Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) (3 page)

“That’s it, Feral beast. Come a little closer,” he muttered, taking a defensive stance with his dagger, pointing it directly at the throat of his approaching attacker.

“Imptus!” shouted the alien-looking being, three yards in front of Remtall. The circling pairs of yellow immediately froze, stopping their circular waltz and chorus of
Kimp
, yielding an eerie silence. It appeared that the one who approached Remtall commanded the others, as it looked around in a strange nod of approval to its chanters.

“Fair fight, I’ll say—five on one, completely surrounded,” Remtall groaned to himself. “Ulpo… it’d be a nice time for you to stop by.”

“Ulpo?” responded the leader in a slightly deeper tone than that of the other four creatures.

“What?” replied Remtall, trying to decide if the creature had really spoken his friend’s name, or if the adrenaline filling his mind was reacting poorly with his
Oms
-saturated blood.

“We have your friend, Ulpo,” spoke the odd beast in a low but shrill voice, gargling between breaths.

“So you speak the common tongue? It was dishonorous then to beleaguer me with your native voice, evil fungus. What of my friend, where is he? Tell me before I slit your thin neck,” Remtall raged. He edged closer to the leader. In response, the four pairs of eyes that encircled Remtall moved inward, so that each presently became nearly as visible as the leader.

“Do not be alarmed, foreigner. We have not destroyed your Ulpo. The star has grown too bright, and lasted for too many days now, and we must take every precaution,” spoke the alien voice.

“What in Darkin are you speaking of, grey mold? Know whom it is you speak to in that viral-filth tongue—Remtall Olter’Fane, captain of the Gnomen Fleet of the Five Country War! Bow now and take me to Ulpo, or find the edge of my blade seated deep upon your neck!” Remtall threatened.

He took a third step toward the creature. Suddenly, a sweet fragrance washed over Remtall as he came within grasp of his enemy. The scent of roots and fresh-turned earth overtook his nostrils, and he swayed, drowsed. Distracted by the smell, Remtall’s intensity flickered. He breathed deeply of the mellow fumes.

“You… you’re… plants?” cried Remtall, finding himself in disbelief.

“We must take every precaution against the Omen of the Star—please, do not be alarmed,” came the creature, trying to dissuade Remtall from violence.

“Never mind my alarm—but rather my steel!” Remtall furiously rallied, summoning his last bit of clarity and strength. He leapt forth, gliding through the air with tremendous momentum. His dagger struck forward at the delicate neck of the yellow-eyed creature.

“
Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!
”

The sweet noxious odor curled up Remtall’s nose as he flew through the air, and then trickled into his brain, numbing his senses midflight. Before his assault had even landed, the gnome was asleep. He remained asleep, even as he slammed into the ground from midair. As quickly as they had surrounded him, the plant creatures scooped Remtall up with their long, fragile arms and placed him on their backs. Remtall snored peacefully as they carried him away through the dense pines. As the creatures rustled along their way, one by one, their yellow eyes disappeared, and there was once again no light to break the uniform abyss that enveloped the deeps of the Endless Forest.

*                  *                 *

“Remtall!” shouted Ulpo, sprinting blindly through the overgrowth. Minutes before, he had woken up surrounded by the most horrifying monsters he had ever seen—they had appeared in the dim light to be oversized bugs, circled around him, staring starward through a bare patch in the canopy of the forest. They had seemed mesmerized by something, but Ulpo hadn’t taken the time to figure out what. The last thing he remembered was falling behind Remtall on the trail, and a great spell of drowsiness coming over him. The next instant he woke up, surrounded by the awful creatures; they had been speaking softly in their ugly language, gazing in a trance at the sky. Ulpo instinctually reached for his short sword, but to his despair it was gone; luckily, his limbing axe was still in place under his shirt. He had quickly drawn it, and still feeling dizzy he jumped straight up from the ground and rushed to the nearest creature, slicing off its head. The congregation began to hiss, turning from their trance to see what had happened; each of the strange things let out a painful shrieking noise. Several of them had charged at Ulpo, but most panicked and scattered. Ulpo did not waste a second, felling two more creatures—killing the first with a neck slice, and hurling his axe from two yards away at the eyes of the second.

No blood spilled that Ulpo could see, and he had been too startled to retrieve his axe. Using the moment of triumph to his advantage, he escaped into the black maze of the Endless Forest.

“Remtall!” shouted Ulpo again, giving away his position in the pathless forest. Remtall would have a torch still, he thought; his had disappeared along with his sword when he’d been kidnapped. Ulpo’s vision was much better than Remtall’s in the dark, a genetic privilege of his cave dwelling race, but the Endless Forest seemed to be a different sort of darkness—it seemed to Ulpo that each pine he passed sprouted from a lightless void, a saturated thickness of air that somehow rose up from the soil.

He began to lose hope, trudging on through the night, and he wondered whether or not he’d made the right decision in coming with Remtall. Perhaps he’d been wrong; perhaps King Terion had known all along what was best for his people. Perhaps he should have known better than to come to Aaurlind with no ranger or guide—to come with only the sparse knowledge of a drunken gnome. As Ulpo’s faith began to waver, he wandered erratically. Without realizing, he started to march in long circles, making no ground, only growing weary with despair. Suddenly, after another call of desperation, Ulpo inhaled deeply of a sweet aroma, wafting slowly through the empty woods. It was somehow familiar, but he couldn’t place it; was it a smell from his past? His mind hadn’t cleared, it seemed, since his mysterious slumber, but he recalled smelling the fragrance before, as if in a dream.

“
Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!
”

“Huh?” Ulpo looked up from the ground where he’d been focusing to avoid roots.

“
Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!
”

“Who’s there?” Ulpo said in alarm. Though his limbs felt heavy, he quickly picked up a stick from the ground, having no other weapons to defend himself. There came the flash of two oval slits in the distance, but they flickered off as quickly as they had appeared. Ulpo looked behind him, saw nothing. He looked to his left and right, straining for anything, to make out anyone, to behold the eyes once more. Nothing appeared. He closed his eyes, and let the aroma spread through him—it is so pleasant I could fall asleep right here, he thought. The befuddled dwarf opened his eyes one last time before passing into slumber once more, and all around him were giant yellow orbs, dancing against the black.

III: A HAUNTING IN RISLIND

The sun rose early. Pink rays poked lazily through clouds that wrung a crown of low-lying mountains. The tree-blanketed peaks stretched out to form a wide circle visible only to passing birds. Few knew of the gem possessed within: a meadow nestled at the heart of the mountainous rim, a most comfortable village of peace and refuge—Rislind. The secluded Rislinders had remained nearly untouched by the corruption that fell upon Arkenshyr after the Five Country War. For many years its residents lived hidden, shielded from the horrors of the slave trade that ravaged the West Continent. Both the south country of Arkenshyr, and the north country of Hemlin, had fallen to the tyrannical corruption of the once honorable and revered Grelion Rakewinter. The equanimous folk of Rislind knew that the fate of the East Continent had been rent by darkness, but they likewise knew they’d do well not to interfere; the better course, they collectively decided, would be to remain behind their mountain walls.

It was only recently, when a resident left town under the most peculiar circumstances, that rumors started to spin among town folk. Some claimed that they saw a man with a magical sword pass through the town; others said they saw their own Remtall Olter’Fane in league with that same wizard. Some had started lore that a giant golem had passed down the town’s main road, accompanied by a band of strangers. One even whispered that the metal man fit the description of the ill omen prophesized in dwarven scripture. Some said that evil wizards long thought dead, bearing the evil titles of Aulterion and Vesleathren, had been revived—and still others gossiped that Remtall journeyed to seek revenge for his missing son. A few talked about a rogue demon—Zesm the Rancor—and spun tales that he had taken the throne of the East Continent from Grelion himself, and now ruled the slave trade. Only one person, a human, had ever admitted to knowing where Remtall had vanished to: senile old Mayor Doings.

Several of the tougher trolls in town had attempted to pressure Mayor Doings into revealing the secrets of Remtall’s departure, but all Doings ever repeated was that “it was a matter of Rislind’s safety, and secret the task would remain—and if I was to even hint at the errand Remtall has left on, then the bird-spies of the air, and the fur-spies of the soil, would take the secret and bring it to our enemies.” The interrogators hadn’t backed off until pressure was put on them to desist by the Rislind militia, a small band of trolls, gnomes and humans.

It had been several months since Remtall’s departure, and though the myths grew about the strangers who had come through the village, and what their passage portended, a new fever of gossip had quieted the tales recently. There was a more pressing matter to fret over suddenly; there was now a
haunting
to be concerned with. 

The village was bustling at the earliest hour of the morn, earlier than was usual for a Sunday in the normally subdued community. Mayor Doings had called a town meeting on this particular Sunday, to be held outdoors at the Rislind Square at promptly eight o’clock. The meeting had been scheduled two weeks prior, as a response to the rash of worry about the haunting that had swept the citizens. It seemed that the fear was contagious. Mayor Doings had heard several eye-witness accounts of the forest-dwelling spirit, haunting the inner foothills of the Rislind Meadow, and he had decided that before the panic spiraled out of control, he would rein in his townsfolk’s fears at a meeting. He would address his peaceful citizens, and assure them that no evil spirit lurked in their forest. 

Despite the early hour of the meeting, which some thought to be too early and a result of Doings’s growing senility, the Rislind Square was already packed with people of different races, ages and colors. Though there was an hour until Mayor Doings was supposed to begin his address, the gnomes, humans, and trolls of Rislind were all congregating noisily over the smell of fresh ham and burnt potatoes. Some were going about with vials of tea, others with the potent, mind-awakening elixir known as Rislind Red, brewed from local flora for its stimulating effect. Gossip was fervent, and the people were anxious with anticipation. The women stuck close to their smallest children, while the older youths ran about playing. Some pretended to be ghosts, upsetting the elderly.

“I’m the Rislind Ghost!” shouted a small girl, as she chased two boys—one a troll, the other a human. They reciprocated her game, acting as if they were scared.

“Oh no! I’m crazy Mayor Doings, and I can’t defend my people!” the gnome boy shouted with laughter. The other children nearby joined in.

“Children, please!” cried one of the mothers, but it was useless—the children were too excited. Some were scared, and clung to their mothers’ pants. Even some of the troll children, typically braver than the others, asked in terror again and again if the ghost was real.  

The hour passed slowly, and what would normally have been merry feasting felt like a solemn affair. The imminence of change was in the air. Most of the townsfolk who believed there was a ghost feared that more would come; that somehow, though Grelion had never found their fair village, malevolent spirits had, and they would turn good Rislind into a nesting haven for their wandering evil. Rislind’s militia did possess two great specimens of strength to combat outside forces—a man and woman, both human. Neither could do a thing against a spirit, and the town knew it.

Rislind had long prided itself on the brute strength of Taisle Bellwend, a gifted young man of twenty-two years, proficient with bow and arrow as well as unarmed combat. Pursaiones Medeflour had always been the one to win in competitions of swordplay—despite being a girl, she had taken up the blade with natural ease, and ever defeated the men and boys she’d come across in the Rislind Fair tournaments. Now a full grown woman, Pursaiones was deadly quick, and Rislind often thought of her as the militia’s greatest asset. Though Rislind had never required defense, except from an occasional rogue wolf, cougar, or bear, the comfort offered by Taisle and Pursaiones’s collective abilities was tremendous. It was no surprise that both of them had a growing throng that traced their steps through the square, producing a steady stream of questions:

“Can you kill a person twice?”

“Taisle, it’s going to have to be you to go into the forest and find it. Are you up to this? Please restore the peace here.”

“Have you ever heard of a ghost attacking?”

“It’s only a matter of time, Pursaiones, before you come to blows with this ghoul!”

“You better be prepared to keep us safe—you are, aren’t you?”

“Will you please find and unmask the fiend?”

The questions were ignored and Pursaiones spoke to them:

“No one has ever fought a spirit, and I don’t think anyone will—it has not been proven that there even is a ghost!”

Mayor Doings was seen from the side of the town square, lumbering toward the front platform where he would stand to address the restless audience. He walked slowly but with purpose, dressed in his traditional attire: a cobalt jacket that swung down to his knees, black tights and shoes, and on his head a tan hat with an enormous brim stretched out at odd angles. Feathers poked out from the hat in odd places, and he seemed altogether disheveled—his jutting triangle jaw was framed by a sagging mop of greyed facial hair, and drooping from his half-open mouth was a thin pipe. His belly bulged when he propped himself against the podium that was erected in the front of the square, and his hands began to fidget around for his matches. The crowd roared with anticipation, chattering restlessly until the moment when Doings would silence them and begin to speak. Taisle and Pursaiones stood together near the front, patiently awaiting the words from their haphazard mayor. To their left was a group of trolls, all wearing their festive clothing—as Sundays called for—and at their feet were the gnome children, sitting up front so as to see what would happen, bored and growing irritated.