by Greg Curtis
“They won't speak to you,” she told him bluntly and then reminded him of the basics. “We're nothing to them. Just mortals. Ants in their precious Temple.”
“And so are they,” he replied. “Vastly more powerful ants perhaps. But I think in just as much danger as the rest of us. Neck deep in piggy pooh just like us. They can't stop this, despite their power. If they could have, they would have. That's why they did what they did to you. It was cruel but that wasn't its purpose. They wanted to know about the sprites. They wanted to know what had happened. And it wasn't simply out of curiosity. They wanted to stop it. But here we are with an ice mountain in front of us. So it seems that they can't. Now I think they're waiting to die – or worse, expecting to spend eternity alone in an empty Temple.”
“That would be good!” She was ashamed of herself for saying it, but it was the truth. She hated those people with everything she had. Or maybe she was just afraid of them. Frightened out of her wits.
“Not if we're all dead first,” he pointed out.
“True.” He was right she realised, though she didn't want him to be. But in any case what he wanted was something other than her speaking with those monsters. And she could do it. Though it still wasn't going to be easy.
“I'll start work on a new portal for sendings when we get back. It'll be limited. You'll be able to speak but not hear. Just sense a little. It will only reach those who have been called to the Temple. And I don't even know how far it will reach. But I'll do what I can.”
“Thank you.” He took her hand in his and then clapped the other one on top of it unexpectedly. “I'm sorry to place this burden on you, but you're the only one who can do it.”
She reddened a little bit at the familiarity, but despite that she didn't pull her hand back. There was something nice about having contact with another – even if he was human.
“First though,” he continued, “we'll go to town, pick up some supplies, you can get yourself a new dress and whatever else you need, and I'll find out whatever other disasters I need to deal with. I just hope it's not any more of those bloody skunks! Or a damned flying pig!”
Elodie started to laugh at that and then had to hold herself back. It wouldn't have been proper. But that had been funny, watching him wrestle a winged boar all around his property, hanging on to the beast for dear life.
“Ahh, there it is!”
“What?”
“A smile!” He smiled himself. “I told you I'd get one out of you Myless Elodie Mae! You guardians aren't that tough after all!”
Chapter Twenty Two
The new portal was completed, and as Chy stared at it, he kept thinking it was very different to his old one on the patio. It was larger of course. And it had been laid out on a flat section of stone he had raised from the ground in his front yard instead of on his patio. But that was a minor matter. The patterns of the lines that comprised it were what mattered and they were completely unrecognisable to him. That struck him as more serious. He had sat on the snake throne several times. He had learned his portal creation and dimensional casting as well as he could. And he fancied he was as well versed in it as most. But he understood nothing of this portal. Why was it so different? He didn't like that.
Still, it was done. Elodie said it was right. And when he stood on it and cast his magic upon it, it would instead of sending him somewhere else to a connected portal, send his thoughts and words to the minds of all others who had used the Temple's grand portal. Of course he had no idea how many casters that would be.
“You ready for this?” Elodie asked. “It will feel a little strange, and you will have to concentrate.”
“Yeah, concentrate big brother,” Soot added with a cheeky grin. “And wave your wand around a bit. That'll probably help!”
“How many times do I have to tell you Soot, I don't have a wand.” But he wasn't really annoyed by the comment. He knew she was just having a little fun at his expense. And she was also busy interrogating Elodie. The moment she'd seen him with the Guardian walking through town and buying clothes together and found out they were living in the same house, she'd had to investigate. It didn't matter that he'd explained that they were simply friends. She was going to poke and pry and then probably make up stories and embarrass him with his family at every turn. No doubt the entire family would enjoy a good laugh or two at his expense. Or ten!
But he put that aside, took a deep breath and then stepped on to the new portal. Then he let his gift wrap itself all around the enchantment, doing his best not to worry.
It was strange. Very different to his other portal. There all he had to do was activate the portal with a thought, then step on it and a heartbeat later step off another connected portal somewhere else. It was over almost before it began. This wasn't like that. It was like making a connection with not one but thousands of other portals – and all of those other portals were staring back at him. He could feel them as if they were alive. Because they were. Because they weren't portals at all. They were people.
“Greetings,” he began, doing his best to speak clearly. Elodie had said it was important – and that he introduce himself because it was polite. “I'm Chy Waine Martin, a caster like all of you who can hear me. I live in the human realm of Althern, in the realm of Ruttland midway between the towns of Stonely and Charlton. And I am not a guardian. But I have a guardian with me – perhaps the last guardian from the Heartfire Temple – who showed me this portal of sending. And I need to speak with you.”
He took a deep breath, to steady his thoughts, and as he did so he felt the thoughts of the others on him. People were listening. That was a strange feeling. It disconcerted him a bit. And his sister didn't help.
“Masterful!” She told him cheekily. “Standing in the middle of the yard talking to yourself! They're going to lock you up in a loony bin and lose the key!”
Chy did his best to ignore Soot and concentrate on the speech he'd practised. “I need to begin by telling you what has happened since the last time the guardian spoke to you. And what we believe is happening to the worlds. All of them.”
“Stand up straight, shoulders back, chest out,” Soot suggested helpfully. “If you're going to stand there pretending you're talking to an audience you may as well do it properly!”
Chy continued ignoring her, and instead he began going through the entire recent history of what had happened to both him and Elodie – and hopefully connecting with those who were listening. He should. After all most of what had happened to him and Charlton were probably the same things that had happened to everyone else. More importantly though, even if they thought he was five sheets to the wind, he was the first caster they'd heard speaking to them like this in weeks. They were going to listen, even if only to disagree with everything he said. So he gave the speech he had prepared, word for word and concentrated on his clarity and the facts knowing he was heard.
He and Elodie had spent some considerable time getting the speech just right, so that it said exactly what they knew and also told them also what they believed but couldn't be certain of. It had to be accurate. With a portal like this he had been told, it was vital that there be no thought of deception. Because if there was, not only would people hear the deceit in his words, the portal could well fail. Lying was hard, and when you had to concentrate absolutely on holding the attention of those who were listening, it required too much. The portal could only operate with the clarity that came from absolute truth.
It took Chy a good while to go through everything in detail. But then it had taken him a while to prepare the speech and rehearse it over and over again. And naturally he had to listen to Soot giving him endless, useless, advice about his performance. Talking about speaking loudly and clearly and to a point about a foot above his imaginary audience's heads!
Finally he moved on to the matters at hand. The things they had to do.
“So these are the things we need to do,” he eventually told them. “All of us.”
“People he
re in Stonely and Charlton are vanishing while others are arriving and we cannot send them home nor recover those who have been lost. I assume it is the same for you, and that everywhere around you people are worried. Frightened. But if we work together, we may be able to do something about that at least.”
“We need to start building a lattice of portals that runs both within worlds and between them. A spiderweb of them that will allow us to quickly return people to where they came from, no matter which world it might be. A task that will be made more difficult by the fact that the portals themselves are failing – we think because as the worlds shift, they are pushed out of alignment.”
“I have perhaps half a dozen portals connected to my original portal, mostly going to nearby towns. And only one of them heads to another world – the grand portal on the Temple Terrace. And that is no longer in existence as far as any of us can be sure.”
“I'd guess that many, if not most of you who have sat on the snake throne, have a similar lattice of portals. But some of you have surely built more extensive spiderwebs of portals across many worlds. And those of you who are more advanced than me, will be able to connect your portals to those of others, and in this way create a vast collection of them. A true spiderweb that spans every town and city on every world.”
“When we have that, some of our problems will be able to be dealt with. We will be able to find many of those who have been lost from our towns and cities, and send others back to their homes.” Of course there were going to be problems. And the biggest one by far was that while there might be a score or more worlds out there that were inhabited, there were a great many more on which no people lived. Anyone who ended up on one of those was trapped there unless they could build their own portal.
“Our next problem is greater. We need to know what is happening to the shadow worlds. If they are being broken down and reformed into Prima. We need to know if we can stop it, or slow it down, or failing that, survive what is coming. And before we can do any of that we need to know what enchantment, what casting was used by the sprites.”
“As far as we can tell, those who carried out the casting have perished. They are gone along with the grand portal and the terrace. But all we can do is hope that others who know what the enchantment was, still survive. That if there are books from the Temple library, they can be brought here so that others can study them.” And that was why he'd told them where he lived. They needed a place where people could come.
“I know this will be hard. You're angry. I'm angry. And the sprites are likely not going to trust us. They have stolen away the people of Stonely and enslaved them. That breaks me some days. These are my friends. And the crime is gross. As are the crimes they have committed against many of you. But even more than I'm angry, I am afraid. The world is in danger. Perhaps it is even ending.”
“So this is not about blame. It is not about holding the guilty to account. Not now. It is about survival. Before anything else, we must survive what is coming.”
“So if anyone, any sprites I would guess, knows of the casting, if anyone has the books, if anyone has advanced knowledge of this sort of magic – come. You are needed. And you need us. Your own lives depend on it along with everyone else's.”
“You can trust us, if only because none of us can afford to strike against you.”
“And last we need to know about these people who have taken control of the Heartfire Temple. They have power and they have knowledge. Maybe they have enough to save us. So if you believe you know who they are, or you can help, you need to come here.”
“We need to build a place together, where we can be as one. Where all the wisest of us can assemble. And where we can create a hub for all the portals we can connect up.”
“I thank you for your time and I pray that enough of us can come together and fix what has gone wrong.”
With that he let his concentration lapse and then stepped off the portal. He had done what he had intended to. From now on, what followed would be up to the other casters, many of whom he hoped would be far more capable and knowledgeable than him.
“So that was it?” Soot asked him. “Because save for a bit of glowing, it didn't look like a lot! And you're such a poor actor!”
“That was it Aisha.” He smiled at her. Then he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and started heading to the patio and maybe some lunch. “Now we just have to hope that enough casters heard it and can help.”
“You know,” she replied, “some music might have helped. A flute perhaps.”
“I can't talk and play a flute at the same time,” he pointed out.
“Exactly!” She laughed at him.
He shook his head. “You know Soot, you're not that fast that I can't catch you and tan your hide!” Chy retorted. But actually she probably was that fast. She'd had a lot of practice in running away from town guards.
“I though it was strong,” Elodie told him as she worked on preparing the meal, ignoring their half witted banter. “And though it may not have come from the Temple, it was clear and would have been heard from a good distance. Hopefully if not all heard it, those that didn't will be told by others in time.”
“It still should have been you sending the call,” he told her. Though he knew why she hadn't. She worried that she would be heard by those she feared. He understood her fear perfectly.
“And you know who would have been listening to me. I cannot risk that. And you have done as good a job as I ever could.”
“I hope you're right.” Chy let out a heavy breath as he went to help with the meal. And then a second when he saw that they had more company arriving. His family.
“Soot?” He questioned his sister.
“We're artists and it's free food!” she told him with a happy smile. “And besides, Mother has questions!”
“Questions?”
“Someone – and I'm not saying who – might have innocently mentioned that you had a woman staying with you. And you know Peaches. She wants to know about such things!”
Chy groaned. But then he went over to greet them. And why not enjoy a meal together, he thought? The world was ending. They should enjoy themselves. Even if he suspected that Mother's questions wouldn't just be about magic and the end of the world. There was the woman living in his home too.
So they set about preparing and then enjoying a meal together, and despite his fears, it was a remarkably pleasant time. Even Elodie seemed to be happy – but then she was a guardian and an elf, trained not to show unwanted emotion.
Even the damned cat seemed to enjoy it, accepting the affections of of his family in return for food. Except of course, from him. She just hissed and glared at him.
But then a couple of hours later, just as they were stretching out in the chairs, and enjoying the afternoon sun, a guest arrived. An elderly sylph master, floating towards them on a leaf of pure silver.
He was old and wrinkled, even his pointed skull had wrinkles, and he had a long thin beard of grey fluttering down to his belly button. Meanwhile his black eyes conveyed anything but pleasure when they focused on him. But none of that mattered to Chy as he got up and went to greet the man. The only thing that did was that he knew his message had been heard.
Now they could finally start to stand together to face the end of the world.
Chapter Twenty Three
Hellas was empty. Still as empty as it had been the day after the sprites had come and stolen everyone away four long years ago. No one had made a new home there. And as much as he had hoped and prayed for it, not a single resident had come back since the worlds had fallen apart.
The mills were silent. After the attack a few of them had spun. But over time, with no one to tend to them, the mechanisms had stopped working and the wings had stopped turning. The streets were still empty. The gardens still overgrown. And generally things were slowly falling into decay and disrepair. It was a town filled with nothing but ghosts. And most of them had taken up permanent residence in his head.
&
nbsp; Fylarne sat on the edge of the well in the centre of the town and stared at it, a single question on his mind. What had he expected? After all this time spent wandering, travelling from world to world and then town to town, trying to get back here, what had he expected?
His family were still in N'Diel – he assumed. How could they leave? Though perhaps they were no longer slaves. The stories that had been going around about the sprites had suggested that his plan had worked in some measure. Those that had been seen, had been in poor shape. Their wings had begun to fail them. Some had fallen off. What that meant exactly he didn't know. But it had to be that their magic was failing at least in some measure. Maybe if their wings were failing, their control over those they forced to become their slaves, was also failing. He could but hope.
For the moment though, all he could really do was sit on the edge of the well in the centre of the town and stare at his family's home.
“Does anyone else feel a chill?” Trey asked suddenly. “As though a cloud has passed across the sun?”
