‘Otrick could do it,’ retorted Velindre, ‘without letting himself run howling mad on the wings of a storm.’
‘You think you’re the equal of Otrick?’ Azazir guffawed as if he had heard a ripe tavern jest. ‘I would be,’ Velindre murmured, more to herself than to the mad old wizard, ‘if I could do this.’ She gestured out to the water where the green dragon was now floating, wings outstretched, basking in the sun. What will that one do, if I can summon up another dragon?’
‘A rival coming into its territory?’ Cruel expectation lit Azazir’s face. ‘It’ll fight. They may be born of the elements but they’re beasts when all’s said and done. True dragons claim a territory for themselves where they hunt, where the elements are at their rawest, to give them power for working their own magics. They fight among themselves for the choicest territory, to the death or until the loser yields and flies away. That’s why dragons would come to the Cape of Winds, following the heights and the storms when they’d been driven out of the far mountains.’ As he spoke, his eyes drifted towards the north.
‘So they were never the strongest,’ he continued, ‘for all the hunters would boast of their bravery in taking on such a mighty quarry. Even a dragon isn’t so mighty if it’s already wounded, with its magic exhausted. Dragon and mage alike—spending too much of our substance on our spells can be the death of us,’ he warned Velindre with a sharp expression.
‘So the hunters just found them exhausted and “butchered them?’ she asked with distaste.
‘You think they needed a wizard along to help them do that?’ Azazir’s screech of laughter made her jump. ‘You think they’d pay a wizard half of everything they made just to whistle up a wind or calm the seas on the voyage? No, you stupid chit. Even a wounded, weary dragon could kill a boatload of hunters without blunting a claw.’
He fell silent, one wrinkled hand absently stroking his straggling, knotted beard, dark-green eyes hooded and contemplative. He looked old beyond imagining. No, the wizard was there to summon up a simulacrum like that one, to fight the wounded dragon to utter exhaustion and sap what remained of its elemental magic so that it couldn’t breathe death or lethal illusion on the hunters. If a wizard could manage that, he’d more than earned his share, wouldn’t you say? Then dissolving the simulacrum was his problem while the hunters tracked the exhausted dragon to wherever it was laired and hacked it to pieces as it lay helpless. If they were lucky, it wouldn’t take their heads off in its death throes. That happened more than once,’ he added with ambiguous neutrality.
He rubbed his hands briskly together. ‘Let’s see if you can do it. Let’s see if you’re even half the mage Otrick was.’
‘I don’t want to summon up a dragon just to set it fighting that one for your amusement,’ Velindre said with distaste.
‘That’s Hadrumal talk, all ethics and imbecile niceties. Besides, you’re assuming you’ll succeed. I’m inclined to think my beast is perfectly safe.’ Azazir clicked his tongue disdainfully. You came up here to learn. I’ve told you what you need to know. Where else are you going to try it? Down in the lowlands where the beast can gorge on some villageful of idiots? Or here where I can fetch you back if you summon so much elemental air you’re overwhelmed by it?’
‘You’d do that?’ Velindre looked searchingly at the old mage. And how could she let such an opportunity pass? she asked herself.
‘Otrick was a friend, the best of my friends,’ Unexpectedly, Azazir sounded almost sane. ‘I didn’t have many. I’ll help you for his sake and yes, there’s part of me that doesn’t want to see such knowledge lost at Hadrumal’s decree,’ he acknowledged vindictively.
She had come so far and she could hardly hope to experiment with such beguiling, perilous knowledge back in Hadrumal. Velindre gazed out at the basking dragon.
‘You say it will fade in a day or so, regardless of what I do?’
‘Or when I get tired of lending it my strength.’ Azazir looked at the oblivious creature with faint resentment, his moment of humanity ebbing away.
Velindre bit down on her qualms. Otrick had done this, after all, without disasters bringing down the wrath of the Council.
‘Will you watch my working?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me where I go wrong, if I should fail?’ When you fail.’ Azazir nodded. ‘For the first few times. Until I get bored.’
‘Then let’s see how hard this can be.’ Velindre reached up into the brilliant blue sky in search of breezes. Faint winds were just starting to rise from the bare slopes of Azazir’s valley, now that the unhindered sun warmed the bare earth and rock. She noted them but did not bring them under her control just yet, looking further afield. As colder winds blew in from the surrounding heights to claim the space those first breezes had just vacated, she caught them and wove them together. More gusts followed and she captured them, but these shallow wafts offered nothing like enough elemental power to try the process Azazir had described. She looked higher into the sky where the winds were stronger, following their own imperatives high above the distant snow-fields and mountainsides, shearing away from the bizarre disruption of the elements around Azazir’s lake. Velindre drew on the alluring recollections of the wild ride the old wizard had thrown her upon. She reached out and summoned the elemental force with unexpected ease.
She reminded herself to feel the earth beneath her feet and the sun’s warmth teasing her hair, soothing her skin beneath her crumpled chemise. There was no birdsong in the barren valley but she could hear the splashing of the green dragon and the slapping of ripples on the muddy shore. This was never going to work if she didn’t keep firm hold of herself, denying the illicit temptations Azazir had shown her.
‘Get on with it.’ Velindre saw the old wizard wave a dismissive hand at the lake and the air shuddered with a rushing crash of water as the dragon dived for the depths. ‘He won’t stay gone for long and if he sees you working magic, he’ll most likely attack.’
She stared unblinking up into the sky. Even as she drew down the power of the uppermost winds, she searched beyond them. There was one secret Otrick had taught her that few, if any, other wizards in Hadrumal knew. Maybe Rafrid knew it, maybe not. No matter. If she could master this spell, no one would dispute her pre-eminence over him. And Azazir could eat his mocking words.
There, she had it. In the very highest reaches of the sky, just before the air became too thin to sustain them, the fleetest winds she’d ever encountered were racing unhindered by the rumpled earth below, indescribable power at their core. No wonder the early mages who had followed Trydek to find refuge from dangerous ignorance on the mainland had approved his choice of Hadrumal, when they’d found such strength in the upper air above it. And Otrick had made it his life’s work to find other such winds. She summoned the intoxicating strength and blue light crackled all around her as a ribbon of elemental energy fell from the cerulean blue. Velindre gathered all the lesser currents of air to it, braiding them around that sapphire heart of unfettered power. Blue magelight flickered and vanished, snapping and fluttering. Flurries of dust along the lakeshore died as the breezes hurried to do Velindre’s bidding. The air cooled as the heat of the sun fled in disarray. Spray danced up, impatient to join its sympathetic element. Velindre spared just enough concentration to banish it. The droplets ran away to hide in the lake, duly chastised.
The sapphire light glowed bright, a swelling column reaching up from her upturned palms into the vast emptiness of the sky. It held steady, pulses of brilliant light running up and down its length. Velindre drew her hands just a little distance apart and focused all her mageborn instincts on the space between them. The azure beams within the column of light flickered and then began coiling in on themselves. The light grew brighter, paler, lightning-white with pulses of sapphire shooting down from the uppermost sky to vanish into the incandescence building between Velindre’s outstretched hands.