by Scott King
"You are sure they are dead?"
"That's what Owen told me."
"Maybe he's lying."
"Not Owen. He either tells you the truth or doesn't tell you anything at all. He said one day when I'm older he'll explain to me how my parents died, but until then..." Carter sat up and drew his knees to his chest. "It doesn't bother me too much because I think of Owen as my father. He's raised me since I was a baby, and I know he loves me."
"He won't tell you the truth?" She raised her voice making a dramatic gasping sound. "Maybe it's because you are secretly the son of a great wizard, Owen's mortal enemy, and you are destined to grow up and kill him!"
Carter glared at her. "You are making fun of me aren't you."
She grinned back at him. "Pretty good impression, huh?"
"Please, my theories make way more sense than that, and I don't sound as goofy."
"You keep thinking that."
"Like half the books I read are real!"
"Real fiction."
"No, I mean histories of the lost races and the time before."
"Why waste your time?" Alex said. "It's gone. It's now that matters. I guess I could understand the histories of the kingdoms. I hate having to read about my great-great-great-grandfather and how he fought a war over whatever, but it's practical. What you are talking about isn't useful."
"Sure it is."
"Like what?"
"The Coming of Erediä," Carter said. "It's one of the oldest tales I've read and it’s important."
"Never heard of it." She of course knew of the Erediä, but she didn't know that books or tales from that time existed anymore.
"Back then, humans lived in a world where they were the masters. The bravest of these was a man named Ailwin. He was fearless and traveled the lands searching for adventure. It was in one of the darkest lands that he found the Erediä."
"This Ailwin is like a role model for you, isn't he?"
"You are ruining the story!" Carter cleared his throat and continued. "The Erediä came on the clouds, like angels, and all noted their beauty. Their skin was colorful, like flowers, free of blemishes and wrinkles. They showed no signs of aging. Both the men and women wore their hair long, and they moved with a grace that no human could match.
"The Erediä said they came from a beautiful world, more beautiful than anything the humans had seen, and since the ugliest of them was a wonder to look upon, the humans believed them and asked if they could see the place the Erediä call home. Not everyone wanted to leave, for humans were masters of their world, and so the majority of those who left were downtrodden and looking for a better life.
"Ailwin didn't hesitate and was the first to enter the clouds. Thus, he was the first to be put into chains, for the Erediä were not there to help humans but to help themselves. They brought hundreds of humans to Elderealm and used them as pets and servants. Seeing them as no different than we see livestock."
"Everyone knows that humans were slaves before the Scourge," Alex said. "But the rest of that sounds made up. Clouds. Other worlds. It's fairy tales."
"No, it's not," Carter said. "It's useful."
"It's not useful." Alex rubbed her temple. Trying to convince Carter of anything was like trying to get a banker from Kelsam to admit that money didn't matter.
"It's got a lesson."
"Which is?"
"Gifts from the clouds are often false." Carter crossed his arms and smirked.
"There are a dozen kids tales that do the same thing."
"I think it's useful." He leaned forward "How about–"
"How about we get some sleep?" She faked a yawn, but it transformed into a real one. "Tomorrow you can think of a better story and fail again to convince me why it matters."
The scraping sound of loose gravel snapped Alex out of her sleep. Across the fire, she saw ten small creatures carrying Doug out of the cave. He was limp, and even with ten of them, they struggled to lift him.
She suspected the creatures were Grekers, though she had never seen any in person. They had chubby cheeks, exposing a pale green skin and full heads of hair that wrapped down around their necks like a mane. The most striking thing about them was their oversized eyes, which made them resemble children. Their cherubic faces combined with their delicately woven clothes made them look cute.
Since they seemed to have no interest in her, she kept still, and once they had managed to lug Doug out of the cave, she shook Carter awake. "Grekers took Doug, and since Gideon didn’t stop them, I think they have Gideon too."
Carter walked two fingers along the back of his arm and then flopped them upside down.
Alex raised an eyebrow.
He repeated the motion, but flopped his hand harder.
"What?" she whispered.
He grunted and brought his mouth to her ear. "We should follow them but be quiet. Grekers have hypersensitive hearing."
Curling her lip, she repeated the hand motion he had made. "How is this a signal for 'let's follow but be quiet'?"
He ignored her and walked out of the cave on his tiptoes. His boots crunched with every step, so much so that she knew anything with heightened hearing would not be able to miss it. She waited, keeping her distance, and followed in complete silence.
Alex couldn't see any stars between the leaves and branches, and she had trouble tracking the Grekers. Carter must have had the same idea because, a moment later, she saw a glowing agyl being traced in the air. "Put that out," she said.
"I need it. I can't see a thing out here. I'm likely to fall and break my neck."
"The Grekers will see it."
"I don't know," he said. "I think they may be gone."
"They can't have slipped away so swiftly."
Carter drew a second agyl in the air. This one was much larger, and its light pierced the darkness, illuminating the forest in all directions. "See. Not a trace of them. You sure you weren't dreaming?"
"I wasn't dreaming. If I was, how do you explain Doug and Gideon going missing?"
"Good point." He spun, looked around the forest, and then turned back to her. "Your guess is as good as mine."
The Grekers could have used some sort of magic, but she hadn't seen any sign of that. They hadn't cast a spell or used an agyl to move Doug. They had picked him up. The dragon's weight, evenly dispersed across that many feet would still be boulders. If Alex and Carter backtracked to the cave's entrance, she might be able to track them.
"There." Carter tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the trunk of an ash tree. "I think that's a pile of clothing?"
She recognized the vest. "It's Gideon's."
"Why would he take off his clothes?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe the Grekers removed his clothes. Was Doug naked when they took him?"
"Eww, no." The image of Doug's hairy, pudgy body burned into her mind.
"Then Gideon must have done it himself."
The vest had a new hole in it and was damp with a green liquid. She pulled the garment close, sniffing it. It was sour but had a mintiness to it.
"What is it?" Carter reached out to touch the goo.
"Idiot." She jerked the vest away. "It's parpah root. Assassins use it. A few drops can knock a person out in seconds. A bit more kills a person, causing the heart to slow and throat to swell."
"I know what parpah root is," Carter said. "A solution made with water and parpah root can dull the pain from wounds."
Alex folded the vest, being careful to keep the parpah root away from her skin. "Let's go."
"Go where?"
"Back to the cave,” she said. “We should douse last night's fire and get our gear. We won’t be coming back.”
Alex had expected Carter to give her a hard time about being able to track the Grekers, but he didn't react other than nodding and listening. They made the short trek to the cave, packed, and headed out again. On the way out, Carter drew an agyl on a smooth pebble. It radiated with a dull light, and he offered it to her.
"I don't want that," she said.
"I thought you could use it to find the tracks easier."
"We want to do this as stealthy as possible."
Carter flicked a finger. The agyl unraveled, and he threw the pebble into the underbrush.
"Now my eyes aren't adjusted to the dark." Alex threw her hands up in frustration.
"I only wanted to help," Carter said.
"I don't need help. I got this."
"I'm not going to stand here and do nothing."
"This isn't some 'adventure' as you like to call it. This is real. Those things took someone I care about, and for all I know, he's already dead. Gideon is like an uncle to me, and I don't want you doing anything stupid to mess this up. I'd leave you here if I could, but there is no telling how far I will have to track them, or what what trouble you might get into on your own."
Carter mumbled something under his breath.
"What was that?" she asked.
"I said, 'You aren't half as smart as you think you are.'"
Enough. She turned her back to him, not caring if he followed and headed deeper into the forest. The cluster of imprints in the dirt and broken shrubbery made it beyond simple to follow the Grekers.
Carter did follow, not saying a word, and Alex felt an awkward tension. She was part mad and part annoyed, but at the same time, all she wanted was to focus on solving the problem at hand. Things had been simpler when traveling with Gideon.
By the time the sun rose, they had reached the flat plains that Gara was known for. She had traveled along the main roads only in Gara, and it was interesting to see the rolling hills as they transitioned into level land used for farming and livestock. It also made following the Grekers effortless. The band had left flattened paths through the tall grass.
Because following them was so easy, Alex feared that she and Carter were stumbling into a trap, but that didn't make sense. If the Grekers had wanted them, why hadn't they taken them at the cave? For that matter, why had they taken Doug and Gideon? They weren't known for being aggressive, only for avoiding interactions with humans. The whole situation was strange and got stranger when they stumbled upon the Greker's camp.
From a low knoll, dense with shrubs, Alex and Carter assessed the site. There were twenty-two Grekers in total, and their camp was nestled in a willow grove along the shore of a creek. There was no watch, which made sense because their hearing was so acute they would wake before anyone could enter the camp. In the middle of the sleeping rolls and snoring Grekers, she saw Doug and Gideon tied to ornate wooden thrones. Neither moved or fidgeted, so Alex had to assume that they were still under the influence of the parpah root.
"What should we do?" Carter said.
"You do your magic thing and put them to sleep or blast them across the stream so that we can run down there." She didn't want to rely on Carter's magic and risk him exerting himself, but she saw no other choice. There were too many Grekers for her to fight.
"I don't know a spell like that."
"What do you know?"
"I know the spell to manipulate air and the spell I used on Doug." Carter looked down as if embarrassed. "We only started covering high magic on my last birthday."
"What about agyls?"
"I..." his brows sank together and a smile spread across his lips. "I think we should revisit our argument from earlier."
"There are so many that I don't know which one you mean."
"The one where you claimed my story about the Erediä isn't useful."
"It's not."
"It is when you consider that the Grekers worship the Erediä like gods."
13
The Erediä
Ulesday, 17th of Hearfest, 1162.111
Drool leaked from the corner of Doug's mouth, pooling in a rose blossom that had been carved into the arm of the throne. As he came around, the first thing he noticed was his own smell. From what he could guess, he must have been unconscious for a day, if not longer. That's hours and hours of not washing, which allowed the funk of sweat, musk, and urine to penetrate his clothes.
More disturbing was that he smelled the unmistakable wet dog smell of Grekers. He hated Grekers, and a whole squad had managed to capture him and Gideon. Once the critters realized he was awake, they would drug him again.
"About time you woke up," Gideon said.
Gideon was strapped to a similar throne with bindings around his armpits, elbows, neck, waist, and knees. That would explain the chafing Doug had felt around his gut. "Quiet. We don't want to wake them."
"Too late for that." Gideon nudged his head to the right, and sure enough, three Grekers were sitting on mats looking back at them. "Can you get free?"
"I doubt it."
"You're stronger than me. Try."
Doug did, but the ropes around his arms were triple wound, and he had no leverage. Same with this legs. "No go."
"That's a shame."
"Where are Carter and Alex?"
"I was hoping you knew. I've not seen a sign of them. The buggers stuck me, and I was out cold before I saw them."
"Grekers," Doug grunted. "I hate Grekers."
An hour before daybreak, the Grekers packed up their camp. Doug expected to be drugged again, but once the creatures seemed to conclude neither he nor Gideon could break free, they ignored them.
A low fog drifted off the creek. From within it came a buzzing sound. The Grekers chittered away in their strange language and then dropped their sacks to take up spears.
"They are saying a dark spirit is in the mist," Gideon said.
"How do you know?"
"I can speak every language spoken on Majerä."
"Even Ba–"
"Even Bakat."
That made Gideon only the third human Doug had met who could speak his native tongue. "There's no such thing as dark spirits, so what do you think is making that noise?"
"There are dark things," Gideon said, "but that's not one."
The wall of fog swallowed the willow trees, and Doug shifted his weight to see what was happening. A feminine figure floated on the fog. Bright light shone from behind her, making it hard to see anything but her silhouette. "Mont ja höltaæz gy stobälalo."
The voice had a sweet cadence to it along with a scratchiness. It sounded familiar to Doug, but he couldn't quite place it.
A ripple of gasps flooded through the Grekers as the woman approached. They dropped to their knees and bent their heads as if kissing the ground.
"What are they doing?" Doug asked.
"Praying."
"What language is that thing speaking?"
"Etriä, which is odd. It's the Erediän language."
"Fulta ty nartizälo. Fulta ja mont kot stobötilo kæt ral keftälalo."
The tone of the Grekers chants shifted, and they repeatedly said the word, "Arg'Natz." Doug didn't like that.
A pattering of feet filled the air, and the Grekers fled into the surrounding field, leaving their supplies and all all of their bedrolls.
The fog shrank and the shadowed figure sank to the ground. As she did, the backlighting faded, and Doug saw that it was Alex.
"Camp is clear." Alex untied a cloth that covered her mouth and wrapped over and around the back of her head. Three agyls were burned into the cloth, and as she removed it, her voice began to sound like normal. "You two ok?"
"We are unharmed," Gideon said. Alex used her dirk to cut away his bindings and then she freed Doug.
"Where is Carter?" Doug asked.
"Here." Carter approached them from the stream. He was breathing hard, and Doug could hear the boy's heart drumming in his chest. "I'm getting tired of this. Literally tired. You need to stop relying on my magic to get you out of trouble. It's draining. As soon as I get caught up on sleep, I end up exhausted again."
"That was all your magic?" Doug asked. The boy clearly had raw power. He had seen that several times, but the finesse of making Alex float and creating fog had a more sophisticated touch to it.
/> "Like I told you–"
"I'm a great mage," Alex said in a mocking tone.
"Hey!" Carter said. "I was going to say that."
"What did you say to the Grekers to get rid of them?" Doug asked.
"I said that I had returned on the clouds and that they should spread the word of my return," Alex said. "Or something like that. I basically repeated what Carter told me to say."
That made sense. The Grekers were obsessed with the Erediä. If the beasties thought the old ones had returned that could be more of a problem than a good thing. "There might be consequences for what you told them."
"I'm not worried about it." Carter covered a yawn with both hands and then held his stomach. "They left all their supplies. I bet we can find something other than vegetables or fruit to eat."
"We don't have time to search," Gideon said. "Grab whatever bundles or sacks you think might be useful, but be quick. If those things return, we don't want to be around."
Doug sniffed, focusing on an oily smell mixed with pine. He picked up a satchel and opened it to find a half used bar of soap. He slung the bag across his back. The moment they got far enough from the Grekers, he was going to wash himself, and it would feel wonderful.
14
Worm Food
Eldsday, 19th of Hearfest, 1162.111
Kane knew she was a sore loser, but being aware of it didn't dampen her emotions, and thanks to the bratty magician boy, she had hours upon hours to reflect on what had happened.
When the mountain collapsed around her, she shifted into a worm, shrinking down to the smallest possible form her mass would take. In the process, she had jettisoned Medrayt's indigo communication crystal. It had been too big and was now shattered and broken somewhere in the rocks. That meant she was on her own, and there was no one to keep her company but herself.
Never before had she so royally screwed up a job. Part of it was on Medrayt. The man should have let her kill the dragon days ago. That was a mistake she wouldn't make again. She was officially off book and didn't care what the would-be-despot wanted. Of course, the first thing she needed to do was escape.
