The Dragons of Dorcastle

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The heat, the dust, the mountains rising ahead were all false, as much illusion as the mirages wavering with the fake promise of water.

Mage Alain of Ihris focused inward, denying the dry, hot wind which had just flicked a cloud of fine sand off the crest of a dune and dusted it over the caravan. Denying the grit which settled in his eyes. None of it was real.

Mounted caravan guards rode alongside the open carriage in which Alain sat, their horses plodding with the same weary gait as the oxen pulling the long line of wagons. Those guards were here for the same reason he was, to protect the caravan from the bandits of the Desert Waste, but that in no way made them equals.

He was a Mage. At seventeen years old he was the youngest Mage in the history of the Mage Guild, but to the common people in the caravan and among the guards, Alain’s age did not matter.

They did not matter, either, Alain reminded himself. Those other people, like the desert about him, like the carriage in which he rode, were all illusions, mere shadows created by his own mind. Only he was real. Ten years of harsh schooling in the Mage Guild had taught him that he was always alone, no matter how many shadows his mind imagined seeing.

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