Cold obsidian

"Ugh, sylphs…" Kangassk shivered, bonfire and hot soup notwithstanding. “I read a lot of things about sylphs, none of them good. At least they’re herbivores… right?”

“Yes, adult sylphs are,” Vlada nodded, “but they still need a host to lay their eggs into so their carnivorous larvae would have food and shelter. Stay in the white gloom for too long and… you get the idea. That’s why you should never camp close to their territory. You wouldn’t die, of course, but being a sylph host,” she raised her hand in a meaningful gesture, “would be quite unpleasant.”

“So that’s true…” Kangassk shook his head.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the camp didn’t seem so nice and cosy anymore, imagination filled the darkness beyond the oaks with all kinds of horrors. With chargas still being away hunting the scenery looked even more threatening. No wonder Kan had such trouble to fall asleep that night. It was windless and therefore so quiet that he could hear every acorn the oaks dropped as it bumped noisily into the leaves on its way to the ground. Some animal howled in the distance? Here you go: falling asleep is cancelled again.

Eventually, Kangassk got several moments of peace that were enough for the sleep to claim him. When a late acorn fell right onto his head giving him a loud flick Kan didn’t even feel it. By this time his sleep was as deep as a Kuldaganian well.

It was so terribly early! It would be so not just for a traveller but even for a mad sunrise-drawing artist. No way waking up that early was normal! The pale pink line of light at the horizon was so thin the stars above didn’t care, they shone, bright and clear. The night, dark and cold, still reigned in the sky.

The chargas were the ones who woke Kangassk up with their soft paws and rough tongues. Vladislava was already wide awake and by then and was busy packing. She offered Kan her flask to help him brush the last remnants of dreams off. The fiery drink made him instantly imagine what being a fire breathing dragon might feel like. The stuff was that strong. Eating something with such a fire burning in his throat and stomach was out of question. Kan started the journey as he was: dishevelled, hungry, and only half awake. The world around him was a blur of colours. Blue made way to green and yellow as the sun rose but white gradually engulfed everything as they went deeper and deeper into the sylph territory. Finally, Kangassk fell asleep in his saddle, his head leaned against his charga’s furry neck.

The strange potion Kangassk had so trustingly drunk from Vlada’s flask got in his head in the most unexpected manner. He woke up with a start, feeling so brisk and full of energy it seemed he would never need to sleep again. The discoloured forest around him resembled a living pencil sketch slowly drowning in skimmed milk. The sky turned grey, the horizon burned white. Kan quickly glanced back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the colourful world they left behind. There was none. The anomaly affected his ability to see, he remembered, it didn't change the world.

Vlada rode beside him, looking like a living sketch herself, or like a celestial, mystical being. Both chargas lost their spots and stripes. Kangassk himself no longer was chocolaty brown. The white gloom thickened by the minute, eating the very contours of things away. But that wasn't the worst. The worst thing was them no longer being alone: the sylphs had arrived.

Colourless and silent, they looked like jellyfish with their headless bodies and restless tentacles. They kept their distance for now. A direct look made them flinch and hide in the trees. The sylphs were clearly afraid of the creatures that could see them. But as the white gloom approached the travellers, so did they. Kangassk remembered his bow carried away by Fervida. It had probably already reached Gileda by now and maybe even found a new master. A pity. It might have been useful here.

Two hours had passed, judging by the alien-looking white sun slowly crawling up. Kangassk was already almost blind, most of the world replaced in his mind by the white gloom. There were no more oak leaves, branches, and acorns, just an amorphous rustling mass above. There were no more grass blades, just a shapeless shaggy carpet on the ground. There were no more pretty “jellyfish” at the fringe of vision, just a squirming, wriggling mass resembling a huge hungry monster. And it moved even closer to the travellers.

Soon after Kan had lost Vlada to the white gloom his field of vision shrank so much it ended at the arm’s length, just where his charga’s head with angrily folded ears was. Several more steps toward the heart of the White Region – and the world went white, swallowed whole by the reversed darkness. That’s when Kangassk felt the presence of the sylphs. They swarmed him, not biting yet but actively seeking something: a pulsing vein maybe or a softer place on the skin, who knows… The sylphs chirped and screeched, their little bodies were all over Kan. One heartbeat, two, three… he clenched his teeth… two more – and he cracked up.

“Take them away from me!!!” he bellowed swinging his invisible hands in the air. “Help!!!”

“Stop it, silly!” Vlada’s voice came somewhere from the left. “Get yourself together! You don’t want to fall from the saddle here, believe me.”

Well, that was sobering. Kan stopped yelling and started thinking. He couldn’t do much to keep the sylphs away but he could do at least something, so he wrapped his cloak around him tightly, hid his face and hands and leaned against the charga’s neck, face down. That was a very good idea. Chargas could see in the white gloom just fine. From time to time Kangassk heard a loud crunch when one of them crushed a sylph or two with her jaws. After a while, most of the sylphs learned to stay away from the chargas’ heads, but only the heads. They still crawled everywhere else. And there were so many of them! Finally, even the chargas lost their nerves and ran.

Kangassk whimpered miserably with every step, his face buried in his charga’s fur. The world before his closed eyes was dark, with dancing colourful spots, which was way nicer than the unnatural, spotless whiteness of the real world he didn’t dare to look at again.

“You can get up now, Kan,” Vlada addressed him after a while.

He straightened in his saddle and beamed: the world was grey! Lovely, lovely grey! There were shadows in it and contours, still patchy, but quite readable. Kangassk could tell there were trees and ruins around.

The sylphs began their slow, reluctant retreat into the white gloom. Kan resolutely shook the most stubborn ones off his clothes and put to the sword several bloodthirsty specimens which kept pestering him and his charga no matter what. Vlada did the same with her own bunch of pursuers. The rest of the sylphs learned the lesson and kept their distance.

Kangassk made a deep breath and exhaled. It was over, they had gone through the gloom!

“I thought I’d go crackers there!” he sighed. “Damn sylphs…”

“Yeah, nasty critters. They give me creeps,” Vlada nodded.

The chargas agreed by setting their ears back and growling. The clever beasts looked very tired but kept running at the same pace. They had no desire to meet the sylphs again.

Kangassk looked around.

“What are these ruins?” he asked. With the danger behind them, he was back to his curious self again. “Who lived there?”

“Scientists mostly,” answered Vlada with a sad smile. “The worldholders had a big lab here. It poisoned two Regions in one go when it blew up. One of them we’ve just passed. The other is ahead of us.”

“The Dead Region…” Kan shivered and asked no more questions.

The grey sky above the Dead Region slowly turned blue, a dark, evening blue where the first stars already twinkled.

Chapter 4. Meeting place

The ruins kept dragging on to the north. The land around them was flat and bare, so the only thing that stood between the travellers and a horizon here was a thin veil of dust raised by the chargas’ paws from the ground.

Kangassk noticed that at some point the ground began to slope in the direction of the Region’s centre. He soon understood why: the ground they walked on was in fact a bottom of a huge crater. The ruins there no longer looked like broken teeth sticking out of the ground, they were just piles of crushed stone and dust scattered along the way and formed a circular rampart by the crater’s centre. To climb it, Vlada and Kan had to dismount from their chargas and go on foot. The view from the top of the rampart was so alien it sent shivers down Kan’s back. In the former centre of the ancient catastrophic explosion stood a huge black cube, perfectly smooth, undamaged, and free from dust. A lonely man sat on the cube, his cloaked head bowed, his shoulders slouched. He leaned his heavily worn staff against one of the cube’s polished black walls. Silvered by the young moon, the staff shone through the night like a fantasy mage’s weapon would.

Vlada approached the man.

“Hello, Sereg,” she sighed. The sadness in her voice was so deep that even Kangassk who had no idea what it was about could feel it too.

“Hello, Vlada,” replied the man. He didn’t sound happy as well.

The man named Sereg removed his hood and stood up. He was so tall he towered above Vlada and Kan like a mountain but his physique didn’t match his height: Sereg was so thin he looked starved. Kan could not guess his age. The stranger’s hair was grey, either with age or with dust, there were dark shadows under his eyes as if he had been running or fighting for a long time. One moment his face seemed young yet but the next moment it didn’t, not after your eyes met his.

Now, when Vlada stood beside this strange man, she looked way older than her young face suggested as well.

Sereg had no sword on him, just the steel bound staff, no doubt as heavy as a solid rock. Kangassk, a smith’s apprentice, knew the very moment he saw that thing that it was no mere walking stick but a weapon as deadly as a sword in the right hands.

“I came through the Chasm,” said Sereg in a hollow voice.

“Why?!” exclaimed Vlada.

“I was in a hurry.” He bowed his head slightly. “Didn’t want to be late.”

Sereg and Vlada sat at the edge of the cube. They paid no attention to Kangassk at all, he just stood there, as still as a statue, his hands resting on the chargas’ necks.

Sereg took a deep breath.

“Vlada,” he said in a grave voice, “it’s not easy for me to say this… At first, after my journal had disappeared I didn’t think much of it. Yes, I put an incineration spell on the journal no thief would survive. But I remembered showing it to Orion and thought that maybe after I had removed the spell back then I just forgot to restore it…”

“What happened, Sereg?” asked Vlada quietly.

Sereg didn’t answer, not with words, at least. Instead, he removed something from his neck and showed it to Vlada. Kangassk could see it too. It was a silver pendant on a long chain, once beautiful, now brutally vandalized as if someone had torn a big jewel out of its delicate pattern.

“No one besides us could have survived touching this,” stated Sereg. “You know why.”

Before Sereg said this, Kangassk had been just angry. Now, he was furious. He didn’t care for the unimportant details, like the fact that those two both were mages, obviously, but he did care about that man bluntly accusing Vlada of theft… His strength boosted by anger, Kan covered the distance between Sereg and himself in one jump.

“How dare you!” he shouted. “I know her! Vlada is honest and brave! She’d never fall so low as to steal some stupid bauble!” The grim silence that followed was like oil poured on the flames to Kan’s anger. “Apologise to her! Now!” he demanded.

Sereg gave the Kuldaganian boy a long, grim look. An expression of subtle mocking cruelty crossed the mage’s young face. The next moment Kan thought that he probably should have ran while he still could. The mage grabbed his staff and, leaning on it, slowly drew himself up to his full height. Kangassk had to crane his head to keep the eye contact, just like little Zanna had to recently. Sereg’s eyes were no longer grey, there were eerie blue fires lurking in them now.

“Be silent, soothsayer,” said Sereg with a distant, cold threat in his voice and a bit of the recent cruel mockery now put into words, “In my North, carrying a soothstone is worth from five to ten years of prison and all that time you’ll be busy felling trees in the bitter cold. Just saying.”

Kangassk flinched away from the mage, grasping at Zanna’s stone. He no longer felt brave or heroic, suddenly very much aware of what being an ordinary guy in a fairy tale feels like.

“Whoa, Sereg, take it easy,” Vlada stepped in. “His bride gave him that stone, he had no idea what it was.”

Sereg threw a suspicious glance and Kan, sniffed contemptuously, flicked the dust off his cloak, and seated himself on the stone beside Vlada again.

“Where did you find this little fool?” he asked with a sneer, his voice still ringing with distant anger.

“In Kuldagan. He insisted on coming with me, didn’t want to let me go into the Burnt Region alone. He is my valiant protector, sort of.”

Sereg glanced again at the startled boy who still stood there grasping at his stone, and gave a little choke of laughter.

“It’s not funny,” said Vlada reproachfully. “Way too many people had mistaken me for a mortal girl and gave their lives trying to save me. Kan had nearly lost his head too.”

“…No, it couldn’t have been you!” said Sereg out of blue and jerked his head up like a man awakened from a bad dream. “You were with him, crossing Kuldagan, when I discovered the theft of Hora Lunaris. This boy would confirm it, I’m sure. And he is right: you would never fall so low. It’s not your style, it’s not you… You know what, I forgive him. I’ll even give him a licence for his soothstone if you want. Just one more thing, Vlada… I know you can’t lie. Tell me, tell me now, looking me right into the eyes, that you didn’t take Lunaris and don’t know where it is.”

“I didn’t take Lunaris and don’t know where it is,” Vlada nodded.

A sudden realization struck Kangassk then, the moment of truth when all the pieces of the puzzle – little oddities, hints, suspicions – suddenly made sense.

Hora Lunaris! The stone that Kan called “stupid bauble” was one of the legendary magic stabilizers. The worldholders made it. Protecting it with a deadly spell was also their doing. “You can’t lie…” Here you go: Vlada the Warrior Who Can’t Lie. “In my North…” – a threat thrown by Sereg the Grey Inquisitor, the northern lord, no one else.

The wonderful world that had always seemed to be so far from everlasting Kuldaganian boredom, now was as close as it could be.

Kan felt dizzy upon realizing who were the two mages in front of him; who was the pretty girl he’d wished to stay with that night in Tammar; who was the morose guy he’d yelled at not a long time ago…

“What now, Sereg?” Kan heard.

The conversation had been going without him for some time. The worldholders, their recent bitterness gone, sat at the black stone side by side, holding their hands like a couple of enamoured kids and discussing their next move. The tired chargas, curled up in a ball, slept by their feet; the Dead Region remained silent. Not a single living soul in the whole world had noticed Kangassk’s “eureka!” moment.

“Let’s go to my Tower,” said the Grey Inquisitor. “I failed to track the thief while the trail had still been hot, so I guess it’s time for a proper investigation now. I hope we’ll learn something together.”

“May I take Kangassk with me?” asked Vlada the Warrior in exactly same tone a child uses to ask her mother whether she can keep some dirty, scrawny stray kitten. She even added: “Please, Sereg…”

“Oh, all right, for goodness sake…” the mighty mage yielded.

Yes, he allowed her to keep the kitten. Exactly that… Kangassk barely restrained himself from dropping a snarky comment about the situation.

They woke the chargas up. Since there were only two chargas but three people now, everyone travelled on foot. They had at least three days of slow walking in front of them according to the map. Maps don’t take a ton of minor obstacles into account, though, so in reality, journeys always take longer.

They didn’t come very far that day, just far enough to make a camp where it would be absolutely safe from sylphs. Kangassk, however tired he was, had a lot of questions but kept them to himself for the moment. The worldholders spoke quite freely when they thought he wasn’t paying attention and their talk was worth listening to.

Vlada mentioned that “Chasm” again, the shortcut Sereg used to get to the Dead Region quickly, and suggested using it to return to the Grey Tower. The stern northern lord turned pale as she said that.

“No way!” he refused. “You have no idea what’s going on there at the moment. The Jesters are raging. And the Stygian spiders… No, we’re not going back through the Chasm! Period.”

Two new words and a lot of new questions… Kangassk understood little but kept listening.

Their next day’s journey through the Dead Region was uneventful. The grey, monotonous landscape and the slow walking pace they were now moving at made all three people sleepy and grumpy. The gloomy mood didn’t affect the chargas, though: fully rested, unburdened, they frolicked around like little kittens; bags, packs, and rolls jumping at their furry backs as they played. The mighty beasts barely noticed them at all.

Kangassk kept observing the worldholders, the faint hope of seeing them perform a wonder or two still alive in his heart. Unfortunately, Vlada and Sereg didn’t even talk much that day. They walked side by side in meaningful silence, Sereg carefully matching his stride to Vlada’s pace, and looked no more majestic and powerful than Kangassk himself.

The further away they went from the crater the brighter the world looked. Soon, seeing tiny yellowish blades of grass sticking through the soft carpet of grey dust made Kangassk’s heart jump with joy. He had become very fond of everything green since he left Kuldaganian sands behind. Now, he even knelt down and gently stroked the sad tuft of wasteland plants with his palm, thinking of how he missed fields and forests he barely knew way more than anything related to his sandy motherland.

His hopes high again, he hurried to catch up with the rest of the group.

The grey day passed like a bad dream. That evening, they camped at a tiny islet of grassy turf at the edge of the Dead Region. There were meadows and trees visible in the distance, so the next day’s journey looked promising. But the night before it? Not so much…

They were out of firewood, so their supper was dry wayfarer rations and cold water, their only protection from cold were their cloaks. The chargas had to make do with wayfarer rations as well for there was no game to hunt and the local yellowish grass was not to their taste, the very grass Kangassk had kneeled to stroke several hours before.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Kan asked the chargas. “Sure, it’s not as green as you’d like but you can’t be so picky when…”

“Huh-huh, good luck making them eat moongrass, kid!” Sereg sniffed at him. It was the first time the ancient mage had noticed the Kuldaganian that day.

“What’s wrong with moongrass?” Kan asked, being as sincerely naive as he was curious.

“Moongrass is deadly,” explained Vlada, “it’s a kind of grass you need if you want to poison your arrows.”

“I had no idea…” Kan sighed and fell silent.

He kept himself busy with nibbling at the dry ration bar for a while and let his thoughts free to go whichever way they liked. They could go exploring all kind of dreams and fantasies but no, they chose to dwell on the past and make Kan’s mood spiral down into the greyest gloom as they did that.

“His bride gave him that stone,” Vlada had said yesterday, “he had no idea what it was…”

Kangassk nearly choked on his food. His loud, raspy cough that followed, was so cruel it made Vlada worry for his well being. The ancient worldholder sat beside the puny mortal and carefully patted him on the back.

“Vlada…” Kan uttered between coughs. “You said… cough… yesterd… cough… something about my bride and that… ss.. stone…”

“And?”

“So that… cough… little… cough… brat… is my future bride? ‘D… destinies cross’… You meant – this way?”

“True,” Vlada confirmed all his suspicions with one word and one nod. “Believe me, you disappointed her as well.”

“Why’s that?” Kan asked, so annoyed and surprised all of a sudden that he forgot about the cough.

“Zanna’s grandmother promised her a great mage and warrior for a husband when she read her fortune. Later, Zanna’s imagination might have added some extra virtues to the picture. You didn’t stand even close.”

“I see,” said Kan gravely and spread his hands in a defeated gesture. “Not a mage, not a warrior, just a usual guy… Yeah, I get it now…”

Kangassk heard the second worldholder snort behind his back in an attempt to stifle a burst of laughter.

“Hey, cheer up! She gave you the stone, after all,” Vlada patted his back again. “She’s giving you a chance…”

“Hmph! Like I need a snotty brat for a bride!” with that being said – in the most spiteful and offended manner – Kangassk turned his face away.

The pocket dragon went for his evening walk to stretch his paws and wings a bit. He tried his luck at hunting for a while but the only game for him there were gnats – nasty critters, hard to catch, no fun to eat – so he switched to burning grass instead. The tiny dragonlighter must have felt mighty and powerful now, finally having something to defeat. The poisonous moongrass burned and shrivelled, blue smoke curled and danced around him as he spat his tiny bursts of fire back and forth.

“That’s the lovely grass for you,” Kangassk said to himself, all the gloomy thoughts and dark regrets summed up in one phrase. “And I even kneeled to stroke it, like a fool…”

He counted that day among the bad ones, made a wish so the next day would be better, rolled himself up into his cloak, leaned against his charga’s furry shoulder for a pillow, and went to sleep.

Chapter 5. Red eyes effect

The last Region they had to cross on their way to the North was Shamarkash. It took them two days to reach a proper road leading there, the very road Vlada and Kan had followed since Border and then left to enter the Burnt Region. It made a long detour to keep the travellers safe from the worst anomalies of No Man’s Land; getting back to it was good news, at least Kangassk thought so.

That day they were finally not alone on their journey, the only downside of that fact being that the people they met had been terrified of them at first. To the five young traders armed with rusty swords and handmade crossbows, three strangers and two chargas looked like a mighty bandit army. The oldest of the traders was the same age as Kangassk, the other four were just kids. As to their goods, there wasn’t much in the cart pulled by a sad scrawny donkey.

“…It’s all honey, honey,” the elder trader kept babbling non-stop, still nervous after the initial shock. “It’s our first time on the road. Our land is famous for its honey, you know, yes, it is. So we decided to sell some. Who else would if not us? We’re the only youngsters in the village full of old people…” He fell silent for a few moments, then gasped as the realization struck him, “Oh, where are my manners! My name’s Astrakh. These are my friends Yles, Will, and Ergen, and this is my little sister Klarissa.”

The fifth trader turned out to be a girl dressed as a boy.

“Do you even realize what you’ve got yourself into, kids?” asked Vlada in a voice full of sincere pity.

Young, brave, stupid. Greenies. Children. It’s an adventure to them, a child’s play. Take your honey, ride to the nearest city, sell it, buy something cool, go back… What can go wrong, really?

“Is something wrong?” wondered Astrakh. He saw the warrior woman frown at his words and the tall man behind her nod in a grim and menacing manner but he still had no idea what was going on.