The Iron Veil

by Randy Nargi

  Pari looked up at the sky. “It is getting late. Maybe we’ll get there when it’s dusk.”

  “And that means the island will appear,” Justin said.

  “Let me be the one to approach the thynir. Animals trust me,” Klothar said.

  He moved towards the closest stag, keeping his body low and unthreatening.

  “Hail, noble thynir,” Klothar said in a soothing voice. “We are allies and—”

  The thynir snorted and trotted away from him. The ranger was unfazed. He moved towards another stag. But as Klothar got closer, the animal pawed the ground and lowered its antlers menacingly.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Pari said. “Maybe they don’t like other males. Let me try.”

  She cooed and inched her way closer to the third stag. Immediately, the thynir reared up on its hind legs and stomped the ground, snorting and grunting angrily.

  Pari let out a scream of panic and fell back.

  Justin raced over to her. “You okay?”

  “Oh my god, it’s so freaking big!” she said. “It was going to flatten me.”

  “Something is bedeviling these beasts,” Klothar said. “I know not what.”

  Then both Pari and Klothar looked over at Justin with a question in their eyes.

  “No, no. Not me. I’m not really an animal person.”

  “One of us has got to tame these things,” Pari said.

  Klothar snapped his fingers. “I remember!”

  “What?”

  “The oracle said that ‘the thynir await to serve the weak.’ That can only mean you, lad!”

  “You guys are going to give me a complex. You really are!”

  Pari said, “We’re running out of time, Justin. Just go over to a deer and see what happens.”

  “Fine!”

  He took a deep breath and slowly walked over to the closest stag. It ignored him, preferring to nibble at the plants growing between some rubble.

  “Hey, there. Nice thynir…”

  The stag flicked its ear and continued to munch on the plants. Justin moved closer. The thing really was huge. Its shoulders were taller than him. Even if the stag didn’t trample him to death, how the hell would he get up on its back?

  “You’re a pretty one,” he said, still trying to keep his voice quiet and soothing.

  “You’re doing great!” Pari said.

  “Am I?”

  “Well, you’re still alive.”

  Justin took another step closer. Now he could just about reach out and touch the stag. He got a whiff of its musky odor. It didn’t smell as bad as he had expected.

  The thynir did a little shrugging motion and tucked its wings. Up close Justin could see that some of the feathers were over two feet long.

  He held his breath and reached up to touch the animal near one of its front legs. Its fur was sleek and soft.

  To his surprise, the thynir raised its massive head and calmly sniffed Justin.

  Okay, here goes nothing.

  He slowly extended his hand and pet the thynir along its neck. The beast responded by making a nicker sound like a horse.

  With Pari whispering encouragements, Justin continued to pet the thynir. And then suddenly it looked him straight in the eyes and he heard a voice in his head.

  Human, ride

  What? This was crazy. Did that stag just talk to him telepathically?

  Slowly, the thynir folded its legs beneath its body and eased itself down to the ground.

  Human, ride

  Justin turned to Pari and Klothar. “It wants me to ride.”

  “It appears they all want us to ride,” Klothar said, motioning to the other two stags. They were laying on the ground as well.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Pari asked, as she climbed on the back of the thynir closest to her. The stag slowly stood back up, and Pari grinned and waved. “C’mon, guys!”

  Justin and Klothar followed suit, carefully situating themselves on the backs of their respective stags.

  “It talked to me,” Justin said. “Telepathically.”

  “Indeed,” Klothar said. “These are magical beasts.”

  We fly

  “It said that it’s ready to—”

  But before Justin could finish his sentence, the massive animal leapt into the air with a great flap of its wings. Justin hugged the thynir’s neck and hung on as the stag pushed itself off the vertical surface of a temple building like someone doing parkour. And then they were flying.

  This was incredible! Justin let out a whoop as the thynir flew up above the treetops. Off to the side, he saw Pari and Klothar on their mounts. Pari waved at him. She looked like she was digging this too.

  Wind whipped at his face, but once the thynir settled into its groove, the flight was pretty smooth. They didn’t go up too high—just a hundred feet or so over the tree tops, but it seemed like they were moving pretty fast.

  Within five minutes they had cleared the Dark Tree forest. Soon they were soaring over square grids of farmland and sheep pastures.

  “This really is incredible,” he told the thynir. But the stag didn’t respond.

  For almost an hour, they flew over farmland. Justin could see scattered settlements below him. And then the fields gave way to low hills.

  What an amazing way to travel. It beat riding, that was for sure.

  Before long, the spires and towers of a seaport town came into view. Lorque, it was called. Justin didn’t know much about it, other than it was the southernmost port town in Greystrand and it had a population of nearly a thousand people. Bigger than Holgate that was for sure.

  He saw warehouses and a shipyard as well as a dozen piers jutting out into the bay. On the largest pier dock workers unloaded nets of fish to be gutted and cut. All kinds of boats dotted the piers and docks of Lorque—everything from rowboats to large merchant vessels.

  Soon they had passed the town and were gliding over the bay itself, which looked more like a wide river to Justin. But they didn’t continue over the water. His thynir banked to the right and started to gain altitude. Below them, northwest of the bay, loomed rocky cliffs topped by a sparse wood that looked nothing like the Dark Tree.

  Then they flew over a rise and Justin was struck by the view of a killer sunset. The sky was still blue on top, but there was a bright gold band near the horizon with the last rays of the sun pushing through tendrils of clouds and reflecting off the ocean which stretched as far west as Justin could see.

  The stags flew in a triangle formation with Justin’s thynir at the point. They crossed over another bay and then an outcropping of a rocky promontory. The sun had almost disappeared and Justin had to strain his eyes to make anything out in the gloom.

  But then he saw the gigantic figure standing in the water. It must have been several hundred feet tall and looked remarkably similar to the sketch on the wax tablet. It had four arms and long spindly legs and a weird horizontal head that looked very alien. A cormorian. That’s what Pari had called it, and so had the oracle.

  His thynir didn’t fly anywhere near the cormorian. These deer were smarter than that. Instead the stag winged its way up several hundred feet over the giant’s head, and then once it had cleared the monster, the thynir flew down to its normal altitude.

  Justin had been peeking over his shoulder, half expecting the cormorian to give chase, but the giant didn’t seem to care about the flying stags all around it.

  When he turned back, Justin saw they were approaching a dark rocky island the size of a football field. It was filled with seaweed-strewn boulders, but not much else. At least as far as he could make out. No sign of any tower.

  Could this really be the Isle of Saari?

  The thynir glided down, preparing to land.

  “Hey, deer, are we in the right place?”

  No response from the thynir. But it did manage to land gracefully on the eastern shore of the island. His mount gently dipped its body down so Justin could dismount. As he climbed off the stag, hi
s overlay popped up.

  :::::. Epic ride! +250 Bonus Experience .:::::

  Holy crap! This was even better than he had imagined. That was a decent bonus.

  Nearby, Klothar and Pari climbed down from their own stags.

  Justin stroked his mount’s neck.

  “Thank you. That was freaking awesome.”

  The thynir said nothing in response, just started nibbling at bits of seaweed.

  “I’m not sure we’re in the right place,” Klothar said, stretching out the kinks from riding. “Did you direct your mount to land here?”

  “I literally would have zero idea how to direct it to do anything. I was just hanging on for dear life. But I did get a nice chunk of XP for that ride, so that doesn’t suck.”

  Pari ran over, her face flushed with excitement. “We made it!”

  “Yeah, kind of. But, uh, we’re kind of missing something. Isn’t there supposed to be a tower here?”

  “Stop being a derp,” Pari said. “We need to check it out before that cormorian decides to pay us a visit.”

  “Check what out?”

  “The tower. C’mon.”

  “I don’t see any tower.”

  “Shut up, it’s right there—”

  “I’m not joking around. There’s no tower here. Klothar, back me up on this, will you?”

  The ranger stroked his chin. “The oracle said that no man could lay eyes upon the tower. But our Pari here is no man.”

  Realization dawned on Justin. A tricksy riddle, it was. Hobbit-style. Ok. He was cool with that.

  “You really see a tower?” he asked Pari.

  “Of course I do. It’s over there. Big black building. Really tall. Actually does look like a finger.”

  “Well, lead on then.”

  The three of them scrambled over the rocks which were wet and slick with seaweed and slime. It was slow going.

  Pari stopped and pointed. “You guys really can’t see it? The door is right in front of us. Twenty feet away at most.”

  “All I see are rocks,” Justin.

  “I, too, only see—” Klothar cut himself off. “Get down!”

  Without thinking, Justin ducked to the ground. Pari did the same. The ranger pointed off to the south.

  “We’ve got company!”

  Justin looked over to where Klothar was looking. The large shape of a ship loomed out of the darkness. In the last fading light, he could make out weird misshapen humanoid forms swarming the deck. On the bow stood a small group of people. It was too dark to see what they were doing.

  “I know that ship!” Pari said. “Storm Reavers!” A look of fear crossed her face.

  “Into the tower!” Klothar said. “Lady, lead us.”

  Pari dashed forward with Justin and Klothar following close behind.

  Justin hadn’t run ten yards before the tower appeared in front of him. It just materialized out of thin air.

  :::::. Discovered Leminkäinon’s Finger! +500 Bonus Experience .:::::

  Justin felt a surge of energy course through his body and a loud, majestic musical chord sounded.

  :::::. You are now Level 2 .:::::

  “Oh my god, I just dinged!”

  “Lad!” Klothar scowled at him.

  “Gratz, Justin,” Pari said. “But we need to focus here. We have to find a way in.”

  “There must be a door.”

  And there was. They found the door easily enough. It was on the west side of the tower. The problem was, it wasn’t really a door. It was a mirror in the shape of a door, inset into the stone wall of the tower. There was no handle, no hinges. Just a six-inch square etched into the center of the mirror with four rows of four letters. They didn’t form any words. The whole thing looked like one of those old word search puzzles his great-grandma used to play.

  “Some sort of riddle,” Klothar said.

  “If so, there’s another clue.” Pari pointed above the door where the word SNAKE was carved in small letters.

  “Let us search the perimeter of the tower. Quickly, now!” Klothar said.

  It didn’t take long. There were no other indentations or doorways. But there were six more words carved into the tower, equally spaced around its perimeter. Clockwise from the doorway and its word SNAKE, were the words NYMPHS, WOOD, NOT, EGGS, SWAN, and EATS.

  Justin had no idea what any of it meant.

  “When in doubt, apply a little force,” Klothar said.

  “What?”

  The ranger swung a mighty blow at the mirror door. His hammer clanged against the silvered surface but didn’t even make a tiny crack.

  Klothar tried again, but with no success.

  Pari said, “I hate these things.”

  “What things?”

  “Door puzzles. Riddles. Whatever you call them. There’s a ton—”

  At that moment, there was a loud whoosh and something bright and fiery streaked through the air a dozen yards away. It struck the ground and exploded, showering rock everywhere and knocking everyone to their feet.

  Justin struggled to his feet “What the f—”

  Before he could finish, he saw another bolt of fire flying at them. It crackled with magical energy, glowing purple and bright white, and it looked like it had come from the ship which was now right off shore and disgorging its misshapen crew.

  “Down!” Klothar yelled.

  This time, the bolt struck the top of the tower with a massive explosion that caused a shower of stone to rain down. A chunk of wall the size of a refrigerator nearly flattened Justin.

  Escape now!

  The thynir stags raced towards them. And right behind them, a horde of shambling creatures climbed from the water, whooping and calling out war chants.

  “F-E-B-A-I-N-U-Z!” shouted Pari. “Remember that. I’ll remember the rest!”

  “Got it!” Justin said. He started repeating the letters to himself. FEBAINUZ, FEBAINUZ…

  “Get away from the tower!” Klothar shouted as another bolt of magical energy shot from the ship, crackling through the night.

  All three of them raced towards the stags.

  Boom!

  Another hit rocked the tower, obliterating the top third of the structure. Justin was thrown to the ground and his head smacked against a stone, causing black spots to cloud his vision.

  A hand yanked him to his feet. “C’mon!” Pari yelled.

  But it was too late. The shambling creatures were almost upon them.

  Still dazed, and barely able to focus, Justin limped towards his thynir, which was a few yards away and bounding towards him.

  Another magical bolt smashed into the tower, shaking the island with its terrible power. There was basically nothing left of the tower but rubble.

  All around him, the zombie-like creatures swarmed. They looked like human sailors who had suffered some kind of horrible disfigurement but were somehow still alive. Some had missing jaws and shattered limbs. Others had huge festering sores teeming with worms. And still others looked like they had been flayed alive, with exposed muscles and bones, glistening with blood. Storm Reavers, Pari had called them.

  One of the Reavers lurched toward him, clawed hands extended, and gibbering some sort of battle cry. Justin tried to get at his shortstaff which was still in its back scabbard, but his arms felt like they were made out of concrete.

  His stag kneeled down so that he could climb on, but before Justin got close enough, the Reaver launched itself at him.

  Justin tried to twist away, but felt sharp claws rip through his legs, knocking him to the ground. He thrashed against the onslaught as the Reaver’s slavering jaws tried to find his neck.

  And then the Reaver’s head exploded, as Klothar’s hammer smashed through it, like he was slamming a home run out of the ballpark. The ranger quickly reversed his hammer and punched the haft between the eyes of another Reaver who had jumped into the fray.

  Almost unconscious from loss of blood, Justin felt himself being lifted on to the back of the thynir.
/>
  “Hang on, lad!”

  The stag jumped to its feet and snapped its wings out. Then it launched itself into the air, with Justin hanging on to its neck for dear life.

  Below him, he caught a glimpse of Klothar and Pari fighting back-to-back against a throng of at least a dozen Reavers. The other two stags raced towards Klothar and Pari stomping and goring everything in their paths.

  His mount flew up, circling higher. As his vision faded, the last thing Justin saw was the giant cormorian wading towards the island. It looked pissed.

  Oh shit.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Justin was too weak to even open his eyes. He felt cold wind whipping against his skin. His head was pressed into the fur of the thynir and he could hear its heartbeat, strong and regular. He just focused on that heartbeat, one two, one two, one two…

  Some time later, he realized that he was no longer moving. He was still and cold in the darkness. And he could smell the sharp scent of wet earth and worms mixed with a burning smell.

  Was he dead? Did he somehow not rez?

  He tried to turn his head, but the effort shot blinding lances of pain through his eyes.

  And then he heard a voice—Klothar’s voice.

  “He stirs.”

  Justin opened his eyes. He was sprawled on the wet ground. A campfire burned nearby.

  “Hang on,” Pari’s voice said.

  Justin still couldn’t turn his head enough to see anything.

  “I might have enough left for one heal.”

  He felt soft warm hands at the base of his neck and heard a gentle chiming sound in his ears and then the pain drained away from him.

  “That was just a healing touch spell. I’m all tapped out, but it should at least keep you from dying on us here.”

  Pari helped him upright, and he saw that the three of them were in a grassy field next to a road. There was no sign of the thynir stags.

  “We made it…”

  “Barely,” Klothar said, guiding him over to the fire. The warmth felt good.

  “But how?”

  “Before we get into that,” Pari said. “Please tell me you didn’t forget the letters from the mirror door.”

  “What mirror door?”

  “No!”

  He smiled at her. “Just kidding. I think the trauma of almost dying burned those letters into my mind.”