He circled around the globe and led us up the stairs, into an adjacent hallway. We passed several closed doors, turned a corner to the right, and finally came to an elevator. Here, Elias paused and turned to face us.
“What I’m about to show you has been a closely guarded secret for more than a century. Once I show you what’s in the next room, your life will never be the same.”
“Get to the point,” I grumbled. The satyr gave me a weak smile.
“I’m trying to warn you, Hank. This isn’t one of those things you can just shrug off. Are you certain you’re ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. “If you know what happened to my ancestors, you’d better tell me. If you’re jerking my chain...”
“Don’t worry,” Elias said. “Come with me.”
He touched a panel on the wall and it began to glow. The elevator door slid open, and Elias ushered us inside. The interior was simple: bare wood paneling, brass safety handles, no lights whatsoever. The moment the door closed, we were in complete darkness.
I expected that dropping feeling in my solar plexus as we began to descend, but it never came. Judging from the movement of my body, the gentle tug of inertia and momentum, we weren’t going up and down but side to side. At least, for the first minute. After that, I could have sworn that we went upward at an odd angle and then dropped, not unlike you would experience with a very slow-moving roller coaster. By the time the ride stopped, I had no idea where we were or how far we had gone. I couldn’t even guess. It was quite disorienting.
“Here we are,” Elias said as the elevator door slid open. It was still pitch black, but he snapped his fingers, and a glowing orb appeared in his right hand. He held it up as we stepped out of the elevator and onto a ledge or balcony of some sort. I could see the stone floor beneath us, and the wall behind us, but in front of us, nothing. Even the light of the satyr’s orb couldn’t penetrate that darkness.
Elias took a few steps forward, right up to the edge. He held the orb out and then drew his hand away. The orb hovered there a moment, and then moved off into the distance. It grew smaller and smaller, until I thought the darkness would swallow it whole. Then, suddenly, it gave out a burst of blue and white light.
The explosion of light shot fifty feet in the air and began to rain down like a fountain of sparks. The lights shimmered and flashed, and finally coalesced into an image. It was a young satyr in a forest, down on one knee. I couldn’t make out much of his surroundings at first, but the image finally came into focus and I realized that he was kneeling next to a grave.
“That is my grandfather, Loremaster Constantine Fountaingrove,” said Elias. “He’s kneeling next to the grave of a friend of his, Steward Matguard of Wildengrove-”
“Steward?” I said, yanking my head around. “You mean..?”
“Yes, Mr. Mossberg, Matguard was an ogre. That was one hundred and fifty years ago, and he was the last known Steward... present company excluded, of course.”
Chapter 14
Istared at the image in awe. I didn’t recognize the names or the place -in fact, nothing at all about it was familiar- but still my mind swam with imagined ideas. “Who was he?” I said.
“Beyond what I’ve told you, not much is known,” said Elias. “My grandfather knew him and considered him a friend, but his journals were primarily concerned with the rest of the species, not their friendship.”
I narrowed my eyes. “The rest of the species?”
“Watch,” said Elias, nodding at the image. It changed, forming into another video of Loremaster Constantine. He was studying in a library, writing in his journals by candlelight. “My grandfather was the first to notice the alarming decline in the ogre population. He took his concerns to the Elders and the Maji councils, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. As you know, such orders do not care to involve themselves in the affairs of lesser beings.”
“I’ve noticed,” I grunted.
“Yes, well Constantine took it upon himself to make a study of your kind. In the process, he built the Hall of Records and founded the Preservation Society, which he dedicated to the study and preservation of all the fae races.”
“Did other races have this problem?” I said.
Elias smiled. “Extinction? No, ogres are unique in this. You see, when the human race-”
“Humans!” Gen interrupted. “It always comes down to them, doesn’t it?”
“Usually,” said Elias. “As I was saying, as humans matured, they began to propagate exponentially. They began to build cities and share their resources. They found safety in numbers, and even comfort. They mastered their environment, and quickly began to recognize and master the sciences. They learned about physics, chemistry, and engineering. They built bigger cities, roads, vehicles, and their reach began to influence even the most reclusive fae communities.”
“And they killed the ogres?” said Gen.
“Not exactly. You see, here is where ogres differ from the rest of the fae. Other fae-kind -the fairies, elves, dwarves, and so on- all adapted to new environments. They moved deeper into the forests and the caves, and eventually built great hidden fortresses, like the undercity.”
“And the ogres didn’t?” I said.
He chuckled. “No, Hank. It seems ogres have a particularly intractable disposition.”
“No kidding,” Gen said, cocking an eyebrow as she glanced at me. “That doesn’t sound like anyone I know.” I glared at her, and she doubled over, laughing.
“At any rate,” Elias went on, “they didn’t cope well with this human invasion. That’s not to say that they went to war with the humans. Instead, it seems that they simply stopped procreating.”
Gen’s smile faded. “They stopped having... sex? Why would they do that?”
“It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. I doubt the ogres entirely gave up their carnal pleasures. It’s just that a species under pressure can occasionally lose the ability to procreate.”
“You mean they went sterile,” I said.
“Perhaps. Many factors play into an individual’s ability to procreate. Environment is but one of those factors. Health and diet can play a role; even mood can have an effect. In the case of the ogres, it was probably all of those things combined. It was like an organized, systematic effort on the part of the universe to drive the ogre into extinction.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re saying the universe conspired to end my species?”
“Of course not. That’s just how it appears when you look at the larger picture. That’s how it always looks. Rarely does any one single event reach extinction levels. It’s almost always a conspiracy of tragedies.”
“So that’s it?” I said. “The ogres just died off, and that’s the end of my kind?”
Gen touched my arm. She gazed up at me with a crestfallen look of sympathy that I didn’t deserve. I’d never known those people. I had never been part of their culture...
“That’s not quite the end,” Elias said. He waved his hand, and the image changed. I saw Loremaster Constantine again. He was back at Matguard’s grave, but this time the camera zoomed in. At his side, he wore a leather satchel. His right hand went to the satchel, pulling open the flap, and he dropped in a large seed of some sort...
“That was a heartstone!” I said. I turned to Elias and found him grinning back at me. He winked. “Keep watching,” he said.
The image shimmered, and I saw Constantine again. This time it was dark, and he was in the ruins of some ancient city. Ivy climbed the walls and crumbling stone towers. Moss covered the ancient paving stones. Moonlight shone down, illuminating the area. Constantine stepped around an old well in the corner and knelt down on the ground. Stretched out behind the well, I saw the body of an ogre. I knew what Constantine would do even before he drew a knife to retrieve the heartstone.
“I don’t understand one thing,” I said. “I thought heartstones only functioned if the ogre died young.”
“That is relatively true,” said E
lias. “My grandfather pulled functioning heartstones from the bodies of ogres well past middle age, but never from the elderly.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gen. “You’re not saying your grandfather went around killing these ogres for their heartstones, are you?”
Elias dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “Of course not. What you must understand is that as the species became more dispersed, the average life expectancy dropped rather quickly. The last twenty or thirty ogres didn’t even reach middle age. Now, watch. You must see one more thing...”
The image shimmered in front of us. This time, we saw a young female ogre in a snowstorm in a forest. The snow was deep, up around her knees even though she must have been ten feet tall. She was running as if in flight, and carrying a bundle under her arm. She had fresh wounds like claw-marks covering the front of her body, her face, and her arms. Blood ran in streams down her dark green flesh.
From the darkened woods behind her, we heard the roar of some wild animal. The ogre woman ran past the camera, and hot on her heels came a massive grizzly bear. It paused at the edge of the woods as she ran out onto snow-covered hills. The grizzly rose up on its hind legs, snarling and slavering, standing close to twelve feet tall.
The image shifted to a view of the ogre woman down the slope. She came to a snowdrift and paused there, taking in her surroundings. She stood at the edge of a road covered in snow that led down the slope and past an old farmhouse about half a mile away. Smoke curled up from the chimney, and in the yard, an old blue truck idled as a farmer loaded up the bed with rectangular bales of hay.
Up the hill and behind her, the grizzly roared. The woman spun to face the creature as it dropped to all fours and broke into a run. She pulled the bundle from under her arm, and pressed it lovingly to her chest. Her blood stained the blankets, and tears streamed down her face. I heard the quiet wail of an infant. She pressed her lips to its face and then set the child in the snowdrift.
As the grizzly came charging down the slope, the ogre woman rushed to meet it. The two came together in a great crash. The creatures went at it with a raw animalistic ferocity that sent shivers of terror running down my spine. The camera pulled away, leaving only the sound of their combat to churn up the bile in my gut.
Moments later, the rattling old farm truck came up the hill behind them. The farmer slammed on his brakes as he saw the two creatures locked in mortal combat. His eyebrows knotted together in a look of disbelief as he opened the door and stepped out. He watched them for a moment, and then leapt into action. He reached behind the seat, pulling out his old hunting rifle. He went to the front of the truck, where he laid the rifle across the hood and pulled the cap off the scope.
With decades of experience, it only took the farmer a split second to draw a bead on his target. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. There was an earsplitting kaboom! and the grizzly let out a wild, panicked howl. The farmer lifted the rifle, working the lever action to load another round. He leaned back on the hood as the grizzly turned on him with a furious snarl. The creature hesitated for a split second and then thought better of taking on two opponents at once. It turned, racing back towards the forest.
The farmer clambered up the slope, racing to where the battle had taken place. When he got there, the old man found to his surprise only a patch of churned up snow and a few blood splatters. The grizzly’s bizarre opponent had vanished. He stood there a moment, looking down on the scene with a furrowed brow as he tried to make sense of it. His breath came out in an icy gush. The wind howled down the mountain, blowing shards of snow across the drifts with a sound like breaking glass. Then, like the cry of a spirit on the wind, he heard the wail of the child. He turned, scanning the hillside along the road, and spotted the tiny bundle in the snowdrift.
Minutes later, the farmer was gone. As he vanished inside the farmhouse, there was a shimmering halo of light among the snowdrifts. It was an illusion spell, I realized. One of the snowdrifts vanished. There, I saw the dead ogre woman. A satyr knelt in the snow beside her. It wasn’t Constantine, but he looked familiar. As the camera zoomed in, I recognized Elias. He looked a few years younger, but not greatly changed. Satyrs tend to count their age in centuries rather than decades or years.
“You were there,” I said in a quiet voice.
Elias nodded. “I was,” he said with a sigh. “I held your mother’s hand as she died, Hank.”
Gen gasped. It was only then that she realized what we’d been watching.
“I’m sorry you had to see this,” Elias continued. “I felt you deserved to know.”
“What did she... who was she?” I said.
Elias gave me a pitying look. “I don’t know, Hank. Her name was Isabelle, and she was one of the last, but that is all I know. At that time, there were only a handful of ogres left in the entire world, and it was all I could do just to find them, to collect their...”
He drifted off and it took a moment for it all to sink in. I turned to face him, glaring down at him with a mixture of anger and confusion that I can’t begin to describe. “You took her heartstone. You cut it out of her, just like... like an animal.”
He nodded ever so slightly, as if afraid to acknowledge the fact that we both already knew. I reached for him, but Gen caught me by the sleeve. “Hank, wait! Don’t you see? Do you know what this means?”
I stared at her, frowning.
“Your mother!” Gen said. “If Elias has her heartstone, Siva might be able to bring her back, too!”
That was almost too much to wrap my head around. I found myself wondering about the lorekeeper’s’ motivations. Why take all those heartstones? What could he possible use them for? There must have been some ulterior motive. I caught Elias by the lapels and pulled him closer. I leaned down until our faces were just inches apart.
“Is that true?”
In response, he snapped his fingers and pointed at the image. It shimmered again. I released him as I turned my attention to the hologram. I saw Elias walking through a long tunnel. Torches flickered on the wall as he moved past. He stepped into a large dark cavern. It was a massive space, very similar to the one in which he stood. Elias took a few steps out into the room and held his hand in the air. I saw a dim glowing light on his palm, which remained in place, hovering there in the air as he pulled his hand away. The light shimmered and gave out a bright flash. Nearby, another light flashed. Then two more, then four more...
The image of Elias faded, replaced by a sudden burst of hundreds of tiny flashing heartstones. They twinkled like the lights of a city in the distance, shimmering and growing in brightness as each light set off another, and another, until the entire room was lit up. I blinked, looking around the cavern in disbelief. Gen caught her breath next to me. I glanced at Elias.
“Is this real?” I whispered. “What am I looking at?”
“It is real, Steward,” he said in a quiet voice. “These are the heartstones that my grandfather and I collected over the last century and a half. More than two thousand of them.”
“Oh, Hank!” Gen said next to me. I looked at her, and saw tears streaming down her face. She pulled close, putting her arms around me.
“They’re real, Hank,” Elias whispered. “And they are all viable. They’re alive! Every single one of them.”
I was speechless. I had a thousand questions rattling around in my head, but I couldn’t focus on any one long enough to make sense out of it. Even if I had, I don’t think I could have spoken a word without choking up. Thank goodness I had the good sense just to keep my mouth shut.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually Elias and Gen quietly led me back to the elevator, which carried us through the tunnels to the Preservation Society hideout. Even there, I didn’t say much. I remember Elias guiding me to a couch, where I took a seat with Gen while he brought us tea and cookies of some sort. I didn’t touch either of them.
Elias patiently explained to me, in the voice that a kindergarten teacher uses
with little children, that while he had managed to verify the viability of all the heartstones, he did not possess the magical skills to start the regeneration process. Even if he had those skills, he said we couldn’t do it right away. We would need to be sure it was the right time. After all, we didn’t want ogres going extinct for all the same reasons, all over again. They would need a special place, a place far from humanity, where ogres might thrive and rediscover their own culture and their place in the world, but where they would be able to study and learn, preparing for interactions with the greater world.
“In other words,” I said when he had finished, “we have to find the right place at the right time, and the right person with the right skills.”
“Yes, that’s more or less it.”
“So the universe has to conspire to bring ogres back again?”
“We’ll see,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “For now, take heart in this, Steward: It is possible!”
Chapter 15
Gen and I had a little surprise waiting for us back at the hideout. Word had spread about my return, and about our plan to put Zane in his place. The ranks of our little band of rebels had suddenly begun to swell. When we stepped into the cave, we found a hundred people waiting for us. The moment we walked in, they let out a cheer. Gen turned to face me, beaming.
“I told you they needed you,” she said.
I reddened a little as they surrounded me, reaching out to clap a hand on my shoulder, touch my arm, or even give me a quick hug. They wanted to know what had happened to me, how I’d managed to survive the explosion, and where I’d been all this time. They wanted to know how I would help them, and if I could make things go back to the way they were before. It was a little overwhelming, considering all that had just happened... not to mention that not that long ago, I had been ready to give up on these people.
When I died, I had been a terrorist, according to the news. Over the years, the reality had slowly dawned on these people that Zane and his sycophants had been the real danger all along. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. Gallan’s plan had succeeded, and Zane had come into power.
A Dame to Die For Page 12