by Elliot Burns
“Your family was rich enough to hire a tacher?” asked Elena.
“I thought you’d heard of my father? Teremund Lornthane, of the Merchente guild, second only to the arch master. Father is a thorn in my backside. Take me on, and he becomes a thorn in yours, too.”
“Our young lord doesn’t have the luxury of choice,” said Bordan. He seemed keen for the deal to be finalized. Perhaps he wanted to be rid of the Blade Maiden.
“What do you say, Jack?” asked Sarna.
Elena looked at him but said nothing. The decision was his.
When he looked at Sarna now, he felt his cynicism disappear. Nobody was one thing or the other, he decided. Nothing was black and white. He didn’t need to start distrusting people immediately; he just needed to recognize that sometimes, a pleasant attitude hid a sense of cunning behind it. Other times, harsh attitudes like Sarna’s hid a deep-down honesty. First impressions meant nothing, really. You only learned what people were like when they were put to the test, and he’d seen firsthand in battle what Sarna was like.
“It looks like we’ve got ourselves a new commander,” he answered.
Chapter Twenty-One
Every bump in the road forced a groan from Mav. Quigley had given him enough opiates to dull his pain, but he couldn’t take too many for fear of falling from his horse. His left arm was wrapped in a linen sling, and he held the reins with his right hand. Going at such a slow pace, the day and a half’s ride home had already become three. It was on the afternoon of the third day that their progress was halted.
They approached a bridge that was called ‘Tight Noose Arch. A trail of mist gathered on the pond-green waters beneath the bridge. Algae floated on the surface, and little bubbles of air marked the movement of silhouetted fish. Their party’s horse shoes clomping on the stone were the only sounds around them. Just a few meters across the bridge, Jack found himself wishing he was already on the other side.
Misgivings aside, he straightened in his saddle and led from the front. Sarna was behind him, while Elena rode as close to Mav as possible and cast her gaze his way every few minutes to check he was okay.
“I know it’s my fault,” called Mav, from behind him. “You’d be a lot faster without me.”
“We couldn’t exactly leave you at the Troop,” said Jack. “Who was the man you ran after?”
“I don’t remember doing that,” said Mav.
“Liar. You sprinted across the yard and yelled at someone. I thought he was going to hit you.”
“Hit me? I nearly knocked the fucker out!”
“Oh, so you do remember, after all?” said Jack.
“It was a case of mistaken identity, that’s all. Looked like someone I used to know, from behind anyway.”
“Who?” asked Elena.
“For Arcus’s sake, you lot are bloody nosey, aren’t you?”
“You might as well just tell us,” said Jack. “We don’t want to have too many secrets, do we?”
“Thought it was a fella named Hendryke. Used to be my best friend and looting partner. The trouble we got into together…well, they were good times, for a while. We had a rule; fifty-fifty. No matter who spotted what in a dungeon, we split the flek.”
“You say he used to be your best friend?” said Elena.
Mav nodded. “We got a juicy tip one day from a merchant we rescued from brigands. A week later, we went into a dungeon together up near the west spikes. They said there were thousands of crystals in there, but all we found was dirt. I was climbing a wall to try and reach something gleaming at the top. Hendryke, the lazy bastard, always left the climbing to me. He was the money man, he said. He’d help get the goods, but his main job was to find buyers and get the best deals.”
“You mean to fence the goods? You were stealing?” asked Jack.
“Well, I am a thief, boy. Some would say it’s an essential part of the job. In this case, we were legit. If a dungeon is on neutral land, no bugger can lay claim to what’s inside.”
“What did you find?”
“Like I said, I was halfway up a wall, when Hendryke starts screaming. I turned to look but I started losing my grip, and I stuck my hand in a hole no man should touch. An Arcus-damned spider bit into my finger. I let go of the wall and fell to the ground and smashed my kneecap on the stone. I tell you, I’ve never felt pain like it. Forget these shatterblades, try falling on your knee.”
“You seem recovered now,” said Elena. “You are lucky; such an injury would cripple some men.”
“It’s agony when the weather turns frosty. Another reason why I like Holuum; it’s not prone to blizzards.”
“What happened, then? I take it that Hendryke got you out, or you wouldn’t be here,” said Jack.
“While I was writhing on the floor in pain, I found out why he’d screamed. Turned out a hive of dungeon slaads lived deep inside, and we’d woken them. When Hendryke saw them scuttling our way, cowardly as he was, he screamed. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move. I looked around, but my friend had scarpered for his life and left me alone.”
“How did you get out?”
“Turned out it was just two slaad lizards. They were infants, but still nasty buggers all the same. I killed them and crawled out. Ever since, I’ve tried finding Hendryke, but the man is like smoke. If I ever do get hold of him, I’ll tear the fucker’s cock off and feed it to Bluntfang.”
“Sounds like an excellent plan,” said Sarna.
It was the first thing she’d said in a while. Jack got the impression that his new military commander was tightfisted with her words.
“Revenge,” said Elena. “Such a waste of energy that could be used elsewhere.”
“Ehh, you wouldn’t understand,” said Mav. “It’s a man thing. A bond between friends is a sacred, and the man who breaks it deserves to die. Jack understands, don’t you?”
Jack had been betrayed once. Back when he used to get bullied, before he started punching back. Some of the bullies used to catch him on his route home after school. Reluctantly, he’d started walking a longer one with his friend, Kyle. It took them through a patch of woods and along by a canal, adding an extra twenty minutes to their journey home.
One night, after staying behind late for extra math tuition, Jack was walking home alone. Despite it being an unusual time, he still opted for the longer route. He was confused when he reached the woods and heard someone laughing. It puzzled him further when footsteps approached him from all sides, and then he felt someone grab him.
‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ said one of his bullies, before punching him in the stomach and knocking the air out of him.
Wheezing, Jack looked up to see Kyle stood there and laughing along with the rest of the bullies. He’d told them about Jack’s new route home, providing his tormentors with the perfect location for an ambush. Jack never found out why, since after that, he never spoke to Kyle again.
He knew what it felt like to want revenge, but he had to put it to one side. He needed to save his energy for Mum. Hate was a vacuum that fed on energy. The more energy you gave it, the more it consumed you. He couldn’t blame Mav for wanting revenge, but he knew that Elena was right. Seeking it wouldn’t help him.
His horse veered a little toward the bridge wall, so he gently tugged on the reins. “I understand you feeling like that,” Jack said, “But maybe revenge isn’t the best thing. I mean, some people get so obsessed with hate that they let it eat them up. Don’t get me wrong, if we ever met this Hendryke I wouldn’t hold you back. But maybe you should try and forget it.”
He took the silence as either unspoken agreement, or Mav holding back on his opposition. Then again, the thief didn’t usually pull punches on his opinions.
As the quiet stretched on, he started to wonder if his words had been so wise that the rest were deep in thought. Soon, though, it seemed that nobody had said anything for an unnaturally long time.
Not only that, but something else was strange. In the murky water below the b
ridge, there was a bubble on the surface, as though a fish had disturbed it. Only, the bubble and the resulting ripples were frozen. The mist hovered but didn’t move an inch.
He turned his horse around. Mav, Elena and Sarna were far behind him in the middle of the bridge. Mav’s mouth was open but frozen. Elena held her reigns tight, and Sarna stared ahead toward the end of the bridge. They didn’t move a centimeter.
Jack moved so that he was just an inch away from Mav. He tried to touch him, only for his fingertip to bend against some kind of invisible barrier between them. A sulphur smell gathered around him, like the sudden flare of a matchstick. Flames crackled over his shoulder.
He whipped on the reins and turned to see the deep purple spiral of a portal spinning just across the bridge. It grew larger and large, spreading toward him like a fog. His horse neighed and almost reared.
“Not more portal shit again,” he said.
There was nowhere to go. The barrier was behind him, and the portal was spreading. It was reaching for him, looming his way. The fog spread out as tendrils and floated at him.
Just as it reached him, his horse finally lost its head. It reared back. Jack fought to keep control, wrapping the reins around his fist and pulling. Sulphur teased into his nostrils and made him cough. With nowhere to go and no help coming from his friends, the portal smothered him.
He blacked out. When he awoke he found that he was flat-out on his back, and he couldn’t move his arms and legs. He could feel their weight, but when his command for movement left his brain, it fizzled out. Somehow, he knew he wasn’t tied down. Something else was at work.
Mist filled the air around him, so thick that it would take a machete to cut through it. It was like the billowing black smoke of a house fire, except that he couldn’t smell anything.
“Open your mouth,” said a voice from somewhere in the maze of mist.
“It’s one of my rules that when I wake up paralyzed and trapped in a fog-filled room, I don’t open my mouth on command.”
“It’ll be the hard way, then,” said the voice.
Hands touched his face. Jack flinched at how cold they were. He wanted to shrug them off, but he couldn’t move his body. He felt a sharp sting on his lip, and then a curious numbness spread through his jaw.
“Ayyyym Ish atsh denchtich?” he said. He’d wanted to say, ‘Am I at the dentist’s?’ but the numbness in his mouth prevented him. His fog-hidden captor forced his jaw open.
“This will feel like you are drowning,” said the voice. It was male. Perfectly calm and devoid of emotion. “And that is because you will be. Do not panic.’
Don’t panic? If there was ever a situation to lose your head, this was it. If Jack could only move he’d be fighting like a wild animal. Instead, all he could do was to stare into the mist and try to steady his ever-increasing pulse.
Wait. Something was wrong here. Something was happening. With his face numbed, it was only when the feeling hit his throat that he knew what was going on.
His captor was pouring something into his mouth. He could taste it faintly on the back of his tongue. A gassy taste, almost like petrol. He wanted to cough and splutter, but his numbness wouldn’t let him.
There was more and more of it. It was clogging his throat. It must have been filling his mouth because he felt a shiver on his neck and chest as the liquid ran in a line down his skin. There must have been so much in his mouth that it was spilling out.
He was at full panic now. He wanted to cough, to shout, to vomit. Anything to get this liquid out of him.
A smell rose in the air. It was an overbearing aroma, like hot tar spread over a highway. The thought occurred that this would be the last thing he’d ever smell. Gasoline would be the last thing he tasted. The worst thing was, he couldn’t even struggle against it. All he could do was lay there in numbness.
He awoke on his feet, stood in the centre of a giant dome-shaped, decidedly fog-less tower. His first thought was to draw his dagger, but a transparent barrier around him limited his movements so much that he could barely blink.
He needed to be calm. Assess his situation. One thing was for sure; he had feeling in his arms and legs again. Okay, two things were for sure; he definitely hadn’t drowned, either. So, where was he?
He was stood in an atrium that stretched up so high that he could hardly see the roof. It was a tower comprised of hundreds of different levels. Each level was crammed with books and desks, with people hard at work behind them. There were so many old books that it smelled like a library. The dome was made of a yellow-ancient looking stone. Intricate carvings on it depicted various shapes that Jack couldn’t make sense of. In the centre, there was a circular patch of stone with runes surrounding it.
“This way, Lord Halberd,” said a voice.
A robed woman stood six feet away from him.
“Where am I?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Jack noticed now that everyone in the tower wore robes with loops attached to them. Once he noticed it, it was impossible to dismiss the sound of loops jingling all around him. They were tachers.
“Being kidnapped and ignored makes me anxious. And being anxious doesn’t put me in the best of moods. Where am I?”
He was answered with nothing but silence. The woman gestured to the centre of the rune-surrounded stone. “This way please, Lord Halberd.”
The force binding him seemed to lessen. Jack wasted no time in drawing his dagger, but it was immediately sucked out of his hand. It flew through the air before clanging against a rectangle of metal fastened to one of the stone walls. It must have been a magnet of some kind.
“You’ll get no answers here,” said the woman. “You must follow me.”
With no other option, he relented. When he stood in the centre of the runes, he heard the click of some kind of mechanism. The circle began to elevate, and Jack realized that it was a platform. Across from him was another platform. Three tachers were kneeled on it with tools in their hands, and they seemed to be trying to fix the mechanism.
The platform lifted him up through the tower, ascending through the different levels. On some, tachers received instruction in classes, while in others, lonely figures sat with piles of books surrounding them, turning pages quicker than any normal person could. He sometimes caught the faint sound of whispering. Even in the classrooms, it seemed the instructors kept a low volume. It was as if the silence here wasn’t allowed to be broken.
Soft light glowed from various lanterns that burned green and red. They must have powered by mana or alchemy. Despite that, he didn’t detect the burning aroma of mana. Instead, the further up he got, he started to smell flowers. He noticed plant-covered areas on some of the levels. They were filled with various colored flowers that gave off a pungent scent, like a greenhouse. Tachers walked amongst them, watering the flowers and taking clippings from their petals.
One tacher was pruning flowers that looked like bundles of rope piled in neat rows. One of them suddenly uncoiled up in front of him. It had vines dotted with thorns, and the way it swayed reminded Jack of a snake under the spell of a charmer. It lashed out at the tacher, making a sound like the crack of a whip. The tacher deftly moved to the side. She sprayed it with a red liquid, and the flower flopped down.
“Is this Tacher Halls?” asked Jack.
The tacher sharing his platform wouldn’t even look at him. “What do you think?” she said.
The further up he got, the grander the building became. The carvings in the stone were joined by gleaming jewels. He elevated beyond a level full of memory crystals. Dim mana torches cast light on their edges and made them blink.
The platform finally shuddered to a halt, and the clank of its mechanism was silenced. He was on the top floor of the tower. The ground was so far below him that when he leaned over the bannister, he felt a lurch of vertigo.
“Feyen is this way,” said the woman.
She swept her arm and pointed at a single arched doorway on the top level. Inside t
he arch, the hazy glow of mana lanterns cast light on a dark-stone room.
“He is waiting,” she said.
Jack left the platform and walked toward the arch. When he passed through it, he caught his first glimpse of Feyen Fjor II, the High Tacher of the halls.
The first thing he noticed was that Feyen was covered in a black oil all over his head, face, arms and chest. It didn’t get any less strange from there. He had needles stuck in him. Ignoring Jack, Feyen removed the needles one by one without the slightest hint of pain. He threw them in a blood-stained bucket.
If that wasn’t confusing enough, Feyen was half-naked. He had a lean body, and he was slightly muscled. He certainly looked nowhere near his age, which Elena had told him was more than five hundred years. Jack knew that the Tachers lived for a long time, but surely nobody could look this good for their age? Maybe the oil and needles had something to do with it.