The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (13 page)

No doubt he said all that for my
benefit. I quickly closed my mouth before Myrka noticed my
slack-jawed expression.

Hydan saw me recover and then said,
“Although I have been to Abal, I have not been through this gloomy
portal! It is so typical of the Tarvos to build in a dark cave, or
out in the middle of some nasty jungle!”

“
Darkness, or secret
locations, help to hide you from your enemies,” she
countered.

Hydan ignored her and headed out
across the bridge toward the cave passage. I was looking at his
scaled body; I could still see Hydan’s familiar human features,
though these were depicted in his saeran face.

“
Should we not scout first
before venturing forth?” Myrka asked imperiously.

“
Scout away, I’m going
outside,” Hydan exclaimed, “I need some liquid!”

Myrka tilted her head to the side in a
kind of puzzled gesture and then said, “Though this race developed
underwater, they have long ago adapted to surface life. Tell him,
Nicholas.”

Hydan called back over his shoulder,
“I meant a drink, not a swim!”

I followed Hydan, and Myrka followed
me. It felt a bit odd walking on the bigger, more pliable feet of
the saeran race, but I tried to hide my uncoordinated
experimentation with the motive power of these legs and
feet.

I figured Myrka had never been to Abal
either, so she would be busy figuring out her own gait. As we
walked, the Tarvos girl asked me, “So, why do you think The Dragon
is hunting you?”

“
Actually, a better
question would be: why is everyone after me?” I replied. “The truth
is I’m not sure. A Hentan hunter, named Stewart, wanted to kill me
in a knife fight, god only knows why, but I managed to escape. I
was then tracked by werewolves, for no apparent reason. Later the
same night we were attacked by a whole caboodle of necrosouls,
again, for unknown reasons. Finally, I ran into you, and you tried
to poke me with a glowing knife.”

“
What is a caboodle?” she
demanded.

“
It means a bunch,” I
answered. “Anyway, now I want to find my parents so I can try to
get some answers as to why things are chasing me; so at this stage
your guess is as good as mine, Sister.”

“
I am not your sister; we
are of different Houses unless you are a crossbreed,” she replied
like I was some kind of idiot.

I said, “It was just an
expression.”

She frowned, and then asked, “What can
your parents tell you about these attacks?”

I replied, “I don’t know; I’ve never
met my birth parents. Hydan says I’m a Hidden Soul.”

Hydan heard me reveal my secret, and
looked back at me while raising a small fin above his eye ridge in
question, but then he kept on walking. I figured with her oath to
support me, knowing part of my secrets couldn’t hurt, and might
help.

Myrka stopped in her tracks and looked
at me with those big round dark saeran eyes. She blinked and I
noticed she had two eyelids. The transparent inner eyelid came up
from the bottom and retracted slightly slower to her blink. “You
are a Hidden Soul?”

“
Well, I was. I know my
House now. I grew up on Earth, and I’ve never been to Abal, the
world of my heritage.”

There, I figured this statement would
take care of the inevitable mistakes I was about to make about my
own planet.

She nodded. “I noticed your
unfamiliarity with this type of body, you were walking somewhat
like I was. I was studying you trying to see how to do it and
noticed your own issues. Only Hydan seems familiar with these
bodies.”

“
Yeah, it’s my first time
too,” I said.

Myrka nodded, and we continued
following Hydan across the bridge, slowly getting accustomed to the
gait of the new bodies, though true control would take some
time.

She glanced over at me again, and then
said, “I have never met a Hidden Soul.”

“
From what I hear, they get
hunted quite often, so there aren’t likely many surviving ones left
to meet.”

She nodded.

I asked her, “What do you know of
Hidden Souls? Maybe I can fill in the blanks once I learn what you
already know?” I was on a fishing expedition, all jokes aside,
considering these scaly bodies.

She considered for a moment and then
said, “Well, for reasons of their own two mages have a child in
secret, and keep this child’s heritage from them, which means the
child doesn’t know they are a mage, or they belong to a House.
Without this knowledge and training, or the Archimage knowing about
them, they do not have a Glyph mark.”

“
All true,” I
answered.

“
Why do you think your
parents denied you your heritage?” she demanded.

I considered her rude question. “Well,
perhaps they didn’t want me to go through life having to dodge
people like Stewart Hentan, or you.”

“
But, by denying you the
knowledge of your birthright you would not learn how to use your
powers, and therefore you would age and die, or if you were ever
Discovered you would become a target for every mage around, even
those lower than your Tier.”

“
So why do you think mages
hunt Hidden Ones?”

She looked at me for a moment, but
finally answered, “Because without training a Hidden Soul is
defenseless, a Hunter could easily end the line of a newly
discovered mage.”

“
You’re talking about the
Ascension Quest?”

She nodded, “Of course.”

I dearly wanted to know more about
this Ascension Quest; Fiona had put me off when I’d asked about it,
and I recalled comments from Hydan about this as well. Thinking
back, I easily recalled his voice, word for word, he’d said: ‘He’s
just playing the Ascension Quest the Hentan way, trying to kill
their way to the top. Not all houses work that way, but there is no
changing the way any house pursues the Quest.’

So I asked Myrka, “I know the Hentans
are trying to kill their way to the top, but I don’t know all the
methods of the other Houses. What can you tell me of the Tarvos’
approach to the Ascension Quest?”

“
I will tell you what is
considered common knowledge; the Hentans rely on physical skills,
they hold reality to their liking, and then try to stick a blade or
something in you. My House studies Derkaz sorcery which makes us
the most powerful of any House. With Derkaz magic at our call, we
believe we can vanquish our enemies, and it will be our First who
Ascends.”

Ascends to what? I thought, but held
my question. She knows I was a Hidden Soul, which might mean some
gaps in my knowledge, but I didn’t want her to know just how little
I really knew. If she doesn’t know what I know, then she won’t dare
feed me lies.

“
OK, what do you know of
the Friare and their plan for the Ascension Quest?”

“
Nothing,” she answered
instantly.

“
You mean they keep it a
secret?”

She shook her head, “No, they are an
open book, too open. They simply have no ambition, they don’t care
who Ascends, and are not even trying to take part in the Ascension
Quest. They will fight, sure, if attacked, but they would rather do
frivolous things than work hard at anything. I do not really
understand them at all.”

We had entered the cave, and I noticed
the walls were smoothly cut through what looked like solid granite.
We made a few turns and then there was bright light ahead,
sunlight. A few minutes later we exited the cave out onto the side
of a mountain. A road cut into the side to our left, winding down
through a series of switchbacks, but what caught my breath was the
view out over the world.

Before us, spread out like a map, was
a lush land, with thick forests the likes of which England had not
seen in many years. We stood on the outer slopes of a mighty
mountain range, like the Rockies back on Earth, and were looking
down over a lush landscape. There were wide rivers, twisting in
snake-like patterns, lakes and a carpet of massive trees. In the
distance, I could make out another massive mountain range rising
into the sky and the glint of an ocean to the east. That sky was
impossibly blue, far darker and a more vibrant color than any sky
I’d ever seen on Earth. And I could see three moons of various
sizes above us at different points in the sky, though none of them
were as large as Earth’s moon.

While looking up at the three moons, I
saw some kind of large winged bird flying past us, but it was a
kind of bird I had never seen before. Its body was a good five feet
in length, and it had a fifteen-foot wingspan. That beak was sharp
and pointed, curving down; definitely a bird of prey.

Hydan saw me gawking at it, and said,
“That’s a Gowaar, not quite the same as a chicken.”

“
No, more like an eagle on
mega-steroids,” I replied.

Hydan nodded, “They can be nasty, but
seldom attack something our size.” Hydan had his habitual grin on
his face as he looked around the view of Abal.

“
Seldom?” I
said.

He shrugged, “They would have to be
particularly hungry, kind of like those dolphin things on
Earth.”

“
Dolphins? They don’t eat
people; did you mean sharks?”

“
Yeah, those,” he agreed
cheerily as he headed for the road, “Come on, we should get out of
sight before something spots us.”

“
You mean the Gowaar?” I
asked.

“
No, something far worse,”
he answered, “something dark and evil, like Myrka here,” he noted
with a smirk, cocking a thumb at the dark skinned girl.

She disdained to answer, but we both
followed him toward the road. We were soon headed down the stone
covered pathway, which was mostly shaded by dark green trees and
bushes which grew along the sides. Once in the foliage, we were out
of sight while working our way down toward the lowlands. We were
soon in the shade of the trees, and I spoke to Hydan, “Tell me
about Abal and these evil ‘things’ who might see us.”

I noticed Myrka was listening
intently.

Hydan shrugged, “Sure. Abal was once a
pretty nice place, I mean, there are always dangers on any world,
it’s a savage universe, as the Silent Mother intended.”

I figured the reference had to do with
some deity he believed in, so I said, “Explain that.”

“
The Silent Mother wanted
the best to survive, so she created a system where everything had
to fight to live, ensuring the best would win.”

“
Survival of the fittest,”
I noted.

He nodded, “That’s a catchy phrase for
it.”

“
I’ll tell Darwin you like
it when I see him next,” I said with a smile.

“
Do that! Well, like I
said, with Survival of the Fittest, there are always some nasty
things out there, but of course, each of our races is the supreme
predator on our planet, otherwise, how would we BE the top of the
food chain?”

“
How indeed,” I
agreed.

He nodded, “But that doesn’t mean
there weren’t some other contenders out there, like those shark
things on Earth.”

“
Right,” I agreed, and then
added, “If they only had a thumb.”

He shrugged, “They might have if
Earth’s First had desired it and thought them a better prospect
than those Rat-Possum things which eventually became humans. I
mean, once she decided the dinosaurs were a dead end, and reset
things, well, then she had to choose from other options which came
up, like that Rat-Possum. After a few nudges, tada, an intelligent
bipedal creature, just like the Silent Mother intended.”

I let this go, his ramblings made no
sense.

“
Now, here on Abal there
are plenty of dangerous creatures which their First might have made
into the dominate biped, like the Gowaar bird, but that’s not what
concerns me.”

I nodded, “OK, I’ll bite, what does
concern you?”

“
The Derkaz has made strong
inroads here.”

That’s when Myrka spoke up, “There is
nothing to fear from the Derkaz Ether, it is just another power
which a mage can bend to their will. My people use it, and control
it.”

“
So you say,” Hydan said
dubiously. “But, let’s talk about Abal; we can leave your world,
Annwn, for another discussion. On Abal, before people started
dabbling in the Derkaz, there was very little evil in this world.
The Archimage and mages of his House kept life here very organized,
and very pleasant. It was one of the best worlds to come to and
have a good time!”

Myrka shook her dark head, “What
possible worth is there in such frivolous wastes of
energy?”

Hydan smiled, “We Friares enjoy life;
can you Tarvos honestly say you do?”

“
We most certainly do NOT!”
Myrka exclaimed, and then added, “Life is not meant to be enjoyed,
it is meant to be meaningful!”

“
To my view, it is
meaningful to get drunk, and have a good tumble with someone you
like.”

Myrka scowled, “Now you are breeding
for pleasure?”