The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Because Maely had been uncharacteristically quiet for the first day of their trip—unless he became engrossed in conversation with Kairah, then she became obnoxious and rude, Jekaran took to testing the sword’s intelligence. He tried asking it direct questions, trying to illicit a response in words, like back in Gymal’s camp, but so far it had yet to do so. He asked who created it, or where it came from. Wordless impressions of sincere ignorance were his only answer.

  Jekaran decided to take a different approach and asked the sword more mundane questions. What’s your favorite time of day? Was it aware of color, and if so which was its favorite? The first question invoked an impression of confusion, the second surprised Jekaran, the question repeated back to him. Jekaran answered that he liked blue. The sword then replied with an impression that it liked the same color as its master. But still no words.

  I’m your master? Jekaran thought in surprise.

  Yes.

  Weren’t you the one trying to control me? he asked.

  The sword didn’t understand. I serve.

  Do you remember things?

  The sword answered in the affirmative.

  That intrigued Jekaran. Do you recall events before you joined with me?

  It seemed to not understand the concept of any time before the two had linked in Rasha, and that surprised him.

  Odd, he thought. Do you lose your memories when you lose your Apeiron charge, or do you start anew with every new host?

  Again, the sword seemed confused by the questions.

  By the end of the second day, they reached the coast, and a small fishing village. Mae’s bad temper suspended as she caught sight of the ocean extending endlessly to the west. They stopped for supplies, and, while Jekaran and Kairah bargained with the merchants, she ran to the village’s single dock for an up close view of the infinite water.

  With supplies secured to the gherns, Jekaran headed to the docks to retrieve Mae. He chuckled as he saw her, standing on the edge of the pier, frozen except for her cropped hair playing with the breeze. Mae seemed to age backward there, her eyes as bright and wide as a small girl.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked him as he walked to stand beside her.

  Jekaran stared out over the blue expanse and studied the slowly churning waves and foam. “It makes me feel very small,” he answered.

  “Do you think this is the ocean that humans sailed on to get to here?”

  Jekaran shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Suddenly Mae asked him, “Did you know the world was round?”

  “What?”

  “Round,” she repeated. “Kairah told me the world was round and not flat.”

  Jekaran stared into the ocean as it stretched on. “I think she might’ve been teasing you, Mae.”

  That earned him an elbow to the ribs and he doubled over.

  “I’m not stupid, Jekaran.”

  “Okay,” he wheezed. “The world’s round.”

  They stood on the dock, watching the waves rhythmically reach up onto the beach before retreating until the sun began to dip toward the horizon.

  “Come on, Mae, we only have a couple of hours of daylight left, and we should probably move away from here so no one gets suspicious of Kairah. Besides, Karak is waiting for us outside of town.”

  Maely slowly nodded, turned from the picturesque view, and began striding back toward the center of the village. Jekaran started to follow, but stopped as something occurred to him. He leapt over the left side of the pier and landed in the squishy sand just above the tide line.

  “Jek?” he heard Mae call. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He scanned the beach without answering her. It took a moment, but he was able to find a shell. He leaned over and scooped it up, then jogged up the beach to meet Maely on the village-side of the pier.

  He extended his hand out to show her the pink, palm-sized shell. “I promised Mull that if I got to see the ocean, I’d bring him back something.” Jekaran laughed. “He wanted a shark.” Maely laughed, and Jekaran was glad to avoid another elbow to the ribs.

  They rode out of the small fishing village and returned to the road where the Vorakk shaman rejoined them. The four of them traveled through dusk and didn’t stop to rest until twilight. After a hurried dinner of dried pork and soft bread, they went to sleep without a fire, Karak not wanting to risk attracting human attention.

  Jekaran noticed the usually unflappable lizard man seemed exceptionally anxious around groups of humans. Well, Jekaran couldn’t blame him. After all, he had tried to kill Karak upon first meeting him.

  He wondered if the Vorakk got that reaction a lot, and if they had any official dealings with humans.

  The third day led the party past the ruins of an ancient tower. Although most of its top was missing, the base was nearly the entire size of Genra, which hinted the structure must’ve been tall, very tall. Kairah seemed particularly interested in the ruins, and they had left the road for a few hours so that she could tour and study them. It turned out the tower had been built by her people hundreds of years prior to even the arrival of the humans in Shaelar. She even claimed to know the name of the tower, something Jekaran couldn’t properly pronounce and definitely did not remember.

  When Jekaran asked how tall the tower had been, Kairah said it had likely reached over three thousand feet into the sky. It had taken a while for him to wrap his head around the concept, as Jekaran had never seen any building rise higher than a hundred feet, and that had been in Rasha.

  Maely grew bored with the ruins and wandered off, looking for a river or lake she could bathe in. She had been complaining ever since they left the rock lands that the ghern’s smell was sticking to her. It made her gag, and Jekaran took every opportunity to tease her about it, asking, “Do you smell ghern?”

  She’d respond with a frosty star and often physical harm, except once when he joked she smelled so much like ghern that he should be able to ride her. For some reason, she blushed at that and fell silent.

  Girls were strange.

  With Maely off looking for a bath, Jekaran had a rare opportunity to be alone with Kairah, and he was going to take full advantage of it. Irvis passed through his thoughts.

  Not his kind of advantage, he thought with a shudder.

  Jekaran did want to get to know her, though.

  Beyond the physical perfection she personified and the exotic appeal of her hair and eyes, Jekaran felt drawn to her on an emotional level. Her touching his mind had done more than just give him a diagnosis of his bond with the sword. The contact had been an intimate thing, and Jekaran hadn’t been able to forget the feeling of taking in the entirety of her being all at once. He felt a profound closeness to her since then and wanted to know if their mental contact had the same effect on her.

  He found her examining some etchings on a weathered and half-crumbled wall. “What do they say?” he asked, instantly worried that she would be annoyed at his interrupting her.

  She looked away from the wall and directly into his eyes. She always did that, he realized, whenever she talked to him. Did it mean something?

  “It is a poem meant to commemorate an event in history I am unfamiliar with.” She turned back to study the etchings.

  “Can you read it to me?” What are you, Jekaran, a child demanding a story? he scolded himself.

  Kairah glanced at him and flashed a smile that made his chest tighten. “It is about two lovers from opposing kingdoms.”

  “Allosians had different kingdoms? I thought your people were united.”

  “We were not always as mature as we are now. In fact, once we were not so different from you humans in our struggles against each other for power.”

  For some reason, her use of the term you humans stung.

  She continued. “The poem may lose some of its meaning in translation, but this is what it says:

  “Two worlds, but one heart,

  opposites that are one.

  Can fire love ice?


  Can the dark love the dawn?

  So were the two lovers,

  a prince and princess opposed.

  Yet in the secret midnight of a garden,

  their love could freely flow.

  Yet the universe is balance,

  and fate would have her due.

  Their love would bring destruction,

  and end the worlds each knew.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a happy ending,” Jekaran said.

  “It is not a fiction. It is true, and truth can sometimes be cruel.” She turned to face him. She was as tall as he was, but it only added to her beauty. “You must come with me to the capital.”

  Why was she asking him this? Was there anything more to it than just needing help for her quest? Oh, how he longed to go. “Kairah, I want to. I really do, but—”

  “—you will come with me,” Kairah said with an authority that surprised Jekaran. It wasn’t a demand, but more as though she were stating a simple fact. Something she knew simply would be.

  “Jekaran!” Maely appeared as if out of nowhere. “We need to get moving. I need a bath, and there isn’t any water larger than a puddle in these parts.”

  Jekaran stared into Kairah’s eyes as long as he could and was encouraged when she stared back. It was like waking from a deep comfortable sleep when Maely towed him away.

  It was on the fourth day of travel that they caught their first sight of Imaris. The city began on flat ground, but sloped downward toward the sea. It was walled on all sides, save the west, where its ship docks were located. Even being several miles away, Jekaran could see the tall masts of sailing ships rising high into the sky.

  In late afternoon, they entered the city gates. The coastal city was so much more than he ever dreamed, and Jekaran stared wide-eyed at the sailing ships the size of buildings, captivated by their masses. Mae cleared her throat behind him, breaking into his wonderment, and he realized his jaw hung open like an invitation for flying things. He snapped it shut, tightening his jaw. He knew he was a farm boy, but he didn’t want to look like one.

  “Golden womb of the goddess, Jek!” swore Maely.

  “What?” He turned to find her glaring daggers at him.

  “You’re not doing it!”

  Jekaran was supposed to be counting backward from one thousand by increments of three. He had lost track of where he was somewhere after seven seventy-eight and stopped.

  The counting was one of Kairah’s exercises, the Allosian woman claimed it developed one’s ability to hold focus. “That was the very first thing those who bore ego talises learned,” she had told him. “Holding focus was like lifting something heavy,” she had said. “And just as repeatedly lifting heavy objects worked muscles and built up strength, so counting worked the mind and increased one’s ability to focus.”

  “I’m sorry, Mae.” It came out sounding petulant.

  “You need to take this seriously!” she scolded.

  “I am.” Jekaran waved at the large sea vessels. “I’ve just never seen real ships like these. Did you see the mast on that one?” He pointed to a particularly large ship. “It’s gotta be a hundred feet tall. Divine Mother, but I’d love to sail on one of those.”

  “And where would you go?” she asked flatly.

  “Anywhere!” Jekaran spread his arms.

  “Maely is correct,” Kairah said. She was walking a few paces in front of them with the hood drawn up again to avoid stares from passing sailors.

  Well, they were staring anyway at her perfect figure. Jekaran just didn’t want any of the men to realize she wasn’t human.

  “You are in danger of losing yourself again until you discipline your mind.”

  “See!” Maely taunted.

  Out of reflex, Jekaran was about to appeal to Karak to support his point, but then remembered the Vorakk shaman wasn’t with them. He had opted to stay outside of Imaris until dark.

  While, he said, some Vorakk walked openly among men, he had never done so, and wasn’t about to start.

  Apparently, a relative of his—Jekaran couldn’t remember if had been an uncle or a cousin—had lived a long happy life, until meeting his end the first time he entered a human city. Consequently, the plan was to send for him once they found suitable lodgings at which time he would veil himself and sneak into the city.

  Money was not an issue with Kairah, for no sooner had she asked what to look for in their lodging then Maely began to list the luxuries and characteristics she expected Kairah to pay for. Brass bathtubs with hot water, absolutely no dancing girls or waitresses with low-cut blouses, a common room that served pudding, and finally, beds stuffed with feathers instead of straw.

  Jekaran rolled his eyes at the haughty demands, and the search took a little longer than it might otherwise have, but eventually they found an inn that Maely approved of.

  The Rose’s Thorn was the finest establishment Jekaran had ever dared to enter. The common room was almost as large as a dancing hall and had no less than three different minstrels taking requests from an enthusiastic crowd. The drapes looked woven from expensive silks, and all of the bustling serving girls wore clean and neat uniforms. Jekaran hadn’t objected to Maely’s choice because—well, she would be angry—and he knew Kairah would blend better in a more expensive inn. They paid for two rooms, one for Kairah and Maely, and the other for Jekaran and Karak.

  It wasn’t long after sunset when something the size of a bug began to pester Jekaran as he dozed in one of his room’s plush armchairs. He was about to swat at it and then realized Karak sent a spirit ball to find him. Through it, he told Karak how to find their inn, and which room he was staying in. Kairah had left Jekaran with enough money to order ham for himself and a large, meaty drumstick which he had waiting for Karak.

  The lizard man startled Jekaran when he came in through the window, an outside climb of over twenty feet. He gladly tore into the drumstick, stripping the flesh from the bone and even breaking the bone to suck out the marrow. After the meal, Karak curled up next to the hearth where Jekaran had built a small fire. The sight of the Vorakk shaman sleeping made Jekaran think of a giant reptilian dog. He laughed at the thought, stripped to the waist, kicked off his boots, and climbed into bed.

  After life on the road for a month, sleeping in a bed felt wonderful. Maybe Mae had been right to demand the feather-stuffed mattresses, was his last thought before sleep took him.

  The steaming bath water was perfect. Not so hot that it scalded Maely, but hot enough that it took her a moment to adjust to the temperature. She sat back and closed her eyes, savoring the deliciousness as the water relaxed her muscles and washed away a month’s worth of dirt and grime. Even breathing in the steam felt good.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to have the serving girls fill the other tub?” Maely asked with her eyes still closed. “Who knows when you’ll get another chance for a bath?”

  “I am clean,” Kairah said dispassionately.

  “Baths aren’t just for cleansing the body,” Maely said as she sank down. “They’re also for cleansing the soul.”

  “My soul is clean,” Kairah said in the same tone.

  Maely opened her eyes and looked through an open door at the Allosian woman sitting on the bed in the next room. She was brushing her hair, not that it ever needed brushing. For some reason it always looked smooth, full, and never out of place. Maely hated that about her, among other things. Why did Rasheera bestow such perfection on the woman? Were all Allosians as beautiful as Kairah?

  “Kairah” Maely began.

  “Yes?”

  “What happens if you run out of Apeiron?” The question had been born in Maely’s mind hours ago when they first arrived in Imaris. Kairah had been expecting the city to be built around an Apeira well like most other human cities, but, to her dismay, it didn’t have one. While she had said she would be fine, Maely had caught a bit of worry in the woman’s voice.

  She smiled to herself. Although Kairah always carefully controlled
her emotions, the time Maely was spending with her taught her how to recognize the subtle changes in the woman’s tone for anger, sadness, or fear.

  “It has never happened to me,” Kairah answered.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Kairah sighed. “I am beginning to think that, even by human standards, your manners are poor.”

  “You’re lucky I’m feeling so good right now, otherwise I’d give you a tongue lashing you wouldn’t ever forget.”

  Kairah remained silent.

  “Well?”

  Kairah stood from the bed and walked into the bath chamber. Surprised, Maely slid down and crossed her arms over her breasts. “Hey!”

  She arched an eyebrow and then turned to the side so that she wasn’t looking at Maely. “Allosians draw their power from Apeiron, much the same way talises do. The difference is that while talises only use Apeiron to power their spells, we use Apeiron to sustain our bodies.”

  Maely rose up a bit and uncrossed herself. “I thought you said that you can live off of food and sleep, like humans.”

  Kairah nodded. “We can and we do. But we always have some Apeiron within us, even if it is but a small amount.”

  “Can you lose that?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “If I took my spell-casting too far, or spent too much time away from a well, my store of energy could deplete to nothing.”

  “Then what?”

  Kairah hesitated for a long moment before finally saying, “Then I would die.”

  “Die?” Maely abruptly sat forward, water sloshing against the side of the brass tub. “For good?”

  She turned back toward her. “That is what death is, is it not? The end of life?”

  Maely slid down again to cover herself, but didn’t let that rile her. “How do you know when you’re running low?”