Nightblade

by Jason Howard

  Chapter Eight

  Bilcher (slang)

  –noun

  1. someone so disgusting or repulsive that their mere presence makes others want to vomit. The verb form, bilch, is similar to “hate” but is a much more serious insult.

  Zac leaned back and drank in the shade. His first break in the shade in a long time—and there were no slavemasters around to tell him he’d better get back to work. Those bilchers were all dead, so he could relax in the sun with a smile on his face. No whip would uncoil from a belt and suddenly find his back, sending rivulets of blood down to dry at his waistband.

  I can just enjoy the shade!

  And so he did, for a whole hour, he just sat there, in the stillness, drinking the last of his water and the first of his freedom.

  ***

  Hours later the beginnings of dusk fell around Zac. He’d been lost in the rhythm of walking, enjoying the tranquility of the forest and the simple exercise. Now he would have to quickly find a good place to camp, somewhere that he could conceal a cooking fire. He kicked himself. He should have been looking for a spot so he’d have time to hunt, but he’d lost track of time.

  Now the air was as cool as the purplish glow along the horizon. The branches swayed with a breeze. Zac shivered like the rustling trees all around him.

  He found a hillock with a yawning cave entrance. His gut told him to get far away from the cave, but it was perfect shelter and a perfect place to hide. He walked through the hillock’s jaws and let the cave’s darkness engulf him.

  He waited as his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, but he still couldn’t see how deep the cave was. He walked further into the cave, curious to see how far it descended. His footsteps, no matter how careful, seemed to be unforgivably loud in the silence. Despite how creepy the cave was, Zac’s exhaustion was muddling his thoughts.

  “Anyone there?” he yelled.

  His words echoed.

  He waited, but there was no answer, no movement, nothing at all.

  The cave was an ideal place to sleep. It seemed empty enough. Any wild creature would have responded to the noise he’d made. He trailed a hand along a wall, then sunk down. He was asleep almost immediately. His dreams were rich and vivid, dreams of his lost brothers, of his escape from the burning cell. Some of the memories that replayed weren’t from that night though. They were of good moments spent with Gemin, telling jokes with Arrice, and roughhousing around the bedless sleeping quarters that the slaves retired to after a day’s hard work.

  He woke suddenly, like someone had dumped a pitcher of water on him.

  He sat bolt upright, eyes scanning the darkness. Then he heard words that seemed to echo in his mind. Like thoughts, but they weren’t his. Zac stood, confused, but the voice came through again, louder this time.

  ‘What are you?’

  “I’m leaving, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” Zac said as he strode for the mouth of the cave.

  ‘Is the sun out?’

  The randomness of the question held Zac in place for a moment. He was curious.

  “No, I think it’s still nighttime,” Zac said.

  ‘I don’t understand your noises. Let me hear your thoughts.’

  “I . . . I’m not a mage,” Zac said.

  ‘I still don’t know what you’re saying, but I know you hear me. Just let me in, relax your mind.’

  The voice was smooth and calm, yet childlike. It was a male voice, but not deep or overpowering. It was not a menacing voice, but it didn’t sound weak.

  Zac formed a sentence in his mind as he thought of the voice, and felt the sentence being pulled from him, ‘It’s night outside . . . ’

  ‘Are the moons out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. We need to get outside. I was searching for a way out of the tunnels when I heard your voice, far, far away. That must have been hours ago.’

  Zac concentrated hard on one simple sentence. ‘Why do we need to get outside?’

  ‘My clan is coming for me, but they won’t come outside, the moonlight is too bright for them. My eyes are different, that’s why they hate me.’

  Zac turned and strode for the mouth of the cave. He broke into a sprint when he could see where he was going.

  ‘Wait!’

  Zac ignored this, his curiosity finally overwhelmed by prudent fear.

  ‘I’ve never been outside before. Don’t leave me, please! Please!’

  The last word was so desperate that Zac almost stopped. But he kept running, and behind him he could hear the slapping and surprisingly clumsy footsteps of the creature. He emerged into the forest, moonlight guiding him now.

  ‘If they find me they’ll torture me, they’ll make me a slave, they—’

  ‘A slave?’

  ‘Yes. Please help me.’

  Part of Zac told him to ignore the plea . . . but he couldn’t. He knew what it was like to be a slave, knew the slow, daily horror of it, the smothering hopelessness.

  ‘Follow my voice,’ Zac thought.

  And with that he yelled back at the mouth of the cave.

  The creature staggered out into the moonlight, blinking like it was bright sunlight.

  Zac recoiled in surprise. The voice that had echoed through his mind couldn’t belong to the awkward looking creature that was struggling to keep up with him. Zac took a few steps back. The creature didn’t look intimidating; it actually looked rather weak.

  ‘Don’t come any closer,’ Zac thought.

  The creature stopped.

  It was around four feet tall, and gunk clung to the thing.

  ‘I was just born. This goo is from my mother’s womb.’

  ‘But you can talk.’

  ‘Of course I can talk . . .’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Zac asked.

  The ugly reptile’s eyes were its only beautiful feature—they were indigo gems that glittered above a long snaggletoothed snout. The head looked familiar, but it was too grotesque for Zac to figure out what it reminded him of. It stood on two powerful hind legs and had two small-clawed appendages sticking from its chest. There were also wings on the creature’s back, but they looked useless and pathetic.

  ‘My name is Althos. And you?’

  ‘I’m Zac. Who were you talking about? Who would make you a slave?’

  ‘The other sheelaks . . . that’s what we call ourselves.’

  ‘Why would they enslave you?’

  ‘These eyes. The others have thin red or orange slits for eyes. They say I have day eyes. They locked me in a room by myself and they were deciding what to do with me, but my mother helped me escape. She said to run away and never come back.’

  Trusting Althos was a risk, but Gemin had told Zac that to never show trust meant two things: first, that one would never be betrayed. And second, that one would never know love or friendship.

  When Althos finished his story, he asked, ‘Can you bring me with you? I don’t want to be alone out here.’

  Zac took a deep breath and made his decision.

  ‘You can come with me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Zac motioned for Althos to walk ahead of him. He listened to the sound of Althos’s clawed feet scraping on the ground. He kept a close eye on him, keeping some distance between him and the sheelak. It walked on two feet like a human, but it had a bounding stride, and because it was so short and small, it seemed to bounce along. It was comical how it walked, and its eyes darted everywhere, staring at the world like a child would, everything new and unknown to it. Zac felt his fears about the creature evaporating as it asked him questions about the wildlife they passed. As he talked to Althos, he realized for the first time how glad he was to have someone with him. He was no longer alone.

  ***

  Zac and Althos made camp under the ledge of a rocky outcropping. They could see out over the moonlit forest. When Zac squinted through the reaching gnarls of the tree branches, he could see a ravine with a stream trickling along its floor.

&nb
sp; Zac looked over at Althos and realized why the creature looked familiar. Memories of his favorite picture book flooded back to him. He had read before he had been sold into slavery as a boy. The picture book had been about a brave knight saving a town from a dragon.

  ‘That’s what it is. You look like a—’

  Fear appeared on Althos’s face. The little creature’s eyes widened and it stood up and crept a step away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Althos didn’t respond.

  ‘I was just gonna say that you look like this creature from one of the stories my dad used to read me. A dragon—you ever heard of that?’

  Althos didn’t respond for a few moments, and Zac could read the tension in his expression and posture. ‘My mother said I . . . had eyes like a dragon’s.’

  Althos looked up at him, unsure if he should proceed. Finally, seeing Zac’s calm expression, Althos asked, ‘What is a dragon?’

  ‘They don’t . . . well I don’t think they exist anymore, or know if they ever did, but legend tells that there were once dragons, and they were huge, magnificent beasts that could breathe fire. They had hides of thick scales and could fly with powerful wings. Some of them were evil, some were friendly, and some were loners that hid in the far corners of Ascadell, keeping to themselves.

  ‘In the myth, there’s a king named Bareloth who made himself immortal, and also assembled an army of dragons to bolster his soldiers and overpower the nations of Ascadell. Bareloth reigned over Ascadell until a dragon named Cerule betrayed him by taking a rider named Kell. Kell and Cerule led an uprising against Bareloth, and together, they managed to trap Bareloth in a soul prison after stripping him from his mortal body.

  ‘According to the legend, Bareloth has been imprisoned for over four thousand years. Also, they say that Bareloth’s last act against the dragon Cerule was to curse him with a disease that spread to all dragons. The curse made their offspring hideous, meek, and deformed. Their eyes were also weak and couldn’t take sunlight, so they were forced to move underground, where they lived in the dank and cold, amongst the worms.’

  Zac stared down at Althos then, waiting for him to make the connection.

  ‘So . . . sheelaks . . . we were once dragons?’

  Zac nodded, but then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ll tell you what—don’t believe everything you hear in a story. Especially an ancient legend.’

  ‘Why would someone make that up?’

  ‘It’s not necessarily all made up . . . but it’s like a fisherman’s story.’

  Althos gave him a blank look.

  Zac explained, ‘When a fisherman exaggerates, you know, my fish was this long, and then the next time he tells the story it’s longer . . . ’ Zac smiled when he saw that Althos still didn’t understand him.

  Although Althos seemed born with an impressive mastery of words, he was a child when it came to experiences and comparisons.

  Zac continued, ‘Well, even if the basics of the story haven’t been exaggerated over thousands of years, it could have been made up, just for fun. That’s how a lot of these legends get started, because someone was sitting around a fire bored and—bam—they made up a story.’

  Althos nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. ‘But if it’s true then the dragons . . . most of them were murderers.”

  ‘It’s never that simple,’ Zac said. ‘It’s not like humans are so great. I doubt that humans would have stepped in to save dragons from other dragons in the middle of a war. Never would have happened.’

  Althos looked away.

  ‘Hey—you aren’t evil, okay? You are what you choose to be. Don’t listen to some stupid story that tells you how you are.’

  Althos nodded.

  ‘The only thing that we can guarantee is true about the story is that it gave dragons a bad name. Everyone knows that story, so if they recognize what you are . . . well, some people might not be too friendly. You need to lay low when I go into town to get supplies and stuff.’

  Althos perked up. ‘So I can still go with you?’

  Zac cocked an eyebrow. ‘Yeah . . . why not?’

  ‘Well . . . I thought that after you recognized me . . . as a dragon . . . ’

  ‘I don’t really care that you’re a dragon, or a half-sheelak dragon thing, or whatever you are—you seem alright to me.’

  Althos seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but in the end he couldn’t think of it.

  Zac thought, ‘Hey, all of a sudden—’ he yawned deeply, ‘I’m feeling pretty tired. You ready to hit it?’

  ‘Hit what?’

  ‘The . . . nevermind, are you ready for some sleep?’

  Althos shrugged. ‘I’ll stay up a little while longer. But I’ll be quiet.’

  Zac smiled.

  He and Althos watched the stars in silence. Zac reached a tentative hand out and stroked Althos’s scaly head. The creature made a raspy noise that Zac took to be satisfaction. Zac scratched behind his ears and stroked the sheelak slowly, feeling how some of his scales were rough, like the loose ones of his neck, and some were smooth, almost glossy like those on his back.

  Althos rasped steadily, closed his eyes, and leaned against Zac. They watched the sky for a while longer.

  Althos puzzled over two huge objects in the middle of the sky. He searched for the word, rifling through his impressive genetic vocabulary. Moons. They were called moons. What about the little crescent shaped sliver of green, was that also a moon?

  He wasn’t sure, but he knew the red and bluish-white ones were definitely moons. But what were they really? He had the words for everything, but he didn’t have all the meanings. He’d have to ask Zac about that. The moons didn’t look like the rest of the stars. They didn’t twinkle and shimmer, they just floated there, huge and forlorn, singularities amongst a web of tiny pinpricks. They seemed frozen into the black night sky.

  Chapter Nine

  The primary abilities of each channel of magic are:

  Power: elemental magic (fireballs, wind spells, water manipulation, weather manipulation), telekinesis, gravity spells, and shielding spells.

  Flesh: healing, increasing strength, sleep spells, attraction spells, alchemical enchantment, acuity and vision spells.

  Mind: psychic communication, detecting magical emanations, creating illusions, invisibility, mind reading, honorbinding, and light amplification spells.

  Time: slowing and speeding time.

  –This is an excerpt from Historeum Arcania, a textbook used at Ascadell’s Arcane Academy.

  When Zac walked into the view of Lockridge’s gates, his scalp tingled—he could feel the stares of the guards. He had, of course, left Althos in the woods. Althos was still close enough that he could pick up the slight whisper of his psychic voice saying, ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Will do,’ he sent.

  Zac gave a warm smile to the guards and bowed low.

  “State your business,” one of them said.

  “I am a . . . traveling bard . . . but I’m down on my luck, lost my possessions in a card game,” Zac improvised.

  “Okay, let me see your eyes,” the guard said with a casual wave.

  “Uh . . . what?”

  The guards tensed up. “No offense—but we have to look for the purple glaze, just to be careful you know. We can’t have anybody else bringing Soulbane into Lockridge. We’ve already had three deaths this week.”

  “Oh, of course,” Zac said, playing along. He made a mental note to ask the next person he could about Soulbane.

  He walked up to the guards. One leaned forward and put a finger on one of his eyelids, peeling it back.

  “Look up, then down so I can see the white,” he said.

  He did.

  “Good. Now the other one . . . good. Alright, you can pass.”

  “Thanks,” Zac said with a nod.

  “Think nothing of it, enjoy Lockridge,” the guard said with a smile—and the smile faded as Zac started to walk past.

  The guard gr
abbed Zac’s shoulder and spun him around, staring down at his brand.

  Zac’s eyes narrowed as he saw the guard’s look of disgust.

  “Don’t stay too long, zell.”

  Zac opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it.

  “Good choice, you little rat,” the guard said. “Now get out of my sight.”

  Zac kept his teeth clenched to hold back the curses that threatened to spill out. The gate opened. He looked straight ahead and walked.

  Zac stepped into the town of Lockridge. He had never been to such a clean, orderly settlement. Besides Detren he had lived in the City of Emerald Shore while working as a house slave, but that had been a dirty, bustling, chaotic place.

  The people bustling through the center square of the town were mostly well dressed and busy. It took Zac a few tries to find someone that didn’t mutter some curse at him, or stare at him with fear and disdain when they saw his brand. He finally caught a timid little man wearing a tweed cloak and sporting a peculiar mustache that was dyed green.

  “Sir, are you busy?” Zac asked.

  “No not at all, today is my Sabbath day and it’s lovely weather for one I’d say, oh, that rhymed! Don’t you love when you make a rhyme by mistake, it’s like finding coin in the pocket of an old coat!” He talked so fast it was almost dizzying. Zac had never heard anyone talk so fast.

  Zac smiled. “I, uh, never thought about it like that, but I guess it is a great feeling. I was talking to someone earlier and they mentioned Soulbane. Can you tell me about it?”

  The man replied, “You haven’t heard of Soulbane? Ahh, but you’re just a zell, I guess you don’t read the news.”

  Zac nodded. This man was being nicer than the rest, so he tried to hide his offense at the use of the word zell.

  The man continued, “Well, it’s quite widespread, Father and Mother God help us. The guards were looking to see if you had a purple film on the whites of your eyes. It’s a telltale sign of Soulbane.”