The Silver Portal (Weapons of Power Book 1)

by David J Normoyle

  The smell of food preceded Bareth’s return. Twig’s stomach roared inside her. With a smile, Bareth placed a bowl of stew in front of her, along with a basket of bread. Before the basket hit the table, she snatched a chunk of bread and immediately dipped it in the broth and began to gorge it down in big bites. She’d eaten similar food at Bareth’s when she had been sick and was glad not to have to figure out the knife and fork.

  The scalding heat of the broth didn’t slow her speed of eating. The bliss of the hot stew settling inside her stomach was worth the burning sensation in her mouth. Before she knew it, she was wiping the last of the bread on the bottom of the bowl.

  Bareth grinned at her as she finished the last mouthful. “Didn’t you say you’d eaten recently?” He handed her a cloth and gestured to where drops of broth stained the wood of the table. She resisted the impulse to lick them up and instead cleaned up the broth with the cloth and, at Bareth’s urging, wiped around her mouth.

  “I’d bring you more, but best to let your stomach settle,” Bareth said. “I doubt it’s used to too much food at once. Now, surely you know that you can buy food like this with the topaz. Why not hold onto it?”

  “They don’t let rain people in places like this.”

  “You’d be surprised. Business people will usually deal with anyone with shards.”

  “You could leave me a few shards for street food, I guess,” Twig suggested.

  “Why give up the rest?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’ve only known a cruel world. But things can get better. Let me help you.”

  Twig swallowed. Help. That was why she had really come to him. She didn’t know how to ask. “If a rain person has something of value, they have to be strong enough to hold onto it.”

  “I’ve never seen any rain people with a sword. Won’t that cause worse problems than crystals that can be hidden?”

  Twig touched the rolled-up blanket on her lap. She couldn’t let someone take that from her. What would have happened with Krawl if I didn’t have it?

  Bareth watched her. “So you came to me because you don’t know how you can keep that.”

  “I wanted to thank you. I had nothing to give you until I came upon that purse.”

  But what he’d said was true. She wanted to learn how to no longer be a mouse, but she didn’t know how to explain that to sheltered people, though. They didn’t know anything about being a mouse.

  “But you also don’t know what to do about the sword, do you?” he asked. “You don’t have to be afraid to ask. I want to be your friend. As a friend, I help and advise you, and you don’t owe me anything in return.

  Generally, friendship wasn’t a part of a rain person’s life. “By helping others, we save ourselves,” she said. Bareth had told her that when she’d asked him why he’d helped her. It was a Zeeist mantra.

  “You remembered.” He smiled broadly. “We’ll make a Zeeist out of you yet. But you don’t have to be a Zeeist to want to help your friends. Now, let’s figure out how you can keep the sword and the topaz.”

  “The gems are for you for helping me before.”

  “I told you. Friends don’t require payment. Now, to me, the solution to your problem seems obvious, though I believe it wouldn’t occur to you. What you have to do to is to become—what do you call us?—oh yes, a sheltered person.”

  “No.” Twig’s body quivered. “I’m a rain person.” Her chair scraped backward.

  “Twig, the only difference between a rain person and a sheltered person is that one has a roof over their head and the other doesn’t. Sheltered people become rain people due to misfortune. When fortune smiles again, sometimes they regain their homes.”

  Twig shook her head. Rain people and sheltered people were different in many ways.

  “You could have stayed with me after your broken arm. If you hadn’t just disappeared.”

  “I had healed.” A warm bed and two hot meals a day were nice, but Twig knew them to be as dangerous as a slippery roof. She couldn’t let herself go soft.

  “You don’t have to give up being a rain person if you don’t want to. Here’s what I suggest. I’ll give the owner of this food hall enough money for twenty days of food. I expect you to come here twice a day.” He pointed at where Twig’s collarbone was visible through a hole in her jerkin. “I don’t want to see the bone jutting out through your skin like that next time we meet.”

  “Everyone watches me in here.”

  “I’ll ask if you can eat in the kitchen.”

  Will I still have the will to fight the rats after the twenty days are over? Her stomach wouldn’t let her refuse, though. She nodded.

  “There’s a leatherworker shop near me. I’ll take you in so he can measure your sword, and we’ll get a scabbard for you. How does that sound?”

  “Better than carrying it in a blanket.” She’d still need to hide it. “Maybe a long cloak?”

  Bareth smile was back, broad as ever. “Now you are getting the idea. A cloak to hide your sword. It would keep you warm, too. Black, I think, will suit you.”

  She liked the sound of that. The color of night.

  Bareth leaned closer. “Was that almost a smile?”

  “Rain people don’t smile,” Twig told him seriously.

  “Of course, what was I thinking?” Bareth said. “If we are getting you a cloak, we might as well get you some other clothes. Maybe shoes, too?”

  “Not shoes.”

  “Why not?”

  “They won’t grip.” The black stones that gave the city its name were slippery as glass when wet.

  “You don’t have to wear them all the time,” Bareth explained. “Consider them a disguise that you wear when you are in places like this.”

  Twig nodded. She understood being invisible.

  “And I’ll arrange a visit to the public baths.” He waited for an objection.

  She nodded. If Twig was going to be invisible among sheltered people, she needed to rid herself of the smell of a rain person. “No soap.” The perfumes and other scents that sheltered people wore were a beacon to some on the streets.

  “As you wish. All that will cost some of the money you brought, and I’ll hold onto the rest until you need it.” Bareth placed his hand on Twig’s forearm.

  She resisted the reflex to snatch her hand away, realizing she needed to learn sheltered-people ways like this “friendship.”

  “You don’t have to leave the streets behind, but you can’t just go back to being who you were if you are going to carry a sword.”

  She had already begun to shed her mousey skin. She had ventured out in daylight. Dozens of different people had noticed her, and she hadn’t fled. “There are two types of people in the world,” Krawl had told her, “Givers and Takers.”

  She wasn’t a Giver anymore.

  Chapter 7

  Hate is the home of evil. That was another of the principles of Kale that had seemed both blindingly obvious and easy to avoid when Mortlebee had learned it. So how is my heart already brimming with hate? Has the moment where I had a chance to reflect and reject the evil already come and gone?

  Lackma’s snores had kept him awake most of the night, and they still hadn’t stopped. Surely, not even a heart fully shielded by goodness could have withstood that barrage of arrhythmic rasping.

  Although Mortlebee felt as though he’d been awake all night, he must have slept at some point because he’d dreamed. In his dream, he’d arrived in Bluegrass on a horse, the glowing bow raised aloft in one hand, and everyone in the village was cheering him, even Father.

  Dawn’s first rays sneaked between narrow gaps in the thatch. Mortlebee shrugged out of his blanket and stepped over the sleeping bodies of his sisters. He quietly put on his boots and took an overcoat off the hook by the door. That early, the night’s chill would still be clinging to the air, and he’d suffered enough from the cold for one day. The door opened silently. He paused and looked back, glancing over the wrapp
ed bundles of his family and the cleric. Mother’s eyes shone from under her blanket as she watched him leave.

  His home usually gave him a warm feeling, no matter how cold it was. He sucked in a breath laced with the smell of fresh bread and drew that feeling around him like an extra coat. It warmed him, but not as much as it should have. The cleric’s snores tainted everything.

  Outside, the morning dusk still resisted dawn’s coming. No one else was up yet. Mortlebee blew a frosty breath into his hands and hurried partway down the Eagleview trail. He stuck his hand under the blue heather bush and felt around. Nothing. He lifted the lower branches and peeked under them. Did I imagine finding the bow and hiding it? He’d heard of fever dreams but never cold dreams. That made as much sense as anything else. Magic weapons appeared in stories with kings and princesses, not to stupid boys in little villages like Bluegrass.

  Mortlebee sighed. What was I thinking, anyway? That what happened in my dream would come true? Even if he managed to get Lackma to leave, he’d never be celebrated for it, certainly not by Father. No matter the result, the Council of Elders was never going to condone the use of weapons.

  He straightened, about to turn away, then paused. He thought back to the night before and where he’d been when he’d found the bow. Then he looked back at the row of blue heather. He thought he’d hidden it under the first bush in the row. Could it have been a different one? He took a few strides farther down the trail to the next bush, crouched down, and felt underneath. His fingers nudged against something solid, and his heart missed a beat. Just a root, he told himself as his fingers curled around the wood. He gripped, held his breath, and pulled.

  It existed. When he rested the bow on the ground, it came up to his shoulder. It was about the width of two fingers and made of a dark wood, smooth to the touch, without any carvings or flourishes. It curved but lacked a string or even notches to hook up a string. It wasn’t glowing anymore and didn’t look very special.

  Forester was the village hunter, approved by the Council of Elders to possess a bow. Mortlebee had never even touched a bow before—Forester hadn’t allowed it, but that hadn’t stopped Mortlebee and his friends from following the hunter so they could get a good look at the weapon until they were chased away by Forester or called away by the elders.

  Mortlebee moved his fingers down to where the string should be, and a glowing line shimmered. He dropped the bow and took several steps backward, his heart hammering in his chest. Magic weapons don’t appear to boys in little villages like Bluegrass, he told himself.

  He took a swift look around. Although he detected sounds of the village waking up, he was still alone. He reached forward and gingerly touched the bow, almost expecting it to be hot, but when it wasn’t, he snatched it up. He then shuffled down the trail away from Bluegrass, breaking into a run as the slope dipped down the mountainside.

  He skidded around a corner then slowed down to a walk. His breath came heavily, and his heart beat much more rapidly than a short run warranted. He was beyond the village, but few places outdoors in Tockery were truly out of sight. With the open spaces and higher slopes all around, he always felt something was watching even if that something was a goat or a gliding eagle. He couldn’t risk being seen by a shepherd or a farmer checking his crops on the upper slopes. Being caught talking violence was one thing, being caught practicing with a weapon, a magical one at that... It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Mortlebee glanced at the bow again. If I had any sense, I would throw it into a deep crevasse and never think about it again. It was too late for that, though. He’d already swapped his impure heart for a hate-filled heart, and though that ran as counter to the teachings of the scrolls as it was possible to get, the weapon was the solution. The Lord Protector’s clerics had to be shown that the people of Tockery couldn’t be pushed around forever. That didn’t mean hurting Lackma, but it might mean scaring him.

  First, he had to figure out what the bow did without being spotted. After a moment’s consideration and after confirming he was no longer in view of Bluegrass, he cut off the trail and headed west. The newly arisen sun shot glaring rays of light into the eastern valleys. Mortlebee stamped his feet to keep the cold from his toes. Tufts of grass were growing on the hard ground, most of it of the blue variety that gave the village its name. The blue was a dark shade, as close to green as blue could get. He skirted the clumps of heather bushes with knotted buds that showed where the yellow flowers were forming—too early in the year for them to be in bloom. Mortlebee came to where Hobo’s Creek cut into a ravine. Around the creek, trees with thin, twisted trunks and sparse leaves gave some cover.

  Mortlebee found a flat section of ground, set his feet, and held the bow up in his left hand. He plucked at the air where the string should be. As before, a golden shimmer appeared then faded. He tried again and got the same result. Mortlebee frowned. Surely, something more was supposed to happen. Did I miss an arrow to go along with the bow the other night? In the dark, he hadn’t searched thoroughly. He scouted around on the ground and found the closest thing to an arrow he could. He stripped off the leaves. It was a crooked and pathetic-looking excuse for an arrow, but he couldn’t exactly ask Forester if he could borrow any of his.

  He lifted the bow once more and tried to nock the end of the stick to the glowing shimmer as he plucked at the imaginary string. The stick went through the string as if it didn’t exist, which, of course, it didn’t. He tried again and again, getting more and more frustrated, until another golden shimmer appeared, that one horizontal. So, the arrow is magical also. He threw away the stick.

  His right arm was tiring from holding the bow. It felt like trying to pluck a reflection from water, but if he concentrated and applied pressure at just the right moment, the golden string solidified instead of disappearing.

  The arrow was harder to get. When the string solidified and he pulled back on it, the string would follow his fingers, and the bow would bend, and tiny golden particles would crystallize into the shape of a fully formed arrow. It only worked one in maybe ten times, usually when he had just about given up on it ever happening again.

  His left arm exhausted, he let the bow fall to his side, thinking. When the bow worked, it was an impressive sight, a golden arrow and string appearing out of nowhere. Even then, though, it never did anything more. The arrow never left the bow.

  His frown turned into a smile then a chuckle. Doesn’t that make it the perfect weapon for Tockery? Something which threatens a violent magical response against oppressors but which doesn’t actually cause harm. Sure, threat of violence and violence were branches of the same tree, according to Kale, but one was clearly not as bad as the other. Mortlebee didn’t want to actually hurt anyone, but making a show and scaring someone who deserved it—that he could do. Once Lackma was gone, Mortlebee would look for forgiveness and strengthen his heart against impurity and hatred.

  Mortlebee climbed out of the ravine and headed back toward Bluegrass. The sun had climbed above the snow-tipped peaks, and the air had a shallow warmth to it. What if I challenge Lackma, and that’s one of the nine in ten times that the arrow doesn’t form? No, he wasn’t going to let that happen. When the Elders weren’t around, the shepherds and farmers often told tales around the fires about heroes and their quests, about monsters and the weapons that killed them, about villains and their eventual fall. What the stories didn’t have in wisdom, they made up for in excitement. And the magical weapons in the stories always worked at the crucial moment. Mortlebee knew he wasn’t in a story, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that the weapon had appeared at the same time as Lackma.

  Mortlebee glanced up and saw two shepherds herding their goats to the upper slopes. They were too far away to recognize him. He used his bow like a walking staff and realized he wouldn’t be able to hide it near the village without being seen. Where then? Unless I don’t hide it and instead confront Lackma this very day... He knew Lackma was due to continue to Leeside, after all. Once he thou
ght about it, Mortlebee realized that was the obvious thing to do. His stomach churned with fear, but he shifted direction, aiming to circle around the village.

  Before long, he could hear the shouts of children playing and could see the rooftops of Bluegrass. No one came across him. Beyond the far end of the village, he cut across the trail to Leeside and bent down to look for tracks. The ground was hard and bare. However, he spotted a goat’s hoofprint. Surely, he wouldn’t have missed the signs of a horse passing. No. Likely, the snoring cleric had slept late and would eat some more of the food his family didn’t have to spare before leaving.

  Mortlebee looked up and down the trail and once again realized how open it was. The shepherds mightn’t take any notice of a man with a curved walking stick, but they would pay attention if someone confronted the cleric on his horse—even more so if the walking stick started emitting golden light.

  So Mortlebee trudged up the slope toward Leeside. He wasn’t that familiar with the trail, but he knew it curled around a cliff face not far ahead.

  The point where the trail curled around the cliff face was much farther away than he realized. By the time Mortlebee reached it, dust-saturated sweat was clinging to his face, and his throat was parched from thirst. He realized he should have taken a drink back at the creek.

  Still, the spot he had chosen was perfect. The trail, only a pace wide at its narrowest point, clung to a rocky face. On the other side of the ravine, another mountain soared upward. Between the two, hundreds of paces down, bright-green trees clung to the narrow valley floor. Leaning out to look down, Mortlebee saw the blue thread of a small river or thought he did—it was too far away to be sure. It wasn’t a good place to lose one’s footing or get caught by a freak gust of wind, but it was a good place to scare someone.

  Mortlebee found a large rock above the trail where he could hide. After wedging himself in behind it, he traced the gradients of color on the rock face with his finger and allowed the sun to warm his face. He recited the principles of Kale in his head but stopped when he realized how many of them he intended to break. Am I really doing the right thing? Perhaps I am supposed to resist using the weapon? The scrolls spoke of the temptations that every man had to face and defeat to become a true follower of Kale.