All stood in silence. The silence was broken by a laugh, and everyone turned to see a young man issue from the mouth of the cave. Tall, with streaming black hair, he wore a long black cloak that billowed behind him as he walked. His legs were long and lean, clothed in tight-fitting black pants, and his feet were shod in heavy black boots. He smiled warmly as he approached, and gestured in greeting.
Ilien nearly jumped, for he recognized him immediately. This was the man from one of his dreams. The man he dreamed he had become. The man he had assumed, somehow, that he was.
This must be Bulcrist, he thought.
"My friends," called the man. "My friends, you are here!" He navigated the rocky ground with ease to stand beaming before the Swan. "Penelope, so good to see you, though it's been a while to be sure."
The Swan nodded curtly, her expression uncomfortable. Pedustil quickly tucked away his errant wing and cleared his throat in a sort of hissing cough.
"May I present—" he began.
"Enough of the pleasantries," said Bulcrist, cutting Pedustil short with a wave of his hand. "We all know who we are and why we're here."
Bulcrist peered hard at Ilien, his dark eyes narrowing without losing their good humor. Ilien stared back, his own eyes devoid of friendly favor. The air fell silent as the two sized each other up, Ilien clutching his pencil in his pocket, Bulcrist gathering his long robes around him.
As Ilien tried his best not to blink, he began to feel as though there was more than the normal wariness of strangers between them. There was something else, something concealed in Bulcrist's gaze. Something he felt himself. There was recognition. Bulcrist somehow knew him as well.
Windy shuffled her feet and Bulcrist blinked and turned away. "Where are my manners?" he said as he laid eyes on the princess. He bowed slightly, smiling. "I have yet to introduce myself to the one person I do not know. Tannon Bulcrist, at your service, though everyone just calls me Bulcrist. Everyone meaning my faithful Pedustil, of course. I don't get many visitors, as you can imagine." He straightened and winked, laughing lightheartedly.
Windy returned a cold stare. It was evident she didn't like the man's demeanor, or his wink. Ilien smiled. Good old Windy, he thought. Bulcrist was undaunted.
"I was unaware that King Allen of Evernden had raised a princess befitting the throne of Nadae itself." He bowed again, this time lower, and cast a glance at Ilien.
"I thought you said you didn't know me," replied Windy.
Bulcrist winked again. "Now that I have met you, I know all there is to know."
Ilien's pencil twisted in his pocket. I don't like him, it whispered in his mind.
Bulcrist stood straight. He raised an eyebrow and regarded Ilien again. "Ilien Woodhill, it's my pleasure to finally meet you." He offered a lean, hard hand. "Forgive my flippant welcome. I'm unaccustomed to guests who are thought of so highly." He nodded his head, waiting for Ilien to repay the formality.
Ilien shook the proffered hand.
Careful. I don't trust him, thought his pencil.
"Please trust me," said Bulcrist, and a smile played on his lips. "I meant no disrespect."
No doubt Bulcrist could read his thoughts, and those of his pencil as well.
"I've overheard that you can see through even the mightiest of Nihilic spells," continued the NiDemon.
Windy leaned over to Ilien. "Is there really a door there?"
"Yes. Great double doors. They're right—" But as he pointed to where they were, they disappeared before his eyes. He turned to Bulcrist, who smiled coyly.
"Interesting," mumbled the NiDemon. "I bet you could have sworn they were there a moment ago. Two golden doors surrounded by massive, carved stone pillars. Doors so large that even old Pedustil here could fit through them."
Since no one else had seen the doors, they understood little of what was happening. Ilien understood. Bulcrist was toying with him.
"Since you insist that they are there, I will make it so."
The NiDemon stepped back. Raising his hand, he traced a pattern in the air. To Ilien's surprise, Bulcrist's fingers left a phantom image behind, a rune that quickly faded and disappeared. He turned to Windy, wondering if she'd seen the rune as well, but she looked at Bulcrist with fear in her eyes.
The space around them grew hot, and the sharp odor of struck flint filled the air. A loud crack echoed off the towering stone face, and the sound of falling rocks sent everyone scurrying from the cliff. And just in time. Debris rained down behind them. Pedustil beat his wings so hard that a great plume of dust roiled upwards, obscuring their vision. Ilien grabbed Windy's arm and pulled her farther from the cliff side. They stumbled blindly toward the river, choking and coughing. The crash of falling rocks slowly died away.
"Is everyone alright?" cried the Swan through the thick air. "Ilien! Windy!"
"We're here!" shouted Windy. "We're fine!"
A moment later a cool breeze, borne from the river's edge, swept the air clean. There, for all of them to behold, stood the two golden doors, their towering pillars glittering in the slanting sunlight. Curiously enough, the rock slide had left no debris behind.
An illusion, thought Ilien. Show-off.
Pedustil let out a hissing whistle of surprise. "So that's what they look like," he marveled. He stretched his great wings in awe.
Windy and the Swan stepped forward. The Swan's tail feathers stood on end. Windy silently wiped the dust from her eyes. Ilien, though, looked at Bulcrist.
"The gates of Ledge Hall," said the NiDemon, raising his hands in reverence. "Hidden for the last part of five centuries, only now revealed for the sake of a child." Bulcrist let his comment stand for a moment, then added, "Young man, I mean."
Pedustil regarded the broad double doors, then looked at his wings. "No more folding them like pretzels," he said with a distant smile.
Before anyone could say anything else, Bulcrist strode forward, his black cloak wrapped tightly about his lean frame. "Come!" he cried. "Enter and be welcome! Ledge Hall is at you service."
One by one they filed up to the golden gates. As Ilien passed Bulcrist, the NiDemon's thoughts whispered in his mind. I have seen you in my dreams as well, young Nomadin.We have much to discuss.
Chapter IV
Ledge Hall
There will be another guest arriving later," said the Swan as Bulcrist led them up the broad stairs to Ledge Hall. "A friend of ours. A Giant."
Bulcrist stopped and looked at Ilien with raised brows. "A Giant? Why are you traveling with a Giant? Nasty brutes, they are. Very good at what they do, don't get me wrong. But what they do is kill people. People like you, usually."
"Anselm is not a killer!" said Windy, suddenly surprised that she was sticking up for him. Bulcrist turned a cold glare on her. "He's different from other Giants," she said.
"She's right," said Ilien. "He and I traveled together. He's my friend." Again Bulcrist raised an eyebrow. "But don't be mistaken," Ilien said evenly, "he could kill if he wanted."
"I'm sure he could," replied Bulcrist, smiling. "Once a Giant, always a Giant."
"That's not what I mean," said Ilien.
"His true name is not Anselm," interrupted the Swan. "You might know him by another."
Bulcrist's face clouded.
"Herman?" prodded the Swan.
"The Heretic?" The NiDemon broke into laughter. "You keep company with Herman Hedrick Humphrey the Third?"
"I wouldn't call him that if he were here," warned Ilien.
"Well, where is he?" asked Bulcrist. "Why does he lag behind?"
"He's rather large for flying," answered the Swan. "He followed us these past four days, catching up near daybreak. But these mountains slow him down a bit. He should arrive tonight, tomorrow morning the latest."
"He travels on foot?" The NiDemon looked incredulous. "He'll be lucky to make it here at all. The Midland Mountains are not kind to travelers. They'll be especially cruel to a Giant with the weight of ten men and the brains of less than one."
Windy started to object, but the Swan cut her short. "He'll be here," she said. "He's very resourceful." But the look on her face betrayed her words.
"Oh no! Maybe he's lost," said Bulcrist, shielding his eyes and scanning the horizon in a mock display of worry. "Does he know where he's going?"
The Swan merely nodded and started back up the steps, pushing past the others. "He knows exactly where he's going."
At first sight, Ledge Hall appeared precisely as its name implied. As they walked up the stairs through the massive golden doors, they found themselves in a wide, damp hall carved from the very rock around them. The light from the open doors fell across their path, sending their shadows jumping across the walls. The sound of their passage across the cold stone floor echoed ahead into the shadows, and the flap of the Swan's feet and the rustle of Pedustil's wings filled the darkness with phantom whispers.
Ilien could swear he heard the trickle of water somewhere to his left where a large stone door stood slightly ajar amidst a litter of rocks and piled dust. The hall smelled of swamp.
"I've been meaning to get that fixed," said Bulcrist, referring to the broken stone door. "But I rarely use this entrance anymore. It's been fifty years since the last Nomadin child came my way, and then it was only to show him the way out."
Ilien stopped so abruptly that Pedustil ran into him from behind and nearly knocked him to the floor. "What did you say?" he asked, stumbling forward.
"Well, it was obvious to me that he wasn't the One," said Bulcrist, continuing forward into the gloom.
Ilien stood aghast. Did he just say that there were other Nomadin children?
"And unlike you," Bulcrist went on, "he never saw through my warding spells. He couldn't even Scry what was for lunch. His Nihilic was horrible."
Ilien felt dizzy. The darkness closed in around him. He couldn't breath. Something flew from out of the shadows, and he fell forward with a cry.
"Ilien!" cried Windy, catching him by the arm. "What's wrong?"
Bulcrist turned back and flashed his lazy smile. "It was just a bat," he said. "Nothing to get worked up about."
As Ilien's wits began to clear, he heard the NiDemon in his thoughts again, like the flap of wings through him mind. Yes. I know. The others reacted the same way.
Ilien recalled suddenly what Philion had told him under Greattower. Believe me. You're nothing special. I've seen a dozen of your kind in my time, each a cookie-cutter version of the other. Could it be true? Was he just one of many children told by the Nomadin that he was the One? But Philion had also said something else, and Ilien looked suddenly at Windy. Philion had said that the Prophesied Child was a girl.
"There were others," he whispered.
"Other what?" asked Windy.
"You mean she doesn't know?" said Bulcrist. He looked at the Swan in astonishment.
"She knows nothing," said Ilien, turning to face the NiDemon. "She's been through her own ordeal. She was the prisoner of that—" He remembered who he was talking to. "She was taken captive by the NiDemon, Philion. She knows nothing." He turned to the princess. "I should have told you, but everything happened so fast."
"Told me what?" asked Windy, backing away.
"I'm not just a wizard's apprentice," said Ilien. "I am a Nomadin. Gallund is my father. My mother is the wizardess Gilindilin."
Windy looked at him in wonder. "Gallund is your father? But you said—" Her face clouded in anger. "Then the NiDemon under Greattower was after you, not me. What else haven't you told me, Ilien?"
Bulcrist waved his hands in the air. "Wait, wait, wait. Now is not the time for long tales." He strode forward and took Windy by the arm. "Come. I will explain everything. If there is a tale to be told in Ledge Hall, it should be told by its master." He glanced at Ilien. "Even you will learn a thing or two, young Nomadin."
The shadows deepened as they moved farther from the open doors. Bulcrist led the small procession down the long hall toward another set of double door at its far end. Again, the flap of feet and rustle of Gorgul wings echoed around them, but this time they sounded oddly like faint laughter as they reverberated around the hall.
Windy walked in the lead with Bulcrist. Now and then she glanced back at Ilien, and Ilien desperately wished he could tell what she was thinking. Her reaction to learning that he was Nomadin made him feel ashamed. He should have told her earlier, but there had been little chance to do so. Still, he felt as if a sense of trust between them had been lost.
"What I wouldn't give for my lightstone," muttered Windy, and she slowed to walk beside Ilien, leaving Bulcrist to walk alone. She reached out and grabbed his hand, but a moment later she pulled it away and kept silent pace beside him.
Ilien would have conjured Globe to light the way, but he felt uncomfortable using the True Language in Bulcrist's company. He sensed that the NiDemon was keeping constant watch on him out of the corner of his eye, waiting for him to do just that. Following a NiDemon into his underground lair after being invited to do so seemed the inappropriate time to be uttering rival spells. Ilien ignored the wriggle of his pencil in his pocket and suffered the darkness in silence, trying to keep his thoughts to a minimum.
"Gather around," said Bulcrist when they reached the doors at the far end of the hall. He shook the dust from his cloak. His smile was just visible in the gloom as the others groped their way into a semblance of order around him.
"Ouch! That's my foot!" cried Pedustil.
"Sorry," said Ilien.
"Watch your tail!" shouted Windy.
"My tail is nowhere near you!" replied Pedustil.
"I was talking to the bird."
"Well, I never!" said the Swan.
Bulcrist clapped his hands, the retort echoing like a shot in the dark. "Settle down!" Then, as if remembering something he'd forgotten, he muttered, "Of course. How stupid of me."
At that, Ilien could see the beginnings of a glowing white symbol form in the darkness in front of him. The rune Bulcrist inscribed this time was far less intricate than the first one he'd drawn before the gates outside. This rune held its shining shape longer in the darkness. It looked like an E with a tail. Ilien tried his best to commit it to memory.
The hall grew uncomfortably warm, and the odor of flint again wafted through the still air. Everyone fell deathly silent, fearing what magic the NiDemon would unleash.
As if springing from the very walls, bright yellow light filled the entire hall. Everyone stood blinking for a moment, and though they looked around for the source of the light, they found none. Every corner of the vast hall was illuminated by Bulcrist's spell. So all-pervasive was the light that even their ever-present shadows had disappeared.
"Please. Forgive me," said Bulcrist. "I forget myself, sometimes. We NiDemon can see like bats in the dark. And here you all were, stumbling about like blind moths. I should have remembered your limitations. Come, you will find all of Ledge Hall lit for your eyes now." With that he turned and opened the doors before him, leading them out of the entrance hall.
Bulcrist was true to his word. Every room filled with bright yellow light as they entered. And every room they left grew dark behind them. In this way they traveled through Ledge Hall, traversing room after room, many large and empty, their stone floors littered with debris, some smaller, cluttered with broken wooden boxes and moldy decrepit casks that held God knows what. Most often they made their way directly across a room to the double doors at its far end, but sometimes they entered a room with doors to the left and right. Then Bulcrist would stop for a moment, trying to remember which door it was they should take. After several of these interruptions, Bulcrist muttered something under his breath, something in Nihilic, and they stopped no longer, until they came to a room where the doors at the far end led to wide, stone stairs that climbed upward into darkness.
"These stairs lead to the more liveable quarters of Ledge Hall," announced Bulcrist. "This lowest level is a bit disheveled, I admit, but I rarely come down here. Above await
s beautiful banquet halls, roaring fires and fine linen. There are some rules, though." He looked at Ilien. "Rule number one: you will conjure no magic that I haven't taught you."
"Taught me?" said Ilien.
"Rule number two: no interrupting your tutor. While you are here you will do as I say. Do you understand?"
Ilien took a visible step backward. "What do you mean, my tutor? I didn't come here to be your apprentice."
Bulcrist narrowed his gaze but his smile remained. "Then why did you come here?"
Ilien looked to the Swan for help. She stood flexing her webbed feet, her feathery brow knitted in worry, but she said nothing.
"Let me tell you why you're here," said Bulcrist, advancing on Ilien. "You feel you've been deceived. Taught that you were the one and only Nomadin child who would either doom or save creation, you found out that all is not as it seems. Your precious Nomadin lied to you, used you to face a foe that even they were hesitant to oppose." Ilien retreated before him. "Now, outcast, hunted by the ones you thought were protecting you, you flee here to seek answers to the questions left spinning in your head—a head, I might add, that all the Nomadin fear for what it might contain. For you are beginning to realize that even you are not what you seem. Are you the Prophesied Child destined to loose Reknamarken upon the world? Or are you something else? Something even more dreadful?" Bulcrist's eyes lit up as he towered over the boy before him. "Yes. It's written all over your face. You are beginning to wonder, aren't you? Who are you, Ilien Woodhill? Who are you, really?"
The Swan fainted, landing in Pedustil's outstretched arms. Windy and Ilien rushed to her side. Windy stroked her feathered head and looked accusingly at Ilien. "What does he mean, something even more dreadful? What's going on, Ilien?"
Ilien faced Bulcrist. "I thought I came here to learn how to rescue my father."
"You will learn much here," replied Bulcrist, "that I promise you." He raised his hand and again drew a rune in the air. It was different from the last, and very complex. Ilien glared at it.
NiDemon Page 4