The Forgotten Tribe

by Stephen J Wolf

  Urrith tensed and squeezed his eyes shut as Ordren flexed his fingers and prepared his sword. One of the soldiers dug his fingers against Urrith’s face, forcing his eyes open. Clearly, Ordren wanted him to know the exact moment of impact. The youth tried trashing about but he was held fast. Indeed, the last thing he would see was Ordren, a vicious expression on his face, stepping one foot at a time, sword raising up, then crashing down.

  And then there was an eruption of fiery agony. Urrith screamed at the top of his lungs, the pain racing through his body. It flashed so brightly in his eyes that the sky illuminated for just a moment and then went dark again. Massive heat remained at his left shoulder where Ordren’s blade had struck. As horrible as it was, he had expected it to be even worse. His body collapsed and it surprised him that his captors had released him. Perhaps they didn’t want his blood all over themselves.

  The pain subsided quickly and Urrith raised his arms to wipe his face. And it took a moment for him to realize he still had two arms and all six of the king’s men were flattened on the ground, the torches flickering wildly in the night.

  Dumbfounded, he merely stood there, not knowing what had happened. He gaped at the fallen men, turning slowly and trying to get himself to move. He had to grab a horse and sprint away, but his body wouldn’t comply. Perhaps, he thought for a moment, he was actually dead, gazing down at them and seeing it wrong.

  Several yards away there was a sound and Urrith turned to face it. Three people hurried toward him. “Move it, you fool, get over here!” Confused, Urrith obeyed.

  One of the people was Janning. Another was a healing mage, and the third was a nature mage, who had opened her conduit to the Underground from a nearby hill. “What happened?” Urrith asked, stunned.

  He was ushered quickly inside and Janning answered brusquely. “All those spells you’ve been volunteering for haven’t been at all what you’ve thought. We were weighing you down with protection spells and once we had the right combination, we sent you out to confront Ordren.”

  Urrith made sense of it quickly. “You sent me out as bait?”

  Janning made no pretense. “Yes.”

  “What if they had killed me?”

  “Then it would have meant our spells had failed.”

  “Comforting,” Urrith said sourly, his body starting to tremble from delayed terror.

  “Well, take comfort in this, then,” Janning offered. “We no longer doubt your allegiance in relation to Ordren. We welcome you now openly.”

  It took all he had not to vomit.

  Chapter 26

  The Ends of Kings

  Dariak and Randler could barely stand to look at another book. They had pored over countless volumes, and though they were learning much, their eyes begged for something else to focus on.

  Randler set his book aside and rubbed his temples. “I’m done for today. Your father is quite the crafter of words, but he does carry on sometimes.”

  Dariak gave a half-hearted laugh. “For a solitary man, he certainly did have a lot to say to others. He was great with giving advice to whomever he came across. It was often helpful, but still. He always had something to say.”

  “Dariak… How do you even know how he was? Weren’t you only about two years old when he died?”

  The mage nodded. “I have some odd flashes of him, even from then. But it was all from Mother. And these texts. More than anything, they taught me who he was. Don’t you agree?”

  Randler considered for a moment. “I certainly can’t argue. These tomes have a personality all their own. It makes me sort of jealous, to be honest. Will my own works show my voice?”

  Dariak placed a placating hand on the bard’s shoulder. “Of course they will, and not just your songs and words, but also your music. Your soul lives in what you create.”

  Randler blushed for a moment and he tried to push away the trouble they’d had so he could enjoy the moment. But in his heart, he knew that was a setup for added disappointment. “So, where are we now?”

  Dariak frowned. “Still a couple cases left to go, I’m afraid to say, but I’m winding down to the last few records he has about the jades. This,” he said, hoisting up the green leather tome in his hands, “is one of the last recordings he made specific to the jades. Most of the others are spell-related, from what I could see.”

  Randler nodded. “Is there any reason you didn’t start from the recent stuff?”

  Dariak raised an eyebrow. “You know why as well as I do.”

  Indeed he did, for Delminor frequently referenced his older writings as he went on, and without that foundation, his later notes were impossible to follow without cross-referencing. “Right. He hated repeating himself.”

  “I do think this book will give me most of what I’m looking for about bringing the jades together as one. He’s discussing the various powers and how they can be paired off in twos and threes. It’s only a matter of time before he reaches the whole set.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t skip to the back to see if he gets there,” Randler lamented.

  “Yeah, well, his most prized books have an added feature that you may not have come across with the histories.”

  “Oh? Did he encode them?”

  “In a sense. Here.”

  Randler took the book and flipped open to the first page and at the bottom it said, “Progress onward to page 13.” He ignored it and turned to page two, but the sentence he was reading didn’t make sense. He then flipped to page thirteen and saw that the words had continued there after all. Two pages later he saw another note to skip ahead a dozen sheets and continue there.

  “Incredible.”

  “Infuriating,” Dariak corrected.

  “That explains all the flipping you’ve been doing back there. I thought you were just having a hard time of things.”

  “The last six volumes or so were written this way, and it has been all I could do not to tear the books apart. Still, though, it was a good way to discourage some errant mage from stealing all his secrets easily. He even crafted a few spellbooks this way, so that if you didn’t pay attention to the page order, you’d end up with unexpected results, or none at all.”

  Randler touched Dariak’s hand tentatively. “He was a brilliant man, and you’re definitely his son. You’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

  Dariak considered the new estrangement between them and it took all of his resolve not to grab Randler’s hand and hold it. He stared at the delicate strength in the bard’s hand and slowly he turned his eyes away. “How are your histories?”

  “Happily, I haven’t learned a whole lot of new things, in terms of major events. It means the stories I’ve heard are actually true after all and I can continue sharing them.” He stretched a knot out of his back and his shoulders cracked in the process. “One thing, though, that I did find interesting. He had two whole volumes where he spoke of a number of other royal lines, all of which have died out for one reason or another. The only line that continued was the Hathreneir-Kallisor line. After them, no other nobles really exist.”

  “Interesting,” Dariak hummed.

  Randler shot him a glance. “You mean ‘boring’ don’t you? I think it’s important. I can’t quite figure out why, though. And Delminor spent some time recalling how they all died. I found it rather odd. Was he always so macabre?”

  Dariak’s brows furrowed. “No. How did they die?”

  “He only followed the elder sons, noting that in many cases, the lines intermingled and so he had some overlaps. Anyway, one of them died in a huge fire; apparently the people revolted back then and they took torches to his home. Another one fell in battle, and your father focused on the type of sword that was used to kill the heir. He said it was a finely-honed iron blade, longer than a man’s arm and unadorned except for the warm blood.”

  Dariak shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like my father’s work.”

  “I’m summarizing,” Randler shrugged. “I know where the book is if
you doubt it, but it was his voice in the words. If you prefer, I could do my best to summon his dialect.”

  “No, thank you. Knowing you, you’d catch the cadence exactly and that would be unnerving. How did the other lines die out?”

  “Some were unremarkable in their ways, though tragic. One line ended when the heir, a boy of six at the time, fell in a pond and drowned. Another had a reputation for climbing the northern mountains and while he was there a storm blew in and he was struck down by lightning. Apparently, he would climb alone at times and it took the kingdom a few weeks to find his remains. They hadn’t been certain how he had died except for the odd scorch marks on his skin. They ruled out fire because he didn’t look like he had been engulfed in flame, just blasted with it and dropped.

  “At first, I wondered why they didn’t suspect a mage of foul play, but Delminor tackled that as if he thought I was going to ask. The reports said he was protected against magic—but your father argued that spells were much too weak back then anyway—and that one blast would not have gotten through unless it was some other natural force.”

  “My father did like to be thorough when he wrote,” Dariak said needlessly.

  “I’ll say. Hold on a second.” Randler raised a finger and closed his eyes, bobbing his head for a moment until he recited:

  Flying on a horse

  Speeding like a bird

  He couldn’t take a breath

  Couldn’t speak a word.

  “Sorry, one of the heirs died because he was born with weak lungs and he always had trouble breathing. He would have these fits where he couldn’t take in any air and he would gasp and gasp until he could calm himself down. Well, his advisors stepped in and smothered him, preventing him from going out and being active. They wanted to ensure he had an heir of his own first, but he rebelled and he escaped one afternoon on horseback. In the excitement, he had one of his breathing attacks and he suffocated from it.”

  “That’s awful.” Dariak’s lip then twitched into an odd grin. “Was that verse in the book or are you crafting a song about these heirs?”

  “The latter,” he admitted. “It is an interesting collection of stories that are all uniquely linked together. Delminor singled them out because they were royalty, but when I was reading through it, I felt like the stories were more important than just that.”

  Dariak agreed, “There must be a reason he focused on them for two volumes. What else was there?”

  “A rockslide,” Randler answer succinctly. “Another climber had a bad accident there. Someone else, younger, was mired in quicksand and wasn’t able to free himself. There was also a king that liked to hunt, but he was eviscerated by his prey. Delminor was unfortunately descriptive there,” he shuddered involuntarily. The bard bit his lip, thinking of the other stories that were mentioned in Delminor’s books. “There was one that seemed very unlikely to me.”

  “Oh?”

  “One young boy was terrified of the dark. He had to have torches lit at all times otherwise he would panic, even if the moon was bright that night. The healers said they couldn’t calm him down with any kind of remedy. They just needed to keep a light on. As the years went by, he dealt with the fear more and more, but he was still frightened by it. One day, he was on the road with an escort and they were ambushed by bandits. The kid was taken captive and held prisoner. Apparently, they kept him locked away in a dark cell underground with no light at all. He inexplicably died, and Delminor insisted he died of fright.”

  “Being in a cell is certainly scary enough without an added fear compounding it,” Dariak noted.

  “True, but being so afraid that your body just… dies?”

  Dariak shrugged. “Think about some of the scuffles we’ve been in. The heart beats fast and you run out of breath. Maybe he worked himself up into a real frenzy and his body couldn’t cope.”

  “That’s about what your father said.”

  “I guess he and I sometimes think alike,” the mage said. “What else?”

  “Well, the last two stories were very dramatic and I had no idea what was going to happen while I read them. It’s been a while since another person’s tale caught me by such surprise. In the first, the prince was minding his own business, getting to know the ropes of leadership, sparring in the yard with the knights to keep in shape, heading out on hunts for sport, and so on. He was extremely outgoing and active and got himself into dozens of predicaments, but always escaped them in the end.

  “He heard word that a bandit raid had ended with the kidnapping of some village girl and he was so outraged that he went and battled the brigands and brought her back. There was a celebration in the castle for his bravery, but the bandits were furious. They launched an assault on the palace and threw flasks of oil through the feast hall windows, followed by lit torches. The entire place lit ablaze and everyone scampered for safety.

  “The prince helped to usher everyone from the hall and saw that even with the help of the guards, his father hadn’t yet left. Perhaps it was some noble stance, that the king would not leave until his people were safe, but he remained behind. The prince ran to him then and they fled together. But before they made it out, the ceiling collapsed and killed the king. The planks cracked the prince on the head and he was trapped in the fire.”

  Dariak let out a low whistle. “Terrible way to go.”

  “But he didn’t die!” Randler announced. “That’s just it; he was nearly dead a hundred times it seemed. No, he lived through the ordeal with massive burns all over his skin. At the time, the mages couldn’t heal, so he was tended by traditional herbalists. They created this brew to help fortify his body as he healed, while they treated his burns with aloe and some other salves. His luck ran out then, though, for someone had miscategorized the herbs, and when they made a whole batch of his healing drink, they added aloe to the mix. He started having all of these stomach pains and digestive issues and he eventually died from it.”

  “I spoke too soon,” Dariak cringed. “That was a terrible was to die.”

  “It wasn’t uncommon for herbalists to get a mixture wrong,” Randler explained. “Still, though, they were slow on fixing the concoction.”

  “Which could have been intentional,” Dariak noted.

  “True.”

  “And the last one? How did he die?”

  “It was another wild tale, actually, where the king was utterly hated by the people and they rose up against him and rampaged all over the place. Delminor went into such detail, mostly describing the ways the king could have died but didn’t. A sword thrust missed its mark, a lupino was killed by a stray arrow before it could sink its teeth into his neck, even fireballs from the mages swerved away by some air pockets that just seemed to keep him safe.”

  “Another lucky soul,” Dariak said oddly, his mind elsewhere. “He didn’t… get strangled by a vine or knocked down by a tree, by any chance?”

  Randler gave him an incredulous look. “Well, yes, actually. In a sense anyway. The people won the revolt and they captured the king and set him to hang. They tied him to the tallest tree near the castle and when they went to release the stool he was standing on, the branch broke from the tree and smashed his head in.” He stared at Dariak for a moment. “You heard that before?”

  “No. It had to be something of nature.”

  “It did? I don’t follow.”

  “Trace it back. One died by fire, another drowned in water, another because he couldn’t get air.”

  “The iron sword—metal. The hunter from a beast attack. The quicksand.”

  Dariak nodded. “Lightning on top of the mountain. That wild fear of the dark. Even the aloe; a healing force that was never meant to be taken internally, and it was probably compounded with a handful of other herbs with other side effects that they didn’t know of back then.”

  “The landslide,” Randler finished. “Yes, so that was the death by earth.”

  “Were there any other stories?”

  “No,” the bard sh
ook his head, “but Delminor commented at the end about an unfortunate death that would likely occur to the descendent of Kallisor and Hathreneir, and he wondered in what form it would take.”

  “Did he… speculate?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Something you mentioned with the one who died by the aloe. You said that the mages couldn’t use healing magic then. It didn’t come about until after that death.”

  Randler’s eyes popped open wide. “You think their deaths opened up new channels for magic based on how they died?”

  Dariak shrugged. “Possibly. And those deaths could have been the moments when those jades came into being; no one quite knows when. Or how. It seems too convenient for there not to be a connection, else why would my father have only documented those deaths? There were plenty of other royal children in the mix. It is possible for it to be a…,” he fished for a word, “‘gift’ passed along to the firstborn male. It would take some extra digging to discover if all those heirs were the first male.”

  Randler’s voice lowered to almost a whisper. “What if there is one heir left?”

  “There is no way of knowing.”

  But the bard believed otherwise. “I’ve been following the tale for too long to ignore it now, Dariak. I know most people believe it to be a farce, but there is something in there.”

  “You mean the Forgotten Tribe. The lost true line of Lady Hathreneir and King Kallisor.”

  Randler nodded vigorously. “The firstborn son ran off and vanished into obscurity. Yet I know there are lineages that trace those ancestries back. Didn’t Kitalla say Magehaven had something along those lines?”

  “So does the library at Castle Hathreneir,” Dariak concurred. “How are we supposed to find some unknown potential heir from a line centuries old? Even if the line is traced in the lineage to current day, what are we supposed to do upon finding that person? Kill him to end the line? And then what?”

  “I have no idea. But maybe…”

  Dariak raised an eyebrow in question.