Blessings of a Curse - The Nexus of Kellaran #1

Blessings of a Curse - Book One of The Nexus of Kellaran Trilogy

Part 1

Chapter 1

(If you are reading this account in a language other than Grand High Draconian, you might consider making a contribution to the Translation section of your local Magic Users Guild. XVD)

Yazadril watched the huge human walk blithely through the border Wards of The Nine Valleys like they weren’t even there, and his breath hissed in between his teeth. The ancient mountain elf was stunned with surprise for the first time in decades, and he nervously tugged his long white beard in consternation. Nothing could pass the Wards unless a Warder had admitted it, nothing! And since he was one of the Warders, he knew with certainty that no such admission had occurred! He felt a moment of fear, an emotion he had not experienced for centuries, and quickly cast Unseen upon himself with a quietly hummed note and a practiced gesture.

Then his intellect re-asserted itself. He reasoned that since the human had been completely unaffected by the Illusions, Force Barriers, and other magic defences of the border Wards, he may also be unaffected by the Unseen spell. That thought gave him another fright, and he carefully moved behind a tree, then peered around it at the human.

‘By the Source, it is the biggest one I have ever beheld with these eyes!’ he thought to himself. ‘He is the size of a great plains bear, and just as shaggy as one!’

He forced himself to calm, and considered what he knew that was pertinent.

Only fourteen times had human wizards managed to see through the Illusions of the Wards in Yazadril’s exceedingly long lifetime. Five of them had openly camped before the Wards, since they had come to speak to the mountain elves, to peacefully trade in knowledge and goods. Six wizards had sought to sneak into The Nine Valleys to steal objects of power, and only two of those had passed the Wards. And three wizards had come with armies, and had attacked the barriers seeking to conquer the valleys beyond, and usurp the more concentrated power available there.

They had all failed. The High People did not trade with human wizards, neither for knowledge nor for goods. The two thieves who made it past the Wards had used masterfully subtle spells of disguise and distraction to pose as resident High People, only to be caught by the hidden Sentries at the top of the pass. And none of the three would-be conquerors had survived their attempts, since all three were brute-force types, and the defensive spells of the Wards had transduced the massive power of their attacks and sent it back at them in unexpected forms.

They had all obviously been human Master Wizards, gray or white of hair, wrinkled of face, clad in ornate clothing and festooned with signs and objects of power.

This huge human was another matter entirely. His long black hair and beard covered most of his face and stuck out in all directions, making it hard to judge his age, but his muscles bulged beneath the bushy hair on his chest and along his arms and legs, and his movements were smooth. He wore a tattered kilt of dark gray plaid, the remains of a gray cotton shirt with the sleeves ripped off that hung open and untucked, and he carried the remnants of a black cloak gathered as a bag and slung over his shoulder, stuffed with unknown items. Crude leather sandals whisked quietly through the deep grass as his long and seemingly slow stride carried him upslope almost as fast as Yazadril could run.

He appeared to be a simple peasant, and for him to have simply walked through the Wards, apparently without even realizing they existed, was almost inconceivable! He walked with his head down, watching the ground, and there was a slump to his shoulders.

As he passed within six meters of Yazadril’s hiding spot the elven wizard caught his scent, and realized that the human was surprisingly clean, given his generally unkempt state. Which might indicate that his appearance was a disguise.

As Yazadril began stealthily following the human upslope another thrill of rare emotion raced through his old heart, this one composed equally of fear and a burning intellectual curiosity.

A moment later his quarry stopped beside the path to dig a wild onion with a small knife, scrubbed most of the dirt off with a handful of dry grass, and stood to stow it in his cloak. He stretched hugely, then looked to the right of the path. He noticed the Clearing of Contemplation where Yazadril had been meditating until he’d heard the human’s distant approach up the scree slope outside the Wards.

The big human ambled into the small meadow and sat himself down on Yazadril’s favorite sitting log, and looked out on the great untenanted valley beyond the Wards, enjoying the very view the old elf so often enjoyed. Or so it seemed at first.

He surprised Yazadril again when he put his head in his hands and began to cry, softly at first, then with great wracking sobs of utter despair. It sounded very strange, as his voice seemed unnaturally deep to elven ears.

After ten minutes of that he seemed to have cried himself out, and gradually calmed. He looked to the setting sun, then began to set up a crude camp beside the log. Having finished that, he set up some small snares around the perimeter of the clearing, then returned to his camp to relax against the log and eat some wild berries and roots he withdrew from his cloak. After eating, he drank deeply from a waterskin, hid his possessions in the hollow end of the log, and rolled himself in his cloak before lying down in the grass beside the log. He soon appeared to be asleep.

Yazadril watched all this from the cover of a clump of bushes ten meters beyond the clearing’s edge. He watched a half-hour longer to be sure the human truly slept, then silently made his way back to the path.

He hiked halfway up to the top of the pass before he cast a careful magic Speaking to the sentinels there.

“Dilimon, it is I, Yazadril! Bring three others of the Sentries, some food and drink, and a warm cloak. Meet with me on the pathway down to the border, move most silently, and do not cast the power in any way! As well, bring your hunting weapons! And before anything else is done, call to duty every Sentry we have available, have them equip themselves with every mundane weapon that they own, and post them in defensive formations about the top of the pass!”

“I hear you Yazadril! Myself, three others, food and drink, a warm cloak, mundane weapons, in stealth down the path, all Sentries to defend the top of the pass! We follow your instructions!” Dilimon’s mind-voice rang in Yazadril’s head with youthful excitement, and Yazadril could tell that Dilimon was relaying the orders and taking efficient action to carry them out, even as he continued the mental conversation. “What is it Yazadril?! A basilisk?! A dark dragon?!”

“It is a human, Dilimon. He is camped and sleeping in my Clearing of Contemplation, two hundred paces inside the Wards!”

“By my soul! Shall I alert the other senior wizards?”

“Do not wake them if they are already sleeping. This human does not appear to be a wizard. If any are still awake, have them informed, and tell them that I will speak with them about it in a few hours. Beyond them, and the eight members of your squad, none must know of this! Tell the extra Sentries that they are there on my order, as a precaution only, that there is quite likely no danger, and nothing else!”

“Yes Yazadril. But… If he is not a wizard, how did he pass the Wards?”

“I am not sure. He did not so much defeat the barriers, as simply ignore them! He did not appear to even realize that they were there! I have kept myself concealed from him, and I doubt that he even knows that he has trespassed onto our lands!”