Deomans of Faerel_Contemporary Fantasy

by Ted Fauster

  “Please, I know you are full of energy, and I understand we haven’t seen one another in a very long time. But please try t’ listen t’ my words before you react in such a way.”

  At first, Tuyen’s eyes grew even more fierce, and he fully expected her to leap upon him in a maniacal barrage. But she was able to grab hold of her own emotions and the fire soon left her eyes. She reached out gently.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Please forgive me. It has been too long indeed. What is it that you desire? Simply tell me and I will make it so.”

  “There is a girl. A Traveler. She is here now from another world. Somehow, she was able t’ pass over into ours along with three others. Another girl and two men. They are very dangerous, my love, and they wish us harm.” Tuyen seemed to follow, but every now and again her eyes wandered off. She was trying. “I must find them.”

  “Such a thing is easily remedied, my love. Just seek out a wizard. There are plenty to be found. With enough gold any will likely loosen their tongues.”

  He swam forward and gently took hold of her dangling ankles. There was something he knew, something the krin had mentioned that he had told no one in the company.

  “No, my love. It is not so easy. These people are Travelers. They are here under some strange enchantment and they cannot be sensed, not by anyone, except possibly…”

  From the look on her face Tuyen had guessed the rest. Her eyes grew wide.

  “Except! Except! Except by a sexy fairy from the wa-ter-falls!” She had him by the face now, tugging and pulling on his beard in an effort to scootch herself closer. She leaned back and wiggled her breasts. “Except by a sexy fairy from the waterfalls!”

  Breven smiled as he gently pushed away. “Yes, yes, my love.” He loved this creature with all his heart, but there was business to attend to. “Except possibly by a fairy creature, a wild fairy.”

  Her eyes sagged and her shoulders drooped. She kicked at the water, puffing out her lower lip. “I hate when you call me that. I’m not a creature.”

  But Breven knew better. He slunk down in the water until only his eyes remained above the waterline. He arched his brows and prowled toward the edge of the rock, the entire time his young and wild love’s own face locked on his in avaricious anticipation.

  He leapt from the water and grabbed her by the neck, yanking her from the perch. Coiled together, they tumbled back into the cool water.

  Old King Leopold was growing increasingly uncomfortable. The long hours spent on the throne were necessary, especially of late, and he’d spent much of the previous night in the royal library, pouring over old treaties and boundary lines, desperately searching for some clues as to what might be happening in the wild North.

  The reports were vague, but trade was being disrupted. It could not possibly have been the Wens; their bloodline had long since perished. And although residual traces of the Dark Order were still afoot, most of its followers kept to the crumbling temples in the far off hills and distant deserts, maligned but far too vulnerable to stir up much of a commotion without the benefit of a standing army.

  They had experienced some difficulties of late with the more pirating nations of the South, and some discontent in the East over the incalculable distances many of the trade fleets traversed in order to conduct business. But the construction of a floating way station in the Eastern Seas had placated most.

  Of course, the Rusalk were offended. But they didn’t seem to pay much attention to what occurred on the ocean’s surface anyway, keeping mostly to their home in deep water. All in all, times were peaceful, and no nation was so incited or so haughty as to include the kingdom of Jarl Naru on their list of enemies.

  Jarl Naru was the jewel of all the realms of Faerel, a peaceful land that tolerated all races and prided itself on sustaining healthy trade relations with numerous kingdoms, each with starkly different customs and values. It was true that pockets of evil existed within the realm, dark places where deomans held a strong influence. But for the most part, the people of Jarl Naru were content and free.

  Leopold sighed. This morning he desperately wished nothing more than to be home with his wife, not in the stuffy confines of the royal council chambers. The Festival of Burning Sheaves was upon them, and the streets and thoroughfares of Overgaard were overflowing with the trimmings of the season. And although his wife, the fair queen Eydana, understood all too well the demands of the times, he missed her company.

  “My king,” his trusted abettor bent and whispered as best a nine-foot wulgar could. “I fear something is wrong.”

  King Leopold brushed the towering bearish creature aside. Wulgars were known for their fastidious adherence to logic and order, which at times was positively annoying.

  “It’s alright, Palontine, everything is fine. These things take time.”

  Palontine persisted, nearly bumping the black horn whorls that sprouted from atop his upper lip against the king’s crown. Some gray was starting to appear in his fur, but he still had much living to do. Again, he placed one gigantic paw aside his mouth to growl a whisper.

  “They should have returned by now. It’s been far too—.” But King Leopold waved him off once more. The barrister was about to speak.

  “Mighty King Leopold, citizens of Overgaard, dignitaries and all loyal subjects of the great kingdom of Jarl Naru, I speak to you now with great anticipation of the response from our scouting party, sent forth four days ago to ascertain why the latest caravans from the northwest have not yet arrived.”

  “What of Sam Samnir?” One of the councilmen stood and shouted. All of the twelve district representatives grumbled in coalition, their impatience worsened by the countless hamlets and villages they directed pressing them for relief. “Have we reestablished communications?”

  The barrister frowned. “We have not. As of current, both public and ministerial pentalphas in the trade capital of Sam Samnir are still not functioning, and we’ve received no response to several royal communiqués sent via viewscreen.”

  A grumble spread across the floor like a stone’s ripple on the surface of a mountain lake. “But I remind you,” the barrister continued, “that ever since the Great Battle, the Blood Plains are a desolate place, fraught with inclement weather, storms that have detrimentally affected the network in the past.”

  A hefty councilman stood and raised his finger. “That may be so, but that does not explain the tardy return of the northwestern caravans.” He threw up his flabby arms in disgust. “This is a holiday season, by the gods, and we’ve no spices nor tobacco, not to mention the shortage of brynstan.”

  Again the floor rumbled. The barrister did his best to maintain order. He smiled winsomely.

  “To begin with, I believe the appropriate term these days is, ‘by the powers that be.’”

  “Phaw!” The chubby councilman swatted the air. “Don’t bring religious semantics into this. You’re stalling! We demand answers!”

  Indeed, the barrister was stalling, and doing a fine job of it.

  “I’m sure we will receive word very soon,” the barrister continued, cocksure, slowly enunciating his words. “Should a state of non-communication persist, the scouting party has strict orders to make use of the military pentalpha located at the northernmost outpost of Far Pass Keep, which has never gone inoperable. They should be there by now and, I assure you, we will receive word momentarily.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. The flaming orbs atop each tower of the royal pentalpha, which had been tuned in to the very pentalpha in question, still burned a steady yellow instead of green, signaling a complete disconnect.

  He snorted. And then he played his wildcard.

  “In regards to the brynstan shortage. Mighty King Leopold has decreed that, should the problem not resolve itself by then end of this month, the reserves shall be opened, and quality fuel made available to every citizen throughout the kingdom.”

  That quieted most. A weak clapping followed, which grew in momentum. But behind hal
fhearted cheers mumbles of discontent could still be heard.

  King Leopold nearly yawned when Palontine suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders, his thick claws clanking against the king’s spaulders. He pointed at the royal pentalpha.

  “My liege! At long last!”

  The chamber quieted. Each of the balls of flame atop the towers encircling the royal pentalpha were now spinning around, burning with a flickering green glow. They began to flash, indicating something was about to come through. The entire assemblage stood cheering to greet the long overdue arrivals.

  When all the lights had finally returned to a steady green, the undead ice giant stepped through.

  It was an awful sight to behold. Nearly four times the size of an ordinary man, and dressed in the ragged pelts of many animals crudely stitched together, it stood teetering like a drunkard, a quivering mass of loose, rotting flesh over a mammoth skeletal frame of splintered yellow bones. One eye was nothing more than a socket. The other barely contained a festering globe of molten muck. Much of the flesh was missing from its face and its toothy maw hung crooked.

  Something was in its hands.

  King Leopold stood and cringed when he saw that it was some kind of pyramidal device, glowing purple runes embedded on its flat, metallic surfaces.

  The dead giant bellowed and slammed the device to the ground, shaking the chamber. The runes began to blink, a high-pitched bleep sounding with each flash. The bleeps increased in intensity as the rotting caricature stood back and howled once more, hammering its swollen chest in triumph.

  Then the queer device exploded.

  The blast rocked the walls of the royal council chamber but was entirely benign. The blinding flash of violet light that followed turned a sick amber color, bathing all of the chamber’s stunned occupants in a hellish glow.

  King Leopold waited until most of the liquefied remains of the monster had settled before signaling for the release of the magickal barrier. Oily smoke and the stench of burnt flesh rolled out into the chamber as the guards rushed forward to poke and prod the remains.

  Amidst the turmoil and confusion, King Leopold stood and looked up into the high ceilings with a hearty sense of relief. High above the royal pentalpha hung the workings of a machine he was now entirely grateful he had requisitioned. Only a few months earlier, a private contractor, a surly gnome who worked for the angel in the bog, had petitioned the royal council with a safety measure he felt would be of some great benefit: a machine which, at the push of a button, could generate a magickal containment field.

  Palontine’s mighty paw still hovered over this very button. King Leopold nodded and then clapped his abettor squarely on the back.

  “Lock the city gates. Scramble the air patrols and the mariners. And assemble my knights at once. This is bad, Palontine. This is very bad.”

  11

  A Gathering Storm

  Several days came and went, and the solitude of Arythria was beginning to get to Hanna. Yet, the contamination of hopelessness that had plagued her in Austria, the aching, sinking desire to do nothing more than sleep, to embrace the end and be done with it all, was beginning to drift away.

  How long had she wandered alone in the foothills of Steyr? She wondered. How had she possibly survived? That lone house. That sad, empty house. What fates had aligned to bring it to her, to take her inside and expose her to the long maze of hallways?

  She chalked up her newfound energy to her physical routine, which kept her rather busy. She’d been introduced to a hunched man with plum-colored skin, a gnome, who had placed her in a strange device that miraculously provided accelerated physical conditioning. Her new body had responded beautifully. Her muscles now rippled and she was quite capable of holding her own with a variety of weaponry, the use of which the machine had also taught her.

  Maltheus had also given her access to a public library where, under the comforting glow of the glass sculptural lamps, she’d whiled away the hours drinking in the history and geography of the lands. It was here she’d learned of the unholy menace that had terrorized the North, the Hellion King of Jarl Narvalla. When she’d questioned the angel he simply nodded glumly, stating he would explain everything in due time.

  It was a terrible burden to bear, and an annoying shrug from a being who obviously knew much more than he was letting on. Her only recourse was to devour everything she could find on the old knight of the Dark Order, a rogue priest whom she distinctly felt would turn out to be something of a meddlesome burden. But as much as she loved her books, she was growing bored of it all and eagerly awaited the opportunity to share the wealth of knowledge she had amassed with someone else. Someone from Earth.

  “But where are they?”

  Arnsworth seemed particularly annoyed this day. Maltheus had long ago said all that he would on the matter and was currently out of reach anyway, off on another research mission of his own, or communing with the information in the Zenavestra, however it was he accomplished all that.

  He’s probably not even on the same planet, she thought, jealous that he was the only creature who could flit around from dimension to dimension without so much as a passport. She’d grown desperately lonely, and she’d been pestering poor Arnsworth relentlessly.

  “I’m sure I have no idea, madam.”

  Of course he didn’t. None of them did. They all knew that something had gone wrong, that Maltheus Falfax’s grand plan to smuggle four humans into the realm of Faerel, a hell-world full of soulless citizens whose entire lives culminated in a lackluster dead-end, had thus far been about as organized as a gaggle of monkeys driving a school bus.

  But what could she do? She could not leave. Not yet. Or could she?

  “Drop the thought from your mind,” was Arnsworth’s immediate response. “The Master would never allow it.”

  “Why? Because I’m not prepared?” She leapt from the couch with her new sabre in hand, an elegant curved blade of shiny metal. She then hopped up onto the coffee table to expertly swish the quite dangerous tip in Arnsworth’s face. “That training machine of yours in the basement does wonders, you know.”

  With the patience of a wet nurse, the tortured Anuran did not even look up from his book.

  “No, madam. As you have most aptly shown over the course of several days, you are now quite well versed in combat techniques of all sorts. Congratulations.”

  She hopped down, bored now. She slid the sabre into her belt. “Yes. Well, I’ll have you know I was pretty good with a sword before…”

  “…before Fenwick ran you through the training simulator. Yes, I’m sure you were quite a swashbuckler in your home town, probably a bit hit with all the boys.”

  Hanna scowled. “Just what would you know about that, hmm?”

  A blinding flash of light on the balcony nearly caused her to start. A puff of smoke materialized on the balcony and a shape appeared. It solidified into that of a long-haired man.

  “Don’t move!” she cried, once again brandishing her sabre. She would show the frogman. “Don’t move a muscle or I will cut you to ribbons!”

  The bedraggled man in rusting armor had other plans. With only a smooth step forward and a slick flicking of the wrist, he disarmed her and had the tip of his black sword against her exposed chest in a dazzling display of superiority.

  “Please,” she begged, shaking but not daring to move. “Please don’t kill me.”

  The man’s eyes looked heavy. A smirk crossed his face.

  “Ah, what a swift change of… tune you’ve made.”

  She smelled alcohol. Was this man drunk?

  Another flash erupted and a small blue man popped into view. This one had wings, and upon sensing the open air took immediately to flight. The long-haired man moved the tip of the blade up to her throat.

  “My friend is a master of the blades himself, as well as a master of the… air.”

  “Really? Well it looks like he just left you to fight all on your own.” He looked over his shoulder and the tip of the s
word drooped. It was enough.

  With an amazingly agile burst of energy, Hanna ducked and swung her fist up and around, catching the fool on the wrist. It created enough of an opening for her to drop to the ground and roll forward. She slid straight between his legs, whipping the teetering man’s shins with her tail as she slid past. She snatched up her sabre in the process. In the next instant she was back on her feet with her own sword at his throat.

  “Stop this!” Arnsworth shouted, still clutching the book. “Stop this at once! You’re sure to break something!”

  But Hanna had no intentions of stopping anything. For the first time in a very long time she felt alive. She felt useful.

  “Get back, Arnsworth! Get back out of the way!”

  The sweaty man looked blearily up at the two of them with lavender eyes. At first Hanna thought he was simply filthy, but she now realized his skin was the color of soot.

  “You lucky I just come to you from one long and mighty… bottle… battle, milady. Or else you head would now be in my… in my lap.”

  She glared right back at him. “You have to be sitting down to have a lap.” She sprang back and took up a defensive stance, flattening her feet to center her weight, the sabre poised over her head like the tail of a scorpion.

  The man rolled his eyes. “Why do you have to go… to go on correcting me all the…”

  The door burst open. A group of leather-clad Anurans armed with lances rushed in. Something shot past her, a dash of pink that somehow disarmed the ragged man. Hanna gasped when she realized what it was. One of the guards had used its tongue to remove the blade from the man’s hand. The long stretch of pink retracted and the black blade swooshed past her and into the Anuran’s suckered grasp. Moments later they had him surrounded. They quickly bound his hands.