Sword from the Sky

  ***

  Meanwhile, far away from the school, near the outskirts of the palace, overlooking the banks of the Alcorba River, Drunen stood on his horse, reading the silent whispers caressing his sense of being. The remote skies were full of gray, as if a wave of thunder approached from the horizon. Mastro Jeskun and the royal guard caught up to Drunen, and they too witnessed the faraway clouds steadily approaching them.

  The purple horizon subdued the fading blue sky, and it was likely for the three men to have mistaken a shadow-drawn silhouette for a human shape, so their wits had to be twice as sharp if they were to discern a threat emanating from any given direction at any given time.

  Drunen focused his gaze on the land around him; there still lived a small amount of light about, so he could still see forms and shapes, and he was confident he would be able to spot Malasorta’s carriage. He turned an eye towards each direction, yet he did not see a shape in the form of what he searched for.

  “She couldn’t have disappeared that easily,” Drunen said, wary.

  “The lady must be hiding in the shadows,” the guard said as he rode up closer to his prince.

  “My prince, I will discern the land,” Jeskun said as he dismounted his horse and walked towards the edge of the Bunish moors overlooking the hills that led down to the Alcorba River.

  Mastro Jeskun seemed out of place, not with his surroundings, but with his companions, for the prince and guard were painted by the lively colors of the palace. On the contrary, Jeskun was like a twin to the dusk, with his black, battle-worn ren covering his upper body and his engrossing, wide-brimmed hat casting a dark shadow across most of his face.

  Jeskun set his sights on the accumulation of darkness in front of him and stared at it with the intent to find what he needed. Using his spirit, he sensed the things around the black, shapeless masses and came upon something hidden.

  “She’s not here, but her presence still lingers,” he said, making his way back and mounting his horse. “We must cross the river.”

  “What is there, Mastro?” Drunen said.

  “We’ll find out soon enough.” Jeskun grabbed his horse, Dahkar, by the reins, and without warning, galloped down the grassy landscape and across the river, to the edges of a far-stretching field known as “The Plains of the Moon.” Drunen and the royal guard followed behind cautiously, fearing being drawn into something unnatural.

  Jeskun slowed his pace, for he could sense that something was afoul with the clouds hovering dangerously close to the grayish moors; they were not as ethereal as they were typically known to be, but appeared dirty as if something had stained them.

  In the shadows, he saw it: a massive structure. It was the lady’s carriage, abandoned and resting on its side. They strode up to it carefully, stopping just a few feet away from the wreckage.

  “I wonder what happened here,” Drunen said, moving his eyes amongst the various pieces of debris.

  “Steady your words, my prince,” Jeskun said. “Wonderment is kin to the dusk, thus it is no comrade of ours. Wonder is the nectar of the unknown. Drink little and be enlightened; drink too much and be cursed. Let us not wonder on the wreckage for too long, lest we end up ensnared by the grayness of shadow.”

  Jeskun dismounted his horse and stepped up to the wreckage in order to study it closer. “There’s no blood, not a single trace.”

  “So, were they taken?” Drunen said.

  “That I cannot say,” Jeskun said. “Although it seems—that’s odd.”

  “What is?” Drunen said.

  “According to these tracks, they left on their own,” Jeskun said, studying the footprints on the ground. He moved to the front of the wreckage. “The horses must have broken free, and after a few yards...disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” the guard echoed. “I wonder how?”

  “Can you tell what direction Malasorta and her guards took?” Drunen said.

  Jeskun moved to the back of the slain carriage, following the tracks embedded deep in the mud. “From the looks of it, it appears that the tracks go on for hundreds of yards all the way to the north, to Loshendu Forest,” he said. He turned his eyes upward and noticed more tracks coming in the opposite direction. “There were others here.”

  “What others?” Drunen said, becoming paranoid and keeping his eyes on every object that surrounded them.

  Jeskun put his hand in one of the tracks sunk deep into the ground. “Seven horses stepped out of Loshendu Forest—four with riders,” he said. “It looks like Malasorta and her guards mounted the other three horses, and all of them made their way towards the—.”

  “Towards the what?” Drunen said.

  “Towards the fog,” Jeskun said, pointing in the direction in which they came from.

  “What fog?” Drunen said, turning his horse around. A great fog had mysteriously appeared between them and the Davinian school.

  “I didn’t notice any beginnings of a fog on our way here, my prince,” the guard said, “otherwise I would have alerted you.”

  “It’s all right,” Drunen said. “I’m afraid you couldn’t have seen this coming. None of us could have. This fog did not come upon us by accident.”

  “There was someone else,” Jeskun said as he took himself a couple of steps away from the horses’ tracks, “a man, on foot. He was with them, but he travels some steps behind, as a lookout, I suspect.” And after coming to an inner realization, Jeskun seemed alerted. “My prince, come here.”

  Drunen dismounted his horse and approached Jeskun.

  “If you look here—the man’s footprint.”

  “What of it?”

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “I do; it’s Davinian,” Drunen said. “There’s a servantu with them.”

  “No, the tracks are too light for a servantu,” Jeskun said. “This is a master traveling with the pack.”

  “Then we must ride out and inform Siel,” Drunen said, turning to the horizon, but the Davinian master did not answer. “Mastro Jeskun?” Drunen turned to Jeskun and saw him moving a few yards away, standing silently in the night’s embrace. Jeskun studied the horizon. “Mastro, we would do well to leave now.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Jeskun said. “We’re dealing with unknown things here, and I sense that more is to come.” Jeskun ran back and mounted Dahkar, and all three turned to the direction of the coming fog.

  “What do you think we will find in that fog, Mastro?” Drunen said.

  “Answers, I hope,” Jeskun said as he took off into the gray mist.

  “Or darkness,” Drunen said, mounting his horse. “Come on, guard. Let’s not keep ourselves still for long. We must keep moving as the fog itself does. It’s not right to keep oneself in place in this perilous smoke.”

  Drunen took off behind Jeskun. The royal guard anchored the three of them, staying closely behind the prince. Drunen and his guard struggled at first to keep pace with the Davinian who cut through the fog like a speeding arrow. Onwards they went, into the gripping arms of the fog. As they rode, all they could see was the gray netting of the dank air surrounding them. The further they rode into the fog, the denser and more clotted it became. Mastro Jeskun had to rely on his instincts to navigate through the gray smoke, for he could only see up to a few feet in front of him. His discerning nose had sniffed out the way to the palace, though it became harder for him to keep on the trail with every tree and shadow he passed. The guard struggled to keep on the heels of his prince, and it wouldn’t be long before he would lose his way.

  As they galloped their way into the unknown, the unnatural callings of the wild animals kept breaking out of the smoky, cloud-like fog. They were strange noises, nothing that the three men had ever heard before, and that made their flight home even more urgent. Who knew what lay beyond the fog, or what they would encounter? The three men rode for an hour, or so but soon after had to stop, for the fog became thicker than ever, like an overwhelming clump of gray cotton, and the young mastro began
to lose his bearings.

  “Are we almost there, Mastro?” the guard asked, feeling claustrophobic.

  “Why have we stopped?” Drunen said.

  “The fog is beginning to overpower me,” Jeskun said. “It’s like it has a life of its own. Can you not hear it? It breathes.”

  The three souls stood silent, listening to the calling of the fog. There was this sort of strange whistling sound, as if the wind encircled them like a slow-moving whirlpool. The wind stopped, and the sound of breathing occupied the air, as if some giant stood inhaling and exhaling above them. The ominous breathing began to manipulate the fog in such a way that it made the smoke move in rhythm with the inhaling and exhaling. The inner edges of the whirlpool of fog began to clear, allowing the three men more room to see what surrounded them.

  “Why did the fog open up?” Jeskun said. “This smoke has a funny way about it, like it has life.”

  “What do you mean, the fog has life?” the guard asked, spooked. “It can’t be alive.”

  “Keep calm, guard,” Drunen said.

  “Wait!” the guard said. “I think I hear it—it’s breathing.”

  “Nonsense, the fog is not alive,” Drunen said.

  “The fog breathes, my prince,” Jeskun said, “but it’s not alive. Something else is. These breaths we hear are from something inside the fog. The fog is feeding air, feeding life to it. It’s keeping something alive.”

  “Or someone?” Drunen said.

  “Possibly,” Jeskun said. “But all this air for a single being seems unlikely.”

  “There’s enough breathing around us for an entire army,” the guard said.

  Drunen and Jeskun stood like men transformed into stone, and they thought and spoke nothing for a moment.

  “My prince?” the guard said, paranoid. “Mastro? What’s the matter?”

  With his brows lowered and face tense, like a damp sponge that had been squeezed of all its water, Jeskun closed his eyes to ponder on his dilemma. “Every second that goes by is a second we lose to prepare for what’s to come,” he said. “And what’s most disheartening is that I seem to have lost my way. My men of Bune, I don’t know how to proceed, but nonetheless, we will proceed.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more time,” Drunen said, turning to his guard to make sure he was still in a sensible state of mind.

  “Lead the way,” the guard said, temporarily uplifted by the Davinian’s sense of focus.

  But before they could command their horses to break into the wall of fog, they were instantly assaulted by a racket of boom-like tremors, sounding something like an army of horses. The marching of the hoofs enclosed them, bringing fear into the royal guard’s eyes, and he heard a child’s laughter, high and mighty, clearly audible to him, but then it quickly vanished into silence. Yet, alas, the child’s laughter resumed once more.

  “Make it stop,” whispered the guard.

  “Make what stop?” Drunen said.

  “Just make it stop!” the guard said, now becoming overly excited.

  “What do you hear?” Jeskun said.

  “The laughter!” the guard said, lifting his hands up to his head. “He keeps laughing in my ear!”

  “But no one is laughing at you,” Drunen said.

  “How can you not hear it?” the guard said. “It’s everywhere!” The guard began to quiver in his saddle, and his heavy-handed movements amplified his nervousness. He reached for his sword but barely could compose himself to pull it out. “Come out, you rotten child!”

  “There’s no one in the fog, guard,” Drunen said with force. “At once, steady yourself.”

  “I can’t,” the guard said. “I can’t!” And the laugh shot out of the suffocating fog once again, this time for all to hear. “You see? There it blows, in the wind.”

  “Yes, I hear it now,” Drunen said.

  “Show yourself, child!” Jeskun said.

  They heard hoofs rattling about on all sides of them. One in particular had the weight of a thousand men. As the sound of the hoofs came nearer, so did the sound of the child’s laughter. It was a young boy, and he taunted them, throwing off their sense of balance.

  “Reveal yourself,” the guard said. “The Davinian master commands you!”

  Everything suddenly stopped. It was as if that commandment from the guard seemed to have silenced the boy.

  “Davinian you say, okay?” came the voice of the boy in the fog. “Davinians are great meat, so I’m told.” The boy revealed himself to the men. Only his right arm and half of his upper torso could be seen; the rest was covered discreetly by the fog. The boy’s arm and body were covered in armor. The glistening blood-red color of the armor stood out against the backdrop of the muted, indifferent fog. His hand grasped a lance made of ivory and steel, and on his head was a helmet of power, shaped like a pig’s face with a square armored plate covering the mouth area. The plate had an elaborate drawing of a giant mouth spread open, like it was consumed by the biggest laughter. The boy laughed, and the mouth-plate slipped inside to the right of his helm, and out of the left side, a new plate, featuring a drawing of a mouth chewing on flesh, moved to the center in its place.

  “Davinian, I can smell your meat,” the boy said in a more menacing and guttural voice. But the voice turned youthful once more, and he spoke, “If you want to get out of the fog, come follow me. It’s simple, okay. It really is.” The boy turned around, escaping into the fog.

  “No one move,” Jeskun said.

  “What was that thing?” Drunen said. “Was that really a child?”

  “He said we can follow him to get out of the fog,” the guard blurted, who was obviously under an enchantment. “He said it to be simple.”

  “Stay put, guard,” Drunen said.

  “He can lead us out of here,” the guard said.

  “Guard, I said stay put!” the prince countered. But it was useless. The boy had put an enchantment on the weak-minded soul, and the guard could not help but heed the boy’s calling.

  “I’m going!” the guard said.

  “No, you’ve been hexed,” Jeskun said. “Don’t move. It’s too dangerous. There’s no simple way out of this fog. Stay with us. Don’t be fooled!”

  “Come now, come,” the guard said as he betrayed his prince’s command and leapt into the fog without a care in the world.

  “Guard!” Jeskun said, running after him.

  “No, Mastro, please!” Drunen begged, aware of the desperateness of the situation. After a brief pause, he followed them both into the fog.

  It took some time for the prince to catch up to Jeskun even though the mastro made sure to mark his trail in the fog, slowing his pace down so the prince would eventually reach him. After Jeskun finally sensed Drunen on his heels, he picked up his momentum. The mastro’s senses were now sharp, for he had something to hone in on. He could make out the length between him and the guard, only some thirty yards away, and he concentrated his efforts on reaching him as soon as possible.

  The guard himself was in disarray, and it seemed as if he had lost all sense of self-awareness. He had been following the strange boy for some time, acting through a force outside himself. He was being guided, lured by something—and all for a promise of a simple way out of his dilemma.

  The guard saw the boy riding straight ahead through the fog on the back of his monstrous horse. And the laugh—he heard that giggling snicker break through the skies of the fog, shooting into his ears like a sharp dagger being thrust into the back of his spine.

  “It’s over here, loyal one,” the child said. “We’re almost there. I told you that it’s truly simple. Come follow the child you hear, the laughter in the distance. In the end, we’ll both be laughing, while the rest rot in flesh. Come, loyal one, and find how easy it is to break through the fog.”

  Indoctrinated and evoked with warm blood flowing through his veins, the guard advanced his speed, evading the trees he came upon and breaking though the loads of branches that sto
od in his way. Behind him, the mastro kept pace, and he could hear the child ahead of him luring the guard with his childish charm, adding to the mastro’s sense of urgency. Finally, he heard the child cry out one last time.

  “We’re almost there, loyal one!” screamed the beastly child.

  Only a few seconds passed before Jeskun and the prince heard an unexpected shriek coming out of the guard’s horse. The pitch of the scream ignited a fierce wind that exploded through the fog and carried the wind past the weary heads of the Davinian and his prince; it was so powerful, that Drunen and Jeskun were almost thrown off their horses. And as if Jeskun’s horse knew much more than its master, it rammed its hoofs on the ground, coming to a sense-numbing halt that once again almost knocked Jeskun off his saddle.

  The prince came up on the immovable Jeskun a few seconds later. “What happened, Mastro?” Drunen said while catching his breath.

  “Dahkar got spooked, and he dug his legs into the ground,” Jeskun said, stretching his limbs to relieve the discomfort.

  “And the guard?” Drunen said. “You heard the yell?”

  “Yes, it was his horse,” Jeskun said. “He’s not far.”

  “No, he’s not far at all,” the boy said from the faceless fog.

  Alarmed, the mastro stiffened up and searched the fog. Instantly, the fog surrounding them lifted up and drew back, revealing a great amount of land in front of them. In the middle of this land was an immense hole dug deep into the ground, measuring a diameter of about fifty feet in length, leading down to a bottomless pit.

  Drunen and Jeskun stood upon the edges of the hole with eyes of wonder. Where did this hole come from? It was such a vile thing. Their eyes moved along the depths of its walls. It appeared as if the loose, dark soil across the surface of the hole’s walls began to move, like it was alive. The two men heard breathing, as if a giant beast stood above them, panting down their necks. The stale air grew dense, and their breaths began to languidly drown in foulness.

  “What is this darkness?” Drunen said. “It reeks of death!”

  Jeskun’s attention was caught by a shadow moving along the edges of the hole. “The guard,” he whispered.

  Along the outer edge of the hole, right in front of them, only a few yards away, was the guard, who hung onto the edge of the hole with his legs dangling about into the depths of the abyss. The guard was covered in dirt and mud, except for his eyes, which were big and lively. He stared at his masters.

  “My prince?” the guard moaned. “Mastro, please help?” He tried crawling up from the hole himself but did not have the strength to see it through.

  Seeing the guard reach out for him, Jeskun jumped from his horse, but as he hit the ground, he heard a strange moaning come from the hole itself, as if a thousand voices were crawling their way up to the guard as he struggled to hang on.

  “Reach for me!” Jeskun said.

  But it was too late. The guard’s eyes lit up with pain as if something had taken a bite out of him. A second passed, and with force, the guard was dragged into the abyss of the hole, leaving the mastro impotent along the edges of the dark terrain, just mere seconds away from rescuing the guard.

  Jeskun stood motionless in the silent fog. Something had caught his attention right after he saw the guard being taken and thrown about like a wooden doll. He saw shapes in human forms beginning to set themselves apart from the dirt-covered walls of the hole, and they began to crawl up the hole to the surface. The closer they got, the more Jeskun could make them out: they were indeed human, but the front parts of their naked bodies were consumed completely in shadow. He stepped away from the hole and turned to Drunen. “Draw your sword, my prince.”

  Jeskun grabbed hold of his vest, tightening it in order to make sure it hugged his torso with enough strength to endure a war. He reached for the twin blades on his back and unsheathed them. He held them up to the fog that had brought them both before this wretched evil.

  “Here are Prossesur and Nunsurrum, the twin blades,” Jeskun said. “It would do you well to learn the wrath that comes your way.” He gave the blades a sudden twirl, and the sound of steel split the sky with a scarring noise. The moaning from the human forms intensified, as if torture was being rained down on them.

  Alas, the first shadow-covered shape surfaced, and the brightness of its yellow eyes came upon the two men. The creature began to rid itself of the dirt, becoming more humanlike with each passing second, until all that was left was a statuesque vision of a human who was part man and part shadow—and hungry for a fight.

  “So this is the army which has come to take the land,” Jeskun said as his fists tightened around the hilts of his blades and anger flamed across the depths of his eyes.

  ***