The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Black clouds appeared in the sky, swirling above the crystal monolith, churning and roiling as though they were threatening the world. Then, just as the cold, desperately hollow feeling in his chest recurred, a bolt of green lightning struck the Aeose with a deafening crack! The crystal monolith changed color right before Jenoc’s eyes, turning from amethyst purple to emerald green. Then, as it had when Jenoc first attempted the summoning, the Apeira well released an explosion of translucent green energy in a wave that exploded outward. It rippled through the air, eventually losing its coloring and looking like heat distortions on a hot summer’s day before disappearing on the horizon.

  The crystal well cracked, and its emerald glow faded. Jenoc fell to the ground, gasping. He manifested tendrils in all directions, throwing them out with wild abandon until they found something to drain. They didn’t have to stretch far; a crowd of onlookers had been watching from inside the cover of a guard tower. There were eight of them, probably soldiers with orders to kill Jenoc, but were too afraid to approach him. He drained them all simultaneously, their energy coursing into him and warming his core.

  Relief rushed through Jenoc and he stood, looking about for any sign that he’d created more of his kind. He didn’t see anyone. The wise humans, if there were such a thing, had evacuated the city square upon his arrival. Oddly, the shouting and screaming of the evacuating masses abruptly fell silent, as though all Isadara were holding its breath.

  Jenoc, too, held his breath, working hard to fend off the fear of failure that tried to take him. Then, the screaming began, and he exhaled with a smile.

  “…But in this paradise, man did not understand things like work, or sorrow, or evil.” The human monk, Irvis, was again sermonizing.

  Kairah had learned all too quickly that to interrupt and question the former monk’s preaching was somehow understood among the others to be an impropriety. Though she’d studied all the faiths humans espoused, she never quite understood what would drive them to believe in stories and ideas they could not substantiate. In fact, to suggest that empirical evidence should be a prerequisite for belief in the divine offended the devout. As she had quickly rediscovered when Irvis began his nightly, mealtime sermons.

  He did not do this when we first traveled together. Perhaps the death of his friend is his motivation for his focus on the tenets of his faith.

  Kairah knew something of what Irvis must be feeling. The longing for answers, the desperation to assign meaning to loss. The anger when nothing made sense. She herself had first started believing Apeiron had a sentient will that guided the growth of the world–the closest thing Allosians had to a religion–when her parents were murdered.

  Jenoc hadn’t taken the same path. He dealt with their parents’ deaths with an almost fanatical need to prove the world merely a collection of random responses to stimuli and reactions to forces by other counter forces. He often ridiculed Kairah for her belief that there was a guiding power operating in the universe. For him, existence was a cruel state in which only strength and superiority of intellect proved one’s worth, the reward of which not being eternal bliss with one’s departed kin, but simply another day of life. It was a depressive, almost nihilistic view of the world, which appealed to her intellect, but warred against an instinct she couldn’t dismiss.

  Irvis continued, “The Divine Mother, therefore, left mankind so that we could learn to live without her continual blessings, and the life of ease which her immediate presence provided. But one day, when we prove worthy, she will return to grant us peace and everlasting life. That time will be one of everlasting prosperity and joy–the Age of the Infinite, some call it.”

  The sound of leathery skin slapping against itself startled Kairah, and she turned to find Karak slapping his one good hand against his stump.

  Irvis frowned. “That was a sermon Karak, not a bard’s story.”

  “Daka, not story.” Karak continued to grin. “Esk, good story!”

  Irvis huffed. “So, what do the Vorakk worship, if not the Divine Mother?”

  “Spirits, aka.”

  “It is the grossest heathenism to worship the dead!”

  Their debate faded into background noise as Kairah stared into the dancing and crackling flames of their campfire. She sat on a rock trying to lose herself in thought to distract from the feeling of hunger that gnawed at her middle. She detested the sensation, not so much because she was unaccustomed to it, or that it was uncomfortable, but because the only way she could make it go away was to eat the meat that was now slow roasting on a spit over the cook fire.

  It had been a deer before Karak skinned it and disemboweled it. With one hand, he’d needed Hort’s help, but the big mercenary was only too glad to assist with his large hunting knife. Kairah knew she shouldn’t resent the Vorakk for killing the animal. After all, it was Karak’s superior hunting ability that had saved their lives. Fleeing from Taris, or Aiested as the humans called it, with no supplies or provisions would’ve meant a death sentence if it hadn’t been for Karak. Perhaps they could’ve sought a small village, but that would’ve taken time, and right now they were pushing hard to reach Allose.

  The scent of the meat both enticed and disgusted Kairah. Even when they’d been traveling to Aiested, she’d always been able to find fruit or roots to eat, but this terrain had been frustratingly sparse for fauna, and she had to preserve her Apeiron so tapping that to sustain her wasn’t an option. The idea of devouring another living animal horrified her and it was only now that she’d ever had to resort to it. But perhaps the worst thing about eating meat was that Kairah had liked the taste.

  It is not wrong to eat meat, Aeva said.

  Kairah rolled her eyes. She would’ve told the flower that it was too much like what Moriora’s vessel did, but she didn’t want to expend any energy to communicate.

  Thinking of the monster turned her thoughts to earlier in the day when the ground had trembled and something dark had shot into the sky over Aiested. Although she’d left the life sucking monster in the collapsing palace feeding on the city’s Aeose, she doubted the creature was destroyed. Where was it now? Kairah had expended some of her stored Apeiron to scry Aiested when the quake happened, but wasn’t able to see anything. She could view the surrounding landscapes, but where the city itself was, there was only an empty dark spot in her psychic vision. She considered scrutinizing it, but the last time she’d attempted to view Karak’s “Eater” she’d been painfully rebuffed. Perhaps someone in Allose with more talent in the Fourth Discipline would be able to see something.

  A sharp pain stabbed into Kairah’s eye. It was so sudden and so severe it made her gasp. She sucked in several ragged breaths, and clenched the side of her head. The pain burned behind her right eye, throbbing and stinging all at once. Then it was gone, almost as quickly as it had come. Kairah exhaled slowly.

  Kairah, can you hear me? Aeva’s anxious voice abruptly flooded into her mind.

  I hear you, Aeva, Kairah said, abandoning her Apeiron conservation effort.

  You were in pain, Aeva observed.

  Yes, Kairah projected. Like the pain of a severe migraine.

  Like Jenoc, Aeva somberly observed.

  Kairah’s hand massaging her eye socket stilled and a chill thrilled through her veins. Jenoc’s headaches began after he had tried to summon Moriora. They’d continued increasing in frequency and intensity since then, and diminished his ability to spell-cast. In her vision of the dead land, Kairah had touched the power that was Apeiron’s opposite, and it had tried to force its way into her body. She succeeded in expelling it only by drawing desperately on Apeiron, but had assumed the whole experience to have been illusory. In her comatose state had she channeled Moriora? Had it damaged her as it had damaged Jenoc?

  A startled cry drew her attention back to the others. At first she thought someone had seen her double over in pain, but quickly realized they were all looking at the human, Irvis.

  “Divine Mother,” he said. He was holding so
mething in the upturned palm of one hand and an empty brown pouch in the other. It looked like the object was a ring.

  “What is it?” Graelle asked.

  Irvis made eye contact with Kairah. “It’s charged.”

  “Does that mean we’re close to Allose’s well?” The little man called Gymal asked.

  Kairah shook her head. “Not close enough to draw Apeiron.”

  She stood and walked over to where Irvis sat. How could that ring have retained a charge when all their other talises had been drained by Moriora’s vessel?

  “Use it to heal Jekaran!” Gymal ordered.

  Kairah watched as Irvis put on the ring, and then moved to kneel next to Jekaran’s prone form. The young man still stared straight ahead with glassy eyes, and that terrifyingly vacant expression.

  It will not work, Aeva said.

  It healed the mind of Maely’s brother, Kairah responded.

  After a tense moment, Irvis sighed. “Nothing’s happening.”

  He sat back on his haunches, his brow glistening with sweat. The plump woman, Graelle, patted him on the arm consolingly.

  Kairah sighed and looked down at Jekaran lying on Gymal’s outspread cloak. After she’d learned the circumstances of Mulladin’s healing, she had hoped the ring would work a similar miracle for Jekaran. The fact that it hadn’t made her nauseating worry for the boy worse. Was his mind forever lost? The possible tragedy was affecting Kairah more than it should. Jekaran was just a human boy, and while he’d proven to be a noble human, he was still one of the enemies of her people.

  Aeva giggled.

  This is funny to you? Kairah snapped.

  Not his pain, but your view of the world.

  Kairah’s anger extinguished like flames doused with water, and she again was perplexed by the Spirit lily’s cryptic remarks. She was about to ask Aeva what she meant, or how she’d known the ring wouldn’t work when Karak interrupted.

  “Reka fat monk fix Karak?”

  Irvis sighed and nodded. Then he motioned for Karak to kneel next to him. The lizard man did so, and Irvis laid a hand on Karak’s side where his scales had turned from a bronze color to a sickly grayish white–where Moriora’s vessel had struck him.

  The wound had proved resistant to healing earlier, and Kairah had to abandon her effort to do so when the process drew too much Apeiron from her core. Could this uniquely powerful talis do what she could not?

  Graelle’s hand shot to her mouth, and Gymal and Hort both gasped. The lizard man’s missing hand was growing back right before their eyes. At the moment, it was a mass of undefined scaly flesh, but fingers were slowly taking shape.

  Karak’s side was a healthy bronze color once again, and the Vorakk shaman was staring at the upraised nub of flesh that now had basic digits. Less than a minute more passed before Karak had a perfect Vorakk hand, complete with the long sharp claws.

  Irvis pulled his hand back from Karak and stared at the Vorakk with as much surprise on his face as the others. He opened his mouth to say something, but faltered and looked down at the healing ring he wore on his chubby finger. He looked up at Kairah and said, “Remarkable!”

  “Yes,” Kairah agreed. “Only the most talented of Allosian healers can restore severed limbs. I have never heard tell of a healing talis that could accomplish something so complex.”

  “Maybe it’s because he’s a lizard,” Hort said. “I used to pull the tails off little lizards I found in the garden. I kept one once, and its tail actually grew back.”

  “Perhaps,” Kairah said. “But this ring also repaired Mulladin’s diminished capacity, which is something I know for a fact even the most skilled Allosian healers could not accomplish.”

  She extended her hand to Irvis. “May I examine that ring?”

  Irvis nodded, still looking at a loss for words, and it took a moment for him to wrench it from his fat finger before he placed the ring in Kairah’s open palm. She picked it up with her thumb and forefinger and held it up before her. Kairah gasped as the ring changed before her very eyes, morphing from a gold loop with an Apeira well shard into a silver band decorated with trailing designs of flowers–lilies if Kairah wasn’t mistaken.

  Gasps from the others and a shout of, “That’s impossible!” from the short human called Gymal reported that the others had witnessed the oddity.

  Kairah hadn’t discerned an illusion spell-casting altering the ring’s appearance; it was as if the very ring itself had changed shape. There were, of course, spells that could change the matter making up a thing, but they were generally difficult, ineffective, and temporary.

  It was a gift, Aeva said.

  “What?” Startled, Kairah had vocally responded to the Spirit lily.

  “I said nothing, my lady,” Irvis said. He shared a confused glance with Graelle before turning back to look at Kairah.

  Curious though the ring was, it was little more than a distraction to Kairah. She straightened and extended her hand to return the ring to Irvis but froze halfway through the motion.

  Her Apeiron store was refilling.

  It was slight, very slight, but she could feel the warmth at her core growing stronger.

  “This ring is radiating Apeiron,” Kairah gasped.

  “How is that possible?”

  “It should not be,” Kairah said.

  Raelen had never stolen a ghern before. He hadn’t ever stolen anything, and wouldn’t have needed to if the townsfolk would’ve believed he was their prince. He’d wandered into Ijell almost two days ago, having lost his ghern a day before to fatigue, and he himself suffering from the need for food and drink. Bread and water the townsfolk had been willing to give him, but when he’d proclaimed himself Raelen Lesta Taris, crown prince of Aiestal, and asked for a ghern, they had scorned him, and accused him of being a charlatan. Apparently, most of Raelen’s subjects had little idea of what he looked like which for some reason was something he hadn’t ever considered. He couldn’t blame them though. Wandering into their town alone, filthy and travel-worn, wasn’t exactly the traditional norm for a royal visitation.

  The ghern bayed softly as he reached around the underside of its jaw and sawed at the rope that hitched it to the wooden post. The effort took far longer than it should’ve, and he anxiously glanced around the dark street as his hands trembled and heart pounded. Finally, the rope came free, and Raelen took the ghern by the bridle and began leading it away from the tavern.

  He turned down a side street, keeping as best he could to the shadows. Fortunately, it was late, and the streets of Ijell were mostly empty. Several minutes later, Raelen had reached the opening in the palisade wall. There was one guard on duty, a fat man in old, dented armor, sitting on a wooden crate. His helmeted head kept drooping until he’d startle himself awake and the process would start all over again.

  Raelen decided the best way through this would be to mount up, and just ride past the guard into the night. If the guard saw him, and if the man chose to report it, it would take a while to organize a pursuit, which would give Raelen plenty of time to get a safe distance away from Ijell. The road ahead wove through a small forest, which would give him plenty of cover should he need to hide.

  He had put one foot in the ghern’s saddle stirrup when something pointy pressed between his shoulder blades made him freeze.

  “Put that royal foot of yours down, my prince,” a man derided.

  Raelen did as told, a cold nausea twisting his stomach as two other armed men stepped out of the shadows and converged on him. In the light of a nearby street lantern, he could see they wore the tabards of Ijell sheriff’s deputies.

  “You know what the king’s punishment is for stealing a ghern? Oh wait, of course you do. You’re the crown prince.”

  “No less than fifty lashings up to hanging, depending on the circumstances surrounding the theft,” Raelen answered.

  The deputy chuckled. “Well, you sure do talk like you could be a―”

  The man didn’t get to finish his taunt.
Raelen spun on him, knocking the spear aside and slamming his open palm into the man’s nose. His transference band was still drained so he didn’t have Gryyth’s borrowed strength, which probably saved the man’s life, but his training in the Ursaj way of unarmed combat made him formidable enough on his own power.

  The deputy stumbled backward, clutching a nose that fountained blood, and Raelen unleashed a flurry of sharp blows to his body ending with a backhand that spun the deputy around before he went down. By now, the ghern had trotted away and the two other deputies had converged on Raelen. Warily, they inched closer to him, spears held up so the points were aimed at his chest.

  Raelen waited for one of the deputies to get brave and make a jab at him and he spun to the side of the man’s spear thrust bringing down his arm to strike the deputies hands. The man cried out as he dropped his spear, and Raelen stepped behind him and slammed his open palm into the man’s lower back. He fell forward, landing face-first onto the ground. Gryyth had taught Raelen exactly where to strike a man’s spine to temporarily–or permanently if he wished–paralyze him. It worked, and the man’s legs didn’t so much as twitch as he writhed on the ground.

  Finely honed instincts prompted Raelen to lean backward as a spear point blurred in front of his eyes. With lightning speed, he reached out and caught the haft of the spear just as the last deputy was retracting it. Raelen broke the spearhead off the shaft as he fiercely shoved the spear down, causing the deputy to lose his grip and the butt of the spear to fly up into the underside of the man’s jaw. Raelen heard the loud crack of wood striking bone, and the man crumpled to the ground. Raelen stepped around the three fallen guards and casually tossed the broken piece of spear away. It clattered to the cobblestone street somewhere off in the dark.

  Raelen’s stolen ghern hadn’t gone far, and he had little trouble coaxing it back to him. He mounted up quickly, glancing around for more of the Ijell law enforcement, but blessedly found none. He launched the ghern into a gallop toward the gap in the palisade wall, and fled without so much as a reaction from the sleeping soldier at the gate.