by Greg Curtis
“Balls!” He stared in disbelief at the fallen fighters as the others stared at him wondering what had happened. “Fylarne was right!”
“What did you do?” A dwarf asked him in a gruff voice.
“It was Fylarne's idea. They carry the enchantment inside them. A piece of it. A grain of sand. Just summon the stone from them, destroy it, and they're free.” Of course even as he said it he had to wonder if they were truly free. Or if they would end up like the shades, empty. But at least they weren't dead. He could see them breathing as they lay on the ground.
He repeated what Fylarne had said to the others and watched as they left, heading off to the other parts of the town where the battle was still raging, and then watched as one by one things became quiet there.
And that quietness spread. It expanded outwards, rippling outwards like a wave, and what it left behind was only peace.
In a mere matter of minutes the battle had ended. The town was quiet. And he was staring at a victory. It didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a disaster. There were bodies everywhere, ruined buildings and fires burning out of control. But no one was fighting any more. And stranger still where there were bodies with gossamer wings, he could see the wings starting to sag.
Chy stood there, staring at the fallen, wondering what happened next with them. And whenever anyone approached him he told them exactly the same thing he had told the others. What Fylarne had told him. He kept doing that until finally he grew too tired. After that he just told them to go and find Fylarne and get him to explain assuming the man was still breathing. He needed to get some rest.
With that he left them, heading for the portals and his bed.
And with every step he took he was overcome with horror and sorrow. How could he not be when he could see nothing but carnage all around him. And yet for the first time he had a new emotion flowing through him – hope. They had a cure, however little it actually helped, for the shades. And now they had a way of freeing the slaves. It was unbelievable, but two of their enemies had just become beatable. Now they just had to deal with the world falling apart.
Chapter Forty Three
By the ladies! What a mess! Elodie almost couldn't believe that this was Stonely she was walking through. The town didn't look much like it had. It didn't really look like a town at all. Just a burnt out collection of piles of rubble with craters for streets.
At least they'd taken away the bodies. Hundreds had died in the battle. These transformed slaves were deadly, powerful casters. Or they had been. Now half of them were dead and the other half were wingless wrecks shambling around the remains of the town like everyone else. Most of them were wounded and all of them had vestiges of the gossamer wings hanging on to their shoulder blades. They would fall off in time so the healers claimed. But at least they were free. Free and helping the others as they tried to regain their old lives.
Meanwhile the rest of the world was still in chaos. The portal walls were still coming down at a steady rate. Dangerous creatures from various realms were running wild. And the hugely obese ogres could leap impossibly high. Every time she saw that happen she found herself wondering. How could that be?
But it was a mystery for another day. Everything was for another day. Even Chy who was moping around his home looking a little like a man run over by a stampede. She'd never seen anyone with so many bruises, cuts and tears in him. Not to mention the broken nose and the two black eyes. And that wound in his side looked nasty. It had been bandaged and he claimed it would heal, but it was still bleeding three days later. Turning his bandages red. Maybe she should send the healers to see him again.
Not that he'd be pleased to see them. Even as he was he wanted to go out and start battling more creatures. Chy swore he was fit enough. She shook her head at the thought. The man was tough. Too damned tough for his own good. Then again the healers had a lot of other patients to tend to and Chy was at least walking. Many others weren't.
A thump just beside her stole her thoughts away from Chy and the rest, and she turned to see a giant green woman just straightening up beside her. A woman with a massive belly of fat jiggling up and down and a huge smile on her face – not to mention a baby dragon coiled around her shoulders. Nga Roth had arrived. Or landed!
“Sweetie!” the ogre greeted her with a cheery grin, “what brings you to this broken down ruin?”
“The leaders,” she answered her. “You're looking happy?”
“Of course. Haven't you heard? There's a new man in Stonely. And they say he's absolutely beautiful!”
“Beautiful?” She asked before she thought about it, and then she wished she hadn't. But it was too late.
“Con Dar! Eyes like an eel's and a girth so round that they can't make a belt to fit.” The ogre beamed at her. “I can't wait to meet him. Start beating him into shape. I mean I'm not as young as I used to be. Only got another fifty or so years before it'll be too late to start a family. A woman's got to make plans!”
“Uh huh,” Elodie commented as politely as she could. Every day it seemed she learned something new about the ogres and it shocked her anew.
“But you must know about that. How is your man? Full of vigour after the battle?”
“Still a bit run down. He's not as tough as he pretends. He needs more rest.”
“Then why are you here?” The ogre stared at her in confusion. “He's weak and vulnerable. It's the perfect time to strike. Beat him senseless, bind him, then jump his bones! Make some babies!”
“Ahhh …” Elodie struggled to find the words to reply with, but they just weren't there.
“Oh.” The ogre's smile vanished to be replaced by a look of sorrow. “I keep forgetting. You little ones are so passionless. There's no life in you. It's all those rules you keep talking about. And not enough blood flowing to the head. You need to eat something! Put on some weight!”
“I don't want to put on weight!” Elodie replied, a little horrified by the idea.
“Of course,” the ogre continued, ignoring Elodie's outburst, “maybe I should visit him. I mean he's so small and thin. Probably break in two. But he is so cute and he does stare at me so. And if you don't want him?” She turned to Elodie a question in her eyes. “You wouldn't mind would you?”
“I'd mind!” Elodie retorted hurriedly. How in all the hells could she suggest such a thing?!
“But you don't do anything about it?! You don't even dress for him! And I could teach him so much about love! A night or two with me and he'd never forget it!”
“We do plenty!” Elodie tried not to turn red as she said it, but failed. This wasn't something a woman talked about. Certainly not in public!
“Oh!” Nga Roth looked a little crest fallen. “If you're sure.”
“I'm sure!”
“You could at least wear something fetching for him,” Nga Roth continued. “Something like this. The men all stare at me you know. It's almost indecent the way their little eyes fall on me!”
In horror and shock was Elodie's thought as she watched the ogre give her latest dress a twirl. It was a nightmare of a garment in eye watering crimson, and there were far too many slits in it, showing off her giant green legs and their quivering masses of flab. And yet, she realised, the woman had a point. She hadn't thought about it before. And she'd worn her Temple garb for so long that it had almost become a second skin for her. It was expected. Proper even. But a new dress might well be in order.
“If only they weren't so small! And puny! And pale!” Nga Roth added sadly. “I mean it's so sad.”
“You could always go home?” And she thought the ogres had found their way back to Prima these days. Or Staal as they called it. Which, it suddenly occurred to her, didn't explain why there were so many of the green skinned people about. Did they like it here? She'd never thought to ask.
“Oh I've been back to tend to my gardens. Where do you think I get my teas from? But each time I go back to Imbris the city seems so … simple. All the fun's here. And these stran
ge mechanical contrivances! You know they've got these floating gas bags? You go up in them and it's like jumping – but you don't come down!”
“I know. I've been meaning to try one.”
“You should. Everything's so little from up in them! But don't jump up and down in them. The drivers get upset! They say the most terrible things!”
Four hundred or more pounds of giant ogre jumping up and down in a woven basket hundreds or even thousands of feet above the ground? Elodie could imagine that they became more than a little upset! She'd grow upset herself!
“So where are the leaders keeping these days?” Elodie changed the subject before she said something hurtful. And besides they'd reached the heart of the town and it was clear that the old town hall was no longer their base of operations. Not when half of it was missing.
By the Ladies, what a battle it must have been. Something had literally sliced right through the town hall like a knife through water, and then because it had been cut at an angle, the top half of the building had apparently slid right off the bottom and then somehow buried itself in the ground. What sort of magic could do that, she wondered? And how was it that only hundreds had died in the battle? She was sure it should have been more.
“Over there in the library.” Nga Roth pointed at a smaller building with a steeply angled roof. “But I wouldn't go there. They're always complaining.”
“Complaining?”
“About things being knocked over. Shelves and books. But it's not my fault. It's so small!”
“I don't think it was designed with your people in mind,” Elodie told her tactfully. “Or the giants for that matter.” And of course it hadn't been. Nothing in Althern had been. But instead of mentioning that she gave her thanks to the ogre and headed off in the direction of the library and the leaders. Nga Roth continued on her way, no doubt to hunt down this new man in town.
A lot of them she discovered as she drew closer, were working outside. They'd set up tables and chairs and blackboards in the street in front of the library and were busy recreating what had once been inside the old town hall. Others were erecting tents, presumably for when it rained. Magic would have been better, she thought. But they probably needed all the casters they could get for the fight now that so many were dead or injured.
Yet for all the strangeness in front of her, the thing that struck her most were the former slaves. Fully a score or more of them – she could spot them by the stumps of their wings sticking out of their clothes – were rushing around carrying supplies and messages. Helping with the struggle.
Why hadn't they gone home? Most of them had little or no magic to their name. For a time while the enchantment had been working through them, they'd had some. But now presumably with their wings gone and having been released from the enchantment, they were as they had been before they'd been captured. There surely wasn't much they could do here
But maybe having been freed, they felt an obligation to help?
Elodie didn't ask. Instead she simply wove her way between the crowds of people at their stations and headed indoors. It was there that she knew the leaders would be.
Inside she found that the library was similar to many others she'd been too. Mostly because it was a space filled with shelves and books. She was familiar with that. And with the fact that there was a reading area at the front of the building with comfortable chairs, and some desks for people, probably children, to study at. That was all as it should be. But what wasn't right was the straightness of the building. One long rectangular box with perfectly straight walls extending all the way back. Where were the gentle flowing curves to put a person at ease? Where was the wood? And why was there this harsh white light all around instead of the warm glow of lanterns? It seemed wrong to her. A library was a place where people should be able to browse books and read in comfort. This place wasn't comfortable at all. But maybe it was for humans.
At least she spotted the leaders quickly enough. They were seated around a bunch of small tables, surrounded by floor to ceiling shelves loaded down with books that had been pushed out of the way to clear an area, right at the back of the building. It was what passed for a meeting chamber in the wake of the battle she guessed. Though they could have used another building.
A lot of them were injured. They too had been in the battle. And she guessed that like everyone else, some of their number were missing. It was simply the nature of things. But the one who wasn't there that she noticed most, was Fylarne. He was recovering in an infirmary somewhere. That made things a little easier for her.
“Guardian,” a giant greeted her. The one from the meeting before the last dreadful plan had been put into action. He looked horribly crunched up as he sat in what was for him a tiny chair behind a small table with his knees almost up to his face. He looked like a parent sitting in a child's tea house. “Thank you for coming.”
“You said you had a new plan?” And that was why she had come. It was also why she was nervous. The last one hadn't exactly worked exactly as it should have. What had gone wrong wasn't completely clear. Fylarne claimed that it was because the new enchantment had simply awoken the old one. When the slaves had been dragged away from N'Diel through a portal, they hadn't been missed, any more than you would notice a few people vanishing from a city. That was why the former slaves just wandered around aimlessly trying to get back. But when the new enchantment had been laid upon them, the old one had somehow noticed that and reacted as if an enemy was at its gates. It had activated every bit of itself near where it recognised the threat.
All of which presupposed that an enchantment was alive. That it could think and act like a person. Even when it was chopped up into thousands or millions of little pieces. She wasn't sure she could accept that – even though it was the only theory they had, and it was more or less what the thrones did.
Living enchantments. Truly the ancients had been advanced in their magic – even if they hadn't been actual spellcasters.
“A plan no. A need. A single spell that every caster needs to have.”
“The one to remove the enchanted grain from the flesh of a person.” It wasn't hard for her to guess what he was talking about. But what he expected her to do wasn't quite so clear.
“Yes.” He nodded and the floor creaked a little underneath him.
“And what can I do about that?”
“You speak with the thrones, including the golem throne. We need for him to impart this spell to everyone who sits on one of his thrones.”
“Oh!” Elodie hadn't expected that. And she wasn't sure if it could be done. Or even if it should be. She had to think about it.
The first thing every guardian was taught was that they did not interfere. They did not direct worshippers to the Temple to sit on any particular throne. They didn't even encourage or discourage them from coming. Everything that happened in the Temple was at the behest of the worshipper. They chose where they sat. And whatever they learned from the Heartfire, was some sort of merging of minds between the throne and the worshipper. No one had ever tried to direct someone to learn a particular cast as far as she knew.
This felt like a violation of her duty as a guardian. A betrayal of her station. And she wasn't even sure it was possible. But on the other hand, these were dark and difficult times. Could she refuse to try?
“I'm not sure if I can do that,” she began. “I'm not sure if I even should. It goes against my oath. But even if I could do as you ask and chose to, I'm not sure it would work. I doubt that the thrones, even now that they've taken some sort of mortal form, can direct the worshipper in what he or she learns. They are, as best I can tell, a conduit. Their understanding of the Heartfire, merges with the thoughts and soul of the worshipper. I'm not sure either has a lot of choice in what happens and what is learned. It's mostly instinct and passion.”
“I will discuss it with them.” She took a deep breath. “But I think you are the ones who can do more. You can spread the word of the importance of this cast, the summ
oning of stone from flesh. You can ask that worshippers whose time to sit with the Heartfire is near, to choose the golem throne. And you can make it known to all of them that this is an important cast to learn.”
Was that enough, Elodie wondered as she stared at the assemblage of leaders? She couldn't be sure. But as she stared at their faces and saw the heavy lines of worry etched into them, it occurred to her that there was more. Something she'd missed. They weren't planning an attack on the world of N'Diel. That would be madness even if everyone knew that particular cast. So obviously they were worried that instead it would be the sprites and the other former slaves who would be doing the attacking.
They should be worried. Everywhere she'd been these past few days she'd heard the same thing. They had the answer. It was time to strike at the heart of N'Diel. It was time to get their loved ones home. Before that hadn't been possible. There had been no way to free the slaves. But now? It was the only thing anyone could seem to think of.
