The Soul Forge

by Andrew Lashway

  Thomas gulped, holding the blade with both hands before remembering the shield and securing it to his opposite arm. Gods, was he not a warrior. If their assailants were better trained than puppies Thomas was going to be completely useless.

  “Does anybody have a plan?” Thomas mumbled, but only mumbles sounded in response. Their opposition closed in on them, and Thomas raised his shield to mount what he knew was an untenable defense. Weapons were drawn, daggers that were a foot long and curved blades with wicked serrated edges. Thomas clutched the General’s blade in a tight grip, feeling the handle start to get slick from his sweat.

  “What is going on here?!”

  It was not a question but a command posing for effect. All of them halted in their tracks, wondering if they were now in even more trouble. But as the shout ripped through the woods, the five or six black-clad attackers suddenly turned and bolted, disappearing into the darkness of the encroaching night.

  Thomas turned to face the voice’s owner and thank him for his timely interference when a fist was shoved none too gently into his face. Pain sparked in his left cheek as his head snapped back, and the world swam around him for a moment as he tried to focus.

  “Ow!”

  “That’s what you get for holding that sword that way. Shameful. Loosen your grip so you don’t break your fingers!”

  The voice was old, almost ancient. Thomas rubbed his cheek, and was taken by surprise when he saw his assailant was an elf that was almost comically small. Shorter by him than more than a head, Thomas at first thought wanted to laugh. But the sting in his left cheek quickly removed the urge.

  “Who the blazes are you?” Thomas didn’t ask as much as shout.

  “Oh don’t be such a child. It was only a stinger. Morando, who are these untrained fools?”

  “These are humans who have come to help me reclaim my family,” Morando said, slowly pronouncing every syllable. “Thomas, Zach,” he said much quicker, “this is the Keeper of the Tomes.”

  “Nice to meet ya,” Thomas said as he finally rubbed most of the pain away.

  “Yeah… a pleasure,” Zach chimed in with a raised eyebrow to Thomas. Thomas could only shrug in response.

  “Help you with your family?” the Keeper asked, ignoring the humans completely, “how can they do that?”

  “If we can prove Orano ordered my death and then faked the notice, we can get his marriage to my wife annulled,” Morando explained.

  “WHAT?!”

  The shout was enough to deafen Thomas, and now he had to rub the pain out of his ears. The Keeper seemed beside himself at the news.

  “All this time we could have achieved this? Four years ago we could have rectified this?! FOUR YEARS?!”

  Thomas and Zach both backed away, but Morando said and did nothing. A clear sadness had entered his eyes, the only sign the taller elf gave that he was present in the conversation.

  “Four years of trying to exploit a loophole! Four years of being told elven law was absolute! And now, now we find out there was such a simple way?!”

  The old elf’s shouting was starting to attract attention, Thomas was sure of it. But every time he tried to recommend they have this conversation inside, the Keeper pretended not to hear him – or he really couldn’t over the sound of his own rage – and just kept shouting.

  After what felt like hours, the Keeper finally calmed enough to allow them entry into his home. The moment Thomas’ feet crossed the threshold, he had to hold back a gasp of wonder.

  He had thought Morando’s home had housed a lot of books, but it was nothing compared to the masses of tomes lining every available surface. The books Thomas had read could have fit on one shelf of the library that was the Keeper’s home.

  “You sure read a lot,” Thomas said before he could stop himself. The Keeper looked back at him and gave what may have been a smile. Thomas almost smiled back, somewhat elated that the Keeper didn’t outright hate him.

  Then he received a smack in the face by a book, and his opinion quickly changed. On reflex he caught the book before it hit the ground, and the weight of it made his arms tired.

  “Ow! What was that for?” Thomas yelped. At least he had managed to turn the other cheek this time.

  “Read it,” the Keeper snapped. Thomas looked down at the book in his hands. The title was written in elvish, which of course Thomas couldn’t read, but as he opened the pages he saw that everything was diagramed. From what he could tell, the book was a fencing manual.

  “You want me to learn fencing?” Thomas asked, though he immediately regretted the question.

  “Of course I do, why else would I have thrown the book?” the Keeper replied, making Thomas cringe. He had walked into that one.

  “I can’t just learn from reading a book…” Thomas said, “not that I object to reading, it’s just… I don’t have a lot of time to read this whole thing…”

  “You will not read the whole thing. You and the other blundering ape will study under my tutelage, and we will make you proficient in swordsmanship before you exit Verdonti. That way, you will survive the bandits and the animals out there.”

  Thomas gave a small, sad laugh that only succeeded in making him sad. “I wish that was our only problem.”

  The Keeper looked back even as he tore through his immense volumes for the logbook. The question was obvious.

  “Something… something has happened, Keeper,” Morando said, looking back at Thomas as if unsettled. “There are… creatures attacking Ludicra.”

  “Creatures?” the Keeper repeated, moving to a different stack as he mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. “What kind of creatures?”

  Morando looked beseechingly at Thomas, who picked up his cue.

  “They’re called ‘Others,’ sir. They’re wooden monsters that don’t feel pain and they can’t be killed. They can barely even be hurt.”

  “Others?” the Keeper repeated, “what color are their eyes?”

  “Their…?” Thomas stopped, stymied at the seemingly random question. It took him a moment to process everything and speak again. “No color, sir, they just seem to be blank holes in their heads.”

  “Inanis,” the Keeper replied instantly, “and the eyeless are the worst kind.”

  “Inanis?” Thomas said, sharing a look of mutual confusion with the other two, “what are those?”

  “That’s their actual name. Who named them others?”

  Thomas fidgeted, again ashamed to admit it. “The Dark Priest, Keeper.”

  The Keeper actually scoffed. “The Dark Priest would never forget their real names. Whoever this person is masquerading as the Priest is a pretender and a fool.”

  Thomas nodded, happy his gut instinct was correct. Though that didn’t make the pretend Priest any less of a threat.

  “He was still pretty strong, even for a fake,” Thomas said, “he could command the… the.. .what were they called, again?”

  “Inanis,” the Keeper replied as he flipped through the pages of a particularly heavy looking leather bound book.

  “Inanis. He could command them.”

  “A parlor trick,” the Keeper replied. “He’s strong willed, nothing more. Now, you, boy, you can use magic?”

  Again thrown by the seemingly random question, Thomas was silent for a moment. In that moment, the Keeper somehow transported himself from across the room to a foot away from him, kicking him in the shin once as if to get his attention.

  The familiar pain in his leg spread to his heart, and he had to fight himself for a moment to regain his composure.

  “Yeah,” he finally replied, “I’m a magic-caster.”

  “In what way has your abilities surfaced?”

  “Well… like this.”

  Thomas rubbed his hands together fiercely until he had a small flame brewing in his cupped hands.

  “Hm. Elementary, but you have promise.”

  “I… what, sorry?”

  “Fencing first, then if you don’t get yourself
killed, I might teach you the secrets of magic-casting. You and Zacharias.”

  “I’m not a magic-caster, sir,” Zach said, and he sounded none too pleased about it.

  “Hmph. Did I stammer?”

  Thomas and Zach shared a confused look, but the Keeper refused to expound further. Instead, he disappeared into a back room and they heard the sounds of crashing and banging. When the Keeper reemerged, he was holding two wooden sticks that looked like training swords.

  He tossed one to both Thomas and Zach, and told them to face each other.

  “Morando, collect the death notice. It is in the House of Commons, under watch. If I had known we could have used it… bah. Go.”

  Morando left the premises without another word, hurrying off to complete his task.

  “And you, boys, will learn the basics in wielding blades. When I am satisfied you are not completely inept, you may go.”

  Thomas was keen to learn, but they didn’t have a lot of time to practice fencing.

  “Please sir, while I’m grateful for the offer, we both are, we have to get to the dwarves before it’s too late. We need them to temper the General’s sword.”

  This plea fell on deaf ears.

  “If you do not stay, you will not make it to the dwarf lands alive. Now! At attention!”

  Neither Thomas or Zach had any idea what that meant until the Keeper jabbed a walking stick into both of their spines and they were forced to straighten.

  “Good,” the Keeper smirked, “now we begin.”

  It was a grueling three hours of work before Morando returned, and in that time Thomas and Zach were covered in welts and bruises. Zach had a bit more experience in swordplay than Thomas, but not very much. And in the Keeper’s eyes, they both were children wielding sticks.

  “Back straight!” he shouted, “hands up!”

  Thomas didn’t speak out, no matter how tired he was or how very sick he was getting of being swatted at with that walking stick. It took them an hour to learn good form, then another hour to move through the basics at a snail’s pace. Zach swung slowly, he parried slowly then reposted even slower…

  If it wasn’t for the fact that he knew the Keeper was right, he would have walked away. But without training, Thomas would be worse than useless in a battle.

  So he stayed, and when Morando returned to find them beaten and sweaty, the elf actually laughed. But before the look of merriment crossed his face, he looked almost horrified.

  “It’s been some time since I saw you whip new recruits into shape,” Morando chuckled as he cleared off a pile of books so he could sit at a table to watch.

  “I’ve never seen such a waste before,” the Keeper replied, shouting a sequence of numbers that related to sword strokes they had to copy. Thomas almost got to the fifth one before messing up. Zach nailed all eight of them.

  “This one is pathetic,” the Keeper said, pointing to Zach, “and this one is worse,” he finished with an offhand wave at Thomas.

  “So they’re shaping up nicely, I see,” Morando replied. Thomas’ eyes widened in shock. How in the world had Morando reached that conclusion from the Keeper’s scathing remarks?

  “Hmph,” the Keeper grumbled, swatting Zach across the shoulders for no apparent reason.

  “Did you get the death notice?” Thomas asked when it was clear the Keeper would no longer be training/abusing them.

  “Yes,” Morando replied as the look of horror returned. “It took some convincing, but finally I was allowed into the House and saw it. But… it is not as we expected.”

  Thomas nearly sighed. Of course it wasn’t. “And what is it?”

  Morando stood up and paced the small space available, wringing his hands together as if trying to restore feeling to them. Thomas and Zach shared a look of deep concern.

  “The letter was not signed by Orano,” Morando finally said, but he said nothing else.

  Thomas waited, but when it was clear Morando wasn’t going to continue he said, “then who was it signed by?”

  Morando looked him in the eye with a look that carried something Thomas never would have thought possible: abject fear.

  “It was signed by Chancellor Vontanado.”

  Chapter 11: Assault on Verdonti

  If Thomas thought he had seen the Keeper rage before, it was nothing compared to the temper he displayed now. The elf swore in languages both familiar and forgotten, smacking things with his walking stick and yelling at them. For a moment, Thomas had to wonder if Morando’s original fear wasn’t due to the Chancellor but due to the Keeper’s reaction.

  “All the years of asking him why! All the years of him saying there was nothing he could do! All the years of being lied to! How dare he?! HOW DARE HE?!

  No man interrupted the Keeper’s rage, even as they all sat at the table staring into a fire that held no warmth. It felt like a physical blow to all of them. Betrayed by the highest power in elven lands…

  Thomas’ head bowed, and he found he didn’t have the strength to lift it again. The Capital, fallen. The countryside of Ludicra, burned. And now Verdonti, the one safe haven for magic-casters, was ruled by a corrupt Chancellor.

  “But why?” Zach said while the Keeper tried to catch his breath, “why would he strike this deal with Orano? What did he have to gain?”

  Thomas shook his head, unable and unwilling to think. Just when things looked like they were making some progress, he was smacked down again by a new bout of misfortune. What was even the point of trying to win the day when everything was against him?

  Unbidden, the image of the Kimpchik’s rose up to meet him, and it was all the answer he needed.

  “It has to be something to do with you, Morando,” Thomas found himself saying. It was the only common factor they had to work with. “Your wife, your child, your death. What did both Orano and the Chancellor have to gain from you bein’ dead?”

  “Obviously, Orano ‘gained’ my family,” Morando replied, placing his chin in his hand. “The Chancellor… honestly, I don’t know.”

  Thomas leaned back, thinking hard. What would the leader – the ruler – of a sovereign people need from faking the death of an ordinary healer?

  But the more Thomas thought about it, the less answers he could think of.

  “Then there is only one way to find out,” the Keeper said, drawing several swords from a weapon’s case behind a shelf of books. “We go ask him.”

  The Keeper tossed three blades to all three of them, with only Thomas almost dropping his. The blades were old and scored, but they were at least sharp and by far sharper than the General’s blade. Then the Keeper reached behind another shelf and drew a sword that caught the flame just right and shone like it was a lesser known cousin of the sun.

  “Wait,” Morando said, “you are coming as well?”

  “Oh yes,” The Keeper replied, heading for the door, “I think it’s long past time I had a chat with our dear Chancellor where I got some real answers. Even if they must come at the edge of a blade.

  The trio behind the Keeper all shared a look of alarm before hurrying after the enraged old man.

  “Do we need to protect him, or protect people from him?” Thomas asked quietly.

  “Yes,” both Zach and Morando answered in unison.

  Their trek took them past the dark homes of the other elves as they traveled the silent streets of Verdonti. Nothing stirred, not the leaves on the trees or the dirt they should have kicked up as they walked. The only sound they could hear was the Keeper’s ragged breathing and the blood pumping through their veins.

  Thomas was the first to draw his sword, looking around wildly. Zach followed suit on principle, trying to find whatever Thomas was trying to find. Morando looked at them questioningly, and the Keeper paid no mind at all.

  “Something’s just wrong here,” Thomas tried to say, but he found to his horror that his voice had disappeared. Zach mouthed a reply, but Thomas couldn’t understand it. But they all understood one thing above all else.
>
  It was time to run.

  They sheathed their weapons and sprinted forward, Thomas and Zach each grabbing hold of the Keeper’s arms and pulling him along. Morando moved forward as sentinel, his elf eyes keen to anything that moved. Fortunately for them, very little did.

  Unfortunately, the very little that did move was a small girl with golden white hair and a star shaped birthmark on her cheek.

  Thomas shouted for her to get down, but of course no sound emerged from his lips. Morando saw his daughter approaching and immediately broke his guard, moving to embrace the child. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were in trouble again, the reunion of father and daughter would have been touching.

  As it stood, they had little time for heartwarming reunions. Morando knew, and he immediately gathered his daughter in his arms and together, the five of them ran for the Chancellor’s temple.

  Naturally, they didn’t make it.

  Spawned from the silence itself, Inanis suddenly appeared in front of them. In unison, Thomas, Zach and the Keeper drew their weapons. The General’s sword sat in one hand while the Keeper’s blade was held in the other, though Thomas couldn’t tell which one would be the more effective. On instinct alone, the three of them closed in around Morando and Etante. They were surrounded and outnumbered five to three, but for some reason Thomas wasn’t very worried.

  After all, he had a little girl to protect. And nothing quelled his fear and surged his defiance like a good cause.

  The Inanis attacked, but they were slow and their blows were easily deflected. The Keeper was the first to counterattack, laying two of them low with blows that rang out so fast Thomas couldn’t even see what he did.

  “Direct attacks will not work,” the Keeper said, spinning his blade in his hand while he pointed his walking stick with deliberate menace. The only thing more surprising than the action was the fact that sound had returned to them. Thomas wondered for a long moment how, but all in all it wasn’t as important as other things.

  “Call the plan, sir,” Thomas said.