by M E Wolf
After fastening a quiver of forty arrows onto her back, slinging her bow over her left shoulder and putting her fletching tools in her pack, she headed to the store rooms to find some other equipment that she might need. Delaigda was able to procure fifty feet of rope, a long patchwork cloak, a large wool blanket and a small tent. She always thought that they should domesticate an animal for riding, but they had never listened to her.
The society preferred to eat the horse rather than to ride it. Thus, Delaigda had to walk into the Waste and hoped she could find a beast to coax into taking her the rest of the way into the Waste. A few miles into the Waste and she spotted such a beast, a horse worthy of a warrior such as herself.
It was bigger than any horse that she had ever seen being about twenty-four hands high from the place where she would sit to the ground below it. The horse knew that she was there. In fact it tossed its massive head from side to side in defiance of her presence and then stood on its hind legs letting out a mighty neigh, a war cry of sorts.
Dust was sent into the air like the clouds in fog when its front hooves fell to the ground digging into the desert sand like a tempest wind that causes a sand storm. It danced around in defiant circles bringing up more and more sand. Her eyes were filled with sand, which meant that she could not see the horse stampeding towards her, but she did hear it. The thunder of galloping hooves in her ears made her afraid for the first time in her life.
She was so afraid that she could not move and trying only made her limbs feel more like lead each time an attempt to move was made. To her amazement the horse stopped a hands breadth in front of her face. It was so close that she could feel the horse’s warm breath on her face, melting away the fear. The horse nudged her shoulder and she took this as a sign of approval. Removing the steel gauntlet from her right hand, she ran her fingers through the thick black mane of this large horse.
Delaigda talked soothingly to the horse and decided to name him Thunder. Thunder laughed the way horses do when they feel warmth and love coming from the gentle caressing of those that are more than their masters’ and more like companions. She opened her sack and brought out the large wool blanket. Delaigda placed the blanket on Thunder’s back. After putting her gauntlet back on, she climbed onto Thunder’s back.
Sitting on his back for a few moments before taking off, so that he got used to her, she looked around from her new vantage point. For the first time in her life she felt at peace. With gauntleted fingers in Thunder’s mane she urged him on. They traveled many miles over sand and as far as she could see in any direction there was only sand. This sand was a light golden copper colour that shimmered in the sun.
The heat waves were visible above the sand and distorted her view and thus she did not see the strange object jutting out of the sand directly in her path. It was black as black could be, as wide as Thunder was long and about fifty feet high. Before realizing it was there at all, Thunder had already been halfway through it and Delaigda was a few seconds from going through it herself. Moments after Thunder and she disappeared from the waste, the black object shimmered and vanished as well.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Orphaned by the death of his parents and abandoned by his family, he was left to fend for himself on Khangle. It was debated whether it was all alone in the universe or those on Khangle were alone. Some said it was a planet that we were on and some thought that it was the only universe that counted, but he knew that it was not a universe but was a planet. His survival depended upon his ability to steal, beg and do odd and strange jobs that no one else would ever think of doing.
He wore rags and very rarely took a bath, but today was different. Today he wore fine clothes and smelled of lavender. The stench of his usual uncleanness did not bother him much, but it certainly affected his ability to get money through begging. His only weapons were usually a rusted, chipped dagger that the handle was about to fall off of and an old crossbow that needed a new drawstring, but today he had a fine bone handled dagger and a relatively good hand crossbow.
Most would tell him that he was in the wrong profession, being over thirty and having to wear rags instead of proper clothes. He did not mind much of what people said because he was doing this work since he was able to walk. To him it was better to look ragged and poor than to be rich and mugged all the time. He had money, but would never show it while he worked until this day. There was really no use for money.
He once wore nice clothes, but it was hard to play the bard after you reached the age of thirty. His only resolve was to play the decrepit beggar. After all, being a beggar visibly to others would not lead them to believe that he truly was an assassin. Now that many young assassins were in the field his work began to diminish. The new faction for assassins that was starting up in the city now had an underground university to teach the younger assassins.
This made getting work as an assassin hard, even for one that had over twenty years experience in the business, like himself. They were producing stronger and faster assassins than him now. His muscles were sinewy and very rough looking from many years of constant use. He was tall for a thief at about four feet and six inches and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds.
Thorinjian had eyes the silvery blue colour of the morning sky, skin as dark as the night sky and hair so black that you would swear that it was a shade of purple. Today he was to do his last mission and then they would probably kill him. Many of his other missions were to assassinate other assassins that were no longer needed. Thorinjian was to retrieve an object and kill its owner then bring the object to the faction he worked for. He had gone over his escape for the last two years and hoped that it would work. His life depended on it.
He continued to walk down the streets, ducking into alleys and such as he went, of the city that he had lived in his entire life. Thorinjian’s street and assassin senses were at an unusual height today. It was very likely that his assignment could very well be orchestrated to be able to pinpoint his location for his own assassination. That was the very reason he was going to do the hit now, in broad daylight. He needed to throw off their timing.
Just before reaching his desired location, where he would complete his last assignment, two young men jumped in front of him and two grabbed him from behind. Thorinjian was surprised that they had surprised him. He did not think or even consider that they would be able to keep up with him and then he remembered that he had visited his usual contact for supplies to do the job.
He should have backed out of the assignment when he noticed a new man or apprentice following his contact in every step and listening to whatever was said too intently. It was a bit too late to consider that his contacts had been compromised because they already had him. Whatever they would do to him he would soon find out and then it would be too late for anything. One of the men in front of him hit him in the face with the back of his hand.
These assassins were at least a head or two taller than and twice as strong as Thorinjian. The impact of the blow split the skin covering his left cheekbone. Pain exploded in his jaw and ran up the side of his head and it took all of his strength to stifle the tears that were trying to force their way out.
“What a scrawny pathetic assassin you are Thorinjian.”
The assassin that hit him said,
“There are better things for me to do besides assassinating you. You do not look dangerous at all. You are at least not dangerous enough to warrant four assassins to assassinate you.
“We are the best of the new sent to kill the so-called best of the old. Your days are over old man, we young assassins run things now. They said to beware of your stench, but I never heard of one smelling of lavender and wearing fancy clothing to be considered smelly.
“You do not look like an assassin anymore. It will be fitting for us to make out a wealthy merchant was killed in the street before he reached the house of his target. You see this box, it is what you were to retrieve from this place.”
He opened the box and picked up
a small black sphere that looked dead in his hands as he tossed it back and forth, playing like he was juggling. The young assassin continued to juggle the object while he spoke,
“You do not look well, my friend. Oh, you want to see it. Here.” The young assassin held it out to Thorinjian.
When Thorinjian held it in his hand, it shimmered. Thorinjian began to glow and then with a bang, he was gone. The assassins managed to recover the object, but were still in shock with what had happened to Thorinjian. Making a pact with each other to not mention a word of this they set off to collect their payment for killing Thorinjian and retrieved the small black object from the ground.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
The’d’r a’t Cart’r ar’t Al’k’n was born in an ancient town that many a people referred to as the Al’k’n of the world or in the common language the heart of the world. Their world being the planet Geh. Lush forests surrounded the town. To the east were old oaks that the tops were said to be well above the clouds, but people of the town know better and believe that they span about five hundred feet and are wider than fifty feet at the base.
Walking is slowed to less than five percent through that forest. It is called the great oak grove forest or the forest of the giants. They cannot be cut down due to them being sacred and the cutting down of these trees being forbidden. Legend says that this place was a great city and that it was then that the grove of oaks was planted and groomed to grow to what they are today. It has also been said that a group of druids or so they were called grew the oaks from seedlings and nurtured the trees to grow.
The soil of the forest is said to have natural healing properties, but it is also forbidden to remove the soil from the grove for it is also sacred. In fact the town council has made it law that nothing shall be removed from the entire forest, not even a small insignificant trinket from the ruins in the middle of the forest. The ruins are what The’d’r finds most interesting and that is why he stays with the wise ones, a new name for the descendants of the ancient druidic peoples.
Once, as the wise ones tell it, the ruins were of white marble that glittered like sparkling crystal on a hot summer’s day. Now they looked as though they were made of pale grey granite. Lush green grass once grew in the small clearing that surrounded the ruins, although you would scarcely believe that today with the murky wetlands that surrounded it now. A wonder it was to look at it barely on an island of dry sand, huge boulders on top of a crust of shale as hard as or harder than diamonds.
If that was not all ancient beasts lived in the wetlands, The’d’r felt that that must have been something left to protect whatever was left in the ruins. As far as he knows no one has ever set foot on the island or entered the ruins. All that was known about the ruins was passed from generation to generation of the druidic peoples until it came into the possession of the wise ones today.
Time can be forgiving at times, but when it comes to written material transposed from manuscript to manuscript for the purposes of preservation meanings are lost and sometimes something that is completely mediocre to one that does it all the time can mean that something would be left out of the new copy of the manuscript. It is not known how many hands that the library with five hundred volumes of texts regarding the ruins once called the Garden of Tranquility went through, but it is estimated to have gone through thousands of years of changes.
Most are written in a strange language that no one remembers how to read, which are all in desperate need of repair. Information contained in five of the five hundred volumes is what the wise ones can even puzzle over. What they do know about the ruins is contained in a book in the common tongue called “An excavation of the City that is lost” by a five hundred years dead scholar, Gr’g’ry v’n L’n’t’r vr’n C’rt’r. He also happened to be the fifteenth great grandfather of The’d’r.
It also meant that no one has set foot in the ruins in over five hundred years. Gr’g’ry made his last trip to the ruins exactly five hundred and ten years ago to the day. No one knows if he returned to Al’k’n and an expedition sent there a few days later had not returned either. Two hundred and fifty years ago a party of men checked the area and found the wetlands inhabited by many large carnivorous beasts and those beasts killed some of them.
No more visits were allowed, even to look at the grounds. Any who went there were banned and could not return to Al’k’n. The book written by Gr’g’ry states that one could get lost in the ruins without a map. A map was included in the book, but it was faded and hard to read. Secrets of living were to be contained in the ruins, among those listed only a few seemed to be of any use. Songs were written in one book that could aid the growth of crops and mend wounds.
There were also books that were forbidden that were of a time when the druidic peoples were ruled by violence. As all were forbidden to enter the ruins, all were forbidden to shed blood or to kill for that was the nature of violence. The’d’r remembers not long ago when a boy bloodied another boy’s nose. He was banned from Al’k’n. That boy was the older brother, by four years, of The’d’r.
Many years later when they had found out that The’d’r was helping his brother live in the ruins they banned him from ever returning to Al’k’n. Now, loaded with books and various other articles that they deemed worthy to retrieve from the ruins, they set off for a town known for its gladiatorial fights, Quar’n t’ b’n’r, which means Heroes of the Shield in the common tongue.
CHAPTER FORTY
Jacob looked around at his surroundings. The yellowish green colour of the grass, few patches of snow and damp spring air told him that winter was almost over. He was a bit cold considering he was not wearing anything, not even any small clothes. If that was not all, he estimated that he was now seven feet and three inches tall and weighed a good three hundred and seventy-five pounds and also appeared to be about age seventeen.
Before he had touched that black ball he was six feet and two inches tall and weighed only one hundred and ninety pounds at age one hundred and thirty eight. He did not understand why or how the changes were made. What was done was done and he had to make himself realize that he could not change it back. The good thing was that he retained his knowledge and memories. The bad thing was that he could not use most of them here, but at least his fighting ability should prove useful once he got used to his new body.
His first concern was to get some clothes because where he was from, whether this was a different world or not, one got arrested for exposing themselves in public. A second look at his surroundings to figure out if he was near a town or city or some place he could get clothes from brought his attention to the edge of the forest, just a few meters in front of him. The forest was populated with spruce, pine, poplar, oak and some other types of trees that he could not quite recognize.
The only area that was not covered by a canopy of tree branches was the small clearing that he had been sitting in. Red pine needles covered most of the ground under that canopy and the forest’s natural aroma gave Jacob strength to fight the cold. Standing up made Jacob queasy. He was not used to his newfound height of seven feet and three inches. It was like learning how to walk all over again because when he made his first step on this world he nearly toppled over on unsure legs.
Jacob stumbled every few steps, but eventually managed to work his way to the edge of the forest. Exhaustion overtook him as he collapsed to the forest floor. It took Jacob a few weeks of exercise and rest to get used to his new legs and be satisfied with his movement. He knew that a year of practice should make him a master of this new body. Jacob was still naked except for the loincloth that he had made out of a wolf’s hide. The past few weeks he had hunted and foraged for anything that he could eat while too weak to venture outside of the forest.
Now ready to get out of the forest, he stood at the edge looking at the trail that wagons, horses, people and other domesticated and wild animals had made. He was not sure of the exact direction that any specific tracks were going, but he could tell that
there were two directions. Those directions were north and south. Jacob decided to go in the least traveled direction, which happened to be north.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Delaigda practically fell off of the giant horse she was on as they both appeared on a hill. They were moving down the hill at a speed that she was not used to. With every step she bounced up and down from the movement of Thunder’s massive muscles. She could not figure out why she was riding the horse naked and Thunder seemed to prefer her this way. Mud, grass and rocks were overturned from the horse’s unshod hooves. As far as Delaigda could tell, she was heading north by northeast.
It took every bit of her energy to coax the horse into stopping. When Thunder had stopped, mud was splashed onto her and the horse’s flank. She slid off of the horse and onto the ground. Delaigda had never felt so weak in her life. It was like she was a foal first learning to walk. Delaigda looked the same except she was younger, like seventeen or eighteen. Knowledge was retained, but the ability to use it was not there. How long would it take her body to adjust, so she could use her knowledge? It would not be known for a long time.
Of all the places to have the horse stop she had to have him stop in the mud. The moistness of the mud told her that it must have rained the day before, a spring rain that obviously was working its way to remove the last remnants of snow. A light breeze caressed her naked skin making her shiver slightly. She needed clothes, but had no idea of where to find them. If anyone had attacked her right now she would not be able to defend herself, let alone stand up.
After slipping in the mud several times and looking like she had just been in a mud-wrestling match, she leaned on Thunder and looked around at her surroundings. She was on a well traveled road or trail that nature still had a hold on. It was clear that nature was winning the constant war between man and nature, as one could not tell it was a road if it were not for the horse and human tracks and most of all the ruts that were made by heavy-laden wagons.
