The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  “Courtesan?” Kairah asked, a part of her recognizing the human word, but her memory failing to define it.

  She looked up at her, eyes again full of fiery defiance. “We all do what we gotta do to survive. Mother was beautiful, and after father died the only way she could feed us was—”

  Kairah lifted a hand to forestall the girl. “Ah, courtesan. A prostitute for the higher human classes.”

  Maely looked surprised.

  “I remember the word now.” Kairah smiled what she hoped was a kindly smile and said, “I pass no judgment upon you, Maely, or your mother.”

  Maely did not reply, but instead turned away to gaze at the horizon.

  “That is how your mother came by the compulsion ring?” Kairah probed, trying to do it delicately.

  Maely nodded. “She stole it from a man who”—Maely paused and turned to look at Kairah—“didn’t pay her,” she finished. Kairah could tell that there was more to that explanation, but decided not to press Maely any further.

  After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Maely turned around, wearing a completely different expression. The girl changed emotions so rapidly Kairah had a hard time keeping up. But she was beginning to learn to match her expressions to what the human girl was likely feeling. This expression bespoke curiosity.

  “You don’t eat. So does that mean you don’t go to the privy either?”

  Kairah faltered, not certain how to answer that question. “We—” she began, but Maely cut her off.

  “What about sex? Do your people do that?”

  Kairah wasn’t sure how to answer. In Allosian culture, such biological functions were considered private and it was the height of rudeness to discuss them in public, or with strangers. She had thought the humans had shared that custom. Apparently, she was wrong.

  “All life has things in common,” she said carefully.

  Maely took that for a “yes” and, to Kairah’s relief, didn’t ask for any details of Allosian digestive or reproduction systems. She thought it safest to change the subject and so asked, “Did anyone offer an indication of how much time has elapsed since Jekaran left this village?”

  Maely looked up at her and nodded. “Not more than two days ago.”

  “That is better than I had hoped,” Kairah said.

  Maely shot her a suspicious look. “What are you saying?”

  Kairah shook her head, the hood of her cloak catching her hair in the motion. “Simply that we have been fortunate.”

  The girl didn’t look like she quite believed that, and in truth, Maely was slowing them down with her needing to sleep and eat. Kairah had not meant to let that sentiment slip, another sign she was feeling the effects of being so far from an Apeira well. Something else was creeping in as well—was it hunger? It had been so long since she had felt hungry that she almost didn’t recognize it, but there it was.

  “What other fruit do you have in your satchel?” she hesitantly asked.

  Maely just smiled, and resumed eating her apple.

  The next day was much like the one before, hours upon hours of walking a dusty dirt road. They took the occasional break and left the road to eat or avoid being seen by groups of travelers. Now that she had become somewhat used to Kairah, Maely opened up, talking more about herself, Jekaran, her simple brother and a man named Ez. When she ran out of things to tell Kairah about, she switched to asking questions. Mostly she asked about Allosian life, physiology, and their history. But she seemed most curious about what she termed witchcraft. Kairah tried to break her of the habit of calling it that, but failed—miserably.

  “So you get your witchcraft—”

  “—magic,” Kairah corrected.” That was an inadequate, generic term, but far more accurate than the girl’s superstitious one.

  Maely ignored her. “—from an Apeira well, like a talis does?”

  “That is oversimplifying the magic behind it, but basically, you are correct.”

  “And the crystal wells grow up from the center of our planet, which is round and not flat,” she paraphrased.

  That had been a hard sell for Kairah. Eventually, she had resorted to using an apple and an ant to explain the curvature of the planet to Maely, and she sensed the girl still didn’t fully accept it.

  “And that power is what lets you cast spells?”

  “Yes,” Kairah said, but then quickly added, “But it is not something that we do instinctually. Learning to take Apeiron into yourself, hold onto it, and then use it to spell-cast requires a combination of natural talent, mental discipline, and years of training.”

  “So you had to be trained to be able to turn dry ground into mud, or make the water obey you, like you did back in Rasha?”

  Kairah nodded under her hood. “And those effects were just part of the second of five classes of spells. We call it The Second Discipline, and it deals with manipulating the elements. It took me years to learn it, and I am only considered adequate by Allosian standards.”

  “How many years?”

  That question gave Kairah pause. The answer would give away her age, and certainly lead to a new round of questioning. “Thirty.”

  Maely stopped walking and stared wide-eyed at her. “Just how old are you?”

  “It is rude in my cultural to ask such a question,” she said as she continued to stride forward.

  Maely jogged to catch up to her and said, “I’m fourteen and a half. There, now you can tell me how old you are.”

  Kairah sighed. “I would be considered eighty-nine by your reckoning.”

  “You’re almost a hundred years old?

  “It is considered just beyond the age of youth among my people.”

  “Do you live forever?” the girl asked eagerly.

  “No,” Kairah said. “Our lifespans are generally three to four hundred years. And”—she faltered at the thought of her mother—“our bodies are just as fragile as yours. We can die in accidents and be killed much like humans.”

  Maely elapsed into silence, rewarding Kairah with almost an entire hour of not having to endure relentless conversation and questioning.

  By late afternoon, the two had passed through a small forest and entered into grasslands and hill country. The setting sun in the west made it hard to see very far down the road, and so Kairah suggested that they leave the road and make camp.

  Maely readily agreed. For one so thin, she certainly did have a difficult time enduring their marathon of walking. When Kairah mentioned this, she received a tirade of scathing insults and blame for the human girl’s difficulty in keeping up. “If you weren’t so damned tall”—she had said—“you wouldn’t take such long strides, and I wouldn’t be so winded.”

  Kairah didn’t take offense. The girl was obviously anxious and found relief in expressing her angst through slander. Are all human females like this? Maybe Maely was suffering from hormonal imbalance due to her monthly menstrual cycle. Asking the girl that question had proved to be a poor decision resulting in another angry tirade.

  They ate in silence – Maely was still offended by Kairah’s questioning her menstrual hormones – and laid their bedrolls across the lumpy ground.

  Kairah laid still for a moment, listening to Maely’s instant heavy snoring, and then rolled on her back with a roll of her eyes. She didn’t like having to sleep, and nearly forgotten how – it had been decades since she needed to rejuvenate through physical rest – but as she closed her eyes, she found the darkness restful. Traveling for over two weeks and being away from an Aeose left her feeling drained, and, now reacquainted with the habit she despised, she quietly slipped into slumber.

  Kairah’s perimeter ward woke her. She crafted the spell to ignore small rodents and insects and only alert her if something the size of a dog or larger crossed the boundary. The quiet chiming, audible only to her ears, told her the intruder was large, which likely meant bandits. She prepared to touch the wind and cause a hurricane-strength gale to blast the intruder. The expenditure would bring her dangerously c
lose to depleting her Apeiron, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Kairah slowly turned her head to focus her spell on a target, but there wasn’t anyone there. She quickly sat up, looking around, but still didn’t see anyone. Fear rose inside her as the ward continued the report of an intruder she couldn’t see.

  “Maely,” she whispered urgently.

  “What?” the girl groggily responded.

  Kairah shooshed her, which only made Maely snap, “You be quiet! You’re the one talking!”

  The air in front of Kairah wavered, and something abruptly appeared out of the darkness. It was man sized and humanoid, but its scaly skin, sharp claws, and long muzzle made it clear it was no human.

  “Vorakk!” Maely screamed.

  At the same time, Kairah siphoned Apeiron from her core and used it to seize the air. A sudden blast of wind exploded from her outstretched hand and slammed into the surprised lizard-man, lifting him off the ground and hurling him several yards.

  Kairah quickly stood and began moving toward the creature. A scream from Maely turned her back to see another figure approaching. This one was human, but portly with white hair.

  “Wait!” he called as he raised his hands defensively. “I’m unarmed.”

  Kairah looked back at the Vorakk, who had risen and settled into a crouch, forked tongue rapidly tasting the air as it hissed angrily.

  “Karak!” the man called.

  The man’s voice relaxed the lizard, and he stood, raising his hands to show they were empty.

  “What do you want?” Maely said as she backed into Kairah.

  “Reka why sorceress and human girl follow?”

  “We were not following you,” Kairah said in a tightly controlled voice. She had enough energy for one, maybe two more blasts of wind.

  “I’ve seen you!” the man abruptly said.

  Kairah glanced over her shoulder to see him pointing at Maely. “You came to see Jekaran when he was locked up.”

  “How did you,” Maely began, then recognition washed over her face. “You were with Jek in that jail!”

  “Karak, I don’t think they were following us,” the man called out to the Vorakk. “I think we’re all looking for Jekaran.”

  Jekaran was miserable. Not only was he now a prisoner of the man that he hated, but his legs ached, it was raining, the ground was muddy, and he was developing a sniffle. As painful as all of these things were, the loss of his sword somehow felt worse. He groaned softly, careful not to let the guards hear him. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  The sword called to him, making the pain burn inside him even more. Didn’t think that was possible. He hadn’t exactly lost it; he could feel it only a hundred or so feet in front of him, inside the lockbox which was buried in the back of a bullock-drawn wagon which was dragging him down the road. It had been taken from him—again. And there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  Jekaran lifted his chained hands to wipe a strand of wet black hair from his eyes and slipped. He fell, his face buried in the road as he breathed in the mud, scrambling with his cuffed hands to stand, and slipped again. He struggled to breathe, unable to catch a breath as he skidded across the ground. I’m going to die like this.

  A hand grabbed the neckline of his robe and lifted him to his feet. “Next time I’ll let you drown in the mud, brother Ulan,” said the mercenary that had been Jekaran’s original escort, a man named Hort.

  Jekaran coughed violently, spitting mud from his mouth. “Maybe you should have,” he finally said.

  Hort chuckled darkly. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But I like you, monk.”

  “I’m not really a monk,” Jekaran coughed again.

  “I know that,” Hort said. “But it’s always how I’ll remember you.”

  “Thanks,” Jekaran said sardonically.

  “You know,” Hort said as he resumed walking. “If I wasn’t employed by your lord, I would’ve gladly helped you steal whatever is in that box.”

  The thought of someone else claiming his sword invoked a sharp explosion of jealousy from within Jekaran and he snapped, “No!”

  Hort looked surprised. “No need to get angry,” he said in a mildly offended tone. “I was just saying that I don’t judge you wrong for thieving. I’ve done a fair bit of it in my day.”

  Jekaran nodded sheepishly, embarrassment now capping his mountain of miseries.

  “I’ll make sure you get a chance to wash up at our next stop.” He laughed and clapped Jekaran on the back. “Which with as often as your lord stops to piss, shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

  Hort walked ahead to confer with one of his fellow mercenaries.

  The rain poured over his face and washed away the mud. Jekaran looked down the front of his robe—Irvis’ robe—and saw it caked from neck to hem. If he ever got out of this mess, he was going to owe Irvis another cloak. He reached up again to wipe the mud-soaked hair from his face.

  Irvis and Karak.

  Where did those two go? He didn’t think either of the men would just abandon him, Irvis having ties to his family and Karak believing Jekaran was the fulfillment of some Vorakk prophecy. He wiped his eyes again with tethered hands and then cast a glance over his shoulder. The road behind wound over a brush-covered plain until it disappeared into a distant forest. He looked down at the muddy ground. The grass had gotten sparser over the course of the day’s travel making the ground rockier and, consequently, muddier.

  They were nearing the western rock lands where Gymal hoped to discover another Apeira well for the King.

  What’s he going to do with me then? Keep me chained to a picket line with all the ghern? Jekaran wondered.

  It was worse than that.

  After another night of camping, they reached the rock lands late the next afternoon. Gymal’s dousing stone led him to a rocky monolith half jutting out of a large sandstone wall. After doing several control dousings to ascertain the best point to start digging, one of Gymal’s men handed Jekaran a pickaxe and ordered him to start swinging at the rock. The task would’ve been difficult enough if iron manacles had not chained his hands together. With them, it was painfully exhausting. He had to learn to swing the pick high over his head to get enough momentum for an effective blow. Even when he did it right, the rock only yielded about half of the time.

  Laughter erupted from Gymal and the soldiers when once Jekaran forgot himself and swung the pick up over his right shoulder, causing the chain tethering his manacles to draw taut and break his grip on the pick’s handle. The tool struck him on the shoulder on its way to the ground, doing only superficial damage, but severely wounding what was left of his pride.

  Blessed dusk came, and when Jekaran could no longer see his target well enough to be effective, Gymal ordered him to stop. He dropped the pickaxe, sat down on the rocky ground, and was handed a cup of water. The relief of it was the sweetest thing he ever tasted.

  Until Gymal reminded him that he would spend the entire next day doing what he had just done for only three hours. The man then did something that Jekaran hadn’t expected. He drew a rod from his pocket. It was clearly a talis, as the end was capped by an amethyst-colored stone. The other end of the rod had a thin point like a needle. Jekaran started as Gymal leaned down, grabbed him by the hair to shove his head forward, and pricked the back of his neck with the needle end of the talis. Jekaran yelped, but was too exhausted to make a fight of it and he hadn’t needed to, for Gymal withdrew the needle as quickly as he had jabbed it into him.

  He let go of Jekaran’s hair and said, “Just in case you try to slip away. And you’ll eat when everyone else is done, if there’s any left, so don’t think to beg.” Then he walked away chuckling.

  What was that about?

  Jekaran groaned and lay down on the rocky ground—he could only lie on his side because of his manacles—and tried to ignore the enticing smell of stew wafting over to him from the cook fire.

  An hour passed with Jekaran lying on the ground, muscles stiff ben
eath him. He had slipped into a half-sleep when the sounds of someone approaching him startled him to full wakefulness. Booted feet invaded his field of vision and he craned his stiff neck up just enough to see Vestus kneel in front of him, a dented tin bowl in the man’s right hand.

  “Ah, Jek,” Vestus said in a tone that reminded Jekaran of how people talked at funerals. “What’ve you gotten yourself into?”

  Jekaran groaned as he sat up. “That for me?” he asked.

  Vestus nodded and handed him the bowl. Jekaran didn’t wait for Vestus to offer a spoon, but tipped the bowl into his mouth and slurped the stew so quickly he started choking on it. Vestus slapped him on the back as he coughed and took the bowl from him so he wouldn’t drop it.

  “Careful, now,” he said.

  Jekaran nodded, trying not to cough and hoping Vestus didn’t think his watering eyes were tears. “I’m ok,” he said in a hoarse voice. He raised his tethered hands to stop Vestus from pounding on his back.

  Vestus nodded. “I’m sorry it ain’t warmer. Gymal hung around to make sure no one fed ya first.”

  Jekaran nodded his thanks as he picked up the bowl and resumed slurping his dinner.

  “We heard that you were locked up in Rasha. Did they let you out?”

  Jekaran shook his head, a motion that almost caused him to choke a second time as he attempted it while drinking.

  Vestus looked confused. “If ya escaped, then why come after us? Why not run?”

  Jekaran finished the bowl of stew and dropped the tin bowl to the ground. “Gymal has something of mine,” he said. “I want it back.”

  “What is it?”

  Jekaran stared at him for a long moment, worried that if he told him, Vestus would want the sword for himself. “It’s better that you not know.”

  Vestus nodded thoughtfully. “You’re in deep ghern muck, Jekaran. Gymal plans to see you get what he thinks you deserve.”

  “Hanging?”

  Vestus shrugged. “He didn’t get into specifics. But I’m sure it’s something like that.”