by GJ Kelly
It was a splendid day, the morning bright, the sky cloudless and as blue as any seen from the peaks of home in summertime. It was early when we set out from the works, and rather than trudge along the forest path and glimpse that glorious azure sky in pieces through the leaves high above us, I took the path due east to the outskirts of Calhaneth, and at the first broad road, turned to the north, heading for the dock. Already the city was showing signs of it being another day of bustle and endeavour, and many were the people going about their business.
For conversation, Sherrod and I passed the time with a discussion concerning refractories, pausing now and then to greet this fellow or that acquaintance, until at length we arrived at the path leading to the terminus of the mighty canal. The path was busy, as it always was, traffic upon it really only ceasing at night, and then only for the peace and convenience of those who dwelled in the northern arc of the city, resuming again at dawn. Many were the supplies needed by such a metropolis.
We kept to the left of the path through the trees, careful to avoid the ruts in the well-worn cobbles and mindful of keeping up with the flow of pedestrian traffic to the terminus. On our right, the inbound traffic, carts and hand-carts mostly, though there were occasional heavily-laden donkeys and asses in braying and obdurate caravans, all making their way to the city.
At length, we came to the broad expanse which, like a funnel, allows new arrivals to jostle politely into an orderly train for the journey into the city along the path, and permits departures to fan out the better to seek the barge they have come to board or to greet. There were large blackboards here and there on which clerks chalked the location of various inbound and outbound barges, a great convenience for traveller and merchant alike; the docks are a large rectangular expanse and without knowing at which berth was moored which barge, there would have been utter chaos.
It was at one such board, quite close to the city path, where Sherrod and I learned that the barge bearing our supplies had arrived early upon the chains, and was already taking on passengers and goods for the return journey to Ostinath. Since it was quite likely that our billet of Morgmetal and other essential minerals had already passed us on the path, we had just decided to return to the works empty-handed when an event occurred which at the time we thought remarkable simply for its uncommon lack of all courtesy. Now, safe at home and penning this account for my king and for posterity, I regard it as terrifying, and ripe with such portents and auguries as could never have been imagined on that fine summer’s day.
There came at first a rise in the hubbub from that part of the path where the aforementioned funnel began its broad expanse, and this quickly grew to such a volume we could clearly hear cries of protest, and shouts, exclamations and curses which became louder as they approached us.
Then I saw, heading towards me in what had been a polite but jostling throng, the cause of all the alarums and epithets. It was the two wizards of the Tau, who had escorted the Orb from my works to the College at the centre of the city, and they were ruthlessly shoving their way through the crowd towards the docks. Beside me, Sherrod gasped, and tried to draw me aside, but, the Viell of the Tau using their long staves to shove people out of their path, and quite brutally at times, found themselves on a collision course with my own person.
“Out of the way, fool! Make way there!” one of them cried, his features twisted with what seemed uncommon fear, and anger.
“What has happened?” I demanded, suddenly fearful for the object I had so recently passed into their care.
“Get out of the way!” cried the other, and I saw a sudden shimmering in the air around his staff, and was bowled over by some mystic force onto the hard and dusty ground.
Sherrod assisted me to my feet, and the pair of us, quite astonished, watched as the two wizards of the Tau forced their way to the nearest unladen barge, burst its anchoring chains asunder with mystic power, and using their staves in the manner of barge-poles began to propel it from the dockside and towards the distant lock gates. The gates had been opened to admit a new arrival, and the barge being already in the pool and making its way towards the northern quayside, the lock-keeper was commencing to crank the wheel to close the gates again.
“Hold the gates! Hold the gates!” called one of the wizards of the Tau, making his staff spark brightly in the air, and the stunned lock-keeper did as he was bid.
“Sherrod!” I exclaimed, “Who are those vile wizards to treat people so ungraciously?”
“They are of the Toorseneth, in Ostinath, and not to be trifled with, nor impeded.” He told me. We watched as the two wizards struggled to manoeuvre their barge to the lock, and then my fears for my creation took greater hold of me.
“Come, Sherrod! To the dome!” I called, and together, we rather rudely pressed ourselves through the throng to the path.
Sherrod, being an elf, moved nimbly, and took to the trees alongside the path, where we were able to move at a goodly pace unhindered by traffic on the road into the city. We covered the mile or thereabouts in good time, and soon found ourselves threading our way through the broad streets and avenues of the city. The plan of that great metropolis, with its offset thoroughfares designed to prevent the rapid passage of some imagined enemy, was a great hindrance to our progress, and we were not quite at the inner ring of lesser colleges and halls of learning girdling the chequered circular way they called the Wheel of Thought, when we heard a loud concussion.
“Theo!” Sherrod cried in alarm, and pointed upwards.
There, over the rooftops of the college of architecture, I saw great shards of gleaming copper falling like autumn leaves, and I knew terror. People began running away from the centre, which was the very the direction we were running to, and I began to hear a loud humming, and a crackling. It was hot, and being the longest day of the year, and nearly noon, shadows were at their shortest.
When Sherrod and I pushed through an alley and emerged through the crowd of panicking people at the edge of the Wheel of Thought, we froze, horrified. The top of the dome had been blown off, its remains like a shattered egg-shell atop the roundtower in the middle of the colonnades. The refectories were afire, smoke rising quickly, and in the midst of the loud humming came great flashes of lighting from the dome, whipping out and striking at those poor fellows attempting to flee the scene, destroying instantly whatever and whoever they touched.
Fires were spreading quickly, and I felt great heat on my face. Then I heard, above the screams and the panic and the growing roar of the flames, a familiar voice calling my name.
“Theo! Theo! This way! Run! In Stanas’ name run for your life!”
It was Baden, a very junior wizard of the Elven Viell, a friendly fellow of long acquaintance, sprinting across the Wheel of Thought, while all about him people were being struck and blasted asunder by the lightning from the tower.
“I must find my wife!” Sherrod screamed at me and turned, and the last I saw of him he was running to the south, calling her name, Leeyana.
I ran then, towards the north where Baden had survived the crossing of the great circular way. Others, still streaming out from the doors at the foot of the College roundtower, were not so lucky. I saw a horse-drawn carriage speed across the grand avenue, its wheels ablaze as it crashed into a statue and overturned. Another wagon, laden with books, dashed from the College, only to be struck by dazzling white fire from above, and though one fellow ran from the wreckage and survived, another was trapped beneath it, and did not.
Baden grabbed my arm and dragged me into what I think was the school for the study of herbs, but there was no time for any examination of the books and surrounds as I was dragged through the place, the wizard heaving a chair through the window in the north wall and shoving me through it. All around us in the street was chaos, people trying desperately to find loved ones, screaming out names, some fighting against the flow of the throng making their tortuous way along the insane design of those offset roads.
But not Baden. He was
young, and energetic, and though low in the order of elven wizards (his duties were those of a clerk recording the progress of the Orb’s construction and activation), he was cool-headed and quick-thinking. He took us north, not by the back-and-forth thoroughfares clogged with desperate refugees fleeing the conflagration roaring ever closer at our heels, but through buildings. Through front door and out the back, or through windows, breaking and entering and smashing his way through the obstacles rather than going around them.
He did not speak, but rather ran, keeping a tight hold of my arm or my sleeve the whole time. A great wind began to blow, swirling, fanning the flames behind us, and above the screams and the shouts and the seemingly endless litany of names being called by the frantic in search of loved ones, a great humming, rising to a crescendo, and a bright light, searing, dazzling, casting the sharpest shadows I have ever seen.
Cut and bleeding from shards of window-glass smashed through by the wizard, we finally found ourselves beyond the northern rim of the city’s outskirts. The wind was howling now, and seemed as though it would draw the very breath out from our lungs as we strove for the trees near the path that led to the docks. All about us, groups of people fought their way against that fire-fuelled tornado, all seeking to make the shelter of the trees and the only safe route out of Calhaneth as the heat behind us grew ever more unbearable.
Halfway to the dock, and gasping for breath, the awful sounds of the city and its people being consumed behind us, Baden stopped, gasping for breath, and grasped my lapels.
“Sabotaged!” he cried, “Sabotaged by Toorsencreed! We must run! We must run!”
And run we did, though my memory of that last flight from the horror is now, thankfully, vague. Somehow, we made our way to the docks, scrabbled aboard a barge, and waited with the other passengers in dread while the lock was operated. Behind us, to the south, we saw, those of us who had the heart to turn, the malevolent incandescence of the ruined Orb of Arristanas, its malicious light piercing the foul blackness of a great and swirling tornado of smoke and embers rising to the heavens...
Ash from that conflagration fell upon us for more than a day as we journeyed north upon the chains, and all about us weeping as it did. Some lost their wits, screaming the names of lost loved ones and beating the ash from their hair and clothing, fearing that the grey and mottled snowflakes that fell upon us on a bright June day were the remains of those who had perished in the firestorm. Some even threw themselves into the canal, and thrashed about in the water to rid themselves of the ash, ignoring all our entreaties to come back aboard, and were left in the wake behind us, and we hoping that a following vessel might later save them.
On the barge, a day after the complete destruction of that city, for surely nothing could have survived, Baden took me to one side, his eyes haunted, and furtive, and, away from those others who had clambered aboard our vessel at the docks, he told me of events as he had witnessed them.
“I went to the College shortly after dawn,” he told me, “And took breakfast at the refectory as I have done these many years. Work on the Orb was nearing completion, the facets were graven in accordance with all procedures and only the uppermost face required the final rune for its activation. These final works were conducted in near-darkness, since with eleven facets completed, and the twelfth face all but a few strokes away from activation, any light might ignite the process of generation, and this could not be risked until the Orb was ready.
“During breakfast, the Ahk-Viell who were to complete the activation of the Orb were sitting nearby, talking quietly though with great animation amongst themselves. It so happened that we all finished our morning meal at about the same time, and so began the walk from the refectory to the College together, though I of course held back a little.
“We saw the two wizards of the Toorsencreed leave the college by the southern door, and then make haste around the base of the tower to the north, striding with great determination and purpose. ‘Hello, they’re in a hurry,’ Ahk-Viell Morat declared, but no-one paid much attention, for they are wise who do not draw the attention of the Toorseneth.
“Inside the College we made our way up to the dome, filled with excitement. I paused to collect my journal, and so was a good distance to the rear of the group when I heard them begin to exclaim, first in surprise, and then in great concern, and then in fear. The single door into the dome you know well, my friend, and though it had been locked when the last of the Ahk-Viell had left late the previous night, the mystic key to unlock the portal did not release the door to admit them…”
Thus it was I learned the nature of the betrayal and sabotage which resulted in the catastrophe which consumed that once great city. Baden related to me all the details, how they took to hammering at the door to gain access to the uppermost floor wherein the Orb lay. Nothing at first would avail them, since the portal had been constructed for the very purpose of containing the secret work that was the Orb of Arristanas and preventing access by anyone not entrusted with that secret. Brute force availed them not, and so they turned to the mystic arts, and found that the seal applied by the two wizards of the Tau was powerful indeed. And all the while they could hear a humming, growing from with the chamber.
One of the Elven Viell, so Baden told me, had an idea to bore a small hole through the centre of the portal, where it was weakest, and if successful, defeat the mystic seal by expanding the hole outwards towards the edges, where the force of the Tau denying them entry appeared strongest. Thus it was that their efforts were concentrated upon a point, and the drilling of a hole through the steel-braced portal.
Their efforts succeeded, but it took hours before finally, Baden said, a hole large enough for a finger was bored clean through the door.
“Candles have been lit, and glowstones!” came the cry. “The Orb is illuminated! It glows blood-red!”
Such were the words that reached Baden’s ears from the cluster of wizards assaulting the door. I knew at once the meaning, as did he, of course, for he had served as clerk and kept the journals of all prior tests. The blood-red glow is an indication of impending catastrophe. It is caused by a fault in the graving of the final facet, which, when the Orb is illuminated, causes energies to reflect and build too rapidly and violently within the structure. With the number of candles and lamps within the dome all lit and shining brightly, the defective Orb was building energies past the point where it could be safely discharged, or even rendered dormant by the closing of the casket’s lead-lined lid.
The wizards began working frantically, but Baden, familiar with previous failures, could see the glow emanating through the widening hole which they had bored, and so began his retreat down the spiral stair running around the inner wall of the roundtower.
He was still within the College when the energies within the Orb became too great for the device to contain, and with a mighty concussion, it detonated, blowing off a large portion of the copper dome of the roundtower. The portal, too, was blown to pieces, and the wizards gathered on the small landing beyond it were likewise rent asunder.
I was dumbfounded by his tale, of course, and I confess without shame that I wept. I wept for the loss of the city. I wept for its people, who had perished in fear and in fire. And I wept for the destruction of my labour, twenty years in the making, which was to have been the great shield by which all peoples of the world would be protected against all dark-made evil, for all time.
Baden was in no doubt what had happened. The wizards of the Tau, possessed of the mystic key by means of which they entered the Orb chamber, lit every lamp and candle they could find, and knowing that only a single rune remained to be graven upon the uppermost facet of the Orb, they deliberately, and maliciously, marked it falsely. They marked it in the manner of prior failures, failures which were well known to all those involved in the creation of the Orb. Then they left the Orb exposed to the light, its energies building, and sealed the door beyond the ability of the Elven Viell to penetrate in time to prevent the cata
strophe which ensued.
I could not bring myself to believe that trusted wizards of Ostinath could wreak such havoc, and upon their own people, in their own city, in their own land, but Baden told me otherwise, as did the terrible events which occurred later, and which I shall relate now.
We were three days on the chains from the remains of Calhaneth when, nearing evening, Baden became suddenly alarmed, and took me by the arm saying ‘Come, let’s stretch our legs ashore a while.’
I was surprised, but did as he suggested, and together we jumped the small gap between the barge and the bank of the canal, and paused, allowing the vessel to draw slowly away from us. It was not uncommon for those of us aboard to become stiff and restless, and such ventures ashore were frequent and unremarkable.
This time, though, Baden’s eyes flicked nervously from the barge to the north, where I could make out the shape of the southernmost Wheel of Thal-Marrahan. He suddenly dragged me to the rough ground, behind clumps of coarse grasses and weeds which grew sparsely there. Of course I was greatly alarmed by this, and was about to protest when he pressed me flat to the ground.
“Don’t move! Don’t make a sound, Theo! Toorsengard!”
I peered as best as I could through the scrubby grasses and inched forward a little so I could see past Baden’s head. Horses and their riders were clopping down the stone tow-paths either side of the canal from the distant lock gates at the Wheel, closing the gap between the mighty boat-lift and the barge we had just disembarked.
I remember whispering to Baden, “A rescue party so soon?” but he turned upon me a gaze so filled with horror I shuddered.
While we watched, some time later, the barge, under orders from one of the riders giving commands in elvish which we heard drifting down the tow-path, slipped from the chains and bumped alongside the canal wall. I could not believe my eyes. I still cannot believe what I saw.
Our companions, survivors from what surely must be the greatest catastrophe the modern world has known, came ashore and assembled in a line on the bank, which is to say the west bank. I had a fleeting thought at the time that perhaps the riders were taking names, building a list of the details of survivors of the calamity. But without a sound, riders on both banks of the canal presented their bows, and without hesitation, shot our comrades dead. There had been thirty one of us in the barge when we fled Calhaneth. Five flung themselves overboard within the first day and were not seen again. Now only myself and Baden remained.