The Gems of Raga-Tor (Elemental Legends Book 1) (37 page)

Raga watched perplexed as Eris hurried across the grass and dropped down in the shade of a small stand of trees. He hadn’t counted on this type of reaction at all to what he had jokingly said, though there was some truth in it.

Clearly, they would go no further this day. Raga dismounted and untied his bundles from the horse. He gave the animal a quick slap and it trotted out to graze with the other. It was as good a place as any to make camp. He tossed the bundles aside, walked to where Eris sat and squatted in front of him.

“Eris, what are you doing?” Raga asked as he balanced himself and then looked into his face.

But Eris stared beyond what was in front of him. He didn't see the look of concern that creased the sorcerer’s ruddy brow. He didn't see the bright light shining on the open fields, but instead stared straight into the realm of nightmare.

Raga was dumbfounded as he watched, unbelievably, a look of absolute terror overtake the warrior’s face. What horrific spectacle was he seeing: an overwhelming vision of the future, or a haunting recollection from his past?

“Eris, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Raga apologized and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“No! Don’t touch me!” Eris screamed as if in agonizing pain and flinched violently away from Raga’s touch. Something wild, something desperate struggled within. His eyes darted about fearfully and saw something other than fluffy, white clouds floating across a turquoise sky.

Without warning, Eris scuttled away from Raga and disappeared around the other side of the tree. Raga suddenly realized that whatever trauma Eris was suffering was buried deep within his past and that somehow his words had triggered that experience again. But worse, he relived it with such feverish hysteria that he cried out as a terrified child, or worse yet, as a man who would never be sane again.

Raga moved quietly around the tree and came as close to him as he dared. Eris sat clutching his knees to his chest with his forehead pressed hard against them. His body trembled as a sapling before the winds of a summer storm.

“Eris, nothing is going to hurt you,” Raga whispered, trying not to startle him again.

“Oh gods, no more! No more,” he mumbled almost incoherently. His body flinched and jerked as he relived a nightmare of violent death set against a web of black incantations.

“Listen to me, nothing can hurt you here,” Raga repeated in a calming voice, but he knew Eris was beyond hearing and likely beyond his help. “Tell me what you see. Shh, my boy, quiet now. Shhh, Eris, you're safe.”

But what were calming words, Raga wondered, when his mind was trapped and mortified by unseen, unexpelled demons of memory. Raga gently touched the silver link. The barrier was gone and its place a maelstrom of fire and fury. Demon winds howled across a desolate plateau under a black, lightening-stabbed sky. Souls of the damned wailed and screamed as they were torn and devoured by a beast of such evil that not even the Lord of the Pits would have it.

The demon, trapped in a spell of vile sorcery gone wrong, gnashed its enormous, fanged maw and turned on itself. The sharp talons of one, giant claw raked ferociously into the flesh of one massive thigh, while the other tore out huge chunks of flesh from its bloody chest and belly that burst into flame and ash. With a deafening roar that split asunder a vile altar of sacrifice, the demon exploded into a fiery, raging wind that seared and flattened a mighty forest for leagues in all directions. The fiery light of destruction blazed one last time and then there was darkness, silence.

An evil blackness, acute and absolute, hung over the land. In the void was a silence so deep that it ached for the susurration of the minutest whisper.

Raga felt the horror of utter aloneness settle upon him. There was no light, no sound, nothing but the black void of death and annihilation. He felt, at once, the genesis of his primal, elemental beginning and the end result of his destructive powers. He saw the void of emptiness where his power might bring light and warmth, yet this was not a place of creation, but rather annihilation.

He remained in the darkness where there was no warmth, only cold, empty nothingness swirling around him. It was the same deep, cavern-like coldness he had felt coming from Eris that night in the Moren Forest. Perhaps an essence of this event still clung to him and it was more than a memory. It could explain many things as far as he understood his own magic. It could explain a lot of things, except how Eris had survived such an experience.

Still, Raga saw nothing. The black eddy currents of dissipating evil swirled. The force of Eris’ memory was so strong he felt the evil flowing around him, its black fingers tugging at his mind, pawing at his person. His mind’s eye scoured the blackness for the silver link, for one glimmer of light, for the essence of the man he now respected more deeply.

He felt it, convoluted and shuddering, but it remained hidden. Then, from somewhere far away, the tiniest sound caught his attention, so far and faint that his ears ached with strain to hear. It seemed an eternity passed in that place of nothing as ever so slowly the sound became louder and louder until he recognized it as, unbelievably, a voice. It was a voice filled with savage screams of rage and fury and vowed vengeance unto death itself.

It was a voice Raga knew well for it was the raw, terror-filled voice of Eris Pann.

The nightmare ended. The sounds of rage faded with the blackness and the gleam of the tremulous silver bond broke through the gray shadows that lingered. Raga’s mind seized hold of the link as if it were a lifeline cast to a drowning man. He held it tightly, protectively, and he soothed its rippling tension until it became calm and slack between its anchor points.

It was finished. Eris’ tear-filled eyes saw again the green grass beneath his feet, yet he remained clenched in a tight ball and wept quietly. After a time, he felt chilled as a gentle breeze wafted through his sweat-soaked clothes.

For a long while Raga did nothing but sit and stare and wonder at the staggering event he had just witnessed. Of course, he had seen these things before, and had even orchestrated the destruction of a few meddlesome demons, but never had he witnessed or felt the awesome magnitude of such an event through the eyes and heart of a mortal man. He took a cloth from out of his tunic and wiped his brow. There was no question now as to why Eris had a disquieting, sometimes violent, reaction to magic in any form.

What man wouldn’t? Not only that, but Eris had managed to cling to his sanity when, Raga was certain, other men would have been utterly consumed and destroyed by their terror.

Raga wondered at the terror he felt at being alone in the void; seeking but not finding the essence or form of any living thing, mortal or elemental. He realized for the first time in his long existence that he truly was a part of the mortal world as much as he was a part of its elemental nature and structure. Yes, he was fire, hot and burning during the siege of war, but also warm and comforting on a winter night. Yet didn’t his essence inspire the passion of a poet’s mind or his fire temper the courage in a brave man’s heart?

And what courage, Raga wondered, what unknown force existed within Eris that allowed him to withstand the working of magic after what he’d been through? What force, what fortitude, kept the nightmare from consuming Eris when either his or Charra-Tir’s magic worked upon him? He couldn’t begin to guess.

Raga saw Eris shiver and realized it was from cold not fear as the long, shallow rays of the sun faded from the fields. He grunted as he got stiffly to his feet and went to his bundles. He pulled out a blanket and two skins of wine. He dropped the skins on the ground in front of Eris, then wrapped his arms around the blanket and held it tight to his chest and face. He breathed a bit of warmth into its folds, but not so much that Eris would notice or take fright, then he bent and wrapped it around him.

The sorcerer sat back down beside Eris and uncorked a skin. He drank down the contents and refilled it with his own magical concoction. Much time seemed to pass as he waited for Eris to calm completely. The waiting made him increasingly anxious. Finally, when Eris wiped his face with a corner of the blanket and ran his fingers through his damp hair smoothing it away from his face, Raga felt it was safe to speak.

“Drink, Eris,” Raga said and held out the other skin.

Eris took it without looking at the sorcerer. He drank slowly as he stared out across the grassy field to where the horses, oblivious to all that had happened, grazed on the last of the sweet grass. The light of the disappearing sun blazed orange behind a low layer of thick clouds and purple fingers stretched up lazily to pull the blanket of night over a tired sky.

When it was completely dark, and Raga had made only a small fire, Eris leaned back against the tree and stretched out his cramped legs. He made no move to get closer to the fire, knowing that in the darkness, Raga couldn’t see so clearly his weakness, his humiliation. Yet he knew there was no way he could have stopped the onrush of that horrifying memory. He always tried. He always failed. He always fell victim to its power.

At some point during that madness, Eris remembered feeling Raga’s presence. For reasons he could not, or more did not, want to understand, he felt somehow comforted by it. It seemed the calm returned to him on a deeper level than it had in the past. Yet the humiliation and shame of his weakness in front of this man, who was after all a powerful sorcerer, remained virulently alive. He felt he could never again look directly into the face of Raga-Tor without feeling abased and despised that weakness in himself.

“Here, eat a little bit and you’ll feel better,” Raga said, holding out a bowl of steaming rice and meat.

Without a word, Eris took the bowl, but only picked at his dinner. A few bites later, he placed the now cold food on the ground next to him.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” he asked in a flat voice.

“Part of it. Why don’t you tell me the whole story? If you think you can,” Raga suggested.

“I feel like such a fool. That happened four years ago and it still has such an incredible power over me,” Eris said and felt utterly drained.

Raga frowned. “How many years have you?”

“Twenty-one. Why?”

Raga didn’t answer, but looked more closely at the man beside him. It wasn’t the answer he expected. Eris was still only a boy, a babe, as far as Red Vale sorcerers measured time and age. Yet he had that cold cynicism usually found in someone much older, more experienced.
But more experienced in what?
In that one event alone Eris had experienced a tragedy that other men hoped never to behold even in their most terrifying nightmares, let alone in person.

“Why?” Eris asked again breaking in on Raga’s thoughts.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought you were older, but you’ve just become a man by the reckoning of most. By the gods, Eris, four years ago you were just a child,” Raga exclaimed. A hint of fatherly concern appeared on his face.

“I suppose you could say that. What I didn’t know of the world was taught to me quickly. Fortunately, I seem to be an adept student or I would have been dead long ago,” Eris said and lapsed into silence.

For a time they remained silent not knowing what to say to each other. Eris finally broke the quiet unease of their camp.

“I’ll tell you what happened. Then you’ll understand why I can’t go to the Vale and why you must go alone. Surely your stone can’t run away from you there. I can’t believe Charra-Tir’s spell can overcome the will of a god’s avatar,” Eris quietly assumed.

Raga said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders and moved a little closer to the fire.

“It all started with the death of my father, and very soon after that, my grandmothers’s. I was seventeen. I had no more close family and no desire to assume my father’s post as the king’s huntsman. A few of my friends and I decided to leave home and see something of the world. As you would surmise, we soon ran out of money and luck. We fell prey to the first conscript recruiter that came along. He offered good wages and the chance to be a part of a campaign to rescue some sacred relic. I still remember how eager we all were to test our mettle. The man in charge of the whole affair wasn’t a soldier by any measure. Had I not been so foolish, so naïve, I would have seen him for what he really was.”

Raga heard the self-reproach in Eris’ voice.

“You can’t blame yourself for not knowing. A great part of youth is the joy of not knowing everything and being able to explore. To have less responsibility before the hard truths of life force that responsibility on you. This man you speak of was a sorcerer, or one who would call himself such?”

Eris nodded. He took a long drink from the skin and continued.

“We marched to the city where the supposedly stolen relic was hidden and put it under siege. After a month or so, we took the city. The dust from the ruined gates hadn't even settled, when we gained the streets looking for this relic. There was an extra bag of gold for whoever found it. By the time I managed to get through the chaos, the temples were already overflowing with men, so I decided to forget the relic and see what else I could find.

“A group of us stormed a mansion on the far side of town that no one else had come to yet. Once inside, we all wandered off in different directions. I came to a wing that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. On the marble floor, I saw faint traces of footprints in the dust. I followed them to a chamber and went inside.

“Needless to say I was very surprised to find one of the temple maids hiding there. On the table in front of me was that damned relic,” Eris said. He paused to drink again.

“What was it?”

“It was a bronze statue of a man holding some kind of ring and a crystal orb. It’s strange, though. I can never seem to remember just exactly how it looked. In any case, I was just glad to have found it.”

“What about the girl?”

“I will never forget how beautiful she was and scared to death. She bade me take the statue if I would spare her. That was fine with me. I had no reason to kill her. Before I had retreated a dozen steps, she called me back and begged me to protect her from the army that was ravaging the city.