by David Dickie
“Don’t know,” said Aurora. “Like I said, it’s murky. And I have to tell you. The cost on this one may be high.”
Grim froze for a moment. “Are you telling me I’m going to die doing this? Because I don’t have your fortitude and commitment to the greater good. I value my skin.”
Aurora shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not a channel quest this time. I’m not even part of the world any more, only connected to Kydaos by a tenuous thread. It’s not anywhere nearly as well spelled out.”
Grim said, “Well, thanks for hanging around long enough to deliver the bad news. Anything else you want to tell me while we’re at it, or can we just relax and enjoy the peace and quiet?”
Aurora sat up, leaned over, and kissed Grim. “For luck,” she said. “Our time here is done. You’re going one way, I’m going the other. But I have faith we will meet again someday. And on that day, you will buy me a drink, understood?”
Grim nodded. “As many as you want. Or that I can afford, whichever comes first.”
Aurora laughed. “Make sure you have a big purse.”
Then the sun set, and it grew dark quickly. Grim couldn’t see Aurora any more, couldn’t see the river, couldn’t feel the breeze. But in the distance, he could see a light, a small dot of white. As he watched it, it grew larger and brighter, no details, just a bright featureless background that slowly filled his vision. Then a face appeared, an Elvish face, blurry at first, then more distinct, and things came into focus.
Grim was in a room, done in pastels, in a large four-poster bed. Light was streaming in through a window. He looked on the other side of the bed. Lug was sitting in a chair there. Grim looked back at the elf. “Alan?” he asked.
Alan nodded. “Urúvion is my true name, as it turns out. How are you feeling, Grim?”
“Like I need to stop waking up with people standing around looking like I’ve risen from the dead,” said Grim.
“It was a close thing,” said Lug.
Grim nodded. “Of course. Part of being a hero, right?” Lug looked at him strangely. “Oracle? Was it destroyed?”
Urúvion nodded. Lug stood up and turned so Grim could see the handle of the sword in the scabbard he was wearing. It was silver and onyx. Lug said, “Just a sword now.”
Grim frowned. “So I ported back? How did the sword get to the gate? I don’t remember carrying it there. I distinctly remember not being in any shape to carry it.”
Urúvion said, “You dropped it, took the amulet off your neck and threw it to me. I had to assume it was what let you handle Oracle safely. I put it on and immediately knew it was a gate-forged soul artifact. That was enough. I took Oracle the rest of the way.”
Grim raised an eyebrow. “That must have hurt.”
Urúvion nodded and held up his hand. For the first time, Grim realized he was missing three fingers. “Burned beyond the ability of our healers to fix. They are preparing a gate spell. Almost as good as the originals, or so I hear.” Grim touched his chest. His fingers touched skin, but the chest only registered a bit of pressure, no feeling of contact at all. Urúvion looked sympathetic. “I’m afraid you have replacements as well. Most of the damage was on the surface. Replacing skin is easier than joints and muscle.”
Grim took a deep breath. It felt normal. “Guess I can live with that. And the amulet?”
Urúvion took it out of a pocket. “Yours. You’ve done a great service to human and elf alike. We pay our debts. This is just the start.”
Grim felt a little spark of interest. Perhaps there might be some coin that came out of this sorry affair after all. But he asked instead, “The black ship?”
“We traced your teleport back to its origination. An Elvish vessel was there within hours. There was sufficient debris floating in the area to confirm the black ship was completely destroyed.”
Grim nodded. “So, what’s in store for me? I know you don’t let people in the Evael. Ever. Now I’ve seen your teleport nexus, your World Gate.”
Urúvion nodded. “You have. It seems we have decided as a group to relax that policy in this case. There is no real harm done. In fact, we are going a step further.”
“Which is?”
“Your friend Rotan convinced the elves in Nyquet that the shipyard of the ohulhug was a direct threat to the security of the entire region. He negotiated an alliance. Kethem and elven warships and ground troops from the northern Pranan City-States are on their way to capture the location even as we speak. The first joint elf-human military force in our history. The first Kethem-Pranan joint venture since the fourth ohulhug-human war two hundred years ago.”
Grim laughed. “Good for Rotan. That has to be a feather in his cap.”
“He asked us to pass on his thanks and his admiration for what you did. He said to tell you the offer to join his Hold was still open.”
Grim thought about that. Even a copper ring was a guarantee of food, shelter, and almost certainly marriage and children. Any holder would be a prize for a commoner woman to capture. A short time ago, he would have leapt at the chance. Now, it seemed to have lost its luster. “Maybe. I have a few things I need to finish up first. I need a teleport back to the Enclave of Karak. Can I ask you to extend your hospitality to include that?”
Urúvion nodded. “Certainly. But rest for a day. There was a lot of healing needed to keep you alive, and it takes time to recover from that.”
Grim would have answered, but his eyes suddenly forced themselves shut, and he was already asleep.
Epilogue
Stegar raised his glass of wine in a toast. Daesal joined him quickly, Grim a little more slowly. “To the reluctant hero,” said Stegar. They were back in the small serving area in one of the auxiliary buildings near the library in the Enclave of Karak.
Grim winced. “Please don’t call me that.”
Stegar shrugged. “Single handedly defeating a gargantuan ship full of ohulhug that wanted to kill you, while destroying an evil gate-forged sword that wanted to destroy the world, all while a hole was being burned through your chest? What else can you call it?”
Daesal said, “Grim, you have done a brave and worthy thing. You should be proud. Everyone owes you a debt.”
Grim shrugged uncomfortably. “I did what needed to be done, that’s all.”
Daesal’s eyebrow went up. “And a better definition of hero, I could not imagine.”
Grim, realizing he wasn’t going to win this argument, did the next best thing. He changed the subject. “So, how is your research going?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. He hadn’t told either of them about his dream about Aurora. Dream, self-delusion, whatever it was, it had left him feeling enigmatic.
Stegar and Daesal glanced at each other. Stegar nodded to Daesal, clearly indicating his approval to speak about what they had uncovered. Grim sincerely appreciated it. Daesal was fast to trust. Stegar, you had to work hard to win over.
Daesal said, “We found what we were looking for, and more. Morpangler was given to the human military just after the fall of the first empire, five centuries ago.”
Grim raised his eyebrow. “Given? A corrupted gate sword? I didn’t think that was possible without something like the amulet. The people who Dulaguk allowed to touch Oracle…” Grim stopped and shuddered. “They weren’t rational, they weren’t even people any more. All they thought of was letting Oracle feed on them.”
Daesal nodded. “Yes. I think, without something like your unique protection, no one could withstand their power. The only way one could give a soul sword to someone else is if they were under the sway of an equally powerful force.”
“Meaning another soul sword,” said Stegar.
Grim thought about that. “How could they have a soul sword? Those things eat through people in a week.”
“We don’t know,” admitted Stegar. “And to say they gave the humans Morpangler is not completely accurate. They traded Morpangler for access to human World Gates.”
“Like the two here
in Pranan,” said Grim.
“Perhaps. The documents where deliberately vague about the location of the human constructed World Gates, presumably to protect the information if one of the sites was compromised. From what we’ve been able to deduce, there is one full strength gate in Tawhiem, one in Kethem, and one in Pranan. Pranan has a few of these smaller gates, like the one here and the one you found under the Storm Bull temple. I suspect they were given access to one of the full-strength gates.”
Grim thought back to what Ziwa had told him. “I think the one in Tawhiem was destroyed by the elves. Maybe others as well, I only know of one for certain. And… another soul sword. You think it was Oracle?” asked Grim.
Daesal shook her head. “I do not. If it was Oracle, there would have been more of these machines the ohulhug had, but many centuries ago. And the one who gave the humans Morpangler was not ohulhug.”
Grim was still thinking about Aurora’s claim that at least two other soul swords were out there. He nodded. “A human then?” Stegar shook his head no. A chill ran down Grim’s spine. “Not a great troll.” Stegar shook his head again.
“An elf,” said Stegar, looking worried. “I find it hard to believe that Beldaer was lying to us, that he knew about Morpangler and possibly other soul swords. But I know that the elves cannot keep secrets from one another either.”
Daesal nodded. “It is not much to go on, and we were trying to determine how to proceed when you arrived. I do not think confronting the elves is the right answer, but I don’t know who else could tell us anything.”
But Grim was thinking. Dulaguk had said Oracle was a gift from another race. Grim thought he meant humans, but now he wasn’t so sure. And at the time he hadn’t thought about it. How could anyone have given someone else a corrupted soul sword? If you touched it, you only let go if you were dead. The only sensible answer… if they already had one that counterbalanced Oracle’s pull. So an elf with a corrupted soul sword had given Morpangler to the humans during the fall, five centuries ago. And, possibly, Oracle to Dulaguk a few years ago. Then there was Pellen, the life-force devouring priest hidden under the ruins of his temple along the great ring road. What had he said? He had been taught the gate commands to extend his life by an elf, an elf with his terrible sword. That had been more than a hundred years after Morpangler had changed hands. And Ziwa, Ziwa with her visceral reaction to Pellen’s words, something that had shaken her to the core. But Ziwa said she was thirty years old.
An elf with a human soul sword from the fall, five hundred years ago. One who had taught Pellen how to extend his life with gate spells a hundred-and-change years later, then provided Dulaguk with his own version of a terrible sword just a few years back. Someone who had done something to Ziwa, something unspeakable. Could it be the same individual?
If there was an elf under the sway of a corrupted gate sword, they wouldn’t be after power, or wealth, or anything sane. Grim had first-hand experience with that now. All those swords wanted was destruction on a global scale.
Daesal and Stegar were looking at him, realizing he was thinking something through. Finally Grim said, “This is bad. Very bad. I don’t think the things we’ve been seeing are unrelated. I think things are going to hell because there’s someone like Brandin and Pellen. Someone who was around at the time of the fall and is using the gates to extend their life. Someone with an agenda and a lot of knowledge who’s decided it’s time to act. The elf with his terrible sword.”
Stegar was looking concerned. Daesal was looking frightened. Finally, Grim sighed. “We need to find out if I’m right. And if I am, we need to find the elf and stop him. Not because he’s an elf. I don’t really think he is, or if he is, he’s not one of the elves we know. I don’t think we’re talking about who ends up on the top of the racial pig pile. I think we’re talking about the ability for this world to support life. If they are holding something like Oracle, they will not stop short of total annihilation of every living thing.”
Stegar and Daesal looked at each other. Stegar turned back and said, “We are with you, Grim. What can we do to help?”
Grim said thoughtfully, “We only have two leads, two things that could tell us something about this elf, if he exists. One is the shipyard. If he did broker some kind of deal with Dulaguk, there might be some record of it there. I think you two should pursue that. The elves have portable teleportal disks, and I’m willing to bet they have some on the ships that are supporting the attack on the ohulhug shipyards. I think they will listen to me if I ask them to teleport you to the Evael, then from there to the site.”
“And you?” asked Daesal.
“Lead number two. I need to find Ziwa,” said Grim.
