Authors: Robert P. Hansen
12
Taro stood his ground at the mouth of the tunnel and waited
for the men riding toward him. He couldn’t do much else, since his bum knee was
giving him fits after his climb out of the tunnel and Abner was still sleeping.
He couldn’t blame the boy, of course; it had been a hectic trip and his fragile
nerves were about as frayed as Taro’s old cloak had been.
The riders slowed as they approached, and one of the blurry
figures shouted, “Well met, Master Taro! It is I, Hobart!”
“Well met, Hobart!” he shouted back, but he didn’t move out
of their way.
Hobart and the others reined in their horses. “Let us go
inside the tunnel,” he said through the white sheet covering him. “The air out
here is tainted.”
The masked men have arrived,
Taro realized.
She
will be with them.
He took a deep, acrid breath that burned in his lungs
and sent his senses shivering. “I would speak to one named Embril,” he said.
“It is a private matter of some urgency.”
He imagined Hobart scowling at him through the sheet as
Hobart asked, “How do you know of Embril?”
Taro shrugged and said, “I have seen her in a vision. Send
her forth.”
“Now, Master Taro,” Hobart complained. “Surely we can enter
the tunnel and purge the smoke from our lungs, first.”
In response, Taro turned and hobbled painfully down into the
tunnel, his walking staff chipping away at the old lava deposits as he leaned
heavily on it. He put his free arm against the wall to help him balance, but it
took a long time for him to reach the bottom. By the time he had, Embril was at
his side. He glanced at her to make sure it was the woman he needed to talk to,
and then nodded. Her long red hair was covered in soot, and so was her light
blue robe. But her eyes—one brown and the other blue—held the forlorn
despondency that had almost brought him to tears when he had first seen it in
his vision. There was no expression on her face, as if her muscles had stopped
working.
“Worry not, Embril,” he said at once. “Angus is not dead.”
She turned to look at him, but there was no spark of hope in
her apathetic eyes. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice flat, empty.
“I am Taro, Great Elder of The Sacred Order of Prophetic
Sight.”
She stared numbly for a long moment, and then she began to
laugh. It was a high-pitched laugh that lingered and grew until it bordered on
hysteria. “SOPS!” she cried. “SOPS!”
Taro shifted his weight to his good leg and used his walking
stick to tap her sharply on the shoulder. She yipped, jumped away from him, and
her eyes grew wide.
“How dare you!” she said, moving her hands.
He glared at her. “Angus is not dead, you silly girl,” he
chided. “You will speak to him again.”
Restrained anger flared to life in her eyes as flame danced
from one of her fingers to the other, like it had in the vision he had had. He
pointed the tip of his walking stick at her and said, “Stop fiddling with that
magic, Embril, and listen to me. I have seen what happens to Angus, and I will
tell you about it. I will tell no one else. What you do with that knowledge is
up to you. Will you listen?”
Embril squeezed her hands into tight fists and her jaws
tightened. Her eyes were wide as she nodded without speaking—just as he had
seen her do in the vision.
“Good,” he said. “You know that he has gone to the volcano,
but you do not know what has happened to him there. Another wizard was already
there, an old man in black robes standing on a strange floating tabletop of metal.
The old man floated down through a tunnel of lava to the center of the volcano,
and Angus followed him. When the old man disappeared, the lava collapsed in
upon Angus, but he was not killed by it. It flows around him now, as he gathers
up the courage to do what must be done. He faces a dreadful choice. He can
escape from the volcano and live, but thousands will suffer and die if he does.
Hellsbreath will be lost. The dwarves…” He shook his head and sighed. “They
have already suffered greatly, and their suffering will grow tenfold. Or he can
remain forever trapped in the heart of the volcano.”
“Trapped?” she asked, her tone as sharp as Hobart’s sword.
“How?”
Taro shook his head. “I do not know,” he admitted. “I only
know the stone he carries is the key. It is what will sustain him.”
“The Tiger’s Eye,” she gasped.
He paused and frowned. “There is one in your party who can
explain it,” he said. “Ask him about it.”
“Giorge!” Embril cried, turning away from him.
“No!” Taro snapped. “It is not Giorge. It is that other
wizard, the plump one. You must speak with him. He will not want to talk to
you, but he must. Tell him what I have told you. He will explain what needs to
be explained. Do not let him stay silent, but tell no one of what he speaks.
Angus has not ended the danger; he has only held it in abeyance.”
This time, she almost ran out of the tunnel, just as she had
done in her vision, right before the masked men came riding into the tunnel.
As she left, Taro moved to the side of the tunnel to give
the riders plenty of room to maneuver past him. As they settled into the
tunnel, he saw the one with the litter strapped to it. When it was safe to do
so, he approached it and tapped the young man lying in it on the shoulder. When
the young man opened his eyes and looked at him, Taro said, “Don’t go after the
fletching eggs, Giorge. I have seen what they do to you.”
Giorge stared at him for a very long time, and then slowly
turned his head away.
13
As they approached the road that ran north from Hellsbreath
to Wyrmwood, Hobart slowed his horse until he and Ortis were several lengths
behind the rest of their large group, but he didn’t say anything until they
stopped at the crossroads.
“We have travelled much together, Ortis,” he said.
Ortis nodded. “I have enjoyed our journey together, Hobart,”
he said, “but it is time for us to part company.”
“Are you sure you will not return to Hellsbreath with me?”
Hobart asked again. “I will end my Banner and ride with you to find your
people.”
Ortis shook his head, “No, Hobart,” he said, looking north
toward Wyrmwood. “This is a journey I must take alone.”
“Giorge will need you,” the one on his other side added.
“His recovery will be long.”
Recovery?
Hobart wondered.
How does one recover
from being dead and buried?
“I believe he intends to return to The Western Kingdoms,”
the third Ortis offered.
The Ortis to his left turned his steady orange-tinted eyes
toward Hobart. They were impassive, brooding, ominous as he added, “It would be
wise for you to accompany him.” Then, without another word, the three of him
flicked the reins of his horses and headed north at a slow walk.
Hobart stared after him for a few long, painful seconds, and
then turned south. He stayed well behind the patrol for a very long time.
14
Iscara huddled in upon herself and gasped for breath. Argyle/Symptata
was not coming back or he would have done so days ago. No one else knew where
she was. It was hopeless to cling to what feeble life she still had left in
her. But she refused to die—if only to spite him….
1
The jostling wagon sent shivers of pain through her
misshapen back, but it didn’t matter anymore. She had long-ago learned to send
the pain away when she needed to, and in recent years it had become such an
essential part of her routine that she didn’t even need the mantra to do it
anymore. It was a small price to pay for the knowledge she had gained while
stooping over books and scrolls for nearly two hundred years. But her time was
coming to an end, and there was only one thing left for her to do.
She turned to her youngest grandchild and smiled at him. He
looked so much like his grandfather when he was his age. But that was long ago,
so very long ago. “Tell me, Ackard,” she said. “Have you heard the tale of
Angus the Mage?”
Ackard’s lips curled up a bit as he turned to her. “Of
course, Grammy,” he said. “Everybody knows how he sacrificed himself to save
Hellsbreath.”
She smiled and shook her head. “That is just the end of the
story,” she said. “There was a beginning to it.”
“Sure there was,” Ackard teased. “But it’s
boring
,
isn’t it? If it wasn’t boring, the bards would sing about it.”
She shook her head. He was young but had a lot of promise. He
would learn. “I knew him, you know,” she said, turning her gaze to the
mountains ahead of them. “
Before
he became famous.”
Ackard turned to her and his bushy blonde eyebrows scrunched
up in a bunch over the bridge of his wide, flat nose. “Really?” he asked as if
he didn’t believe her. “You’re
that
old?”
She chuckled and shook her head, “Older,” she said. “I was a
young woman when I knew him.” She reached up behind her and brought the long,
pale, almost white, orange-tinted braid in front of her and looked down at it.
“My hair was bright red at the time,” she said, her voice soft, sad. “His was
as black as the night sky and just as mysterious.” She smiled and looked over
at him. “And as mussed up as your own. His beard wasn’t much thicker than that
scraggly little thing you have, either.”
“Grammy!” Ackard reached up and tugged on the thin little
blonde curls. “It’s coming in a lot fuller this spring than last fall,” he
protested. “It won’t be long before I look like I ate a bear and forgot to
swallow the tail.”
She shook her head and chuckled. “It will be a full one,
soon, Ackard. I was just using you as a reference point to give you an idea of
what he looked like. That painting they have in the wizard school was
after
he changed. I knew him
before
he changed.”
“What do you mean?” Ackard asked. “What change?”
“Ah,” she smiled. “For that, I have to tell you how it
started. I wasn’t there, then,” she admitted, “but he told me about it later,
after he died. We talked often, then.”
Ackard scowled at her and shook his head. “Were you playing
with death magic again?” he accused. “Isn’t that forbidden?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, not death magic. It was
another kind of magic altogether. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, isn’t
it? We were going to the beginning, when he didn’t know who he was, and before everyone
else made him into what he was to become.”
Ackard shook his head. “More riddles for me to solve,
Grammy?”
She smiled and patted him on his knee. “We have time for the
story, Ackard,” she said. “It will take us many days to reach the shrine.”
“Oh,” Ackard said. “It’s one of
those
stories.”
She frowned at him until she saw his lips quivering, and
then smiled and said, “Yes, Ackard. It’s one of
those
stories. And if
you listen well to it, you might learn something important.”
“All right,” Ackard agreed with a grin. “I’m listening.”
She nodded. “It started in Blackhaven Tower.”
Ackard’s eyes grew wide and his mouth opened. “
His
tower?”
She slowly nodded as a sad smile settled onto her lips.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Voltari’s tower. You see, Angus was his apprentice.”
“What?!” Ackard cried. “But—”
“I told you that you only knew the end of the story,” she
said. “They don’t tell the beginning.”
He frowned and stared at the road ahead of them for a few
seconds. “Was he really his apprentice?” he asked. “Did he really study death
magic?”
She smiled and turned her gaze forward. “Voltari was a
master of many forms of magic,” she said. “He taught Angus about fire and
earth, and Angus learned it well. And then Voltari made him forgot it all.” She
paused and turned to him. “
That
is the real beginning. When he woke up
in Voltari’s tower and couldn’t even remember who he was.” She paused to stare
down at the braid in her hand, marveling at how it still hinted at orange after
all these years. “Would you like to know what happened next?”
Ackard pursed his lips together and squinted at her. “It’s a
long story, isn’t it? And this is a long trip.”
She fumbled with her braid, flipping the end if it through
her fingers as if she were toying with a strand of magic to show her students
what it could do. “Not long enough,” she muttered to herself. Then she sighed,
turned to him, and smiled again. “But it will take us all the way to the
shrine.”
His tongue swirled behind his lips for a few seconds and
then he asked, “Is this one of those stories you use to teach me a lesson?” he asked.
“Can’t you just tell me the lesson, instead?”
She shook her head and said, “If there is one, you have
already failed to learn it.” She looked down at the tail of her braid, the
wrinkles on the backs of her hands, the supple fingers absently manipulating
it. “I have told no one this story,” she said. “It should not die with me.”
He turned sharply toward her and his mouth opened and
closed. His eyes were wide for a long moment, and then he blinked. “I’m sorry,
Grammy,” he finally said. “I will listen.”
She didn’t look up as she said, “You must do more than
listen, Ackard. You must hear and remember. My burden—the truth of Angus—will
become your burden, and when the time comes you must share it with others.” She
turned to him and added. “This will be my last visit to the shrine.”
Ackard looked at her with a rare serious expression and
slowly nodded. “I will remember,” he promised.
“Good,” she smiled and patted his knee again. “It begins
when Angus woke up and didn’t know who he was….”
2
“The story ends here,” she said as they entered the large,
open courtyard of the shrine. The shrine was little more than an altar
surrounded by bare rock and fields of flowers. Behind the altar was a stone obelisk
that stretched up thirty feet, and at the top of it was a simple geometric
symbol: three teardrops radiating out from a central circle. She pointed to the
symbol and asked Ackard, “Do you know where that symbol comes from?”
He looked at it and said, “It’s sort of like the rune for
flame magic, but there are too many of them.”
She smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said. “That is the
symbol of the Angst.”
“But they’re all dead,” he said. “You said so yourself. And
that temple was swallowed up by a volcano.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “This volcano. The temple
once stood on this very spot.” She gestured around them. “We are in the center
of that volcano’s caldera. Here is where Angus met his end, and this shrine is
as much for him as it is for the dwarves who died because of him.” She turned
away from him and half-whispered, “Because of me. I failed him.”
Ackard shook his head. “No,” he said. “You didn’t fail him.
You did what you did to prevent Darby from taking The Tiger’s Eye. You didn’t
know what he was really doing. Giorge is the one who betrayed him—and you.”
Ackard said it with such certainty that she was almost
tempted to believe him. But she knew better. She had been so naïve when she
thought she could protect the nexus. So naïve that she didn’t even consider the
possibility of Giorge’s betrayal until it had already happened, and by then it
was much too late. She shook her head sadly and said, “I have long-since come
to terms with it, Ackard.” She turned and looked up at the obelisk. “And soon I
will do my penance.”
Ackard looked at her in alarm. “Grammy,” he slowly said.
“What are you talking about?”
She smiled and brought the magic into focus. “I will not be
returning with you, Ackard,” she said.
“Grammy—”
“Use your eyes,” she said without turning away from the
obelisk. “What do you see?”
Ackard frowned and turned to the obelisk. He stared up at
it, and then said, “There’s a red shadow on the symbol,” he said. “What kind of
magic is that?”
“A very old kind,” she said. “Look more closely,” she said.
“What do you see?”
He frowned and studied the symbol for several seconds, then
tentatively said, “The shadow. Some of it is missing.”
She smiled and reached out for a stand of air. It was a
simple thing to tie the knots for the Flying spell, and she did it without even
thinking about it. “Come with me,” she said, lifting herself up to the symbol
on the obelisk. At its base, the obelisk was an octagon ten feet across, but it
tapered as it rose upward. On top of it was the symbol, which was over five
feet in diameter. She hovered a foot in front of it and waited until Ackard
joined her. He was a bit wobbly, but that would pass as he became accustomed to
the spell, just as it had for her. There were three sections of the Angst
symbol that had no shadow, and she pointed at them. “You must press them in the
proper order,” she said. “This one first,” she pressed the bottom of the top
teardrop. “This one second,” she pressed the lower right section of the inner
circle. “And then this one,” she added, pressing the tip of the teardrop
stretching out from the lower left of the symbol.” When she finished, she
descended to the altar and waited for him to join her.
Several seconds passed, and then the altar’s lid began to
slide open to reveal a stairway.
“What’s down there?” Ackard asked.
“You will see,” she said as she cast the Lamplight spell and
maneuvered herself to fly down the narrow, steep stairwell. She went down until
she was a few feet below the altar’s top, and then she stopped to wait for him.
When he joined her there, she pointed at a red shadow on the stairwell wall and
said, “Press this—” she pushed the missing part of the Angst symbol, “—to close
the altar.
Always
close the altar when you come down here. Press it
again when you leave to open it back up.”
“I don’t like this place,” Ackard said.
She took him by the hand and flew down the narrow shaft,
dragging him along with her. When they reached the bottom, he frowned and said,
“There’s a lot of flame magic down here.”
She nodded and said, “There will be more.” She led him by
the hand through a series of corridors, occasionally pointing to a faint red
shadow and saying, “Press this one.” or “Don’t press this one.” All the while,
the intensity of the flame magic continued to increase. Then they came to a room
that had no other exits. She stopped and reached into her robe’s sleeve and
brought out her keys.
“This one,” she said as she lifted it up, “is for my room in
the Wizards’ School. In it, you will find a chest. This key,” she lifted a
second one, “opens that chest. What it contains is yours. This key,” she
gripped it lightly and turned away from him. She walked up to the far wall and
pointed to a keyhole, “opens the door.” She inserted it and turned it all the
way around. A moment later, the wall began to split apart.
“Grammy?” Ackard’s voice was like that of a young child who
didn’t know what to do. “Where are we?”
“You know,” she replied.
There was a long silence, and then Ackard asked, “Is it a
nexus?” He paused and then asked, “
The
nexus?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We should go,” he said. “It isn’t safe.”
She smiled. The gap was wide enough now to walk through. She
turned to Ackard and asked, “Can you hear them? The voices?” She listened to
them calling to her, asking her if she wanted to join them.
“What voices?” Ackard asked, but she wasn’t hearing him
anymore. She was listening to the voices, searching for the one—
Embril?
It was the familiar voice.
It has been a
long time.
“Yes,” she replied. “Too long, my love.”
“Grammy!” Ackard shouted.
A tear slipped through her control as she stepped through
the gap, and the wall began to close behind her.