“Sometimes,” Rokwolf said, “but this tree was young and quite healthy.” He turned to Klare. “Can you ride?”
Klare did not look up. “I think so,” she said, “the worst of it seems to have passed, and I have nothing left in my stomach.”
“We should get moving,” Rokwolf said, “and quickly, if Klare can manage it.”
“I’ll try,” Klare whispered.
Klaybear helped Klare climb back on her horse. “Okay?” he asked.
Klare gave a curt nod. “Start slowly,” she said, handing her reins to her husband, once he had mounted, and clutching pommel of her saddle with both hands.
They urged their mounts into a walk, Klaybear watching his wife closely as they increased the pace. They managed a fast trot before Klaybear could see that they should go no faster.
“Slower,” Klare hissed through clenched teeth.
They complied, slowing to a trot, which lasted for about ten minutes before Klare shouted for them to stop, leaning over the side of her mount and retching drily.
Barely half a minute passed when their mounts twitched, responding to another subterranean concussion, followed by creaking and cracking, and they saw the tree fall across the road just south of them.
Rokwolf turned to look at Blakstar. “Your sword?”
Blakstar nodded. “I touched it as soon as we heard the concussion, and felt the humming stop when the tree fell.”
“The morgle,” Thal noted. He looked at Klaybear; Klare was trying not to retch. “Do you suppose,” he said, “that the morgle has discovered the mental link between the keys?”
Blakstar still touched his hand to his sword. “It’s starting again!”
“Ride!” Rokwolf exclaimed, kicking his mount.
The others followed, galloping north; Klare held both her saddle and her stomach, trying to keep from retching while staying on her galloping mount. They felt the concussion, heard the creaking of wood and the crashing of another tree. Turning to look back before the road wound around another corner, they saw a large, healthy-looking tree blocking the road at nearly the exact point where they had stopped.
“We can’t run all the way to Shigmar’s Tomb!” Klaybear exclaimed to his twin.
“No,” Rokwolf replied, “and it’s only a matter of time before the morgle simply blocks the road ahead of us, and slows us enough for pursuit to catch us.” He slowed to a trot; the others imitated his action. Rokwolf turned to Klaybear. “Is there any way you can mask our presence from the morgle?” he asked.
Klaybear started to reply but was interrupted by Thal.
“There might be a way,” Thal said, “but I’m not sure it would fully mask us from the rod and a being as powerful mentally as the morgle are.”
“What do you mean?” Rokwolf asked.
“Our problem is that we are all only novices in our different arts,” Thal answered. “There is a way to cover our position with a mental fog, but my inexperience prevents it from being much larger that a single person; it would not cover the mental thread that connects the three keys to each other, so the morgle would still know where we are, since all he would have to do is look for the moving bit of mental fog,” he finished, smiling wryly.
Rokwolf looked at his brother after glancing once at Klare; she rode hunched in her saddle, still very pale. Rokwolf frowned. “Why can’t we do the same thing as the morgle?”
Klaybear looked puzzled. “Why would we want to knock living trees over?” he countered.
“Not knock over a tree,” Rokwolf replied, “open a doorway directly to Shigmar’s Tomb.”
“We do not know, precisely, where the tomb is,” Klaybear replied.
“Then open the door to Kalbant, his hometown,” Rokwolf said.
The others were silent for a time.
Thal broke the silence. “Probably because Blakstar would need to rest an entire night after opening the doorway, and from all we have been told about the tomb, and the need for us to return quickly, he would not be able to face whatever awaits us inside in a state of exhaustion,” he said.
Rokwolf again glanced at his sister-in-law. “The morgle managed to open a second doorway, and he continues to attack us from a distance, without the required night of rest.”
Thal opened his mouth but closed it again; the others sat silent.
“Why couldn’t someone besides the kortexi open the doorway?” Rokwolf asked.
Thal shook his head. “We saw what happened to the guard captain in the dungeon, who touched Blakstar’s sword: all in the room were killed.”
“Wait a moment,” Blakstar said, “you touched my sword and weren’t killed,” he pointed at Thal.
“But I wasn’t trying to use it,” Thal protested.
The kortexi shook his head. “You were,” he said. “You held it up to test your idea that the sword would take someone’s will, so you tried to threaten me with it.”
“And it didn’t work,” Thal replied.
“Only because you did not know how to properly hold and wield a sword,” Blakstar retorted.
“Rokwolf has a point,” Klare said weakly, “we are all chosen, why couldn’t one of us use the sword to open a doorway to Kalbant?”
Klaybear shrugged and started to reply but stopped, interrupted by the sound of hooves pounding toward them. Looking north, they all saw Tevvy come around a bend in the road ahead of them, whipping his pony. The awemi started to speak before any of them slowed.
“There is an army of purem moving toward us on the road!” he exclaimed. “I had to kill one of their scouts, who stumbled into the place where I was concealed.”
Rokwolf turned to Blakstar. “I think it is time to find out whether or not one of us can use the sword to open a doorway to Kalbant.”
Chapter 6
Artifacts of power, by their very nature, consume huge amounts of energy when used, which can drain and ultimately kill the person using them; however, they also contain giant reservoirs of energy that the wielder can draw upon when using their primary and secondary powers.
from Annals of Melbarth, Third Series, Early Lectures of the Hierarchs
Lecture by Sedra Melbarth
Rokwolf took Blakstar’s sword to open the door; the golden light surrounding the sword dimmed for a moment as the sword passed from one hand to the other but resumed its usual brilliance a moment later. The others stood waiting, holding their mounts ready to pass through the portal the moment it opened. To the north, they could just hear the sounds of marching feet and harsh voices.
“Draw a circle on the ground,” the kortexi spoke softly, “with the image of where you want to go clearly in your mind; make the circle large enough for a horse to be led through.”
Rokwolf nodded, then started to drag the point of the sword over the dirt.
“Once the point returns to the place on the ground where you started,” Blakstar continued, “lift the sword high overhead forming an arch in the air, bringing the point to the ground on the other side of the circle. Hold the point there until all have gone through, then step through yourself and lift the sword, which will close the door.”
Rokwolf did as instructed, lifting the sword once he had drawn the circle in the dirt; when the point touched the ground on the other side of the circle, a gray shimmering formed in the air. Tevvy led his pony through, followed by Klaybear, Thal, Klare, and Blakstar leading two horses. Rokwolf stepped into the arch, lifting the sword and closing the door. Smoke and the smell of burning assailed them. Rokwolf pressed will-giver back into Blakstar’s hand; the kortexi wordlessly sheathed it, extinguishing its golden glow.
“What has happened?” Tevvy asked, looking around.
The town square was ruined; the buildings surrounding the square were smoldering rubble; bodies lay haphazardly about the square, some charred and black, some masses of bloody clothes and flesh. The square was silent but for the occasional crack and pop of wooden timbers still burning. They stood near what had been a monument topped with a statue, broken pieces scatt
ered around what had been the base of the monument, the base itself cracked and misshapen, as if it had been struck repeatedly by some giant hammer and then superheated, so that the edges had begun to melt and run.
Klare drew a sharp breath, looking around the square of her childhood home. “Father!” she exclaimed, running west and out of the square.
“Klare, no!” Klaybear shouted. “It’s not safe!” He started to move after her.
Rokwolf grabbed him. “I’ll go,” he said sharply, “you cannot fight anyone, and you should help the others find the tomb. It has to be . . . ,” he began, but his twin cut him off.
“It’s my wife!” Klaybear shouted, jerking his arm free and running after Klare.
Rokwolf shook his head. “You three stay here and look for the tomb.” He turned to follow his brother.
“Where do we look?” Thal asked.
“Try the broken statue,” Rokwolf said without turning, then disappeared from the square.
At nearly the same time, Tevvy pointed. “Here,” he said, “this was a monument to the first kailu, Shigmar.”
Blakstar looked in the direction Rokwolf and the others had gone. “He shouldn’t be strong enough to walk,” he noted. “How can he open a door with my sword, an action that exhausts me, and still be able to act?”
Thal shook his head. “Maybe because he is more experienced than you.” He turned to Tevvy. “What are we looking for?”
Tevvy walked up to the pedestal. “A way to open this, or slide it back, revealing the entrance to his tomb,” he said, running his small hands over the side of the cracked and melted stone nearest to them.
“How do we know his tomb is here?” Blakstar asked, eyeing the awemi.
Tevvy paused, looking up from his examination of the stone. “This is the only monument to Shigmar anywhere in the village.”
“Doesn’t the village have some kind of graveyard?” Thal asked.
Tevvy nodded, going back to his work. “We’ll go there after we have thoroughly examined this,” he said.
“But if we are looking for a tomb,” Blakstar objected, “wouldn’t be smarter to start in the graveyard?”
“It would,” Tevvy replied without looking up; he moved right to one side of the pedestal. “But we were instructed to look here first.”
“Instructed?” Blakstar asked, “by whom?”
“The Headmaster, of course,” Tevvy replied, looking up. “Shouldn’t you be looking around for survivors?”
The kortexi blushed, turning away from Tevvy; he nodded once, then moved off to the nearest body.
Tevvy watched him for a moment, then looked back to the white maghi. “I can handle this,” he said. “I’ll call if I find anything.”
Thal nodded, moving off toward Blakstar, who had moved away from the first corpse. As Thal caught up with the kortexi, he heard him mumbling to himself.
“Something wrong?” Thal asked.
Blakstar jumped, startled out of his thinking, his face still flushed. “He’s right,” he admitted, “I should have immediately started looking for survivors.”
“Why didn’t you?” Thal asked.
Blakstar bent to examine another body. “Also, dead,” he noted, “the purem did a thorough job; I doubt we will find anyone living here. Every corpse has been stabbed through the heart by a thin dagger.” He moved on without commenting on the mark branded on each forehead, and without answering Thal’s question.
Thal had turned white and was holding his stomach; the smoke had shifted around the square, bringing with it the pungent smell of burning flesh and turning his stomach. He looked to where the kortexi stooped to examine another corpse. He moved to catch up, willing his insides to be still. “You did not answer my question,” he said when he had caught up with Blakstar.
Blakstar sighed and stood up; he looked back to where Tevvy examined the pedestal. “I don’t trust the awemi,” he said.
Thal glanced back at Tevvy, who was now examining the top of the pedestal. “The Headmaster trusted him enough to send him into the sewers to rescue all of us,” he noted, “and he saved us all from execution. Isn’t that enough?”
“He’s a thief,” Blakstar spat, “and thieves cannot be trusted.”
Thal looked at the kortexi for a long moment before replying. “I haven’t witnessed him taking anything that did not belong to him.”
“He admitted stealing from the merchants in the marketplace of Shigmar,” Blakstar retorted.
“He also said that he did not take anything of value,” Thal replied, “that it was solely for practice.”
“Theft is theft,” Blakstar said.
Thal sighed, then shook his head. “You cannot categorize people so strictly,” he said, “life is not made up of simple, strict categories.”
“But he’s broken the law,” the kortexi went on, “and should be punished.”
“We’ve broken the law,” Thal retorted, “we escaped from prison where we were to be punished for treason by death.”
“We were tried and convicted unjustly,” Blakstar responded.
“Not according to the court of elders who tried us,” Thal said, “from their perspective we are fugitives from the law and escapees from just imprisonment; from their perspective we should be put to death for treason. Do you plan on going back and accepting your just punishment?”
“It is not the same,” Blakstar retorted.
“Which is why Tevvy should not be punished for practicing his skills,” Thal added, “otherwise, you are guilty of the very same mis-application of justice that condemned the rest of the chosen to death, a death from which your thief, through his skills, rescued us. He is one of the chosen, and his skills are as necessary to our success as yours.”
“I think I found something,” Tevvy called, cutting off further conversation.
Thal and Blakstar looked over to Tevvy, turned, and walked back to the broken monument.
“What have you found?” Thal asked.
Tevvy pointed to a spot near the top of the pedestal. “It is hard to see,” he said, “since some of the melted stone has partially covered it, but it looks like a keyhole.”
Blakstar snorted. “A keyhole?” he said. “Do you mean like the keyhole on a door?”
Tevvy nodded.
“On a statue?” Blakstar went on, “why would anyone put a keyhole on a statue? That’s absurd.”
Tevvy’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the kortexi. “People who want to conceal things, protect their valuables,” he noted.
“Oh, well, conceal something in a statue,” Blakstar scoffed, “then put a keyhole in the pedestal: no one would ever notice that.”
Tevvy shook his head and removed a leather pouch of tools from his pack, which he had slung on the ground next to him. He opened the pouch and removed a small hammer and chisel, then started to chip away the stone. “It is quite brittle,” he noted, “so we should not have too much trouble uncovering the hole.”
“Brittle,” Thal said, “that indicates high heat, which would cause the impurities to be boiled out of the stone.” He reached forward, touching the surface of the pedestal; Tevvy continued tapping his chisel with the small hammer. “A powerful fire orthek, which is beyond most purem,” he noted to himself. He looked at the awemi. “Did you see a ponkolu among the purem you saw coming south on the road?”
Tevvy stopped chipping and looked up. “No,” he replied, “but then I did not take the time to look closely at them.”
“Why not?” Blakstar asked. “Isn’t that your job as scout?”
Tevvy looked at the kortexi for a moment, then turned to Thal. “What’s biting him?” he asked. He looked back at Blakstar. “Your pace had increased, because of the attacks of the morgle, which meant that you were very close to the purem, so I thought warning you that you were about to stumble into a legion of purem was more important than waiting to see what other monsters from Kolu had tagged along.” He turned back to his hammering, hit the chisel with more force than
he had been using, and chipped off a large piece of the melted material. They could now see the keyhole. The awemi returned hammer and chisel to his pouch, trading them for a set of small picks. “A few moments of silence, please,” he noted, selecting two of the picks and slipping them into the keyhole.
They stood silent, watching Tevvy work; after several minutes, Tevvy started to curse under his breath.
“Something wrong?” Thal asked.
Tevvy paused, looking up. “This is a very odd lock; just when I feel I have got it, something prevents it from opening.”
Blakstar snorted, but Thal put a hand on his arm to stop his retort.
“Something mechanical?” Thal asked.
Tevvy shook his head. “No, not mechanical,” he replied, “at least I don’t think it’s mechanical.”
The kortexi laughed; again, Thal stopped him. “Teka, then?” Thal asked.
Tevvy shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but teka locks are usually all teka, not having any mechanical components.”
“I know a simple orthek,” Thal added.
“You can try it,” Tevvy said, “but I think this lock uses both.”
“Maybe,” Thal suggested, “if you work the mechanical part of it to the point where it should open, then I cast the orthek?”
Tevvy shrugged again. “We could try,” he said, slipping his picks back into the keyhole. After a moment, he nodded.
Thal had slipped his clay rod from his belt while Tevvy worked; he touched the tip of his rod to the lock, then spoke the word, “apweryo.”
Tevvy shook his head; Thal sighed.
“It is an oddly shaped key,” Tevvy noted, “ancient in its origin, since it has to go back to the beginning of history itself, and the time of the Founders.”
“If it does conceal the entrance to Shigmar’s Tomb,” Thal remarked, “and the powerful staff he constructed, it is not the kind of key we would find lying around.”
Something about the way Thal said his last phrase sparked a memory in Blakstar’s mind: The path turned to the right on passing the wreck and moved toward a line of underwater hills. At the base of the one nearest to him, the kortexi saw a dark opening, slightly illuminated by the glow of the golden line. His path descended to the floor of this underwater cave, and he felt wet sand under his feet. Looking back, he could see the shape of his sandals imprinted in the sand. The glow of the golden line illuminated the cave floor, and his eyes were caught by things sparkling. Looking down, he saw gold and silver coins, gems, bracelets and necklaces, armor, swords, and weapons of every possible type. Their number increased until the floor was completely covered by wealth unimaginable. As he walked along, he felt something hard and cold get caught in the toe of his sandal. Reaching down with his left hand, he removed the object from his sandal and found himself holding an ornately carved, golden key of some ancient design attached to a fine, golden chain. He thought he heard a bell ring somewhere in the distance, and so without thinking, dropped the chain around his neck, felt its coolness, felt it clunk against his chest. The golden line he followed swerved suddenly into the roof of this underwater passage, and the kortexi oozed again into the rock. Blakstar’s hand went to his chest where he felt the key cold and hard against his skin. He touched one finger to the neck of his golden suit, sliding his finger down, opening his suit enough to remove the key. He lifted the chain over his head and held out the key to Tevvy.
The Redemption, Volume 1 Page 40