The Sorcery Within

XL

Alemar and the healer stood on the crest of a foothill overlooking the upper Ahloorm Valley. A single rider had appeared out of the plain on a lathered oeikani. Alemar lifted the amulet out of his collar. The jewel was so bright it flickered visibly even in the sunlight.

An answering glint of emerald came from the rider's chest.

"She's pursued," Alemar said matter-of-factly, "but she has a good lead."

"It tells you all that?"

All activity from the amulet ceased. The jewel once more looked like a dull green, semiprecious stone of no great rarity. Alemar stuffed it back out of view. "Sheis telling me that. It never used to be so clear from a distance. Maybe now that we're older, or now that I've been trained as a Hab-no-ken…"

"Why did you stop?"

"It's been a long time, master. It's a bit overwhelming to communicate with her so strongly."

Gast caught the huskiness of his apprentice's voice. Abruptly he said, "I'll wait for you downslope. There's a spring there. We need water."

Alemar nodded, not bothering to watch the healer. He never shifted his sight from his sister's approach. It seemed like no time at all after his teacher's hoofbeats had faded away before he was smelling the dust of her arrival.

They listened to her oeikani wheeze. It was a proud, sleek animal and had travelled near the limit of its endurance. She patted its neck, murmuring gratitude, and flipped back her cowl and dropped the veil. Alemar removed his hat.

"You look good in green," she said.

"You look good, period." Maturity had taken the severity from her features. Her breasts were fuller and her hips flared, a belated womanly blossoming that had dissolved the tinge of boyishness she had still possessed two years earlier. Her tan was deep, her hair unbound.

But such ferocity. No Zyraii had ever exuded it as strongly as she did. Perhaps he was overly sensitive to it, by virtue of their twinness, or the amulets, but there was no question that she had become the kind of warrior the desert itself would admire.

He didn't dwell on it. In the same instant, they had rolled out of their saddles and into each other's embrace.

They stayed that way for a long time. Finally Alemar said solemnly, "The Dragon flies."

She stiffened. "Tell me everything."

He told her what he knew. Her lips pursed tighter and tighter as he spoke. "I feared as much, when I felt your summons," she said.

Alemar became aware of a familiar sensation. "You're hurt," he said.

"It's only a scratch," she said. "It's old. I didn't think it showed."

"It didn't. Let's go down to the spring and I'll take a look."

The next day, Elenya removed the poultice and examined the slice along her vastus muscles. In slightly over twenty-four hours, all that remained of the damage was a section of pink tissue and a slight stiffness when she stretched.

"It's amazing," she said. "It doesn't even look like there will be a scar."

"There won't be," Alemar said.

"Obo would be proud. He could never prevent scars."

"Obo can still do things I can't. This was easy, because of our attunement."

He glanced up the slope they had been climbing. "Let's see what Gast has found out," he said.

They had ridden through the night, conversation filled with their lives of the past year, ending always with the topic of the Dragon. They left unsaid their worries that their effort now might be too late.

The final leg of their journey had been over jagged escarpments and grades not meant for travel. It had cost them time, but they agreed that it was worth avoiding being sighted by anyone from Setan. It would have been too easy to have established a guard around the citadel to thwart their objective. They had abandoned their oeikani a few minutes back, near a water hole.

The healer lay on a smooth rock slab at the ridgeline, lifting only cranium and eyes above the horizon. The twins wormed their way up to either side of him and peered over.

A circular valley opened in front of them, totally unlike the desolate landscape to be found everywhere else in the eastern Ahrahikte. Steep hills ringed it on every side, the only easy way in being the narrow defile that carried a small tributary to the Ahloorm. The far wall was almost a sheer cliff, its lower face decorated with carved columns, gargoyles, and geometric designs, vestiges of herculean construction long past.

But the relic astonished them not half as much as the verdant orchards, vineyard, and hayfields. A small lake lay up against the cliff; it emptied via canals into furrows, ditches, and smaller reservoirs. The cultivated land formed a broad horseshoe around the relic, the ground immediately in front of the cliff swept bare. The road from the pass led ostensibly straight to the ruins, but the route showing the most wear veered off to the right, to a cluster of buildings.

The village bustled with activity, people standing in the avenues in conversation, individuals striding from door to door on various missions, boys being instructed by blue-robed Ah-no-ken, maintaining their neat rows and proper posture even out in the indolent shade of date palms. Young acolytes of the Zee-no-ken, Bo-no-ken, or Hab-no-ken could be distinguished by their colors as they engaged in menial tasks such as raking, sweeping, or harvesting dates. A few individuals were working out in the fields. A bent old man was carrying a bundle of scrolls from one building to another. The twins could see occasional tents, but for the most part the structures were substantial, of clay or of stone quarried from nearby slopes – many remarkably fitted with doors or trim of actual wood.

The white garb of the Po-no-pha was absent, nor could a single woman be seen.

"Setan," Gast said reverently.

The twins absorbed the view, if for no other reason than the length of time since they had seen so much water in one place. Finally, distractions fell aside, and their glances settled on the citadel once more. At the very center of the cliff, though faint from the centuries, the twins were able to discern a symbol etched into the stone surface: a dragon in its death throes, an arrow jutting from its midsection.

"The emblem of Alemar," Alemar said. "It is no myth. He built this."

"The mountain is honeycombed with chambers," Gast said, "but the only way in is there." He pointed to a portal near the lake. Both the opening and the entire pool were surrounded by tile trim, some of it now cracked and moss-ridden, but obviously set by a master mason.

"I don't see any guards," Elenya said. Furthermore, there was no door, only an empty frame, thus nothing that could be locked.

"There seldom are any. There is nothing to steal inside. It contains only what you bring."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see soon enough once you go in. I'll believe that there are physical relics inside only when you bring them out."

Not only was there no guard, but the village stood a good half-mile away. An open pasture took up the center of the valley, the few dozen grazing animals it contained the only obstacles between the twins and their goal.

"Now we wait for sunset," Alemar said.

The doorway led into darkness, an ominous blackness impenetrable to Motherworld's brown glow. They had crossed the valley in silence, hugging the edges of the orchards for cover, and now, at last, Alemar and Elenya could reach out and touch the place Keron had sent them to find. The entire trek had lasted twenty-three months. To be certain it was no phantom, Alemar reached out and brushed one of the tiles with his fingers.

"You are sure?" Gast asked.

"It wouldn't make much sense after all this to turn back now," Alemar said. "Give us the layout once more in detail."

Gast sighed. "Immediately within is a small antechamber. You should each take a torch from the stack you will find there. Five corridors lead into the mountain. It doesn't matter which one you take. All will soon bring you to stairways. Take only those which go upward. If you continue straight or descend, you will be lost in mazes. In ages past, before the school was founded, men died within them, unable to find their way out.

"You will need to light your torches at the stairs. At the top, you will find another antechamber. Beyond it lie a series of large rooms. These are the chambers within which the ken are tested. To become a Bo-no-ken, one must enter the first and return. The Hab-no-ken must penetrate the second room, as I once did." For a moment, his voice quavered. "The Zee-no-ken must survive the third."

Gast searched their faces. "If what you seek is truly within the citadel, it must be past the third chamber. Some of the Zee-no-ken have reported seeing a portal at the end of that room. If any have entered, they have never emerged to tell the story."

Suddenly he reached out and clasped Alemar's hand. "I don't want to lose you, my son."

Alemar stepped forward and hugged the old man. "We have to try, master."

"I am not an old fool," Gast said as they separated. "The danger is literal. Only one out of every two who venture into the third room survive as whole human beings. Even the first claims victims. What guarantee have you that your quest is true?"

"Only the word of a ghost," Alemar said, his throat sore. "But you still haven't said what isin the rooms."

"All the fears you have ever felt," Gast said. "And nothing else. Remember that: Whatever happens inside, it is nothing more than fear."

"We have company," Elenya said.

They turned toward the mouth of the valley. They heard echoes of many hoofbeats and saw a night-lit shroud of dust.

Gast said, "If they are Po-no-pha, they must leave their weapons and wait for permission of the High Scholar to approach the citadel. But now the ken will know you are here. Go in now, or lose your chance. Take off your clothes."

The twins blinked.

"Take them off," Gast insisted. "You don't want clothes in there. Leave your weapons as well."

They stared at him skeptically.

"Trust me," he implored. "I have been inside. You haven't."

Elenya toyed with the fastenings at her collar. "You can't expect us to leave our weapons here. What happens when we come back out?"

Gast was adamant. "What good will two swordplayers do against many Po-no-pha? And in there, weapons will only be your ruin. You will be undone by your fears." He groaned. "I wish there were more time to prepare you."

The intensity of his plea eventually persuaded the twins to strip, but neither would disarm. They stood ready, naked except for their belts and the weapons hanging from them.

"I feel like an imbecile," Elenya said.

"You look like one, too," Alemar said.

Elenya shot him a backhand swipe. He ducked it. "I see you haven't changed a bit." She smiled.

They needed the humor. One look at Gast's expression was enough to dismay the stoutest heart.

"Choose separate routes," the healer said. "And God be with you." In Zyraii, the phrase meant a permanent farewell.

"And with you," Alemar said. The noises from the far side of the valley were stronger. They took deep breaths and stepped into the dark passageway.

Full of bitter thoughts, Gast gathered their clothing into neat piles and began to prepare the proper eulogies.