by Russ Linton
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Details can be found at the end of Forge of the Jadugar.
CHAPTER I
Sidge woke inside the vardo. The drafty enclosed wagon had been his and Izhar's home for weeks, but he'd been unable to grow accustomed to it. Izhar's hoarded relics clamored for attention with each bump while incense and oils fought to overwhelm his sensitive antennae. So unlike his sparse, clean quarters at the Stormblade Temple.
The wooden chests which he lay upon felt swollen and smooth, bloated by the water beneath the platform city of Stronghold. The salty smell of their submergence lingered. He pushed up, two hands walking his torso upright and the other two cradling his head. Sunlight streamed through cracks in the wall, cooking the damp air. He winced as each of his many lenses were made aware of how bright the light truly was. Master Izhar's white stole, now his stole, was balled up where his head had been.
He planted two palms on the travel chest to keep the world from spinning. Everything had been better when it had been black. Asleep, one could say. The last thing he remembered was Kaaliya departing with Chakor, the noble's hand firmly on her backside and her arm draped over his shoulder. That had seemed good enough cause to blot out the world with a bottle of thornsap. Awake now, without lids to cover his enormous eyes, he no longer had that same luxury as every sway and jostle of the vardo taunted him.
Of course, the Deep Night festivities would've had thornsap. Sidge's "poison" as Master Izhar had put it. An apt description, he mused, but the inky liquor granted him a blissful emptiness he'd never known before. As an Ek'kiru, a bugman, sleep was not to be had. He'd grown up during endless days in the Stormblade Temple toiling away at his studies and chores beneath the Undying Storm.
Chores.
Shelves rattled. Bottles clattered. He couldn't help but watch every item shimmying out of their proper places. No. Nothing had been in the proper place for days. Incense and meditation chimes had been hastily flung on the same shelves. Scraps of cloth from the roof rack had been hung around the cabin to dry, slapping wetly against the walls. It would take the better part of a day to re-organize the shelves.
The wheels of the vardo creaked and the cabin lurched, hard. Sidge skittered toward the edge of the chest and steadied himself before being tossed to the floor. Outside, Izhar bellowed at their sole surviving horse, the cantankerous Paint. "Slow down, you impetuous son of a mule!"
Arms out for balance, Sidge stumbled toward the rear. He parted the curtain and reeled at the ferocity of the sunlight. Another lurch and he flailed wildly on the threshold. Another vicious bump and he fell face first.
Instinct saved him from tasting the dirt road. He floated face down, suspended by his wings. In the corner of his expansive vision, the vardo rumbled onward.
He sealed out the virulent sun with his hood. Then, with great effort, he managed to find a relatively upright position and skimmed along the ground after the vardo. Catching up, he dropped clumsily onto the bench.
Izhar jumped. "Ahh, Sidge! Back with the living, I see."
His Master, or former Master, offered a warm smile through an unruly beard. Deep chestnut, with a gray streak down the middle, Izhar's wiry facial hair no longer flowed into the white lightning bolt shaped stole of a Cloud Born. A lifelong symmetry had been turned askew.
Sidge grunted and pulled his hood tighter.
"You can continue to ride in the back if you like. Out of the sun."
"Did I make a fool of myself, Mas…?" asked Sidge, stumbling over Izhar's old title.
"So late into the celebration? Hardly." Izhar chuckled. "You left everyone else in the room in utter amazement."
The memory of the Deep Night celebration at the Living Attarah's palace returned in blurry streaks. Blank stares. Congratulations. More of the former. He had taken it all in with as much decorum as he could muster. Behind his back, in clear view to his eyes, had been the open-mouthed gawking and suspicious glares. Kaaliya leaving. Shortly after, he'd requested an earthen jug of thornsap from a porter.
He tried to divert the cascade of thoughts. "Where are we?"
"West of Stronghold, about half a day. Should be coming up to the Padmini soon."
"That far?"
"Give or take. We may have left a little later than the rest. I hope you don't mind, but I spoke with our raksha, Lord Chakor. Advice, supplies. He's got some intriguing ideas and we're fortunate you gained his support."
"Mind? Not at all." Sidge didn't want to think of Lord Chakor and his groping hands on Kaaliya anymore. She'd given too much by helping to convince a member of the nobility into sponsoring his and Izhar's pilgrimage. He never asked her to do that.
Although, it didn't hurt that their raksha also held the title of Jadugar, the Attarah's advisor.
Sidge supposed he should be grateful for supplies, advice, whatever their raksha wanted to provide. Even so, he didn't have to like the man. He doubted Chakor had any respect for him—the mischievous noble mostly seemed interested in creating a scene—something to do with some history with the living Attarah and the sponsored priest of his royal house, Gohala.
"What of Master Gohala?"
"He's in the lead, naturally." Izhar thrust his chin to indicate the road. "He'll be across the ford first. He seemed to be in quite a hurry. We shouldn't be crossing paths and it's a good thing, too. That smug bastard was pissed." Sidge cringed at the insult, unsure how he should react. Izhar had never been one to mince words but technically, he was an acolyte and speaking about a superior. His former mentor appeared to take note. "Pardon me, Master. That Master of all bastards was displeased by your ascension."
Sidge watched the road disappear under the Paint's hooves. The land around them had flattened from the hilly Paharibhumi into a grass-covered plain. Trees sprouted in green copses, their trunks obscured from ground to canopy by tufts of leaves. He dared tilt his head so his hood no longer obscured the sky. Thin horsetail clouds striped the horizon. A storm in the making.
More memories of the Deep Night celebration returned: Izhar surrendering his corestone pendant and robes of office to his sole acolyte, Cloud Born Gohala demanding Sidge prove his right to wear them by doing something he'd never done—channeling the mighty Storm Dragon's Fire. Sidge did so in front of the entire assembled royalty of Stronghold. He had tried again and again until the impossible just…happened.
"Master?"
Izhar hesitated, then answered. "Yes?"
"Did I really channel?" Sidge waited for a response. He turned his head to look, but only succeeded in sinking deeper into his hood. "Well?"
"Of course you did. We all saw, Master."
He recalled the unusual acrid smell and the absence of Vasheru's Kiss, the charged air which always preceded a channeling. Yes, there'd been a spark, a flash of power, but it hadn't felt the same. Or was his throbbing head playing tricks on him?
"It felt different than I thought it might."
Izhar pulled the reins and the vardo slowed to a restless stop. They sat amid the clinking of crystals and chimes dangling from the upper roof rails and the hollow clank of the Paint's tack against the shafts. A breeze carried the smell of damp grass and for the first time in days, Sidge realized the mystical song of Stronghold's palace well was gone.
"You're different, Sidge," sighed Izhar. "Stop doubting yourself. You've every right to the title of Cloud Born, but if you don't believe it, neither will the rest of them. Gohala. The Stormblade. None of them."
Sidge withdrew the corestone pendant Izhar had given him. He stared into the hollow space running through the irregular lump of fused earth. H
e could almost feel the energy skinning the surface. A force familiar, yet unknown.
"When we return to the temple, I'll enter the Sheath to seek my own corestone. You'll have this back."
"Do as you must. I already told you, the trip is overrated." Izhar urged the Paint onward. "As far as I'm concerned you own the damn thing and the title which goes with it. Keep that straight, Master."
Eventually, Sidge surrendered to Izhar's continued admonishments and rode in the back of the vardo. Despite a constant flow of curses directed at the Paint and the uneven road, Sidge did his best to meditate. He gripped the corestone between two palms, then four, staring into the setting's copper threads and the stone's craggy surface. He called to Vasheru and recited the fifteen mantras of the Storm's Plight. The Thirteen Falls of Gambora's Sacrifice. The First Mantra of Fire.
None helped him call forth Vasheru's power.
How had he done it in the palace? All he'd ever wanted rested in the palm of his hand.
His entire life he'd absorbed the mantras chanted in the halls of the Stormblade Temple. These holy phrases, delivered in metered chants and spoken in a tongue older than legend formed the foundation for the world he knew. But no, that life had begun to unravel as soon as he left the hallowed halls. More real than each of the twelve thousand one hundred and sixty-two mantras were the experiences of his journey and the visions he'd shared with Master Izhar.
Izhar and the mysterious man they'd come to call Chuman.
Yet none of these visions had made sense. In them, he'd driven the vardo underneath the platform city where the sea should have swelled, and been transported to a forest older than time itself. They'd escaped up through the palace garden's well, ferried by the hands of countless water spirits. The last "vision" had left him, the vardo, and Izhar soaked to the core with the briny water of the city canals.
In another, his Master, appearing as both Vasheru and a festering worm, had asked him to drink a cup of blood and gore.
He had.
The mantras, his foundation, his world, held no blood rites. No wells full of water spirits. No curious men with miraculous strength. There was only the Attarah and his people and their flight from slavery under the glorious protection of Vasheru.
And those evils would return, the mantras said as much. Others may have grown complacent in their beliefs, but he hadn't.
Then there were Izhar's teachings. His old mentor stood alone in the temple as an ardent scholar of the mysterious and near apocryphal Trials. While Sidge hated to admit it, those teachings made more and more sense.
Sidge's wings chirped, and he tossed his hood back. He couldn't let Master Izhar down, and he had much to prove. When they returned home, he would venture into the Stormblade Sheath and either retrieve his own corestone or be burned in Vasheru's righteous flames.
Until then, they would complete the pilgrimage as tradition demanded. He'd have time to practice this new blessing from Vasheru. They'd even return to Stronghold as they made their way home. Perhaps he'd see Kaaliya again. Time spent with her wasn't time at all—both unending and fleeting. A respite from the sudden rigors of temple life, a life he'd once fully understood.
Sidge took up the corestone and returned to reciting the First Mantra of Fire.
CHAPTER II
Kaaliya stared into the shifting radiance of the lamp. She thought she could see a difference between the depth of shadows, or the brilliance of the core, but she wasn't sure. She looked down Stronghold's main boulevard once again. Lamps on tall posts flanked the roadside. Their blueish cast remained calm and soothing, but watching the crawling, dappled shadows only convinced her of the difference in light between the one above her and the rest.
"That one, Firetongue," she said, pointing to the lamp and using her companion's human name. She'd requested the Ek'kiru's true name, and while it had been a lovely combination of clicks and motions, she knew she couldn't do it justice.
"Very astute," replied the Ek'kiru and her antennae arched in surprise. "How is it you know?"
"I'm not sure," Kaaliya shrugged. "How can you tell the difference?"
The Ek'kiru quirked her mandibles. "I don't tell anything. They tell me. They dance out of cadence with the others. It's quite infuriating."
Kaaliya watched more closely, and the same intuition came to her, but she couldn't quite see it.
"I'll take your word for it."
Firetongue adjusted the leather satchel slung across her body and grabbed hold of the wooden lamppost. The carved base and elaborate etchings provided solid hand and footholds, and Kaaliya mapped out the path she might take. But the Ek'kiru transitioned to the vertical surface as though she'd simply turned a corner and walked to the top.
"I thought I was a spider," Kaaliya muttered.
Firetongue shivered as she reached into her pouch. "Nasty little creatures."
Kaaliya laughed. Firetongue was a new addition to Lord Chakor's personal retinue, and she'd liked her immediately. This one asked pointed questions, never wasting time with pleasantries or attempting to mimic human etiquette. If she could, she'd try to keep the novice servant this way. Keep her from acclimating.
On this evening, the Ek'kiru servant had a very specific task which Kaaliya had asked to accompany her on—ensuring that the lights of Stronghold's main thoroughfare did not need repair.
Apparently, this one did.
Kaaliya had been to Stronghold countless times. It wasn't her first trip at Chakor's request. Yet most of her experiences here had been outside the sprawling palace grounds, and while Chakor wasn't shy by any means, he maintained as much of an air of mystery as he could about his position as the sole Jadugar.
Artifacts of a lost time like the lamps which lit the streets, the hidden mechanisms that controlled the gates, and even the waters that surrounded and flowed beneath the streets were under his purview. In their time of need, when the Children of Kurath returned, those waters would rise up and destroy the invaders, or so legend said. Rise up to keep them safe from a foe who hadn't stirred in a countless age.
The Jadugar kept these secrets of the city, and Chakor reveled in them. In truth, the office owed as much to his showmanship as anything. He'd begun to let her in on some of the minor tricks. More closely guarded were the rumors regarding the source of his wealth, his power to turn lumps of earth into gold and gems. She could care less about money aside from the freedom it bought, but those secrets he held close lest he lose the awe of commoners and nobles alike.
Secrets, she could respect. She had her own, and for those who requested her services, she often guaranteed discretion. Men tended to make themselves vulnerable around her, and she enjoyed the feeling of control. However, something had happened at the Deep Night festival which piqued her interest in the wealthy Jadugar's hidden knowledge and overrode her normal sense of propriety.
When Sidge had channeled Vasheru's Fire at the festival, something happened. He'd given fervent mantras, they'd all witnessed a flash of power—no reason to doubt he'd succeeded. Yet she knew both Chakor and Sidge well enough to read them amid the excitement. The way Sidge splayed his antennae and parted his mandibles, she knew he was shocked. Then, the same inner intuition told her to look to Chakor. She'd seen cats with feathers between their teeth appear less smug.
At the top of the pole, Firetongue produced a metal cylinder from her satchel. Her middle hand moved quickly, cradling the object close while her upper hands reached for the suspended light. Her feet, hidden under the crimson tabard she wore, clung effortlessly to the pole.
Kaaliya moved to the side and craned her neck, trying to see. Firetongue noticed, canted her mandibles and shrugged. She held the cylinder lower for Kaaliya to examine while her upper hands worked near the light.
No longer than a dagger and no thicker than her wrist, the dark metal tube was capped with bronze. Both ends were ringed with symbols and runes which Kaaliya had seen on artifacts dating to the true Attarah's time, though no one had ever offered her a suitabl
e explanation of their purpose. She held her questions as Firetongue worked.
The Ek'kiru's antennae went rigid, and she tilted her head forward. Hands worked in cautious motions as she simultaneously opened one end of the cylinder, removed a similar cap from the hanging lantern, and slid the ends together. In the brief moment it took for the two to connect, a bright orange fire seeped out like a forge stoked in a shuttered room. She quickly re-capped the lantern, and the light returned to a calming blue hue. In her haste, the cap to the cylinder fell to the wooden boardwalk.
Kaaliya picked it up. The metal was hot on her skin, and she nearly dropped it in surprise. She quickly found the heat to be right on the edge of comfort. She ran her fingers along the deep grooves. The symbols were angular and crude compared to the elaborate metalwork and carvings of skilled artisans.
"What are these?" she asked.
Firetongue stood beside her with one hand extended. Kaaliya surrendered the cap.
"Lord Chakor has only shown me how to make the repairs. He doesn't explain much, only that these are called emberseeds."
Kaaliya brought a finger to her lip. Typical Chakor.
Even without his enigmatic role, his wealth alone would sustain his seat at the Attarah's table. She added the bit of information to her questions about the festival and wondered how she could ply more details from him.
"You conspire," said Firetongue, her tone friendly.
Kaaliya raised an eyebrow and smiled. "That obvious?"
"I may not be human, but I understand when a woman plans to lay a new trail for a man."
"Any recommendations?" asked Kaaliya as they started up the boulevard.
"From what I have seen, you don't need any help with Lord Chakor," Firetongue replied. "But is your conspiracy why you came with me on this menial task?"
Kaaliya watched the orange Ek'kiru for any sign of displeasure at the idea she'd accompanied her just to gather information. She found herself focusing on her own reflection in the single glossy eye facing her.
