Gifts of Vorallon: 02 - City of Thunder

by Thomas Cardin

  “Andrigar,” he whispered, “get back on your horse.”

  A cow lowed in sudden pain, a wet, gurgling bellow that ascended to a haunting shriek. Her back hunched and arched while the cattle nearby trotted away. Black spikes burst out of the blackening hide along her rising spine.

  She bellowed again as her jaws distended and split apart into a long, toothy snout. Rather than collapse in agony, the beast reared high and gave another screaming bellow as her eyes filled with a smoky, white light. Another cow cried out as she too began to twist and warp.

  “The world goes mad,” Andrigar murmured grabbing the horn of his saddle and thrusting a boot into his stirrup.

  The hunger was growl of need and hatred combined. It rose in pitch to a maddened howl as Marek strained his gift toward it. It cried for him from the depths of Blackdrake. Something terrible was waking and thrusting its arms out across Ousenar.

  “No, this rises from Blackdrake,” Marek said as he climbed up behind Andrigar. “It seeks us. It seeks everything. I hear its newly awakened howl.”

  The warhorse tossed his head, but broke into a gallop as more cattle began to cry and scream behind them.

  Chapter 5

  SPIRITS OF THE KETH

  Twenty-Seventh day of the Moon of the Thief

  -within the Keth forest

  Lorace blew out his lungful of mountain air and his ears popped. Startled and curious, he stretched out his senses to the forest air. It was indeed thicker, and pressed harder on everything it touched. Motes and spores filled the air, the breakdown from decaying leaves that enriched the loam of the forest floor. The breeze that eddied beneath the shade of the high canopy brought it to his nose as the rich odor of life.

  That step down from Kur K’Tahn’s tall shoulder left them within the same forest glade he had seen through the shimmering portal up on the mountain. They now stood near the roots of a great tree bordering the glade.

  A new feeling opened onto Lorace’s outstretched senses, a radiant sensation revealed by the cool green shade. The living spirits of the trees surrounded him like a warm mist permeating the air. Within that mist were stronger sparks of warmth emanating from Oen, Tornin, and the elves. The spirits of the trees were far more subtle. Holding sway over and above them all was the deep, steady warmth coming from the golden crowned grandfather tree.

  Adwa-Ki led her fellow elves between heavy surface roots that breached the thick carpet of fallen leaves to the great tree’s broad trunk. The warmth of the tree’s spirit reached out and enfolded the sparks of the elves. They embraced the tree with their outstretched arms, greeting an old friend.

  “The tree is glad to see you as well,” Lorace said while his eyes remained focused on this new sense of life.

  “I should not be surprised that you can feel him, Lorace,” Adwa-Ki said with a warm dulcet laugh that rang through the forest glade. “So much has your spirit grown already.”

  “I can feel them all around us,” Lorace mused as he turned with outstretched arms. “It is beautiful.”

  Dederon’s weakness from opening the portal, was clear to Lorace’s growing senses, but the elf stood tall and straight as before, showing no outward signs of weariness.

  The elves completed their respects to the grandfather tree and moved to stand before Lorace and his companions.

  “Esrenar will perform the next ritual of travel,” Adwa-Ki said with a tilt of her silver haired head toward the darkly attired elf. “We will perform three more such steps, each of us taking a turn before we take a rest and eat.”

  With the diffuse spirits of the forest around him, Lorace held up a hand to forestall Esrenar from beginning his ritual song.

  “What is it, Lorace?” Oen asked.

  “I will not delay us long,” Lorace said with a brief focusing of his gaze on the priest. “I just want to try something while I feel all this life around me, before any of it changes.”

  He reached out with his sight in conjunction with this new sense of life, but it showed only his companions and himself amidst the clearing with its many surrounding trees. He pushed on his sight further, not to move or expand it, but to try to see the spirits he could sense. He tried to squeeze more out of his sight, like straining to see something in total darkness. A slight glimmering throughout the clearing rewarded his attempts. When he focused his sight harder upon the indistinct glows, they disappeared altogether. He backed off, took a deep breath and released the excitement in his body, releasing himself to the cool pool of his tranquility.

  Throwing his growing strength at the task had failed. He focused on precision, delicate shifts and pushes of his sight.

  Finally, he found the right subtle push again and it was indeed a shifting, akin to feeling the rough surface of a ripe citrus fruit with your fingertips then pressing firmly, past the touch of roughness to feel the softness of the form beneath the surface. Around him glowed the bright spirits of his friends, and beyond them, the subtler auras of the surrounding forest were now visible.

  Lorace’s own spirit was a flow of golden sparks like brilliant motes caught in a bright beam of sunlight, identical to those that flowed on his chain when it consumed corruption. The motes sparkling from a butterfly’s wings in his wakening dream. Tornin’s spirit showed as a whirl of teal green and white, sweeping around his body and extremities in many merging vortexes. Oen’s was a soothing blue-white glow that covered him in constant illumination. Lorace smiled wide at how the elves spirits mirrored their distinct clothing styles, even to the innumerable red tendrils of Harna-Ki’s twining and weaving spirit. Adwa-Ki’s was a beautiful spray of white and silver that rose up around her like glittering splashes of crystal water.

  “Beautiful,” Lorace sighed, before he closed his eyes and relaxed his sight back to normal.

  When he opened his green eyes again, it was to see everyone looking back at him in patient stillness.

  “I can see the spirits now with my gift of sight,” Lorace said. “I can shift my sight to reveal all of our spirits, and they are lovely and unique to each of us.”

  “Shift?” Adwa-Ki asked with a lift of her delicate eyebrows. The full implication of her question was clear in her expressive eyes.

  “Possibly, yes, it may be a manifestation of Kvarrak’s gift, or simply a level of control with my sight which I had not reached for yet,” Lorace answered her true question as best he could. “It is something I must practice further to gain more ease with, but surely you already have a means of viewing your spirits, your elven styles of dress match them so perfectly.”

  “No, we have no seers of spirit among us, like Oen,” Harna-Ki answered. “We are, however, encouraged to spend as many years during our youth as we need to discover our own most comforting personal attire.”

  “If you can see how closely their dress matches their spirits, you have indeed matched my gift,” Oen said with a beaming grin of excitement. “You can see what I see!”

  “I saw the appearance of our spirits, but I could see no measurement of their purity or strength as your gift allows you, Oen,” Lorace said, eyes brimming with a sheen of moisture as he looked upon his friend.

  “What of the spirits of the trees, Lorace? What did you see of them?” Adwa-Ki asked, resting a hand upon his shoulder.

  Lorace smiled in recollection and paused to still his upwelling emotions and find the words to describe the vibrant life forces of the forest around them. “Their spirits are like clouds of luminous greens and browns, with some few, like the grandfather tree, a glowing golden color like afternoon sunlight. Our spirits are busy and energetic, while theirs are calm and sedate, happy to reach out and intermingle with one another. They dip into one another, like my parents would, embracing and kissing, and sharing their whispers of endearment.”

  Adwa-Ki and her three slender companions looked about at the forest while Lorace described what had always been unseen to their eyes. “You paint a beautiful image of the life we have so long felt with all our senses, thank you.”<
br />
  Lorace bowed low to the elves then nodded to Esrenar to begin the fluid song of the elven ritual of travel.

  Three more times they stepped through the shimmering portals and at each step the elves greeted and paid homage to a different great tree. At each location, Lorace shifted his awareness to view the living spirits of the forest around him making swift improvements in his control.

  The deep peace of the forest depths was intoxicating, but a concern for how the elves were pushing themselves drew Lorace’s focus. Their veiled exhaustion, once they had each completed their leg of the journey had not escaped his notice. They all shared a heavy strain.

  This last leg, which Adwa-Ki herself had sung, brought them to stand upon the edge of a shaded forest clearing. A fall of bronzed leaves carpeted the glade and many floated on a burbling spring pool in its center. A rivulet flowed from the spring. It eventually fed the Silarne, a full day to the south. With noisy, crunching footfalls, Lorace, Tornin, and Oen stepped within the ring of surrounding trees while the elves embraced the red crowned grandfather oak.

  “We must rest here for a while,” Adwa-Ki said from where she stood with one hand upon the broad, knotted trunk of the ancient tree. She displayed no hint of the lessened strength Lorace could sense within her. “The toll on our vitality is greater than we had thought, never have we carried three non-elven folk.”

  “How much further to Halversome?” Oen asked.

  “Though the sun has moved a bare hands-breadth through the sky,” Adwa-Ki said, “we have traveled fully half the distance to Halversome from the dwarven home.”

  Lorace turned to Tornin who stood gazing upon the rippling mirror of the spring pool. “Now it is time for you to have Adwa-Ki examine your sword,” he said, drawing his young knight’s attention. “I think she will welcome the opportunity.”

  Tornin had patiently awaited this since Adwa-Ki first explained the nature of her gift within the entryway of Vlaske K’Brak. The tall knight nodded with an eager smile. “I believe you are right, my Lord.”

  “Adwa-Ki,” Lorace said as she completed her greeting to the great tree, “would you do my young knight the honor of speaking the story of his unique blade?”

  She hesitated for only an instant while the dimness of her eyes revealed a hint of her weariness. “Of course, but it must wait until my strength has returned.”

  “I think you, and your companions, would benefit most by examining the blade now,” Lorace urged with a smile as he gestured for Tornin to produce his sword.

  Adwa-Ki returned Lorace’s smile with one of her own. “I should know by now that you are purposeful in everything you do. Very well then, I will tell the black sword’s story at once.”

  Tornin held his heavy sword out to her with the flat of the blade across his palms and bowed his blonde head low.

  Lorace watched with all his senses as Adwa-Ki reached for the offered hilt of the black blade. She brushed it with the lightest of touches. Brilliance erupted from the blade like a dazzle of sunlight off the waters of the Silarne, followed by a burst of golden light from the elf’s wide eyes.

  “Thank you, Sir Tornin,” she said with a breathy sigh before turning and beckoning to her elven companions. “Touch the sword, my children, and feel the strength of she who smiles down on us.”

  Adwa-Ki stepped back and gave Lorace a golden wink as the other elves stepped up to touch the hilt of the heavy black sword. “Purposeful indeed, Lorace. Kvarrak’s spirit courses strong and steady within you.”

  Lorace shook his head, still smiling. “I am, who I am,” he said simply. The man with but a single memory who trudged along the cliff-top to Halversome, and forged a bond with the wind, remained within him, but greatly enriched by the return of all his childhood memories. His nightmares of possession also laid claim to their own dark corner, near the cold coals of his rage. That part of him was intact, greatly diminished, but not forgotten. The culmination of all was set at the instant of Sakke Vrang’s first fiery touch.

  “Sir Tornin, that sword is yours now and will accept no other master,” Adwa-Ki said, turning back to the tall knight. “Lord Aran and his brother, Lord Lorn blessed it unto you.”

  She paused a moment to let her words sink in to those around her before continuing. “Their blessing has forged a link between the black blade and the sun herself. Those who can stand in her light may touch the hilt and partake of her boundless renewing energy, while you, its wielder, gain tremendous strength of limb. The blade of your sword was magically shaped by the hands of the young sorceress known as Scythe, though that is not her true name, from a shard of metal that fell from the sky, a metal that originated within the heart of our sun.”

  “Scythe is the disciple of the Devourer.” Lorace mused.

  “Yes, she forged this sword through a magic ritual devised by the wizard Losqua an age before,” Adwa-Ki informed them. “Her knowledge of the arcane is unsurpassed in our time, even Losqua never succeeded this well in the crafting of such a magical artifact. Thankfully, the sword carries none of her foulness. It is a pure thing all its own. As pure as the singular metal from which it is formed.”

  “Is it the sun’s version of godstone?” Oen asked.

  “There is a weak connection between the two,” Adwa-Ki answered, “but godstone is drawn from the spiritual substance of Vorallon, whereas the metal of the blade was drawn from the material substance of the sun.”

  Oen glanced up through the broad-leafed canopy toward the partially hidden disc of brightness. “I do not understand. How can the substance of the sun be black metal when it is the essence of light and warmth?”

  “Up until the moment I touched Sir Tornin’s sword, I would have asked the same question, Oen, but my gift has shown me more of the sun in that touch than anyone among my people have ever known,” the elven matron answered with her hands raised toward that same spot in the sky. “I will have to share with my people what I have learned, it is knowledge that must be spoken of and studied. I can see the story of this metal while it was still within the sun, before a mighty upheaval during the time of Vorallon’s infancy flung it out. Within the sun’s very heart, it was a far different thing. Were it to still hold the heat it once knew, it would incinerate the entirety of the Keth in a storm of fire,” she paused, lowering her eyes, still glowing with the sun’s light, back to the blade laid across Tornin’s palms. “Make no mistake; though it remembers not its former heat, the blade still recalls its luminance. Show us Sir Tornin, set free its light.”

  Lorace closed his eyes tight. He knew what was coming and chose to watch the scene of erupting brilliance with his sight, circumventing the debilitating effects of the tremendous shock of blinding light. Even the elves gasped at the radiance, which forced them to avert their wide, sunlit eyes, while their desire to bathe within the radiance of this shard of the sun drew them to lean in closer. Tornin was unaffected, his eyes remained open and clear, while Oen gave an involuntary yelp and snapped up an arm to block the light to his eyes.

  Tornin quenched the sword’s light before the priest’s discomfort could mount. Oen blinked tears from his dazzled eyes until he could see once more.

  “Can you tell us more about the blessing upon the blade?” Lorace asked.

  “It was blessed by the Lords Aran and Lorn,” Adwa-Ki replied. “The Lady of Destiny also had a role in orchestrating the blessing, but her ways are obscure and difficult to read even for my gift. They strengthened the link between the sword and the sun. Also, they tied the destiny of the blade to your own as your dedicated defender, and made it so only Sir Tornin, your knight, will be able to wield the blade in that capacity.”

  “Meaning it will be capable of something more when wielded in my defense?” Lorace asked. “We saw this already. When Tornin faced down the final demon within Vlaske K’Brak the sword overcame the nigh invulnerable shell of its hide to cut it in two.”

  “There is only one blade I know of that could possibly surpass that feat,” Harna-Ki interje
cted, a hint of awe creeping into his smooth voice. “The godstone sword of Sir Rindal: Brakke Zahn, the Heart of Destiny.”

  Tornin smiled and lowered his head, humbled at hearing this.

  “No, Tornin,” Oen said, slapping the tall young man exuberantly on his chainmail covered back. “Be proud to bear this blade, the gods have blessed it unto you as Lorace’s worthy champion. You are the only wielder the Defender of the Youngest shall know.”

  Tornin nodded and straightened his shoulders once more before returning his black sword to its sheath. “I have only dreamed of such an honor. To stand here, before you all, and hear it told causes my heart to near leap out of my chest.”

  Lorace smiled and stepped forward to place a hand on Tornin’s breast. “Your heart is where it belongs, my friend. I could ask for no more worthy knight. You stood in my defense against a mighty demon of Nefryt. I will never forget the words you swore to that creature of darkness before laying it low. In fact it will be my sincere pleasure to narrate the entire event to Captain Falraan once we have returned to Halversome.”

  At mention of the Captain’s name a new light entered Tornin’s eyes, and Lorace could feel the young man’s chest swell under his hand. “You know now, do you not, Tornin?”

  Tornin bobbed his head while glistening tears formed in his blue eyes. “I do, I have known since I touched your chain, though I did not acknowledge the change, even to myself.”

  “Well that is a relief!” Oen exclaimed with an explosive chuckle. “I thought we would have to take matters into our own hands where you two were concerned.”

  “You knew?” Tornin stammered at Oen.

  “My boy, everyone who has seen you and Falraan together knew you loved one another,” Oen assured his foundling son with a wide grin.