“You know I’m not so stupid, Lammy. Crazy, yes. Stupid, not so much.”
Lamrhath squinted before motioning a finger at one of his sorcerers, who grabbed Daghahen’s bundle off the floor and dropped it before him. He sifted through each item, folding the garments and placing them aside before lifting and arranging the other items in a circular pattern. He picked up a rough leather drawstring bag and placed the flask beside himself. He brought out the wooden button between two fingers, placed it in his robe pocket, and patted the pocket down.
He continued to unload items—a comb, a smoking pipe, a head of cabbage, a small flute, a woman’s hairpin—from storage bags and also arranged the bags into the pattern on the floor. Pausing to study the arrangement, he swapped two items and then two more. He took the cabbage and placed it in his robe’s large side pocket.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Get on with it!” Lamrhath yelled.
Daghahen shushed him. “I need to concentrate.”
“You’re buying time.”
“I’m not… I had a thimble. Where’s my thimble?”
The purple-robed sorcerer responded, “You don’t need a stupid thimble.”
“I do! Hand it over, or I can’t please the kingsorcerer.”
The purple robe grunted. “Our seamstresses need supplies.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the little bronze object, and slapped it into Daghahen’s open palm.
Leaning over the arrangement, he placed the thimble between the smoking pipe and a folded pair of elven sa-garhik. “There.”
He raised his hands from the last piece with palms flat. He lifted the flask and uncorked it before swirling it under his nose. Sniffing the wildcat urine zapped him with a new, much needed, alertness. “Mmm. Want some, gentlemen?”
The sorcerers lurched away from his pungent bottle.
“Suit yourselves.” He dumped the bottle’s contents in the center of his arranged items. It spread into a wide, shiny puddle of stink.
“What are you doing?” a man yelled, as they all buried their noses in their sleeves.
“I only have a few seconds,” Daghahen said, and plunged his arm into the liquid. His hand bypassed the stone floor through a portal that opened into an old box hidden deep in Goblin Country, overgrown with moss and hidden under a mess of twigs. Within the box, his fingers slid around a smooth, vibrating sphere. Wik’s sphere.
Before the brief portal could close and sever his arm, he grasped the thing and yanked it back out. On this side of the portal, he threw his other hand around the sphere as well. One couldn’t be too careful with this object.
Cradling the thing to his chest, he rose to his feet against a rage of trembling pain in his sore muscles.
Lamrhath stepped back farther and stared. It appeared Daghahen knew some elementary spells his dominant twin didn’t. Lamrhath had skipped a lot of them in his obsession to master the high-level ones. He’d never bothered to use his brain and consider how useful and economical the low-level spells could be.
A wide grin spread across Daghahen’s face. He lumbered closer to his brother, extending the object forward. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Didn’t you want to see Wik? I told you I had him.”
He opened his palms and let the orb rest atop them. A blackness swirled within the glass, and though it contained darkness, it emanated a soft purplish light.
“Come over here and touch it,” Daghahen continued. He stared in a near-hypnotic state. “He’s yours, big brother, take him.”
The sharp glare vanished from Lamrhath’s eyes and a new awe, similar to Daghahen’s, replaced it. He stepped forward, reaching with both hands. Lamrhath shuddered at the connection and grasped the sphere firmly to keep from dropping it.
“Touching it takes getting used to.”
“You didn’t lie,” he murmured. “This must be Wik.”
“Can you hear his voice yet?”
“No. But I don’t think he likes me.”
“Are you surprised? He doesn’t like me either. If you’re pleased, let’s discuss some mercy you could pay me, since I went to the trouble to bring you this treasure.”
Lamrhath’s eyes snapped from the mesmerizing object to Daghahen.
“Will you show me my Orinleah?”
Cradling the orb to his chest, Lamrhath opened the wardrobe and took out a spare red robe. “Not quite. Put this on,” he said, tossing it to Daghahen.
Chapter 22
A Plan for the Damned
Lamrhath led Daghahen, wearing the red robe over his normal tan robes, to a room with a big fireplace and a gaudy throne. Anxiety turning to nausea, he glanced around for any sign of what Lamrhath would show him. Certainly not Orinleah. Nonetheless, Daghahen kept his eyes peeled for any sign of her he could spot, perhaps under one of the red hoods standing around the place.
“Wait here. Your surprise is coming,” Lamrhath said, and he had no sooner finished the last word when the door slammed open with a boom of shouting men. A nimble figure slipped into the room before a pack of panting red robes.
“Dammit!” the newcomer snapped when he noticed what room he’d entered. He lurched to snatch a dagger out of one of the unsuspecting bystander’s sheaths and brandished it as the red robes closed in around him.
“Dorhen,” Daghahen whispered through a heavy breath. A sinking feeling hit Daghahen’s being with a layer of sweat to his upper lip. Oh, Creator, he’d found him. He’d hoped all along Dorhen wouldn’t be here. He’d gladly have given Wik’s sphere over to Lamrhath in exchange for Orinleah. But this… The stars’ counsel was becoming too real.
He stretched his neck to see over the crowd. No doubt about it. His son’s big eyes shone exactly like Orinleah’s, and his nose stuck out like Daghahen’s. His hair hadn’t shifted colors over the years; it showed the same rich brown from his childhood.
Dorhen was worse for wear at the moment, roughed up by the-Creator-knew-what they’d done to him. His open shirt revealed the pus-riddled, raw, and charred black scab of a brand the faction was searing onto its members these days. They’d instituted that tradition after Daghahen had left. A shame it now marred such an impressive specimen of Daghahen’s own offspring. Even worse, of Orinleah’s offspring! Daghahen ground his teeth, hating that he was being subjected to watch such treatment of his son.
“How long has he been here?” he asked Lamrhath.
“Not long, as you can see. He’s a bad, bad saeghar.”
“Saehgahn! Clearly, he is saehgahn, and you’d treat him as—”
“Shut up now, or we’ll do worse to him.”
One of the stronger men wrested the dagger away from Dorhen’s hand, and the group beat him down to the floor until he sprawled helplessly. The group stepped back as a sorcerer began whipping him with a flog.
“You can stop now,” Lamrhath ordered the flogger, and the room hushed.
Dorhen laid his head on the floor, gnashing his teeth, stifling his shouts of pain as Daghahen would’ve also done.
Lamrhath stood close, casting his shadow over Dorhen. “The doors are locked and warded. You can’t escape, so don’t try.”
For an instant, Dorhen’s eyes might’ve grazed over Daghahen, and he turned his face away to hide behind the red hood he wore.
“How did you escape, little saeghar?” Lamrhath asked Dorhen.
The lad groaned on the floor with glassy, squinting eyes.
“You shouldn’t have been able to escape—not from both the locked shackles and the cell door.”
One of the sorcerers who’d chased him in there cleared his throat. “He did something with magic, my lord.”
Lamrhath’s eyes brightened. “Is that so? When I asked you before if you knew magic, you denied it. Why would you lie to me?”
Dorhen raised his head to show wet, sincere eyes and shook his head as if unable to form any words yet.
“So, how did he escape?” Lamrhath asked the sorcerer.
“When we checked the cell, the shackles were…well�
��melted somehow.”
Lamrhath’s eyes narrowed to gleaming golden slivers. “Melted?”
The sorcerer bowed his head. “He ruined the cell door too.”
“And yet you don’t know magic?”
“No!” Dorhen cried.
“How many things have you melted before?” Lamrhath asked.
“None. I can’t do magic. I didn’t do it!”
“Oh, I think you did. I’ll go see what they’re talking about later, but I think you know something, or at least you know it subconsciously. And if it’s what I think it is, it’s very valuable, and I’m overjoyed to have you as my little heir. I’ll help you make sense of whatever powers you’re hiding as we go along. For the moment, I have a present for you.”
Lamrhath held his hand out, but Dorhen didn’t take it. With a scowl, he bunched Dorhen’s hair in his fist and pulled to make him stand. Turning to Daghahen, Lamrhath waved him over.
Dear Creator, no. I can’t let Dorhen see me here. Nonetheless, his feet moved because fear powered them forward inch by inch. Dorhen swayed and gawked until Daghahen ventured close enough to catch his eye.
“We have a special visitor tonight, Dorhen,” Lamrhath said. “Do you recognize him?” He yanked Daghahen’s hood off, making him feel as good as naked.
Dorhen’s eyes fixed on him. He stuttered and blinked. There was nothing Daghahen could say to the lad, nothing he could do for him.
“F-f-father?” Dorhen said. He swallowed thickly and opened his mouth again.
Daghahen couldn’t manage to dart his eyes away. Dorhen drew them in.
The lad’s mouth worked, twitching and fighting against an uncontrollable quiver. “Father, where have you…?”
Daghahen shook his head, keeping his face as calm as possible.
A sob burst out of Dorhen’s throat, and he fought it. “Father, please—” Tears ran down his cheeks. “Father, take me out of here! Help me!”
Daghahen shook his head more vigorously.
“Please!”
He took a step backward; Dorhen could’ve followed, but he remained planted.
“Please get me out of here!”
Daghahen shook his head again and tore his eyes away. He turned and retreated. A commotion erupted behind him. Apparently, the sorcerers were restraining Dorhen; maybe he had tried to pursue after all. Daghahen pulled his hood up and attempted to blend in with the other red robes.
“A heartwarming spectacle,” Lamrhath said, taking the floor again. “But let’s move on. A glorious thing has come into my possession, thanks to my brother, who perhaps does love me after all.”
Lamrhath reached into a puffy velvet bag and brought out the holding sphere with Wik inside. He held it high. “Look what he’s brought us.”
The sorcerers’ eyes flared wide, and some pulled their hoods down, revealing greasy heads and gawking, bearded faces.
“It’s Wik,” Lamrhath continued. “Do you know what happens when a pixie gets trapped in a holding sphere?” He paced around, flashing the swirling, humming object before the sorcerers’ starving eyes. “They become usable. For many years, we’ve tried to contact Wik, one of our five gods of power, and found no response. That’s because the whole time, Wik was trapped. In this.”
The sorcerers stepped backward, creating a near-perfect circle within which Lamrhath could pace around.
“Have any of you ever seen anything like this in your lives?” Lamrhath asked. “Take a good look and watch carefully. What I hold in my hand is the fate of two societies, and the fate of Kaihals too.”
Lamrhath stared into its black depths as dreamily as the awe-inspired crowd. “One could go mad trying to decide what to do with such an item of majesty. Since it is so alluring, one could look at it all day—or a lifetime. To think how the world won’t be the same once I’ve broken this open. It’ll change, yet return to the existence it knew ages ago.”
He walked the orb around the circle once again, holding it out as if offering it to others as they stepped backward with defensive palms pointed at him.
Dorhen sat on his knees at the circle’s edge. He’d been released, and now his hands held him up, trembling at the elbows. His blood-dampened hair curtained his face, hiding it from Daghahen’s longing eyes.
Lamrhath stood at the center of the circle, giving himself plenty of space. “My era will unite the two most powerful societies in the Darklands!”
Lamrhath dropped the sphere before his own feet. It didn’t hit the ground. Daghahen lunged forward, ignoring his pains, and pushed his brother aside to catch the orb.
“I think not!” He rolled it up his arm and behind his head to the other hand like he had done with crystal balls when he had entertained for food and shelter in his youth.
“Give it back!” Lamrhath roared. “Get that from him!”
Daghahen danced around, slipping past men coming from each side. He whipped off his outer red robe and flung it at a group of pursuers. Though he had shed one robe, his old tan robe’s many dangling layers and folds prevented him from running around in such a packed room.
Several men managed to grab him at once, trapping him. He continued his old contact juggling tricks, confusing the men as the sphere changed hands and rolled away from them along his arms as if it had a mind of its own. Though their hands were in such close proximity to it, they grabbed for it shyly. If mishandled, it could fall on the floor, and whoever it shattered closest to would get the power. All meant to deliver it to Lamrhath. But how interesting would it be to see if any man present would betray the kingsorcerer and drop it on himself? It was almost worth finding out.
They all gasped and released Daghahen’s robes to throw their hands in the air when he tossed the sphere high. He let them scramble for it, using the opportunity to slip away. Sighs of relief hissed out when it managed to fall into a pillow of many hands.
When one young sorcerer broke from the group, running toward Lamrhath, Daghahen shot forward and kicked his hand, bouncing the ball back into the air. The men shouted and moaned.
“You’re dead!” Lamrhath screamed, and several similar threats echoed from other mouths. No one seized Daghahen, though, because they were all too interested in saving the sphere from shattering prematurely. Daghahen chuckled and stood by to watch their frenzy.
Dorhen remained on the floor, watching with interest, though defeated. If this were any other day, Daghahen would be tempted to use the distraction to run out of there together with his son. Getting outside the manor’s walls with another person would be a struggle, but Daghahen could possibly do it, though getting out alone would be easier. Similar to the way Chandran and Rayna had warded the doors and windows of the inn with deadly spells, this manor was guarded with the keenest traps and wards the sorcerers could produce. Daghahen would need lots of time and energy to undo the wards. It would take careful planning and execution to escape any Ilbith outpost; he should know.
But he hadn’t come here to save Dorhen. Daghahen planned to find Orinleah and kill Lamrhath, or at least set the gears in motion for that eventual outcome. Dorhen’s will was already cracking under the layers of elaborate pressure the faction put on new recruits, so time was sensitive. This was why Wik had told him to watch the stars and hurry along. Wik knew things, as if pixies and the stars of the universe shared some unfathomable insight. The stars had been trying to tell him all along, each night tightening the formations of the constellations, shouting the answers over the top of Daghahen’s head in his unwillingness to look upward.
This would end tonight.
Three men grasped the orb at once in all of their six hands and carried it to the kingsorcerer together. “My lord!” they said in unison and knelt, offering it to him. He lifted the orb off their hands, smirking, no doubt planning a slow murder for Daghahen after using it on himself.
“I don’t know why you’d be so stupid, Dag,” Lamrhath said.
He dropped the sphere.
It shattered in front of his feet, sending sha
rds scattering. A loud sound popped with a billow of black smoke, and a zip of negative energy flashed across Lamrhath, Daghahen, and every other body in the room. Lamrhath stood with his palms open at his sides, sucking in long drags of air as the smoke billowed and dissipated around him.
They all waited. His chest rose and fell for several long moments. Daghahen crossed his arms and shifted to one foot on the leg which hadn’t been clobbered by an iron poker. Lamrhath opened his eyes and glared at him.
“Well?” Daghahen said. “How does it feel, my good deity?”
Lamrhath observed his own hands and frowned. “Nothing. There’s no new sensation.”
Daghahen fished through his robe pocket and pulled out the cabbage he had been saving. It had been his food supply before he changed course toward this house.
“Because I’m not the one stupid enough to give you the holding sphere.”
He pulled off the strand of twine which helped to keep the cabbage’s leaves together, and then peeled the leaves away to reveal the actual holding sphere containing Wik.
“You stupid, gullible filth-mongers!” he hissed. Many mouths dropped open, including Lamrhath’s. “You’re so hungry to collect trinkets and stack implements of power, you’ve lost the ability to tell a piece of glass with an amateur’s smoke and negativity illusion from a sphere containing an actual pixie.”
Daghahen flashed it around like Lamrhath had done with the fake. “I’m not playing anymore!”
“Daghahen,” Lamrhath said, “give it to me.” His expression had lost the knife-edge it usually showed. “Give it to me, Brother.”
“Are you really the one rightly chosen to be a god?”
Sorcerers were inching closer as he spoke, showing off the sphere, far more magnificent with the glittering, liquid-like black smoke within. It put off a dark glow, as the being inside was a force of that element, making darkness a tangible thing, and not merely defined by an absence of light.
“We could decide better, gentleman. Now tell me: who wants to be a god?” He jumped forward, and even managed to spook the nearby sorcerers who were tempted to tackle him. He screamed it again. “Who wants to be a god?”
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