Part 12: Chapter Ten: The Lonely Centuries

Chapter Ten: The Lonely Centuries



The Dries are not a lifeless desert; they teem with aberrations of nature and magic. The Nightmares are enormous moths that can sap their victims' strength and conjure fireballs.



Were-cats are particularly vile beasts--mutant temptresses from Gehenna. While the monsters in the Dries are dangerous, the Were-cats are truly vile, having led many great men into oblivion. I admit satisfaction in killing them.



They are easier to defeat than others in the Dries, but still dangerous. I freeze them with the Ice Knife spell before crushing them with earth magic.



The Sandmen are enormous constructs raised by the desert's sole humanoid inhabitants, the Blue Men. The Blue Men are all that remain of the Uteri-Zeun, corrupted somehow during the Day of Grief. They are pin-headed, odd-shaped monsters, clinging fast to the fading remnants of their magic. They create Sandmen (and diminutive Rockies) because it is all they remember, along with a few scattered war-spells. In the thousand years since the Day of Grief, most of the great works of their civilization starved to death and crumbled. Murder-magic and the Sandmen are all they have. It's understandable why they are also psychotically hostile. I give them a wide berth, more out of pity than strategic necessity.



The map is difficult to follow; the dunes all blend together after a while. Fortunately a spirit ushers me along the correct path to the bulk of the Dries.

Not far away from the Sweeping Fields is a small building resting in the shadow of a ridge. I knock, and surprisingly somebody answers.



That armor can't be comfortable in this heat. His name is Wait. "I hate war," he says. "That's why I ran away. But it is lonely here in the desert so far from town. Long ago when we all got along and lived in peace, this was a green valley. But now..."

I ask what he means about war. He explains that King Beigis is growing bold and aggressive. The Kingdom of Iron is drafting more and more into the army--not just men, but women, and from the elderly to children younger than I. Yet the ranks of the common soldiers aren't increasing, but the elite Rose Knights are ever-swelling. He doesn't know what they are, only that they are more than a match for any normal soldier.

"I've heard that a lush and beautiful kingdom still exists to the south," Wait muses. "Can it be true?" The old legend of Shamwood, erased in an instant and leaving the Dindom Dries behind. It's an old story, a favorite of mine. Perhaps Fargo tried to find it in the desert?

I take my leave of Wait and head into the sweeping golden sands of the Dries.



I walk for hours, a fire spell keeping the worst of the heat off my back. If worse comes to worse, I can use my Exit spell to return to the tent; it is keyed to the last place I rested. My path feels correct somehow, as if I am being guided.

...What is that over the hill? It bobs in the air, invitingly.



In the middle of nowhere, a teleportation array. It can't be. But... well, I'm more than equipped to survive most of the threats in this world. If I may say so.



The world goes dark as I step on the array, feeling the weightless yank as the array takes me wherever it may.



...all the world.



This? This is the find of an age. Shamwood, found at last after a thousand years lost. My life, for all the horrors I have seen, is privileged beyond compare.

The first thing I notice stepping off the array is a spirit to its side. I reach for it, but a binding force--whatever separates Shamwood from the rest of reality--keeps me from reaching it.

Feeling against the barrier, I find a looping tunnel. I shove through the field, feeling like a worm trying to find cracks in concrete. But I manage to nab the spirit for my own. By the time I crawl my way back, night has fallen. Perhaps Shamwood is cut from the outside, but those still within are allowed to look out over what was once theirs? Some grand cosmic punishment?



I explore the courtyard before going into Shamwood proper. I find another spirit in the garden. It's still well-kept; perhaps there's someone here, or has all life stood still since Shamwood was swept from the face of the world/



The threshold looms ominous in the evening light. I step through to see what lies within Shamwood.



A bounty without compare--and two spirits! Marvelous. For once I indulge, though if any residents should appear and take issue, I shall leave what they demand.



I follow a flight of stairs; they lead to another tier of gardens. I walk around them again, taking in the beauty of the place (and another spirit).



Another door. I reach to open it, and it slides open of its own accord. I step through and see--



A man. I stammer, fall to my knees, bow. A living resident of Shamwood, a king, or one who has donned a king's vestments. He casts a spell and speaks to me in curiously-intoned, magically-translated speech. "What have we here? No one has found this phantom city in a thousand years." I cast a speaking spell of my own and explain that I have found my way here in a most capricious turn of events. Well, more "muttered" than "explained." The man nods, impressed (I hope) at my show of magic.

"I am Lavaar," he said. "I once held the Eltale Book. But when I opened it to unleash its incredible powers, I was not worthy. The only powers I could control were those of famine and destruction. I could hate, but not love, I could terrify, but not inspire. Finally, the great magician Epona, came to my rescue and freed me from the curse of the Eltale Book."

I ask what happened to the rest of Shamwood. He casts his gaze to the stone. The very epicenter of the Day of Grief. Nothing could have lived.

"But my penance is that I have been exiled here, alone for eternity, or until the evil that we call Mammon is defeated. Only then will I find my final peace." I ask him who Mammon is. I met a woman named Shilf who claimed to be his consort.

Lavaar shakes his head. Mammon was the secret god worshiped by the kings of Shamwood, a being from the stars who silently watched the world; Shilf was one of the temple priestesses, one of Mammon's symbolic "wives." The highest priestesses of Mammon knew spells that would allow them to live for ages without time seeming to wear them away. She must have been resting for one thousand years in that ruin, waiting for Mammon to stir again. The Eltale Book, the book of creation itself, held the secrets of death and unmaking; in retaliation for the opening of the book, Mammon moved to sweep mankind clean of the earth. Epona, the first Chosen of Water, and her other fellows in the Three sealed Mammon using the same energies of the Day of Grief, sealing what remained in the elemental gems. After one thousand years, Mammon had finally drawn enough of the Eltale Book's energy back into himself to wear thin his cage in anticipation of the Eltale Book's reopening.

"You with the precious gems of untold power are my only hope. The only one who can free both myself and all of Celtland from evil." With all four of the great gems, I may stand a chance against Mammon, he says. I could stand against him and win--not just prolong his binding, but actually slay him. I promise that, should the time come to pass, I will kill Mammon and allow Shamwood to return to the waking world.

He thanks me, and offers the four spirits at his altar. They are of a precious vintage, untouched for a thousand years; each one feels as strong as a batch of ten. I thank him, and promise his imprisonment will not be much longer.



I leave Shamwood. I will return once Mammon is defeated and welcome Lavaar to the world denied him for ten lifetimes.



I walk from the array for a long while, gathering my thoughts in the freezing-cold desert night. I come across, out of nowhere, a spirit flickering at the top of a hill. I collect it, and invoke the Exit spell to return to the tent. I sleep through the night; I'll tell the archaeologist after my adventure is complete. He'll have all the time in the world to investigate Shamwood. I hope his heart can take it.



Greenoch is not far from here. I remember the knight from Larapool. He'll want to know what happened to his family.



I smell ashes before I see the town. The outskirts of Greenoch are a blasted ruin.



Shannon is here, in the inn. It's one of the only buildings still intact. "Master Brian," she says, "King Beigis of Brannoch Castle has somehow gotten his hands on enormous powers. It is he who burned this city to the ground and made townspeople suffer, and he did it only to test his strength." She mentions Fargo was with him, incinerating whoever put up a decent struggle against the knights.

Beigis. The Iron Kingdom has always been hard, always a little more eager to take the violent solution. But this? Greenoch was under Brannoch's eye. Killing his own followers for--what? Just to test a spell? What kind of madness could drive a man to such evil?

I ask what happened to the townspeople. The innkeeper says they were all taken away to Greenoch Castle by the Rose Knights. I know my next destination.



How many souls lived here? How many has Beigis killed with his own hands? Did he cast the spell from a distance, draw it across the village, erase every living thing at a distance, no more personal than reports of the dead from a distant battlefield? Or did he make it personal, strutting through Greenoch and killing everything he saw, relish every death, crack jokes to his right-hand men?

I can barely comprehend what I see, barely grasp what Beigis has done. I smell human ash and all my conscious thoughts slip away, leaving one emotion burning like the sun at noon. I will kill Beigis. I have killed, but never meant to kill. Until now.

Beigis will die, and if it must be--

if it can be--

it will be at my hands.



So much magic has been used here that chunks of magma are becoming animate, fused with spirits unleashed through Beigis's horrendous spells. These Magma Fish are not especially threatening, their meteoric blasts easy to dodge. They are quite tenacious, though.



This isn't new. This land has always been ruined; I am nearing the Boil Hole, a searing scar on the face of Celtland. Spirits litter the craggy earth, and I must move carefully to keep my balance on the precarious surface.



As I get nearer to the Boil Hole, the heat pours out like water. I raise fire spells to control the heat, but even at their strongest the air is sweltering.



Here it is. Beyond the Boil Hole is Brannoch, and a king who would slaughter his own people for amusement. Fargo lives yet, my father pursuing him. I can only hope I can find my father soon. I don't want to lay siege to a king on my own.

Next: The beginning of the end.





Chapter Ten Point Five: A Last Prayer

And he prays:

My Lady of Mercy, I am so afraid.

And he hears the clank and shuffle and slither of Rose Knights, knowing they must smell him--knowing they are coming ever-closer. And he prays:

I don't know if Melrode will help us. I don't know if Bartholomoy can escape, if he can fight with that wound.

And he can feel Guilty, somewhere near Beigis, and he is casting spells never known in Celtland, never known on this planet.

What is he? What is it? What magic can piece together flesh as his can, what magic tears and shreds and warps?

And he remembers the prophecy, and he wonders if Guilty has indeed descended from the stars, the wisdom of countless distant worlds swirling in his head.

What can stand against Beigis? Can even Brian, with all four of the gems? Can any mortal spirit tamer?

And he has heard the demons howling in Beigis's sword, and Beigis, cackling, killing his own people, relishing the last moments of particularly pathetic subjects before killing them, and he laughs. It's all a game to him. Nothing is real. Nothing is real now that he has the book and two creatures from the stars at his side.

My Lady of Mercy, I pray you will guide us in this, the darkest hour of the world. I pray I will see you again. I pray for fire and water and air and earth. For Brian and Bartholomew. I...

And his thoughts break apart, reduced to a single image: the Rose Knights. He does not want to be torn apart and, still living, be stitched into one, or many, of the terrible slippery things bound up in armored shells.

And he remembers the Lady.

The star-spawn. The puppet. The way her neck never seems to move, as if guided by an invisible noose. The way her flesh and bone stretch and crack in impossible ways. That sleight, bland smile.

Save me. Please.

He hears them. They know where he is. The end is nigh.

He is going down with a fight. He casts his spell, and a little grenade appears in his hand, carefully-fractured ceramic around a charge of black powder. Black powder magic, a permutation of fire. The Rose Knight shatters the wall he has slipped behind, glides in, and the ceramic grenade tinks off its armor, and erupts in a plume of flame and tearing shrapnel. And it collapses in blood and filthy brown-black connective tissue, and its fellows are too stupid and automatic to care. He casts another spell, and a red-painted keg flashes out of thin air and arcs at its brethren like a Rock spell. And in another invocation the barrel ignites and they are blown to pieces by fragments of their own armor.

Everybody knows now.

But he's ready. He is an infiltration magi, master of permuted magic. His fire is the thunderous blow of black powder. His wind sees all, hears all, knows all. His earth is the steel of the forge and the deceptively-mighty mechanisms of a clockmaker. His water lets him slip out of sight like a puddle and drip through cracks in the walls.

He will strike like the lightning of the old gods, its source unseen, its effects blinding and deafening and tearing and burning.

He will fight so long as there is life in him, and so long as he knows his queen is threatened by Beigis, the man who sold the world.

All glory to Limelin, my Queen.

I am yours, always.