The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Jove ground his teeth. “Then could you at least give me directions to the nearest city, one with an Apeira well.”

  The guard laughed incredulously. “You’re joking.”

  Jove gritted his teeth. “No, I’m not.”

  “Why would a vagrant like you need a well? You can’t own any talises.”

  It was all Jove could do from lashing out with his power. “Please.”

  The guard pointed to his left. “That way, but it’s over a hundred miles. And the way you look, I doubt you have enough days left to get anywhere near it.”

  A hundred miles? The travel time would be too long to go without another large feeding and Jove was desperately hungry. No, that would not do.

  Jove shot out a translucent, greenish tendril. It took the guard in the face, and he fell to his knees on the platform, screaming and clutching the sides of his head. His screams cut off as he quickly withered into a dry husk. A surge of strength rushed into Jove closing several of his wounds.

  Shouting, followed by the blowing of a horn set the encampment ablaze with the sounds of stampeding soldiers in their clanking armor. Three more soldiers ascended to the watchtower platform, one man falling to a knee to examine his mummified comrade and the other two spotting Jove.

  “Divine Mother, what is this?” Jove heard the soldier examining the corpse swear.

  “WHO GOES–” one of the soldiers began to call down to Jove, but didn’t get the words out before Jove whipped another translucent tentacle up and caught the man in the stomach.

  The other two soldiers reacted immediately, one stringing a bow and readying an arrow while the other leapt to his feet. Jove heard a twang, and then something buried itself into his shoulder. The impact made him stagger back a step, but didn’t hurt at all. He looked to his left shoulder where he found a fletched shaft sprouting from his flesh.

  No blood.

  Jove cackled as he threw his arms forward, and unleashed two more tentacles of warped air. The soldier with the bow attempted to dodge, but in so doing fell from the platform onto a sharp point of one of the palisades where he impaled himself. The other soldier, now cradling another lifeless husk of one of his comrades, shouted down to someone.

  “HE HAS A TALIS!” Those were the last words the man ever spoke.

  Horns blew again, followed by the creaking of wood. Jove looked to his left, down the line of tall pickets to where a wooden gate swung open. Twenty soldiers poured out, located him, and then charged. Jove just shook his head. He let them close to within fifteen feet before whipping several tendrils into existence, and striking out. He walked calmly among the dying men as they writhed on the ground, withering to old skeletons in a matter of seconds.

  Jove rounded the open gate just in time to see three lines of pike men quickly forming up. They lowered their halberds and charged. The orderliness of their advance impressed Jove, and so he made sure to eat them in a similar manner, line by advancing line until they all lay at his feet. He could feel their life fill the hollow void in his chest, relieving his hunger but not satisfying him.

  No, as delicious as people were, they were nothing compared to drinking in the pure, potent, Apeiron. Jove salivated. He needed more of that sweet, life. Is that what Apeiron was? Just a purer form of the essence that gave all things life? Jove barked a laugh. It made a sort of sense. If he was death, then he consumed life.

  Something struck him in the chest, knocking him back a pace. He had smelled the burning before he saw the charred cloth of his dirty tunic. Jove looked up just in time to see a ball of fire streak toward him. He caught it on his arm, the flesh of his forearm blackened and smoldering. Yet, even this caused him no pain, though the smell was horrid–familiar, but disgusting. How did people eat cooked flesh? Jove never did like eating meat. Funny, that. He giggled at the irony.

  “Come no further!” a voice commanded. It belonged to a woman wearing form fitting armor. Her hair was shorn like a man’s, and she held an amethyst-capped, red-gold scepter in her left hand and a sword in her right. She was lovely in an exotic sort of way, the sight of her invoking the predatory lust that was so familiar to Jove.

  “You are a very lovely doll, aren’t you?” Jove licked his lips as he inched closer.

  The woman raised her scepter to launch another fireball but not before Jove whipped out a tentacle and struck the scepter. Jove convulsed with a jolt of unexpected pleasure as his tendril of warped air drained the Apeiron from the woman’s talis.

  YES!

  Jove exulted as the sweet energy closed his wounds, regrew his hair, and gave him strength. But it was over all too soon. He opened his eyes to find the soldier-woman looking at him, aghast.

  “What are you?” she breathed out.

  Jove grinned, the action causing pooled drool to spill out of the corner of his mouth. He stepped toward her and she dropped the scepter to grip her sword with both hands. With the practiced speed of a professional fighter, the woman launched forward, raising her sword for a horizontal cut. Out of reflex, Jove raised his left arm to block the swing, fully expecting to lose the appendage. To his utter surprise–he considered it remarkable that he could still be surprised by anything–the air around his arm warped with the same translucent, green energy that made up his feeding tendrils. The woman’s sword swept across his arm, but didn’t bite into his flesh or sever his arm. Instead, the blade broke in two, the spinning point slicing Jove’s cheek as it sailed over his shoulder.

  The sudden loss of weight unbalanced the woman, and she stumbled, falling into her swing, her armor clanking as she crashed to the ground. Jove stared at his arm in wonder, watching the warped air evaporate. That had happened automatically, without any effort on his part.

  He looked down at the woman soldier kneeling on the ground. She was staring at her broken sword. That’s when Jove saw the rust cankering the jagged metal where the blade had broken from the hilt. It looked as if the metal was left in the rain for a dozen years. He shook his head. He’d seen the blade before the woman struck out, it had been pristine, new even.

  Jove grinned. Apparently, he could not only drain living creatures of life, but he could also break down the natural elements of the world. He was more than death. He was decay incarnate.

  The woman snapped out of her shock, dropped the blade, and leapt to her feet. Gone was the fierce bravado of a warrior, replaced by the watery eyes and uncontrollable trembling of a little girl. Jove took a step toward her, his grin so wide it felt like it was going to tear the corners of his mouth.

  “Please,” the woman sobbed.

  They always did that at some point; begged for their life. He laughed aloud.

  The woman backed into a wall of stacked, wooden crates. She sobbed, desperately looking to her right and then her left for a path of escape, but Jove was too close to her now. She screamed as he moved to within an inch of her face. They always did that too, screamed. But he liked it when they screamed.

  “Shh,” Jove said softly as he traced the woman’s cheek with his fingers.

  As with anything else he touched, the woman began to wither. Her skin wrinkled, her eyes shriveled, and before Jove could kiss her, she was nothing more than a skeleton wrapped in a thin layer of dried flesh.

  He batted the woman away with his hand, a spray of ash exploding from the desiccated corpse as it fell to the ground. So, there was a drawback to his new power. He would no longer be able to enjoy the thrills he had become accustomed to. Well, no matter. The feeling of taking the very life of another creature was more than enough to compensate. And drinking pure Apeiron magnified that a hundred-fold.

  Jove licked his lips as he turned to stare off in the direction the guard had indicated he could find a city with an Apeira well. A hundred miles? He stroked his chin. How long would it take to walk that? He looked around and almost unconsciously shot out a tendril to catch a soldier trying to sneak past him. The infusion of life rushed over him, and he smiled.

  It wouldn’t take long if h
e didn’t stop to eat. He didn’t have to stop to eat, he realized. He could just feed on everything as he marched toward the Apeira well. That would keep him fully energized, and hold him over until he could again taste that maddeningly addicting Apeiron. Jove giggled and turned to leave, wishing he had time to set the outpost on fire.

  Jekaran…

  Jekaran…

  Wake up, Jekaran…

  Jekaran opened his eyes, shadows and a blur of brown resolving into a ceiling made of splintered wood. Then the pain overwhelmed him. His senses reported it from almost every inch of his battered body: sharp stabs, hot burns, and dull aches all combining together in a horrible symphony of suffering. He groaned, two pains in particular winning the bid for his immediate attention. One was in his left arm; a dull throbbing that shot sharp bolts of pain-lightning each time he tried to move. The other was a steady pounding from the back of his head that was so acute it made him feel like vomiting.

  Jekaran tried to focus on his surroundings, but turning his head or moving at all proved to be too difficult. Where am I?

  We are on a ship, someone answered him.

  Jekaran snapped his head up and instantly regretted it. He fell back down onto his pallet, pain blinding him and making him dry-heave. He would’ve retched if he had anything in his stomach, but it was empty as was made evident by its near constant rumbling. Although he hadn’t seen much in the split second he tried to sit up, he had seen enough to know that there was no one in the room with him.

  Not a room, a cell. He had seen the black-lacquered metal bars.

  It is called a brig, the voice in his head repeated.

  That’s when Jekaran recognized it. It was the sword, and it was talking to him in full sentences.

  Where are you? Jekaran asked reflexively.

  Locked in the captain’s quarters.

  Since when did you start talking? Jekaran raised his right hand and began to gingerly massage his closed eyelids.

  I am not talking, the sword replied.

  You know what I mean!

  While you have been unconscious, I have been examining your memories, learning much of you and your language.

  That disturbed Jekaran. How long have I been out? He asked.

  Since just before we left Imaris–two days, I believe.

  That’s when it all came back to him, a torrent of memories flooding into his brain: being ambushed by Gymal, running from the giant crystal golem, fighting Kaul and…

  “Kairah!” Jekaran called out. The pain in his head flared at the movement of his jaw and vibration of his voice. When last he had seen the Allosian woman, she had fallen off the pier and was drowning in the sea.

  She is on this vessel.

  Jekaran gritted his teeth until the pounding in his head returned to a lesser throbbing. Is she alive?

  Yes, the sword said, but weak.

  “What happened?” Jekaran asked aloud, as much to himself as to the sword.

  Another voice answered him this time–a human voice. “You damn near got yourself killed, brother Ulan. That’s what happened.”

  The voice belonged to Hort.

  “I figured out that much,” he said. “And it’s Jekaran, not Ulan.”

  Hort chuckled. “I think I’ll stick to calling you Brother Ulan.”

  “Well, it would be stupid for me to argue with a trained soldier.”

  Hort laughed. “Which one of us is a trained soldier? I watched you duel that man with the flame ring. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”

  Jekaran actually heard himself chuckling, which also hurt his head. “I had a bit of help.”

  “The sword talis,” Hort said. “Now I know why it was so important to you. A lot of men would kill for a treasure like that.”

  A worrisome thought occurred to him. “Is that why you’re here? To kill for the sword?”

  Jekaran started as Hort bellowed a laugh. “By Rasheera’s breasts, no! I’m old enough to know trouble when I see it. Something tells me it wouldn’t be worth it.”

  Was it worth it? He had thrilled with the power the sword bestowed upon him, and actually enjoyed the feeling of destroying his enemies. But was it worth never being alone with his thoughts? Was it worth the mortal danger it attracted? Was it worth losing control of his own body? Was it worth losing his very soul?

  But that dance leads only to the soul-less grave, Ez’s phantom voice suddenly echoed the last line of that blasted poem.

  The idea of death ignited a renewed worry for Kairah and Jekaran blurted out, “The Allosian woman!”

  “Don’t worry she’s alive, just unconscious,” Hort said. “We’re all on a ship sailing to Aiested. Your little girlfriend said the fey woman needed an Apeira well, or she would die. But don’t worry, we’ll be docking at the capitol by tonight, and Aiested’s well is said to be so large that it radiates Apeira five miles out to sea. So she should start getting the help she needs before long. Your little girlfriend also told us that the fey woman has an important warning to deliver to the king. Something about one of her kind trying to start a new talis war.”

  Hort’s report that Kairah would soon be receiving an infusion of Apeiron loosened the knot in his chest. “And Maely? Is she on board?”

  “That your little girlfriend’s name?” Hort asked. “Gymal let her go. She’s a spitfire, ain’t she?”

  “Yeah,” Jekaran massaged his right temple.

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” Hort said.

  “For what?”

  “Who do you think tended your wounds?”

  That’s when Jekaran noticed that his left arm was stuffed into a sling, and his head was wrapped tightly in bandages.

  “I was a field medic when I was about your age, and a damned good one too. I even considered joining your brethren so that I could become a healer.”

  “I’m not–” Jekaran began.

  “I know, I know, you’re not a real monk.” Hort chuckled.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t really picture you selflessly ministering to the sick.”

  “It’s true.”

  Jekaran heard the creaking of floorboards and rustling of chain mail as Hort stood up. When next he spoke, he was closer, probably right outside Jekaran’s cell.

  “I didn’t join the king’s army by choice, you know. Like many young men, I was conscripted. I had scarcely a week of training when a sword was shoved into my hands, and I was ordered to kill, so you can imagine how shocked I was when I saw all of that violence. I seemed to take it harder than my fellow soldiers did. It made me want to do something about it, and becoming a healer seemed the best way to do that.”

  “So, why didn’t you?”

  “Not sure.”

  Jekaran heard the shrug in Hort’s voice.

  “Guess I just got used to the killing.”

  “I don’t know how you could.” Jekaran gagged as he remembered the reeking viscera of the bandits in Rasha strewn about on the cobblestones of the bridge. That had been the first time he had used the sword, and although he had been defending himself, the carnage he’d wrought still haunted him.

  “You’d be surprised,” Hort said.

  “So why bother fixing me up? Isn’t that a bit like washing a chicken on its way to the chopping block?”

  Hort chuckled. “Maybe. But I like you, Ulan. You remind me of someone I used to know.”

  “And who’s that?” Jekaran asked, but he didn’t get an answer. The sound of a wooden door banging open reverberated painfully through his head, followed by a familiar nasal voice.

  “He’s awake?” Gymal called to Hort.

  “You have a signal talis,” Jekaran accused Hort in a low voice.

  “Yes, Lord Gymal,” Hort called back and then shifted to a whisper. “He wanted to know the moment you regained consciousness. He is still my employer after all,” he added in a tone that was both defensive and apologetic.

  The swishing of cloth and creaking floorboards told Jekaran Gymal was approaching. “I wasn’t certain y
ou would wake up at all.”

  “Disappointed?”

  Gymal sighed. “Why do you insist on making every one of our dealings confrontational?”

  “Why do you insist on being an ass?” Jekaran knew it was childish, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with the weaselly little lord.

  “You peasants are all the same,” Gymal snapped. “You think the nobility is always looking down on you. Well, we do, but not in the way you think. We look down on you the way a parent looks down on its child. You have no idea what I do to protect and prosper the lowborn under my care. The burden of making sure my children survive and behave is heavier than you’ll ever know.”

  “Well aren’t you the suffering hero?” Jekaran made sure the words were dripping with sarcasm.

  Gymal sighed again. “That sword talis has only added to your insufferable arrogance.” He paused, and then said, “Speaking of which, how did you come by that talis? I know you wouldn’t have the coin to purchase it on the black market. Such a powerful talis would be worth a small fortune. That makes me think that someone gave it to you. Someone in your village.”

  Jekaran’s bravado evaporated. Ez!

  He had just saved his uncle from the Rikujo and wasn’t about to give him up as a target for the law. He had to think of a lie–and quick. Something that would sound possible, and throw Gymal off the line of thinking he was pursuing. A line of thinking that would fast lead the man to the truth. Gymal may be a horrible person, but he wasn’t stupid. Jekaran needed to remember that.

  “Kairah!” he suddenly blurted out.

  “The Allosian woman?”

  “Yes,” Jekaran said. “She said she needed a guide to the capitol and someone to protect her. I met her in Rasha, and that’s where she hired me and gave me the sword.”

  Gymal was silent for a long time before finally saying, “That sounds surprisingly plausible. Though I am certain you are not being completely honest with me.”

  “Guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, unless you have an oath collar.” That was stupid, Jekaran berated himself. What if Gymal did have an oath collar?