The Ritual of the Sword - part 2

        The ride to Lake Erstead, atop fine riding horses provided by the Order of Knights, was quite painful for me, much to the amusement of Draknahr. Prior to this three day ride, I had never even sat atop a horse, having lived my entire life in port cities, and traveling very little other than by carriage or on foot. During the journey, Draknahr and I spoke at length, and it was on this journey where our friendship was cemented. Draknahr told me many stories of his childhood which I will commit to writing at a later time.
When we arrived at Lake Erstead, I was overwhelmed with the majesty and beauty of the location. It is a large lake, clear and cold sitting at the foot of the southernmost extent of the rugged White Mountains, which separates Ghieral and Galdor, and intrudes into Caeleon for thirty or so miles. Several small towns sit on the southern shores of the lake, while the northern portion is enclosed by steep mountain walls. We set up camp as far north as we could manage, and then Draknahr told me more of what he knew.
“According to the stories I have heard from the knights in the Order, when Vellarius was tracked down, he and his followers were living within a series of caverns there,” Draknahr said while stoking our small campfire. He pointed with the smoldering stick he had been stirring the coals with to an area at the base of the cliff wall overlooking the lake, and just a few hundred yards from our camp site. “Eventually, as you know, Sorcerers from your Guild came and caved in the cavern opening.”
“That is not entirely accurate,” I replied, filling him in fully on what I knew. “The Sorcerers were the finest in Del Caet at manipulating elemental earth. They did not just cause a cave in, but sealed the cavern opening entirely. Unfortunately, I am quite poor at manipulating earth, but there may be another way. Some of the accounts that I read indicated that Vellarius and his men seemed to have a readily available supply of water, and the smell of cooking fish was common from the cavern. It can be surmised the the caverns were in some way connected to the lake.”
“Why then did Vellarius and his men not escape?” Draknahr asked.
“I can not be sure. Vellarius had witches with him, but no sorcerers. While I know little of the actual rituals and methods the Witches Guild teaches, I do know that their power does not come from within, as it does for we Sorcerers, but requires a living sacrifice to release the power they then manipulate. The more difficult the task, the greater the sacrifice necessary. I would guess that fish did not provide them enough power to escape,” I replied. “It is also possible that their rituals simply cannot do some of the things that sorcerers can do.”
The next morning, I set out with my walking stick to the location the cavern entrance had once been. There was no trace, and even reaching out with my limited power in elemental earth, I could not even feel the faintest hint of the former cave mouth. It was just as I expected, and there was no possibility of accessing the caverns through the cliff face. Taking a different approach, I walked to the water's edge, and sat down on a flat topped rock projecting a few inches above the water's surface, several feet from the shoreline. I took my hand and gently touched the surface of the water, and pushed out my power over the water very gently. While I was simply feeling the water, a task requiring little power, the depth of the lake, and the massive area I was searching made the task extremely draining. As I searched, I could feel the fish knifing through, and the insects skating on the surface. I felt ducks swimming, and I felt deer gently drinking at the water's edge, and finally I felt the contours of a rough tunnel leading into the side of the mountain wall. The tunnel felt natural, and in places was barely small enough for a man to pass. It was also deep, and long. The witches would have faced a daunting task to try to use it for escape. Satisfied with my discovery, I rose from my rock and returned to the campsite where Draknahr waited impatiently. We decided to make the attempt the following day, after I had rested and recovered my strength.
The following morning at dawn, Draknahr roused me from my deep slumber. Clearly he was incapable of waiting for even a single minute longer than necessary, and I could feel a nervous energy radiating from him. Almost at once, I could feel myself feeding off of his excitement, and off we went, not even bothering to eat breakfast. Draknahr and I each brought a rucksack with some provisions, as well as torches. While I was capable of providing light myself, I saw no need to drain myself unnecessarily. At the water's edge, I quickly prepared myself and instructed Draknahr to stay as close to me as physically possible. Then, I took a long breath, pushed out with elemental air, and then stepped into the water.
The sphere of air that I pulled down into the depths, a cocoon around our bodies, was actually slightly more difficult to manage than I had expected. We were able to look out of the perfect bubble to the water and lake bed around us, and see the fish darting away from us. The saturated mud of the lake bed made for difficult walking. Fortunately, the lake was incredibly clear, so light was not an issue until we made our way along the cliff wall and into a much deeper part of the lake. Here, the mud gave way to rocky projections, and we began climbing down the terribly slick and icy cold wall, finally reaching the tunnel after more than half an hour of tentative climbing.
When we reached the tunnel, I was beginning to have trouble maintaining my focus. I was beginning to tire, physically and mentally, the cold of the water and rock had completely numbed my fingers and toes, and I sensed the air in our bubble was growing stale, and soon would not be able to sustain us. I nearly lost heart then, fearing that my overconfidence had indeed led us to our doom, but Draknahr, sensing my doubt and fatigue grabbed me and slung my body over his shoulder before I could even protest.
“You concentrate on the sorcery, I will manage the climbing,” he said between clenched teeth, and he soldiered on, in fact picking up his pace.
This was the first display I had really seen of Draknahr's resolve. Despite his obvious fatigue, he never wavered, and he climbed through the narrow tunnel, with me clinging to him like a baby monkey to its mother. In several places, I had to make my own way through narrow crevices, but finally after what seemed like days in the pitch black water, scrambling over freezing rocks, we pulled ourselves, gasping, exhausted, soaked and nearly frozen to death out of the water and into a dark chamber. I heard Draknahr digging through his rucksack, and then I felt a torch pressed into my hands. It actually took me several seconds to determine what the object was, as my hands at that point could feel nothing, and my fingers could barely grasp. With the very last of my elemental energy, I touched the tip of the torch, and a spark leaped from my finger, igniting it.
We huddled around the meager flame of the torch, absorbing its heat into our bodies until it sputtered out, barely bothering to look around us at the small, natural cavern we sat in. Sensation slowly and painfully returned to my hands and feet, and I was overcome by my fatigue. I fell asleep where I sat, my back resting against the rough wall, but amazingly, I was not to sleep for long.
Draknahr Otherian's one significant flaw, if it can even be called one, is that he is a man of action, often before thoughtful deliberation. One significant strength, often to my frustration, is his incredible physical resiliance. These two factors were what caused Draknahr to shake me awake, after what seemed to be an entirely inadequate amount of rest.
“Alan, you have to see this,” he said, his eyes bright with excitement in the torchlight.
After groaning, and stretching my still stiff fingers, I rose to my feet, knowing that nothing I said could dissuade Draknahr. I followed him through a series of low passages before we finally came to an opening into a large chamber filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and standing pools of water. I noticed immediately that the light from his torch was only accounting for a part of the light illuminating the chamber. The rest, a cold silvery glow, came from what appeared to be three large crystals of ice in the center of the chamber. Littering the floor in a circle around the crystals were a dozen or so corpses, most of them little more than skeletal remains wrapped in pieces of rotted armour, or tattered robes.
I did not know then what I was looking at. I could see some shadowing within the icy crystals, and instinctively, I approached them, looking carefully inside. Draknahr followed close on my heel, saying nothing. I stepped over a body that had clearly been a warrior, his chain armour rusted, and I walked to the central crystal. Inside was a man. He wore grey armour and a white cape with gold trim. He held a white plumed helm in his left hand, and a dark grey scimitar in his right. His face looked aged and regal, yet his chin bore an unkempt beard, and traces of grime. His grey hair was pulled back and tied with a gold threaded ribbon. This was clearly Atrius Vellarius.
I am normally a cautious person, but my amazement in that moment overwhelmed me, and I made a terrible, but possibly inevitable mistake. I touched the crystal encasing Vellarius, and a deep booming, almost like the ringing of a mountain sized bell filled the chamber. The three crystal prisons flared for a moment, and then melted away, becoming nothing more than pools at the feet of Vellarius and the two men flanking him, one dressed as a knight, and the other as a witch. A moment later, Atrius Vellarius opened his eyes as I backed away.
“Our salvation has come,” he said with a deep and raspy voice, and he smiled triumphantly.
I was absolutely terrified. I knew who I was facing. I knew his reputation for cruelty. I knew that we were doomed. Apparently Draknahr, as was often his tactic, decided that boldness would serve us better than the pathetic quivering I was displaying, and he stepped forward, pulling me behind him and spoke.
“How are we your salvation?” Draknahr asked, though even I could hear the fear in his voice.
“You boy, are nothing. The Sorcerer is all that we require to escape this place,” Vellarius said grimly, then he stepped forward and pointed directly at me.
“Kill the boy and bring the Sorcerer here,” he commanded his minions.
The knight took a step toward me, his hand going to the sword at his side. The witch stepped back, and I saw that his hand held a small fish, wiggling and struggling while the other held a knife. Even though I had never before witnessed a witch's ritual, I recognized that one was being prepared. Draknahr apparently did as well.
I had not noticed that his hands had been hooked in his belt as he spoke to Vellarius, but with lightning quickness, Draknahr pulled his small dagger from its sheath and hurled it with amazing accuracy at the witch. It struck home in his chest before the witch could complete his ritual, and he fell in a heap to the rocky ground. For some reason, seeing the witch fall, clearly dead before he hit the ground, roused me to action. Unfortunately, Draknahr in his excitement had awakened me while I was still nearly depleted of my power. As the knight drew his sword, clearly intending to cut down Draknahr, I lashed out with a ball of elemental fire, blasting the knight back against the wall. Though I knew not whether he was dead or simply knocked unconscious, the knight slumped to the floor of the cavern and dropped his sword. In an instant, the sword was in Draknahr's hand, and he turned to face Atrius Vellarius as I fell to my knees, once again completely depleted.
“Who are you boy, so that I might know your name before I end your life,” Vellarius said with an evil grin while slapping his helm on his head. The armour he wore, rather than appearing ceremonial, as one might expect from the Emperor's leading general, instead looked quite functional and almost utilitarian. He raised the scimitar before him, and I could see tendrils and wisps of elemental shadow enveloping it.
“I am Draknahr Otherian, here on my ritual of the sword from the Order of Caelish Knights,” Draknahr said, taking a defensive stance with the knight's longsword held out in front of him.
“A novice obtaining his first sword,” Vellarius said with sadness, stepping ever closer to Draknahr, his stance making him look like a cat stalking a mouse. “I remember completing the ritual quite well, but you might have overreached a bit, trying to steal my sword from me.”
“We had not thought to find you alive. It has been over a hundred years,” Draknahr replied, stepping backward, and circling into the center of the chamber.
Before replying, Vellarius attacked, delivering three slashes in rapid succession, each aimed at different locations. If Vellarius had intended to end the fight quickly, Draknahr thwarted him by parrying the first two strikes and dodging the third.
“Your skills are exceptional for a novice,” Vellarius complimented. “It is not likely that a hundred years have passed. The sorcerers and knights had us trapped. They would have come to finish their task.”
“Is it likely that they sent only two men, and mere boys at that?” Draknahr replied and launched an attack of his own, slashing at Vellarius's sword arm. The strike was easily turned aside.
“Indeed, that is not likely,” he replied and launched a flurry of strikes, but Draknahr was up to the task, parrying each one before countering with several attacks and feints of his own.
“Perhaps I was hasty in ordering your death,” Vellarius admitted, “one with such skills as you have, and at such an age could be a worthy ally of mine when I claim the Emperor's throne for myself.”
“The throne has sat empty since Zarthurian's death,” Draknahr said with a new found confidence. “I also think you would not be offering alliance if you were sure you could defeat me.”
Reflecting back on this exchange, and with a much better knowledge of sword play than I had then, I can now easily see what Draknahr saw. Vellarius was highly skilled, but old, and the armour that he wore made him much slower than a young and unarmoured Draknahr. Barring a single lucky strike, Draknahr had the edge.
Vellarius was wily though, and had escaped many impossible situations before. Using the same method he had always used, he circled his way away from the still flaming torch which was the only illumination in the cavern, and suddenly melted into the shadows around him. I instantly knew what it was that the sword did, and pulling myself to my feet, I scrambled to take up the torch and stood in the small circle of light while Draknahr paced the cavern, cursing at the shadows.
“Draknahr, come,” I called him over desperately and pulled him, still cursing, out of the cavern and back to the water that represented our only escape.
“Where is he,” Draknahr demanded of me.
“The sword allows him to merge into the shadows. In this place, we will never find him.”
“The cowardly thing to do would be to make our escape, enjoy the comforts of a nearby inn for several weeks, and then return after he has had time to starve,” Draknahr said bitterly, but I actually thought that it sounded like a marvelous suggestion, with one fatal flaw.
“We cannot escape. My strength is gone, and I must rest,” I told him.
“Then rest. We were not leaving anyway until Vellarius is defeated,” he said.
I closed my eyes, and again, seemingly moments later but actually several hours later, I was rudely awakened, this time by the ringing of steel. Draknahr told me that as he sat in the small circle of torchlight, watching for any movement, his attention had momentarily wavered. His own fatigue caught up with him briefly, and he closed his eyes for several seconds. Vellarius had obviously been closely watching, because that is the moment he chose to strike. From out of the shadows, Vellarius, having discarded his heavy armour elsewhere in the caverns, launched himself at Draknahr. Amazingly, Draknahr opened his eyes just in time to see the clipped point of the scimitar emerge from the shadow, aimed at his neck. Draknahr always insisted that it was the voice of the Goddess Harriane herself that came to him in his sleep, and demanded that he open his eyes. From what I now know, this may well be true.
When I opened my eyes, Vellarius and Draknahr were furiously trading blows, and even to my untrained eye, it appeared that Draknahr no longer had the edge. His parries came ever later, and it appeared inevitable that the end would come very soon. They were so focused on fighting each other though, that neither of them noticed me. While I had again had an entirely inadequate amount of rest, I had rested enough to do something.
While this is intended to be an account of the adventures of Draknahr Otherian, and I have no intention of aggrandizing myself unnecessarily, this is one of the few occasions where I can honestly say that I saved Draknahr's life. As Vellarius struck again and again, inflicting several small but mounting injuries to Draknahr, I seized hold of the water we had emerged from hours earlier, now but a few feet away from me, and pulled it out of the tunnel in a ribbon. This was no simple feat, and again I felt my strength fading rapidly, but not before I wrapped the ribbon of water around the waist of Atrius Vellarius and pulled him back into the watery tunnel. I could feel him struggling desperately and my mind screamed at me to stop, the effort of holding him was enormous, and the horror of drowning someone in this way, appalling. I did not stop though, and several minutes later, I finally collapsed, the cavern around me fading to black.
I awoke many hours later feeling entirely refreshed. Dozing next to me was Draknahr, his injuries no longer bleeding, and looking reasonably clean. Cradled in his lap was the scimitar. Apparently he had been unable to wait for me to wake up, and had gone in after the sword while I recovered. It was a menacing looking blade, dark grey, with the haze of shadow surrounding it. The grip was of padded, bleached suede, with thin, braided gold wire holding the grip tight. The pommel was a simple ring with a tassel of white and gold hanging from it. All in all it was a beautiful, if menacing looking blade. Draknahr's eyes opened and he smiled.

Three days later, Draknahr and I arrived back at Del Caet, and after showing the city guard at the gate his authorization from Commander Camrian, were we allowed in without the customary inspection of the cart we had procured. Similarly, when we arrived at the Training Ground, the guard there greeted us warmly, as was befitting a returning sword apprentice after success in his ritual, and Draknahr prominently wore the scimitar on his back, white tassel brushing his right shoulder. With an uncharacteristic bit of dramatic flair, Draknahr asked that the cart be taken to the center of the field without the canvas covering being disturbed.
As we strode onto the field, Commander Camrian and the same two senior knights awaited us in the center of the field with proud smiles. Many other knights lined the perimeter of the field, and still more looked out over the field from balconies. Draknahr and I both bowed to Camrian and the senior knights respectfully, and then Draknahr ever so deliberately drew the scimitar from his back, and held it out for them to see. The three men stepped ever so slightly toward us to get a better look, and as one, they realized what they were looking at.
“By the Gods...,” one of the senior knights said in shock.
“The scimitar of Atrius Vellarius!” Draknahr announced triumphantly, and a murmur sounded from all around them.
“How did you come by this?” Camrian asked, his amazement quite evident.
“We came by this and more,” Draknahr said, and as if on cue, our cart was brought onto the field. It had been unhitched from Draknahr's horse, and was pulled in by the same two men who had brought the training targets.
Draknahr waited for the cart to arrive next to us, then pulled the canvas cover away, revealing a neat pile of blackened steel armour from Vellarius, another neat pile of polished steel armour from his companion knight, a silvery longsword, a sack containing all of the rings, clasps, necklaces, earrings and other assorted precious finery we had looted, and finally, laying with arms crossed over their chests, in the dignified pose proper for a fallen member of the Order, were the bodies of Atrius Vellarius and the other knight.
The murmuring ceased instantly. All eyes fell on Vellarius, and every knight present, from the initiates to Commander Camrian himself gaped in astonishment. Fortunately, Draknahr and I had discussed this very event for three days, and he had prepared exactly what to say, in all its elegant simplicity.
“Commander Camrian, I claim all spoils, as is my right, for myself and my companion. I returned the bodies of my opponents so that they may receive a burial appropriate for respected members of this Order,” Draknahr said with great formality.
“You went to the cave and found them alive?” Camrian asked, his face growing a bit pale as the reality of what we had faced settled in his mind.
“Alive enough, sustained by a witch's ritual,” Draknahr replied.
“And you faced Atrius Vellarius, and you killed him?” Camrian sounded incredulous, but he was staring the the irrefutable proof.
“We defeated him, his fellow knight, and a witch that we left there to rot. He was quite hostile, and left us no choice,” Draknahr replied without a trace of remorse.
After more than a full minute staring at the body of one of the most reviled men to ever come from the ranks of the Order, and a man still spoken of in hateful whispers throughout Caeleon, Commander Camrian walked to the cart and took the piles of armour, one at a time and set them at Draknahr's feet. He took the sack and without even looking inside, sat it next to the armour. Lastly, he took the silvery longsword from the cart and approached us.
“Draknahr Otherian, you have completed the ritual of the sword, and have exceeded all of our expectations. You have earned your sword. Wear it proudly and may it always defend you and Caeleon. We welcome you as an apprentice of the sword,” he said loudly enough for all to hear, and a cheer went up from all around us.
“From what I have seen today,” he added very quietly, “ridding Caeleon of a disease that has silently slept for a century, we should expect great things from you. Just take care that your power remains great and does not become terrible.”
“Alan of the Sorcerers Guild,” he turned to me and said loudly. “Though you are not officially a member of this order, what you men faced, and what you have both done for this nation will become legend. While I had concerns about your suitability as a companion, as far as I am concerned, you have also earned your sword. Wear it proudly and may it always defend you and Caeleon.”
Young as I was, even I recognized the unprecedented honor that Sir Camrian had shown me. I took the sword from his hands and bowed very deeply to him. Again, a great cheer went up around me, and I was given a seat of honor, alongside Draknahr at the feast that evening.
Amazingly, even my fellow Sorcerers were highly impressed at the tale of our adventure, and word of our deed spread throughout Del Caet, seemingly within hours. Despite the acclaim, invitations to social events with influential people, and the small amount of wealth we split, fame had a price. We were soon to learn that there were other dangerous threats which had been long biding their time, and Draknahr and I had shown ourselves as targets.