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In the Shadow of the Dragons
The Dragon Lords
The Dragons' Lord
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Dagnan gestured silently for Frayne to precede him into the fallen Temple and they disappeared from view of the crowd. Inside, Kalyani awaited them and as she had the day before repeated the rules for the contest, though she knew Frayne would remember them from his previous experience. Dagnan could tell that she, too, was a little on edge about his facing Frayne today, though; that was making Dagnan even more uneasy inside the Temple. He put it down to just pre-duel jitters and tried to shake it off, but it was as though the walls around him were reacting violently against something.
When Kalyani left and he and Frayne were alone, Dagnan chose to get immediately to work, though he didn’t even know if Frayne would be familiar with the standard spell variants or if he had peculiar Family specialties. Of course, he had faced his father before so they must have been able to come to an understanding for the casting of the circle.
“I’ll begin in the east, and if you could follow from the west…?”
Frayne nodded silently and they went to their positions in the circle. Then Dagnan began as Ller had the previous day.
“We call the Hellira, Elementals of Air, masters of smoke and storm. Guide us with Thy presence.”
Dagnan clapped his hands together and rubbed them palm to palm until they began to glow faintly white. Beginning in the east, he traced the outline of their circular space toward the South, leaving a faint trail of while light in the air as he went. Facing south now, he continued.
“We call the Reshani, Elementals of Fire, masters of sun and stars. Guard us with Thy presence.”
As before, he repeated the same gesture until the glow in his hands was red. Then he stopped and looked to Frayne.
Frayne in his turn faced west and said, “We call the M’Lari, Elementals of Water, masters of sea and blood. Grace us with Thy presence.” His voice was stronger than he remembered it to have been the last time they had spoken.
Frayne also clapped his hands once and rubbed them together palm to palm until they glowed with a blue light. Now he traced out the circular outline of their space and moved into the north, leaving a trail of pale blue behind him in the air. As soon as he began, Dagnan noticed that something about the casting was different. The words were the same, but the taste of the magic in his mouth was different. The four men who had cast the circle the day before, all of them had cast the circle in the same way, and it had felt the same when it was completed. Today, something was different. Was it just his unusual Southern training? Or something else?
Facing North, Frayne continued.
“We call the Children of Daela, Elementals of Earth, masters of the moon and mothers of history. Honour us with Thy presence.”
Repeating the same gesture as before, now his hands glowed green. Together they completed the circle, Dagnan moving to the west leaving a faint red trail, Frayne to the east closing the circle with green. When the ends of their trails met, they could feel the circle, like a great dome, closing around them.
Facing the center of the circle now, together they said, “We are met, in a place not of Earth, to bind ourselves to the will of the Dragons. We shall not walk this path again. Zal li ya.”
They circled each other.
“Why, Frayne? What are you doing here? What do you hope to prove by Challenging a man less than half your age?”
Frayne said nothing, and Dagnan, too, fell quiet and waited. Kirou must be first to strike if the dural will not, so it was his move. And then suddenly, Frayne did. And just as suddenly, Dagnan was countering attacks as though his life was in danger. Furiously, Frayne launched attack after attack, leaving Dagnan little or no time to defend himself and no time between them to consider launching his own attacks. This was no slow, tentative start as the others had been. For some time, Dagnan simply countered until he began to settle into a kind of routine, preparing counterattacks almost before the attack was created. Finally, it gave Dagnan a chance to go into automatic, and use the rest of his brain to think about what Frayne hoped to accomplish with such a strategy.
It suggested to him that Frayne believed he either had an advantage early through shear power and hoped to overcome the stamina Dagnan’s youth afforded him to endure a long battle, or that he believed Dagnan was weakened from his duels the previous day and might be susceptible to such an attack. In either case, it did not appear that Frayne intended that battle to last long—which would correlate well with his father’s description of his encounter with Frayne. This suggested to Dagnan that he merely needed to outlast this initial barrage and Frayne might wear himself out.
However, it soon became clear that something was not right. For one thing, Frayne was not tiring as Dagnan had expected, if anything, the force of his attacks continued to increase while Dagnan himself began to feel the drain on his own reserves. His routine defenses, while effective, were more of a power drain that the finessed ones he had managed against the others. But more than this, as Frayne continued, though he continued to use powerful but classic attacks, the Feel of the spells began to change. The sense he had had when they walked into the Temple that something was not right grew and broke finally into Dagnan’s consciousness. Dagnan searched unsuccessfully for the possible cause of this sense, really, of Frayne’s distinctive power signature, and his uncanny endurance.
In time though—Dagnan did not know how long they remained locked in combat like this, with Frayne attacking and Dagnan merely defending himself—even Frayne’s unexpected endurance began to flag and the attacks began to come just slightly more slowly and with barely perceptibly less power. Now Dagnan sensed that his moment to strike himself approached. He realized that the Challenge for the Dragon Lordship was not merely about outlasting competitors until they gave up, but that strategy and ingenuity was as much a part of victory in the best of such battles. To win this battle, he was clearly going to have more difficulty overcoming Frayne than he had originally imagined, but he would have to be able to out-think Frayne if he was going to walk out of the Temple rather than being carried out. So now he began to attack himself, launching counterattacks between Frayne’s attacks, rather than merely parrying them, and deviating from classic attacks. The more he deviated from the classic attacks, the better the results he had and so Dagnan began to search desperately for new and creative ways to attack Frayne, shortening his spell calls, focusing his mind more, and even simply experimenting with wild ideas he would never have considered before, and somehow, between these efforts, he cast a spell on himself, the same dangerous one he had cast on his long ride from Dera to Zinara, to preserve his strength until the last possible moment.
Then suddenly, Frayne fell backward under one attack against the dome of the circle, bouncing off of it as it at once repelled him and drained him of energy. This was unusual, but he could not ignore it. Here Dagnan struck, pouring every last ounce of will power into his attack, every ounce of strength he could muster knowing that if this did not work he probably would not have enough left to defend himself against anything Frayne might try afterward.
The casting and the attack seemed to Dagnan to take forever, and longer still for Frayne to attempt to counter. The spell seemed to wash over him like a slow wave, throwing him back against the circle again with surprising force, even as Dagnan stepped forward to hold him up against the barrier and cast one last attack from so close just for good measure.
When Dagnan stepped away, Frayne slumped over unconscious at his feet. Dagnan himself struggled to remain upright and he suddenly realized his hands were shaking badly. It was almost more than he could bear to raise his arms and dissipate the circle. He swayed in his feet as it collapsed but remained standing.
The two priests and Kalyani emerged from the shadows, clearly relieved that it was Dagnan they saw standing after a much longer battle than any of them had imagined possible. The sun had moved far across the sky and cast Dagnan in shadow where in the morning had been sunlight. But Kalyani knew instantly that something was amiss and hurried the priests with Frayne’s body away, while Dagnan remained motionless in the middle of the floor. As soon as they were out of sight, he collapsed to his knees with a groan of physical pain; the shaking he tried desperately to control in his hands only slowed when he pressed them against the ground in front of him.
Kalyani reacted instinctively, coming forward, but she could not touch him. She knew what he’d done, and he was in far worse shape than the last time. She could not help him this time. If he could not walk outside and call the Challenge again, the contest would be judged a draw and he could have to face Frayne again in the morning if Frayne so chose.
Slowly Dagnan gasping for air mustered back what remained of his willpower, fighting his exhausted body all the way. He had two things left to do. He had to release the last spell he had used to help him marshal the remnants of his strength, and then he had to walk out of here on his own power and dare anyone else to Challenge him; and he had to do it in that order.
His hands still trembling, he raised himself up off the ground, to his knees and undid the spell. As it fell away, again he groaned; his body protested. He fell back onto his hands but his elbows could not support his body weight. His heart was pounding and he breathed still more heavily, his lungs desperately gasping for air trying to keep him conscious.
It was some time before Dagnan could drag himself to his feet. He did not even look at Kalyani as he walked out of the Temple, his gait steadying somewhat as he walked. His hands had finally stopped shaking.
When he emerged into the sunlight he was shocked to realize it was already well past noon by the look of the sun, and the crowd was larger now than even the day before. But when he emerged they erupted giving him another moment to steady his voice before he spoke, knowing that if anyone else challenged him he would surely lose.
With defiance to hide his exhaustion, he spoke the ritual words.
“I am Dagnan Te Daelan. I claim the right of succession to be Dragon Lord which my father Kalun Te Daelan was before me. I claim to be the most powerful sorcerer among the Children of Daela and to be best able to represent my people’s oath to the Dragons, and protect us all from our enemies. Is there anyone here today who challenges my right to make this claim?!”
The crowd grew quiet, but no one came forward. Dagnan had no sense of time, and did not know how long he waited but it appeared to be long enough, because when he turned to reenter the Temple, the crowd, now behind him, cheered again even more loudly, knowing that they had found their new Dragon Lord. As soon as he was once again out of view of the crowd his balance gave way and he fell to the marble floor. Now the priests and Kalyani could assist, but he hardly heard them or felt them. His body was shutting down, wanting nothing else but to sleep or die, but his mind still raced.
How was Frayne able to mount such an attack?
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Last updated: 2005 August 23