Footwizard

by Terry Mancour

  Soon we came to another rise, one that continued up to a large, barren hill. It wasn’t nearly as large as the Kilnusk’s mountain, but it was impressive in its own way. Ameras led us up a tiny path, past a trickle of river that ran through the desolation from the hill through a channel far larger than the stream seemed to warrant.

  “This is the site of the vault’s entrance,” Ameras reported, as we came to a gently sloping expanse of nearly barren rock. “It sits only a few hundred yards away from the eastern jevolar. It was very difficult to construct without magic,” she added. “It was a great challenge for the skill of the Karshak.”

  There was a kind of longish grotto that stretched across the northern slope, an overhanging cliff under which we rode. To my surprise, there was a hole under the cliff, concealed by the shadow.

  “It’s a lava tube,” Ormar observed. “These things are all over the place, up here.”

  “It’s an expedient way to reach the deep places in the earth,” Rolof answered.

  We tied up the horses and descended the lava tube, which opened into a cavern, and a small, steaming underground lake, I saw. When we got closer, Lilastien used her tekka tray to provide some light. Enough to see where the torches were. Travid had them lit in a jiffy, and soon we were able to see the entrance of the vault, behind the pond.

  “Behold, the Arsenal of Kova Salainen,” Ameras said, with a wistful sigh. “It has not been opened in my lifetime.”

  Along the wall were several deeply carved scenes of Alka Alon historical figures, I was assuming, as well as abstract patterns and hieroglyphs of some sort. Toward the center of the wall, opposite the pond, was a large round stele with a particular design. I paused and studied it, before I recognized it from memory: the night sky of the Alon homeworld, and the constellation of stars. A symbol of Alka Alon sovereignty.

  “The entrance is ahead,” Ameras called to us, as she walked up the wide stairs that had been cut into the rock to lead to that level. “It’s big,” she warned us.

  And it was. At least thirty feet across and twenty high, a massive slab of stone within a gracefully pointed arch of Alka Alon design and Karshak workmanship. There was an elaborate design carved into the face of the door, nearly four feet wide. There were no other markings. Or locks. Or any hardware or other design on it. It could have been part of the wall, for all I knew.

  “That is one big door,” Taren said, as Ormar whistled, appreciatively.

  “It would have to be, to allow some of the artefacts it contains to pass,” Lilastien agreed.

  “So, how thick is it?” Taren asked, eyeing the great doorway.

  “That is unknown, but it is likely very thick,” Ameras supplied. “It was designed to withstand any assault on it, by nature or beast. Even a dragon,” she added.

  “I don’t know, if a dragon hosed that thing with dragon fire long enough, it might weaken it,” Ormar conjectured.

  “They would run out of fire long before that door was harmed,” Ameras said, shaking her head.

  “What is that decoration in the center?” I asked, curious.

  “The Seal of the Aronin,” Lilastien explained. “It places this entire place under their dominion. None are allowed to open the vault without their permission.”

  “I’m having a hard time thinking that permission is going to be enough to open that thing,” Tyndal said, tapping on the great expanse of stone. “I can’t even tell if it opens in, up, down, out, or what. There’s not so much as a knocker on it.”

  “Do we have your permission to attempt to open it, Ameras?” I asked. “Upon the request of the Alka Alon Council?”

  “You may try,” she conceded, after a long pause. “I have tried, myself, to no avail.”

  “Then it won’t hurt for us to try,” Tyndal nodded. “And, just to warn you, I’m feeling particularly clever, today. And I had a big breakfast, this morning.” To demonstrate, he pushed mightily at the door, then tried to slide it with the pressure of his palms. Of course, it did not move a bit.

  “I’m thinking maybe thirty, forty pounds of Dragon Cotton might get through it, if it’s less than eight feet thick,” Ormar predicted. “Of course, it might just take the top off this bloody hill, too.”

  “What about these things?” I asked, unslinging my plasma rifle. Ameras looked startled. Lilastien shrugged.

  “You can try, but I wouldn’t expect much,” she suggested. “But let’s move away a bit. It’s rare for plasma to ricochet, but I don’t feel up for a surprise today.”

  I nodded, and everyone cleared the door while I charged up the weapon and took aim at the great seal at the center. When I pulled the trigger – not once, but five times – each bright red bolt of energy from the gun splashed harmlessly over the sigil. There was barely a scorch mark left on it, though the stone was hot to the touch.

  “That’s twelve hundred degrees of plasma accelerated to a quarter of the speed of light,” Lilastien said, shaking her head. “Enough power to punch through six inches of solid steel like parchment.”

  “They made a very good door,” Ormar nodded, impressed.

  We tried everything we could think of. Wedges in the crack at the bottom, pressing various parts of the seal to see if they might activate any hidden switches, catches, counterweights, or latches . . . but nothing. Ameras and Lilastien tried various incantations in Alka Alon. Taren used his spear to test the edges of the door. Travid looked for hidden catches. Even Fondaras took a crack at it, as if staring thoughtfully would open it.

  Eventually, we all stood around the thing and just stared at it. We’d been at it for two hours. We were no closer to opening the thing than we were when we walked in.

  “Magic would be a handy thing to have, about now,” Tyndal remarked.

  “It would certainly simplify things,” I agreed. I’d tried to invoke some slip of power with the Magolith, but it was as dead and cold as the stone door we faced. “There has to be a nonmagical method of opening it. Just as there was with the Cave of the Ancients,” I reminded them.

  “But we had a key to that mysterious ancient cavern,” Tyndal pointed out. “Are you sure your dad didn’t give you some sort of key?” he asked Ameras.

  “I think I would have remembered,” Ameras said, dryly.

  “It looks like we’re going to have to speak with the dead to learn how to open it,” Taren fumed. “That’s awfully inconvenient.”

  “Hopeless quests often are,” Ormar pointed out. “How about acid? We could use an acid, I think.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lilastien disagreed. “That door is made of some sort of basalt. It would take centuries even to mar it with acid, much less weaken it.”

  “I’m fresh out of ideas,” admitted Taren, regretfully. “Really, who makes a door you can’t open?”

  “My people excel at that sort of thing,” Lilastien answered. “Well, we wanted to see it. We’ve seen it. Unless anyone has better ideas, we should probably go if we want to make it back to the ridge before dark.” She turned and walked back down toward the constellation mural.

  “That was disappointing,” Taren fumed, as we rode back down the trail. “I really hoped we could figure it out. Without help from beyond the grave.”

  “The price of knowledge. We weren’t meant to, else we would have,” Fondaras suggested.

  “I’m less fatalistic about that sort of thing,” Tyndal said. “Just because I haven’t figured it out yet doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  “That door was designed to withstand just about anything,” Lilastien agreed, “even Tyndal.”

  “They can’t possibly have factored me into their equations,” Tyndal boasted.

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure your pecker is gigantic,” Ormar grumbled. “You should have slapped it against the door a couple of times. I bet you could have knocked it down in no time.”

  “I have studied the matter for years, now,” admitted Rolof with a small smile. “Ameras and I both have. No craft in our experience suggests how it may b
e done. If you’d like to try rubbing your privates against it, you may do so. But I don’t think it will work.”

  “There has to be some sort of counterweight mechanism,” Taren offered. “Something to contend with the great weight of the thing. It’s the only way it could be done, without magic.”

  “My people are subtle, and the lines of the Aronins the most subtle of them all,” Ameras offered. “I’ve tried to remember everything my father ever told me about Kova Salainen. Everything. And I’ve tried every possible approach I even suspected might work. There is a lot of obscure lore about the place, but nothing that I’ve found that gives me the slightest idea of how to open it. I’ve tried singing, chanting, words of power, I even invited some Kilnusk up here to take a crack at it. They tried every means of their craft, to no avail. Even throwing themselves at it. The door will not budge.”

  “The only thing that’s encouraging about that is that if we’re having this much difficulty figuring it out, it is unlikely the Enshadowed will have any better luck,” I pointed out. “That should keep them from invading the arsenal. That is what your father feared the most.”

  “That would be disastrous,” Ameras agreed. “The devastation that they could wreak on the world would be appalling. That is the reason the vault was built in the first place.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “Perhaps the dead will have a solution. But it will require us to rethink our strategies on a number of fronts. And it will have the Alka Alon Council in a fit, when they realize they cannot access their means of escape from this world.”

  “If our people are trapped here, it will be good to have their company,” Taren said, a little bitterness in his voice.

  “There has to be a solution,” I murmured to myself. “There has to be. To the door, to the war, and to the greater crisis that looms over Callidore.”

  “Wiser minds than ours have determined otherwise,” Lilastien said, diplomatically. “Truly, the high councils of all the Alka Alon realms have considered it for thousands of years. The Vundel have all but given up. Without the Celestial Mothers, there is no hope.”

  “I refuse to accept that premise,” I said, shaking my head. “Not when so much is possible. It would help if we understood the problem better.”

  “It appears the unopenable door is an apt metaphor for our greater predicament,” Fondaras remarked. “Perhaps an answer lies behind it. Perhaps our destruction. What price for knowledge?”

  “Well, if we cannot complete that portion of our quest, we should get on with the other bits,” Tyndal suggested.

  “It is what we can do,” I agreed. “Rolof? Are you willing to lead us to the striekema tomorrow?”

  “I can,” he agreed. “We can stop at my croft for the night and start afresh on the morrow. The Leshwood is not someplace you want to be at night,” he added, forebodingly. “It is dangerous enough during the day.”

  “Why is it so dangerous?” Ormar asked, anxiously.

  “It is the abode of the Leshi,” he explained. “They are unlike humans or Alon. They oversee their brethren and tend the forest.”

  “And they are dangerous?” Ormar repeated.

  “Yes. But not usually to humans or Alon. But there are other things within the wood that are. The Leshi are a branch of the Met Sakinsa,” he explained.

  “Ah!” Lilastien said, with a look of appreciation. “The Moonriders have a colony here? I would think that the jevolar would keep them away.”

  “The Leshi have evolved to exist in its shadow,” Ameras informed us. “They are not as advanced or as sophisticated as many of the Met Sakinsa, but they persist. They, like me, hold guardianship of this land, though for different reasons. Their grove was implanted here tens of thousands of years ago and persists to uphold that guardianship.”

  “What do they guard?” Taren asked.

  “They ward the lands from the Kurja,” she explained. “When they emerge from their caverns, the Leshi and their servants keep them from leaving Anghysbel. That would be disastrous,” she added. “They were planted here for that purpose, despite the lack of magic. The Leshi are so sensitive to the world that they have managed to survive here without it, when most Met Sakinsa require it, in one form or another.”

  “I’ve always been fascinated by the Met Sakinsa,” admitted Lilastien. “In other realms there are great swaths of their forests. Here, only a few linger. I had no idea there was one here in the realm of the jevolar. Fascinating!”

  “So, what’s the big deal about that?” Ormar asked. “They’re just another nonhuman race. Like Alon or the lizard people or the Vundel.”

  Lilastien smiled indulgently. “No, my friend, the Met Sakinsa are nothing like us – or the lizard people. And certainly not like the Vundel. The Moonriders are a special gift to Callidore, one that has protected and defended the Dry since they came here on that pretty little green moon, eons ago.

  “Once they roamed everywhere, and their forests covered large portions of the world. That was long before the Alon came here. Now they mostly inhabit one continent on the other side of the world, the one on which the Grandfather Tree grows. Oh, there are still groves of them, but they are content with where they are and rarely seek any interaction with other races. But they do have a very protective streak in them. And they understand commitment to a cause. That’s likely why the Leshi were selected to guard something dangerous.”

  “What makes them so special?” the alchemist demanded. “Do they swing through the trees like Farisian monkeys?”

  “No, Ormar,” Rolof said, shaking his head. “They are the trees.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The Leshwood

  I’ve been intrigued by the Moonriders since I was a girl and languished that there wasn’t a proper grove around to study. If the Leshi are any indication of the complexity of the species, there are lifetimes of research that could be done on this amazing race. Alka Alon lifetimes, not the passing interest of ephemeral men. Their basic biology is understood by both men and Alka Alon, but our knowledge extends only so far. The Met Sakinsa are one of the great races of Callidore, and yet we know very little about them.

  from the Expedition Book of Anghysbel,

  Recorded by Dr. Lilastien

  The Met Sakinsa, as Lilastien has often told me, were brought to Callidore by the Vundel during a time of great need. The Celestial Mothers and the Formless were at war – a conflict that lasted over ten thousand years – and the Vundel were losing.

  Part of the reason, she explained, was because while Callidore’s vast oceans were teeming with life (over five times more genetic variety than Terra’s oceans, according to Forseti) the lifeforms that had colonized the land were underdeveloped and anemic. The Celestial Mothers’ reach just did not extend to the Dry, and the Formless took great advantage of that. They had no trouble moving from the oceans to the land, though they were more potent in the former. They had entire races of servitor species to do their bidding against the undersea powers.

  When things got desperate, one of the Celestial Mothers made contact across the Void with another species, which was also desperate.

  The Met Sakinsa’s world was dying, though Lilastien could not tell me why, and they would be extinct if they could not move to another world where magic worked efficiently, like Callidore. The Met Sakinsa vowed to fight the Formless in exchange for refuge on the magically potent world.

  So, with a little assistance from the Celestial Mothers, a colony of the Met Sakinsa arranged to have an entire moon transported from their star system to Callidore. It can be seen to this day, a small green disk that travels through the southern sky, making a circuit around our world every seven days.

  What made the colony unique in Callidore’s experience was the nature of the colonists. For while the Celestial Mothers had often invited aquatic and amphibious species to settle here, the Met Sakinsa were far more comfortable on land. On dirt, specifically. For they were a sapient species made up entirely of plants.

  It
took a few centuries for the Moonriders (as the Alka Alon colorfully named them) to transfer their seed stocks from the moonlet to the surface of the planet, but the Met Sakinsa are hardy and thorough. Once their more active colonists grew to maturity, they began to hunt the Formless and their allies across the Dry.

  The Met Sakinsa were both sophisticated and relentless; with little to compete against in the local ecosystem, their fecund colony soon began to grow forests across the lands of Callidore. Not all of them were mobile, of course; according to Lilastien, only about a tithe of them could actually move, and then only during a portion of their life cycle. But they had plenty of subsidiary species that grew rapidly, and that provided the active members of the colony to pursue the enemies of the Celestial Mothers for centuries.

  Eventually, they won. The Met Sakinsa had natural magical abilities that allowed them to contend with the Formless on land, and the battles were heated. But the Formless had a difficult time replenishing their forces while the Met Sakinsa were able to produce a great force in just a few centuries. And everywhere they went, they left sprouts of their client species behind them. When the Alon came here, they were mesmerized by some of the remaining forests, though they brought a goodly number of trees from their homeworld with them. A good deal of the natavia flora that still existed on Callidore was from the simpler forms of the Met Sakinsa. A good deal of the insect life, too – they domesticated a vast range of insects for specialized tasks.

  The last of the Formless was eventually driven from land, and the last of the Celestial Mothers imprisoned them in the Deeps. Their vow fulfilled, the Met Sakinsa largely withdrew from most of Callidore and retreated to one large island (or small continent), which they proceeded to cover with their descendants. Supposedly there were thousands and thousands of hectares of moving forest there surrounding the Grandfather Tree, which I assumed was either a leader, or an object of cultic worship, or both.

  It all seemed fantastic, from my perspective. The idea of plants that could move, that could walk, was more fable than fact, to my experience.