“No one forced Arthur to join my band,” Klye shot back. “But if you want to talk about allying with shady characters, let me remind you who had been following the orders of a goblin prince up until a few weeks ago.”
Petton tensed, and Stannel held up a hand. “That is enough, gentlemen. We haven’t the time for bickering.”
“Arthur is from Hylan,” Horcalus said softly. “From what I gathered, he had never been away from home until he went to Port Town. He knew the island no better than we Superians did. I’m not even sure he would be able to find his way back to Hylan from here.
“But as you both know, our band stayed at the Port of Stone for a short time before…well…coming here. Arthur might have returned there…if he had a choice.”
“Port Stone,” Petton muttered. “It is the nearest refuge. Some of the buildings still stand. It would be the obvious place to begin our search.”
“Very good,” Stannel said to Petton. “I shall lead a small party on horseback to Port Stone. You will continue investigating here. I am eager to learn how four of our guests managed to leave the fortress without being seen by our vigilant sentries.”
Petton hesitated for moment before saying, “With all due respect, Commander, this matter does not necessitate your personal involvement. Let us not forget there is a goblin army out there. If something should happen to you…”
The lieutenant trailed off, leaving Stannel to consider the implications. Whatever Petton’s motivation for trying to talk him out of going, he could not refute the lieutenant’s logic. He had not forgotten—could not forget—that the attack on the original Fort Valor had occurred while he was away.
What if the goblins mounted an offensive while he was gone?
Stannel took a deep breath to clear his mind and banish all doubt. If this mystery with Arthur and the others was to be resolved without worsening relations between the Knights and Renegades, it needed to be handled delicately. And there was nothing remotely diplomatic about how the lieutenant interacted with the Renegades.
While he wanted to believe that Petton’s professionalism and honor held more sway than his personal prejudices did, Stannel could not risk sending Petton—or anyone else—to fetch the truant rebel.
“I will take two with me,” Stannel announced. “Sir Horcalus, would you please accompany me?”
Horcalus looked shocked, but no more so than Gaelor Petton. The lieutenant looked as though he were in a great struggle to govern his tongue.
“The honor would be mine,” Horcalus answered.
Stannel turned to Klye. “Were you in better shape, I would ask you to join us as well. I am a perfect stranger to the boy, and I should think Arthur would welcome a familiar face or two, whatever the circumstances. That being said, do you think the fellow in the black hood would be willing to come along?”
“You cannot be serious!” Petton shouted, but then, as though remembering himself, he added a hurried, “Commander.”
Stannel regarded him patiently.
“What makes you think they won’t stab you in the back and join their companion the moment the fort is out of sight?” Petton demanded.
“Faith.”
Gaelor Petton crossed his arms but didn’t argue further.
“I would like to come too.”
Stannel glanced behind him to find Sister Aric standing in the doorway.
“Two of the missing people are my patients,” she said. “I pray you won’t need my services, but we should be prepared for the worst.”
He might have tried to dissuade her. As the only healer at new Fort Valor, Aric was in some ways even more valuable than he. Taking in her determined expression, Stannel knew she would not soon forgive him if he ordered her to stay behind. But that wasn’t the reason he granted her his permission…
As he left the infirmary, with Aric and Horcalus following close behind, he gave Petton a curt nod. He knew his lieutenant was unhappy with his decisions, but Stannel would not allow others’ opinions to distract him.
For good or for ill, he would abide by his own wisdom, trusting that the Great Protector would take care of the rest.
* * *
She has many questions she wants to ask, but she won’t bother Toemis.
He is angry about something. Why else would have hit that man with his knife? She thinks maybe Toemis is still angry at the thief for trying to rob them before. Toemis used to be a quiet and gentle man, but he isn’t anymore.
She and Toemis left home in a great hurry, and now they are leaving in a hurry again.
She is surprised when the castle wall opens up like a door. When they come out of the castle, it is dark outside, but she isn’t afraid of the dark. Larissa used to worry she would be afraid of the dark because Julian told her scary stories about ghosts and goblins.
In a way, Larissa had been right. She had seen monsters at night, but they were never scary or mean. Sometimes they even talked to her.
She and Toemis walk for a long, long time. She can’t remember stopping, but they must have because Toemis is waking her up. They are in a town, but it is not really a town. Many of the houses are falling apart. She thinks maybe she sleepwalked to the town.
When she sleepwalks, she never remembers how she got where she is.
Without eating any breakfast, Toemis takes her hand, and they start walking again. Now they are going uphill. The ground is very hard. Toemis is walking so fast she falls. He drags her back to her feet and keeps going.
She tries to listen to what Toemis is saying, but he is mumbling. She hears the name Julia a lot, but she doesn’t know a Julia. She thinks he must mean Julian, but Julian is dead. He was killed by wolves.
When Toemis stops, they have already climbed a good way up the mountain. Even though the sun is up, the air is colder up there, and it’s harder to breathe. She wants to sit on the ground to give her legs a rest, but since Toemis does not sit, she won’t. He looks down at her, and for the first time since leaving the empty town, he speaks to her.
“I am sorry about this, Zusha,” he says, “but it has to be this way.”
She thinks he is apologizing for making her walk so far in the cold. She doesn’t say anything back to him. She is used to keeping quiet. She has never liked to talk much. Larissa called her a “quiet child.” But Larissa is dead too. She was killed by people.
“I had wanted to reach the top of the mountain,” Toemis says. “That’s where the curse began…”
She watches the steam flow from Toemis’s mouth as he talks. It reminds her of when Toemis smoked his pipe back home. But when Toemis used to smoke, he never talked. Larissa told her that she and Toemis were two of a kind because they were both so quiet most of the time.
“I should have died that day. We both should have. But today, I will finish it. Today, it will all end…gods forgive me!”
The way Toemis is talking makes her feel uncomfortable. When she sees Toemis is holding his knife again, she starts to worry even more. She thinks maybe Toemis is going to kill himself. Maybe he is apologizing because he’s sorry to leave her all alone in the world.
“No,” she whispers. She wants to run at him and grab the knife away from him, but then Toemis takes a step toward her.
“You were never meant to be born because your father should never have been born. You are both of my blood. You both carry the curse.”
Toemis is inching nearer as he talks. She can’t take her eyes off of the knife.
“In order to end the curse, you and I must die. I have to take you with me!”
Toemis lunges at her. She tries to jump out of the way, but Toemis’s free hand grabs her by the shoulder. His fingers are even colder than the air. His grip is so tight it hurts. She pulls away, but even though Toemis is an old man, he is still very strong.
Her eyes are blurry with tears. Toemis’s eyes are clear and dark as ink.
“Please don’t struggle, granddaughter. You’ll only make it worse.”
But she doesn’t ob
ey him. She pulls and pulls with all of her might. She can’t get away from him, though. She is looking at the knife again, which is slowly coming closer.
A glint of sunlight reflects off the tip of the knife, and then all she can see is white. Her body starts to tremble, and her skin tingles as though hundreds of tiny ants are crawling all over her. She shakes so much that the ground beneath her starts to shake too.
She hears a little girl shouting. The voice sounds familiar, but she can’t understand the meaning of the words. Then, as suddenly as it left, her sight returns. She sees an old man standing before her, holding a knife. He draws back with a terrified expression. She realizes she is free from his clutches, but at the same time, she can’t figure out who the old man is or why he was holding her to begin with.
She turns away from the old man and forgets about him as soon as he is out of sight. Aimlessly, she places one foot before the other, walking for the sake of walking. Without giving a thought to where she is going, she ascends the mountain.
* * *
Ruben burst out of the inn, nearly tripping over the hem of his robe in the process. The sun was well above the eastern horizon, shedding its light on the ruined town. How could he have overslept? Gods above, what time was it anyway?
Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Ruben glanced down one end of the road and then the other. There was no sign of Toemis or his granddaughter.
“It’s hopeless!” Ruben lamented, kicking at the dusty ground. “They could be a hundred miles from here!”
Arthur joined him outside, but Ruben couldn’t look the boy in the eyes. Not only had he failed the quest, but he had failed Arthur as well. The boy had stepped blindly through a secret passageway and wandered the countryside in the middle of the night on the presupposition that he, Ruben, would lead them to their quarry.
What are we to do now? he wondered. If we go back to the fort empty-handed, they’ll throw us in the dungeon for sure!
Fixing his gaze heavenward, Ruben found himself looking up at the wide mountain looming over Port Stone. He shivered then, though he couldn’t say why. It felt as though someone was looking at him, as though the mountain itself were staring him down.
“You don’t suppose the old man just wanted to give mountain climbing a try, do you?”
Arthur’s reaction to the facetious question frightened Ruben more than anything they had encountered since leaving the fort. The boy’s face drained of all color, and his eyelids opened so wide Ruben feared his eyeballs would pop out of their sockets. Taking a series of small steps away from the mountain, Arthur struggled to get any words out of his gaping mouth.
“We can’t go up there, Ruben. That’s Wizard’s Mountain…and I’ve met the wizard. His name is Albert Simplington, and he told us that if anyone ever trespassed on his mountain, he’d kill them and then hunt me down and do terrible things before killing me!”
Ruben might have thought Arthur was pulling his leg, except no player could have so perfectly affected that look of sheer terror. “Slow down, Arthur. What exactly are you saying?”
“That wizard was why we left Port Stone to find a new hideout,” Arthur said. “He could’ve killed us all if he wanted to, but he didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought we would keep people away from his mountain. Scout said there’s a treasure or something hidden up there—”
“A treasure?” Ruben interrupted. “That has to be what Toemis is after!”
Arthur was already shaking his head. “No no no…”
“Come on, Arthur!” Ruben pleaded. “It’s the only chance we have. If Toemis did spend the night here, he has a big head start on us. Somehow I know he went up there. I can feel it.”
“No no no…”
Ruben scanned the tree-strewn slopes of Wizard’s Mountain, and for a split second, he imagined he actually saw Toemis.
“Look, Arthur, I’m not going to give up. If there really is a wicked wizard up there, then Zusha needs our help more than ever. And if Toemis is climbing the mountain, we had better get him down before said wizard realizes he’s there.”
That comment made Arthur flinch. “We don’t know they are up there.”
“Well, I’m going to find out,” Ruben announced. “You can either come with me and help me get Toemis before Albert does, or you can wait here.”
Ruben brushed past Arthur and started toward the mountain. He felt guilty for pressuring the boy, but while he felt that pursuing Toemis was the right thing to do, he didn’t want to go alone—wizard or no wizard. As he strode purposefully through the deserted port, Ruben resisted the urge to glance back at his companion.
A short while later, after stumbling upon a small trail that meandered up the mountainside, Ruben heard the sounds of someone following him. Arthur eventually caught up with him, though Ruben refused to reduce the grueling pace he had set. Even after an hour of walking, he dared not slow down.
Once again, he had made a hasty decision, gambling everything on the small chance that he was right. Goblins, the old man and his knife, and now a xenophobic wizard—it seemed increasingly unlikely he and Arthur would survive this adventure.
You’re not some hero from a bard’s tale, Ruben scolded himself. You’re going to get yourself killed and take poor Arthur with you. You would have been better off if you had forgotten you had seen Toemis Blisnes in the corridor and just gone back to bed.
But Ruben kept right on walking, pushing himself higher and higher up the mountain’s rocky slopes. It was far too late to turn back now. Besides, disappointing Sister Aric was a fate worse than death.
They were startled to a halt when the sky filled with hundreds of birds.
The birds—mostly sparrows and wrens, though Ruben spotted a falcon or two—moved like a single organism, spiraling and undulating in a most unnatural fashion. The motley flock whirred overhead before eventually disappearing back the way he and Arthur had come.
Once birds were gone, the scene was eerily quiet. The trail that they had been following came to a steep rise up ahead, prohibiting their view of what lay ahead.
“Come on,” Ruben said, feigning confidence. Clutching his flapping robes, he slowly advanced and, keeping himself as low to the ground as possible, peeked over the embankment.
On the other side of the hill were Toemis and his granddaughter.
Ruben was so stunned by the sight of them he could only exchange a wordless look with Arthur crouched beside him. Toemis held the girl by the shoulder. The old man was holding his knife.
“Wait…he’s not going to…” Ruben gasped.
Before Ruben could finish, Arthur vaulted over the ledge and ran at Toemis. Ruben followed, hoping they would reach the old man before he completed the horrendous act.
He heard Arthur shout, but his cry was immediately lost beneath the voice of the little girl. The sound was far too loud to have come from Zusha. It seemed to emanate from all around, buffeting them like a sudden gust of wind.
Then the ground began to shake. Ruben lost his footing and hit the rocky trail hard. At first he feared the deafening yell had caused an avalanche, but he didn’t have long to ponder the earthquake for suddenly a burst of white light flared from up ahead.
Surely they had run afoul of the dreaded Albert Simplington!
But when the blinding radiance disappeared, he saw only Zusha standing where the light had been. Toemis had fallen to one knee. Now freed, the little girl started walking away.
Ruben expected Toemis to give chase, but the old man didn’t move. Toemis appeared to be staring off into the distance, looking past the spot his granddaughter had occupied only seconds ago. As Ruben got to his feet, he glanced off to his right, wondering what was preoccupying the would-be murderer.
What he saw was nearly enough to send him back to the ground.
Not far from the mountain trail, the earth continued to churn. Ruben watched, transfixed, as what appeared to be arms and then legs separated themselves from the rocky soil. When the thing stood upright, Ru
ben realized he was looking at a creature made entirely of solid stone.
The behemoth resembled a man in that it had a head, a body, arms, and legs, though it was more than twice the size of any person Ruben had seen. Even from a distance, he could see the giant’s eyes glowed bright orange.
The stone colossus took a step forward, then another. It moved slowly, each step sending dust and pebbles cascading down its massive form. When the loose dirt had all fallen away, Ruben saw the creature’s flesh was a light, dull gray. Its skin—if the stony shell could be called skin—was not at all smooth, but bore many sharp angles and fissures.
The creature moved slowly and unerringly toward Toemis Blisnes.
Passage XII
The all-night ride seemed like a dream to Colt. He feared that if he closed his eyes, Opal and the others would melt away and be replaced by the same patch of tent-top he had been staring at for days.
They stopped sporadically to let the horses rest, but such reprieves were short-lived. Inevitably, the dreadful silence was interrupted by the distant shouts that would prompt them to renew their arduous pace.
Eventually, Colt dozed off, unabashedly resting his head against the other man’s back. He didn’t know the rider, didn’t know anything about the rescuers who were taking him away from the goblins. At the moment, he didn’t care. All that mattered was Opal was alive and she had saved him.
Upon waking from that first of many naps, he was startled to find the skull-staff in his hands. He was overcome by the impulse to cast the vile thing to the ground, but he remembered all too clearly why he had taken it in the first place.
Colt would never forget the terrible things that the staff was capable of…
He tried not to look at the skull. He didn’t know what he would do if those vacant eyeholes flared to life. The rod itself felt incredibly cold in his hand. Colt suspected it was the result of his imagination. And yet he would have gladly endured far worse than numb fingers to keep the skull-staff away from the goblins.
Williams, D M - Renegade Chronicles [Collection 1-3] Page 82