The Ashen Levels

by C F Welburn

  “Can’t you feel it? It grows worse the further we go.”

  “What choice do we have? To leap from the rocks? To face the storm?”

  In the end this dread drove them on. Not so much a treat ahead, as a flail behind; the result was the same.

  They went deeper.

  There had to be a reason their trail had led here. They could not have come for naught. The clues, the crumbs, the map in the hiilg temple…

  But the ship graveyard lingered on, and even when it ceased, the land was barren and grey. There were few landmarks.

  “Over there.” He pointed. In the distance stood the only structure seemingly unnatural, a squat squareness of grey stones.

  They approached it, each becoming as grey as the terrain they traversed, the sky almost florescent above.

  When they reached the entrance, they found it to be little more than a roofless sequence of walls.

  “A maze,” Freya said, not revelling the suggestion.

  “So it seems,” Balagir agreed.

  “You’re not suggesting we enter?” Raf Kajor snapped, his face as colourless as the old stone.

  “Why else do you think we’re here?” Balagir said, not letting even a shred of crippling doubt creep into his voice.

  “And if we lose our way?” Tal rasped, leaning heavily upon the staff she had not so long ago wielded with agility.

  “It’s a risk we must take.”

  Raf Kajor was about to explode when Kolak raised his hand.

  “Balagir’s right. I like it not, but there remains little choice. We cannot go back, and if we were truly drawn here for a purpose, then surely our goal must lie within.”

  “And what if we were drawn here by the will of a madman?”

  Surprisingly it was Freya that came to his defence.

  “You’ve not seen what we have,” she said icily. “You’d rather live in ignorance? Then you should have made your decision on the ship, as Finster did. We did not force you to come.”

  “Ah yes, Finster. Now I see he was the only sane one among us.”

  Balagir ignored the idris. He would dwell on Finster later.

  “It’s getting worse,” Tal said, lifting her hand. In the orange light, her grey fingers were almost transparent. “We’re disappearing.” Balagir pushed despair down as one hungry must swallow bitter fare.

  “Keep moving,” he said and entered the maze.

  How the place had been formed he could not fathom, nor how old it might be. The walls were indistinguishable, featureless and grey. They ran at straight angles for the most part, but soon began to curve and wind. The only two colours in the world were orange and grey. One above, one below. They walked without direction, ever forwards, taking whichever fork seemed to propel them towards the centre. Left, then right. Right again if the path veered to the left, and vice versa. There was nothing against which to gauge their progress; only the fading of their bodies told of the passing time.

  When they had rounded a corner and were faced with the same bleak corridor they had perhaps passed through a dozen times, the idris stumbled.

  He looked up at them, wretchedness on his vanishing face, fury in his eyes.

  “We’re doomed,” he moaned. “This is hopeless.” He was voicing concerns they all shared, but Balagir was still determined to rally them.

  “We must not yield.” Even his voice sounded thin and distant now.

  “What about the mask?” Freya suggested, faintly. Her face was blurring now. Almost unrecognisable. If she had lain down on the floor, he might have thought her part of the rock. “Can you use it? Find the way so we don’t wander hopelessly anymore.” He did not think it would work but saw a brief hope in Kolak’s eyes.

  “I’ll try,” he said, sighing. He donned the mask and strode onward, even as his body sat fading with the others. He rounded one corner, then the next. Nothing. He began again, taking different routes. Still the same endless grey corridor. There had to be a way through. He attempted once more with another random combination of turnings, only to confoundedly return.

  He tried something else then. He released the kalaqai, her future projection at least. Sending her forth, he followed. She had led them here, had she not? It was her cause too. Her story. He followed her, turn after turn, as he once had in Golden Wood, hoping she drifted with purpose. Before long he was lost, and even if he wished to retrace this with the others, he doubted he would remember.

  Suddenly the maze opened up. It remained grey and orange but was a wide circle now. In the centre stooped a large, grey figure. It had its back to him, yet was instantly familiar. It stirred and began to turn. He bade Era to heel, but his mind was too opaque to muster coherence.

  Then Kaliga’s eyes met his own, antlers black against the luminous sky. Like the piper, but taller, and alive. Very much alive. His gaze drew him in as a drain pulls water. The dhaki’s face twisted; a smile, a sneer? It was then that Balagir knew tribulation. They should not be here. They should never have come to this prison. If Kaliga was trapped here, how could they hope to escape? There was nothing for them to learn here. Only death. He struggled against the black, ancient gaze and opened his mouth to scream, but only silence and grey tendrils came out. Smoke snakes, his soul, his pitiful life.

  “Balagir!”

  He wanted to ignore the voice. He was pleasantly numb. Free, in a sense.

  “Balagir!” It came again, and he writhed, as one in slumber might absently bat away a fly.

  Something had him by the shoulder, shaking him, rocking him, and slowly the world came back into view. The grey world, full of grey faces, crowded in concern.

  “You passed out,” Kolak said, releasing his grip.

  “What did you see?” Raf Kajor asked impatiently.

  “I…” he began, struggling to recall the dust of dreams. Then he wished he hadn’t.

  “What was it?” Tal barked, grey spittle flying for her grey wound.

  “I saw him.”

  “Who?”

  “The master.”

  “Kaliga,” Freya murmured, forlorn.

  “He’s here?” Kolak asked, dread in his voice.

  Balagir could only nod.

  “Do you remember the way?”

  Balagir shook his head. He did not, and even if he could, he would not wish to return. Then he saw the mask. It had splintered and lay in fragments in his lap.

  “Well, that’s the end of that,” Kolak said, looking at the broken pieces. The mask had seen him through some predicaments, but now it was no more. It had failed him. No. He had failed them.

  “We must go on,” Freya urged, her skin as translucent as a reflection on water.

  How could he tell them they had walked into the dhaki’s bastille? That they were trapped in a place they should never have strayed?

  “Was there a fire?” Kolak demanded. “Any way out of this place?”

  Once again Balagir shook his head.

  “What now?” Raf Kajor almost whimpered. “I can’t go much further. I’ll never make it back to the shore.”

  Balagir for once had no answer. If going on meant facing Kaliga, he might prefer this fate instead. A slow, gradual fading. Turning back was no option either. In fact, they were so utterly lost, turning back may very well be the same as heading onwards. Perhaps there was no way out now, only an endless labyrinth where all corridors led towards the dread dhaki.

  Balagir swallowed, rueful and bitter.

  “I was wrong,” he said heavily, and it felt almost a relief to say it. “Coming here was a mistake. Kaliga… I think he needed us to come. He’s been alone for a long time.”

  “I knew it!” Raf Kajor exploded, baring his teeth. He looked like he would have launched himself if his leg weren’t useless. “We’re finished.”

  Tal cupped her face in her hands and sank down. Kolak’s eyes were flat, as though he had finally lost hope. But it was Freya’s gaze that wounded him the most. She had let herself believe in him. She had dared hope that their fat
e was not destined to end here. That the hero of the Valelands, the kalaqai-bound ashen, had really been something special. But now she knew the truth: that he was a charlatan, as lost as the rest of them. She sank down beside the others as a flower wilts sadly in winter’s grasp.

  “You’ve betrayed us,” Raf Kajor muttered. He sounded faint, as though his despair had detached him from the situation. “There was no fire. No fire,” he moaned. “A lie.”

  Balagir’s head swam. His hands were no more than ghosts. The absence of fire was to an ashen like the absence of water to fish; the absence of air to man. They could not be without it, and here they were in a place of the dead. A place where no fire had ever burned.

  He let the last fragment of the mask fall from his hand and drew out the wand from his bag. No one was looking at him now. They had lost hope; he had ceased to matter.

  With his back to them, he aimed the wand at the earth and cast it.

  Nothing happened.

  He recalled the etchings in the temple, of the ancient hiilg and how he had kindled the fire. He tried once more. Nothing.

  Slowly he sank down, defeated. He thought of Kiela and Ginike, and of Roje and Inverna, and he hoped that they would find a way without him. It would be a blow to the ashen and the south. His acts there had given them hope, even if he was a fraud. He should have stayed to help. Not chased their history, not sought answers that no longer existed; perhaps had never existed. What had mattered was not the beginning, but the now. And he had left them, leaderless and lost against an enemy they did not understand.

  Era drifted from his bag and hung in the air. He resisted the urge to swipe at her. To knock her down and stamp on her. She had done nothing to help. She was a curse on him, not a blessing. If only he had never encountered her. Things would have been so much simpler. To live without question. To wander without direction. The taste of the smoke, the glory of the fire. All gone, and for nothing. Bleakness, greyness, lost souls in a world of ash.

  He wanted to scowl, but even his muscles felt wasted, the chords and sinews frayed. If he could just close his eyes, maybe death would be a dream. Passing from life as one passes from wakefulness to sleep. Painless, unnoticed.

  Era, however, had other ideas. She flashed in front of his eyes, bringing him back from the cusp. He blinked groggily and watched with lazy eyes as she drifted and perched on the end of the wand he had forgotten was still in his hand.

  Feebly she began to palpitate, and when she rose, a dull redness glowered on the end of the wand. If it were a tree trunk, he would have raised it as easily. It took him a while to understand the significance of the odd, dim light. The surreal speck of colour in the grey world.

  Then, before his strength could abandon him completely, he pointed it at the earth and, with every ounce of will he could scrape from his hollow reserves, he cast.

  It seemed to happen very slowly. The strange red bolt that came from the end was too slow for lightning, rather a red tendril of blood, twisting under grey water. It touched the earth and left a red stain that began to spread and glow, growing brighter with each lethargic pulse; a languid awakening, a torpid quickening. The others stirred. He had thought them dead, or merely just grey rocks. But the strange light roused them, and from the silence, across the void between death and the living, drifted an otherworldly noise. The sound of a pipe. Distant and near at once, as if it were right beside them, but folded in the fabric of time.

  Freya leant forward, her face growing more substantial by the instant, her black eyes reflecting the thin flames that sprang suddenly from the shimmering circle and then cracked and leapt high with a sudden flurry of the pipe.

  Balagir averted his eyes to behold the others watching him, captivated, bemused. But it was not the place for questions, just as it hadn’t been for answers. He nodded, and one by one they offered up what smoke they had and passed through that portal to another place. A place of colour, a place of life, a place where the flame could suppress the ash.

  XXVI.iv

  THE CAULDRON OF MAGLEDORF

  Eskareth hub was all too bright. The palette of colour almost sickly, as one weaned on gruel suddenly gorges themselves on fruit and honey.

  The sky was blue once more, the grass a fluctuation of greens, the trees their eternal gold. Only the storm clouds on the eastern hills showed any trace of grey, and even then, they had their beauty. The five ashen lay sprawled about the fire, returned to colour, limbs mended, wounds healed, but scars remaining.

  It was a while before anyone spoke.

  “Are you going to explain?” Kolak asked once the resplendent assault had subsided.

  “I have the kindling-wand, depicted in the hiilg temple.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve had it for some time. For a long while I could not fathom its use.”

  “You may have forewarned us,” Tal said, somewhat gruffly. Raf Kajor took a while to find his tongue, but when he did, he was furious.

  “Never gamble with my life again that way!”

  “Would you have come if I had told you?”

  “Your friend Finster had a choice.”

  Balagir looked away and shrugged.

  “Finster was no good to us anyway. He’d never been to the south, he could not have warped here with us.” It was true, the black-eye had only ever claimed to have been as far as the isles, namely Silione. He had been a leech in the north though, sucking it for all it was worth.

  “Any other surprises you have in that bag of yours?” Kolak asked with a raised brow.

  “Nothing that will aid us against the askaba,” he answered ruefully.

  “We should go,” Freya said, looking towards the keep. “They’ll be waiting.”

  If Kolak and the two new ashen had felt any sense of awe at Balagir’s revelation and use of the ancient artefact, this was heightened as they entered the keep. Whereas the last time they had been in Eskareth the ashen had been shunned or ignored, now the people drifted out to line the streets, and chants of Balagir’s name could be heard from all quarters.

  “You’ve made quite the impression,” Kolak said incredulously.

  Having confronted his inner doubts and false importance, he no longer felt worthy, and longed to walk in anonymity once more.

  “I hope they don’t expect too much,” he said quietly. “I’d hate to disappoint them.”

  “They look to you, Balagir,” Freya said.

  “I’m just as lost as they. More so, if the truth be known.”

  “A cause needs a champion. The hope it brings, the morale it boosts, can mean the difference.”

  “Even if it’s false hope?”

  “The torch that lights the darkened path does not know the way, but bolsters those who would not move forward without it.”

  “Very poetic. You should have stayed in Kirfory.”

  They said no more and pushed onwards towards the royal residence.

  Guards struggling to control the crowds bowed respectfully as they passed through the ornate door into shade and silence.

  Roje stood talking to Yorvic against one of the pillars that lined the lofty vestibule. They had been waiting, forewarned by the commotion throughout the bailey. Yorvic had been officially promoted and now wore the crest of the House of Eskareth, identifying him as commander. His wounds were almost healed, but he was no ashen, and he would always bear some pain.

  “Balagir! Your return gladdens us. The court is on edge. We’ve been practically pacing.”

  “We came as quickly as we could,” he said, shaking the commander’s hand and exchanging a knowing nod with Roje. Freya did the same before they introduced the three new ashen. “Reinforcements,” Balagir said, gesturing to the jaegir, human, and idris.

  “Well, we’ll never turn down help,” Yorvic said. “Especially if it’s ashen help.”

  “I never thought I’d hear a settler say that,” Kolak said, grinning.

  “Much has changed,” Yorvic said, returning the smile. “You can thank
your friends here for that.” Balagir looked away. He felt as though he had won a prize by cheating and could no longer savour the jaded victory. “There are others who would know of your return. Please,” he said, gesturing.

  They were led between pillars to a side door and a smaller, firelit room.

  The other ashen leapt to their feet at his entry. Kiela embraced him fiercely, Ginike’s crooked face lurched into a smile, and even Unvil’s eyes became less angry. The gillard made a series of hissing, whirring sounds through his apparatus, which Balagir interpreted as greeting.

  As soon as he was done, the door swung inwards, and Kejal appeared, smiling.

  “I’d heard it was true,” he said, clapping Balagir on the shoulder. He was still heavily bandaged, but had made room for the insignia on his lapel, indicating a promoted rank. “I hate to be the one to rush you, but Dunn Elohim awaits. He is holding an impromptu council.” He winced apologetically. “It was to be expected.”

  A few moments later, the room was deserted; only the low fire crackling in the hearth gave off any movement.

  The council had been gathered with surprising efficiency, and the rows of benches were already full of expectant faces and anxious eyes.

  Dunn Elohim stood on a platform at the head of the room.

  “Greetings, Balagir of the ashen!” he announced in a strained voice. “If only it weren’t in such dark times.”

  “It seems to be the basis of our relationship,” Balagir said with grim humour. “How fares Dunn Fannon?”

  “Alas, then you’ve not heard. Sadly, he passed away in the night. The injuries he sustained were internal. There was nothing that could be done.”

  Balagir lowered his head.

  “It saddens me to hear that, and just as you’d made peace.”

  “Indeed, these are times of woe, and our strife does not end there.”

  “Roje has informed me of the situation at Ozgar. I bring reinforcements, though, I regret, little information that can aid us.”

  “You’ve done enough,” Dunn Elohim said kindly, though there was a flicker of disappointment in his eyes.