Olga McArrow
Hot Obsidian
Chapter 2. The liar’s speech
Warriors on the Lifekeeper path are confident and level-headed. They know the difference between love and lust, learning and mindless parroting, truth and lie, loyalty and fanaticism. Warriors of the Order of Hot Obsidian build their lives upon the same foundation. The Order is no place for mindless fanatics!
Sainarnemershghan Saidonatgarlyn. Neophyte’s handbook.
Sainar made his speech right before dawn in a large, dimly lit hall. “They must concentrate on my voice. Yes, my voice, and not on my face…”
Preparing the speech took Sainar a long time. Never before had the man whose words were strong enough to make a worldholder angry had to prepare his speeches beforehand. Whether he spoke as Hansai Donal or in his own name, he always spoke from his heart. Sainar’s words had always been a pure fire: passionate, straightforward, honest, and enhanced with his ambasiath power. But now…
The simple test he had made yesterday changed everything. Watching his children react to the simple events down in the library; having his daughter – Kangassk Eugenia – openly confront him made Sainar reconsider everything.
He raised his children to hate the worldholders and their reign, he taught the Kangassks to trust the Order’s judgement. And faithful followers they all turned out to be, indeed! So what was troubling the great leader now? Just one little thing, so simple but immensely dangerous. The thing he had realized yesterday…
They love their apprentices.
What was wrong with it? The thing is, according to Gerdon’s plan, nine of the ten boys were to be sacrificed to the Hot Obsidian, there was no way around that. But what would happen now if Sainar had honestly told the Kangassks about that? How would they react? Oh, he already knew how!
Sainar may be their beloved father and their fearless leader but eight out of ten Kangassks would turn against him the moment they heard of the purpose their apprentices had been raised for. And whose fault is that? His own. Hadn’t he lectured them about honesty and truth, hadn’t he raised them all as Lifekeepers, hadn’t he been an example of everything he taught? Oh, their sense of justice was firm and true all right! And it would flare up as fast as dry grass does when it meets a fiery spark.
Even quiet and gentle Kangassk Eugenia and that silly buffoon Kangassk Majesta would rise against their father. Only the eldest two – Abadar and Orlaya – would remain loyal. And why? Oh, the irony! Because they are the only fanatics of the whole lot. Those two were raised by Gerdon while Sainar was travelling across the world, busy with spreading his rebellious teachings.
Sainarnemershghan hated fanaticism and lies, the two things that perverted all the noble doings and dreams of humanity, but now, now he had no other choice but to use them himself. It was either that or throwing three thousand years of the Order’s existence out of the window.
In the dark hour before the dawn, in the dimly lit hall, Sainar was telling lies to his own children, for the first time in his life. Later, he had a private conversation with Orlaya and Abadar in his study. He was right about Gerdon’s apprentices: they remained loyal to the cause and were willing to send the boys to certain death. Each of the two saw their own apprentice winning the Hot Obsidian’s favour and being the change the world so desperately needed.
Just like only two masters of the ten knew the truth about the incoming mission, only two apprentices were let in on the secret.
“…You will lead your unit through safe lands where the biggest danger you may encounter is a bandit gang,” explained Kangassk Abadar to Juel. “All the mages, Grey or Crimson, will wish you good luck when they see you and even risk their lives for you in case of danger. Upon seeing your swords, every ambasiath will share their food and shelter with you. But as soon as…”
“…But as soon as one of you takes hold of the Hot Obsidian,” explained Kangassk Orlaya to Irin, “all the world will turn against you. Every mage will meet you with a sword and a lightning spell. You will have to avoid people and walk through the wildest lands. Believe me, the creatures that live there will seem much easier to deal with than two furious armies of South and North combined. And remember…”
“…Remember, “ Abadar warned Juel, “that the Order was working for three thousand years to make it happen. There is no way back now. One of you must carry the Red Eye out of the No Man’s Land even if all the rest of you die. I hope you will be the last one standing, Juel. Bring the stone to the Benai Bay on the shore of Karmasan Sea. They will wait for you there…”
“…The ones that wear grey and silver,” Orlaya whispered to her apprentice. “From them, you will learn what to do next and which path leads to the destruction of the worldholders. It’s most likely that Juel will take the Red Eye at first. Don’t fight him. Let him carry your burden while he can. The stone has a mind of its own, it will measure you all up and decide who deserves it the most. Be patient, Irin, and it will eventually come to you. Stay safe, my boy. You alone are important. Everyone else is expendable. Be strong. Be patient. Be the one that carries the Hot Obsidian to the Benai Bay!”
The ten left the Temple of Life at noon. Many Lifekeepers, young and old, gathered to wish them good luck. They knew little of the boys’ mission; to them, it was some simple quest they had been given to prove their worth and learn a thing or two along the way, so the general mood was lighthearted and cheerful. Eight boys of the ten were all smiles; only Juel and Irin remained grim.
The masters took their time to have a chat with their apprentices before seeing them off. Kangassk Eugenia was buttoning Jarmin’s jacket so he would stay warm and telling him to be good and to do as the older boys say. Kangassk Majesta tried to give Bala some books and scrolls and kept dropping and anxiously picking them up. Orion and Kangassk Lar shared jokes, laughed, and patted each other on the shoulders, just like two brothers would… Every Kangassk had something to say at the last minute and Sainar couldn’t bring himself to hurry them up. His children, the ones he had lied to, looked so happy that it broke his heart.
The magnitude of his sacrifice reached Sainarnemershghan only now: to keep the Order’s mission alive, he had betrayed everything he stood for, everything he believed in, everyone he loved. He knew he would never forgive himself.
Chapter 3. Rain and stories
All that I dream of
Is there, in the endless sky,
There, where the sun shines.
All that I hold dear
Is there, in the endless sea,
There, where the moon drowns.
All of my sorrow
Is here, on the joyous earth,
Where I have no place.
Ziga-Ziga. Haiku of the nameless continent
Firaska is a small but ancient city. The city every Saidonatgarlyn had a special connection to. The city that was there during Erhaben’s Golden Age and after Erhaben’s fall. The city where Malconemershghan was born.
To Juel’s little team, it was just the first step on their long journey. The boys were supposed to shop for supplies there and buy themselves a Transvolo to Torgor. Lainuver, having counted their money twice, concluded that such a laughable sum would never interest a mage powerful enough to know the Transvolo spell. Orion was more optimistic about the matter. They were young Lifekeepers on a quest; a bunch of cute kids to most people, a reminder of some special Lifekeeper-related story to the rest. It was unlikely that anyone, even a powerful mage, would charge them much for a spell. With enough luck on their side, they could even get a Transvolo for free!
The road to Firaska was wide and well-tended to, so walking it was pure joy. The boys, quiet at first, started talking to each other. Careful words soon turned into a lively chatter, with jokes and puns and bursts of laughter.
When someone asked about Firaska’s origins, Oasis answered him with a story. Three thousand years ago, Firaska was a tiny settlement on the edge of the nastiest part of the No Man’s Land, the part where the darkest, vilest creatures lived. The first Firaskians must have been exceptionally brave people to live there. What were they fighting for, why didn’t they settle on a safer spot? Freedom. That was the answer. The dangerous place they chose for their city was their ticket to independence from both South and North allowing them to stay within the territory of stable magic at the same time.
Hard times create strong people, the proverb says. True. Malconemershghan was one of them.
He left Firaska when Sereg the Grey Inquisitor took him as an apprentice but he kept the Firaskian spirit in his heart. If the Grey Inquisitor hadn’t killed him and destroyed his followers, the whole North would have been as free now as the old Firaska was. Was. Because Firaska became an ordinary Southern city and lost its freedom forever.
“Who’s been in the North?” Orion asked, looking around.
For a while, the boys were silent, then Kosta Ollardian spoke up in a quiet, quivering, wheezy voice, the kind of voice someone with a chronic illness might have.
“I’ve been in the North once,” he said. “It’s crazy cold there. I was ill for the whole journey. My father says that the North is a bad place. He hated it when grandfather sent him there.”
“My master says there’s,” Jarmin took a deep breath, “CEN-SOR-SHIP!” he said in a loud whisper. “What’s censorship, Orion? Is it an evil ghost ship?”
Someone snorted, stifling his laughter, behind Orion’s back. Orion kept his cool.
“No, Jarmin, it just means that there are some things you are not allowed to say and write in that country,” he explained. “I don’t think their censorship is that bad, though. I’ve been in the North several times and they definitely have way fewer shitty books in their bookstores. Maybe the South needs a little bit of censorship too.”
“Well, our dear Sainar would strongly disagree with you, I’m afraid,” said Lainuver with a sly smile.
The weather was warm, the company was merry, and the road was easy, but even with all things perfect, you can’t walk from Magrove forest to Firaska in a single day. By the evening, the boys had to camp.
Judging by the clouds gathering in the sky, it was going to rain, so they had to find a proper shelter if they wanted to stay warm and dry that night. But where could they find one in the smooth grassland between the Lifekeepers’ holy place and the nearest city? There were trees, of course – a thin diadem here – and there but they were no help.
The boys kept walking. They were no longer joking around: the possibility of spending the night in the rain was no fun. In an hour or so, a rather promising purple-white spot got Juel’s attention and he ordered his unit to leave the road and head there.
The bright spot turned out to be a circle of ten slender diadem trees. Most likely, a lonely traveller had camped there once, ate a sugary diadem fruit, and planted the seeds – or maybe just thrown them away. The trees that had grown out of those seeds were beautiful, a very welcome sight in the middle of endless green, only their crowns weren’t thick enough to offer any cover from the rain. But, with nowhere else to hide, the young Lifekeepers made their camp there.
They piled their backpacks in the middle of the tree circle and spread a couple of extra blankets over them so they wouldn’t get drenched in case the weather indeed decided to take a nasty turn. Jarmin, the brave six-year-old who had been keeping up with his grown-up companions the whole day without even a peep, dozed off right there by the backpack pile. The others sat on the ground, leaning against the trees, or just sprawled on the grass.
Rainy forebodings aside, the evening was beautiful. Bala wholeheartedly enjoyed it. Orion, nervously chewing on a grass blade, kept looking around, still hoping to think of some solution to their shelter problem. Juel was doing the same, only in a less obvious way. In his relaxed but watchful state, he resembled a charga, the big cat Faizuls like so much. Pai and Kosta moved closer to Oasis to ask him for more stories. Lainuver sat beyond the circle, cross-legged, his back to the group, thinking of something personal that seemed to be troubling him way more than the incoming rain. Irin had walked away and was currently shooting birds with his bow. From time to time, a painful squeak reached the diadem shelter; the hunt was going well.
Milian happened to end up being all alone. Not that he minded it, though. To him, a bookish boy, that day had been a serious overdose of human interaction. He felt emotionally drained now and just wanted to be by himself for a while. Milian decided not to walk far away; leaning against a diadem tree behind the backpack pile and putting his hood on was enough.
There was a moment when he lifted his eyes to the cloudy sky grumbling above the thin purple-white crowns and a stray thought entered his mind: these slender diadem trees could make a fine roof if someone would tie them together. And if this someone would also cover that roof with several blankets, just like they did with the backpack pile…
Milian Raven liked the idea at once. He stood up, tried to bend one of the trees. Yes, the trunk was flexible enough! Now he just needed to get help. That meant addressing one of the leaders. Milian chose Orion at once.
“Orion? Orion!” Raven tugged at his sleeve.
“What’s up?” Orion yawned.
A brief explanation later, to everyone’s surprise, Milian and Orion grabbed two coils of rope from the backpack pile and started bending the trees. The rest of the team watched them with distrust at first but then they got it: they were going to sleep under a roof after all! Everyone joined the building process, even Juel. Little Jarmin, woken up by the commotion, found himself inside a beautiful living tent of branches and flowers.
Their spirits high again, the boys got back to lively talking, mostly about what to make for dinner. Juel left that matter to Bala who seemed to know a thing or two about cooking and actually making food taste nice.
A true Lifekeeper is always observant, even in little things. Especially in little things. And Juel was a true Lifekeeper. He noticed that Milian had brought his idea to Orion and not him. That would not do. It was time to start setting things right.
“Good job, man!” Juel patted Milian on the shoulder, hoping that the praise sounded as sincere as he wanted. “Just one thing: in the future, if you have something important to say, come to me first. Keeping the leader uninformed can be dangerous to the whole team.”
“Okay,” Milian shrugged. “Whatever you say…”
“Jarmin!” Juel turned to the little boy. “I want to apologise for that joke I made yesterday. It was stupid. Please, forgive me.”
He said no more, leaving his companions to their thoughts. While the whole gradient of moods and opinions was shifting and rearranging behind his back, Juel grabbed his backpack from the pile, unrolled his sleeping bag, and started preparing for the night. He knew he was doing the right thing now, both for the mission’s and his own sake. Juel had hated Sainar’s decision to send him on this very questionable journey with a bunch of children. Now, he had finally made peace with that.
“Those guys are not all that bad,” he told himself. “They’re all my brothers of the Order. They’re all warriors, even the youngest ones. Maybe even little Jarmin is worth something, we’ll see; he is a powerful ambasiath too, after all… As to me, my master has always said that I must learn to keep my pride in check. All right, I will. Trust can be powerful, so let’s make them trust their leader.”
The wayfarer soup the young Lifekeepers had for dinner tasted like a proper homemade meal with Bala’s spices and Irin’s birds thrown in. The rain did finally start and quenched the campfire but, luckily, the diadem tent turned out to be a good enough shelter that kept both water and wind away.
Soon, night swallowed the world outside the tent; rain swallowed the sounds that could warn you about a danger. From time to time, a cold water droplet or a wet purple-white petal fell from the tent’s roof on the boys sleeping below. Sleeping. Jarmin no longer felt safe among them when there was no one to look out for danger. He felt alone and painfully vulnerable now. The No Man’s Land with all the nightmarish creatures Oasis had been talking about that day was close. Even worse: Kosta had mentioned that some of them – moroks – can wander outside the unstable lands and attack travellers even beyond Firaska. What if one – or a whole pack of them! – was prowling about the grasslands or maybe even lurking outside the tent right now?
Jarmin sat and wrapped his blanket around himself, shivering. He was so scared already that Orion’s unexpected whisper had almost made him jump.
“Can’t sleep, Jarmin?” asked Orion and added, looking around, “Well, you’re not alone. Looks like we’re all awake.”
One after the other, the boys raised their shaggy heads and exchanged looks in the dark.
“I’ve never been so close to the No Man’s Land,” whispered Kosta. His voice sounded even worse now when the air was cold and damp. “I know that it’s a rare thing that some dark creature sneaks beyond Firaskian patrols but it’s not impossible.”
“Orion…” said Jarmin with a pitiful sniff. “What are moroks like?”
“Oh no, no scary stories in the nighttime!” answered Orion with a nervous laugh. “That would be bad for the team’s morale.”
“Okay… But maybe you can tell me a fun story then?”
The pure hope in little Jarmin’s voice was too touching for him to refuse.
“Well, I know some stories. They’re not as cool as Oasis’s are, of course…” said Orion.
He even yawned as a part of play-acting and it worked: the listeners’ interest spiced up now, everyone moved closer; Pai promptly cast a light spell to scare all the night fears away and create a proper storytelling atmosphere. The spell – Fiat-lux, as Pai named it – resembled a classic Liht only remotely. It was much more flammable; every droplet that fell onto it from the leaky roof went up in vapour with a sharp hiss as it would on a hot frying pan. Also, Fiat-lux was a rather unstable light source, it flickered like a candle in the wind. That only suited the story-time, though.
“How about a cool real-life story?” asked Orion. “Our Sainar is not the only one who remembers his family history three millennia into the past!”
“Ah, yes, Aranta said you’re a descendant of that pirate…” Lainuver tried to chime in but Orion frantically waved his hands. “I’ll get to that! Story first!”
***
Three thousand years ago, there lived a great pirate Ziga-Ziga. It’s unknown whether his ambassa or his talent was the reason, but no one could match him in his bravery and his cunning except his friend Orion the son of stars. Together, they raided ships. Together, they spent their bloody gold on deeds good and evil.
But it wasn’t only the joy of piracy that the two friends had in common. Often, they stood together on the bow of Lafarg, Ziga’s giant trimaran, and looked at the horizon, where the charted sea ended and Ocean Fayera began. They talked of unknown lands and dreamed of visiting them one day, but for a long while, the dreams just remained dreams.
But one day, following the calling of his heart, Ziga left Orion in charge of his fleet and sailed to the uncharted sea alone. He returned a different man. There were wonders in Ocean Fayera he had never known existed: islands made of pure ice and inhabited by wingless birds; giant sea monsters as big as ten Lafargs combined but as tame as little lambs; and there was a large continent no one had ever visited before. It was a land of wild, unstable magic and emerald dragons.
Unlike Kuldaganian pocket dragonlighters and nomadic yellow dragons – mindless monsters with morbid curiosity and voracious appetite – emerald dragons were intelligent. They had a civilization and a language of their own. They knew love and friendship. They were a lot like humans, actually, only they lived much longer: up to two thousand years.
Ziga had never learned their language but the dragons, being far smarter than he, had learned his. They didn’t stop there: next, they learned to take human form.
The world of humans interested them greatly. After all, dragons, intelligent and mindless alike, are naturally very curious. But, while interesting, our world seemed too dangerous and frightening for them. Back then, not a single dragon had followed Ziga back to the charted Omnis.
Back in the known sea, Ziga returned to his old trade. He told everyone about the dragons, he sang of them, he wrote about them but no one seemed to take him seriously. His tales spawned fairytales, his ballads inspired funny verses, his writings got ridiculed and criticized for no one would believe a pirate’s word. Not a single human had followed Ziga’s call to visit the dragon continent. After a while, disappointed, Ziga began forgetting it too, falling more and more into his old ways.
But everything changed after he met a very special girl – Meralli. It was a girl given to Orion by the sea itself; she had no memories of her past; she spoke in poems; she seemed alien to this world… like a dragon that had taken human form and forgotten about that. Ziga fell in love with Meralli the moment he saw her. But upon finding the love of his life, he lost his best friend: he and Orion had a fight over Meralli. In the end, Ziga won the girl’s heart and Orion made peace with him but things could no longer be the same between the old friends.
Next time Ziga heard the call of Ocean Fayera again, he answered it. He left everything to Orion – his fleet, his riches, and his blessing – and sailed to the emerald continent on a little dimaran – Jovibarba (that’s where our surname comes from!). He took no one with him but his wife Meralli and their little daughter.
Ziga lived and died among the dragons but some of his descendants chose a different path.
A part of our family moved back to Omnis about a thousand years ago. In the beginning, there was so much dragon blood in the descendants of Ziga and Meralli that they could take dragon form at will and lived for centuries. But as they mixed with humans, their dragon traits faded over time.
Now look at me. The only dragon trait I have is curiosity. Well, maybe audacity is too.
***
The story cheered the audience up. That and the cosily warm Fiat-lux under the ceiling helped the young Lifekeepers shake off the uneasy feeling the night was giving them.
“So, when dragons take human form,” asked Milian, “where does the excess mass go?”
“Ah, a scientist to the bone…” Pai gave him a condescending smile. “They’re natural mages, all of them. And mages have their ways of bending the laws of physics a little bit.”
“Natural mages… And no need for stabilizers. Cool,” said Milian thoughtfully. “Ah, why can’t we humans be like that?”
“We can’t do a lot of things,” Bala smiled. “Just look at us, compared to animals: no fur, no claws; blunt teeth, poor eyes, poor sense of smell… My master says that the lack of something always gets compensated with another thing: a weak person can compensate for their weakness with intelligence or cunning, for example. This is exactly what we as a species do. If we could naturally stabilize magic, we may not have developed civilization, we would have been just… animals.”
“You’re quoting the enemy now,” Orion made a sly remark.
“True,” nodded Milian. “This goes back to Helga before she became Vlada the Warrior. But, to be fair, the book where I saw that quote had been written a very long time before Erhaben.”
“I always thought that it’s not wise to hate a creation only because you hate its creator,” agreed Bala. “Helga spoke the truth…”
“You’re treading on a very thin ice here!” shouted Irin. He had been trying to keep quiet but his patience had finally run out. “Have you forgotten everything that the Order has taught you? You,” he pointed at Orion, “the one who is so proud of his ancestor, a bloody pirate! Maybe you’re proud of your name as well?”
“I am,” was Jovib’s calm reply.
“It’s the name of the worldholders’ minion!” Irion growled.
“For a Lifekeeper, you’re too fast to judge, Irin,” Orion shook his head. He remained unruffled under the younger boy’s angry gaze; there was even a tone of pity in his voice. “The world is not black and white, it’s not even grey. There’s always a No Man’s Land between good and evil where any anomaly can happen.”
“Go back to sleep. Everyone.” That was Juel’s voice. Low, cold, commanding voice. “I’ll set a lookout so we all can feel safe. Irin, you will take the first watch. Orion will change you in two hours. Then Lainuver. And kill the light lest it blinds the lookouts to the dark.”
The team followed Juel’s orders. Despite all the fears, the rest of the night was calm, calm and boring.
