by K L Reinhart
“Ach!” And then a heavy meaty orcish fist caught onto Terak’s leg, wrapped over one wing muscle. The sky was a flashing gray blur all around him, and the wind was howling in Terak’s ears as he felt the orc’s talons bite through his thin trousers and into the flesh beneath.
The orc smashed downward with his other hand on Terak’s thigh, holding one of the orcish fat-bladed daggers made of obsidian glass.
Terak had been trained in the Path of Pain. He had been taught how to accept, control, and even to welcome the hurts and maladies of the material body.
But that didn’t mean that Terak could stop himself from screaming as he felt his own skin part. The wyvern, orc, and elf crashed into the straggling trees that clutched to Malvern’s Point.
6
The Mysteries of a Chief
Journeywoman Reticula, dressed in her customary dark robes of the Black Keep, stood in the shadows of a small room and looked out of the window at the encroaching night.
Well, the encroaching darkness, the young human woman corrected herself. It should be daylight outside. She should be able to see the fierce light of the snows clutching the sides of the Tartaruk mountains. She should be able to pick out the distant, sweeping shapes of the gigantic Tartaruk eagles in their constant search for hapless frozen meat.
Funny, the young blond-haired woman’s brow creased in a frown. Reticula had never stopped to consider how beautiful this place was, or whether there was a part of her heart that liked it up here almost at the roof of the world.
The Black Keep and the Book of Corrections bred a hardy sort of individual, of course. Reticula had long since come to accept the gritted-teeth challenges and discomforts here.
A part of her had always hated it, of course. No one wanted to live here, did they?
But now that the Plague of Darkness had come, and it had completely wiped out any vision of the bright light or looming mountains, Reticula realized that she missed them.
Just as she missed the slight elf who had lived in this room, a part of her had to accept. She turned away from the unnatural night to see instead the thin cot and low wooden table that Terak had called home for the last few seasons of his life.
And there, on the wooden table, was a small object, a piece of gray stone, one half of it a perfectly rounded dome of a marble, and the other cracked and cut in half with jagged ridges. Reticula moved to pick it up, feeling how smooth the one half of it was in her hand. Reticula had never known Terak to be sentimental, but it touched her nonetheless that her friend had kept this small find from one of his training missions—for no other reason than it was a beautiful thing, perhaps?
Not beautiful! Reticula almost dropped the half-orb when she realized what precisely it was. She remembered, because she had been in the same room when the orb that it had been had cracked in half like an egg.
The Journeywoman remembered the hiss of alarm from the Chief Arcanum and the horror that had spread through everyone else there, too—including herself.
“This is ochullax. Was ochullax,” she murmured, rolling the odd half-shape between thumb and forefinger, feeling its smoothness contrasting with the cracked-tooth edge.
Ochullax was the magic mineral that the Chief Arcanum used during the testing of the Enclave students. The test was a simple one: recite questions on magical lore which they had all studied at the Black Keep. Then hold out their hand to catch, and then drop, three of these large marble-orbs of glowing white ochullax.
Only it isn’t glowing white anymore, is it? Reticula looked at the dead gray rock. All color and eldritch glow had faded from it as soon as the orbs had fallen into Terak’s hopeful palm.
For everyone else, as soon as the ochullax stones had been dropped from the novitiate’s hand, they would hover before hitting the floor. Reticula remembered how they would glow different colors. Red for an aptitude for battle-magic, indigo for an aptitude for illusion-magic, and so on.
But Terak’s testing had resulted in all power being drawn from the rock, falling to the floor to crack. Because he was a null and not like anyone else in all the realms of the Midhara. And that had been the moment that he had been whisked away to here by the Chief External—given over to the secret order-within-an-order of the Enclave External, and not put to death, as the Chief Arcanum had desired.
This half-stone was, Reticula realized, a memory of Terak’s difference here, not the memory of beauty that Reticula had so recently had.
“Reticula!?” A voice in the room outside startled her. Despite his age, the Chief External himself—Father Jacques—could still move silently. It was his job, after all.
“Chief, sir!” The Journeywoman moved quickly out of the open door and back into the laboratory and training annex that was tucked away by secret doors and passages in the heights of the main building. It was an odd-shaped room. One which was filled with scarred worktables and glass jars of strange unctions and potions, wedged beside ancient oak casks, chests, and lines of grimoires. It was where the Chief External had tried to teach the elf everything that he needed to know in order to kill at the Magister’s command.
But now, the middle-aged Father Jacques looked uncharacteristically intense, his eyes fixing Reticula with a fierce gleam.
“Something is wrong. I need you to stay close,” he said, before seizing up an object from one of the small stands and tossing it to her. It was a brass amulet, inset with tiny blue stones and crisscrossed with strange geometric designs.
“Sir?” Reticula caught it with practiced ease.
“It’s a Ward. It’ll keep you safe,” Father Jacques stated.
“Weapons, sir?” Reticula asked automatically. She already kept at her side the thin hidden shortsword and had another, heavier-bladed dagger on her other side.
The Chief External had already turned to the door that led out, but paused, his face suddenly ashen with indecision, before it cleared into a stern frown. “Take a sword. Whatever this night may bring, I’d rather you had it than didn’t.” The older man in black robes moved to display his own broadsword, already strapped to his side.
Reticula murmured her affirmative, already reaching for the mid-length sword that hung by a number of other different sabers, rapiers, and even a longsword. She hurried after the Chief External as he set a quick march through the notorious and occult passageways of the hidden Enclave.
“Chief, sir, are we heading out?” Reticula asked as he took them on winding paths through the bones and behind the walls of the Black Keep. Reticula could think of no other time that she had seen the Chief External armed, save for when he was leaving the fastness of their frozen home.
“There is danger enough within these walls,” the Chief said darkly. He did not comment any further as his four-fingered hand passed over the stones of one featureless, exactly-the-same stretch of wall as any other. The section swung silently outwards, revealing one of the ordinary passages of the Enclave.
Reticula recognized it at once as one of the galleries before the battlement walls, a wide corridor with brackets for torches and many smaller storerooms for spears, bows, and armor.
The Chief External crossed the corridor, leading the Journeywoman to the nearest iron-bound door to pull aside the bolts that held it and march out into the fiercely cold airs of outside.
Reticula did as she had been commanded, staying a few steps behind her master at all times. She said nothing as she followed him between the burning metal fire-pots that lit the Keep and cast a vague radiance down the walls to the snows below.
Dear Stars, Reticula breathed as she saw, also, the surrounding blanket of inky black fog that completely encircled them. The Plague of Darkness started a mere hundred and fifty feet from the walls of the Keep, kept in check by the Magister’s shielding.
“Chief External?” said an imperious voice. Reticula saw that the Magister herself was standing at one outward crook of the wall beside a gaggle of other black-robed Brothers and Sisters.
All seniors. Reticula recogniz
ed them. A few, she had studied under, and each was well into their adulthood and had the same grim and uncompromising demeanor that came with a life spent following the Path of Pain.
“I am sorry for the delay, Magister. I checked his halls, but there is no sign of him,” the Chief External said formally.
Who? Reticula wondered.
“Pfft!” the Magister however, made a grunt of frustration—a rare moment of emotion from the ruler of their small world. She turned instead to nod to the gaggle of senior Brothers and Sisters. “Begin,” she said, clearly irritated.
The group of their fellow adherents to the Path of Pain broke apart immediately, until they were standing in a loose line behind the Magister. Reticula felt the wash of power flow over her as each man and woman closed their eyes and started to murmur under their breath. Reticula tried to make out the words, and thought she heard Prryho, Castella—
And then, one by one, each of the Brothers and Sisters grasped onto the hand of the comrade next to them, with the humans at the end raising their empty hands, palms outward.
Reticula felt the surge of power leap from their outstretched hands before she saw it, the way that a thunderstorm can be felt in the head sometimes before it breaks.
But then her eyes saw the glittering clouds of both purple and blue, each flowing out toward the Plague of Darkness. Each one burst like a plume against the Magister’s own shield.
“Concentrate!” Magister Inedi snapped. The two outstretched hands at either end slowly start to weave and wave, pouring more of the magical energy around the inside of the protective shield.
The Magister appeared to wait until she was certain that the group knew what it was doing and could perform the task to her needs. Then she turned to regard the Chief, already walking fast, and Reticula behind him. She waited for them to follow her.
“Where has the old fool gone!?” Reticula was surprised at the vehemence and emotion in the Magister’s hiss.
“He might be working on something, sire . . . ?” the Chief External said dryly. Reticula could hear the heavy contempt that Jacques had for whom they were talking about.
“More important than building a second shield against the Gatekeeper and all the forces of the Ungol?” Inedi snapped. “The seniors are good, but they will tire soon, and their shield will have to be renewed before morning!” They passed an open door to the marginally less freezing corridor inside.
“The Arcanum should be here. He is the most magically competent among us. He will play a huge part in defending the Black Keep!” Inedi said angrily. “Find him for me, External! And you can say with my authority that he is needed at the walls!”
“As you wish, sire.” Jacques nodded, although Inedi was already stalking off down the corridor. The bearded Chief External turned on his heel to Reticula. “I had to wait for Inedi to give me the authority,” he said seriously, before pulling out a silver key on a chain. “This is to the Arcanum’s own personal study. A place that I should not have the key to, but I do anyway. I am going there to try and find the Chief Arcanum,” he said with a hint of iron in his voice.
“Yes, sir?” Reticula was bewildered at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Why do you need me here at all? her look asked.
“You, Journeywoman Reticula, will accompany me. I fear the worst has happened to the Arcanum, and I may need your quick eyes and your sword arm before the hour is up.”
“Yes, Chief, sir,” Reticula bobbed her head and hurried to keep pace with the striding man.
The Arcanum’s study wasn’t far through the shortcuts of hidden passageways and secret stairs that Father Jacques took. When they crossed into the public halls and courtyards, Reticula saw that small groups of Brothers and Sisters were already racing back and forth, carrying barrels of pitch or stacks of quarrels. The Black Keep was preparing for war.
The last courtyard was bitter cold, but there was no biting wind or the thick flakes of frost that the Journeywoman might have expected this late in the year.
The Magister’s shield, Reticula realized. It had created a dome that allowed the air in but halted any baleful influence from the outside world.
They approached the steps and doors to the study hall where the Arcanum held court. Father Jacques grunted in surprise a second before Reticula felt the same: that tense fizzing crackle of magic in the air.
Jacques seized the wide door handles and pushed, but nothing happened except that his muscles bunched and strained. “It’s charmed!” Jacques hissed angrily, just as there was a flash of purple light from the gallery windows. A shiver set all of Reticula’s hairs on her neck and arms on edge.
“Karak!” The Chief External leaped back, before pushing out with one hand and hissing the enchantment. The air shivered in front of the Chief’s hands, and the doors to the study hall suddenly buckled inwards but still held.
“It’s strong,” Jacques wheezed. “Karak! Karak!” He threw his hand and shoulders forward once again as he summoned the battle-magic strike against the enchanted doors. Each time that the Chief’s bolt hit, Reticula saw the door shudder and the wood start to splinter and crack from the heavy iron hinges.
But Father Jacques was tiring quickly, and the flaring purple lights in the large windows pulsed quicker and quicker. Reticula didn’t like the urgency and intensity of the light.
“KARAK!” The Chief External roared, flinging both of his hands in a final strike that broke the holding enchantment that kept the doors. It flung them inward over the marble checkerboard floor on the inner side.
Revealed lay the study hall inside. Reticula recognized its wide and bare lower space on the floor, with the benches and thick stands of mahogany shelves against the walls, stacked with books and rolls of parchment. At the far end was a raised section and a lectern where the Arcanum would give his bi-weekly lectures . . .
But now that space was alight with a circle of purple-white fire.
“A portal!” Father Jacques broke into a run across the room, and Reticula followed suit immediately.
There was a shape inside the circle of light, and the wavering motion of the eldritch flames revealed the darker silhouette of the Arcanum, arms raised high over his head and two fists glowing with radiance. Reticula saw that his head was tucked downward to his chest, and his wiry graybeard was flaring around him in invisible winds.
“Arcanum! What under the Stars do you think that you are doing!?” Jacques roared, already raising one four-fingered hand, for it to flicker with an answering blue flame.
“You’re a fool, Jacques!” the voice of the Arcanum boomed, made unnaturally loud with the mighty forces he marshalled inside his own body. “The time of the Gatekeeper is here—and the Black Keep, if it wants to survive, must choose a new master!”
The purple light swept higher, obscuring the Arcanum.
“Dear Stars!” Jacques skidded to a halt, shock plain on his face. “I was right—” he was in the middle of saying, just as there was a shout from the Arcanum’s ritual circle and a crack of thunder.
“Urk!” A flash of blinding bright light and something like a fist hit both Jacques and Reticula, flinging them backwards, almost back to the broken-open door.
Breathe! Get up! Reticula coughed, gasping as she pushed herself to roll over. She smelled burning and sulfur in the air. There was a blue haze fading around her into a mist. The Ward! she realized, one hand clutching at the magical amulet that the Chief External had given her.
And thinking about the Chief made Reticula turn to see the large stout form of Jacques a few feet away, his body smoking. “Chief!” The Journeywoman moved to him immediately, already calling up a soothing healing cantrip from her memory.
“Urgh . . . The Arcanum. Stop—the Arcanum . . . !” Jacques coughed weakly. The black robes of his chest were a burning and cindered mess, and his face was red and blistered from the Arcanum’s battle-magic.
Reticula turned to look, but the Arcanum and his circle of purple fire were gone, leaving a blackened, sooty m
ark. “He’s gone,” she hissed urgently, returning to her task of healing her mentor.
“Malama, Malama Vitris . . .” She remembered the words easily, one of the simplest of the healing charms and also one of the most effective. The Journeywoman concentrated, feeling the surge of calming green energy spread upwards through her, out of her hands, to mist onto Jacques’s tormented form.
“Ach—” Jacques coughed, shaking his head weakly as the skin on his face returned to something approaching normal. Reticula would have taken him to Hospitality’s halls for a more comprehensive healing if she had thought that the man would agree to it.
“The Chief’s gone, sir,” Reticula said again, feeling confused. What had she just seen? Why was everything that she had ever known since the age of six being turned upside down?
“He demanded access to the Loranthian Scroll and Amulet,” Jacques said. His eyes were far away and darting in that familiar way that Reticula recognized as he forced his quick mind to work.
“I tried to hold it back from him—I knew I could translate it, given time . . .” A mournful, self-hating note crept into Jacques’s voice when he said that. “But the Magister forced me to give them up. The very tools that led to the creation of the Blood Gate itself!”
Reticula nodded that she understood. Terak the Null had retrieved both the scroll and the amulet, reputed to be created by the Loranthian—one of the elvish architects of the First Family who also created the Blood Gate. It had been Jacques’s hope that, by studying it, he could also find a way to undo the magic of the Gate between their world of Midhara and the nightmare world of Ungol.
But the Arcanum had them both—and now he is gone. Reticula realized the danger they were in. And he was talking about changing sides . . .
That was not all of the nasty surprises the day had in store for them. Jacques and Reticula’s hurried conversation was halted by another sudden flash of purple light from the raised end of the study hall.