The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  He woke to find himself leaning sideways against a tree, hands bound behind him. He pulled his legs back to get them under him, but found them bound as well. His frustrated growl drew the attention of the man called Loeadon, who was standing five paces off to Mulladin’s right. The tall man with the long black hair turned, revealing that he held Jekaran’s sword – point skyward, examining the blade. He lowered it and walked over to Mulladin.

  “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  “Your mother gave it to me as a present for bedding her.”

  Loeadon smirked. “That juvenile barb wounds me deeply.”

  The sarcasm in the man’s voice enraged Mulladin. “Go to hell!”

  “Probably,” Loeadon said, “but not yet. Now, I am only going to ask you one more time. Where did you get this?”

  “And if I don’t tell you?”

  “Then I have no further use for you.” Loeadon raised the sword again, testing its weight in his hand. “I’m not a swordsman by any stretch of the imagination. So, I apologize in advance if my killing stroke isn’t clean or,” he laughed, “immediately effective.”

  Fear replaced Mulladin’s rage and he strained against his bonds, but it was no good. Strong as he was, they were expertly tied. That’s when he spotted a lone soldier amidst the watching crowd of refugees. The man was short and thin, his breastplate looking too big for him. He approached them, the crowd parting to let him through.

  Loeadon raised the sword, his hesitation and expectant stare giving Mulladin one last chance to confess. He was about to do just that when shouting caught his attention. Loeadon looked over his shoulder, sword arm lowering a few inches. If Mulladin’s legs hadn’t been bound, he could’ve kicked or tripped the man. More shouting ended those thoughts, and Mulladin let himself fall sideways onto the ground to see past Loeadon. Smoke rose from behind the crowd, followed by flames licking skyward. Fire. Something was on fire. The mass of spectators scrambled, the men of the group running toward the flames, while the women shepherded the children away.

  “Inbred peasants,” Loeadon muttered. “Can’t even handle fire safely.”

  He turned back to face Mulladin. “What would they do without one of their betters to watch over them?”

  Loeadon chuckled. “And I will. The king is dead, and likely the prince too, along with the chief general. With this talis, I will rule the–”

  The soldier in the too-big chest plate grabbed Loeadon’s sword arm. In one expert motion, he bent it backward so far that Mulladin heard the cracking of bone. Loeadon cried out, dropped the sword, and fell to his knees. His face had turned pale, and he made to cradle his broken arm, but screamed upon touching it. The soldier scooped up Jekaran’s sword and struck Loeadon in the face with its pommel. The tall, long-haired man dropped hard to the ground, his broken arm flopping next to him at an unnatural angle.

  Mulladin looked up at the soldier. The man removed his helmet to reveal a very feminine face.

  “You!”

  The Rikujo wench smiled down at him. “I win.”

  She replaced the helmet and turned to hurry away.

  “Wait!” Mulladin shouted, but the woman ignored him. He thought about calling out to the crowd, telling them that she had assaulted and robbed Loeadon, but that was stupid. This was his chance to get away.

  He rolled to his knees. Then, moving like an inch worm, he slowly crawled away from the camp, in the direction the Rikujo wench had fled. She had disappeared into the woods, something Mulladin himself needed to do before someone spotted him. The trouble was, not only did he move like a worm, but he also moved at a worm’s pace. No, not a worm, a slug.

  The fire–set as a distraction by that Rikujo woman, he was sure of it–would soon be defeated. Mulladin elected to deviate from his pursuit and crawl into thick underbrush a dozen feet to his left. This would conceal him nicely while he figured out how to get free of his bonds. The bushes were effectively conciliatory, too effective as it turned out. For he didn’t see the sharp decline in the ground until he was already rolling down it.

  Thorns, and rocks cut his face and hands as he tumbled down the hill, and he hit his head on several embedded rocks which made him woozy. Finally, his side struck something that arrested his wild rolling. It was a large rock with sharp edges that tore his clothes and bit into his skin. Even thought it’d hurt, Mulladin was thankful for the rock. It had both stopped him and would give him something to saw off his bonds. Mulladin went to work cutting his bonds. It took forever to get his hands free, but once he did, he untied his legs.

  He stood, looking back up the hill. The smoke from the fire was gone, and he couldn’t see the camp. After ascertaining his location, and the direction in which his quarry had escaped, Mulladin broke into a run. He had to get Jek’s sword back–again.

  Jenoc blinked open his one good eye. It was dark and he lay face down on cold stone. He pressed his palms against the ground and pushed himself up. By reflex, he attempted a spell-casting that would light up the room but immediately froze. He had no Apeiron. His core was completely devoid of the warm energy that should’ve swirled within. Jenoc’s breathing quickened, and he reached for the nearest Apeira well. He could sense it, less than a mile away; could feel the currents of energy flowing all about him, but he couldn’t draw the Apeiron. It radiated into him.

  Panicked, Jenoc stood and looked about in the dark. His eye had adjusted so he could make out shapes, but little more.

  “Where am I?!” he shouted at the ceiling.

  He winced as he expected the noise to aggravate his constant migraine, but no spike of pain assailed him. In fact, the ever-throbbing pulsing was gone. What did that mean?

  Sounds from above drew Jenoc’s attention. Were those footsteps? Scraping followed, and then light blinded him. Jenoc turned away from the ceiling, and was grabbed by the arms before he could say anything. Two men lifted him out of his cell, and he was able to abide the light enough to see a flat piece of square metal being slid back into place over a dark opening.

  A booted foot flashed before Jenoc’s eye followed by a flash of light and sharp pain. He rolled onto his side. He sputtered and tried to speak, but the blood running over his lip and down the back of his mouth choked him.

  “Get up,” someone snarled. “The only thing stopping us from tearing your guts out is our orders.”

  “Prince Isara wants to do it himself,” a second voice added.

  Rough hands lifted Jenoc from the ground and shoved him forward into a walk. His eye had finally adjusted to the light, dim though it was, and he could see he was inside a corridor made of square black stone bricks. He was walking a paved path lined on both sides by floor cells like the one he’d been pulled from. He was in a dungeon. But where? Prince Isara, the guard had mentioned. Then this was likely the castle dungeons in Isadara. It all come back to Jenoc: the plague box, the guard he’d forced to witness his crime, and then the pain that had felled him and robbed him of consciousness.

  They continued to call Jenoc every filthy name he’d ever heard in the human’s tongue as they marched him up several flights of stone stairs, finding excuses along the way to shove or trip him. He instinctively tried to spell-cast each time he was assaulted, and each time nothing happened. It was maddening. He could feel the Apeiron coursing all around him, but he couldn’t take it in. What’d happened to him? The constant headache was gone, but it seemed to have taken his spell-casting ability with it. This was no doubt the result of his tampering with Moriora.

  They were in the upper halls of the castle now, crowds of soldiers and servants stopping to stare at him as he was paraded past them. The guards didn’t stop a maid with red-rimmed eyes from blocking them so she could spit in Jenoc’s face. In fact, that act only drew cheers from the watching crowd of soldiers and servants. The woman was pulled aside by one of her fellow servants, and Jenoc’s forced march resumed.

  They passed a large mirror with an ornate golden frame hanging on the black stone wall, a
nd Jenoc froze at seeing his reflection. The man staring back at him was a stranger. His throat constricted and his chest tightened as he studied his features. Gone was his ice-blue, jewel-like hair, replaced with strands of blond. His skin was no longer pale white, but a peach color, and the amethyst iris of his remaining eye was green like those of the people around him. He was no longer an Allosian.

  Jenoc looked like a human.

  He barely registered the sharp blow that goaded him back into walking, and the rest of the trip to the throne room was surreal. This was a nightmare. What had happened to him? Was this the ironic joke of some cruel god? To turn him into the very thing he hated? The very thing he wanted to destroy? That was too much, and Jenoc collapsed to the shiny black floor. The guards had to carry him the rest of the way into the throne room where they unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. His vision swam as the back of his skull struck the stone floor. That was followed by a quick kick to the ribs forced him onto his side.

  “So, this is the piece of shyte Taris sent to kill our little ones?” A baritone voice shouted.

  Jenoc managed to look up and found a heavily muscled man in a red-lacquered breastplate staring down at him. As with all Haeshalan royalty, the man had emerald-green eyes that oddly contrasted with his ebony skin and long, braided beard.

  “Prince Isara,” Jenoc managed to breathe out between coughs.

  “You Aiestali are cowards!” He leaned down and spit in Jenoc’s face. “I’m going to personally march all my brave warriors on Aiested to butcher every single one of your people.”

  Jenoc started to laugh. It was a hysterical sound that appeared to disturb some of the prince’s guards. He didn’t know why he was laughing. He was as an angel cast out from heaven, cursed and doomed to die. But Jenoc had long ago dedicated himself to destroying the humans, and the rage of the prince only confirmed that his plan was working. There would be a new talis war. Perhaps that’s why he was giddy to the point of laughter, either that or his metamorphoses had robbed him of his sanity.

  “You think this is funny?” Isara grabbed a handful of Jenoc’s newly blond hair and forced him to get up so he could meet his eyes standing.

  “My son,” the prince said through clenched teeth, tears streaming into his beard. “You took my son! He was scarcely two years of age!”

  Isara backhanded Jenoc so hard that he spun completely around as he fell back to the floor.

  “I am going to make you suffer. I will torture you myself and then have my monks heal you so we can do it all again tomorrow. And the next day and the next day until you beg for death!”

  “H-how can you lead your armies if you are going to spend each day torturing me?” Jenoc said with a hysterical sob-laugh.

  Isara knelt beside Jenoc and leaned down as if he were going to whisper in his ear. “I will start your hell, but others will continue my work while I’m gone. And I will make sure you do not die until I return from war to kill you myself!” He grabbed Jenoc by the back of the head and slammed his face into the stone.

  Four of Jenoc’s teeth broke, and he laughed harder. Isara slammed his face down a second time, and Jenoc’s nose crunched. Still he laughed harder, though now it was mixed with gurgling as he choked on his own blood. An image flashed in Jenoc’s mind. His father, a tall man with long sapphire-colored hair being set upon by a mob of angry villagers. He’d been trying to reason with their leader, but they were whipped up into a frenzy and would have none of it.

  The laughter only enraged the Haeshalan prince, and he continued to slam Jenoc’s face into a black stone tile that was now smeared with red. More memories surfaced unbidden: his mother, torn dress exposing her left breast as a group of five men pinned her to the ground. Yet, even with the horror replaying before him, the laughter came stronger.

  Isara was in a frenzy now, repeatedly slamming Jenoc’s head into the stone. Despite all his threats of endless torture, Jenoc knew he’d die this day. His laughter stopped when his mind showed him Kairah, as a young girl, weeping as the vile men approached her. Rage replaced his giddy insanity. He had saved his sister from a fate like that of his mother’s by spell-casting a wave of force that tore Kairah’s assailants to pieces. It’d drained him to near the point of death, but it succeeded in scaring away the mob so that he and Kairah could escape into the woods surrounding the village.

  Jenoc was losing consciousness now, but his burning rage gave him something to hold onto. He tried with every last bit of will to draw from Haeshala’s well, but the Apeiron refused to come. He was about to surrender to syncope when his senses registered something new. Energy, not from the Apeira well, but emanating from Isara himself. Jenoc instinctually drew on that energy. It poured into him, but not in the same way Apeiron did. This energy had to be pulled from Isara, ripped out of him. The beating abruptly stopped, and the pain in his face faded.

  Jenoc blinked open his eyes–both eyes–and lifted his head. He found Isara’s guards staring at him, mouths agape and faces pale. He rose to his knees and turned to look back for Isara, expecting the man to resume his assault at any moment, but Isara lay on the floor unmoving. More than that, the man’s black skin was shriveled and white, his thick muscular arms now little more than sticks. Isara was dead, and by the state of his corpse, Jenoc would’ve thought for years if he hadn’t been alive a moment ago.

  Jenoc stood, and the Haeshalen guards raised their spears, though they looked loathe to fight. He smiled and then blasted the first guard with a jet of fire, which reduced the man to ashes. Jenoc could cast again. The energy he’d siphoned away from Isara could power his spells, though he immediately realized something was wrong. The power it took to spell-cast the fire was double the amount of Apeiron it should’ve taken him, and though a basic spell of the Second Discipline, it left him so weak he nearly collapsed.

  The other five guards advanced on him and Jenoc could feel the pulsing energy in each of the armored men. He grabbed for it, and to his astonishment, five translucent tendrils of greenish energy exploded from his chest–one for each guard. Jenoc marveled as the men withered before his eyes, falling to the ground looking less like men and more like centuries-old skeletons.

  Power coursed into Jenoc, and he gasped, his entire self feeling miraculously revitalized. He stood in the center of the throne room, now emptied as the remaining attendants and guards had fled.

  This is the other magic, Moriora Kairah had named it. He marveled at how similar it was to drawing Apeiron.

  And, I can use it to spell-cast! Although that had been disappointingly less effective than when powering his spells using Apeiron. Jenoc touched his newly restored eye. The day before it had been burned from its socket by Kairah’s magic, but now it was whole and functional. His nose was no longer tender, nor his face where Isara had shoved it into the onyx floor. Syphoning power from his enemies apparently healed him.

  Mirror! I need a mirror!

  Jenoc found one on the wall between two sconces with guttering flames. To his disappointment, his hair was still blond, eyes green, and skin pink. The energy hadn’t returned him to his Allosian form as he’d hoped. He’d have to accept what he was now–human. No, not human. I’m something else. But what?

  The energy in his core wasn’t the same as Apeiron. It was chaotic, unorganized, and less pure. He wasn’t sure why that was, and the power was decreasing with each of his breaths. That too was very different. Apeiron remained with an Allosian’s body, only ebbing away as it was used to spell-cast. Oh, it did slowly decrease as it substituted for sustenance and sleep, but the process was too gradual to be noticed–like a leak in Jenoc’s soul.

  I will need to draw energy on a more frequent basis.

  He noticed a serving girl cowering behind a stone column. Apparently, she hadn’t had the good sense to emulate her companions and flee the throne room. She sobbed as she met his eyes. Jenoc just smiled.

  Jove’s consciousness–now nothing more than a black sphere surrounded by crackling green electricit
y–floated and bobbed through the ocean of purple. Upon first arriving here, wherever here was, he’d sensed a powerful concentration of Apeiron, more potent, and more powerful than any well, even vaster than the purple ocean that surrounded him. It was some sort of fountainhead, the source and supply of all Shaelar’s Apeiron.

  He’d lost track of time in this place, and couldn’t say how long he’d been seeking out the fountainhead. Had it been hours or had it been weeks? He had no idea. Time was different here, flexible in a way it hadn’t been in the corporeal world.

  The Hunger was starting to reassert itself. Since coming here, it had grown more intense and demanding, as well as more difficult to satisfy. He stopped moving forward as he paused to draw in more Apeiron. His new electric tendrils crackled and snapped and the ocean around him shuddered as he sucked in the energy. It took vast quantities now to slake his appetite, more than a thousand Apeira wells–no, a thousand times a thousand! And his need only grew each time he ate more of that sweet, delectable life.

  Somewhat satisfied, Jove moved on. He sucked in one of the many currents of power and it propelled him forward. He continued to do this, catching currents and pulling himself toward the fountainhead, ever more excited as his senses reported to him that he was getting closer.

  The surrounding Apeiron became sweeter, more potent, more powerful, and eating it became as novel as the first time Jove fed on Apeiron; the day he’d drained the crystal man with the jewel eye. The idea of recapturing that original thrill energized Jove and he pulled harder on the lines of power emanating from the fountainhead.

  Soon he came upon something he hadn’t expected to see in this place, though upon reflection it made a kind of sense. The fountainhead was a gigantic sphere of transparent glass. Jove imagined himself laughing as he zipped toward the sphere. This was it! This was where all of Shaelar’s Apeiron originated. This was the ultimate source of sustenance and satisfaction Jove had been longing for–aching for. He slammed into the smooth surface of the crystal sphere and was rebuffed by a flash of white light.