by Jak Koke
Jibn smiled at him. “Welc-c-come, Gvint Od. I am pleased to s-s-see you.” His shoulder twitched. “C-c-come in.”
“Are you well?”
“I am the s-s-same.”
Gvint walked past him into the room beyond. A cluttered stone table dominated the space, and the walls were covered with bookshelves and detailed maps and drawings; the lines This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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were too fine to have been drawn by the huge hands of an obsidiman, unless by magic. Hardly a clear area remained.
Gvint set his pack down on the only chair. He removed a sealed clay urn which he had filled from the riflev pool, and a small stone box, carved to look like a wicker basket on the outside. “You can keep these,” he said, carrying the stone basket over to the hearth. He pushed some books out of the way and opened the box.
Fire crackled and burst as the cover was pulled back. Inside, a fine mesh of orichalcum-laced netting billowed up as its quarry — a tiny fire elemental — burned and flickered in a struggle to break free. Heat radiated into the room, and Gvint rubbed his warming hands. “Ah, that’s much better,” he said.
“Your old bones must be impervious to the cold, Jibn.”
Jibn chuckled, but said nothing.
As Gvint shared the water with Jibn, he explained the situation with the miners. Jibn knew some, and he had been worried. But when Gvint asked him to merge with Ganwetrammus and help, he refused.
“I c-c-can’t,” he said, his phobia causing his voice to waver.
“What if the Horror returns and I . . .” Jibn bowed his head.
“The Horror is dead, Jibn. Garen killed it when he sacrificed himself.”
“B-b-but what if I infec-c-c—” he paused, trying to gain control of himself. “What if I infect the rock again?”
“How? The Horror is dead, gone. There is no way you can infect the rock.” Gvint paced across the small space, then back again. How do I convince him? he thought.
“B-but there is s-s-s-still a chance,” Jibn said, fear evident in his eyes. “You m-m-must know that.”
“Look, Jibn, I came because the situation is desperate. I think the rock may die unless we perform the Ritual of Protection.”
“I c-c-can’t help you with that.”
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“Maybe you can,” Gvint said. “You are the next in line, Jibn.
Maybe you are old enough to understand the magic involved.”
“You d-d-don’t really th-think that, do you?”
Gvint sighed, breathing out slowly. “No, I confess I do not.
According to legend, the ritual magic is meant for Elders only, but you may be our only chance. You have magical knowledge and power equal to mine. Even though the chance that you will comprehend the ritual is remote, I must ask you to try.
Please, merge with Ganwetrammus.”
“I will n-n-not be responsible for k-k-killing our rock. If I merge again . . .” His voice trailed off, leaving a heavy, expect-ant silence in its wake. He did not want to breath life into his phobia by speaking the words.
“You do not realize the danger here, Jibn.” Gvint’s voice rose involuntarily. “If we can’t stop the miners, and Pabl Evr fails to find Reid Quo in time, the Ritual of Protection cannot be performed and our liferock will die. You have to try. Please, for the sake of our brotherhood.”
“But my H-h-horror c-c-could re-infect . . .”
Gvint put his hands on Jibn’s shoulders, holding the other obsidiman so that he could not look away. “If you don’t try, you will be just as responsible for our rock’s death.”
Jibn stared at Gvint, his sandstone eyes ablaze with anger.
“The answer is no.” Then he twisted out of Gvint’s grasp and turned away.
This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Chapter Eighteen
Pabl clamped his hands over his ears against the grinding roar of the sand column next to him. In the darkness he couldn’t determine the size of the column, but it was big, at least thirty yards across at the base. Wind buffeted him as it was sucked into the vortex, pulling dirt and sand from the ground up with it. There were no trees or vegetation of any kind this close to the column, and Pabl wondered just how he was able to resist the pull of the elemental air that rushed in.
He turned away and ran, quickly finding a path which led down into the valley. Soon the path entered a forested area, and Pabl slowed. The trees dampened the noise of the swirling sand behind him, and after a time he made his way to the center of the valley.
Broad, flat flagstones of granite gray formed a floor between four massive pillars of rough stone. The pillars were black and brown in color, and Pabl could see that they cor-responded to the four twisting elemental columns at the corners of the valley. Each bore carvings representing one of the elements.
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At the center of everything was an obelisk, glowing faintly white. The obelisk’s shaft was made of pure white stone, its surface perfectly smooth and clean, jutting from the floor in the exact center of the valley. As Pabl stepped onto the flagstones and looked up at the sky above him, he found that he could see the eerie shadows of all four of the huge swirling columns. An illusion served to distort the image so that the shadow cylinders seemed to come together high above the point of the obelisk.
Petroglyphs carved into the flagstones told the story of the First Order. How the eldest four gave up their liferocks to live forever in the Valley of the Elders. How they decided to make this personal sacrifice in order to ensure the continu-ity of obsidiman culture, magic and life through the ages. As Pabl read the petroglyphs, he felt an irresistible pull from the obelisk. The Council of Four beckoned him to merge. And he stepped forward to embrace the spear of pure white rock which towered above him.
It was like walking through a plane of water at first. Then he felt his body come apart into its constituent elements. No pain; merely disintegration. And with it came an expansion of his consciousness into unfathomable dimensions.
He saw the entire history of his race in a split second. He experienced the life memories of every obsidiman, but the knowledge came too fast for him to assimilate. The world was much larger than he had known; so far beyond his comprehension that he felt his mind exploding. Even his merging with Ohin Yeenar hadn’t prepared him for this.
All this happened in a fraction of a moment, and Pabl forgot it all instantly, left only with the sense that his existence was tiny and insignificant in the face of a vast universe. Then the memories of his own life filled his mind. He remembered everything clearly. His Emergence and First Merge. The history of Ganwetrammus he had learned while merging, back This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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to the First Order. His Awakening and the twenty-one years spent in the company of the others.
Pabl remembered his first years outside, just after emerg-ing from the liferock, famished and thirsty. He had eaten for several hours before his hunger abated. He remembered seeing his brothers, how odd they looked in the flesh, like sculpted boulders of muscle and skin, bones and blood. So fragile.
After he had eaten, they’d taken him down to the riflev pool to bathe away grime from his new skin. He had seen himself in the black glass of the pool’s surface. He looked like the others except his skin was new, smooth like polished marble, his eyes dark and wide. No cracks, no blemishes. The icy chill of the water shocked him as he washed.
His first months passed in a barrage of new sensations, sights and sounds, smells and the wondrous texture of the outside world. After a few months he w
as ready to see more of the world, so Chaiel accompanied him down the rock and into the jungle. The two of them made excursions into the jungle for days or weeks at a time, learning the tricks of camouflage and negotiating treacherous terrain. They were never gone too long, always returning to the liferock. The first year was a weaning process.
Bintr and Tinu replaced Chaiel after the first year, escort-ing Pabl into the village and his first experiences with civilization. Pabl was fascinated by the other Name-givers, especially one young dwarf who could make colors dance in the air around him. They became friends, despite initial objections by the dwarf’s grandparents, and when it was time for Pabl to move farther away from the liferock, Jan took the opportunity to get out of Rabneth.
Tinu and Bintr traveled with Pabl and Jan for the first few years as they wandered Barsaive. Tinu taught Pabl to respect nature; he trained Pabl in the magic of the purifier discipline.
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And for a while that was enough. But the more Pabl learned about the world, the more he realized that power came from magic. It was his frustration at his own inability to understand Jan’s magic which finally drove him to take up his own studies of wizardry several years later.
Now, in the merge with the Council of Four, Pabl’s motives and personality were being evaluated — his devotion to purge nature of destructive forces, and his commitment to understanding the manifestation of magic in the universe and how it can help him purify. His problem, that of finding Reid Quo, was being considered.
Pabl didn’t know how much time passed while his memories sifted through his mind and into the memory of the Council, but it seemed like hours. Maybe days. And after he had remembered his whole life up to the failed attack on the mining company and the trip to Domorpen, Pabl felt the presence of the Four. They greeted him in thoughts and images. He saw their forms in his mind, though they no longer physically resembled obsidimen at all, and Pabl suddenly knew that they were the swirling columns at the corners of the valley.
Unnamed one, you are young for such responsibility. The thoughts seemed to come from all of them, rather than one.
You have a daunting task.
We know the whereabouts of your lost Elder, Reid Quo.
Pabl felt a wave of relief pass through him. If they knew where Reid was, then all Pabl had to do was go there and bring Reid back to Tepuis Garen.
But the risks are terribly high, unnamed one. So great in fact that we cannot warn you enough, except perhaps by showing you the story of Sangolin.
Pabl steeled his mind, readying himself for whatever came next. He had never heard of a place called Sangolin, but the word was familiar. Sangolin meant “bloodstone.”
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Our knowledge of Sangolin comes from the experiences of two obsidimen of different liferocks who managed to escape the place. Eventually, with the help of others, they made their way here.
Pabl saw an image of cliffs, of red rocks in drifting mist.
Fire glowed in a sea below the cliffs, its flames licking the rock at the base a thousand feet below. He felt the heat of the mist against his skin, and smelled the stench of rotting vegetation carried on the clouds of steam.
Some places in our magical world bear names — Named-places such as Death’s Sea and the Dragon Mountains. These places hold power and have distinct patterns of their own. Like people, and some objects that bear Names, Named-places have their own temperament and force of will. They can be benign or influential, work for Name-givers or against them.
The image in Pabl’s mind coalesced until he saw a great Gathering of obsidimen on a wide level shelf, set slightly back from the cliff. The brothers of many liferocks were meeting together to share water and consciousness, nearly fifty obsidimen Dreaming together. The mass of their merged body hummed with music, a deep harmonious chorus that sang of joy and togetherness. The Gathering enjoyed deep seclusion due to the surrounding mountains, and yet they had the benefit of open space and sunshine peeking through the drifts of mist.
Sangolin is an evil place for obsidimen. At the beginning of the Scourge, Horrors attacked a Gathering of obsidimen at a place set into the cliffs next to the Scarlet Sea.
Pabl watched in his mind as the obsidimen were startled out of their Dreaming by an army of dwarfs and men and orks who crested the mountain slope and poured down the narrow path onto the wide shelf. Pabl recognized Reid Quo among the obsidimen who emerged from the Gathering.
Reid was angry at being disturbed, and he went with This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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some others to ask the army to leave. But the energy-wasters told them that an onslaught of Horrors had breached the barrier between planes and had been attacking their army for five days as they tried to retreat to a place of safety.
Then the newcomers looked past Reid, seeing the cliffs and the Scarlet Sea beyond. They lost hope completely when Reid told them that there was no way out except the way they had come. They were all trapped — dwarfs, men, orks— and obsidimen.
Soon the hollow was filled with the Name-givers, and the Horrors came screaming in. The rumors of the coming Scourge were true. The Horrors were all shapes and sizes; ugly parasites that attacked minds, formless blobs of smothering pink ooze, fat insect-like things with pincers and sharp bristles. They killed slowly, inflicting as much pain as possible before death. And although they weren’t hard to fight, they came in huge numbers, swarming like killer bees.
A powerful obsidiman mage — Vecrix — called to the members of his race. He asked them to recreate the Gathering while he called upon the earth to cover them and protect them from the Horrors. Reid and the others gathered in a space next to the mountainside and entered united self-Dreaming for a second time.
Vecrix stood tall, his white marble skin shining in the sunlight as he used his magic to shake the rock above them, trying to cause an avalanche to cover the Gathering and create a makeshift kaer. The rock responded, leaping to his command with a deafening crack. And as the boulders fell, Vecrix bound the disparate fragments of rock together with magic, tying their patterns together to create a shell of stone over the Gathering. He wove a series of wards into the loosely tied pattern of the falling stone in a desperate attempt to prevent the Horrors from digging them out. His power was vast, and his need drove him to attempt the impossible.
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Many dwarfs were pummeled and crushed to death under the falling rock, trapped and wounded, waiting in fear for the Horrors to come and infect their minds. And the Horrors came and feasted on the pain, eventually killing everyone who was not protected in the merge. Vecrix himself almost didn’t make it. A Horror dug its claws into him near the end, ripping away the left half of his face, and digging out his eye with its mandibles. He would’ve died then, except that a fragment of stone crashed down on them, killing the Horror and breaking Vecrix’s leg. He pushed the Horror off and crawled to join the Gathering before the last stones fell.
You see, unnamed one, the Horrors did not get to your lost Elder, but the obsidimen of the Gathering spent five hundred years in self-Dreaming.
Pabl felt a chill seize his mind. All obsidimen knew not to Dream without a liferock for more than a decade. These obsidimen had passed through the entire Scourge merged together.
The prolonged exposure to each other’s memories and thoughts caused them to lose themselves. Their memories became jumbled, their personalities merged until they didn’t know who they were.
They forgot their liferocks; they forgot them
selves.
When they emerged at the end of the Scourge, the place they had created — their Gathering — had become a force of its own. An entity. They called it Sangolin and they did not leave it for they had forgotten what had happened there at the beginning of the Scourge. Most of them had forgotten the Horrors and the avalanche. Those who did remember didn’t care; their life energy had been used to create the pattern of a new place, one with a spirit of its own. They were beyond caring.
The force inside Sangolin did not want them to leave. So they stayed because they could not fathom living without it.
They were addicted to it.
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Visions of Sangolin after the Scourge flooded Pabl’s mind.
He saw the emergence of the first obsidimen, hesitantly leaving the sanctuary of their brothers. They pushed against the covering of rock, using magic to carve a corridor through the stone. Hunger and thirst nearly claimed the lives of the first ones, emerged into a ravaged world. All of the plant life near the hollow had been destroyed, and the spring water which had flowed from over the mountainside into a pool on the shelf of rock was now covered by the avalanche.
They violated their obsidiman nature, tunneling and hunting and eating meat. They dug out a cavern around Sangolin and discovered the water, though it was now hard with minerals and tinged with the taste of the Horror bones over which it flowed.
Reid Quo emerged to help the others. And like them, he no longer knew himself. He hunted and dug caves with the others, waiting, always waiting for Sangolin to call him back to join. The vision made Pabl sad, for he remembered the Reid Quo from the liferock’s memories. Adventurous, a powerful master of illusion, and one who did much to unite disparate brotherhoods, taking pride in the Gatherings he organized.