by Greg Curtis
Things unexpectedly became more confusing as a sprite approached them. A man with a strange smile on his face as he dragged a huge pickaxe behind him. A man dressed in rags.
“What are you doing just standing around?” he asked. “No time to waste. There's good magic here to dig.” And with that he walked on by, still dragging the pickaxe behind him, not even waiting for an answer.
Fylarne watched him leave and then turned to stare at the others. And they in turn stared back, none of them knowing what to say. The little man was insane. But it seemed that he was far from alone, because as they stood there, more of the miners crossed the dirt in front of them and many of them asked the same questions.
“I know where we are!” Dah announced finally her voice filled with wonder. “This is N'Diel!”
“No! It can't be!” Fylarne instantly denied her claim. “This is nothing at all like what they claim. “N'Diel is a woodland paradise full of meadows and unicorns and flowers. The sun always shines. The rain is gentle. And magic fills the air along with the scent of wild flowers. It is a paradise!” At least that was what every sprite he had ever met had said of their homeland. But he had to admit that there were a lot of sprites among the miners. And all sprites were muck spouts.
“And I suspect that that's exactly what these people would say – as they dig!” she replied. “They're under some sort of spell.”
“Truly!” Allide added. “These people are happy. They're dressed in rags, working themselves to the point of exhaustion, physically in pain, and happy. They believe that this is some sort of paradise. I can feel it so clearly. The joy as they work. But what sort of magic could affect so many and distort their minds so greatly?”
“And what are they digging?” Trey asked. And then he bent down and picked up a small piece of rock from beside his feet. “What is this stuff? It looks burnt.” He showed them the piece of blackened rock and then passed it around.
“It's lava,” Dah answered him. “Spat out of a great volcano and then cooled into this lump of jagged, black rock. Why would anyone dig lava?” She passed it on. “It's not of any worth.”
Then the piece of rock was handed to Fylarne and he was staggered the moment it touched his skin. Overcome by the might within it. But even as he felt weak and nearly collapsed to the ground, he knew it. Even if it took him a moment or two to catch his thoughts and tell the others.
“It's not lava,” he finally told them as he held the piece of rock. “Or not typical lava. This is the Heartfire. A tiny, faint bit of it. Released from the ground, bursting through it, cooking the rock where it travelled through it, turning it into molten orange lava. And then, it would seem, launched into the sky in some sort of eruption, to cool, with just a trace of the Heartfire left in it.”
He could feel that. It was so clear to him. But he still couldn't understand why anyone would dig it up. It was no use to anyone. To take the Heartfire and use it you needed a throne. Otherwise what you had was nothing more than chaos. And few could absorb anything from the Heartfire in its primal state. Only guardians. To the others this was only a rock. To him it was joy.
“And you know this because you are a guardian?” Allide asked gently.
“I was,” he admitted, somehow not caring that he was trying to hide that painful truth. With a tiny piece of the Heartfire in his hand it didn't seem to matter so much. But they'd surely guessed that much anyway.
“And the sprites abducted your family? Used them against you?” the dryad continued.
“Yes.” He didn't want to say it, but the word slipped out. It was hard to think of anything beyond the wonder in his hand. But they had seen him bury his daughter's fingers. The dryad had surely felt his pain as he'd done so. They knew a lot already. So it probably didn't matter anyway.
“And all that has happened has something to do with you?”
“I think so.” He dropped his gaze to stare at the ground as he confessed his crime. “They came to me. They forced me to bring them books from the library, else they would cut off pieces of my family and bring them to me. My mother's hand. My daughter's fingers. Now buried.”
“And to capture the Temple?”
“I was supposed to lower the defences,” he admitted. “But I didn't. They came early. Before I had a chance to save my friends. But I had given them books. Knowledge. It must have told them how to do it for themselves. All of my friends are dead. My companions. Good, brave noble people.” And there was no excuse for that. He knew that. But what else could he have done? Sacrificed his family?
“And the rest? This breaking apart of the worlds?”
“I don't know.” Fylarne continued with his confession. Someone should know what he'd done. Maybe, even if it wouldn't help him it would help to fix things.
“I changed the writings in the books. I learned the language of those who came before. The true ancients. I learned to not just speak their tongue but to read it and write it. I learned to shift the ink on a page to change what was written. And I rewrote the books I gave them. Only little things. They thought to steal the magic of the Heartfire for themselves. To rebuild the thrones or create now ones so that they could return to their rightful place as the Nabris ne Yall – the rulers of the skies. They sought power. I rewrote the books so that the enchantments they used would not work as they wished. They would not steal the magic of the Heartfire. Instead the Heartfire would take back the magic that they possessed.”
“It would have destroyed them. Left them completely helpless. Freed the slaves. It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“But that could not have done what has happened.” He finally looked up to stare at them. “I don't know what went wrong. And I don't know what this is.”
“There is a story passed around my people.” Dah took over. “A story from the days when the sprites were at war with us. Taken from those we captured and interrogated. So really it is a story from the sprites themselves. A strange tale to be certain.”
“Long ago they were a people who walked as they do now. But a people who dreamed of flying. And they were a people of little magic. Some could command the weather. Others could enchant. But as is usual, what they could enchant was only what they could cast. They were a weak people who would never rule the skies as they wished to.”
“Then they met someone. A god or a demon. They did not know. And he promised them their wishes would come true. If they worshipped him. So they made that deal.”
“He gave them their wings. Huge wings of gossamer and light that could lift them off the ground and let them soar. And he gave them vast magic, but magic that they had to bind into their flesh. And for a time all was well. But only for a time.”
“As the centuries passed they lost much of their power. Their wings shrank. As a people they became smaller. And the magic they commanded weakened. They were returning to how they had been before, or even smaller and weaker.”
“Ever since then they have sought nothing but to regain their magic. To take to the skies once more.”
The sylph paused then to let them absorb what she'd told them. Or maybe just to stare at the mining camp where the workers continued their madness.
“And?” Trey asked as the silence stretched for too long. “What does that have to do with this?” He gestured at the camp and its workers. “Or him?” He pointed at Fylarne.
“This is about that. About regaining their magic. This rock is the Heartfire. It is clearly from another long dead volcano. Like the Temple itself. And they dig it up and use it to reclaim the magic they believe is theirs. And clearly they will mine it using anyone they can bend to their will. Even their own people.”
“But with the other, they sought to capture the Temple. To steal its magic for themselves. And they got it wrong. Thanks to Fylarne here, instead of stealing the magic of the Heartfire, the Heartfire stole what little magic they had left. But I have to ask, what happens when you steal magic from those who do not have any? Especially when that magic is in the for
m of an enchantment?”
No one answered her. Fylarne didn't try, because he simply didn't know. But he knew she was right to ask. Because maybe it explained what had gone wrong. Somehow.
Still the story didn't make sense to him. At least in one respect. How could anyone, god or demon, give a people wings? Not a person but an entire people? Down through the generations? He knew of no magic that could do that. There were plenty of tales of people who'd made deals with the denizens of the various underworlds. The bards and the scribes loved crafting them. All of them of course ended badly. But he'd never heard of any story in which a people had been given wings. It simply wasn't possible.
But then again, their wings were gossamer. He had always wondered about that. A lot of people had. They were like the wings of insects. And people weren't insects. So how did people have insect wings? You would think that if people grew wings they would be flesh and blood like the rest of their bodies. Bird wings or bat wings.
“All stories are muck spouting nonsense,” he finally told the others. “None of the legends are ever true, and the prophecies are lies and romantic hogwash!”
“So what do we do now?” Gris asked, changing the subject. It probably wasn't something to his taste. The wood elf was a hunter. A practical man. And tall tales weren't practical.
“We do as anyone of Si would. By chance we have arrived in the world of our enemy. Those who caused this disaster. The logical thing to do is to learn all we can of this place. Of these people. What is this magic that commands the workers? Why are sprites also bound by it? Where does the rock they mine go to? What do they know of the unfolding calamity? We must learn everything we can here before we travel on. We must be able to tell the people of Stonely everything that we can.
“I don't want to go to Stonely,” Trey complained. “I want to go home!”
“And Stonely clearly is your path home,” the sylph reminded him. “Go there and they will likely have a portal that can send you somewhere close to Longfield. At least to Carnas.”
The same was true for the rest of them, Fylarne realised. Except of course for him. He had been home. Not to the Temple – though no one could go there. But at least to Hellas. Hellas wasn't his destination. His family was.
But for the moment there was something else on his mind. He had confessed. Revealed the truth of his failure. His crimes. And no one had said anything. No one had yelled at him. No one had accused him of anything. Blamed him for what had happened. No one had said anything at all. Even though what he had done had ruined their lives. Why was that?
He wanted to ask. But he also didn't want to know. He feared finding out. The thought of what they would say frightened him in a way nothing else could. So he held his tongue. And instead when Dah suggested a strategy – in essence picking up a shovel or a pickaxe and joining the miners and asking them questions as they worked – he did as she suggested. It was the smart thing to do. And she was right. They needed to learn all that they could.
Maybe then they could fix things. Maybe then he could start making things right. He had to do something.
Chapter Twenty Seven
If there was ever a place Chy didn't want to be, it was a swamp. Especially this one. It stank. The air was filled with rot and disease. And with the sounds of frogs. The damned things wouldn't stop croaking. Worse than that though were the slime covered trees and the snakes slithering through their branches. This place was alive, with danger.
But what was worse than all of that was the fact that this swamp was right in the heart of the town of Maybone, barely seven leagues from his front door. Actually it was right in the middle of one of the houses. He was standing on one side of the house, in what had been the main room, and seven hundred, maybe a thousand paces away from him across an expanse of foetid water and slime, he could see the other side of the same room.
This was another piece of another world that had somehow been inserted into Althern. It was like punching a nail into an apple. The apple was still all there, surrounding the nail, but pushed aside.
The sages, the smartest minds and the most advanced casters were working day and night on trying to find an explanation for what was happening. They had set up quarters in the Stonely town hall and did nothing but work on the problem. But none of them had found anything that could even begin to explain it let alone come up with a way to stop it.
But they were also working on a way to make their new portals endure as the worlds constantly shifted out of alignment. A strange one. A mixture of geometry and trigonometry. They simply made every portal connect with a dozen others at least and then connected all of them back up with the rest. That way if a world shifted out of alignment between two portals, the others would still connect up. And then all anyone had to do was recast the initial portal spell to match the new, changed angles.
They'd also found a few interesting clues as to what was happening. The first was that there was a pattern to these things.
It began with the fact that these insertions as they called them, hadn't come from inhabited worlds. Whether they were mountains of ice or foetid swamps or stone outcrops, they hadn't come from any of the worlds where people dwelt. And nor had any of those worlds lost pieces – yet. Althern as far as they knew, wasn't missing any pieces. It had just had hundreds of new pieces added to it. As had Thiessen and Lall and Stalen and all the others.
Why that was they couldn't say. Some thought it might be because the magic involved, or maybe even the Temple and the thrones, were working to minimise the destruction. To limit the deaths. Others thought it was simply that this magic was undoing worlds by size. Like dropping clumps of dirt into a stream. The smallest pieces of dirt dissolved first as the water flowed around them. And the smallest worlds simply weren't inhabited. And still others said it was all luck. They didn't know how many worlds were out there, but there could be vastly more that had no people than the maybe twenty or thirty that did. But it was only a matter of time.
Another thing they'd found was that these insertions didn't have any magic around them. No residue. You would think that if someone was taking pieces of worlds and simply nailing them into other worlds, it would require immense magic. There would be residues. But there was nothing. Of course they didn't have a theory for that.
But then that fitted well with the last piece of the puzzle they'd uncovered. Nailing a piece of one world into another, tearing apart the fabric of that second world to make it fit, should have caused a titanic upheaval. There should have been thunder in the ground on a scale never before experienced. Earthquakes. Rings of volcanoes should have formed and erupted. The sky should have turned black with ash, and fire should have filled the land. There should have been complete devastation. None of that had happened. Again they had no explanation for that. No theories.
The theories though, didn't matter. Whatever the reason and the means by which pieces of other worlds were arriving in Althern was, it was far less important than the dangers they brought. And this one unlike the ice mountain had brought a lot of trouble to his region.
The frogs were both annoying and poisonous. Touching them was a mistake as your skin would burn. Some people he understood, had even tried licking them. Witlings! That had been a mistake. The snakes were slithering everywhere, biting people – and of course they too were poisonous. More than a score of the twenty thousand or so people who called Maybone home had perished from snake bites. There were of course small eruptions of lava, and fumaroles blasting foul smelling steam into the air completely surrounding the new swamp in the centre of town. Fires had started and many people had been overcome by the fumes. But worst of all, there was something big and scary right in the heart of the swamp. Something with very long, sticky tentacles that grabbed people.
Chy wasn't looking forwards to dealing with it. But he was the only caster around, and when word had reached him of this latest disaster it had fallen to him to deal with it.
But how?
Cold was his first choic
e. He had no idea what was in the heart of the swamp, but he knew that snakes and frogs didn't like the cold. They became lethargic. So it seemed like a good place to start.
He started by draining all the heat he could from the swamp, though of course it was a slow process. But over the next twenty or thirty minutes he could feel the chill settling over the water. He could see it too. The water vapour in the air above it began settling into fog and then slowly settling like dew. But the truest sign that it was working was the sound. Little by little the chorus of frogs began growing more quiet.
That encouraged him, and gave him the strength to keep going. Unfortunately he'd been standing there for too long.
“Whatchya doing?” A town guard came up to him. They were busy patrolling the surrounding town, killing snakes and spiders and toads and anything else they could find. And they didn't know who he was or why he was there. He hadn't introduced himself.