Ringwall`s Doom

by Awert, Wolf

  “Why not?” the witch asked back. “Birds you don’t lock up keep flying away… but here, see how I trust you.” She raised a hand and the twigs fell lankly aside.

  Sedramon stepped outside and enjoyed the first light of a sky where the sun had not quite risen. The trees were still black as the night, but they would soon change to dark green. Sedramon was not fooled. She had opened the door, but the shield still kept him prisoner.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” he said, “but now let me leave.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No means no. I’m not letting you leave. Do you honestly think I spent days nursing you back to health, cooling your fever by day and warming your body by night for you to just pack up and leave? No, you will stay until I say otherwise.”

  An overwhelming mixture of emotions crashed down on Sedramon’s head: rage and anger, but also fear and helplessness, for he knew he was no match for the witch’s magic.

  “Beware of half-shamans,” he heard his mother’s voice again. “They combine knowledge with power.”

  “As you wish,” he heard himself say meekly, and he laid aside his bags. He sat back down as if nothing had happened, but his insides were boiling, and Sedramon was amazed at the raw strength of his feelings.

  The witch kept talking as though they had never disagreed and Sedramon stared into the small fire they cooked on.

  “When you understand, you’ll find your voice again. You’ll see.”

  The day seemed to pass far slower than usual. Sedramon sat silently beside the fire and explored his feelings. When night fell, he laid down on his bed and put his bag next to him as a silent sign of protest. The witch smiled, but said nothing.

  The pale full moon woke him. Sedramon sat upright and clutched his bag and gathered himself. He knew he had only one chance to escape. “Not all of them came back,” his mother had said. But what choice did he have? He had to try.

  Sedramon-Per leapt to the Plains of the Dead and saw with elation that his bag had traveled with him. So does that mean my body followed my spirit? He wondered and leapt further. Nothing makes a man faster than a woman on his heels. Sedramon did not know the Other World, but he focused on the image of the forest from his vision and sprang back.

  It was dark. The air smelled familiar enough to tell him he had returned to his world. There were no embers nearby, no deep breaths. Wherever he was, it was no longer the witch’s hut. He was certain, now, that she was a half-shamaness, living somewhere on the border between Water and Wood. All he smelled and heard told him that he was in a forest, but he could not have said where this forest was.

  Sedramon-Per had not quite reached the Plains of the Dead when the witch jerked awake. The magic of the Other World filled the void where Sedramon had just been. The witch sprang after him, but the plains were now empty of living bodies and souls. She was too late.

  Back in her hut, she screamed into the night: “Curse you, curse your hair and the magic in you, curse every breath you take! Every step and all the stones you tread on, curse them all!”

  She screamed with her entire body writhing in the storm of hatred that engulfed her. Saliva flew from her mouth and her gray eyes darkened to black.

  Sedramon was too far away for her fury to reach him, yet he heard the witch’s words, so mighty were they. At first they were mere words reaching his ears, sounds without meaning, but a part of these words passed his ears and pierced his skin and hovered just outside his skull. At the edges of the bone, where there was an opening in his early childhood to let in the powers of the skies, the words found tiny grooves they could convene in. Sedramon felt the siege of this unknown thing; the first, shadowy attempts to reach his spirit. He knew he had to stop the words from entering into his body. The air he breathed was not poisoned, the stones he trod on did not mean him harm. He himself would be the one to consider air and earth his enemies, foes he could not escape and which would consequently defeat him. Nobody can defeat their own breath. He could not allow it to happen.

  But he felt strong against curses. He had already dissolved one curse, back in Ringwall. A curse was no more than a confusion of the elements, just like a poison, manifested by a wish or a promise and sent through the magic of the Other World. Sedramon re-ordered the elements and attempted to stifle the magic of the Other World. But this was not a neophyte’s curse, spoken by accident with what little force a child could muster. Malice was strong in this one; a force that knew what it wanted. The elements, barely re-ordered, fell apart again and the magic of the Other World resisted his attempts to subjugate it. It expanded and surrounded him and picked away at his body.

  Sedramon leapt back into the Other World, taking care to leave his body behind this time. He turned around and looked down upon himself. Part of his self had remained. A torn phantasm, cloaked in gray, with the colorful tips of disturbed elements. Sedramon-Per concentrated the Other World’s magic around himself as best he could and made it stream towards his own aura. The instant the two collided, he leapt again and rode the flow of time. Nothing was fast enough to follow him through time, nothing was all-knowing enough to know where the past and the future lie. Sedramon had escaped the curse, but in the visions that came to him the white-haired witch’s face kept appearing, her gray eyes glaring. He knew they would meet again.

  The later words the witch spoke were not curses. They were sacred oaths. It was a good thing Sedramon could not hear them.

  *

  On the fourth day after Nill’s arrival, three Oas came to the village. A young woman with light hair, easily recognizable as a relation of the eldest, was followed by a stout warrior; from her hips hung two clubs, and on her back she carried an old woman, whose fragile legs likely made a longer journey impossible alone.

  The Oas fell to their knees as they approached and bowed their heads. The three women made their way through the villagers without paying them any attention and entered the hut of the eldest. When the door fell shut, the Oas rose again and gathered around the hut.

  “Never would have guessed such a display of reverence to come from the Oas. At least it looks like something’s happening now,” Brolok murmured hopefully. Every day they had spent waiting had passed slower than the previous one. “I wish I knew what.”

  His nerves were put to the test. The Oas stood, still and silent, before the hut. The sun set, and as it crossed the horizon it gave the impression that the world was on fire. Following the red came violet across the sky, darkening until finally the black treetops were indiscernible from the heavens above. A long time later, the twigs and branches reappeared as the sky lightened. Nobody had retired to sleep that night, not even the children. They had simply fallen asleep in their mothers’ arms.

  Brolok and Bairne waited impatiently for the door to reopen. Rather than that, when the sun broke through, a young Oa stepped towards them and said: “It is time. Take the mage to the water.”

  Brolok and Bairne were no wiser than before, but they dutifully carried Nill to the bank of one of the small rivers that surrounded the village. Half the villagers followed them; the other half was already waiting by the waterside. Brolok exchanged glances with his wife when he saw that the wise women had already taken their place.

  “How’d they get here? I swear, I never blinked last night. That door never opened.”

  Bairne’s face, too, showed signs of curiosity. The crone who had arrived on the warrior’s back the previous day was now sitting on the ground, clad in blankets to protect her from the damp cold of the early morning. On her left and right sides, respectively, sat Haraak and the other light-haired woman who looked as though she might be her sister. In front of them stood a huge drum, and the warrior began to beat the skin in a measured rhythm.

  Bam, bam!

  “Lay him in my lap.” The old woman’s voice was little more than a croak, as though it had been unused for a long time. Silence was golden, after all.

  “Heh… a handsome boy,” she chuckled as sh
e stroked Nill’s cheek with a withered hand. “Let us begin.”

  Brolok and Bairne stepped back in alarm at the sudden concentration of magic that seemed to come from every direction at once, vibrating in time to the drum. They did not understand. Neither the magic of the five elements nor the intricacies of Witchcraft had anything even remotely similar to this. Central to all this magic was the drum. Brolok knew this from Tiriwi: the drum connected the magic to the primal pulse of all life. That was all he remembered on the matter.

  The three Oas in the middle swayed slowly to the rhythm; their faces were cheerful and the crone’s lips were curved in a smile. They appeared to be singing, but quietly, more inside their heads than out loud. Nill lay still and motionless.

  When the singing died down, the two sisters vacated their spots beside the old woman and pulled Nill’s legs apart before sitting back down. The three Oas now formed a triangle, their helping hands at Nill’s head and both his feet. All the while, the crone held the magic like a canopy above the small group. The singing began anew.

  Bairne nudged Brolok in the side. She had been the first to notice: the brook had fallen silent. It had stopped flowing and the water level was slowly rising. At the same time it began to rain. Brolok looked up. The sky was checkered blue and white except for a small cloud directly above them which grew steadily darker. It was the source of the cold. The river overflowed and reached the three Oas, and Brolok pulled Bairne away.

  “We don’t need to be sitting in the mud too.”

  Nill had begun to convulse. His heels hammered the soft earth and dug holes into it, which the water promptly filled. The hammering turned into splashing and then into squelching when the water turned the ground into mud. And the rain fell harder still.

  What then happened was blocked from view for all except the three Oas, for around them the mud rose and the cloud came down. They disappeared in the small space between the sky and the earth, in the darkness of grayish brown from below and deep black from above.

  A scream broke the tense silence, as sad and desperate as if a hundred generations of pain was being put into it. Ramsker leapt up and Brolok’s fingers dug into Bairne’s upper arm; she would feel the ache there for days. But at that moment she felt nothing at all. She was cold and lifeless like an empty snail’s shell.

  A second scream chorused with the first, this one a shriek of rage, disgust and disappointment. The two screams clashed until they finally found a common pitch; for a short moment, every last corner of every unused chamber in the village was filled with the twin voices, driving out every other sound. Then – silence. The drumming stopped. Bairne and Brolok regained consciousness, as did everyone around them.

  The river was gurgling and splashing again, and the sky was clear. The black cloud had evaporated and the sun regained control of the heavens. Its first rays broke in the puddles and transformed the raindrops that still clung to leaves, hairs and clothes alike into sparkling diamonds. Everywhere they looked, it shone, and the nature around them glowed in all its beauty. It was glorious, yet cold; the sun had not yet warmed the place. Yet, Brolok thought dully.

  Nill’s eyes flickered open and he muttered weakly: “Can you teach me? Whatever you just did…”

  But his voice was too quiet, or the Oas’ ears not yet receptive. Perhaps they had not yet woken from the ritual; whatever the case, his words were unheard. With one exception.

  “Nearly dead and gasping for more knowledge,” he grunted thickly. To his surprise, he was fighting back tears.

  The four bodies – Nill and the three healers – lay on the ground as if they were dead. The Oas carefully carried them back to the huts.

  When Brolok and Bairne were later allowed to see Nill, a strange scene greeted them. The two wise sisters, as Brolok thought of them, were sitting by one wall, their arms around each other’s shoulders, shaking and exhausted. Deep lines of weariness had carved themselves into their faces, and Bairne was not so sure these would go away after a good night’s sleep. Nill was lying in the middle of the room on a stack of furs, beneath a thick quilt that covered him from head to toe. With him lay the old woman. He clung to her like a babe to its mother, and appeared fast asleep. Only the occasional twitch of an eyelid disturbed the peaceful picture.

  “The power she must have,” Brolok said under his breath, his face mirroring the amazement and admiration he felt inside for once. “All the time she had that magical field stretched over everyone and now she looks younger than the sisters.”

  Bairne looked thoughtful. “It’s an illusion,” she said finally. “The youthfulness you see in her is merely the peace she feels. The old woman is as good as dead. She has no more strength to give, and her protective embrace is an empty gesture. Nill is the only thing keeping her alive.”

  “How would you know?” Brolok hissed. He hissed quietly, for he did not want to disturb the sleepers, but sharply. He was not used to Bairne contradicting him, considering she rarely spoke at all.

  “All witches can read and understand auras. Just like the Oas. Maybe because we’re women – I don’t know the reasons.”

  Bairne fell silent again, and despite his best efforts Brolok was not able to squeeze any further information from her.

  Bairne and Brolok spent the following days and nights in the common house where the Oas’ guests were traditionally sheltered. It was a small house, hardly worthy of the name, which showed all too clearly how rare visitors were in this village. Guests were always men. Mostly they were druids. Sorcerers and warlocks were a rare sight, and not a welcome one, and they knew it. Mages were all but unknown here: those who had been accepted into Ringwall usually did not leave the city, and everyone knew that the stilted politeness between the mages and the Oas was a thin cover for the deep dislike they shared. However, guests were the reason the Oas never died out. The daughters that came from these short unions stayed with their people; the sons spent their first few springs there, but were always adopted by their fathers once that carefree time had passed, and grew up to learn the Druidic ways. Nobody really knew how the fathers knew about their sons, the same mystery posed by birds and how they know that it is time to brood. Sorcerers and warlocks never returned after a visit, and if no one could be found to take the small boys, they were abandoned. It seemed cruel, but this was the way of the Oas.

  It was not an instinctual mistrust of strangers, therefore, that made the Oas give the common house a wide berth.

  Brolok pondered. He wanted to leave this place where he was unwanted. The Oas who lived here were not like Tiriwi. Only Nill kept him here. The nights were the worst for him. You cannot fight against dreams; neither steel nor tactics will help. They come faster and quieter than smoke and mist and steal your breath before you can even blink. Sometimes, they are little more than disjointed feelings, accompanied by wishes and fears; other times, they are fully-formed figures from the past, whose faces you know and whose presence wakes memories. They choke you like a mountain slide and are just as unstoppable.

  They were always the same people Brolok saw. His grandfather he admired so, strong, hard and strict, with an aura that filled his entire dream. His mother, motionless in the darkness, all magic rebounding off her. His father, lying on the ground, propped up on his arms, struggling desperately to get to his feet. His father fought. Oh, how he fought. But against what? Brolok did not know.

  The dreams always ended the same way: Talldal-Fug’s sorcerers beating him and his family with their staves. His panicked screams woke him and Bairne wiped the sweat from his brow and held him until he stopped shaking.

  Tonight, it was different. The dream’s end, usually so predictable, had changed. The court sorcerers had him cornered. All he had was a small round shield, leather, its edges strengthened by silver braces. Under the sorcerer’s blows the silver grew dull and dented, the braces lost their shape until they flowed across the leather like water and covered the entire shield. Over the shield, the air flickered with dark gray Metal energy.
>
  Brolok was now holding the shield with both arms, pushing the sorcerers back. He turned his head and saw that he was no longer alone. To his left stood Galvan, the master of Metal, holding the edge of his shield; to his right he felt a beam of light surrounding Tiriwi. With one last push, the sorcerers were knocked through the room and vanished. Galvan and Tiriwi disappeared. His grandfather and parents were now standing there in awe, dwarf-like in stature at his feet. Galvan, by my side? Brolok wondered doubtfully. And Tiriwi, too?

  “Everything alright?” Bairne’s high voice brought him back to the day.

  “Yes, everything’s alright. Where were you and Nill? Whenever I need you, the two of you aren’t there,” Brolok quipped.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Brolok laughed. “A joke. I had a dream and the two of you weren’t in it. It happens, you know.”

  “Yes, it does,” Bairne agreed. “But you shouldn’t keep your eyes open for things that aren’t there in your dreams.”

  Brolok knew that a dream that returned to him nightly had to mean something. He had to find out what the dream was trying to tell him, or he would find no rest. But who would help him with that? His father? Hardly. Galvan? Maybe, but that would have taken him to Ringwall; besides, he doubted that the master of Metal would stoop to talking to a half-arcanist about dreams.

  Tiriwi!

  Brolok was surprised to note that he had never spoken with her about dreams. Did Oas even dream? Even if they did, could Tiriwi tell him anything about his family? Oas did not have real families, after all. Only halves.

  Brolok left the common house and hurried over to Nill, the same as he did every morning. Nill, for his part, was weakened, but in excellent health, and his morning’s greetings were uncharacteristically jovial.

  “It’s about time we moved on, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Brolok.

  “You sure you’re strong enough yet?” Brolok asked in reply, as if he cared not where they went or stayed. “Wouldn’t want you falling over after ten steps.”