Nathanatoll: Night of the Maelstrom

2010-03-27T12:17:00.001-04:00

Chapter Twenty-Two: Algressaro in Bakir

Once the wizard made up his mind there was no stopping him. The leagues that separated him from the westlands dissipated and the trip was uneventful until he sighted the coast of the Great Expanse. He too was sighted. The great red hawk dodged arrow after arrow in his descent to the top of the castle’s highest crenellated tower. The Bakirian archers cursed. They couldn’t understand how they could miss such a huge target at such close range. After they finally nailed this bird there would be hell to pay, of this they were certain, hence their obscene volleys.

The hawk landed and a crossbowman came close with a bolt, only to have a eighteen-foot wing flail at him, the gust of air it generated knocking him to his backside.

“It’s nary a real one! It’s a magicker!” he yelped.

“Look its claws are crushing the stone!” another cried. And surely enough Algressaro’s hawk-claws were raining stone dust down on the men as an indication of his power.

“It’s unnatural! Hold your fire.”

Algressaro watched the Bakirian soldiers scurrying around the walkway and the courtyard below like so many frenzied field mice. He loved the articulated vision that the great hawk eyes gave him. A different perspective. The hawk shrieked at the whiteskins just to rattle them and they fell back as expected.

The sharp clip clop of hooves on cobblestone alerted him to the mounted troops massing below. He chortled thinking how the appearance of such a bird threw them into a flurry of activity. They were so overly militaristic, these Bakirians. Imagine what they would think when he morphed into his necromancer self? The hawk dropped down to the walkway where the bowmen stood which linked two large towers some seventy feet above the courtyard.

“What an august and splendid view you have from this vantage point!” Algressaro shouted as the hawk became the forkbearded wizard. “Such a lovely campanile and bell. Bronze I see. Also, I greatly appreciate the craggy mounts hugging

the coastal plain out to the west where the golden orb once shone so brightly. Do you often get lost in the view from this lofty perch, whitefaced men?”

The bowmen, some thirty of them, were dumbfounded.

“I asked you a relatively simple question. Answer me now or you will force me to set fire to your tongues even as they reside in your gaping mouths.”

The resulting babble was loud and unintelligible but the appearance of a young man flanked by six heavily armed guards with pikes and pennons flying, interested the sorcerer more. Not too tall, not too wide, not too thin. One of the First Call of Bakir, Algressaro decided.

“Hallo,” the newcomer called. “Hallo there, stranger of great power. Welcome to the Blue Coast and the Grand Palace of the Kingdom of Bakir. Our equanambria has been disturbed by your flight. May we speak?”

Algressaro’s brow furrowed. A pompous peacock this man was. But daring, he sensed. Eighteen and barely into his beard.

“Equanambria? In Bakir?” Algressaro retorted, and an iron staff materialized in his left hand. “I have come here on business, not to dawdle with ninnies. But of course we may palaver unless you whiteskins eschew the spoken word or have non-functional tongues... as it seems your mesmerized bowmen do. Not such good shots, I will add. Practice makes perfect, my lad.”

“Irreverent with a fine sense of humor I daresay. Permit me, stranger of power. I am Jar-al-Jal, son of Efrion-al-Jal, prolocutor of all the Bakirian Empire of Velahar and beyond, grandson of Baud-al-Jal The Visionary.”

“Is this a good thing or merely a factoid?”

“I detect, stranger of power, that your wit is as sharp as your tongue.”

“My wits are beyond your comprehension, xenophobic whiteskin. Do not try my patience. Bring your Prince Jal here to me now.”

“I dare not advise you sir, of the insouciance of your request.” Jar-al-Jal answered as he rubbed his unshaven stubble.

“Demand. Not request,” Algressaro answered plainly. “It will save me the time and energy to locate him.”

“Indeed! Yet one does not order the Prince. Rather the Prince orders you.”

“Enough!” snapped the wizard testily. “You palliate! Do not fester my boils callow fool! Else the wrath of Erichane Algressaro will rain upon you here and now!”

The bowmen shrank at the mention of his name but the young royal never blinked and stood fast. He took a sudden pull of air and flashed angry grey eyes at the intruder. Brave, thought Algressaro anticipating his response. But youthfully foolish.

“Your dreamweaver magick versus all these swords? All these bows?” He pointed to the additional corps of archers on the next walkway and tugged at his neck scarf.

“I admit that this is quite a mismatch. Your disadvantage. And for your information, dreamweavers are reptisectoids...of virtually no power compared to my own, you little whitefaced twerp. But if you insist, so it shall be.” Algressaro raised the iron staff.

“And you will pit that against these petards?” Two men holding bomb explosives appeared behind the wizard who didn’t bother to turn to see them.

“Captain!” Jar-al-Jal chirped. “On notice!” The skish of swordblades being drawn filled the air.

“The games you play will cost your troops many lives, Jar-al-Jal!” retorted the wizard. “All their lives if you persist.” Algressaro tapped the iron staff twice and thunder pealed directly above the castle.

Suddenly it was pouring a drenching rain which distracted the soldiers for a split second--precisely the dram of time that Erichane Algressaro needed to materialize the gauntlet. The ethereal glove was around Jar-al-Jal’s neck and the brash young Bakirian was lifted two feet off the platform even before the lightning flashed.

“You are brave, but disrespectful, you with a red scarf, so enjoy this vicissitude of fortune. I do not think I like you, wee young man.” The gauntlet swung the gasping

man out over the rail so that he dangled over seventy feet of nothing. And the rain began to hammer down.

“Now I will ask you kindly, one more time before I splatter your youthful glands and masculine hormones all over the horsemen you have assembled below. Where is this Prince? Tell me now or I will act.”

“You...will..be.. slain.” Jar-al-Jal puffed, struggling for breath.

Brave, but ignorant, Algressaro thought. And stupid. The bowmen and swordsmen began to get edgy, noticing as they did, that the pouring rain was eating away the limestone and granite walkway that they stood on. In fact it was eating away their jerkins and pitting their Bakirian steel blades. Disciplined soldiers, they stood fast, but their eyes betrayed their fears.

“Where is he, this Efrion Prince?” demanded the wizard.

“I...don’t...know,” managed the purpling Bakirian.

“Oh, go wet yourself Bakirian whelp,” Algressaro yelped. “I read the thoughts of your treacly mind and I will go to the royal hunting lodge now. Spitalhouse be ready! Gauntlet! Release him!” And with a dark burst of smoke, Algressaro was gone.

As he snake-slid, he made the wagon horses capriole and leap entirely off the hardpan. Algressaro whisked to the royal tent directly in front of his quarry--literally touching his forkbeard to Prince Jal’s shaven chin. The Prince slowly rose from his elephant-tusk chair and Algressaro rose with him. The conqueror of the westlands was physically imposing by no means, and the necromancer kept rising to intimidate the wide-eyed Prince and his stunned guards. Erichane enjoyed this little trick and stopped only when he towered some fifteen feet high.

Algressaro looked down on the Prince, his ashen white skin agleam, his brow painted an orange hue. Then he shrank to the exact height of the leader and pushed his craggy wizard’s visage up against Jal’s. But he was drawn to al-Jal’s eyes, for they were bottomless in a very mortal way, empty of all things save orbs themselves. He looked into them for compassion and found none. He stared deeply searching for sympathy and

love and found neither. The wizard had seen such eyes many times before, both open and closed in the signs of death. He stroked his forked beard which rested on the Bakirian’s chin and slouched on the willow branch which had once been the iron staff.

The still-surprised Bakirian overlord opened his mouth to speak but a wave from Algressaro silenced him. Bodyguards finally reacted but Algressaro’s stare froze them in their places.

“We can make my visit very brief, Prince of Bakir. I would like that myself as I must be back to my flock. Will you come to my aid?”

The Prince’s eyes zipped around the lodge. Some sixty heavily armed men and women surrounded him. He breathed deeply calming his beating heart.

“H-how in the name of Baud did you get into this camp? How did this become possible?”

Algressaro would not move his face from where it touched the Prince’s .“Not the question I had in mind, not at all Bakirian Prince. Let us get beyond that. Just answer me and I will be gone so fast that I will appear to be a dream to you. Now, where was he born?”

“W-What?” sputtered al-Jal. “W-Who? Guardians! Seize this interloper!”

“STAND OR DIE!” Algressaro bellowed slamming the willow bow into the hardpan and causing sparks to fly. His spittle appeared on Jal’s face. Still the Prince would not move his head away and remained nose-to-nose with the sorcerer.

“There is no time. I am Erichane Algressaro! And we can palaver now or palaver after I scorch every one of your men and women here! Answer me or welcome your fate!” The willow became a torch and the gauntlet suddenly hovered over the Prince’s head like a giant mosquito.

“I-I don’t understand,” sputtered al-Jal, his bottomless eyes reeling.

“You are not meant to comprehend! Merely answer and I will leave you alive and well.”

“Sorcerer or not, I am no coward sir!” The Prince was fully recovered from his original shock.

“That is true Bakirian overlord. I see it in the empty pits of your eyes. Now answer me and the people gathered here with you shall live to enjoy a morning meal.”

Prince al-Jal peeked at his dirk which hung from his belt, an action not unseen by the wizard. Algressaro exhaled and pointed. The dirk miraculously sliced through the sheath and plopped onto the ground.

“Enough man-brave-enough-to risk-his-retainers.” This was Algressaro mocking him; for al-Jal knew that they were expendable but that he himself was not. “Now, where precisely was he born?”

“Who in all of the Bakirian Empire are you speaking of?”

“The homely one.”

“Who?”

“The man with the yellow eyes?”

“Yellow..? You mean the guerrilla? The Morningstar?”

“You know that is who I mean, Efrion al-Jal. Where was he born? Save me the trouble of peeling back the grey matter of your brain.”

“Why he is a Sabuan and far beneath me. A peasant. How would I know? I do not know the answer you seek.”

“YOU LIE!” screamed Erichane directly into Jal’s face. “Tell me now or the gauntlet will fasten upon your pasty neck as it did on your eldest son’s.”

“Jal-ar-Jal? What do you know of him?”

“I know that he can be squeezed until the moles pop from his skin. Where was the Sabuan born? You are an artifice of purpose, Prince. I will find the spot, mind you, with or without your help. You are merely a convenient means of saving time. Where is his house?”

“It does not stand.”

“Burned?”

“Yes. The fool Sabuans kept sneaking by at night and leaving flowers there. Rebels wanting to incite the masses.”

“So you burned it down.”

“And salted the ground so nothing could ever grow there.”

“The beach at the point furthest west? The Bassi peninsula? Is that where the green lipped mussels grow?”

“Grew,” al-Jal corrected. “No more.”

“And yet the conquered rabble still leaves flowers there on that spot do they not?”

“Few. Less all the time. None in fact for many months. The carperays get them and our bowmen are precise.”

Algressaro tugged his forkbeard and moved his face back from Jal’s. He was impressed. Indeed these Bakirians were not easily intimidated.

“Tell me now and tell me until we meet once again, Bakirian Prince. The beach where the house stood. Does it attract the rebels easily? With an phosphorescent glow at night?”

“You know that it does so, else you cannot be Algressaro. Yes, it glows with argentine silver.”

“The death penalty for trespassers?”

“On the spot. Without trial.”

“Excellent!” Algressaro yelped. “And you will maintain your vigil at the site.”

“That is my plan.”

“I was not,” Algressaro began with some annoyance, “asking you. I was informing you that you will do so. And when The One of Power arrives to claim the site he has marked, you will notify me.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“My bargain is this, al-Jal. Notify me then or die now. Choose as you will. I cannot leave an enemy behind me.”

And then what would I enjoy as a reward for my services to you, dreamweaver?”

“Your life in this realm, al-Jal. And freedom to expand as far as your armies can carry your flag.”

“Do I need this from you? You give me this?”

“I give you life, al-Jal. Or I give you death. Now. Choose your fate.”

“Consider the bargain sealed.”

“Oh I do, al-Jal. I most certainly do!” yelped the sorcerer as he morphed into the giant red hawk. “Thank you for your answers and for sharing your breath. The time is nigh. I must take my leave.”

“Screeeech!” That was all the amazed warriors heard, and as the majestic avian soared, they loosed arrows. Algressaro banked and swept the air, sending the missiles hurtling back at their originators. And he laughed the wicked sorcerer’s laugh until he landed amidst the argentine glow in front of the great sea wall on the beach at Sabua’s westernmost point. Satisfied that he had reached the origin of this rendition of Elios Eserpious, and fearful that The One might zero in on him, Erichane Algressaro rode a thermal for a speedy return to his entourage. Mission accomplished.

2010-03-27T12:12:00.001-04:00

Chapter Twenty-One: Behind the Airy Gates

His time had been interrupted. Nathanatoll’s pulse began to race. Cold sweat appeared on his skin and the man from Sabuan shivered. He attempted to raise himself but the pressure held him fast. He detected the rising cry of the winds and suddenly the blue sands were the air and the air was blue sand. His jumbled thoughts whirled about like the very blasts of sand that attacked him. Azure dust devils appeared, their whirlpool columns spinning and dancing a dance of choking death. Lamoks and stones pierced the wind-whipped veil of sand and a deep droning commenced and grew louder and louder still.

Nathanatoll attempted to stand but was flung against a large outcropping of blue rock by the fury of the combined winds. The boulder shuddered as Bressoud assaulted it from the south and Dado from the east. The Sabuan felt himself lifted off the ground by the tempest, boulder and all. Suddenly the reddish-yellow whirling sands turned an eye-blinding silver and thundering words erupted in the tissues of his mind that made his entire being crawl.

“AHA!!! OPEN YOUR MALAPROP MIND AND LISTEN!!

NIGHT IS DAY AND DAY IS NIGHT

AFORE YE DRAW YOUR NEXT BREATH

FEEL THE POWER OF MY ENDLESS BLIGHT

FOR GEMSTONES YE EXIST, NO MORE NO LESS.

IT IS THE SEVEN HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH MOON

BEYOND THE DAY OF THE GRAND DRAMATURGE

THE TIME OF PASSAGE NEARS, SO WILL I CROON

ALL THE REALMS THAT EXIST, I WILL MERGE.

DISAPPOINT ME NOT AND FOLLOW MY DIRECTION

QUASH THE WELLING OF YOUR SABUAN ESPRIT

FOR YOUR COMING HAS HARDLY AVOIDED DETECTION

I COMMAND YOU, YOU WILL LAY DOWN YOUR LIFE FOR ME!”

The thundering dissipated leaving Nathanatoll stunned and weak. He was unsure of just how long he had lain there, but eventually he raised himself and wandered forward. Soon he was reunited with his fellow travelers. They jabbered above the invisible airy gates which had seized the Sabuan and then the others; and Nathan revealed the screaming messages of the wind. Trayblade shuddered and Alman-as-Saml stirred. For the Recourta’s dwindling reptisectoid brain recognized the telltale signature of The One, and the lingering energy-presence infected him, bolstered him in his fight against this Man-being body. A thought crossed his renewed mind that the Man-body’s strength might come from the One himself. But he dismissed this, recalling that he had seen and felt no silver. Alman was merely pleased to have adapted the trailing power of the One’s presence. Now he felt, he could carry out Algressaro’s wishes.

The first structures they happened upon were little more than piles of sunbaked mudbricks. No stones lined the path, no slate marked the way. Dozens of mudbrick huts, topped with thatch, all the same tedious sepia tones, were strewn along a dried streambed. Someone lived here, but where were they?

Shops abounded. Made of mudbricks with wooden frames. Posted signs in Basal script. CORDWAINER. GRISTMILL. FARRIER. Followed by a tavern and a peruquierie or wig shop. Trayblade’s Faerian nose detected water and they moved in that direction. Further up the avenue disintegrated into an occasionally paved street and they watched as a small dust column arose and fell. They began to trot, Trayblade in the lead, and turned a corner, gathering speed as they went, all eyes scanning for the creature that must have caused the dust to rise--and must have seen them.

This street was lined with clay culverts and rutted with foot and hoof prints and the cogwheels of vehicles. The mud brick huts were all painted bright earthy colors and a length of sarpler, a coarse sacking cloth, dangled from a house pole. From behind a corner hut, an old blind yaud snorted, irritated no doubt, by such nervy intruders who brought no oats or carrots.

The town was deserted like a burial mound on the day the spirits of the dead were due to rise. It was too quiet. Trayblade drew cimeter and the tattooed eyed one produced a long knife from some hidden repository. It was identical to Alman’s teeth, unbeknownst to the others. Then they fanned out.

Nathanatoll’s golden orbs detected the running figure. They dashed after the person, and turned the corner, suddenly astonished to find themselves amidst a bustling marketplace. It made no sense! First the inhabitants hid from them and now, as they approached, the people continued their market tasks business as usual, as if the intruders did not exist. And what a motley crew! Dwarves and pygmies, Men and Syffians and Hennans. Beings that Nathan did not recognize. Elves? Here they saw a mixture of faces and features as never before. The freckled skin of Faere mixed with the red of Henna, the brown of Sabua, the white of Syffia, the blue of Kelaou. Dwarfs of innumerable orders--Nathanatoll spied Crimson, Ochre, Umber, Azure ---mingled with natural enemies like gnomes and simians. How could this mixture be?

The marketplace was lined with kiosks and booths, crammed with shoppers, mongers, hagglers, pickpockets and the like. They could see that this extended for a very long way. Where, in all of Velahar were they?

As they moved into the crowd, they realized that none were armed, and so sheathed their weapons.

“This is...even BIGGER than Sabua’s market,” Nathan exclaimed.

“And even Egel's, Frog Prince.” Trayblade asserted, loathe to have Faere second in any way.

“Where, do you suppose, are we? For in als, we are not dreaming. This is real. That wheel of cheese is certainly real...and I am hurting with hunger.”

'Ehh...be not ye fools. This market is larger than any in the westlands I tell ye. Keep your mitts off the wares of these mongers, I tell ye. Else trouble will beckon.”

They shuffled along. From the roof posts of store after store hung greasy grey sausages, fair game for Man, dog or fly. Large brown and yellow cheeses encased in colorless wax were displayed by hawking vendors. Fruit tarts and cakes and flagons of wine were everywhere. Dried fish, fresh vegetables, and basket upon basket of beans and grain lined the shop fronts.

They continued, ignored by the milling crowd, though Nathanatoll towered a foot or two above all. They spied Men with part Sabuan blood, Nathan was sure. In fact, no one seemed to be of pure blood, all seemed mixed.

“Ehh, perhaps ye have found your half-breed niche, Trayblade,” snapped the old man with the tattooed eyelids.

This was no time to fight. In fact the crowd seemed extremely focused if not jovial. Two inebriated Umber Order Dwarves squatted beneath a branchless basswood and attempted to pull silver coins from the wallet of a third equally drunk but unconscious acolyte. Dozens of dirty, naked, longhaired children raced about, yelling, laughing, crying, pouting. Where were they? The trio collared a few people to ask questions, but the inhabitants simply shrugged and moved along.

They moved past several booths selling fruits and nuts with or without pesky

gnats, and simnel cakes that resembled estauo, or journey bread. Nathanatoll was so dehydrated that he elbowed his way to a rattan-and-cord kiosk stocked with flagons of wine. The tattooed one produced a coin and the Sabuan croaked a request for a flagon in Basal. The shopkeeper was a manofaere, or at least mostly manofaere. His changeling eyes went from watery blue to violet at the sight of the trio and he promptly turned away. Short, naked to the waist, the manofaere’s back was deeply scarred with marks of the lash. Once, twice, more the Sabuan called for wine, but the scarred manofaere made no response.

“Perhaps they only accept silver pracksuits here, Prince of Frogs,” Trayblade mumbled. Nathanatoll frowned.

Saml tapped his enraged companion on his barn-broad back. The market, normally a noisy niche, quieted as if by instinct. Villagers of all sizes and descriptions belatedly stared at the intruders. Trayblade pried the coin from Saml’s hand, held it up to the crowd like an offering and dropped it on the counter. It resounded quite nicely and then the manofaere dipped his hand into a green clay urn and pulled out a dozen ripe dates. The Sabuan hauled down a round brown cheese and quickly strung it to his belt. They took two flagons of wine and two of water, though their eyes never left the staring spinney of humanity. Slowly the trio edged around the corner to an oddly empty alley. Four flagons were emptied in moments and they devoured hunks of amazingly tasty cheese. They smiled, they grinned, they could have danced, so great was their relief. Yet as they leaned against the wall of a brown mud brick wall of a silversmith shop feasting joyously, unexpected danger was hurtling like a meteor, closer and closer.

2010-02-06T18:03:00.000-05:00

Chapter Twenty: Lamoks and Rumors

Rale was nearly done with his morphing and was quite aggravated. Had he known Erichane Algressaro was THAT perspicacious, he would have never tried to ooze so quickly. Or was it by mere chance that the plyntela had come across him? He didn’t appreciate being lapped. He didn’t appreciate being nibbled, especially by a file-tongued hunter cat that had no license to be here in the desert. By the time he successfully telepathed the violet-skinned conjurer, he had lost many hours. Then, being a fickle sort, she had demanded a favor from Rale, and after much wrangling, the gede gave in. Heldawn recalled her plyntela who left, but marked the cactus as his territory in a most feline manner.

Rale continued to generate atom-heat and ooze from the blue-green dwarf cactus, when the trio appeared. Where had they been? Lost? Yes. But as he turned the edge of his microscopically thin body toward them, he realized that they were heading for the cactus. He sighed an almost human sigh of utter frustration and re-entered the tree of the desert. Would he miss the Golden Charioteer? He was afraid he would, but silently prayed that the recourta now known as Saml would neither detect his presence, nor be near when the Charioteer arrived. That would destroy all that Rale had learned and the scornful gede bound himself inside the thorny cactus with a vengeance.

Saml wandered far and wide, sniffing the sand and groping the rocks. Despite the manofaere’s urging and his own misgivings, Nathanatoll decided to retrieve the white-skinned one. Trudging after him down a steep dune, Nathan’s all-seeing yellow eyes revealed something standing alongside the old man. He rubbed his eyes but the thing remained.

“And what is this old man?” he inquired, broadsword ready. “I have never seen the likes of this monster in all my born days.”

The monster rose to nearly twice Trayblade’s height. It was dark green and blue with thick waxen skin, though the exterior covering was difficult to see---for thousands of

thin, but pointed little daggers were strewn strategically about its body. Nathan marveled at the creature’s defenses. Inside, Rale fumed, he the gede of rumor, trapped inside a plant by two idiots and a half-Syffian recourta. He hoped that none of his fellow gedes would hear of this.

Nathan studied the beast. Three thick arms with rounded elbows curved off the thick furrowed torso and stretched toward the mocha night sky. Its trunk was thick and powerful and was buried deep in the sandy waste. Trayblade joined them and wondered aloud if this were one of the aphideaters of “West” mention. The hulking Sabuan circled it cautiously, examining its barbed armor, never supposing it to be a plant. A mirage perhaps, but a plant, no.

And yet it was. Atop a tall arm of the plant sat a beast that resembled a bird, with feathers and claw-toed feet. Rale, strapped for options as he might be, elected to have a spot of fun with this low intellect beings.

“In als, what kind of creature have you slain, old man?”

“Eh? Nay false, i-it is not a creature as ye say,” he replied anxiously, “though it does seem to have more life than meets the eye. Nay manofaere, this is a lamok, a tree of the desert. Fairly prevalent in these reaches of Caromendil.”

Alman-as-Saml kept staring at it, because the recourta in him sensed something was not quite in order. But the pervasiveness of Man-senses camouflaged his recourta skills and prevented them from probing deeper. He sighed in a very Man-like manner. He was losing that battle once again.

“A lamok?” asked Nathan. “A most curious tree, no doubt. Not ever have I seen one of these, though I have been to several wastelands in my time.”

“With the Morningstars, Frog Prince?”

“With the Morningstars.”

“Here it is different. Aye Sabuan, it is a lamok of the desert, and...eh... underneath those sharp needles it is moist...moist with blessed water!”

The bird-like creature atop the lamok blinked his protruding eyeballs and opened his scissored beak in an extended yawn.

“Water?” exclaimed an excited Sabuan.

“Well then,” Trayblade muttered, “just where is the spigot?”

“Wiseacre ye are, manofaere. Not a spigot, mind ye, but wetness...eh...a wet pulpy substance inside the lamok’s core.”

Trayblade spoke for the trio. “If this lamok contains moist innards, then we shall slake this vile thirst. In als, Saml Twelve Eyes, you have proved that you are at least good for something!”

He drew cimeter, Heldawn’s sword. “Surely this pulp will be sweeter than the blood of crawling lizards.”

Nathanatoll pulled his dirk and moved to the lamok. Just as he attempted to plunge it in the thorny blue-green flesh, the lamok bent, rotated, and twisted away from the dagger’s blade. Three sets of eyes blinked in amazement. The bird yawned.

“Fool of a white-skinned Syffian!” Trayblade hissed through cracked lips. “You have not slain the beast at all. He lives!”

Still not entirely convinced that this was a tree and not a creature, Trayblade stepped up and swung cimeter. The razor edged weapon hissed as it sped to its stationary mark, but the mass of green-blue barbs expertly twisted away. The blade bit only air.

The old man said nothing. Nathan’s eyes bulged. Trayblade swung Heldawn’s great sword again but the lamok bent and went under the blade. Cursing, the manofaere threw this stalo, which missed the squirming thing by a foot. “Old man!” he yelped. “Slicing the breezes would be easier.”

A rumble of sound was issued from either the bird, whose mouth did not open, or the lamok, which appeared to have no mouth at all. From the look on Saml’s chalky face, Nathan surmised that this was not normal behavior for lamoks. The surprised manofaere regained his composure and re-approached the spiny green creature.

“No maw,” he said, “and yet it speaks.”

“Yetitspeaks?”

Trayblade looked at Nathan who shrugged. It was the lamok!

“It speaks, in als it does,” Trayblade said in wonder.

“Inalsitdoes?” the lamok repeated. Rale’s power to mimic was legendary and would have been evident to a vigilant Alman Recourta, but his senses were far too weakened. Rale answered in nearly identical tones that the manofaere had used.

“Eh…but ye have not a maw,” remarked the surprised old man. “Ye cannot speak. Not without a maw, lamok.”

“Outamawlamok?” replied the creature.

“The old man spat. His large companion stood a few paces behind and scratched his curly black beard. Trayblade frowned and grinned at the same time.

“How is it...eh...how can ye speak ye bluish-green devil? How can ye utter a sound with no maw?”

“Withnomaw?” The queer bird blinked his eyes twice and yawned, its large bill shuddering through the motion. Nathanatoll approached the phenomenal lamok hoping to do better than his companions.

“Have you a tongue lamok? One that is hidden in your barbs?”

“Inyourbarbs?”

“You speak, but you have no maw...and also no tongue, lamok.”

“Sonotonguelamok?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Do not try my patience lamok,” he warned, lips curling. “We need water...and we must return to the cobblestone crossroads again.”

“Stonecrossroadsagain?”

“Yes. How?”

“How?”

“Damn you, unruly lout. Tell me before I plunge this dagger into your spiny skin and cut out your innards.”

Rale was enjoying himself. They couldn’t detect him and they couldn’t harm him. He toyed with the travelers.

“Outyourinnards?”

“Yes! Right into your spiny hide!”

“Inyhide?” The bird blinked his eyes and yawned. Frustrated, Nathan cast an evil glance at the old man who merely shrugged his bony shoulders.

“Again, I ask you. Tell us, tell of the crossroads...or tell us of Ancraturk, lamok.”

“Ancraturklamok?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Damn infidel swine!”

“Daminfidelswine?”

“Ask him about water,” Trayblade coached.

“Boutwater?” the lamok asked.

Trayblade advanced the theory that the heat and their dissipation had made them the victims of what Faerians call a ‘terl’...an imaginary occurrence that happens only in one’s mind. Nathanatoll grunted, unconvinced. He merely desired water. Once again he stepped forward and the lamok postured. He brandished the dagger. Once again the great creature twisted to avoid the blow.”

“Bastard of a beast!” he shouted.

“Ofabeast?”

“Lamok,” he snarled, “I think that you can understand us. I know not why, but I believe you can. So hear me. We must have water. And we will not rest until we do. Where is water if not in you?”

“Ifnotinme?”

It was Trayblade who caught the blunder. Because up until that juncture, the lamok had repeated back what they had said, usually in the interrogative. This time it personalized the response! Rale was angry with himself. He had allowed himself to have too much fun. He thought about microsizing his body, that is turning it so that it was

hair’s breadth thin. That might work for these buffoonish infidels. But that might also give him away. And his seismic sensors detected the rumble of great motion. The Golden Charioteer approaching. No, it was time to end his funfest.

“We must get water now lamok.”

“Nowlamok?”

“Damned whore of a creature!” Nathan snapped.

“Whoreofacreature.” Rale couldn’t resist teasing one more time.

It was some time before Trayblade stopped laughing. Now, in addition to “Frog Prince,” he could call his pal “Lamok Slayer.” At length Nathanatoll also laughed and they embarked on a final plan to slay this playful desert plant-- or creature.

Rale had had enough. The Golden Charioteer approached the highlands to the east and even this pale imitation of a recourta would sense it...and, he reasoned, summon Algressaro. That would not be good for the Ennead, and it would likely spell the end of Rale. He decided to act.

“Stop, you wayfaring dolts,” the thorny creature commanded. “You might as well dig your own graves.”

The trio at once realized that they did not hear the lamok’s words with their ears, but with their minds. Nathan stepped back. Saml spat. Trayblade nearly choked.

“Listen to me, seekers. All day I may stand rooted in this sandy subsoil and twist to avoid your blades. You do not have the authority or the ability to harm one who is protected by the power of Omel. Fools. The desert will devour your flesh and bleach your bones. Be off. Omel guarantees my freedom. I am his reeve. Go now, before I summon my guardians.”

“Omel? I think not,” muttered the Sabuan. “Ogres? I think not lamok.”

“He is not of the ogres of Crus,” whispered the old man.

“No more than I am Jerajon Bladeger,” Trayblade said nodding.

Alman-as-Saml knew that something had gone amiss, but he was too Man-like to decipher even this simple and obvious magick. The lamok's thought-sensations bombarded their collective consciousness.

“Your thoughts, one with tattooed eyes, are scented with the tree of vainglory. Omel is mighty. He will devour you paltry little beings.”

“Nay false!” snapped the old man. “He is in the realm of Saffanion to be sure. I tell ye that the night has covered his eyes. And I would bring his liver on a spear if he were in possession of one!”

Rale thought quickly, enjoying the rumor. Yes, it was a great rumor! Yes, it was a little known fact that in the War for Velahar and the Gemstones of the Black Rose, Omel had lost not only his head, but also his liver. He weighed the options. Amuse himself further with this band of gypsies or perhaps miss the Golden Charioteer while he removed himself from the lamok. Or worse, be exposed as a gede to these annoying people. Or worse still, have them discover himself and the Golden Charioteer and thus Rale’s mission. The Ennead would be most angry.

“It is Omel, then, that you speak of.”

“Eh...I always speak the truth, lamok. Eh-eh by the beard of the Grand Dramaturge, just ask my spotted companion here from Faere. In als, ye see, he will say I tell ye the truth.”

Trayblade frowned and the lamok declined the invitation. The sleepy bird awakened from its stupor long enough so that its beady eyes flitted from man to man.

“Eh, now ye lamok, ye. We must have water!”

“You need me not for water, as you know well, truthspeaker. Over the knoll there will be a grove of palms set against a hillside. You will find water there. If you do not believe what I communicate to you, realize this. I cannot gallop away. If there is no water, I will still be here in this spot.” Rale reveled in the lie. The Golden Charioteer was mere minutes away.

They summoned their energies and trudged in the general direction, looking back occasionally to make certain that the lamok had not moved. Eventually they lost sight of the lamok and made the grove. The palms were bright orange with deep green leaves. Their gnarled trunks seemed attached to the star-lit night sky, so tall were they. A burst of exhilaration overcame the trio and they scrambled frantically about, like pirates looking for gold coins, but no life-giving elixir was discovered. The old man babbled hotly in some indecipherable foreign tongue and spat upon the sands with a particular vehemence. Nathan’s brow lowered and his lips curled.

“Betrayed by a lamok,” he grumbled. “Fools we are, are we not?”

The rhetoric was followed by accusing words and Saml and Trayblade squared off to battle once again. So vehement were they that Nathan feared weapons might be drawn and so interceded. He pushed Trayblade back and went to keep the old man at bay with the shaft of his heavy warlance, when instantly it was torn from his left hand. The reddish sands leaped up and grabbed the Sabuan in a scabrous grip of fury. Overcome by the speed of the actions, Nathanatoll was lifted off his feet by dozens of long fingers of scarlet sand. He was effortlessly whirled about above the stunned duo like a leaf at the mercy of stray gusts. Blurred visions of warlances, Samls and Trayblades danced as unruly segments in rapid succession. A blinding silver light streaked out of the chocolate brown night sky and flashed like fork lightning. Suddenly it was gone, as was Nathanatoll, at least to the eyes of his fellow travelers. With a rude thump the Sabuan with the all-seeing yellow eyes landed in the blue sands of a strange world. Though he was a mere few inches from them, the heretofore squabbling duo could see neither hide nor hair of him. The, with a resounding hiss, all the numerous, intricately related aspects of the third crossroad, the Crossroad of Ignorance, came to an abrupt end.

2010-02-06T18:01:00.000-05:00

Chapter Nineteen: Blood Meal

They trudged through the sands in silence for many hours to conserve energy. Nathanatoll’s immense strength and stamina reached a low ebb and they stopped to rest. Comos descended quickly upon them and framed against his inky robes, images darted by, too quick for the Sabuan to identify. An enormous flash of silver light blinded him. A silver storm brewed over a silver city beneath a silver horizon and billowed high into a silvery night sky. Next the city crumbled as high waves, silver and more silver, smashed into the land. Nathanatoll’s dream was entrancing. Silver was disaster. Disaster was silver.

When the yellow-eyed man was released by Comos and came to his wits, he found himself clawing at the red-brown sand. His visual search brought the presence of neither companion. Did they forsake him? Did they leave him here to die and go on to try to steal a meager mouthful of wet fluid from some real or imagined source? Saml, perhaps, he reasoned, but not Trayblade.

Saml Twelve Eyes returned. Nathanatoll leaned on his elbows and weighed the old man’s explanation. He was dehydrated and lost patience with the old one who insisted that he had gone to find water. True? Perhaps. He seemed far more cognizant of himself, far more awake and energetic. If he found some of the precious fluid, he was not sharing.

“And Trayblade?”

“Eh...I do not know. Half breeds....eh, they often have a nomadic nature.”

Nathan frowned. “But not Trayblade. He will return, I am certain.”

“All of those...godseeking fools are like that, Sabuan. Ye know it to be true. He is better? I think not.”

Nathanatoll glared. “You Saml are a Syffian full of hate, and hate rots the fibers of the soul. You are old and therefore wise. Why then do you condemn someone who saved your life? Perhaps your scrawny neck was the life that Heldawn said would be saved.”

“Eh, eh, or yours, Sabuan... because ye seem to forget the Lug and the Caves of Passpor. Was it not I, Saml who saved your life? Why do ye not care to recall that, Sabuan?”

Nathan considered the words, which did not exactly ring true, but could not recall how the old man had managed that rescue. All he could see was the blinding light of a sunbeam--and the crashing fists of Ancraturk. Finally he could hold his temper no longer.

“Damn you, old man! You are a burr under my saddle. You complain and criticize and condemn me as a fool. Why, even as fatigued as I am now, I could crush your skull in my bare hands and do not tempt me to do so! And when we leave this desolate land, it ends. You will not accompany Trayblade and Nathanatoll, no, not a step further.”

“Ye are insane. I think the heat has affected your brain, Sabuan Morningstar.”

Nathan was about to pursue the argument when his yellow eyes detected movement in the distance. He drew his sword and the old one pulled a blade. A figure approached. “I believe your wandering nomad returns,” he said smirking.

Nathanatoll was amazed at Trayblade’s appearance. He carried his mantle in his hands. Every few seconds the mantle rose and thrashed wildly. He handed Nathanatoll a hissing, squirming green-skinned lizard and the Sabuan needed no explanation. With a single blow from his small axe he beheaded the hapless creature. Half dead from thirst, he crammed the decapitated creature into his mouth. The forelegs twitched frantically, scratching his bearded face. The man from Sabua sucked the horrid tasting blood and handed a second creature to the old man, who refused. Trayblade aped his brown-skinned partner, and nine too-curious, green-skinned lizards would no longer scurry about the hot dry desert.

Their blood lay heavily in the duo’s stomach. Both men slumped backward and awaited the arrival of Comos, who descended upon them like a heavy portcullis.

2010-01-09T11:05:00.001-05:00

Chapter Eighteen: The Desert Demesne

The evidence detected by Trayblade’s “Gift of Faere,” his acute sense of smell, became obvious to all. There appeared to be nothing save endless leagues of reddish yellow sands. No stately hardwood dared to grow here, no wispy softwoods disturbed the nauseating flatness. There was not a single fragment of evidence that life in any form had ever galloped across this desolate steppe or driven roots into the unyielding hardpan. Such was the steaming desert of Caromendil. And unfortunately for them they had strayed into the harshest section, called Bonazzi Bonazzi, a term derived from the nomadic tribes that crisscrossed these lands. These people were man-like creatures of Belin, but xenophobic and as cruel as their environment. Thus the trio moved gingerly in this, the Great Interior Desert of Velahar.
The three seekers wandered aimlessly for leagues. Directionless winds conjured whirling sand devils, and rising heat created mirages before their very eyes. Their feet were soon burnt and sore. Sulitar was missing? How could it be so hot?
Alman-as-Saml struggled to retain his identity. How could the essence of a Syffian prove so strong against a recourta’s essence? These were Abodons! Fool Apes! How could this be? Yet the Man-essence persisted. So it was small wonder that Alman found himself telling a preposterous tale that he, as the recourta, did not endorse or believe.
Saml chattered about multi-armed giants living deep in the recesses of the planet. There, in the very center, was an enormous deposit of iron ore. The giants made iron weaponry and utilized the subterranean stones for a forge, Saml explained, hence the intense heat. His fellow travelers rolled their eyes and Alman-as-Saml pressed his argument. Thus he came to understand the man-concept of irony. Alman Recourta
detested every word that this puny man-being uttered but he could not dominate the body any longer. He had little choice save to await his master’s next command, which, unknown to all, would come in short time. For now he merely wished that he could slake his growing humanoid thirst.
Trayblade playfully mimicked the tattooed one by spitting and clawing his loins and retelling an-all-too similar tale involving changers. The manofaere spun a good yarn and had a gift for farce. He had once worked as a ‘denitor’ or word assembler, in Egel, one of his many occupations. Nathan laughed at the tale but so many old yarns had emerged as realities on this incredible journey. After all, Ancraturk was very real; the Sabuan had seen that for himself. And Sulitar had been stolen, as this, longest of all nights, testified. But Saml’s beliefs did not count in Nathanatoll’s Sabuan mind. He was too pasty, too white-skinned and therefore prone to lying. Nevertheless, he recognized that all hands and minds would be sorely needed to confront the giant and recover the sunbeams.
The trio rested on a dune and the sweat rolled from the furrows of the yellow eyed man and the white-skinned one. Menofaere dissipate heat better than Men, partially due to the micropores in their hands, and so Trayblade seemed reasonably cool.
“Those giants you spoke of, old man...are they the gedes of whitefaces too, the Bakirians?”
“Eh? Nay, false.” Saml commented. “Ye see there is an overlord sovereign for my people...just one master.”
Trayblade flashed an infectious grin. “Only one gede?” he taunted. “Just one? An economy for sure. Does he have pale white skin then? I think not. One gede, and with Syffian colored skin. In als, that is amazing.”
The recourta still remaining in Saml surged with the mockery. “Aye, there is only one master. And, eh...he has as many skins as he wishes, whenever he wishes, mind ye. For he is lord, though ye are ignorant of him, as all ye menofaere are ignorant.”
Nathanatoll tried to change the subject, but an irate Trayblade cut him off.
“Ignorant we are? In als, menofaere are learned. Why we have “West”. We have the great library at Lampelli. What do you have old man-with-white skin? You Syffians have no literature or culture. So your lord must be Lord of the Thoughtless Mind, mustn’t he?”
Alman Recourta disliked the half breed, and he disliked what he was inadvertently saying about his master even more. The Syffian ire grabbed center stage.
“Tell me no more... and do not insult my master! What could ye know? Ye are naught but a half breed!” he snapped.
“Half breed?! Watch your tongue, you insulting trull! I will wager that your nameless god or master smells like the breath of Kintupu. And I am what I am!”
“Spoken as ye are, ignorant one! My lord is powerful and strong... capable of great feats. Ye have many lords, but not a one, exists...save in your backward nation’s mythology.”
“Here then is your lord!!” Trayblade snapped, flinging stalo, his throwing knife into the packed sand only inches from a recoiling Saml’s sandals. The imposing figure of Nathanatoll pushed in between the enraged pair.
“Listen both of you, and listen well. Sheathe your weapon, Trayblade. And both of you, shut your venomous maws. We can ill afford this bickering.”
“In als, I am sorry to anger you, Frog Prince, but this picaroon--”
The old one leaped to his feet. “Picaroon? From a half breed! I cannot accept this talk.”
“Doddering old man! Your lord stinks with the tree of vainglory!”
“Nay false! Your gedes are weak like mewing little kittens. That’s if they exist at all save in your sewers!”
“Stop!” Nathan shouted. “No more of these gedes and gods!”
“And you Sabuan? How many lords do ye acknowledge now?” Nathan’s face crumbled into a frown. “You already know. Some people have gods or other lords...so they may spin tall tales to their children and their children’s children. Fishwives and prostitutes have lords to lean on when they need aid. Priests and scribes use gods to bolster their positions over their fellows. No, I do not believe in your gods or gedes...or acknowledge any lord. Now let us cease this ridiculous banter and begone.”
Alman-as-Saml could not control himself, a trait he resented as terribly human. His face wrinkled like a prune. “All will be known in the end, Nathanatoll of Sabua, this I tell ye. And the gedes that the half breed worships? They have no power at all, eh...no more than the dust devils that this wind conjures at its will.”
Trayblade leaped at the Syffian and Nathanatoll separated the feuding pair again. He was tired of the game and content to let the conversation die. It would not make the slightest difference in their present predicament. Their throats were parched, coated with the yellow-red sand they walked on. Dark skin, white skin and freckled skin alike were beginning to dry out and flake off in patches. Nathan half wished there were gedes or lords or gods about, so long as they had water and a willingness to share.
They judged by Enerburis that their course was east, which was desirable. They trudged for many hours over cracked parched ground, baked hard by an unseen source. Bony lizards with horny plates down their backs, were the only other life forms they encountered. Comos soon got the best of them and they plummeted into sleep beneath the thick dark robes of a crimson sky. While Nathanatoll snored and Trayblade breathed heavily, Saml slept. But Alman Recourta did not. He felt a strange tingling, and assumed it was just another annoying man-ache or weakness of this all-too-human body. It persisted, the tingling did, until Alman recognized that it was not in his body, but in his reptisectoid brain. Algressaro! It was his master and he rejoiced. For he had lost the power to transportate and more recently, the power to telepath. But now, at long last, his great and powerful master was with him.
Alman-as-Saml was energized, despite his weakness, despite his fatigue, hunger and thirst. The reptisectoid brain cells responded to the command that came from the skies. In the distance a huge hawk circled and Saml trudged in its direction. When his Man-knees rebelled, he sank into the sand and the great hawk sailed into a graceful dive, landing some twenty yards distant. It walked nimbly to the old man’s exhausted carcass and gripped his bony shoulders in its mighty talons. In a flash, hawk and Syffian were sky bound. They soared for the better part of an hour before Alman-as-Saml was deposited in a large, but shallow pool. Slowly the old man drank and the screeches of the hawk gradually made sense, appearing in his neuron-translators as the voice and words of his magicker lord, Erichane Algressaro.
“It is close to the time, Alman Recourta. Soon you will skirr and scurry and vacate this scrawny body.”
“It could not be soon enough, most august master.”
“We have battled with some gedes and changers. The Simian slew eight changers himself and we repulsed their attack. We did not liberate their sunbeam as that peculator, that Ancraturk, beat us to it. The giant now has at least six, dimwitted contumacious beast that he is. We must possess all seven before we confront The One.”
“Your wish, master?”
“Ah recourta of mine. Focused as ever, you are. We must ensure that the yellow-eyed dog from Sabua does not realize the ultimate veracity of what he is. And the spotted one, the manofaere, I see that his influence grows.”
“Master, they are like long lost friends.”
“This is most unhealthy. I do not like this Faerie’s mendacious influence. He is a bit of a plague, says I.”
“Half breed, master. He is half Faerie, half something I am unsure of.”
“So be it. However, it is time that the manofaere must be removed. How is your level of strength? Should I send the Sixfinger?”
“Isn’t he needed with you my master?”
“In all veracity, he is. He is a great petard-bomb, as you know so very well. And our present course for a conflagration is quite clear.”
“Then I will fight this persistent mannish nagging as if it were a rheumatoid illness. I will remove the spotted beast from this world as you wish, when you wish, master of mine. Permanently.”
“Excellent, Recourta. Do so at your earliest convenience. Then you will meet me with two days to go at the headwaters of the river sacred to the stone-eaters.”
“The Agourdan?”
“One and the same. Two days hence, to be two days early. At the Agourdan. Then we will eliminate the rest of the gedes. We will prepare for The One. If we cannot barter with him, which is likely, then a final showdown.”
“Yes my master. But I will require my own reptisectoid carapace returned to me. This puny one will be even more useless then than it is now.”
“Ah the paucity and plethora of it all. Yes my recourta, yes yes yes. You shall HAVE IT! Chitinous plates and all, Alman Recourta. Heed my words and you shall be in complete oneness again. A repousse of your existence. Your own reptisectoid equanambria.”
“The time could never be too short.”
“The time for action draws nigh and the acids in me gurgle in a churning of expectation. We shall triumph, recourta, we shall, mark my words.”
Algressaro’s words would be heeded by all present. The magicker probably should have known better...known that he would be watched by his nemeses...tracked by them as he progressed en route. And both he and Alman Recourta should have remembered that Man-humanity essences take a certain amount of time to absorb other essences...and that the rate at which Alman was being absorbed was far too rapid. Perhaps also, Algressaro should have trained the keen hawk-eyes on the sparse vegetation around the pool, on one strange cactus in particular. For the blue-tinted dwarf cacti was very much alive with another power.
None of this was by accident. The Ennead, the coalition of the night, the quasi-governing body of the reunified gedes, had followed the progress of the Sabuan, and also, when he was not careful, Algressaro himself. They knew that Alman Recourta was embodied within Saml, and they were powerfully glad of the fact. For at the time of final reckoning, Alman’s fierce countenance and brilliant neuron-power would be compromised, rendered inconsequential by its long term association with Man-humanity. Or better yet, if the recourta died in the process, his energy power would spill into the third realm, the realm of death...presided over by the lord of the dead...Saffanion. The Ennead was pleased with its logic and its plan of action as well.
Had Algressaro appeared as the wizard he was instead of as a hawk, he would have sensed in an instant that the bluish cactus was none other than the gede Rale, the reeve of rumor. He was the favored investigator of the Ennead and he had done his job very well. Now he would bring this information back to the Ennead and the gedes would revamp their plan to defeat the sorcerer before turning to fight the horrible power of The One.
Rale waited until long after the hawk had taken to the night skies. He checked the figure of Alman-as-Saml, thirst slaked, wet with water from the pool. The Syffian's flesh was ancient and tired, battered by infirmity. Rale felt the effervescence descend and soon the old man slumbered in the arms of Comos.
Rale raised the internal temperature of the desert tree and kept the energy-fire burning as hot as he could muster. Without Sulitar, metamorphosing was impossible for changers and quite difficult for those gedes who did possess the ability. It was, regrettably he thought, simple for Algressaro and those freakish necromancers to change, for they were not bound by Sulitar, but by magick. Rale agitated the atoms in this cactus, and the spiny plant began to perspire. Moisture appeared on the waxen skin and slowly, ever-so slowly, began to collect. Rale prayed that no creature would come and lap up the precious stuff, for it was him, his essence, and he did not relish the thought of being trapped in the innards of some desert reptile or insect, not even for a few hours.
The moisture collected and slowly ran down the length of the tree. Rale struggled with the effort of agitating his atoms, but maintained the pace and slowly began to take his normal long, thin, bony form. He needed to transportate and he needed to do it fast. At the risk of his telepathation alerting Algressaro or his entourage, Rale concentrated the appropriate atoms and cast them into the atmosphere. He was relieved when the response indicated that The Golden Charioteer was on his way to retrieve him and concentrated on oozing. He angled his microscopically thin body sideways to minimize detection by the waking old man or the companions that the white-skinned beggar was pledged to betray.

2009-12-26T12:26:00.001-05:00

Chapter Seventeen: Crossroad Blackness

The theft of Sulitar had relegated the realm of the living to a dimly lit netherworld. However, it was not complete darkness, but a shadowy chart of greys and slate blues spiked with brilliantly stained celestial skies. The darkness of the fifth crossroad that seized the three travelers was different… subterranean dark, inky and black, devoid of light. Nathan’s golden eyes ached as they searched for a mere glimpse of something other than black.

“Trayblade!” he called. “That WAS you, was it not?” “Where are you now? Or am I dreaming?”

“In als, you are back with us. Are you hurt, Frog Prince? Do not move too quickly lest any broken bones pierce an organ.”

Nathanatoll walked toward the flames of a tiny fire that spawned hideous shadow monsters that danced in the nooks and crevices of the passage.

“My neck...is stiff, but I can move my limbs. I think I am uninjured. My broadsword? Where is--?”

“Eh, we have located your weapons, Sabuan. Fear not. Kintupu did not devour them!”

“And you old man!” Nathan snapped with some energy. “Why did you stand there so frozen? You should have been consumed.”

“Nay false, Sabuan fool. How should Saml know? The poisonous fumes must paralyze Syffian blood. Or perhaps...eh.. I am merely a victim of age.”

“In als, Frog Prince, none can say. Rest, then we will talk. It is very good to see you again Nathanatoll, even in this scant light.”

Trayblade related the story of his travels in detail, including the visions, the frays, the injuries. Saml advised the manofaere of their own adventures, as they searched for an exit. Saml lit a pipe of some ultra-fragrant herb and smoked merrily. It proved stifling and the half breed grabbed the pipe away. This precipitated a loud discussion, which Nathanatoll monitored, not allowing any blows to be exchanged. They moved along for another few hours and when they rested, the old man again lit his pipe.

Alman-as-Saml was quickly sickened by the smoke, but he had no control over this. Saml Twelve Eyes’ brain dominated on the topic, an alarming event to Alman. Imagine the paltry humanoid brain of a Syffian dominating his own! It was happening. Alman thought for a moment that he understood the human concepts of frustration and vulnerability. He gritted his human teeth and chewed the pipe stem, unwilling to yield.

It was then that Nathanatoll’s golden eyes used the miniscule light produced by the pipe to trace the stream of smoke upward. Without explanation he scaled the cavern wall. Twenty feet above the floor his toehold cracked. Amid a shower of debris, Nathan landed on the moss-covered floor.

“We need to be flies!” Nathan said in disgust as he tried and failed to get another toehold. “See? The smoke does not collect but disappears.”

Trayblade hit upon the solution and they painstakingly carried and dragged rocks and stones to the sides of the cavern. Nathan, being the tallest by some two feet, clawed his way up into a vast chamber.

“Old man, light your pipe!”

The trailing smoke coiled up over his head. Nathan boosted Trayblade ahead and suddenly he was calling to them. “I smell gold, Sabuan, a very strong odor of gold.”

“Aye manofaere. But who needs gold here?” the old one mocked. “Gold is useless, we need--”

“In als, not metallic gold. I smell gold, old fool, the color gold, like yellow sands. And the source, it is above us!” Trayblade followed his nose for the better part of an hour and the others followed.

“The yellow...is powerful. It is a yellowish orange, I am sure of this now. And it is this way!”

The passage was narrow. With great effort Nathanatoll squeezed his bulky frame through the shaft. The tunnel leveled for fifty feet, and then the Sabuan heard Trayblade’s voice. It had never sounded sweeter.

“This way!”

Trayblade dropped to his knees and Nathan followed as he squeezed under a craggy outcropping.

“Open your eyes, Nathan, but in als, do so ever so slowly.”

The vision of a blurry Trayblade, face grinning, danced in blue and green. He had seen that grin with his own eyes! Nathan’s golden orbs closed instinctively, but a smile crossed his ruddy face. No one would ever believe that the dark, star-studded night skies would appear as bright as Sulitar at noon, but they did! Those who doubted such tales had never experienced the world devoid of light-- the realm of the fifth crossroad.

2009-11-21T09:25:00.001-05:00

Chapter Sixteen: Algressaro’s Rage

The Sixfinger felt the pressure in his fangs and recognized that something was amiss. He kept quiet due to the presence of the nighthawks. He neither liked nor trusted them, but as they swept out of the muddy brown of a night sky and dove for the geese paddling innocently in the ponds below, he smiled. The Sixfinger was a predator and he appreciated the hawk’s abilities. Yet the message that the alpha nighthawk had brought to their group was not sitting well with the sorcerer. The Sixfinger could tell. Erichane was ravenous and yet he stopped devouring his potage to listen to the caws and squeaks of an avian. The news had to be powerful.

Their plan had been simple in strategy, though complex in tactics. Alman could explain it better, but he was...gone. The theft of Sulitar opened a window of opportunity, albeit a narrow one, for the sorcerer to return to his own time, the aeons of the future. Assemble enough sunbeams and transpose the collected energy power to open the dimensional passageways that linked the worlds of life, death and spirit. Then use the energy power of Elios Eserpious, the gemstones of the black rose, to open the channel of time. Simple.

The Sixfinger contemplated the difficulties. There were four major groups, in addition to themselves, seeking the gemstones: The One, the gedes, Ancraturk and dozens of assorted mortal bands that The Sixfinger lumped together, due to their ineptness. Their pettifoggery was legend, but strangest of all was the sun-seeking Sabuan himself. Algressaro had explained that he had to seek Sulitar, though in his malaprop mind, he thought he was doing this of his own volition. The Sixfinger laughed at the man’s ignorance. Didn’t he know that his golden eyes were keys to the puzzling strategies? No, he didn’t, and therein lay the rub, since all the other groups essentially did. And now the Sixfinger’s keen hearing told him that the nighthawk’s babble brought news of another setback to Algressaro. Wasn’t dealing with The One enough? Apparently not. The wizard’s call snapped his thoughts.

“Callosi!” he cooed gently.

He used the Sixfinger’s real name, a sure sign of anxiety. And the cooing was literal for the wizard had donned the persona of rare blue doves to better communicate with the nighthawks. The Sixfinger joined the Simian as the wizard morphed back into his most familiar form.

“The tryst of time beguiles me,” Algressaro said plainly. “Seems to me that a pattern emerges, a pattern of two setbacks to one victory. Have we a paucity of resources, Callosi? I think not. But it is possible. This is not positive for it means that someone else likely will be victorious. Ah the vicissitudes of this pimple in time. ”

The Simian nodded. “Gedes.”

“No, it is not the imbecilic gedes that one has to be concerned with, Simian. For they are so priggish that unless the gemstones fall into their laps, they are hardly bright enough to manufacture the means to access them. No no no.”

“We field our concerns about The One, then,” interjected Milacs the Younger, a recourta junior to Alman, hence his name. He was eager to please, something that always aroused suspicion in the necromancer.

The sorcerer bit the heel of his hand, which meant “affirmative” and dismissed the nighthawks with a wave. The majestic birds took to the air instantly, pleased to be released from the will of one as powerful and as unpredictable as Algressaro.

“They need not hear of these words. For the nighthawks might reveal them in some belching eructation somewhere along their travels in stray droppings or random calls. It is good young recourta, that you recognize the origin of our most monumental concerns. You are...Milacs, no? Milacs the younger.”

The recourta opened his maw to speak and was halted by the wizard.

“Stop. Do not answer. When Algressaro opens the floor to discussion, then you will discuss. When Algressaro asks for an answer, then you will answer. When you are to indicate that you are not with Comos, you will apply your teeth to the back of your hand...in this case your claw. Eliomath? (which meant ‘understand’)?”

Milacs bit the back of his right claw and Erichane Algressaro smiled. The Sixfinger’s hair stood on end as he recognized that which was amiss. The wizard sensed it and flashed a warning stare at him.

“Today is the longest of all days, is it not?”

“Yes Master,” Milacs, The Simian and The Sixfinger answered ensemble, getting it right.

“And this is the darkest of all nights, is it not?”

“Yes Master,” the trio answered again.

“Permit me to explain why it appears so dark to us. First, the golden-eyed ignorant fool is quite pertinacious and has meandered into the caves of the fifth crossroad. That squeaking mole of a halfbreed is back with him. Alman’s power appears to be well challenged, as the humanoid body egregiously attempts to retake its idiotic realm. How much longer can we continue this? Or shall we renounce Alman, let Alman fight his own fight and possibly be consumed? A query most rhetorical I assure you.”

“What way, master-of-mine?” the Simian asked calmly. “Point the way my master and we shall advance.”

Algressaro grimaced. “A paucity of power, a plethora of possibilities. I think it is nigh time to act with a sharper fillip, to move more strongly.”

The Sixfinger had seen no conjuring phial and so asked, “How did the ugly faced human make it to the crossroads if Alman were directing him? Were there gedes involved?”

“Oho! Callosi my Sixfinger, you have outdone yourself. By the beard of Belin, that is a incisive question, it is, it certainly is. This ugly-faced Sabuan stumbled into the crossroads, yes he did. Remember, those golden eyes give him a second sight invaluable in the night like this. So he moves easily. And he is ignorant, so therefore he is brave. But this, darkest of all nights, will become brighter by many degrees very soon, I tell you this is truth.”

The wizard spat and his spittle hissed as it fused the sand into wee bits of crude glass. He was angry they all realized, but had yet to explode. They hoped his plan of action was clear, and that he would spare them the frustration that he felt.

Algressaro continued. “The Sabuan was caught and held by Kintupu the Moving Mountain himself and freed by that malaprop halfbreed whom we will now slay. Yes, have Alman dispose of him, yes that we must do. Now, the nighthawks brought me a message that is invaluable. When Kintupu spread out his odoriferous mass, the nighthawks saw something eerie and terrible all about him. Do you know what that is?”

Milacs bit his claw. Algressaro winced.

“Oho, you bite me, Milacs the Younger. Hear me. I, Algressaro, cannot emit an eschatological fardle to such a contumacious farrago. Do you hear me? Do you understand those words, Milacs the Younger?”

“Almighty spellbinder--”

“Bite your claw Milacs! Of course you do not understand the meaning of those words! For words are power and your power is limited to the chitin that binds your braincase and fights the pathogens of life on the Water Planet. Words are magick, Milacs the Younger, magick. What did I actually say? I merely noted that ‘we are in a fix. Do you see?’”

Milacs bit his other claw and released his jaws.

“No, Milacs the younger, Algressaro asks you a question. Eliomath? Do you know what has transpired, what the nighthawks so aptly whispered? Of course not. But Sixfinger, you do. Tell them.”

“Something eerie and terrible...must be...must be the crest of silver.”

“True it is!” Algressaro yelped. “The crest of silver! Crest of the One! The One, he has Kintupu!”

The group shuddered and Algressaro showed his palm to begin binding a spell, when instantly a lightning-like flash of unparalleled brilliance flashed in the night sky directly above them. A rumble sounded like the loudest aerial thunder, and it shook the ground like an earthquake. But it was not thunder nor an earthquake. Only Algressaro could detect the power-driven words, drenched in silver that hammered them to the soil with the gusto of arrogant, haughty laughter.

"HEAR ME PUNY SPELLBINDER!

AFTER THE GRAND DRAMATURGE’S FINAL DELIVERANCE

MOONRISE, THE SEVEN HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH

OCCASION…

AS ALL YE WALLOW IN IGNORANCE AND AMBIVALENCE

THIS TIME I SEIZED TO BEGIN MY INVASION

NEVER WAS I BORN...

LIKE SOME MERE TWIG OF A MAN

NAY RATHER I WAS FORMED

FROM THE SEAS, THE WINDS, THE SAND.

TO CASTRATE THE SOCIETY OF SEEKERS WHO DARE

WHEN TIME PERMITS ALL OMENS TO ALIGN

BEWARE MY CREST, SPELLBINDER, I AM EVERYWHERE

AND THE ELIOS ESERPIOUS WILL BE MINE!!!”

It was the wizard’s powerful persona that limited the damage of the aerial attack. The group understood even if they didn’t hear. They knew that either the gedes or The One had visited, and the Sixfinger was certain it was the latter.

The wizard rose and willed the dust from his garments. The sand below his feet was turning red and his anger was apparent. Algressaro did not like being humiliated by a superior power.

“Such a simple desire,” he sighed aloud, “to venture home once again. “But we must go forward to go back, and back to go forward. You, Milacs, prepare for battle. Simian! Ensure that this is done. And Sixfinger, my vaunted Callosi, let us further develop the timetable for the maturation of the gemstones. For as The One spoke to me, so I have drawn some knowledge from him. Oho, the channels open on both ends! Elios Eserpious will be opened sooner than we have thought. We must be in reach of the locale where they were born in this coming...and stay alive until then...and keep the bearer alive until then. Eliomath Callosi?”

“It shall be done my master and lord.”

“And I do so like the beauty of the Western Sea, my Callosi, I do. Always have. The way the waves crash and the demonships shudder in the wash. Especially in the land of the sea-colored shore.”

“Demonships master? You speak of Bakir?”

“Oho so I do. I must journey to the land of the whitefaced men with the black hearts. The fogskins.”

“Bakir now, master?”

“So it must be. Soon, Callosi my Sixfinger, soon. Now, let us forget this visitation AND PROCEED!”

The magicker curled his fingers into his palms. Then he and the Sixfinger dropped to their haunches and began to plot a means of liberating stray sunbeams from the immense creature that possessed the bulk of them, Ancraturk.

2009-11-14T12:37:00.001-05:00

Chapter Fifteen: The Moving Mountain

The unlikely pair followed the thin little path for many hours as it snaked through the hill country of the West Pelno, navigating steep foothills and steeper dales. Twice it ended in stinking sykes half-filled with yellow water and wriggling leeches. As they inched through a narrow pass, their vantage point afforded them a dynamic view of an immense valley. The cobblestone path took a demented course, alternately branching out, disappearing, reappearing, so that they were continually unsure of their whereabouts. Saml navigated by the rising moons and stars, and Nathanatoll was forced to trust the old man. It was three dark days before they reached the far side of the huge valley, three days full of snakes, scorpions and the occasional plyntela to add a bit of drama.

On the dawn of a stunning crimson-sky morning, the valley gave way to short, flat-topped hills. Vegetation in a wide array of unknown forms flourished. Nathan complained loudly, counting eleven different versions of thorn bushes which grew thicker and thicker until the cobblestone path was virtually impassable. Nathan’s small axe was put to work and the Sabuan complained about that too--for Saml’s age and physical condition rendered him useless for such arduous labor.

Eventually they hacked though the wall of thorns to a clearing. “Old man!” Nathan called with glee. “A running stream which I daresay is cool and refreshing! And you need a wash in the worst way. Or two!”

He leaped in like a buffalo and splashed about. “It IS cool, a delight!” Nathanatoll of Sabua, great warrior and leader of brave armies, was never far from being nine years old.

His exuberance and thirst quenched, he filled waterskins and walked up the slippery sides of a grassy knoll. Suddenly he froze. In a hoarse whisper the Sabuan choked out words that made Saml the tattooed one come sprinting. They nudged through a maze of barbed branches and sighted an overgrown path lined with cinders. It led to a circle some sixty feet in diameter, and in the center an earthen embankment showed ancient edifice. Wide marble steps ended in a black stone pentagon. The porch fanned out and crossroad paths ran every which way--five of them in total. They had reached the source of the fabled five crossroads!

“Aye. We are here at the source, eh Sabuan? Ye see the Akrups, of which ye are so adamantly ignorant, call this area Aheria,” Saml explained. “It means...eh... how to say it? It means...five-in-one.”

“Old man, you babbled about these paths whilst we traveled with Trayblade. Which is the one that will lead us to Regis-Kragar and the sunbeams of Ancraturk? I do not want to tarry here.”

Alman-as-Saml began to recite an ancient poem, but a strange occurrence came to pass. He couldn’t complete it! His acute reptisectoid mind was subject to the foibles and failures of an ancient, sotten human being! Alman burned with anger but was helpless.

“Old man, which way? I believe you have lost your mind.”

“Nay false! It is very much like a riddle. Eh...the old rhyme goes something like this.” He spat. “Aye. I have it now.”

‘One is right for each of three,

four are wrong for all but thee.

None are right for all of five,

one will keep all five alive.’

“Words. Always words. What does this mean, old man? Which way?"

The white haired one hesitated. Nathan fumed. “I should have abandoned you long ago!” Nathan shouted. “Your knowledge is of no aid at all.”

Alman-as-Saml grimaced.

“Nay false! Your maw, Sabuan can be venomous. But I ask ye? Who pulled your useless Morningstar hulk from the flood? Eh? I ask ye.”

But the Sabuan could not have left him in any event, not without Algressaro’s permission. And with The One, Ancraturk and also the gedes seeking the golden eyed man from Sabua, it was unlikely Algressaro would ever have permitted that event to come to pass.

“It is simple, ye see, Sabuan!” Saml snapped. Alman was amazed at the emotion he had just brought up. “One road is...eh... peace, another is ignorance, a third is power. One is splendor, the last is the eternal darkness of death. But the correct one...eh...I do not know.”

“Tattooed old Syffian...is there no way to decide with any accuracy?” Nathan asked as a cooling breeze came from beyond the thicket.

“Aye! Nay! Press me not. I...eh...I do not know for certain, ye see. There is an incantation, but I...cannot seem to recall it.”

“So,” the impatient Sabuan muttered, “there is no way to decide, then?”

“Oh...eh...what? What did you say?”

“Your old Syffian mind wanders! The crossroad, old man, the crossroad. Which one to travel?”

“The crossroad ye say?”

“Yes! Which way to travel?”

A deep cooing filled the air like the wings of a thousand doves and suddenly the thunderheads that had been pursuing them all day, opened their aerial gates. The downpour began meekly, like a mid-summer shower, but steadily increased in intensity and volume. For an hour the pair slumped beneath dwarf oaks in a vain attempt to stay dry. Fal Tane rumbled in the distance and jagged bolts of lightening ripped through the starry, deep purple skies. The main deluge came and went, leaving the duo waterlogged amidst a submerged courtyard.

Half the other trees in the tiny glade had lost branches or been uprooted. “The wind can be fickle like a rabid dog.” the man with the golden eyes said philosophically. At that very instant, a cold shiver slithered down his broad back. His hands tingled, his knees trembled. Nathanatoll tried to ignore the weight that had so suddenly descended upon his chest. He felt woozy and unsteady. Was he having a seizure like those he suffered in endemale number six?

At that moment a gust of wind scurried through the waterlogged clearing. Wet leaves began to stir and the gusts grew. Sprays of mud lifted from the soggy ground. By sheer force of will the yellow-eyed man regained his composure. His sweating hands steadied. His golden eyes focused. He opened his mouth to comment to Saml when his olfactory senses detected an unsavory scent wafting on the breeze. Something was wrong. The Morningstar paced like a caged beast and struggled to free his mind from all else.

“Saml Twelve Eyes. Do you smell this?” Nathan called out to his white-skinned companion, who seemed enraptured by the ever-increasing noxious odor. The gusts brought more foul stench, like a thousand Deragians were rotting a few yards away. The miasma grew stronger and Nathan held his nose.

“Something very foul and very evil approaches us, Saml Twelve Eyes. It is unnatural I tell you. Come old fool of a Syffian, let us go while we can still escape whatever it is.”

Saml was stone. His eyelids were closed tight, the tattoos staring back at the Sabuan. The west wind hummed, bringing the swamp muck stink deeper and thicker. Nathan called to the old man, but he was leaden, he refused to move, he refused to answer. He was there, and yet he wasn’t there! And the normally gentle south wind curled into the soaking glade, pumping in a hot, sticky, but rank stench with atypical urgency.

Nathan swallowed and held his nose tightly. It was getting difficult to breathe! He nearly keeled over from dizziness and he felt like vomiting. Suddenly the air thickened, grew weighty and took on an invisible form and a definite color--brown. Nathan shook the old man who was stiff to the touch and riveted to the spot. Had he died standing there? Was the visible stench choking off the air itself to suffocate them? Were the actions winds a recurrence of the terrible whispers he and Trayblade had been assaulted by?

The air grew wetter and clung to his skin. A stinking brown patina settled on him and the old man, directly out of the air itself. Nathan felt top heavy, then gagged, the air itself thick with the noxious odors of a thousand stables. He slipped and fell over into the wet grass. Instantly a tiny flash of light appeared over a hog-backed hill and flickered like a silver lantern. And the dizziness increased in Nathan’s head.

“Saml!” he shrieked over the whirling, stupefying din of the winds. “Come! Old man! Let us begone!”

Try as he might, Nathanatoll could not budge the stiff statue that Saml had become. Suddenly the winds broke free, Charos joining his brethren, and the Sabuan was flung to muddy ground. He felt a gnawing, crawling in his abdomen, his lungs, his joints and bones and he could not overcome the dizziness. His chest ached as he struggled for air, but every breath Nathan took brought more of the foul stench. Had they been poisoned? Was he hallucinating?

It was then at that very instant that the all-seeing yellow eyes flashed to a sight he had never dreamed possible emerging over the flat-topped hills. Long tentacles of dark brown mud swelled over the hills and down toward the duo. The stuff rolled like waves in the sea and scurried forth covering all, consuming all in their paths. A tentacle bubbled caustically and latched onto the Sabuan’s foot holding him fast. It was...an arm, an arm of thick, bubbling, stinking, lava-like mud, part of something so vast that it covered the hills within view, as it consumed tree after tree. So physically awesome was the massive assemblage that the Sabuan couldn’t manage to close his gaping mouth despite the wind-driven, air-coloring miasma of muck.

In his mind he heard a voice, calm and controlled. As the mire grew and deepened, he discerned the words with greater ease.

Kintupu has struck

spilling over the foothills

in huge crescendos.

Ah let yourself drift

endlessly, back to when Velahar was a babe...

young, fearless,

spawning and replicating…

back when is...was!

The deep days, the dark days, the days

beyond the Abyssal

when the Moving Mountain was formed

when the Moving Mountain was all-powerful.

No escape from the stinging grip,

no escape for deragians, no escape for reptisectoids,

no escape for the great bear Chal.

Then came the giant, then came Comos the Primal.

Only after Kintupu grabbed and held,

only after Kintupu stunned and poisoned the great one.

Chal escaped not, will you then escape?

And Kintupu flows on, Kintupu the world shaker.

Let yourself drift,

appreciate the tentacles that hold you so dearly,

recall the beautiful Sulitar-lit days back, back then.

NOSTALGIA.

And now you spurt mechanically along,

powered by avarice and hatred,

stained by envy, destined to fulfill a role,

like a sandworm on a hook

or a rat in cage.

And Kintupu flows on, older than the rivers,

son of the oceans, child of the stars.

Let yourself drift. Do not try to heed the conjurer’s words.

Do not listen to the venom that accompanies you

from the seekers of their own age

who have sought fruitlessly for aeons.

Become one with the ages.

Let yourself drift into Kintupu

and allow Kintupu to settle

on ears too deaf to hear

on a mind too narrow to understand,

upon eyes too brilliant to see clearly.

The nauseating muck swelled, holding Nathan fast with a grip of steel. As he struggled his sandals began to lose shape and dissolve in the foaming, caustic sludge. A second huge muck-tentacle slithered forward, then another and another. Nathan drew and flailed with his sword but the beast felt nothing. A shrill whistling announced an aerial bombardment of muck-bombs that exploded all around Nathan and his statue of a companion.

Hallucinations revisited the man from Sabua. Visions flew in front of his eyes as the muck reached his thighs. Sandy beaches glittering like diamonds in a golden sun. Stunning double moonrises. A bevy of Sabuan misses. Trayblade. The merrymaking of the month of the vintage.

The distant and near hills shuddered. The dark brown crust covering the mounts like a viscous frosting moved forward en masse, inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot. The muck-bombs continued to rain down, though they seemed to concentrate on an area to Nathan’s right.

The Sabuan began coughing without control as the formless mass of Kintupu slid over the hills, seizing, engulfing, possessing, an ever-changing creature of living, stinking slime that created new tentacles at will by the dozens. Framed in a ghastly white light, the monster lurched forward, bending, toppling, uprooting and consuming a towering oak as if it were a stalk of corn.

A hot flash erupted deep inside the Sabuan. He struggled, yanking a leg free from the stinging caustic brew, only to have Kintupu seize the other leg. The air was filled and stained with Kintupu’s sticky, filmy breath and suddenly the monster pushed a series of wave-like rippling tentacles at the hapless duo. Nathan redoubled his efforts but to no avail. Instantly the hallucinations retuned.

His broadsword changed to a broom to a cattail to a viper before his stunned yellow eyes. The air filled with brilliant swatches of blinding colors that decomposed to assume familiar shapes. Violet moths bounced atop the bubbling muck. Long green sea snails knifed in and out of the mire, taking flight but never escaping the slime-coils. Reddish burlap sacks filled with blue grain appeared emptied themselves and became snow geese, which took to the air and melted into the distant horizon.

Next a tiny figure grew in height, moving steadily closer, burning with an aura of fire. Muck-bombs whistled as they targeted the creature, Man, a Dwarf, A Hennan, Prince al-Jal in that procession. Prince al-Jal leaped atop a purplish boulder and Nathan found himself rooting for the muck to consume the evil Bakirian overlord. Nathan flailed

with his broadsword and when he looked up al-Jal was orange with fire, then he was the Bakirian no longer, but a lime green and yellow Trayblade the halfbreed of Egel. Nathanatoll struggled valiantly, but realized that his strength was ebbing and that he was losing the battle. Kintupu’s voice came once again to him, soothing and encouraging. He contemplated surrendering for a split second, but it was not in his essence. The Sabuan fought on, whipping the mud coils and ducking the muck-bombs as best he could.

The hallucinations flashed a burning image of Trayblade in his mind, when all of a sudden, he recognized the truth. Nathanatoll screeched aloud. Trayblade! It really WAS Trayblade! And the fire he saw were the torches the manofaere had lit, which forced Kintupu to recoil! Flame backed the muck away from the Sabuan and the manofaere yanked him free.

“Hurry Frog Prince!” Trayblade shrieked. He turned and bolted toward a rise that was presumably either the first or fifth crossroad. Nathan sprinted but Kintupu’s tentacles swerved forward,

“In als, where are you going? Follow me, over here!” Trayblade yelped.

“I have to get the old man!” Nathan screeched.

“Leave the tattooed fool behind, Frog Prince! He isn’t worth the risk!”

Nathanatoll danced around a tentacle and Trayblade’s torch forced the creature’s retreat. Nathan grabbed the stiff, weightless little man, but the quag-like monster did not give up.

An ominous, droning whistle announced a score of wet, crumbling projectiles, which fell from the blackened skies and shook the crossroads as they impacted the ground. Kintupu was trying to block the passage!

Trayblade scurried as the slime-bombs dropped like a heavy monsoon all around them, splattering, splashing, downing trees. Trayblade lifted Saml’s rigid body amid a feverish volley and Nathanatoll swept the torches and kept the tentacles at bay. The brown mist thickened and they felt their way. The entrance to the crossroad looked to be a cave, and they dashed for their lives. Kintupu sent a tidal wave of stinking black mire to block them but it was too late. They rolled in, dragging the stiff old man with them into the inky blackness that was the fifth crossroad.

2009-11-04T16:12:00.000-05:00

Chapter Fourteen: Alman’s Cynicism

Cynicism. It was most uncharacteristic of the recourta. In fact, recourtas were not supposed to be capable of such emotions. Which was why Algressaro accepted Alman’s effusive thanks without noticing the well-hidden complaint. It had to be well hidden as the wizard missed very very little.

Alman communicated with his master by telepathing. The magicker with the forked beard had summoned the reeve to his presence, but lo and behold, Alman could not muster the power to transportate. He could not stimulate the motion within the atoms of his puny Syffian body, even when the necromancer assisted. The recourta notified Erichane that his reptisectoid presence within this decrepit shell of humanity was deteriorating. Hard as it might be to believe, but his recourta powers were steadily diminishing, being replaced by man-weak powers. A most un-recourta thing, worrisome to Alman as it seemed a portend of other diminishing abilities; hence the veiled attempt at being cynical. Alman pointed out the example. He could not transportate. The sorcerer scoffed.

“Cods wallop! Temporary set back, Alman Recourta. Inchoate it is, yet we know of it and it shall triumph not. An adumbrating vision? Perhaps. Focus on the task at hand, my recourta.”

“Master, this Syffian spirit is what you would term annoying. There is no reasoning with the unreasonable. There is no logic within it. Logic is a neologism to this foul smelling flesh. How do these...Syffians...or any of these bipedal beings of mankind reason?”

“Reason? Why recourta of mine, do I detect an attempt at humor? From you? Logic in a man? There can be none. That is, of course, why the Abodons earned their name ‘fool apes’. Study the Star Tempest, and you will know. Let us focus on matters at hand.”

“Master, this internal struggle appears to be longwinded. I must tell you that I fear losing my ability for telepathy next.”

The sorcerer nodded and tweaked the twin forks of his beard.

“Anxiety. Very human feelings that you are experiencing, I see. But recourta of mine, please understand that you are experiencing such ephemeral things for the first time. You are unused to them. Admittedly these...emotions...are a massive burden that will be lessened in time. Time time time!! Time is of the essence!” he muttered, laughing at his own joke. “Time is of the essence, ha! And yet true essences are timeless!”

Even the Simian and Callosi the Sixfinger laughed, though the former was unsure as to why.

Alman-as-Saml requested relief from the task. The wizard would not have it that way and seemed angry, a most unfortunate occurrence for the object of it. That’s when Alman Recourta changed tactics and thanked Algressaro for making him a Syffian. The wizard nodded.

“I think that you palliate, recourta, but this is a puerile attempt. Understand that if you had still been in your form, still been a recourta, Alman would be no longer.”

It was true. Recourtas, like changers, were not buoyant. Their spiracles absorbed fluids and as such, they drowned rapidly.

“Thank you, master for your gift of humanity,” Alman said.

The wizard nodded, reminded Alman of the task at hand. “I call you because I must inform you. He is not dead, this blotched half breed, this one who hides his nature. He has been spared. He was losing his red cells and well on his way to the second realm. But he is not dead. Not yet. The multi-tusker I sent to remove him from the world of the living to the netherworld, has failed. Treachery abounds. For it would appear that I, Algressaro, saved him, but it was not so. A hawk saved him to be sure. A hawk that resembled Algressaro. But it was not Algressaro.”

“Master, who could this be?”

“Heldawn the violet freed him, so it is unlikely to be her work. The gedes are not sufficiently intelligent, save perhaps Rumor, and Callosi can vouchsafe that it was not he.”

“Then whom?”

“Suffice it to say that a power impersonated me, and did so quite well, Alman my recourta. And wanted others to think it was I. The nerve! But why do such a thing?”

Alman thought for a moment before providing the obvious answer. “To keep him alive, master. Where he could be used and manipulated for devious purposes.”

“Of course, isn’t that the case, Callosi?”

The Sixfinger averred it to be the truth. The Simian smiled weakly.

“Deed done. This one who hides his nature is mercurial and acid-tongued. Just to keep him alive, this spotted manofaere. And why?”

“Because...he hides his nature?” the Sixfinger offered.

“Ah, a good supposition, Callosi. But no, this is not the reason. He hides his nature because he is, deep inside himself, he is in reality a falanofaere, not a manofaere. So why then keep him alive?”

“It...had to happen, master,” Alman telepathed. “The Akrups?”

“Ah Alman Recourta, you perceive so well. Yes the Akrups indeed. Recall these words, all of you.”

“His sensors shall be many, changeling orbs so acute

his love shall engineer his actions

his mind infiltrated by the invariably resolute

by the thief of the sun-stealing faction”.

Alman pondered. “Master, forgive my ignorance. Isn’t this a passage that describes the Elios Eserpious? It seems so from the words and the reference to the acute eyes. Could this be so?”

“Nary a chance! Surely the passages are quite involute. ‘Changeling’ is the keystone, Alman. But recall this, my recourta, recall the next stanza.”

“From conjurer’s lips for all powers competing

the companion will proceed with his flight

the impersonation so complete and netherworld cheating

by the hawk that calls your name at night.”

“These words are powerful. They speak of the manofaere and his purpose. Alman. So this one has been saved by what would appear to be me. But it was not I. Rather it must be the mover of all the events.”

“The One?” inquired the The Simian.

“Do not be frivolous with those words! Just as we cannot use his real name, else the portal will open and he will locate us. Even saying these words could open a channel to our whereabouts! And we would seared to cinders, for he adds the energy-power of creatures dying all over the Water Planet each second. Careful! Let us not take the chance.”

“Yes master,” the Simian replied dutifully for all.

“Alman, hear me. About this companion, this manofaere falanofaere. Saved once, he may be. But that does not preclude eliminating him now so he will no longer influence the Sabuan. I expect he will follow his heart, this manofaere. For you must understand, hard as it may be for you, that he loves the homely bronze-skinned man, this nothing-at-all, loves him more than he loves the reward for Sulitar. He is loyal, like you Recourta. But unlike you, he is ignorant. So he will come to you. He must die. Please ensure that he will. Enjoy your task, Alman Recourta. Your time is nearly at hand.”

The sorcerer raised his arms to the starry, burnt umber of the night skies to end the telepathy.

“And Recourta of mine?”

“Yes master?”

“Remember this. Cynicism does not become you.”

“Yes master.”

2009-11-04T15:50:00.001-05:00

Chapter Thirteen: Gelats at the Lesser Pelno

The journey through the Phar Mountains was treacherous. The mounts were sandy and more than once Nathanatoll skidded down steep orange banks. After a while he became proficient at predicting which ledge would give way under his bulk, and he enjoyed sliding down them like the small child he readily could readily become, but was never allowed to be.

The Sabuan only vaguely knew of Regis-Kragar, his destination, and understood less why he was seeking that city. Saml Twelve Eyes’ babble came back to him about a warrior called Kwashiorkor and a Majir of RyCour who was alleged to have captured a sunbeam. This meant that the giant Ancraturk would be traipsing about, and he shuddered involuntarily at the thought. But the rewards were worth the risk and frankly, he had no other prospects. Nathanatoll recalled more of Saml's sputtering about nonsensical things. Lug and gelats, things like that. Until he realized that the sputterings were not in his mind, but were coming from the ridge in front of him! Saml’s voice!

Stealthfully he crawled to the brink and saw the Syffian with the tattooed eyes no more than fifty yards distant. Two of the gangliest, hairiest, and foulest-smelling creatures Nathanatoll had ever encountered were guarding the old beggar. Changers! Saml was supposed to have traveled north to Henna. What was he doing here? Nathan frowned, turned away, leaving Saml to his own devices.

Desertion, however, was not in him. The Sabuan cursed under his breath as he recognized that there could be no negotiation with changers. The trolls were primal, not known for intellect. They were quick, agile, with immense strength many times that of men; and they possessed the energy of a berserker, when they chose to exert themselves.

The Sabuan concocted a plan of attack that would keep him away from the powerful beasts. His bow for the first changer, and if the second charged, then his warlance. Then he ducked behind an immense kauri, shoved four arrows, iron points down, in the sandy soil. Was Saml worth this risk? No. But Nathanatoll of Sabua had never shrunk from duty. He recalled his boyhood with the Sabuan garrison masters frantically calling for recruits to resist the pasty-skinned invaders from beyond the wave. He hadn’t refused then, so why not do his duty now?

The man with the golden orbs edged closer for a better shot. The changers were absorbed. How ironic it was that the changers who possessed metamorphic powers for one day at a time were trapped. Since there was no true sunrise, they were stuck in the creature’s form they had last adopted. Nathanatoll smiled dourly at the fact.

The changers dropped to all fours and went eye to eye with a large green land turtle, as if they had never before seen one. The reptile pulled its extremities into its shell and the trolls went wild. They clicked and clacked loudly. This was, somehow, a

revelation. They jumped and gesticulated, waved their long arms in some ancient dance and grunted.

Virtually ignored, Saml looked about for an escape route and spied the Sabuan. His eyes rolled in his head as the brain of Alman Recourta started working. When he saw the Sabuan fit his bow, he inched away from the preoccupied beasts. Two feet. He slid on his rear end yet two more feet. Nathanatoll stayed the launch of his arrows. Perhaps fortune would smile and they wouldn’t have to risk combat with the changers. His supposition was characteristically incorrect.

Alman-as-Saml did his best to shinny along quietly, but his body was old and human. The senses of an old man were beginning to dominate Alman's occupation of a human being, something that concerned the recourta. So he did not detect the tail end of his tabard getting caught on the thorns of a dewberry. He moved and the tabard pulled the desiccated bush, snapping the thin branch with a soft, but definitive ‘crack’.

Instantly two heretofore consumed heads popped up. Two sets of beady, deep-set feral orbs scoured the scene; the captive had slithered too far away...and they spotted the glitter of two golden eyes glowing from atop the ridge! Saml rose to his feet and raced for the Sabuan. Nathan seized the opportunity, aimed, and the arrow whistled to its mark in the side of the changer nearest Saml. The troll clicked and clacked angrily, and without breaking stride, merely yanked the bolt from his flesh!

Saml desperately scrambled up the sandy slope, but with little traction, began to slide backward. A second changer grabbed Saml’s ankle and sank his canine fangs into his footgear. The Sabuan loosed an arrow which slammed into and through the beast’s temple. He click-clacked shrilly and toppled, the night covering his eyes.

The other changer bolted directly at Nathanatoll, hurtling the sand cliff in a single bound. So fast was the creature’s attack that the Sabuan had no time to turn his broadsword and the blade slammed sideways into the troll. Fortunately, the loose sand gave way and the changer toppled back down the ravine, clacking loudly.

“Move it old man!" Nathan commanded.

“This way!” Saml shouted. “There are other changers in that direction!

The Morningstar sped along following the old one along a narrow precipice flanked by a sheer drop of several hundred feet. Sixty feet at its widest, the ledge quickly narrowed so that Nathanatoll could scarcely find room for his huge Sabuan feet. He dislodged a small boulder which caromed off the rock face and hurtled into the rapids, the river welcoming this gift from above with foamy, watery arms.

“Run, run with wings!” Saml yelped, and he raced along the precipice with uncharacteristic speed. The ledge widened miraculously and the Sabuan dodged a hail of projectiles. Javelins, sling stones and a crude stone axe caromed off rockfaces, sparking and clanging as the Sabuan raced forward. In a moment he caught the one with the tattooed eyes whose open-mouthed but silent expression mirrored a revelation of events to come. The ledge was at an end!!

A dozen changers sprinted enthusiastically forward, waving stone axes and cudgels, clacking and shrieking rabidly in a primitive tongue. Quickly their long legs devoured the distance separating hunters and hunted.

Dust. Dirt. Shrieks. Powerful arms grabbed the pair in vise-like grips. The glaring hooded eyes of the changers seemed to stab him in his flesh and they stunk worse

than a camp latrine. Amid the confusion, the throng parted to permit an intruder, so queer and so physically unlike the changers that Nathanatoll wondered if the trolls also were prisoners.

The creature was about Nathan’s height and its head and body were merged into a single unit. Internal organs could be seen without trouble. The region taken to be the braincase had no features, and two clear nodes that projected from the body were the only evidences that the beast would have any senses. Many unidentifiable organs were moving and pulsing within the translucent flesh. Two long black and orange striped tentacles that resembled vipers protruded as arms would from where there should have been shoulders; and two additional thicker, heavier tentacles formed caber-like legs. Hair, in a pentangle symbol grew on what should have been a chest.

The Sabuan stared at the creature...and the creature’s arms stared back! The long black tentacles that looked like vipers WERE vipers! They did everything in tandem and communicated with the changers in a hissing basal, the trolls answering in their unique system of clicks and clacks.

“Hiss...hiss…are these are the ones? Are the beasties who escaped my brethren?" The twin vipers hissed and droned steadily, their tiny nostrils flaring ever so slightly.

Slowly they wriggled up and down a hair’s breadth from Saml’s wrinkled white skin, carefully probing, smelling, sensing the shuddering old man’s being. The gelat’s dual snakeheads scanned every inch of the old man. Proud as he was, Alman-as-Saml could do nothing to halt the human trembling. He smirked knowing that the gelats were ancient reptisectoid enemies. My, they were ugly! And ignorant. And....

“Hiss...hiss. Nay. This is…not the beastie who escaped. Nay. Hiss. No reward I say.”

An obese changer got the message and didn’t like it. Nathan realized that the changers were mercenaries. They sought someone else. Mayhaps the gelats would let them go after all!

“This animal is...kind you seek?” the obese changer translated in basal with great difficulty. Their clicks and clacks and shrieks were sufficient for them to communicate amongst themselves.

“Hiss...hiss. Negative. I have smelled...many animals in my lifetime....but this beastie has no...animal scent. Hiss. Blood runs here...but the beastie must be so old that it does not seem to live. Hiss. Something different here. Next... hiss hiss.”

The four beady eyes on two triangular heads turned to the man with the golden eyes. Both tentacle-arms buzzed as they moved, surveying the man to depths unavailable to other creatures. Up, down and around him they coiled and twisted before stopping at his bearded face. The Sabuan clutched his dirk, but did not move a muscle.

The obese changer asked “This the beastie?" He anticipated a positive answer.

“Hiss...nay...no...negative. Too hairy. No sensors. And the eyes remain one color. Not the one who...escaped my brethren.” both scaly heads replied. “Hiss. I sense...what is called an Abodon, a Fool Ape…a Man. From the westlands, far to the west, I recognize its distinctive scent. It is empty of wisdom. Not the one sought by our benefactor. No payment, hiss.”

The obese changer was becoming agitated as were the rest of the band. Saml recognized this and attempted to buy time.

“Eh, pray tell me...eh...e-exactly what breed of creature do ye seek?”

“Hiss. You have... lived long, no? We seek...beastie...biped with workable thumb like yours...short fur...eyes change color...it is called...in your words a...nymph. Hiss.”

“Manofaere?”

“Yes. A manofaere biped...it is called. Do you know...these menofaeres?” The sinister looking heads zoomed into the faces of the old man and the Sabuan.

Nathanatoll’s eyes were yellow fire and his heart beat wildly against his massive chest. They seek Trayblade! Then he is still alive!

“Hissss. You know? You do. I feel...your heat grow.”

Before Nathan could answer, a smallish changer, only a bit taller than the man from Sabua, inched his way to the edge of the cliff.

“These beasties here,” the fat changer asked of him, “are these the ones...who imprisoned our tribe mates?”

“Noooo,” replied the newcomer. “Noooo. Not these.”

The leader rattled the old man with the back of his hand. “And this beastie...is animal that...great whiteface prince seeks? Reward?”

“Noooo.” the smaller troll answered. “No smell man. He began licking the old one’s balding pate with a long black tongue. “Noooo. Not man. Taste good. But not man.”

The changer pointed to Nathan. “This beastie the biped prince whiteface seek?”

The smaller changer squinted, wrinkled his brow. He pushed several fingers into his nostrils in thought.

He licked Nathan’s right arm. "Taste bad. Maybe this beastie prince seek."

Nathanatoll peered at the changer eyeball to hooded eyeball. Was it possible that they spoke of was the bastard prince of Bakir, al-Jal? Yes it was! His blood surged.

The gelat detected the pressure and heat rise instantly. “Hissss. You react...you know. I sense it...in you.”

The smaller changer began to stomp away when his obese master called him back. “Now. Is beastie man who kill prince's brother?”

The smaller changer thought for a moment. “Well...is man. Not know if... is right beastie.”

“Prince’s reward... for head, no? ”

The smaller troll nodded. The fat changer looked to the gelat.

“Hiss. Hiss. We are done,” the gelat replied matter-of-factly. “Hiss. Do not forget to bring their heads.”

The prolonged examination had lulled all present off-guard save the one whose traits were honed with the Morningstar guerrillas. Instantly, before the last word escaped the changer’s black lips, the Sabuan ripped loose from the grip of the changers. In the same motion he yanked the old man up from the ground, and with a mighty leap, dived over the precipice, a changer clinging tightly to his powerful torso for dearest life.

The changer released his grip when they hit the waters. Unable to use his metamorphic power until Sulitar’s return, he frantically tried to swim for shore. By nature, changers swim like stones. The panic-stricken troll’s wild thrashings could not dissuade the swollen stream. In a moment, changer and raging rivulet were one.

The Lesser Pelno, as the river was called, was icy cold with the spring thaw. After swallowing enough water to make him vomit, Nathan slowly regained use of his mind. Somehow he felt something, a log, a branch, he wasn’t sure. Summoning all his strength, he was able to cling to it, despite the might of the river. Then something pulled at him. Visions of viper-armed gelats danced in his head, but he couldn’t resist. He clawed the waterlogged bark. His head struck something unyielding but dry. Slowly the yellow eyes focused. Suddenly a familiar voice rang loudly in his ears.

“Aye! And a very special cobblestone, Nathanatoll, to be sure. Now rest. Saml is here.”

2009-10-24T09:49:00.000-04:00

Chapter Twelve: Heldawn’s Directions

It seemed like years, but eventually Heldawn returned. She was attended by no less than a dozen handmaidens and dressed in flowing white robes, which somehow glowed in the light of a large fire. She dipped her hand into a phial and cast what looked like sand into the flames. They flared high and the three men shrank back. Heldawn strode boldly and poked a long fingernail into Trayblade’s chest like a dagger.

“C-cold,” Trayblade stammered involuntarily.

“Cold as the bowels of the Water Planet herself, Faerian. Cold with the prescient powers of conjuring.” Her fingernail pressed into his flesh.

“C-c-cold.”

“Take heart. You will be warm in a short time. Your breast is large for a manofaere. Is your courage large also?”

“C-cold. C-old.” It was all he could say.

Heldawn removed her fingernail.

“Manofaere that you maintain you are, behold this simple quill.”

She reached into the flames without hesitation and removed a glowing ember that resembled a bird’s quill.

“Three-blade, your road is to follow the route of the highest flying waterfowl. South. You will venture to Tropos Southland as this omen demands Hear me closely. Commit these words to your memory. Do you understand.”

“Y-yes,” Trayblade said, no longer cold, but stammering from nervousness.

“There are things that you will discover that you do not know and are malaprop to understand. Follow what is inside you. For I know who you are and what you are...and what you are not.”

To this spoken command Heldawn added in a whisper so low that none of the others could hear: “falanofaere.”

“Hear me now. Follow your instinct for it is strong in you. These things will take a life and they will save a life. You will travel and feel the argali, Three-Blade, and you will feel the gryphon, the gelat, the changer. Beware of the gorgon’s lair.

For this I give you two eye pieces of red copper. Do not look upon the gorgon. Her gaze is stronger than yours will be in a thousand lifetimes. This is my warning.”

Heldawn stooped and pulled a long sword from a pigskin sack.

“This, Three-Blade, is cimeter. For ‘til this very moment you have had but two blades and yet it is so written that you shall be a bearer of three blades. Hence I give cimeter to you.”

When she placed it in his outstretched hands, its pommel fit his palm perfectly. It was amazingly light and the blade was tooled with Crimson Order symbology.

“Cimeter will cheat victors and create victims,” Heldawn continued. “Lose cimeter and you will be lost. Cimeter will answer only to her arms-bearer and finds you handsome, Three-Blade. She will answer to you if you are worthy of her. I tell you that your journey for Sulitar will be fraught with danger. Most of all Three-Blade, beware the hawk that calls your name at night. Remember it is a long evening’s search for the glory of morning. Go forth Three-Blade, go as Janoll Teay has gone to find your missing star.”

Emotion pulled at the manofaere‘s heartstrings as he realized that he would have to leave his Sabuan companion behind. He hesitated. But even though his changeling eyes sparkled, his head ruled. Trayblade of Egel said nothing, obeyed the commands, and the nightmists muffled his footsteps.

The Sabuan was equally affected but Heldawn’s icy gaze froze his feelings. She turned to Saml and directed him. She looked askance at the Syffian and smiled knowingly. Alman-as-Saml felt her magick gaze, so similar to Algressaro’s. And yet different. Probably not as powerful as his master, he thought. Heldawn’s eyes flared and smoked. Alman-as-Saml dismissed the errant thought.

“You, Syffian knave, hear me. Follow what is inside you. For Heldawn knows who you are and what you are...and what you are not.”

He was to head in a northerly direction, to the lands of the Hennan Confederacy and the Bangians. Alman-as-Saml began a retort when the conjurer lashed out with blinding speed and seized his lips. He tried reflexively to pull away but to no avail. She stiffened his lips with a smear of some unguent and pointed. Try as he might, Alman-as-Saml could not resist and he marched away like a wind up toy, foot after reluctant foot. Even Algressaro’s initial directive could not re-direct Heldawn’s power.

Nathanatoll fingered the hilt of his jeweled broadsword nervously, an action that did not escape the conjurer.

“Your time, Sabuan sun-seeker, is at hand,” she said. “Are you prepared?”

He made no reply. With that she approached the fire that burned more intensely as she neared. Suddenly the Sabuan recognized that there had been a cauldron there all the time...or had there been? Back to Nathan, Heldawn bowed over the brim of the frothing kettle, all above her naked backside vanishing into the vapors. Nathan stared. Mists poured out from the flames and engulfed him. His hands penetrated the mists and suddenly they were flesh colored no more. Suddenly they turned a shade of silver! Brighter and brighter the gases glowed. Nathan looked away to shield his yellow eyes and when he looked again Heldawn had vanished.

He waited, but she did not reappear. Time to vacate the premises, Nathan decided. Cautiously he made his way back up the barranca, lest he break the spell that bound the plyntela. It was not until far later, after he had wandered aimlessly for what must have been a full day, that Nathan noticed the stars glowing more brightly than usual. He was exhausted and struggled to stay awake for he was in the open country where any beast or warrior could find him. To no avail. Comos grabbed him in a leaden fog and he was gone to the world.

A round object glowed. It grew in size and intensity and became violet. Though he still slept, Heldawn reappeared.

“So you leave without my permission, do you Sabuan? I am most amused at your insouciance. I have found you to be brave. You will need bravery. I have also found

you to be faithless, devoid of loyalty save to yourself. You cannot locate the star sun Sulitar in that mode. You cannot achieve a thing if you are without faith. I will tell you this no more, Sabuan.

“Your fate is complex and your mind is inadequate. Your spirit is great, yellow eyes, but you are willful and ignorant. Your arrogance keeps you ignorant! Lose this, Sabuan! Heed the Akrups! Do you know what the Akrups say about the forty-third Heda-Dro? Do you know, Morningstar guerrilla? Don’t look at me like a wall-eyed calf! Answer me.”

Nathanatoll was perplexed. He had no training in the Akrups and did not believe a word written therein.

“No. I do not know.”

“Of course not, Sabuan. But I tell you that you WILL know.”

“How...will this happen?”

“Do not question me, Sabuan. It must happen because it is so written.”

“Because it is written? Can’t--”

“Did I not just tell you not to question me?? Enough! Suffice it to say that the Akrups are clear, fogbound man. They say:

“power shall appear to those who see

deep within mortal’s immortal womb

there at the instant false claimants shall flee

and the sacrifice shall forever be mortal’s doom.”

Nathanatoll blinked his yellow eyes. The words meant nothing and seemed poor poetry to him.

“Elios Eserpious! Truly you are the ignorant one, Sabuan, you are, to be sure. Now go to Regis-Kragar...Silence Grove in your Basal tongue. You will know the camps of Kwashiorkor and the power of the mountain that moves and the giant who sees with one eye. You will be tried and you will be governed. Your pace will speed when it is warranted and slow when it is desired. Up and down you will go. Skills will save you

and ignorance will doom you. Your spirit must measure up to the danger that walks and crawls and rumbles. Your all-seeing yellow eyes will see mountains come alive, but with spirit, you will comprehend. AND FORGET THIS NOT: ‘Jewels are two, directed by one’. Beware the false thief, beware the victor over Chal, beware the sheen of the aeons. Now awaken and go on your appointed task, Sabuan, and be true to the truth.”

Heldawn was correct. The day was far brighter than its recent predecessors. He had a sense of Sulitar, and was convinced that he and he alone was destined to locate the stolen star. As he marched forward through thicket and moor, Nathanatoll thought of his friend Trayblade. He was convinced that he would never again see the chatterbox manofaere in the flesh. Already he missed him. Saml? He relished the idea that he would never lay eyes on his miserable Syffian carcass again. As was usual with his myopic suppositions, the man from Sabuan was entirely wrong.

2009-10-24T09:32:00.001-04:00

Chapter Eleven: A Hostess Called Heldawn

They walked and talked, talked and walked. Plyntelas seemed put off by the incessant chatter and nighthawks did not trouble them. They felt like long lost brothers, like siblings separated at birth. They could not fathom that their meeting and subsequent harmony was not accidental, but planned and executed with astonishing precision. It was understandable that Nathanatoll did not realize these things, for even though he possessed the golden eyes that strained day from night, he was ignorant and a non-believer. Plus, his recent incarceration at the hands of Prince al-Jal made him bitter towards life; and the Akrups reveal that bitterness is akin to blindness.

It was the manofaere, Trayblade, who should have recognized the omens. He was an astute, quick-minded individual who had some training in the Akrups and who could quote ‘West’ from memory. But he was young, impressionable and easily distracted, a most deadly combination in these most deadly times.

Their impressive pace took them far past the Hialesian Fields to an area of rivulets and streams that babbled merrily and mimicked their moods. Twice they spotted war parties, one Hennan, one Bakirian, and twice were fortunate enough to avoid them. A band of changers spied them as they cleared a ridge but they had just made a kill and were too slothful to pursue them. Thus the duo arrived at the village of Omel’s Skull completely unscathed.

Tired, thirsty but still chattering, they sought an inn but found horses branded with the seal of Bakir. How could this be? Bakir was hundreds of leagues distant. They took no chances and returned to the wild bush under a stunning violet sky that framed Enerburis and Paolis, the two moons, in a vista that left Trayblade glowing and Nathanatoll confused. Spotting the spoor of plyntela, they cut prickly briars and strung them around their encampment. A large fire might have given them away, so they settled on a smaller one and were soon in the clutches of the Great Deceiver.

Nathanatoll snored blissfully, but hardened by years of battle, the man with the golden eyes never rested. So when his ears detected unusual sounds, his mind

flashed awake. He listened and recognized footfalls. Soft. Creeping. An inch at a time, Nathan's hands moved to his curved dagger. Soft sounds. Creeping closer. The creeper was behind him, closer to the sleeping Trayblade. He willed his eyes to expand their field of vision, and they complied reluctantly.

A man! A small white-skinned, white-haired man, but only one. He detected the glint of metal near what he supposed was Trayblade’s throat. In a fraction of a second he rose, leaped, drew the dirk and bowled over the intruder. He was about to bury the curved blade in the back of the man’s neck when a familiar voice screamed out.

“Stop Sabuan! It is I, Saml! Saml Twelve Eyes!”

Trayblade flashed awake so that the sered old man was faced with two drawn blades. He grinned stupidly and slyly slid his foot over his knife, unseen by the pair.

“Ye-ye startled me! Sheathe your blade, Sabuan. It is I. Saml.”

Nathanatoll was livid. “I would have skewered you like an old chicken, foolhardy Syffian. What are you doing sneaking about in these parts?”

“I-I followed ye, I did.”

Trayblade fingered his neck. He could have sworn the skin was nicked there. “Are not you the old man from the inn? In als, you are. “

Nathan and Saml related their adventure together in the caves of the Lug.

Trayblade was uncharacteristically suspicious. “You found Nathanatoll, did you? Trailed him here, old man, through the wilderness? You are a gifted tracker for a blind man.”

“Eh, eh, why the truth of the matter...is that I am not blind, brave manofaere. I am, Saml Twelve Eyes, and I...merely pretend to be blind...hence the vision tattoos on my eyelids. I pretended, mind ye, because it makes my begging...more profitable.” Alman Recourta, locked into the human being, wanted to bite his own hand off as he said these words; but the pact with Algressaro could not be breached.

“Aye,” he continued. “I saw ye, saw your brave deeds back at the inn, young manofaere. Ye are great of heart, indeed, as well as being comely. I think ye are known as Trayblade the Brave, no?”

The Faerian was not above flattery. Suddenly this old man was not such a terrible person. Still he couldn’t shake the feel of steel against the skin of his throat. Had that happened? Was it a dream?

“In als, Saml Twelve Eyes, I do not deserve such acclaim. I am merely a humble forager seeking Sulitar. No more. I ask you why old man, why do you track us?”

Saml scratched his groin. “First ye are easy to track. But why? Why...I am with ye...I would seek the star also. Rewards are great, are they not? And Saml can help...navigate the way. I have been to many locales in my time, mind ye.” The latter was almost true, since as Alman he had explored the Continent of Changes for aeons.

Nathanatoll was unconvinced, but Trayblade wavered and gave in. Saml provided his knowledge of the Phar, the vast unknown regions of Velahar. He maintained that rumor had it that the Majir of RyCour had snatched a sunbeam, and that a second was in the citadel of Regis-Kragar in Henna. He directed that they find the Five Crossroads, the ancient Droyian paths. Lined with cobblestones of various colors and substances and guarded in the Great Interior Desert by Headless Omel, the journey would be long and perilous, but would bring them to the sunbeams.

Nathanatoll, ever the disbeliever, scoffed. “Omel...exists? I think not. I think he is nothing but an old wives tale.”

Trayblade and Saml assured him that the ogre was real, despite being headless. Nathanatoll laughed and admonished them, saying that they would believe just about anything if it were from some dusty ancient tomes. Trayblade, thinking he meant, “West,” took offense, and a heated debate ensued regarding the route to travel. So vehement was the argument that they ignored the drizzle that fell from a brown-gold sky. Nathanatoll wanted to continue east while Saml opted to pursue the Trail

Of Dragon Teeth. Trayblade believed Regis-Kragar was the goal. Finally, drenched and angry, they agreed to Saml’s improvised plan to break the deadlock. Seek the counsel of one who would know which way to travel...Heldawn, the Conjurer. Nathanatoll wasn’t even willing to admit that she existed, but if it would accelerate their quest, he was willing to concede.

The journey through the Abderain Mountains was difficult. Footing was treacherous but they persisted, and the crags eventually gave way to windswept hills, barren save patches of prickly yellow gorse and sword grass. One thing that quickly became obvious was the Trail of Dragon Teeth. Huge timbers several yards in length and a foot wide and thick lay parallel, each separated by crushed stone. Long, thin rusted metal rails were twisted to and fro, ostensibly by dragons, and Saml entertained them with tales of the Heda Dro and the Deragians. Alman-inside-Saml, described this with great rapture and passion, though the duo had no idea that he was a first person witness to the ancient events.

Leagues fell beneath their feet. Parched, they sought water. Trayblade’s Faerian senses detected the presence of water several leagues distant and they made for the life giving fluid. They slid into a ravine, following the unmistakable scent, descending quickly, the steep soapstone sides looming like parapets above. Further down sward grass flourished and morels gave abundant evidence of water. Where was it? Nathanatoll’s golden eyes detected cattails and the trio quickly found a spot where two muddy brooks mated to form a shallow pond. They were in the process of slaking a particularly vile thirst when Trayblade nudged the Sabuan. Nathanatoll and Saml slowly looked up as one. For the first time in his life, Nathanatoll viewed an animal, four in fact, that struck terror in his heart. The warrior had just glimpsed the most dreaded of all hunter cats, the Plyntelas of Plyna.

Even Alman-as-Saml froze with a disturbing feeling in him. Albeit, it was a human feeling, an emotion, he supposed. Fear? Was this Fear? Then this is what constitutes the gede called Theon. Had the great cats seen them? A spotted plyntela,

largest of the quartet at some eighteen feet from head to hindquarters, looked in their general direction and opened his maw as if to growl. With an immense forepaw made larger still by thick footpads and multiple twelve-inch claws, the animal nudged its belly on the hard black soil. Plyntela meant, “Silent Wonder,” in the tongue of the Syffians and a more fitting name did not exist; for if a man ever heard the slightest sound from this stealthful mute of a beast, it was the sound of his own rueful demise.

The largest male plyntela weighed more than ton. Most were tawny, but only during the day, for at night their fur and hide turned charcoal. All possessed a double row of teeth and four sword-like canines. And like many a viper, they could unhinge their jawbones to swallow large prey. Worse, plyntelas were pack animals. With their silent approach, immense strength, and almost horn-like hide that covered their backs and shoulders and legs, plyntelas were perhaps the most dangerous of all mammals. Even the most slothful plyntelas seldom knew hunger; yet they roamed many times with bellies full and attacked nesting grounds, isolated villages, fish in the streams, virtually anything that moved. The plyntela was the furthest thing from being a hunter...a murderer. Indeed, there was no joy for living things in the name that meant, “silent wonder.”

Eight eyes, red as the coals of a fire, glowered at the nervy intruders. Trayblade cursed himself for ever coming to this place of the damned. Alman-as-Saml struggled with this new sensation called fear. And Nathanatoll slowly gripped his broadsword, ready for the battle. Minutes crawled by in silent agony. Then a stray gust of wind breathed life into the ravine and the trance was broken. Unable to endure the stalemate any longer, the manofaere bravely rose to his feet. Nathan followed, pulling his broadsword, but the ferocious cats merely traced their movements with captivating scarlet eyes and licked their chops. Alman-as-Saml realized that Heldawn the Conjurer knew of their approach, and he sensed a familiar magickal presence.

The travelers edged down the steep ravine and discovered the granite wall to be one ominous block of stone hundreds of feet tall. Finally they came to a wooden dais.

To the right of a dark tunnel was a caryatid of pure white marble and the female figure was beautiful to behold. In the tunnel they were confronted with a breeze, which at once cooled and warmed them.

Trayblade leaned against the wall of the ravine. Wispy nightmists descended and his changeling eyes began to water and sparkle with an array of color.

“Be still goodfellows,” the manofaere whispered, “for I smell a faint hint of purple.”

Before either traveler could utter a reply, three stunningly beautiful women appeared, each with skin of violet. The trio bade them follow and the entourage eventually stopped in a great hallway where mirrors covered every inch of wall space. Nathanatoll frowned imagining the Conjurer’s vanity, but Saml knew the reflecting glass to be symbolic of her powers.

They followed the women intro a smaller chamber and before them were twenty two tables laden with more edibles than they had seen since the great feria days before the Bakirian Wars. Whole lambs, trays of roasted, unidentifiable fowls were neatly arrayed on shiny porcelain tables. Suckling roasted on spits over four open fires and from an overhead beam hung copper tankards and fired clay mugs. The women smiled and suddenly were gone. The trio needed no encouragement and began wolfing down food as if tomorrow would never come. Even Alman-as-Saml discovered that this food was especially fortifying, and he wondered if he were becoming too human in this guise of a man.

Trayblade quickly guzzled the hearty black ale and, nearly choking with a mouth full of buttered sweet tarts, raised his foaming tankard and emptied it over the hulking Sabuan’s head.

“I now crown thee officially,” the manofaere shouted, ”Frog Prince of the great nation of Mud Flats and Thorn Thickets. May you rule the water skimmers and dragonflies for all the aeons!”

Alman-as-Saml was confronted with another very human emotion that he did not understand when he found himself laughing. It felt good, though he wasn’t certain as to why. Reptisects, especially recourtas, did not have this facility. He slugged the black ale and experimented with this laughing, sometimes too loudly and sometimes too softly. But as he consumed more of the bitter liquid, the laughing predictably became louder and louder.

Nathanatoll had already imbibed too much by this time and the trio drank and ate and laughed their way through the night. This reveling lasted the equivalent of three days, unbeknownst to the travelers. On the eve of the fourth day, eleven blue-skinned handmaidens in white satin shuffled forth, preceding the Conjurer, whose beauty instantly enraptured the three. Was their ever a nose so perfect, a leg so shapely? Heldawn studied them with dark eyes a fathom deep. She was nearly as tall as the hulking Sabuan, with skin as violet as a fierce summer sunset. A yellow fichu covered her otherwise naked body, and it seemed glued to her. The men stared and unconsciously hoped she would remove it. Again, Alman-as-Saml experienced another human emotion. The conjurer quickly recognized his reptisectoid aura. The trio knelt before the incredible combination of beauty and power.

“I-I am Trayblade, Trayblade of the forests of Egel in Faere,” the manofaere began. “I travel with these goodfellows, the Sabuan who is called--”

“Manofaere!” Heldawn interrupted. Her voice was high but cold, if it were a voice at all, for they heard it in their minds. ”Do you believe that Heldawn, mistress of the plyntela, is puny and powerless?”

Trayblade wanted to answer but could not. The conjurer’s spell bound their tongues.

“Perhaps you do, half breed who calls himself a manofaere. Do you think that Heldawn has no powers to discern whom you are and what it is that you want? Because I have breasts that I am not powerful? You will learn, you will. You have eaten and drunk as pampered guests of Heldawn and you are full of Heldawn as you stand here now. And you think me weak, do you?”

“In als, i-in als, we meant no such thing. We only mean to--”

“Silence half breed!” she commanded with a powerful intonation that rang in their bodies down to their toes. “Plyntelas do not attack lest it is my desire.” Her stunning violet features were mangled by the deep furrows that seized her brows. Nathanatoll wondered if she were truly irate or merely posturing.

A handmaiden began to brush Heldawn’s long hair, which sparkled like a Faerian’s changeling eyes with every stroke. The conjurer smiled and the creases of anger erased themselves. She was stunningly beautiful again.

“It is a female’s nature to know things that no man can understand. You are a strange lot of creatures, you four. Secrets abound with you. Is it good to have secrets? I think no. And I think yes.”

Trayblade opened his mouth to ask a question but Saml kicked him gently. He closed his mouth and smiled a silly smile.

“You have secrets from one another, and from yourselves. You are doubtless a modest crew. You, large man that you are, you fancy yourself a son of Sabua. A patriot. You are not. You and the lot of your Morningstars destroyed Sabua, is what you did. Sons aid their nations. You destroyed the land that fathered you. You foolishly resisted a people whom you could not have defeated with a hundred times the soldiers. For it was fate that felled Sabua, don’t you recognize this? The Akrups tell of this. ‘West’ tells of this. Open the portals that you call eyes Sabuan, and you will see wonders no one else can even contemplate."

The handmaiden retreated and another came and began rubbing a cream into the conjurer’s legs.

“Yes, homely one, then your vision would be great, and so it is written. And you are a master of weapons as attested by those that you bear. Do not take false pride in your great strength. Oh, I would like to match strength with you in the javelin throw. And you are a horseman and a daring warrior? Heldawn smells that you are a seeker, are you not, Nathanatoll? And your fate? Do you see it? You see it not.”

The Sabuan was confused and could do nothing but grin.

“Aheyy!” shrieked the witch. “Why does your homely visage smile back at me like the semen that misses the womb? Black-bearded picaro! You are the victim of the aeons. Yet you do not see it, making you a morthworker of the dark, a pillor of dung cakes at best. Your day to sweat like the toiling ass at the gristmill turnstile will come soon. Morningstar, have you made no reparations for the slaughter you spread? Or that you will spread? Will you make them now, Sabuan?”

“I-we seek the sun--”

“I have already told you that I know your task! Do not try my patience further. Or do you live in the shadow of the tree of vainglory? Then truly, Megrims will follow your steps all the days of your wretched life.”

Confused, Nathan made no reply. The conjurer then turned to Saml and Trayblade and ripped into their psyches. Finally after the demonstration that her superiority was complete, she ordered them to sit and asked for Trayblade’s wolf jaw dag. A handmaiden retrieved it and brought it to the witch. She took it, raised it slowly

above her head and suddenly slammed it down into the oaken table, a hair’s breadth from the Sabuan’s right thumb and forefinger. His yellow eyes flashed with anger, but he did not flinch.

“It is good that you are without fear, Sabuan Morningstar,” snapped the conjurer whose beauty seemed to erode with each passing second. “Perhaps you will achieve what it is you are fated to do. Rest now, all of you. I will return. Be forewarned that you should not attempt to leave. My plyntelas have no inkling of my plans. Or perhaps you are foolish enough to test their prowess.”

Heldawn smirked, undid the yellow fichu, let it drop and disappeared.

* * * * * *

Saml was encased in an old man’s body, and as such he required sleep. While this natural process unfolded, Alman Recourta thought it prudent to visit his lord. He teleported. Algressaro was not pleased.

“Recourta, Recourta, my dear Alman, what shall I do with you, most loyal reeve? Because the time is nigh to make the change and yet this half breed still exists. Why haven’t you skewered him? Because you see, Heldawn will advise him of the way he is to travel, but I fear that his half breed nature will pollute the plan. I believe he will not fulfill Heldawn’s command. He will say that he will, but he will not.”

“Alman understands this.” the Recourta confirmed. “However the ugly human flesh that I inhabit has much Abodon to it. Its will manifests itself in emotions that I must comprehend, as my powers are...far meeker than in my normal self.”

The Low breathed rapidly and the air around him chilled so that his breath was frosty and visible. Little Stok-like creatures began to appear and The Simian grumbled recalling the pain the beasts had caused him.

“So you do not like the flesh of the mortal humans? I sympathize. But do not succumb to any emotions or else you will fail at your task, Alman Recourta. And, that is unacceptable in our quest for Sulitar and Elios Eserpious, the gemstones of power. For I tire of this realm.”

“As do I,” the Sixfinger agreed.

“And I,” Alman chimed.

The sorcerer glanced skyward and his orbs bulged from his head as if to leap from his skull, a feat he had accomplished on numerous occasions. But Algressaro's eyes were sensing for the presence of other forces. They remained bulging for several moments before returning to the skull satisfied that the likes of The One and assorted gedes were far away.

“It is time to permanently remove the halfbreed from the scene. Do it sooner than later. Dare I send the Sixfinger? He is most bored by all this inactivity.”

Alman smiled at the challenge. “No, I think not. I will summon the paltry strength of this worthless imbecile with tattooed eyelids and execute your command, master. Fear not.”

“I fear nothing, Alman Recourta, nothing at all. But the time for Elios Eserpious draws ever closer. We must be ready.”

“We will be ready,” Alman replied.

With a wave of his hand, the wizard disappeared in a magenta mist and Alman found himself embodied once more in the Syffian flesh he so detested.

2009-10-17T10:29:00.000-04:00

Chapter Ten: The Trayblade Chats

They shared what meager provisions they had...dry biscuit, salted meat, hard journey bread. The manofaere produced a flagon of harsh red wine and they chattered endlessly. The howls of the Bakirian gyres temporarily galvanized them, but the manofaere’s great gift detected that they were moving away from the pair. Even the cackle of a hunting bird did not interrupt their palaver, so deep was their involvement. Indeed Nathanatoll felt as if he had known this half breed with the barbed tongue for ages.

“Your name, goodfellow from Faere. You never did tell me what it is. Surely Jerajon Bladeger cannot be correct. Else you are the High Hijidal of Faere.”

“And why not?” the Faerie demanded with a grin. “I am very proud of that name.”

“Ahh, I see. Then you are surprisingly active for a dead man. Proud of your creation? Have you created this one all by yourself? Perhaps then you have other names. Or many names.”

The Faerie laughed. “In als, I have but one name. In basal tongue that would be Trayblade. Trayblade the adventurous, Trayblade the forager in search of honor, riches and the most beautiful women in all of Velahar...though I am quite uncertain as to which I prize most. So that is my name, but it tells little of me, can you see?”

Nathan stifled a smile. “Well...how then do I know you are not some roving picaroon or a cutthroat? I have, in my travels, seen many of these, and several from the land of Faere.”

“I am Trayblade, Trayblade of Egel in the beauteous heartland of ever-green Faere. No more no less. And I have been given my task, Frog Prince, which is to locate the star that is missing from the heavens. I am a seeker, by task and by nature. And Sulitar I will find, make no mistake about it. Uniterrae demands it. There is much honor to be won in this heroic deed you must appreciate. And a reward in gold piled higher than the pate of your Bakirian skull. The women come with it, I suppose.”

“Sabuan skull,” Nathan protested.

“Are you so certain?” Trayblade asked, eyes twinkling merrily. “In als, you look like --”

“Sabuan. You know it is Sabuan, goodfellow. Enough of such chiding.”

“Sabuan then it is. And your task? Why are you here in the wilderness?”

Nathan’s face creased in merry surprise and he explained that he too was out to seek the star...and to collect the rewards. He wasn’t certain why, but he readily proposed a partnership. No, he silently admitted. He knew why. He liked this insouciant one from the deep greenwoods.

“A partnership? Perhaps.” The Faerie laughed. “In als, but why would I, a healthy, strong and sharp-witted manofaere need a laggardly sloth the likes of you, now, pray tell me this?”

Nathanatoll grinned. “Well manofaere, you are a bit on the slight side, yes? Where has your muscle gone? You are built like a woman. A falanofaere. Why me you ask? I assure you I am not such a poor one to have on your side in a fray.”

“And you hide in cellars well, too.”

Nathan looked away and bit his tongue. “Yes, I admit that you were quite brave during that escapade, man of Egel.”

Trayblade. Traaay-blade. Is that so difficult to remember? Too many syllables for a Sabuan to recall? Is your noggin so full of holes then or just empty?”

Nathanatoll exhaled loudly. Maybe teaming up with such a wiseacre wasn’t a good thought after all.

The merry one seemed to read his thoughts. “In als, Frog Prince, I do think it is a fine suggestion.”

Nathan nodded. “Then I suggest we will split the reward in two once we secure the star’s return.” He swigged at the flagon of wine.

“In als, Frog Prince. Half? I am not so sure. Half...less twelve pracksuits of course.”

Nathan spat a stream of wine at his sandals.

Trayblade’s eyes sparkled a deep green. “But I could not be a partner with someone, and not know his name. So, tell me, what are you called, Prince of the Pond?”

The Sabuan was suddenly very troubled. His real name was blasphemous to many in the man-kingdoms of the westlands, and in Faere. He considered an alias. No, that would only postpone problems. “I come from Sabua as you seem to know. There I am called Nathanatoll.”

Trayblade’s eyes instantly buzzed from green to a deep scarlet. He fought the urge to move away. Nathanatoll was by reputation a manslayer, a lifetaker, a murderer, a demon.

“So be it. Yet in other places...I have heard you called other names...many different names. And not a one so gracious, this I assure you. In als, I have heard your name likened to the dung of antelopes. And cursed by the lowliest thieves and whores. You are held in low esteem with remarkable consistency. In als, I have heard your name damned just about everywhere I have ever traveled.”

Nathan swigged at a the flagon again. “Well then, what can I say to you? That I am sorry? I am sorry for nothing. In life, one can change nothing that is done. I regret your dismay and I will not attempt to change your mind. Keep your opinions, manofaere.”

“Trayblade. Traaa-blade. Surely you Sabuans are slow learners.”

Nathanatoll did not smile. “I will seek the sun, Trayblade. Alone. I see now that we should not be partners."

Trayblade studied the muddy brown sky. “I did not say that I put faith in those tales, now did I Frog Prince? Rumor, as we menofaere know, is a hangman. There is so much in a name and so little. Do you know what I have heard about the land between the Outland Wood and the Great Expanse before the Bakirian warships of Efrion-al-Jal came? It is said that the lands were covered with peace. Is that in als?”

Nathan nodded. “Yes. I believe so. The Bakirian ships came to Sabua, to the Blue Coast, with their black sails and multitudes of troops. With no regard for life or

limb. Or justice. Peace was impossible to them, a concept beyond their capabilities. Well armed they were. And hungry for the spoils of conquest.”

“Most of the Faerian soldiers that I knew fought against you and the Sabuans, Nathanatoll. They hissed when they spoke your name. When they urinated they said ‘To the blood of the yellow-eyed maggot.’ That is what ‘Nathanatoll’ came to mean to us menofaere.”

“We need not be partners, but should part as friends.”

“In als. The war was surely over when you took command of the remnants of Tosca Stol’s armies. He was a good general? A poor general?”

“He was an OLD general. And I didn’t take command. It sounds so improbable now, but the regular troops admired what I had done as a partisan leader of the resistance. They would follow no other...but not of my choice.”

“So you were drafted?”

“In effect.”

Trayblade nodded. “The younger element in Faere supported your resistance. Which did not endear you to their elders. Weren’t you...the Morningstar guerrillas?”

“I was. We were. I am not ashamed of this.”

“The young supporting you impressed us. If they supported you, why then did you attack our southern cities?”

“Surely it is written elsewhere!” Nathanatoll snapped. “Why do I explain now, years later? Cannot scars heal? Surely if Faere failed to support the Sabuan freedom fighters it would have been trapped like a mangy cur between the whitefaced hordes of Bakir and the accursed Hennan wolves.” He laughed an evil laugh. “So today it is, manofaere. And so it shall remain until all of your bones are bleached.”

“With no Sulitar in the skies, bleaching could take many aeons.” Trayblade snickered. “So tell me now, explain to me. Why attack us?”

“You were in the way. In the middle. We were on the run for our lives. We sacked no towns. And nary a child was ever harmed by my men, this is common

knowledge. The Bakirians and your own kind did that, not I, not the Morningstars, not anyone bearing the star tattoo.”

Trayblade’s changeling eyes shone a deep violet as he weighed the possibility. “But Faere will go on as it has always. In als, Frog Prince, you are no expert on Faerian history, but Faere has long been punished for some ancient misdeed. I am a manofaere and I know our country will never fall while any of us live.”

Nathan scowled. “You are a half breed and you are an outcast.” he snapped. “You will never be equal to your beloved brethren. Do you sincerely believe that you will be able to attain what the shrunken-testicle philosophers preach? The equan...equan...”

“Equanambria? Do you mean the state of complete harmony and balance? I do, in als, I do.”

“Halfbreed, you may set women’s hearts aflutter with your handsome features. But you will never be equal, never reach...equanambria with your fellows. I tell you truthfully. They will taunt you and humiliate you. Manofaere, who do you chide?”

For once the chatterbox Faerie was silent.

“And,” Nathanatoll continued, “I admit that I admire your fealty in a land that doesn’t love you. I suppose I once felt the same for Sabua.”

Trayblade recovered quickly. “I understand. Enough there. You say that you no longer love Sabua? Ha. But you were captured in the battle called the Great Demise, were you not? Why did your countrymen turn on you? Why did they allow you to be taken?”

The yellow eyed man coughed violently, an unsolicited gift from endemale number six.

“Know this, Trayblade, know that power is entrancing. It warps and it alters. All those in power can never be far from the tree of vainglory. I myself know this to be true as I have sniffed its fragrant bark. Had I been a perfect leader, perhaps this end would not have come about. But Bakir was superior to Sabua in too many ways. More soldiers. Better trained. With greater weapons. Who had ever heard of the new iron called steel before? Why, that was an alchemist’s dream. And they were ruthless. Bakir controlled the seas. Our fishing boats could hardly sneak from their harbors. Then the bastard al-Jal seized the trading cities and the high roads to the interior. First Hursa. Kabel. Throulix and East Pteroul. Then they besieged Sabua and the city fell to those looting, raping white skinned devils. That made me...a general without a base...a kauri without roots. And we fought on, oh we did. Long live the Morningstars. I shudder to think of how many skulls I have laid open and how many warriors I have buried.”

“You are PROUD then?”

“Still. Always. Just as my star pledges.” Nathanatoll pulled his long black mane away from his neck to reveal an intricately tattooed star pattern. “Always.” He reaffirmed with defiance in his voice.

“A general without a base...a kauri without roots,” Trayblade muttered. He recognized the impact of those words. They were from a passage in ‘West’. Without revealing this omen to the ignorant Sabuan he continued questioning.

“You took too many lives, Nathanatoll. Too many died. The wars wreaked terrible destruction on all the nations.”

“What do you know about this, manofaere?” Nathan scowled. “Is it right to take lives in the defense of your own? What was I to do? Let them slaughter us like they did at Adissio? How many children does a man have to bury before his soul turns to stone?”

Trayblade began to speak but Nathanatoll cut him off.

“So I stepped up and assumed command when our leaders fell. We fought. And they died, Trayblade, they died. We made a pact, we the last of the Morningstars. And do you know what our pact was? Yes, we would lay down our lives, but three for one. Three whitefaced devils for each one of us. Warriors only. We did not kill the women save those that were warriors. And nary a child was ever harmed by my men, this is

common knowledge everywhere. Not even Bakirian children. Not even when they starved our own.”

“What do you mean?” The manofaere toyed with the embers of a fire which glowed as a wayward breeze began to blow from the east.

“I mean the starvation of the Sabuan elitists, Trayblade...before the mock trials, before they murdered them. I can still see their heads on pikes on the causeway that approached the citadel of Manicular. Yes, al-Jal’s blockade was effective. Proud men scrounged for grasses and bark to feed their families. al-Jal poisoned the people’s minds against us, with promises of food and the points of spears. Then when Sbliat, second in command, ravaged the Syffian foothills, who was blamed, I ask you?”

“You of course. This is legend already.”

“This was not I, nor any Morningstar. How could that be us when we were getting blasted in the battle of Blau at that very time?”

“But you escaped from that didn’t you?” Trayblade challenged. “ And you sacked the city, which was it? Oh yes, Adenalifit. Do you deny this then?”

“Surely this is true, Trayblade. But Adenalifit was in al-Jal’s hands. And we nearly captured the smug little bastard that very day. Know this...he is the one who torched the city, not the Morningstars. We had no reason to do that. My men were starving and they did what starving men do.”

“In als, not every one knows these things.”

“How could they? Victors write the tomes of history, not the conquered. You menofaere and your falanofaere hear regurgitated tales.”

“In als. So you say. How then did you escape?”

“We barely got out of the inferno. We retreated through the flatlands and defeated the Kaasamians in a running battle. I led the retreat through the Kelaou highlands after that. Bakirian archers picked us off almost at will. We spotted and avoided a large force of Hennan emasculators and reached the Hialesian Fields, not too many leagues ride from where we now sit. We camped by a pond, I still remember it, Trayblade, because its waters were green from a local mineral clay. Then al-Jal’s legions

attacked. I can still hear the swish of the catapults and the boom of the petards. I can still see the hail of steel fragments and hear the screams. Then the green pond ran red. War is not a merry thing, Trayblade. It is bestial.”

The manofaere turned his back to the growing wind.. There was going to be a storm he knew. But his Faerian nose detected no water...and a strange color, a grey, a silvery grey presence. Changers? He thought little more of it and returned his attention to the hulking Sabuan, who against all odds, seemed to have a soul.

“In als, there is more to this than is commonly known, Frog Prince. How did you eventually succumb?”

“Succumb? A strange word, Trayblade. But we forded the River of the Moons, we circled al-Jal’s flank. He attacked before dawn and we lost the cream of the Morningstar guerrillas and most of our horses in the mudflats. I accept the blame. I should have vacated the position earlier. Then the last skirmish in the Outland Wood came about. It happened in the freakish hailstorm that came from nowhere in the heat of the day. We fought well, and we took our fill of them, at three to one. But they were too many. A free Sabua died there on that battlefield, and so did freedom for all the westlands. You shall see, mark my words. After that Sabua was under the bastard’s thumb and his Empire of the South was proclaimed.”

Trayblade toyed with the embers of the fire which glowed red in the upstart breeze. “The hailstorm was from a sorcerer I am certain.”

“Sorcerer? What can a spinner of tales achieve?”

“I would wager the hailstorm was from Erichane Algressaro.”

“Who?”

“Algressaro. The magicker. Last of the Low.”

“And...you believe these dreams of old shrews?”

“Oho, but they exist, these spellbinders. And dreamweavers too. Many. And they are mighty, Frog Prince. Many are even from the gedes!”

Nathan laughed loudly, on purpose to show his disdain. “Gedes and sorcerers. Manofaere, you have much to learn about the real world.”

Trayblade grinned and decided not to get into a discussion with a non-believer. He would see the light in due time.

“This tale of yours is not known by all, Nathan. The peoples of Faere and Lamoya, Syffia and Kaasam too, hold you responsible for bringing destructive warfare to their doorsteps. You know this, of course. Their children curse your name as often as Von-kalimba. But what happened thereafter? Tell me.”

Nathan gagged on a cloud of smoke driven toward him by the stiffening breeze.

“There is little to tee-tell,” said he coughing. “The bastard al-Jal imprisoned me. Hung me in irons in a dungeon. With the lepers. And rats the length of your thigh.”

“That large?”

“And tasty too.”

“You...ate them?”

“Surely. Delicious. But better if cooked.”

Trayblade grimaced. “But Nathan, now how did this come to pass? In als, this could not happen in Faere.”

“Were you a bloodsucker in Egel by any chance, Trayblade?”

“Bloodsucker?”

“A man of laws?”

They both laughed.

“Truth is clear. How is it that menofaere always think that the rest of Velahar is governed by laws and codes like Faere? You cannot see Bakir with Faerian eyes.”

“You’re annoyed, Nathan. It is no good to be so.”

“I am not annoyed!” the annoyed Sabuan snapped. “You must understand the white skinned ones. They brought systematic warfare with them from wherever they came. They worship their dead war leaders like you Faerians do your gedes. Ha! The Bakirians live war, dream war, sleep war. They eat and urinate war! War, to them, is the end unto itself. Dying in battle is the path to glory.”

Trayblade brushed flying embers from his cloak and winced as one singed his arm. He cursed the everpresent wind.

“Best put down the fire due to this wind, Frog Prince. It is getting so strong that I fear a wildfire.” He leaped up to stamp out a hot cinder. “I too have heard that about al-Jal and his kind. In als, they must be crazed. But why did al-Jal spare your life? That makes him sympathetic, does it not?”

“Sympathetic?” Nathan bellowed. “You ARE a witty one, Trayblade. The bastard convicted me of high crimes at a tribunal. Not war crimes, mind you. They couldn’t really do that because we had conducted our resistance with some honor...foolishly I can now say. No, they convicted me when I answered ‘yes’ to a single question: ‘Are you Nathanatoll of Sabua?’”

“And then?” the manofaere asked as the wind howled.

“He is a fox, that al-Jal. A cocky bastard too. The old guard of Sabua might have rebelled had he had me executed there and then. I think not. But his sentencing me to endemale number six was worse because it was a slow death, a filthy one, one where your spirit is imprisoned and broken. So al-Jal sentenced me to death without honor. I escaped. But know this, I will never be imprisoned again,” Nathan yelled to be heard over the increasing roar of Dado. “This I swear to you!”

Suddenly the west wind kicked in, joining its sisters and the duo realized that something was amiss. Suddenly their throats became parched and a tiny itch cause them both to cough; but no amount of hemming and hawing could relieve the irritation. Nathanatoll’s yellow eyes throbbed and the lids swelled. The winds redoubled, howling like the fury of hell, and the pair wrapped arms around a macrocarpa as the gusts tried to seize them. Trayblade’s nose poured blood and their mouths were forced open by the pressure of the howling tempest.

The winds roared through the nearby stand of kauri and filled the air with sand, dirt and leaves so that even Nathan’s all seeing yellow eyes were blinded. Branches snapped, the great kauris bent submissively, and a lonely, dirge-like wail commenced in the tortured skies, echoed in the canyons and hollows, and in their minds. Black rainclouds covered the heavens and the air thickened so that it hurt to breathe.

With a thunderous roar the skies opened and icy torrents of black rain pummeled the ground, making the men writhe. They tried to run in order to escape but the pressure prevented all movement. Even crawling on their bellies was impossible and they realized that this was no storm, but a maelstrom of supernatural power and origin!

In the distance a deep groan erupted and the mammoth kauris could resist no longer and bent parallel to the ground. As the intensity of the furious storm increased, their ears bled profusely and the Sabuan felt an icy river shoot down the narrow of his back. Then, as the winds whipped them, the electrically charged air exploded. The shadows were upon them. Nathanatoll screeched. A series of yellow-silver lightning bolts erupted from the impossibly black skies and a voice, a voice so loud that it shook the very ground beneath them, took mastery of the maelstrom.

“AHA!!! YE HEAR MY CALL. NOW OPEN YOUR MINDS AND LISTEN!!

WHEN THE DARK LORDS DESCEND

LIKE DEADLY DEMONS FROM THE SKIES

WHEN THE NETHERWORLD UPENDS

AND TOWERING PEAKS WINGE AND CRY

WHEN ALL THESE EVENTS COME TO PASS

I WILL ENJOY MY DEVASTATED PEACE

AND DELIVER THE LIVING FROM THE MORASS

ONLY THEN, THE STAR WILL I RELEASE!

The thundering evaporated, the last echoes dying in far off grottoes. Groggy, disoriented from the incredible deafening of the celestial assault and the blinding silver light, Nathanatoll and Trayblade woozily debated the source. Ancraturk? Some new trick of al-Jal's’? A sorcerer or gede’s ploy? Somehow they knew they would determine the source, as soon as they stopped shaking.

2009-10-17T10:27:00.001-04:00

Chapter Nine: Nathanatoll Meets Trayblade

Nathanatoll burst out of the forest like a drunkard racing away from a weekend in the stocks. The tick-laden fields were pitted with thousands of hidden rodent burrows, and the careless man nearly snapped his ankle on two occasions. Hopping and howling he continued, and despite similar misadventures, the leagues fell beneath his gait.

The Sabuan encountered a vast field of stunning wildflowers, and he rejoiced despite the ticks; for it had been some years since he had experienced the beauty of life to this degree, before the Bakirian Wars, back when he was just a lad. And so Nathanatoll strode boldly, shoulders back, head up, his long curly hair waving like a black flag in the breeze. Gone were yesterday’s memories of a giant fist blasting all beneath it, gone were the thoughts of the old Syffian with the tattooed eyelids, gone were the bloodsucking Lug. He was free! Like a pompous peacock he marched through the magnificent fields and made a thick grove in a short time-- too short for his own vain imagination. Scowling, he waded through waist high prickly sward. How dare it invade his visions?

An entirely different set of wildflowers and grasses dominated here and like a curious child he bent his huge frame to study them. He soon discovered a murmuring stream which curled through a blue hemlock thicket where it mated with two small brooks. Nathan scampered down the barranca as it widened. Finally he spotted three adzed logs lashed together in a crude effort to span the flood. In the non-existent shadow of the primitive bridge he drank his fill while salamanders slithered and a turtle spied on him. Then he drew deep, refreshing breaths and laughed at the drama put on for his benefit by a waterskimmer and a young bullfrog. The Sabuan retrieved his lance, sheathed his broadsword and mounted the shaky span.

Aware of his bulk, Nathanatoll proceeded cautiously, taking several steps before chancing to look up. A figure stood at the opposite end of the span. A Man. A Bakirian? Not more pursuers! He halted and stared. No, not a Bakirian and not a Man. Part Man. A half breed. Probably Man and Faerie. That was most common. The two stared at each other. Nathan frowned and was the first to speak, using Basal.

“Hallo fellow stranger,” he called in his best attempt to mask his irritation, “be so good as to allow a weary traveler to pass on this rough bridge. I am certain it is too narrow to permit two at one time. It will snap under the great weight placed upon it.”

Changeling eyes confirmed that the man was indeed a halfbreed. His response was quick and sharp.

“You should pass first? Why? In als, this is not the way, friend. I was first to set foot on these lowly logs you deem a bridge while you dawdled like a slow-witted child with the frogs!”

Nathanatoll was flabbergasted. He stared at this upstart of a halfbreed. He smiled but didn’t know why.

Sensing the Sabuan’s disadvantage, the halfbreed continued.

“You are a far distance from the realm of your kind, sir, far from the society of Sabuans. Have you no use for society then? Then you must be god or beast. And unless you are some sort of hero who has frogs for a phalanx, you had best move from that spot and allow me first passage.”

“A cocky little one you are, I can see.” The former Morningstar guerrilla replied with a sugary sweetness that did not hide his irritation. Then he exhaled loudly. His life seemed filled with confrontations. In a less friendly voice he called out: “I have come many leagues, friend. Allow me the privilege of the first crossing. My traveler’s bones are weary and my feet are sore.”

The half breed’s changeling eyes sparkled. “Feet? Is that what you call them? Keep them dry sir, in als, feet that size may well take to root when they are wet.”

Nathan’s jaw dropped. Who was this interloper? And why was he risking a thrashing or worse from a clearly superior warrior?

“Hail frogman. Please recall that these are not your lands, they are mine. I should therefore charge you a fee, a tax, to cross at all. And then too, I was here astride this log when you blundered upon it like a lost goat. Accordingly I should be first to cross. And yet you beseech me.”

“Lost goat?”

“An odoriferous lost goat. In als, the logic of Sabuans is full of holes...like that of all Men.” The halfbreed enjoyed the joust and turned away, finding it difficult to stifle his grin.

Nathanatoll stretched and his bearded face lapsed into a frown. “A lost goat? I think not. A tax? Your lands? I think not. Now, do not be a nuisance goodfellow. It is time for you to move off this bridge Do so now if you please.”

“I do not please.” The manofaere stared and did not budge.

Nathanatoll caught a glimpse of red sparkle in his eyes. He was excited. Would they brawl over this right to pass? Nathan thought it foolish...but acknowledged that he had no desire to move away.

The Sabuan exhaled loudly. “All dues will come due. Now, if you would permit me to pass on my important errand, I will take no offense at your boorishness. Then after I pass, you can most certainly do the same without further ado.”

“I should let YOU pass?” No, misguided king of BULLFROGS,” he shouted, “your thoughts originate on the left. You are a true Sabuan or perhaps a Syffian. Or perhaps you are one of those Bakirians, though you would be a very dark one.”

Nathanatoll growled. “You insult me and you do not even know me.”

“If I knew you, would my insult be any less stinging?"

The Sabuan grunted and shook his head. The manofaere dug a thumb into his belt.

“I believe this means ‘no’ in your limited language, does it not? You should observe Faerian uniterrae, the code of honor. This is the rule and it applies here in Hialesia also. Now, goodfellow Lord of Croaking Creatures, move aside. After all, if it were not for my generosity, your miserable countenance would be elsewhere and nowhere so bucolic.”

“What? What are you mumbling?”

“Just as I say, Frogman! You would, no doubt, be in an endemale or perhaps your head would adorn a pike.”

“Frogman??”

“In als, you hear well. You have clean ears for a Sabuan.”

Nathan drowned a smile. This half breed had no shortage of nerve. “Oh so I think I now understand your words, sir. Without you, I would not be here? Then it is as it is. You are my...mother. I have no recall of her, so it is wondrous to finally make your acquaintance.”

“That subject of your parentage I will not comment on, hulking Frog Master. Move aside. I do not wish to pass such a dim day with such a dim wit.”

Yes, this halfbreed certainly had nerve, Nathan decided. He stifled a grin.

“Well...if you are not my mother...explain yourself then. Are you my lord, my protector, my benefactor? Because I tell you as I stand here now, I have no benefactor...nor have I ever had such.”

The manofaere’s changeling eyes glowed sea green then indigo.

“In als, yes I once was a benefactor to you. But I am of a generous nature, I tell you. Eliomath? Understand? It was a minor favor. Let me pass. Surely that would be a

fitting reward. Then I will trouble you no more; you can return to regimenting the frogs.”

Nathan snorted. “Your tongue is almost as sharp as my blade. But you look for a small reward, do you? I am tiring of this also. I tell you, try my patience no longer.”

“I agree. It is time to pass,” the manofaere replied.

Nathanatoll rolled his eyes and glanced at the sky. “This argument will go nowhere.”

“It will go only when you are wet up to your neck in the waters of this stream, dark skinned Bakirian.”

“Bakirian? Oho, you are a blind manofaere, aren’t you? I told you for sure, I am not a Bakirian but a Sabuan. Can’t you see this?”

The menofaere nodded. “In als, I see a dark bronze-skinned Bakirian. Because everyone knows that all Sabuans are Bakirians.”

“Never!” Nathan blurted. “Erase that ugly thought from your mind’s eye.”

“Now to matter at hand...let me pass Frog Prince. I am Jerajon Bladeger. Let me go first.”

“Oho, then you maintain that you are royalty?”

“Yes!”

“Jerajon-I-care-not-who, I have tired of this game. You are a nuisance. If you are royalty and this is your realm, then you must be the Marquis of...Mosquitoes. And in that event a particularly poor host.”

“You are an arrogant Frog King, you are. Perhaps I have misjudged you and you are not a king at all. Perhaps you are a merely a Prince of...Toads!”

Nathan’s brow furrowed. “This is it then? I see. Let me pass or I tell you, you will surely splash in this cold stream.”

“No, and for the last time I say to you, allow me to pass and the humble gift I gave to you from this humble heart will suffice and never be uttered again.”

“Humble heart? I think not. I think your words are thick with the scent of the Tree of Vainglory. How then have you helped me? Tell me now so I might remember your humble deeds.”

“It will take me only two words...and even a densely packed noggin like yours will recall, Frog Prince.”

“Oho, so now it is two words that made you my benefactor?” Nathanatoll asked mockingly. “And, pray tell me half breed from Faere, what two words are these?”

The manofaere glowered at the mention of ‘half breed’. He placed his hands on his hips and stared at the Sabuan. He shook his head from side to side. In a loud but calm voice he cried:

“Twelve...pracksuits!”

Nathanatoll’s first inclination was to purse his lips. His second was to bury himself up to his pate in the black swamp muck. His swarthy face reddened beneath the curly forest of his beard like iron on an anvil. The Sabuan had no response, nothing adequate in any event, and he hesitated while this manofaere that most any woman would find handsome merely watched with an upraised eyebrow. Then, with a slight nod, Nathanatoll gritted his teeth, took a giant step and plunged off the crude bridge that had served as a platform for both tired feet and lively debate.

The stream was cold and he hoped it would quell the heat of his burning embarrassment. Indeed he waded nearly to his neck before arriving at the opposite bank just beneath the grinning manofaere. The bank was slippery and after falling back in and dousing himself completely, the eight foot tall warrior from Sabua accepted the extended hand of the laughing manofaere who pulled him from the stream.

In the next hour Nathanatoll of Sabua and the acid-tongued half breed from the greenwoods of Egel learned much about each other and innocently touched on that which would bond their names together for all the aeons.

2009-10-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

Chapter Eight: Trayblade & The Avergane

The dense forest called the Avergane was separated from the Hialesian fields like day from night. There was a definitive boundary in the form of a twisting rivulet and the land gradually rolled down to that level. The kauri and ironwoods refused to grow on the northern bank, and from the epic of his people entitled ‘West’, the manofaere knew that an ancient spell dictated the fact. Exactly why escaped him. He had been too busy in his youth attempting to be himself to actually memorize that part of the saga.

Puffy clouds sailed through the skies and he smelled a hint of orange in the ether. He breathed in deeply. The strange heavens glowed with water. The dark sky was alive. The traveler from the northlands could not remove his eyes from the endearing celestial panorama. Then again, he was inclined to see the artistry in life. That was in accord with the blood of Faere which pulsed through his veins. He sniffed the air again. Cold rain. Not far off. He smiled and thanked Janoll Teay the giftgiver, for the invaluable asset.

As he moved through the fields, the colorful scene that unfurled reminded him of his beloved homeland. In reality he was prancing through Hialesia not of his own preference. The council had ‘requested’ that he leave the country of greenwoods and giant ferns, rugged mounts and blue lakes when Sulitar disappeared. The traveler slowed his pace, fingered his scabbard. A frown wanted to form on his face but that was against his nature and he overruled the emotion. Gazing at the sky which now swirled fast-moving orange clouds into a deep slate grey horizon, he forced a smile. He was determined that he would see Faere again. In the interim there was Sulitar, or more appropriately, the task of locating the star. Rumor had it that Ancraturk had stolen it and was about seeking stray beams. He shuddered at the thought. But there HAD to be Sulitar or there could be no life, not in Faere, not anywhere. So for the good of all, the obedient traveler would find and return the glowing star. This duty he understood so very well.

After another hour’s walk, he paused to draw in great draughts of air, testing the winds for direction, moisture, purpose and predators. It was rife with reds and tans, not good signs because this was the land of the plyntela. The giant cats were called ‘silent wonder’ for they made no noise as they stalked. Nor did they growl. He wisely detoured and walked the center of a small brook to erase his scent. The plyntela’s scenting ability was nearly as great as a manofaere’s.

Like all menofaere his yellow-orange skin was taut on his fine facial bones. Large brown blotches the color of spoiling pears crowned a high forehead and protruding cheekbones. He was more Faerian than not. Even his thin dark eyebrows and long lashes bespoke Faere, and he wore his chestnut hair short-cropped at the shoulders. Over six feet tall, large for a Faerian, he had long arms, long legs and supple, wiry muscles. His skin glowed and was unmarred. Most any woman would find him handsome.

He appeared to be a stout manofaere, but a certain “aua’, or foreign angle as it was termed in Egel, always seeped through. Curious stares degenerated into insulting scowls of “HALFBREED!” Faerians preached equanambria or universality, but not when it came to their own. His anger boiled like a kettle of giapo when he heard ‘halfbreed’. And when the taunting grew a mite too strenuous, his long-fingered man-hands would drop to his wolf jaw dag. He would use it, though it was not in his basic nature to do so.

The populace of Faere were esteemed for their unique powers of judgment and foresight, their dedication to ethics and justice. That struck the traveler as ironic as he reflected on his countrymen’s taunting. His changeling eyes would virtually disappear into their orbits and flash rapidly from scarlet to sea green to orange. Why did they goad him so? Why not just look beyond and accept him for his good heart or his unflappable loyalty?

His Faerian heritage dominated and he dismissed the bitter thoughts for happier ones. Above all the traveler considered himself a true manofaere. He held his handsome head high. He had proved himself to himself. After another league he stooped and rested on his haunches. The colorful sky had lost its appeal. The rain came, soft and gentle. He had ventured east to seek Sulitar, therefore Sulitar he would find. He would have the rewards for its return and the glory of a grateful Velahar. He would have not only the acceptance of his countrymen, but also their respect as a great person. And then they would never discover his hidden secret.

At the moment he was thirsty and opened his hands to the sky to allow the passage of raindrops through the micropores located in his palms. He smiled and knelt in the deep green meadow grass, and imagined himself to be Janoll Teay, the great pathfinder of Faere, returning to the task after many millennia.

2009-10-04T17:47:00.001-04:00

Chapter Seven: The Lug & Ancraturk

He didn’t know what to stare at first...the red welts that covered his body, or the ropes that bound his hands...or the shadows of the towering creatures that loomed a scant few paces distant. With a gasp he moved his legs and thought that death could not be so painful. Before he could shake off the stupor, a quaking whisper crashed into his still ringing ears.

“Do not move, aye, do not make one sound if ye value your ugly Sabuan hide.”

Moments passed and the pitche blende blackness surrendered to the Sabuan’s golden yellow eyes. He detected the outline of a human, or possibly a dwarf, as it was a small silhouette. He could hardly keep his thoughts on the shape because his head throbbed and the ringing in his ears would not subside. Again the whisper came to him like an ocean wave crashing into his consciousness:

“Ye are moaning. Shhh. Keep still, or eh, ye will moan mightily at the Lug’s evening repast.”

Nathanatoll didn’t know what a repast meant, but he knew enough to heed sage advice. Slowly the ringing in his head dissolved into scabrous beepings.

“Shhh...hush,” the voice whispered. “Listen to me and we have a chance. Do not move. Do not moan. Do not reach for your dagger for it is over yonder. Keep ye still, for they do not know if ye are living. Give them no clue. The rearward party of Lug follows. I shall tell ye when to speak.”

The scabrous beeping grew louder, closer and again Nathanatoll’s golden eyes pierced the blackness. He did not like what he saw...large shadows of large beasts...who dragged something behind them that looked suspiciously human.

The beeping slowly trailed away.

“Eh, Sabuan, they are gone. The brightness of daylight has made them unhappy.”

“Daylight? There is no daylight here. Who are you...and who are they?”

“Eh , ye stubborn Sabuan, there is daylight, even here.”

The voice? Saml Twelve Eyes, the beggar, the old man with the tattooed eyelids!

“Now, ere they return, let me explain our predicament. Along with others, ye and Saml are guests of the Lug of Passpor... the Land of the Caves. Do ye know them?”

Nathanatoll sat, overcame the dizziness and asked if these Lug were friend or foe? The wizened old man reacted with a sharp, cynical laugh. “Friend? Ye know the Akrups, do ye not? Nay false, I do not suppose that ye do. These Lug are bloodsuckers. Vampires. "

Nathan shuddered. “I have never read the Akrups. Are these the giant bats of ancient legend, then?”

“Eh, one and the same, Sabuan. Bloodsuckers to a one, mind ye.” Saml replied. Then, as Alman Recourta, he thought to himself: ‘It is good that you do not read the Akrups, ignorant fool of a Sabuan. It joins with my master’s plans. And it will be easier for me, despite this puny mortal body, to control you.”

“My weapons?” Nathan asked. “I need them.”

“Aye. I told ye that they are here. In that chamber, yonder. I am afraid that they are with mine and the arms of many lost comrades.”

“Comrades?” Nathan asked.

“Vampire victims.”

Nathan could have sworn that the Syffian’s eyes were closed. And yet when they were open, there was a certain dullness to them, as if they were dead. This Saml did not stare at one, he stared through one. Nathan’s skin crawled and he disliked this Syffian, instinctively. His golden yellow eyes glowed. After all, wasn’t he too white-skinned to be trusted?

As if predicted, two beeping sentries emerged from the sole tunnel passage. With folded, silken black wings, the two ugly brutes fixed themselves to the ceiling, stooped, bringing their inverted faces to within an inch of Nathan’s. He feigned sleep.

“Beep beeep. I hear his sleep, his sleep I hear,” rasped a droning basso voice.

“Beeep. Beeeep. Survived the fall, he did, he did survive the f-fall.

“Beeep. Large...only one so large could survive such a f-fall...beeeep.”

The hunched figures straightened. “Beep. Beep. May the gedes be praised for this gift of blood,” the first said.

“Beep. Beep.” The second sentry said. “May your children grow strong with this gift. Beeeep.”

“I am with hunger, beeep!” The first monster blurted, swinging out over the head of Saml. “You will callus, callus, beeeep, beeep, callus when he w-wakens!”

Saml could barely see the beasts with his man-eyes. But with the second sight of Alman Recourta, Saml’s orbs tore through their bodies and detected movement far beyond. He sniffed the air and visions came to his reptisectoid mind. A pouch. The rest of the Lug were dragging a pouch, made of wolfskins. and they moved it cautiously as if it were filled with poison. And of course it was. For Alman knew the Lug had discovered a stray sunbeam, one that had escaped when Sulitar was stolen. And it would be fatal to them with its blinding brightness and heat. They managed to incant it into the ancient metal box which they had not long ago liberated from a magicker called Forgen. And now the vampires awaited their lord protectors, probably gedes, to retrieve the sunbeam. Absorbed, Alman/Saml didn’t hear their beepings.

“Beeep! Shriveled man answer me, answer me shriveled man! Beeeeep!” the first Lug demanded. ”Else I chew your head now, beeeeeeep, now I chew your head, beeeep.”

Alman would never have tolerated this treatment, but Saml was forced to do so by his puny body and by his task. He also figured that Algressaro was on his way to liberate the sunbeam, and he would arrive before the gedes got here. Then Alman could annihilate these impudent beasts.

“Aye. Call ye I will.” He replied, sounding sincere.

“Beeeeep. Good man who is small, good.” The second bat exclaimed. “Beep. You will be honored. Last you will be consumed, Beeep. Consumed last will be you.” The towering guards plodded down the tunnel.

Nathanatoll and Saml conversed in whispers. Saml recounted their escape from the Bakirians and his own desire to seek Sulitar. He explained how he had dragged an unconscious Nathanatoll out of the raging river. The Sabuan frowned. He thought that he had saved the old man, then fell asleep, exhausted. The old man was lying, he decided. As for seeking Sulitar together, Nathan wanted no part of the old man…until he insisted that he knew the way out of this labyrinth. Then suddenly a rising chorus of shrill beepings, garbled foreign words and flapping wings alerted the pair. The hunting party had returned!

“Rado! Acansa!” A deep, raspy voice, haughty and assured, boomed through the passageways. “Beeeeep! Bind the furry creatures. Beeeep. In the control chamber.”

A flurry of activity confirmed his authority.

“That would be Elo, their headman,” whispered Saml. “

That was Saml’s man-mind speaking. Alman Recourta would never suppose; Alman Recourta always knew. Silently Alman permitted himself a moment of aggravation with his master who had commanded him into this flimsy, inefficient man-body that he had to share with its even punier man-brain. Then his reptisectoid mind returned to the scene...giant bloodsucking bats, a missing sunbeam, gedes and escape.

“This Elo, ye will know him, Sabuan man. Aye. Seems he is the only one who does not repeat himself. And he beeps less. Seems a sign of respect.”

Nathanatoll nodded.

“Aksa! This one!” Elo called. “Stow this one...beeeep.... with tomorrow’s rations. Do it NOW!”

The flapping sounds grew closer. A giant guard, presumably Aksa, flung a hairy clump of flesh into the niche with a passion. He smiled, flashing long white teeth that reminded Nathanatoll of Bakirian sabers. He shuddered at the thought.

Alman’s recourta senses indicated that a presence was nearing. It was time for action. Alman-as-Saml threw out a foot which caused the bearer to trip and slide on the blood-covered cavern floor.

Suddenly a brilliant flash of light escaped through the pouch and blinded them all. The Lug toppled like dead flies, shrieking, screeching in unworldly pain.

“Beeeeep! Close it now! Now close it! Cover the evil, the evil must be covered!

“Save the children! The children must be saved!”

Nathanatoll broke the bonds that bound his hands. He stumbled, but followed the shriveled old man with the tattooed eyelids down an side passage. In the stunningly bright light something gleamed. The broadsword of Nathanatoll! He lunged for the weapon, but a huge Lug, his flapping wing hiding his miniscule eyes from the sunbeam’s brilliance, toppled him with a only glancing blow. The creatures were ungainly but immensely powerful.

In seconds two Lug hurled their bodies on top of the pouch covering the beam, and were fried alive in the process. Two others came to the aid of their comrade who had cut off Nathan’s retreat. One vampire bat stepped on the Sabuan’s back to keep him from moving and grabbed the old one.

It was Elo. “Again? Do it again and beeeeeep, by the time for the next meal, you will be long gone. Two brave Lug will never nightfly again. Fortunate you are.”

Nathanatoll had seldom felt less fortunate.

“You escaped not...because your destiny is to supply iron to ensure our race.”

“Meal you are, you are meal,” came the Lug chorus.

The Lug removed his clawed foot from the Sabuan who exhaled loudly.

Elo’s huge maw opened and the saberteeth gleamed even in the semi blackness.

“Fortunate ones. Yes. Beeeeep. We Lug prefer to eat nutritiously. And we honor what we eat. We shall return.”

“Return we shall, we shall return,” the Lug chorused as they departed.

Saml groaned aloud. “Ye understand, Sabuan. They have a fancy for all things bloody edible...eh...including themselves.”

Feverishly the duo sought a plan of escape. Nathanatoll gathered stones, sharp stalactites as well as various bones that could be used as clubs. Saml could not sense the presence of his master. Was he to perish like a lowly Man, was this his ignominious fate? Why, he couldn’t even fight like a true reptisect recourta and take a dozen or two bloodsucking monsters with him!

A figure some twelve feet tall and nearly half as wide waddled to the crouching duo. Elo. “Beeep. Understand the inferior tongue called Basal do you? It is so limited. You are my meal and my children's meal. I thirst. So it is time to quaff what you have to offer. Aksa. String them up from the stalactites, beep, beep. Now!”

“Glorious Elo!” interrupted Saml. “Ye are the master of the Lug. We pray that what ye need, is what we have to serve ye. We pray to Erichane Algressaro that your childbearers will make stronger children. It is an honor to be served to ye.”

Elo bent, turned his ear to the duo. “Beep. You said a word, magick words. Say it again, meal of mine.”

Nathan readied his stalagmite daggers. Saml swallowed hard and gently pushed the Sabuan back. “I said no magickal words, only the name of my master.”

“Beeeep! Say it, say the word and say it now!”

“Ye must--”

Instantly Elo grabbed the Saml with a hairy clawed hand and pulled him so close to his face that the hot exhalations from his nostrils flurried the old man’s hair.

“Hear me one-with-tattooed eyes, hear me well. Beeeeeeeep. I shall crush your meaningless little skull betwixt my tiniest tooth and my tongue, beep beep. Say the words I command you, beep, and say them NOW!”

Saml’s plan was working or so he thought. “Of course, eh, I merely said to ye... the name of my master...Erichane Algressaro.”

“Beeeep. Indeed ye did, tattooed eyes. Beeep! Aksa! Acansa! Come here now. For I have in my claws a reeve of our enemy, the forkbearded magicker. Beeep!”

Nathanatoll reacted. He launched himself like a rocket driving his full weight into the legs of the giant bat, who wobbled and shook but did not fall. Nathan stabbed once, twice, thrice with a sharp stalagmite, puncturing the Lug’s foot before he could move away. The astonished monster reflexively dropped the old man and swatted at the Sabuan who dodged the blow with surprising agility. The tattooed man lost no time and smashed a large stone into the Lug’s wings which had little effect except to enrage the beast. Nathan dove for his weapons and found his lance. Again Nathan stabbed, then kicked out and managed to knock giant Elo off his feet.

“Beep! Master!” Aksa shrieked. He led the other guards in a headlong rush.

“Here! Beeeep! Now!” Elo cried, as he hopped about on his wounded feet.

“Master it comes, it comes master! Protect us master, master protect us!”

Nathanatoll was too busy stabbing at the thrashing Lug bodies to recognize their frightened cries. Saml, however, understood as suddenly his reptisectoid brain detected the presence of a tremendous primordial force, a force familiar and so powerful that he could not stop it. It was everywhere! Algressaro? No!

The caverns trembled under an earthshaking impact. Soil and stones poured from above. Large stalactites shuddered, cracked, toppled, crashed. A second mammoth earthen tremor flung them all to their knees. Acansa beeeeeeped. A disaster warning!

“Beeep! It is Kintupu! Kintupu it is!”

“No! Not Kintupu!” snapped Elo. “Beeeeep, worse. The giant has come!!”

“It is the beam-seeker! Ancraturk!” Saml snapped!

Nathan bellowed. ” “How can you see, you crazed old man? Your eyes are blind aren’t they?” There are no giants. Follow me!”

“Nay false! He is very real! Believe me Sabuan, I am sighted, the blindness a mere ruse. And I see with a vision that is from within.”

Nathanatoll wanted only to escape the bloodsucker vampires. The trembling ground reopened the opportunity. The caverns shuddered under a tremendous assault of flying debris and panicking Lug. The Sabuan opened his mouth to yell at the crazy old Syffian, when at that very instant a hand twice Nathanatoll’s height, pulverized the stone ceiling. Huge fingers the size of blackthorn trunks snapped the remnants of rock creating chunks of flying rubble and blinding dust. The Lug scattered, and the awe-stricken Nathanatoll stared at a gigantic fist which rose and fell, bashing twenty foot-deep holes in the hard packed cavern floor.

Another mammoth fist grabbed a Lug out of the air, bit the beast in half and spat out the upper half of the still-thrashing body. And Nathanatoll stood completely mesmerized by the sight of the largest being in the world, the creature he had steadfastly refused to believe in. Ancraturk! The giant of the Akrups, in the flesh, back from the aeons, very much alive...and very focused.

“Wherrrrre it be? Wherrrrrre have ye hidden it ye flimsy bloodsucking beasts? Give it herrrre cowardly leeches and give it this instant!”

Nathan was shocked as the bellowing shook the caverns. Then as the giant bent his hairy visage low to the ground, he could see the flaccid eyelid of his sightless eye flapping as he shrieked. One-eyed! As the tales of the Akrups foretold and he had never believed.

Elo squealed and tried to fly, only to be hammered into a stone wall by Ancraturk’s backhand blow. The Lug took to the air en masse, but the giant batted most of them to the ground with savage thrusts that broke their wings and backs.

Saml crouched in a fissure. Had the Sabuan been able to see him, he would have noted a strange an aura which colorized his being. For Alman Recourta was communicating the unfolding events to his master.

Amid the chaos, Nathanatoll spied the cowering Elo and made to run. Then the warrior in him returned. Who knew if Elo or the Lug would pursue him? Elo hissed and beeped as he sensed the man’s thoughts. He attempted to take to the air but his injured wing would not permit it. Nathanatoll, a legendary marksman, fingered his bow, fitted an arrow and let fly striking Elo in the lower back. He whirled but a second arrow buried itself in his breast and a third tore through the base of his spine and the eternal darkness, covered his largely unseeing, eyes.

Ancraturk roared, chewing on several Lug at once and spitting them out like broken toothpicks.

“Ahhh a goodly shot I say, weeny little man!” Ancraturk guffawed. “Not bad, not bad at all.”

He tore up a mountainous slab of stone and grinned, baring his yellowed, broken teeth. “Aha!! herrrrrrre it is! Foolish wee upside down beasts! The sunbeam is mine!”

With that he kicked the ground and like a child’s sandcastle, the network of Lug caverns crumbled with a roar in a thick cloud of dust. Nathanatoll raced away in the opposite direction as fast as his thick legs could carry him, using the choking dust and dirt as a screen of safety.

2009-10-04T17:13:00.000-04:00

Chapter Six: Escape From the Inn

Nathanatoll had taken two dozen strides, all backward. He stared at the cliffdwelling and awaited the foursome. Then he heard hoofbeats. He listened but only for an instant as the baying of gyres accompanied the clop clop clops. Cut off from the dense greenwood, he dashed for the inn and barreled past his four foes who were downing a free round. Wild-eyed, he raced past the cockfight and hurtled down narrow stone steps. He instinctively reached for his dagger--it was back in its scabbard!! Was he mad? HOW? No matter. He untied his small axe put his bow and quiver aside. Bakirian whitefaces! He had heard them whispering to their mounts. He wouldn’t let them take him alive.

The threshold to the cellar darkened with a crush of bodies. Half a dozen scrambled down the steps and raced toward the man. He raised the small axe and lowered the curved dirk which gleamed in the dim light.

“NO! WAIT!” yelped the two frontrunners. “Not us. We-we’re not Ba-Bakirians.”

The others, totaling seven, reached Nathan. “The keeper, he’ll get rid of them. He pays the captain off, he does. And the Bakirians don’t know about this place.”

Nathan smirked, thinking of the gyres, the great wolf dogs. It was just a matter of time.

The air was cool, warmed only by body heat and they stood with their feet in the numbing water of an underground spring. Bakirian boots clomped on the crude floorboards overhead and the men stiffened. One panicked.

“W-what do they want?” a frightened voice moaned. “I have nothing left. They took everything I had. Stole my barley they did, ate what they wanted, tore it out by the roots and burned what they did not. The thieves took my pullets, they--”

“No more of that!” snapped an authoritative voice in Sabuan tongue. “They find you down here, you swindling cheat of a gambler, you’ll be slaving on the royal estates. Or worse on the galleys. Quiet now.”

The gambler lowered his voice but ignored the warning. “What brings them so far afield? W-why are they here?”

“Who knows?” the Sabuan-speaking one answered. “They’re not here for cockfighting, I’ll wager. Bakirians do nothing at random. They’re systematic. No, they’re after something very important, I tell you.”

“SOMEONE very important you mean, friend,” a third voice chimed. “Someone it must be because they’re lining them up above us. Just listen.”

For ten long sweaty moments all fell silent. Then finally the sounds of mugs slamming on tables and a woman’s squeal broke the silence.

“They’re gone!” the gambler chirped. “Let us get out of this cold slop and--”

“Quiet fool!” the authoritative voice snapped. “The Bakirians are still above us, make no mistake. You do not know these whiteface Bakirian bastards. They are more than clever, I tell you. Who would know better than I? I spent the last fourteen months mining in their accursed camps, breathing the dust, eating their swill unfit for swine. Nathan’s ears perked. Had he heard correctly? He moved toward the men, splashing as he went. The gambler nearly swooned, having forgotten there was another man in the cavern. Abruptly the oaken door at the top of the stairs was dragged open with an ominous squeal and time died. Bakirians charged down the steps and the light revealed a narrow passageway which the golden-eyed one sprinted for, followed by the others. It led down. He heard the followers sliding on the sandy uncertain footing. He heard the curses of the Bakirians and realized there would be no losing them in the passages as they had unleashed their gyres. No, he’d have to fight them underground, in tightening quarters, one by one. Then one by one they will die, he sneered and kept moving.

The passageway was not cooperating and squeezed the big man. His keen yellow eyes detected a new, albeit smaller, passage. He scuttered into it, then fell in the openness of a chasm, fortunately only a few feet. Bodies tumbled on top of him and Nathanatoll pulled his broadsword. A Bakirian shouted in Basal as he spied his quarry.

“Over here! Come Jar and we will collect heads for you.”

“So be it! Advance you men of Bakir! No quarter to these despicable traitors who run from the real law of the land! And watch the yellow-eyed one and his blades. He is deadly!”

“Men! His head for my father the Prince!”

At that instant a wizened Syffian voice cried out from underneath the Sabuan.

“I have found it! A passage!”

Nathan grabbed the man’s waistcoat but the Syffian dove headfirst, taking Nathanatoll with him as the Bakirian spears clanged off the stone walls producing a shower of sparks. Nathanatoll and the old man hurtled through space for a million centuries, screaming at the top of their terrified lungs.

Before impact Nathan heard a scrap of verbal prayer, the screeching of the bellyslain, the skisk of swords as they whipped through a man’s torso, bone, sinew and all. Then there was pain, then there was red, then there was nothing except a blinding silvery splash and a subhuman shriek for a tiny breath of air. There was foul tasting fluid, there was a vicious stabbing in the eyes, a stinging, biting pain the body over.

His eyes were closed and yet they were open. But they weren’t real eyes were they? Yes, eye sockets at least, for the orbs were missing, burned it seemed. He looked to his left and two more eyeless sockets stared back at him, and then he realized he was floating in a thick mire of silvery-grey gunk with corpses, many corpses, or pieces of corpses, some white some brown, some a combination of the two. The old Syffian beggar from the inn, the one with the tattooed eyelids was floating next to him, but unlike the others, he was mostly alive. Saml Twelve Eyes? And Nathanatoll remembered it was the old man’s voice that he had followed. That wasn’t the only reason he swam for shore with the old man’s robe in his teeth, but it was the only reason he was cognizant of, the only reason he would be allowed to know.

2009-09-28T15:10:00.000-04:00

Chapter Five: Alman Erichane Yips

Alman Recourta was one of the most logical and incisively-minded beings in all Velahar. True, he was a son of Belin, a miscreant concoction of fleshes that made him a reptisectoid. His cunning, mighty as it was, loomed second to the reeve he served, and there had never been an instant when he had debated disobeying his master. After all, his master was in him and he was in his master. And his master was not Belin, but Algressaro. He loved him, he feared him, he respected him, he obeyed him always, even when his incredible intellect advised him not to; for Algressaro was superior to Alman, and Alman endorsed the difference. He was the ultimate vassal, this Alman Recourta, the one with the multi-chambered black eyes. And he would serve until the end.

So when Algressaro had ordered him into the stinking humanoid body of Saml Twelve Eyes, a Syffian known as the Peddlar, Alman had obliged. True, it was demeaning. He detested Mankind of all shapes and sizes, those flea-brained incompetent bipeds, those sons of Abodons and fool apes. Why the only way he could even tolerate them was lightly breaded and fried in oil. He hated seeing the world with myopic man-eyes as opposed to his multi-visional reptisectoid orbs. But Erichane had told him to stay close to the yellow-eyed one and this he did, tracking him relentlessly.

Now, inside Saml, he summoned his master, not out of indecision, but out of logical choice. For the Sabuan was about to bond with another beast, a Faerian, or at least a partial Faerian. Prescient, Alman searched Saml’s pre-sequence memory and envisioned the half breed’s interaction with the Sabuan...which was why he summoned his master. For the meeting of these two wasn’t accidental. Nothing was accidental.

This seemingly innocent tete-a-tete in the cliffdwelling smelled of spellbinding, of gedes…and gedes would preclude his master from returning to his own age. Alman-as-Saml was sick to death of listening to the Simian’s eternal whining. He watched silently as his master conjured.

Erichane Algressaro was naked and busied himself with smearing various substances all over his body. This done to perfection, he recited an ancient series of

verses that Alman recalled as being a changer prohymnet. Did Algressaro seek to release Enguf Deargos from his flagon? He was trapped there by the disappearance of Sulitar.

The sorcerer was getting all the more agitated because not a one of his spells were working, and he wanted an answer fast. He drew various circles in the ground and barked commands to the Simian and a few others, but nothing gave the desired results.

Finally he snake-slid over to the bodies, an effect that denied backbone and never ceased to amaze Alman. The Simian had done a good job of not mutilating the bodies of these whitefaced men with their puny swords who had dared resist Algressaro in the name of some mortal lord. al-Jal? Yea, that was it. But these dead men, all nine of them, were no match for the Simian, he recounted, let alone Algressaro. Only three had escaped. Two Bakirians and a falanofaere.

Still, the presence of hunting parties such as these concerned the recourta since they appeared to have common interest…the homely Sabuan. And Alman’s prescience told him that there were more of these armed bands all the time. Was this frilly Prince of Bakir merely irate that a prisoner had escaped? Was the Sabuan a spurned lover? Or had the Prince stumbled upon the secrets surrounding Nathanatoll? Alman rolled his mandibles. Could Men be that intelligent? He dismissed his thoughts and returned his primary concentration to Algressaro.

The wizard slid on his belly sniffing and chanting as he went, inhaling the essences which were still largely fresh in the corpses. He located the one he desired and stood, suddenly clothed and wearing hoops of gold everywhere on his person. He pulled back the sleeve of his garment and stretched a skinny arm. How did such a flimsy being have such immense power, Alman-as-Saml wondered? But he dismissed the idle query lest the sorcerer read his thought-stream and react.

Algressaro’s index finger began to grow until it was nearly a foot long and he plunged it into the left eye socket of the dead Bakirian all the way into the center of his brain. There was a sound of hissing as the essences fought, but of course Algressaro’s power dominated. Suddenly a voice began to drip from the dead man and the wizard began panting.

“Gedes!” he snarled. “Egregiously imbecilic idiots with nary a saving grace to recommend them. Eaters of dung! Fornicators of furry animals! I am certain.”

“Many master? How are their numbers?” Alman asked calmly.

“ANY is too many!”

“We must eliminate some to reduce the odds in our favor.” The Sixfinger muttered.

“They are after him.” Algressaro continued. “As are these whitefaced Bakirians. There are too many prize seekers, Alman Recourta. The thief of Sulitar has set the populace a-tilt, he has. Isn’t it a surfeit of disaster merely to deal with him?”

The gedes are currently where, master?” Alman asked.

“Recourta they seek this nothing-at-all Sabuan. Now we have also to manipulate those invidious malaprop beings!”

He began to howl an eerie dirge and The Simian and Alman-as-Saml heard the flapping of wings. “The hawk-that-calls-your-name-at-night has a plan of action!” he screeched.

“Recourta! Stay with this blithering Sabuan fool while we deal with the gedes. He is so ignorant that he will never suspect. And do not let this new-found friendship progress too far for our interests. For the manofaere is something other than what he appears to be. We will return shortly, no doubt. And Recourta! Keep a watch for The One. Do not let this ignoramus of a man fall further into the clutches of The One or any others. That is patently unacceptable, a pathogen to our purposes.”

Alman nodded and began to morph back into the Syffian he found so offensive. His tattooed eyes fluttered quickly, mimicking the reptisectoid means of affirmation. “Master,” he said in the squeaky Syffian voice he so abhorred, “what of the giant collecting sun beams? How should we deal with him?”

The hawk swooped and clapped his beak together with a loud snap as he remembering Ancraturk, his ancient nemesis. The great bird cawed and Algressaro’s entourage understood.

“He is about, this Ancraturk. I tell you Recourta not to be concerned with the giant at this juncture. He collects sunbeams to barter a position for himself regardless of who captures Elios Eserpious. He believes that he cannot lose. Leave him to Algressaro.”

And with that he began to yip and howl again, before disappearing into the shiny, silvery nightmists.

2009-09-22T15:13:00.000-04:00

Chapter Four: The Pracksuits

It was a curl of smoke, no more no less, but the one with the golden eyes tracked it to its source. He had seen many of these mud-baked cliff and cave-dwellings in the Bakirian Wars and he approached it cautiously, lest he run into more white-faced soldiers on the prowl. He studied the surroundings from the bush. Seven horses hitched to a post rail. Several mules. No Bakirian stigmata or brands. Chickens and other fowl. Peaceful? He hoped so because he direly needed to slake his thirst. He glimpsed through the many cave portals and decided to enter. A wizened old beggar, blind as the night, shook a rattan bowl as the Sabuan neared. His double eyebrows--above and below the orbits--identified him as a Syffian. His eyes were open--no they were closed. Nathanatoll admired the tattooing of eyeballs on his eyelids which made him seem as if he had sight. He ignored the bedraggled man’s pitiful requests and entered.

“Move it along, Saml Twelve Eyes,” an exiting Dwarf muttered. “Out of the way now! Watch yer pocketbook, I tell ya friend. Else it’ll soon be ‘is.”

Nathanatoll turned sideways to facilitate the friendly little man’s exit.

“I tell ya, ‘e sees everythin’, blind or not. Watch yer pocketbook, Sabuan.”

“Many thanks...I think.” Nathan muttered in an unnatural attempt to be sociable.

The interior of the cliff dwelling was a cavern, surprisingly spacious, with most of the stalactites and stalagmites cut away to permit occupation. And it teemed with life. In one corner four men gamed with dice made of the knuckle bones of swine. Nathan sensed their body heat and smelled their sweat from across the chamber. The jingle jangle of coins as they were juggled from hand to hand was sporadically drowned by laughter, by oaths, by laughter again. Three figures in hooded tabards slumbered amidst the spillage of what must have been a flagon or two of wine and the wasps were having a feria in the sticky liquid. A gnome smoked kauao in a long white clay pipe while two others eyed a young woman, probably a Faerian half breed, old beyond her years. A second female, much darker than the first, possibly a Sabuan, smiled from across the room.

Nathan moved toward the bar which consisted of ten or eleven presumably empty kegs. She sauntered over and intercepted him. She was pretty, though unwashed, with large breasts and rather thick legs. It was simple to observe her attributes since she wore nothing at all save sandals. She giggled, then whispered an invitation into Nathan’s ear. He shook his head. She tarried long enough to ply other verbal and physical persuasions but the Sabuan only grunted brushed her aside. Undaunted, she melted into the crowd.

The blind beggar with the tattooed eyelids felt his way into the main chamber of the cavern and squatted by the entrance, his filthy robes knotted up behind him like a ragged pillow. Several men, odd combinations of colors and features that bespoke their origins--Blau, Kelaou, Faere, Baotown, Sabua--waited for ale and the hulking man with the golden eyes slowly approached. He pulled a recently liberated silver coin from his pouch and awaited the tender who busied himself at the other end of the keg row.

“Green,” muttered a figure in a hood next to him. “In als, the ale here is a mite green, but it is the best in all these parts. Mark my words, friend. The secret is in the water, ya see. And the water runs cold in a stream beneath this limestone cave. In the cellar. Which is hollowed out of the rock, ye see. To permit the stream to flow without difficulty. No stream, no green ale. Buy yourself an ale, friend. Because ya see, we don’t like difficulty here.”

The Sabuan didn’t quite understand the heavily-accented Basal but nodded, electing to slide further down the keg line. He was very thirsty, and he needed something to wet his maw. And ale, the best in the land or not, was going to tumble down his gullet for the first time in years. He unshouldered his bow and could barely conceal his excitement.

The innkeeper, a balding ham-handed man, likely a Syffian, kept busy serving those who yelled the loudest and most often, regardless of turn. He was large and beefy, green-eyed and tattooed, and his beard was close-cropped. Apparently he was half deaf.

Finally Nathanatoll caught the keeper’s eye. Just then a young manofaere strode over to the makeshift bar. He was slightly over six feet tall with large blotchy orange freckles and eyes that changed colors like all Faerians. With shoulder length chestnut hair and finely chiseled features to go with his slim but muscular build, most any woman would have considered him handsome. He jostled Nathan’s elbow and bellied in, then calmly glanced up at the imposing figure. Nathan made no reaction, received his ale in a shallow earthenware pot, handed the keeper his silver Bakirian coin and waited for change. None was forthcoming. Irked, he settled at a rough bench and studied his drink. Portions had gotten quite a bit smaller since he was incarcerated in endemale number six, he decided.

When he finished the ale, which was quite good, he gave out a loud belch and pushed a teetering drunk away. The keeper then approached him with a second crock. Surprised, the glowering Sabuan nearly cracked a smile thinking that the innkeeper was making restitution for short-changing him on his first drink. Then, when he finished, the keeper generously brought him two more green ales.

The Sabuan felt awkward. He had cursed the keeper when no change was forthcoming. Now he was ready to praise the balding man with the meaty forearms. Embarrassed, Nathan mumbled half an apology. The keeper glanced at him quizzically as if he didn’t understand the language--Nathanatoll had spoken in his own corruption of Basal, a tongue he disliked. Sabuan was a beautiful language he held, a tongue of bards, while Basal was harsh and awkward. The keeper wiped the foam off the bench top with his sleeve and returned to tend the bar.

The dry cavern was a direct contrast to the coolness outside. Indeed the strange man at the bar had been right about the ale--and the stream. Nathanatoll could actually feel it rumbling beneath his feet. And through a tiny portal he could see the drizzle outside. This caused quite a stir as apparently, it seldom rained in these parts. Eventually the cliffdwelling facade of the cavern began to leak, bubbles of rainwater dripping from the ceiling to form tiny puddles. He watched a puddle form on his rough table top, noticing how the drops exploded when they contacted the bench. In the course of the

evening Nathan consumed fourteen pots of the delicious green ale served by the generous bartender. Figuratively he was almost gregarious enough to take a turn at the gaming table. Realistically he was drunk.

A heretofore slumbering Gnome of the Crimson Order announced a a cockfight. It was time to leave. Nathan’s thirst was slaked--over-slaked--and he eventually succeeded in pulling his huge bulk off the crude bench. Despite the spinning world he sauntered toward the exit and bumped his head on the ceiling before remembering to hunch over. The ever-generous barman moved over to him, smiled and nodded. Nathan stared, then returned the nod. What an incredibly polite man, Nathan thought. Maybe Syffians weren’t so bad after all. The man flashed a toothless grin. Nathan returned the grin and made for the exit. The keeper pushed his meaty forearm in front of the Sabuan, blocking his exit.

“Twelve pracksuits,” the keeper barked.

“Prack-suits?” Nathan mumbled. “Pracksuits? What are pracksuits?” “Pracksuits. Coin of the realm. Certainly you understand pracksuits, Sabuan. Where have you been the last year? Pracksuits. Bakirian silver. Twenty ingles to the pracksuit, mind you. Understand? For your green ales.”

Nathanatoll slowly began to apprise the situation. At the same time he began to grow angry. He cocked his head and a frown creased his homely features. He straightened to his full height--here the cavern ceiling allowed it-- and stared at the man who tapped his open hand.

“I...do not have more silver. No pracksuits or ingles. You should have informed me...that the ales were not free,” he said menacingly. “Then I would not have drunk more than I could afford, for that has never been my way.”

This wasn’t going to work. Three men at the keg line quietly dropped their hands to their sword belts. A fourth crept over from the cock fight. Nathan’s hand searched for his dagger. IT WASN’T THERE! Probably the bastard who jostled him at the bar. He

felt under his cloak for the small axe and was reassured when he touched its keen blade. Suddenly he didn’t want to control his anger. He also recognized that he could probably clear the tavern by screaming “I am Nathanatoll of Sabua!” Then again, that might backfire and drag the other twenty five into the fray. The odds didn’t look good.

“Pracksuits or silver? How will you pay? I do not ask what your business is, just that you pay your share. Pracksuits, mate. Which will it be?”

Nathan made no answer. His golden eyes darted around the room. It was always best to familiarize oneself with obstacles that could get in the way. Tables and chairs, walls, bodies.

“Friend,” the tallest of the four asked, “ya see, it is like I said to ya afore. We patrons here, we do not want trouble in this establishment. Especially, I tell you, from a sniveling dog of a Sabuan like ya. And we are very certain, that no one who stinks as badly as ya do, wants trouble either.”

Nathanatoll gritted his teeth.

“W-why did you down my green ales, heh?” the barman sputtered “Free are they? No stranger, we ask few questions here. But nothing is free. Twelve pracksuits it’ll be and then your stinking hide out of here.” The keeper wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Not a one of you steals a drink of ale here in MY inn.”

The inn fell silent with anticipation. Yes, there would be a row. In the tense silence, he could hear two of the men swallow. Nathan could suppress his emotions no longer and a broad grin spread across his dark visage. He was ready to act.

The Sabuan’s yellow eyes bored into the four men and the keeper, who caught his breath. Saml Twelve Eyes, the old blind Syffian beggar with the tattooed eyes, howled for green ale, then was quieted by a more sober patron. The keeper exhaled, the armed foursome moved stealthfully and Nathanatoll reached for the small axe with a smile that indicated he was ready for action.

“In als, a miniscule matter!” a cheerful voice called from the recesses of the cave.

“How say?” the barman asked. “I am out of pocket.”

“No matter at all! Eliomath? Understand? We need nothing to trouble us on this most memorable occasion. In als, winners like myself, well you know how it is, we simply love to spread our spoils of fortunes about and buy for others. Because there’s a another cockfight coming up, you see. And in als, I think I am going to be just the man to win again. Eliomath? Do you understand me?

The barman frowned. “I am still out of pocket.”

“So what have we here now? Twelve pracksuits Bakirian silver? That shiny debased metal that’s really not silver? That’s all? By the pages of ‘West”, it’s a pittance I tell you. In als, I will pay the silver, keeper of the inn with REAL silver. Faerian silver. And pay it gladly so that all these gentlemen here can sheathe their swords. Then no Bakirian soldiers will have the opportunity to hang six of us in the guise of keeping the peace! In als, it is sensible. Eliomath? So, here it is, goodfellow keeper. Count it out as you please so we might resume our most profitable entertainment.”

“Twelve pracksuits it is,” the keeper muttered, throat thick and dry. Nathanatoll glanced through the corner of his eye and found the voice to be that of the manofaere who had jostled him at the bar. Their good brawl defused, the foursome seemed crestfallen when the Faerian paid the bill. Not so the barman who cast an evil glance at the Sabuan. And not so Nathanatoll, who without so much as a word of gratitude, strode quickly out the entrance.