A Wizard's Tears (20 page)

Yet you cannot stop, girl. Keep running. The darkness never tires; never yields to pain. Neither must you.
A door appears in front of you. A door ablaze in a consuming mass of red and gold. The only way on. No! Do not stop, girl. The fire is light, safe. Feel its warmth. Succumb to it. Good! The darkness hisses in rage. It cannot reach you now.
Ignore the pain. The heat is warmth. Let it caress your soul. No, do not accept it as pain. It is mere illusion. Step through the door. Do not linger. To linger is to perish.
Your flesh burns in the fire. It is excruciating. Yet you are through! You survive. Burnt, but alive. You lingered too long! You lingered too long! You are to blame for your wounds.
A figure hobbles towards you. It is dressed in bandages and a cloak. Two evil eyes glint malevolently at you. You shriek, aghast at the terror before you. You have never seen evil so intense. Your senses explode, numb in fear and loathing.
Run, girl, run. Or death will catch you in its fearsome claws.
Yet, you do not move. Death laughs, cackling loudly. You are petrified. Why do you stay? Run. Keep running, girl. Never give up hoping.
Death reaches you, torments you. You writhe and recoil under the touch. Fight, girl. Push away the cloak. Death shall not claim you.
His eyes. You look into his eyes. You see your life, stretching away into the mists of cloud and vision. It is the beginning of the end. Run! You can still elude the forces of evil.
His eyes. So dark. So penetrating. They suck you in, ripping your soul to shreds. There is hollow laughter.
Girl, you die. Death has claimed you. Forever.
You did not run. It is your fault. You did not aid yourself. It was like you wanted it to happen.
Or, perhaps, you did not have a choice.
Death gloats. He licks the blood off of his bandaged fingers. His laughter echoes wickedly through his domain. He is supreme.
The world is set into darkness.
A skull floats in the emptiness, leering its corrupted smile at you.
There is an echo of eerie laughter.

Images.
An empty void of white nothingness. A gentle breeze on the face. A sensation of magick. Wisps of cloud, drifting noiselessly on an endless journey. Nowhere, yet somewhere. Pieces of rock and debris floating mysteriously in the air. Weightlessness.
Total silence.
Vergail’s mind spun, her eyes darting around her surroundings quickly and with fright. Had she dreamed the talons of death, or was she in his domain, looking out at a barren wasteland of cloud and rock? Was this a punishment, a torment, for her lack of faith, or for her love for a sorcerer?
The word sunk into her mind and lodged itself there, a feeling of completeness. She loved the sorcerer with all her heart. Her body sung the tune of his spirit, and her emotions were undeniable. If she had died, then she had already lived her journey to the very essence of souls; to the immense feeling of rapture.
She was lying down on a floating rock, moving noiselessly through the air. The sky, around and below her, was a deep azure. The oxygen she breathed was untainted, and filled her lungs with a purity she had not felt before. Vergail stood, and looked far and long around her.
Gravity obviously held no meaning, here. The rock she stood on was vast, covering several square metres. She supposed its weight would be immense, and, if she was back on Elrohen, this rock would have crashed to the earth, not float like it weighed no more than an eagle’s feather. Even then, it did not appear to be dropping, but merely drifted along on the small wind currents she could feel on her face.
Her immediate fright ebbed away, leaving her strangely calm. There did not seem any harm to being here. There was nothing, anywhere, as far as her eyes could see. She felt the small breezes surrounding her, pushing her rock along. It was comforting, almost. She was not stranded, but moving toward her destination, whatever that may be. She surmised she was on a journey, a great and beautiful journey, to the other side. The blue sky was beautiful, and she was not cold. Let the rock drift, she thought, and guide her to where she needed to be. She would dream of love.
A flash in the sky broke her reverie, and she looked over to the event. A small, ball of white light had appeared in the sky, and grew as she watched. Narrowing her eyes slightly from the glare of the light, Vergail could make out a figure, spinning outwards from the ball into the blue sky, silhouetted black against the backdrop of white brilliance. Her heart soared in anticipation. It was her love, come to greet her!
No, she was mistaken. It was not her lover, but a young man. He held a crystal staff in his hand, and, as she watched, he sped across the sky, becoming so fast that her eyes could not follow, until he became a white streak flying across the horizon. She watched him until he faded from view, disappearing into the vastness of the blue. As quick as it had come, the ball of white light blinked out of existence, and she was alone again with her rock. Who had that been? She had an odd thought that she ought to have known. The man looked familiar.
Moments passed, and her memory began to return in earnest. Images and thoughts of the world she had come from passed through her mind. Why was she no longer in Elrohen? Vergail frowned, struggling to remember. She could only grasp certain images, the pieces of an incomplete jigsaw. Why had her memory faded thus? It must have had something to do with her transition to this place.
She focused on the image of the man who had sped past her, as if he had been catapulted out of the white ball of light. If she could remember who he was, then perhaps she would remember more about herself. Perhaps she would remember the time of her death, for she must surely be dead to be here? Perhaps this was why she had seen the young man. Maybe he, too, had just died, and begun his own journey to the spiritual realm.
Another pocket of light burst into being in front of her, scattering her thoughts. She waited, expectantly, for another figure to appear, and she was not disappointed. This time, she recognised the figure, and her heart beat faster. It was her love! It was her bonded.
Lorkayn spun outward from the ball of light, but this time, rather than speed off like the other figure had done, he slowed down, his mouth chanting words, a spell. He was conscious! Vergail could not hear his words, but she could see him and her love for him poured out. With his face came more memories of their union, of their deep spiritual bond. Pieces of the jigsaw came to her then, and she remembered the portal, and the battle.
The sorcerer floated over to Vergail and her rock, landing upon it with ease. His robes, what were left of them, blew in the soft currents of the place. He appeared wounded, and she could hear his wheezing breath, as if each inhalation was a curse to him. His face, however, shone with an inner delight. He had made the journey back to the planes of nowhere, of that he was certain. Now, he needed to find his way through and home to Mincalen, to finish what he had started.
Vergail ran across the rock and enveloped the sorcerer in a bear-like hug. Her body melted against his, in excitement at the union again. She felt his body, and could hear his wheezing. He was hurt, but he had made it this far. Now they could begin their journey to the spiritual realm together, as one. Nothing could hurt him anymore. He was in a place where pain and time held no meaning.
Lorkayn pushed the priestess away gently. Shocked that he would not join with her again, in a beautiful entwinement of souls, Vergail frowned. Her face asked the question, not the mouth. Why did he push her away, when all they had experienced was love?
The sorcerer saw the look, but did not answer her initially. He turned away from her, and looked at his surroundings. He could feel his chest heave in pain. Each breath was ragged, and caused discomfort. The energies he had spent getting to this point were costly. He had hoped for an easier route back to the planes, an easier time in the world he had just come from. Yet that accursed blue skinned being had sapped all of his strength.
“I have returned,” said Lorkayn to himself, in a voice soft and commanding. Vergail had not heard the sorcerer speak before, and his accent filled her with wonder.
“What is this place?” asked the priestess, hoping he would answer her, tantalise her ears again with his song.
Lorkayn turned back, eyeing the priestess up and down, much in the same way a hungry man would eye a piece of tender, succulent beef. “My beloved,” he whispered at last, in a voice that held no emotion, merely calculating and dripping with cunning.
Vergail smiled sweetly, and looked down at her own, tattered robes. The black fabric rustled in the breeze. Her clothes were burned, leaving little to the imagination. One of her breasts poked through a hole in the robe, and her arms were bare and free as her robe had disintegrated there. She was suddenly conscious of the way she looked. Oddly she felt no chill in the air around her.
“Are we dead?” she pursued her questioning to the sorcerer. She did not say this out of worry, but mere curiosity.
“No,” answered Lorkayn. “We have, merely…travelled. Are we alone? One other was caught up in the maelstrom of the portal. Have you seen him?”
He must be talking about the man she had seen speeding across the heavens. “Yes,” she replied with delight, for the information must surely please him. “He looked lifeless, however. He was not moving himself, but he sped across the sky, and disappeared over yonder.” She gestured with her hand, showing him where she had seen the man disappear into the hazy blue of the sky.
“If he lived, he will not live for long, here. Alone, on this plane of air, he will be food for the inhabitants that dwell here.”
“There – are, creatures, here?” Vergail was startled, not by fear, but by the knowledge she was still alive, in a place where the laws that governed her world were meaningless.
“Yes, and we must not linger. I will need to summon a guide, one who will show me the way to my own world, and back to the destiny that awaits me. But first, I will need you, my beloved. I am low on energies, and you will sustain me with your love.”
Vergail smiled then, a mischievous, playful smile. She knew exactly what the sorcerer had in mind, and she did not mind at all. Casting aside her robe, she felt the strange breezes hit her whole body, intoxicating her, making her nipples stiffen. She simply waited for the sorcerer to walk over to her, and claim her.
She did not have to wait for long.

Fall, brave and foolhardy soul, fall into my jaws. I wait for you with teeth and death.
His eyes flared open, and the rushing wind singed his ears. He was plummeting, spiralling downward, towards a leering mouth. One that clamped its jaws tight, the sound of grating bone surging up to deafen him.
There is no escape for you, boy. You fall, right into my trap. You were folly enough to travel to my domain, and now you will be crushed, and used as I see fit. I will own your soul. I will rip your body away, peel away the flesh and blood, and devour you. He could hear maniacal laughter, and his own mouth opened, mimicking the one below him, but instead of laughing, he issued a scream, one that he could not hear.
Falling, falling into the mouth of death.
Boy, come to me. Meet your doom. Come to me.
Fall into the jaws of your defeat, and taste your blood on your senses.
He fell, unable to slow himself. He fell, and the teeth opened up to greet him. His mind screamed as the teeth bit into him, and he could feel agony…

Keldoran’s eyes opened in panic as the nightmare attacked his mind, and shook his very being. Instantly, realisation dawned on him that he was falling in a sea of blue sky. In anguish, expecting the ground to rush up and meet him, or millions of rows of death’s teeth to appear and rip him apart, he spun frantically over and over, a reaction to the fear. After moments of sheer shock and trauma, he realised he was not falling, but floating. His heart in his mouth, Keldoran looked all around, seeing nothing but blue sky. The light did not seem to come from any sun, but from somewhere on the horizon, something he could not make out.

After several minutes, Keldoran forced himself to breathe more calmly, and to stop his heart from bursting. As he slowly calmed down, his eyes could make out tiny rocks, and then bigger rocks, as if he were adrift in the middle of a vast ocean, surrounded by small islands of stone. He clutched tightly onto the crystal staff, and with the touch of it penetrating his racing brain, it soothed him, reminding him who he was. Keldoran forced himself to relax.

Clarity hit him. He must have gone through the portal. The very portal he was trying to destroy! Now he was somewhere…else, but certainly not on Elrohen. The thought excited him and frightened him at the same time. Another plane of existence, a place between worlds, this was where he was. He had read about such places; his mother had spoken of such places. Yet to be in such a place was awe-inspiring.

He found he could move, not merely float, but, by using his staff and his legs, almost swim in the environment. He clawed his way through the air, slowly, over to one of the larger rocks that drifted in this place. With effort he managed to clamber atop it, and from here he stood, feeling his body as light as a feather.

Vo’Loth had not prepared him for this eventuality. His journey had taken him further than just the fabled city of gold, back in Elrohen. He thought crazily what his mother would think of him now. Shaking his head, he tried to calm down once more, to focus his mind on more pressing matters: what was he to do now? He was a land mage, but this power had no purpose or force here. The land his power stemmed from had gone, for all he knew it was billions of miles away. How could he ever hope to return?

Despair could have quite easily raked across his spirit, but he had already been there. He thought momentarily about Relb, and the deaths of those that had ended him at this place in time. They would not be for nothing. If it was fated for him to come here, then it was also fated for him to continue, and try and find a way through this.

The priestess had to be here, too, his mind calculated. She had entered the portal first, and the resultant magick had engulfed him and sent him here also. He did not know if the sorcerer had succeeded in coming here, or whether he had been thwarted by the Ice Lord. It did not matter. He needed to find the priestess. It was the first step. Perhaps, here, she was free of the sorcerer’s magick. If that was the case, she would be able to help him, and he would be able to help her.