The King of Nowhere Ch 6

  Chapter 6



The dreamer felt a stirring, a wind on the windless plain, one that he had felt a hundred times before.
  A fire was burning somewhere, melting away a link of chain.
  He could feel it, that sweet odour of waking.
  The sun was high in the dark sky -- soon it would be midday.
  The dreamer stretched his heart, and prepared to rise.

* * *

They were sitting down on the cushions of the Receiving Room of the Shrine. Doctor Armar had been left to busy himself happy in the archives ("Ah, but it seems I have forgotten where exactly the original passage is..." she had said), and Doe, the Abessa and Thorn were sipping sweet wine as the sun was touching the top of the mountains.
  "The cultists will most likely strike tonight," the Abessa said.
  "To get it over with as soon as possible, before reinforcements arrive?" Thorn mused.
  "Not only that," she replied, "but because tonight is the full moon of Drop-of-Wine."
  "The small red moon?" Doe asked. "What has it to do with anything?"
  "When Drop-of-Wine is highest in the sky above the Seal, for about half an hour it... Does something significant, we do not know what. Probably the focus of power is itself strengthened somehow."
  Doe almost dropped her pipe. "Oh, damn, of course!" she said, "that's what it was!"
  "You know something interesting, Mistress Doe?" the Abessa asked.
  "I have been doing measurements and so forth on the Seal itself, and have discovered many interesting patterns," Doe explained, "and one of them is a regular oscillation of the strength of the Seal. Very small, almost imperceptible, but it was visible on the pendulum... It results in different patterns, the weaker phases result in slightly smaller ones."
  "And these oscillation periods coincide with the Red Month?" Thorn asked, "That is about nine days."
  "No, they coincide with the zenith and nadir of Drop-of-Wine, I now realise," she replied, "but it changed by about two and a half hours every day, and there was a greater period of about nine days. When the strong phase was around midnight, Drop-of-Wine was new, and when around midday, it must have been full. But there were so many interesting things, I just didn't think about it too much at the time."
  "But why wait for the full moon, if it just needs to be in zenith?" Thorn asked. "You'd just need to figure out what time of the day it falls on."
  "They probably do not know better," Doe said "and it's just simpler to check where the damn thing is if you can see it well, I guess."
  She took a drag of her pipe.
  "The way I see it," she said, "they came with that caravan for a reason. No doubt some of them are just supplies and food, but you don't just go and break a Great Seal just like that," she snapped her fingers, "you need something... Big and bulky."
  She smiled at the others.
  "Which means they probably cannot break ordinary seals either... Like, say ones that I have put around the three elakhisks."
  Thorn looked at her. "Brilliant," he laughed.
  "They would have needed to divert the power-source of the Great Seal before they could even start to destroy it?" the Abessa asked.
  "Something very much like that. In fact, I may have caught Yanda at the nearest elakhisk snooping around, when I was investigating today..." her face paled.
  "What is it?" Thorn asked.
  "Gods below, seven iron hells!" Doe swore ("Language," said the Abessa).
  "I let the bastard help me clear the undergrowth. I let him have a chance to insert his power inside the barrier before I even created it... Stupid, stupid!"

* * *

The elakhisk was engulfed in flame, and flickered like a torch in the shadows of the evening mountains.
  "What is happening to it?" the Abessa asked.
  "The power is being diverted into the fire!" Doe shouted from nearer the monolith, over the soft roaring before her. "I can't get any closer!"
  She gave up, and returned back, her clothes steaming with vapor.
  "If I hadn't gotten that thrice-bedamned pyromaniac to sterilise the ground, the whole mountain-side would be in merry flame right now. Thorn, you  have to get the villagers to clear this whole area of trees."
  "It will burn for a while," Thorn offered. The flames danced in his staring eyes.
  "May his piss burn like a thousand suns," Doe swore at Yanda.
  "Seems like the only thing we have left," the Abessa said, "is to just rush them and kill them where they stand." She looked thoughtful. "I can live with that."
  "There's about two dozen of them," Doe said, "and only six or seven of you."
  "I've had worse chances. Besides, they're not even warriors, just fanatics with ancient butter-knives."
  Thorn smiled. "I do not believe that you will need to go alone," he said.
  "How so?" the Abessa asked.
  "Because, y'see, this isn't the first time Village-in-the-Valley has had problems with cultists."
  Doe groaned. "Are you serious?"

* * *

It couldn't be called a mob, Doe thought to herself. A mob was more organised.
  "Why is that man holding small pots on a bandolier?" the Abessa asked.
  "That's the potter and his oil pots, amazing things," Thorn said, "but I'll have a word to him about the firemage..."
  The group gathered in the yard of the burned Inn was mostly comprised of men in the village who knew something about handling sharp tools and implements. Scythes, knives and a lone, confused sword had been tied up at the tops of poles, in the traditional peasant's militia fashion, under which the men mingled in excitement. Mrs. Rosmarine was fussing about, armed herself only with the contents of her mysterious bag, and the Maid Brigade (most of whom actually were holding some sort of weapons -- Doe noticed that one had a saber scabbarded to her side) were mingling about. Fala was preparing the riding harts of the Sisters, Eye-of-the-Storm and some horses.
  "Aren't you scared?" asked Doe from one of the men.
  "Of cultists?" he said. "Nah. We've always got 'em in the end. They tends to be pretty soft when things come to ahead and someone chops their head off." He whistled to one of the men behind him. "Hey, Cork, give Miss Doe a showing."
  "All right," the man, holding two small axes, nodded. He held one of them in a throwing position, and neatly clove in twain one of the butts the hunters had been using for target practice. He was about fifty yards away.
  "Good man," the Abessa said. "I don't see any problem here."
  "I think it might be better if I do something small anyhow," Doe said, and stepped forward before the crowd.
  "Listen up," she said, "I am going to cast an enchantment upon you, a Sealer's protection. Mister Clay," she said to the potter, "could I have one small pot or amphora for everyone each here, please?"
  "Whatever you say, Mistress Doe," Clay sent some of the young boys that were watching the men after them. It didn't take long until a wheelbarrow of the Potter's tiny clay bottles arrived.
  "Oh, you've made quite a lot of them," Doe remarked.
  "Some of these are old rejects that we've been making for a while now," the potter said, "the rest are new, but they're pretty good even if I say so myself," he beamed.
  "Thank you, then," Doe said, "now! Line up, everyone, after taking one of the pots, choose whichever takes your fancy."
  As the men started to form a rough queue, Doe started at one end.
  "What's the pot for, Miss Doe?" the first man asked.
  "Glad you asked," she said, "I am just going to extend the rim of the pot to encompass your own, and to act as a substitute when confronted with primitive rim manipulation..." She paused.
  "I'm going to put you in the bottle," she finally said. "The bottle will take the harm that you get, for you, until it is broken," she was now shouting so that everyone could hear. "If your bottle cracks, you know it won't be useful anymore, so you'll have to scarper."
  "And stop that man from putting moonshine into his -- don't think I can't see you, because I can --" she continued, "or he'll drown in it."
  Thorn looked on her working in silence.
  "I think I'm going to leech some of the death from all the weapons here," he finally said.
  "What?" asked Doe, turning to him in bewilderment, "what for?"
  "To lessen the chances of casualties," he said. "If I take away some of the death, it doesn't mean they suddenly become useless, y'know. It's just that people will be less likely to die from getting hit by them. Death will become a wounding that will put them out of the way until the fight is over."
  "You're horribly soft for a necromancer, y'know that?"
  "No I'm not!" he protested, "that's the kind of stereotyping I've been telling you comes with the," he looked at the villagers in the crowd, and whispered, "N-word. Just because we Closers can kill a man with a single touch doesn't mean we have to like it. You know that."
  Doe looked at him. "They'll still be coming at us with their enchanted butter knives."
  "That's true..." he said. He thought about it for a moment. "I can probably lessen the potency of their weapons, too," he said. "Yees... I think we're close enough to the Shrine for my powers to work that way. I think I might need your help, though, with that," he said to Doe. "Do you think you could make these weapons into... Containers?"
  "There are spells to make things contain other things, usually incorporeal entities, yes..."
  "Could you make these weapons to be containers for death?"
  "From your point of view," she said, "aren't they that already?"
  "Yes, but I am not a Sealer," he replied, "if a Sealer does the reification of the metaphor, then it becomes more useful... Say, as a container that can receive..."
  Doe thought about it for a moment, and her eyes brightened. "You can't do that yourself!" she realised, "but if I do it, I can make it a container that acts as a sort of attractor."
  "So when I drain the weapons of their death --" Thorn said.
  "-- they will act on the enemy's weapons to drain them out of their lethality!" Doe pronounced in victory.
  The Abessa looked at them in horror, and clutched her hammer.
  "Not my Skullcracker," she pronounced, "I wouldn't be able to sleep at night!"
  The Sisters murmured their agreement.
  "Not the weapons of the Sisters, then," Thorn said, "but you have to promise me not to kill anyone too much, clear?"
  "We solemnly swear," the Abessa said.
  "I will come too!" a shout came, and Doe and the others turned to watch Sister Bloodcurdler come towards them, with a feverish look in her eye, wielding a light-glaive, and clad in nothing but a sheet of bedding. "I c'n fight."
  Mrs. Rosmarine ran towards her in shock, "Get back to bed, you! You're in no condition." She tugged at her to return to one of the buildings near the Inn that had been converted for medical use. Two of the Sisters went to help her.
  Sister Bloodcurdler looked crestfallen. "Summon, summon take Swift," she waved the light-glaive. "Take Swift..."
  Doe walked up to her, and took the polearm from her.
  "Th'nks..." the Sister looked relieved as she was dragged back to bed.
  "I didn't know you knew how to use a weapon," Thorn said.
  "It was compulsory at the Small University. I got second place once." She swung the glaive and took a ready stance, holding the pole in her two hands to her side, knees bent and the blade low before her.
  "Nice," he eyes glittered.
  Thorn rolled his eyes. "I am surrounded by crazy people."
  "Yes," the Abessa grinned, "isn't it great?"

* * *

They rode slowly up the old road. The ashes, though dampened and sludged with rain, stained their boots and hooves, and the evening-shadows of the mountains chilled them, but the red of the dying sun still swept the peaks above.
  Doe saw the path leading to the old cave, and suddenly remembered.
  "I need to milk the damn fawn," she muttered to herself.
  "Excuse me?" Abessa Redhorn asked.
  "Oh, nothing, nothing." She thought for a moment. "We should make our headquarters at the old cave," she said.
  "Does it lead somewhere we can use for an ambush in the ruins?" Thorn hopefullied.
  "Of course not," she replied, "there's just... Stoo."
  "Stoo?"
  "Just stoo."
  "Sounds good to me," the Abessa said. "Lead on, Sealer."
  The turned from the sooty road, and led the following mob towards the old camp-site. Someone had brought wine enough to share, and the noises coming from behind them had set the Abessa to berate them several times.
  The six unwounded Sisters rode on their harts, and Thorn, though offered Sister Bloodcurdler's, had declined the offer and taken one of Fala's horses instead. Fala herself rode with the Sisters, handling the riding hart, a difficult and blood-thirsty beast, like she had been born to it.
  Everyone had one of Doe's enchanted pots on their person, either hanging from a belt, or a necklace, or in a bag. She could feel each one of them, a heavy burden upon her strength, and remembered the bottles that she had left at the cave. The potter had offered her some of the left-over pots, but they hadn't been enough.
  Bloody duty, she muttered to herself again. Sod it, for the moment.
  After a few moments, the cave came to sight, and the snow-fawn with it. Doe dropped off Eye-of-the-Storm, and led everyone to camp down.
  "Are you going to use your riding harts for battle?" she asked the Abessa.
  "Oh yes," she answered, smiling beatifically.
  "Please stop that," Doe shuddered, "it makes me feel horrified."
  She looked at the motley group of villagers.
  "Anyone here who is proud of their stealth?"
  A few stood forward.
  "We're hunters," one of them said. "I'm Patient, the best."
  "Good, good. You'll be the leader then," Doe scanned the rest of the men, and stepped forward. The crowd opened to her, and she confronted one of the men.
  "You have a very interesting bottle there, Mr...?" she said to the panicked man.
  "That's Twig," Thorn said behind her, "who is called 'the Brewer'," he grinned.
  "And he has a bottle of the strongest and most potent moonshine this side of the Plains, I reckon," she pronounced, to Twig's confusion and surprise.
  "Ho-how did you know?" he asked.
  "I am a Sealer, Twig the Brewer," she replied, "I can tell. Now hand it over, it's going to be used for something rather... Interesting."
  Twig gave her the bottle, reverently.
  "Are.. Are you going to do magic to it?" he whispered.
  "No," was the answer, "I'm just going to give this to the hunters," she did so, turning to talk to Patient, "and tell you to find the wine-cask they're using today to drink. They're bound to be ritualising tonight, and that makes a man thirsty. Besides, they won't want to be sober. Dark occult rituals are always better when you're a bit tipsy. You never know what's going to pop out."
  The Abessa looked at the people around her.
  "Maybe we should send more than one bottle, then."

* * *

  "Dinner?" Thorn asked.
  "Yes," Doe said, "Dinner."
  "And you accuse me of being morbid."
  The sun had fallen long before, and the night sky was visible above.
  She blew out a stream of pipe-smoke. "Look, I've had it up here with goats and goat-type creatures. I started naming them like this ages ago. In fact, this isn't just Dinner... This is Dinner IV, from a long line of proud Dinners. They are the blood-enemies of the wily Lunches, who are up to Lunch V. He was a sort of antelope with screw-spiral horns, which made an excellent set of instruments that I sold for quite a lot of money."
  "My gods..." Thorn said, and went silent for a moment. He decided to change subject, and sipped the white broth once again. "The milk isn't bad, though. This is good. I need to get around to magic myself a Sacrifice someday, if they're all like this one."
  Dinner looked on patiently.
  "How much would you pay for this one?"
  "You know you can't sell a Sacrifice, Doe."
  "Oh, look, the hunters are back."
  Patient was talking to the Abessa, and turned to Doe when she came.
  "It all went very well," he reported. "They have some sort of large stone, with chains hanging from it, up on a cart in the Great Hall."
  She took a drag of her pipe. "That's the unsealer focus. Might even be one of the Twenty-seven Stones of the Glorious Bondbreaker. I know the current owner's been itching to get rid of the damn things, I'll have a word with him after this, after I skin him. Did the chains have anything on the ends? A sword? Spear? Saw, giant lock-pick?"
  "I thought I saw a big key," one of the hunters said.
  "What? Those idiots," she said, "they have the completely wrong stone for this kind of unsealing! If I had any time, I'd hide them for their stupidity. But never matter, as long as they try hard enough... Yeah, even the key-stone should do the trick. It makes you despair, though, doesn't it?"
  "Did you see the firemage around?" the Abessa asked. "It should have been easy to spot him, what with him still going around with his red clothes on."
  "No, not a sign."
  "He's not in black?" Doe asked. "I wonder why."
  "Probably just a hireling, a johnny-come-lately," the Abessa said, "who came with because the cult needed some magical muscle. He was in red, I remember, during the attack and when he burned the Inn down."
  Doe looked up at the sky, and the little red moon rising towards the summit of its path.
  "Let's give them a while to get a bit more drunk," Doe said, "and then crush them."
  "Mistress Doe," said the Abessa, "have I ever told you how I like your plans?"

* * *

The guard was looking outwards over the valley, into the night. The moons in the sky were rising one after another, Drop-of-Wine among them. It was a confluence. He wondered if there would be a Great Tide back home.
  He looked furtively around, and moved behind a boulder, a shield towards the camp-site behind. A small, stubby pipe was procured from somewhere in the damned black, itchy robe, a friend in a time of need. It was during times like these tense moments before the ritual that you started to think about individuality, herd mentality, peer pressure and whether you should have lost yourself into the crowd when you were still leaving the city.
  Now where were those damn fire-sticks...
  "Here," a quiet voice besides him offered a small piece of ember.
  "... -- Thanks," he said, and put it in the pipe.
  He turned to look. It was... Difficult for some reason, but she was there. Quite pretty, he thought. Nice pipe.
  He took a drag of his.
  "There is no use to torture me," he said. "I will tell you everything you want to know. Please."
  "Do not worry," she whispered, "I could do a monologue on how torture is ethically and pragmatically wrong, useless due to the fact that it does not elicit truth rather than the pained hallucinations of grovelling pleading, and kinda icky, but," she took a drag, "I'm a bit busy right now."
  "Very admirable," he said.
  A knock on the head.
  "May I ask?" Thorn said.
  "I hope you didn't kill him, he was nice," Doe said.
  "You can never know with blunt force trauma to the head, but he's still breathing. The spell seems to work."
  She rummaged through the guard's robes, pulled out a bag and took a sniff.
  "Hohoo, finest Labradgean pipe-leaf. This stuff doesn't grow on trees, y'know."
  "Let's just get going, shall we?"
  Doe strode forth boldly. She suddenly wavered in Thorn's eyes, and became more distant. A variant of the Words of the Inviolate, she had told him. Sometimes he really envied Sealers. They always seemed to get the medium or well-made deal, while nec-- Closers usually couldn't even get the waiter's eye.
  No use crying over spilt sacrificial blood. You just got a new cow and started again.
  Suddenly, Doe had stopped. The ground around her swirled, and the light bended around her chaotically.
  "Those bastards," she said. "They've already started."
  Thorn looked at Drop-of-Wine. "But it's not even near the zenith!"
  Doe stared at the sky. "It's the confluence! They must have some sort of way to tell when the seal is weak enough... My tools!" she looked at Thorn, "They're using my tools! And my notes! My notes are still there!"
  Thorn could only stare at her.
  "That's... Ridiculous," he offered, weakly.
  Doe cursed, and started to run forward. She had already taken out the horn, and put it on her lips. She let her coughing, smoky breath blow a note through the hushed dark, and then heard the answering call.
  They were screeching and shouting, and making noises that no mortal should have had in their lungs. The cloven hooves of the giant deer-kin clacked on the hard ground like a hundred jaws, and their red robes streaming, their weapons brandished, their faces set into expressions of horrifying joy and lust, the Sisters of the Holy Thanate rode forward to claim their due blood.
  Around the Obsidian came groups of the village men, silently walking forwards to surround the ruined castle. Their faces were grim, unlike what she had seen before in the bravado they had put on, except for the maid brigade who were listening to the wailing of the Red Sisters with interest.
  And in the middle, standing twenty and some, were the black-cloaked city-men, soft or criminal, who had come to a vale populated by superstitious rubes to quickly open a doorway to ultimate power, armed only with their antique daggers and protected only by their coarse, itchy robes.
  Some ran, and fell, and stumbled due to what would be known later known in local legend as Twenty Black Robes proof. Some stood their ground. And some ran inside the Great Hall, and attempted to barricade the doorway.
  It would have been slaughter, but for a solemn oath and an enchantment. The Sister ran down those who opposed them, leaving them bleeding and unconscious (and in one case, feeling very smart and unwounded) on the ground, and the groups of villagers, now running towards the center, gathered up the rest.
  Doe cut one down with Swift, wounding his across the ribcage, and poked the shin of another.
  "Has anyone seen the firemage?" She shouted.
  No one had.
  "At least he won't bother us for now..."
  As the tragicomic violence unfolded on the summit of the Old Road, she ran towards the Great Hall, and the barricade of a wagon. She took out one of the potter's bottles from the basket she had been carrying with her, and stood before the doorway that led to the Great Seal.
  A green, soft glow was covering the walls, and seeping through all the cracks it could find, the tell-tale sign of the key-stone being used. Some unnecessary chanting was rising up into the air, softly, as the cultists were trying to appease the dumb rock to do their bidding, the ignorant fools. She could feel, though, the roots of the Great Seal convulse and pulse and writhe, as someone was tearing them apart with the key attached to the stone. It echoed in her teeth, and made her jaw vibrate with uncomfortable voices.
  The stoneware bottle in her hand crumbled, and she took another out. She rested the light-glaive on her shoulder, looked at the bottom of the barricade-wagon that had been turned to its side like a pitiful and unlikely tortoise, and knocked.
  There was a boom. Do not let me understate that, though. It was a very loud and definite boom. A boom you definitely would open your door to, or face the consequences.
  The door didn't open. Doe sighed. It never cost to try, though.
  She put her hand-palm on the wood, and opened.
  The wagon was pushed slowly inwards, as she rested her palm softly on it. She took a step forward, and... Gently... pushed it backwards. The figures of straining black-robes were revealed as the barricade it retreated.
  She felt another twang, and another broken piece of the string that surrounded the focus of power. No time, she thought, ah, damn the consequences. She devoured the other bottle, and let her strength unseal.
  The wood under her hand turned white, which spread outwards from the centre, followed by ashes, or dust, that turned the matter into small white, floating particles. They softly exploded outwards, within a second, leaving only a floating cloud of what once was a barricade.
  The Sisters, now down on their feet, flooded the opening, and crushed the opposition that had so desperately held it.
  Doe walked purposefully towards the Great Seal, and took in what she saw.
  The Stone was there, glowing that ghastly green, as was the one who wielded it. Feng the Merchant was holding a giant key in his hands, and turning it within the convulsing roots of the Great Seal.
  "I've had enough of you!" Doe shouted, and he turned, startled, towards her.
  "You try to ambush me, shoot me with arrows," she hit aside one of the black-robes trying to run her down with the light-glaive, using it as a conduit to lock his joints like a sacrificial lamb, "burn down the only place in a hundred miles that serves the sweet wine I like!" Another black-robe attempted at her, and found himself wrapped tightly within his robes, unable to move. "You cause me to get a Duty -- a Duty! -- while I am doing research. You mess up my schedule and destroy my protective circles..." Feng was looking at the figure closing in on him, the inviolacy distorting the air around her like a halo, and making the dust flee before her feet, "you try to take this power to yourself, and likely want to destroy the world or something equally banal as that," she stood before Feng, "and you dare!" she shouted now, and took the captivated Feng by his throat, "to mess with my Theory!" She paralysed him. His hands clamped around the key, and she cursed, cranked his stiff fingers from the key, and levered him aside, leaving him to rock on the ground like an unsettled boulder.
  She turned to the Seal, and pulled the key out violently. The stone ceased its glowing, and it seemed as if the roots had calmed down. Slowly, they started to knit back together, and Doe sighed in relief.
  Thorn came to her, holding a wounded arm tenderly. "Is it going to be ok?"
  "I think so," she said. "The roots will grow back in time..."
  Her face brightened suddenly, and she turned to Thorn.
  "This wasn't such a bad deal after all."
  "How so?"
  "This will be a very helpful experiment for me, to determine what the purifier in the--"
  She was interrupted by the foom of a great flame. Right behind her, she felt the heat of fire, and saw her shadow stretch away into the Great Hall now coloured in red and orange. She turned to see the Great Seal's root's burning.
  He's channeling fire through the leyline that connects the burning elakhisk, was her thought, before she turned away and started to shout everyone to safety.
  The flame suddenly died, with a sudden silence as surprising as its birth, and with nothing to feed it anymore, Doe could feel a cold void behind her where warmth and life had only been a moment before. As she struggled to run away, the world seemed to stop, and all that she could do was slowly witness the horrified expression of Thorn and the Sisters, and feel gentle hands stretch out from behind her and pull her backwards into darkness.
  Suddenly, she saw the Red Moon.