Raelen stared at his fingerless hand. It’d been his dominant hand. How would he write, play the harp, or steer a ghern? What an odd thing to think in the heat of a battle. He ground his teeth and tears threatened, not from pain but from the crushing pressure of defeat. Jenoc was going to do something horrible to his men, but he couldn’t stop him. In fact, he literally could not touch the man.
Saranna’s words come back like a lightning strike to his brain: To touch him is death.
“Saranna…”
She had spoken to him! Her spirit did come to him to prophesy of this very moment. It hadn’t been a dream. Hope rekindled inside Raelen. Not only did the soul of his dear sister warn him of Jenoc’s return, but she’d also given him a clue for how to stop the Allosian.
Raelen ignored his pain with one of Gryyth’s mediation mantras;
The wind cannot silence me.
The dirt cannot smother me.
The rain cannot drown me.
The cold cannot touch me.
I am the ever- burning flame.
What was it Saranna had said to him?
You will face him again, but this time he fights with the power of death itself. You cannot fight him the way you did before. To touch him is death. His power cannot affect itself, so arm yourself with it, but don’t partake of it.
Raelen didn’t understand, but the frightened shouts of his men made him growl a very Ursaj-like growl, and he stood. He had to do something. He had to stop Jenoc. He didn’t have time to puzzle out Saranna’s cryptic instructions. Perhaps if he struck hard and fast, he could kill the Allosian warmonger in a single blow. It would likely cost him his life, but he was ready to give it.
Seiro.
Jenoc stood before the looming purple, crystalline obelisk at the center of the Aiestali camp. He craned his head back to take in the entirety of it. Twenty-feet tall was a small Aeose, especially when compared to the miles high Mother Shard at the center of Allose.
His screaming hunger begged him to reach out and drink from the Apeira well, but he fought it. He hadn’t come this far, sacrificed this much just to give into appetite. He began the ritual, again casting from all Five Disciplines and then inverting them–just as she had shown him.
As before, the effort drained him, but fortunately sustenance was plentiful. Jenoc consumed the life energy of dozens of soldiers as he tapped into the very fabric of reality, the most basic building blocks of the universe. He found the rhythmic cadence of Apeiron, and interrupted it, replacing order with chaos. The rhythm changed from a steady pulse into a frantic, wild, cacophony of random beats.
Even with unlimited sources for his magic, the effort was taxing. Not just his physical body, he realized, but the ritual was doing something to his mind. Not corrupting him, or making of him something else, but taking something from him. It was like the spell demanded payment in more than just Apeiron. It required a piece of his very being–his soul.
Jenoc tensed with the effort. He balled his fists at his sides, and his hand brushed something sharp concealed inside the pocket of his cloak. Kairah’s geode. Why had he brought that with him? Thinking of his sister’s betrayal fueled Jenoc’s rage, and he completed the spell with a hammer’s blow of unnecessary force.
The Apeira well exploded.
Raelen bounded toward the center of camp, growling and shoving soldiers out of his way. He drew more deeply on his transference band, the strength of Gryyth reinforcing him and dulling his pain.
He could see the tall Allosian now. He was standing at the base of the camp’s Apeira well, waves of translucent force pulsing from him. Raelen had no idea what the monster was doing, but it couldn’t be good. Perhaps he was going to use the well to power a spell that would kill the entire army? Raelen growled and charged.
He’d closed to just ten paces when the Apeira well exploded. The blast hurled him backward so hard that even Gryyth’s borrowed stamina couldn’t keep him from blacking out when his head struck the ground.
When Raelen awoke, he hurt all over. But one sharp, cold stabbing in particular drew his attention. It was like being speared by Loeadon’s lethal icicle all over again. His fingers found it before his eyes did. An emerald-colored shard of crystal, as long as a short sword, pierced his right shoulder and protruded from his back. He cried out, and every twitch of his muscles was agony. An image of the gigantic piece of Aiested’s broken well flashed before him. It had been the same color.
Raelen forced himself to roll onto his side. He screamed, but his voice was drowned out by the roaring cries of his army. The well was gone. Not even its base remained. Jenoc was gone too. Then why the screaming?
That’s when Raelen saw it: a bedraggled man in a wrinkled and torn diamond cut overcoat–the vogue fashion of the Haeshalen nobility. His skin was pale, and his eyes rimmed by dark circles. He was grinning as he walked through the mass of moving soldiers. One of Raelen’s fighting men raised a sword to strike the Haeshalan wild man down but froze as a tendril of warped air, translucent green in color, speared him through the chest. The soldier convulsed, and then withered into a desiccated corpse.
More figures–men, women, and youths, not soldiers–strolled around the killing field striking out with tentacles of the same power at any who were foolish enough to come within ten feet. Their victims suffered the same fate of the withering soldier.
Raelen staggered to his feet. He called upon Gryyth’s strength to aid him, but felt nothing. His transference band was empty, its Apeiron charge gone.
“My Prince.”
Raelen turned, his shoulder both on fire and freezing at the same time. He found Vesarr standing a few paces away. His helmet was off, and he held his flare kris at a lazy angle. He was hunched over, one arm folded about his stomach like he was going to be sick.
“General?”
Vesarr looked up and Raelen gasped. The man’s face was as pale as the flesh of a corpse, and he bared his teeth in a grimace of pain the likes of which must’ve far exceeded Raelen’s own.
“You’re wounded?” Raelen grunted.
Vesarr touched the side of his head and squinted his eyes closed. “It’s so cold,” he sobbed out. “It’s eating my stomach.” He screamed and fell to his knees.
Raelen instinctively backed away, the motion sending jolts of pain lightning throughout his arm and drawing involuntary tears from his eyes. Vesarr looked sick. Could Jenoc have set off a plague box? Loeadon spoke of crafting one. Perhaps Jenoc took it?
“So cold,” Vesarr cried. He looked up and met Raelen’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
A spread of tendrils made of the same warped, translucent green energy the Haeshalan wild man had wielded, sprang from Vesarr’s chest. They struck like vipers at Raelen but just when they ought to have sank into his flesh, they evaporated.
Vesarr’s eyes widened and he shook his head. He struck out with more of his magic vines, but the same thing happened. Vesarr struck his stomach with a gauntleted fist. “No!” he screamed, and then struck again, and again, and again.
“Vesarr stop!” Raelen barked.
Vesarr stopped, crawled backward until he could scramble up, and then broke into a run. Though every step was electric torture, Raelen followed. Two more of Jenoc’s creations struck out at Raelen as he passed, but as with Vesarr, their tendrils of energy vanished upon contact.
Vesarr was screaming now, running hunched over with his free hand pressed against his middle. He ran back to the command tent and stopped to snatch a lantern hanging from a pole. He broke the lantern open, showering himself with oil, and repeated the action with a second lantern. He flipped his flame kris around so that the point rested against his stomach and glanced back to meet Raelen’s eyes.
“Vesarr, no!” Raelen shouted.
Vesarr shook his head and then rammed the wavy-shaped blade into his gut. Nothing happened. No blood, no fire. The talis was drained of its Apeiron charge, just like Raelen’s transference band. Of course, that didn’t explain the lack of spilling
gore or the absence of any pain expressed on the general’s face. Vesarr yanked the wavy blade free and dropped it on the ground. He looked about wildly, and smiled upon seeing a quarter of the camp engulfed in flames–the flame caster’s brigade.
Vesarr tore off in the direction of the flames, his mad laughter drowned out by the shouting and screams coming at Raelen from all sides. Raelen tried to pursue, but the pain of his wounds was too much. He impotently watched a tongue of flame lick up above the blaze raging in the flame caster’s quarter as Vesarr dove into the inferno.
Raelen staggered forward and fell to his knees. The impact jerked the shard of green crystal impaling his shoulder and Raelen opened his mouth to scream, but vomit poured out instead. He choked and sputtered as blackness encroached on the edges of his vision. The world went silent as the black swelled and devoured his sight.
Jenoc’s harvest was disappointingly meager. Out of the entire Aiestali army, he’d created less than a hundred new children. It had sated the hunger of the others who’d disobeyed him and mobbed the army–killing the soldiers to a man–which brought them back under his control. That was helpful, and the destruction they wrought was awe inspiring, but not enough. He’d need a bigger army to unleash on Shaelar if he was going to destroy all of humanity.
He needed more Moriorans.
Jenoc mentally listed the different Apeira wells in the vicinity. There were at least a dozen, both discovered and hidden, but none were large enough to effect a change larger than a few miles. He needed a big Apeira well like the one in Taris. But no, that was too far away. He’d lose control of his minions long before he reached Aiested.
A thought came to him, sudden and illuminating like a revelation from one of the human’s fictitious gods. There was an Apeira well close by that was powerful enough to broadcast his Moriora spell across all of Shaelar. If he could do that, turn every green-eyed human in the land into a Moriora wielder, he wouldn’t need to control his children. They would be everywhere, crisscrossing the land and devouring their fellows until all of Shaelar was a boneyard.
The Mother Shard in Allose was the key to completing his mission, to exacting his vengeance. But what of his people? Would they not die too? Jenoc laughed. They didn’t matter anymore. Kairah didn’t matter anymore. All he cared about was punishing the whole world for his suffering. And then he would die too, shining bright like a supernova before collapsing in on himself and becoming nothing.
He looked in the direction of his homeland, and telepathically relayed his command to the thousands of monsters making up his army. Now he was a monster too, but then perhaps he always had been one.
“If you don’t know who Jekaran is, then how do you know me?” Mulladin asked the sword.
You don’t need to say the words out loud, Jekaran chided.
Mulladin glanced at Keesa who sat opposite him, cross legged, on the dusty wooden floor. They’d easily fled from the frightened city guard, and were holed up in the attic of the cooper’s shop–unbeknownst to the cooper.
“I want Keesa to hear what I’m saying.” Mulladin was kneeling over the sword, which was placed on the floor between them. “So, you know me? But no one else?”
There was that bastard with the long black hair. I knew him.
“Why did you kill him?”
He was going to kill a lot of people.
“Isn’t that what a sword is for?”
I only kill evil people.
“Ask it if it remembers anything from when we were…” Keesa hesitated, “competing for it.”
Mulladin arched an eyebrow.
Keesa rolled her eyes. “Fine. When we were trying to kill each other.”
I can hear her, Jekaran said in a flat tone. And there was nothing before the Apeira well woke me.
“So, you don’t know Maely, or Kairah?”
I know them.
“What about Ez?”
At the mention of Ez’s name, the sword fell silent. Maybe “silent” was the wrong term, Mulladin decided. It was like the sword just disappeared from his mind.
“Jekaran?”
It was a full minute before the sword spoke again. Mull! It enthused, in the exact same excited tone he’d first heard it speak his name.
“Jekaran?”
The sword mentally laughed. If that’s what you want to call me.
It’d said those same words the first time.
“What’s wrong?” Keesa’s thin eyebrows were drawn down.
Mulladin shook his head, but didn’t respond to her question. “Do you remember what we were just talking about?”
The sword projected confusion. I just awoke.
Yes, something was definitely wrong.
“Could you give me a moment of privacy to talk to my friend?”
The pretty girl? The sword projected the image of a sly wink. You sure you don’t need more than a few minutes? Wait, what am I talking about, you’re a virgin, aren’t you? You’ll probably only need―
“I’m not a virgin!” Mulladin blurted out. Horrified he’d said that out loud, he looked up at Keesa with wide eyes.
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you?”
Mulladin didn’t answer. Of course he was, but it wasn’t his fault. Until just a short time ago, he’d possessed the mind of a six-year-old. He’d had those feelings, of course, but he didn’t understand them, and no decent woman would take advantage of a simpleton that way. He remembered the girls from Graelle’s brothel. They hadn’t had any qualms about flirting with him. They probably would’ve… He flushed.
“You are!” Keesa laughed.
Mulladin rose so abruptly that he forgot to stoop, and struck his head on one of the attic’s low wooden buttresses. “Dammit!” As he rubbed his scalp he bent down, grabbed Keesa by the forearm, and pulled her up.
“What’re you doing?”
Mulladin towed her to the far corner of the attic.
“Whoa! I’m not gonna help you with that problem. If you think―”
“Shut up!” Mulladin hissed. “Something is wrong with him.”
“Him?”
Mulladin rolled his eyes. “My friend–your cousin–is definitely in that sword.”
“Like his mind or his soul?”
“Hell if I know.” Mulladin glanced back at the sword lying on the dusty floorboards. “But it’s definitely Jek. He knows who I am and remembers our life together…”
Keesa sniggered. “So, that’s how he knows you’re a virgin?”
Mulladin just narrowed his eyes. “He also knows my sister, and my other friends. But when I asked him if he knew your father, he shut down, and when he finally started talking again, it was like it was right after Loeadon died. Like he’d just woken up and the last few hours never happened.”
Keesa’s smile faded. “You said he killed my father.”
Mulladin nodded.
“Perhaps that did something to his mind,” Keesa said. “Maybe he’s broken.”
Mulladin rubbed some more at the goose egg rising on the top of his head. “Maybe the Allosians can do something to fix him. Kairah and the others are probably already there.”
“You mean Allose?” Keesa sighed. “You still think what that little girl said about her talking flower is true; that you need to take the sword to the secret city?”
“The sword talks,” Mulladin snapped. “Why not a flower?”
“A prophet-flower?”
Mulladin threw up his hands, and they struck the wooden beam above him. “Ow!” He pulled his hand down to examine a sliver that’d lodged itself in his finger. “At the very least,” he said while sucking on his wound, “Jekaran’s body should be there. If we bring the sword back to him, maybe it’ll fix him somehow and he’ll wake up.”
“Okay.” Keesa’s tone was patronizingly patient. “Let’s say you’re right. Where is Allose? How do we find a city that polymaths and scholars have been searching out for centuries?”
I know where Allose is, Jek projected.
M
ulladin realized they’d stopped whispering. He walked back and knelt over the sword. “How do you know where Allose is?”
“It knows?” Keesa asked.
Because that’s where Kairah is.
Though Mulladin didn’t know much about magic, the fact that the sword would know where Kairah was did make a kind of sense. Kairah had Jekaran’s physical body, and if the sword was still connected to it…
“Can you tell me where Allose is?”
I can show you.
Mulladin cried out as images flooded into his mind. He was so startled, he fell backward and landed on his side with a loud thump! It didn’t last long, but Mulladin now knew how to find the ancient Allosian city as though he’d made the journey a hundred times.
“Damn rats!” A muffled voice shouted from below. “Adna! Adna! Where’s my hammer?”
“We need to get out of here.” Keesa helped Mulladin up.
He bent down and took the sword. “I know where we need to go.”
“Is it far?”
“Yeah. A hundred miles northeast of Rasha.”
“Rasha’s at least two hundred miles away from here!” Keesa walked to the window by which they’d gained entry to the cooper’s shop attic. “It’ll take us weeks to get there on ghern back, and we don’t have any gherns. With the city guard on high alert, it’s gonna be hard to steal any and we’ll need at least four to cycle riding so we don’t kill them.” Keesa raised one leg and put it over the window sill. “Guess we can wait a few weeks until things settle down and then…”
“No!”
“Let me guess.” Keesa rolled her eyes. “The talking flower spoke to you and said we had to hurry?”
“Haven’t you seen what’s happening?” Mulladin snapped. “The darkness over Aiested is spreading. The ground shakes, and there was that wave of force that disintegrated your boat.”
Keesa didn’t say anything.
“I don’t think we have weeks!” Mulladin walked over to the window and stared Keesa in the eyes. They were quite pretty–like liquid pools of–shut up!
The Lure of Fools Page 71