After the World

by Maire Brophy

  The green wizard now walked through tunnels as if he had lived in Iret. The glob appeared increasingly certain about where it was going, and the wizard hurried along after it. He was entering clearer tunnels, so he rarely tripped.

  It took several hours, but eventually he reached the entrance to the mill cavern. My gut wrenched to see that the doors were already broken open. The black wizard must already be inside. The glob didn’t enter the door, and, with a gesture, the green wizard called it back to him.

  At this point, I decided to stop following the green wizard and take an alternative route. I assumed that the glob was following the black wizard, and the black wizard obviously knew where she was going. I stepped back from the green wizard and chose one of the other routes into the mill cavern. I knew there was a tunnel that would allow me to view the cavern from higher up. Perhaps I could see both wizards without either of them spotting me.

  The way was not as easy as I expected. Falls of rocks and stones blocked the way. Some I could climb over, and some I had to move, stone by stone. One, I had to tunnel through, squeezing my body through a large hole I made in the rubble beneath several large rocks. Eventually, I made it through to the pathway, which ran around the upper walls of the mill cavern. It had a lip that came to hip height. I squatted low and peered over the edge.

  My eyes searched the cavern for the wizards. I almost let out a cry when I saw the largest of the mills was now destroyed. Water still cascaded onto the paddles, but they were pushed out of alignment, and with each turn did more damage to the mills and mechanisms beside them. At the end of that mill pool, I saw the green wizard clumsily attempting stealth. Without eyes, he made his way across the cavern, his staff stretched out in front of him, and his other hand on the lip of the pool. The water crashing into the mills and pools covered most of the noise he made.

  With no obvious signs of the black wizard forthcoming, I leaned back a little and tried to take in the whole of the space. I let the roaring water and the stumblings of the green wizard become background. There was something else here that I needed to see. I waited and waited, and my heart broke again for the mountain with no pulse and was not comforted by the arrhythmic turning of the once-beautiful paddles and gears.

  The cavern was vast, and the green wizard made slow progress across it. I got used to the new syncopation of the mills, and it became background like the falling water. Then I heard something different. There was something humming in the cavern. It was low and barely on the cusp of my hearing, but it was there. I searched for the source of the sound. Of course, it came from the direction of Isknaga’s Cavern. I leaned out again over the ledge to see what I could see. The green wizard still fumbled in the middle of the cavern. I examined the walls through the darkness and sought the entrance to the tunnel.

  Then I saw it. On the opposite side of the cavern, there was a circle of blackness more black than the darkness around it. It blocked my view utterly, and I could no longer even see the start of that tunnel. I remembered this device. It was a trick known to the dark wizards. It wasn’t powerful magic but very useful. It could hide something in the dark, and it would act like a tripwire alarm. If anyone crossed it, the black wizard would know. I knew that the black wizard was near to Isknaga, and I needed to act. I felt my mouth begin to dry and then flood with saliva. I tried to calm myself. I needed to think, but my instinct was to leap over the ledge and run toward the tunnel.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one made desperate by frustration. The green wizard got fed up with the seemingly endless stumbling and sent a pulse of green light throughout the cavern. It startled me and momentarily blinded me again. The green light faded, and a glob hung in the air over the wizard’s staff. After a moment’s hesitation, it found its way toward the blackened circle and hung there. The wizard hurried toward it.

  I roused myself and climbed back down the passageway. It was as painful as it had been before, and I was even more hurried. At one point, I climbed through a hole in a rockfall only to have it crumble behind me. Gravel sprayed across my back as a large rock fell where I had just been. I shuddered and ran on. I lost my footing and slid and tumbled to the end of the tunnel, banging my injured hand again in the fall. Getting off the ground was difficult, and I wobbled to my feet. I took off down the opposite tunnel― I needed to take the long way to Isknaga’s Cave to avoid setting off the trap.

  I ran through the workshops, with rocks still falling and destroying beautiful things. I wanted to save them all, but I needed to prioritize. I slowed as I neared the end of the workshops and the tunnel to the cavern. I wasn’t sure what I would find there. Or who I would find there.

  As I neared the door, I saw a faint green light. There was no sign of the black wizard. The green wizard’s staff had found the door. Some spell illuminated the edges, and the green wizard crouched in front of it and pondered. He flicked back and forth through his book, in between furtive glances. He knew there was someone else here. As did I. Perhaps the black wizard was already inside. He found the page he wanted and stood up.

  With gravitas at odds with his tattered cloak, he began to incant. The green light grew stronger as he wove the spell, and his voice grew louder and surer. Several strands of flickering green light formed across the door. They glowed ever brighter as the spell went on. His voice reached a crescendo, and the strands of light that encircled the door ignited. I turned my head away just as the burst of light came, followed by a crashing sound and a wind of smoke I just about managed not to choke on.

  I opened my eyes and turned back, but could see nothing. Smoke filled the air, and rubble puttered to the ground. Dust and dirt hung in the air and swirled into my eyes. Eventually, the smoke began to fade and the dust began to fall, and for a moment, an entirely intact door and a cursing green wizard were revealed. I stifled a chuckle but too late. It caught in my throat with the dust and the smoke.

  I coughed. The green wizard spun around, staff at the ready. Before I could react, I was no longer choking from the dust and smoke but from an invisible hand around my throat. It pushed me back against the wall of the tunnel and held me there. My sword was pulled off its belt and flung down the tunnel away from me. My claws scrabbled at my throat, but I couldn’t grasp anything. The wizard came toward me, holding his staff in front of him. He pinned my arms and legs to the wall but finally released my neck. I felt the fingers there long after they had left and struggled to open my throat again. The air rushed in, dust and smoke and all, and I coughed and coughed.

  I coughed a little longer than I needed to. It was buying me time. The black wizard must have heard the crash of this attempt to open the door. If she was still this side of the door, things might fall in my favor.

  The green wizard eyed me while I found my breath again. His face was filled with disgust. He brought his face close to mine. A little closer, and I’d be able to bite. But I was pinned, just too far away to get my teeth into him. His nostrils flared and his nose wrinkled. This one really didn’t like orcs.

  Here’s the thing about orcs: We’re not bad at heart. Well, some of us are…depending on your definition of bad. But we are all troublemakers ― even the good ones, even the ones that want to play nice with the elves and the day creatures. We can’t help it. We all love to stir a pot, mix it up, poke a caged wolf, poke an uncaged wolf. It really shouldn’t be surprising that many orcs died because of the mischief that they made. And I was just like them. I just preferred to make mischief on a grand scale. To poke the world, caged or uncaged. So, I really think what I did next was down to my core orcishness. I pulled my head as far forward as I could, stuck my tongue out, and licked the side of the wizard’s face.

  He reacted with his core too. His disgust overrode all sense and suddenly, my arms and legs were free. I rushed him before he could regroup. If anyone had a right to feel disgust, it was me, not him. He had destroyed this mountain. His errant blasts had cracked it all the way through and destroyed the clever things my orcs had made.


  I barreled into him, pushing him back against the other side of the tunnel. I went for his throat with my injured hand, and with the other, I grabbed at his staff. If he came to his senses, I would not be able to defeat him. Even without his staff, he would likely be more powerful than me. I squeezed this neck, and his grip on the staff loosened. I pushed against it, and it fell to the floor and rolled away from us.

  I closed my fist around his neck, but before I could end him, I felt my fingers buckle, and my hands were both pushed away. His eyes glowed green, and I was thrown backward against the other wall. The wizard stood in front of me with his hands apart. His hair swarmed around his head, and his grotesque features became exaggerated. Without touching me, he threw me across the tunnel toward the door. My back smashed into the ground, and it remembered every hardship I had put it through. He lifted me again and pinned me to the wall. He pointed to the door.

  “Open it,” he bellowed.

  I let him sweat for a bit. No sense in encouraging this sort of behavior. I felt the pressure mount, and he pressed me harder against the wall.

  “Open it!”

  “There’s a price.”

  I wasn’t lying. There was a price. And he wasn’t going to like paying it.

  “What price?”

  I smiled from ear to ear. “One more kiss”

  I winked at him. Yeah, so I’m definitely an orc, even in the desperate times with nothing left, I was still willing to poke this bear.

  He thrust out his arm behind him, and his staff came to his hand as if called. My arms began to feel more pressure. They were being pulled away from my body. My muscles and tendons were stretched to their limit. He was pulling my arms off, like I was an insect. My shoulder sockets were coming apart. The pain was excruciating.

  I cried out. “Stop! I’ll tell you!”

  My arms stayed where they were, but the pressure was lessened. I could feel the parts of my arms grasp and cradle each other again.

  “Open it!”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  I felt the pressure return to my arms, and the pulling started again. This time, it wasn’t a steady pressure but came in intense bursts, each one yanking at my arms, pulling them out of their sockets. Between each burst, I felt both relief and dread of the next one.

  “It doesn’t belong to you!”

  As if that would make any difference. How would that even work? The green wizard knew it didn’t belong to him; he wanted to steal it. A thought occurred to me. Did he even know what he was looking for? Could I trick him with something else? My mind raced as I searched through every memory I had of the mountain.

  “It’s not there any more. I took it for myself.”

  “Open the door!”

  “I told you it’s not there anymore.”

  “I hid it in the great hall.”

  “Open the door!”

  I felt my whole body slam against the rock.

  “I wanted to take it away with me. I couldn’t use it. I’m not a wizard.”

  Another slam for good measure. This time, the stone of the tunnel wall cracked a bone in my back, and I couldn’t stop myself from roaring out. The pain seared before my mind could numb it.

  “I will not stop. Open the door!”

  I felt a sudden focus, perhaps brought on by the pain. Would this be the final test of my allegiance? Was there anything left I wouldn’t betray?

  Another slam. This time it was like it was happening in slow motion. The staff pulled my body from the wall, my arms and head lagged behind, trailing like flags, and then came the force back into the wall. It compounded the break that was already there, and my head and arms snapped back again. The impact of my head against the stone brought the world rushing back at full speed. Every feeling echoed and reverberated, and then I lost most of my senses. I didn’t even feel my broken hand hitting the wall. I slumped into a heap. The green wizard was no longer holding me, and I could no longer stand.

  I felt something warm on my face. I couldn’t make sense of anything; it was just a cluster of sensations. It slid down my face, rolling over my lips, and falling off my chin, until only the dripping remained. I licked my lips. The taste of iron meant something.

  I looked up and saw the green wizard standing over me, goggle-eyed and trying to swallow. With deadening eyes, he fell to the floor. There she was, the black wizard, standing over us both, with a bloodied knife in her hand. The shadow and the blade in the dark.

  She put her arm under mine and tried to help me up. The green wizard was still gurgling on the ground. His blood pooled on the ground and arrested my eyes. She jerked me upward again and this time, I managed to get my feet under me.

  “He’s still alive.”

  I don’t know why it seem important to tell her that. It didn’t look like the green wizard was going anywhere other than death.

  “He doesn’t deserve a clean death. The longer he suffers, the greater his atonement to Iret.”

  I didn’t expect to hear this, and the surprise finally pulled my eyes away from the blood and into the face of the black wizard. I saw her closely for the first time. Her face was hardened and bitter, and there was no mistaking her pure hatred for the green wizard. She looked at me keenly, although whether I appeared to her as an ally or a tasty morsel remained to be seen.

  She moved me away from the green wizard and away from the door, back toward the workshops. We entered one, and she cleared the bench of tools and rubble and got me to lie down on it. When my back touched the bench, the searing pain came again, and this time I passed out.

  It has been a long time since waking to someone’s touch was anything other than alarming. She was trying to wash my wounds…but there were so many, and I was so covered in blood and dirt that she was having quite the hard time. I heard her return the cloth to the water and wring it. It seemed that while I was out, she realized the extent of this challenge. I felt a wet hand on my forehead, as if to hold it in place, and then a rag of cold water splashed down, followed by some serious scrubbing action. My poor head, after all it had been through, did it really need to be cleaned as well?

  I jerked myself upward to sit up and make her stop, but I found that I couldn’t really move. The effort caused another spasm in my back. She stopped scrubbing and put her hand firmly on my shoulder, indicating that I should stay down. She walked away from me. My eyes followed her as much as they could without moving my head. She had lit a fire in one of the forges. A pot steamed above it, and I watched her throw something into it. She poured the contents into a bowl and brought it to me. She helped me up slightly and put the bowl under my nose. Without meaning to, I breathed in the vapor. It had a stinging smell. I grimaced, but only for a short time, because a sensation of warmth spread through my body and dulled my brain. It didn’t make me insensible. If anything, the opposite. It gave me relief from the various competing pains and that made me better able to think.

  She was the first to break the silence.

  “We’re on the same side, you and I. There aren’t many left who are.”

  It’s not like I really expected her to be on my side. We both knew she was lying. Even when the dark wizards were allied with the orcs, there was always a tension. But there probably wasn’t anything to be gained from disagreeing with her. After all, I could barely move, and I had already almost been killed by one wizard today. So I responded to her.

  “Where did you fight?”

  “The Agostor Valley.”

  “Who was your commander?”

  “Lord Ter.”

  That shithead. I remember him well. “Did anyone else get away?”

  “I don’t know. Some of the orcs and goblins ran before the end. Ter was adamant we face whatever was coming, but it overpowered us.”

  Her face was pale as death. The words came out like a recitation rather than a story. I understood that need. I wondered if she knew who I was, but perhaps to her, I was just one orc among many. One in a sea of grunting animals. And of course
, I wore no finery these days.

  As she spoke, she returned to the fire to warm some water. She busied herself silently and returned to her futile task of cleaning me. I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t question me ― she was biding her time, trying to gain my trust. She was gentler in her scrubbing this time, but no less involved. It was as if the cut in my head was a thorny puzzle to be solved and not a part of me at all. She took out her knife. With great restraint, I managed not to flinch. She started to cut my hair, and clumps mixed with dirt and blackened blood fell to the floor beside us. For some reason, I found those thuds very satisfying, but then I did have a festering head wound. She returned to washing and eventually cleaned it to her satisfaction. Then she allowed me to sit up.

  “You’re badly hurt.”

  Bloody wizards are so fond of stating the obvious as if it was something revelatory. My snappy retort was engulfed by the pain from my back.

  She pulled off the mangled leather and searched my back with her fingers, pressing and prodding until I cried out. “You’ll live.”

  I felt positively bathed in her sympathy.

  She looked at me directly. “Tell me about the cavern.”

  “So the nursing portion of our relationship is over?”

  “You’re not an Iret orc.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You don’t have the mark. All the Iret orcs had marks on their back.”

  “Maybe they skipped me.”

  “How do you know about the cavern?”

  “What cavern?”

  “Sure, okay. Let’s play that game. What do you want?”

  “I just want to live here in peace. It’s you that’s trespassing.”

  She snorted in derision.

  “I was here long before you. I was welcomed into these halls. It is you that is trespassing.”

  “So you must know all about the cavern then.”

  “There were some things the orcs here would not talk about. Even to their trusted friends.”

  We were leaving the pretence behind so quickly.