by Greg Curtis
“And you're not a dwarf either,” the sylph pointed out as she walked up to the fire and took a seat opposite him. “One would think you would have noticed.”
And she would have noticed, Fylarne thought. The sylph were an observant people. Not to mention logical and arrogant. But he didn't mention that. Mostly because he was too busy watching the others making themselves comfortable around the fire, and dropping a little food of their own onto a flat stone they'd brought with them.
“I noticed,” he replied, trying not to notice how close her eyes were together or how high the crown of her head was. And in the firelight her black eyes seemed even blacker than normal. “I was simply caught by surprise.”
“A sorry thing for one of the priesthood to be,” she commented.
Obviously she'd noticed his robes, Fylarne realised. Though hopefully she didn't know the order. She didn't recognise the two broad green stripes. But then he didn't recognise her, and he thought he would if she'd visited the Temple.
“True,” he agreed easily, deciding not to mention the subject. She would no doubt mention it in time if she knew. “But these days, everything is a sorry thing.”
“You're lost too?” the dryad asked. “A long way from home and loved ones?”
“I am,” he admitted. And it was the truth even if there was so much more.
“As are we all,” the dryad replied. “And many others.” He paused for a moment, as if considering something. “I'm Allide of the greater village of Pushana.” He nodded politely the jagged edges of his his ears falling forwards as he did so.
“And I'm Fylarne of Hellas.” He decided to return the greeting. It seemed the thing to do. And it allowed him to learn the names of the others.
Dah Mi Lon was the sylph, who hailed from the city of Gilt. Fylarne knew little of the sylph's world of Crystal. And even that was a translation of the sylph's name for their world which was Si. The spell of the ancient tongue often confused things, translating names where they didn't need to be. But he knew of Gilt. It was one of the sylph's largest cities, a place of gleaming towers of glass that reached for the very stars. There had been others of her people who had come to the Temple from that city. It had always struck him as an odd thing to live in a tower of glass. For a start there had to be so many stairs to climb. And how could you have any privacy in such a place?
The boy meanwhile was Trey and his baby dragon Spike. He hailed from a town called Longfield in a realm called Carnas, neither of which Fylarne had ever heard of. But he was more curious about something else entirely.
“Your … pet,” he began. “How did you find him?” Because surely, he thought, that meant that the boy had to have been in Prima and met the ogres.
“She found me. I was fishing with my friends when I heard her puffing away in the woods behind us. So I went to her and then just as I reached her I was in a land of great trees. And while she was wrapping herself around my neck, I was suddenly here in this land of rocks and sand.”
“A portal. You must have stepped on to a portal of some sort.” That much was obvious to Fylarne. But one thing wasn't. You had to have some sort of gift to use one, even by accident. He pointed that out to the others.
“I'm no babbling half wit!” the boy retorted, clearly upset by the idea. “There are no wizards!”
“You're talking to one of the Darisen – a copper elf as your people would call mine,” Fylarne pointed out gently. “Sitting by a sylph and a dryad with a baby dragon curled up around your neck. And in a strange world filled with dwarves. Elenar – the Lady of Grace – would suggest it is time to stop being so sure of the world you know.”
“We lock up the witless!”
“Oh!” Fylarne wasn't quite sure what to say to that. But he supposed it made sense. In a world where there was little magic and few with the gift, those who had it or claimed to have it, would be considered crazed. And they might well be locked away and everything about magic shunned. He knew little about the human world of Althern. There weren't many humans who came to the Temple.
“Ignore the boy,” Dah told him. “He is simple.”
“I'm not simple, egghead!” the boy in question snapped back angrily. “There just aren't any wizards!”
For an answer the sylph raised her hand and let some rainbow coloured lights dance above it.
“Human wizards!” the boy clarified, still clearly upset. “We have steam! And we float through the clouds! And you're all sports!”
He was young and foolish and probably frightened though he would never admit it, Fylarne realised. He wanted to go home in all likelihood, and didn't know how to get there. The anger just covered up his fear. Not that knowing that helped him a lot in dealing with the lad.
“Perhaps the name calling should end,” he replied as tactfully as he could. “It helps no one and we would all it seems, be lost.”
“You speak well for one who spends his life on his knees,” Dah agreed a little disrespectfully. “But it would be better if you could show us the way home.”
“I don't know it. I am far from my own home. My own family. And I've been wandering for weeks trying to find them.” Which was the painful truth. All he had left to do was find his loved ones, if they still lived, and spend the last days with them. He could not get back to the Temple. He could not fix whatever the sprites had done. He could not atone for what he had done. All he had left to do was find his family and friends and hope they were still alive. That was the most important lesson he had learned over the previous days and weeks. He had only family and he needed to be with them.
“It would have been too much to hope for, I suppose,” the sylph muttered, disappointment in her words. “And yet I hoped. Even from a priest.”
“We all hope,” Allide added. “It is the condition of the mortal life.”
“That and the insufferable wisdom of the helpless!” she snapped back at him. “We don't need hope. We need a plan! A simple, logical plan!” The sylph turned to Fylarne. “I don't suppose you have the gift of portals?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I studied the gifts of the thoughts.” And he was starting to think that that had been a mistake. Maybe it had helped. But he was sorely lacking in a lot of other magic that would have been useful.
“Splinters! So you have the knowledge to tell us we're lost! And that the worlds are being returned to the primal void!”
Fylarne nodded, but said nothing. He gathered that the sylph had heard Elodie's sending. Which surely meant she had at the least been summoned to the Temple once. She might not have gone – most of her people didn't – but she had been called.
“And I still say that cannot be,” Allide disagreed. “If something cannot come from nothing it cannot be then returned to nothing. I do not care what this Elodie has said to you all. She is wrong. She would know that were she part of a circle instead of standing alone.”
“She is a guardian,” Fylarne replied, trying to defend her. But what that meant any more, he wasn't sure. After all he was a guardian too. Or he had been.
“All your precious gods must have laughed themselves to death the day your people found that ancient Temple. It is as much use as a book to a dog!” Dah stared moodily into the flames.
“I still don't understand how a temple in some other world can cause us to get lost and turn the skies angry.” Trey petted his baby dragon's head. “It all sounds like the babblings of the drunkards!”
“I told you,” Dah began explaining before Fylarne could answer. “It is a font of magic. The one true power. Ignore all this babble of gods and demons. There are no such things. There is magic and life. And these fools,” she cocked a finger at Fylarne, “found it and tried to control a force that binds all the worlds and all life together thinking they had the right. As if they had the right to control the air we breathe!”
“They claimed what was not theirs. The despicable sprites then tried to steal what was not theirs. And somehow in the fight the font was torn wide open. Now the sk
ies turn to storm and the land to chaos because the magic runs wild. No one can get to the Temple. And even if they could, no one could undo what was done. Not the sprites, not the Darisen and perhaps not even my people, though we surely try. We simply have to hope it will grow calm again in time.”
“Elodie sounded certain,” Fylarne pointed out.
“Certainly wrong!” Dah replied. “She is a priestess. She believes in gods and goddesses and mystical things. But even the boy here knows better. Maybe he only believes in the power of technology, but at least it is a logical, rational power. And magic is the same. It has no mystical spirit. It is simply a force to be controlled – like his precious electricity and steam. And now it's out of control.”
“And you would have done better, somehow?” Despite knowing better, Fylarne was annoyed.
“Of course. We would have left the ancient Temple and the font of magic contained in it completely alone. No one should control magic. Just as no one should control electricity or the air we breathe. It is pure arrogance to think otherwise. And now we see the price of that arrogance.”
Maybe she had a point. Fylarne didn't know, although he could have pointed out that the guardians had run the Temple for the benefit of all for centuries. She wouldn't have listened to that though he suspected. And as for the idea that magic was simply a force like electricity with no spirit, that he didn't agree with at all. But what was the point of arguing about it? Silence was better. And the smell of dinner was more important again.
“So what is your plan for returning to your homes?” He turned to what mattered to all of them. “Because I don't have one save to keep wandering.”
“The same,” Allide replied. “Though I feel great sadness within you. Grief.”
“Hellas was attacked by the sprites, years ago,” he admitted. What was the point in hiding that truth? “Now the worlds are falling into ruin, perhaps ending. I would like to find my family before that happens.”
“They are a repugnant people,” Dah commented. “But if the stories are true, they too are suffering.”
“They are? How?” Fylarne was curious. And he wanted the winged vermin to suffer.
“They too are being scattered around the worlds. Picked up and sent hither and thither. Often to lands where they are unwelcome. And there are none where they are welcome. The dwarves mentioned that they had some locked away. We did not see them though.”
It was wrong. Fylarne knew that. But still he felt a smile trying to tug at his face when he heard that. Trying hard. The sprites were in gaol! He liked that. And he should have thought that it might happen. Maybe they would even be hung.
That hadn't been his plan. His hope had been to leave them helpless before their victims. And for their slaves to rise up and kill them. That had gone wrong somehow. The sprites had somehow turned everything upside down. But if the miss-cast magic had scattered the people of the worlds around as he had heard, then it would seem likely that the sprites too would be scattered. And he had heard that too. What he hadn't considered was that they could be scattered among the lands of their enemies. And the Nabris ne Yall had a great many more enemies among the shadow worlds than they did friends. In fact they didn't have any friends. He hadn't considered that before. Not until just then.
Maybe, as badly wrong as his plan had gone, it had still worked in some measure. After all if people were being scattered, that surely included the slaves and their masters. And if the masters were gone, perhaps now being killed by the people of the other worlds, who was left controlling the slaves?
His family could be free! And even now they could be trying to get home. Back to Hellas. He might yet have a chance of seeing them again. Before the end. Unless of course, the sylph was right and this wasn't the end.
“You are pleased by this?” Allide asked. The dryad had noticed his smile – or felt his joy. “That seems heartless for one who listens to the whispers of the gods.”
“If the so called rulers of the sky are being scattered, then surely so too are those they took as slaves. There is hope once more.” And if the rulers of the sky got butchered by the dwarves and their other enemies instead of their slaves rebelling, he could be happy with that too. But he carefully kept that thought to himself. It wasn't very spiritual. Not the sort of thought a priest should take pleasure in.
“Maybe. If the yellow sky is as our friend here believes, simply a temporary thing. And not the portent of the end.”
“We can but pray.” Fylarne shrugged and ignored the look of displeasure that fell over the sylph's face. He doubted the sylph was right. He believed Elodie. She was a smart woman and unlike him, she had been there when the Temple had fallen. She should know the truth. But there was no point in arguing about things none of them knew anything about.
“And we should eat. Build our strength for the morrow as we continue our journeys,” the dryad observed. “After all, sitting in one place only slows our search. And I would like to return to my circle. A man is little alone.”
He was right of course. And Fylarne had had enough of being alone. But he wasn't sure he liked these people as companions. Then again, he didn't seem to have a lot of options and they shared similar goals. Perhaps it would work out.
Chapter Twenty
Life was growing harder. Busier. Chy was spending all his time fixing problems – mostly creature problems. They kept slipping through the gaps between worlds and causing trouble. And every so often he would have a rider arrive at his door, yelling something crazy at him, and he had to go. Worse, it was only growing worse as more and more people heard about the wizard living nearby who dealt with these things. His fame was growing. So was his workload.
Sometimes what he found was deadly, and the three headed fire breathing hound that had turned up had absolutely been that. He'd been singed a couple of times sending it away. But sometimes it was more embarrassing like the pack of fast running skunks that had arrived and started stinking Charlton out. The smell had been unbearable!
Of course there were loads of other matters to deal with – like all the new arrivals. It turned out that the dwarves were less trouble than he'd expected. And for all that they clearly believed themselves superior to humans in every way, the elves were also reasonable neighbours. Mostly they kept to themselves and bothered no one. The hill giants though had sent everyone running in terror despite being peaceful, and everywhere they went they accidentally broke things. And of course they couldn't get through any of the doorways in town. They were nice people, but Charlton simply hadn't been built for ten foot tall giants. Luckily they had found accommodations in a stables that was to their suiting.
Even the arrivals however, were less of a problem for him than the disappearances. And there were a lot of missing people. Unfortunately he could do nothing about them. Once they were gone, sent away to another world, he couldn't bring them back. He couldn't build a portal to another world he'd never been too, especially when he didn't know which world the townsfolk had been sent to.
Naturally that led to his other problem which was the distrust of the people of Charlton. For some reason they kept imagining he was lying to them when he said he couldn't retrieve their loved ones. He saw them too often when he went to town, whispering behind his back. And every time he did he could feel a noose tightening around his neck.
Why would he lie? If he could have found them and brought them back, he would have. Surely that was obvious? It was simply impossible.
Then of course there was Elodie, who'd turned up on his lawn without warning and without much in the way of an explanation and then promptly spent days unconscious, scaring him witless. She should be in the Heartfire Temple. In fact he'd been sure she'd been trapped there. But that had apparently changed. Now she was locked out. Sent away by perfect people as she called them – which made no sense. And spending her days simply staring at walls, sometimes sleeping, suffering nightmares when she did, and scarcely eating or drinking.
Something had happened to her
. Something bad. He knew that from the sounds she made from her bed-chamber as she tried to sleep. But she wasn't going to tell him about it. In fact she flat out refused. And when he pressed too hard she snapped at him like an injured badger. And sometimes he found her weeping. He couldn't help her. All he could do was hope that she recovered. And wonder what in all the underworlds was happening to the Temple in her absence.
But now, as if that wasn't enough, he had a new problem. And this problem snorted angrily and flapped its wings at him.
Chy stared at the creature, and wondered if his mind had finally slipped a cog or ten. He was staring at an actual flying pig. Except that this pig was a wild boar of some sort – a bristle-back he guessed – and had great leathery bat like wings which she could flap angrily at him. She wasn't a friendly piggy! And worse than that, she absolutely refused to bow to his commands. In fact she was resistant to magic. All magic. He could bend the thoughts of an angry lion to his will. Make it hunger for grass. But this accursed beast just glared at him. Which left him with only one option.
