by K L Reinhart
A stone dais dominated the center of the room, several high steps narrowing to a round platform at the top. There was a much smaller, thinner statue standing there with hands—Paws? Claws? Talons?—held out in front of it.
This final statue made all the others look like friendly farmyard animals, however. It was like nothing that Terak had ever dreamed of, let alone seen.
It had a snout a little like a dog, but a hairless one if that was possible. Its jaw hung open, and the stonemason had worked in intricate details, such as a forked tongue between rows of fangs. From behind its head and long, tapered, notched ears, there extended a mass of barbed tentacles, caught in lifelike motion within the stone.
The creature’s body was similar to a dog or a wolf, Terak thought, with the same strange backward-knee joints for legs. However, the creature appeared bipedal, because its forepaws were muscular and more person-like. Ending the nightmarish vision was a split tail emerging from the creature’s rump—two prongs that ended in hooked barbs just like the mane of tentacles did.
It held its paws out in front of it as if begging or offering something. Laying across them was a thin bronze cylinder, decorated with swirls and dots, ending in bronze-caps.
The Loranthian Scroll. Terak gasped. That had to be it!
The other three acolytes had apparently seen it as well. Although the looks of disgust—even fear—were plain on their faces, they were eager to retrieve it.
But . . . Wait! Terak thought in alarm.
“Torin, wait! The charms,” Reticula said as Torin started to mount the steps to the scroll above. “The arcanum gave them to us for a reason, remember?” She was fumbling with something from her pocket, scraps of folded paper. “He said that because we hadn’t mastered our aptitudes, we’d need to use these—”
“Ha!” Torin laughed off the suggestion. “What’s the Ninth Maxim?”
Only walk the correct steps of the path, only use the simplest tools you need . . . Terak breathed the words silently. In front of him, Torin was tapping his temples as if to say that the correct tool was his wits.
Well, it’s certainly the simplest one, Terak thought as he slid the dagger back into his belt and prepared to step out into the light. Maybe this had been a group effort after all. Maybe all that the Chief External had wanted to prove was that Terak could survive the forest and make it into the shrine alone. He felt disappointed and disheartened by that, but he allowed himself to breathe through the feelings, as he had been taught.
There was a scintillating flash of blue-white color, and Torin was flung down the stone steps. His skin flushed with exertion and his eyes rolled white, his limbs shaking as he gritted his teeth.
“Torin!” Mendes and Reticula ran to his aid where he lay slumped at the bottom of the steps, the Loranthian Scroll still untouched overhead.
“Torin?” Terak could no longer hold himself back. Whatever enchantment or trap had hit the acolyte looked as though it hurt. And I have salves and bandages, Terak thought. Despite how cruel Torin is, he is still an acolyte . . .
“Get off me!” Torin shook Reticula and Mendes from him as soon as they had hauled him to his feet. He pointed a finger straight at Terak’s advancing form. “Null!” the acolyte shouted vehemently.
Terak’s run stalled completely when he saw the daggers of fear and hatred the three stared at him.
“Mendes? Reticula?” he said uncertainly.
“Don’t come any nearer, worm!” Torin announced on behalf of all three of them.
Oh, it’s like that, is it? Terak felt the apprehension in his chest start to subside. In its place rose fury.
Whatever attack had hit Torin, it did nothing to dull his anger. He stepped forward from the others, his hand raised, pointing at the elf in accusation and disgust.
Just as the arcanum had done. Terak started to growl.
“Seize him.” Torin commanded. For a moment, no one moved. Terak saw both Reticula and Mendes share concerned—even worried—glances behind their friend. “You heard the arcanum! One of his kind is too dangerous!” Torin heckled them. To Terak’s horror, the pair moved, breaking apart to try and encircle him.
Well. Anger catalyzed Terak. The Chief External said I was blistering quick . . . He whirled and sprang up the steps, heading for the scroll. He would seize it and escape before they could catch up. Maybe this was the test after all. To be able to outrun and outwit his fellow “gifted” acolytes.
I’ll show them. I’ll show them all. Terak’s feet hit the first step, then the second.
“He’s going for the scroll! Stop him!” Terak heard Torin shouting, and the other two scrambled into action. They chased him, but Terak was already halfway up the steps.
He hissed as there was a blue-white flash. Pain seared across his body as if he had walked into a wall of white-hot fire. Terak jumped, sliding down the previous two steps. Mendes was the first to reach him.
“Argh!” Mendes howled in torment as he too was thrown back. Reticula, behind him, was more circumspect, pausing and catching Mendes as he fell.
But I’m not dead. Terak gritted his teeth. He hadn’t been thrown back as far as Mendes had, and his body, although throbbing with remembered pain—like spending too long in the high summer sun—was not burned. He could see his hands had the same, normal ghostly pale complexion as always. No blood. No injuries.
It’s not strong enough to kill me, just hurt me, Terak realized in that instant.
“To walk the path of Corrections, you must first walk through pain.” That was the very First Maxim. Terak breathed deep, pushed the pain aside, and started to climb.
The same blue-white flash happened all over again, and it felt to Terak as though he were crawling through a wall of fire itself. His entire body was covered with hammering pins as he screwed his eyes shut and forced himself to climb past the next step, the next, and the next.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the pain stopped. Terak flopped to his side, panting with effort as his body returned to normal. Every muscle from his jaw to his fingers to his toes ached, but it was the ache of climbing the Tartaruk Mountains, not the sharp pains of iron oak clubs.
It was just a test. You have to be brave to push through. Terak blinked, opening his eyes. He was lying at the clawed feet of the statue, the scroll only a few feet above him. He had done it.
10
The Path of Pain
Terak reached toward the long tube of decorated bronze that surely must hold the Loranthian Scroll.
“Hyargh!” A cry of agony as someone else forced themselves through the pain-enchantment. Terak turned to see that it wasn’t Mendes this time, it was Torin.
But the taller and broader human looked worse affected than Terak had been. He had fallen to his knees on the step beside the top of the platform, panting and weeping. His arms shaking with effort.
The elf slowly stood up beside the statue, his head reeling with angry possibilities. “It is a fool who stays their hand when they have the opportunity to strike,” Terak thought. Eleventh Maxim.
Torin hated him, apparently. Even detested him. Terak wondered how far his fellow acolyte would have gone to stop a null like him.
A worm, Terak thought grimly. His hand twitched, wanting to feel the handle of the dagger that was still secure in his belt.
But no. The elf looked down on the shaking, shuddering form of Torin, not with fury, but with contempt. Emptiness, fortitude, and pain, Terak thought. He had always been taught that pain was the teacher, and through it, he would discover who he was and what he was capable of.
I faced the beastials. I faced the serpent. And I faced the pain, Terak thought. It was clear as he watched the sobbing, shaking form of Torin that the other acolyte had failed the test.
“Here.” Terak sighed heavily. He took a step down, offering his hand to help Torin up. Maybe even Torin would respect the inner strength that he had now, Terak thought.
And that was Terak’s mistake.
As soon as the
elf offered his hand, Torin grabbed it, his eyes rolling as he pulled Terak closer to him.
“Hey!” Terak gasped. He stared down into Torin’s eyes. There was something clearly wrong with the other acolyte. The pain enchantment had done something to him. Torin the clever, the handsome, even Torin the cruel was no longer there.
Torin snarled into Terak’s face as his other hand seized Terak’s own dagger and pulled it from the elf’s belt. He drew back his arm to ram it into Terak’s gut.
“Torin! No!” Reticula screamed from below.
But Torin paid no attention, spittle frothing on his lips as he garbled, “Worm!”
Ixcht! Terak couldn’t leap to one side, with Torin holding onto his wrist—the human was larger and stronger than he was. Instead, he twisted out of the way of the first strike, but Torin was already throwing his second . . .
Terak tried to throw his body back, turning his torso as he sucked his stomach in . . .
“Ach!” Terak felt the scrape of the sharp blade across his ribs. Fury and panic filled him. Without thinking, he clamped his hand on the wrist that held the dagger and pushed out.
Wham. Torin merely shoulder-barged him, driving him against the grotesque statue and knocking the scroll from the creature’s hands. It tumbled end over end down the steps.
Terak’s head hit the black stone and he saw stars, but he refused to let go of the dagger. Torin meant to kill him. That much was obvious.
The other acolyte barged into him again, driving him against the stone. Torin appeared enraged. He had completely lost himself to some dark, murderous emotion, so much so that the acolyte didn’t even look like himself anymore.
Torin drew himself back for another shoulder-barge that would surely split Terak’s skull.
Terak moved at the last moment, not resisting as he kicked forward with his knee against Torin’s, at the same time pulling Torin closer as the larger youth surged forward.
“Ahh!” Torin went flying, flipping over Terak’s leg and hip, somersaulting in the air before hitting the floor below with a sickeningly wet, solid thump.
“Torin?” Mendes, looked from the dead body on the ground up to Terak. “What . . .what did you do?” the heavyset youth whispered, appalled.
“I didn’t mean to,” Terak said, his voice shaking. But whatever his wishes, the evidence was plain for all to see. His own dagger was sticking from Torin’s side, where his fellow acolyte must have landed on it.
“You killed him!” Mendes said in horror, stumbling backward. “The Chief Arcanum was right. You’ll kill us all!”
“No, Mendes, it wasn’t like that,” Terak said, taking a step toward them both. “Torin was trying to kill me!” he cried out, but the dark eyes of Mendes stared at him in disbelief.
A sound startled him from the top of the podium behind him, and it rasped like grating stone . . .
11
The Brilliant Host
Terak spun around. The impossible was happening. The grotesque statue, standing so solid behind him, was . . . moving.
Not just moving, Terak saw. Something else as well. There was a large blotch of Terak’s blood running down the thing. It must have spewed onto the statue when Torin had wounded him. As the acolyte watched, he saw the blood start to vanish into the statue, seeping into the solid stone. Wherever it soaked in, the black rock lightened and became oddly organic— flesh-like.
As if my blood brought it to life . . . Terak thought in horror as he staggered back down the steps. There was no blue-white flash of pain this time and no wall of invisible fire to halt his progress. Either the enchantments only worked one way, or perhaps when the scroll was dislodged, the shrine’s magical defenses came to an end.
Apart from one last defense, that was. Terak probably wouldn’t even have noticed the pain-wall because he was too busy looking wide-eyed at the creature emerging in front of him.
A sheen of lighter, almost tawny colors had started to wash over most of its body, but the thing’s legs were still the dull, glossy black of Tartaruk stone. Terak watched little puffs of rock dust and chips of stone shake themselves free from the creature’s snout and mane. It opened and clacked its jaws experimentally.
“What is that!?” he heard Reticula breathe. Terak had almost reached the bottom of the steps, moving as slowly as he dared.
“I have no idea. I didn’t mean to—” the elf whispered. Above them, the creature was shaking its head with a great grinding and tearing noise. Its barbed mane of tentacles started to move sluggishly on their own, rising in the air about the vulpine head.
“I know,” Reticula breathed. “It was Torin. The arcanum . . .” she gasped in small, bird-like pecks of noise.
The creature ahead of them clacked its jaws together in a mighty snap and rolled its two arms, as if trying to work out how to use them.
Gasping in panic, Mendes turned and fled.
The creature’s head snapped toward the retreating Mendes, and Terak became transfixed by its two sets of eyes, one larger and one smaller, and both as black as the stone which had birthed it.
“Scrargh!” The thing lurched forward, but its legs weren’t moving properly. It stumbled, sliding down the top half of the steps.
Terak had seen enough.
“Come on!” He snatched up the bronze tube in one hand and Reticula’s wrist in the other, fleeing after Mendes down the main passageway.
“Run!” Terak gasped to the others.
Behind them rang the sounds of something large and heavy crashing down the steps. Despite the creature’s only partially animated legs, it appeared to still be terrifyingly fast.
Or terrifyingly determined, Terak thought.
Their path ahead was a wider corridor than the one Terak had fallen into, free of mire of water and bones.
They hit a T-junction. Reticula hesitated as a grating, hissing roar echoed down the passageway.
“Right. We came right,” she said, breaking from Terak’s hand and running ahead. This time, the black stone corridor was short, and turned abruptly left into—
A boulder.
“What!?” Reticula almost ran headlong into it. A large granite boulder lay in their path, almost completely blocking the passageway. Almost, Terak saw. “Look!” Despite the gloom of this place, a faint haze of graying light came from above them, and a whiff of fresh air. There was a gap, where the boulder clearly hadn’t filled the space.
“Your foot,” Terak said quickly as the roaring grew louder behind them.
“Huh?” Reticula at first didn’t understand, but Terak was already reaching down to grab her legs and push her upward. It was a scramble, but Reticula squirmed into the gap and disappeared on the other side.
Terak looked at the graying patch of light and listened to the galloping, scraping sound. The creature was close. Maybe at the T-junction—
“Give me your hand, you idiot!” Reticula shouted. She had only disappeared to turn around, clearly. Although it was almost pitch black, Terak felt and found her hand and started to climb.
“SsskrARGH!” The roaring exploded behind Terak as he squirmed into the space. The boulder beneath him shook as the weight of the almost-stone creature hit it. A frantic scrabbling erupted behind him, but the elf was determined to get away. He reached the top, then tumbled down the other side of the boulder into the corridor on the far side.
A gray light shone from the end of the passageway ahead. The sound of furious battering continued on the boulder behind.
“Surely, that will stop it!” Reticula breathed as they stumbled backward.
An almighty crack reverberated the passage. The entire boulder shifted a little in its seat, making the gap above bigger.
Terak took one look at the horrified human beside him, and they sprinted at top speed toward the doorway.
Wham!
Wham!
The sound of the creature’s fury intensified as the pair scrambled toward the light. It was a gloomy sort of light, but at least it was brighter than wh
at was behind them.
Wham!
Terak could now feel the sweeter air on his face. But from behind them came a horrible scraping and scrabbling sort of noise. Terak made the mistake of glancing over his shoulder to see, in horror, that the tentacle-wolf thing had forced itself through the gap and was clawing its way on the floor of the corridor behind.
“Don’t look!” Terak gasped. “Just run!”
Reticula plunged into the light first, with Terak just behind her, leaping down the steps after the racing form of the black-haired girl. His canvas and leather shoes hit the welcoming, soft mat of the pine needles.
Another roar echoed from behind as the monster burst from its stony womb to land on the forest floor only a few feet behind. Terak was beyond thinking of a plan. He glimpsed the path up ahead, rising out of the hollow, with Reticula already halfway up it.
Then the creature behind must have jumped, because a shadow crossed the elf’s vision along with a rush of fetid air. It landed with a spray of needles and dirt in the space between him and the other acolyte.
Terak skidded, stumbled, and sprawled as he tried to avoid the thing.
The monster swiveled its head back and forth from the retreating back of the young woman to the prone elf.
Some instinct in Terak made him shout. “Hey!” He didn’t want to see the girl torn to shreds by this beast. He didn’t want to see anyone torn to shreds, he hastily told himself as the monster fixed its double set of eyes on him and opened its mouth.
Oh Ixcht! The elf tried to scramble backward, but the pine-needle floor was treacherous. His hands and heels slipped as the creature loped toward him on all fours in an ungainly way.
Terak stopped cold.
The creature had lowered its head, its forked tongue lolling between its teeth, playing and teasing the air, anticipating what this meal would taste like.
Terak wished he had his knife.
The creature was now only a yard away, its mane of tentacles spraying around it widely, each barb raised independent of the others as it lowered its head—