The second thing that stuck out to me was that it was no accident the ogres were there. They were dressed for combat and they had wolves with them. They’d known they would face the mages at the lake, and they were actively hunting them.
Perhaps I was safer alone, after all.
Something to think about. Not today, but soon, maybe.
We walked for the rest of that day, and soon the potions we’d drunk started wearing off. I could see it in their faces and in the way some of the older Lonehills had to drag their legs. Even their submission to Pendras’s authority wouldn’t miraculously make their bodies keep going.
Soon, we reached the beginnings of a mountain. A Goliath of frozen rock that reached way up to the heavens, full of trails that didn’t look like they hadn’t been walked in decades, and inclines that led to nowhere. There was a gate right ahead of us, and a path beyond it.
Next to the gate was a sign.
‘Welcome to Rosediac Bluff.
This is the amber trail. More experienced hikers may seek out the crimson trail. The elderly, pregnant, and those with heart conditions may wish to find the green trail.
All dogs must be kept on a lead. Litterers will be fined.’
The mountain had been a tourist spot, a draw for hikers, and the sign was written in English. I had never heard of Rosediac bluff.
Or had I?
Images flashed in my mind. Memories stirring.
One after another, way too fast and way too many for me to focus for long on a single one.
Pictures of all kinds of hills and mountains. Of roads, streets, fields. Of many miles walked, many soles of many shoes worn to threads.
Of me walking around a giant lake while sunlight bouncing off it.
Of standing at the beginning of a trail exactly like this and watching it, and a question forming in my mind.
Did he come this way?
In my memory, I had watched this trail and I had asked myself that question.
Did he come this way?
From the tiny slivers of memory I’d had before now, I assumed that I was a vagabond or something. But maybe it was something else. Maybe I had been pursuing someone across the country.
“Isaac!” called a voice.
The group had split from me, heading away from the trail gate and toward the mountain base, where there was a big opening cut into the stone. It was chest-height, and some of the Lonehill mages had to bend down to get through, while others were short enough to just walk in.
Roddie ran ahead of me, disappearing through the hole and out of sight. I followed them through it and into the mountain. Soon, I saw that Pendras was already sitting down further into what I now realized was a cavern.
He had already hrr-chared a fire. I assumed that was how he’d made it, anyway. Either way, the wafts of heat felt like the best thing I had ever experienced.
I walked further through the passageway until it widened into a cavern room. We were fully inside the mountain now, and though the fire gave it a certain coziness, I could almost feel the weight of all the stone above me.
At least we were far enough in that I could barely see the outside world at the end of the tunnel. We were safe here for a while.
Pendras beckoned me over. The rest of them started sitting on the floor and crossing their legs, forming a semi-circle of people. It was as though they all knew their place in it without speaking.
“Isaac, caim zetz. Es teim fure dar ceremony.”
Ceremony?
Time for the ceremony?
We all gathered inside the cave under the mountain. Fourteen mages all told, but fifteen if you counted me as a mage. I didn’t. I mean sure, I’d learned how to shoot fire from my hands, but that didn’t feel like enough. Could I just call myself a mage? I didn’t know, and it just didn’t feel right, somehow. Wasn’t there some weird mage ceremony where I got a diploma or something?
Then again, I had noticed that the other mages acted differently toward me after the lake. Not in a massive way, but friendlier, and as though I had earned some of their trust.
We were sitting in a semi-circle around the fire Pendras had cast. I had thought that it would be dangerous to start a fire in such a small space, but the tunnel that led to the cavern seemed to give it enough ventilation.
It was weird, sitting there. Despite having found this place out of necessity after getting ambushed by a bunch of ogres and their wolves, I felt safer and warmer than I had since I had spent my first night in the cottage.
It’s funny how getting attacked by ogres can change your outlook. It makes you appreciate the small things. In a way, they’d done me a favor.
I should get them a thank you card.
The Lonehill clan didn’t think so, not that I could blame them. They were quiet, morose, and didn’t seem to appreciate the warmth as much as me.
The mages ages ranged from maybe fourteen to sixty. I couldn’t get too precise, because it’s sometimes hard to tell someone’s age when they are bald. It makes them look younger, and it meant it was hard to figure how old some of these guys were.
I guess this was my first look at them up close, without having to march through blizzards and rain. It was my first proper chance to study them without exhaustion creeping into my limbs, without having to worry about getting free from ropes around my ankles.
Now, I saw all their different colored circles on their foreheads. Blues, greens, reds. Looking closer, some of them had patches of different colors mixed in. Purple swirls meeting crimson splotches.
A sign of the spells they’d learned, maybe? I knew from my experiments that spell disciplines increased when you used them, and you could eventually hit 100% and earn a new rank. I guessed that was what happened, anyway. But if a mage increased their fire spells more than others, would this show on their forehead?
Another question for another time, because something was happening here. There was a shift in the atmosphere. The mages’ gentle voices had softened to silence, and all eyes were on Pendras, who was sitting opposite us all.
“Rosi,” said Pendras.
A woman looked at him. She had a thin nose and small ears, and her face had a squashed look. But her eyes were beautiful; wide and blue, swimming with color. Her forehead circle was almost like the eye on a peacock’s feathers; auburn in the middle, with swirls of black and a current of red around the circumference.
“Ya, Pendras?” she said.
Their leader pointed next to him. “Hrr dar argen. Hrr da All-Kna.”
The girl nodded. She stood up and walked to where Pendras had pointed. With the firelight flickering on her and casting her shadows against the cavern wall behind her, she started dancing.
She was performing the stances of a spell, of course, but her grace made it a dance. I’d never seen the particular stances before but I could tell that her form was perfect and quick, and in a blink, it was over.
“Hrr-Augsai!”
Light rushed from her fingertips, spreading outward toward the ground and then forming an oval shape, resembling her own eyes but much bigger. It looked like a giant egg made of light.
A glow spread from it now, and I realized what his was; a lamp. A weird, magic lamp.
Pendras dragged a bag in front of him. It looked like the one Kaleb had given me, so I guessed it was magic and it’d hold way more than it should be able to.
The crowd of mages seemed tense now. I could see it in the way they stared at Pendras. I could feel it in the air and it made me tighten up, too.
Pendras began taking wooden figurines from the bag. They were inches tall, carved from oak in a simplistic way, and seemed to depict people.
He took fourteen figurines out in total. He placed each one on the ground so that they were standing in a line, and he tapped their heads and spoke a name to each.
“Bas. Milto. Gaven. Ana. Marga...”
On and on this went, until he reached the final figurine, which he tapped on the head and kept his finger on it for longer t
han he had with the others, and he said, “Kaleb,” in a voice so soft that a breeze would have drowned it out if we weren’t in the cave.
So the figurines represented those who hadn’t made it back from the lake. This must have been a funeral, of some kind. A remembrance. Most of the dead had been claimed by the lake, so it was impossible for a real funeral. Impractical, too. The ground was way too cold to bury bodies even if we had been able to recover them. I supposed they could have burned the corpses, but it was a waste of fuel or elementals. It didn’t matter either way since the dead Lonehills were at the bottom of the lake.
Pendras tapped the first figurine again. “Bas,” he said.
Now, one of the mages stood up. A thin, young mage who I think had been friends with Kaleb.
He took his inventory bag and stuffed it under his robes so that he looked like he had a swollen belly. He puffed his cheeks out, and he waddled around the cavern.
The rest of the clan fell about laughing. Deep, loud belly laughs. It was as though this young lad had taken their tension and transformed it into something else without even using a hrr command.
Pendras smiled, but he did not laugh like the others. He tapped the next figurine. “Milto,” he said.
This time, the girl mage stood up. She screwed up her face so she was frowning, and she started pointing at the other mages and giving exaggerated stern commands. The others thought it was hilarious.
On and on this went, one figurine after another. I thought I understood it; in funerals, it was common for people to talk about the things the deceased did in life. Their strange habits, their funny stories. After they had grieved, people would eventually start remembering the deceased’s humorous peculiarities. Laughter was a release valve.
When this was done, Pendras collected the figurines again and packed them in his bag. Next, he pointed at the mage on the furthest left of the semi-circle.
“Donny,” he said.
The mage stood up. He was one of the oldest there, with sunken eyes and wrinkled, flappy skin. His bald head was covered in liver spots.
“Hier, Donny,” said Pendras.
He took three things from his bag; a handful of dust that seemed to keep its shape even when handled, not losing a single grain. That must have been an elemental of some kind. A book with strange writing on the cover. A jar with black liquid inside it.
“Thankie, Pendras.”
Pendras nodded. “Shea,” he said.
The next mage stood up and approached him, and Pendras gave her something.
Just like with the figurines, the others watched patiently as Pendras went from mage to mage and gave them gifts. I wondered if the gifts were something that they gave at funerals, or if they were rewards for their service in the lake. Every single mage, though they couldn’t fight well, had pitched in by casting their spells at the ice. Without that collective effort, all of them would have died.
“Isaac,” said Pendras.
I looked at him so quickly my neck hurt. I was just so surprised. Was I getting a reward, too?
“Yap?” I said.
He curled his finger to me. He seemed to do that a lot.
I’d watched the other mages get a reward, but I hadn’t expected anything. It was enough to have a safe place to sleep for a night or two, while I figured out what to do. I had originally wanted to ask for help freeing the humans, but I didn’t know anymore. This didn’t seem like the time, given everything that had happened to the clan.
As well as that, I needed a long-term plan, and I needed it soon; I couldn’t just keep surviving one day to the next.
“Isaac, hier,” he said.
He held out items to me. I took them, and I couldn’t believe it.
Items Received:
[Fire] Elementals x5
[Standard] Lonehill clan robes
Blue spellbook
Purple spellbook
As gifts, Pendras had given me five fire elementals and a set of robes. Elementals were beyond precious to a mage, I was coming to realize, because you needed to kill a relevant creature to get them. To receive five of them was beyond anything I’d expected.
But that wasn’t all. That wasn’t even the best of it.
Pendras had given me two books. One was blue, the other purple. Though I couldn’t completely read the titles, there was a word on each that I understood; Hrr.
These were spellbooks. Two new spells for me to learn.
“Thankie, Pendras,” I said, trying to copy the way he’d said it.
CHAPTER 14 - Home
We spent the rest of the night back in the cave. Pendras’ fire had gone out but the cave trapped some residual heat, and with ten people all cramped together it got a little stuffy. The smell was terrible. Made sense. A bunch of mages who’d been walking all day, whose robes had been soaked with rain and stained with mud. There was little ventilation for the aroma, and I wasn’t completely convinced this wasn’t some kind of chemical attack.
Not that I smelled much better. When did I last have a shower? Or even a wash? Maybe in the stream?
No, wait. It was in the barn, after the hell kittens.
Two mages took guard duty at the front of the tunnel, facing the outside world. Pendras and another mage who looked to be his age were the first. I had volunteered, but Pendras shook his head and said something in Kartum. I imagined it was something along the lines of, “You’ve had a hard day, Isaac. You deserve some rest.”
Who was I to argue with that?
They didn’t take weapons with them, so I guessed they were acting more as sentries than anything else. After all, when it took a lifetime for you to cast a spell, your magic wasn’t much a defense. Then again, I guessed Pendras would be able to use his magic much faster than anyone else.
They seemed to swap shifts every few hours or so. I knew this because I was awake through each rotation. Roddie didn’t have the same problem, though. He curled up next to me, as close to my side as he could get, and he wrapped himself up into a little ball of dog.
I envied him being able to sleep in this, but I knew I didn’t have insomnia just because of the heat. I would have found it hard to sleep in any case, but the heat and smells weren’t what stopped me dozing off.
It was the questions. Words bouncing around my head. The things Pendras had told me, and the gaping hole of knowledge he’d left with every new word. I tried to get it as straight in my head as possible.
I had come here through some kind of portal of light. Pendras and the others had seen the portal, found me, and tied me up.
Okay. Simple enough. Forget how it happened, or why. That would just send me in a spiral of unanswerable questions.
So, what next?
Well, I knew I wasn’t the only person this had happened to. Pendras had mentioned other people. Even other races.
And others brought from different time periods!
Why did I suddenly feel like my mind was shrinking, and my skull was pounding? I needed to sleep. Maybe under the clear morning light things would look clearer.
I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to let my mind calm down.
“Isaac,” said a voice. “Isaac.”
Someone nudged me.
I rolled over to see the vague form of Rosi towering over me, her bright blue eyes seeming to shine even in the darkness.
“Isaac, caim,” she said, pointing at the tunnel.
Time for sentry duty. That suited me fine; it wasn’t as if I was going to get any sleep. I got up and followed her, and we took our positions at the tunnel opening. Even wrapped up in a robe and overcoat, it was freezing.
I supposed that if I had to have sentry duty with anyone, Rosi was one of the better choices. She was much friendlier than some of the other clanfolk. But even with that, she had an intensity. It was clear that her clan meant a lot to her, but not only that; she wanted to rise within it. I had already noticed that whenever Pendras needed something to be done, Rosi was the first to volunteer.
&n
bsp; “Isaac, hier,” she said. She nodded at my hands, widening her eyes.
“What?”
“Hande,” she said, spreading her hands and nodding at me.
“Ah.”
I opened my hands, and she dropped a stone onto my palm. It was hot. Not enough to burn but warm enough to feel it heat my skin. That must have been how they kept warm while on guard duty; they heated stones in the fire embers and took them outside when it was their turn to keep watch.
We sat together, side by side, and I looked at her closely. She was a different species to me, sure. Green-skinned, with pointy ears. And yet, we had something in common. Not just the circles carved into our foreheads, but something else. It was weird, but I could tell she was my age, or maybe just a little bit older. Maybe a person’s age shows itself not just in wrinkles or lack of them, but in their eyes.
But how did I know how old I was? I guess I didn’t, really. I just felt that I wasn’t old.
Maybe it wasn’t so strange that I saw this in Rosi. After all, you can tell a young dog from an old one, can’t you? Even though you aren’t the same species as them.
Not that I was comparing her to a dog. What was I thinking?
Thank god I hadn’t said any of this out loud. Man, I needed sleep.
“Chare,” said Rosi.
“Huh?”
She nodded at me. “Chare,” she repeated. At first, I wondered if she wanted me to cast a fire spell, but that’d be a waste. Plus, it’d draw attention to us.
But she’d made it sound like a question. So, what was she asking me?
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you want,” I said, shrugging.
Rosi began making the stances of hrr-chare. Not completely, since you had to stand up to do them properly, but she made the backward C, and then the subsequent arm movements. When she was done, she pointed at me.
“I think I get it. You want me to show you my form.”
She nodded. “Ya. Firme.”
I shrugged. “Okay. So there’s the first stance…”
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 10
