The Return of the Fifth Stone

by Vincent Todarello

  Then there was a discussion of war strategy. It seemed so useless to me. Everything could change in an instant like it did in Mir’Dinaas when the dragon arrived, or some new information could alter everything like it did in light of Felgor’s betrayal. And we still did not know if anyone else would be coming to our aid, or if the other Divinae would help. I was losing confidence in our prospects for victory; the news of Felgor had shaken my faith. My mind wandered, as did my eyes. They fell upon Sindris.

  She had been glancing at me throughout the council meeting, smiling. My eyes kept returning to her. Her Aquidian skin was like my mother’s; shiny and milky white. But when light danced upon it, it would shimmer with tones of blue and pink. Her features were delicate, pristine. Her blonde and brick colored hair hung straight down at the sides, partially covering her face as she hid her eyes from me. She was curious of me, I thought. Her glances shot past me on some occasions to examine my wings. I could feel her gaze upon me when I wasn’t looking. When our eyes finally locked we smiled at one another.

  “That is enough!” Patreus spoke above the low roar of discussions that were ongoing. For a moment I thought he was addressing me, reprimanding me for making eyes with Sindris. “We will lead the army in groups,” he continued.

  “I have seen Scievah’s formation, and I know where the army is heading,” Erdus added. “One group can flank them with an ambush.”

  “And who shall lead this group?” Ergomet asked, squinting his eyes and rubbing the scales on his chin.

  “It would be best if I did, since I know where they are,” Erdus volunteered.

  “Very well,” said Gerron. “The others will take formation on the battlefield."

  “How soon will you set out to flank and ambush them?” Patreus asked.

  “If we leave here in two days, we would be in range to flank them by surprise when they reach the battlefield plains,” said Erdus. “We will leave in the night, before the rest of you. Once we have attacked, you should come in from the north to overwhelm them.”

  CHAPTER 24

  I walked around the ruins for some time, taking in the enchanted views. As the day came to a close, the temperature fell. The steam pool at cliff’s edge hissed, and a cloud of white fog hung just above it. I decided that a hot bath was the perfect way to unwind after so many long and treacherous days of journeying. I left my clothing in a pile on the stone stairway leading into the pool and slowly climbed down into the water.

  I felt invigorated, but relaxed. I parted the low fog with my hands in order to gaze upon the starlit sky above. I leaned my wings against the wall nearest to the scarp, tipped my head back, and stared up at the stars until my eyes grew heavy and shut.

  Sometime later I awoke from my slumber to the sound of a light splash and the tickling ripples of moving water across my chest. I opened my eyes and looked all around, but the fog had accumulated atop the pool in the cold night air. The movement continued. Someone or something else was in the pool with me. It came closer and closer, the splashing grew louder, and the rippling water became steady.

  “Who goes there?” I called out. I heard a small shocked gasp of air. It sounded feminine. Whoever was here was just as surprised by me as I was of her. “Who is it? Who is there?” I asked again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It is Sindris. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  My nerves were relieved. I feared another serpent attack or something dreadful. “It is alright. The pool is not mine to claim,” I said.

  The fog began to part and I saw the outline of her figure silhouetted by the moonslight. She stood in the pool, still dry from her thighs up. Despite her petite frame, she was curvy in the hips and chest. She covered herself with her hands, and her eyes wandered all around looking for the source of my voice.

  “I’m over here,” I said. She quickly turned in my direction and dropped down into the water up to her shoulders. “I won’t look,” I said, averting my eyes, cupping my hands over them and turning to face the cliffs.

  “Is that you, Valdren?” she asked.

  “Yes. If you’d like I could leave and give you some privacy,” I offered.

  “No. Please stay with me.” She swam over to me. “You can open your eyes, you know.” I uncovered my eyes and slowly turned toward her. She swam closer, with only her head above water. “I don’t mind if you see me,” she added. I felt uneasy. She was very attractive. Her skin glowed in the moonslight, and all of her colorful markings were amplified by the water. “You know, I am not like Ergomet.” She broke the tension. She must have sensed my awkwardness. “I know that I am not the Unity.” She took a breath and ducked her head under the water, reemerging directly in front of me, close enough to touch. She brushed dripping water from her face, arched backward and pulled her hair back. “I think it is you,” she added.

  “It seems that everyone is sure about the Unity but me,” I confessed.

  “I never said I was sure. Just a hunch,” she corrected me.

  “Some amazing and unexplainable things have happened, but I still don’t know if this prophecy is meant to be fulfilled by me. Maybe there is another with the blood of the four races.” I spoke more out of hope than reason. At times I wished I was not the Unity, that someone else was so I could be relieved of worry.

  “There are no others,” she said as she moved beside me, sitting with her back against the wall as I did. “You are the only one. Ergomet and his people have been searching for many cycles. I was the best they could muster, but I do not come from Lapisian lines like you do.” She spoke softly as she reached her hand out to touch my wings. “May I?” I nodded in agreement. “I’ve never seen anyone with wings before, never saw a Lapisian.”

  “We met several on our travels. Although I have wings like they do, the Lapisians look different than us. You and I look more like each other than I do to them,” I explained. In doing so I felt less nervous about sitting unclothed beside such a beautiful woman.

  Sindris put her back up straight as she reached up over me to look at the wing that was farthest from her. I put my head down, out of the way. My eyes caught a glimpse of the top half of her breasts as they rose up in the water.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “Does what hurt?” I lifted my head to find myself face to face with her, our lips almost touching. There was a long pause of silence between us. I could see in her eyes that she wanted to kiss me. My mind and my heart raced. The steam of the bath began to make my brow glisten with sweat. I wondered if she could sense how flustered I was by her presence. My mind went to Lunaris, thinking about how much I loved her, about what I said to her the last time we spoke, and about the talk I had with my father and what I would do if I ever saw her again. My heart was filled with desire for the woman next to me, but I fought back with all my strength not to give in to that desire.

  “Does it hurt when you lose a feather?” she asked again, pulling back slightly and lifting a wet white feather up between our lips.

  “That is the first one that I know of,” I said. “I didn’t feel it.”

  “May I take it, keep it?” she asked as she lifted herself partly out of the water and pressed her naked body up against me. The night air chilled her wet skin, and her stiffened breasts cooled me above the water.

  My pulse quickened. My desire for her burned hot inside. I felt a longing I had only experienced once before, when I was near the Fountain of Power. I wanted her, but it wasn’t right. Suddenly a wave of reason came back over me in a swell that made the passion subside.

  “Perhaps I should save it for someone else, some other time,” I responded, gently taking the feather in my hand and slipping it from hers.

  With a long stare deep into my eyes she smiled at me, and gave me some space.

  “You are a good man, Valdren. Pure.” she said. “Now I know that you are the Unity.” She spoke with a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction, raising her eyebrows and nodding her head in the affirmative.

  “W
ere you testing me? Testing my resolve?” I asked incredulously, my brow wrinkled with puzzlement.

  “I’m sorry. I did not mean to deceive you,” she pleaded sincerely, “and what is worse is that I do have feelings for you, and now all the more. I know it is crazy. We barely even know each other, but I am curiously drawn to you, attracted to you. You were all I could think about today, ever since the meeting.”

  “You are very beautiful, Sindris, and you do seem kind enough, but my heart belongs to another. I made a promise to myself that if I ever saw her again I would make her my wife,” I said.

  “She is a lucky woman then.” I smiled at her compliment. Sindris seemed slightly upset by what I said, almost heartbroken behind her confident and smiling exterior. Despite her crude test of my purity, she seemed to be genuine.

  “Good night, Sindris,” I said politely as I swam across to the other side of the pool, through the fog, to where I had left my clothing.

  “Sleep well,” she said.

  I spent the following day exploring the area. Sindris came along with me for part of the time. She told me about her life, about her village, and about how her appearance and abilities change when she spends time in water. I told her about my life, the capture of my parents, and tales of adventure after I set out on my journey. She expressed her love for me, and again I denied her. I admired her and thought she was beautiful, but I did not confuse my admiration or attraction with love.

  Later that day, my father and I spent some time training together in a cobblestone square that overlooked the sea. I was reminded of the time we spent together in the wilderness. It felt so long ago. His hair had turned mostly silver since that time, but he did not yet look old.

  “What is that on your arm?” he asked. “Have you been inked?”

  “Inked?” I asked.

  “Some men have ink cut into their skin, to make permanent designs and patterns,” he explained.

  “No,” I responded, looking down at the arm he fixed his eyes upon. A mark was on my right arm, just below the ball of my shoulder. My sleeves must have covered it earlier, but it had not been there the previous evening in the steam pool.

  “It looks like the shape of a spear tip,” he observed. He examined it closely, holding my arm in his thick hands.

  “Father, look,” I said, pointing to his arm. “You have one as well.” He looked down at his mark, also in the shape of a spear tip. “What could it be?”

  “The Mark of the Uncorrupted Warrior,” answered my father. “The army of the pure.”

  Just then Felsson had joined us in the square. He saw us looking at each other’s markings. “I see you have found your marks. The others have them as well. A sign from the king himself,” Felsson explained.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “It means we are ready,” my father answered.

  “Not yet,” Felsson corrected. “I must teach you all to harness your strength, and your powers.”

  “Powers?” I asked.

  “It is written that, during the Great War, the army of the pure will be marked with the sign of the Fifth Stone, and have powers bestowed upon them,” my father explained.

  “And now I must show you how to use them.” Felsson waved for us to follow him.

  He led us to a nearby field just outside the ruins. Our army lined up in a grid formation, facing Felsson, who stood at the front of the group. I could see the markings on everyone whose upper right arm was bare.

  Felsson asked us to sit or lie down, to get comfortable. He told us to empty our minds, close our eyes, and relax. He spoke to us in a calm voice that was almost soothing, telling us to imagine we were floating gently in the sea, up and down, in big but gentle swells. He told us to imagine our bodies melting into the water, becoming one with the waves.

  “Embrace the sunlight and let it reflect off of you, back out into the sky,” he instructed. “The swells begin to approach the shore. You feel yourself rising higher and higher with each peak of the wave. Slowly let your body come back together. It forms in the water as you get closer and closer to the shoreline. The sun beams off of you, warming you. The light is in the palm of your hands, and you ride the wave into the shore gently. You are standing on the shore. You feel the water rushing over your feet now and again as it washes up and back down the sand. Now let your body be as weightless as air, and become the light. Become the glorious light.”

  He seemed to pause a long while at that point, but it could have been a moment just the same. I felt as though I was asleep, yet still in control of the dream.

  “Open your eyes,” he said. Moments later a collective gasp sounded from the field. Our arms were stretched out in front of us, palms upward, with what looked like sunlight beaming out from them, so bright it was difficult to see anything else around us. “If you are in danger, if you are overtaken by the enemy, or if your courage simply runs out, return to that pristine shoreline and become the light again and you shall vanish from this realm.”

  The light faded from our palms. We all stood there in astonishment, still waking from what felt like a lucid dream. Perhaps it was some kind of astral event, like the kind of experience when I saw Hemela; half real, and half dream.

  “Have a restful evening,” Felsson said. “Tomorrow we go to war.”

  #

  I was settling in for some stew when Sindris came to me in a panic. She looked around frantically as she approached.

  “Something is wrong,” she said. “Earlier, after you and I parted ways and you went to go train with your father, everyone started to notice the symbols on our bodies. Ergomet said his was under some scales on his right arm, but he did not show us. Now he is gone. I’m beginning to think his loyalties lie elsewhere.”

  “I’ve thought that for quite some time as well, but he doesn’t seem to be a threat. One of our men kept his eye on him and did not find anything suspicious about his actions.” I told her about Algomann. “There are many people scattered all around this place. He could be here somewhere,” I reassured her. “Perhaps he is with Erdus and the men who are going to flank the enemy by surprise. I’m sure they are preparing to leave, or perhaps they even left already.”

  “Erdus has gone, but Ergomet was not with them. I fear he has betrayed us, and that he lied to us about his markings, going off early to warn Scievah of our attack plan.” She looked upon me for a response. I thought about it long. Ergomet had been right all along about Felgor, but he was wrong about many other things. Could they amount to a betrayal? Was this another test from Sindris? Could she be trusted? “Our men could be killed in the night!” she pleaded.

  “Alright,” I agreed. “I should let my father know.”

  “We must go now, there is no time!” she insisted. I nodded in agreement. "If we run for a good part of the way we could get to Erdus, warn him, and be back before the morning."

  It was dark. Our pace had to slow in order to keep their tracks. They veered west, staying along the edge of the rocky grasslands beside the desert. They couldn’t be much further. Then I heard a distant clamoring, bouncing off the rocky boulders that were all around us. It was the voices of men calling out in a hurried panic. A moment later I heard the beating of dragon’s wings closing in from the south. We were too late.

  I climbed up onto a large boulder for a better view. Our men were not but half the way to their destination. They were being attacked. Streams of fire spilled forth from the winged beast in the sky, scorching the men below. They screamed in terror and agony as their bodies curled and crisped to a cinder. A horde of flesh eating barbarians and bloodthirsty warbears flooded the field to devour those left alive. A pair of men stood nearby atop boulders with their arms in the air weaving more flames with their hands. Dark wizards, I presumed. They hurled fireballs and seemed to pull flames directly from the earth in a ring around our men, trapping them in a circle of fire. There was no sign of Ergomet, but he had to have been behind this. There was no other way the impure could have known about ou
r plan in time, unless, perhaps, the shadowy figure that was following my father was somehow behind this.

  Sindris climbed up beside me and began to weep at the horrific vision, putting her face into her hands, then wrapping her arms around my shoulders. Our men were too surprised to even fight back. Many of them just sat on the ground, motionless, awaiting their death. I watched as Erdus fought bravely against many a man and beast. I wanted to go to him, to help. My blood boiled with rage at the sight of this treachery. Sindris pulled away from me, sensing my anger. I pulled my blade from its sheath and was about to climb down and join Erdus.

  “Have you lost your wits?” Sindris protested, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “No, I have a grasp on them now more firmly than ever,” I responded with my glaring eyes fixed on the scene below us.

  But then there was a flash of light, almost like a bolt of lightning in the night, and Erdus was gone. The dragon wailed and turned away from it in the sky, nearly throwing the rider from its back. The rider took the beast to the ground and dismounted. It was Hadlick; I could tell from the shape of his figure. The dark wizards stopped weaving their spells and incantations, and the flames died down to a flicker. The warbears began to scatter in every direction in fear, but the barbarian drones knew no fear. They continued to attack, gnawing and tearing at our men, both dead and alive. Then there was another flash of light. Hadlick was confused. The dark wizards climbed down from their boulders and approached him. They seemed to be discussing the curious event.

  I watched closely. Our men were doing as Felsson taught us earlier. Light began to beam from their hands. But then there was a sudden flash, so bright it made us shield our eyes even from this distance. After that, they were gone. Vanished from this world, I imagined, as Felsson said. One by one our men burst into flashes of light and disappeared until none were left but those who died in battle.