Aviation Art - Fantasy Art - Prints by Stu Shepherd

(From a Teen Fantasy novel... codename AIBM)

Chapter One

The Princess and the Wizard

They were times when tales lived longer than men, and were much taller. Old things had been lost and all but forgotten. New things had come, new ways of life, as natural to the people as those things that remain unchanged since the dawn of the first civilization: family, community, cooperation, work. Yet so much remained unexplained, as always so much remains unexplained. Being folk of inquisitive nature and unbound imagination (though some wondered whether it should be bound and carried away), the people of the warm and friendly valley of Gedrea invented manifold myths to explain the unexplained, even if everyone really knew the true explanation. They were thus days when innocents saw love in creatures adults could not see nor remember -- the shadow dwellers, the Draggits, the Faer-un, the Spirrisites. They were moments when ancient mistakes no longer mattered and future quests were not yet born. The days, the times, the moments stopped and waited for the young folk of the Gedrean Valley. For one young girl they waited more expectantly than the others. As if by magic, they waited. As if by dream, they came.

Princess Amyriseth Tambrin was from birth immersed in myth and story, her name given by her wise mother Awenetta to mean “Myth Arise”, the two words intertwined as was the custom in the Enchanted Valley of Gedrea, making a name composed of both but meaning more than either. Each day of her childhood Myrise would listen to the great tales the folk told -- around the spinning wheels, out in the fields, at the feasts. From the great high and often snow-capped Serafin Mountain range on one side of the warm valley of Gedrea, to the dark heavily forested Karnadin range on the other side, the Gedreans weaved their tales with tireless zest. Her mother told Myrise that the tales were Good -- that if the folk weren’t to imagine evil in the trees around about, then they’d start imagining it in their neighbors, and the long-held peace would melt like the snow on the springtime meadows of Gedrea.

The tales grew markedly more heroic every year. To Myrise they seemed ever more what life was about. She herself was credited with scaring away the Moon-beamers, and she came to believe that she really had. By the time she reached her teens, however, the tales had lost some of their luster. In school they were taught sciences and critical thinking, which had little to do with the wild heart of the tales. She began to question, and as she questioned, her faith in myth wavered. Yet, for the people of her lands, some truth always remained possible in the myths, for they knew that there was more to life than science and logic – there was faith and magic.

So Myrise turned from the myths to learn magic. Oh, magic was not taught in the schools, for most of the folk had no need of nor ability to grasp its intricacies. Yet Myrise desired with all her heart to understand, so in her eleventh year her father, the King-Regent of the Ged, acquiesced and allowed her extra studies with the Regal Mage, Kifring. She would have to attend Kifring when he was available, and outside of her regular studies, which did her social life little good. Still, she was a devout student, and learned much. Now, after three years of study with Kifring, Myrise came again to Kifring the mage, but this time with a question that he was not quite prepared to answer.

It happened several months after her tumultuous fourteenth birthday gala (the behavior of certain children at which being Auntie Rista’s favorite topic of complaint ever since). On that early morning, Myrise came troubled into the dark dungeonesque workshop where Kifring spent most of his time, and in which he gave her most of her magical lessons. It was early, the sun having just peeked over the dark rim of the Karnadin Hills. She had an hour before the school bell and boring class started. Even if her grades had slipped a bit and she didn’t always finish her homework, getting to Kifring’s early was never a problem for her. Others might care to keep their eyes closed for a bit more rest, but she wanted her eyes open, so that she might understand more about the world, and especially the world that could not be seen but had to be felt.

Myrise yawned as she trudged down the manicured road that led from the Castle toward the town of Verendeon. It was a nippy morning, but her shawl (hand knitted by Auntie Rista, who always gave knitting for presents) kept her plenty warm. She stopped well short of the bridge over the river Ancetta, which still was shrouded in its normal morning mists, and turned off into a maze of hedgerows that led back to the manor Kifring had occupied for what some say was over a century. Built from large blocks of smoothly hewn stone and wood trim, with oddly shaped windows and seemingly random protuberances from its steeply angled roof, Kifring’s Manor contrasted with the castle’s exquisitely crafted architecture, but also its cleanliness. It’s weathered and stained walls, half covered with tufts of ivy, was tucked in quietly against the hill at the back of the castle proper, nearer the gate and road to the town of Verendeon just across the river from the Castle gates. It was built right into a rocky knoll, from which more windows sprouted, as if the house and mountain had merged on accident, found the coupling useful, and stayed that way. Huge willow trees crowded around the outside of the manor, their long mopey branches swaying gently in the morning breeze, and casting the mansion into shadow at this time in the morning.

Myrise didn’t pause to knock on the door but pulled the black cast-iron handle, which was crafted in the shape of a dragon, and pushed right in. She stopped just long enough to drop her pack of schoolbooks in the entryway, then went on in. As was usual, old Turen the caretaker was too late to greet her before she was down the hall and around the bend that took her to the wizard’s study. Kifring was already there, fast at work.

Creolase tree oil lamps lit the musty old room with their normal flickering shadows, making the footing a bit treacherous as she entered the old mage’s study. Shaped like an “L” and about ten yards long, Kifring’s study was scarcely large enough to hold his large collection of the odd, the useful, and the seemingly useless. She preferred the other rooms in his house, especially the oak-lined library, though Grieg the Librarian was a bit touchy when anyone but he or Kifring extracted a book from its shelves. She most certainly did not like the storage halls better, filled with odds and ends that were constantly overflowing into Kifring’s study as he felt need. She often wondered how in its constant state of disorganization, Kifring ever found anything.

Stepping down the two steps into the study, Myrise looked about before continuing, having learned the hard way that it was wisest to look before entering a mage’s experimental chamber. Kifring’s sciento-magical implements were scattered in disarray – hanging precariously off the shelves which ran stone floor to mortar ceiling inside the entrance leg, or crawling out half-closed trunks clustered in every conceivable usable space. Most of the items would be quite familiar to anyone in the valley: A chest piled with parchments, disheveled books and loose rolls of paper, maps, diagrams. Then there were many that would be out of place anywhere else: blown-glass beakers and stoppered bottles all half-empty of some or other exotic substance; a well worn mortar and pestal, alembic and scale; there was the odd collection of skeletons and skulls on the wall opposite the entry door, with their shapes representing creatures both familiar and alien to Myrise’s eyes (but most of which she could now name and explain to anyone interested in their unique properties). Items and implements seemed scattered everywhere about the gnarled old workbench and gedwood shelves.

Myrise paused just inside the entrance hall to look over her favorite skeleton: a creature reported to have lived its life completely inside a shell, which Kifring had called a “tortal” – it was similar to the local turtles, but had huge flippers for feet and a streamlined back, which the books guessed meant that it swimmed in a sea. Myrise – nor likely anyone else in the Valley – had never seen a Sea. The Tortal sat next to (but not unwary of) a jagged tooth the size of Myrise’s left arm. From a dragon, Kifring had explained once, though she had reason to doubt that. Still, Myrise shivered and proceeded around the corner to Kifring’s working space proper.

The air hung thick and musty as it usually was in here, though the castle’s builders had the foresight to install ventilation shafts to bring in some measure of fresh air. The room did have windows that were known to possess a lovely view of Kifring’s extensive herb garden, but the windows were invariably shuttered tight—to keep out something obscure that she didn’t quite grasp called ultra-purple in the sunlight that might affect some of the wizard’s reagents. Exotic scents swam and mixed in the air; the Creolase oil’s spicy aroma danced with the tart of mildew and the strange conglomeration of sickly-sweet fragrances escaping from the open jars on Kifring’s workbench. She held her stomach for a moment, making sure that the combination of quickly-eaten breakfast and exotic scents wouldn’t lead to a level of queasiness she wasn’t ready for.

Satisfied of her composure, Myrise smiled to herself as she found Kifring already there, crouched at his workbench, poring over a parc

hment of ingredients and mumbling to himself. His lavender wizard’s robe dangled as he hunched, reading the script over the upper rims of his half-moon glasses. He looked up expectantly from the book to a beaker of gooey green sludge that sat bubbling happily over an oil burner. Noting something of interest or of annoyance, as the case may be, he muttered again under his breath.

“Fairly fuddled thinking methinks.” He grumbled, the grumble breaking into a hacking cough that rumbled like thunder through the chamber.

“Kifring,” Myrise called out over the pair of coughs. There were a pair of coughs, for beside Kifring sat his woozle—a creature not unlike a weasel, but with a larger tail and bigger eyes. Amri, the woozle, looked up, though Kifring continued staring into the goo. Being a woozle, Amri made great fun out of mimicking others, so his cough mimicked Kifring’s, which was notable in that woozles only mimic behavior they have observed repeatedly. Myrise looked back to Kifring, scrunching her forehead in concern.

“Gween!” Amri smiled toothfully at her. “Be gween ooze.” The cream and grey creature seemed genuinely delighted with himself. Myrise nodded patiently.

“Of course it is Amri.” The woozles weren’t the local animals with the highest intelligence, but it still wasn’t wise to get one mad. Woozles bite first and ask questions only after stating their displeasure accordingly.

Myrise waited for a moment, but when Kifring failed to acknowledge her presence, she cleared her throat and spoke up. “Kifring, it’s Palabres. He is no better this morn.”

Kifring shot a glance at her through his thick reading spectacles.

“Me lassy, tis but a wee flu. I be sure the draggit’s got naught but a cold. Tis that time o’ year.” He sneezed for effect, then wiped his nose with a glittering cloth from off the table.

“But Kifring, he’s magical. Isn’t he? I mean, he is a draggit. I didn’t know he could catch a cold. And he is getting old…”

“Gad’s girl! Me hair t’was grey whence the good draggit Palabres came unto us. Wouldst thee have me at mort’s door as well? Be I too old?”

Myrise looked over the man’s weathered faced, his lined skin, his snow white thinning hair, and knew at once that saying yes would be impolite. It was well known around the valley that Kifring had last year celebrated his one-hundred-and-fifty-first birthday. Still, his voice and words this morning were, well, annoying. But, then again, that did not make being impolite in return a good idea. She was just realizing that he too had been sick frequently of late, and concern replaced the normal impulse to play mind games with Kifring. Though mind games with him were, well, fun, as his mind was so vast and preoccupied usually that luring him into saying something silly was an easy task, still she demurred this morning. So she stared back at him intently and delicately changed the subject.

“Kifring, will you stop this nonsensical use of the languish and be serious! Palabres has been ill almost continually for a season, and I’m worried. What’s wrong with him?”

At that, the infamous green goo began to bubble wildly. Kifring sighed. Amri’s eyes were as large as a yellow harvest moon as it lurches above the horizon.

“Ah, you’ve done it girl!” Kifring grumbled. “You’ve destroyed me concentration! What is it about young women that can so befuddle honest menfolk?”

The beaker containing the goo began to rattle and roll around the table. It commenced to glow, then with a whoosh it flew out of the beaker and stuck in a pile against the grimy black ceiling.

“What… what is that?” Myrise asked in awe, staring up at the substance as it pulsated oddly. Glancing back at him she noted that Amri was now hiding upon the far end of the work bench within Kifring’s pointed wizard hat. She returned her eyes to the goo. “What’s it doing up there?”

“Glob!” Amri commented in great detail.

“Oh, not much.” A deflated Kifring leaned back in his rusty metal chair, rubbing his long silver beard and grimacing up at the green glob, which had begun writhing about. He successfully fought off another cough. “It will sit up there for about two minutes until it realizes that it’s not really alive, then it’ll start dripping all over my table—it’ll make rather a mess!”

Myrise shook her head. She turned back to him.

“Listen, Uncle Kifring. About Palabres…”

“I checked with Palabres yester eve.” He snapped back at her, his voice its normal self again. “He seems no better and no worse to me. He does seem under the weather, but that is expected as the season turns. He does have to live under it, you know. The weather, I mean.”

“But isn’t there, isn’t there some medicine you can give? Something to help him feel better?”

Kifring rubbed his fingers through his beard, studying her, as he often did. Sometimes she wondered if he could see within her mind. He was a mage, after all. But of course, the abilities of the average mage were as subject to mythification as anything else, and if they went about advertising their abilities then there wouldn’t be much mystery left. Much of the power of a mage dwelt within the fact that, to the uninitiated, most of what a mage could accomplish was a mystery. Maintaining that air of the mysterious was central to a mage’s reputation.

“It is not like you to be so melancholy before tomorrow’s Remembrance Festival, girl. You must indeed be worried.” He crossed his arms.

“He’s my friend.” She lowered her eyes to the floor.

“Potions and elixirs work to enhance what is already there.” Kifring announced. “Palabres’ ailment is not one that can be helped by such means, Myrise. You know that the draggit is lonely. He misses his own kind. He is old. He is tired. He needs rest. Heaven knows he has gotten quite a workout of late! And that episode in Daressk was quite taxing. But what he does not need is medication that shifts health from one part of his being to bolster another part… that is the fast path to dissipation.”

“Old and lonely. Then what is the cure?”

“Cure? There may be no cure. I am considering what can be done. That should be enough for you. For now, just remain his friend and bring to him the greatest magic you have.”

“Listening?”

“Love.”

“Oh.” She sighed. She looked back at the large map of the valley that was plastered against the wall behind (and partially obscured by) Kifring’s workbench. “But what if it’s more than that? What if he dies? The Valley…”

“The valley survived before he came to us. It survived even before I became wizard here, which was indeed many, many years ago. I must say, times have been better here since, but without Palabres and I, the valley will still go on.”

“Then, he could, die?”

Kifring looked up at her dour face and his countenance softened. “The comings and goings of life have a rhythm all their own, Myrise. I have taught you many things, how magic and nature live hand in hand. Life can only come where life has gone before. Death is no end, but a new beginning. It is true for us.” He coughed sharply. “It is true for magical creatures. Your concern for your friend does you great merit, my girl. But apply your learning. What does it tell you?”

“Magic must be renewed else it fade.” Myrise recited, her voice in monotone. “Magic and life are intertwined. When one magic fades, a new magic grows stronger to replace it.”

“Yes, as taught. But, do you really understand this? Can you feel it in your heart?”

Myrise looked at him blankly. Her eyes darted over to Amri, who was busily dancing about the table top dodging bits of green goo as they fell from the ceiling glob. One drip landed squarely between his eyes, causing the woozle to roll and squirm wildly about the table, splashing into ever more driplets. It would have been comic to her were her mind not preoccupied with other heavy-hearted matters.

“I, I do not know. Mage. I feel only life.”

“You are young. There is no fault in that. “ He slowly stood, began pacing slightly. “The fading of life, has not, touched you. It will, many times. And each time, you feel it a bit more. But, that is a lesson you must learn yourself. When you are as old as I am, it is a presence that you can sense.”

“But it is our responsibility to preserve life as much as possible. Isn’t it?”

Kifring grinned. “That it is. But, there are times when we must let it go.”

“I must let Palabres go?”

“Someday.” Kifring stepped up to her, patting her arm. “Someday. But not today.”

She nodded, softly wiping a tear from her cheek.

“Today we have a lesson in the identification of enchanted words within symbols.” He paced over to his trunk of scrolls and began rummaging about.

Myrise grabbed a rag off the table and began wiping the goop off of Amri. He was almost completely green, and had given up squirming to sit forlorn and moping on the table.

Kifring allowed himself a moment to watch her work at cleaning up Amri. She was, perhaps, not the most talented magic student he had ever taught, but her way with animals was exquisite. It was this that he had caught on to early in her life. It was this that helped him convince the King that his daughter should be allowed to be caretaker of Palabres, the Guardian Draggit. It was this that provided him hope in these tiring days.

Then he sighed to himself and mumbled inaudibly.

“But it is not enough. I need another.”

Myrise finished her lessons with Kifring without broaching the issue of Palabres’ health again. It was a rather dull lesson, for magic, and she had difficulty following his logic. Of course, Kifring was distracted himself, coughing and wheezing and seeming altogether disinterested. So, for a rare occasion Myrise was relieved when the time came for her to get to school, with the other kids and the studies of normal lessons. The idea of sitting through hours of Calculation and Agronomy and Literature seemed comforting to her this day, not the normal boring.

She bade her farewell to Kifring, patted Amri’s damp head (for he was still grooming himself to get rid of the last of the green goo), then made her way back to pick up her books and head on out into the light of morning. The sun was shining brightly now, warming the countryside with its golden light and the nippy autumn air with its heat. She glanced back at Kifring’s house, sighed, then looked forward. A few kids were already on the way to school, and just across the bridge to Verendeon she could see the morning marketers going about their business. It seemed a normal weekday for fall, but there was evidence to the contrary. Workers were busy placing banners on all the lampposts in town, and one was being hauled up over the stone bridge across the river Ancetta as she passed. “Welcome Rememberees!” it read. At last, the thought of this cleared some of the somberness from her morning mind.

This weekend was the time of the Rememberence Festival – the biggest gathering of Valley folk during the entire year. Even with her responsibilities she was pretty sure she’d just manage to have a little fun. Myrise was smiling and her old self by the time she got to school, concern for her friend the Guardian Draggit (and now Kifirng) left behind.

With Myrise gone, Kifring sat back for a long while, seemingly staring at nothingness. His eyes rested on the map of the Valley, but his mind rested elsewhere. Finally, he pulled out pen and parchment and began to write a letter. It was, by his own admission to himself, the hardest letter he had ever written. The content was for eyes only, the eyes being those of the note’s recipient. When finished, he sealed the note up in an envelope, stamped it closed, then wrote the addressee on the front.

“High Baron Berengk of the Daresski…” The address began, and thus began the flow of events that would bring about the adventure that would make this morning the last normal morning for quite some time for many in the Valley – and for Myrise most of all. After all, Kifirng had finally reached a decision on what to do about the vexing problem that hung silently but ever more heavily over the Valley. He coughed once or twice as he finished his letter, reminding him of the urgency of the need. Finally he went upstairs, handed the note to Turen, then did what every tired and sick hundred-and-fifty year old wizard did in the late morning when the world was about to change.

He took a nap.