The White Fox

by James Bartholomeusz

  It struck Jack for the first time just how many people there were here—the uniformed guards, tunic-wearing miners, administrative scribes, peasant refugees, and forge blacksmiths clad in their thick overalls—at least a thousand denizens or visitors to this battered colony-city-fortress. He could tell he was not the only one who noticed too late that the king was now the shortest on the podium.

  This did not seem to deter him, however, as he began. “Last night,” he declared in a voice much louder than his usual one, which carried right to the back of the crowd, “we, the people of Thorin Salr and the surrounding localities and villages, suffered a merciless and unprovoked attack by external enemies. There are many amongst the citizens I see before me who would have me blame the goblin tribes and have done with it. There are even those who would want me to marshal our soldiers and launch a counterattack into the Wastes.”

  There was a cry of consent from a large minority of dwarves in the crowd.

  “That, however, would be an injustice and a travesty.”

  Widespread murmurings.

  “We were not the victim of a malicious attack from goblins, though that has not been unknown in the past. The attacks on your villages and on this city were indeed perpetrated by goblins—but goblins manipulated by a malevolent force behind them. A force, moreover, that used Dark alchemy to attempt to destroy our kingdom. I have communicated with the kings of our neighboring states, all who attest to having been the victims of similar attacks. These attacks were masterminded by an organization of sorcerers who call themselves the Cult of Dionysus.”

  There was a general cry of outrage at this. Thorin was clearly right in that there were elements amongst his inhabitants who were pushing for a counterattack.

  “Yet we repelled them,” shouted the king, overcoming the cries of outrage. “We repelled them through our belief in the righteous defense of our homeland!”

  The cries of outrage morphed into cheers at this change of tack.

  “However, this victory does not belong to dwarves alone. The small force of heroic warriors that has ensured the safety of our kingdom was made up of dwarves and elves”—he gestured to those either side of him—”and goblins.”

  Shocked silence dissolved into whispers, as, at Thorin’s beckoning, Vodnik and the surviving goblins climbed the rubble from out of sight to stand next to the king. They looked very awkward before a crowd of a thousand dwarves and did not seem to know what to do with their hands. The one with the bleeding shoulder was heavily bandaged now, though he still looked drawn and pale.

  “These goblins,” Thorin continued, “lost far more of their fellows than we did of ours. Yet when a brave regiment of dwarves and two elves left the fortress to assist their surrounded companions, these goblins chose to fight on our side rather than to flee. Together they repelled the forces of Dark alchemy that threatened us and allowed us to be standing once more in this valley today. For their utmost bravery in the face of adversity, I have chosen to award all these warriors honorary citizenship of our kingdom.”

  There was a pause once the king finished speaking, in which the mood of the crowd was unreadable. Jack stood next to Lucy, feeling extremely tense. If the dwarves decided they didn’t like this idea, there were easily enough of them to overrun the podium and probably crush all those standing on it in the process.

  But his fears were unfounded. It was only a few seconds before the first claps sounded, and within a few more cheers were resounding around the valley as Thorin crossed the podium, shaking the hands—and cracking the knuckles—of each of them in turn.

  Once he had finished and the cheering finally ceased, he began again. “This experience, trying as it has been, has certainly taught me a very valuable lesson. The feud between dwarves and goblins, not only in this kingdom but across this continent, is absurd. Last night showed that when we cooperate, we can achieve much more than when we fight amongst ourselves. I therefore propose that friendly relations begin from today with the goblin tribes of the Wastes, and at the first opportunity, I will call together the other dwarf kings and goblin chieftains in the first Dwarf-Goblin Conference of the Stórr Mountains.”

  Bál stepped forward to speak, clearing his throat.

  Jack could tell the strong political position he held even by the silence that descended upon the crowd again. As the head of a potential resistance to this new stance, his view was very important.

  “I second this proposal,” he said loudly. “My experiences in the last hours have led me to reevaluate my position. Early this morning I fought alongside some of the bravest soldiers I have ever met, and many of those were not dwarves. I welcome this new opportunity for good relations.”

  Another cheer began, intensifying even more as he too cracked knuckles with the goblins on the podium.

  The late afternoon was passed in much the same manner as earlier in the day but with a more elated sense of purpose. The goblins, no longer under threat, assisted in shifting the rubble and recovering the bodies of the dead. In accordance with their tradition, a pyre was constructed away from the fortress, on which the bodies were cremated. Meanwhile, the dead dwarves were taken out of the valley to an ancestral barrow ground and laid to rest there. Neither side questioned or impinged upon the other’s traditions.

  Jack and Lucy spent the remainder of the day with Ruth, Adâ, and the crew of The Golden Turtle—the same group, in fact, that had first travelled under the ocean that lifetime of three weeks ago. Things could not be more different now. The extremes of Adâ’s cool aloofness and Lucy’s spoilt moodiness had gone, and all four of them laughed and joked together. As before, Jack found himself watching Ruth in idle moments and looking away hurriedly whenever she noticed.

  They were helping to clear out the rubble, and now, with the assistance of alchemy, this was much easier. Lucy even managed to perform her first spell in levitating a rock, a feat that earned her praise from Hakim, who happened to be passing on an errand at the time. Jack reacquainted himself with some of the crew members he had met on their journey here, Aonair the Irishman and São the Spaniard amongst them.

  At around five o’clock, just as the first hints of dusk were creeping into the sunlit sky, a messenger arrived to tell the four of them to come to the throne room.

  “This was found on the battlefield an hour ago,” the king informed them when they arrived. Sardâr, Hakim, and Bál were already in the torch-lit chamber. He gestured to a slab of black stone, smooth except for the symbol—an ornate black rose—carved into the center in the middle of the table. Turning it over, he showed them the other side—a sheet of glass as dark as the stone itself, completely unreflective.

  “It’s a dimension mirror,” Sardâr said. “It’s what the Cult of Dionysus use to communicate.”

  “How does it work?” Ruth asked.

  “It would normally respond only to a member of the Cult,” Sardâr replied, “but I think I can fool the alchemical protection.” He placed his hand over the surface and began whispering under his breath.

  Then, suddenly, with a whip crack, a black force exploded outwards from the mirror, shrouding the room in shadow. Sardâr backed away quickly. They saw lights flashing by—stars, planets, and galaxies all moving outwards. They zoomed in on one in particular. As they got closer it became a cluster, then a shape, a perfect spiral of glowing orbs—a miniature galaxy suspended at the center of the room. They continued moving closer to one of the nearer spirals. More stars flashed beside them until they reached one, a massive ball of fiery energy which, to them, took up only half the room.

  The speed did not stop there. They blasted by the star and five more planets, getting closer all the time, until they reached an orb, its surface like that of a spherical stormy sky, though spinning slowly on its axis.

  Farther in, it was as if they were going to hit the surface. Past many layers of clouds and they were hovering over a vast ocean, thunderous and dark. They moved sideways and over land, a mass of dark buildings and skyscrapers g
lowing with ghostly blue windows. Now upwards to an immense dagger shape—a castle suspended above the waves on a floating rock. Up to the third highest tower, then in through the window, down a corridor. They were about to hit the door … but they went straight through it into a dark chamber and finally stopped.

  They were in a large circular chamber by the door. Tall, black thrones rose up in a circle around them. In each one sat a black-cloaked figure, and in pride of place, in the highest position, was someone with silver embroidery to his robes. They were all looking downwards into the center of a room, where a man knelt, shaking upon the same embossed rose emblem engraved on the dimension mirror.

  Jack started towards him and cried out in pain. Though he could not see it, he had just walked into where the table had been before the mirror activated.

  “It’s no use,” whispered Sardâr from his side. “This is just a vision of what is happening elsewhere. You can’t touch any of these people, and neither can they see you. Just watch.”

  Jack turned back to the scene just in time to hear the man in the silver-embroidered robes speak.

  “You have failed us, Iago.” The voice was perfectly clear, as though he were actually in the room with them.

  “Master,” Iago moaned, shuddering. “Master, please …”

  “Please what? You wish for mercy? I do not give mercy.”

  “No, master … the girl … the informant … that was me. I retrieved her for you.”

  “That is beside the point.” The master’s voice was shrilly cold. “Have you, amongst your many failings, forgotten the mantra of the Cult?”

  In unison, the eleven other figures chanted: “The Darkness is power. We wield the Darkness. We become power itself.”

  Iago gave another shudder, as though the words made him gag.

  “Precisely. And what have you done, Iago? Not only did you fail to retrieve that Shard of the Risa Star, but you did not even weaken that world sufficiently to absorb it into the Darkness. You have squandered the recent work of Archbishops Icarus and Tantalus.”

  “But, my liege, my years of service—”

  “Count for nothing. You have made us suffer an irritating setback. You have failed us, and you must suffer the consequences.” The master clicked his fingers.

  Instantly, something stirred in the darkness behind the throne. Jack gave an involuntary shiver, remembering Iago’s own Sleepy Hollow–esque demon.

  “Execution?” one of the other cloaked figures said, though not at all concernedly.

  “No. Iago shall suffer a fate much more painful. His essence shall be wrenched from this reality and sucked into the Dark Realm. There he will traverse the Darkness for eternity, tortured by the insatiable temptation to submerge himself into the collective Dark, but with the knowledge that if he does so, he shall become a mere tool for the Darkness itself.” The master’s lip curled. Jack knew that he was deliberately explaining in gory detail to make Iago’s fate even worse.

  Below the foremost throne, only just discernable in the dark, black smoke was beginning to coil upwards from the floor. As its tendrils twisted around themselves, they formed into the shape of a tall, long-haired humanoid, completely naked, with a pair of massive dark wings extending from its shoulder blades to shadow its face.

  “No, master, please!” Iago’s voice rose to a scream as the creature dived. A mass of dark feathers, robes, and hair engulfed the elf, his hastily summoned Abaddon falling pathetically under the master’s demon. Iago’s screams rent the air around the chamber, and Jack noticed many of the others averting their eyes.

  In a moment it was over. The shadowy, vaguely humanlike winged creature evaporated. Iago’s lifeless form slumped, motionless, on the marble floor. A pool of congealed dark liquid began to form about it, and it sunk like a rock into the sludge until it was completely submerged. Then the pool shrunk and closed, with no sign that there had ever been a body there.

  “Now that is dealt with, we have to right his mistakes. Iago’s blunders, whilst dangerous, will not be fatal if we act quickly. Another Door to Darkness has been sealed by that infernal Star, so we must move onwards. Phaedra, Paethon,” he addressed two figures in seats opposite, “our latest intelligence shows that the goblins of the Sveta Mountains on the planet of Yarkii are long known to have guarded the Fifth Shard. Go there and extract it from them.”

  They stood, bowed in unison, and disappeared into the same gusts of dark smoke Iago had used during the battle.

  “Nimue, time is short. We now know that the Third Shard is hidden somewhere around the city-state of Albion in the Centauras galaxy. Obtain it by any means necessary.”

  The woman, one of the few with her hood down, nodded and made for the exit.

  “Nimue,” the master called as she opened the door, “take our informant. She may be useful in negotiations.”

  Nimue nodded again and left, and the door swung shut behind her.

  “Now, Icarus. You have proved yourself time and time again as the prime example of a loyal servant.”

  The hooded figure on his right bowed his head.

  Jack felt his stomach squirm. This was the man who, he now realized, he hated above all others, only meters away, and yet he could not touch him.

  “We will discuss your next assignment in private—”

  “Master!” A shrill voice interrupted him.

  He quickly turned to the woman across the room from him. “What, Ino?”

  “We are being watched.”

  There was a pause, and then the message sunk in. Figures all around the room began pulling their hoods over their faces. The master clapped, the noise echoing supernaturally loudly around the chamber. Dark fog rose from the floor, tentacles twisting like black serpents around the bases of the thrones and their feet, cloaking everything in deep shadow.

  Jack couldn’t see anything. He seemed no longer to be standing; he was falling backwards into darkness, and it was cramming into his eyes, his ears, crushing his lungs under its weight …

  An arm grabbed the neck of his tunic and pulled. Slowly, the fog drifted away, leaving him behind. Then he crashed onto the throne room floor. Blinking furiously and rubbing his head, he stood up.

  Everyone stood and moved away from the mirror. It hovered in the air above the table, the oppressive dark smoke swirling around it.

  Jack looked behind him and saw Hakim, evidently the one who had pulled him out of the fog. He became aware of chanting. Somewhere to his right, Sardâr was bellowing syllables with his hands pressed together, a blinding white light shining within them. At a last word, which seemed to shake the room itself, he released the light. It flashed across the room and exploded, imprisoning the mirror in a cube of burning energy. There was another flash, and the smoke vanished, the mirror falling to the table with a dull clunk.

  Jack breathed out slowly. All around him, people were making their way cautiously towards the incarcerated mirror.

  “Don’t touch it! I have restrained the Dark alchemy for a time, but it is still very dangerous.” Sardâr approached, and everyone backed away. “The Emperor has blocked this mirror from tapping into Nexus. It is unlikely that we will be able to access it again.”

  “So that was the Emperor?” Ruth asked breathlessly.

  “Apparently so. And that was this mysterious planet Nexus. It must have been the Council of Thirteen, which coordinates the Cult of Dionysus.”

  There was silence. Everyone around the room was trying to work out the intricacies and implications of what they had just seen.

  Eventually, Sardâr let out a long breath. “I think it would be best if everyone went to bed. There’s nothing we can do about that now, and I need some time to compose my thoughts. I suggest we meet back here tomorrow morning.”

  They all nodded and departed for their rooms.

  Chapter XV

  the two-pronged attack

  Jack and Lucy headed to their rooms on Sardâr’s request. The fortress was quiet now, quieter than it had bee
n all the time they had been here. Earlier in the day, a decree had been issued granting refugee peasants permission to return to their villages. Eager for the space and comfort, many had moved out immediately, hoping to arrive at their homes before sunset. The miscellaneous barrels, carts, and sacks that had adorned the hallways almost like festive decorations were diminishing, swept away by the rush of relieved travellers.

  Jack bid Lucy good-night, and after seeing her into her room, he opened the door to his own. He was only mildly surprised to see the glimmering, white-furred form of Inari sitting on his bed. “I haven’t seen you for a while,” he remarked, taking off his boots.

  “You haven’t needed me for a while,” Inari replied, hopping off the bed to let Jack sit down. The fox spirit positioned himself on the floor, looking up at the human elf.

  “Where do you go when you’re not here?” Jack asked.

  “Now, that would be telling,” the fox said, echoing his reply the last time they had spoken in this room. “Around and about. Lots of different worlds. I’m always pulled back to the same place in the end, though.”

  “You don’t know anything more about Alex, then?”

  “Sorry, but no.” Inari stretched out, yawning. “You’ve become quite the hero since we first spoke. An alchemist. Who would have thought it? And a fairly competent swordsman, if you don’t mind me saying so. You’re almost unrecognizable.”

  Jack glanced down at himself. He knew he looked different, thanks to that alchemical egg. But he felt different too. He felt braver, as if he had proved to himself as well as everyone else that he could hold his own in a difficult situation. He did not hear Inari’s words without a slight flicker of pride within.

  “We’ve spoken four times. The first time you gave me the Shard. The second time you gave me some answers, and the third time you saved my life. So why are you here now?”