by Jak Koke
As they let go of him, Pabl lost his balance and staggered, nearly falling to his knees. The air inside the cave was cooler and a little easier to breathe. Sangolin called to him; he heard it like a whisper. A low rasping sound that urged him to walk down the tunnel.
He took a step. Then another, moving out of the bright steam into the darkness of the cavern. Pinpoints of white glit-tered in the dark, where light crystals shone like stars. The tunnel gave way to an open space — a black cavern filled with the echo of dripping water and the bass hum that came from the rocky surface ahead.
Pabl felt a slight breeze against his face as he took step after inching step. His eyes began to adjust and he saw Sangolin before him, its skin a lumpy gray mass. Pabl’s heart thumped, This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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blood pounding. His breath quickened, and a hot, tingling burn traveled like fire across the surface of his skin. He was almost past the point of resistance, and he knew he should turn and run. Now, before it’s too late, he thought.
But even as the thought flickered through his mind, his feet kept moving forward. He couldn’t stop. He wanted to merge with Sangolin; it would feel so good. He knew that immersion inside Sangolin would give him a depth of satisfaction which he’d never before experienced — a sense of connection which even his liferock couldn’t match.
My liferock?
Pabl stopped walking. How could anything match my liferock? It is my spirit guide and memory. It is my link to my brotherhood. My anchor to myself.
He stood in front of Sangolin, its lumpy gray flesh stretching back into the darkness like a poorly formed ball of clay. He held his back rigid; he shouldn’t touch it.
“Yes, Pabl,” he heard in his mind. “Touch me and know the ecstasy you have been dreaming about.”
His hands reached out, almost involuntarily. He wanted to know the sweetness of the rush. His skin burned with a million pinpricks as his fingers hesitated over the stone.
No, he thought. If I merge, even once, I may lose Ganwetrammus forever. The Council of Four warned me of this.
Pabl withdrew his hands, clenching his fingers in a tight fist, slowly and deliberately moving them to his sides. Disappointment flooded through him, forcing him to his knees in front of the rock. He cried out, gasping for breath as the wind was knocked out of him.
Pabl doubled over and focused on the movements of his lungs, concentrated on the cold rough stone against his knees.
I will not give in! Sangolin’s magic will not take my spirit. He forced his hands to reach up and grasp his Mynbruje pendant.
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“You don’t need that anymore,” the voice said in his mind.
“All you need is me. I will take care of everything.”
The pendant grew warm under his palms, but the images and memories of Ganwetrammus, which normally came from it, were weak and distorted. The liferock seemed a universe away, insignificant and paltry in comparison to Sangolin.
Yet, some memories filtered through. Through a haze in his mind, Pabl remembered Reid and Garen at Parlainth: the magic training, the scarab brooch, the Gatherings in the secluded spaces of surrounding forests. Pabl also remembered Garen performing the Ritual of Protection to cleanse Ganwetrammus of Jibn’s Horror. Garen had worn the Mynbruje necklace that Reid Quo had given to him many years before as payment for training. As he danced the ritual with Tylon Giv, Garen’s Mynbruje necklace served him as a reminder of truth — a reminder of the true nature of himself and his enemies.
And yet, all of that was so long ago. So far away that it seemed not to matter. All that mattered was right here in front of Pabl. Just to touch and merge. Only to feel the power and the ecstasy of Sangolin.
Pabl held himself perfectly still, unable to move away. Resisting the merge as long as he could. Time passed as he knelt, though he had no idea how much. Hours possibly, maybe days.
Yet he remained motionless, barely daring to breathe. And after a time, Pabl realized that he could never leave. And he knew his resistance was failing. Slowly, inexorably Sangolin was taking control of his will.
It would be so good to give in. To relax and let go. To merge. The struggle would be over.
Then something strange happened. A form took shape in the surface of the rock. First hands appeared, Sangolin’s skin changing from gray to a deep russet as arms poked out from the surface. The rock flowed around and over the body like a thick film of lumpy mud as it emerged. The head came next, This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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then the torso and legs, pushing cleanly through the membrane of rock.
Pabl scrambled to his feet and backed away as the obsidimen stepped free in front of him. The sudden motion caused jolts of pain to shoot up his legs; he hadn’t moved in so long.
Then he stepped back again, this time in astonishment as he recognized the obsidiman.
His skin was older than Pabl remembered, cracked and crenulated with crusty wrinkles. But his eyes were as black and as shiny as they had been in the liferock’s memory.
Reid Quo.
Pabl had found the lost Elder. But Reid’s black eyes were fixed into a far-off, dead stare, just like the other obsidimen of Sangolin. And as he emerged, Reid put his hands out to grab Pabl. His intention was clear; Reid Quo was going to force Pabl to merge with Sangolin.
This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gvint sat on the hard tile of the temple floor, his gaze tracking along the red sandstone slab of the wall and up to the ceiling where a huge mosaic of colored tiles told the Myth of Creation. The pictures showed how The-Spirit-That-Pervades-All had merged with the Great Liferock at the beginning of time. How the Great Liferock split into a myriad of molten drops which became the heavens, the Sun, Moon and Earth. How obsidimen had emerged from the Earth as guardians of nature and students of the universe.
Have we come so far, only to be helpless in the face of a mundane enemy?
He crossed his legs and faced the glowing tip of the Alqarat. The spur of natural rock rose up through the tile in front of him as he crossed his legs and reached for it. The Alqarat was an extension of the liferock — a conduit to the spirit force of Ganwetrammus.
There must be a way to stop the miners. Something I have yet to think of.
Gvint clenched his jaw against the pain and plunged his hands into the molten rock at the Alqarat’s tip. He entered the 204
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merge with Ganwetrammus in this sacred point as was his prerogative as Elder.
The pain of the liferock overwhelmed him as he began the Dreaming. At first it was an overpowering dull ache. A wound.
A tear in the fabric of the rock. Then, as Gvint’s spirit became part of Ganwetrammus, the pain narrowed. He was the liferock, and the liferock was he.
He felt violation. Prolonged rape. The cavern was a knife, stabbing into his flesh. And when he reached with his mind, searching the tender place near the wound, he saw that the miners had stopped digging. The cavern had not grown since the last time; in fact it had become something else. It had been lined with a thin lattice of orichalcum.
Why would they do such a thing? Why stop mining the orichalcum? What sabotage are they up to now?
In astral space, the cavern now had a pattern of its own, and that pattern touched the liferock’s pattern, which was why it brought so much pain to the rock. But even so, Ganwetrammus was mostly undamaged. The newly replaced orichalcum even helped, acting like a patch of sorts, healing the wound.
Most strange indeed.
“Elder?”
He heard the voice in the distance, as if through water. He brought himself out of the merge with Ganwetrammus, pulling his hands from the burning lava. The red-hot rock had burned the skin of his hands to an ash gray, but he was an Elder and it would heal in a matter of minutes. Gvint looked around the temple.
“Elder?” The voice came from the verandah.
He turned to see a silhouette of an obsidiman. As the brother entered, Gvint drew breath in surprise as he recognized, from the tattoo of tiny emeralds tracking up the brother’s forearms, who it was.
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“Jibn, my brother,” Gvint said, his breath catching in his throat. I had never expected to see him in the temple again.
“Please come, you are most welcome here.”
“I have decided to m-m-merge again,” Jibn said. “I w-w-want your help.”
“Of course.”
“Maybe I c-c-can learn the m-magic of the Ritual of Protection.”
Gvint felt a rare smile come upon him. “You’re willing to try?”
Jibn stepped hesitantly into the temple. “That is w-w-why I came,” he said.
Gvint approached his brother, extending his palms in greeting.
Jibn put his trembling hands against the rough skin of Gvint’s palms, trying to stop their shaking. Jibn was scared nearly out of his mind, and must be keeping himself here by sheer force of will.
“When you left,” Jibn said. “I thought ab-b-bout what you said.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Yes, I do; p-please let me fin-fin-finish.”
Gvint stepped back. “I’m sorry.”
Jibn walked around the room, tracing his finger tips along the engravings on the wall. He took several deep breaths before continuing. “You w-w-were right. I’ve b-b-been away too l-l-long.” He looked up at the ceiling — the mosaic of tiny enameled stones which told the story of the Great Liferock. “Much t-t-too long.”
Jibn brought his hard gaze on Gvint. “I started t-t-to listen,” he said. “Af-f-fter you left. I heard the c-c-cry of Ganwetrammus.” He looked at the floor. “I heard, and I c-c-could not ignore.”
Gvint extended his palms. “When you are ready, brother, This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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we will merge with Ganwetrammus together.”
Jibn placed his hands in Gvint’s. “I am as ready as I can be.”
They sat next to each other on the tile floor, both facing the Alqarat. Gvint instructed Jibn to put his hands against the rough base of the spur and let himself fall into the merge. Ganwetrammus will pull him in.
Gvint watched as Jibn placed his shaking palms against the stone, then Gvint put his hands over his brother’s, and they merged together.
Falling, falling. He felt Jibn struggle against it at first.
Gvint tried to soothe him, but Jibn hesitated on the verge of completely merging. Doubt crept in, and uncertainty. Jibn had believed all along that he would infect the liferock again.
Gvint pulled memories and images from the liferock and pulsed them through his merge with Jibn. Ganwetrammus wanted Jibn to merge; it needed him to enter the Dreaming so that it could be complete again. And finally, Jibn felt it. He relaxed then, and let himself be drawn into the liferock.
Jibn savored the Dreaming, relished it — the glorious sensation of merging with his liferock for the first time since the end of the Scourge, nearly a hundred years ago. Realization washed over him, filling the hollows of his yearning spirit — the sudden recognition that he had not been whole without the liferock, had been barely more than a shell.
Jibn experienced the memories of the entire brotherhood that he had missed in the last hundred years. And Ganwetrammus forced Jibn to remember his life in exile, which made Jibn appreciate the Dreaming all the more. He was part of the brotherhood again, no longer an exile. He learned finally that his brothers had forgiven him long ago for his inadvertent mistake with the Horror.
Gvint shared Jibn’s joy in the merging. But Jibn was also distraught at the constant, mind-numbing pain which This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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throbbed through the liferock. Gvint had been living with Ganwetrammus’s pain for so long that he had nearly become jaded to the significance of it.
Jibn’s shock at the wound, his fright at the peril to the liferock, made Gvint curse himself for his failure to protect Ganwetrammus. He was ashamed of his inability to mount a successful defense.
I have been waiting too long for news of Pabl, Gvint thought, to no avail. I must act soon, organize the brotherhood to attack the miners again.
Jibn sent images of the Ritual of Protection through the merge to Gvint and the liferock. He wanted to learn the magic now, driven by his outrage against the miners. Gvint felt his seething anger like an acute sting.
Gvint tried to warn him that it was too soon. He should not attempt to learn the intricacies of the ritual until he had been Dreaming for some time and was better prepared by Ganwetrammus. But Jibn did not heed Gvint’s warnings. He wanted to perform the ritual before it was too late. Before the miners had destroyed more of the rock. Gvint tried to show him that the miners had stopped digging. Maybe they were going away. Maybe there was time.
Jibn ignored him.
The astral image of Ganwetrammus materialized in Gvint’s mind’s eye. To dance the Ritual of Protection, Jibn would have to learn the entire pattern — all its knots and tangles, its loops and twists. Jibn must be able to dance along it from memory without making a mistake.
For an Elder like Gvint, the dance would be second nature; he knew the liferock’s pattern like he knew himself. But in Gvint’s knowledge, none besides Elders had ever mastered Ganwetrammus’s pattern.
Still, Jibn wanted to try now, insistent. Angry. He knew what he had to do, and he started examining one curve of the This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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pattern. But as Jibn’s spirit moved along the liferock’s pattern, trying to comprehend the full scope and measure of Ganwetrammus, his mind wavered at the sheer complexity of the undertaking. He failed.
Jibn tried again, gaining a little more knowledge, but again he wavered. Then again. And again. Same result; he wasn’t ready to know so much of Ganwetrammus.
The task was not a simple one, even for an Elder. Gvint remembered that it had taken him nearly three weeks to grasp the entire pattern. And he had been called; he had been an ap-prentice Elder, ready to understand.
Jibn was not. He could not comprehend because he didn’t have access to Reid Quo’s part of the pattern. Anytime Jibn came across part of the pattern which tied into Reid’s life or experiences, Jibn’s astral threads slipped and lost hold. Gvint could grasp it because he was older than Reid, and he knew how Ganwetrammus’s pattern had changed over the years because of Reid’s absence.
Jibn tried again and again. But each time, he failed. And after a while, Ganwetrammus drew him deeper into the Dreaming to make him stop. Ganwetrammus wanted Jibn to dream for a long, long time. He had a lot of healing to do.
Gvint left his brother in the Dreaming. He emerged to a temple ringing with the aftershock of a thunderclap. A storm approached. The emptiness of hunger gnawed at Gvint’s insides as he stood and stretched his muscles. He walked outside, around the wall of the temple and into his small home.
There was a loaf of bread and a bowl of dried fruit on the large table, and Gvint began to eat. He knew Jibn could not understand the magic of the ritual, because he could not understand all of Ganwetrammus, because he was not an Elder.
There was a gap in the
brotherhood, and Reid Quo was the only one who could fill it.
It is my responsibility to stop these mundanes from de-This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock
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stroying us. Mine alone.
Gvint knew then what he would do. He would call another council. Most of the brotherhood had healed. It was time to attack again.
We must drive these vermin away, he thought. Even if it means our lives.
This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Chapter Thirty
The body of Reid Quo grew out from Sangolin, his hands reaching for Pabl. The muddy gray skin of the rock peeled away from around Reid’s shoulders and chest, slipping slowly back into the mass of stone as it regurgitated him. Reid came loose with a wet pop, and the strong mildew odor of unwashed obsidiman drifted from his newly emerged body.
Pabl stepped back to stay out of reach.
Reid stood exactly the same height as Pabl, his glimmering black eyes at the same level. But Reid’s eyes didn’t stare into Pabl’s; they were focused at some imaginary point down the tunnel. His body had completely emerged now; his russet skin enameled with red stripes dripped cold and wet, detached from Sangolin. His mouth struggled to form words, but no sound came out.
“I know you,” Pabl said, stepping back again.
Reid put his hands out for Pabl. “Will you merge?” he asked. His eyes focused on Pabl.
“You are Reid Quo.”
Reid gave Pabl a puzzled look. “You do seem familiar. Do I 211
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