The Cave Part 27

"Tytiana!" I cried, lurching up so fast from my bed, that I actually fell over and out of it to the hard floor with a loud resounding bang. The vision had been so real, the queen fading back into dark shadows with a last call out to me for help. I had tried to reach her, stretching, grasping for her fingers, but nothing would close around my own hand. It was in that last terrible moment that I continued to dwell, head down on the wood floor, hands splayed out. Faintly I could hear movement below, and creaks in the timbers as others on the second level moved about.

A loud firm bang on my door, clearly a large knuckled individual, reached my ears. I groaned and slowly climbed to my knees, not truly hurt but still dazed from my own tumble. After a moment, the knock came again, and I supposed I had better answer it before someone felt the need to force the door in. Calling out that I would be there in a moment, I gathered myself up and found it was Bjardon standing there, concern stretched across his face. Clearly I had woken him from a sound sleep, for he stood there just in breeches with bare chest and tossed hair.

"There was a loud cry and crash in your room," he blurted out, almost apologetically. "Is all well with you?"

"Yes, that was me waking from a bad dream," I replied, rubbing my jaw where it had come into violent contact with the flooring. "I am sorry to have disturbed you. What time is it?"

"Not yet dawn little human," he laughed, seeing that there was nothing to fuss about now. "You might have startled the cooks downstairs, but that is about it."

After another quick look over me to see that there was nothing else wrong, the jovial orc wished me a few more peaceful winks and went back to his room. It appeared that he had no qualms with going back to bed to await breakfast. I followed this sound idea and climbed back into my own bed, a little more banged up then when I had started the previous night. However I could not go back to sleep, and alternated between closing my eyes and then opening them again to stare at the ceiling. My dream, my connection with the woman so far away in the past, was as crystal clear to me as if I had just left her in the next room.

Her words, that she was dead, lingered with me long after the connection had ended. I felt deeply hurt inside. Maybe in the place of someone else, wanting to speak with a beloved family member or friend, the few moments of real time would be worth almost any price. Yet in my position, I was becoming slightly attached to someone I had only met once before, and whom I would probably never see again. She was to die, and I was born some thousands of years later. Why the effort? Who brought us together and for what? All I knew now was that the creature I had to face in the cave was of the shadow realm that Tytiana was born to control, and that her death left that realm free to fall under another entities dominion or run rampant.

Sleep was escaping me and yet it was too early to get up and bother Ipda with questions about healing magic and her medicinal potions. I decided it was time to crack open the tome that Tharkin had given me, and see who this Raith Kan really was and why his reflections were so important. The blue leather with the gilded lettering was more than attractive, and the rampant lion emblazoned on the cover drew the eyes. The volume was too large and hefty to comfortably lean back in bed and read it, so I got up and went to the table and chair that offered the only other place to study.

Without giving a verbatim reading of the work, I learned in brief that Raith Kan was only a young man of sixteen summers when he was selected for training by a wizard named Sardac the Judge, a dour individual who held court over community problems in the island kingdom of Lascar some eight hundred years before my time. A legal mind combined with wizardry was considered a uniquely qualifying profile for giving out judgments under the Lascar kings and queens. Sardac was getting quite old at the time he selected Raith Kan for tutelage, and there were some dissenting voices at the time since the boy had no knowledge of magic or exceptional powers of learning. As I read through these opening pages, I chuckled at how similar that sounded to my own recent history.

However, in spite of a shaky start, Raith Kan learned many things from his mentor, and eventually earned renown from his extensive travels across the realms and participation in the wars of that age. Eventually he was asked to be the personal advisor of King Garbolan of Lascar, at the suggestion of Sardac. Raith Kan accepted, built a tower in the capital city, and spent much of his time learning his art and teaching. He began the writing of the Reflections in his sixtieth winter, having been encouraged by one of his his own precocious proteges, Ana the Seer, a noteworthy practitioner of the art in her own right.

Fortunately for me, Raith Kan seemed to be a man who knew his students and readers would fall asleep at their desks if he delved too deep into history and data that glazed over the eyes. He quickly moved on to his philosophy of life and thoughts on the era in which he lived. Briefly looking ahead, I could see that throughout the work, the wizard councilor of of Lascar had illustrated many things into the work, adding incantations and other lesser known spells as the work progressed under his pen. The tome itself almost felt warm to the touch in my hand, as if power had been blessed into the very pages.

A sharp tap at the door startled me out of my thoughts with a jolt, and I felt I knew who it must be, based on the strength and placement of that greeting knock. I was not surprised at all to see Glip, refreshed and as alert as if he had been up for hours, impatiently waiting for me to stir. In fact he had been and said as much in rapid words, encouraging me to get downstairs to breakfast on some fresh rabbits he had been able to hunt down in the early hours, having found their burrows in his fox form.

"Ya love dees ones," he said with enthusiasm, clapping his hands together excitedly. "Fat and juicy they be, and the cook fried them up specially for us. Best to go down now, before the orc gets started. Might be none left for ya or me."

"You don't have to tell me twice," said I, grabbing my staff after stuffing Reflections back in my satchel. Bjardon seemed a good sort of fellow, but also one capable of eating several breakfasts including those belonging to others without thinking.

"Oh say now, was that nice my hearties?" boomed Bjardon, sitting down to his own breakfast a few minutes later, and finding only his own share of the rabbit left. "Ye can't expect me to hunt monsters with ye in the cave on a just a basic breakfast like this. I need meat and plenty of it!"

"Ya get ya share of extra bacon for a few coppers more," laughed Glip, snatching up the last bit of rabbit haunch on his own plate. For my part, I had wolfed down all my food before the orc arrived.

"Wait, hunt monsters?" I asked, turning to the smiling orc, in spite of his protestation that there was not enough meat to go around. "Are you going to help me, or rather us fight this thing?"

"Well of course lad," he replied with a powerful slap on my back that stung like a blow. "Ye don't look like you've used a sword in your life, and ye need a little back up eh?"

"Thanks," I wheezed, feeling the air knocked out of me by just a friendly gesture. "You're help will be very appreciated."