The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Raelen watched his father proffer the sword to the tall, robed polymath. “Make it your priority to study this talis. I wish to know how it operates as soon as possible.” Loeadon took the sword and stepped back, examining the talis with a professional look as he ran one finger along the flat of the blade.

  “As for you, Lord Gymal,” the king said. “You shall be rewarded for your service to the crown with a public commendation and a feast held tomorrow night in your honor. Until then you shall be my guest, and lodge here in the palace.”

  “Th-thank you, King Taris,” the man stammered.

  “Raelen, please escort Lord Gymal to one of the suites on the upper level.”

  “And what of this boy?” Raelen was surprised to hear Lord Gymal ask.

  The king pointed at one of Raelen’s personal guards. He knew the man would obey this command without needing leave from him. “Take the boy to the dungeons.”

  “For what crime?” Raelen blurted out.

  The storm behind the king’s eyes was back. Whatever capital of approval he had gained with his father was just squandered. “Did he not wield a weapon talis?”

  “But it was at the behest of the Allosian woman,” Raelen countered.

  “And that is why I will not execute him,” the king said.

  “But he was only complying with the request of the fey woman to protect and defend her.”

  “Our laws are not subject to Allosian trifling!” Raelen’s father snapped. “This peasant committed a crime, and therefore he must be punished!”

  Raelen’s guard was already escorting the boy towards a side exit. “But surely Father– ”

  “I will hear no more of this!” the king had actually raised his voice.

  That was the warning that he’d gone too far, so Raelen fell silent and nodded acceptance of his father’s will. He turned to watch the boy being taken from the throne room. He was shaking his head and muttering, but it wasn’t at Raelen’s guard. Poor lunatic. Raelen glanced at Lord Gymal’s face. The man had turned pale and looked on the edge of vomiting. That was odd. Hadn’t he brought the boy to them in chains? Why was he surprised to see him committed to prison? Why did he care for that matter? Raelen didn’t know, but at the moment he could sympathize with Lord Gymal. His father’s condemnation of a naïve farm boy for getting pulled into magic and politics made Raelen feel just as ill.

  Not Seiro.

  Jenoc watched the boy–Jekaran–be taken from the room. Once the boy was gone, he slowly breathed out the tension that had been building in his head–another headache? He had been certain the boy was going to tap the sword and strike back, but he hadn’t. Why hadn’t he? Curious though it was, Jenoc inwardly smiled at the remarkable stroke of good fortune. For if the child had wanted, he could’ve thrown the king’s court into chaos, and Jenoc would’ve likely been forced to spell-cast in order to stop him. He needed King Taris alive and would’ve been forced to protect him. It very well could’ve ruined his plans. A stroke of good fortune, indeed.

  Of course, had the king decided to imprison Kairah, Jenoc would’ve slain every human in the throne room, the secrecy of his plans be damned. He would never allow this human vermin do to her what they had done to his mother.

  At least for now Kairah was safe. But why did she still slumber? Jenoc could feel the Apeiron flowing into her, and knew that whatever injury she’d suffered to her body had been healed. It worried him. Still, Kairah was alive, and according to his senses, healthy. Having her here in the palace would make it easy for him to watch over her. However, it would be a problem when she finally did wake. She would be able to see his Apeiron aura as he cast from the Fourth Discipline to disguise himself; she would be able to unmask him.

  That only means I need to work quickly. He could do it before she awoke. And then, once things were in motion, not even Kairah could stop the war. It would come. He would ensure that it came.

  Jekaran stumbled and fell to his knees. Before he could even turn back to reward the guard with a scathing remark, he heard the barred door swing shut with the pained screaming of rusty hinges. It thudded against the lock bar with a dull clang. The guard was already a dozen paces down the dungeon aisle when Jekaran scrambled to his feet and called out, “Thank you,” the words dripping with sarcasm. The only response he received was the angry complaints and mocking of the unseen occupants of neighboring cells.

  Jekaran sank back down to his knees, hands sliding down the black iron bars. This cell was more like a cave than the one in Rasha. It was little more than a deep alcove carved into the stone with a swinging barred door covering an arched opening. There was also no hay or even a piss bucket. Prisoner comfort was definitely not a concern of the jailer here.

  Great, I can compare prison cells. He sighed and let go of the bars. Well at least he wouldn’t have to worry about execution. Still, the prospect of freedom dangling so close to his reach, only to be pulled away like a lure on a fishing line was heart wrenching. Even if the king let me go, I wouldn’t be free. Not while I’m bonded to you!

  The sword didn’t reply, but Jekaran could feel its hurt confusion. For some reason that infuriated him. Don’t pretend this is my fault he mentally shouted.

  It is.

  Jekaran clenched his jaw and only remembered at the last minute not to speak to the sword out loud. Really? And how’s that?

  If you would only let me take control of our bond, I could free us both. We wouldn’t have to remain here.

  I’ll sprout chicken’s wings and a pig’s tail before I let that happen again!

  I don’t understand why you will not let me fight for you, the sword said.

  Jekaran exasperation in its psychic tone. Why did that remind him of Maely? Because last time you got the hell beat out of me!

  The sword hesitated and Jekaran could feel another emotion emanating from it–embarrassment? The sword was embarrassed? Its emotions certainly had grown complex very quickly. To Jekaran, the sword no longer seemed a child. It was as if it were aging, growing, and maturing–all at an alarmingly fast rate.

  I didn’t know the limitations of your physical form, the sword finally said. I apologize.

  Apologize? That gave Jekaran pause.

  I have a better understanding of your capabilities now, the sword offered.

  So you want me to just let you possess me again? Jekaran scoffed.

  I did not possess you.

  “Then what would you call it?” Jekaran forgot himself and cringed when he heard his shout echo.

  “Who’re you talkin to, boy?” one of the other prisoners called from a few cells down.

  “Damned lunatic,” one of the other prisoners grumbled. “Should put your kind down, like a rabid dog. Not lock ya up in here! You best not keep us up tonight with you’re carrying on!”

  “Sorry,” Jekaran called. “I won’t,” he added weakly.

  Our bond, the sword said patiently, as though it were talking down to him–now it did sound like Maely–allows me to take control when you are incapacitated or are otherwise unable to defend yourself. Your enemy had paralyzed you with fear, and the only way to prevent your death was for me to take control. You did not understand this, and so I resisted your attempts to reassert your domination of the bond until the threats to your safety had been destroyed.

  You are the threat to my safety! When that fight was over I was burned, broken, and dazed from a knock to my head.

  I did try to heal you, the sword said.

  Jekaran froze. The sword was talking about the strange thing that happened when Jekaran beheaded Kaul. Then the sword had done something it never had before; drained the life from Kaul’s dying body and given it to him. The result had been the closing of Jekaran’s cuts, the smoothing of his charred flesh, and a wave of fresh energy invigorating him. Knowing where the power came from made him sick.

  You are a strange human, the sword said. Your fellows glory in the ability to destroy and take from their enemies, but it causes you disgust and guil
t.

  Was my uncle the same as me? Or was he like my fellows'? The question had been weighing on Jekaran’s mind ever since leaving Genra. He’d told himself it didn’t matter; Ez had changed. But the truth was, the more he understood the sword and what it made him want to do, the more he wondered just how much of a monster Argentus had been.

  All I know about your uncle is what you know about him.

  Why don’t you remember being bonded to him?

  The sword projected something that reminded Jekaran of shrugging. My first memories are of waking in Rasha and fighting those bandits with you.

  Suddenly it made sense. Losing an Apeiron charge is death for you, isn’t it?

  As it is for you.

  Jekaran scoffed. I’m not a talis. The resultant echo reminded him to keep his conversation and all of its related expressions inside his head. Humans don’t have Apeiron charges.

  Yes, you do.

  That’s when it hit him. The sword could drain Kaul’s life because it ate Apeiron, which meant that Apeiron and life must be one and the same.

  Now you understand.

  “No, I don’t!” Jekaran said aloud.

  “Shut up!” The shout echoed from one of the other prisoners.

  He ignored it. “Those emerald chips in your blade lit up when you drained Kaul’s life. I’ve never seen another talis with those. They look like shards of an Apeira well, but they’re green. What are they?”

  You don’t know a word for it, so therefore I don’t know a word for it.

  “Then show me!”

  The sword projected an idea directly into his mind. It took a moment for the concept to take shape, but when it did, the closest name Jekaran could give it was corruption. No, not corruption, he decided, but decay?

  Both words are inaccurate, but they do come close to describing the concept.

  “I still don’t get it,” Jekaran said.

  You have the same inside you.

  He froze, his blood chilling and his mouth suddenly feeling dry. What did you say?

  I said nothing, the sword reminded him.

  You know what I mean!

  You have the same corruption and decay in your blood. It is why I was able to transfer Apeiron into you and heal your wounds.

  I ate Apeiron?

  Karak’s words struck his memory like a lightning bolt: “Uska human boy go to Eater.”

  “Divine Mother,” Jekaran gasped. Panic thrilled through him, and he shut off his mental contact with the sword so completely, that he almost couldn’t feel their bond. He frantically scooted into the front corner of the cell, so he was pressed up against the bars. He drew his legs up and hugged himself as if for warmth, though it wasn’t cold. He could feel himself trembling, and he shut his eyes so tight that it hurt.

  He didn’t know exactly what the connection between Karak’s words and the sword’s description of what it did to Kaul was, but it felt significant. You have the same corruption and decay in your blood, the sword had said. Jekaran had eaten Apeiron, had eaten Kaul’s life force. Karak had called the monster he was hunting, “The Eater,” and had said Jekaran would lead him to it. Was that because he was also an “Eater” of Apeiron? An Eater of life?

  That possibility terrified him.

  Kairah stood frozen, the sight of the dead Apeira well paralyzed her and brutally twisted her heart strings. Another flash of emerald lightning lit the night sky revealing hundreds of bones strewn about the city square. The base of the well ascended from the ground like normal, but about ten feet up the shaft broke, and the rest of the obelisk lay at an angle with its top resting inside the attic of a crumbling building. But the worst part about the sight was the color of the Apeira well. It was not the soft purple that made the crystalline growth look like a giant amethyst. No, the well was green, making it look like a giant, uncut emerald.

  Kairah shook herself out of her stunned stupor and climbed three steps to a cement dais that had been poured in a circle around the base of the well. She slowly approached the well until she was close enough to see her fractured reflection in its glass-like surface. Even close up she could not feel anything radiating from it. She timidly reached out to touch it. Pain seared her finger and she yelped, pulling back her arm and stepping away from the well. Her foot landed on a skull and she lost her balance, falling backward to the ground.

  The impact expelled the wind from her lungs and she lay heaving on a bed of scattered bones until she could catch her breath. When she did, Kairah rolled onto her side and rose to her knees. She quickly examined her finger to find that it was not blackened or burnt.

  But the burning had not been one of heat. It was as if Kairah had touched a chunk of cardice. A breeze pressed against Kairah. But no, it couldn’t be a breeze, for the air in this place was abnormally still. And it wasn’t her physical senses that reported this new sensation to her; it was her core.

  She could feel a power coursing all around her, flowing toward the dead well. It was like the force of a radiating Apeira well, but in reverse. As if the well were sucking in energy instead of emitting it.

  “Impossible,” Kairah whispered. For some reason the eerie quiet of this place made her want to be as discreet as she could, as though she were trying to avoid alerting some unseen predator.

  She slowly stood, unconsciously brushing human ash from her dress. Could this energy be “the other magic?” It made sense. It felt like Apeiron, but opposite. But what was it?

  Moriora, a voice like Aeva’s whispered to her mind.

  A clap of deafening thunder startled her, setting her heart to race, and Kairah knew that she’d caught the attention of the unseen predator.

  “I’m not going to hold your hand!” Ezra snapped at Irvis. They stood just outside the door to Racheta’s Pleasure House in one of the lowbrow parts of Imaris.

  “I’d poke out my eyes, but I’m going to need them later!” Irvis huffed indignantly. The man had tied a blindfold around his face and was just finishing up knotting it at the back of his head. “Please Argentus.” His tone changed to pathetic. “For the sake of my immortal soul.”

  “Damnation, man!” Ezra spat as he reached over and gripped Irvis by the forearm.

  “Wait! What of the boy? I’d hate to know that I had a hand in corrupting his sweet, innocent mind.”

  Ezra looked over at Mulladin, who was smiling as he carefully stroked a giggling woman’s hair. She was clearly a prostitute and had congregated around him with three of her busty associates.

  “Too late,” Ezra chuckled before calling, “Mulladin!” The boy looked back at Ezra and obediently dropped his hand and turned away. The women jeered at Ezra, but he ignored them.

  Ezra looked up at a wooden sign swinging on a pole that jutted out ten feet above the building’ entrance. He took a deep breath. This could only go one of two ways, either Graelle would accept his story about Jekaran succeeding him as head of the Rikujo or she would have Ezra executed on the spot as a deserting traitor.

  He used his trick for defending against psychic attacks to calm himself. Then he stood up a little straighter and tried to remember how Argentus used to arrogantly saunter into places like this, expecting every woman in the inn to fight for his business. It disturbed him how easily it came back to him.

  Rasheera forgive me, he silently pleaded, and then threw open the doors. The brazen action stilled a room full of scantily clad girls flirting with men as they lounged or drank. They all turned to stare at the door, some looking startled, but all looking irritated.

  “I love the smell of all that perfume,” Irvis whispered, although amid the awkward silence it all but sounded like he was shouting. Ezra ignored his friend and did his best to stare down any challenging gazes. Then, to Ezra’s utter surprise, all of the girls and their prospective patrons nonchalantly returned to flirting and drinking. They didn’t recognize him.

  For some reason that stung. Makes sense. Most of these women were children when I left the Rikujo. That thought made any
small temptation to ogle the girls vanish.

  “What’s happening, Argentus?” Irvis whispered.

  Before he could reply, one of the women broke from speaking to a man at the bar and moved to greet them. She was older than the other girls, perhaps forty, and the dress she wore was a little too tight, and not in an enticing way.

  She eyed Ezra up and down and then said in a throaty voice, “Finally, a mature man. I tire of the usual boys we get.” She smiled a ruby-lipped smile. “They’re all so inexperienced. Too much in a hurry, if you know how I mean.” She chuckled knowingly as she moved in closer to Ezra.

  “What does she look like?” Irvis urgently whispered.

  “We’re not here for that,” Ezra said as much to Irvis as to the woman. “I’m looking for someone.”

  The woman reached up with chubby arms and laced her fingers around the back of Ezra’s head so that she was pressed up against him. “Well, I’d say you found someone.”

  Ezra looked down into her face and said, “Graelle.”

  The woman’s entire face changed at Ezra’s flat mention of the name and she abruptly let go of him. She took a step back and said in a tone that was not the least bit seductive, “Oh, you’re one of them.” She turned and hollered at one of the younger girls who was currently sitting in the lap of another man and playing with his moustache, “Mistiana, go tell mother that one of her cousins is her to see her.”

  “I’m with a client,” Mistiana replied in a tone of barely strained respect.

  “Not yet you aren’t!” The chubby woman snapped. “Now go!”

  Mistiana huffed and rolled her eyes as she stood and walked away, a hand going to her shoulder each time her quarter sleeve slipped down, which was almost with every step. The chubby woman turned back to face Ezra. “My name is Varin.” She paused to leer at him again and smiled as she asked, “Mother is very busy. Are you sure you don’t want to make the most of your time while you wait?”

  “Perhaps we–” Irvis began.