by BJ Hanlon
He woke refreshed and with the smell of something minty in the air. Arianne laid next to him, her eyes moving rapidly behind her lids.
“Tea?” Yechill said offering a clay pot to Edin. Steam wafted off it with an undertone of lemon.
He sipped it and felt the hot liquid lap his tongue burning it. He dribbled it out onto his lap. “Hot.”
Yechill laughed.
A pile of snow had drifted to the entrance; he crawled to it and shoved a handful in his mouth. Cold water spewed down the front of his tunic. “I won’t taste anything for a week,” Edin gasped.
“Quiet, sleeping,” Dorset moaned and rolled over and his foot slipped out of the bedroll and tilted dangerously close to the fire. He left it there. After a moment, he yelped and spun over in his bedroll scrambling away from the flame.
“Better?” Edin asked smiling
Dorset’s face was blank but Yechill understood it and laughed again.
After eating tasteless venison, they started another day of travel. They continued southwest through the forest and over streams.
Suddenly, the forest abruptly stopped and in front of them was the dark blue expanse of a huge lake.
It was vast and he couldn’t even see the other side. The rocky shore was iced for nearly a hundred yards and ducked in and out of view behind coves and rocks jutting far into the water.
“It’s like the sea…” Dorset said. “I’ve never heard of a lake this large.”
Edin was about to speak when he saw something glinting in the distance. At first he thought it was a wave catching the sun but it was cloudy… and the light wasn’t in the water.
Yechill’s brow furrowed as he stared for a moment. “Under,” he said, his voice quick and harsh. Then he dropped down and slid behind a tree.
It took a moment for Edin to understand, then he followed and pulled Arianne with him. Edin looked out from behind the cracked bark of the tree but still couldn’t make out whatever it was.
“Demons…” Yechill whispered stabbing a finger at the lake.
A moment later, rattling and scraping sounds that sent shivers up Edin’s spine came from the left.
They appeared like beasts from a slightly different world. An alternate world. A patrol of dematians jogging along the thick stony shore of the lake like a military unit. They leapt with ease over larger boulders their feet touching each stone for but a split second.
“It’s daytime…” whispered Dorset.
The leader was larger than the others and wore a red sash over his bare chest. He carried a large sword strapped to his back and chittered and chattered in low intervals.
As they were passing, something made Edin move back a step. A heart stopping crack of a twig came from below his foot. Edin paused.
The dematian leader stopped midstride as did the rest of the group. They looked like a painting for a moment, each had the same left leg up ready to land on the boulder in front of them. Their heads snapped in Edin’s direction; their mouths slightly open revealing the needle-like teeth.
Edin swallowed. He was twenty feet away looking down on them. Behind him, came the sound of an arrow being slipped from a quiver. Edin felt the anticipation of them attacking rising in him. His hands gripped the sword tight and a tingling sensation flowed through his fingers. His chest pounded, blood blasting through his brain.
The moments turned to minutes as they just stood there. These weren’t the wild dematians he’d fought before.
Dorset was right, it was daytime and somehow they were standing like statues… How were they doing it for so long without moving?
It meant discipline. These were trained warriors.
Minutes passed and their long ears twitched like a deer’s listening for threats.
Then, far off to the right, something hard cracked against a tree. Their eyes all darted toward that sound.
A cacophony of very loud skittering came from the lake. It carried on the wind and the leader of the platoon cried back in a sort of cheer. The rest followed and a moment later, they stepped in unison and continued their jog around the shore.
After they were a hundred yards down the shore, he gasped for a freezing breath of chilly air but didn’t move.
“They’re going for the artifact,” Arianne whispered behind him.
Edin glanced back at the thing in the lake and he knew she was right. Out there, in the middle of a partially frozen inland sea were some sort of dematian archeologists, dematian king, looking for the thing.
Edin backed up further into the woods and squatted behind a large evergreen tree that rose twenty feet above their heads and smelt of pine needles.
“What do we do?” Dorset asked, his lips were slightly blue and his jaw quivered. Steam came from their mouths in puffs.
“Suuli says whatever is down there we need,” Edin said. “I trust him…”
“But… if it could help them…” Arianne said, her hand reaching up toward the necklace. “If your… mission is to find the stones… that’s what we should do.”
“Can the powers transfer to anyone?” Edin asked.
“I don’t know,” Arianne said, “but there is a legend that the Ballast Stones were sent from the gods.”
“Sure,” Edin whispered, his eyes fixed on the princess. “But that can’t be true right? Sent from the gods? As if the gods really exist?”
“What do you mean as if the gods exist? Of course they do,” Arianne said. “Have you not read from the scriptures, the church doctrine…”
“I was told to believe, told magi are evil, and the gods cursed us with these powers. How can that be true?” Edin said. “The things the doctrine says, most of it seems to be lies. I don’t believe the gods exist nor their curses.”
Yechill said something to Dorset, Dorset answered then looked back at Edin. “Whether you do or not, another legend is that the Ballast Stones were once all part of a single object that could make a door to the land of the gods.”
Edin raised an eyebrow and looked at Arianne. “Did your father have this portal? I mean, he did have all of the stones didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did,” Arianne said, “And no I’ve never seen any portal to the gods. Or any gods at all. They and Vestor left this world to man after the monsters of old were destroyed.”
“It’s all a legend, hearsay from people wanting to believe in the gods,” Edin said. “Someone imbued the stones with powers for the…” he was going to say the title or himself, but stopped. “For a person to find and help stop an invasion by the dematians. Someone prophesized this and they saw the only way for mankind to survive was for… a future person to find all of the stones.”
They were silent. Yechill was looking out toward the water while the rest of them stared in different directions.
Edin didn’t notice Yechill stand and head toward the water.
Dorset said “Guys.” They followed him with their eyes as he stopped behind another tree. Far out in the distance, something shinned so bright for a moment it was like staring at the sun. A bright white sun.
Edin recoiled and covered his eyes still seeing the nimbus in his eyes. A great boom flowed from over the lake and caused his ears to ring and his mind went blank.
9
Invalid
Edin found himself on the ground staring over at a fallen tree with rustling branches. Around him, the sounds of the forest hung beneath a ringing. But then there was something else. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Edin pushed himself to his hands and saw Arianne near him, blood was coming from her one visible ear. Edin touched his ears. One came back the same.
He glanced back toward the light and saw it was gone. Instead of the light, he saw something else. Blue, a dark blue wall…
Edin blinked, his jaw fell. It was a giant wave rushing toward them. A tsunami. It was at least thirty feet high and coming faster than a falcon diving at a field mouse.
Yechill was staring up at the sky, too shocked to move.
Dorset shook him, he alone seemed to be okay. “Edin do something!” Came from beneath the pealing bells in his head.
Wind ripped past him and trees bent away from the lake like they too were so afraid of the sound that they were curling up and waiting for the terror to pass.
Edin raised a hand trying to summon the talent, the strength to handle this. The water raged at him but he could pick up the feeling. The smallest of particles of the great wave. Billions, trillions… an innumerable number coming at him like a cavalry charge of giants.
Water was warm ice. Or the other way around, it didn’t matter. Edin felt it grow closer, felt the energy growing in his stomach, the twisting and yanking.
Edin closed his eyes and pictured it, he saw the line of water changing to ice. A great ice barrier. He felt the power as it pulsed toward him. There was such force, it was like he were holding a thin door closed with his shoulder as a battering ram was slamming into it.
Edin’s arm trembled and he held out the other. It did little good. The pulses were pounding into his head, into his body. A pinch came in his neck, a tweak to his stomach. A leg gave way and he dropped to a knee.
His breath grew short and he could hear nothing but the ringing in his ears. For a moment, the world was all but gone.
Hands grabbed his arm and pulled him up and back. Edin’s concentration lapsed and the pulsing power of the wave flowed through him.
Edin screamed, clenching his eyes shut. There was too much force.
His mind went blank, he felt sick, and vertigo overtook him. Another hand grabbed him from the other side and he was being dragged back faster. His fingers began to tingle, then his toes.
Edin retched and coughed. Sticky fluid coursed through his throat closing his airway. He tasted bile in his nostrils and it burned.
The white hung in his closed eyes. Someone stumbled and Edin was dropped.
His body hit the ground and a stone smacked his hip. Edin coughed more, his head felt like it’d been split by Ocop’s hammer. There was scrambling around, he began to hear sticks cracking and people moving.
Edin pried his eyes open to see the barren trees highlighted by the gray sun. His arm was pulled, then the other and he was lifted. He glanced over his shoulder at the lake. Instead of the open sea, he saw a huge wall of ice that glittered with white light.
It was a castle wall, long and steep with no way to penetrate it.
His heart was racing as he looked back at Dorset and Yechill carrying him with his arms around their shoulders and his toes dragging on the ground.
Ahead, he saw the outline of Arianne, she had her bow out but was running over the white and brown forest floor.
“I’m fine…” Edin tried to say but it was only a whisper in his head and he wasn’t sure even he could understand it. He picked up his feet and tried walking. After two steps, the strength in his right thigh gave and the leg began to drag again.
He didn’t recognize anything and every time he blinked, a white circle clung to his vision after he opened them. Both men panted next to him, but he could barely hear their breath. In his periphery, Edin saw sweat and strain pouring from their faces but they didn’t stop.
Edin’s head lolled back and all he could do was stare up at the mix of evergreen and skeletal tree branches passing overhead. They cut this way and that sometimes and he caught glimpse of greens and smelled the pine near him.
Birds began to rush through his vision. Great big birds high in the sky, they flapped and scrambled away as fast as they could.
All running from a single point. The light.
At one point, they stopped and nearly dropped Edin to a bed of pine needles. He could barely move, barely think, he could only see what was around him and even that was difficult with the circle in his eyes.
A shadow stood over him and took a waterskin and put it to his mouth. He felt the icy water pour into his mouth and gag. The water roared over the edge like a bath overflowing. He couldn’t swallow.
His limbs felt numb. He couldn’t move them. Something was coming over him, taking over his body like ice. Edin closed his eyes.
The white light hung there. This was energy exhaustion, Edin thought… that’s all. Though it’s never felt like this…
This is different as if someone was reaching into him and squeezing the life from him one limb at a time. Soon, it’d be inside his torso, it’d gain his heart. When that happened, he’d turn into some unmoving, unknowing shell of a person.
He tried to feel the power around, tried to summon it in. With all of the life, there had to be some.
But there wasn’t.
He felt lips on his and Arianne’s hair tickled his nose and forehead. It was good to feel that, he thought. He’d have to remember that as long as he could.
Some hours later, Edin woke. He heard rustling and crackling of branches in the fire.
The numbness in his body still pervaded but seemed to be keeping at bay slightly. It tickled his hips and shoulders as if here were cocooned in a woolen blanket.
There were more dead trees hanging overhead now and the cold starry night stared down at him between barren limbs that were like nets holding up the sky.
For a brief moment, he thought his arms and legs had been cut off and he was but a stump of a man. Fear began to come over him. A great panic, his breath ceased for a moment and he felt a cold chill through his body. It wanted to shiver.
His eyes searched down trying to see, to get a sense of what had happened. But then he saw hands, his own by the looks of it, crossed atop his chest as if he were on a funeral pyre. An even more uneasy feeling came over him. Fire crackling, hands like a death pose…
The fire light flickered somewhere toward his legs but he could not lift his head to see, he couldn’t do anything except swallow and breath.
Edin noticed his head was propped up on something soft and as he raised his eyes and saw through a waft of hair Arianne staring off into the distance. There were tears running down her face. She hadn’t seen him wake.
Then, their eyes met and he realized the bright circle had faded to a spot. A dot right in the center of where he was looking.
“Hey, you’re awake. Can you move?”
He tried to speak but his jaw wouldn’t move… his tongue felt like a dead lump of blubber. Edin didn’t know what to do.
Edin had heard about people who were called vegetables. Unable to move limbs or any part of their bodies. It was as if they were dead. Edin would rather be dead than like that.
“Dorset, he’s awake… I don’t think he can move.”
There was a creaking sound and then shuffling and it was that point that Edin realized he could hear again. That was a good sign at least. If he could hear again, why hadn’t the feeling in his body returned?
Dorset leaned over him, touched his fingers to Edin’s neck. He reached into his pack and whispered something under his breath that Edin couldn’t catch. He pulled out leaves and then disappeared toward the fire.
“Do you think it’ll work this time?” Arianne said.
Dorset didn’t answer. They’d tried something on him before, an attempt to revive him from whatever curse had left him like this. But it didn’t work.
Curse… Edin thought and remembered his words about the gods. His doubts. Edin’s heart began to thump in his ears. Did they curse him? Was his friends in danger just by being near him?
An anxious feeling went through him, he wanted to get up and tell them to go… but there was nothing he could do.
He couldn’t tell them to leave him, literally, it was impossible and he knew Arianne never would. He stared up at her tear-filled eyes and tried to smile. He thought his lips began to turn up, just a bit, but if they did, she didn’t see it.
Edin sat there in silence, thinking of the light that nearly blinded him, the boom and the fight against the wave. The last was like fighting the corrinbomon. The giant squid that owned the northern sea. When he tried to use the talent against that, it was
as if he were trying to lift an anvil with a toothpick for leverage.
This was worse. That anvil had turned to a mountain. There was something strong in the talent over there. Something stronger than any magi talent he’d felt before.
Was it the object or something else? Someone else? A dematian mage maybe, or a dematian king. Maybe it was something else. Were there other mythical creatures still in the world? The other beasts that had once ruled before man? He imagined humanoid crillios or serpents, ogres, elementals and giants and other beasts that were supposedly destroyed by the gods and Vestor.
What if they were true?
Dorset appeared with a small clay mug and tilted Edin’s head back to open his mouth. A warm, foul tasting liquid with a hint of rotten eggs was poured down his throat. He couldn’t even gag or throw it up. The liquid caused his eyes to water and for a moment, he gasped as what he thought of as tea choked his breath.
A quick thought of, I can taste this… fluttered through his mind before Edin gasped, sputtering a spray of yellow glowing liquid into the air as a thick painful bubble slid down his windpipe. He coughed again but it didn’t come up.
“Enough,” Arianne nearly shouted but her voice was hushed as if not wanting to be heard.
Dorset was quiet. “He needs it all.”
“Not at once,” Arianne spat. “Let him breath.”
After Edin had swallowed what was left Dorset began again.
“Slowly now,” Arianne whispered.
Dorset continued to pour and clamped a hand over his mouth. Edin gagged but finally swallowed as his natural reflex took over.
“That’s it…” Dorset said. “Hopefully he’s on his feet when Yechill returns.”
Edin wondered if he looked confused because Arianne said, “he’s run to the village; he’s going to try and get help.”
How long would that be? Where were they and were they being chased?
Edin closed his eyes again and tried to will the liquid to strengthen his body. He tried again to bring forth energy from the world, pulling it into him like a magnet. It’d worked in the forest when he was weak and used much of his energy throwing a stupid ethereal apple at Grent.