The Coin of Kenvard

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Without the steadying influence of the crown, Deacon could feel the chaotic whims of his affliction surge. No crystal meant no light. He could not see what was happening, but he could feel it. The hand clamped in Mott’s jaws started to change. His fingers curled and writhed bonelessly. Spiny protrusions emerged. Then came the smoldering glow. Whatever his hand had become, it was threaded with something intensely hot. The shifting hand sizzled against Mott’s tongue, and the monster recoiled. In the weak glow of his afflicted hand Deacon reared back and drew his desperate mind into the proper shape for one of the simpler spells he could muster. He drew upon the endless, silty moisture clinging to the walls of the cave and doused Mott liberally in the dank water. A second twist of his frazzled mind managed the briefest burst of complex magic. Deacon knew the spell was far too sophisticated to survive the influence of the cave for long, so he funneled all the strength and focus he could muster into it. His gambit paid off. The water dousing Mott glimmered and shifted, turning to a thin layer of stone that wholly encased the beast. Deacon’s spell faltered just as the last patch of water changed to slate gray.

  Mott was still, now looking like little more than the work of a particularly disturbed sculptor. He was still alive inside the shell of stone, or at least he was still animated. It was hardly a permanent solution. Deacon couldn’t be sure how thoroughly the stone had shifted, and thus how long it would be able to hold the deceivingly strong creature. Gods willing, it would hold him for a good long while. Deacon would have to trust it would be enough. He couldn’t afford to waste the time to kill a beast that didn’t truly live. Without his crown he was tasked with controlling his chaotic affliction himself, a task that would have been difficult enough even with his crystal.

  He wrestled his hand into something resembling humanity. Through some combination of the well-designed enchantment and more than a little bit of luck, the ring had not been destroyed by his hand’s transformation. It gave Deacon an anchor of sorts to center his focus on. For now, he could fight his way past the cave’s influence and his own flailing spirit, but it was only a matter of time before this spell faltered like all the others. He needed his crown or his crystal, and he needed them now. Already he could feel the thorny influence in his mind. Swirling chaos eroding his thoughts. Between keeping his body human and keeping his mind sharp, he had barely enough of his intellect left to stay on his feet.

  Deacon staggered down the tunnel. The floor was treacherously smooth. A gold crown could slide a long way down a slope like this, and his egg-shaped crystal was probably still rolling. It didn’t matter. He had no choice but to venture deeper.

  #

  Myranda shook her head and wiped some weariness from her eyes. Myn had flown well into the night. The wizard herself had nearly dozed off more than once, but now she felt invigorated by the sight of her beloved city in the distance below. The palace was better lit than she’d expected it to be so late in the evening. Little points of light traced their way across patrol paths and along walls. They moved quickly, too. Horsemen had been deployed.

  “What is happening…” Myranda said.

  She felt Myn tense beneath her. The dragon thrust her wings and launched south with renewed speed.

  “What? What is it? What do you see?”

  “Attack,” Myn murmured, her voice a throaty growl.

  Myranda squinted into the night. Far to the south, too far to be within even the farthest reaches of the city but too near to be their nearest neighbor, there was motion on the ground. Myranda’s night vision was too weak to make it out with any detail. She shut her eyes as Myn surged toward the motion and focused her mind. What she saw, scanning with her mind, was nearly as weak and ill-defined. There were soldiers. Not human. Nearmen. They were heavily armed, and in numbers great enough to overrun the city.

  She didn’t waste time wondering how they could have appeared. Questions could wait until the city was secure. A streamer of fire erupted from one of the towers of the palace. At first Myranda feared it was another sign of attack, but it soon resolved itself into the vengeful, fiery form of Ether. She streaked out over the city and down along the field. In her light, the first wave of New Kenvard’s soldiers could be seen, charging to meet the foes.

  Myn dropped down to charge along the ground. Ether sizzled through the air beside her. The wall of inhuman troops loomed closer. Closer.

  And then it was gone.

  The foes vanished without fanfare, without light or sound. One moment Myranda could hear the stomp of their boots, the next the field ahead was empty. Neither Myn nor Ether was willing to trust her eyes. The elemental continued forward to where the soldiers had been and flared her fire brighter. A brilliant orange-white glow illuminated the field. Myn cast a long shadow, and the approaching friendly troops spurred themselves faster. The force that had brought them here was gone. But not without a trace.

  Myranda hopped from Myn’s back and gazed down. “That was not our imagination. And it was not illusion,” she said.

  The field was churned up with boot prints. There had been attackers here. She turned. Less than a mile separated the footprints from the edge of her city. If they had been real enough to trample the field into mud, then their blades and bows were real as well. What would have happened to the city if they had reached it? And why hadn’t they reached it. She needed more information. More answers. But one question needed to be answered before all else.

  “Is he safe?” Myranda called to Ether.

  “The boy is with Ivy, deep in the palace. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary there,” Ether said. “What was this? I don’t feel any residue of magic. Anything that could have conjured so vast a force and whisked it away should have been astonishing in its power. The field should still be reverberating with the intensity of it.”

  “I don’t know. Has anything like this happened here before? Anything at all out of the ordinary since I’ve been gone?”

  “Nothing.” Ether dropped down and shifted to human. “No… There was one thing. Curious but not threatening. The boy knocked down a bowl of fruit twice, but none of us observed it being righted in between. I fail to see how this could be connected.”

  “It isn’t clear to me either,” Myranda said, climbing back to Myn’s back. “But unexplained things have been happening all over the three kingdoms. It can’t be a coincidence. Ether, I want you to go to Tressor. Be diplomatic, but firm. I want you to find out if anything like this has been happening there.”

  “Yes. Wise. I shall return with the answers,” Ether replied. She shifted to wind and burst skyward.

  “Come on, Myn. I need to see Leo. After this, I need to see for myself that he is safe.”

  “We need Deacon,” Myn stated.

  “By now he’s in the cave. It will be difficult to reach him.” She shut her eyes tightly. “We will find a way to reach him if we have to, but if there is any way to solve this without him, I intend to. It was difficult enough to persuade him to seek a cure. If he is pulled away, I worry it will be years more before he will risk leaving again.”

  #

  Deacon held his healthy hand to his head and tried his best to split his already taxed mind between keeping his ailment in check and illuminating his path. As crucial as it was that he find his crown, the crystal would be easier to find and more useful. He had so far managed to keep his hand flesh and blood, though what sort of flesh and what sort of blood was varying moment to moment. It was unsettling, but nothing he hadn’t had to deal with before. The truly disquieting thing he had to cope with now was the more recent symptom of his illness. The one he’d kept to himself for fear of what Myranda might say if she knew. He could feel his thoughts betraying him just as his hand did. It was nothing so sinister as madness. At least, not proper madness, he told himself. He simply felt his mind shift from the sharpened instrument he’d made of it through years of discipline to something… else. Something equally honed, equally potent, but playing by a different set
of rules. As though it was a mind borrowed from some other Deacon, some version of himself that had followed the same path, but in a different world. What worried him most wasn’t that it felt like a violation. It was that it felt so very natural. It was insidious.

  Not until he was ankle deep in water at the end of the slope did Deacon finally find his crystal. He reached down and plucked it from the dank water. The blunt edge it brought to his focus was enough to wholly restore his hand and smooth the wrinkle in his mind to something he could more easily tame. He raised the crystal high to light the cave around him. If he was lucky, the crown had made it this far as well.

  What he saw struck him as wrong, somehow. Debris was piled here. It certainly could have been a cave-in. The ceiling was jagged and crumbled overhead. But it seemed too thorough. The pile of stones before him was mounded perfectly, like someone had endeavored to piece the bits of fallen roof into a wall.

  “So. Finally, you have come.”

  Deacon turned to seek the source of the voice. There was no one. “Who is there?” he shouted. His voice echoed and folded upon itself.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know me.”

  The reply had no echo. And, he realized, it was in his own voice. He wasn’t hearing it with his ears. He was feeling it in his mind. His panic had distracted him from the very thing that had brought him here in the first place. Now that he at least had the crystal, he realized that the will he had followed this far was now right in front of him, trapped on the other side of the stones.

  And he finally recognized it.

  “Epidime,” he said coldly.

  “Is it that time already, Deacon? Our time?”

  Deacon took a step away from the wall. Epidime felt weak. He was dimmer in Deacon’s mind’s eye than even a mundane human would be. There was no risk of him forcing his way into control, as he’d done so many times before. At least not at this distance. And he wasn’t drawing any closer.

  “You… you’re trapped here, aren’t you?”

  “I am. By Desmeres, of all people. Not even a Chosen One. A grave injustice.”

  “A fitting prison for you.”

  “An effective one, I must admit. And I cannot place all the blame on the treacherous half-elf. My curiosity was to blame. It was bound to get the better of me one day. This mountain was the piece of this world I couldn’t properly investigate. Irresistible for a lifetime student like myself. But then, I don’t need to explain that to you.”

  “Now that I know you are here, I can take the proper precautions to keep you here.”

  “If special precautions were necessary to keep me here, do you think I would still be here? I am defeated, Deacon. Finally at your mercy. So now is the time.”

  “What time are you talking about?”

  “Don’t tell me I overestimated you. You have questions. Minds like ours always have questions. And you are in the presence of the only source you will ever have for some of the answers you seek.”

  “I don’t need to know anything that badly.”

  “Oh no? Then answer me this. Why have I never taken you as a host? You aren’t one of the Chosen, but you walk among them. No mark to save you. I’ve gone to the effort of taking Lain. I’ve sought Myranda. But you? I had you at my mercy, and there were only words. You may think me a scoundrel. You may think me a demon. But I pray you never think me a big enough fool to miss that opportunity without a good reason.”

  “I don’t need to know.”

  “You do. You always need to know. It is a thirst we share. To know. Always to know. But if I must appeal to something that truly matters, I have a question for you. How complete are your memoirs? I know you have sought to record every nuance of the end of the Perpetual War. All the exploits and challenges of the Chosen. But you haven’t, have you? You can’t know everything that happened, because you cannot know what happened behind the closed doors of the D’Karon. You cannot know the hearts and minds of people now lost to the world. There is only one source of such knowledge now. I swam in the thoughts of some of the greatest mysteries of your world. I plotted and planned with D’Karon you defeated. Every gap in your story lurks in my mind.”

  “… The story is complete enough.”

  “And what of your son?”

  “What do you know of my son?”

  “Only what drifts on the surface of your mind. You’re working too hard to keep yourself stable. You can’t shield everything from me, even in my present state. You fear for his safety. You specifically fear what those like me may do to him. Ironic.”

  “My only fear is that he might one day face an evil such as you.”

  “The seeds. You’ve found some, haven’t you? But perhaps, not all. Perhaps I know where they are. Perhaps I am the only one who knows where they all are.”

  “We will find them. We will find another way.”

  “You are already working on a way, aren’t you?”

  Deacon shut his eyes tighter and tried to shield his mind, but every bit of effort he put into blocking Epidime’s gaze into his thoughts allowed his affliction to rebound. The D’Karon continued.

  “Is that how it happens? Is that how it begins and ends? With you tinkering with things even your mentors didn’t know to warn you against? You know your way is treading on dangerous ground. But you know it could work. You are missing pieces. And I know where to find them.”

  “You are lying.”

  “Who would know if not me? I have traveled so many worlds. Scoured them for all there was to know. Everything I know could be yours. Or even just the bits and pieces you need to make your world safe.”

  Deacon gritted his teeth. His mind was swimming. “You are trying to manipulate me. Why would you help me?”

  “Does it matter? Think of what I’m offering you.”

  “No one in their right mind would trust you, even in your weakened state.”

  “Fortunate for us both that you aren’t in your right mind. You wouldn’t be here if you were.”

  “I’m still sane enough to know what should and should not be done.”

  “Deacon, I can give you insight into the D’Karon. I can give you insight into so much of your world that has been hidden to you. I can give you truths that no one else knows. And I am the only one who can give you these things. I am knowledge distilled. Lie to yourself if you must, but we both know that I represent precisely what you have been searching for. You can have the remaining pieces to your most precious riddle. You can, once and for all, protect your son, and his children, and every generation to come from the same tragedies that nearly wiped out the people of this world. I know how the door opens. I know how the door closes. There was a time when you sat, helpless, waiting to be interrogated by me. Now the roles are reversed. Ask your questions. Drink deep of my fountain of knowledge. If you fail to do so, you condemn your child to a life of uncertainty.”

  The wizard felt his mind shudder and curl. It wasn’t Epidime’s doing. He’d gone too long without the crown, and the cave wasn’t sufficient to completely unravel the affliction. The longer he tried to hold it at bay, the wearier he became. The wearier he became, the deeper the chaos wove into his thoughts.

  “I see the plan in your mind. I see the gaps that need to be filled. They are plain as day to me. And if nothing else, believe me when I tell you that a ‘healthy’ mind will never stumble upon them. If you truly wish to give your world the safety you seek, know that a sane and rational Deacon, free of this affliction and free of my insight, will never take the steps that must be taken. Choose now. And choose wisely.”

  Deacon’s fingers wavered. His grip on the gem loosened. His strength of mind was flagging. He needed clarity. He needed relief.

  He needed to know.

  Chapter 5

  Desmeres groggily opened his eyes. It was disorienting to wake from a particularly exhausted rest at the best of times. Buried deep in the complete darkness of a treacherous cave was far, far worse. H
e felt for the darkened lantern and fiddled with the flint until it sparked to life. With the dim glow smoldering, he raised the lantern and took in his surroundings.

  “Ah… Yes… the Cave of the Beast. Too much to wish for that this whole foolish enterprise was a dream.”

  He held the lantern down to the flooded tunnel. The water had receded greatly. It hadn’t simply dropped a few turns down the rope. The rippling surface was nearly beyond the glow of the lantern.

  “Good news,” he said, turning to where Deacon had set down for the night. “We are in luck. Cave is draining, not filling. Another few days and we might be able to risk… Deacon?”

  Desmeres tugged at the luxurious blanket atop Deacon’s bedroll. There was no one there. He gritted his teeth and smashed his false fist against the wall of the cave. The metal digits sparked against the stone. He transferred the lantern to the false hand and pressed his other fingers to the bedding.

  “Cold. He’s been gone for some time. That idiot! How can someone with such an intellect be so astonishingly stupid?” He climbed to his feet. “A child would know not to wander off.”

  He pulled his pack to his back, leaving the bedding in place. “I should have taken some sort of a precaution against this. The whole reason I agreed to lead him was because it was far too dangerous for someone like him to be set free in the cave, and then what do I do? Leave him free to wander its tunnels.”