The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  The entrance to the coliseum leapt closer to her view and she gasped. A blackened skeleton in tattered rags that mostly had melted to its bones shambled forward. In its skull’s eye sockets burned two glowing emerald dots. A web of translucent, green tentacles spread from the skeleton’s chest and back striking like vipers at the fleeing Allosians, syphoning Apeiron and causing pale flesh to regrow over the creature’s charred bones.

  “Kairah!” It shrieked in a rasping voice afire with hate.

  Jekaran stepped up to her side. “Divine Mother, what is that?”

  “Shivara!”

  The heat inside Kairah’s body flared hotter. She slumped, and Jekaran steadied her with an arm around the shoulders. Despite the burning she was no doubt inflicting upon him, Jekaran didn’t let go until Kairah straightened. The contact left blisters on Jekaran’s skin and Kairah healed him with a half a thought, something that drew a gasp from Irvis.

  “Kairah!” Shivara began descending the stairs. Her skin was nearly all restored, and long black hair grew from her bald head. The burnt strips of robe did little to obscure her nudity, but the witch appeared not to care.

  She dragged half a dozen Allosian bystanders with her, tethered by tendrils of Moriora and looking like the morbid train of a ceremonial gown. With that many conduits for Shivara to syphon Apeiron, she would have endless energy to fuel her spells. And if Jenoc hadn’t been able to defeat her, what chance did Kairah stand?

  I am more powerful now. But Kairah couldn’t be diverted. Rasheera needed her, and all of Shaelar needed Rasheera.

  “Kairah! I know you’re here! Come and face me, girl! See how you fare when your brother is no longer alive to protect you!”

  Jenoc…

  “That sounds like my third wife.” Hort chuckled.

  Kairah glanced down the corridor, toward the chamber of the Mother Shard and then back at Shivara descending the coliseum steps.

  “Go, Kairah,” Jekaran said. “I’ll deal with that thing.”

  Kairah looked into Jekaran’s green eyes. A tear ran down her cheek and sizzled into a puff of steam. “She is like nothing you have ever fought. She will kill you!”

  Jekaran glanced at Shivara and chuckled. “She doesn’t look so tough.”

  It pained Kairah to allow him to fight Shivara alone, but she knew where her duty lay. She had to free the goddess, or everything would unravel; Allose, Shaelar, the entire planet!

  “I wish I could express my gratitude for you philematologically, but my lips would burn yours.”

  “You mean kiss me?”

  Kairah nodded. “But I fear the heat I am producing―”

  Jekaran cut her off. Her feverish lips scorched his, and when he pulled back his mouth was blistered.

  “Ow…” He half groaned; half laughed.

  Kairah smiled and healed him. How could she have believed Jekaran was her inferior? The young man was brave and selfless in a way that miraculously ran counter to his Moriora nature.

  Hort stepped up to the entrance, black scepter twirling in his hand. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Brother Ulan.”

  “And me.” Mulladin stepped up and flashed the lightning ring that he now wore on his finger, and Kairah caught a scowl from the tan-skinned woman.

  “I can help.” Gymal stepped up holding a stun baton of all things.

  “You damn idiot!” the fat woman, Graelle, said. “Here!” She tore Gymal’s stun baton out of his hand and replaced it with her concussion rod.

  More tears sprang to Kairah’s eyes. It wasn’t just Jekaran. How could she have ever thought these humans anything but noble and brave?

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I will accompany you, Lady Kairah,” Irvis said. “If the Divine Mother is indeed in peril, then it is my duty to aid her in any way I can.”

  “And I’m comin’ to make sure he doesn’t try staring down your dress!” Graelle folded her arms.

  Irvis kissed Graelle on the cheek. “Yours is the only cleavage for me, love.”

  Keesa stepped up to Gymal and wrenched the concussion rod from his grip. “You go with them.” She nodded at Irvis and Graelle.

  “Keesa, no!” Mulladin said.

  “Shut it, you big dumb ox!” she snapped back.

  “I can fight!” Gymal protested.

  Jekaran turned toward the short, balding lord and placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, you can’t.”

  Gymal scowled.

  “Go with Kairah. She will need help.” Jekaran smiled. “And just so you know, you were right. I did hire that man whore to call on you in front of last year’s well-finding camp. Cost me a whole silver Aies, money I was originally planning to use for some new festival clothes”

  Gymal’s scowl faded and he started laughing. Jekaran joined in, and Kairah was at a loss for understanding.

  Even after spending months among them, Kairah still couldn’t quite understand the unpredictable behavior of these humans.

  No, I should no longer think of them that way. They are my friends.

  “You see those Allosians Shivara is dragging behind her?”

  “The dead ones?”

  “They are not deceased. Shivara is using them as conduits to draw Apeiron from the Mother Shard. While she is connected to them, she will be all but invincible, and her fuel for spell-casting inexhaustible. Cutting her off from them is your only hope of defeating her.”

  “Go, Kairah.” Jekaran nodded down the hallway. “Go save the world.”

  Kairah shared one last look with Jekaran, then left him and the others to fight Shivara–fight and almost certainly die. She told herself that the only way to help them now was for her to finish her mission and free Rasheera. That didn’t make leaving Jekaran and the others to face the most powerful spell-caster in Shaelar, without her help, any easier. More tears sizzled off her cheeks into puffs of steam.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we, Ulan?” Hort asked.

  “Probably,” Jekaran answered.

  Hort grinned.

  Jekaran eyed him. “What?”

  Hort shook his head. “Getting killed by a gorgeous, naked woman has always been a fantasy of mine. Except in my fantasy I died from my heart giving out because of the intensity of the―”

  “You’re as depraved as Irvis!”

  Hort shrugged and leaned his head to the right and popped his neck. “What can I say? Since my first wife left me, I’ve become a dedicated student of hedonism.” He leaned his neck to the left and popped it.

  “Thank you,” Jekaran said softly.

  Hort looked at him. “For what?”

  “For looking after me. Helping me find my way back when I was lost.”

  Hort’s smile waned. “You remind me so much of Nemel, it was like… like Rasheera gave me a chance to, I dunno…” He shrugged, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Make things right.”

  Jekaran smiled.

  “What’s the plan?” Mulladin asked.

  Jekaran glanced at Mulladin and Keesa who, despite her earlier display of bravado, was clinging tightly to Mulladin’s big arm. Jekaran grinned, faintly remembering a scandalous scene of the two kissing in a feeding trough after falling off a roof. The memory was like something from a half-remembered dream.

  “What?” Mulladin’s eyes darted to Keesa and back.

  Jekaran shook his head. “I’m just glad you’re with me, Mull.”

  “Well?” Keesa asked, trying to sound impatient, but her quivering voice betrayed her terror. “What do we do?”

  Jekaran looked through the arched doorway and into the coliseum. The witch, Shivara Kairah had called her, was standing in the center of the floor, green tendrils still attached to five bodies lying frozen on the floor. They weren’t dead, but their eyes were just as unblinking.

  Shivara’s tattered rags fluttered about her naked body as she turned, scanning the thousands of Allosians frantically running out of the coliseum. She destroyed swaths of the retreating crowd with spears of white of lig
ht.

  “I’ll kill them all, Kairah!” she shrieked. “Unless you come out of hiding!”

  Jekaran inhaled. “I’ll keep her distracted. The rest of you go after those Allosians she’s feeding on. Save them if you can.”

  “And if we can’t?” Hort asked.

  Jekaran didn’t answer. He’d known as soon as Kairah had explained they were sources of power for the witch that they might need to be put down. It made him sick.

  “Just try to get them away from her,” he said. Jekaran looked at each of them in turn. “Ready?”

  Mulladin and Keesa shared a look and nodded. Hort twirled his black scepter and grinned. Jekaran twirled his sword up and gripped the handle with both hands before launching into a charge back onto the coliseum floor. Upon nearing Shivara, he held the sword out to his right and down at an angle and then leapt ten feet into the air. As he came down, he raised the sword for a vertical slice, behind which he’d put all his momentum.

  Without even turning to look at him, Shivara motioned, and a wave of force slammed into him. A beat later he found himself lying on the coliseum’s floor. His sword clanged down in front of him. He shot out a hand and snatched the handle, rolled, and sprung up.

  Now Shivara was looking at him. Her long black hair hung down over her face, glowing emerald eyes narrowing as she considered him. “You are, Jekaran. The one who rescued Kairah in Imaris.” She glanced at the sword. “How, pray tell, did you get your hands on Azrin?”

  You have mastered Azrin.

  “That’s what this weapon talis is called?”

  Shivara took a step toward him. “It’s the sword’s name.”

  Jekaran wanted to glance around for the others but resisted the impulse. That would only give away their tactic. “Like its personal name?”

  “Yes.” Shivara took another step. “It is one of three crafted by artificer Meloldrin–the filthy traitor!”

  Jekaran didn’t know what the mad witch was going on about but decided conversation might be a better distraction than attacking her again. That, and his side smarted from being swatted from ten feet in the air.

  “There are more like this?”

  “Three. I have one called Irkalla, and Thanatos was destroyed hundreds of years ago.”

  Irkalla? That must’ve been the name of the rapier with which the slave girl had run him through, nearly killing him.

  Shivara frowned. “But I can’t sense Azrin’s intelligence. What have you done to him?” she screamed.

  Jekaran startled at the shout and worked to steady his shaking hands. Since bonding with the sword, he’d never really been afraid of an opponent. Even the slave girl hadn’t frightened him; he’d just looked on her as a difficult challenge. This creature, though, she evoked terror in Jekaran. It wasn’t her powers, godlike though they were, but the unpredictable, feral hate in her eyes. She was insane, cruel, and truly evil.

  “I absorbed Azrin’s knowledge and power.”

  “How?” Shivara cocked her head, the expression disturbingly childlike. “Such a thing shouldn’t be possible.” She met his eyes and a hellish smile spread across her face. “You are like me, though not yet awakened.”

  Jekaran caught movement on his periphery. Hort was behind Shivara now and positioning himself for an attack. Jekaran needed to keep her attention on him, so he kept talking, although all his enhanced senses screamed at him to attack before the witch drew any closer.

  “I’m nothing like you.”

  Shivara appeared not to hear him, her eyes entirely fixed on the sword. “Moriora truly is the unbinding of all laws, and all order, just as Boulos said it would be.” She met his eyes again and took another step. “Perhaps you are the one destined to be my consort.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You are quite young and not educated, but it should only take a century or so for us to remedy that. And with me as your teacher, you’ll learn many things.” She chuckled in a way Jekaran thought was meant to be seductive but came out making her sound that much madder. “I will need to awaken your Moriora first.” Shivara closed her eyes and began casting.

  “Now!”

  Hort leapt forward, slashing the scepter and drawing a black line in the air across the green tendrils tethering the five helpless Allosians to Shivara. The tentacles evaporated, and Mulladin and Keesa moved in to grab the witch’s hostages.

  A concussive blast with Shivara at its center exploded outward. It struck Hort, Mulladin, and Keesa, throwing them away from the hostages. It struck Jekaran too, but this time he was ready. He held the sword in front of him in a guard position, willing the emerald shards to life. They shined up and down the blade, and Jekaran cut through the telekinetic blast like a tree standing against the wind.

  Her eyes still closed, Shivara formed new green energy tendrils and recaptured her five Allosian conduits. Then a red line appeared in a circle around Jekaran, the witch, and her hostages. A wall of flames leapt up and burned along the red line until they were surrounded in a circle of fire.

  Shivara opened her eyes and something else struck Jekaran. Waves of vibration thrummed through every part of him, making him tremble and want to collapse. He gritted his teeth and held tightly to the sword. Its emerald shards shined brighter but didn’t have the same absorbing effect on this attack as it had before.

  Ice filled Jekaran’s limbs and his chest grew empty and cold. A pain churned inside him, a sensation not unlike being desperately hungry. He was shaking so hard that he was having trouble holding onto the sword.

  “Azrin is interfering with the inversion spell!” Shivara snarled. “How?” The witch’s eyes focused on the shining green dots peppering the sword’s tapered blade and she gasped. “Melodrin, you cunning bastard! You crafted a key!”

  Not a sword, but a key. The impression he’d received earlier repeated from his memory.

  Shivara raised another hand so that she looked as if she were reaching for Jekaran. The wave of force smashed into him with renewed vigor, ripping at every fiber of his body and soul. It was as if something were trying to tear him apart from the inside out. He screamed, dropped the sword, and fell to his knees. It was all he could do to hold his essence together as Shivara’s spell thrummed louder and louder in his ears. He knew that he shouldn’t have let go of the sword, that now he was vulnerable. And though it lay but a few paces off to his right, he couldn’t get to it for the pain. It was as if knives were stabbing every inch of his flesh and scraping his bones.

  Then the offer was before him; a promise of relief from the pain and hunger if Jekaran would only surrender to it. He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to! The unnerving feeling of every particle of his self being pulled upon was more than he could handle. But Jekaran knew that to accept the proffered relief meant destruction. He wasn’t certain how he knew it; he just did.

  Just at the point when Jekaran was about to surrender, he heard something over the thrumming in his mind–a voice; Ez’s voice. It wasn’t an actual vision like when he fought Etele, but a memory, dredged up from his subconscious and displayed to him as if by the will of another.

  He’d been seven or eight, bent over a bucket and sobbing in between violent retching. Ez’s hand slowly rubbed his back and he whispered, “It will pass, Jek. It will pass.”

  Jekaran screamed and rejected the offer of relief so strongly that his will actually rippled the air and struck Shivara. The assault on his essence abruptly ended as did the wall of flames that ringed them.

  Jekaran heaved, wanting nothing more than to collapse and sleep, but instead he reached for his sword–Azrin–and stood. Again, he brought his blade up to a blocking position. Ready for a follow-up attack, he was surprised to find tears rolling down Shivara’s cheeks. She wore a look so utterly hurt, that Jekaran couldn’t help but to pity her.

  “You too?” She sucked in a ragged breath. “You also reject me?” The pathetic, childlike pouting disappeared, replaced by lips twisted down, narrow eyes, and a tightened j
aw. “Heartless bastard!” Shivara roared and a horizontal column of white light blinded Jekaran.

  He clenched his eyes shut, and gripped Azrin’s handle, holding the blade as if to parry a blow. The emerald chips on his sword shined, and energy flowed through Azrin and poured into him. It healed and reinvigorated him, and he took a step forward, pushing against the blast of power meant to incinerate him.

  The light abruptly vanished, and Jekaran opened his eyes in time to see Shivara stagger forward. Another bolt of blue lightning struck her in the face, but her charred features quickly reformed.

  Something else hit her from behind, and the witch whirled and cast another spear of light, this time at Keesa. Jekaran was in between them in a blur, sword swinging and absorbing the spell. Hort lunged at Shivara, his scepter splitting the air and revealing blackness beneath the skin of their reality.

  Shivara disappeared a heartbeat before Hort landed and trailed a black line through where she had just stood. The witch reappeared a few feet away and launched a bolt of lightning that took Hort in the shoulder. He spun but hadn’t quite hit the ground when Jekaran leapt over him, charging Shivara with Azrin poised to decapitate.

  Kairah pushed open two tall, stained-glass doors. Beyond was a cylindrical chamber, miles in circumference and rising thousands of feet to an open sky. The massive Apeira well known as the Mother Shard was like a small mountain in size. Ringing its base was a pit that appeared to descend into the depths of Shaelar. A smooth walkway growing out of the chambers interior wall allowed for viewing the crystal monstrosity, but only a staircase in front of them rising to a circular platform allowed someone to get close enough to touch the Mother Shard.

  “That platform has no rail.” Gymal’s voice trembled. “What if someone were to fall?”

  “A brave lord like you is afraid of heights?” Graelle smirked.