Gifts of Vorallon: 01 - The Final Warden

by Thomas Cardin

  “I may doubt myself, Tornin,” Lorace told him as he reached up with both hands to clasp his knight by the shoulders, “and until the gods see fit to restore my memory completely I probably always shall, but I will never doubt you.”

  Tornin nodded firmly. “I understand, Lorace, thank you. It will take a lot more than the treachery of a man like Hurn to undo me again. Lord Aran spoke to me while he healed me; he bade me to embrace my gift, to let none undo his fine work because I failed to move quickly enough. This I shall do, especially with the power of this sword coursing through me, I can feel it invigorating and strengthening me. For all the unworldly blackness of its metal it is full of light, I feel its desire to shine brightly but it obeys my will to remain dark.”

  “It is a wondrous sword, Tornin,” Lorace said as he examined the strange black metal. There was a wateriness to how its broad blade scattered and reflected the light of the temple. The simple crossbar hilt and ball pommel was of normal, though finely crafted, blackened steel.. The two-handed grip was wrapped round and round with a black dyed leather strap. “Perhaps Thryk can tell us what it is crafted of, it looks like it should be too heavy to wield properly.”

  “It is indeed quite heavy, but not when I wield it in my hand,” Tornin said as he stepped back and waved the blade lightly about. “The strength it gives more than makes up for its weight, I am quite fortunate that Hurn did not strike me with it.”

  Guardian Oen seized this relatively quiet moment to announce his immediate departure for the dwarven home of Vlaske K’Brak to his priests. They accepted the news well, but a few were concerned because of the Zuxrans. Oen reassured them with a voice that resonated confidence then busied several of them with gathering food and supplies for their journey.

  “I know that this is the first time we have faced a threat outside our walls, but you are all more than capable of seeing to the welfare of our people during this crisis. It is my duty to see that our allies are notified of this threat and the Guardian’s Pact is honored,” Oen assured them before he dispatched a few priests to the wall to relieve their fellows.

  Lorace noted that Captain Falraan had not been present since Tornin’s oath swearing. In his mind’s eye, he found her standing across the plaza before the Voradin tree, weeping softly. He wondered if she wept for Tornin, fearful for the new knight’s destiny his service. For his part, Lorace was fearful as well, but he promised himself to see his knight returned safe to this woman who cared for him so.

  Gone was Lorace’s belief that what he envisioned was just in his imagination. After the events of this morning he acknowledged this unique sight of his as real and true. With that realization, a portion of his uncertainty faded away, like a fraction of weight removed from his shoulders.

  Oen beckoned Lorace to follow him, interrupting his introspection. With Tornin following, Oen led them to his private chamber to pack a satchel of his own belongings. The chamber was spare and simple, much like the high priest himself, who, except for the heavy silver chain he wore, showed no outward sign of his importance.

  “May I ask the both of you about your gifts?” Lorace asked them while Oen looked through a heavy chest for spare garments. “Is it common for the people of Halversome to be gifted?”

  “Very few of us are potently gifted,” Oen said, holding up a pair of miss-matched woolen stockings. “I would wager that Tornin here and my brother Lehan are among the most strongly gifted, but there are others who wish not to be named.”

  “You name your brother Truthseeker? Is that because of his gift?”

  Oen nodded, stuffing an extra pair of sheepskin boots into his pack. “He can look at anything before him or hear a man’s words and see the truth of it. It is rather complicated because revealing the truth he sees will show underlying truths about the subject, but not until he speaks the first truth aloud. We had a very interesting childhood, let me assure you.”

  “Is his gift always functioning?” Lorace asked, remembering that Oen told him his own was always working, but that Tornin was only quickened when he wished to be.

  “No, he has to will it to be so, gifts are heavily influenced by one’s will,” Oen explained. “Were Tornin to will it strongly enough there is no telling how fast he might move. As for my own it is always functioning but I can will it to see even deeper into the spirit, seeing the corruption within no matter how slight it may be.”

  “And when you look deeply into mine?”

  “Your spirit is far too deep,” Oen said with a chuckle as he rolled up a heavy blanket. “I fear I would lose myself in its light were I to do so, but what I can see is as pure as any I have ever beheld.”

  “But I have doubts, uncertainties, fears. How is it that my spirit is as pure as you say?”

  “It is in acting upon them that our spirits are most harshly tainted. Still, they do leave their mark, but we all bear similar. I do not say your spirit is perfectly pure, just that is more pure than any other I have beheld.”

  “Do you look deeply into Lord Aran’s when he appears to you?”

  “No, his spirit also is too deep and it is everywhere when he stands before me in my prayers. And before you ask, yes, there are taints even upon Aran’s spirit. A great sorrow lives within him—a regret or fear of grave import. The only spirit close to that pervasiveness is that of Vorallon itself.”

  “The world spirit the elves worship?” Lorace asked.

  “The dwarves do as well, that is what unites their two peoples despite their clear differences,” Oen informed him. “The spirit of Vorallon is dim but it is everywhere beneath our own spirits, holding them up as the ground does our own feet.”

  “That is fascinating,” Lorace said, looking down at his feet. “The world is a living thing?”

  “Not as you and I are alive, but he breathes with the seasons and the tides,” Oen said. “His spirit is very much alive.”

  “You said previously that gifts are manifestations of strong spirits,” Lorace said, shifting the subject back to the original topic. “Have you seen a spirit strong enough to manifest more than one gift?”

  Oen stopped his packing and looked searchingly into Lorace’s face. “Only one, Lorace, yours.”

  Lorace nodded and looked away from Oen’s penetrating eyes. “Besides whatever it was I did to kill Hurn, I am seeing things. I thought I was imagining these visions. When I first saw Halversome from the headland I could see the people in the streets, the guardsmen on the walls, though they were too far away or blocked from my direct line of sight.”

  He turned to Tornin. “I saw those wolves when they howled from within the forest, they had picked up my scent and were hunting me. I saw the murdered men in the guardhouse because I was following you with this sight of mine when you left this morning. That is when I believed it was real. Before then, I just thought I was imagining it all, or remembering places I had already been.”

  “That is a wonderful gift, Lorace,” Oen said as he finished with his pack and slung it over his shoulder. “You must learn to control it and guide it, embrace it. Today we begin a journey up the Silarne River, use your gift to find its headwaters, that is where the ascent to Vlaske K’Brak begins. Tell me what you see.”

  Lorace thought of the broad winding river that flowed into the lake behind Halversome. The morning sun sparkled on its waters as he pushed his sight up river, seeing it from the air, from the point of view of a bird. Along the northern riverbank there was a well-kept road, beneath the eaves of the forest. He pushed his awareness further up the river, following its sweeping turns through the deep forested valley. The river narrowed and quickened its pace the further up the valley he moved, many small tributary streams flowed into it, descending from the Stormwall mountains to the south and east. He passed seven towering peaks as he pushed his point of view along until the river was just a cascade of falls and pools descending from the greatest of the peaks in the mountain range. Here, where the river became completely impassable, a broad stone bridge allowed the road
along the northern bank to span the river. Beside the bridge was a stone quay that jutted into the lowest pool, and the road continued up the great peak’s flanks in a series of many steep switchbacks.

  His sight followed this road until he found its terminus before a great double door cut into the mountainside with only a small stone ledge before it. The glint of metal in the sun that was just cresting the mountain’s peak drew his sight closer until he saw several dwarven warriors standing before the door. When he approached closer he could hear their voices carried on the wind as one was telling the others about the attributes of a certain daughter of a journeyman woodcarver.

  “I see the entry to the Home of the Heart, Vlaske K’Brak,” Lorace said to his companions with a smile of delight. “It is a long way, this journey, but what is more, I can hear the dwarves who stand guard before its great stone doors. It is more than just sight, it is awareness.”

  “I wager that you would have a difficult time becoming lost,” Tornin said as they extinguished the oil lamp and exited Oen’s chambers. “It is indeed a wonderful gift to so swiftly see a journey of several days.”

  “What do you see and hear with your own eyes and ears while you are moving your awareness about with your gift?” Oen asked.

  “I was still aware of where I was, but everything was overlapping, and the awareness of my gift was the more dominant of the two.”

  “And what happens if you include yourself within your awareness, say if you were to move your point of view to somewhere above your head and looked down? Does it work like that?” Oen inquired, with a raised eyebrow.

  Lorace paused in the broad hallway that led to the priest’s chambers and pushed his awareness upward, above his head. The effort was easy like consciously turning his eyes to look from left to right. “The awareness supplants everything if I am in view.”

  Lorace pushed his sight upward further until it entered the stone ceiling above their heads at which point everything changed, his personal senses awakened again like another eye opening and he was sharing his awareness with the interior grain of the stone. Pushing further out he was soon outside the Temple and looking downward toward himself within. It was as though his own eyes were now filling in the view that the pyramid’s white walls were blocking out—transposing himself into the view his gift created.

  He turned to Oen and Tornin and told them what he was seeing. Oen was fascinated that he could see the inside of the stone.

  “I would have imagined it to be all darkness within solid rock,” the high priest said with puzzlement. “Look into my chamber we just left, it should be darkness within for we snuffed the lamp.”

  Lorace did so, he did not push his point of view there, it snapped there the instant that he willed it. Within, he could see everything though there was no light of any kind. “I can see, my sight reveals everything in the dark as easily as in light. It is not like seeing with my eyes, it is somehow clearer and more in focus as though everywhere within the room was where I was directing my sight. There is no loss of perception at the edges of my vision.”

  They were met by several priests on their way back to the main hall of the temple who had bundles of bedrolls, water, and food for them. One of them had gone to the Green Dragon to retrieve the clothes and shoes Ehddan had given him as well as Tornin’s bedroll. Lorace thanked them profusely for their assistance and was rewarded by their honored smiles in return.

  Oen, Tornin, and Lorace departed the temple and headed toward the forge of the dwarven smith, Thryk. The people on the street were not as carefree as they were the previous day, but they were still going about their business without much apprehension towards the threat outside the walls. The lack of idle guardsmen in the street was perhaps the most conspicuous difference between today’s morning and the previous afternoon.

  “Now that you are conscious of your gift it will become easier and easier to use,” Tornin said, continuing their discussion. “That is how mine was. When I first ran, I was unconscious of my gift, but once I was aware of it I could control it and go even faster. The exhaustion is the only limiting factor but I think this sword of mine may change all that.”

  Lorace nodded and smiled at his friend as they walked along the water channel, looking forward to seeing him in action.

  “What can you tell us of your other gift, Lorace, the one that you used earlier?” Oen asked.

  “I want to understand it, but it is like I do not have enough to grab hold of yet,” Lorace said with a furrowed brow of concentration. “I used it in my memory, at a time of great stress, without passing on to my present self what it was or how it triggered. Somehow, when I used it in my memory it manifested in the present, only Hurn was the target and it was over very fast. Something appeared in the air, it shimmered like water as it flew straight through Hurn’s chest, fast as an arrow in flight, perhaps even faster, and I could only see it from the end of it that faced me, a slight shimmer. It struck Hurn dead and vanished; it did not hit the wall at the far end of the room, it just killed him and vanished.”

  “Well I doubt it was made of water, though it may have appeared as such, there was not any water on him, his clothes were dry, but for blood. There was no sign of any kind of missile except for the hole in his chest, and you say in your memory the demon was unaffected?”

  Lorace nodded with his lips drawn in a thin line.

  “Demons are quite tough, their bodies are not flesh, but some other substance entirely,” Oen said calling forth his own memory of a demon. “I have only seen one once, on the journey here with my brother and his family. It was in the wilds south of Zed, and the blows rained upon it by the men it destroyed just glanced off its hide. My brother and I cast it back to Nefryt with two rituals that Lord Aran taught us.”

  “The Ritual of Binding and the Ritual of Banishment,” Lorace murmured.

  Oen’s heavy brows shot up. “Yes, exactly, you know of them?”

  “I was taught them when I was a child,” Lorace said. “My parents and guardians were very aware of the possibility of an attack by demons; all of us were trained extensively in the use of those two rituals.”

  “With so many protectors blessed with the spirits of priests, how could a demon, even several demons, be able to attack your family?”

  “I do not think my gift driven attack glanced off his hide,” Lorace said, going over the troubling memory in his head again. “I think the demon absorbed it, fed on it. If he did that to my phantom bolt he may very well have absorbed the divine magic of any rituals that my protectors and parents may have cast upon him. They were defenseless against him and he laughed, Oen, he laughed like it was all a fine joke.”

  chapter 9

  the rivermen

  Twenty-Third day of the Moon of the Thief

  -in Halversome

  Lorace and his companions arrived at the forge of Thryk to find that the dwarf had been joined by three additional members of his people. All four of the dwarves stood in the street before the forge in heated discussion. When Oen arrived before them they broke off from their talk to respectfully bow to the Guardian of Halversome.

  “Greetings brothers of the stone,” Oen said, returning their bow. “Is there a problem that worries all of you?”

  “We argue about who must stay,” Thryk said to them with dismissive gruffness toward his fellow dwarves. “I called through the stone last night to alert my people that one who bears godstone has appeared, and these rivermen, bringing me a load of coal and iron from Vlaske K’Brak, heard from where they were camped beside the Silarne. They have come to assist the godstone bearer in his journey and witness the Ritual of the Forge, but with the Zuxrans besieging Halversome, one of us will have to remain here to man the forge. It is whom this shall be that we are in disagreement about.”

  A memory opened up to Lorace upon hearing the dwarves in conversation with one another. He recalled Taggi teaching him to speak dwarven with monumental patience of the human child’s short attention span. For his par
t, Lorace was an apt pupil and he showed a quick mastery of the inflections toward rank, family, and skill that changed the pronunciation of almost every hard consonant of the dwarven tongue.

  “Hail, brothers! May your shoulders bear the weight of the mountain with ease. I am called Lorace,” much to everyone’s surprise, he said the traditional blessing in fluent dwarven, inflected with respect to strangers. Only briefly was he haunted by the corpse of his teacher, Taggi, lying torn and beaten.

  The eldest appearing dwarf among them stepped toward Lorace and bowed his head in respect before returning a blessing of his own in the inflection of respect for one’s skill. “May the skulls of your foes lean toward the kiss of your hammer. I am called Ralli, my companions are Quig and his younger brother Petor.”

  Ralli looked Lorace up and down, his gray whiskers twitching in open veiled curiosity. “Very few of the people under the sky know the voice of the stone. May I ask who taught you our tongue?”

  “The stone brother was called Taggi, he was one of my protectors and teachers while I was a child,” Lorace answered him with the inflection of pride in one’s elder brother.

  Ralli stood straighter and his chest thrust out in pride as his deep-set gray eyes twinkled with emotion. “You had a very good teacher,” Ralli said with the heavy inflection reserved only for speaking of one’s son and heir. “Taggi was my son. He answered the call of the Lady of Destiny almost thirty years ago. I heard the song of his death through the stone almost fourteen years ago.”

  “He died defending me from a demon of most dreadful aspect that slew my mother and father and my other oathsworn defenders,” Lorace said with pride toward one’s elder. He would have reached out to clasp Ralli, whose eyes brimmed with tears, in an embrace if he were another human, but it was not the way of the dwarves who only embraced members of their family.