Though no one around him could tell, Karl was exhausted by the time he, Xahn, and Wyll—still slung over the Dashman’s shoulder—reached the courtyard of the witch’s mansion. Almost instantly, one of Ekatern’s servant women spotted them and came over to help. Seeing their predicament, she directed them to an older, stern-looking woman on the other side of the courtyard, near the red door. The woman’s name, she said, was Myria, their local healer who would see to their needs.
Karl nearly dragged himself across the courtyard; Myria met him halfway, sizing up the tall, bearded man and the two injured boys as she did so. Of course, he sized her up, as well. She was a bit plump and smelled of rose petals. Perhaps twenty years older than Karl, she had white hair and was so short she had to crane her neck back to return his stare—defiantly but not unkindly. Satisfied, the Dashman nodded and began to gently lower his son’s friend to a bench in the courtyard.
“Not here,” Myria said in a pleasant contralto voice, waving her hands. “Too dirty. Follow me.” The plump woman propped Xahn under one shoulder began an unhurried walk with surprising speed and Karl took large strides to keep up with them. In a few moments, Myria opened a concealed door in the side of the mansion and guided Xahn inside. Karl followed, carrying Wyll.
The whitewashed room they entered was small, only a few feet on each side, but it held a bed, two wooden cabinets, a wash basin, and a table large enough for Karl to set Wyll upon. It was quite clean and very well-organized. It did have a slightly malodorous smell about it that Karl recognized immediately. He said nothing, but wondered why they would have so much liquor on hand in this tiny the room.
“The red-headed boy appears to have had the worst of it,” Myria said, prodding Wyll’s damaged foot carefully with only a couple of fingers, brining a wince out of the young man. “The ankle is definitely broken,” she said. “You can by the a—”
“The angle of foot,” Karl finished. “It’s hanging too far to the inside.”
Myria’s eyes grew slightly wider as she looked up at Karl, with a grin. “Well, well,” she said, softly. “Ekatern said you would know how to triage.”
“I know what broken ankle looks like. That’s all.”
Myria continued to smile, but gave a huff, shook her head and went over to one of the cabinets. She returned with a clean but nasty-look pair of sheers.
“What are you going to do with that?” Wyll practically shrieked.
“I’m going to remove your boot so that I can set and dress your ankle, young man.”
“You’re going to cut it off?”
“Just the boot, Wyll,” Karl said with a slight smile. “Not the foot!”
“They’re the new boots his father gave to him,” Xann said weakly, from the spot on the bed where Myria had bid him lie. “I think he’d rather lose the foot.”
Myria sighed again and looked up at Karl and they exchanged an understanding glance. Myria raised an eyebrow and Karl paused, then nodded slowly. Sighing once more, the old woman put aside the sheers and reached again into the cabinet, this time retrieving a small, leather strap that may have once been part of a belt.
“Put this between your teeth,” she told Wyll. Looking as though she had asked him to fall on a sword, Wyll blinked away sweat and tears, nodded, then put the strap in his mouth.
“Look at me, young man,” Myria told him as she grabbed the boot on the injured foot. “Are you re—” While talking and seeming calm, she jerked the boot off as quickly as she possible. Caught off guard, Wyll screamed around the leather strap and bit down as hard as he could. Then, as suddenly as he had started screaming, he stopped and looked a bit puzzled. Slowly, he took the strap out of his mouth.
“It hurt like anything for a second,” he said warily, “but … it’s stopped. I don’t feel anything.”
“That won’t last,” the old woman and Karl said simultaneously. They both looked at each other with wide eyes, then laughed.
“It’s not bloody funny!” Wyll said, horror on his face.
“Watch your language, young man,” Myrai chided. Still looking at Karl she said, “I’ll get his ankle set and wrapped. The healer in the village will know how to care for it.” She looked back at Xahn on the bed. “Your son will need his wounds clean and dressed, but otherwise, he’s in good shape.”
Karl nodded. To his surprise, he found himself trusting the woman. Turning towards his son, he said, “Do as Myria tells you. Get some rest. I’m going to go have a word with the wi—with Ekatern. I’ll come back here when I’m done and take you home. I can carry you down to the food cart and you can ride back.”
Xahn nodded halfheartedly. He was disappointed in himself, Karl could tell. There would need to be a few mentoring conversations on trip home, Karl realized. It was moments like these that could cut either way—they could be learning experiences or traumatic events. His son needed the former.
“Ekatern is in the World Room,” Myria told Karl without looking up from her work on Wyll’s ankle. The dashman nodded and noted that she didn’t question his reasons or try to dissuade him, just gave him the information he needed. He didn’t remember her from his past, but Myria knew about him—at least enough to understand that he knew his way around the witch’s house.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly and started to duck out the door.
“Through there,” Myria told him, pointing with a roll of white bandages at another smaller door that was almost hidden amongst the cabinets. “That goes straight to the main hallway.” Karl nodded, then followed her guidance.
He found himself in the middle of the main hallway. Like most features of the mansion—except the healer’s room—it was quite large. Six people could easily walk abreast in it. The gray walls curved upwards for at least twenty feet before forming a gentle arch overhead. Karl remembered the polished gray stone floors from years ago, but in his memory, they had been shiny and clear—these were dull with dirt and dust. The hallway was lit pleasantly—neither too bright nor dim—by dozens of finger-sized white crystals embedded in the walls, forming the pictures the stars made in the sky. It took Karl a moment to orient himself, but very soon he was walking down the musty-smelling hallway toward the World Room, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silence.
The doorway he sought was cut directly into the right-hand wall of the hallway, as tall as the ceiling, and made of the same redwood as the front door, though in far better condition and painted forest green rather than a dark red. As in the front of the mansion, the doorknob was a large golden orb in the center of the door, surrounded by a golden sixteen-pointed star. Karl paused for a moment and took a deep breath. His thoughts were racing, and his feelings were quite chaotic. He had sworn to himself, on his wife’s ashes, that he would never again venture into the crystal temple, yet here he was. He blew out a breath of sadness, frustration, and confusion, focused his mind and his will, put his hand to the golden doorknob and opened it.
The World Room was named for the murals of forests and animals on the walls and ceilings. Like the great hall, this room was dome-shaped, though not nearly as large. The dome overhead was blue with paintings of clouds, the sun, the moons, and the stars. Karl found himself turning about to examine each of the images of lions, tigers, bears, and horses. They were much as he remembered them, he discovered. But the room itself was disheveled—as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a long, long while.
“It is good to see you again, Karl.” He closed his eyes briefly at the familiar sound of the high, thin voice. Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm his heart and turned slowly toward the voice. “Hello, Tern,” he said, cautiously.
“Oh, my," said the witch. "I haven’t heard that name in a very long time.” She stood on the dais above him in the center of the dome, framed by two crystal columns and dressed in her typical fashion—a loose-fitting, silken robe of dark green with wavy lines of light green running through it, and a green kerchief tied over her hair and forehead. Karl was shocked to see how old Ekaterin looked. It had been about ten years since he’d last seen her, but she appeared to have aged by more than three times that amount. The clothes seemed to drown her skeletal body, but it was in her face that Karl saw the toll the years had taken on her. It was shallow, pinched and wrinkled, like an old plum left out in the sun too long. An empty sack of skin fell loosely below her chin. Smaller skin bags hung darkly beneath her bloodshot eyes in which there was a look of profound sadness.
Karl was surprised at himself, but the sight of the witch looking so worn and sad did not bring him any satisfaction. Incredibly, it made him feel sorry for her.
"You disapprove of my looks, do you, sir?" Ekaterin said with a wry grin.
Karl grunted. "You should leave a man's thoughts to himself, you old witch."
"It doesn't take a witch to read the expression on your face, though it is still a devastatingly handsome face after all this time. And your Dasch accent ... I had forgotten how appealing the combination was."
"There is no Dasch," Karl snapped. "We lost the war, remember?"
Ekaterin made a rude noise and waved a weathered hand. "Fran and Dasch have defeated each other countless times, one always consuming the other like a fish swallowing a bug. I suspect there is a Dasch underground movement already planning a rebellion that will no doubt succeed—eventually. Things have not changed between those kingdoms in five thousand years, Karl Starai." She grew thoughtful for a moment. "Although there was a brief, wonderful period about five hundred years ago when Dasch and Fran were allies. Of course, they had Hahn as their common enemy." Ekaterin looked at Karl's eyes and sighed heavily, causing the light fabric of her gown to ripple down the front. "No change to that solemn expression, eh? Yes, my lord, I have gotten old."
"Don't call me that. And you were old, Tern, when the tallest trees around here were saplings, so it is not age that has made you look like this." He wrinkled his brow, squinted up at her and whispered, "The Sadness?"
Ekaterin's voice was also low, almost too faint to hear, as she shook her head and said, "No, Karl. I do not have the condition that took your poor Suhan. I have lived many years, but it is only recently that I have begun to grow truly old. I will die soon."
Karl cringed inwardly at the mention of his late wife's name, but he did not react to it as he'd feared he might. He did not shout at the witch, did not accuse her of killing his beloved, did not demand to know why she stood by and watched Suhan waste away to nothing. Perhaps it was seeing Ekaterin like this; perhaps the years had watered down his bitterness; perhaps he was simply more concerned about his children and the people of Hylan and the vision he had seen through the telescope.
"You cannot die just yet, Tern," he said with only a hint of a smile. "I have a feeling we are going to need your help."
The witch's eyes narrowed. "You've seen them, then." It was not a question. "You've seen the horde marching down on us. How is this possible?" The witch closed her eyes and her face became calm, almost reverent. "There is something in your pack, my lord, that calls to me," she said, her eyes still closed. "It cries for refreshing." She opened her eyes and started at Karl intently.
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"I said, don't call me that. I'm no lord." Karl paused for a moment under the pressure of that stare, then pulled the pack from his shoulder and retrieved the telescope. When he presented the silver tube to Ekaterin, her eyes grew wide.
"Where did you get this?" she demanded.
"An Angel gave it to me, during the Battle of Schtern. He was one of the Fallen."
The crystal witch stroked the silvery sides of the telescope lovingly. "These crystals have been away from the Heart far too long." She touched one hand to the column on her right while bringing the tube near her ear with her left hand. The crystal column lit up white around her fingertips and Karl saw a dim white glow coming from within the telescope itself. Ekaterin closed her eyes, as if she were intently listening. She smiled. "They are happy, now," she said, baggy eyes still closed.
"They are crystals, Tern," Karl shot back, with a bit more venom than he'd intended. "They don't have feelings."
The witch opened her eyes to two slits. "Not like you and I do, that is true. But they do have them." Her eyes opened wider, as if she was surprised by what she heard. "They showed you the horde making its way to Hylan."
Karl tried not to let his surprise at the accuracy of her words show. “How long before this … this horde reaches the village?” he asked, instead.
“Two days,” the witch said without hesitation. “They will be here on Arrival Eve. Appropriate, isn’t it?”
“That’s why you have all the children here,” Karl said with a sly smile. “It’s not about any feast. I’ve been wondering what the real motive was for your sudden community spirit.”
“The children will be here and as many of the adults as I can convince to attend the feast. Once everyone is inside, I’ll activate the fence. It should keep the horde at bay long enough for us to evacuate everyone through the mines.”
Karl furrowed his brow. “Not necessary. I have rigged the North Pass so that I can fill it with boulders the size of this mansion with very little effort. The beasts will never make it this far.”
Ekaterin’s eyes grew narrow again. “When did you do that?” She scoffed. “I suppose I have been distracted.” Her face softened. “You’re still protecting your people. You say you're not a lord, but you're behaving like one.”
“I was safeguarding my family,” Karl retorted. “Of all people, you should know what dangers they would face if any of my … former associates showed up.”
“Of course,” the witch said with a smile. Then her expression became sullen. “Your trap will only slow them down, Karl, not stop them. They are coming for me and they will get me, one way or another, whether you block the North Pass or no.”
“What do you mean? It’s a stampede of wild beasts.”
The crystal witch pursed her lips and stood there quietly for a moment, then said, “Komstdu,” in Dasch, and beckoned him to climb the short staircase to the dais. He did as she bid while saying, “I told you Dasch is no more,” deliberately in Glishtongue.
“Then no one else will understand what we’re saying,” the witch replied, still speaking Dasch. She removed her fingertips from the crystal column and stepped to the center of the dais. Karl noticed that the white images of her fingertips remained on the column after she released it. They were quite detailed-he could even see her fingerprints for a few seconds. Quickly, the images faded to a whitish gray, then to nothing but clear crystal.
“Biensehr,” Karl breathed and sauntered up the stairs to where Ekaterin stood, beckoning to him. He’d never been upon a temple dais before; he wondered if they were all as cluttered with paraphernalia as this one was. A thick Hahn carpet—red wool interwoven with black geometric shapes—covered the hexagonal floor, which only extended two or three paces in any direction. Sitting on the carpet was a mismatched set of tables and low cabinets, some quite ornately made of dark woods and covered with detailed carvings, others with embedded scenes formed from complex patterns of mother-of-pearl and crystals, and several with no lacquer or carvings at all. The top surface of each piece of furniture was littered with strange foreign items, metal devices, trinkets, books, scrolls and bits of papers of various sizes, shapes and colors. The low table which Ekaterin pointed Karl to was small and round—one of those with the mother-of-pearl inlay. Upon the table, covering most of the inlay, was a large, blue crystal. It was about the size of Karl’s head, unpolished, with sharp edges jutting out in several directions. And the blue color was not like the sky or water blue crystals that were traded so commonly in Glish; this was a deep, dark blue-nearly purple-that reminded Karl of the sky in the east, just as the sun set in the west. Karl approached, watching as Ekaterin stroked the crystal’s surface. It lit with a brilliant glow, somehow darkening the shade of blue to a near-black.
Tern wrinkled her nose as Karl approached and said in Dasch, “You stink.” Karl thought of a hundred retorts, dismissed all of them and simply replied, “Yes, I do.” The witch laughed in a surprisingly youthful manner, casually returned his telescope, then turned her attention back to the crystal. “I do not intend to cause you pain, Karl, but I must ask: how much crystal lore did Suhan teach you?” She looked back up at Karl with such compassion on her wizened face that he lost all that was left of his anger.
“Not much,” he whispered. “She tried, but I never could seem to catch on.”
“I understand,” Ekatern said and pointed toward the blue crystal with her chin while both hands stroked the glowing surface. “Some crystals have what we call talents. These are special abilities that we can … encourage the crystals to employ. That telescope you carry, for example. Its crystals have the talent of foresight, as you witnessed. This beauty here,” she said, stroking the blue crystal’s sharp edges, “sees only the present, but it sees everything in the present.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, my lor—Karl, that with the proper coaxing, we can use this crystal to see anything happening anywhere, right now.”
“I wish I had known about this at the Battle of Schtern.”
“It has been used—abused, some of my order would say—for purposes of war in the past. Now, however, I am using it to save the lives of the people of Hylan.”
“How?”
“Look in the flat side over here,” Tern said, pointing at a smooth spot on the crystal about as big around as Karl’s palm. “Tell me what you see.”
For several moments, Karl saw nothing but glowing blue crystal. Then, as if a heavy cloud were blown away from the sun by a swift wind, a bright image swept into view in the flat area. Karl saw trees, rocks, and a mountain pass. “That is the North Pass,” he said with surprise. “It is empty right now. That’s good, very good.”
“For now,” said the witch. “Keep watching.”
Karl wasn’t sure what she did, but suddenly the view moved, as if he were looking down upon the pass from a swiftly-moving cloud. “The road remains clear for many miles north of the pass," he noted. "This is good. This is happening right now?”
“Yes. Keep watching.”
The speed and movement of the viewpoint increased, making Karl’s stomach drop. The view flew northward along the Trader Route for quite some time, passing the Hahn villages, distribution centers, and trading posts that were set up along the way. Then, suddenly, Karl saw smoke and fire and the image stopped moving. “I can’t make out anything through that smoke,” he said.
“One moment,” Tern said, concentrating. The view in the blue crystal suddenly cleared, the smoke vanishing. Now, Karl could see that the blaze came from the roofs of several village houses, engulfed in flames. Many were decimated to the point where they were collapsing in piles of wood and flying cinders. The streets were full of people running from the fire, crazed by the destruction, running in great lopes, jumping and—running on all fours? “Wait,” Karl said, looking more closely. He blinked and rubbed his eyes; his close-up vision wasn’t what it used to be. “Tern—those are not people in that village.”
“No,” Tern replied, softly. “That is the horde.” Ekaterin did something to the blue crystal with her fingertips and the image dropped quickly in height. Karl cried out and grabbed onto the table, then felt very sheepish when he looked around and realized the dais hadn’t moved at all. He took a deep breath and looked back into the crystal. Now, the forms in the street were quite clear, despite the grey sunlight filtering through the smoke.
“I’m looking at the stampede. These are beasts of some kind,” he said. “See how they run on all fours? And how they leap toward the—” Karl’s breath caught as he peered closer. The figures in the smoke moved with unnatural speed, darting on all fours, and one by one, sprouted wings to take to the sky.
“Tern, what is this? What are they?”’
The witch took her fingers from the rough blue crystal, the glow faded, and the images vanished. “Have you read the books of MaHo’Ni?”
“I went to a chapel and listened to a navi’s sermons when I was a child, like all Dasch children. But, no, I have never read the sacred texts myself. Why?”
Ekaterin’s wrinkled face showed no emotion. Karl noticed for the very first time ever that her wide, calm, bloodshot eyes were a dark green. “When you listened to the navi’s sermons, do remember anything about the demonspawn? Hellsgate?”
“Of course,” Karl said, confused. “The demonspawn tried to prevent the Vessel from bringing humankind from the Before World to this world. But MaHo’Ni the Prophet defeated them with the Sword of Heaven, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” the old woman said, nodding and smoothing the fabric of her gown. “That is the story the scriptures tell. The sacred texts also describe the races of demonspawn: the ellgru, the ird, the gnal, and the demon lords.” she pointed at the blue crystal and said, "Those flying lizards looked exactly like the scriptural descriptions of the gnal."
“Oh, come now, Tern!” Karl said, disapproval in his voice. “What are you telling me? That the horde stampeding down on us is made up of nightmares from children's stories? That there are flying lizards as big as horses and rock trolls and goblins coming to drag us from our beds?”
“Yes.”
Karl was stunned; he didn’t know what to say.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, the withc said, “The scriptures don't really tell us much about MaHo’Ni himself. There are some very unreliable details, like he was born fully grown and could call down lightning from a clear sky, but little that is concrete. The only thing we know about him for certain is that he wrote a considerable number of books, guides, and letters before he died of extremely old age. He was ancient, even compared to someone like me.
"In one of those books—the Book of MaHo’Ni's Sorrows, traditionally the last book he wrote before he either died or was taken into the heavens to meet the Vessel—he wrote a series of prophecies. These prophecies all had to do with the return of the goblin horde. He gave us many signs of their return; chief among them was the opening of Hellsgate.”
“I thought Hellsgate was a mythological opening into the underworld. A place of fire and smoke that the demonspawn call home.”
“Yes,” said Ekaterin, nodding. “It was always thought to be a symbolic representation of evil, each kind of demonspawn representing a human vice. But, three weeks ago, when the Great Moon was full, I used this blue crystal and saw a mountain of fire spring into existence in the northern reaches.”
“A fire mountain?” Karl said, incredulous. “There haven’t been any of those for untold thousands of years. All of them are now dead or dormant.”
“Until now. It sprang into being straight out of the ice, tall enough to reach the clouds and large enough to swallow all Hylan, including your ranch. Fire and hot liquid rock spewed from its summit and melted the ice around it for at least twenty miles in every direction. I don’t know how it came to be … it simply was there.”
Karl shook his head and said, “The appearance of a fire mountain does not mean that those things coming for us are—”
“I watched those creatures crawl from the water around the fire mountain,” shouted the witch, cutting him off with a sharp gesture. “The sea literally boiled and spewed them out. What’s more, I believe I have identified all the different varieties of deamonspawn.” She paused and pursed her thin, grey lips. “MaHo’Ni’s prophecy was not symbolic, Karl. It was a true prophecy. And we are in very grave danger.”
Karl was about to argue that there must be some other explanation, when the light in the room suddenly brightened noticeably. He heard the noise of someone clearing their throat behind him and turned to see his son Xahn standing at the base of the dais, looking up at him with a strange expression.
“Father,” said Xahn, “Myria said I would find you in here. I—I feel strange. I think I would like to go back home, right now.”
Karl nodded slowly, trying to discern if his son was alright. “Of course, Xahn. Shall I carry you?” Xahn sheepishly shook his head and turned to leave.
“Wait, boy!” the witch said, loudly. Xahn stopped dead in his tracks. “Come back here.” Xahn glanced back over his shoulder with more than a little fear in his grey eyes. Karl laughed lightly and told him it was alright. His son nodded and began climbing the stairs, steadying himself on one of the clear crystal columns. Karl knew that these Heart Columns were sacred and was about to caution his son against touching them, when Karl heard a high pitched ringing sound and every crystal in the room suddenly lit up like the sun. The room became so bright that it blinded Karl and he staggered backward, blinking against the painful purple splotches filling his vision. The brighteness lasted only a moment, then the room returned to normal, but Karl still couldn’t see clearly. “Xahn!” he cried. “Are you alright?”
There was no answer.
“Ekatern,” he demanded, “what was that? Why did the World Room light up like that?”
There was no answer from the witch, either.
Karl rubbed hard on his eyes to clear away the purple blotches and he looked quickly around the room. He found Xahn was lying at the bottom of the dais stairs, unconscious. “Son!” he called, as he rushed down the stairs and lifted Xahn’s head and shoulders. The young man was breathing; that was a good thing. He seemed devoid of marks, other than a small bruise on his temple that he probably got from the fall. It was not enough to be worrisome, but Karl was very concerned that Xahn remained unconscious despite light shaking and face slapping.
“Tern!” Karl shouted, getting angry. “Come help me! I think my son is injured!”
Silence was his only answer.