by Martin Gibbs
Torplug only shook his head. Qainur had now dismounted and started walking out in the field. He paid no heed to the strangeness of the grass but seemed transfixed by something far off in the distance.
“Well, it is of no consequence to us,” Zhy stated. “We should probably ride—Qainur, what are you doing?”
The mercenary didn’t hear him, but was walking very slowly eastward, deeper into the large green field.
“Qainur!”
No response.
“Qainur!” Torplug belted, his voice suddenly louder.
At last the mercenary turned dumbly around and looked at his friends. He said nothing, but turned back and kept walking. He slowly raised his hand and extended his pointer finger lazily. Still, he was silent.
Zhy and Torplug followed his direction.
Zhy groaned.
At the very far reaches of the field, nestled between stoic birches and an ancient balsam, was a structure made of stone. It was constructed using medium-sized boulders, possibly from this very field, Zhy mused. The building was small and square, and its steeply pitched roof, full of holes and divots, looked ready to completely collapse. Moss grew rampant in the grout holding the stones together. The combination of faded stone and bright moss gave the place an eerie and haunting look, and to Zhy it resembled an evil hermit’s lair—right out of the stories he read as a child.
But the only thing that kept him from associating evil with the place was the fact that this structure exactly mirrored the miniature temple Qainur had purchased.
Instead, his cynicism triumphed, even though he swore he heard his father’s voice shouting in his head. But the voice was dull and muted, as if something were barring the barrier between this world and the next. “So I think we found the real template for that temple of yours, Qainur.” He chuckled, but the laugh fell flat in the cold air of the clearing.
Qainur did not hear him, but kept creeping toward the structure.
“I don’t think so,” Torplug answered for him. “I’ve seen replicas of temples like this. True, it resembles the Temple of M’Hzrut. Or what we know of it. But…well, maybe you are right.” He shrugged. “I don’t know at all anymore. I have never seen a temple built like this in Belden.”
“Nor I,” Zhy agreed.
Qainur had stopped but feet before the overgrown path which led up the crumbling stone steps to the unimposing door. He stared blankly for a minute. Then he seemed to come to his senses as he stared at the gaping black hole that was the entrance. No doubt other adventurers, probably much younger, had long ago removed the door and explored the abandoned temple. Was it a temple?
“Is this a temple?” Zhy asked. “I know it looks like one, but ...”
“Oh, it is,” Torplug replied. “See the rod at the peak of the roof? A Holy symbol was there at one point—now long gone. There is something very strange about a temple here. And about this field. Where is a town around here?” he asked, looking around.
Zhy looked back at the road, only hundred paces away. We should ride out of here.
Qainur started forward, but Torplug bounded forward and pulled at his leggings. “Stop! Stop and think!”
The warrior seemed to emerge from his trance. Then he shook his head and looked at Torplug. “Why? This. This temple…it is so much like my little one. Could this really be the Temple?” He kept inching forward
“Of course not! It only looks like it. It cannot be the true Temple, and you know that!” the mage barked. He glanced furtively at the temple again, then at Qainur. “Stop, please!” he pleaded.
Zhy was starting to get nervous. The bright sunlight that bathed them earlier was being slowly replaced by thin high clouds. A gloom was settling over the clearing and the temple. He could not shake the feeling that someone or something was watching them. “I think we should get back on our horses and find a place before dark.”
“There is still daylight left,” Qainur replied, returning his gaze to the temple. He finally stopped, and the small-man heaved a sigh of relief.
“I’m…I’m not very comfortable being here,” Zhy said quietly.
Torplug sensed his unease. “I am not either, Qainur. This place is wrong. What matted down all of the grass? Why is it still green? What is a temple like this doing out here, with no towns around?”
Qainur finally seemed to see a grain of reasoning here. He looked around and frowned. There were at least a few warrior instincts in the young man, and he muttered something.
“What was that?” Zhy asked.
“You are right. Why is the grass green?”
Torplug’s glance bounced around, down to the grass, up to the trees with still-green leaves, then back to the grass. He looked afar—back to the road. It was very unsettling to see the bright orange and yellow colors of birches contradicting with the spring-green lushness of the field. His glance slowly went back to the grass, and then he looked up sharply, his strangely-large eyes suddenly much larger.
The small-man gasped. “Oh no! Oh no! That is right…” His horrified glance locked on the temple. He started to back slowly away. A disgusted look plastered his face.
“What?”
“A reversal! A reversal!”
“Excuse me?” the mercenary wondered dumbly.
“A what?” Zhy frowned.
“The temple looks like the real temple. Only it is in a place with no people,” he muttered, still walking slowly backwards. His eyes remained locked on the temple. “The grass is green now. But it will be dead and brown in the summer. Don’t you see?”
“I don’t follow,” Zhy asked, his thumb nervously working at his earlobe.
“There is good and evil. Good and evil. Demons, boys, demons! We must leave. Leave now!”
“What?” barked Zhy.
“A Reversal! A re—”
“For Sacuan’s massive balls’ sake!” Qainur barked, finally tearing his gaze away from the temple. “What?”
“Didn’t I already tell you this?” the small-man snapped. “A reversal! Where night is day and light is dark and winter is summer!”
“Why’s it still light here?” the mercenary snapped. He looked at Torplug with contempt.
“I—I don’t know. Maybe the demon wants it light. It’s darker in the forest…” the mage trailed off. Again, he looked at the road as if it was hundreds of miles away and he had to traverse a field of thick mud to get to it.
“And why is it so close to the main road?” Zhy wondered. He looked back to the road, but somehow it seemed much farther away than it had previously. Between the road and the clearing was a wide field of dead grass and juniper bushes. He did not remember crossing that path of earth before.
“It…” Torplug trailed off. “I think it moved,” he whispered.
“Wait! You said...demons?” Zhy breathed. Qainur was staring, dumbly, at the bright green grass.
“I did...what else could cause this?”
Zhy sucked in the warm air. Warm air. Too warm to match the cold forest they were traversing. Sunlight reflected off Qainur’s sword, but it seemed dull and faded, as if it were artificial. Zhy shivered even with the warmth and felt as if a thick blanket were slowly descending over him; a blanket of something sticky and cloying. Torplug stared at him, his eyes wide, and he dry-washed his oversized hands. “This...”
Gazes turned to the temple and the oppressing sensation intensified. Zhy could see shapes and shadows dancing along the crumbling walls and in the black voids that were windows—all in his imagination, the thought, but there could indeed be demons inside.
“Qainur, snap out of it. We need to leave. Now.” Torplug started to turn. Zhy took a step backward.
Qainur looked at them coldly. Then he drew his sword, oblivious to the fact that everything was horribly out of sorts. He turned and resumed his transfixed gaze on the temple. Slowly he trudged through the grass, half-expecting Torplug to come pulling at his trousers again. But the small-man only stood stock-still, and his face was frozen with terror.
“Silly little man,” Qainur muttered under his breath. This time Zhy had overheard Qainur, though he was farther away. Something is most definitely wrong with this place.
Suddenly there was a motion from inside the temple. Each traveler sensed more than saw it. There was a palpable shift in the shadows—it was the affirmation that someone stood in a darkened doorway, though they remained hidden in the shadows. Each man turned his head toward the temple, then recoiled violently as a sickening blast of fetid warm air rushed out at them.
Although he had been raised on a farm, Zhy felt physically struck by the intensity of the odor. It seemed to reach up into his mouth and nose. He tasted rot and death. His hackles rose, and he fell to his knees in the soft grass and retched. As he slowly righted himself, standing with a groan, he froze. He wiped his chin and flung small pieces of breakfast on to the grass. He moved his hand to wipe again, and it hung, frozen, next to his chin.
Qainur stood, with his sword outstretched. The mercenary stared at a physical terror far worse than the sickening odor. His eyes were glazed and he was frozen in place. Staring. His mouth slowly sank open, as if a large spider had affixed its web to Qainur’s bottom lip and was stretching it languidly downward.
The old man from the village stood in the entryway. His eyes glowed red, and a vicious looking snarl graced his mouth. He slowly strolled out from the entryway and descended the crumbling stairs. When he spoke his voice was cold and reverberating, and it sounded like so many snakes hissing at passing prey. He glowered at the travelers.
“Greetings, little ones,” he hissed, still snarling. “I thought I had warned you about traveling north.”
Zhy ventured a quick glance back at Torplug, who was motionless. He’d seen that look before, when the Knight of the Black Dawn was warded. We die here.
The old man answered his thoughts by fingering a pentagon-shaped trinket hanging around his neck. The sneer was replaced by a grin of pure evil, exposing rows of uneven and jet-black teeth. Then he laughed—a deep laugh, which reverberated off the temple and quickly died in the bright clearing. A few stones shook loose from the stairway and rolled to the grass. He took another step and then stopped. Suddenly his hand extended outward. There was neither light nor sound, but something slammed into Torplug and sent him sprawling back into the field. Zhy swore he saw slight ripples in the air just before the mage went flying. Torplug lay motionless.
Qainur and Zhy were still frozen.
“He will be of no use to you anymore. Not with this!” Again, he fingered the trinket. It took Zhy all of his energy to keep himself from wetting his trousers. He hoped that the final blow would be painless. Dark, I just want dark. A voice from the grave seemed to answer: Booze would have sent you to the dark. Would you rather die with a bottle in hand or facing a demon?
The old man swatted at something unseen. “Boys…” he hissed. The s slithered off his putrid lips, like a rattlesnake sliding off a rock covered with moldy lamp oil. If black had a sound, Zhy thought, this demon’s voice matched it perfectly. “Boys. Boys. You lied to me. How sad. You kept going on your futile mission. But you are well-disguised. I did not know the Dawn sent such young men forth.”
Qainur’s face suddenly moved. His eyes snapped from their previous unfocused stare and instead locked on the unholy creature before them.
“Ahhh,” the man moaned. “Don’t try to cover the lies.”
Zhy was stunned. So this demon thought they were Knights of the Black Dawn? Great, just great.
Although demons were a very real threat to Belden, they were not exactly the most intelligent when it came to choosing host bodies. Too often, the weakest host was the oldest person in terms of life years. And while the demon forced its will upon its host, driving actions, spells, and speech, there was only so much an aging body could do. Reflexes that were once immediate were now slow and faltering. Dark spells could be cast, but the body’s energy reserves of an old man were far reduced from his younger self. This contradicted the abilities of the younger man, who would be able to complete, construct, and maintain complex wards against invading demons. So the demons of Belden often found themselves in expended hosts. Too bad past storytellers overlooked this fact when they constructed their wild imaginations of youthful demon hordes scouring and terrorizing the world. Alas, there must be a time for old clichés to die.
Qainur did not know this side-effect of demonic powers, but something about the way the old man carried himself provided several clues, although the mercenary would be hard-pressed to identify them specifically. He had no training in magic, but whatever instincts he’d picked up as a mercenary were suddenly firing in his brain. For many years, trust in his instincts had kept his face pristine, and today was no exception. He waited for the demon’s gaze to shift to Zhy and he struck.
Qainur possessed a quickness that was much too fast for his great, muscular bulk. In one motion, his sword was out and the trinket was snapped from the demon’s neck. The talisman went skittering across the space between them and the temple and landed silently in the thick moss between two blocks of stone aside the building. As it flipped in the air, it caught the sun and flashed brightly then vanished in the grass.
The old man gasped and stepped back, raising his arms in preparation for a spell. He never had the chance. Zhy heard a quiet rustle behind him. Thinking it yet another demon or whatever horrible creature from the underworld, he dared not turn. He wanted to throw his arm over his eyes, but something seemed to keep them pried open in wide-eyed terror.
A ball of purple flame swirled from a kneeling Torplug and skittered across the short distance between them. It ignited the demon, and the smell of burning hair and flesh was stifling. The old man began a throaty cry, but it was snuffed out from the acrid smoke of his own flesh being burned in the strange fire. As he collapsed to the ground, his aging bones shattered upon the stone, and blood that had not boiled trickled out onto the cold earth.
Torplug remained kneeling, his arms extended. He waited a few seconds, and Zhy thought he had been frozen in place. Soon, however, he let his arms fall, and he exhaled.
The little mage immediately leapt to his feet and he appeared to be afflicted by Zor’Tarak. Every move was a hundred times fast, and his eyes danced from the body, to his companions, to the temple, to the road, and back again. He muttered something incoherent, or in Welcferian, and his friends stared. Then he started yelling.
“Run! Run to the horses! Before the demon has a chance to jump to one of us!” He was already running, even though the spell had spent the last of his energy, adrenaline and fear carried his small legs to their horses.
Zhy and Qainur needed no further encouragement. They too ran. Only in his nightmares had Zhy run so hard and so fast.
Chapter 15 — Stalking the Spires
Would you ever strike out unaided into a desert or a frozen wasteland? Would you ever jump into the ocean and swim blindly towards an illusion? Would you walk blindfolded into a moonless forest? Then why do we trust our teachers, leaders, and friends to guide us across the treacherous landscapes of our lives?
Prophet Zhera
It is time to bid farewell to your father, Bimb, and exit the Tunnels.
“I don’t want to leave Fa.” I was sad. Why did I have to leave?
I’m sorry, Bimb. He will be safe. My son is not safe...we must help him.
“Is it cold?”
It is cold, but you have packed your warmest outfits, matches for fires, and dried meat. If we have to, I can teach you how to set a trap for an animal.
“I don’t want to leave.” It was warm here. Going upstairs was going to make me cold. I did not like winters back home. I wanted to go home. But Fa was here. And now Lyn was making me leave Fa. I stopped walking.
Son, I know you want to stay with your Fa, but you have to help me. When we are finished, I will get you back to your Fa.
He called me Son. Only Fa called me Son.
I promise.
“You called me Son.
Only Fa does that.”
I—I’m sorry. Sometimes, it feels…well, maybe like you are a…a…nephew to me, we’ll say. You are helping my son and I am forever grateful. I promise.
“You promise?”
Yes, we will return to Fa when we are done helping my son.
* * *
There was snow. A lot of snow. The door to the upstairs was hidden by snow. It fell on me when it opened. It was the same numbers to unlock it as the door on our farm. I went upstairs.
All I could see was snow. It was cold. I put on the big coat and the big mittens.
Pull up your hood.
It was cold. So very cold. I wanted to go home.
Now, turn to your left and start walking.
“The snow is deep. I can’t see my feet.”
Those boots will keep you warm. They are very high, and as long as you keep them tied tight, they should keep snow from sneaking into your boots. You know how to tie, right?
“Yes.”
Keep moving, and that will help. We should have packed skis, but it would have been hard to carry them in the Tunnels.
I walked. I did not go anywhere. I took steps. Behind me were my footprints. Ahead was snow. But I was not going anywhere. Why?
The terrain is vast and looks very much the same. You are moving, but you don’t really see your progress. Look farther ahead if you can, once your eyes adjust to the sunlight.
I walked not looking up. I was cold. I wanted to go home. The snow was bright. And very deep. My feet started to warm.
Look.
“What are those big jaggy things? Big gray things?”
Mountains! Called the Spires of Solitude…the largest and most rugged mountain range in the entire world.
“Is that where I am going. To help your son?”
No, you go beyond. Beyond is where they are going. You are going over those mountains.
I stopped walking. No. I could not go up mountains. Fa said people tried to climb mountains. And they died. They could not breathe, he said. No air in the mountains. I did not want to die.
