The Dark Lord

by Jack Heckel

  Sam patted me sympathetically on the back. “It’s okay, but it is obvious that, whatever the legends say, dwarfs didn’t make this so-called mine. They would never make such a mistake.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” agreed Seamus. “It’s a sign of sloppy documentation and construction, and it only augers trouble in the future.”

  Many heads around the room nodded in somber agreement with this pronouncement.

  Despite my new noninterference policy on things like this, I didn’t want us to be slowed down by things that didn’t matter. I decided I needed to clear a few things up. I stepped into the middle of the room and held up my hands. “We need a company . . . of the Fellowship conference. There are a lot of things that we are doing that are only slowing us down. First,” I said, pointing a finger at Sam, “you don’t need to describe every room in such excruciating detail. We can all see the size of the room and the doors and the monsters in them.”

  “But how will the mapmaker know what to draw?”

  “Can’t she see what the room looks like with her own eyes?” I asked in reply.

  “I suppose so,” Sam said, a bit chastened.

  I spun to Seamus. “The extra foot doesn’t really matter, does it? All we need from the map is sufficient detail not to get lost. We are two rooms into the mine, for the sake of the gods.”

  The dwarf grumbled over this and Rook joined in for moral support. I caught words like negligent, slipshod, and haphazard in their mutterings.

  I ignored them and addressed the entire group. “And what about this obsession with marching order? As soon as we met an orc, the order, which we spent so long arranging, went straight to hell. Let’s stop with all the nonsense.”

  By the end I was raving and waving my arms about.

  It was at this point that Valdara and Drake grabbed me, one on each arm, and began dragging me back down the hall. “We need to talk to Wizard Avery,” Drake said. “Why don’t you all start looking for secret doors, particularly around that area with the extra foot?”

  Behind me I heard Sam announce, “The orcs are dead, and we are standing in a twenty-by-twenty-one-foot room . . .”

  Chapter 20

  RED FOUR

  As soon as we reached the entry chamber, Valdara turned on me and shook a finger in my face. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “What? You mean what I said back there?” She stared at me. Her eyes glittered dangerously. “But you have to know it’s all ridiculous. You’ve been through this before. You said yourself that checking for secret doors was pointless.”

  “I didn’t say that at all. I said that they would grow tired of it after three or four rooms. I didn’t say that we should stop them doing it. I will do anything I can to keep their minds off the fact that many of them will die on this quest.” She pointed at Red Four, who was still out cold, lying in the middle of the floor where we’d left him. “Do you think he’s going to make it through the mines? He barely survived the first room, and there was nothing in here. So, I ask again, who the hell do you think you are?”

  “That’s monstrously unfair, Valdara. You think I don’t know what’s at stake? I understand how dangerous the Dark Queen is, apparently better than you two do. Absent me dragging you both out of that two-bit town, you would still be wallowing in self-pity and doing nothing to stop her. Do you think I did that, that I put this group together for fun? I don’t need to be here. I’m doing this for you and everyone else in this sub—” I stopped myself just in time. I took a deep breath and mumbled, “I just want to get to the Dark Queen before she can hurt more people. Forgive me if that’s too much to ask.”

  “What’s his name?” Valdara asked, pointing again at Red Four. I looked down at the man and away again without answering. She leaned in close and shouted, “What’s his name!”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted back. “Happy? I don’t know everyone’s name. I admit it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

  “Doesn’t it?” she asked.

  I thought about it, but too long. Valdara threw her arms up in frustration and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her as she went.

  I turned to Drake, who was leaning on his staff. “Drake, don’t you see that it’s getting to the end, to the Dark Queen, that matters? That’s all I want.”

  “His name is Barth Hammerarm,” Drake said in reply, in what I imagine must have been the voice he’d used as a priest at one time. It was calm, measured, and infinitely solemn. “He has seen twenty-four summers, and was born on the steppes of these mountains, not far from Hamlet. His grandfather and father both fought and died in the war against the Dark Lord. When the Dark Queen rose, his village was one of the first that orcs overran. He lost a wife and two children to their hordes. He does not have any hope of killing the Dark Queen. He has come on this quest to die with honor so that he can join his family in the beyond. The end doesn’t matter to him.”

  I looked down at Barth. I had never given a moment’s thought to his life’s story, or any of the others’ life stories for that matter. I cared about what they represented to the spell, and I had gotten sick when some of them had died, particularly when the visceral parts of them splattered on me. I liked Valdara and Drake. I felt a special affection for them, if I’m being honest. But if I was being perfectly honest, I couldn’t say that I felt the same way for them as I did for Eldrin.

  We were taught from early on that beings of lesser reality were like drawings on a piece of paper. They could be shaped and discarded and altered with magic. Erased or touched up, as you will. Time flowed so fast on some of their worlds, especially the outer ones, that they could die in the time it took you to grab lunch back in Mysterium. I knew they had their own reality and their own worth, but I had never considered how that should be reflected in my own behavior. Something about Drake’s description of Barth made me question all of that.

  I don’t know when Drake slipped out the door to rejoin the group, but I stood for a long time staring at Barth. My mind was filled with images of the Armies of Light and Dark fighting beneath the walls of the Fortress of Despair. I saw again those white lines charging and faltering and falling back only to regroup and try again, like a foaming wave crashing and receding on a coast of black rock. How many died that one day, and all the other days that preceded it? How many Barths had I created?

  As I watched this man breathe and bleed, I had a thought that sparked a feeling that ignited into an obsession. I became determined that, whatever else I did, Barth Hammerarm would not die. Not here. Not today. Not while I still walked this world. I bent down to pick him up, but the man was enormous and the weakness that had been growing on me since my return made it impossible for me to do more than drag his body into the center of the room.

  If will make him safe, I pledged silently.

  I spread my feet wide and raised my hands. I drank in power from the world around me. Colors faded and the mass of string in the corner disappeared. I continued to draw. The door Barth had battled flickered and then vanished. Still I drew. I drew energy until I was fairly bursting, and then from the tip of my finger a line of pure white light shot forth. Using it like a blowtorch I burned a circle of protection into the stone around Barth’s unconscious form. Reality screamed and crackled at my spell. The very walls around me wavered for a moment like they were made of water. The air grew thick and viscous and I felt Vivian’s presence in the room. I knew she could feel my touch and was looking for me. I did not care.

  “Let her come. Let her touch this circle,” I said to no one, to the walls, to Vivian. Let her feel what a true mage of the Mysterium is capable of, I thought.

  With the reality key perhaps she could break through the circle I was forming, but it would require her to tear the world apart in the attempt. Absent that, Barth Hammerarm would remain perfectly preserved in his slumber. He would be untouched by the ravages of time and hunger and violence; he would rest until the Dark Queen was no more, or Trelari ceased to exist.<
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  When at last the circle was complete, the weight of what I had done hit me. Tears burned in my eyes as I fell to my knees gasping, then the world room spun and I blacked out.

  I was not out for long, or at least it did not seem like that long. I came to with Drake kneeling beside me, splashing water onto my face. “Hey, kid, you still with us?”

  I nodded groggily and sat up. “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

  “What the hell happened in here?”

  “I wanted to protect Barth,” I said slowly, trying to find my way to the words. “I needed to protect him.”

  “Right. Barth looks fine. Not that I can get within three feet of him, but what happened to the door, and why does it look like the walls have been melted?”

  I looked about. The room was clean, not swept clean or mopped clean, but surgery room sterile. Every surface was brilliant white and looked to be made of wax. Rivulets of solid stone had dripped down the sides of the walls and gathered in smooth stone pools around the edges of the room.

  “The spell may have gotten away from me a bit,” I said as he helped pull me to my feet.

  “Does this happen often?”

  I shook my head. “No. I was—” I tried to think about what to say “—upset,” was all I could come up with.

  He never said anything, but I saw in his eyes a larger question, the question Valdara should have asked earlier: “What the hell are you?”

  Chapter 21

  POLYGON MADNESS

  We rejoined the group, and I braced myself for Drake to tell them what I’d done, and for the inevitable and impossible-to-answer questions that would follow, but he said nothing except that I had cast a protection spell on Barth so we wouldn’t have to worry about him.

  Valdara would not look at me, but Rook nodded his approval. “Good thinkin’, laddie. Draggin’ a body around a dungeon is a nightmare.”

  And with that rather unsentimental observation, we were off.

  There were no secret doors in the twenty-by-twenty-one room (not surprisingly), and so the south door was where we went. Sam continued to describe as we explored the mines. Ariella continued to map. The searching for secret doors lasted one more chamber before it was dropped by silent consent. I kept my mouth shut except for asking Red Five his name: Luke. I also asked the two gnomes who were with us what their names were: Spryspindle and Berrycrank.

  I’ll leave out much of the next several hours. We traveled around randomly. There were long periods of boredom when all we did was listen at doors and check for traps or locks and things of that nature, punctuated by mayhem when we encountered a group of kobolds or a pack of bugbears or a group of skeletons. I omit the details partly because everything seemed so random and pointless, and partly because my memory of it is foggy. I was in a daze formed of a noxious mixture of fatigue and self-loathing, contributing little or nothing to the group’s efforts. Not that I had much left to give. I’m not sure I could’ve focused enough energy to light a match.

  Eventually we rested for a few hours, something Rook called a “long rest,” which was to be contrasted with a “short rest,” which was only ten minutes or so. Everyone told me I would feel better after a long rest, and I was surprised to find they were right. It made no sense, but for once I was managing to keep all my questions to myself, and I had a lot: How do all these creatures live, in many cases right next door to each other, without killing one another? How do they find food and water? Where do they go to the bathroom (a problem I was always having), and why doesn’t the mine smell of untreated sewage?

  It was obvious that the world was playing by a set of rules that didn’t have to make logical sense, as long as it maintained an internal coherence. I knew this because I recognized that many of the “rules” I was having trouble understanding had been drawn up by a smug adept—me—who couldn’t be bothered to think about the people that would have to live in accordance with his edicts. So, yeah, I was pretty down.

  At some point in our wanderings we found ourselves standing in front of a door, deep within the mines, that led into a natural cavern.

  Sam said, “You push open another door.”

  “We already pushed open the door, kid,” said Drake.

  We were all getting tired.

  Sam yawned and nodded. “Right, okay, then,” he said, peering into the gloom. “The room before you is cavernous—the walls are natural and unhewn, unlike the chiseled stone found in the rest of the dungeon. A pale turquoise fungus hangs on the east wall and a corridor winds away to the southeast. It’s noticeably damp.”

  “How do I draw that?” asked Ariella.

  “I’ll do it,” said Sam, taking the quill.

  Paul went over to the fungus. I noticed a sudden change in the music. It was building to something.

  I put up my hand as a warning. “I wouldn’t touch that.”

  “Why?” asked Paul, wiping his hand across it. “It’s blue. It’s harmless. If it were a slime, that would be one thing, or perhaps an ooze. But a blue fungus should be harmless.”

  This had become Paul’s MO since we’d entered the mine. The man seemed to be existing in a fugue-like state where he had accepted that it was his fate to die and was trying to get it out of the way as efficiently as possible. I hadn’t been sure what to do to help him except to put him in the back and get him out of that red tunic. I’d insisted on both, but he kept slipping forward, and somehow, despite my orders, he’d donned another red shirt.

  “I don’t know, lad,” said Rook. “Looks greenish to me.”

  “My eyes are blue,” said Drake, “and that’s not the same color as my eyes.”

  “Don’t you mean your eyes are bloodshot?” suggested Valdara.

  “So we have a sense of humor again?” Drake said sardonically. “How wonderful.”

  “Listen here,” said Ariella, “I’m an herbalist . . .”

  “When did that happen?” I asked.

  She thrust her chin up and said defensively, “I’ve been studying herbalism at least as long as I’ve been studying crystal dowsing.” Another skill I hadn’t known she had. “Anyway, we herbalists know about fungi, and that’s definitively—”

  Paul screamed as his body shuddered and the turquoise goo engulfed him. We watched in horror as he melted into a puddle.

  “—dangerous,” finished Seamus, slamming a meaty fist into his hand.

  “What can we do?” said Luke (Red Five as he was previously). “Can you heal him, Avery?”

  I stared between Luke and the puddle, dumbfounded. All I could think was, that’s the end of Paul, red tunic and all. A wave of nausea swept over me and I threw up.

  Seeing that I was occupied, Luke turned to Drake. “What about you, St. Drake?”

  “Look, kid, I’m not a saint anymore, and even if I were there’s no cure for someone being melted.”

  Valdara held up a hand. “Listen, I hear something.” She turned her head left and right before pointing to the southeast exit where Spryspindle and Berrycrank were standing. I became aware of a rumbling noise. It reminded me of the sound that a stone might make rolling downhill.

  As we watched, a massive shape rolled out of the opening and squashed Berrycrank. I should say, it seemed to start absorbing him. Whatever it was, it was about ten feet high and had no limbs, eyes, mouth, or other identifiable body parts. It was also translucent, which only amplified the horror, because it meant we could watch as Berrycrank struggled briefly within the thing’s body, grew still, and then began to dissolve. I screamed in terror and threw up again.

  “It’s a gelatinous sphere!” said Seamus as he pulled his axe from his belt.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Rook barked, also grabbing his axe. “A sphere is a round solid figure with every point on its surface equidistant from its center. That obviously has a number of different facets like a gem.”

  “Gods save us, it’s a gelatinous polyhedron!” shouted Sam, who was digging desperately through the pouch at his side. He pulled o
ut a twig and began to gesture at the thing with it.

  Absorbing Berrycrank had only slowed the thing’s progress briefly. Already it was rolling after Spryspindle, who was sprinting back towards us as fast as his tiny legs could carry him. It became quickly obvious that Spryspindle had no chance to outrun the monster.

  Ariella screamed the gnome’s name and fired arrow after arrow at the pursuing creature. Her aim was true, but the gelatin never slowed as the missiles were simply absorbed and digested.

  I recovered enough from my nausea to set a spell pattern in my mind, but when I tried to draw energy to activate it my head began to spin and my legs gave out beneath me. I fell to my knees and watched as the gnome drew his daggers and spun to confront the monster.

  “For Berrycrank, for Puddlestripe, for Fizz—” came the voice of the gnome before the thing hit him.

  I closed my eyes as the monster hit the gnome with a loud smack. When I reopened them, the Spryspindle’s body was half-inside the creature. The gnome twitched as his lower body was smashed into the floor and then the wall. And that was the end of the gnomes. There was no time to vomit.

  “It’s coming this way!” shouted Seamus. “Run for it!”

  Everyone made for a small crevice in the cavern wall that was barely an arm-span wide and about twenty feet deep. Everyone that is except Sam. While we squeezed into the narrow gap, he stood his ground, gesturing wildly with his twig.

  A burst of blue magic like lightning erupted from the end of the stick and arced through the dark of the cavern striking the gelatin. The shape crackled, before splitting in half. We all gave a shout of joy, which turned to horror as we watched the two halves reformed into new shapes and begin again to roll about the cavern. Our problems had doubled.

  Sam sprinted to join us in the crevice. “Lightning doesn’t work,” he panted.

  Thud. Squish. The polygons smashed into the wall just behind him, but the opening was too small for them to reach us.