The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  It was a large white thing that vaguely resembled a boat. But instead of a flat deck on top of a rounded bottom, it had something on top of it, enclosing the deck. It looked like a smooth ivory shell. The strange thing also had what looked like fins of a fish on the sides, and one on the top near its rear. Amethyst gems lined the underside of the craft, and a plank of wood led up to an open door on the side, just next to one of its fins.Jenoc was dragging Kairah toward the craft, and she was resisting him, making their progress painstakingly slow.

  Wind blasted Maely as she climbed onto the roof. “Jenoc stop!” She shouted, wrapping her words in a wave of compulsion.

  Jenoc halted so abruptly he stumbled. Both of the Allosians looked back at Maely, and Kairah gave her a grateful nod as she broke free of her brother’s grip. She drew back, facing Jenoc as her long purple hair whipped furiously in the wind, one strap of her shift falling down her shoulder.

  “It is over, Jenoc.” Kairah said.

  Maely walked to stand at Kairah’s side.

  Jenoc glowered at her with so much intensity Maely took a step backward. Then he closed his eyes and his face took on a serene expression.

  “Maely, get back!” Kairah shouted, but it was too late.

  Jenoc broke free of her compulsion and lunged forward. He grabbed Maely before she had a chance to issue another command, drew her in, and clamped a hand around her throat. Kairah tried to pull Jenoc’s hand away, but he shoved her so hard she fell to the ground. Then he met Maely’s eyes, and his mouth twisted into a smirk as he squeezed. She panicked, hands gripping Jenoc’s arm, nails digging into his white flesh, but he just kept squeezing. She couldn’t breathe. Everything around her was darkening, and the roaring of the gale muted.

  Then the pressure was gone and Maely found herself on her knees coughing violently. She looked up and saw Jenoc fallen to one knee a dozen feet away, a muscled man naked from the waist standing between her and Kairah’s brother. The man’s biceps were bulging and his forearms were completely covered in white fur. Another figure moved past her and stopped at the side of the man. Maely recognized the creature. It was the prince’s bear-man bodyguard. Which makes that man Prince Raelen!

  Raelen tensed as he met Jenoc’s hard, hateful eyes. “Surrender now, Jenoc of Allose!”

  A thunderclap made Raelen wince, and his eyes flicked to the sky. Roiling black clouds appeared, swirling unnaturally as they spread, blocking out the first rays of the dawning sun. He met Jenoc’s eyes again, and the man smirked and slowly began to rise.

  “I’m warning you!” Raelen called over the whipping wind. “I will kill you if I must.”

  That made Jenoc smile in full and a sudden dread dampened Raelen’s confidence. He had started to believe fighting the Allosian spell-caster was little different than when they’d battle Loeadon. He had a feeling he was about to learn just how wrong he’d been.

  The wind picked up as the dark clouds descended closer. The light of a new morning was gone now, their only illumination the purple glow emanating from Aiested’s well.

  “Jenoc, stop!” The Allosian woman’s scream was nearly drowned out by the roaring wind. And then shafts of lightning fell.

  The light was blinding and the thunder deafening, but Raelen’s enhanced reflexes let him leap out of the way as a sharp bolt struck the ground where he’d been standing, leaving a blackened scar on the cracked stone. The force of the next one threw Raelen to the ground and he rolled just as a third hot, white shaft struck for him. He was deaf now, and his vision blurred by bright green after images.

  Disoriented, he tried to stand, fully expecting to be struck down by the wrath of the storm. He looked up, wincing through the dust screen gale and was able to make out two shapes battling. Gryyth had managed to reach Jenoc, and was swiping sharp claws at him. Jenoc’s agility was both impressive and surprising, he ducking the swings of the Ursaj warrior with seeming prescience. Finally, Gryyth succeeded in seizing upon Jenoc and lifting him up in a bone-crunching hug.

  Incredibly, Jenoc burst into flames and Gryyth immediately dropped him, howling silently as he fell backward, arms and chest fur charred and smoking. Raelen lunged forward, his deafness making the entire scene surreal. He’d closed to within a meter of Jenoc’s fiery form when he slammed into something solid. It dazed him for a moment, and when he finally regained his wits, he found himself trapped inside a faintly translucent bubble. He battered at the barrier, growing lightheaded as the air thinned.

  Jenoc, no longer wreathed in flames, stared at him from just outside the barrier. The smile was gone, replaced by a frightening mask of cold rage. He turned away from Raelen and approached Gryyth, who was only now struggling to stand. Raelen’s pounding lost its power, and he began to choke as the oxygen ran out.

  Jenoc kicked Gryyth in the chest where the Ursaj had been burned the worst, and Raelen’s protector opened his maw in a silent bellow of pain before falling back to his knees. The bear-man collapsed on the ground, smoke rising from his fur. Raelen couldn’t even choke now, suffocation having paralyzed his lungs. His thoughts became disjointed, and blackness closed in from his periphery.

  Then air flooded back into Raelen’s lungs, and he gasped, sucking at it desperately. His hearing had also returned, and the translucent sphere around him shattered with the sound of glass before disappearing altogether. Immediately the wind died down, the black clouds swirling above dissipated, and the gentle light of a new dawn lit the white stone of the tower. Raelen coughed and choked, rolling onto his side as he regained his breath.

  Maely touched her right ear. She’d been deafened by the thunder but could suddenly hear again. Had Kairah healed her?

  “No more, Jenoc!” Kairah shouted as she strode toward her brother, and although dressed only in a short shift, she had the poise and presence of a queen.

  Jenoc looked shocked, and then his brow drew down and his amethyst eyes hardened. “Are you going to fight me, Sister?”

  “If I must,” she said.

  “You would side with these humans?” he spat. “Even after what they did to our family?”

  Kairah stopped a short distance in front of Jenoc. “It was not these humans, Jenoc.”

  “That does not matter!” he shouted back. “They are all the same! Parasites that leech off the land and everything in it. They destroyed our civilization and stole our treasures! They must be removed!” Then the Allosian man faltered, head bowing and both of his hands flying up to grip each side of his head.

  “You are sick, Jenoc,” Kairah said in a softer tone. “Moriora has injured you.”

  “No,” Jenoc snarled, his eyes still shut tight against whatever was tearing at him.

  Maely inched closer, thumbing her ring and preparing to call out another command in order to give Kairah a chance to strike. Sure, she has no problem with compulsion when it helps her! Would the woman attack her brother? The Allosian woman had waited so long to intervene. Was that because she didn’t want to hurt him? Or was it because she was afraid of him? No, she couldn’t count on Kairah. She would need to take care of Jenoc herself.

  The pain afflicting Jenoc appeared to subside, and he let go of his head and straightened. His breathing was labored, but smoothing with each breath. “It is time for you to choose whose side you are on, Kairah.”

  Kairah shook her head. “Jenoc, please listen. Something is here, an aberration that we need to–

  “Choose!”

  Jenoc’s enraged scream made Maely flinch. She looked at Kairah’s face and found the woman looking as shocked at the outburst as Maely was. Time to act!

  Summoning all of her courage, anger, and whatever other strong emotion brewed within her, Maely opened her mouth to command Jenoc to leap off the roof, but her voice caught in her throat as Jenoc’s eyes flicked to her. Before Maely knew it, a hurricane strength blast of wind crashed into her, lifting her up and hurling her back.

  “Maely!” The wind made Kairah’s scream sound unusually distant as Maely arced over t
he low wall and into empty space.

  As she came down, she grabbed the first thing she could; a small, decorative outcropping made of smooth white stone. The hard landing shocked her arms and it was only by wild primal fear that she held on. Yet her hold was tenuous, and she kicked wildly over open air as she strained to pull herself up. She looked down to see a long stretch of stone passing vertically through a wisp of lazily floating clouds. How had she ever thought this tower was only a hundred feet tall? From this vantage during the day, it was clearly much, much taller, more like a thousand feet.

  Her heart pounded and she couldn’t breathe as her fingers slipped. She looked up, just as the prince appeared over the stone wall and reached down with a bear-like claw to grab one of her wrists. The timing was divine, for the prince’s grip took hold at the same moment Maely completely lost hers.

  “It’s okay, girl. I have you.”

  He hauled her up and over the edge, holding her in an embrace as she trembled involuntarily.

  Kairah clenched her jaw as tears threatened. She hadn’t been fast enough to counter Jenoc’s spell and save Maely. That would pain Jekaran. Why did the idea of Jekaran suffering hurt her as well? She unleashed two spells simultaneously, a flare spell to distract Jenoc, and a paralysis net to trap him; both failed.

  Jenoc laughed at her. “You are so very predictable, Sister.”

  Kairah lashed out with a whip of air, but Jenoc easily deflected it. Even in his weakened state, her brother was still the better spell-caster. She transmuted the stone beneath his feet into a sticky sludge, but Jenoc solidified it before he could sink. She tried to trap him inside a force shell, but he shattered it. Finally, she launched twin streams of blue fire at him. Kairah hadn’t wanted to wound her brother, but she knew she had to stop him–she could heal him afterwards.

  Jenoc frowned and made to block the spell with a shield of air, but spasmed as another migraine caused him to falter. The half-cast wind spell knocked aside both fire blasts, but not enough and one scorched the right side of Jenoc’s handsome face. He cried out and fell to the ground. His hand reflexively went to the burn on his face causing him to scream a second time.

  Kairah ran to him, preparing to cast a sleep spell to fully incapacitate her brother. She leaned over Jenoc, and placed a hand on his back both for comfort and to maximize the effect of her spell. Immediately she was hurled back by a shockwave, crashing down on the flat white stone so hard that it forced the air from her lungs. Jenoc stood, face blackened and charred around his right eye, which had been burned completely out of its socket.

  He stalked over to Kairah, grabbed a fistful of her long amethyst hair, and hauled her to her feet. She tried to tell him she would heal him, but all she could do was suck air. Jenoc drew her in so that she had a good look at the horrible burn that marred his perfect white face.

  “You have made your choice!” Jenoc snarled through clenched teeth. Then he let go and shoved her back to the roof.

  Kairah lay on the stone watching him ascend the plank and enter the wind rider. “Brother,” she finally coughed out.

  He stopped just inside the craft’s hatch, keeping his back to her, but turning his head to call over his shoulder. “I am not your brother, and you are not my sister. You are as dead to me as father and mother.” Then he disappeared inside the ship, and the hatch closed.

  For some reason those words hurt Kairah more than his attack on her. Her tears leaked onto the white stone roof as she watched the wind rider rise into the sky and then shoot away like an arrow.

  “Jenoc,” she sobbed. He is right. That was not the gentle, deep-thinking, kind boy who’d obsessively watched over and protected her. Whether changed by Moriora or his own poisonous hatred, Kairah couldn’t say, but one thing was certain; he was no longer her brother. That realization dumped upon her shoulders such an enormous weight of grief that it threatened to crush her.

  Courage, a voice said. The Vessel comes. Was that Aeva or Kairah’s mother?

  Kairah stood, determination pushing back her sorrow. Of course, it wasn’t gone, just shoved aside until the time when she could appropriately grieve. She strode for the square hatch that led back down into the palace. As she descended from the roof, she saw a visibly trembling Maely cradled protectively in the arms of Prince Raelen. They were sitting on the roof against the battlements, both staring at her.

  Kairah was relieved that Maely had survived, but she didn’t say anything to the girl or the prince. Instead she left the roof and strode quickly down the tower’s ramp. Only she knew the Vessel had come, and only she was able to stop it.

  Jekaran was himself, but not himself. He was free to use his body, but not exclusively. Something else guided his physical form, responding instantaneously to his will in a process faster than even the speed of thought. The sword was with him, but it also was him and he was it. They were one; achieving such a supreme state of martial grace and awesome destructive power that no one could stand before him.

  They were invincible.

  The being Jekaran had become sheered through two swords at once before whirling in between their stunned bearers. He cracked the skull of one with the pommel of the sword, grabbed the other from behind and impaled him through the back, and then turned the man about to use him as a human shield to catch three bolts at once. Blood flowed like a crimson stream, puddles of it pooling and connecting all over the marble floor of the hallway.

  The part of him that was Jekaran hated killing these men, but the fact they were trying to kill him eased his conscience. Also, they stood between him and rescuing Kairah. He could feel the Allosian woman through his new senses, divine her location in the palace, and most important, discern that she was in danger.

  A mountain of a man dressed in full plate armor charged him, raising a mace the size of a caber. Fused, Jekaran exploded into a full sprint directly toward the knight. The charging mass of metal brought his mace down just as the two collided.

  The man audibly gasped when the skull-splitting momentum of his falling mace abruptly halted, the flanged head stopped by the blade of Jekaran’s sword. Jekaran–or the sword, he couldn’t tell–met the knight’s gaze with a wicked grin, threw off the mace, and then swung low, sheering off an armored leg just above the knee. The armored man screamed as he fell sideways. Jekaran charged, passing on the side of the falling knight and spinning as he swept his blade through the man’s neck. The knight’s helmeted head clanged against the marble floor, followed a beat later by his decapitated corpse.

  There were only a handful of soldiers in his way now, and upon seeing what he’d done to their champion, they fled before him. Had the sword been in control, he would’ve given chase, but fused as they were, Jekaran’s respect for life tempered the sword’s lust for destruction, and he let them go.

  He glanced behind him and wasn’t surprised to find dozens of slain guards littering the long corridor. How many had they killed? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was reaching Kairah. He broke into a run, turning into a connecting corridor and followed the pulsing light in his mind—a beacon representing Kairah and her location in the palace. She was moving now, descending from the roof quickly.

  Ezra’s idea of blitzing the palace and rescuing Jekaran in a lightning strike raid had fallen flat on its face. Not because he didn’t have the manpower, or the weapons he needed, but because the building was just so damned big! They’d arrived nearly an hour ago, but wasted much of that time trying to orient themselves, which was just a nicer way of saying that they’d gotten lost. Fortunately, they had just found a silver, bell-shaped, wall fixture–a guide talis. It had given them the layout of the palace, and they now headed down toward the dungeons.

  He glanced behind him. Fifty Rikujo enforcers dressed in black leather jerkins and bearing a variety of weapon talises trailed him. They were his again. It hadn’t taken much convincing for the other Rikujo lords to submit, not after what they saw him do to Trous. Never mind the fact his display of supernatural strengt
h and swordsmanship had been something of a fluke. They saw him fight as though he still held the power of the sword, and that was enough to quell them.

  To his right strode Irvis and Graelle–were they still holding hands?–and Mulladin on his left. The former simpleton bore an expression of grim determination, something that looked completely out of place on his face. He wore a ring on his finger, Trous’s lightning talis, claimed by Mulladin as it had been the weapon that nearly killed him. Something that led to his mind being healed from whatever it was that retarded his mental development.

  Graelle jumped as a wailing sound shattered their stealthy silence. An alarm talis. Could the palace guard know they were here? Had accessing the guide talis given them away? Ezra tensed, waiting for soldiers to assault them at any moment.

  None came.

  Now that he considered it, they hadn’t encountered a single guard since leaving the storage room that held the palace’s supposedly ‘broken’ slipgate. Shouldn’t they have at the very least seen one patrol? Then again, the Allosian designed building was so huge it seemed they could wander for days without encountering anyone. Still, something about the lack of security bothered Ezra. “I don’t think that alarm’s because of us.”

  Irvis shot him a glance, the chubby monk’s eyebrows raising. “Who else could it be for…” Irvis trailed off. “Divine Mother! He’s loose.”

  “What’re you going on about?” Graelle demanded.

  Ezra looked at the woman. “I think Jekaran might be on a rampage. The sword has the power to take control of its bearer’s body if it perceives a threat. It would explain why this place is so empty. All the guards and soldiers are probably trying to contend with him.”

  “He’ll slaughter them,” Irvis said.

  “For a while,” Ezra said. “But there are thousands of troops here. Eventually they will overwhelm him by sheer force of numbers.” He broke into a run and the others followed, Irvis breathing hard as he worked to keep up.