The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Jekaran leapt off a wall, sailed through the apparition of a planet, and clashed with Etele. They hung in the air as if frozen, purple electricity arcing from the steel of their kissing blades. An explosion rippled from them, distorting the holographic display of the cosmos as they broke apart, each falling into a ready crouch. Bloody boot prints covered the planetarium’s glossy floor, and Jekaran’s right pant leg was soaked through. The sword allowed Jekaran to ignore his physical wounds, and Kairah had seen him fight through a concussion, internal bleeding and broken limbs, but eventually the damage would take its toll. To make matters worse, Jekaran had suffered several additional serious wounds since the commencement of the duel.

  If I could only get close enough to heal him.

  All restoration talises required skin to skin contact with the intended recipient of the healing, but getting close to the two combatants’ dance of death was suicide.

  Kairah gasped. The electric burning inside her core flared and a halo of white light rippled away from her and coalesced around Jekaran as he flipped headfirst over Etele. He landed, spun, and parried three thrusts from Etele before knocking her back with a kick to the stomach. Light fused into Jekaran in a rush making him gasp and shudder. When it faded, the oozing gash in Jekaran’s thigh was gone. Kairah had healed him without even touching him!

  Jekaran glanced at her, but before he could say anything, he was on the defensive of a barrage of rapier jabs and quickly sucked back into the duel.

  Kairah examined the glowing ring. The healing had felt less like using a talis and more like spell-casting. Was the ring restoring her ability to channel energy? The heat in her chest had slightly faded when she healed Jekaran, but immediately resumed building hotter as it spread along her entire body. She was glowing now, a nimbus of white light outlining her form.

  Kairah grit her teeth and stumbled forward, landing against a silver chair with a pentagram holding an amethyst jewel for a head rest–the Zikkurat. The talis Shivara had forced her acolytes to use to maintain her deception, and try to contact her god.

  The Zikkurat responded to her touch.

  Shivara had said that only Allosians with the oracular talent could use this talis. Kairah had never heard of a talis that would only function for an Allosian, but perhaps only oracles could use it because they already knew how to sift through the complex communion with fate.

  I need answers. I need to find and free Rasheera. But would the Zikkurat work for her while she was wearing the goddess ring? Talises often conflicted with one another, and Kairah had no idea what the ring was doing to her. The interactions could also sometimes be lethal, especially when trying to combine the use of two powerful artifacts.

  More is at stake than just my life.

  After a glance at Jekaran–who was bearing down on Etele with a blinding whirlwind of sword swings–Kairah pulled herself up and sat in the silver chair. The planetarium faded to a vision of absolute white.

  Tyrus’s idea had turned out to be a monumentally stupid one. Yes, they were out of the tower, and therefore outside the influence of the warding stone that held them there, but no, they definitely were not safe.

  The sky above Allose had grown black with roiling clouds within which flashes of green lightning came in regular intervals. But the real danger wasn’t coming from above. No, it was right there with Tyrus on the streets of the magical city.

  Feral men and women with tentacles of translucent, green energy growing from their backs and chests, roamed the streets of Allose. They used their otherworldly tendrils to paralyze and kill any who strayed too close to them.

  Their little group had encountered two of the monsters upon exiting Kairah’s tower and had only managed to escape because Irvis had dropped one of the displacement talises. The monster was distracted by it, feeding on it like a guard dog tossed a piece of freshly cut meat. That left them with not enough talises to escape the city, not that the others really wanted to.

  Hort and Mulladin both seemed determined to find and help Jekaran, now that their opportunity for escape had evaporated. Even Irvis and his whore-mistress lover refused to take the remaining shift bracelet and escape. Tyrus had been tempted to volunteer under the guise of going for help, but he didn’t want to look like a coward. Truth be told, Tyrus hadn’t liked the idea of leaving Jekaran either, and although they were caught in a maelstrom of death and chaos, it felt right to remain in the city.

  “Oh, we’re going to die, aren’t we?” Tyrus whined.

  “Probably.” Hort laughed, actually laughed!

  “You’re insane! All of you people are insane!”

  “Yup,” Hort cheerfully agreed.

  Tyrus let out a very unmanly scream as one of the monsters with the magic tentacles charged them from an alley. Hort shoved him out of the way, spun the black scepter, and swung it in front of the charging monster, drawing a horizontal line of absolute black that hung in the air. When the monster collided with the line it tore through its neck, decapitating it. But that wasn’t all the black line did. Before the creature’s head could fall, it compressed in a nauseating mess of broken bone, fluid, and pink sinew and was sucked into the black line. Like a beast sated by eating its fill, the line faded.

  Tyrus covered his mouth but vomit still spilled through his fingers.

  Hort eyed the headless corpse sprawled on the ground and then twirled the scepter. “Handy! It almost looks like this was created for fighting these creatures.”

  A bolt of lightning erupted from behind Tyrus, and he clapped his hands over his ears a moment too late. Keesa was casting blue shafts at another approaching monster; this one a woman wearing a tattered dress that looked to have once been of fine and expensive make. The style was not Aiestali, Tyrus noted, but Haeshalen, as evidenced by the sharp diagonal cut of the cuffs, and the neckline high enough to show the chest but hide cleavage. In fact, many of the monsters wore Haeshalen-noble clothing, tattered and dirty though it was.

  Not many people had the kind of eye for fashion that Tyrus did. Not many unwed noble men collected fine dresses. Truthfully, not many unwed noble men liked to wear fine dresses. It was a guilty pleasure he kept to himself for obvious reasons.

  They turned a corner onto one of Allose’s arterial streets where they found a mob of panicked Allosians fleeing toward the center of the city. Peacekeepers herded the crowd, occasionally breaking away to battle one of the life-sucking monsters. At best, they could repel or delay them, most often they were paralyzed and set upon by packs of the creatures and devoured.

  Tyrus broke into a run toward the Allosian mob and was surprised when the others followed him. He guessed they’d come to the same conclusion as he had–there was safety in numbers. And, of course, their best chance for reuniting with Jekaran was to be at the center of the action. It was like following smoke to find the fire that produced it. Perhaps the old saying, “where there is smoke there is fire,” ought to be replaced with, “where there is chaos, there is Jekaran.”

  Tyrus found himself laughing. “Divine Mother, I’m just as insane as the rest of them!”

  A single, glowing white flower rose from the ground at the edge of an endless abyss. A wind from within the void pulled at the petals of the spirit lily, and one actually broke free and was sucked into the darkness. The flower’s aura dimmed and it sagged as it began to wilt.

  “Aeva!” Kairah screamed. “Mother!”

  Kairah… Aeva’s voice was frighteningly weak.

  The void pulled at the flower with increasing vigor.

  “Tell me what I must do!” Kairah shouted, and even her voice seemed to get sucked into the infinite darkness.

  The Eater has come…

  “How do I find you? How do I stop him?”

  The spirit lily’s glow winked out, it wilted, and then was pulled into the darkness.

  “No!’ Kairah screamed.

  Aeva was gone, but something on the ground remained, uprooted when the spirit lily had been pulled into the void. Kairah
focused her disembodied gaze on the object. It was silver, and glowed with a faint white light. What was it?

  Plant it, a voice very much like Aeva’s, only more mature, whispered.

  Kairah looked closer. The object was a tear-drop shaped bulb, the kind used to plant flowers, though this one appeared to be made of molten quicksilver. Kairah reached for it.

  I have to plant this? But where? Where can I plant it that the void cannot just pull it in?

  Guided by an intuition she couldn’t account for, Kairah lifted the liquid metal bulb and pressed it to her chest. The bulb flashed white and then melted into her heart.

  Kairah’s eyes snapped open. She was back in Shivara’s planetarium, sitting in the silver chair that was the Zikkurat. The sounds of Jekaran’s duel with Etele returned, as did the fever that scorched Kairah’s skin from the inside out. She glanced at the goddess ring glowing white on her finger.

  What did the vision mean? She’d sat in the Zikkurat for answers but was now more confused than ever. She sat back and closed her eyes. The future. Instead of reaching out to Rasheera, she would concentrate only on the future. Perhaps the answers lay ahead.

  She saw nothing.

  Kairah pushed again, and the Zikkurat activated, but it showed her only blackness. Icy horror impaled her chest. The Zikkurat could show her nothing if there was no future to show. She stood from the silver chair, wobbled, and collapsed to her knees. The searing heat from the energy coursing through her was agony.

  She ignored the pain as best she could, slowed her breathing to calm herself, and sifted through memories of the vision she’d seen of Shivara imprisoning the goddess. There had to be a clue for how to free Rasheera from her crystalline prison.

  The Eater has come, Aeva had said.

  Somehow, the creature Kairah had fought in Taris had broken into Rasheera’s prison. She remembered hearing the monster’s laughter echo across two planes of existence just before Taris fell. It was there, in the center of the planet, it had to be. It was with Rasheera who was unconscious and defenseless.

  Although the spirit lily in her vision had already been consumed by the void, Kairah didn’t think it meant Rasheera was dead. If spell-casting worked the same way for the goddess that it did for Allosians–albeit on a cosmic scale–then that meant her spells would fail with her death. In the case of a deity, that likely meant all creation would unravel.

  The pain flared hotter, making Kairah wince and grit her teeth. What was happening to her? She’d been certain the Moriora had left her body when she refused to become a life leech. Could she have been wrong? Was she so corrupted that the energy from Rasheera’s ring was destroying her? If that were true, then it was more reason for her to be quick in discovering the secret to releasing the goddess.

  She focused on her memories of what the Zikkurat had shown her of the past. What was it that Shivara had done? She blasted Rasheera with Moriora. What had Rasheera done? She manifested a shield to block the cage of energy trying to crush her. The shield had pushed out, mixing with the Moriora which diluted the energy until it crystalized as an Apeira well. The Mother Shard now stood where the attempted deicide had taken place, rising from within the planet.

  That is the door to her prison. All Apeira wells were doors to her prison. Kairah remembered the Eater in Taris touching the well. He’d done more than just feed upon it. He’d used it to enter Rasheera’s dual realm.

  Kairah stood and found Jekaran. Etele was standing on a table parrying his blows. She performed a flawless backward, single-handed handspring, flipping off the table just as Jekaran cleaved it neatly in two.

  We need to get to the Mother Shard!

  Kairah took a step toward Jekaran but faltered and crashed into a bronze tesseract sat atop a metal pole. The instrument crashed to the ground, Kairah going with it. She screamed as the heat consuming her burned even hotter.

  Kairah’s scream distracted Jekaran and he nearly took the point of the blank-eyed girl’s rapier through his throat. He folded backward, and then spun to the side, landing a staggering kick in the woman’s stomach. Jekaran straightened, and raised his sword, but she was already recovered and again on the offensive forcing him to desperately deflect five lightning-strike thrusts.

  Divine Mother, but she’s fast!

  Jekaran knocked her thin blade aside and punched her in the face. At first, he’d tried to avoid dirty tactics like that, on account of his foe being a woman, but any quarter he showed her resulted in injury or loss of advantage to himself. He could almost hear Maely saying, “Idiot! Girls can fight just as well as boys.”

  The girl’s blank stare didn’t falter as her head rocked back from the force of his blow. Jekaran took the opportunity to break away and scan the chamber for Kairah. He found her slumped over a bronze cube, grimacing in pain and trying to stand–and was she glowing?

  “The hell?”

  Pain and cold metal dug into his side and he jerked back just in time to deny the girl’s rapier further penetration. He turned his dodge into a diagonal cut, but the woman moved away just in time.

  He was about to ask the sword for advice but caught himself. They were no longer two separate minds yoked together, but one being. Jekaran’s consciousness had swallowed up the sword’s sentience and absorbed its knowledge and power–You have mastered Azrin. That actually caused a pang of sadness. He’d been getting used to the psychic company.

  He parried, dodged, ducked, and swung, but couldn’t ever inflict any significant wounds on his opponent. They were too evenly matched, a fact Jekaran had not faced since bonding the sword talis. And she too fought as though there were no disparity between her mind and that of her ego talis. The woman’s sword, despite being forged in a different style, was identical to his.

  No, a thought came to him. Not identical.

  Jekaran glanced at the steel that made up her rapier’s thin blade. It bore no emerald shards.

  The scene of those green specks shining like stars when he killed Kaul flashed in his mind. I drained his life and used it to refill the sword’s Apeiron and heal myself. Then, another scene replayed before him. Ez staring into his eyes, blood trickling from his mouth. The emerald stars lit up then, too.

  “No,” he choked out and unbidden tears blinded him.

  He’d drained Ez’s life force, too. Did that mean his uncle’s soul was gone?

  I’m the Eater.

  He faltered and the blank-eyed woman rammed her rapier through his shoulder and then quickly pulled it out. Jekaran choked out a bellow of pain, and barely managed to bring the sword up to parry her follow-up thrust, a strike meant for his heart.

  I’m the Eater. The sword had told him as much when it confirmed he had evil in his blood.

  The slave girl sliced his thigh, and he stumbled. She kicked up, the heel of her bare foot connecting with Jekaran’s jaw. She held her foot above her head with the flexibility of a dancer and then brought the heel down on the back of Jekaran’s head. He went down, his sword clanging as it struck the floor beside him. His heart stung as though it were being squeezed by two strong hands, and a crushing nausea filled his stomach. He resisted his supernatural instincts to roll to the side and snatch the sword. He didn’t want to keep fighting.

  You were right, Ez. I should’ve listened to you. I should’ve resisted the lure of fools. He wasn’t sure exactly what he could’ve done different other than not going after the sword when it called to him. In retrospect, that had been the linchpin decision that tied him to this fate, and he hated himself for having made it. You’d still be alive if I had simply left it alone.

  The woman’s rapier pierced his back, driving through one of his lungs, forcing Jekaran to cough a smattering of crimson on the marble floor. He knew his end had come, and even thoughts of saving Kairah didn’t rouse him to defend himself. It wasn’t cowardice or even surrender to grief that kept him down, but his love for the woman. She wasn’t safe with him, not if he was Karak’s Eater. Not if he was capable of killing the
man he loved like a father. Eventually he’d kill her, too.

  I am a mad dog that needs to be put down.

  The woman leveled her rapier at his right eye and then drew back in preparation to ram it through his socket. A ball of light, like one of Karak’s spirit orbs, appeared behind the slave girl and Jekaran used it as a focal point to steel himself against the coming deathblow.

  Fool, boy! A familiar gravelly voice said.

  Ez?

  And then his uncle appeared behind the slave girl who stood frozen with her arm cocked back. His uncle stepped forward, passing through the slave girl like smoke, and knelt in front of Jekaran. He could actually smell the tobacco on Ez’s breath. He was really here.

  Ez smiled. “You aren’t the Eater, boy.”

  “But the sword said―”

  “Just that you have the potential in your blood. It’s why you can use the sword to drain Apeiron. I could never do that because I don’t have your gift.”

  “A gift?” Jekaran sobbed. “This thing that I am is not a gift!”

  Ez shook his head. “If only you could see you the way I see you.” He put a very physical feeling hand on Jekaran’s shoulder. “Mull told you the end of the Lure of Fools poem?”

  “Ez…”

  “But closely resemble they one another, both heroes and fools at first…” he began.

  “Ez, please… I’m not―”

  “Quiet boy!” he snapped, and the familiar expression, though rebuke, actually comforted Jekaran. “I don’t have much time, so dammit, you’re going to listen!”

  Jekaran nodded.

  “Closely resemble they one another; both heroes and fools at first, but it’s only at the fork of destiny’s road that the truth will at last emerge. For while the fool always looks to his own regard, the hero for others is aware. And will suffer and die when called upon, even for strangers in his care.”