Joleen's presence moved closer, and he became more aware of her. She reached up and put one hand over his shoulder, joining him in contemplation of the night's vista. “Anything?” she said softly in his ear.
Keldron shook his head, a movement that was barely perceptible, but was enough for her to feel. He did not want to give anything away to anyone that might be watching. “Excuse the pun, but it is dead quiet out there,” he replied, leaning his head back and tilting it to one side as he spoke so as not to lose his view of the village.
“So why are you up here when you could be sleeping. This is not like you.”
“Bad dreams,” Keldron admitted. “This village does not give one much cause to sleep.” They stood there for a while then in silence, sharing their communion with the village via the pane of glass in front of them. Keldron felt something in the way Joleen was stood by him. She had a need that had to be fulfilled, some question that had to be answered. As the night wore on, still nothing came from her as she shared his watch, and so he decided to take the initiative. “What is it, Jo? What ails you?”
A pregnant silence followed, in which Keldron sensed that Joleen was trying to formulate a way she could communicate to him her feelings. “When you found that you could heal your wounds with your magic… You wizards didn't seem to think straight. Do you know how frightening that looked to see people I always knew to be in complete control acting like they did not have a rational thought in their heads? Injuring themselves to prove a point?”
Keldron swallowed, he knew he had a part in this as much as his two friends.” Jo, I…”
“You nothing, Keldron Vass,.” she replied, her whisper carrying tones that brooked no argument. “I know from what you have said that being able to heal yourselves with your magic was something special that you have yearned for despite years of searching. How come you have never found this out before?”
Keldron smiled, making sure she couldn't see him; the answer to that was simple. “Jo, when you first met me, us, how did we appear to you?”
“Strong, confidant.” Was her immediate answer. “You looked like you could tackle any problem you set your minds to.”
Keldron turned so that he could see Joleen's outline in the darkness. “That's not quite what I meant. Let me rephrase what I said. Physically, how did we look to you?”
This took Joleen longer to answer, but not much longer. “You looked as though you had embarked upon a journey that you were not ready and really capable of undertaking. You weren't physically fit.” She snuggled against him. “But I believe that has changed.”
“But what you said before was exactly my point,” Keldron replied, determined to press his point home despite the comfortable situation he was now in. “Before we came to your forest, we had barely set foot outside the guild since our initiate. We might go to the marketplace, or to a tavern nearby, but the secular nature of the guild kept us separated from most goings on in our very own city. Even with our studies, we were not too different to the old men who sat around trying to remember what they had been doing the day before, vegetating and existing just for the sake of existence itself. We were not fit Joleen, and we were not travellers. How do you think that we could have ever been in a position to injure ourselves and then cast a focus straight after? I can promise you that nobody in my guild ever suffered anything worse than a skin cut from parchment. They were never in a position to.”
This mollified Joleen somewhat, but she was still not herself. “But why did you all have to go to such extremes to prove it earlier? You looked like masochistic madmen downstairs. I could not believe people could act with such disregard.”
Keldron now felt a tinge of shame on behalf of his brothers. “Oh Jo, I am so sorry for that. We were caught up in the euphoria of what will be a major discovery in the lost arts of focussing. I guess that that was the best way for Belyn and Raoul to prove to themselves that it actually worked.”
“Would you have done the same?” Joleen asked warily.
Keldron had to think for a moment, but his mind came up with nothing. “I can't say for sure.” He felt the bandage over his upper right arm. “The burn would be gone if I focussed once more, but it makes me think. What if we became addicted to using the stones just in case anything was wrong? We would lose all ambition of other goals in a selfish circle of self-healing.”
“No, I don't think so, Keldron. You are not like those others from your guild. You are beyond that, hence why you shocked me so.”
“Well I think I had better bring that up with the others in the morning, just in case. I can't say what I would have done. However, I am glad I did not do it, for I would not want to suffer the same roasting I am sure that Belyn got from Yerdu”
This time the quiet chuckle came from Joleen. “He will not be doing such a stupid act again in a hurry, Yerdu made sure of that.”
Keldron winced for his friend. He had seen a tongue-lashing from Yerdu first hand, and wished that not upon anybody. “Good.” He replied. “For all of us. I…” Something caught Keldron's attention out in the village. He turned to follow it, but it disappeared.
“What is it?” Joleen asked, noting the change in his stance.
He peered out into the dark, his eyes attuned to the night. “ I don't know. I thought I saw something.” Still, nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. He shook his head, looking down at the road beneath the house. “Maybe it was just me.” He turned to say something to Joleen, and there was a flicker of light once again, right in the extremity of his view. “There it is again.”
“There is what? I can see nothing out there.”
“I just saw it. Something off over the other side of the village.”
Joleen stared past him, looking for a sign of what he had seen. “There is nothing out there, Keldron.” Joleen continued staring for a few moments. “There is something wrong though.”
“What do you mean?”
“That feeling. The feeling of ill we have all been having since we got here. It has changed.”
Keldron concentrated on that feeling of dread that had pursued him tirelessly since he had come to this village. Joleen was right. The sensation was there, but there was a distinct difference, as if it were awaiting something. Such expectancy worried Keldron. Instinct made him reach for his focus stone. Pulling his concentration in, he sent his thought out to the village. “There is an impression, almost an intelligence out there, but I can't quite grasp the nature of it.
“I can't feel anything now.”
“It is elusive. Every time I get close it slips away, as if I am not concentrating on quite the right thing. Oh. Joleen, get Belyn and Raoul. Now.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Wake the others. Get them outside the front of the house, for that is where I will be. I need to get a better view of the sky. This window is too limited.” Keldron gave Joleen a quick squeeze of the hand, and slipped past her, vanishing into the shadows of the house. He hurried down the stairs, and wrenched the door open, stealing out into the night like the sole ghostly occupant of the entire village. The chill wind caught at his breath as he hurried out over the porch and into the road. There was nothing obvious to behold, but as his thoughts gained pace and consumed the night around him, he knew that something important was occurring. There was a tingle when he focussed on the night sky again, but nothing was clear to him. He clenched his eyes shut as he forced himself to explore every aspect of the sky through his stone, and then it hit him. The thought attracted his concentration like a flower attracted a butterfly. He opened his eyes, pocketing his stone, and licked one finger, holding it up to the feathery breeze. The wind blew as steadily as it had done before, but it was coming from the opposite end of the village. Amazed that he had not noticed it the second he had emerged from the porch, he walked slowly around in circles, trying to get some idea of what was going on. A pain from a weight in another pocket that pressed to his chest reminded Keldron that he had several different stones with
him. He pulled out a lump of what could only be granite, and brought his concentration to bear. He searched the sky for the answers that anybody alive in this place could sense were out there. “Movement. This stone confirms it, but whatever it is seems to be indistinct and determined to remain that way.” The temperature had dropped on this moonless night, and Keldron was convinced that it was not wholly due to the breeze and the time of season. Something eldritch was at work here, and the bad feeling he had experienced was as strong as ever, stronger perhaps where he was nearer other buildings. He heard footsteps, and turned to see everybody else joining him in the darkness.
They moved quietly, even Belyn, for who it was an admirable feat. “Ok Kel, what is it that is so important that you have dragged us from our beds? What can't wait until the morning?”
Keldron hushed them with a wave of his hands, and raised his head, listening to the air around him. “Can't you feel it? There is something at work here, something that we all can sense in different ways.
“What is it?” Raoul asked, still half asleep and best known for being surly when woken.
“Dark magic,” came the answer from Belyn.
“No,” disagreed Joleen, “this is not dark magic. You can feel it in the air if you but stand and open yourself to it. It is a magic born of desperation.”
“Raoul shivered, and held himself to keep warm. “Is there any aspect of this village that isn't desperate?”
Keldron tried to explain. “When I was watching over the village, I could sense things that were just beyond my sight, as if I was not quite meant to see them. I focussed using a couple of my stones, but I could only get impressions of something moving around outside here.”
“So why don't we see if any other stones give us a result?” Suggested Belyn. “How many different stones do you have?” They emptied their pockets of the various focus stones Belyn had deposited with them, and it turned out that all three had four of the same type.
“Well we can forget these two,” Keldron said, holding up his marble stone and the granite. “That leaves these other two.”
“Why don't we all try the same stone at the same time, in case we miss something?” Raoul suggested. The other two nodded in assent. Standing with their backs to each other, the three wizards formed a rough triangle, with the tribes people in the middle. Holding onto black cubes of volcanic rock, they threw their concentration into the stones. Each wizard pushed out with his mind.
“It is the same. I can feel the brushing of something close, but there is nothing to see.”
“Agreed, Kel. I can see vague shapes in the air, dashing around them as if they are caught in some sort of vortex.”
Keldron withdrew the focus, to see Raoul clearly as perplexed as he was. “That was as far I could see.”
Belyn pocketed his stone. “Nothing more is available to us from this type of rock. The shapes faded into the background as soon as they came into range.”
Keldron hefted the last stone in his possession. It contained streaks that seemed to give off phosphorescence in the utter dark, and was strangely pyramidal. “Well it's this or nothing.” He raised his hand with the stone balanced on his palm. Feeding his concentration through the stone and out into the night sky, Keldron was faced with a vision at once so delightful and yet so full of despair that he did not know whether to laugh or cry.
“Sweet Ilia,” swore Raoul, and as Keldron watched, he heard a similar utterance from Belyn. He gaped about him. It was as if the night sky had come alive through different eyes than his own. Phosphorescent light gleamed over the village as beings swirled about him, dodging around them all randomly.
“They are spirits, and from what I can judge, they are the spirits of the village.” They had tears flowing in continuous streams, and they looked abject and miserable. Yet they glowed in such splendour that they were magnificent to behold, and he felt tears flowing from his own face. In the pitch black of the night, they danced and cavorted through the air, now that gravity had no hold on them. But they were not released. Something capped the air over the village. Now and again a spirit would rise to the height of one of the buildings, and rebounded off of something, swirling with the grace of a butterfly back to the ground, to attempt another escape moments later. The spirits had no comprehension of the watchers, and passed through and around them as if they were the ones that did not exist. Keldron wished that they did not appear so normal. The ghastliest thing about them was that behind the glow and the otherworldly appearance, they had normal clothes on, the clothes they were most likely wearing when they had been so needlessly murdered. The speed with which the spirits rose to hit the barrier increased somewhat.
“Kel, look over the middle of the village.” Raoul directed the focus inwards.
Keldron turned his augmented sight to look up and across at the behest of Raoul's asking, and saw something that amazed him further. Something flashed as every spirit hit the barrier, and seemed to feed an umbilical that arched off into the distance, as far as the horizon. It defied comprehension. The spirits calmed, and only a couple continued to hit the barrier. The rest went back to swirling in misery around the village, leaving luminous traces of their passing.
“Is there something wrong?” Yerdu asked, her timid voice frightened.
“Of course there is,” Raoul replied without turning. “This was not meant to be. This is not right.”
Almost on cue, the wraiths that had once been villagers started in a crescendo of light without sound to arise once again, hitting the barrier and deflecting off it to skid in a cascade of phosphorescent beauty back to the ground.
“They are trapped in a cycle; Whatever is holding them in is feeding off of their anguish. Can you not feel it?” Nobody replied. Keldron broke off his focus and turned around. Joleen and Yerdu were in tears, and Malcolm had his eyes screwed shut. Raoul and Belyn also stopped, having felt Keldron break contact. “What is it?” he asked in the darkness.
Joleen practically jumped into his arms. She was cold and he could feel her trembling. “We could see them,” she whispered, her voice only an inflection higher than the surrounding breeze. “When the three of you cast your focus outwards they were revealed to us, beautiful, and yet in such utter pain.” Joleen turned in towards him and he could feel the heat of her tears through his clothes.
“This is not right,” Malcolm said quietly. “Souls should not be damned in a trap like this, they should be able to depart for the next life. Something is very wrong.”
“Might we be able to help?” Suggested Raoul.
Keldron shook his head. “This is beyond anything we can comprehend, my friend. The answers lie elsewhere, and certainly not in this village. There is nothing we can do but watch them in their sorrow and torment. Let us go back into the house, and try to get what rest we can.”
The remainder of the night passed slowly. Whatever they did to ease their discomfort at the sights revealed to them that night, nobody could sleep. Keldron spent the night gazing out at the village, and as the darkness receded with the first promise of dawn in the Eastern sky, he felt nothing but relief. Daylight would soon push back the fear, the misery that they had all suffered. As the sun rose behind the mountains far to the east, a mist formed through the village, sweeping slowly around the houses as if the village suffered a sequela of the night before. The mist clung to the ground, rising no higher than the fences, and Keldron realised that this meant only one thing. There was no breeze. For the second time he rushed downstairs, but instead of going out onto the porch, he crept back to the parlour. Edging around the door, he found that everybody else had finally fallen asleep. He smiled in gratification that somebody had managed to find some peace. He knew that he would not while he stayed in this place. Making his way out of the house, Keldron passed the porch, and walked through the light of earliest morning to a point just beyond the small wooden bridge that crossed the stream. He followed the path of the stream with his eyes. It led down to the main river, which itself could
not be called much more than a stream. The mist clung thickest where the water flowed, like a shroud trying to cover the events that had happened only moments ago, or so it seemed. He found that from this point he could behold the sunrise, and he willed it to speed to him with every fibre of his being. Black turned to inky blue, and the cloud became more visible. It had holes in it that allowed him to watch the sky change colour. The dawn crept towards him with the gradual creep of arctic permafrost. It could not come quick enough. Blue became lighter blue, and then the mountains lit up with the flames of heaven as Matsandrau sent his creature full circle around the earth. Even without actually seeing the sun, Keldron felt better. The glow of a sky borne hearth made the spiny teeth of the grating so appealing in the distance. He would have held his hands out towards it but for the obvious fact that it was cold here. He had been right though. The breeze had dropped in between them witnessing the wraiths and the coming of morning. It was a completely different world now. Almost as he watched the cloud receded, and broke apart. The last stars were visible as he looked to the heavens and watched light blue in the distance now become yellow with the promise of the sun. Dark shadows of the mountains stretched hungrily towards him across the vast expanse of the grassland, and were then obliterated as the sun made its blazing entrance between two of the far-off peaks. Keldron winced and looked to one side, unprepared as he was for the entrance of the sun, and nearly jumped out of his skin as he found Raoul standing next to him. “It really makes you think, doesn't it brother,” he said philosophically. “How can there be so many bad things in the world when there are sights such as this to behold?”
The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2) Page 10
