Legends of Belariath
Ian Macross
Apprentice: Part Three
The expedition had set out in good humor, but was rapidly declining…the dwarves, formerly considered to be sluggish, were somehow stepping up the pace, beginning to increase the gap between the easy-going party of warriors, and themselves. Before long, the Shaman ordered a faster speed, wanting to get to these creatures before this chase took them far out of their own territory, and into the neighboring Wolven lands.
According to the scout’s last reports, the dwarves had traveled along the edge of the forest before, obviously aiming for the pass to the south. But now, they were risking it all, heading for the cliffs and the steep passage down to their escape…
As the scene unfolds, we find young Ian Macross, along with the party of village warriors, and his mentor…all traveling through the forest at a break-neck pace, fairly leaping along the ground, already reaching the limits of the lad’s endurance, and even beginning to take a toll on some of the weaker warriors. They could not keep this up for long, judging by the deep breaths, and numerous other signs that could only point towards mild exhaustion.
What had started as a simple run to subdue some short and stocky thieves, was becoming a run straight out of hell, with barely a second to lose…even as the party breaks out of the forest, they can see the dwarves crossing down the final stretch of the edge of the cliffs, preparing to go down…the warriors break into a striding lope, covering the remaining distance with a speed only possible by the driving forces of desperation and fear…fear for what would happen if they lost the bowl, and desperation for what would happen if they kept it…
Silently, the fly across the gulf between them, pounding the sod under their paws with a cold light in their eyes…the dwarves seem to notice that their escape might be hampered, but don’t seem as alarmed as they ought to be, really. They turn, and several of them lift crossbows, beginning to fire warning shots towards the party. They all fall short, of course…but the aim seems relatively accurate. There weren’t that many of the dwarves, probably no more than six or seven, but if they had any fighting ability, they might take one or two of the felines out of commission.
The Shaman seems to understand just how dangerous this situation was…and calls for drastic measures. He motions for the warriors to continue their charge, before simply…well..stepping forwards, and vanishing. He re-appears elsewhere, specifically right behind the dwarves party, clinging to the rocks…he lays a hand towards the group, and unleashes bolt after bolt of sparkling electricity, letting it course over their bodies, singing, burning, smoking…paralyzing the few it didn’t kill.
When it was all over, the warriors overlooked the burned and broken bodies, identifying that none had survived in the end…and only one seemed to have had the strength to crawl a few meters away. Ian wonders idly why the warriors seem so jubilant, almost all of them purring..they hadn’t taken any alive, how would they know who was behind this? Paranoid at a young age, perhaps? Or just intelligent beyond his years…
Whatever the case, there are a few frenzied moments as the felines attempt to discover the location of their treasure…they do find it though, cast aside by the one dwarf who had crawled as far away as possible…perhaps convinced the item had brought him bad luck, not good? Ian watches silently as his mentor picks up the bowl, hastily wrapping it in the folds of his cloak. “Always remember, Ian my lad…thieves always pay in the end, one way or another.” he says firmly.
The warriors cheer and rally anew around the Shaman, ecstatic that their prize was returned to them…they begin to lope back into the woods, closely followed by Ian, who had just found an interesting item in the debris of carcasses and filth. A small dagger…gleaming with the shine of some exotic metal he didn’t have a name for…and glowing with a faint aura of magic.
He grins…he had his own spoils now. He thrusts the dagger into his belt, before striding and bounding to catch up with the others…later, that night, they begin to feast, apparently the three leaders decided that this was cause enough for celebration, considering what great tragedy had been averted. They continue to smile, to wave to others, to dance with wild joy and abandon…even as Ian sits to one side, staring at the dagger curiously…
He frowns, not even considering using his spell as it was taught to him, simply letting his mind wander…when it happens. His viewpoint shifts, and he’s standing in a long, dark tunnel…crudely hewn rock on either side, as well as above and below him. A short, scurrying figure runs through, no more than a few feet high…a dwarf child, it seems? Something attracts his attention at Ian’s feet, and as he watches, petrified and unable to move, speak, or even breathe…the dwarf smiles, picking up the same dagger he now holds in his hands, waving it and slashing experimentally. The scene fades…
…Only to be replaced by another. Now, that young dwarf has grown, not to his full measure perhaps, but nearing it. He practices in a long, low stone hall, with many other youths…thrusting spears, hurling axes, most ways of training were martial, but some were simply games, for amusement…such as touching one fellow, and the others fleeing from him…well, that’s a game known to all species, it seems. Ian begins to smile, before spotting just what the dwarf was doing…when the other’s attention had moved away from him, he had begun to furiously attack the target dummy, showing a frenzy and bloodlust that put all his comrades to shame…
And again, the vision fades, to be replaced by yet another. The dwarf is a full-grown member of his race now, and runs down the side of a steep mountain, followed by many others of his ilk…all armed to the teeth, and quite a few showing wounds and other damages…they are fleeing from the entrance to the tunnels, and somehow Ian knows instinctually that something horrible had happened, that the dwarves had tried to rob their own kin en mass, and had been repelled. Now, without a home or a clan, having forsaken their own…they travel into the lower valleys, eager for plunder
That must have been where they discovered word of the village, for the next view shows the dwarf clambering over a hut in a darkened village…cutting his way through and dropping down, to steal a certain bowl…as if sensing Ian’s boredom with a fact he already knew, the entire series of visions blurs, and fades away…leaving him still sitting at the feast, as if not a moment had fully passed them by yet.
His surprise is evident…how had he accomplished that? He didn’t know, but he was…jubilant. Pleased beyond words that he was able to accomplish his goal, to ascertain the nature of an object…clearly this dagger had been owned by someone of importance, and chances were that the young dwarf had stolen it from it’s rightful place…but, since he had no way of contacting or discovering the nature or location of that owner, he decides it’s rightfully his…
His mentor approaches, at first smiling, but then frowning as he sees a change has come over his disciple…”Lad, what is it?” He asks quite simply, tilting his head as he plops down next to him. Ian frowns as well, staring back at him..”I…I did it. I saw the past, and learned about what it could do…” He says, holding up his prize. The Shaman quickly snatches the dagger from the lad’s surprised grip, and closes his eyes, focusing…meditating for a fraction of a second. He opens his eyes…”From where was this taken?” He asks.
“From an abandoned tunnel.” He answers, cocking his head curiously. Why was he being asked these questions? “Was the bearer a Guardian or a Shaman?” He asks the boy again, still perplexed…how had the lad gained such sudden mastery over an ability which had proved impossible for him for months? “…a Guardian, sir.” He answers, before shaking his head…he suddenly feels tired, and can’t begin to imagine why…perhaps the power of the spell had weakened his young body too much?
The Shaman sighs, but nods…”I can see it’s getting far too late for you, my lad…why don’t you get some rest, we can continue your studies in the morning.” He says, gently guiding the apprentice off to sleep…for sleep he needed, considering the trials of the following day..
Over the next few months and years, young Ian quickly learned a few abilities, though again, his powers seemed limited, and often would not progress until some unseen barrier to the knowledge snapped, and he would acquire it…but always in a different manner than his mentor had known. He learned to decipher the legend behind an object with greater skill, how to create a soft ball of light to illuminate a darkened room, and also learned a bit of casual knife-work on the side, now that he had a -real- weapon.
But other than those two spells, he couldn’t learn very much…his mentor flat refused to teach him combat magic until he deemed he was ready…and, on the lad’s 18th birthday, their new training phase began. We find them in the middle of a small woodland clearing, away from the village…apparently they don’t want to injure the villagers with a misfired blast.
“Now, lad, watch carefully…see what you can learn from what I’m doing, hmm? Put that mind of yours to work…” He raises both hands, slamming his wrists together…pointing both arms towards a small tree stump, growling…a symbol suddenly flashes before him, arcane mists surrounding it, before crackling alive with power, and in that moment, transforming into a blazing ball of blue lightning, taut and prepared…and suddenly released towards the stump. A small explosion, and the stump is quite simply burned away…small sparking embers are all that remain.
“Now…what did you learn from that? Hmm?” He asks, tilting his head to one side again…Ian frowns, shaking his head…”I…I do not know. You took your arms and used them as a focus, I’m assuming, throwing some sort of energy that you had into them, and called up a sort of divine focus to use it. Or was that arcane?” He asks, frowning…he hadn’t recognized the sigil.
“Aha…very close, lad, very. But not quite accurate…yes, I summoned the energy, and yes I used my arms as a focal point for the energy…but no, the symbol is -not- divine or arcane in origin. It is a symbol native only to our village…might you have noticed some similarities to that, and the symbol in the middle of the village square? Add an arm here, a lightning bolt here…” He illustrates on the ground, drawing it carefully in the dirt..
“Mmm. Well, I suppose it would work…it did, obviously. But how does one learn to control it?” He asks, attempting to draw the same symbol, and after a few failed attempts, completing a relatively good impression of the original in the dirt. “Well my lad, that’s the trick. Right now, you can’t. You have never had to channel the right energy before…you need to practice. Attempt to hold one palm before you, pointing towards me…don’t worry you can’t hurt me. Now, focus on the air around you, pull it in towards you…let it flow through your mind, then through your body, accumulating in your grasp…then imagine energy coursing around in your hand, enough to blacken that tree stump a second time over!” He says in an urgent whisper near the end.
There’s a few moments, then a sharp -snap- near his hands, and a small spark appears, hopping out of his grasp and fizzling out. The shock of that sudden noise causes Ian to lose his concentration…”Ah!! What was that?!” He asks indignantly…as if the Shaman had tricked him. “That, Ian, was the first step. You conjured a spark from the air around you, the faintest trace of the magic…now, with practice, you will be able to make many such sparks, and do untold amounts of damage with them…eventually.
The boy’s training would take some time, of course…but now that he knew what was there, it was possible…his apprenticeship seemed to be working out quite well, but, there was one unanswered question: “Who told the dwarves about the village, and it’s bowl? It wasn’t a very well kept secret, but someone would have had to tell them…” Off in the distance, a pair of yellow eyes stare into a bowl of dark, filmy liquid…watching the shaman train his future replacement…”Yes. He could do…quite nicely.” A deep voice resounds, before growling softly…before anything could be done, they needed to stop the shaman…to distract him so that he would leave the protection of his pupil to those weaker than him.