Ringwall`s Doom

by Awert, Wolf

  *

  Nill and Ramsker made steady progress on the solid ground and Nill was confident that he would learn more about the sorcerer in Woodhold. A wide, flat dust-cloud beneath the horizon pulled him from his thoughts. Nill stretched his neck, closed his eyes and attempted to penetrate the dust-cloud’s aura and whatever was causing it. Despite the great distance, he saw the auras of animals and humans overlapping. Not a herd, he thought. Riders. Five or six at least.

  Riders were never good news in the desert. Travelers moved in sets of two, usually at an angle to the wind. Those who fled did so in single-file, to mask their number. Only hunters rode abreast. Hunters on the lookout for something.

  The riders seemed to be in a hurry: the cloud approached rapidly. Their horses were trotting, not a gait commonly seen in the desert. The desert usually demanded a slow walk to save the horse’s strength, or else a gallop as the riders approached their quarry. But only one of these riders galloped. He rode ahead of the others, then behind them, criss-crossing back and forth. Nill cursed the dust and the flickering heat and the difficulty it caused him in seeing properly. The fast rider would soon exhaust his steed and force them to rest in the middle of the desert, with no respite from the desert sun. It seemed foolish. Something was not right.

  The outrider had stopped and dismounted, then reappeared in Nill’s vision with a new horse. Replacements! Nill could now make out details. None of the horses carried anything to slow them down, and the lone rider… Nill waited for the auras to separate, but he already knew what he would see. Panic constricted his throat.

  Sergor-Don’s dustriders – with a sorcerer in their midst.

  Some called them dust-demons. They rode across the land, presenting a wide front, faster than the wind. They did not hide; they did not need to. They were always visible from a great distance, recognizable by the dark brown cloud of dust and dirt their horses kicked up from the ground. It was impossible to count their numbers. They rode around their quarry in quick spiral movements, making it harder and harder to see where the riders were in their protective cloud. The fatal arrow could come from any direction.

  The prey of the desert hunters was always man, but there were none in this remote wasteland. None except Nill and the holy man.

  Nill nudged his ram. “Move, quickly. We need to get off the path before one of them sees us.” Nill ran with long strides, and as he did he attempted to weigh down the dust he caused to rise with a spell. Ramsker seemed to understand the stakes. His hooves gave a hollow sound as they trampled over the rocks.

  “Stop, enough,” Nill commanded and looked his ram in the eyes. “Ramsker, go slowly to the low range ahead. I will stay here and pray they don’t find me.”

  As if the ram had understood every word, he trotted onwards. Nill turned around and used a spell Tiriwi had taught him. He became invisible, part of the desert; he assumed its colors and breathed the same dry air, smelled of dust and salt. The invisibility spell did not nullify his figure, but it was good enough to deceive a weary traveler or to cause eyes to glide over him as something else caught their interest. Nill considered empowering the spell a little, just to be sure – but what use was it to perfect his disguise if the magic involved flared up like a bonfire? Recognizing magic was the reason the riders had brought the sorcerer along. Nill decided against it and remained stationary, his eyes on the ground. Just another grayish-brown stone among millions.

  Nill closed his eyes. The only things he felt were the tireless wind and the clacking of stones as they were released by the horses’ heavy hooves. He heard their snorting and smelled sweat in the air. The sounds drew closer, grew louder, and then fainter again. Silence.

  As Nill was about to take a deep breath, assuming the danger had passed, another hoof knocked against a stone. Silence again. The riders had stopped. Only the sorcerer rode back and forth, circling his troop in larger and larger movements.

  Nill opened his eyes a fraction and peered through his lashes. The sorcerer was so close he could now make out his face in detail. He had long, white-blond hair, cleanly parted down the middle and now whipping in the wind as he drove his horse this way and that. His men grew anxious to move on, but the sorcerer did not allow it. He had found something, and Nill hoped against all odds that it was not his own aura.

  The sorcerer was now arguing with his followers. After several tense moments he shouted something and pointed into the distance. One of the hunters shouted back. “It was only a ram! You felt a ram’s presence, my lord.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it. Ride on.”

  Again, Nill’s breath of relief was cut short as the sorcerer rode straight at him. Fifty steps perhaps, now twenty. The horse stood still and gave a snort as it shook its slender head. Drops of foam flew from its muzzle and evaporated on the hot stone, sand and Nill’s right arm.

  “Here?” a voice called out from directly above him. “Are you sure you saw it here?”

  Nill could not hear the answer clearly. The muttered response died among the chafing of leather and the scratching of hooves on the ground. Nill did not know what the sorcerer felt, but it was only a matter of moments before he was found. He had to act.

  Too late. Nill saw the sorcerer’s aura expand and twitch as it touched his own. He felt the power that reminded him of Ringwall, opened his eyes and concentrated the energy of light in his body. A laugh broke his concentration. It came from the blond man’s eyes and spread through his entire body. Nill could not tear his gaze from the other’s. Nill knew he had lost. The sorcerer gave him a nigh-unnoticeable nod.

  “A ram,” the sorcerer called over his shoulder. “A ram, indeed.”

  He retreated to his troop, leaving Nill very confused.

  What had that been about? The sorcerer had undoubtedly found him and then lied to his people. He had escaped again. But this time neither demons nor fate had intervened. The sorcerer had tracked him down and let him go free, but why?

  If he was ever to find an answer to this question, it would not be here and now. Nill straightened up and followed Ramsker. They did not have many alternatives left. Where there was one search party, others were bound to follow. And the dustriders would return, sooner or later. If they reached the hermit, sooner; he would either show them the way or give in to torture. The Mistmountains that separated the Fire Kingdom from Woodhold were no longer a safe option. But he could not go back.

  There was only one way left. Nill heaved a resigned sigh and picked up his belongings. He had to dare what few had ever dared before. He had to pass the low mountains and flee into the Borderlands of Fire. They said that the magic there was different to the Five Kingdoms, but who knew? People who went there seldom returned, and if they did, their stories never corroborated another.

  Nill stood on the flat ridge and absent-mindedly stroked Ramsker’s matted coat. Behind them was a plain of rubble, sand and gravel. On the right-hand side, in the direction of Earthland, the low mountains vanished beneath a sea of smashed rock, and Woodwards the mountains rose to unclimbable peaks. None of them were particularly inviting. What lay before him, however, was beyond his imagining.

  He gazed down upon a vista that took him into prehistoric times. The ground was torn wide open; pockmarks and open sores dotted the landscape in violet and black, all streaked with glowing red tatters of molten rock.

  He slowly made his way down the slope and searched for a path. The grating sound beneath his leather soles was not caused by sand, but coarse ash. Red, yellow and black ash. Every tiny grain was puffed up and porous. The wind would have little difficulty in blowing it away.

  Nill had long left civilisation behind. Now and then he spotted a lonely bird of prey flying in circles through the air, not much more to his eye than a black dot in the pale blue sky. Gazing up was a bad idea to begin with, as there were no clouds to shield his eye from the glaring white sun. The ground was like a furnace, the air above it distorted and flickering, the wind so dry that it sucked the moisture from his s
kin and made his lips crack. The land rose slowly but steadily, and that was enough to utterly sap his stride of energy.

  When the sun finally set, Nill and Ramsker set up their night’s camp in a dip. Ramsker buried himself beneath most of the ash and Nill covered his body with the few pieces of clothing he had. Once the ash had given off all the heat of the day, it grew bitterly cold in the night.

  They continued at first light. Movement expelled the stiff cold from their joints, soon to be replaced by searing sunlight. The grinding sound beneath their feet had taken on a new tone. The small puffs of ash now burst and were rubbed to dust between their soles and the rock beneath. What was a relief to their feet was torture for the rest of their bodies; the stone that made up the ground all the way to the horizon was black as coal and hot as the kitchen oven in Ringwall. Nill had thought only the day before that it could hardly get any hotter; how wrong he had been.

  The ash was sparser here and bare stone now greeted him wherever he looked. The ground glimmered like black glass, its many facets breaking the sun’s reflection into thousands of tiny bright flames. Where the stone had burst open, it cut through everything around it with angular, razor-sharp edges. But soon the surface was much smoother. Beautiful, wavy structures rippled across it like the circles of a pond when a stone was dropped into it. Waves trapped in glass.

  It took Nill and Ramsker over half a day to cross the glassy black plain and reach another mountain range that was nothing less than a collection of small volcanoes. None of the alien beauty that had accompanied them in the past few days was present here. The heat, on the other hand, increased further still, and the incline between the fiery mountains grew steeper. Nill could feel his strength waning fast. He leaned on the rock to rest for a moment and leapt back with a yelped curse when it burned his hand. The path, whatever it was, looked more and more like a huge tear in the land, torn into the mountainside eons ago by some otherworldly power. At least it offered sparse shade sometimes. Nill followed the crack until he found himself facing a dark rock face with a bluish sheen that rose to a dizzying height. A dry sob rose in his ruined throat. This was the end. The walls around him were at an acute angle, making any sort of climb suicidal. He had no other choice but to walk the long way back. He doubted his strength and the few drops of water they had left would take him even half the way.

  As Nill remained standing dejectedly in front of the wall, the flickering air before him condensed and he was able to make out the indistinct silhouettes of three red warriors.

  “Your road ends here, human,” the middle one said.

  He was a full head taller than Nill, more powerfully built, and clad in bright red armor. His unusual weaponry consisted of two round shields, but their metal surrounds were burning. Nill had spent enough time discussing arms with Brolok to know that even a shield could be a deadly weapon. Sometimes they hid daggers or other kinds of blades behind the buckler, but Nill could not make out any details. Even the warriors’ shapes seemed undefined, blurred around the edges, shifting constantly. Without warning, the spot where the speaker stood erupted in a huge flame that blocked the assailants from view until it became translucent again, showing shapes and motions. The speaker’s companions were similarly equipped, if not quite so extravagantly. One bore a flaming lance, the other a sword and pavise.

  “If fate has decreed so, then so it will be; but it is not yours to decide,” Nill replied, fighting to keep his voice steady. He wished he could transfer some of the courage and confidence from his words to his being; but fear had his stomach in a vice, and the heat and weariness threatened to rob him of his consciousness. What Nill saw before him was pure Fire energy. The weak traces of Metal and Earth he could taste came from the rock surrounding him.

  Nill glanced over his shoulder and weighed his chances of making a quick escape; from what he saw, there were none. A second troop of Fire warriors blocked his path, clad in light harnesses and holding various weapons. Archers stood beside ax-wielding melee combatants, and small, quick figures hid behind the sword-carriers, ready to plunge their daggers into his heart. The way was blocked. His own weapons consisted of nothing but a staff and the dagger he had forged as a child.

  Beings of pure energy, Nill wondered. I didn’t think they still existed. Not even in the Other World had he encountered anything like it.

  “We are the lords and the servants of Fire,” the warrior spoke. “We are the lords, for we control the Fire, and we are the servants, because we keep it pure and untainted. You and your companion are impure and do not belong here. You must be removed. You have the choice. Surrender and I will grant you the mercy of a quick death. You cannot resist. Fire has been since the beginning, and will always be – it takes its strength from the deepest depths of the world.”

  “And what makes you so certain that I can’t easily crush you?” Nill laughed in the Firelord’s face.

  The figure returned the laugh.

  “Because Fire will melt your Metal and burn your Wood to ash. You could never summon enough Earth energy to suffocate our flames. No mortal can. Your only hope, therefore, is Water. Take a good look around; do you see any? No. There is no water here save for what reserves you and your beast have left. You could, of course, attempt to – what is the phrase you humans use? – fight fire with fire. You would be hopelessly outmatched. It would be painful and embarrassing for you, and pointless for me. Resign to the flames and I will make sure you do not suffer.”

  “My decision on whether or not I even accept your challenge to fight has not been made yet. Are you prepared to answer a question?”

  “Time has little meaning for us elementals. Ask.”

  “Are you the guardian of the Book of Eos?”

  Nill saw, out of the corner of his eye, several of the fiery warriors lower their weapons.

  “You know much. More than any other mortal who has dared enter the Borderlands. Yes, I am the guardian. The mages of the Old World created me and my kind to guard Eos. Tell me – how do you know this?”

  “Fate granted me the chance to read in the Book of Wisdom and Creation,” Nill said. “It says that Eos is to have a guardian. I am here because I seek you and the book. If you are the guardian, and some higher force guided me here, I cannot surrender. I must fight, and I will win because fate chose me to find and read the Book of Eos.” He felt his confidence growing in his chest and prayed that he was not about to make a huge mistake. He still had no idea how to fight an elemental.

  “Very well, human. We shall fight. Should you be victorious, you will find the Book of Eos.”

  Nill saw through the Firelord and knew that he was more than a mere fighter. He was the first, and only, king of his ilk. Sooner or later, all other Fire creatures would leave Pentamuria with him. They were the children of the first arcanists, and Nill finally knew how he could win the fight. How powerful the first must have been, to create such beings…

  Nill’s back tautened and he gave a deep bow, careful not to abandon his combat stance.

  “You have my esteem and I grant you my reverence, Firelord, but – and I say this with all due respect – you are still young. Truly, there are no elemental magics you need to fear. Yet I do not wish to fight you, as that would mean your death. You act as perhaps you must, and it will be your downfall. This will not be a battle of Fire and any other element. You have challenged me to a duel between a young magic, an elemental magic, and the ancient magic. How do you think to win?”

  The Firelord stared at the human before him, little more than a child. He gazed down upon him for a long moment, then turned his view inwards. Finally, he spoke.

  “You have no fear and are free of corruption. You do not boast like a desperate man in an attempt to ward off death. You honor our magic. I hear truth in your words. And yet I cannot avoid battle between the two of us. I will give you the chance to prove your magic is still strong, or long since gone. We know of the ancient magic, but we also know that it no longer rules the world and has long bee
n forgotten. I will fight you alone, and you will have warning of my attacks.”

  With a commanding gesture, his two companions took a few steps back.

  “Behold – this purifying flame will attempt to swallow you whole.”

  The Firelord pointed one of his shields towards a point in the ground at his feet and with a small bang a yellow, hand-wide flame burst forth. It approached Nill rapidly and grew to his size, and then larger. It danced wildly and grew bigger and bigger.

  Time to see whether my dreams were just a fever after all. Time to see whether the ancient magic of light and dark still exists.

  Nill placed his legs slightly apart and held his hands before his belly as though he held an invisible ball. He raised his arms and spread his shoulders, bent his back and created a giant orb of energy to which he clung like the falundron on its perch.

  The orb swelled rapidly and calmed the flickering air, taking the color of the many small flames that now burned all over, in the earth, the ash and the stone.

  It grew like the fire pillar before it and changed slowly from light to dark. The air vibrated as the flame hit the orb. The fire shot up and fell down, crept over the ground and finally sank beneath it once more. The Firelord held his arm outstretched. The yellow of the flames disappeared, the dark red at its core became brighter and in the very center of the pillar a blue cone bloomed, turquoise at its peaks. The heat grew so strong that the fire was consuming its own colors, first the turquois rim of the blue center and then the blue itself.

  Nill’s orb had gone completely black by now. The flames licked across it and called forth bright flashes that drove deep into its core. Nill remained motionless and strengthened the black mantle.

  He raised his eyes to his opponent’s. “You can still stop,” he whispered hoarsely, but his enemy’s arm did not move even the width of a spider’s thread. Nill absorbed all the Fire energy into his orb of shadow and concentrated it into a tiny white point. The point was the light in the darkness, the eye of the storm, the caw of a bird in a dead forest. Bright and shining, it grew and expanded and Nill sent it slowly towards his opponent. As it moved the point sucked in all the Fire energy it could find and hastened its approach, then it swallowed the blackness it had come from and raced towards the Firelord. There, it collided with his raised shields and exploded, throwing the red king back against the rock face. The flickering body went straight through the solid stone and left no trace that it had ever been here.