The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Why do you so often ask me questions for which you already know the answers? The Spirit-Lily’s telepathic tone communicated a sigh.

  She would do it, Kairah decided. She would steal the illusion pendant from the College of Disciplines and leave Allose to warn the humans of Jenoc’s plans, no matter what the cost. It was the right thing to do.

  See, Aeva said smugly.

  Kairah’s thoughts were not on the lecture. She heard what was being said, but retained only occasional pieces, something she did deliberately in case she was called upon to answer a question. She sat on an ivory bench in the third seating tier of the stadium-like lecture hall. The light from the noon-day sun poured down through the purple, dome-shaped skylight dappling the chamber with an assortment of refracted hues.

  The lecture she had opted into for the morning was one on the evolution of talis crafting. While initially it had sounded interesting, it turned out to be nothing more than a dry recitation of names, dates, and places with little in the way of the actual science behind making a talis.

  But intellectual stimulation was not the reason Kairah had reserved a seat in Elder Tardun’s lecture hall. No, she was here to steal the college’s only illusion pendant, kept in the historical treasure room, the corridor to which opened up directly behind Elder Tardun’s lectern. She eyed the arched doorway and the soft light of the hallway pouring in from beyond.

  You are nervous, Aeva observed.

  Of course I am nervous! Kairah mentally snapped and she felt an immediate backlash of regret. I am sorry. It is just that I have never done anything like this before. The flower seemed to send a wordless communication of patient understanding for which she was grateful.

  It was true. Like the majority of Allosians, Kairah had no experience with crime, it being something of a rarity among their kind. Her brother once said that was because Allosians had everything they could want and possessed no motive for stealing. He also had said it was because of their enlightened and superior nature over the other races in Shaelar. While that ran counter to her understanding of the will of the Apeiron, she couldn’t dispute the facts Jenoc cited.

  Kairah couldn’t deny that her brother was right. Humans were by far the most petty, selfish, and violent of the four races inhabiting Shaelar, as was evidenced by their near constant warring. And when they weren’t at war, smaller scale violence abounded in their cities and villages. The Vorakk and the Ursaj were violent too, but most of their killing was the result of hunting animals for food or defending themselves from other predators. Oh, they killed each other too, just not nearly as often as the bloodthirsty humans.

  But Kairah was not a lawless human and so, for her, criminal methods and motives were a foreign concept. In a way this gave her the advantage. For as alien as it was for Kairah to steal, she knew that her instructor and classmates were just as inexperienced in expecting and preventing crime. Thus, they would never suspect what she was about to attempt.

  “It was when Sorlan of Trallister welcomed the humans to Shaelar that we entered into the age of innovation that produced most of our modern talises,” she heard Elder Tardun say. “And so ends part one of our lecture. Tomorrow we will have a recitation of facts from three students selected at random after which we will begin part two.”

  It was over, the lecture was over. A panic thrilled Kairah as she watched the other students begin to rise from their seats. This is it, she thought, now is my chance.

  She rose, carefully smoothed her lavender silk dress and began slowly descending to the lecture floor where a group of students clustered around the lectern, each waiting their turn to ask Elder Tardun questions. They’ll be the perfect distraction. Her muscles grew rigid, her skin alive with tingling pulses, and she licked her lips with each measured step.

  You are doing well, Aeva encouraged.

  Kairah wasn’t so sure.

  As one foot followed by the other eased off the final step, she felt like her lungs would collapse. Still, she pressed herself forward to blend herself in with the other students, lingering on the far edge of the group, the corridor within eyeshot. She listened as a polite debate began between Elder Tardun and one of the students. Their voices went back and forth, but she couldn’t decipher what they were each saying. Something about human aggression and Allosian execution mandates. Kairah didn’t care. The timing was perfect.

  She slowly rounded the lectern, easing herself closer to the corridor, and gently rotated her shoulders.

  Elder Tardun called her name.

  Kairah froze, heart pounding so hard she was certain it echoed throughout the entire stadium.

  “Kairah,” Elder Tardun repeated.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself—it didn’t work—and turned to face her instructor and twenty-seven of her fellow students. “Yes, Elder?” she answered, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt.

  Elder Tardun motioned at the student he had been debating. “Perhaps you know enough of your brother’s research to be able to settle a question for us?”

  “I know much of my brother’s work,” Kairah answered with forced calm.

  “Then answer us this,” Elder Tardun began, “are any of the three modern human kingdoms still actively hostile to the Allosians? And if so, which ones?”

  Kairah could feel the stares of the other students as they fell silent in expectation of her answer. To her horror, her mind suddenly went blank. The moment stretched, and her palms grew sticky, until Aeva’s voice inside her mind said.

  Is the answer not, Haeshala?

  “Haeshala,” she said. “They are the only human nation whose mandate to kill or capture Allosians has never been rescinded.”

  “Haeshala,” Elder Tardun repeated thoughtfully. He then turned to re-engage the student he had been debating.

  Kairah sighed inwardly as all eyes returned to her instructor.

  You are welcome, Aeva said.

  Kairah eyed the group of students warily as she slowly stepped through the arched doorway behind the lectern. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized the first hurdle of her plan had been overcome. She looked around, making certain she was alone in the corridor and then she broke into a swift stride. Her ankle-length silk dress swished at her feet as she hurried toward a bend in the corridor. She turned the corner, pressed herself against the wall, and closed her eyes. I made it, I made it. She gulped in air and listened as the rhythm of her heart slowed. She eased her eyelids open and glanced down the hall. Empty. Good.

  Again she looked down the corridor to twenty-foot double doors of white stone set in the terminal wall. Kairah rushed toward the massive entry and paused to listen. When she was satisfied that the treasury was empty, she reached for the ornate golden handle and turned it. The door on the right cracked open. The treasury wasn’t locked; Kairah had guessed right about her people’s criminal naiveté working both ways.

  The dome-shaped Historical Treasury was similar to the college’s lecture halls, but twice as large. Its walls were lined with shelves packed with cubicle glass containers or large leather-bound tomes. An ivory staircase spiraled up from the center of the room, granting access to a dozen split level balconies and the storage shelves that lined the interior walls of the chamber.

  There are certainly a lot of artifacts in here, Aeva said, her mental voice thick with wonder.

  “Yes,” Kairah whispered. “I need the treasury’s catalog or it will take the better part of the day for me to find the pendant.”

  She strode into the chamber, leaving the door open in case she would need to make an expeditious retreat. She descended three stairs that dipped into the concave floor of the treasury, and quickly located a fluted pedestal topped with a glass orb. Kairah touched the orb and willed the record talis to show her the location of the illusion pendant. A disembodied image of her standing in the chamber formed inside her mind and her view flew, as though she was a bird, to the third level where a large glass case mounted on the wall. Inside of the glass case wa
s a cerulean, teardrop-shaped pendant with an amethyst shard encased inside the jewel itself. Kairah’s eyes snapped open and she drew her hand back from the orb. She glanced up to the third level and, finding the very same glass case she had seen in vision, turned and began to quickly climb the ivory staircase.

  As Kairah wound her way up to the third level—a height of fifty feet—she caught sight of two statues just below the staircase. They were flatted against the wall opposite the door through which she had entered. The statues were a curious piece of art – twenty-feet-tall humanoid figures that looked to be carved entirely from glass. They were faceless, but had a single amethyst sphere set where their eyes should have been. Kairah had never seen anything like them. Were they new? She didn’t know for she hadn’t been in the treasury since she was a child, some seventy years ago. The statues were beautiful. Quite possibly the most gorgeous work of sculpted art she had ever seen.

  I did not know that they stored anything but talises in this room, she thought to Aeva.

  They frighten me, Aeva replied.

  That had not been the reaction Kairah expected, but her attention abruptly shifted as she reached the third level and spotted the glass case containing the illusion pendant. She stepped off the staircase and hurried past three large storage shelves. Kairah’s warped reflection stared back at her as she leaned over the lid. Inside, placed decoratively on a red velvet pillow, lay a clear, tear-dropped shaped gem about the size of her thumb. Etched into the face of the jewel was the colorless image of an open eye behind which was the amethyst shard encased inside the gem.

  Kairah reverently traced the glass with her fingers. It’s beautiful, she thought. Aeva didn’t respond. Instead, she felt apprehension flow from the Spirit Lily. The emotion mixed with her own feelings and caused her to quickly withdraw her hand from the glass. With renewed urgency, she quickly slid her fingers across the underside of the case and caught on two metal clasps. With her thumbs pressed against the side for counter-weight, the tips of her index fingers raised the metallic flap, startling her as it clicked against the other side of the enclosure. She paused, looking around the chamber, frightened someone might have heard her. Satisfied she remained alone, she turned back to the jewel, carefully lifting the glass cover.

  Kairah was about to reach down to take the pendant when a sound from the floor below gave her pause. It was an odd sound, one that she had never heard before, a high pitched whine rising to an almost inaudible crescendo. The closest she could compare it to was the sound of an empty talis receiving a new Apeiron charge. Without closing the case, she quickly scanned the levels below, her heart beating so fast that she thought it would explode. Her pulse began to slow as she could find no source for the noise. She dismissed it and returned her attention to the case.

  Kairah quickly reached in and snatched up the illusion pendant, then gently and quietly lowered the glass cover. Wrapping the pendant’s platinum chain around her hand, she rushed back toward the helical staircase, hiked up her dress a few inches, and began to descend as quickly as she could. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, a flash of purple light washed over the chamber. Kairah stopped and whipped her head around. To her shock, she found one of the glass, humanoid-shaped sculptures moving toward her. Its single amethyst eye was now glowing, sending beautiful refracted light throughout the sculpture’s entire body.

  Not a sculpture, Kairah realized with a stab of panic, but a golem. Not a golem of clay or stone, as she had read about, but a golem made from crystal, one apparently with orders to protect the inventory of the talis museum.

  RUN! Aeva mentally shouted.

  Kairah tore herself out of her panicked stupor and began sprinting toward the exit. The sound of the second crystal golem waking thrilled Kairah with another wave of fear and she redoubled her speed. As she barreled down the corridor leading back to the lecture hall, she unwound the pendant’s delicate chain from around her hand and slipped it over her head. Immediately she felt a connection to the talis and intuitively understood how it worked.

  Cloak me! She mentally shouted.

  Immediately the colors of her vision muted, and her reflection vanished from the hall’s shiny marble floor. She could still see herself in regular color if she looked down at her body, but, beyond her, it was as if she were looking through a foggy, color-suppressing lens.

  Kairah slowed and turned back to look at the door to the talis museum. The two crystal golems stood in front of the white stone doors, their amethyst jewel-eyes intensely shining. They halted and appeared to be scanning the hallway. Relief washed over Kairah at their hesitation. It worked.

  Kairah, Aeva said in a warning tone.

  Just then the amethyst jewel-eyes of each of the crystal golems changed color from purple to red, and one of them turned to look directly at her. Immediately the second golem did likewise and the two sentries resumed their hurried march down the hallway.

  Impossible! Kairah thought.

  RUN! Aeva projected.

  Panic impelled Kairah forward, and she broke into a desperate run, turned the corner and exploded into the lecture hall. Most of the students had vacated the stadium-like chamber, but Elder Tardun still stood behind his lectern debating the same student. Parchment on the lectern blasted into the air as she blew past, both Elder Tardun and his student starting at the ghostly cyclone. A heartbeat later Kairah heard her teacher and fellow student gasp, the sound immediately followed by the duel cadence of heavy footfalls.

  “Someone has robbed the museum!” she heard Elder Tardun call.

  Kairah took the stairs leading up through the benches two at a time. When she reached the top landing she risked a glance over her shoulder. What she saw accelerated her already racing heart. The two crystal golems could not fit in the narrow aisle of ascending stairs, and so they were systematically climbing the long stone benches, their weights causing the benches to crack, break, and crumble. They had fanned out, one golem climbing on each side of the stair aisle. Stone dust exploded into the air with each step they took, their cycloptic crimson eyes tingeing the dust blood red.

  Kairah hurled herself through the exit and into the adjoining hall, nearly colliding with a group of curious students amassing outside the lecture hall. She made a sharp right to avoid the crowd and sprinted down the hallway. An explosion of stone mixed with frightened screams told her the crystal golems had exited the lecture hall and entered the corridor. She glanced over her shoulder and found both automatons lumbering in her direction.

  How is it that they can see me? Kairah desperately thought to Aeva.

  Heat, was Aeva’s prompt reply.

  How had she known that? Kairah wondered. Heat, she mentally repeated in acknowledgement. The revelation rang true, sending a thrill of relief through her. Although she was not a master of the Second Discipline, elemental manipulation, calling up a chill wind to hide her body heat would be a simple thing. She was about to begin the casting when a realization doused the flame of her hope. If she cast while cloaked, any Allosian would be able to see her expend the needed Apeiron.

  All spell casting required that the caster release a proportional amount of Apeiron to make the spell work. That flared the caster’s Apeiron aura, making them shine in the eyes of other casters. She need only expend a little amount for a simple elemental spell, but in a corridor filled with two dozen fellow students, it would be enough to give her away.

  Kairah’s panic resurged and she began to glance desperately out the tall windows lining the outer wall of the building. She couldn’t hide, she couldn’t cast, and, glancing over her shoulder, she saw the crystal golems gaining on her at a frightening rate. She redoubled her run and quickly turned a corner. The hall opened up into the college’s antechamber. It was another domed room as big as one of the lecture halls serving as the navigational plexus of the building. In the center of the chamber was a thirty-foot-tall, multi-tiered decorative fountain.

  I cannot keep this up forever, she thought in despair. Virtual
ly all Allosians were perfect physical specimens until the day they died, but, even so, none but the trained athletes could hold a sprint long term. And Kairah knew she couldn’t sprint the requisite twenty miles she would need to run in order to leave Allose. She huffed, struggling to catch her breath and ignored the burn in her legs. She couldn’t stop.

  Upon reaching the center of the chamber, she leapt into the basin of the fountain in order to shave some distance off of her dash toward the college’s front doors. The move proved to be folly as she slipped and fell forward into the shallow water. Kairah quickly rose up on her hands and knees, sputtering and coughing as she wiped strands of soggy amethyst hair from her face. This was it, she despaired. If the golems do not catch me, then everyone who saw the splash will.

  She struggled to pull herself up, slipping into the water and falling on her back with a silent oomph. She was about to sit up, but the water-distorted image of a crystal golem standing above the fountain made her rein in her reflex. To her surprise, the glass automaton did not reach down into the pool to pull her out. It just stood there, head moving from side to side, searching for her. As she stared, waiting, she felt a tingling in her fingers and realized the fountain’s water was cold. Not ice water cold, but chilled enough for her extremities to be numbing.

  Though her lungs burned, Kairah held her breath and remained as still as she could. Her intuition paid off as a moment later the crystal golem moved out of her view. When she could feel it lumbering away, Kairah launched herself out of the water, gasping desperately as she scrambled out of the fountain’s wide basin. She slipped a couple of times on the marble floor of the chamber before her bare feet caught some traction. She must’ve still been difficult to see, because it was a full ten seconds before she heard the golems resume chasing her.

  Kairah made it to the towering, arched twin portals of the college’s front entrance and used the full force of her momentum to push the door open, hitting a fellow student in the face as he tried to enter. The force threw him to the side of the archway, and he covered his nose as blood began to pour from the nostrils.