Blackhand (6 page)

“Tell me more of Yuul,” he asked. 

Siyer looked at him as if weighing his words.

“Yuul does not have the strength to cross the fabric of existence at will. It must be summoned, invited over. The god provides advice and grants us knowledge. It taught us how to harvest Ru’s residual power and use it against him.”

Siyer walked over to the small heating stove.

“I was one of the humans chosen to receive such knowledge,” he said. “For more than ninety years I have served as one of Yuul’s Minions...”

“Ninety years?” Quintel could not believe it. He had guessed Siyer to be around sixty. “How old are you?”

“One hundred and eight. I was a boy, younger than you, when Yuul called me to serve.”

Quintel stood. He did not doubt a word of Siyer’s tale. He had come to trust the old man without question.

“Do you believe that is my purpose in all of this? To serve Yuul?”

Siyer nodded. “Yes. But not in the same way as myself or those who came before me.”

“How would my service differ?”

Siyer faced him with a thoughtful frown. He rubbed his hands together for warmth.

“Those answers will come to you in time, Quintel,” he said. “Know that your Abanshi blood is critical to the role. I wish I could tell you more, but I cannot. Mere words cannot explain everything.”

Quintel sat on his bed.

“Why did you wait until now to tell me these things?”

Siyer walked over to the game and slid it out into the middle of the room. He sat cross-legged behind his usual side of the board.

“Only now are you ready to hear them,” he said. “It will be longer yet before I can tell you more. Now come to the board. Let's play the game.”

Without further inquiry, Quintel took his place behind his pieces and began to play.

Chapter 7

Crag threw open the cell door and entered with four other guards behind him. Quintel and Siyer still slept.

“Wake up, dogs,” he shouted and kicked Quintel in the stomach. “The warlord wants you.”

The guards grabbed their chains and led them into the corridor. Still half asleep and recovering from the boot, Quintel stumbled behind clutching his midsection. Siyer's composure remained controlled.

The guards herded them to the far side of the fortress where Huk made his quarters.

Quintel had been imprisoned for five years. His boyhood had ended, and his features and frame were those of a man. Nothing of significance was revealed in his appearance. He was of average height and musculature, and his features remained indistinct.

Huk no longer considered him a threat and allowed him to leave the cell for short errands requested by Siyer. The potions he concocted were still a mystery, but he knew enough about them to fool inquiries and conceal ignorance.

Huk's chamber occupied most of the northern wing of the fortress. Behind its doors, the thick smell of incense hung in the air. Ornate furniture and tapestries splashed the large room with color and form. The work of practiced artisans stood in every corner. Statuary of mixed style provided islands of beauty at carefully chosen locations. It was a strange addition to the cold, gray tower.

The warlord rested in his bed, wrapped in a cocoon of quilts. Two maids attended him. One cleaned his bed pot, the other administered spoonfuls of meal for his breakfast.

Taking the two prisoners to the foot of the bed, the guards forced them to kneel. Quintel and Siyer kept their heads bowed in subservience. Quintel had long since learned to feign submission without hint of pride.

“In three days I journey to the castle of Sirian Ru,” Huk said. “I will be gone for half a year. You must prepare enough medicine to make my trip tolerable.”

Siyer lifted his head but did not meet Huk's eyes.

“Half a year, Warlord? We do not have the provisions to cover those quantities,” he said. “The Tallis mushrooms spawn but once a month, and the Cloudmoss is imported from--”

“You will do it, Siyer,” Huk commanded. “The god has called me and I must go.”

Displeasure laced Huk's tone, but it was not directed toward Siyer. The warlord feared his drugs would dwindle on the journey.

“Take the Abanshi and gather what ingredients you can,” Huk finished. “You must have the elixir ready in three days or your value to me ends.”

The guards pulled them to their feet.

“As you command,” Siyer said.

They were led back to their cell. Siyer took quill and parchment and scratched out an inventory of their needs. He gave the list to Crag.

“Can we meet his demands?” Quintel asked.

“To a degree,” Siyer said. “We have enough of the ingredients to prepare for three months. We will work through the day gathering the remaining materials we need from the forest”

“How can we possibly collect enough herbs to fill the required doses?”

“We cannot,” Siyer said gathering a leather sack and the tools he needed to collect the plants. “I will adjust the quantities of the active substance in some of the vials to be weaker. Should he go more than a month without it, his addiction will be broken and my deception exposed.”

Siyer did not have to explain the consequences of that scenario.

They spent the day foraging in the heavy forest, accompanied by six guards armed with crossbows. The plants and fungus they needed to formulate the drug were hard to find. Just before the light faded, Siyer found a cluster of the important mushrooms under a rotted log. They were young spores, but mature enough to supply the critical ingredient that would see Huk through his journey.

They prepared the components throughout the night. Quintel stole a few hours of sleep during the morning, but Siyer continued to work without rest. By afternoon the next day they had rendered, diluted and strained the portions Huk needed.

Siyer labeled several large flasks by month, inscribing instructions on how to portion the substance. He had mixed the drug in such a way that Huk would unknowingly taper off during the middle portion of his journey, thus extending the supply. On the return trip, however, the dosage would again increase, to ensure the warlord's continued addiction.

“What if this is a trick,” Quintel asked. “What if Huk plans to kill you and is storing enough of the drug to sustain him until more can be made.”

Siyer strained a large pot of liquid through a sieve and spoke while he worked.

“If only that were true! It would be better if Huk were to create such a deceit rather than travel to meet the god,” Siyer said. “Something is happening. Ru is moving his pieces.”

“I understand,” Quintel said. “Their conference is to engage new strategies against our people.”

Siyer set the large pot on the table.

“It is certainly not for social purposes,” he said.

When finished, Siyer had Crag and two other guards load the elixir on one of the wagons.

The entire fortress convulsed in preparation for Huk’s journey. Servants scurried about preparing clothing, food and other essentials, warriors polished their armor and sharpened their blades, blacksmiths hammered fresh shoes for the horses.

On the day of departure, a caravan of twenty wagons and fifty horsemen formed outside the castle's northern wall with Huk's landbarge placed in the middle. A captain gave the sign to move and like a huge caterpillar, its body lunging forward in segments, the parade crawled east to meet the god.

After the caravan had left, activity at the fortress slowed to a stroll. Most of the Huk's council had departed with him, leaving a handful of lieutenants to administrate. Even Crag took the opportunity to collect as much sleep as possible while on duty. Quintel and Siyer were left with nothing to do. To get them out of their cell, Siyer would fabricate a need to collect herbs or use the downstairs kitchens. Since no one was sure what he and Quintel did from day to day, their trickery remained undiscovered.

They played the game often during this slow time and Quintel found himself growing more bored than ever. After playing for several years, he still had not won a single match. Although his skills had improved enough to offer Siyer a worthy challenge, the inevitable outcome prevented any competitive enjoyment.

Then one afternoon in the middle of their fourth game of the day, Quintel noticed something different. He had struggled to an even position and his next move looked strong. But as his hand reached for the piece, he noticed another line of attack. The grids of the board seemed to rise and present a new angle which at first appeared weak, but as he let his mind probe the possibilities he saw more. The harder he concentrated on the line the deeper his mind pierced into the folds of the game. The outside world faded from view. He seemed to sit in a vast emptiness occupied only by himself and the pieces on the board. And there was something else. Something within his mind — a spreading warmth of understanding; the emergence of a new perspective. With blunt insight, he realized the secret of the game: it was not designed to be won.

He moved the piece to begin the discovered attack. As if it were the only possibility open to him, Siyer gave the anticipated response.

Quintel's depth of concentration melted away common patterns and opened possibilities previously unknown. He saw the game differently from the thousands of times he had played it before. Although the options of movement were infinite, a single line would appear and leave no room for others. It seemed the game told him where to move next. He played without consideration, following the leads that materialized before him.

Images separate from the game entered his mind like visiting dreams. They were disjointed fragments of events he had not experienced, places he had never been and people he did not know. Their presence did not distract from his play but rather seemed to be a part of it. Every move opened another gateway and channeled his thoughts like a river.

He knew where Siyer would move many turns in advance, just as he knew where he needed to move to focus the shifting images rushing through his mind. Each turn brought a different focus to his thoughts, a different concept to consider.

After a few more moves, Quintel realized that the images were not coming from the game, but emanated from his opponent.

Somehow, Siyer was speaking to him through the movement of the pieces.

He did not react to the realization, afraid the sensation would be compromised. Instead, he followed the course mapped before him, moving toward an inevitable conclusion. As the end of the game approached, his thoughts had taken wild, hallucinatory tangents. A thousand images stormed past his senses in blazing visions of emotions and perceptions. When the last move found its square, a clear, single message appeared in the position of the pieces.

It was a question, naked in its simplicity.

“Can you hear me?”

Quintel took his hand from the cylinder and realized the game was his; he had reached the opposite end of the board and divided Siyer's pieces. He stared at the pattern with its voiceless message ringing clear.

The game was not a game, it was not a puzzle to be solved. It was a language; a language beyond words. A language of the spirit realm.

The mist disappeared from the surroundings and the cell returned. His heart raced and blood roared in his ears.

Siyer stared at him, knowing.

“So now you see,” he said.

“Incredible,” was the only word to find Quintel’s lips. “Incredible.”

“Would you like to play another?” Siyer asked, but Quintel was already setting up the pieces.

They played again. This time the images did not come in screaming shards, but in concise phrases dictated by the position at hand, carved from the possibilities buried in the grid. As pieces fell from play, ideas ended and new ones began. Entire epic narratives appeared and vanished with every move.

“Words are the path tracing the side of a mountain, they show a small band of the truth,” Siyer said with the movement of a few pieces. “The game reveals the mountain as a whole -- as a man sees it upon the horizon.”

And so, Quintel began to learn. With the aid of the game, Siyer explained all that had happened before, binding events and concepts that mere words could never contain.

First, he elaborated upon his own fate, explaining how he had come to be chosen by the god and later imprisoned by Huk. He showed his existence in Vaer as a boy, carefree, intelligent with ambitions to be a warrior.

But with the shift of few pieces, the tale changed as the god intervened. Siyer and others throughout the centuries had been selected to assist Mankind in battling Ru. Each had served for a time and later passed his or her responsibility on to another. All had held a unique skill for the task before them. Siyer had been selected to usher in the last of the Chosen, to provide instruction to the final human who would receive the touch of the god.

That was where Quintel entered the tale.

Quintel was to be unique even among the Chosen. He was the final answer to Ru's domination of the world. While Yuul was not powerful enough to incarnate in this realm, the god could enter a being who was already here, if the individual had been properly prepared.