by J. L. Doty
The reaction was immediate. His stomach tried to reject the poison but he held it down. His mouth filled with an unpleasant metallic taste; his nose burned and his eyes watered. An ache formed in the back of his head and his vision began to blur. The ache grew until it overwhelmed the pain in his arm and chest. He closed his eyes, lay on his side and buried his face in his hands, which shook and trembled as excruciating pain tore at his soul. Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripped from his chin. And then he felt nothing beyond the pain.
Looking back he could never remember if the time was long or short. Time seemed unimportant amidst the pain. But at some point awareness returned, and he realized that the pain had peaked, was slowly receding, that he could once again function.
His hands were sticky with half-dried tears. He waited until the pain was almost wholly gone before he looked up. He opened his eyes carefully, fearful that the pain might return, not truly believing that it was gone.
He still lay on the ground as he had lain the night before. But daylight had come, and JohnEngine and Tulellcoe and the men were gone. There was no sign of the ring of fire, no sign that it was or had ever been. There was no indication of a camp past or present, no indication that man had ever come this way. And yet he knew this small piece of forest in a way he could not explain, and he knew he had not moved since swallowing the redthorn.
He looked again at the sky. It was an eerie gray-blue day, though there were no clouds to obscure the sun. And yet there was no sun visible, no brilliant, yellow orb hanging in the heavens to light the day. The sky itself was merely gray, and the forest lay in the deathly stillness of an unnatural calm.
“Why are you crying?” a young voice asked.
Morgin started, pulled his eyes away from the dingy gray sky, struggled up onto his knees. A small boy stood directly in front of him next to a tall, beautiful woman. The boy was no more than seven or eight years of age, and dressed as a nobleman’s son. The woman wore an elegant gown of rich, blue brocade, and while she didn’t wear a crown, she stood with the regal bearing of a queen.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said politely. “I didn’t mean to startle you. But you were crying. Why were you crying?”
Morgin closed his eyes carefully, then reopened them. The men were still gone; the woman and boy still there. “I was crying for my brother.”
The woman nodded her head once. “Your brother. He is walking the Plains of Death at this moment, I believe.”
“Where are the Plains of Death?” Morgin asked.
She shrugged. “The Plains of Death are between here and there.”
Morgin shook his head, looked at the woman and then the boy. “I don’t understand. Who are you?”
The boy’s eyes opened with surprise. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“No I don’t.”
The woman smiled, as if at some private joke.
The boy pondered that for a moment, as if it were strange indeed that someone would not know him. In many ways he acted much older and wiser that his apparent years, and Morgin wondered at that. The boy seemed to come to some decision, then looked directly into Morgin’s eyes. “First you tell me your name.”
Morgin shrugged. “Sure. I’m . . .” His mouth hung open as if he were slow witted; his voice was as still as the forest air. He struggled to speak his name, but the words would not come. The words did not exist. He tried then to just think of his name, but not even in thought would it come to him.
“Ah ha!” the boy said triumphantly. “I knew it. How can you know us if you don’t even know yourself?”
“But I do know myself,” Morgin said. “I am . . .” Again the words did not exist to be spoken.
“This can’t be,” Morgin pleaded. “I’m dreaming.”
“No,” the woman said. “This isn’t your dream. If this were your dream you know very well you would be dreaming your one and only dream.”
They knew of his dream, but Morgin was certain he had never told anyone of his dream. “Who are you that you know of my dream?”
“I am Erithnae,” the woman said. She looked down at the boy. “And this is Aethon, and this is our dream, not yours.”
Aethon added excitedly. “And I am a king, you know. And I rule a vast kingdom. My subjects all call me sire, or Your Majesty.”
“Now Aethon,” Erithnae said, chiding him. “You shouldn’t boast.”
He lowered his eyes sadly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to boast. But I have no one to play with. A king never gets to play.”
Erithnae sighed. “Unfortunately, that is part of being a great king.”
She looked at Morgin. “Perhaps Lord Mortal here will play with you. Why don’t you ask him?”
Aethon’s eyes brightened. “Will you? Please play with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Morgin said. “But I have to find my brother.”
“We can help you find your brother. Then will you play with me?”
“All right,” Morgin said. “It’s a bargain. But we have to find my brother first.”
“Oh that’ll be easy,” Aethon said. He reached out and excitedly took Morgin’s hand, pulled him to his feet. “You’ll have to follow us, and do exactly as we say. There is a lot of power between here and there to tempt one, and it’s so easy to succumb to power. But I know the way. You can call me Aethon. I wish we knew your name so I could call you something besides hey you. We’ll have to ask the Unnamed King, if he is about. He knows all names, you know, except, of course, his own. Poor fellow!”
~~~
JohnEngine could think of nothing but water. He would give his soul for just one drink, but water was not a part of this gray nothingness of an existence, only confusion and pain. And even if there were water he would not have time to drink.
He thought of water and slogged on through a gray landscape with no feature or marking to distinguish one place from the next. He wondered if he would ever find his way, for each step was more difficult than the last, as if he walked in a bog that sucked and slurped at his feet in a never-ending effort to slow him. And it seemed now that he had been walking so forever.
Up ahead he saw a strange feature to the landscape, a vague outline on the horizon. He slogged on with renewed effort, whimpering almost hysterically. But the feature did not define itself better as he approached, and his hopes began to ebb. Not until he was upon it, almost standing within it, did he realize that it was nothing more than a shadow, a singular, dark blotch with no reason or meaning for its own existence.
A strange creature emerged from the shadow so suddenly that JohnEngine gasped and jumped back. The creature stood no more than waist high, and it stank beyond belief. It wore tattered brown rags for clothing, and only faintly resembled a healthy human being. On its face several sores oozed puss and slime, and its hair was a clumped and tangled mass of grease and dirt.
“Follow me,” it croaked, then without further ado it stepped back into the shadow. JohnEngine stood still, unable to decide which was worse, to trust this creature, or to remain in this barren nothingness. Indecision pulled him back and forth until finally the strange creature reemerged from the shadow and stared at him for a long, silent moment.
JohnEngine demanded, “What are you?”
The creature shrugged and croaked, “I am Rat. Follow me, brother.” Then it disappeared again into the shadow.
It had called him brother. It could have called him a hundred things so why did it choose to call him brother? And Rat? He had once known of a Rat, from some other life, some other existence, though the memory of that knowledge eluded him now.
The shadow that the disgusting little creature had disappeared into suddenly began to dwindle. Soon it would be gone, and JohnEngine realized that he must make his choice now.
He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Brother!” he said into the nothingness. “He called me brother.” And so remembering those words, JohnEngine closed his eyes and stepped into the shadow.
~~~
Morgin was
lost in a gray nothingness that pulled constantly at his soul. It was a struggle just to put one foot in front of another, for it seemed he’d been searching forever for an end to this barren landscape, and yet no end was in sight, no let up, no relief.
JohnEngine’s spirit fluttered nearby, frightened and confused. Morgin wanted to reassure him, but there was no real communication between them, and in any case his reassurances would be a lie. He was as lost as his brother, and the power of his spirit was weakening with each second he spent wandering aimlessly through nothing. The grayness about him was thick, like honey, and he was so tired, so very tired . . .
“. . . Morgin. Wake up, Morgin.”
Morgin opened the eyes of his soul. Somewhere Rhianne was calling to him, and as he made the effort to look he saw an image of her standing over him. There were bruises all about her face and shoulders, and yet she had the strength to ignore the obvious discomfort they caused her. She pulled at him, tugged on his sleeve. “Wake up, Morgin. You mustn’t stay here.”
It was an effort to speak. “Where can I go? I don’t know the way back.”
“I’ll show you the way.”
He had the impression that she pulled him to his feet somehow, and that he leaned heavily on her while they walked through the nothingness. But it was an indistinct impression, clouded by the gray that filled his soul.
~~~
Rhianne gasped awake, sat up instantly in bed with her heart pounding at the walls of her chest. It was several seconds before she realized it had been a nightmare. She sighed with relief and lay back against the mattress, but the effort reminded her of the bruises that covered her body, and it was some time before she returned to sleep.
~~~
Morgin awoke and found Tulellcoe leaning over him with a worried look on his face. He spent a long moment realizing that dawn had come, and that he was still alive. “JohnEngine?” he asked weakly.
Tulellcoe smiled unhappily. “I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but he will live. And it appears that so shall you.”
Morgin reached up with a trembling hand. “Help me up.”
“You should rest.”
“I have to see JohnEngine. Help me up.”
“Very well. But then you rest.”
Tulellcoe pulled him into a sitting position. He got only that far before his head began to reel; his stomach started to churn and he shook violently. He waved his hands, fending Tulellcoe off, unable to speak but signaling that, for the moment, he could go no further.
He sat there for a moment, noted that his tunic was covered with an ugly stain in which he could see the pulpy remains of the redthorn. The redthorn! He remembered swallowing it, and he remembered the pain, and he remembered Aethon, and he remembered the nothingness and Rhianne, but he could remember nothing beyond that. There was no memory of how he’d saved JohnEngine, and he wondered now if it was even he who had done the saving.
“Where is Aethon?” he asked. “And where are Erithnae and Rhianne?”
Tulellcoe looked at him narrowly, but said nothing, so Morgin demanded, “Where did you go? You left me alone.”
Tulellcoe’s look of unease grew. He spoke slowly and carefully. “I went nowhere. I remained by your side through the night. And as you instructed, the men did not relax their vigil until dawn.”
Morgin closed his eyes and tried to picture again the still and empty forest with the gray-blue sky and the young boy king. “Tell me what happened after I swallowed the redthorn.”
“Within seconds you cried out and slumped to the ground. You lay through the night near death, vomiting even when your stomach had nothing left to yield. And though I tried many times, I could not help you because you were surrounded by a strong and dangerous field of magic. Dawn came an hour ago. The field of magic disappeared, your illness passed, and JohnEngine began to breathe again. I have been waiting since for you to awaken.”
Morgin decided to say nothing of the discrepancy between his memory and Tulellcoe’s words.
“Morgin,” Tulellcoe said carefully. There was a sense of urgency in his words, and also a sense of disapproval. “You are not wholly in this world. I can sense it. Part of your soul is still dwelling on the Nether Plane. You’re feeding on it, and it’s feeding on you, and the longer you remain in contact with it, the harder it will be to break that contact.”
For the first time that morning Morgin became conscious of his power. He had not been aware of it before, but now he thought of Aethon’s words, “There is a lot of power between here and there to tempt one, and it’s so easy to succumb to power . . .” This power had an ethereal sensation to it, as if it were not his own power at all, and deep within his soul Morgin knew that he would be free of this power only when it chose to be free of him.
Morgin demanded weakly, “Help me to my feet. I must see JohnEngine.”
Once on his feet Morgin could not stop the trembling in his knees so he leaned heavily on Tulellcoe. His stomach continued to churn and his head still ached, and the power pushed at his will as if it were a conscious thing with a will of its own.
The ring of fire had dwindled to smoldering black ash. The men had dispersed, though since his magic chose to remain so fully with him he could sense each of them nearby.
JohnEngine had been taken aside and wrapped in several blankets. His face remained pale and ashen, but the pall of death was gone and his chest rose and fell with a weak but steady rhythm. Asleep as he was he seemed like a child that needed protecting. Morgin wanted dearly to protect him, but he knew that was now out of his hands.
“All danger is not over yet,” Tulellcoe said. He touched JohnEngine’s forehead. “But the worst has passed.”
Packwill, the scout leader, and France and Cort came striding across the camp. The scout dropped to one knee before Tulellcoe, bowed his head reverently. “We’re ready to leave at your word, my lord.”
Morgin looked at Tulellcoe. “Where are we going?”
“I’m sending you and John and Val and the rest of the injured to Inetka now. Val’s going to talk to Wylow, though I doubt Wylow’s fool enough to help us. Those of us who can ride are going to the Lake of Sorrows to see if we can get Eglahan’s help. I have no idea what shape he and his men are in, but we’re going to try anyway.”
Morgin nodded slowly. “I’ll ride with you.”
Tulellcoe shook his head and spoke in a flat angry voice. “No you won’t. It’s going to be a hard fast ride, and you’re in no shape for that.”
Morgin started to speak, but Tulellcoe cut him off, “Don’t argue with me. As long as you ride with us, you’ll do what I say.”
“We’d better get going,” France said.
Tulellcoe nodded, looked in France’s direction to say something, and Morgin took that opportunity to slip into a shadow. He changed shadows quickly and stopped to catch his breath behind a tree.
Cort gasped. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it. Even up close he literally vanished.”
“Damn you, Morgin,” Tulellcoe shouted. “You’re getting too good at that. I’m warning you. For your own good. You’re spending too much time in those damn shadows.”
Packwill asked, “I take it, my lord, that the ShadowLord will be accompanying us?”
Tulellcoe turned on him angrily. “I think we can all take it that the damn ShadowLord will do as he damn well pleases. And stop calling him that.”
~~~
Morgin found Mortiss waiting for him a few paces into the forest. He climbed weakly into her saddle, but for the first time was unsure of the direction, and the more he thought about it the more confused he became. The netherworld pulled at him, beckoning him to become part of the netherlife, and the power that flooded through him kept his senses constantly overloaded.
He realized he was starting to hallucinate badly when a nearby shadow took on a life of its own. The sun shone brightly in the sky, and a light breeze constantly fluttered the leaves of the trees overhead, sendi
ng thousands of shadows dancing about everywhere. But one particular shadow suddenly coalesced into a dark wraith shaped much like a man. It had no face to speak of, only the poorly defined shape of head, and shoulders, and arms and torso and legs. It turned toward him, bowed deeply from the waist, spoke with a voice barely above that of a whisper. “My lord,” it hissed. “This is the way you seek,” it said, then turned and led the way up a game trail.
Without any prompting from Morgin Mortiss followed.
~~~
Bayellgae flew into the tent of its master, fluttered about the room once on its tiny wings, then settled on its perch, coiling its tail tightly about the base.
“Well?” Illalla demanded impatiently. “Is he dead?”
“Yesss, my lord. The deed isss done.”
Valso asked, “Are you certain?”
“I do not err in death,” the snake scoffed. “Bayellgae’sss venom flowsss thisss night in his veinsss. And none can sssurvive Bayellgae’sss venom.”
“Well done, my pet,” Illalla said. “This campaign will now proceed rightly.”
“But I wasss dissscovered, my lord. I had to kill another.”
“Who?”
“The Elhiyne’sss brother, I believe.”
“Even better. That is one less Elhiyne that I must deal with.”
“But there wasss an outcry in the Elhiyne camp. There wasss no time to sssavor the kill. That wasss to be my reward, my lord.”
“Fear not, snake. You have done well this night. We will find another reward for you, something equally as pleasing, I am sure.”
