Back to the Vara

by John Kerry

  “The mountains. Yes. Baxter informed me of it. Have we discovered why they’re being taken there?”

  “We have a pretty good idea. Order men dressed in furs have been abducting people with academic or scientific backgrounds. We believe they’re being taken to the mountains so they can work on a portal that Lord VorMask is building there.”

  “A portal?”

  “We’re not sure how it’s been achieved, or even if it works, but you can trust that it will be thoroughly investigated.” The Grand Master paused. “May I sit?”

  The minister’s jaw clenched, but he nodded and perched himself on the corner of his desk.

  The Grand Master sat in a chair opposite Baxter. “The portal was not why I came to talk to you tonight. I have … bigger news.” He waited before going on.

  The gravitas was not lost on Baxter. He found himself leaning forward in his seat.

  The Prime Minister shifted on the edge of his desk. The Grand Master wanted to make sure he had their attention. This was going to be big. Something major. Baxter had never seen him act like this before. Perseopia was changing. Even in the capital, way out in the Khushk plains, he could see it. The lower yields of food, the fear in the traders eyes when they returned from the Fungi Forest. Was the Grand Master going to impart information that would explain what was happening to the realm?

  “An event has occurred since Hami left Aratta. And we’re trying to understand the significance of it.” The Grand Master edged forward in his seat, maintaining eye contact with the minister. “A visitor from the Mother World has entered Perseopia.”

  The minister said nothing. He got up, walked around his desk and sat down. “When?” he asked.

  “Almost four days ago.”

  “Why were we not told?”

  “We felt a fluctuation in the fabric of our realm, but we didn’t know what it was. We speculated that it was someone arriving, but we didn’t know who it was or where they came from.”

  “And you know now?”

  “Principal Hootan found her. A young girl with yellow hair, wandering the Fungi Forest alone.”

  The minister crossed his arms and waited for Aegis to go on.

  “Lord VorMask knew she was coming before she arrived.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he knows more than we do. And the implications are significant.”

  “Because of this girl?”

  “They’re the actions of a desperate creature. He believes she’ll bring his reign to an end. Perhaps even bring about his death. And he’s scared enough that he’s been constructing the black column, building a portal and amassing an army of crabman for the past thirty years in preparation for this event.”

  The minister remained quiet for a time, seemingly deep in thought.

  “Where is Hami taking the girl?” he said after a time.

  The Grand Master broke eye contact and stared into his hands. “He was bringing her here.” He took a deep breath. “But then he dropped off the network and I haven’t heard from him since.”

  –SIXTEEN–

  KARKADANN AND CART

  Sammy lay in the back of the cart next to Victa. She stared up at the narrow strip of purple sky in between the glowing undersides of the mushrooms. They’d been bumping along the pothole-ridden forest track for almost two days now and it had been near impossible to sleep. Calven had wanted to keep off the well-travelled paths as crabmen were known to use them, but they’d spent the first afternoon fighting their way through thick vegetation and creepers. They’d made such little progress that eventually Sammy had convinced Calven to divert back onto the path. She reasoned that Harsoot, Calven’s karkadann, could take on most crabmen they came across, and then she would pick off the stragglers with Victa’s lightning staff. She’d saved a fully-fledged magus from multiple crabmen at once, after all. She could handle it.

  Calven had murmured a few complaints but ultimately it had worked.

  Yet even the forest path was too slow. Sammy recalled the journey to the fire temple with the thirty Marzban as being a lot faster, and they’d been travelling through thick forest.

  They camped in the tents the first night, but not the second. They’d lost too much time already. From that point onwards, they ate and slept on the go. Sammy even convinced Calven to let her have a go riding Harsoot, so he could take a shift sleeping in the cart. It turned out that it wasn’t so hard to steer a karkadann. The animal pretty much led itself. All she had to do was sit on it and tug the reins every so often when it veered off the path. It was quite fun, actually. Like riding a giant, hairy horse … that had a six-foot horn and ate flesh instead of hay. Thankfully, Calven had uncoupled it from the cart when he’d taken it to feed. Sammy hadn’t had to watch it attack or eat the pig-dog it caught. But she’d heard it. The cold, murderous look in its eyes along with the blood dripping from its chin hair had chilled her enough that she wasn’t going to take her tenuous relationship with the animal for granted.

  Calven pulled the beast to a stop.

  Sammy sat up and twisted round in the cart, careful not to pull her stitches. “What’s the hold up?”

  Calven had his compass out and was consulting a map. “I think we’ve veered south,” he said. “Do you think you might’ve taken a right-hand fork while I was sleeping?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard enough to figure out what’s path and what’s a gap in the mushrooms. Isn’t there a better track we could’ve taken?”

  “There was, and if you’d paid attention to where you were going we’d be on it. That big hill we passed several stadia ago. That was supposed to be on our right.”

  “So what does that mean? Do we go back?”

  “No, we can carry on this way. It just means we’re going to be south of where we should be when we exit the forest. We’ll have to travel north up the Cataclysm several stadia.”

  “Are we going to make the fire temple before Hami?”

  “It depends how fast they’re going. We had a half day lead on them.”

  “They were going pretty fast.”

  “Were going pretty fast?”

  “You know what I mean. Victa made it sound pretty urgent, whatever it is they need me for.” Sammy smiled innocently. “Just trust me. They’ll be there.”

  Calven sighed audibly. “We’re getting close to the edge of the forest. I guess we’ll find out how fast they were soon enough.”

  –SEVENTEEN–

  CATCHING UP WITH THE PAST

  Hami ran to the edge of the Cataclysm where the bridge had been. Part of it remained, jutting out from the land like a huge diving board.

  He slowed.

  A black arm shot up at the far edge of the rocky protrusion, scrabbling for purchase. It was followed by a second and then a third arm.

  Ramaask hauled his head and chest above the ridge. Steam billowed from his body. His cloak had been incinerated and his armour had melted to his body, still glowing orange and red in places. He pulled his helmet off with his thin rear arm and threw it aside, exposing his bald, smouldering head.

  “You’ve made a grave mistake,” he said with a wheeze.

  “It is you who made the mistake,” Hami said, lowering his staff to point it directly at him, “when you attacked my partner.”

  Ramaask managed a strained chuckle. He pulled the rest of himself up and onto the end of the bridge. He remained on all fours, his broad chest rising and falling. “You can’t kill me,” he said.

  “I can’t,” Hami replied. “But the Cataclysm can.” And he lowered the staff further to point at the ground between them.

  “No!” Ramaask yelled.

  Lightning slammed into the rock, disintegrating the last of the bridge and sending Ramaask careening backwards.

  “You need me!” he screamed as he fell.

  Hami watched him fall and catch fire. He continued watching well after he’d disappeared.

  When he coul
d no longer stare into the light, he turned from the Cataclysm to see the last of the crabmen fleeing into the forest.

  Ramaask had finally gone.

  Hami re-joined the magi network. It was the first time he’d done so in days. He took a moment to communicate to the Grand Master, told him where he was and what had happened to Ramaask. Then he disconnected before the shouting started. His dressing down could wait for another day. He was dead on his feet. He wanted to collapse where he stood, to tuck himself into a ball and sleep.

  But he couldn’t rest yet.

  The earthquake hadn’t stopped. If anything, the tremors were building. He went to the edge of the Cataclysm but could see nothing in the harsh light. No pterodactyls, no slaves. Most of them would be dead.

  He would need to find a way over to the fire temple. Near impossible, now that the bridge had gone. The bridge had spanned a gap of several stadia, and even though the mountain widened towards the base, the distance was still too great to cross. Even if he could descend the side of the Cataclysm to the point where the distance was shortest, he’d never survive the temperature down there.

  Hami’s stomach was churning again. He let its contents force their way up and onto the ground. He wiped his mouth and kicked dirt onto the black, oil-like vomit.

  He was almost used to the sickness now. A routine. Puke, wipe mouth, bury the mess. He wasn’t sure where the seemingly endless contents of his stomach were coming from. He’d snacked intermittently since leaving the old capital, but he hadn’t eaten properly in days, he couldn’t keep anything substantial down, and had been running on pure adrenaline. He wasn’t sure how long a person could go without proper food, but it felt like he was close to finding out.

  The earthquake raged on. Vibrations came up through the ground, increasing in intensity. Hami moved away from the edge, spread his legs and braced himself with his staff as a crutch. The rumbling was building to a crescendo, to an almighty climax.

  The shockwave hit his chest, knocking him back a few paces, as it raced away across the plain behind him. He staggered, managing to remain standing as plumes of fire and lava flew into the sky.

  Then the mountain shifted. And it was falling, coming towards him.

  Hami ran. He cleared almost half a stadion before it hit the plain.

  The collision took the ground from under him and he landed hard.

  He rolled onto his back but remained where he lay, trying to suck air back into his lungs.

  When he was able to breathe again, he eased himself up and coerced his body back into a standing position.

  The mountain had sheared off its base and fallen forward, coming to rest up against the Cataclysm wall, where Hami had been standing moments before, where the bridge had been.

  He walked back towards it, approaching the edge and the Fifth Azaran Fire Temple, now significantly closer than it had been and leaning towards him at a shallow angle.

  It wasn’t far down to the mountaintop below, perhaps a single storey, and although the temple was on the far side of the mountaintop, it was still close enough that he could see lights on through the first floor windows.

  Sammy had broken the column just like Behnam said she would. But how? She couldn’t have known the Temple of Paths would be in there. Mehrak wouldn’t have known either. Could they have learned it from Esther’s sister? He’d interrogated her hard and she hadn’t let anything slip. What about Esther herself? She’d been a deserter. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that she’d given their secrets away too.

  He sensed a fluctuation. A burst of energy deep in the mountain. Was it Sammy leaving? He closed his eyes and reached out to her. He couldn’t feel her, but that didn’t mean she’d gone. There was a considerable amount of rock between them that could be blocking him.

  She couldn’t have left Perseopia. She’d crossed the seal, that part was obvious, but she wouldn’t know how to use the Temple of Paths. Not even the magi knew which portal pearl took you to the Mother World.

  Except Esther had known, apparently.

  Sammy had only met the woman briefly at the Mother World market. There wouldn’t have been time for Esther to fully describe how to find the portal pearl and escape the realm. No. He was jumping to conclusions. Sammy didn’t know how to return. She’d been in tears when he’d told her she was stuck here. She didn’t know anything and that meant she was still here. She had to be.

  The rumbling stopped.

  It took a moment for Hami to acclimatise to the quiet. An eerie stillness asserted itself, a deficit of movement and noise filling the gap that the battle and seismic activity had left.

  As Hami’s ears adjusted, he heard whispering. Hundreds of voices, hissing in earnest. He turned on the spot, but there was no one around. Had the whispering started before or after the earthquake had ended? He couldn’t tell. And where was it coming from?

  Then, faint hoof beats from the plain. Two Marzban on karkadann were emerging from the darkness. Narok and Eva. The relief at seeing them alive was overwhelming and it took all Hami’s resolve not to break down and cry in front of them. He smiled.

  Blood had soaked Narok’s turban. It was down the side of his face, neck, and in his beard, but he returned a weary smile. Eva was uninjured but looked dishevelled, an errant twirl of hair dangling out from under her turban. “What’s that noise?” she asked.

  Hami shook his head and shrugged.

  “The crabmen have fled into the forest,” Narok said. “Where’s Ramaask?”

  “At the bottom of the Cataclysm,” Hami answered.

  Eva’s eyes widened. “You defeated him?”

  Hami shrugged again. Could it really be over? He didn’t dare hope.

  He edged closer to the precipice.

  A black vapour had begun drifting up out of the Cataclysm on one side of the mountain. A thin line of smoke as if something was burning below. It became more substantial as it snaked up out of the light, a thick heavy smoke, almost liquid, an upside-down waterfall flowing up into the clouds. Globs of it were sluicing off the main column as it rose, dropping back into the crevasse or slopping onto the mountain. The magenta clouds were darkening where the liquid smoke reached cloud level. The whispering was getting louder.

  A separate tendril of the substance broke off the main column and arched over onto the mountaintop, pooling outside the fire temple, forming a growing black mass.

  Smaller wisps spiralled out towards Hami. He dodged as they continued past, disappearing into the darkness of the plain.

  “What is that?” Narok asked.

  Hami had no answer to give. This was all new, unprecedented.

  The column of smoke broke off from the Cataclysm at the bottom and continued up into the sky. As the last of it disappeared, the clouds flushed black, in a single ripple movement starting at the point of entry.

  The sky had gone. No swirling smog, no movement, just a dark, yawning void.

  Narok and Eva had gone pale in the light of the Cataclysm, now the only significant light source, bar the faint glow coming from the Fungi Forest way off across the plain. What must be going through their heads?

  Hami turned back to the Cataclysm, to the black mass of liquid smoke that had gathered outside the Fifth Azaran. It was coalescing, forming something in the middle. Tentacles of liquid slithered in and around each other, coiling over and under like enormous snakes. A mass was growing in the centre, solid yet liquid and gaseous at the same time. Hami couldn’t make out what it was, but it looked organic. It looked alive. He realised now that it was also the source of the whispering.

  The karkadann backed up. Hami moved away from the edge too, while keeping his eyes on the blob. He glanced over his shoulder to check on Narok and Eva.

  Both were wide eyed and trembling.

  Narok raised a finger, pointing past Hami.

  Hami sensed the movement late and spun around, lowering his staff.

  A Marzban guard staggered out of the
darkness. A lone survivor from the battlefield, but something wrong with him. It took a moment for Hami to figure out what that something was. Then he realised, and panic threatened to reduce him to a quivering heap. He couldn’t feel the man’s life force. An impossibility. A dead person didn’t just get up and walk off the battlefield.

  The Marzban’s skin had taken on a greyish aspect and his eyes stared motionlessly ahead as he walked. Hami recognised the man’s face but didn’t know him well enough to know his name. He reached out to touch him, to grab him by the arm and shake him, but he stayed his hand. The man’s arm was missing, severed below the shoulder. Most of the blood had clotted but some still oozed from the wound, soaking the clothes down the side of his body.

  The guard kept walking, approaching the Cataclysm. When he reached the edge, he stepped off.

  There was a crunch as he hit the mountaintop below. The sound of bones breaking.

  Hami moved back to the edge to take a look, his heart rising in his throat.

  The fall had done little to stop the man. He was still going, albeit slower, crawling one-armed and one-legged, dragging a freshly broken ankle behind him, the foot of which pointed out at an ugly angle.

  He was heading towards the roiling mass of liquid smoke.

  This was the thing Behnam had warned him of when he’d communicated across the network. The worst case scenario.

  Panic was making him impotent. He didn’t know what to do. Had no order to give Narok and Eva. They’d know the Marzban. He’d be a colleague, a friend maybe. He might even be a relative. Hami should tell them something, comfort them or lead them away. He’d put them through enough. He looked to them now, to try and reassure them, but they weren’t looking at him. They were staring out across the plain.

  Other bodies were emerging from the darkness, silhouetted by the light of the Fungi Forest. Hundreds of shadowy figures shuffling towards them.

  Crabmen.

  Hami tensed, but could tell the creatures weren’t as they had been in life. They were like the Marzban. Changed. Their eyes were as lifeless as ever, yet their grey bodies had darkened further to an almost black with red joints. They moved towards him in their stilted, jerky fashion, but it was slower, almost lethargic. There were darkened karkadann among them. A lava pterodactyl too, dragging itself across the plain on burnt wings. The crabmen outnumbered the Marzban and the other creatures interspersed between them but all walked together heading towards the Cataclysm. They shuffled in between Narok and Eva’s trembling karkadann, past Hami, stepping around him, yet at the same time strangely unaware of his existence, not making eye contact. They all walked up to the Cataclysm and each toppled over the edge to the mountaintop below.