The Rebellion

6

Grallik doubled over coughing, unable to get the dirt out of his mouth. His chest felt so tight and hot, his lungs like charred wood. His eyes were filled with dirt too, burning so fiercely he could make out nothing with his vision. Everything was a blur of gray and brown and pain.

The misery sent his mind back more than sixty years to when he was a child in the great Qualinesti Forest. His parents, both half-elves, lived in the village of Willow Knot, in a small house, in front of which was an herb shop.

It had been a cold night, and a fire burned in the hearth.

Grallik’s parents and his twin sister hadn’t known there was magic in him or that he’d been testing his growing abilities when no one was looking. They didn’t see him crook a small finger at the hearth that night and coax the flames to lick outward and grow brighter and higher. He’d only intended to make the room warmer. They didn’t see him flee when the flames spread to the rug and flowed up the walls, stretched out to burn the left side of him before he fell out the back door, gasping for air as he was gasping at that moment.

He heard his family’s screams that night. They were worse, he thought, than the cries of the laborers caught in the quake. The roar of the fire in his house and his trapped parents’ and sister’s screams were always in his memory, louder than the rumbling of the ground, and had risen over the voices of everyone in Steel Town just minutes ago.

Chaos Town should be the camp’s new name, he mused as his eyes finally watered enough so he could see, though dimly. The dirt that caked his face had turned to a clay muck that stung and felt heavy and hurtful. There was nothing to be done for it at the moment, he knew. But he’d get to a Skull Knight soon and have the man tend his eyes and to his tender ribs.

Grallik was on his hands and knees outside what was left of his workshop. A cloud of dust and dirt hovered around him and above the ground for as far as he could see, as persistent as the early morning fog that usually wrapped itself around the tall grass of the Qualinesti Forest. Shapes moved in the haze; knights, he recognized, by their posture, heads held high. They wore helmets despite the awful heat and the dust cloud, and Grallik imagined that their sweating faces must be covered with dirt that lined their eye slits. He brushed at his face, managing only to smear the dirt around.

Breathing slowly and shallowly, he got to his feet, leaning against the crooked stone and wood wall of his workshop. His fingers flitted across the cracked mortar; his had been one of the sturdier buildings in Steel Town, and he feared the remaining two walls would topple at any moment. He tipped his head up, hoping for cleaner air, but found none. The mountains and volcanoes that ringed the camp were hazed by the dust too, looking faded like an old painting.

He heard a nervous whinny and turned just as a frightened horse shot past him, eyes wide and foam flecking its mouth. A knight chased the beast, the sun glinting off his armor and making his shoulders and arms glow as if he’d been ensorcelled. Grallik watched him catch the reins and saw the horse toss its head, nostrils flaring and front hooves coming off the ground as it fought against the knight.

Grallik stepped away from the wall, arms in front of his chest as if warding off the choking dust and dirt. When the wind changed, he caught another mouthful. He spit it out again and cursed, coughing so hard that his shoulders bobbed. When the spasms stopped, he turned back to see the knight leading the horse behind the remnants of the stable and into a pen that was one of those that had largely survived the quake. At the edge of his vision, the wizard saw the pines on the slope of one of the volcanoes, their branches looking bare and pale, like the skeletal remains of long-dead creatures.

It hurt, physically and emotionally, to gaze upon the wholesale destruction. Grallik stumbled around the wall and into what remained of his workshop. Only the northern and western walls were intact. The front of the building had crumbled and the thatch roof was caved in. He’d hidden a flask of water behind some books on a shelf. He wanted to find it and flush his eyes. He choked back a bitter laugh as he pulled at the thatch to clear the floor, looking for the flask.

His worry always had been the volcanoes. He’d never considered the possibility of an earthquake, and yet it made sense. Land dotted by volcanoes was prone to quakes, he’d heard, and tremors had been recorded in the camp before his arrival. There had been rumors of faint ones just a few days ago. But something of the magnitude he saw that day had never occurred to him.

It took him several minutes to pull the thatch away and several more minutes to find both his breath and the water flask. He held it to his chest as though it were a priceless treasure and then against his face, finding some coolness to it. He kissed the cork then gingerly tugged it free, sniffed the water, and poured some in his eyes, finding only a little relief. Then he took a small mouthful and held it, savoring it as if it were fine, aged wine, finally swallowed it, and replaced the cork. Once more he held the flask against his chest, then he thrust it in a deep pocket so none would see that he had it. He turned too sharply at the pop of a timber and gasped in pain, instantly worried that his sore ribs might be more than bruised and responsible for the heat in his lungs.

His vision slightly improved and he took inventory. His workshop, which also served as his home, was largely destroyed. He was fortunate that the shelf and his precious water flask survived, both being on one of the standing walls. Benches and tables and his prized bookcase carved of walnut were so much kindling, torn apart as if a herd of maddened bulls had trampled them. The frame he heated the ore on was broken, the pans beneath it lost, and behind the frame-where his bed and meager possessions had been-stretched a wicked-looking crevice in the ground. The jagged crack extended south of the building and had pulled men and animals underground, including everything of value he owned-lost in the depths.

Grallik’s throat grew tighter, and he fought for air in his grief and fury. He stumbled forward, kicking aside pieces of wood from a shattered bench and kneeling at the edge of the crevice. Without any roof, the sun shone down brightly over his head and the wizard could see that the bottom of the gash was dozens, perhaps hundreds, of feet below. A mailed arm jutted out of one side, a leg farther away was from a different knight’s body. A piece of tangled blanket was caught between two large rocks, and a post from his bed poked up from what looked to be the deepest point. Everything was charred, with smoke rising from a few pieces still burning.

He’d been heating the ore when the quake struck, and when he ran outside to see what was happening, that ore had caught fire and spread to his precious possessions. He noted that pages ripped from one of his books were burning at the edges, as if someone were blowing on them. A section of the crevice’s far wall had collapsed, but he knew nothing down there was worth recovering.

Grallik eased back from the edge and sat heavily, unmindful of the debris that jabbed at the backs of his legs. Everything he had nurtured and treasured was gone. In his mind, he likened his sense of loss to a close relative dying.

Again he thought of his family.

“Everything.” The word came out as a harsh whisper, his mouth instantly dry again from all the blowing dust. “By the fading memory of the Dark Queen’s heads, it is all gone.”

He would have cried, but it was not in the nature of a Dark Knight. So he silently mourned and forced down a sob. The half-elf had never been one for burdening himself with personal objects, so he hadn’t lost a considerable amount of goods. The Order provided clothes and food and more coin than he could spend-particularly at his posting. He disdained knickknacks or jewelry or art objects. He was a relatively simple man in terms of physical trappings.

But his magic-his scrolls and spellbooks and vials upon vials filled with prized arcane powders and enchanted liquids-that was all lost to the quake. Years of research had been sacrificed, notes on arcane experiments and diagrams of magical objects he’d intended to fashion-those were all gone. A tome of spells-a singular copy-from decades ago when he studied as a Black Robe with the Conclave, obliterated. He felt the color drain from his face and his chest constrict. His life was in ruins at the bottom of that crevice.

The rare magics learned while he was with the Conclave, the ones from before he joined the Dark Knights, those and much more were in the crevice. The spells that allowed him to call lightning from the sky and let him read passages in ancient, foreign languages, the spells that created spheres of acid out of air, helped him to breathe water, or stay awake for days at a time, the one that summoned an invisible force to clean his workshop and bring him food-he hadn’t cast some of them in years. Without that tome and his other spellbooks to consult, to stir his memory and to renew his knowledge, he doubted he could ever cast such magic again.

“All of it lost. My research.”

The destruction of his notes might extract the greatest toll. He’d so meticulously written down his evolving theories on strengthening steel and giving it arcane properties. He’d been so very close to an amazing breakthrough, something that would benefit the entire Order and propel him to fame and a prime posting and promotion up the ranks. Grallik was certain he could recall many of his notes, but it was years and years of note taking, and his memory couldn’t absorb everything.

For nearly five decades, Grallik had served the Dark Knights, a long time even for a half-elf. A Thorn Knight, he commanded only one talon, nine men, all of them Lily Knights. But given the years, his title should have been marshal or warder, and he should have been assigned to a place where no silly act of nature, no earthquake, would have deprived him of his research and diagrams and books, especially the old Conclave tome. He deserved a more favored post.

“Sir N’sera?”

The half-elf didn’t stir until he’d heard his name and title spoken a third time. He looked up to spot a member of his talon standing where the doorway had been.

“Sir, the commander-Marshal Montrill-is injured. Skull Knight Ramvin is tending to him. But until Marshal Montrill is able …”

The rest of the words were unimportant, so Grallik shut them out and rose up, brushing futilely at his robe and picking his way out of the remains of his workshop.

Until Montrill was able and fit … until that time … then Grallik, because of his seniority, would take charge of all of what he thought of as Chaos Town. It was the responsibility Grallik had dreamed of even a moment ago, but in truth he was not prepared for it. At least the demands of the new job would keep his mind so busy he couldn’t dwell on his utter loss.

“How many wounded?” Grallik asked, deciding that taking stock of his charges was the first proper order of business.

The knight drew his lips into a needle-thin line. “At least a third, Sir N’sera. Wounded or dead, all of that’s being sorted out now. Between the quake and the hatori, falling buildings and the like …”

Grallik straightened and squared his shoulders, gesturing for the knight to move aside. “Then I place you in charge of the tally. See to it immediately. We must know our current strength.” He paused. “And our weakness,” he added under his breath, too softly for the knight to hear. He raised his voice to a normal level. “Marshal Montrill. You said he is hurt. How badly?”

A part of Grallik wanted Marshal Montrill to be very badly hurt, so he could at least be heartened by his promotion, but he shoved those malign thoughts away. For the good of the Order and the good of the annihilated camp, Montrill needed to survive. He was a capable leader.

“I don’t know, Sir N’sera. Shall I …?”

“Find out?” Grallik shook his head. “No, I’ll see to Marshal Montrill. Start with the others. Begin your count.” Grallik watched him go, wondering how the knight would approach the task and knowing whatever numbers he came up with would not be wholly accurate. The once-orderly mining enterprise was gone. In its place was a void of death, injury, and destruction that would take time to calculate.

No building stood truly intact, with unruly mounds of rubble replacing the familiar structures. Laborers and their families either milled about listlessly in disbelief or were rushing around in panic. Raised voices and shrill bleats and whinnies filled the air. Knights were assembling into formations on the west side of the camp. To the east, more knights were rounding up goblins and hobgoblins and repairing one of the five slave pens.

He’d cast warding spells and laid glyphs on the ground outside the slave pens shortly after his posting there and had refreshed them every third or fourth month as a precaution. But the quake tore up the ground they’d been placed upon, rendering some of the wards and glyphs useless.

Possibly all of them.

Grallik would have to pray for the precise warding enchantments so he could cast them correctly again. It would take days to restore all the enchantments to keep the slaves from escaping. Several of them, he recalled fondly, shot pillars and walls of flame into the air, incinerating potential escapees.

Of course, no slaves had tried to escape for several months. The Dark Knights had made examples of offenders in the past, catching those not burned to death by Grallik’s wards and glyphs and torturing them before slaying them in front of the others. The Dark Knights had sufficiently beaten down the goblins’ and hobgoblins’ spirits and tore away their sense of self-worth to the point that likely none of them entertained thoughts of fleeing anymore. The threat of ogres, and some minotaurs, in the nearby mountains further hindered them.

My precious pillars of fire.

He’d have to replace all of them to be certain the pens were escape-proof. But he couldn’t start doing it during the day when the slaves in the pen could clearly see what he was doing. He didn’t dare risk letting them figure out that the wards and glyphs might have been rendered useless.

Their numbers were too great …

Grallik looked to the pens and shuddered. There were far more slaves than knights, ten times as many, and without the wards? Were the goblins smart enough to realize the wards might be gone? Just the day before, he’d heard a skinny female goblin hollering in the common tongue about something bad coming to the mine. He hadn’t paid any attention to her babble.

Had she been babbling about the quake?

How smart were the goblins?

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two knights carrying a badly injured knight on a makeshift stretcher. Grallik set off after them, hoping they would lead him to the infirmary and the wounded Marshal Montrill.