Night Born

by K L Reinhart

  A simple wooden door led off from the right-hand wall, and there was a small stairwell in the nook at the far end, curling downward. “Our rooms wind all through the Black Keep,” Father Jacques said, “but this one, yours, sits under the western eaves of the main building itself.”

  The room was wide enough to be littered with odd arrangements of furniture—a set of comfy chairs congregating around a small fireplace, alongside long scarred work benches littered with strange pots, beakers, and half-built tools. A tall water-clock housed in fine mahogany stood between benches, making regular glop noises as it measured out the quarter and half-watches of the night. Higher up the walls, shelves gathered books and dust, along with wicker cages, pots, and other oddments. A wooden dummy sat in a small cleared space—the top, an armless torso that Terak recognized from the Chief Martial’s training halls. In fact, Terak realized, there was something here from every type of lesson that he had so far taken part in along the Path of Corrections.

  “Ratachook!” Something twittered along the shelves, and a small, brindle-brown shape flashed across the books to leap through the air, landing expertly on the Chief External’s shoulder, before staring at Terak expectantly with its wide green eyes.

  “It’s you.” Terak smiled despite himself. It was the strange little creature he had befriended in the First Moon Garden.

  “Ah, I see that you have already met Frebius,” Father Jacques said, casually picking up the creature in one hand and depositing it on the nearest table before pulling out a pouch. With the sound of rustling, he scattered a pinch of seeds for it to eat.

  “He’s a conundrum, not a species I have identified in any of the bestiaries, but whom I found wounded on my travels.” The older man shrugged self-consciously, as if embarrassed by his display of affection. “I nursed him back to health, and he seems to have taken to the life of the keep.”

  Terak crouched down to watch the little creature eat. You’re something that shouldn’t be here just like me, hey? he thought as he reached to move seeds around in front of the thing’s quivering nose.

  “Ratachook!” it twittered, either in excitement or indignation.

  “Here, you will study, learn, and train—just as you would anywhere else at the keep.” Father Jacques moved around the room, opening the door to reveal a simple bunk room. It held a wash stand and a chest beside the bed, as well as a rail of tunics, hose, and robes. The older man faltered as he glanced back at the newly-minted novitiate.

  “It is perhaps, ahh, not ideal circumstances for an elf . . .” He frowned. “But that stairwell leads you down to the western gallery, and as long as you keep yourself unobtrusive to the other acolytes and novitiates, and you are not currently engaged in lessons, you may come and go as you wish,” the man said.

  Was that a note of apology in his voice? Terak wondered. There needn’t be.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” he said with a grin, and meant it. Previously he had been in a drafty room on the lower eastern side of the main keep, beside other drafty rooms occupied by acolytes who had detested him. Down there, his life had been regimented and grueling. Here, it appeared freer than he could have imagined.

  For a moment, Terak remembered the feeling of the first step he had taken outside of the way-marker, at the edge of Everdell Forest. It felt like that again.

  “Ah, excellent then,” the Chief External coughed. “Now, the hour is late, sunrise will be in . . .” He glanced at the hands of the water clock. “ . . .a couple hours or less, and although on your first day as my novitiate, I will allow you some rest . . .” The chief frowned as he looked at Terak’s blood-soiled clothes. “Dear Stars! What have I been thinking? All this time, you have been injured, and you said nothing!”

  I have, Terak thought in astonishment, looking down at the tattered rags he was now wearing.

  Torin almost gutted me, and nearly cracked my skull, Terak was thinking, but then why did he only feel the ache and thump at the back of his head—not on his side?

  The elf pulled gingerly at his tunic to reveal the pale white flesh beneath, encrusted with blood—

  But the wound was sealed, just a thin, puckered red line where he was expecting a deep swipe of red.

  “First Moon, elf!” Father Jacques burst out. “But you heal quick!”

  That was where the Mordhuk licked me . . . Terak frowned. Did the creature have magical properties? He couldn’t prove it, but it seemed to him that the two things were connected—the strange reaction he had received from the monster and his almost-healed side.

  It didn’t make any sense why the murderous thing would want to heal its prey before it ate, but then again, nothing much had made sense about this day.

  Father Jacques produced a pot from one of the many drawers, handing it to the novitiate.

  “Meadowsweet and bone-knit,” he said, and when Terak unscrewed the heavy glass lid, he saw a white salve that smelled surprisingly sharp and fresh. He gingerly dabbed some on his side and at the back of his head, where it stung—but not for long.

  “Well, if you are this quick to heal, then you can rise at dawn all the same!” the Chief External laughed, rapping on the table. “I will return then, and we will begin your training in earnest.”

  “Father,” Terak said quietly, screwing the cap back on the salve and returning it to the drawer, before taking out the coil of the gray belt of the novitiate and holding it up between them. This is now my key, my right, Terak thought. “You promised to tell me about the Loranthian Scroll.”

  “Ah, I was hoping you’d forget.” Father Jacques sighed heavily. “But it seems that tonight is a night for revelations,” He gestured to one of the chairs. “Sit.”

  Terak did so, finding it surprisingly comfortable. The Chief External brought a board of bread, cheese, and dried meats to their side, before turning once again to rummage amongst the tables and oddments. When he returned, he was dragging across the work surface a strange bronze device, like a huge bronze hourglass, but with a metal ball in its center where the two triangles met.

  “A counting clock?” The elf frowned. He had no idea what that had to do with the Loranthian Scroll, the Loranthian Shrine, or the Mordhuk.

  But he was about to learn . . .

  “Do you know what our world is called?” Father Jacques asked.

  Of course. “Midhara,” Terak said. Although the Chief Arcanum had barely told the acolytes anything about the world, the old fool had at least told them that much!

  Father Jacques tapped the middle sphere of the hourglass. “Correct. But did you also know that there are two other worlds as well?”

  What? Terak’s look of incomprehension said it all.

  “The upper world and the lower.” The Chief External’s hands moved first to the topmost cone that connected to the top of the sphere, and then the lowermost.

  “The upper world is known as Aesther, and the lower world is Ungol.” More indicative taps.

  “The elf lord said that the statue-creature had something to do with Ungol,” Terak said.

  “Yes. The Mordhuk,” Father Jacques placed the device on the near edge of the table and sighed heavily. “Mordhuks, as far as we understand, have no physical form in their own world of Ungol, but can be drawn into Midhara—our world—and made to inhabit or animate objects.” He grimaced. “It was a traditional sort of trap used by the sorcerer-kings of old.”

  “Is that who made the shrine?” Terak guessed. “And who wrote the scroll?”

  “One thing at a time!” the father said seriously, moving back to the device. “You need to understand something about the three worlds first.” He seized the top cone of Aesther with his fingers and started to twist.

  Terak realized that both cones weren’t solid shapes at all, but each contained different ‘bands’ of metal that could spin and turn with a clicking sound.

  “The worlds are most often out of alignment.” Father Jacques lazily spun first one upper band on the Aesther cone, and then a lower band on Ungo
l one below Midhara.

  “We have yet to understand the mechanism, after three hundred years of trying,” the man admitted with a grimace. “But we know that at certain times of the year, and when the First and Second Moons are in certain positions, and certain stars are in the sky—even when certain flowers bloom in certain places of our Midhara world . . .”

  There was a click from the Aesther cone, as each of its three bands appeared to find an alignment.

  “ . . .that is when the worlds come closer together than ever. When there is easier, and freer, movement between the realms,” the Chief External murmured.

  “Who lives in these other worlds?” Terak asked, intrigued. He earned another grimace from the chief.

  “No one you’d ever hope to meet,” he said gruffly, before blinking and looking at Terak. “Although the elves have long had a connection with the upper world of Aesther . . .so maybe I’m wrong about that.”

  The man sighed and tapped the middle globe. “Midhara, as you know, has humans and elves, dwarves, trolls, orcs, the beetle-men of the Ixcht . . .” His finger then tapped Aesther. “The upper world is strange, like a dream. Endless forests of white trees and strange blooms, lakes made of glass, and creatures just as strange. The Fey live there—a race of people who are more at home moving between dreams and illusions than they are in our mortal realm. But they can be cruel and capricious, in the ways that dreams are.”

  His hand then moved to Ungol. “The lower world, however, is a nightmare place, filled with burning chasms, endless tunnels, lakes of fire, and monsters that hunger for mortal flesh.”

  Terak shuddered. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to be tasted by the Mordhuk . . .

  “And now we come to the final and most important part of the sorry tale of the three worlds . . .” Father Jacques set aside the device, instead turning to the shelves groaning under the weight of books. He selected a thin ochre-brown volume, its edges worn thin from age and constant use.

  Terak watched as he flipped through the pages, before the spine cracked and the book settled onto a sketch that it was clearly used to being open to. He held it up for Terak to see.

  It was an arch, of sorts. Fluting and bulbous stone flowed and sprouted organically to form two large pillars, with a slightly off-level lintel across its top, similarly grown out of the same stuff. In some parts, the stone—if stone was indeed what it was—appeared to be thin so that it could barely hold the weight of what was above it, and yet it did. Terak could spy small markings on the faces, like encircling script, that reminded him of the script on the Loranthian Scroll.

  “The Blood Gate. One of three such gates in our world of Midhara,” the Chief External said seriously. “I told you before that we here in the Enclave protect knowledge, because a long time ago that knowledge was used unwisely?”

  Terak nodded.

  “It was during the Reign of the Elves, when Taurelion the Sorcerer-King decided to build such a thing—to allow a permanent portal through which Aesther and Midhara could connect. He believed that this would allow much greater magic to flow between the worlds.

  “The ritual to create the Blood Gate lasted a year and a day, or so the old legends state. Entire castes of elvish mages were created and trained specifically to take part in the never-ending chanting. I guess you could say that the ritual either worked spectacularly, or failed just as spectacularly Either way, it did bring more magic to the world, but in the form of a fiery rock from the sky that crashed into Midhara, spreading wildfires and leveling cities for leagues.”

  Terak tried to imagine the cataclysm but couldn’t.

  “But what it left behind—the stuff of the rock itself—was ochullax,” Father Jacques stated.

  The stuff that the Chief Arcanum uses! Terak nodded. He had said that it concentrated natural magic . . .

  “If that wasn’t enough, the fool Taurelion decided to create a second portal to Aesther called the Bone Gate. Perhaps he thought he had to do it because his people were decimated. Perhaps he saw it as the only way to help Midhara after his first failure . . .” The father shook his head.

  “But something terrible happened. As soon as the rituals were completed, both the Blood and the Bone Gate opened into Ungol, the nightmare realm.”

  There was a skitter by Terak’s elbow as Frebius scuttled up the side of his arm and curled in a small ball of warmth in the crook of his neck. As if the little guy is scared of what we’re talking about. The dark thought flared over Terak’s mind, but Father Jacques was still talking.

  “Tides of monsters, shades, spirits—all manner of evils—poured into the world. The Reign of the Elves came to an end as their civilization was overrun and the Dark Years began—a period of endless wars and plagues and retreats and advances . . .

  “Eventually, the Ungol forces were driven back, the Blood and the Bone Gates closed—for a while.” Father Jacques’s voice lowered itself to the merest whisper. “You see, the gates couldn’t be destroyed, but they could be locked, in a magical sense. There is still an influx of Ungol forces every time the alignments match up again, and even the magical locks of the gates cannot stop the greater numbers from pouring through.

  “It is believed by the Enclave that we are entering one such period of greater alignment even now. Right now, there could be one, two, ten, twenty more nightmares of Ungol worming their way through the magical defenses of either gate,” the Chief External said fiercely.

  Terak swallowed nervously, and Frebius shifted on his shoulder. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? Why aren’t armies being sent out?”

  “They are, Novitiate, they are,” Father Jacques said. “But ours is not the work of armies. As you already know, the fathers of the Enclave seek out and secure the knowledge of the gates and the Reign of the Elves and other ancient secrets, so that we will never have another period like the Dark Years.

  “And hopefully, so that we can find a way to destroy the gates entirely,” the Chief External concluded, closing the book and drawing a deep breath.

  “Does the Loranthian Scroll have something to do with that?” Terak whispered.

  Father Jacques nodded. “We believe so. There is a reason why it is protected by the elves, and why there was a Mordhuk set to guard it. It is believed to be a document from one of those elvish mages who created the first Blood Gate. It may even contain the secret to its undoing.”

  And why it was protected by an enchantment that would destroy most people’s minds, Terak knew.

  “And you needed a null to get it,” he said.

  “Yes,” Father Jacques said in a voice thick with emotion. “I am sorry if we tricked you, but the stakes are too high. They have always been too high . . .”

  Terak nodded, which caused Frebius to squeak in his sleep. The creature woke to scramble back to the table and disappear between the jars and bottles.

  “I understand,” Terak said.

  In a strange way, he even felt a little better despite the awful horrors that he had just been told about. He knew why the Enclave was so austere, and why the Path of Corrections was so harsh.

  And he alone—of every other acolyte, novitiate, journeyer, father, or chief—had managed to accomplish what no other had.

  15

  Revenge

  “Please continue, Novitiate,” the Chief Arcanum said to the young man who stood on the rug in the center of the room, still round-eyed and pale.

  The young man was Novitiate Mendes, wringing his hands after being summoned to the personal study of the Chief Arcanum of the Black Keep in the early hours of the morning.

  Mendes had never entered the inner sanctum of the Chief Arcanum before, and even though it appeared to be little more than a reading room—with bookshelves filling the walls and making the place feel cramped—he was still dazed at the honor. In fact, he had never heard of anyone being invited to the Chief Arcanum’s study. At all.

  “Some kofa from the southern trading ports. It will sharpen your nerves.” Th
e Chief Arcanum poured a dark, bitter-smelling drink into tiny alabaster cups. He dropped two lumps of hardened honey into the cups and swirled them around with a long-handled spoon.

  “Uh, thank you, Father.” Mendes was unsure whether to bow, kneel, or what in this circumstance. He settled for merely looking dumbfounded.

  “Gah!” As soon as Mendes had swallowed the dark brew, however, his face contorted at the acrid, bitter taste, and he just managed to stop himself from spitting it out. A loud-sounding gulp came from the young man’s throat. “Outstanding, sir,” Mendes said rather unconvincingly.

  “Ha. You are still young. You have not refined your taste yet. It takes forty years to build up some sense in this world, and twenty more to know how to use it!” The arcanum tittered. “Now, please go on, Mendes. Are you honestly telling me that you saw Acolyte Terak kill another acolyte?” The Chief Arcanum sounded shocked and appalled, and the ancient man’s apparent horror was mirrored in the face of young Mendes.

  “It was . . . awful, sir!” Mendes burst out, the words flooding through him like water over a broken dam. “The worm—I mean the null—went berserk! His face twisted in rage as he climbed up the podium steps to get the scroll. It was like I wasn’t looking at Terak the acolyte at all, but someone I had never known!”

  “Oh, really?” the Chief Arcanum said seriously.

  “Yes, sir, and then Torin went after him, running up the steps to try and stop him just as you asked us to.” Mendes saw the Chief Arcanum nod at this loyalty. “Then Torin was hit again by one of the enchantments. I think. Either that or it was the null somehow.”

  “It could well have been,” the Chief Arcanum whispered in agreement.

  “Torin went down on one knee at the top. I saw that Terak had grabbed onto his hand, and the two were struggling. I think that the worm was trying to throw Torin back down the podium!”

  “The devil!” the Chief Arcanum said in horrified tones.

  “Yes! So Torin had to grab the elf’s blade just to defend himself, and they struggled. Torin was winning, but then Terak threw him from the top of the podium and that . . .that . . .is where he died.” Mendes heaved a heavy sigh, his eyes going down to the small cup in his overlarge hands.