The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

Here, there be dragons.

Day Twelve

Accession: Sample 337

Accession justification:

I wish to understand this world that was made for me to realise.

The parts that weren’t spelled out so much were what I’d always liked most about Cameron’s stories. In the Land he’d had a place that made fairy stories acceptable. He wasn’t the first to do that, of course, and, for my money, wasn’t the best; Pratchett or Gaiman were much better authors.

His Land though, was both a place that did bend old conventions and which humans had interrupted and skewed. It’s clear, for example, that his dwarves were friends with the dragons –a symbiotic relationship where dragons smelted metal while dwarves built nesting caves for them. I liked the thing, never made much of, that Cameron had invented the world’s first carbon-neutral dwarves.

The coming of humans twisted the arc of a development that might have been successful, though in ways that were beneficial to all. His vampires had been a natural aristocracy and, at times, you felt he had a lot of sympathy for their point of view and the culture they’d developed; again something that was superseded by the coming of the Mages. There was the focus on the main characters that a children’s novel demands, but there were always the hints of a broader world, one that had reasons beyond the needs of the children’s story.

No, this does not help. This world is a shadow of the one outside where they live. I must concentrate on that life.

Phoebe

The next morning I woke up with a strong feeling that I had to look in a crystal. It had to do with my dream. I couldn’t get anything clear on the tower, but what came up about the Vere was spook. I needed to tell Niall and I thought I had better tell Adam too.

Adam

I didn’t know what to make of Phoebe’s news. What was going on here? Going after me I could understand. Same for Phoebe. Take us out and you win the game. There was some kind of logic to that, but why go out of your way to hurt people I was starting to think of as friends? What kind of sick mind was behind this?

Niall

Did Maldon know about the Duergar Initiation and young Earle’s part in suggesting it? Or was this more the desire to hurt Earle and Lai that she’d warned us about? The boy was exceptional, no question of it, but why did Maldon harbour such a resentment against him? What good did he think he’d achieve by hurting the boy’s friends?

And while I was busy asking questions to which I had no answers, why were we winning this war so easily? Why was Maldon handling things so amateurishly? This was the Mage who’d taken over the Western Lands just after they’d been discovered, conquered a large part of this island, and been stopped only by the luck we had in having leaders as inspired as Mitchell to fight against him. I knew Mitchell, his strategy…his strategy?

I couldn’t remember. There had been battles, I could remember fighting, but how had we fought? What were the campaigns, what was the history of the war, how had we turned the tide and stopped him? Where were my memories?

Stay calm. I had to stay calm. I could ask people. Yes, I could ask them. I could say I wanted to review what we’d done to see what we could use again, to see what mistakes we made. I could say I wanted different perspectives on things so I didn’t miss something obvious to others, but that I’d missed.

Yes, I could deal with this. I had to. I was worried I was losing my mind and that is a thing you have to deal with. I needed to know how far gone I was before I started to do things that would cause us to lose this war. And I wanted to talk with the boy. It might be a risk, but I had to find out what he knew.