by Greg Curtis
Fylarne didn't understand what was happening. But he knew it was profound. The shade seemed to be helpless. Standing there, fighting himself as he struggled to find the next insult. Beginning to sweat and turn red.
“Are you alright?” he asked, concerned for him despite everything. “Are you in pain?”
The shade didn't answer him. He just stood there, clearly struggling with some internal conflict. But at least he was breathing.
What had he done to the man, Fylarne wondered as he stared at him? What could he possibly have said that could have caused such a reaction? All he'd said was that he hoped they got his name right. A flippant remark of no importance. Except that it clearly was to the man.
The moment suddenly passed, and whatever had been blocked or trapped within the shade suddenly came free and he abruptly burst back into life, taunting, insulting and threatening Fylarne at the top of his lungs once again. But even as he did so, Fylarne could see something more than just fury on the shade's face. He could see relief. Whatever had just happened, he realised, had been profound.
All over a name? How could his name be so important to the shade?
But even as he asked himself that, another thought occurred to him. He didn't know the shade's name. No one did. The man had never given it. None of the shades had revealed their names. Of course they hadn't revealed anything else either. They said nothing about themselves.
Names were power! It was something the speakers of stories often claimed. And maybe they were power in those tales. But they were also power in enchantments. The shade didn't know his name so many of his enchantments wouldn't have worked on him. They wouldn't have had a target to aim at. And of course an enchanter would never reveal his name either. He would not grant another power over himself.
But was it more than that? Fylarne found himself thinking it might be. He had seen the shade's face. Locked up completely as if something impossibly basic had just been broken. Like one of the steam machines when its wheels had fallen off. All because of a name. And that wasn't about power. It was about survival.
Then it hit him. The fundamental nature of what had happened. People had names. Machines didn't. And he had been captured by a machine. Been made a part of it. And as part of that, he had lost his name. A necessary part.
“What's your name?” He asked the shade even as he was busy threatening him some more. And no sooner had he asked, than he watched the man lock up again. Start struggling to find the words he wanted to say.
“No matter.” Fylarne didn't need him to tell him his name. That magic he had. And with a thought he had the man's name being written on the prison wall in front of him like the titles of a book.
“Your name is Dirth Morra,” he told the shade. You were born in the town of Tarn Gar Fordam. In the winter under a half ended moon.”
“No!” The man shrieked, for some reason terrified by his own name and trying to deny it.
But it didn't matter. Fylarne could see the conflict within the shade. And he knew instinctively that it was good. He couldn't change the man back into what he had been supposed to be. No one could. But the shade could do it himself if he heard the truth. If he felt it. Accepted it. So he repeated himself and listened as the shade screamed like a frightened child as the monsters of the night crept to his bed. And then when that wasn't enough, he repeated it a few more times. And at some point things changed.
The shade suddenly stopped denying what he was being told. Instead he just screamed wordlessly, clutched his hands over his head and began crying even as his knees gave out under him. Soon he was on the cold stone floor on his knees, making inhuman noises and not really listening to Fylarne. He wasn't hearing anything except the words Fylarne had spoken. And they were in his head.
Fylarne stopped repeating the words on the wall then. He had done enough. Whatever he had done, it was happening. So he turned his gaze from the wall and back to the shade, only to see him unexpectedly collapse the rest of the way to the ground in a heap. But even as he did Fylarne could see the change in him. In his aura. It was as though he had been one colour, grey, and now there was another flowing through him. That had to be a good thing, he thought. He hoped. But he also feared he had done something terrible and permanent to the shade.
“Ladies be praised!” This he hadn't expected. And for a moment he feared that he'd killed the man. But thankfully as he studied the prone form he could see the shade's chest moving and he knew he was breathing. He was just unconscious.
But how could a name do that to someone? Just a name? And what exactly had it done? Obviously it was something profound.
Fylarne didn't know what had happened. But as he called for the guards and the leaders of the town, he knew that he needed to find out. This could be important. It could be the answer to at least some of what had gone wrong. Though as he stared at the prone body of the shade, he realised it could also be a disaster. But either way, someone had to know.
Chapter Thirty Eight
N'Diel. Chy had never been to the world. Never known what it would be like. Only imagined it from what he'd been told. But this surely wasn't it, he kept thinking as he looked around. This could not be the perfect paradise every sprite he had ever met had described.
Where were the crystal fountains filled with sparkling water spraying up into the air? The woodlands filled with mystic creatures and magical trees? The glades of unparalleled beauty? Why wasn't the air filled with the scent of wild flowers and honey? And as for the blue skies, fluffy white clouds and birds singing in the trees, the sky was grey, it was bitterly cold, and the trees were two or three times as tall as they should be. There were no birds in them at all let alone ones that were singing. This just wasn't what he'd expected. Not even when he'd been told what he would find.
But somehow he imagined that that was what the poor wretches saw as the laboured mightily to dig out the Heartfire infused lava. They really believed that they were living in paradise. And yet many of them were injured. Hurt to various degrees by the hard physical labour they'd been carrying out. And whether it was a scuffed knee, bruised fingers or something more serious, how did they explain away the suffering? Or did they not feel pain here?
Just what sort of magic or mechanical contraption could so bind a man's thoughts that he could truly believe he was living in paradise even while he was suffering through hell? Make him work when he was exhausted? Make him want to bring others that same joy?
But he put those questions aside for the time being as he concentrated on the task at hand – abduction.
It was ironic really, he thought. For years, decades, even centuries the sprites had been arriving in other worlds and stealing away their people. Now they had come to do the same to them. All because their chief prisoner had found a way to free the people from whatever magic they were under. Or at least it worked on the shades.
It wasn't perfect. He doubted there could be such a thing. But after they'd been told their names, had that knowledge almost rammed forcefully into their brains, the shades collapsed for three days give or take. And then when they woke up they were different. They were confused. Couldn't seem to make sense of much of the world. Often they simply sat and stared blankly around them as they tried to make sense of things. But they weren't shades for want of a better description. They didn't look down on anyone with a gift. They didn't taunt them or hate them or try to beat them into the ground. The imperatives that had been laid upon them had gone away. It was just that nothing had replaced those things.
So mostly they just sat and stared and seemed to wonder what was happening – in the world around them or in their heads. And eventually they seemed to heal a little.
It would take time before they were as they should be, whatever that was. But the leaders of Stonely and others from further afield believed that in time they would become new people. Not the ogres they had been born as. And not the shades they had been shaped into. But someone new with their own goals. Their own wants and needs and desires
. It would just take time.
Now of course, the question had to be asked – would the same thing be true of the sprites and their prisoners?
Naturally when he had learned of the plan to find out, Chy had volunteered to help. Somewhere on this world were the people of Stonely. His friends. His former lover Sana and her soon to be husband. And while he didn't know if this would work, he had to find out. They had to be freed. The others agreed.
“So we stick to the plan,” Nga Roth announced as they stared at the pitiful wretches digging out the rock. “We start with the mist and hope they don't notice.” And that was the key to all of their plans – that these people wouldn't notice anything.
It seemed like a gamble to Chy. A wager with the Great Beast itself. But it had to be done. They had to get these people out of here, and the mist should let them do that. And they seemed placid. Unaware of anything around them. And anything they did see, they simply assumed was part of their paradise. But would that be true when they were attacked? He didn't know.
Nor did he understand why Nga Roth was in charge of this operation. Granted he liked the ogre – though not her tea – but it seemed odd somehow that she should be in charge.
“Dah?” Nga Roth nodded to the sylph – one of Fylarne's former companions so Chy had learned – and the woman bowed her head and began concentrating.
Soon there was a fog gathering around her. A fine mist that began rolling away from her, gradually heading for the workers. And Chy and the others watched it flow, all wondering the same things. Would it work and would anyone notice?
No one noticed. The workers just kept slaving away at their tasks, digging out the lava and loading it onto the wagons, all with happy smiles on their faces as if this was pure joy to them. And in time the mist reached them and began flowing around their feet. But even then, none of them seemed to realise that anything was happening. A few of them waved their arms around as if fanning the mist away, but that was as much as they did. They wouldn't let a little mist stop them working.
In time the mist spread right around the little mining camp and it rose a little higher. High enough that the workers were breathing it in. But still they didn't seem to notice anything. More of them started waving, but that was it.
And then the first of them collapsed. The dwarf didn't really collapse so much as simply seem to sink to the ground bit by bit. First to his knees, than to his hands as well. And after that he sort of settled peacefully the rest of the way, while all around him others were doing much the same. But no one cried out. No one seemed to notice that the others had gone down. And those that still had the strength to keep working, simply worked around them, until they too were slowly overcome.
Ten minutes later the camp was asleep. Two, maybe three hundred workers were on the ground, sleeping. And there hadn't been so much as a hint of alarm among any of them.
This was going impossibly well, Chy thought. And as he looked around his companions he could see the same thought on their minds. Maybe, he almost dared to hope, the rest would go as easily. Still he was nervous. Even when he heard the sound of the steam wagons in the distance.
Soon the two of them were chugging their way into the village, and immediately he and the others went to load the unconscious workers on to them. It was a quick task when they were using magic to hoist them onto the vehicles, but not necessarily an easy one. Not when they could see the condition of the workers up close.
They were in bad shape no matter how wonderful they felt. Worse than he'd realised. There were more than just a few injuries among them. All of them were thin – far too thin. They clearly had been starving for a long time. They were covered in sores and boils and open cuts. No one had obviously tended to them as they worked. But then they probably didn't know they were suffering under the power of whatever enchantment held them. Many were losing their hair and their teeth. Legs were bowed and skins were greasy and pallid despite the fact that they spent all their time outdoors. All of that he knew was due to a poor diet. They needed fresh fruit and vegetables to go with whatever gruel they were being fed.
Still he refrained from saying anything as he worked, helping to load up the first two wagons and in time send the first sixty or seventy souls away to the portal. From there he kew, they would go to the prison in Stonely, where Fylarne and several others would begin with their enchantments. Learning their names, making them repeat them, and then hoping that eventually they too, just like the shades, would be freed by that knowledge. It still seemed too much to hope for to him. But they were here. They had finally found a portal that lead to N'Diel. Or Fylarne and his group had. And that was a miracle. So maybe he should have a little faith.
Things went well at first despite his doubts. They sent the first two wagons away and watched them return fifteen minutes later for the next batch. That was seventy or so people sent hopefully to freedom. And nobody had woken up. Nobody had tried to stop them. Nobody had even raised the alarm. When the next batch of prisoners began their journey to Stonely, he almost began to feel a little of that hope that people talked about burning in his chest. He should have known better.
The buzzing was the first thing that caught him unawares. It sounded like a plague of flies circling a dead cow. And at first he ignored it. He simply waved his hands around even though he couldn't see them, and carried on loading the wagons. A few flies weren't a problem.
“Look!” Someone shouted.
The alarm in the man's voice made Chy look up at him and then at where he was pointing. But when he did he almost wished he hadn't. They weren't flies buzzing around a corpse somewhere. It was a cloud of flies, heading for them! And while he didn't know what that meant exactly, he was sure it was bad.
“Get everyone loaded and run!” He called out even as he began calling his first defence. And of course with wings or anything that flew, there was only one. He called the wind and sent it flowing towards them. He didn't know what these flies were, but he didn't want to find out.
Soon he was joined by another of the band, and the slaves were being loaded onto the steam wagons as quickly as possible. And they weren't all being seated. The rest were gathering them up and simply tossing them on it like firewood being stacked for the winter. It probably wasn't good, but he didn't care about that. He only cared that the giant cloud of flies was being held back by the wind. And that the engines of the wagons were growing louder.
“What are they?” Someone called out.
“I don't know,” he answered her. “But they scare me.” And then he put a little more effort into his breeze. It was holding the flies back but it wasn't stopping them let alone scattering them as he would have wanted. And they kept pushing back against it. There was no doubt that they wanted to come to them. And he doubted it was to be friendly.
Thankfully the loading was quick and the drivers blasted their steam whistles as soon as they could. That was their signal to get on board – if there was any room. Or failing that to start walking away. Chy started backing up towards the wagon, not daring to take his eyes off the buzzing cloud. And as he did that someone else decided to do something else about the flies. Something more permanent.
The first he knew of it was when he saw the fire ball expanding in the air on the other side of the mine. A huge ball of flame simply growing and spreading out in all directions. And it worked. He saw untold thousands or millions of little black creatures suddenly turn into flame and tumble to the ground. But he also saw something more. A shape. A giant winged creature that looked like a bat made out of scorched feathers. Or a great dirigible with wings. And in that moment he understood.
It was a harpy! A monster of the skies. Death from above. Chy yelled the warning out to the others, but didn't dare turn around. He'd heard stories of them. Great vultures of the sky that could remain completely unseen, the only warning that one of them was around, the flies that travelled with them. But he'd never seen one. And he'd never heard of one of them as large as this. The damned thing had
to have a wing span of more than a hundred yards. It was vast – which left him wondering how it could possibly even remain in the air. It was almost floating there like a dirigible. Though he'd never imagined a floating gas bag that large could actually fly. And they certainly couldn't flap their wings, however slowly. But everything in this land he supposed, was larger than it should be.
And what did that mean for its power? Harpies spread disease and poison. It flowed from them like rain. Invisible rain that settled on whatever was underneath them. And everything that was underneath them sickened, choked and died. It was a horrible death. Then so he understood the creature would simply settle on what remained and suck up what was left. He shuddered at the thought. The only good thing about it was that the creature didn't seem to be a strong flier. The wind was holding it back just as it had held the flies. But not for long he suspected.
He backed all the way to the steam wagons and kept his concentration on the barely visible beast. Then he clambered on to the tail of the wagon as best he could – someone had to hoist him the last of the way – and continued with his cast.
