by R. E. Fisher
The two leather-clad men began kicking him until the man in the chain mail stopped them. His sharp green eyes looked at Dmitri and then down at his leg with the plastic splint. The man knelt next to him, observing the pain on his face; he said something in a language Dmitri didn’t recognize, so he simply looked back at him. The warrior put his fists together with his thumbs touching and made a downward breaking motion. He then silently pointed at Dmitri’s plastic-covered leg, a questioning look on his face. Dmitri nodded, understanding showing in his captor’s eyes. The warrior said something to the other two men, and they picked Dmitri up and sat him in a saddle on one of the mules. One of the black-clad warriors took his silver survival blanket and formed a triangle with it. He put the broad end below Dmitri’s leg and lifted it, then tied the corners of the blanket around Dmitri’s own belt. He failed to understand the reason for this until the mules started moving forward. He realized that the weight of his leg would have created more pain than he could stand had it hung over the side of the mule.
It was difficult—but not impossible—to stay atop the mule with his hands tied and only one foot in a stirrup. If they didn’t break into a trot, he would be all right. He watched the members of his newly formed troupe as they traveled toward the mountains. The heat didn’t bother any of the men as much as he thought it would have. Another remarkable thing to Dmitri was that the chain mail armor the blonde man wore failed to make a single sound as he walked or rode. He wondered how that could be. He also wondered who had captured him; it wasn’t the military. They looked more like those peasants that ran around re-enacting the middle ages at renaissance festivals. He had gone to one of them while he was in college, but these people seemed to carry it to the extreme. They were at least sixty kilometers from the mountain range. What would they be doing so far out in the desert—in costume? Had they seen his out-of-control plane? They rode further along; after many hours, they arrived in a small village at the base of the mountain range.
All the people in the village scattered as they entered and stopped at a watering trough, allowing the animals to drink. The soldiers got off their mounts, stretched their legs, and filled their water skins from a well. The man in the chain mail handed him a water skin. Dmitri drank deeply, not caring that the water tasted stagnant. He looked around the village, noticing each of its dull brown, sunbaked buildings made from mud. There were less than one hundred people occupying the village, he figured. As he watched the few people who stayed visible while he and his captors continued through the village, he almost fell off the mule as he saw a pig-like creature standing well over two and a half meters tall. It was a bulky, muscular figure with curved tusks extending from below its snout. Dmitri watched it as it moved around the corner of a building. He now knew he had fallen into a state of complete delirium. He leaned forward to try and get another glimpse of the creature, resulting in an excruciating fall onto his already broken leg. He passed out from the pain.
The two soldiers looked to their captain with questions in their eyes.
“Tie him to the mule and let’s get going. Eod expects us by dusk tomorrow.”
They tied him to the saddle of the mule, climbed atop their own less-than-regal steeds, and rode from the village. No one in the village wished them a safe journey; however, the people did feel a little sympathy for the strangely dressed prisoner.
* * *
“Can I make a suggestion, you big ox?” Gnack asked, looking up at Laz.
“Now what, you munchkin?”
“Could you make a little less noise as we travel? There are elves about, and they are protective of their forests.”
“Elves? You mean little pointy-eared fairies wearing leaves and flowers for clothes?”
“Yeah, right. Just remember what I said as you float off to your just rewards and see the arrows sticking from your body, and you finally realize you’re either dead or dying because those huge, fat ears on the sides of your head didn’t hear them as they killed you.”
“There’s some imagery,” Ollie stated.
“Ollie, I realize my brother isn’t the subtlest of creatures, but he does have a point. The elves that live in this forest care little for humans. They barely tolerate any other elvish race as it is. Finding two humans within the boundaries of their land would most likely result in your deaths.”
“How long until we’re out of their land?”
“Tomorrow afternoon sometime, if we maintain our pace.”
“There’s something I haven’t been able to figure out.”
“And what would that be?”
“Why are you helping us? I mean, we could have wandered around until we figured it out, right?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Odds are, you two would be dead inside one, two weeks at the most.”
“There’s a warm and fuzzy.”
Gnick looked at him quizzically. “To answer your question, not all of us would see humans dead. As far as I’m concerned, most life is sacred. But most of the time, my brother and I don’t look at it in such a noble light; most of the time, we’re bored,” he finished with a warm smile.
“Thanks; at least it’s honest,” Ollie replied.
“What’s a ‘warm and fuzzy’?”
“Do you guys have a mother?”
“Are you trying to make us angry? Of course, we have a mother! The sweetest, most wonderful woman who ever lived in a hollow tree!”
“OK; when you think of her, what do you feel? Do you miss her, and feel nothing but good?”
“Yeah, I do. That feeling is a ‘warm and fuzzy’?”
“You got it,” Ollie said, smiling.
“So how did my saying you and Laz wouldn’t last long give you a... oh...sarcasm. I’ll have to remember that,” Gnick said, smiling back.
Ollie looked back at the other two, who were still arguing with one another. He looked back down to his traveling companion and asked, “How long does this spell of yours work?”
“We’re using an awful lot of our low-level magic maintaining the spell. It’s easier to maintain a spell than to recast it, but if we need to use our magic elsewhere, the spell will be broken and it may be awhile before we can cast it again.”
“So, if something happens, we follow you?”
“Yes. And should something worse happen, you should look for Dumas the Bear. I think he’s from your world, or at least he knows someone who was. He also runs a fighter school, training the king’s city guard and the assorted freemen. If you want to learn to fight as a trade, he’s the best.”
As Gnack grew quiet after answering Ollie’s question, he heard his brother ask, “You can read?”
“Most Americans can read, but the numbers dwindle each year. Some of my fellow citizens don’t place a high priority on it.”
“That’s amazing! About the only people who can read and write here are nobles. Well, and those who dabble in the arcane, the clerics, and, of course, the elves.”
“I wish we had some parchment; you could write down how to get to Noli Deron.”
Ollie stopped and pulled a pen and notebook from his flight pack. “Ready anytime you are.”
Both Gnick and Gnack stopped in their tracks looking at the notebook Ollie held. Gnick looked at Ollie. “May I?” he asked, taking the pad in his hands and riffling through the blank sheets of paper.
“Do you realize you have a fortune here? You can get a least five gold pieces for each blank sheet of this parchment. He looked closer at the paper. “There are even lines on it to keep the writing straight. Amazing.” He paused for a moment and pointed to the light-blue symbol at the top of each page. “What’s this?”
Ollie looked at the watermark of the Air Force logo at the top of the page. “It’s a symbol of our military. Like a coat of arms, but for the Air Force.”
“An eagle with its claws outstretched—a good symbol. Strong and intelligent. I like it.”
“Would you like to see our lands? I’ve got a map.” Ollie reached into the pack again
and pulled out a folded map of North America. Kneeling, he spread the map out over the ground.
Gnick and Gnack knelt next to the map and shook their heads as they looked at it. Gnack noticed that there were various nations, each of a different color. He looked up at the men and said, “The different colors represent different lands. Which are your lands?”
Laz pointed to the northern and southern borders. “From here to there and to each ocean.”
They continued discussing both worlds as they traveled. They spoke of their societies, their technology, and their politics. The more the gnomes disclosed, the more Laz and Ollie wished they were home. As Laz and the brothers—mostly Gnick—argued about which was better, magic or technology, Ollie became lost in thoughts of his wife, his family, and how far from them he was. He determined if they could get into this world, there had to be a way out. He was going to get home to his wife and family.
Dmitri moved in and out of consciousness all throughout his journey. During one of his coherent periods, he awoke and found himself looking down over the edge of a precipice, which dropped over three hundred feet to the canyon floor. He saw that the hooves of the mule were less than a foot from the edge. He hadn’t ever been afraid of heights, but he had never been leaning over a canyon headfirst with his hands tied, either. The ropes were cutting down the circulation in his hands, causing a great deal of pain and discomfort. Unable to get to his morphine and unable to communicate the request to his captors, he shortly faded into a pain-induced unconsciousness once more.
He later awoke and found that he was lying next to a campfire while one of the black-clad figures was shaking him, holding out a piece of bread and a cheese of some sort. Realizing that they had untied him, he reached out and took the food. As he nibbled, the wound on his face reminded him that it was still there. He reached up to check and see if the bandage was still in place. Seeing as how he wasn’t going to get another, he took smaller, slower bites. His belongings were on the other side of the campfire, with one of the two of the men in black next to them always. He briefly had a chance to look upon his captors’ faces. The man in the chain mail had long, blond hair hanging well past his shoulders. He also wore a thin leather band around his forehead to keep his long hair from falling into his milky green eyes. A thin scar ran down from the top of one of his high cheekbones to his jawbone; it would have been called a dueling scar in earlier times. It gave his captor the look of a dangerous man. Dmitri figured it was what his own face would look like until he could get to a plastic surgeon. The leather jerkin the man wore under his chain mail was undecorated and sweat-stained. His goatee was short, and a line of white, dead hair grew at an angle from his bottom lip to the base of his goatee. Dmitri knew that the line of hair grew from a scar, as he had a few hairs grow in the same way out of a scar above his own eye. His companions consisted of two very muscular men. One was a tall, handsome black man with tribal scars on his face. His hair was long, past his shoulders, and braided into a ponytail. It was the color of the sands they had been traveling over, he noticed. Anger shone his in light green eyes. The other was a hulking brute with a thick forehead and no hair. His nose had been broken on more than one occasion, and looked as though it had never been set properly. One of his eye sockets had been sewn shut—and not very well, Dmitri noticed. His remaining eye was brown. Neither of them spoke to him.
He looked around and saw that they were in a shallow alcove high in the same mountains he had seen the day before, lying next to his crashed cockpit. Looking through the cave’s opening, he saw a moon, full and glowing an iridescent red. Surrounding the moon was a black ring, with no light or reflection escaping from its darkness. It was disturbing, but he felt connected to it somehow. He felt it impossible to withdraw his gaze from the darkened ring, as if it were trying to communicate with him. He wondered to himself if it was it a second moon.
The leader, Cousa Cali, nudged the black man and nodded toward their prisoner, who sat entranced, looking at the black dragon moon. Cousa picked up a small stone and threw it at Dmitri; the stone struck him on the side of the head, breaking his concentration. Cousa shook his head sideways and said something. The other two soldiers laughed aloud. The chain mail warrior tossed Dmitri a water skin, and he washed down the last of the cheese and dry unleavened bread. The broken-nosed warrior stood up and moved outside the cave as Cousa picked a piece of rope and stepped over the fire, ending up in front of Dmitri, who leaned forward while putting his arms behind his back. Cousa tied his hands and arms, but not uncomfortably so. He looked at his bag, wishing he could get a couple of the morphine tablets to ease the pain in his leg. He lay back, facing the cave opening and trying to gain a view of the moon, but it had moved upward. Only half of the moon was now visible. Though he was still drawn to it, it didn’t have the strength over him it had exhibited earlier. He watched as One Eye, as he had decided to call him, leaned against the cave opening, silhouetted by the amber light of the moon. His hand was on his sword as he stood watch over the group and their mounts outside. The others within the cave stretched out next to the fire and promptly fell asleep.
Dmitri slept fitfully and dreamed of a dark figure chasing him. As the cold air moved into the cave, the soldier on watch attempted to keep the fire up, but it was of little use to Dmitri. Infection had begun to set in while sitting in the desert heat. The constant movement combined with his lack of rest had increased the speed at which the infection moved outward from his wounds. A fever set in, and the delirium that he had begun to experience the day prior increased during the early morning hours. As the morning sun rose, his captors were unable to rouse him from his state. Looking at one another, they loaded their captive onto one of the mules and resumed their journey.
Chapter 9
“Care for those that have less than thyself, for thou could find thyself having less than they.”
(A.Ka., 2.2 - Book of Air, Tenets of Kazdeo, Chapter 2, Verse 2)
“‘Tis a long journey to the Guarded Isles, Mistress. All of it above the Bedrin Sea,” Telerex said above the sound of the wind.
“Well, we didn’t expect this to be easy, now, did we?” she asked, rubbing his neck.
Telerex turned and headed toward the Guarded Isles. Tetra always enjoyed time in the air with her friend. She was relishing the joy she was again getting to experience, and she realized that moments like that would be few in the coming weeks. She considered pulling the sword from the scabbard and examining it further, but the fear of dropping it into the sea and losing it forever deterred her from doing so.
She did wish she knew more about the world and all that was now in it. She also knew that she was dependent on Telerex to get her where she needed to go. Since she had never been anywhere, she was unable to open the dimensional doors she would normally use to travel. If she made a wrong move, she could step into a wall or appear above a deep canyon—or even materialize within the body of another, killing both.
As their flight took them toward the Guarded Isles, her thoughts turned to what she might say or how she could gain their cooperation, coming to no real conclusion. She had never interacted with the lesser races. She was unsure of how they might respond to her. The two spent much of the next two weeks in the air, occasionally landing on some small atoll or island—and only then just long enough to rest.
They drew closer to the Guarded Isle, where the Dragon Magi had their order and practiced their arts, in the early evening of the thirteenth day. As they neared the island, they could see the nine mages’ spires and the simple dwellings in which the other mages lived and trained. She could also sense the power that place held.
Telerex flew close enough to the towers to enable Tetra to see the layout, hoping she would remember it without his having to ask her to. They both looked at the main tower, which was sitting in the center of a large hexagon; it was joined with what appeared to be a confusing series of paths connecting them with one another. If you were patient, you could see that each point of the hexag
on where each of the outer towers had been built connected with the others, forming a large square with tens of triangles within.
Each of the eight outer towers rose more than a hundred feet into the air and were topped with parapets. Within the walls of the parapets, the stone had been painted with the sigil of each of the disciplines of magic.
The tower in the center stood half again taller than the outer towers, and it, too, was topped with a parapet rather than a roof. Tetra realized that if you flew above the center tower, the lines on the ground continued onto the stone of the parapet, each line connecting to a couple of squares drawn in gold and surrounding a painted sun with a multi-pointed compass over it.
“Impressive, is it not?” Telerex asked his rider.
“It is! I had no idea they could build such structures!” Tetra said.
“That center tower belongs to the Master of Towers. He is the mage in charge. The outer towers house the masters of the various magic disciplines that they have vast control over. The one painted as a lantern’s flame is the Tower of Divination. The yellow-and-black one that resembles the face of a bird is the Tower of the Dead, and that symbol represents the Blackwing; he’s the master of necromancy. I can’t remember the rest of them.”
“What’s a Blackwing?” Tetra asked, not remembering any of her brethren or sisters creating a beast with that name.
“It’s how they see death. A demon bird for the dwarves, a beautiful avian woman for the humans, and a giant raven for the elves. Each is different, but really, they are the same thing,” Telerex answered.
“What do you mean? They have a death magic?” Tetra asked.
“Not like you’re thinking. Their magic can kill, but they can raise the dead, speak with the dead, and sometimes give the dead an immortal existence in this realm—preventing them from going to their heaven or Asmordia. Whichever would be appropriate. They try to cheat death, too.”