The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  The little girl offered him another apple which he took, but didn’t eat it quite so desperately. He glanced around the village to make sure no one was watching, for Loeadon had forbidden the townspeople from giving them real food, and he feared someone would chide the girl and take away the apples.

  “She said you’d be hungry,” the little girl said with another giggle.

  Mulladin stopped chewing. “Who?”

  “Aeva.”

  “Who’s Aeva?” Keesa asked.

  “My flower.”

  “You have a talking flower?” he scoffed.

  The little girl’s smile faded. “You don’t believe me do you–no one does.”

  Not wanting to hurt the girl’s feelings, and consequently lose access to her basket of apples, Mulladin quickly said, “I believe you. It’s just, I’ve never heard of a talking flower before.”

  The girl’s smile returned. “That’s because she’s special. I found her in the woods when Da sent me out to get firewood. She’s really nice. I wanted to bring you to meet her, but she says there’s not enough time.”

  Mulladin froze mid-bite. “Not enough time?” That was an odd thing to say.

  “Yeah,” the girl said. She fished in her pocket and produced a large iron key. “She told me to sneak this from my da and give it to you.”

  Mulladin glanced at Keesa. Her eyes were wide and she was trembling. “Is that the key to…?”

  The little girl proudly nodded, and Mulladin snatched it from her hand.

  “Aeva says to wait until night so you won’t get caught.”

  Mulladin stared at the key, his hand trembling as he stuffed it into a pocket. “Thank you, uh…”

  “My name is Jesh,” the little girl said.

  “Thank you, Jesh.”

  Mulladin glanced at Keesa. She had risen to her knees and was clutching the bars of her crow’s cage with both hands. “Are you going to leave me here?”

  Mulladin honestly didn’t know how to answer. The woman had tried to kill him or at least put him in danger. She’d stolen Jek’s sword, and was half-crazed with a lust for vengeance. But she was Ez’s daughter…

  “Aeva says you need her help to get the key back.”

  Mulladin hesitated. What was Jesh talking about? “You gave me the key,” he said.

  Jesh laughed. “Not that one, silly. The key you’ve been chasing. You know, the one the bad man with long hair took. Aeva says you have to work together if you want to get it back, and then you have to take it to the secret city. It’s really important.”

  “Jesh!” a man shouted.

  The little girl glanced over her shoulder, and when she looked back her eyes were wide. “I have to go, or Da’s gonna spank me.”

  She hurried away before Mulladin could ask her what she meant.

  A talking flower told her to free them? Could the little girl be playing pretend and they’d become a part of her game? Mulladin would’ve thought that if Jesh hadn’t known they were chasing the sword. She called it the key. And what was this thing about the secret city? Was she talking about Allose? How the hell would she know about that? Mulladin only knew about it because of what Irvis had told Ez when they met up a few weeks ago.

  “Well?” Keesa asked. Her voice was harsh, but her trembling hands and tight jaw belied her bravado. “Are you going to leave me here to die?”

  Mulladin looked at her. He found that he was still angry with her, and the temptation to leave her to die was very real. But she was Ez’s daughter. And she’d probably alert the guards if he tried to sneak away without her anyway.

  “No,” he sighed. “I can’t leave you.”

  The ring did not radiate Apeiron, as Kairah had first believed. The energy was very similar in tone, feel, and its ability to refill her internal Apeiron stores, but there was no mistaking that it was different. Not alien like Moriora, but truer. Where Apeiron felt warm, the ring felt hot. Where Apeiron felt clean, this felt absolutely pristine. Where Apeiron was potent, the richness of the power the ring radiated was nearly overwhelming. Kairah also sensed something inside of the ring, something that was active and intelligent; like an ego talis, yet without projecting any psychic voice–all things a human couldn’t notice just by using the talis.

  Another confusing oddity was that she’d seen the familiar ripple of fate around the ring when she took it from the human monk. Kairah had only ever seen the mark of the fated around people, never objects. But perhaps that was because the ring was alive. That was the only way she could describe the power pulsing inside it. It was like it had a soul.

  Drawing on it took some adjustment at first. A little bit of the power had an effect exponentially greater than normal Apeiron. Spells she cast with the power were more powerful, and took less effort. With it, Kairah’s skill was on par with other, more adept Allosian spell-casters. It was jarring, like when she’d made to lift an object, only to find that it wasn’t as heavy as she anticipated. The power had also alleviated her throbbing headache. It was still there, but it was a quiet thing only causing mild discomfort.

  But the most wondrous thing about the restoration ring was that, through her, it caused flora around her to grow. Grass became greener and grew taller in only a matter of minutes. Flowers appeared and bloomed, trees leafed, and even a dead gray maple revived to a healthy brown with green leaves. This was certainly no ordinary talis.

  “I don’t see a damn thing.” Hort held Jekaran in his muscular arms like a mother would cradle a baby. “Just an empty valley surrounded by mountains.”

  Kairah looked up from the ring which she now wore on her hand. She hadn’t asked the human monk for the official right of possession, but as an Allosian she wasn’t required to. All talises rightly belonged to her people, and so she claimed it. He hadn’t said anything in protest anyway, the man appearing to be unnaturally quiet and shockingly uninterested in studying her form.

  He grieves for his friend, Aeva said. Can you not speak comfort to him?

  That is not my concern. Kairah cast a glance to her side where Irvis stood, his chubby arm around Graelle. “Allose is cloaked in a spell that shrouds it from all eyes.”

  “Even yours?” asked the little lord, Gymal, in his nasally voice.

  After all that’s happened, you still don’t think of them as people, do you? Aeva accused.

  Aeva’s uncharacteristically mature question surprised Kairah. They are a lower form of life. You cannot expect me to consider them equals.

  She felt a sigh from the spirit lily. Is that not what Jenoc thinks?

  Just because their life has value does not mean that they are my peers! For some reason Aeva’s words angered Kairah–something that had never happened before.

  And Jekaran? Is he also your lesser?

  Kairah faltered. He is different, she finally sent. He possesses a sense of morality that is sorely lacking in the rest of the human race. Again, anger, and this time it came with flashes of memory; images of her dead mother lying naked on her back, blood dribbling from her nose. Kairah pushed the memory away. What was wrong with her?

  You are tainted, Aeva said in answer to the thought.

  Kairah’s breath caught. Was Moriora corrupting her heart as it did Jenoc’s? She’d thought since Jenoc had long suffered a vengeful fever that the Moriora only magnified his hatred. What if it had actually changed him? What if it was changing her?

  “Lady Allosian?” Gymal repeated.

  Kairah shoved her rising terror down and turned to face the others. “I cannot see it either, not with my regular sight. But I can see the Apeira aura of Allose’s well and the thousands of my kin who occupy the city. I can take you there, and once we cross the boundary of the cloaking spell, you will behold the city.”

  “You never told us what your people will do to us,” Hort said.

  Kairah sighed. “Likely you will not be able to leave.”

  “They’ll imprison us?” Graelle asked, her eyebrows raised.

  Kairah nodded. “But
it will not be like the practice of humans. It will not be in a dark dungeon in squalid conditions. You will be made comfortable, taken care of, and even free to wander most of Allose.”

  “So there’s precedent. You’ve captured humans before?” Gymal asked.

  “Yes,” Kairah said. “From time to time some of your kind have discovered our city. They were not permitted to leave, but they did live out their lives in comfort and tranquility.”

  “You should’ve told us this!” Graelle snapped.

  “Would it have changed your determination to accompany me? To see Jekaran brought here?”

  Her question was met with silence.

  “I will give you an opportunity to turn back now, even though you know where Allose is. I only ask that you tell no one of its location.”

  More silence, broken a minute later when Gymal finally said, “There are doubtless others who know or will figure out what happened to the king, or who was responsible for freeing Jekaran. That will put my neck in a noose, or my ass in a dungeon. I don’t really have much to go back to.”

  “There’s nothing left for us in the world of men either,” Graelle said. She pulled Irvis close to her and the two locked stares. A heartbeat later Irvis nodded.

  “Karak kill Eater. Then Karak die, aka.”

  So sure he will die? But then Kairah was becoming increasingly convinced that if they were to defeat the monster that was Moriora’s vessel, it would cost her life as well. She wasn’t being negative, just realistic. The creature had to be stopped, and like Karak, she would give her life to see it destroyed if that was what it cost. And if Moriora was corrupting her, she may have no other choice but death. She would not turn into a hateful monster like Jenoc.

  “That leaves you, Mercenary,” Kairah said to Hort. “There is no reason for you to accompany us any farther.”

  Hort glanced at the others and then looked down at Jekaran’s face. He gently wiped the black strands of hair away from Jekaran’s blank eyes. It was a surprisingly tender motion, like a loving father considering a terminally ill child.

  Hort shook his head. “No, I have to see the boy healed.”

  Gymal’s eyes snapped up to Hort’s face. He opened his mouth to comment, but closed it again. Apparently, he had been as surprised as Kairah by the burly mercenary’s answer.

  Hort met her eyes and then grinned. “My latest wife was about to leave me anyway, after catching me in the bath with her mother. This way the magistrate can’t force me to give her any of my money. It’s all buried in a chest under the latrine.” He laughed. “She’ll never think to look there. And even if she did, there’s no way in hell she’d fish it out.”

  “Your latest wife?” Graelle asked.

  Hort nodded. “Number seven.” His brow crinkled. “No, I’m sorry. I was thinking of her twin sister, Loria–she was number seven. Hedia is number eight.”

  Tyrus Gymal huffed as he worked to keep up with the long strides of the tall Allosian woman. It’d taken a few hours to descend into the valley, which had been an exhausting and perilous climb over rocks and horizontally growing trees. But now the terrain had blessedly leveled out, and they hiked over grassland toward the invisible city.

  He glanced at Jekaran carried in Hort’s arms. Taking him to Allose wasn’t about avoiding implication in the king’s assassination, though that definitely was part of why Tyrus hadn’t turned back. It was about making certain Kybon’s son got help from the fey people. They were his only hope of restoring the boy to his senses. He needed to see that done if possible, no matter the cost.

  He didn’t owe it to Kybon, not really. If anything, the lout had left life in Tyrus’s debt–both figurative and financial. But he’d loved his cousin. The handsome, popular boy hadn’t needed to be Tyrus’s friend, despite their familial relationship. Kybon had wanted to be his friend, had chosen it, and for Tyrus that was a rarity. But it was more than that, Tyrus knew. Guilt played its part, guilt that he hadn’t been able to see those responsible for Kybon’s murder brought to justice. Guilt that he hadn’t gone to his uncle and revealed that Kybon was dallying with a peasant girl. If he’d done that, maybe he’d still have his cousin.

  He would never have forgiven me.

  If it were any of the light-skirt baron’s daughters or courtiers Kybon usually rolled around with, he would’ve eventually have pardoned any treachery on Tyrus’s part. But this girl, Anarilee…Kybon was different about her. The idiot actually loved her.

  Tyrus glanced again at Jekaran and then up at the man carrying him. Hort had surprised Tyrus, and he still didn’t know what the mercenary’s game was. Why did he care what happened to Jekaran? Was he trying to leverage the situation? Ingratiate himself to Tyrus in the hope of increasing his pay? It made sense, and it was in Hort’s character as far Tyrus knew except for the fact that going to Allose meant they could never leave. Perhaps he was hoping for a cushy retirement and the chance of bedding one of the fey women?

  But no, Tyrus had seen real concern in the man’s eyes when he looked at Jekaran’s blank face. Could he possibly like the child? Kybon had that effect on people too. Perhaps it was more that, in a world that seemed on the verge of falling apart, Allose offered safety. Tyrus didn’t understand what this Eater was, but if anyone could deal with it, it would be those who wielded the power of Apeiron itself.

  He threw a glance over his shoulder at the Vorakk shaman striding behind him. It made his skin prickle to have the lizard man at his back. While the Vorakk was technically their ally, Tyrus had no doubt the creature would eat him if the occasion arose. And it would be him first, he was certain; the blood of nobles was sweeter than that of the common folk. He nearly tripped and had to force himself to focus on the path ahead, but continued to steal glances at the lizard man as often as he could. It was during one of these backward checks that Tyrus caught the Vorakk speaking to no one.

  Perfect. He’s dangerous and insane.

  But no. He wasn’t talking to nothing. A glow fly hovered at eye level to the lizard man. It bobbed up and down, and was unusually bright. The Vorakk finished whatever it was saying, and the little ball of light zipped away. Tyrus started when the lizard man’s slitted eyes focused on him. He looked away, but not in time to avoid stumbling over a fallen log. Tyrus crashed to the ground, evoking a spell of hissing laughter from the Vorakk as it stepped over him. He scrambled up, and continued on, curtly dismissing a concerned question from Hort.

  The crossing of the boundary came without warning, or fanfare. One moment Tyrus was looking ahead at grassy hills with a meandering creek and thickets of trees, and then a white mountain suddenly loomed over them. Only it wasn’t a mountain–it was a city made of stone so pristinely white it glowed with reflected sunlight. And rising even higher than the city’s mammoth white towers and artfully sculpted turrets, was the biggest Apeira well Tyrus had ever seen. It was so tall that clouds–tinged with reflected purple light–concealed the top of the crystal monolith.

  He’d stopped walking, but wasn’t the only one. All the party save for Kairah stood still, overawed by the sight. The city was like Aiested, but in the same way that a sapling was like an ancient oak.

  “Allose,” Kairah announced, though to Tyrus it came too late and was ridiculously unnecessary.

  Tyrus imagined that this was what dying and arriving at the gates to Heaven would be like. Did Rasheera live in a city like this? Surely if there were cities in the afterlife, they would be as grand as this. He couldn’t imagine anything grander.

  Flashes of purple light exploded all around them, and a heartbeat later, Tyrus found that they had been surrounded by Allosian men and women wearing glossy white, form-fitting armor. The most impressive part of the sentries, however, was their wings. Each looked like an avenging angel with a set of glowing silver wings sprouting from the back of their armor. They bore no weapons, but Tyrus was sure they were armed with innate magic or powerful talises.

  “Lady Kairah?” a male sentry asked. Immediately, his
helmet appeared to liquefy and melt off his face before being absorbed by the high collar of his chest plate. He had a perfectly sculpted face, and long cerulean hair that looked like it had been spun from glass.

  “Peacekeeper,” Kairah responded with a respectful nod.

  “What are you doing out here?” The sentry glanced at Tyrus. “And who are these humans?”

  The rest of the sentries raised their hands and pointed at Tyrus and his traveling companions. They won’t kill us, he had to remind himself. The legends said Allosians wouldn’t take a human life, but what then of Kairah’s brother? The sentries started to advance on them, and Tyrus’s bladder threatened involuntary evacuation.

  Kairah raised her hand to halt the sentries. “They are my guests.”

  The sentries hesitated, all looking to their helmet-less captain for instruction. He nodded to them, and they ceased their attempt to close on the group, but kept their hands raised.

  “You know the law, Lady Kairah.”

  “They are material witnesses,” Kairah said. “I bring them here to testify before the synod.”

  The sentry captain furrowed his brow. “Testify of what?”

  “The destruction of the Aeose at Taris, and the being who singlehandedly destroyed it.”

  The sentries lowered their hands and looked to their captain. Although all Allosians were pale-faced by nature, the captain had actually turned a shade whiter. For some reason that made Tyrus feel like smirking at the Allosian, and so he did.

  Tyrus wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the magnificence of Allose’s interior was even more awe-inspiring than when he first beheld the city appear in a seemingly empty valley. Even the smallest of Allose’s structures were taller than the giant sequoias that grew north of Aiested, and every building was as much a work of art as the finest Aiestali sculptures.

  Allose’s towers, domes, and palaces all surrounded the base of the city’s gargantuan Apeira well–its circumference having to be measured in the dozens of miles–and was the center from which a network of paved streets wove between smaller buildings in neat straight lines.