Chapter 5: Dragonstone and Damsels

Training is in the eye of the beholder, like many other things, I guess. Being trained by a semi-imaginary six foot tall blue lizard? That's just a little strange, even for me, and I've seen some strange stuff. River has spent a good bit of time in the Imhur, so I know she's seen some stranger stuff than I have.

What I found truly interesting was the lizard's continual use of what I would have called 'Earthisms', phases and attitudes that seemed to have been drawn from the Earth/American setting that my grandparents and great-grandparents had grown up with. Mom too, I sometimes forget. She was very much a young American woman of Earth before she came to Arbor with Dad.

River, once she got used to him, thought he was funny. Master Jo? Well, I'm not sure I know what he thinks any more. He's almost transparent most of the time these days physically, but he is far from it otherwise. He has been pretty quiet, even after having regained most of his form, as if these events are so far outside of his experience as to be mind-altering. Come to think of it, I guess they are.

The training is an odd combination of stick work and mental insults. RJ accuses us constantly of immaturity, being unimaginative, lacking willpower, shallow thinking, insensitivity, spiritual weakness and complacency. Even Master Jo gets his dose of criticism, but the damned Lizard is plainly expecting different things from River and I than it is from him.

Did I mention that the lizard is a shape-shifting pain in the ass?

Every other lesson was a sparring lessons, and during the sparring lessons, RJ shifted from form to form constantly, challenging us to adjust and adapt. When we aren't sparring we were talking.

"You each have what the Dragons call an Ordinal source of power. What the folks on Arbor would call Elemental power. Earth and Sea. You have spend your Transformed lives so far accessing only one aspect of that Ordinal power. Rock, buried for you Obsidian and water, seeking for you, River. These aspects are powerful, and defining in some ways, but they are also limiting you right now. What I am trying to do is free your minds so that you can move beyond these self-limiting aspects and on to the broader aspects of who and what you are."

RJ was constantly forcing me to examine the Dragonstone, to feel the shape and weight of it in my mind. Not jut feel it, but find it.

"Seek it, Obsidian. Find it! It isn't out here, it is in you. Seek the heart of Arbor and bring it out."

Interesting words. Difficult to weigh them with care when you are scrambling to avoid an attack from the snarling blue Tree Bear that was really your instructor.

For River, it was the Sea, of course, and her struggle to separate the lives within it from the sea itself.

"If there's rock at the heart of Arbor, then the sea is its soul." RJ told her often. "You are the sea, so you are the soul of Arbor. Find it within you and bring it out!"

Always these statements came out in mid-battle.

"Reach out and use it! It's right there! C'mon! Feel it, draw on it."

When it was Master Jo's turn, the insults were usually much milder, and RJ seemed happy to drive him over and over again to fading back out of existence, back into that puff of breeze he had been when we'd first awakened here.

"Yes! Stretch! Open! More!" He would say, as his attack finally drove Master Jo into insubstantiality.

We slept nine times while we were there, and we trained for ten days, a tenday.

That night, the tenth night, RJ brought us wine. We still hadn't eaten, hadn't felt so much as a twinge of hunger the entire time we'd been there. The wine was delicious, bright and deeply flavored.

"Enough training for now, children. Perhaps we will gather again, somewhere down the road and work some more on being who we are."

The world was quickly fading into darkness, even as he spoke those words, and I thought briefly that perhaps the wine had been drugged, but I laughed the thought off, briefly, before sleep and darkness descended on me.

I woke up sitting beside the pool at the facet. Had we ever even moved at all, physically? I rubbed my chin. It felt like I had three days worth of unshaved stubble. The tenday and a half that it seemed we had been gone hadn't been real either. I turned slightly and saw River staring back at me. We had just enough time to give each other a smile when it was interrupted by a stomach grumbling. We both turned to find a finally solid Master Jo, grinning sheepishly.

"It seems we're back, and just in time for midday meal somewhere." He said.

We all stood. I was surprised at what seemed like a total lack of kinks and pain. If we'd been sitting, unmoving, for three days of real time, our bodies should be complaining right now, but all they were doing was demanding feeding.

"The Tower or the Red Flag?" I asked.

"The Tower, please." River asked. I reached out and jumped us to the Tower roof.

We were just in time, the cook said, and we all rushed off to get cleaned up a little before we sat down to eat. For me that meant a washcloth to the face and a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Time enough for a shower after we ate. River ran her washcloth over a few more places than I did, but soon joined me in the t-shirt and jeans decision, and to be honest, she looked way better in that kind of outfit than I did!

In the dining hall, Opal Durmiter joined us, and Master Jo returned from his own freshening up to sit down with us, but Plank wasn't there, and neither were the Arrals. There still seemed to be too many places set at the table until Mom, Dad, Coral, Trunk and Alianna Parkin came through the door to join us.

Well, you three look a little scruffy! Mom said. Been busy?"

"Yes and no." I said. "Very, very much yes and no."

"Eat now. Questions later." Master Jo said.

I could tell by the way that Alianna and Trunk were sitting, side by side, lightly touching, that something was up in that department, but I was too busy for a while with the heaping piles of scrambled eggs, sausage and fried potatoes to worry about anything else.

With the food out of the way, it was time for some questions and answers, or at least as close to answers as we could get in some cases. I was sure that it was no coincidence that my family, with Trunk and Alianna in tow, had arrived exactly when they did. Not with two seers in the family.

The trip to visit the Shar had been the beginning, so we started with it first. Of course dad wasn't surprised to hear that the Shar had set us on a quest, but he was surprised at the vagueness of it all.

"Ancient prophesies are being fulfilled. The days have come that mark the return of the dragons. Hear these words and heed them, for they are prophesy.'earth and sea will raise them. the sun and the sky will aid them. the dragons will return, born by the wind.'"

Dad listened to the words of the Shar prophesy, nodding his head as I spoke. I left the last bit, the final sentence spoken by Warup unsaid. There had to be a reason it was whispered, apart from the rest.

Now that they were back, and we were into the telling of it, it was obvious to me. Coral was the Lady of Echoes. Echoes of herself. But the whispering made me cautious, and I kept that piece unspoken.

Mom was appropriately maternal in her response to our near-death experience. Dad was conspicuous in his silence, but nobody thought that odd, except perhaps Alianna, who was hearing most of this stuff for the first time.

Explaining what happened at the pool was even harder, because none of the three of us were even sure yet as to what had really happened. Dad immediately suspected we had gone to the Dream World, a place he was familiar with.

"It sure sounds like it could have been the Dream World, but there should have been no way you could have taken Master Jo with you. Getting there is not easy."

"Well if we took our experiences literally, we had help getting there. But I'm not prepared to treat that as literal yet." I answered.

We had also, none of us, spoken of the Dragons' telling us about being left unawares of an ending outside the Shar assumptions. About the choice we would make somehow that would leave the Dragons free to remain in the Dream World, or wherever it was they really lived.

I still considered what we had seen as engineered for our eyes only, and not necessarily the reality of it.

It was still the dead of winter, and there was little to do outside of the winter chores, keeping the livestock happy, the water flowing, the fires burning, and the people happy. Though we could have escaped it easily, gone South to Demira and Trunk's family. It was summer now in the southern hemisphere, and it would have meant warm days and flower-scented nights.

Could have, but the beginning of our adventure was still here, waiting to get started by some word from Coral, if I had the clues figured correctly. The question was, should I wait for Coral, or should I go asking? This prophesy and quest business was not all simple riding off on your horse and fighting foes. Second-guessing prophesy in particular can make your brain spin.

River was particularly not ready to engage in any of the confusing speculation yet. She seemed to be laying back. Charging her mental and Magical batteries, I suspect. When she did move into the picture, it was going to be as a force to be reckoned with.

Master Jo was more himself, and yet at the same time I could see something going on there. Our trip from the pool had opened him up to something, or awakened something inside him. We'd know that for sure by the end of all this, of that I was certain. In the meantime, we still meditated and sparred every morning, and Master Jo had taken RJ's place as our tormentor.

"You are the water elemental, you are all the ways of water, not just the sloshing, soft kind. Stop acting like the babbling brook and become the hurricane!"

The taunt came as Master Jo was running around River, firing arrows at her. She dodged the arrows easily, but she seemed to hesitate in her attack. We were supposed to be attacking with some aspect of our Talent, which since our visit with the Dragons we had begun thinking of as our elemental gift.

River was getting frustrated. If we had been doing this at the Neck, where there was ready access to the Wind River and its power, she would have had less trouble. She was still looking externally for the power. I needed to remind her of RJ's lessons.

"Don't feel for the river." I called. "You are the river! You are the sea! You are the source. Look there!"

I got a brief frown sent my way for my efforts, but the furrowed brow was also River moving through her difficulty.

"Aaah!" She screamed, and then suddenly, in a glimmer of frost and ice, she was shooting blades of ice, like throwing knives at Master Jo. Toss after toss just missed him, and he ducked and dodged, and finally, an ice blade touched him, and he went transparent again briefly, and the blade passed through him completely!

"Good!" He said. "Good! Good! Good!"

"Are you all right?" River said, suddenly concerned that her attack had reached him that time.

"Yes, fine. You did it, River." Master Jo said. "We did it."

"I saw you go a little transparent there when the ice hit you." I said.

"Yes." Master Jo said. "River found a new aspect of herself, and I found the one that I'd been shown by the Dragons. We both made some progress today.

"You're the tough nut to crack then, Sid." River said. "When are you going to have a breakthrough?"

I liked to think it was because I had been further along to begin with than they had, but whatever the reason, it was true that I had made no progress since our return, and I wasn't sure why.

I was standing on the roof of the Tower thinking about that later that day when I felt a movement behind me.

"Hi Coral." I said.

"Hi big brother." She said. "Troubled?"

"Don't you already know the answer to that question?"

"In general, yes. Specifically? No."

"I'm not making the kind of progress I should be, compared to River and Master Jo." I said.

"I can't say anything about Master Jo's progress, because Master Jo is completely impenetrable to me. The gift doesn't work on him at all. None of my future selves ever mention him, and when I ask, they act as if they didn't hear the question."

"Interesting. Not helpful, thanks anyway, but interesting." I said.

"You are getting frustrated, aren't you?" Coral said. "Would it help if I told you now what you need to hear to begin your journey?"

That got my attention immediately.

"I knew you had to be 'the Lady of Echoes'." I said.

"As soon as the river is free of ice, take the road to Beletara, as Mom and Dad once did. You will find your answer along the way."

"Thank you." I said, and meant it. Seers never give easy answers. This seemed pretty straightforward.

"Mom sent me to tell you that evening meal would be in half an hour." Coral said as she walked back to the stairs. "Oh! As to your other problem. Why aren't you doing what the figment said to?"

That last bit tossed off just before her head disappeared down the stairs.

I thought I had been doing what RJ had been asking. I'd have to reconsider it then.

Pulling the ice out of myself had been amazing, and again, one of those perspective-shifting events. I had a better understanding now, that my problems were mostly self imposed, and as I learned more about myself, I would learn more about the power within me. What I had done was a minor thing, as far as power went, but a major thing as far as my own perceptions went.