by B. A. Scott
“What does that mean?” Treäbu asked, already knowing the answer. “If Adoran does not stand as one, all will fall.”
“Will they?” Embros asked cryptically, rubbing his chin.
“‘Choose our alliances wisely,’ ‘do what’s in our best interest,’” Dareic quoted the King. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
Embros’s eyes narrowed, and the flames upon his crown intensified, boasting a tinge of deep blue at their roots.
“I believe we have nothing more to say here,” said the King. “Fahren, take them away,” he ordered.
“Wait!” Dareic yelled desperately as the Sage’s guards moved in to bind he and the others. “What if I told you that even one of Daro’s own bloodchildren has sided with us?”
“Hold!” Embros raised a hand to his guards. “What do you mean, ‘bloodchildren?’” he asked Dareic.
“Dareic, wait!” Treäbu whispered, grabbing Dareic’s arm. “Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” Dareic asked. “It’s why she’s here, isn’t it?”
“If he finds out, he’ll hand her over to Daro for sure. We can’t let that happen.”
“You were saying?” Embros probed. “Bloodchildren?”
“Yes,” Dareic told him. “His very own daughter claims to oppose him.”
“Lord Daro has no daughter,” Embros responded curiously. “He has only his demons.”
“I’m sure the Dark Lord keeps many secrets,” said Dareic, causing the King a moment of great contemplation. “But it’s true.”
“And where is she—this treasonous offspring of his? Hiding with your people, perhaps? Or the Skaelar?”
Dareic hesitated before answering. He felt Treäbu’s gaze upon him, begging him to remain silent. He wiped a handful of sweat from his face as he decided whether or not to give Vexen away. Then, from beside him, Treäbu spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
“She saved your life. You owe her for that.”
Dareic knew it was true. After a moment of great deliberation, he opened his mouth to speak.
“She is here,” came Vexen’s voice from behind him.
Dareic, Treäbu, Vega and Fahren snapped their heads in her direction, astounded that she’d spoken. Vexen paused, then moved forward and pulled back her hood, revealing her face.
“Buggar me!” Fahren exclaimed.
“I am Vexen Alakai,” she said, “daughter of Lord Daro.”
“What are you doing?” Treäbu whispered to her with pained eyes. But Vexen ignored the question.
“But I’m confused,” said Embros. “If you are indeed who you claim to be, why are you here? Surely Daro’s kin would never associate with the likes of his sworn enemies.”
“I do not share my father’s vision,” Vexen said.
“You openly oppose him?” Embros asked. “And seek to rally his enemies against him? My, how proud he must be of you!”
“Lord Embros,” Dareic said, “by not allying with the nations of Adoran, you’re leading your people to their deaths.”
“Is that so?” asked the King, amusedly.
“That’s right,” Dareic said. “I’ve seen the destruction Daro’s capable of with my own eyes. But we’re already moving against him. The Humans and Skaelar have united. And my brothers are traveling to Valea, Marinar and the Northlands as we speak—for the very same reason I’ve come to Kallenshar. Please, consider our proposition.”
“That is interesting news,” Embros said, stroking his chin. “Fahren,” he said, then spoke in the Incinian tongue, “Vir muli a sen daccimir.” The words drained Fahren’s face of all its color, and Vexen let out a gasp. “We’re done here,” the King finished.
“No, wait!” said Dareic. “You’re making a mistake! Please! You’ll need our help just as much as we’ll need yours.”
“We shall see,” said Embros. “Take them from my sight,” he told Fahren.
“Fahren, wait just a second!” Dareic pleaded.
“It is pointless, ambassador,” said the Sage. “Our decision is made. I’m afraid I can delay your fate no longer.”
“But—but—”
“Trust me, Caladen,” Fahren urged him. “We need to leave right now.”
The guards grabbed hold of Dareic and the others, and Fahren led them to the throne room’s doors. Dareic looked back over his shoulder to see Embros one last time. The King bore an expression of evil satisfaction across his face, thoughtfully stroking the point of his beard.
As the doors closed behind Dareic, Lord Embros vanished from his sight. Dareic noticed that the two Incinian women had remained outside the throne room, waiting for them all the while.
“Nova, Sahna, come with me,” Fahren told them, once the doors were fully closed. The women nodded, and joined him on either side. “Cover their heads,” he told his guards, and each obeyed by putting Dareic and the others’ hoods up. Then, the Sage led everyone through the palace at a brisk pace.
“Are you really taking us to the dungeons?” Dareic whispered to the Sage. But Fahren did not answer. All Dareic knew was that wherever they were going, Fahren wanted to get there quickly.
At last, they arrived at a torch-lit corridor that ended at a set of ornately fashioned doors. A lone Incinian woman stood before them. Upon seeing her, Dareic began to sense a trend, having noticed an Incinian woman at nearly every set of doors he’d encountered.
With a nod from Fahren as he approached, the woman opened the doors behind her. When everyone had passed through them, she closed them, and remained outside.
The chamber was massive, decorative and dark-stoned, well lit by torches. Weapons, strange to Dareic’s eyes, hung numerously upon the walls, and the ceiling was so high, he thought an Aerolus might have had room to fly about.
“Release them,” Fahren told his guards.
“Fahren, what are you doing?” Sahna asked.
“I don’t know, Sahna,” Fahren responded, putting his hand to his temple. “I don’t know.”
“You should not have brought them here,” said Nova. “If Embros finds out—”
“Then we haven’t much time,” Fahren said, eyeing Vexen with a glint of fear in his eye. “You,” he spoke to her. “Is it true? Are you really who you say you are?”
“Yes,” said Vexen. “Daro is my father. My mother, a Primen-Blessed cross-breed.”
“Why’d you do it?” Treäbu asked her. “Why didn’t you just keep quiet?”
“I thought I could convince him to change his mind,” Vexen answered. “I thought I could have made the difference.”
“That was—” Treäbu wanted to berate her, “it was just—”
“Stupid, I know,” Vexen said.
“You should have stayed hidden!” Treäbu told her.
“Well, I thought I was about to be exposed anyway!” Vexen argued. “Better by my own will than his, right?” She gestured to Dareic, who suddenly felt like he was about to be put on trial for a crime he never committed.
“You,” Treäbu turned to Dareic. “You were really gonna do it, weren’t you?”
“Do what?” Dareic asked back.
“Give her away. Hand her over to Embros.”
“You have no idea what I was gonna say,” Dareic defended himself.
“But I saw the look in your eye, Dareic. I know it all too well by now.”
“Well I’m telling you right now that you’re wrong,” Dareic said. “And besides, Vexen spoke up before I could say anything, didn’t she? So it’s her own fault that she’s found out, not mine.”
“Shut it, all of you!” Fahren spoke forcefully. “We haven’t time for this. We need to get you out of Kallenshar.”
Dareic and Treäbu kept their gaze with each other long enough for both to understand that though the conversation had ended, their sentiments remained. Finally, Treäbu turned his attention to Fahren.
“What did the King tell you?” Treäbu asked. “In Incinian, just before we left?”
“He said,” Fahren took
a deep breath, “that we’re adding to our offering.”
“Offering?” Vega asked. “What do you mean? An offering to what?”
“I told you Embros is in dealings with Daro,” said the Sage. “Daro wants him to pledge our armies to his cause, but Embros won’t surrender them. Instead, he proposed an alternative token of our allegiance.”
“What ‘token,’ exactly?” Dareic asked. “What could Daro possibly want more than your armies?”
Fahren remained silent as he looked to each person with thick reluctance spread across his face, as if to tell everyone, “Please don’t make me say it.” When it was clear that the decision to answer proved far too difficult for the Sage, a sudden realization struck the Skaelar like lightning.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Treäbu uttered gravely.
“What?” Dareic asked.
“It’s the Gauntlet, isn’t it?” Treäbu asked Fahren. “You’re giving Daro the Gauntlet of Wrath?!”
Suddenly, Nova and Sahna drew their blades. The other guards stepped in closer to Dareic and the others, ready to bind them once more.
“For making such an accusation,” Fahren spoke to Treäbu in the most serious of tones, “that the Gauntlet lies in our possession, by Incinian law, I am now bound to banish you from Kallenshar at once. But,” he seemed to experience an amusing thought, “as banishment’s a bit tame compared to your current fates of lifelong imprisonment and torture—and the fact that I’m already trying to get you out of Kallenshar—well, banishment seems rather preferable in this case, doesn’t it?”
Some of the guards shot each other confused glances as Fahren put his hands on Sahna’s and Nova’s blades, lowering their tips.
“This ‘token of allegiance.’ Are you saying,” Dareic proceeded cautiously with his words, “that you have it?”
After a few moments, Fahren spoke. “We do.”
Shock filled the room. Nova and Sahna looked at Fahren as though he’d gone mad, and the other guards fidgeted uneasily in their stances.
“You bloody thieving liars!” Treäbu belted.
“It can’t be true,” Xado muttered to himself.
“But the people do not know!” Fahren told them quickly. “They have never known!”
“Fahren, this is most unwise!” Nova spoke, placing her hand on the Sage’s arm.
“Fahren,” Dareic interjected, seeking to keep the Sage’s attention from the females. “What does the Gauntlet do?”
“The knowledge passed down tells of it magnifying a wielder’s potential to incredible limits,” said the Sage. “It was forged by the combined efforts of no less than five Sages before the War of Ages, including Idonitus.”
“Oh,” said Dareic, attempting to comprehend the magnitude of the furentus’s power.
“And each Sage had sipped from nearly every fountain,” Fahren added.
“Good glory,” said Vega. “In Lord Daro’s hands—”
“I can’t believe it,” said Xado. “Centuries of denial. Yet in the end, it was here all along. Halavere stole it after all.”
“The Gauntlet of Wrath was not stolen,” Fahren told him. “It was confiscated. Idonitus convinced the other Sages its creation would benefit the world. Imagine a wielder who’d sipped from Sae Lenar having the power to heal an entire city in one stroke. Imagine famine and thirst a thing of the past if only a wielder of Wave could cut rivers through the land, and conjure torrents to dampen even the direst drought.
Upon its creation, the Sages discovered the furentus was far more powerful than they’d ever dreamed. Yet only after they forged it did Idonitus warn of its less than benevolent potential. And upon demonstrating its destructive power,” Fahren’s tone turned cynical, “he deemed it too dangerous a device to use—even by a wielder with the purest intentions. The slightest misstep, oversight or miscalculation of magic could spell inconceivable devastation. And so, he locked it away in his junakothari, saying he and the other Sages had ‘gone too far.’
But our Lord Halavere saw through Idonitus’s façade. He saw past his self-righteous declarations when everyone else blindly believed his lies. Idonitus knew the Gauntlet was much more than just a furentus. It was a symbol of power. And whoever held it possessed the greatest force of magic in all the world.
Halavere would never let him have that power over the other nations. He believed by removing the Gauntlet from the Erygians’ junakothari, he was helping the world maintain its balance of power, and thus, its peace. And by denying his actions—professing his innocence even to his own people—he hoped the other nations would think it lost, find comfort in its disappearance, and realize the world was better off without it.”
“Oh bollucks, he wanted it for himself,” Treäbu interrupted.
Fahren glanced at him angrily, thinking it beyond rude to interrupt such revelations of the past. Dareic shook his head subtly at Treäbu, telling him, now’s not the time.
“But such fanciful hopes were not to be,” Fahren continued. “The Gauntlet doomed our race to centuries of suspicion and scathing blame. And now, after all this time, it will be hidden no longer. The Incinians will return it willingly to an Erygian—an Erygian who coerced a nation to bended knee.”
“How soon is this going happen?” Vega asked.
“Soon,” said Fahren.
Dareic stepped forward slowly, so he could speak with Fahren on a more personal level. “Can you get it first?” he asked.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Fahren told him.
“I’m asking you to take a side,” said Dareic. “You’ve already said you’ve been supporting a resistance to Lord Embros.”
“But to declare openly the wish to ally, against the King’s wishes,” said Fahren. “It would tear the nation in two, turning Incinian against Incinian.”
“From what you’ve told us,” Vega told him, “it sounds like that’s inevitable. You’ve played both sides of this game for too long, Fahren. The time has come for you to decide where your heart truly lies.”
Fahren thought on Vega’s words, letting them take hold. “I can make no promises right now,” he said at last.
“Fahren,” Treäbu said, “you said Embros told you that you’re adding to your offering. What else is he giving Daro, other than the Gauntlet?”
“What do you think?” Vexen asked. “You saw the gleam in his eyes when he found out who I was.”
“And not just you,” Fahren told her. “I’d wager he wants to hand the rest of you over to Daro as well. Ambassadors—the driving force of his opposition. That’s why we have to get you out of Kallenshar as quickly as possible. When Embros finds out I haven’t taken you to the dungeons—”
“He’ll know you helped us,” said Treäbu. “He’ll know.”
Fahren appeared as a man, torn and tortured in his mind, and for the first time, Dareic felt a pang of sympathy for him.
“We’re returning to Skaelwood,” Dareic told the Sage. “Those who will follow you, bring them there.”
“What? Leave Kallenshar?” Fahren asked.
“If you don’t think you can take control of it,” said Dareic.
The very thought of it seemed to add even more weight upon Fahren’s conscience.
“One thing at a time,” said the Sage. Then, he leaned in close to Dareic. “I will secure the Gauntlet after your departure.”
“Then we’d better leave now,” said Dareic.
“First,” said Fahren, “there’s something we should do.”
“And what’s that?” Treäbu asked. “I thought we were in a hurry.”
“I do believe it’s time that I return your effects to you—except for you—and you,” Fahren said, pointing to Dareic and Vexen.
“Why not us?” Dareic asked as the guards surrendered every blade, pouch and armoring that had been taken upon their capture.
“Nova, Sahna,” Fahren spoke to the females, “stay here with the others. I’m taking these two with me.”
“With you w
here?” Vexen asked.
Fahren looked at her, still debating the decision in his mind. Then, he spoke as though it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to say. “To the Fountain of Cyneas Dal.”
Chapter 16: The Fountain of Cyneas Dal
Fahren secreted Dareic and Vexen through countless passageways, delving deeper into the bowels of Kallenshar.
“Are the others safe?” Dareic whispered. “With those women?”
“Nova, Sahna and Falysia are my most loyal servants,” Fahren said. “My eyes and ears in the palace halls. Now, shut your mouth.”
“Why are you doing this for us?” Dareic asked.
“I said quiet!”
Dareic kept his head as low as possible, praying no one would glimpse his face beneath his cloak. If he was discovered, the consequences for himself would be severe, but none, he knew, would compare to those for the Incinian Sage.
Why’s Fahren risking so much for us to drink from the Fountain? he thought. But though he already knew the answer, it didn’t satisfy him. He’s aiding whoever opposes Daro. It seemed too cut-and-dry for someone leading a double life.
The other thought on Dareic’s mind was how much he hated the fact that Fahren was permitting Vexen to drink from the Fountain as well. He’s giving this demon something she’ll end up using against him, he thought. But protesting as they walked past the inhabitants of Kallenshar would only get him caught.
Finally, they stopped. Though Dareic didn’t raise his gaze, he heard Fahren speak. “I need access to the Fountain chamber.”
Heavy metallic doors opened, and the group passed through them. Only when they closed behind the group did Fahren speak again. “You can remove your hoods,” he said.
Dareic slowly drew back his cloak, and nearly lost his balance at the sight before him. The massive obsidian cavern glowed orange from intricately designed pools of lava upon the floor. The walkway Dareic stood on stretched from the doors behind him to the center of the Fountain chamber, where a mound of jagged obsidian rock stretched inward, waist-high from the ground, like a sawed-off volcano. Within it, a swirling column of liquid flame rose to the ceiling, where it fed an obsidian mound, identical to the one below.