“But doesn’t King Koss still live?”
“Yes,” Onar claimed. “Both he and his brother probably do. Even when I was a young man, Dimtreanos was concocting Longevity Draughts using dark alchemy…these potions have stopped the process of ageing in all the Royals.”
“Longevity Draughts,” Bladeborn said. “I see…”
Onar nodded, “When I was locked away in here, King Koss was protected by his Praetorians and a number of Knights, some of whom drank these potions to extend their lives. He and Dimtreanos were beginning to rule by threatening to withhold these potions.”
Although he listened intently, Bladeborn realized that Onar was giving him information that was about some time more than fifty years earlier…he wondered if any of it would make a difference to anyone but the two of them.
Onar spoke gravely, “All those years ago, I made an error in judgement—an action that will never be undone…”
“Tell me,” Bladeborn said.
“One morning, I was going to set up the items of my faith and begin to pray at the crystal sarcophagus. But to my great horror, I discovered that a thief had snuck into the Royal Treasure Vault during the night. Somehow this thief had gotten past the magic protecting the crystal case, causing it to OPEN—and then he died. The Vault’s greatest prize, the Sword of the Ancients, lay on the floor next to the thief’s body—and his head—was nearly cut off! Blood was everywhere.”
Onar shuddered and continued, “I saw how the thief had gotten into the Vault—there was a secret door built into a nearby column. But I wondered: why had the crystal sarcophagus opened for the thief? And what killed him? It appeared to me that the thief had cut off his own head.”
“How does someone cut off their own head?” Bladeborn inquired.
“It could only have been magic wrought by the Sword.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t killed by a Guard or a Knight?” Bladeborn asked.
“Let me continue,” the Acolyte said, slightly frustrated. “There was no one else within the Vault that I could see. I used a spell of perfect sight to try to see if this thief was alone. I found that he was indeed alone, as far as any powers I had to see.”
“What did you do next?” Bladeborn asked.
“I made the mistake that changed my life!” the Acolyte said, impatiently. “I did what landed me down here in this infernal prison for so many years!”
Bladeborn had been startled by Onar’s anger. He could feel the pain the old Acolyte when recalling the event. Onar drew a long deep breath, and then let it out slowly.
“Instead of going to get help, I took my cloak off and wrapped it around my hand. I wiped the thief’s blood off the Sword. Then, I cautiously returned the Sword to where it had been before the thief had touched it—the sarcophagus next to Emperor Eshumé. I wanted everyone to think that I had done absolutely nothing wrong. And more than that, I wished that when King Koss, Dimtreanos, and the Knights of the City arrived, the Sword of the Ancients would pass directly from where it had rested near Eshumé to one of them.”
Bladeborn said, “What went wrong? Why were you arrested?”
The Acolyte snapped, “Be silent! I will tell you.” The man looked Bladeborn in the eyes and said, “Others were just arriving as I laid the Sword down … I looked up and smiled. There was a moment when I thought everything would be alright…And then the lid to the crystal sarcophagus closed and sealed the Sword inside! Because of my error, it is probably still there today!”
Bladeborn paused as the gravity of the situation sunk in. He understood that his friend was looking for redemption. “How could you have known?” Bladeborn said. “You acted with just intentions.”
Onar began to weep, “Even after I admitted my terrible mistake they put me in here. It was long, long ago. Will they release me, that I may see my Temple and my City once more? I am so old that I will die soon.”
His voice trembling, Onar whispered to Bladeborn, “I always held out hope that I would someday be freed. It was the one thing that kept me sane, kept me from going completely mad. At times, I thought Saint Morth had forsaken me and I would never get to speak to another human being.”
The old Acolyte relaxed a bit and his voice steadied. “Yet in the end, I have been allowed to have you as a companion. You have made my last few years tolerable and even worthwhile… “
“Don’t speak as if there is no hope—there is still time!” Bladeborn exclaimed.
“Promise me this,” the old Acolyte said, grabbing Bladeborn’s hand, “do not fall into madness after I am gone. You are meant for great things. Greater than you know.”
Bladeborn was going to ask what Onar meant, but before he could, the old man said, “Now, I must rest.”
Hours later, Bladeborn was still awake. After Onar’s story, he had continued working at the energy sparking spell—and continued to fail. Bladeborn knew there had to be a different approach. Through meditation he could feel the warmth of what he imagined was a yellow sun. He had never seen the sun, but he description of the sun by Onar had been truly detailed. He focused on that glow—the warmth, the light. Nurturing the spark—not in the snap of his fingers—but within, Bladeborn recognized his spirit had reached a turning point.
He opened his eyes, filled with certainty. He snapped his fingers, and the energy flashed brightly before his eyes! The light was there!
Onar saw the flash of light from this first success, and he called to Bladeborn, “You have a have a natural understanding of Essence!”
“Natural?” Bladeborn laughed in amazement. “I tried to get this to work for months!” He tried again right away and the spark snapped!
“Do you know what this means?” Onar said, his voice shaking with excitement. “Someday, you might escape!”
“Not without you,” Bladeborn stated.
Onar shook his head, “It is as I said. I still pray that they will open the door. My health has failed and I can’t dive anymore. But you are young. Your strength of will has mastered that small conjuration easily. I am certain other powers lay dormant within you…”
“I am going to dive and work at the grate, Onar,” Bladeborn said, as he jumped in the water.
While he worked the first sparks on the grate Bladeborn thought that it could be another fifty years before the last bar was through. The spark was small and the bar was thick…
As he got better at evoking the magic spark, Bladeborn began to use it on the stone grate when the Acolyte slept. The struggle to break free of the cell, now that he could see a way, became Bladeborn’s focus.
The day came when the Acolyte didn’t awaken as usual. Onar was breathing shallowly and with labor, but a kind of peace seemed to have descended upon him.
Then Onar let out a gentle sigh, and issued some of his last words: "Bladeborn, stay with me until I die... It won’t be long now."
Bladeborn stayed close to him for several hours, until the man’s body was still. The High Acolyte of the Crystal Sarcophagus had passed in his sleep. On his face was a look of rest.
Bladeborn said a prayer to Saint Morth for Onar and placed his body on a high ledge near one of the glow-globes imbedded in the ceiling, in the back part of the cell. Bladeborn vowed that with renewed vigor, he would try to work the bars of the stone grate until he was free of the prison or drowned.
For exercise, Bladeborn ran in circles, in and out of the pillars of the cell. He studied the figures scratched in the walls. He read and re-read all the letters, words and diagrams, years of their work together, feeling that he would not die in the cell. He would dive, staying under as long as he could, fighting the swift currents that rushed back and forth through the bars. He worked determinedly at the bars’ weak points with the magic trick Onar had showed him, each day’s effort not being apparent to the naked eye—but gradually, he made progress.
Another year of Bladeborn’s life passed. One night there was a loud slapping and splashing in the water.
Bladeborn got up and saw that somethin
g had dragged itself out of the pool and then gone back in. Could it have been a very large deeps-rat? But looking at the water on the cell floor he ruled out that possibility. The creature must have had the width of Bladeborn’s shoulders, estimating from the broad trail of sticky mucus it left. Whatever it had been, it was a rare and possibly dangerous thing.
Bladeborn worked on the bars continually, and the width grew to a nub. Kicking at the bar with his heel, he finally broke it all the way through. He hoped that the exit pipe beyond would lead to safety before his lungs filled with water, but there was no assurance of that, and no other option.
Before diving into the water for the last time, Bladeborn looked to where Onar’s body rested. He said a final prayer to Saint Morth for his friend.
Bladeborn didn't know where it led, but with great resolve he drew a deep breath and dove into the water…
Chapter 8: In the Arena
Swept along by a forceful current, Bladeborn was thrown against the sides of the pipes repeatedly as smaller pipes converged into larger ones. He thought his lungs would split from holding his breath, when suddenly the main pipe opened wide. He saw a faint green light somewhere above and swam for it. He surfaced in a vast pond lit by dim glow-globes.
Gasping for air, Bladeborn quickly realized he had found his way to the great worm-fish farm at the base of the city. He could see a dozen worm-fish farmers with their nets on the edges of the water. They looked in amazement at the young man who had bobbed up on the pond; none could imagine how he had gotten there.
An old fisherman holding a lantern was standing by the edge of the reservoir’s waters. The fisherman called to Bladeborn, “Don’t know how you got out there, but get into the shallows quick! The tentaslimes will drag you down!”
With what little energy he had left, Bladeborn swam toward the men in the shallows. Finally, he could touch the bottom of the reservoir and walk, which was good, since he was nearly out of breath from the ordeal in the pipe-ways. Waist deep in the murky water, something brushed against his leg. He tried to move rapidly toward shore, but he was near exhaustion. The thing in the water was incredibly fast, and a second later it wrapped a slimy, spine-covered tentacle around his leg.
One of the fishers yelled, “Get the spears, or the guy is gonna be taken by a tentaslime!”
The tentaslime pulled Bladeborn off his feet and dragged him back into the deep water. Bladeborn tried to find something to grab on the bottom of the pond but the floor was slippery and silt-covered. He was in a state of panic, for he didn’t have the breath or strength for a long fight with the strong, sinewy tentaslime.
One fisherman called to his friends, “Don't go out too far, me brothers—there may be a pack of them!”
“Harpoon it!” another fisherman exclaimed. “Don't worry about that guy out there, he is doomed! Soon, more will come!”
A fisherman hurled a spear toward Bladeborn. It glanced off the side of his head, opening a sizable gash and momentarily stunning him. The throw did no damage to the tentaslime. Two more harpoons on lanyards fell short. Bladeborn made a grab for one of the harpoons, desperately trying to snag it with his fingertips—and while reaching he felt something odd...
Knowing his life was in the balance, he grasped not a lanyard or harpoon, but a ceramic knife. It came from what he could only think of as a “room that was not a room.” The ceramic knife was something familiar but how had it appeared in his hand he did not know. Pulling it out of this “no place” was inexplicable, but he didn’t have time to question.
Now armed, he stabbed deeply into the tentaslime, and then ripped upward, disemboweling the thing. Its dead weight still threatened to drag him down, and he struggled to keep afloat, finally grabbing a lanyard.
“Pull the guy in!” one of the fishermen cheered. “He skewered it good!” The men tugged him back to the shallows of the reservoir.
Bladeborn waded into shore pulling the dying beast with him. His head was bleeding, and he was utterly exhausted. The tentaslime still had its tentacles wrapped all around him. Yet he was alive!
Another cheer came from the men. Not even the oldest of them had seen someone wrestle a tentaslime to shore single-handedly. Bladeborn lay on the slimy pond shore and rolled onto his back gasping and resting for a while. In his hand he held the ceramic knife. He looked at it with amazement, but it was an ordinary thing, not unusual other than its origin. He stuck it in the waistband of his tattered pants and arose.
“What shall we do with the spoils men?” the overseer of the fishermen said. “We have enough tentaslime ichor here for an awful lot of Liquid Sweet! There is a lot of money in this one—it’s a big one!” A couple of men brought pottery basins to place the creature in, so none of the ichor would go to waste.
“Tell you what,” an older fisherman said to Bladeborn, who was wavering back and forth. “You killed it, but this is our pond. If each of us gives you ten coin would you let us clean it and take it to market? That be fair, lad?”
“All right,” Bladeborn said. If what he heard was right, they were about to pay him over a hundred coin for the carcass.
“Gather the money up for him boys,” The older fisherman said.
“Can I borrow your cloak, old one? My clothing is worn through.”
“Here son, you can have it,” The older fisherman said. Wait until me wife hears about you. She’ll not belive a word.”
They agreed on a price to split with Bladeborn, and now he was not only free but also wealthy.
He thanked the fishermen, who fixed him up with a bandage for his skull and a large cloak. As soon as he could, Bladeborn left the waterway—in wonder at the materialization of the ceramic knife that he killed the tentaslime with…he had reached his hand out, desperately grabbing—and there it was! Amazed by what he could only explain as a manifestation of pure Essence, he set out to look for a familiar part of the lower City.
* * *
Before long Bladeborn was at the fountain of the Nameless Hero in the central market. He washed the gash on his head and bathed. Soon, he purchased some decent clothing, and sat down at a tunnel-street café, ordering a sumptuous meal.
He vowed once more that he would never be taken alive. Now he was FREE! By Saint Morth, it was good! He thought of his friend Onar, and shuddered, knowing that such a death had nearly been his fate also.
“I promise you, Onar, that I will continue the thinking man’s journey,” Bladeborn said to himself.
Bladeborn found his way back into society on the lower floors of Fortress City. No one recognized him, and much had changed. He learned that years earlier Claw Girl, his old "enemy," had taken over a part of the city, marrying Fire Tongue. He had thought a lot about Claw Girl while in captivity, and for a moment, wished that things had been different. He once had a chance to join her and he turned her down. And now that chance was gone.
Bladeborn went to the store of the Shopkeeper who years earlier had patched him up after his fight with Roccar. In answer to his knock, the Shopkeeper’s wife appeared, and Bladeborn asked about her husband.
“My husband is—dead—murdered by a man with a huge brick strung on a bat,” the widow said.
“Who was that man? Who sent him?” Bladeborn asked, angry that the Shopkeeper been killed.
“The Hazords—when we couldn’t pay the money they demanded of us, their enforcer, the Brickman, came around.”
“I am sorry,” Bladeborn said.
“Why do you care?” the Shopkeeper’s widow snapped back, slamming the door.
Bladeborn left her to her sorrow. But he thought, if there was ever a way, the shopkeeper’s death would be avenged.
He asked around about Agatha and the Enclave. In a hushed whisper, a mushroom grocer told Bladeborn what happened to them, “Agatha, Queen of the undercity thieves, was killed during a raid by the Shaft Police. Some said the man behind it was the Chief of the Shaft Police himself, Grus. A lot of her old friends started sayin' they would have their revenge on the people
responsible. But thems on the upper floors of the City got word of that threat.”
“There is money in it if you can tell me more,” Bladeborn said quietly.
“Where have you been?” the grocer asked suspiciously. “Everyone knows all this…”
“Higher floors,” Bladeborn said, evasively. “I’ve been out of it for a while… I’m—pretty wealthy now, but I need to know…”
The mushroom grocer looked about nervously and spoke even more softly. “So then, the Shaft Police went down to floor fifteen and arrested everybody. Half of Agatha’s folks are in the dungeons now. Everyone else scattered to the four directions. Chief Constable Bluelock said something like, ‘…same fate goes double for any who dare make such claims about getting revenge for Agatha...!’ The Enclave was bad, but the Between the City Watch, the Constables, and the Shaft Police, everyone is jumpy. The gang shake people like me down, then they have officials who they pay. It’s out of control…Ach, I say too much! Everyone is scared!”
Bladeborn gave the man a five-piece and moved on.
Bladeborn noticed significant change in the lower City since his imprisonment. Poverty had always been a problem in Fortress City, but Bladeborn thought the depths of hopelessness among the people due to crime, filth and lack of work was more serious than ever. Beggars were everywhere and those who were servants to their cravings for mushroom wine hid in dark alleyways, ready to throttle anyone so they could pay for a few drinks. There were entire families of indigents living off what they could find in the trash-halls and rubbish rooms. In the City Bladeborn remembered, the fan-turners guild as well as the farmer guild normally would hire men and women at any time. But even those opportunities were no more, as though no one was hiring.
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