The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2)

by Matthew W. Harrill

  “I don't think you can quite call it that.” Keldron disagreed. “It looks as though you have to be holding the stone for it to work any sort of benefit on you. How do you use a focus stone if you are already dead?”

  That brought Belyn up short. “There must be a way.” The determination was strong in his voice. “If we can understand this, then we can learn. This could benefit everybody. I will strive to figure out a way, but I must meditate upon this. I will find a way to release Lothan from the cave, and I will find a way to ensure we can heal others.” Belyn made to leave the room, and paused in mid-stride. “Hang on, when you told us that you had injured yourself in the forest, how come you hadn't healed yourself when you prevented the army from chasing you?”

  “Simple.” Keldron answered. “I created the wall to block them before I fell. Afterwards, I had not much cause to use a focus stone, as we were too busy trying to evade them. I never healed myself then because I never had cause to.”

  “What about when you slept?”

  “That was the forest, whose eaves we were still under when the army passed by us. I had nothing to do with that enchantment, but I bet you wish you knew how it was performed.”

  Keldron chuckled as Belyn strode from the room, seeking solace. Yerdu charged after him. Joleen giggled. “I don't think that Belyn is going to get the peace and quiet he desires, Keldron.”

  “No? He can be pretty dogged when he needs to be.”

  Joleen came to him, wrapping herself in his arms. “That is not what I mean. Did you see my sister's face when he ran at the door like that? Yerdu does not like surprises, and it will take her a long time to get over that shock.”

  Keldron squeezed her tight against him; the summer smell of her hair was a comfort in this perilous place. “I know what you mean, Jo. I had no idea he was going to do that either, and I have known him for more years than anybody but Raoul. Crazy stunts do not usually come from him, but at least it proved my point.”

  Joleen snuggled closer. “Do you think that he will be able to heal people?”

  Keldron shrugged, and revelled in the sensation that he was able to do so. “He might well find a way. Mind you, he might as well find a way to restore the great focus over the forest, and he might find a way to bring this village back to life as well.”

  Joleen untangled herself, searching his face to see if he was mocking. What she saw both surprised and heartened her. Keldron was deadly serious. “He could do that?” she asked, clearly in awe of powers she did not fully comprehend.

  “Who is to say what he could do.” Keldron replied diffidently, aware now that there was someone close to them who knew more about focussing than Belyn. “The point is that there is so much that we don't know about our art. So much has been lost. Belyn possesses the knowledge of one that we like to call our 'benefactor', though we know not who he was, or even when he set his ideas down on parchment. But he gave ideas that led Belyn to believe that the order of Law was once more than a bunch of old men sat around telling merchants how to behave. He believes that the order of Law was once the paramount guild in the land, presiding over the rest.”

  Joleen frowned at this. “So you are saying that you want supremacy over everyone else? And this makes you better than those mercenaries how.”

  Keldron shook his head firmly. “No Jo, that is the last thing that we want. But what we do want is to give people the power to choose. We want to balance the equilibrium and help everybody. We most certainly want to save anybody that might be in trouble from these riders.” He shook his head slowly, watching her. “The Gods alone know what we cannot do. We can only try what we know.”

  Their quiet moment together was broken by Raoul, who came into the near-silent room like a thunderstorm. “What is this I was told about injuries and magical healings before I was bundled out of the room I was using?”

  Keldron outlined what they had learned as a result of the focuses they had performed, and then finished by unwrapping his freshly wrapped wound to show his friend.

  “Well blow me down.” Was all Raoul could say, and he went looking around the parlour. Pretty soon he found what he was looking for in the form of a large knife. Grinning up at Joleen and Keldron in the crazed look of his zealous Old Law faith, Raoul slashed the knife across his arm, drawing blood. “Ow, that hurts,” he grimaced, staring at the cut, and then reached inside his pocket for his own focus stone. Pretty soon Raoul's unique blend of zealot's concentration and his marble stone throbbed through the air in time with the blood from his arm, but that did not last long. It seemed only moments until he was stood there eyes open, gazing in wonder at his healed arm, with a flask of orit in the other hand. “Well I never. Who would have thought that it would be that easy?” He turned his arm over, checking for any sort of a scar, but there was none. “I don't believe it.”

  Joleen had moved apart from Raoul and Keldron during this, and looked from one face to the other. “You are all mad!” she exclaimed, pulling away from them. “Was there no other way for you to test this healing?”

  Keldron grinned at Raoul, who grinned right back. “I guess not.” Joleen just shook her head, her face pale and drained, and left the parlour, letting the door swing ajar behind her as if it could not care who passed through.

  “What was wrong with her?” Raoul asked with mild curiosity.

  “I know not, my friend.” Keldron replied as he hefted his flask. “But I am sure that I will find out at some point soon.” Keldron hefted his flask and raised it towards Raoul. “To you and your miraculous recovery, my friend.”

  A broad smile lit up Raoul's narrow face. “I'll drink to that!”

  After repeated toasts to various happenings, and several quick swallows of the brandy, both men felt a little better, but the situation had not become any less grave. Raoul put his flask down with a sigh. “It is not the same without Belyn.” He conceded ruefully.

  “I know what you mean.” Keldron agreed. “This place does not help. It makes me feel so on edge.”

  Raoul's gaze dropped to the floor. “The cushions and blankets suddenly seem so inviting. I think I am going to take a nap. Might as well make the use of this place while we are here.”

  Suddenly Keldron felt drained, the events of the day catching up with him. With not a word more, he dropped to his pack, and fell asleep. If Keldron had hoped for peace, his wishes were not heard. The moment he dropped off, his dreams were plagued with darkness and death. He felt constricted by an unending abyss of evil, grabbing at him and drawing him ever deeper into its depths. Keldron beheld a mass uprising of people in a city with high walls, while his master ran through tunnels. He realised that he was seeing Obrett and three men as yet unknown to him escaping the Witch Finder. His master had found a way out of Raessa. The evil was great, a pulsing mass of blackness that permeated the very rocks. People were dying there. As Keldron watched, helplessly held in the thrall of his subconscious mind, faceless people were impaled on stakes as they were held hand and foot by tangible ropes of darkness. As each one was pierced, the man or woman looked straight at him, mouthing obscenities as they were pierced by wood that was too blunt to pass through them, but did so nonetheless. The wounds did not bleed, but pulsed black viscous fluid in his direction, filling his vision. He screamed, and the corpses laughed back at him, waving and jeering as if their souls had been damned and they enjoyed the sensation. They filled his vision to the widest periphery, all waving at him and welcoming him as if they would embrace him given a chance. He fell further into the abyss, but could not look down. Whatever was holding him in this veritable nightmare was preventing him from seeing what he was being dragged down towards. The corpses hung off of their stakes, grinning with madness. They moved away from him but at the same time there were more of them. He realised that the black abyss had become the top of a yawning cavern. He stared about himself and realised that the cave was alight with evil and darkness. Thousands of mad corpses gibbered at him in dark ecstasy, waving their arms and spouti
ng curses. The noise was deafening, every voice shrieking at him in some mad language. He found himself accelerating to the pool of black liquid at the bottom of the chamber, while all around him the frantic waving of arms became rippling as if the corpses were spiralling down towards the liquid. He realised as he looked that they were. The chamber of his nightmare was feeding the dead and the dying into the pool, increasing its potency. His arms were thrown forward as he was thrust towards the pool and he found his chin upon his chest. The noise became deafening. The bodies disappeared in a blur of pain and nausea as he hurtled backwards towards the pool, and then it all stopped. The voices silenced, and all he could hear was a drip. He hung from something, something that made the sound. He was on an islet within the middle of the black pool separated from it by not much more that a stride or two of rock. Everything was upside down. The bodies off in the distance stared expectantly, awaiting a stigma to set off their insane gibbering once more. They looked much more human from the funny angle Keldron was resting at. He pushed his arms behind himself for support so that he could raise himself up, and found that he could not move. Something prevented him by pinning him to the ground. He moved in a gentle rocking motion, and determined that whatever it was had a hold of his chest. Straining his already injured neck, he tried to look up and across himself, but something long and dark prevented him. With a Herculean effort, he raised his head, and found that an immense stake had thrust through his chest, and was almost as long as he was tall. The girth of the stake was impossibly wide, and his blood dripped from it onto his own body, the drips making the gentle patting sound that echoed all around the cavern. The corpses looked on, expectancy falling from them to the base of the cavern like blood. Unable to keep his head up any more, he let it drop back, and the liquid at the edge of the island bubbled and frothed. Something raised the surface of the liquid nearest to the point on the island where he was pinned. A voice whispered to him.

  'Find me, unbind me. Before they do.'

  The bulge in the pool sank back down, and molten pain seared his chest. Blood started to spurt out in huge gushes, and he screamed the scream of the damned. Upon hearing the scream, every corpse in the cavern reacted as if this was the sign they had been waiting for. They threw back their heads and screamed, and black blood gushed out of the wounds in their chests as it did from him, and poured straight to the point at his head where the liquid had bulged. The screaming increased to a pitch so high it felt as if his ears were in as much agony as his chest, and Keldron clenched his eyes shut, willing the cacophony of evil away. Waves of pain thrust towards him, and into him through the wound that now pulsed with his heartbeat in the middle of his chest. Somehow, Keldron willed himself to twist around, and as he concentrated he felt that it might actually happen. With strength he never knew he possessed, he wrenched his shoulders, bringing his body around with him, and hit his head on the stone.

  Abruptly, everything went silent. Keldron kept his eyes screwed tight, lest the cauldron of noise come back. He realised that the smooth surface he could feel against his face was not that of the rock. He reached to his chest with his arm, and patted it all over, feeling for the wound. His clothes were intact, not a rent, not a loose hem of a stitch. He led there for a moment longer, trying to absorb his surroundings. He could hear breathing, the breathing of more than one person in close proximity. He knew where he was. Opening his eyes, Keldron found that he had twisted himself over onto his front. Joleen was nearby, her face close to his. An angel asleep in the dim lamplight of the parlour, he dared not disturb her. Keldron was comforted by the warmth of the room, relief flooding into him as his awareness came fully back to the present, and out of his nightmare state. He levered himself quietly up, and saw that everybody else was spread out around the room, aside from Malcolm, who was nowhere to be seen. He sat there on the cushions for a while, just enjoying the fact that he was awake and not in a cavern full of gibbering corpses. Closing his eyes again with a deep sigh, he revelled in the close company of friends, but something nagged at him as he sat there. It was an echo of the feelings he had until so recently been experiencing. Then it came back to him. This room might be comforting, but it was the thinnest shell against the very reason they had come to the village in the first place. Keldron remembered the face of the corpse he had seen in the house the afternoon before, and suddenly a connection hit him, as if prescience had inspired him to make a connection that had just been waiting to occur. Ensuring he did not disturb anybody, Joleen especially, he rose on legs made shaky by his unconscious experience. Stepping over and around his friends, Keldron made his way to the hallway, and then to the upper floor of the house. Aware of the dangers of moving in complete darkness, he stretched out his hands to catch himself should he hit anything. Fortunately the house was not full of the clutter that marred so many of the town houses in Eskenberg. They apparently believed in order in this part of the Nine Duchies, which was as much as any follower of the Old Law would do. Remembering what was on the floor from his sojourn up to the bedrooms from before, Keldron stepped into the bedroom with the larger window. He guessed that Malcolm would be keeping watch from there as it had a better view of the village. He had guessed right. The big man was a shadow almost one with the dark blackness of the drapes at the side of the room, but still Keldron spotted him.

  Malcolm turned in the darkness, rippling the shadows as if a breath of wind had caused the drapes to shift. “Keldron,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Malcolm. How goes the watch?”

  “Peaceful,” came the reply, ghosting out if the darkness like an owl given sibilant voice. “There is nothing out there, or at least nothing living.”

  Keldron detected the unease that lay behind Malcolm's words. “I know nobody will feel right until we have moved on from this place, and had put some great distance, and not a few memories between ourselves and this experience, but this house was too good an opportunity to miss. Why don't you go downstairs and get some sleep? I will keep watch on the world while you slumber.”

  “You don't mind?” came the high-pitched reply.

  “Not at all, my friend.” Keldron replied as he shuddered at the thought of sleep. At this point he felt as if he would never do so again. “Bad dreams,” he added by way of explanation, moving into the room so that Malcolm would not trip over him. “But I suppose some sleep is better than none at all.”

  “No,” came Malcolm's sorrowful reply. “I think that no sleep is sometimes preferable when the situation demands it. Yet I am weary, and I will try to sleep if I may. You are a good friend, wizard, and it gladdens me that you are as hale as when you began this quest of Keldron settled into the niche at the side of the window, feeling the need to stand tall and face the darkness. His standing there was a small gesture of defiance in the very face of this evil. He knew that should he fail in his duty to seek out the answer as to the source of this catacomb of nightmares, that he would fail every free person in the Nine Duchies. His own emotions could not get in the way of his duty to people he knew that he would never meet. The Old Law taught selflessness, not selfishness, and he would see his journey through to whatever end. As Keldron's eyes adjusted to the pitch black, he was able to pick out details with increasing clarity. The road became the houses of the village, packed together and filled with their sorrowful contents. The houses eventually became the road beyond, and small hedgerows, fences and gates. The cloud overhead was visible, not as the result of any light, but because its depth of black was different to that of the land beneath. The houses should have had lights, and warmth, but they just stood there, bleak and empty as if they were mourning for their former occupants, yearning to be lit up with the gay exuberance of children running around and filled with the warmth of the mothers at the stoves and the wisdom of the old folk with their many tales. No, that was all gone, replaced by empty husks filled with bad memories and wooden stakes. These people would never even be afforded the dignity of a simple burial; for nobody would come near the plac
e once they had heard about what had transpired here. Nobody but mercenaries on the loot. This event was beyond ordinary folk, and they left it well alone, exactly as they should do. Keldron surmised that whomever had the greater plan behind this would effectively do a great job of sealing off entire areas of the countryside. People only went so far to visit other villages in this region, and once a village such as this blocked their route, they would gradually retreat into themselves until the countryside became a collection of hermits. He made a mental note to remind the tribesmen to ensure this did not happen. His thoughts changed then, as he recognised an aroma in the air. It was the scent of summer woodland that always accompanied Joleen wherever she walked. It assaulted his senses in this dark place, bringing a relaxing relief. He smiled, not even turning. He knew that she was sat down on the bed behind him, and he revelled in her presence. The village clear to him, he looked out upon the various shades of black. Nothing moved as he watched the various hues of deepest night.