Oen himself shook Lorace awake and smiled happily into his bleary eyes.
“You did it, Lorace. Aran came to you. Thank you, I was letting go to the pain. You brought me back from that promise of release.”
The priest wept in gratitude at seeing the crisp dawn light again. “It is a complete healing. My skin was burned everywhere.”
“I am sorry you faced that pain, I should have cast the Ritual of Binding sooner,” Lorace said, hanging his head low.
“No, we needed to know what that demon was doing. Anything we learn about them is something we can use against them. What you learned was invaluable. This Aizel leads and controls them. There may be more of them somewhere in these woods. I just wish he would have answered more of your questions while he was still mad with his feasting.”
“But knowing those things was not worth your life, or the life of any one you,” Lorace gestured toward where their companions still slept.
“I would not be so sure of that. Aran has told me the world beyond this valley has fallen into darkness and corruption. The Zuxrans before our walls are merely the first of it to be visited upon us. You are here to save us, everything you learn is another key to our survival. I have to believe that. Of us all, you are the only one we cannot afford to lose. You bear godstone, you wield a gift like no other and yet another that remains hidden, but most of all, you have a spirit as boundless and pure as any I have ever seen.”
“What does my spirit look like to your eyes?” Lorace asked.
Oen’s gaze focused beyond the bounds of Lorace’s flesh, as he had when they first met. “Everyone’s spirit is different, unique in form and color. Yours is a swarm of golden sparks, flowing around and through you. Sparks without number, and when you use your sight they expand outward from you adding even more sparks.”
Lorace mulled this information over, but it gave him no further clues regarding his mysterious gift or his gap in memory between childhood and adulthood.
Oen turned around with his arms spread wide, embracing life and the new day. Tornin and the dwarves awoke to see him thus—happy and whole.
“Lorace healed me,” Oen crowed to them all. “He prayed to Lord Aran who took my pain away and restored my flesh with his light. We have another priest in our midst that has been blessed with the means to commune with the Lord of Light.”
The only one of them who doubted Oen’s story of what happened was Lorace himself, but he kept firm hold of the image of his brother’s silencing finger and just smiled and nodded to everyone who asked for a confirmation of the high priests words. Somehow Aran worked his energies through the memory of his brother and something about it needed to remain secret. He would honor that gesture for silence and hold on to the joy of seeing his friend whole and full of life.
Tornin examined the priest with a bright smile, “I have never witnessed a more welcome healing, except perhaps my own.”
“I think there may be something about how Lorace’s gift manifests itself that strengthens the magic he wields—amplifying them,” Thryk put forward at Tornin’s comment. “Ralli told me what he saw of the strength of his Ritual of Binding and now we see the power of his healing prayer.”
“It is evidence of the purity and strength of Lorace’s spirit that I am healed so completely. Lord Aran’s energies flow best through such a conduit,” Oen clarified to the dwarf before turning to Lorace. “What happened with the Ritual of Binding? I was lost in finishing my Ritual and could not see beyond the pain of the fire.”
“When I cast the Ritual of Binding, I saw the planes of force meant to restrain the demon, crush him. The binding alone killed him before your banishment was carried out.”
“You saw the planes manifest visibly?” Oen asked with widened eyes. “The words of the ritual call forth a dozen equal planes of force to press in and hold tight the target being. These planes of force are not supposed to be visible. They are made of air, the element of the ritual.”
“They shimmered in the heat of the demon’s fire, trapping and squeezing down on him.”
“You said that when you slew Hurn you saw shimmering in the air. Was this similar?” Oen prompted.
“Yes, it was very much the same,” Lorace said, understanding what Oen was edging him toward. “It was my second gift again, enhancing and strengthening the Ritual of Binding.”
“Thryk may be correct, at least in part,” Oen said while rolling up his blankets. “Though it does not explain how you created a bolt of energy out of thin air without spell or ritual—it does give an additional clue.”
Lorace thought for a moment before something else from his childhood arose in his memories once more.
“I remember now, something Taggi told me. He was speaking to me of the two rituals and he suggested I not use the Ritual of Binding, that it was not wise for me to do so. He also suggested I use my gift if I should meet a demon on my own, without a second there to cast the Ritual of Binding while I stuck with the Ritual of Banishment. He could only have meant my second gift, since I do not see how my gift of sight could physically harm anything.”
“Keep thinking about it. Perhaps it will trigger more memories to help you solve its mystery. In the mean time we have to get moving again,” Oen gestured grimly towards the dwarven wagon of torture.
Lorace groaned, but accepted Ralli’s hand to be pulled aboard.
Oen and Lorace sat upon their folded up bedrolls in the bed of the wagon roughly between the two merciless axles, the least offending location to seat themselves.
Throughout the morning, Tornin trotted alongside while Lorace recounted what his sight revealed of Halversome and the besieging Zuxrans.
The Zuxrans had yet to attack. They fought and argued amongst themselves like a pack of dogs, but not once had they returned within bowshot of the south wall. They seemed content to raid the nearby woods for lumber to build a great siege tower. Oen laughed and declared this a huge waste of time.
“That will never get close to our walls,” he barked before addressing his companions questioning frowns. “Never mind why! It is a secret I hold for someone, if they want you to know about it, they will share it with you.”
“It is one of the other gifted people, is it not?” Lorace reasoned. “That must be why you have no worries about these attackers.”
“And let me say that after the events of last night, I have a whole new respect for this person’s gift.”
Lorace narrowed his eyes at the priest. “Fire?”
Oen hesitated before giving a begrudging nod. “Additionally, if they had someone among them with a gift that could defeat our defenses, they would not be spending the effort to make this great siege tower. That is what I find truly comforting.”
Lorace was not ready to discount the Zuxrans so easily. “Their leader does have a strange companion though. The man is silent, never speaking or even moving while I am watching him, though their leader often rails at him as if he could. From the nature of the leader’s comments toward the silent man, he must be an adviser of some kind. He is always asking him to explain what is happening and how long they must wait. It worries me more than a little. I think they have a plan which they are going to great lengths to keep secret. They are waiting for something or someone to arrive.”
“Perhaps they await the mistress that Hurn spoke of,” Tornin suggested. “The one who gave him the sword I now carry.”
Oen stiffened. “Perhaps I should have stayed. We don’t know what Halversome may be facing if what you say proves true.”
Petor laughed and slapped the timbers of the wagon. “You will return soon enough with a fine army of dwarves and a godstone blessed champion. Let them plot and plan, they cannot breach the walls of Halversome and our shields will push them into the sea.”
Ralli nodded and gave a shake to the traces as they rounded a river bend. “Keep your concern and your eyes focused for those demons the beast of fire hinted of. If they are somewhere in these woods, they are a danger to us all.”
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Lorace kicked himself for allowing the threat of demons to escape his mind. Their joy at Oen’s recovery had shoved all fears aside. He spent the remainder of the morning pushing his sight through the forest, attempting to find any sign of other demons. The forest of Keth was so heavy and dense, he could see very little of the ground area from below the canopy, and none at all from above. The only thing he had managed to see was a small group of long necked deer as they slept within a cluster of sun beams that managed to penetrate the broad leafed canopy. Soon the relentless jarring and bumping of the wagon overcame his concentration and he had to give up his fruitless search.
They ate a lunch of dry biscuits and blackberry preserves washed down with a generous mug of dwarven ale from a small keg that Petor kept stashed in the aft compartment. Lorace sighed into his mug. It was the very same drink which the innkeeper Ehddan served.
While they nursed the ale in the bottoms of their stoneware mugs, Oen leaned his shoulder into Lorace. “So tell me, how did Lord Aran appear to you in your prayer?”
Lorace was silent, trying to determine how best to answer. He had not seen Aran, only a memory of his brother. And his brother had asked for his silence. That single clandestine gesture shared between two children seemed to be of ponderous importance. It had been something more than a memory. He would not lie to his friend, but neither would he betray the vision of his brother.
“Aran blessed me with a memory of my childhood,” Lorace began. “I was picking mushrooms in the woods near my home with my next older brother, Jorune. It was for a soup my mother made for us on rare occasions which I dearly loved. I remembered how rich and warm the soup tasted, how she transformed the mushrooms I had despised into something fun and delicious that I could not resist eating.”
Lorace took a final drink, savoring the last of the ale while contemplating what more he could share. “I did not see Lord Aran at all. I think he was just helping awaken a memory within me while he was healing you through me.”
Oen patted Lorace’s shoulder and his face creased with a broad smile. “Yes, he was sharing a scene of love and comfort from your childhood. This is what he does. His light fills all who worship him with the same comfort as that of your mother’s soup, making hardships and discomforts palatable.”
“Like this wagon?” Lorace said with a weak smile.
Oen chuckled deep in his chest. “Yes well, that may be taking the example a bit too far. Apparently there are feats which the gods themselves hesitate to perform.”
Near sunset they arrived at the bridge that spanned the last navigable bend of the river, right before the lowest lake at the base of the great Kur K’Tahn. The mountain had done nothing but grow ever taller in the sky throughout their journey. The amber rays of the winter sun shined spectacularly on its snow shrouded heights.
Ralli and Petor unhitched the ponies from the wagon and released them into a large corral that contained a host of the shaggy creatures. They entered among their fellows, whickering in greeting before trotting up to a manger of oats and hay that someone must have filled earlier in the day.
“We will camp here and begin our ascent up the trail in the morning. The climb will take a full day,” Ralli told them once he returned to help push the wagon down a stone ramp into the lake. Then the dwarves deftly removed the wheels and tang and stowed them again, once more making the wagon into a barge-like boat. They tied it to a stanchion upon the stone quay, which harbored a multitude of similar river craft.
“Will we not take the wagon up the road to the entrance to Vlaske K’Brak?” Lorace asked curiously.
“If we had a cargo without legs of its own, we would,” Ralli said with a rumbling chuckle. “The ponies cannot take us up this trail any faster than we can walk it on our own. It is a lengthy climb and the switchbacks slow the wagon down. Besides, we take great pleasure in greeting our home mountain with our own feet.”
Lorace nodded a happy goodbye to the wagon, though he was leery of what pains it may cause in its watery form during the trip back to Halversome.
He turned his gaze back up to the looming mountain. “Why is the entrance to Vlaske K’Brak so high up the mountain? Purely for defense?”
“In part, I am sure,” Ralli answered. “The entrance is where Vorallon decreed it should be when he led the dwarves to this mountain in the first days of our history. It is the nearest point upon the face of the mountain to the stone of the Ritual Forge.”
Thryk stepped over to a broad horizontal stone that protruded from the very foot of the mountain where the path of many switchbacks began its ascent. The bald dwarf removed a small hammer from his belt and knelt to commence a rhythmic tapping upon the stone.
“He gives a sending,” Ralli explained. “Telling who we are and what our purpose is. He tells those who are listening of you, Lorace.”
The sending stone had been pounded so mirror flat from years of such messages that it glistened like a sheet of ice in the fading twilight.
To Lorace’s surprise the dwarves made camp directly upon its polished surface. It was large enough to accommodate them all. Beside the stone was a blackened area for a fire and beside the nearby corral was a full cord of cut wood.
“Who prepares all this, and tends the horses?” Lorace asked. “I see no sign of anyone and we are still a day’s travel away from the Home of the Heart.”
“It is the elves who do these favors for us,” Petor answered. “In return we build them anything which they require that they cannot glean from the Keth. We have a long history of such sharing, and with the coming of Verth’s pilgrimage, we have all continued that sharing with your folk. Before Verth’s arrival our only contact with man was through the first godstone bearer who came to us. May our three peoples always share in the benefit of the Guardian’s Pact.”
The dwarves flopped upon the hard surface of the sending stone with contented sighs, while Lorace, Oen, and Tornin doubted the wisdom of spreading their bedrolls upon it when several layers of blankets did nothing to soften the stone.
For the first time since leaving Halversome, Lorace removed the godstone sphere from his blue leather satchel. He held it up while he sat upon the sending stone and examined it in the firelight. He could sense it avoiding his awareness, causing him to forget about its presence, keeping itself secret and hidden until it could be forged. It still had the same dull silvery sheen, bright but not shiny. He spent a moment thinking about what its destiny may be—the destiny that would become his once it was forged.
“You will know glory like few others can comprehend,” Ralli said as his eyes lingered on the sphere.
“Is it true that those who bear a godstone destiny soon meet their fate at that destiny’s end?” Lorace asked him.
“Aye, it was true for Elena, but others, like Sir Rindal have continued for many years,” Ralli said. “And we do not know that Sir Rindal has completed his destiny yet, if that is so, he has walked Vorallon for many years with Brakke Zahn. The deeds of Elena are recorded in the stone of our home. When word reaches us of Sir Rindal’s deeds we will record those as well.
“To the hunter Elena, the first bearer of godstone, Kithke K’Brak was forged—Spear of the Heart. With it, she slew the foul Kamunki, the dragon that shaped Blackdrake Castle. The lair the Zuxrans now call their home. We listened through the stone as Vorallon himself wept for her loss for many years while he sang us her song.”
“Vorallon wept for her?” Tornin, who stood first watch, asked with heartfelt concern. “He cared for her?”
Ralli nodded to the tall guardsman. “He cares for all of us, watches and lives through all of us. He chose Elena to be his champion for he loved to watch her run and hunt. No other could move through the hills and mountains with anything near her skill and speed.”
“Elena shined quickly and so very brightly. Kamunki greatly injured Vorallon during his reign upon Ousenar, and we bless Elena in our memories every day for giving the living spirit of the world a release from that pain.”
Lorace looked toward Tornin and saw the shine of a tear in the young man’s eye. Once more, Lorace was impressed by the depth of feeling and life within the breast of his young friend.
“Was Sir Rindal’s sword forged to kill a dragon as well?” Lorace asked, trying to steer the discussion away from the tragedy of Elena. Ralli’s reply though, proved that the dwarf was much more tenacious to the tale.
“No, Kamunki was unique, there has only ever been the one dragon, and only Kithke K’Brak could reach its heart to slay it. Only Elena had the grace and agility to see it strike home,” Ralli said, completing Elena’s tale, before fully addressing Lorace’s question. “Brakke Zahn, Sir Rindal’s sword was made to serve the Goddess of Destiny, in that we believe its destiny is yet to be fulfilled, for Vorallon has yet to sing his song to us.”
Ralli rolled over onto his back to watch the stars above as he relaxed his stout body on the hard flat sending stone.
“Your deeds will be recorded as well. They will live on after your destiny has been fulfilled, and your glories will be without end,” Ralli said as he shut his eyes to sleep and listen to the voice of Vorallon.
Lorace returned the godstone sphere to his satchel and stretched out upon the stone. After a moment of shifting his weight on the hard surface, he too felt the comforting embrace of its incredible solidity. It anchored him to the very world.
As this feeling drifted through his relaxing body, Lorace very thinly felt a vibration coming to him through the stone—a pulsing, not unlike the sensation he received through the godstone sphere that interrupted his conversation with Adwa-Ki before the Voradin tree.
“Word from Vlaske K’Brak, they welcome the bearer home,” Ralli murmured.
Lorace eased himself into a state of sleep, and a dream flowed into him. The child Lorace slept in his wooden bed, its headboard carved with rearing horses, when his eldest brother, Bartalus, shook him awake.
“Wake up, little brother, it is my birthday today!” Bartalus said to him as he stood beside Lorace’s bed.
“Is it my birthday too?” the child Lorace asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
Gifts of Vorallon: 01 - The Final Warden Page 12
