by Sam Ferguson
Jahre narrowed his eyes. “You repeat this question often,” the elf sage replied. “Is it that you honestly believe my hope is misplaced, or are you looking for an excuse to fight against me even now?”
Talon was silent, unwilling to answer Jahre’s condescending question. His eyes moved back to the vision which was now resting with a frozen view of the Nahktun Mountains. He scanned the jagged, rocky peaks, and nodded after a while. His anger was pressing him to fight against Jahre, but there was something else compelling him to take the lessons in.
Jahre waved his hand, seemingly prepared to let the question of Talon’s resistance die for the moment, and the vision cleared. Then, a sea of blue appeared where the mountains had been moments ago. “Now, I will teach you how to sound out the Taish runes, though unfortunately we have not nearly the time necessary to teach you to understand what you will be reading aloud.”
“What?” Talon spluttered, shocked at this abrupt turn of events. “You have time to take from your wretched afterlife of manipulation and deceit to torment me with a lesson in your cursed language?”
“Why, yes.” Jahre nodded with wide, innocent eyes. “Did you intend to infiltrate an elven order’s headquarters, navigate elven spells, traps and scrolls, and then lead an elvish army to victory without even knowing what the rune alam looks like? What did you think you were going to do with the Tomni’Tai scroll? Wave it at the portal?”
Talon cast his eyes to the side in annoyance. The old goat did have a point. There wasn’t much sense in asking more questions. He would need to open the portal with the scroll, and he realized now that he had always been so focused on whatever step had been immediately in front of him, he had never stopped to consider what language the scroll might be written in, or how he would speak out the incantation.
Talon returned his gaze to Jahre’s face, and the old elf seemed to understand that he was prepared to acquiesce to this necessity. As Jahre began the lesson, displaying runes and their corresponding common tongue sounds in the same way he had shown Talon the recent visions, Talon did decide one thing. There could be little ulterior motive to wasting precious moments until Khefir’s return teaching Talon to read Taish aloud. Jahre may very well be sincere in his professed desire to enable Talon’s success in this endeavor.
CHAPTER 4
Jaleal sat on a small, round stool, shifting his weight to prevent his legs from numbing as they dangled over the hard seat. Phinean stood next to a Svetli’Tai Kruk Priestess. It was the same person that had intervened in the fight with the assassin, saving a couple of the individuals embattled with him in the alleyways. She had not seen Jaleal making his way nimbly across the rooftops until he finally managed to find the appropriate time to strike the assassin down.
Wrapped in a blue cloth on the table beside Jaleal sat the Goresym, the magical stone that Jaleal had received from the Father of the Ancients back in the Middle Kingdom. Phinean and the priestess were discussing how to use the Goresym. Jaleal had not been invited to participate in the discussion. Worse still, the priestess had looked doubtful when asked if Jaleal could be returned home.
The gnome warrior turned his head, scanning over the bookshelves that lined the walls of this small room on the upper level of the Kruk castle which served as the headquarters for the order. Glancing at a closed door a few yards away, Jaleal let out a deep breath. Scrubbing the floor just before the doorway was a stout female elf. The rag in her hands had long ago turned from white to a dirty, reddish-black color as she worked furiously to clean the blood that had been smeared across the wooden planks while bringing the wounded in from the fight.
Of the combined elf force which had been tracking the assassin, one had died immediately, an elf warrior named Garfule. The local guards who had been involved had also slipped away soon after the battle had ended.
Only three had survived the ordeal with Talon. A human called Kai, an elf named Seldaric, and a younger Kruk priestess. She gave a valiant effort to the others as well, but it hadn’t been enough. Even as the wounded and dying were being shuttled to this castle in the minutes after Talon’s death, the priestess had immediately begun to tend to each of the fallen warriors in turn as they lay in the city streets. It was likely this immediate response to the situation at hand that had saved Kai and Seldaric’s lives.
Even now, remembering what he had seen of the battle as it raged through the back alleys and muddy streets of Tantine’s slum housing district, Jaleal was amazed by the skill of the assassin who, they later learned when investigative reports from the local guard arrived, had even been operating under the influence of a powerful sedative administered by an unsavory barkeep earlier in the night. Jaleal felt a deep sense of satisfaction at having been able to finally put an end to the man whose trail of death and havoc had rivaled the greatest destruction Jaleal had seen wrought by armies and dragons in the Middle Kingdom. If it had not been for Talon’s inexplicable hesitation in his battle with the younger priestess, Liloriel, the opportunity to strike might have eluded even Jaleal and his enchanted spear.
When each member of the team which had hunted Talon had been cared for to the best of her abilities, and Talon’s body had also been removed to the castle, Jaleal had approached the priestess about tending to Phinean as well. The older gnome had lain incapacitated, falling in and out of consciousness at a nearby inn for days, having sustained severe wounds during an earlier encounter with Talon.
After working regularly over the past two days in the castle’s makeshift hospital to restore both Phinean and the three survivors, she had managed to help bring Phinean’s wounds under control, and the spry gnome had risen with the morning’s sun as chipper as ever, if a bit clumsy. He had been so excited to see Jaleal that he had knocked over a sculpted bust of some elf hero from the Elf Wars, which had decided the priestess’s foul mood from the start. Jaleal certainly sympathized. The first day after the nighttime battle between Talon and the Kruk agents which hunted him, she had needed to hurry from one task to another, not even taking a moment to change into clean robes. The remnants of blood and mud from having tended to the wounded in the street clung about her all that day as she tended to her three patients, secured the relics which Talon had carried, arranged for the fallen to be returned to their families and properly honored for their sacrifice, and received reports on the assassin’s recent activities..
“Jaleal,” the priestess said as she stepped toward him.
The gnome, having been ripped from his musings, turned about to face the elf. The strain from the previous several days showed on her face. “I do believe we are ready to cleanse the sword.” she said, taking up the sword in her left hand.
“Anything you want me to do?” Jaleal asked.
The elf priestess nodded. “Carry the Goresym and follow me.”
Jaleal hopped down from his stool and snatched the stone in his hand. He shot one more glance back to the closed door where the wounded were still recovering and then hurried to keep up with the priestess.
Phinean followed silently, his hands clasped behind his back and his face bent down to the floor. None of them spoke as they made their way through a narrow hallway, crossed the parlor, and then descended a marble staircase to the basement level. Jaleal noted how sparse the building was in terms of decorations. There were no grand tapestries, no curio cabinets filled with fineries. Just a plain, gray marble floor holding up light brown walls, punctuated periodically by sconces flanking a single statue or plaque of brass honoring a fallen Kruk. Phinean had commented to Jaleal that the building was going to be receiving many more such statues and plaques thanks to Talon’s efforts after Jaleal had recounted to him the parts of a conversation he had overheard with a messenger.
Jaleal hadn’t heard the final count of the fallen Kruks, but he had seen the priestess pale and gasp, throwing a hand up to her mouth when the other Kruk gave her the information. Then there was the councilman, or former councilman according to the priestess, who had come to the building the day before demandi
ng that the Kruks disband. According to him, there were less than seven Kruks left alive. Even though Jaleal was a newcomer to the Elven Isles, even he could sense the frustration and gravity of the predicament the priestess now found herself in.
A once mighty order, autonomous and separate from the High Council that governed Selemet Isle, had been destroyed by one man. From what Jaleal could ascertain, the fact that the assassin had been human was as much a cause for concern as the fact that he had nearly slain everyone in the order. The elves were not accustomed to such things.
The priestess stopped in front of a large, black door. Having grown up through tiny fissures in the walls and floor around the door, a tangled mess of thorny vines had wound themselves around the wrought iron which reinforced the wooden door, effectively sealing it from all sides. Jaleal watched as the living barricade obeyed the priestess’ upraised hand, retreating and sliding off from the door with a leafy scraping. A golden light emerged from the keyhole and the door opened, swinging inward and to the left. Blue lights along the ceiling began to sparkle and shine. Jaleal followed as the priestess moved through the strange hallway. Unlike the rest of the building, which had been quite plain, this hallway was carved of stone, with exquisite scenes unfolding on either side of Jaleal that had him constantly turning his head from side to side to inspect every inch of it. There were battle scenes, coronations, councils, feasts, festivals, dragons, beasts, and every imaginable fantastic creature that had walked upon Selemet.
“It is a history of the Elven Isles,” Phinean said quietly from behind. “The runes below each carving describe the scene. We must be inside the Shrine of the Kruk.”
Jaleal nodded and turned his eyes downward. Taish runes glowed a soft hue of sky blue as he studied them.
“Come along,” the priestess said. “We don’t have time to dawdle.”
Jaleal reluctantly quickstepped to catch up with her. The hallway went on for some fifty yards, but they only crossed thirty before the priestess held up her hand and turned to the left. The warrior gnome saw there the carving of a fierce dragon. Upon its back rode an elf, and he held a terrible sword that sparked lightning from its blade.
“This is King Lemork,” the priestess said. “Let’s go inside.”
“Inside where?” Jaleal asked. There was no door, only solid stone.
The priestess ignored his question and pressed her right hand against the stone. A blue light radiated out from her hand. The stone nearly disappeared, leaving only a faint outline of the carved images hanging in the air before them like a blue mirage. She stepped through.
Jaleal inspected the area and stuck his left hand out. He felt nothing as he pushed through the ghostly images. He stepped through and found himself in a small, dark room. A stone table sat in the middle of the round space. Light came from a single hole in the conical ceiling that created a golden circle of sunlight on the gray slab of stone.
“Wait there, Jaleal,” the priestess commanded. She moved to the center of the room and set the sword on the stone table. She waved her hands over it and whispered an incantation. Then, she slipped the blade out from its sheath. A great hissing sound came from the blade, as if it were a viper made of steel that threatened to bite the priestess. Smoke sizzled from the blade as the metal was placed in the circle of light on the table. The priestess whispered another incantation and then turned to Jaleal, her hand out expectantly.
Jaleal stepped forward and gave her the Goresym.
The priestess held the stone in the light over the cursed blade. As the light struck the stone’s surface, the stone turned green, shining brightly and humming low as it began to vibrate.
“Goresym, I call upon you to cleanse the evil from Drekk’hul,” the priestess said in Common Tongue. Then she closed her eyes and began to chant in a language Jaleal did not recognize. It was like Taish, but older perhaps, for it was different and more guttural. The stone changed from green to blue, then to white, and then it became clear. Gold sparks shot out to the side of the stone, and the priestess backed away, letting the stone hover in the air above the sword.
Purple streaks of lightning darted across the sleek blade, but the priestess’ magic kept them in check. The Goresym began to spin, sending its golden sparks down toward the blade. The sword hissed and spat in protest each time one of the sparks struck it. The priestess continued her chanting, now holding both arms out to her side and tilting her head back and nearly shouting the words.
Wind picked up in the circular room, running clockwise in rhythm with the Goresym as it spun. The light from the ceiling above streamed through the now clear stone and seemed to become hotter and more intense after passing through the magical gem. Smoke rose from the blade and gathered itself to form a dark figure that hissed and tried to escape to the shadows.
“You think you have won?” a voice called from the darkness. “I was forged to drink elf blood.”
The priestess did not break from her concentration.
“Better take a step back,” Phinean told Jaleal as he reached a hand out to grab him. Jaleal shrugged it off and stayed close. He wanted to get a good look at this demon that had possessed the blade.
The darkness grew thicker, like a gathering mist, the shadow of a partially formed figure writhing inside it. The figure seemed to take on many forms, each dissolving almost as soon as it had gathered itself together. It continued to harass the priestess, but then the Goresym stopped spinning. A great thunder clap ripped through the chamber and Jaleal and Phinean were thrown to the floor. The Goresym then spun rapidly in the opposite direction. The dark shade that had possessed the sword screamed in terror, or perhaps pain, as it was ripped from the blade and drawn into the Goresym. The stone grew dark, losing its transparency as streaks of golden lightning zipped around it. The darkness was finally contained, and then the Goresym fell to land upon the table.
The priestess shot her hand out and pulled the sword away from the table just as the Goresym struck the stone. A faint scream emanated from the stone, and it wiggled atop the table, but the darkness was sealed away, unable to escape its new prison.
“This will hold it in place,” the priestess said.
“What was that?” Jaleal asked as he brushed himself off.
“It was a piece of the black dragon’s soul. A portion of chaos itself,” the priestess replied. “Now that it is sealed, the black dragon is finally defeated. The sword still has its magical properties, but it will no longer thirst for elf blood, nor drive its master mad.”
“Who will be its new master?” Jaleal asked.
The priestess shook her head. “The sword is cleansed, but I still believe it best to remove temptation from sight. This sword is still well known throughout the elven isles as the weapon which symbolizes the greatest threat to our civilization in living memory. I will seal it inside a mithril container, and then I will send it away with one of the Kruk agents that tracked the assassin down.”
“What of the Triad?” Phinean asked in a squeaky voice, leaning hard against the stone wall to slowly raise himself from where he had been thrown to the ground. “Now that Elroa and Jahre are dead, we will need to rebuild the Triad.”
The priestess arched a brow at him and her voice turned cold. “While I cannot discount the service performed by the two of you, I do not share Jahre’s trust in the gnomes. I believe it best that your dealings with the Kruk end here.”
“With respect, I have no home to go back to,” Phinean said. “My family and home were destroyed during the Elf Wars with the Sierri’Tai. That is why Jahre took me in, and allowed me to help. Working as an agent of the triad is all I have known for centuries.”
“While I empathize with your loss, that does not change my decision,” the priestess said, unmoved. “I have allowed you both to witness the cleansing of the sword. With that finished and the assassin dead, your tasks set by Jahre have been completed, and therefore your time with the Kruks has come to an end.”
Phinean looked as though he had
been hit by another clap of thunder, and he reached out to the stone wall again to steady himself as he took in a deep breath.
“What of me?” Jaleal asked. “Can you send me back to my home?”
“I have spent much of my magical energy,” the priestess admitted as she placed Drekk’hul back in its scabbard and secured it to her belt. “Between healing the wounded and cleansing the sword, I am nearly spent. However, I can augment Phinean if he believes he can replicate the spell that was used to send him to you in the first place.”
The two of them looked to Phinean.
Straightening himself and running a hand over his beard, Phinean considered the proposition. After a moment the gnome cracked a half smile and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he shrugged. “The thing is…”
“Don’t tell me it was an accident,” Jaleal said, remembering the gaffes with the magical potion back at Elroa’s tower and other bungles that Phinean had made recently.
“No, no, it wasn’t a mistake, I assure you!” Phinean shouted quickly. “But I had a bit of help.”
“Help?”
Phinean nodded. “I used a spell that Jahre gave me.”
Jaleal sighed with relief. “I don’t care who created the spell, just use it again and let’s be off.”
Phinean shook his head and held up a stubby fingered hand. “No, I mean, Jahre created the spell that found you. I can transport us, so long as the priestess augments my power, but I have no way of locating your homeland. Picture it like this, there are three holes in the ground. You can’t see down any of them, but of course you can jump in and slide to wherever they lead. The problem is, only one goes to your home. The other two could lead any number of places.”
Jaleal turned to the priestess. “Can’t you help?”
She shook her head. “If Jahre located you with a spell, then he either had something of yours in his possession, or he saw you clearly enough in one of his visions to get a fix on your position. I have nothing like that to assist me. Besides, what I would need is some piece of your homeland to locate your home with. Since you are already here it wouldn’t do any good to waste a spell locating you.”
