A Child of Great Promise: An Altearth Tale

by Ellis L. Knox

  “An opening. We now must choose between two dark ways.”

  Talysse moved forward. The light from the gem brightened, but both tunnels stretched away into darkness. She reached out to sense the air.

  “This way,” she said, after only a moment.

  “You are certain?” asked Jehan.

  “I can feel air coming from this way. From that way, the air does not move.”

  “I do not feel anything.”

  “It’s not the air, exactly. I mean, it is, but there are currents. The things that carry me when I fly. They come from outside.”

  “You are sure?” Jehan said again.

  “My friend,” Gonsallo said, “we are lost inside of a mountain. It’s long past the time to be doubting our captain.”

  Captain? Talysse almost laughed out loud, the notion was so absurd. But she did know the second tunnel led nowhere. She moved forward, holding the staff high like a torch.

  The way had been running straight, but now it began to curve, gradually, one way then the other. More tunnels appeared, more choices. Each time, they stopped and Talysse felt and listened and tasted the air, and chose. She tried to concentrate on that only, but the events in the tower kept appearing before her eyes. She saw fire and smoke; saw Remigius lying on the floor, broken and inert; saw Saveric striding down a narrow set of stairs. Saw the tower itself shaking apart. She could not tell which of these was real. They sprang upon her suddenly, like screams.

  Then came a place where the air changed. Echoes sounded ahead and Jehan drew them to a halt.

  “We are close to a cavern of some kind,” he said. That he kept his voice low as he spoke made his words sound menacing. Even the light dimmed. Gonsallo glanced her way.

  “Are you doing that?”

  “No,” she said. “Or maybe yes. I don’t know.” Her voice trembled and sounded strange in her ears.

  “Never mind, Lyssie,” Detta said. She glared meaningfully at Gonsallo, who retreated a step.

  “Is the place so very large?” Detta asked.

  “Hard to say. But if we simply stumble forward we could easily become separated.”

  “Oh,” Detta said. “Let’s not do that.”

  Jehan smiled. “Be encouraged. Maybe it’s a way out.”

  Talysse was sure it was not.

  The tunnel curved again, ran straight for some yards. Every footfall sounded hollow and even the stillness had an echo. The tunnel opened up and they entered the cavern. The light leaped outward and was swallowed. Jehan started to speak, but Talysse put up her hand in warning. Everyone turned to her.

  “Something is here,” she said softly, trying to keep the words close. The light went out. Blackness collapsed upon them, then Talysse added in a whisper.

  “Something bad.”

  They all fell silent. A distant sound echoed weirdly off the walls. Some distance away, there was a glow that was not daylight.

  “Mon chevalier,” Gonsallo whispered.

  “Yes,” Jehan whispered back. “It sounds like something eating.”

  They retreated back around the corner.

  “We should go back,” Detta declared.

  “Alas, there is no other way to go, madame,” Gonsallo said, “or I should certainly agree.”

  “Could we hide until it goes away?”

  “I’m afraid it most likely lives here,” Jehan said, “and we have neither food nor water.”

  “Ayi, ayi,” the gnome muttered.

  “Perhaps we can sneak past it,” Talysse suggested.

  “Can the Archmage’s Stave make us invisible? And silent? Without scent?” Jehan did not try to soften his tone.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how to use this. It just happens.” No one said anything. “But I can try,” she added softly.

  They agreed they would move along one wall, each with a hand touching the one in front, like blind beggars.

  The light went out. She tried to imagine being invisible, being silent, but had no idea if it was working. Talysse went first, holding the Stave in her right hand and running her left along the rough stone wall. She encountered no side tunnels, but the sense of fresh air was still there, beneath the reek of damp and rotting flesh.

  Someone stumbled. It was only a small stumble, but it was enough to send a stone skittering and that was enough to gain the attention of whatever was across the cavern. It turned.

  She knew it turned, and she knew it was a monster, because the thing had eyes that glowed like two pale lamps. They were very big eyes. Even though it was some distance away, the eyes lit up all four figures and threw their shadows against the wall.

  “The tarrasque,” Jehan breathed.

  Gonsallo said something in reply but his words were torn apart by a shriek that deafened them all. It sounded somewhat like a hundred eagles shrieking at once, but also a hundred lions roaring. The sound made speaking impossible.

  Then it began to move. The terrible cry sounded again and again. Its eyes shook as it ran, sending beams gyrating crazily.

  Talysse raised the Stave high over her head.

  A massive column of energy shot out, looking like a bundle of reeds on fire.

  The whole of the creature’s back was covered by a multi-colored shell. The fiery bundle struck this and exploded outward in a hundred shards that flew in every direction. They caromed off the stone, striking floor, walls, and ceiling. Talysse dropped to the ground, covering her head with one arm. The jagged pieces of the bolt ricocheted for several seconds, then silence fell.

  The creature was staggered, but appeared unharmed.

  Gonsallo called out, “Please do not do that again.”

  The creature lumbered into motion once more. It raised its body up on its legs, reminding Talysse uncomfortably of the way a spider moves, but it was not fast like a spider. ‘Unstoppable’ seemed a better description.

  Talysse stood and struck a light so others could see. She could be that much use, at least. Protect Detta.

  “Get to safety,” Jehan bellowed, his deep voice echoing.

  She screamed at them to stop, come back, but they did not heed her. Gonsallo dashed to one side, Jehan to the other, but the tarrasque continued to charge straight at Talysse.

  “Stay back, Detta,” she ordered. Staying here, with their backs against a wall, was the worst thing she could do. There was no choice but to advance. She held the Stave in an attack position, then charged. When the beast was only two yards away, she leaped. There was little enough current, but she gathered it to her and rode it. The mouth of the tarrasque was blunt, filled with teeth, but it could not raise its head very high. She flew in over the top and jabbed the Stave into its right eye. Her aim was a bit off. She caught only the corner, but it was enough to halt the charge. Still using the faint current of air, she returned to Detta.

  “Brava!” Gonsallo cried.

  Jehan shouted that they must strike beneath the shell. The tarrasque turned at his voice. Talysse moved forward again. Detta came with her and threw a rock.

  The tarrasque had turned again. It faced away from her now. As it turned toward Jehan, Gonsallo attacked from the other side, just by the rear leg. He drove his long knife into its upper leg, then upward, beneath the shell, and a third time, into the leg again. The tarrasque shrieked in pain, and Detta cheered, but the Catalan had stayed too long. The monster’s tail hooked around. A dreadful black spike flashed, stabbing him in the leg, and Gonsallo fell and did not move.

  Talysse froze.

  Jehan, unaware of what had happened, took his chance. He struck with his sword, underneath the front leg. The blade went in to its hilt. The creature screamed again. The tail waved furiously but Jehan was out of its range.

  Talysse took careful aim with the Stave. A single bolt of dark red lanced out and struck the tarrasque squarely in the face. Its entire head exploded into ruin. This was followed by a strange silence that filled Talysse, as if she’d been suddenly dropped into deep water. Detta’s voice br
ought her back.

  “Ayi, ayi,” Detta cried. She was running toward Gonsallo. “He is fallen!”

  Talysse followed close after, then stopped and gasped.

  Jehan came running up at the same time. The sob that came from him struck Talysse like a hot iron.

  He lay with his arm strangely rigid, his face contorted. Anyone could see the trovador was dead.

  Detta came up. “Ah, no, the brave boy,” she said quietly.

  “The bravest,” Jehan said.

  A third voice Talysse heard. Inarticulate but sweet, like mourners singing in the distance, yet somehow close. Talysse looked around. The song was in her hand.

  The Archmage’s Stave glowed and vibrated and sang, and nothing was more natural or obvious than to kneel down beside Gonsallo’s body. Jehan gave her a look as if she might be about to burst into flame, or ascend into the sky. He stepped away. Talysse scarcely noticed. The sound consumed her. It struggled inside, like a captive bird.

  She put her hand on Gonsallo’s blackened wound, and the sound swept out from her. One hand was on the wound, the other gripped the staff, and Talysse was somewhere in between, but she could not tell where. She felt all the tunnels of the Redoubt and they were like veins within her being. She felt air moving through them like blood, and the song resounded in every corridor.

  Deeper notes rose up from below, tolling like bells of granite and basalt, long notes whose reverberations spoke of eternity. Woven into these came echoes of the ocean and the roots of mountains, and of mysteries still deeper, where strange fires dwelt in colors unknown to the sun.

  Talysse drifted through the song like a melody, rising and falling as easily as a leaf. She felt storms and was herself a storm, a drop within rain, forever dissolving into mist.

  A cold wind blew through her. Thoughts ran in her mind like animals fleeing a burning forest. The creature’s sting had turned Gonsallo’s flesh as cold and rigid as stone. A thin humming ran through her core; it occurred to her that she might be wailing. The sound was joined by the memory of Gonsallo’s voice, clear and pure, like mountain wine. She could smell it, feel it, from the inside out.

  Her eyes were open, but they looked upon a strange landscape. The tarrasque formed a black cliff, at the foot of which lay the Catalan trovador, his form bathed in sunset red. Bright sparks hovered at the edge of sight, making sounds she could not hear.

  She herself was a sculpture in ice, burning blue. On her lap lay a rod of fire. She grasped it and it was cool. It shimmered and flowed like a stream leaping from its source, straining seaward.

  She let it go.

  Waterfalls crashed around her, falling into fire, hissing like dragons. Fire filled her mouth and she swallowed it, and it came out through her hands. She felt herself dissolve, tumbling into brown earth. All her senses fused and fled, and she hung like a trumpet call in mid-air. A great wind caught her and she rejoiced. She felt every current: its muscle, its bones. She felt its heartbeat.

  And knew it was Gonsallo.

  “Talysse.” Jehan’s voice was deep and gentle. “Mademoiselle. Leave off. You have done enough.”

  Her hand hurt. It clenched so tightly around the Stave she didn’t know how to let go. She could see again, see individual objects instead of seeing everything at once. Could see Gonsallo, who was sitting upright before her, his brown eyes filled with concern. Not pain. Not emptied by death.

  Grief shook her. It broke in waves, leaving tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry, jovencita. Look. I am well. I am whole.”

  “You are bleeding,” Detta said.

  He looked surprised. “So I am, yet it doesn’t hurt.”

  Talysse was not crying for Gonsallo. Slowly she released her grip on the staff and let it fall to the ground. Her knuckles all showed bloodless white. She stared at it as if it were the hand of a stranger attached to her arm. She began to sob, unable to form words or to answer Detta’s worried questions, save silently.

  Ah, Detta. It’s gone. I am crying because the staff is dead and I’ll never hear its song again. I had a second heart and it has been torn from me.

  “I am crying because Gonsallo is alive,” she said aloud. “I’m crying because I’m happy.”

  “That is good,” Detta said, who could not stop hugging her. “That is well.”

  Jehan stepped forward to bind up the wound and stop the bleeding. As he worked with deft hands, he kept glancing at Talysse as if he’d never seen her before. After a few minutes he helped Gonsallo to his feet.

  “My thanks, hero,” Gonsallo said. “I should like to get away from that beast as soon as I can.” He eyed the body of the tarrasque, a few feet away.

  Talysse handed the Stave to Gonsallo. “Use this,” she said. “It is dead now. Just another stick.”

  “Jovencita,” the trovador said, and tears started in his eyes. “You sacrificed such power, for a poor singer.”

  “Nonsense,” Talysse said brusquely, “you are quite a good singer.” She pressed the Stave on him and he took it.

  “Now then,” she said, “let’s find a way out.”

  A faint, phosphorescent glow came from the corpse of the monster, but only a few feet away all was blackness. Talysse felt the air and detected the trace of a current.

  “Follow me,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “Detta, you hang on to my belt. Jehan, stay as close as you can.”

  “We should speak every few steps, so we do not get separated.”

  Talysse nodded.

  Navigating across a cavern in the pitch dark was tricky, not least because the floor was uneven. She heard the two men stumble more than once. Gonsallo apologized for a stumble, saying he was still weak.

  “You seem strong enough, for a dead man,” Jehan said.

  “At the moment, chevalier, I think a dead man could walk faster than I.”

  Talysse smiled at the exchange. If the two men could make jokes after what had just happened, they might be all right.

  After several minutes she located an opening, mainly by walking into a wall, then feeling her way to the actual opening a few feet to her right. She soon found they were in a tunnel. It turned back and forth, the way the other had, but there were no side tunnels. She was grateful for that.

  The air was growing fresher, the current stronger. “I think we’re on the right way out,” she said aloud.

  “There was some doubt?” Gonsallo said with a small gasp.

  “Never,” Talysse replied. It was easier to lie now that she thought she might be right.

  “Mademoiselle,” Jehan said softly.

  “What?” Talysse was suddenly anxious.

  “I can see you.”

  Talysse stopped, blinked, turned around. There was Jehan, Gonsallo beside him. Faint as a ghost’s shadow, but unmistakably visible. She turned back around and now her eyes could see the way ahead was lighter.

  “Told you so,” she said.

  A low chuckle came from behind.

  The taste of the air had not lied. She still had her ability. After a few minutes, Gonsallo said he could walk on his own.

  “I am stronger with every step, Talysse,” he told her. “And I do not much care for the touch of this thing. It is unnaturally cold. Besides, it belongs to you.”

  She accepted it, but to herself she disagreed. The Stave did not feel a bit cold in her hand. And she had decided it did not belong to her at all. Whatever it had once been, it was no longer.

  Five minutes later, they saw daylight.

  Five minutes after that, they came to a wide, low entrance and emerged from the mountain onto a wide, steeply sloping meadow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Settling Accounts

  Talysse stepped forward. Even blinking against the sunlight, she knew the figure standing in the clearing. He leaned heavily on a black staff veined with crimson.

  “You all live. Extraordinary.”

  Saveric’s voice slid like oil across the grass.

&
nbsp; “You are greater than ever, Talysse,” he said, “now you possess the Stave of the Archmage. Don’t be alarmed; I have no intention of trying to take it from you. I should not have tried. I see that now.”

  His words clung to her like nettles. He is most dangerous, she thought, when he is being courteous.

  “Can we not talk, young wizard?” Saveric smiled and took a step forward.

  She was tiring fast, but she drew herself up.

  “Talk, then,” she said. “Tell us how you killed Remigius, my patron.”

  The word echoed in her heart: patron, patros, pater.

  “That was accidental. He got in the way.”

  “In the way of you trying to kill me.” She was too tired to make it more than a flat statement.

  “I have already said that was a mistake. Please tell the elf to stay where he is. I will not allow violence to be done to me.”

  Jehan had been edging sideways by quarter steps. He stopped.

  “I am under royal protection,” Saveric said, head raised.

  “You wear me out with lies,” Talysse said. She, too, had moved—only a single step, but it was away from Detta. She hoped the gnome understood.

  “I do not lie,” Saveric replied. He put his free hand to his chest in protest. Talysse tensed; nothing happened, but she stayed ready, certain he would do something soon.

  “Believe me, Talysse, I wish no harm to you.”

  “No? Then let us pass,” Gonsallo called out. He had ranged himself to the right, but froze when Saveric glanced his way. Talysse caught the trovador’s eye and shook her head. She could not save him a second time.

  “I can’t do that,” the wizard said, sounding like he regretted it. “Talysse knows this. She knows there can be only one end to this long day.” He spoke as if they were all coming to an agreement on a difficult point. Saveric gestured with his staff. Talysse managed not to flinch.

  “Not another step, elf!”

  Jehan had resumed his sly movement. He was nearly to one side of Saveric.

  “Do not think to attack me.” Saveric turned his head to look directly at Jehan. “I shall kill you without remorse.”

  “Remorse is foreign to a scoundrel,” Jehan said. He was starting to rise onto the balls of his feet.