Into Forbidden Lands

The Dragon Mount lay two nights behind them.

It was nearly midnight when the Shakim leader suddenly reined in his horse and raised his hand, bringing the party to a halt. They waited silently. Sudra’s light showed them nothing.

“What is happening?” Illiom whispered.

Tarmel, alongside her, merely shook his head and scanned the surroundings.

“Apparently there is another group of Shakim ahead,” Dreel said.

At first, Illiom could see only a shadowy blur of movement in the distance. This was soon revealed to be riders approaching at great speed.

The Shakim hailed the new arrivals. A few of the newcomers veered towards them in response, shouting words that to Illiom sounded unmistakably like urgent warnings. The rest continued speeding south.

Those who reined in before Jan’ankt engaged in an urgent exchange, pointing north. Even as one tribal spoke, his mount’s front legs folded and it fell to its knees. As the man leapt to safety, his horse collapsed onto its side, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. Its coat glistened with sweat, and Illiom now saw that most of the newcomers’ mounts trembled or staggered where they stood, their heads hanging low.

Illiom’s heart began to beat hard, for it had just dawned on her that the tribals were fleeing something that terrified them.

She turned questioningly towards Tarmel, even as a chorus of shrieks and barks sounded out of the darkness in the north.

Tarmel’s sword sang in Illiom’s ear.

The Shakim who had stopped to talk turned and looked back in abject terror. Jan’ankt bellowed something and the tribals behind them surged forward as one.

“Riders, ward your Chosen!” Illiom heard Argolan shout, though she could no longer see the Shieldarm as the Shakim swarmed around them.

She heard Kassargan cry out.

“Keilon, do something!”

“I do not think…” was all that she heard the conjurer say, before mayhem hit.

Dozens of shapes hurtled out of the night, shrieking grotesquely. Their own party momentarily froze in the moonlight.

The creatures were fearless, unstoppable. They slammed mindlessly into the Shakim, and under that onslaught the warriors staggered and scores of them fell, skewered before they even knew what was happening.

The monstrosities were vaguely human in shape and covered in grey fur. Illiom watched them scythe through the Shakim as if the tribals were stalks in a field of wheat.

Horrified by the onslaught, when one turned towards her, Illiom froze.

The creature had no nose. A series of vertical slits filled much of the space between the mouth and the eyes. These were large amber orbs with tiny black pupils. Long, tufted ears protruded from the sides of its head, and its mouth was thin and lipless.

Even as it threw itself at her, one of the Shakim tried to intercept it, only to be severed nearly in half by the creature’s weapons. Illiom quailed when she saw that these were part of the monster’s body, sword-like protrusions of bone, rather than forearms.

Black Lightning suddenly leapt forward and she clung to the saddle horn as he galloped into the night, past the frenzy of battle.

She turned in the saddle, looking frantically around, Tarmel’s name an unvoiced scream. Then she saw that it was he who had seized her horse’s bridle and was leading her away from danger.

Suddenly her world altered.

In a twist of time and space so small that it could not be measured, Illiom suddenly felt all the other Chosen as though they were physical extensions of herself.

She was Sereth, fire brimming in his veins. As she watched through his eyes, one of the creatures erupted into flames and fell, writhing to the ground.

She was Azulya, screaming at the creatures. The one directly in front of the Kroeni exploded into bloody fragments of flesh.

She was Malco, manipulating the very air to deflect the creatures’ attacks.

She was Undina, drawing vapours from the deepest folds of the earth, to coalesce directly into the lungs of a creature until it collapsed, drowning in the middle of a desert.

She was Scald, directing the scent of their party away from where they fought, sending it far towards the north, and the creatures pursued this phantom scent until there was nothing left behind but the stillness of the night. The light of the two Goddesses shone from the heavens: the hale and the ill, both casting their glow upon the battlefield.

Illiom felt her own power swell with the savour of kinship, a recognition of her profound connection to the Chosen, which touched every nuance of her awareness.

She was Elan, her awareness full of the happenings around her, and full of Illiom, as the priestess recognised in her fellow Chosen a mirror of her own realisation: that the Chosen had melded.

Without thought or agreement, they had spontaneously melded and shared in each other’s experience as though they were not seven, but one.

Dawn brought light to the chaos that darkness had cloaked. The dunes around their camp were strewn with the bodies of the dead. The toll of battle had been horrendous.

The Riders had pitched their tents a short distance away to accommodate the wounded who needed urgent ministering. Close to a hundred tribals had lost their lives and nearly as many of their mounts had been killed. The sands of the battleground were stained black with their blood.

No one bothered to count the dead creatures, but a quick glance revealed that their loss was far less than that of the humans.

Fortunately, none of the Chosen were harmed, but the number of injured amongst the Shakim was almost equal to the number of dead. Many of these were so seriously wounded that they were unlikely to recover – not here in the desert.

“What a shambles,” Zoran pronounced, as he followed Argolan back inside the tent where Illiom was helping with the wounded. “The tribals have fared very poorly in this encounter.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Elan remarked, looking up from bandaging the stump of an unfortunate lad’s arm. “We could have all been killed last night.”

“About that,” Argolan said, “how is it that we were not?”

“Scald’s doing, mainly,” Illiom said, continuing to cool the forehead and temples of a Shakim with a gut wound, one of those who was unlikely to see the dawn.

“Is he still out there?” asked Sereth, from the other end of the tent.

“Yes,” Zoran replied. “I have just come in to fetch him some water.”

“Tell him not to overdo it,” Argolan said.

The Rider nodded.

“I will tell him that, though he is adamant that the longer he keeps up whatever he is doing, the safer we will be.”

Scald came in sometime near noon and fell upon a bedroll.

“I could not keep it up any longer. Hopefully they are far enough away that they will not be able to regain our scent.”

“How did you do it?” Argolan asked.

Scald shrugged.

“I am not sure. I managed to fool them into believing that our scent was coming from somewhere else. I cannot explain it. I just kept pushing our scent away, as if we were fleeing north.”

“What made you think that they relied so heavily on scent?” Sereth asked. “Their eyes were quite big.”

Scald sighed heavily.

“I did not think, it just came to me. But did you notice that, even though their eyes were quite large, their pupils were no bigger than pinpricks? At night? Night creatures, as a rule, have pupils that dilate in darkness, but all this came to me afterwards. At the time I just acted without thought.”

He shrugged. He seemed uncomfortable acknowledging his achievement.

Pell entered the tent, a big grin upon his face as he spotted Scald.

“Good job with those Skeet! If you had not done something, we may not be talking about much today.”

Angar groaned.

“Skeet? Where did you get that name from?”

“My father, that is what he used to say whenever something scared him to death. They sure scared me half to death.”

Angar shook his head.

“First Kresh, now Skeet? You and your names!”

“Well, we have to call them something or else we would be fumbling with ‘remember those things that moved like demons, had knives for hands, and faces that looked like they had been split in two with an axe?’” He levelled a questioning look at Angar. “Skeet is easier, no?”

Scald smiled weakly, stood up and made to leave, but Sereth intercepted him.

“One last question?” he asked.

Scald turned with a resigned sigh.

“When did you realise you could do what you did?”

Scald momentarily closed his eyes.

“The very moment I did it.”

He left the tent.

Pressed for time, mindful of both dwindling resources and the need to get the wounded to a place where they had some chance of recovery, the red-haired leader of the Shakim decided to split his forces. Despite the losses and the wounded, after rounding up the tribals who had managed to escape the monsters’ onslaught, he still had close to two hundred able-bodied warriors in his ranks.

The larger party was to head back to the Dragon Mount with the wounded, while a smaller group would accompany the Chosen to the edge of the Forbidden Lands.

“We are not far, so we should leave soon,” Dreel said, relating Jan’ankt’s words. “It is prudent to approach the Schektra-la in broad daylight.”

They wasted no time.

By afternoon the two groups headed away from the carnage, travelling in opposite directions. Iod’s heat was relentless but Jan’ankt had spoken truly. Within the hour, they approached what looked like a white line in the sand dunes ahead.

The Wall of Bones was no wall at all. It seemed to Illiom as if someone had gathered up all the sun-bleached bones from the surrounding desert and piled them into a continuous line that went north and south as far as the eye could see.

Jan’ankt raised a hand and barked a command as he reined in his horse.

“Beware,” Dreel translated. “Beyond the Wall of Bones is Schektra-la, the Forbidden Lands.”

Illiom slid off Black Lightning’s back and, along with the others, carefully approached the line of bones.

“Who make this?” asked Undina.

“Do not go near it,” Dreel warned again. “Those who touch the wall, die.”

Looking at the bones from a respectful distance, Illiom saw that they were the remains of all manner of creatures: birds, lizards and snakes, as well as a few larger animals. Some of the skeletons were intact, others looked charred and burned. Most seemed old and bore the scars of wind and sun. Some, however, looked fresh, like the carcass of a Vurl – the giant Iolan desert vulture – that still had clumps of feathers stuck to its desiccated remains.

“This is old,” Kassargan mused, facing the western sky, head tilted to the heavens, “and yet its power remains undiminished.”

She knelt and despite a snarl of warning from Jan’ankt, touched one of the bones.

The descrier bowed her head and was silent.

No one stirred.

After a while she raised the blind orbs of her eyes towards the sky.

“I am a bird, flying north-east, searching for food and water. One moment I am flying and the next I am on fire. This is where I fell, and this is what remains of me.” She faced the barrier as though she could actually see it. “There truly is a wall here, but not one made of bones. It is a wall of power and it is entirely invisible.”

She fell silent once more.

Tarmel came up to stand beside Illiom, and together they watched the descrier as she laid one hand flat upon the hard ground.

“The desert has known this power’s presence for an eternity,” she said. “The earth knows that it is a perversion, and yet I sense that the wall’s purpose is not to slay. The killing is incidental.”

Another silence.

“It is a Warding,” she proclaimed at last. “It has been placed here to warn someone of something, but to warn who of what?” the descrier shook her head. “That, I cannot say.”

Scald came up beside Malco and placed a hand on the Blade’s shoulder.

“Malco, do you have the stone?”

“What? Oh that, yes, here it is,” the Blade replied, unshouldering his pack and rummaging through its contents. Then he extended his hand to reveal the stone that Draca Provan had given him.

“How are we going to do this?” Azulya asked.

Illiom was sure the Kroeni had directed her question to Argolan, but it was Malco who answered, drawing his sword.

“Does anyone have any rope, or some strapping?” he asked.

No one did.

“How about cloth?” Elan asked. She pulled a garment from her saddlebag. “You can use this.”

Malco tore it into strips and used them to secure the Seren Stone to the end of his sword, but before he could take a step towards the bones, Argolan caught him by the arm.

“Sorry Malco, but I cannot risk you.”

Malco sighed and shrugged.

“We cannot afford to lose you either,” he countered.

“I will do it,” offered Pell.

“No,” said Argolan. “We will draw lots. Let chance decide who will take the risk.”

Zoran stepped forward.

“With respect, Shieldarm,” he said, as he prised the sword from Malco’s hands. “I am the last to join you and I have not yet had a chance to prove myself.”

Argolan frowned at the Rider.

“You know that I am right, Shieldarm.”

“Very well,” Argolan relented and stepped aside. “But be careful.”

“Oh, I certainly will!”

Illiom held her breath as Zoran approached the barrier and extended the sword towards the bones. He waved the weapon around in slow arcs, inching forward incrementally.

Suddenly, the air in front of the Rider crackled and a high-pitched ringing filled Illiom’s ears. Simultaneously, a fetid stench caused her to gag.

Zoran pulled back with a grimace.

“That went well,” he said.

“It truly did. You are still alive,” Azulya countered.

“Try again,” Scald encouraged. “Something was beginning to happen.”

The Rider repeated the action with the same result, but as he kept the stone in position, the landscape beyond the line vanished to be replaced by an opaque wall that cleft the world in two.

Looking up incredulously at the now visible barrier, Illiom saw that the Warding curved slightly towards the eastern lands behind them. Above her she noticed the same slight curvature. Was the Warding a dome?

Suddenly, at the point where Zoran held the Seren Stone, the wall began to ripple. It was like gazing upon the surface of a lake. The smell returned, eliciting grunts of disgust, but as the Rider held the sword in place, its intensity subsided rapidly.

Maintaining contact with the now visible barrier, Zoran lowered the sword down to the ground and stepped back. Suddenly, the barrier’s fabric crackled where the stone still touched it and a gradually widening hole appeared. Through it, the landscape beyond became visible once more.

The hole stopped expanding when it reached a height and width of about three spans. It continued to crackle, as though the power that sustained the barrier was trying to close the gap that the Seren Stone had created.

“Well done, Zoran. It looks like we have a breach,” Argolan said.

“Yes,” Malco nodded. “And now we need someone to test it.”

Undina stepped forward.

“I,” she said.

“No,” Argolan countered. “I forbid it.”

“Then I will,” Zoran said, resignedly.

“No!” Undina shouted, “I go!” and before anyone could stop her the Pelonui slipped past them and ran through the breach.

She stood unharmed and grinning on the other side.

“I first in Forbidden Lands, yes?”

Angar closed his eyes and shook his head, while Argolan covered her face with her hands.

“Well done, Undina,” Malco said, grinning. “We could have spent half a moon debating who should do what you just did!”

One by one, leading their horses, the party of the Chosen made their way through the breach.

When her turn came, Illiom hesitated. She glanced at the edges of the portal and saw that the wall looked thinner than a sheet of parchment.

“What are you doing, Illiom?” Malco asked.

She did not answer but stepped through and, as she did, felt a burst of heat against her right hip where her travel pack rested.

Safely on the other side, she opened her pack and found her Key glowing intensely, just as it always did when she touched it, only this time she had not.

She was about to remark on this when Jan’ankt, who had remained on the other side of the barrier, spoke. “I wish to keep your stone now that you have all crossed. If you fail in your intent, others may well need a way through this wall.”

A reasonable suggestion, Illiom thought. She did not have the heart to tell him that she believed there would not be much of a world left if their mission failed.

She suddenly realised something that shunted all other concerns from her mind.

“He wants to know,” Dreel said, “if he can have the stone now that we have crossed … what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

The Chosen were in fact gaping at him.

“I thought you said he did not speak Common,” Sereth said, frowning at the dwarf.

“Who doesn’t speak Common?”

“Jan’ankt,” Illiom answered. “He just spoke in Common.”

“He did nothing of the sort,” snapped the dwarf, his face reddening. “Don’t you think I would’ve noticed?”

Azulya shook her head.

“But Dreel … he did, just now.”

Amid nods of agreement, everyone started talking at once.

Illiom turned to Tarmel.

“Did you hear him?”

Tarmel’s look bordered on the apologetic.

“Yes, but I did not hear him say anything in Common, just the usual incomprehensible sounds.”

Jan’ankt listened intently as each spoke.

“Something has changed,” he said in Common again. “Some of you speak Shakim? How can this be? I can understand what you say!”

They tried to work out whether it had been the Keys, or the barrier, or a combination of the two that had brought about this development, until Azulya pointed out the obvious, namely that it did not matter. All that mattered was that the Chosen and the Shakim could now understand each other. For some reason this did not extend to the Iolans or to Argolan and the Riders.

“This just keeps getting better all the time!” laughed Sereth. “People! We are in the Forbidden Lands! We have made it here. We speak Shakim, or at least the Shakim think we do, and we can understand them. Is there a problem with any of that?”

Behind them, Jan’ankt had also made the crossing and was looking around with wonder.

“Your journey is marked by power and fate,” he proclaimed. “You are a very small group with only a few warriors to protect you and you are vulnerable to whatever the enemy will send against you. It is my wish to offer you some of my men.”

Argolan touched Dreel’s shoulder.

“They might understand him, but I still do not,” she pointed out.

The dwarf looked pleased to have retained some usefulness. He quickly obliged the Shieldarm.

Azulya started to respond.

“We thank you for your offer, but I am unsure…”

Argolan held up a hand.

“This is my decision, Chosen,” she said softly but firmly. Then, turning back to Dreel she added, “How many?”

“Four fists is what I can spare,” came the response.

“Twenty tribals,” Dreel translated.

“But that more than doubles our number,” Malco said. “We will be much more conspicuous.”

Argolan nodded.

“Yes, but more importantly it almost quadruples our number of seasoned warriors. Twenty-seven swords are a lot better than seven.”

“Eight,” Malco corrected, without much enthusiasm.

“Eight, then!” Argolan snapped.

“Twenty more warriors are very welcome. Tell him so, and be sure to thank him.”

Dreel complied.

“I agree,” Sereth said. “Not that it would make a lot of difference if we ran into real trouble, but it would certainly even the odds in a skirmish.”

“What about the Seren Stone?” Malco asked. “Do we keep it or give it to the Shakim?”

“Wait,” Elan said. “What about us? When we come back, will we not need it to get through the wall?”

“I doubt it,” Azulya said. “I have been asking myself who could have erected a barrier that kills so indiscriminately. Who do we know who wields such power and has no scruples using it?” Her eyebrows were raised as if the answer was self-evident. “If we fail, we will not need the stone. If we succeed, I very much doubt that this wall will still be standing.”

For once there was complete consensus.

“Very well,” Malco said to the leader. “You can keep the stone, but I do want my sword back.”

Jan’ankt smiled as he recrossed the barrier, calling upon several of his warriors. Z’essh, Illiom’s rescuer, stepped quickly up and spoke softly with him until the leader nodded, and Illiom’s tribal joined the group that would journey west with them.

After the Shakim had made the crossing, Jan’ankt stooped to pick up Malco’s sword. Severed from its contact with the Seren Stone, the breach snapped back with a loud crack. Everything on the east side of the Warding vanished as the barrier became opaque once more. It slowly reappeared a few moments later as the wall regained its invisibility.

Jan’ankt spoke, but no sound reached their ears.

“We cannot hear you,” Malco replied, mouthing the words exaggeratedly.

“He may not be able to lip-read Common,” suggested Sereth.

The tribal leader shook his head resignedly and then tossed the sword at Malco. The weapon crossed the barrier without mishap and the Blade snatched it out of the air and slid it back into his scabbard.

On the other side, the Shakim tribesmen mounted their steeds, waved once, and sped off without a backward glance.

The party was once more on its way with no way back. They rode towards the dark unknown of the Forbidden Lands.