Blood Gate Boxed Set

by K L Reinhart

  The room had low wooden benches along the sides of the walls, reminding Terak a little of a chapel or an assembly room. In the center was a thin wooden table. It held collections of books, metal boxes, candles—which explained the smell of incense and spices—and crystals.

  Ochullax! Terak felt the rising bone-clack jitter in his jaw as soon as he saw the great milky-white orbs. They were the only mineral that captured and exuded natural magic. The null felt nauseous in their presence.

  The elf lord and the sorcerer were beyond the table at the back of the room, however, standing in an open space before a deep red velvet curtain.

  “Ogula, Ugala, Voktari, Moktal—” the High Chancellor started to chant, making strange gestures in the air before the curtain. Terak’s sense of physical unease increased. Waves of strange, unhealthy magic washed over him, bringing with them a sense of rising panic.

  Terak the Null watched the Hexan start to sway forward and back on his heels, his eyes rolling white. He wondered if his disability with magic made him more susceptible to the flows of magic around him.

  This does not feel like the magic of the Second Family, Terak thought. As soon as he had stepped into their domain in the Everdell Forest, it had felt strange and surreal, but also had a certain familiarity. A naturalness.

  This chanting—this abhorrence—felt like the rest of awkward, ungainly human magic, but a hundred times worse. Like vertigo and winter-sickness all rolled into one.

  Ungol magic. Terak started to sneer, his hand slowly drawing the steel of his sword as softly and gently as he could.

  “Ofal, Ungat, Chekba, Utval—” And now, as the Hexan’s voice became a steady drone of noise, the light started to change in the small open space around them. To Terak’s sharp elvish eyes, it was as if the light intensified somehow. The orbs of ochullax were glimmering and glowing with their own radiance. The shadows in the corners of the rooms seemed to deepen. Terak could only describe it as if someone had painted a watercolor of this room, but made all the lights lighter and the edges sharper.

  And then, Lord Yuliel stepped forward. He pulled aside the red velvet curtains, revealing that the back wall of the small ritual room was covered by a large, oval mirror.

  At first, the reflection appeared inky black. Then the darkness shifted, lightened a little, and drifted under its surface like the heaviest of Tartaruk storm clouds.

  With a jolt of unease, Terak realized that this strangely shifting mirror didn’t reflect the two people before it.

  “Ung’olut, Ung’olut, Ung’olut!” The Hexan’s voice rose, and the storm clouds of the mirror started to shift and boil. Lord Yuliel rose his hands before the mirror, slowly pointing one hand at the table. Terak eased backwards into the shadows, certain that Yuliel would see him, but the elf lord’s own eyes were a gleaming white. He appeared entranced by his own magic. The furthest of the three ochullax orbs—the one nearest to Terak—started to let off a red-and-purple glow. The glow became a rising, twisting vapor that snaked through the air toward Yuliel’s hands. As Terak watched, the second and the third started to do the same.

  I don’t know what they are doing, Terak thought as readied himself. But he remembered during the Chief Arcanum’s Testing that red was the color of battle-magic. And if the elf had to hazard a guess, he would have said that Lord Yuliel was somehow drawing power from the ochullax orbs into himself to cast some intense enchantment.

  That was why the Hexan brought Yuliel here, Terak observed. The elf lord knew some cantrip or spell that the Hexan didn’t.

  Terak’s heart started to hammer faster and faster as the shifting clouds of the mirror started to move faster and faster.

  But I’m a null! What I can do against magic!? The elf felt suddenly impotent before such deep and arcane enchanters. He felt like he was perhaps the last person in all of Midhara who might be able to do something about this!

  But this was a bargain, wasn’t it? He remembered Yuliel’s words. They were bargaining with some Ungol spirit or being called Ung’olut—a city in return for the safety of the Fourth Family and some strange sword.

  And then, with the cutting clarity and precision of the Path of Pain, Terak knew what he had to do. This wasn’t about the strength of the enchantments and magics that these two sorcerers were exhibiting. It was a transaction.

  And if one side fails to honor their promise, then the deal is off, isn’t it!?

  It was all the impetus that Terak needed. He jumped forward from the shadows, his legs extending out before him in a wide and deep stride that took him almost directly to the edge of the narrow table. He didn’t roar or hiss or bellow his challenge to alert them of his arrival.

  Instead, he used his leaping weight to throw his arm forward, holding the elvish longsword—down on the nearest orb of ochullax.

  “Hyurk!” There was a grunt of surprise and pain from Lord Yuliel as the blade crashed down. It hit the marble-like orb, searing through the purple-red light. Then the sword suddenly shattered with sparks.

  “What-?” the Hexan asked in a groggy voice, as the white radiance around his form started to fade.

  “Hsss!” Terak hissed in agony as his entire sword arm and shoulder felt like, well, he had just tried to cut through a block of solid stone. Idiot! He looked down at the ochullax orb to see that the red-and-purple light was diffusing around it. It was still there—and there was only one sharp, pristine scratch down its center.

  But Terak knew that he was a null. He remembered what had happened when the Chief Arcanum had tested him with smaller versions of these very orbs. He dropped the stub of sword, blade and hilt, and lunged forward. Lord Yuliel snarled, stabbing with his hands to send a bolt of purple-red through the spot where Terak’s head had been.

  Terak’s bare hands, the hands of a null, seized the first ochullax orb and held onto it. He felt the waves of magical power, like the heaviness before a storm, radiating from it—and they started to subside.

  The milky-white ochullax orb was losing its radiance, becoming grayer and duller, like any ordinary granite. Even its smooth and shiny surface seemed to become pitted and pocked, as if all it took was Terak’s flesh to draw the vitality and power from the object.

  “Gah!” Terak heard a snarl of rage. He was already attempting to turn, holding the heavy stone bauble in his hands as he completed his null’s work.

  But the elf didn’t turn fast enough. The next bolt of purple-red battle-magic hit Terak on the shoulder and felt like someone had struck him with a gleaming red-hot poker.

  Terak was thrown against the wooden benches, still clutching the ochullax orb in his hands. He hit his back and smelled burning flesh. Then the orb in his hands cracked and fell apart, fracturing into gray and powerless rock chips. It was what nulls did.

  “Who is he!?” Lord Yuliel snarled. Through Terak’s fog of pain, he heard the fast step of elvish feet approaching him. “What is he!?”

  “No time, you fool! Cast the spell! Ung’olut is nearly here!” the Hexan shouted. Terak heard an elvish cat-like hiss of agitation.

  Pain teaches us. Accept the pain. Bring it down to the marrow of your bones and let it mold you. Terak bit down hard on the pain rolling like waves through his body, as the Enclave and the Book of Corrections had taught him. Something was happening outside of his body in the room. Yuliel had moved again, turned away from delivering the killing blow.

  Terak knew that if he was to survive, he had to master the agony rolling through his body. And the only way to do that was to pay attention to it. The battle-blast had felt like a searing heat. It was making his teeth grind together, his heart hammer, and his body sweat with the effort to control it.

  But it is only another sensation, he told himself, and held onto that awareness. Pain was like anything else. Like hunger, exhaustion, cold, fear, joy. This was what the Book of Corrections had taught him. And if that was true . . .

  Then I can ignore it. Terak opened his eyes, still with the waves of heat pulsing over his shoul
der. Somehow his mind had become more accustomed to it. He had won for himself a brief shadow of awareness.

  And he saw that Lord Yuliel was plunging his hands with their accumulated red-purple radiance down toward the floor. The light rolled and combined together into a pulsing beam that shot into the floor with a dull thump.

  What did you do? Terak thought, over and over. What have you done!?

  And then, as the ground started to shake and the objects on the table rattled around them, Terak got an inkling of an idea . . .

  12

  Elsewhere, the Walls of Araxia

  It was full night, and the battle for Araxia was raging hot and fast. Although the walls were alive with running feet and lit by torches, the human and elvish defenders of the city barely needed any extra light. The great bonfires of the War Burg’s projectiles cast the city in a hellish red glow.

  The War Burg itself hadn’t moved from its stationary position, hanging a couple miles over the ground before the keep of the Southern Gate. Its entire chalk-stone body was lit by the glow of the fires, and the heavy smokes caught and gathered about it in streamers and fogs.

  Still, the wyverns of the orcs flared and swept over the walls. The night-time was their natural time to be active. They appeared out of the night suddenly monstrous and terrifyingly close. These creatures flipped their scaled bodies over the battlements as they shrieked, picking off individual wall defenders before spinning down the far side of the walls to careen through the empty streets of the city.

  Volleys and flights of crossbows and arrows attempted to track and follow them, but many of the creatures proved too fast, too erratic. Only the contingent of Yuliel’s bow-elves—unaware of their liege lord’s treachery, somewhere far behind them—whose sharp elf-sight and goldenwood longbows could track and bring down the savage beasts.

  But despite an hour or so of fighting, the clamor of harsh orcish war horns, and the shriek of the wyverns and their riders, the various orcish tribes and warbands of the War Burg had not sallied forth. They had not let down their long ladders to the walls before them or the ground below the Burg. The orcs had not moved their Burg into direct, crashing contact with the walls. Nor had they floated it over the walls to land in the city itself.

  “Why!?” hissed blond-haired Captain Olandier. He was newly arrived at the city walls with approximately half of the contingent of sword-elves, as his liege master Lord Yuliel had ordered him to do when night fell.

  Captain Olandier was an accomplished duelist and a seasoned fighter. He had fought the insect-like Ixcht as well as human bandits. He had fought orcs and goblins many, many times.

  So, as he mounted the battlements to see the streams of armored humans readying themselves with spears or crossbows to defend against the next wyvern sweep, he felt no fear or trepidation.

  But he did feel puzzled.

  Orcs fight savagely, he knew. Just like they did on the wyverns—sudden, desperate, and ferocious attacks without thought for safety or survival.

  They are not accustomed to holding back . . . Olandier looked up at the War Burg hanging before them all.

  With a crash, one of the red-cast sections of the War Burg’s rocks suddenly exploded in a cloud of dust. The Araxians had brought their long cannons to bear. Olandier smiled grimly. But even though the gunpowder guns—each one as long as two elves lying head to toe—were powerful enough to destroy wagons and small buildings with their iron-cast shot, Olandier knew that they were not devastating enough to bring down the War Burg.

  It’s just too big, the elvish warrior observed. The shrieks and whistles of a wyvern came closer to his side of the walls. Olandier crouched a little, readied himself with his longsword in one hand.

  No, the orcs know that the Araxians have nothing that could bring down the Burg. His mind raced as he scanned the dark shadows on either side of the walls, looking for the gleam of reptilian scales, the flash of teeth—

  But why aren’t they attacking in force? It was still a mystery. He knew that what the War Burg was doing was a clever tactic, but it was entirely atypical for the orcs to do so. One of the best, most-used tactics that Olandier had often used to trap and outwit any orcish warband was to goad and provoke them to attack first and unwisely.

  And it never took a lot—

  Olandier’s eyes saw a gleam of something in the darkness—a fragment of flame light hitting something hard, shiny. Scale!

  The elf captain turned from his hip, already pushing out with his foot as the wyvern—this one apparently without its accompanying orc rider—flipped upwards over the edge of the battlements in front of him. This one had been a little cleverer than its fellows. It had not shrieked its location but flew arrow-fast and silent.

  But not fast enough to come close to the reactions of a battle-hardened elf captain. Olandier leapt into the air as the wyvern flipped. For a brief moment, both wyvern and elf were caught in a balletic dance through the air as each one flexed and lunged.

  Olandier brought his hands together on the pommel of his sword as he drew it down, feeling it bite wyvern scales between neck and wing. There was a scream and a sudden showering of green ichor all over him as Olandier was thrown down onto the battlements. He rolled across the hard stone and came to a halt in a crouch, panting and gasping for air.

  Behind him, the half-dismembered body of the wyvern, twitching and dying and spilling its life-stuff, tumbled over the city side of the battlements to crash, dead on the cobbles far below.

  One less to worry about. The elf captain rose on his feet, turning to scan the battlements for where they next might need his aid . . .

  Just as the stone underfoot started to vibrate just a little and then to shake.

  What? He looked up and down the walls, wondering if the War Burg had flung one of the flame-clad boulders to hit the wall somewhere. But he could see no ball of fire or ragged hole in the battlements.

  The shaking was only getting worse, as he saw the long curve of the wall ahead of him start to sway. The Araxian defenders and elves skipped back and forth as they tried to maintain their balance. No—

  Olandier stumbled to the side of the city walls to look down, fearing that he would see teams of goblin sappers down there. Had this been the orc’s plan? Had they been hiding the approach of the tunneling goblins, experts in bringing down high walls and castles?

  No, that was not what was happening. Olandier was not looking down at tunnels or industrial-looking wagons, but instead at myriad small clouds of dirt exploding outwards from the foot of the walls.

  As those clouds of dirt fell, there grew in their center sinuous, twisting red-purple forms, elongated and strange.

  “No, it cannot be . . .” Olandier muttered as he saw one of the red forms throw itself forward, hitting the base of the wall bodily before exploding into a thousand tongues of red flame. Wherever they struck, the wall shuddered and rolled and the stones cracked and shook.

  But they look like elvish fire-elementals! Olandier thought in alarm. Although anyone who knew the powerful spell could summon a fire-elemental being (or any elemental being, for that matter), Olandier knew enough advanced magic to realize that, just as with any of the Midharan races, the fire-elementals had their own politics and groupings. There were certain “families” of fire that liked talking or dealing with elves, and others that preferred dealing with orcs, say, or humans.

  And what he was looking at below him was unmistakably what the Fourth Family called the Kiroi. They were the long and slender flame-beings who had the closest alliance here in the physical world with the elves.

  Olandier opened his mouth to shout to them, already half-knowing that it was almost a useless gesture.

  The elvish Kiroi elementals slammed into the thick walls of Araxia below them all. The city walls shook, cracked, and started to fall . . .

  A little way away, in the ruined and burning farmlands before the city, one giant form slowly stood up from where he had been sitting beside the ruins of a farmhouse.<
br />
  The ground trembled underfoot as the walls of Araxia started to come down. Vorg the Unwanted stepped up onto the roadway that led to the Southern Gate. The walls of Araxia were falling in sections here and there without apparent reason or rhyme.

  Vorg slowly started to roll his shoulder, hearing it crack and pop as his old bones awakened old wounds. The ground underfoot tremored as he padded toward the beleaguered city. The walls were falling down everywhere. As the orc marched forward, one entire side of the keep of the Southern Gate—the main entrance to all of Araxia—collapsed in on itself, spilling wall guards and weapons to their doom.

  And so, it begins . . . Vorg the Unwanted thought to himself as he picked up his pace. He jogged toward the now-open gates.

  13

  The Queen of a Thousand Tears

  Terak felt the ground shaking around him, reminding him of the rock tremors that would rumble through the Tartaruk. What did you do! He thought. His shock that an elvish lord would actually go along with this scheme overtook even the sensation of pain.

  “What did you do!?” he hissed, forcing himself from his huddle into a crouch. His right-hand side still screamed in waves of hot red, but he could ignore it. No, I have to ignore it.

  Where was his sword? There it was. On the other side of the room, its blade shattered, now only a sharp stub of metal sitting in the hilt and pommel.

  “Ung’olut! Queen of a Thousand Tears! The sacrifice has been made!” The Hexan was bellowing manically as Lord Yuliel stumbled to the side of the chair, panting and gasping with the effort of whatever great curse of enchantment he had just cast.

  Terak stumbled forward. He collapsed onto the floor as the right-hand side of his body refused to obey his will. It’s only pain! It’s only pain! the elf shouted at his own recalcitrant limbs.

  And then, an entirely different sensation swept into the secret room in the heart of Araxia’s capital. It was the same paralyzing nausea that came from any act of Ungol-tainted magic. It completely swept over Terak’s self-taught resistance. His body twitched with nausea, sickness, and despair as he hit the floor, gasping like a fish.