Wrath of the White Tigress

by David Alastair Hayden

  "But the temple is mere legend," Zyrella said.

  The Farseer shook her head. "The temple exists, and it lies in the northeast desert, though I cannot say precisely where. When you find the right location, it will become visible beneath the light of Avida."

  "And once we find it?" Jaska said.

  "You must ask the Keeper of Swords for a blade to use against Salahn."

  "The Keepers are real?" Ohzikar asked.

  "Yes, yes. I even saw one in my youth."

  Jaska said, "And this Keeper will grant what I ask of him?"

  "In some of the few skeins of the future where you reach the temple, that is the case, but those are not many, three out of the hundreds I observed. Truthfully, you have little hope for success."

  "That's comforting," Ohzikar mumbled.

  "Yes," the Farseer said. "But it could be worse. You could have no hope at all."

  Jaska devoured three biscuits and drained another goblet of water. "What other help can you give us?"

  "Knowledge of your enemy."

  "I know Salahn well enough."

  "How he fights, I am sure," the Farseer said, "though the man you knew wields far more power now. You know nothing of the real man, of how he came to be who he is, of what motivates him, why he has such ambitions. You must know your enemy to conquer him."

  "What price is this knowledge?"

  "You read the present as well as I read the future, Jaska Bavadi. The price of knowing more about Salahn could be high. It could cost your life and soul, my own and those of your friends as well."

  "I will not risk a price beyond myself."

  "That is not your decision," Zyrella said. "Ohzikar and I have as much stake in this as you do."

  Bakulus held his fist over his heart. "And we will do whatever you ask, Kharos."

  Caracyn mirrored his brother's gesture. "We serve you as the prophecy said we should, in whatever capacity is necessary."

  Jaska scowled but didn't argue. "Exactly what sort of risk are you talking about, Farseer?"

  "Your friends must occupy the alcoves you see here. They will be suspended within them, their life-forces connected to yours and mine. They will give their strength to aid us in the Shadowland, and we may need it. Also, if I get lost in the shadows or near death, then their lives will be forfeit to save mine."

  Jaska shook his head and said with disdain, "I cannot accept this. You risk little for yourself and everything with my comrades."

  "No, I risk much more." She stood and swept her hands across her robes, smoothing out the creases. "No other Farseer can take my place. I am the only one remaining to the Arhrhakim, and I am all that we have had for nine hundred years. To risk myself at all is a testament to the debt I owe the Tigress."

  Jaska turned to Zyrella. "I don't like this."

  "I understand, Jaska, but she's important to her people, and we desperately need information."

  "We now have knowledge of the Temple of Avida and this Keeper of Swords."

  "But we don't know our enemy, what he really wants, plans, and thinks. And you need to know, to understand why he did to you what he did. Otherwise, you will never recover. Besides, she wouldn't waste our time with this if she didn't think it important enough. It is a danger to her after all."

  "I will never be whole, regardless of what I see in my past or his." Jaska walked to the nearest alcove, which was decorated with a few small runes. "I am weighted by the past."

  "Like the White Tigress is now," the Farseer said. "Many chains bind you, but your Grandmaster bears chains of his own."

  Jaska spun. "If you know, why not simply tell us?"

  "You must see for yourself to understand. And you need to see what he has done recently to know what actions he will take in the future. The latter is the dangerous part, for he may notice and have the capability to pursue us."

  Jaska dreaded going near Salahn. He wasn't ready for a confrontation yet. However, he refused to let fear bind him. "Fine, we shall go and see his past, but be certain that if you harm any of my comrades, I shall return and deal with you."

  The Farseer tilted her head toward Jaska and said nothing for several moments. Her lips tightened along with her posture. "I will accept that as fair."

  Zyrella broke the tension. "You travel the Shadowland to see the past and the future? I didn't know that was possible."

  The Farseer eased her posture. "Indeed it is. The Shadowland goes out into other dimensions and times, allowing travel to many places, though only in spirit. The future offers many possible directions but the past we know from our present has only one path leading back. That is the path Jaska and I shall take."

  "If Salahn threatens the Shadowland, then you are threatened as well," Zyrella said.

  "That is true. If he conquers it, I must avoid him, make a deal with him, or not go at all. And I will not make a deal with such as him."

  Ohzikar finished his sixth and final biscuit. "If loss of the Shadowland affects you so much, Farseer, then why not commit your people to helping us?"

  "My people have dwindled, and so few of them are left that I will not part with a single one even if it means the loss of my farseeing."

  "Pardon me, Farseer," Caracyn said, "but if you have sight of the future, how have your people dwindled? Why do you hide within this mountain?"

  "A good and brave question. The answer, of course, is that my knowledge has guided my people."

  "We would be lost entirely without the Farseer," Hyrkas said. "Have you seen any other races that are not human? The Eirsenda once lived beside us, and they are long gone, not saved even by their tremendous knowledge. We are fortunate not to have joined them."

  "But Salahn, if he's not stopped, will conquer you eventually," Jaska said. "This island is strategic, regardless of its terrain. Hmyr Karphon will want to build a port here eventually."

  "No," said the Farseer, "we shall be safe from them here. We will eke out our living and decrease naturally."

  "It is the spirit of your people that is dying," Zyrella said. "By continuing to retreat the spirit dies and with it the flesh."

  The Farseer almost growled. "We will live as we wish to live! My people are precious to me and I will spare none." She folded her arms and slid her hands into her sleeves. "Now that you have eaten, you should rest. If you will trust me, I will briefly encase you within a spell of sleep worth many hours more than a single night of rest. It will also heal Ohzikar's wound."

  After some debate, they agreed to this. The Farseer had them stand in the alcoves, arranging each to a particular spot. She chanted, and with the somnolence already brought on by the gasses within the chamber, they swiftly and comfortably fell asleep, their bodies held erect by the magic of the alcoves.

  Jaska awoke with his senses hazed by the chamber's mild hallucinatory gasses. He yawned several times and stretched. Rings of light blurred the edge of his vision. Sparks of scintillating color shimmered before him. The Farseer was kneeling at the small altar, which now held sorcerous implements. Without turning she said, "I pray you slept well, Jaska Bavadi."

  "Well enough," he said, looking to his still-sleeping companions. Hyrkas and the two other Arhrhakim slept in the remaining alcoves. "Why are the others not awake?"

  "I saw no need to rouse them. Entering the Shadowland will progress more easily if they remain relaxed."

  "And what if they have changed their minds about participating?"

  "Do you think any of them truly would?"

  "Perhaps Caracyn and Bakulus."

  "Then you know little about either man. Those two will not back down from any challenge, and they have searched many years for the great man they must follow."

  "Am I that man?"

  "In truth, I am not sure."

  "Then it could be a lie they follow."

  "Life is neither easy nor clear, even for one who sees possible futures. Their prophecy was a true one, trust in that."

  Jaska sighed. "What do I need to do?"

  "Rem
ain where you are and relax. When I signal you, go to the Shadowland in your usual manner."

  "What about Salahn?"

  "He is not strong enough to penetrate this mountain, and we shall go to the past starting from here. Only when we observe closer to the present will he prove dangerous."

  Jaska relaxed and the Farseer chanted her spells. The energies in the qavra he wore stirred in response. Like shy fingers, the currents swirling around him brushed his skin, sending chills across his body, fears into his mind. The energies began to bind his spirit to the Farseer and to his companions. In response, Jaska panicked. He tried to jerk his body and thrash his limbs, but he couldn't move. He tried to scream but couldn't even speak.

  The Farseer stalked forward. "I feared this would happen." She placed a hand on his forehead and cast a charm that eased him somewhat. "You will not be harmed. I shall not dominate you as Salahn did. You are loosely bound to your comrades and me only because we must venture into the Shadowland farther than you have ever gone before. The shadows will be thick and without each other, we will see nothing, not even the way back. Where we go, you cannot merely speak the word of return."

  He improved slowly, and the Farseer lost patience. From within one of her voluminous sleeves she pulled a wooden handle with three leather straps emanating from the top to form a miniature whip. She reared back and unerringly, despite her lack of sight, struck him in the face three times.

  "Come to your senses, damn you. Do you not wish to defeat the man who misled you, the man who used you to commit the foulest deeds known to humanity?"

  She struck him three more times before fires of anger lit within his amber eyes. Then he was able to speak. "Enough, I will make it."

  "Are you certain? I cannot risk you panicking in the Shadowland."

  "I will manage."

  After a few more minutes he was better and found that whatever sorcery had prevented his movement before was gone now.

  "Whenever you are ready," she said.

  Jaska sent his spirit into the Shadowland and the Farseer joined him. "Take my hand, and I will lead you onto the path that goes into the past. We shall see together where Salahn has come from."

  ~~~

  Jaska and the Farseer walked down a tunnel of swirling shadows and emerged somewhere deep within Hareez. He could see the landscape clearly through the shadows despite the distances of time and place. The only difference was that it looked even more colorless than it would have in the present. He shook his head in amazement.

  "It is my power," she said, "that I can see the past and future so clearly."

  "But it would take forever to view a man's life."

  "Ah, but my powers will reveal only those things we need to know. We will view the particular moments of fate that led Salahn to be who he is and we will know and understand what came between."

  "This is a great power that you possess."

  "Yes, and terrible. After decades of study I endured horrific rituals, and cutting out my eyes was the least of those."

  "But without eyes, what good is your power?"

  "In the normal world I am sightless, but here I can see even better than you."

  "If you can see and know anything within the dark past, and all possibilities of the future, then you could develop new things with great speed. You could resurrect the technologies of the Eirsenda and reclaim the lost knowledge of the Zindarhi. You could change the entire world."

  She stopped, her spirit hovering outside a cave entrance. "Yes, and each development would lead to new futures with new difficulties and more discoveries. The cycle would never end. Besides, just as you can travel the Shadowland only a certain distance, I can travel only so far forward or backward in time. About a thousand years back is the best I can manage and not even a century forward into any of the many possible futures.

  "Even now, my own childhood grows dim to my farsight. Soon I will not be able to reach it at all."

  "You have lived a thousand years?"

  "I have lived as you do for eighty years, and I have slept for ten centuries. I awake and leave my chamber for only four weeks each year, unless I am needed. I guide my people after studying possible futures and then I retire. I waited some time for you, though, having seen this day coming for many years."

  "So sure was it?"

  "No, but sometimes I trust my instincts to tell me which future I will end up experiencing. Of course, some would argue that a million different Farseers exist and that many of them will never meet Jaska Bavadi. I have, so I was right. But other versions of me in their own timelines may be wrong."

  Jaska shook his head. "Metaphysics of that kind hold no interest for me. I have my own problems to deal with here and now."

  She led him forward. "Come then, we shall begin to observe the life of Salahn."

  ~~~

  As Jaska moved through time, he understood things he hadn't even known about moments before. The past he wished to see began not with Salahn's first evil actions as he had expected but with those of Salahn's mother, an exiled priestess of the dark goddess Harmylkhat.

  Jeraia had dominated the people of her village until a traveling priestess of the White Tigress discovered her and alerted the palymfar who then came to cast her down. Before they arrived, she fled to a forgotten network of caves in the Wedawed Mountains. There she unearthed a vault containing long-hidden copies of the works of Ylarras Kalazaar and other necromancers.

  Using sorceries gleaned from these works along with peculiar magics of her own devising, she summoned a manlike Zhura demon from the Shadowland, copulated with him, and conceived a child by this union. The child whom she named Salahn would grow powerful. He would avenge the wrongs done to Jeraia and strike down all who had opposed her, those who would one day kill her if the future she divined occurred.

  Jeraia placed a masking on Salahn to hide his true nature that even the power of the palymfar could not see through, along with a compulsion of hatred against the Palymfar Order that would strengthen as he aged. Then she stored all her knowledge deep within his mind, hidden but accessible should something happen to her. Finally, she abandoned him outside the palymfar compound so that they would raise him. That way he would attain all their skills in combat and stealth before she taught him her dark arts.

  Salahn grew up with palymfar training and became the most talented among them, though always he had a selfish nature and a malicious spirit that his masters feared and tried to correct. The grandmaster of the time loved Salahn who quickly learned how to sweet-talk him to get his way. Jaska watched him repeatedly lie to his masters and break the rules without punishment.

  To prove his worth and to gain glory and prestige, Salahn began a campaign against the dark cults and powers operating within Hareez. Along the way, he collected much of their paraphernalia and interrogated them relentlessly, learning much more than he needed to know. The masters worried about his enthusiasm, but he had a knack for sniffing out corruption no one else could find. Because he accomplished more than any other palymfar, they continued to let him rise in the ranks.

  Young palymfar gravitated to Salahn and hung on his every word. Secretly, many of them indulged with him in the same forbidden pleasures of drugs, wine, and whores. He became a nearly autonomous operative with his own squad of loyal warriors. But Salahn still believed himself a true palymfar even if he disagreed with his masters about many of the old ethical traditions.

  In time, his campaign led him to his mother Jeraia and her new temple to Harmylkhat in the mountains. She had a large and dedicated following, and her powers had increased over the years. She had refrained from contacting her child and was content to simply watch him through the Shadowland whenever she had the opportunity.

  With his squad, Salahn slaughtered followers and acolytes with ease until they reached the inner sanctum. There, a strange sorcery their qavra couldn't stop put all asleep save for Salahn.

  Jeraia stood beneath bodies hanging from the ceiling, their blood dripping down an
d seeping into a drain shaped like a fanged maw. Jeraia was hunchbacked with a face disfigured by leprosy and failed sorceries. "My son, you have come to me at last. Long have I dreamed of this day. Now I can teach you the ancient arts and we can build a great nation and rule it together."

  Salahn chuckled. "I know you not, witch."

  "You don't recognize me because I'm disfigured, but you will know me by my love for you. I have watched you from afar and dreamed of taking you into my embrace. We shall be as close as lovers the two of us. We shall restore my youth and beauty and have vengeance on those who maligned me."

  Salahn advanced. "I see before me a madwoman who has killed many innocent people to get her wishes. You and I have nothing in common."

  "But we do! We share a love for the things of darkness. You can't deny it. I know that you collect such things!"

  "How do you know this?" He glanced back to his sleeping comrades. "You can't know such things!"

  "I know because I gave you this hunger!"

  Salahn scowled. His eyes darkened. He had long warred against his base instincts and depravities, often losing. Whether this witch was their cause or merely taunted him with her knowledge of it didn't matter. He readied his sword.

  With a voice of command she said, "I am your mother, and the Zhura-demon Varderoz was your father. You must listen and obey me!"

  But he was too strong against her magic. As he lunged, she lifted her hand to unleash the deadly spell she had prepared in her defense. But she couldn't do it. He was handsome and powerful and everything she wished him to be. She stayed her spell.

  Salahn's saber flashed in the flickering torchlight. The steel blade cut through her midsection, disemboweling her.

  But with her blood seeping onto his hand, he at last sensed a connection between them. "Who are you?"

  "Everything I've claimed … I could have killed you. Instead I give you my knowledge."

  With her last breath, Jeraia uttered a spell to recall the compulsion she had put on him long ago, and because the base spell predated his qavra, he had no protection against it. Unknowingly infected by her dark witchcraft, Salahn placed Jeraia's lifeless body on the altar and stared at it. Eventually he bent and kissed her brow. Then he pocketed her qavra and took all of her books and implements.