The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  Muttering and movement came from beneath a trapdoor set in the floor. The cooper was coming to deal with the rats.

  “So how are we going to get to Allose?”

  “Trous’s manor house is in this city.” Mulladin smiled.

  “You want to use the slipgate?” Keesa cast a worried glance at the trapdoor which was now shaking. “The manor house is still a Rikujo stronghold, and they’re sure to have gotten a report about what happened in Aiested by now. Someone else will have already stepped forward to claim leadership, and I doubt they’ll be friendly to us.”

  The trap door in the floor burst open and a bald, liver-spotted head crowned the square opening. Mulladin and Keesa quickly slipped out the open window and onto the shop’s roof. They crawled up the tiled incline and crouched in the shadow of a chimney.

  “We have the sword of the Invincible Shadow.” Mulladin raised the sword for emphasis. “And I was with Ezr….” Mulladin glanced at the sword. He didn’t want to say the name again in front of Jekaran. “…Argentus,” he finished.

  Keesa glanced at the sword and rolled her eyes. “That’s why they’ll be hostile! The new leader will see you as a threat.”

  “Then we fight our way in.”

  That’s the spirit, Jekaran said.

  Keesa frowned. “You can use that thing?”

  That was a good question. If a piece of Jekaran’s mind was trapped in the sword, would it work for him like it’d worked for Jekaran?

  I’ll help you fight.

  That was good enough for him.

  Mulladin nodded at Keesa. “And with your lightning ring, we shouldn’t have any trouble forcing our way to the slipgate.”

  “They’ll have weapon talises too, idiot.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Mulladin snapped.

  Keesa looked past him and Mulladin shifted to see what she was staring at. It was Erassa’s Apeira well, thirty feet tall and glowing with a soft purple aura. “You really think the world is ending?” she asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  “And you think we can actually do something to help stop it?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “But my friend, your cousin, needs this sword. And I’m gonna get it to him.”

  Keesa met his eyes and quietly asked, “Why did you save me?”

  That caught Mulladin off guard. “What?”

  “Why did you save me? I’m your enemy. I stole that sword and tried to kill you!”

  “You weren’t trying that hard, were you?” Mulladin smirked, but Keesa didn’t laugh at his jest.

  “Was it because of what that little girl’s flower said–that you need me? Or was there another reason?”

  Mulladin shifted uncomfortably. “Look, I’m not sure now’s the time for this.”

  “Every man I’ve ever known, starting with Kaul, has only hurt or used me. Are you using me too, Mulladin?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then why save me? Why do you care?”

  Mulladin considered that.

  Because you think she’s gorgeous, Jekaran said.

  “Shut it!”

  “What?” Keesa scowled.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” Mulladin looked her in the eyes. She is pretty. “Your father took me and my sister in when our mother died. He fed us, watched over us, and pretty much raised us. He cared about us when no one else did. I think that’s the reason I care. Because someone who didn’t have to care cared about me first.”

  Keesa threw her arms around Mulladin and planted her lips on his. She kissed him long and deep. Mulladin was so surprised that the handle of Jek’s sword slipped from his hand, and he had to lunge to catch it. The sharp move unbalanced him and he slipped taking Keesa with him as they rolled down the slope and off the tiled roof. They landed in a trough full of hay, much to the consternation of a feeding cow. It snorted and moved away.

  Mulladin quickly located Jek’s sword. It was lying on the ground a few paces away from the trough. He’d landed on top of Keesa and quickly rose to all fours, panicking at her tearstained red face.

  “Are you okay? Keesa?”

  Then he realized she was laughing. Her eyes were clenched shut, but tears squeezed out of them. She was laughing so hard she was turning purple, apparently not able to breathe. Mulladin started laughing too, mostly out of relief that he hadn’t crushed the woman. When Keesa got a hold of herself, she shoved Mulladin so that he fell onto his side. Then she rolled on top of him, pressing him down and leaning in to kiss him. He kissed her back.

  Jekaran wolf-whistled inside his mind, but Mulladin didn’t care.

  Raelen woke to an agony that exceeded any physical pain he’d ever known. His shoulder was on fire and freezing at the same time, a contradiction that reminded him of being speared by Loeadon’s magic icicle. He rolled onto his good side, but the movement jostled the shard of crystal embedded in his flesh and he screamed. His vision darkened, and he very nearly passed out again, but managed to cling to consciousness by mentally reciting one of Gryyth’s Ursaj focus mantras.

  The wind cannot silence me.

  The dirt cannot smother me.

  Raelen whimpered and shuddered as he gingerly worked to sit up.

  The rain cannot drown me.

  The cold cannot touch me.

  “I am the ever-burning flame!” Raelen’s strained voice echoed across the empty camp.

  It was dawn, and though the shadows were long, the awful scope of the destruction surrounding him was clear. Tents were tipped or completely collapsed into heaps of poles and canvas. Swords, shields, and armor lay rusted and broken all around him, as though they’d belonged to a people hundreds of years removed. The ground was black and barren, not a single blade of grass anywhere to be seen. And there were bones, lots of bones, stripped entirely of flesh and so scattered that trying to reassemble any one corpse would be an exercise in futility. The sheer totality of the devastation was awesome, and nearly made Raelen forget his physical pain.

  He moved to stand, but froze when the stabbing cold in his shoulder objected. He looked at the emerald colored shard sprouting from his flesh. The skin around the shard was blackened, not like it had been burned, but like dead flesh surrounding a festering wound. It couldn’t have gone foul this soon, could it?

  He debated about whether he should wrench the green crystal from his shoulder, and another failed attempt to stand convinced him of the necessity of doing so. He gently touched the shard with his opposite hand–the good hand, praise the goddess–and was surprised to find the crystal cold, almost to burning like cardice. He plucked a stray stick of firewood from the ground–he hoped it was a stick and not a bone–and put it in his mouth for something to bite down on. Then he took several deep breaths through his nose, closed his eyes, and gripped the protruding shard so tight that its edges sliced into his palm.

  The cold cannot touch me.

  He drew in one last deep breath, and then yanked as hard as he could. A muffled scream exploded from deep within him, and he bit down so hard on the stick in his mouth that it snapped in two.

  Almost two feet of emerald crystal tore free of his flesh with surprisingly little blood. Raelen collapsed to his back, tears stinging his eyes as he hyperventilated. He vomited and nearly passed out, but clawed his way back to full consciousness just as the tunnel of blackness was about to swallow his sight. He gripped his wounded shoulder with a bloody palm, the pressure helping him to weather the shock.

  He stayed like that for almost an hour, and by the time he had the strength to move, the sun was high in the sky. Raelen examined the tear in his deltoid. The jagged hole was surrounded by necrotized tissue, and a cold numbness inside his muscle restricted its movement. Raelen gripped his shoulder and carefully sat up. It hurt, but was a faint echo of the stabbing pain the embedded shard had produced. He glanced down at the crystal. It was smeared with blood from his sliced palm.

  It’s a piece of an Apeira well, or had been.

  Why
had Jenoc destroyed an Apeira well?

  Raelen did another cursory sweep of his surroundings, but the only thing he found was Vesarr’s charred corpse smoldering amidst piles of burned canvas. The general was one of those things; the monsters in human shape that fed on the living. Was he always one? Was this some sort of elaborate betrayal engineered by the Allosian warmonger? Raelen didn’t think so. There was something in Vesarr’s eyes when he’d attacked Raelen–horror. The general was appalled that he attacked his prince, even as he was doing it.

  He’d seen that look before, on the face of a nobleman at court who attempted to beat his eight-year-old son to death when the boy testified of his father’s deviancies. Raelen had broken protocol and seized upon the man himself, stopping the beating and nearly tearing the man’s heart out.

  Good thing Gryyth was there to stop me.

  Raelen glanced at his transference band. It encircled the bicep of his unwounded shoulder. The Apeira shard embedded in the talis was dark. He really could’ve used the stamina it offered right now, not to mention the comfort of a connection to Gryyth. He found himself desperately wishing for his Ursaj protector.

  Vesarr’s wavy-shaped red-steel blade lay on the ground half a dozen paces away. His own general had tried to devour him–but it hadn’t worked. Neither had any of the other of Jenoc’s monsters been able to touch him. Why?

  “His power cannot affect itself,” he recited what Saranna had told him and then glanced at the blackened hole in his shoulder.

  He’d been pierced by the green well shard when Vesarr attacked him. Before that, he’d been every bit as vulnerable as his soldiers. He raised his fingerless hand before his face and wiggled his blackened nubs. He examined the dead skin around his shoulder wound, prodding it and feeling nothing.

  “Arm yourself with it, but don’t partake of it.”

  Raelen choked out a laugh. “Arm yourself, Saranna?” It was a pun, something his sister had been fond of in life. A personal touch signing the experience and proving it authentic. “It was you!” Raelen laughed again. “Saranna?” Raelen called. “Saranna?”

  His sister didn’t answer.

  He was disappointed and confused; he could’ve really used her counsel and company at the moment, but apparently communicating with the dead was said to be a miracle for a reason. Whatever laws or barriers that separated the world of the living from the dead must’ve been difficult to transcend, otherwise such a wonderful thing would be common place.

  “She said her time was short.” It was comforting to speak aloud to himself. What else had Saranna said? “Arm yourself with it, but don’t partake of it.”

  Raelen looked at his blackened wound, and then at his transference band. The emerald shard killed the flesh around where it pierced him, and touching it was painful. It was similar when touching a normal well shard, except that only tingled the skin. With talises, the actual well shard didn’t need to touch the bearer’s flesh. It could grant power as long as there was a conductor of some kind bridging the skin and the shard. The green crystal was a shard of an Apeira well, so shouldn’t it work the same as a talis?

  Raelen found a one-inch piece of the green crystal lying on the ground. He sucked in a breath when he picked it up, and quickly wrapped it inside the bottom of his tunic. The pain ceased as soon as direct contact was broken. He tore off a piece of the cloth, wrapped the shard in it, and then shuffled back to the command tent where he found a leather thong in Vesarr’s traveling trunk. It was wrapped around a ring, not a talis but obviously some sentimental memento.

  “Sorry, Vesarr.” He broke the leather cord with his teeth.

  He tied the thong around the bundled shard and then, moving slowly so as to not aggravate his shoulder, looped the makeshift necklace over his head. He winced at the pain from his arm, and used his blackened nubs to slide the bundled shard under his shirt so that it touched his skin–like a talis. He wasn’t at all sure this would work. Physically touching the green crystal was painful, and apparently too much contact would kill his flesh. By the same token, too much cloth would act as a barrier to connecting with a talis. He was no polymath or talis hunter and so didn’t know exactly how much material would inhibit a connection, but this was the best he could do. The cold radiating from the shard was still present, but no longer painful. That encouraged him, and he exited the command tent.

  If what Saranna had said proved true, then wearing the crystal would protect him from Jenoc and his minions’ life draining magic. Hopefully that would give him the opportunity he needed to strike a fatal blow. His transference band was drained again, but Gryyth’s training had made him lethal enough on his own. If he could get his hands around Jenoc’s neck… but no. He’d marred the Allosian’s perfect face and watched it heal right before his eyes.

  Fire.

  Vesarr had become one of those life leeches, and fire ended up being what destroyed him. Raelen would need to somehow immolate Jenoc. His eyes rested on Vesarr’s flame kris and he gingerly retrieved it from where it lay on the ground. The talis was dead, but if Raelen could recharge it, it’d be the very thing he needed to fight Jenoc. But what about the thousands of life leeches that followed him? Raelen would need help.

  He prayed to Rasheera for exactly that, but if no help could be found, he would still follow, find, and kill the Allosian warmonger. That would probably cost Raelen his life, but with the severity of his wound, and his dead flesh, he likely didn’t have more than a few days anyway before infection poisoned his blood–unless he could find a monk with a healing talis, which wasn’t likely this far from a city.

  Raelen ducked back inside the command tent and rifled through Vesarr’s belongings until he found a thick leather satchel. He dumped out its contents, walked outside, and made his way to where the Apeira well had been and loaded the satchel with green crystal shards. If he found allies, they’d need the same protection. It was a desperate chore, one he guessed was probably wishful thinking, but it never hurt to be prepared.

  “A cub that eats twice his weight before winter will be glad when he wakes twice as big as when he went to sleep.” Raelen smiled, but the smile quickly faded. Oh, how he wished his Ursaj friend was here with him right now.

  Once his satchel was as heavy as he had the strength to carry it cross country, Raelen left the camp with Vesarr’s flame kris tucked into his belt and the bag full of crystal shards slung over his good shoulder. The weight of it was burdensome, and so he stopped and rid himself of half of what he’d originally gathered. Even with a lighter pack, his weakened physical state slowed him considerably.

  Once out of the camp, pursuing Jenoc proved to be simply a matter of following the swath of withered plants, trees, and blackened ground–a road paved with death itself. Finding the monster wasn’t Raelen’s problem; catching up to Jenoc for even the chance to kill him was going to take a miracle.

  Watching the bare ground stretch into the horizon did make it look like a black road. Where was the man going? Certainly to find more victims, perhaps a city? It didn’t matter. Raelen was like the shot arrow, committed to the air, racing toward his target, and unable to turn back. Either he would hit his mark or he would die. Probably he would die either way, but the reality of an afterlife made sure to him by his sister’s appearance brought him comfort.

  “I’ll see you again soon, Saranna,” he whispered.

  Maely gaped at the white spire of the sky temple. It rose as tall as the ancient red-barked trees that surrounded it, reaching over a hundred feet into the sky. The building itself was just as impressive, the roof that served as the base of the spire over half as tall. It was clearly of Allosian design, made of a white substance that seemed to glow against the forest backdrop, and decorated with trailing designs, amethyst jewels, and glowing purple runes. Four smaller spires–though still some thirty feet tall–rose out of the ground, evenly spaced a hundred yards away from the main building.

  A netting of vines and thin branches grew around the base of the four
smaller spires, and had been pruned to extend horizontally until it joined with the vines of its neighboring spires, making a kind of natural fence. It was tall too and made it hard to see inside the temple grounds. The growling-moans of the Ursaj’s native tongue emanated from inside the vine-fence–hundreds of the creatures if Maely guessed right.

  The vine fence writhed and moved like a den of rattlesnakes, and the branches and leaves parted of their own accord to allow an Ursaj to exit the temple grounds. He wasn’t as big as Gryyth, and his black fur was mottled with gray. The bear-man’s left eye was permanently squinted shut and patches of missing fur revealed a diagonal scar crossing the closed lid from crown to cheek.

  “Wait here, cub,” Gryyth rumbled.

  Maely ignored him and continued to help him walk as he approached the other Ursaj. An exasperated growl was the only reproof Maely got, a reaction due in part to Gryyth’s increasing pain and weakness. They’d run out of poppy, and Gryyth’s fever had returned. Combined with the bear-man’s stubborn commitment to fast, his condition had worsened over the last two days of travel.

  Maely was supposed to fast too, but her self-denial was more a matter of imposed necessity than spiritual ritual. She’d run out of her secret store of jerky early on in their journey, and had resorted to eating wild berries and bamboo shoots to stave off hunger. The pains of her personal famine reasserted themselves with a vengeance upon smelling the unmistakable scent of cooking meat wafting from inside the temple grounds. They were feasting in there, and Maely wanted in more badly than she’d ever wanted anything in her life–at that moment anyway.

  “Glynn,” Gryyth rumbled.

  The smaller Ursaj roared in delight and fell to all fours as he ran up to them. “You yet live, cub!”

  Maely didn’t know what else was said as the two broke into their guttural, moaning language. Clearly the older Ursaj knew Gryyth, and they were friends or family or something, because he attempted to embrace him. He stopped when he noticed Gryyth’s wounds, and his jovial sounding moans, turned to clipped growls.