Nightblade

by Jason Howard

  Artem’s eyes widened. “That’s quite a spell . . .”

  Zac recognized Ultimber’s sarcasm. “He probably just took a boat.”

  Artem nodded at the obvious answer, looking a little sheepish.

  “Now you’re using your brain a little—a good sign,” Ultimber said from his mount.

  “Your next test will stress your quick wits and reflexes,” Ultimber continued. “Ivor, King Lanthos’s head advisor, will be giving you a clue—just once. Listen closely.”

  Ivor cleared his throat, “Your first clue: its back is to the sky and its face is filled with darkness. It stares at the light of the sun and stars, but only sometimes will its open mouth to taste the light and heat. Beyond that it is always cool, dark, and empty.”

  Ultimber tossed a parcel onto the sand in front of them.

  Zac picked it up. It was a map.

  Zac and Artem exchanged glances.

  “What does that clue have to do with this map?” Zac asked.

  Ultimber and Ivor ignored him.

  “Oh, now you can’t hear me,” Zac said with a smile. “Come on, just tell us. We beat everybody else here by a long shot, at least give us an extra hint.”

  Statues would have been impressed by how unmoved Ultimber and Ivor were.

  “I’m too tired for thinking right now,” Zac mumbled to himself.

  “Well then I guess you wouldn’t be a good soldier,” Ultimber said.

  “Stop with the selective hearing,” Zac said.

  Ultimber didn’t return his smile.

  Zac studied the map once more, and then said, “I think I got it.”

  He started inland and Artem followed close behind.

  “If you’re wrong, then you’re eliminated from First Blood,” Ultimber said.

  “Also,” Ivor said, “if you ever need to give up, or are too afraid to continue, just call out the word, sanctuary, and I’ll remove you from the course. You will be eliminated if that happens.”

  They headed out over the sands of the beach. As they labored over the loose sand, Zac could feel the heat digging into him. The dancing shimmers above the sand seemed to tease him. His feet were burning. Finally, they came over a huge dune and down onto grass and dirt. A meadow stretched to a small mountain ridge. Humid breezes had mossed the ridge over in places, and Zac squinted at the glistening of those rocks in the sun.

  “Why did you stop?” Artem asked.

  “I’m thinking about the clue.” Zac glanced down at the map. “There’s nothing over here where it’s telling us to go. This meadow takes up most of the map. What if . . . I’ve got it, the clue means underground. We have to go underground. A cave.”

  Zac looked at the map and said, “The cave entrance is probably close.”

  Zac’s world swayed. He knew this feeling well from his years as a slave. Heat was a special type of enemy. A relentless one, but a deceptive one as well. Heat was like a great weight, but not one that just rested on your shoulders, one that soaked into your skin and made it heavy.

  We just have to make it to the shade.

  Zac kept this thought in his mind as they jogged around the mountain ridge. When they finally found the mouth of the cave, he ran into its cool shade and lay down.

  “What are you doing?” Artem panted. He wiped sweat from his brow.

  “Wait just a minute.”

  “We need to keep moving,” Artem said.

  “If we take a little break here, and let ourselves cool down, we’ll get through this faster.”

  He took a deep breath of the cool air and let it out slowly.

  After a few minutes they went further into the cave, leaving the sun behind.

  “We need a torch or something,” Zac said.

  Artem muttered something and his hand glowed bright green, swathing everything in the juicy color.

  They came around a bend in the tunnel and to a glowing orb. The orb floated above a small pedestal, unseen currents of magic holding it up. It swayed and bobbed gently, its weight moving against the levitation spell. Behind the orb was a cavern. Zac thought he saw something move—he couldn’t be sure. His eyes were molding the darkness into squirming shapes that he knew weren’t there—but still, for a moment he had been sure . . .

  “Should we touch the orb . . . or should we ignore it?” Artem said.

  “Touch it,” Zac said. “It must be important.”

  They stepped forward and—gently—put their hands on the orb.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Atch (slang)

  –verb

  1. to commit murder for fun

  2. (noun) a morally deficient, reprehensible person: these atchers think I’m a bad person for cheating on my husband, but they don’t know what it’s like to live with that chulgar. He’s always talking about how much he loves his parents and wants to be a good father to our children, it’s nauseating!

  Two images flashed through their minds after they touched the orb: the sun setting over a beautiful waterfall—and darkness. The final image was one of the sun rising over a cracked and barren wasteland.

  Ivor’s voice emanated from the orb and said, “Light shows you the way, but it also reveals you and can blind you. Nothing can be seen without light. Light is the source of life and death, the embodiment of energy. Darkness is often feared, but why? Evil needs the energy of light as much as goodness does. Darkness is just a different type of purity. Remember this or you will fail in the coming test. You will proceed into utter darkness for the coming test. You may make your own light, with the torches or magic. Even with that light, you will find a different kind of darkness ahead.”

  Hundreds of torches suddenly came to life. The torches dangled over a platform high above Zac and Artem, hanging from the cavern roof by chains. Chains hung down from the platform. It was clear that the only way to get to the torches was to climb the chains.

  Zac started for one of the chains but Artem stopped him.

  “I can make light for us, we do not need a torch.”

  “Good, that’ll save us some time,” Zac said.

  “What do you think the clue meant?” Artem asked.

  “I’m not sure . . . maybe when we go inside we’ll understand it better.”

  “Let’s go,” Artem said.

  Ahead they rounded a bend and were greeted by darkness. Artem’s green light didn’t extend far.

  There was a slithering noise.

  They tensed up.

  There was a flash of blue light above them.

  “What the hell—”

  Zac was cut off by a cackle of laughter.

  “Thank you,” a reedy feminine voice said from the darkness. “Ooooohhhh, thank you.”

  “Back to back,” Artem said.

  From the edge of the green light streaked a hunk of something. It thunked into Zac’s chest—wetly. It smelled horrible.

  “What the hell is that?” Zac said, trying to keep his voice even.

  “It’s . . . a thigh,” Artem said as he stooped, waving his glowing hand over it.

  “Meat from one of the others before you,” the voice said. “And they were afraid of the dark too.”

  “I’m not afraid of the dark, I’m afraid of creepy ghost women that throw bloody thighs at me,” Zac yelled. “How about you just let us pass—we’ll do something for you. We saw the thing about the sun coming up and the waterfall.”

  She laughed—Zac laughed with her, like it was some inside joke they were sharing.

  “What are you doing?” Artem whispered.

  “I’m stalling,” Zac said as they walked briskly forward, deeper into the gloom of the cavern. Zac glanced up and saw Artem’s green light clawing at the top of the cavern, which seemed far, far away.

  “Do you think we should have grabbed a torch? What if that was part of the riddle?”

  “I don’t think so, it said light, not fire or firelight.”

  “Yeah but—”

  Zac genuflected as a partially decomposed arm smacked th
e back of his leg. Zac hopped up, trying to brush the gore off his leg.

  The next one schlumped into Artem’s chest. His light flickered for a moment and Zac said, “No!”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t let the light go out!” the voice mocked them.

  Schlump—a wad of bloody muscle slapped Artem’s face dead on. He groaned, wiping the rotted meat juice from his face. He felt it in his eyes and mouth. The acrid taste made him want to puke.

  Schlump, schlump, schlump—this was followed by a loud cackle that echoed throughout the cavern.

  Blood and guts dripped onto them. Zac looked up just in time to see a beheaded torso coming down on them—he pushed Artem out of the way and dove—but he was too late. The torso pancaked him to the ground.

  A head flew into view, its eyes were wide and they reflected the green light of Artem’s spell—Artem yelled out as the head hit him in the stomach, knocking his wind out.

  Zac pushed the torso off of himself. And then he saw, as he sat on the ground, the arm that had smacked him in the back of the leg. The arm was crawling. It crawled to the torso and Zac said, “Look!”

  The arm attached itself to the torso. The torso shuddered gently.

  “I think we should start running,” Artem said.

  They ran, the bobbing light from Artem’s hand their only guide. Zac ducked a whizzing arm—a spray of blood cooled his brow.

  They both tripped over a corpse wearing armor. Zac helped Artem up, his glowing hand muffled for just a moment. They were running again, this time trying to look at the ground and dodge the corpse parts at the same time. They hopped over small piles of bodies, swords, and armor. So many dead things blurred past them.

  And they ran with the chortling voice of the old woman in their ears, so confident of their demise.

  There was a passage ahead though, out of the cavern into another part of the cave, but they couldn’t make it there because a line of corpses had risen in front of them. Eight or so. And behind them Zac could hear the lumbering and squishing of more reanimating body parts and her continued cackling.

  “We’ll fight our way through!” Artem yelled, charging at them. Zac followed, and they hit the corpses at a full sprint, fighting and dodging. The creatures were strong. Whenever they hacked a body part off of one the body part would crawl back to its owner and reattach itself. The acrid blood sprays overwhelmed Zac’s sense of smell. When the blood touched him, it burned against his skin. They were bleeding acid. A flying head smacked Artem in the temple, and he fell to the ground, semi-conscious.

  “No, wake up!” Zac said.

  Artem’s light spell died and blackness swallowed them.

  The smell of death was overwhelming.

  At any moment he expected the undead ghouls to jump on him, ripping with their nails and teeth.

  But nothing happened. Zac sat up, listening. Waiting.

  “Artem?” Zac whispered.

  Artem groaned, then stirred.

  “Don’t move,” Zac said. “And don’t channel your light spell.”

  “Where did they go?” Artem finally whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we move?”

  “I . . . I guess.”

  They started to move toward where they’d seen the exit of the cavern.

  They found the wall and felt along it like blind men—Zac kept a hand on Artem’s shoulder. As they went through the passageway, Zac thought he might have heard a voice whisper, “Don’t leave me here.”

  He shivered as Artem led the way deeper into the passageway.

  “So I guess that’s what the clue meant,” Zac said. “Light reveals us. It’s the source of life and death, evil and goodness. So when you stopped using that light spell, we passed the test.”

  “By trusting the darkness,” Artem agreed.

  There was a gentle glow on the floor as they rounded a bend. The blue glow came from an orb, which floated in the center of the passage.

  When Artem touched it a door opened. A huge chasm greeted them. A winding rope bridge was illuminated by torches that dangled from the cavern roof by long chains. The bridge was wide enough for five men to stand side-by-side, and it was broken by brief islands of rock. And there were fearsome obstacles. Warhammers pendulummed, swinging from huge poles attached to the cavern roof, flames gushed from the ground on the rock islands, and gaps they would have to jump revealed the dark oblivion below. Even more ominously, the obstacle course, lit only by dim torchlight, stretched beyond their vision. Into the unknown.

  The orb said, in Ivor’s voice, “This is the final part of the test. You have seven minutes to complete it.”

  Zac and Artem’s eyes widened as they exchanged a glance.

  Artem and Zac sprinted. They leapt over a gap in the path. Darkness engulfed them. The bridge swayed dangerously, but they knew they didn’t have time to slow down—they just shifted with the bridge as they ran, absorbing its wild bucks like they were on the deck of a three-master in a terrible maritime storm. Zac wondered how far they would fall if they tripped up. He had to drive that thought from his mind.

  They timed their sprints so they could get past the arcing warhammers.

  Up ahead was an oasis of torchlight.

  They sprinted through the light and back into the semi-darkness, dodging more swinging warhammers.

  Finally they were off the treacherous bridge. They came to a rock island bathed in torchlight (and it seemed to be emanating some sort of orange glow, directly from the rock—Zac didn’t have time to wonder about this) and slowed as they approached a series of gargoyles that stared across the path. The gargoyles belched fire at intervals.

  “Okay. I think I’ve got it. You ready?” Artem asked.

  “Yeah.”

  And they ran, speeding up here, slowing down there, leaping just out of reach of the flames. Their faces burned from the closeness of the blasts. Their hearts raced as adrenaline imbued their blood.

  They didn’t stop to catch their breath after the gargoyles. They sprinted, timing their acceleration and deceleration to avoid running off shifting segments of the path. They continued to dodge swinging stone warhammers and axes that threatened to maul them into the darkness.

  They raced through, bathed in a strange orange light that seemed to glow from the path itself, and climbed up a pair of ropes dangling from a higher platform. A final stretch of path lay ahead. Beyond it they could see a large opening and unmistakable sunlight shining through. But between the sunlight and them was a towering statue of a knight leaning on his sword, the point of the blade digging into the ground.

  “I’ll bet he—”

  “Yeah,” Artem said.

  “Only one way to find out. Be careful brother.”

  Artem turned to Zac and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  As they approached, the statue came to life. It was silhouetted by the sunlight behind it, which made the fact that it was twelve feet tall even more fearsome. It moved quickly, swinging at Zac—but with the flat of its blade. Still a solid strike to Zac’s head would easily kill him—anywhere else and Zac would be too injured to go on. Zac rolled out of the way and stabbed uselessly up into its thigh—a bit of the stone chipped off, but the knight snorted, then swung again.

  Zac and Artem rolled, dove, and ran to evade the attacks. A minute or so of this dance and Zac finally rolled between the knight’s legs and sprinted for the exit. At first it seemed that the knight was going to chase Zac, but then it abandoned that and turned to Artem, who had been trying to get past. Zac stood, halfway out into the fresh air and sunlight.

  Zac was just steps away from being safe. In a space of seconds, many thoughts flitted through his head:

  Artem can handle himself . . .

  That’s not right, turn around, help him!

  If I don’t make it I’ll always be a slave in the eyes of the law. I need to be in First Blood, I need to get my freedom.

  You deserve to be a slave if you leave hi
m back there after how he stood up to Ryder and his thugs for you.

  But still, fear rooted Zac. He stood, drowning in turmoil.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Why should I care then, if I’m doomed to hell anyway? Atch Ascadell, atch the clergy, atch Ascadellians, and atch you, especially you, you whip-wielding chulgar.”

  –a quote said by a Raezellian slave named Zo. Under torture he would not take his words back. Zo’s story spread through the enslaved peoples of Ascadell, and the name zo is traded amongst them as the highest of compliments, meaning that someone has pride and loyalty to their friends, and that they consider them to be a trusted brother.

  Zac turned and sprinted back into the cave. Artem was tired and bleeding, but he fought on valiantly, blocking and dodging the powerful strikes of the statue knight, which was laughing as it worked. It was a deep, powerful laugh that made Zac’s hair stand on end.

  Zac crept closer and closer, making sure that his feet were silent, his steps sure. When he was close enough, he fell into a sprint, and smashed his sword into the back of the knight’s leg. The knight was distracted for just a moment, but it was enough.

  Artem darted past. The two of them sprinted into the blinding sunlight. They emerged onto a grassy meadow. Zac walked over to a tree and sat against it, the cool dirt gripping the underside of his legs.

  Artem put a hand on Zac’s shoulder, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Thank you, I owe you an incredible debt.”

  “No,” Zac said. “We’re even.”

  Artem plopped down next to Zac and said, “Well, that was easy.”

  Zac laughed at this, but the laughter hurt his straining lungs, and stinging sweat burned in his eyes. Somehow all the physical pain was meaningless—he felt great actually. They had overcome the test and come back from sure defeat.

  “As you would say, I barely broke a sweat.”

  Artem and Zac laughed together. They quieted when they heard footsteps. They both looked up.

  It was Ivor. He said, “You two are the first to qualify—you should be extremely proud!”

  “Did you design that deathtrap?” Zac asked.