The Legacy of the Ten: Book 01 - Eyes of the Keep

by Scott D. Muller

  Zedd’aki reached three minutes and tried to rouse his friend. Nothing happened. Zedd’aki yelled at him again, “Wake up you fool! I won’t have you dying on me.”

  Zedd’aki sent a shock through his body as he had been instructed. Nothing. Zedd’aki was getting desperate. He lifted his fist and gave a strong thump on Ja’tar’s chest.

  “Come on you old bastard,” Zedd’aki foamed, “Live!”

  He hit him again and was getting angrier by the second. He took a good swing at Ja’tar’s jaw and watched as his head snapped sideways.

  Ja’tar wasn’t aware of how much time had passed, nor did he hear Zedd’aki’s pleas. Men’ak began to dissolve.

  “Where are you going?” Ja’tar screamed.

  “It’s not me! It’s you,” Men’ak shouted as he watched Ja’tar fade into the gray cloud. In a flash, he was gone.

  Ja’tar’s heart started just as Zedd’aki took another swing at his already bruised jaw. He felt his eyes cross and saw stars. He coughed and sputtered.

  “Oh, thank the gods!” Zedd’aki exclaimed.

  Ja’tar rolled over to his side, “Were you trying to kill me?” He rubbed his chin and moved his jaw side-to-side.

  “You weren’t coming out of it. Over four minutes had passed. I was desperate!”

  “Well, I’m back!”

  Zedd’aki hit him in the shoulder.

  “What the hell was that for?” Ja’tar yelled.

  “That was for frightening the color out of me,” Zedd’aki said, as he gave Ja’tar a big shove.

  “I feel fine, thank you!” Ja’tar scowled. “Other than my broken jaw!”

  Zedd’aki turned to leave, “I’m going to dinner.”

  “Me too,” Ja’tar replied.

  “— Huh?”

  “You heard me. We’re going to dinner ….”

  And with that, the two men exited the apartment and made their way down toward the dining room.

  “Well, did you talk to him?”

  “I did —” Ja’tar nodded, not offering any additional information.

  “And?”

  “And what? We talked — I said, we needed to talk to Hagra and Shar’ran. I also told him that we needed more detailed information.”

  Zedd’aki prodded. “Anything else?”

  “Not that I recall. By the way, Men’ak looked fine, except he was naked.”

  “Naked? Why’d you have to tell me that?”

  “Like a new born babe …”

  Zedd’aki smiled, “That just doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I think you just ruined my dinner.”

  “I’m probably scarred for life you know!”

  Zedd’aki laughed. Ja’tar snorted as Zedd’aki poked him in the ribs.

  “The things I do for the Keep!”

  Men’ak abruptly sat up in bed. A bit disorientated, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he looked around the dark room, checking to see if Dra’kor had retired for the evening. The bed was empty, so he threw back the heavy blanket with a sigh and shivered as the cold air hit his warm skin.

  He ventured first one leg, then the other over the side and searched for his worn boots, using his feet shuffling over the jagged wood surface to find them, too lazy to light a glowing orb.

  He randomly patted the floor searching and eventually located them strewn about, one near the door and the other under the foot of the bed. He grunted as he slipped them on and left them untied.

  Still not fully awake, he staggered as he stood and grabbed his robe before making a grab at the door for the latch. He yanked the door hard, freeing it from the jamb where it always stuck. He took two steps, grabbed the railing and made his way downstairs, forgetting to duck and banging himself right between the eyes on the low hanging beam.

  “By the Ten,” he moaned as he grabbed his throbbing head. He stood still for a second, rubbing the sting out before ducking low and continuing his trip to the common room.

  Dra’kor heard the thump followed by the stairs creaking. He peered over his shoulder, “I didn’t expect to see you before morning. Are you hungry?”

  Men’ak continued down the stairs and stepped into the room. Dra’kor saw a worried look on D’Arron’s face, and turned around to face the stairs.

  “Are you okay?” D’Arron asked in a wobbly voice. “You’re as white as if you’ve just seen a ghost!”

  “Funny you should say that,” Men’ak replied frowning. “I bumped my head on the way down.”

  “I’m sorry. That beam’s a bit low. Here,” she said as she got up from her chair, “— you should sit down.

  “I just had a strange dream. We should talk,” Men’ak said, as he yawned and walked across the room.

  Dra’kor looked over at D’Arron, “Sure. We can talk for a while. We were just chit-chatting about the town ….”

  Men’ak scratched his head, “Uh, it’s a little private. I’m sorry, it’s just …”

  “That’s okay,” said D’Arron, lowering her eyes. “I understand.”

  She stood and spoke to Dra’kor, “I’ll go take care of some things in the kitchen. You can come get me when you’re through.”

  Dra’kor nodded.

  “I thought you were free of those dreams?” D’Arron said, grabbing Men’ak’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze ….

  “I did too, but this one was very disturbing. Apparently, I still don’t have a grip on things. I’m sorry to intrude ….”

  “Well, I’ll be in the kitchen if you boys need me!” she said as she hurried off.

  Men’ak smiled weakly as he watched her go. He called out, “It shouldn’t take long…”

  Men’ak waited as D’Arron exited the room through the kitchen door. He quickly sat down next to Dra’kor, leaned close and whispered, “I just had an unexpected visitor.”

  Dra’kor held his hands out toward the hearth to warm them, “Unexpected? How so?”

  Men’ak blurted, “I just talked to Ja’tar!”

  Dra’kor’s eyes popped wide open as his jaw dropped, “Ja’tar? How the — the mist land?”

  “He came to me in the mist world,” Men’ak said, in a hushed voice. “He just walked out of the fog like it was a completely normal thing to do. Eerie, I’m telling you!”

  “Damn the gods, he’s dead?” Dra’kor said, as he covered his eyes and pounded his head. “What else could possibly go wrong?”

  “Not exactly dead, dead! Apparently, he and Zedd’aki were using this as a way to contact us. He killed himself using magic. I just hope Zedd’aki can revive him.”

  Dra’kor shook his head in disbelief, “Why not send a messenger?”

  “I’ll get to that,” said Men’ak, with a heavy sigh. “I need to get this out and get it right. First, he said you were right, the Guild might be a farce, although he wasn’t clear on that.”

  Dra’kor was shocked, “He talked to you? Wait a second… he said I was right?”

  “Yeah he talked, but he only had a couple minutes. Apparently there is a quiescent time between when you die and when you can’t get back, so his time was limited.”

  Dra’kor hadn’t even heard a word of what Men’ak said, he was fixated, “What do you mean I was right?”

  “That’s what he said, exact quote.”

  Dra’kor furrowed his brow, “What else did he say?”

  “He said that he needed to get messages to Hagra and Shar’ran. We’re supposed to let them know that the Guild’s orders were a farce and that he needs them to visit the Keep or something like that.”

  “You can’t remember what he said?”

  “Well, not exactly. I thought I was dreaming at first, so I missed a couple things he was saying…”

  “How could you —?”

  “Hey!” Men’ak whined. “It’s not like I’ m used to a dead Keeper showing up in my dreams. I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

  “I suppose. Still …,” Dra’kor grunted. “Who’s this Shar’ran?”

  Men’ak threw up his arms,
“I don’t know, but I think Hagra knows him.”

  “Damn! I guess we’ll need to talk to her about this. Did Ja’tar have any other messages for us?”

  Men’ak nodded, “Actually, he said quite a bit for only a couple minutes. He told me to just shut up and listen. You know how the old man can be?”

  Dra’kor rolled his eyes, “And?”

  Men’ak snapped his fingers, “Oh, and he said he needs a lot more detail on the world and the old magic. He said that the entire Keep has been under some kind of glamour spell for the past twelve hundred years. Can you believe it?”

  Dra’kor thought about what Men’ak had just said for a couple seconds, “By the Ten! That would explain a lot of things.”

  “Well, it explains why we’ve never seen anyone from the Guild, but it leaves a lot of questions as to where all those travelers we sent to the City actually went.”

  Dra’kor nodded as he swore under his breath, “Bloody dragons! I wonder if they are still alive?”

  Men’ak’s voice got very small, “He was really upset. Dra’kor, it was so weird seeing him in the mist. It means he had to die to meet me there. Something must be horribly wrong for him to go and risk his life like this.”

  “I agree. So he said I was right?” Dra’kor sat back in the chair and stared at the fire.

  “Can you forget about being right for a second. This is serious!”

  “But it means something. Hmm, I wonder if that means that part of the spell must have been to keep us in the Keep and away from the realms? But why?”

  Men’ak shrugged, “I have no idea. What if that’s not what he meant?”

  “What else could it be?” Dra’kor shrugged.

  Men’ak just stared back blankly.

  “What do we do next?

  “I think you should send him a long note about what you are learning and what we are doing. I suppose any information is better than none,” Men’ak said, answering.

  Dra’kor’s head shot up, “What do you think he is going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine that he and Zedd’aki will try to figure out who is doing this, and what it all means.”

  Dra’kor’s face got serious, “Was he planning on meeting you again in the death land?”

  Men’ak rolled a shoulder, “He didn’t say. He was yanked back before we got that far. Like I said, we only talked for a couple of minutes.”

  “Maybe we should ask Hagra about it. She might know more detail on what the deathwalker can do and such. Maybe you can find a different way to talk to him, in his dreams — maybe? We could send instructions in the letters.”

  “Talking about the letters, I think you should tell him about the skree, the spells on the land, everything.” Men’ak nodded emphatically.

  Dra’kor shook his head in disbelief, “So it turns out that Ja’tar wasn’t the problem. If the entire Keep has been misguided for centuries, I wonder what has really been going on? I bet Ja’tar feels horrible. He takes all this stuff personally you know.”

  “Who can say, but it sounds like we are going to get a chance to set things right.”

  Dra’kor threw his head back and stared at the ceiling, “I wonder who is behind this. Did Ja’tar have any ideas?”

  “None, at least, none that he spoke of,” Men’ak replied

  “How did he find out?” Dra’kor queried.

  Men’ak got a confused look on his face. “Find out what?”

  Dra’kor sighed, “Find out that we’ve been duped?”

  “Apparently Zedd’aki remembered Hagra and he didn’t. That set them off to investigating. That along with what they found when they researched spellcaster and deathwalker led them to believe things were not as they appeared. So he said he asked Shar’ran about his new baby daughter, Sheila, and his younger son, Dra’kor. “

  Dra’kor chuckled, “I assume the Shar’ran hadn’t a clue…”

  “Knew enough I guess, knew Sheila wasn’t his youngest and knew you weren’t his son. Other than that, didn’t even blink, said thank you and that everything was adjusting fine.”

  Dra’kor cracked a smile, “Anything else?”

  “Oh, one other thing. Apparently, the Ten didn’t perish at Ror. They found some old document that everyone signed at the end of the battle. It was wrapped up in the Room of Records. I guess nobody knows what happened to them.”

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “That’s what I thought. So I have a question, why can’t they remember signing the document, or even being there?”

  “You’d have to possess strong magic to glamour the entire Keep, especially if you glamour each person with a different story.”

  “That eliminates most of the magi I know,” said Men’ak.

  “Agreed! It also would take someone who has a wealth of knowledge about our lives.”

  “I wonder if the glamour is as strong for everyone else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, most of us are not involved in Keep business, so it seems to me that only the people at the top would need to be charmed. Besides, we weren’t around for Ror, so that eliminates a whole bunch of stuff we wouldn’t have to forget, and we never learned the old magic!”

  “That makes sense. We pretty much do what is expected, they give us the rules and direction.”

  “But why —?”

  Men’ak shrugged.

  “Following your last thought, I guess if they took care of Zedd’aki, Ja’tar, Rua’tor, the Floormaster, and Qu’entza, they’d have most everyone who has Guild responsibilities.”

  “That’s now. Back in the day, we had more wizards about. There were at least another five or six that worked with Ja’tar back then.”

  “That’s still a fair amount of work.”

  “It is!” Dra’kor said, “— and to pull it all off at the same time?”

  Men’ak whistled, “Impossible!”

  “Apparently not!”

  I Was a God

  After diner, Ja’tar excused himself and went up to his room. He was satisfied with how his meeting with Men’ak had gone and now he had to focus on another puzzle piece. He needed to know if Dra’kor was right about the magic. If indeed, what they called magic in the Keep was not ‘real’ magic, as Dra’kor had said, he needed to find out where the real magic went.

  He also realized that he needed a way to rid himself of the glamour that he believed encompassed the Keep and its grounds. This was going to be relatively easy as he saw it, all he needed to do was get far enough away that the glamour couldn’t affect him anymore.

  But there was the Guild.

  He would suffer greatly if he did something that required them to formally reprimand him. Zedd’aki was right; they were sticklers for the law, and merciless, and would make an example out of him if he directly disobeyed them. He didn’t see that he had too many choices here. He could either follow what the Guild said, and let the world spiral into chaos or follow his gut and take action. If the world was being systematically attacked by demons or worse yet, a dark mage, the Keep would eventually be pulled into the fray.

  Ja’tar groaned to himself. If he waited, it might be too late to turn things around.

  He didn’t imagine he’d have to wander more than a league or so before he would be able to tell if his assumption was right. More than that, he wished to visit the area where he and To’paz had spent happier times. He thought that it would be a good place to craft a memorial to her.

  Ja’tar looked over at the small box of items he had removed from her old room. They weren’t much, but they were all she had in the world. Ja’tar choked back a tear.

  Maybe he could use the building of her memorial as an excuse to get out of the Keep. He could rightly claim that he was overcome with sorrow and guilt at not having spent enough time with her. It was closer to the truth than it was a lie.

  He figured that since he was the Keeper, and he was kept from travel from the keep, there was no reason to imagine that the spells, if the
y really existed, would extend too far down the mountain. His first task this night would be to discover that limit.

  The second task he had in mind would be more difficult. He needed a way to break contact with the Zylliac. He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to accomplish that task, since the Zylliac had rule over the realms.

  He pulled open the drawer of his desk and pulled out a small box. The ornate container had no clasp, and opened easily. Ja’tar stared down at the old brass medallion as he pushed it around with his finger. It seemed rather unremarkable for having such a high value. He grabbed it by the chain and draped it over his head. He didn’t feel any different, but again, that was the point. He closed the box, returned it to its resting place, and shut the drawer. He packed a bag, his journal and stepped out the door. It was well past midnight, but he still felt nervous about being caught. It was silly of course. Nobody ever questioned what the Keeper did. Nonetheless, he felt like a young child sneaking out after bedtime.

  At the last second, he remembered a gift he had received from Shar’ran when To’paz was a toddler and was having night terrors of the Zylliac. Shar’ran had given him a hand-sized statue and told him to remove the protective cloth and set it next to her bed, it would rid her of the bad dreams.

  He told him they used it for the elves who were going through the Rash’al’shanna, a discovery of their ancestors where a great horn called the shofar, carved from the woolly Shola beast was blown to welcome their ancestors back from the dead. In this way, the young elfling learned of his family and his heritage. It soothed the mind by separating it from contact with the dreams.

  e said that they used it for elves when they went through the He quickly made his way to an enclosed storage room below his apartments where they kept mementos and souvenirs from the past. He found the delicate figurine and its shielding cloth. He tucked it into his pocket and scurried away.

  He made his way to the side entrance, which led to the small courtyard and let himself out. He followed the wall until the courtyard dumped down a tight covered alley and exited to the main Keep. The rest would be easy. He knew how to open the main gate and to dispel the protections that guarded the Keep at night.