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

by Matthew W. Harrill

  “There is definitely something more to this,” Obrett observed, much more eager now to see the rest of the tower. He climbed the great set of stone stairs, with Brendan following him. The steps were slick, polished dark by repeated use. They did not reflect the general state of disarray that was prevailed by the rest of the building. At the top was a door, shut in the same way as the iron doors that provided, or denied entrance to the tower itself. This one was not a great door like the entrance, but made just for a man of his size. Obrett twisted at the handle, and pushed. Nothing happened. He reset the handle and then tried once more. Still nothing. “It appears to be locked from the other side.” Obrett did not hesitate in pulling his focus stone from its resting place in his robe. Closing his eyes with one hand on the door in front of him, he concentrated on the stone structure around the door. As his will poured through his stone and into the tower, he encountered something strange. It was as if there were two walls around him where he could only see one. The door was simple enough. He concentrated on the iron latch that had jammed on the other side, and freed it using his mind. Releasing his concentration, Obrett opened his eyes to see Brendan staring at him in fascination.

  “You clearly did not expect to find what you did,” he stated.

  “How could you tell?”

  Brendan laughed. “The expression on your face. It was as if you had eaten horse dung. There was something you could just not swallow about that focus, was there not?”

  Obrett reached for the door. “Let's go inside first, and worry about my thoughts later.” He opened the door and stepped through, expecting to find something special, and what he found left him gaping in astonishment. His mouth hung open in disbelief as he found yet another dusty old room.

  “This was clearly not what you were expecting,” Brendan observed laconically. “Not in the least. Judging by the look on your face this is something very unexpected.” The room was huge, and that in itself was impressive. It had six sets of windows, set at equal distances from each other around the walls of the room. They rose too high for any man to be able to see over their bottom ledges, but in several places, small sets of stone stairs led up to the great windows, allowing a view of the surrounding terrain. More worrying was the fact that when they had climbed the stairs, two of the windows provided full view of the mountains that clawed towards the sky in the distant West. From the view that was granted to the wizards, they seemed a lot closer, dangerously close even. The rest of the room was as dusty and as ill-used as the ground floor had been. There were a couple of rotting beds to one side, the mattresses once stuffed with straw now only thin shells full of rotted matter. More of interest to Obrett and Brendan was the stone bench in the centre of the room. It was perfectly round, and placed exactly in the middle of the room, as if it were a centrepiece of some description. By looking at it, they could not divine any purpose for its being there. Obrett sighed in frustration.

  “So what did you see?” Brendan asked of him.

  “It was not so much as something that I saw, but a feeling that I had.” Obrett replied, taking a seat on the part of the bench facing the East, the direction in which their companions were riding. There was no trace of their passing in the dust outside, for a steady breeze had obliterated all traces of their passage. “There is something strange about this tower. Something is not quite right here. When I focussed I felt more than one wall, where clearly there is only one wall.”

  Brendan walked over to the circular wall and poked at it curiously. “Nothing obvious, just cold smooth stone. And yet I agree with you, there is something strange about this tower.”

  They spent the remainder of the day trying to unlock the secret of the tower, not getting anywhere. Brendan tried repeating Obrett's focus and found that although there was definitely something mysterious about the building they could not find anything more. They explored every inch of the grounds surrounding the tower, and still the flowery scent inside the entrance confused them. They poked and prodded at every wall, and the stone remained dark and shiny. The only inconsistencies the two wizards could find were in the oddities they had already discovered. The sand always reappeared behind the door no matter how many times they swept it away. The scent of flowers was always there when they opened the door, but could never be smelled outside of it. The dust was a blanket over everything, and yet the stairs showed signs of repeated use over the seasons. The tower always remained cool, even when the door had been left open. As the sun began its westward descent, the two wizards sat outside in frustration. Obrett was perched on the circular wall, throwing stones at imaginary targets in the dirt, and Brendan was sat on the sandy ground up against the tower wall opposite. The shadow of the tower stretched over both of them, but they were both warm. If there was such a thing as springtime in this hostile environment, then it had passed them by with merely a fleeting glance.

  “What are we missing?” Obrett mused in the company of his friend and the copious rocks. “It feels as if there were a reason that we have stopped here, but I cannot fathom it.”

  Brendan sipped on his water bottle, and then finished the remainder of the cheese that he had been sparing. “When we were at such an impasse as novices in the Earth Guild, one of our masters gave us a piece of advice that must have been one of the most cherished bits of knowledge one could retain. He said 'When you have lost your way, and know not where to turn, always remember that the realm of Earth is inside of you, and all around you. You are as much a part of it as it is of you.' ”

  Obrett looked around them. “Well the earth certainly is all around us.” He looked about.

  “I think what he meant was that we all share similar properties. If you think about it, that is all a focus is, the bringing into alignment of properties within us that are similar with the stones that we use. That is why some stones react better and produce different focuses. In essence, if you had not found that particular stone, who is to say that we would have escaped in the manner that we did? Who is to say that we would have escaped at all?”

  “You are on the verge of something here, my friend.” Obrett searched around his feet, and selected two rocks that fitted into his palms. The rocks were sandblasted smooth, and were a very pale yellow with a sandy texture. Obrett chucked one over to the older wizard. “See what you can find in common with this.”

  Brendan observed the stone, turning it over and over in his hands as he sought a clue as to its properties without using his mind.

  “I have never seen anybody do that before,” Obrett said.

  “It is part of being the Earth Order,” answered Brendan. “We attempt to divine the properties of stone in order to make the transition of the mind that much easier.”

  “So what does this rock tell you?”

  Brendan peered closely at the stone in his hand. “It tells me that this rock is specific to this tower and the immediate surroundings. Were I to hazard a guess, you would not find this rock within say a half-days walk of here. The larger grains in the fine matrix tell me that subtlety is needed, and finesse, for we are looking to pass through different regions of both the mind and the stone. There are areas of greater resistance here, but they can be gotten around with patience and persistence.” He looked up. “This stone could prove difficult, but I believe that once its secret is unlocked it will be a powerful tool.”

  Obrett peered closely at the stone in his hand. He could now see the larger grains embedded and surrounded by smoother rock. “How does this rock help us unlock whatever mystery surrounds us here?”

  “Simple,” Brendan replied animatedly. “It shows us that one reality is surrounded by another.”

  “And I thought I knew all there was to know about focussing.” Obrett looked on, forlorn.

  “No, you know all you had been taught and had learned about focussing, my friend. I have just learned it in a different way, because my order serves in a different way to yours. Your order formulates Law. We are much more in tune with our stones, and therefore the
earth too. My friend, there are things you know that nobody knows.”

  Obrett spared a thought for his three students, and sent a silent prayer to the heavens in the hope that they had not suffered a similar fate to him. “I feel that I can never know it all.”

  “That is an admirable trait. It means you will never stop seeking answers. Now shall we have a go? The sun is almost down, and the nights out here are as cold as the days are hot.”

  Obrett searched the horizon. Beneath the clear blue sky, the distant mountains to the West were stretching forth their shadows like hungry scavengers, seeking to devour the entire desert into chilly darkness. As the men watched, the sun winked out of sight behind a tall peak in the northern range, and a chill descended. Obrett never felt the cold, for he stood mirroring Brendan, a rock in his left hand and his eyes closed in concentration. Obrett began to focus, but at the same time felt Brendan do the same. This did not disturb him; rather it gave him a sense of clarity.

  “I feel it too.” Came Brendan's voice in his mind. “We are on to something here.”

  Obrett felt ready to push his mind into the stone, and at the same time, Brendan sifted his consciousness through his own stone. The effect was instantaneous. Both men felt their minds become linked with the stones, waves of thought finding the easiest path inside. As Brendan had predicted, there were areas of resistance, but these areas promised a resource that once tapped, would provide power the likes of which they had never tasted before. “Find a fractured grain.” Obrett thought to the other wizard. “Let us see if we can't unlock whatever is within.”

  “Got one.” Came the reply. Obrett found a grain as well, one that had been crushed long past, one that spoke volumes about how the rock was formed. But in his mind it was not just a grain. It was a step closer to unlocking something more. It was a pulsating radiance with a weak point that needed to be exploited. Obrett caught himself. It was not exploitation that he required, not dominion of any sort, but a sharing, an enhancement of his own senses that was required. “Don't force it, or it will ruin everything,” he cautioned Brendan.

  “Why not? Don't we want to release the energy of the crystals?”

  “We do, but think about how we use our focus stones. It is as you have said: a melding, a willing co-operation. The same can be said for the parts that make up our stones. If we force it in any way the results could be unpredictable, but if we can find a way in then we can control the release.”

  “Got you. Here goes.”

  Obrett probed at the fracture in the surface of the grain, finding little that could help him. To any casual observer, it might look as though an old man was frowning at a rock in his hand with his eyes closed. They could not however comprehend the energy or the control being exerted. Obrett probed at a different part of the fracture, and this time, the fracture yielded just a little. Eager to go further, his patience was reinforced by years of training. He fed a little more of his consciousness into the fracture, seeking to pour himself into the structure of a single grain, and the gap widened. He had found his way in. Like an hourglass, Obrett poured his mind into the tiny grain at the centre of the stone in his hand, and the mounting sense of mental excitement that emanated from Brendan gave the sense that the Earth wizard had found the way in too. As Obrett's consciousness became one with that tiny fragment in his hand, he began to feel a difference outside of his body. The temperature warmed, the flowery smell that had accompanied them in the foyer of the tower became stronger for the first time outside. His closed eyes registered the darkness falling outside. Even the stone wall upon which he perched felt different underneath him, but he concentrated on the stone. He urged himself into the grain, and power built within him unlike any he had ever felt before. He was ready to burst, his head singing with crystalline-heightened awareness. A blue tinge coloured everything he could see, and then he was there.

  Afraid to open his eyes, Obrett remained seated. It was only a hand upon his shoulder that reminded him that he was only focussing on a stone, and not made of one.

  “Open your eyes and look, my friend,” came the voice of Brendan, but it was a voice that sounded much richer, so very much more vibrant. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring down at the stone in his hand, and beyond that, grass.

  “What the?” Obrett looked around, and found that he was sitting on a lawn; the grass trimmed neatly short, several different wildflowers growing through in various patches. The dark tower now rose above them in its midnight splendour, but the circular wall had disappeared entirely, as had all of the desert, sand and all of the rocks except the ones they had held on to. “Are we in the same place?”

  “It appears that way, though some things indeed are different.” Brendan pointed up into the sky. “It was late afternoon when we started focussing, and now it is deepest night.” Brendan continued. The stars were huge in the sky, great white orbs of flaring light, shining down upon the garden, which was now surrounded by a ring of trees, their lush foliage moving gently in a breeze that was barely noticeable. Obrett looked down at the stone in his hand. “What did we do?”

  “When we reached our target, we unleashed something a lot greater than we would have imagined. We have changed everything around us.”

  “Perhaps, but maybe this was always here and what we did revealed it.” Obrett moved over to the now chest-high squared-off wall that surrounded what looked to be more like a complex of buildings now as opposed to the single tower that had dominated the desert skyline. “Remember the signs that led us to this. The smell, the stairs, the sand reappearing.” He bent and plucked one of the flowers. “Who would imagine that it would lead to all of this?”

  “What is that blue glow?” Brendan asked, looking past the tower. “It's everywhere.”

  Obrett leaned back as far over the wall as he could in order to try and get a better view. “I can't see. It's coming from around the other side of the tower.”

  The two wizards walked through the glade containing the tower to try and see what the source of the blue light was, but when they reached the other side, the foliage of the trees seemed to meld with the top of the wall, blocking any decent view from the ground. The only other thing of significance in the flower-strewn garden was a well that had not been present outside of the 'other' tower, another fact that was not lost on the two wizards. Heading back around to the other side of the tower, they walked slowly around a square building that was formed of the same stone, but was only a fraction of the size. It had a similar domed roof, as if somebody had started to build an imitation of the tower, and then changed their mind.

  “Look up there.” Brendan pointed at the great windows of the tower. Red light shone from within, just as it did from the smaller windows of the square building behind them.

  “Well at least we know we are not alone.”

  A rustle from behind caused both men to turn from their contemplation of company, but before they could say anything or even move, sacks were pulled down over their heads, and secured about their waists.

  “Don't even bother trying to move.” A rough voice said. “Not if you want to live to see another day. Ungentle hands turned them around and pushed them in what might have been the direction of the smaller building. They were guided up several flights of steps, almost falling at the top as they tried to step on thin air, and into a warm room. There they were seated and left to wait. A door slammed shut, and Obrett felt sure that they had been left alone. “Well so much for the friendly welcome.” He joked, trying to reduce the apparent gravity of their situation. “Can you reach any of your stones?”

  He heard some fidgeting as Brendan tried to loosen his bonds. After a short struggle came the defeated answer. “No I cannot, they are deep within my pockets.”

  Forgetting the use of his focus stone, Obrett tried to extend his perceptions by using the senses that he still had available to him. He tried to smell the air, though the sack defeated most of his efforts. He tried listening, sorting out the sounds in the room fro
m one another. He could hear the struggled breathing of Brendan as he tried and failed to break free of his bonds, but that was not all. Somebody in front of them was trying his best to mask his breathing behind hands. “We are not alone.” Obrett stated.

  “Truly.” Answered Brendan with a hint of sarcasm that expressed his anger at being tied up. “Excuse me, whomever you are, could you possibly scratch my nose? This sack is itching.”

  “How did you get here?” whispered a quiet voice, so quiet in fact that they almost missed the question.

  “We used rock from outside of your tower for focussing.” Obrett answered without pause. “It brought us here, wherever here is.”

  “How did you know to do such a thing?” the voice continued.

  “My friend with the itch is of the Order of Earth. I am of the Order of Law. It is part of our training to know such things.”

  “Wizards?” Scoffed a different voice. “All wizards know what to do is prolong their miserable existences by using their skills to lift pencils.”

  “Alas that it is so,” Obrett agreed. “Whomever you are, your judgement is unjust. There are those of us that have looked beyond the predefined borders set for us by our peers.”

  “The Law Guild has ever been a hostel for politicians and eloquent speakers.” The voice denounced.

  “And thus shall it perish,” Obrett replied with a note of finality in his voice, as well as a hint of anger and a tinge of regret. “The entire guild from the lake city of Eskenberg has defected to the ranks of Garias Gibden.”

  Several intakes of breath were heard. “The entire guild?” Said the voice that had been demeaning the Order of Law.

  “With the exception of myself, and three of my students.” Obrett replied, hoping his honesty was getting them somewhere. “I personally witnessed the head of my order sneering down at me from outside of the cell I had been held in. I feel that there are other orders rallying to his cause too.”