by K L Reinhart
“Hsss!” It burned cold when it touched the wound, and for a second, Terak’s mind faded to blackness, before springing back once again to wakefulness. He had no water, but underneath his own dried blood, the wound was still wet.
Breathe, he advised himself, taking a deep breath as he seized the edges of the wound and pinched them together, hissing out as he did so as more pain tried to overcome him.
Pain is a teacher. There’s no pain I can’t welcome. He repeated the mantra over and over again until it became a dull ache instead of a lightning strike. And then, Terak opened his eyes to see that he was done. His leg looked ugly, with a splat of the yellow substance forming a cake over the wound, but it held when he released his grip.
I won’t bleed to death anymore, and the wound won’t get infected . . . Annoyance rushed through Terak once again. These were things that most others probably wouldn’t have to worry about, as a simple healing cantrip would at least have cleansed and re-knitted the wound.
“Why do you seem so intent on getting yourself killed?” a voice said from behind him, and it sounded like the sort of voice that birds might have if they could talk.
And it was a voice that the elf recognized, as the slender, ethereal form of the Aesther spirit called Hyxalion appeared, stepping lightly around one of the black pillars.
“If you’re here to tell me to do something for you,” Terak wheezed in pain from the ground, “I really don’t think that I am going to be much help . . .”
“Hsst!” The Aesther woman hissed angrily, her smooth features suddenly turning fierce and savage. The woman was a little taller than Terak, with eyes that were large and almost took up a third of her elongated head. Silver hair glistened, spreading from a topknot down her layers of shimmering gold-like robes.
The Aesther spirit moved lightly on the tiptoes of her bare feet, but Terak could see that her feet didn’t actually touch the ground. Where they hovered over the surface of bare rock, every step produced a spray of tiny plants with white flowers.
“You seem to forget that I have placed a geas on you, Terak Vardalion,” the Aesther spirit said tartly, turning to look at one of the black-stone pillars, raising one perfect, sculpted line of an eyebrow.
I really haven’t. Terak groaned, lying back with an exhausted thump against the pillar that he had propped his exhausted, dying body against. The southern sun was hot above him, and it almost made him feel peaceful.
But he remembered what Hyxalion the spirit had bargained with him. He had been sent to the Aesther, through one of the Second Family of the elves’ portals to retrieve the rare Demiene Flowers, capable of curing the poison that was killing his friend. He had no idea whether the flowers had got there or not. Whether Reticula, Father Jacques, or any of the others had survived . . .
But in return, you wanted me to kill Mother Istarion of the Second Family! Terak’s frustration gave him a little strength.
“Remember also that I gave you this . . .” Hyxalion was suddenly close to him, leaning down to lightly gesture to Terak’s right arm.
“I remember,” the elf murmured, turning his arm and hand over to reveal the silver mark in the center of his palm, which he knew was mirrored by the spread of silver all over his shoulder and upper chest, hidden by his clothes. That had been the effect of Hyxalion saving him when the Hexan had shot him, point-blank, with a curse-bolt.
“So. Here I am again,” Hyxalion sounded exasperated. “You have succeeded in waking the First Creature, so we are still moving according to plan.”
What plan? The elf frowned. The dizzying possibility that this strange being from a different world could manipulate him so easily made his teeth grind together. “You meant me to wake Grom?”
There was a sound of bird twitter from the woman, and Terak realized that she was laughing. “Oh, Vardalion. You are still so mortal, are you not?”
“Clearly.” Terak thought of all of the blood that he had lost.
“You cannot see with my eyes. You cannot see the plans of the Infernal Queen, playing out over millennia.” Hyxalion appeared to be nothing if not boastful.
Terak, on the other hand, rather thought that it was a good thing that he didn’t know that much about his world’s fate.
“Just as Ung’olut,” the spirit’s words twisted when she said the name of the Queen of the nightmare realm whom the Hexan served, “has set in course this plan to open the Blood Gate over thousands of years, there are other cycles—other hopes that have been growing in time to stop her,” Hyxalion said.
Right now, Terak really wished that these “other hopes” included water.
“And it is necessary for the First Creature and the Elder Beings to be awoken in order to stand against Ung’olut,” Hyxalion said. “It was necessary that you went after the Hexan, thinking you were going to stop him. It was necessary that you came to me begging for Demiene Flowers, because now, I can guide you.”
“How wonderful for me,” Terak croaked. His vision was blurring. He wondered if his imminent unconscious should be welcomed, if it stopped him from hearing this spirit’s gloating . . .
“And now, you must go to help awaken the Elder Beings, too.” Hyxalion sounded like a little child, pleased at a sudden, new present.
“The Elder Beings!?” Terak rasped. I just want to go back north. I want to find Reticula and Falan and Vorg. I want to fight at their side until the end—if there is nothing else that can be done.
“Like Grom, they are the creatures that filled this world before your First Family of the Elves created the Blood Gate,” Hyxalion said. Her tone turned serious.
“The Blood Gate is about to open, Terak Vardalion. The Gatekeeper has been unleashed, and it is clear that there is no strength to the Kingdoms of Man or the Families of Elves. If you are to defeat Ung’olut when she arrives, you will need the Elder Beings and the First Creature.”
“But I was trying to find a way to close the Blood Gate!” Terak’s frustrated anger rose in him. That was what his whole quest had been about.
Find the Loranthian Scroll and the Loranthian Amulet. Deliver that to Father Jacques. Find the Hexan. Make him stop it—
“It’s too late, now, elf,” Hyxalion said calmly. “It was always too late. You were part of a deeper story, one which sees Queen Ung’olut defeated and vanquished—for good!”
“That wasn’t what I signed up for,” Terak murmured.
“You might not have known the name of this quest—but you walk it all the same, Vardalion,” Hyxalion returned.
Terak felt trapped. He felt caught by forces too cosmic and deep for him to comprehend. “Whatever. I’m still not going to kill Mother Istarion for you!”
The Aesther spirit stepped close once again, bending down to Terak’s level, so he could see her face double in his hazing weakening vision.
“You will kill her, Terak. You will because you have to. If you want to save your world, by the end you will have to.”
No! Terak tried to rouse himself to say. But Hyxalion was ignoring him, raising one impossibly long-fingered hand toward the middle of Terak’s brow.
“I am sending you to the Emarii. Seek out one named Kol,” she said, lightly pressing the long finger between Terak’s eyes.
There was a flash of blinding light and pain, and Terak screamed.
9
Teeth in the Dark
“How is he?!” Journeywoman Reticula hissed. The question sounded almost like an accusation at the older Sister of the Black Keep left in charge of the section of the Healing Halls where Father Jacques lay.
The woman was taller than the blond-haired Reticula by about eight inches and older by twenty-odd years, the younger thought. She had that grim dead-eyed stare that came with a life spent on the Path. “That was powerful magic that struck him. It’s a wonder he’s alive at all—”
“I got a Malama Vitris cantrip on him almost as soon as it happened,” Reticula said quickly. The last couple of watches had been a whirlwind for her and the entir
e Black Keep. The corridors and walls were already busy normally, but now a storm of activity had erupted as the Magister demanded more and more from them.
The Magical Shield is down. The Chief Arcanum took it down, and no one can put it back up. The facts kept bursting into the front of Reticula’s mind, each one more terrible than the last.
“And you never told me precisely how Father Jacques was hit by such a powerful curse-bolt either, did you?” said Sister Hedeth, the older caretaker in question.
“You’re right. I didn’t,” Reticula glared at the Sister and refused to say more.
Sister Hedeth looked about to press the issue, but a sudden call from the end of the room for more bandages to be brought up to the galleries nearest the walls distracted her. She looked back at Reticula and pursed her lips. “It’s his pain, and he has to bear it, I suppose.” She shook her head toward the corner cot occupied by Jacques.
The man was slumped in his bed. As Reticula drew nearer, she thought that she could still see the waxy sheen of sweat on the man’s forehead. Despite the prodigious magical abilities available in the Healing Halls of the Black Keep, a full combat-curse by the Chief Arcanum—the master of magics himself—was no easy matter to cure, Reticula could guess.
“Damn sneaky ixchter!” Jacques, even though apparently asleep, was still able to surprise his students as he rolled over to show that he had known that Reticula was approaching from behind.
“He layered thread-curses into it underneath the fire-summons and pain-kiss.” Jacques coughed, thumping his chest with one hand. “It must have been a special enchantment that he had been working on, as there is no way he could have combined all three in the moment!”
Well, he was the Chief Arcanum . . . Reticula, in any other situation than the imminent end of the world, would have said. She wisely chose to remain silent.
“Get to the Northern Wheelhouse. Second storage locker, back wall, third brick down and four across,” Jacques said.
“What’s at the Northern Wheelhouse?” Reticula asked. For all she remembered, it was one of three stone halls that sat up on the battlements, housing a collection of the mighty metal wheel-works that the Black Keep used. Some were used to pump and move water, others, to pump warm air from the giant kitchen stove-fires, and others used to haul freight lifts up and down the walls from the outside.
“This place isn’t just protected by magic, Journeywoman!” Jacques said. “Go now. Pull the red-wrapped levers when it’s time.”
“How will I know when it’s time?” Reticula was confused. It was a common feeling when in the company of the Chief External, she had come to understand in her short tutelage under him.
“You’ll know. Did I say dawdle and ask questions? Just go!” Jacques barked angrily.
At least he seems to be getting better, Reticula thought, turning and running.
Reticula slipped into the labyrinth of Enclave-External passages as soon as she got the chance, crossing from galleries where Brothers and Sisters stacked spears to the crooked between-places that climbed the inner walls of the Black Keep. She liked how she was getting to know this place better as she studied under Jacques, even if it did turn her into a bit of a ghost in the life of the Keep.
Her sudden appearance from the darkened alcoves and corners of the Black Keep or from behind ancient, moldering tapestries, if noted, was unremarked upon. Such was the austerity and determination of this place.
But still, her progress was terrifying at times as she would fly from one shadowed place across an open stretch of wall or windowed gallery—to see that everywhere outside was a thick wall of night.
It should barely be dusk! She cursed. The Plague of Darkness had arrived, and it had enveloped them.
As Reticula lengthened her steps, she passed a small, almost-covered courtyard to her left because the walls and eaves were so tightly-built here. She noted that the shifting tendrils of dark were beginning to gather inside any open space that the Black Keep offered. Only the iron lanterns, affixed to the old walls and shaking in the Tartaruk winds, allowed small halos of cheer.
The darkness was an invader. It was a poison.
“North-Northeast!” A cry went up on one of the lower walls before her, and Reticula couldn’t help but turn to look—before cursing when she realized that she didn’t know which part of her right-hand side was North-Northeast.
Her confusion was shared by frustrated and confused exclamations from the Brothers and Sisters currently acting as Wall Guards, before . . .
“Get a light on it!”
The Journeywoman’s feet paused as three bright lines of red—flaming arrows—were fired high into the air from the walls, arcing outwards and growing dimmer and smaller in the dark as they made their descent.
One winked out, hissing either in snow or blown off course.
Then another, gulped by blackness.
The third struck true, however, and turned into a small stand of guttering flame for a moment . . .
Suddenly, something moved across the faint glow of the arrow’s illumination. Then another. And another.
Bodies. People. No— Reticula corrected herself almost immediately. Creatures.
The Journeywoman saw moving loping shapes covered with the suggestion of short-cropped fur. Powerful muscles, low to the ground but bounding, swinging themselves as though they did not have four legs, but . . . arms!?
“Beastials!” The cry went up at the same time as Reticula’s mind worked out just what it was that she was looking at.
Beastials were a galloping, hungry, half-sentient race that hunted in packs across the forgotten places and the wilds of Midhara. They had heads like boars with tusks, and some even had horns—but their bodies were fashioned so that they could use their upper limbs either as arms or clenched into heavy fists to pound along the floor.
As mighty and as devastatingly powerful as they were, this was the Black Keep! The Journeywoman turned, her feet already resuming her course.
“Grakh!” Until there was a thump from the walls—not far away.
“More light!” the call went up. Reticula turned around in horror, one hand moving to the shortsword at her belt.
But the scene was already clear, as more Wall Guards were rushing across the nearer parapet bearing torches in one hand, longswords in the other—
And their torches and sudden screams revealed that the beastials were hauling and crawling over the battlements already and leaping onto the Brothers and Sisters of the Enclave.
And there looked to be hundreds of them.
10
The Emarii
“Urk!” Terak gasped as air suddenly rushed into his lungs. His body still ached, and it took him a moment to realize that it was cold air. And it wasn’t the super-dry airs of the South.
The skies above were the deep slate-gray of storm clouds. The elf thought his doubling vision could pick out dark shapes around him. Walls? It didn’t make sense to his addled mind how he could see walls and the sky at the same time.
The assassin’s body felt like it was aflame, but at least the pain of his magical journey was fading fast. It was almost a pain that he was used to, now that he had hopped through (and been cast, hurled, and dragged through) several such magical portals. It was because he was a null, he was sure—most magic either didn’t work at all around him or didn’t seem to want to work with his body.
The elf still felt weak and dizzy and terrifyingly parched. He opened his mouth to croak—
“Hey! Look at this!” There was a voice nearby, and the sound of hurrying feet. A silhouette eclipsed his view. Terak got the impression of intense red hair.
“Oath and bone, look at him!” the red-haired woman said, alarm in her voice. “It’s an elf—and he looks mostly dead . . .”
“More than mostly.” A male shadow rose in his view. “It’s probably Tyburn’s lot, thinking to cause us problems. Leave him for the Watch to sort out,” the gruff-voiced man was saying, already turning away.
/> “Kol.” Terak remembered the name of the one that Hyxalion had mentioned. “Kol!”
“He’s awake. Drink,” a voice said. The same gruff voice that had spoken earlier and just as uncharitable as previously, Terak thought.
The assassin found that he was lying on a bed looking up at the slats and beams of a wooden ceiling. He was in a small room cheerily lit by a single lantern. Terak couldn’t see any windows, but he could hear distant thuds and muted voices rising and falling.
“Where am I?” Terak coughed as he tried to speak. The only other embellishments to the room were a small wooden desk, a narrow door, and the man who had spoken.
“Never mind that. Just drink this, will you?” The uncharitable man was a human about the age of Father Jacques, but taller and with broader shoulders, and un-bearded. He was pressing a clay flagon of something that steamed and smelled foul to the elf.
“Urgh!” Terak coughed and spluttered over the foul stuff, but the uncharitable man with straight, dark brown hair was unrelenting, tipping the flagon so that at least half of it spilled down Terak’s chin, and the other actually got into him.
Terak coughed and sneezed as the flagon was pulled away. His elvish senses registered a confusion of scents and tastes. Cinnamon, pepper, something like apples, but also aniseed, ginger, and something broth-like and meaty at the same time.
“That’s horrible!” the elf spat, as he felt the concoction forcing its way into his body, making his limbs feel warm as it did so.
“Hah!” The uncharitable man barked one simple laugh. “Not supposed to enjoy it! And it’ll keep you alive, so I don’t see why you’re complaining.” The man stood up from the stool that he had been sitting on beside the table, for Terak to see the human’s strange garb.
Or not-so-strange, really, Terak mused. He was, after all, used to seeing humans in battle-gear and guardsman’s insignia. It was normal attire for a city human, the elf thought—but with a slightly finer lace-up shirt and a wide belt that reached from his hips to his lower rib cage.