Open my mind? What was that supposed to mean? And why had she kicked me?
She smiled again, and this time her lips did not move: Open your mind to me, and to our kin.
The door rocked, and I wondered how much longer it could hold. I heard cursing from the other side, which was probably a good sign. I hoped they would give up in frustration.
I looked at Kara then, and saw her staring at me, still smiling and smug. It was the smiling after she kicked me that got to me. What the hell was she thinking?
I was about to say something ugly, when she took my head in her two hands, and kissed my forehead.
Whoa. Just like that, my mind opened.
How exactly did it feel?
Like coming home to a home I had never known.
I felt closer to Kara than I had ever felt to Mom and Dad, even in the few moments when we were all getting along.
Nothing in my past, no kiss or hug, came close to what I felt when Kara’s lips touched the middle of my forehead. My whole body buzzed with energy, energy that seemed to feed off my anger and pain and change them into something else.
Suddenly I could see things, things that had been invisible just a moment before.
My inner eye was open, and a glow around Kara and my body stretched out in all directions, even through the walls of my castle room.
Focusing on these webs of light, I could see far beyond the walls of the castle, farther than I had even realized existed.
Her lips left my head, but the third eye she had awakened stayed open. Her hands ran down the sides of my body. I felt a wave of energy rush over me, and then she was holding my two hands in hers.
Sorry about the kick. I had to get you angry.
What’s going on?
It’s amazing, isn’t it? I still remember when my eye was opened. But we have no time. I can see the walls weakening. Even if the door resists, the walls will not, and they will be in here in any case. We must seek someone, now.
How? I don’t know what to do.
She smiled at me and the smile extended into my mind. It was as if her smile had more than three dimensions — not only height, depth and width, but a fourth dimension, too. I found the name for it: luminosity.
Her smile was luminous, golden in the fourth dimension.
Hold my hands and follow my thoughts... Our only hope is to find someone alert and open in a safe location.
She squeezed my hand. Her mind shouted then, and my voice inside echoed hers and we were one voice, shouting a word that somehow my blood remembered:
Volk!
The word vibrated on all four dimensions, sending out pulsating light on the strands that ran away from us in all directions.
At first we heard no answer.
How would anyone answer, anyhow?
Then I felt a small tug.
I looked down, expecting to see Kara’s hand, but there was nothing to see, at least with my first two eyes.
With my third eye I saw the strands spreading out from our hands, still vibrating with our call. The center, the nexus, was between our clasped hands. I felt the tug again, and Kara gasped.
She must have felt it too. It was one of the strands. The tug grew stronger as the strand grew thicker and brighter. Its vibration felt like a buzzing in my ears and all through my body.
A crash came from behind us. I turned my head around. A stone had fallen out of the wall. The wall still held, but for how long now?
Watch.
I looked back at the strand that pulled at us as it thickened and vibrated and spiraled, suddenly no longer a straight string but more like a luminous coil, or a spring, and then the spiral solidified into a glowing disk.
Durch.
The word, sent out from our joined minds, from our lips, rang loud and powerful like an enormous ringing bell.
The crashing stopped for a moment on the other side of the wall.
There was another cry of rage then.
Maybe they realized how close we were.
I looked at the disk and it darkened, then swirled, a glowing whirlpool of many colors. Kara squeezed my hands tightly then, and I felt a buzz all the way from my teeth to my ears to my toes. Another stone fell out of the wall, making a cloud of broken stone and mortar.
They were almost in.
A hand was reaching through. But there was something wrong with it. The fingers were too long, for one thing, and they ended not in nails, but instead in... How could I describe it?
Little sharp points? Claws?
I shuddered and bit my lip, and tasted blood.
Kara squeezed my hand so tight then I thought my knuckles would crack.
No time now. Look. Now. At the Gateway.
There was a fire.
Smoke.
Wood smoke blew through my mind, and my mind cleared.
I looked again at the gateway. A clearing in some forest, it looked like. A smiling face, looking worriedly at us, with pointy ears and a nose ring.
Durch, Kara thought, and I echoed her.
Together our words joined our thoughts with a great thunder and roar.
There was a crumbling from the door, a cloud of sparks, and dust everywhere. I felt a rush of exhilaration, and then we were jumping, together, into the gateway.
I looked back at a snarling face. It wasn’t an animal or a person, but something else entirely. Its eyes glowed. Its forked tongue spat out a word of power covered in green glowing spittle.
I ducked. Great heat rushed by my right ear, but then we were through the circle and someone was pulling at our joined hands.
A burning heat tore into my leg. I turned and stared at a monster.
Two eyes like red hot coals, a mouth full of razor sharp teeth — the mouth round and wide open, and out came the forked tongue, ready to spit again. I felt Kara’s hand in my left and then another hand, large and firm, in my right. In my head I heard a word as it blasted out of my mouth and the mouths of those around me, and the word was VERSCHWINDEN.
The disk turned black and disappeared.
I fell to the ground as the world turned black.
Chapter V
I awoke in a clearing. It was pretty dark, and I was so confused I couldn’t tell if it was very early morning or early in the night. I lay on a bed of soft grasses and leaves, which crunched pleasantly underneath as I turned over now onto my side and sat up.
A fire burned brightly, and I could smell something delicious. It smelled like nuts. I remembered when I was ten my father took me out into the woods, and we roasted chestnuts.
But these were not chestnuts.
Certain nuts were magical — enhancing the constitutions of those who ate them, strengthening them both physically and magically.
Just from the roasting smell, I knew this nut must be powerful.
My mind felt clearer and cleaner. Colors looked stronger, sharper and stranger as I breathed in more and more smoke. If the burning shells affected me this much, I couldn’t imagine how eating the nuts would affect me.
I felt a shadow over me and I looked up. Kara was smiling as she reached out her hand. I grabbed it and she pulled me up.
“I want to introduce you to someone,” she said, and pointed off vaguely behind her.
A man stood there.
His hair was light like wheat, his ears were pointed, just a little bit, and there was something weird with his eyes, a strange honey color that confused me. I was sure I had never seen eyes like his, yet they seemed familiar.
There was a small gold ring in the man’s straight short nose, and his lips were smiling, revealing white straight teeth.
He was full-blooded Kriek, I was sure of that much. I had read about their rebellions, their freedom and their eventual doom, far off in the black forest, the Schwarzwald.
I hadn’t believed a word of it until now.
With a shiver, I realized I was cold now, and that the black forest was not far off anymore.
I must have traveled far North, through the gate
way, farther even than when we had moved when I was little.
The man stood there smiling silently, immobile, at the far end of the campfire.
“Why is his face green?” the man said, finally.
“It’s only a clay mask,” Kara said, giggling.
“I’m even stranger looking underneath,” I said, laughing now, as I took a step towards the fire. The man, as if I had been waiting for just this signal, came forward and held out his hand.
“Welcome to the Schwarzwald. You can call me Kalle.”
“Anders,” I replied, and shook his outstretched hand. I felt strange vibrations through my fingers, a tingling that moved up my arm to my teeth and made them buzz, then ache; it was almost like music played not in the air, but in my blood and sinew and bone.
It was unpleasant and wonderful at the same time and I had never felt anything else like it.
Kalle let my hand go and looked me up and down. He turned to look at Kara, and I felt, instead of heard, his words. The blood sings strong in this one, cousin.
Then he turned back to me.
“You don’t look like us, yet you’re one of us. Your eye is opened.”
“I opened his eye, Kalle,” Kara said.
“That explains a little. But many strange things are about, now. They say the hills sing out a warning, and then in a moment the animals are gone from the Wald. We must be careful. We must be swift. But I take the time to greet you, Anders.”
Then Kalle did something I didn’t expect.
He bowed.
I bowed as well, awkwardly.
Kalle laughed. “Enough formalities. We’ll have time to get to know each other on the trail. For even my weak ears hear a warning from the hills.”
I looked around but couldn’t see anything threatening. How much time did we have, before whatever Kalle was talking about was upon us? I wasn’t ready for a battle. Would I ever be ready?
“We must move on,” Kalle continued. “We have enough time to clear this camp, and to eat those nuts — their nutflesh will strengthen our bodies and minds. Look at them now, with your third eye, in the fire, and tell me what you see.”
I looked.
There were maybe five or six dozen nuts in the fire, and each one glowed a different color, like a pile of fiery multicolored jewels. I could feel physical heat from the burning shells, but inside, there was a magical heat as well. There was some kind of connection between the two, one feeding the other, the physical the magical.
And wasn’t fire itself magical? My tutor had told me it wasn’t, but turning wood into heat and light and ash seemed if not magical at least wondrous.
“They’re beautiful, like a bed of jewels,” I said. “What are we waiting for?”
Kalle smiled. “Wait a little while longer. When they are ready, you will hear it. Then I’ll scoop them out of the fire and put them in this bag. We will throw dirt on the coals, and be off.”
I could see the glow of the nuts, but hear them? I looked at Kara but she was looking out into the forest.
She turned with a thin smile to me.
When the nuts are ready we’ll have around thirty seconds to get out of here. They’re coming, and I’m afraid the nutsong will bring them quicker.
I felt her worry as well. My tutor had told me about thought projection, but I figured it was one more thing that had gone the way of dragons. I had never experienced it before. Or had I? What had happened, when grandfather had died? Just before he died, hadn’t I heard words in my head? I couldn’t remember. I felt suddenly exhausted. I wished grandfather Henrik was still alive.
He’d know what to do. He had been a real wizard, not like my father.
Everything was happening too fast. And everything was damp and cold except for this fire, which would soon have to be put out.
He’s cold, Kalle.
I will fetch him what little I have. I travel light, now I will travel lighter.
Kalle’s thoughts rumbled through me like a heavy carriage on a dirt road.
“Will you please stop thinking about me,” I said. I felt ridiculous, my teeth chattering, shivering, so lightly dressed, so far from home. Here I was at night in the Schwarzwald, in my studying garb, which was scarcely more than underclothes. Of course I was cold.
And I still had that gunk on my face.
Kalle laughed. “He hears us Kara. He hears all, this Anders.” He drew away from the fire for a moment and then came back into the light. He was carrying a light cloak. “Here, Anders, take this.”
I caught the cloak thrown through the air and put it on.
Kara handed me a wet cloth, giggling. “Wipe that off your face, now.”
I felt warmer, but angry. Who were they to laugh and giggle? I wiped my face savagely, making the skin hurt.
Had I asked to be drawn into this whole crazy adventure? My parents would be home soon, and find my study destroyed. I hoped they would be in no danger themselves. And here I was on the other side of the world with a beautiful thief. And a man with pointed ears and a nose ring. And both of them were laughing. At me.
I wiped at my face again, and it felt clean.
For once the ache was gone. I wondered if the green paste was more effective than I had imagined. It had been ages since my face had felt this… normal.
Still, I was upset.
Who were these people, to pull me out of my life in the castle?
To pull me out of the only life I had ever known?
The answer seemed to come from the cloak, from the fire, from the roasting, glowing nuts, which had began to hum, as they sizzled.
The answer was: they were my kin.
My anger faded.
“You look much better now,” Kara said. “Just a little charcoal soap, maybe, when we get into camp.”
“Thanks,” I said, pulling the coat tighter around me.
“The coat fits you well,” Kalle said. “Let it comfort you in our Wald.”
The nuts were making some kind of vibration, a buzzing, humming noise that was musical and random at the same time, like some crazy dance music, music that made my head hurt and my teeth ache.
I brought my hands up to my ears, but it made no difference — I realized that I heard the song inside my body, through my skin, instead of through my ears.
Kara was looking off into the distance.
Kalle, though, met my gaze and nodded. “The song takes some getting used to,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the nutsong. “You can’t drown it out, so try to enjoy it. The problem is it will pull enemies to us like moths to a bonfire. Kara is watching but we must be quick.”
I looked at the fire then and let my hands drop from my ears. Kalle was right. It made no difference. I opened my inner eye and looked. Luminous bands shot out from the roasting nuts, pulsating different colors as the song played on.
The song rose in pitch and the colors changed. My body vibrated with the song.
I was sure my ears were going to burst. The more I resisted the song the harder it got to bear — there was pain now, a dull throbbing, growing sharper with every note of nutsong.
I shook my head to clear it. That only made it worse. Kara, waiting at the side of the clearing, nodded at me. Let it in, Anders. Relax.
Was she crazy?
I wanted to run away into the forest. The noise was driving me crazy, and now it really hurt. My hands were pressed again tight against my ears.
And yet.
I’d trusted her so far.
Why not trust her now?
I was lost here anyway, without Kalle and Kara. If I couldn’t trust them, I was doomed.
And they had called me kin.
Maybe I should stop resisting. Stop trying to drown it out. I let my hands fall to my sides. I opened my inner eye and inner ears.
The song burst through me. My body became an instrument playing the song of the haselnuss.
The song took hold of me and my body sang. Pulsating light and music covered me, filled my every p
ore.
But the pain was gone. It was glorious. I smiled, and looked up.
Kalle was smiling too. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Normally, when a boy has his first experience with the opening of his inner ears, through nutsong or the song of an ancient tree, we have a special ceremony. It’s a right of passage. You let the song into you or it will rip apart your inner ear. You, Anders, have gone through the opening of your inner eye and your inner ears today, without ceremony. We should celebrate, but we have no time. The haselnuss already finishes its song.”
I realized the song that coursed through me was in its last notes, fainter, more drawn out.
The song stopped.
The night was silent, and then I heard a far off squeal.
It hurt my ears, but not like the haselnuss. There had been something good in that, even when it was painful.
Kalle threw dirt on the fire.
“We have minutes, now, at the most,” he said.
“I think we have even less,” Kara said, moving closer to the fire. “There are three creatures coming from the north. I see their breath, hear their cries, their whistles. Even their breath hurts me. They are very magical. And they are very evil.”
Kalle drew back, and out of his mouth came a word, a word of power, kalt, and green fire extended out of his raised hand. Cold poured into the smoldering fire, as the word vibrated on all four dimensions.
Then Kalle was picking up nuts and handing them to us.
Kara took them, but shook her head. “They’ll come all the faster now, after that spell.”
Kalle shrugged. “After the song of the haselnuss, nothing could be a stronger signal that we’re here.”
Another squeal from not so far away. I didn’t want to stick around and find out what made that sound. I felt a chill vibrate up my spine. “That was close,” I said.
Kalle’s face tightened. “We must gather every nut and flee. Quick now! Look for them with your third eye. Don’t miss any, or they’ll be food for the beasts that hunt us.”
I opened my third eye and saw several dozen points of light in the firepit. Kalle and Kara were already picking them out quickly and putting them into pouches.
I picked up several nuts, one at a time, and put them in a pocket inside my cloak. I grabbed several more. They tingled in my fingers, but Kalle’s magic had taken away their heat — they were merely warm to the touch.
Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons) Page 4