Chateau Cascade

by Dusty Ridgeman

  He awoke a few hours later to the sensation of movement. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was lying in the corner of the carriage, which was once again rolling along through the desert. He moved to sit up; his muscles felt extremely stiff, but at least they were working. Before he could get up, he felt a strong hand on his chest forcing him back down. He heard the hangman's voice from beside him offering a gruff warning, “Watch it, son. I ain't never seen somebody get bitten by a sand spinner and live, but it looks like yer... magic might have brought you some luck. Best you rest a spell.”

  Jak felt warmth on his injured leg and looked down. His foot had been placed on a stack of ration-bags, elevating his leg. He then saw little Lunarm standing there, his stubby feet planted firmly atop Jak’s thigh. The creature was holding his arms up above his head and emanating a soft, yellow light. As Jak became more alert, he realized that a soft humming sound was coming from the creature.

  The bone was no longer sticking out of his leg and what was left of the wound was miraculously sealing itself underneath the yellow moonbeam. As this happened, a viscous green liquid was pouring out and dripping into a small metal pan placed beneath his leg. Jak watched this process, his head swimming. He suddenly wasn't quite sure whether he was awake or if he was dreaming.

  “Since when can you do that, Lunarm?” Jak asked weakly, his voice slurred and drowsy.

  “Hum hum! Jak is Lunarm's friend! Lunarm helps friends!” The little rock man continued his work and Jak drifted off to sleep again.

  After arriving in Saltflat, Jak spent two more nights above the adjunct Enforcer’s office in a fitful, feverish sleep. When he woke up, he felt more rested than he had in his entire life. His wound was completely healed. Only two quarter-sized circles of dark scar tissue remained to mark where he had been bitten. Later, when he asked about what had happened after he’d been bitten, there was some disagreement. Quentin claimed that he had dispatched the creature single-handedly with a dagger, but Karzt said that Hohaym had sliced its limbs off in a splendid show of Ouroloan swordsmanship. For his part, Hohaym simply muttered something in his native tongue, then punctuated the sentence by karate-chopping the air, his palm open, and yelling “Cha-hop, cha-hop!”

  Lunarm was unavailable for comment – he seemed to be sleeping. Jak wondered if “dormant” would have been a better way of describing the little one's state. It was still glowing with its soft yellow inner-light, but its crystal eyes were shut, lidded with a thin rocky membrane. Lunarm stood like this, seemingly inert, on the table next to Jak's bed, and when Jak awoke he gently lifted the creature and placed it back into his satchel. He was worried at first, but Quentin told him that the creature had probably just tired itself out by using its new healing power.

  By the time he’d woken up, arrangements had already been made with the Sandy Travels Shipping Company. They were scheduled to leave that very night. As Jak walked out toward the caravan in the mid-day light, he spotted Karzt loading grain into an open-top carriage. “Hello, Mr. Taker,” he said. “Can I help with any of this?” Jak’s usual chipper tone had taken a glum turn.

  “Suit yerself,” Karzt replied gruffly. “Ya know, I didn't take ya for a damn magic user.” He paused, then grunted as he heaved a bale of hay into the carriage. Brushing his hands off, he continued. “But at least you ain't lazy. That Quentin fellow is about as useless as tits on a steer.”

  Quentin was standing across the town thoroughfare with his top hat in his hand, whispering into the ear of an Ouroloan girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen. Jak stopped moving crates for a moment to watch him and was rewarded with the girl slapping Quentin in the face and walking away. Quentin's arms immediately flew up above his head in mock surprise, as if he couldn't understand why such a thing could have happened. Jak pulled a sheepish face at the exchange as he contemplated his traveling companion's personality.

  “Quentin is... well... he can be hard to get along with, but he saved my life back there. I don't think he's all bad.”

  “If you say so,” came Karzt's curt reply.

  “I did almost die back there, didn't I?” Jak was pensive, not his usual self.

  “Best ya get used to it. Ya want to work out here? That's how it is.” Karzt paused a moment, then picked up another crate. “Here, this is where the grain goes.”

  The men worked in silence until Jak spoke again. “I heard we're leaving. Why are we traveling at night? Isn't that more dangerous?”

  “Deserts are hot durin' the day. Ain't you never been out here? Thought ya Cascadians had been all over.”

  “I was born on a farm east of the Sphynx, sir.” Jak sweated in the noonday sun as he rapidly moved crates of grain from place to place. “It's like Quentin said. I'm only a provisional citizen, a trainee. I’m hoping to learn quickly, though. I want to do some good in the world.”

  At this, Karzt gave him a knowing look, followed by a brief, approving nod. The hangman had been appraising this boy from the start. He continued to see a very natural goodhearted strength in him, the seed of potential that might help this promising boy grow into the kind of man who could make a real difference in the world. Still, he wondered if he had met the boy too late; mixed up with magic as he was, things were bound to turn out bad for him. The sun was slow in setting as they worked to load the caravans for the long drive east.

  Two weeks passed without incident. At night the caravan moved toward the small towns dotting the Ourolo and, during the day, everything would be still and silent as a hundred men slept and sweated beneath the white cloth of the carriages.

  As they reached each township, they'd drop off the allotted grain and pick up the payment, then move on to the next. Zigzagging across the desert in this fashion, they slowly crept eastwards until they were in the shadow of the Peril mountains. Their destination was a factory city called Crystal Sands. These hubs of engineering and technology were kept far away from the peaceful cities of the Imperium where most of its citizens lived, and for good reason. Factory cities were the source of the polluting smog which crept over and permeated the Peril mountains. The Sovereign was a great believer in clean air for his own people; he'd never allow a factory city to be built nearer than the absolute edge of his domain.

  Crystal Sands was where the caravan was set to drop off the lion's share of its grain, and instead of taking payment in gold they would be restocking with the city’s main product: infused gems. Through a special process involving the azure powder mined out from underneath the Peril mountains, gemstones could be imbued with energy and then used to power all manner of Imperium technology.

  While common materials such as quartz could be used, rare and expensive gemstones could hold and amplify much more energy than others. A suit of Enforcer walker armor, for example, could be powered by a single infused ruby for over a year. Once the power ran dry, however, the gem would crumble into nothingness.

  Infused gems were the reason for much of the Imperium's wealth and power. As a result, the process for the production of these gems was a closely guarded national secret. These factory cities were therefore under the direct administration of the Imperium military. Crystal Sands was among the smallest factory cities and was located deep in the desert – facts which helped to explain why the Enforcers were not keen on sending troops to reinforce it unless it was deemed truly necessary.

  Jak had learned some of this from his classes, but still pestered the Ouroloan teamsters with endless questions. When asked, Karzt was not inclined to be talkative. As the caravan went further and further east, a stony veneer fell over his face and he grew very quiet and grim. When he spotted a thick plume of smoke on the horizon to the east, he simply raised his weathered hand and pointed. A red glow burned in the distance.

  Jak thought that they were looking at smog from the factory city. He felt like a tourist; having spent most of his life on a farm, he was excited to see this place firsthand. To him the technology west of the Sphynx was as wondrous as his friend Lunarm, as mysterious as Q
uentin's strange power. Smiling toward the horizon, he exclaimed “Hey, we're getting close!”

  At this, Karzt shook his head and replied, “Double time it. Someone may be hurt.” The hangman and several mercenaries set out ahead of the teamsters as they rushed toward the smoke. Quentin remained behind, maintaining his leisurely stroll alongside the caravan. Jak ran to catch up, then noticed the Cascadian Knight's laziness. He yelled for Quentin to hurry up, but the top-hatted man just waved one of his white-gloved hands in his usual dismissive fashion.

  Ten minutes into their dead sprint, Karzt and Jak arrived at the site of a burning caravan, much smaller than the one they had been traveling on. Both drew weapons as they spotted the two carriages and a wagon – they were arranged in a rough triangle around an enormous crater in the earth.

  The bright light of the moon hid nothing from them. The area was a mess of death and destruction – the body parts of men, horses, and mutants were strewn all over the place. Red blood and green sludge stained the sands. Jak felt his stomach turn as he surveyed the horrific carnage. All of this death was very fresh, with no evidence of rot. Reaching the edge of the field of corpses, Jak, already breathing hard from his run, fell to his knees and began retching into the blood-stained sand. Ignoring him, Karzt proceeded toward the crater. He had no time to console a green boy – there was work to do.

  The white cloth tops of the carriages had either burnt up or detached and blown away in the wind. One of the carriages was smoldering; it had already burned into a nearly unrecognizable hulk. Another was still burning, sending great plumes of dark smoke into the air. The wagon had been knocked onto its side by some great force and – somehow – was free of flame. A humanoid figure was curled up against it. Smoke drifted over the whole area, stinging Karzt's eyes. He rubbed them with the sleeves of his jerkin and cautiously approached the wagon. Laying there was a badly injured man. Much of the right side of his body was burnt black and the skin was flaking off. He lay there taking shallow breaths, his chest rising and falling quickly.

  The man's body was a ruin. His right eye was missing, lost somewhere in the black, flaking carbon cinders that now comprised half of his face. Cloth hung off his burnt torso in tatters, the remains of a shirt or jerkin; Karzt couldn't tell which. He wore simple leather jeans which had also been torn into tatters, although they’d withstood the abuse better than his shirt. On the left side of his chest Karzt could see runic tattoos, and he immediately recognized them for what they were. As a hunter of such criminals, the hangman knew that magi often mark themselves with runes in order to enhance their wretched spells. The man was obviously an outlaw, perhaps even a smuggler. Karzt surmised that the man must either be very brave or very stupid to have been walking around bearing magical tattoos within the borders of the Imperium. Suspecting a trap, he immediately drew his revolver and knelt down in front of the dying mage. The man's single remaining dark brown eye swam in its socket momentarily and then managed to focus on the hangman.

  “You're a wizard,” Karzt said, motioning with his gun toward the runes.

  “I... I was... don't think I'll be much of anything s-soon...”

  “No. You're going to die today. What happened here? Did you do this?”

  “Yes. Fire... fireball.” The man raised a finger on his right arm and tapped on what remained of a fire rune inscribed on his belly. At this, Karzt jumped backwards, slamming the hammer down on his revolver. Realizing the man wasn't trying to cast anything, Karzt sheepishly squatted back down with his gun pointed toward the sand, elbows on his knees. The wizard barely seemed to notice. “Azure powder shipment... black market... all gone now. Big fire.”

  Karzt narrowed his eyes. “Why did you do this?”

  “Creatures in the night. Ki... killed some. Took most. Not me. Blew up the shipment. Blew up the creatures. Rest ran off.”

  Karzt looked around, taking in the carnage once more. He decided that the man was telling the truth. “Which way?” he asked flatly. The man simply moaned, his remaining eye lolling around as delirium began to overtake him.

  “Which fucking way did the fucking mutants go?” Karzt yelled, grabbing the man's crisped arm at the same time.

  He groaned in agony as the hangman's iron grip bore down on him. “Northeast!” he shouted in a hoarse, deadened voice.

  The hangman put the muzzle of the gun up against the man's forehead. “You've broken the law of the land, wizard. The crime is magic. The sentence is death.” Before the man could respond, the revolver thundered and the wizard’s head was pulped like a melon. Standing up, the hangman noticed that Jak had recovered from being sick. He was watching, his mouth wide open in horror.

  “What?” Karzt said, screwing his face into a sneer. He spat into the sand.

  “You... you shot him. We could have saved him. He was hurt but maybe I could have woken up Lunarm and you... just killed him.” Jak's face had turned pale. He had never seen a man die before.

  “Magic ain't legal 'round these parts, Jak. Fer good reason. Now, I like ya, but if you wasn't from Cascadia this is what I'd have to do to ya for the safety of thems that's around you. Don't think I ain't keepin' an eye on you for when them demons make ya turn on me.” Karzt punctuated his sentence by pulling a bullet out of the ammo pouch on his belt, sliding it into the cylinder with a deft quickness, and holstering his gun. The hangman began to pick his way through the shattered bodies and wagons, pocketing any supplies he could find. Jak watched this and wondered if he'd end up getting shot by this man who, up until this moment, had garnered a great deal of his respect.

  A few minutes later, the caravan caught up to the two men. Jak heard a whooping noise from behind him and realized that it was Quentin.

  “Whoooo! What a mess! You do all this, Jak? Damn, you're a real monster.” Quentin slapped him on the back and chuckled.

  Jak looked up at him and spoke in a deadened tone, “He killed somebody, Quentin. I just watched him shoot a man just because he was a wizard.”

  “Uh huh. That's what they do over here, farm boy. Bet you're regretting picking up that spellbook now, aren'tcha? Ha ha...” His laugh trailed off as he walked toward Karzt and began to have an uncharacteristically quiet conversation with him. Jak watched as he then walked back to the caravan and spoke to the leader. Soon there was a bustle of activity as the caravan started packing up – dawn was coming and with it the stillness and heat of the day.

  Meanwhile, Jak took some paper out of his satchel and began hastily sketching copies of the runes from the dead wizard's body. He hoped that he could somehow make use of them – that some good could come out of the man's gruesome death.

  They rested in a carriage that night. They ate salted camel meat and drank camel milk; this was a meal that they had become very accustomed to during their time in the desert. Jak had found that the milk was far too sweet and sat strangely in his stomach. After their meal, Hohaym shared some of his cactus wine, which Karzt alone refused. There, in the sun-shielded carriage, Hohaym, Quentin, and Jak drank and spoke of adventure, women, the Chateau, and life itself until the sun was high in the sky.

  When the evening came, Jak woke with his head pounding. He stepped outside and saw that the buzzards had gone to work on the corpses during the day. Again he felt like vomiting – both from the sight and from last night's wine. He had wanted to bury the bodies, but the Ouroloans refused; their custom was to allow bodies to feed the desert, in order to preserve the natural order. Likewise, Quentin thought it was a waste of effort, and Karzt was content to let the Ouroloans deal with their dead in whatever way they saw fit. Lunarm had no comment – he was still dormant, sleeping soundly in Jak's open satchel. The three men stood together in the moonlight as the carriages began moving eastward.

  “We're leaving,” Quentin said. Jak nodded and began to walk toward the departing caravan.

  “Not that way,” said the hangman. He explained that the caravan was heading southeast toward Crystal Sands. It would be safe, as it wasn't far from i
ts destination and still had many swords to defend it. The three of them would instead be heading northeast.

  “What's northeast?” Jak said.

  “Them,” replied the hangman, pointing at the severed and shattered burnt head of one of the mutants in the sand. It had already begun to decompose, its flesh sloughing off in clumps.

  “How do you know?”

  At this, Quentin clapped the young man's back and said, “He's a tracker, you idiot! There's a trail. Now let's follow it before it goes cold. I'm not keen on doing this babysitting duty any longer than I have to.”

  The three men marched off into the night, kicking up the loose sand as they traveled. Hohaym was not among them; his place was with the Sandy Travels Shipping Company, and he had no interest in risking his life against mutants from up Peril way.

  The Machinations of the Destiny Throne

  In the heart of the Chateau there was a grand throne room. A pair of great outer doors acted as the singular entrance to this chamber, guarding it from all would-be intruders. These doors were carved from raw amethyst, great chunks of jagged gemstone jutting out in all directions. Guarding the threshold were a half-dozen royal guards adorned in elegant blue-tinted plate armor, wielding pikes, and wearing expressions of slack boredom. If there was some elaborate contraption employed to prise and shut these massive doors, it was a well-kept mystery; they seemed to open and shut of their own accord or, perhaps, at the whims of the queen herself. They were usually closed, and the room itself usually unoccupied. On this day, the doors were shut but the room was not vacant.

  The throne room was a long rectangle, with a rich violet strip of carpet cutting a straight path all the way from the great amethyst doors to the throne itself – and what a throne to behold! It was formed entirely from a rainbow of raw gemstones, and this had the effect of making it look like a particularly uncomfortable place to sit. The walls of the chamber were covered in gold-gilded mirrors and blue velvet. One could easily begin to feel disoriented if they stared too long into that hallway of mirrors.