The Lure of Fools
Page 78
“Go!” Maely screamed.
The sky temple shook and the ground around it started to crack and separate. Fissures formed all around the temple’s base, and entire swathes of ground collapsed inward falling into the unknown depths. The sky temple’s shaking increased in violence as it started to rise out of the ground. Explosions of dirt and rock shot into the air as the temple pulled upward. That’s when Maely understood what Empyrean was. She’d seen something like him before, on the roof of Aiested’s palace. This wasn’t an Ursaj temple; it was Allosian sky ship–a gigantic one.
The white spires acting as posts for the vine-fence pulled up from the ground, clods of dirt falling away and revealing that they were attached to massive white wings. They tore free of the vine-fence just as the wave of translucent green energy started to wither the greenery.
Maely was about to tell Empyrean to hurry when it jerked free of the ground and shot into the black sky. The darkness only lasted a few heartbeats and then Maely was soaring through blue. The sight and sensation of flying like a bird was enough to shove all other concerns to the back of her mind, and she almost forgot that she wasn’t the one sailing through the clouds, which were once again soft puffs of white. Empyrean rose above the clouds and hung in the air.
Maely looked down, marveling at the sea of clouds beneath her. She stretched her arms out–or at least that’s how she thought of it–and leaned forward. The wind picked up as she exploded back into an aerial climb, rising higher and higher until the blue sky began to turn purple. It was cold this far above the world, but Maely kept pushing, wanting to reach such a height that she could look down and see the entirety of Shaelar.
Maely twisted with the curving horizon and found herself hovering between a blue-brown globe below and an endless blackness above.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Kairah was right. The world is round.”
“This is as high as I am capable of flying,” Empyrean said.
Maely didn’t answer, but reveled in the unexpected serenity of space. She’d left all of her problems below on the planet, and the quiet of space lulled her into a trance. For a moment, she wanted to stay here forever–it was so incredibly peaceful.
That’s when Maely noticed the western edge of Shaelar. Where she could see through cloud cover, the ground was not green or brown, but black. The wave of life-destroying magic had spread out from Aiested in all directions and appeared to have eaten up hundreds of miles of land. Almost the entire western coast was black.
No, she hadn’t left her problems behind, and she couldn’t stay up here forever.
Maely pictured herself diving off a cliff into a lake, and Empyrean suddenly dipped. Fire engulfed Maely, and while she could feel the heat, she knew it was just a semblance of the burning Empyrean was taking. But if it hurt the sentient airship, he didn’t say so.
Clouds raced up to meet Maely as she plummeted back to Shaelar. Green and brown land filled her vision, and soon she could make out forests and rivers. Maely laughed at the fluttering in her stomach and pushed forward even faster.
“Shall I take over navigation, Maely?”
Maely poured her excitement, grief, and anger into the dive, and for some reason it made her feel better; like the relief a frustrated scream or a good cry could bring.
“Maely?”
A forest filled her view, details resolving quickly as she fell closer. She streaked down like a meteor, covered in fire and filled with fury.
“Maely?” Empyrean’s usually calm voice actually held a note of concern.
Maely pulled out of the dive so late that she brushed the forest’s canopy, sending up an explosion of frightened birds. She laughed and gave Empyrean back control of the airship. The change from soaring through the sky to simply standing on a purple circle was so jarring that she wobbled and stumbled off the dais and slid to her knees on the floor. She laughed a relieved laugh of pure joy. She’d needed this, it had helped drive away the gloom and grief.
“That… was… incredible!”
“Why thank you, Maely.” Empyrean said, and he actually sounded flattered. “It is my pleasure to serve. But next time, please don’t wait so long to pull up.”
“We’re really flying!” She laughed again.
“Indeed we are.”
“And we can go anywhere in all of Shaelar?”
“So long as we are not too far from an Apeira well. My energy store is vast, but it powers hundreds of talises, and prolonged flight away from a well could result in a crash.”
The blackened ground of Shaelar’s west coast flashed before Maely, and her giddiness faded. She couldn’t fly west now, and if the death wave was spreading, eventually there would be no more Apeira wells, and nowhere to run.
You can still help fix things, Aeva had told her.
“But you’ll let me fly anywhere I want?”
“So long as we are within a healthy distance of an Apeira well. Do you have a destination in mind?”
Maely nodded. “East.”
Empyrean hesitated and then carefully asked, “Could you be a little more precise?”
“I’m not sure where exactly.” Maely stood. “I just know that he rode east, toward Haeshala.”
“Who?”
“Prince Raelen. I need to find him.”
Mulladin batted a blast of purple energy out of the air mere inches before it would’ve struck him in the chest. Wind ruffled his shaggy black hair as Karak swept a horizontal tornado across the large chamber. It blew the Allosian spell-casters out of their path and deposited two in the basin of a tall fountain with a splash.
Red lights pulsed above and below them from within the very stone of the floor and ceiling, and an assertive chime repeatedly sounded around them. They’d been forced to abandon the slipgate room before Gymal could find any gates inside the city for them to retreat to. Spell-casters, usually marked by Allosian men and women dressed in white robes, appeared from thin air, and commenced trying to stop them. The strange magic closet that Gymal called a lift ceased to work, and they’d been forced to fly down several flights of stairs amidst a storm of magic attacks. Now they were on the ground floor, trying to find a way out of the enormous building that was the College of Disciplines.
“I don’t understand,” Keesa shouted. “I thought Allosians were a peaceful race.”
“Why do you think we’re still alive?” Gymal snapped in his nasally tone.
Mulladin ground his teeth. Even when the little lord was helping them, he still managed to come off condescending and insufferable.
“If they wanted us dead, they could’ve killed us already,” Gymal finished.
Mulladin caught sight of a mammoth arch set into the curved wall of the chamber. It housed two double doors at least as tall as the fountain in the center of the chamber, and the grandeur of the portal marked it as the front entrance.
Mulladin pointed at the doors with Jek’s sword and resumed sprinting, and the others followed. Screams erupted from a crowd of Allosian students congregating near the main doors, and they scattered to all directions when they saw him coming.
They’re not scared of you, Jek laughed. It’s Karak.
“You sound like you’re having fun,” Mulladin panted.
I am!
The large doors of the front entrance swung inward and a dozen Allosians wearing white, form-fitting armor with silver wings marched in.
“Oh dear,” Gymal said. “Peacekeepers!”
That must’ve been the Allosian term for guards or soldiers, for the armored men and women walking in lockstep definitely had the air of seriousness about them that Mulladin had found common in military types.
Mulladin grinned. He was eager to test his power with the sword against a foe that posed a real threat, instead of poor unsuspecting Rikujo enforcers. And thus far, their tactic of hiding and running hadn’t afforded him the opportunity to really engage any of the Allosian spell-casters.
“Are you ready to have some real fun, Jek?”
Mulladin didn’t really want to answer Gymal anyway. He could barely stand the short, nasally lord’s existence, to say nothing of talking with him.
I can’t fight them, Jek said, all mirth gone from his psychic voice.
“What? Why?” Mulladin slid to a stop, forcing the others to do the same.
Because they don’t intend to kill us.
“How can you know that?”
I can feel it. Karak’s tricks won’t be enough. We’ll have to wipe them out if we want to get past them, but all they want to do is disarm and capture us.
Mulladin growled. “Since when has that mattered?”
They aren’t evil.
“What’s wrong?” Keesa asked. She held her hand up, ready to start casting bolts of lightning.
“Jek says we can’t fight them.”
“Why?”
“Come on!” Mulladin grabbed Keesa by the arm with his free hand and towed her toward another connecting hall.
“Did you say Jekaran told you?” Gymal shouted.
“Uska, stupid human boy in sword.”
A wide ring of purple light formed on the ground around them and Mulladin slammed into an invisible barrier. The force of his collision at top speed threw him backward, and he would’ve fallen had Keesa and Karak not caught him.
Mulladin shot a glance behind them. The peacekeepers steadily advanced. He growled, shrugged off Keesa and Karak, raised the sword high above his head, and then brought it down on the invisible wall. The tip of the sword met resistance for only a fraction of a second before continuing its downward arc. A dome of crackling purple energy flashed into existence around them before shattering like glass, and the ring of light surrounding them winked out.
They resumed their desperate retreat, the peacekeepers now running and closing the distance behind them. Keesa fired off two bolts of lightning behind them, one striking a female peacekeeper square in the chest. The blow didn’t stop or even slow the Allosian sentry. Instead, the white, form fitting armor she wore flashed purple and simply absorbed the blast.
A second dome of invisible force formed around them, but this time Mulladin didn’t even stop or slow. He just swung the sword in a horizontal cut and dispelled it. They continued to close ever faster, and it was only by the Vorakk shaman’s intervention that they were able to maintain their lead. The lizard man summoned a dozen small orbs of fire and directed them at the peacekeepers. The marble-sized fireballs drew red lines on the polished floor that erupted into walls of fire separating them from their pursuers. Of course, the Allosian peacekeepers, in their white helmets and armor with silver wings, either leapt the dozens of feet over the flames, or barreled through them. Still, the surprise was enough to slow them, and Mulladin led the group into the connecting corridor.
Allosians in robes leapt out of their way as Mulladin lead the others through a hall that curved slightly on the right, stretching past doors set at regular intervals. He slid to a stop when he came to a part of the wall where a door should’ve been. Instead there was a gaping tear in the white stone that stretched from the floor dozens of feet up to a cracked arch. Mulladin didn’t think, he just ran into the chamber beyond and found himself at the top of a flight of stairs leading down to the floor of an amphitheater.
Stone benches ran the circumference of the circular chamber, interrupted at regular intervals by stairs leading down to the floor. The chamber was a mess. Debris littered the ground and stairs, and benches in one entire section were nothing more than cracked chunks of marble.
“What happened here?” Keesa asked.
Mulladin shook his head and then flew down the steps two and three at a time, taking the last ten in a single leap.
Showing off for your girlfriend? Jek teased.
Mulladin didn’t reply. Instead, he located a large open doorway leading to a hall behind a glass lectern. The others followed, and they exited the amphitheater just as the peacekeepers started hurling bolts of purple energy at them from the top of the stairs.
The corridor, like all the others in this building, was wide enough for ten wagons abreast with a ceiling so high it could accommodate a giant. Double doors, gold-leafed and decorated lavishly by runes and gemstones, awaited them in the corridor’s terminal wall.
Mulladin slid to a stop in front of the doors, gripped a handle that was more art than utility, and pulled. Both doors swung open with an ease that belied their mammoth design. Mulladin shepherded the others inside before slipping in himself. He caught sight of the peacekeepers entering the hallway just before slamming the doors shut.
“Vorakk!”
His name is Kara, Jek corrected.
Mulladin rolled his eyes. “Karak, can you use your magic to seal that door?”
“Ssk!” The shaman motioned with a hand and more of his floating balls of light appeared.
These turned light blue and then zipped into the gilded surface of the doors and disappeared. A heartbeat later, frost crept out from the seam dividing the two doors and spread until it entombed them in a thick layer of ice.
Mulladin turned away from the doors grinning, expecting Keesa to mirror his pleasure. Instead, she, as well as Gymal, were staring with craned necks at walls rising hundreds of feet and lined with treasure-filled shelves.
“Talises!” Keesa gasped. “Those are all talises!”
Mulladin lowered Jek’s sword and walked into the chamber. The sheer number of talises sitting in glass boxes was awe-inspiring–a fortune hundreds of times greater than that possessed by all the kings that ever ruled in Shaelar combined.
“I think we’re in the center chamber of The College of Disciplines, and this is some kind of vault,” Gymal said. “Like the one in Aiested, only much much bigger.”
“Vault?” Mulladin’s stomach soured. They might as well have run directly into a prison cell. “So, we’re trapped?”
“We are in a chamber filled with talises, peasant!” Gymal snapped.
“Displacement talises!” Keesa glanced at Gymal.
“Yes,” the weaselly little lord said with a weary sigh. “If we can find a shift bracelet, or blink ring, or any other kind of displacement talis…”
Mulladin started when something slammed into the frozen doors. He whipped back around as a second impact shook the doors. The ice cracked, but held.
“Karak, can you fix those cracks and keep the doors frozen?”
“Ssk!”
“The rest of us need to find displacement talises!” Mulladin broke for a spiral staircase rising from the center of the chamber’s glossy floor.
Keesa followed, eventually overtaking him and bounding up the stairs to the second level. Mulladin glanced back down at Gymal. The little man was standing in front of a tall pedestal with a glass orb hovering above it.
Mulladin gritted his teeth. Was that arrogant ass just going admire the scenery while he and Keesa did all the work? “What are you doing?”
Gymal raised his hand and gently rested two fingers on the orb. It glowed in response.
“Hey,” Mulladin repeated.
“Quiet!” Gymal snapped. “I need to concentrate.”
A moment passed, and then Gymal opened his eyes. “Third level, in the eastern-most section.”
Apparently, the orb was some kind of guide to the inventory of the vault. Mulladin felt stupid, but didn’t apologize–he’d be damned thrice over before he ever apologized to Gymal. He resumed climbing the stairs, following Keesa onto the third level, which was really nothing more than a five-foot balcony running along the wall of the chamber.
He caught up to Keesa in what must’ve been the eastern-most section, and joined her in opening glass boxes and sifting through their contents.
Uh, Mull…
He overturned a glass box, dumping its contents onto the floor, and kneeli
ng to sift through the talises looking for anything that could teleport them out of the vault.
Mull…
Mulladin lifted a thick silver necklace with a large diamond encasing a well-shard for a charm. “Keesa?”
She looked back at him and shook her head. “That looks like a shadow catcher.”
“What’s a shadow catch…?”
Gymal screamed.
Mulladin stood and ran to the balcony’s thin rail. His first thought was that the peacekeepers had broken through the door, but Karak’s balls of blue light continued to crisscross and disappear into the frozen doors, melding cracks together, and adding inches to the ice wall.
Mulladin looked from Karak back to Gymal. The little man was sprinting toward Karak, running so fast that he tripped on his robes twice before finally reaching the lizard man. Mulladin jogged around the circular balcony trying to get a view of what was scaring Gymal. He stopped when the hulking form of a gigantic crystal statue stepped from the shadows of an alcove on the chamber’s far side.
“What the hell is that?”
Crystal golem, Jek said. I was trying to warn you, but you were too busy gawking at your pretty necklace.
“Keesa!”
She was already at his side staring down with wide eyes at the colossal glass form. It steadily clomped toward Gymal and Karak, and Mulladin was about to shout for Karak to use his magic to stop it when he noticed the streams of water pooling around the lizard man’s ankles. The peacekeepers had apparently stopped trying to batter their way in and were now using magic to melt the ice.
Karak closed his eyes, and his balls of light redoubled their speed, darting in and out of the door in a pattern, trying to counteract the heat from the other side. No, Karak couldn’t both fight that thing and keep the peacekeepers out.
You wanted a challenge, Jek said.
“Keep looking for something to get us all out of here.” Mulladin climbed up onto the balcony railing.
“What are you doing?” Keesa shot a hand out, but Mulladin jumped before she could grab his tunic.
He fell toward the glass monster, sword pointed down. He’d seen Jek fight using the power of the sword, seen him jump impossibly high and land without so much as a spraining his ankle. He hoped, very sincerely, that the sword’s power would do the same for him.