The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Mulladin sighed. He’d underestimated this woman–again.

  Despite her warning, Mulladin spun around and shoved her into an empty table. Tipping the table over, she fell backward, cloak fluttering open to reveal Jek’s sword hidden beneath. He lunged for her, but she was on her feet in one acrobatic motion, and spun, kicking a leg out. It connected with Mulladin’s stomach, and he groaned as he doubled over. That’s when the knee to the face came.

  There was a flash of light, a loud crack, and then Mulladin was on his back looking up at the ceiling. The Rikujo woman stared down at him, a triumphant smirk on her face. Mulladin pretended to be more dazed than he actually was and the wench leaned down, chuckling. She opened her mouth to gloat, but it became a yelp as Mulladin kicked out, the bottom of his boot connecting with her shin.

  She fell forward and landed so that she was on top, straddling him. She opened her eyes, and the two stared at each other. She’s actually sort of pretty. His body traitorously reacted to her lithe frame pressing down on him. The Rikujo wench smiled at him, as if she could read his thoughts. Their faces were so close that he could feel her breath on his lips. The moment stretched, Mulladin’s pulse quickened, and a powerful inclination to kiss the woman fell on him.

  He head-butted her instead.

  She rolled off him, releasing a torrent of muffled curses as her hands snapped to her face in an effort to staunch the pouring blood. Mulladin quickly scrambled up, leaned down, and drew the sword from her belt. He stepped away from her, lest she try something similar to what he had done to bring her down.

  “I win,” Mulladin chuckled, his laugh becoming heartier as he met her smoldering gaze.

  He turned around to leave, but froze upon seeing two armored guards blocking his way, their crossbows leveled at his face and chest.

  Mulladin ducked as the tomato struck the bars of his crow’s cage. It didn’t do any good. The bars shredded the overripe fruit spraying his bowed head with juice and sticky pulp. Well, at least they weren’t throwing eggs, he thought. An egg struck him in the shoulder, exploding its rotten yoke all over his shirt. He ground his teeth, and shot an angry glare at the cage hanging next to his–its occupant the Rikujo wench. She, too, was being pelted by trash, but not to the extent he was.

  “This is all your fa–” he cut off as another egg struck him in the face, this time spraying yoke into his eyes and open mouth. He sputtered, and his temper flared when he caught the woman smirking at him.

  The village of Gnot had a creative system of jurisprudence. Unlike Genra, in which criminals were arrested, and held in a guarded cell inside an old stone watchtower until the traveling magistrate could pay them a visit, Gnot’s constable passed judgment and pronounced sentence on the spot. Thirty days of hanging in the crow’s nest in the center of town, and to be subject to the taunts and abuses of passersby. Upon the day of their release they were to be expelled from Gnot and expected never to return.

  That had been until the constable had found Jek’s sword and Mulladin’s lightning ring. Now both he and the Rikujo wench were to be held for a week and then taken to the nearest city for official judgment and hanging, Jek’s sword remitted to the hands of the nobles governing that city, which in this case was Erassa.

  Mulladin’s attempts to explain himself, and what had happened in Aiested, were met with skeptical scoffs, and disdainful dismissals. Even when the ground quaked during one of his insistences that something cataclysmic was happening, and he needed to get the sword to an Allosian, the constable refused to believe. But Mulladin had seen the doubt in the man’s eyes. He didn’t want to believe the world was ending, and only grew angrier when Mulladin tried to convince him.

  Blind idiots!

  The barrage of trash, produce, and rotten eggs subsided as the group of villagers left to return their daily routines. They would be back, they or more like them. He wiped the egg off his cheek with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Well, are you happy?” Mulladin said to the Rikujo woman.

  “Don’t blame me.!” She rubbed her swollen nose. “You’re the one who drew the attention of the guards.”

  Mulladin scoffed. “Because you had a knife to my back!”

  “Well, if you hadn’t followed me―”

  “You stole my friend’s sword!”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “It is my inheritance!”

  Mulladin was about to demand she explain what she meant by that when laughing from an approaching figure caught his attention. He turned, fully expecting another crowd of villagers, re-armed with withering lettuce and rotting apples. Instead, a tall man with long, black hair and one arm in a sling approached. It was the man called Loeadon, and he had Jek’s sword.

  He stopped a meter away from them and grinned. “Two naughty little birds sulking in their cages, never to be free to fly again.”

  Mulladin’s only response was a roar as he shook the bars, making the crow’s cage swing from side to side.

  Loeadon laughed. “You are both idiots. Gnot is the only village for several miles. If you were trying to evade me and my soldiers, why come here?”

  The Rikujo wench didn’t say anything.

  “That’s Jekaran’s sword!” Mulladin shouted.

  “So, you do know that farm boy? Well, I suspected as much. Did you know he killed the king?”

  Mulladin didn’t say anything. He didn’t know that.

  “If you came to Aiested to try to help him, that makes you co-conspirators.”

  “I don’t even know him!” the Rikujo woman said.

  Loeadon glanced at her. “But you stole a weapon talis. Another capital offense.”

  “If you’re going to kill us, then just kill us,” Mulladin growled.

  “Speak for yourself!” the Rikujo wench said.

  “I really ought to thank you.” Loeadon lifted the sword and stared into the well shard. “I was worried that if the prince survived the fall of the palace, I’d have no way of dealing with him. Now I do.”

  He looked up at Mulladin. “Oh, and a lightning ring, too.”

  “If you’re feeling so grateful, why don’t you let me go?”

  Loeadon lowered the sword and rested the point on the ground. “Do you know who I am?”

  “A bugger-loving piece of ghern shyte?” Mulladin snapped.

  Loeadon chuckled. “I am the leader of the royal cadre of polymaths. I was one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, until I fell out of favor with the prince. I was severely wounded on my way to a dungeon cell to await my execution. A monk came to heal me. It was about that time that the palace started to shake, and I took the moment of distraction to break the monk’s neck, take his healing ring, and then escape. I had only just healed myself when all of the talises went dark.”

  “I don’t care who you are!” Mulladin spat at Loeadon, but the arc of his phlegm was too sharp, and it landed only a foot away from the crow’s cage.

  Loeadon looked down at the spittle in the dirt. “I favor you with this story because it was my scheming to get this very sword that brought me to what I thought was my end. But the miraculous circumstances that allowed me to escape and then put the very object of my designs into my hand can mean only one thing.”

  Loeadon met Mulladin’s eyes.

  “The goddess wants me to rule the kingdom. She has chosen me.”

  “You’re no devotee of Rasheera,” Mulladin said.

  Loeadon grinned. “Perhaps not. But whatever controls the destinies of men and kingdoms has given this gift to me, and I intend to use it. Once my entourage reaches Erassa, the sword will recharge and I will bond it. Think about that while you rot in your filthy bird’s cage. Which reminds me. I’ve ordered the constable here to cease providing you with food and water. He is to let you die and leave your corpses to rot in the sun–forever.”

  Mulladin released another roar of pure rage and shook the bars so hard that his cage swung into his neighbor’s. The resultant clash made his teeth rattle and his stomach twist. Loe
adon just shook his head, turned, and walked away with Jek’s sword.

  Jenoc strolled out of Prince Isara’s black stone fortress feeling more energized than he ever had before. Humans ran from the very sight of him, making him feel like a lion pouncing into a herd of gnus. Prayers in the form of screams echoed all around him.

  “Please, God, protect us!”

  “Spare us, Almighty!”

  These filthy humans had different superstitions than the rest of the humans in Shaelar. Whereas most worshipped the goddess, Rasheera, the Haeshalan scum seemed to importune a male deity. It was all very fascinating, and Jenoc was sure his old self would’ve spent months researching the concept. Now he didn’t care about academics. All he cared about was killing every last one of the vermin.

  Some guards escorting a group of frightened wash-women spotted him, and sent the women on ahead while they stood their ground and leveled spears at Jenoc.

  “How very brave.” Jenoc laughed.

  Then he raised a hand and a bolt of green lightning arced from his palm to one of the guards. A flash of light washed over the surrounding training grounds, and when it subsided, only a smoldering pile of human bones remained. The energy coursed into Jenoc, paying for that spell and then some.

  He’d devised this way of combining his Moriora tendrils with a spell-casting of lightning to strike faster at escaping prey. To his surprise, combining the two vastly reduced the energy cost of the spell, and greatly accelerated the feeding process. He struck the other guard with a bolt of green lightning, absorbing his life force in one quick action, or bite, as he was starting to call it in his mind.

  Screams from the fleeing humans echoed from beyond the perimeter walls of the fortress grounds drawing another cruel smile from Jenoc. He didn’t need a talis war to exterminate mankind, not anymore. His original plan to use Moriora to wipe out the humans had been the correct choice. However, there was one drawback to this plan. It was going to take a long time for him to crisscross Shaelar, devouring the life of his enemies–likely decades. It was too long. He needed to expedite the process somehow.

  He looked to the city’s Apeira well rising from only a few miles away, and called to mind his first attempt at wielding the mysterious other magic. He had meticulously followed her instructions, but assumed the inversion spell failed. He’d attempted it at an undiscovered well near a small human village between Haeshala and Aiestal. What had the human vermin called their village?

  Oh yes, Almott.

  He remembered, because he’d had to visit the place in disguise to ascertain the exact location of the buried well. Of course, none of the humans in Almott knew they were living near a well, but they could tell Jenoc the signs that would confirm his suspicion: A near-zero infant mortality rate, livestock that reproduced double the amount of other villages, and harvests that consisted only of unusually large, pristinely ripe fruits and vegetables. Those villagers had claimed it to be the favor and blessing of Rasheera. That just made him laugh.

  After Jenoc had excavated the well, and woven the complicated inversion spell that would summon Moriora, the well had cracked and turned the color of an emerald. When nothing else followed, he assumed the spell had failed. Now he realized it hadn’t failed. It merely needed time to attune him to its alien power, to change him into something that could channel and wield it.

  That thought gave Jenoc pause. After considering the implications for a long moment, he quickly left the training grounds, and returned to the city streets. He struck again and again at humans fool enough to let him see them, devouring them with only half his concentration as a new theory unfolded before his mind.

  He now had green eyes like many of the Haeshalan people. Eyes the same color as the corrupted Apeira well he’d experimented on near Almott. Could these people be the Moriora equivalent of Allosians? But if so, why did they not know the power he now used to destroy them? Perhaps their abilities and nature were dormant? Could there be a way to draw it out? Awaken their powers? Would the inversion spell do to them what it had done to him?

  Jenoc strode toward the city’s Apeira well. He would need many allies with this same ability if he was to devour the entire human race and cleanse Shaelar. No, not allies, soldiers. Jenoc needed an army. But would he be able to control them? What if they used their powers to fight him? He could spell-cast, and they couldn’t. Or if they could, they were surely ignorant of spell-craft. That would give him an advantage. But then, did he need to control them so much as unleash them?

  Back in Isara’s palace, when he’d used the man’s siphoned energy to spell-cast, his core had grown cold and empty, and he was overcome with a panicked urgency to fill it. He would’ve done anything to rid himself of that horrible, hollow feeling. It hadn’t abated until he drained more energy from the throne room guards, and even at a standstill, the stolen power inside of him ebbed away like sands in an hourglass.

  If this power required frequent transfer of energy to avoid that feeling, perhaps that would be motivation enough for others who wielded it to concentrate on finding human prey. But what would happen to them when they ran out of people to drain? What would happen to Jenoc? He suspected that the Moriora would turn on him, devour his body from the inside out, ultimately destroying him. If that is what it took to rid the world of those who oppressed his people, then so be it.

  He’d never consciously decided to give his life for his quest, but he hadn’t had to. He was dedicated to this course, and would pay whatever price. That decision had been made for him years ago when had he knelt weeping next to his father’s headless corpse.

  Eventually, Jenoc reached Isadara’s Apeira well. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he’d come here and left the plague box, although it had only been a couple of days. He craned his neck, fixating on the tip of the amethyst obelisk thirty feet above him. He could feel the Apeiron radiating from the well and was suddenly assailed by an overpowering desire to drain it. Tendrils materialized reflexively, but Jenoc held them back. He intuitively knew that he if touched the well, the spell to summon Moriora would fail. It had to remain pristine, virginal. But every part of Jenoc’s being screamed to feed upon the potent, powerful energy with a burning lust hotter than all his other desires.

  He fell to his knees, clenching his teeth and pouring every bit of his will into the effort of restraining himself. He sought his buried rage, calling it up with memories of his parents’ murder. Images of the villagers of Teratra mobbing his father, holding him down while the mayor used a scythe to remove his head. He remembered watching from a closet as those same men held his mother down so they each could take turns raping her. That ended in her being beaten to death while a large, hairy man had his way with her.

  Why hadn’t they spell-cast to protect themselves? His parents weren’t strong in the disciplines, they having been dedicated scholars, but they knew enough that they could’ve fought back. It was that damned Allosian pacifism. Foolish tradition that because Allosians were mightier and more intelligent than the humans, it meant they should treat them like helpless children. It was how Kairah thought. It had been an odd dichotomy; their parents trained in logic and scholarly analysis believing in the foolish idea that Apeiron had a creative will, and it was the Allosian’s sacred duty to preserve life. But even Allosians would kill to protect themselves, so why hadn’t his parents done something? Perhaps it was because they were caught off guard–the whole thing had happened so quickly. Or perhaps they were trying to keep the villager’s attention on them so they wouldn’t find Jenoc and Kairah.

  Well, they had found them.

  Jenoc remembered being pulled roughly from the closet and thrown to the floor. One of the men calling him, “Filthy fey larva!”

  He had been kicked in the ribs and knocked to the ground, momentarily forgotten when the men discovered his sister. She was very young by Allosian standards, but old enough to pass for a human girl of thirteen. Jenoc remembered the men hooting and laughing when they found Kairah–she had always
been beautiful, even as a child. The man who had beaten Jenoc’s mother to death proclaimed his hideous intent to deflower Jenoc’s sister, reaching for the front of her dress. That’s when Jenoc had first lost control.

  He’d always been adept with spell-casting, and before leaving Allose to study the humans, he’d enjoyed a celebrated status as something of a prodigy in the junior college of disciplines. His parents had forbidden him to spell-cast while among the humans, but he’d practiced in secret. At least until he’d been spotted creating fire by one of the filthy human villagers. That was the spark that’d enflamed the angry mob, the seminal factor in the tragedy that claimed his parent’s life.

  It was his fault.

  Jenoc remembered casting from The Second Discipline with such reckless ferocity that all the humans in their cottage had exploded, each in a maelstrom of fire, flesh, and blood. The smell was horrendous, but the display of spell-craft had the desired effect. The remaining villagers, watching through the windows, fled in fright.

  The casting had left Jenoc dangerously weak, having used too much of his Apeiron store in the attack. Since Teratra was a day’s travel from the nearest Aeose, he was in danger of death. He only remembered pieces of what happened next, but it had been Kairah who had carried him out of the village and to a yet undiscovered well secreted in the white forest. From there they made their way back to Allose. Jenoc’s rage hadn’t truly started to accumulate until the elders of the synod refused to take any action against the human villagers. It was that damned Allosian pacifism!

  Jenoc clung to that rage and pushed back the intense desire to drain Isadara’s Apeira well. His breath came in ragged gasps as he stood and dismissed his translucent green tendrils. He began the mental recitation of the spell for summoning Moriora. It was a strange spell that required tapping into all five of The Disciplines, and then somehow inverting them. He still didn’t fully understand the inversion spell, but knew enough to make it work. The energy in his core ebbed away, and Jenoc had to manifest a tendril and drain a corralled horse standing outside a nearby building to keep going.