by K L Reinhart
“Argh!” Before his middle was suddenly constricted as if by a giant hand. It was the half-alive tentacle, and Vorg had whipped it toward him as the spear-carrier and the mace-bearer closed around him.
“Vorg, jump!” Terak gasped, and the orc did just that.
Suddenly, the tight constriction of the half-alive tentacle was gone as Vorg bounded, one great leg smashing into the top of one of the stalagmites as the two male-elf statues struck out at him.
The stone weapons missed, thankfully, but there was also a cracking sound in that instant as Vorg’s precarious foothold shuddered and broke underneath him.
But the orc was still in the process of running, swinging his other leg to leap to the next stalagmite before that, too, wobbled and cracked.
Oh Stars! Terak saw the running, stone-hopping orc coming toward him. There was no way that Vorg would be able to slow down his momentum if he wanted to survive. So Terak sprang, far lighter, onto the next hump of rock as all of the fake floor started to crumble and fall around them at the heavy passage of the orc’s metal war-boots.
“Keep on running! You can do it!” Terak heard Falan shout ahead of them as they ran-hopped forwards.
There was another crash as more of Vorg’s foothold-stalagmites snapped or broke under his weight, sometimes in the same instance as his booted foot left them.
But even for the elf, the way was still hazardous, though far less so. Terak nimbly jumped the last two standing pillars of rock in the midst of the shifting, fluttering mass of lichen to land with a roll onto the more solid rock of the floor, beside the assembled humans. He gave himself no time to see their reaction at the fact that he was still alive, instead flipping over to look back at the monstrous orc.
“Vorg!” Terak shouted, as the orc attempted to follow Terak’s own passage, moving from one pillar to the next, with the final one snapping downwards as soon as his metal war-boot hit its surface.
But even as he fell, Vorg flicked his hand outwards to snap the half-alive tentacle over their heads, its three-point talons, frilled with suckers, catching onto one of the rocky overhangs above as the orc grunted, swinging forward to fling himself onto the floor, rolling to a halt beside Terak with a heavy groan.
“Urgh . . .” Vorg wheezed, blinking and coughing as the humans clustered around the pair. “This seems to happen a lot to me, hanging around you, pointy-ears,” the giant orc champion wheezed.
“I guess . . .” Terak gasped as he caught his own breath, blinking as he looked up to see where all the light was coming from.
There were holes in the roof. The cavern tunnel rose up as the floor descended down, forming a truly gargantuan inner space, complicated with ridges and boulders and outcrops of rock.
But above them, the cavern roof appeared to be speckled with stars–Only, they aren’t stars, are they? Terak’s dazed mind focused. They were apertures or chutes or fissures in the mountain itself, leading out toward daylight beyond.
“Uh . . . people?” Their realization was broken by the nervous voice of Lord Falan, to one side. Terak looked over to see what he was looking at, and that he was looking down, not up.
The gargantuan cavern rolled in jags and humps downwards, toward a great black tunnel beneath them.
And, just a few steps ahead of where they lay, there was a trail of dark, russet blood, now long-dried, but standing out against the muted grays of the rocks.
“It has to be one of the Hexan’s party,” the Lord Falan said heavily.
“Good,” Vorg growled as he sat up.
But any savage joy that they might have felt at the danger that the Hexan and his group must have faced was tempered by the sobering awareness that they still had their mission to perform. They still had to find and stop the Hexan, and now with less than half of the group they’d started with.
13
The Chiefs of Pain
“You are clearly still addled, Chief External. We have run out of time, and the night of our world of Midhara draws nigh!” spat the Chief Arcanum through the feathery wisps of his long gray beard.
The Chief Arcanum and the rest of the Chiefs of the Enclave sat in Magister Inedi’s council room–a dark and secretive place with only the muted, dirty, yellow light of the singular oil lantern illuminating their faces from the center of the ancient table.
There sat the Chief Arcanum, hunched and huddled inside his heavy black robes, beside the other black-garbed figures–the barrel-shaped Chief Martial, weapons trainer of the Enclave; the Chief Hospitality, who oversaw the day-to-day running of the Black Keep; the Chief External, orchestrater of the “quiet work” of the Enclave; and Magister Inedi. She sat at one end of the table on her own, the lamp-light catching her shaved head and the ever-sharp pins of her eyes.
The Third Baleful Sign–the Blood Plague–had razed the bodies of the Brothers and Sisters, journeyers, acolytes and novitiates of the Keep, leaving just two out of every three still breathing.
It’s a wonder that all the Chiefs survived, Jacques spared a moment to think to himself, mostly as it was a relief to not have to engage with the irritable Chief Arcanum’s foolish rhetoric.
But the Chief External knew that the Magister Inedi had a far colder soul than even he himself could claim to hold.– She had first administered the harvested Aesther flower blossoms, the Demiene Flowers that Terak the Null had retrieved from that alien realm before he had been lost–to the Chiefs, then to the senior Brothers and Sisters, then to the Wall Guards and the messengers, before finally to the lower orders of the Enclave.
She’ll regret that choice . . . Jacques thought for a moment, before wondering if perhaps the methuselah of the Chief Arcanum had a point. Was his thinking still addled from the Blood Plague? Why was he thinking of such inconsequential things as who had died and who hadn’t?
If the Enclave lasts another year, we’ll have to face losing most of our younger staff and order members, Jacques continued thinking nonetheless as the conversation washed over his ears. These were the sorts of things that Jacques had always forced himself to think about–the slow and quiet questions that few others considered. They were essential to the quiet work that he was tasked to perform.
“Chief External?” Magister Inedi’s voice cut through his distracted thoughts, always insistent and always undeniable.
“Your answer, Chief?” she said.
The tired, weary Father looked up to see that their leader’s eyes were sparkling in the lamplight. Even in such dreadful times as this, Inedi adhered to protocol above all things. A small part of Jacques felt frustrated by that, knowing that Inedi could have cut down Arcanum’s proclamation with one word of authority. But a larger part of Jacques felt a little proud at this fierce, small woman who would do the work of the Enclave, even as the hordes of the Ungol swept past them.
“My answer . . .” Jacques blinked, his own training rising quickly in him. It was like a second skin, his life in the Enclave, and the lessons of the Book of Corrections.
The Chief Arcanum was heading toward the idea that we abandon the Black Keep, that we pull our texts and tomes and grimoires and every scrap of knowledge further to the south. Seek aid from any of the other kingdoms . . . Jacques informed himself.
But even that would be impossible, now.
“No.” Jacques said pragmatically, and there was a muffled gasp from the Chief Hospitality.
“Magister! This is outrageous,” the Chief Hospitality spluttered. “You cannot let one Chief override the wishes of all of the rest of us! Three Chiefs against one, and in such dark times—”
“This is not a democracy, Hospitality,” Inedi said curtly, and there was such venom in her voice that Jacques saw Hospitality swallow nervously.
“The traditions of the Enclave are clear,” Inedi continued. “Any Chief can act according to their role, agreeing or disagreeing as to their part in the life of the Enclave. But I, as Magister, am the only one who can command any to obey. Or had you forgotten the Path that each of us walk?�
� she said. She turned to address Hospitality directly, although Jacques knew that her words were intended for everyone in the room.
“No Magister, no . . . I have not forgotten . . .” Hospitality muttered sullenly, his eyes falling to the heavily-scarred table of the Council chamber.
The Path that we all walk . . . Jacques thought. The Chief External was probably the only one who knew how strange the Book of Corrections and its Path of Pain made them.
Well, aside from the Magister, that is, he considered. The Stars alone know just what it is that she knows!
But Jacques considered the Magister’s words, as he knew that she never used them lightly. The Book of Corrections set out a punishing, and often-times crippling, acceptance of pain. However, it was also an embracement of the lessons that pain and hardship, loss and struggle, give to the soul.
Those who followed the Path did not only understand how to manage their own physical pain, but also their mental anguish, if they lasted long enough in the walking of it, Father Jacques knew. And that made for a strange breed of people compared to the rest of human civilization. Father Jacques knew that each one who went through the lessons of the Book would emerge self-reliant and strong. Some might say uncaring.
But also, fiercely alone. A lot of his quiet work took him outside of the walls of the Black Keep. He had slipped through darkened streets in foreign cities, heard the gentle laughter and nighttime conversations of the other, more normal humans.
That aloneness meant that each Chief and Brother and Sister was empowered to act alone, should they wish to. They knew their own strengths, and the Magister demanded that they remain rigorously true to them.
So, in practice, no Chief could demand that another do something, and now that Arcanum was telling them all that they had to flee, Jacques was full in his rights to refuse.
“You will be overrun. You will lose your life, and any that follow you!” Arcanum snapped, rapping his bony knuckles on the table with short, loud cracks.
“Perhaps,” Jacques said. The middle-aged man felt the wash of fear in this idea—that he might remain here, even completely alone, as the Blood Gate opened.
But this is what the Path teaches us, doesn’t it? Jacques thought. We learn from our pain. We learn from hardship. How else to test the mettle of the soul, then to galvanize it in the fire?
And besides which, Father Jacques also had some very good reasons not to flee to the south. “Araxia is lost,” he stated simply. He reached to draw from his sleeve the scroll that he had brought with him to this meeting, with the intention of announcing the calamity–had he not been immediately challenged by Arcanum.
“What!?” This time, the incredulity came from Father Gourdain, the Chief Martial and a southerner by birth, who had elected to travel the many miles to the frozen and icy north to study the ways of death.
“This is from one of my . . . contacts . . .” The Chief External said the word lightly, still feeling a shadow of his own traditional secrecy when talking about the network of spies, allies, and undercover Brothers and Sisters that he had spent a lifetime developing. “Who saw the fall herself,” he stated clearly, slipping the small red cord from the scroll to allow it to unfurl. He passed it to Father Gourdain beside him, whose small eyes flickered and danced as he read the terrible news.
“Araxia, the most powerful human city of the south, in the most powerful human kingdom of the south, fell to sorcery and an orcish War Burg not one moon ago,” Jacques told the others, as each waited to read the scroll.
“A War Burg?” Hospitality gasped, referring to the floating island-fortresses of the orcs. “They haven’t been seen north of the southern deserts for three generations!”
“And the power it takes to keep one in the sky, the amount of blood sacrifices that their orcish magic requires . . .” Arcanum stated incredulously with a shake of his head. “Are you sure that your contacts aren’t as addled as you appear to be?” the ancient man said caustically.
Father Jacques shot Arcanum a glowering look. “I’m sure.” As a matter of fact, Father Jacques knew that he could trust his contacts far more than he could ever trust the Chief Arcanum–even with all of the Chief’s supposedly profound and esoteric wisdoms.
“It says here the walls of the city fell to elementals,” Father Gourdain read, before passing on the scroll to the next Chief opposite him, the Chief Arcanum himself. Jacques watched as Arcanum gave just one cursory glance at the black spider-writing of his trusted contact, clearly not even bothering to read it as he just handed it over to Hospitality.
It is a foolish man who does not heed words of danger, Jacques quoted from the Book of Corrections to himself, before wondering if he and he alone of those sitting here really attempted to follow the Path of Pain with every fiber of his being?
Clearly not, Jacques thought as he noted Inedi’s carefully contained silence. She would not enter needlessly into this fray, but was strong in her own quiet, her fears, and her silent judgment.
“It takes a great and deep magic to summon elementals,” Gourdain said with a grumble. “I thought only the elves still knew their invocations?”
“Perhaps,” Arcanum’s bushy eyebrows beetled in annoyance, but said no more.
“An elf sorcerer then?” Hospitality read. “One powerful enough to perform such a conjuring is working in league with the orcs? Unthinkable! Such a thing has never happened!”
Father Jacques let out a sudden bark of laughter, causing sudden, annoyed looks from Hospitality and Martial. “It seems that we are in a time of an awful lot of things happening that never have before,” Jacques said with a razor-edged mirth. The sort of humor that could have been a shout of rage, had he let it.
“Even in this conversation alone, you’ve heard the Chief Arcanum talk of abandoning the Black Keep and almost six hundred years of knowledge,” Jacques stated scathingly. “And you yourself have stated that no War Burg has crossed the southern deserts for three generations–and now no elf would ever work with an orc?!” Jacques pointed out the ludicrousness of the man’s fears.
“Pain teaches. Fear teaches. It is only denial and ignorance that hold us back,” Father Jacques remembered from the Book. He might have even quoted the passage just to rub Hospitality and Arcanum’s nose in it, but he wasn’t feeling that petty. Yet.
“Well said,” the Magister intoned with a nod of her head, as if she could read the Chief External’s thoughts. It was just a small validation, but it carried all the weight of the entire Black Keep itself.
“Anyway. We were discussing the future of the Enclave, gentlemen?” Inedi said, nodding for Jacques to continue, and subtly reprimanding him for his diversion, he knew.
“Araxia has fallen. The orcish warbands have aligned, and I can only assume that they are working to open the Blood Gate,” Jacques said with certainty. He held up his two calloused and scarred hands, one of which was only three-fingered and one thumb with its missing digit. He held them as cupped walls with a small space between them, and the message that they gave was obvious.
On one side is the Blood Gate, Jacques thought. And all of the horrors that it will bring when it opens, while on the other is the orcish warbands . . . and the insect-people, he added.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Hospitality said with a long and mournful face.
“Hospitality,” Inedi said with a sigh. “Please, consider the Path.” She sounded tired of Hospitality’s warbling.
“And you think this alliance is to do with this Hexan cult arising again?” Gourdain ignored the drama and asked Father Jacques directly.
“I do not know,” Jacques said honestly. “All I do know is that as the Enclave-External was seeking knowledge of how to undo the magic that made the Blood Gate—” Still a work in progress. Jacques’s mood soured. “—we were thwarted by agents in the kingdom of Brecha, working for a Hexan, not the Hexan.”
The Hexans, everyone around this table well-knew, were an ancient Ungol-worshipping cult whom everyone though
t had been eradicated a century ago. Now, it appeared as though it was only one person.
“A powerful sorcerer capable of conjuring elementals?” Gourdain the Chief Martial nodded. “And who might be able to orchestrate the orcs and the Ixcht? It fits.”
“Hardly—” Arcanum scoffed.
“It’s the best that we have,” Jacques heard himself say. He was letting his temper get the better of him. He’d just about had enough of the Arcanum’s badgering argumentativeness.
“So, Chief External,” Inedi took a moment to summarize. “You will not be relocating your departments, people, and resources from this Black Keep, because you feel that there is nowhere else left to turn?”
“I will not, and I believe so,” Jacques nodded.
“But do you also believe that you can use the Loranthian Scroll to dismantle or undo the Blood Gate?” Inedi asked, just as sharply as when she rebuked Chief Hospitality.
Ah . . . Jacques’ resolve waivered. He was not as learned as Chief Arcanum in the ways of scrolls and ancient magical formulas. His eyes flickered to the eldest member of their group.
The Chief Arcanum’s eye’s sparkled as if to say, “At last!” Jacques watched as the Chief stroked his beard and sat his ancient and crooked back a little straighter. He knew that he had the right to assume total authority on this issue.
“I require more time with both the Loranthian Scroll, and the Loranthian Pendant,” he said. “As yet, my access to their study has been limited . . .” The Arcanum said the words sweetly, but they were layered with poison for the Chief External.
“External?” Inedi raised one fine eyebrow at Father Jacques.
Jacques felt the uneasy, almost angered feeling rise in his chest, but with his decades of training, he breathed through the hot, awkward feeling of being challenged so directly by the Magister, and in front of his rival, too.
“I have not had time, after the Ixcht attack and the release of Blood Plague, to fully complete the translation of the Loranthian Scroll . . .” Father Jacques tried to say, biting back on the impulse to add how difficult it was to translate a First Family script. Every record of that accursed and much-hated people had been burned from the history books. As well, a constant stream of acolytes and Brothers who had been working with him had died!
