The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Sound faded in Jenoc’s ears, and blackness swallowed him whole.

  Kairah stared at the crystal spire on the distant horizon. She couldn’t really see it anymore, only when flashes of lightning illuminated the dark clouds swirling about it. Green lightning, like she’d seen in her vision of the dead land. Is that what it was, an oracular vision? Or was it just a dream? She didn’t have much experience with dreaming, as Allosians seldom slept, but she was increasingly certain that what she’d seen was real. Did that make her an oracle now? Could she invoke other visions? She needed information, needed it desperately. Could she use her inherited gift to find out what was going on or more importantly, how to stop it?

  She shook her head. Oracles could only see what fate showed them, not see what they wanted to see. Or so she’d been told. Kairah had woefully neglected studying prophecy in favor of improving her already considerable talent with the First Discipline–Creation. Perhaps she ought to have accepted an apprenticeship with Allose’s premier oracle, Shivara. If she ever made it back to Allose, Kairah would have to call on the reclusive woman.

  Warm cloth enfolded her shoulders. She looked up to see the human, Irvis, naked from the waist and placing his brown cloak upon her like a shawl. That was surprising. She’d thought that the man with the overactive reproductive instinct would not have been concerned for her modesty.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Irvis nodded wordlessly, and then walked away. His eyes were red, and some mucus dribbled from one of his nostrils.

  He grieves for the loss of his friend, Aeva said.

  Kairah couldn’t send Aeva her agreement. She was too far from Allose, and only retained half of her Apeiron. Additionally, she didn’t dare spell-cast this close to Aiested for fear of the creature that had smashed the well. The same creature had also drained every talis in the city, and for several miles out. In fact, it was only just before they’d stopped to rest in this clearing that she’d felt the suction-like force of the Apeiron vortex relent. Karak’s strange magic had shielded her from the worst of the draining, but even then she slowly lost Apeiron so long as they were in or near the city.

  A bolt of green lightning flashed in the distance, followed a moment later by thunder. This is what happened to the land in my vision. Had that been the future of Shaelar she’d seen? No, the shape of the land and the stars were different. Could it be she was seeing the land from which humans had originated? That made a kind of sense. History was mostly quiet on the reason humans had fled their home country, and if what Kairah saw was the result of what was happening now, she understood why they’d abandoned everything to sail into the unknown. But if she couldn’t stop that same fate from befalling this land, where would her people go? Where would the Vorakk, the Ursaj, or even the humans escape to? And what was to stop this from happening again?

  “I asked you a question, Allosian!”

  Kairah turned to see a large man with wavy black hair stalking toward her. His face was contorted with anger, and he threw off Irvis’s gentle attempt to grab his arm.

  “Mulladin,” Irvis pled.

  “I am sorry,” Kairah said. “I did not hear your question.”

  The husky man, who was really just a youth himself, stopped a few paces in front of where she sat. “Where’s Maely?”

  Kairah glanced back at Aiested, and then turned again to look up at the young man. “The last time I saw her she was on top of one of the palace towers.”

  “And you just left her there?” he shouted.

  “Mulladin!” Irvis snapped.

  Mulladin? So this was Maely’s brother. Kairah had thought the girl had said he suffered from a diminished capacity, but the young man standing above her didn’t fit that description. Kairah didn’t take his anger personally. Humans were passionate creatures with a limited ability to think rationally or control their emotions. His rage wasn’t meant for Kairah. He was just worried about his sister.

  “She was in the company of the prince and his Ursaj bodyguard the last time I saw her.”

  “She could be dead!” Mulladin waved angrily at the ruined city.

  Kairah nodded. “She may be. I have already attempted to scry the ruins of the palace, but all I can see is darkness. Something blocks my vision. I am sorry.”

  Mulladin reached down and grabbed Kairah’s arm and lifted her into a standing position. He moved in close, and hissed through gritted teeth, “You left her to die.”

  Kairah pulled her arm free, but didn’t step away. Grieving or not, this man did not intimidate her, though he had started to irritate her. “I had no foreknowledge of what was about to happen. She was safe when I left her, and I was needed elsewhere.”

  Mulladin’s eyes flicked to something over Kairah’s shoulder, and he turned and stalked away. Kairah nodded her thanks to Karak who stood just behind her, quietly hissing.

  “Fey girl well, reka?”

  Kairah nodded and then glanced at Karak’s left wrist, a blackened stump where his claw should’ve been. She then looked at his ribs where he was pressing his remaining hand against a patch of white scales. They reminded Kairah of a shed snakeskin.

  She turned to face him. “But you are not well.”

  Karak rasped a syllable and raised his stump to sign something, but stopped when he realized what he was doing. He looked at his stump and rasped a chuckle, “Ek.”

  “Let me heal your side,” Kairah said. She moved Karak’s remaining hand away and gently placed her hand over his white scales. She expected him to wince or hiss, but apparently, the contact didn’t hurt him.

  “Does this not pain you?”

  “No feel, aka.”

  The flesh was dead, then? It made sense. Karak had been fighting the Moriora Vessel, an incarnation of the power of death itself. She would have to grow new flesh from the surrounding healthy tissue. Kairah was still hesitant to cast so close to Aiested and without a nearby functioning well, but she was good at healing. That was from the First Discipline, Creation or Growth, and she was a master of growing things.

  Kairah cast a healing, but nothing happened. She tried again, expending more of her Apeiron store this time, but the wound resisted her. Right at the end, just before she had to give up, something started to happen, but the result was disproportionately small. She looked up at Karak, who had a concerned look on his reptile face.

  “Reka?”

  Kairah drew back her hand and shook her head. “Something’s wrong. That wound is resisting my ministrations.”

  “A cursed wound?” Irvis asked.

  Kairah glanced at the chubby monk and nodded. “I suppose that description fits.”

  “Is she always this condescending?” The woman seated next to Irvis glared at Kairah.

  “Hush, dear,” Irvis said with a pat of her hand. It was resting on his knee. “You can’t heal it?”

  “Not without a well.”

  Irvis fingered a pouch hanging from a cord around his neck. With his robe gone, it hung exposed in the middle of his man-breasts. “How did Karak gain that injury?”

  Kairah shared a look with the lizard man.

  “Eater,” Karak said.

  Irvis gasped. “You found it?”

  “It is what destroyed Aiested,” Kairah said.

  “Divine Mother!” Irvis raised his left hand to his mouth.

  “What happened to Jekaran?” Kairah looked at the human boy. He was sitting against a tree, eyes unfocused and face blank.

  Irvis began to cry again. “Argentus tried to stun him with a talis while he was enthralled by the sword and…” His voice caught.

  “He ran Ez through!” Mulladin called harshly from several feet away. He was standing aloof, arms folded as he leaned against an Aspen.

  Irvis nodded as he wiped his eyes. “It did something to Jekaran’s mind.”

  Kairah walked over and knelt in front of Jekaran.

  “He was trying to save you,” a short, balding man sitting on a rock five paces away said. His tone was s
harp and accusing.

  For some reason, Lord Gymal’s words cut Kairah. “I…”

  “He fought over a hundred soldiers on his own.” Gymal’s burly mercenary said as he walked up to stand over Jekaran. Was he protecting him?

  “All to rescue you from us wicked humans,” Gymal snarled.

  Jekaran had been trying to rescue her? It seemed that the only time he let the sword have control over his body was when he was fighting to save her. No, she realized. Even before he’d bonded the sword, he’d been her protector. In Rasha, when those human criminals tried to assault her, Jekaran had run to her defense although outnumbered, and bearing no real weapon. That stirred her feelings, making her growing affinity for the human boy rise to the surface.

  She reached out and tenderly caressed his cheek. He didn’t react to the contact–not even a flinch. As far as humans went, he was handsome, his stage of physical development not too far behind Kairah’s own; although she was eighty years his senior. Kairah used the contact to delve into his mind. She gasped and pulled her hand away.

  “What is it?” Gymal snapped.

  Kairah shot a look at Irvis. “Tell me again exactly what happened. Omit no detail no matter how seemingly insignificant.”

  Irvis repeated the story of Jekaran’s killing his uncle, breaking into sobs when Kairah pressed him for details. It felt to Kairah as though she were torturing the chubby human, but she needed to know.

  After Irvis finished, Mulladin stalked over and demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Where is the sword talis?” Kairah asked, ignoring Mulladin.

  Irvis shook his head. “Probably in the ruins of the palace.”

  Kairah returned to studying Jekaran’s blank face. He should never have come to my rescue. Although she knew by her oracular gift that their fates were intertwined, Kairah felt real sorrow for Jekaran. Not pity, as she felt for other humans, but true, empathetic heartache. She had brought him to this fate, one worse than death. And he had willingly come. Like his running into danger to rescue me in Rasha.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Gymal asked in a tone bordering on hysteria. That was strange. Wasn’t he Jekaran’s enemy?

  “His mind has been shattered.”

  “That’s what your Allosian magic was able to discern?” Mulladin snapped. “We knew that already, woman.”

  “No,” Kairah said. “It has literally shattered, broken into compartmentalized pieces.”

  “How does a mind shatter?” Gymal asked. “It’s not like it’s made of glass.”

  Kairah sighed. “That is the best analogy I can think of at the moment.”

  “Then put it back together.” Mulladin ordered.

  She shook her head. “I have never attempted a healing of a mind so severely fractured.” Actually, Kairah hadn’t ever attempted a healing of the mind at all. Such a thing was possible of course, and she had read about it in her studies. But the mind was part of the soul, and Apeiron didn’t effect it the same way that it effected flesh and bone.

  “I need a well.”

  Irvis stroked his chin. “The closest one is to the east, in Galadar.”

  “Across the sodden lands?” Gymal shot to his feet. “Without a boat, we’ll have to go all the way around the Ridalia marsh. That’s three weeks travel even by ghern. Who knows how long it will take on foot. And we don’t have any supplies!”

  “Can’t we translocate there?” Graelle interjected. “Our talises may be drained, but can’t she do it?”

  “Fey girl weak from fight Eater, ska.”

  How did he know that? She was definitely going to have to learn more about Vorakk magic.

  “What about your spirits?” Irvis asked. “Can they transport us?”

  “Isk,” Karak hissed and signed something with his remaining claw.

  “There is a closer well,” Kairah said.

  Irvis crinkled his bushy eyebrows. “There aren’t any well-cities besides Galadar for two hundred miles or more.”

  “We can take Jekaran to Allose.” The words came out before Kairah had fully considered them.

  Silence.

  “What will happen to you if you bring a group of human outsiders into the secret city of your people?” Irvis softly asked.

  Kairah stared at Jekaran’s blank face. Irvis had just given her an opportunity to take back her suggestion, and she should. There was something much bigger than she, Jekaran or any of them going on. The world itself was in danger. But her heart twisted at the thought of abandoning the young man who’d sacrificed so much to protect her. It was where she was going anyway, to warn the synod about Moriora and its Vessel, but she hadn’t considered before now bringing any of them with her.

  Kairah sighed. “After the war, my people wanted nothing to do with humans. They are not overtly hostile like my brother, but they will get angry if I bring Jekaran there. They will publically censure me at best and exile me at worst.”

  “Allose is supposed to be built around the largest Apeira well in the world. Is there any chance you could bring Jekaran into range, outside your city, and heal him there?” Irvis asked.

  Kairah hooked a strand of her glittering hair behind her ear. “Perhaps. But in truth, I am uncertain how to heal him, and will likely need the wisdom of our libraries, if not the actual aid of other Allosians.”

  “Will they even let you into the city with him–with us?” Graelle shot a nervous glance at Irvis.

  Kairah looked at the corpulent woman, and her jaw tightened. “If they wish to hear my news. They will certainly have sensed the destruction of the well in Aiested, and will be wondering what happened there. If they bar me entrance, then I shall not tell them what I know.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Gymal said with a nod.

  “No, it’s not!” Mulladin snapped.

  Karak moved closer to Kairah and she caught him hissing quietly.

  “I need to find Maely.”

  “Son, you need to―”

  “Don’t talk down to me, Irvis! I’m not dim anymore.” Mulladin let an angry stare linger on the chubby human. Then he appeared to deflate and tears started rolling down his cheeks. “Ez is dead. Jekaran might as well be. My sister is all I have left. I can’t lose her too.”

  Tears fell from Irvis’s face. “I know.”

  Mulladin nodded, scrubbed his forearm across his eyes, and strode away.

  “Mulladin…” Graelle began, but Irvis silenced her with a pat on her knee.

  “Let him go.”

  As Kairah watched Mulladin go, the unmistakable sign of a fated soul rippled in the air around him. She’d seen it before with Jekaran, which was the driving force behind staying close to him. This was different, however. She didn’t feel as though the sign were prompting her to do anything. She wondered if she should stop Maely’s brother, but that felt wrong. Whatever he was fated to do, it didn’t immediately involve her. Even if the sign had meant she needed to follow Mulladin, she wasn’t sure she would have. Again, she looked down into Jekaran’s empty, green eyes. If it weren’t for his blinking and breathing, the glassy stare could make someone mistake him for a corpse. She caressed his cheek one more time. For reasons she didn’t fully understand, Kairah was willing to risk the wrath of her people, perhaps even permanent exile, to save this human boy.

  “Fey girl’s tribe kill Karak, reka?” Kairah looked up at the Vorakk shaman.

  Kairah shook her head. “You are coming then?”

  “Ssk,” Karak said with a sharp gesture. “Need healing to more fight Eater, aka.”

  “Have you any idea how to kill it?”

  “Ska.” He signed something and looked away. Was that shame?

  “But we have to try, do we not?” Of any in the group, she had the most in common with the Vorakk shaman.

  Karak looked up, met her eyes, and then flashed a sharp-toothed grin. “Daka.”

  Surprisingly, Karak’s smile comforted her. That was odd. Their situation remained dire, she didn’t know what to do
to stop the monster that had impossibly destroyed an Aoese, and Jekaran might be forever lost. But she and the Vorakk shared the same purpose and, it appeared, they were both committed to seeing it done.

  Raelen looked back at Aiested. Green lightning danced around the emerald shard that had once been Aiested’s Apeira well. Could this be the wroth of the goddess for mankind’s long history of cruelty and decadence? Was her judgment truly upon them? Well, he couldn’t blame her. The run and mill of humanity disgusted him. The world was a cruel, dark, miserable place, made that way by his kind. Rape, slavery, murder, and theft were all too common among his people. Where was the nobility of man he’d read about in the histories? Where was the heroism? Perhaps those writings had never been true.

  He looked at Gryyth. The white Ursaj walked hunched over, folding in on himself as he led them into the north woods. He’d been badly burned on his chest, neck, arms, and legs while fighting the Allosian wizard. Pariel–no, Jenoc–was trying to rid the world of the very same decadence Raelen himself wanted to abate. Only the Allosian man saw fit to accomplish that goal by wiping out all of humanity. Was this dark storm and the destruction of the Apeira well his doing? What if he was serving the goddess in this thing? What if mankind deserved to be destroyed? Raelen found himself staring at the column of refugees trudging along behind him. Most walked, still dressed in their night clothes. Some had brought carts, or rode gherns. There were even some fools trying to maneuver their wagons through the thick woods.

  “Are you well, cub?”

  Raelen snapped his head back to Gryyth. The bear-man was boring into him with his bright blue eyes. Although grievously wounded, and free of the slave talis, the Ursaj continued to worry over him. It made Raelen want to sob. He stopped walking and lay Maely down upon the soft forest floor. One of his honor guards called for the company to halt. Raelen was about to countermand the order for the sake of urgency, but then decided that everyone could use a moment to rest.