Healer's Ruin

by O'Mara, Chris

  'Just more war,' Chalos sighed, rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling. There had once been a fresco, colourful and bizarre, but now it remained only in grey slivers. He could only guess at what it had all once meant. 'Nothing to write home about.'

  'Listen to the jaded veteran,' Samine said with a smile, rising and bounding over to the bed. She sat next to him and pressed the back of her hand to his head. 'You've got a fever. Come on, sit with me by the fire. Bring some of these animal hides.'

  'You should listen to her, Chalos,' said Mysa.

  The healer grunted and went with Samine to the fire. They sat with hides drawn around them, his head on her shoulder.

  The sun was shining in through the wide, arched window. Without warning, figure appeared there, crouched on the weathered stone sill, casting a long, black shadow.

  'Make yourselves at home, why don't you?' the kid said.

  Chalos sat bolt upright and stared at the silhouetted figure. Mysa rose from the floor, flapping her wings and shrieking in as fearsome a manner as she could muster. Samine whirled, making a claw of her right hand.

  'I like what you've done with the place,' said the Wielder as he hopped down. Chalos noticed the slight wince on his young face as he landed. He's sick, the healer realised. Sick inside. Something terrible ravages him. No wonder, all that magic coursing through him... 'Oh no, wait,' the Wielder said with a mock frown. 'I like what I did with the place. You're just here on a jolly, right?'

  Chalos sensed a static charge in the air a heartbeat before he saw any sorcery. The Wielder was about to unleash his power but Samine got there first and with a loud tearing sound the air before her split and a bar of violet light spilled out, crashing into the young northerner. The Wielder deflected it with a flash of emerald light and Samine's magic flayed wildly at the walls and ceiling, pulling tiles loose and boring deep holes into the stone.

  Then there was a flicker of silver and a broken cutlass arced from the Wielder's hip, dodged another salvo of the Dread Spear's sorcery and drove into Samine's chest. She fell back onto the fire which went out with a loud, fizzing hiss.

  Adrenaline pushed both pain and exhaustion from the healer's body as he hurled himself towards Samine. The broken-bladed cutlass pulled itself free from the Dread Spear and Chalos felt it sweep past him, opening a wound on his side. He went down, throwing himself over Samine. The sword came in again, digging its meagre blade into the back of his shoulder. Chalos tried to heal both Samine's wound, and his own, but the combination of exhaustion and the blade's constant assault prevented him from forming a robust connection with the world of magic.

  Suddenly the cutlass was wheeling away from him, its hilt gripped by Mysa's fierce claws. The bird wrestled with the weapon which seemed able to fly almost as well as the crow could despite having no wings and appearing to be an inanimate object, and the two were quickly crashing blindly into the walls. First Mysa would crack the cutlass against the stone and then the cutlass would take control of their flight path and drive the bird into something hard and unyielding. Loose feathers twisted in the air. Then, through good fortune more than judgement, Mysa rammed the blade into the wall at such an angle and with such wanton force that the weapon's ornate guard split and what remained of the blade spun away. The handle dropped straight down, bouncing once, and lay still.

  Mysa fell after it, landing with a dull thud.

  Chalos looked at the bird. The Wielder looked at the cutlass.

  Then they looked at each other.

  'Come on then, invader,' the Wielder said. 'Stake your claim.'

  Chalos growled and lunged, clearing the space between them in two great leaps. But anger was no substitute for combat skill and the Wielder dodged his gouging fingers, kneed him in the gut and tossed him out of the window.

  'Overrated,' the Wielder said, dusting his hands. 'Unlucky.'

  The Wielder turned back to see Samine struggling to her feet with a groan. The air around her was rippling as if a cavalcade of energy was trying to burst through. Alarmed, the Riln hero raised an arm, preparing to blast the southern girl to pieces.

  Something hit him in the back with enough force to break his concentration and his power fizzled away to nothing. He felt tiny pinpricks rake through his cloak and flesh. Gasping with surprise, he reached around and took hold of something dry, small and muscular. With a deep frown he raised the little creature up, peering at it in fascination.

  'You're an ugly little shit,' the Wielder said to the dangling reptile. Its hide was burned away in patches, revealing raw, blistered wounds. Dark shards of what seemed to be pottery were embedded in its flesh. It looked half dead, yet stared evilly out of its one good, beady eye. The Wielder had never seen such a thing before. 'What are you, then?'

  A long black forked tongue shot out, going for his eye. With a yelp, the Wielder threw the creature across the room and pressed a hand to his face, blood trickling between his fingers.

  'That's Sixt,' said Samine. 'And his timing is impeccable.'

  Through his remaining eye the Wielder saw the air before him slashed open and glimpsed, beyond the rent, a world of glistening bands of energy. His mouth gaped. So this is where the slingers of the south get their power from... Then, a volcanic surge of raw magery thundered over him, pouring out of the window behind him in a thick, sludgy mass. The floor of the chamber gave way beneath the deluge and the top of the tower split like eggshell as a column of energy forced itself out to jab at the guts of the grey clouds above.

  Chalos fell eight floors. He cracked his upper back on the edge of a square stone building, spun vertically, smashed a flailing wrist on an outcrop of masonry and struck the pathway below which crumbled beneath the impact. He hit the carven slabs of a vast underground chamber surrounded by streaming soil and rubble.

  For a long moment he lay there, staring up. Through the ragged hole in the ground, he could see richly coloured patterns of light play across the sky. He heard the boom of magery and the rumble of a toppling tower.

  Sick from the pain that lanced through his body, he rolled onto his side and tried to rise. The bones in his right forearm and wrist were shattered and he fell onto his face. Even the drawing of one ragged breath made his whole upper body protest. Blood was seeping through the sword wound in his side. The room was starting to spin.

  Samine. Mysa.

  His groan became a roar of frustration and then of stubborn determination as he managed to get onto his haunches. Closing his eyes, he tried to force back the mind-killing barrage of pain to found his mirror. It was brighter than before, the world of magic. More real, perhaps. Yes, he was slipping into it. He could feel the madness on the edge of his consciousness, a howling black field that was desperate to claim him.

  Come, his own voice seemed to say to him. Step over to this side of the world. Embrace these bands of energy. Stop all of your pain and suffering forever and dwell in a haze of eternal wonders until your body withers and turns to dust. What have you got to lose?

  He resisted the urge to abandon himself to the world of magic, repeating in his mind the same mantra. Samine. Mysa.

  Drawing from the energy before him, Chalos felt his wounds heal. The pain was slow to leave him as his nervous system responded in utter confusion, still reporting the agony of injuries that had suddenly vanished.

  Samine. Mysa.

  The chanting in his head continued. It was his mind's way of keeping him focussed, of taking his mind away from his agony.

  Climbing to his feet he mopped sweat from his brow with the back of his right hand. Although the appendage was no longer twisted and useless, it nevertheless housed a phantom pain that would perhaps never truly be exorcised. Wincing, Chalos looked for a way up to ground level.

  He was in a huge circular room. The stones beneath his feet were marked with oblique, impenetrable script. There did not seem to be any doors, though there were a number of alcoves in which small stone pedestals suggested the past presence of statues. Turning towards the
centre of the chamber, his eyes settled on a wide-jawed well, its lip a ring of shining bronze etched with complex alien glyphs.

  Chalos could feel something in the well. A voice, calling. No, scratch that – a multitude. The chorus sounded behind his eyes in a language he had never heard and could never understand, a language that was never meant for the ears of a Rovann, or any inhabitant of the contemporary world. He edged closer, careful to avoid tumbling into the pit. Craning his neck, he looked in.

  Blue. Green. Red. Pink. Purple. Orange. A swirling, marvellous tumult of magical energy. It seemed frozen in a glacier-like substance, and the well looked down upon it. The light from above, meagre though it was, picked out strands of colour so vivid that they hurt the healer's eyes.

  It's magic, he knew. Actual magic, a raw and volatile physical manifestation of it. Pulled from the realm of sorcery and fixed, somehow, in this world by the people who built this city... the people who were slaughtered by the golems for their crazed experiments.

  And then he understood where the Wielder had got his sorcery from. He drew his energy from this place, using this well to power his magery. No wonder he was so powerful! Those had been his animal hides and it had been his campfire they had discovered in the tower.

  So there must be a way down... and a way back up.

  He turned his attention back to the alcoves and noticed now that one of them held a deeper darkness than the others. Not just shadow, but a portal. Chalos ran towards it and found a sloping passageway curving up towards the surface. Hurrying, the names of his loved ones flaring again in his mind, he emerged in another chamber, this one smaller, with a passage that led out into the street.

  It didn't take him long to find his bearings. To his right, the street was clogged with thick dust and a few chunks of masonry lay scattered and smoking. Pressing the edge of his robes to his face, he pressed forward into the dust, narrowing his eyes as he went. Soon he came upon the site of the tower and his heart sank.

  An enormous pit barred his way, the edges jagged and warped. Stone and wood had been blasted with extreme heat leaving what could only be described as a grievous architectural wound. Cautiously stepping to the edge, Chalos looked down into a miasma of cooled lava-like sludge that was only now paling from harsh violet to chalky grey.

  Samine... Mysa...

  The bird, perhaps, could have escaped. But the Dread Spear? Without thinking, he found his mirror and plunged, landing thigh-deep in the mire. The pain was immediate and extreme, but his determination – now hardened by an edge of crazed passion – enabled him to focus on the magic as he poured energy into his lower body. The flesh sizzled and melted, blistered and burst from his bones over and over, but was each time remade. Now almost numb with the overload of agony, Chalos thrust his right hand into the sludge. Then his left hand. Now, a constant, livid circuit was open between his body and the world of magic.

  A hand flopped into his grasp, slender and brittle. The healer's heart leapt.

  Gritting his teeth, his crazed eyes flaring, he delved deeper into the volcanic sludge and with a loud grunt pulled Samine's body free. He turned, waded to the edge of the pit and tossed her onto a broken ledge, all that remained of a basement room. He then threw himself in after her, dumping a mass of magic into his arms and legs. The pain, again, refused to subside as his mind and nervous system failed to recognise the unnatural repair of his flesh, but although he was still in pain, at least he wasn't crippled.

  Samine was a charred skeleton, utterly annihilated by the deluge of power. Whether it had been her magic or the Wielder's that had destroyed the tower did not matter. Theirs had been a duel to the death.

  No. Not death.

  Chalos put his hands on the corpse and hurled whole columns of magic into the warped black bones. For a moment he felt something, a resisting force, something ragged and meagre but definitely there, the ruined tatters of a soul. It felt like a small bitrd in his hands, fluttering softly. Then it was gone. Exhausted he fell back onto his haunches, arms hanging by his sides. A hacking cough dislodged the dust that was clogging his throat.

  His desperate, roving mind fixed on the well of magic in the underground chamber.

  OK, Wielder... you drew from it, why can't I?

  He felt for it, like a blind man looking for a bannister. Still connected to the world of magic, he treated the well as if it was a mirror, finding its fierce gleam on the edge of his perception and creating a three-pointed cell of surging magical energy, his quivering soul at one point, the world of magic and the Ruin's well at the others. A warm hand seemed to descend upon him and the well gave up its power to him.

  With a crash of exhilaration he swamped Samine's skeleton with all the power he could manage, his body shaking like loose guttering in a rainstorm. The magic flowed through him, battering at the walls of his mind, pulling at the fixings of his soul, fraying his senses.

  He was so entranced by the tumult that he did not notice something break from the sludge below and arc towards him. It struck him hard on the temple, knocking him over. He slid across the stones with a gasp.

  Groaning, the healer raised himself up. A small form had arranged itself between him and Samine. A tiny, pebble-like skull regarded him eyelessly. It shook from side to side.

  'Mysa...?'

  The wretched thing hopped closer. It had no beak and no wings, resembling something that had been left over from a banquet. Tiny ribs poked through disintegrated flesh.

  She must have fought so hard, Chalos thought. Used her own magical power, potent as it was. Accomplices are tough to kill indeed.

  Tears sprang from the healer's eyes and he collapsed before the bird.

  'Why?' he asked. 'Why can't I bring her back? Why?'

  With a series of clumsy movements the bird skipped closer and hopped onto his arm before clambering up onto his shoulder. The tiny cool skull nestled against his neck.

  A thin and decayed voice sounded behind the healer's eyes. It was breaking up as if all the power in the world was being used to push a final message through before oblivion reigned.

  'You brought us back, Chalos... all that power... but truly saving us is beyond even the well's power... all you are conserving is bones and pain... she is gone... let her go... let us both go.'

  Chalos hung his head, the tears coming freely. And there he stayed, for goodness knew how long, long after the collection of bones on his shoulder had crumbled apart and long after what had once glowed faintly in the heart of the corpse had faded to an ember and then vanished, dust swirling up and surrounding them all like a shroud.

  Beneath the city, power pulsed in invisible beams. A wave of energy swept upwards and outwards, stretching to the fields that lay in the shadows of the Ruin's great towers.

  Unlocked after centuries... triggered at last.

  True, the little Riln had tapped into the well's frozen sliver of pure magic, but that was all. He had not pushed hard enough to break the sacred seal that lay over the object, content to sup from it periodically rather than break the floodgates. But the foreign healer... he had reached in with both hands and unleashed the well's true power.

  Now it could perform the task it had been designed to do. Now it could conquer death...

  So thick was the dust, so utter was his grief that Chalos did not feel the tremor from beneath the city as the well gushed forth its energies. Nor did he sense, at first, the vague rustling in the streets above the basement room. Small whorls of air were twisting over ancient shards of bone, nudging the long dead from the grooves, cracks and alcoves that had become their resting places centuries earlier.

  We live! We live!

  It was a rushing wind, a hissing breath, carrying with it the voices of those whose departed souls had been gathered into the well. Centuries after the golems had fallen on the city, slaughtering its army and scattering its inhabitants, punishing its mages for the unnatural and meddlesome sorcery, the souls had become beaten wisps like patches of cloth that had been washed so m
any times they were now almost transparent. Little remained of the personalities and intelligence of the army that was being returned to life.

  But what had endured was the will to stand, to brandish weapons that seemed to reform from the air, to adjust helms and breastplates that formed from countless ancient flakes of metal, and to march to their positions, ready to defend the city against any and all enemies.

  They're coming, they're coming, to your posts! The voice was incessant, a chorus of dessicated throats that groaned like the wind through the dusty streets of the Ruin. Who was coming? These rotted minds no longer knew, nor did they care. All that concerned them was defending the city, defending the lands around it, from something... from anything...

  As rank upon rank of the ancient warriors reformed, they pulled harder on the strands of power emanating from the well, and harder on the unwitting portal through which the energy was pouring.

  Chalos gasped, falling forward onto his hands, his eyes bulging. He felt like a narrow tributary that had been forced to accommodate the roaring waters of a whole ocean. His soul was hammered, torn, punctured and then the edges of the rift battered smooth, making it a ferociously gleaming ring of protesting energy through which the magic of the well forced itself. He screamed himself hoarse, scrambling around in a panic, until the torrent eventually subsided. Then he lay moaning, his hand pressed to his chest.

  He could feel them.

  How many strands, a thousand? No, ten times that. A hundred times that. Each one a fine, strong wire of energy that ran from the heart of the resurrected being to the healer's soul. There, the strands converged, bound together like the strands that make a rope, and this cord ran straight to the well where it was anchored fast in the frozen sliver of pure magic the city's mages had procured in an era long past.

  Chalos could hear the clamour of the voices.

  'They're coming,' the chorus went. 'They're coming!'