by Sean Hinn
Who are these people? she wondered, setting aside the more impossible puzzle in favor of one easier to solve. Not soldiers, she decided; they were not armed. Not merchants; there was no one west of Mor with which to trade. Brigands? No; there were young and old among them. There were too many to be a single family, not that any family would choose to travel in such conditions.
Which means they did not choose to travel, Mila reasoned. These are refugees. And there will be more.
Mila quickly cast a spell to warn her should something approach, malevolent or otherwise, from any direction, shuddering at her own foolishness in not having done so before. She then doubled her efforts at charging her gems; she had relied solely on the stray life energies around her to imbue them to this point, but should she encounter the creature responsible for the destruction she now witnessed, she would need every bit of power she could muster, and quickly. She began to fill the gems with her own power, with her own will, with the innate power of sorcery she had carried since birth. Doing so was not without risk, a fact she had discovered at Kehrlia. Her sorcerous power was tied to her will, and her will was tied to her emotions. Should she become unexpectedly enraged, or afraid, or even aroused while imbuing a gem, she could easily overload its capacity, to devastating effect. It had required a considerably imaginative explanation to her instructor when an entire classroom had been obliterated during the midterms of her third lesson year.
~
Her class had been assigned the task of imbuing gems with various elemental energies. They had been given a full cycle to prepare their stones, but Mila had been busy with her own extracurricular studies. The power within their gems would be measured the next day; the half of the class whose jewels were most potently imbued would advance to the second half of their third year. The rest would be expelled from Kehrlia. Mila was behind. Her peers had done as they were expected, dedicating nearly every free moment to the task for the previous thirty-one days. Mila had not, certain that her sorcerous power would enable her to win the competition handily. Therefore, the day before their gems were to be judged, Mila worked late into the night. Thinking herself to be the lone student awake in the tower, she had not bothered to lock the door to the classroom. She filled her assigned gem, a finely-cut emerald that sat across the room within a specially made cradle, feeding it from the infinite wellspring of her will, and in a few short hours had accomplished what had taken her fellow students a cycle. She was quite near to completion when a muscular arm snaked its way around her delicate waist, and the fingers of a strong hand took gentle hold of her throat. The sorceress smiled at her lover’s touch.
Kynneth.
~
Mila recalled the young man with fondness. She had not loved him, but she might have, had she not already marked him as a stepping stone in her ambitions to become an Incantor. She shook off the recollection; there was no room for such distractions, particularly as she began imbuing the diamond that sat in her cloak pocket, so near to her breast. Were she to suddenly overcharge it, as she did the emerald that night, she would never even register her mistake. Mila Felsin would simply cease to be.
A quicker death than what these poor people experienced, she imagined. She tried, at first, to push the thought of it from her mind as she continued cautiously east but decided that she must not. She would need to reason out what had happened, and the details mattered.
Refugees, she thought again. Nothing else fit. Time would soon tell; if an exodus from Mor was indeed underway, she would soon encounter people – or more bodies.
Or the thing from which they ran.
As the day wore on, it became clear that the citizens of Mor who evacuated east along the Morline, if indeed it was an evacuation that had taken place, did so in vain. The Something they fled had followed them, killing them to a one. The most disturbing fact, to Mila, was that the Something which had ended the lives of these people had largely not done so out of hunger. A few horses had been partially eaten, clearly, but the Something responsible for the bodies Mila walked past – hundreds of them – appeared to have killed them in sport.
Or madness, Mila hoped. Certainly that.
Night fell. Mila did not encounter another living soul that day, prey nor predator. She could have continued on, but good sense told her she would be better served by resting at night. Should a confrontation between herself and the Something take place, she would need all her strength and wits, and would prefer such a battle to take place in the light of day.
For the third night since she and Sartean D’Avers had done battle in Hanse Field, Mila stepped off the trail and found a tree beneath which to rest. She cleared the snow where she would lay with a thought and withdrew her diamond. A series of incantations initiated a series of spells that would draw against the gem throughout the night; one for warmth, one to shield her from wind and snow, one for concealment, and a new, fresh spell of Warning. If a wolf snapped a twig within an hour’s walk in any direction, Mila would be awakened. The sorceress ate a bit of dried rabbit and willed herself to sleep.
An hour before dawn, Mila discovered that no spell of Warning had been necessary.
A great rumble resounded overhead, moving from west to east, followed a moment later by the loudest, most thunderous boom she had ever heard. The ground shook from the reverberation of it, and a moment after that, a gust of wind tore through the trees, sufficiently powerful to shatter Mila’s Windbreak spell and cover her dry patch of ground in a thick drift of snow.
Mila could not fathom what had just flown past, nor could she calculate its speed, but she knew it to be faster than any natural thing, she knew it came from the west, and she knew it was the Something.
XXI: KEHRLIA
The knowledge of the Name surfaced within the consciousness of the Master of Kehrlia, much as if it had been there all along, though he knew it had not. The mindful awareness of the thing would have surely altered the shape of the Incantor’s life, and Sartean felt certain that even the unknowing custody of such a dark truth would have left an indelible mark. Yet as he stood on the topmost balcony of Kehrlia, awaiting a response to the question he had asked hours earlier, he did not hear the Name, neither in his ears nor in his mind. It simply emerged, causing Sartean to wonder whether he had wasted the afternoon listening for an answer that had already been given.
Embedded within the knowledge of Name was the terrible tale of the origin of the beast, the appalling horror of its birth, and, more than these, a foul, ineffable truth about the very nature of all things that shook Sartean D’Avers to the core: death was not final, and for a man like Sartean, what came after was unspeakable.
It was the gem within the amulet that gave Sartean these truths, he knew, but the manner in which he came to judge them truthful dispelled any doubt as to their veracity. Before that moment, Sartean had openly and repeatedly mocked the assertion that such a thing as a soul could exist, but now he knew: it was his own soul that recognized the language of Fury for what it was.
The fires. The quakes. I am a blind fool.
A sense of dread collapsed Sartean’s spine as he realized just how close he had come to death at Mila Felsin’s hands. Had she succeeded, he now knew, he would not merely have died. The torment that awaited him in death equaled and exceeded any cruelty he had ever committed in life, and as he fell to his hands and knees, he could not help but recall each one.
The Master of Kehrlia wept in fear.
For the briefest of moments, barely the span of a dozen breaths, Sartean’s terrified mind grasped frantically at the possibility that he could be redeemed, that he could change, that he could somehow alter his fate. Yet the deluge of recollections of his most awful deeds did not abate; the acknowledgement of his own immortal soul had opened a valve within him, threatening to drown the Incantor in a sea of his own sins.
…like rain around us…
Within that brief moment, as he considered the atrocity he had committed against Mila’s parents, a thing akin to guilt w
elled within the Incantor’s heart, a foreign thing, unfamiliar and unwelcome, and its name was regret. He had felt it last in his earliest days at Kehrlia, before he was apprenticed, before he had reached adolescence. Accompanying the memory was the impassive face of his mother, looking down at him in the vestibule of the tower as he cried out to her. She spoke her last words to him then, and for a time after, he had known regret, a certainty that it was his own sins, inadequacies, and defects that had caused her to leave him behind in favor of a life among the priestesses of Kal. The abuses he would come to suffer at the hands of his caretakers at Kehrlia eventually freed him from such fragile emotions as regret, however, and in time, all that remained was rage. In the name of that rage, he had committed acts too terrible to recount.
No, Sartean decided. I cannot be redeemed.
Thoughts of his mother reawakened that rage, replacing Sartean’s moment of introspection with one of resolve: if he could not escape the fires of Fury that awaited him after death, then he would simply refuse to die. And if, by some chance, he could not ultimately defeat the specter of death, then he would ensure that, upon arriving in Fury, it would be he to do the tormenting.
Sartean turned to face Fang. “I will never suffer at your hand!” Sartean screamed, his voice shaking, a blend of wrath and terror. “Listen, as I Name the enemy you have sent, and know who opposes you!”
The beast was a dragon, and its name was Kalashagon. The first word, in the ancient language of the fiery pits of Fury, meant ‘slave of’. The second, the name of the beast, meant, among other things, ‘first of.’ It also meant ‘from many’, and it also meant ‘for Kal’. These were among the many truths which Sartean now knew, truths carried on the current of the Name, and all that remained was to command the dragon to attend him. Upon its arrival, the Incantors of Kehrlia, led by its Master, would burn the spawn of Fury to ash.
Sartean reached into his robe and grasped the amulet. Two of the three stones were warm to the touch; this, Sartean knew, meant that Daughter Nia had been as good as her word: her sisters continued to draw power from the citizens of Mor, feeding the dark jewels. Twilight had only just arrived; he would have many hours within which to defeat the beast before the power of the amulet waned at dawn. He leaned over the railing, sending his thoughts to his army of Incantors gathered at the foot of the great tower.
~Prepare yourselves. The dragon comes soon.~
Sartean drew deeply from the power within the second gem.
“I Name you, Kalashagon! I Call you, Slave of Disorder! Obey my summons! Come to me!”
The name of the dragon, spoken aloud, was a murder of the innocence of Tahr, and anyone within a thousand paces of Kehrlia heard it die. It was not the syllables of the word which were responsible for the befoulment; had they been accidentally spoken, they would have carried no power. The intentional utterance, the knowing expression of the name most foul by a living human being had despoiled the virtue of the world, and as the dark word escaped Sartean D’Avers’ lips, he knew it.
Fury had supposedly risen before, Sartean knew, long ago, when the volcano Fang had first emerged. An army of black and terrible creatures had been born with it, and it had been the dwarves, then, led by Mulgar Silverstone, to beat back the terrors. Accounts from those days were among the most common tales told, most relegated to the status of drinking songs and fables. Sartean once believed the tales merely referenced some foul species that had been set free when the volcano pierced the crust of Tahr: terrible beings, to be sure, but natural organisms nonetheless, animals whose hunger and brutality would go on to fuel the legends that would one day be written into rhyme. Sartean now knew the truth behind the fiends that had risen that day, for the truth lived within the Name, and he knew that even in those days, the virtue of Tahr had remained intact, for the creatures who had risen with Fang in those days were not new to this world. The dreadful things were the physical manifestations of tortured souls, humans who had once lived, men and dwarves and elves and more who had committed great horrors during their lives. They were evil in life, and they were evil in death, but they were once human, beings of natural creation in possession of living souls.
Kalashagon was clearly no human, and of all the truths woven within in its detestable name, the worst was this: it had never been. It was no tortured soul. It was not a thing of ordinary creation turned dark. It was not an automaton, nor a specter. Neither was it one of the Old Ones, fabled denizens of the deep born of Kal’s jealous ire when the world was new. Kalashagon was a novel and unique being, fashioned by the very Hand of Disorder in homage to the Destroyer, not from a soul, but from the remnants and residues of the committed evils and atrocities of humanity; it was the first being of its kind, a thing darker than dark, born in possession not of a soul, but of an anti-soul, and that first utterance of its name among the living was nothing less than a corruption of life itself.
Sartean spat reflexively, unable to shake the feeling that he had tasted a poison. He quickly dismissed the idea as fanciful. Its name does not matter, Sartean told himself. Soon it will be dead. The wizard took a long pull from the flask within his robe, and in a blink disappeared from the balcony, reappearing at the foot of the tower beside Jarriah.
Jarriah turned to his master.
“So that is its name, then?” he asked. “It is a ‘dragon’?”
Sartean ignored the question. “Are we prepared?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“Yes, Master. Twelve squads, as you requested. We recalled nearly every wizard in Mor back to Kehrlia, all those save the ones who had served under Mila Felsin.”
“None have returned from the farmlands?”
“None, Master. Near to fifty Incantors are unaccounted for.”
Sartean shrugged. “They will be found.”
Several moments passed in silence as Kehrlia held its breath, waiting for the beast to arrive.
A young mage assigned to a wind squad addressed Sartean, shivering both from the cold and in fear of Sartean’s reply.
“When will it come, Master?”
Sartean turned to the young woman. “Calli, is it not? Daughter of Master Alton?”
The young woman nodded.
Sartean sneered, watching the horizon as the last light of day faded to purple. “I made a bargain with your father once. To keep you alive, and more. Did you know that?”
It was too dark to see the woman blush in shame, but Sartean knew that she had.
“You did know. Interesting. And you fear that I will break my promise this day?”
Calli shook her head. “You are no longer bound to it, Master. The dragon killed my father three days ago.”
Sartean grimaced; the woman would expect his sympathy. “Oh. That is… tragic.”
She repeated her query. “When will it come?”
Sartean sighed. “I sensed it was not near when I Called, but it did not resist. It comes, quickly. Keep your eyes to the west.” Sartean turned from the woman and walked away, stopping briefly to speak with the lead Incantors of each squad. His wizards were cold, their courage worn thin. They had waited for hours as Sartean had, listening for him to utter the Name. Now they must wait again, and he could not tell them for how long. He had forbidden the use of magic for the Incantors to warm themselves, insisting that all energies be saved for the battle to come, but now, the sun having set, the temperature again dropped below freezing. It would serve no one for his wizards to collapse from exposure; he lifted the prohibition to the relief of ten dozen Incantors.
Time crawled. Hours crept past as the Twins traced lazy arcs across the night sky, Kal now only a fraction ahead of his faster brother Lor. The final zenith of the year was less than a full cycle away, Lor racing into position for the annual eclipse that marked the official advent of winter and the beginning of a new year. Not that it mattered presently; the snows had come early, earlier than ever before, as far as Sartean could recall. He wondered at the significance of the fact as he also wondered at the glowing c
elestial orbs above, the latter with a new and profound perspective. He still did not believe them to be gods, though he now allowed that they might, in truth, be the namesakes of gods. In any case, as midnight came and went, and the coldest hours of the night arrived, one needed not look upwards to mark the onset of winter; it had already come. It is not the coming of winter that should concern me, he thought. Dawn approaches. Where is that damnable dragon?
A sharp pang of craving gripped Sartean as he walked the circular stone paths around Kehrlia. He reached for the flask in his robe; it was nearly empty. He would need to speak with Jarriah. He tilted it back, pouring the remainder of its foul contents down his throat just as a speck of black dashed before the silhouettes of the Twins.
“Light! Now!” Sartean replaced the flask within his robes and hurried towards the steps, where his teams of air wizards stood waiting. Every Incantor present cast a spell at the tower. An instant later, the upper portion of Kehrlia shone as bright as the midday sun, brighter, its roof, balcony, and the very stones of the upper floors enchanted to glow. The intense light from the tower bathed the capital city of Mor in an unnatural white light, a sight that would have certainly been sufficient to captivate even the Incantors who had contributed to the spectacle, but when compared to the blur of blackness that light exposed, the display was barely noteworthy.
The speed at which Kalashagon overflew the city of Mor was incalculable. Even in the light of Kehrlia, no feature of its shape was recognizable. So swift was its flight that it had been out of sight for the span of several breaths when an explosive shock of compressed air, caused by its passage, shattered the windows of the buildings in its wake.
