Visions: Knights of Salucia - Book 1

by C. D. Espeseth

  He sank to his knees beside his brother. Matoh wasn’t moving; his whole body looked limp. Wayran dared not breathe as he tried to detect any sign at all that Matoh still lived.

  In the stillness, he heard a sound like something slowly cracking. All around him, the sound repeated. It sounded like glass about to pop.

  Above them, atop the crest of the dune, he saw the metal rods beginning to sink into the sand.

  It was then Wayran felt a vibration in the sand beneath him, and a sound like giant cogs whirring together.

  The cracking sound grew louder.

  Wayran thought he heard a hissing, and he looked back to a spot of charred sand where a santsi globe had exploded. The blackened sand began to disappear as its centre was pulled down into a vortex, just like it did within an hourglass.

  Another crack sounded, this time closer, and more sand began to slide towards the growing vortex.

  “Matoh get up!” Wayran yelled. He grabbed his brother by the shoulders and tried to pull him up and away from the sliding sand. Yet Matoh was unconscious and his body a dead weight.

  There was a great popping sound as all of the sudden the ground around Wayran gave way beneath him. He held onto Matoh as they fell into the giant vortex of sand and were sucked down below the dunes.

  2 - Beneath the Sands – Matoh

  How omnipotent the sands feel. The last remnants of grasslands have been overtaken, and now there is only sand. Sand and dust. Dust and Sand. In this isolation, I have nothing better to do than track the long protracted movements of the dunes, like giant cream waves upon a time-slowed ocean.

  Always encroaching, always hissing in the wind, skittering across the surfaces of its brethren. Always moving. And it gets everywhere. Into every crack and crevice. Into every device and mechanism. Clogging things up, disrupting my contraptions with an unfathomably high order of entropy. Eventually, everything submits to its encroachment and is in turn claimed by the sand. Against its never tiring onslaught there is no victory, only delay. And the sands have limitless patience. They know I cannot last forever. And in the end, they will take me and this place, like they do everything else.

  In the end, there is just sand.

  Always, in the end, there is just sand.

  - Journal of Robert Mannford, Day 075 Year 68

  Something was pushing him forward. Like a massive hand, impossible to resist, gently thrusting him forward.

  Matoh turned his head to see what it was, but there was nothing. He turned back, still moving forward, towards some sort of threshold. It looked like a barrier of some sort, and suddenly his chest met resistance.

  Yet the invisible hand kept pushing. It was crushing him, slowly, yet unflinchingly.

  Matoh put his hands up, trying to feel the barrier; his hands moved but were slow, dragging as if he were weighed down.

  And the pressure kept increasing, forcing him into this resistive shield, which flexed but began to smother him as he ran out of space. He couldn’t breathe. Matoh pushed against the invisible hand, trying to dig his heels into something, anything.

  And still the pressure increased. He tried to scream, but more air left his lungs.

  He had no options … No! There was one. Forward.

  He braced against the invisible hand and surged forward into the smothering barrier with everything he had left. His body shook with the effort, he was going to black out.

  And suddenly there was light.

  Bright sunlight shone down on his shoulders; he could feel its warmth. He stood in a golden field. Grass as tall as his waist waved in the wind and he could smell flowers.

  He had a sword in his hand.

  Matoh looked down at the weapon in his hand, puzzled. How did that get there?

  The sword was impossibly large, nearly four feet long and half a foot wide, but it felt light as a feather. A blade of burnt gold … but then it changed: first into a wicked black longsword, then into a brilliant white dagger, then back into the great golden two-hander. The weapons flickered back and forth. Yet they all felt the same somehow.

  Matoh tightened his grip on the hilt and he felt strong, stronger than he ever had before. The weapon knew him, recognised him. He had the strange sensation it had been waiting for him.

  He looked up across the waving grass to see a man standing in front of him, silent and motionless. He wore an odd hat, wide and conical. It was made of woven grass, like one a farmer might wear. The wind rippled across the field and Matoh felt its chill, but the strange man was not touched by the wind, he waited, watching him. Somehow Matoh knew this man as well. This whole scene was … familiar.

  He’s here to kill me. Matoh didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

  Another sword, this one long and slender, appeared in the strange man’s hand as if it had been summoned. Its form changed as well; it seemed to be settling on the black longsword, where his own weapon seemed to be flickering more often to the golden blade.

  The light itself shied away from the jet-black blade in the man’s hand, as though there was a pool of darkness there which the sun couldn’t touch. Matoh felt hunger from the black sword, and then he remembered his own golden blade. His sword began to glow, drinking in the sunlight, and blue runes emerged from the central fuller. This too was familiar.

  The man tilted his head as if in curiosity, and the sun crept in under the wide hat. A face of polished silver surrounded a set of glowing red eyes. The man was impossibly thin, more like a skeleton, yet Matoh could see armour running the entire length of his body like a second skin.

  And now Matoh wore his own armour. A full set of Syklan Knight’s armour. He had huge santsi globes atop his pauldrons. This too felt right. He was meant to be a Syklan. Matoh had always known this. He was a greater warrior than even his mother, the Silver Lady, Natasha Spierling.

  I must win. Matoh knew this battle was what would define him. It was everything. The fate of the Union rested on his shoulders. He had to win.

  They stared at each other across the grassy field for an eternity. The metal man seemed to hesitate, waiting for him. A mistake, Matoh thought. ‘Hesitation kills as surely as a blade’: they were his father’s words.

  “You are here to kill me,” Matoh stated. His voice was powerful, surprisingly so, and was somehow not quite his own, as if he was hearing someone else speak with his lips.

  “Yes.” The word was spoken softly, almost sadly. The silver face had no mouth with which to speak, but Matoh heard the word as if it had been whispered in his ear.

  Again Matoh felt he should know this man. But that didn’t matter; what he did know was that the man was his enemy and he had to beat him. He had to win to save them all.

  Matoh surged forward, and the heavens roared with him. He lifted his sword and blue fire blazed along its edge. A hum, like a swarm of giant bees, rushed through him as he swung the great blade. Nothing could stand in his way. He wielded the power of the gods. The metal man’s black sword rose up to meet his, and the world shifted.

  He was on a street.

  Moonlight shone down upon the lifeless eyes of a hundred corpses in front of him. A tall man, dressed in rich black silks, laughed with delight as he licked the blood from his long hunting knife. A manic hunger lit the man’s eyes as he turned to Matoh; then he smiled showing a mouth full of fangs and blood dripped down his chin.

  Matoh tried to run, but couldn’t.

  The man laughed at his weakness. “I was hoping you’d find me.” The dark man smiled and launched forward, diving straight into Matoh’s chest. He felt a hole in his body. The monster was inside him.

  The world shifted.

  Matoh’s heart pounded. Had he just died? What was happening?

  Something touched his arm, making him jump. It was a young woman. As Matoh stared at her, her hair colour shifted from dark to light.

  “Time to go,” the woman said holding out her hand. Matoh reached for it, but when he looked up it was no longer the young woman, but his mother.
<
br />   Matoh was a child again, on the cliffs across from the Red Tower. It was the last place he had seen his mother.

  “Don’t leave me,” he said, but his mother only smiled down at him, now dressed in her shining Syklan armour. She patted his head sadly.

  A wave crashed below, and a fine mist rose up from the rocks below surrounding the clifftop. Matoh could smell the ocean.

  “Be strong, my young prince,” his mother said to him.

  “Don’t leave me!” Matoh wailed, trying to run, but his legs were so small.

  “Goodbye, Matoh.” His mother waved and stepped into the mist.

  He was alone.

  * * *

  Matoh sat up. Cold sweat covered him. Sweat and something else … sand?

  He put a hand to his chest as he felt a tightness there. In the place where the evil figure had dived into his body. The memory of it made him shiver.

  He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from a strange pale blue light above, but the motion made his head swim. “Where am … ?”

  “Matoh!” Wayran yelled – far too loudly for Matoh’s taste.

  “Shhhh.” Matoh put a finger up, closing his eyes against the ringing pain between his ears. “Not so loud.”

  “I thought you were dead!” Wayran’s voice had an edge of panic to it.

  “I may have been,” Matoh groaned as he tried to stand up. He seemed to be half buried in the sand. “Do the dead have really weird dreams and feel terrible?”

  “I doubt it,” Wayran said, and slid in under his arm, trying to steady him. “The dead don’t really feel much from what I gather. Do you have pain anywhere else?”

  “You mean other than everywhere?” Matoh squinted some more, and finally the room came into focus.

  He saw Wayran’s concerned face. “No, really, Wayran. I’m fine. A little woozy and my chest hurts a bit, but it’s nothing really. Weren’t we meant to be flying?”

  “Are you serious?” Wayran said in disbelief. “You pulled lightning, you idiot!”

  “What?” Matoh scoffed. The memory of something flashing just before he blacked out did seem familiar, but that couldn’t have been what happened. “Come on,” he said, “that’s not possible.”

  “What were you thinking?!” Wayran threw his hands up as he stepped back from Matoh. “Do you have some sort of death wish or something? That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do. Flying straight towards where lightning keeps striking! Yes, that’s a great idea. What could possibly happen?!”

  Matoh ignored his brother’s comments as he began to see where they were standing. “Where are we, Wayran?”

  “I can’t believe you’re not hurt.” Wayran shook his head, pacing back and forth and staring at him.

  “Sorry to disappoint.” Matoh put his hands on Wayran’s shoulders to stop his pacing.

  “We need to get you to Quirin. She’ll be the one to decide if you’re alright.” Wayran pointed his finger at him. “As soon as we get out, straight to a healer.”

  “Ok, fine.” Matoh turned from Wayran slowly to look back at the wall across from them. “But first tell me where in the nine hells are we?”

  Across from them stood a wall of interlocking metal panels and black glass, but the oddest part was above them. Light came from a rod in the ceiling which glowed with a pale white-blue light. The room was like nothing Matoh had ever seen before.

  “It’s a Jendar building of some sort, as far as I can tell,” Wayran growled.

  Matoh could see, however, that his brother’s concern was lessening with the mention of the Jendar.

  “I had to wreck my glider to save you, and the practice one Uncle Aaron gave you is completely destroyed,” Wayran said as he shook his head in disgust, “not to mention the fortune of santsi globes we lost.”

  Matoh grimaced at that. “Sorry,” he said, and he genuinely was. “I know how long you spent saving for that glider. I’ll help you get another one. But Wayran, how did we get here? I remember circling those strange pin-like spikes sticking up out of the sand. I wanted to see them catch a lightning bolt.”

  Wayran quirked an eyebrow at him but then shook his head. “Well, if this place is Jendar, it could be possible, but flying towards them was still stupid.”

  “Fine, I’ll admit that.” It was then Matoh remembered falling. “Wait, did you smash into me in mid-air?”

  “Yes,” his brother said, and now it was Wayran who looked distant, as if he too were trying to piece together what exactly had happened.

  “How are we both not dead? Alright, say I believe you about the lightning.” Matoh remembered the feeling of a massive amount of energy as he siphoned it. “But then I fell. How – what …” He didn’t know where to start. “Just tell me what happened!”

  “I don’t …” Wayran looked at a loss for words. “I don’t quite understand it myself; but I saw you pull the lightning.” Wayran looked up at him. “And then you were falling and I just, sort of, saw how to save you. It was as if everything had slowed down, and I felt” – Wayran scratched his head – “I don’t know, it was something massive, something so big I can’t explain it.” Wayran shook his head in frustration.

  “So how does this turn into you smashing into me in midair?” Matoh quirked an eyebrow and flicked the small braid on his left side behind his ear.

  “Well, I couldn’t stop you from hitting the ground, so I tried to stop you hitting it with so much momentum. I dived below and then flew up to hit you. I guess it was enough to make a difference.”

  “Have I ever told you, you read too many books?” Matoh shook his head and brushed a hand through the stripe of hair on his head, dislodging some sand. The leather skullcap he had been wearing must have been lost, as were a large number of the crow’s feathers he had woven into his hair for luck.

  Bad luck that, he thought to himself, losing crow feathers. The thought was a bit of an understatement, and he laughed aloud. He turned away from the metal wall with another chuckle and looked at the pile of sand sloping sharply up to what remained of a thick glass roof. “So we fell, but how did we get in here?”

  “The santsi,” Wayran said, as if that explained everything.

  “The santsi?” Matoh spread his hands, waiting for Wayran to continue. He had got used to this lack of explaining from his older and more scholarly brother. Discussions sometimes felt like pulling teeth.

  “The santsi you had filled during the lightning strike flew off when I hit your glider. They must have been super-charged from the lightning and detonated on contact with the sand. It would have sent a shockwave through the sand, thus cracking the glass dome. We were sucked down as the sand poured into the open cavity beneath. Luckily there was enough room in here for most of the sand above, or else we’d be buried alive.” Wayran pointed up at the remnants of what must have been a rather magnificent glass dome. “Sad really. That dome would have been standing for nearly three thousand years.”

  “Yes, poor dome.” Matoh rolled his eyes. “Can we climb back out?” But he thought he already knew the answer, looking at the mountain of sand behind him.

  “No,” Wayran said. “The collapse of the dome would have caused the dunes above to shift as well. There must be at least another hundred feet of sand above the glass.”

  “What about up those spikes, any chance with those?” Matoh pointed at the giant pin-like spikes they had seen from above.

  “No, thought of that. Looks like these spikes are pushed up through the holes in the roof and through the dunes. We’d just get stuck in the sand, or fried by lightning.” Wayran pointed at one of the spikes. “They’ve been hit twice since we fell in. You could feel the heat and crackle of energy coming off them after a strike. We’re stuck down here, unless you want to try and take the energy of another lightning bolt?”

  “Once is enough for me.” Matoh stretched, looking around once again. “So … we need to find a different way out.”

  Wayran nodded.

  “A part of you loves this,
doesn’t it?” Matoh said. This was pretty much what his older brother had been dreaming about doing ever since they had visited the Chronicler Archives as kids.

  “You mean apart from the fact that we are probably going to die a slow and agonising death down here?” Wayran asked, still studying the room around them.

  “Yes, besides that.” Matoh twisted and felt a satisfying pop as the pressure in his neck released. He flexed his muscles and knew he would have several ugly bruises – if they ever got out of here.

  Wayran finally began to smile as he looked around the room. “I know I should be scared to death, but ... I’m not. I mean, yes, I’m scared and worried, and I think we are probably going to starve before we suffocate. Marcus probably doesn’t have a chance of finding us down here, and –”

  Matoh put up a hand. “Stop talking. You’re beginning to make me think we’re in trouble.” He smiled as he too studied the room around them. “I have to admit. This is pretty amazing, other than the impending doom part of course.”

  Wayran looked at him seriously. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  “Ask me that again and I’ll show you just how ‘alright’ I am,” Matoh growled. “Come on, there has to be a door somewhere.”

  They set off to look around the room.

  * * *

  “The Jendar did actually use doors, didn’t they?” Matoh asked after they had spent what must have been hours searching for an exit. They had circled the room over a dozen times and found nothing that even resembled a door. “You know, an opening, usually framed, with a moving barrier in it, something which connects one room to another.”

  “I know what a damned door is, Matoh,” Wayran cursed; they were both getting tired. Wayran looked to be favouring one leg more than the other, suggesting that he was hurt more than he let on. “Maybe we’re missing something, but I’m tired of walking in circles,” he said as he sat down.

  “Would it be underneath the huge pile of sand?” Matoh grimaced, hoping Wayran would say no.