We Should See Other Blogs

When the last of the servants had left, bearing empty plates and bowls to the kitchens eight levels above, Orrenkhendis scanned the room one last time before unrolling the parchment. Spread out, it covered most of the table, brightly coloured, intricately detailed. He placed an iron triangle on the map, and sat back. “We’re ready for the Don Ampheti,” he said, pursing his lips. “You concur, I think.”

The woman to his right, the only other person in the room, nodded. “Only one more city, and a few nomadic tribes, Orren. Not difficult.”

“But which path?” he asked. “The army will be vulnerable in the mountain ranges, the plains are no more than a pleasantly-named desert, and we have no ships send by sea.” He motioned to the body of water that lay beside the city, the sea into which the river Amphet emptied, after which the city and its surrounding fertile areas were named. “At least not in the time frame we’re looking at.”

“No,” the woman replied. “Though we could hire Don Khellev mercenaries to ferry the Brittle Bones, or the Twelfth, if we could trust those butchers with anything more than wheat and glass beads.”

Orren grunted, and was about to say something.

When the iron doors split open in a burst of sorcery, and figures began to spill in, scimitars drawn. Behind them a mage, Theriar perhaps, hands reaching out, fire extending from them and into the throne room. The table splintered and the map burst into flame before Orrenkhendis threw a ward up around himself and the Mask. Fire began to lick at the sides of the ward, rising against it as if climbing an invisible wall.

A strong mage, then, drawing on the Canton of Fire. Almost enough to overwhelm Orrenkhendis, who felt a flicker of fear, unease at the power displayed in the room. No mage he knew had such sorcery at his command. None except himself, and even he disliked the Canton of Fire, for what it did to those who used it. What it took out of its practitioners. No, Orrenkhendis was a practical mage, drawing even now on Elnomia Serrc, Realm of Dreams.

But fire can only be tricked for so long. The wall that was not a wall began to collapse. The sorcerous fire began to seep though, as the figures beyond held back, scimitars still drawn. Orreen could sense the fear in them, and the terror in the heart of the Mask. Something new. He had never known the Mask to afraid of anything. So, he would have to be unpredictable. Do something different. Redoubling his call on Serrc, Orrenkhendis prepared to call also upon Elnomia Jekkhyr.

The ice would probably kill everyone in the royal house, saving only himself and the Mask from being trapped in the glacier this building would become. Perhaps an entire section of the city.

He prepared to draw upon the Canton of Ice as the fire consumed ever greater portions of the room. He prepared, but never had the chance. Orrenkhendis and the Mask disappeared, the ward vanishing with them, flame engulfing where they had just been.

Just outside the double doors, the mage blinked and lowered his hands. In a moment the fire snuffed out, smoke disappeared, embers glowed brightly and turned to ash. The mage swiped the sweat from his brow, at the same time feeling where his ritual tattoos had grown, where the scars had deepened, where his skin had become more like leather than before. He felt old, but even at his age had not seen anything like Orrenkendis’ disappearance. This is ever so slightly odd, he thought.

* * *

The fire had disappeared, the throne room had disappeared, everything had disappeared. The Mask looked around shakily; they were somewhere… else. Somewhere she had never seen, a place out of a nightmare. Above, the sky roiled in slow, ceaseless movement, different shades of grey moving in and around eachother, hiding whatever sun provided the seemingly sourceless light. Warm and moist, the air seemed to move in concert with the clouds as if driven by some unseen force, a push that could not rightly be called a wind.

As she scanned the area, the Mask saw countless ruins, packed together. They were standing in what had once been a city, and a fairly large one by the look of it. A city so old that what was left of it was little more than stone and rubble. Pillars rose from the ground, supporting nothing. Flagstones tilted at strange angles, fissured strangely.

An intake of breath to her left. Orrenkhendis, staring wide-eyed at their surrounding, and then almost smiling, as if he recognised the place. “You know where we are?” he asked.

The Mask shrugged. “A dead place.”

Orren rubbed his hands together in obvious delight. “No, much better than that,” he said. “Much, much better than that. This is the Canton Elnomia Serrc.”

“Even I know that Canton isn’t a realm proper,” the Mask said, frowning. “There’s no way to get there because there is no there.”

“An impressive elocution, dear Mask,” Orrenkhendis replied, “and entirely correct. But it appears that the Canton of Dreams has been deceiving us, after all this time. This place is thick with the scent of it.”

“And things decaying,” she said. “But enough talk. We have a situation to attend to.”

“In the palace? I’m sure they’ve figured out we’re not quite there anymore. And no one’s going to launch a coup if the emperor can’t be found. I could poke my head out any minute.”

“So what, we explore?”

“We explore. Come.”

Orren took off, the Mask following him, their shoes kicking up dust that, as far as they could tell, hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds of years. Only a few feet, and the Mask laid a hand on her companion’s shoulder. “Look,” she said, pointing past a pillar, to a dead tree rising from a pile of rubble.

“Most strange,” Orrenkhendis said. He stroked his beard, contemplating the tree. “Now who would have the sheer strength to do that?”

A massive demon had been nailed, four limbs stretched out above and below its head, to the tree. It had six eyes, a gaping maw lined with crooked though deadly-looking teeth, and fingers tapering to almost delicate points.

The Mask stepped forward, examining the demon more closely. “I wouldn’t want to meet this thing in a dark alley.”

“Indeed, you would not,” it said, or rather, hissed. Orrenkhendis and the Mask both gasped and stepped back. Two of the six eyes opened, staring at the emperor and his consult. Pupils like a cat’s set in blood-red eyes. An off-putting look.

Orren recollected himself quickly, and addressed the creature. “Demon, you are a resilient sort of beast, aren’t you. Nailed to a tree for how long and yet still alive?”

The demon closed its eyes again. “Ah yes. You two. I was set here seven years ago to watch for you, Orrenkhendis and Doth Leane. Or as I believe you call yourself, the Mask. Appropriate for the Realm of Dreams.”

“Ah, so it’s as I thought,” Orren said, grinning. “Very much a Canton in its own right, is it not, demon?”

The demon approximated as much of a shrug as he could manage. “More no than yes. Depends. Look at it right and yes. Or no. But hold, Anachronist approaches.”