Chapter 26 - Final Hardships

It would be just her luck if they had come so close just to have it damaged by an arrow and ruined. She felt sure it was tougher than that, but the thought was going to nag at her until she checked. So she pulled it out and inspected it. Sure enough, it was just fine.

Kyla pointed out the mountain they needed to reach. They did not appear any closer now than they were before.

"It would have been too easy if he could have just sent us right to the cave, huh?" Niza asked.

"We're alive," Ullden said. "Let's not complain."

"There is a mountain between us and the Elar," Kyla explained. "They will not be able to see us. We may be safe for a little while."

"There might be enough wood around to make a fire," Ullden noticed. "Let's set up camp here. We'll keep the fire small. It's going to be dark soon, so if we're probably safe we should rest until morning."

They set up camp quickly. A couple of bags and bundles had been left behind, dropped during combat, including one of the tents and some of the extra food. There was some discussion and general agreement that they should not leave Alldeh sleeping out alone. Ullden slept by the fire along with Kyla, letting Father Marus and Alldeh share a tent. She and Jetha crawled into the other one.

It didn't take Niza long to fall asleep. Between the travel, the combat, and the dreams from the scepter, she was exhausted. Her eyes were drooping before she even finished making her way into the tent. These days she didn't even bother changing into her nightgown for sleep. She didn't want to waste the time. She waited long enough to get the swordbelt and her boots off, stashing them at the door, just inside the tent, and then collapsed into sleep. She didn't even bother pulling the blanket over her.

When she woke, it was dark. Something didn't feel right, so she ignored her desire to just go back to sleep. She pulled her boots on, and crawled out of the tent, noticing that Jetha had already gotten up.

A figure sat by the small fire in the cave. She knew his gaunt face well by now, and met his dark eyes. Something still nagged at the back of her mind, trying to remind her of something. The figure beckoned to her with one long, bony finger.

"Come and see," he told her.

"See what?" she asked, suspiciously. Still, she approached anyway, trying to keep her expression blank and guard her emotions.

"Why, what your destiny is, of course," he answered, smiling. His smile was anything but warm, making her shudder slightly when she saw it. He stood up and gestured around him.

"Come and see what you will achieve for me."

The fire blazed suddenly and the room of the cave was brightly lit. Around her, their bodies lay on the ground, obviously having been slaughtered. She found herself instinctively looking for her own body there, although knew that such a thing shouldn't be possible.

"What makes you think I would do this?" she asked, keeping herself calm as realization dawned on her. It's just a dream, she reminded herself. He's in my dream again. It doesn't matter what he says. He can't hurt me here.

"Can't I?" he said, as if he'd heard her. "Let's see, shall we?"

With a laugh, he flicked his wrist at her and she flew backwards, slamming against the cave wall. All the breath left her chest and sharp pain shot through her back and head where they'd hit the rock. Then she fell downwards, crumpling onto the cave floor. When she pulled herself up, she realized that she could taste blood in her mouth.

"Did that hurt, little girl?" he taunted. "You don't seem to understand. I will win. I'm offering you the chance to join with me. You don't have to die with the rest of them.

"But," she stammered, "but I don't want to join you." She finished getting to her feet.

"You must," he said calmly. "You will. You can save some of them. You can stop all of this. The army chasing you, the demons... you can stop all of it by joining me."

"I'm pretty sure you're evil," she countered. "I'll never join with you."

"I'm not the evil one," he replied. "The spell that the madman wants to cast, do you have any idea what the spell will do?"

"Something to stop you, kill you, I hope."

"No, it's not something to kill me," he said. "It is much worse than that. Their spell will plunge the world into eternal warfare. It will never end. Thousands of years of bloody conflict."

The fire jumped up larger and cast flickering shadows on the wall. All around the cave shadowy armies clashed and fought. Muted sounds of steel on steel, and muted anguished screams, echoed through the little cave.

"With your help I can stop it. The world can have peace. You want peace rather than eternal warfare, don't you?"

"Well, yes," she agreed.

"It's easy, or at least it can be. You just need to stop them from casting their spell. The girl doesn't know what she's doing. Alldeh is using her. That isn't even his real name, you know."

"You know his name?"

"Oh, yes, I do, although I dare not speak it. Have you considered why I only speak to you in your dreams?"

"Because you need some kind of magic to do it and it doesn't work in daytime? Or it doesn’t work while I'm awake?" she tried.

"No, no. Those are the times when he's asleep. You've seen him do things no human wizard can do. There's a reason for that, Niza. You have to stop them, before it's too late."

"What do you want me to do?" she asked. He seemed pretty reasonable so far, she thought.

"You have to kill Jetha and Alldeh. It's the only way to stop them, the only way to stop the destruction."

"That will never happen," she told him, angrily. "Jetha is my friend." She took a couple steps towards him, fists clenched.

"Perhaps," he said, looking in to the fire. "Or, perhaps, she has just been using you. They had hoped to learn about this ritual of theirs from Alldeh. And yet, it seems that the girl learns more from your dreams than the madman. Information I have given you. Because I know that you will do the right thing when the time comes. All the girl does is pick your mind for more clues. Has she ever really been your friend?"

"And Alldeh," he continued. "Why does he wait to tell you the things you need to know? Why does he feign madness? Have you ever thought that it might be to keep you all from knowing his true goal? He seeks revenge. He has lost perspective. I tried to bring peace before, but he and his friends stopped me. I had to kill the others, I was left with no choice. But I left him alive, hoping he would realize his mistake and help me this time to bring your world together in harmony. But he has been blinded by his vengence, and cannot see past the hate in his heart."

"No," she shook her head, not wanting to believe it. "You're lying."

"You've been watching him, Niza. He's waiting for something. Hiding inside himself, waiting. If he was truely trying to save the world from some evil, don't you think he'd step forward and do something?"

"I... I don't know," she admitted. She didn't want to think that Alldeh was misleading them, but she had to admit she didn't have much to go on. And Alldeh obviously had secrets...

"But Jetha hasn't done anything," she said. "Even if I did believe you, I'd still have no reason to kill her!"

"She seeks greatness, to do something epic with the power she's discovered. Power Alldeh has shown her how to use. She uses magic that was lost, forgotten, for a reason Niza. It is not something she can put away, now that she's felt it flow through her veins. She will only seek more and more. It is a mercy to kill her now. A mercy to those who will fall victim to her power. And, in the end, a mercy to her. You've seen her weild power, just a fraction of what she will become capable of. If she goes through with this ritual, she will begin to understand just how powerful she can be. Then it will be too late. You will have no chance to stop her."

"You don't know her! That's not what she's like!" Niza cried. "You're just trying to trick me!" She felt helpless, unable to contradict what he was saying. Unable to be sure he wasn't telling the truth. She desperately tried to will herself to wake up, to escape the dream.

"You must kill them before they reach the cave, Niza, or all is lost. The world will be plunged into a dark time, the likes of which has never been seen before. War will blanket the world. If you go through with this ritual, you will see that I was right. Can you risk my being right, Niza? You, alone, will have been responsible for the deaths that will follow mine. You can stop it, Niza. You hold the weight of the world in your hands."

His last few words echoed as the cave around her changed to swirling mist, and she felt as if she was falling. Then she sat up suddenly, awake in her tent with Jetha.

Jetha stirred but did not wake. She did not look evil lying there, did not look dangerous. But then, she had noticed the excited look on Jetha's face whenever she had done something new.

No, she told herself. It's the demon. It was a demon, after all. It was lying to her. It had to be. Trying to trick her.

It would be easy to do, she realized. She had a knife. She could just stab Jetha in her sleep. Alldeh might be trickier…

She forced the thought out of her mind and got out of her bedroll. It was out of the question. She got out of the tent to clear her mind.

Kyla, Ullden, and Father Marus were still asleep around the fire. Marus stirred some, but did not wake up. The fire was dying out. She wanted to sit next to it, to just get lost staring into it, but she did not want to risk waking the others.

She moved away and let her eyes wander the mountain scenery. It was so different from city views. It was at the same time majestic and intimidating. The mountains were cold and unwelcoming in the dim starlight. There was just the smallest sliver of icy moon hanging in the sky. She stood and watched until the sky to one side lightened with the red of the approaching dawn.

Kyla woke first, and got out of her sleeping fur without more than a small yawn to indicate that she might still be tired. Ullden was only moments behind Kyla in waking up, but yawned and stretched a good deal before starting to wake the others. Niza moved to stoke the small fire and start getting breakfast together. Jetha joined her minutes later, and began helping Niza cook.

"Morning," Jetha smiled through a yawn. "How'd you sleep?"

"Morning," Niza replied, not looking at her. "I slept well enough, I guess. You?"

"I slept okay. Any dreams?"

"Not really," Niza lied. "I think I dreampt of the cave again, but nothing of the ritual anyway. Nothing worth your notes."

"Well, good. Then maybe you got a decent night's sleep after all. I hate to see you so tired."

"Thanks," Niza said. "But I know how important the details of the ritual are to you."

"We'll find a way to make it work, Niza," Jetha said, touching Niza's arm. Niza looked up to see Jetha looking at her, concerned. "It's not as important as you getting proper sleep. I hate to see you so exhausted."

"I'll manage," Niza gave Jetha a smile to reassure her. "The coffee helps." She nodded at the small pot that was heating on the fire.

"Nordithet always said that stimulants, like coffee, disrupted a person's ability to focus and concentrate properly."

"I've noticed that you seem to have no issue with having a cup every morning though," Ullden cut in with a chuckle.

"Just one cup though, to get me moving," Jetha protested. "I don't drink nearly as much as you and Niza have been lately."

"Well, I'm not weilding anything as complicated as your magic," Niza offered. "And, I figure, it's better to be awake to fight than asleep on my feet."

"She's catching on," Ullden grinned, adjusting the straps on his armor.

"I'm not asleep on my feet," Jetha frowned.

"No, but you're getting better sleep at night than I have," Niza pointed out. "So it balances out."

"True," Jetha conceded.

"Kyla, what's the plan from here? Have you figured the best route to reach the cave?" Ullden asked.

"Yes," Kyla replied. "The mountain between us and the Elar is too steep to climb in most areas, so we will have to go around the backside of it. It will take us close to the area the beasts are said to be in, but perhaps not so close as to be noticed. Based on our rate of travel so far, we should be at the cave in four or five days, assuming we don't have any interruptions."

They had their breakfast and coffee quickly. Ullden calculated that they had three more days' coffee.

"Three nights of new moon left. Too late for coffee after that," Alldeh muttered.

"What does he mean?" Jetha asked.

"The moon has waned smaller each night," Kyla reminded them. "Tonight starts the first night of the new moon, which lasts for three nights. Among my people it is an important time for new beginnings and for making changes."

"There is also precedent for important rituals happening at the full or new moon," Father Marus added. "It might be that we need to do the ritual then. We would have been on time, but we've been sidetracked."

"Then if ever we've need of a speed and lasting strength prayer," Ullden remarked, "it's now."

Ullden prayed, asking Ogrun to take their strength and determination, to shape it as he might metal, making it stronger and returning it to them. They did feel encouraged, and maybe even a little revitalized, afterwards.

"Drop anything we can live without," Ullden suggested. "The lighter we are the faster and longer we can go." He turned and went through his own backpack, muttering a stream of curses but apparently not finding much to get rid of. Some of the curses sounded creative, but most of them she could not hear. She went through her own backpack, but there was not much left that was not important.

"I don't think there's really much more we can afford to leave behind," Niza said, looking at the pile they eventually came up with. A few bars of soap sat atop the pile, one of the paper wrappers rattling softly as it caught in the wind. The heaviest item being left behind was the last of the tents. There would be no more sheltering from the wind behind the thick canvas. Jetha had sorted through and narrowed down the pots and pans, until there was only one deep pan with a lid remaining that hung from her backpack. Niza noted that it was the one they'd seemed to use the most often anyway. Also on the pile was a few bags of Jetha's "components" from inside her shoulderbag. The rest of the pile seemed mostly made up of small personal effects that didn't amount to much.

"So it seems," Ullden agreed. "Let's get moving."

They trekked hard through the day, barely stopping long enough to pass some hard, preserved meat around for them to gnaw on as lunch. Some of the route was steep, making it difficult to maintain much conversation. The mood was grim as the group kept going well into the evening before stopping to eat and sleep again.

We're running out of food too, Niza noted to herself as she helped Jetha prepare dinner. They only had what Kyla had hunted or foraged, and all the spices except salt had been left behind a while back. It was mostly salted meat with grasses or roots nowadays. Kyla hadn't found any game that day either. If she couldn't hunt anything down, they'd run out of meat in a day or so. Water was getting trickier to find as well.

She tossed and turned under a cloud-filled sky before finally falling asleep. When she woke the fire was out. A single little wisp of smoke curled up from it. The others were all asleep. The ugly old man was there again.

"They say there's a mountain here where you can see the whole world," he said in his gravelly voice.

"What do you want?" she asked, assuming she was dreaming again.

"Look," he said pointing off in the distance. The sky was still dark with heavy clouds that seemed far too low, but she could see a very long way. She could see the plains stretching out to the ocean.

He pointed another direction, and there she saw the fields and rivers they had crossed getting to where they were now. Far away she could see Riverport, where the people labored under Elar supervision and were putting up a colossal statue at the docks. It was facing away from her, so she could not see the figure's face.

She saw the church she had sheltered at--Father Marus' church. It was half rubble now, bodies strewn haphazardly around it being gathered and stacked for burial.

In another direction she looked over the seas. The oceans were covered with black Elar warships moving like cockroaches scattering across a kitchen floor.

"Do you see it?" he asked. "That's peace. There's no war, no killing. The Morgule pirates are no longer raiding shipping. Goods can flow safely now. It's almost done."

"I've never heard of Morgule pirates," she protested. "They're peaceful and gentle."

"That's just one story," he countered.

"Your story," she countered. "Besides, that's not peace. That's enslavement."

"It must begin somewhere," he replied, his expression not changing. "Your kind do not seem willing to just lay down your weapons and be peaceful. You must be shown, proven to, that peace can happen. Ironic, really, that you call me the demon."

"Am I supposed to believe that once you've won the whole world you'll just let everyone go?"

"Once I've brought peace to the whole world, stopped the fighting..." he shook his head at her. "No, they must be educated first, shown the path so they may follow it."

"What if they don't want your path?"

"Those who don't will only be destroying the peace that will have been created. They will have to be dealt with. There is a price. There is always a price for such things. I would not think you so naive as to think otherwise. And yet, you still hesitate. Do you wish for the fighting to continue? For so many to die?"

"I'm not going to kill my friends," she told him. She stood ready, expecting some sort of physical injury. He usually got angry when she spoke so directly against him. She was surprised when none came.

"What about her father? Her brothers? Even Jetha's mother? Don't you think that if she knew her life would save theirs that she would sacrifice it without any thought at all? Her father and older brother fight, even now, to save the home and lands she grew up on, while her mother flees with her younger brother and other women and children of those lands. She has no idea that her path is what will kill them. In the end, she will only destroy what she loves most. And anyone close to her will suffer. She will be damned for all eternity for the things she will do with the power she seeks."

"You're wrong. Jetha respects the power she weilds. She would never harm the ones she loves."

He laughed at her, low and patronizing.

"Don't try to fool yourself, Niza. The girl does not weild the power, the power weilds her. She pulls on as much of it as she can draw into herself and then lets it direct her, instead of controlling it as she ought. And, every time she finds that she is capable of more, she takes more pride in that capability. It has destroyed far more disciplined wizards than her. It will destroy her too."

"But, but the gods wouldn't have chosen her if she wasn't capable," she tried, running out of arguments. "They chose all of us."

"First of all, Niza, I am a god. But you know what? The gods you're thinking of did not do all the choosing." He stood up more smoothly than his appearance would suggest.

"Niza, I chose you. I led you to the scepter, and with the scepter I have been leading you ever since. It was me that led you to Marus' church. I have been with you from the start, protecting you."

"But I only have so much patience. I have given you nothing but opportunity. You can be the voice that brings peace to the world, you can be my greatest high priestess. Or you can plunge the world into eternal chaos. It will be your choice. But until you make your choice I am done protecting and sheltering you."

He took a step backwards and was gone. She woke up chilled in her bedroll. She shivered once before even opening her eyes. The little fire had burned completely out. She looked up at the sky, but there were no stars and no moon. She felt, more than saw, the first snowflake land on her nose.