Secrets of Arkana Fortress (38 page)

              ‘Just get lost, Breena.’

              She felt the tears begin to well up in her eyes, both sets of eyelids blinking profusely to help her fight it back.

              Kelken turned on his heels and stormed off through the undergrowth, disappearing into the night like an assassin. Trailing behind him were the emotions he had let out, and the sense of futility.

***

A small rodent skittered through a pile of fallen branches and leaves, barely disturbing the towering figure above it. It whipped behind a tree, vanishing almost as fast as it had appeared, and left the shadowy form to its sorrows.

              Kelken wiped his face and cursed himself under his breath. He hadn’t felt like this for a long time, not since his last time he was in Traseken. Being there had brought it all back – his wife, his oath, his service, his friends, his decision to leave – and it had been the key to a treasure chest of bottled feelings that shot through his mind, and his soul, like a thousand arrows that delighted in tearing him to pieces.

              He had failed. He had given up the oath, and failed.

              The first step outside of Traseken all those years ago had been what sealed his life to the routine of drinking, battling, and repression. The thoughts of his wife came back to him, thoughts of a young-faced Breena looking at him as he left on a search that took up years of his life. He remembered her tearful face as he had said goodbye to her, the way she had scratched him when she had grabbed him in a desperate attempt to make him stay, and the feelings of regret he had had to live with for the rest of his life. It was the one thing he had regretted most of all.

              Kelken flicked a leaf from its branch and watched it swivel to the floor in a windmill-like motion. He lifted his head as he heard the leaves behind him crunch and shift along the floor. He didn’t care who it was; he stayed where he was, leaning against the tree next to him.

              ‘I thought I said to Breena I wanted to be left alone,’ he voiced out loud to whoever it was behind him.

              San Kiln’s rhythmic purr quivered in the night air. ‘I thought we might chat – you know – discuss things.’

              ‘Chat? Get bent, fur face.’

              ‘Now that’s no way to speak to a friend, is it?’

              ‘Friend?’ Kelken turned his head. ‘We are here due to your
darling
wife blackmailing me and my daughter – this doesn’t make us fucking friends.’

              San Kiln stroked his whiskers, trying to adjust his natural night vision to see Kelken’s expression. ‘This has grown to more than a trivial job you were given… this is something all three of us, now four, have been destined to do together.’

              ‘You believe in that destiny shit, eh? All a load of nonsense to me.’

              ‘I’d like to think that we’re designed for greater things other than our own self-bestowed ambitions.’

              Kelken laughed scornfully. ‘Rather an outdated romantic concept, ain’t it?’

              ‘It helps me sleep at night.’

              ‘Huh… what have you got to lose sleep over?’ he sneered.

              San Kiln shifted his weight onto his left leg. ‘Enough to make me restless at night, Kelken; enough to make me toss and turn.’

              ‘Well? Come on, I’ve got all night.’

              ‘Why would you be interested in my problems?’ he purred.

              ‘Might help me forget about mine for a while.’ Kelken looked at San Kiln in the strained light and twitched the side of his mouth into a small smile.

              ‘That’s as may be, but I’d rather not.’

              Kelken stiffened upright and grumbled something. ‘Then bugger off if you’re not going to talk.’

              There was a sudden change in San Kiln’s manner. ‘Have you always been this hostile?’ There was a rising gradient of anger in his deep voice.

              He was met with a silent wall.

              ‘My wife abandoned me years ago and left me to look after our son on my own.’

              ‘Pakros didn’t seem absent to me.’

              ‘She’s my second wife – my first one ran out on me many years back. We’d had a son together – Tino.’

              There was a slight lift in Kelken’s voice. ‘What’s he like?’

              ‘He’s a good lad; lives over in Pillin these days last I knew.’

              ‘You don’t have much contact with him?’

              ‘Not really. He went his own way once he’d grown old enough – got his own little empire of taverns in Pillin, so I believe; about three or four of them.’

              ‘Very nice.’ Kelken sniffed. ‘When did you last speak to him?’

              San Kiln’s purr halted and he let out a long, thoughtful breath. ‘Seven, maybe eight years ago… even then it wasn’t exactly on the best of terms.’

              ‘How come?’

              ‘I… kind of raised a sore point about his mother. He always thought highly of her regardless of her leaving us both in the dark. I was bad mouthing her and he went on the defensive… it got out of hand, and he ordered me to leave and go back home.’

              ‘Must’ve been hard.’

              ‘It bloody was; heartbreaking to be honest,’ San Kiln replied, more calmly. ‘It wasn’t long after that that I met Pakros.’

              ‘How did you two meet anyway?’ Kelken asked softly.

              ‘A pretty unimpressive story to be honest, Kelken,’ he chuckled. ‘I was in a crowd that was watching her deliver a rather good speech in Yingtzo about distributing wealth to the poorest people in a bid to get them out of poverty. She’s keen on equality, you see. But anyway, I remember I was near the front of the crowd, and she picked a few of us out to come up and talk to her after the speech. She was under the impression I was a Yingtzo inhabitant, so you can imagine her awkwardness when I told her I was a visitor from Preull. She offered to have me over for dinner as a way of saying sorry for wasting my time and involving me in domestic matters… it went from there, as you can imagine.’

              ‘You’re right… quite unimpressive.’

              They both laughed.

              ‘This is a lot bigger than you and me, Kelken.’ San Kiln became much more solemn, his voice turning into a harsh whisper. ‘Franlet had a look at the rest of the book…’

              Kelken sighed. ‘And? What did she find?’

              ‘Nothing good.’ San Kiln rubbed his chin.

              ‘What does that mean exactly?’

              He paused before purring again, this time intermittently. ‘It affects everyone in Salarias… shall we leave it at that?’

              ‘That’s a bit vague.’

              ‘Maybe you should speak to your records keeper about it…’

***

‘
The great darkness, the great magic; the greatest threat, will engulf the lands far and wide if left unchallenged, and there shall be no going back from it. We, the casters, endeavour to protect the relics – the only powers to oppose the great evil that forever lurks on another plateau of existence. It is the essence of evil known as the Providence – banished from the world of the living for their misuse of the magic that was bestowed upon them by the old gods. They came back angry and more powerful than they had once been. However, they are unable to venture into the world of the living, but have the elusive ability to manipulate the creatures residing within it.
’

              Kelken sniffed the air and rubbed the back of his head. ‘If they can’t come into our world then how can they interfere with it?’

              Franlet cleared her throat in annoyance. ‘As I was saying…’

              ‘
By way of servants and agents of the Faceless, the Providence channels its powerful magic through them.

              ‘
The casters are thinning and are very few in number. To whoever reads this, know that I, Kasten, am one of the last survivors of our endangered race. I have sent the high caster, Xatri, far west to Cryldis Island in an attempt to hide him from the reaches of the Providence; there I hope he will carry on with a new caster lineage. As for my brother, he was clever enough to go into exile of his own accord – to the Isles of Dinsk. I pray to the old gods that the magic surrounding those isles will protect him from the eyes of darkness. He is a far more wise man than I… yet even in the afterlife I will always be watching over him.
’

              Breena, this time, butted in. ‘Sounds like he knew he was close to death.’ She glanced at the others one by one and saw San Kiln’s face screwed up into an expression closely resembling torture. ‘What’s up with you?’

              They all looked at him.

              San Kiln scratched his chin delicately with one claw, emitting a low, thoughtful purr. ‘Kasten…’ he mused. ‘That was the name of the caster spirit in the village that showed me where this tome was.’

              ‘Figures I suppose,’ said Breena.

              ‘There’s something else. The feline back in Traseken mentioned his name as if he’d known him. Fran, how old would you say the book is?’

              The giant Bullwark turned the book around then gave it a longing sniff. ‘I’d say nearly two centuries, give or take a decade.’

              Kelken and Breena looked at each other with awkward expressions. ‘How old is that bastard then?’

              ‘He must be working for those Providence guys,’ remarked San Kiln. ‘What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?’

              Franlet snorted, nearly blowing out the flames of the campfire. ‘It looks like something we’re not going to get out of.’

              With a short hiss of disapproval, San Kiln leaned over to look at the pages of ancient script. ‘That caster – the brother – what was his name? Does it say?’

              Franlet moved a hairy forefinger across the page. ‘The brother’s name is… Byde.’

***

An ill wind suddenly whipped through the alleyway where the Faceless had been fooled by Mikos’s illusionary magic.

              Byde fiddled with his robes as he crouched slightly to examine the floor. He ran his finger through a powdery white substance and sniffed it, quickly wrenching his head backward. ‘Definitely a bi-product of their magic.’

              Mikos stood a few strides away from him looking at what he was doing. ‘A bi-product of what exactly?’ he asked uncertainly. The way he felt at the moment, nothing was going to shock or surprise him in the slightest – he’d been told that he was a descendent of an important caster bloodline, but his mind was having a lot of trouble grasping the reality of what had happened to result in such a bombshell.

              Byde’s rough face glanced up at him. ‘Them… the Faceless.’

              ‘Oh, I get it. Whenever they disappear they leave behind a mark?’

              ‘Kind of,’ said Byde. ‘When they enter this world from their own they start to deteriorate physically. That means they can’t stay too long… not that they need much time to get their job done.’

              ‘What is their job?’

              ‘They’re used as assassins, messengers, couriers; you name it.’

              ‘Not much of an enemy if they can’t stick around too long.’

              Byde smirked. ‘They are just pawns of the Providence.’

              ‘Providence? They the head honchos?’

              He nodded. ‘Banished from this world a long time ago for their misuse of magic… and now they’re just twisted, vengeful beings.’ He traced the groove between two cobble stones and looked around the blackened tinge to the rest of them. ‘Look at this.’

              Mikos moved in closer to look at the floor.

              ‘This blackness on the stones – this is the area where your magic engulfed the Faceless agent.’

              ‘You know… I still don’t quite believe this is happening.’

              ‘Weren’t those tests proof enough?’

              ‘Well… yeah, kind of. I suppose I’m just having a hard time taking it all in.’ Mikos looked up at the half clear sky; patches of blue and grey hanging like a blanket. ‘Why are we here anyway?’

              Byde sucked his teeth. ‘You need to understand who you are; and that includes knowing what effects your magic has on people and the surroundings.’

              ‘So, I use my magic and the floor turns black… got it.’

              ‘Don’t be facetious,’ Byde grunted. ‘Why don’t you have a closer look?’

              Mikos kneeled down and ran his fingers over the charred stones. He could feel something faint, as if someone was trying to grab his attention. ‘What’s… that?’ He had no clue what he could sense.