Alium, page 9
Mortality was known in Secundom.
From all ways communed they at Penulouir
The Centre, and it was Primexcitum,
Among them mightiest and King, who laid
Upon immortals this decree: Recede
Into the stars, and abide the children
Who bud and flower of their own virtue
In these havens we leave them unauthored.
Many years had passed since Byron had thought of his own mortality, for he feared little in his pursuit of Zelor. Now humbled and saddened by the great works of the Xol, he missed his enemy dearly, for once they had been inseparable, bound up in their acceptance of ephemerality and love for combat. But a curtain of shadow fell upon these images, each a memory from their youth, Byron and Zelor duelling, travelling, teaching, working the land, and in all reflections this cold, black fog separated them Novare and Xol, born adversaries. He slammed the book closed. A diaphanous sheet of dust rose and fell, spreading and trickling through the half-light.
Looking up, he saw at last that there had been all this time a wide map of the world spread and weighted at its corners upon a circular table in the corner of the room, and he hastened for it. Many were the masses of land that seemed strange and new to him etched in fine ink on the yellowed paper. But here was the body of land home to the Kingdom of Lucetal, called by the Xol Petrampis, and across the sea to the East was the continent of Efvla. Holding his finger to this sprawling shadow of dark forest, occupying the entire northern hemisphere of the continent, he wondered where Elleon’s tree might be.
He scanned southeast over the endless woods, until the trees gave way to desert. This land was hilly and dry, and intolerably hot—it was noted in a stylish scrawl. Up the hills went until they gathered and rose into great mountains, and these mountains carried on to the sea, rising ever higher. They were called the Xosfir, in large, bold scroll of another hand, though he imagined the range had another name in Lucetal. At their uncharted centre, in tiny lettering, was the word Zenidow and a question mark. He only realized then that the word was the same across languages.
Byron rolled the map and folded it twice in half before stuffing it indelicately into his cloak. Then he begrudgingly returned to the room where Elleon’s corpse sat still in its position of deep meditation. Ignoring the horrific sight at first, he took his sword from the table and strapped it again to his back. He sighed long, listening to the wind outside for a moment, and finally turned to face the sorcerer.
A hard light was in Byron’s eye. Back was his unshakable resolve. He gripped Elleon’s cloak and dragged him out into the pale grey light. The cold wind rushed against his face, and he could not help but relax in the ecstasy of his liberty from the labyrinthine tree. The monstrous Euphran, still roosted, at once perceived the situation, and its wings shivered.
“I’ve slain your master!” Byron shouted, and he threw the sorcerer’s body down upon the gigantic branch where he stood. The empty cranium rebounded off of the metallic bark, and bits of brain scudded along its surface.
So broad was this place for footing that it was practically flat here by the entry-arch. The Euphran was perched on a thinner bough of the tree further out in the open air. As if sighing now it opened its wings and hopped massively—though deftly—to the greater branch, enormous, wicked talons slamming into the metallic bark, and snaked its long purple neck over Elleon’s body. “So you have,” it grumbled. “What does it matter?”
Byron grinned. “It matters everything to a Euphran.”
The long gossamer tassels stiffened, great yellow eyes widened, vertical black pupils stretching and opening unto chasms of dark shock. “How can you know this thing?”
“I am no Lucetalian. I know a Euphran when it looks me in the eye. You are bound to me, Gryshnam.”
The Euphran snorted at its name. “Slay me then, and be done with it.”
Byron scowled. “Take me to the Xosfir. Then I release you.”
“That is the proudest home of my kind.” The deep pupils dilated even further with the strain to disobey. “I shall be devoured for the scar of Elleon’s saddle.”
Though Gryshnam said nothing to justify its forbidden partnership with Elleon, Byron was impressed with the creature’s ability to speak against its new master. The pain of its treachery was nearly deeper than blood loyalty. He sympathized with the Euphran. For whatever reason it had come to serve the sorcerer, he could not fathom that Elleon had been a kind master. He took out his map again. “Right,” he said, furrowing his brow over its esoteric features. “Occultash may be close enough.”
“Occultash… yes; the Xol spare no sacred words for the cities of Novare.” The yellow eye flitted to the map and back out along the empty horizon. “But I must leave you there hastily. Even the lowlands are not unknown to them, though they prefer the desolate peaks.”
“Your freedom is promised.” Byron held out his hand.
“So be it,” the Euphran snorted, hot wind blasting the mercenary. Then he lowered his neck and huge shoulder so that Byron grabbed the edge of the saddle. With one leap he was fitting his boots into the leather catches of the black saddle and leaning forward to grab the elzbark pommel that jutted from the front of the rig. As soon as he was settled, Gryshnam leapt from the branch, flung out his wings like long violet clouds, and fell banking into the grey sky.
Chapter VII
Masterless
Elts could not say what leagues wrote the fissures in her frozen feet. Dumb to the passage of time, up steep, choking woods, over ice and crag, blindly in white flurries, she held behind the trudging black cloaks and swishing tails of her company as it was her nature to do so. Numberless months had waxed and waned with the neon-blue phases of Xeléd, yet even if the Moon of the Change was divine for other Xol, she thought no blessing could come of it.
Deathless winds swept jagged claws along naked bones. Hidden drifts of snow swallowed legs whole. The wet of the eyes and nose froze like thorns turned back upon the defenceless flower of the face. Out of stillest silence came the explosive, tearing storms layered with stabbing hail. Sheer escarpments and open chasms yawned suddenly underfoot, spanning miles of detour. Save the appearance of some blood-boltered predator, scarce were the opportunities to sate their wretched stomachs.
The rare settlements of Novare even along these remotest peaks were indignant as any towards the purple folk. Zelor was quick to anger and overzealous in vengeance, yet many gracious nights were spent thereof in the cabins of the dead. They made their choice, Elts would assure herself, curled against the gelid boards. Outside the corpses froze into a mass. But such memories were warped by distance.
It seemed now they travelled at last through wilds uncharted by Novare as much as Xol. Three cycles of Xeléd had shone unhindered by adopted shelter upon their weary camps. Each coming darkness they huddled around the blaze of Feox’s flaming greataxe sunken into the rock, holding alternate watch at the shimmering perimeter of Xelv’s defensive conjurations, scouting ahead through the nighteyes of Xirell’s familiars.
Worst of all were those abyssal, sleepless nights. Slithering bush-creatures made covenant with foul hissing things that crawled out of rocks under the different moons. In the pit of dark, a race of tittering eyeless troglodytes had its day. Yet there was something familiar to Elts lying far from civilization in the total pitilessness of these moments. The peerless mountains dissolved her new prestige, that grandiose status uniting her company so awkward and—she often felt—unearned. Far from the rigid hierarchy of the black city Xoldra, here was the true, indifferent world where she had first found her way. After so many years she remembered almost fondly the squalid, ungoverned Hollow of Wyx, and a life of orphan vigilance.
But to say that the others of her party did not consider themselves paragons of rank would be a gross error. Feox’s unassailable pride came purely from battle, while Xelv, ever since that myth-shrouded arrival, had known the Empress’ side better than any. Xirell, Fexest, and Zelor ascended more naturally, through pedigrees of storied blood. Trained from birth, despite what humility they might cultivate, the highborn Xol were innately accustomed to privilege. Yet these five and Elts the unproven were as one to their race. Together they were the Zefloz, elite in the Empire’s highest, and few in number.
*
As any morning, Elts’ thoughts could not stray long from the wrenching torment in her toes and heels. The daily numbness of pain long endured would not comfort her for many more hours of walking. With each grinding frozen step now accentuated came as well a presence of mind, disrupting thoughts of Xoldra and Wyx, of her ill-fitting title—the White Zefloz. Now she realized that the strangely massive, dark objects leaning into her periphery were not trees, but the hulking stone ruins of an old sylvan settlement. No close look was prerequisite in seeing that these structures had nothing to do with the Novare.
Typically far behind the others, she had little time to explore, but could not contain her fascination—here were staggering signs of elder life! Her personal interest as a member of the company was in seeing what no Xol before her had done. At last the Zefloz were sent into true wilderness; at last they stumbled upon things to which countless, if not all generations had been ignorant.
She lingered under the shadowed, leaning Cyclopean structures whose alien proportions confounded all known bodies, stepped slowly over cracked, moss-choked courtyards and cloven tabernacles, raised ancient stone chalices carefully in her freezing hands to study their rings of senseless alphabet. Between friable pillars she snaked, hands clasped behind her back, leaning around wind-eroded obelisks erected, she figured, following their trajectories into the sky, as in alignment with stars in heaven. Rather abruptly the structures grew rare, and the strangling hold of the stony alpine forest began to loosen. Gnarled, frozen branches enshrined her egress in a ceremonial tunnel hung with dazzling icicles.
Out from under the dead, snow-decked branches she appeared behind the waiting Zefloz, small and dark in their black robes before an immense open expanse. The tails of Zelor formed signs of impatience. In the clear light what was grey and dense became pure and clean. Rolling on and away in blinding glory was a great unfolding blanket of white. The huge slope was interposed by a wide river descending out of the frozen trees farther along the ridge where they stood. Rushing with great chunks of ice, seething over awesome rapids, it ran vanishing into an ocean of fog that roiled in the valley below. Above all, Elts could see their goal: Zenidow, shooting high as ever into its canopy of clouds.
Rising like sentinels in front of the Great Mountain, a final range obstructed the Zefloz. Huddled together were the implacable titan shoulders of three snowy peaks, larger and more treacherous than any before encountered. The middle and rightmost mountains were broad-based and jagged-toothed, thrusting the cloud-wrapped multiple points of their serrated apices like the crude battlements of giants. But the leftmost was quite different. As though a flat, clean cross-section of land had long ago been pulled straight up from some mantle-deep slot, this ten thousand foot vertical formation was sheer-faced down to the mist obscuring its connection with Altum, and would have been completely vertical, and taller than its companions were it not leaning only slightly against the middle. Yet even more stunning was that part of its composition which was clearly unnatural.
Embedded in the upper reaches of the smooth sun-drenched face was a spiny clustering of tall, leaning black towers and crumbling castle walls dark as pitch. Though it was unclear how such magnificent structures could be affixed to the featureless wall of rock, it was obvious to Elts that this was no work of the ancient architects of the forest. Perhaps, she thought, it was the mark of a race even older and wiser. It might have been once a citadel of the gods themselves, forgotten in their retreat to the stars. Though, any Xol might compare the looks of it to the cities of Novare.
*
Seeming to take no notice of the awesome vision afforded them after months of suffocating forest, Zelor descended busily down and out into the open snow. One by one the others silently succumbed to some invisible dominion in their hearts and followed his long, beckoning tails as if, like hateful leashes, they drew the Zefloz forth. Indeed, they did not follow him out of free will, for by some black art he had dominated their minds. None but Elts and Fexest seemed still to think for their own.
The coloured hemming of the black robes of the Zefloz bespoke their different titles, and Zelor’s was silver as the blades of the Novare, for though he was the greatest swordsman in the Empire, he abhorred the use of elz bark. An argent scabbard swept from his waist into the folds of that cloak, and he wore another, smaller but finer weapon along his back. Tall and broad-shouldered, with deep purple skin, long straight white hair, and black eyes, the Silver Zefloz fought with the legendary technique, and used only the metals and weapons of the Knights of Molavor with whom he had spent his greatest years.
Yet long ago he had betrayed and destroyed with their own lessons that single race of Novare to which the Xol were long allied. In the name of the Empire, he had sown the first seeds of distrust long before the war with Lucetal, whose kingship was ignorant of Molavor. Therein he was important to Fozlest, the Empress of Xoldra. But though the might of Zelor was plain, she would never trust him. If not for his treachery against those who took him in and so kindly blessed forth the art he loved, she detested him for his temper, his hate of sorcery, and for the many years he spent too close to the Molavorians she had always feared.
Therefore she placed in command of the expedition to Zenidow that sorcerer who was closest to her: sexless Xelv. Hairless, white-eyed, and cat-bodied, the bearded tails and fair skin of Xelv showed forth a brilliant blue as out from ancient myth. Scripture told that the ancestors of the Xol were sky-skinned; many legends surrounded Xelv who alone bore that pigment. Those twisting cobalt tails spoke a dead language unrecognized in Xoldra, and the crafts of summoning and knowledge of Xeléd especially with Xelv far surpassed what was known. One hundred years ago the Blue Zefloz came out of the untamed West pledging fealty to Fozlest for reasons unspoken. Xelv was above all things the most loyal in her court. Yet even that wisest sorcerer, the Hand of Fozlest itself, had surrendered seemingly without conflict the reins of this quest so important to her, going always in Zelor’s shadow, the first to do his bidding.
Close behind Xelv in following at the tail-commands of Zelor, and second to become like a silent thrall to silver was Feox. Born a slave, tails shorn off by merciless drivers, brain misshapen and teeth destroyed by contest in the fighting pits of Zentref, Feox of the Fire rose through the brackets of death to become the most famous gladiator in all Xoldra. He won his freedom in a bout against the Red Zefloz of old, whom he broke before Fozlest over the head of that warrior’s own axe. He claimed the flamed weapon thereafter, and was never seen without it. Simple minded, brutal, ursine in form with torso tree-thick, he was the Empire’s most powerful physical force. Patchworked with dark purple hide, the stringy clumps of his violet hair swung back and forth with affected masculine swagger as he lurched after Xelv. Yet when he turned, in profile one noticed the strange, feminine dignity of his features. Perhaps for this reason he detested women, obeying Fozlest’s commands only with dangerous surliness. Loud and hateful was his belief that Elts and Fexest should not have come on the journey; he spoke to them only out of what condescension he deemed necessary. But he was not so conservative with the men. Often he would mock the androgyny of Xelv, the old body of Xirell, and though he had perhaps most in common spiritually with Zelor, to him he was the most bitter and resentful. All the more surreal and contradictory was it to watch Feox pad after his enemy like a trained animal.
Third to fall in line in descent of the snowy slope, and only this morning to have changed, was Xirell. The spry codger was normally full of song and story, always delineating new plants and animals, cooing in melodic susurrus to some animal companion. It was nigh impossible to shut him up when his intellect was stimulated. Yet lost as Elts had been in her thoughts and the ruins out of time, only now—seeing him drift ahead as a mirthless spectre, head bowed, gnarled fingers limp—did she realize his transformation. Even the day prior he had spoken about the subordination of Xelv and Feox only as it was an unfortunate quagmire, assuring her that Zelor could not control them all. But his silence and abjection during these early hours when he was usually most gay made an omen most fell. Grassy eyes before intelligent and curious were barren and cracked. Ancient smile-marks sagged with stiff death. A sick pallor of grey cursed his wispy cheeks, and his long flowing moustache—that source of wit—went untwisted, forgotten by hands now thoughtless.
As Xirell shuffled on into the open, the noble septry which he’d befriended long ago in the valley before the forest winged out from over the wood and perched upon his shoulder. Its jet feathers folded back, vigilant eyes taking in every slightest detail around them. The wizened sorcerer at such a time should have tossed the creature some new morsel from within his voluminous pockets, spoken rapturously into its bristling feathers, sent it eagerly off on errands both essential to their progress and silly as his fancy often was. Many meals had found them in this way, or seemingly useless artifacts which Xirell would add to some hidden trove, smiling knowingly. Yet now he said nothing. The great raptor shifted foot from foot anxiously. Then it flew away, perhaps forever. Black-cowled Fexest, still of clear eyes and seeming independence, glanced back at Elts as if to say “him too,” before plodding out after the others.
It was this horrible absence so sudden and total in the Green Zefloz which forced Elts that morning to recognize the evil of Zelor. Old Xirell was the only reason she walked alongside these elite members of the Empire she had always loathed.
As she lastly joined the procession down the great slope into the distant river valley, she let an old and special memory seep up from unconscious vaults, growing clear as the white snow. Supplanting the vacant eyes of her master with remembered vitality, she fell into a vision of younger years, when all Xol sorcerers were patently malefic.
From all ways communed they at Penulouir
The Centre, and it was Primexcitum,
Among them mightiest and King, who laid
Upon immortals this decree: Recede
Into the stars, and abide the children
Who bud and flower of their own virtue
In these havens we leave them unauthored.
Many years had passed since Byron had thought of his own mortality, for he feared little in his pursuit of Zelor. Now humbled and saddened by the great works of the Xol, he missed his enemy dearly, for once they had been inseparable, bound up in their acceptance of ephemerality and love for combat. But a curtain of shadow fell upon these images, each a memory from their youth, Byron and Zelor duelling, travelling, teaching, working the land, and in all reflections this cold, black fog separated them Novare and Xol, born adversaries. He slammed the book closed. A diaphanous sheet of dust rose and fell, spreading and trickling through the half-light.
Looking up, he saw at last that there had been all this time a wide map of the world spread and weighted at its corners upon a circular table in the corner of the room, and he hastened for it. Many were the masses of land that seemed strange and new to him etched in fine ink on the yellowed paper. But here was the body of land home to the Kingdom of Lucetal, called by the Xol Petrampis, and across the sea to the East was the continent of Efvla. Holding his finger to this sprawling shadow of dark forest, occupying the entire northern hemisphere of the continent, he wondered where Elleon’s tree might be.
He scanned southeast over the endless woods, until the trees gave way to desert. This land was hilly and dry, and intolerably hot—it was noted in a stylish scrawl. Up the hills went until they gathered and rose into great mountains, and these mountains carried on to the sea, rising ever higher. They were called the Xosfir, in large, bold scroll of another hand, though he imagined the range had another name in Lucetal. At their uncharted centre, in tiny lettering, was the word Zenidow and a question mark. He only realized then that the word was the same across languages.
Byron rolled the map and folded it twice in half before stuffing it indelicately into his cloak. Then he begrudgingly returned to the room where Elleon’s corpse sat still in its position of deep meditation. Ignoring the horrific sight at first, he took his sword from the table and strapped it again to his back. He sighed long, listening to the wind outside for a moment, and finally turned to face the sorcerer.
A hard light was in Byron’s eye. Back was his unshakable resolve. He gripped Elleon’s cloak and dragged him out into the pale grey light. The cold wind rushed against his face, and he could not help but relax in the ecstasy of his liberty from the labyrinthine tree. The monstrous Euphran, still roosted, at once perceived the situation, and its wings shivered.
“I’ve slain your master!” Byron shouted, and he threw the sorcerer’s body down upon the gigantic branch where he stood. The empty cranium rebounded off of the metallic bark, and bits of brain scudded along its surface.
So broad was this place for footing that it was practically flat here by the entry-arch. The Euphran was perched on a thinner bough of the tree further out in the open air. As if sighing now it opened its wings and hopped massively—though deftly—to the greater branch, enormous, wicked talons slamming into the metallic bark, and snaked its long purple neck over Elleon’s body. “So you have,” it grumbled. “What does it matter?”
Byron grinned. “It matters everything to a Euphran.”
The long gossamer tassels stiffened, great yellow eyes widened, vertical black pupils stretching and opening unto chasms of dark shock. “How can you know this thing?”
“I am no Lucetalian. I know a Euphran when it looks me in the eye. You are bound to me, Gryshnam.”
The Euphran snorted at its name. “Slay me then, and be done with it.”
Byron scowled. “Take me to the Xosfir. Then I release you.”
“That is the proudest home of my kind.” The deep pupils dilated even further with the strain to disobey. “I shall be devoured for the scar of Elleon’s saddle.”
Though Gryshnam said nothing to justify its forbidden partnership with Elleon, Byron was impressed with the creature’s ability to speak against its new master. The pain of its treachery was nearly deeper than blood loyalty. He sympathized with the Euphran. For whatever reason it had come to serve the sorcerer, he could not fathom that Elleon had been a kind master. He took out his map again. “Right,” he said, furrowing his brow over its esoteric features. “Occultash may be close enough.”
“Occultash… yes; the Xol spare no sacred words for the cities of Novare.” The yellow eye flitted to the map and back out along the empty horizon. “But I must leave you there hastily. Even the lowlands are not unknown to them, though they prefer the desolate peaks.”
“Your freedom is promised.” Byron held out his hand.
“So be it,” the Euphran snorted, hot wind blasting the mercenary. Then he lowered his neck and huge shoulder so that Byron grabbed the edge of the saddle. With one leap he was fitting his boots into the leather catches of the black saddle and leaning forward to grab the elzbark pommel that jutted from the front of the rig. As soon as he was settled, Gryshnam leapt from the branch, flung out his wings like long violet clouds, and fell banking into the grey sky.
Chapter VII
Masterless
Elts could not say what leagues wrote the fissures in her frozen feet. Dumb to the passage of time, up steep, choking woods, over ice and crag, blindly in white flurries, she held behind the trudging black cloaks and swishing tails of her company as it was her nature to do so. Numberless months had waxed and waned with the neon-blue phases of Xeléd, yet even if the Moon of the Change was divine for other Xol, she thought no blessing could come of it.
Deathless winds swept jagged claws along naked bones. Hidden drifts of snow swallowed legs whole. The wet of the eyes and nose froze like thorns turned back upon the defenceless flower of the face. Out of stillest silence came the explosive, tearing storms layered with stabbing hail. Sheer escarpments and open chasms yawned suddenly underfoot, spanning miles of detour. Save the appearance of some blood-boltered predator, scarce were the opportunities to sate their wretched stomachs.
The rare settlements of Novare even along these remotest peaks were indignant as any towards the purple folk. Zelor was quick to anger and overzealous in vengeance, yet many gracious nights were spent thereof in the cabins of the dead. They made their choice, Elts would assure herself, curled against the gelid boards. Outside the corpses froze into a mass. But such memories were warped by distance.
It seemed now they travelled at last through wilds uncharted by Novare as much as Xol. Three cycles of Xeléd had shone unhindered by adopted shelter upon their weary camps. Each coming darkness they huddled around the blaze of Feox’s flaming greataxe sunken into the rock, holding alternate watch at the shimmering perimeter of Xelv’s defensive conjurations, scouting ahead through the nighteyes of Xirell’s familiars.
Worst of all were those abyssal, sleepless nights. Slithering bush-creatures made covenant with foul hissing things that crawled out of rocks under the different moons. In the pit of dark, a race of tittering eyeless troglodytes had its day. Yet there was something familiar to Elts lying far from civilization in the total pitilessness of these moments. The peerless mountains dissolved her new prestige, that grandiose status uniting her company so awkward and—she often felt—unearned. Far from the rigid hierarchy of the black city Xoldra, here was the true, indifferent world where she had first found her way. After so many years she remembered almost fondly the squalid, ungoverned Hollow of Wyx, and a life of orphan vigilance.
But to say that the others of her party did not consider themselves paragons of rank would be a gross error. Feox’s unassailable pride came purely from battle, while Xelv, ever since that myth-shrouded arrival, had known the Empress’ side better than any. Xirell, Fexest, and Zelor ascended more naturally, through pedigrees of storied blood. Trained from birth, despite what humility they might cultivate, the highborn Xol were innately accustomed to privilege. Yet these five and Elts the unproven were as one to their race. Together they were the Zefloz, elite in the Empire’s highest, and few in number.
*
As any morning, Elts’ thoughts could not stray long from the wrenching torment in her toes and heels. The daily numbness of pain long endured would not comfort her for many more hours of walking. With each grinding frozen step now accentuated came as well a presence of mind, disrupting thoughts of Xoldra and Wyx, of her ill-fitting title—the White Zefloz. Now she realized that the strangely massive, dark objects leaning into her periphery were not trees, but the hulking stone ruins of an old sylvan settlement. No close look was prerequisite in seeing that these structures had nothing to do with the Novare.
Typically far behind the others, she had little time to explore, but could not contain her fascination—here were staggering signs of elder life! Her personal interest as a member of the company was in seeing what no Xol before her had done. At last the Zefloz were sent into true wilderness; at last they stumbled upon things to which countless, if not all generations had been ignorant.
She lingered under the shadowed, leaning Cyclopean structures whose alien proportions confounded all known bodies, stepped slowly over cracked, moss-choked courtyards and cloven tabernacles, raised ancient stone chalices carefully in her freezing hands to study their rings of senseless alphabet. Between friable pillars she snaked, hands clasped behind her back, leaning around wind-eroded obelisks erected, she figured, following their trajectories into the sky, as in alignment with stars in heaven. Rather abruptly the structures grew rare, and the strangling hold of the stony alpine forest began to loosen. Gnarled, frozen branches enshrined her egress in a ceremonial tunnel hung with dazzling icicles.
Out from under the dead, snow-decked branches she appeared behind the waiting Zefloz, small and dark in their black robes before an immense open expanse. The tails of Zelor formed signs of impatience. In the clear light what was grey and dense became pure and clean. Rolling on and away in blinding glory was a great unfolding blanket of white. The huge slope was interposed by a wide river descending out of the frozen trees farther along the ridge where they stood. Rushing with great chunks of ice, seething over awesome rapids, it ran vanishing into an ocean of fog that roiled in the valley below. Above all, Elts could see their goal: Zenidow, shooting high as ever into its canopy of clouds.
Rising like sentinels in front of the Great Mountain, a final range obstructed the Zefloz. Huddled together were the implacable titan shoulders of three snowy peaks, larger and more treacherous than any before encountered. The middle and rightmost mountains were broad-based and jagged-toothed, thrusting the cloud-wrapped multiple points of their serrated apices like the crude battlements of giants. But the leftmost was quite different. As though a flat, clean cross-section of land had long ago been pulled straight up from some mantle-deep slot, this ten thousand foot vertical formation was sheer-faced down to the mist obscuring its connection with Altum, and would have been completely vertical, and taller than its companions were it not leaning only slightly against the middle. Yet even more stunning was that part of its composition which was clearly unnatural.
Embedded in the upper reaches of the smooth sun-drenched face was a spiny clustering of tall, leaning black towers and crumbling castle walls dark as pitch. Though it was unclear how such magnificent structures could be affixed to the featureless wall of rock, it was obvious to Elts that this was no work of the ancient architects of the forest. Perhaps, she thought, it was the mark of a race even older and wiser. It might have been once a citadel of the gods themselves, forgotten in their retreat to the stars. Though, any Xol might compare the looks of it to the cities of Novare.
*
Seeming to take no notice of the awesome vision afforded them after months of suffocating forest, Zelor descended busily down and out into the open snow. One by one the others silently succumbed to some invisible dominion in their hearts and followed his long, beckoning tails as if, like hateful leashes, they drew the Zefloz forth. Indeed, they did not follow him out of free will, for by some black art he had dominated their minds. None but Elts and Fexest seemed still to think for their own.
The coloured hemming of the black robes of the Zefloz bespoke their different titles, and Zelor’s was silver as the blades of the Novare, for though he was the greatest swordsman in the Empire, he abhorred the use of elz bark. An argent scabbard swept from his waist into the folds of that cloak, and he wore another, smaller but finer weapon along his back. Tall and broad-shouldered, with deep purple skin, long straight white hair, and black eyes, the Silver Zefloz fought with the legendary technique, and used only the metals and weapons of the Knights of Molavor with whom he had spent his greatest years.
Yet long ago he had betrayed and destroyed with their own lessons that single race of Novare to which the Xol were long allied. In the name of the Empire, he had sown the first seeds of distrust long before the war with Lucetal, whose kingship was ignorant of Molavor. Therein he was important to Fozlest, the Empress of Xoldra. But though the might of Zelor was plain, she would never trust him. If not for his treachery against those who took him in and so kindly blessed forth the art he loved, she detested him for his temper, his hate of sorcery, and for the many years he spent too close to the Molavorians she had always feared.
Therefore she placed in command of the expedition to Zenidow that sorcerer who was closest to her: sexless Xelv. Hairless, white-eyed, and cat-bodied, the bearded tails and fair skin of Xelv showed forth a brilliant blue as out from ancient myth. Scripture told that the ancestors of the Xol were sky-skinned; many legends surrounded Xelv who alone bore that pigment. Those twisting cobalt tails spoke a dead language unrecognized in Xoldra, and the crafts of summoning and knowledge of Xeléd especially with Xelv far surpassed what was known. One hundred years ago the Blue Zefloz came out of the untamed West pledging fealty to Fozlest for reasons unspoken. Xelv was above all things the most loyal in her court. Yet even that wisest sorcerer, the Hand of Fozlest itself, had surrendered seemingly without conflict the reins of this quest so important to her, going always in Zelor’s shadow, the first to do his bidding.
Close behind Xelv in following at the tail-commands of Zelor, and second to become like a silent thrall to silver was Feox. Born a slave, tails shorn off by merciless drivers, brain misshapen and teeth destroyed by contest in the fighting pits of Zentref, Feox of the Fire rose through the brackets of death to become the most famous gladiator in all Xoldra. He won his freedom in a bout against the Red Zefloz of old, whom he broke before Fozlest over the head of that warrior’s own axe. He claimed the flamed weapon thereafter, and was never seen without it. Simple minded, brutal, ursine in form with torso tree-thick, he was the Empire’s most powerful physical force. Patchworked with dark purple hide, the stringy clumps of his violet hair swung back and forth with affected masculine swagger as he lurched after Xelv. Yet when he turned, in profile one noticed the strange, feminine dignity of his features. Perhaps for this reason he detested women, obeying Fozlest’s commands only with dangerous surliness. Loud and hateful was his belief that Elts and Fexest should not have come on the journey; he spoke to them only out of what condescension he deemed necessary. But he was not so conservative with the men. Often he would mock the androgyny of Xelv, the old body of Xirell, and though he had perhaps most in common spiritually with Zelor, to him he was the most bitter and resentful. All the more surreal and contradictory was it to watch Feox pad after his enemy like a trained animal.
Third to fall in line in descent of the snowy slope, and only this morning to have changed, was Xirell. The spry codger was normally full of song and story, always delineating new plants and animals, cooing in melodic susurrus to some animal companion. It was nigh impossible to shut him up when his intellect was stimulated. Yet lost as Elts had been in her thoughts and the ruins out of time, only now—seeing him drift ahead as a mirthless spectre, head bowed, gnarled fingers limp—did she realize his transformation. Even the day prior he had spoken about the subordination of Xelv and Feox only as it was an unfortunate quagmire, assuring her that Zelor could not control them all. But his silence and abjection during these early hours when he was usually most gay made an omen most fell. Grassy eyes before intelligent and curious were barren and cracked. Ancient smile-marks sagged with stiff death. A sick pallor of grey cursed his wispy cheeks, and his long flowing moustache—that source of wit—went untwisted, forgotten by hands now thoughtless.
As Xirell shuffled on into the open, the noble septry which he’d befriended long ago in the valley before the forest winged out from over the wood and perched upon his shoulder. Its jet feathers folded back, vigilant eyes taking in every slightest detail around them. The wizened sorcerer at such a time should have tossed the creature some new morsel from within his voluminous pockets, spoken rapturously into its bristling feathers, sent it eagerly off on errands both essential to their progress and silly as his fancy often was. Many meals had found them in this way, or seemingly useless artifacts which Xirell would add to some hidden trove, smiling knowingly. Yet now he said nothing. The great raptor shifted foot from foot anxiously. Then it flew away, perhaps forever. Black-cowled Fexest, still of clear eyes and seeming independence, glanced back at Elts as if to say “him too,” before plodding out after the others.
It was this horrible absence so sudden and total in the Green Zefloz which forced Elts that morning to recognize the evil of Zelor. Old Xirell was the only reason she walked alongside these elite members of the Empire she had always loathed.
As she lastly joined the procession down the great slope into the distant river valley, she let an old and special memory seep up from unconscious vaults, growing clear as the white snow. Supplanting the vacant eyes of her master with remembered vitality, she fell into a vision of younger years, when all Xol sorcerers were patently malefic.
