Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) Read online

  It was a well known legend that Palailia housed the greatest weapon in all of Darkin, the most powerful artifact ever derived from the constituents of Gaigas: the Rod of the Gorge. It was Remtall’s idea to seek the Rod, despite the well known tales of Palailia’s hauntings. Even Krem had warned against the trip, and expressed his doubt about the existence of the Rod. Ulpo knew that an evil necromancer was said to control the ruined gnomen mines of Palailia, but Remtall believed that the treasured Rod buried there was the answer for Zesm, and that with the power of the Rod an end might finally come for the evil in the West Countries. With the Rod, he would get revenge for his son’s murder. Though Remtall hadn’t made his offer to travel south more attractive by admitting he didn’t know the way, Ulpo thrust himself into the wily gnome’s quest anyway. It seemed that since journeying from Rislind, Remtall had reclaimed his spirit of old, and his courage for adventure. Besides the seriousness of their mission together, there was always their mutual admiration of fine smoking weeds and assorted liquors—at least that much would comfortable in their perilous journey.

  * * *

  “Ulpo!” cried Remtall in frustration. He had been calling out every five minutes since their separation. Earlier, he’d tripped in his hasteful search, extinguishing his torch in a muddy puddle. In vain he had attempted to rekindle it, finally declaring it ruined; he was left to trudge through the woods with only his poor eyesight.

  Remtall stopped in his tracks and peered into the eerie black of the Endless Forest. He looked skyward, trying to see through the thick branches—nothing. His hope for starlight was dashed, and he set his eyes again to the wooded path in front of him. The darkness in the Endless Forest was somehow different than the nights he knew in Arkenshyr; it was somehow heavier, if air could be said to have weight, and a deeper shade of black. The presence of the darkness somehow permeated his being in a way that not only forsook his eyes, but his heart as well. Hardly noticing fear trickle into his consciousness, Remtall looked to his flask, clasped loosely on his belt. He knew the liquor he had brought was nearly gone. It had been the stoutest drop in all of Enoa, bought for a hefty sum at the southernmost port city of Cams-Den Gnarl. The purpose of such a strong drop had been to sustain Remtall farther along with less to carry—the liquor was so strong that he had assumed it would lessen his consumption. His plan had worked flawlessly after stepping onto Aaurlind from their anchor mooring, until one hour ago; now, though Remtall hadn’t realized, his rate of consumption had increased fourfold.

  “Poor sighted dwarven bastard…” Remtall complained, giving up his attempt to see through the damp black atmosphere. He decided to rest a moment, as flying through the forest for an hour had done him no good in finding his missing partner, and it had been too long since he’d had a smoke. The small gnome calmly knelt down and felt the ground for a smooth patch of grass to sit on. Too exhausted to take much time feeling the earth, Remtall conceded the ground suitable for sitting and plopped down.

  “Sweet whore of Gaigas!” screamed Remtall. He rolled to his side, having sat heavily into an upturned pine cone. The dazzled gnome grasped blindly at his buttocks. Finally, the embedded needle dislodged. “Any more to throw at me, good Gaigas?” Remtall spat into the charcoal firmament.

  As he rubbed his new sore, he glimpsed a flickering pair of eyes in the periphery of his vision. After much straining, he could make out vertical lines of tree trunks, crowded together, clustered around dense foliage, a monotony only occasionally broken up by a high shrub or vined overgrowth.

  “Out then, spies!” Remtall coughed. He quickly decided that he could not trust his senses—even the hardened sea captain of the Gnomen Fleet knew not to trust everything he saw under the spell of Oms Fine Granite Liquor.

  “Empta Gnoma! Kiss Dill Wort!” shouted a high-pitched voice, shrill even to Remtall’s dulled senses.

  “What? Speak the common tongue Feral spy! Come out and be seen,” he challenged back at the incomprehensible voice. Quickly, he drew his dagger and regained his feet, frantically scanning the lightless void between each nearby pair of pine trunks. Still nothing could be seen through the night-shaded dark, and he grew angry.

  “Come out vile creatures, if it’s me you want! What have you done with Ulpo?” Remtall roared, letting his fear pass out of him, replacing it with adrenaline, and once again feeling his wits grow sharp. As if in response to the manic gnome, not one but four flickering sets of eyes appeared, each bright yellow, breaking the endless black. The oval slits slowly began to circle the blade wielding gnome—Remtall reckoned the creatures ten yards away on each side of him. The magical yellow balls danced about in perfect rhythm, curiously observing their find. Suddenly a fifth set of eyes began to glow, as if a torch had been lit, and while the original eight eyes rotated slowly around Remtall, the fifth pair did not move sideways, nor back, but only in a direct line toward him.

  “Come on then. You’re the leader I suppose, poor vermin. Surely you do not know who it is you’re meddling with,” Remtall taunted the fifth pair of eyes as it grew larger. A strange-formed body began to emerge as they drew near. Slowly, Remtall saw the uniform black around the glowing yellow eyes take shape, and a body separated from the static background of murky pine trunks.

  “Kem Empta Gnoma! Wort Chane! Kimp! Kimp!” came the shrill voice again, this time piercing at Remtall from behind.

  “Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!” came another.

  “Kimp!” came a third voice to Remtall’s left.

  “Kimp! Kimp! Kimp! Empta Gnoma! Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!” the eyes chanted in unison, chorally sounding even shriller, and Remtall winced at the grating song.

  “Enough, primitive-tongued rodents. Come out and test my blade, or remain a troop of hiding cowards!” Remtall goaded. The body housing the fifth pair of eyes jumped forward; Remtall was taken aback at what he saw: two enormous tendrils extended high up above each of the creature’s yellow eyes, each tendril hairless and smooth. At the end of each tendril was a small bulb, the size of the gnome’s fist, and on the bulbs were several small, spiked growths. The creature’s eyes were level with Remtall, and aside from its high arching tendrils, it was the same height as the short gnome. Its face was bulbous and triangular down to the chin, supported by a neck that appeared far too long and thin to support its oversized head. From the darkness, Remtall could see the blotchy skin pattern of the yellow-eyed beast: it appeared a grainy tan, coated in grey and red flecks. Under the scrawny neck was a small set of shoulders that capped two bony arms, long and fragile looking, each with circular mounds of serrated claws at their ends. The stomach bulged at the top but sloped away from the head near the legs, and it receded into the darkness, yet Remtall could still make out two legs on either side of the silky creature. As it crept closer still, he perceived a waddle in its gait, and he wondered if he should run. Looking around desperately, he realized the other four still circled him.

  “That’s it, Feral beast. Come a little closer,” he muttered, taking a defensive stance with his dagger, pointing it directly at the throat of his approaching attacker.

  “Imptus!” shouted the alien-looking being, three yards in front of Remtall. The circling pairs of yellow immediately froze, stopping their circular waltz and chorus of Kimp, yielding an eerie silence. It appeared that the one who approached Remtall commanded the others, as it looked around in a strange nod of approval to its chanters.

  “Fair fight, I’ll say—five on one, completely surrounded,” Remtall groaned to himself. “Ulpo… it’d be a nice time for you to stop by.”

  “Ulpo?” responded the leader in a slightly deeper tone than that of the other four creatures.

  “What?” replied Remtall, trying to decide if the creature had really spoken his friend’s name, or if the adrenaline filling his mind was reacting poorly with his Oms-saturated blood.

  “We have your friend, Ulpo,” spoke the odd beast in a low but shrill voice, gargling between breaths.

  “So you speak the common tongue? It
was dishonorous then to beleaguer me with your native voice, evil fungus. What of my friend, where is he? Tell me before I slit your thin neck,” Remtall raged. He edged closer to the leader. In response, the four pairs of eyes that encircled Remtall moved inward, so that each presently became nearly as visible as the leader.

  “Do not be alarmed, foreigner. We have not destroyed your Ulpo. The star has grown too bright, and lasted for too many days now, and we must take every precaution,” spoke the alien voice.

  “What in Darkin are you speaking of, grey mold? Know whom it is you speak to in that viral-filth tongue—Remtall Olter’Fane, captain of the Gnomen Fleet of the Five Country War! Bow now and take me to Ulpo, or find the edge of my blade seated deep upon your neck!” Remtall threatened.

  He took a third step toward the creature. Suddenly, a sweet fragrance washed over Remtall as he came within grasp of his enemy. The scent of roots and fresh-turned earth overtook his nostrils, and he swayed, drowsed. Distracted by the smell, Remtall’s intensity flickered. He breathed deeply of the mellow fumes.

  “You… you’re… plants?” cried Remtall, finding himself in disbelief.

  “We must take every precaution against the Omen of the Star—please, do not be alarmed,” came the creature, trying to dissuade Remtall from violence.

  “Never mind my alarm—but rather my steel!” Remtall furiously rallied, summoning his last bit of clarity and strength. He leapt forth, gliding through the air with tremendous momentum. His dagger struck forward at the delicate neck of the yellow-eyed creature.

  “Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!”

  The sweet noxious odor curled up Remtall’s nose as he flew through the air, and then trickled into his brain, numbing his senses midflight. Before his assault had even landed, the gnome was asleep. He remained asleep, even as he slammed into the ground from midair. As quickly as they had surrounded him, the plant creatures scooped Remtall up with their long, fragile arms and placed him on their backs. Remtall snored peacefully as they carried him away through the dense pines. As the creatures rustled along their way, one by one, their yellow eyes disappeared, and there was once again no light to break the uniform abyss that enveloped the deeps of the Endless Forest.

  * * *

  “Remtall!” shouted Ulpo, sprinting blindly through the overgrowth. Minutes before, he had woken up surrounded by the most horrifying monsters he had ever seen—they had appeared in the dim light to be oversized bugs, circled around him, staring starward through a bare patch in the canopy of the forest. They had seemed mesmerized by something, but Ulpo hadn’t taken the time to figure out what. The last thing he remembered was falling behind Remtall on the trail, and a great spell of drowsiness coming over him. The next instant he woke up, surrounded by the awful creatures; they had been speaking softly in their ugly language, gazing in a trance at the sky. Ulpo instinctually reached for his short sword, but to his despair it was gone; luckily, his limbing axe was still in place under his shirt. He had quickly drawn it, and still feeling dizzy he jumped straight up from the ground and rushed to the nearest creature, slicing off its head. The congregation began to hiss, turning from their trance to see what had happened; each of the strange things let out a painful shrieking noise. Several of them had charged at Ulpo, but most panicked and scattered. Ulpo did not waste a second, felling two more creatures—killing the first with a neck slice, and hurling his axe from two yards away at the eyes of the second.

  No blood spilled that Ulpo could see, and he had been too startled to retrieve his axe. Using the moment of triumph to his advantage, he escaped into the black maze of the Endless Forest.

  “Remtall!” shouted Ulpo again, giving away his position in the pathless forest. Remtall would have a torch still, he thought; his had disappeared along with his sword when he’d been kidnapped. Ulpo’s vision was much better than Remtall’s in the dark, a genetic privilege of his cave dwelling race, but the Endless Forest seemed to be a different sort of darkness—it seemed to Ulpo that each pine he passed sprouted from a lightless void, a saturated thickness of air that somehow rose up from the soil.

  He began to lose hope, trudging on through the night, and he wondered whether or not he’d made the right decision in coming with Remtall. Perhaps he’d been wrong; perhaps King Terion had known all along what was best for his people. Perhaps he should have known better than to come to Aaurlind with no ranger or guide—to come with only the sparse knowledge of a drunken gnome. As Ulpo’s faith began to waver, he wandered erratically. Without realizing, he started to march in long circles, making no ground, only growing weary with despair. Suddenly, after another call of desperation, Ulpo inhaled deeply of a sweet aroma, wafting slowly through the empty woods. It was somehow familiar, but he couldn’t place it; was it a smell from his past? His mind hadn’t cleared, it seemed, since his mysterious slumber, but he recalled smelling the fragrance before, as if in a dream.

  “Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!”

  “Huh?” Ulpo looked up from the ground where he’d been focusing to avoid roots.

  “Kimp! Kimp! Kimp!”

  “Who’s there?” Ulpo said in alarm. Though his limbs felt heavy, he quickly picked up a stick from the ground, having no other weapons to defend himself. There came the flash of two oval slits in the distance, but they flickered off as quickly as they had appeared. Ulpo looked behind him, saw nothing. He looked to his left and right, straining for anything, to make out anyone, to behold the eyes once more. Nothing appeared. He closed his eyes, and let the aroma spread through him—it is so pleasant I could fall asleep right here, he thought. The befuddled dwarf opened his eyes one last time before passing into slumber once more, and all around him were giant yellow orbs, dancing against the black.

  III: A HAUNTING IN RISLIND

  The sun rose early. Pink rays poked lazily through clouds that wrung a crown of low-lying mountains. The tree-blanketed peaks stretched out to form a wide circle visible only to passing birds. Few knew of the gem possessed within: a meadow nestled at the heart of the mountainous rim, a most comfortable village of peace and refuge—Rislind. The secluded Rislinders had remained nearly untouched by the corruption that fell upon Arkenshyr after the Five Country War. For many years its residents lived hidden, shielded from the horrors of the slave trade that ravaged the West Continent. Both the south country of Arkenshyr, and the north country of Hemlin, had fallen to the tyrannical corruption of the once honorable and revered Grelion Rakewinter. The equanimous folk of Rislind knew that the fate of the East Continent had been rent by darkness, but they likewise knew they’d do well not to interfere; the better course, they collectively decided, would be to remain behind their mountain walls.

  It was only recently, when a resident left town under the most peculiar circumstances, that rumors started to spin among town folk. Some claimed that they saw a man with a magical sword pass through the town; others said they saw their own Remtall Olter’Fane in league with that same wizard. Some had started lore that a giant golem had passed down the town’s main road, accompanied by a band of strangers. One even whispered that the metal man fit the description of the ill omen prophesized in dwarven scripture. Some said that evil wizards long thought dead, bearing the evil titles of Aulterion and Vesleathren, had been revived—and still others gossiped that Remtall journeyed to seek revenge for his missing son. A few talked about a rogue demon—Zesm the Rancor—and spun tales that he had taken the throne of the East Continent from Grelion himself, and now ruled the slave trade. Only one person, a human, had ever admitted to knowing where Remtall had vanished to: senile old Mayor Doings.

  Several of the tougher trolls in town had attempted to pressure Mayor Doings into revealing the secrets of Remtall’s departure, but all Doings ever repeated was that “it was a matter of Rislind’s safety, and secret the task would remain—and if I was to even hint at the errand Remtall has left on, then the bird-spies of the air, and the fur-spies of the soil, would take the secret and bring it to our enemies.” The interrogators hadn’t backed
off until pressure was put on them to desist by the Rislind militia, a small band of trolls, gnomes and humans.

  It had been several months since Remtall’s departure, and though the myths grew about the strangers who had come through the village, and what their passage portended, a new fever of gossip had quieted the tales recently. There was a more pressing matter to fret over suddenly; there was now a haunting to be concerned with.

  The village was bustling at the earliest hour of the morn, earlier than was usual for a Sunday in the normally subdued community. Mayor Doings had called a town meeting on this particular Sunday, to be held outdoors at the Rislind Square at promptly eight o’clock. The meeting had been scheduled two weeks prior, as a response to the rash of worry about the haunting that had swept the citizens. It seemed that the fear was contagious. Mayor Doings had heard several eye-witness accounts of the forest-dwelling spirit, haunting the inner foothills of the Rislind Meadow, and he had decided that before the panic spiraled out of control, he would rein in his townsfolk’s fears at a meeting. He would address his peaceful citizens, and assure them that no evil spirit lurked in their forest.

  Despite the early hour of the meeting, which some thought to be too early and a result of Doings’s growing senility, the Rislind Square was already packed with people of different races, ages and colors. Though there was an hour until Mayor Doings was supposed to begin his address, the gnomes, humans, and trolls of Rislind were all congregating noisily over the smell of fresh ham and burnt potatoes. Some were going about with vials of tea, others with the potent, mind-awakening elixir known as Rislind Red, brewed from local flora for its stimulating effect. Gossip was fervent, and the people were anxious with anticipation. The women stuck close to their smallest children, while the older youths ran about playing. Some pretended to be ghosts, upsetting the elderly.