Shifting Stars, page 15
Dreya moved her penetrating gaze to the roses trapping her.
“BREAK.”
The wood and green stems snapped, allowing Dreya to step clear.
“SHATTER,” she told the ice wall, and it blew apart into a million fragments.
Cat was grateful that Dreya’s stun magic allowed her to close her eyes against any incoming ice shards. She still had her eyes shut tight as she felt Dreya’s breath on her face.
“SQUEEZE,” came Dreya's voice, and at her command, a force of magic took hold of Cat in a vice-like grip.
Her eyes flew open in genuine fear and panic.
“Shapeshift into something smaller, and I squeeze tighter,” Dreya warned her. “Finally out of tricks, druid? Feel free to nod your head.”
Cat thought hard but had to admit defeat. She nodded.
Still not releasing her, Dreya turned her attention to Catriona’s Crystal Mage Staff. “Interesting staff you've got there. It seems to be giving off higher planar energy as well as a very mixed up magic signature, like druid, wizard and cleric magic all squeezed together like, well, like you are at the moment,” she taunted, like a spider savouring her power and control over the annoying insect snared in her web. “Mind if I take a closer look?” Dreya asked. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t have a choice, do you?”
Higher planar energy was the power of the shadow warriors. The power Daelen StormTiger wielded. If ever she was going to take him on as she planned, she would need that power. She had begun experimenting with the residual traces left behind after their devastating battles. Scraps off the shadow warriors’ table. But the power within the staff this druid girl possessed was a feast by comparison. It was irresistible.
Dreya reached out, but as soon as her hand touched the staff, a brilliant flash of energy broke all magical bindings and sent both mages flying. Cat landed in the soft garden. Dreya was not so lucky. Her head collided with her door, throwing it wide open and knocking her unconscious.
This was Catriona’s first peek inside the Black Tower. She could see that the front door led to a large porch or portico area, and eventually to an interior door made of frosted glass. Through that glass, Cat could just make out figures rushing closer: Dreya’s personal staff, she realised. Presumably, while Dreya was conscious, she had kept them out of it, preventing them from interfering while she ‘dealt with’ Cat, personally. But with Dreya unconscious, there was nothing holding them back anymore. They were going to come rushing out, believing their Mistress to be under attack.
Catriona had never intended to seriously harm Dreya – throughout their fight, she had carefully avoided that – but her elite guards were not likely to take intentions into account. They would kill Catriona without a moment’s hesitation.
Cat still had a couple of small vials of the water Mandalee had blessed, in her pocket dimension, in case of emergency. This definitely qualified. With a prayer to Blessed Alycia, Mother of Nature, she used one to create a new ice wall to keep them trapped in the porch. Mandalee’s blessing meant it was effectively frozen Holy Water, which would make it difficult and painful for the undead guards to break through, but it wouldn’t stop them for long.
She knew how powerful Dreya’s elite guards were. They weren’t like the lumbering, unthinking ones in the grounds, still unable to work out how to break free of the ties that bound them. No magic Catriona possessed would stop them, and if they touched her…well, she didn’t want to think about what would happen then. Suffice to say, when dealing with powerful undead, simply dying is often seen as a positive result.
My mother could have shifted to falcon form and flown away, but if she did that, there was no way Dreya would ever let her into her tower. Moreover, ‘Get the Greatest Mage Who Ever Lived really annoyed and out for your blood’ was not on Cat’s to-do list for the day. If Dreya interpreted this as an actual attack, their next fight would be for real, not the fun playtime of this afternoon. Cat had to pray she could make her see reason and healing her would be a pretty good first gesture.
Catriona ran to Dreya's side and focussed all of her energy on restoring her. She told Blessed Alycia to take what she needed directly out of her own body. It would weaken her but, given the way her ice prison was breaking up, if Dreya did not recover quickly and in a favourable mood, Cat’s strength would make no difference.
After an eternity, Dreya came around. The ice was beginning to splinter. The guards would be through any second.
Cat panicked. “Not an attack!” she exclaimed desperately. “Promise! Not an attack! Please call off your guards so I can get you inside!”
Dreya’s head was fuzzy from the concussion, but she still managed to quip, “You’re determined to get in my tower one way or another, aren’t you?”
“Dreya, please!”
“You could just fly away.”
Cat shook her head. “I won’t leave you.”
“Why not?” Dreya asked, just as the ice finally broke apart. “Be honest,” she warned. “Tell the truth like your life depends on it.”
“Because…” Cat began. Dreya’s death knights stepped through the broken ice wall, the ghouls at their side. “Because it’s my fault you got injured…”
“The truth, remember?” Dreya insisted.
“That is the truth!” she insisted. “Well,” she amended, “that and I won’t get what I want from you if I do.”
She cringed at the admission, but Dreya just smiled.
“Now, that is the truth.” To her guards, she commanded, “Stand down, all of you, and return to your duties! Catriona here is not to be harmed unless I specifically order it.”
Her guards complied.
“I’ll have to train them to recognise the difference between an attack and an accident. It’s never come up before.”
“You know it was an accident, then? Not an attack?”
“Of course,” Dreya reassured her, choosing to remain seated on the ground for the moment. Catriona sat beside her, drained from the healing on top of all her other exertion. “You’re not stupid. Reckless, yes. Stupid, no.”
Cat apologised. She hadn’t expected that to happen when Dreya touched her staff.
“Only happened once before,” she said. “Actually, I don’t even know why I got it out of my pocket dimension. It’s like it wanted to come out. Needed, even. It’s very odd.”
“Well, as a further gesture of peace,” Dreya said, “would you mind allowing my gardening staff to get on with their work? You've left them tied up.”
Cat looked over and realised Dreya was right. “Sorry. I forgot.”
She asked nature to release the undead gardeners, who simply returned to their ceaseless duties. Cat further promised to tidy up the mess she’d made with her various magics, once she had her strength back, and take the roses away from around her door.
“Leave them,” Dreya told her. “In fact, why don’t you move the black ones and put all three colours together? It would be a good symbol for the co-operation of the three orders of magic, which is something I’m trying to achieve with the Council. As for you, Catriona Redfletching: you beat me.”
“Technically, my staff beat you,” she refuted.
“Semantics,” Dreya insisted. “You beat me.”
“Please don't kill me!” Cat cringed.
“Kill you? That's the best contest I've had for years. I'm in your debt, and I always pay my debts. Besides, why would I kill my betrothed?”
“Your what?” Cat laughed.
“You proposed, remember? I accept.”
“So, we’re getting married, after all?” Cat wondered.
Dreya grinned, and replied, “Well, like you said, why don’t we take it slow and start with a study date? I grant you full access to my tower's library and facilities whenever you like. How’s that for a romantic gesture?”
“Really? That's amazing!” Cat cried out in joy.
Dreya tried to stand, but even with Cat’s help, the world was still spinning too fast, and she promptly sat down again.
“Well then, in a romantic gesture of your own, you can carry me across the threshold.”
With help from some low-level levitation from Dreya, Cat was able to get them both into her main sitting room, where they collapsed together on a sofa.
“I underestimated you,” Dreya admitted. “It won't happen next time.”
“Next time?”
“Well, I was hoping for a rematch…but not right now, please, dear. I've got a headache.”
“I blame the door,” Cat quipped. “Your door dared to attack Dreya the Dark and must be destroyed.”
Dreya laughed, “I’ll have it burnt, immediately.” Cat gave her a meaningful look and Dreya got the message. “OK, I admit it: you are pretty funny.”
“Ooh!” Cat grinned, delighted. “You think I'm pretty, too?”
“I think your magic is beautiful,” Dreya replied.
Cat choked on a laugh and then blushed when she realised Dreya was serious. “Wow, thank you! No-one's ever said anything like that to me before.”
“That's because other people don't see magic as I do. Magic isn't just a tool or a weapon, it's…”
“It's an art,” Cat finished.
“Precisely,” Dreya agreed. “Your creativity is part of what I'm trying to achieve in magic.”
Dreya called one of her death knights to make some tea.
“Now, let’s talk about what you need from me, Cat, and how we might advance magic, together because, thanks to you, I'm more convinced than ever that magic can do so much more.”
*****
Sitting there, beside someone she dared to think of as a new friend, my mother slowly started to relax, and that, gentle reader, is the story of how Catriona Redfletching impressed Dreya the Dark.
If Catriona and Mandalee was a friendship for the ages, this was something altogether more complicated.
Chapter 18
When Catriona showed Dreya Shifting Stars and the other references that seemed to verify the claims made therein, Cat wasn’t expecting Dreya to snap her fingers and immediately advance her research. After all, it wasn’t reasonable to suppose the sorceress would have a complete inventory of the Black Tower’s vast library in her head. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.
Dreya had been interested in some of the magical research conducted by Ulvarius. That may have worried some people, but not Catriona. She didn’t make the mistake others made with Dreya, in assuming she would one day become a tyrant like Ulvarius before her. That was prejudice, pure and simple: her black robes, plus her chosen residence did not automatically equal a prelude to world conquest. Dreya’s interest in Ulvarius was purely academic: nobody had had access to his research before, and to Catriona, leaving that resource untapped made no sense. How could anyone know whether there was something of value unless someone was prepared to look? It seemed to Cat that although Dreya was wholly committed to Dark magic and the power it could bring her, she had not forgotten her Red robe roots. No doubt Xarnas would have told her, many times, the central tenet of the order of Balance: ‘Knowledge is neutral; its application is not.’
In this case, gentle reader, the knowledge in question came from an entry in Ulvarius’ personal diary from the Day of the Lake of Tears that I have mentioned before. The day when, according to legend and his own journal (which is hardly unequivocal evidence), Lake Quernhow was formed.
A whole town wept for me this day. The baby started it, perhaps sensing how the greatness of Ulvarius was to be challenged. The rest of the town had to drown before they had a chance to spread the word and try to undermine me. Those deaths caused the ground to shake and sink beneath the waters of a brand-new lake, blessed with the souls of those I killed. It was truly magnificent.
Some higher planar creature came today to witness the glory of the power of Ulvarius. It refused to bow down to my greatness, even daring to suggest that a mage more powerful than I would one day rise. All nonsense, of course. The truth is, it secretly feared Ulvarius – I could tell – and was just using that ridiculous claim to try and make me hesitate to kill it. In the end, I let it run away so that it could warn other higher planar beings not to mess with Ulvarius in the future.
Even as the magic of Ulvarius made the whole town weep, it used some kind of staff to create a magnificent display of light in the sky in Ulvarius’ honour.
Nothing will be the same, now. Now that I know my magic has caught the attention of the higher planes, everything has changed, even the sky. For today, the stars moved for Ulvarius.
Now, I daresay something struck you about that, gentle reader – besides the revelation that Ulvarius even wrote about himself in the third person! It certainly struck my mother.
“The stars moved for him!” she cried, breathless. “Three hundred years ago, my Angel appeared, and the stars moved for him.”
“Well, I very much doubt they moved for him,” Dreya said. “That’s just his ego talking. To be honest, when I read this before, I just assumed it was a metaphor – or a delusion.”
“Understandable,” Cat accepted.
“But now that you’ve shown me your research and told me your own experiences, the similarities are too striking and repeated too often to ignore.”
Comparing star charts from Ulvarius’ time to more recent ones, showed a seemingly random group had once again moved out of position.
Some obvious questions naturally suggested themselves: Why did the Angel keep popping up at various times in history? Why did they conceal themselves from all but one person? And what were they doing with the Crystal Mage Staff to cause that lightshow?
“Can’t answer any of those,” Cat admitted, “but I do have a theory about the star shifts.”
“Go on,” Dreya encouraged her.
“Well, the author of Shifting Stars questioned whether it was the stars or Tempestria itself that was moving. He made a case for the latter, but I think he overlooked a third, more likely possibility. Maybe it’s neither. Maybe the stars and our world remain unchanged in their relative positions in the heavens. Maybe it’s merely our perception of the stars that is changing.”
“You mean, something in between is filtering or refracting their light?” Dreya considered. “You’re right, that does make more sense. I can’t imagine any magic moving heavenly bodies around but bending light – we can do that already. It’s just a question of scale. But why? What’s the point?”
Cat shrugged. “And that’s as far as my clever theory goes, I’m afraid. We don’t even know whether the shifting stars are a goal or a side effect.”
Dreya had to admit she could suggest nothing more.
“Also,” Cat continued, “there’s one other question that you’re being really sweet not to bring up, Dreya: Whatever my Angel’s been doing with this staff for goodness knows how many centuries, it must surely be important. So why in the name of Creation give it to me?”
“Maybe that’s important, too?” Dreya suggested.
“Yeah, right!” Cat scoffed. “Because I’m so important!”
“You’re important to me,” Dreya stated, matter-of-factly, “and I happen to think I’m pretty important, so it doesn’t seem an entirely unreasonable hypothesis.”
Cat shook her head and offered a wry smile. “Only you could combine a compliment and self-aggrandising in one sentence.”
Dreya smiled back. Cat got the impression that not many people got to see that. “Just telling it like it is.”
“Well, that does lead me nicely to something I wanted to bring up,” Cat said. “Since I’ve met you, you’ve talked about your interest in bringing diverse magic together to strengthen the whole, and in that context, something else has struck me about my staff.”
It had occurred to Dreya, too: The readings from the Crystal Mage Staff seemed to indicate it contained diverse forms of magic, somehow bound together with higher planar energy. How, or for what purpose, the sorceress could not fathom.
Catriona snapped her out of her thoughts, speaking Dreya’s name in the most solemn tone the sorceress had heard from her, and following up with a most unexpected question.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Cat asked.
Dreya looked puzzled. “I like to think so.”
“But more than that – and I know it hasn’t been that long – I think we have a pretty good understanding of each other.”
Dreya agreed.
“So, I’m under no illusions: for you, the power will always come first.”
“I won’t deny that,” Dreya said, “but don’t for one moment imagine that means I don’t…” she hesitated, unused to expressing such thoughts, “…care. I am, in point of fact, very pleased to have you in my tower and in my life.”
“I know,” she assured her with a smile, “and no matter how…unconventionally you say things like that, as I say, I understand you.”
“What are you getting at, Cat?”
“I just want you to understand me when I say that I would never ask you to turn down a chance for power for the sake of friendship. You wouldn’t, and I get that, I really do.”
“Why do I feel there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
Cat nodded. “But equally, my staff and whatever it contains, is more important to me than your friendship, if it ever came down to a choice.”
“I can appreciate that,” Dreya agreed, “better than anyone. I think I can see the point you’re heading towards but say it anyway.”
“My point is that I want to try and find a way for us to live and work together, to grow as friends, in full understanding of each other, and I want—”
“—You want assurance that I will never take power from your staff, no matter how tempted I might be.”
“Exactly. I know asking you to promise is futile. Your word is not as binding as your debts. Therefore,” she concluded, “I want you to think of taking power from my staff, as a debt that can never be repaid.
