The Defenders of Dembroch by Patrick Harris

Author:Patrick Harris [Harris, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SunBurst Sagas

Remain within the realm

so as to always mind the mind of magic.

The last part didn’t make any sense at all to me. Since when did magic have a mind? The magic of Dembroch had never spoken to me or, to my knowledge, anyone else. It was not sentient.

And there was the first part of this rule to consider. Remain in the realm.

Since I’d been to Dembroch, the queen had never left the isles. Distantly, I remember many Civium recounting the tale of King Richard’s murder, followed by an admonishment against the king for having left in the first place. Turns out, it was an actual rule. For me, it was the nail in the coffin. My adventures beyond the borders of Dembroch would be at an end. Sure, there was plenty of adventure to be had in the Timeless Kingdom, but I would be leaving the rest of the world behind.

Funny, I thought. I’d spent twenty years of my life longing for Dembroch, and now I wanted to hold on to the ability to leave it at my leisure.

Maybe, I decided, I was reading the passage wrong. Or I’d translated it wrong.

I wandered back to the bookshelf of the kings’ journals. Maybe they had answers. I grabbed the very first one, surely written by King Peter, and took it to a dark corner.

Opening the first page, I whispered what I hoped to learn: “How do you—well—what is the mind of the magic?”

Words began to etch into the page. King Peter had indeed written about it. But why read it when you could watch it?

On the pages, I spilled a hefty amount of magic sparks that I’d borrowed when Sir Teddy wasn’t looking. Just a drop of magic required a narrator to encourage the storytelling, but as I’d learned a few years back, a whole lot of magic would make the story unfold even without narration.

Before my eyes, the pages of King Peter’s journal tore free from their binding. They swirled around, folding into intricate shapes. A moment later, I was looking at a crude paper model of Dembroch. There was no castle or village yet, not even a forest.

As I watched, paper men and women crawled upon the shores of Dembroch. Amongst the brush and shrubberies of the land, they came upon two humanoid creatures made of moss. I recognized them as the mage and his magesty.

One of the paper people approached the mages. It must have been King Peter, or at this point in time, I supposed, just Peter. Distantly, I heard whispering. I leaned closer, listening. Peter and the mages were talking in, unless my ears deceived me, English. It must have been the magic of the journal to present the tale in a way that best served the reader.

“My people need a safe haven,” Peter was saying. “We do not mean to take this land as our own, but to thrive and help it grow.”

The mage and his magesty considered this.

“Dembroch was born for such an occasion,” the mage said at last.

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