Wit'ch Fire: Book One of The Banned and the Banished

by James Clemens

  The mystery of why all this was happening and why he had been lured to this chamber finally penetrated the shameful ache in his heart. He pushed to his feet. He had lived with the memory of his foul act for centuries. Though the sight of the statue had shocked and thumbed this old bruise to life, an anger now began to build in his breast, burning back his throbbing guilt. He straightened his back. Whoever had sculpted the statue had much to answer—and Er’ril was determined to be the one to pry those answers forth.

  Bol spoke up as Er’ril stepped into the chamber. “Out with it man! What is wrong?”

  Er’ril nodded to the statue. “That is the young mage whom I slew the night the Book was forged.” He saw Bol’s eyes widen with his words, and even the girl shied from him; but he did not look away this time. His voice held steady. “I do not know what game is being played here. But I mean to end it.”

  Er’ril strode closer to the statue. As he approached, the pain on the boy’s sculpted face seemed to worsen, as if the statue recognized him and feared meeting him again. Just a trick of the light, he thought. He reached a finger and touched the hard crystal surface. For a moment he expected it would burn or in some way harm him, revenge for his previous crime, but the stone was merely cool and smooth, its surface slightly damp with dew from the moist cavern air.

  Er’ril found his finger brushing the boy’s cheek. He had forgotten how very young the lad was. And how small—Er’ril towered beside the kneeled statue. Surely the child had not deserved this fate. Er’ril tried to find words to ask his forgiveness, but he had never learned the boy’s name.

  “It had to be done,” Bol said softly behind him. “I read the old texts. Innocent blood had to be shed.”

  “But did I have to do it?”

  “We all have burdens we must carry in life: my sister Fila, Elena, the boy. These are dark times, and if we pray for a future dawn, we must get on our knees, no matter how tired our bones or how sore our joints.”

  “I am done with praying. Who listens?” He placed his palm on the boy’s raised and anguished face. “Who listened to this boy?”

  “The path you have walked has been one full of heartaches and sorrow, and I will not say where you walk next will be any easier. I can only tell you this—it is the one path that will redeem all you’ve done and justify all who were sacrificed. Do not lose your heart, Er’ril of Standi.”

  Er’ril let his hand slip from the boy’s face. “It is too late. My heart was lost long ago.”

  “No.” Bol reached a hand and squeezed Er’ril’s shoulder. “It may be hiding, grown hard over hundreds of winters, but down this path I wager you will find your heart again.”

  Er’ril’s face tightened. He had no wish to find his heart again. That would be a pain he could never bear.

  Elena’s small voice suddenly rang with alarm. “Listen!”

  Er’ril raised his head. A familiar noise was again flowing toward them—hissing.

  Goblins approached! Er’ril glanced toward the tunnel. No sign yet of the beasts. He glanced around the chamber. There was one other tunnel opening onto the chamber, and from there, too, flowed the sibilant hiss of goblins.

  “They have us boxed,” Bol said.

  “And we’re too exposed out in the open,” Er’ril said. “Our best chance is in one of the tunnels.”

  Bol turned to Er’ril. “We have no chance of fighting them. We don’t even have a weapon. They drove us here for a reason, surely not to kill us. They could have done that at any time.”

  Er’ril swung from Bol’s side and stepped again toward the statue. “I am not trusting to the logic of a rock’goblin. All I know is we need a weapon.” He slipped to the back of the statue. Leaning forward, he grasped the pommel of the silver sword and pulled on it. For a moment, it stayed caught within the grip of the sculpted crystal, and Er’ril feared he did not have the strength to yank it free, but as his muscles knotted tighter, the sword suddenly slipped free as if a ghostly hand had simply released its hold.

  Er’ril staggered backward, sword in hand. Steadying himself, he raised the weapon up. Its long blade shone so bright the silver itself seemed to be forged of glory. “Now we fight. Enough of slinking shadows and hissing threats.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” The voice came from behind him. Er’ril twirled around, his sword shearing through the air to point at the speaker. From the other tunnel stepped a hunched figure. Crookbacked and gray with shaggy hair, the speaker raised his face toward the light. It was a man. He stepped toward them. He wore only a loincloth, foul with mud and filth. His chest was scarred with the raking of many claws, and he limped on the club of a twisted foot. His right arm had been torn off at the elbow and now ended in a scarred mass of pink tissue.

  “Who are you?” Er’ril asked.

  With his words, a rush of goblins burst into the room from the tunnel behind the man. They clustered around the man’s legs like nervous shadows. Elena had crept closer to Er’ril by this time. He heard her squeak beside him and glanced to see red eyes staring out from the other tunnel. They were trapped.

  He faced the decrepit man again. “Who are you?” he repeated, his voice thick with threat.

  The man pushed back his muddied hair to reveal a gaunt face pocked with scars. His nose had been torn and had healed crookedly; one eye was gone. He smiled to reveal a mouth barren of teeth. “You do not recognize me, Er’ril?” The man cackled, his laugh bright with near-madness; his hand twitched as if it had a will of its own.

  “I know none such as you, creature of the cave,” he said with disgust.

  “Creature of the cave?” The man tittered again. His hand climbed to his hair and picked at something there. He dug it out and examined it a moment, then pinched it between nails grown long and yellow. “Your brother was never so rude when last we met—him begging for a boon.”

  Er’ril’s eyes twitched with surprise. Shock held his tongue. Who was this madman?

  Bol spoke into the silence. “You live among the rock’goblins?”

  The man waved a dismissive hand. “They fear me. They call me ‘the-man-who-lives-like-rock’ in their clicking and hissing tongue.”

  “You know their language!” Bol’s voice rang with wonder.

  “I’ve had plenty of lonely time to learn.”

  Er’ril had by now overcome his shock. He cared little for the rock’goblins and their speech. “You spoke of my brother,” he finally said.

  The man’s bright eye settled back to Er’ril. “Oh, yes, Shorkan was always a mixture of delight and frustration. Such a pity we had to lose him.” His eyes shifted to the statue. “We lost so much that night.”

  “Enough of this foolery, old man. Who are you, and why have we been herded here?”

  The man sighed heavily. “I was once called Re’alto, Master Re’alto by my pupils. Do you still not recognize the headmaster of the school?”

  Er’ril could not stop a gasp from escaping his lips; his sword point dropped to the floor. Master Re’alto! Impossible; but Er’ril spied a vague resemblance under the scars and filth. How could this be? How could the headmaster still be alive? All the mages had been thought destroyed the night the school was purged by the skal’tum and dog soldiers. The boy was supposed to be the only survivor. “H-How?”

  The man stayed silent as his strained smile faded to a sad frown. A certain lucidity entered his bright eye. His voice lowered with the weight of memory. “On that night … I sent your brother after the boy in the apprentice wing and tried to escape. I meant to flee myself, but the dreadlords caught me. Luckily, they decided just to play with me.” He pointed to his shredded arm and scarred chest. Suddenly the old man looked dazed. He searched around himself as if he had lost something. His eye fixed on a tiny goblin, much smaller than the others. He snatched the squirming creature up by one arm. “Aren’t they cute when they’re young?”

  Er’ril’s mouth sneered in disgust. He had never respected the headmaster, having thought the man too craven
and whining. But now … “Master Re’alto, enough of this nonsense. What happened?”

  Er’ril’s words snapped him back. He dropped the goblin, as if surprised to be holding it. He wiped his hand on his loincloth and continued. “I … I still lived when word reached my dreadlord captors that Shorkan had escaped with a boy. They left me for dead, as I was thick with their poisons. I dragged myself off to one of the deepest cellars, and from there, I knew a way into the underground caverns.”

  “You abandoned your school.”

  The man’s voice grew stern. “I am no sea captain to die with his ship! The school was lost. All that roamed the halls were the screams of the dying and the dogs of the Dark Lord.” The old man wiped at his brow as if to erase the memory. “I just wanted to die in peace, not fill the belly of a dreadlord. So I dragged myself here.” He waved his hand to encompass the chamber.

  Bol spoke next. “Yet you did not die—not of your poisoned wounds or age.”

  Master Re’alto’s eye settled on the statue. His eye became lost and the old man began to hum to himself, rocking slightly on his feet.

  When it was clear no answer was forthcoming, Bol cleared his throat.

  Re’alto blinked at the noise, then spoke, his voice a whisper. “No, I didn’t die. Instead he came back.”

  “What do you mean?” Er’ril asked.

  “The boy needed me. Somehow he knew where I was and he appeared, rich with Chyric power. His light healed me, and as long as I kept near the light, its magick kept the years from aging me. He needed a guardian, someone to watch over him.” He pulled his eye from the statue and spoke to them in a conspiratorial tone, as if afraid the statue might hear. “At first I balked at his request, but I had so poorly kept my school from harm.” The man sagged with exhaustion. “How could I refuse?”

  “How do you know all this?” Bol asked. “Does the statue speak to you?”

  Re’alto’s one hand fluttered about his head as if waving the thought away. “No, he speaks to me in dreams. He is the only thing keeping me sane down here.”

  Bol turned to Er’ril, his eyes full of doubt, questioning the man’s current sanity.

  Suddenly the man sprang straight and screamed at them. “Keep her away!” The goblins erupted in angry agitation around his feet.

  Er’ril glanced beside him to see Elena reaching a hand, her ruby-stained hand, toward the statue. She seemed only curious. The man’s words froze her. “You’d better leave it be,” Er’ril said to her.

  The moon’falcon on her shoulder squawked at him, but she dropped her hand and slipped closer to Er’ril.

  As she retreated from the statue, the man calmed down, and after a few breaths, the goblins settled to a low hiss. “She must not touch it,” the man said.

  “Why?”

  “The boy waits only for you, Er’ril, no other. We have both been waiting a long time for this meeting.”

  Er’ril’s eyes narrowed. “For what purpose?”

  The scarred man pointed with his one good hand toward the boy’s raised limb. The statue’s arm ended at the wrist. When Er’ril just stared at him in ignorance, Re’alto started to jab vigorously toward the statue. “To complete the statue, you fool!”

  What was he talking about? Er’ril thought. The man clenched his fist and shook it at him. Then, like the bursting of a log in a hot fire, Er’ril suddenly understood! He spat toward the man. “So that’s why you stole the ward?”

  “About time you figured it out,” Master Re’alto said, then continued to mumble something else, as if he was arguing with himself. Suddenly he raised his head and yelled at Er’ril. “You were always so thick-headed!”

  Before Er’ril could respond, the old man swung to face the plague of goblins behind him. He clucked and hissed at them. One of the goblins near the back darted away. Re’alto spoke with his back to Er’ril. “Their sense for magick is strong. That is how they found me. The light scares them, but the magick attracts them. They think me some sort of god.”

  Down the tunnel, a commotion arose. A goblin pushed through the others. Its hands were clutched together, laden with something heavy. Its tail flagged back and forth in agitation as it stepped up to the old man. With its head bowed, it offered what it held in its clawed hands. Re’alto accepted the gift with a hiss and a snort.

  The goblin slunk away, and Re’alto turned to Er’ril. “It was easy for them to find where you had hidden the ward. The boy spoke to me in dreams, and I sent them to fetch it. We knew you would come back for the ward, so we just waited. When word reached me that you had arrived, I had that little goblin use it to lure you down here.”

  “Why didn’t you fetch me yourself and save us all this game of chase?”

  The headmaster frowned and rolled his eyes. “I must not leave the light’s touch. It’s not safe for me.” He held the ward out to Er’ril. “I have waited long enough. Finish the statue.”

  Er’ril stared at the ward. He had risked so much trying to retrieve it, but now that he knew to what purpose he was meant to put it, he balked. The chunk of metal melded out of the iron distilled from the blood of a thousand mages glinted a fiery red in the silver light. Er’ril studied it and knew what he had to do.

  The ward was forged into the shape of a fist—a small boy’s fist.

  Er’ril handed his sword to Bol, whose eyes were wide with questions. With his hand shaking, Er’ril took the ward, the iron fist almost slipping from his numb fingers. He clenched it tighter, his fist wrapping around the smaller fist. He stepped to the statue.

  “Only you could do this, Er’ril,” the headmaster of the school said. “Your hand took his life.”

  Er’ril reached and balanced the fist upon the empty wrist of the statue. It fit perfectly. When his fingers slipped free of the ward, the fist remained in place. He stepped back. With the statue complete, a new nuance shaped the sculpture. Where before the boy had appeared plaintive and his face pained with supplication to an uncaring heaven, with the fist raised high, the piece was transformed into one of defiance. The boy’s face now shone with the agony of responsibility, the fist raised in rage and determination.

  It was no longer a boy who knelt, but a man.

  As Er’ril stared, tears in his eyes, the crystal face swung to stare back at him, gaze meeting gaze.

  Behind him, Elena cried out in surprise, and a rattled gasp escaped from Bol. But Er’ril’s ears only heard the mumbled words of the old headmaster, his voice bordering between exaltation and madness. “Only you could do this, Er’ril of Standi. Your hand took his life. Only yours could give it back.”

  31

  MOGWEED HUGGED THE stone wall of the tunnel as Rockingham fought to light a brand made from a dried branch and a torn piece of Mogweed’s shirt. The si’lura feared the thin man, with his quick movements and suspicious eyes, but found he could not help but respect the man’s tongue—and few had ever commanded Mogweed’s respect. Not even his own brother, with his stout heart and loyalty, had earned more than a sneer from him; this man, however, was worth studying. With only his words and his wits, Rockingham had won them freedom from the claws of the winged beasts. Fardale would have fought them with teeth and muscle, and only won them all a savage death.

  There was much Mogweed could learn from this man.

  “Blast this thing!” Rockingham cursed as he struggled, trying to ignite the oiled shirt with his tinderbox. He struck the flint again, and at last a thick spark jumped to the tinder. “Finally!” He blew the spark to a weak flame. Soon the shirt blazed, blooming like a rose in the gloom; the sudden light cast dancing shadows across the thin man’s features and stung Mogweed’s eyes. “Collect a few more branches and strip that shirt. We may need to replenish our torches. I don’t know how long we’ll be down here.”

  Mogweed glanced the length of the tunnel, first in the direction of the wood where the skal’tum waited, then toward where his brother had vanished. Fardale’s howl still echoed in his head. “Where do we go?”

&
nbsp; “We kill time. Dawn is near. The skal’tum will only wait so long before the sunlight chases them to shadowed roosts.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Rockingham shrugged. “Just in case, we can use the time to see if there’s another way out of here—an exit well away from those beasts.”

  Mogweed’s respect for the man flared higher. He always seemed a step ahead, his mind cunning even in the face of such monstrosities. “We need to be careful,” he said, trying to be of use. “There is something down here, something that hisses. I think it attacked my brother.”

  Rockingham raised his flaming brand. “Creatures of the dark usually fear fire. As long as we go slowly and keep the torch blazing, we should be safe.”

  Mogweed nodded and followed the man deeper down the tunnel. Their muffled steps echoed around them. Moss and roots hung in drapes from the low roof. As they crept farther along, Rockingham’s torch occasionally caught a dry tendril of hanging rot, igniting it with a hiss and a crackle. Each time that happened, Mogweed’s heart jumped to his throat. The hiss reminded him of the sound that had drawn Fardale away.

  After a stretch of silence, Rockingham whispered, “Ahead there. I think the tunnel ends.”

  Mogweed’s feet stopped. He could not follow.

  “It’s a room,” Rockingham said, continuing, unaware his companion had halted.

  Darkness quickly wrapped about Mogweed’s shoulders as Rockingham and the torch slipped farther away. The gloom began to whisper wordlessly in his ear with a voice of its own. Mogweed knew it was only his imagination, but still the blackness could not be ignored. His fear of the darkness clashed with his fright at what might lie ahead.