by Paul Collins
Acting on instinct, Jelindel scooped up the fallen warrior’s sword and raced across the apron. Piled high in the centre of the courtyard was a large cairn composed of dried logs and kindling. It had once been kept in readiness to signal for aid, a remnant from centuries earlier, before magic spells replaced the need for crude signal fires.
Jelindel reached the cairn and hurled a word of conflagration into it. The woodpile caught instantly and blazed up into the night. Within moments it was roaring fiercely, lighting the night sky – and a swarm of deadmoon warriors. Now that all could see them clearly, a significant part of their advantage had been removed. But how to remove the next?
Jelindel hunted desperately through her mind for a spell that might undo the power that kept the deadly warriors airborne. But all that came to her aid was another binding spell.
Although the spell itself was useless against the attackers, she knew her mind was trying to tell her something.
Dismissing it for the moment, Jelindel rallied several priestesses and novices to her side. She sent two of the more fleet footed ones racing to the Temple armoury to bring back the ceremonial swords and pikes. The rest she organised into a small fighting unit and armed them with flaming brands, and the surprisingly successful Siluvian kick-fist techniques that Jelindel had taught them, to temporarily hold back the enemy.
‘There are so many of them!’ wailed a young neophyte.
‘So there are,’ Jelindel admitted, tightly. ‘And see how they crowd one another with their inexperience?’
The girl sagged to her knees in prayer.
‘We’re not finished yet,’ Jelindel said, heaving the girl to her feet. She wove a quick spell of confusion and an aerial attacker dived straight into the blazing bonfire. Jelindel’s moment of glory became decidedly less triumphant a moment later when she threw herself into a pile of goat dung to narrowly avoid a hissing sword stroke.
The novices who had been sent to the armoury returned, laden with ancient pikes, halberds, and swords. More priestesses rallied to Jelindel’s side, grabbing weapons. Together they created a wall of deadly blades raised against the sky.
‘Here, I found this,’ one of the novices said, thrusting a crossbow at Jelindel. It was the old-fashioned sort that used a cranking arm. Jelindel’s heart sank. There were only three bolts.
She quickly fitted an iron bolt into the fluted channel of the crossbow, cranked up the string, and aimed. Muttering a spell of true-aim, she let fly. The bolt found its mark and a deadmoon warrior plummeted from the sky.
‘Oh Mother of Redemption, lead us …’ prayed several novices in quavering voices.
‘We’re holding our own,’ Jelindel reassured them. As if to mock her words, twenty deadmoon warriors that had been held in reserve outside the walls of the Temple suddenly rose into view above the battlements, hovering like a terrible veil of blackness. Their sheer number shattered the spirits of all in the courtyard. Novices and priestesses alike cried out in horror and flung their weapons from them, demoralised.
Jelindel realised it was part of the enemy’s strategy. In all wars and confrontations, the psychological edge was often the one that bit the sharpest.
The new reinforcements emitted an eerie cry that paralysed many who heard it with abject fear, and gave all others a sense of their own danger. The warriors swooped in for the final all-out kill.
‘Hold your ground!’ Jelindel ordered. Some broke rank, but others held firm.
The same binding spell as before presented itself to Jelindel, but this time it appeared with the symbol for ‘like but unlike’. For an instant it meant absolutely nothing to her. Then she saw what it was trying to tell her. She shouted a new spell at the massed horde screaming down upon them from above.
‘Ketar unsa kitab!’
At her utterance the airborne warriors were momentarily blinded.
Unable to see, and blasting down with speed, they smashed in wave after wave upon the flagstoned walls and battlements, till the Temple was dotted with the broken remains of the aerial assassins. In the light of the bonfire, they looked like so many squashed raisins.
‘Back,’ Jelindel cried out to the startled women. ‘Get back!’
Deadmoon warriors plummeted. But some veered away, eluding Jelindel’s snare. Others managed to save some of their falling brethren.
Within moments it was all over. But Jelindel was deaf to the praise raining down on her. She was too busy pondering what little difference there was between the words ‘binding’ and ‘blinding’.
She untangled herself from the clutching novices, who clearly saw her as a newborn messiah, and hurried to the bell tower to check on Kelricka. The crumpled form of the Holy Priestess was still sprawled on the cold stone. But she was breathing and her pulse, though weak, was steady. Jelindel expelled a deep sigh of relief. She fumbled her way to the rearmost wall and felt along it till she came upon a torch embrasure. She was about to use a lighting spell to ignite the torch when she was struck on the back of the head, and she knew no more.
Chapter 2
THE TOWER INVIOLATE
The thing about being transported to another world via magic is that there are no guarantees where you may land, or if you will land at all. Nor can you pick and choose which reality will be your host.
When Daretor and Zimak were first flung across the paraworlds, they landed reasonably softly and with few ill effects. It was unfortunate that they arrived at a recent massacre and had had to defend themselves against two brawny victors. Having survived that encounter, Daretor decided that they would attack the freebooters and free their prisoners.
‘Daretor, what are you thinking of? There must be a dozen of them, maybe fifteen,’ Zimak remonstrated.
‘Maybe more,’ Daretor replied.
‘This is the end, this is the beginning,’ thought a resigned Zimak.
In the next instant, a vortex of bluish light spotlighted them. In that split second their screams were cut off and they were hurled up at such fantastical speed that both men passed out.
Moments later, a terrifying blast of sound broke like a thunderclap across a darkening sky in which three pale moons rode high in their orbits. A crack appeared, a rent in the fabric of reality, and a chaotic spasm of blue light spewed forth once more. Two shapes belched outwards with insane violence, and they began to tumble towards the ground far below.
The shapes were Daretor and Zimak, still bearing the flash-burns of magic used violently and at point-blank range. Zimak screamed as they were flung through, their new world lunging crazily. Zimak clutched frantically for something to grab hold of. But there was nothing but air, and thin air at that.
‘What in White Quell’s name is happening?’ shrieked Zimak.
Daretor, who was just as scared and confused but constitutionally unable to show weakness, said nothing. He clenched his teeth to stifle any errant cry and grabbed hold of his equally terrified companion.
‘Black Quell means to have us this time!’ he said, tightening his grip on Zimak.
They plummeted earthward, punching through thin patches of cloud that slapped them wetly, making them shiver as the cold airstream pummelled them.
‘She betrayed us,’ Daretor snarled. He had to shout to be heard.
Zimak clenched his eyes shut. He was getting himself back under control, or trying to – not an easy feat when the distant ground was becoming exceedingly less distant by the second. ‘Gah, Daretor! Is that all you can think about?’
‘She sent us here to die, the miserable witch. We survived the first landing, so she’s hit us again.’
‘Agreed. But how about being more constructive, like how by all the truenames of all the true gods do we get out of this?’
‘Fool!’ Daretor hissed. ‘We are not meant to “get out of this”. We are meant to die. That’s the vixen’s intention.’
‘I don’t want to die, Daretor!’
‘I intend to pass this life with honour, not squealing like a stuck pig.’
‘I’ll stick to my squealing …’
It was growing dark. The land below, still a good league down, was already in shadow. An encampment could be seen as campfires sprang up in a great ring reflected from the surface of a lake or slow-moving river.
Zimak peered down. ‘Hie, those yayas are still there.’
‘Well, you’ll soon be joining them,’ said Daretor.
‘Hope they don’t mind company dropping in.’
Daretor’s hand tightened around Zimak’s. Humour was not usually Zimak’s strong point. ‘I’m sorry about the squealing pig remark. It was … unfair. You appear to have some honour after all.’
Zimak opened his eyes. It wasn’t often that Daretor apologised.
‘Sometimes I forget that you, at least, are one who never betrayed me,’ Daretor continued.
Zimak opened his mouth to say something when a shadow passed over them. Then a gout of jagged flame ripped past like livid-green lightning. The flame lit up the pale underbody of a vast aerial creature that banked sharply away, screeching hideously.
Zimak screamed again, quickly forfeiting honour for sheer terror. The creature swooped back and suddenly a giant net swept towards them.
Daretor spun in the air, trying to get a glimpse of their attacker. The net closed around them and they found themselves no longer falling but swinging in sickening gyrations inside the huge sack-like mesh.
‘We’re alive!’ Zimak yelled. ‘We’re saved!’
Staring upwards, Daretor shook his head slowly. ‘Saved for what, I wonder?’
‘You’re such a pessimist.’ Zimak squirmed around, trying to get a look at their saviour. When he did so his mouth fell open. Nothing came out save a strangled sound deep in his throat.
‘That what I think it is?’ he asked finally.
Daretor nodded. ‘Aye. It is.’
Flying above them, its huge bat-like wings sawing the air with massive downstrokes, was a crimson armour-encrusted dragon that was at least a hundred yards from wingtip to wingtip. Trailing behind for balance was a long, thin, forked tail.
‘I don’t believe it. Dragons aren’t real. They’re just in … dummart fairytales.’
‘Then,’ said Daretor, ‘you’ve been ensnared by a fairytale.’
On the dragon’s back, riding in a sleek streamlined cockpit, were several armed warriors who grinned down at them. Each man was richly outfitted in the harness and accoutrements of battle, and small metal ingots that appeared to be insignia.
Dropping from the sky above, a dozen more dragons came crashing into view, swarming in apparent chaos before quickly forming into aerial ranks. Each dragon trailed a net similar to the one that held Daretor and Zimak. In most of them small figures could be seen clutching the mesh, and wailing mournfully.
‘At least,’ said Zimak, ‘we’re not going to die immediately.’
Meanwhile, Daretor was testing the strength of the mesh and looking for a way out. All too quickly he concluded that they were well and truly trapped – for now.
The dragon squad flew at staggering speed towards a vast high wall of rock that towered above them for a hundred furlongs, its topmost pinnacle lost in dark swirling clouds. The noise of the leathery wings pounding the air was overwhelming. Every now and then, as if in triumph or ire, a dragon spewed forth a greenish gout of flame that seared the optic nerve and created a minor thunderclap as the air was annihilated.
Nervously staring ahead, Zimak gulped. ‘Do you think they know what they’re doing?’
Lit up by the three orbiting moons, the rock wall appeared unbroken; yet the dragon squad raced towards it with no sign of veering aside.
Daretor shrugged. ‘It’s their world. Unless, of course, we’ve fallen into the hands of a tribe of lunatics.’
‘I’m always surrounded by them,’ Zimak said, miserably.
Daretor pointed. ‘Steady yourself, Zimak – the wall is upon us!’
Zimak steadied himself to scream yet again as the squadron shot towards a jagged rampart of rock that jutted from the wall, and which swelled quickly into view. Surely the dragons would dash themselves to pieces on the rock. But, at the last second, they banked hard and swerved around it, rocketing into a narrow canyon of sheer walls that revealed themselves at the last moment. The canyon, which disappeared above into dizzying heights and below into darkness, was barely wide enough to accommodate the dragons’ massive wingspans. The slipstream from the dragons in front and above sucked the air from the men’s lungs and violently buffeted the net, till they were sick, bruised and dazed.
From time to time, they cast a look outwards to see the canyon walls blurring past. The speed of the dragons, not apparent in the open air, was here revealed as truly incredible, as was the precise nature of the flying. One small mistake would have dashed a dragon into a wall. Yet the entourage flew with nerveless disregard of the danger, deeper and deeper into the mountain.
Occasionally, other canyons veered off at sharp angles, and into some of these a dragon sometimes darted, dragging its human cargo to whatever fate awaited it. At one point the canyon closed in tightly, a blank wall looming ahead. Zimak cried out, flinging his arms over his head.
The dragon carrying them lunged abruptly upwards, towards a narrow cleft. Zimak peeked out and was sorry he did so, for the cleft was far too narrow for the dragon to pass.
‘We’re done for!’ he wailed.
Daretor grunted, refusing to look away.
The dragon banked steeply, turning almost sideways so that one wingtip pointed at the sky and the other at the dark canyon depths, before shooting through the cleft and levelling off on the other side.
The view that greeted them was breathtaking. A vast crater, at least fifty miles from rim to rim, had been scooped from the earth by an aeons-old cataclysm. In the crater’s centre reared a single pinnacle of dark basalt, sheer and daunting for over five thousand feet.
Carved into the pinnacle’s peak was a dark and foreboding castle. Its narrow turrets and battlements, thrusting upwards and outwards in a tumult of chaotic design, spewed steam and flame.
‘I fear that is our destination,’ said Daretor.
Zimak regarded the castle with a shudder. Its aspect was illomened. Around its base were massive holes or ‘hangars’. As he watched, a dragon shot towards one. Folding its wings at the last minute, it plunged inside.
‘Pigeon holes for dragons,’ Zimak mumbled.
Twenty minutes later their own dragon swooped towards one of the dark entrances. The net containing them was hauled in tight to the dragon’s flank, the wings snapped up with a creaking crash, and suddenly they were inside, the dragon alighting with unexpected grace.
‘Well,’ said Daretor, ‘we’re here.’
‘Here’ was a vast hangar at least a hundred feet high and twice that width. The walls were pockmarked with tunnel entrances and staircases cut into the rock. As the dragon settled on its haunches, the net was unceremoniously dumped on the floor. A squad of soldiers jogged out and surrounded them. Meanwhile, ‘engineers’ saw to the dragon itself, removing the flying harness and ‘cockpit’ apparatus.
As the soldiers dragged the net containing Daretor and Zimak to a holding pen, the dragon was guided further into the hangar to what appeared to be a feeding trough. The pitiful screams coming from the trough left little to the imagination as to what composed the dragon’s diet. Zimak paled visibly.
‘I don’t think I’m going to like it here,’ he groaned.
‘For once, we are in complete agreement,’ Daretor growled.
The soldiers spoke little, though when they did it was oddly intelligible to the two Q’zarans.
‘I don’t get it,’ Zimak remarked. ‘How come we can understand them?’
Daretor shrugged. ‘It is my belief that a paraworld is a different world from whence you started, and it exists on a completely different plane. A different cosmos even.’
‘Well, if it is anything like our world, then we are in for it,’ Zi
mak said.
‘It is a world of men,’ Daretor stated plainly. ‘When did men ever treat other men with anything but savagery?’
‘There you go again. Always the optimist.’
‘Pay attention, Zimak. There are other things to note.’
‘Such as?’
‘Have you noticed anything about our weight?’
Zimak looked at him, mystified.
Daretor gnashed his teeth. ‘You have the brains of a mule. We weigh less here. We are much lighter!’
Zimak bounced from foot to foot, testing Daretor’s observation. ‘You’re right. I feel like I could jump over their heads! Do you think that’s possible?’
‘The laws of this world may be different from Q’zar’s. If so, do nothing suddenly. It may give us an advantage later on. There is something else I have observed. The soldiers are small. Their arms and legs are thin; their musculature is like yours.’
‘Being small and lithe has its advantages,’ Zimak replied.
‘It may be that we are stronger than they,’ Daretor continued.
If so, they did not get a chance to prove it. Still draped inside the net, they were taken to a stone chute where the net was opened and its protesting contents dumped. Daretor and Zimak hit the slippery chute and slid out of sight, Zimak’s echoing wail fading in the distance.
‘I don’t like this one little biiiiiitttttt –’
Oomph! They landed hard, face down in a shallow pool of scum-covered water that reeked of refuse and worse. They scrambled to their knees, retching.
The head and snout of a small dragon poked through an archway. Smoke coiled from its nostrils. ‘Down. Get down!’ a voice shouted.
Such was the urgency of the voice that neither Zimak nor Daretor sought to argue. They plunged beneath the water as an inferno of green fire erupted across the pool’s surface. Superheated by the dragon’s fiery breath, the water exploded into steam. If they had still been above water, they would have been fried then broiled instantly.
