“We thank you for the reminder,” Quiet Surata said, still smiling. “We will obey the rules you have set forth before us.”
“We’ve got the right to a description,” Krom the Hunter cut in, as he pointed to what was hidden behind a large tarp. “What’s this trap about?”
The referee raised her hand as a signal, and three giants pulled back the cover to reveal what lay beneath. Instantly, the crowd started booing. Ahiram’s companions chuckled. They had expected a dangerous and deadly trap and instead, they saw a square courtyard with six white stones, cut into cubes of about six feet. Four occupied the courtyard’s corners, and the remaining two faced each other in the center.
“So what do we do?” asked Krom, looking at Quiet Surata.
“Look,” she whispered, “Over there.”
Transfixed, Sweet Gondolaz looked at a line of black stones on the opposite side of the trap. “The finish line,” she said. “We’re almost there.”
Ahiram eyed the referee standing close by. “So what are we supposed to do here?”
“The lizards must have had pity on you to give you such a simple test. You have to cross the courtyard without touching these cubes.”
“That’s it? We reach the finish line by stepping inside that courtyard and crossing it without touching any of these six white slabs? We do this and we’re done?”
“Yes,” replied one of the referees. “You do this and you will reach the end of the race.” Her smile vanished when she saw Ahiram’s sword somehow leap out of its sheath and landing into the Silent’s open hand. The two referees retreated prudently.
His companions were also amazed to see Ahiram take a few steps forward only to be violently thrown back by an invisible barrier. He tried once more and was disdainfully rebuffed by the same mysterious force.
“What is going on, boss?” Mango asked. “What is going on?”
“This trap is not what it seems,” the Silent replied.
“As I suspected,” Slippery Slued sighed. He frowned, focusing his gaze on the slabs. He suddenly gasped.
“Slued, what’s going on?” Surata asked. “You’re all pale, what is it?”
“It’s m … m …”
“You’re stuttering again. Magic?” Quiet Surata asked.
Slippery Slued nodded. “Seen it before. It’s a koon.”
“A what?” Ahiram was intrigued.
“What’s a koon?” Sweet Gondolaz asked.
“Square of being,” Krom the Hunter replied. “That’s really bad. Really, really bad.”
Ahiram adjusted his leather bag. Something in it was digging into his lower back, and he thought it might be the wings.
Slippery Slued took a deep breath before continuing, “It’s foul magic, where you create a sequence of interlocking curses. Step on any one of them and they all activate.”
“How can you step on a curse?” Ahiram asked.
“I don’t know. All I know is that curses can apply to a specific location.”
“Why use many curses when you can do the same thing with just one?” Sweet Gondolaz wondered.
Krom shrugged his shoulders, “I’m no magician, but we’re a team of eight, right? So you could have a different curse for each of us, or different curses in case we have defensive, magical tools, that sort of thing. One curse can act only in one way. So that’s why a koon is stronger and harder to diffuse.”
“I see,” Ahiram said. There may not even be an exit. This could be a one-way trap. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is trying to hold me prisoner inside the Spell World, someone who doesn’t care about the outcome of the Race. He kept this thought to himself.
“Normally, there’s a safe path in there,” Krom added. “I mean, you’ve got to physically go in there to set up the koon, so you need a safe way to exit. If we know what that path is, we might have a chance to cross.”
“So,” Quiet Surata summarized, “The koon, this set of blocks, is like an invisible, deadly weapon. If you trigger this weapon, it fires everywhere except on the path where you’re safe?”
“Yeah,” Krom said. “It’s a nasty piece of magic.”
“And these guys want us to go through this?” a dejected Mango said.
“They might just as well kill us,” Sweet Gondolaz added.
“Who can create something like this?” Ahiram asked.
“I thought that the only one who knew how to put a koon in place was Baal,” Slippery Slued replied.
Those words confirmed Ahiram’s suspicions. “Slued, how can I find out where the path is?”
“I don’t know …”
Ahiram jerked his back once more. The physical discomfort was turning into a burning sensation and quickly becoming unbearable. What now? thought Ahiram as he removed his bag and opened it. He peered inside and managed to suppress a gasp: The Seriathörist Candelabrum’s candle sockets had become luminescent. Carefully, Ahiram reached in and grabbed the candelabrum by its shaft. It was cool to the touch. He pulled it out and examined the object closely. The three candle branches rotated a third of a clockwise turn. Three beams of bright light shot from the candle sockets and hit a common spot above the object. A dark sphere materialized between the three conjoined beams, and the emaciated face of a man appeared on its surface.
“Seer of Chaos,” the man said in a low growl. “Death and destruction are your path. You have seen the greed for water in the desert, stronger than the greed for gold, and the madness of Metranos. You are now fighting for your life in this Wretched Race, and all of it, all of this, is nothing compared to the madness and insanity you will bring upon us all with your Letters of Power.”
“Who are you?” Ahiram said defiantly.
“I am Sharr, High Priest of Babylon, and I am speaking to you as a father to a son.” Sharr opened his arms in a comforting gesture. “Come to me, come to the Temple of Baal, and we will help you. We will teach you the truth about these letters. We will give you all the power your heart craves, and you will become a great sorcerer, followed and revered in the Temple, just like Sureï was before you. Come to us and become a true son of Baal.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I would like you to consider our offer. There is still time. But you should know this: you are not the first Seer. There have been two others before you. They came to their senses and submitted to the authority of the Temple. Think it through, Seer of Chaos. Choose wisely.”
The candelabrum shook and rotated once more. Ahiram gasped when he found himself standing on top of a high peak next to a tall man with a flowing gray beard and a pony tail.
“What happened? How did I get here? Who are you?”
“We’ve got little time. I can’t undo Sharr’s trap but I’ve altered it. There’s now a path you can follow through this maze to get you to the other side. It’s not straightforward but it’s there. You’re holding the candelabrum the wrong way. To cross the koon, hold it upside down.”
“But who are you?”
“No time to waste,” the old man grumbled. “I’m risking skin and limb to reach you this way. Sharr must be very cross now that I have messed with his trap. You and I will have time to chat when you get to Salem.”
Another tremor seized the candelabrum and shook Ahiram’s hand. The three branches of the strange object went through another quick rotation, and he saw the backs of two young girls standing on the ridge of an impossibly tall wall surrounded by snow-covered peaks. One of them looked familiar. It’s the girl from Metranos, Ahiram thought. The second girl turned slightly, and Ahiram saw her profile. Who is she?
She smiled playfully, jumped high over the wall, opened her arms and performed a graceful spin. As she turned to face him, her long hair hid most of her features. Ahiram gasped when he saw her wave at him. She saw me. “Wait,” he called out, “who are you?” The young girl fell back in the void and vanished from view. Ahiram forgot where he was and tried to step forward. Someone yanked him back. He lost his balance and fell on the ground.
&
nbsp; “Are you mad?” Quiet Surata yelled, “You were going to step in there.”
Ahiram sat up and rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry,” he said.
“What happened to you?” Sweet Gondolaz asked.
“We called you,” Krom said, “but you didn’t hear us.”
“Really? How long was I out of it for?” he asked. I hope it’s not like Metranos and a week has gone by.
“A short moment only, but you couldn’t hear us,” Sweet Gondolaz said, visibly worried. “What are you holding? What happened?”
Ahiram smiled. “I think I found a way to get us out of this trap.”
“We better hurry,” Slippery Slued grumbled as he scanned the crowd. “Rules or no rules, if we don’t get moving, this mob will kill us.”
I’ll have to deal with the Temple later, Ahiram thought. No matter what, I will never submit to their tyranny. Come what may, I’ve chosen the side I’m on, and it’s not theirs. Resolutely, he flipped the candelabrum upside down and brought it to the edge of the trap.
He stepped forward and the rim of the candle sockets turned to a hot red. Strange, Ahiram thought, it works like my sword, but my sword isn’t shaking. Maybe they’re meant for different purposes. He moved the candelabrum quickly to the right, and the color switched abruptly to a deep blue. He brought it leftward and the color began to fade. He stopped when the sockets returned to normal. So red and blue colors must be danger zones but between them, there’s a path. It’s safe to move when the colors vanish. Let’s try this.
He took a step in the direction the candelabrum was pointing at and faced no resistance. As soon as he stood in his new location, the candle holder returned to a deep blue. He moved the candelabrum slowly from left to right until he found a safe spot and took another step. Once more, there was no resistance. “Alright, I think I can get us through this. Now, walk in my footsteps, and do not deviate even by an inch.”
To the spectators, what followed appeared like a strange slow dance where the eight racers would move and freeze alternatively, following an invisible path. They saw Ahiram wave a strange object back and forth, but no one could see the change in color, and since nobody understood what the trap was, they thought the racers were simply mocking them, taking their sweet time to reach the final line to increase the partisans and gamblers’ sense of loss. Unable to hold much longer, one archer fired an arrow into the trap. Instantly, the crowd erupted into angry screams and a hail of weapons fell upon the racers from all sides. Swords, spears, javelins, battle axes, daggers, arrows, maces, and chains came crashing down on the racers.
The weapons did not reach the team. To prevent the participants from crossing over or under the koon, Sharr’s servants had extended the curses high over ground and deep below. The weapons fell on the curses and ended up in the Arayat as a melted pile of oozing metal.
“Kill them, kill them all,” a man yelled as he jumped on the track.
“Wait, you fool,” another shouted. “That’s high magic!”
But it was too late. The partisans’ anger had reached its apex. They could no longer take it anymore. If the racers crossed the finish line, they would be sold as slaves, something most of them could simply not accept. Screaming with rage, they invaded the tracks and rushed to the trap.
That day, the Shogols who were tending a field of spells felt a great disturbance in the Spell World. It took them several days to locate its source, and by the time the spell herders found the mob that had attacked the trap, nearly two thousand souls had been turned into mindless automatons by Sharr’s curses. The Shogols simply assumed them to be condemned criminals and hooked them to their field of spells.
Ahiram and his companions were oblivious of what took place. Ironically, Sharr’s trap had saved them from the wrath of the crowd. They were now standing a few feet away from the two cubes that occupied the center of the square. Ahiram brought the candelabrum to his left and the rim of the candle sockets turned red; he moved it in the opposite direction and the color shifted to a deep blue. He performed a second scan but could not find the next safe step to take. Now what? These two cubes here are blocking the way. What do I do when I can’t even see where I’m going …
That last thought struck Ahiram. He looked at the candelabrum. Hum … when I held it the other way, I was able to see people who are not here. Maybe I can talk to that old man again and get him to help me?
He considered dropping the golden tile with the Letter of Power on the candelabrum. What if it accelerates things, or what if it causes the candelabrum to … I don’t know, throw fire or something? I can’t risk it here.
Unable to think of anything else, Ahiram flipped the candelabrum back up. The branches turned counter-clockwise, back to the position they had occupied when he saw the old man, and he gasped. The landscape around him had suddenly changed. He was standing in a dell, between rolling hills that oozed a thick green liquid with a soft glow. I’ve seen this before, thought Ahiram. This must be the Spell World. The hollow was filled with semi-transparent shrubs in which water flowed through a complex system of veins. A cross between cacti and pine trees, these shrubs had colored leaves ranging from intense red to bleached-blue. Three feet tall, their tops were odd-looking conical skulls. A harsh light seeped from their buds, shielding them from view. In the center of the hollow, blood collected inside a small pool where a thorn-infested, gray orchid stood. Glancing up, Ahiram saw, along the periphery of the dell, prisoners wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes standing rigidly like insects caught in a spider’s web. Translucent tubes tethered them to the Arayat, tubes through which blood flowed. Ahiram shivered. This must be a field of blood, and that flower in the center, a curse, but what are these shrubs around the curse? They don’t fit the description Sheheluth gave me. The water flowing inside the shrubs caught his attention and he gasped. Those are spells! So many of them! They are protecting the curse. He was starting to understand the magical power of the Temple. He gazed at the prisoners whose blood was feeding the curse and saw behind them another circle of victims that were nourishing a different field of blood. He then noticed a throbbing root bridging the two fields. These two curses are side-by-side just like the two stones in the middle of the trap. So they must be interconnected. He knew he would have to ask Sheheluth to explain how it worked, but he set that thought aside and focused on finding a way out. An idea suddenly sprang to his mind. He grabbed the candelabrum with his right hand and unsheathed his sword. In the strange landscape, Noraldeen’s dark steel sparkled with a commanding white light. “Taw,” Ahiram said, and the handle flashed as the Letter of Power appeared within it. For the second time, Ahiram gasped. The blade, which was steel a moment ago, had turned to flowing water. The flow circled back on itself, following the shape of the blade, but it was water, pure, crystalline, moving with the force of life itself. No, it’s not water, he thought. It’s liquefied meyroon! Liquefied meyroon!
“What are you doing here?”
A young boy with straight black hair and blue eyes was staring at him. He could not have been older than twelve years, and was studiously watching Ahiram without any display of emotions. I’ve seen him before, Ahiram thought, but I don’t remember where.
The young boy took notice of the koon and understanding dawned in his eyes. “Cut that root over there,” he said. “Quickly now, you don’t have much time before they find you.” Suddenly, he vanished. Resolutely, Ahiram brought his blade down on the thick artery linking the two curses, and as it tore through it, the edges of the blade of meyroon burst into flames. The flames spread with the force of a storm, and fury stirred within him, longing to consume the entire Arayat.
“Ahiram, stop! Stop!” The voice was faint but vaguely familiar.
Who’s calling me? He watched with fascination the destruction of the curses on the mound.
“Stop! Stop now!”
Quiet Surata! He noticed then that his blade was still resting on the splayed vein. Abruptly, he removed it and leaned back. The cand
elabrum rotated again and he was back inside the trap on the racetrack.
“Thank goodness,” Quiet Surata said.
The two blocks were in ruin. Disoriented, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “What happened to the blocks?” He saw his companions cuffing their ears with their hands. “What’s going on?”
“You unsheathed your sword and brought it down right before you,” Slippery Slued explained, “and an awful screech filled the air, like a wounded gigantic beast. It was awful to hear. We thought we’d go deaf.”
“Sorry,” Ahiram said sheepishly.
“I heard nothin’,” Huska the Fat said.
Mango Karthal let out a dry chuckle. “Any progress? It’ll be real nice when we’re through with this.”
“Patience, Mango,” Sweet Gondolaz chided.
Ahiram smiled, flipped the candelabrum upside down again, and scanned the space before him. This time, he found not one but two safe zones. He closed his eyes to remember the view of the trap as seen inside the Spell World. Definitely left, he thought. That’s how we should proceed.
They began moving forward again. The crowd was getting restless and impatient. Ahiram led his teammates, one step at a time. He resisted the urge to move quickly, focusing on only the next footstep. Over the next three hours, they went around the trap four times, sometimes moving closer to the exit, sometimes moving away from it. At one point they stood a mere two feet from the finish line. Tired and on edge, it became harder to concentrate with the hundreds of drums that the crowd was now beating at a frenetic pace. Keeping a fixed stance and moving slowly was painfully difficult. Still, Ahiram refused to rush. He kept reminding them that they were walking in the middle of curses, and one misstep could mean death, or worse.
Finally, as the sun dipped into the west, Ahiram reached the edge of the trap. Carefully, he leaned forward and brought the candelabrum over the finish line. His hand vanished from view behind an invisible barrier. He pushed his head forward, broke through, and saw the arena, which was filled to the brim with spectators. He turned back to relate what he saw back to his companions.
The Wretched Race (Epic of Ahiram Book 3) Page 67