The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Kairah had to do something or Jekaran was going to die.

  Jekaran ducked under the golem’s next swing, spun to the creature’s left and sheared through its tree-trunk-sized leg in one smooth motion. It fell to one knee in a crash that shook the street and Jekaran jumped, raised his sword, and plunged it deep into the crystal golem’s back. The crystal golem quickly absorbed and reformed its leg and then spun to reach behind and grab Jekaran. As it did, the sword was wrenched free from its back, and it flung Jekaran to the ground. Again, he held onto his sword and leapt to his feet without showing any sign of pain at his physical damage.

  Kairah quickly assessed the situation and mentally listed her options. The only way to knock Jenoc’s avatar into the water was with winds several times greater than those in a hurricane. Kairah was certain she could not manage that with the low level of Apeiron she had remaining. However, the golem was close enough to the pier for Kairah to strike at it with seawater.

  Drawing on what energy she had left, Kairah cast a spell from the Second Discipline and raised twin pillars of salt water. They twisted and writhed as they raised high into the air. Once tall enough to reach Jenoc’s golem, Kairah threw the water forward, both columns pouring down on the titan’s back. Then, while the golem was in the midst of the deluge, Kairah froze the water into a solid block of ice, enveloping the golem to the neck and rendering it immobile.

  “Break the jewel in its head!” she shouted at Jekaran. Could he hear her? Would the sword, which was controlling Jekaran’s body, comprehend her?

  Those cold green eyes glanced at her, and then up at the amethyst jewel in the golem’s head. The talis forced Jekaran forward and he ran at the golem, leapt high into the air, and brought the sword down on the golem’s face in a stroke that nearly cleaved its head in two. An explosion of purple light shortly blinded Kairah, but when it subsided, she saw Jekaran backing away from the golem as it exploded into a rain of glass-like shards. She released the spell that held the ice in place, and it immediately returned to liquid, splashing to the ground and washing most of the glass shards into the sea.

  Maely’s shouting sounded miles away as Kairah’s vision began to darken. The last thing she saw as darkness took her sight was the frothing seawater rushing up to meet her.

  Jekaran tried to scream, but his mouth would not move. He clawed with all of his desperate fear at the bond in attempt to wrest it from the sword, but the sword refused. He was trapped in his own mind, helpless, as Kairah slumped to her right and fell off the pier.

  She would drown, and there was nothing he could do to save her.

  That thought, the thought of his never being able to see her beautiful face again, or hear her musical laugh, or breathe the intoxicating scent of her natural perfume, awoke something inside him. It was fierce, and powerful, and it focused his will.

  Those feelings that had been swirling around in his consciousness for days coalesced into something tangible. At first, he thought it just youthful lust, but his conversations with Kairah had been more stimulating than physical attraction. Her naïve innocence and her gentle determination to save a people who had all but destroyed her own won his admiration. Each morning he awoke thinking of her, and each night her face was the last thing he saw in his mind before sleep took him. Was this love? The question badgered him. He wasn’t sure he knew how to tell.

  Whatever it was, the emotion was so powerful that he could feel his will surge, rising up to snatch the bond away from the sword. It retreated to the back of his mind, making Jekaran think of a dog that had been kicked for disobedience slinking away with its tail between its legs. He could feel the sword’s confusion, and almost felt guilty.

  As control of his body returned to Jekaran, sharp pain in his arm and head twisted his insides. The sensations numbed by the sword came rushing in, and he felt as though he was standing on a riverbed, facing the full aquatic fury of a breaking dam. Jekaran fell to his knees, dropping the sword as he vomited.

  There was something wrong with his vision and thoughts that were clear a moment before abruptly became muddled. Kairah was the only thought that made any sense to him anymore. She was drowning and he had to save her.

  Then sound and light abandoned him.

  Maely didn’t think, she just reacted. She dove off the pier, nearly losing her breath as cold sea water assaulted her. The saltiness stung her eyes as she swam down toward the dark shape ahead that was slowly sinking.

  She pushed forward, gripped Kairah around the waist and began the difficult ascent to the surface. She had done this before. Three summers back when she, Jek, and Mull were spending a leisurely day at a lake, only a few miles outside of Genra. In an over-ambitious attempt to impress Jek, Mull had climbed a rocky outcropping that reached out over the lake. The height had to have been at least fifty feet, and, before Maely knew what her brother was doing, Mull leapt from his perch.

  He had dived wrong, and he hit the water belly first with a loud slap. The impact had knocked the wind from his lungs, and he had thrashed about, panicked. Maely had leapt into the water and brought him back to shore. She saved his life that day, and thanked Rasheera that swimming had been one of her favorite pastimes.

  Mulladin, I hope you’re ok, she thought as she broke the surface of the water and took a desperate breath.

  She swam to a ladder that ascended onto the pier, and with all the strength she had, Maely climbed up and pulled Kairah onto the wooden planks of the dock.

  She’s not breathing!

  She turned the woman onto her side and began pounding on her back.

  Nothing.

  Maely paused to place a hand on the top of Kairah’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat. It was there, but it was alarmingly weak.

  She jumped as Kairah suddenly vomited water, and then began to cough, the spasm lasting an eternity before she began to breathe normally.

  “Jek!” Maely called. Where was he? When she looked up, she felt a new wave of panic.

  Jekaran was lying on the ground, unconscious, his head bleeding. She glanced down at Kairah to make sure she was still breathing. Nodding at the rise and fall of Kairah’s chest, she scrambled to her feet and raced to Jekaran. She fell to her knees at his side.

  She checked his pulse as Ez had taught them, the tension escaping her shoulders when she felt it strong.

  He wasn’t dying, just badly hurt.

  The sound of metal scraping across stone behind her, and Maely looked up to see Gymal picking up the sword.

  “This is indeed a very powerful talis,” Gymal said as he ran his hands over the tiny emerald shards embedded in the blade. “With it, your peasant friend was able to take the head of that wild man with the flame talis.”

  Then Kaul was dead, Maely realized. Jekaran had killed him.

  “That belongs to Jekaran!” she shouted at the lord.

  He looked at her, and, although his mouth and chin were covered in dried blood, he managed a condescending smile. “This belongs to the king, little girl.” He looked adoringly at the sword. “My reward for delivering this to him will surely be great, perhaps even a dukedom.”

  Maely stood up, balled her fists, and took a step toward the man, realizing she was almost as tall he was. Maely was about to unleash a torrent of hot angry words peppered with the most vile curses that she knew, but Gymal turned away from her, his attention distracted.

  Gymal’s bodyguard, the soldier Jekaran called Hort, knelt down and checked Jekaran’s pulse.

  Why did he care if Jek died?

  “Divine Mother!” Gymal’s gasp made Maely turn back to look at him. The short, balding lord was crouching next to Kairah, his hand gently holding a lock of her soggy, amethyst hair.

  No! Maely thought with a stab of panic.

  Gymal stood and turned to Maely. “She’s an Allosian?”

  Maely thought about denying it, but doing so seemed foolish. It was too late. Gymal knew. “Her name is Kairah,” Maely said. “She’s badly hurt and needs an Apeira well o
r she’ll die.”

  Gymal looked again at Kairah and nodded. His face was oddly devoid of its usual smug expression. In fact, Maely thought, he almost looked concerned. Gymal leaned over and scooped up Kairah to carry her over his shoulder. For a man so short and so skinny, he was surprisingly strong.

  “I will take her to Aiested,” Gymal said. “The well there is said to radiate Apeiron to such a distance that it can power talises on ships five miles out to sea.”

  “She has an urgent message for the king,” she blurted out. Could Kairah be enough to distract Gymal from pursuing Jek? He already had the sword, and, if Maely could somehow appear to be helping the weaselly little lord, perhaps he would go and leave them alone.

  Her conscience rebuked her for being so ready to abandon Kairah, but Maely ignored it. All that mattered was saving Jekaran’s life and getting away. Let the lords and kings worry about magic and wars. In a way, wasn’t this what Kairah had wanted? And by letting Gymal take her, wasn’t she helping Kairah accomplish her mission?

  “One of her people is trying to start a new talis war between the three nations.” Maely eagerly volunteered. “She is trying to stop that from happening.”

  Gymal nodded gravely. Although the man looked the picture of sober fear, Maely suspected his thoughts centered on rewards he received for delivering an Allosian, and vital intelligence, to the king on top of a powerful weapon talis.

  Self-serving bastard, she thought, then her gut smacked her conscience. Are you not doing the very same thing? Maely smothered the screaming voice in her head.

  Her need was greater—it was!

  Gymal appeared to really look at her for the first time. “Go back to your village, little girl. Consider it your reward for being so helpful.”

  Yes! Maely inwardly exulted. He’s letting us go!

  “Bring the boy,” Gymal called to Hort.

  Panic filled Maely’s breast as Gymal’s words registered. “No!” she shouted. “You can’t take him from me!”

  Gymal ignored her and began walking toward the Queen’s Honor. Had he been planning all along to sail to the capital once he caught Jek? Hort hefted Jekaran from the ground, slung him over a shoulder, and began to follow Gymal.

  “No!” Maely cried out again. “You can’t!”

  She tried to stop Hort, but the man shoved her aside so hard she fell to the ground. Her mother’s ring. Use the ring.

  She had the power to make them leave Jekaran alone.

  She quickly reached into her dress pocket and froze. A gaping tear ran across the pocket, and she looked down to see the flesh of her fingers poking out beneath tattered cloth. The push cart. She never thought to check, in all the panic, if the ring was safe. Tears filled her eyes as Maely’s heart sank. She watched as Hort carried Jekaran up the gangplank of the ship, and the crew pulled it in as they readied to disembark.

  Maely thought she heard her conscience laughing at her, and she broke into uncontrollable sobs.

  Jenoc’s view of his sister abruptly vanished, and the psychic link tethering him to the golem snapped back as a taut rope severed. He heaved a sigh as he pressed two fingers to his right temple. In spite of being a master of the Fourth Discipline, Sensory, the effort of controlling the golem personally and communicating through it, had greatly taxed him. Although he had only been watching through the golem’s eye for a few minutes as it had chased and nearly apprehended Kairah, the effort ignited another fierce migraine.

  He was getting those a lot lately.

  Jenoc added his left hand to the effort of massaging his temples as he sagged back into his plush chair. He had spell-crafted psychic links, like trip wires, to both crystal golems so that he would know the very moment they had found his sister, and it had worked. They had been like ever-present, nagging lights in the back of his mind, aggravating his migraines.

  It had been one of those links that had alerted him less than a half an hour ago of the automaton’s find. But he didn’t have that to worry about any longer. The light disappeared when the boy shattered the golem’s Aeose.

  And, strangely, the light in his mind representing the other crystal golem had gone dark a few days earlier.

  The one that I sent to the east.

  That would only happen if the talis had either lost its charge or been destroyed. And since the humans did not possess the means to destroy such a powerful talis on their own, Jenoc assumed—odd as it was—that it had somehow lost its Apeiron charge.

  I will have to send someone to retrieve it. He sighed again. It almost didn’t matter. Sending it after his sister was no longer an option.

  Kairah proved more resourceful than Jenoc would’ve guessed, even going so far as to employ that human boy with the green eyes to provide martial protection. He had possessed a weapon talis, a very powerful one the likes of which Jenoc had not before seen. Even with such a formidable protector, Kairah had to realize just how out of her element she was.

  Jenoc sincerely hoped it was only a matter of time before she gave up her quest and returned home.

  After several minutes, the throbbing pain behind Jenoc’s eyes eased and he was able to stand. He made his way over to a crystalline desk where a small, disc-shaped talis rested flat on the glass desktop. Jenoc touched the disc, and a translucent three-dimensional map materialized in the air before him. The floating image depicted a map of Shaelar, specifically the kingdom of Aiestal, the very country Kairah had fled to.

  It hadn’t originally been Jenoc’s first target. He had been planning on going to Haeshala first, they being the most war-like humans in all of Shaelar. As such, they would be less suspicious of his offer, their violent hubris blinding them to all else. And once Haeshala launched an attack on its neighbors, Jenoc would have an easier time convincing the other two human nations, Aiestal and Maeis Tol, to go to war.

  That was going to have to change now. As unlikely as it was to happen, should Kairah actually manage to warn Aiestal’s king of his plan, it could unravel everything. He rubbed his temples again, although they no longer hurt.

  He would have to go to Aiestal first. He had, of course, been to all three nations many times in different disguises in order to prime their rulers to accept his offer, but now it was time to begin his efforts in earnest.

  Now it was time to give the humans the tools they would need to destroy each other.

  Jenoc touched the floating image and it zoomed in until it showed a larger view of an enormous city. It was Aiested, the capital city of Aiestal. Jenoc estimated a populace of over a million humans inhabiting the ruins of the ancient Allosian city,Taris.

  He scoffed as he wondered just how many of the vermin even knew their city was stolen from his people. Taris had been great in its day, built around an Apeiron well second only in size to the Mother Shard. Its fall to the human conquerors had signaled that the Allosians had lost the war; it was the turning point that led his people to retreat into hiding. They had taken as many of their books and talises as possible before fleeing Taris, the grand Aeose falling into the hands of those who were wholly unworthy of it.

  Anger began to stir inside Jenoc, but he quickly tamped it down. No, he reminded himself, this is not personal. He was a junior master of the college, and because of his talent and achievement, everyone knew he would, one day, be appointed to the Synod, perhaps even becoming Speaker. Professionals like him did not allow emotion to factor into their decisions. His plan for the humans was necessary in order to prevent the end of Allosian civilization, nothing more than a doctor killing an infection to preserve the life of his patient.

  This is not personal.

  Still, there were those who already believed Jenoc was acting out of personal prejudice. Elder Harad had all but accused him of it when he presented his arguments to the Synod. The anger stirred again, a hungry thing that demanded Jenoc feed it with his memories. One memory in particular suddenly surfaced in his mind, a still image of his mother’s lifeless body lying naked and broken on the dirt floor of a lo
g cabin. He squinted his eyes shut against another threatening migraine. Another image came unbidden to the forefront of his thoughts, and he saw his father’s headless corpse bent over, kneeling in a prostrate position, as though he were praying.

  Jenoc had been young, not quite a man, when his parents were killed. Slaughtered not by highwaymen or soldiers, but by a mob of human villagers, whipped into a frenzy because they had discovered they had been deceived.

  Jenoc lost control of his anger and abruptly stood, hands gripping his crystalline desk and flipping the entire thing over, dumping the map talis onto the floor where it shattered into a dozen pieces.

  Even before the desk and talis completely shattered, Jenoc rallied his emotional discipline to force back his rage. After a moment of carefully controlled breathing, he felt control return. Shame quickly followed, renewing the intensity of his throbbing migraine. Right hand pinching the bridge of his nose, Jenoc stumbled back to his lounge chair and collapsed.

  It took the better part of an hour for the headache to pass.

  When had they started coming so frequently? he wondered. Worry sparked as a possibility occurred to him. The headaches had started increasing about the same time he attempted to open a doorway to “the other magic.” He scolded himself for using the folklore name for it, but he really didn’t know what else to call it.

  The experiment proved to be a failure, but could his attempt have damaged him somehow? Spells going awry and causing damage were not unheard of, but usually the negative effects were obvious and instantaneous. No, he shook off the worry it is the increased stress, nothing more. He had never heard of damage occurring as a lingering effect, like a brain injury, and, besides, he had been fretting over Kairah’s departure. And the task that weighed upon him would naturally evoke some physiological reaction.

  He waited a few more minutes, and then rose from his chair to make his way toward his bedchamber. He strode through the door and tossed open an ivory wardrobe closet and began collecting articles of clothing and other necessaries.