by B J Hanlon
Edin remembered Arianne’s ward was an alarm. But there was also the darts that knocked him unconscious only for him to wake up with the most beautiful woman in the world taking care of him… before she tried to kill him. He wished they were there again, in the mountains alone.
“Where’s your head? When I open this, somethings going to happen, I need you with me not thinking about her… if we fail, the island, the people could all die.”
“So dramatic… maybe you should’ve studied theater.”
“Didn’t you feel it? They are pushing the isles to war… they will listen to Pharont. But if the
Ecta-”
“Shut up…” Edin shook his head, “I’m not a prophesied anyone.”
“Not yet, now draw that blade.”
Edin was wary but did it.
Le Fie twisted and the lock snapped open.
Edin quickly covered Le Fie and summoned the culrian as a clicking sound came from around them as if they were in a large cavern.
Slowly, a yellowish gas began to slide down the walls as if it were a waterfall.
“Inside,” Le Fie said as he rammed a shoulder into it. It sprang back. “Stuck…” he hit it again.
Edin was too drained to try and blow the door open. He looked up, the smoke kept coming. A moment later, something felt odd around his feet. As he looked, he saw the leather on his boots start to decay. The shine faded slowly… “What is this stuff?”
Le Fie looked down. “Blast… help me.” He stepped back and kicked. Still nothing. “Shoulders.”
Edin saw his black trousers were becoming threads as if they were being taken apart on a loom. His eyes went wide and he saw Le Fie. They stood facing each other.
“Now,” Le Fie yelled through a cough. They hit, nothing happened. Again. Then again. Edin could see skin now on his feet, the hairs on his legs began to shrivel.
“One more,” Le Fie called. The smoke was at their chest now. They both threw their shoulders into the door.
It crashed open and Edin fell. He caught himself and began scampering on his hands into a dark unknown. A moment later, the door slammed behind him.
Edin coughed, and glanced back. He could see nothing in the black of the underground cellar. He had little energy, but could… at least he hoped, make a light.
He did, though if flickered dimly.
“Le Fie?”
He looked over and saw the spy lying next to the door. There was no smoke, but half of his clothes had been burned away and his legs looked like they’d just been shaved and he’d been put into a steaming bath. Edin’s own legs looked the same.
Slowly, Le Fie turned his head, his eyes were red and his face pale. Edin stood gingerly and scanned the room. It felt damper and colder than even by the door. Though maybe that was because three-quarters of their pants were gone.
“It’s empty…” Le Fie sighed. “Can’t be… Mersett promised...”
Edin spotted a single stool and a table. The table had been turned over and was missing a leg.
“Could he have lied?” He wondered about the bodies above them. “What if he just wanted us to stop that?” He pointed to the ceiling.
Le Fie took a few moments to consider it. He coughed but shook his head. “I’ve been used as a pawn before… this isn’t like those...”
“Well, I don’t think we’ll be going out that way anytime soon,” Edin said. “Can you stand?”
“Yes,” he replied.
He moved to the ancient stone walls. He ran fingers along them. They came away with dew and mold. It smelled like the place had been vacant for years like the room at the top of the tower.
Slowly, he circled it, not sure what he was looking for. Then, in the darkness, he spotted something. A statue holding a bowl.
“Le Fie… come here. It’s a…”
“Dematian. But what is it doing here?”
Edin grinned, he closed his eyes and felt the water in the air and on the walls. He called for it and it shot at him like a weird horizontal rainstorm. Then the water dropped into the bowl.
“Step back,” Edin said.
He ran his hand around the rim as Arianne had showed him at Erastio’s Rise. A moment later, there was a rumbling to the left and a gust of wind.
“How’d you…”
Edin said nothing and went to the new door.
It was another dark space but the walls weren’t hewn stone, it was as if someone dug it straight into the mountain. The floor shone as if by moisture.
Le Fie cleared his throat. “No one’s been here in years.” Le Fie nodded and stepped forward into the darkness.
Edin followed.
Soon, they saw it was a long hall that seemed unending. He ran his hands along the damp walls. The tunnel began to slope steadily downward, deeper into the ground.
Suddenly, they felt a rumble and stopped. Stones began to drop from the roof of the hall.
Edin felt unsure on his feet and reached out grabbing a nub on the cave wall. “What the…”
“An explosive,” Le Fie said. “Like we used it at the dry docks.”
From far behind, he heard voices.
“There’s water up here… I think we’re near the ocean,” Le Fie called from ahead of him. “It goes down, under the waterline. Can you swim?”
“I have the talent but… do we have to?”
“Those are probably Pharont’s men, the broson, you know how understanding they are? Do you have the energy to fight them?”
Edin said nothing.
“Do you think they’ll be lenient?”
Again, Edin didn’t answer.
Le Fie grinned. “You go first and light the way… fire doesn’t hold up well down there.
Edin nodded and slowly moved his body forward as the cold water crept up his body, he took a deep breath and dove under. His eyes opened and began to burn from the salt. Edin suddenly had the feeling this was a bad idea. The ethereal light lit up a long square passage either meant for a dwarf or a child. Edin hadn’t tried this before, but he’d used the water to push ships, why not himself…
The light flickered when he attempted. He turned around and saw Le Fie swimming at him quickly. He turned forward and tried to push himself faster now.
It worked. Edin shot forward. He was like a fish flowing through the currents. He turned back for a moment and saw Le Fie struggling to keep up. Suddenly Le Fie pointed forward with fear in his eyes.
A moment later, as he turned to look ahead of him, something cracked him on the skull and everything went black.
It was just a moment of dizziness but the darkness was all encompassing. He felt something touch him, he screamed and the rest of his air disappeared.
Something grabbed him at the lapel. A strong fist and he was yanked upwards and free of the water.
He broke the water’s surface and was lifted out of the pool past his waist. For a moment, he thought of himself as one of those sprouting fountains he’d seen, so elegant and serene.
With his chest burning and his eyes on fire. For some reason, he wondered why so many of the fountains smiles on their faces. Edin was dropped to his side with water gurgling from his mouth.
Edin tried to blink away the pain and saw only a whitish gray haze like smoke in the fall moonlight.
“Gods alive…” Le Fie whispered from somewhere near his head.
He finally was able to look and saw Le Fie wasn’t looking at Edin, he was slowly backing up.
Edin turned over and saw something… he shook his head and blinked, was there still salt in his eyes… but there was a… thing in the corner. His chest seemed to stop beating.
Edin blinked again. Nothing had changed. He was looking at… a twister? But not like any he’d seen. There was a soft glow from within and it was silent and seemed to be whipping around a single spot, like a post holding up twisting vines.
His mouth dropped and he scrambled back on his hands pulling himself backwards until he met the wall.
Le Fie stood
over him, he groped for Edin’s arm and hauled him up.
There were no words. It seemed so real yet unreal. A visceral feeling of unease rolled through him like a violent storm was approaching.
Edin couldn’t help but stare. He felt exhausted and wide awake like a jolt of coffee after running for leagues.
Below and atop the tornado were a pair of glowing white rocks. Then he glimpsed something. It rushed by so fast that he couldn’t be sure. He blinked and wiped his eyes feeling the sting from the salt.
“Is that…” Le Fie said, his voice quaking.
He saw it again, a flesh colored protrusion. It was only a moment. His mind still wouldn’t contemplate. It… was.
A third time and he saw the digits of a hand and the connecting palm near a leg, then more skin and hair near the top.
A face? Edin swallowed and felt dizzy, his body lost all of his equilibrium. His eyes were tiring, but he couldn’t stop staring, the breaks in the tornado were infrequent but he saw more of the… man…
A foot with nothing underneath, a leg, shoulder… there was nothing covering the man but the wind.
He began to tilt and felt a hand steady him. “It…” Edin couldn’t form words, couldn’t think. Where was he? What was happening here?
Edin tore his eyes away and saw that the pool sparkled black in the light. It covered three quarters of the chamber, with a smooth pathway followed the circular cavern to it... to him.
They stood on the far side while that… creature was on the other.
Edin took a step.
Le Fie tightened his grip on Edin’s shoulder.
“Don’t…” Le Fie babbled nearly incoherently.
Edin tried to pull away but didn’t have the strength. There was nothing left in him but his will. “It’s a man… not a creature.”
“I see that, but we don’t know who it is.”
“You think…” His mind was tripping on itself. “It’s a punishment… like a prison?” Edin said.
“I… ah…” Le Fie’s words fluttered.
Le Fie wasn’t sure, how could he be. Looking at the shock in his eyes there was no doubt he was just as confused.
“I’m not sure he’s alive.”
As if on command, the man’s face broke through the gap and was looking toward them.
But not with eyes that they recognized. A gray cloud was in the sockets where his eyes should’ve been.
“A draugr?”
Edin shook his head. The skin looked normal, not the sickening, translucent gray of the half human thing at Erastio’s Rise.
A twisting voice spoke in his mind, the words seemed to be curling like a snake… “Come.” It was also twitchy like an itch on the nose with no ability to scratch it.
He took a step.
“What are you doing?” Le Fie said.
“Getting closer,” Edin said.
Le Fie dropped his hand.
Edin skirted the wall. He felt sweat and gooseflesh at the same time. His heart pounded as he approached what appeared to be gale force winds.
Edin looked up and saw the smoky gaze of the man staring down at him. It was as if he were a god about to smite Edin. Maybe Uncle Rube would get his wish… Edin thought ruefully.
Edin reached out, into the wind. As he touched it, however, it felt like a cool summer breeze. Almost pleasant.
Then he noticed something in the wind, movement. His hand stopped and his heart leapt.
A fleshy hand reached out and seized his wrist. It burned like it’d been made of molten iron. The rush of wind grew louder, and something hit his chest like a fist. He tried to look but saw nothing beyond the gray cyclone.
There was a loud, piercing noise that sounded in almost harmony with his cry. Then its pitch grew.
It dug in, slashing at his brain. He tried to scream, tried to break free. Then the eyes appeared before him, and the mouth turned into a wicked grin. The sound, the pitch, whatever it was, pulsed deeper. He pictured a spike being thrust into the earth, into his head. Pounding, beating monotonous.
At some point he lost all feeling, all pain and torture.
A moment later, everything disappeared and Edin was somewhere else. Somewhere entirely different… but not. Edin blinked, there were five magi standing in a room. This room.
“Are you ready?”
“I will do what must be done.” A man said, he looked at the others, a sad but resigned expression on his face.
“You may never wake…”
“I understand,” the man said, “our people need protection.” He held out his hand and showed the small diamond in the shape of the other Ballast Stones.
Edin took a step forward, squirming between two of the magi. They all wore different colored robes, but he could feel their strength. They were older, some looked near skeletons.
The man they were surrounding seemed a few years older than Edin. “Edin Harlscot, your sacrifice will not be in vein. I have seen it.”
Edin Harlscot?
“Yes, Master Tilliac,” the man said. “Tell my wife… my son I love them.”
The magi all reached out and gripped hands around the two Edins. They closed their eyes and slowly began chanting something he couldn’t understand. A shroud of shadows began to rise up from the ground. A cold eerie feeling rose.
Edin’s heart raced, he stepped back to keep it from touching him. There was a surge from somewhere in the room. A roaring like some sort of powerful monster.
Edin Harlscot closed his eyes and bowed his head as the shadows touched him. Once they did, a few small pebbles from the ground rose and began whipping around him. They didn’t touch the other magi but stayed in a close orbit around the man’s body.
Edin blinked and there was more, he looked at the other Edin’s eyes and saw they’d gone white… then he noticed the color turned gray.
The tornado was forming and somehow, Edin knew they were forming the barrier that covered the isle. That made it the Isle of Mists.
A moment later or so it seemed, the other Edin was completely covered in the tornado… but the magi kept chanting.
Then it began to tug at him.
Edin tried stepping back, but the force of the wind grew too great. His heart pounded and he heard words in his mind but he was unable to pull them out. It was like holding water in open fingers…
Suddenly, something hit him, thrust him into the tornado and he was next to the other Edin again. The man gripped his wrist and he felt the stone being thrust into his palm.
A burst of energy came to him as the stone let loose its energy.
Edin cried out and a moment later, he collapsed and a vision flashed before his eyes.
It was a land, almost barren with thin trees and shadowed as if by some sort of giant cloud. The ocean pressed against it. Slowly, the shadows flittered off to the north as if the sun was beginning to leap forth and illuminate a wasteland. A frigid wasteland.
Edin opened his eyes to see two naked legs standing above him. There was a gray mist hanging in the air as if the tornado, gale or whatever it was had disbursed into a thin cloud.
With only his eyes, Edin cast his gaze up to see a completely barren man, much older… skeletal. My ancestor… Edin thought. The eyes traded the mist for black coals. Edin Harlscot… screamed and then collapsed into a heap next to Edin.
“The west rises in dark…” the words were raspy and pushed into his head like the first chords of a loud percussion band more words came, but his mind felt like a pitcher that had over flowed.
His body felt numb. Edin couldn’t even call for Le Fie.
He heard the words continuing a soft rhythmic chant but couldn’t make out much… barely anything. But he heard one word in the final line. Ahlar…
In Ulstapish, Ahlar means death.
Edin was unsure if he slept or passed out. His ears were ringing and his chest thumping harder than he’d thought possible. He felt as if he were trampled by a stampede of wild buffalo or torn apart by a pack of crillio ca
ts. Opening his eyes, he saw the faint flicker of a flame somewhere over his shoulder. A pale body lay in front of him, the eyes were wide open. They were hazel now and glassy. The firelight danced over them.
Footsteps clacked on the ground, crunching small pebbles behind him. “Gone,” a man said.
Gone? The word did little. He tried to roll over, to look but his muscles were soft as if his body were void of them.
“The FAE will want to see.”
Edin heard the steps coming closer and closed his eyes. He felt a rough hand grab his shoulder and pull him onto his back. Fingers jabbed at his neck to feel for a pulse. “Blood over here… but I think he’s alive.”
“Not for long,” the other man said, “come, let’s get him back.”
Edin felt them pick him up, a man threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and began to carry him. He felt a wetness press into Edin’s stomach.
The man leapt and splashed into the water. Edin felt it begin to rise over his hands and feet and reach the top of his head.
“Bag him.” Something covered his head and it all went dark.
Edin felt his body flowing through the water, he could breathe through some sort of cloth. He wasn’t exactly aware, but close to it for the next hour or two. Edin was tossed and thrown around in places, always covered in a dark hood.
While whomever it was thought it was a good idea to let him breathe, they didn’t care to protect his body from being scraped and slapped into walls and doors and he couldn’t move or fight back...
Everything was blurry and almost dream like. Like that vision and the words that floated out of the man’s mind into his own. They tickled at his brain like a mind teaser.
In the background, he heard talking, yelling, screaming, and crying. He smelled foul odors and felt weightless when he was tossed, not too gently onto a hard platform.
Edin slipped back in and out, not sure where he was going.
“Wake him…” A voice panted. It was the wheezy voice of Pharont. A cold shower followed, crashing over Edin’s body and soaking him with a chill.
Through his eyelids, he knew the bag was off his head now but Edin kept his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. Around him, he felt the presence of a wan stone. But through the suppression of the talent but he could still feel his own powers.