by Watson Davis
“Hurry up!” Wu Cheen said.
“Right!” Sifa found the nodes, tapped the pattern, and shut off the magic. Shiyk’yath jumped closer to Sifa when the door began to move, stone grinding on stone.
“Run through!” Sifa said. “Hurry.”
Shiyk’yath darted through first, Wu Cheen pushing Che-su through next, and then following behind her. When the door had opened far enough, Sifa released the node and sprinted through with the door beginning to grind shut as soon as she released her grip.
On the far side of the wall, the same trees stood, a thick grove, their roots breaking up the tiles that had once been a flat town square. Worn stone faces glared down from the mountain.
“Whew.” Sifa took a deep breath of the fragrant air, full of the scent of roses and jasmine and more delicate flowers she didn’t even know. “We’re safe now.”
A voice said, “I have a lot of fond memories of this place. Some admittedly less happy.”
A single man stood atop the battlements staring down at them, wearing elegant silk robes lavish in their embroidery, a stylish black and gold cap on his head, with his hands clasped behind his back, his belly round and his legs seeming too long for his body.
Che-su whispered, “Dyuh Mon?”
Arenghel
“DYUH MON?” SIFA WHISPERED, staring at the man Ka-bes had read her night-time stories about, the hero of the empire, the Empress’s librarian and wizard. The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Dyuh Mon said, “You will suffer much less if you just give up now.”
“You can’t have her!” Che-su screamed, putting her hands on Sifa, twirling her around and throwing her away from Dyuh Mon.
Sifa stumbled over the roots of a tree and the broken tiles and fell to her knees, peering over her shoulder.
“All evidence to the contrary, my dear.” Dyuh Mon said, his tone cold and mocking, lacking the respect Che-su should be given. “Who’s going to keep me from her? You?” He nodded toward Wu Cheen. “Him?”
Sifa lunged to her feet, staring at this heartless man on the battlements across from her, the dark magic that infused the altars wrapping around him like an evil cloak. She tightened her hands into fists, imagining a bolt of lightning surrounding him, her heart beating faster and faster, a growl rising from her chest.
Dyuh Mon reached out to her, his eyes impaling her with their intensity. She had to listen to him and her concentration on attacking him waned.
“You should make this easy on yourself and your friends. Give yourself to me, for the good of the Empire, and I will promise that I will not harm your friends. Otherwise”—he tilted his head to the side, cocking an eyebrow, and shrugged—“it will not go well for any of you.”
Shiyk’yath darted out from the shadow of the tree. He wrapped his left arm around her waist and lifted her from the ground, carrying her through the trees to the street beyond.
Dyuh Mon said, “Or we can make it exciting and much more painful.”
Shiyk’yath carried her down a street lined with columns and empty shops, open doorways leading into dark shadows. He darted in between the columns, turning onto a cross-street, and there he sat her down on her feet.
“I was going to blast him!” Sifa said, punching Shiyk’yath in the chest.
Dyuh Mon’s voice thundered through the monastery, saying, “Sifa, my dearest, you have a very valuable soul.”
“Listen to me.” Shiyk’yath grabbed Sifa by the shoulders and shook her, pulling her attention back to him and away from Dyuh Mon and his speech. “How well do you know this godsforsaken place? Can you find a place to hide?”
“I don’t know.” Sifa shook her head, her eyes wide, thinking. “I could lose myself in the temple. The door has a magical lock and I can hide in there. Lots of different hallways, but I have only explored one of them.”
Dyuh Mon’s voice thundered, “A soul like yours works very well for opening the channels between the realms, allowing larger armies to pass through the veils. The Empress needs these armies to conquer this world as well as worlds and realms beyond.”
“You do that,” Shiyk’yath said, picking up a loose stone from the street. “You go hide. I’ll try to buy you some time.”
“Buy me some time?” Sifa shook her head, grabbing at Shiyk’yath’s arm, drawing him back. “I don’t need you to sacrifice yourself for me. I can just blast him.”
“He’s a powerful mage,” Shiyk’yath said. “Do you think he doesn’t know you can blast him?”
“Well.” Sifa blinked. “What if I blast him really hard?”
“Get out of here,” Shiyk’yath said. “Lose yourself.”
“Ka-bes is coming,” Sifa said. “She’ll save me. She’ll save us all.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should save yourself first.” Shiyk’yath pulled away and ran back to the street with the shops.
Dyuh Mon’s voice said, “Come back to me, my desert flower, so the Empress can bring more of Her infernal army to bear on the nations of this already damned world and hasten the inevitable.”
Sifa whirled and sprinted through an alleyway, took a turn, went through a courtyard, between some buildings, and into the plaza of columns before the temple.
She ran between the columns to the door into the mountain, her eyes searching the magical flows for the lock, her hand hovering over the stone, tracing the power, finding the node.
Sifa clenched her teeth and opened the door, a tear running down her cheek as she felt Che-su’s fall and Shiyk’yath’s terror.
Someone shrieked in agony.
The door opened and she heard a tick-tick-tick—a familiar sound, a sound that filled her heart with dread: that damned head.
“OR WE CAN MAKE IT EXCITING,” Dyuh Mon said, watching Sifa and the peasant flee deeper into the monastery, “and much more painful.”
Che-su stomped on the uneven ground, planting her feet to give herself a solid base for her casting, and she chanted the words for a wind summoning, a lance of frigid air. Her hands circled, preparing and focusing the lance.
Dyuh Mon lifted his hand, and spoke a word, triggering one of the many spell combinations he had already prepared. A magical net, dark and insubstantial, flew from his hand and wrapped itself around her, engulfing her and silencing her.
The words of Che-su’s spell ended, the sound cut off by the hex Dyuh Mon had placed on her. The magic of her spell swirled without focus, now out of control, seeking some exit.
Fear and desperation surged into Che-su’s eyes, her movements growing frantic as she tried to re-gain control of the forces she had summoned.
To no avail.
The currents exploded, lifting Che-su’s aging body into the air, flinging it into the wall of the old gatemaster’s home. She slid down the wall, mashing her fists into her temples, squeezing her eyes shut, mouthing a silent scream.
“Sifa, my dearest, you have a very valuable soul,” Dyuh Mon said, amplifying the volume of his voice with his magic so she would hear him. “A soul like yours works very well for opening the channels between the realms, allowing larger armies to pass through the veils. The Empress needs these armies to conquer this world as well as worlds and realms beyond.”
Dyuh Mon stepped off the battlements, using a gesture of his fingers and a whispered word to trigger a spell to allow him to float to the ground.
Che-su rose to her feet, bent over, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, her lips moving but no sound coming forth. Dyuh Mon threw one hand toward her and a wave of magical force slammed her into the wall. She collapsed in a heap.
Dyuh Mon stepped over roots that would have scandalized the caretakers had they still been among the living, ducking his head to walk beneath the limbs of an ancient tree he remembered as a small bush.
Something struck Dyuh Mon’s physical shield and he whirled around. The rogue from Basaliyasta had darted from the shadows behind Dyuh Mon, silent. His fists pounded on the shield, but did no damage. Dyuh
Mon raised his palm toward the thief, said a word, and a disk of dark magical force flew out from Dyuh Mon’s palm, smashing into the thief’s midsection.
The disk drove the air from the man’s lungs even as it drove him back relentlessly to slam into the wall of what was once the first-year acolyte’s barracks, smashing him through it, the plaster cracking, the bricks and mortar beneath giving way and tumbling back, leaving the thief lying on his back in the dusty rubble.
Dyuh Mon looked through the hole in the wall. He smiled as he remembered his year in that barracks with friends and enemies he hadn’t thought of in over a century. He shook his head and said, “Come back to me, my desert flower, so the Empress can bring more of Her infernal army to bear on the nations of this already damned world and hasten the inevitable.”
He strode down the main road, his eyes darting to each shadow, each possible hiding place, looking for the girl.
The peasant charged toward him, his arms pumping as he ran, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Dyuh Mon flung his arm out and triggered another spell with a word. Strands wrapped around the peasant, encasing him in a cocoon, with only his head left bare.
“Damn you,” the peasant yelled.
“My damnation is already a certainty; I’m planning on not dying for as long as I can for that very reason,” Dyuh Mon said, moving his arm, pointing to a branch, whispering a command. The strands extended to the branch of the tree, and pulled the peasant up, leaving him hanging upside down. Dyuh Mon walked up to him and patted his face. “Now, tell me where the little wench has run off to.”
“I will never tell you a thing, you bastard,” the peasant said, and he spat in Dyuh Mon’s face.
Dyuh Mon smiled. “Oh, yes, you will.”
KA-BES COUNTED SEVEN horses milling about around the moat before Arenghel, the stark walls and battlements empty, the dark mountain looming over them like a deadly promise, the gap between the ground and the mountain falling away into a pool of lava. The riders were walking across the bridge, single-file, holding hands but one of them pointed back at Ka-bes and Ja’ast and the whole group scurried back to their horses and mounted.
Ka-bes turned to Ja'ast and whispered, “She’s in there. I can feel her.”
“In there?” he asked, slowing his horse, raising his eyebrow. “In that godsforsaken place?”
She nodded. “I told her that if we ever got separated, we’d meet up here.”
“You couldn’t have chosen a nice park or an inn or something?”
The riders approached, riding hard, three men and a woman, a priestess.
Ka-bes lowered her head, pulled her bandanna over her nose, and dropped her hands to her sides, whispering a chant to summon her magic.
The priestess shouted, “May the Empress hear you.”
“Hold on!” Another rider waved his hand and trotted forward, and Ka-bes assumed he was the leader of the group. “Who are you two and what are you doing here?”
Before Ka-bes could speak, Ja'ast said, “We’re just two lost sheep looking for our shepherd girl.”
The riders formed up in a line before them, the priestess’s chanting almost inaudible.
“A shepherd girl, huh?” the leader said, his face caked with dust and dirt giving him a pale reddish pallor. With his hand on the hilt of his sword, he urged his horse a few steps closer toward them. “A little bitch by the name of Sifa, perhaps?”
“Now, let’s be civilized,” Ja'ast said, his hands raised, asking the riders for calm but glancing at Ka-bes. “No need—”
“Thyu’fest?” Ka-bes said, her voice trembling and muffled by the bandanna over her mouth.
The leader squinted and leaned toward Ka-bes. “Do I know you?”
“Yes.” Ka-bes tugged at the bottom of the bandanna, sliding it off, revealing her face, her discolored lips.
“The murderous slave whore!” Thyu’fest laughed and whipped his sword from his scabbard. “I should have known you’d be following that pup of yours. You owe me.”
“Come and collect, then,” Ka-bes shouted, standing in her stirrups. “If you can!”
Thyu’fest spurred his horse forward, shouting an inarticulate roar. The other men scrambled to draw their weapons, and the priestess stood in her saddle, pulling her arms in and cupping her hands
“Ah, well,” Ja'ast said. He dropped his reins, his horse rearing beneath him, his hands making symbols as he shouted words of magic.
Ka-bes whispered her trigger through gritted teeth, throwing her right hand toward Thyu’fest, her fingers splaying, her left hand grabbing her horse’s mane as the horse shied beneath her. Wind rushed from her hand, hardened by chunks of ice, and plowed into the middle of Thyu’fest’s body, driving him back out of his saddle, off the back end of his horse. He shrieked in agony.
The priestess punched her hands toward Ja’ast and a stream of fire erupted from her palms. Ja’ast leapt from his horse, the fire catching his side; the side of his shirt went up in flames, but he shouted and swung his hand.
Ka-bes screamed another word, and clenched her fist. The winds whirled around Thyu’fest, spinning him around in the air in a small tornado, lifting him into the air, carrying him away and dropping him wailing over the side of the canyon, into the lava beneath.
Sand spurted up in arcs from the ground, encasing the upper body of the priestess, hardening into stone. Ja’ast rolled through the sand, extinguishing the flames on his shirt.
The priestess fell from her horse, her feet kicking, her chanting decaying into a scream of rage. Her spell backfired and exploded within the stone with a whumpf. Her screams stopped.
The last two soldiers whirled their horses around and fled, running away from the black mountain.
Ka-bes cast a magesight, identifying the current position of the bridge, far from the last place she’d seen it, and trotted up to it. Ja'ast remounted and followed behind her.
She squeezed her horse’s sides and clicked her tongue, but the horse refused to step off into a giant hole in the ground. Ka-bes sighed and slid from her saddle.
Ja'ast shrugged as he dismounted. “They’re smarter than we are. If we had any sense, we wouldn’t go walking on air, either.”
“Spoken like an earthmage,” Ka-bes said, jogging onto the ethereal construction of air and magic spanning the chasm to Arenghel, with Ja’ast close behind. On the other side of the bridge, standing before the wall, Ka-bes began a chant.
Ja'ast held up his hand, passing it before the wall, and a network of wards and counter-spells sprang to life, a dangerous collection of magic of all kinds. “Damn. How did she get in?”
Ka-bes finished her chant, and said, “She’s got gifts.”
Ja’ast wrapped one of his arms over her shoulders, and she grabbed his waist. She triggered the spell and jumped. He tightened his grip around her. A force of concentrated wind pushed up against her, raising her into the air, soaring over the edge of the wall and depositing them on the battlements, on the walkway behind the crenelations along the top of the wall. Five stone faces, worn with age, glared at them from the mountainside above a temple set into the stone.
A man lay moaning in the rubble of one wall to their right, and another hung from a tree wrapped in a cocoon of webbing. Ka-bes crouched at the edge of the walkway, her eyes searching for a clue as to where to go next, but her heart told her the direction to go.
She pointed at an angle toward the temple. “She’s over there, and she’s scared to death.”
Ka-bes leapt from the walkway.
SIFA KNELT IN THE DARKNESS, squeezing the glowing gemstone around her neck in both hands, her hands and fingers only partially muffling the bright light. She leaned against a crumbly bit of wall, listening to the pad and swish of Dyuh Mon’s boots on the stone, wishing Ka-bes would hurry up, wondering if she should try to sneak past Dyuh Mon and make her way to Ka-bes.
Shadowy sunlight trickled through an empty window into the room where she hid. The window peered out on the colonnade
and the front of the temple. Bugs crawled over her forearms, their feet tickling her skin, and Sifa forced back the urge to stand and shake herself off, to rid herself of the bugs and the cobwebs and other creatures her imagination conjured up.
The door into the mountain stood open, inviting him in. She prayed he would think she’d gone that way and run in, so she could close the door after him and lock him inside with that head thing.
She peeked about the place she hid. A door led deeper into the building, possibly an exit. Vines and roots covered fallen planks, broken furniture, metal rods and leather rectangles, but it was all a pile of junk to Sifa, bits and bobs of no discernible use.
“There is no need to hide,” Dyuh Mon’s voice boomed, seeming to speak right into her ear.
Sifa jumped and gasped, frightened by the sudden sound.
“So.” Dyuh Mon chuckled. “Not into the temple after all.”
Sifa leapt from her hiding spot, charging to that door on the other end of the room. A root snagged her ankle, tripping her. She tumbled down onto her hands and knees.
Dyuh Mon’s shadow filled the doorway. Sifa scrambled to her feet, but the vines along the floor wrapped themselves around her forearms, pulling her back. A root grabbed her foot and she fell to one knee.
“There, there, child,” Dyuh Mon said, smiling with his lips, not showing his teeth, a kind expression in his eyes. “You are tired.” He raised his hand.
Outside, someone screamed, “Sifa!”
Sifa’s eyes went wide and she yelled, “Ka-bes! Help me!”
Dyuh Mon stepped back, whipping his head around.
Sifa yelled in her fury and in her anger. She pictured a conflagration of lightnings striking and killing this beast, a man she’d thought a great person and a great hero but instead a sham and a lie. The lightning came, ripping a hole through the roof of the building and down through three floors to smash through the ceiling into Dyuh Mon. The bolt exploded into the room with a white flash that was almost blue. Dyuh Mon screamed in agony, suspended in air, held in place by the fury of the storm.
