Gifts of Vorallon: 01 - The Final Warden

by Thomas Cardin

  Lorace and Oen checked on Tornin once more before they sought out their adjoining rooms to get what sleep they could. Lorace paused only long enough to pull off his robe and shift to bathe in a small basin of lightly scented water, washing the black dust of destroyed demons from his hands. He climbed into bed, and within moments of laying his head on the down-filled pillow, he slipped into sleep.

  chapter 15

  memory and flow

  Twenty-Sixth day of the Moon of the Thief

  -in Vlaske K’Brak

  In his dreams, Lorace floated over an empty city bathed in late afternoon sun. The buildings were of brown brick and roughhewn timber. Many pennants, bearing the black dragon insignia of Zuxra, ruffled in a weak breeze, but nothing else moved. There were no signs of life, only scattered piles of clothing lying in the dust of the cobbled street. As Lorace’s view moved through this unknown city, the wind picked up to blow the discarded clothing about, revealing white bones underneath. His exploring sight found a burnt area where it appeared a fight had occurred, and many more bones of men and weapons were scattered among clothes and armor. The rising wind began blowing about furiously.

  His view kept moving, beyond his control, taking him past the ramshackle outskirts to show him a large shadowy figure lumbering into the fields and pastures that had fed the Zuxran city. In the wake of the wavering, ogre-sized shadow were more bones. The wind whirled and whirled while a voice began a low, keening cry. The shadow stopped for a moment and turned back toward Lorace’s point of view to laugh above the sound of crying.

  Lorace woke to the wind swirling about his room. Bedding and clothing spun in a vortex over him and rattled the door to his chamber. The crying came from his own lips as he writhed and clutched at his remaining blanket. He stifled the cry on his lips and released his hold over the wind, allowing the room to settle down in disarray.

  Tornin flung the door open, sword in hand, and rushed to Lorace’s bedside. “You have to stop waking me up like this,” his friend said with gentle humor. “I heard your cry and I am here to protect you. What terrors did you see? Share the burden with me.”

  “It wasn’t a memory this time,” Lorace said, clasping Tornin’s arm and sitting up. “It was happening as I dreamed, my sight awakened in my sleep.”

  “What did you see?” his friend prompted.

  “I saw something, a large shadowy form, easily the size of a large demon or an ogre such as we saw burned. This creature left the bones of hundreds of people in its wake, far more than a demon could kill without falling back to Nefryt. I did not see how it killed them, but I am sure that it was the instrument of destruction. Somehow it seemed to know I was watching—it turned and laughed at me.”

  “Where was this? Not Halversome, I hope,” Tornin frowned.

  “No, it was not Zed either, of that I am sure. There were Zuxran banners hanging everywhere, like those mounted over the tents before Halversome. It destroyed an entire city of men. If anything was left alive, it was hiding from the creature and my sight.”

  -in Ousenar

  The Devourer heard the sudden cry on the rising wind and turned around. There was a taste of life on that wind, a spark he hungered for more than any other. He laughed at the note of despair in the cry. It too reeked of familiarity. He took several strides back toward the center of town, but both cry and wind had faded away.

  His body was complete now, and glorious, but he had gained no new memories. He growled at the wind. It had tortured him and kept him from his prey.

  “You have no hold over me!” he shouted to the deathly silence from his deep chest. “I will be a god, and you cannot stop me. It is my destiny to devour you most of all!”

  “To become a god,” he mused, the words sinking in comfortably. “This is my destiny, this is why I feed. Yes!”

  Whatever the living presence in the wind was, it gave him a target for his hatred. All else was hunger, a lust for more flesh.

  He examined his wonderful growing body again while he strode toward the next sparks of life in his path. He was huge now, a perfect man shape, handsome and strong. The swords of the men he had devoured had done nothing but glance off his unblemished skin. Their fire had only warmed him. His was the body of a god, and there was a purpose within his hunger. A call that grew in strength and urgency with each life he devoured.

  The next spark of life was a mounted man on a distant hilltop watching him. He continued in the man’s direction without haste, though the man turned and fled on his horse, putting more distance between them. The Devourer remained focused on the life of the man and horse, even when they were out of sight. In the further distance, toward where this man fled, was an enormous concentration of life sparks. Something more lay beneath those sparks; another tantalizing familiarity, something from a lifetime ago—several lifetimes ago—so long before what he was now.

  -in Vlaske K’Brak

  A dwarven attendant led Lorace, Oen, and Tornin to a bathing chamber. It was a sunken pool of hot water that nearly filled a chamber beside the traveler’s hall. Lorace disrobed and stepped into the pool with an extended sigh. As his toes curled in the course sand on the floor of the pool, his inquisitive sight revealed the mystery of its heat. Beneath the sand, a thick copper plate lined the pool, and beneath this ran a vent of hot air rising from a smelter below to exit upon the surface of the mountain. They used the sand to scrub their skin as the hot water soothed them.

  Tornin’s eyes had only widened for an instant at his first full view of Lorace’s scarred chest and shoulders. “Your scars were put on you by the demon that had possessed you?”

  “Yes, they are the same as what it had cut into its skin,” Lorace murmured. “I think it was his attempt to make my flesh his own, but of the demon’s we fought last night, there was none that had marked themselves as Tezzirax had.”

  “Perhaps they have a meaning that was important to the demon,” Tornin suggested.

  “It is possible, it may be explained in a memory that has yet to return to me,” Lorace said. “Though it seems that after last night most of my memories have returned.”

  “Great days!” exclaimed Tornin. “Do you remember anything more about your childhood?”

  Lorace’s brows furrowed. “Most of my memories are of my two older brothers.”

  “We can find them!”

  Oen stilled Tornin’s exuberance with a raised hand. “Lorace? Your brother’s, did they…”

  “No, they were not killed by the demon—they were gone already. My eldest brother, Bartalus, vanished when I was six. Jorune, when I was nine.”

  “What happened to them?” Tornin asked with heartfelt concern on his open face.

  Lorace smiled at his young knight, “I don’t know. In some memories, they are there, and later, they are simply gone. They knew when they were leaving, but they would not share with me why. Even the demon spoke of my destiny, something that would happen when I too became twelve years old.”

  Lorace paused while he searched through his returning memories.

  “I remember my brother Jorune best. He always watched over me, looking out for me. You remind me of him, Oen, in your wisdom and your kindness. My strongest memory of him returned when you were so badly hurt and showed me how to pray to Aran.”

  “Do you remember now how you received the godstone?” Oen asked.

  “It was given to me by The Lady of Destiny while I lay washed up on the beach south of Halversome—it was the barrier that had shielded my spirit from that of Tezzirax.”

  “Did she say how you came to be there?” the priest asked while he scrubbed his feet with handfuls of sand.

  Lorace shrugged, “She said only that she had held me close while the storm raged. I do not know if she was referring to the storm that seemed to have tossed the sea into a fury, or if, in a broad sense, she meant the period of my life during which the demon possessed me.”

  Tornin stood at the edge of the pool, drying his well-muscled body with a thick towel th
at originated from weavers in Halversome. He paused and tipped his head in a thoughtful nod, “Either interpretation would be true. There was a very strong storm that swept in from the southern Vestral Sea and raged for three days before you arrived.”

  Oen spoke tentatively, mindful of Lorace’s sensitivity to the intervening period of his life, “Do you have a feeling of what was happening just before you awoke, free from the demon’s spirit?”

  “Those nightmares have not come in any kind of order, but there is one memory that seems to be more recent than others,” Lorace said warily. “I—or my body, at least—was stalking a man in Zed. There were many people running and screaming in the streets, and the spirit controlling me was relishing all the chaos.”

  Lorace’s face clouded over with deepening concern as he delved further into the nightmare memory. “Zed was attacked by demons, a lot of them, far more than attacked here—hundreds. I think Zed may have been completely destroyed.”

  When his eyes took on a faraway cast, Oen interrupted him, “Lorace, don’t look. No peace will come of it. Just focus on what you remember, if Zed is gone, we can do nothing about it now.”

  Tornin said, “We can go there after we have defeated the Zuxrans, and hunt any of those demons down.”

  Lorace twisted his body like someone trying to struggle free from another’s grip, but he withdrew his sight after seeing only a glimpse of burnt ruins.

  He continued through his memory, “I followed my intended victim onto a ship which fled the demon attack. Then a great storm struck our vessel. That is the last thing I remember from that nightmare—the storm that brought me far north from Zed. There was another man there that stood out; besides the man I was hunting. He was a white robed priest, an older man with a long nose and a very severe look to him. He had white hair like you, Oen.”

  Oen’s eyes lit up in sudden excitement, “This priest was on the ship with you that fled to safety?”

  “Yes, I was hiding from him, huddled on the deck with other refugees.”

  “You described my brother, Lehan,” Oen said. “He journeyed to Zed over a year ago to carry the word of Lord Aran. He may have been instrumental in the expunging of your demon spirit. He at least could have seen something of the truth to your possession.”

  “I can seek him out with my sight, if you wish,” Lorace put forth.

  “No, Lord Aran has told me he lives and bade me not to seek him out. He will return to us in time, I am content with that. If I knew what straights he was in now, I fear I would not be able to focus on the tasks before us.”

  “What of this man you were hunting?” Tornin asked. “Was there anything special about him, perhaps he threw you overboard, if the storm did not founder your ship.”

  “He was cloaked in black, a big man, who seemed to be armed and familiar with being on the open sea,” Lorace said as he dried himself off. “I never saw his face, but I remember thinking he carried himself like a warrior, so it may be that he defeated me, but my demon host never fought fairly if he could avoid it.”

  chapter 16

  the ritual of the forge

  Twenty-Sixth day of the Moon of the Thief

  -in Vlaske K’Brak

  Petor and Ralli brought Lorace a clean white robe to wear for the Ritual of the Forge. Once he had draped it on and secured it about his waist with a long woolen belt, they both tugged and tweaked it until it was straight and true on his frame.

  “Carry the godstone in your hand,” Ralli instructed when Lorace reached for his blue satchel. “And remain barefooted, ensuring your contact with the spirit of Vorallon.”

  Petor circled around him a last time with a critical eye, “Are you prepared?”

  “I believe so,” Lorace replied without apprehension.

  “Remember Yarkin’s words to you, Lorace,” Oen reminded him. “Embrace only that part of you which is strongest, there is room for nothing else in the Ritual.”

  “Yes, that would be wise,” Ralli said, escorting Lorace and his companions out into the main hall. “You and the godstone must bond together upon that strength.”

  Lorace searched within himself while he walked. What was beyond the angry and scared little boy? That rage was strong. The rage killed Hurn and saved Tornin. Though scared, that little boy had stood up to Tezzirax, attacking with his gift of air to avenge his mother. There was unbridled and passionate strength in the rage, but there was fear in that child, hesitant and uncertain. When his thoughts lingered on the death of his family or the murders committed while possessed, the horror crippled him.

  He pushed his way past that part of himself, beyond the smoldering coals of rage. There was the tranquil side, the side that always pressed on and remained rational. It was purposeful and certain. It had launching him through predawn Halversome to the Pilgrim’s Gate, knowing that his gift of sight was true. It had commanded the run up Kur K’Tahn, leading them to the rescue of Vlaske K’Brak. This tranquility, this certainty, was very strong. It battled against his uncertainty and fear, in direct opposition to them. His rage had a fiery strength, but his tranquility had a vast reserve of solidity.

  He chose to embrace the tranquility. It bore the certainty and leadership he and his friends needed, and it gave him peace inside. He could see his mother’s face perfectly, only when he was calm at his core. This alone, beyond the benefits of peace and serenity, drew him toward his tranquil side.

  He nodded to himself. This is my choice.

  The dwarves they came upon in the halls stepped into line behind them, leaving their tasks and duties to attend the Ritual. They passed the scene of the final stand against the demons, where Wralka’s crushing blow had cracked the floor. Several dwarves were reworking the stone, chipping away the broken portion and mixing thick clay slurry that smelled like fertile soil. These workers too, abandoned their tools and mixture to join the long line of dwarves.

  Not a hundred paces beyond the sight of the broken floor, the hall opened into a vast amphitheater, easily the largest open area Lorace had yet seen within Vlaske K’Brak. There was a large circular expanse at floor level, and surrounding tiers of broad steps. Above, the cavernous ceiling was almost beyond the light of the glowing fixtures that ringed each tier.

  Several hundred dwarves already stood upon the stone steps with naked feet. There were a few men present. From their garb and the tools in their belts, they appeared to be smiths and metalworkers. Lorace spied several tall, elegant elves as well. All have come to witness the Ritual.

  In the center of the level floor of bedrock was a low gray stone block, perfectly square and smooth as a polished gem. It was not unlike the sounding stone they had briefly slept upon the night before. This was the forge stone, the heart and heritage of the dwarven people. The dwarves were silent in anticipation as they listened to the world beneath their feet.

  Thryk and Yarkin stood beside the block of the Forge Stone. The smith wore a tooled leather jerkin and a thick leather apron. At his waist was his hammer, the same he had used to craft a plow blade, and to defend Lorace from the reaching tentacles of demons. Also tucked into his belt, were several stoppered red clay flasks. Yarkin wore robes of shiny, golden fabric, trimmed in black.

  Petor stood Oen and Tornin on the bottom tier, where room had been set aside for them, while Ralli led Lorace out to stand before Yarkin and Thryk. Every eye in the vast chamber was upon Lorace, but his focus was on Thryk’s intense gaze as the dwarven smith, now Forgemaster, scrutinized him, measuring his preparedness.

  Ralli halted Lorace a dozen strides back from the Forge Stone with a touch of one blunt finger, and his voice boomed, “I, Ralli, bring the bearer of godstone. I speak for Lorace as his father.”

  “Be welcome at the sacred legacy entrusted to us,” Yarkin said to him with an officious bow. “This is the Ritual Forge of our people. It is a place of great power, where we hear the voice of Vorallon clearest. Here is where the dwarven people are gifted. While the Forgemaster wields the hammer, it is all of us who su
mmon Vorallon’s will to heat and shape the godstone.”

  Yarkin took a step forward and raised his arms to the ranks of dwarves standing shoulder to shoulder upon the tiers. “Here is where he called us when we were still young upon the world. He bade us dig into this great mountain of Kur K’Tahn to seek our birthright. For years we tunneled ever inward until we excavated this chamber, in it we found many precious metals, but nothing more precious to us than this perfect stone. It is here that we forge the godstone to its destiny, it is here that we all gather to witness and guide the Ritual of the Forge.”

  The silence of the assembled dwarves was a palpable thing, mirroring the vast quietude of his tranquility. Ralli had retreated to where Tornin and Oen stood. The stillness of the air revealed that none drew a breath while Yarkin spoke.

  “Are you ready to commence, bearer?” Yarkin asked with a twinkle of excitement in his eye.

  “Yes, I am,” Lorace embraced the certainty of his tranquility, letting it well up within and wash over the cold coals of hate. He would allow no place within for rage and fear.

  Yarkin bowed and retreated as had Ralli, leaving Lorace and Thryk alone before the glassy smooth square stone.

  Without preamble, Thryk stepped forward, bowed down to Lorace. He knelt at Lorace’s feet and drew out one of the clay flasks from his belt. The hundreds of dwarves arrayed on the tiers surrounding them, began a low song. They sang a looping series of wordless tones in perfect unison. Thryk as well began to sing in a dwarven tongue Lorace had not heard before. Thryk’s deep voice mixed and harmonized with the song of tones in a convoluted rhythm.

  The Forgemaster unstoppered the flask and began to trickle out a line of rust colored powder upon the dark stone floor. He extended the line in a circle around Lorace, just beyond the hem of his robe.