Shaking his head, Riyan waved him away and said, “That’s alright. It isn’t that bad.”
“But…” Kevik stammered.
“Just some stinging is all,” he said.
Coming up behind Kevik, Chad said, “You better be more careful next time.”
“Yeah man,” Seth said. “Lock the door or something.”
“I’ll do that,” agreed Kevik. He looked on as Riyan got to his feet. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
Riyan nodded in reply. “Can barely feel it,” he said with a grin.
“Liar,” Chad said. “I saw how you flew across the hall and hit the wall. You can’t tell me it’s nothing.”
“It is, now let’s not say anything more about it,” Riyan said.
Chyfe had made his way into the room. He then glanced back out to the hallway where Kevik still knelt by Riyan’s side. “You sure did a number in here,” he said.
Everyone moved into the room and saw how black marks scored the walls, floor, and even the ceiling. “Got a little carried away did you?” Bart asked when he saw the state of the room.
“I guess so,” he said. With everyone looking at him, he continued. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to practice like this. I guess I got more into it than I had planned.”
“I would say so,” agreed Riyan. He clapped him on the back. “From now on, let us know when you’re doing this and we’ll stay away.”
“Okay,” replied Kevik. He still felt bad about what he did to Riyan and was glad he hadn’t done anything very serious to his friend.
Kevik and Riyan remained in the room as it was the one they were sharing. The others began filing out to theirs.
While Riyan made ready for bed, Kevik put his spell book back in his pack and propped his staff against the wall by the bed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you practice that way before,” Riyan commented. Crawling under the blanket, he glanced over to Kevik.
“To be honest,” Kevik admitted, “I’ve been a bit lax in my practice.” The light from his staff kept the room illuminated as he too crawled into bed. “The spells I knew when we first met had been repeatedly worked at and ingrained into me by my master. Now with these new spells I have to keep ‘honed’ I guess you’d call it. In an emergency I’m not going to have time to open my spell book. I’ll need to react fast, and react correctly.”
Riyan nodded. “I guess our two crafts aren’t as different as one would think,” he said.
“Both require hard work and determination if one is to succeed,” agreed Kevik. He then canceled the staff’s light spell and they settled down to sleep.
For Kevik, sleep didn’t come right away. His earlier practice of working on spells and the pronunciation of symbols had left him wondering about the five symbols they found on the island near Catha. He still didn’t have a clue as to what they were or the affect they may produce. But he got to thinking that maybe they were like the symbols that he could interchange for his protection spell. If so, then all he would need was a sufficiently powerful spell in which to plug them in. He was certain that the current one he was using would be insufficient. There could be one in the other libraries of the Tower, but it may be years before he gained sufficient rank to be allowed access to them.
Thoughts of wondrous magic coursed through his mind until sleep finally claimed him.
After the morning meal in the common room, they split up as Riyan, Kevik, and Chad went in search of the cartographer, while Bart and the rest headed back to Kell Plaza and the Orack trading house.
Riyan led his group through the streets as he followed the directions given to him the night before by the group of locals he talked with. “They said it was located next to a park on the eastern side of town,” he told Kevik and Chad.
After working their way through the streets of Kendruck for half an hour, they made further inquiries of other locals when they hadn’t come across it yet. It didn’t take long after that before the small park came into view.
It wasn’t much, just half a block of grass, bushes, and trees with cobblestone paths running through them. A couple benches could be seen spaced about the park where people could take their ease.
“Must be something in the springtime,” commented Kevik. Indeed, with winter in full force, most of the trees were barren of leaves, and snow still held a presence in the shadier areas.
Riyan noticed a building off to their left which bore a sign depicting a quill superimposed over a boot. “That’s it,” he said. Quill and boot was the cartographer’s sign. Quill for the drawing of the map, and boot for the traveling done in acquisition of the information.
Most cartographers have many apprentices who are sent out to gather pertinent data of an area which was then added to maps. Another way cartographers gained a variety of maps, was to copy them from the existing maps of others. Some maps have been around for a long time and can at times not be very accurate. An honest cartographer would tell his customers of maps in his possession which may be less than reliable. Usually if one has a good reputation with the locals, you could trust his maps.
They went up to the door and entered. The shop wasn’t very large, it held but a single table situated in the middle of the room and a door in the far wall leading to a rear room. Scores of shelves dotted the walls with rolled maps stacked in neat piles upon them. Several maps were displayed on the walls between the shelves. Other than the maps, shelves, and table, the place was deserted.
“Where’s the cartographer?” questioned Chad.
Riyan indicated the door in the far wall. “Maybe in the back,” he said.
Kevik shut the door and they moved further into the shop.
“Look at this,” Riyan said as he moved to one of the maps displayed on the wall. It was a map of a city. The name on it read ‘Yerou’. “Yerou?” he asked. Glancing back at the other two he asked, “Ever heard of it?” Chad and Kevik both shook their heads no.
Yerou was a large city with a massive defensive wall surrounding it. The keep was positioned in the upper section of town. Kevik was interested in the tower that rose beside it. He peered closer to the words written at the bottom of the tower. “Kylon’s Tower,” he murmured. The name seemed familiar but he couldn’t remember from where.
“Can I help you?” a voice asked from behind them.
Turning around, Riyan saw a youthful looking young man who couldn’t be more than twenty years old. “Are you the cartographer?” he asked.
The young man shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I am one of his journeymen.” He glanced at the three of them in turn before asking, “Are you in need of a map?”
“Wouldn’t be here for any other reason,” quipped Chad.
The journeyman nodded understandingly.
“We were looking to purchase one showing the lands to the south,” explained Riyan.
“Are you interested in just the area along the border?” the journeyman asked. “Or deeper into the Moran Tribes?”
“So you do have maps of that area?” asked Chad.
“Of course,” the young man said. Then he turned his attention back to Riyan.
“Can I see a couple of what you have?” Riyan asked. “I’m not exactly sure what our needs are going to be.”
Nodding, the journeyman went over to one of the shelves and removed three maps. Each was rolled and secured with a bit of twine. He carried them over to the table and removed the twine from one of them.
“This map shows the lands of the border between Byrdlon and the Moran Tribes,” he explained. Unrolling it, he held it open for them to see. It did show the borderlands in great detail, but not much else beyond it.
“Is there one that shows further into the Tribes?” Riyan asked.
The journeyman nodded again. He then rolled the map back up and secured the twine around it. Setting it aside, he picked up the second map and soon had it unrolled on the table before them. “This one gives an overall depiction of the terrain for a hundred miles south of the border,” he said.
Riyan gazed at the map and thought this might do. He looked closely at names of the few towns represented on the map for any sign of Hylith, the place they believed to be the city where the lords of the Orack Tribe live.
He followed the road that led south out of Kendruck and found Hylith to be situated on the south side of a lake some distance from the border. Riyan nodded to himself, then glanced to Kevik.
