down with its right arm and picks up the sword from the stage. The breeze that once drifted through the room has become a gale, howling around the stage, blowing the scenery overhead to spin and twist from its cables. “Enough rehearsal,” he screams over the sudden din. “Let the play begin!”

The body of the winged woman picks itself up off the ground, her hand snatching her head from where it lay and deftly replacing it on her shoulders as she walks off the stage. The demon creature, too, has walked off, pulling a new set of symbols out of a barrel just behind the proscenium of the stage.

I look back toward the twins—but only one figure stands at the back of the stage. I look down at myself and see that we now wear identical costumes.

“I won’t do it!” I yell at the stooped man over the roaring of the wind. “I won’t play this part . . .”

“Everyone’s part is his own,” he insists.

The hunched figure puts the bloodied sword in my red-stained hands.

BOOK OF CAELITH BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME IX, FOLIO 1, LEAF 52

The winds were unusually cold for late afternoon, even in the early spring. Caelith Arvad awoke with a shiver from his reveries and pulled his hood down closer around his face, his cheeks chilled to a bright, rosy blush. He shivered once more but knew deep within himself that it had little to do with the cold of the approaching night.

He stood in the center of the broad avenue that had been the main thoroughfare of the town known as P’tai—the Jewel of the East. The wind played with a broken door somewhere, for the squeal of its hinge and occasional banging of its remaining planks sounded an uneasy tempo through the town. The wind lent its own mournful low wail to the scene as it wound its way across the jagged edges of broken walls and the vacant blackness of shattered windows. The skittering dry leaves and ashes hissed for silence, but the wind paid no attention and continued to blow through the desolation.

The wind brought one consolation, Caelith thought as he sighed: it rolled down from the northern Enlund Plain, spilling over the Bounteous Hills before it cascaded down into the town. It filled his nostrils with the pungent smell of burnt timbers, blistered paint, and charred stores. It was unpleasant enough but he was grateful for it nonetheless, for the smell, he knew well from experience, could have been much worse.

It certainly would have been much worse had the wind come from the west.

A sharp, distant voice echoed among the fallen walls: “Prince Arvad!”

Caelith looked up in annoyance at the figure running toward him, weaving through the rubble of the fallen walls.

“Prince Arvad!” It was Lovich. He was new to the clan, only rescued from the Election in Waystead four months before. He was a talented mystic who showed promise in a number of areas—if he lived long enough to develop them. He had an enthusiasm and a blind loyal fervor that argued against betting in favor of his survival. Lovich breathlessly skidded to a halt just in front of Caelith. “Prince Arvad, I bring news!”

“Don’t call me ‘Prince,’” Caelith snapped. “A prince is the son of a king, and last time I checked, my father had not acquired a crown.”

“But, sire, everyone calls you the Prince—”

“We are a clan—not a kingdom,” Caelith said with a hint of force in his exasperated voice. He was inclined to like Lovich—probably a bad idea considering how easily one’s friends die in the course of their work. Better to keep a distance. “Look, I know people back at the clanhold sometimes refer to me as the Prince, but that really isn’t a good idea out here, right?”

“Yes, sire,” Lovich gulped.

Caelith shook his head. Lovich was not that much younger than Caelith in years, but they were ages apart in experience. “You had something to tell to me, Lovich?”

“Yes, sire,” the younger mystic replied. “Master Kenth says he’s bringing everyone in.”

“Let me guess,” Caelith said, absently glancing around. “There’s nothing left.”

“Well, not much anyway.” Lovich shrugged. “It looks like Satinka’s army came down out of the Thanes’ Rift east of here four days ago. They just marched down the road through the night before they got to the town. Master Kenth thinks old Thane Baerthag must have known they were coming, though, ’cause the townsfolk were already heading west with most of the Thane’s army when Satinka arrived. He left part of the army behind to hold the town but apparently the Dragonbitch herself showed up two days ago and, well”—Lovich gestured around him—“they didn’t hold on much longer after that.”

Caelith nodded. Baerthag would have fared better if he had not been a thane in Urlund. All of Hramra, from the Forsaken Mountains to the south to the northern coasts of the Dragonback and from the western Desolation to the Gulf of Palathina on the east had been divided, since the fall of the Rhamasian Empire over four hundred years before, into the Five Domains. Each was ruled by a Dragonking—or, in two cases, Dragonqueens—under entirely different systems of governance depending upon the whim of the dragon who ruled that part of the land. Though each of those lands was touched by the Pentach of the Pir Drakonis and their religion to one degree or another, the actual system of rule varied from domain to domain. Thus, while Vasska ruled Hrunard and much of the Dragonback under a theocracy heavily centered in the Pir Drakonis, Ormakh preferred to rule Urlund through a less centralized collection of local thanes, each with its own militia and arms. Caelith was certain that Ormakh’s intention was to keep each of the thanes sufficiently weak so that no one of them could challenge his rule as Dragonking. It may have been caution on the dragon’s part, but it often left the individual thanes to fend for themselves, as the other thanes were reluctant to get involved in their neighbor’s troubles.

Caelith started slowly down the broken remains of the avenue, Lovich falling into step next to him. “How far did Baerthag get?”

“Ten miles—maybe fifteen,” Lovich said evenly. “It was pretty bad; Baerthag left the refugees behind and tried to make a run for it with what remained of his army. EvaLynn—you know, that Wind-talker visiting from Clan Thais—she flew out and saw it. I can go and get her if you want to hear it from her, but she’s pretty shook up about it.”

“No.” Caelith stopped and looked at Lovich as he rubbed his hands up and down the heavily patched sleeves of his tattered robe. “What’s done is done. Baerthag brought it down on himself. He tried to push into Enlund through Satinka’s lands and thought he could do it without the Dragonqueen noticing.” Caelith took a long look at the smoldering fallen buildings around him. “Satinka, however, notices everything—and always balances her books.”

“Have you seen one?” Lovich asked quietly.

“Seen one what?”

“A—a dragon?” Lovich breathed.

Caelith saw the look on the boy’s face and started walking again. “By the gods!”

“No, really, sire!” Lovich stumbled back into step behind his commander. “I was just wondering . . .”

“You were a member of the Pir most of your life, Lovich,” Caelith said, chuckling darkly. “Didn’t Vasska, the Dragonking of the Pir—the center of your worship—ever deign to make an appearance for you?”

“Well, no,” Lovich stammered, stumbling over some paving stones that had broken loose on the ground. “I mean, what with the war going on and all, I figured—”

“Lovich,” Caelith said sharply, his anger boiling over. “The war is always going on! It’s been fought back and forth across the plains of Enlund and the Urlund Expanse and the Vestron Marches and a dozen other lands you’ve never heard of since before you and I were even born! It’s bled the clans, it’s bled the Pir, it’s wrung every one of the Five Kingdoms dry of blood, and the dragons go on! I promise you, Lovich, that you’ll see your fill of dragons. The first time will be awe-inspiring and you’ll feel a thrill at the power those magnificent beasts represent. You may even feel the need to fall down and worship such undeniable authority. But the next time—if you are fortunate enough to live to have a next time—you’ll remember the people standing next to you who screamed as they burned under the dragon’s flames. You’ll remember the thousands of lives that die just to satisfy the hunger of their shredding gullet. You’ll remember that the dragons prefer to cripple their prey rather than kill them outright because they like their meals alive when they digest them.”

Lovich stopped, the color draining out of his face even in the salmon light of the fading day.

Caelith stopped and paused for a moment, thinking before he spoke again. “You will see far too many dragons, Lovich. I take it that Satinka’s troops did a thorough job of ransacking the town?”

“Yes, sire, I’m afraid so,” Lovich responded quickly. “There really isn’t anything we can salvage for the clan.”

“Well, that was expected.” Caelith nodded. “I know it wasn’t possible, but I wish they had held the town . . .”

“Sire?”

Caelith chuckled. “Well, I’m certainly no friend of Baerthag—or any of the Thanes of Urlund for that matter—but the outlying villages have been unusually helpful to our clan over the last few months. With the Thane and his army gone, the outer villages will flee west toward Urmakand. The remaining Thanes will be outraged and demand revenge—they may even work out an alliance with those lunatics in Enlund; that would heat up your war even too fast for you, Lovich. The Thanes will come back in force to take the land back for their own Dragonking, Ormakh. In any event, we’ll find no friends here. We’ll have to find somewhere else to get supplies.”

“Somewhere else?” Lovich blinked. “Where else?”

“I don’t know,” Caelith said, running his gloved hand down his tired face. He then turned and looked around once more at the ruins. “P’tai.”

“Sire?”

“The name of the town, Lovich,” Caelith said sadly. “It was called P’tai.”

The sky burned brilliant with the setting sun, red streaking the wispy clouds overhead.

“I guess we got here too late,” Lovich said sadly.

“Late?” Caelith replied with surprise. “I should hope not! We couldn’t have stopped this, Lovich; not with a hundred times our number.” They had reached the edge of the town. The avenue became a wide, trampled road winding its way over gently undulating hills to the west. The fields to either side of the road were heavily trampled with the passing of the army just a few days before. Caelith gazed down the road to the west. “Find Kenth and have him gather up everyone else here as soon as possible. Have them collect as much wood as they can for a fire.”

“Well,” Lovich sputtered, confused, “if we couldn’t have stopped this—and there’s nothing to salvage—then, excuse me, sire, but why are we here?”

The distant hoarse braying of a torusk beast drifted down the road. Only then did they both hear the tones of an indistinct song echoing among the western hills, growing closer by the moment.

“We are here, it would seem, to be entertained,” Caelith said as he smiled grimly in the fading light of day.

2

Teller of Tales

“. . . So the merry work of blood and woe,

As onwardly we gladly go

To hear the ringing of our steel

And turn once more the warrior wheel!”

Warm baritone notes rolled out of Margrave’s throat and carried across the scorched hills. He stood on the footboards at the front of the wagon, sure-footedly rolling with each jounce of the wagon beneath him, one hand pressing his fingers dramatically to his chest while the other was extended for its theatrical effect. His long black hair, carefully kept in a thick cascade of curls, framed his thin face and set off his bright blue eyes. The cuffs of his elegant, puff-sleeved shirt were frayed and its former white had settled into a complacent gray. His tight-fitted breeches, once obviously tailored with great care and expense, now sagged slightly from the effects of literally leaner times. Yet the single golden earring—symbol of his trade—was brightly polished and every gesture suggested a man who knew he was magnificent. Indeed, behind him in paint so faded and badly scarred as to be nearly illegible, the side of the creaking wagon proclaimed him Margrave the Magnificent as it rolled slowly on wobbling wheels down the deserted road.

As no objection was heard from the shattered and scorched dead that littered the fields to either side of the road, Margrave determined to continue his song.

“The noble Thanes of Urlund called

For Ormakh, Dragonking of Night,

To come defend the city-walled—”

Margrave stopped in mid-verse, then glanced down past the emaciated torusk beast in front of him as it pulled him and the wagon eastward. Margrave sniffed the wind for a moment as he considered. “What do you think, Anji? ‘City-walled’ seems a bit forced, doesn’t it?”

Anji, a short waif of a girl with mousy looks and a demeanor to match, walked along beside the front of the torusk beast, a huge stick in her hand. She herself seemed like a stick of a girl. Her large, dark eyes were unfocused somewhere on the road a few feet in front of her, almost hidden completely by a tangle of long brown hair.

Margrave continued without waiting for an answer.

“How about ‘To come prevent a people mauled’?”

Anji did not look up from her blank stare at the road before her.

“You don’t like that one? I thought it rather visual,” Margrave said, warm in his own cleverness. “How about ‘And make his enemies appalled’?”

Anji said nothing.

“No? How about ‘To save the ass of Baerthag bald’?”

Anji continued to trudge the road.

“Oh honestly, there’s no pleasing you,” Margrave said, emphasizing his frustration by flinging both his hands passionately into the air. “We escape Urmakand with our very lives, witness one of the greatest battles yet fought in the War of Scales, slip through its devastation unscathed—and all you can do is criticize! We have an obligation—no, more than that, we have a duty to all humankind to chronicle such events.” Margrave struck a noble pose at the front of the rickety wagon. “To sing for those who can no longer give voice to their deeds; to tell the tales of those whose tales should have been told but now cannot be told because they cannot tell them.”

Anji sighed, tapping the torusk’s tusk to urge it over the crest of the hill.

Color rose in Margrave’s prominent cheeks. “Of course I know it needs work! Don’t you think I know it’s a terrible slogan? Honestly, Anji, sometimes I wonder if you’re supporting me in my calling or not. Who else will tell the tales of the dead? It’s our duty to stay alive so that those who don’t will be remembered long after—”

Anji stopped, tapping the torusk on its good tusk. The torusk stopped suddenly, bringing the wagon to an unexpectedly abrupt halt. Margrave staggered slightly, fighting to keep his footing under him. He was momentarily upset that his grandeur had been compromised, but he forgot it all in an instant when he steadied himself and looked up.

Five cloaked men stood before Anji and the torusk, blocking the road. Beyond them, Margrave could see the road running down the hill and across three miles of fields to the smoldering remains of the town beyond.

Margrave barely hesitated before striking another pose.

“A delegation from the city!” Margrave said, opening his arms grandly. “I assure you it wasn’t necessary, but the gesture is not lost on Margrave the Magnificent—Margrave the Loremaster of the Five Kingdoms! I humbly accept the generosity of the city of P’tai!”

Relieved of its burdens of the road, the wagon sagged against the broken wall on one side of what remained of the town square. It hid behind the canvas backdrop which Margrave had unfurled and hung between trembling lengths of supporting poles, a sagging cyclorama emblazoned with a fanciful map of the Five Kingdoms of Hrunard, illustrated with many small scenes that stretched from pole to pole. A fire sputtered in the center of the square, the late evening wind shredding its flames into shifting and uncertain light. Completing the circle around the fire stood a cadre of nearly thirty dark figures, each of them clad in worn and tattered robes, their faces cast in stark and shifting relief by the stuttering fire.

The young girl called Anji stood uncertainly next to the fluttering canvas, her large eyes blinking as her hands crossed in front of her. She shivered occasionally with the mounting cold, the fire offering no comfort in the chill wind. She shifted her slight weight from foot to foot as she silently waited.

Caelith stood on the far side of the fire with his arms folded tightly over his chest.

Next to him, Marash Kenth, a seasoned warrior from Vestron Marches, glared with his single good eye at the sight arrayed before them. He turned toward Caelith, his distaste obvious in his voice. “Master Arvad, have we force-marched three days into Urlund just for this shrill peacock?”

Caelith sighed. “That’s what we are about to find out. My instructions were very specific. But before I bring this bizarre sideshow back with us, I want to be sure.”

“’Tis a mad dream that brings us to ill ends,” Kenth grumbled.

“Mad dreams I can understand,” Caelith said with a chuckle. “Quiet, now. The show is starting.”

The rising din of a drumhead rose slowly from behind the canvas, its tempo increasing. Just as it sounded a final hollow bang, the thin girl surreptitiously flicked her hand sideways, casting a handful of powder toward the ground. It erupted in a flash of smoke and light. Quite suddenly, Margrave stood before them, his hands upraised in anticipation, a grand smile on his face and the canvas behind him swaying precariously.

“Greetings, good friends!” Margrave intoned, his rich voice carrying over the heads of his grim audience. “Tonight you shall partake of the greatness of the ages! Fear not the power that I wield, for it shall harm none here! For I alone have tamed the power of the Soulless, the wandering carriers of the Emperors’ Madness—that through those tempered demons you may experience yourselves the rise of your ancestors, the Thanes of Urlund, who from the most ancient of days were called forth by the Ormakh, dragon-god of Urlund!”

Margrave paused with dramatic effect, gesturing back toward the sweeping canvas behind him. That part of the backdrop representing Urlund suddenly seemed to lift as a ghostly apparition from the artwork. A visage of the past hung before the assembly. Caelith could only guess that he was seeing some apparition of the city-state of Urmakand sitting at the confluence of two rivers on the plains of the Urlund Expanse. Above it materialized the specter of a dragon—impossibly large—that spread its leathery wings from horizon to horizon. It looked down on the city beneath it, its glow illuminating the landscape.

Margrave turned with a smile toward his audience. The audience stared back at him with deepening grimaces, but Margrave barely missed a beat. The vision changed at a gesture, the dragon suddenly appearing threatening. The glow was gone, replaced by a deep shadow that blanketed the land below. “Yes, the evil god of Urlund, who, as you conquerors of the Eastern Empire well know, challenged the rightness of Satinka’s domain and her benevolent rulership of the lands of Bayway!”

The dragon in the vision suddenly cowered and retreated as another spectral vision rushed forward from another part of the canvas. This time a different dragon, once more impossibly large, rose in the sky above a new landscape. The dragon swooped down from a towering peak high in the mountains, one which Caelith recognized as Mount Saethalan. As the company watched, it roared eastward over an illusory plain, the flames of its breath streaking down into a different city—walled with towering spires—whose stones exploded at their touch.

“I shall take you back down the centuries and you shall relive the liberation of Ost Batar from the Rhamasian lords who had held it captive in their madness since before time! You shall walk with me across the Vestron Marches as Satinka . . .”

Margrave caught sight of Kenth, who was livid at the mention of the conquest of his homeland. The scarred warrior bared teeth as he reached for the hilt of his sword.

“As Satinka brought her terrible destruction and iron domination down upon the once noble and free peoples of that land!” Margrave concluded. The enormous dragon suddenly diminished as the vision collapsed behind the Loremaster back into the canvas.

Caelith leaned over toward the still seething Kenth. “You have to admit, he’s got an open mind.”

“More like vacant, if you ask me,” Kenth sniffed menacingly.

“Let us together peel back the years of war and find ourselves back in another time—a time of your ancestors; a time of their beginnings and ours,” Margrave intoned with great solemnity, though beads of sweat were breaking out on the Loremaster’s forehead. The images on the canvas behind him wavered, with different illusions struggling to be set free. “Just ask me! Test me! What story of your forebears will you have me weave for you tonight?”

“Tell us of Rhamas,” Caelith called out.

Margrave turned sharply toward him, the Loremaster’s face still a mask. “Do you want to hear a tale of the Mad Emperors and their just destruction before the power of the Dragonkings?”

Caelith stepped forward slowly, his hands still folded across his chest as he slowly shook his head.

“Ah! Then perhaps I could