by James Beamon
Embarrassment hit Rich like a hammer. “I, I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was your bedroom.”
“I knew it. And I still invited you. There are only a couple of things a woman expects from a man she invites into her bedroom at night, and a ‘thank you’ is one of that couple.”
“Thank you,” Rich said smiling.
Rew wasn’t smiling. Her face was ashen, aghast.
Rich looked down at his hands—wrinkled, spotted, old. His eyes came up to the mirror, where he was a raspy, rickety, ancient man.
Rich looked at Rew Majora, his new Richard Bates, as she laughed with glee.
“C’mon,” Rich said with his age-rusted voice. “Isn’t the same thing a bit tired?”
“There’s a lesson to be had in the same thing,” Rew said. “And after you’ve paid, I’m sure you’ll come up with the theme. You are, after all, a smart boy turned clever old man.”
“So, this is how I’m going to spend this cost? With your grandpa jokes?”
“Why, Razzleblad, I’m offended,” Rew said smiling. “I’m being generous. I’m giving you another future look at a tender love moment.”
Rich felt his right side go numb. He tried to yell out but the words all came out as mush. Then he collapsed on the floor. His brain burned with pain and was unable to speak, unable to do anything but convulse as the pain shook his body.
Rew kneeled over him, concern etched in her features. “Rich!” she shouted. “Rich!”
Richard Bates in his black suit stood over Rich as he convulsed and Rew as she knelt over him crying in panic.
“You’re having a stroke, old man,” Richard Bates told him. “This is how you die, Razzleblad. This will be Rew Majora’s last memory of you—you decrepit, tired, spasming to death on the floor.
Rew was crying, asking Rich to say something, to come back to her. Rich fought against the paralysis, raged against the helplessness he suffered.
He was able to lash out and grab Rew. But his hands came up with fire. The fire spread to Rew’s face, where she screamed in pain.
Now they sat on her bed, as they had been when the scry first started. And the scene played out as it did last time, with Rew burning and Rich unable to stop the destruction he had caused.
Rich woke up just like before, screaming and unable to determine if any of it had been real. This time it was still night out, no sunlight to answer the question.
Melvin came over, it being his watch.
“I’m sorry, about what you’re going through,” Melvin said.
Rich nodded. He looked down beside his bedroll. The bowl of water he had conjured was still there.
“I don’t know,” Rich said. His eyes searched the darkness frantically for a way to work through it. “I just don’t know.”
“Know what?” Melvin asked.
Rich didn’t speak the problem. The bowl told him he had set up to scry. The cost didn’t start at any place identifiable. When did the real Rew stop speaking and the cost Rew start? Did he ever get to speak to the real Rew at all? These questions bandied back and forth in his brain but the big question loomed, ever-present, unanswerable.
Did he burn her mind away?
“I don’t know!” Rich yelled in anguish.
“Shaddup,” Jason muttered half asleep as he turned away in his bedroll.
Feminine arms came from behind him to circle around his chest. A soft, beautiful voice next to his ear whispered.
“Calm. Remember, it’s not real. Calm.”
Rich leaned back into the embrace. He couldn’t trust what he saw. The cost wanted his madness. So he put faith in the voice. It told him it wasn’t real; he wanted desperately to believe in that. Rich closed his eyes and relaxed in the arms that held him.
Before Rich knew it, he was stirring awake to the others packing in the morning sun. Wordlessly, he got up and stowed his gear.
The mood was even more somber today than it was yesterday. Silence sat on all their shoulders, heavier than the packs on their backs. Jason tried to introduce conversation, but Rich and apparently Melvin didn’t feel like talking.
Rich felt old. He looked over to Melvin. He noticed her looking at him, concern and something else on her face, and whenever he met her eyes, she’d look away.
She. Rich had grown so used to seeing Melvin as a beautiful woman he almost forgot there was a dude underneath. He couldn’t recall Melvin’s real face. He could only see Zhufira, smiling or being worrisome or looking beautifully fierce. She felt realer than the kid from the burbs he used to know.
The landscape failed to change. Only Jason could measure progress. “Almost there,” he said as the day waned, the sun setting over the mountains.
He looked at Rich. “Campfire time,” he said.
“No.”
Jason smiled. “C’mon. You’re playing, right?”
Rich dug in his pack for his ornate tinderbox, the only gift he had accepted from the people of Triptoe. He tossed it at Jason.
“You want a fire, get to work.”
“Seriously? You want me to smack rocks together and blow at sparks all night when it takes you half a second to make it happen? C’mon dude, get it crackling before it gets dark.”
“Don’t you fucking get it?” Rich snapped. “I’m only casting one more spell,” he said, holding up a finger. “One. And this isn’t it. You want a fire, make a fire.”
Rich walked away from the camp and from Jason’s mumbling remarks. He looked down at the red gemstone on the ring Druze had given him. If it was marginalizing the cost, Rich sure couldn’t see it. He paid the same price for conjuring a bowl of water and a camp fire as he did for going super Razzleblad and cleaving apart a piece of the High Fane.
That was it.
This was the lesson Richard Bates wanted to teach him. Small magic, big magic, it didn’t matter—his price would be the same.
This ran contrary to what Rew had told him and what he had read in the Birleshik Arcana. Cost grows as spell power grows. Mages simply can’t cast above their present level until they’ve mastered the level they’re on. And once you master a certain level, the cost for levels below becomes almost negligible.
But he had never mastered any level. He was a novice, inside a body that touted some of the highest levels of spellcraft a human could wield. Razzleblad’s mind was tempered to the cost. Rich’s mind was baby fresh and raw to it.
He looked out at the barren landscape, darkening quickly as the sun threw its purple-hued death throes. Rich turned around to the camp, where Jason’s sour look was illuminated by a small, sad campfire.
Jason tossed Rich his tinderbox as he approached the campsite.
“I hope this means you won’t scream us out of our sleep tonight and you’ll start tomorrow off without your period,” Jason said.
“You never know,” Rich said. The period remark made him look at Melvin, who looked away, cheeks reddening.
Rich did the same thing he did last night, attempt to translate Kaftar’s spell. He managed to translate three other spells on the page.
The first was called “Equal Hardship” and it was ludicrous. The spell turned someone to stone at the cost of turning yourself into stone as well. Why the hell would anyone do that?
The others two were better, still a bit crazy but not outright suicidal. “Cursed Footsteps” made the caster lame for two hours but paralyzed everyone in the immediate area for twice as long. The other was “Mind Erosion,” where he could erase a selective memory from another mind at the expense of having a random memory of his own erased. That seemed kind of useful, but kind of dangerous too.
None of this helped him figure out his spell. He got another word out of the title, leaving him with the ominous sounding “Life Something Chain.”
He looked up from the books, his eyes strained and his body fatigued. Everyone else was out again, with the hourglass out of sand. Rich settled into his bedroll after waking Jason.
Thoughts of Rew started to buzz in his head. Was she
OK?
He stopped himself. Not knowing was murder. But finding out could kill her.
One more spell, he told himself.
Chapter 28
Olukent
Melvin should have been elated when Jason pointed with his bone fingers at the town in the distance. Getting here meant the end of a hard road and life in the wrong body. Instead of elation, there was only a choking sense of dread.
The town was nondescript, like a mountain version of Triptoe. But above the town sat a massive cave carved into the hillside. Perfectly round, the cave gaped open like the gigantic maw of a hungry beast.
That’s where Jason’s finger pointed. Melvin guessed it wouldn’t be monsterly enough for the black creature to hang out at the local pub.
“Well, guess we should end some evil, right?” Melvin asked the guys.
“You ready to cleave some zombies?” Jason asked. “Town’s probably crawling with them.”
The town wasn’t. Living people milled about the town. Not a lot of people, but everyone there was very much alive. The first man to see the three of them smiled warmly at them.
“Welcome to Olukent,” he said, taking particular notice of Melvin. “I knew the master’s message was going to spread, but, my, I never expected it to reach all the way down to the Transvaal.”
“Funny how word spreads,” Melvin said.
“Well, you all have gotten here just in time,” the man said. “We’ve less than three days left until the Rising.”
The man looked around with a question on his face, like the newcomers were missing something. “Where are your bodies?”
“Um...” Melvin began.
“They’re close,” Jason filled in. “We weren’t sure how this all worked, so we wanted to come and investigate first.”
The man looked shocked. “You have heard Master Izal’s message, yes?”
“Meh. A little,” Jason said, shaking his hand so-so style. “You know how word gets when it spreads, the message gets twisted around.”
The man looked in awe at the death hand Jason shook casually. He stared at Jason. “You’ve been touched—directly—by the Death Null?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, looking like he was bored with the conversation. “Kinda why we’re here.”
The man brought his head down. “I am not worthy to speak to you,” he said. “You are a portent of the Death Null’s promise. Please, come, you must meet Master Izal.”
He led the way to the inn, where a small crowd had gathered around one man who looked like a cross between mage and clown. He wore black robes covered with white polka dots. His face was white from caked powder, his lips red from what could only be lipstick. The guy was talking to the people in a calm, soothing voice, like he was teaching little kids Sunday school.
“Master,” the man interrupted. “I’ve brought more to the fold. One, the aian, has been directly touched by the Death Null.”
The man’s powder face cracked as his ruby lips widened into a heartwarming smile. “Burru, you have done well.” His attention returned to the crowd. “Excuse me, my children, I have much to discuss with our new friends.”
The crowd left without a word. Master Izal looked at Jason like he was Jesus Christ.
Melvin shuddered. He hoped this wasn’t another Chosen One episode. How many freaking messiahs did this world have?
“I am honored to be in the presence of one who the Death Null has directly touched,” Izal said with a bow. “None of us have earned its grace yet, not even I.”
“Yeah, that’s why we’re here,” Jason said. “We wanted to experience more Death Null and we heard a little of your message, but we didn’t get it all. So what’s your message?”
Izal smiled. “Why, brother, you’ve arrived at the gathering place fortuitously. In less than three days time the Death Null will stop taking our offerings, and grace our lost loved ones with his gift.”
“What offerings?” Jason asked. “What gift?”
Izal frowned. “It’s tragic, how distorted the message becomes once it leaves the hearth,” he said. He explained, maintaining his eerie bible-study sermon voice.
“I told all interested in gaining new life for their loved ones to bring their treasured remains along with a stranger’s corpse. The Death Null resurrects them both at the mouth of the cave. We allow the stranger to roam into the cave as an offering and the loved one we escort to the town jail.”
Jason scratched his head, confusion all over his face. “Why do you lock your loved ones up?” he asked.
Izal laughed, a good-natured, friendly sound that ran contrary to the freakish look he sported. “Our loved ones would wander into the cave with the offering corpses and would be forever lost to us. The resurrection is incomplete, you see. Our loved ones are just a roaming shadow of their former selves until the Death Null bestows its grace. But when its grace comes, in less than three days now, all of our loved ones will be restored, body and mind.”
Despite Izal’s attempt at explanation, Jason looked more confused than ever. Maybe he just couldn’t believe what the hell Izal was saying.
“What’d everyone do in this town before the Death Null showed up?”
“Why, this old mining town has been abandoned for countless ages,” Izal said. “Our family comes here once a year at the start of autumn, to practice our resurrection rituals. We have done so without fail for centuries. This year we have been blessed with our unwavering faith by the coming of the Death Null. And in three days its grace will fall upon us.”
“One more question,” Jason said. “Why do you think its grace is falling in three days?”
“Our loved ones tell us,” Izal answered. “In fact, since resurrecting that’s all our loved ones say. They speak in unison the days left to make offerings, counting down starting seven days ago when the first of them rose. Now they uniformly say three days.”
Izal put his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “You all have come just in time, brother.” He looked past them like he had just missed something important.
“Where are your loved ones and your offerings?”
“They’re on the way,” Jason said. “Our resident mage will send word right away. You’ll see, gonna bring an army of offerings for Death Null.”
“Glorious,” Izal said. “If you excuse me, I must see to my children.”
Alone in the inn now, Jason turned to the others, his voice a harsh whisper.
“Dude, we’re in the middle of a resurrection cult!”
“So?” Melvin asked. “I say we head into the cave and catch us a Death Null.”
“We can’t just march in there,” Jason said. “You think these cultists are going to stand by while we stop their Death Null from dropping grace on them? We’ve gotta sneak in.”
Jason was right. They needed to make the cave without being seen. Getting discovered meant having a murderous town at their backs and a legion of zombie offerings at their front.
They walked around the town, assessing their options. The cultists approached them and talked with serene optimism, like Ritalin kids waiting for Christmas. Melvin kept his smile pleasant and his eyes peeled.
By the time they had talked to everyone and mapped the town out, it was late afternoon. One of the cultists, Crispin or Crispy or whatever, came rushing out of the jail.
“Two days! Two days!” he yelled.
Great. Death Null wasn’t on standard time. One thing all three of them universally agreed on, whatever it had in store in two days probably wasn’t good.
Getting to Death Null didn’t look good either. The only way to the cave was through a building at the base of the hill. That building was heavily guarded by at least eight nutjobs with swords. Izal called them the protectors of the flock. Melvin called them impossible to get past.
“Maybe the guards don’t hang out in the building all night,” Melvin suggested.
“I’ll take a look late in the night,” Jason said. “We’ll see.”
Jason got V.I.P. treatm
ent around the town. Everyone loved him. Two of the cultists even gave up their room in the packed inn for Jason and his friends. That’s where the three of them were now, in the small, dusty room sitting on either of the two beds discussing strategy.
Jason popping over to the guardhouse in the wee hours wouldn’t cause suspicion. Mage-clown Izal said he was even free to go into the cave to audience with the Death Null. Too bad Izal said Melvin and Rich weren’t worthy, otherwise there’d be no need for subterfuge.
“I’m an awesome gamer,” Jason said. “But this is starting to look like a quest that needs a bigger group.”
“Well, we can cut down the guards,” Melvin said a little half-heartedly. He didn’t relish the thought of killing guys just doing their job, but they were devoutly in the way and he wasn’t about to scrub the mission. “After that, I can bolt and lock the guard house and defend it while you two track down and capture Death Null.”
“Can’t,” Jason said shaking his head. “My arrows are useless against the zombies. And Rich would be even worse.”
“How can I be worse than your useless arrows?” Rich asked indignantly.
“Even if you were the magefire slut I wish you’d be, these zombies are numb puppets. They’re kept up by magic more than their meat. You go flaming zombies and all you’ll do is create a bunch of walking bonfires begging for a hug.”
Jason looked at Melvin. “We need someone who can hack these zombies down. Arms, legs, heads have to come clean off. Rich and I can grab swords off the guards and help, but the two of us alone won’t get far if they’re swarming.”
Melvin got up from the bed and looked out the window. Early evening cast the town in dark spots filled in with the flickering light of several torches. People were still out and about greeting one another, talking and laughing peacefully. These folks were peaceful because all was right in their universe. Soon as that paradigm shifted they’d be grabbing their torches and pitchforks.
“All three of us going into the cave means a whole angry town at our backs,” Melvin said. He turned to face the guys. “It’s suicide.”
“It’s looking like our only option,” Jason said. “But they’re people, angry, nut-filled loon or otherwise, I can shoot them down and Rich can flame them up while you work out on the zombies in front of us.”