The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1) (33 page)

…and something even more uncomfortable happened at the end, as if he had been shunted, violently, about twenty feet to one side. It felt like the whole world had tilted quickly, then righted itself.

All of that took about five seconds, and he stood, blinking rapidly, in front of the Greenhouse door.

Morningstar looked at him with some relief. “There you are. I was starting to think you hadn’t come with us.”

Kibi couldn’t focus on what Morningstar was saying; his innards were still swirling like water in a washtub.

“Oh,” said Aravia. “The Greenhouse is protected from that kind of ingress. Should have thought of that. By the Gods, I’m tired. I think I’ll—”

She lay down suddenly on the front path and closed her eyes.

Kibi looked around, impressed. The girl had done it!

“You go on ahead,” he said to Tor and Morningstar. “I’ll carry these three inside.”

* * *

With Morningstar’s assistance, Kibi set Aravia and Dranko down gently on couches in the living room and propped Ernie in a padded armchair. With many apologies Tor headed up to his room to immerse his hands in cold water. Morningstar likewise excused herself to lie down after all were inside. Only when everyone was settled in did Kibi stump upstairs, intending to wash away the soot and grime he had acquired during their encounter with Hodge. He found two things amiss.

First, the door to the secret room was open, and it had been closed when they had departed for Seablade Point. Maybe Abernathy had called and chatted with their butler while they were away, or Eddings had just been dusting in there and forgotten to shut the door behind him. He poked his head into the little room with the crystal ball and found it undisturbed. Well, no matter; he’d ask Eddings about it later.

His own room was the next down from that one, and there he discovered the second disturbing thing: Abernathy himself was sprawled out on his bed, face down, limbs splayed, as though he had gotten himself drunk and wandered into the Greenhouse by mistake before passing out. His body was outlined in that blue radiance that meant he was both here and still in his tower; Kibi never quite understood how that was supposed to work.

He hurried over and turned the old wizard onto his back, then drew away in shock. One side of Abernathy’s face was badly burned, and the other had three oozing claw marks raked across the cheek. His torn, singed robes were spattered with blood and shimmered with tiny flakes of something like red-orange mica schist. It was as if someone had sprinkled him with rock dust.

Abernathy’s eyes fluttered open.

“Kibi…”

“Mister Abernathy, what in the Gods’ names happened to you?”

“Listen to me,” Abernathy whispered. Kibi had to put his face all the way to Abernathy’s to hear. “The…blood gargoyle. Attacked my tower. I was prepared to fight it off, thanks to your warning, but still…still…”

“Sir, you need help, but Dranko’s out cold. What should I—”

“Listen! While I was…distracted fighting the gargoyle, something…new got through at Verdshane. Not…not Naradawk, but someone very dangerous. Salk…saw him as he made the crossing; a man wearing the…crimson armor…Naradawk’s servant.”

Even Kibi could add two and two. Morningstar’s dream-assailant!

“Kibi…” Abernathy was gasping out his whispers now, his chest bucking with silent punctuating coughs. “I’ll be…fine…eventually, but…we need the Crosser’s Maze. Arch…Kivian Arch…counting on you…”

Kibi wanted to fetch the others but refused to leave Abernathy alone. “What about yer archmage friends? Can’t they help?”

“Busy,” Abernathy wheezed. “All they can do to…keep Naradawk out…has to be…has to be you.”

Abernathy’s eyes closed, and his coughing ceased. For a terrified moment Kibi was sure the wizard was dead, but the old man’s chest still rose and fell, barely.

“Abernathy? We just came from the arch. It ain’t open! And somethin’ happened to Grey Wolf; he’s gone missin’. You need to tell us what to do next. Abernathy!”

But the old wizard was comatose.

Kibi knew he should go tell the others right away, but he had to sit a minute. It was too overwhelming. Here he was, in a fancy house in a city far from his home, magicked there by the world’s most powerful wizard and charged with protecting the kingdom from an ever-expanding roster of enemies—cultists, fire-worshippers, a locked-up monster king, a guy who could stab you in dreams—and now, here was that wizard, injured and unconscious, in his own room, having just reminded him that the survival of Charagan hinged on the efforts of him and his companions.

The Gods had made him strong, but damn if they weren’t giving him a heavy burden to shoulder.

“I ain’t cut out fer this,” Kibi muttered. “Better warn the rest.”

He turned to go, but something out of place caught his attention, something sitting on the lip of the water tub in the corner. He stared at it for a moment, his distracted brain a bit slow in recognizing it.

It was Bumbly, Ernie’s stuffed bear, its head drooped low over its chest.

Kibi took a step towards it, and at his approach the head perked up and its left eye blazed green. Living crystal spread across the bear’s face from its embedded gemstone, then down its body until the entire animal looked carved from frosted jade.

“Not now, you blasted bear!”

It wasn’t enough that Abernathy was out cold in Kibi’s room. He was tired and still woozy from being teleported, and this whole thing felt like a mostly bad dream, and now his mysterious talking green rock was coming to life again? Gods, it was too much!

I LACK TWO WILLING BROTHERS.

“You said that before!” Kibi shouted at it. “Just tell me what you want and stop with your stupid riddlin’!”

YOU MUST BRING MY BROTHERS. ONE IS CLOSE.

“Are your brothers more Eyes of Moirel, like you?”

IN THE YOUNG HILLS EASTWARD, THE WATER BENDS ’ROUND. A MOUTH OPENS. INSIDE IS MY BROTHER.

“Dammit, be more specific!”

HASTEN. THE SHARSHUN SEEK US, AND IF THEY FIND US, THEY WILL UNMAKE THE WORLD.

“But I don’t…”

KEEP ME SAFE, KIBILHATHUR.

The Eye dropped from the bear’s socket and clunked onto the wooden floor. Bumbly quickly shed its green coating into the air and toppled backward into the empty tub. Kibi picked up the Eye of Moirel, no longer colored, just a large round diamond with a tiny heart of jet.

“Guess Abernathy’s trunk weren’t good enough,” Kibi said wearily to the diamond. “Not sure how to keep you any safer.”

* * *

Kibi was unused to talking, but he had a lot to say.

Finally, two hours before midnight, everyone was awake at the same time. Kibi could have knocked over any of the company with a feather. It had been a long, trying day, a bloody day after a late night camping in the woods, but he knew he shouldn’t wait until morning.

“I got some things you’ll all want to hear.”

The others became quiet in a hurry and stared at him. His face reddened beneath his beard at the notion they thought him worth listening to. He was still overwhelmed, but being in the presence of his friends helped to calm him.

First he told the others about Abernathy, currently convalescing in Kibi’s bedroom. “Guess the gargoyle must a’ come after him. He said ’cause of our warnin’, he was able to beat it, but while he was dealin’ with it, that’s when that Dreamborn fellah showed up.”

“I’ll check on Abernathy as soon as I have the strength to get out of this couch,” said Dranko. “Maybe next week or the week after.”

It didn’t seem like a joking matter, but that was Dranko for you. Next, Kibi reported what Bumbly had told him about the Eyes of Moirel and the Sharshun. “I think we oughta do what it says. We ain’t got no new orders from Abernathy, and the world gettin’ unmade sounds like a thing we oughta keep from happenin’.”

On that topic there was unanimous agreement.

“One more thing,” said Kibi. “I found this in Hodge’s office back in Seablade Point.”

He produced the scrap of prophecy and read it aloud. When he was done, Aravia asked to see it, and he handed it over.

“It’s obvious, don’t you think?” she said.

“Nope,” he answered. He was never much good at riddles.

“Well, here, think about it.
As the Emperor was driven out, so were we also, for a long season, a bitter season and a cold.
Abernathy told us that Emperor Naloric had fire-worshipping allies during the war that ended with his banishment. Those would be the Kivians, Hodge’s people, who came from the land on the other side of the Uncrossable Sea.”

Kibi pondered. “So what’s a Ventifact Colossus?”

“I don’t know,” Aravia admitted. “But according to Hodge’s prophecy, it’s going to get killed by three Stormknights, and that will signal, or herald, or otherwise coincide with the Kivian Arch opening up.”

Stormknights, Kibi knew, were warriors who venerated Werthis, the God of War.

“And that’s good, right?” Kibi hoped he was keeping everything straight. “We need that arch open so we can get to Kivia and find Abernathy’s maze that will stop Naradawk.”

Ernie’s eyes grew wide. “But we just stopped them, didn’t we? We killed Hodge! What if we needed him to keep doing his rituals, to open the arch for us?”

“There’s still too much we don’t know,” said Aravia. “Mostly I wish I knew what a Ventifact Colossus was.”

“Aravia, if you don’t know what it is, no one does,” said Tor.

“Previa might,” said Morningstar. “I’ll pay a visit to the temple before I go to bed. We’ll see if there are any records of a colossus in the Ellish archives.”

Once their conversation was over, the rest of the company went to sleep. Kibi was tired, too; though he had been spared the worst ravages of Hodge’s fire spell (for which he still had no good explanation), he was bone weary and ready for sleep. Of course, Abernathy was in his bed, but he didn’t mind taking the couch for a while.

But first he went to the kitchen for the heaviest cast-iron pot he could find. Into this he placed the Eye of Moirel, then wrapped the lid tight with a long length of rope. In the basement he chose a second iron trunk (since there was a hole blasted right through the metal of the first one he had used) and set the pot down inside it. Trunk locked, closet door shut, he wondered if there was anything more he could do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EVERYONE READY TO go?”

Morningstar stood by the Greenhouse door, tapping her foot. For all that Charagan was in peril, most immediately from world-unmaking gemstones, her companions showed a troubling lack of urgency. Was it because they were rudderless without specific instructions from Abernathy? Grey Wolf would have kicked everyone out the door by now. Where had he gone? Was he even alive?

“Almost!” called Aravia. She was cramming her pack—and also Tor’s—with books.

Ernie came in from the kitchen and handed out loaves of bread. “Some things can’t be rushed.”

“Fine,” Morningstar grumbled. She glanced at the sunshine streaming in through the window and squinted into it defiantly. Dranko was reclining on a living room couch, looking peaked. Before breakfast he had been to see Abernathy but could not wake the old man.

“Hey Aravia,” said Dranko. “Now that you can cast
teleport,
why are we bothering to walk anywhere?”

“It doesn’t work that way. I can only teleport
to a place I’ve been. And the more familiar I am with the destination, the less likely it is that something will go wrong.”

“Should I ask what kind of things can go wrong?”

“There are several possible failure cases,” said Aravia. “We could end up missing the target by arbitrary yards or miles. Or we might mistakenly arrive in a place with superficial similarities to my intended destination—like I intend an arrival at the Old Keg but take us to the Shadow Chaser instead. Worst case is solid displacement, where we end up embedded in the ground, or walls, or trees, or even other people. That would be messy.”

Dranko winced. “How messy?”

“Fatally messy.”

“Right.”

“Also, until I refine my technique and get a lot more practice, a single
teleport
will take nearly all of my casting energy, so I’d rather only use it to take us someplace we know is safe.”

“Do you think we’ll be in danger, going after another Eye of Moirel?” asked Tor. “It’s just a gemstone, isn’t it?”

Kibi shook his head. “The green Eye we got, it said them Sharshun fellahs were after ’em too, and you know from experience how dangerous they are.”

“Right,” said Tor with a grin. He probably relished the thought of a rematch.

* * *

Though the Eye of Moirel’s instructions to Kibi had been cryptic, Aravia claimed they made perfect sense. To demonstrate, she drew by memory a detailed sketch of a region twenty-miles east or so from Tal Hae, where the Talflun River took a sweeping curve through a cluster of hills. As for “a mouth opens,” she guessed that the mouth of a cave was the mostly likely interpretation.

After the long cross-country marches and multi-day journeys in the holds of ships, a two-day stroll across fields and meadows was more than welcome. Morningstar still found the sun too bright, and kept her hood drawn forward to shield her eyes, but it was tolerable. Had it truly been less than two months since her dispensation from the church to travel in daylight?

When all of this was over, how would the Ellish temple react to her acclimation? More and more, she found herself caring less and less. Her devotion to Ell Herself was not diminished, and her encounter with Previa had given her some hope that her sisters’ rejection need not be universal. Either way, let the others think what they would; Rhiavonne had sent her into the blistering desert, and she had emerged burnished but no less a sister of Ell than before.

“It all looks so green,” she said as they hiked alongside a burbling stream. “I can distinguish colors with my darksight, but they’re different. Muted. I know it’s blasphemous to say, but it makes me sad that my sisters don’t get to experience how colorful the world is. They can only remember it from childhood.”

“It’s your destiny,” said Dranko. “Why do you think Ell named you Morningstar and gave you white hair? You think She didn’t know you’d end up tromping around outside looking for magic rocks?”

“It makes more sense now,” she admitted. “And I try to be appreciative that I’ve been put in this position. But I’d always hoped that when I learned the reason I was born so different, it would be something that would make me
less
of an outcast among my sisterhood. But that was not to be. I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

“Believe me,” said Dranko, “I sympathize. But look on the bright side. Someday, when we’ve saved the world, are famous heroes, and they’re having parades for us through the streets, you can go back to your temple and tell them all where they can stick it.”

Morningstar smiled but said nothing. Sometimes Dranko was almost tolerable.

After a few seconds’ pause, Dranko added, “When I said ‘look on the bright side,’ that was just an expression.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” said Morningstar. “A life without friends made me value simplicity. As much as learning to adapt to sunlight has been a transition, it’s been just as trying, accepting that my life is never again likely to be simple.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Dranko. “How much simpler can our purpose be than ‘stop a world-conquering evil monster from busting out and killing everyone?’”

“But we’re not doing that right now. We’re—how did you put it—‘tromping around looking for magic rocks.’”

Dranko grinned his tusky grin. “Stopping the world from being unmade by blue-skinned bald guys will have to suffice.”

* * *

Morningstar had a dream that night. It was no ordinary dream, but not a Seer Dream either, or however one might describe her encounter with Aktallian Dreamborn. It was, she felt, the end of all that she had been, and the beginning of all that she might become.

Greetings, Morningstar of Ell.

All around her was starlight and grass, the air crisp with midnight chill. She was armored in a shirt of mail rings, and a triangle shield was on her arm. Her mace was at her belt.

The being who had addressed her was majestic and dark, an angelic woman wrapped in black robes, a sword upheld, her feet hovering inches above the turf. But Morningstar did not fear her—at least, not in the same way she feared Aktallian. Divinity shone from the angel’s noble face, her holiness so spiritually effulgent that Morningstar shielded her eyes and fell to her knees.

Rise, Morningstar. Rise and be glad, for you are chosen.

Morningstar stayed kneeling, looking at the ground. She didn’t understand but didn’t need to. “I am not worthy of being chosen.”

That is not for you to decide. Nor would it matter, were it to be true. Ell has chosen you. Look upon me, child.

With an effort of will that bettered any she had made in this life, Morningstar raised her eyes. The angel’s face was stern but merciful, beautiful but perilous. It was
pure.
Morningstar was not looking upon the face of Ell, but on something that reflected a part of Her grace.

“What must I do?” she asked. “For what have I been chosen?”

You are a child of darkness, but you are the Child of Light and the Daughter of Dreams. Ell has made you a Dreamwalker, the first in a generation.

“I’m sorry…I don’t know what that means.”

All dreams have a place, and all dreams linger. Together they form an expanding tapestry through which some may walk. The Tapestry is many things to many dreamers, but for you, Morningstar of Ell, it will be a battlefield, and you must be ready to fight.

“Aktallian. Is he whom I must fight? I am not strong enough.”

You will be. I will train you. And when the time comes, you will find others from your sisterhood to fight by your side.

Morningstar bowed her head again and still would not stand in the presence of this avatar of Ell. “How is this possible? The Gods cannot interfere directly in the mortal affairs of Spira. The Injunction forbids Them.”

I am bending the rules. We are not on Spira. I will train you here, in the weave of the Tapestry that you have dreamed. Now stand, Morningstar of Ell.”

Morningstar stood and looked upon the face of the avatar. “Is this my destiny?” she asked. “To throw down Aktallian? But what of my service to Abernathy?”

The future is a thousand roads to a thousand fates, and the Gods see them all, but they cannot tell which path you will walk. They can but set out lights to guide your way. Now I have talked enough. Morningstar, Shield of Ell, Child of Light and Daughter of Dreams, defend yourself.

The angel advanced upon her, sword raised, her blade shining bright beneath the stars.

* * *

Morningstar awoke the next morning with a soul-shivering thrill. She lay in her bedroll, looking up as dawn’s spreading pink glow gently filled the sky.

I am a Child of Light and a Daughter of Dreams.

She felt refreshed and energetic, despite a clear memory of having sparred with the avatar for hours. Should she tell the others? Her experience with the avatar had been intensely personal. Her soul had been both humbled and uplifted, its most burning question given a gloriously terrifying answer.

At the temple in Port Kymer there had been no one close enough to share her heart’s secrets. She had been grateful to those who merely showed her indifference and not the mingled fear and hostility that had become so commonplace. Faced with years of passive-aggressive resentment, Morningstar had set her life’s trajectory towards solitude and simplicity, prayer and practicality. She tried mitigating her bitterness with meditation, with limited success.

All of that had been disrupted with Abernathy’s summons. She felt a growing bond with her companions, naturally, and was still exploring the reality of having friendships, but there remained a part of her that was skeptical, fearing it was all ephemeral, an illusion. Were they truly friends or merely victims of the same circumstance? She would tell them about the avatar one day, sooner if it became relevant to their tasks, later otherwise, but not today.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Dranko sitting up and belching.

Definitely not today.

* * *

They ate a hurried breakfast. Morningstar did her best to move things along, to instill a proper sense of urgency. Grey Wolf wouldn’t have tolerated any dawdling. She wondered again where he was. And yet, more than anything else in her mind, there was the dream and the avatar.

You are the Child of Light and Daughter of Dreams. Ell has made you a Dreamwalker.

Her spirits were lifted, albeit on a frightening updraft. Goddess, but Dranko had been right. She had so many questions, and no one to answer them. Was there precedent? First in a generation, the avatar had said. So what had Dreamwalkers done in previous generations? Should she announce this officially within the temple? Send word to the High Priestess Rhiavonne?

“We should only be an hour or two from the bend in the river,” said Aravia, “but given the vague nature of our instructions, we should be on the lookout from the outset.”

The hills were barely worthy of the name. They rose tentatively out of the farmlands, grassy even to their tops, though here and there some bare bouldery patches poked through their green flanks. The Talflun, a narrow and lazy river, carved its shiftless path through the hills, wandering along a shallow valley running southwest to northeast.

Just as the Talflun took a wide turn southward again, Dranko called out that he could see black spots on the hills ahead. Morningstar envied him his superior sight; her own vision was still uncertain during the day, especially when the sun was out. It was another five minutes before she could see what he meant; the slopes of the hills on both sides of the river became steep and barren, and riddled with crevices near ground level. Many of these were wide enough for a person to fit through, but only a handful were worthy of being called caves.