The Year of the Lumin (7 page)

The group looked at each other then stood up to follow him.  Before they started up the stairs, Adeel said quietly, “We will have to be even more careful on this trip than we originally thought.”

Chapter 10

Death

Noir awoke to find the room empty of his companions.  Ratt and Elrid’s beds were overturned as though their sleeping inhabitants had been flipped off of the mattresses.  Most of the room’s furniture was flipped over or smashed.  He hadn’t heard any commotion while he slept.  Noir blinked a few times trying to determine if it was all real.

A woman’s cry from the room next door stirred his body.  “Adeel is next door!”  He flung off the covers and leapt from bed.  As his feet hit the floor, he was suddenly aware of a sharp pain on the bottoms of his feet.  He looked down to see pieces of a glass oil lamp on the floor. Two pieces of the glass protruded from his now bloodied feet.

Another scream from the other room pushed him to hastily pull out the pieces, and place his feet on the floor away from the broken glass.  He stood, feeling the floor get warm and wet under his feet.  It didn’t matter, he had to go check on Adeel.  He made for the door but then noticed that what he thought was a blanket on the floor was actually the body of Elrid, laying on his side facing the door.  He was not moving.  “This can't be happening,” Noir said, shaking his head in disbelief and shock.  “This can’t be real.”

Noir stepped over the body and went into the short wooden hall.  Smoke from a fire somewhere made the ceiling a dark gray.  He turned and limped to Adeel’s door, ignoring the pain from his wounded feet.  He grabbed the handle but recoiled from the sharp heat.  He grabbed the tail of his shirt and encased the doorknob with it.  Then he quickly turned the handle and pushed open the door.

The door released a new wave of smoke into the hallway.  Inside the room, flames crawled up the walls.  Scorched marks made it look as though small explosions had gone off in places.  The most odd thing about the room were mounds of ice clinging to spots on the walls and ceiling.  They were dripping into puddles on the floor from the heat of the fire around them.

“Noir, run!” he heard Adeel’s voice and turned toward the sound.  In one corner of the room, a tall, dark figure stepped forwards.  He held Adeel firmly to him and had a long, slightly curved blade near her throat.

The man’s face was hard to make out under the hood of a dark cloak.  Noir noticed that while the cloak was mostly black, it had flecks of red and blue color in it.  On the breast, it had the symbols that represented sye and din.  The blue diamond was on the man’s right breast and the red circle on the left.

Adeel called out to him again, “Get out of here Noir!  You can’t do anything against him!”  Noir noticed something about Adeel.  There was a faint glimmer of yellow light passing through her body.  It seemed to flow out from her abdomen area, then out through her hand and into the blade that was near her throat. 

Noir’s thought, “Is she using lux?  Is that what it looks like?” 

Suddenly Noir’s mind was no longer his own.  While his external senses were unhindered except by the thickening smoke, his mental senses were bizarrely twisted, as if changing the channels on a TV at a blinding rate.  He recoiled and put his hands to his temples trying to figure out what was happening in his mind.

Then a voice spoke louder than a thousand voices at once.  It was viciously slow.  “Young Noir.”  The voice seemed as if it would shake the building to the ground it was so loud, but Noir noticed that he was not hearing it with his ears, but within his mind.  “Your friends and everyone will die because you came to this world.”  Noir looked again at the figure holding Adeel.  The blade was glowing orange with heat.  Adeel seemed to be putting all of her effort and concentration into that blade.  It was slowly getting closer to her throat.  “You never should have come here.”

Noir could now make out the lower half of a man’s face beneath the hood.  He saw rows of teeth in the largest, most sinister grin that he had ever seen.  His skin was stretched oddly by layers of scars.  His mouth did not move, but the voice pounded at his mind.  “Watch her suffer.”

The blade then closed the distance to Adeel’s throat.  Noir reached out a desperate hand as Adeel screamed.

~~~

A hand gripped Noir’s arm and he instinctively clawed at it and screamed.  Ratt jumped back cradling his scratched arm.  “Man, that’s some nightmare.”

Noir sat up suddenly and looked about the room.  The other beds were disheveled, but not turned over.  Elrid was sitting on a stool in the corner looking as though he was about to stand and come over.  As before, Noir blinked as if to make sure it was all real.

“Where’s Adeel?” Noir asked.

Ratt answered, “Probably in her room.  Why?”

Noir threw off the covers and put his feet on the floor.  Remembering the pain from the dream, he looked down half expecting to see glass shards, and then at the oil lamp on the end table next to his bed.  It was intact.

He stepped onto the ground and limped to the door.  The actions felt eerily similar to what had just happened moments before.  He opened the door, limped quickly down the hall, and then knocked on Adeel's closed door.

Her voice replied, “Yes?  Come in.”

Noir grabbed the cool door knob, twisted it, and pushed it in.  He saw Adeel facing away from the door fixing her right pauldron onto her shoulder.  The left one was on a table next to her.  “What is it, Noir?” she asked without looking in his direction.

Noir looked at the corner where he had just seen Adeel killed in his dream.  A shudder ran through his body when he thought about that man's smile.  “I had a dream.”

“I'll say,” Ratt's sarcastic voice came from behind.  “He clawed up my arm when I tried to wake him from it.”  He was rubbing the red marks gingerly.

Noir said to Adeel quietly, “Can we have him leave?  I don't want him to hear about it.”

Adeel said, “I agree.  Out with you, Ratt.  Go get ready to leave.”

“Fine.”  Ratt said as he left, “No one ever lets me in on anything.”

Noir closed the door then sat down on a chair in the room.  Adeel continued to put on her armor as he spoke.  He told her all that had happened in the dream.  After he was done, Adeel took a deep breath and sat on her bed.  “This is not a good omen.  There are some things about this dream that are strikingly correct, and others that are impossible.  From what you said, it sounds exactly like that man was wielding both sye and din at the same time.  However, that cannot be.  No one in history has been able to use more than one vigor at a time.  Also....”

Elrid opened the door interrupting Adeel.  “Luxin Adeel.  We must be on our way.  We are already late for our rendezvous with Ryojek.  Is the boy alright?”

Noir turned and said, “I think I will be fine.”

“Good, then let's gather our things and go.”  He turned and went back to their room.  “I'm anxious to be done with this journey and back in my warm bed in Talik with my wife.”

Adeel stood up from the bed.  She walked to Noir and put a hand on his shoulder.  “We will talk more about this on the road.  Go get ready.”

~~~

Kuli was fading in the distance and there was still no sign of Ryojek.  Elrid expressed his concern with scanning eyes and occasional worried comments. 

After nearly an hour of travel, Elrid called, “I think I finally see Ryojek ahead.”  A mounted figure rode toward them from around the side of a hill.  He approached and relief could be seen in Elrid’s mannerisms.  “You had us worried, friend,” he called out.

Ryojek reined his horse in alongside Elrid, “You were late, so I scouted ahead a bit.  I figured you would catch up eventually.  The path seems clear.  We should have no trouble.”

Elrid said, “This is good news.”

Ryojek then gave an impish grin to Elrid, “So, how was your night?  Did you meet any pretty bar maids?”  Elrid smiled and started to answer but he was cut off loudly by Ryojek.  “I doubt it!  I had a better chance of that out in the
wilderness
than you did in town!”  The two gave loud laughs that echoed through the hills.  Ryojek made another joke about Elrid’s wife that sent them into another rolling laugh.  Elrid playfully reached over and slapped Ryojek on the back of his helmet.  Noir thought to himself that he would never understand old people humor.

The group traveled on.  Ratt walked quietly alongside Noir's horse.  Noir had offered the mount to him but he declined.  The two young men talked and joked.  Ratt talked about festivities in his home town: chasing girls at the Summer festival, climbing trees with friends.  Noir told stories about his family but was careful not to mention anything that he didn't think would fit into this world. 

As they talked, the conversation turned more serious.  Noir learned for the first time that Ratt had been living with his grandfather for the last few years.  His father and mother inexplicably disappeared one day.  With the threat of the town Din Mage over Ratt's head, the town council gave Ratt no time to wait for his parents.  They sent him to work as a carpenter to fill his father's absent shoes.  He worked in fear for over a year having no clue where his parents had gone.  Finally everything just got to be too much and he escaped from the town.  Few Tierians made it out due to guard towers around the villages and scouts in the wilderness.  He said he was somewhat relieved when the men from Talik captured and put him in jail.  If Tierians had found him first, it would have been much worse.

By noon, the group left the road which was bending away from the mountains.  The hills became rockier by the early afternoon.  The route they took turned to sloping cliffs with long drops in places.  Noir felt uneasy being up high on a horse with a cliff a few spans away, but he kept going nonetheless.

Noir was thinking about his parents when it started.  The next few moments of Noir's life seemed to happen in slow motion.  From a hidden place higher on the cliff face, a pale, featureless creature crashed down on Elrid knocking him from his horse.  The creature's  long black claws were buried in the spaces between his armor.  The creature made no sound, but Elrid shrieked hauntingly as his flesh was pierced.  In an instant, the two were tumbling down the side of the mountain into the brush.  Ryojek grabbed his shield and sword out of his saddle, called out a battle cry, and kicked his horse forward on the path.

Adeel seemed suddenly very intent on the road ahead of them.  Her abdomen was glowing faintly yellow as Noir had seen in his dream.  She seemed poised and waiting for something.  Ratt had crouched to the ground with his dagger in his hand, though he did not seem to have any ideas what to do with it.

To Noir's right, the brush lower on the mountain suddenly moved and another creature sprung forth running on all four limbs.  It galloped straight toward Noir and he panicked.  A thousand different ideas ran through his mind, and his gut felt twisted.  In his panic, he didn’t even think about his sword.  He simply raised his arms in a futile effort to defend himself as the creature leapt up toward him on his saddle.  Before the creature reached Noir, it slammed into an invisible barrier and fell back to the dirt path where it then struggled against an invisible force holding it down.  A flow of yellow came from Adeel's abdomen, to her hand, then to the creature.  Adeel quickly jumped from her horse and impaled the creature twice with her sword.  It writhed for a moment and then was still.

Noir could now make out multiple pale, hunched-over figures moving toward them on the path ahead.  The creatures made hauntingly little sound; just the padding of their clawed hands and feet gripping the dirt.  Adeel called to the others through gritted teeth.  “Fall back!”  Her words were lost to Ryojek who was already charging his horse forward, stirred to a rage by the attack on his companions.

Adeel said some sort of curse under her breath, then leapt back on her horse and followed behind Ryojek.  The charging figures ahead drew closer.  Noir could now make out their shapes well.  Blue veins could be seen under their taught, thin skin.  The skin stretched over where their mouths, eyes, nose, and ears should have been.  Noir had no idea the “straghs” that people talked about were so horrifying.  They clambered forward in an unorganized clump.

Ryojek and his horse plunged into the mass of straghs.  His horse charged through them, trampling a couple under its hooves.  Ryojek’s sword flew from side to side from one twisted monster to another.  As he rode through the group, the straghs clawed wildly at horse and rider.  Almost every time a claw came close, a plate of white transparent light would shimmer the instant a claw rebounded.  He saw Adeel's hand raised, yellow light coming from it every time an attack was deflected.  However, the protection was not perfect and long red scratches quickly appeared on Ryojek and his mount.

Noir was shocked at the sight of his first battle.  There was no triumphant music like in the movies he had seen.  There were no picturesque shots of a hero conquering his enemy.  There were only the terrifying claws of straghs and the realization that he and his friends were in true danger.

Then suddenly Noir’s mind was no longer his own.  The thoughts and will of another were in his head.  He felt a mental struggle for the control of his limbs.  He tried to somehow fight it, but the mental assailant dodged and twisted around his efforts.  Then he lost control.  Noir was still seeing through his eyes and hearing through his ears, but no muscles would respond to his command.  “Hello, Noir, my little puppet,” a familiar voice pounded in his mind.