by A Hero Born
It occurred to me that Chaos looked exactly as the Empire might if the land were flayed down to the bedrock.
Despite the time spent viewing the model, this was all alien and new to me. I could have found myself wandering from one wonder to another, but the sight of Roarke hanging limp over the back of his horse killed all romanticism. Chaos might be the place from which heroes came, but that was because it was an unforgiving crucible. Here, in this forbidding terrain, we were the intruders. Everything on the Chaos side of the wall would do its best to destroy us.
lust as we would try to destroy anything of Chaos that came into the Empire.
Within two hours of crossing through the Ward Walls, we reached First Stop Mansion. What it once looked like, or might again appear to be if the Ward Walls were pushed out this far, I found it hard to imagine. In its present state it reminded me of nothing so much as a small fortress that had been crushed in a siege. Built into a semicircular plateau carved from the side of Gorecrag, the mansion originally had twin towers at the north and south corners of the main building. As its construction had taken place well before the peak had been baptized with its new name, it did not surprise me that the southern tower had collapsed, and the top of the northern one looked to have been burned away some time ago. The stone manor house stood two stories taller than the surrounding plain, but part of the northern wing had fallen into disrepair. Beyond it I saw what might once have been stables, but were now just a big pile of rubble.
Eirene rode into what would have been the paved courtyard in front of the mansion itself, then spun her mount and looked back out toward the west. “It looks clear, but keep an eye out for traps. The Bfiarasfiadi could have set them for Tsvortu or the other way around.” She smiled grimly. “And other Riders could have set them for both.”
Kit rode up to her side. “Hansen, get Roarke inside. Aleix, Xoayya, and Donla, help him. Taci, see what you and Nagrendra can do for him.” He looked over at the wolf-headed man. “Tyrchon, if you want to scout the area, feel free. Holiness, if you would take watch in the north tower, I would be obliged.”
“As you wish, Lieutenant,” Osane replied, and rode off in the direction of the tower.
Tyrchon passed me the reins to his horse, then slipped from the saddle and ran back out of sight along our backtrail. Following the others, I rode Stail straight into the mansion through the main entrance and along an arched corridor to a central square courtyard with a working fountain. The horses’ hooves clacked sharply off the cobblestones, and the sound echoed back at me from the mountain and inner walls. Because the inner courtyard was open to the sky, looking up to the east 1 saw Gorecrag.
The way the mansion had been built, the eastern portion had been carved out of the mountain, and a large archway opposite the front led back into the red rock. A covered walkway surrounded the courtyard, both on the ground level and one story up, but looked very unreliable where the north wing had crumbled. Still and all, the mansion’s faded paint and the remnants of tile mosaics suggested it must have been very grand before Chaos swept over the world.
Eirene tied her horse’s reins around one of the pillars supporting the upper walkway “This is the first time I’ve been here, but others say it is very defensible. If worse comes to worst, we retreat into the mountain and hold them off at the doorway.”
Kit glanced back at the dark opening. “There is no other way out of there?”
“No bolt-hole that I’ve heard of, but we should scout it out to make certain.” Eirene stripped the saddle off her horse and set it on the low wall surrounding the courtyard. “We have water and an open killing ground in front of the mansion. We can last here for a while. If not”—she shrugged—“I can think of uglier places to die.”
Hansen put Roarke in a southwing room just off the courtyard. Taci and Nagrendra made him as comfortable as possible and worked on him while Kit, Eirene, and I watered and fed the horses. After I finished my work, I made to join them. I knocked on the closed door and waited patiently for someone to offer me permission to enter, since I had no desire to disturb sorcerers at work.
Xoayya opened the door and invited me in. Roarke lay on a makeshift pallet in the corner of a small, dark room. Cruach lay beside him and proved remarkably tolerant of Taci’s poking and prodding of his master. Nagrendra stood at the foot of the bed, looking much like a stone statue. Only the flicker of his forked tongue and occasional nods in response to Taci’s comments or questions showed he was alive.
Xoayya shook her head. “They have focused their diagnostic spells down to limit detection. They don’t think that has affected their ability to report results, but they can find nothing wrong with him.”
Taci stepped away from the bed. “Roarke is unconscious and resting, but his body is at an incredibly low life-level.” Taci looked utterly baffled by Roarke’s condition.
“That room is not, according to the maps I have seen, a ‘slow’ zone.” I looked at Nagrendra. “Do you have any ideas?”
“None.” The Reptiad shrugged mica-scaled shoulders. “I suppose he could have some sort of sickness that only thrives within Chaos, but I have never heard of such a thing. Moreover, the diagnostic spells Taci and I used did not indicate a disease. As nearly as 1 am able to determine, he is healthy and recovering.”
“That’s good.”
Xoayya nodded. “I feel odd saying this, but it feels to me as if Roarke is, well, waiting.”
I frowned. “Waiting?”
Taci idly tapped her baton against her left thigh. “Roarke’s body seems to be reacting as if he is in a state of stasis. It’s functioning, but at a reduced rate. It’s not abnormal, but just subnormal. If it were a spell causing this, we might be able to modify it. If it were an organic problem, we might be able to heal it. Since we can’t pinpoint the source, however, we don’t know how to treat it.”
“I see. So Roarke is waiting.” I shivered. “Waiting for what?”
Tyrchon walked into the sickroom. “If he is waiting for Black Shadows, he has a day or so.”
“This is important. Let’s head outside and find Kit.” I glanced at Roarke. “Let’s give him a chance to recover in peace.”
“Not much peace will be had here Tyrchon led us out of the room and over to where Kit and Eirene were speaking in the center of the inner courtyard. 1 followed on his heels, and the others joined us. Xoayya was last, having pulled the door to the sickroom shut after the rest of us had left.
Tyrchon shared his scouting report with Kit.
“A day before they attack? How many?” Kit’s head came up, and his expression changed as he assumed command again. “What can we expect?”
Tyrchon sniffed the air twice, then squatted down on his haunches. “1 would assume, since the sorcerer saw how easily we dealt with his people and magick, they will send a hundred or so of their number after us. They will likely all be warriors, but one or two sorcerers may be with them.”
“Do you think Packkiller will be one of them?”
Tyrchon shrugged in response to Kit’s question. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. He’s too important to risk in this sort of operation. The Black Shadows will first try to spook us, then rush in and use swords or axes for close work. Any of you hunted by them?”
Eirene and Nagrendra shook their heads.
1 shook my head. “This is my first time into Chaos. Same with Xoayya.”
“That wouldn’t preclude anyone hunting you, but it makes it very unlikely.” Tyrchon sniffed the air. “How about Roarke or the bishop?”
Kit shook his head. “Unknown.”
“Roarke may have tangled with the Bfiarasfiadi a long time ago.” Eirene kicked a piece of paving stone loose from the courtyard floor. “You worried about vindictxvara?”
“Worried, no. Wary, yes.” The lupine warrior stood again. “I do not believe any of the Black Shadows will be coming after me, but it is possible. If you see a sword with my picture on it, that Bharashadi is mine.”
Aleix, the
old sergeant, guffawed. “I will try to remember that as I shoot them full of arrows.”
“You do that, Herakman. If you can.” Tyrchon’s voice dropped into a low growl. “Want to know what you will see tomorrow night? Close your eyes. Everyone, do it.”
I complied and felt a rough cuff to the side of my head. From the startled shouts of others, I knew Tyrchon had hit them as well while we were blind. I opened my eyes again and saw Kit had grabbed a handful of Aleix’s tunic to hold him back from attacking Tyrchon.
The wolf-warrior slowly smiled. “That is what you will see when they come for us—nothing. Black Shadows is a name the Bharashadi earned through their stealth. In the night here you will not see them until they are on top of you. I hope you Herakmen get a chance to feather as many as you want, but you would do well to sharpen your swords, too.”
Eirene nodded. “Tyrchon has the right of it, but this is a good place to defend .”
“Lieutenant, if I might make a suggestion?” Nagrendra bowed his head to Kit.
“Please, Nagrendra, suggest away.”
“Let us reconnoiter the mansion. We travel in groups and determine if any old traps are still in force or can be repaired. If each of us travels with a Rider, your people can be quickly introduced to this place. You and Tyrchon can then set up our defenses.”
“A solid plan as nearly as I can tell.” Kit folded his arms. “Hansen and Donla, you go with Tyrchon. Taci, get the Bishop. Locke, you and Xoayya will go with Nagrendra. Aleix, you stay here with the horses.”
“Yes, sir.”
I followed the Reptiad sorcerer and Xoayya as we walked out through the mansion to the front courtyard. The rooms between the exterior wall and the inner courtyard had long ago been stripped of furnishings, but some of the tile mosaics still could be seen beneath the red dust on the floors. Rubbish, paint chips, and bits of wood decorated the rooms now. As the dusk came on I could imagine skeletons lurking amid the shadows, but I had no real desire to go poking about to confirm my suspicions.
In the courtyard, Nagrendra’s~opal eyes became slits. “Locke, pace off twenty feet.”
I took eight uniform steps from where I stood. “This should be it.”
“Good even paces. Excellent.” He turned to Xoayya and had her do the same. She smiled self-consciously as she ended up a foot back of where I stood, but Nagrendra did not seem to mind. “Close enough for what we will be doing. Xoayya, go out another forty feet. Locke, start over at the north tower and pace out ten feet, heading directly toward her.”
He stood in the middle of the courtyard as we did what he told us to do. When I had taken my four steps out from the tower, he came to me and knelt down. He brushed the dust from one of the square paving stones in the courtyard, then told me to fetch a nearby rock. I did so and gave it to him. The Reptiad raised the rock in his fist and brought it down on the paving stone, breaking a triangle off one corner.
Drawing a dagger, he scraped the number one on the stone. He then surprised me by using the blade to nick his right thumb. Blood welled up in the cut, and he pressed his thumb first to the fragment of the rock and then to the stone it had come from. “Give me another twenty feet, Locke.”
I marched closer to Xoayya, and Nagrendra repeated his actions. “What are you doing?”
“Please, Locke.” Xoayya stared at me as if I were an idiot. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Patience, woman.” The Reptiad dropped his jaw in a rough approximation of a smile. “He knows even less about magick than you do.”
“I know about enough to fill a thimble and have room for the Empire left over.” I gave Xoayya a smile. “And as my grandfather said, the first step to wisdom is acknowledging how much you do not know.”
Nagrendra nodded, the dying sun painting red highlights on his stony flesh. “A wise man, your grandfather. In magick we deal with a number of laws. One of them is the Law of Contagion. It suggests that a part of something is tied to the whole simply by having come from the whole. Each of these rock fragments is tied invisibly and intangibly to the stone from which it has been taken. The use of my blood ties them directly to me. Twenty more feet, if you please.”
1 nodded slowly and walked to Xoayya’s side. “Now 1 know what you are doing. Why are you doing it?”
“Because I want to kill Bharasfiadi.” He looked up at me, and a clear membrane nictitated up and down over his eyes. “Each of these stone fragments becomes a focus for my spells, similar to using a magick staff or Taci’s baton. When I cast a spell with my hand wrapped around one of these, the spell is all but guaranteed to take effect at the spot from which the stone was taken.”
“And the spells you mean to cast have an effective diameter of twenty feet?”
Nagrendra smiled up at me. “You are quick, but I would expect that from one of your blood. Yes, I think the Bharasfiadi will find this courtyard a very dangerous place.”
Xoayya plaited a lock of her red hair. “What could stop a spell from going where you wanted it to go?”
1 winked at her. “I thought all this magick stuff was obvious to you.”
“Intent is.” She gave me a superior smile. “Technique, on the other hand, is not my strong point.”
“That’s because you’ve had little formal training. If you had, you’d know many things can make a spell go awry. Being distracted by a wound or being afraid. Anything that might cause you to lose your concentration in a battle will likewise cause problems for me.” He anointed another stone with his blood. “Counterspells can negate any magick I choose to cast as well. Twenty more feet, Locke.”
I paced it off, then chewed my lower lip. “You cast the counterspell that stopped Packkiller from getting me with his spell, didn’t you?”
The magicker nodded solemnly. “I utterly mistook the strength of his spell. Luckily, he had chosen a physical focus for his magick, you moved to duck it, and I was able to deflect it. The two spells managed to annihilate each other, but the residual effect of his spell was enough to melt that snow and knock quite a few people from their horses.”
“Well, thank you.” I smiled. “It’s kind of funny that your spell was erratic and blurry while his was so crisp and exact—no offense intended.”
“None taken, but no amusement either. That is not funny because it is fundamental to the nature of magick.” Nagrendra sat back on his heels. “Chaos magick demands that sort of precision because here, in a place of highly variable probabilities, order must be imposed on chaos to get the desired effect. Within the Empire, on the other hand, to obtain magickal effects, we must break the order imposed by the Ward Walls. In essence, creatures born in Chaos must use Ward magick disciplines to get what they want, and Imperial sorcerers must invoke Chaos to make their magick work.”
“And the type of magick you do depends upon your training and where you were born?” I asked.
“To a greater or lesser extent.” He held his hand up so I could see his mica scales. “I have been in Chaos long enough that were I to learn from a Chaos sorcerer, I could work their magick. This is how Black Churchers can learn to work Chaos magicks. Unlike them, however, I have no desire to see the Empire destroyed, so I have no incentive to learn the ways of the enemy.”
Xoayya giggled nervously. “And the opportunities to learn from the enemy out here are not that common, I would imagine.”
“A good point, my dear.” The Reptiad straightened up and stretched his arms. “Both of you may also have noted that my spell had a blue or white tint to it, while the Bfiarasfiadi spell appeared more red or gold. The difference in color also marks the spells as being Chaotic or Imperial in nature. The last thing you want to see in the dark is the glint of gold eyes and a red spark.”
Recalling my encounter with Packkiller in the sewers below the palace, I nodded and rubbed my right shoulder.
As night fell we worked more quickly. Nagrendra set up another line of defenses fifteen feet out from the front of the manor house, with only ten feet between them. H
e also took stone fragments from the lintel and each of the window frames on the front of the house. He marked each one and entrusted them to Xoayya so she could take them to Taci. “Taci will know what to do with these.”
Xoayya nodded slowly, then shook her head as if to clear it after a clout. “After that, what should I do?” Her question came slowly and haltingly.
I looked at her. “Is something wrong?”
She shook her head again. “No, not really. It is just that I keep catching glimpses of visions. There is more here, to this place, than is readily apparent.”
Nagrendra’s jaw dropped open in a smile. “Not only have you a gift for Clairvoyance, but one for understatement, too.”
Xoayya frowned at him. “I have the feeling there are tunneis and passages here.”
“That the Black Shadows are going to come through?” 1 watched her closely. “We have to defend against that kind of covert attack.”
Xoayya shook her head. “I sense no threat, just the potential of their existence. I might be sensing the past or the future, too, not just the now.” She forced a grim smile onto her face. “If it is permissible, I’ll do some exploring after I deliver the stones to Taci.”
Nagrendra and I nodded. As she departed, I gathered up the other stones the Reptiad had prepared. He had me bear them to the top of the north tower—an excellent vantage point, with thick stone walls to protect us. He quickly set to work, and after a short time I could hear Xoayya searching around in the debris inside the base of the tower itself.
The effects of the fire that had taken off the roof of the tower could be seen in the charred wood and stone on the uppermost level. The creaky wooden floor looked none too safe to me, but Nagrendra picked a path around burned areas and ignored the groans of the wood. I followed him, knowing that any floor that could support his weight ought to bear mine, and I tried not to think about the possibility of our combined weight causing the floor to collapse.
