by Mark E Lacy
Slowly, the band tightened. The girl seemed to be urging it on even as the Saerani urged on the Dreamtunnel. In almost no time, it seemed Enkinor and Visylon were standing with their backs pressed tightly against the tree, the band only inches away. They watched in horror, sweat running from their faces, certain death was at hand.
The Dreamtunnel slithered among the tree branches, wound itself around the trunk of the tree, and, when it reached the men, expanded and swallowed them up. The Swordbearer, the Gauntletbearer, and the Dreamtunnel vanished just as the red band reached the tree and scorched a ring around it.
A sky gray with ash. Every breath sent him into a fit of coughing. Nothing but barren rock in every direction.
Raethir Del cried out as blazing pellets whistled through the air and passed straight through him. He held up his hands and stared at the scorched holes. He ran, looking for shelter as another shower of fireballs pierced his face, his chest, his legs.
Enkinor and Visylon regained consciousness at the same moment. It was dark, and they stood in the middle of a burning city. Minarets stood like gigantic torches. One fell, and as it crashed into the ground, sparks and ash went flying. Flames reflected off low clouds and cast a hellish glow over everything.
“Enkinor,” said Visylon, gasping for breath in the heat and smoke. “The Dreamtunnel will return shortly. Six hours or so in the desert, an hour, maybe, in the swamp. How long here, wherever this is? Minutes? What's happening?”
The Gauntletbearer covered his face to shield it from the glare of the flames, the stinging smoke sweeping up the streets. “Maybe the Dreamtunnel is breaking down, now that it has two in its gullet.”
“If it breaks down, will we be free?”
Enkinor gave him no answer.
Visylon looked around. “Isn't there anywhere to escape this hell?”
The men stood in an open city square, conflagration spreading around them and not a person anywhere. A huge city, abandoned, on fire.
Enkinor shuddered. “Visylon, it's coming again.”
“Where will this end?”
“I feel something else too. We're very close to Raethir Del.”
Visylon, startled, turned to the Gauntletbearer, and took him by the shoulders.
“This is what we've been waiting for. This is our destiny. We will meet the Gatekeeper and destroy him.”
“It's no use,” said Enkinor, weary and sick at heart. “Without the vradu name for the Gauntlets, I can't draw on their power. 'The Paws of the Bear' is the only other thing I have heard them called.”
“What?” Visylon shouted. “What did you call them?”
“The Paws of the Bear. Look how they're dyed, as if there were fur on the backs and tan pads on the palms.”
“Enkinor, there was more to the Codex. I'd almost forgotten it because I couldn't understand it.” Haltingly, Visylon dredged up the last several lines for Enkinor.
“The bond of brotherhood shall draw the Gauntletbearer and the Swordbearer to their destiny, and they shall stand before the Ban-breaker. The Sword shall bridge the Hands of Guardianship and the Hands of Healing, and the Gauntletbearer shall call upon the Paws of the Bear and speak their name, Urascarrh.”
“That's it!” said Enkinor. “The vradu name for the Gauntlets!”
He had no sooner cautioned Visylon about speaking the vradu name when, howling with violent fury, screaming with insane glee, the Dreamtunnel passed through the fire and smoke and grasped them once again.
Raethir Del struggled against the hands that held him fast. Each arm and leg was pinned to the ground. Even his head was held still. He opened his eyes and stared in the face of a laughing demon crouched over him.
The sorcerer was naked. Torchlight revealed five demons holding him. Each had large red lips that stretched too far across a pale face, a ragged leaking hole where a nose should've been, and lank hair like dried seaweed.
They were not looking at him. They were looking into the darkness, watching a vine with the pallor of death wiggle into the clearing, black leaves vibrating as it sensed what it was looking for. The demon holding Raethir Del's head lifted it to give the sorcerer a better glimpse of the horror slithering his way.
The Gatekeeper screamed. The gray vine reached his feet. Sensing its target, the vine began sliding faster along the ground. In moments, it was passing between his knees, exploring, probing. Raethir Del vomited on himself, choking, as the vine dropped beneath his buttocks, and an offshoot ran tickling across his crotch.
The demons were now laughing so hard they were having trouble holding their squirming captive. The sorcerer's hips bucked suddenly. The vine continued up his chest and paused to taste. Realizing with terror what was about to happen, Raethir Del clamped his lips shut and gave a muffled cry of panic just before the vine reached his face, paused at his lips, and entered one nostril. The sorcerer tried to shake his head, tried to break free, but it was no use. The demons were too strong.
Something caressed each side of his neck, offshoots climbing up the sides of his head. The demon holding the sorcerer's head decided it would be safer to release him and stepped back. A shoot tickled the Gatekeeper's ear and slipped inside it. Then another penetrated his other ear, and all sounds were muffled. Unable to stop himself, Raethir Del opened his mouth and screamed soundlessly.
Enkinor bent over and retched. Visylon cried out, swinging his arms in every direction, trying to beat off hundreds of large black rats crawling up their clothes, shrieking and biting. The rats seized chunks of flesh and tore them loose, fighting over the pieces, clambering over one another, furiously trying to get to the men's eyes.
The Gauntletbearer tried to bring his foot down on one of rodents before it could leap on him as well. A moment later, the rats vanished, and Visylon cried out again. Enkinor looked up to see Visylon's flesh melt in bloody trickles from his skull, worms and leeches slithering from his ears and nostrils and plopping in wet masses from his mouth. Pain in his hands caused the Gauntletbearer to look down. Enkinor raised crushed, pulpy hands to his face as his skin reddened and then blackened and burned, ashes of his own flesh making him cough up swarms of stinging wasps.
When Enkinor looked again at Visylon, the warrior's flesh was returning to his bones. Visylon raised his bloodless face to the sky as Enkinor spun around, crying in pain.
They found themselves on a colorless plain under a colorless sky. A swarm of black specks raced across the sky and grew larger as they descended. They were black bats the size of eagles, flapping around them, trying to find exposed flesh into which they could sink their fangs. Visylon and Enkinor waved their arms in panic, trying to beat them off, but their hands were soon bleeding and poisoned. They ran, trying to escape their monstrous pursuit, and leapt over a colorless cliff into space.
A whirlpool of swirling colors opened beneath them. They yelled as they fell into it and kept tumbling through space. Visylon could no longer see the Gauntletbearer or even himself. Moment by moment, the colors separated into fewer and fewer components that swirled more slowly around the men. The colors gave way to blinding whiteness, and then putrid gray, and finally total darkness.
Enkinor tried to catch his breath, grateful for whatever few moments of peace this might give him, peace from pain and fear and hallucination.
Raethir Del stood on the shore of an underground lake. Daylight crept in through a small tunnel at one end of the lake. The muted roar of a waterfall reverberated through the tunnel. He realized with a start where he was.
Silence, stillness, and deep coldness.
A light breeze.
A blinding flash of light.
The Gauntletbearer and the Swordbearer stood in a large cavern, on the shore of a huge underground lake. They looked at each other, knowing where they were and what must be done.
Raethir Del stood in the shallows some distance away.
This was the Lair of Ualdrar.
Visylon drew his sword.
Chapter 56
Visylo
n extended the Sword of Helsinlae point-first toward Enkinor, both hands grasping the hilt.
Taking a deep breath, Enkinor placed his hands around the end of the blade, the cold metal chilling him through the Gauntlets.
“Urascarrh!” he yelled.
As the vradu name split the air and triggered the Gauntlets, the Sword flared, and a torrent of warmth and power surged through the hilt and the blade and into the two men. The mind of the Swordbearer and the mind of the Gauntletbearer flowed across the bridge of power and into one another like rivers meeting at the Sea. Each felt a moment's awkwardness at the closeness of the mental contact, a contact that was effortless to achieve. The unleashed power of the Thraean kings began to gather and build around them. They marveled at the depth of this power even as they recognized the weight of obligations that came with it. And as it grew and infused the men, gossamer strands of light appeared, weaving a cocoon of brilliance around the Saerani until they were totally enclosed, the cave around them shut out.
When the cocoon was complete, and its light diminished to a warm glow, the two Saerani looked around, confused. Everything had disappeared: the Sword, the Gauntlets, the Lair of Ualdrar, Raethir Del. A peculiar sensation came over them, as if something was seeping into their flesh and bones. Visylon found it disconcerting, but Enkinor found it vaguely familiar. To the Gauntletbearer, it was the dream-like sensation of moving through the Weave, the fabric of existence across which the Dreamtunnel had flung him. To the Swordbearer, it was a much more eerie feeling than that which he had experienced as the spell of the Dreamtunnel collapsed, and he and Enkinor were brought from Paerecis to the Lair of Ualdrar. Though they could not see each other, each was aware of the other's presence, each shared the other's feelings as they found a pattern in the Weave along which they were carried back in time.
Like mists rolling back before a stiff sea breeze, a scene opened before them. They saw a woman walking along a wooded ridge-top. Her features may have been molded by age or by private cares, but she strode with a posture that spoke of singular pride and confidence. Before her, silhouetted against the dusky sky, moved a giant of a warrior. Visylon recognized Anquilon, Champion of Thrae, and the peak toward which the Champion labored, carefully carrying a long and bulky object in his arms. Shroud-wrapped, it could only be the body of Helsinlae, last of the Kings of Thrae. There, on a remote peak in the Parthulian hills, Anquilon gently lowered the king's body to the ground and labored to construct a rock cairn over it. Before he laid the last stone, the woman stopped him, laying her hand on his arm.
“We must do what we came here to accomplish,” she said. “A remnant of the power of the Kings of Thrae will be preserved for one last use against the forces of evil. Most trusted friend of Helsinlae, do you wish to go on? It is no small price you pay.”
“You know I am ready, resara.”
The woman drew a small glass vial from a pocket and tapped a single seed into her empty palm. She took it in her fingertips and dropped the seed into the king's cairn at the spot at which the last stone would be placed. She then took another vial, uncapped it slowly, and poured a clear liquid over the seed.
“When the time approaches, seed of the Rivertree, take root and grow,” she said. “The death of this king shall give you life, that you may preserve the Thraean power. Someday, this power will be used for great good, and a great evil will be thwarted.”
She set the last stone on the cairn and turned to Anquilon.
“For you, Champion, this is death. Someone must guard the grave of Helsinlae and guide the one who is to receive the Power preserved by the Tree. Though dead to this life, you will live on as guardian and guide. Not as a spirit but something other than the form you now know. When your deed is done, to a true death you may go. Is this your wish, to serve your king in this final act?”
The warrior nodded his assent.
“Very well, then,” she continued.
The resara removed a huge cloak from a pack and draped it over the Champion's head so he was completely hidden beneath it.
“Goodbye, my friend,” she whispered.
She spoke the name of the spell, trying to whisper, but the power behind the spell ripped the vradu words from her mouth in a screech, and with a sweep of her arm, she threw off the cloak.
Anquilon still stood there, but his form had no real substance. He seemed to shimmer in the twilight.
“Thank you,” he said, “for giving me this opportunity.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Guard well your charges,” she said, “and don't forget me.”
As Anquilon gently took the woman's hand in his large but less material own and brought it to his lips, the woman, Anquilon, and the grave of Helsinlae melted away like snow thrown on the slumbering coals of a winter fire.
For a few moments, there was nothing to see but an empty, gray void. Then, another scene began to take form.
Again, the same woman appeared, knocking on the door of a small farm cabin. A tired, aged woman opened the door a crack. The old woman bowed low with a muttered apology on her lips when she recognized the silver corocir on the brow of her visitor. The door was then opened by someone else behind her, a large man with white hair and mustache. He dipped his head slightly in respect.
“Lassar, I need your help,” spoke the visitor.
If either the old woman or her husband was surprised that the resara knew the man's name, they did not let it show. Instead, as their visitor turned and walked into the dusky meadows, Lassar simply followed her. The two of them stopped out of sight of the cabin.
“I am Indrelfis, leader of the resari. I want to entrust something to your care.”
Lassar nodded. A breeze lightly played with a few thin strands of hair that had escaped his braid. “Very well. I will do whatever you ask.”
The resara smiled gently. “I know,” she said.
In her hands were a pair of long, leather gloves with flared cuffs. They were gauntlets, made of black leather except for the palms and finger-pads, which were tan. Lassar looked uneasy, as if he sensed there was something uncomfortably different about the gauntlets, something not obvious to the eye.
“Take these,” said Indrelfis, taking one of his large callused hands in her small one and pressing the Gauntlets into it. “Guard them for the resari. Before you die, give them to your grandson with the same instructions I am giving to you now. They should be passed down in this fashion forever.”
Lassar looked from Indrelfis to the Gauntlets and back again. “Lady, forgive me, but what are you placing in my safekeeping? A pair of gloves?” His eyes gave away that he knew there must be more to it than just that.
She was silent for some time, but finally, she shook her head. “It is best you do not know. I have done one thing, though. I have placed a spell on them which will prevent anyone from taking them from you or your heirs by force.”
Lassar tucked the Gauntlets out of sight under his shirt. “It will be done as you ask,” he said.
Her eyes brimmed with tears as she took his head in her hands and pulled it down to place a light kiss on his forehead.
“Thank you,” she whispered, releasing him. “May Eloeth bless you and your family forever.”
Lassar watched, puzzled and just a little unsettled, as Indrelfis blended into the woods and disappeared. Then, this image of Lassar, the first Gauntletbearer and Enkinor's distant ancestor, began to fade and then vanish altogether, as if the dusky shadows that had swallowed up Indrelfis had taken a sudden bite of the whole world. As the scene blurred and faded, a curious drawing feeling came over Enkinor and Visylon, like being pulled and stretched, a tingling that told them they were returning along the pattern in the Weave.
It was a much longer journey back to the present than they had expected. There was nothing to see along the way, nothing to feel but some lingering unease in being so close to one another's thoughts and feelings, as well as some growing anticipation that the time of true confrontation was finally at hand.
When they stood again in the Lair of Ualdrar, something felt wrong. Instead of being part of this scene, it still felt like they were observers, that they were detached in some way from what their senses were telling them. The cocoon of power continued to enclose them.
Now, in a matter of moments, the strands melted away. Only when the cocoon was gone did they notice the metamorphosis that had occurred. Visylon-Enkinor looked down at himself in surprise.
Chapter 57
Visylon and Enkinor were gone. In their place stood a gargantuan of a man, some ten feet tall. Though his form was visible in the strange, dim light of the cavern, his face was hidden in the stygian shadows of a cowl. His chest was covered with lightweight leather armor, while an armored apron protected his thighs. Leather boots reached to the knee, lacings adorned with huge claws and animal teeth.
But, wondered Raethir Del, is it a man? For the man, or animal, or monster was covered on arms and legs with dark red-brown fur like an enormous bear. And on the creature's hands were the Gauntlets, and in his Gauntleted hands was a Sword.
The Gatekeeper shivered.
Raethir Del stood with his hands at his sides, up to his knees in chilling water. Things were happening too fast. Fear was making his thoughts confused and sluggish. Pain in his abdomen from the wound Enkinor had given him was distracting him. In the span of a few moments, two tribesmen had grasped a sword and disappeared into a ball of blinding light, leaving in their place a Gauntleted, armed giant.
“Who are you?” Raethir Del asked. It was hardly more than a whisper, and he was ashamed he could not conceal the awe in his voice.