Mystic Pursuit, page 6
Gris Hallis pointed up ahead. “It appears out of place, does it not, in this barren desert? Some have called this place an aberration. A mistake of nature. But this is not true. It is in fact the perfection of nature. You see, despite its rugged exterior surface, its inner wall forms an exact circle.” His voice rang with pride.
“It is perfect,” replied Lakos, unable to take his eyes from it.
The caravan made its way closer to the range, with Gris Hallis leading the way. “Only I know the entrance to the Inner Realm. This way.”
Leading the charge, Gris Hallis and Lakos ventured toward a path of white stones, conspicuously cleaner than the surrounding ground cover. The path snaked toward the base of the volcano, disappearing into the shadows between the massive ridges of stone.
Gris Hallis intersected the path and continued on.
“I see the path, it’s right there,” Lakos called out, incredulously.
The old mystic shook his head. “My lord, this realm possesses many secrets. Through the eras, the lineage of the Gray Mystic is wrought with paranoia, littering the outer walls of the Bray Ridge with dark energy, lies, and treachery. Be ever cautious and stay with me. We will soon be there.”
Lakos felt his better judgment pulling him toward the white path. However, he could not conceive of Gris Hallis bringing him so far only to mislead him now.
Riding alongside the volcano’s outer ridge, Lakos glanced up the sheer, vertical mountainside. What had been imposing from a distance was simply astonishing up close. It was as if half the sky had been removed, replaced with an endless wall of stone. As he rode, his fleet horse began to slow, edging closer to the radiant, gray mountainside beside it. Gris Hallis, lost in the nostalgia of returning to his former home, was oblivious.
Lakos had gotten so close to the wall, in fact, that he was able to touch it with his outstretched hand. His fingers dragged serenely along the cold, damp stone as his fleet horse slowly marched on. The gray-black stone was alive with twinkling light, sparkling against the few sun’s rays to reach it. The stone’s rich, mildly acrid smell filled Lakos’s nostrils with each breath, instilling in him the satisfaction that he had truly come home.
His mind growing murky, Lakos glanced up ahead to see a solitary, bright red flower, jutting out from the rock face. As he neared it, he was enthralled by its beauty. It was the boldest, most striking color he had ever seen. How had it gotten there? It was as though the mountain itself were humbly presenting a gift to its new master.
Lakos reached out his hand, his fingers desperately stretching forward to grasp it. As his fingertips touched the base of the stem, he leaned forward on his fleet horse to finally extract his gift from the mountainside. But before he could fully grip the flower, a sudden, sharp pain darted through the back of his hand, causing him to release his grip and recoil as the flower passed him by, intact.
Lakos looked up in shock to see Gris Hallis holding a wooden staff extended toward him. Lakos was livid.
“You dare strike me!” he uttered, dumbfounded. “What madness possesses you, wizard? I have run my sword through countless souls for lesser offenses! Speak now, or else I fear our time together has come to an end. I’m certain that my men and I can quite capably locate the entrance to the Inner Realm without your assistance.” Lakos unsheathed his sword, and recoiled his arm, awaiting a response.
At that moment, a scream bellowed behind him.
He spun back to see one of his soldiers holding the brilliant red flower tight in his hand, it’s stem broken free from the wall. The soldier’s mouth lay agape, his eyes protruding slightly from their sockets. The flower’s bold red petals quickly browned, as did the soldier’s skin. Within seconds, his face grew sallow and dry, utterly devoid of moisture. As the first of the dried petals broke off and fell to the ground, so too did one of the soldier’s fingers. The grotesque dehydration continued until both the soldier and the flower crumbled to dust, swirling into nothingness in the warm, abrasive wind.
The broken stem, still jutting out from the wall of glittering stone, thrust further out into the open air, a new bulb forming and splitting open, revealing a flower still more vibrant and beautiful than the one preceding it.
“As I said, these are perilous parts. I implore you, my lord, to follow my lead.”
With that, Gris Hallis resumed his journey, Lakos following closely behind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Unable to tolerate the Lii-jit’s mania, Thayliss returned his attention to the scenery beyond his cage. The sky had darkened considerably as the stifling air grew cooler. His visibility was limited to clusters of pack mules on all sides, each pulling a metal-barred wagon like his own. He estimated that there were at least fifty such wagons around him, each containing five to ten prisoners. From what he could see, every wagon seemed to contain only Ohlinn, with the exception of his own, which housed seven Ohlinn, the annoying Lii-jit, and whatever he, himself, had become.
The small Lii-jit was not deterred. “I was just thinking, because there’s really little else to do at a time like this than think, about how we all got here. Here, in this cage. All of us.”
Thayliss couldn’t take it anymore. “Lii-jit!” he bellowed down at the diminutive mystic. “I have no patience for this. Why on earth do you infernal creatures have such a reputation for timidity when once you start talking, you never shut up?”
The Lii-jit quickly turned to look outside, his shoulders hunching slightly.
Thayliss was still riddled with guilt over the loss of Leysiia, convinced that there was something—anything—he could have done to intervene. Looking down upon the small, derided prisoner cowering before him, he felt yet another wave of remorse.
Obviously the little Lii-jit was subjected to torment of his own. Where was his family? Was he the only survivor? Thayliss knew that as elusive and mysterious as the Ohlinn were, the life-mystics were in many ways even more so. They were energetic, boisterous creatures that thrived on flittering about, at one with nature. He surmised that being stuck in a filthy metal cage in a smoldering, ashen desert must be at least as challenging for the Lii-jit as it was for him.
“I’m Thayliss,” he offered, glancing down at the lean, muscular figure.
“Nahlin-tiig,” the Lii-jit replied, nodding an appreciative smile. “But Tiig is fine. Often, we Lii-jit abbreviate our names when speaking with kin for the sake of convenience—though you are clearly from an Ohlinn order and not the Lii-jit order, as I am. All the same, we mystics are, in a sense, a common brotherhood, are we not?”
“What was your secret?” asked Thayliss, still unsure if encouraging the life-mystic was a wise idea.
“Secret? Oh yes, my secret. Two secrets, in fact. Isn’t it strange—don’t you find it at all strange—that those who managed to contain us all within these rolling prisons did so in spite of our innate mystic abilities? My kind governs all that is alive. To a lesser degree, we may also exert some measure of control over such life. So, then, did I just allow myself to willingly be captured and enslaved by these criminals? Could I not just utilize my gifts to summon those who could help me? Of course, the answer is no. But the question is why?”
Thayliss, struggling to keep up with his frenetic little companion, simply nodded.
Tiig continued, “And what of your kind, the Ohlinn? Powerful spirit-mystics, your kind. Possessing gifts of persuasion, no doubt capable of dissuading our captors from their diabolical aim. Communicating with past and future ethereal entities, seeing into the future, forever one step ahead.” He snorted obnoxiously. “Well, certainly this was not the case. Again, why?”
Thayliss could not hazard a guess. Fortunately, the Lii-jit did not wait for one to emerge.
“The secret involves those little yellow stones up there, do you see? Up in each corner of our cell—up there, there, there, there and down there, there, there, there.”
Thayliss nodded. He had noticed the stones earlier but thought nothing of them at the time.
“Sacred stones, salvaged from the ruins of the mystic tower, still pulsing with the collective energy of all mystics. Once used to ensure proper balance and flow in the universe while under control of the Voduss Grei. But now exploited for sinister purposes by the one who now aids the villainous, prophesized human.”
“Who?” asked Thayliss, looking up at the innocuous stones in disbelief.
“The fallen Ohlinn, Gris Hallis.”
Thayliss knew the name well—a ghastly, lecherous character tied into the Betrayals of Noryssin. Thayliss, like most, had assumed that the old Ohlinn outcast perished alongside his Gray Mystic master with the destruction of the sacred tower.
“Gris Hallis lives?” he asked, pondering the implications.
“In truth, it is so,” replied Tiig. “And so long as he harnesses the power still residing within the fallen temple, he will exert over us the very power we were created to wield.”
Thayliss looked over to the group of Ohlinn across from him, each staring dejectedly to the floor or bleakly through the prison bars. “Do they know?” he asked Tiig.
“They know that their powers have left them,” he replied. “Though it is doubtful that any of them know the reason why. You see, the logic is circular. For them to know the reason for their loss would necessitate the very clairvoyance taken from them. A most sorry state of affairs indeed.”
“And how did you come to possess these insights?” asked Thayliss, his eyebrow raised.
“I feigned loss of consciousness for a time. Rather intriguing what one may overhear through somnolence. Humans do love their talking, do they not? Especially when presenting themselves as brave, intelligent, and on and on and on. Anyhow, the rest I figured out while being forced to exert my abilities to draw a flock of klacktalli birds and packs of wild bastik wolves upon your home in the Valla Forest. Regrettable in the most to have played some small part in your tragic loss,” he said, his voice lacking any semblance of sympathy.
Thayliss grew ill once again. The steel bars of the cage seemed to close in on him. A hot flush rose up from within as his footing grew unsteady. He pushed away from the Lii-jit and toward the only unoccupied corner of the cell.
Truly, and insufferably, alone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Just a little further,” assured Gris Hallis, leading Lakos and his men farther along the mountainside. The massive gray wall teemed with ribbons of deep inlets and crevices, occasionally suggesting a way in where there was none.
In Lakos’s estimation, the only perceptible change in the terrain had been the white stone path they’d passed many strides ago. Both before and since that time, their journey yielded the same bleak view: sheer rock face to the right, dusty, ashen desert to the left, and a varied smattering of volcanic ground cover beneath them. The fact that they had not again ridden by that same white path provided the only tangible evidence that they were not traveling in circles around the great volcanic ridge.
Finally, to Lakos’s great relief, Gris Hallis pulled his ride to a halt. Glancing over his shoulder toward Lakos, his thin, pale lips curled into a grin. “We have arrived.”
To Lakos, the thrill of coming upon the entry to the great and sacred Inner Realm was tempered by the complete absence of any perceptible way in. He scrutinized the vast section of rock before him but saw not even the prospect of an inroad. To the contrary, this particular section of rock face was completely flat, lacking any of the cracks or inlets they had seen previously.
“My lord,” Gris Hallis continued, “we need an offering.”
The groundswell of affirmation that Lakos felt on first arriving at the volcano now degraded to suspicion. His years of advanced tactical training gave him both a heightened sense of danger as well as the conviction to allow himself to be led by it. Something was awry.
“An offering?” he asked, incredulous. “I see no entrance. I see only rock. And now you tell me that we need an offering to be granted entrance into this realm? I suggest that you offer yourself, mystic.”
Gris Hallis smirked softly, as if to acknowledge the incredulity of his request. “I assure you, my lord, that this is no ruse. The Inner Realm concealed within these volcanic walls does not merely attract and concentrate the world’s energies, it feeds on it. During my apprenticeship with Noryssin, I was his ambassador to the outside world. I wanted more, but that was the role he granted me. Such that it was, it afforded me many years of experience with the secrets and intricacies of the Bray Mountain you see before you. It is but rock, forged from the very core of our planet, thrust outward toward the sky through some prehistoric calamity. But, as such, it also serves as a direct link to the beating heart of our world. Through it, we can feel its pulse. Its energy. That’s why all of the world’s great energies return here, drawn back to its very core, only to be released yet again. The eternal circulation of our living world.”
Lakos was not swayed. “Spoken like a true mystic. Now, as for the offering?”
“Following Noryssin’s Three Betrayals and the energetic discord that followed, the steady influx and rhythm of energy circulating between all life and the planet itself was disrupted. Our world grew disjointed and weak, no longer able to sustain itself. But now, an offering, a voluntary return of life—of energy—back to the world will grant us entry into its domain. The Inner Realm has been starved of its vital energy for far too long—it, too, grows desperate. As evidenced by that poor soldier, lured in by the red flower. Upon absorbing his relatively meager life energy, the flower re-grew all the brighter.”
“I am not about to sacrifice another one of my own men just to see if your story is correct,” Lakos protested, still unable to fathom where along the sheer, unrelenting wall of gray an entrance might be hidden.
Gris Hallis lowered his head, the slightest hint of a smirk returning to his face. “In the past, when the Inner Realm pulsed with universal energy, I was routinely granted re-entry through these walls with little more than a hog, or a crate of fowl. But now, in these weakened, desperate times, with no disrespect to you or your valiant soldiers,” he said, “it will take much more than a human life to be granted access.”
Lakos glanced back at his caravan, through the waves of mounted soldiers, and toward the sea of prison wagons peppering the barren landscape.
“A mystic then,” offered Lakos, seeming to detest the implied power differential more than the thought of sacrificing one of his men.
“The life-mystic,” Gris Hallis replied. “As all life is both bound by matter and infused with the spirit, the Lii-jit serve as a link between the Masdazii and the Ohlinn. They unify all three orders, and by virtue of their innate vitality, the Lii-jit wield more energy than the others.”
“And greater energy means a greater offering,” surmised Lakos.
“I believe it will prove sufficient, with minimal loss of assets for us. Besides, I do believe our Lii-jit’s purpose on this quest has already been served, my lord.” Gris Hallis bowed his head in reverence.
Lakos once again scanned the wall of rock before him, glanced back to the throng of wagons in the distance, and signaled his nearest soldier.
“The life-mystic, bring him to me,” he ordered.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thayliss stood in silence, his hands gripping the metal bars on either side of his face as he gazed blankly at the world beyond.
A while back, his wagon, like all the others, had slowed to a halt. He could see many of the Ohlinn occupying the other wagons pacing and fretting, with others seemingly lost in serene meditation. As swiftly as he had taken to many of the Ohlinn ways and customs in his youth, the act of meditation had always eluded him. Through his childhood and into adolescence, Leonorryn had tried on countless occasions to instill in Thayliss the meditative stillness so ingrained in their kind. More than any trait, it was what truly defined the Ohlinn—the opening of a sacred channel to the other world. Providing guidance, affirmation, and a link to spirits long past.
Thayliss knew the instructions verbatim: remain still, seated on the shins, back arched, head forward, hands on the knees. At times, while attempting the exercise with Leonorryn on the floor of their dwelling high in the Valla treetops, he would feign achieving a meditative state. Then, he would slowly open one of his eyes just enough to watch Leonorryn. It was amazing. Thayliss would watch as the great old mystic grew increasingly still. His breath regulated and slowed, almost to the point of becoming as rigid and wooden as the walls around him. But then, just as Thayliss began easing his own body, the frozen Leonorryn would bellow, “Be still, Thayliss, be still,” before returning to his own meditative bliss.
But no matter how hard he tried, what came naturally to so many Ohlinn seemed perpetually just beyond Thayliss’s reach.
Finding himself trapped in a mobile prison, forced towards an unknown destination, Thayliss could use those meditative gifts now more than ever. He caught his distorted reflection in one of the metal bars in front of him and looked away in grief. He didn’t know how long the curse would last, but he begged for its end. The Ohlinn features projected upon his face were a constant reminder that he had lived a lie, and that the bright sapphire eyes staring back at him were those of the family he left behind. The family he let die. In spite of a heart that yearned otherwise, he inescapably harbored the soul of a human. Flawed, weak, plagued with sin and vice. Perhaps this was his penance for ever having thought otherwise.
Thayliss heard a murmur wash over the captive Ohlinn around him. Word traveled fast amongst their kind, so much so that it often blurred into the telepathic tendencies they also displayed on occasion. Before he had a chance to register what was about to happen, Thayliss heard the seven Ohlinn crouching behind him suddenly sequester tightly against the far wall of the cage, distancing themselves as much as possible from where Thayliss and the Lii-jit silently stood.
He then heard the sound of footsteps—several pairs—growing louder. Within moments, a cluster of armed soldiers swarmed his wagon, forming three distinct layers. Thayliss observed that, save the lone soldier closest to them, the innermost layer of soldiers each wielded some form of close-range weapon, knives or daggers. Behind them was a row of soldiers brandishing longswords. Finally, the third, outermost layer of soldiers each held a crossbow at the ready. Whatever their objective, reasoned Thayliss, such weaponry to harass a small cluster of Ohlinn and a weary Lii-jit seemed excessive.
