Land of Madness

by B T Litell

  “We have forty coins left. I think we have enough money to buy food for another two days, if we buy the same things we have been eating,” Týr said, putting his coin purse back after counting their money.

  “We need to eat. Something is better than going without,” Svenka replied. “It doesn’t matter if it tastes good or not at this point.”

  The merchant wrapped up the food for the travelers, tying everything with a plain brown string. Two small parcels of food wrapped in a waxy feeling paper were handed back, one to Svenka, one to Týr, who both tucked the pouches away in their cloaks. Turning away from the vendor’s stall, Týr saw two men approaching, one wearing a cloak and robes, his hood covered most of his face. The front of the tan robes showed a black raven on the chest. In one hand the robed man held a small white disk that was glowing brightly, like a torch. The men approached quickly, and Týr tapped Svenka on the arm and motioned toward the men with a slight nod. Neither of them appeared threatening, but the speed with which they approach alarmed Týr. Something was odd.

  “I’m sorry to bother you both, but we need you to come with us. There is a matter of great importance that you are both destined for,” the robed man asserted as he tucked the disk under his robes.

  “Who are you? What do you need us for? How do you know who we are?” Svenka asked…

  ***

  Joshua quickly explained who he and Michael were, and that more details would be provided out of the open. The group moved from the marketplace toward The Snorting Pig; they walked down the winding, stone streets of Erith. Once they reached the inn, Joshua asked the innkeeper if they would be permitted to use the cellar, and the innkeeper, who, without batting an eye, opened the door. Clearly the amount of gold provided for the room had been sufficient enough to grant them some privilege at the inn. As the group moved into the cellar, the innkeeper called out to his visitors.

  “Master priest, if you would like I can have some of the boar stew and some tankards sent down for you and your guests.” The man wiped his hands, vigorously, against the once-white apron he wore just like the day before.

  Týr and Svenka lit up at the idea of something other than dried food, and perhaps at the idea of having something stiff to drink, and Joshua asked for four bowls of the stew to be brought down promptly. The innkeeper nodded and once more wiped his hands on his apron as the door closed behind the guests.

  The cellar was cool but not cold. It smelled musty but was dry. Inside stood a table and some chairs which was surrounded by barrels which undoubtedly contained ales, stouts, lagers, or any other number of beers. Michael gazed at the half dozen barrels, each a little shy of a meter wide and not much taller. The night before the only drinks the innkeeper seemed to have been serving were ales and stouts, but Michael imagined there were other types of beer available. Perhaps not to typical guests, but Joshua seemed to have a way of working the innkeeper to his wants and needs. A few moments after everyone sat down, the innkeeper lumbered down the stairs with a wooden tray, laden with four bowls of the peppered boar stew and chunks of the same crusty bread. Also, on the tray were four tankards, which the innkeeper filled with a brown ale from the only opened barrel in the cellar. The metal ladle he used dipped in and poured the ale quite skillfully. Clearly, he had been doing this for some time. Maybe he kept the table and chairs down here for a special purpose.

  “Help yourselves to as much of the ale as you want, but please don’t open another barrel. I have to have enough beer to serve my guests later today, and the Allfather knows that the soldiers in this town are thirsty bastards. Please let me know whatever you may need, master priest,” the innkeeper said, bowing slightly and wiping his hands on his apron.

  “Thank you,” Joshua replied, dismissing the portly man.

  Týr and Svenka, smelling the stew, asked if they could each get another bowl. The innkeeper started up the creaky stairs and he bowed and nodded. When the door to the main tavern had closed, the four ate their stew. While they ate, Joshua explained in greater detail what was happening, and why the two travelers were needed. As he went on, he removed the black leather book he had been given from the Heron Priest and explained his intentions. Týr and Svenka stared at Joshua with puzzled looks on their faces.

  “Let me see if I understand this correctly. You want to use Dark Magic to find a Shadow Knight that we are supposed to fight?” Týr asked.

  “Do you expect us to simply take everything you’re telling us as fact and agree to do this for you?” Svenka questioned.

  “I don’t expect the two of you to fight the Shadow Knight alone. The four of us will fight him together. But basically, yes. I told Michael earlier that this is less Dark Magic and more something that the priesthood, or at least some priests, don’t understand and consider to be Dark Magic. There is very little risk of us catching or even coming in contact with the Madness, however I must let you know that casting this spell will, if the Shadow Knight is present in this realm, make him aware of our presence and could put Erith at risk of being attacked. Shadow Knights like to work from the background, unseen and unknown. If he learns that he is known, he might retaliate or flee into another realm and become craftier with whatever plans he is executing right now. I know this sounds hard to believe. A priest wants to use a spell that will put a whole city at risk of being attacked by an immensely powerful Dark being. Please understand the urgency with which I have made this decision. I do not risk danger for anyone lightly.”

  Before the conversation could continue, the door at the top of the stairs opened and the innkeeper returned with another set of four bowls of the peppered stew. He cleared away the empty bowls and placed the new ones, one in front of each of his guests. The man had sweat beading on his brow, likely from when he had filled the bowls from the cauldron that was hanging over the fire. With the bowls placed on the table, with more bread for his guests, the innkeeper walked back upstairs and closed the door behind him. Týr and Svenka both started eating their stew, attacking it as if they hadn’t had a proper meal in at least a week, before resuming their conversation.

  “Are you wanting our approval to cast this spell? You’re the only Mage amongst the four of us in this group, and clearly know more about Magic than the rest of us,” Svenka said before she finished off her thick slice of crusty bread.

  “I still don’t understand what the bond that you found is, how you found it, or why we are tied to the two of you,” Týr said, eying Joshua as his hands settled on the black book.

  “Svenka you make a valid point in saying that I am the only Mage in the group. That really has nothing to do with the decision to cast this spell or not, though. Týr, the bond is a connection that exists between the four of us in this room. Beyond that, it would be arduous to explain a bond of this level and how the Heron Priests thought to check for it. It was only a matter of time before we would have found each other. The bond pulled you to Erith, even if you didn’t know that was why you came here,” Joshua explained.

  He gingerly opened the book in front of him. The leather creaked quietly as he opened the book. The pages, with their torn, uneven edges, were thicker parchment than most books that Michael had seen before this point. Joshua sat at the table, the bowl which had formerly contained stew pushed away. The book laid on the table, Joshua skimmed the pages, quickly glancing from top to bottom and then flipping to the next page. This continued until he stopped and read the same page several times. His lips moved silently as he read the page once more, and his finger moved from one side of the page to the next, as if he was trying to further absorb the knowledge the book contained.

  After he finished reading the page, Joshua stood and moved back from the table, clearing some space in the cellar and started casting a spell. Part way through the spell, he chanted something and the light of the oil lamps in the cellar flickered. A dark orb appeared over the table where a thick forest of maple and oak trees could be seen. Some pine trees were scattered through the forest, their pointed tops standing
out from the sea of rounded trees. A sea of goblins ran from the forest, moving north and east, away from Erith by a considerable distance. A second orb appeared and focused on the dark entrance of a rock cave. The Shadow Knight emerged from a cave deep inside the forest. His dark robes remained still as he walked. The cowl on his robes was raised and completely hid his face. Despite wearing no scabbard, or belt, in his left hand he held a sword with a slightly curved, black blade. The blade had only one sharpened edge. Having left the cave, the Shadow Knight stopped and focused his attention on the orb. Without any hesitation, his sword flashed, and the edge struck the orb, though nothing happened in the cellar.

  “I know not who you are, but clearly you are strong enough to resist that. You meddle in things you do not and cannot understand,” his gravelly voice echoed through the orb.

  The Shadow Knight raised his right hand, started a spell, and the orbs wavered, flashed dimly, and then closed before anything further could be seen. Joshua rippled, recovering from casting the spells, then dropped into the empty chair behind him. His breath came in shallow gasps as he recovered from something unknown to the others. Sweat that had been collecting on his forehead now dripped down his face. His whole head, face and neck shone in the dim lamp light of the cellar. Michael handed him his tankard of ale, though he raised his hand, declining the offer of a drink. That was odd, since Michael surely thought the cool ale would help him right now.

  “The goblins,” Joshua gasped between ragged breaths, “are doing his bidding. What that is, I can’t tell. I need to find out though. I believe it has something to do with where we have to go.”

  “They were running northeast, right? What if we looked at a map to see if there is anything worth his attention in that direction? That could help us narrow down his potential target,” Michael suggested.

  “Northeast of the Goblin Coast are the capital cities for the kingdom. Anselin, the Elven capital is far to the north, and Shemont is almost directly east of here. There are also the Dwarven mines in the mountains, but the Dwarves want little to do with Drendil beyond selling us whatever they can mine. I can’t imagine he would find anything of interest in Vilyar or Nalum. That means it has to be Anselin or Shemont, right?” Svenka wondered.

  “Don’t forget about the College between the two capitals. They supposedly have many Magic artifacts that could be valuable to a Shadow Knight. Maybe he is interested in something they have there?” Týr asked.

  “I doubt that any of the artifacts that the College still maintains are even worth his time to consider. Unless he is serving someone, else who seeks additional power that can’t be gained without one of the artifacts. I still think that would be a waste of his time to go after,” Joshua replied. “I agree with you, Svenka, that he likely won’t go after the Dwarven mines. I haven’t heard of any Dwarf coming above ground for anything, short of when Madira collapsed and the few who were fortunate enough to do so escaped before the mountain imploded.”

  “So, that brings us back to Anselin or Shemont,” he continued.

  “This would be easier if we had an army that could scout the continent for us like he appears to. I doubt I can cast the same spell again without giving our location away to the Shadow Knight.”

  “Is there a way we could watch the goblins without him knowing that we are watching him?” Týr took another long pull at his tankard of ale after he asked this question.

  “I very much doubt that I can cast any spells from this book without alerting the Shadow Knight. He is incredibly strong, and likely knows these spells better than I do. When his sword hit the orb, I felt its strike. I believe his sword is made from Magic. I have no idea how that is possible, or how such a thing can be done. I also don’t know how he can strike a spell with a Magic-made weapon and make me feel its strike. That said, I do know, now that we have seen him, that he is a Vor,” Joshua replied.

  “What does that mean?” Michael asked, taking a sip from his second tankard of ale.

  “From what little I have learned in an exceptionally small handful of scrolls, the Vor are assigned to disrupting order within different worlds. They are an extremely powerful race that lives in another plane of existence beyond our own. There are extremely few records of them that even exist, and the sight of one usually means trouble. Using this knowledge, can we potentially narrow down his intentions? Also, since he can travel between realms, he is likely to have picked up different spells and weapons that we will have difficulty fighting without support from, at the very least, the priesthood, if not other Mages,” Joshua answered.

  “If he is meant to disrupt order, and you said Michael’s dream involves a mine being dug under a city with a moat, that leaves us with Shemont. Anselin has no moat,” Týr said as he finished his second ale, during this conversation, and poured a third. “Also, a Magic-centric attack, especially against the capital of the human kingdom would create hostilities between the Elves and Humans. Since the Second Mages’ War, the humans have been very wary about Magic, which is the biggest reason their army has an entire regiment of Battlemages. Any kind of attack against Shemont that is Magic based would only bring further tension between the Elves and humans. This could be something the Shadow Knight uses to get another war started between the two. Another all-out civil war could bring Drendil crumbling down, Erith would likely get involved in the war, as the ‘last bastion of sanity’ they claim to be. If Erith did join the war they would lose too many soldiers and they wouldn’t be able to hold off against whatever else the Shadow Knight plans next.”

  “Perhaps we should focus on Shemont. Is there anything that the Shadow Knight could gain from attacking both Anselin and Shemont?”

  “He would have to have a massive army to assault two heavily fortified cities,” Týr reminded.

  “We are talking about an extremely powerful entity from beyond our own planet. I’m sure he could amass such an army if he really wanted to. But why attack two cities if you would want them to fight each other?” Joshua wondered aloud. He had finally stopped sweating.

  “It’s possible that both sides of the kingdom would be angered toward the other side if he attacked both capitals. Would that cause enough of a disruption of order for his purposes? Would another war in Drendil get the other continents involved? Joshua you said the priesthood is full of Mages that serve to defend against Magic like this, right? Can’t we ask them for help?” Svenka asked, emptying her third ale. Clearly, she and Týr had missed ale during their time on the road.

  “After my last interaction with the Heron Priests, I doubt they will be much help to us, if any. I can speak with them about this matter, and any other questions we can come up with. I think in this effort, they might be willing to answer questions to help us. I will simply not tell them what I did and hope that they don’t already know about the orbs. Are there any other questions you want me to bring before the priests?” Joshua asked as he quickly drank the last of the ale that sat in his tankard. The bubbles that had formed at the top when the innkeeper had poured the beers had disappeared, but Joshua seemed unconcerned about that matter.

  The group fell silent as they drank more ale, thinking of more questions to bring before the priests. After another ale, and no further questions to ask, Joshua stood, wavered slightly on his feet, and walked to the stairs. As he left, he assured the others he would return shortly.

  ***

  Joshua walked into the temple, doffed his hood, and dipped his hands in the basin of water the priests used for cleansing rituals. The entirety of the priesthood was already waiting in their study downstairs, grim looks upon their faces. When Joshua walked in, the head of the Order, a wizened man named Harold stood, his face betwixt by annoyance. His long grey eyebrows turned down in a furious rumple splitting his green eyes from his brow, wrinkled with the force of his eyebrows.

  “Brother Joshua, we cannot help you with your quest. We told you that to do so would go against our oaths that everyone in this room took to enter the priesthood. You ha
ve forsaken your oath by casting these dark spells. Brother Timothy told us of the book he gave you and the nature of what is found within its pages. Surely you have found more questions through these spells, or you would not have returned for the second time this day,” Harold scolded.

  “I still think it’s wrong for us not to help them,” Timothy argued, clearly speaking when none of the other Herons wanted him to.

  “I will deal with your insubordination later. For now, sit there and know your place,” Harold snarled. Normally, priests were far more restrained than this.

  “You were correct. I do have further questions because of what I have seen,” Joshua stated.

  Joshua briefly described what he saw through the spells he had cast. Once the priesthood had been fully brought to understand his findings, Joshua began asking the questions he had come up with, making sure to ask in ways that would elicit specific answers from the priests, rather than roundabout ways for them to tell him off.

  “This certainly sounds like a Vor, as you stated. What purpose is there in causing a rift between the Elves and the humans? What could be gained by the kingdoms collapsing?” Harold asked.

  “That’s what I came here to find out. The Vor have, in the very little documentation that we have concerning them, been the masters of chaos. Could attacking Anselin and Shemont cause another war between the races? What of the Dwarves?”

  “The Dwarves have not left their mines since Madira collapsed, and even before then very seldom were they seen above the surface. Even the merchants that come and go from the mines aren’t Dwarves,” Timothy said, not meeting Joshua’s gaze. Why help me then tell the priests I was using spells you gave me? “We honestly only know that the Dwarves still exist because ores and jewels keep pouring out of the mines, and even that evidence is speculative.”

  “Brother Timothy I already told you to sit there quietly,” Harold snapped once more as he waved his finger at the stubborn priest.