by Ember Lane
“And we have no idea how long…” Lincoln took another draft on his ale. Petroo drank his own down.
“I’ll spread the news to the others. Can you tell Cronis?” Petroo looked from Swift to Lincoln.
“No doubt he’ll have questions for both of us,” Swift replied.
Petroo stood. “Then I must be on my way. Oh, one thing. Have any of you seen the prince—Flip?”
Thinking about it, Lincoln had only seen Flip once since Alexa Drey had left. He said he had some things to check out and then he’d be back.
Lincoln shrugged. “I’m not overly sure. He was snooping around the mountain, but I haven’t seen him since. My guess is that he’s moved on.”
Petroo grunted. “Always up to something, that one. Wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t behind a few things that are going on.” He offered his hand to Lincoln again. “I’m sorry it’s been so brief. Is Swift serving you well?”
Lincoln looked at the young apachalant. “More than I could hope for.”
Petroo almost smiled. “There are more Apachalants coming, and the Kobane are slowly sneaking into the country—it’s a journey that you are going to have to take. Manners are very important to the Kobane way of things. If you do not thank their queen, she will take it personally.”
“How long will the trip take?” Lincoln asked, remembering his feeling of being trapped by the city, of not seeing any of the land.
“For you to get to the capital, two months by land, the border, maybe four weeks. The Kobane that passed through here came by clipper—not a journey we wish to replicate too often—it is very precarious, and we wish to keep our troop movements to ourselves”
Petroo bowed. “I shall return and set up a station in Sanctuary. In the meantime, it’s been a pleasure. Swift, a word please.”
Both apachalants left. Pete started chuckling.
“Scouts, portals, Kobane queens, you move in high circles.”
“Pete, I was just going to build a quiet legacy for my Joan.”
Inside, Lincoln was smiling. Somehow, he was wriggling his way into the land’s destiny.
“That gnome they talk of—the portal one—that there’s Thadius Hawkwind. He's a strange guy.”
“Strange?”
“Strange,” confirmed Pete. “Strange because he’s got magic—true magic—and he turned it into the chaos magic, like the spell you’ve got.”
“Why is that strange?”
“Do you know what chaos is? It’s the absence of order. Now magic masquerades as chaos, but it ain’t. Rules, magic’s got rules that need to be satisfied to work. So tell me, Lincoln, how can you have chaos magic?”
Lincoln looked at Pete, wondering if he’d found some different kind of leaf to smoke. The Pete he’d known back in Brokenford hadn’t seemed too interested in the goings on in the world. He did, though, pose a very good question, but Lincoln had no answer. Luckily, Belzarra reappeared. Lincoln asked her opinion.
“Magic is chaos,” she said, quite firmly. “Mana is chaos, shadow mana is dark chaos. The art of magic is bringing that chaos under control by binding it within certain rules. Cronis’s color magic uses mana to bring chaos to bear on a stable item, and that chaos teases the object apart. He then uses the laws of his magic to mimic his desires and form what he wants. Chaos is mana, and mana is chaos. The spell is the rope that binds it, the lens that focuses it. There, it’s that simple.”
“Then what’s chaos magic?” Pete pressed.
“It’s where the chaos takes control of the magic—where the outcome becomes unpredictable.”
Lincoln finally saw what Pete was getting at. “So, the portal at Tanglewood can’t be a chaos portal.”
“Oh no,” said Belzarra, “wherever did you get that idea from? The portal is an old magic. It comes from Valkyrie—from Speakers Isle. You see, that’s the trouble when people who really don’t know what they’re talking about start gossiping. Valkyrie, it all leads back to Valkyrie, leads back to the witch Melinka.”
“Is that why you think this Melinka is behind it?”
“Well.” Belzarra shook her brilliant red hair out. “This girl could do with ale. Merryweather? Please?”
Lincoln noted that the bartender already appeared terrified of the witch, and had her ale poured and served in seconds. Belzarra picked it up, took a sip, and winked at Lincoln. “See, that’s magic—order from chaos.” She put her mug down. “Valkyrie’s fallen god is called Taric. It’s widely thought he’s dead or imprisoned, and so Valkyrie is up for grabs and out of their game. Thus, his champion was released and came here to serve Poleyna.”
“Mezzerain,” Lincoln said, getting the gist.
Belzarra let a heart-melting smile cross her lips. “Exactly, Mezzerain. Now, I was told that Pellevere—”
“Another fallen god?” Lincoln muttered, trying to get it straight in his head.
“Exactly. Pellevere fell to Kataspay, and Corsaka is her champion. Anyway, it was widely rumored that they’d conquered Valkyrie, thus I thought you were from there when you appeared to fall from the vortex, but news from beyond the mists is just hearsay.”
Lincoln scratched his head. “So…”
Belzarra sighed. “What aren’t you getting?”
Lincoln raised his finger in the air. “There are nine lands within the mists…”
“Correct.”
“And all of them count as Mandrake.”
“Exactly. Beyond the mists there are eight more lands.”
“Continents,” Lincoln muttered.
“Whatever,” Belzarra said, offhandedly. “And the winner has to control all nine.”
“Winner?”
“Oh my!” Belzarra exclaimed. “You don’t know, do you? We mean nothing to these fallen gods. It’s just a game to them.” Then she laughed uncontrollably. “Lincoln, you’re in the middle of a contest, nothing more, nothing less, and once they’ve finished with our world, they’ll destroy it just like they did to their last.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, but the realization was beginning to dawn on him. Or was this just another way to prepare them for their future life? Was this game designed to be so complicated that it kept their mind active, constantly thinking? It had to be, because the alternative was just too horrendous to think about.
“Nine ships,” he whispered, “nine continents…”
“Sorry?” Belzarra said.
Lincoln shook his head. “Nothing…nothing… Getting back to the portal. So, you think it comes from Valkyrie?”
“I think they have a hand in it. What would make sense is if the portal starts and ends in Irydia. Addison’s land sits very close to Horns Isle. What if they’ve found a way to breech the mists, land an army on his shores, and then march through the portal and right into the heart of Irydia? If Valkyrie is lost, if their god Taric is vanquished, what better than to take over a land protected by the mists? What better place to regroup?”
Lincoln screwed his eyes shut. He knew everything she said made sense.
Belzarra looked at Lincoln like he was unhinged. “Of course, much of my theorizing is based on a simple fact. The portal started building the day after Mezzerain left.”
“Mezzerain?”
“Why else would Taric’s champion be in Mandrake other than to lay the way for his army? My guess is that Addison’s halls are already filled with the beginnings of Valkyrie’s army. My guess is that Irydia will soon have another king.”
“Mezzerain,” Lincoln growled.
7
Respite
It was nothing short of idyllic, and after Belzarra’s revelations, or rather, theories of a couple of days past, Lincoln needed his faith in the land to be restored. They’d hiked through the thick forest, a trail now worn on its floor, and camped in ready-made stopovers, and now they were on the boats rowing upstream to Sanctuary.
Lincoln was hugely impressed with the organization that made it all possible. Allaise introduced him to each and every one of her group
along the way. There was no doubt in Lincoln’s mind that the journey from Hunter’s Cross to the river was in safe hands. Even on this trip, another ten folks were being taken to the safe city. Now they had Apachalants ranging far and wide, and with the first of the Kobane Cavalry patrolling, things should become even tighter. Allaise had done a fantastic job, as had Pete, and Lincoln hadn’t stopped telling them how impressed he was.
Belzarra, on the other hand, didn’t travel well and didn’t play well with other folks either. Her curious battle with Allaise had also continued the whole time. She demanded Lincoln’s constant attention, always getting between him and Allaise.
For Lincoln, it was an unwelcome intervention. He’d forgotten how pure and giving Allaise was. She never stopped helping people, and nothing was too much trouble for her. The contrast between the half-elf and the witch couldn’t be any more stark. Allaise even defended Belzarra, telling Lincoln that he had to give her time, that she was used to being a recluse, and that she’d sacrificed a lot to leave Tanglewood.
Tanglewood: that was another thing that Lincoln hadn’t quite understood. Why was the portal there? But apparently that was easily explained. Tanglewood wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It was a depression in the land, and it was changing. The swamp was drying out, the forest dying, and soon the crawling fungus would fade away too. Somehow, Lincoln knew that the vortex was killing Tanglewood and the land surrounding it. Belzarra had explained, enjoying being the center of attention, but hadn’t given him any concrete answers.
“Why do you think I chose the place? It was teeming with natural mana. Until the vortex showed up, the swamp was thriving. Death was never more than a few feet away from you. And life—well that was always blooming. Swamps: folks say they’re a place of death, and rot, and nothing more, but they’re wrong. Swamps teem with life. The river supplied its life; they slowly drained through the clay bed under and everything was in an ever-changing balance.”
“So, what happened?” Lincoln had asked.
“The vortex sucked the mana away, and without the mana, nothing can grow—apart from fungi. That’ll leach the last of anything’s essence until nothing is left. Once the fungi dies, all is dead. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the swirling mists started sucking up the water as well.”
She’d gone on to say that she thought the whole of the grove, the dale, and the surrounding area would slowly be swallowed by a crawling blight. That thought, along with so many other dire ones, was the reason Lincoln needed his faith in the land restored, and the row upriver was doing just that.
It was broad, alive, and fresh. The mountain water was clear, cold, pure, vibrant, and revitalizing. From his viewpoint in the boat, the teeming forest spilled over its banks, no longer thick and oppressive. He spied the odd bear fishing, birds circling, and otters swimming by.
This, this right here—this is what this land should be about.
Allaise snuggled close on one side, Belzarra on the other. Even the witch’s mood had brightened, her face angled up, soaking in the sun as it glimpsed through the split in the forest.
Ten elves rowed them, fast, practiced, and in perfect harmony. Forgarth’s tribe was thriving now, long gone the blight of their one tree. Even Forgarth himself had improved. While he wasn’t spritely by any means, he had his fire back—except when he was sleeping on his throne. Jin had commented that he’d started arguing harder, though Forgarth would never understand the darker side of man and woman.
They ported the boat around the shallow part of the river, and again up the rapids, and were soon on the final stretch. Lincoln had never seen the wall from this direction, but when it started breaking through the forest’s emerald camouflage, he smiled a satisfied smile. Though it wasn’t tall enough yet, it was certainly getting there. It looked impassable, impregnable, and truly impressive. They’d started cutting the forest back in front of it, and a good two hundred yards of no man’s land existed, packed with traps and abatis.
Huge gates now hung above the river roadway. Still clad in scaffolding while being strengthened with iron braces, and they would have been the one weak point in an otherwise robust defense, so Lincoln had thought around it.
He’d redesigned the main wall so that it turned and ran back along the river for a hundred yards, and then commissioned another set of gates to span the river. His plan was to have a hundred yards of death for any that would dare attack his city—for city it was fast becoming. As they passed through the gates and into the stone alley, he saw that the wall was now ten feet high and climbing.
Time, I just need time…
Of the ten more refugees, only one had a trade he desperately wanted—a mason, but another one was better than nothing; one could direct twenty, one could make a difference. He knew that the apachalants were scouring the land for likely volunteers, but with Brokenford still building, and paying good gold, those subtle conversations were quite often falling on deaf ears.
“You’ve built all this?” Allaise said, looking at the wall, up at Starellion, and farther upriver to the stone jetty they were nearing. Once through the stone tunnel, she gasped again—the true magnitude of Sanctuary clearly becoming apparent to her.
Though Lincoln had only been gone a week, he could already see that Finequill et al had progressed his settlement farther, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he could see what looked like half a street and a line of shops being built out from the town hall.
The ceratog and Sanctuary’s city guide, Echo, were waiting by the quayside. Finequill kept trying to stand in front of Echo, but Echo was having none of it. Before the boat was lashed to the quay, they both called his name.
“Seems like you’re in demand,” Belzarra muttered. Allaise squeezed his hand. Pete jumped out of the boat and stretched.
“It’s a fine place you’ve built here,” he said, wandering off a few yards.
“Ah Lincoln,” said Finequill, “we need to get some things straight.”
“Yes,” said Echo. “We do.”
“For instance,” Finquill pressed. “Who’s in charge of city planning when you’re gone? I explained to this thing, that the steward is in charge.”
“Thing?” said Echo, indignantly. “I’m the city guide, and all instructions to all bots have to go through me.”
“But...” Finquill raised a paw. “But, be that as it may, while you can be told what to do, the creative thinking falls to me.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Lincoln cried, scrambling out of the boat. “Didn’t I name a second in command?”
“I’m authorized to take instruction from Alexa Drey,” Echo said, with more than a little smugness. “But she isn’t here, and nor were you, so therefore I was in charge of building.”
“Except,” Finequill said, puffing out his chest. “Except that I am steward, and the steward runs the city.”
“Technically,” Belzarra muttered, “the mouse is correct.”
“Ceratog!”
“Mouse!” Belzarra barked. “And you, mouse, will let your master off this boat and away from this quay. You will not bother him until such a time as he is fed, bathed, and rested—more than likely tomorrow. Then, and then only, he will grant you fifteen minutes to go through what is needed. Those fifteen minutes will be shared equally between you and…”
“Echo,” Finequill said meekly, staring at Belzarra’s outstretched hand.
“So, you’d best get your act together and prepare.”
Belzarra held up her palm. A violet sphere of magic hovered just above it.
“That’s the zombie one,” Lincoln told Fineqill.
“Zombie one,” Finequill muttered, backing away. “Echo, if I may have a word,” the ceratog said, and the pair of them walked away.
Lincoln couldn’t be sure, but he thought he felt the first pangs of love for the witch from Tanglewood.
“So,” said Belzarra, “where’s the tavern? I could eat…most anything.” She laughed that evil laugh of hers, looping her arm through Lincoln’s, and
escorting him from the quay.
Allaise took Lincoln’s other hand and called Pete over, and the four of them walked through Sanctuary toward The Swift Half tavern. Ozmic was behind the counter, Cronis was in front, clearly a few mugs of ale ahead of everyone.
“So,” Lincoln declared, “everything been quiet?”
Cronis growled at Belzarra. “So you came then.”
“The land’s in peril, and you know me, mage, if the land needs me, I always come.”
“The apachalant said you needed rescuing,” Cronis pointed out.
“When did Swift get here?” Lincoln asked, smacking his lips together in appreciation of his own ale.
“Yesterday. Allocated a camp for the Kobane—they took one of the empty barracks and then ranged out into the forest with the others.”
“And all’s been quiet?” Lincoln asked.
“If you’re inquiring about Griselda Irongrip,” Cronis said, perking, a mischievous grin crossing his old face. “Rumor has it that she is a day away—still partying. In fact she’s holding a Party Under the Mountain Open Cave Night tonight. Ozmic, you’re going, aren’t you?” Cronis called.
“Wouldn’t miss it fer the world. Every dwarf from here to Zybond is going.”
“Who is Griselda Irongrip?” Belzarra asked.
Cronis roared, “She is coming, and that’s who she is.”
Belzarra turned to Lincoln. “Well?”
“She’s…”
“She’s our champion,” Ozmic said proudly, and filled Belzarra and Allaise in on the imminent arrival of the dwarven celebrity.
“And she’s coming to help us clear Starellion?” Belzarra asked.
“Yep,” Lincoln replied, wondering why he was feeling…guilty about it. “Me, you, Swift, Jin, Crags, Griselda. Flip was supposed to come, but he appears to have vanished.”
“If Flip said he would be here, he will,” Cronis said, imperiously. “The prince has long served his own agenda, and if he’s told you he’ll help, then it serves just that, and nothing more. Seek no loyalty from that one, just appreciate it when his path and yours cross.”
