by Rowe, Andrew
He did not expect them to be wrong about the species being eradicated, however.
Was this just a single remnant, the last of a defeated race? It was possible – but it seemed infinitely more likely that there was a darker explanation. The city of Orlyn was once a Xixian city – could some of the empire have survived here? Were they working in secret somehow?
Taelien turned around and touched the door again.
Close, he told it. The door reverted to its previous state.
He needed time to think.
Aside from the Esharen, the tables, and the runes, the room appeared to be completely bare. Not even a chair – the torturer must like to stand. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all the same nondescript grey stone. Taelien saw no other entrances or exits, nor any obvious traps.
He had to have answers.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped away from the door to get a closer look at the Xixian. It still did not respond to his presence, but he kept himself outside of the boundary of the runic pattern, not knowing if the Esharen was faking unconsciousness or what the functions of the runes were.
As he approached, he noted that the Esharen’s breathing was rough, wheezing, like a man with a damaged lung. Its blackened scales were marred with cracks, especially along its chest and neck. A single large pattern of damage showed at the back of the creature’s head. Though he knew little about Esharen physiology, the patterns were fairly obvious – the creature had been smashed with some kind of heavy bludgeoning object. If the tales were true, no ordinary weapon could pierce an Esharen’s scales – but perhaps a heavy enough weapon could crack it. There was no blood near the apparent injuries; just a dry white powder of some kind.
He walked to the table next, inspecting the implements laid out there. The blades of each of each of the cutting implements looked clean, but he noted a scalpel that appeared to be bent out of shape. Touching the metal handle, he extended his senses into it. He felt the flaws that had formed near the blade, where the surface had been distorted by jarring force. Someone tried to jam this into the Esharen, but it bent against the creature’s scales, he deduced.
In a moment of obsessive neatness, he bent the object back into its proper shape and set it back down. He went down the line of objects until he found the likely culprit for the Esharen’s missing scales – a medium-sized hammer with a pick on the opposite side of the hammer head. Scratches on the hammer head confirmed that it had been used, but there was no sign of the white powder he had noticed on the Esharen’s body on the surface of the metal. It’s been cleaned, he considered. If that white powder is dried Esharen blood, perhaps they’re testing its alchemical properties in one of these vials. Or maybe the powder is some kind of poison, and they’re applying it to the Esharen to keep it weak.
Setting the hammer back down, Taelien took a cautious step toward the Esharen. A quick glance at the floor told him that the runes – much like the ones on the wall – were indecipherable to him. This was intriguing, since he could read and write in both Velthryn and Liadran, and he could recognize several other languages, including Xixian. This was nothing he could remember seeing before – except in one place.
The runes on the blade of his weapon.
In moments, he picked out two of the seven symbols on his sword. He did not find any of the others, but the ones he found were identical to his sword’s markings. No scholar or sorcerer he had met could tell him what the origin of those runes were – merely that they represented the gods of the Tae’osian faith.
If these symbols represent gods, well, this Esharen is surrounded by an awful lot of gods.
If he had carried paper, Taelien would have taken the time to write down the symbols before doing anything else. He hadn’t, however, and this find was too significant to leave alone. If this room was some kind of holding cell, it was plausible the Rethri had already been held here and transferred elsewhere – and that the same could happen to the Esharen if he left.
Not only did he need to know what the Esharen knew, he could not justify leaving it to whatever fate awaited it at the hands of the sorcerers that bound it here. No creature, not even a creature of Xixis, deserves this.
“Esharen,” Taelien said, “Can you hear me?”
Jonan appeared at Taelien’s side an instant later. “What are you doing? Don’t talk to it!”
Taelien took a step back away from Jonan, startled by his sudden appearance, and put his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be investigating your box?” Taelien asked.
“An image of me is,” Jonan explained. “I never went in there. I was going to warn you that I was following you, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it without alerting the guards.”
“You changed the plan,” Taelien muttered bitterly. “Wait. How do I know who I am speaking to? Perhaps that Esharen is invading my mind.”
He glanced warily at the Esharen. Its eyes still appeared to be closed.
“Well, if I was the Esharen, I’d probably want you to free me. I, Jonan, want you to get out of this room. Right now,” Jonan replied.
“We can’t just leave him here,” Taelien said, glancing back at the Esharen. “Whoever captured those Rethri probably took him prisoner, too.”
Jonan shook his head, reaching into a coat pocket and removing a mirror. Taelien glanced at the mirror dubiously. “You’re not going to leave that here, are you?”
“No need,” Jonan said, waving the mirror around for a moment and then putting it back in his coat. He removed a second mirror, held it up to reflect the image of the Esharen, and then tapped the surface of the glass. Looking satisfied, he put that mirror away as well.
Taelien took a step closer to Jonan, gritting his teeth. “You are beginning to try my patience, ‘Jonan’. Explain yourself.”
Jonan took a step back, a look of surprise crossing his face. “Um, hold, there’s no need to be aggressive,” he said, backing away further. “Look, I can use the mirrors to send images to other mirrors, like I explained before. If I leave one here, that’s the best, since I can watch it constantly. I just cast a spell to send an image of what the mirror saw – just an image – back to another mirror I have. So we can study these runes later.”
Taelien nodded, but his jaw was still set tightly. “For the future, I would appreciate it if you disclose your plans to me further in advance.” After a moment, he waved his left hand toward the Esharen. “Accurate plans.”
“I didn’t know this thing was here, I mean that,” Jonan said.
Taelien nodded. “But you told me you’d be in your vault. You followed me instead.”
“And you were supposed to take a look and leave, not talk to the – nevermind. We don’t have time for this,” Jonan said.
“You’re right,” Taelien said. He ducked down, grabbing the hilt of his sword and scraping the metal-lined scabbard across a line of the glowing runes on the floor. The runes sparked as the metal impacted against their surface, and then faded out. “We will use our time to get answers.”
Jonan’s eyes widened and he stumbled back several steps, running into the stone wall of the room. “No, no, you didn’t,” he stammered.
The Esharen’s eyes fluttered open, revealing yellow irises with thick red pupils. Aside from that, it made no obvious movements.
Taelien walked back to the metal door and hovered a hand near it. “I’m opening the door. Leave, and I’ll follow you when I am done here.”
Jonan rushed to the door. “We both need to leave. Please. These things can kill entire squads of soldiers by themselves,” Jonan pleaded, putting a hand on Taelien’s arm.
“Stand outside, then, and be ready to make me invisible as soon as I step out. I may have the Esharen with me, if he’s cooperative.”
Taelien pressed his palm against the door. Open.
“You’re insane,” Jonan whispered, slipping outside.
Close.
The door slammed shut, and
Taelien turned to see the Esharen’s torso directly in front of his face.
The creature’s hand – more accurately a claw – was around his neck before he had a chance to react. It lifted him off the floor with seemingly no effort, pressing him against the metal door.
“Ashavan kor de sahu mes,” the creature said, pressing him harder against the wall.
Taelien lifted his hands to grasp the creature’s arm, knowing his neck could not support his entire body’s weight. He didn’t understand a word the creature had said, which was unsurprising. He only knew a few words in Xixian. “Stop. Peace,” he said, trying to remember something relevant. When the pressure failed to ease, Taelien released his right hand and slammed his open palm into one of the damaged sections in the Esharen scales. He felt the scales cave further as his hand connected, pressing the stone-like plates into something softer beneath. The creature released him instantly, stumbling back a step, its hand reaching down to clutch at the injured area.
Taelien looked up toward the massive creature, seeing something that looked like disbelief in the Esharen’s eyes. The expression lasted only an instant before being replaced by fury, and with a growl, the creature swung its other claw straight at Taelien’s head.
He was ready this time, ducking beneath the swipe. A sharp whine erupted as the Esharen’s claws ripped into the metal of the door. Taelien slammed another palm into the other side of the creature’s chest and then sidestepped to the right, trying to avoid being boxed in against the wall.
The Esharen stepped back, surprising Taelien, and spoke again. “Your sorcery has failed you, human,” it spoke in deep, reverberating tone.
“No,” Taelien said, “Hold on, I just freed you. I am not working with your captors.”
The Esharen tilted its head to the side, bending its knees and assuming a catlike pose, its claws scraping against the ground. “Indeed?” It glanced back toward where it had been bound, coughing deeply for several moments before spitting a mouth full of white powder on the floor to its side. “And why would you help me?”
“It looked like you were being tortured,” Taelien stammered. The creature’s eyes narrowed at him, and Taelien took another step back. Wrong tactic. It doesn’t believe I’d do this for moral reasons. “I also wanted information. What are the runes that were binding you here? Who captured you?”
“Ah,” the creature said, nodding. “You share one of my enemies, and you think this makes you a friend.”
The Esharen pounced, and Taelien was forced to fall backward to avoid a swing at his chest. He kicked at its face with his left leg, but it grabbed his foot en route.
“You were mistaken,” the Esharen pulled him across the ground by his foot, bringing a claw down to disembowel him, but Taelien grabbed the creature’s arm with his left hand. The Esharen pushed downward, but Taelien held the huge arm in place. Remembering the creature’s difficulty with breathing, he slammed his right palm into a cracked section of the creature’s neck. It held tight this time, but began coughing even more fiercely than before.
“Please, I don’t want to hurt you,” Taelien pleaded. The Esharen released Taelien’s foot, swiping it claws up Taelien’s leg, tearing through pants and flesh. Taelien tried to roll away, but the claws dug deeply before he managed to tumble aside. He found himself on the floor a few feet away from where the creature was still coughing fiercely.
Taelien tried to push himself to his feet, favoring his wounded left leg, and fell back down almost instantly. The Esharen began to rise, finally seeming to recover from its coughing fit, and Taelien’s right hand went to his sword.
No, he told himself. I won’t kill a prisoner I failed to free.
The Esharen dove for him again, but Taelien reacted faster this time, rolling out of its path and smashing a closed fist into the damaged section at the back of the creature’s skull. Brittle fractions of scales caved beneath his fist and the Esharen crumpled, unmoving, to the floor.
Gods curse it. Still on the ground, Taelien unbuckled his belt and removed his sword and scabbard, using the sheathed weapon as a cane to push himself to his feet.
He took a moment to breathe and inspect his leg injury. Blood was flowing freely from where three of the Esharen’s claws had rent his skin, from the top of his left foot up to nearly his knee. He had nothing aside from clothing to bind it with, so he removed his coat and tore off a wide swath of his shirt, pressing it against the bleeding wounds. As he watched the blood seeping into the shirt, he noticed the rhythmic rising and falling in the chest of the unconscious Esharen next to him.
I’m going to regret this, he told himself, but he had already made his choice. He couldn’t stand the idea of leaving a torture victim behind to face certain death.
After staring at the creature for a moment, Taelien refastened his sword on his belt, took a deep breath, and bent down to the fallen creature. It was over seven feet tall, and its stony hide undoubtedly made it weigh several times more than a human of similar size. Gritting his teeth, Taelien wrapped his arms around the creature’s chest and lifted its body over his shoulders.
It was only a couple steps to the door, but the pain from each of them nearly sent him back to the floor. When he reached the door, he brushed up against it, unable to free up his hands to use them directly. Open, he told it, nearly falling through as the window opened in the metal to comply with his demand.
Jonan stood on the other side, an incredulous expression on his face. The sorcerer took a step back as Taelien lurched through the doorway, Esharen still atop his shoulders, and turned to nudge the metal with his skin and shut it tight.
The sight sorcerer down the hall, and then back to Taelien. “Put that back.”
Taelien shook his head, whispering. “No, we need to take him with us.”
Jonan tightened his jaw, raising a hand to cover his eyes. “How exactly do you plan to keep that thing – nevermind. We can’t talk here. Just follow me.”
Jonan made a gesture at him and the Esharen, and then turned to walk back toward the building’s entrance. Taelien hoped the gesture was refreshing whatever invisibility spell Jonan had used before. He didn’t know if his invisibility had ever worn off – perhaps the Esharen could have seen him through its unusual eyes – but it was the wrong time to ask Jonan about it.
The guard near the door was still reading a book when Jonan walked by. Each step took Taelien several times longer, and he was fairly confident he was leaving a trail of blood behind him, but he pushed himself on regardless. As he neared the exit, Taelien fell to his knees.
Resh. His injured leg had gone almost completely numb, but Jonan was there a moment later, wordlessly stepping in to help him lift the Esharen and stand once again.
With Jonan’s help, the climb up the stairs was almost tolerable. They were forced to pause when they discovered the door to the main entrance locked, and Taelien took the moment to adjust how he was carrying the Esharen. A couple minutes later, Taelien saw the pair of guards approaching. Jonan put a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for quiet and waved his other hand – revealing to Taelien what the guards must have been seeing all along.
A perfectly uninjured – and unarmed – Taelien, following behind a much less frustrated Jonan, trailing the pair of guards.
As the guards reached the door, Taelien shifted out of their way, gritting his teeth at the continued strain on his leg and back. When the door opened, Jonan surged through immediately, not waiting for his illusionary duplicate. Taelien followed suit, ducking awkwardly to shift the Esharen through the door. He nearly fell again, but managed to slip to the side instead, merely stumbling into the main room of the bank.
Jonan shifted his stance until he was nearly overlapping with his illusionary double, and then Taelien watched as the illusion faded.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Jonan said calmly to the guards.
“You have a nice day,” one of them said with some pretense at warmth, but with a slightly irritated tone.
And with that, Jonan led Taelien out of the building.
It only took a few more agonizing moments to slip around the side of the structure and find an area with no civilians visible.
“Let me look at that,” Jonan said, kneeling by Taelien’s leg. “Resh it, that’s bad. You need to -,” he started looking up at the Esharen, “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“Help me carry him?” Taelien asked weakly, trying at a smile.
“Fine,” Jonan said, rolling his eyes. “You’re still insane.”
Chapter V – An Introduction to Sorcerous Theory
Lydia awoke in darkness. She rubbed blearily at her eyes, waiting several moments before rising to find her discarded glasses.
Seems I slept a while, she mused, stumbling toward her wall. A brush of her hands displaced the heavy drapes concealing her window, bringing the shimmering light of the nightfrost into her chambers. Even that scant light was enough to force her to blink for several moments as she mumbled to herself and found her way to her closet.
The nightfrost’s presence signaled the temporary dominance of the dominion of ice over the dominion of heat – two of the many opposing dominions that influenced the world. While earlier cultures had associated the dawnfire and nightfrost with living entities, modern sorcerers thought them to be inanimate satellites that circled the world. The methods of their creation – and their ultimate purpose – were broadly debated.
After precisely zero moments of deliberation, Lydia picked out the first tunic and pants she came across, setting them out on her bed. She didn’t have any formal meetings on the agenda, so she didn’t need to wear her robes of office – at least for the moment. Eating was currently much higher on her list of priorities.
Dressing herself in what turned out to be a white tunic and dark brown pants, Lydia belted on her saber and lazily grabbed three silver pins to set on her collar. The pins were typically worn with her robes, but strictly speaking she could wear them with any outfit to identify her rank. At the moment, she didn’t foresee needing them, but it helped her feel ready to challenge the world.