Hot Obsidian

Q: Are fairies dark creatures? Fairies are known to attack humans sometimes.

A: No, they are not. This is evident from the creatures’ behaviour. Fairies are hive species that react to anyone breaking into their hive or treading on their territory in the same way that bees or wasps do: by attacking the intruder. They never hunt humans on purpose. They also do not eat meat.

Q: But a fairy body is similar to a human body. Is it not an imitation of human shape, one of the signs of the darkness? And what about fairy larvae that can live in any dead creatures, including humans, feeding on decaying flesh?

A: Neither of those facts proves anything unless another fact, the most important, is present: imitation of human behaviour. No fairy imitates a crying child to lure a wanderer into its lair. No fairy uses human empathy as bait.

Fairies are dangerous, magically active animals you should be wary of but no, they are not dark creatures, not the children of the night.

“Tome of Dark Creatures” by Helga-Vlada and Sereg, Appendix 2

Firaskian walls followed the same protocols as temporary field perimeters did: they were divided into five segments, each segment had its own leader, a high-ranked Crimson Guardian. Aven Zarbot’s segment was the most important one of the five: she was in charge of the city gates. That circumstance made her a chief battlemage in Firaska but only in times of peace. If an emergency were to happen, like a massive invasion of dark creatures, the Elder Rule would make the oldest, most experienced Crimson Guardian – Sarien Sarra, a fragile old lady with grey hair and devastating magical powers – the head of the Firaskian mage army.

As Aven was walking through Firaskian alleys in the middle of the night in a company of five other mages, she couldn’t stop wondering whether the time to enforce the Elder Rule was now…

“Do you know those boys, Aven?” asked Sarien Sarra in her usual tone: cold, spiky, making everyone feel like a child caught with their hand in a cookie jar. Zarbot wrinkled her nose as she heard the question. Couldn’t help it. Luckily for her, it was dark enough, so no one noticed anything.

“I saw them enter the city in a company of eight other Lifekeepers and talked to their leader. He said that they were on a mission and wanted to hire a Transvolo mage in Firaska and jump to Torgor,” reported Aven. “For some reason, they decided to stay in the city, though. They earned the trust of one of the college magisters, visited the college library, and trained with the young mages. That was unexpected but not suspicious. Young Lifekeepers often travel together and share their experience with everyone who wants to learn, it’s their tradition. Magister Sharlou spoke well of them, so did the college swordmasters…”

“What kind of magic did the boys use to kill the morok?” Sarien interrupted her.

“It was killed with an ordinary sword,” said Aven.

The other mages exchanged puzzled looks behind Aven’s back. The rest of the way, everyone kept silent…

Lots of warm Lihts floating under the ceiling of a detention room filled it with enough light to keep all the night horrors at bay and enough warmth to make it cosy. Bala and Kosta shared that room with several sleeping citizens that had been caught by the guards in the streets after the curfew. What those people did was not a crime and the detention they got was only for their safety because of all the dark creatures prowling around, so the room did not look like a prison cell and the cots there were clean and comfortable.

The morok’s head had indeed allowed Bala and Kosta to enter Firaska at night but it had also alarmed the whole Crimson Guard. There would be questions, lots of them. Tired as they were, the boys were too worried to sleep now.

Kosta walked up to a sink in the corner of the room, grabbed a bar of soap and began scrubbing the dried blood from his hands, hair, face and clothes. The water turned crimson-red; there seemed to be no end to the bloody filth no matter how hard Kosta tried to wash it away.

Bala, feeling sad and useless, sat on his cot, and hid his face in his hands. A swarm of questions he couldn’t answer tortured him. He could make neither heads nor tails of the situation. What kind of disease Kosta had? Why did it pass after the morok had died? Why was Kosta immune to the morok’s horror magic? Who was that boy after all…

For the first time in his life, Bala regretted not having been reading more. The only things he could remember about moroks were a snippet of one of Kangassk Magesta’s incoherent lectures and a couple of his teammates’ bedtime stories.

He knew that moroks were dangerous magical creatures of a dark kind, because they preyed specifically on humans. He knew that the magic they used was not “spells” but rather a limited set of patterns. They knew a few illusion tricks – they used those to fake human appearance – and could spread waves of horror-inducing magic. An ordinary person could resist one such wave at best. Bala could not do even that: the very first wave had paralyzed him. But Kosta… Kosta stood his ground like a breakwater, through all three…

When Aven and Sarien arrived at the detention station, a couple of young Crimson Guardians woke up everyone in the room and escorted them away, leaving Bala and Kosta alone. They were going to be questioned, that was as clear as day, so they prepared themselves. Kosta, now scrubbed clean of most of the bloody filth, hastily combed his hair with his fingers in a feeble attempt to look nice. Bala did his best to put on a brave face; he was the “adult” here, after all, and needed to look like one.

Seeing the “adult” warrior the Crimson Guardians had told her about, the “adult” who in fact was just a teenager scared out of his wits, Sarien got suspicious, to say the least. But learning that this boy wasn’t even the one who had killed the morok and that the younger one – a twelve-year-old! – had done it, made the old mage almost furious. Was Aven Zarbot that incompetent? Obviously, those kids were not the ones who had killed the monster! But who did it then? And why did that person decide to hide? That seemed worthy of Sarien's attention.

“I heard, my dears, that you had killed a morok,” said Sarien sweetly, like a loving grandma would, while her battlemage companions inconspicuously spread around the room, keeping an eye on the boys’ every movement.

“Not we,” said Bala, a shame in his eyes, “Kosta did. To protect me. He is the true warrior here.”

“You?” Sarra gave the younger Lifekeeper a long look, with a very convincing surprised expression on her face. The kid’s clothes were still splattered with blood even though he had tried his best to wash it away.

“Yes,” he nodded with quiet dignity.

“Oh how interesting!” almost cooed Sarien and sat at a cot next to Kosta’s. “I feel that you are telling the truth, my sweet. But it’s all so very puzzling! The morok was killed with a simple sword. It’s so rare! You see how old I am and I’ve seen that done only once in my whole life. Thirteen years ago. I was leading a team of young mages through the Firaskian forest and we met a whole pack of moroks: four ancient monsters hunting together! Their illusion was extremely convincing: they pretended to be a family – wife, husband, two kids – and played their parts so well that it took us long enough to recognize the trap. By the time we did that, we were doomed. My companions were no battle Seven, and a single mage, even a mage of my calibre, was no match for a morok pack. A young woman saved us that day and she, too, like you say you did, killed the moroks with only a sword. Only her sword had a handguard, unlike yours, and was not a katana. But that woman was immune to the horror magic, just like you must be if you’re indeed a morok-slayer. She had raven-black hair, black eyes, and – I never forget a face, my dear! – she even looked somewhat like you.” Sarien looked Kosta in the eye, a silent question in her gaze. “Well, what else? The woman was wounded in the fight and I treated her wounds; it was the least I could do to repay her. That encounter left her four claw marks on her right shoulder. She didn’t say much about herself, not even her name, but she mentioned that she was from the No Man’s Land.”

Aven and her fellow mages were listening to Sarien with bated breath, surprised, to say the least. Why was she suddenly so friendly and open with the boy? Even they, her battle brothers and sisters, had never heard that story!

Kosta Ollardian was silent for a long time but Sarien Sarra didn’t say anything to hurry him up. Aven had no idea that her boss could be so patient.

“That woman was my mother,” Kosta confessed at last.

“Small world!” Sarien smiled admiringly. “Tell me, my dear, are you your mother’s only child?”

“No. I have siblings,” answered Kosta, as honest and vague as Juel was with Aven when they first met.

“Ah, don’t worry, I’m not going to interrogate you about personal things,” said the old mage in a warm, soothing voice. “It’s the way you and your mother resisted morok magic that interests me greatly. Your mother never taught me her secret. Will you?”

“No,” Kosta shook his head.

“But my dear boy,” Sarien chastised him softly, “it can save countless lives. Just think about it!”

“It’s just impossible to learn,” explained young Ollardian. “It’s what you can only be born with.”

Sarien Sarra looked disappointed but didn't change her sweet attitude toward the boy.

“Tell me, where is your mother from?” she moved to the next question. “Are all people in her native land like her?”

“There is a small settlement in the No Man’s Land. It’s almost near the Karmasan Sea, in the forest. The name’s Marnadrakkar.” Kosta shrugged. “But my mother is an exile. She was not like the other people there, so they told her to go away. That’s all I know. My mother rarely spoke about her past.”

The younger Crimson Guardians exchanged a few silent gestures when their boss wasn't looking. After so many years of working together, they had their ways of understanding each other without words. It was as clear as day to them that the old mage had big plans either for the boy himself or for his mother’s people.

Before his simple no, she must have dreamed of legions of specifically trained monster-slayers marching through the No Man’s Land. But after that, the flow of her thoughts changed: now it was Marnadrakkar people that interested her.

Sarien Sarra had a way of making a suspect spill everything out and was very creative in her approach. The grandmotherly tone she had chosen for that shy little boy was working extremely well. Slowly, one tiny confession at a time, the young Lifekeeper was opening up.

He knew little about his mother’s origins, indeed. Her ancestors called themselves Marns and were a small tribe surviving between a rock and a hard place, with yellow dragons reigning over the Karmasan Sea and children of the night prowling in the No Man’s Land. That must have been why there were so few of them.

Aven and her three fellow mages listened to Sarien Sarra with breathless attention. One word from her – and the Elder Rule would be enforced; one word from her – and the massive raid on the No Man’s Land dark creatures would begin. That meant a bloodbath, the end of the fragile peace they all were working so hard to keep, that meant a lot of mages, warriors, and civilians would die… One word. Just one word. Maybe not even Sarien’s but Kosta’s if he really knew something the old mage needed.

There was a moment when Aven was sure that her worst fears would come true: Sarien fell silent for a while, thinking, brooding over something, a frowning, pondering expression overshadowing her mask of grandmotherly kindness. Finally, she wished the young Lifekeepers goodnight and signed to Aven and the others to leave the room.

***

“You didn’t tell her everything, right?” asked Orion, a shaky mix of optimism and desperation in his voice. He was the one who broke the silence that followed Kosta’s report of the last night’s events. “That disease of yours is gone. You are no longer coughing.”

“Yes. I didn’t mention that to lady Sarra,” nodded Kosta.

Bala opened his mouth to say something but dropped the idea as he suddenly recalled the end of Kosta’s illness, that mass of black clots and red blood he had coughed out…

“My father warned me against telling anyone about it, even you. I was allowed to speak about my immunity to wild horror magic but never about the cause of my magical addiction,” he explained looking at Orion alone.

“Why?” a question followed. That was Lainuver.

“It would make me too valuable to Greys and Crimsons, Father said. They would recruit me whether I wished that or not.”

“Call me a shlak if I get what’s going on,” Oasis shook his head. “Kosta, can you just… explain that to me that like I’m five? I swear – and everyone else will join me, I bet – that your secret will be safe with us. We’re all your brothers of the Order, after all. And your friends.”

Not a single muscle moved on Juel’s face to betray his emotions but the last phrase hit him hard. Since the very beginning of the journey, he was doing his best to be distant. He failed. Those boys were good people. The more time he spent with them, the better he got to know them, the more he liked and respected the whole lot.

That peaceful time they were having together in Firaska worked wonders on the team’s mood. Also, it made Abadar’s words about the true purpose of the journey and the true fate of everyone under Juel’s command seem distant, almost unreal. Now, Juel’s memory shoved all that into his face again.

Anger, terrible, uncontrollable like a forest fire, rose in the young Faizul’s heart, consuming everything he held dear, leaving only duty and oaths behind…

“Shut up!” he growled at Oasis but instead shut up himself, terrified by his own inner rage.

Oasis took no offence. Just like Kosta was immune to horror magic, the urban jungle boy was immune to insults of any kind. He didn’t care to reply to Juel’s outburst – indeed, he barely even noticed it. Only Kosta mattered to him at the moment.

“I wasn’t going to keep you in the dark forever,” said young Ollardian. “I just had hoped that it would go away like it always had before. And, honestly, I didn’t know how to explain such a thing to you properly…”

“So your magical addiction is a reversed one: not absence but presence of the addiction’s target triggers it, right?” said Milian, excited. “It’s an extremely rare type!”

“Yes,” Kosta nodded again. “But not only a morok can trigger my illness. Any other child of the night can: drekavak, navka, siren, vetala, bargest, werewolf… you name it. The closer they are to me and the longer I stay close to them, the worse my illness gets. You saw that yourself. It started with just a sore throat at the Magrove Forest but worsened every day I stayed in Firaska. I hoped that the monster would go away or that the Crimsons would kill it.” Kosta lowered his eyes, suddenly shy. “I’ve never killed any dark creatures before. This morok was my first kill…”

“Why didn’t you tell us? We could've helped you!” grunted Lainuver.

Bala turned to him and made a hasty forbidding gesture which, along with Bala’s sad face, explained a lot. Maraskaran alone, of all people here, knew how helpless a warrior was when a wave of morok’s magic hit him.

“Well, we could have told the Crimsons about the monster then,” Lainuver kept going, “let them face that thing with a couple of battle Sevens!”

“No, we couldn’t,” Orion stopped him and added with a tired reproach, “Kosta already told you why. Just imagine what the mages would do to him if they learned that he can sense the darklings!”

A heavy silence fell. It made the gloomy little room look even darker, despite the golden rays of the morning sun slanting through the open balcony door.

Kangassk Ollardian was right to warn his son against revealing his secret to anyone. And most likely about the mages instantly recruiting him too. They would drag him into every raid, use him to detect dark creatures as a village sorcerer uses a divining rod to find water. “Oh, the boy is coughing again? Good! Reinforce the perimeter and tell everyone to stand ready!”

Kosta’s life would turn into endless torture. How long would he live? An illness that makes you cough blood is no joke. Oh, but no, they would not let him die too soon! They would prolong his life – and suffering! – with medicine and magic and in the end they would assign a battle Seven to him so the donors would sustain his life as long as possible.

Sainar used to say that the worldholders and their mages would do anything “for the greater good”. So why wouldn’t they sacrifice one boy to a "good" cause…

That made Sainar’s own decision – about sacrificing not one but nine boys to his Order’s plan – look quite ironic. But only Abadar, Orlaya, and their apprentices knew that, of course.

For the whole time of Sarien’s Sarra interrogation, it was touch and go whether Kosta would live. The boy steered through all her tricks and traps as gracefully as a pirate captain steers his ship through the Perilous Archipelago. Even Juel gave a deep sigh of relief after learning that. He wished he could somehow steer between his oaths, duties, honour, and the Order’s mission the same way and bring his little team – all the boys – alive to the final point of the journey. It was a beautiful dream, a dream worthy of living for. One moment, it quenched Juel’s rage and lit a small candle of hope under his heart. But a reminiscence that rose in his mind the next moment barred its way…

“I don’t want to lead these people to their death,” said Juel, looking his master in the eye. “I’m not a murderer and not a liar.”

“I know,” said Kangassk Abadar, crossing his arms on his chest. His cloak was flapping in the wind like a flag. “I will be honest with you, Juel. There is no one to murder there. They died a long time ago, even before becoming the apprentices of the Order. You alone are real of the whole team.”

“I don’t understand…” recoiled Juel.

“I know. But you will,” Abadar leaned forward. “You will see the truth, all of it, very clearly, when you step onto the shore of the Karmasan sea with Hot Obsidian burning on your chest.”

“…died a long time ago…” The cruel phrase echoed in Juel’s mind again.

He raised his eyes and saw that a lot of time had passed while he was brooding over the past, relieving the strange conversation over and over again in the vain hope of grasping the meaning of his master’s words.

Bala was busy cooking breakfast for the whole team. Kosta had changed into a clean set of clothes and was asking Pai about a magical way to remove blood stains because plain soap had been no help. Orion was making a wooden flute for Jarmin, and Jarmin was nagging Oasis about more stories…

With Kosta's life no longer in danger, there were chatter and laughter in the room again. More than ever, the small flat felt like home.

“…you alone are real of the whole team…” another echo rose from Juel’s memory.

The austere Faizul hid his face in his hands. He felt like crying now, as a helpless little child would.

Chapter 7. Divide

When I was small

My sworn oath was spoken

And I will honour it whole.

My word was given

Ere my mind was woken

When there was peace in my soul.

I kept my promise

Through the years, unbroken

And I have won me a sword.

If I could return,

Knew what it might betoken,

Yes, again I would give my word.

Max Milian, when he was a child

Einar Sharlou was enjoying the view opening from the college loftiest tower. He was alone there, on the balcony, alone with his thoughts.

Those were the last days of spring but the weather was summer-hot. It turned the whole city into a giant frying pan and made the college moat the only safe haven for everyone suffering from the heat. Einar could hear students and other kids splashing in the college moat and deeply regretted being unable to join them. A magister's status had its downsides, indeed…

With a tired sigh, Einar turned away from the city and gave the lush green of the Firaskian forest a long, yearning look. There was shade, beautiful, tempting shade under the ancient cedars; and quiet. If only that charming place weren’t crawling with dark creatures… like the one his young friend Kosta had killed recently. A twelve-year-old ambasiath.

The morok was about two centuries old. Einar was the one who had put its head into a formaldehyde jar in the college museum, so he knew that for sure. Just like most mages, Einar Sharlou usually considered the ambasiaths’ way a waste of magical potential. But sometimes, their deeds made him doubt himself. Kosta’s famous victory over the moroks was certainly one of those. And all when he, Sharlou, must finally decide what to do with Pai!

Pai Prior was a talented boy; even more: a boy living and breathing his dream of becoming a mage. He studied so hard, he shone so brightly! He was everything Einar dreamed of being and was never going to be, but instead of getting jealous, the junior magister wanted to help. After these months, the very thought of letting such talent go to waste became unbearable to Einar Sharlou.

But accepting Pai to the college was easier said than done. Mages and ambasiaths had an unspoken treaty that forbade either side from recruiting children from the other. Overcoming that was no laughing matter, especially for someone standing so low in the mage hierarchy as Einar did…

A scream interrupted Sharlou’s thoughts… a painfully familiar scream.

A Transvolo done properly looks like a ripple in the air for an outside observer, a slight blur similar to the one you see when hot air “dances” above a frying pan or a Firaskian street on a summer day. That ripple plays tricks with the observer’s vision, making it impossible to spot the exact moment when the Transvolo’s caster appears.

The Transvolo witnessed by Einar Sharlou above the college was wrong, horribly wrong. There was no peaceful ripple in the air, no gentle blurring of vision. No, the fabric of reality itself had twisted in a tight knot that burst with a sickening gurgling sound when the caster of that abomination appeared. Pai Prior.

If it wasn’t for Einar Sharlou who had happened to be there by pure chance, that fall would have killed the boy. Yes, Pai knew levitation spells: both his own and the classic one, but lifting yourself with a levitation spell is no easier than lifting yourself by your own bootstraps. Einar caught him with a hastily cast levitation loop just in time.

The magister lifted Pai to the balcony and released him there. The child mage was ghastly pale, his teeth chattered, he trembled like a leaf in the wind, clearly shaken by the experience. His saviour looked no better.

“Let’s go to my study and drink some coffee,” said Einar Sharlou. Pai nodded, a blank expression on his bloodless face.

A cup of steaming coffee and a chocolate cupcake restored Pai in no time – he even started laughing at his mistake – but did little to calm down his young mentor. Einar wanted details – how exactly Pai had cast that horrible Transvolo – and wanted them now.

“You are lucky, lucky kid!” he said, covering his face with his hands. “The basic principles… you don’t understand them at all. I can’t blame you – they take years to learn and comprehend – but attempting Transvolo without them is pure madness…”

“But master Sharlou! I noticed some similarities, patterns, and…” Pai tried to chime in.

“I know,” Einar stopped him and added softly. “I know. You are a very talented lad, Pai, and it shows. But, please, next time, take me with you. I haven’t built my bridge to casting Transvolo yet but I know the theory well. And another thing: don’t experiment with height yet, work on the ground level. Next time, no one may be there to catch you.”

…For many years, Einar Sharlou had been dreaming of this moment, the moment when he would see the stars of Transvolo for the first time. Of course, he had always imagined casting it himself, not just following a thirteen-year-old mage. But the stars were no less beautiful for that.