by kubasik
Bevarden smiled at him. “Ah, J'role, my fine boy. How good of you." He rolled over and picked at the bread with his fingertips. "Can' t say I'm hungry right now, though."
J'role tore off a bit of bread from the loaf and raised it to his father's mouth, as he'd done so many time in the past.
"No, no. Not hungry now." His father closed his eyes. His face suddenly contorted with deep pain. "Why?” he whispered to no one, as if J'role had suddenly gone and he was free to voice all his confusions aloud. He then placed his hand on J'role's knee. Unlike Garlthik's hand, which was rough and alien and full of something strong, the touch of J'role's father was familiar—horribly familiar and weak and tied to misery. “Thank you for the food. You're a good son. Did you beg some money?”
J'role nodded.:
"From some adventurers?"
He raised one finger. "Ah. A man with a sword?”
J'role nodded, but barely. He knew what was coming, and did not welcome it.
"What I could tell you about adventurers! Your great great-great..." He stumbled, having lost track of the count long ago. "Grandfather, who traveled far and wide, even once visiting the island of Thera far to the southwest, the very man who entered this kaer four hundred years ago, he told many stories of his adventures. He encountered a great many creatures across the land. He even fought Horrors, before they became so great in number and there was naught to be done but seek shelter in the magical kaers." He slumped against the tunnel walls, his eyes closed tight. "Oh, the stories I heard when I was a boy!
What I would give to be young again, to know I had the opportunity to go off on the same quests that have traveled the family memory all the years we waited for they Scourge to pass." He looked at J'role, saw the disappointment on his son's face. He faltered.
Immediately J'role felt bad: he hadn't meant to reveal anything. He knew he had to react faster, know when people were going to look at him. Reveal only what people wanted to see, or nothing at all.
His father continued. "Ah, and who's to say I won't go yet. You're right, J'role, you're right. I've got it all planned out in my head. There's a treasure waiting for me. I'm just in the middle of my life. I could make it happen. I need only make the preparations. It'll all be so easy." He stretched himself out on the floor. "Just the preparations, and then it's a sojourn for me. What more need be done? The life of wealth and adventure, eh, my son?"
He reached out to take J'role's hand. J'role clamped down his thoughts, felt nothing, let his father pull him close, cradle him in his arms. "It's ours when we want it, son," he said softly. "Ours when we want it. Ah, life can be so grand. Who knows, I might get enough money, find the magic to grant you your speech again. Eh? Wouldn't that be something?
Magic to get your speech back. There are finer magicians than Charneale in the world, mind you, and with enough money—the money from a treasure guarded by a dragon or perhaps from a kaer not as fortunate as ours, empty of life now, but still full of treasure.
With preparations one could go out and find these things, claim them, forge a destiny."
For a moment Bevarden's thin arms tightened too much, and J'role thought his father might start to hit him as he sometimes did, his thoughts confused by drink. A quick, tearful apology always followed.
But no violence came. His father's voice trailed off as he rocked J'role in his arms.
J'role was stiff as a corpse, eyes wide, uncertain. The silence of the kaer enveloped him like his father's arms, and he felt momentarily transported to the earliest days of his childhood. Born in the underground world of tunnels and magical lights, he had existed without a true conception of the world outside. Until the day Charneale announced that the Horrors had gone from the world and it was safe again to go outside, J'role had believed he would spend his whole life within the corridors of stone. Living in the earth did not seem strange at the time. But now, having lived in sunlight, returning to the kaer invited uncomfortable sensations he could not identify. It seemed a strange thing to do, to return to the dark recesses of one's childhood.
Then he heard the faint echo of shouts through the corridors, all edged with anger. To J'role's well-developed perceptions, the shouts carried one clear message. Somewhere within the kaer's corridors, danger had gathered.
3
J'role is seven and something has happened. A day ago. A week ago. Months ago. The dream is a buried mystery, and within the dream the memory of another mystery.
His mother is close to him, her face a breath away from his. "Speak to no one. Speak to no one. No one but me, do you understand?"
She touched his face, her hand so warm and wonderful, but he flinches at the touch.
Something is wrong.
His mother turns away, upset. She bites her lip. Walks a few steps away, then turns suddenly and comes back. Kneeling next to where he sits, she hugs him tight. She begins to cry and then say she is sorry.
He does not know why.
He cannot remember why.
But he has made his mother unhappy, and he decides to keep the promise she asks of him.
He will speak to no one but her.
J'role got up quickly, disengaging himself from his father's arms. Drifting down the dark corridors of the kaer came the sound of shouted orders. He turned and placed a hand on his father's shoulder, tried to wake him up, but his father pushed him away.
And what if I wake him up? J’role thought. What if he shouts at me for waking him? If we stay here, we might be safe.
He stood and walked with his wary grace back up the tunnel, toward the sound of the voices, hoping to get close enough to hear what was happening. He left his torch behind, not wanting to call attention to himself. Turning a bend he suddenly entered total darkness. He walked carefully now, one hand brushing the rough stone wall. The barking orders continued, but now the words sounded harsher, as if the people shouting had moved farther away from one another.
Suddenly a voice rushed down upon him from out of the darkness. It was a man's voice, the syllables crashing off the corridor walls, coming closer and closer. "Verin, stay by the entrance! Don't let him get back out!"
Now a light spilled down the corridor, faint at first, turning the corridor walls the color of dried blood. Gripped by fear J'role turned and rushed back the way he had come. The darkness seemed to swallow him, and because he ran with fear, it dug its way into his eyes, removing all sense of direction and balance.
Without warning J'role slammed into a wall. With a cry he fell to the ground.
"Wait! I heard something! It must be him!"
J'role scrambled up, pressing his hand to the wall, firmly now, to steady himself. He touched his other hand to his forehead and felt warm, sticky blood. A desire to be a child crawled over him. The man would be on him in a moment, and all J'role could think was how he wanted his father to come and save him. Couldn't he do that? Just this one time, just once, come and do that for him?
Seeing the dim red light appear around a corner snapped J'role back into action. He continued through the darkness, moving quickly, but this time with one hand pressed firmly against the stone. Virtually blinded by the dark, he kept thinking he would trip over something—a stone, a body— something. The rough wall scraped at his palm, but it gave him comfort rather than pain. Compared to the impenetrable, insubstantial darkness through which he ran, it was solid and real.
Then his groping hand found only thin air and he fell into a side tunnel. The fall terrified him, but this time he stifled any sound. He rolled quickly against the base of the tunnel wall, tucking himself tightly into the shadows. The firelight became brighter and brighter out in the main corridor, the sound of footsteps coming closer. Then the light of a flame washed over him, and J'role was sure the man running down the corridor would see him.
But the footsteps only hesitated at the junction. For the merest instant J'role glimpsed a man dressed in black leather, illuminate by torch light. Then the darkness descended again, comforting J'role as he lay brea
thing quietly. He started tucking his body deeper into the shallow hole he'd found when he remembered his-father.
The man in the leather armor was heading straight toward his father.
J'role got up, dizzy from the wound on his forehead, and once more began to move down the corridor, putting first one hand then the other against the left wall for balance. After walking no more than twenty yards he heard his father cry out. That made J'role move faster, but not so fast as to run the same risks as before. He used the wall for balance and guidance until the light from flames ahead lit the corridor for him.
Three torches lit the scene: his father's torch jammed into the wall, J'role's own torch on the ground, and the torch carried by the man in leather. The man stood between J'role and the brilliant collection of flames, his features hidden from J'role, his body a red-tinged shadow.
The stranger leaned over Bevarden, his free hand around the man's neck, pressing his head against the wall. "You must have seen him! Why else are you here? You're working with the ork, aren't you?"
His father, wide-eyed, gasping as if staring straight into a nightmare come true, sputtered,
"No. No. No ork." Then he shut his eyes, as if trying to deny his assailant any reality.
“Listen!" shouted the stranger, jabbing his torch into Bevarden's rough shirt. Smoke rose from the coarse-cloth, and Bevarden screamed. The man laughed, and Bevarden tried to shrink himself into a small ball.
Shame burned at J'role's cheeks, and then it was anger driving him—anger at his father—
as he charged the stranger. He screamed, and as he opened his lips he felt himself lose control of his mouth. His tongue writhed of its own volition and seemed thick and strange in his mouth. A prickly sensation ran over the flesh around J'role's mouth and he heard the words stream out.
Words ... things like words.
A conflagration of syllables and sounds, some recognizably human, others not. They tore at his mind even as he raced down the tunnel, screaming them at the top of his lungs. He felt his muscles, his tongue, forming the noises, but he had no idea what he was saying.
As the tall thin man whirled toward J'roIe, he dropped the torch and clutched his hands to his face. J'role's father screamed in agony—a moaning so deep and mournful that it matched the wail he had uttered while watching the villagers stone his wife to death nine years before.
Without thinking J'role shoved his thin arms into the chest of the stranger. The man fell back, J’role’s momentum carrying them both just over the edge of the pit. The man cried out, and; J'role, realizing what was happening, twisted and desperately caught hold of the edge with one arm. He quickly swung one leg up onto the edge, then felt a hand grab his back. It was the stranger, who also had one hand on the edge of the pit, and another one on J'role's shoulder as he tried to climb up.
Their faces were inches apart, J'role still babbling uncontrollably. The sensation of his mouth moving without his will terrified him, and he tried to scream, "Help me!" but the sounds and screams and cries and noises only continued louder and faster, broken now by harsh laughs.
Frozen in terror, the man stared wildly for a moment at J'role. Then he began to claw his way frantically over him, the movement nearly sending the boy down into the pool.
As the man climbed over him, J'role tried to roll further away from the pit, all the while still babbling and crying and shrieking.
J'role and the tall thin man cleared the edge of the pit. J'role struggled to get away, but the man flipped him over and pinned J’role’s chest down with his knees. Behind them, J'role heard his father sobbing. Grabbing J'role's head between his hands, the man began to slam it against the stone floor.
Slam.
Slam.
Slam.
Slam.
"Stop it! Stop it! Please! Stop it!" the man screamed at J'role.
J'role felt himself losing his sense of place; the up and down motion, the rhythmic pain, suddenly felt normal. A blackness seeped into his vision. But still the noise from his mouth continued. He tasted the salty tears of the man as they fell into his open, ranting mouth.
Through all the screaming and pain And motion, a single thought burned straight to the center of J'role's thoughts. “I'm going to die." He welcomed the idea. The creature in his head purred.
Everything outside this white-hot thought suddenly faded to the background, though he was still aware of the crying and the screaming and the sharp crack of his skull against the floor. Terror filled him.
What would happen if he died with the thing in his thoughts? Would he just keep ranting never truly dead, alive just enough to support the Horror?
With a sudden, desperate burst of strength he grabbed the man's wrists and tore his hands away from his head. Without pause he rolled the man to the right. The man scrambled wildly to keep his balance, arms waving in the air, but J'role sent him tumbling into the pit, giving him a final nudge with his last bit of strength. The man shouted—a short, abruptly cut-off cry for help.
J'role's mouth continued to babble as he stared up at the torch-lit ceiling, but the sounds came softer and softer.
Then a blessed silence fell. His mouth was sore, but still. He crawled to the edge of the pit and looked down. He saw nothing but the blue, bubble-pocked liquid.
Behind him his father sobbed.
"I'm sorry," Bevarden said amid his tears. "I'm sorry."
J'role crawled toward his father. His words—the noises from his mouth—had caused his father the pain that now wracked him. He wanted to hold his father, to somehow make everything all better.
But before he could reach his father, more light entered the corridor. J'role looked up.
Fifteen feet away stood a tall man wearing magician's robes—red like the blazing heart of a dragon; against the red were intricate silhouettes of trees, their branches beautiful. The magician's eyes were blind white orbs. His right hand was raised, and in the palm was an eye with a deep green pupil. It stared down at J'role.
Behind the magician was a woman. She was as tall as the magician, but with wider shoulders. At her side was a long sword, but the weapon in her hands was a short sword.
"Well, this is a strange night," said the magician. "Do you know where I can find my friend Garlthik One-Eye? And if so, would you please tell me where?" The words were calm and friendly; the sound of them heavy with menace. The- eye in the-palm blinked.
A strange sensation passed through J'role, a combination of dread — for he had never seen anyone like the magician before him—and a sense of thrill. He'd just vanquished the stranger who had assaulted his father. His voice, which had always seemed a curse, had helped him. Could he use it again?
Keeping his face still, ignoring the sobs of his father, J'role opened his mouth to speak to the magician. If the voice confused the magician and the warrior, he might be able to grab his father and run. Perhaps not. Perhaps only he would run. Who knew? But the sensation of fight was strong in him now, and he knew the desire to try rather than surrender.
His mouth dropped open and he felt the rush of the creature's control rush up like a thick snake in his throat. The snake squeezed its way into his tongue and J'role felt it begin to move without his willing it.
The first sounds—low cries, unintelligible syllables, some panting, a giggle—came out; The warrior dropped her sword. The magician took a step back, placing his eyeless hand against his chest. His father screamed. "Please," he shouted, high-pitched, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
The thrill grew greater in J'role. A pride began to grow in him. He could harm so many people. He had denied it for so many years, but no more …
The magician, his eye-hand still raised high, spoke a word that J'role could not make out over the cacophony of his own speech. A blue flame jumped out from the hand, and in terror J'role watched as a webbing of blue light warped itself in the air around the hand.
The webbing, like a cloud of soft blue cotton, flew through the- air, slamming into J'role's mouth and wrappi
ng tightly around his head. He tried to continue speaking, but the gauze grew tighter and tighter, choking his tongue back into his mouth, cutting deep into the corners of his mouth, until he could do no more than moan.
The warrior quickly seized her sword from off the floor. The magician took a few curious steps forwards His father now had his hands held high in front of his face, with the rest of his body curled tightly into a ball.
J 'role-raised his hands to try to pry away the webbing, but his hands became stuck to the material and he could not tear them free. Feeling helpless, J'role decided to stay on his knees rather than risk the magician's further wrath. His head throbbed, and in his ridiculous position the desire for conflict quickly dissipated.
"What is it?" asked the warrior of the magician. J'role could see now that her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she'd been crying. "Is he a magician? A nethermancer adept?"
"I'm not sure," the magician said, a strong note of curiosity in his voice. He seemed the least affected. With his eye-hand held high, he approached J'role. The eye looked down and peered at him. It blinked. "Hmmm" said the magician. "A Horror?" asked the warrior. She took a step back at the word she spoke.