“Lord Shikrar, please, you must not let them eat right away!” he cried, a little out of breath. “Will told me what you were doing, but you must listen. Don’t let them eat at first! Start by drinking. And when you kill the cattle, start by drinking the blood.”
I stared at him. “Surely how we eat is no concern of yours,” I said, annoyed at his tone of command.
“Please, I beg you, listen to me. Your bodies are very similar to ours, I saw the results of fatigue in your blood and muscle. Just exactly like us. And I tell you, if you eat meat too quickly after such desperate exhaustion and hunger, you could die of it. Even water is not the best. Blood has salt and enough sugar to help you back to enough strength to eat. Drink the blood, I pray you, and wait an hour until you are recovered. Then drink water, slowly, and very small amounts of food at first—that is the most important. Eat much less than you want, lest your hearts stop from the shock.”
“We have managed to live so long without your assistance, Master Vilkas,” I said dryly. “I thank you for your concern, but—”
“Shikrar, didn’t you tell me once that some of the Ancestors died when they reached the Isle of Exile?” asked Varien quietly.
“Yes, the greedy ones who gorged themselves on the few large creatures who lived on the island, and left the rest to—oh.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. When I opened them again, I bowed to Vilkas, to his great surprise. “Master Vilkas, forgive my foolishness. We will do as you have asked.”
Vilkas nodded to me, an attenuated bow, and strode back to where Mistress Aral spoke with Will. I called out in truespeech to all the Kantri, who, groaning and complaining, nevertheless began to rise and flex stiff wings. I took a moment to bespeak Kédra.
“What did you need to say to me, my son ?” I asked, but he did not answer immediately.
I was just as glad, for the murmur in my head was growing now with every breath. I listened again—nothing distinct yet—and shook my head to clear it. And watched my son do precisely the same thing.
“Kédra, do you hear this whimpering?” I asked urgently.
“Nearly shouting now,” he replied, frustrated. “But I can’t make out the words. Have you the faintest idea what it is or where it is coming from?”
“Not the least,” I began, but I was interrupted by a loud mindvoice under very poor control.
“The Hollow Ones have risen! Be ’ware, my elders, the Hollow Ones follow me close!”
We all, every Kantri on live, looked up into the western sky. Salera was flying on the Winds’ wings, desperately powering ahead of a great cloud of … of …
Of the Lesser Kindred. But as they drew nearer, I could see that these were the Lesser Kindred as we had known them of old, as our Ancestors spoke of them: no soulgems, no sign of intellect, no spark at all. They appeared to be mobbing Salera as crows will mob a hawk, but when she flew past at speed and just as I was preparing to fly to her aid, they all came to land. There must have been nearly two hundred of them, all dark of hue like rusted iron, falling clumsily to earth in a great crowd. The Kantri, now fully roused, surrounded them—but even so I was not prepared.
Gyrentikh let out a great shout. “Shikrar! Shikrar, quickly, here!”
I leapt into the air, blessing the work of Vilkas and Aral as I climbed just a few tens of feet that I might see Gyrentikh. I might have saved myself the effort. He was at the center of a circle of the strange creatures. None came closer than one of their own body lengths, but every pair of dull eyes was focussed unblinking on—Gyrentikh?
No. On that which he guarded.
I backwinged in shock, fool that I was, stalled, and fell to the ground. I hadn’t done that since before I had seen seventy winters.
“Shikrar!” cried Varien. “Shikrar, what—”
“The Lost. The soulgems of the Lost!” I shouted, climbing to my feet. “That’s why they’re here.” I stood now beside Gyrentikh, facing all those desperately intent beasts, and I shook to my bones. “Name of the Winds, Akhor. What are we to do?”
I found that I was shouting, for the whispering was turned now to yells, and it was coming from the golden cask over which Gyrentikh still bravely stood guard.
I could hear words now. Cursing, screaming, wordless shouts, and one cry repeated over and over.
“LET US OUT! LET US OUT! LET US OUT!”
Varien
I hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. I was about to try to push my way into the midst of that unnatural crowd when Salera came running up, Will trailing behind her.
“Lord, these are the Hollow Ones!” cried Salera, terribly distressed. “They have our shape but they are beasts. They know neither speech nor reason. Beware, they have killed our kind before!”
“Whence came they?” I asked. “Quickly, Salera!”
“I was following Lord Kédra when several of my people hailed me,” she said rapidly. “I had only begun to speak to them of truespeech when we all became aware of a terrible darkness below. We have had to fly from the Hollow Ones before, but only ever in ones and twos. This—this is very wrong.” She shivered. “We all chose different directions and scattered, but the Hollow Ones followed me. I thought my death had chosen me. What is it they seek, Lord? What has called them here?”
“The soulgems of the Lost, it seems. Why, I have no idea.”
Maran strode up, her pack on her back, Rella, Vil, and Aral behind her. Maran’s eyes were fixed on the dark agitated crowd of the Hollow Ones. There was now a great fluttering of wings among them, that in the Kantri denotes rising anger.
“What in all the Hells is this about?” asked Maran quietly.
I opened my mind to bespeak Shikrar and staggered from the noise.
“LET US OUT!”
Shikrar
I could bear the shouting in my mind no longer. I could think of nothing else to do, so I picked up the golden cask that contained the soulgems of the Lost. Instantly there was silence, from the beasts and in my head.
“Go, Gyrentikh,” I commanded him quietly. “They are not come for you.” He walked slowly through the beasts, who ignored him, while I tried desperately to think.
When one of the Kantri dies, the soulgem remains. It shrinks to half its size in life and is preserved with all honour in the Chamber of Souls, in appearance like a great gem. These gems are dark until the Keeper of Souls has cause to summon an Ancestor. At such times, the soulgem of the particular Ancestor will glow gently as it did in life, until the Summoning is over.
When last the Kantri lived in Kolmar, five thousand years before, a great and nameless Demonlord had arisen. In the terrible battle that ended in his death, we found to our despair that he had learned how to destroy us. A single word, a single gesture from the Nameless One, and one of the Kantri would fall from the sky: they dwindled to the size of younglings and their soulgems were ripped from them. Even after the Demonlord was dead, we could find no way to restore those who had been defiled. They were become as beasts, and their soulgems never turned dull as with death—ever they flickered, neither alive nor dead. We came to call them, our family, our dear friends now taken, the Lost. That we might not take our revenge from the innocent Gedri who remained, we flew west, to the Isle of Exile, taking with us the soulgems. None now lived, or had for three and a half thousand years, who had known any of the Lost in life. Since the day it happened we had tried to restore the Lost, to no avail.
I had no idea what was happening now or why, but in the silence of my heart I was forced to admit that there was nothing to lose.
I lifted the cask high and with one talon incised a circle in the top of the golden cask in which we had carried the soulgems with us across the Great Sea. I gently removed the circle and dropped it in the grass.
The soulgems of the Lost were not flickering, as they had for so many centuries. They were blazing.
The soulless creatures surged towards me. Had we been of a size, I had surely been overwhelmed, but I am the Eldest and thus the lar
gest of the Kantri. They were like so many younglings.
I was uncertain of what to do next when a cry of pain drew my attention.
It was Maran.
Maran
I had ignored the rising heat at my back until that big dragon opened that damned golden egg. In the instant I felt as if my back were on fire. I threw my pack from my back and turned to stare at it.
The leather was burning. In a circle.
In moments the Farseer was revealed, a globe of smoky glass about the size of a small melon. I gingerly moved my hand towards it, expecting extreme heat—but there was nothing. I touched it, picked it up: no heat at all.
When I looked up, the Farseer in both hands, I was confronted by a sea of blank faces. The little dull dragons, though they stayed in a circle around the big dragon—was he called Shikar, something like that?—they were staring at me now.
“Hells’ teeth, what’s in that dirty great golden bowl?” I asked anyone who would listen.
And there at my elbow, with several other people, was the silver-haired man my Lanen had married, telling me swiftly about those he called the Lost.
As he spoke, as I forced myself to listen and to ignore the fact that I still didn’t know his name, something chimed in my memory. I had studied the disciplines of the Lady—at one time I thought I’d have to become a Servant to escape the demons—but I couldn’t remember. Something about balance.
As if he read my mind, the tall young lad with the silly beard stepped forward. “By the Goddess, it just might be,” he said, his eyes alight with possibility. “The Lost were dragons transformed by the Demonlord, a man who sold his true name and his very soul to demons. It took all three races together to create the Lost. Perhaps …”
“Perhaps it will take all three to restore them,” said the silver one, his glorious voice deep and resonant and full of a wild hope. His eyes were gleaming and he was shaking with excitement, and I have to admit I caught some of it. “Come, Maran, perhaps your Raksha-taint will serve us after all!” he cried, pulling me with him into the middle of that uncanny circle of creatures. “You as well, Vilkas,” he cried, and the tall lad followed.
As I came close to Shikrar the beasts started fluttering their wings again, a dry rattle that sent a shiver down my back.
Varien
“Shikrar, put them down,” I said quietly. “Vilkas thinks—it might be—we may be able to do it, Shikrar, at last. Restore the Lost.”
“What must I do, Akhor?” he asked softly, laying the cask on the grass at his feet. His control was extraordinary. His voice hardly trembled at all.
“Lift out a single soulgem,” I said, my eyes never leaving the beast-eyes that stared intently at the three of us. Shikrar reverently picked up a blazing violet gem. A single creature stepped forward—it happened to be the nearest—and lowered its head. There in the faceplate was a shallow depression. I took the soulgem from Shikrar and, shaking, placed it in the hollow.
Nothing. The creature did not move.
“All three, Varien,” said Vilkas quietly. “All three.”
I took Maran’s hand and Shikrar’s talon and brought them together to touch the gem.
Nothing.
“I may stink of the things, but I’m not a real demon,” said Maran quietly. “This was made by them.” She lifted the Farseer to touch the soulgem, but she had overbalanced. It slipped from her fingers. All three of us—Shikrar, Maran, and I—moved to catch it at once, and were all touching it at the same time.
Upon the instant a great blaze of light streamed from the Farseer, dazzling even in daylight. I tried to let go of it and could not, and neither could the others. When I thought to look, I realised that the Hollow One still stood before us, unmoving, soulgem in place.
What was there to lose?
“Together, then. Touch the Farseer to the soulgem,” I said. It took but a tiny movement from us all—a little farther—contact.
The soulgem caught a portion of the Farseer’s blaze. There was a grotesque sizzle like fat in a fire, and the creature stepped back. Its eyes were wide, surprise warring with furious joy for just an instant—and it changed. I had never understood why that simple word was so important in the tale of the Demonlord until I saw it happen.
In reverse.
In an instant.
Light and colour spread out from the soulgem, flowing swift as flame over the creature, first changing that rusty black faceplate to one of bright iron, then extending the full length of the beast—which was a great deal more length than it had before. In moments, impossibly, there stood before us a full-grown adult of the Kantrishakrim, dazed, blinking in the daylight, astounded.
Shikrar, eyes wide, somehow managed to croak, “Welcome, Lady. I hight Shikrar of the line of Issdra. Who art thou?”
“Tréshak. I hight Tréshak,” she managed, and cried out in agony
Idai hurried up to her. “Lady, what ails you? What may be done for you?”
“Not me,” she moaned. “Help them. The rest of them. Free them, quickly, in the name of the Winds!”
And so we did. As the three of us were yet bound to the Farseer, Vilkas drew forth the soulgems and held them in place while we touched the Farseer to each in turn.
I had dreamed of this moment for many long years. Our people had striven to restore the Lost since they had been torn from life by the Demonlord. In the thousands of years since, there had been endless debate about the flicker of the soulgems. Were the Lost in some way still alive and aware? Were they tormented by demons? Would any of them still be sane if we did manage to bring them back after long ages of whatever imprisonment they endured?
It seemed in the end to depend on the individual.
Many, blessedly, were largely undamaged. Their imprisonment had seemed little more than a long, uneasy Weh sleep, and they simply awoke in their new bodies with little sense of the passage of time.
Some had been aware for part of the time, crying out, feeling trapped in some desperate place. They said that they had drifted in and out of consciousness. They thought perhaps several tens of years had passed while they were ensorcelled. Somehow they had managed to cling to hope, but they were furiously angry.
The first of these to be released saw Gedri standing before it and drew in a breath of Fire. I cried out to Shikrar, who managed to deflect the blast upwards. We did not condemn him—the last thing he recalled clearly was a treacherous Gedri, the Demonlord, who had stolen his life from him. He was taken away by the Kantri to a part of the field far from the Gedri, where he was told as gently as possible what had happened in the intervening time.
Vilkas took a moment to warn Rella, Will, and the Healers to move out of sight until all could be explained to the confused souls. They disappeared in the direction of the Dragon’s Head, an inn hard by the field.
There were a few, though, who wrung our hearts from us. A score of souls found themselves in the green world, cried out in agony, and threw themselves into death.
It is rare that a child of the Kantri will willingly choose death, but we can do so if the pain of life is too great. It is very simple. There is a—a something in the base oi the throat. The nearest that humans can understand would be a flint. It would be as if you filled a room with oil-soaked straw, threw in a lighted match, and closed the door.
When we die, in the natural course of things, the fire within is released from our control and we burn to ash very quickly. This was even faster. The first of the Lost who chose death passed to the Winds in less time than it had taken for its new form to appear. Shikrar, his voice trembling, asked Vilkas to collect the soulgem and bring it to him: when he saw it clearly, he heaved a deep sigh of relief. It was small and dull. The poor trapped soul was released to death at last, and could rest.
It took nearly five hours to restore them all. We were exhausted by the end, but we had no choice—the Farseer clung, blazing, to our hands, until the last of the Lost was restored. The moment all was accomplished, the thing dropped to
the grass, dark and lifeless.
Shikrar, Maran and I followed in much the same fashion.
Berys
What a fine chance! I had only just sent along a Rikti spy to report on what the damned dragons were doing, and behold, what piece of news it has brought me! If I understand it aright, it appears that those whom the Demonlord had thought destroyed have been restored. How very resourceful of them.
So, the number of my enemies is doubled. And these new creatures were created by the Demonlord, whose imminent arrival will doubtless rouse them to fury and to the foolishness of acting in anger.
How interesting. It will be useful to see how he deals with them.
On the whole, I believe that I am pleased. What fun would all this be if it were too simple?
Marik has confirmed the Rikti’s report. How kind of him to keep me informed, and how charming that the damage the dragons inflicted upon him has allowed him to hear the thoughts of those two creatures. Shikrar and Akor. Altogether delightful.
I was uncertain as to when I would unleash all those lovely healers of Marik’s. There they sit, so demure in House of Gundar trade establishments throughout the four Kingdoms of Kolmar, no sign of their slightly suspect allegiance. And I never coerced one; they have come to us of their own free will. Ah, how easily the lust for power corrupts.
It is astounding how many folk are unhappy with the power they have, and how willing they are to take part in something they know to be wrong. Just a little corruption at first, a fortnight to try out the new power available to them before they must choose. Nearly all, having become accustomed to the greater level of power in those few days of the trial, are seduced by the good they can do.