“You had a fever.”
Kiri blinked awake and rubbed her eyes to bring Garon’s face into focus. He was frowning worriedly at her. They were in a very small room- or rather cave, she amended, noting the hollowed-rock look of the walls. She pushed up on her elbows, noting that she was lying on an exceptionally soft fur. She looked away from Garon and ran her fingers through the long white nap of the fur.
“What is this?” she asked. “White bear?”
“I was worried,” Garon said.
“I’m sorry.” Kiri sat all the way up and patted his hand, which was gripping, white-knuckled, his leg. “I’m better now. How long have I been asleep?”
“It’s not even morning yet,” Garon said. “The Eldan gave you something, and the fever broke right away. I wanted to let you sleep, but I think something is going on.”
“Do you think he’s here?” Kiri asked.
“I think they got some kind of alarm,” Garon said. “They’ve been arguing in their own language for the last ten minutes.”
“You think I should remind them I’m fated to help?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. But I want to know what’s going on, so say whatever you’ve got to.” Garon said. He got up and held out a hand to her, Kiri took it and he pulled her to her feet. She was glad to find she was barely even lightheaded.
They were definitely in some kind of cave. Garon led Kiri down a round-sided tunnel. They passed the openings of a few forbiddingly dark chambers before Garon pulled Kiri into one that was lit by two lanterns hanging from the low roof. Kiri could feel the heat of them as they passed.
The two Eldan, whose names she still did not know, stood on either side of a strange glass table. Both were talking fast in their ancient tongue, all over the top of each other. Kiri doubted they understood much more than she did of what each other were saying, and she didn’t speak the language.
“Excuse me!” She said loudly. “What has happened?”
The Eldan woman turned on her and snapped. “Go back to bed! You’re ill.”
“I’m much better,” Kiri snapped back. Then she added, more quietly, “Thank you.”
“Wait,” the man held out his hand as the woman started to bite out a retort. “She is fated to be here, remember? She can help us with this choice.”
“Didn’t even have to remind them,” Garon whispered in her ear. Kiri wished he hadn’t. The Eldan woman had turned her narrowed eyes on him and she was worried they might have really good hearing. Their long, pointy ears might be as bat-like as they looked.
“Yes, I want to help,” Kiri said. “What has happened? Is the Thief Lord here?”
“We do not know who it is,” the man said. “But someone has just entered the wood.”
“It could just be a traveler,” Garon said.
“The wood is keeping travelers out,” the man said. “It would take someone determined to bypass its deterrents.”
“He is approaching from Belir,” the woman said.
“It could be him,” Garon said. “And if not him, it could still be one of his agents.”
“So they would still be after the Sceptre,” Kiri said. “We need to go and guard it!”
“We are guarding it,” the man said. “This is as close as we dare get unless absolutely necessary. Do you not understand its evil?”
“Well, I’ve heard about it,” Kiri said. “But I guess not. I’m not saying we should touch it.”
“You do not have to touch it to be harmed by it!” The Eldan woman spat, disgusted.
“If you are to help, you need to understand,” the man said, in a firm but much kinder tone than his companion. “Whoever it is who has entered the forest is still some way away. Listen, and I will tell you of the true evil of the Sceptre. The one we call Fatefall.”
~
“When the race of man were still children and had not yet come to the land they call Laed, the Eldan lived here. We were many thousands. We were the masters of the land, and it was good to us. We built great cities, with towers that touched the clouds. Our kings ruled with wisdom, and strength of arms, but most of all with the True Power.”
The Eldan man turned his cup in his hands. Kiri blew on her own hot cup of tea and took a sip, not taking her eyes off him. They were all sitting around a table in one of the small cave chambers which lined the tunnel. There was a fire built into a dug-out hollow in the cave wall. The Eldan had brewed tea for them in a pot hanging over the fire before settling down to tell his tale.
“Your people call it magic, and most of you don’t believe in it,” he continued. “Believe in it? You might as well not believe in rain! Believe or not--when it falls, you’re getting wet. By the light in your hand, you know the truth of the True Power. It works in many ways, and the art of shaping it was the province of our kings. They used the True Power to bring great things to our people, and when the terrors of the White Waste threatened, it was the True Power that beat them back.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“But the kings came to rely on the Power too much; they grew overconfident. They forgot all the other ways to help their people. If it was not a matter for the power, it was not a matter for the king. One year, there was a great drought in the west, and the land gave no food to the people. Their king did not have the Power to bring rain, but the True Power works in many ways, and one of the other kings did have the ability to control weather. The kings in the far north had long ago made a way to keep the worst snowstorms away. When the western king asked for rain to be sent to his lands, the other king demanded his tools of Power in return. The western king refused, and his people began to starve.
“The High King, seeing the needless suffering of his people, ordered that the western king give up one of his tools of Power in exchange for the needed rains, but he refused, and the northern king insisted the price was too small. So the High King decided to force the northern king to give rain to his neighbor, and he turned to his True Power. He succeeded in compelling the northern king to bring rain to the west, but still the western king refuse to pay for it. This time, when the High King tried to use the True Power to force the issue, he found himself opposed not only by the western king, but two other kings of the realm joined with the west. Soon the four remaining kings had chosen sides, and all of the land descended into war as the kings turned their Power against one another.
“The High King was horrified, and he decided that he needed to make a new tool of Power, one that would allow him to rule his subjects without contest. If his decisions could be final then civil war would not happen again. So he retreated to his capital, responding to the misuse of Power against Power by gathering to himself, in one tool, more of the True Power than had ever been used before. When he was done, he called all the other kings to parlay. At that time, all of them could speak mind to mind with the Power, and travel instantly with the use of stones, though they have since been lost.”
Kiri and Garon exchanged glances, but stayed silent.
“When all eight of the other kings were gathered, the High King appeared among them, and he was holding in his hand the Sceptre. No one else had ever seen it before, but they could see that it carried more True Power than anything made by any Eldan King before.”
“‘You have turned against your brothers, Power against Power,’ the High King told them. ‘You have brought suffering to your own people, each King here has caused great suffering to protect his own Power, but none of you have succeeded. You have all lost your power.”
“The kings were all angry, but none dared to move against him with so much of the True Power in his hand.”
“‘I am now the only King,’ the High King said. ‘You are now all my vassals, and if you will bow to me, I will allow you to continue to use my Power. I am now the master of all of your fates, and this is the tool of my mastery. This is Fatefall. By it, any who defy me will soon meet their final fate.’”
“‘How?’ It was the western king, the defiant one, who dared to question the king.”
“‘By your fate, everyone will see,’ the High King said. And he looked, only looked, at the western king, but everyone felt afraid, though they didn’t know why. ‘I will give the rest of you three days to bow before me, or share in his fate.’”
“He let them all go then, and at first the kings were confused. What did he mean, when he did nothing to the western king? But that night, the western king choked on his food and died, and they understood. Death would find them. So they all bowed, and now the Eldan had only one King.”
“The King used his Power over the others Power to make sure that all the needs of the people were met that could be by the Power. The Eldan should have prospered, but they did not. A madness seemed to slowly grip the people. Quarrels which used to end with angry words now too often led to deadly blows. The streets were no longer safe at night as murderers and thieves crept through the dark like rats in the walls. More and more people were brought before the King, and he dealt their fates with Fatefall. There was never any escape. Anyone the king brought judgment on with Fatefall in his hand died within two days. The problems were worst within the capital, but they spread to the other lands as well.”
“One day, the western lord, the son of the one who had been Fatefall’s first victim, came by Travelling stone to his old enemy, the northern lord, and he told him what he had realized.”
“‘All of our troubles come from Fatefall,’ he said. ‘Where it goes, evil follows. Good Eldan people turn mad with rage and hate, and death and fear follow the King and Fatefall.’”
“The northern lord thought that it might be that the western lord hated Fatefall because of what had happened to his father, so he was skeptical. But the young lord explained all that he had discovered. The facts pointed perfectly to Fatefall as the source of the evil; incidents surged in the wake of each of its uses.”
“The two lords formed a secret alliance to oppose the king and put an end to Fatefall. But it was all too late. The Eldan people continued to descend into evil, and the king began to pass judgments on any whom he looked on with disfavor. Fate took many, and the Eldan people were seized by fear. The western lord finally made the final sacrifice and attacked the King. The King was not expecting to be defied, but the western lord did not care that the Sceptre was used on him. He killed the King knowing his own fate would soon fall. He took the Sceptre to the fortress where it still waits, and set his royal guard to keep it away from all others. He had hoped removing the source of evil would allow the Eldan to recover, but it did not happen that way. That was the beginning of the end of the Eldan and it was not another generation before all that remained of our people were the Sceptre’s guardians themselves. It is our fate to survive to ensure that another race does not fall as our people did.”
Kiri set down her cup and licked her lips. She looked at Garon, and he just shrugged.
“So, are you saying the Sceptre turns people evil,” she asked. “Just by being around them.”
“It is more subtle and insidious, but essentially yes,” the Eldan woman, who had been silent throughout her companion’s story, stepped forward and leaned on her hands on the table, her lean form looming over Kiri’s head. “Any who approach the Sceptre will find their motives twisted, and anyone who dares to use it will be corrupted completely.”
“So that’s why we’re stuck guarding it from here,” Kiri said. “I don’t want to turn evil, of course, but I can’t say I feel confident we’ll stop the Thief Lord from getting the Sceptre when we don’t even have eyes on it.”
“We’re as close as caution allows,” the man said. “And we have a net of alarms surrounding the Sceptre’s chamber. When the thief approaches we will know.”
“So then we just try to race him to the Sceptre?”
“Then we stop him,” the Eldan woman said. “No matter the cost.”
The Eldan man bowed his head and sighed, and Kiri felt there was a story to that, but she didn’t ask.
“So this is really as close as we can get?” Kiri asked. “This room here?”
The man lifted his head. “We can get a little closer.”
“Let’s do it.”