Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Lliferock (9 page)

“You haven’t seen him?”

Ohin handed the flagon back to Pabl. “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t, but I do not recognize that name. Do you have an internal picture of him?”

“Of course, from my liferock’s memory.” Pabl brought an image of Reid Quo to his mind’s eye. A high sloping forehead of russet brown rose to a regal peak above deep, knowing black eyes. He was tall, like Gvint, but broader, and his expression was gentle, not hard.

“If we merge together,” Ohin said, “we will know if I have seen him, and when. It is the only way.”

Pabl knew he was right. “How do I know you’re not tainted This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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by a Horror?”

Ohin broke into laughter. “If I were, which is impossible, do you think I would have shared water with you? What do you know of Horrors anyway?”

“I know a little.” Pabl sounded defensive and knew it. “I just thought I should ask,” he said, “because of the rumors.”

“Don’t heed rumors,” Ohin said, his laughing face turning to a grimace of pain. “Horrors stay clear of me since Othellium died.”

Before he could stop himself, Pabl asked, “How did that happen? How can a liferock die?”

Ohin forced himself to stand upright, then stepped over to the window and looked out onto the river. Vines from the trees looped low across the water, and Pabl watched a trail of giant ants carry leaf-cuttings across. Bright blue and red macaws nested in the riverbank off to the right, flying in and out of the mud holes.

When Ohin spoke again, there was a deep chagrin in his voice. “The saddest part of all is that I don’t know, even now, what happened. Othellium’s life force simply dwindled away.

It started slowly; we hardly noticed at first.” He sank to the floor, his bent back pressed against the quartz wall.

“Then later, even when we felt the energy draining from our liferock, we couldn’t stop it. The rock grew weaker and weaker as we tried to figure out what to do. We suspected a Horror, but found nothing except a new clot of astral threads near the base of the rock. No Horror.” Ohin’s head fell forward into his hands, and he spoke at the ground. “Only after a time did we realize that the threads were the cause of the liferock’s energy drain. We severed the threads eventually, but it wasn’t easy, and by the time we had finished, the pattern of the rock had lost much of its form.”

“What happened to the brotherhood?”

“Others of our race heard about our trouble, and came to This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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offer companionship. Most of my brothers eventually left with them in search of a mythical liferock which takes in strays.”

“You did not want to join them?”

“I don’t believe such a liferock truly exists,” he said. “But even if I did, I am the eldest. I stayed with my liferock. I must die here.”

Pabl knelt down, holding his hands out. He placed his palms into Ohin’s hands, feeling the roughness of the ancient’s palms like broken shale. “I will enter the Dreaming with you,” Pabl said.

Ohin nodded.

Pabl helped him to his feet, and they stood facing each other, palms touching. Ohin began to hum in a bass voice, and Pabl joined him. Soon the hum evolved into a chant until their voices were one, singing of the Great Liferock from which they all came. Of the Spirit-That-Pervades-All which was part of every Name-giver, connecting their souls.

Merging with another obsidiman was not effortless like merging with a liferock; it required force of will and concentration. Pabl focused on the touch of Ohin’s hands against his, and felt them yield as the magic of the chant drew the threads of their spirits together.

They became a single being as their bodies melted together. Arms first, then chests, legs and head. Pabl stared into the sightless cataracts of the ancient, coming closer and closer until they connected with his.

Pain. So much pain inside.

Pabl felt himself slip away as Ohin’s vast experiences flooded his mind. The sheer power of his magic and the ages of time gone past hit Pabl like an avalanche. Long ago, impossibly long ago, Ohin emerged from the rock. He was one of the First Order, Pabl realized. He emerged near to the same time as the Council of Four — the very first obsidimen.

Visions of the Valley of the Elders popped into his mind.

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The valley itself was roughly circular and many miles across, surrounded by mountain peaks and cliffs. He saw the four gigantic columns, one for each element, stretch from the valley floor up into the clouds.

In Ohin’s memory, the columns were alive with motion.

One was a swirling sandstorm — air and rock. Another was a cylinder of lava — fire and rock. Across the valley were the other two, one of churning mud and the last made from living earth, wood and flesh. Hundreds of the First Brotherhood had returned from across the world. They all merged with the Council of Four, happy to be united again.

Pain. Loss. Everything gone now.

A wracking sob shook their merged body. Another image flashed into Pabl’s head, but this one wasn’t a memory. Ohin had been having visions of a strange place. A sea of fire below cliffs of red rock. Hot mist clung like smoke, stinking of sulfur and boiled putrefaction. Caves and the hint of drums pounding in the darkness.

What is this place?

Ohin did not know. The ancient’s pain grew until Pabl could hardly sense anything else. He felt his mind warp under the strain. He had to try to get out of the merge, but Ohin didn’t seem to think anything was wrong. Then the memory of Othellium’s death hit them. The brotherhood working against time and an unseen foe to resuscitate the dying spirit of the rock. Liferocks are not supposed to die! They give us life, nurture us, and guide our lives. We and they are forever connected.

Yet Ohin lived on. All of the brotherhood survived the loss, in body anyhow. But our spirits were forever ruined. Twisted.

The others went in search of . . . a substitute. A surrogate. I stayed. I had to stay, did I not? Stay here to die.

A memory flashed into Pabl’s mind. After Othellium’s spirit had gone, a group of five obsidimen arrived, appearing This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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out of the jungle like apparitions to the grief-stricken minds of the orphaned brotherhood.

They had heard of our tragedy and shared their water with us. We were grateful for their companionship.

In his mind’s eye, Pabl saw the five travelers. One of them had skin of russet brown, painted over in haphazard stripes of fire red, black eyes and a regally peaked forehead. It was Reid Quo.

He was thinner than Ganwetrammus remembered him to be, his face gaunt and expressionless. He wore drab robes of dusty red cloth, unadorned and plain. There was no sign of his sacred scarab brooch or his Mynbruje necklace, and when he spoke, he did so distractedly, as if he divorced himself of feeling anything.

Ohin and the others didn’t think much of it then, because it was a natural defense against the shock of seeing an entire brotherhood without a liferock. In the memory, Reid and the others left a few months later, accompanied by the entire Othellium brotherhood except Ohin. And he did not know where they went; he never heard from any of them again.

Pain wracked through their merged body again, sending shivers of sadness through Pabl. Pure anguish. Loneliness clawed at his mind, scraping at his sanity.

I must get out soon, Pabl thought.

Please don’t go. Just a while longer. Since the other one left, the isolation has been maddening.

The other one? But Pabl saw him then in Ohin’s mind.

A young obsidiman with russet skin, auburn eyes. Lyrthus Rewt, his brother who had never returned to the liferock.

What happened to him?

Images came into their merged mind, memories of ten years ago. Ohin had wandered off to gather food from his over-grown garden; he was not at the temple when Lyrthus arrived.

Othellium looked much the same, except Ohin had welcomed This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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visitors then. Ohin returned to the temple to find Lyrthus in a catatonic state, partially merged into the dead remnant of the Othellium liferock.

A shudder passed through Pabl.

He merged with Othellium. And it drained his life force before he could disengage. I tried to revive him; we coexisted in self-Dreaming for many years. But he never recovered. And when he died I vowed never to let any others near Othellium.

And his body?

An image materialized of Lyrthus’ dead body sprawled across a large quartz stone, Ohin chanting a funeral hymn over it as it disintegrated. I did not know where his liferock was, but he got proper service at death.

The pain hit Pabl again now, harder than before. An intense, soul-bending sadness which clutched desperately at Pabl’s mind, trying to catch hold. By Mynbruje, don’t you know you’re killing me? He calmed himself and tried to bring focus, gathering the threads of his identity together in an attempt to break out of the Dreaming.

Don’t go!

Pabl began to break the union through force of will, but Ohin held on somehow and prevented him from disentangling. I cannot share your pain. I am truly sorry.

Kill me then. Take away my anguish.

A pulse of fear shot through Pabl. Kill you? I can’t do that. The fear jerked along his spine, snapping him out of the merge. He stepped back and looked at the form in front of him.

Ohin sank into a ball of white flesh at Pabl’s feet, his arms wrapped around himself. A feeble image in the magical light given off by the glowing quartz columns. Many hours had passed, and it was dark outside.

The ground tilted and swirled around Pabl, and he stumbled to his knees, disoriented from the suddenness of coming This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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out of the Dreaming.

Ohin reached out for Pabl, groping. “Please take my life,”

he said. “I want to die.”

“No!” Pabl shied away from the ancient’s grasp.

“You have the strength to take away my pain. You know it will free me. Please, I beg you.”

Pabl lurched to his feet and turned away from the form crawling across the floor. The pathetic image repulsed him. It is unnatural and should be killed.

Instinctively, Pabl moved to strike the pitiful creature. He concentrated, magically hardening the flesh of his fists, focusing them into lethal weapons. Then he moved, his fist arcing toward the thing’s head.

Ohin stopped crawling and knelt high, bringing his hands together and facing Pabl. His milk-white eyes rolled up into his head as his vision went astral.

Pabl stopped his attack mid-motion. “I can’t,” he said, his whisper a loud, grating echo in the chamber. He couldn’t take the life of a brother. He knew Ohin should have died long ago, naturally. But Pabl could not be the instrument of this most unnatural suicide.

His stomach roiling, Pabl spun away from Ohin and fled the temple as fast as he could, not looking back for fear of seeing what he left behind.

This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected])  Chapter Nine 

After Jan and Pabl had left for Othellium, Celagri met up with some jungle elves who lived amongst the trees and came into Rabneth once in a while to gamble or trade enchanted blankets and clothing for forged metal. Her dark complexion appealed to the young male elves who had taken her back to their settlement in trees on the west side of the Tepuis, and she enjoyed the attention. It had been a long time since she had been among her kin.

The elves called their home Tri’um. The settlement had been formed from the jungle; magically grown vines and trees made up walls, stairs and floors. It was deftly woven into the fabric of the flora and blended in so well that even Celagri, who had been to many such homes, did not notice it until they were climbing up the entry.

She stayed at Tri’um for several days before she grew restless for adventure. Celagri traveled constantly and called no place home. Her entire household consisted of nothing more than what she could carry on her back, and she liked it that way. No family or possessions. She was a vagrant and proud of it. Student of the world.

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She had been on her own since she was ten years old. She had never known her mother, and her father had raised her on his own until he was killed by Terrica, the windling who served as Garlthik One-Eye’s enforcer in Kratas. Celagri had hated the windling ever since.

The corrupted blood elf Vistrosh, Garlthik’s rival, had given Celagri a home for awhile. But his thorns repulsed her, and she had escaped Kratas at her first opportunity. Trying to steal the gem from Pabl’s finger was one of the stupidest and luckiest things she had ever done. No one besides Pabl had ever given her so much trust.

Now she bade farewell to her hosts at Tri’um, thank-ing them for their hospitality and walking out into the jungle, headed in the general direction of Rabneth. Jan and Pabl should be returning soon and she wanted to know how they had fared.

The jungle air hung heavy and still, but cool in the early afternoon. She stepped lightly along the narrow path that wound its way along the west side of the tepuis. To amuse herself, she dared herself to move as quickly as possible without making a sound. It took concentration, willpower — and though she could use her thief magic to help her, she did not, saving that for situations of real danger.

Rough voices drifted to her from in the jungle off to the left.

Villagers? Elves? No, the language was vulgar. Not elven certainly, not even dwarven.

As the voices grew closer, Celagri used magic to gather the jungle shadows around her. Then she recognized the language, though she hadn’t heard it since she’d left the streets of Kratas. Orkish.