The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  “You know Trous?”

  Irvis nodded. “I dealt with all of the Rikujo lords when I was bookkeeper–a great deal more than Argentus did. Because I wasn’t intimidating or a political rival like him, they didn’t bother to make any pretenses when dealing with me. It gave me the opportunity to observe their real characters. So I knew that in spite of his reputation for chivalry, Trous is one of the worst ruthless, back-stabbing bastards in all of Shaelar. That paired with the sincere warning you gave us–well, let’s just say I’m good at reading people.”

  “If you knew what I was doing, then why didn’t you tell Argentus?”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t certain. And…” The chubby monk looked at the ground. “I think I’m in love with you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true!” Irvis looked up and took a quick step forward. “I love you!”

  “This is a trick!” Graelle trained the concussion rod so that it targeted the monk’s chest.

  “You won’t hurt me, Graelle,” Irvis said confidently and then took another step.

  “You don’t think so?” Graelle aimed the rod at the open window behind Irvis and released a bolt of invisible force. The air rippled and the glass exploded out into the night.

  Irvis jumped, and his eyes widened, but the determination in his face remained.

  “Next time it’ll be your head!”

  “No, I don’t think so, my lady.” He took another step forward. “You don’t have it in you. I watched you through the window, sitting on the edge of your bed–”

  “You were watching me?” Graelle wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  Irvis continued talking as though she hadn’t said anything. “Your face betrays the shame you feel.”

  He couldn’t have known that just by watching her. Does he have a mind reading talis? “You don’t know me!” Graelle sobbed, and she was shocked to feel tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Irvis flashed a gentle smile. “But I do.”

  “Get back!” She raised her concussion rod so that it was aimed at Irvis’ head. “I’ve killed before!” Graelle struggled to summon her steel, but it wouldn’t come. There was something about that round face smiling at her that had broken through her defenses.

  “I believe it.” Irvis stepped up to her and gently pushed her arm down. “But that’s not who you are.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” he said slowly and now he was standing so close that she could feel his breath, “from the moment I first laid eyes on you, I knew you were like me–broken.”

  He must have a psychic talis!

  Then, before she could say anything else, Irvis bent down and kissed her. The concussion rod clattered to the floor and to Graelle’s utter surprise, she found herself kissing him back.

  Ezra had retreated from the window and pulled his plush armchair over to the hearth fire. Though he wasn’t really cold, the heat was somehow comforting. Mulladin must’ve felt the same way because he’d sat on the floor next to Ezra’s chair, and was staring at the dancing flames as though he were hypnotized.

  One of Trous’ lieutenants had just checked in on them, warning Ezra to prepare for their duel, which would start within the hour. He ran his fingers through his wispy, unruly hair. He wasn’t afraid, not anymore. Instead, he was overwhelmed with a crushing sorrow. He shouldn’t be surprised it would end this way. In fact, he was beginning to think it a fitting punishment for him, one full of irony and poetic justice.

  “Adventure is the lure of fools, and excitement glamour to the gullible,” he said softly and on his periphery he saw Mulladin look up at him. “The siren song of the world is as music to the wanderer’s feet.”

  Images of that night when he’d wantonly killed dozens of people surfaced in his mind, and he pushed them back down. There was something to those memories, something wrong. Of course there was something wrong, the whole event was a horrendous blot on his soul, but that explanation seemed insufficient. It was almost as if there was something buried beneath those memories, something Ezra recognized, but desperately worked to ignore.

  “But that dance leads only to the soul-less grave,” he finished quietly.

  “I like that poem,” Mulladin declared.

  “That’s not all of it,” Ezra admitted. “I told that first part to Jekaran, to warn him against looking for excitement and thrills. I didn’t tell him how it ends.” He looked at Mulladin, who was staring expectantly at him. “You want to hear it?”

  Mulladin nodded his head vigorously.

  “Okay,” Ezra chuckled in spite of himself. “But closely resemble they one another, both heroes and fools at first, and it’s only at the fork of destiny’s road that the truth will at last emerge. For while the fool always looks to his own regard, the hero for others is aware. And will suffer and die when called upon, even for strangers in his care.”

  “It’s good,” Mulladin said.

  Ezra shook his head. “I wish I would’ve told that part of .it to him. I was just so afraid he was like me–a fool. But after hearing Irvis tell me what happened in Rasha, and the well-finder’s camp, I couldn’t have been more wrong. He’s only used my sword to try to protect the ones he loves. He’s resisted its destructive pull. Jekaran is not a fool. He’s a hero.”

  Boom!

  Mulladin cried out and Ezra shot up from his chair. “The hell?”

  He listened but couldn’t hear the guards. He crept toward the door, the hair on his arms standing up as he felt the familiar crackle in the air that always accompanied the blast of a weapon talis. The door flew open, making Ezra leap back and grab for the iron poker laying on the marble in front of the hearth. The metal was uncomfortably warm, but Ezra didn’t care. He gripped it tight and brought it up ready to–

  “Irvis?” He lowered the poker.

  “Come on!” The chubby monk beckoned urgently for him to follow.

  That’s when Ezra saw the two guards sprawled on the floor in the hall. One’s face was toward the door, and he could see blood gushing from the man’s nose, his eyes staring sightlessly at him. He motioned to Mulladin–who’d taken to hiding behind the plush armchair–and the two rushed out of the room. That’s when Ezra saw her.

  “Graelle!” She was looking down the hall, her mysterious rod talis in her right hand. She whirled around and Ezra raised his poker. “Irvis! She’s a traitor!”

  To his surprise, Irvis snapped at him. “Put that down!” He forced Ezra’s wrist down, and the two men locked eyes. “She knows where the slipgate is!”

  Ezra shook off his surprise and pulled away. He looked at Irvis’ earlobe where he found his old displacement earring. He dropped the poker, grabbed Irvis’ wrist with his right hand and Mulladin’s with his left. “Tell us!” he shouted at Graelle.

  “It won’t work, Argentus,” Irvis said irritably. “Trous has some kind of warding talis that blocks translocation inside his estate.”

  “Damn!” Ezra growled.

  “We need to go!” Graelle snapped at them, but Ezra noticed there was something different in her eyes. The defiant hardness he’d seen in her when she betrayed him was gone.

  “Come on! She’ll take us to the slipgate!” Irvis said.

  “But you said the warding–”

  “Most warding talises grant the bearer the ability to permit exceptions,” Irvis replied. “Trous would have to exempt the slipgate if he was going to use it! But we won’t know for certain if we never make it there!”

  Ezra nodded, still wary of Graelle. I don’t really have any other options. He towed Mulladin forward. Not if I am to have any chance of rescuing Jekaran. Rasheera had granted him this mercy, and he would gladly take it.

  They jogged around a corner in the hall and Ezra froze when he saw Trous’ lieutenant and four armed guards approaching them. He was about to turn to run back, thinking perhaps they could escape through a window when Graelle raised her rod and another loud boom rocked the hall. Ezra watched in astonishment as an in
visible wave rippled in the air, streaking from the end of Graelle’s rod and hurling their enemies back as though they’d been struck by the colossal fist of a god.

  Two of the guards disappeared through the plaster of the wall, while the other two and Trous’ lieutenant flew a dozen feet to land hard on the stone floor. Ezra heard the unmistakable sound of a skull cracking, which was confirmed when a pool of blood quickly formed beneath the head of one of the fallen guards.

  Trous’ lieutenant tried to rise, hand instinctually going to his belt for something, but Graelle released another concussion blast at him, and his head snapped back with a sickening crack! He fell onto his back and didn’t try to rise again.

  One guard lived, but he was groaning as he squirmed on the floor. Ezra went out of his way to plant the hard toe of his boot in the man’s groin as they passed; partly to ensure he stayed down, and partly because it gave him some satisfaction.

  “Others will have heard that!” Graelle huffed as they ran down the corridor. Those words had no sooner puffed out of her than angry shouts echoed from downstairs.

  Graelle quickly led them to a servant’s stairwell, and Ezra nearly fell down the stairs as they flew to the first floor. He was about to exit the stairwell when Graelle hissed at him, “The basement!”

  Ezra paused to stare at her stupidly. “What?”

  “The slipgate is in the basement!” She repeated.

  Ezra nodded and the four of them resumed their descent until they reached the bottom of the staircase where they threw open the door and began running down a narrow corridor with rooms lining both sides of the hall. Some had doors, and others were little more than open archways that let Ezra see into the stores. This is where Trous would likely keep his contraband while arranging for shipping contracts. Sure enough, Ezra soon saw an entire room filled with burlap sacks marked with a slang term for poppy seeds.

  They reached the end of the basement hallway and were blocked by a locked set of double doors. Graelle raised her talis–a concussion rod Ezra had decided–and blasted the doors into chunks of sharp wood. They exploded into the room, a long splintered piece burying itself in another Rikujo enforcer’s head. He fell, and a cursory sweep of the large room showed Ezra that the man had been the sole guard on duty.

  That’s when Ezra saw it, a gazebo-like structure built over a raised circular dais on the floor, it’s domed top capped by an amethyst sphere–a slipgate. He ran over to the talis, leapt upon the rune engraved dais, and quickly found the small plinth he’d been looking for. A map of Shaelar etched into the white stone was overlaid with glowing lines connecting the continent’s different cities. Only one of the luminescent paths stretched between Erassa and Aiested. The receiving slipgate would certainly be in the possession of the crown, inside the palace itself. That had been why Ezra had wanted a contingent of Rikujo enforcers. Now he was going to have to rely on Graelle’s concussion rod to deal with any soldiers the king might have guarding Aiested’s gate. Ezra swept his hand to the right side of the console and froze. An empty, oval-shaped depression on the plinth’s smooth surface made his stomach turn.

  “Check the guard for the access key!” he barked. He looked up to find Irvis already kneeling over the dead guard. He quickly searched the man’s belt pouch and then met Ezra’s eyes and shook his head.

  “It has to be here!” Ezra hopped off the dais and made for a row of shelving on the room’s east wall.

  He’d only made it a half a dozen steps when a wave of fear slammed into him. At the same time the floor suddenly became slick and he lost his footing. He fell hard on his left shoulder, a sickening crunch and a stabbing fire reporting that he’d broken it. He looked down and found himself lying on a patch of ice.

  “Now you don’t think that I would just leave my gate open, did you?” Trous said in his friendly Tolean accent. “If someone at the palace discovered that the broken slipgate the king keeps in storage actually works, and was linked to mine, they’d send an entire battalion of soldiers to wipe us out.”

  The room shook as a concussion blast fired from Graelle’s talis. The sound was followed by a loud slap and Graelle cried out. “Come now, lasa. Was that really necessary?”

  Ezra tried to roll over to see what was happening, but the pain in his shoulder proved to be too much. He heard Irvis shout, followed by a choking noise.

  “And who is this, lasa? Your boyfriend?”

  “Let him go, Trous!” Ezra growled.

  To his relief the choking noises stopped, replaced by Irvis’s urgent gasps. Pain flared and Ezra cried out as he was roughly lifted from the ground, and then hoisted into the air by the scruff of his shirt. “You really have lost your edge, Argentus.”

  His vision darkened and all sound faded as the pain from his broken shoulder overwhelmed him. Then, just as he was on the edge of syncope, his pain disappeared and he found himself standing on his own power and facing Trous.

  The man smiled at him, deliberately wiggling a finger upon which he wore a gold ring set with an amethyst stone. “A restoration band. It’s more valuable than any other talis I own, even this rare frost ring.” He wiggled another finger, this one with a sapphire studded silver band.

  Ezra glanced behind Trous and found Irvis kneeling next to Graelle, her nose leaking blood, and Mulladin curled up on the floor sobbing, a wicked bruise forming on the side of his face.

  “Now, Argentus,” Trous said pleasantly. “If you will please come with me. It is time for our duel.”

  They were greeted by shouts and jeers when Trous and his enforcers paraded them into the mansion’s dining hall. Gone were the feasting tables, a circular dais no more than a foot tall having replaced them. Ezra winced as spittle slapped his cheek and began to ooze toward his chin. Mulladin was making sharp, panicked shouts as the on-looking Rikujo lords and their subordinates threw trash at the boy-man.

  Irvis appeared to be shielding Graelle from similar treatment, and actually got struck in the head by an empty bottle for his trouble. But he appeared to pay little attention to the blood that began to run down the side of his head.

  The mass of spectators–there had to be a hundred people–exploded with renewed enthusiasm when Trous stepped up onto the dais. He smiled and stretched his arms out expansively to encourage the cheering. He let this go on for a full minute before finally motioning for quiet. The clamor of the crowd tapered off as Trous began to speak.

  “Did I not promise you entertainment?” The crowd erupted again, and Trous bellowed a laugh. “And now, I deliver on that promise!” he shouted as he pointed at Ezra.

  One of Trous’ burly enforcers shoved Ezra forward so hard that he nearly tripped instead of climbing up onto the dais. Ezra shot a worried glance at Irvis, who had taken to comforting a sobbing Mulladin by letting the big man cringe under his outstretched arm.

  “Here is Argentus, The Invincible Shadow!” Trous pulled Ezra into a sort of half-hug as though they were the closest of friends.

  The crowd jeered and shouted angry obscenities at him, but it all sounded faraway to Ezra. He’d retreated inside himself and was focusing all of his thoughts on his nephew. I’m sorry, son.

  “Do not deride this man!” Trous scolded the audience who reacted with confused half-hearted shouts. “He was once our leader and deserves the ceremony due the passing of his mantle to a worthy successor!”

  Trous stepped away from Ezra and over to one of his waiting servants. The man handed Trous a cloth bag, which he preceded to fill by slipping his rings from his fingers. “This is to be a fair duel. No talis-craft of any kind.” Finally, Trous slipped off Kaul’s dread medal, deposited it in the bag and cinched it shut. He then hung the bag around his neck. Most talises required contact with skin, at least initially, to function. This was Trous’ way of removing talis-craft from the fight without actually giving up his talises. The man was polite, but not stupid.

  Trous’ servant next handed him a gleaming rapier with a closed hand guard. It was an elegant weapon, qu
ick and sharp, like the man himself. Ezra recognized the blade because he had gifted it to Trous almost twenty years ago. Its make was fine and its value the highest a weapon could fetch without being a talis. At least my blood will be spilt in style, his sarcastic inner voice said from wherever it had been hiding. It almost made him chuckle–almost.

  The crowd cheered as Trous raised his weapon high over his head. Ezra started as something was pushed into his hand. It was a short sword, not unlike his old one. That was probably deliberate on Trous’ part, as it would help to solidify in the minds of the other Rikujo lords who it was Trous was dueling. The man really was an adept manipulator and by Ezra’s old outlook probably would’ve made a worthy successor.

  Trous turned and gracefully brought his rapier up so that the flat of its narrow blade kissed his forehead. It was a gentlemen’s salute indicating the start of a duel. Ezra had never really held much with showy, Tolean chivalry, but mimicked the motion anyway. Then, before he’d had a chance to call to mind any of his old swordplay, Trous was across the dais and whipping his thin blade through the air.

  Ezra had barely enough time to parry the blow, and the crowd roared with delight as he stumbled back. Trous grinned at him, letting Ezra regain his balance before assaulting him again, this time with a series of quick swipes punctuated by sharp thrusts. Only pure survival instinct allowed Ezra to parry the attacks, and only just barely. He would’ve allowed himself a little pride at having retained sharp reflexes if he hadn’t known that Trous was merely toying with him.

  The barrage continued, driving Ezra back until he actually fell off the dais. Trous relented, watching with one raised eyebrow as the jeering crowd roughly placed Ezra’s sword back into his hand and angrily shoved him back up onto the dais. Trous deliberately turned his back on Ezra as he walked back to the opposite side of the circular platform. Trous was baiting him, but Ezra wasn’t likely to get an opening like this on his own, so he struck, swinging his sword down in a diagonal arc.

  With blurring speed, Trous whirled around, parried the blow, and then moved in to land a booted kick on Ezra’s thigh. He cried out as he fell back, nearly dropping his sword a second time. This time Trous didn’t let him recover, but instead moved in so fast that he had the point of his rapier pressed against Ezra’s jugular in less than a heartbeat. The crowd roared with delight and called for Trous to dispatch him.